Evan Meyer welcomes California State Senator, Ben Allen on this episode of Meyerside Chats. Interested in any of the civic topics below? Please tune in to Meyerside Chats on the Santa Monica Daily Press.
California State Senator Ben Allen was elected in 2014 (and reelected in 2018) to represent the 26th Senate District covering the Westside, Hollywood, and coastal South Bay communities of Los Angeles County. Ben chairs the Senate’s Environmental Quality Committee and co-chairs the Legislature’s Environmental Caucus, is a member of the Legislative Jewish Caucus, chairs the Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Arts, and the Senate Select Committee on Aerospace and Defense. He previously served as Chair of the Education Committee (2017-2019) and Chair of the Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee (2015-2016).
Meyerside Chats seeks to eliminate the “us and them” narrative and toxic polarization by praising those who lead by example, virtuous community leadership, and authentic conversation. The intent is to showcase the humanity in those that take on the often thankless jobs of public service through civil discourse, and honoring differing points of view.
Summary
– Ben’s lovely Beard. 0:00
– New SB54 plastics policy signed by Newsom, authored by Ben. 3:00
– Very little press attention, yet so much power at the state level 6:00
– State-level vs federal-level news 10:00
– The conflict of private companies distributing public information. 11:30
– Lots of ways to engage in the system and have your voice heard. 13:30
– Pushing social media companies to better their algorithms. 14:30
– What is a fact? 15:30
– Social Dilemma / BraverAngels.org 17:30
– Bond agencies charge communities higher interest rates to cities without local press. 20:00
– The public confusion around the process of writing policy. 25:00
– Policies are almost always a product of compromise. 28:00
– Policies evoke infinite possibilities of outcomes that need to be considered while the actual vote for the policy is binary 32:30
– Where Ben gets his news from. 35:30
– What overhauling changes need to be made in government in order to rebuild trust with its people. 39:00
– The important, yet “pernicious force” of money in politics. 43:00
– What power should be granted to the State versus Federal government? 50:00
– The issue of equal representation in the senate. 57:30
– People power, Georgia, and the 2020 elections. 58:30
– Urban vs Rural politics. 1:04:00
– Ben’s final words 1:08:00
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Listen to the podcast here
Meyerside Chats: Evan Meyer & California Senator, Ben Allen
It’s great to have you here. I’m excited to get into some fun topics. As I always like to say, the purpose of this is to help people think about difficult conversations in a civil way. In that regard, have meta politics conversations about how to destroy this us and them mentality, which is the toxic polarity that exists at all the levels of politics, and think about what’s needed to make it a better space for people.
I’m looking forward to it. We have so much more in common than we have in terms of difference. Yet, that doesn’t seem to be what people focus on. I love the basic premise of your show. We’re trying to have conversations so we can get to know each other better, build more dialogue, and also build more opportunities for people to feel like they can access their government and engage with their government.
[bctt tweet=”People have so much more in common than they have. And yet that doesn’t seem to be what they focus on.” username=””]
Thank you. I should first congratulate you on a pretty big accomplishment. It took some years, but a new bill has been passed.
It is very exciting. This is our SB 54, a sweeping plastics pollution bill that we got through the legislature after four years of work. We had lots of ups and downs. We thought this whole thing was dead, but we finally got it across the finish line. It was the product of many months of intense negotiation between businesses and the environmental community. We ultimately got it passed with bipartisan support. As a result, the plastics measure that had qualified for the ballot is going to be off the ballot. We have a strong nation-leading policy that will give the producers who have the most control over the plastic that gets out there more responsibility associated with the end use of their products.
It’s an extended producer responsibility system. It’s an example of what you were talking about earlier. Here we are in this polarized moment, and yet, we were able, here in California, to bring together business leaders, environmental leaders, environmental justice folks, and folks from across the business spectrum, too. They’re from the haulers to retailers, grocers, distributors, everybody in between producers, and then the government as well. We were able to come up with a solution that ultimately won support from both Democrats and Republicans. I was so proud of that.
Unanimously?
It wasn’t unanimous. There were still some folks who did not support it, but nevertheless, we had strong bipartisan support in both houses.
That’s a good example of the ability to do exactly what we’re talking about, which is to create the kind of consensus.
It doesn’t happen as often as it should, especially not on big things. It’s hard. It was interesting. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association came out against it because there’s a fee mechanism associated with it. One of the arguments we made all the time and resonated with other taxpayer groups was that the status quo is more costly for regular folks.
The league of cities came out with the studies saying that they’re going to have to jack up everybody’s waste hauler rates. Those are the rates that you pay for your trash pickup. That’s coming out of people’s pockets partly because we have so little coherence in our waste system. All this junk keeps flooding. There’s no mechanism for accountability or any responsibility on the part of the producers. Creating more coherence will lead to lower rates in the long run or at least stem the ever-increasing rates. That has to be factored in as well when people are thinking about the front-end costs that might be initially put on some of the new products that are going to be out there as a result of this bill.
As a result, CalTax Association, for example, stated they didn’t come out of line in opposition. They’re a really important taxpayer organization. They realized that there was a lot of wisdom to what we were trying to do, but because Howard Jarvis came out against it, a lot of Republicans got nervous. It’s hard to break with them when you’re on that side of the aisle. Some very bold folks saw the value of what we were doing. They saw the fact that the chamber of commerce was asking for folks to support it. The agricultural community saw that it was a grand compromise and saw the wisdom of what we’d done. They voted for it.
This goes into this interesting concept of, when you’re a senator or you’re at any level of politics, there are certain ways that things work that you don’t know unless you’re a senator. There’s no way for people to understand what the day-to-day looks like for you.
That’s true. Especially in state government, there’s so little media attention. There’s so much media attention on the federal. People care a lot about the local because it’s so close to them, but the state has a lot of power. A lot of interesting things are happening there. Yet, it’s amazing how little scrutiny and how little press attention is up there.
