S8E2: Rick Bennett

This is Lawrence Lessig. This is episode 2 of the podcast Another Way, season 8. In this episode, we're going to talk to Rick Bennett, who was a Republican state senator from the state of Maine. He's now an independent candidate for governor in the state of Maine. But Rick was one of the critical influences that inspired us, inspired me to bring this initiative to Maine. And he's been instrumental in fighting the corrupting influence of money in Maine. He's gonna tell the story of why it is so important for politics in Maine, for people to believe in politics in general, to have this system of corruption Come to an End. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Okay, so I'm here with the great Rick Bennett, who I've known for, well, now about 150 years, but we've known each other for a long time, working, um, originally on Article 5 convention stuff. But as I've gotten to know you, Rick, um, I've been fascinated with the history of you and politics. You've been in and out, and you've had a very distinctive perspective on it as you've taught me. So I'd love you to help us understand where you started and what the world was like and why that world is different from the world we have now.

Sure. Well, I started in politics with an aberrant gene that shows up in my, uh, my, my family maybe every 100 years or so, uh, and, and got interested in politics as a young man. And I, um, and I just— it was between the Carter and Reagan administrations. Um, and, you know, like many young people at the time, I looked at message of optimism, Morning Again in America. And I, and I was gravitated toward that and became a Republican activist and ended up running for office at the tender age of 27 back in 1990. And, you know, it was a, it was a different world in politics then. It was, uh, there was a real social aspect to it. There was a place for community to come together and for people to share views, not always agree even within the party, but, you know, to have of fun with politics and to contribute, you know, have that shared experience and that common space that politics really ought to be. And so I had a, what you'd call a successful career, I guess, having been in the House and then the State Senate back in the '90s. Was actually, I had the honor of serving as President of the Senate for a term when we had a tied Senate in Maine, 17 Republicans, 17 Democrats. One independent. Uh, everybody thought it would be awful and a failure, but we made it work. We had a power-sharing arrangement and it worked out great. And back then, uh, we had an independent governor, Angus King. And so it was a, it was a, a, an opportunity for people to find areas of common ground and build from them. But, you know, fast forward, I, I got out of, uh, politics and, um, had a career in business, uh, and, and, and returned in 2020 to the state Senate, getting elected again as a Republican after a 16-year break, willfully, because I felt that our politics had taken a bad turn and that Maine people deserve different— Americans deserve a different approach. And, and I thought that maybe I could model something of a return to the cross-partisan work that we did, um, just 20 years ago, you know, where we didn't treat each other as mortal enemies, but we were adversaries on certain issues, but all working in a common purpose with maybe disagreeing on particulars. But politics has gotten to a very toxic place. I think money has been a principal driver in that toxicity. So that's really what I've been working on as a central piece of my work over the last 6 years is drawing attention to that. Fixing it, working with people like you, Equal Citizens, and, uh, the many, many Maine people that know that this is a problem and have expressed repeatedly that they're ready to do something about it.

Um, so just, I want to go back again to the time when you're— so you're serving as president of the Senate. It's a tied Senate. Uh, Angus King, an independent who's now senator from, uh, from Maine was the governor. So in the process of doing the work of the Senate, how would you see your role in like knitting together two sides in this? And you described it as a context where people didn't try to make the other the mortal enemy. Was there, what was the camaraderie like? Like what was that possibility? 'Cause you know, most people now can't imagine it, can't imagine politicians actually like dealing with each other like humans.

Yeah, well, you know, it was great because we recognize that people come from different places. They have different experience, different life experience, and different points of view, and they draw different conclusions about issues. But one of the first things we have to do is keep talking with each other, keep having conversations, share information. So the hallmark of our power-sharing arrangement when we had the tied Senate was total transparency. You know, we knew what issues were going to arise. We talked about, is this really ripe for debate? Have people been informed? Are there people ready to bring a certain group of issues to the floor of the state Senate? And so the people who want to participate in the process or pay attention to it would know, okay, this coming week, we're going to be focused on sales tax reform. In the state Senate this coming week. We try to bring the bills relating to that topic to bear, and it allows for the public and the news media, people who really are waiting for the most opportune moment for them to weigh in, because most people have other things involved in life and they can't just sit around the statehouse halls waiting for something to arise. So we let not only each other know what we were talking about and what the— where the conversational arc was going. But we also, um, let the public know. And so it was a very open and transparent thing, even though we often had spirited debates and, uh, and came to different conclusions.

