Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is an author,
Speaker 1: digital strategist, and the co founder and president of Run
Speaker 1: for Something, an organization that recruits and supports young, diverse,
Speaker 1: progressive candidates. Amanda Littman launched Run for Something in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Since then, she has helped elect more than one five
Speaker 1: hundred leaders across forty nine states. Amanda Littman is also
Speaker 1: the president of r FS Civics, a five oh one
Speaker 1: c three organization dedicated to ending the char intocracy in
Speaker 1: American politics. Prior to launching Run for Something, Littman built
Speaker 1: a career as a digital strategist. She served as the
Speaker 1: email director for Hillarby Clinton's twenty sixteen presidential campaign, Not
Speaker 1: those emails. She also served as the digital director for
Speaker 1: Charlie Crist's twenty fourteen Florida gubernatorial campaign, and previously worked
Speaker 1: on Barack Obama's twenty twelve reelection campaign. Amanda Littman is
Speaker 1: also the author of two books, Run for Something, a
Speaker 1: Real Talk guide to Fixing the System Yourself, and her
Speaker 1: most recent book, When We're in Charge, The Next Generation's
Speaker 1: guide to leadership. Litman has become an outspoken critic of
Speaker 1: what she calls bad Boomer leadership and is an advocate
Speaker 1: for a new style of next gen leadership. I was
Speaker 1: curious to hear her perspective on the boomer mentality and
Speaker 1: what she believes sets the next generation of leaders aparts.
Speaker 2: I find boomer leadership to do a very good foil
Speaker 2: for what the next generation needs to be working against.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in what way?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: I think that there is a mentality behind Boomer leadership.
Speaker 2: And I say this with all due respect too boomers
Speaker 2: two gen xers always getting mad when I leave them out.
Speaker 2: It's classic gen ICs response. That there's a certain mentality
Speaker 2: among a Boomer style of leadership that is very beholden
Speaker 2: to institutions. It feels like institutions are good, will be
Speaker 2: there for them, are worth engaging with, that you can
Speaker 2: climb a career ladder. That mental health is like you know,
Speaker 2: for weaklings, and that you should never take a day off,
Speaker 2: and if you do take a day off, it's none
Speaker 2: of our business what you do with it. And you
Speaker 2: know you don't bring your full self to work. You
Speaker 2: are a beatbop robot when you show up and you
Speaker 2: do your job and then you leave, or alternatively, you
Speaker 2: bring all of yourself to work with you and you
Speaker 2: tell me all of your problems and all of your illnesses,
Speaker 2: And I actually don't want to know any of that
Speaker 2: compared to what I am proposing in when we're in charge,
Speaker 2: which is what I call sort of next gen leadership,
Speaker 2: which millennials gen Z but really anyone can adapt, which
Speaker 2: is authentic but with boundaries, transparent, but understanding there are
Speaker 2: limits to transparency, effective, but also not treating people like shit.
Speaker 2: And I think that, especially in this particular moment, understanding
Speaker 2: that you do not have to be an asshole to
Speaker 2: be a good boss and a good leader and a
Speaker 2: good politician is something that we actually need to be
Speaker 2: incredibly clear about and reiterate over and over and over again,
Speaker 2: because if you look around the world right now, you
Speaker 2: might come away with the misconception that you have to
Speaker 2: be terrible to people in order to rise to the
Speaker 2: tops of the latters.
Speaker 1: Do you believe as I do, that we have the
Speaker 1: patriarchy in charge of the country for so long now
Speaker 1: and it hasn't been bested by some other group. What
Speaker 1: appealed to me about your book run for something. Was
Speaker 1: this idea that more and more people don't want anything
Speaker 1: to do with politics. Yeah, the people that would make
Speaker 1: the best senators, justices, state wide offices, nationwide offices. They
Speaker 1: don't want anything to do with these recent generations. Do
Speaker 1: you agree?
Speaker 2: No, So run for something, which is the organization I
Speaker 2: Run recruits and supports millennials and gen z running for
Speaker 2: local office. In the last nearly ten years, we've had
Speaker 2: more than a quarter million young people raise their hands
Speaker 2: to say they want to run. And my favorite thing
Speaker 2: is these are people who never thought about running for president.
Speaker 2: They haven't planned to become United States senators and say,
Speaker 2: we're kindergarteners. They didn't go to college majoring in political science.
Speaker 2: They're not lawyers, they're not rich. They are totally ordinary
Speaker 2: people who see what's happening around us and say, oh,
Speaker 2: I actually have a responsibility and an opportunity to fix it.
Speaker 2: And this organization has said maybe I could run for
Speaker 2: office and they'll help me do it. I'm going to
Speaker 2: consider this. I'm going to jump in. I think we're
Speaker 2: at a tipping point here where to your point, there
Speaker 2: is a lot of young people who see the political
Speaker 2: system and say screw it. This is not for me.
Speaker 2: But there is a group among them who are saying
Speaker 2: this is for me, and I'm not going to wait
Speaker 2: my turn. And I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I look at, for example, although New York's
Speaker 1: fortunes have ebbed in terms of its relevance and its place,
Speaker 1: not it as a spawning ground for political leadership nationwide.
Speaker 1: But I mean just in terms of the population has
Speaker 1: gone down, The House delegation has gone down New York, Florida,
Speaker 1: California is forever eclipsing us, and New York is like
Speaker 1: the fourth most populous state now. And I say to myself,
Speaker 1: what passes for leadership in a certain states? I look
Speaker 1: at people who go to the Senate and the House
Speaker 1: from certain states and I go, You've got to be
Speaker 1: kidding me. That's the person you sent to the United
Speaker 1: States Senate. You couldn't find somebody else, man, woman, black, white,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, whatever age, who's more dynamic than that. The
Speaker 1: same I think is true in New York. He's been
Speaker 1: there too long.
Speaker 2: If Democrats take back the majority in the House, the
Speaker 2: Speaker of the House will be from New York City.
Speaker 2: And if we take back the majority in the Senate,
Speaker 2: the majority leader will be from New York City. What
Speaker 2: happens here has national ramifications and you know, Keem Jeffries.
Speaker 2: But is Chuck Schumer our best is really? Is Chuck
Speaker 2: shot He says, yes, I would agree with that.
Speaker 1: I think that she's had her time as well well,
Speaker 1: jilib Bren. I mean nothing wrong with them as people.
Speaker 1: I'm not judging them as people. I'm just saying they've
Speaker 1: been there a long time, and I'm not quite sure.
Speaker 1: When Chuck Schumber didn't stand up to the banks during
Speaker 1: the financial crisis, it was over for me.
Speaker 2: For me. I think part of this is that Chuck
Speaker 2: Schumer still imagines the Republican Party as good faith operators.
