Larry Jacobs: Good afternoon. Welcome to the University of Minnesota School of Public Affairs, the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. You got the law school, Humphrey School, and the business school. These are the professional schools. It makes sense. I'm Larry Jacobs. I'm a faculty here at the University of Minnesota in the Humphrey School and it's good to have you here. We have some really great programs coming up. Theda Skocpol, who's preeminent scholar in the Social Sciences and one of the most preeminent progressive scholars in the country will be here on Wednesday at noon, to talk about her research, but it's going to really be wide ranging. I think you'll be surprised by some of the things that she's going to say, which will in part be quite critical of other progressives. If you're able to come, please do. We'll talk more about our programs coming up. I do want to mention, as with all of our programs, we want to get you involved, and we use question cards. The reason for doing that is not to weed out dissent. I love dissent. If you totally disagree what we're talking about, give us your questions because that's my bias towards those questions. Not that everyone else's questions won't be factored in as well, but this is not to weed out alternative perspectives. We like that. The reason for doing it is many of our programs are broadcast on public radio and picked up by other media, and it's just much easier if there's a clear stream of a conversation between two voices. It doesn't require editing. It doesn't require the time that goes into the engineering of that. That's the only reason. Please bear with us on that. It's a real pleasure to invite today's guest, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez. Alex is just out with a new book called State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States and the Nation. It's for sale outside. Did I mention that? Well, it's for sale outside. I'm told it's perfect for all occasions, birthdays, Easter, so feel free to pick that up, and Alex will be signing them afterwards. Alex is what we describe in our area as a rising star. He graduated from Harvard three years ago, he's now at Columbia in the School of International Public Affairs and has published a stream of articles in some of our most impactful journals. He's got three books that are out or about to be out or in process. It's just an extraordinary record. We're going to have a quite lively conversation. We've already reviewed what that's going to look like, and I think you'll enjoy it. Please welcome Alex. [APPLAUSE] Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: Well, thanks so much for coming and thanks so much for the kind introduction, Larry. It's really exciting to be here to talk about state capture and the transformation of state policy and politics over the past decades, particularly in a place like the Humphrey School that thinks about the intersection between policy and politics in the real-world. Before we get to our discussion, I wanted to give you a flavor of the book and some of my main arguments as we go into that discussion, spoiling the ending, but I promise you, it's still worth a read of the full book. To give you a taste of my argument, I wanted to take you back to the 2016 election, as traumatic as that might be for some folks, but not the national election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but rather control for Iowa's state government, your neighbor in Minnesota. Now, for the past two decades leading up to 2016, control of the Iowa State House had flipped back and forth between Democrats and Republicans with neither party holding outright control of the governorship and the legislature. But all of that changed in 2016. Republicans gained full control of state government after they foot the state Senate, and accordingly, a number of people predicted that the state legislature would take policy in a different direction. They thought it would go in the direction of perhaps tax cuts, cuts to regulation, cuts to social programs, a typical Republican agenda that you see in many states these days. But that's not what happened. The first major item that Republicans pushed through the legislature after they gained control of the state house in 2017, was not the standard Republican agenda of lower taxes or cuts to labor regulations, but rather a sweeping set of changes to the ways in which labor union law was governed in this state. They proposed cutting back collective bargaining rights for nearly all public sector employees and imposing new requirements on unions that they undergo regular recertification elections. This bill was modeled after a similar initiative that Governor Scott Walker championed as soon as he gained control of Wisconsin's state government in 2011. This transformation of Iowa law really poses a puzzle for political scientists who tend to think about policy as being the outcome of elections and public opinion. I say that because the typical model is that politicians are elected on a particular platform responding to public opinion, and then they enact the policies that they campaign on that are aligned with public opinion. But that's not what happened here. According to polls that were done right before this legislation was pushed through and right after, over 60% of Iowans opposed the cutbacks to public sector bargaining rights. They wanted to see collective bargaining rights for public sector employees. In addition, it was not a real campaign issue for most of the key Senate races that ended up flipping control of the Iowa State Senate. Where did this legislation come from, if it wasn't coming from voters and it wasn't coming from the campaigns of rank and filed Republicans? Well, to answer that question, I think it's helpful to go to the bill text that ended up enacting these changes. Doing so, you can see that the bill in Iowa bore striking resemblance to the legislation in Wisconsin that I just mentioned, and both of those bills bore striking resemblance in key phrases and concepts to a model bill proposal that had been put forward by an organization called the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, a network of right leaning lawmakers, businesses, and donors, and activists that I'll explain more about in a moment. But suffice to say that this legislation came directly from an ALEC model bill idea. We have further evidence for this from the leadership affiliations of the key Republicans in the state. All three Republican leaders in the legislature and in the governorship had ties to this organization. The House Speaker was a national chairwoman of ALEC at the time. The Senate majority leader was a state chairman of the ALEC organization, and the governor himself was, in fact, a co-founder and early supporter of this organization. That provides one part of the explanation, but as it turns out, ALEC wasn't the only organization on the ground promoting this bill in Iowa's government. The second organization that was a national group, but that had an in-state presence in Iowa, was a group called Americans for Prosperity. It's a federated grassroots advocacy group, and I'll explain more about it in a moment, but it was a key player in the battle for Iowa's passage of this legislation. We know that because shortly after the governor signed the bill into law, the head lobbyist of Americans for Prosperity posted a picture on Twitter of him shaking the governor's hand. It was a closed ceremony, and he was one of the few people who was allowed to attend, in part because of his efforts at whipping votes in the legislature until the wee hours of the morning to get the bill passed. The third organization that was present in Iowa that was pushing for this bill, cutting back collective bargaining rights was the state policy network. It's a network of state level right leaning think tanks that buttresses the work of ALEC and Americans for Prosperity. In Iowa, that affiliate is the Public Interest Institute. Shortly after Republicans gained full control of the Iowa State government, the Public Interest Institute began putting forward research reports and media commentary arguing that public sector bargaining cutbacks should be the number one priority for Republicans coming into office. In the