David Hogg tried pitching a compromise to the DNC. He was rebuffed.
Speaking with DNC Chair Ken Martin, Hogg proposed a so-called 'internal firewall' in which he would stay on as vice chair but be barred from accessing any internal DNC information about congressional and state legislative races as long as he was supporting challengers, according to three people familiar with their conversations and granted anonymity to describe them.
Martin shot down the idea, the people said, expressing confidence that he would win the votes at the DNC to pass a rule requiring party officials to remain neutral in primaries — essentially forcing Hogg to drop his primary project or step down.
Jane Kleeb, a Martin ally and another DNC vice chair, said she also spoke with Hogg about his proposed compromise. She called it 'nonsense' and argued 'it is not the DNC's job to create a firewall for one officer — it is the officer's responsibility to create a firewall.
The exchange between Hogg and DNC leaders marked a breakdown in efforts to diffuse controversy surrounding his announcement that a group he co-founded, Leaders We Deserve, would spend $20 million in safe-blue Democratic primaries against incumbent House members. Martin has given Hogg an ultimatum, telling reporters that party officers 'can't be both the referee and also the player at the same time.'
Martin told POLITICO that 'party bosses should not be involved in putting their thumb on the scale' and said, 'I campaigned on this,' while Hogg, in an interview, stood by his peace offering. He said the DNC 'doesn't really have a role in congressional races, and therefore there shouldn't be an issue or real conflict.'
But Hogg is not backing down. Instead, he is mounting a charm offensive.
The 25-year-old Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor recently spoke at a fundraiser for state Democrats in Rhode Island. He donated $100,000 to the House Democrats' campaign arm. He is scrambling behind the scenes to win over Democratic activists and operatives, and he is finding some success.
Even as Hogg has enraged many establishment-oriented Democrats, he is gaining the support of some others on the left, including state party leaders, labor officials and powerful media voices who view him as tapping into a more aggressive approach in the second Donald Trump era.
Hogg has captured the attention of Charlamagne tha God, the influential radio host, who has publicly thrown his weight behind him. He said in an interview that Hogg 'is absolutely right — I don't know why people are acting like he's not,' and that Democrats 'who aren't willing to fight for democracy in the way that it needs to be fought for, they need to be banished.'
James Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist who once dubbed Hogg a 'contemptible little twerp,' went from vehemently disagreeing with Hogg to posting on social media that the 'DNC needs him' because 'David Hogg fights.' Hogg said that after appearing on a podcast with Carville, he texted the strategist, saying that he respected the work he has done and would 'love to connect more.' Carville then called him and soon after took his side.
Hogg is working to pull more Democrats along with him. Speaking at a fundraiser for the Rhode Island Democratic Party a few weeks ago, Hogg said, 'We need to show the reason to vote for Democrats isn't because we're the less bad of two options. It's because we're the best fucking option,' according to a video shared with POLITICO.
Hogg addressed the dispute with the party, saying, 'I know that right now there is a movement to try to remove me from the DNC.' The crowd booed in response, in an apparent show of support for Hogg.
His plans to oust some Democratic incumbents — and the uproar he's triggered — have exposed a painful rift among Democrats as they struggle to rebuild their party. And the messy conflict threatens to drag on for months, putting a spotlight on Democrats' internal disagreements over generational change and how aggressively to take on Trump.
Martin has described the ultimatum he issued to Hogg, proposing to amend the party's bylaws to bar DNC officers from getting involved in primary campaigns, as part of an overall reform package that is not aimed at the vice chair. But it would effectively force Hogg to decide between leaving his vice chair post or walling himself off from the primaries launched by his group Leaders We Deserve. The overhaul is expected to come up for a vote this summer.
Even some of Hogg's allies are skeptical that he'll be able to defeat Martin's proposal. 'Unfortunately, I do think it'll pass,' said Jeanna Repass, chair of the Kansas Democratic Party, who argued that Hogg should be grandfathered in 'because it really looks like we're bullying out a young Dem who's trying to be a change agent.'
Kleeb said that as a Bernie Sanders supporter in 2016, she felt that the party influenced that primary — as leaked emails revealed that many DNC officials derided Sanders' bid against Hillary Clinton — arguing 'that is what we are trying to fix.'
'No quote-unquote charm offensive or media appearance of David,' she said, 'will change the fundamental fact of what we are trying to do at the DNC.'
Stuart Appelbaum, a DNC associate chair, said that he and every other DNC officer — except Hogg — signed a 'neutrality policy' at a private party retreat in March. As president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, he said that 'meant a big change for me' but that 'it is crucial that the Democratic Party' be seen as impartial.
But Hogg does not appear to be budging. He said he will refuse to wall himself off from his group's work on primaries, as the neutrality rule — if adopted — would require.
'If that's the rule that they implement, then they're going to have to vote me out if that's what they want,' said Hogg. 'I would prefer that we come to a deal here.'
Hogg's group has pledged that it is moving forward with plans to target House Democrats in anywhere from 10 to 50 districts. When he was in Rhode Island for the state party fundraiser last month, Hogg met with progressive legislators and activists to discuss potential primary challenges, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
Asked about the meeting, Hogg said Rhode Island is 'not currently' on his group's list of targets. But, he said, 'I can't write any state off at this point, because we're looking at all the districts around the country.'
