The Author of HR 1 on Saving Our Democracy [09-19-19]

This is Larry Lessig, and this is the third season of the podcast Another Way. The subtitle for this season is POTUS 1. Our effort to frame a commitment to fundamental reform and to get the presidential candidates to accept it. And today's guest, in many ways, is the inspiration behind that title, John Sarbanes, and has done more than any other member of Congress to craft a package of fundamental reform. More than anyone else, save the speaker of the House, he was responsible for H R1 passing the House in March of 2019. And I can't think of another sitting member of Congress who can better help us to understand what's possible and what's necessary from the next president and, and from the next Congress if we're going to make government in America as a democracy possible again. Reform that could work. That has been his battle. And that's the topic of this episode. Stay tuned for the rest of the episode. So, Congressman Sarbanes, thanks so much for joining us. I mean, everybody in our movement, of course, knows you and knows your background, but let's just begin to make sure that people are oriented who may not be directly in the movement. You're a congressman from Maryland's third district since 2007. I guess for many years you had to explain that you were not your father. Right. I mean, because there's obviously many famous Sarbanes in the history of American politics.

Well, certainly to some, I had to explain that it began when I was running in the campaign the first time, and I would run into people say, I thought you were a lot older. And then they, then they would realize that they were talking to the son and not the father. And actually one person said to me, are you the son of the father? Which I thought was an interesting way of framing it. And I said, well, absolutely. So anyway, my goal from the beginning was to make sure I earned in my own right, the voters support. I think we did a good job of that. But for sure, my father's career was something that was a strong foundation to build on. I'm very proud of his legacy and the contributions that he made and frankly, his efforts as a reformer in his day as well.

Yeah, of course he was. I mean, he is most well known or remembered at least as being a leader in the integrity or establishing integrity or reinforcing the integrity in the market. And that complements directly the work that you've been doing in the context of the political space. And so I imagine he would be very proud of the work you've continued. You were a graduate of the Harvard Law School in the late 80s, and then worked as a lawyer for a bit. And then you became, after your father stepped down, you ran for Congress. We met in 2012. I don't know if you remember the weirdness of our meeting.

I do.

After, I guess, you'd read my book, which I was quite flattered that you would, and you asked that we meet. And we met in a deserted restaurant just off of Capitol Hill, sitting in the back, hidden from public view, and you just drank one cup of water. I was a little bit anxious at the time. What was that about? What was the reason that we had to be so secretive when we were talking about democracy?

Well, I'm not sure it was that we had to be so secretive. I just might have picked a bad restaurant, looking back on it. But I think, as I recall, the essence of our discussion, it was you wondering out loud why I wasn't sort of being more vocal and waving around my efforts at reform, particularly the things that I was doing in my own campaign, which were pretty creative in terms of trying to March in a 45 degree angle away from the status quo. And what I said to you then was that I certainly felt strongly about what I was doing and had a lot of conviction about it, but I was so committed to it that I didn't want to screw it up. I wanted to make sure I was very deliberate about the effort to change the way our campaigns operate, particularly the financing of campaigns in America. And I wanted to take it step by step and not sort of get out too far in front of myself or the effort that I was pushing behind this. And so I think that explains maybe why before that meeting you weren't aware of the things I was doing, even though they were totally in sync with. With the whole theme and narrative of your book, which was what impressed me so much and why I wanted to get together and have that conversation. And of course, since then, we've been working as close allies in this effort.

Yeah. So what you did really, before anybody was talking about this issue in a big way, is you kind of tied yourself to your own set of principles about how to raise money for a campaign that would be consistent with the idea of being a representative of everyone in your district, not just the rich people who gave money to your campaign. And it was an elaborate structure that you built to kind of force you to go out and raise money in small dollar contributions that was going on at the time we met. But describe for us a little bit about what led you to that position and how, in fact, it worked.

