Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. My guests today are a former
Speaker 1: New York state senator and a former journalist who now
Speaker 1: work together on a civic engagement initiative called The States Project.
Speaker 1: Daniel's Squadron previously represented New York's twenty fifth and twenty
Speaker 1: sixth districts as a state senator from two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight to twenty seventeen. After nine years in public service,
Speaker 1: Squadron resigned his office and helped launch the political initiative
Speaker 1: future now currently known as the States Project, with entrepreneur
Speaker 1: Adam Pritzker. Melissa Walker was formerly a magazine editor and journalist,
Speaker 1: published in countless magazines ranging from teen Vogue to The
Speaker 1: New York Observer. She has also authored ten young adult novels.
Speaker 1: Walker currently served as the principal strategist for the States Projects,
Speaker 1: giving circles. Being New Yorkers who are immersed in democratic politics,
Speaker 1: I was eager to hear their reactions to the recent
Speaker 1: mayoral election here in New York City.
Speaker 2: So I do think that a mayor's race that more
Speaker 2: New Yorker's participated in than any time since John Lindsay
Speaker 2: is good news. I am partial to state lawmakers being
Speaker 2: elected to high and important offices. So this idea that
Speaker 2: mom Dannie has never had a real job is incorrect.
Speaker 2: State Assembly member is a real job. No one has
Speaker 2: had a job that prepares them for mayor. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you know what Borough presidents do nowadays, but
Speaker 2: like you know or public advocates which I ran for,
Speaker 2: you know, these are not jobs of enormous managerial complexity.
Speaker 2: I think, as someone who loves New York, being optimistic
Speaker 2: and hoping for and trying to support his success is
Speaker 2: what we should all do. He has a vision that
Speaker 2: is responsive to the thing that is killing New York,
Speaker 2: which is affordability and liveability, and we should be all
Speaker 2: hands on deck for him to overperform the skeptics and
Speaker 2: deliver the most ambitious possible parts of what he can.
Speaker 3: I really leaned into what my younger self would think.
Speaker 3: I thought about myself in my twenties, and I thought
Speaker 3: about all these people who were out in the streets.
Speaker 3: I got canvassed three times in Brooklyn by people in
Speaker 3: their twenties, and seeing that made me feel energized, and
Speaker 3: I leaned into the kind of hope I would have
Speaker 3: had in my twenties, and I know I would have
Speaker 3: been out there canvassing, and that kind of helped me
Speaker 3: get over some of my own skepticism and get into
Speaker 3: that place of energized excitement.
Speaker 1: I wonder what you think about that one percent thing,
Speaker 1: whether more of them are going to leave the one
Speaker 1: percent that's paying the forty percent of the tax base
Speaker 1: in New York? Is that? Where were you when New
Speaker 1: York are strapped for cash? Now?
Speaker 2: I think the race to the bottom on public financing
Speaker 2: over the last forty years is a real problem. You know,
Speaker 2: where you have these states that are basically using low
Speaker 2: taxes and bad services as a recruitment tool. And in
Speaker 2: New York, we need to be bringing young professionals, young
Speaker 2: artists in and then having them choose to stay for
Speaker 2: forty six years four forty six years ago, housing schools, liveability.
Speaker 2: And if New York has that engine, despite the fact
Speaker 2: that people can now work remotely, New York does great.
Speaker 2: If New York is a place where a tiny portion
Speaker 2: of the one percent or choosing whether or not to
Speaker 2: move to Florida, and that's the only chance for its
Speaker 2: vibrancy and success New York's done anyway.
Speaker 1: You worked in the legislature for ten years, and when
Speaker 1: you left you questioned that you had your quote I
Speaker 1: have here about the corruption. I believe in state government's potential.
Speaker 1: I still do, but over the years I have seen
Speaker 1: thwarted by a sliver of heavily invested special interests. In
Speaker 1: the State Senate, for example, Democrats have repeatedly been denied
Speaker 1: control of the chamber by cynical political deals despite winning
Speaker 1: an electoral majority. How is that? How were they repeatedly
Speaker 1: didn't what denied it to them?
Speaker 4: And the political nature.
Speaker 2: Speaking of misdemeanors and felonies, I would consider this one
Speaker 2: a political felony, obviously not criminal. But a group of Democrats,
Speaker 2: starting in twenty ten, announcing on the same day as
Speaker 2: Andrew Cuomo's first State of the State address, left the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party group of Democrats and gave Republicans the majority. Now,
Speaker 2: in twenty ten, Republicans already had a majority by one seat.
Speaker 2: But what they did is they gave them a cushion.
Speaker 2: In twenty twelve, they gave them the majority, and they
Speaker 2: stayed with them year in and year out.
Speaker 1: What was the name of those Democrats again?
Speaker 2: Independent Democratic Conference, which was missnomer on every one of
Speaker 2: those words. Nothing independent. They were with the Republicans. They
Speaker 2: weren't Democrats, they were the Republicans. They weren't a conference.
Speaker 2: They were just a people, a lot of conferring. And
Speaker 2: the really shocking thing, though, is this was done with
Speaker 2: no political accountability. For eight years, from twenty ten to
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, this was happening.
Speaker 1: And Cuomo did nothing to dissuade them.
Speaker 2: Well, there's certainly speculation that he did things to influence them.
Speaker 2: I'd say this, Andrew Cuomo is known to care about control.
Speaker 2: And they announced on the day of his first date
Speaker 2: of the State address, and they lived to tell the tale.
Speaker 1: But he never did anything publicly to change them.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: I only asked that because when the Moralmit Commission came
Speaker 1: and went, I was flabbergasted, because I remember that the
Speaker 1: Brennan Center at NYU Law School they would do a
Speaker 1: report every year, and one year the report they there
Speaker 1: was an evaluation of the fifty state legislatures in the
Speaker 1: United States, and New York was forty ninth, just above
Speaker 1: Louisiana in terms of its transparency and effectiveness and integrity.
Speaker 1: So I mean I'm someone who's grown up in New York,
Speaker 1: my whole life in New York State. I grew up
Speaker 1: on Long Island. I've been in the city since seventy nine.
Speaker 1: And you know you have a tough, jolegist view of Obany.
Speaker 4: Well, this is why I ran.
Speaker 2: You know, I'd say tough, but not cynical. You know,
Speaker 2: it was right just a couple years after that report
Speaker 2: that I ran. I ran against a thirty year incumbent,
Speaker 2: a guy who had been the leader of the Democrats.
Speaker 2: He'd been ousted by David Patterson on his way to
Speaker 2: become governor. I was twenty eight years old at the time,
Speaker 2: and you know, everyone said to me, this is the
Speaker 2: worst place in politics, and I said, that's exactly what's.
Speaker 4: Appealing about it. A couple things.
