Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: BusinessWeek with Carol Messer and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Well, judges are racing two resolve fights, many in swing
Speaker 2: states over how Americans will cast ballots and tally results
Speaker 2: in the November fifth presidential election. As absentee and early
Speaker 2: voting is poised to start. All these legal fights brewing
Speaker 2: in the memory of the wait to know the results
Speaker 2: of the twenty twenty presidential election raises the question of
Speaker 2: whether it's time for America to innovate how we vote.
Speaker 2: I know our next guest is going to have some
Speaker 2: thoughts on this. Bradley Tusk is political strategist and founder
Speaker 2: of Mobile Voting. He's got a new book out, Vote
Speaker 2: with Your Phone, Why mobile voting is our final shot
Speaker 2: at saving democracy. Bradley, by the way, he has worked
Speaker 2: on a few democratic political campaigns. He served as campaign
Speaker 2: manager for Mike Bloomberg's two thousand and nine mayoral race. He,
Speaker 2: of course, Mike is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP,
Speaker 2: the parent company of Bloomberg Radio and also Burg Philanthropies.
Speaker 2: Probably great to have you here with us. Thanks for
Speaker 2: having me first up before we get into your book,
Speaker 2: and how we can maybe make it simpler. This political
Speaker 2: race lots of twist and turns already top of mind
Speaker 2: for you, and what you find kind of fascinating.
Speaker 3: I mean, one is it's fifty to fifty, right, you're
Speaker 3: gonna have a fox and just come out and that
Speaker 3: Harris is up to and another one come out. The
Speaker 3: Trump's up too, It doesn't really matter. The truth is
Speaker 3: it's fifty to fifty. And the truth is we're talking
Speaker 3: about one hundred to two hundred thousand people. Probably that
Speaker 3: number is even dwindling every day in six or seven states,
Speaker 3: and then kind of core base turnout in those states
Speaker 3: as well, and it's really whatever appeals to that specific group.
Speaker 1: So, like I'll give you an example.
Speaker 3: I was on a podcast earlier today and the host
Speaker 3: was throwing a theory at me that the cats and
Speaker 3: eating cats and dogs thing was good for Trump because
Speaker 3: immigration is the number one issue for a lot of
Speaker 3: voters and therefore it reminds them of it. And I
Speaker 3: was like, I think you're being too too smart here
Speaker 3: by half.
Speaker 1: To me, it's pretty simple.
Speaker 3: If Harris were to win, it's because she is not
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, and she is not Joe Biden. And that's it, right.
Speaker 3: It's not like she was successful in her twenty twenty
Speaker 3: race or that popular as vice president. But all people
Speaker 3: want to know is is she not either of those guys.
Speaker 3: And the more that she can show that she is
Speaker 3: lucid and sane, which are the things that those two
Speaker 3: guys can't necessarily claim, that's her path to victory.
Speaker 4: So yeah, we had Steve Eisman on this morning, and
Speaker 4: last time I had him on when Biden was still
Speaker 4: in the race, he said one hundred percent chance that
Speaker 4: Trump wins. Now he thought they were going to be
Speaker 4: like massive protests in Chicago, is going to look like
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty eight that didn't turn out, never open. But
Speaker 4: he now says with Harris and the race, it's a
Speaker 4: completely new game and it's a coin toss. He has
Speaker 4: no idea who's going to win, but he says that
Speaker 4: markets are going to be happier if Donald Trump wins.
Speaker 1: Do you get that, you know, yes and no.
Speaker 3: I mean I think that there is a kind of
Speaker 3: immediate reaction of the Republican who is sort of more conservative,
Speaker 3: is therefore more pro markets.
Speaker 1: At the same time.
Speaker 3: For mainly Democrats, right, Chuck schu I have although your
Speaker 3: boss and my one time boss, we actually we were
Speaker 3: the Republican candidate from her at the time, that's true.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I actually I am an independent. I've been
Speaker 3: independent for a long time. So what I learned is
Speaker 3: to not trust either party. But at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, there was a lot of chaos between twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen and twenty twenty, and markets tend to not like chaos.
