David Hogg became a political activist five years ago after surviving the Parkland school shooting in Florida that claimed 17 lives. He was one of the co-founders of the student-led March For Our Lives movement to curb gun violence, which brought hundreds of thousands of young people to Washington, D.C., a month after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
This week Hogg launched a hybrid political action committee, Leaders We Deserve, to support young candidates under 35, particularly members of Gen Z who are running for state and federal office. On its website, the group says it is modeled after EMILY’s List, which helps elect Democratic pro-choice women to political office.
RELATED STORY: Gen Z expected to take 2024 electoral baton in shift that will last for decades
Here’s the launch announcement, which is sure to bring goosebumps to most Daily Kos readers:
In the video, the 23-year-old Hogg emphasized:
“Our generation refuses to back down. In 2018, we shattered youth voter turnout records. In 2020, we helped power President Biden to victory, and in 2022 we were critical in holding off a Republican red wave. Now we are not just voting, we’re running for office and winning. But we need to elect more fearless progressives to Congress and especially our state legislatures. That’s why we are launching Leaders We Deserve, a grassroots political organization that will do just that.”
Hogg told NPR that the goal of Leaders We Deserve is to look for “the cream of the crop of young people from the recent social movements that came up during Trump’s presidency” and provide the resources and support they need to run for office. These include the gun safety, the environment, abortion rights, LGBTQ+, and racial justice movements.
In the NPR interview, Hogg said:
“As a generation, we grew up hearing that to survive a school shooting, we had to run, hide and fight. I think, as a generation, we need to reinterpret what that means at a broader scale and that we need to run for office. We need to stop hiding from the responsibility that previous generations often did to protect young people and the future of this country and the future of this planet. And we need to fight for a better future where that never happens and a better system.”
The group’s co-founder is Kevin Lata, who was the campaign manager for Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida, who at 25 is the first Gen Z and youngest member of Congress. Lata and Frost were also leaders of March For Our Lives. "A big part of this ... is electing young people that have the values of our generation, that understand the anxiety of not knowing if you’re going to be able to survive math class," Lata told NBC News.
Lata said that as a hybrid PAC, Leaders We Deserve will have a PAC that can coordinate with campaigns as well as a super PAC that can raise and spend unlimited amounts to back candidates. The group will help on such campaign-related activities as fundraising and media outreach. "Running for office is so hard," Lata told NBC News, "I mean, it's gotta be one of the hardest things there is to do and for a young person it's even harder" because they lack political or fundraising connections.
Frost serves on the advisory board of Leaders We Deserve along with Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride, who is running for the House, and Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones, who was expelled from the state House after a gun control protest on the floor, Roll Call reported. Jones later was reappointed and earlier this month overwhelmingly won a special election for his seat.
Frost observed in a statement that “the deck is stacked against young people running for office.”
“Leaders We Deserve is exactly what we need to change that and help elect a new generation of young progressives that will beat back the far-right agenda and advance a future that puts equity first,” he said.
Other members of the board include Reps. Jamie Raskin, Lauren Underwood, Eric Swalwell, and Jan Schakowsky as well as Sen. Chris Murphy, according to Roll Call.
Indian-American Illinois state Rep. Nabeela Syed, who last November won election to the legislature at age 23, also issued a statement supporting the new group. She said it is important to “support young, dynamic candidates who are ready to make change in state legislatures and in Washington—not just today, not just tomorrow, but for decades to come.”
Hogg said the group primarily plans to focus on supporting young candidates for state-level races, in particular for seats in state legislatures. Its role in congressional elections will be smaller. It will support a few candidates in 2024 primary races for open, Democratic-held seats, but will not get involved in trying to unseat incumbents or running candidates in competitive swing districts. CBS News reported:
According to the group, Gen Z and millennials make up 45% of the electorate, but only hold 21% of state legislature seats. The Leaders We Deserve PAC and SuperPAC will work with 15-30 candidates under the age of 30 in key states such as Florida, Texas and Georgia.
"Whether it's abortion bans, whether it's weakening gun laws, it's not coming from the federal government. It's coming from Tallahassee. It's coming from Austin. It's coming from state capitals around the country," Hogg told CBS News. "This is not just an outside game. You're not just pushing politicians to hold them accountable to their promises and make them better but we also need to have the inside game."
Hogg told NPR that the group hopes that by electing young people in open blue seat primaries, it will help in terms of branding the Democratic Party in states “to show a new face, a new generation.”
“And with that, I think it can have an up-and-down ballot effect of turning out more young people because they see people who understand them,” Hogg said.
He added that it’s important that young people not lose faith in democracy. This project is “showing young people that, yes our system is broken, but it’s not unfixable. We can work to fix it and make it better as a generation.”
Leaders We Deserve has launched nearly 14 months before the 2024 election. And as Hogg has noted, millennials and Gen Z voters have played a key role in Democratic successes in the past three election cycles. That was reflected in an analysis by the Democratic data firm Catalist, which looked at the results of the 2022 midterms, Politico reported:
Democrats avoided an electoral wipeout in the 2022 midterms. One way they did so was by reassembling a history-defying coalition of young voters who turned out at rates more commonly seen in presidential elections, according to a new study of voter-file data.
The Democratic data firm Catalist found that these voters bested 2018 turnout levels in states with the most competitive races for governor or Senate — and they overwhelmingly favored Democratic candidates.
Catalist found that the millennial and Gen-Z generations made up 26% of the electorate in 2022 compared to 23% in the 2018 midterms, according to Politico. And despite the historical trend that the party in power tends to lose support in midterms, Democrats increased their vote share among Gen Z voters under 30 from 62% in 2020 to 65% in 2022. Politico wrote:
Combined with 2018, it’s the first time Democrats have exceeded 60 percent among young voters in two consecutive midterms. The Catalist report suggests that young voters may be uniquely turned off by Trump’s version of the Republican Party, in an inverse of how voters who came of age during Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan’s administrations tended to remain Democrats and Republicans, respectively, throughout their lives.
Leaders We Deserve believes that time is on their side and hopes to build a pipeline of young legislators who eventually will run for higher state or federal positions.
Hogg cites the example of President Joe Biden, who was first elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware in 1972 when he was 29 years old. "It's important to note that a pretty big inspiration for this is, perhaps ironically to some people, President Biden," Hogg told NBC News. "He started when he was 29 years old, doing things right, and that enabled him to form the network and experience that he needed to be able to be one of the most successful presidents of our lifetimes."