Politics

Roger Lau named DNC executive director

Published

1 year ago

March 3, 2025

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin is promoting from within as he fills out his senior leadership team, taking a stay-the-course approach to staffing despite the party’s losses in November.

Roger Lau, who has been serving as the DNC’s deputy executive director since 2021, will be the DNC’s next executive director, committee officials shared first with Blue Light News. He replaces Sam Cornale.

The appointment of Lau, a veteran campaign hand who managed Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential bid, comes after Martin — himself a longtime party tactician and state party chair in Minnesota — was elected on Feb. 1 to lead the DNC. Their selections reflect the DNC’s post-election preference for experienced operatives over shaking up the party apparatus on South Capitol Street.

Libby Schneider will become deputy executive director after serving as chief of staff of the DNC, senior adviser and national rural political director. Jessica Wright joins the DNC as deputy executive director and chief of staff to the chair. She served as deputy chief of staff for operations at the State Department during President Joe Biden’s administration and is an Obama administration alum.

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), Washington State Democrats Chair Shasti Conrad and union chief Stuart Appelbaum, who leads the DNC’s Labor Council, will serve as associate chairs. They round out a diverse leadership team that follows a race for DNC chair that was defined by — and criticized for — its homogeneity.

“The DNC is thrilled to announce a new slate of leaders whose depth and breadth of experience will support the Democratic Party in holding the Trump administration accountable and fighting for working families,” Martin said in a statement. “At such a critical moment, we are excited to have experienced, aggressive operatives who are ready to roll up their sleeves and defend Democratic values up and down the ballot.”

Martin’s don’t-rock-the-boat approach to building out the apparatus that will guide the DNC through a difficult midterm election and into the next presidential cycle comes as top officials and strategists engage in a raging debate over Democrats’ branding and how the party out of power should be navigating President Donald Trump’s second term.

Democrats who struggled at the outset to settle on a cohesive opposition message have in recent days seized on Trump and Elon Musk’s mass firings of federal workers and Republicans’ possible cuts to Medicaid as rallying cries.

But many Democrats, including some governors and rank-and-file lawmakers, are urging congressional leaders to take even stronger stands against the president and his billionaire ally’s attempts to dismantle federal agencies and override legislative-branch authority — even though the party has next to no leverage in either chamber. The DNC is also still trying to find its footing there, with a staffer recently issuing a mea culpa on X after a 32-point list of what Democrats did in February — a play on the emails Musk has sent directing federal employees to detail five things they’ve done in the past week — was roundly mocked.

Meanwhile, some of the party’s more moderate lawmakers and consultants are using Democrats’ electoral shellacking as an opening to try to steer the party away from the more progressive messaging and ideological posturing that defined its response to Trump’s first term.

And still others are cautioning Democrats to wait until Trump steps in it himself — with veteran Democratic strategist James Carville recently urging the party to “roll over and play dead” until public opinion sours on the opposition.

But Martin and Lau say they are charging ahead.

Lau said in a statement that when Democrats are “in the opposition party, the work of the DNC is more important than ever” and that the committee “will leverage the vast infrastructure that we’ve built within the DNC and our state parties while meeting this moment by deepening our partnerships, strengthening grassroots organizing, and turbocharging messaging to win elections.”

Politics

Michigan pollster accuses McMorrow campaign of killing unfavorable Senate poll

Published

8 hours ago

June 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A prominent Michigan pollster is accusing state Sen. Mallory McMorrow’s Senate campaign of pressuring a state capitol news outlet into killing a survey of the heated Democratic primary.

The pollster, Steve Mitchell, told Blue Light News the survey was conducted on behalf of Michigan Information & Research Service, an independent news outlet covering the state capitol that his firm regularly works with. But MIRS ultimately chose not to publish the survey after pushback from the McMorrow campaign.

The poll found McMorrow at just 6 percent ahead of the state’s pivotal Aug. 4 contest, far behind former public health official Abdul El-Sayed at 42 percent and Rep. Haley Stevens at 33 percent.

