Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds and in not at all shocking news,
Speaker 1: Trump is pushing to have the document's case to be
Speaker 1: tried after the twenty twenty four election. We have a
Speaker 1: fascinating show today. We are going to take the temperature
Speaker 1: on the ground in two different states. The first, Michigan
Speaker 1: Detroit News is Craig malgre joins us to talk Michigan politics.
Speaker 2: And Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Politico's Chris Cadigo about California and
Speaker 1: how the Democratic Party is repairing after their unnecessary midterm
Speaker 1: seat losses.
Speaker 2: But first we have the host of Strict Scrutiny, Kate Shaw.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Kate Shaw, Molly, thanks so much for having.
Speaker 2: Me, Professor Kate Shaw. I should be calling you, Professor Sugah.
Speaker 3: You should not. You should calling Kate obviously.
Speaker 2: Let us talk about the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: You wrote a really good piece in the Times this
Speaker 1: weekend about how much this Supreme Court values religion. I
Speaker 1: want to first talk about that because I think it
Speaker 1: relates to a lot of the cases that were on
Speaker 1: the docket. This second season of Trump's Supreme Court Destroys America.
Speaker 3: Well, it's been three years since the three you know,
Speaker 3: Trump appointees have been fully in place. But I think
Speaker 3: you're right, it's really only the second season because they
Speaker 3: took a fairly cautious approach in that first season.
Speaker 2: They never did that again.
Speaker 3: It was like getting her wall hangings up and getting situated,
Speaker 3: and then as soon as she was fully in place, yeah,
Speaker 3: last term and then this one. And I don't think
Speaker 3: there's any end in sight. They are just going through broke.
Speaker 1: They say they're textualists, or they say they're this, or
Speaker 1: they're that, but really religion seems to be kind of
Speaker 1: their number one hobby horse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean people sometimes refer
Speaker 3: to this court as kind of elevated religion to a
Speaker 3: sort of most favored nation status among rights. Right, the
Speaker 3: Constitution protects lots of rights, but the one they see
Speaker 3: most interested in protecting is the right to free exercise
Speaker 3: of religion. Then maybe the Second Amendment right gun. So those,
Speaker 3: I would say, are the two that this Court is
Speaker 3: the most interested, conspicuously so in protecting. And yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean there were two big cases this term one you know,
Speaker 3: a blockbuster case three zero three creative, which was technically
Speaker 3: a speech case, not a religion case. So the argument
Speaker 3: was that this website designer, a Christian website designer who
Speaker 3: did not want to design websites for same sex weddings,
Speaker 3: had a right not to be compelled to speak, and
Speaker 3: she said having to provide a website upon request would
Speaker 3: have been compelled speech. So it was a speech case,
Speaker 3: not a religion case. But the reason she objected, she said,
Speaker 3: was religiously grounded. Right. She basically said she believed that
Speaker 3: same sex marriages were false, that they were inconsistent with
Speaker 3: God's plan, and for that reason she objected to designing
Speaker 3: them for same sex couples.
Speaker 2: I want to add an important caveat here, which is
Speaker 2: she hasn't ever designed a website for a same sex couple.
Speaker 2: This was a theoretical.
Speaker 3: Case, absolutely, and I think that's a critically important point.
Speaker 3: So she had never been asked to design a website
Speaker 3: for a same sex couple. Unclear if she ever would
Speaker 3: have been had she even gone into business shapes. She
Speaker 3: wasn't even in the business of designing wedding websites at all.
Speaker 2: This was just in case she decided she might want.
Speaker 3: To and in case somebody tried to retain her services
Speaker 3: that she didn't want to provide. Right, there were so
Speaker 3: many kind of intermediate, speculative points in between her objection
Speaker 3: and any possible injury in the world. Even if you
Speaker 3: believe that this compelled speech argument is valid, it was
Speaker 3: entirely speculative that it would ever actually come to pass.
Speaker 3: And normally the Supreme Court doesn't decide cases under those circumstances.
Speaker 3: It needs somebody who's either being injured or will imminently
Speaker 3: be injured by the law they are objecting to in
Speaker 3: order to actually get the Court to intervene. And I
Speaker 3: think I think that the Court was so eager to
Speaker 3: announce this broad principle of freedom from compelled provision of
Speaker 3: goods and services on a non discriminatory basis that it
Speaker 3: reached out to decide this case. And maybe if I
Speaker 3: could say one more thing, I think it really matters
Speaker 3: that individuals who have been wanting to challenge laws like this. Remember,
Speaker 3: like five years ago, there was a very similar case
Speaker 3: also out of Colorado, involving a baker who didn't want
Speaker 3: to bake cakes for same sex and there the court
Speaker 3: actually didn't decide the case on the marriage, sort of
Speaker 3: took an off ramp. But actually there there was a
Speaker 3: dispute right there was the same sex couple who had
Speaker 3: gone into this bakery and tried to get a wedding case.
Speaker 2: There was actually somewhat injured, yes, and.
Speaker 3: They were definitely injured. I mean like it was a
Speaker 3: really traumatic event. So there was no question about standing
Speaker 3: the court who took a different off ramp. And in
Speaker 3: the five intervening years, the same people who brought that
Speaker 3: case have been really trying to find another case and
Speaker 3: this is the best they had. And I think it's
Speaker 3: just it is meaningful in that there's not a lot
Speaker 3: of So if there's a lot of website designers out there,
Speaker 3: and there are obviously a lot of same sex couples
Speaker 3: getting married, it's just like it's not obvious that it's ever.
Speaker 3: If she is known not to give great services or
Speaker 3: something to same sex couples because she's a devout Christian
Speaker 3: and doesn't believe in same sex marriage, maybe she's not
Speaker 3: going to get a lot of requests from customers. Maybe
Speaker 3: there'll be other website designers who provide the services that
Speaker 3: same sex couples are then going to be drawn to it.
Speaker 3: So I guess the point I'm making is institutional arrangements,
Speaker 3: sometimes in quiet ways, get made such that the Court
Speaker 3: doesn't have to sort of declare like sometimes things principles
Speaker 3: come into tension, right, non discrimination principles may sometimes be
Speaker 3: intension with people's religious values. It's a pluralistic country. People
Speaker 3: believe all kinds of different stuff. And the point is,
Speaker 3: most of the time we have figured out ways to
Speaker 3: balance I think these competing imperatives. But the Supreme Court
Speaker 3: here is basically saying, you know, first of all, it
Speaker 3: is very much elevating religious belief above other values like equality.
Speaker 3: But it's also saying we have to get in the
Speaker 3: mix here when there isn't even an obvious conflict that
Speaker 3: is live. And I think that's just part of the
Speaker 3: kind of hubris of this court that we were seeing
Speaker 3: on display in just a huge array of areas.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to tell a personal story here, which
Speaker 1: I'm not known to do. But a friend of this podcast,
Speaker 1: George Conway, and I were fighting pretty hard on each
Speaker 1: other on this, and he was saying, this is a
Speaker 1: victory for the First Amendment you shouldn't feel you should
Speaker 1: be compelled to serve anyone you don't want to serve.
Speaker 2: And I was saying.
Speaker 1: That's and since we're not on cable news, I can
Speaker 1: use this word bullshit, that this is actually opening the
Speaker 1: door to discrimination, and what we're seeing already, right, it's
Speaker 1: been you know whatever a week two weeks the owner
Speaker 1: of a Michigan hair salon says she's refusing to serve
Speaker 1: some members of the LGBTQ plus community. Christina Geiger, who
Speaker 1: owns studio at hair salon and Travis City, says in
Speaker 1: a Facebook post she is exercising her free speech right
Speaker 1: by allowing only certain customers. If a human identifies as
Speaker 1: anything other than a man woman, please seek services at
Speaker 1: a local pet grammer. So, I mean, I think we're seeing,
Speaker 1: besides being this person being a falling, that this is
Speaker 1: the doorway bigots had hoped for.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and I think there is. You know, I think
Speaker 3: there's debate already about kind of how broadly to read
Speaker 3: this opinion, and kind of understandably, I think they're litigators
Speaker 3: who very much want, and you know, I very much
Speaker 3: share this desire to have this opinion be a narrow
Speaker 3: one the State of Colorado stipulated that this was an
Speaker 3: expressive business.