So, like, what was money like back then? Like, how much did you have to raise to run for, for the Senate, um, or the House when you first ran?

Well, when I first ran, um, I think I raised $8,000 for the Maine House seat. And, you know, in the '90s in Maine, we adopted Clean Elections, which, as soon as that was adopted by the people, I encouraged all my colleagues. I was a Republican leader at the time, and I encouraged my caucus members and people running as Republicans to use the Clean Election Act because it was there for a reason. It was there to clean up politics, and it worked in many ways. One of the principal ways it worked is it gave people a floor of money that would allow them to conduct a campaign even in a district that was really tough. And, you know, there are some people that want to run for office, but they don't want anything to do with raising money, or they, you know, they're in a tough district and they, you know, that where there should be options. But, you know, we— so we, we, under the Clean Election Act, which today works pretty well in Maine, it's been reformed a couple of times again because of requirements from the court. But we currently, if you're running for the state Senate in Maine and you get maximum funding of the Clean Election Act, it's about $75,000 for a Senate seat. And the Senate seats are about 40,000 people.

So, I mean, Maine was incredibly important in the 1990s with Connecticut and Arizona becoming the first states to adopt clean elections. But at that time, the outside money was muted. There was no big outside money. So So I imagine over time, as outside money has grown, it's become harder for candidates to use Clean Elections as the way that they run their campaigns. Is that right?

Well, they use— many candidates still use Clean Elections, but the issue with the outside money is that it begins to dwarf the money going through the campaign, whether it's traditionally funded or Clean Election-funded campaigns. The outside money, you know, can distort the entire conversation. I think of campaigns as critically being a conversation between candidates and the voters. And what happens with this huge influx of outside money is suddenly another group, often a dark money group— you don't even know what the interest is behind the money— is making the conversation about something else than either the candidates want to talk about or the voters are interested in. And it really perverts and corrupts the system. And it becomes— elections become about that agenda, not the shared commonalities that, you know, of leadership at the state and local level where candidates are presenting themselves in order to tackle the challenges and pursue the opportunities that present themselves in a state like Maine. So that— and that disparity between the candidates' funding and the outside spending has gotten larger and larger over time. And even the candidates' money, particularly in, in, in the federal races we've seen in Maine, have become just out-of-state dominated. You know, in the, in the last real serious U.S. Senate race we had in Maine, 90% of the funding for both candidates was coming from out of state. You know, not that conversation between the voter and the candidate, but people who had different interests throwing money into, into these races. And even in those, that amount, staggering as it was at $100 million, was overwhelmed by another $120 million coming from other sources entirely, just plain dark money interest groups and PACs. So it's become, even in a small state like Maine with 1.4 million people, It's become a serious, serious problem.

And so when the outside money, like in the Susan Collins race, in the last race, comes in in this big amount, is there a character to the advertising? Does the advertising look in a certain way versus the kind of advertising that ordinary candidates would be putting on?

Yeah, it's overwhelmingly negative. I mean, some early spending tries to prop up the good qualities of the candidate that it's supporting, but long about midsummer, it turns very negative in a hurry and it becomes a race to the bottom in terms of tone and toxicity. And that just drags everybody down. And the two-party system is, you know, a large part of this problem, which is why I've renounced the two-party system entirely and am running now as an independent for governor because the two parties are just really more interested in frightening voters away from the alternative than they are attracting voters to their option. And that just drives everything into the gutter.

Yeah, I mean, that's pretty significant that you left the Republican Party to become an independent. I mean, it must have been hard. I mean, you're, you know, I know you and I know the range of issues you care about, and I wouldn't characterize you as a far-right Republican at all. But still, it must have felt difficult to, to say to your colleagues, actually, I don't think we can do what we need to do in this frame as a Republican. We have— I have to be an independent. Um, did you struggle with that, or was— did it feel like just this is the obvious solution to the problem we face right now?

