Former Liz Warren Campaign Manager Who Lists His Pronouns in Chinese

Roger Lau has worked for at least four losing Democratic presidential campaigns

“This is a new DNC,” party chairman Ken Martin proclaimed when he won his seat in February. On Monday, he appointed the DNC’s new executive director: a longtime political operative who has worked for at least four losing Democratic presidential campaigns and who lists his pronouns in Chinese on social media.

Martin appointed Roger Lau on Monday to serve as the DNC’s next executive director in a move Politico described as a “stay-the-course approach” following the party’s devastating losses in the 2024 elections. Indeed, Lau has experience working for losing political campaigns. He served as senior adviser to the Harris Victory Fund last year, managed Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D., Mass.) failed presidential campaign in 2020, worked as a state director for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential campaign, and cut his teeth in politics as a staffer for John Kerry’s failed 2004 presidential campaign.

Martin hailed Lau’s “depth and breadth of experience” in a statement Monday announcing his appointment of the longtime Massachusetts political operative. Martin said Lau will “support the Democratic Party in holding the Trump administration accountable and fighting for working families.

“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 told Politico in a statement, which also announced Libby Schneider as the DNC’s next deputy executive director. Schneider previously served as the party’s chief of staff during the 2024 elections.

Lau touts his decades-long experience leading and working for losing presidential campaigns on his LinkedIn page, where he displays his pronouns in English and Spanish, as well as a Chinese character that translates to “he.”

Amid the scores of losing campaigns on his resume, Lau has made a point to clarify on his LinkedIn page that he has secured at least one win during his 22 years in the field. He served as campaign manager for former Rep. Niki Tsongas’s winning bid for the special election in Massachusett’s Fifth Congressional District in 2007. The district hadn’t voted for a Republican for over three decades at that point, but the special election was an unexpected nail-biter, with Tsongas’s challenger coming within 6 points of flipping the seat red.

“We won!!” Lau noted on his LinkedIn page.

Martin appointed Lau to serve as the DNC’s executive director just weeks after winning his chairmanship and promising to usher the party into a new era. “We’re taking the gloves off,” Martin said in early February, with party operatives describing the new chairman as a “knife-fighter.”

But Lau embodies many of the same characteristics that defined the Democrats’ defeat in 2024. He said in October that it was “very cool” when vice presidential candidate Tim Walz live streamed one half of a Madden NFL video game with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.). The final score was zero to zero. In addition to disclosing his Chinese pronouns on social media, Lau made far-left identity politics a central focus of Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign in the leadup to her disastrous Super Tuesday performance that year.

Lau noted in a Warren campaign memo two days before the Super Tuesday primaries in 2020 that their campaign had invested more than $700,000 in radio, print, and mail advertisements to reach “Latinx” and other minority constituencies ahead of the critical primary contests.

It didn’t work. Warren failed to win a single state on Super Tuesday, and she came in third in her home state of Massachusetts after winning just 21 percent of the vote.

Warren ended her campaign just four days after Lau sent the memo. “Thank you for dreaming so fucking big, thank you for dreaming so fucking hard,” a choked-up Lau told Warren’s campaign staff during a conference call after the senator announced her exit from the race.

Warren tapped Lau to serve as her senior Senate adviser following her failed presidential bid. From there, Lau publicly attacked Republican lawmakers for sponsoring a resolution that condemned the Chinese Communist Party for misleading the world about the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic. Lau said the resolution could incite hate crimes against Asian Americans.

“This is just so wrong,” Lau wrote as Republicans mustered support for the anti-CCP resolution. “It’s lazy scapegoating, hateful fear mongering, & just flat out dangerous. Asian Americans have been victims of hate crimes that have been incited by ignorance like this. This is a global crisis & we’re all in this together. We’re better than this!”