May 21, 2018 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
50:45
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unidentified
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(upbeat music) | |
| Joining me today is the Democratic nominee for Senate from the great state of Utah, Jenny Wilson. | ||
| Welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Well, thank you. | ||
| It's great to be here. | ||
| I am glad to have you here. | ||
| I was reading your bio and it said that you are a fifth generation Utahn. | ||
| U-T-A-H-N. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| I didn't know it was spelled that way. | ||
| I wasn't sure it was even pronounced that way. | ||
| But I did it right. | ||
| You did it right, absolutely. | ||
| A Utahn. | ||
| Don't throw the A in. | ||
| What would that even sound like? | ||
| That's how we'll know that you're not a Utahn. | ||
| Well, that's why I thought, I was like, all right, well, Utah-hun, or something just didn't, but you are a fifth generation Utahn. | ||
| I said to you right before we started, I've actually never been to Utah, so I only know the things of Utah that sort of get out there, like John Stockton, Karl Malone, the jazz. | ||
| The Morgans. | ||
| Jazz aren't doing well right now, but hey, it happens. | ||
| At the moment of this case, I think they're down 3-1. | ||
| Yeah, but you know, the world's best skiing, incredible snow, beautiful mountains. | ||
| I leave my front door and in eight minutes I'm in remote wilderness on a run or a hike or with my dog. | ||
| It's really great. | ||
| Great state. | ||
| So tell me, we're going to talk a little bit about Utah generally, but tell me just a little bit about your family and upbringing. | ||
| Fifth generation, Utah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, my ancestors go back to the first person to even make it into the valley ahead of Brigham Young. | ||
| He was a scout for Brigham Young. | ||
| His name's Orson Pratt. | ||
| And he was head of the Pioneer Trail and looked into the valley and said, this is the place, even before officially Brigham Young said, this is the place. | ||
| So he'd actually started planting and irrigating before Brigham Young and the rest of them came in. | ||
| Yeah, and tell me just a little bit about your upbringing and family and that sort of thing. | ||
| Yeah, so I kind of fell into politics not by choice. | ||
| My dad was the mayor of Salt Lake City in the 70s and 80s, and I was the kid of the mayor that would go with him around town and to visit the banker and, you know, the local religious leader, whomever. | ||
| And I guess I, of the five kids, ended up being the one, you know, stuck with this affliction. | ||
| What's that like for a kid? | ||
| I mean, I know as a kid it's just your life, but as a child of a politician? | ||
| Well, my dad was a people person, still is, and I think that helped. | ||
| but it's a busy life to have a parent who's running and on the ballot, | ||
| and I think my kids are now living that with me. | ||
| And there's a little bit of, I think, stress with that, because it's not a typical life, but it's a good one. | ||
| I feel really lucky to have had that experience and got to know the community. | ||
| My mom's a small business owner, an artist and gallery owner, | ||
| so I was able to kind of go to her business too as a kid growing up, and it was really a great life. | ||
| Yeah, and we were talking right before, you've had a bunch of jobs also in politics | ||
| that have sort of led you to this. | ||
| Can you give me a couple of those? | ||
| You've bounced around, you've done some stuff. | ||
| Yeah, so back to the day that my dad was running, I was always thrown into the campaign. | ||
| And then in 1988, he ran for governor, and that was my first real job. | ||
| And they actually paid me, I was a press secretary. | ||
| So I thought, wow, I can make a living doing this. | ||
| And it sort of helped, in 1988, define my politics a little. | ||
| I think some of the relationships I had on that campaign. | ||
| And then I ended up... Can you tell me a little bit about that? | ||
| Like what were some of the formative issues? | ||
| Yeah, I think, well, Utah is a very homogenous state. | ||
| So I think we were the Democrats, right? | ||
| So we were sort of the counter to what was out there. | ||
| And so I think environmental preservation, balance in government is important, I think, and that was one of the principles of that campaign. | ||
| And so anyway, I just kind of fell into it, ended up on Capitol Hill. | ||
| I worked initially for a congressman from Oregon, Lessa Coyne, in 90. | ||
| And then in 92, he was running for the U.S. | ||
| Senate. | ||
| I joined that race in Oregon. | ||
| He was defeated. | ||
| And I ended up working after that for a congressman from Utah, initially as press secretary, and then I became his chief of staff. | ||
| His name's Bill Orton. | ||
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unidentified
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And he was a blue dog democrat, right? | |
| He was an old school democrat. | ||
| What has happened to the old school Democrats? | ||
| Because obviously we're gonna talk about your politics and I did a little dig in here and I think there's some stuff, there's some points of agreement that we have for sure. | ||
| What I wish out of the Democrats is that the old school Democrats still existed. | ||
| What I've seen consistently is that as the progressives have gone further left, and I would say it's really out there now, they've sort of taken the whole party and any of the moderates or the blue dogs or whatever you wanna call that wing, I don't know, they're either silent or they're gone altogether. | ||
| Do you think that's a fair estimation, or how would you even define some of these things, like a blue dog Democrat versus a progressive? | ||
| Well, what, in the 90s, my memories of Bill Orton, and unfortunately he passed away a few years ago, but he's a pretty young congressman in the day, and I worked with him for about four years, and he was on the Budget Committee and the Banking Committee, and very concerned about the deficit. | ||
| So that had a great impression on me. | ||
| I learned a lot about entitlement reform, about discretionary spending, about our choices. | ||
| And I do think that as we see the deficit and the debt go up and up, The deficit, as you know, is tied to economic prosperity. | ||
| When we do well, our deficits are not as high. | ||
| Our overall debt keeps increasing. | ||
| So I really feel that we need to get back to some discipline. | ||
| And I think that that has been missed in recent years. | ||
| And I work on a Salt Lake County Council. | ||
| I'm elected now. | ||
| And we do balance the budget every year, and it's much tougher in years where we have economic decline. | ||
| And those are the years we can't do maybe some of the nice-to-haves. | ||
| So I think we need to get back to more of a fluid budget process where Congress recognizes, hey, this isn't such a good year. | ||
