| Speaker | Time | Text |
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May We Ask Questions?
00:05:51
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unidentified
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| The Democratic National Committee meets Saturday to elect a new leader. | ||
| Watch live coverage of the meeting starting at 10 a.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN on our free video app, C-SPANNOW, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Up next, we'll show a debate between the candidates vying to be the next chair of the DNC. | ||
| This was co-hosted by the committee, as well as MSNBC and the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right, everyone, we're ready to get started. | ||
| Exciting. | ||
| I love the enthusiasm. | ||
| First, I just wanted to welcome everybody in the audience, everybody watching at home. | ||
| I want to thank Georgetown University and Mo and the community for having us all here today. | ||
| I also want to thank all the candidates because you've all put yourself out there. | ||
| I know you all have differences on some things, which we're going to dive into tonight, but you all want to make the Democratic Party stronger. | ||
| So I want to thank you all for that. | ||
| We're going to dive into opening statements in just a moment, but just for the benefit of all the candidates, everybody watching at home, everybody in the audience, I'm going to go through the rules of this evening. | ||
| Bear with me. | ||
| It's important for everybody to know. | ||
| Okay, first of all, in order to participate today and to qualify for the February 1st ballot, candidates must have submitted 40 verified DNC member signatures by Saturday, January 25th at 8 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| Obviously, they have all done that. | ||
| Officers for the DNC will be elected by a majority vote of DNC members during the DNC winter meeting, which takes place from January 30th today through February 1st. | ||
| The chair's race is on Saturday, as everybody here and here is probably already knows. | ||
| This forum is going to take place over the course of 90 minutes, beginning with 30-second opening statements from each candidate and concluding with 30-second closing remarks. | ||
| The order of the opening statements was done by random drawing preceding the forum, and closing statements will occur in reverse order. | ||
| We, the three of us, moderators, have been given exclusive control of the questions and the flow of discussion. | ||
| Neither the DNC nor any of the candidates have previewed these questions. | ||
| During the audience portion of the questioning, the DNC members from the eastern region will be the priorities, but there will also be questions, could be questions from other DNC members from other regions, and we may be asking some of the questions as well from people who are not in attendance today. | ||
| Candidates may not receive the same questions throughout the forum, but they will be afforded roughly the same amount of speaking time. | ||
| That is our shared objective up here. | ||
| Candidates will not be afforded time to respond to other candidates unless so directed. | ||
| We may ask follow-up questions, and if we do, we will provide a time limit for those follow-up questions as well. | ||
| Candidates will have 90 seconds to respond to each question asked. | ||
| There's a timer available for all of the candidates. | ||
| Once a candidate's time has elapsed, we will inform the candidate and their microphone may be muted if needed. | ||
| We hope we don't get there. | ||
| Crosstalk is not permitted during this forum. | ||
| And finally, candidates are not permitted to use earpieces, cell phones, messaging services, or other electric applications or devices during the forum, though they may have written notes. | ||
| That concludes the rules. | ||
| So everybody knows. | ||
| Jonathan, why don't you kick off the opening statements? | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| Thank you very much, Jen, and we'll begin with the opening statements. | ||
| Each candidate will have 30 seconds, and we'll start with Dr. Quintessa Hathaway. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good evening, everyone. | |
| It is my desire to be the next DNC chair. | ||
| And I just want to give you all a little bit of something that's been on my heart here over the last couple days. | ||
| You fight on, you fight all. | ||
| You fight on, you fight all. | ||
| When your government is doing you wrong, you fight on. | ||
|
Leadership In Crisis
00:06:38
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unidentified
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Oh, you fight on. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Dr. Hathaway. | ||
| Next up, Faz Shakir. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm not going to follow that. | |
| I jumped into this race late because I did felt like the ideas were not meeting the moment. | ||
| And at this moment, the DNC needs to be on a war footing. | ||
| Donald Trump campaigned as a populist. | ||
| He's governing like an oligarch, doling out special favors to billionaires who want to kiss his ring. | ||