Speaker 2: He still sees this as a Republican Party of when
Speaker 2: he came up in politics, where you know he and
Speaker 2: others will say this too, like we're just waiting for
Speaker 2: the fever to break. No, it is Trump Party all
Speaker 2: the way down. These people do not want the government
Speaker 2: to function. You cannot negotiate with them.
Speaker 1: You're happy with the way things are.
Speaker 2: They want to break it and they don't want to
Speaker 2: put it back together. You know, Schumer has this like
Speaker 2: shtick where he you know, he doesn't have an iPhone.
Speaker 2: He's got a flip phone that's like his bit. I
Speaker 2: don't find that charming. If you don't understand how people
Speaker 2: communicate in twenty twenty six, how they're getting information, how
Speaker 2: they consume media, how they're engaging with the world, you
Speaker 2: are not well suited to lead in this moment.
Speaker 1: Well, people told me back then, when the two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, when the financial crisis was They said to me, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Schumer's the head of the DSCC, and he's
Speaker 1: got to raise money, and he raises money, a lot
Speaker 1: of money from these banking people, and he can't go
Speaker 1: too hard on them because then he's going to bite
Speaker 1: the hand that feeds him. For the DSc. He needs
Speaker 1: this money. He gets to handle them very tenderly. I
Speaker 1: want to go no, no, you don't. I wanted to
Speaker 1: see something in which you were taking a leadership role
Speaker 1: in posing how we got into this horrible place which
Speaker 1: we could likely be in again. We could likely be
Speaker 1: in again. But before you started run for something, and
Speaker 1: before you did other work, you were involved in working
Speaker 1: for political figures. It was Obama. But I would say
Speaker 1: the one I'm more interested in for the purposes of
Speaker 1: this podcast is Hillary, in which you had to raise
Speaker 1: a lot of money three hundred and thirty million dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you like raising money?
Speaker 2: Did I like raising I liked doing email marketing because
Speaker 2: it's a mix of art and science. Because it's writing,
Speaker 2: it's creative, and also it's very data driven. You get
Speaker 2: a chance to test things, You get a chance to
Speaker 2: learn what people respond to and the way in which
Speaker 2: people in many ways are animals when it comes to
Speaker 2: marketing of like, oh, if you center of a text
Speaker 2: to make the button bigger, more people give money. Man,
Speaker 2: we are just so primal. But it was fun and
Speaker 2: it was also, I hope, the hardest thing I'll ever do.
Speaker 1: What way?
Speaker 2: I worked for two years basically one hundred dollars weeks
Speaker 2: in the office from seven am to two am every night,
Speaker 2: every weekend for a mission that I genuinely believed in
Speaker 2: and a candidate I really believed in. Like I thought
Speaker 2: every day we were going to lock the first woman president.
Speaker 2: So we used to get these pep talks in the
Speaker 2: office when days are really hard about how you know,
Speaker 2: if we didn't win, feel it would be like Nazis
Speaker 2: wood storm the streets. There would be women would lose
Speaker 2: their rights, the right to vote would be taken back,
Speaker 2: like all the progress we made it be rescinded. And
Speaker 2: it felt hyperbolic at the time, like it was just
Speaker 2: supposed to motivate us. And you know, almost ten years later,
Speaker 2: we weren't scary enough.
Speaker 1: Author and co founder of Run for Something, Amanda Littman.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy conversations with political leaders who started their
Speaker 1: career thanks to Run for Something, check out my conversation
Speaker 1: with Michigan State Senator and US Senate candidate Malory mcmurrow.
Speaker 3: I'm used to people underestimated me. I ran in twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen against my Republican incumbent state senator who had won
Speaker 3: previously by sixteen points, and even local Democrats said you're
Speaker 3: going to get destroyed. There was something really freeing about
Speaker 3: not having the backing of the party and just say
Speaker 3: let's just go for it and try to run a
Speaker 3: campaign to really connect with people in a way that
Speaker 3: feels different. And I beat him by four points, and
Speaker 3: now I'm in leadership. You know, I'm responsible for an
Speaker 3: eighty billion dollar state budget. I've proven that I'm a workhorse.
Speaker 3: I do really well when people underestimate me.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Mallory mcmurrow, go
Speaker 1: to Here's Thething dot org. After the break, Amanda Littman
Speaker 1: shares her thoughts on the twenty twenty eight Democratic primary
Speaker 1: and why she predicts the nominee could be someone no
Speaker 1: one is talking about today. I'm Alec Baldwin and this
Speaker 1: is Here's the Thing. Amanda Littman grew up in Fairfax, Virginia,
Speaker 1: but it was a young Illinois senator that would ultimately
Speaker 1: draw her to attend college in the Midwest. Littman enrolled
Speaker 1: at Northwestern University in the hopes of being close to
Speaker 1: Barack Obama's Chicago base of operations. She'd be called a
Speaker 1: day as a high school junior in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight when she decided to skip a day of school
Speaker 1: to attend a student's for Obama rally.
Speaker 2: I was hooked. I wanted to be part of whatever
Speaker 2: he was building, which is why I went to Northwestern
Speaker 2: for college, because I wanted to be in Chicago when
Speaker 2: he was gonna interesting. I assumed was like he's going
Speaker 2: to win. That's an insane thing to think interesting, And
Speaker 2: I want to work for his campaign, and it'll be interesting.
Speaker 1: West because you wanted to be proximate to his work.
Speaker 2: I was not a small part of it, you know.
Speaker 2: I also I liked the diploma program, I liked the campus,
Speaker 2: but I wanted to be near to Schogo Grade school.
Speaker 2: When I was a senior, I got an internship on
Speaker 2: the Obama campaign doing online fundraising, which is what I
Speaker 2: ended up doing for Hillary in twenty sixteen. And it
Speaker 2: was magical, like being part of that movement, and on
Speaker 2: the inside of that felt like being part of the
Speaker 2: best sorority or fraternity I could ever imagine. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's how I spent my senior year of college. I'm
Speaker 2: shocked they gave me a degree because all I did
Speaker 2: was write my thesis and work on the Obama campaign.
Speaker 1: I was there in Washington in seventy six when the
Speaker 1: Carter Pete Ford and when to have his term. The
Speaker 1: entire period of time I was there, this is back
Speaker 1: in the old Washington when they were burning the Shah
Speaker 1: of Iran and effigy and Lafayette Park right outside the
Speaker 1: White House gates. Who's going to come forth two years
Speaker 1: from now? You say, over sixty, Gavin Newsom is in
Speaker 1: over sixty. Is he cut it for you or no.