Speaker 2: One, you can't underperform expectations, sort of the opposite of
Speaker 2: what our mayor elect has. He's got very high expectations
Speaker 2: to perform against. But secondly, if you can just improve
Speaker 2: it nominally, the impact in the state and people's lives
Speaker 2: will be so dramatic. And you know, we saw that
Speaker 2: the moments of greatest competence were unbelievable. My first years
Speaker 2: in office, two thousand and nine and ten, there's a
Speaker 2: huge amount of stimulus money to deal with the financial
Speaker 2: crisis from the federal government, and I chaired the Social
Speaker 2: Service Committee, were able to create a billion dollars in
Speaker 2: new social services programs, all of which were tested for
Speaker 2: their effectiveness and some of which still continue today. And
Speaker 2: Riquomo deserves credit for in twenty elevens, for six months,
Speaker 2: you know, pulling a political rabbit out of the hat
Speaker 2: and getting marriage equality passed in New York with Republicans
Speaker 2: having the Numerican majority and the additional majority with those
Speaker 2: turncoat Democrats. When state government rises above its most dysfunctional instincts,
Speaker 2: the outcomes are unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Now, you had a long career in magazines and publishing,
Speaker 1: I did, yes, and you did that for how many
Speaker 1: years were you in that business? Twenty oh No, probably
Speaker 1: more like ten.
Speaker 3: I started my career in magazines at Rosy Magazine, Rosi
Speaker 3: o'donald's magazine.
Speaker 1: How was that? Someone? Was it? That was formerly McCalls.
Speaker 3: It was formerly McCalls.
Speaker 1: How does Rosi o'donald take over McCall's. What does that work? Well?
Speaker 3: Oprah magazine launched with Hurst and then Gruner and Yar,
Speaker 3: which was the publisher company that owned McCall's, was kind
Speaker 3: of looking for a way to jazz it up a bit,
Speaker 3: and Rosie O'Donnell on the cover had sold the most
Speaker 3: issues anytime she was on the cover. It was just phenomenal.
Speaker 3: Her talk show was on, and so eventually they made
Speaker 3: a deal with her to take over the magazine and
Speaker 3: make it hers, and then she was on every cover
Speaker 3: after that, And that was where I had my first job.
Speaker 1: And when you just started to leave the public, I
Speaker 1: just this is great as written for publications such as Seventeen, Glamour, Teen, Vogue,
Speaker 1: Self More, Cosmo, Girl, Red Book, Family Circle, Fitness, Parenting, Brides,
Speaker 1: The New York Observer, New York Magazine, Ladies' Home Journal,
Speaker 1: Life and Style. I'm like, what base didn't you touch
Speaker 1: going around the bags there? What's the difference. What's the
Speaker 1: difference running for women's magazine on men's magazine in terms
Speaker 1: of your writing skills?
Speaker 3: You know, I think I wrote a lot about lifestyle things,
Speaker 3: and I wrote a lot about psychology. I mean, I
Speaker 3: was really mining my own experiences women in their twenties,
Speaker 3: and honestly, back then, magazines really didn't write about women
Speaker 3: much older than their twenties and thirties. I remember asking
Speaker 3: my colleagues like, where do all the forty year olds go?
Speaker 3: Because it felt like there wasn't a voice for them
Speaker 3: until there were some older women's magazines created, like More.
Speaker 3: But back then, it really was what experiences were we living.
Speaker 3: It was dating, it was psychology, it was all the
Speaker 3: things that we were experiencing. First jobs, job changing, all
Speaker 3: that stuff. But I really found my voice in teen magazines.
Speaker 1: I don't know why.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know.
Speaker 3: If my internal dialogue was always set somewhere around seventeen,
Speaker 3: but when I started working at a teen magazine, that's
Speaker 3: when I started realizing, like, oh, this is my audience,
Speaker 3: this is who I want to talk to. I think
Speaker 3: it's partly because teenagers are fans. They're just fans of
Speaker 3: what they're reading, about, what they're into. They're so enthusiastic
Speaker 3: about life.
Speaker 1: When they like something, they.
Speaker 3: Like it absolutely. I loved that energy, and that's really
Speaker 3: why I started writing young adult novels too, because there's
Speaker 3: such a universal experience when you're a teenager, and the
Speaker 3: irony is that every teenager thinks no one has ever
Speaker 3: felt this way before.
Speaker 1: I alone, I don't know this.
Speaker 3: And feel this way. And the truth is everybody's felt
Speaker 3: that way before. So there's a lot to write about
Speaker 3: and a lot to mine, and a lot of deep
Speaker 3: caring among that audience.
Speaker 1: Now, what happened? What year are we talking about when
Speaker 1: you transition.
Speaker 3: Over to politics as well? Really, in the fall of
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, you know, something happened. Donald Trump was elected
Speaker 3: for the first time. And back then I was just
Speaker 3: writing young adult novels and middle grade novels, so getting
Speaker 3: even younger with my writing. And I realized that I
Speaker 3: hadn't been involved in the democracy and that something had
Speaker 3: happened that I couldn't believe. And so I spent the
Speaker 3: month after Donald Trump was elected kind of looking for
Speaker 3: ways to plug in and do something that was meaningful,
Speaker 3: and I couldn't find any. I was casting about, I
Speaker 3: was sending you know, I was making those five calls
Speaker 3: a day, I was sending notes to Schumer. I was
Speaker 3: doing all these things, but I couldn't figure out no. No,
Speaker 3: I was just writing as a constituent. I was saying,
Speaker 3: please help with this, How can I do this? Whare
Speaker 3: well the form letters?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: But it all felt a little bit like you know,
Speaker 3: peering in windows at rooms I couldn't quite see, and
Speaker 3: I could not figure out how to insert myself into
Speaker 3: the democracy in a way that would help until I
Speaker 3: went to a publishing holiday party in December of twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen in Brooklyn Heights and I heard Daniel speak.
Speaker 1: So he was the bait. The ideas were the bait.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the ideas and a little bit of a challenge
Speaker 3: which he is wont to throw around. I think sometimes,
Speaker 3: you know, he really He started talking about state governments.
Speaker 3: He started talking about how everything we care about is
Speaker 3: decided in state capitals, not in Washington, d C. He
Speaker 3: was talking about education, funding, environmental policy, healthcare, civil rights,
Speaker 3: voting rights, abortion even back then, jerrymandering, all of those things.
Speaker 3: And he connected the dots for a bunch of things
Speaker 3: that hadn't made sense to me from the Obama years,
Speaker 3: like the bathroom bills passing all over the country, starting
Speaker 3: with Raleigh, and the standard ground gun laws starting in Tallahassee,
Speaker 3: letting Traymon Martin's murder go free, then starting a spreading
Speaker 3: to twenty six states. I started to realize, like, these
Speaker 3: things are happening in state capitals. I don't know the
Speaker 3: names of those lawmakers. There are fifty many congresses around
Speaker 3: this country, and I haven't been paying attention to any
Speaker 3: of them, not even my own. The night after I
Speaker 3: heard him speak, I googled who is my state Senator
Speaker 3: on the way home and figured out that I had
Speaker 3: never heard of my state senator. I'd had no eyes
Speaker 3: on Albany at all. But I thought of myself as
Speaker 3: a pretty well informed person, so I realized this was
Speaker 3: a place I could plug.
