David Hogg wants Democrats to wake up: "We have to show how our party is going to fight back"

David Hogg, a March For Our Lives activist and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, announced a plan to primary lackluster Democrats in the House of Representatives that drew backlash from party elites.

While Democrats have traditionally respected seniority and incumbency in internal party conflicts, Hogg, a party official, announced a $20 million effort to primary sitting members of the House. Leaders We Deserve, a political organization and action committee that Hogg serves as president of, is set to fund the effort, which is aimed at electing younger Democrats. While the announcement that the group would back primary challengers received significant attention, Hogg told Salon that they would also be supporting younger candidates in competitive seats. The Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, has not endorsed the idea.

In a conversation with Salon, Hogg said that he hoped the threat of a primary challenge would encourage Democrats to put up a more vigorous opposition to Trump and the Republicans or convince some representatives to retire ahead of the 2026 elections. Hogg lauded Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who recently made a trip to El Salvador to meet with a wrongly renditioned immigrant, pointing to Van Hollen as the sort of representative he was hoping to support.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm interested in talking about the support you've announced for primaries against Democratic candidates, and I'd like to start with just a simple question of whether or not you have any names on your list.

Right now we're looking at all the districts around the country where a lot of our members have failed to meet the moment, and part of what we hope with this is that it won't be necessary. We hope that a lot of these members, if there's a member who hears about this program and is made anxious by it: A, they should ask why, and why that is because, if you're effective, you don't have anything to worry about this; and B, if you aren't able to meet this moment, and that's why you're anxious, you should think about not seeking re-election and supporting the next generation, passing down your knowledge and mentoring them.

So that's why there isn't that announcement. We don't want to have to do this right now, but we need to let people know that this is a real possibility and we are not afraid to do it.

There's one thing that I would like to say, too, which is not getting out there nearly enough: We're not just focused on challenging incumbent Democrats that we feel like are failing to meet the moment in the U.S. House — we are also focused on supporting younger Democrats who are running in competitive races that could help us gain a majority, because we obviously want to take on big Republicans head-on as well.

If there is somebody who aligns with our values, who is in a frontline district, that is not challenging an incumbent, we're going to support that person because we really want to make sure young people come into the majority, obviously, as they're running.

You mentioned candidates supporting your values or “our values.” I'd be interested in hearing about whether or not there's an ideological component to this, or if there's like a litmus test in terms of an issue or issues you're thinking of here, or if it's more so about deference to the administration.

More than anything, what I would say is that it is about our candidates. There are a few things that they have to be. Obviously, they have to be good on guns, and they also need to not take corporate money. Part of the reason we support them so heavily is that we want to show the next generation, to people of all ages, that there are Democrats out there who don't take corporate money — that are there to represent you and your interests, and that is their sole job, right? They're not here to represent any special interest.

Because you know that our young people are losing faith in democracy, and in terms of what the type of candidate that we're really looking for, I would say is somebody like [Chris] Van Hollen, who is obviously is in the Senate, and we're not going to be working there, but the fact that he literally went to El Salvador and didn't just sit around saying, “Well, we're In the minority, we can't do anything.” It's fighting back against the Trump administration, doing everything that he can to see that we are putting up a fight.

And it's also people like, obviously, Congressman Maxwell Frost, who was the first organizing director at March for Our Lives. It's people like that around the country that are looking for, and we understand that in different districts, there's going to be, you know, there can be different values, but ultimately, those are some of the lines that we're looking at.

I want to follow up — you've mentioned corporate money. I'm wondering if the scope here is limited to just corporate money. One of the things I'm thinking about is that in the primaries in the Democratic Party last year, we saw significant spending against Democrats like Jamal Bowman or Cori Bush. I'm wondering if you're taking into account special interest donations in general.

I would say one thing overall that everybody wants, that our candidates are also going to be pushing for, is major campaign finance reform, because the people who should have a say in the elections are their voters, and repeatedly, the American people — they feel like democracy is not working for them, that it's only representing special interests that are not representative of the people within their districts.

And we want to make sure that our candidates are representative of their districts, representative of their values and what what they need help with, and the best way to address that, especially with groups like the NRA, who have been known to spend so heavily in districts, for example, is to reform that campaign finance system so that ... the biggest factor in a race is how well a candidate represents the constituents.

Are there any issues you think that special interests seem to have captured candidates on, in particular here?

For me, the first thing that comes to mind is the NRA in particular, where we see 70% of the American people, 70-80% of them are very supportive, across the board, of stronger gun laws and things like removing firearms from people that are going to be a risk themselves and others. It has widespread support, but we don't see much congressional action on that because of the intervention of the NRA.

The other thing that we're trying to do here: We believe that the reason why we've lost both shares with basically every demographic except the elderly and well educated, is because a lot of people feel like the American dream is increasingly evaporating before their eyes, and the message that they're hearing is, “Well, we need to defend democracy” over and over again.