| The working class is looking for a political home. | ||
| If we are smart, if we reject billionaire influence, take on corporate power, stand with striking and organizing workers, build our strong media channels, we will rise again. | ||
| We'll be a people-powered DNC. | ||
| Thank you very much, Mr. Shakir. | ||
| Ben Wickler. | ||
|
unidentified
|
As we grieve the horrible crash yesterday, as we reel with shock at the horrors that Trump is visiting on communities across this country, we need a DNC and a DNC chair who's ready to bring the intensity, the focus, and the fury to fight back in this moment when our country is reeling and waiting for leadership. | |
| I've done this in Wisconsin, a state rigged to be read. | ||
| I've done this in the fight against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| If I'm the DNC chair, we will meet this moment now with the fight it requires. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Wickler. | ||
| Okay, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ken Martin. | |
| Thank you so much. | ||
| First, let me just say to Gina Reepass and, of course, all of the folks in Kansas, look, this was really tragic yesterday, what we saw happen, right? | ||
| But it shouldn't surprise any of us, of course, that the president today decided to inject politics into that, saying, of course, this was the fault of President Biden, President Obama, the air traffic controllers, and DEI of all things. | ||
| If we don't understand right now what this fight is about, we have to bring this fight to the American people and stand up and call this for what it is. | ||
| It's chaos, and it deserves a party that's going to fight. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Martin. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Jason Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My name is Jason Paul. | |
| Why am I here? | ||
| Because over 20 years, I've dedicated my life to working in Democratic politics. | ||
| And my main takeaway over that time is that how we do things just isn't working. | ||
| I feel like those of us in the audience and in the watching know that it isn't working. | ||
| What we need is to reach, to fix it. | ||
| It's going to require that we reach for the moon. | ||
| I've had plans to do that, but what we all do together is how we get to the moon. | ||
| Thank you very much, Mr. Paul. | ||
| Mary Ann Williamson. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It is difficult for the mind to absorb the enormity of this moment. | ||
| Fascism is literally in the House. | ||
| We have a very sobering mission, and it is one that tens of millions of Americans are hoping that we get right. | ||
| And we will get it right by transforming the Democratic Party. | ||
| We will become as audacious with our vision for this country as the Republicans are audacious with theirs. | ||
| And we will do it by being exciting, by being motivating, and inspiring and amazing. | ||
| And if I'm chair, I promise you we will. | ||
| Thank you, Ms. Williamson. | ||
| Martin O'Malley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a moment of profound crisis in our country. | |
| The sort of crisis we have never seen before. | ||
| This is therefore not a normal DNC election. | ||
| This election calls out for change, cries out for new leadership to meet this moment. | ||
| The choice for all of us as Democrats is do we have the courage to embrace change and rise to this moment? | ||
| I believe we do, and that is why I'm running for chair of the DNC. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you very much, Mr. O'Malley. | ||
| And Nate Snyder. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe we need leadership that's ready for a crisis, and I believe I'm that leader. | |
| As we mourn this tremendous loss of life, we have a president who is spewing fear, who is spewing lies into an extremist narrative of hate. | ||
| And I think the largest and biggest threat that we have to national security is the Republican Party. | ||
| We need to push back with everything we got, and my intention is to disrupt, dismantle this propaganda lie machine. | ||
| I hope I can get your vote. | ||
| Thank you very much, Mr. Snyder. | ||
| Simone I'm gonna kick off our make sure my mic is on You got me. | ||
| I'm going to kick off our questioning tonight. | ||
| I'm going to kick off our questioning tonight. | ||
| And I will just have you know, we are going to ask the questions from this stage. | ||
| There will be a moment where we will take questions from the audience, but I would ask. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| We are, I appreciate, we appreciate your enthusiasm. | ||
| We are going to ask the questions from this stage. | ||
| We'll ask that you please take a seat. | ||
| ask that you please take a seat this is a question we're going to ask we're going to ask all right we're going to ask that question We understand. | ||
| We understand that there are many issues that people are very passionate about, and we are going to endeavor to get to all of those tonight. | ||
| I will note that candidates will have 90 seconds to answer each question, and again, we won't ask everyone the same question. | ||