Speaker 1: In going to this meeting with him. You went to
Speaker 1: a meeting of future now.
Speaker 3: No, you know what it was. It was a publishing
Speaker 3: holiday party. It was a party that happened every year.
Speaker 3: It was like one of the best parties of the year,
Speaker 3: this big brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. And I thought I
Speaker 3: was just going to the party, but we were all
Speaker 3: feeling pretty down because, yes, because of Trump, the.
Speaker 4: State project hadn't been launched.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I was just the local state senator at that time
Speaker 2: who had been invited to speak at a holiday party.
Speaker 1: Then won't you speak about what?
Speaker 4: Well? That was a good question.
Speaker 2: That was what they wanted, because you know, I was
Speaker 2: in office nine years and no other point was ever
Speaker 2: invited to anyone's holiday party as the politician to speak.
Speaker 2: There were times I was asked not to come to
Speaker 2: people's holiday parties for fear I would speak about politics
Speaker 2: and so the But you know, the invitation actually happened
Speaker 2: to be my son's third birthday. Was my wife's friend's
Speaker 2: friend who invited me, who's actually a wonderfully successful novelist.
Speaker 2: And I didn't really want to go at eight o'clock
Speaker 2: after putting my three year old to bed on his birthday.
Speaker 2: But I also figured, you know, I'm a stage senator.
Speaker 2: Beggars can't be choosers here. They want to hear me.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go. I'm going to do my thing.
Speaker 2: No one's going to listen. And so I went, and
Speaker 2: I basically said, you know, if you feel like you're
Speaker 2: not meeting the moment, that's correct. If you feel like
Speaker 2: you're an observer to the destruction of the democracy, that's right.
Speaker 2: There is a thing you.
Speaker 1: Could do good with a cheery holiday message.
Speaker 2: And if the people in this room committed themselves for
Speaker 2: a year to changing the direction of a state, they could.
Speaker 2: It often costs less to change power in a state
Speaker 2: legislature than a single congressional district. And then I said,
Speaker 2: you know, and you know, I hope you'll do it.
Speaker 2: If you really, we can save this country. You are
Speaker 2: a part of it, but you need to choose to
Speaker 2: be strategic and to look where your impact will be,
Speaker 2: not where your glamour is. Then I stopped speaking. There's
Speaker 2: a jazz Era microphone there. The jazz band starts coming up,
Speaker 2: and I figured I'll do one loop around the room.
Speaker 2: Maybe there's some constituents here, maybe someone will thank me
Speaker 2: for the recent traffic light. And Melissa and another young
Speaker 2: adult author stop me, and her friend Gail Foreman, says.
Speaker 4: We can do it.
Speaker 1: What can you do?
Speaker 2: I kind of try to move away. Melissa blocks the
Speaker 2: other side and say no, we're going to raise one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars and what do we do next? And
Speaker 2: I said, you know what, here's my email. Email me
Speaker 2: if you're still interested in this. On Monday, and I
Speaker 2: decided not to do a walk through of the party,
Speaker 2: I turned around and went home. I actually went home,
Speaker 2: turned on Saturday Night Live and you were the cold
Speaker 2: open playing Donald Trump doing a social media I just
Speaker 2: got to eat doing a social media gambit, And I
Speaker 2: thought to myself. I actually remember, I thought to myself, like,
Speaker 2: now that's how people engage politics, this state legislative thing.
Speaker 1: Never Yeah, Now describe for me. I'll ask you this question,
Speaker 1: and we're both of you, but you first, Melissa, and
Speaker 1: that is so future. Now describe what that was and
Speaker 1: over what period of time does it morph into states?
Speaker 3: Honestly from my journey, you know, I started what we
Speaker 3: started to call a giving circle with a bunch of
Speaker 3: other children's book authors and we decided that we would
Speaker 3: try to focus on a state, just like Daniel had
Speaker 3: said we wouldn't do. And when we had amassed a
Speaker 3: bunch of pledges together, we called them back and said
Speaker 3: we're ready to do this. We've got pledges, we just
Speaker 3: need your guidance on where to go and how to
Speaker 3: do this. And he said, okay, well not a minute,
Speaker 3: and a bunch of other things happened too, including you
Speaker 3: met Adam Pritzker, and that summer Daniel resigned from the
Speaker 3: State Senate to start Future Now, which is now the
Speaker 3: State's Project, and start focusing on state legislatures, and we
Speaker 3: became the first giving circle to support the electoral work
Speaker 3: of the States Project. So that was fall twenty seventeen
Speaker 3: was giving.
Speaker 1: Circle for my listeners is just it's just fundraising.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a group of people coming together. It's actually fundraising,
Speaker 3: but it's also a lot of learning. None of us
Speaker 3: had any idea about state legislatures grams you can learn. Yeah,
Speaker 3: once we started getting together and learning about, you know,
Speaker 3: how much power they had and how you know, from
Speaker 3: twenty ten to twenty sixteen, Democrats had lost nearly a
Speaker 3: thousand state legislative seats as Carl Rove and Project Red
Speaker 3: Map got into action and flipped all those seats and
Speaker 3: then took over state houses and state senates and really
Speaker 3: made people's lives bad. Defunded education, put in right to
Speaker 3: work laws, gutted environmental protections, and most people blame what
Speaker 3: they can see and the spotlight stays on Washington, DC,
Speaker 3: the President and maybe Congress. So once people started seeing that,
Speaker 3: light bulbs went off in their heads and they were
Speaker 3: ready to say, yeah, i'll give an annual donation for this.
Speaker 3: This seems like something I can actually impact. And that's
Speaker 3: how we started our giving circle, learning together and giving together.
Speaker 1: How about you when you started future Now, what was
Speaker 1: the goal?
Speaker 2: So I can't tell you how surprised I was that
Speaker 2: they took me up on the challenge. I wasn't being cute.
Speaker 2: I really thought no one had. Probably I'd made a
Speaker 2: similar speech one hundred times before, and it really changed me.
Speaker 2: I could not stop talking about it. In this moment
Speaker 2: with Trump, maybe people will finally be willing to be
Speaker 2: strategic and focused till everyone I knew about it. Adam
Speaker 2: Pritzker was selling his first business. He knew two people
Speaker 2: in New York politics, and they both said, well, you
Speaker 2: want to do something really interesting. He's a very interesting thinker,
Speaker 2: wander something interesting. You should meet this guy who's got
Speaker 2: this strange obsession with giving circles for state legislatures and
Speaker 2: kind of want to do something in Virginia this year.