I probably waited a tad too long, uh, before I gave up on the, on the party. I really felt— I've always felt that parties are best when they are a reflection of all their membership. But, um, it's becoming, um, the parties are going in a different direction. That now it becomes more of an enforcement mechanism for a way of thinking, for a rigidity and orthodoxy, which, you know, if you're a heretic on any one issue, you, you know, you're called a Republican in name only, or whatever the equivalent is on the Democratic side. And it's, um, You know, they've become real caricatures of themselves in many ways. But the most offensive part is not only are they driving people away from the public space, away from politics, putting people off, they're also getting nothing done because they're actually not interested in meeting the challenges that our communities and our state are facing. They're interested in just keeping a fight going. And, you know, there are these campaign consultants, as you know, are making tens of millions of dollars. They put their kids through college and plan for nice retirements on the strength of not resolving human issues and helping people with housing and childcare and all the other issues that Mainers are facing. They're just interested in keeping a fight going. Resolving issues is not the point in the least. A resolved issue means they can't fight on it anymore and make loads and loads of money. I call it the political industrial complex, which is what it is.

Yeah, that's a good way to think about it because especially given how Maine has become a, a very purple state, so it's a swing state in presidential context, especially cuz you allocate electors by district. Mm-hmm. And also obviously the Senate and, and at least one of the districts in the House. There's so much outside money that comes in and people increasingly just think, I'll just get my summer place in Maine and that's the place I'll be living for the campaigns and making all this money as a consultant. Yeah, it's, I kind of regret I never took that business up. That would've been, that would've been quite an effective way to face the bills. Okay, so like you—

I'm glad you didn't do that. Yeah. I'm glad you took the other road, like a road less traveled by.

Um, so, so you're running for governor, and, um, obviously Maine has had independent governors. Uh, I can think of two— one I have enormous respect for, one a little bit less respect for. Um, but you imagine, like, as an independent, given your history in Maine, um, in Maine politics in particular, you have a capacity to work with people from both sides. And so you You imagine that in this weird position of being an independent, at least it's weird from America's perspective, Maine has had a lot of them, um, you could do more than you could if you were either a Democratic governor or Republican governor.

100%. I'm running as an independent because I want to govern as an independent, which is an important modality if we're actually going to get back to a place of building off from common purpose and common ground and resolving some of the longstanding challenges that Maine faces. And, you know, we've got a housing crisis in Maine. It's not going to be solved by, you know, ideological stances. It's solved by rolling up your sleeves and like digging into the housing supply issues, into the regulations and rules, into, you know, creating some incentives for more affordable housing, helping people reduce their mortgage payments and their down payments, which is a huge problem. Childcare. I mean, all these issues, energy costs in Maine, we're the highest in New England. England. These issues, you know, are not going to get resolved by just standing on ideological ground on either side. And, you know, with hands on the hips and saying, hell no, we need to roll up the sleeves. And what's really encouraging to me is that I am a known person who's, you know, been serving the public for a number of years in Maine. And I cannot tell you the number of people in the State House even elected people from both sides of the aisle when I made the decision to become an independent who'd come up to me in the corridor and say, thank God, because these are the people who know the system is broken, who are frustrated by their, in their own ineffectiveness in serving their constituents because of this partisan, uh, overlay which has become smothering of their good intentions. And so it's reflected in the broad range of endorsements I've received from people all across the political spectrum in Maine— Republicans, Democrats, independents who've come out and endorsed my candidacy, including former party leaders in both chambers of the, of the legislature and former party chairs. So people are ready, are ready for a different approach, and they're just looking for some leadership to help bring them there. And, and to get back to that, uh, that notion that I think was exemplified when we had the power-sharing arrangement 25 years ago in the Maine Senate, where, yeah, it's okay, we can disagree on things, but people of good intention should have the space to work together, try to resolve things, collaborate, communicate— all these words that have been driven from politics.

Yeah. Um, okay, now As I said, we originally were connected on the question of whether Maine would call for an Article V convention, and you had put together an interesting package of proposals to appeal to people on the right and the left, consistent with your effort to get stuff done. So it was a proposed package of term limits, um, and an amendment to address the corrupting influence of money. So that's what was very interesting to me. But what you've also done, um, is lead efforts in Maine to try to address the corrupting influence of money. And I'm thinking here about the two initiatives, Question 2 and then Question 1. What was the background to Question 2?

