OPINION — News that the Democratic National Committee has ousted David Hogg, the 25-year-old gun control extremist-turned-liberal activist who clashed with party leaders over his plan to primary allegedly ineffective incumbents, should not be taken as a permanent breakup.
With its increasingly radical gun prohibition agenda, the DNC will need to keep Hogg around, just not as the party’s vice chairman. Likewise, to achieve his gun control goals, Hogg will need the DNC, and everybody knows it.
So, when the Washington Post reported Hogg was “stepping down” as the DNC vice chair, “capping months of party infighting and turmoil centering on the Gen Z activist’s pledge to involve himself in primaries and back challengers against some incumbents,” he’s probably not stepping too far.
The party claimed Hogg and fellow Vice Chair Malcolm Kenyatta had been improperly elected earlier in the year “because their election ran afoul of gender-diversity rules.” That sounds suspiciously like the party’s effort to disguise sexism and gender bigotry, and angst over Hogg’s bull-in-the-China-shop pursuit of power.
And there’s the money. As noted by USA Today, “In April, Hogg, 25, announced that his group Leaders We Deserve would pour $20 million to help fund young progressive candidates who will challenge incumbents in safe blue districts. But DNC chairman Ken Martin urged officers to remain neutral in primary elections, giving Hogg an ultimatum of resigning from the committee or divorcing himself from his organization.”
If Hogg can raise that kind of money, Democrats aren’t likely to let him stray too far from the herd. And it is clear Hogg and the DNC have the same perspective on the Second Amendment.
CNN reported Hogg’s departure “ends a monthslong intraparty fight between the young gun control advocate and much of the national committee that has distracted from the party’s efforts to rebuild after devastating 2024 election losses.”
One thing Democrats dislike is having their disagreements in public, but Hogg ignited the firestorm by acting like the attention-grabber he has been since becoming a media darling in the wake of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting. Following that tragedy, Hogg seemed to be everywhere, getting face time on television, appearing in interviews, leading rallies and evidently enjoying his fame as a “survivor” of the school shooting and co-founder of the anti-Second Amendment “March For Our Lives” youth movement.
The New York Times candidly described Hogg as “a lightning rod for criticism within the party after he told The New York Times two months ago that he planned to spend millions of dollars on primaries through a separate group, Leaders We Deserve, that he leads. He said he was raising as much as $20 million to help bring generational change to the Democratic Party.”
The NYTimes headline acknowledged “backlash” to his primary election plan, and it is no secret the scheme caused heartburn for DNC Chairman Ken Martin. Despite this, CNN said Martin is now praising Hogg “for his years of activism, organizing, and fighting for his generation, and while I continue to believe he is a powerful voice for this party, I respect his decision to step back from his post as Vice Chair.”
This is where the adage “appearances are deceiving” applies. Hogg may be down a notch, but don’t presume he’s completely out.
When Hogg was initially elected, the reaction from the Second Amendment community was swift. The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms declared the party had “destroyed whatever remaining shreds of credibility it may have had on the gun issue.”
“David Hogg has become one of the nation’s most extremely outspoken—and attention seeking—gun control zealots in recent memory,” noted CCRKBA Managing Director Andrew Gottlieb at the time. “Since becoming a media darling following the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, he’s been traveling the country pushing heavily restrictive gun control, which, he must know as a Harvard graduate, collides with the federal and state constitutions.
“He has claimed the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms,” Gottlieb continued. “Apparently he slept through his history courses, else he would have known the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled three times since 2008 that the Second Amendment protects a fundamental, individual right to own firearms, whether he likes it or not.”
Hogg is hardly wallowing in defeat. He is vowing to devote full time to his power group, Leaders We Deserve, which he co-founded with Kevin Lata, campaign manager for Maxwell Frost, the first Gen-Z member of Congress, according to the group’s website. This group has raised millions of dollars, which may still be used to recruit Democrat young Turks to challenge the people Hogg says are not effective. Those office-holders couldn’t pass Joe Biden’s extremist gun control agenda while the former president was in office.
Perhaps Hogg thinks he can install younger anti-gunners who can get the job done, which brings the issue right back around to the DNC’s ultimate gun control goal. The party may not care for Hogg, but the party will need him in the future, and vice versa. And this will raise an interesting question about whether those political newcomers will be loyal to the party, or to Hogg.
Buried in the CNN report was this revelation: The DNC “is also weighing a new proposal put forth by Martin that would officially require elected party leaders to stay neutral in primaries. The DNC is expected to vote on that measure at an August meeting.”
This was obviously inspired by Hogg’s power play to unseat incumbent Democrats and put his own people on ballots around the country.
Don’t kid yourself. That plan is still very much alive.
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About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