Speaker 2: Virginia's your elections. So Adam and I met, and to
Speaker 2: my shock, he said, this is great. Like I don't
Speaker 2: want to go just do something. I said, you know
Speaker 2: you're not going to get credit for it because it's
Speaker 2: state legislators.
Speaker 4: Said I know, but.
Speaker 1: It's really this is he was seed money.
Speaker 2: Lots smart. He said, let's do it together. I'll make
Speaker 2: it possible. I'll see it. You have to resign to
Speaker 2: do it full time, and let's partner up and let's
Speaker 2: see how we can.
Speaker 1: Prime to resign by then. Any Way, according to your
Speaker 1: remarks about Albany.
Speaker 2: Look, I was certainly extremely frustrated with how much a
Speaker 2: single politician could do to change the system, especially as
Speaker 2: it felt like the democracy was starting to crumble. Now,
Speaker 2: my district was the greatest district on earth. It was
Speaker 2: Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. You know, I had
Speaker 2: the Statue of Liberty Allis Island, both sides of the
Speaker 2: Brooklyn Bridge World Trade Center site. You tight in New
Speaker 2: York City into a map, it Pushban came down right
Speaker 2: in the middle of that district. I was never tired
Speaker 2: of that district. But there are two things. As an
Speaker 2: elected official, your best job is to take what comes
Speaker 2: and try to make good decisions, try to improve it
Speaker 2: on the margins, or to serve your constituents and what
Speaker 2: they need. That was an incredible way to spend ten years.
Speaker 2: But this is a systems problem. This lack of attention
Speaker 2: to state legislature is their potential to either be a
Speaker 2: source to destroy the democracy or improve it. And when
Speaker 2: Adam and Melissa and her first giving circle together made
Speaker 2: it possible to do something that really also wasn't partisan.
Speaker 2: The other thing that was important to Adam is this
Speaker 2: is not about party. Obviously, you need to choose in
Speaker 2: a two party system in each election who's better. But
Speaker 2: it's about these outcomes in the world that you talk
Speaker 2: about that when you really look at it on paper,
Speaker 2: States can deliver and no one's trying except for the
Speaker 2: radical right, who was, by the way, doing a damn
Speaker 2: good job of it.
Speaker 1: Daniel's Squadron and Melissa Walker of the States Project. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy conversations about New York City history and preservation,
Speaker 1: check out my episode with Rob Snyder of The Island
Speaker 1: Institute and Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for
Speaker 1: Historic Preservation.
Speaker 5: We need to have affordable housing all throughout New York City.
Speaker 5: The problem is that the approach that a lot of
Speaker 5: people take is instead of saying we need affordable housing,
Speaker 5: let's build affordable housing, they say, well, we need to
Speaker 5: unleash the market and build as much market rate housing
Speaker 5: as possible, flood the market, and then that's going to
Speaker 5: bring the prices down for everybody. The way to get
Speaker 5: affordable housing is to build affordable housing and to keep
Speaker 5: the affordable housing that you have, which we're losing at
Speaker 5: a breakneck pace.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Rob Snyder and
Speaker 1: Andrew Berman, go to Here's the Thing dot org. After
Speaker 1: the break, Daniels Squadron, and Melissa Walker share how the
Speaker 1: State's Project operates beyond New York State and targets all
Speaker 1: ninety nine legislative chambers in the country. I'm Alec Baldwin,
Speaker 1: and this is Here's the Thing. When Melissa Walker first
Speaker 1: met Daniel's Squadron in twenty sixteen, she was inspired to
Speaker 1: start her own giving circle to help raise funds for
Speaker 1: local state legislatures. In twenty eighteen, she co founded a
Speaker 1: giving circle for the States Project to help engage networks
Speaker 1: and raise funds towards the goal of creating political change
Speaker 1: at the state level. I was curious how these giving
Speaker 1: circles have evolved over time.
Speaker 3: The first year we started doing it, there were twenty
Speaker 3: eight giving circles all in New York and really just
Speaker 3: kind of along my walking paths in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Speaker 3: It was people who were gathered in cafes writing postcards
Speaker 3: to voters, and I would kind of knock on the
Speaker 3: window and say, can I talk to you about state legislatures,
Speaker 3: because what I thought happened every time I walked into
Speaker 3: one of those rooms was I said, I know you're
Speaker 3: trying to impact what's happening in this country, and I'm
Speaker 3: about to tell you a way that you can have
Speaker 3: an impact that you never thought was possible, and people
Speaker 3: would really light up at it and think to themselves,
Speaker 3: maybe I can do this, Because you know, I wasn't
Speaker 3: someone I was writing one young adult novel a year
Speaker 3: and for many many magazines, as you noted. But I
Speaker 3: wasn't someone who could host a senator in my living room,
Speaker 3: you know. But I was someone who could gather ten
Speaker 3: friends over for pizza and wine and everyone pulled some
Speaker 3: dollars and actually change what's happening in a state legislature.
Speaker 3: Who's in the majority. And that first year, we raised
Speaker 3: around one hundred thousand dollars for Virginia, and they have
Speaker 3: odd year elections. We were trying to flip ten seats
Speaker 3: that year to change the balance of power in the
Speaker 3: House of Delegates. We funded the final campaign gaps for
Speaker 3: ten of the ten candidates. Nine of them won their seats,
Speaker 3: and the balance of power got so close to flipping
Speaker 3: just one seat away from flipping entirely that the next
Speaker 3: year of Virginia expanded Medicaid, four hundred thousand people got
Speaker 3: healthcare who hadn't had it before, and we felt connected
Speaker 3: to that policy outcome, and everyone who'd given any amount
Speaker 3: to my giving circle said, let's do this again. Let's
Speaker 3: choose another state with the State's Project and do this again.
Speaker 3: And so that's when I started Giving Circles program with
Speaker 3: the States Project, because it was the most impactful thing
Speaker 3: I'd ever done. It was the most you know, energized
Speaker 3: I felt, and I really felt like what we were
Speaker 3: doing was making a difference, and that feeling has gotten
Speaker 3: stronger every single year.
Speaker 1: But in that way that you can harness that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, I mean for you with the Giving circles,
Speaker 1: is it like do you make sure people don't come
Speaker 1: unless you know what they're going to give? No?
Speaker 3: No, really, I mean it's it's kind of fascinating. So
Speaker 3: when I started doing this work, I had a friend
Speaker 3: a couple months in say, oh, how's the fundraising going?
Speaker 3: And I said, I'm not fundraising, I'm flipping state legislatures.