| I want to start with something you all touched on, because since taking the oath of office, President Trump has unleashed a flood of executive orders, like just a couple. | ||
| He's attempted to end birthright citizenship. | ||
| He's attempted to eliminate DEI programs, although I'm unsure what DEI stands for. | ||
| He has frozen congressionally appropriated aid. | ||
| He has pardoned 1,500 January 6th defendants just today. | ||
| He took to the White House press briefing room to speak disparagingly during a tragedy. | ||
| I'm going to start with a show of hands question. | ||
| Who thinks that the Democratic Party, the Democrats, have responded sufficiently to Donald Trump's first almost 11 to 10 days in office? | ||
|
Missing Democratic Master Narrative
00:04:35
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||
| Show of hands. | ||
| Who thinks the Democrats have responded sufficiently? | ||
| No one's hand went up. | ||
| Ms. Williamson, why didn't you raise your hand? | ||
| Well, the Democratic Party as a whole did not respond at all. | ||
| A profound dereliction of political responsibility. | ||
| In terms of specific Democrats, whether it has to do with J.B. Pritzker, Governor Walls has been great, Jasmine Crockett's been great. | ||
| There have been some wonderful statements. | ||
| Chris Murphy out of Connecticut has been great, but there's no cohesive message. | ||
| And that's what the Democratic National Committee needs to be. | ||
| We have some golden threads, but we need to build the loom. | ||
| And that's what I would do as chair is to collate and curate all these really quite extraordinary voices that we have in the Democratic Party, but to create a communication system so that every day we know what are the best things that are being said by Democratic leaders throughout the country, make sure that these things are pushed out to candidates, make sure that we ourselves are pushing them out on media. | ||
| Right now, what has happened has only increased the decline in the sense that the Democrats don't know what they're doing. | ||
| I feel, actually, no matter which of us gets there, that will end next week. | ||
| We will hit the ground running. | ||
| We will have a new playbook, and we will make sure that from this point forward. | ||
| For me, it has to do with a DNC policy institute. | ||
| We will have the best thinkers, the best leaders, and also we need a whole new paradigm of the way the chair and the DNC itself talks to the caucuses, talks to the councils. | ||
| We have extraordinary talent in the DNC, in the membership of the DNC. | ||
| But people do not ask their opinions. | ||
| Their expertise is not used. | ||
| Their skills are not exploited. | ||
| And if I am chair of the DNC, all that stops. | ||
| We're going to be exciting. | ||
| We're going to have within ourselves the level of depth and relationship that reads the DNC. | ||
| Thank you, Ms. Williamson. | ||
| Mr. Shakir, you didn't raise your hand either. | ||
| I would ask along those lines then, if you're elected the DNC chair, what immediate steps would you take specifics to respond to the current environment beyond fundraising and listening sessions? | ||
|
unidentified
|
When you think about the DNC's power and authority, oftentimes in these moments of crisis, people are looking for a leader. | |
| And the tools that they're available, Chair Harrison and others have used, is there's a DNC studio, there are networks of state parties, there's a research department who all need to be mobilized to disseminate facts and information in real time. | ||
| Part of the concern that a lot of people have is the pace of information is not coming fast enough. | ||
| Did you wake up this morning with the fire in your belly to hear and see this first? | ||
| Are you the first person to tell us this? | ||
| Then when we go to our states, our wonderful state parties, we utilize them and say, hey, we need some actions. | ||
| If he is freezing Medicaid, right? | ||
| We need to identify Medicaid recipients. | ||
| They are working at Walmart. | ||
| They're working at McDonald's. | ||
| Why these billionaire corporations are putting them on Medicaid is a different issue. | ||
| But we identify them. | ||
| They say, we fight with you. | ||
| We're going to ask you to fight your state legislatures, identify points of action to fight in the states, fight your federal representatives, take down Russ Vogt, Trump's OMB director, give them tangible actions. | ||
| Draw people in to tell them what they do. | ||
| That's what they're looking for. | ||
| Give them a plan of attack quickly. | ||
| And I think as DNC chair, I have the capacity, I have the track record, and I think the confidence of a lot of Democrats that they would follow a direction if I said it for them. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Mr. Sider, same question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think, I mean, before we get to any of this, I think we need to really look at what we're facing here. | |
| So spending years and years at the Department of Homeland Security fighting domestic terrorism and violent extremists, I think we need to come to reckoning that the president is forwarding something called a narrative that's based on a white supremacist narrative called the Great Replacement Theory. | ||