Speaker 2: And this expressive speech. Will you just I'm sorry to
Speaker 2: interrupt you, but will you talk for a minute about
Speaker 2: the difference between expressive speech.
Speaker 3: Well, the court hasn't really told us that much, but
Speaker 3: the basic idea is something like, you know, it's just
Speaker 3: different to sell a good or a service where you
Speaker 3: are expressing something in the doing or the making. That
Speaker 3: distinguishes maybe these kinds of more artistic creative endeavors from
Speaker 3: something like selling a pre made sandwich. Right, So maybe
Speaker 3: the argument is people who are engaging in the sale
Speaker 3: of something like this, something expressive where you know, their
Speaker 3: own voice is kind of inextricably linked up in the
Speaker 3: thing they are selling on the caremercial marketplace, that that's
Speaker 3: different in some meaningful way from just like, yeah, selling
Speaker 3: a shirt, selling a sandwich, something like that. So that's
Speaker 3: a way to maybe limit or blunt the force of
Speaker 3: this opinion to only those businesses that can be characterized
Speaker 3: as expressive. You know, it wouldn't necessarily give license to
Speaker 3: someone who runs a bodega to deny service to somebody
Speaker 3: from the LGBTQ community or some other protected group. But
Speaker 3: a couple things. One the category of expressive I think
Speaker 3: is potentially really expansive. Right, so maybe a pre made sandwich,
Speaker 3: Know what about a custom sandwich? Right, Like, a lot
Speaker 3: of things can be characterized that I think. So think
Speaker 3: about just weddings, right, like you interface if you have
Speaker 3: like a big wedding with tailors, bakers, photographers, calligraphers, potentially,
Speaker 3: I mean, and all those services could definitely be characterized
Speaker 3: as expressive. If a web design business can be so,
Speaker 3: even if it's not literally everything sold on the commercial marketplace,
Speaker 3: it's a huge, I think swath of services that also
Speaker 3: often attached to life's really important events, right like weddings
Speaker 3: and birthdays and graduations. And if everyone who provides something
Speaker 3: in conjunction with those things can all of a sudden
Speaker 3: refuse to participate. If we're talking about a same sex couple,
Speaker 3: or an interracial couple, or a couple in which one
Speaker 3: individual is disabled or both, I mean, this is just
Speaker 3: like taking a huge bite out of ordinary principles of
Speaker 3: equality and dignity and fair treatment that we have all
Speaker 3: become really accustomed to living under.
Speaker 2: Right an anti discrimination Yeah, I haven't heard the specific
Speaker 2: case that George is making. But for sure, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of people in various places, I think on
Speaker 2: the ideological spectrum, not just like the far right, who
Speaker 2: are characterizing this as a as a victory for speech.
Speaker 3: And I think that if you take just the narrowest
Speaker 3: possible view of you know, the assertion that this web
Speaker 3: designer would be web designer was making, Like, yeah, her
Speaker 3: claim was a speech claim, and that claim one I
Speaker 3: think if you zoom out at all and really take
Speaker 3: a broader view of what actually is at stake and
Speaker 3: what is imperiled, I think it's really enormous in terms of,
Speaker 3: again the ability of lots of individuals to be treated
Speaker 3: fairly and equally, like you said, just basic non discrimination values.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the other cases where
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court sort of went in there and we're like,
Speaker 1: you know, no, we're the legislative body now, bitches. I
Speaker 1: mean that was what I felt like, like we're talking
Speaker 1: about we're talking about like the EPA, that EPA case,
Speaker 1: the Clean Water Act, because I think that's such an
Speaker 1: important one too.
Speaker 2: It's sort of like you see where they're going with us.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So that's last terms West Virginia Versus EPA case
Speaker 3: in which the Court strikes down the Clean Power Plan,
Speaker 3: also a case that arguably should never have been decided
Speaker 3: because the plan had already been overtaken. Like was we
Speaker 3: were already even past the Trump administration. We were the
Speaker 3: Trump administration had withdrawn it. The Biden administration then had
Speaker 3: its own power plan. So the Court was opening in
Speaker 3: the abstract about this plan that was like seven years
Speaker 3: old at this point and had never gone into effect,
Speaker 3: but still held that the EPA did not have the
Speaker 3: authority to issue this broad I mean, the Court characterized it,
Speaker 3: I think, in maybe somewhat unfair terms, a really broad
Speaker 3: role regarding carbon divisions from coal plants. And it's the
Speaker 3: logic of that opinion from last term, which was, as
Speaker 3: you just said, Molly, like the Court basically anointing itself
Speaker 3: like the key policymaker of the country, was exactly the
Speaker 3: same logic that was on display in this term's decision
Speaker 3: striking down the Biden loan forgiveness plan. So the Court
Speaker 3: used this, i think truly invented doctrine that it calls
Speaker 3: the Major Questions doctrine, which is like twenty years or
Speaker 3: so old, and was a doctrine that didn't do much
Speaker 3: work in the early years, but in the last couple
Speaker 3: of years has assumed this enormous importance. I mean, Kagan
Speaker 3: and her assent in the Loan cases calls it the
Speaker 3: made up major questions doctrine, which I think is actually
Speaker 3: just factually true. It's completely invented. It's completely invented very recently,
Speaker 3: and it just basically says, if an agency tries to
Speaker 3: do something that, in the Court's view is really big, major,
Speaker 3: and particularly involves an issue of vast economic or political significance,
Speaker 3: then the agency has to be able to point to
Speaker 3: crystal clear language from Congress authorizing the agency to take
Speaker 3: said action, or the action is unlawful. And that's just
Speaker 3: like not how Congress ever, legislates, right, It doesn't. When
Speaker 3: it passes the Clean Air Act or this statute called
Speaker 3: the Heroes Act that gives the Secretary of Education the
Speaker 3: power to make changes to federal loan plans, it doesn't
Speaker 3: specifically say in the event of, you know, once in
Speaker 3: a century pandemic, if people end up like in real
Speaker 3: economic distress, you know, that's just not how lawmaking works.
Speaker 3: And nor do these statutes from the nineteen seventies that
Speaker 3: give broad authority to the EPA to regulate like clean
Speaker 3: air and clean water, say with specificity how exactly they're
Speaker 3: supposed to do that. But this rule the Court has
Speaker 3: announced would require that degree of specificity in statutes, and
Speaker 3: if it's not there, strikes these agency actions down. And
Speaker 3: it's just an unbelievably subjective and malleable test, and it
Speaker 3: is one that gives the Court a tremendous amount of
Speaker 3: power to decide just how how big is too big,
Speaker 3: how much is too much, what policies doesn't like, and
Speaker 3: to strike them down on that basis.
Speaker 2: The three level of justices have kind of had enough
Speaker 2: of his As frustrated as we are, they seem matter.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about the kind of
Speaker 1: like I mean, I remember last season on Trump's Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: we had Sodoma R. Saying the spurt will never survive
Speaker 1: this stench. This season, I feel like we had Kagan
Speaker 1: and Justin Jackson talking with much more kind of harsh language.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about that? Absolutely?
Speaker 3: I think it's right that these so we now have
Speaker 3: justice so to my or Justice Kagan, Justice Jackson, the
Speaker 3: three liberals. There are a couple of cases this term
Speaker 3: where you kind of saw them seeming to try to
Speaker 3: forge compromises, in particular with the Chief Justice John Roberts
Speaker 3: cases before they went on vacation.
Speaker 1: I feel like they always like they wait until the
Speaker 1: very end to kind of kill us.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: Actually, the one exception I would say is the Voting
Speaker 3: Rights Act case where Roberts surprised a lot of people
Speaker 3: in writing the opinion upholding the Voting Rights Act, you know,
Speaker 3: finding that it still has force and you know, does
Speaker 3: something meaningful in terms of protecting the ability of black
Speaker 3: voters to actually exercise meaningful political power.