Speaker 3: And she was like, through fundraising, right, And I was like,
Speaker 3: oh am I fundraising, Oh my gosh. And I really
Speaker 3: still kind of approach it that way. I want everyone
Speaker 3: in a room to really understand how power works in
Speaker 3: this country and how foundational state legislatures are to that power,
Speaker 3: and I hope they all leave with that kind of knowledge,
Speaker 3: and I hope they all leave with enough kind of
Speaker 3: tidbits to spread that knowledge a little bit. And then yeah,
Speaker 3: there's an ask in the room. But I have found
Speaker 3: that not having a minimum and not having a maximum
Speaker 3: can really do the most for a room, because it's
Speaker 3: never with giving circles about one room. It's about seeding
Speaker 3: something in a room and raising some dollars, but then
Speaker 3: spreading those seeds out among the people who were there
Speaker 3: to host the next room and the next room and
Speaker 3: the next room or a lunch they want me to
Speaker 3: come to with someone who's really important. And that way
Speaker 3: it has spread so much more organically, I think than
Speaker 3: those kind of one off political events.
Speaker 2: And this is one of the big differences. I don't
Speaker 2: think there's a single person who says I love political fundraisers.
Speaker 2: Occasionally you're glad you got the picture and the grip
Speaker 2: and grin line so that you can show everyone else,
Speaker 2: but no one had a good time. That's true in
Speaker 2: a small one, it's true in a big one. The
Speaker 2: difference with the giving circles and with Melissa's sometimes it's
Speaker 2: been difficult for me. Insistence that it's not just about
Speaker 2: fundraising is that it's actually a good time because you're
Speaker 2: actually going And there are two things happening that never
Speaker 2: happen at a political fundraiser. The first is you're actually
Speaker 2: learning something, you're not just scoring the pall on how
Speaker 2: much they can tell you what you want to hear.
Speaker 2: And the second is you're doing something that feels like
Speaker 2: you discovered the best next band that no one's heard of.
Speaker 2: And so you show up thinking you're going to be
Speaker 2: a political fundraiser, and you walk out with a totally
Speaker 2: new perspective on American politics that, by the way, happens
Speaker 2: to be true, and like a little bit of like
Speaker 2: an insider in the kind of cred that you can
Speaker 2: carry with you everywhere you go. And if there was
Speaker 2: a minimum, if everyone was there, it was like here's
Speaker 2: the two fifty, here's the thousand dollars check, it wouldn't
Speaker 2: be that, it wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Be the same. I believe that again, harnessing that energy.
Speaker 1: People want to think it matters. People want to give,
Speaker 1: they want a care, they want to help, they want
Speaker 1: to learn, they want to do all these things based
Speaker 1: on one really horrible thing, and that is that they've
Speaker 1: completely lost faith in the government of this country. Exactly,
Speaker 1: they have completely lost faith. You only come when you
Speaker 1: want something from me, and then once I vote for
Speaker 1: you, you disappear and I never hear from you again. I
Speaker 1: never hear from you again. And people are sick of that.
Speaker 1: What's the path? Now? With the giving circles, you raise
Speaker 1: some money, you educate people, you have a good speaker,
Speaker 1: somebody who's really really interesting and informed, and so forth,
Speaker 1: and then the money goes where where does it go? Yeah?
Speaker 3: So with giving circles, they get to choose the target
Speaker 3: state from our list of targets that they'd like to impact,
Speaker 3: not just.
Speaker 1: Their home state.
Speaker 3: Correct, that's right, iortant yep. So we are only in
Speaker 3: states where we see a threshold of power that needs
Speaker 3: defending or that we think can be challenged.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 3: So, for example, we just finished up this year working
Speaker 3: in Virginia because it again has odd year elections, working
Speaker 3: on the House of delegates. So many of the giving
Speaker 3: circles working this year were focused on Virginia, and when
Speaker 3: they give money to the giving circle, one hundred percent
Speaker 3: of the amount that's raised by the giving circle goes
Speaker 3: out the door to the state. And we are working
Speaker 3: in the state as the State's Project with the State Caucus,
Speaker 3: the Virginia House Democrats and working on targeting the set
Speaker 3: of districts that are possible to win to shift power.
Speaker 3: This case, we were trying to deepen power. We had
Speaker 3: a one seat majority that we won by nine hundred
Speaker 3: and seventy five votes in twenty twenty three, so trying
Speaker 3: to deepen that majority this year, protect it and deepen it.
Speaker 1: I went down there, went door to door the last election.
Speaker 1: Good for you get with people for the American way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's it was really important. It was
Speaker 3: a really important thing to do, partially because there was
Speaker 3: a governor's race too, and there was a chance just
Speaker 3: on Tuesday to make Virginia a trifecta, meaning control of
Speaker 3: the governor's mansion, majority in the House and majority in
Speaker 3: the Senate. And that was achieved on Tuesday, and Virginia
Speaker 3: became the sixteenth.
Speaker 4: Divenment a trifecta.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, sixteenth democratic trifecta in the country, and that
Speaker 3: has a lot of power to not only do things
Speaker 3: to improve Virginian's lives, but also to impact the entire country.
Speaker 3: And that really was made possible by the State's Project's investment,
Speaker 3: which was the largest investment of any national group.
Speaker 1: And who with the State's Project or someone you're affiliated with,
Speaker 1: is doing the strategic research as to where the money
Speaker 1: is going to go.
Speaker 2: So our team does that, you know. I think another
Speaker 2: barrier to people getting involved in politics, giving money let
Speaker 2: himself become emotionally invested, is the feeling that it will
Speaker 2: be wasted, that campaigns don't really matter, or they just
Speaker 2: enrich consultants, someone's cousin, whatever it is. And so that's
Speaker 2: a barrier we need to help people get across. We
Speaker 2: have a whole internal team that is constantly looking actually
Speaker 2: at all ninety nine legislative chambers in the country. As
Speaker 2: I'm sure you and all your listeners know, Nebraska is
Speaker 2: a unicameral state, but every other state has a House
Speaker 2: and a Senate, and so they're looking at all ninety
Speaker 2: nine of those legislative chambers trying to figure out out
Speaker 2: both which chambers could be flipped, but also which seats
Speaker 2: and which candidates are most likely to do so, and
Speaker 2: then trying to figure out the most effective ways to
Speaker 2: spend money so that those dollars are well spent to
Speaker 2: communicate with voters and convince people. And you know, one
Speaker 2: of the things that they've found that we found is
Speaker 2: in state legislative elections, getting candidates off the phones, raising
Speaker 2: money from special interests and out knocking on doors in
Speaker 2: their communities is an incredible way to win elections and
Speaker 2: do something about corruption. And so the way to think
Speaker 2: about it is there's going to be money in politics.
Speaker 2: The state's project program, make sure that money is well spent,
Speaker 2: but also that the candidate is not being asked to
Speaker 2: do something. We don't have a litmus test other than one,
Speaker 2: serve your constituents, they are the ones who hired you. Two,
Speaker 2: do you believe in the American promise, the idea that
Speaker 2: it's self evident all people are aated equal with the
Speaker 2: right to life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness, and
Speaker 2: government secures those rights with the consent of the government.
