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True Grit and Public Service · Political Junkie Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Nearly 1 in 10 retired people have had to return to the workforce
0:05
SPEAKER_01: because they've lost their pensions.
0:08
SPEAKER_01: Young people returning home to live with their parents after graduation
0:12
SPEAKER_01: because they can't find a job.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: Companies leaving the country to avoid paying taxes
0:18
SPEAKER_01: or avoid paying people livable wage and corporations doing this with the support
0:22
SPEAKER_01: of our own government.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: And a political process in Washington that they rent if not own.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: This is the fear of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson,
0:40
SPEAKER_01: the fear that economic power would one day try to seize political power.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: And Theodore Roosevelt said it best,
0:48
SPEAKER_01: every special interest is entitled to justice, full, fair, and complete.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: But not one is entitled to a vote in Congress,
0:57
SPEAKER_01: not one entitled to a voice on the bench,
1:00
SPEAKER_01: and not one to any representation in public office.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: We opened with a clip from former Vermont Governor Howard Dean announcing his bid
1:10
SPEAKER_00: for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination in Burlington,
1:14
SPEAKER_00: Vermont, on June 23rd, 2003.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Neil and I are off until after Labor Day, but there will be plenty of bonus content.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm Claire Potter,
1:24
SPEAKER_00: and this is the True Grit and Public Service edition of
1:28
SPEAKER_00: the Political Junkie podcast.
1:37
SPEAKER_03: Well, you can't be my lovin', baby, you ain't got the style.
1:41
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna get some real gone love that'll drive a cool cat wild.
1:45
SPEAKER_03: Gonna move, roll that rod on down.
1:49
SPEAKER_03: Gonna get me a gal that'll go out on the town.
1:53
SPEAKER_03: Well, you gotta move on down the line.
1:56
SPEAKER_03: Gonna get me a gal that'll make some time.
1:59
SPEAKER_03: Can't be as quiet as you can't be slow.
2:00
SPEAKER_03: Cause the wind starts bloodin', gotta go, go, go.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: One of the things I've always loved about teaching is keeping up with students
2:10
SPEAKER_00: after they graduate and finding out who they're going to become.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: Back in the spring of 2007,
2:16
SPEAKER_00: I was teaching at Wesleyan University when a student in one
2:19
SPEAKER_00: of my lecture classes dropped in to ask if I would advise his senior honors thesis
2:24
SPEAKER_00: in American Studies.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: When I asked what he planned to write about,
2:27
SPEAKER_00: Ryan McLaren answered something about the history of Vermont.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: I love Vermont.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Who could resist such a request?
2:36
SPEAKER_00: This was also an ambitious guy.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: Most members of the football team didn't write an honors thesis.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: The time they devoted to the sport,
2:43
SPEAKER_00: even at a Division III school,
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SPEAKER_00: made it hard to fit a rigorous independent study,
2:48
SPEAKER_00: one that required intense research focus in the fall, into their schedules.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: Ryan graduated with honors in American Studies in the spring of 2008,
2:58
SPEAKER_00: and I learned a lot about the history of Vermont that year and
3:02
SPEAKER_00: that state's distinctive place in our democracy.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: Get acquainted with Vermont's commitment to civic excellence,
3:09
SPEAKER_00: and it won't surprise you that it is one of four states
3:12
SPEAKER_00: to have produced two presidents,
3:13
SPEAKER_00: Chester Arthur and Calvin Coolidge,
3:16
SPEAKER_00: that it has supported a senator,
3:17
SPEAKER_00: Bernie Sanders,
3:18
SPEAKER_00: who has reshaped the Democratic Party,
3:21
SPEAKER_00: or a presidential candidate,
3:23
SPEAKER_00: Howard Dean,
3:24
SPEAKER_00: whose investment in a digital strategy revolutionized how campaigns are run,
3:29
SPEAKER_00: something I discuss in my book, Political Junkie.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: After he graduated from Wesleyan, Ryan devoted himself to contributing to his state.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: I'll let him tell you his story,
3:39
SPEAKER_00: but that path included AmeriCorps,
3:41
SPEAKER_00: coaching,
3:42
SPEAKER_00: working on schools and Democratic Party politics,
3:46
SPEAKER_00: working for Governor Peter Shumlin, and as a staffer for Senator Peter Welsh.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: That upward trajectory was interrupted by a 2017 catastrophic spinal injury,
3:57
SPEAKER_00: which left Ryan disabled in body but not in spirit.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: He's still the same sunny guy I met back in 2007,
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SPEAKER_00: still an athlete and still devoted to public service,
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SPEAKER_00: so much so that on Tuesday,
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SPEAKER_00: August 11th, he will be on the ballot for Lieutenant Governor of Vermont.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: Ryan McLaren,
4:15
SPEAKER_02: welcome to the show.
4:17
SPEAKER_02: Claire, it's so good to see you.
4:20
SPEAKER_02: Oh, my gosh.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh, my gosh.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I've made it now.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: Really?
4:24
SPEAKER_00: Really?
4:25
SPEAKER_02: You're on Claire Potter's podcast.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: It's really quite unusual to have a student walk into your office and say,
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SPEAKER_00: I want to do research on my state because I love it so much and it's my home.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, how can I turn you down, Guy?
4:41
SPEAKER_00: And you wrote a thesis.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: And that was the beginning of...
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Your launch into politics.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: But you started in AmeriCorps, didn't you?
4:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, my first job back in Vermont after college was as an AmeriCorps member.
5:00
SPEAKER_02: I was trying to figure out what to do with myself.
5:01
SPEAKER_02: And I'd always had,
5:03
SPEAKER_02: I think, a general commitment to service and an appreciation for Public Education.
5:10
SPEAKER_02: I'm the product of public education.
5:13
SPEAKER_02: My parents didn't go to college and somehow managed to send all three of their kids to Wesleyan.
5:18
SPEAKER_02: We all graduated from Wesleyan and,
5:21
SPEAKER_02: and I have,
5:23
SPEAKER_02: I just was so invested in the value of an education because it opened up the world
5:28
SPEAKER_02: of possibility for me.
5:30
SPEAKER_02: Like I'm here right now because of great teachers like you,
5:33
SPEAKER_02: the folks I had in,
5:34
SPEAKER_02: in my high school and elementary school who saw The potential in me as a kid,
5:39
SPEAKER_02: not because how much money my parents had or whatever,
5:41
SPEAKER_02: but because there was something there that they saw.
5:44
SPEAKER_02: And so I came back to Vermont and just did a year of service in
5:49
SPEAKER_02: a reading mentoring program,
5:50
SPEAKER_02: trying to connect Elementary school kids with mentors from outside of the school
5:55
SPEAKER_02: that would come in at their lunch break and just come and read with kids to try
5:59
SPEAKER_02: and instill a love of learning,
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SPEAKER_02: to try and build positive social relationships with kids and adults outside
6:05
SPEAKER_02: of their family, often in cases where the kids don't have that to begin with.
6:09
SPEAKER_02: And so it was wonderful.
6:10
SPEAKER_02: And it helped me pay my student loans,
6:13
SPEAKER_02: which was important to me as a first-generation college kid.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: So you got your loans forgiven for this year of service.
6:21
SPEAKER_02: A big chunk of them, yeah.
6:22
SPEAKER_02: And then I started working.
6:24
SPEAKER_02: Once I started working, I spent the last 10 years of my life working for one of our U.S.
6:28
SPEAKER_02: Senators,
6:29
SPEAKER_01: the other
6:30
SPEAKER_02: one.
6:30
SPEAKER_02: Peter Welch.