| Can we find a different way of budgeting so that we don't always, you know, give away things that we can't afford? | ||
| Yeah, is that possible perhaps at the local level, state level, city level, et cetera, and just not possible anymore on the federal level? | ||
| Because when you talk about fiscal responsibility, that sounds so foreign to me as a Democrat. | ||
| But by the way, the Republicans are horrible at it too, and look at the omnibus that was just passed and all that. | ||
| So I'm not even defending any of them. | ||
| They at least have some of the principles that should make sense in it. | ||
| So in a way, they deserve more criticism because it's part of their package where it's a little less so for Democrats. | ||
| Well, I think the division in Washington is forced budget reconciliation rather than true budgets. | ||
| And how can you reprioritize when you are just on the fly saying, hey, another two weeks. | ||
| Let's go two more days. | ||
| Let's come back next week and fix this. | ||
| So that's my concern is that we're at the point with so much division that we're not having real conversations. | ||
| And I do think there's a baseline budget if we were to go maybe even to a two-year budget | ||
| cycle to really find a way to force Congress into actually true debate about what are our | ||
| priorities. | ||
| Because we all are frustrated with the federal government. | ||
| It's not serving us. | ||
| It's not serving us at the local level. | ||
| And you know, I'm not someone who wouldn't say that we need to spend. | ||
| I think we do need to invest in our communities. | ||
| And there's so many things that the federal government can do to support us at the local level and should. | ||
| But when it's just rubber stamping what was done the year before at last minute, it's chaotic and it's not efficient. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you think is the right amount? | ||
| of power for the federal government to have over the states. | ||
| A lot of my audience that leans a little more libertarian or classical liberal or conservative, whatever it is, | ||
| this is one of the key issues for them, that we have to get this stuff back | ||
| to the local municipalities. | ||
| And I'm pretty much there on that. | ||
| I feel really good about the role that I have at the local level. | ||
| I do think that there are certain things that really matter to us as a nation that we have to have in place. | ||
| One, of course, being defense. | ||
| Our interstate system and our highways and our connectivity and commerce. | ||
| There's so many things that if we were to be isolationist state to state really jeopardize our ability to act as a superpower, the one that we are, to be really, I think, the best of our nation. | ||
| But there are a lot of things that we should do locally. | ||
| You know, I worry a little about too much diversion when you look at education. | ||
| I don't want there to be a decision that we would go four days a week in one state | ||
| and not have basic standards. | ||
| So I think a basic level of standards, but then let states decide. | ||
| I mean, we've got California here being very different than Utah, | ||
| very different than a southern state or New York. | ||
| Yeah, so I'm basically there on that. | ||
| To me, I always say now, I would wanna kick all of education back to the states, | ||
| but then people ask a totally legit question, which I think is what you're saying. | ||
| or what if states start really doing very drastically different things. | ||
| What I would say is that maximum freedom, the ability to leave a state you don't like if you don't like what they're doing, I think that that's the better answer. | ||
| But I guess getting some, some baseline, I think is a sound. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| And I do think, though, we look at the unique character of each of our states, and we need to foster that and find a way to, you know, really enable a state to do well on its own. | ||
| And, you know, we could start over. | ||
| We'd do it differently, wouldn't we? | ||
| But we have to understand that in 2018 there are certain things that are in place that, you know, the conversation needs to be how do we reform, maybe not dismantle. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know if we would do it differently if we start over. | ||
| I wish we would get back to some of that stuff. | ||
| I would do many things differently if we could start over. | ||
| Yeah, like what, for example? | ||
| Well, like I think there is a better way to fund Medicaid and Medicare and some of our | ||
| big programs. | ||
| I do believe as a Democrat, and I believe strongly in fairness and compassion and the | ||
| government being a tool, that we can and should invest. | ||
| It's just I think we've ended up building year after year after year on something that | ||
| was created maybe for a good purpose at one point in time, but is not as efficient as | ||
| As it needs to be. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And I consider myself a reformer. | ||
| That's one of the reasons I like what I do, is I have the opportunity to step in, look at how to make something better, and try and figure out a way to enact change. | ||
| Do you worry, as someone that you're saying you're pretty content with the work that you're doing now, and you've been able to say, no, we can't do this if we can't budget it, and it all kind of makes sense, and you let the chips fall where they may, that you could end up going to the swamp? | ||
| Where it seems like nothing changes and that it doesn't sound that fun to me. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| There might be, you know, it's nice to maybe be on the national stage and playing with more high rollers and that kind of thing, but that you lose the real sort of ability to govern the way you would want to. | ||
| It's a good point. | ||
| I really believe the Senate can change, and that change will make a big difference. | ||
| I'd like to get back to the days where Orrin Hatch from my state and Ted Kennedy worked together and solved problems. | ||
| And we're seeing too much polarization. | ||
| We don't have enough conversation. | ||
| On my council, we have five Republicans, four Democrats, and we work together. | ||
| And I know that I have to, right? | ||
| I've got to go find that fifth vote. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| I'm not a mathematician, but I think... So it's, yes, it's, yeah, the collegiality matters, and listening, and trying, and compromise. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What's the tenor of politics in Utah right now? | ||
| Is what's going on nationally with just this endless craziness? | ||
| Is that happening to you guys at a local level? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, we tend to be, to 5 to 10 points, the president's numbers and profile and polling tends to be about 10% higher in favor in Utah, so we still have a lot of people who are pro-Trump. | ||
| The core downtown Salt Lake, which is our kind of more progressive area, you're going to see the reverse of that. | ||