Speaker 2: And then go work for the people who you want
Speaker 2: to represent.
Speaker 1: Now, why is Nebraska the only unicameral. You blew my mind.
Speaker 1: Why is that the only unicameral.
Speaker 4: It got it got shifted.
Speaker 2: So you know, the requirement in the Constitution is that
Speaker 2: all of the states have a quote republican form of
Speaker 2: government small R not party although I think exactly and so,
Speaker 2: actually a bunch of states were already bi cameral as
Speaker 2: of the time the US government was created, and then
Speaker 2: there was a move sort of in the progressive era
Speaker 2: that unicameral would be better. Only Nebraska did it sort
Speaker 2: of play a plan's progressivism. There's actually some real arguments
Speaker 2: for it. The relationship between the legislature and the governor
Speaker 2: is very different in a unicameral LEGI when you need
Speaker 2: two chambers, the governor can play them off each other
Speaker 2: and increase their power significantly. A gubernatorial veto, just as
Speaker 2: an example, is much easier to override in a single
Speaker 2: chamber than a bicameral.
Speaker 1: What do they call the members of the unicamer senators?
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean they're politicians.
Speaker 2: You don't think they wanted to call themselves a separate
Speaker 2: members as a former senator of Upper House matters. But
Speaker 2: the other interesting thing is it's the only nonpartisan legislature.
Speaker 2: So while people have parties, they run on a non
Speaker 2: partisan ticket. So as recently as twenty nineteen, members of
Speaker 2: the Nebraska Senate supermajority Republicans. The number three most powerful
Speaker 2: person in that chamber was a Democrat, even though a
Speaker 2: supermajority of Republicans. The different possibilities for a different kind
Speaker 2: of partisanship across the fifty states, I mean, you would
Speaker 2: really lose all your listeners.
Speaker 1: But is fascinating now is there a state that you
Speaker 1: basically said us of don't bother. You wouldn't even bother
Speaker 1: going down there to try to influence the state legislations
Speaker 1: is so conquetized.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's actually not a light question at
Speaker 2: all because I would argue that the Democratic Party and
Speaker 2: progressive activiststs have basically been sending the message we don't
Speaker 2: need all the states for a number of years now,
Speaker 2: The idea that we're letting the competition partisan or ideological
Speaker 2: competition in places like Idaho just whether on the vine.
Speaker 4: For years.
Speaker 2: Were in Mississippi. Hopefully that's now shifting. We were in
Speaker 2: Mississippi in twenty nineteen. You know, it's an incredible state
Speaker 2: with a really interesting political history. Obviously very ugly one
Speaker 2: as well, but also some hope in it. We were
Speaker 2: able to help a candidate, I think, outperform what she
Speaker 2: had done the year before the election before by seventy
Speaker 2: points to win the election. So I would say there's
Speaker 2: some cultures that you wouldn't want to get involved in.
Speaker 2: I think that maybe for non New Yorkers people might
Speaker 2: think the New York political culture is one of those.
Speaker 2: But there is no state where we shouldn't be saying
Speaker 2: at a time when you have a political movement that
Speaker 2: wants to undermine democracy, we should be able to build
Speaker 2: a coalition that's pro democracy, including by the way, if
Speaker 2: you have an R by your name on the ballot,
Speaker 2: not just a D.
Speaker 1: Now, when you were doing that, just like in the Senate,
Speaker 1: you were you were Brooklyn and at that timely Manhattan.
Speaker 4: So I never lived in Manhattan.
Speaker 2: When I was in the legislature, I was considered very
Speaker 2: Manhattan because two thirds of my district was Manhattan and
Speaker 2: how I come across. But I actually grew up in
Speaker 2: the Bronx and lived in Work. I've never lived in
Speaker 2: Manhattan a day in my life.
Speaker 1: The Bronx andwhere riverdaleah exactly, Oh, yeah, your dad, as
Speaker 1: we raise everybody, got it? Got it? Got it? Would
Speaker 1: you say that when you do these projects? Because when
Speaker 1: I was there at the thing that you both were attending,
Speaker 1: that was Sarah Jessica was there and Jasmith Cameron and
Speaker 1: so forth, and I went to that event, which I'm
Speaker 1: very glad I went to, although there was that again
Speaker 1: hallucinatory moment when I was like, I've heard this before,
Speaker 1: if I heard this before, but do you find that
Speaker 1: it's easier to corral women than it is meant?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I find that, yes, giving circles are
Speaker 3: largely led by women, and they are organizing other women.
Speaker 3: There are some men who lead giving circles with us,
Speaker 3: but I would say eighty percent of our leaders are women.
Speaker 3: And it's really an exercising organizing people. So I always
Speaker 3: say it's you know, it's the person who's organizing the
Speaker 3: pot luck, it's the person who started the book club,
Speaker 3: it's the person who hosts the dinner parties, it's the
Speaker 3: person who brings people together.
Speaker 1: That women are more organize them men.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm just saying I think there's there's a
Speaker 3: community building aspect to it that really is tends to
Speaker 3: be women and for the most.
Speaker 1: Part, Daniel's Squadron and Melissa Walker of the States Project.
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: Daniel's Squadron and Melissa Walker discuss how the States Project
Speaker 1: was able to flip twelve state seats in Pennsylvania in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two with the help of giving circles. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. As
Speaker 1: a New York State senator, Daniel's Squadron focused on many
Speaker 1: important public policy and funding issues. Among his many contributions
Speaker 1: were federal funding for public housing, ethics and campaign finance reform,
Speaker 1: and public parks projects on the Lower east Side, Governor's
Speaker 1: Island and the Brooklyn Bridge Park. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: more about Squadron's desire to protect open spaces and how
Speaker 1: he worked to save Brooklyn Bridge Park from developments. Well.
Speaker 2: Originally the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey State,
Speaker 2: well a bi state agency. Actually there is a state
Speaker 2: public state level, and then the conversion and it was
Speaker 2: in the district I was running for, and the plan
Speaker 2: to get it funded was to build luxury housing in
Speaker 2: the limits of the park and have the tax dollars
Speaker 2: from that housing fund the park. I had real concerns
Speaker 2: about that because I think that privatizing public space with
Speaker 2: parochial local interests is a serious Actually, it's the same
Speaker 2: thing that's now become sort of the Nimby question when
Speaker 2: it comes to housing. But I think you see it
Speaker 2: with open space all over the place as well.
Speaker 1: It's what did they wind up doing? Did they build
Speaker 1: luxury housing?
Speaker 2: So they did, so I was able to delay it
Speaker 2: to reduce it, and you know it. It's actually Brooklynbridge
Speaker 2: Park is working really well because, in a way I
Speaker 2: underestimated it's so popular all of us. It was so
Speaker 2: popular that there's no parochial interest that could take it over.