It doesn’t glitter like federal politics for some reason. I don’t know why.
Especially given how polarized Washington is, there is so much more interesting work happening at the state level. Yet, there’s a fraction of the correspondence. You think about the fact that we live in a state of 40 million people. A few years back, I was in New Zealand. New Zealand probably has 5 million people. I went to Australia afterward. They have 26 million people. Both of them are significantly less than what we have. In fact, our economy’s far bigger than both. Yet, in both countries, you have several major different news channels, lots of major national newspapers, and all of this attention on their own national politics. Yet, in Sacramento, we’re down to fourteen full-time correspondences there from the media. It used to be about 50 back in the day. It’s extraordinary.
Why do you think this is?
It’s cheaper and easier to have all the news focused on Washington as opposed to having to set up shop in 50 different states. I would argue that you could set up shop in Sacramento and cover California. There would be a lot of interest
It is the fifth biggest economy in the world.
We have 40 million people. We have so many people here. There are so many big markets. If you think about San Diego, it’s the third largest city in the state. It would be the most important city in most other states on its own. Sacramento as well is a massive city, but nobody thinks of it as an important city compared to San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Even within San Francisco and Los Angeles, you’ve got Orange County, Inland Empire, South Bay, and East Bay up in Marin. There are these enormous megaliths of power, motion, and innovation that are happening up and down our state. It’s an issue of these national cable news channels that have honed a certain model. Much of it’s based on trying to stoke preexisting biases and feelings.
It’s contentiousness, engagement, and whatever clickbait you can throw out there to get people to watch it.
They’ve got that model. They’re working on it. They’re doubling down on it. It works for them. It’s cheap because you can run the same stories with the Senate nationwide as opposed to having a standalone news channel for all these different states.
You’re saying it’s cheap. The diametric opposite would be it’s not profitable.
Cable news has been profitable.
At the state level?
At the national level.
Is it both cheap and not profitable to do that because it doesn’t get the kind of attention you think or is it because it’s less expensive?
The last thing I want is for us to recreate a Fox News for California, like a Fox News and MSNBC battle. I don’t think that would be helpful. I would want more of a thoughtful PBS, but then again, that’s not what makes the money. Maybe I need to be careful about what I wish for. I look at other countries. I mentioned Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Canada. These are all countries from the British tradition where they have, for quite some time, had BBC. It is a publicly-funded, well-resourced, and very well-respected public broadcasting system, which we have, too, with PBS, but it’s nowhere near as robust and as well-funded. It’s nowhere near as central to the culture as it exists in these Commonwealth countries that I mentioned.
The BBC and their equivalents, CBC and ABC, in these different countries raise the bar. It creates a standard for quality of television, engagement, and discussion that forces all the channels up a little bit, even the private channels. There’s a higher level of discourse in discussion when they talk about politics. I’m not saying that there are no problems in these countries, but if you go to them, watch their news, and watch how they talk about their politics, there’s more substance than when you turn on our cable news. In our cable news, they’ll parse apart the latest Trump tweet for an hour and blab about it.
It’s just based on clicks. It’s hard because if you look at how they’re funded, a lot of them are strictly funded on advertising dollars. You could say, “Who’s funding them?” You can get down this rabbit hole of your bottom line. Your funders are the most important parts of any business. If that’s the case, where do we draw the line between what’s allowed there to give people the right information and not have biased information? It seems that’s the most popular thing people make their public decisions on. It’s based on private news. It’s weird, right?
That’s true.
A public and private conversation there can go in a lot of ways.
It’s a problem. It’s one of the many things we got to work on. It’s part of what you’re combating here at the local level.
There is a lot of mal information, biased information, uneducated information, or AI out there.
You’re right. We got onto this tangent because you talked about how you can’t expect the average person to understand all that goes behind the scenes when it comes to legislation. What I would say is it’s up to us who are in politics, our staff, the reporters, and all of us that are in this world to try to work more, reach out to constituents, reach out to the public, explain what we’re doing, and bring people in.
On the reverse, this system is a lot more accessible than you think. A lot of people look at the news and it looks very far away. It looks like something that they can’t influence. It’s off in the distance. Yet, every elected official and their staffs are from a community. They come from a place. I grew up here in Santa Monica and served on the school board here. I’m raising my son here. I’m a member of this community. All my staff are members of this community.
There are lots of ways to get to know an elected official staff. Local elected officials serve on a commission, get involved with a campaign, and show up at meetings. Join a Democratic club or Republican club, or whatever it is. There are all sorts of different ways to engage in the system if you want to. It’s there. It’s accessible, much more than people realize.
That requires effort. What doesn’t require effort is reading something you disagree with and then retweeting it or re-sharing it and going, “This sucks.” It’s an outrage. That doesn’t require effort. You get into the pool of nonsense. It takes work. You have to make a commitment and show up.
It’s algorithmic rabbit holes.
That is unfair. It’s one of the things I’ve thought about, even for social media companies. They should bias good things. If you’re that powerful, you should have an algorithm that says, “This is wonderful news. It’s pure goodness. It helps humanity.” We have a little part of the algorithm that puts that up to the top, not just things that people click on. This is part of that, public and private. It’s like private business influencing the public sphere.
You’re right. We’ve got appropriately strong rules protecting freedom of speech and all the rest. We need to figure out a way to push social media companies to steer away from misinformation at the very least. The opinion is important, but misinformation and the constant negativity that seems to dominate a lot of people’s feeds are not helpful.
[bctt tweet=”Having an opinion is important but misinformation and constant negativity are just not helpful.” username=””]
It’s vitriol. Let me ask you this. I was going to ask you what misinformation is, but I like asking this better. What is a fact?
