“It’s all gas, no brakes.” For David Hogg, a vice chair of the Democratic
National Committee, there’s little time away from politics right now, especially
considering his $20 million campaign to disrupt his own party.
Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, and gun control
advocate, is looking to oust what he calls “asleep at the wheel” incumbents in
primaries around the US through his political action committee, Leaders We
Deserve. It’s a strategy that has won him admirers and detractors, especially
from the Democratic establishment, who say he shouldn’t be meddling in
primaries, considering he’s now a party boss. So far, Hogg isn’t backing down.
But he argues that it might get him kicked out of the DNC altogether. The party
is set to vote June 9 to decide whether to redo Hogg’s election.
Just seven years ago, Hogg was a high school senior in Parkland, taking speech
and debate classes and prepping for college. But all that changed when a former
student entered his building and committed the largest mass shooting at a US
high school. Hogg quickly co-founded the student-led organization March For Our
Lives and became one of the nation’s most prominent gun control activists.
Today, he’s the first member of Gen Z to be a vice chair at the DNC and, through
Leaders We Deserve, is aggressively challenging the party’s status quo to
generate “an attitudinal shift.”
“What we’re trying to do is say, across the board, Democrats need to stand up
and fight harder,” says Hogg, whose PAC is trying to recruit a fresh slate of
young candidates. “And if there’s somebody that feels nervous about potentially
being challenged as a member of Congress, they should ask themselves why that is
ultimately.”
On this week’s More To The Story, Hogg discusses why he’s ruled out running for
office himself and how the anger he felt after the shooting in Parkland still
drives him today.
Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast
app.
Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your
favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to subscribe.