| That's his master narrative that's feeding into everything. | ||
| It's a language in the EOs. | ||
| It's a language in his legislation. | ||
| It's a language in the attacks that we heard today attacking DEIA and especially the disability community as well. | ||
| This is all put out to a specific plan. | ||
| We don't as Democrats have a master narrative yet into where we can push back. | ||
| Yes, it includes defending the rights and civil liberties of working families and working people. | ||
| Yes, it stands for supporting all these communities that are being attacked. | ||
| To get into sort of the specifics of what I would do, one of the things really has to do with the spread of mis and disinformation, as I mentioned. | ||
|
Build Analytics Center
00:15:18
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|
unidentified
|
We lack the capability to detect, to thwart, to disrupt, and share information with our state parties, our allies, our territories on what that information is. | |
| It is a current blind spot, and until we know what that landscape looks like, then we are going to be shooting in the dark. | ||
| So what I would do is I would first build that capability. | ||
| It'd be an analytics center, and I would partner with organizations like the Center for Internet Security. | ||
| And that way, once we know the landscape, then we can start punching back and really fighting. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I want to take a look back to the last election cycle. | ||
| You do not pardon me. | ||
| Thank you all so much. | ||
| We appreciate, can I just note, can I note we appreciate your enthusiasm and we have a number of questions we'd like to get to. | ||
| If you would please take a seat, ma'am. | ||
| If you're willing to stay silent, we would love to have you stay. | ||
| But we have a number of questions that we're going to ask. | ||
| And please, you all don't know what we're asking. | ||
| No one has seen our questions on this stage. | ||
| Give us an opportunity to get the questions from these candidates and the answers that we all know you want. | ||
| I see my sunrise family over here. | ||
| Give us an opportunity to ask the questions, please. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| As I was saying. | ||
| We are going to take a look back, to look forward. | ||
| And Mr. Wickler, I want to start with you, because when President Biden stepped down this summer, it was a month before the convention. | ||
| It was weeks before the first certification deadlines in Ohio. | ||
| The Democratic National Committee specifically faced an unprecedented scenario. | ||
| There were many people that had thoughts. | ||
| Some folks called for a new primary. | ||
| Others wanted to ignore the Ohio deadline and take a contest to the convention floor. | ||
| There were, as everyone knows here, other ideas. | ||
| My question to you is, what would you have done if you were the chair? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We had a process to choose our nominee, and that is for the delegates to the Democratic National Convention chosen through elections in all of our states to be able to vote. | |
| And I remember that moment when the call came through. | ||
| I was sitting on my back porch. | ||
| I was on a phone call, and then I got the alert that President Biden had decided to end his campaign and then to pass the torch. | ||
| I put my phone down, I took a deep breath, and then we called a Zoom call of our delegates to the DNC. | ||
| What I found in that moment was what I think state chairs across the country found, which is that the people chosen to choose the nominee through a process that we built moved with lightning speed. | ||
| There was a vote. | ||
| We voted for Kamala Harris to be our nominee. | ||
| And we're proud of that vote. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Wickler. | ||
| Dr. Hathaway, I would ask the same question to you. | ||
| Would you have done anything differently? | ||
| I'm sorry to answer. | ||
| No, I'm sorry. | ||
| Everyone, please. | ||
| We cannot. | ||
| I am going to. | ||
| I am going to ask if the audience would please give us an opportunity to ask the questions. | ||
| And if you are not going to give us an opportunity to ask the questions, we are going to simply ask you to leave. | ||
| We will not be able to get through this evening. | ||
| We will not be able to get through this evening if you all continue to interrupt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Our planet is running out of time. | |
| Our planet is running out of time to yell. | ||
| And we are running out of time in this forum. | ||
| Again, I would ask, if anyone else feels the need to disrupt, please stand up and do it right now. | ||
| I want to give you your opportunity. | ||
| I want to give you your opportunity. | ||
| Do it right now. | ||
| That being said, I hope we don't see any more disruptions. | ||
| I'm so sorry, Dr. Hathaway. | ||
| Please answer the question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can everyone hear me? | |
| Thank you, Mr. Faez. | ||