Speaker 2: Many of us were shocked.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was a really surprising I think I'm still
Speaker 3: sort of processing that decision, but that really was kind
Speaker 3: of an outlier. And then and then, actually, the other
Speaker 3: I would throw in is a case in which the
Speaker 3: Court rejected a bunch of challenges to the Indian Child
Speaker 3: Welfare Act.
Speaker 2: And that's the Gorsuch has this sort of one group
Speaker 2: that he feels he can sort of have compassion for.
Speaker 3: That's right, Well, I mean just evangelical Christians or Christians
Speaker 3: who discriminated against these things by generally applicable non discrimination laws.
Speaker 5: I would add to the list. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 3: But yes, I think it's right that in the biggest
Speaker 3: opinions of the term, which were enormous six y three
Speaker 3: conservative victories. So that's you know, three or three creative
Speaker 3: which we were just talking about. That's the affirmative action
Speaker 3: cases out of Harvard UNC, that's the Biden loan forgiveness plan,
Speaker 3: the sort of the three that were the last, and
Speaker 3: there are lots of other big ones, but those were
Speaker 3: six to three. And these dissenting justices are done trying
Speaker 3: to forge compromises or strike a faciliatory note. I mean,
Speaker 3: they were ripshit, I think in a lot of these descents,
Speaker 3: and correctly so. So Kagan I already mentioned her descent
Speaker 3: in the loan cases. In addition to calling the majority
Speaker 3: like using this made up major questions doctrine basically says
Speaker 3: the Court violated the Constitution, which is something that that
Speaker 3: justices don't usually say about each other, Like their job
Speaker 3: is to decide who else violates the Constitution, but to
Speaker 3: say that they themselves can do it was a really
Speaker 3: striking moment. But I think in some ways the most
Speaker 3: striking descent of the term was Justice Jackson's descent in
Speaker 3: the Affirmative Action cases, just the one she recused in
Speaker 3: the Harvard case. It was just the unc case. But
Speaker 3: the cases were consolidated in the opinion, and so Tomior
Speaker 3: had an incredible descent there as well. So they wrote
Speaker 3: separately but joined each other's descents. They both really I
Speaker 3: think exhaust of and irrefutably recited the history of the
Speaker 3: fourteenth Amendment, the laws passed by Congress immediately after the
Speaker 3: fourteenth Amendment, and all of that I think makes just
Speaker 3: crystal clear that the idea that the Constitution has to
Speaker 3: be understood as race blind is just preposterous. Like the
Speaker 3: drafters of that amendment that commands equality and the laws
Speaker 3: passed right after it, and their drafters everybody understood that
Speaker 3: in order to bring about conditions of meaningful equality you
Speaker 3: had to take race into accounts, like the creation of
Speaker 3: the Freedman's Bureau. Thomas in his concurrence in the Affirmative
Speaker 3: Action Cases says that was actually the category Freedman was
Speaker 3: a race neutral category, which is a truly laughable claim.
Speaker 3: And both so Jamayor and Jackson I think, make that
Speaker 3: really clear. And then Jackson, I think does a beautiful
Speaker 3: job documenting the profound and enduring racial disparities across like
Speaker 3: health and wealth and general well being, all of which
Speaker 3: is traceable to a history of both obviously slavery, but
Speaker 3: then formal legal inequality, and is the reason that these
Speaker 3: universities have tried to take raise into account measured way
Speaker 3: to build diverse classes in order to both open minds
Speaker 3: of students and to output a diverse class of leaders
Speaker 3: to do things like serve diverse communities in the state
Speaker 3: of North Carolina where she's focused anyway, So those I
Speaker 3: think are great examples of just and then so Tomyour's
Speaker 3: descent in that three or three creative case, Like, she
Speaker 3: doesn't try to suggest this is a narrow opinion. She
Speaker 3: says the court has basically licensed discrimination and it's not
Speaker 3: clear what logical endpoint there is, and that this is
Speaker 3: just an existential threat to principles of equality. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, I think silver lining is a weird way
Speaker 3: to describe it. But I think in some ways, these
Speaker 3: full throated kind of articulations of counter visions of what
Speaker 3: the Constitution means, what our laws do, what the role
Speaker 3: of the court is. We've seen those emerge from the
Speaker 3: pens of these three women in descent, and that I
Speaker 3: think has been really gratifying because sometimes we've seen them
Speaker 3: just try to sort of play nice and forged compromises,
Speaker 3: and understandably so if they think they can limit the damage.
Speaker 3: But on some of these issues, I think they've decided
Speaker 3: that it is better to speak clearly to the public
Speaker 3: about what this court is doing.
Speaker 1: I had Stephen Bladock on this podcast and he was
Speaker 1: talking about there are ways in which Congress has authority
Speaker 1: over this Supreme Court, even though the Supreme Court doesn't
Speaker 1: believe it does. And I'm curious, like, do you agree
Speaker 1: with that or do you think there's some other mechanism
Speaker 1: or just you know, give us something to hang our
Speaker 1: hats on, because otherwise we're going to be depressed.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, one is that you know, this is I
Speaker 3: think already starting to change. But the left just needs
Speaker 3: to pay a lot more attention to the court and
Speaker 3: needs to understand the Supreme Court is an important kind
Speaker 3: of voting issue, which there has been just this enormous obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, partisan asymmetry in terms of how mobilized people
Speaker 3: are around the Supreme Court, and I think Dobbs has
Speaker 3: really upended all of that, but you know, muscle memory
Speaker 3: has to be built, like the court has to be
Speaker 3: central to every election for Senate, for president, and for
Speaker 3: voters on the left, and that I think kind of
Speaker 3: is a critical potential response to this. Now that's a
Speaker 3: long term one, right, like it takes time, but I
Speaker 3: think a really important one. And I think that Steve
Speaker 3: is right that Hungress has been asleep at the wheel
Speaker 3: for a long time in the context of the Supreme Court,
Speaker 3: and obviously in a divided Congress it's harder to do that.
Speaker 3: I mean, the opportunity to really pass any meaningful reform
Speaker 3: has been squandered in the filibuster. It meant that, you know,
Speaker 3: doing things like actually expanding the court was never on
Speaker 3: the table, you know, in recent years anyway. But if
Speaker 3: you had enough Democratic senators to actually limit or abolish
Speaker 3: the filibuster, all of a sudden, a lot of just
Speaker 3: straightforward statutory changes become realistic. So doing things like potentially
Speaker 3: adding justices to the court, you know, trying to do
Speaker 3: some kind of creative term limits that that I think
Speaker 3: is harder because there's an argument needs to be done
Speaker 3: by constitutional amendment. And if this court, you know, was
Speaker 3: in the position of deciding whether the term limit statute
Speaker 3: was constitutional, I'm pretty sure they would find conveniently.
Speaker 2: Enough that it's not.
Speaker 3: But adding justices is obviously constitutionally sound. No one questions that.
Speaker 3: And it's happened before, it's happened before it's you know,
Speaker 3: it has been a while, and it would be absolutely
Speaker 3: constitutional hardball. But so is Mitch McConnell just refusing to
Speaker 3: let President ob fill the vacancy that Scalia left. So
Speaker 3: also stripping the Court's jurisdiction over certain kinds of disputes,
Speaker 3: Congress could pass laws saying that Court can't decide cases
Speaker 3: involving certain kinds of agency actions. If the Court continues
Speaker 3: to strike down important social policies that Congress or agencies
Speaker 3: sort of managed to pass, it could just you know,
Speaker 3: try to remove broad categories of cases from the Court altogether.