6:31
SPEAKER_02: Peter Welch, yeah.
6:33
SPEAKER_02: And so there was a generous loan forgiveness program that, frankly, allowed me to buy my house.
6:40
SPEAKER_02: By the time my wife and I were buying a house,
6:43
SPEAKER_02: If I still had the yoke of student loans over my neck,
6:45
SPEAKER_02: it wouldn't have been possible for us.
6:51
SPEAKER_02: I'm just very grateful for what I've been given and trying to give back however I can.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: So Ryan,
6:59
SPEAKER_00: one of the things this makes me think about is something I've believed for
7:02
SPEAKER_00: a long time,
7:03
SPEAKER_00: which is that we're sort of nibbling around the edges of higher education.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: And then,
7:09
SPEAKER_00: of course,
7:09
SPEAKER_00: the Trump administration is attacking higher education, is sort of removing...
7:14
SPEAKER_00: Some of the capacity for people to borrow money to attend it.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: But what we have not really done is to connect the promise of an education and
7:24
SPEAKER_00: the promise of a career to public service.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: And we had this loan forgiveness program,
7:31
SPEAKER_00: which was very difficult to access, actually, for a lot of people.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: And then the Biden administration kind of made it much more open.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: And now it's shut down again.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: So let's just start with education.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: What is it that you as Lieutenant Governor of Vermont would do to advocate
7:50
SPEAKER_00: for making education accessible to Vermonters?
7:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, we have a really, we have a real challenge in public education here in Vermont.
8:00
SPEAKER_02: Our student age population is shrinking.
8:03
SPEAKER_02: We're the third most expensive state in the country to raise a family.
8:06
SPEAKER_02: It's more expensive than California to raise a kid in Vermont.
8:11
SPEAKER_02: It's more expensive in Vermont to raise a kid than in California.
8:13
SPEAKER_02: It costs $40,000 on average a year to raise a kid here.
8:17
SPEAKER_02: And so as a result of that, as a direct result of that, our student age population is shrinking.
8:22
SPEAKER_02: And so we're having to reimagine what public education looks like here in Vermont.
8:31
SPEAKER_02: In ways that I think are really important because our outcomes are,
8:33
SPEAKER_02: while the costs of an education is rising in our K2 through 12 system,
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SPEAKER_02: the outcomes we're delivering here in Vermont are declining actually.
8:43
SPEAKER_02: Mississippi is past us in terms of like,
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SPEAKER_02: The number of kids in third grade that are reading at grade level.
8:50
SPEAKER_02: And so we have some really hard questions to ask.
8:54
SPEAKER_02: But so much of what I think about education is like, I am just so grateful.
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SPEAKER_02: I went to one of the best public schools in the country here in Essex.
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SPEAKER_02: And people were moving here from Connecticut when I was growing up
9:05
SPEAKER_02: to send their kids to the school.
9:07
SPEAKER_02: And then...
9:08
SPEAKER_02: That allowed me somehow to land at Wesleyan, miraculously, and to meet you.
9:14
SPEAKER_02: And to like, you know, it wasn't just the thesis.
9:16
SPEAKER_02: I, you know,
9:17
SPEAKER_02: I remember walking in to your queer history class,
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SPEAKER_02: a class that, you know, I don't know how I landed there, but I landed there.
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SPEAKER_02: It interested me and I went.
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SPEAKER_02: And you investing in me somehow,
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SPEAKER_02: for some reason,
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SPEAKER_02: I felt like a woodchuck from Vermont or a jock playing sports at Wesleyan.
9:42
SPEAKER_02: For some reason,
9:43
SPEAKER_02: you saw some potential in me or saw something interesting and were committed
9:49
SPEAKER_02: to helping me explore the reasons I was there, the reasons I was curious.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: Education for me has always been just this pathway to freedom.
10:00
SPEAKER_02: It is like,
10:00
SPEAKER_02: how do we find who we are in a big,
10:04
SPEAKER_02: complicated world and end up in a place where we can explore and be entrepreneurial
10:13
SPEAKER_02: and figure out how to build a life around that.
10:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
10:19
SPEAKER_02: Access to that,
10:20
SPEAKER_02: it's like the education itself is really important,
10:23
SPEAKER_02: but the direction it goes will obviously be different for everyone.
10:26
SPEAKER_02: I know electricians that are geniuses that never went to college, you know what I mean?
10:33
SPEAKER_02: But their curiosity and...
10:38
SPEAKER_02: Their capacity is as bright as any Ivy League graduate I know.
10:44
SPEAKER_02: And they've just found their path in some,
10:47
SPEAKER_02: not just in college,
10:48
SPEAKER_02: but in a career that gives them some fulfillment and allows them
10:53
SPEAKER_02: to express themselves.
10:54
SPEAKER_02: And so that's the point in the end.
10:57
SPEAKER_02: But so much of what holds it back is one stigma around some things
11:02
SPEAKER_02: where it's like you've got to go to college to be a bright person or
11:10
SPEAKER_02: to have
11:11
SPEAKER_02: a future that still exists here in Vermont and I think is a real challenge.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: But...
11:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: It's like, it's so much of it is tied to how much money you have.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: It really is.
11:22
SPEAKER_02: And it's like what your outcomes are,
11:24
SPEAKER_02: the like social indicators of education status are as acute today as they ever were.
11:31
SPEAKER_02: And it's getting worse.
11:32
SPEAKER_02: And so like, how do we arrest the slide?
11:34
SPEAKER_02: I, I, my,
11:36
SPEAKER_02: I say all the time, like,
11:37
SPEAKER_02: I don't,
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SPEAKER_02: I refuse to be the last generation of working class kid
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SPEAKER_02: that could imagine just like building a life here in Vermont,
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SPEAKER_02: like owning a house, starting a family.
11:46
SPEAKER_02: Starting a business or retiring with dignity after a lifetime of work.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: Well, and what you're saying there is true in many states in the union,
11:56
SPEAKER_00: that there are a great many working class people who sort of look at their kids
12:02
SPEAKER_00: and say, You're not going to have the chances I did.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: And there is this sort of general sense across the United States
12:10
SPEAKER_00: of downward mobility,
12:12
SPEAKER_00: which Barbara Ehrenreich famously wrote about in her book Fear of Falling,
12:16
SPEAKER_00: which I think everybody should read again because what she's talking
12:20
SPEAKER_00: about is happening now and it's driving politics.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: I think the other thing I'm noticing in what you're saying is that
12:27
SPEAKER_00: When you have fewer students, the actual cost of education doesn't really go down.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: The buildings cost the same.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: The power costs the same.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: But you have a declining tax base and you're consolidating schools,
12:43
SPEAKER_00: which means students have to travel further.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: And so you really have to rethink the whole thing.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, we should be wanting more kids.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: We have a declining birth rate.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: That's not a good thing.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: And you want talented people to bring their families to Vermont.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: So how are you going to do that, Ryan?
13:05
SPEAKER_02: Oh, man, I talk about three things on the campaign trail, housing, health care, and hope.
13:12
SPEAKER_02: And all three are in short supply in Vermont.
13:16
SPEAKER_03: I think that's true across the country, frankly.
13:19
SPEAKER_02: But these problems that you describe are more acute in Vermont than many other places.
13:24
SPEAKER_02: And we've seen the political impact of that, actually.
13:27
SPEAKER_02: Half the legislative seats across the country that flipped from red to blue happened in Vermont.
13:34
SPEAKER_02: Um, state legislative seats.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: We had 25 state legislative seats that we lost.
13:39
SPEAKER_02: And so that's because of these particular, that fear of falling.