| The youth of this nation are crying for their voices to be heard. | ||
| I'm sorry for the disruption. | ||
| I'm going to apologize on their behalf. | ||
| But when I tell you a youth movement must rise up here in the United States of America that's equivalent in voting power, we're going to have to get this country registered to vote. | ||
| 10 million new voter registrants, youth mobilization, social activation, mass voter turnout, citizenship education. | ||
| That is what it's going to take in order for a serious, intentional, methodical, strategic revolution to happen in this country for us as Democrats to win races up and down and all around the ballot in this country. | ||
| No longer can any voice be silent when it comes to issues and matters of the heart, our humanity, the vibrancy, and lifelong longevity of our party. | ||
| We've got to make some serious, intentional changes, people. | ||
| So when I hear the children, I'm telling you all I'm going to be responsive to their needs as well as everyone across every economic spectrum, everyone against every type of background. | ||
| That is the leader I seek to be for the DNC. | ||
| Thank you, Dr. Hathaway. | ||
| Mr. Paul, you have also been critical of the way in which I think the party has been running. | ||
| You've talked about the need to do things differently. | ||
| I would ask, what specifics would you like to put on the table? | ||
| Obviously, the climate issue, the climate crisis that our country is facing is something that not just the people who have stood up in this room care about, but I think many Democrats in this room and frankly people across the country regardless of who they voted for in the last election. | ||
| What specifics would you do to respond to the real concerns that young people specifically have about the party not meeting the moment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I would start by saying I signed climate the pledge that they wanted me to sign. | |
| So it's a little surprising. | ||
| I don't know what is the pledge for people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Sunrise asked the candidates on the stage to ban the corporation donations, which Obama had a ban on, not be involved in, discourage people, I think it was discourage people from being involved in primaries and keep billionaires from spending money in Democratic primaries. | |
| And there were sort of three action items. | ||
| I signed it. | ||
| I believe Marion Williamson also signed it. | ||
| Not to criticize anyone who didn't, but I think it's a little odd when people on the stage agree with you that you then yell at them, even if when people agree with, you know, it would be nice if you said these people agree with us, so maybe that's a good direction. | ||
| In terms of specifics, I want 10,000 organizers. | ||
| People talk a huge amount about how we're going to sort of communicate, but the number one communication that anyone gets from the Democratic Party is a fundraising solicitation or a near-fundraising solicitation to sign a petition and then it's just a fundraising solicitation. | ||
| If you want to do real work to beat Robert Kennedy from getting confirmed, which I absolutely do, that's really hard to do when people are flooding the zone with scammy asks. | ||
| I know it's not a very big issue in the grand scheme of the climate, but if we can't talk to each other, then we can't solve anything and we can't talk to each other because of this. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I want to ask specifically about something that came up. | ||
| I want to ask, we're going to continue to go forward. | ||
| I want to ask specifically about something that came up during the election. | ||
| And I will direct this question to you, Governor O'Malley, and to you, Mr. Martin. | ||
| We're going to continue to go forward. | ||
| About one third of Donald Trump's campaign advertising in October of 2004, pardon me, we'll wait a second. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You work with billionaires and young people like me. | |
| Raise your hand and you'll get billionaires out of our records. | ||
| Raise your hand. | ||
| Raise your hand. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So we're going to continue to, we're going to continue on. | ||
| Again, about one-third of the Trump campaign advertising in October of 2024 was dedicated to, and I'm going to use quotes here, gender-changing surgeries for a small number of trans, incarcerated, and undocumented immigrants. | ||
| These particular... | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is the Greek policy. | |
| Teachers, we don't hate the Democratic Party. | ||
| We've stopped it up. | ||
| You knock on doors and we get much raid on this country. | ||
| I think it's important to say here, I think it's important to say here, we respect people's opinions. | ||
| And it is definitely understandable that there is a lot of passion in this moment because the issues in this moment is so the stakes are hot. | ||
| The stakes are high and the issues are very important. | ||
| And look, I can understand why people want to jump up and yell out their questions to these people who hope to lead the party. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just, can you, let's talk. | |