It is something that is grounded in truth. Ideally, it’s something that is evidence-based, demonstrable, and provable. I know there are some facts that are harder to prove than others. It’s a statement that is grounded in truth and that is provable.
It can’t be misinterpreted.
Lots of facts are misinterpreted.
I don’t think people have the same definition of a fact, which is why I ask it. You ask one person the definition and then you ask someone else, and their experience of that is different. You say, “What are the things you read?” Are you basing your anger on your definition of what a fact is? That’s a pretty pure definition of a fact.
When you read certain news and you get outraged, are you looking to make sure that what you’re getting outraged on are actual facts that are in line with your definition of a fact, or are you getting the emotional portion of it? You’re then sharing it with 1 million people. You’re quick to confirm your own biases by calling up your best friend, who believes exactly like you do and go, “Can you believe this is going on? This is crazy.”
You’re right. It’s usually the latter. The social media bias is doubling down on that approach. What’s that great film or documentary?
The Social Dilemma.
He does a great job of spelling all that out.
He was on Joe Rogan, too. They speak at length about it. It is interesting. That’s how I found out about the one he did with Daniel Schmachtenberger. They mentioned BraverAngels, who I met with. I heard them and I went and reached out to them. I was like, “This is a great mission.”
We need more of that.
They’re bridging their goals to bridge red and blue through civil discussion. That is the purpose of this, too. It’s to understand that our values and aspirations are largely the same, but our approach and the narratives we read turn us into enemies. The media turns us into enemies, unfortunately, in a lot of ways.
It’s as a business model sometimes. That’s what gets people agitated and excited. Let’s be fair. There are also a lot of great, objective, hardworking, and balanced journalists out there that are struggling in this environment where their entire profession has been attacked. They’re trying to keep their head down and keep reporting the facts as so many have before. Yet, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for them.
It’s sad.
I subscribed to a couple of print newspapers. I encourage other people to do the same. We have amazing 3 or 4 print news for Santa Monica alone. We need to keep supporting local and national press. Consider the damage that is done when we don’t step up and help to fund good, high-quality media together. I’ll give you one little example. It’s interesting. I heard not too long ago a study was done that showed that in those communities that don’t have a local newspaper, the bond agencies charge those communities a higher interest rate to borrow for municipal bonds, school bonds, water bonds, and all that kind of thing.
They give you a slightly higher interest rate because they’re taking on a higher risk. When there’s a strong local press, the city council members, city government, and school district knows that there’s someone watching over them. There’s more transparency. There’s more scrutiny. There’s more attention to detail and less likelihood for there to be a mistake or fraud. Isn’t that interesting? We pay a cost as a society when we don’t have a strong press.
[bctt tweet=”We actually pay a cost as a society when we don’t have a strong press.” username=””]
That’s super interesting. That’s wild. That goes into the idea that even on this last ballot, people call you and they’re like, “Who should I vote for?” It’s like, “If I tell you who to vote for, you’re not being a real citizen here. I can tell you who to vote for. I’m happy to do that. I’d love to see the people that I like win, but you’re not participating in the democracy.” Part of your job as a citizen is to understand how things like that work. What percentage of the population do you think understands how state bonds work?
Not super high. I agree with you on one hand, but I want to push back a little bit on the other. I don’t know a lot about the types of surgery. I trust and respect people to go to school and learn a lot about that subject matter. I’m going to go into the hospital when I need it or when my family needs it and trust them to do the right thing while also trusting, but verifying. I’m making sure that I’m learning as much as I possibly can. I don’t think we should expect everybody and their mother to get into the details of bond financing, but I think it’s part of why we need good journalists who understand bond financing and can ask the tough questions. We also need smart, wise elected officials and government bureaucrats stepping up to play those roles as well.
When people ask you who they ought to vote for, I’d rather them do the research on their own, but if you think about it, what are they doing? They’re going to go online and read a couple of the Daily Press endorsements or the LA Times endorsements. In some respects, they’re turning to you because they know and respect you. They know that you follow this stuff. They know you know people and you’ve got better access to the system that they don’t have. They trust your opinion.
I would take it as a sign of respect to you that they’re asking you this and they do want to participate. I’m sure that if you were to give them twenty of your votes, they’re not going to vote with you twenty times. They might vote with you 15 times or maybe even 19 times. These are independent people making their own decisions, but they do take you into account. You’re going to be a factor in helping them determine their decisions as endorsements are a factor or as mailers are a factor.
We can’t possibly know everything there is to know about every race. I know a lot more about the system maybe than most, and yet, there are some times when I’m torn. Two judges, for example, are running. I’d be like, “I don’t know these people.” I can read a certain amount about their judicial philosophy, but there’s only so much I’m going to do to research. I end up relying on proxies as well to help me better determine who I’m going to vote for as well.
This may be something that is somewhat asymptotic to be able to solve. You’ll never get to a place where there’s a pure amount of knowledge transfer.
That’s my point at the end of the day.
That’s impossible.
The flip side of the coin is much more dangerous than what you described, which is to say only people who are fully informed end up participating. As a result, you end up getting a very small portion of the population and then the decision-making ends up focusing on the elite.
It could also be the most educated.
It could also be the most fired up. This is one of the problems in the primary system in a lot of ways.
That’s number one. It’s the squeaky wheel.
These members of congress that are seeing all this crazy stuff, when you understand who it is that they owe their elections to, you start to understand why it is that they’re so wild. It’s because they’re focused on the partisan primary voters in their gerrymandered districts back home. They may be a very small portion of the population, but they’re super fired up. As a result, they’re incentivized to go off the deep end with their messaging and their positions because of that small portion.