13:43
SPEAKER_02: And that's exactly what I'm talking about.
13:45
SPEAKER_02: Like housing and healthcare are the two most impactful things we can do
13:50
SPEAKER_02: to lower costs for people and to encourage young folks to come to Vermont.
13:58
SPEAKER_02: Uh, our, The average Vermonter pays over 30% of their income in housing.
14:03
SPEAKER_02: So we are housing stressed and we pay,
14:06
SPEAKER_02: the average Vermonter pays 20% of their income in healthcare costs.
14:10
SPEAKER_02: That's the most expensive in the country.
14:12
SPEAKER_02: The average across the U.S. is like 8% of income spent on healthcare premiums.
14:17
SPEAKER_02: And so we have the most expensive healthcare in the world, basically, here in Vermont.
14:23
SPEAKER_02: And so no wonder young families aren't coming here.
14:27
SPEAKER_02: And those are like solvable problems,
14:30
SPEAKER_02: particularly the housing one, where that housing is a policy choice.
14:35
SPEAKER_02: And we have...
14:37
SPEAKER_02: Built a culture of no here in Vermont or preserve this place in amber to the point
14:43
SPEAKER_02: of suffocation, basically.
14:45
SPEAKER_02: And now if we want to be something other than a theme park or a retirement home,
14:51
SPEAKER_02: we need to do something different.
14:52
SPEAKER_02: And I think that starts with building more housing.
14:55
SPEAKER_02: Um, and then,
14:57
SPEAKER_02: you know,
14:57
SPEAKER_02: on the healthcare front,
14:58
SPEAKER_02: it's a bigger challenge because it's a very complicated system and Vermont is
15:02
SPEAKER_02: a very small place.
15:04
SPEAKER_02: So it's hard to make, you know, to change this behemoth on our own.
15:11
SPEAKER_02: Um, and the answer in the end has to be a national single payer healthcare system
15:17
SPEAKER_02: where healthcare is a right, not a privilege.
15:20
SPEAKER_02: And we do Medicare for all like that is so obvious to me.
15:23
SPEAKER_02: And it's more obvious now than ever.
15:25
SPEAKER_02: I was paralyzed skiing nine years ago in an accident.
15:29
SPEAKER_02: And the day I got hurt,
15:33
SPEAKER_02: I went from, uh,
15:35
SPEAKER_02: An ambulance at Mad River Glen,
15:37
SPEAKER_02: the ski resort,
15:38
SPEAKER_02: to a hospital here in central Vermont that put me in a helicopter to fly me to
15:43
SPEAKER_02: the level one trauma center in Burlington,
15:46
SPEAKER_02: where they put me in another ambulance to take me to the ER to repair my spine.
15:50
SPEAKER_02: And every one of those is a different bill.
15:53
SPEAKER_02: Right.
15:53
SPEAKER_02: And I got a $10,000 bill for a critical care ambulance ride from a helipad
15:59
SPEAKER_02: in Burlington, basically like across the street to the ER.
16:02
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
16:04
SPEAKER_02: At UVM Medical Center.
16:05
SPEAKER_02: And so like, it's so irrational.
16:08
SPEAKER_02: It's so inhumane.
16:11
SPEAKER_02: And Vermont's not going to be able to solve that problem on our own.
16:13
SPEAKER_02: But there are bits we can do here to make it better.
16:16
SPEAKER_02: And yeah,
16:19
SPEAKER_02: there's this like,
16:20
SPEAKER_02: knot of issues around housing,
16:23
SPEAKER_02: around healthcare,
16:24
SPEAKER_02: around education,
16:25
SPEAKER_02: around And there's no silver bullet to solving them,
16:28
SPEAKER_02: but our attitude has to be saying yes to the things we say we want,
16:34
SPEAKER_02: like more housing, like affordable healthcare, like renewable energy.
16:38
SPEAKER_02: Here in Vermont,
16:39
SPEAKER_02: we have a way of saying we want these things and then getting really precious about
16:43
SPEAKER_02: the delivery of them.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: Right.
16:45
SPEAKER_02: Because it might change the like postcard image
16:47
SPEAKER_02: of what we think their town should be or was in the past.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: And it's meaning we can't build the future we actually want.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
16:58
SPEAKER_00: one of the things I hear about a lot because I live in Western Massachusetts
17:01
SPEAKER_00: and Massachusetts,
17:02
SPEAKER_00: I recently learned, has the highest average home price in the nation.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: Right.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Which doesn't surprise me because I've known people trying to buy around here.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: It's very hard.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: You either get a place that has been totally renovated and it costs seven
17:16
SPEAKER_00: or eight hundred thousand dollars or you get a place that somebody's been living in
17:19
SPEAKER_00: for 60 years and you have to put three or four hundred thousand dollars into it.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: So one of the problems is,
17:26
SPEAKER_00: though, that there are very few smaller homes for older people to live in.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: So I hear a lot of Republicans,
17:33
SPEAKER_00: particularly the political consultants on X, saying, well,
17:37
SPEAKER_00: old people are just selfish and they won't leave their homes
17:40
SPEAKER_00: and let younger people buy them.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: It's really hard to find a place to go if you are older.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: My wife and I bought a couple of condos.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: This is my office and then we live in the one upstairs.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: And we were just lucky.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: We got them by word of mouth.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: If we were actually looking for a condominium today, it would take months.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: So let's just think about what specifically has to happen with housing.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: You actually have a housing plan up on your website.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: Can you sketch it for our listeners?
18:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
18:17
SPEAKER_02: I call it the YIMBY tax credit, the Yes in My Backyard tax credit.
18:22
SPEAKER_02: And so what we've been doing here
18:23
SPEAKER_02: in Vermont is we have been artificially buying down property taxes that we use
18:28
SPEAKER_02: to fund our education system.
18:30
SPEAKER_02: We have excess revenue from essentially income taxes.
18:33
SPEAKER_02: So like if we have a surplus over here,
18:35
SPEAKER_02: we're just going to put a bandaid on the education funds on the other side.
18:39
SPEAKER_02: And the problem gets worse over time because you're not actually solving the structural problem.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: Like there is not enough growth in revenue by building more housing.
18:49
SPEAKER_02: What my tax credit would do is say for every unit of housing community permits,
18:56
SPEAKER_02: they would get a $25,000 tax break on what that community owes
19:01
SPEAKER_02: to our education fund.
19:03
SPEAKER_02: And so it would finally connect the two things
19:05
SPEAKER_02: where I know everyone wants lower taxes and it would use the carrot of lower taxes
19:10
SPEAKER_02: to get that community,
19:11
SPEAKER_02: not just the community,
19:12
SPEAKER_02: but everyone in the system,
19:13
SPEAKER_02: the community,
19:13
SPEAKER_02: the state,
19:14
SPEAKER_02: anyone that has a say,
19:15
SPEAKER_02: just the neighbor that might not want someone to Building something close
19:20
SPEAKER_02: to their home or anything to change.
19:21
SPEAKER_02: Now they have an incentive of lower property taxes to get to yes on that development.
19:28
SPEAKER_02: And so it's trying to flip the script where it's to reinforce the idea
19:35
SPEAKER_02: that we all will do better if more people have a place to live.
19:40
SPEAKER_02: Because I got lucky.
19:42
SPEAKER_02: When we bought our house, I bought our house from my high school lacrosse coach.
19:46
SPEAKER_02: And the only reason I was able to buy it was because he was my high school lacrosse coach.
19:50
SPEAKER_02: And it happened to be a three-bedroom ranch,
19:54
SPEAKER_02: though single story, that was totally accessible to me in a wheelchair.
