David Hogg takes his war on Dem establishment to California

SACRAMENTO, California — David Hogg is turning California into the front line of his war on the Democratic Party establishment.

Hogg, the former Democratic National Committee vice chair who roiled the DNC last year with his pledge to take down “ineffective, asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats, has steered some $2.6 million into primaries across the country this cycle through his group Leaders We Deserve. About a third of that has come in California, where the 26-year-old activist is spending heavily to boost insurgent candidates in some of the party’s most consequential House races. And once again, it is putting Hogg on a collision course with Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other party power centers.

In the run-up to Tuesday’s primary, Leaders We Deserve has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into supporting progressive challengers taking on vulnerable Reps. David Valadao and Kevin Kiley. His organization is backing 81-year-old Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui’s first serious challenger in a generation.

It’s a test of whether younger, more progressive candidates can win in the California districts Democrats now need after the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling unleashed a new round of red-state redistricting. The question is most immediate in Valadao’s Central Valley seat, still widely considered a toss-up despite the gerrymander. Party leaders are betting on more conventional candidates, but Hogg argues that approach has already failed.

“We do believe in embracing a culture of competition to make our party better, because people left us en masse, again,” Hogg said. “We need to bring in a new generation and show young people that don’t believe in either political party that there at least is a segment of young people that properly represent them, and not the special interests that have screwed them over their entire lives.”

Leaders We Deserve has already endorsed dozens of candidates across the country this cycle, including 13 in congressional races, 24 in state legislative contests and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Taking this political project to California has placed Hogg directly opposite Pelosi and the DCCC — opening another round of conflict with party institutions less than a year after DNC members ousted him from leadership</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/11/hogg-vote-new-election-dnc-00401673","_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff2240004","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff2240005","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>ousted him from leadership. Some Democrats in the state see its involvement in battleground primaries as a risk and a waste.

“I wish some of these organizations would save their dough to ultimately help make sure that a good Democrat defeats a terrible Republican, because right now we should have less ideological purity tests, and we should be singularly focused on defeating Trump and holding MAGA accountable up and down the fucking ballot,” said Dave Jacobson, a top Democratic strategist based in Los Angeles. “Every dollar wasted away in these ideological battles in primaries is a dollar that we’re not going to be able to spend in a general election.”

Hogg is not going it alone, joining the Working Families Party, the anti-AIPAC American Priorities PAC and Congressional Progressive Caucus that are collectively spending enough to make young progressives significantly more viable against moderate opponents. And Leaders We Deserve’s push in California — amid criticism</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.axios.com/2026/04/06/david-hogg-pac-leaders-we-deserve-robert-peters","_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff2240006","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff2240007","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>amid criticism that it has spent too much on overhead and not enough for its endorsees — has drawn him praise from progressives in the West.

“Competition is healthy, and it’s what’s needed currently,” said Brian Parvizshahi, a veteran of Democratic House contests in California who managed Rep. Ro Khanna’s successful campaign to unseat Democratic incumbent Mike Honda in 2016. “I’m talking to voters of all ages. They just feel like the party needs to usher in the next generation to lead. That’s what David is trying to do.”

The stakes of that competition are highest in California’s Central Valley, where moderate Democrats have failed three cycles in a row to defeat Valadao. His district was gerrymandered last year, giving Democrats an 18-point registration edge in a district President Donald Trump won by 1.8 percentage points.

Leaders We Deserve is backing Randy Villegas, a political science professor whose endorsement list reads like a who’s who of national progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The group has spent about $450,000 to boost him, while Hogg traveled to the Valley and cut supportive videos for social media, part of a broader California swing to meet with all his PAC’s candidates.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee boosted Villegas’ moderate opponent last month, running joint ads for Assemblymember</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.politico.com/newsletters/california-playbook/2026/05/04/becerras-biden-model-and-harris-new-digs-00904170","_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff2240008","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff2240009","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>ads for Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains and adding her to its Red to Blue program — to the chagrin of the congressional Hispanic and progressive caucuses</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.politico.com/newsletters/california-playbook/2026/05/05/will-tom-steyer-take-a-swing-00906145","_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff224000a","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff224000b","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>to the chagrin of the congressional Hispanic and progressive caucuses. The center-left New Democrat Majority is pouring</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.politico.com/newsletters/california-playbook/2026/05/22/spencer-pratt-shakes-up-la-00933408","_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff224000c","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff224000d","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>is pouring $750,000 into an ad casting Villegas as “just like” MAGA, while the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC has spent a half of a million dollars trying to depress Villegas’ support. Democratic PACs spent more than $1.5 million boosting Bains and knocking Villegas in just one week leading up to the election.