In that portion, sadly, what most people think is the reality is that extreme messaging. This gets to that point that we’ve talked about before. You have a policy. Let’s say it’s about climate whatever. If you vote a certain way on this policy, Ben Allen supports this policy or Ben Allen voted against this policy. The people going against you who want you to lose would say, “I can’t believe he voted against this policy,” and you didn’t necessarily for what I’m talking about. You don’t realize how much is behind that you’re voting against. It’s all the other stuff.
I run into this problem a lot because the process of crafting bills is messy. Think about the conversation you’ve had with your wife. Maybe you’re trying to make a decision about where to have your kid go to school or you want to remodel the house. It’s oftentimes a long negotiation. You have many conversations. The legislative process involves votes along the way, and each vote is part of that negotiation. It doesn’t mean that you disagreed going with this contractor that you don’t want to do a remodel. That particular contract may not have been the one that you thought was wise. You were interested in a slightly different approach. Yet, the vote that’s on the record is you voting against that contractor, that particular bill, and that particular form.
That is one of the many challenges of serving in this position. You have to cast a yes or no vote on these bills. Sometimes, you may love the idea or the core thrust of a bill, but there may be a lot of details in there that give you pause. If you vote for that bill without asking any questions or any caveats, you are, for better or for worse, rubber stamping what’s in the bill. What ends up happening is that people say, “I’ll vote for this to continue the conversation, but I reserve the right to not vote for it later.” That’s confusing to people and, sometimes, to the general public.
Within our system, it’s important. What ends up happening sometimes is when things get toward the end of a vote where this bill is either going to go into law or not or it’s going to go to the governor’s desk or not, you have to make a decision, ultimately. You’re like, “I believe in 60% of what’s in this bill, but I am having a hard time swallowing the 30%. Am I going to take the decision to vote for it anyway?” That becomes a tough thing. It can be so easily characterized out in public when people don’t understand all that went behind it.
Ben Allen is responsible for this one aspect of a thing and then they’ll focus on the aspect of the bill.
They’ll focus on the part of the bill that everyone can agree with. They’re like, “He voted against X, Y, and Z.” I had no problem with X, Y, and Z. In fact, I like X, Y, and Z. The problem was J, K, and L, which were also stuck in the bill.
The bill doesn’t read well with J, K, and L. The bill says climate bill. Whether you vote for or against it, one of the things that many people don’t know is the process and what’s behind it.
Every bill is ultimately a product of compromise. I brought it up with the plastics bill I worked on. In order to pull together all those people, everybody had to make a certain compromise. There are a lot of people in business who think the bill will go way too far. Certain people in the environmental community think that bill doesn’t go far enough. There were people who were complaining on both sides right up to the end, raising concerns like, “I wish you’d done this. I wish you’d done that instead.” At the end of the day, you could parse these things apart until the cows come home and then never do anything. At the end of the day, you also have to pull together enough of a coalition that is broad-based to get bills across the finish line.
[bctt tweet=”Every bill ultimately is a product of compromise.” username=””]
Mike Feinstein wrote an interesting piece to certain Greens, for example. They are hardcore environmentalists who I tend to agree with on a lot of environmental issues. They were complaining about the bill not being as strong as they would’ve liked to have seen. Mike makes the point, “It’s either this or nothing at all. There was a ballot measure out there. For a lot of reasons I can’t get into, we thought that at the end of the day after the opposition was going to spend $150 million kicking the crap out of the ballot measure, the polling data that I saw suggested it was going to eventually lose.” Having a strong bill that goes 90% of the way is still such a win, yet some people out there focus on the fact that it didn’t get you to 100%. That’s the challenge of the job too.
You need the activation energy to get you to say the 80% mark. You say, “Was this good? Is this good enough to get us there so we can make refinements over time?” That’s with any decision you have to make in business or even starting a company. We call it an MVP.
The negotiations are fascinating. When we came out with our bill, after all these negotiations, I would argue that we got to 90% of the way. Some environmentalists held out and arguably pushed us to 95%. Good for them. I was so worried the whole thing was going to collapse as a result, but they held out. Ultimately, we finessed the language and got to a point where it got even stronger than it was. That was fantastic too. You never quite know. These negotiations are so delicate. When you got so many people riding on that surfboard together, any little change could offset the balance.
One of the things I’ve thought about also at the local level is whenever there’s this polarity on a certain issue. Maybe it’s a development. Maybe it’s something here in Santa Monica. They commonly become pretty toxic sometimes, and that’s pretty frustrating. At the end of the day, there’s a matrix of possibilities and decisions. You say, “These are the things that we’re approving and this is the possible outcomes.”
There’s a cost-benefit to any decision that you have to weigh out. You could put that into a table and say, “Here are the 100 things we’ve considered. We agree with 88% of them. 12% of them are not good,” but then, you have to make the decision. You’re like, “Is it better? I have to make a vote.” That doesn’t mean I agree with it 100%. It means that I agree with enough of it that it’s the right decision. Not that every single aspect of this is perfect. You’ll get that 12% of people who then hate you for it.
This comes down to both relationships and spidey sense. Sometimes, you’re in that situation, the 88:12, and you can say, “This is a good project. Let’s weigh within a couple of minutes the proponents on the 12% and see how many of those we can cut down. Are these things that you and I may hate essentially for the proponent or are they things that we could finesse, reduce, change, or alter to make less odious?” That needs to be part of the story too. You’re not just accepting things at face value where you’re having to swallow a pill in order to get all these positives. Is there a way to avoid swallowing the pill while still getting the positives? Sometimes, the answer is no, but that’s part of where really good negotiations come in.
It could also be, at least, in the time allotted. This comes down to if people don’t read the contract or people don’t know what that decision-making process is. Maybe there’s an opportunity for transparency there in some way, like, “We evaluated all these things. We’re people. We had to make a decision.” I had to pick yes or no. The choice is binary. The list of the matrix of what this is and how it affects things is virtually infinite. We’ve been able to identify 100 scenarios in this matrix, but I have to make a yes or no choice.
