Democrats debate strategy, voter protection at first candidate forum

Democrats evaluated candidates for party leadership at their first virtual candidate forum on Saturday with a focus on the Southern region.

The highly contested race for DNC chair forced contenders to address their landslide loss in November and share future plans for successful races.

“In the last election, there were millions of Americans who didn't know that we were fighting for working families. And if we're going to correct that, we need to communicate everywhere. That means on conservative media, where conservative voices dominate and tell stories about Democrats,” Ben Wikler, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, told viewers.

Former Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer endorsed Wikler this week bolstering his campaign for the party’s highest seat in leadership.

“That means building a progressive media ecosystem where we tell our own story, and critically, it means speaking to folks who are not tuned in to politics, who don't trust either parties, people who are paying attention to YouTube and podcasts and TikTok, people who are on platforms that often an older generation of Democrats haven't heard of, but dominate news and information for younger voters,” he added.

His challengers agreed citing a disconnect with the public as the reason for the slim Republican majority in the 119th Congress. 

“The majority of Americans now believe that the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and the Democratic party is a party of the wealthy and the elites. And to prove the point, of course, the only two groups that we over performed with were wealthy households and college educated voters,” former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) shared. 

“That is a damning indictment on our party brand. There's a dismissive notion that the words working class are a code for white voters, we lost ground among all kinds of families, black, brown and white, and they are all disconnected from our party,” he added. 

Former Department of Homeland Security official Nate Snyder said Democrats lost momentum due a lack of authentic presence on the ground in key states.

“We're taking some for granted, and we're not investing in places, say, for instance, like rural America in the South, where we know there are battles to be won. And so we opened up the playbook of just sort of what we've done before,” he told the virtual audience.

“Sure, we saw a lot of volume on the ground, a lot of doors hit, but how many people from those communities who were knocking doors were actually from that enbloc? How many were actually talking to the neighbors? And did we do enough to recognize that the dynamic on how we're dealing with our politics and our campaigns reaching people has also fundamentally changed.”

His proposal to combat retreating visibility is to promote the youth.

“We need to uplift our youth leaders within the DNC members,” Snyder stated.

Candidates for the party’s vice chair of civic engagement hammered similar points earlier on the call.

“We have lost young people, we have lost men of color. We have lost the working class, in large part because we are talking at people rather than listening and mobilizing the ways that they are engaging information,” former vice chair Michael Blake said. 

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), who is running to be vice chair of civic engagement, echoed concerns about key demographics being left behind amid fledgling election results. She urged the party to re-engage seniors amidst their push to capture the attention of younger voters.

“But we also can't forget those who are seniors. We can't forget those who are in our territories. We can't forget those who are Democrats abroad, because we know what happens if we don't train and educate people on not only how they should vote, but the process,” she said. 

At the beginning of the call, she flagged concerns with the rapid spread of misinformation and new voter suppression efforts in states across the country.

“We look at the 60,000 votes being held in North Carolina right now because of voter suppression of people who tried to vote. We need an avenue as the DNC to be able to tell people what to look out for, how to handle these problems when they occur,” Beatty argued.

Collectively Democrats sounded a raging alarm for internal changes heading into the 2026 election cycle.

“We are winning elections on the margins. It doesn't take big numbers. It takes one community at a time, one conversation at a time, and we've got to get back to doing that as Democrats,” stated Rep. Nikema Williams (D-Ga.), a vice chair candidate.

“It should mean going out and talking to voters, and that's exactly what we're going to continue to do and elevate when I'm your next vice chair of civic engagement and voter participation.