Speaker 3: So those are things that statutes could easily do. And
Speaker 3: actually just a few more democratic president and a few
Speaker 3: more Democratic senators willing to actually look at changing or
Speaker 3: again abolishing the filibuster. But all of a sudden, I
Speaker 3: think open up all of that. But also internally, like
Speaker 3: John Roberts just needs to get that House in order,
Speaker 3: Like this these ethics scandals are I think they're not
Speaker 3: going to stop. But even the Times piece that just
Speaker 3: dropped this week about Justice Thomas and the Ratio Alger
Speaker 3: Association had all of these little nuggets in there about
Speaker 3: it seemed report trips that were a little mysterious. Still,
Speaker 3: and it just feels like there's a lot more reporting
Speaker 3: ongoing and more shoes to drop. We just cannot have
Speaker 3: these public officials exercising all of this power. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just an enormous amount of power with life tenure,
Speaker 3: with no real meaningful ethics constraints, internal or external. It's
Speaker 3: just not a sustainable state of affairs.
Speaker 2: Kate Jaw, I hope you won't come back, Molly.
Speaker 3: I'd be happy to you anytime.
Speaker 1: Craig Magar is a reporter at the Detroit News. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Crag. Just tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about your beat and who you write for and what
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 5: So you write for the Detroit News newspaper, which is
Speaker 5: a daily metro paper in southeast Michigan. I cover all
Speaker 5: of Michigan politics, campaign coverage, state government coverage, all the
Speaker 5: good stuff.
Speaker 2: So what's happening in Michigan right now? Because this morning
Speaker 2: on Morning Show, they were talking about how Michigan GOP
Speaker 2: has gotten into fisticuffs.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a little bit like trying to explain in
Speaker 5: the unexplainable, but there's a major, major rift in Michigan
Speaker 5: Republican politics. I mean, if you go back a couple decades,
Speaker 5: the Michigan Republican Party was known nationally for being one
Speaker 5: of the strongest gops in the entire country. There's a
Speaker 5: lot of establishment Republican money in this state. Many of
Speaker 5: your listeners have probably heard the name Betsy de Vos before. Yes,
Speaker 5: the Voss family, the members of a family are some
Speaker 5: of the biggest Republican donors in the entire country. They're
Speaker 5: based in the Grand Rapids area here in Michigan. They
Speaker 5: give millions of dollars each cycle to Republican causes. There's
Speaker 5: a lot of other business leaders that are of a
Speaker 5: similar similar mindset that are our big donors here, and
Speaker 5: that has allowed up until recent years, the Republican Party
Speaker 5: here to be a very strong, influential political operation. Then
Speaker 5: came Donald Trump and a lot of that fell apart.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's talk about this. I feel like Michigan
Speaker 2: is a great example of a state where was a
Speaker 2: purple state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really was a purple state. You have right
Speaker 1: wing that is as right as and you have the
Speaker 1: Michigan militia.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what happened. Michigan is a state where there is
Speaker 5: a very strong libertarian saction. I think it's partly because
Speaker 5: of you know, the wilderness and there's a lot of
Speaker 5: rural areas of this state further to the north, and
Speaker 5: there's a strong you know, justin Amash's from here. There's
Speaker 5: a lot of libertarian minded people who call Michigan home.
Speaker 5: And this state has gone from during the Obama years.
Speaker 5: You know, it was a light blue state. I mean
Speaker 5: Obama won Michigan pretty easily during his two elections. But
Speaker 5: there's something about Donald Trump that makes this state more competitives,
Speaker 5: I would say. I mean in the first election in
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen, when Trump ran, he became the first Republican
Speaker 5: to win Michigan since nineteen eighty eight. He's been able
Speaker 5: to win over some voter who either stay home during
Speaker 5: a lot of normal elections or who are Union voters
Speaker 5: who have kind of fallen away from the Democratic Party
Speaker 5: for one reason or another. And that those kind of
Speaker 5: two factors allowed Trump to do just enough to make
Speaker 5: these races close. In twenty sixteen, he won the state
Speaker 5: by ten thousand votes. In twenty twenty, he you know,
Speaker 5: he lost by but he lost by three percentage points.
Speaker 5: It was one hundred and fifty four thousand vote margin.
Speaker 5: But it's something about only Trump. No one else in Michigan, right,
Speaker 5: no one else, no other GOP candidate has really been
Speaker 5: able to capture what Trump is doing and move the
Speaker 5: ball forward. And Trump and his allies in the state
Speaker 5: have kind of been so divisive with how they have
Speaker 5: operated and how they've gone about their business that they've
Speaker 5: really damaged the state party apparatus. They've damaged the Republicans
Speaker 5: standing in the state legislature. So in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 5: all of the candidates Trump endorsed for governor, Secretary of State,
Speaker 5: and attorney general on this midterm election got the Republican nominations.
Speaker 5: They didn't have a lot of money, they didn't have
Speaker 5: institutional backing, they didn't have campaign experience, and they all
Speaker 5: kind of fall sell flat on their faces with voters.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is a state that is a battleground state,
Speaker 5: but the Democrat, the Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer beat Tudor Dixon,
Speaker 5: the Republican nominee for governor, by eleven percentage points. The
Speaker 5: closest race at the top of the ticket in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty two was nine percentage points for attorney general. Democrats
Speaker 5: won control of the state legislature for the first time
Speaker 5: in forty years. So now Democrats control every lever of
Speaker 5: state government. And you know, just you know, six years ago,
Speaker 5: Republicans controlled every lever of state government. So this is
Speaker 5: left the Republicans in a state where they have no power,
Speaker 5: They don't have the money that they used to have,
Speaker 5: they don't really have anything going for them with initate
Speaker 5: recruitment at this moment, and they're kind of in the desert.
Speaker 1: I want you to just talk for a minute about
Speaker 1: Tutor Dixon, one of my favorite Trump candidates. That was
Speaker 1: a candidate he just picked because he liked her, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Think that was a lot of it. I think there
Speaker 5: was a hope that from Tutor Dixon's profile that she
Speaker 5: had kind of this profile where the people in the
Speaker 5: know on the GOP side were like, if everything came together,
Speaker 5: this is gonna be a great candidate. If all this
Speaker 5: potential that Tutor Dixon seemed to have. Her ability to
Speaker 5: you know, talk to people. She had experience in some
Speaker 5: level of broadcast conservative radio, and also movies, Yeah, doing
Speaker 5: very low, low level horror films. There's a movie that
Speaker 5: you can find on Amazon where she's getting basically destroyed
Speaker 5: and beaten up by a zombie and there's blood flying everywhere.
Speaker 2: Who among us.
Speaker 5: So she's a very outsider candidate. No one had really
Speaker 5: heard her name before she emerged as a gubernatorial candidate,
Speaker 5: and it was kind of like Trump's people, people who
Speaker 5: were associated with Trump found this person that they thought
Speaker 5: they could throw out there and would be the perfect
Speaker 5: person to take on Governor Wimmer. That's what the Republicans
Speaker 5: kept saying. You know, we're getting our male leaders of
Speaker 5: the Republican Legislature are being made to look like fools
Speaker 5: because they keep saying insensitive things. We need a female
Speaker 5: candidate to really take this weakness away and we can
Speaker 5: you know, start going after Governor Wimmer. That was the
Speaker 5: idea that they had, but it didn't work because no
Speaker 5: one knew or who Turner Dixon was. The donors were
Speaker 5: hesitant to give to her because they didn't really know
Speaker 5: who she was. The base of the party didn't really
Speaker 5: like her that much because they weren't sure she was
Speaker 5: far enough to the right. The people who were the
Speaker 5: establishment didn't like her because they thought she was too
Speaker 5: closely tied to Trump. So kind of this whole package
Speaker 5: that they thought was going to come together didn't really
Speaker 5: fermit the way that they thought it would.
Speaker 2: It's such an incredible unforced error to look at Tutor
Speaker 2: Dixon and just to see like how Republicans just kept
Speaker 2: screwing up. But there were also I mean, it just
Speaker 2: was sort of a plethora of craziness. So now we
Speaker 2: have this state.