The background to Question 2 is that we had an enormously expensive, by Maine standards, but even by national standards, referendum about Maine's energy future and as it related to Massachusetts wanting a corridor built across Maine to feed their own clean energy needs. And a lot of Maine people objected to it. They thought it was a bad deal for Maine. And that was one issue. But what, what that led to was an enormous amount of spending in that election. And there was $100 million spent in this just in the direct advocacy side of that. Election, and almost all of it was from corporations that are owned by foreign companies, either directly or close to directly. And so there was a backlash to that, as one would expect. I mean, most Mainers and most Americans are united around keeping foreign governments particularly, but foreign actors more broadly out of our elections. You know, the elections ideally are between Maine people, and you're making up their own mind. But here we had foreign entities actually and foreign governments very closely involved. So we put together a proposal. We went to the legislature first. Actually, the legislature enacted the measure and put it on the governor's desk. She vetoed it. So we went out to the public, and that resulted in, in Question 2, back in 2023. Question— this was 2023, so it was an off-year election, but you think Maine people are, are united on, on one issue? 86% of the voters all across the political spectrum were in favor of, of that, um, proposal. And we, uh, ended up, of course, getting sued by the, by the people, the out-of-state and out-of-country corporations that are, you know, were subject to it. And so that litigation is ongoing. But 86%, more votes, a higher percentage of the votes, I should say, than anything in Maine history. And then, of course, that led in my mind to what was question 1, which a lot of Maine citizens, uh, as well as you and the folks at, uh, Equal Citizens, uh, brought to us, um, which ended up the following year, the limitation on Super PAC contribution, which got more, uh, votes than anything in Maine history because it was during a presidential election year and 75%, but the votes, uh, were higher than anything ever in history.

You shouldn't, shouldn't exaggerate, Rick. It was 74.9%. —of the vote. Close enough. Yeah, I remember, I mean, that was such an amazing opportunity or really a surprise opportunity because we had tried with Free Speech for People and the next episode will be an episode with representatives from lawyers from Free Speech for People. But we had tried to get an initiative in Massachusetts to block super PACs. And I'm so happy we were blocked in bringing that initiative because, because we were blocked, we came to Maine, or I came to Maine. I was invited to talk to a dinner that was organized by a group called Leadership Now in a beautiful house, about 25 people at this dinner. And I described the story of being blocked by the Maine attorney general and then The, uh, by Massachusetts, I mean the Massachusetts Attorney General, and then the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts said we will decide whether the Constitution bans your initiative only if you gather signatures to get your initiative on the ballot. So it was basically a million-dollar filing fee, like we'd have to go out and get all the signatures, and then they would say whether the initiative could be on the ballot. So that was just crazy, like we weren't going to do that. But when I described that, um, You know, you said, why don't we just do it in Maine? And a bunch of people around the table said, that'd be great. We could do it in Maine because Maine doesn't have this kind of attorney general pre-clearance process. So that was the conversation that then led us to commit to the idea of doing it in Maine. We were very engaged in getting the signatures. We had a very short time to get the signatures, although the signature gatherers said it was one of the easiest things in the world to gather signatures for. And then once we got the signatures, the committee in Maine— Cara McCormick was the leader of that committee— ran the campaign, and the campaign was enormously successful. You know, obviously it had a broad range of support, including your support. But, you know, fortunately it didn't— it wasn't a terribly expensive campaign because I think everybody realized it would would be a waste of money to try to block it if you had to talk to the people. Instead, the strategy is block it by talking to the judges, because judges are the cheaper path to blocking any initiative like this. And so that's what they did. We won, we celebrated, and then a month later we were sued. So I'm not gonna ask you to unpack the legal arguments, but I am gonna ask you just to think a little bit about two futures for Maine. Like, you know, we have the future, it's pretty clear the path we're on right now. It's only going to get worse. This election cycle is obviously going to be as bad as it's ever been because you're going to have, I guess, District 1. Is that— District 2. District 2 is going to be a hugely competitive race. And then the Senate's going to be a hugely competitive race. So that path is pretty clear. But I— but when you fight, as you have, for reforming the role of money, what do you imagine politics could become again? How do you think this could, could become something different? What would it look like?

