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What It Takes to Win an Election at 25 · Politics Between Us

0:00
SPEAKER_00: And it was a very jarring experience because I had been told and they had been told
0:04
SPEAKER_00: that we should not have good conversations or have anything in common because
0:09
SPEAKER_00: of our political affiliations.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: But what I learned through all these conversations is that we actually had so much in common.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: It just was on a deeper level.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: It was around our values and the way that we Approach our life and our community.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: But those values were buried underneath layers and layers of political bullshit
0:31
SPEAKER_00: and political stories that have prevented us from being able
0:34
SPEAKER_00: to have those conversations.
0:36
[music]
0:47
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Politics Between Us.
0:49
SPEAKER_02: This is a podcast about politics, purpose, and how to live a good life.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: We have a little bit of a surprise for you all today.
0:57
SPEAKER_02: Usually my co-host is Alison Bia,
0:59
SPEAKER_02: who I've known for 10 years since I was her intern at the ACLU of Maine.
1:03
SPEAKER_02: But today I'm joined by a special guest co-host, Lucas Sinclair.
1:08
SPEAKER_02: Lucas is a public lands advocate and former main congressional candidate.
1:13
SPEAKER_02: He joined us during season one of Politics Between Us,
1:17
SPEAKER_02: and he was just such a thoughtful and delightful guest
1:19
SPEAKER_02: that we thought he would also be a good co-host.
1:23
SPEAKER_02: Welcome, Lucas.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: It's so good to be running the show with you today.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Luca.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: It's great to be here.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm super excited.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: And I love the fact that we only have one letter separating our names.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: It's been very confusing as our correspondents have gone on who is being spoken to.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: It's excellent to be back,
1:44
SPEAKER_01: and I'm especially excited today because we're joined by Chloe Maxim.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: Chloe is a former Maine State legislator and the co-founder of Dirt Road Organizing,
1:54
SPEAKER_01: which has worked to build lasting political power in rural communities.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: I'd say that Chloe has been a bit difficult to put in a neat political box.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: She has challenged a lot of the assumptions about rural voters,
2:09
SPEAKER_01: especially here in Maine, and what it means to be a Democrat here in Maine.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: And I've followed her work along for now probably almost a decade,
2:19
SPEAKER_01: and it's been really exciting to see The way in which she's used her political power
2:25
SPEAKER_01: to do some really interesting things.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: So thanks for having me and thanks for joining us, Chloe.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for the invitation to be here.
2:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, welcome, Chloe.
2:36
SPEAKER_02: I think we want to start kind of where we often start on the show,
2:39
SPEAKER_02: which is back towards the beginning,
2:42
SPEAKER_02: which is,
2:42
SPEAKER_02: you know, you've had a You were involved in politics pretty early in your life.
2:48
SPEAKER_02: And one question that we often like to think about is,
2:52
SPEAKER_02: what was your first political memory, if you have one?
3:00
SPEAKER_00: There's so many.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: My parents were,
3:03
SPEAKER_00: they weren't in elected office,
3:05
SPEAKER_00: but they were political people watching the news every night.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: And I, you know,
3:08
SPEAKER_00: I have distinct memories of watching,
3:12
SPEAKER_00: you know,
3:14
SPEAKER_00: just the news growing up and watching our country kind of slowly descend into chaos.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: And that,
3:21
SPEAKER_00: you know,
3:22
SPEAKER_00: just kind of the lack of hope in politics always felt very, very present for me.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: And as I grew up, I
3:31
SPEAKER_00: I really love Maine.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: I love everything about this state.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: I would fight for this state until the day I die.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: As I grew up,
3:38
SPEAKER_00: I began to become more aware of all the forces that threaten our state and our way
3:42
SPEAKER_00: of life and our economy.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: My parents really helped guide me.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: Into spaces where I could put that care into action.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: One of my first big projects was joining the effort to try and protect
3:55
SPEAKER_00: the Moosehead Lake region from a big real estate development project.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: And that was when I was 12.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: And then from there I was like, oh, I really like this organizing stuff.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: And it all kind of snowballed.
4:09
SPEAKER_02: How are you involved in that first organizing effort related to Moosehead Lake?
4:16
SPEAKER_00: I spent a lot of time up there growing up.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know,
4:20
SPEAKER_00: just writing letters to the editor,
4:22
SPEAKER_00: I went and testified in front of the Land Use Regulation Committee,
4:25
SPEAKER_00: as it was called back then.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: It's called something else now.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: And just, yeah, I don't know.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: Looking back, it feels like basic civic engagement for young people.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: But then when I went to my local high school and I wanted to do that type of work
4:44
SPEAKER_00: with my peers and get more young people involved.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: But there was no there was no environmental club at my high school or no way to kind
4:50
SPEAKER_00: of engage with these issues.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: So that was one of my big projects in high school is working with the we started
4:56
SPEAKER_00: the Climate Action Club and did a lot of projects
4:58
SPEAKER_00: to support advocacy efforts around.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: It was a very empowering experience as a young person to be able to organize and see
5:05
SPEAKER_00: that the effort that you were putting into something was impacting conversations
5:09
SPEAKER_00: or shifting the way something was happening in the institutions around you.
5:31
SPEAKER_02: That the country was declining and failing.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: Is that fair to say?
5:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: That in our own lives,
5:39
SPEAKER_00: that we can take actions and choose to live in a way that makes the world
5:45
SPEAKER_00: a better place,
5:46
SPEAKER_00: that allows us to pursue things that we're passionate about with other people.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: I think back then, I would maybe call it more advocacy than organizing.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: I never had an education in In social movements, in organizing, in building people power.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: That all came in college when I was in a city and exposed to just more ways
6:08
SPEAKER_00: of thinking and doing the work.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: But I think looking back, it was totally a form of organizing.
6:18
SPEAKER_01: It's interesting.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: Did you feel that where you were in Maine, did you feel connected to the Moosehead region?
6:29
SPEAKER_01: And I'm always interested when people speak about Maine and where they're from,
6:34
SPEAKER_01: and it seems to be divided into a lot of different places,
6:37
SPEAKER_01: and a lot of people were advocating for various aspects of that project.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: Specifically,
6:42
SPEAKER_01: it was quite a statewide heated project,
6:44
SPEAKER_01: but how did you feel sort of A sense of connection to that place other
6:50
SPEAKER_01: than going up there on vacation.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: I grew up snowmobiling.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: That was what my family did.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: Just spent all winters snowmobiling up north.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: I think that...
7:06
SPEAKER_00: And back then,
7:08
SPEAKER_00: the part of Maine that I live in now,
7:09
SPEAKER_00: because Maine is so much more populated than it was when I grew up.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: My partner and I talk about it all the time, just like what a different place it feels like.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: But I think in Maine overall,
7:19
SPEAKER_00: and especially for Northern Maine, just the tension between how we...