Well, you're absolutely right. I wanted to probe the incentives that you could sort of foist upon a candidate or a member of Congress to turn towards everyday citizens when it came to the funding and powering of their campaigns, and to turn away from the traditional sources of a lot of the money you see, particularly in congressional campaigns, which is lobbyists and PACs and sort of the big donor crowd that sits on K Street and inside the Beltway. And so I put together a structure initially that would force me to do that. So the first iteration of this was that I went to some high donors that I knew and had supported me, and I said, I want to try something. We're going to do an experiment. I'd like you to raise a significant amount of money for me, and I will promise to put that in a separate account. I'll basically put it off limits, and I'll pledge to you, and I'll have instructions to my treasurer to follow through on this pledge that I'm not going to touch any of those dollars until I can go recruit and secure a small donation from 1000 new small donors out there. And so what happened was that we very quickly raised this Challenge Fund, as I called it, because a lot of the people that give to campaigns, they'd like to see a different system, too. And then I became a man possessed with finding these thousand donors because I knew I couldn't access the Challenge Fund until I had done that. And in that way, I began to model the effect that it would have on candidates everywhere if you created that kind of an incentive program. So what did that mean? Well, I started scheduling house parties all across my district, where I would go and meet with people in their living room and ask for small donations. $5, $25, $50 and so forth. And then we set a goal of trying to do it. I think it was by June 30 of the election year to see if we could hit 1,000. And of course, what happens is the kind of viral momentum kicks in, and we hit our goal. We got to 1,000 donors. By that time, I was able to unlock the Challenge Fund, and in that way, I was able to kind of test how a system of matching funds could work to incentivize candidates to reach out to everyday Americans instead of spending all their time with the lobbyists and the PACs and the big money crowd. Then I came back a couple years later and I did another version of this, which was more granular, which was to select 100 precincts in my district and build a matching system inside each one of those. What that did for me, Larry, was it forced me to go to parts of my district that maybe didn't have as many resources, but deserved to have me show up. And so I was testing this from all different sides. And the good thing about it was it then informed the kind of policy proposals that I began to put together to reform our campaign finance system. So it was very personal thing wasn't something I was waving around over my head or being righteous about. It was just curiosity. And the desire to try things a little bit differently led me to that. And that led me then to where I am now, which is to be, you know, working as hard as I can to lead on this reform effort.

So. But let's back up a little bit. You know, obviously many people go to Congress. Not everybody becomes a reformer in Congress. You would have had a broader perspective on how Congress had changed, because you would have seen something, at least indirectly, through your father, about what Congress had been. What was it about the Congress you found in 2007 that led you to take this up so aggressively three or four years later?

The first thing that struck me was how fast the money people move to gain influence and access to a new member of Congress. And when I say fast, I mean before you are even sworn in as a new member. So, you know, you get elected in November, There's a period of a couple of months where you're doing orientation and you're getting your staff put together and so forth before you get sworn in officially in January of the new year. Well, during that six week period, I'm already starting to hear back in 2006 from lobbyists, from industry folks and so forth, you know, who want to get together, they want to put an event together with me. They want to, quote, do something, they want to support me and all the rest of it. And I was amazed. I mean, I had some sense of the culture because I'd been sort of close to it growing up in a political family. But I was amazed at how rapidly these special interests move to kind of establish their connection with you. And my initial reaction was to be kind of allergic to the whole thing. And I convened what at that time was a core staff of about three or four people. And I said, you know, let's take a step back here, and before we start doing all of these events, taking PAC money and the rest of it, let's think this through. So in the early days, I started to build my resistance to this. And from the Very beginning, I took no corporate PAC money at all. And then within a couple of cycles I had decided to forswear all PAC money from any sources. So I'm now the longest serving PAC free member of Congress in the country, which the very least I'll put on my epitaph one day or have somebody else do it for me if there's nothing else to show for that, for that effort. But that was the thing that struck me and I'm glad I had the allergic response I did, because it then made me more interested in studying this ecosystem and understanding how corrosive and corrupting it can be to the whole policymaking machinery in Washington. And that in turn made me interested in what can we do to fix it as a policy matter.