Speaker 2: I think that there is going to be a very crowded, chaotic,
Speaker 2: interesting primary. It's going to make us want to throw
Speaker 2: our phones into the river. It's going to be infuriating,
Speaker 2: as primaries are because ultimately most of us have the
Speaker 2: same values, Like we generally agree on ninety eight percent
Speaker 2: of things. The two percent we don't is where it
Speaker 2: and it gets like mean and personal and nasty. It's
Speaker 2: why primary is. It's like a fight with your family.
Speaker 1: It sucks.
Speaker 2: I don't know it's going to be, and I find
Speaker 2: that to be actually very freeing. It could feel very scary.
Speaker 2: But I think this is the first open primary really
Speaker 2: since I've ever gotten a chance to vote, I mean
Speaker 2: even twenty twenty, like Biden sort of came in as
Speaker 2: the polling leader and ended with the nomination. This is
Speaker 2: the first time where there's no clear frontrunner. It could
Speaker 2: be anyone, and I would say, you know, fifty to
Speaker 2: fifty chance it's someone nobody's talking about right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whit Mari was keen on I really I thought
Speaker 1: she was effective and smart and all these other things
Speaker 1: and not just a woman for a woman's sake. I mean,
Speaker 1: I thought I'd like to see a woman become the
Speaker 1: president because a woman was voted the president, I believe,
Speaker 1: and I think where we would be now is very
Speaker 1: different from where we are now if she had won.
Speaker 1: When she lost, what did you attribute it to?
Speaker 2: I thought it was one part, many parts, obviously sexism,
Speaker 2: obviously a twenty year campaign to drag down her reputation.
Speaker 2: I think there was obviously foreign interference. I think Trump
Speaker 2: tapped into something that had been building since the Tea Party.
Speaker 2: I think you know, the final ten days of the
Speaker 2: call Me letter, and then you know Anthony Wiener and
Speaker 2: the emails, all of that. Talk about the emails, I
Speaker 2: can't talk for it makes me want to. You know,
Speaker 2: I was Hillary Clinton's email director and I so we
Speaker 2: have a sweatsheh. We had team sweatshirts for in the campaign,
Speaker 2: says Hillary Clinton's other emails because I always had to
Speaker 2: clarify not the ones they're talking out on Fox News,
Speaker 2: like that's not the ones I'm in charge of.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it was so many things, and yes,
Speaker 2: of course the campaign made some poor decisions and the
Speaker 2: process too. Every losing campaign does the same way that
Speaker 2: every winning campaign also makes some bad decisions in retrospect.
Speaker 2: But we came so close close. It is not close,
Speaker 2: it's not winning, but we came so close.
Speaker 1: It was tough. It was so tough because what a
Speaker 1: great president she would have been.
Speaker 2: She would have been phenomenal. Although I say, my husband
Speaker 2: often reminds me, had she won, the Republican Party, had
Speaker 2: they controlled the House, would have tried to impeachure by
Speaker 2: like noon the day after inauguration. So what would you
Speaker 2: know President Tim Kane have been like? Is an interesting
Speaker 2: question to marinate on. Yeah, that's a good pob and
Speaker 2: I find that version of the alternate history to be
Speaker 2: like a little soothing. It was never going to be
Speaker 2: easy for.
Speaker 1: The first It's interesting you say that about no clear
Speaker 1: front runner for twenty twenty eight, and I agree with you,
Speaker 1: even though Newsom's name is thrown around a lot, and
Speaker 1: I've met him a few times and I'm not quite
Speaker 1: sure how I feel about him as president because I mean, again,
Speaker 1: I look at the job now, one think it's almost undoable.
Speaker 1: This marketing involved, there's image making that's involved.
Speaker 2: Well, it's basically a nationwide branding campaign. That's what a
Speaker 2: presidential campaign is at this point, it's a branding campaign
Speaker 2: and policies are a part of that. But it's policies
Speaker 2: and the way that they contribute to the brand of
Speaker 2: the person and how you can make people understand and
Speaker 2: see themselves in those policies. It's not most people don't
Speaker 2: actually have a strong position on most issues. They take
Speaker 2: their cues from the leaders and how the leaders make
Speaker 2: them feel. And yes, part is an affiliation and how
Speaker 2: the person communicates and the story that they tell, and
Speaker 2: of course their identity like all of that sort of
Speaker 2: play is a role here. So just to say there's
Speaker 2: like a broader internal Democratic party debate about oh we
Speaker 2: need a progressive or a moderate or that's not the
Speaker 2: access upon which people are operating anymore. They want someone
Speaker 2: who is willing to fight, and who is authentic and
Speaker 2: knows who they are and what they believe.
Speaker 1: Someone who's willing to go down in flames in their
Speaker 1: first term risk a second term. Nothing more important to me.
Speaker 1: If I were a president, sit there and I go,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this first term like it's the
Speaker 1: second term, got it. I'm not going to throw everything
Speaker 1: to the wind and see, I want to win. I
Speaker 1: want us to accomplish these things environmentally and blah blah blah. Now,
Speaker 1: the idea of coaxing people, of summoning people to want
Speaker 1: to run for office themselves and get into the whole
Speaker 1: civics thing about that is something that's not new. I mean,
Speaker 1: when I was in college and I was in the
Speaker 1: Young Democrats of g W and blah blah blah. Everything
Speaker 1: was about when you leave here, when you leave here
Speaker 1: with your degree or your professional degree, are you going
Speaker 1: to go home and run for office? What are you
Speaker 1: going to do? And you have formed your variant of that,
Speaker 1: how did you get involved with that and why?
Speaker 2: So About a week after election Day in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: I'd started hearing from people I'd gone to high school
Speaker 2: in college with, Hey, Amanda, I'm a public school teacher
Speaker 2: in Chicago. If Trump can be president, it seems like
Speaker 2: fucking anybody can do this. What do I do if
Speaker 2: I want to run for office? They keep cutting our
Speaker 2: budgets and I want to fight back. And at the time,
Speaker 2: this is November twenty sixteen, I didn't have anywhere you
Speaker 2: could send them, like the state Party would probably not
Speaker 2: answer your emails. If you're a twenty six year old
Speaker 2: public school teacher. That wasn't what the DNZ did. They're
Speaker 2: just like there wasn't an on ramp. And the more
Speaker 2: that I thought about that, and the more that I
Speaker 2: kept getting these emails and seeing it online, the more
Speaker 2: I realized, like, that's actually a problem we need to
Speaker 2: solve if we're going to fix a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: other problems in the Democratic Party and our democracy. So
Speaker 2: I reached out to a whole bunch of people with
Speaker 2: an idea, what if we start an organization to solve this.
Speaker 2: I am unemployed and very sad, and with like a
Speaker 2: coping mechanism in the form of an interesting project. One
Speaker 2: of those folks became my co founder, Ross Morales Rocqutto.
