Posted May 15, 2025 | by KimS | in DemDaily, Democratic Party, DNC Chair Ken Martin

DemDaily: DNC VC Elections 2.0?

May 15, 2025

A parliamentary error has thrown a kink into the new leadership lineup of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), with the announcement Monday that a new election for two of its Vice Chairs may be required.

The decision comes as one of those Vice Chairs, David Hogg, is under fire for his April 29 announcement that his organization, Leaders We Deserve, has launched a $20 million initiative to recruit primary challengers to more than a dozen longtime Democratic incumbents in safe seats.

His "movement," aimed at electing a younger generation of leaders, was met with immediate backlash from the Party, with DNC Chair Ken Martin saying, “No DNC officer should ever attempt to influence the outcome of a primary election. If you want to challenge incumbents, you’re free to do that, just not as an officer of the DNC.”

The very public internal drama has now escalated with news of the do-over of the officer elections.

The Election
The Party's new slate of officers were elected February 1 at the DNC's 2025 Winter Meeting in National Harbor, Maryland. The 12-hour elections were occasionally interrupted by cheers from an enthusiastic audience, but were conducted without controversy. The final vote for the three Vice Chair At-Large seats -- which started with 18 candidates in the first round -- generated the most suspense.

AFL-CIO National Campaign Director Artie Blanco won a significant majority, awarding her the first of the General VC slots. Pennsylvania State Representative and 2022 Senate Candidate Malcolm Kenyetta and Hogg, a gun safety and progressive activist, ultimately emerged victorious in the final round. The result was applauded for the election of the three young leaders.

The Challenge
On February 28, DNC National Committeewoman from Oklahoma Kalyn Free, who was among the VC candidates, filed a credentials challenge regarding the manner in which the Kenyetta and Hogg seats were tabulated. Their election on a combined ballot violated the DNC's gender-parity rules and disadvantaged women candidates, argued Free, a former elected district attorney and a tribal citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

The full membership of the DNC must now vote on the recommendations in the Credentials Committee report and, if accepted, the DNC will immediately administer ballots to fill the final two Vice Chair positions.

The Do-Over: Only candidates for Vice Chair who were eligible for the third Vice Chair ballot on February 1, 2025 will be eligible to appear on the ballots. These candidates are Vice Chairs Kenyatta and Hogg for the ballot for male Vice Chair, and Kalyn Free, Jeanna Repass, and Shasti Conrad, plus the male candidate not elected to the male Vice Chair position, for the ballot for Vice Chair of any gender.

The Do-Over: Only candidates for Vice Chair who were eligible for the third Vice Chair ballot on February 1, 2025 will be eligible to appear on the ballots. These candidates are Vice Chairs Kenyatta and Hogg for the ballot for male Vice Chair, and Kalyn Free, Jeanna Repass, and Shasti Conrad, plus the male candidate not elected to the male Vice Chair position, for the ballot for Vice Chair of any gender.

Hogg, 25, rose to national prominence after surviving the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

He co-founded March for Our Lives, the largest gun violence protest in history, and has since become a vocal political commentator and critic of President Donald Trump. In 2023, he co-founded Leaders We Deserve, a grassroots organization dedicated to electing young progressives to Congress and State Legislatures across the country.

He denounced the Credential Committee decision, saying in a statement that the DNC had taken its first steps to remove him from his position. “While this vote was based on how the DNC is conducting 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.”

Kenyatta said that, while he disagreed with the Committee's decision, framing the vote around Hogg is “nonsense” and that the challenge was filed months ago, before the controversial "circus" Hogg has created. "David is playing fast and loose with the facts” and is detracting from "the real work we need to do to bring this party together to address the seriousness of this moment.”