| And our urban area is probably 50-50. | ||
| So we're like a lot of states where you have a very progressive kind of core city and suburban area, 50-50, and then you get to a very conservative area in our state. | ||
| So as a state that generally runs red and that leans more conservative, for sure, as someone that's running as a Democrat, what's the primary process like first as a Democrat? | ||
| What kind of people are you running? | ||
| Where are you running? | ||
| Well, interestingly, two years ago, there was very much a strong Bernie Sanders presence in our state. | ||
| Because, you know, the LDS Church has a lot of dominance. | ||
| There are a lot of people who speak out forcefully against the one-party system, which is generally what we have in the state. | ||
| And so you get some pretty progressive people. | ||
| And we were an 80-20 Bernie Sanders state to Hillary Clinton. | ||
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unidentified
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Wow. | |
| Yeah, which is kind of surprising. | ||
| But things have sort of calmed down. | ||
| I would expect in the presidential. | ||
| What do you make of that? | ||
| Is that just because of the nature of a Democrat at that point? | ||
| Because the state leans so far the other way that if you're gonna say you're a Democrat, You may as well go all in on that. | ||
| Generally, I think so. | ||
| And we also, like every state, we have our own nomination process. | ||
| And the Republicans have a closed Republican system, so you have to affiliate with a Republican with an R on the voter file. | ||
| And so therefore, there actually are a lot of independents who are actually filing as Republicans because they want to vote that way and with that party. | ||
| What's your policy on that, for the open or closed primary? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I don't know. | ||
| We've debated it on the Democratic side, and because the Democrats are few and far between in my state, we register at 20-25%, but we do poll independents, as I mentioned. | ||
| You know, we're not in the driver's seat on some of those policies, so we just sort of work with whatever makes sense, because we're not in the We're not able to do anything about that. | ||
| Yeah, it always strikes me as one of those things where it's like, the closed primary does make sense to me because that's to nominate who you want out of that party, and if you just have an open primary, well, you could get all sorts of people who will never vote for any of those candidates purposely getting in to help candidates that they think are gonna be more handicapped, ultimately. | ||
| So I don't have, I know a lot of people think that the closed primary thing is somehow a conspiracy or anti-democratic or something, but I don't have a problem with that. | ||
| The problem is, what do you do with independents? | ||
| Because most people tend to affiliate independent. | ||
| I mean, people I know. | ||
| I mean, there are people like you and me, elected or in the media or whatever, that tend to be the insiders who obviously follow this and get very deeply entrenched in every step of the way. | ||
| And I think most Utahns are sort of in the middle. | ||
| And so, I don't know, that gets a little confusing, because if we close both, then where does an independent go? | ||
| Right, then independent does nothing. | ||
| Or you could say the independents can vote in either, but then why wouldn't anyone register as an independent? | ||
| Right, I guess there's no easy answer on that one. | ||
| Yeah, our big battle in the Republican Party right now is whether or not we're gonna do away with the caucus system and go to the conventions, rather, and go to a direct primary. | ||
| So that's our battle right now. | ||
| We have a two-tiered system. | ||
| You can pick either now. | ||
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unidentified
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Right. | |
| And that's under review. | ||
| What are some of the other issues? | ||
| Is there anything else in Utah that you just see as like, just like the technical stuff, the technical problems related to voting or districting, gerrymandering, that sort of thing? | ||
| As someone that's on the other side, right? | ||
| Well, gerrymandering is a very big problem. | ||
| I mean, we have wacky maps, like a lot of states. | ||
| There's ballot initiatives this year. | ||
| One is a redistricting commission ballot initiative that should likely pass. | ||
| They got the required signatures to get on, it seems, so that would require that the legislature listen to a redistricting commission that makes a recommendation. | ||
| But the decision does lie in the hands of the legislature in our state. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So what are some of the other democratic principles? | ||
| Lay out some democratic, good old democratic principles. | ||
| Do you mean in Utah or nationally? | ||
| I mean you personally first. | ||
| Just give me some of the things that you believe in. | ||
| I've affiliated with the Democratic Party because I think the party's been the party that has battled for fairness and compassion over the years. | ||
| I mean, I have been pro-LGBTQ rights from day one. | ||
| I was the first on my council to move forward local policies. | ||
| We did, even before my election to the county council years ago, housing non-discrimination, but we didn't have medical fairness in terms of our health care plans at Salt Lake County. | ||
| So when I was first elected in 2004, I moved that and I couldn't get a Republican vote. | ||
| So it took several takes trying to redefine the benefits and ultimately we ended up passing it 6-3 with a Republican supporting us. | ||
| So I think issues like that have been key. | ||
| I think we have a very, one of the reasons I think I'm so active in politics in my state is that we don't have balance. | ||
| Back in my dad's era in the 70s, we did have a Republican governor, or we had a Democratic | ||
| governor rather. | ||
| It's been since the 70s since we had a Democrat in the U.S. | ||
| Senate from the state of Utah, and that's the person that Orrin Hatch defeated. | ||
| So I really believe that good government is a balanced government, and we live it and | ||
| see it on my county council, again with that 5-4. | ||
| We have a Democratic county executive. | ||
| We call it a mayor. | ||
| And so I feel like we're in a really good position in my day job now to bring about fairness and balance. | ||
| But we're 80-20 in our legislature. | ||
| We are Republican governor and so on down. | ||
| So part of what I fight for is balance. | ||
| I think it makes sense for good government. | ||
| Yeah, it's interesting to stake out positions that you know are not the popular ones there just so that the system doesn't become too corroded or too stiff. | ||
| So it sounds to me sort of like you're socially liberal and fiscally conservative, basically. | ||
| I would agree with that. | ||
| Is that a fair estimation? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| Where are you at on abortion? | ||