So when people talk about it as corrosive and corrupting, and obviously you talk about it like that, I talk about it like, like that. Some people might hear that as a pattern of bribery, that what happens is these people call you up and they say, we're going to have a fundraiser if you vote X, or we're going to bring a bunch of people by to support you if you can do Y. Is that the economy or is it something more subtle?

It's much more subtle than that. It's much more insidious than that. If it were that crass and naked, I guess I think probably, I hope most people will be too embarrassed about it to actually engage in that. But as you say, it's much more subtle. It's sort of the head nod. It's playing on human nature. I mean, if you're someone who has to raise Right now, I think on average a winning campaign for Congress costs about $1.7 million every two years. If you got to raise that kind of money on a regular basis, you have to go to people who have that kind of money. And those people have set up this whole apparatus to help you out. The PACs have done it, the corporations have done it, the big donors of special interest, and they're like, come on down, we'll take care of you. And so what happens is human nature makes you lean in the direction of people that can help you survive, help power your campaign and help support you. And it's not because you're thinking when you're doing that, I'm going to carry water for that industry. You're thinking, I got the pressure to raise a lot of money. I got to find that money somewhere. These people have it. I'll go to them. Then what creeps up on you is the blind spots, the shape shifting, the leaning towards the people that, you know, butter your bread and so forth. Not necessarily consciously, but it's there. And if that kind of a system begins to operate on 435 members of the House and 100 members of the Senate, it can achieve quite a bit when it comes to the special interests getting their way. So they're kind of moving these members of Congress around on a chessboard, using money, using their lobbyists, using their access, all for the sake of getting the kind of policy that they want to see. Even if, and this is oftentimes the case, that is not policy that supports the priorities of the broad public. So that's kind of how the system operates. And you got to really get your radar up. And I sort of analogize to the movie the Matrix. It's kind of like you unhook yourself from the money matrix, and all of a sudden you start to see how it flows through everything. And hopefully you have the impulse to try to change that system.

So what you've done, which I think might be unique, literally maybe the only person who's done this over the course of the last six years, you've spent an enormous amount of time working the idea through Congress. I mean, you've. You know, when we first met, you had an initial blueprint which is very close to the model you ultimately adopted. But what was so compelling about your appreciation of the problem was the recognition that you need to do something that could work for ordinary members of Congress. They'd have to buy into it. And in the context of those conversations, I wonder how many had the same kind of recognition. Because what's so striking to me is the number of people who are willing to say, no, no, no, the money doesn't matter. I remember Barney Frank, after the Dodd Frank bill, insisting that the banker's money never mattered. It didn't have any effect on anything that happened in that bill, and you just didn't know quite how to read a statement like that. So I wonder, in the privacy of you sitting down, colleague to colleague, is there common recognition or is there denial by many that this influence would have that kind of effect?

I think there's a common recognition that the amount of time that goes to raising money and the distraction that that presents in terms of being able to do your job as a policymaker is huge, and that that ends up corroding the way the process is supposed to work and doesn't deliver the kind of results that the public has a right to expect. I think there's A less common recognition of how that culture has kind of infected so many people in Washington. It's hard to step away and look at your own situation and make that judgment or that critique. And I think it's particularly hard if, as I think is the case with most members of Congress. They're there for the right reasons. I mean, they do want to serve the public and their constituents. They view themselves, rightly, as public servants who are there with a mission. So the idea that somehow their perspective would be getting shaped or affected by the money that flows, the special interest, influence, et cetera, is kind of inherently offensive for the right reasons, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. And so I really have presented this from the start as how do we liberate members of Congress from a system that is really inhibiting them from delivering the best they can on behalf of their constituents? And that has to be structural. It can't depend on the nobility of two or three members then trying to get 10 and 15 and 50 to just kind of do the right thing. Because if the structural incentives are pushing hard against that becomes very difficult to overcome. That's why you got to go in and really look at the incentive structures and try to build something completely different. And I think when you start explaining that to members, educating them on the different ways that we can do this, they get more interested in it. And particularly now, because they're so fatigued by the current system, they're more open and receptive, I think, to some of these more dramatic solutions that we can put in front of him. We're hoping to take advantage of that perspective to get the kind of reform that we began with HR1, and we hope we will continue to push forward.

