Faiz Shakir, Bernie Sanders’ former campaign chief, enters DNC race

NEW YORK (AP) — Faiz Shakir, a progressive strategist who led Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ last presidential campaign, launched an eleventh-hour bid for Democratic National Committee chair on Wednesday, warning that his party is ignoring the painful lessons of Donald Trump’s political success by failing to embrace major changes.

Shakir said President-elect Trump, in some cases, has delivered a more compelling message to working-class voters, who have long made up the backbone of the Democratic Party.

“It’s almost like we’ve moved on and not even deliberated or grasped what were the challenges. I mean, we’re not even having a conversation,” Shakir told The Associated Press. “We will have learned nothing about the last four years if we proceed as normal with a failing Democratic brand.”

It’s unclear if Shakir, the 45-year-old son of Pakistani immigrants who has never run for office, has a legitimate chance to win the election, which comes in less than three weeks. Many DNC members have already committed to his competitors. But Shakir’s candidacy, backed by his strong connection to Sanders and the party’s vocal progressive wing, may influence the conversation in a high-stakes election that has lacked major ideological or strategic differences.

Eight other candidates, including Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic chair, and Ken Martin, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair, are already in the race.

The New York Times first reported Shakir’s move.

Shakir said he advised Sanders of his decision, and Sanders did not discourage or encourage him. A spokesperson for the Vermont senator declined to comment.

Shakir earned his first public endorsement from Sara Nelson, the President of the Association of Flight Attendants. In a post on X, she encouraged a change of the status quo and expressed support for Shakir’s push to “use the authority and resources of the @DNC to build power for working people.”

Still, the other chair candidates have been working for several weeks to secure the support of the committee’s 448 voting members.

“There are already too many running. It’s way too late,” said DNC executive committee member Ray Buckley, who chairs the New Hampshire Democratic Party and has endorsed Martin. “There are not enough undecided members to create a viable pathway to 225 votes for Shakir.”

Wikler casts himself as a bridge between the party’s progressive and moderate wings. He’s earned the endorsements of top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer and high-profile Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, in addition to progressive groups like MoveOn.

Martin has the support of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the party’s recent vice presidential nominee, along with dozens of state party leaders from across the country.

Both perceived front-runners have promised a strong messaging focus on economic issues and the working class if elected, though there has been little discussion of fundamental change within the party’s political apparatus.

Shakir, a Harvard-educated veteran strategist, would be the party’s first Muslim chair. He previously worked for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid before leading Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. He now serves as the executive director of More Perfect Union, a pro-labor journalism platform.

Shakir explained his belated decision to enter the race in a letter distributed to the DNC’s voting members earlier Wednesday. He missed a deadline to qualify for a candidate forum in Detroit on Thursday, but expects to collect enough signatures to participate in two final forums ahead of the Feb. 1 vote.

“As I have listened to our candidates, I sense a constrained, status-quo style of thinking. We cannot expect working class audiences to see us any differently if we are not offering anything new or substantive to attract their support,” he wrote to DNC members.

Shakir went further in his interview, crediting Trump with doing more to attract disaffected working-class voters than Democrats in some cases by embracing tariffs on imports and calling to eliminate taxes on tips and Social Security.

“If you were looking for that friction with corporate America, you would rightly feel like maybe Donald Trump offered more of that than we did,” Shakir said, while suggesting that Trump’s strong connection to billionaires like Elon Musk undermined his pro-worker rhetoric.

Shakir was also critical of his own party’s recent embrace of billionaires like Mark Cuban, who played a high-profile role in supporting Democratic nominee Kamala Harris during the election’s closing days, along with former Rep. Liz Cheney, an anti-Trump conservative from Wyoming.

He outlined a “reimagined” DNC that would leverage its “organizing army” to support striking and organizing workers, such as those at Amazon and Boeing, in addition to joining with groups that fight rent increases, price gouging and hospital closures, among other working-class priorities.

He said the DNC should also seek out and facilitate meetings with Trump voters who previously backed Democrats.

Shakir acknowledged that it may be too late for him to win, but he said something was needed to shake up the race.

“It feels very fluid to me, based out of a lack of energy and a sense of aimless drift that people are feeling,” he said. “Democrats are in the wilderness, right? There’s no real leader.”

Steve Peoples, The Associated Press