19:57
SPEAKER_02: It's a unicorn.
19:59
SPEAKER_02: And so the fact that I have a home that I can live in feels like a miracle.
20:03
SPEAKER_02: But it shouldn't.
20:04
SPEAKER_02: And my parents are still in the same 900-square-foot house they raised three kids in.
20:11
SPEAKER_02: My mom has Parkinson's and they're in a house with one bathroom that's upstairs,
20:15
SPEAKER_02: laundry that's downstairs, and there's no place for them to go.
20:19
SPEAKER_02: They can't afford to buy another house in the community I live in now
20:24
SPEAKER_02: because prices have skyrocketed.
20:26
SPEAKER_02: There's no place to rent because we don't have enough supply on the market.
20:30
SPEAKER_02: And so their only option at basically retirement age, 68, is to
20:36
SPEAKER_02: Tear down their house that they live in now and to build a single story home on top
20:41
SPEAKER_02: of where they already are.
20:44
SPEAKER_02: And take out a second mortgage.
20:47
SPEAKER_02: No one wins in that scenario.
20:49
SPEAKER_02: And that's a regulatory regime that is leading to bad outcomes.
20:52
SPEAKER_02: If we say we want to address homelessness,
20:55
SPEAKER_02: if we want to address education costs,
20:57
SPEAKER_02: if we want to address our demographic issues,
21:00
SPEAKER_02: we have to be willing to say yes to housing.
21:03
SPEAKER_02: And so I'm all in on the YIMBY movement.
21:06
SPEAKER_02: We have to say yes.
21:09
SPEAKER_02: All kinds of housing.
21:11
SPEAKER_02: My grandparents lived in a mobile home park when I was growing up on my mom's side.
21:17
SPEAKER_02: That is a good option for people because it's a home.
21:20
SPEAKER_02: What frustrates me is often I literally heard a Elected official here in Vermont at
21:26
SPEAKER_02: a housing summit after hearing a panel conversation about building condominiums,
21:30
SPEAKER_02: about building apartments, say, yeah, but no one wants to live in those.
21:35
SPEAKER_02: And that's just not true.
21:36
SPEAKER_02: There is no evidence to suggest that no one,
21:39
SPEAKER_02: that Our personal preferred vision of what a home is is shared by the market.
21:46
SPEAKER_02: People want a place to live, and that includes tiny homes.
21:51
SPEAKER_02: It includes boarding houses.
21:52
SPEAKER_02: It includes mobile home parks.
21:54
SPEAKER_02: We need everything, and we need it now.
21:57
SPEAKER_02: Otherwise,
22:00
SPEAKER_02: we will become a theme park where only rich folks can afford to enjoy all
22:04
SPEAKER_02: that Vermont has to offer.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: I want to come back to Vermont's economy and what it's based on and so on in a second.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: But you've mentioned a couple of times your catastrophic accident that led
22:16
SPEAKER_00: to you continuing your life as a disabled person.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: You said earlier you didn't know why I took a special interest in an athlete who,
22:25
SPEAKER_00: you know, Had just shown up in my career history class.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you,
22:29
SPEAKER_00: which is at Wesleyan,
22:32
SPEAKER_00: one of the ways that working class men got there was through sports
22:37
SPEAKER_00: and being recruited guys who had the academic talent,
22:41
SPEAKER_00: but maybe not the class privilege to access an elite education.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I always loved about you guys is that when you locked on
22:51
SPEAKER_00: to my class, Invariably, there would be this sort of task-oriented approach.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: What do I have to do to succeed here?
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Just tell me what I need to do to succeed, and I'll do it.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: And I loved that.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: And it was a wonderful way to work with young men and watch them on their journey.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to ask you,
23:14
SPEAKER_00: first of all,
23:15
SPEAKER_00: can you tell us what you learned from going from being an extremely athletic,
23:22
SPEAKER_00: vigorous man to being, I think, a vigorous, athletic, disabled man?
23:27
SPEAKER_00: Tell us a little bit about that journey.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: And then also...
23:32
SPEAKER_00: What did you learn about being a man from going through that struggle?
23:36
SPEAKER_00: Because manhood is very much at the top of our national conversation here.
23:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it really is.
23:43
SPEAKER_02: And I have obviously learned a lot from
23:49
SPEAKER_03: the injury.
23:50
SPEAKER_02: And I say all the time, like,
23:53
SPEAKER_02: I would never wish it on my worst enemy, but I don't think I could ever go back.
23:58
SPEAKER_02: Like, I have learned...
24:02
SPEAKER_02: More about what the world... Two things.
24:07
SPEAKER_02: You don't always get to choose the context within which you live.
24:10
SPEAKER_02: Not everything is within our control.
24:15
SPEAKER_02: But you get to choose how to respond every single day.
24:18
SPEAKER_02: And there's a way of responding if you wake up in a hospital bed
24:22
SPEAKER_02: and your legs don't work one day that is pulling the cover over your eyes or waiting
24:27
SPEAKER_02: for a miracle or finding someone to blame.
24:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:32
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: I just don't want to live that way.
24:34
SPEAKER_02: I think I have more power in me than that.
24:37
SPEAKER_02: And so it's like the other way is to get up and just go and try and build a life
24:41
SPEAKER_02: that you want for yourself.
24:42
SPEAKER_02: And I was always an athlete and I,
24:47
SPEAKER_02: I found a lot of,
24:51
SPEAKER_02: um, strength and comfort in like being able to do things physically with my body.
24:57
SPEAKER_02: And
25:01
SPEAKER_02: So that was an adjustment.
25:03
SPEAKER_02: Like it,
25:03
SPEAKER_02: it actually,
25:04
SPEAKER_02: I didn't,
25:04
SPEAKER_02: I probably always knew that, but I, it, it was,
25:07
SPEAKER_02: it's hard to fully appreciate until your body is sort of dislocated
25:12
SPEAKER_02: from your identity in ways that is, for me,
25:16
SPEAKER_02: it was like brand new, um, where,
25:20
SPEAKER_02: where it felt like to be myself,
25:24
SPEAKER_02: I just had to be mobile in a different way or able to like access, um, Um,
25:31
SPEAKER_02: you know,
25:32
SPEAKER_02: the world's physically in a different way and,
25:34
SPEAKER_02: and so much of the adjustment has,
25:38
SPEAKER_02: has just been like,
25:39
SPEAKER_02: actually, no,
25:40
SPEAKER_02: like I'm me,
25:42
SPEAKER_02: the things about me that are,
25:46
SPEAKER_02: you know,
25:47
SPEAKER_02: might look different,
25:48
SPEAKER_02: but who I am and what I have to offer is,
25:51
SPEAKER_02: is more in my head and in my heart than in,
25:56
SPEAKER_02: in how I move through the world specifically.
26:00
SPEAKER_02: And, um, and so, yeah,
26:03
SPEAKER_02: like I've been on this journey for almost,
26:06
SPEAKER_02: it's been nine years and I still use my wheelchair every day with my kids,
26:12
SPEAKER_02: but I'm able to stand up and walk on crutches and get around the world,
26:16
SPEAKER_02: which is, has been an important and impactful part of my journey.
26:22
SPEAKER_02: But the point has never really been to walk.
26:24
SPEAKER_02: It's been to like challenge myself about like,
26:27
SPEAKER_02: and not,
26:28
SPEAKER_02: and never be complacent and Where I am and what I'm doing and to just try
26:32
SPEAKER_02: and keep growing however I can internally and externally.
26:37
SPEAKER_02: So I still find ways to test myself physically.
26:40
SPEAKER_02: I still ski on a monoski.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: I've been six Boston Marathon since my sixth this year and I love that on my hand cycle.