We live in a democratic society that is the same one that empowers special interests, that has resulted in people this generation going through school shootings, that has resulted in this generation facing the brunt of climate change, the student debt crisis, the housing crisis and so much more, where the basic, foundational building blocks of the American dream are so much harder for young people to achieve now than they a generation prior.

I think the answer to address what we're doing to defend democracy is to show how we, as the Democratic Party, are using democracy to fight back against the special interests that are part of the reason why housing prices have gotten so high, part of the reason why education has gotten astronomically more expensive, like healthcare has gotten astronomically more expensive, and giving them that faith in democracy by using it to actively improve their lives, and showing them with younger candidates who know how to communicate on social media because they grew up with it and how they are doing that on a day-to-day basis.

I'd like to discuss some of the reactions to this announcement. I'm thinking specifically of James Carville’s reaction. I'd like to get your reaction to both his comments about your plan to support primary challengers, as well as his broader political prescription to just let Trump defeat himself.

James Carville purports to be this expert all the time, but we aren't talking about the fact that he's not won an election since before I was born.

I just think the idea that the best answer when we have 27% approval from our base is to roll over and die is an awful idea. I think that right now, we are at a real moment in our party, that there is a crisis and that people are going to start to lash out against and rebel against it. We need to make sure that we're having productive disagreements, if you will, and constructive criticism that isn't just, "Oh my God, everything sucks."

You know, things aren't going good, but what are we going to do to make it better? Those conversations should be had and settled within our safe Democratic seats. Does this plan risk us losing the house? No, because the people that are going to win in these very safe blue seats are almost certainly going to be Democrats.

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Two questions. The first one is on logistics. I'm wondering if you're thinking about coordinating with any other groups in terms of some of these primary challenges. I have spoken to some of the primary challengers this cycle and I'm wondering if you've communicated with any primary candidates as of yet, and also whether or not you've communicated with any groups within the Democratic Party about coordinating primary challenges.

The organizations that we're looking to work with will come out more as we're willing to escalate this, to apply more pressure, because, again, we do not want to have to do this. We want a situation where enough people decide it is my time to just not run for office, regardless of their age, if they simply are not being effective, so that there's enough room for our young people to step up in our party and run.

I know you've mentioned guns and gun control as an issue. Aside from that, what are you hoping Democrats will run on in 2026 and beyond?

I hope that we run on policies that affect everybody of every single race, every single trend that everybody is pissed off about. And what I mean by that are basically three buckets. One, how are we lowering costs? I'm not just talking like, oh, you know, a plasma screen is too expensive. I'm talking about the costs of the foundational building blocks of the American dream. So for example, we have seen overall the price of consumer goods since the 70s come down pretty dramatically, like TVs, electronics, just consumer goods in general.

At the same time, we've seen the things that we can't import, like college education, like housing, like eldercare, childcare, healthcare, insurance, all of those things skyrocket in price and it is crushing the American people. We have to show how our party is going to fight back against that so that the only determinant of whether or not you're able to own a home in the future was how hard you were willing to work, and how good your ideas are, not whether or not there's a corporation that is price fixing or buying up 10s tens of thousands of single family homes to try to squeeze you out of the market, or simply that there is not enough housing available.

What are we doing to make sure that Americans do not have to make impossible decisions in particular? What I mean by that my own life is that after the DNC in this [past] summer, the actual convention, I had to come back home to take care of my father, who was on his deathbed, unfortunately, because of being the final stage of Parkinson's Disease.

My family was able to financially survive this illness because of the Social Security system that Democrats fought to create, thankfully. However, the cost of at-home care in the final weeks of his life was going to be $19,000 a month for 12 hours of care a day, and that is despite him being a veteran and a medically retired FBI agent. The only reason why my family didn't go bankrupt is because my father did not live long enough for that to happen. That is an impossible decision that millions of Americans are having to make right now, that Republicans are not offering a solution to that we can and we should.

So that's the first bucket: “How are we addressing those costs, the foundational building blocks of the American dream, and what are we doing to tangibly lower those costs?”

The second one is public safety, crime and and gun violence in particular. What are we doing to make our cities and our communities as safe as possible, and ensure that parents have the freedom to know that their kids are going to come home from school with the backpack and not in a body bag? There are far too many parents around this country who have to fear for that every day, not only in school, but also outside of it, where kids are killed all the time and rarely make it on the news.

Then the last bucket is major campaign finance reform and fighting back against corruption in particular. You know, how do we make sure that we're limiting the power of special interests in our elections? And how do we make sure that we're taking on corporate landlords that are price fixing right now, kind of like Jeff Jackson did as attorney general just recently in North Carolina, where there was a group of apartment companies that were price fixing through an algorithm and a legal loophole in order to to squeeze people out of as much money as possible for something that everybody needs, which is a roof to live under.

I think those are the policies that we really should be campaigning on and talking about, and, in addition to that, how we are actually going to fix the broken immigration system we have. That doesn't look like sending people without due process, or even with due process, to a foreign country where they don't have counsel, and the government just says, “We don't know where they are.”