Speaker 1: Markets like predictability.
Speaker 3: And you know, Harris, what I don't see her doing
Speaker 3: is saying maybe we should sort of change the independence
Speaker 3: of the FED.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: To me, the greatest potential risk of anything that's come
Speaker 3: out of the mouth that either of these two candidates
Speaker 3: would be, you know, making Jerome Powell a political appointee
Speaker 3: who serves as the pleasure of the president, because then ultimately,
Speaker 3: if we can't count on the FED to make independent
Speaker 3: decisions on rake cuts, then I think our economy is
Speaker 3: in serious trouble. So it really just depends how you
Speaker 3: look at it, you know, like in my business, Adventure Capital,
Speaker 3: which is my day job these days, Biden has not
Speaker 3: been great, But I think that whether it's Trump or
Speaker 3: Harris will have a new CC chair, so Gary Ginsler,
Speaker 3: it's been a disaster.
Speaker 1: For Crypto, he will be replaced.
Speaker 3: We'll have a new FTC chair, Lena Kahan, who has
Speaker 3: been very very tough on M and A.
Speaker 1: She will be replaced.
Speaker 3: And so the good news is, I think we saw
Speaker 3: the rake cut yesterday. I was very very welcome news.
Speaker 3: And I think we're going to see new regulators in
Speaker 3: place kind of no matter what happens on election day,
Speaker 3: and both of.
Speaker 1: Those things are good.
Speaker 2: Do you think with Donald Trump, we've talked a lot
Speaker 2: about you know, he's now come out and you know,
Speaker 2: was in New York campaigning to reinstate salt right, the
Speaker 2: state and local tax deductions we took away, which and
Speaker 2: for those of us who live in like the New
Speaker 2: York metro area, it's been you know, pretty painful. Cap
Speaker 2: is killing me, as killing me as a political strategist.
Speaker 3: Is that smart?
Speaker 2: Look what does it do?
Speaker 3: It doesn't do that much for him in the sense
Speaker 3: that he's still not gonna win New York and so yes,
Speaker 3: it will run up more votes on Long Island. But
Speaker 3: what he is doing is he's helping those House candidates
Speaker 3: on Long Island and the Hudson River Valley. Their elections
Speaker 3: get more likely if Trump really stumps for them. And
Speaker 3: if people think that, oh, if Trump is president and
Speaker 3: if Mike Lawler or whoever it is is, my congressman
Speaker 3: sat will now come back to me. That's that is
Speaker 3: really helpful. So I would say he's almost taking one
Speaker 3: for the team here and that he really should be
Speaker 3: basically just be in the swing states. But I think
Speaker 3: he's thinking, look, I want to win, but I also
Speaker 3: want to have a Republican housel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that that's.
Speaker 3: Why you would come to New York And very specifically,
Speaker 3: it's the same reason why can'ty Hoko killed the congestion
Speaker 3: pricing right? It was simply that those same congressional candidates
Speaker 3: would have just been destroyed on that issue because it's
Speaker 3: their party and.
Speaker 4: Doesn't care about New York City. That they don't even
Speaker 4: like New York City.
Speaker 3: No, they probably care are any city but New York City.
Speaker 2: Talk about your book, vote with your phone?
Speaker 3: What you know?
Speaker 4: I know I've been excited about this book and I
Speaker 4: can't wait to get into the vote with your phone
Speaker 4: aspect of it. But there's a question I don't understand.
Speaker 4: Haven't understood the answer to For so long we live
Speaker 4: in this you know, liberal bubble here of New York, Right,
Speaker 4: everyone here thinks that the Democrats have it right and
Speaker 4: the Republicans are crazy. But I've always thought it makes
Speaker 4: perfect sense to show an ID when you're voting, like
Speaker 4: you should be at least an American citizen. Yeah, right,
Speaker 4: And for some reason the Democrats are pushing so hard
Speaker 4: against that. I'm not understood why.