26:50
SPEAKER_02: I still love the endorphin rush of exercise and to try and push myself physically.
26:58
SPEAKER_02: I think that's important for everybody,
27:00
SPEAKER_02: but I've had to find new ways to do it, and I found them.
27:09
SPEAKER_02: I'm proud to be a disabled person and to move through the world.
27:13
SPEAKER_02: The gift of it, honestly, is the worst thing that ever happened to me you can see.
27:19
SPEAKER_02: So there's no sense in hiding.
27:22
SPEAKER_02: There's a freedom in it where it's like, oh, actually, I know what matters.
27:25
SPEAKER_02: I know what doesn't matter.
27:27
SPEAKER_02: I know who I am and what I have to offer and what I can do.
27:31
SPEAKER_02: And so, like, here I am.
27:32
SPEAKER_02: I can be my full self in the world in a way that I don't think I had access to before.
27:36
SPEAKER_02: I still...
27:38
SPEAKER_02: Hiding or, you know, there's, there's a lot, I don't know.
27:41
SPEAKER_02: I feel more complete in who I am today than I ever have.
27:46
SPEAKER_02: And that's a result of,
27:49
SPEAKER_02: you know,
27:49
SPEAKER_02: being broken and having to figure out how to rebuild a life that you want
27:53
SPEAKER_02: for yourself.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, it makes me think because I'm a historian of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: And one of the big things that has changed in politics is even though it was
28:03
SPEAKER_00: an open secret that Roosevelt was disabled.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: They hid it from the public and there were particular rules about
28:11
SPEAKER_00: when pictures were taken and so on.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: But a number of historians have really credited him coming back from that catastrophe.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: To his care for others,
28:22
SPEAKER_00: something he as an upper class person was not really raised to feel,
28:27
SPEAKER_00: maybe noblesse oblige,
28:28
SPEAKER_00: but not actually caring about the lives of people who were less fortunate.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: What has it taught you about politics and how to relate to constituents as
28:42
SPEAKER_00: a Senate aide and now as a candidate to have made this journey yourself?
28:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a great question.
28:51
SPEAKER_02: And politics is a human business.
28:53
SPEAKER_02: I actually think we get really,
28:56
SPEAKER_02: we often,
28:56
SPEAKER_02: our political discourse can get caught up in very intellectual things,
29:01
SPEAKER_02: important things,
29:02
SPEAKER_02: policy things that are important as they translate into people's lives.
29:07
SPEAKER_02: But it's an art and a science.
29:11
SPEAKER_02: And so the science is like campaigns, the science is policy.
29:16
SPEAKER_02: But it's like any other service industry.
29:20
SPEAKER_02: It is about human connection.
29:23
SPEAKER_02: And that's what I love about it.
29:26
SPEAKER_02: I loved waiting tables.
29:27
SPEAKER_02: I like engaging and I'm curious about other people's lives.
29:31
SPEAKER_02: And so I think I've always had that inclination.
29:34
SPEAKER_02: But
29:37
SPEAKER_02: for whatever reason, my injury helps me connect with other people.
29:42
SPEAKER_02: Because everyone, suffering is universal.
29:45
SPEAKER_02: We all know that.
29:47
SPEAKER_02: But the way it manifests is obviously individual.
29:51
SPEAKER_02: And it is contextual.
29:53
SPEAKER_02: And so like, but...
29:55
SPEAKER_02: People see me and they're like, oh, that's a guy that's been through some shit, basically.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: And it opens up them in a different way.
30:04
SPEAKER_02: And as long as you're open to that, like I'm open to that.
30:07
SPEAKER_02: I love those kind of conversations that help me connect deeply with other people
30:11
SPEAKER_02: in ways that help me learn what matters and how to help.
30:16
SPEAKER_02: And so sometimes that's just having a conversation with someone about their friend
30:20
SPEAKER_02: who had some accident or it's about Like really important structural challenges
30:28
SPEAKER_02: in our healthcare system.
30:29
SPEAKER_02: And like,
30:30
SPEAKER_02: how do we make sure the spouses of disabled people can get reimbursed for
30:35
SPEAKER_02: the care they provide?
30:37
SPEAKER_02: Because right now disabled people like don't get married because they'll lose heaps
30:41
SPEAKER_02: of support just by adding additional income.
30:44
SPEAKER_02: And so like, there's, there's all sorts of ways, but, um,
30:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it helps me.
30:53
SPEAKER_02: It feels like a superpower almost because people are just open in a different way to
31:00
SPEAKER_02: a conversation with me because they know I've had to do something hard.
31:04
SPEAKER_02: They may not know what it is,
31:07
SPEAKER_02: but they know I've been through the ringer and I've come out on the other side.
31:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:17
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
31:18
SPEAKER_02: I haven't been embittered by it.
31:21
SPEAKER_02: I try not to be, at least.
31:23
SPEAKER_02: And I get a lot of credit for just being in the world as myself.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: And you've got a terrific family.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: I see pictures of them on your website.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: And actually, I think we follow each other on Facebook.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: So I've sort of watched as your kids have grown.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
31:40
SPEAKER_00: one of the things that's sort of floating around the national political scene is...
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: This guy's as authentic as the day is long, which I've always known about you.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: But what do I mean by that?
32:08
SPEAKER_00: And I think what I mean by that is actually he is who he says he is.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: And he has a very nuanced way of explaining that to me.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: But is it useful to have conversations about authenticity at all?
32:21
SPEAKER_00: Is it distracting us from something else?
32:23
SPEAKER_02: It's not.
32:25
SPEAKER_02: Well, yes and no.
32:26
SPEAKER_02: It's the most important thing.
32:28
SPEAKER_02: Voters want to know, do you get it and can I trust you?
32:31
SPEAKER_02: Those are the two most important factors in anyone's electoral decision making, I believe.
32:36
SPEAKER_02: And policy positions are a way of informing that decision for voters in some ways.
32:42
SPEAKER_02: But most voters are not us.
32:44
SPEAKER_02: We are the aliens who are deeply engaged in the nitty gritty of politics.
32:49
SPEAKER_02: It's like most people are consuming the political ecosystem ephemerally.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: And so they need to know that you understand their lives and that you are not full of shit.
33:01
SPEAKER_02: And so those are the main questions people are asking.
33:07
SPEAKER_02: Trust is the coin of the realm here.
33:11
SPEAKER_02: Authenticity is invaluable in building trust,
33:14
SPEAKER_02: but it is almost like electability where once you start talking about it,
33:19
SPEAKER_02: it's become something else.
33:22
SPEAKER_02: You can't define it.
33:25
SPEAKER_02: It just is.
33:26
SPEAKER_02: I do believe voters evaluate people that way.
33:32
SPEAKER_02: That's not to say you can't fool people.
33:35
SPEAKER_02: But more and more,
33:39
SPEAKER_02: it's harder and harder these days,
33:41
SPEAKER_02: I think,
33:41
SPEAKER_02: because of the way we,
33:43
SPEAKER_02: the communications ecosystems where this kind of conversation,
33:47
SPEAKER_02: long form, on podcast, is prioritized in our political landscape.
33:54
SPEAKER_02: It's becoming more and more valuable, so it's harder to hide.
33:58
SPEAKER_02: I say this all,
33:58
SPEAKER_02: I do say this all the time to the people on my team,
34:01
SPEAKER_02: where I get frustrated and A setting that's like a forum or a debate,
34:06
SPEAKER_02: and it's like,
34:07
SPEAKER_02: here's your 90-second intro,
34:09
SPEAKER_02: and I'm going to ask you a very detailed question about healthcare,
34:12
SPEAKER_02: and you're going to have 90 seconds to respond.