Speaker 1: Party that is like literally injuring each other. What is
Speaker 1: the blowback from that?
Speaker 2: Because I read that there's going to be that the
Speaker 2: one guy is going to sue the other guy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just absolutely wild.
Speaker 2: Do you have talk us through this?
Speaker 5: So this is the encapsulation of where the Michigan Republican
Speaker 5: Party stands, and I think it's also captures where the
Speaker 5: state parties from what I'm reading, where they'd stand in
Speaker 5: some other battleground states. In February, the mischiganar Republican Party
Speaker 5: elected a new share and there were a number of
Speaker 5: people who are running who didn't have the political experience
Speaker 5: that usually the share of this party has to run
Speaker 5: what is a multi million dollar business. Essentially, you've got
Speaker 5: to raise millions of dollars and you've got to figure
Speaker 5: out how to spend and spend wisely millions upon millions
Speaker 5: of dollars. The person the Republican delegates chose to do
Speaker 5: this is a woman by the name of Christina Karamo,
Speaker 5: who ran for secretary of State. Extremely aligned with Trump,
Speaker 5: has various conspiracy theory ideas about all sorts of things
Speaker 5: that she has voiced in the past. She lost for
Speaker 5: secretary of State by fourteen percentage points to the Democratic
Speaker 5: Secretary of State, Jocelyn Bencent. Trump did not even endorse
Speaker 5: her for party chair. Trump endorsed someone else, but Karamo
Speaker 5: still won with this race. So you've had this person
Speaker 5: as party chair who doesn't really know a ton about
Speaker 5: how to successfully run campaigns.
Speaker 6: I don't think you really need that as party chair.
Speaker 6: I think it should be okay, yeah, no, I mean
Speaker 6: she's gotten in here. She had promised to overall ah
Speaker 6: the party operates. She had promised to make it very transparent.
Speaker 6: But now four or five months into her tenure is chair,
Speaker 6: a lot of the Republican insiders who loved her previously
Speaker 6: are now saying she hasn't made the party transparent. She's
Speaker 6: not telling us how much she's raised. There's a lot
Speaker 6: of questions if she's raised any money at all. She's
Speaker 6: not really telling them. Also how she's spending the money
Speaker 6: that she has brought in. And the delegates and the
Speaker 6: insiders that chose her for this position are starting to
Speaker 6: become frustrated with what she's doing and they've demanded more transparency.
Speaker 6: So at this meeting that occurred in northern Michigan on Saturday,
Speaker 6: some a small group of Republicans delegates had shown up
Speaker 6: to this State Committee meeting where there's like one hundred
Speaker 6: people who are part of the State Committee. They get
Speaker 6: a participate in the meeting. Definitely.
Speaker 5: Usually the meetings opened up to other Republicans if they
Speaker 5: want to watch. They did not let these other Republican
Speaker 5: delegates in the room.
Speaker 2: Why not.
Speaker 5: Kromo's team is very worried that information they share is
Speaker 5: going to get leaked to people like me other reporters.
Speaker 5: Then they don't want they think it's going to be
Speaker 5: spun in some negative way. That's going to make them
Speaker 5: look bad. So they're very sensitive about how they give
Speaker 5: out information. That's the excuse that they keep using, so
Speaker 5: they want to let these people in. This guy by
Speaker 5: the name of James Chapman had driven from Wayne County,
Speaker 5: which is in the southeastern part of Michigan, all the
Speaker 5: way up to Claire, which is in northern central Michigan,
Speaker 5: and he was infuriated that they would not let him
Speaker 5: into this meeting room to watch this meeting. He was
Speaker 5: outside the meeting room and he started at one point
Speaker 5: jiggling the doorknob of one of the doors is the
Speaker 5: meeting room, jiggling it up and down inside the room.
Speaker 5: He's going to try to get in Netwig.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean why not.
Speaker 5: The Claire County Republican Party chair is at this meeting.
Speaker 5: He's inside the meeting room. He's standing there. This is
Speaker 5: happening in his county. He notices the doorknobs jiggling. He
Speaker 5: thinks it's a staff member of the hotel where they're
Speaker 5: having this meeting, so he walks over to try to
Speaker 5: open the door. As he's walking over to open the door,
Speaker 5: there's a small window in the door. Chapman gives him
Speaker 5: the middle finger through the window.
Speaker 2: I can't love this story anymore.
Speaker 6: Go on, yes, continue, the Young the chair sees this
Speaker 6: middle finger.
Speaker 5: He doesn't know who's doing it. He told me that
Speaker 5: he thought it was a staffer of those when he
Speaker 5: was going to open the door to yell at this
Speaker 5: staff or why are you giving me the middle finger?
Speaker 5: He opens the door. Upon opening the door, he says
Speaker 5: he was kicked in the crouch by James Chapman immediately
Speaker 5: opens the door. He gets kicked in this. I love
Speaker 5: the story so much, sense of the Bavaria. And then
Speaker 5: as he's in pain, Chatman, according to De Young, charges him,
Speaker 5: picks him up, and throws him on a chair. Chapman
Speaker 5: has a differing account of this. He alleges that the
Speaker 5: Young swung at him, and then once Deyong swung at him,
Speaker 5: he took his glasses off and was ready to engage
Speaker 5: in a knock down fistfight. So oh good as it ended,
Speaker 5: de Young had believed he believed. He went to the
Speaker 5: emergency room and said he thought he had a broken rib.
Speaker 5: He was telling other people that his dentures had been broken.
Speaker 2: Wait is he old?
Speaker 5: I don't know his exactly ask.
Speaker 2: But I mean, I feel like denthers would mean that
Speaker 2: he is.
Speaker 5: He's not a young person either. James Chapman is not
Speaker 5: a young person either.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, all right, so anyway, so but did
Speaker 2: his dentures break or now he.
Speaker 5: Did not tell me about the dentist thing, but okay,
Speaker 5: to find out later. He had told everyone else who
Speaker 5: was at the meeting that his teeth had been broken
Speaker 5: in this fight and he was going to press charges.
Speaker 5: He's told everyone I want to see Chapman penalize arrested
Speaker 5: for this. There's been no arrest that we know of
Speaker 5: up until this point. The meeting went on, Chapman went
Speaker 5: to his car, the police came, and it all eventually
Speaker 5: they separated and the meeting went on. We don't know
Speaker 5: what the Claire police are going to do about this,
Speaker 5: if they're going to do anything about it.
Speaker 1: Jesse has a really good point that is not about
Speaker 1: the hilariousness of this. I want you to talk about
Speaker 1: what you are in Michigan on the ground, and Purple
Speaker 1: stayed likely blue at this point. But what are you
Speaker 1: seeing about national politics that the rest of us are
Speaker 1: not saying.
Speaker 5: I hear people say that you know, they think that
Speaker 5: Trump is going to lose relatively easily, you know, that
Speaker 5: it's going to be a wide margin that they think
Speaker 5: he doesn't have much of a chance to win another term.
Speaker 5: But what I hear and see on the ground is
Speaker 5: that a lot of the people that have been with
Speaker 5: Trump previously are still with him, right. No, I think
Speaker 5: that there is some undercounting from the national level of
Speaker 5: the chances that Trump does have to not only be
Speaker 5: the nominee because he has a large lead in all
Speaker 5: papolling there, but to give Biden an extremely close race.
Speaker 5: I mean, think about this that in twenty twenty, Trump
Speaker 5: only lost by three points in Michigan. And you know,
Speaker 5: the question that I think is on the minds of
Speaker 5: a lot of these swing voters that I run into
Speaker 5: in Michigan is, you know, has Biden given them a
Speaker 5: reason to give him another term?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: And that's on Biden at this point. I mean, the
Speaker 5: idea that they are gonna because Trump is simply on
Speaker 5: the ballot, vote for Biden, that is not what I'm
Speaker 5: hearing from people. I Mean, Trump was just here a
Speaker 5: couple of weeks ago, and there was a huge crowd
Speaker 5: for him in Oakland, County, which is an area he
Speaker 5: has not done well in. There seems to be within
Speaker 5: the GOP, this GOP that has suffered a lot of
Speaker 5: losses during his tenure in Michigan, they are not at
Speaker 5: this point stepping away from him. I mean, it seems
Speaker 5: like they're still ready to jump on board with him.