Speaker 2: We wrote a plan, we built a website. Hayes no
Speaker 2: Hayes wife and I worked together on the campaign, so
Speaker 2: she connected me with him, and he'd been like chewing
Speaker 2: on a very similar idea for a little while. He
Speaker 2: was managing a congressional campaign in California at the time,
Speaker 2: and I was sad at home. So we wrote a plan,
Speaker 2: we built the website, and we launched Run for Something
Speaker 2: on Trump's first inauguration day. We thought this is going
Speaker 2: to be small. We're going to get a hundred people
Speaker 2: in the first year. This is going to be my hobby.
Speaker 2: We had a thousand people signed up in the first week.
Speaker 1: What do you attribute that to?
Speaker 2: Partially it was the right idea for the right time. Partially,
Speaker 2: we you know, I'm a digital strategist by trade. We
Speaker 2: built a very easy way for people to engage. The
Speaker 2: branding was good, the story was good, that the you know,
Speaker 2: the vibe was good. But mostly I think people were
Speaker 2: hungry to do something and they wanted to do something
Speaker 2: they felt like could matter. You know, we had eighty
Speaker 2: thousand people raise their hands in twenty twenty five. We
Speaker 2: had more people sign up in the last twelve months
Speaker 2: than we did in the entirety of Trump's first term.
Speaker 2: They're looking around and saying, there aren't leaders here that
Speaker 2: are doing the work I see that needs to be done.
Speaker 2: There aren't people who excite me. My community is struggling.
Speaker 2: If I don't run for office, if I don't get
Speaker 2: involved in this way, nothing is going to get better.
Speaker 2: I find it to be so inspiring. It's I've been
Speaker 2: able to do this work for almost last decade, and
Speaker 2: that every week, and we have elections basically every week,
Speaker 2: and every week we win, and then every day I
Speaker 2: get in my inbox the stories of the people we've
Speaker 2: helped elect who are cutting the cost of insulin, getting
Speaker 2: free lunch for kids in schools, building more housing, you know,
Speaker 2: passing gun safety laws in unusual places. It's just it's
Speaker 2: a reminder that actually democracy is good and government can
Speaker 2: work when you get really good people in it.
Speaker 1: So Daniel Squadron and Melissa Walker from State's Project came
Speaker 1: to take the show recently, and I'd gone to some
Speaker 1: salons of there it's at somebody's home in my building
Speaker 1: once and then i just went to another one that
Speaker 1: they had, and I'm very admiring of the two of them.
Speaker 1: And do you see some kind of overlap with the
Speaker 1: work we do.
Speaker 2: We work closely with them and with every other organization
Speaker 2: that works on these state and local offices, because we
Speaker 2: only work with people running for a state house, state senate,
Speaker 2: city council, school board, library board, American River Flood Control
Speaker 2: District trustee, like the kinds of local positions that make
Speaker 2: up the building blocks of democracy.
Speaker 1: Is it safe to say that when Mom Donnie won,
Speaker 1: you were glad because you were glad somebody else didn't win.
Speaker 2: I was delighted. Okay, yeah, I was delighted. I did
Speaker 2: not like Cuomo. I wanted a mayor who won spoke
Speaker 2: to the problems that I, as a millennial mom of
Speaker 2: two in Brooklyn, really experiencing the housing crisis as a
Speaker 2: renter is personal. Free childcare huge, huge part of my expenses.
Speaker 2: In fact, you know, him getting us two K might
Speaker 2: make me have another kid. The idea that you can
Speaker 2: make a difference in your city with a leader that
Speaker 2: is inspiring, who I don't agree with on every issue,
Speaker 2: but who I believe what he's He believes what he's saying,
Speaker 2: and I believe he's going to try, and I believe
Speaker 2: that when he fails, because he will certainly fail on
Speaker 2: some of his promises, he'll be able to communicate that
Speaker 2: in a way that brings the people along with him.
Speaker 2: Like that is so powerful. And I will say after
Speaker 2: he won, especially in that primary in June, we saw
Speaker 2: ten thousand people raise their hands to run for office.
Speaker 2: The two weeks after. It was our biggest organic candidate
Speaker 2: recruitment moment in the history of the organization.
Speaker 1: Describe the point of contact, the point of engagement, between
Speaker 1: you and these people. They contact you and seek resources
Speaker 1: to help them in guidance of how to run for office,
Speaker 1: depending on what kind of an office it is.
Speaker 2: So it sort of depends. We find people, we ask
Speaker 2: them to sign up to run for office, We do
Speaker 2: text message recruit them. We recruit them. So we do.
Speaker 2: We work with partners. We do cold calling, we do
Speaker 2: cold texting, We do ads, we do events, we do
Speaker 2: social media. I wrote Run for Something, the book we
Speaker 2: Had to Run for Something podcast. We have all kinds
Speaker 2: of ways in which we reach people and say have
Speaker 2: you ever thought about running for office? When they say
Speaker 2: yes or maybe, we then have a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: programming for them to get them onto the ballot. So
Speaker 2: we have the Run for Something Community, which is an
Speaker 2: online space you can talk to other people thinking about running.
Speaker 2: You can do one of two training tracks, I'm running
Speaker 2: this year or I'm thinking about running someday down the
Speaker 2: road because it's a slightly different focus. You can join
Speaker 2: one of our monthly intro calls, or we talk through
Speaker 2: the same basic questions every first time candidate has. You
Speaker 2: can talk to one of our volunteers and once you
Speaker 2: have filed to get on the ballot, which we have
Speaker 2: guides to help you figure out how to do. You
Speaker 2: can apply for our endorsement. Our PACK does endorsements specifically
Speaker 2: of folks forty and under running for those local offices
Speaker 2: for the first time you PACK, I'm sorry. It doesn't
Speaker 2: mean I don't think you shouldn't run if you want to.
Speaker 2: It just we might not be the right org to
Speaker 2: help you. But I think for us, we really try
Speaker 2: to help people with everything that isn't the stuff that
Speaker 2: you like. They have innately, but.
Speaker 1: If you recruit them what I want to go through
Speaker 1: a path here, a very simple path, which is that
Speaker 1: if you recruit them and they decide they want to
Speaker 1: participate with you and engage with you, then what happens
Speaker 1: to man you help them run for office?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: How many people have you I'm not saying you've kept
Speaker 1: track of this, but I assume you have. How many
Speaker 1: people have you engaged with this way who've run for office?
Speaker 2: In one so we track winners and losers of our
Speaker 2: endorsed pools. I've endorse more and four thousand campaigns. We've
Speaker 2: helped elect sixteen hundred and fifty three across forty nine
Speaker 2: states plus DC, mostly women and people of color, all
Speaker 2: millennials and gen z to state and local offices, many
Speaker 2: of whom are now running for higher office. So we
Speaker 2: have really built the bench of the Democratic Party. You know,
Speaker 2: people like Mallory McMorrow in Michigan.
