Gun control activist David Hogg is living high on the hog thanks to the many donors cutting checks to his political action committee (PAC), Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show.
Hogg created a group in the aftermath of the 2022 midterm elections called Leaders We Deserve PAC, which states that its goal is to elect Generation Z politicians to various offices throughout the country. He created the PAC with a man named Kevin Lata, who was the campaign manager for Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL)—a Generation Z Democrat elected in 2022.
Hogg launched the group with great fanfare, telling National Public Radio (NPR) in an interview that during former President Donald Trump’s presidency, a “social movement” was born on the left.
“For every year of Trump’s presidency, I think there was a new chapter of a social movement that was born, whether it was the Women’s March, March for Our Lives, the environmental movement, or the movement for Black Lives,” Hogg said.
Hogg touted in that interview his new group’s efforts to elect young Democrat candidates—promising that Leaders We Deserve PAC would provide them with the resources they needed to win races.
“[We’re] trying to pick them and say, you know, we would like to help you run for office, we’ll supply you with all of the resources that you need and help basically coach you and hold your hand to get there, which is kind of the gap that’s in the space right now, for at least young people at the state legislative level,” Hogg told NPR.
But since Hogg’s group came into fruition, much of the few million dollars he’s raised has gone not to electing candidates or executing its stated mission but to luxurious expenses like travel bills and to political consultants and legal fees. In fact, the group in 2023 only spent on a handful of candidates—four to be exact—one of whom was already serving in the U.S. Congress, Frost, and another of whom lost a race in a special election last year in Alabama. The vast majority of the group’s money, the FEC filings from 2023 show, did not go to helping candidates at all—and much of it went to other political consultants at various firms and also to Hogg and Lata paying themselves and a lavish travel budget to boot.
The year-end 2023 FEC filing from Leaders We Deserve shows that the group states it raised slightly north of $3 million in its first year in operation. The group reported $3,035,868.87 in total receipts in 2023. That’s an admirable amount of cash coming in for a totally new PAC that never existed before.
Some very high-profile donors who have given the PAC big sums include filmmaker Alexander Adell who gave $10,000, Tusk Holdings CEO Bradley Tusk who gave $10,000, Florida investor Gary Sugarman who gave another $10,000, Omaha, Nebraska wealthy donor Barbara Weitz gave $100,000, Chicago-based Democrat Judy Wise—who served in former President Barack Obama’s administration as an adviser on gun control and has long been a fixture on the left—who gave $25,000, Pilot House Associates chairman Amos Hostetter who gave $25,000, San Francisco based venture capitalist Ronald Conway who gave $100,000, former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick who gave $1,000, and the accuser of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Democrat Lindsey Boylan, who gave $1,000.
The group also took in a total of $41,000 over three transfers from another PAC that Hogg is involved in called Ban Assault Weapons Now!. That group, of course, was Hogg’s first major foray into the political arena and comes from the celebrity he became after he survived the shooting at Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, back in 2018.
While the group does also have a handful of other smaller four-figure donations like an Oct. 15, 2023, $5,000 check from former President Bill Clinton’s Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick—she is now at the mega law firm WilmerHale and also serves as a Homeland Security adviser to President Joe Biden’s administration—the FEC report shows that in 2023 most of the donors to Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve PAC were small-dollar donors giving less than $250 a pop. Other higher-dollar donations to the group include a pair of $5,000 checks from Nancy and Richard Robbins—Bay Area, California, based philanthropists—and a $5,000 check from Harvard economics professor Arthur Segel. The group also got another $5,000 from Blue Haven Initiative co-founder and principal Ian Simmons, who sits on a Harvard’s National Advisory Board for Public Service. Hogg, for what it’s worth, now attends Harvard as a student.
Robert Starr, the CEO of Vermont-based green energy company Radiantec, gave two separate $1,000 donations at the end of 2023 too. Actress Chandra Wilson, who was nominated for four Emmy awards for her portrayal of Dr. Miranda Bailey on Grey’s Anatomy, gave $2.500 last summer.
But all those big donations amount to less than $400,000 of the group’s multimillion dollar haul—most of which clearly came from smaller dollar donors.