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Moore's historic mass pardons were intended to right the wrong of a policy that criminalized the possession and use of marijuana and disproportionately impacted communities of color, because no one should continue to suffer the ill effects of a conviction for conduct that is no longer a crime in the State of Maryland,' Elliott said in a separate statement. On Juneteenth of this year, Moore's office announced an additional 6,938 pardons that were mistakenly omitted from the original pardons. But a Maryland Judiciary spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether those simple cannabis possession charges should have been expunged under the 2023 law or if they'll be expunged now. The governor's office said they will be hidden from the court's public online database under this year's new law. Sen. 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Maryland legalized medical cannabis in 2014 and Maryland voters approved the legalization of recreational use in a 2022 ballot referendum, paving the way for lawmakers to pass the Maryland Cannabis Reform Act in 2023 — which Moore signed into law. Along the way, lawmakers prioritized the purging of court records for cannabis-related criminal charges through expungement, meaning someone with such a conviction could submit a petition to the courts requesting the permanent obliteration of all related records. An expungement is the most effective tool for clearing someone's criminal record, guaranteeing it will be purged from the three places documentation of it exists: the courthouse, the Maryland Judiciary case search database and the state's central repository, which is what gets tapped during criminal background checks. But the expungement process is also burdensome and expensive for those seeking relief, often requiring the help of a lawyer. 'These systems are complicated, they're cumbersome, there's paperwork,' said Heather Warnken, executive director of the Center for Criminal Justice Reform at the University of Baltimore School of Law. 'People who have been held back and marginalized by their convictions are facing even greater barriers to be able to engage with these systems.' Advocates have championed laws that mandate automatic expungement of certain charges. It's the only way to truly give people a clean slate and second chance, said Del. David Moon (D-Montgomery), one such advocate. Auto-expungement was a key component of the Maryland Cannabis Reform Act of 2023, which, in part, ordered the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services to purge misdemeanor cannabis charges from the central repository. But officials from the Maryland judiciary have told lawmakers that auto-expungement is a financial and resource burden, prompting the General Assembly to instead use a method called 'shielding' in reform laws. Shielding hides criminal records from the public-facing Maryland Judiciary Case Search database — a form of relief that is simpler to achieve. But it does not include the destruction of records at the courthouse or from the central repository. Waldstreicher expressed frustration with the Maryland Judiciary for its reticence to commit to auto-expungement policies. 'The judiciary continues to plead poverty when it comes to their ability to expunge records,' Waldstreicher said. The governor's office said in a statement that administration officials chose to shield the charges the governor pardoned rather than expunging them because shielding 'provides many of the same benefits of an expungement, and does so without requiring that the individual take any action.' The governor's office added that auto-shielding was done 'using existing state resources' and 'without flooding courthouses with expungement petitions.' To completely purge their charges, those who were pardoned will still need to apply for expungement. Of the 100,000 people Moore pardoned, just 700 have taken that extra step, the judiciary said. It's not clear if those expungement applications were for the cannabis possession or paraphernalia charges. But the gap highlights the legal and administrative hurdles faced by people hoping for a clean slate in a state that disproportionately arrests and imprisons Black people Officials in Moore's office and criminal justice reform advocates said they've known since the June 2024 pardons that clemency was just the first step in a multipart plan to bring relief to those charged with acts that are no longer crimes in Maryland. Since then, the administration has worked to bring additional relief. The Maryland Expungement Reform Act expands expungement eligibility to three additional misdemeanor criminal charges: driving without a license, cashing a bad check and possession of a stolen credit card. Additional charges that were written into the original bill but later killed by lawmakers included resisting arrest, making a false statement to an officer and counterfeiting drug prescriptions, the latter of which would have given expungement eligibility to those who became addicted to opioids often originally prescribed by doctors. Most important to advocates, the new law overturns a 2022 Appellate Court of Maryland ruling that barred expungement for anyone who had violated their probation, even if the underlying charge was eligible under state law. The appeals decision originated with the case of a man, called Abhishek I. in court documents, who had pleaded guilty to low-level theft and was sentenced to probation. But he violated that probation when he was later arrested for marijuana possession, serving four days in jail. When he applied to have his theft conviction expunged a decade later, a judge denied his request, ruling that Abhishek's probation violation meant he had not satisfied the terms of his sentence and, therefore, was not eligible for expungement. Abhishek's attorneys unsuccessfully appealed the decision, with the Maryland appeals court ruling that the state's expungement laws at the time did not clearly address probation violations. The Expungement Reform Act provides that clarity by defining the satisfaction of a sentence as 'the time when a sentence has expired, including any period of probation, parole, or mandatory supervision.' Under that part of the law, which goes into effect in October of this year, a probation violation cannot automatically undermine an expungement application. Warnken called the governor's support for the Expungement Reform Act a 'game changer' that helped the Abhishek reform succeed. Aside from the Expungement Reform Act, all other expungement proposals died in committee during the most recent legislative session. Among other changes, those bills sought to make all criminal charges eligible for expungement and auto-expunge certain charges. When asked about his pardons and follow-up legislation earlier this year, Moore told reporters that he believes it is the 'responsibility' of the government to 'make sure that we're not just putting in laws that make sense in theory, but then we're also putting the supports in place to make people actually believe that redemption and efficient governance can be a reality for them as well.' 'Sometimes when you pass a really important piece of legislation or do things that I think are good, important, you still have to come back and make adjustments to make sure that it's being done correctly and being implemented properly,' the governor said. Warnken said the next frontier of cannabis reform in Maryland should include expanding relief — through pardons and legislation — for those with low-level, nonviolent criminal charges related to marijuana. 'The power of the pardon and the forgiveness is so profound and absolute, but it's not going to wipe it away from the record searches,' she said. 'These are all just steps and we have to keep going. We can't just take victory laps.' Katie Shepherd and Erin Cox contributed to this report.