Speaker 2: So there are people who live in brooklyn Bridge Park.
Speaker 2: You ask anyone who does, they're sure their tax dollars
Speaker 2: go to brooklyn Bridge Park. But the political constituency and
Speaker 2: the folks who designed it, Regina Meyer, who ran it
Speaker 2: when it was first getting built and opened, really to
Speaker 2: their credit, built a park that would draw people in
Speaker 2: even who could never still live in Brooklyn Heights, and
Speaker 2: that has, in a way I underestimated, allowed it to
Speaker 2: be a truly public space. It also, i would say,
Speaker 2: is by far the best funded public amenity maybe in
Speaker 2: the history of all humanity because of what's happened to
Speaker 2: real estate.
Speaker 1: So the land was owned by the joint authorities and
Speaker 1: they sold it to the developer to build the house.
Speaker 2: Now, before I ever came an office, the Port Authority
Speaker 2: transferred it to a public corporation that was controlled by
Speaker 2: the state at the time. All of the land is
Speaker 2: on ground leases with the developers still owned by the state.
Speaker 1: But part of this whole in theatre buildings are just
Speaker 1: renting the land.
Speaker 2: Yes, but under long term leases and leases. And actually,
Speaker 2: another thing we did that I'm really proud of and
Speaker 2: we were able to do in Governor's Island too, is
Speaker 2: change the governance structure so instead of some by state
Speaker 2: no accountability. In both cases, we were able to negotiate
Speaker 2: with the Bloomberg administration and the governor at the time,
Speaker 2: Governor Patterson, so that the city controls Brooklyn Bridge Park,
Speaker 2: the Mayor's responsible, the city controls Governor's Island, the Mayor's
Speaker 2: responsible sort of like what you see in the arrow
Speaker 2: control of the schools. And one reason I think those
Speaker 2: both of those parks have done so well is is
Speaker 2: mayors care about making them better in a way you
Speaker 2: never would if it was this alphabet soup that we're
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 1: Now. The land was leased by the developers. They built
Speaker 1: and erected housing, their high end housing, and they kept
Speaker 1: the money they profited from them from leases they got
Speaker 1: with did they pay so the only thing they paid
Speaker 1: They didn't pay a big on the housing or do
Speaker 1: you guys say paid taxes?
Speaker 2: Now they did so, I mean, so there's a bunch
Speaker 2: of different types of housing there. So there's a rental unit,
Speaker 2: there's a building that was a huge conversion, that warehouse
Speaker 2: that you might sort of be able to picture at
Speaker 2: Peer five there. And then there's some new developments that
Speaker 2: were built, one of which is actually one hundred percent affordable.
Speaker 2: Actually the Blosoo administration and I both supported that. So
Speaker 2: there's a mix. There was some cost to the ground lease,
Speaker 2: but mostly there had They have something called pilots payments
Speaker 2: and lieu of taxes, so they don't pay property taxes
Speaker 2: to the city. The property DEXes for those all of
Speaker 2: that housing funds the park directly.
Speaker 1: So the city and of the state have realized some
Speaker 1: money from the sale of this property. The housing.
Speaker 2: I'd say the city doesn't the city treasury doesn't have
Speaker 2: to pay to keep Brooklyn Bridge Park going and being
Speaker 2: the it's funded by this mechanism.
Speaker 1: And then and then the land that the park is on,
Speaker 1: there was there was no park there.
Speaker 2: I know there were. There was Peers. It was it
Speaker 2: was Peers that had been basically in disuse since the containerization.
Speaker 1: And where do the mochi have developed the park?
Speaker 2: So that was capital money that was part of the
Speaker 2: deal we made to give the city control. The Bloomberg
Speaker 2: administration put a really large amount of capital investment in
Speaker 2: as part of the deal to take control of the park.
Speaker 2: There's a board that has seventeen appointments on it.
Speaker 4: So if so you.
Speaker 1: Know who appoints them, hocel Well, I want to.
Speaker 2: Tell you because we made the deal. So obviously the
Speaker 2: local state senator has an appointment and I.
Speaker 1: Knew him once and what did he do? And the
Speaker 1: ones walking around lost in Manhattan.
Speaker 2: The local assembly member, the local city council member, the
Speaker 2: Brooklyn Borough president, the governor still has a few appointments,
Speaker 2: and the mayor has a large number. The best thing
Speaker 2: to do with a five year old in New York
Speaker 2: City is get on one of those public ferries. Take
Speaker 2: it to Governor's Island, spend Little Ham Gover Island, get
Speaker 2: back on the ferry. Take it to Brooklyn Bridge Park,
Speaker 2: Go get some ice cream, Get back on the ferry,
Speaker 2: take it back to Manhattan. Think of a day where,
Speaker 2: like you know, you spend less than ten dollars and
Speaker 2: maybe twenty dollars with the ice cream cone, and you
Speaker 2: experienced the greatest view, the greatest community on earth.
Speaker 1: My wife and I take my kids to Saint George
Speaker 1: all the time. My kids would love to go on
Speaker 1: the ferry and they'd seen to me, you know you
Speaker 1: rode the ferry, Dad, But when you were young, did
Speaker 1: you ride the ferries? Like? Yeah, when I was in
Speaker 1: I used to ride the ferry. Then I could have
Speaker 1: had to cut the story short because it involved me
Speaker 1: smoking a joint, drinking a bottle of wine, turning around,
Speaker 1: coming back and going to Woe Hop in Chinatown, and
Speaker 1: it was blowing it out.
Speaker 2: On the Dollar Miller high lifes on the All Staten Island,
Speaker 2: ferry ferry with the dollar highlight.
Speaker 1: We got as wasted as that was glorious of liberty.
Speaker 4: So it was so for Agia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember I woke up to the ferry with
Speaker 1: my kids and I go, where do I pay? I
Speaker 1: hadn't been on the ferry of fifteen years, and I
Speaker 1: welcome to the like ten cops in a huddle, and
Speaker 1: I go where do I pay? And I goes ferries free,
Speaker 1: mister Boldbyn ferries free. I go what he goes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's free. That's another thing I can save money with.
Speaker 1: Mid We're going on the ferry again. Yeah, come on,
Speaker 1: come on, get your coats on. Now, what is your
Speaker 1: goal in the coming years or even months. What's the
Speaker 1: goal in terms of you want to just continue a
Speaker 1: long or is there another goal? You have a broader
Speaker 1: goal you have?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean so we now have over two hundred
Speaker 3: giving circles working with the state's pormationwise nationwide. Correct. And
Speaker 3: my goal really with that program is to keep everyone
Speaker 3: who's in it on a steady course, not in this
Speaker 3: kind of reactive politics that makes us all so tired,
Speaker 3: but to keep them moving steadily and focused strategically on
Speaker 3: these particular nodes of power where they can have impact.