34:18
SPEAKER_02: Sound bites aren't how people communicate these days,
34:20
SPEAKER_02: and it's not good enough to just get something in one clip on a TV news broadcast.
34:28
SPEAKER_02: So it is...
34:32
SPEAKER_02: It's really important,
34:34
SPEAKER_02: but can we have a conversation about it that actually informs better outcomes on
34:40
SPEAKER_02: the back end?
34:41
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
34:41
SPEAKER_02: I think we just need to find the people and support them that can be themselves.
34:48
SPEAKER_02: But that's all.
34:49
SPEAKER_02: You asked about my accident.
34:56
SPEAKER_02: That's been the gift.
34:57
SPEAKER_02: It's helped me learn who I am and be really confident in who I am and what I have to offer.
35:02
SPEAKER_02: I'm not afraid or hiding, feeling like I need to hide anything.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know,
35:10
SPEAKER_00: the other thing that the disastrous Maine Senate race made me think
35:14
SPEAKER_00: about is this infatuation with the so-called outsider,
35:18
SPEAKER_00: which has in some ways come very much out of a conspiracy-driven social media world
35:24
SPEAKER_00: and The stuff that's flying around the interwebs today
35:27
SPEAKER_00: about Lindsey Graham being assassinated.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: It's just crazy.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: But it is also true,
35:36
SPEAKER_00: as my wife is constantly pointing out to me,
35:39
SPEAKER_00: that politicians and political junkies like me think long and hard
35:44
SPEAKER_00: about these things.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: The vast majority of voters decide who they're going to vote for pretty much
35:49
SPEAKER_00: as they're walking into the booth.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: So the idea of the outsider has sort of captured the imagination of political consultants.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: You're not an outsider at all.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: You've come up in the system.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: Now that happens to be something I really like.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: So would you make an argument for the competent, committed insider?
36:13
SPEAKER_02: Well, I would make an argument for people that know how to get shit done.
36:16
SPEAKER_02: It's like, I'm here to do the work.
36:18
SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm running to do something, not to be something.
36:21
SPEAKER_02: This is work I will do,
36:22
SPEAKER_02: whether or not I'm the lieutenant governor of Vermont,
36:25
SPEAKER_02: because I love this place,
36:26
SPEAKER_02: and I feel like I owe it to the community that raised me to, like,
36:30
SPEAKER_02: make it livable for the future and for my kids who are going to graduate
36:34
SPEAKER_02: from high school in a decade, a little over a decade.
36:36
SPEAKER_02: And so what...
36:42
SPEAKER_02: There are ways to be an insider.
36:45
SPEAKER_02: Although I would argue,
36:47
SPEAKER_02: I don't feel, I am not representative of the people that work in our business.
36:51
SPEAKER_02: My background,
36:52
SPEAKER_02: my history,
36:53
SPEAKER_02: my socioeconomic status,
36:55
SPEAKER_02: like where there are not a lot of like first gen college graduates in this world.
37:00
SPEAKER_02: And so what the question people are asking,
37:04
SPEAKER_02: I think often in the insider outsider thing is like, do you get it?
37:08
SPEAKER_02: And too often insiders are defending an institution
37:13
SPEAKER_02: that normal people believe is totally detached from their lives or has failed
37:19
SPEAKER_02: to deliver outcomes that they want.
37:22
SPEAKER_02: And so every election is a change election these days.
37:26
SPEAKER_02: And I think the reason we have Donald Trump a second time around is
37:31
SPEAKER_02: because people have a fundamental understanding that
37:33
SPEAKER_02: the systems governing our lives are broken.
37:35
SPEAKER_02: They're not working for most people.
37:38
SPEAKER_02: And they just want someone to do something about it.
37:41
SPEAKER_02: And so they will give power to an autocrat Because they have some confidence that
37:49
SPEAKER_02: that autocrat will actually act.
37:51
SPEAKER_02: They don't know if it's going to be the right thing or the wrong thing,
37:53
SPEAKER_02: but it's going to be something.
37:55
SPEAKER_02: And so what the trap that insiders fall into is like, are you the status?
38:00
SPEAKER_02: Are you just here to defend institutions that people think are broken or failing them?
38:04
SPEAKER_02: Are you the status quo or are you willing to change things?
38:07
SPEAKER_02: And so...
38:09
SPEAKER_02: I am someone who has worked in politics and public service my entire adult life.
38:16
SPEAKER_02: I understand how these systems work and don't work,
38:19
SPEAKER_02: and I'm running to change them because I understand how they don't work
38:24
SPEAKER_02: and how they've helped me and how they've failed me in my own personal experience.
38:30
SPEAKER_02: And so that's powerful, actually, the knowledge to actually make an impact.
38:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
38:40
SPEAKER_02: And being able to give people confidence that I will act on what they see in their own lives.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: And I think, yeah,
38:50
SPEAKER_00: that's a really important message,
38:52
SPEAKER_00: which is, you know, maybe the government has failed people.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: The government has failed people.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
38:58
SPEAKER_00: there's no question about that because people believe that and they can point
39:02
SPEAKER_00: to specific things like health care and housing and the cost of food.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: And Then the answer is not less government,
39:11
SPEAKER_00: but rather better government and better ideas in government.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: And I feel very privileged because I have two senators,
39:20
SPEAKER_00: Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, who believe that too and are good at it.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: And Elizabeth Warren is an inspiration to me.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: And then my congressman is Jim McGovern.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: Who also does it and spends a lot of time talking to his constituents.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: And I've been to these town halls where people sort of get up and yell about Donald Trump.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: And then the next person who gets up and says,
39:43
SPEAKER_00: you know, Congressman McGovern, I can't get a primary care physician.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: Help me.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, and those are both things.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: And edging on each other.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: And how do you move both of those questions into government?
39:57
SPEAKER_00: I don't like this kind of political style.
39:59
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, sir, I can't get a doctor.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: Which means that families don't move to your community.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: I know people who have not moved their elderly parents to Northampton because
40:13
SPEAKER_00: the idea of setting up health care for them is so daunting.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: So let's turn to Vermont, too.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to spend a couple of minutes on the state that you love.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: One of the things I noticed around the fizzling of Graham Plattner's or explosion
40:31
SPEAKER_00: of Graham Plattner's candidacy was the number of pundits and national commentators
40:36
SPEAKER_00: who did not fundamentally understand the state of Maine.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: And what happens in the state of Maine and
40:42
SPEAKER_00: that you couldn't just say nominate Heather Cox Richardson for Senate
40:47
SPEAKER_00: and everyone would love her because she's a Substack.
40:49
SPEAKER_03: I don't actually know where
40:50
SPEAKER_00: you could do that,
40:51
SPEAKER_00: but you certainly can't do that in Maine, even though she is a much beloved person.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: Vermont strikes me as similar to its neighbors in New Hampshire and Maine in that
41:04
SPEAKER_00: a lot of the employment is very seasonal.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: A lot of the home prices are driven by a seasonal home market.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of retirees.
41:16
SPEAKER_00: So you have this sort of,
41:18
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:19
SPEAKER_00: well-to-do people nudging up against people who are
41:25
SPEAKER_00: in some cases catastrophically poor.
41:27
SPEAKER_00: And I remember this from campaigning for Warren in New Hampshire in 2020.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: I was going up to houses and And I grew up in Philadelphia, right?
41:39
SPEAKER_00: And I became an adult in New York.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: And I went to school in New Haven.