Speaker 1: You had her on the show.
Speaker 2: She's phenomenal. We were her first endorser when she ran
Speaker 2: for state Senate back in twenty eighteen. James tell Rico
Speaker 2: down in Texas, one of our alum Zach Walls in Iowa,
Speaker 2: Alexis Hill in Nevada, Ethan Corson in Kansas, Rure Roman
Speaker 2: in Georgia, Francesca Hang and Wisconsin, and then currently serving
Speaker 2: in Congress, Christian Menafie who's in Houston, Yasamine and Sorry
Speaker 2: in Arizona, Sarah McBride and Delaware. These as you're a.
Speaker 1: Part of the country where this plays more than other
Speaker 1: parts in a region or a state for that matter.
Speaker 2: No, it's pretty commensurate with population. We have people signing
Speaker 2: up with us in all fifty states. The only state
Speaker 2: we haven't won an election is Idaho. Although this is
Speaker 2: the year, I feel very good about it. And we
Speaker 2: have built a model that is tight on values but
Speaker 2: flex in policy, which means we can in the same
Speaker 2: night in twenty twenty five, as an example, elect you know,
Speaker 2: a DSA affiliated candidate to the Atlanta City Council, Kelsey Bond,
Speaker 2: young renter activist who was really pushing from more green
Speaker 2: space and transit justice and all those things. At the
Speaker 2: same night, we helped elect a former Republican who had
Speaker 2: left the party after January sixth and one in a
Speaker 2: county that Trump won seventy thirty in rural Pennsylvania, Andrew Harbough.
Speaker 2: We built a machine that can do both.
Speaker 1: Now, let's just confine ourselves to the run for something
Speaker 1: period of your career when you began.
Speaker 2: Which is like, what year was a twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Twenty seventeen, so it's seven, it's nine years ago, so
Speaker 1: nine years ago, which is a considerable amount of time
Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned. Do you look back in
Speaker 1: retrospect and there were things you assumed, there were things
Speaker 1: you had hoped for or even took for granted, And
Speaker 1: it's different than you thought it was. How's the work
Speaker 1: you're doing different from what you've conceived it would be
Speaker 1: when you started.
Speaker 2: I didn't think it would be this big like it is.
Speaker 2: I thought it would be harder to get people to
Speaker 2: run genuinely, you know, part of my shields like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we thought we'd get a hundred. I really thought we'd
Speaker 2: get a hundred people, and we would struggle to get
Speaker 2: one hundred people in that first year. The fact that
Speaker 2: people are so eager to do this meant we've had
Speaker 2: to build systems very differently. We've had to scale the
Speaker 2: organization very differently. I also have been equal parts surprised
Speaker 2: and disappointed at how fundraising for the work has gone.
Speaker 2: Surprised that, like nine years in, we're still here. That
Speaker 2: is honestly shocking to me. And disappointed because the work
Speaker 2: is working. The impact is so clear. You can like
Speaker 2: literally measure the outcomes that we have done, both quantitatively
Speaker 2: and qualitatively. You know, nine years ago it would have
Speaker 2: been unimaginable for a state party to put out ads
Speaker 2: recruiting people to run for office. Nine years later, the
Speaker 2: Florida Democratic Party had billboards up across the state, do
Speaker 2: you want to run for office? Sign up here. We've
Speaker 2: changed what it means to ask people to run. We've
Speaker 2: put running for office as much a part of the
Speaker 2: civic vocabulary as vote or volunteer and yet man to
Speaker 2: Democratic donors not like to fund what we're doing. Really,
Speaker 2: it's been harder than I expected. It's been harder than
Speaker 2: I expected.
Speaker 1: Because they want the money used to go straight to
Speaker 1: a party.
Speaker 2: They wanted to go to a party, or they want
Speaker 2: to go to a federal candidate, or they want to
Speaker 2: become an ambassador, or you know. Love what you're doing.
Speaker 2: I think it's so important, But this year we have
Speaker 2: to flip the House. This is not the year for infrastructure,
Speaker 2: or this is the year we have to win the
Speaker 2: White House. This is not the year for local. If
Speaker 2: it's never the year for infrastructure, if is never the
Speaker 2: year for local, if it is never the year for
Speaker 2: pipeline building, we will keep being in this mess, year
Speaker 2: after year after year.
Speaker 1: Author and co founder of Run for Something, Amanda Littman.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be
Speaker 1: sure to follow Here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Speaker 1: Amanda Littman talks about the future of the Republican Party
Speaker 1: without Donald Trump and the opportunity that creates for Democrats.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty eight, I'm Alec Baldwin, And this is
Speaker 1: here's the thing. With the twenty twenty eight presidential election
Speaker 1: on the horizon and the next president facing a long
Speaker 1: list of daunting tasks, I was curious to hear Amanda
Speaker 1: Liptman's opinion on the much needed remedy for American governance
Speaker 1: in a post Trump world.
Speaker 2: If we have a democratic Congress and a democratic Senate
Speaker 2: and we can break the filbuster and we have people
Speaker 2: really ready to govern this say twenty eight, So let's
Speaker 2: say like we have full control trifecta government and we
Speaker 2: can do things. I would do massive campaign finance reform.
Speaker 2: We got to change the way money interacts with politics.
Speaker 2: And that's not just like how much you can give.
Speaker 2: That's you know, thinking about how outside groups can engage
Speaker 2: receiving this this year with you know, AI companies and
Speaker 2: outside special interests just flooding races with very confusing messaging
Speaker 2: in a way that really takes away people's power. So
Speaker 2: that's one I would wildly changed. There's can be kind
Speaker 2: of a hot take. Have we changed the pay of
Speaker 2: elected officials? I am that doesn't feel like the top
Speaker 2: priority for a lot of folks, but I would do
Speaker 2: it as much as possible for as many offices possible,
Speaker 2: state legislatures wildly underpaid members of Congress also actually really underpaid. Agree,
Speaker 2: I think you will get better people, You'll get.
Speaker 1: More working class under paid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you will get more.
Speaker 1: More and better. One hundred thousand dollars a year to
Speaker 1: be president right when there's guys that are people would
Speaker 1: think that they would want to buy that office who
Speaker 1: are making four hundred thousand dollars a day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like we should pay these positions to be competitive
Speaker 2: so they're not incentivized to do insider training. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think so you change campaign structures, you change the
Speaker 2: way people engage with the system, then I would do
Speaker 2: as much as you can around tech regulation while you can,
Speaker 2: because I think that we are looking forward to an
Speaker 2: environment where you've got AI doing massive like labor force implications,
Speaker 2: You've got tech in schools, you've got social media companies
Speaker 2: that are literally rotting people's brains, and there's really smart
Speaker 2: people thinking about how you can engage in these social
Speaker 2: media tools in a way that better fortifies the information
Speaker 2: ecosystem that will also serve to make our democracy a
Speaker 2: little bit stronger.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been immersed in campaign finance reform and
Speaker 1: always adhere to that old line, that tired old line,
Speaker 1: which is that if the Sumime court says cash is money,
Speaker 1: then he would the most cash speaks the loudest. And
Speaker 1: I really believe this is the lynchpin of all the
Speaker 1: problems in this cuntrure. You've got to be able to
Speaker 1: have people who aren't rich or not the friends of
Speaker 1: the rich run for office and beholding for the rich.