I think it looks like, um, what it might have looked like before. We, we had really tough fights, you know. We had disagreements, but it was about the disagreements between the candidates, differing versions of the future that the candidates themselves expressed. Not this us versus them writ large, but the nuance of actual real people in leadership presenting themselves to the voters to have, you know, that character of leadership, which is important. It's sort of depersonalized politics because of the vast sums of money. You know, it was shocking that in 2020, in the US Senate race, $220 million was spent. This year they're expecting at least twice that to be spent, over $400, maybe $500 million to be spent in a state of 1.4 million people. So by its very nature, it becomes a bit of, of thuggery, you know. It's just like clobbering people over the head with messaging, which becomes— you become insensate because you're not— you can't process this stuff, and it just becomes really just off-putting. So, and then it becomes, you know, who's going to turn out their voters? And that's not what politics should be about. Politics, as you're suggesting in your question, is, you know, to— in a free society, it should be nuanced. People should get to know the candidates not as caricatures, but as real living people who are putting themselves forward to lead. And that is so lost in this vast spending and all the dehumanization that's involved with it.

Yeah, it's striking to think about, you know, the court, the Supreme Court has a very simplistic conception of what money does.

And dehumanizing.

Yeah, dehumanizing, but because of the simplistic conception. Right. Like, you know, they think that more is better. And if they get more speech people have more understanding. But I think what we're seeing is exactly the opposite. When you dump $400 million into a state like Maine, um, for one race, I mean, you know, there's a bunch of races. I mean, just think, you guys are running for governor. Like, how are you ever going to compete with the money that's being spent, um, in the Senate race? But the point is, like, there's a certain point at which more is not more. More is not better. More is not more understanding. More is just confusion. And in that mess of messages, the only way to get through is to be as negative and as destructive as you can be. So it's kind of striking that the court, um, is not willing to actually look at the reality of the world that they've created and just ask, is this helping? Is this actually advancing understanding? Um, because if they did, I don't think anybody could look at this and say this is advancing understanding and giving people a better chance to make decisions in a democracy.

Overwhelming people with paid speech is antithetical to free speech. I mean, drowning out ordinary voices with million-dollar megaphones is corrupting of the process itself. But when I was talking about how the courts have dehumanized it, they've literally dehumanized our rights, our human rights. You know, free speech, uh, by virtue of calling corporations people and, you know, giving them human elements, which they lack, you know, they live forever, they, you know, limited liability, all these various things that human beings don't. And also they, they lack, you know, soul, they lack a value system, whether they're corporations or whether they're political action committees, these fictional entities. Should be treated differently from flesh and blood human beings who have these characteristics that I think our Constitution and our framers felt that they were entrusting the government to as actual people. And so this notion, I mean, they see these court cases that seem predicated on a fundamental misconception of these entities as being equal to flesh and blood human beings. So that dehumanization is reflected, I think, in, um, in the rest of it.

Yeah, it's interesting to, to sort of see the baseline presumption that they bring to this. Obviously Citizens United was the case that clearly extended the right to spend unlimited amounts of money in political speech to corporations., and that was because they treated corporations as persons. But, and Scalia in that case said, yeah, yeah, everybody's getting all upset about the idea that we're giving rights to corporations, but that's not it at all, he said, because the question is not whether the corporation is a person. He said the question is whether Congress has the right to limit the speech. So he made it seem like it was independent of the entity. It was just about the speech. So then I think it was the next year, maybe it was 2 years later, some legal immigrants in the United States wanted the same rights that corporations have. They wanted the right to spend money independently of a campaign to support or oppose candidates in those campaigns. And on Scalia's theory, the answer would be, of course they have that right because the question isn't not these, are these immigrants allowed to have a right or not? The question is, does Congress have the right to limit their speech? And under Scalia's theory, the answer would've been no. But the court actually was originally an opinion written by Justice Kavanaugh when he was on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, a case called Blumen v. FEC. The court said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. The immigrants aren't really part of the political community. They're not entitled to vote. They're not entitled to be helping us decide what we should be doing in a political community. So therefore, we can exclude their right to speak. Deny them a freedom to speak because they aren't the same as us citizens, which led Justice Stevens when it went up to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court didn't take review to write a really striking, very aggressive dissent where he basically said, you know, why are the corporations entitled to participate? But the people aren't. I mean, the corporation could be as foreign as the people, like the owners of the corporations could all be be from Germany or from Russia for all that sake. But, but, uh, so it's, it's striking how there's a selectivity here and the selectivity has led to, you know, corporations having this kind of right. But what's interesting about the corporations is, you know, the Supreme Court in Citizens United gave them the right to spend their money independently. Very quickly, the corporations discovered the high cost of free speech. So Target, I think, spent money opposing an anti-gay candidate in Minnesota for governor, I think, and then found themselves targeted, picketed all across the country. So the company said, you know, this doesn't make sense for us. We can't like be associated with politics in that way because we're in business. But what that— what then SpeechNow did, the case that created super PACs, is it allowed them to pass their money through these nonprofits called C4s, and that's the source of dark money. So a huge chunk of this money is dark money, and it's dark money because super PACs exist. Get rid of super PACs, which, when Maine's initiative is upheld, uh, we think it will end super PACs nationally too, uh, and you get rid of this dark money too. And maybe we get back to this world that you're talking about. Now, I wonder when you talk to voters, Do many of them even remember that world or do they yearn for that world? Is this like a line that connects and they kind of dream that this might be possible again?

