DNC chair says wins in Virginia and New Jersey would signal 2026 blue wave

Mary Ellen McIntire, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin feels confident about Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, arguing Democrats have the momentum coming off of a series of overperformances in special elections this year.

“If we win these elections on Tuesday, which I think we will, that will be a huge wakeup call to Republicans that a wave election is coming,” he said Sunday in an interview with CQ Roll Call at the DNC headquarters in Washington.

But Martin, a former chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party who took over as national party chair in February, acknowledged that a 2026 wave election may not include winning the Senate majority.

“The hill is pretty steep for us to win the Senate back,” he said, before suggesting Democrats could “chip away at the margin enough” to be primed to flip the chamber in 2028.

“There could be enough of a wave election next year that brings us back into both, both chambers. I won’t bet against it. I won’t bet on it. It’s still unlikely,” he said. “The likeliest chamber to flip will be the House.”

Democrats face a daunting Senate map next year, needing to flip a net of four seats to win control. Martin said he felt good about picking up North Carolina’s open seat, where Democrats are excited about former Gov. Roy Cooper’s candidacy.

He also said Maine, where GOP Sen. Susan Collins is up for a sixth term, “certainly could be a real promise for us if we don’t blow it.”

But for further gains, Democrats will need to expand the map into red territory. Martin pointed to Iowa, Alaska, Ohio and Texas as potential pickup opportunities, adding that he thought Rep. Jasmine Crockett would join the field of Senate hopefuls in the Lone Star State.

The interview with Martin came shortly before a planned afternoon door-knocking excursion in Virginia, where Democrats are looking to win back the governor’s mansion. He spent the previous day in New Jersey, where Democrats are hoping to win a third straight gubernatorial election for the first time since the 1960s.

The Democratic nominees in both races —New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill and former Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger — were both first elected to the House in 2018, when Democrats won control of the chamber two years into Donald Trump’s first term. Martin said both candidates, as well as New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, have emphasized their own messages around an economic agenda while not “taking the bait that the Republican candidates are trying to set for them on some of these other issues that they want to debate.”

“Even though they’re all sort of uniquely different and represent uniquely different spaces, their through line is affordability and the through line is an economic agenda that they’re offering up,” he said. “And they’re using, of course, local issues to illustrate that.”

Martin was skeptical that Republican efforts to link Democratic House candidates to Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, as the National Republican Congressional Committee has signaled it plans to do, would be effective next year.

“They’ll certainly try, don’t get me wrong,” Martin said. “I haven’t seen that work a lot in the past, to be honest with you.”

Trump’s push for Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps to help the party defend its House majority and Democratic attempts to counter those moves have reshaped next year’s fight for the chamber.

Martin said he thinks the GOP would have a net gain of seven seats when both parties are eventually done with their redistricting efforts. But, he said, that was still less than the 26 seats the party out of power has won, on average, in midterm elections.

So far, GOP-led redraws in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina could help the party net as many as seven seats. California Democrats responded to Texas’ move by passing their own map, which state voters will decide on through a ballot measure Tuesday. Martin said he felt confident that Californians would approve Proposition 50, which could help the party pick up as many as five seats.

“My hope is that it actually sends a chilling effect to Republicans, and they stop with this nonsense around the country. But if they don’t and they continue moving down this road, we’re going to respond in kind,” he said.

Democrats, though, have fewer opportunities to redraw congressional lines in states they control, as several give redistricting power to independent commissions. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has been pushing Illinois Democrats to redraw their map in an effort to squeeze out an extra seat, but state legislators took no action during a recent veto session. Martin said that although Illinois’ candidate filing deadline for congressional races is on Monday, he didn’t think that would completely close the door on redistricting efforts in the state.

Martin also said he’s expecting the Supreme Court to overturn Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a civil rights-era law that has been used to ensure majority-minority congressional districts. Such a move would significantly affect Democrats’ hold on several Southern House seats, though it’s unclear if such a decision would come down early enough to affect the 2026 elections.

And with red states such as Florida and Texas likely to gain House seats after the next census in 2030, Democrats need to have a long-term strategy to become competitive in more parts of the country, Martin said.

“We cannot keep just investing in one election cycle,” he said. “Of course, we’ve got to win in ’26, but we’ve got to do this in a way that helps us also prepare for the future.”