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Continue to ensure economic viability for our rural way of life
7:29
SPEAKER_00: while also preserving our natural resources is such a real tension and it exists
7:33
SPEAKER_00: in Maine and every rural community across the country.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: And that was something that just really struck me when I was working on that project back then.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: I think there's rarely clear black and white to any big policy issue.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: But I remember thinking that back in the day.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: But more importantly,
7:54
SPEAKER_00: I think the same theme applies today,
7:57
SPEAKER_00: which is that You know,
8:00
SPEAKER_00: corporate power can come in and provide one vision for a community
8:06
SPEAKER_00: that feels like it's the only vision and the only way forward.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know,
8:09
SPEAKER_00: thinking about data centers right now feels like a bit of a similarity in the ways
8:14
SPEAKER_00: that data centers and communities.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: Large tech corporations want to come in and take advantage of rural communities
8:20
SPEAKER_00: without really giving back the type of economic viability
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SPEAKER_00: that rural communities need and deserve.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: And so I think those themes have also been very present in my mind over the years
8:31
SPEAKER_00: as I think about what it means to be from a rural place and to organize
8:38
SPEAKER_00: with rural people.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: So you decided...
8:44
SPEAKER_01: When you came back to Maine to run for office,
8:46
SPEAKER_01: can you tell us a little bit about how you decided to do that and what it was like
8:53
SPEAKER_01: as you first started to step into a more public political space?
8:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
9:00
SPEAKER_00: in college,
9:01
SPEAKER_00: I did a lot of organizing work,
9:04
SPEAKER_00: and that organizing work was really focused on trying to limit corporate power
9:08
SPEAKER_00: over our political system.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: That was very empowering,
9:11
SPEAKER_00: and I learned a lot,
9:13
SPEAKER_00: and most importantly,
9:14
SPEAKER_00: Importantly,
9:14
SPEAKER_00: like learning the tools of grassroots organizing was was totally life changing
9:19
SPEAKER_00: for me and seeing what well organized movements can accomplish.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: But at some point I was like, wait a second.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Like, yes,
9:27
SPEAKER_00: like there's so much room to blame corporate America for what's happening
9:31
SPEAKER_00: in our country right now.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: But it's also like we got to blame the politicians that allow themselves
9:37
SPEAKER_00: and their campaigns to be bought out by by All this money.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: And so I started to think more about, OK,
9:46
SPEAKER_00: maybe it's actually more about the people that we elect rather than all of
9:49
SPEAKER_00: the forces that are acting upon them.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: And so when I also like when I was in high school in 2009,
9:55
SPEAKER_00: the partisan lean amongst Republicans.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: Rural voters was dead even.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: And by the time I had moved back home in 2016,
10:04
SPEAKER_00: rural voters were voting to the right by 16 points.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: And that was the year that Trump was elected.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: And that was a shift that I felt really viscerally in my hometown.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: Growing up in my community, I grew up in a rural red community.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Politics was not something that...
10:21
SPEAKER_00: It was there, but it was not divisive.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: It's so...
10:25
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, like on the surface of everything right now.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: And it just was not like that growing up.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: But when I came back and,
10:33
SPEAKER_00: you know,
10:33
SPEAKER_00: the 2016 elections were happening,
10:35
SPEAKER_00: it was like, oh, this feels really, really different.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: My hometown House district, my hometown Senate district voted for Trump in 2016.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: And that also felt really at odds with what I knew about my community,
10:46
SPEAKER_00: which I see as like a very caring and kind community.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: So I So I think all of these things were in my head like, OK,
10:54
SPEAKER_00: there's something going on with the people that we elect and there's something going
10:58
SPEAKER_00: on in rural spaces.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is a like a massive power shift amongst an electorate in less than a decade.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: And the way that American democracy is set up.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: It greatly privileges rural voices, rural voters over suburban and urban voters.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: And we've obviously felt the impacts of that.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: And I can add more statistics, but they're boring, so I won't.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: So in 2018, I was 25, and I was like, maybe I should run for office.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: I want to...
11:28
SPEAKER_00: I want to understand what this is about.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: I want to serve my community.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: I want to be more involved in my community.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: And so I call my best friend.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: We run Dirt Road Organizing together now.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: He's from rural North Carolina.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: We met in college and he moved up to Maine in 2018 to run the campaign.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: I was running in a plus 16 Republican House district that hadn't been won by
11:50
SPEAKER_00: a Democrat since it had been redistricted and just kind of went at it.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: Fully expecting to lose, but also trying to do it differently.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: I had worked on a bunch of different campaigns before.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: I had been through a lot of electoral trainings,
12:06
SPEAKER_00: and they're just ways that I wanted to do it differently and see where it could go.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: And most of That difference came from bringing in the tools and tactics
12:15
SPEAKER_00: and strategies of grassroots organizing into a campaign space.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: And so we just organized in this district for months and months.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: We won in 2018, so I served in the Statehouse for two years.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: And then in 2020, I was asked to run for the State Senate seat.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: Our State Senate seats in Maine are slightly more comparable to the size of other states.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: I was running against a Republican incumbent who was also the Senate leader in Maine
12:45
SPEAKER_00: at the time and did the same thing,
12:48
SPEAKER_00: just organized across the district and we won again.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: So it was just a very...
12:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
12:54
SPEAKER_00: it's just like an incredibly powerful four years of organizing and policymaking
13:00
SPEAKER_00: and trying my very, very best to represent the rural communities that I came from.
13:08
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there are many unique things about your candidacies,
13:12
SPEAKER_02: but one of them was that you're so young.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: And I feel like one of the things I see a lot with young candidates,
13:21
SPEAKER_02: like these young insurgent candidates,
13:24
SPEAKER_02: is that they're very quickly dismissed by the party or they're often told
13:32
SPEAKER_02: that they're too young or too inexperienced to lead.
13:35
SPEAKER_02: What was the experience particularly of becoming a candidate at such a young age?
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, all of that exists.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, and it exists.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exists.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: It's all very real.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, I think there's so many advantages to running as a young person.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm 34 now, so I don't really consider myself on the young end of the spectrum anymore.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: But back then,
14:06
SPEAKER_00: I think the energy, the devotion, and the different perspective, I think really...
14:15
SPEAKER_00: At that time,
14:16
SPEAKER_00: and that was a different political moment,
14:18
SPEAKER_00: but back then it really resonated with people.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: I did my research.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: I knew my stuff.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: I made sure that I was educated on what I was doing.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: But I think also just owning that, like, yes,
14:33
SPEAKER_00: I am young and that's a good thing,
14:35
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:36
SPEAKER_00: and that we've been electing people of the same generation,
14:39
SPEAKER_00: generations for years and has our society, has our democracy become healthier?
14:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: So, you know,
14:48
SPEAKER_00: maybe it's more about thinking about diversity and who we elect and
14:52
SPEAKER_00: who we represent.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a particular,
14:56
SPEAKER_00: like for rural communities,
14:57
SPEAKER_00: especially where it's so hard for young people to make a living here,
15:01
SPEAKER_00: to stay here, that it's important.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: And I think all,
15:06
SPEAKER_00: like most rural people would say, like, it's important that young people can stay.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: I remember that spring, summer, and fall of 2018 really well.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: It was an exciting moment.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: AOC was elected to
15:37
SPEAKER_01: The House that year,
15:39
SPEAKER_01: there was people like yourself that were progressive,
15:45
SPEAKER_01: from my view,
15:46
SPEAKER_01: progressive,
15:47
SPEAKER_01: young, really well-organized,
15:52
SPEAKER_01: had really thought out their political position.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like you were just coming there just to win,
16:00
SPEAKER_01: but you wanted to win for very specific reasons.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: And it was a really exciting thing to see And did anything change for you
16:11
SPEAKER_01: when you got to the statehouse?
16:13
SPEAKER_01: Did it feel like,
16:15
SPEAKER_01: I've always wrestled with this,
16:17
SPEAKER_01: like the interview for the job seems different,
16:19
SPEAKER_01: so vastly different than the job itself.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: And I feel really skeptical about the interview process in today's political campaigning moment.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: But when you ran your campaign and then you got to the statehouse, what was that feeling like?
16:34
SPEAKER_01: And was it much of an adjustment or Did you feel pretty prepared to start legislating?
16:42
SPEAKER_00: I think that, I mean,
16:44
SPEAKER_00: for me, I mean, between my two campaigns, I knocked on over 20,000 doors myself.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: And I never recommend anyone knocking on that many doors in two cycles.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: It totally burned me out and I've not been able I've never been able to knock on
16:57
SPEAKER_00: a door since, although I drive people around to doors a lot.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: But I feel like I got to know my community really well.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: And the vast, vast, vast majority of people that I talked to were not Democrats.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: They were Republicans and conservative-leaning independents.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: And that experience of talking to folks
17:17
SPEAKER_00: who, on the surface, we were really, really different.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: It was totally life-changing.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: I came into the campaign in 2018 being a 25-year-old,
17:32
SPEAKER_00: fairly radical,
17:33
SPEAKER_00: progressive,
17:35
SPEAKER_00: coming out of college organizing,
17:37
SPEAKER_00: which is some of Some of the best and most radical organizing that's out there.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: And then I found myself just every day talking to very conservative folks.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: And so all of those conversations were very sacred to me.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: I took them very seriously.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: I knew I was running to represent a community, a conservative community, not a community.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: The majority of my community is not aligned with Chloe Maxman As a citizen and
18:08
SPEAKER_00: an individual,
18:09
SPEAKER_00: I knew that I was seeking to represent folks that,
18:13
SPEAKER_00: yeah, it's just like, it's not about me, it's about the community.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: And so there was like a bit of an identity transformation there.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: So when I got into the state house, I was a Democrat.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: I was in the Democratic Caucus,
18:27
SPEAKER_00: but I was representing a community that if I voted party line,
18:31
SPEAKER_00: I would not be representing my community.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: So I think that tension was really difficult for me to figure out the spaces
18:38
SPEAKER_00: where I would vote with the party,
18:41
SPEAKER_00: where I wouldn't vote with the party,
18:43
SPEAKER_00: how I would communicate all of that to my district.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: You know,
18:46
SPEAKER_00: I think everything was much more nuanced than I thought it would be as like
18:50
SPEAKER_00: before I was elected.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: And also just like the information that you like it's my job to I was elected
18:57
SPEAKER_00: to read the policy to talk to people on both sides of the aisle.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: Like to make informed decisions about my votes.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: And that work is like kind of private behind the scenes work
19:07
SPEAKER_00: that I just like truly didn't have the time always to communicate.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: And so I think on some level I needed my community to trust me in the relationships
19:17
SPEAKER_00: that I had built while I was campaigning and able to go make good decisions as
19:23
SPEAKER_00: a legislator.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like on the whole that that did go well.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: And if people You know,
19:28
SPEAKER_00: if I voted some way and someone didn't like and they would call me,
19:31
SPEAKER_00: I would call them back and I would talk with them about it.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: And like that, that process was really important to me.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: I also was surrounded by like,
19:39
SPEAKER_00: I knew people who were in the legislature who had served in the legislature.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: So I felt like I I had folks around me who helped guide me through that process
19:47
SPEAKER_00: of becoming an elected official.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: I didn't feel like I was starting from square one.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: That was also a huge,
19:54
SPEAKER_00: huge blessing because it's a weird system that is deeply baked in all of
20:03
SPEAKER_00: the most horrible isms of our country.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a lot to navigate.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: It's a lot to be there.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: And you just got to figure it out.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: That's such an interesting point.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: And I was just at an event for Troy Jackson and the person introducing him said
20:21
SPEAKER_01: that they were in the legislature with him.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: And at one point he voted against the tobacco tax to increase the tax on cigarettes.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: And he was like, look,
20:33
SPEAKER_01: in Northern Roasted County,
20:34
SPEAKER_01: there's people that don't have much and they get real pleasure
20:38
SPEAKER_01: from smoking cigarettes.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to now make that more expensive for them.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: He's like, I just, I can't do it.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, huh, that's an interesting thing to think about, right?
20:48
SPEAKER_01: Constituents, this means a lot for them.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: Tobacco, on the whole, causes a lot of problems and it's pretty bad.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: And so when do you choose to vote in your conscious and when do you choose to vote
21:03
SPEAKER_01: for your constituents?
21:06
SPEAKER_01: And hopefully it doesn't,
21:07
SPEAKER_01: it always isn't so black and white as that,
21:09
SPEAKER_01: but it sounds like something that you had to Grapple
21:14
SPEAKER_02: with at times.
21:15
SPEAKER_02: I'm hearing that phrase come up multiple times.
21:19
SPEAKER_02: Well, Chloe,
21:19
SPEAKER_02: you said earlier,
21:20
SPEAKER_02: at the beginning of the conversation,
21:22
SPEAKER_02: you said you learned pretty early that policy is not always black and white.
21:29
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's a common theme when Alice and I talk about politics a lot,
21:32
SPEAKER_02: is kind of like finding the gray.
21:36
SPEAKER_02: And I'm just, is that something that you, when did you learn that?
21:40
SPEAKER_02: Because I feel like the...
21:43
SPEAKER_02: You know, college organizing is really known for being very black and white.
