Infighting at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is threatening to consume Democratic leadership just as the midterms are starting to kick into gear.
The tensions come after a DNC panel moved forward this week with the potential ouster of two elected officials, including gun control activist David Hogg.
Now officials find themselves in a war of words over the issues at play, with Hogg alleging the move is a sign of party insiders seeking to force him out over his calls for supporting primary challengers to certain incumbents.
Though others at the DNC deny the vote was related to Hogg’s efforts, the feud is stirring up drama that Democrats want to avoid as they focus on regaining control of the House and possibly flipping the Senate next year.
“I hate to be the party of chaos when the GOP is doing such a good job of it,” Democratic consultant Marj Halperin said. “This isn’t the priority voters want the DNC to be focused on.”
Pressure had been bubbling up for weeks, even before the DNC’s Credentials Committee voted Monday in favor of holding a new election for the two positions that Hogg and Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta currently hold.
Hogg, who was elected to one of the DNC’s vice chair positions in February, first sparked controversy last month when he indicated that his group, Leaders We Deserve, would launch a $20 million effort to back primary challenges to incumbent House Democrats in safe seats. He emphasized that the group wouldn’t target Democrats running in competitive districts or those who have been effective at standing up to President Trump.
“The reality is you should not be worried about this if you are a member of Congress if you are effective like [Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)], for example, or [Rep.] Nancy Pelosi [D-Calif.],” he told The Hill at the time. “What we are looking at is places where the elected official has not done a great job being effective against Trump.”
But that met opposition from DNC Chair Ken Martin, who said shortly after that all DNC officials should remain neutral in primaries, saying Hogg is free to challenge incumbents but not as a DNC officer. He also said he has “great respect” for Hogg as an “amazing young leader.”
Hogg argued in response that he wasn’t violating any DNC rules.
But these tensions look poised to come to a head following the Credentials Committee’s vote, which was in favor of a complaint from a losing candidate for a vice chair position who argued the election procedure violated DNC rules. The entire DNC membership must vote to determine whether to redo the election in the coming months.
The complaint was filed shortly after the election — well before the controversy surrounding Hogg — but he has argued the development needs to be viewed in the context of the latest developments, saying his work to reform the party “loomed large over this vote.”
But that has sparked pushback from some — including Kenyatta, the other vice chair — who maintain that the decision is not about Hogg and that he’s trying to make the story about himself.
Democrats said regardless of who is right, the bickering isn’t a good look for the party as it needs to present a unified message opposing the Republicans’ agenda.
Democratic strategist Max Burns said he expects the public will likely view it as the DNC pushing out Hogg, but the broader issue is with the confusion over the DNC’s rules.
“The reality is that the DNC’s rules have clearly become so confusing that not even senior officials have any idea how to understand them,” he said.
He warned the infighting could become an issue for those on both sides of the argument, as young people and Democrats who were considering getting more involved in the party could be turned off, creating a “negative image all around.”
“The result is that it just becomes such an unattractive proposition for people to get involved with,” Burns said. “It hurts the party on an infrastructural level when your operation looks this scattershot.”
Even as the direct issue has just focused on internal party positions, the debate has broader implications and has stirred strong emotions.
Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said the takeaway that people will have is the party is targeting a “young vibrant force in the party” who is trying to make it “bolder.”
“That’s the tragedy of Ken Martin picking a fight with David Hogg,” he said.
“Most people’s impression of the Democratic Party is that it’s defending a broken status quo and failing to shake up a broken political and economic system,” Green said.
Kenyatta has denounced Hogg’s framing of the issue, arguing he has a “casual relationship with the truth.” He said Hogg’s statements about the DNC’s move pushed him “over the edge” despite wanting to avoid adding to party infighting.
“But David’s first statement out of the gate was, ‘Here’s the Democratic Party doing some maniacal thing to push me out’ because of what he’s doing with his PAC,” Kenyatta said. “David knows that that is not true.”
Hogg in an interview with The Washington Post said he doesn’t take the criticism of him personally and what’s happening is just about differing tactics.
“This is purely about a strategic disagreement, and should be treated as such, because we’re all on the same side here. It’s about, how do we create the strongest Democratic Party possible?”
Meanwhile, Martin has expressed optimism about the party’s recent wins in competitive races, making a subtle reference to the drama while pointing to Democrat John Ewing Jr.’s ousting of a three-term incumbent Republican mayor in Omaha.
“A lotta people in DC want to win the argument. I want to win elections,” he said Wednesday in a post on social platform X. “Last night’s huge victory in Omaha speaks to the power of ‘organizing everywhere’ — our new mission at the DNC.”
Democratic strategist Matt Grodsky said he isn’t as worried about the turmoil leading to a wider issue for Democrats broadly, saying most people living their daily lives aren’t concerned with such fighting.
“At the end of the day, when it comes to the midterms, and if things stay the way they are, they’re going to have two options. Do we want to continue with what Republicans are offering, or we want to go with what Democrats are offering?” Grodsky said. “And I don’t think that the intraparty fighting is going to be a big factor in that.”
But he added that the longer the focus is on “little fights and spats,” the harder it will be for the party to be able to focus on fundraising and candidate recruitment.
The strategists all expressed some amount of sympathy with Hogg’s broader effort to support younger challengers to longtime incumbents but said the DNC needs to be focused.
Halperin said the party should focus on broader strategies to try to move forward, looking at the long-term incumbents and if they genuinely have support from their districts. She said the answer will vary from district to district, but the listening needs to come from outside the “inner circle.”
“It sort of looks like we’re going to talk internally and get our house in order the way we think it should be, then we’ll be ready to go and talk to voters,” she said. “I think that’s backwards.”
