Opinion | If anyone can save the Democrats, it’s Ben Wikler

This summer, while having coffee with Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, I discussed my own unproductive tendency toward political desperation and my recurring fantasies of moving abroad to give my children a start in a less cruel country. Such thinking was completely alien to him. I remember him saying that when he sees a crisis, his instinct is always to find the way through it, no matter how narrow or winding the path is. He seems to relish the opportunity to take on a challenge.

I was reminded of this conversation when I spoke with Wikler on Sunday after he announced he was running for chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The political discussions I’ve had since Donald Trump’s re-election have generally been dark and depressive, leavened at best with a bit of gallows humor. But while Wikler acknowledged the same concern many of us feel, he sounded animated, almost cheerful.

“What drives me is the opportunity to fight back,” he said. “I’m drawn to big fights where, if you put everything into it, you can make a difference that actually impacts people’s lives.” This combination of focused pragmatism and deep, genuine optimism makes Wikler the obvious candidate for rebuilding a broken and demoralized Democratic Party.

There may be good arguments for some of the other candidates who have joined the race, although I confess that I don’t fully understand them. The leading candidate is reportedly Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota, largely because he is a consensus candidate. “If he wins, the party will choose him not as a personality, but as a safe hand,” Politico wrote. But given the party’s losses in November, it’s hard to see the logic in choosing a benign, status quo-oriented election over a policy innovator who has a proven track record of wresting power from Republicans.

When Wikler became chairman of the Wisconsin Democrats in 2019, the party appeared to be dependent on permanent minority status in the state. After Republican Scott Walker was elected governor in 2010, Republicans adopted shockingly lopsided election plans that all but ensured their continued dominance of the state legislature, even as Democrats won more votes. When Wisconsin residents elected a Democratic governor and attorney general in 2018, the Republican legislature stripped them of some of their powers, a move that was in turn upheld by the state’s conservative Supreme Court. That court would then introduce a new set of even more gerrymandered maps, strengthening Republican control. Politics in Wisconsin seemed to be a closed box.

But as Wikler realized, there was a key. Wisconsin Supreme Court justices are being elected, and if voters could flip a seat on the Supreme Court, it would pave the way for a reevaluation of the state’s maps, finally allowing fair elections in the Legislature. Wikler used the party’s power to elect Janet Protasiewicz to the court last year in what ended up being the most expensive state Supreme Court race in American history. On the bench, Protasiewicz cast the deciding vote to unseat the Republican gerrymander. This, in turn, gave Democrats the opportunity to flip 14 seats in the state legislature this year. Wikler believes Democrats could flip the state Senate and Assembly blue in 2026.