Speaker 3: Well, not only is it not smart to push against it,
Speaker 3: because it really just turns off the average voter. It's
Speaker 3: not like all of a sudden they're going to pick
Speaker 3: up this extra cash of votes because illegal units can
Speaker 3: be able to vote. Look, the mobile voting technology we
Speaker 3: build allows for both facial recognition scans and biometric screening.
Speaker 1: Because I think that you should be able to ensure
Speaker 1: that you're you, And so when you.
Speaker 3: Log onto the app, there's multi factor authentication, just like
Speaker 3: if you were, you know, at logging into Amazon or
Speaker 3: Google or whatever it might be. And then it could
Speaker 3: be a strict as let's take a facial recognition scan
Speaker 3: your fingerprint, and then we know that Matt is Matt,
Speaker 3: and then at that point you can go ahead and vote.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I agree with.
Speaker 2: The absolutely all right, so why isn't this happening?
Speaker 4: So we're we're at the mobile bar already.
Speaker 2: Where you are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we got the idea for it.
Speaker 3: I was running the campaigns around the US to legalize
Speaker 3: Uber and at the time we were this tiny, little
Speaker 3: tech startup, and taxi was this sort of big, powerful
Speaker 3: industry and they had lobbyists and they had political muscle,
Speaker 3: and we had to figure out how to compete with that.
Speaker 3: And what we realized were our customers really liked us, right,
Speaker 3: and our bet was if we make it really easy
Speaker 3: for them to tell their elected officials, their city council members, mayors,
Speaker 3: state reps, whoever was relevant, hey I want this thing,
Speaker 3: leave it alone, that would have an impact and it did. Ultimately,
Speaker 3: millions of people told their elected officials leave you worlone,
Speaker 3: I want to have it, and we wanted every single
Speaker 3: market in the country. And what I started wondering was,
Speaker 3: like these same people, I guarantee you they don't know
Speaker 3: who their state senator is, they're not voting in city
Speaker 3: council prime. But because we gave them something to care
Speaker 3: about and we made it really easy, they were willing
Speaker 3: to do it. So the question was what if they
Speaker 3: could vote this way? And so I started the mobile
Speaker 3: Voting Project in twenty seventeen and we funded elections in
Speaker 3: seven different states were either deployed military or people with
Speaker 3: disabilities voted in real elections on their phone. It worked,
Speaker 3: turnout increased significantly. Denver who did it did a poll
Speaker 3: and not shockingly, one hundred percent of people participated said yeah,
Speaker 3: I prefer pressing a button to going somewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Right, And then I got a right surprise. And
Speaker 1: then I got a ton.
Speaker 3: Of grief though from the cryptography community that oh, it
Speaker 3: can't be safe. And my view was while the elections
Speaker 3: that we had done were audited by the Natural Cybersecurity
Speaker 3: Center and came back totally clean. I know politics, and
Speaker 3: I know that politicians can hide behind an excuse like
Speaker 3: it's not safe. They don't want to change the system
Speaker 3: because they just don't want any way risk losing their
Speaker 3: grip on power. So I feel like I had to
Speaker 3: take that excuse away. So we started building our own
Speaker 3: mobile voting technology, which we are now most of the
Speaker 3: way done with.
Speaker 1: We're in year four of doing this.
Speaker 3: I've put about twenty million dollars in my own money
Speaker 3: into this project that is totally filmthropic, and the tech
Speaker 3: that we have built is and to end encrypted and
Speaker 3: to end verifiable air gapped biometric screening, multi factor authentication.
Speaker 3: Most importantly, it's open source code. And once we finish
Speaker 3: it and we run it through various authorities, we're going
Speaker 3: to put it up and it's going to be free
Speaker 3: for any government to use.
Speaker 1: And then the really hard work begins. Right.