| Okay, hello. | ||
| Let's get to the climate emergency. | ||
| Let's get to the climate emergency. | ||
| Jinsaki, excuse me, excuse me. | ||
| We're going to address, we're going to skip ahead. | ||
| Jinsaki's going to ask about the climate. | ||
| We're going to go to climate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's go. | |
| We'd like to ask any questions of emergency. | ||
| Give us a moment. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you all for your thank you all so much. | ||
| We really appreciate you all being here. | ||
| Again, I just want to restate. | ||
| We want to hear your opinions. | ||
| We're just asking the questions so you can all hear from these candidates and people at home can hear. | ||
| Okay, let me start by asking a question more formally that someone asked. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you all. | |
| Obviously fundraising, as you all know, is a big part of the role of the Democratic National Party's chair. | ||
| It's a very important part of the discussion we want to talk about. | ||
| It's a challenge because it's funds state parties, but also you have to make decisions about who you will take money from. | ||
| So we'll be discussing that in just a moment. | ||
| Just want to make sure everybody can hear at home. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| He made quite an exit. | ||
| We'll give him that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Okay, let me start with this question on the fundraising front. | ||
| Because it was asked before, and again, we respect the passion. | ||
| These are important questions, and we want to get to them as we said we would. | ||
| Please raise your hand if you would be for supporting a ban on corporate PAC donations to the Democratic National Committee. | ||
| Okay, and let's have a discussion about this. | ||
| Mr. Martin, you said that there are a lot of good billionaires out there who have been with Democrats, who share our values, and we will take their money. | ||
| But we're not taking money from those bad billionaires. | ||
| What is a good billionaire and what is a bad billionaire in your view? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to say this, because I think it's really important, right? | |
| Many of us on this stage want to end Citizens United. | ||
| We want a complete overhaul in our campaign finance system. | ||
| We want to get dark money out of politics, right? | ||
| And for me and for many folks here, as we raise money, we only raise money from people who share our values. | ||
| I will make this commitment to everyone. | ||
| I will work my ass off to make sure we push to get the corrosive impact of money out of politics. | ||
| We've got to change this. | ||
| We raised and spent over $10 billion just last year in 2024 on elections on the Democratic side. | ||
| And the presidential race, $2.5 billion. | ||
| It's obscene. | ||
| We've got to reverse course. | ||
| We also have to win elections, not at any expense. | ||
| We've got to get dark money out of politics. | ||
| We've got to end Citizens United. | ||
| We need a complete overhaul of our campaign finances. | ||
| And my commitment is we will not take money from corporations that are union busting. | ||
| We will not take money from corporations that are polluting our planet. | ||
| We will only take money from people who share our values. | ||
| That's a DNC that I'm going to lead. | ||
| See, there's support for that in the room, Mr. Martin. | ||
| Let me ask you a follow-up question because clearly there's a lot of passion on the climate crisis. | ||
| I think that's a concern everybody on this stage shares. | ||
| Will you take any money from oil and gas companies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, and look. | |
| Is there anyone on this stage who would take money from oil and gas companies? | ||
| Let me just ask this. | ||
| Is there anybody on this stage who would take money from oil and gas companies as the DNC chair? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Just to answer some of your questions that I know are of concern, which we wanted to get to and we told you we would get to. | ||
| Okay, let me ask you, Mr. Wickler, you didn't raise your hand either. | ||
| I just read a statement that Mr. Martin made. | ||
| What were you thinking? | ||
| You've raised a lot of money for the Wisconsin Democratic Party when you heard him say that. | ||
| And do you agree with his assessment? | ||
| Do you have any differences on how you would approach fundraising? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're in a moment when our country is spinning out into oligarchy. | |
| The richest people in the world are part of the Trump administration trying to shred the way our government works, handoff chunks to the ultra-wealthy and rig our system against everyone else. | ||
| And to fight back, we need all the help that we can get. | ||
| We need to work with the union movement. | ||
| We need to work with small donors. | ||
| We need people who have money that they can give so we can fight for working people to make this a country that works for all of us, no matter what we look like or where we live. | ||
