DNC chair Martin confident Democrats will win New Jersey, Virginia races

EXCLUSIVE: PHILADELPHIA, PA – Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Ken Martin is confident that his party’s investment in the most important elections of 2025 will pay off.

“I expect we will win the elections in New Jersey and Virginia,” Martin said in an exclusive national interview with Fox News Digital, pointing to the only two states holding gubernatorial contests this year. “We feel pretty optimistic about our chances.”

Democrats plan to bounce back from last year’s setbacks, when the party lost control of the White House and Senate and failed to regain its House majority, with a strong showing in next week’s races.

The New Jersey and Virginia contests are seen as early tests of President Donald Trump’s agenda and a barometer for next year’s midterm elections in which Democrats hope to regain control of Congress.

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The DNC has doled out a party record more than $7 million for get-out-the-vote and organizing efforts this summer and fall in New Jersey, Virginia and Pennsylvania, where Democrats are fighting to retain three state Supreme Court seats.

“I’ve always taken the view that every election matters, whether it’s a year off, whether it’s a local election, whether it’s a federal election, where every square inch of ground we gain adds up,” Martin emphasized.

Since Trump returned to the White House in January, “there have been 45 elections on the ballot. Democrats have outperformed them all by an average of 16 percentage points,” Martin said. Although confident, he added, “we don’t take anything for granted.”

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Asked what the decline at the ballot box would mean for Democrats, Martin said his focus is “seizing every vote we can get over the next few days to make sure we win.”

He echoed, “I’m hopeful that we will win the elections in New Jersey and Virginia. We have great candidates running great campaigns.”

Martin spoke during a two-day campaign tour in Pennsylvania ahead of return stops to boost voter turnout in New Jersey and Virginia.

Representative Mikie Sherrill, Democratic candidate for governor of New Jersey, greets voters at a senior center in Elizabeth, N.J., on October 29, 2025. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)

In blue-leaning New Jersey, polls show a tight race between Democratic nominee Rep. Mikie Sherrill and GOP challenger Jack Ciattarelli. Jack Ciattarelli is running to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.

Asked why Republicans are optimistic about their chances of capturing the Garden State’s governor’s office, Martin said. he told Politico “New Jersey is probably the best place for Donald Trump to stop the Democratic momentum, or at least minimize the Democratic momentum that we’ve seen throughout this year,” he said in a recent interview.

Offering his comments, Martin said: “We expect this race to be close and it certainly looks like it will be close.”

And in New Jersey, he said, “history is not on our side in the sense that we haven’t elected a Democrat to a third term as governor in at least 50 years.”

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Still, he argued, Sherrill “ran a really strong campaign with a message that resonated with New Jerseyans.”

In Virginia, recent controversies in the state’s attorney general race have complicated Democrats’ efforts to retain the governor’s mansion and forced former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who is running for office, to defend against GOP attacks. Polls showed Spanberger with a wide lead over his Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.

After winning the Democratic nomination for Virginia Attorney General, Jay Jones addresses his supporters as his wife, Mavis Jones, watches on June 17, 2025, in Norfolk, Virginia. (Trevor Metcalfe/The Virginian-Pilot/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

The controversy centers on Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones’ apology for texts in 2022 that compared then-House Speaker Todd Gilbert to mass murderers Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot and said that if given two bullets, the Republican lawmaker would “use both.”

Republicans demanded that Jones withdraw from the race.

“Let me be very clear, I immediately condemned his vile and indefensible comments and text messages and asked for his apology,” Martin said. “He needed to apologize to Virginians, and he did.”

Asked by Fox News Digital if he should ask Jones to step aside, Martin responded: “That’s not up to me to decide. It’s up to Virginians to decide whether his comments are disqualifying, and they’ll make their decision in a few days.”

Martin also said the state supreme court retainer elections in Pennsylvania “are critical for our party because what we’ve seen for years is attempts by billionaire donors and special interest groups to buy Supreme Court seats across the country, and that’s essentially an attempt to thwart our democracy.”

“The truth is, this is a critical election for us for the National Democratic Party, because if they win here, if these billionaire donors can win all three of these Supreme Court races, they will absolutely make it their way and they will try to do it all over the country,” Martin warned.

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Asked to respond to Martin’s remarks, the Republican National Committee (RNC) noted the fundraising advantage.

“Ken Martin has turned the DNC into a debt-ridden circus run by radicals — and we sincerely hope he continues his great work,” RNC national press secretary Kiersten Pels said in a statement to Fox News Digital. he said. “Whatever happens next Tuesday, it won’t be because of anything Ken Martin did. The DNC is broke, desperate, and spending its last dollars trying to salvage its reputation in blue states, and even then Democrats are having a hard time hanging on.”