The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is on the brink of “chaos” in the aftermath of the DNC moving forward with a process to oust gun control activist and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor David Hogg as vice chair.
Officials in the DNC have reportedly found “themselves in a war of words over the issues at play” in the aftermath of the DNC’s credentials committee 13-2 vote to void the election results from February in which Hogg and Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D) were elected to serve as co-vice chairmen of the committee, the Hill reported.
In a statement issued, Hogg noted that while the vote was “based on how the DNC conducted its officers’ elections,” it was “impossible to ignore the broader context” of his work to spend roughly $20 million to “primary ineffective members of Congress.”
“Today, the DNC took its first steps to remove me from my position as Vice Chair At-Large,” Hogg said. “While this vote was based on how the DNC conducted its officers’ elections, which I had nothing to do with, it is also impossible to ignore the broader context of my work to reform the party which loomed large over this vote.”
Hoggs’s statement continues in part:
Our country is in crisis, and too many leaders in the Democratic Party are asleep at the wheel. Trump is on a mission to crash our economy, disappear people without due process, and participate in flagrant public corruption – and voters still trust him more than Democrats. That is a massive indictment of our party.
Last month, my organization announced that it would primary ineffective members of Congress who are not meeting the moment. In response, the DNC made it clear they were going to remove me, due to the necessity of “neutrality” for the party. This is despite the fact that the DCCC, DSCC, and other party committees regularly get involved in primaries. Just this month, the Democratic Lt. Governor’s Association pledged a 7 figure ad spend to elect a candidate in a primary in Illinois. Past DNC Vice Chairs have endorsed candidates in primaries as well, without any issue.
“I hate to be the party of chaos when the GOP is doing such a good job of it,” one Democrat consultant, Marj Halperin, told the outlet. “This isn’t the priority voters wants the DNC to be focused on.”
While Hogg has received criticisms from people within the DNC such as DNC Chairman Ken Martin, the vote to oust Hogg and Kenyatta came in response to a complaint that Kalyn Free issued, the New York Times reported.
Free, who had been one of the candidates running to be vice chair of the DNC, argued that the “party had wrongly combined two separate questions into a single vote,” which reportedly put the female candidates at a “disadvantage.”
The ruling by the credentials committee on Monday was not technically related to Mr. Hogg’s plans to engage in primaries. Instead, it was the result of a complaint from Kalyn Free, one of the losing candidates in the vice chair race. Ms. Free said the party had wrongly combined two separate questions into a single vote, putting at a disadvantage the female candidates because of the party’s gender-parity rules.
Martin has called for Hogg to either remain neutral in politics, or to step down from his position, Politico reported.
“Party officers have one job: to be fair stewards of a process that invites every Democrat to the table — regardless of personal views or allegiances,” Martin said in a statement.
In a thread on X, Martin explained that a “neutrality pledge isn’t about silencing anyone,” but rather that it ensured that candidates and their supporters “can participate in” the primary process “without interference from party leadership.”
“It ensures that candidates, and the millions of supporters behind them, can participate in our primary process without interference from party leadership,” Martin wrote. “It means no thumb on the scale, no backroom deals, no favoritism.”
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