Speaker 1: So I agree with you that that's really the most
Speaker 1: critical thing in the world. We're among the most critical
Speaker 1: in this country. REP.
Speaker 2: I would also add jerrymandering. I think there's some structural
Speaker 2: I would say broader structural changes to elections, to like
Speaker 2: voting rights, but I think those connected, Like you want
Speaker 2: to fix the structure of these institutions, you can change
Speaker 2: how people engage with them. Then you'll be able to
Speaker 2: get really meaningful policies around housing, around reproductive health, around equality,
Speaker 2: around climate. Like you got to change the institutions first,
Speaker 2: because right now they are broken. We're not going to
Speaker 2: get effective governance in the next two twenty twenty six,
Speaker 2: twenty seven. We're not going to get good governings.
Speaker 1: I can't see we're we're going to gain much ground
Speaker 1: in the court because I think that I think that
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas will resign right before the buzzer with the
Speaker 1: Trump leaving, so they'll leave that open to this Republican
Speaker 1: unless they lose the majority. That's a different ballgame. I mean,
Speaker 1: the number one thing for me is that you wonder
Speaker 1: would Thomas even resign now this summer because there's the
Speaker 1: fear that the Democrats will take over both houses in
Speaker 1: the fall, which will hurt him. But I'm very worried
Speaker 1: about that, and I'm very worried about how, if possible
Speaker 1: to repopulate the court.
Speaker 2: There's really compelling arguments about court expansion. There's really compelling
Speaker 2: arguments about term limits and other ways you could do
Speaker 2: reformation here. I think we need a president who is
Speaker 2: not beholden to the way we did things yesterday dictating
Speaker 2: the way we do them tomorrow, because the way we
Speaker 2: did them yesterday has meant today sucks well.
Speaker 1: I also would love to have somebody articulate for me
Speaker 1: some examination. It just might take a lot of hours
Speaker 1: and a lot of effort, and that is to understand
Speaker 1: how things got the way they are right now, the
Speaker 1: way they are right now in terms of policies, but
Speaker 1: the hatred and the bio and the partisanship on this level,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to find that how can this be
Speaker 1: changed where And you even have people running for office
Speaker 1: who kind of take an oath. Yeah, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go in and buy into that, you know, any
Speaker 1: meaning where everything is will just screw them on the
Speaker 1: other side of the aisle reflexibly.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I think there's an opportunity in twenty twenty eight for
Speaker 2: a really compelling communicator to make a case for America
Speaker 2: being a place where you can know and trust your
Speaker 2: neighbors again. And you could tell a story about that.
Speaker 2: We've seen that over the last year, like in Minneapolis.
Speaker 2: Neighborism is what has gotten people through these crisses in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles and Chicago, in Portland, through these climate crisses,
Speaker 2: through the fires in LA You're seeing people step up
Speaker 2: for their neighbors in a way that is so meaningful
Speaker 2: and moving. And I've been joking it's like mister Roger's Resistance,
Speaker 2: where people really do want to feel like they can
Speaker 2: trust and love and care for the people who are
Speaker 2: near them. There they're neighbors, they're fellow citizens. They're villow
Speaker 2: community members. You don't have to be a citizen, but
Speaker 2: fellow community members. And there are so many things getting
Speaker 2: in the way of that, from social media to housing,
Speaker 2: to cars, to public safety to schools. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of ways in which you could pull policies into that.
Speaker 2: But I do think there's an opening. I think Mom
Speaker 2: Donnie actually got at this a little bit, where you
Speaker 2: can create a country where you can feel free to
Speaker 2: be in community with others.
Speaker 1: I wonder what you think about the notion, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody seems to whether it's through some fatigue
Speaker 1: from reality or just in general, they don't ascribe to
Speaker 1: Trump what he's really capable of. What do you think
Speaker 1: about him co opting the midterm election this year.
Speaker 2: I think it's certainly scary. There's things that he can't do,
Speaker 2: and I think it's worth always being really clear. You
Speaker 2: can't cancel elections. The federal government does not run elections.
Speaker 2: He sends ice to polling stations. Isn't enough ice agents,
Speaker 2: There's not competent enough. And also I think that there
Speaker 2: is a real danger in what they are doing because
Speaker 2: Democrats would crawl over broken glass to vote in this
Speaker 2: midterm election. Their voters are low propensity voters, people who
Speaker 2: are unlikely to vote, and unless they are given a
Speaker 2: really good reason, if you make it even a little
Speaker 2: bit harder for them, they're going to stay home because
Speaker 2: they're already not liking what Trump is selling and what
Speaker 2: the Republican Party is doing. I do think that there's
Speaker 2: real concerns to have on the state and local level,
Speaker 2: especially in some of these Republican states, but I prefer
Speaker 2: to operate in this moment. There's really smart people across
Speaker 2: the party who are doing contingency planning, preparing lawsuits, preparing
Speaker 2: safety plans. I want to focus on my particular spear
Speaker 2: of influence. Let's prepare to win. Let's prepare to win,
Speaker 2: and then prepare to govern as much as we can.
Speaker 1: I think, as much as I'm horrified to even consider this,
Speaker 1: let alone say it, I think that Iran is going
Speaker 1: to be the final denu mall for him. I think
Speaker 1: the Iran, even though it's horrible and I'm I'm sick
Speaker 1: and that he did that. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: people attack me online and sit they go, well, you
Speaker 1: know what about a free Iran? And I want to go, well,
Speaker 1: let's hope there was another way to have a free Iran.
Speaker 1: We don't have to, don't We don't have to turn
Speaker 1: all of the Middle East into an ash in order
Speaker 1: to achieve our policy goals. But I do think that
Speaker 1: Iran is not going to be over quickly in a
Speaker 1: way beyond them just stating it is and claiming it is,
Speaker 1: We're going to be over there for a while to
Speaker 1: control Lebanon. I mean, it's just it's insane what they've
Speaker 1: this beive they've kicked. But I think it's also going
Speaker 1: to lend to his demise. I think he's going to
Speaker 1: lose the mid term because of Iran. Well, that'll be
Speaker 1: the straw that breaks because of Iran. He'll lose the
Speaker 1: mid term, and he'll lose the long term election the
Speaker 1: general the Republicans because of Iran. I think Iran is
Speaker 1: something that's got some silver lining. I hate to say that,
Speaker 1: but for us politically.