That’s right.
That’s tricky.
It’s part of what makes being in these positions difficult. I’ve had to make thousands. It’s scary for me because I pride myself on being someone who tries to take my job seriously and is thoughtful, well-researched, and well-grounded in the decisions that I make. I’ve cast thousands of votes since I’ve been in the Senate. I can’t look you in the eye and say that every single vote was as well-informed as I would’ve liked. That does become scary for me.
I rely on organizations that I trust. I rely on colleagues who I trust. I rely on my staff. I try to read as much as I possibly can. I rely on journalism. That’s another part of the story. It’s part of why we need a robust civil society and a robust journalism class that’s always asking tough questions and making sure that stones are being overturned. The decision-makers are being asked to make a lot of decisions that are never going to be as well-informed as they would ideally be.
Thousands of times, you’ve been through that struggle.
You get hardened a little bit through that process. Over time, you start to understand, “Which of my colleagues can I trust? Which of them have delivered in the past?” If they tell you, “This is a good bill. I’m going to address this, this, and this,” you know that they’re telling you the truth, some much more than others. It’s similar to organizations. There are some organizations out there whose perspectives not only do I agree with, but I trust them. They’ve got good lawyers and good vetting. If they sign off on a proposal, I’m much more comfortable signing off on it as well.
That’s also why we all have staff. We got staff who has distinct portfolios. I got a staff that will work on a whole bunch of different issue areas. They’ll come to me with recommendations and suggestions. I’ll sometimes wrap back and forth with them and ask them questions. We’ll talk and go back and forth over the decisions that I have to make.
The information that gets presented to you and comes in must be a wealth of information from a variety of things. I was going to ask, “Where do you get your news from?”
I’m old-school. I love print news. My colleagues tease me because I love taking pictures of articles and sending them to them. Everyone gets their news from their phones, but I find it a dissatisfying experience. I don’t mind flipping through an article on my phone from time to time. I do, all the time, but then someone pings you halfway through the article. The next thing you know, you’re down some rabbit hole responding to a text, or an email comes in, or there’s a lot of clickbait.
I love having my newspaper, putting my phone aside, and focusing on my paper. When I’m down here, I got the LA Times. When I’m up there, I got the Sacramento Bee. I love reading the Daily Press as well when I go off for a walk or take my kid to school. I’ll pick up a copy of the local press and SMDP. We can also get the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle up in the capital. I love reading the print stuff. With that being said, there is some great journalism online, too. Politico is fantastic. CalMatters is great. Those are two top-notch pieces of journalism that you typically can’t get in print.
I love NPR. I love PBS. I love the Sunday morning news shows like NBC and Meet the Press. I do try to keep my cable news intake. I watch CNN from time to time. One of the other things I like about PBS NewsHour, for example, is it’s a distinct presentation of the news that’s curated. They’re not making it up on the fly, trying to fill the time, which you find a lot on cable a lot. It’s similar to print articles. When they’re well-written, you get all sides covered and it’s presented in a very receivable format.
It’s hard to find. We’ve talked a bit about the information and being able to determine what misinformation is, what’s real, and what’s not real in this day and age. It’s tricky to remove bias and make a very well-informed decision. This is one of the improvements that we can make. In general, when you look at the distance between government and its people, whatever that distance is in your mind, the connection that needs to be made to rebuild trust and to make it feel like, “Things are working well,” maybe that’s never entirely achievable.
It’s tricky being involved in government. What do you see that the opportunities for improvement are for reform? Some of the top things to say are, “These overhaul hauling changes need to be made so that we can get to a place where people are trusting and the people they are electing are there for them.” On top of that, one of the awards I know you won was a clean money award.
Let’s talk about some of the stuff we’ve been talking about. Robust journalism is having good quality oversight from the Fourth Estate. Those are from journalists or from the press. They’re making sure that people are being asked tough questions and that there’s scrutiny. There’s also a better and higher quality flow of information between the public, decision-makers, and everywhere in between.
With money, you raised the point. It’s got a pernicious role in the process, particularly when there isn’t enough scrutiny and enough attention being paid. Campaigns are increasingly expensive. It’s interesting. Some people think, “Why do you keep raising money once you’ve won?” You got to run for reelection, but it’s much easier to run for reelection than when you first run.
Our party leadership and legislative leadership ask us for very substantial contributions every year. That’s done to help the broader cause. That money is then used to help fund other campaigns around the state. It’s important to give because it plays a role in your PO, the elected official’s position, and what sort of staff, offices, chairmanships, and committee postings you get. I don’t mean to say that is quite as quid pro quo as it may initially seem, but there is a certain seemliness to it that bothers me, and I have to live in that space.
It’s part of why I’ve been working so hard for many years on clean money issues. Common Cause, League of Women Voters, and California Clean Money Campaign work on transparency. They work on trying to get more control over the money that’s in the system and more focus on the corrupting influence of a lot of special interest money that floods the system. It’s a real problem. I worked closely with those guys. In fact, I’m proud that California Clean Money Campaign ranks the legislators every two years. I’ve been number one in the legislature on their issues since I started because I feel so strongly about this particular issue. Money is a pernicious force in the system.
We need to keep moving in a clean money campaign finance reform transparency direction. That will also help to rebalance things so that people will feel that ultimately, the decisions that are being made are in their interests as opposed to special interests. I also think we need some electoral reforms. I certainly like the fact that here in California, we’ve been working hard to make it easier for people to participate in a safe and fair, but also transparent way. Instead of making it harder for people to register, vote, and participate in the process, we’ve been making it easier while still having strong anti-fraud protections. Looking at things like some of the structural issues that we have nationally, the partisan primary has caused problems that gerrymandering has a whole set of issues.