book, I examine each of these organizations, ALEC, Americans for Prosperity, and the State Policy Network in more detail, spelling out exactly how they've evolved, why they've taken on the forms that they have, and how they have ended up having so much success in so many states like Iowa, pushing among other things, cutbacks to labor union rights. ALEC, for instance, was founded in the 1970s, and as I mentioned, brings together state lawmakers, businesses, donors, and activists to draft these model bills. The State Policy Network was founded in 1986, and was substantially revamped in the early 2000s and buttresses ALEC's work from the outside, providing, as we've seen, media commentary, research support to ALEC model bills. Americans for Prosperity is the most recent addition to what I call the Conservative troika. It was founded in 2004, but by now has turned out to be one of the most significant components of the troika. It is present in over 36 states that cover over 80% of the population and has over three million activists who participate in a federated structure. They have local field offices in a number of states, especially battleground states, state offices, and a national office as well. Paralleled structure to a political party. I think state capture has something new to add to the conversation about these organizations. There's been a number of really excellent books that have come out in recent years, thinking about conservative activists and donors, I think, most prominently about Jane Mayer's book, Dark Money, but also Gordon Lafer has an excellent book called The One Percent Solution, and there's been a great investigative journalism on groups like ALEC from the Center for Media and Democracy, as well as the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. I use a lot of this work, but I take a slightly different perspective. I take an organizational perspective. A lot of this work focuses on the individuals, either the individual lawmakers or the individual donors who are setting up these organizations, but I take an organizational picture, which means I think about how these organizations operate, why they take on different forms, and where they're most successful and why. In the last part of my opening remarks, I wanted to go through three of the main arguments that I make in the book, what I call what the right got right, and what I think provide broader lessons about power in American politics. I hope that there are things that we can put on the table and discuss in more detail in the question and answer session. These are three ways in which I think that conservative groups in the troika, ALEC, the State Policy Network, and Americans for Prosperity, have been especially successful in pushing their policy ideas across the states. These include the first, which is taking advantage of under-resourced state legislatures, the second, bridging together disparate and conflicting interests who might not be on the same page, and the third, thinking about policy, not just as a way of solving technical problems, but as a way of building and sustaining political power. I want to go into each of those in a little bit more detail. The first, under-resourced state legislatures. It's hard to overstate the extent to which in many states, lawmakers simply don't have all that much time or staff help to develop legislation on their own. On this slide, I've put up a chart of legislative professionalism. That's a measure that political scientists use to capture the resources that lawmakers have. States that are darker in their color have more resources, states that are lighter have fewer resources. In these lighter states, lawmakers spend less time on the job, have shorter legislative sessions, fewer staffers and are paid less. You can see that in most states, lawmakers really don't have all that much in the way of staff help. Legislative sessions are just a few months. Some states don't even meet every year for legislative sessions, and salaries are often quite low in many of these states, meaning that lawmakers have to take on other jobs. In fact, in the 14 least resourced states, lawmakers only spend about half of their time on the job, being a lawmaker. They're paid only about $18,000 on average, and they only have about 160 staffers on which they can rely. All of this means that outside organizations can be incredibly effective by giving lawmakers the resources that they otherwise lack, giving them ideas for legislation, particularly the text of the bills that they would need, the research support that they need, the studies that can back up why that bill is important, the names of witnesses who can testify on behalf of that bill, and political strategy that can help them get that bill over the finish line. That's exactly what ALEC has done. In the book, I have a number of surveys and interviews with lawmakers that really established the case that ALEC recognized that it could provide these resources that lawmakers would otherwise lack. In the book, I cite this interview with Oregon State representative, Gene Whisnant, but I think does a nice job of summing up how this works. According to Representative Whisnant, ALEC is a great resource for a part time lawmaker like him, whose staff is comprised of his wife who works half time and an aide who works three days a week when the legislature is not in session. We have such limited staff that ALEC helps us look at things and consider them. The second strategy that I think made these conservative organizations so successful was getting different groups who might want different things on the same page. I think there's a tendency on the left in particular to think about the right as being all on the same page. The conservative movement only wants smaller government. Lower taxes, smaller government, less regulation. But as I show in the book, especially in the '70s and '80s, many of these organizations were trying to weave together coalitions of social conservatives who cared intensely about abortion or gay rights or the Equal Rights Amendment, businesses that wanted lower taxes, but also subsidies and regulations to keep their competitors out, and libertarians who wanted smaller government, lower regulatory burdens, and fewer subsidies for private sector businesses. As you can see, those three sets of actors don't necessarily share the same priorities or preferences. Just by way of example, I've put up here ALEC's membership from the 1980s, and you can see a number of large private sector companies like Monsanto, Shell, or UPS, some libertarian groups like the National Taxpayers Union, and, of course, social conservative groups like the National Rifle Association. How did ALEC get these groups on the same page? Well, as I described in the book, a key figure is Sam Brunelli, a football player for the Denver Broncos, who went on to head the organization. His innovation was to come up with a set of task forces that were geared around particular policy areas. If you cared about a policy area, you only participated in that task force. That helped decentralize the agenda setting process for this organization. Moreover, when there were conflicts between different actors within a task force, a business wanted one thing, a libertarian group wanted another, whoever paid more to the organization would get the final say over the model bill that ended up being enacted. This was really efficient. It managed to get these organizations all on the same page about what they wanted from ALEC. >> The last strategy that I think has made these groups so successful is not just thinking about policy as a way of solving a specific technical problem, but a way of reshaping power relations. I think nowhere is that clearer than with labor union policy. I think these organizations and especially ALEC were incredibly successful in selling all of their members on the idea that labor reform should be their Day 1 priority. Not because social conservatives would necessarily care about, say, cutting back teachers' union rights, but because if you cut back the power of labor unions, you make it harder for Democrats to win future elections to pass progressive legislation, and therefore you pave the way for future conservative initiatives on social issues or business issues or any other set