| And we cannot lie down while Republicans punch us in the face. | ||
| This is a fight. | ||
| And this is a fight that in Wisconsin, it's taken record fundraising for us to fight back against some of the biggest Republican donors in America who poured $29 million into a super PAC in order to defeat Mandela Barnes. | ||
|
End Dark Money
00:08:26
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unidentified
|
He lost by one percentage point. | |
| Now, look, we totally agree. | ||
| We need to end Citizens United. | ||
| We need to get dark money out of politics. | ||
| We need fundamental campaign finance reform. | ||
| But to do that, we need to win enough elections that we can change our laws. | ||
| And that is our job at this party. | ||
| And that is what we are going to fight to do. | ||
| There are differences of view on this issue, which is why I think it's important to discuss it. | ||
| Mr. Paul and then Ms. Williamson, I'd love to hear from you too. | ||
| Because you raised your hand that you would ban. | ||
| You would not take money. | ||
| Mr. Paul? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so I read the climate. | |
| I mean, I came up because I read the Sunrise Pledge. | ||
| I'm a little bit frustrated that they then decided to turn this into Scream Night at the DNC forum. | ||
| But I signed the pledge because we don't take very much corporate money in terms of money from directly from corporations. | ||
| So turning it down is a symbol, and it's a symbol that doesn't cost us very much, and I think we should do it. | ||
| At the same time, it's really easy to say we can get dark money out of politics once we get a law. | ||
| But within our own party, we don't need a law to get dark money out of politics. | ||
| We just need to have conversations with our candidates that say, don't take it. | ||
| Don't use it. | ||
| Don't encourage it. | ||
| And if you set that as the standard, then we had this in Massachusetts. | ||
| We had a people's pledge where all outside money was kept out between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown because they decided they weren't going to do it. | ||
| And the penalty was like 25% of your money had to go to charity if you didn't spend it, if somebody spent outside money on you. | ||
| And that was just enough to nudge people out of doing this. | ||
| It wasn't that hard to sign. | ||
| And sort of, I think it's sort of, I don't know what the rhetorical tell is behind the other candidates being unwilling to do this, but it's not a large amount of money. | ||
| It sends a good message. | ||
| I was happy to sign. | ||
| Much happier than before, again, they hijacked the whole evening. | ||
| But I was happy to sign because I think it's the right thing to do. | ||
| I think we can moderate it. | ||
| I think that having people believe that billionaires don't buy primaries, don't buy our party, is important, even if I'm not even sure that they have the influence that the people who claim that they do do. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I'm going to get you in one moment, Ms. Williamson. | ||
| I realize Governor Malley hasn't a chance to speak this evening, so I just want to get to him if that's okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let me move on. | ||
| The reason, and certainly you can answer the corporate question or the one I'm about to ask. | ||
| I'm going to give you a choice here since we're making the rules. | ||
| Let me ask you, Governor Malley, the reason why I'm asking about fundraising is as a number of people have raised, you have to have money to give to state parties, and it's just where is your bar going to be, which is why there is a question. | ||
| And then it's a question of how resources are spent. | ||
| So looking back at the 2024 election, Democrats spent $175 million in TV ads on abortion in the 2024 election. | ||
| It's an issue I think everybody on this stage cares about, but I want to know from you, was that the right use of resources? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, I was not involved in the campaign. | |
| I was not a state chair in the campaign. | ||
| You're running for chair now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know. | |
| And I'm going to answer your question. | ||
| I appreciate you tossing one to me. | ||
| Imagine Benz, I tried. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You were interrupted. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, it's a challenging night. | ||
| Yeah, so I was hatched at the time. | ||
| I was at the Social Security Administration. | ||
| President Biden asked me to pull it out of a customer service nosedive, and thanks to the courageous men and women there, we did in pretty short order. | ||
| The question that you were asking about the allocation, should we have run this ad, that ad, in my opinion, as a very interested American focused on this election, I believe, and this is from conversations with so many of you that were on the front lines in the campaign, that the hardest working people in our economy, the ones that are struggling to get by, the ones that work at McDonald's and are on Medicaid, | ||
| they felt like we did not speak to their concerns. | ||