I want to see some more publicly-funded or foundation-funded independent news that people can draw upon. I would also say we need robust participation. I ask your audience to be active citizens. Be engaged. It takes a little bit more work to show up at an organizational event, meet an elected official, or voice your opinions about something than it does to retweet something, but it’s worth it.
Everything that we’ve come to love about America, like our ability to live in freedom, express our opinions, live in safety, and have all of this infrastructure where we can live our lives from parks and transportation, to schools, roads, and a cleaner environment, all those things have do not come out of nowhere. They come because we’ve had an engaged citizenry every step of the way that has gotten involved, put their muscles to the grindstone, and try to help make our society better.
We’ve made a lot of things better because people stepped up, engaged, and forced the system to change. Look at racial justice issues, for example. Democracy takes constant work. As much as people would love to pretend that they don’t have to do anything and that the system will somehow work itself out, our system requires participation and engagement. I would ask people not to be afraid of the system. Don’t be so cynical that you don’t get involved. If you think the system sucks, come in and vote for some radicals. Try to push your own perspective. That’s part of the conversation too.
Do you know Plato’s quote?
Which one?
It’s something along the lines of, “Those who think they’re too smart to get involved in politics will find themselves governed by those dumber than them.” I love that.
I remember that quote. There is another one that says if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.
In Hamilton, they had an interesting line. There is an element of if you want to be part of the conversation, then you have to step into the room where the conversations happen and all politics is local. In how I’ve seen it and how I’ve gotten involved, you can go and make a change in your local community. Your voice is heard. Your vote counts one to one. There’s no Electoral College. It’s very easy and super accessible. It almost should be part of the school where you have to go participate in one thing you care about at a public service level as part of the curriculum in an emotional IQ class.
Don’t be afraid of getting involved. It’s interesting. It’s meaningful. Getting involved doesn’t mean you’re on the plane with a president prepping him for speeches. You can do it by getting involved in a neighborhood council, getting involved with a neighborhood organization, stepping up, serving on your kid’s school PTA, getting onto a commission, joining a local political club, going to hear a talk, and asking an elected official some questions, going and lobbying an elected official staff, or running for office yourself. There are all sorts of different ways to do this.
That’s your example, right?
Yeah.
You felt inspired enough to be where you’re at.
I also was doing a lot of other things too. I didn’t just want to run for office for the sake of it. I got excited and engaged in policy making. When I was in law school, I became a student member of The Board of Regents for the University of California. It was a fascinating experience. I loved that experience so much and felt like I wanted to keep it going. That was not an elected position. It was an appointed position, but it got me in the mindset where I wanted to come home, run, and get engaged here. It’s been a great experience ever since. Certainly, there’s been some ups and downs, but it’s been a meaningful and worthwhile experience for me.
You have a particularly impressive education as well.
I went to Santa Monica High School.
That was followed by Harvard, Cambridge, and Berkeley.
That’s right, but it was my public SMMUSD education that gave me the preparation for that.
They’re followed by these boards, commissions, and the inspiration to keep going. That’s a mindset of public service, which I know you have because 1) I’ve heard you talk about it before, but 2) I know you as a person. It feels like there’s a little bit of an element of public service that if everyone gets it a little bit, they start to learn how to make the change to give people the space to win sometimes. You can’t win everything. Even when you get involved, to be able to get into that dialogue and see that there are a lot of sides, these things are complex. There’s no right answer most of the time. There’s a learning of how to deal with rejection in a sense of, “I wanted that, but I didn’t get it this time.”
Especially when we’re involved in the business of having to govern for everybody and having to bring together vast groups of people. Everyone thinks about the law or a policy as to how it affects them and the people that are close to them, but there are a lot of other people in our society. We got to be thinking about them too.
State and nationwide?
Global. We’re like, “How do we craft solutions that are in the best interests of everybody?” There are no easy answers at all. Social psychology is such an important part of this.
The Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade is a sensitive issue for lots of people. Where my head goes with this conversation is this is one of many potential issues and past issues as well that we think, “What is this predicated on?” To me, a lot of it seems what power should be given to the federal government and what power should be given to the states. That’s the underlying thing. It’s not always, “Don’t do this thing,” but rather the state should have the power, at least, that’s the narrative.
You could say that about the civil war too. We also know there was a lot more besides federal-state tension.
Let’s stay meta on the conversation of what power should be given to states and what power should be given to the federal government. Where do you draw that line and say, “I get it? That is a state issue.” Is alcohol one of those things? New Orleans figured out how to somehow not have an eighteen-year-old drink.
They finally were forced up to 21 because the federal government said they wouldn’t give them highway funds. While alcohol was technically a state decision, they were forced into it.
No one followed that path?
It’s not national policy.
Roe v. Wade is one end of a very tense conversation. If the alcohol is somewhere in the middle, what do you think?
This is what constitutional scholars have been grappling with for a long time. Ideally, we’d all be able to come together for some basic principles and norms that we can all agree upon as a nation while still allowing for a certain degree of innovation at the state level. People kept talking about states as the incubators of democracy. Brandeis writes about this in one of his decisions a while back. There are all these interesting policy ideas that come from the local level and state levels.
I’m a liberal. I harken back to the old system where the feds were driving a lot and a lot of the states were standing in the way of progress. From my perspective, civil rights is a very clear example. There was a certain consensus. There was an ability in Washington where people could get things done. Things are so broken in Washington. That would argue for more state power.
The flip side is some of the states are going so far off the deep end. As much as I am state-patriotic, a California guy, and love what we’re doing, I will say that not only are there a lot of other states in the wrong direction. I would also say that one of the other problems with the trajectory of our politics is that it used to be that both parties were truly national parties.
The states were nowhere near as locked in terms of the Electoral College. They’d vote for one party in one year, then another party or the other, and flip around. There was a certain degree of regionalism, but not as locked in as we see now. What you’ve seen is partly a result of the polarization and the regional aspect of the polarization. Not only are these states locked in in terms of the Electoral College, but they’ve also become very heavily Democrat or Republican in the state government. That leads to excess, too.
