Democrats vie for top DNC job in first officer forum

The Democratic National Committee held the first of four officer forums on Saturday afternoon, and qualifying candidates for top leadership roles laid out their platforms and strategies while attempting to differentiate one another from the now-crowded field.

Candidates needed to secure the support of 40 DNC members to make it on the virtual stage -- and will need to maintain that support to qualify for the three subsequent forums.

Each of the four forums will focus on a region of the country, with Saturday's themed around the South. The journalist moderators all hailed from publications based in that region.

The eight DNC chair candidates who qualified for Saturday's forum were: former congressional candidate Quintessa Hathaway, Minnesota Democratic Party Chairman Ken Martin, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, attorney Jason Paul, New York state Sen. James Skoufis, former Department of Homeland Security staffer Nate Snyder, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler, and author and spiritualist Marianne Williamson.

While most candidates had little daylight between their positions on how to move forward -- such as de-centering Washington, greater distance from consultants, investing in recruitment across the board, and being savvier about communication -- perhaps the most vocal critic of the party was Skoufis.

When asked by moderator Greg Bluestein of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution what he would steal from GOP strategy, Skoufis said addressing controversial issues head-on, pointing to what he saw as "fence-sitting" by Democrats on the Israel-Hamas war that ended up alienating all stakeholders.

And when asked how to make gains in red areas, Skoufis didn't hold back: "We have to get out of our elite ivory towers and back onto the factory floors and being relatable, talking in language that people understand and they find respectable and stop using this overly academic language and terms that sometimes make it seem like we're better suited running for university chancellor."

During the forum, Wikler and Williamson were the only candidates who did not commit to living in and heading the DNC from Washington, D.C., when not on the road traveling. Williamson currently resides in Washington but said she would rather have one of the current candidates handle day-to-day operations while she travels talking to voters, and Wikler said that while he would be visiting Washington regularly, he would continue to raise his family in Wisconsin, akin to some members of Congress.

Several unaffiliated Democratic organizations, spanning across all wings of the party, have hosted and plan on hosting similar forums, though none are directly linked with the DNC leadership election process. For instance, the campaign arm of the House Democrats, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, will host the candidates for DNC chair in Washington this coming Wednesday, several sources familiar with the planning told ABC News.

Neither House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries nor other Democrats in the lower chamber leadership have weighed in yet, but last week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer threw his support behind Wikler. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the former vice presidential candidate, is backing Martin's chairmanship bid and Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg for vice chair.

The candidate field has a very brief time to winnow -- officer elections are scheduled for Feb. 1 just outside of Washington, D.C. -- but any candidate movement could significantly shift the dynamics of the race. Both Martin and Wikler, two state party leaders, have pulled ahead as clear front-runners, with robust vote-whipping and outreach operations. Even though they hold very similar, progressive fundamentals, they differ slightly in presentation. Wikler often appears on cable news and even sat down with Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show."

One of his core proposals is to change how, and where, Democrats tell their story.

"In the last election, there were millions of Americans who didn't know that we were fighting for working families," Wikler said. "And if we're going to correct that, we need to communicate everywhere. That means on conservative media, where conservative voices dominate and tell stories about Democrats. That means building a progressive media ecosystem where we tell our own story, and critically, it means speaking to folks who are not tuned into politics."

Martin, for his part, boasts long-standing relationships within the organization, sitting on the impactful Rules and Bylaws Committee and serving as a vice chair of the DNC since 2017.

"I think what our party needs right now is a workhorse, not a showhorse," Martin said during the forum. "And of all the titles I've had, the most important is organizer. That's what people know me as."

Still, O'Malley's team sees opportunity to pull ahead and has consistently claimed there is a "three candidate race." O'Malley, former chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, this week gained support from Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and from some current and former members of the Congressional Black Caucus. He's pitching a refocus on core issues, such as economic prosperity, and his team said he plans on going on a listening tour in the communities surrounding the in-person forum locations before the election: Detroit and Washington, D.C.

"Sometimes, people blame the DNC for decisions that were actually the campaign's decisions," O'Malley said. "Of course, we as a party have to own that. We have to accept this really, really hard loss. I believe that the biggest mistake we made was in not continually staying connected to kitchen tables all across America by talking to the economic concerns of people."

But what qualifies front-runner status has been based broadly on conversations with various DNC members, unofficial endorsement tallies and the long-standing relationship between some of these candidates and committee members. Campaigns have said they have support from dozens to hundreds of members, but no team has released the full list of names of all their current supporters who can actually vote in a few weeks time.

And with no candidate showing they have yet clinched support of at least 225 votes needed to win -- half plus one of the full DNC, which is 448 members large -- it's possible no candidate wins on the first round of balloting in February.