Speaker 3: So, yes, you know, funding those elections around the country
Speaker 3: to see if the demand was there, you know, was work. Yes,
Speaker 3: building new voting tech a lot of work. But try
Speaker 3: changing the rules on people who have power. That's going
Speaker 3: to be the really hard part. And I wrote this
Speaker 3: book to kind of begin making the case for it.
Speaker 3: And we're going to have to build a movement because look,
Speaker 3: there are plenty of times in American history where really
Speaker 3: meaningful things have happened because people demanded it. You know,
Speaker 3: they didn't want to give women the right to vote,
Speaker 3: but eventually enough women demanded it that it happened. They
Speaker 3: didn't want to pass the Civil Rights Actor Voting Rights
Speaker 3: Act of the Americans.
Speaker 2: So we need people saying this happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people have got to say, look, I want this.
Speaker 3: And the reason why it's so important is right now,
Speaker 3: our politics are controlled by the extremes because of jerrymandering,
Speaker 3: which is basically guarantees that the general election will either
Speaker 3: be a Republican or a Democrat based on whatever district
Speaker 3: you're in. The only election that ever really matters is
Speaker 3: the primary. Primary turnout is typically ten to fifteen percent.
Speaker 3: And who are they They're the furthest left, they're the
Speaker 3: furthest right, or they're special interests who can control money
Speaker 3: and votes in turnout elections, and as a result, those
Speaker 3: groups dictate not only who wins office, but then once
Speaker 3: they do one.
Speaker 1: They're in office.
Speaker 3: Right, So let's take you know, your boss and my
Speaker 3: former boss, Mike Bloomberg has spent a lot of years,
Speaker 3: in a lot of money trying to pass new gun laws.
Speaker 3: But the problem for Mike, and one reason why I
Speaker 3: think he hasn't gotten as far as he would like,
Speaker 3: especially in Congress, is if you're a Republican congressman and
Speaker 3: turn out in your primary is twelve percent and NRA
Speaker 3: members are half that twelve percent, it doesn't matter that
Speaker 3: terrible things are happening in schools and churches, in walmarts.
Speaker 3: What matters is if you were to say, let's do
Speaker 3: something about it, you would lose your next primary. But
Speaker 3: imagine if in that same primary, because people could now
Speaker 3: vote on their phone, turn out one from twelve to
Speaker 3: thirty six, so still not even that much. Just by
Speaker 3: the basic math of Republican polling, you would have to
Speaker 3: be for something because the nri's vote share just went
Speaker 3: from half down to sixteen. And so if we want
Speaker 3: to move things towards the middle, we got to free
Speaker 3: our politicians from the extremes, and that only works if
Speaker 3: we can really increase turnout.
Speaker 4: It makes sense to me because you get support from
Speaker 4: both sides.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: On the one hand, you get verified American citizens voting
Speaker 4: and you can easily verify that on the legle. On
Speaker 4: the other hand, you get access to a whole group
Speaker 4: of young voters who wouldn't show up at a primary
Speaker 4: voting place, but they have their phone, so they're gonna.
Speaker 1: Want to vote totally.
Speaker 3: So I dropped my daughter off at college a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks ago, and it didn't hit me till after
Speaker 3: I left. But we you know, she got her room key,
Speaker 3: she got her bike, room key, and mail never came
Speaker 3: up once and we get not gonna happen.
Speaker 2: Come back because fine, Bradley Tuss, thank you so appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Vote with your phone. This is Bloomberg, all right, everybody.
Speaker 2: Earlier this year, Bloomberg reporting on how the world is
Speaker 2: rapidly losing usable land for self inflicted reasons, ranging from
Speaker 2: intensive agriculture and overgrazing of livestock to real estate development
Speaker 2: and yes, climate change. The crisis is further fueling food
Speaker 2: and water insecurity, as well as adding to more greenhouse
Speaker 2: gas emissions. So our next guest is trying to work
Speaker 2: on making it better when it comes to food production.
Speaker 2: That's I didn't mean to be such a bummer there.