Speaker 3: You know, these are races that are decided on the
Speaker 3: mark rgins, and these giving circles are actually impacting results
Speaker 3: not just of single elections, but who is holding the
Speaker 3: majority in states. And you know, twenty twenty two Pennsylvania
Speaker 3: is a great example. We were able to flip twelve
Speaker 3: seats that year with the help of Giving circles and
Speaker 3: we got the final twelfth seat by sixty three votes.
Speaker 3: Sixty three votes shifted power in Harrisburg that year. And
Speaker 3: I believe that every single Giving Circle that chose Pennsylvania
Speaker 3: that year was responsible for that victory because if one
Speaker 3: of them hadn't been there organizing a living room in
Speaker 3: a backyard, a gathering or a zoom room, then I'm
Speaker 3: not sure we would have gotten those last sixty three
Speaker 3: votes to shift power. So when I meet a new
Speaker 3: Giving Circle leader, what I say to them is that
Speaker 3: they are turning on the porch light for strategic political
Speaker 3: giving or their communities. And my goal is to make
Speaker 3: sure that people have a focus and people have a
Speaker 3: place where they feel like they're making a difference, and
Speaker 3: that's what the Giving Circles program does. So staying in
Speaker 3: it staying steady, not being reacted to politics, but really
Speaker 3: focusing on where they can have an impact foundationally for
Speaker 3: the country, and then spreading that to other people, saying
Speaker 3: who else in your community should have a giving circle?
Speaker 3: Who else is feeling like there's nothing they can do.
Speaker 3: We do not have to be witnesses to what's happening
Speaker 3: in our democracy. We have power, especially when we gather
Speaker 3: people and do it together, and so giving circles are
Speaker 3: never about what one person can give, but the magical
Speaker 3: math problem of bringing people together to learn about this,
Speaker 3: have a focus, and strategically work with us to target
Speaker 3: specific seats.
Speaker 1: I love when I went to the meeting both meetings,
Speaker 1: the one at Rothman's house that I first went with
Speaker 1: you guys was a bit smaller, and that other one,
Speaker 1: that woman who was the host in that magnificent carriage
Speaker 1: house of us that was like, oh my god, I'll
Speaker 1: give money to I and come back here and have
Speaker 1: some more candipas and some sparkling war or know her
Speaker 1: house was stunning. But the idea being that you know,
Speaker 1: finding people I guess nationwide, who are States Project's material.
Speaker 1: My question for you is what's the budget of States Project?
Speaker 2: Now roughly in the twenty twenty four cycle, we were
Speaker 2: the largest outside state legislative effort in the history of
Speaker 2: the country. We raised more than seventy million dollars over
Speaker 2: that two year cycle. And you know, it's it's a
Speaker 2: lot of money. But when you think of the fact
Speaker 2: that a single congressional race nowadays cost about twenty five
Speaker 2: million or is, you know, they're spending twenty five million dollars,
Speaker 2: you're talking about less than the cost of three or
Speaker 2: four congressional races. To have candidates who believe in America
Speaker 2: and believe in democracy free to go meet their voters
Speaker 2: around the country in every state, it matters, and giving circles,
Speaker 2: including ones that raise cumulatively five thousand dollars in contributions
Speaker 2: of fifty dollars at a time or raised ten times,
Speaker 2: that are often the single biggest giver in one of
Speaker 2: these races in a smaller state like New Hampshire or Maine.
Speaker 1: So the budget of states projects is what per year.
Speaker 2: It's a two year cycle, so almost the vast major
Speaker 2: the money goes out to actually be contributed to campaigns.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure the initiative of quesse so low, but
Speaker 1: how many people in the staff fourteen people. Great, and
Speaker 1: your office is.
Speaker 4: Where totally remote?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, totally remote. You don't want an office, no.
Speaker 2: I said, unfortunate. I mean because I love, actually love
Speaker 2: our team and when we get to be at worse,
Speaker 2: when we got to be.
Speaker 1: In personal, did they have an office prior?
Speaker 2: We had an office before COVID, but then as we
Speaker 2: were growing during the COVID period, we started hiring people
Speaker 2: from around the country and now.
Speaker 1: My kids, you can have my apartment.
Speaker 2: If you can convince our team to move to New
Speaker 2: York by doing happy hours for them once a week,
Speaker 2: I'll take it.
Speaker 1: I'll take a look at it. Yeah, you know, when
Speaker 1: I saw you guys speak the first time, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have the same idea
Speaker 1: of there's a collective consciousness, and they have a variation
Speaker 1: of the same idea of like, well, let's go, let's
Speaker 1: work the states. I think what you're doing is really
Speaker 1: the only meaningful work that could be done right now.
Speaker 1: We're more meaningful in that way.
Speaker 3: Well, it gives me a lot of hope to work
Speaker 3: on these campaigns where the main thing is we want
Speaker 3: you to go door to door and talk to the people.
Speaker 3: In your community, right, we want you to We want
Speaker 3: you to listen. We want you to talk about the
Speaker 3: traffic patterns and the grass on the softball field and
Speaker 3: the local school. And that is how you connect with
Speaker 3: people as a neighbor. And you do that persuasion knocking,
Speaker 3: talking to people like a neighbor. That to me is
Speaker 3: part of the connective tissue that's been missing. And it's
Speaker 3: really heartening to be able to work on campaigns where
Speaker 3: that is a main tactic, because that person to person
Speaker 3: contact is so effective and so important for healing people
Speaker 3: in this really disconnected time.
Speaker 2: I'm really sympathetic to people who are discouraged by politics,
Speaker 2: and I actually sometimes think how hopeless about politics must
Speaker 2: people have been to vote for this guy again, knowing
Speaker 2: what they were getting.
Speaker 1: But knowing.
Speaker 2: But it's on those of us who are doing this
Speaker 2: full time, on those of us who care about the democracy,
Speaker 2: to make it less hopeless, to make it seem worthwhile.
Speaker 2: That's not going to happen by watching more cable news
Speaker 2: or spending more time on social media. It's not going
Speaker 2: to happen by choosing you Burger King McDonald's Republicans or
Speaker 2: Democrats in the national conversation. When you get into states,
Speaker 2: you start feeling like, Wow, I have power in this democracy.
Speaker 2: Wow that thing that made no sense suddenly I understand.
Speaker 2: And most importantly, things really can change for the better.
Speaker 2: And I just want people to have that chance, because
Speaker 2: being discouraged and being hopeless is the end of the democracy,
Speaker 2: whether it's this guy or someone else, and knowing you're
Speaker 2: a part.
Speaker 4: Of it is the hope.
Speaker 1: My thanks to Daniel Squadron and Melissa Walker. This episode
Speaker 1: was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're
Speaker 1: produced by Kathleen Musso, Zach MacNeice, and Victoria de Martin.
Speaker 1: Our engineers Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you
Speaker 1: by iHeart Radio.