21:49
SPEAKER_02: And so I'm just curious about like kind of the move between your early advocacy
21:55
SPEAKER_02: to your college organizing to your time in elected office and kind
22:00
SPEAKER_02: of tracking like your understanding of nuance and politics
22:04
SPEAKER_02: across those time periods.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
22:08
SPEAKER_00: I feel like it is such a hallmark of youth organizing to uphold the black and white.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like it's really, really powerful for youth organizing.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that should change at all.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: It's like it's the power of young people to call out that type of moral clarity.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: And to fight for it.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: And that was something that I felt like so strongly about when I was a youth organizer.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: And back then I couldn't understand the gray.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: I was like, gray is moral, like you're morally compromised.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's...
22:40
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's all okay.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: That's the evolution of change-making as you grow up.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: But I think I really began to appreciate the gray while I was campaigning,
22:52
SPEAKER_00: while I was having these conversations with people where...
22:58
SPEAKER_00: You know,
22:59
SPEAKER_00: it's hard to explain,
23:01
SPEAKER_00: but you're having a conversation with someone,
23:04
SPEAKER_00: you may have never voted for the same candidate ever in your life,
23:08
SPEAKER_00: in your two lives, but you're still finding common ground and like...
23:14
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, something real there when you're talking about politics.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: But it's not simple, right?
23:23
SPEAKER_00: It's like not a simple alignment and you have to work for it, but it's totally there.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: And then alignment can still be surrounded by a lot of disagreement, right?
23:35
SPEAKER_00: But even still, I don't think we're as disparately disconnected as we think we are.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: We all want the best for our families and our communities,
23:45
SPEAKER_00: and we're trying to find the best way to get there.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: Like I was saying before,
23:52
SPEAKER_00: it very much influenced my identity,
23:56
SPEAKER_00: how I think about myself as a progressive,
23:59
SPEAKER_00: and what it means to do this work in a rural community is so different from
24:05
SPEAKER_00: And what it looks like in a suburban or an urban place
24:08
SPEAKER_00: where there's maybe more political alignment.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: So I also feel like it's a bit of a rural specific thing.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: And that also I always just feel compelled to say.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: That work is not for everybody.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: My ability as a white woman to go have challenging conversations by myself
24:28
SPEAKER_00: with conservative voters is a very particular theory of change
24:32
SPEAKER_00: that I both think is important and also that I have access to.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: It's not for everybody.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: But I do think that this work is important to...
24:44
SPEAKER_00: To grappling with where our country is right now,
24:47
SPEAKER_00: to building the relationships that bring us back from the brink
24:51
SPEAKER_00: of total democratic failure that we're at.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: And it's like slow work.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: Relationships are slow.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: They take time to develop.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: But I feel like that's what we've been lacking on the left is taking the time
25:09
SPEAKER_00: to actually do that deep organizing.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: The right has done it very, very well for decades.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: And so we just have taken shortcuts and that's how we got to where we are.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: But that's just my opinion.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot of truth in that.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to change questions a little bit about just your own personal experience.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: You know, as you,
25:38
SPEAKER_01: when you run for office,
25:39
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:39
SPEAKER_01: all of a sudden there,
25:41
SPEAKER_01: and when you become elected to office, there's this, there's your own narrative.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: And then there is the media and, and the political narrative and, um,
25:55
SPEAKER_01: Trying to find your center line and stay true to who you are.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: And you've been described as a progressive, as a rural Democrat, a climate activist.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: You certainly were viewed by a lot of people in circles that I were in as
26:13
SPEAKER_01: a real rising young political star.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure that some of that felt true, maybe not.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: But is there a story that you tell about yourself and a story that sort
26:28
SPEAKER_01: of has been told about you that are separate from one another?
26:32
SPEAKER_01: And how does that feel for you to try to be your own true authentic self while
26:41
SPEAKER_01: the media is out there trying to define you in all kinds of different ways?
26:48
SPEAKER_00: Oh, interesting question.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: I think that...
26:54
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm such an introvert and I don't think much of myself.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: And so I think some of those narratives really don't match up with how I see myself.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: My goal in life is to leave Lead a meaningful life,
27:10
SPEAKER_00: fighting for what I love and believe in,
27:12
SPEAKER_00: which is a just democracy and the state of Maine.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I've just followed that path, you know, wherever it took me.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like some of those stories,
27:28
SPEAKER_00: like about me,
27:28
SPEAKER_00: about my work, I don't know, they all sound kind of like calculated to me.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm trying to like, Gain notoriety for the work.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: There's more intention in those narratives than I could ever hope to ascribe to myself.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm not that smart.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: I really believe in experimenting with theories of change and not being ideological.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: I believe in the power of human connection.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: I believe in the power of rural communities.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: I really,
28:06
SPEAKER_00: really dislike the way that progressives in the left,
28:09
SPEAKER_00: as a national whole, have framed and interacted with rural communities.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: It's super demeaning.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: There's no wonder that rural people don't want to engage with that storyline and that narrative.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: And that breaks my heart.
28:26
SPEAKER_02: So, I mean,
28:27
SPEAKER_02: Lucas described you as this, like,
28:29
SPEAKER_02: you know,
28:29
SPEAKER_02: a lot of people framed you as this rising political star,
28:33
SPEAKER_02: but you actually decided to step out of public office and you're,
28:37
SPEAKER_02: you know, focused more on organizing now, it seems.
28:41
SPEAKER_02: Do you mind talking a little bit about, like, why you made that decision?
28:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, deciding not to run again was a really,
28:48
SPEAKER_00: really horribly difficult decision,
28:51
SPEAKER_00: you know,
28:52
SPEAKER_00: in part because of what I've laid out about how much I care about my community
28:56
SPEAKER_00: and how much time and effort I put into this.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: Building relationships and trust in my community.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: There were a whole bunch of factors that led to me not running again.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think I'd spent half of my 20s running and serving and I felt like I just...
29:16
SPEAKER_00: And also Maine is a part time citizen legislature and so is working full time as well.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: And I was just exhausted.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: I like it was genuinely burned out from running the types of campaigns that we had
29:28
SPEAKER_00: about and like what it takes to win in some of these rural spaces.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a lot like like you win, but you don't know that you're going to win again.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Like you don't have that incumbent protection.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: And serving, yeah, serving is also like a very stressful, intense experience.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: And I think also that my heart,
29:50
SPEAKER_00: like both with my campaigns and the way
29:53
SPEAKER_00: that I served was more centered around grassroots organizing than it was around
29:58
SPEAKER_00: the concentrated power of being in.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: In a state capitol.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: And I felt like, I don't know, I wanted to get back to that organizing.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: So I made,
30:09
SPEAKER_00: decided to make,
30:10
SPEAKER_00: to make that switch and,
30:12
SPEAKER_00: and almost at the,
30:14
SPEAKER_00: and the vehicle for And after that was Canyon who is my campaign manager
30:18
SPEAKER_00: and my best friend we started dirt road organizing together to be able
30:23
SPEAKER_00: to support lots of people that were doing this work in rural communities instead
30:26
SPEAKER_00: of just focusing on myself.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: Candidates should run.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: Everyone should run for office.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: Everyone should focus on themselves and believe in themselves to run.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: I totally believe that.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: And I think for me, it was so uncomfortable for me.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: And I felt like I could have a bigger impact by supporting more folks who are
30:49
SPEAKER_00: into this work than just myself.
30:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's interesting
30:55
SPEAKER_02: because I think we all personally have different personality types that lend itself
31:01
SPEAKER_02: to different things.
31:02
SPEAKER_02: And you described yourself as an introvert earlier in the conversation because
31:07
SPEAKER_02: at first I was thinking, oh,
31:11
SPEAKER_02: is it possible to do the type of candidacy that you created in a sustainable way
31:19
SPEAKER_02: where you don't burn out,
31:20
SPEAKER_02: but maybe it has something to do more with like You have your own personality type
31:25
SPEAKER_02: and what feels like generative and energizing for you.
31:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: And I think, I mean,
31:32
SPEAKER_00: I think the way that I did it,
31:34
SPEAKER_00: people come to me like way too,
31:36
SPEAKER_00: way too often now and be like, I can't, I could never do what you do, what you did.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not going to win.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, and that, that narrative kind of breaks my heart a little bit.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: That was like, not what I was trying to convey at all.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: You know,
31:49
SPEAKER_00: I was 25 and in like a moment in my life where I could Get up and do my work in
31:54
SPEAKER_00: the morning, go canvas all day, come back and work at night.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: I have no kids.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: I didn't mind eating Annie's every meal.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: It was just a particular moment of my life where I had the flexibility and the space
32:06
SPEAKER_00: and the privilege to And I wanted to campaign in a way that allowed me to just,
32:11
SPEAKER_00: like, go deep and do it.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: And, but that is not the only way to do this work,
32:17
SPEAKER_00: and it is not the only way to win in rural, in rural spaces.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: What it means to win in a rural space is much more complicated
32:25
SPEAKER_00: than actually getting more than 50% of the vote on election day.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: We see it all the time with the folks that we work with at Dirt Road that in
32:34
SPEAKER_00: so many rural communities that the political muscle,
32:38
SPEAKER_00: The volunteer muscle has atrophy to such an extent that simply running a campaign
32:43
SPEAKER_00: and providing an infrastructure for people to get involved
32:47
SPEAKER_00: with local politics is such a massive win and it benefits the next person that runs
32:52
SPEAKER_00: and the next and the next.
32:55
SPEAKER_01: I love that point that you made.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: By just running,
32:59
SPEAKER_01: you can run and lose and it's still an incredibly important thing to do
33:04
SPEAKER_01: because you're demonstrating that It's okay to lose for one thing,
33:09
SPEAKER_01: but also that there is,
33:12
SPEAKER_01: you know, it's like these foundational blocks that you can start to build upon.
33:17
SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot about that in these small rural towns,
33:24
SPEAKER_01: like running for the hospital board or being assigned to a hospital board or sitting
33:31
SPEAKER_01: on a school board where you're making these really critical decisions for
33:35
SPEAKER_01: a community.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes in rural Maine,
33:38
SPEAKER_01: especially,
33:39
SPEAKER_01: these communities are so small and you see all these people all the time
33:43
SPEAKER_01: and you're likely related to many of them as well.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: And so when politics is very personal, I think running for office can be quite hard.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: And just stepping into that role can be,
34:03
SPEAKER_01: Probably the hardest thing,
34:04
SPEAKER_01: but once you're in it, it starts to feel like, you know what, this isn't impossible.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: And I at least found that people were much more willing to speak to me
34:15
SPEAKER_01: about their challenges and ideas when I was running for office
34:22
SPEAKER_01: than certainly any other time in my life.
34:24
SPEAKER_01: And that was really exciting because organizing for a campaign like
34:31
SPEAKER_01: the Plum Creek Moosehead Lake debate or the work that I did in the Katahdin region.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: If it's for one thing, it's like, are you for it or are you against it?
34:42
SPEAKER_01: And that has a dividing nature to it in its own right.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: But public office is different in that sense.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: And people are saying, they're not saying yes or no.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: They're saying, here's what I want.
34:55
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I think.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I understand about the place that I live and what would be best for us.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we talk about that all the time.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: Just when you are campaigning,
35:06
SPEAKER_00: you have this unspoken social license to drive down someone's driveway,
35:11
SPEAKER_00: sit on their porch and have a conversation with them about politics.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: And there is truly no other time when that is acceptable or when people will allow that.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: And because of that,
35:21
SPEAKER_00: campaigns have a really special organizing function in our democracy
35:26
SPEAKER_00: that I think has been really,
35:27
SPEAKER_00: really overlooked because it's not just about You know,
35:31
SPEAKER_00: lifting yourself up as a candidate.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: It's about building a political culture where everyone deserves the space
35:39
SPEAKER_00: to be listened to and to be heard.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: And it's a lot around, it's a lot of what we train.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: How can you use your campaign as a vehicle for public service, for mutual aid?
35:53
SPEAKER_00: How can you think about the work that you're doing beyond election day and beyond yourself?
35:59
SPEAKER_00: Because it is such a special opportunity to do this work.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: Gotta take advantage of the whole thing.
36:09
SPEAKER_01: I definitely feel like I'm better at my job now, which is working on rural economic development.
36:14
SPEAKER_01: Because of the run that I had in a rural congressional district,
36:19
SPEAKER_01: I just have vastly deepened understanding about the needs of rural places.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: I feel the same way.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'd love to chat a little bit more about dirt road organizing and kind of some of the...
36:45
SPEAKER_01: Sort of some of the philosophies that you have around
36:51
SPEAKER_01: what positive politics means
36:53
SPEAKER_01: on your website.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: We've been really interested in,
36:58
SPEAKER_01: I know this podcast and Luca and Allison and myself to
37:02
SPEAKER_01: a certain extent have been really interested in the emotions that drive politics.
37:06
SPEAKER_01: And on your website for Dirt Road Organizing,
37:09
SPEAKER_01: it says that you're 100% committed to positive politics.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: And I think I have a version of what that means in my mind,
37:19
SPEAKER_01: but I'd love to hear what that means to you and what it means to the candidates
37:24
SPEAKER_01: that you're working with and the campaigns that you're working on.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
37:28
SPEAKER_00: it definitely came out of the campaigns,
37:31
SPEAKER_00: of my own campaigns and committing to 100% positive campaigning,
37:38
SPEAKER_00: which sounds very kind of like naive and simplistic,
37:41
SPEAKER_00: but in practice,
37:42
SPEAKER_00: it had such a It's such a powerful impact in our community because we're all so used
37:46
SPEAKER_00: to politics being like the opposite of positive and being very negative
37:51
SPEAKER_00: and just tearing everything down.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: And people are genuinely tired of it.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I can't stand it.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: We do this work for a living.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, we just deserve something better.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: And we deserve to have our political system talk about what we can achieve
38:07
SPEAKER_00: and what we are fighting for instead of just what's wrong
38:10
SPEAKER_00: with what everyone's doing right now.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: And that's very much true for Dirt Road as well and the people that we work with.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: You know,
38:17
SPEAKER_00: it's about building a positive political vision for our future and
38:23
SPEAKER_00: for really putting the time into articulating what that means to demonstrating what
38:28
SPEAKER_00: that can look like.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that you don't stand up for yourself and you don't call out
38:33
SPEAKER_00: the hatred and the violence that's surrounding our politics right now.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: But it's paired with...