I’m a proud Democrat. I like the Democrat party and want to keep seeing Democrats getting elected. I think the system works better when there is a rational, sane dialogue between the two parties, not only in Washington but also in the state capitals. Partly because of Donald Trump, the Republican party here in California has done so poorly. People don’t want to have anything to do with that brand here. We’ve lost something as a result.
The system works better if you’ve got Democrats and Republicans who can work together in the state capitals. Look at what’s happening in Florida. It can lead a state in a dangerous direction. You’re seeing this in a number of states around the country in ways that are not helpful. I don’t think there’s an easy answer to your question. I wish that we could all see more eye-to-eye so that we could have a stronger federal approach that allows for a certain amount of innovation and flexibility at the state level. It’s good to have a different culture and different vibe.
I don’t think it’s good for our country to have such wildly opposite policies from state to state. With abortion and environmental issues, I don’t think this is a good path for our country. As much as I’m a proud state legislator and want my state to continue to lead, I wish we could find a better consensus nationally. We wouldn’t need to be fighting these battles to protect what we used to think were basic American rights that we’re having to codify here in California.
It’s quite a path we have.
It’s tough with the abortion thing and then this environmental stuff too. This court decided to hobble the federal government’s ability to fight climate change, which is the great existential crisis of our time. As it is, there weren’t enough tools in the toolkit. They took away the most important tool, which is to use the Clean Air Act to give the EPA the power needed to fight climate change. Those were terrible decisions, from my perspective, and they’re setting us back. They’re also going to continue this polarization between the states. You’re going to have California continue to go out and double down, and then other states will double it down in the other direction. It feels like we’re moving in opposite directions, and it’s not healthy.
What is it that people can do who are super supportive of one side or the other that didn’t get their way on Roe v. Wade or anything else that’s important to them? Can they overturn certain policies in their state by getting their ideas on the ballot and getting enough signatures to start doing stuff like that? One of the conversations is that’s not representing the populace. We don’t know that for sure. We don’t know for sure whether that’s true, but I would think it’s true. The polling suggests that it’s true, but in order to make a difference, the polling doesn’t matter. People need to say, “It’s true for us. We’re in the state.”
One of the problems is that we’re constricted by these systems, like the redistricting and the inequities of the Senate. It’s also the fact that the US Senate gives every state the same amount of representation even though Wyoming has half the number of people living in my state senate district. I’m 1 of 40 senators here in California, and yet, my district has double the number of people that live in Wyoming.
Wyoming has the coolest name for a capital.
That’s right. Their biggest city’s Casper, which is such a cool name, too.
That’s a good one, too.
They got good names, but they got way too much representation in the US Senate if you think about it from an equity perspective. I don’t think that’s ever going to get solved, to be honest, at least not in our lifetime. Look what happened in Georgia the last election. Here’s a state that has always been at the heart of the confederacy, pretty behind the times on a lot of racial equity issues, and had elected some people to office that were pretty problematic. Traditionally, they voted for Trump in 2016.
This go-round, people organized. They went out and identified the fact that there are a lot of demographic shifts happening in and around Atlanta. There are a lot more immigrants. Lots of people are coming in from different parts of the country. There is an increasingly empowered Black population that had always been so marginalized. They sensed this and took advantage of the moment. They got behind Stacey Abrams and all of her efforts to organize people.
Not only did Georgia flip the presidential vote, but then turned around in a later election, which is typically a lower turnout election. They voted for two brand new people that flipped the balance of power in the US Senate, which were a young Jewish guy and a Black guy. It was incredible to see what happened in, in, in Georgia. I point to that as an example of how people power, organizing, and coming together aggressively in an organized, tactical manner can make a difference. It’s hard work.
[bctt tweet=”People’s power and coming together tactically and aggressively can really make a difference.” username=””]
They had people waiting in long lines in Fulton County. They got to witness firsthand how much harder it is for a Black person to go cast your ballot in Georgia than it is for people living out in the suburbs where there are tons of polling locations and no lines. That organizing and dog at the determination that went into that work were driven by the people of Georgia. There were also a lot of people who came in from California to help the effort. They came in from all over the place. They helped to fund the effort, organize the effort, and animate the effort. I bring that up to say that there are opportunities out there. There are examples of how, in spite of all the odds, people’s power made a difference. I would argue it helped to save our democracy.
I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, but after what happened on January 6th, 2022, I continue to be so grateful to those organizers in Georgia who tipped the balance there and held firm. I hope people take inspiration from that work and don’t get discouraged by all of the roadblocks and barriers. There are ways to push through. Who would’ve thought that in a changing state, but nevertheless, a state that had never seen this kind of change this could have happened? It was because people came together. Let’s take some inspiration from that.
What I tell people sometimes when they’re passionate about something, I’m like, “There are people who care, and then there are people who care enough to put it into action.” What feels compelling for me to do is to get people motivated at that level where it’s like, “I know you care. You’re in a country that’s built on lots of this wacky and awesome system. We have to help make things happen.”
It’s more wacky than awesome.
The awesomeness is cool that if you believe in something and you care enough about it, you can make things happen. It’s an imperfect democracy, but the whole point of getting involved is to evolve this beautiful system that’s been created for us. There are so many wonderful things that we have that we take for granted and get used to. All you have to do is to travel and see that the lower class of America is still within the top 5% of the world.
That’s all true. Though, if you look at our peer countries, we’re on most factors way behind, but compared to most of the world, you’re right.
Compared to France and Germany?