| I'm pro-choice. | ||
| I believe that women should have that right to choose. | ||
| One of the reasons I really, the more I've learned about younger women, you know, my own years with friends growing up, I see at times women who don't have the security that I've had my entire life with good parents and support are often Pray to being victimized, and so I think that a woman's right to choose is very much critical because of that. | ||
| And I know that, you know, in a very conservative state, I've had situations to support my sister who carried her child. | ||
| I've been friends with people who've made different decisions, and I just fundamentally believe that women need to be in the driver's seat on that decision, and we can't go back to the days of Real tragedies prior to Roe vs. Wade. | ||
| Yeah, do you see a cutoff point on that or where are you on that? | ||
| Well, I think that that's a decision for science and I think the courts have landed through Roe vs. Wade and so that's the best I can do but follow what we have in place now and I just don't think in 2018 we can go back in time. | ||
| Yeah, it's interesting because that's one of the ones where I've heard, you know, obviously there's a lot of Mormons in Utah, but I hear a lot of people that, you know, talk about the flyover states and they say that, you know, a lot of the Christian conservatives are just voting on that no matter what. | ||
| So again, it's a position where as someone not towing the conservative line on that, that's a serious uphill battle. | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| But I think the LDS Church is fundamentally a very compassionate religion. | ||
| And I think that its compassion, I think, kind of can mitigate that a little bit. | ||
| And it has actually, the LDS Church, its position, rape, incest, life of the mother, is actually a little more progressive than some religions. | ||
| What do you make of how involved they've been in with gay marriage? | ||
| It's not really talked about anymore. | ||
| It's the law of the land. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| It's sort of a boring topic for me at some level. | ||
| But they did have certain influence in the whole national debate about this. | ||
| Yeah, and over the years, it's interesting. | ||
| I think the LDS Church has come a long way in terms of basic rights, but marriage is obviously a Defining line. | ||
| And in this era, given we have marriage equality nationally, we'll see how they step up. | ||
| And it's interesting. | ||
| They tend to be very open right now to more LGBTQ people involved in church services and really sending a message of love thy neighbor. | ||
| And I appreciate that. | ||
| Yeah, well it's interesting to me because it's like, people, it's so easy to bash Mormons and you see it in comedy all the time. | ||
| And look, Broadway had the Book of Mormon. | ||
| I didn't even see the Book of Mormon, actually. | ||
| I heard it was great, I would love to see it. | ||
| But it's like, you can make that show very easily. | ||
| There's certain books you're not allowed to talk about that would never make it on Broadway. | ||
| So I always find this need to bash Mormons all the time, or it's like the easy joke all the time. | ||
| It's like, maybe they're actually not the intolerant people because you have a very easy time joking about them. | ||
| Well, you know, I'm baptized LDS and I have a great relationship with my friends who are still going to church regularly and my family members who are. | ||
| And I think it's a, I love any religion that lifts people up. | ||
| And there are times where I disagree with the church's politics. | ||
| I would very much defend separation of church and state. | ||
| And there are times where I might raise an eyebrow and go, wait a minute, this seems like it's overstepping a little bit. | ||
| But I do appreciate the LDS Church's incredible force for good in the Utah community by services and by creating a lot of support within our Salt Lake City area with You know, there's a food bank for members, and they make it open to people who are in general need. | ||
| And I think there's, again, at times I would have some differences certainly, but I support the role and the commitment. | ||
| And anybody who chooses to practice religion and it lifts up their life, that's a good thing. | ||
| Yeah, so because you're talking about all the good things that the church does, would you kick some of those social services back to churches and synagogues and mosques and everything else if you had the power to do so? | ||
| Because to me, again, as a small government guy, that's what I would love to see, and it sounds like some of that's happening. | ||
| Well, I think we do that. | ||
| I mean, I worry about the tax bill now because we're not going to get a write-off anymore. | ||
| We're going to see how charitable people really are, you know? | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| But we do that now, I think. | ||
| I mean, I love the work that I'm able to do on the Salt Lake County Council when we have a business leader step up and support something, a little bit of county dollars as well, and we have, you know, public-private partnerships. | ||
| So, I think we see a lot of that now. | ||
| Could we take it further, perhaps? | ||
| But I think we then get into, you know, incentives and benefits. | ||
| And what I want to see in the community and what drives me is problem solving. | ||
| And I don't think that government is always the best vehicle for solving those problems. | ||
| I mean, we do have businesses, individuals, government, the web of all of that to solve | ||
| a problem and do it creatively. | ||
| I enjoy doing that at the local level and I think the federal level we can do that better and do more of that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What kind of support or not support are you getting out of the DNC? | ||
| They got a whole slew of problems right now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, so I just got the nomination. | ||
| This is going to air, by the way, just for the record, a little bit after when we're taping it. | ||
| Okay, yeah, so I just recently received the nomination. | ||
| So I have not, you know, had anybody, the doorbell ring and a big check from the DNC by any means. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I've had conversations with the DSCC. | ||
| I've been invited to tour this city here in LA and San Francisco and Seattle with some of the U.S. | ||
| Senators, women. | ||
| And that was very educational for me and a great benefit to have some time with our three or four, maybe five of our U.S. | ||
| Senators on the Democratic side of the aisle. | ||
| And so I think just the conversations, the connection, I mean, fundamentally, I think the Democrats are trying to take back the Senate, and we'll see how things play out over the next six months or so in my race. | ||
| And I'm hopeful that we'll get some significant national support. | ||
