House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday pushed back on David Hogg’s effort to fund primary challengers against select Democrats in deep blue seats, arguing in favor of a more efficient allocation of party resources.
“Here’s the thing,” Jeffries told Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week.” “I’m gonna really focus on trying to defeat Republican incumbents so we can take back control of the House of Representatives and begin the process of ending this national nightmare that’s being visited upon us by far-right extremism.”
Leaders We Deserve, an organization co-founded by Hogg, now the Democratic National Committee vice chair, last week said it would shell out $20 million to younger, more progressive challengers of Democratic incumbents in safe blue seats.
The resultant schism has pitted Hogg and allies looking to inject fresh faces and enthusiasm into the party against key Democrats and insiders who are preaching unity and believe that money could be spent on winning back the House majority.
But on Sunday, Hogg told Karl during an ABC panel discussion that his initiative had two goals, resolving friction within the party and energizing American voters by “giving people something to vote for.”
“We cannot just be the party that is against Donald Trump,” Hogg said. “We have to be a party that doesn’t have a 27 percent approval rating from our own base. That is not a survivable future. And the way that we change that is making sure that we have some different characters.”
Former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, also on the panel, attacked the Democrats by saying he agreed that they needed a fresh message but added if Hogg were working for him: “I mean, unfortunately, David, I’d have you removed from the party.”
Donna Brazile, who chaired the DNC throughout the 2016 election, urged Hogg to exercise caution in deciding which primary challengers to fund.
“My position is many of these so-called safe blue seats, and I can get in trouble, many of them are seats that women and minorities finally had an opportunity to come and sit in because there were no seats at the table for us,” she said at the panel Sunday. “So before you start wiping clean the menu and the plates and the seats, be very careful.”
But Hogg defended the initiative. Messaging is only part of the battle, he told Karl.
“You can have Shakespeare write the best script in the world,” Hogg said. “If you have bad actors, it doesn’t matter.”
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