38:40
SPEAKER_00: An intention to be like,
38:42
SPEAKER_00: we deserve better than this,
38:43
SPEAKER_00: and this is why,
38:45
SPEAKER_00: and this is what I'm doing to demonstrate that this could be better than it is.
38:54
SPEAKER_02: In a political climate where there's so much anger,
38:59
SPEAKER_02: and I think particularly among young people,
39:02
SPEAKER_02: like apathy,
39:04
SPEAKER_02: apathy and mixed with anger, which is an interesting combo, how do you kind of...
39:10
SPEAKER_02: Metabolize all of those emotions and come out with a positive vision.
39:15
SPEAKER_02: I think it takes a really unique politician to be able to do that.
39:22
SPEAKER_02: Because to me,
39:23
SPEAKER_02: you have to be able to validate people's frustrations as well and find a way
39:29
SPEAKER_02: to make them feel seen without being, I guess, angry yourself.
39:34
SPEAKER_02: Does that make sense?
39:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
39:36
SPEAKER_00: I think I was going to say exactly what you just said,
39:40
SPEAKER_00: which is like that anger and that apathy is 100 percent warranted.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: Like it's so it's so valid and it's very real and understandable.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: So but to me,
39:54
SPEAKER_00: the questions that I ask is like, well,
39:55
SPEAKER_00: why are we like,
39:56
SPEAKER_00: why are we so angry and like,
39:58
SPEAKER_00: why have we decided to disengage from the political system?
40:00
SPEAKER_00: And This is a very simplistic answer,
40:04
SPEAKER_00: but I think underneath there's a core of because we deserve better,
40:08
SPEAKER_00: because it's not working for us,
40:10
SPEAKER_00: because it's not setting us up for a lifetime of democratic security
40:18
SPEAKER_00: that we need on
40:19
SPEAKER_00: the most basic level to move through our lives.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: And so I think being able to articulate the other side of that
40:29
SPEAKER_00: Is, is basically, is basically what we're talking about.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: Or, you know,
40:33
SPEAKER_00: if you're,
40:34
SPEAKER_00: if you're running a campaign,
40:36
SPEAKER_00: or you're staffing a campaign,
40:38
SPEAKER_00: you know,
40:39
SPEAKER_00: you need to be able to articulate,
40:42
SPEAKER_00: like the values that you stand What are you going to represent as you're campaigning
40:47
SPEAKER_00: and as you are looking ahead towards being an elected official?
40:51
SPEAKER_00: That's also another way of thinking about positive campaigning.
40:56
SPEAKER_00: Some of the values that That I find most compelling are just like
41:00
SPEAKER_00: the most basic ones, which is like, we will listen to each other.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: I will listen to you.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: I will represent you.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: I will always be accessible.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: I will be communicative.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: I will be in our community every month for...
41:16
SPEAKER_00: Coffee with people.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean, whatever it is,
41:20
SPEAKER_00: there's something inherently in a campaign that you have to stand on and just taking
41:25
SPEAKER_00: the time to do that while also very much honoring that things are deeply,
41:31
SPEAKER_00: deeply broken right now.
41:34
SPEAKER_00: It's not just young people that are angry and apathetic.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: So many people are just not voting because they don't think
41:40
SPEAKER_00: that their vote is worth anything anymore.
41:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I even have some of that in me.
41:45
SPEAKER_00: I just cast my ballot the other day and I'm like,
41:50
SPEAKER_00: I know my vote has an impact on the local level when I'm voting for my state rep.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: But besides that, I'm like, there are so many forces acting upon voting.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: Our campaigns now that go beyond my vote.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: Anyways,
42:04
SPEAKER_00: just that was a bit of a ramble,
42:07
SPEAKER_00: just being like, we have to, there is space for it all.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: And I think the more human and honest our politics can be, then the better off we are.
42:17
SPEAKER_02: You're both pretty aligned there on how you chose to lead your candidacies.
42:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I was interested to hear how you kind of grappled with that.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: Like
42:35
SPEAKER_01: you definitely had some negativity directed toward you and in a positive,
42:41
SPEAKER_01: like trying to be as positive as possible,
42:43
SPEAKER_01: how did you, I like the word metabolize that Luca used earlier.
42:47
SPEAKER_01: Like how do you sort of take that and push it back out in the world in a positive way?
42:53
SPEAKER_01: Like was that challenging or is it easy for you to just sort
42:57
SPEAKER_01: of Let it roll off your back and stay focused.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
43:04
SPEAKER_00: I think that, yeah, I mean,
43:08
SPEAKER_00: my own experience,
43:09
SPEAKER_00: which is like very limited and very couched and like a lot of privilege
43:14
SPEAKER_00: and security,
43:16
SPEAKER_00: is that, yeah,
43:18
SPEAKER_00: there's negative stuff that comes your way,
43:20
SPEAKER_00: but it's like such a small, like, It's not the only thing.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: This is my own experience.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: It's not the only thing that's coming my way.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: In our campaigns,
43:30
SPEAKER_00: when we would get attack mailers or attack ads or something like that,
43:35
SPEAKER_00: one of my main barometers for is this happening.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: Having an actual impact on the way that people are thinking about me was to go out
43:41
SPEAKER_00: and knock on my door knocking universe of like all conservative folks who got
43:46
SPEAKER_00: that mailer or heard that ad,
43:48
SPEAKER_00: you know, and see if it was landing with people and almost universally it wasn't.
43:53
SPEAKER_00: Like people, it just didn't get traction with people.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: So, you know,
43:57
SPEAKER_00: so for me it was like,
43:58
SPEAKER_00: oh my God,
43:59
SPEAKER_00: someone like Photoshop my face and I look horrible and, you know, Yuck and ah.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: But in reality,
44:09
SPEAKER_00: there was a bigger story beyond that,
44:11
SPEAKER_00: which is people also weren't buying all of the negative politicking.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you're referring to when our book came out and everyone really had
44:20
SPEAKER_00: a hard time with that.
44:24
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, a lot of lessons to be learned there.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: But in that same moment,
44:29
SPEAKER_00: we were receiving so much positive feedback from people all across the country
44:34
SPEAKER_00: who were like, oh my gosh, I'm having a really similar experience to you.
