As Democrats Reel, Two Front-Runners Emerge in a Leadership Battle

Days before Republicans take full control of Washington, the Democratic National Committee is mired in an intramural fight that is less about how the party found itself locked out of power than about disputes over donor influence, personality conflicts and past slights and jealousies.

The two candidates who have emerged as front-runners to become D.N.C. chair, Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wikler of Wisconsin, are both middle-aged white men from the upper Midwest and chair of their state parties whose politics are well within the Democratic mainstream.

Yet, as is common during internal Democratic squabbles, fault lines in the race have formed not over ideological differences but over arguments about party mechanics.

Mr. Martin, 51, is campaigning on a platform of returning power and resources to state parties, while his supporters are attacking Mr. Wikler, 43, as a tool of major donors and Democratic consultants in Washington.

Mr. Wikler’s supporters include a host of D.N.C. officials who have been perturbed at Mr. Martin for creating a group of state party chairs that has competed within the national committee for influence. They say that the Wisconsinite, who turned his state party into a fund-raising juggernaut, is the more dynamic figure who managed to turn state elections, like a 2023 Supreme Court contest, into national causes.

At the same time, Democrats who are not directly involved in the D.N.C. race described the field to succeed the departing chair, Jaime Harrison, as uninspiring. Among the party’s top leaders, only Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has weighed in on the race (for Mr. Wikler). Some Democrats see the D.N.C. contenders’ arguments about relationships with donors and their regular promises of more money for state parties as papering over a broader discussion of why Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election.