Speaker 5: I don't really know what to make of that, but
Speaker 5: it's just something that I'm noticing.
Speaker 1: I Mean, it definitely seems like from everything we're reading
Speaker 1: and reporting and seeing, is that Trump is going to
Speaker 1: be the nominee unless he gets struck by Lightton.
Speaker 5: I think that's true. I mean, it's also people, I
Speaker 5: think discount the fact that, like in Michigan, the individuals
Speaker 5: who run these state parties, the people that are going
Speaker 5: to be in charge of administering all of these various
Speaker 5: contests that are going to decide who the nominee is,
Speaker 5: a lot of these people are Trump people, right, And
Speaker 5: that's going to help him as well. I mean, not
Speaker 5: only is there support for him to run again within
Speaker 5: the GOP, but the mechanism for deciding how these races
Speaker 5: take shape is also in his favor. And there's so
Speaker 5: many challengers that it's just a really uphill battle for
Speaker 5: these people to try to make inroads.
Speaker 2: I mean, he really installed his people.
Speaker 5: He has been the dominant face of the party all
Speaker 5: the way back to sixteen basically maybe a little bit
Speaker 5: before that. And in the way these state parties work
Speaker 5: for them to change, it's delayed, you know, maybe four
Speaker 5: or funk years. So I mean for the next four
Speaker 5: or five years, the state party in states like miss
Speaker 5: Michigan and elsewhere are going to be dominated by people
Speaker 5: who are a lot of them got into politics because
Speaker 5: of Donald Trump. I mean, that's just the easiest way
Speaker 5: to put it.
Speaker 2: That's really terrifying.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you, like, Biden World has been
Speaker 1: really trying hard to sort of take their show on
Speaker 1: the road and show how their infrastructure spending effects normal voters.
Speaker 2: Are you seeing that on the ground. Do you think
Speaker 2: voters understand that, get that, see that, appreciate that.
Speaker 5: That's a great question. And how much are they grasping
Speaker 5: the connections between what is happening with various projects, what's
Speaker 5: happening with all the funding that has poured through state
Speaker 5: government offers and are they giving that credit to Joe Biden?
Speaker 5: Are they giving that credit to their state legislator or
Speaker 5: the governor of our state, where it is a very
Speaker 5: well known governor. I mean, this is a governor. Everyone
Speaker 5: in the state of Michigan, Gresha and Wetbory knows her
Speaker 5: largely a lot of because of her actions during the
Speaker 5: COVID pandemic. She's become I'm just such a well known
Speaker 5: person here. I think she gets a lot of credit
Speaker 5: for anything that happens, especially among Democrats and people that
Speaker 5: are in the know. They credit her for some of
Speaker 5: the increased spending that has taken place, and I don't
Speaker 5: know if they're crediting Biding. I mean that's the thing
Speaker 5: that one of the things from covering the twenty twenty
Speaker 5: campaign is Biden did not have large rallies. I mean,
Speaker 5: there were not rallies in Michigan. We don't know at
Speaker 5: this point what that looks like. I keep thinking about
Speaker 5: as I prepare to cover the next presidential campaign. What
Speaker 5: does it look like for Biden to have an event
Speaker 5: on the campus of University of Michigan or Michigan State University.
Speaker 5: Do students show up for that? Are we going to
Speaker 5: see large crowds at those types of events? Are there
Speaker 5: going to be people you know, pooring out to go
Speaker 5: out doors for them. Democrats in the state say that
Speaker 5: because if Trump is on the ballot, that that's going
Speaker 5: to spur all these people to turn out and continue
Speaker 5: to continue to give because they want to stop Trump
Speaker 5: does That is at the same as being for Biden.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Do you think your governor is eyeing the presidency in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 5: I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, because from
Speaker 5: the standpoint where I am, you know, I hear about
Speaker 5: this every day, and I have relatives that ask me
Speaker 5: about this all the time. You know, you look at
Speaker 5: the national polling and people don't know who she is.
Speaker 5: Still the average voter who lives in another state doesn't
Speaker 5: know much about her yet, maybe compared to like Gavin Newsom,
Speaker 5: who they hear about mores but it does, you know,
Speaker 5: you can see in her comments as it's gone along.
Speaker 5: But now she's kind of opening the door to maybe
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty eight, maybe I would be open to that.
Speaker 5: It's difficult though, because at the end of twenty twenty
Speaker 5: six that will be the end of her second term
Speaker 5: as governor. What does she do in the time between
Speaker 5: when her second term ends, and when the race for
Speaker 5: the presidency unfolds, can she stay relevant in that time?
Speaker 5: She is very good at raising money, She's very politically savvy.
Speaker 5: Even the Republicans would acknowledge that she loves cam painting,
Speaker 5: she loves the political game. Do I think that that's
Speaker 5: definitely something that she thinks about and would want to
Speaker 5: do if the opportunity provided I came forward. I think yes.
Speaker 5: Will that opportunity unfold in a way where it can happen?
Speaker 5: I think that's what remains to be seeing.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Craig. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me those fun Hi.
Speaker 2: It's Mollie and I am wildly excited that for the
Speaker 2: first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now,
Speaker 2: is going to have merch for sale over at shop
Speaker 2: dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts.
Speaker 1: Hats, hoodies, and toe bags with our incredible designs.
Speaker 2: We've heard your cries to spread the word.
Speaker 1: About our podcast and get a tow bag with my
Speaker 1: adorable Leo the Rescue Puppy on it, and now you
Speaker 1: can grab this merchandise only at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com.
Speaker 2: Thanks for your support.
Speaker 1: Chris Cadego is Politico's California bureau chief.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fastpolitics.
Speaker 4: Chris, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: So tell us exactly what you do and what your
Speaker 2: beat is.
Speaker 4: So I recently moved from Washington back to California. We
Speaker 4: were very excited to do it. Politico is doing a
Speaker 4: big expansion in the state, and I am the bureau
Speaker 4: chief in the state. So I cover politics, write about
Speaker 4: the intersection of politics and a whole bunch of kind
Speaker 4: of industries from the state capitol. Write a lot about
Speaker 4: Gavin Newsom. We have, of course the money folks in
Speaker 4: Silicon Valley and southern California, and you know, there's a
Speaker 4: bunch of exciting elections coming up here. There's the possibility,
Speaker 4: I know folks are trying to shoot it down that
Speaker 4: the Republican presidential primary the California might matter in that
Speaker 4: one if Trump doesn't run away with it early. And
Speaker 4: there's a Senate race Diane find Side is retiring folks
Speaker 4: like Adam Schiff and Katie Porter and some others including
Speaker 4: Congresswoman Barber Lee or in that race. So it's it's
Speaker 4: kind of a it's a real moment in California where
Speaker 4: some of these offices with older folks are turning over.
Speaker 4: Talk about Nancy Pelosi leaving the speakership and sort of
Speaker 4: a changing of the guard. There some younger leaders like
Speaker 4: Pete Aguilar stepping up and kind of creating relationships with donors.
Speaker 4: So it's an exciting time. I'm from here. I used
Speaker 4: to cover Jerry Brown before covering you know, Biden, and
Speaker 4: folks like Kamala Harris. So it's there's not I mean,
Speaker 4: you guys know, journalism, while there's not a lot of
Speaker 4: opportunities when you can like go home and not be
Speaker 4: one of the seventy people chasing Joe Manchin around with
Speaker 4: your cell phone and recorder on and actually, you know,
Speaker 4: report on races and people where there's the space is
Speaker 4: a little bit less crowded. So's it's a lot of
Speaker 4: it's a lot of fun. We're happy to be back here.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about Governor Newsom because
Speaker 2: he's really kind of captured the national spotlight. Is he
Speaker 2: just cooling his jets for twenty eight? Does do you
Speaker 2: feel like are you seeing him trying to make moves
Speaker 2: for twenty four? It also seems like he's sort of
Speaker 2: coming from the cold he was not a favorite and
Speaker 2: national Democrats, and now he's sort of moved that. There's
Speaker 2: a sense that he's a little more popular now. Talk
Speaker 2: to me about the evolution of Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think he's, you know, in the last year,
Speaker 4: there's a sense that he's become more of a team player.