| I think, I feel though my support should come from Utah and it is and I just get up every day and see what I can do to bring a check in and get low dollar contributors to give what they can and day to day and we'll see what happens. | ||
| Yeah, it's interesting to me because it seems like you're really in a unique position where you really seem to be fighting both sides. | ||
| Maybe you don't want me to totally present it that way, but you're obviously fighting the Republican side as a Democrat in a red state. | ||
| But also, what I mentioned earlier about, it seems to me that the DNC and the entire leadership from, you know, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren and Keith Ellison and Tom Perez, like those guys seem way more left than some of the things you've talked about here. | ||
| So I don't, it's almost like, why would they want to support you? | ||
| Like, they're sort of against the stuff that they're kind of... | ||
| Well, actually, Tom Perez has visited Utah a couple of times. | ||
| He's pretty committed to playing in every zip code, and I think he's building towards that. | ||
| I mean, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have different influences within its governance structure. | ||
| So, I haven't given up on the DNC paying attention to Utah. | ||
| I think they've done a good job in the past year in really engaging and listening. | ||
| What's most important to me is that we get to the point where both parties actually recognize that there are cities and there are communities and they're all small towns aside from, you know, Los Angeles. | ||
| New York City, big cities in Florida, etc., Chicago, where, I mean, there are people on the ground in my state in need with, you know, that need government to lift them up or need some support in some way from community-based networks. | ||
| And I think that we have become both, and this isn't just the parties, this is Washington and how we govern, you know, a little too focused, I think, on urban centers. | ||
| Do you think we're just too reliant on government in general? | ||
| That the answer always seems, for both parties at this point, I mean, there's a couple outliers. | ||
| I think Rand Paul, I always bring him up, he's trying. | ||
| You obviously have disagreements with him on the amount of government, but I see him as someone that's earnestly trying to fight for what he believes in and usually falls short because the system doesn't allow it that much. | ||
| But that argument of how much government, the answer seems to always be more, unfortunately. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, I think that we have to get back to some pretty major changes, back to reinventing things. | ||
| Because what I do when I look at government and what's possible is look at what we have on the table. | ||
| Unfortunately, I learned in the 90s when I worked for a congressman that things don't happen quickly. | ||
| And I wish we could, you know, get out the Etch-a-Sketch and shake it and start over, right? | ||
| But, you know, and I think sometimes around Paul and others, we have to accept that we do have challenges with a lot of people in need. | ||
| We do have income inequality. | ||
| And we have to address those issues. | ||
| It would be nice, I think, to simply, you know, I think we would have a smaller federal government, but on the other hand, what are we to do? | ||
| I think we would take a step back in terms of progress for us all. | ||
| I think we all want the same things. | ||
| We want people to do well. | ||
| We want them to get up every day, have a step towards self-sufficiency or get out, make a living, not commit crime, be happy. | ||
| I mean, we all want the same thing. | ||
| The question is, how do we get there? | ||
| So it's funny, right, so that is the question, because the latter part of that, of course I believe all of those things, and I don't, I really try not to impugn the motives of the people that I disagree with in general, I'm not talking about you, but just in general. | ||
| But to me, the answer to solve those problems would be you just, the government keeps scaling back, keeps scaling back, keeps scaling back, hopefully private enterprise comes in, and you give people more self-reliance as opposed to creating a system that they kinda can't move out of, because I think there's a lot of evidence for that. | ||
| And that's the great debate. | ||
| And that's the great debate. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Isn't it? | ||
| I mean, I wish we could. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| We can agree to disagree on it. | ||
| I mean, that's the point. | ||
| But I think you also have to look at, you know, I worked for a little while at a hospital | ||
| that did an incredible amount of ophthalmology research. | ||
| And I learned a lot about research and development and how the federal government works through | ||
| basic science and supports researchers. | ||
| And I look at our innovation in our nation and what we've done because we've invested | ||
| in that. | ||
| So when you talk about smaller government, you have to say, OK, where and what is the | ||
| next step? | ||
| I am for. | ||
| Pure funding of science, by the way, for the record. | ||
| There's a lot of books of scientists here, some who have been on the show. | ||
| And I think we have to. | ||
| And then there's a lot of businesses that receive benefits and support, small businesses on up. | ||
| You know, we just allowed for a $1.5 trillion corporate tax cut without any requirement that people return it to wages and to growing companies. | ||
| And I see a lot of federal policies that have overly supported business. | ||
| And I think especially now in this era with that, I mean, I looked at and did a back of the napkin on our own taxes. | ||
| I did quite a bit of assessment when the tax bill came out at the end of the year to see what it would do for a family of four, a family of six, a larger Utah family. | ||
| And there are not many of us who are going to get a big benefit from that. | ||
| Now, the Mitt Romneys and a few others will. | ||
| And I think why in this era we've got to find a way to, if we are going to do tax Reform, tax simplification, that was a principle we talked about forever. | ||
| I'm with you on that one. | ||
| I'm like, ah, you know, call your, you know, call your tax accountant, because he or she's gonna make double now. | ||
| Yeah, is there any reason, though, to believe that the government can do these things? | ||
| Like, if you take just the general stagnation we talked about in Washington, and most of the congressmen who do nothing, and the senators who've been there forever and accomplished nothing, or it's just endless fighting, or all that, the idea That these people who often have never created any jobs and have never really made anything happen, I mean, I include Bernie in this for sure, the idea that they are the ones that are gonna figure out how to get the economy going when it really comes from the people, it comes from the local businesses, the small businesses, et cetera. | ||
| Well, Congress should be listening to its constituents and to its specialists, and that's why. | ||