Speaker 2: Well, and I think once Trump loses the midterm, he
Speaker 2: is really a lamb duck and the Republican Party without
Speaker 2: Trump has no uniting like vision. This is I think
Speaker 2: something we're not talking about enough, at least on the
Speaker 2: Democratic side, where their primary is going to be as
Speaker 2: much of a shit show as ours is, and it's
Speaker 2: going to be way nastier because they're going to be
Speaker 2: trying to like out racist, outbigo out you know, maga,
Speaker 2: the one or the other. But none of them can
Speaker 2: sell maga the way that Trump does because they don't
Speaker 2: have his you know, forty five years in the public eye.
Speaker 2: They don't have his brand as a businessman, whether justified
Speaker 2: or or not. They don't have the charisma that he has,
Speaker 2: even though not my cup of tea. But without him,
Speaker 2: the Republican Party is going to fight among themselves. I
Speaker 2: don't think it's going to be fun to watch necessarily,
Speaker 2: but I do think it creates an opportunity because.
Speaker 1: It a finger pointing. I mean, I look at them.
Speaker 1: I mean this is a weak analogy maybe, but it's
Speaker 1: like the cockplit of a plane, and once the pilot
Speaker 1: is removed, meaning Trump, there isn't another pilot on board
Speaker 1: the planet. Where have you seen a legislature dominated by
Speaker 1: women or people of color or one that is closer
Speaker 1: to what you advocate for? What did they achieve and
Speaker 1: what did they get right?
Speaker 2: There's a couple of state legislatures that are our majority
Speaker 2: women in New Mexico and Nevada in particular, and New
Speaker 2: Mexico just passed universal childcare huge. The Saint Paul City
Speaker 2: Council is actually entirely women, majority women of color, almost
Speaker 2: all women under the age of forty five, and we
Speaker 2: have seen them really rise to the occasion over the
Speaker 2: last year. You know, as ICE has taken taken over
Speaker 2: the cities in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the Saint Paul
Speaker 2: City Council has been out there are doing like protection
Speaker 2: efforts in a way that is really meaningful and really
Speaker 2: supporting local organizers and grassroots movements. I think we just
Speaker 2: saw Virginia pass paid family leave thanks to impart a
Speaker 2: woman governor and an incredible bunch of women in the House
Speaker 2: of Delegates. You know, when women take off as good
Speaker 2: things happen. I'm not saying every woman is good christ
Speaker 2: you know, bad, but women who's surprising surprising number of
Speaker 2: bad women. Yeah, well, you know, the patriarchy needs its showhorse,
Speaker 2: I guess is the expression is. But we've seen really
Speaker 2: good women take over and do things a little bit
Speaker 2: differently and pass laws that while they shouldn't just be
Speaker 2: women's responsibilities directly make a difference for women, for families,
Speaker 2: for kids in a way that's really powerful.
Speaker 1: What's the state that breaks your heart in terms of this,
Speaker 1: what's the state that really do you think gets it wrong?
Speaker 1: What's your guests Louisiana?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking Louisiana, Mississippi, even Texas a little
Speaker 2: bit like Texas had you know, Anne Richard's Texas has
Speaker 2: incredibly ballsy women for lack of a better expression, women
Speaker 2: who can really kick ass and take names. I suspect
Speaker 2: at one point we will have another woman governor, women's
Speaker 2: stay legislators in Texas where there's opportunity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was among the ones that was most gratifying
Speaker 1: to you? A campaign that you were involved with, someone
Speaker 1: you helped and guide it.
Speaker 2: It's one of my I have many many favorites, but
Speaker 2: I would say one of the ones that I come
Speaker 2: back to a lot is in twenty twenty three, we
Speaker 2: were running a campaign and we still are to get
Speaker 2: people to pro democracy, people to run for local election
Speaker 2: administrator roles, so positions that actually oversee elections like county clerk,
Speaker 2: county commission, county recorder, those kinds of roles, And we
Speaker 2: were specifically doing it in a bunch of targeted counties,
Speaker 2: one of which was Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. It's around Harrisburg.
Speaker 2: We did a bunch of texting and cold calling, and
Speaker 2: we found this guy justin Douglas, who was a former
Speaker 2: pastor who'd been fired from his church for being too
Speaker 2: welcoming to LGBTQ congregants. He's a CrossFit athlete. I have
Speaker 2: been working with the homeless community in the area. And
Speaker 2: he was like, no, not me, not me, but I
Speaker 2: mean I know someone not me, And we're like, ooh, no,
Speaker 2: you dude, it's you. We got him to run for office,
Speaker 2: and he was running against a Republican who'd been in
Speaker 2: office for a very long time. He was outspent I
Speaker 2: think ten to one, twelve to one, something insane like that.
Speaker 2: He was knocking doors, making calls, doing billboards. His actual
Speaker 2: campaign premise was on the fact that I leave a
Speaker 2: dozen or more folks under the county jail system had
Speaker 2: died under the care of the county, and he wanted
Speaker 2: to combat that neglect that they had done in the
Speaker 2: county commission. He ultimately flipped that seat by one hundred
Speaker 2: and forty four votes in November twenty twenty three, won
Speaker 2: that election, flipped control of the County Commission for the
Speaker 2: first time since World War One, and was able to
Speaker 2: make huge changes both on the way that they oversee
Speaker 2: the county jail system, but also the election administration. And
Speaker 2: he's now running for Congress in that district where he
Speaker 2: can flip a seat red to blue. So I think
Speaker 2: that's an amazing example. Like he's not he's got like
Speaker 2: big gauged years tattoos all over. He's like not the
Speaker 2: kind of guy you typically see in politics, but he's
Speaker 2: so deeply caring about community and speaks from a place
Speaker 2: of faith. And can I give you one other So
Speaker 2: earlier this year, in twenty twenty six, you may have
Speaker 2: read about Taylor Ramett, who flipped a seat in the
Speaker 2: Texas State Senate that Trump had won by I believe
Speaker 2: seventeen points. Run for Something got Taylor to sign up
Speaker 2: back in twenty nineteen. He came through our pipeline, He
Speaker 2: joined our calls from time to time. He was part
Speaker 2: of our community when he ultimately ran in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: We were one of his first national endorsers. When he
Speaker 2: came in first in that primary or that general election,
Speaker 2: but not quite far enough to win outright. It was
Speaker 2: beyond my wildest dreams. And to see him win that
Speaker 2: general election at the end of January, to flip a
Speaker 2: seat that was so far off the radar that most
Speaker 2: other organizations didn't even consider it, and to see it
Speaker 2: happen because we invested for six years in thinking about
Speaker 2: long term talent cultivation, Like that's what it's all about.