| And now we are paying the price. | ||
| You saw the poll today that had our party's ratings in the polls, like lower than it's ever been. | ||
| We need to restore our brand. | ||
| A piece of that is the integrity of whether or not we fight for people. | ||
| I'm the only candidate I do believe so far, two of us, I've revealed the donations to my campaign, made it public. | ||
| There's a lot of money. | ||
| There's a lot of money floating around this campaign, and there was a lot of money that we're going to be able to do. | ||
| Governor O'Malley, we're at time here. | ||
| But I just want to go back to just my original question there, which is, do you think that money was correctly spent on abortion protection ads during the campaign? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, Jan, I respect your ability to ask me that question to the people that objected on, I mean, that were standing up with regard to climate change. | |
| I was the first candidate for president in either party that put forward a proposal to get to 100% renewable energy by 2050. | ||
| Mr. O'Malley, thank you for your time. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| I'm going to ask Marianne Williamson if she would like to answer that question. | ||
| At this point, is this about the money? | ||
| Please state the question as you see it now. | ||
| Well, I gave you the choice, so let me give you that choice again. | ||
| Why would you support banning corporate PAC money? | ||
| Or do you think the $175 million spent on abortion rights ads was the right use of resources? | ||
| Governor O'Malley just talked about the fact that the Democratic brand is basically in the toilet. | ||
| And if I'm your chair, I'm going to be very honest. | ||
| And if we're going to be very honest, we have to look in the mirror and we have to stop some of our hypocrisy. | ||
| And one of our issues of hypocrisy is about money. | ||
| We have to recognize that people see us as hypocrites. | ||
| No, Reid Hoffman is not a good billionaire who supports the working class. | ||
| This man has been trying to get rid of Lena Kahn from the beginning, and we know other things that he's done. | ||
| But also, let's remember this. | ||
| Hillary Clinton had more money than Donald Trump did. | ||
| And we all know about the absurd expenditures of the Harris campaign. | ||
| When the Democratic Party started taking corporate money in the 70s, that's when our moral authority began to leak out of the bottom of the boat. | ||
| Bernie Sanders has proven that you can do this on small donations. | ||
| When we become the people's party again, when we align our own ethics with what we say we believe in, when people can see that we are there talking about things like universal health care that a majority of Republicans as well as Democrats want, when we are there talking about tuition-free college and tech school, when we are talking about the $50 trillion transfer of wealth over the last 50 years, the fact that our system is rigged in the favor of a few so that they can get rich at the expense of everybody else, | ||
| we won't even have to be begging from billionaires. | ||
| So many people will be throwing their lunch money. | ||
| They'll be throwing everything they possibly can, including a few good billionaires. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Time. | |
| We're at time. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Faz, let me go to you. | ||
| One of the things that has been raised, or the themes that have been raised by a number of you in your opening statements, is the need for change and the need to do things in a new way, which I think a lot of people are happy to hear about. | ||
| You've talked about this quite a bit as well. | ||
| In the weeks after the election, David Plough said that Republicans coordinate far more with super PACs and Democrats need to stop playing by a different set of rules. | ||
| There were limitations by lawyers who limited this, and this is something a number of candidates running for office complained about. | ||
| Do you agree with that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The devolution, the demise of power within the party structure, the Democratic Party, has meant that super PACs and other outside expenditures have played more of a role in politics. | |
| And it's become a play toy for billionaires, both in primaries and in general elections. | ||
| And that is one of the reasons why I want to ban that kind of spending. | ||
| I think you have to speak out boldly against billionaire influence in that direction. | ||
| I would say about the corporate money, you know, they don't give it out of the goodness of their heart. | ||
| When there is a reason why they would want to contribute to the Democratic Party, if you go stand with Amazon workers, yeah, I'll tell you Amazon's going to come calling. | ||
| They might give you, hey, $15,000. | ||
| Would you not send an email to your list about the fact that some of our Amazon workers went out on strike? | ||
| That quid pro quo is what I'm after. | ||
| I will also challenge everybody in this room. | ||
| Bernie Sanders ran a 100% grassroots funded campaign. | ||
| It was $250 million. | ||