41:44
SPEAKER_00: And I met poorer people than I had ever met in my life.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: Poor people in the country are poorer than poor people in the city.
41:53
SPEAKER_00: And so can you tell me a little something about Vermont that
41:58
SPEAKER_00: a national audience might not understand, but that we need to know about your state?
42:05
SPEAKER_02: I think the most illustrative example is the most popular political figure probably
42:12
SPEAKER_02: in the country is from Vermont and it's our Republican governor.
42:17
SPEAKER_03: It's not Bernie Sanders.
42:18
SPEAKER_02: It's not Peter Welch.
42:19
SPEAKER_02: Our Republican governor gets more votes than both of those people in the state of Vermont.
42:23
SPEAKER_02: That's Phil Scott, right?
42:25
SPEAKER_02: Phil Scott has like a 75% approval rating.
42:27
SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, people have this image of like great progressive Vermont.
42:33
SPEAKER_02: And we have a Republican governor and a Republican lieutenant governor currently
42:36
SPEAKER_02: in office today.
42:37
SPEAKER_02: And so when we split our ticket in a way that doesn't exist in a lot of places,
42:44
SPEAKER_02: and so our national political discourse is not necessarily translated down to
42:50
SPEAKER_02: the ground here in Vermont, And we're tiny.
42:55
SPEAKER_02: We're the size of Nashville, Tennessee, essentially, as an entire state.
42:59
SPEAKER_02: And so it is a place where hyper-local,
43:05
SPEAKER_02: very retail politics, like human-to-human interaction, still...
43:10
SPEAKER_02: Is prioritized some in the little ways like New Hampshire does in
43:14
SPEAKER_02: the presidential primaries where they make you come around and they'll kick
43:16
SPEAKER_02: the tires,
43:17
SPEAKER_02: but it's not California where you're just running a national campaign with like
43:21
SPEAKER_02: a bunch of money and a bunch of TV advertising.
43:23
SPEAKER_02: And so what you described in Maine is happening in Vermont, kind of on steroids.
43:30
SPEAKER_02: It's like we have,
43:32
SPEAKER_02: and COVID has accelerated these trends to a point of like real Where it's really,
43:40
SPEAKER_02: really acute, like what the future of Vermont is going to be.
43:43
SPEAKER_02: And we are, it's that K-shaped economy where the folks who are doing well are doing really well.
43:48
SPEAKER_02: And you can live here if you're working some remote job where you're based,
43:52
SPEAKER_02: actually companies based in Boston, New York, San Francisco, or whatever.
43:56
SPEAKER_02: But if you're just working off the land or trying to earn a wage,
43:59
SPEAKER_02: it's almost impossible to make ends meet here.
44:03
SPEAKER_02: And so that's what's driving our political conversation in a lot of ways.
44:11
SPEAKER_02: So the way I think about it is like, how do we invest in the people that are here?
44:15
SPEAKER_02: How do we find ways to go where the money is and invest in the people that are here?
44:21
SPEAKER_02: So we're having a really hard conversation about how to retain local schools,
44:27
SPEAKER_02: how to fill our schools with children.
44:30
SPEAKER_02: And a lot of that conversation feels like trying to squeeze blood from a stone or read
44:39
SPEAKER_02: A jigger how we divide up an ever-shrinking pie instead of how do we grow the pie.
44:45
SPEAKER_02: So it's like how do we build more homes so there's more revenue
44:48
SPEAKER_02: and there are more kids in our ecosystem.
44:50
SPEAKER_02: And then at the same time,
44:53
SPEAKER_02: we have communities like Stowe,
44:55
SPEAKER_02: Vermont, a place people probably know, might have come
44:58
SPEAKER_03: and gone skiing.
45:00
SPEAKER_02: That community is three-quarters empty 80% of the year.
45:05
SPEAKER_02: 80% of the homes in Stowe are owned as either second homes,
45:09
SPEAKER_02: short-term rentals, but they are not residences or people.
45:14
SPEAKER_02: And the owner of that multi-million dollar ski house on the top of the hill pays
45:19
SPEAKER_02: a lower property tax rate in Vermont right now than the family down the street
45:24
SPEAKER_02: that just wants to send their kid to a local school.
45:26
SPEAKER_02: That is like criminal and should never happen.
45:29
SPEAKER_02: And so we have to, and people are gonna, people wanna be in Vermont.
45:33
SPEAKER_02: And there's a price to our communities of vacancy.
45:35
SPEAKER_02: So the fact that the only people that have enough capital To buy these homes in
45:41
SPEAKER_02: a lot of places are private equity or investors that are using or second homeowners.
45:47
SPEAKER_02: That has a real cost to like how we want to live here.
45:50
SPEAKER_02: It means there are fewer people, there are fewer kids.
45:54
SPEAKER_02: And so we have to start recouping the cost of some of those things.
45:58
SPEAKER_02: Alex Karp,
45:59
SPEAKER_02: the billionaire founder of Palantir,
46:01
SPEAKER_02: owns property in Vermont,
46:03
SPEAKER_02: pays more property tax rate than me and my family here in Essex Junction.
46:07
SPEAKER_02: And that's a policy choice that we need to change tomorrow because
46:13
SPEAKER_02: if he doesn't want to be here because the tax are too high, okay, that's fine.
46:18
SPEAKER_02: That's just more access to someone else owning that property.
46:22
SPEAKER_02: Right.
46:25
SPEAKER_02: Our political system is really challenged by scarcity.
46:28
SPEAKER_02: How few people are here and how many demands of people that want to come here.
46:36
SPEAKER_02: And so we have to start finding ways to use that demand
46:41
SPEAKER_02: to make investments here locally that can encourage more people to come
46:48
SPEAKER_02: and actually reside here.
46:51
SPEAKER_00: I love hearing you talk this way because as somebody who was a New Yorker
46:55
SPEAKER_00: for many years,
46:56
SPEAKER_00: there's a terrible shortage of affordable housing in New York and then we have all
47:00
SPEAKER_00: of these towers that are basically being used to launder a lot of money.
47:05
SPEAKER_00: And they sit completely empty.
47:07
SPEAKER_00: No one uses them.
47:08
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the new mayor, Zorin Mamdani, is locking in on this.
47:12
SPEAKER_00: But let me also say, listeners.
47:14
SPEAKER_02: I copied it.
47:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just copy it.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: And so, listeners,
47:18
SPEAKER_00: you don't have to want to eat the rich to recognize that the place
47:22
SPEAKER_00: where you take your vacation is And I think one of
47:26
SPEAKER_00: the downstream effects you're talking about,
47:28
SPEAKER_00: I think about Martha's Vineyard,
47:29
SPEAKER_00: which is where we go every year for about six weeks.
47:33
SPEAKER_00: And we sometimes have a house guest who comes home from
47:35
SPEAKER_00: the grocery store having said, oh, yes, you know, we want to buy groceries for you.
47:38
SPEAKER_00: And then they come home and say, my God, everything's so expensive.
47:41
SPEAKER_00: What is the problem?
47:42
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, the problem is they make all of their money between June and Labor Day.
47:48
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, and in between, those jobs go away.
47:55
SPEAKER_00: The consumption goes away.
47:57
SPEAKER_00: It's more expensive to get all of these things to an island.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: And I think people don't really understand that the place
48:05
SPEAKER_00: that they have very fond romantic memories of,
48:08
SPEAKER_00: even if they're not like,
48:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
48:10
SPEAKER_00: masters of the universe, that there's an economy there that they're stepping on.
48:16
SPEAKER_00: And that they need to be aware of that when they are evaluating people's policies.
48:25
SPEAKER_00: So I want to ask you my last question here, Ryan.