Bains’ supporters say the physician, who has won some labor support despite her moderate voting record, is the type of Democrat who can survive the politics of the Central Valley. They point to the GOP Congressional Leadership Fund spending to elevate Villegas’ profile as evidence that he’d be a weaker opponent to Valadao.

“Republicans are already spending $200,000 to stop Dr. Bains and to lift up her primary opponent — because they know she’s a serious threat to David Valadao,” DCCC spokesperson Anna Elsasser said in a statement on Hogg’s involvement. “She has built a broad coalition of support — from teachers and health care workers to firefighters and law enforcement — and has consistently overperformed national Democrats in one of the toughest regions in the country,”

Hogg argues institutional Democrats are mistaking moderation for electability by rallying behind a candidate he derides as “a Republican-lite Democrat.”

“They are insane, because they’re doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting a different result,” Hogg said.

In another tug-of-war with established party figures, Leaders We Deserve spent big to boost its preferred candidate in the Northern California race to unseat Kiley, another of the five GOP incumbents targeted by last year’s gerrymander. Kiley has since dropped his party affiliation in a bid for a Sacramento-area district with a nearly 10-point Democratic voter registration advantage.

Hogg’s group and other progressive organizations have put more than $1.6 million behind Lauren Babb Tomlinson, a first-time candidate and public affairs chief at the region’s Planned Parenthood affiliate. But that has been offset by a PAC supporting more mainstream candidates, including Bains, that has poured more than $1.2 million into helping elect former state legislator Richard Pan. Pan’s supporters, like Bains’, argue the name recognition he built in state legislative races and his background as a physician would make him a more formidable run-off opponent than a younger political newcomer.

In the Sacramento area, Hogg’s support of Matsui challenger Mai Vang won’t change the balance of Congress — both are Democrats vying for a safely blue district — but his involvement has injected new energy into what has arguably been Matsui’s toughest reelection campaign in two decades.

Pelosi has sent money from her PAC to Matsui and, in February, personally asked a room full of state party delegates to endorse the incumbent</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://x.com/ZavalaA/status/2025615648592941428?s=20","_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff224000e","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff224000f","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>endorse the incumbent — helping her narrowly secure the party’s backing. Matsui, seeming to feel the heat, recently loaned her campaign $1.4 million.

“I don’t take this step lightly, but I will not stand idly by while outside groups spend hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking my record of delivering billions for infrastructure, flood control projects, mental health and accessible healthcare here at home,” Matsui said in a statement.

Leaders We Deserve had been working with Vang’s campaign for months before determining that she had a shot and endorsing her last month, Hogg said. While Hogg recently campaigned with Vang in a Sacramento suburb</u>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article315696966.html","_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff2240010","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff2240011","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>in a Sacramento suburb, Leaders We Deserve is waiting to see if Vang makes it to a run-off against Matsui to ramp up spending for her, a spokesperson told Playbook.

“Incumbent fights are really hard, and we don’t endorse people unless we really think that there can be a pathway to victory for them,” Hogg said. “We know it is going to be the hardest type of race, frankly, to win, in some ways probably even harder than a red to blue.”

This reporting first appeared in California Playbook. Sign up</i>","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://www.politico.com/newsletters/californiaplaybook","_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff2240012","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"0000019e-85af-dde6-a5de-fdaff2240013","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>Sign up to receive it in your inbox every weekday.

المصدر: Politico