Speaker 4: I mean, but it's the truth.
Speaker 3: It's the truth.
Speaker 4: No, it is the truth. For example, in Germany, they
Speaker 4: want the left they want to put a speed limit
Speaker 4: on the autobond because they say, you know, the CO
Speaker 4: two emissions are powering global warning, which is probably true.
Speaker 4: But I don't want to speed limit. So the first
Speaker 4: thing I say is when you stop eating beef, then
Speaker 4: we can talk about a speed limit, because it really
Speaker 4: does have a huge effect on greenhouse gases.
Speaker 2: I actually have cut back on the beef. Let's see
Speaker 2: what Cirella Herada has to say. She's co founder of Simply,
Speaker 2: It's generative organic food brand, and she joins us from DC.
Speaker 2: I'm so good to have you here, Matt night and
Speaker 2: go on forever like this. Tell us about your company
Speaker 2: and your brand and what you're up to.
Speaker 5: Absolutely well, thank you Matt and Carroll for having me
Speaker 5: here today. Simply is the leading regenitive organic staples brand
Speaker 5: in the industry, and we're in the mission of really
Speaker 5: connecting people around the world through the joy of food.
Speaker 5: And that really conveys from being able to source the
Speaker 5: best ingredients from around the world, work directly with that
Speaker 5: international farmer, and care not only about what you're harvesting,
Speaker 5: but also what you're leaving behind, and that is the soil.
Speaker 5: And if you're able to heart of that soil, you're
Speaker 5: going to be able to supquest their carbon and fight
Speaker 5: climate change.
Speaker 4: What is the so I've recently started looking into plant
Speaker 4: a plant based diet good because I'm into this too
Speaker 4: for the health for the health reasons obviously, but I'm
Speaker 4: not immersed in the jargon enough to know what you
Speaker 4: mean when you say regenitive organic food.
Speaker 1: What is that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Regienda agriculture really is the highest gold standard in agriculture.
Speaker 5: And it goes back into the principles of not just
Speaker 5: looking at the harvest, not just looking at what comes
Speaker 5: out of the soil, but the soil itself and taking
Speaker 5: certain practices to be able to have nutron density back
Speaker 5: into the soil so you can sequester that carbon in
Speaker 5: fight climate change. So that looks into rotational crops, minimum
Speaker 5: tillage coverage of those crops, and that is going to
Speaker 5: produce crops that are going to be more nutron dense
Speaker 5: for you. So if you go into a plant based diet,
Speaker 5: you're going to get the fibers and the proteins and
Speaker 5: that you need from these plant based products like grains
Speaker 5: and beans.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny. I did a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: with Chipotle years ago under Stevels, who created the company,
Speaker 2: and they certainly work on Sunday.
Speaker 4: I hope you want to work with them on Sunday.
Speaker 3: They're closed on.
Speaker 2: Sunday anyway, but really cared about where the food came from,
Speaker 2: and they thought about food production in a big way,
Speaker 2: and they only worked with certain providers, if you will.
Speaker 2: Having said that in terms of regenerative farming. We've done
Speaker 2: a little bit about this. How easy is it to
Speaker 2: ramp up grand scale to really feed the masses?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Absolutely, And Steve Ellis is a huge advocate of
Speaker 5: simply he carries some of our Gigantevin products in his
Speaker 5: new concept kernel in New York City. And because of
Speaker 5: the value and the brain promise that it has behind,
Speaker 5: we believe that regentitive agriculture is scalable and that Big
Speaker 5: AGG you see now, Big AGG and Big CpG really
Speaker 5: making claims of moving some of their sourcing and supply
Speaker 5: chains into regentive agriculture by twenty thirty or such. And
Speaker 5: the way to really look at regenitive agriculture and scalability
Speaker 5: perspective is being able to convert where food is being grown,
Speaker 5: to fight monocross and really look into multi cropping, being
Speaker 5: able to understand how the whole ecosystem supports each other,
Speaker 5: and not just being able to grow once inprop year
Speaker 5: over year and over year. Just like our diet, we
Speaker 5: can't just eat one specific food item every single day, right,
Speaker 5: We need different nutrients and soil is just like that.