Yes, they do. Ordinary people are really hungering to get back to a normal kind of politics where they can be heard. But the people who have the power and making the money off the current system are doing everything they can to frustrate people and keep them out of the political space. They want a narrower, more siloed debate, and they want to put off ordinary people because they, you know, it's just a way of having more power and control. And that works when you have like a binary system. You know, you've got like this side and this side. And this is one of the reasons that I think that we need to make room in our politics for independents, because when you introduce a third or fourth candidate in the mix, it challenges that binary bipolar kind of politics. And people are really hungering for it. And that Maine is a great place for it because we've shown, as you indicated, twice in my lifetime we've elected an independent governor, one who served one term and one who served 2 terms. And it is possible in this state because it's— we have the history. We have, as you said, we're purple. We've got people, notorious ticket splitters still in Maine. Jared Golden was winning his seat in rural Maine in the US Congress as a Democrat while Donald Trump was winning the electoral vote in the same district. So Mainers, it's still a possibility here, and I'm hoping that we will do what we did with Question 1, with Question 2, and what we've done with electing independent governors in our history and an independent senator by living up to our state motto, Dirigo, which means I lead. And we've shown it in the past, I think we can again.

As goes Maine, so goes the nation. Yes, we can hope. Um, um, so I, I wonder, uh, when you're thinking about the fall, I mean, obviously we've now had— you've now had the primaries, and so you have now two candidates that are gearing up to run against you and against the other candidate. What do you think the other candidates will, uh, think as you set up a campaign which is about trying to fight for a different kind of politics. Are they going to deny that they need a different kind of politics, or they're going to just ignore the idea that a different politics is what might solve some of the problems of Maine?

They're going to ignore me as long as they can, and when they can't do that anymore, they're going to do what they are trained to do by the current system, which is go negative and attack. And like, I've already seen it, you know, the Republican nominee calls me a progressive Democrat, and the Democratic nominee says she's running against two Republicans. So I— they don't even know how to engage in language that is non-binary. So they— it's quite interesting. And it's interesting because both of these candidates under our ranked-choice system of primary elections got a very small amount of the vote relatively, the Republican nominee 62% of Republican voters didn't vote for him. And the Democratic nominee, 77% of Democratic voters, voters in the primary, didn't vote for her.

So you mean as the first choice? Yes, exactly.

And so as a consequence, you know, there's a, there's a large pool of voters just coming out of the primaries that I am reaching out to because these candidates were not their first choices of of most of the voters, the majority of voters in the primaries. So it will be interesting. I think we've got a really good chance of resonating. Certainly my message is resonating in every conversation I have with ordinary people across this state. I can't tell you, I go— I was in a diner the other day going table to table and introducing myself, and, you know, people people when I said, I'm Rick Bennett, I'm running for governor, and they'd say, nice to meet you. And then I'd say, I'm running as an independent, and stand up, hug, handshake, smile. I mean, not on just a one-off basis, but this is a constant that I'm getting everywhere. And then two Fourth of July parades this past weekend and had the same experience. It's— people are really looking for an alternative. I've got to earn their support. You know, the fact that I'm running and my background and my credibility we've established thus far, I think, gets us part of the way. But you always have to earn the support of the people. And I'm working feverishly at that.

Yeah. And you're going to have a challenge to get the message out again, given hundreds of millions of dollars being spent from Super PAC money in your state. Yeah, unfortunately. You know, I wonder, is there going to be Super PAC money in the governor's race as well?