| I mean, there's nothing that offended me more than what happened with the health care bill and the tax bill last time, with no debate. | ||
| I mean, there were some efforts to have a bipartisan discussion around both. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And one of the offenders was Orrin Hatch, who you've seen I'm trying to take, and up, down, no, get out of here, we've got to get home. | ||
| And that's the worst of government to me, because we should have that. | ||
| We should have specialists in, we should have debate, we shouldn't have lobbyists lined up, and we should actually have methods and systems to do what I do on the County Council, work with my colleagues, bring specialists in, listen to information, and make good decisions. | ||
| Yeah, I think you could probably draw a line from the Obamacare debate and how insane that got to everything that has led us to where we are at now. | ||
| Even during that, yeah, the Republicans wouldn't sit down and were going crazy the whole time, and Obama kept saying in the reelection campaign, we're gonna do it on C-SPAN, it's gonna be open-door C-SPAN, and it's like. | ||
| You're all just liars! | ||
| And the odd amount of congressmen and senators that were retiring in the middle of it after they would make a decision. | ||
| I mean, something just seemed very odd about the whole thing. | ||
| And let's go fix it. | ||
| Let's go fix it. | ||
| And let's get back to a real conversation. | ||
| And I guess I feel maybe from going back, you know, maybe a full circle now to talking about my father again, I think in the 70s and the 80s, those things were more likely to happen. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The collegiality, the discussion. | ||
| And one of the things that led to my interest in this race was, like, I am a reformer. | ||
| I like you want to fix things. | ||
| So I want to go back and have a voice in the system wherever I can find an ally in doing some of the things you're suggesting, that we get down, we work through these things. | ||
| But I actually think that if that's too big a deal, initially at least, that I can serve my state. | ||
| And that was my major interest in running. | ||
| I think that we need a Democrat from our delegation. | ||
| We have six Rs. | ||
| We have 6-0 votes on everything. | ||
| And there are a lot of people in my community and in my state that aren't being served by that. | ||
| Yeah, just quickly to reverse back to something we talked about before, and you were saying about being able to sit down with people across the aisle and all that. | ||
| You mentioned right before we sat down that we have a mutual friend in Rick Grenell, who I think as we're taping this today, we think he just left for Germany. | ||
| He was finally confirmed after over a year of waiting to be the ambassador of Germany, so we're both thrilled. | ||
| You guys were old roommates, but he's a Trump-supporting Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You were a Democrat from Utah, and guess what? | ||
| You guys are friends. | ||
| We're good friends. - And it's all good. | ||
| Yeah, it's all good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And that does seem to be the thing that is lost these days. | ||
| Yeah, and I just don't get that. | ||
| And I have enough sense of my own convictions that I'm not threatened by going to dinner with Republicans or working with them on my county council. | ||
| And I'll tell you, there are times when the four Democrats look over at the other side of the aisle and we're like, "We're | ||
| done. We're out." | ||
| But we have those conversations. We work through our budget together. | ||
| We have some votes that are cross-party lines and others that aren't. They typically are, | ||
| you know, some R's, some D's. And, you know, I think that's the reason that local people | ||
| or people who've worked at the local level like myself need to get to Congress. | ||
| We need to get more and more people who get government, who've worked in government, who've solved problems, and come in with that commitment to, you know, putting the time, effort, energy in to moving things forward. | ||
| All right, so let's talk about the race you're involved. | ||
| Fair to say this is an uphill battle, fair? | ||
| I think so, a little bit, yeah. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| Just numbers-wise, it's a tough one. | ||
| Okay, so at the Republican convention, everyone thought, I think, or at least at the national level, everyone thought Mitt Romney was gonna walk in and clean this thing up, right? | ||
| The guy was the Republican nominee for president not too long ago and has all the media behind him and all the money and all that. | ||
| But Mike Kennedy won. | ||
| I don't know much about Mike Kennedy, so could you just briefly tell me a little bit about him and then we'll focus a little more on the Romney factor. | ||
| He's a legislator. | ||
| He is kind of billing himself as conservative, more conservative than Romney. | ||
| Although Romney's sort of been all over the place, so I don't know, I really truly do not know Mitt Romney's politics. | ||
| So Mike Kennedy ran to the right of Romney and did pretty well at the convention. | ||
| Romney came in second, so the two of them will go to a late June primary. | ||
| Right, so it was pretty close. | ||
| I think it was 51-49, so they will do a primary soon enough. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You would have to clear 60% at your convention to avoid the primary, which I did. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so I, yeah, I've got to stick it to it. | ||
| I cleared my, with 81%, and then they're, I've got the primary now. | ||
| You worked for Romney. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did. | |
| Tell me about that. | ||
| Considering you just said you don't know his politics. | ||
| Well, I thought I did at the time. | ||
| So I worked for the Olympic Games of 2002. | ||
| We had three or four of us who ran the volunteer program. | ||
| Recruitment, retention, training. | ||
| 26,000 employees and volunteers in those games that made it a success. | ||
| And yeah, so he was our chief executive and I was senior staff and saw quite a bit of him. | ||
| And I was always a little bit nervous when we had the quarterly budget review with Mitt Romney. | ||
| It was a big day. | ||
| What was that like? | ||
| I mean, the guy's a businessman, right? | ||
| He did that well. | ||
| No, we went in with our budgets and how to defend our programs and he'd give us the up or down. | ||
| And I will say Mitt did a good job of stabilizing the budget and fundraising. | ||
| He was good at that. | ||
| He's a good person to work for. | ||
| But when you say you don't know what his politics are, what does that mean? | ||
| Well, he left right after the Olympic Games to Massachusetts to run for governor. | ||
| He had run against Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts for the Senate years before, so this was his jump into political life again. | ||
| And he won that race. | ||
| And I started to watch and was interested because I knew him. | ||