Speaker 2: That's the point. That's why we do this. We get
Speaker 2: people to sign up to think about it, We stay
Speaker 2: in their ear, we stay in relationship with them, and
Speaker 2: then maybe a year, maybe three years, maybe five years later,
Speaker 2: they can win in a long shot race.
Speaker 1: How do you find candidates specific to a play like,
Speaker 1: for example, do you look at people and go, we
Speaker 1: need more candidates in Alabama? You do? We do you
Speaker 1: factored that it?
Speaker 2: We do. We think about this in a couple lens as.
Speaker 2: One is, we want people who are interested in running
Speaker 2: for office, like you got to have some self motivation here,
Speaker 2: because it's really hard. You got to know why you
Speaker 2: want to do it, why voters should want you to win,
Speaker 2: which is different than why you want to win, why
Speaker 2: should someone else want you to win? What are you
Speaker 2: going to do for them. You need to be able
Speaker 2: to understand good point, like, it's not glamorous, it's not fun,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be really hard. You're gonna put your life
Speaker 2: through a under a microscope, So you got to want
Speaker 2: to do it. And we should be asking in more places.
Speaker 2: We should be really intentional about asking people who are
Speaker 2: traditionally left out of the system. So we've actually identified
Speaker 2: a dozen states where we think in five or six
Speaker 2: years they could become battlegrounds or if we don't do
Speaker 2: the work, they want to be off the map entirely.
Speaker 2: Some of those Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Idaho, Ohio,
Speaker 2: North Carolina, Florida, places where not yet, but I would
Speaker 2: love to think about it because I think there's opportunities
Speaker 2: in these places where, you know, if we don't do
Speaker 2: the work, especially what Run for Something does of recruiting
Speaker 2: and supporting local candidates, like in six years, especially post redistricting,
Speaker 2: it's not even though we won't have multiple options, we
Speaker 2: won't have a path to victory. We got to keep
Speaker 2: everything on the table now.
Speaker 1: When people want to help you, when people want to
Speaker 1: embrace the work you're doing, and assist you in any way.
Speaker 1: Is it just only funding or can they offer you
Speaker 1: something else? So? Can I come and give acting lessons
Speaker 1: to political candidates?
Speaker 2: You absolutely could. We have a whole mentorship program where
Speaker 2: people can sign up. They can give their services, their
Speaker 2: skills to candidates for free. We ask you to charge
Speaker 2: people anything because most of our candidates are not full
Speaker 2: time candidates. They're working people with jobs and this is
Speaker 2: what they do outside of their job. We don't charge
Speaker 2: candidates anything for our help as much as we can.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we have ways you can volunteer, ways you
Speaker 2: can help make calls. Ways you can work directly with
Speaker 2: the campaigns. If you want to knock doors, make calls,
Speaker 2: whatever did you want to do? We have ways that
Speaker 2: you can help.
Speaker 1: I think to myself back then, it seemed like there
Speaker 1: was something to root for. I mean, did I like
Speaker 1: Kamala Harrise? I didn't want you about like or whatever,
Speaker 1: but I worried about her. I had a friend of
Speaker 1: mine this is not me, but I had a friend
Speaker 1: of mine lean over to me at a fundraiser for
Speaker 1: her one This is years ago in the nevers. She's
Speaker 1: a little two four to one five. For my liking
Speaker 1: you know, kind of northern California, like unabashed, unshielded liberalism.
Speaker 1: Is that going to sell right now? Maybe not, you
Speaker 1: know when we found that it didn't. But I really
Speaker 1: really look now and it comes to this thought, and
Speaker 1: that was, do Americans really just have the government that
Speaker 1: they deserve right now?
Speaker 2: I hope not. I think we're at a tipping point.
Speaker 2: Like you know, you got to get to rock bottom
Speaker 2: before you can get better. I do think Trump two
Speaker 2: point zero is hopefully rock bottom, and it's going to
Speaker 2: be uncomfortable to get out, you know, like you go
Speaker 2: to the gym, you work out, your muscles are sore
Speaker 2: after growth is painful. I look at the next generation
Speaker 2: of leaders that are coming up. Both ones that run
Speaker 2: for something has helped, but also you know, countless others
Speaker 2: across the country, these mayors, these state legislators, even these governors,
Speaker 2: who make me think democracy can work and there is possibility.
Speaker 2: You know, I often joke I am an optimist in
Speaker 2: spite of this all, but also I do this because
Speaker 2: I'm an optimist, because I believe that better things are
Speaker 2: possible and change is possible. And when I've seen what
Speaker 2: our leaders have done, even in spite of all of
Speaker 2: the bullshit over the last decade, I have to think
Speaker 2: that it's going to get better, and I'm gonna do
Speaker 2: everything I can to make that sound no doubt about that,
Speaker 2: for better or for worse, or die trying, I suppose,
Speaker 2: but I really, I do believe because the people who
Speaker 2: are stepping up to lead now are not settling for
Speaker 2: the status quo.
Speaker 1: I just went to a meeting with Hokel about something
Speaker 1: involved in my mother's charity of breast cancer charity in
Speaker 1: New York, and we went to go meet with Hochel.
Speaker 2: And I was blown away, pleasantly surprised.
Speaker 1: You meet her and she's dynamic and smart and on it.
Speaker 1: And I thought, seeing her in the press as you
Speaker 1: perceive her through that prison or through that lens, it's
Speaker 1: so diminishing. And I met her when we sat with
Speaker 1: her for like an hour or forty five minutes, and
Speaker 1: she was just so engaging and smart. I walked out
Speaker 1: of there going I'm her fan.
Speaker 2: Now, well, I'm the really good candidates, the ones who
Speaker 2: are gonna be able to thrive in the next couple
Speaker 2: of years. Are there going to be the ones who
Speaker 2: are so good at using the Internet that they can
Speaker 2: make you feel the way that you feel when you're
Speaker 2: in the room with them, that they can create that
Speaker 2: parasocial connection that they can connect. I mean, like mom,
Speaker 2: Donnie's really good at this, but he's not the only one.
Speaker 2: Tall Rico is good at this. Mcmarrow Mallory is really
Speaker 2: good at this. There's a number of others for whom
Speaker 2: you feel the same way, whether you're watching their Instagram
Speaker 2: story or sitting around a table with them. And those
Speaker 2: are the people who can really use the tools of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six to lead in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: My thanks to Amanda Littman. This episode was recorded at
Speaker 1: CDM Studios in New York City. Were produced by Kathleen Russo,
Speaker 1: Zach MacNeice, and Victoria de Martin. Our engineer is Isaac
Speaker 1: Kaplin Woolner. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought
Speaker 1: to you by iHeart Radio
Speaker 2: Two.