From the other OECD countries, we have higher infant mortality, lower life expectancy, and much higher obesity rates. It’s much harder if you do grow up in the bottom quintile of our society, or the bottom 20%, to make it up the ladder. It’s much harder here than in other places. We have real disparity problems. We’ve done incredible things as a country, but we’ve got these gaping inadequacies that I hope we can galvanize ourselves to work on.
It’s interesting. From traveling, you realize the government is not its people. I’ve been to Vietnam and Cuba. Depending on who you talk to, both countries have these ways of thinking about it through history. You go there and realize everyone there is the nicest person. They welcome you with open arms. Vietnam has the second largest population, like in Orange County.
Whether you’re in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh, it was so wonderful and welcoming. Some of these people don’t have a lot at all. Their beds are on the floor, they’re living on huts, and they love you. That’s the difference of perspective that traveling gives you. Texas is perceived one way, but all of the big cities voted blue. All four big cities voted blue in the last election, right?
That’s right.
It’s not even a question of government or people. It’s a question of urban versus rural a bit. I wonder how that factors into the way that people perceive even Texas. Texas is an amazing state. Forget about some of the policy stuff. They got wonderful things there. That’s part of the divide that is sometimes unfortunate, too.
That’s right. Our governments and our policies can sometimes divide us more than we would naturally. It’s crazy. You can say the same thing about any war that’s ever been fought. Especially during World War I, there was such great work written about how ridiculous it all was. We were mowing each other down. Yet, there were these moments when the German and French got up and started playing soccer together. They started recognizing their common humanity and how crazy it was that they were blowing each other up every other day of the year. It has become one of the most touching stories of the whole war.
It could also be of almost any war, ever.
They were singing carols across the no man’s land. They had different lyrics because of different languages.
Where was that? Was that in France?
It was on the front.
We can talk for hours. What do you want to leave people with? I’m sure you could tell them 100 things, but pick one that’s been top of mind that you can leave people with here that you feel is important.
It’s a recurring theme in the conversation. First of all, our democracy is so valuable. We take it for granted. We have to engage and keep it strong. That involves everybody’s participation to some extent or another. We can’t have 300 million presidents of the United States, but we do need to have everyone step up, be a citizen or participant, and have a stake in our democracy.
Don’t be intimidated. Figure out a way to connect to our democracy that resonates with you. If that’s through voting, that’s fine. It’s the most important way to participate. If there’s an issue that you care about, get involved with an organization that’s doing good work in advocacy in that space. If you have some extra money lying around, give money to an organization you care about, a candidate you care about, or a campaign you care about. If there’s an interesting talk that’s coming up, go show up. Join a club. If you want to get more involved in your community, there are lots of ways to do it with a commission or neighborhood group. Get involved with the campaign. Run for office yourself.
[bctt tweet=”Figure out a way to connect to the democracy that resonates with you.” username=””]
Also, people running for office need help. It’s never done by the candidate. It’s always done through a team effort. If there’s someone you believe in or a cause you believe in, get involved in that cause or that candidate’s work. The other thing I would say is most elected officials in governments have good staff. Don’t discount working with the staff. Oftentimes, the staff is as much, if not more, engaged on a particular issue that you care about than the elected official. Don’t ever forget that. Sometimes, people are like, “I want a meeting with the Senator,” and yet, sometimes, the staff are in a better place to solve the problem.
Shout out to your staff.
I got a great team here. Any issues that folks have with state government, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our office. We’ve been helping thousands of people over the course of the pandemic. We were at an inventory, and there was an extraordinary number of people whose lives we were able to help by navigating the waters of the pandemic. It was either unemployment, insurance, small business loans, or dealing with an issue with the DMV.
With the number of issues that people have had to deal with over the past couple of years, we know how tough it has been for folks. We’re always trying to help. If we can’t solve the problem because it’s a federal issue or a local issue, we can always find a way to help connect people with the relevant and appropriate person. Don’t hesitate to reach out.
It’s appropriate to assume the worst about some people, but do a little bit of research first. Try to get your research from different sources and not just the same sources. Don’t believe everything that pops up on your Facebook feed. You owe it to yourself and you certainly owe it to your fellow Americans to go beyond the Facebook feed or your Twitter feed. You need to do a little bit more of a deep dive before forming a vitriolic opinion about someone and spouting it out to everybody else.
I’m sure if people read this, they’ll see that, for example, Ben is a person with feelings, thoughts, and opinions, and there are people behind in that position that are people. We’re all people.
We all make mistakes. At least, most elected officials care about what people think because we owe our elections and our jobs to our constituents. We’re anxious and eager to hear from folks, too.
There are a few friends who wanted to say hi. They couldn’t be here at this moment, but they’re Lana Nagrete, Greg Morena, and Don Bay, who you know. They’re sending their love.
You were mentioning Kristin McCowan, too. There’s an example. We were talking earlier. Here we have four people who are once former council members or elected officials. We were all in student government together at Santa Monica High School in the ‘90s. I remember us all going to the lobby for an additional minute of the passing period because people were getting in trouble for being one minute late to class. It’s little things like that.
That seems like a silly thing, but that’s a tangible way to help the student community. We were all working together on that. We’re all trying to help make our community and our state better. That is an example of how as much as it may not always feel this way, our government does have a lot of real folks who grew up alongside you that are trying to make a difference. They do it sometimes imperfectly, but they’re trying to make a difference.
Thank you. I loved seeing you and having you here.
You’re a serious public servant in your own right. We were talking before. I want to personally thank you as someone who loves this community and has seen it get so much more colorful as a result of your work. There are all these murals that were done over the years, and you are such an inspiration in helping to make that happen. Unfortunately, I have to fly a lot for work. Sometimes, I’m on Lincoln Boulevard, and the way you’ve transformed that street changes the vibe. I want to thank you for all the love and care you’ve put into the arts and for making our community look a little bit better.
Thank you. I appreciate that. It means a lot.
Thank you.
I’ll see you soon.
We’ll do this again.