So the word liberate is very helpful here because it really is about the kind of dependence that they develop on these resources. And it's not just even the money. Right. I mean, one of the most striking changes which Newt Gingrich brought about when he was speaker of the house in the mid-1990s was to decimate the independent policy infrastructure for Congress so that Congresspeople had less ability to turn to institutions of Congress to figure out what the facts were about any particular legislation they were considering. And they needed to turn instead to. To lobbyists. So they got not just their money from lobbyists or channeled through lobbyists. They also got their facts from the lobbyists. And of course, that made the lobbyists happy, and it made the funders of campaigns through the lobbyists happy, but it really weakened the institution's ability to do its independent job of evaluating what's in the public interest. Do you see these things as going together? Is it really about rebuilding Congress as much as liberating them from money that might affect them?

I think all of those things go together, which is why, frankly, when you look at the reform framework we built around for the People act, it covers so many different dimensions of the way the democratic institutions are being pulled from the American people and sort of gathered up and sequestered on behalf of special interests. So it's, you know, it's not just campaign finance, it's redistricting. And what do we do to fix that? It's more ethics and transparency and accountability in terms of the day to day operations of Congress. It's making sure people can get to the ballot box without running the gauntlet every two years and so many other things that are all part of giving everyday Americans their voice back in this democracy. So it all kind of works together. And absolutely, the capacity of Congress on behalf of the people has to be more robust than it is. We depend on, or we should depend, and there's that word again, we should depend on, on the Congressional Research Service, on other resources that can help us think through important policy questions. So we're not having to turn to the lobbyist who is perfectly willing. I mean, they're standing there. In one hand they've got a bag of money. I'm using a metaphor now. In one hand they've got a bag of money, in the other hand they've got a draft of the bill.

Yeah.

And they know you need the money to survive. And according to what you just said, increasingly they know you need a draft because you haven't got your own staff capacity to put that kind of policy proposal together. And they're very willing to deliver both to you because it's all working for them to break free of that. We've got to both sever that money dependence and then build back up our own capacity as members of Congress and as an institution to generate the policy options, analyze them and yes, with the input from anybody who wants to contribute to discussion, then move to what we think is important and sensible policy.

One of the most poignant stories that I remember you telling about the effort that you were doing in your own district was a story of someone coming up to you at one of these House parties and handing you the small contribution. I don't remember if it was $10 or something like that. And you recounted the way in which this made this contributor feel so Important to feel like he was part of the system again. And I think that this is something people miss, that both sides of this equation are important. Not just that you as a congressperson feel liberated to represent your constituents, but the constituents feel like they're part of the process too.

I think that the cynicism you see in the country and the anger and frustration at our politics fundamentally comes from a sense of feeling powerless. People don't like to feel powerless, particularly in a democracy, because the whole premise of this experiment we've embarked on is that it's the voice of the people that matters the most, that is determinative of the policy we'll make, the direction we'll take as a country. So when people feel locked out, left out and powerless, they get angry. One of the things you achieve if you create a new system that is built on small donors and everyday Americans stepping forward is that they feel empowered again. They feel like they matter. They know they can compete with the pacs and the special interests, and then their cynicism over time can give way to re engagement and trust in government and their politics and their own democracy. And there were two stories I told. There's the one you mentioned, which is where actually I was knocking doors at one point in a neighborhood, Larry, and asking for $5 donations because I had created this incentive structure for myself. So imagine that I wasn't on K Street at a law firm pulling down thousand dollar checks from well heeled lobbyists. I was in my district, in a community, knocking on doors and saying, hey, I'm trying to build something new here. Can you afford a $5 contribution? And I sat in the living room of one guy who was an unemployed security guard. He was so excited by this that he pledged to me and he followed through. Ultimately, he says, I can't give you a donation right now because I'm not working. He says, but as soon as I get a job again, I'm going to send you that $5 contribution because I believe in what you're doing. And it was as much about his sense of empowerment as it was about me making the appeal to him. And that got me really excited because that's the whole point of this exercise. The other story I tell is of a volunteer who came up to me at an event and said, I've been volunteering for you for four years. I've come to all your house parties in this neighborhood, I've done phone calls for you, I've walked the beat, I've licked envelopes and so forth. He says, But I got a complaint with you. I said, what's the complaint? He says, you've never asked me to make a donation to your campaign. He said, I can't afford much. Probably $25 the max, I can do, but I'd be happy to do it. You just never asked me. And I realized that what he was conveying to me is when you want the work on the ground, you come looking for me. But when you want the real power, when you want the money, your kind, the members of Congress, turn to the big donors. And I realized then that his whole relationship to the process was connected to this idea that he could help power my campaign in fundamental ways. That's what a matching system on small donations can do, and that's why it's such an integral part of the proposal that we've put together.