of issues. It's about sequencing policy in the right way and thinking about policy as a way of reshaping power. As I've shown in other work with co-authors, when states pass right-to-work laws like the ones that have passed in recent states like Michigan or Indiana or Wisconsin, it really does make it harder for Democrats to win elections and public policy in those states moves to the ideological right as a result of weaker labor unions and weaker progressive movements in these states. Those are the three strategies that I think made the right so successful, what the right got right, and I hope we can use those as a starting off point to think about differences with the left and what all of this means for American democracy. I look forward to your questions and Larry's probing, as well. [APPLAUSE] Larry Jacobs: >> We've got ALEC and Alex. We're going to try to keep that straight. Well, thank you very much. This is a very provocative book. I think if you are looking for Smart Read and really thought-provoking, this is a good book to sit down with and spend some time with. Let me start off with a broad question, which is, what kind of book is this? Usually, academic books, and I'm not necessarily recommending this in terms of readability, but they'll lay out competing arguments, some competing theories, and they'll say, here's two or three different ways to understand this problem. Then the researcher goes through the evidence and parses out which explanation works. This is less like that. It reads almost like how to for progressives who are losing out on this fight against this, as you call it, conservative Troika. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> Well, thanks for that question. I think that this book is trying to do both things. It's trying to understand in a rigorous way using the tools of social science, such as interviews. I conduct surveys of state lawmakers, surveys of political advocacy groups, and I dig into the archives of these organizations to understand what made them successful, what contributed to their missteps, and what we can learn from all of this. But ultimately, I am interested in this question of what made them successful and what the left could learn from those. I view it as being both. Larry Jacobs: >> There's quite a bit of talk at various points about organizational combat. There's not a whole lot of conflict here, though. It's really tends to be a story about the conservatives on the march, sending out information and winning, for the most part, with some exceptions. Where are the progressive groups? Is this like they've abandoned the battlefield or that the conservatives are just so much better organized and resourced that they're not even in the fight? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> I think I would push back a little on the first part of your question, which is to say that this is a story of conservative victory. In some ways, I very self-consciously tried to set out to read history forward from the 1970s onwards and not to assume that just because the conservative organizations I study are successful today, that they've always been successful. The political scientist Steve Teles has this great phrase the myth of diabolical conservative competence, which I think is all too prevalent amongst many journalists and folks on the left. I very self-consciously try and understand both the moments of success of which there are many, but also the moments of failure. For instance, in the 1980s and '90s, when ALEC nearly went bankrupt, for instance, or when the state policy network was really struggling to get off the ground. I think studying those moments of weakness really illuminate the choices that these organizations made that ultimately had a lot of bearing on their future success. Now, to get to your second question of where is the left in all of this. Well, to go back to the 1970s, I think it's important to remember that at that moment, conservatives felt like they were on the losing end when it came to state policy and politics. Digging through archival materials and conducting interviews with the early founders of these groups, I was really struck by how much it was a mirror image of the situation today. In particular, conservatives were very worried about teachers' unions and public sector employee unions that had just gotten the right to collectively bargain and had become really powerful state lobbyists in the states in which they had large memberships. Crucially, and perhaps ironically, ALEC pointed out that they often drafted model bills that they shared with their state affiliates, and they lobbied on a range of issues not just related, say, to education, but to taxes and budgets as well. They felt they had to mobilize at the state level to cut back the power of those unions, and they've managed to do that quite successfully in a number of states. Larry Jacobs: >> You said you're not really holding up conservatives as this winners of the fight over state public policy. But you do describe in the book what you phrase, and I'm quoting you, a dramatic right word swing in state policy. Isn't that a summation about this winning streak that conservatives are on and the losing streak that progresses have suffered? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> I think in their early years, especially in the '80s and even into the early '90s, the conservative groups might not have been successful if it were not for some key decisions that they made, but since then, they have been quite successful and particularly so since 2010. But they did enjoy a number of victories in the early 2000s, and late 1990s as well. I think looking today at the snapshot of power across the states, it's clear that Republicans and Conservatives through these organizations have managed to gain much more cross-state clout than have progressives. In the book, I describe that there are just very few cross-state progressive organizations that could counter the troika. That's not to say that there haven't been efforts over the years. In the book, I recount, it's a mixed metaphors, I apologize for this, a graveyard of an alphabet soup of organizations with all these different acronyms that have tried to counter ALEC. But by and large, they just have not had as much success as these conservative groups. Larry Jacobs: >> One of the policies that you highlight as an example of the more recent successes of the conservative movement is the effort to adopt the Medicaid expansion that had been authorized by the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. Particularly after the Supreme Court ruling in 2012, it required states to actually enact enabling legislation. Big question was, okay, would the states actually adopt a Medicaid expansion, which is a very powerful tool for giving coverage to Americans who are poor? For some progressives, it is the most important part of Obamacare. In any case, you hold this up and you say, hey, right here, we can see an example of this right word swing. Here's the power and advocacy of the troika. Do you still feel that way? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> I do. I think that while there have been expansions in a number of additional Republican-controlled states since the publication of the book, it still remains the case that a number of states have decided to pass up the expansion and thereby pass up, in some cases, billions of dollars over years to cover very poor uninsured individuals, disproportionately minority individuals. I am still persuaded that the conservative troika's opposition to Medicaid expansion has had very important substantive consequences, not just for politics, but for the lives of the individuals in these states that lack health insurance. Larry Jacobs: >> Just a little factoid here, 37 states have now adopted the Medicaid expansion. That's 73% of the states. This large number of states that haven't adopted it is 27%. We recently saw actually, progressive organizations organizing in states like Idaho, Utah, Nebraska to push through or put on the ballot initiatives that have forced the adoption of Medicaid expansion in those very conservative states, states that you point out as ripe territory for this conservative movement. It really strikes me, particularly after 2010, and now we're into 2018, and it feels like a different moment that we're seeing some of the limitations of this conservative movement, maybe other explanations, including citizens who do get organized. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> I think that's right broadly. I would push back on some of the specifics and say, it's a big deal that Texas hasn't expanded Medicaid yet. There are a lot of poor people in Texas who lack health insurance. While it's true that it's over 70% of the states, a big chunk of the states that lack this expansion have large populations, like Texas, for instance. You're still talking about a large number of individuals. That said, I think you're right to point to these recent ballot initiatives to expand Medicaid going around the legislatures that are controlled by Republicans and conservatives. But quite strikingly, you've seen those state legislatures try and roll back the expansion gains. In some cases, you've seen states just drag their feet on following through with expansion. I think about Maine but also Utah, for instance, as being examples of this where the government seem reluctant to actually follow through on the will of the people. I think it points to the overarching point in the book, which is to say, progressives can't get around the business of organizing at the state level. Ballot initiatives are certainly an important tool when you're in the opposition. But ultimately, those are one-off coalitions all too frequently that don't sustain power building at the state legislative level, which is where a lot of these battles ultimately come back to. Larry Jacobs: >> Medicare and Medicaid was passed in 1965. It wasn't until really in the last couple of decades that all the states adopted the Medicaid legislation. Arizona was the last state, and it was the early part of this century that they did it. What other factors might account for the resistance to adopting liberal federal legislation in states other than, let's just take this conservative Troika and put it to the side. What else is going on here? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> Well, I happen to think that conservative Troika is a big chunk of that, but I also think there are other factors that matter. I'm persuaded by work that has been done by an excellent health policy scholar here at the Humphrey School, by the name of Jacobs. Looking at the role of health professionals as being important lobbyists and public health advocates in particular. In the case studies of the Medicaid expansion that I did, it was certainly the case that broad-based coalitions of doctors, public health providers, low-income services providers were incredibly important in pushing for expansion. So too, were businesses in some case. In the book, I talk about how the troika is not always align with what big business necessarily wants. In many of these Republican-controlled states, where there were battles over Medicaid expansion, you had the troika, on one hand, saying, no, absolutely no to expansion. But you had the chambers of commerce in many of these states, I think most prominently about Missouri going all out for expansion. In many of these states, the Chamber of Commerce is not exactly a friend of progressive initiatives. They oppose the minimum wage. They oppose labor unions, but they understood that it meant big dollars from the federal government coming in to their communities, particularly rural communities whose economies are often powered by healthcare providers and hospitals. I think it points to these other factors, certainly, but it also points to these coalitional dynamics where the troika isn't always necessarily on the same page as business. Larry Jacobs: >> I find that, to be honest, more persuasive, that there are these other advocates. There are splits in the conservative movement that there are pressures within each state, depending on the nature of their healthcare system, or their economy. The mix of those things is going to vary based on the particular point in time and on the particular state. Thinking of businesses, and you talked about this in the book and hospitals, for instance, in places like Arizona and in the South where you have seen Medicaid adopted, it's a really striking and surprising bedfellows that have gotten together and said, yeah, we actually recognize that we need government help or our public hospital system will go bankrupt. The state budget is going to head into deficits. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> I think that's exactly right. It points to a blind spot that I think exists even amongst many researchers, but certainly, I think many on the left and many journalists, which is to take business as a monolith and say, business wants this, business wants that. The business community is really diverse with very different preferences. I think what's striking about the organizations that I study in the book is that they manage to overcome those cleavages in many instances, and you have businesses in the same organization pushing for ideologically charged legislation that you might not think would necessarily be in that business' interest. But to address your question about whether it's in-state factors or out-of-state factors, what I think is very important about the Troika is it's nationalizing politics in a really important way. It's taking these debates that used to be state-by-state within state actors, for instance, dominating the discussion and making it national, bringing national resources to bear on issues like labor relations or on healthcare policy. Larry Jacobs: >> Got great questions here from our friends who have joined us at the Humphrey School today. One of them is what has been the influence of the conservative Troika in Minnesota. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> That's a great question. The influence of the Troika has been limited by the fact that you haven't seen as great a degree of a Republican takeover of state institutions as you have in other states. I think the comparison with Wisconsin that so often gets made is quite striking that where you have had the opportunity to pass these bills, as well as the ideas coming through, you've just seen the state take a complete different direction. Indeed, Minnesota tends to score quite low on adoption of ALEC model bills, certainly not as high as other states. In the book, I use plagiarism detection, much as one might try and catch a student who is copying and pasting his term paper right before the deadline from an online website, I look to see where lawmakers have plagiarized their bills from ALEC model bills. I find that consistent with what I'm arguing, it tends to be in the states where lawmakers have fewer staffers, fewer resources shorter sessions that you see more of this plagiarism. Larry Jacobs: >> You spotlight Minnesota in several spots in the book, and one is to put a spotlight on Senator Mary Kiffmeyer who had put forward one of these ALEC pieces of legislation, some controversy about whether it was actually copied or drawn upon. But in any case, let's take that case because here's the instance, and I think many of us will remember in 2010, a constitutional amendment to require a voter ID was put on the ballot. The consequence of that was not an ALEC takeover, kind of, to support your thesis. It was the opposite. It created a tremendous backlash in the state that helped usher in democratic power in the legislature. Does that point to ways in which not only victories, but there may actually be a backlash precisely because visible, maybe heavy handed role that ALEC and the other conservatives are playing? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> I think that's right. I think politics is all about mobilization and counter mobilization. That's a great example of where when policy overreach happens, citizens have an opportunity and activists have an opportunity to capitalize on that, to build power in a sustained way that can be translated into electoral wins. In work that I'm doing right now, I'm looking at the teacher walkouts that happened last year, these mass walkouts and strikes of hundreds of thousands of teachers in very conservative red states, and they were often responding to large cuts in education spending that were the result of bills that were pushed by the Troika. I think that's another great example of this backlash. When you go too far, you end up provoking activists and citizens to take real risks in order to build political power. Larry Jacobs: >> You mentioned backlash and one of the questions we have here is, do you believe that there was a backlash against Barack Obama's policies that helped the conservatives and may have given legitimacy to some of their arguments? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> It's an interesting question, and it gets at the broader issue of whether 2010 was a blip or not a blip, but an unusual moment in political time or whether it was part of a longer trend, whether it was part of a backlash that was unique to Obama or whether it was part of a longer historical development. It's a little bit of both. We knew that Democrats were going to have losses at the state level, given that voters tend to reward the out party in midterm elections like that. But I think what was unprecedented was the degree to which Democrats lost control at the state level, precisely because they were not focused on a lot of those races in a way that Republicans were in addition, Republicans had ideas ready to go as soon as those governments were elected. It's not enough just to win these elections. You have to have the ideas and policy, and the sequence of policies all set up once you gain office. I think that's what's lacking on the left. It's quite striking that the playbook that these Republicans pursue across states when they gain control is so similar. I think that's because of the organizations like the ones that I study in the book. Larry Jacobs: >> From the audience, which is, are you describing efforts by conservatives that you consider to be illegal or nefarious, or is this just Americans exercising their constitutional rights? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> That's a really important question, and it's one that I tackle head on in the book, and I say that nothing I have documented in this book is illegal, and nor should it be. I think it is perfectly legal and indeed desirable in a democracy to have activists organize in political associations and try and bring about policy change. If you dislike what the Troika is doing, I think the solution is not to try and outlaw it, but to create organizations of your own that can counter that power from the left. I think this touches on another issue which hasn't really been brought up, but I think is important to put on the table. That's the issue of elections and campaign spending, which is important, to be sure and receives, I think a lot of attention, perhaps too much attention from liberal reformers who are concerned about corporate influence or conservative influence. As I show in the book, only one of these organizations, Americans for Prosperity, is involved in elections. Alec and the state policy network are not. In the book, I focus quite deliberately on what happens in between elections because I think that's a big part of the Troika story. In the book, I go through some back of the envelope calculations that suggests that even if you had pretty restrictive campaign finance regulations in place, it's unlikely to cut back substantially in the clout of Alec or the state policy network because you still have these under resourced lawmakers who are looking for ideas. Larry Jacobs: >> I think that is a particularly persuasive part of the book, it's true. I just finished a study of campaign spending during the 2018 Minnesota State and Federal elections, and it puts a spotlight on precisely the election and the amount of money going in. But what about the non-election cycle? What about the influence that's exercised not by giving money to a legislator, but by giving them the capacity through model legislation, through other resources that would enable them to pursue an agenda, the left or the right. There, I think it's a blind spot. I don't think there are many journalists and political scientists who focused on these issues that you've brought to light. There are several questions here really about the broader issue of the book, which is, what is the overarching goal of conservatives? You referred to them, but what is the big picture here? What are they trying to achieve? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> It's an interesting question and one that is hard to answer in the abstract. I think that's a source of strength for these groups that Alec in particular, never tried to advance a particular overarching world view as best as I can tell. They were willing to make coalitions between these different actors who cared a lot about state policy. They were willing to push policy that those actors wanted. Its goals and its emphasis on different issues has changed over time as its membership has changed. In its early years, it tended to be dominated by social conservatives, especially religious conservatives, and so it spent a whole lot of time on those things. In the 90s, it tended to be dominated more by companies. Therefore, it focused on business issues. Then in the 2000, you saw a return to some social and ideological conservative issues like voter ID laws or gun rights, for instance, and it began pushing those. I think in some ways, it's been a strength, um now, on the other hand, Americans for prosperity is part of the Coke Political Network, which is very much, I would say, an ideologically informed organization. Say what you will about the Coke, but I think they're deeply committed to the libertarian world view that they put forward in their public remarks. You've seen Americans for prosperity, for instance, lobby against business subsidies or supports that the Cokes themselves would benefit from. Larry Jacobs: >> I think this follows up on what you just said, which is what is it about the conservative Troika that gives them the advantage over progressives? If you were to, as a doctor, give a prescription to progressives who said, Oh, yeah, we're neglecting the states. We need to do more across all the states, not just pick out a few. What would be your short list of go home and take this medicine? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> Or maybe go home and come back to me in 20 years when you built up these organizations. You said, assuming that they would focus on the states. That's a big if and one that has not been true across the years. You've seen sporadic attention from left wing donors to the states, but it's tended to be started and stopped as Democrats have gained control at the national level. When Democrats are out of power, you see return to the states. When they get power in the White House or in Congress, you see a reduced attention to the state. Paying attention to the states is a big deal and something that I think progressives and especially donors haven't done enough of. The second piece of advice that I would have is focus on all states. When you have seen progressive cross state organizing, it's all too often tended to focus on blue states with strong labor movements that already have a strong progressive presence and far too frequently has focused on the mass of more conservative states throughout the whole country. That's important because if you want to have real impact in people's lives, you have to organize across the whole country. A great example of this, I think is the Fight for 15 movement, which has done amazing work to raise the minimum wage at the state and local level all across the country. But they've had a real limitation to their reach because in many of these red states, when they've tried to raise the minimum wage at the city level, the Republican controlled state government will preempt that legislation at the city level, meaning that the limits whether or not cities can actually pass these increases to minimum wages. You can't just focus on a handful of states, it has to be the whole country. The third piece of advice that I would have is to think really strategically about the sequencing of policy. You mentioned the Medicaid expansion. It was so striking to me in going through interviews and archival material of left wing donors, little attention they paid to the Medicaid expansion when this was really a live issue in 2013, 14, and 15. There's