Speaker 4: There was a time after we at Politico had broken
Speaker 4: the huge news on the overturning of Robi Wade and
Speaker 4: the Dobbs decision, where Newsom came out really called out
Speaker 4: a party. A lot of folks took it personally. Nancy
Speaker 4: Pelosi took it personally, someone he's known a long time.
Speaker 4: She Jamie Harrison at the DNC, A lot of folks
Speaker 4: in the White House around Biden saying that this was
Speaker 4: all just kind of preening by Newsome, that he's trying
Speaker 4: to draw attention to himself. And Newsom's point at the
Speaker 4: time was like, this is going to be the fight
Speaker 4: of not only the twenty twenty two mid terms, but
Speaker 4: the twenty twenty four presidential race and onward. And I
Speaker 4: think his thing was sort of you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: not to sort of overstate it, but they looked at
Speaker 4: it a little bit like a kind of Paul Revere moment,
Speaker 4: you know, for the party and for Democrats, and that
Speaker 4: rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. There was
Speaker 4: not really a strong sense at the time. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of complications for some Nationally. Kamala Airis is someone
Speaker 4: he's known and sort of grown up with in politics,
Speaker 4: and certainly they share a lot of the same donor base,
Speaker 4: they share a lot of the same supporters. She obviously,
Speaker 4: you know, despite all her sort of troubles in the
Speaker 4: VP's office, you know, some of which are of her
Speaker 4: own making and some of which are just the nature
Speaker 4: of the office, she's still sort of in the in
Speaker 4: the you know, driver's seat, and you know, among this
Speaker 4: next generation of Democrats, and it would be harder for
Speaker 4: Newsome than it would other others in this next generation
Speaker 4: of Democrats to lead frog hurt just because there's so
Speaker 4: many kind of tie ins to both of them. There was,
Speaker 4: you know, a lot of relief among Newsome and his
Speaker 4: folks when Biden when it was clear that Biden was
Speaker 4: going ahead and running, because it just kind of essentially
Speaker 4: took the question off the table for him. He was
Speaker 4: never going to primary Biden in any of these states.
Speaker 4: It was just never going to happen, and so yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean basically this is keep your name out there,
Speaker 4: keep yourself fresh, you know, stay in the national spotlight,
Speaker 4: raise money, try to be a voice for the party,
Speaker 4: try to be a good soldier for Biden. And I
Speaker 4: think that's kind of where he's at right now.
Speaker 1: One of the first things that happened to Gavin Newsom
Speaker 1: was that there was this recall election. That is one
Speaker 1: of the sort of weirdnesses of California politics is that
Speaker 1: you can have a recall election. It was a while ago,
Speaker 1: but I want to ask you, is there any residual,
Speaker 1: like goodwill or bad will from that? Did the recall
Speaker 1: election have any effect on newsome trajectory as governor?
Speaker 4: I think, you know, you're seeing a little bit of
Speaker 4: a you know what, doesn't kill him, make some stronger
Speaker 4: effect from that recall. I think he's probably matured a
Speaker 4: little bit. There's there's obviously, like something humbling about having
Speaker 4: to run again so shortly after winning election. You're talking
Speaker 4: about sort of like the depths of COVID. A lot
Speaker 4: of anger out there from businesses, from voters, a lot
Speaker 4: of people pointing the fingers, a lot of parents pissed
Speaker 4: that schools were closed, and so it was just like
Speaker 4: a really rough time for overall. There was some technicalities
Speaker 4: around the signatures at the time, they got a long
Speaker 4: extension to get the signatures which allowed that and be
Speaker 4: called to qualify. It didn't really look like he was
Speaker 4: ever going to lose that. Recall, you remember, like Larry
Speaker 4: Elder was the Republican candidate who was you know, close
Speaker 4: to the sucking up to Trump and sort of running
Speaker 4: as as a maga Republican in California is not going
Speaker 4: to get you very far. But you know, for new
Speaker 4: some you know, you emerged from that, he was able
Speaker 4: to basically you know, the silver lining rays essentially an
Speaker 4: unlimited amount of money. And you go back to looking
Speaker 4: at like you know, Scott Walker in Wisconsin or any
Speaker 4: of these folks who have faced it. Not to comment
Speaker 4: on where his career might go after the governorship, but
Speaker 4: I think it's it's sort of only strengthen his position
Speaker 4: in the state. Not a lot of pushback or equals
Speaker 4: to him in California when you're talking about lawmakers or
Speaker 4: any other players.
Speaker 1: Today, let's talk about this Democratic Senate race.
Speaker 2: It's a big one. It Schiff Katie Porter, Barbara Lay.
Speaker 1: There are other candidates, but it seems like those three
Speaker 1: are the main What are you seeing?
Speaker 2: What do you? Where does this go? When is the primary?
Speaker 4: The primary is next spring. There's city unique possibility in California,
Speaker 4: fairly unique that two of these Democrats, if nobody coalesces
Speaker 4: around a single Republican, that we could see a rematch
Speaker 4: from the spring primary in November. Again, so conceivably it
Speaker 4: could be Adam Schiff and Katie Porter in November, in
Speaker 4: which case it would probably be sort of a very
Speaker 4: personal type contest because there's not a huge amount of
Speaker 4: differences on policy. Obviously there's differences in personality. Right now,
Speaker 4: I would stay for the last few months since these
Speaker 4: folks got into race, it's been kind of the quiet
Speaker 4: work of gathering endorsements and mostly raising money. And we
Speaker 4: saw Shift raised over eight million in the second quarter
Speaker 4: of a year. Kitty Porter's numbers aren't out there yet,
Speaker 4: Barbara Lee raised another million, and so Ship is basically
Speaker 4: built up this workshaest of nearly thirty million dollars. California
Speaker 4: is super expensive to run these campaign ads in over
Speaker 4: the last few weeks of the campaign or before the primary.
Speaker 4: And so he'll obviously need that money. But yeah, there's
Speaker 4: been a huge focus on shift nationally, given this censure
Speaker 4: in the House, and really given like Trump's sort of
Speaker 4: resurgence amid all these kind of scandals. It reminds folks
Speaker 4: that shiff was there during the first impeachment, and that's
Speaker 4: like exactly what Ship wants is to be on a spotlight.
Speaker 4: I think Porter has been a little quieter, but you know,
Speaker 4: she's popular and she has a real following among folks
Speaker 4: with her whiteboard and it's a fun race in California.
Speaker 4: Folks for used to for so long Barbara Boxer and
Speaker 4: Diane Feinstein. I mean really since the early nineties. It
Speaker 4: just hasn't happened in a while. A news pointed Alex
Speaker 4: Padilla to serve in Kamala Harris's old seat. Her race
Speaker 4: was not very competitive in twenty sixteen, so this could
Speaker 4: be the first real competitive race in years.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about this for a second. Katie Porter has
Speaker 1: a very purple seat. Democrats really need to win back
Speaker 1: the House if they want to get stuff done. And
Speaker 1: you know, really Democrats lost the House through California, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and New York very annoyingly.
Speaker 2: Two Democrats in California New York. So do you see
Speaker 2: the party taking care of that seat?
Speaker 1: Do you think that there is are there plethora of
Speaker 1: Porter like candidates running forward, or is that seat just
Speaker 1: gonna get thrown away?