“The poll, in the eyes of the McMorrow campaign, understated their support,” Mitchell, whose firm Mitchell Research & Communications conducted and paid for the poll, told Blue Light News. “And they put intense pressure on MIRS, and therefore MIRS decided that they weren’t going to run the survey. That’s their decision, and I support their decision.”

McMorrow has trailed the other two candidates in a number of recent public surveys, but 6 percent would mark a new low — a sign her campaign for the critical Michigan Senate seat may be mired in third place. McMorrow’s campaign told Blue Light News the polling methodology was faulty and that its resulting memo was riddled with errors, including spelling her name wrong.

Kyle Melinn, a news editor with MIRS, said he killed the poll after speaking with the McMorrow campaign and other pollsters.

“I told Steve that the campaign did raise issues with the poll, and that they were pressuring me to not run the poll,” Melinn said in an interview. He added that after registering the McMorrow campaign’s concerns, he solicited the advice of other pollsters, and “didn’t run it because I didn’t feel comfortable with it.” The other unidentified pollsters shared his issues with the poll, according to Melinn.

McMorrow campaign spokesperson Jackson Boaz said in a statement that “Voicing concerns about a poll isn’t a pressure campaign. They chose not to publish a survey that is deeply flawed.” Asked whether the campaign had asked MIRS not to run the poll, Boaz said, “MIRS chose not to run the poll because they agreed the poll did not meet their standards.”

Boaz said the McMorrow campaign reached out to MIRS after “we noticed odd things about the data,” including that 0 percent of Black voters were undecided in the race; 0 or 1 percent of voters in Detroit and its metro area were undecided while other parts of the state had undecided voters at 25 percent, 48 percent, and even 54 percent; and that McMorrow was at just 5 percent support in her home base of Oakland County.

Their suspicion — which they said MIRS confirmed — was that the poll allowed anyone to take it through an open link, rather than having access controlled to ensure a random and representative sample of the state.

The poll was conducted through a methodology known as text-to-web, in which random voters are selected to receive a text message link to a survey to fill out. That allows pollsters to ensure they are reaching an appropriately wide-ranging group of voters. But the McMorrow campaign said all respondents received the same open-access link, which would allow anyone with the link to take the poll — potentially multiple times.

“The outlet that sponsored this poll declined to publish it because it didn’t meet their standards.

It was conducted through an open SurveyMonkey link sent over text, meaning anyone who

received this poll could vote multiple times or send the link to friends and supporters to impact

the results,” Boaz said in a statement. “This is fundamental polling malpractice. We urge either of our opponents, or any reputable pollster, to stand by this shoddy methodology.”

In an interview, Mitchell admitted he got some of the polling memo wrong, saying for example that he meant to write El-Sayed supported Medicare for All, not “Social Security for All.” But he said he stood by the poll and its methodology.

“I have always had 100 percent confidence in all the polling I do,” Mitchell said. “I believe that we’ve been very strenuous in the methodology that we use. We’re very careful about it. We weighted it well, and more importantly, we have a track record that shows we are a strong and good pollster.”

“A poll is a poll,” Mitchell said when asked about the open link question, sharing a poll with Blue Light News from GOP gubernatorial candidate John James that he said used a similar approach.

The controversy over the spiked poll underscores the importance of the Michigan Senate race. Democrats view defending the open seat as crucial to reclaiming the Senate majority, and the party establishment has mobilized hard against Bernie Sanders-backed El-Sayed, who they argue could pave the way to Republican Mike Rogers flipping the seat in November.

But recent pollssuggest McMorrow is falling behind El-Sayed, who is experiencing a surge in support, and Stevens, who is backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

In the memo about the contested poll, Mitchell wrote there has been a “huge erosion in support for Mallory McMorrow.”

“One of the reasons for her seeming collapse is the fact El-Sayed had received a large amount of unpaid media because of the endorsements by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Hasan Piker the anti-Semitic podcaster while Haley Stevens had an outside organization spend more than $6 million on her candidacy,” Mitchell wrote. However, he added: “Our poll was conducted June 11-13 which coincided with an ad buy of at least $5 million on behalf of McMorrow that started just the day before we began our polling. Therefore, McMorrow’s ads did not have enough time to impact our results.”