By Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Nate Snyder, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security official, joined the growing race on Tuesday to run the Democratic party, pledging to win back the working class after extensive November election losses.
Snyder, who is Jewish and Latino, joins four white male candidates vying to run the Democratic National Committee after current DNC chair Jaime Harrison, who is Black, steps down next year.
Snyder’s rivals are Minnesota Democratic Party head Ken Martin, former Maryland governor and presidential candidate Martin O’Malley, leader of the Wisconsin Democrats Ben Wikler and New York state Senator James Skoufis. Other contenders could still join the race.
The last white man to run the DNC was Tim Kaine, who served from 2009 to 2011. The Democratic Party has historically drawn strong support from Black voters and other people of color.
Snyder told Reuters he decided to run after attending a meeting of state party officials in Scottsdale, Arizona last week, where he was shocked by the lack of candid discussion about the need for change.
“We can’t repeat this, no matter what, because our democracy depends on it,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem like anybody wants to actually sound the alarms.”
“Education, loan forgiveness, putting food on the table, fighting for the little guy – we’ve sort of lost our way on that,” Snyder said, echoing the sentiments of Senator Bernie Sanders and progressive Democrats.
“And not surprisingly, those are common themes and entry points for extremist groups that are looking to exploit and recruit people.”
Democrats have been agonizing over their next steps after former President Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in every battleground state and Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate and retained the U.S. House of Representatives.
The job of DNC chair is largely administrative and involves logistics and fundraising. But focus on who will next fill the role has grown given the breadth of the Democrats’ losses and urgent calls from some party members for a complete reset.
Democrats lost even in states with strong unions and Democratic legislatures, Snyder said, which shows state parties need more support between elections. According to the Edison national poll, Trump’s support among Latino male voters also jumped 18 percentage points from four years ago.
Snyder previously worked on counter-terrorism and threat prevention at the DHS, and was a community organizer and labor activist before heading former President Barack Obama’s election efforts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states in 2008.
Martin, who headed the DNC’s state committees, is pushing for a “massive” narrative project to improve the party’s image.
Wikler, whose Wisconsin Democrats have won seven of the last 10 statewide elections since he took over, but not the most recent one, sees promise in outreach to people not engaged in politics.
O’Malley, the just-departed head of the Social Security Administration, is pledging to focus on the economy, while Skoufis wants to wrest power away from Democratic consultants and hand it back to state party officials.
The 448 members of the Democratic National Committee will vote on a successor to Harrison on Feb. 1. The group includes local party leaders, more than 200 elected officials apportioned based on voting populations and other prominent Democrats.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Heather Timmons and Nicholas Yong)
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