44:39
SPEAKER_00: And maybe this is, you know, like it's like...
44:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm having a similar experience too and that's really comforting.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: I felt really isolated in my already isolated community and maybe there's more
44:52
SPEAKER_00: of us facing these challenges than I thought before.
44:54
SPEAKER_00: So I think just being able to balance it all and also to learn from ways
45:05
SPEAKER_02: that maybe you brought the negative stuff on yourself or I don't know.
45:10
SPEAKER_00: There's always a lot to unpack there.
45:12
SPEAKER_00: But again, I feel like I experienced that in such a safe and privileged way.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: There are never any direct threats on my life.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: No one ever came to my house.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: I think the ways in
45:24
SPEAKER_00: which people experience negative campaigning right now are really intense,
45:29
SPEAKER_00: genuinely scary, and often very physical.
45:33
SPEAKER_00: It's about your family and your safety,
45:35
SPEAKER_00: and that's a very, very different level from what I've experienced.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: So I'm really curious about your thinking about rural America generally.
45:51
SPEAKER_01: There is a sense that rural America is conservative, rural America is fading in some way.
46:00
SPEAKER_01: And there is this kind of assumption even...
46:03
SPEAKER_01: About activities like hunting and snowmobiling.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: I love when he said,
46:08
SPEAKER_01: in my mind,
46:08
SPEAKER_01: this is like the assumption that I made was like,
46:10
SPEAKER_01: oh, when Chloe's family went to Moosehead, they went cross-country skiing.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: And then you're like, no, we'd go up there and go snowmobiling.
46:16
SPEAKER_01: And I was like,
46:17
SPEAKER_01: oh, that's like kind of more of a conservative thing that happens in rural America.
46:21
SPEAKER_01: So like,
46:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
46:24
SPEAKER_01: despite the fact that I've lived in rural Maine for most of my life,
46:30
SPEAKER_01: I make assumptions about rural Maine and I make assumptions about rural America
46:35
SPEAKER_01: that aren't right.
46:38
SPEAKER_01: What are we getting wrong about it?
46:40
SPEAKER_01: If you could broadcast to the world what rural America is like
46:47
SPEAKER_01: from your perspective, what is that?
46:54
SPEAKER_00: I think at the core of it, it's that like rural values are progressive values.
46:57
SPEAKER_00: And I'm broadcasting this to the left because I think that's kind of where a lot of
47:02
SPEAKER_00: the misconception is.
47:03
SPEAKER_00: But that,
47:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
47:05
SPEAKER_00: if we're talking about like a representative democracy, affordable health care.
47:11
SPEAKER_00: Accessible education,
47:13
SPEAKER_00: some of these bedrock values of progressive politics,
47:18
SPEAKER_00: those are exactly what rural people want as well.
47:20
SPEAKER_00: This is not my original thought.
47:23
SPEAKER_00: There's tons of incredible organizations.
47:26
SPEAKER_00: That are proving this point, like doing the message testing and the reports that back this up.
47:35
SPEAKER_00: And I'm happy to provide sources if that's what your audience likes.
47:39
SPEAKER_00: But it's a well-researched theme that progressive values are rural values.
47:45
SPEAKER_00: And what has gotten in the way of those equations being connected are...
47:51
SPEAKER_00: We have very divisive campaigning and very divisive media that have kind
47:56
SPEAKER_00: of polarized rural people from the progressive left.
48:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, so I think that's the core of it.
48:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:05
SPEAKER_00: Rural values are progressive values.
48:08
SPEAKER_00: It's so like in my mind, it's so much more complicated than that, though.
48:12
SPEAKER_00: The left has spent decades disenfranchising rural voters,
48:15
SPEAKER_00: both through our policy and the way that we campaign.
48:18
SPEAKER_00: And so I think a lot of the ways that rural people think about the left are...
48:24
SPEAKER_00: If you're looking at it in a vacuum, are kind of warranted.
48:26
SPEAKER_00: Again,
48:27
SPEAKER_00: those have been absolutely exacerbated and taken advantage of by all of the media
48:36
SPEAKER_00: and our country and the rhetoric of rural political leaders.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's very real.
48:47
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing that's very real is a lot of the, not all, but a lot of
48:54
SPEAKER_00: The racist and xenophobic tropes in our country right now do come out
48:58
SPEAKER_00: of rural spaces, and that's also very real.
49:02
SPEAKER_00: To me, it's a very complicated place to organize,
49:09
SPEAKER_00: and I don't think there's any simple truth about it.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: And then to make it more complicated,
49:19
SPEAKER_00: like that our democracy does privilege a rural vote greater than it privileges
49:23
SPEAKER_00: an urban or a suburban vote.
49:25
SPEAKER_00: So if we are talking about building durable political power on the left, we have to organize.
49:31
SPEAKER_00: In rural America,
49:32
SPEAKER_00: there's no way to achieve that end without organizing in these spaces that have kind
49:37
SPEAKER_00: of turned against us a little bit.
49:39
SPEAKER_00: And that work of winning back those communities of building that trust is going
49:43
SPEAKER_00: to take a really, really, really,
49:45
SPEAKER_00: really long time and require thousands of people to run for office, to,
49:51
SPEAKER_00: you know,
49:52
SPEAKER_00: Take on leadership in their county parties to do the local organizing work.
49:57
SPEAKER_00: It's like it's a long it's a long road back.
50:00
SPEAKER_00: But to me, it's the democracy saving work that we that we have to do.
50:04
SPEAKER_00: So it's very I find it.
50:07
SPEAKER_00: Very complicated.
50:09
SPEAKER_00: There's no easy way to talk about what it means to organize in a rural community.
50:14
SPEAKER_00: And what it means to organize in like
50:16
SPEAKER_00: a very white rural space like Maine is very different from what it means to organize
50:21
SPEAKER_00: in the South.
50:21
SPEAKER_00: And so it's just, there's a lot to unpack with rural organizing.
50:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:29
SPEAKER_02: And I think one thing that's kind of Hard to think about right now is,
50:34
SPEAKER_02: you know, you talked about this taking a very, very long time.
50:39
SPEAKER_02: But right now, so many things feel like they're kind of on fire.
50:42
SPEAKER_02: And there is a lot of like urgency in our politics.
50:47
SPEAKER_02: And it feels like we're kind of in crisis.
50:50
SPEAKER_02: So how do you kind of reconcile that urgency with the patience that,
50:58
SPEAKER_02: you know, durable organizing requires?
51:03
SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
51:04
SPEAKER_00: And I mean,
51:05
SPEAKER_00: I was my answer and how I think about it is like both have both have to exist at
51:09
SPEAKER_00: the same time and can exist at the same time that one does not displace the other.
