Marianne Williamson Announces Campaign to Lead the Democratic National Committee

Any hopes that two-time failed presidential candidate Marianne Williamson had left politics and returned to her roots as a spiritual guru were dashed Thursday. That’s when the vocal supporter of alleged sexual assailant and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced via her Substack (of course) that she is launching a campaign to head up the Democratic National Committee and to “reinvent the party” in her image.

Marianne Williamson sprang into the spotlight in the late 1980s as an advisor to the stars, characterized in a 1991 Vanity Fair feature as “a liberal, Jewish ex-lounge singer from Texas” who brought A Course in Miracles—a book allegedly dictated to its author by Jesus Christ—into the mainstream. Now 72, she’s since moved from the spiritual realm into the political, throwing her hat into the Democratic presidential ring in 2020, and again in 2024.

Williamson’s non-traditional stances on the 2019 campaign trail feel almost quaint compared to RFK, Jr.’s during the most recent election cycle, but such is the frog-in-pot life of America in 2024. Still, her announcement that, if elected, she’d launch a Department of Peace, or that hurricanes could be controlled by collective meditation, or that “James Cameron deserves a Nobel Peace Price” for Avatar still managed to raise even the most jaded political watchers’ brows, as did allegations of a toxic and abusive environment for campaign staffers in 2020. (Williamson, for her part, has denied those allegations, calling them a “distraction technique.”)

But though the heavily-memed former candidate appeared to eventually realize that her path to the White House began and ended with her vision board, the spiritualist wants to remain in the game. In her subscription newsletter, “TRANSFORM with Marianne Williamson,” the teacher (who just yesterday used her platform to announce “only love is real”) posted an open letter to DNC members saying that “The MAGA phenomenon now challenges the very way that politics are done in America, and the traditional tool kit of party organizing will not be enough to meet the moment.”

Williamson, who just last month tweeted “Good choice!” in response to Donald Trump’s announcement that Kennedy would be named the country’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, writes that “President Trump has ushered in an age of political theatre – a collective adrenaline rush that has enabled him to not only move masses of people into his camp but also masses of people away from ours.”

While Williamson does not mention the top contenders to replace DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, who led the party since 2021 and isn’t expected to seek another term, her criticism of the Dem’s current strategies seems a shot at traditional candidates such as Minnesota Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, former Homeland Security official Nate Snyder, Sen. James Skoufis, and Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler. “Data analysis, fundraising, field organizing, and beefed-up technology – while all are important – will not be enough to prepare the way for Democratic victory in 2024 and beyond,” Williamson writes, proposing “A party that listens more, and makes people feel that their thoughts and feelings are as important as their wallets.”

The DNC is slated to hold its election for positions, including its chair, on February 1, with four candidate forums planned throughout January. Williamson is the only woman, thus far, to announce her candidacy for the role.

In a video that accompanied her letter, Williamson said, “Donald Trump is a 21st-century political phenomenon, and we need to become one, too … We need to know what it was that made people feel that their wallets were more important than their pain. We need to understand what it is that has made people emotionally and psychologically disconnect from a sense that the Democratic Party was part of a great legacy in American history.”