Hogg Wild: Filings Show Left-Wing Gen-Z PAC Blew More than $1M on Travel Expenses, Consultants, Spent Little on Candidates
Federal Election Commission records reveal that gun control activist David Hogg has a swanky lifestyle thanks to all the donors who have made contributions to his Political Action Committee (PAC).
Hogg formed a group called Leaders We Deserve PAC after the midterm elections of 2022. Its stated goal is to elect Generation Z to office in all states. He founded the PAC in conjunction with Kevin Lata who was the campaign manager of Maxwell Frost, a Generation Z Democrat that won the 2022 midterm elections.
Hogg announced the formation of the group in a big way, telling National Public Radio that, during the presidency of former President Donald Trump, a new “social movement” on the left was born.
Hogg stated that “for every year Trump was president, I believe a new social movement was born. Whether it was the Women’s March or March for Our Lives. Whether it was the environmental movement or the movement for Black Lives.”
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Hogg touted his 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 select them and say that we would love to help you run, that we will supply all the resources you need, and that we’ll help coach and guide you to get to the top. This is the kind of gap that exists right now for young people in state legislatures.
Since Hogg’s group was formed, a large portion of the money raised went not towards electing candidates, but rather to lavish expenses such as travel, political consultants, and legal fees. The group spent money on only four candidates in 2023. One of them was Frost, who served in the U.S. Congress. Another lost in a special Alabama election. FEC documents from 2023 reveal that the vast majority of money spent by the group in 2023 was not used to help candidates. Instead, it was given to political consultants, including Hogg and Lata.
Leaders We Deserve’s 2023 FEC report shows that it reported raising slightly more than $3 million during its first year of operation. The group reported total receipts of $3,035,868.87 for 2023. This is a very impressive amount of money for a brand new PAC.
Some of the most prominent donors to the PAC include: Alexander Adell who donated $10,000; Tusk Holdings’ CEO Bradley Tusk who contributed $10,000; Florida Investor Gary Sugarman who contributed another $10,000; Omaha Nebraska wealthy donor Barbara Weitz who donated $100,000; Chicago Democrat Judy Wise, a long-time leftist activist who served as an advisor on gun control in the former Obama administration, and who has been a fixture for many years; Pilot House Associates chairman Amos Hostetter who gave $25,000. San Francisco venture Deval Patrick gave $1,000, and the accuser against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo and Democrat Lindsey Boylan who donated $1,000.
Ban Assault Weapons Now, another PAC Hogg is involved with, also donated $41,000 to the group over three transfers. Hogg founded that group in the wake of his fame after the Parkland High School shooting in Florida in 2018.
The FEC report shows, that in 2023 most of Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve donors gave less than $250 each. Nancy and Richard Robbins, Bay Area, California-based philanthropists, have also donated $5,000 each to the group, as well as a $5,000 donation from Harvard economist Arthur Segel. Ian Simmons, co-founder of Blue Haven Initiative and principal at the company, also donated $5,000 to the group. He is a member of Harvard’s National Advisory Board for Public Service. Hogg now attends Harvard University as a student.
Robert Starr, CEO of Vermont’s green energy company Radiantec made two separate donations of $1,000 at the end 2023. Chandra Wilson gave $2,500 to the Grey’s Anatomy Foundation in summer 2023. She was nominated four times for Emmys for her portrayal as Dr. Miranda Bailey.
All those large donations are less than $400 of the multi-million dollar haul of the group. The majority of these smaller dollar donors.
Then things start to get interesting. Hogg and Lata raised all of this money and then spent it on things other than the candidates and causes they claimed to support. The money was spent on living lavishly and hiring political consultants.
The Leaders We Deserve PAC, which raised more than $3,000,000 in its first year, spent less than $263,000 of that amount on its stated goal of electing Generation Z candidates to office, combined with donations made to other Democrat Party groups and committees. Instead, it spent over $1.4 million for disbursements, including payroll, legal fees and political consulting firms, as well as travel and entertainment costs like flights, hotels and meals.
According to the FEC’s records, Hogg’s group paid more than $51,000 in several payments to an organization called Accelerate Political Advisors, and another amount of more than $25,000. This was done by a company called Bee Compliance, LLC. The group also spent over $83,000 in legal fees with Elias Law Group – the firm led by Democrat lawyer Marc Elias. Leaders We Deserve also paid more than $28,000 in two payments for “Communications Consulting”, from “Liftoff campaigns” and another $60,000 to “Strategic Consulting”, from “Lim Consulting Services.”
These payments pale in comparison with the $550,000 Leaders We Deserve PAC paid to a political consultancy firm called Middle Seat, over more than a dozen payment. Among the reasons listed for these expenditures are “Digital Consulting,” List Acquisition,” Digital Ads,” and SMS Texting.
According to FEC records, the largest recipient of funds in 2023 came from Leaders We Deserve. They spent more than $563,000 on several payments with a firm called “Grassroots Analytics, LLC,” primarily for “SMS Texting,” but also “List Acquiring.”
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