The Democrat Party keeps telling the country it’s the resistance. Organized. Focused. Ready to fight.
But behind closed doors, the man running the whole operation allegedly just threw his phone at a junior staffer’s desk.
And a new report from the New York Times pulled back the curtain on just how bad things have gotten inside the Democratic National Committee.
Phone Toss, HR Complaints, and a Boss Who Reportedly Can’t Stop the Leaks
According to Times reporters Shane Goldmacher and Reid J Epstein, DNC Chairman Ken Martin’s “fraying nerves are showing.” In what the reporters described as “a pique of frustration in early July, he threw his phone at the desk of a junior aide while upbraiding the person.”
The phone-tossing incident resulted in a formal complaint to the DNC’s human resources department.
And it did not stop there.
Martin has felt a “growing sense of paranoia,” according to the report, about a potential move to oust him. The reporters also said Martin has become “paralyzed by the idea of leaks” — although that hasn’t stopped them from happening.
Paranoid about leaks. Throwing phones at junior staffers. Filing HR complaints from the top of the org chart. This is what Democrat Party leadership looks like in 2026.
The Money Picture Is Ugly and Getting Worse
The DNC is so cash-strapped that it is asking its vendors to hold off on invoicing them until after the midterms. The Times reports the DNC is $2 million in debt, while the Republican National Committee has $128.5 million on hand.
That is not a close race. That is a rout.
Roger Lau, the executive director of the DNC, told the Times in a statement that the request to vendors to hold off on sending their invoices for months is “nothing more than standard negotiations with vendors over contracts and payment processes.”
Sure it is.
On Martin’s watch, the DNC paid $7.3 million for the remnants of former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign list — money which was used to cover Harris campaign debts.
Think about that for a second. Donors gave money to the DNC to fight Republicans. Instead, that money went to bail out Kamala Harris’s losing campaign and pay off her leftover bills.
And the DNC has dropped $840,000 on territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam — which, Goldmacher and Epstein note, will not have “any impact on control of Congress.”
Puerto Rico and Guam do not vote in congressional elections. Spending nearly a million dollars there while begging vendors to wait on their invoices is not a strategy. It is a mess.
A Politico report found that the DNC “wildly trails” its Republican counterpart by nearly all fundraising metrics, as donors view the Democrat Party as “rudderless, off message and leaderless.”
Those are Democrat donors saying that. Not Republicans. Not Trump supporters. People who write checks to the DNC.
Liberal influencers are publicly questioning Martin’s refusal to release an internal report on the party’s failures, and Democrat operatives have begun informal discussions about recruiting a new chair, even as most believe that Martin’s job isn’t in serious jeopardy ahead of the midterm elections.
Amanda Litman, who leads the Democrat-allied organization Run For Something, said she has been approached by senior strategists gauging her interest in replacing Martin. She declined but said many in the party have lost faith in the DNC leader.
“I think it’s a really hard job, and also Ken is not doing it very well,” Litman told the Associated Press.
What This Tells You About the Democrat Party Heading Into 2026
Martin has tried to get ahead of the criticism. He penned a Substack essay defending his fundraising and spending strategy. But writing a Substack post while your vendors are waiting on payment and your own allies are shopping around for your replacement is not exactly a sign of strength.
The RNC has a roughly seven-to-one money advantage over the DNC, and Martin took out a $15 million loan ahead of elections in Virginia and New Jersey. Multiple people familiar with the DNC’s money issues said the situation is so dire that Martin will likely be forced to make another tough call this summer: take out another loan or lay off staff.
And Martin’s own public admissions have not helped his image. He told Politico that there is “not a day that I don’t go home wanting to pull my hair out” in his current role.
But then he also said this: “Most people think I’ve got the shittiest job in America, but I feel like I’ve got the best job in America.”
Pick a lane.
The infighting did not begin with the phone incident. Earlier this year, Martin told other DNC officers in a leaked Zoom call that he was unsure about his ability to lead the party due to infighting sparked by the national party’s vice chairman, David Hogg. “I’ll be very honest with you, for the first time in my 100 days on this job . . . the other night I said to myself for the first time, I don’t know if I wanna do this anymore,” he said in the meeting.
That audio leaked. Then more leaks followed. And now the New York Times is publishing a detailed account of a phone being hurled at a junior staffer’s desk while the chairman reportedly spirals over who inside the building is talking to reporters.
None of this happens in a well-run organization. The DNC is not a well-run organization.
What makes the financial picture worse is that the Democrats spent 2024 burning through cash at a staggering rate. The Harris campaign put on several star-studded concerts in the days leading up to Election Day, and spent an eye-popping $1.5 billion during the former vice president’s 15-week run, only to lose the popular vote, the Electoral College, and all seven swing states to President Trump.
And now the DNC is holding the bag. The fundraising gap has only widened, with the DNC reportedly having less cash this summer than at any point in the past five years.
The party that spent years lecturing the country about competence and character is now stiffing its own vendors, bailing out a failed campaign, and watching its chairman throw his phone across the office at a subordinate. The midterms are coming. The RNC has $128.5 million ready to go. And the Democrat Party is trying to figure out whether it can afford to pay its bills without taking out another loan.
That is the state of the opposition party right now.
Sources: Mediaite, New York Times (via Mediaite), Politico, Associated Press, Washington Free Beacon, The Bulwark