Speaker 4: Democrats are really gonna try to hold onto that seat.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's a legislator who's running there named Date Man,
Speaker 4: who's got a lot of parallels to Porter. They both
Speaker 4: come from UC Irvine, both the lawyers, and so he
Speaker 4: was kind of the early front runner there and still
Speaker 4: might be. He raised I think over four hundred thousand
Speaker 4: dollars in the last quarter. A lot of folks point
Speaker 4: to this DUI he got a couple months ago, and
Speaker 4: we remember asking Pete Aguilar, who is kind of stepping
Speaker 4: in as the highest ranking California Democrat, about that and
Speaker 4: whether it's gonna turn Democrats or the leadership in DC
Speaker 4: off on Man. And you know, Aguilar's answer at the time,
Speaker 4: this is pretty recently, was like, you know, the filing
Speaker 4: period doesn't close for several months, so it was kind
Speaker 4: of a not all that subtle point he was making
Speaker 4: that the party may not get behind Men there. And
Speaker 4: there's another candidate running named Joanna Weiss, who's a Democrat.
Speaker 4: That's the kind of seat where if you put your
Speaker 4: name down and you run kind of a credible campaign,
Speaker 4: the money will slow to you. It's just such a
Speaker 4: competitive seat that you're in the position. And not taking
Speaker 4: anything away from Katie Porter, she was obviously a prolific
Speaker 4: fundraiser and really built kind of a brand around herself,
Speaker 4: but there is something to you being in these sort
Speaker 4: of purple seats that are highly contested, where, like I said,
Speaker 4: the money will come to you.
Speaker 1: Oh see, that's very interesting and seems like an important
Speaker 1: data point. There are all these house seats in California.
Speaker 1: Democrats really did well in twenty eighteen with a lot
Speaker 1: of those seats, and they give them back now. Because
Speaker 1: we're not on cable news, I can say this terrible
Speaker 1: bad word that you're not supposed to say.
Speaker 2: As the state party. Gutten it shit together? Or are
Speaker 2: we going to have you know what happened in New York.
Speaker 4: There's been a lot of figure pointing about like who's
Speaker 4: to blame for that? And I think part of it
Speaker 4: is it's a mid terms, right and they sort of
Speaker 4: fought to a draw with Republicans. I think Republicans ended
Speaker 4: up picking up a seat, and there were some losses
Speaker 4: that you know, we're super close. In the Central Valley,
Speaker 4: Republicans have Kevin McCarthy. I mean, you know, regardless of
Speaker 4: what you think of Kevin McCarthy, he's from California. He
Speaker 4: has done over the years a pretty good job of
Speaker 4: recruiting candidates in some of these districts. He knows the
Speaker 4: state well, he knows the Central Valley well. David Valadeo
Speaker 4: is a good example of someone who can kind of
Speaker 4: withstand being in one of these districts and is sort
Speaker 4: of locally connected enough and knows people enough that he
Speaker 4: can win. And so I think the question for Democrats
Speaker 4: is really how much is this road decision still going
Speaker 4: to reverberate and how much do they pick up from
Speaker 4: Biden at the top of the tip get, you know,
Speaker 4: this being a higher turnout presidential election this time. When
Speaker 4: we asked Aguilar, I think I specifically asked him if
Speaker 4: Trump is the nominee, does that turn out more? You know,
Speaker 4: Republicans in some of these these swing areas. You don't
Speaker 4: think of these California Republicans, but there's a huge number
Speaker 4: of that state. I mean, just given the sheer number
Speaker 4: of voters. There's a ton of Trump voters in California, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: and now you are seem to think that Trump is
Speaker 4: a net positive for Democrats that basically the specter of
Speaker 4: Trump just turns folks out. They don't want Trump in there.
Speaker 4: With the Republican controlled House, that is going to really
Speaker 4: stir turnout for Democrats, you know, in the last couple elections,
Speaker 4: you know, the specter of Trump, or at least in
Speaker 4: the mid terms, it's harder to kind of campaign as
Speaker 4: with Trump as the boogeyman when he's not actually on
Speaker 4: the ballot, with him potentially being the nominee, it does
Speaker 4: give Democrats a sense that they could rally around that.
Speaker 4: I know that's been the calling card for a few
Speaker 4: years now. But between that and a board and a
Speaker 4: whole lot of other issues in the state, there's going
Speaker 4: to be a bunch of ballot measures and bonds and
Speaker 4: other things that could Democrats feel like could help turn
Speaker 4: folks out for various issues.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of like ballot initiatives, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of state legislation that has been to address the
Speaker 1: fall of row things like that. Can Democrats run on
Speaker 1: that are those winners for Democrats.
Speaker 4: I mean, Democrats certainly think that they are California you know,
Speaker 4: gap venusom after that side of just a long, you know,
Speaker 4: big raft of bills to basically make this kind of
Speaker 4: an island, you know, a place that people could come
Speaker 4: from other states. They at one point they were putting
Speaker 4: up billboards basically saying, you know, you can come to California.
Speaker 4: It's been a huge issue for so long. Like I
Speaker 4: can remember being these campaign things like so many years ago,
Speaker 4: and there were always these lines in the speech here
Speaker 4: about protect road way.
Speaker 7: And all of that, and you kind of think back
Speaker 7: at the time and you're thinking, like, why are they
Speaker 7: even talking about that, Like that happened so many years ago,
Speaker 7: and it was just it was like it was so taken,
Speaker 7: you know, for granted by a lot of voters that
Speaker 7: the fact that that you know, is not a protection nationally.
Speaker 4: Now, and the fact that you have Republicans out there,
Speaker 4: you know, from Pence to a whole lot of folks
Speaker 4: in this you know, live wire Republican presidential primary talking
Speaker 4: about nash Fan talking about all those things regardless of
Speaker 4: what's in the state constitution in terms of protections it
Speaker 4: does keep the issue really sort of front burner when
Speaker 4: you have people wanting to go further in the Republican party.
Speaker 4: It's a top line item among Democrats on the Republican side.
Speaker 4: I mean, not to really change the topic, but in California,
Speaker 4: you know, there's a real issue with wages not keeping
Speaker 4: up with the cost of living. I mean, it's gotten
Speaker 4: super expensive. There's an issue with you know, homelessness that's
Speaker 4: gone on and made a lot worse by the pandemic.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of sort of quality of life. There's
Speaker 4: a report from folks last week and the AG talking
Speaker 4: about the rise and crime like that is real. You know,
Speaker 4: these are not just Republican talking points. Some of these
Speaker 4: numbers are really up. The homeless count in LA was up,
Speaker 4: and so people look at that and I don't know
Speaker 4: that it's gonna you know, it's always taught for Republicans
Speaker 4: to pick folks off in California, especially sort of these
Speaker 4: voters who might be more in the middle, because they
Speaker 4: look at the national Party and they look at Trump
Speaker 4: and that's really what defines in their mind who Republicans are.
Speaker 4: And so it's not an easy choice for some of
Speaker 4: these folks. But in somebody these swing districts, some of
Speaker 4: these older voters there, it can make a difference in
Speaker 4: these races that come down to a few hundred votes.
Speaker 2: Chris, thank you so much. I hope you will come back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I really hope you please have me back.
Speaker 1: A moment Jesse Cannon, Maley Jong Fast.
Speaker 2: The dumbest member of Senator, possibly the dumbest member of
Speaker 2: the whole entire body, Tommy Tuberville.
Speaker 5: He he doesn't goofed.
Speaker 1: Yes, he said that you shouldn't discriminate against voydetlist was
Speaker 1: the sort of nugget of it. That guy, you'll remember him,
Speaker 1: He went on CNN last night and in typical moronic
Speaker 1: Republican fashion, he went back to his usual doubling down.
Speaker 1: So that guy, Thomas Tuberville, perhaps the dumbest member of
Speaker 1: the Senate, the male Marsha Blackburn. He has been holding
Speaker 1: up all of the military appointments because he's mad at
Speaker 1: Biden abortion. So Tommy Tuberville and his pro white supremacist views,
Speaker 1: he is our moment of fuckery, because why shouldn't you be.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.