Well, it's, you know, the principal source of Super PAC money in governor's races are typically the Republican Governors Association, the RGA, and the Democratic Governors Association, the DGA. The DGA has indicated that they're going to be spending something like $8 million in the fall. They had to buy the time early because of the overwhelming the blanket that the, particularly the US Senate race and the 2nd Congressional District race are putting on all political spending. You gotta buy it early, but they're using the traditional methods. Maine is still a place where retail politics means a lot, that you can reach a lot of voters through over-the-top streaming and through social media along with the, impressive field operations town by town. And that's what we're doing. We're taking our message individual voter to voter, doing lots of Chamber of Commerce breakfasts and house parties where we're meeting people and building our own network because we're not— we don't have the network that the parties have and that kind of infrastructure. But it's okay. It's achievable in Maine. It's been done before and we're on plan to get that done.

So there's, uh, there is more independent infrastructure like, uh, the Forward Party. Is the Forward Party involved in this fight at all?

They are actually. The Forward Party have been great. And of all the, uh, all the races nationally, um, the Forward Party endorsed our candidacy first out of all of them in 2026, uh, nationally. Um, and, uh, Governor Christine Todd Whitman, who is one of the chairs along with Andrew Yang, of the Forward Party came and did an event with me in November, standing room only, in Portland, Maine. And she's coming back this month to do another event. They've been very supportive. They've introduced me to some of the national networks and also some of the infrastructure resources, because one of the things about the way campaigns are operated now, they're very much in the party fold. So even things like texting services and voter list management, all very partisan. But because of groups like the Forward Party, the Good Party, and a number of national reform organizations, we're beginning to see infrastructure resources be available for candidacies like mine as independents.

That's going to be really important. Yeah. Okay. So we're recording this in the middle of— well, actually, the first week of July. And we're going to see you, I hope, at the oral argument, which is going to be July 29th in Boston at the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

I'm looking forward to being there.

Yeah, because it's really important that everybody, including the judges, recognize how important this is to the people of Maine. I would think that 74.9% or 75%, the way you talk about it, of the people support it would be important to them. But I think that they need to see that this really matters to people who are trying to actually be part of politics. This isn't a theoretical question. It's a very practical question. And they can't help but notice the consequence in a state like Maine. I mean, people in Massachusetts don't suffer the same kind of money issue. Because, you know, essentially there's no, I mean, there are no contested races, not in the House, not in the governors. I mean, governor, we've had Republican governors even though it's a Democratic state, but it's not anything like what you see in Maine. So it's great to get everybody aware of just the consequence here. And, um, and I, you know, just have to tell you how grateful I am for your leadership. Um, you know, so many people think think this issue is just a, a liberal issue, um, uh, issue that only people on the left care about. But that's only because they don't talk to people on the right. Um, I think when you talk to people on the right, there are just as many people on the right who think this is a deeply corrupting reality in American politics, and they're eager to see us do something about it. So you've been an incredibly important leader for that, and I'm grateful for that, Rick.

Well, back at you, Larry. I mean, we, those of us who want it, want this kind of reform, need to hang together and work together. You know, but 600,000 citizens of Maine came out, over 600,000 out of 800,000 people who voted in that election. 600,000 people wanted to throw off the yoke of corruption and the contamination of their politics by voting for Question 1. And those are the people who really are in the leadership here, and the Attorney General and the Friends of the Court are there standing there in the courtroom fighting for them, and I just applaud your own leadership in this area and all the time and energy that you and your team have spent, Equal Citizens, and the bringing people together and convening that energy for reform.

It's absolutely critical.— I appreciate that. Okay, so we're going to see you at the end of the month.—

Look forward to it, Larry. Thank you.

That was Rick Bennett talking about Question 1, the Maine initiative that ended super PACs in Maine and then was ended itself by a district court who stopped that initiative from going into effect. Now we are litigating on the end, at the end of July, We will have arguments in the First Circuit Court of Appeals, and the hope is, my confidence is, that court will get it right, and that will help us get to the Supreme Court. But in the next two episodes, we unpack the core legal arguments to show why, in fact, we should win. Not should win in some moral or ethical or even legal sense,, but should win as well in a political sense, in the political sense of what makes most sense for the courts, given the extraordinary perception that exists right now that somehow we've gone off the rails with money in politics. So stay tuned for episode 2. Grateful to Josh Elstrow of Elstrow Productions for the productions of these podcasts. You can find them on audio form on any podcast platform and video form here on YouTube. Thanks very much.