| And it seemed, you know, he was going in as a progressive governor, Republican governor. | ||
| He signed an assault weapon ban. | ||
| He was pro-choice. | ||
| And he governed in Massachusetts. | ||
| And then not long after, he ran for president, was defeated, and then president again. | ||
| And he ended up moving more and more and more. | ||
| I'm going to the left, but it was actually to the right. | ||
| Right, and people would say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, didn't he kind of start Obamacare with Romneycare in Massachusetts and then was also running against it? | ||
| Yeah, and then we had the history with Trump where he was, I think delivered all would agree the most scathing speech against Trump, talking about his lack of values, his inability to govern, and was very much in the anybody but Trump camp. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then, you know, we saw the sit down when there was some talk of Secretary of State. | ||
| That sad picture of him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He did not look happy in that picture. | ||
| And then it seems he's back with Trump. | ||
| Yeah, so that's what we're left with right now, to kind of work through that in this state. | ||
| Do you think when he had that moment, I remember when he gave that press conference, it was late, it looked like Trump was gonna win no matter what, but he gave that press conference. | ||
| I read it more as, and I think perhaps the electorate did too, that it was kind of like, ah, you lost this thing, so why would we listen to you? | ||
| Like the whole thing with Trump was about winning. | ||
| So it was like anyone that liked Trump wasn't gonna be like, oh, he is making a couple good points. | ||
| It's like, no, you were the loser. | ||
| They're trotting out the loser. | ||
| We tried it with McCain. | ||
| We tried it with Romney. | ||
| We tried it with more centrist people, even though I actually think Trump is sort of a centrist in his own bizarre way, but that's a whole other topic. | ||
| Like the idea of that just doesn't work anymore. | ||
| It doesn't fly anymore. | ||
| Right, exactly. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| I mean, I look at Romney and I feel like, My biggest concern about a Romney in the Senate is, I think we just need somebody from Utah fighting for Utah. | ||
| And I think he's a national figure. | ||
| And I don't—I mean, if Romney does win the Senate race, people will notice. | ||
| Now, many have said, well, Romney's going to get a chairmanship. | ||
| Is that realistic? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I mean, I can't imagine a Republican senator stepping aside for Romney to come and take—you know. | ||
| Right, and it also gets to the heart of what you think the problem is. | ||
| It's like you're trying to get a guy to get in there for Utah, and it's like, oh, congratulations. | ||
| Yes, it's nice to get those powerful positions, but that's not the position to help your state the most. | ||
| Yeah, so I'm from Utah. | ||
| I know Utah. | ||
| I work in the state. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| I've lived there except for my time in graduate school and my time working on the Hill in the 90s. | ||
| I've lived there my entire life. | ||
| I'm raising two children there. | ||
| Fifth generation Utahan. | ||
| And I recreate there. | ||
| I enjoy it. | ||
| I love the state. | ||
| Do you think that feeling was what caused him not to win the convention ballot? | ||
| Because carpetbagging, it kind of, you know, Hillary was a carpetbagger. | ||
| If we're going to use it, Hillary was a carpetbagger. | ||
| She was from Arkansas. | ||
| You know, when Romney got in, I actually thought Orrin Hatch would run again, because he loves the Senate, and he doesn't know anything else. | ||
| So I thought he might run again. | ||
| And when he didn't, it just didn't make sense to me, knowing Mitt. | ||
| Mitt's at the sunset of his career. | ||
| He's had a very successful career financially, and he's got kids and grandkids. | ||
| I figured, hey, at that point in my life, I'd be like looking to relax a little bit. | ||
| So it didn't seem to make sense. | ||
| And I think people went, I worried a little as a candidate, like, oh my goodness, is Mitt Romney, am I even going to keep the lights on in the campaign headquarters? | ||
| And what I found is that people are asking that question. | ||
| How long has he lived here? | ||
| People are even saying, does he meet residency? | ||
| Which he does. | ||
| He's been in Utah long enough now, again. | ||
| But I do think that there are people wondering, you know, what is, why? | ||
| Why the Mitt Romney candidacy? | ||
| And that may have been part of the reason that this division occurred within the Republican Party. | ||
| Yeah, it's an interesting place as a Democrat because he's so successful as a businessman and generally Democrats want to tax businessmen more, which is something you've already alluded to here, and yet at the same time you're also saying that he ran the Olympic I mean, going back to this tax bill, if we had the one chance at reform, I wanted it done differently. | ||
| By the way, I want to talk some more. I just don't want to give away more. | ||
| I mean, going back to this tax bill, if we had the one chance at reform, I wanted it done differently. | ||
| But I do think that, you know, we'll just see if the public, if Utah aligns with Mitt Romney candidacy. | ||
| I fundamentally believe in balance in my state, and that's what I've been fighting for. | ||
| And I, you know, in my day life as a county elected, I'll work on canyon protection or, you know, advancing a development or protecting our water and our air. | ||
| I'll do all of those things. | ||
| But I fundamentally am really fighting as a Democrat for balance. | ||
| Because I think it's really critical to a less corrupt system, a more even playing field, all voices heard in the system. | ||
| We don't have a lot of women in politics in Utah. | ||
| We don't have a lot of women in politics anywhere, including the U.S. | ||
| Senate. | ||
| So I think getting more diversity, more diverse voices in is really important. | ||
| Those are the things I care quite a bit about, and we'll see if my vision for the state resonates with people versus Romney's. | ||
| So I'm glad you mentioned that, because one of my biggest issues right now with the Democrats and with the left, and especially with the progressives, and my whole audience knows this, because I beat this thing endlessly, is identity politics. | ||
| That you shouldn't be voting for a woman just because she's a woman, you shouldn't be voting for a black person just because they're black, or a white person because they're white, or any of those ridiculous things. | ||
| When you talk about that sort of diversity, I think you sort of said it both ways there, like you want some more women, which in and of itself, of course, is not a bad thing. | ||
| But what I think always gets lost in that is diversity of thought. | ||
| And that's what I'm more concerned about. | ||