48:28
SPEAKER_00: This is so much fun.
48:30
SPEAKER_00: Which is, I think most people could not tell you who their lieutenant
48:37
SPEAKER_03: governor was.
48:39
SPEAKER_00: And I've tried this on people.
48:40
SPEAKER_00: Who's your lieutenant governor?
48:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
48:42
SPEAKER_00: Let me Google it.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: The only lieutenant governor of Vermont I have ever met was Howard Dean,
48:50
SPEAKER_00: who became lieutenant governor.
48:52
SPEAKER_00: And then the governor died suddenly of a heart attack.
48:55
SPEAKER_00: And Howard Dean,
48:56
SPEAKER_00: who was like running a medical practice and sort of being lieutenant governor,
49:01
SPEAKER_00: but it really didn't mean much, suddenly became governor.
49:05
SPEAKER_00: And he actually changed our politics forever.
49:08
SPEAKER_00: And listeners, if you don't have a copy of my book, Political Junkies, there is a great chapter.
49:13
SPEAKER_00: About the dean candidacy and why he changed politics forever.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: But Ryan, you want to be lieutenant governor for a reason.
49:21
SPEAKER_00: You're not a guy who's going to just like sit around waiting for fortune to call you.
49:27
SPEAKER_00: So how does being lieutenant governor position you to really do the things you want to do?
49:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I say all the time that my opponent in this race is nihilism.
49:39
SPEAKER_02: It's this sense of hopelessness and fear.
49:43
SPEAKER_02: I feel it palpably all over Vermont because there is this question of can we make
49:51
SPEAKER_02: the future better than it is today?
49:53
SPEAKER_02: And Donald Trump and what's happening nationally is fuel on that fire.
49:58
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
50:00
SPEAKER_02: But it started long before him and it's fundamentally tied to our economics and
50:06
SPEAKER_02: whether or not people can just make ends meet here in the state.
50:10
SPEAKER_02: And so if I'm going to do anything, it's to fight that.
50:13
SPEAKER_02: It's like the hope bit of my housing, health care and hope.
50:16
SPEAKER_02: It's like hope's the most important part.
50:17
SPEAKER_02: Housing and health care are foundational pieces of the material concerns
50:24
SPEAKER_02: of normal people that allow them to hope.
50:28
SPEAKER_02: And so like, you know, it's like, what's the cost of our hopes and dreams?
50:32
SPEAKER_02: It's like just to buy a house, to raise a family, start a business or retire with dignity.
50:38
SPEAKER_02: And, and I would argue my mission
50:44
SPEAKER_02: To communicate to the world that we have raised the price of our dreams so high
50:48
SPEAKER_02: that people cannot pay.
50:50
SPEAKER_02: Regular folks like my parents.
50:53
SPEAKER_02: And so when we can't afford a dream, we end up paying with hope.
50:57
SPEAKER_02: It like saps the life out of us and our communities
51:02
SPEAKER_02: because you can't even imagine what it would be like.
51:07
SPEAKER_02: And I am concerned that with all the challenges in the world,
51:13
SPEAKER_02: And all our political dysfunction in Vermont and nationally,
51:18
SPEAKER_02: but it's happening here in Vermont with a,
51:20
SPEAKER_02: between our governor and our legislature that people are just going to say, fuck it.
51:26
SPEAKER_02: It's not worth trying.
51:27
SPEAKER_02: And, and I don't believe that.
51:30
SPEAKER_02: I just don't like.
51:31
SPEAKER_02: Government can fail us and it can also work.
51:34
SPEAKER_02: FDR is an example of someone who is committed to just getting it done
51:38
SPEAKER_02: and trying things and taking action and moving the ball forward.
51:41
SPEAKER_02: I do think people are ready for something different.
51:46
SPEAKER_02: We are seeing the political marketplace change where it's like, actually, I don't care.
51:52
SPEAKER_02: You're not going to get credit for being the cynic on the sidelines.
51:55
SPEAKER_02: Get in the game and go do the thing you say you want to do.
52:00
SPEAKER_02: And build it.
52:00
SPEAKER_02: And so like I am unwilling to pull the cover over my eyes and just sit around and wait.
52:08
SPEAKER_02: It's like I'm going to get up and try and build the future we want.
52:12
SPEAKER_02: I want this place to be.
52:15
SPEAKER_02: And this is a role,
52:16
SPEAKER_02: both because we have a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature
52:22
SPEAKER_02: that sits right in the middle of the conversation.
52:24
SPEAKER_02: I might not have a ton of power.
52:26
SPEAKER_02: I don't get to vote on everything.
52:27
SPEAKER_02: But I get a megaphone to say, like,
52:30
SPEAKER_02: this is the vision for the future of this place that I think people are behind.
52:37
SPEAKER_02: And so, like, let's go do it.
52:39
SPEAKER_02: It's not good enough anymore to be like Trump bad.
52:43
SPEAKER_02: Our governor bad, ergo Democrats are good.
52:47
SPEAKER_02: Like no one's buying that.
52:49
SPEAKER_02: So who are our leaders articulating a positive vision of the future and trying
52:55
SPEAKER_02: to instill some confidence that people, we can go and do it.
53:00
SPEAKER_02: And, and I won't quit.
53:05
SPEAKER_02: Like I, I, for, I can, I can help us like our political conversation is paralyzed.
53:10
SPEAKER_02: It's stuck in the past.
53:12
SPEAKER_02: And like,
53:13
SPEAKER_02: I think I can help nudge us out of that,
53:16
SPEAKER_02: not just in Vermont in particular,
53:18
SPEAKER_02: where it's like,
53:19
SPEAKER_02: it's feeling acute and, um,
53:22
SPEAKER_02: the challenges are,
53:23
SPEAKER_02: are, we're sort of the leading edge of friends across the country in a lot of ways.
53:29
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a great place to end.
53:30
SPEAKER_00: Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the show.
53:33
SPEAKER_00: I will be watching the primary very closely.
53:37
SPEAKER_02: Oh, gosh, it was fun.
53:38
SPEAKER_02: Go to mclarenforvermont.com if anyone's interested or feels inspired to participate.
53:46
SPEAKER_02: There is a market for this energy.
53:48
SPEAKER_02: I think you saw it in Obama's opening his presidential library.
53:53
SPEAKER_02: There's a thirst for something.
53:55
SPEAKER_02: We've been through a decade of...
54:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like real dark times and or dark conversations and like we can imagine something better.
54:07
SPEAKER_02: And I'm excited to try to just be the only way to fail is to stop trying.
54:12
SPEAKER_02: And there's hope in trying.
54:14
SPEAKER_00: There certainly is.
54:15
SPEAKER_00: Ryan McLaren, thank you so much and good luck on your quest.
54:20
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
54:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's it for today's show.
54:34
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for hanging out with us.
54:36
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54:41
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54:51
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54:52
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55:03
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55:07
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55:11
SPEAKER_00: Political Junkie is written, recorded, edited, and produced by me, Claire Potter.
55:16
SPEAKER_00: Today's theme is Go, Go, Go by Roy Orbison and the Teen Kings.
55:21
SPEAKER_00: Copyrighted music licensed through Lifty.
55:23
SPEAKER_00: That's all for now.
55:25
SPEAKER_03: See you next time.
55:38
SPEAKER_03: Well, you gotta move on down the line.
55:41
SPEAKER_03: Don't give me a gal that'll make some time.
55:43
SPEAKER_03: She can't be quiet, she can't be slow.
55:45
SPEAKER_03: Cause the wind starts strutting, got him so, so, so.
56:13
SPEAKER_03: We'll be right back.