a major consortium of progressive donors called the Democracy Alliance, and during that period, it was not one of their top priorities. I say this is a huge missed opportunity because we know from political science research that Larry has done, among others, that when you have social programs like Medicaid, it builds a constituency for those social programs going forward. It creates identities that attach them to government and make them more likely to participate in politics. In short, it's exactly the power building policy reform that progressives should be putting forward to counter things like right to work laws or cutbacks to labor unions. Larry Jacobs: >> You go again with the interpretation of the progressives where they don't quite get it right. The conservatives, they tend to get it right. But let me ask you about this case, which I think talks to this very important point about the way in which policy reshapes politics and power. You talked about unions and the way in which the conservatives went after public sector unions, the way to reduce the power of Democrats. Well, when Obamacare was passed, California was one of the first and most aggressive states out of the gates to implement it. Here's what they did. If you go to the California Health Insurance Exchange to sign up for Obamacare's benefits, the subsidies and choose a insurer, you're also given an option. Would you like to register to vote? Is that the thing you're talking about? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> That's exactly the thing that I think would build power on the progressive side, but all too frequently gets left by the wayside. Perhaps most strikingly, during the Obama administration, they designed a stimulus program that would give a little bit of money with each person's paycheck in order to increase the purchasing power of the country. They did this by changing the withholding that people had on their paycheck to pay taxes. The economists love this idea because there is good research to suggest that people are more likely to increase their spending in response to an economic stimulus if they don't know that they're getting a big lump sum check, that if they get it in these little tiny amounts, they're more likely to spend it. The bad news, though, is that no one realized that they got a tax cut. A polling that was done after the stimulus went into effect indicated that, nine out of 10 people either thought that Obama raised their taxes or didn't change their taxes when, in fact, their taxes went down by a big amount. If a tax cut happens and no one knows about it, does it have any political consequences? The answer is no. I think, progressives all too frequently, focus on the technical details of policy at the expense of good politics. Larry Jacobs: >> Is there something about liberalism or progressivism that makes it inherently difficult to consistently organize across states? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> That's a really great question. I think in some ways, yes, there is a strand within progressive politics that thinks about state policy as being inherently constrained, inherently constrained by two different factors. One of them is the long reach of Jim Crow and the horrible atrocities that states, particularly, but not exclusively in the South, visited upon racial and ethnic minorities. Then, two, a sense that states can't do all that much because they try and appease businesses. State governments will be reluctant to raise taxes or regulation in a substantial way because they're afraid of businesses up and leaving their state. Some of those explanations are both true. When you delegate civil rights to the state level, you do see sometimes states rolling back protections, and states often are reluctant to impose big taxes on businesses that could be used to redistribute resources. But on the whole, when I look at the history of progressive politics in this country, I think you see a big role for state level innovation. Unemployment insurance and various forms of social protection were previewed at the state level before they found their way to the new deal. More generally, you've seen this in other major pieces of legislation, including Obamacare, which was previewed in Massachusetts before it was developed at the Federal level. I think it's hard to ignore the states, even if you subscribe to these limits on state power. I don't think a focus on federalism is inconsistent with progressive Worldview. Larry Jacobs: >> A question here is essentially asking, isn't Alec and the other conservative organizations that you've identified saving the states from bankruptcy that the programs that the progressives want to pass would far exceed what businesses and taxpayers could afford? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> That's a great question, and I think it's up for debate. It's up for debate within the citizenry of each state to decide what the appropriate tax and spending mix is. Alec plays a role in helping provide resources and ideas to lawmakers who are especially sensitive to the costs of government and costs on the private sector. But I think it would be a mistake to only listen to one side of that perspective. I worry that there isn't a coordinated effort on the other side making the case for government programs and for taxes that could spend resources on important public investments. I tend to think that democracy works best when you have representation on both sides of these issues. The absence of progressive cross state organizing, I think, is worrisome here. Larry Jacobs: >> Question from the audience. I question that the right is using public policy to influence political power. I'd say they're using fear and lies. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> Well, there's certainly some components of the Republican Party that I think capitalize on fear and lies, particularly at the national level. But, I think the organizations that I study in the book, they really do think about policy in this way of building political power. It's not just the teachers unions, I think it's quite notable that they've also focused on organizations like Planned Parenthood, which, in addition to providing public health services for low income populations is also an incredibly politically important part of the Democratic coalition, very involved in elections and policy debates, and, of course, Acorn, as well. These organizations, especially Alec and the state policy Network, organized in a big way against Acorn, which was an important force on the progressive side trying to build power at the local and the state level. Larry Jacobs: >> You've been talking about how conservative advocates have used the public policy arena and state legislatures to move policy. How about private employers who have been making efforts, according to this question, to influence their employees and try to mobilize them as a political force? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> Well, I think the questioner who maybe perhaps is familiar with some of my earlier research in my first book, which was called Politics at Work, which was very much on this question about how employers are increasingly, thinking about using their workers as a political resource, getting them involved in policy debates at the state level, in national government and in elections. That's a trend that you've seen increase over time and that actually received a boost from Citizens United, which made it legal for companies to spend their own resources on elections so long as they're not coordinated with a candidate or a party. You've seen many businesses becoming more comfortable, for instance, with giving voter guides to their employees, with endorsed candidates, and encouraging them to participate in politics. In many ways, I think about state capture as being a sequel of sorts to this first book, trying to think about ways that private actors, whether they're coalitions of businesses and conservatives or private sector employees, how they exercise power in American democracy. Larry Jacobs: >> Is Minnesota an exception to your story? If you look in Minnesota, the Democrats have raised a lot more money through campaign contributions. They coordinate because some of the big funders won't give money to some of the political groups unless they buy into the consortium. We see unions like SEIU and the Teachers Union very effective, very active. Plenty of strong armed tactics that you describe involving the right wing, and they've been very successful. I mean you talk about a right wing swing in Minnesota over the last 10 years or so, we've seen a pretty strong leftward swing in terms of higher taxes, more spending and education and health care. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> I think that's a fair characterization, and I would say that, you know, Minnesota and a handful of other states sort of preview what full democratic control looks like when you have a strong base of progressive in state organizations. I also think of California now New York with the flipping of the state legislature, Connecticut as being examples of this. But the trouble is, if you are on the left, there aren't a lot of examples like this to point to. I think that's part of the challenge is that Democrats don't have a lot of these opportunities to try out these ideas because they lack control at the state level. Larry Jacobs: >> Your fundamental point is, you can have, I don't know, socialism within one state, but that the impact of progressive ideas across the country is much more limited without this consistent, sustained funding and organizing that you point to on the conservative side. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> I think that's exactly right. Larry Jacobs: >> A bunch of questions here, I'm walking through. Thank you. Can the use of the resources that Alec and the others offer be tracked to individual legislators? Can you name names? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> In the book, I do this, I look at these instances of plagiarism when lawmakers copy and paste bill ideas and text from Alec. I have for both states and individual lawmakers what proportion of introduced bills and enacted bills come from ALEC model bills. If folks are interested in that definitely share that data. There's also been a new initiative by USA today that was just launched last week that uses a similar approach of plagiarism detection to look at model bill reuse, not just from Alec, but a range of other organizations on the left and the right and from businesses. That's another great resource that individuals can turn to. Larry Jacobs: >> You've made the point that one of the reasons that the conservatives have been so effective is that many state legislatures and legislators lack the resources to do their job. I guess the question is, what about the resources that do exist at the national level, whether it's the national state legislative Conference or the Council of state government and some others that are there that do research on particular policy or whether it's health care or taxes or pension reform and plenty of foundations as well. Aren't they stepping in and helping legislators as well? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> Certainly. Over the years, they've been very important organizations, and I have a chapter in the book that goes through the history of these good government, non-partisan bipartisan organizations, and a key figure is Henry Toll, who at the time of the New Deal, a little bit before, founded one of the first organizations of lawmakers across the states trying to build resources and support for them because if you think that the problems of information are acute now, you can only imagine at the first half of the 20th century, what lawmakers had to deal with even as the demands on state government were increasing. They have certainly played a role. But there is a role for more ideologically oriented organizations, too. NCSL and the Council of state governments are studiously nonpartisan bipartisan. It doesn't offer much in the way of help for lawmakers who are looking for, say, legislation that's right leaning or left leaning and associated with a particular world view. Indeed, I view that as being an essential role that Alec and to a lesser extent the state policy network have played. They're not just subsidizing, so to speak, lawmakers to help them pass legislation that they would otherwise want to pass. They're defining what it means to be a conservative state lawmaker. I think many state lawmakers are elected knowing that they might be on the left or the right, but they don't really know what specific policies correspond to that world view and that's what these organizations do. They fill in the empty bucket, so to speak, of the ideas on specific issues that lawmakers should care about, and that's a function that NCSL and the Council of state governments really aren't equipped to fill. Larry Jacobs: >> You've focused on states. Question here. What about cities? Are they the new battleground? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> Yeah, our city's the answer. I think it's tempting for progressives to focus on cities, given that cities tend to skew to the left. I think if you look at a list of the hundred largest cities in the United States, there vast share of them are controlled by left leaning or democratic council members and mayors. But it would be tempting, but I think it's ultimately a mistake. It's a mistake because in the United States, it's states that have the final say over what happens within their boundaries. As you've seen with the case of preemption, it's just all too easy for Republican controlled legislature and governor to come in and undo important gains that are made at the city level. The fight for 15 is one great example of this. Another great example is the paid sick and family leave movement across the US. A number of cities have been taking the initiative on this, given that the US is one the last advanced democracies to have a national paid sick and paid leave family leave program. But in red states, when cities do this, the legislatures tend to swoop in and undo their efforts. Larry Jacobs: >> After this book went to press, 2018 election happened, and Democrats did very well. They picked up net 308 legislative seats. They flipped a handful of state houses. Seven governorships went from the Republican column to the Democrat, including some of the states that you highlight like Wisconsin and Michigan. How do you factor in that success by progressives across states? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> I should be clear that the object is not to explain any one particular election, but the broad sweep of policy and politics over the states. I think 2018 in many ways, was a wave election. It was responding to a very unpopular president. There was unprecedented citizen and activist mobilization, and all of that contributed to the sort of gains that you're discussing. But I think over the longer term, the question is, do these newly controlled democratic states or governorships or legislatures have the suite of ideas that can actually build sustainable power? I think it's notable, for instance, that many of these states haven't taken action on rebuilding the labor movement, haven't taken other steps that might build progressive power over the longer term, and that's where these outside organizations, like the ones that I study in the book, I think, really come in. Larry Jacobs: >> Follow up question from a member of our audience here. Do you see signs that progressives have gotten the message and are making the sustained organizational financial investments in state organizing? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> I think that they have recognized the depth of their failure to do so. That's an important first step. I think there is a desire amongst donors to give to new organizations that could build power on the left. I think it's unclear whether or not there are organizations that are well positioned to capitalize on that. The most recent flurry of activity came out of 2014. I was an organization that was founded then that I study in the ensuing years in the book. It sort of looks like they're still focusing on mostly blue and purplish states that you don't really have the whole cross state organizing in a sustained way that you would want. But that's not to say that it can't happen, and I think the fact that you are really recognizing this need on the left that's an important first step. Larry Jacobs: >> One of the major possible competing sources of funding, at least, is the Democracy Alliance, which are the Democrats billionaires and they've been putting in money, quite a bit of money at some points, they've even rivaled what the Koch Brother consortium has been able to raise. Do you see a change in their behavior that would lead you to say, the fight is on? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> They recognize the depth of these problems and they have been taking action by creating funds that focus exclusively on state policy and politics. I think that is important. They've also been coordinating donor tables across the states, and that's been a success story in several states. These are tables of in state donors who agree to pool their resources in a concerted manner to make sure that they're not duplicating their efforts and they're building a long term infrastructure. But the degree to which these tables have had success is variable. In the book, I go through some examples of these, some for the better, some for the worse. That's an important step for sure. A challenge that the democracy alliance, this club of wealthy liberal donors has faced is that they give their donors a lot more autonomy than donors on the right have with the Coke seminars. When you enroll in the Coke seminars as best as I can tell, you're committed to giving to the Koch Brothers priorities, which include at their center Americans for prosperity, which receives an overwhelming proportion of the donations that are raised their fundraising meetings. Whereas on the left with the Democracy Alliance, they're funding over 100 different organizations. That means that each organization tends to receive a little small slice of what is a lower aggregate amount than exists on the right. You just have much more fragmented and limited giving on the left. Now, I mentioned that the Democracy Alliance recognizes these issues and has been trying to move away from that. But once you give donors autonomy, it's hard to roll that back. You can imagine, these are personalities who are used to having their way in other realms of their lives, and so it could be difficult to get them all to commit to the same agenda. Larry Jacobs: >> This seems incredibly ironic, Libertarian organization denying choice to its donors. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> Free market marketplace bizarre on the left. Larry Jacobs: >> How did the Koch Brothers Network and this conservative consortium become so dictatorial and restricting choice for their donors. How did that happen? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> It's a fascinating question, and ultimately, in order to get a complete answer, I think you'd have to have in depth interviews with either the brothers themselves or their key political lieutenants, which, unfortunately, my co-author, Theta Scotchbol, who'll be talking later this week here in this forum, we have not yet secured those interviews. But as best as we can tell from the leaked materials that we have access to, as well as the financial records of these organizations is a lot it goes back to the rules that were put in place initially in these organizations. The Koch Brothers were very clear from the outset that they were going to focus on a core set of organizations. Over time, they managed to enforce that. It wasn't always the case. I mean, at some point in time, they were scattering money more widely. In 2012, most notably, they were giving money to a whole range of different organizations. But I think after they lost that election, they really doubled down on this strategy of funding mostly the organizations that they directly helm like Americans for prosperity, most notably. On the left, the Democracy Alliance was actually founded out of this sense that there were a whole range of progressive organizations, but they weren't on the same page, and there wasn't what they called an infrastructure. The idea really was, much as the Koch Brothers are doing now to develop a core set of progressive organizations that would all be on the same page, including some mainstays that exist now, like the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America, the Center on budget and policy priorities. These are sort of big components of the progressive infrastructure in DC. But over time, as they struggled to add additional donors, they gave those donors greater autonomy and say over the organizations that are on the list, the approved list of organizations and that means that the list kept expanding. There'd be various points where the list would get cut, but then it would get expanded once again as they tried to attract more donors. Larry Jacobs: >> There's a lot of consternation among progressives about Donald Trump's impact and his legacy. Some are saying that democracy is dying in America, that the country's commitment to human rights to trade, to immigration is all being rolled back. But question here is whether Donald Trump may actually be contributing to re-birth or re-energizing of progressives at the state level and at the national level. Do you think that's just hopeful thinking, or is there something to it? Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> I both can be true. We can be concerned about the ways in which Trump is violating important norms that underpin democracy, norms like respecting the press, the way in which we talk about racial and ethnic minorities. We can be concerned about those violations of norms and also think that he's contributing to this countermobilization and really rebirth of a lot of progressive organizing at the local level. As FIDA has documented in some of her ongoing work, these resistance groups, some of them in many states have had a significant presence in revitalizing local democratic parties that had gone moribund, that were really committees that were either empty or filled with people who really weren't doing all that much, and they've inserted new vibrancy in the party. And I think that's important. At the state level, you've seen some battles over important state policy and referendum and initiatives like the ones that you mentioned. I think it points to a hopeful direction. Larry Jacobs: >> Three final things here as we're running out of time. First, I hate to ask the hardest question last. Why the bright colored socks, one of our folks here want to know. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: >> Just so you would notice. Larry Jacobs: >> The other is, I want to remind you, Alec's book is right out here for sale, and that he will be hanging around to sign them. Third, I want to recognize my colleague, Kate Semino. Kate Semino: >> Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming today. A couple things about our upcoming events that we have in our series. I know a lot of you enjoy those. This Thursday, we have Theta Scotchbol from Harvard is going to be here to talk about I think I mentioned earlier, if you're into this going deep on the political trends. She's a good one to hear from. Then on May 2nd, we have Hari Han from UC Santa Barbara's going to be talking about mobilizing at the progressive side and how could that be shifted into a longer term strategy over time? Then some of you have heard about our event series going around the state two different of Minnesota looking at the aging of Minnesota's workforce and how older adults can be part of Minnesota's workforce solution. Our trip down to Austin, Minnesota, was rescheduled from March during the winter that we can't seem to get out of. I was rescheduled to May 3rd. We're going to be down in Austin, if you feel like doing a road trip or you have friends in that part of the state, please let them know. Finally, on your program, we have some thanks on the back there to our major donors who support our initiatives through their gifts to our Center, and we also have individuals who contribute at all levels, and we encourage you to consider getting involved in our Donor Circle. That is a gift to the University of Minnesota Foundation. It's a charitable gift that supports our work here and these conversations, talking about some really important topics across the political spectrum. Thank you for being here and have a good rest of the day.