51:13
SPEAKER_00: That if we're like that,
51:17
SPEAKER_00: the importance of rural organizing does not displace the importance
51:21
SPEAKER_00: of power building in more.
51:24
SPEAKER_00: Densely populated communities.
51:26
SPEAKER_00: We need all of it and we need both of it.
51:29
SPEAKER_00: And I think if you're looking in a rural-only context,
51:33
SPEAKER_00: that
51:35
SPEAKER_00: campaigns or rural organizing work can acknowledge The urgency of gas is $5
51:42
SPEAKER_00: a gallon right now.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: How are we going to get through the winter?
51:46
SPEAKER_00: That level of urgency can be matched at the same time
51:49
SPEAKER_00: with running thoughtful campaigns that actually engage with the community
51:53
SPEAKER_00: and continue to do the good, deep work of...
51:57
SPEAKER_00: Just listening to people's stories and building a political ecosystem
52:01
SPEAKER_00: that is more representative than just one experience, which is kind of where we are.
52:08
SPEAKER_00: So I think it all has to happen at the same time.
52:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, my hope,
52:13
SPEAKER_00: which is like,
52:14
SPEAKER_00: we don't really do this well as human beings,
52:16
SPEAKER_00: but I think the left has consistently decided to spend its resources
52:24
SPEAKER_00: In more densely populated areas to get more bang for their buck when it comes to voter turnout.
52:29
SPEAKER_00: And the cost of that calculus to me is profound.
52:37
SPEAKER_00: It's what has lost over a thousand.
52:39
SPEAKER_00: The Democrats lost more state legislative seats during Obama's presidency than
52:43
SPEAKER_00: since World War II.
52:44
SPEAKER_00: There's just been a profound...
52:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
52:57
SPEAKER_00: siphoning of power from the left because we have very intentionally decided not
53:01
SPEAKER_00: to organize in communities where it takes more time and more effort to build
53:05
SPEAKER_00: to build those relationships.
53:08
SPEAKER_00: Mostly because like in a rural community,
53:09
SPEAKER_00: it's like all the houses are a mile apart or more like it just takes longer to do
53:14
SPEAKER_00: the work, which means it takes more money.
53:18
SPEAKER_00: And so.
53:20
SPEAKER_00: So anyways, that calculus has been very real.
53:22
SPEAKER_00: And I think if we continue to indulge that,
53:25
SPEAKER_00: then we are,
53:26
SPEAKER_00: we're not actually putting ourselves in a better position to address
53:31
SPEAKER_00: the urgent issues of our time.
53:34
SPEAKER_00: How the right has like very thoughtfully and intentionally organized over
53:38
SPEAKER_00: the past 50 years in rural communities taking over school boards and churches
53:46
SPEAKER_00: and kind of using some of these local institutions.
53:50
SPEAKER_00: To build a type of power that,
53:53
SPEAKER_00: in my mind, it's so ubiquitous that we take for granted that it is intentional.
54:01
SPEAKER_00: But we don't do anything like that on the progressive side.
54:07
SPEAKER_02: Real quick, before we close out, I want to ask about our current political moment.
54:12
SPEAKER_02: Do you think...
54:14
SPEAKER_02: Do you think Democrats are doing a better job this cycle of,
54:20
SPEAKER_02: I guess, investing a little bit in rural places?
54:22
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
54:24
SPEAKER_02: right now the polling is pretty strong for Democrats in some states like Kansas
54:30
SPEAKER_02: and Alaska, Iowa.
54:33
SPEAKER_02: At least at the statewide level.
54:36
SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious if you've seen any shift in the last few years
54:40
SPEAKER_02: of Democrats actually starting to kind of take this message and take the idea
54:44
SPEAKER_02: of being in rural communities more seriously.
54:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do feel like it's shifting.
54:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think that the basic math of the situation is causing a shift.
54:55
SPEAKER_00: And I think also there are amazing candidates all across the country who are doing
55:02
SPEAKER_00: the work that I'm talking about.
55:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm one tiny person amongst an amazing ecosystem of leaders that are engaging
55:12
SPEAKER_00: in this work and doing it so successfully and so beautifully.
55:15
SPEAKER_00: So I do think that it's becoming...
55:20
SPEAKER_00: More recognized and more appreciated and more invested in.
55:25
SPEAKER_00: My own perspective is from supporting rural leaders in small communities across
55:32
SPEAKER_00: the country that are running for office right now as they head towards November
55:37
SPEAKER_00: and just having a very beautiful and privileged view into the Like
55:44
SPEAKER_00: the very loving organizing that they are doing in their in their corners of
55:48
SPEAKER_00: the country,
55:50
SPEAKER_00: the ways that they are trying to think about politics differently,
55:53
SPEAKER_00: the ways that they're trying to serve their community beyond their own candidacy,
55:57
SPEAKER_00: the ways that they bring Like genuine compassion and kindness
56:01
SPEAKER_00: into their political work,
56:03
SPEAKER_00: even in spaces and places that are not compassionate and kind.
56:07
SPEAKER_00: To me,
56:08
SPEAKER_00: that work is so hopeful and it's the most hopeful when it happens like on a On
56:14
SPEAKER_00: a small scale in a small community where someone has that connection.
56:19
SPEAKER_00: And so I think whatever happens in November
56:23
SPEAKER_00: that there are good people doing this work and it's so brave and it's so scary and
56:29
SPEAKER_00: that they should be getting all of the attention even when
56:33
SPEAKER_00: the big splashy races suck it all up.
56:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
56:38
SPEAKER_01: Very, very nicely said.
56:40
SPEAKER_01: I think that's probably a good place to To end this conversation,
56:46
SPEAKER_01: Chloe, it's been such a thrill to have a deeper conversation with you.
56:52
SPEAKER_01: I remember seeing you and Canyon on your book tour at Space Gallery in Portland,
56:59
SPEAKER_01: probably a decade, well,
57:02
SPEAKER_01: it's been a lot of years,
57:03
SPEAKER_01: and I was very impressed with your vision for politics then,
57:08
SPEAKER_01: and it seems to Have just become more focused and really more optimistic.
57:15
SPEAKER_01: And it's clear that you bring a lot of love and joy for the places that you are and
57:20
SPEAKER_01: the places that you work into your work.
57:22
SPEAKER_01: So thank you for spending some time with Luca and I.
57:27
SPEAKER_01: It's a testament to how rural Maine and rural places feel left out as we struggle
57:35
SPEAKER_01: to find a good, strong internet connection.
57:36
SPEAKER_01: But I'm glad we persevered so we could have this conversation.
57:40
SPEAKER_01: Rural infrastructure is very important.
57:42
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm really glad that we were able to find the time and the place for this conversation.
57:48
SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much.
57:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:50
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for being on Politics Between Us.
57:51
SPEAKER_02: It was awesome to have you.
57:53
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
57:55
[music]