That’s where things get interesting. So these guys—Hogg and his partner Lata—raised all this money, then they turned around and spent it mostly not on candidates or the cause they were purporting to support. They spent a huge chunk of the money living large—and on political consultants.
Of the more than $3 million raised in its first year of operations, the Leaders We Deserve PAC spent only about $263,000 on its stated mission of electing candidates from Generation Z to office combined with donations to other Democratic Party committees and groups—and instead spent more than $1.4 million on disbursements to themselves for payroll and to political consulting firms, legal fees, in addition to travel and entertainment expenses like hotels, flights, and meals.
The FEC records show that Hogg’s group spent more than $51,000 across several payments to a group called Accelerate Political Advisors and another more than $25,000 across several payments to a firm called Bee Compliance, LLC. In addition, the group spent more than $83,000 on legal fees to Elias Law Group, the firm headed by Democrat lawyer Marc Elias. Leaders We Deserve spent another more than $28,000 over two payments, the records show, for “Communications Consulting” from a group called “Liftoff Campaigns” and yet another $60,000 for “Strategic Consulting” from a firm called “Lim Consulting Services.”
Those payments pale in comparison to the more than $550,000 that Leaders We Deserve PAC spent with a political consulting firm called Middle Seat over more than a dozen payments. The listed reasons for the expenditures include “Digital Consulting,” “List Acquisition,” “Digital Ads,” and “SMS Texting,” among others.
But the biggest recipient of funds from the group in 2023 was more than $563,000 over several payments that Leaders We Deserve spent with a political consulting firm called “Grassroots Analytics, LLC,” mostly purportedly for “SMS Texting” but also for “List Acquisition,” per the FEC records.
Before even getting into the travel expenses meticulously detailed throughout the FEC report, that means this group spent more than $1,314,000 of the money it raised in its first year just on other political consultant firms and legal fees. That means Hogg and his crew spent nearly half of the money he raised just on other political consultants and legal fees, not on candidates.
Another nearly $36,000 went to expenses for travel and entertainment and meals for Hogg and Lata listed throughout the FEC report. Those include Uber and Lyft rides, flights, hotels, restaurants, and more.
Hogg himself was also paid nearly $40,000 in payroll payments, per the FEC filings, and Lata got more than $50,000 in payroll payments per the filings. Since the group launched mid-year and these payments started in the late summer, this does not represent a full annual salary but just a few months worth of worth.
The group did spend some of its haul on actual candidates. The Committee to Elect Sylvia Swain—which was the campaign for a transgendered Democrat in Alabama’s House District 55 in 2023, who lost a special election in the primary—seems to be the biggest beneficiary from Hogg’s group getting across several disbursements nearly $125,000. Clearly, that money was ineffective though as Swain lost the election in the primary to a man named Travis Hendrix last October. Hendrix got more than 65 percent of the vote, so it was not even a close election.
Del. Nadarius Clark, a Democrat member of the Virginia House of Delegates, got $100,000 over three disbursements from Hogg’s group too. Clark actually won his election. The filings also show Leaders We Deserve PAC gave $5,000 to Averie Bishop, the former Miss Texas who’s currently running as a Democrat in Texas’s 112th House District. Outside of those donations, and a $3,300 check to Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL)—the U.S. representative whose former campaign manager is Lata, Hogg’s business partner in running this PAC—it does not appear any more of the group’s money went directly to any other candidates running anywhere in America.
That means on actual candidates in 2023 Hogg’s group only spent just shy of $235,000.
The group did however cut some checks to various other organizations and Democratic Party committees, like a $5,000 donation to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), $2,500 to Annie’s List PAC, $2,500 to the Texas Democratic Party, $5,000 to the Nebraska Democratic Party, $5,000 to the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, $5,000 to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s Bold PAC, and another $3,300 to Frost’s leadership PAC which is called “A Love Supreme PAC.”
In total, those donations to Democrat Party committees and left-wing groups amount to just over $28,000. So in total overall the group spent about just $263,000 on actual campaigns and candidates—as compared with more than a million dollars more than that on personal expenses and on political consultants and fees.
Hogg has not replied to multiple requests for comment from Breitbart News for this story.