Speaker 5: That simply we have our internal regentive Pathway program which
Speaker 5: we really focus on working with farmers and meet them
Speaker 5: where they're at, if that is conventional agriculture or transitional,
Speaker 5: and really help them, educate them and really incentivize these
Speaker 5: practices to move them to that gold standard of regenitive
Speaker 5: organic agriculture.
Speaker 4: Did you already list all the accolades that she's gotten.
Speaker 4: I didn't list all ink female founders. Two fifty list
Speaker 4: Ey Entrepreneur of the Year in terms of their business
Speaker 4: two nine hundred percent growth in retail placement over three years,
Speaker 4: four hundred and ninety two percent year over year growth
Speaker 4: at whole foods market specifically. So this is a business
Speaker 4: that is kicking butt. Do you find getting financing easy?
Speaker 4: I know that venture capital historically has done very poorly
Speaker 4: with female founders. How has it been for you?
Speaker 5: Well, we're fortunate that we're well capitalized today and we've
Speaker 5: had investors as early on as a set Goldman founder
Speaker 5: of honesty that really see that the industry is moving
Speaker 5: this way. Consumers are the growth and the numbers you
Speaker 5: just shared is because the new generation and Gen Z
Speaker 5: are really reacting to finding value on maybe some of
Speaker 5: these categories that you might have thought are boring and freshness,
Speaker 5: didn't matter. We call ourselves the silent hero of every
Speaker 5: healthy plate, and these are products that you need every day,
Speaker 5: so you should care of where they come from and
Speaker 5: the nutrient profile of that as well. So as we
Speaker 5: continue to grow, we have we have a set of
Speaker 5: investors that they're really able to believe the growth that
Speaker 5: we have and and being able to see where the
Speaker 5: market goes as well.
Speaker 2: Sweet Green Chop, True Foods, Kitchen and just sell it.
Speaker 2: I'll use your products.
Speaker 4: It's good because I lunch.
Speaker 2: Matt talked about the growth. You just talked about the growth.
Speaker 2: Are you guys profitable?
Speaker 5: We are. We don't really share our numbers. We are
Speaker 5: a private company, but what we can say is that
Speaker 5: we are just like we look at the environment from
Speaker 5: a sustainability perspective, we also take care of a business
Speaker 5: that way and really growth not at all costs, but growth,
Speaker 5: but growth at a sustainable pace.
Speaker 4: Interesting, interesting stuff. It's making me so hungry.
Speaker 2: Just well, you're always hungry. And I just dated banana,
Speaker 2: not that you were interested, but was.
Speaker 4: It a regenerative organic banana?
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was organic or anything.
Speaker 4: Probably not with bananas, right, Sorella, that's uh, that's a
Speaker 4: tough one with bananas.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I was just discussing that with a peer
Speaker 5: today and bananas is the number one sold product, organic
Speaker 5: sold product in supermarkets. That's why it's all the way
Speaker 5: on the back of the supermarkets, so you're able to
Speaker 5: walk all the way through the prote section.
Speaker 3: Ah, that's a good point.
Speaker 4: That is a pack of my supermarket too, is it?
Speaker 5: Is it not for you?
Speaker 2: No, in my little market, it's like everything right there,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: No mine's I have to walk all the way past
Speaker 4: immerse the apples, then the strawberries, blueberries, then the potatoes,
Speaker 4: then the and then I finally get to at the
Speaker 4: very end the bananas, which is but I get them
Speaker 4: and I see like Dole and Jaquita, and I wonder
Speaker 4: am I doing the right thing when I buy these?
Speaker 2: So I don't know, Sirella, come back soon. This was
Speaker 2: really interesting. Sourrella Herada, co founder of Simply Joining Us
Speaker 2: from DC