| And I don't see anyone talking about that on the left anymore. | ||
| Well, and I don't know that put Jenny Wilson, Democrat, in a county council seat, take my colleague Jim Bradley. | ||
| I don't know that Jim's better as an elected than I. I wouldn't say he or I are better because of our gender. | ||
| I would only judge you on your ideas. | ||
| I mean, that's the point. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I do think what is preventing, when women make up 50% of the population, women from being in the pipeline. | ||
| That's what we have to get at. | ||
| We have to figure out why we don't have that. | ||
| I mean, because ideally, in a given body, we would see 50/50. | ||
| Now, we are seeing a lot more women step up in this era, and we saw it in Utah. | ||
| And they weren't all progressive. | ||
| We have a new mayor, a female, of Provo, Utah, which is the heart of a very, very conservative | ||
| area, the home of Brigham Young University. | ||
| We have a woman in a small town not far from Salt Lake City, where I'm from, Tooele, Utah. | ||
| And I think that's great, but you hadn't seen that as often in the state of Utah, which is mainly Caucasian, Caucasian men, typically over 60, right? | ||
| So I think that the voice of our community is beyond that one segment. | ||
| So that's where I want to see people say, hey, what is it that would get me to step up, to be considered within the system? | ||
| Do you think some of that is not just that it's old, crusty white men doing it? | ||
| I just think it's sort of too easy to lay it on that, that perhaps also that women are interested in other things at some level. | ||
| The idea that we'd ever get it to 50-50, or that it should be 50-50, that seems like very strange engineering of things. | ||
| These women are qualified and have the right ideas and all that, and it ends up being 70% women and 30% men. | ||
| I think that's, I don't, I just don't care what it is other than the ideas, but there's something that when people talk about, well, we should, you know, it's like, we should have this represent, if they represent this amount of the population, if you're talking about an ethnicity, they should have this amount of representation in politics. | ||
| That seems incredibly dangerous and actually prejudiced to me. | ||
| Well, I just think that you have to look at barriers for participation. | ||
| I mean, the good news is we're seeing a lot of women graduate from college now for the first time, so maybe that will change over time, right? | ||
| But I do think there's something to be said for reform and change. | ||
| I think maybe we just disagree on this point, but I'd love to see more people reflecting the percentages of our community serving in government because I think we then end up having more, you know, voices for people who have lived a certain way or have some understanding of, you know, individual or kind of collective need within a given community. | ||
| Yeah, so that part I think we probably have to agree to disagree on, on the sort of collective need. | ||
| Yeah, but I will say, like, I want it to be very clear that I don't, not every woman in the state of Utah needs to want to run for the U.S. | ||
| Senate, for goodness sakes, right? | ||
| I value women who choose to raise their children at home and have that option within their family. | ||
| And that, you know, I, my kids kind of tease me because I'm a sort of half a cook, I'm not a very good cook, and I look at these women who, like, are making like their home and their environment for their | ||
| family just incredibly rich and interesting through the commitment they make in that way. | ||
| And I don't for a minute take anything away from that because I'm taking a different path. | ||
| And I try my best. | ||
| I haven't abandoned my children by any means. | ||
| But I'm raising them differently. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're not starving on the streets. | |
| They got blankets. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| I mean, I understand that for sure. | ||
| I mean, my mom, I have two siblings, so we have three kids in my family. | ||
| My parents are married over 40 years. | ||
| My mom worked before she had kids, but then in all of our formative years, she didn't. | ||
| And my dad was this old breadwinner. | ||
| But then after my sister, who's the youngest, got to a certain age, my mom went back to work. | ||
| I look back on those Years of my mom being around, and we always had dinner at six o'clock and all that stuff. | ||
| I look at that as great, and yet there's a certain segment of society that kind of looks down on that, and I think that's so depressing. | ||
| Yeah, and I don't. | ||
| I think it's impressive and wonderful. | ||
| But I think that the point is that every child, he or she, should grow up being whatever they want to be. | ||
| right to the American dream. | ||
| And if the American dream is staying home and raising your kids and you're able to do | ||
| that financially, then that's amazing. | ||
| If it's like me, you know, I want to make a difference in politics. | ||
| I've had that advantage in my life to be given a platform to get there. | ||
| And I think that's great. | ||
| So I would hope that for a young woman who is high school or getting into college who | ||
| aspires to do that, that there won't be barriers in her way, that she will be able to sit here | ||
|
unidentified
|
with you in a few years. | |
| You'll be able to say, I remember that Jenny Wilson. | ||
| She was rooting for you. | ||
| Get cracking. | ||
| I mean, that's what it's all about. | ||
| And believe me, equality of opportunity, that everyone has the exact same opportunities. | ||
| I am completely on board with you. | ||
| Anything else we should know about Utah? | ||
| We briefly talked about just the sort of demographics of Utah a little bit. - We have to come visit. | ||
| I know, I've never been to Utah, it's ridiculous. | ||
| I can't believe that. | ||
| Like most people that I meet have been there. | ||
| I'm not a good skier. | ||
| Did it a couple times. - So you don't have to ski. | ||
| We have five national parks. | ||
| You can access our national parks through Vegas or Arizona or Salt Lake City, four or five hour drive south. | ||
| We have amazing national parks. | ||
| We have an agricultural area north up by the Idaho border, which is pretty amazing. | ||
| A lot of somewhat barren land around the Great Salt Lake area. | ||
| You need to fly over the lake 'cause it's like, you think you're on Mars and there's some water. | ||
| It looks very, very different, the landscape. | ||
| Yeah, cool. | ||
| Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you. | ||
| I wish you luck. | ||
| As we said, you've got an uphill battle here in a state that is not the color that you are, because everyone's obsessed with this silly blue and red stuff. | ||
| Yeah, well, I'm the upset of 2018, so I'll be back on as a U.S. | ||
| Senator. | ||
| That's what I'm talking about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah? |
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