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A closer look at David Hogg's "Leaders We Deserve" PAC

Fri, 05/16/2025 - 3:59pm

Last year, in the thick of the 2024 Presidential Election cycle, I did a deep dive into the FEC filings of two supposedly Democratic-friendly Political Action Committees (PACs): "Blue States PAC" and "Fight the Right."

In both cases I brought up the 2022 election cycle Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings so I could get a true sense of their fundraising and spending habits for the full 2-year cycle.

In both cases I discovered that out of the respective $720,000 and $993,000 which these PACs spent, only around ~30% or less actually went to Democratic candidates or Democratic Party committees. Another 10% or so went to completely reasonable expenses (4% to ActBlue to cover credit card processing fees, plus another 5-6% for website hosting, legal compliance, accounting and the like).

The remaining 60% or so, however? Yeah, that mostly went towards the goal of spamming the shit out of potential donors ("list acquisition," "SMS texting," "mailing list harvesting" & "email services") or into the pockets of various types of "consultants" whose actual jobs I've yet to actually figure out.

I always meant to go back and do similar analyses of other "Scam PACs" as they're often called, but I didn't get around to it as the campaign season heated up.

Today, in light of the recent controversy surrounding Gen Z political activist David Hogg, I've decided to go ahead and take a look at his "Leaders We Deserve" PAC. (LWD)

I actually already did a less formal version of this several weeks back via a lengthy thread on Bluesky, but I'm doing a more detailed version this here.

OK, first of all, here's the link to LWD's FEC filing for the 2023-2024 election cycle.

As you can see, they were first formed in June 2023 and raised a total of just over $11.9 million through the end of 2024. $9.6 million of that was via individual donations; the other $2.3 million was via "other receipts." I'm not worrying about where LWD's money comes from at this time; I'm willing to accept that it's all completely legitimate.

I'm focused on what they did with that money.

Here's how it breaks out; I've grouped a bunch of smaller expenses (less than $10,000 apiece) together to keep it from getting too unwieldy:

  • Administrative Expenses: $758,354 (6.4%)
  • Car Rental/Rideshare: $20,633 (0.2%)
  • Consulting - Administrative: $18,687 (0.2%)
  • Consulting - Communications: $35,078 (0.3%)
  • Consulting - Compliance: $108,546 (0.9%)
  • Consulting - Digital: $464,487 (3.9%)
  • Consulting - Finance: $37,500 (0.3%)
  • Consulting - Fundraising: $161,935 (1.4%)
  • Consulting - Operations: $11,990 (0.1%)
  • Consulting - Research: $74,220 (0.6%)
  • Consulting - Strategic: $60,000 (0.5%)
  • Credit Card Payment: $131,016 (1.1%)
  • Credit Card Processing Fees - ActBlue: $379,480 (3.2%)
  • Digital Ad Production: $40,561 (0.3%)
  • Digital Ads: $1,657,000 (14.1%)
  • Direct Mail - Grassroots Analytics LLC: $463,847 (3.9%)
  • Donations to actual candidates/PACs/etc: $3,286,037 (27.9%)
  • Health Insurance: $18,203 (0.2%)
  • Launch Event Production: $24,187 (0.2%)
  • Legal fees: $183,947 (1.6%)
  • List Acquisition: $1,067,228 (9.1%)
  • Meals: $12,488 (0.1%)
  • Miscellaneous/Other: $110,992 (0.9%)
  • Office Rent: $166,153 (1.4%)
  • Payroll - Conor McGuire: $54,429 (0.5%)
  • Payroll - David Hogg: $174,275 (1.5%)
  • Payroll - Jackson Boaz: $23,819 (0.2%)
  • Payroll - Kevin Lata: $195,782 (1.7%)
  • Payroll - Sarah Koo: $40,785 (0.3%)
  • Payroll Taxes: $318,265 (2.7%)
  • Polling: $98,400 (0.8%)
  • Reimbursement - Kevin Lata: $45,991 (0.4%)
  • SMS Texting: $1,262,845 (10.7%)
  • Software - EveryAction: $136,655 (1.2%)
  • Travel - Airfare, Hotels, Trains, Gas, etc.: $107,430 (0.9%)
  • Utilities: $12,300 (0.1%)

Here's what it looks like visually:

The biggest takeaway, of course, is that only 28% of what they raised actually went to Democratic candidates, party committees or other PACs (and only 19%, or $2.24 million, went to actual candidates).

This is actually in line with the other PACs I've analyzed...which is kind of the problem.

I'm aware that running a PAC requires legitimate legal support, tax/financial support and FEC compliance. Perhaps ~10% overhead is too low...I just find it difficult to believe that ~70% overhead isn't too high.