Yeah. So you've been. I mean, it's really an extraordinary struggle that's gone on now for many years. And I've not asked you this, but I've got to say that I feel so incredibly optimistic about where we're going in this, because just the experience of recognition is so dramatically different today from where it was in 2010, 2011, 2012. You must be optimistic as well on this.

I'm very optimistic, and I think you're right on about that. I think the awareness of how the system is broken, where the leverages are, how it's rigged on behalf of certain interests out there is much, much higher than it used to be. People connect the dots now to the things that impact their daily lives. They understand that money influence makes a difference on the environment, on tax policy, on gun safety policy. The list goes on and on. They connect the dots to this. And so people are more energized around the idea of fixing this system and opening the doors of the democracy and letting themselves back in, and. And if we can establish this partnership. And I think it's happening, it's happening because, frankly, we've got a lot of allies in this process. You were one of the early pioneers in this. You put together a lot of the sort of intellectual and philosophical underpinnings of the case we are now making to reform our campaign finance system and refused to be silenced on it from one moment to the next. And I think having that kind of ally in this process, along with many, many others, has gotten us to this position. So definitely more awareness. I think the Citizens United case did sort of imprint on people just how offensive the money was in our system and introduce this idea of ownership. Who owns Our democracy, who owns our campaigns, who owns members of Congress? And the result has been the public is starting to say, you know what? We want to own it. We want to step in here. This is our joint. We're going to run it, we're going to own it, we're going to call the shots. And so it's created that kind of competitive impulse on the part of the broad public. The other thing is, you now see happening at the local and state level the kind of reforms that we're trying to push nationally. And they're happening. I mean, these things are getting done. So we're not chasing a unicorn. This is happening out there in the country, and the citizens that are making it happen at the state and local level also happen to be the ones who vote at the federal level. So we ought to be able to enlist them in, in this effort to completely change how campaigns are financed and again, give the voice back to everyday Americans.

So if we think about the map of the policy here, you know, before you were in Congress, obviously, there was a debate about whether to create congressional public funding in an old, traditional model. Basically, you got a check from the government. You've been integral in developing and pushing the idea of matching funds. So this is the technique that New York City uses of small dollar contributions that get matched. And depending on how disciplined you are about not accepting large contributions, the match can get much larger or be smaller. The other alternative that you and I talked about at the very beginning, and in my first book, I talked about a $50 voucher, or as people like to call it, Democracy Dollars, which is something that Seattle has now adopted, this idea has become a more central part of the conversation, indeed, in this presidential cycle. On one of these podcasts, Kirsten Gillibrand talked about her idea for up to $600 in democracy dollars depending on the election cycle. Andrew yang has a $100 democracy dollar program. This evolution is all in the direction of giving more power to ordinary voters. I wonder how you think about the trade off now between, or the complementing role that these two later innovations might have. Matching funds and vouchers.

I think they're very complementary. I think what Seattle did was really exciting. And if you look at now the statistics, the data on participation and engagement from residents of Seattle and how that sort of cuts across all socioeconomic groups. It shows that having that kind of a democracy voucher system can create a whole new ecosystem for people to live in and be proud of and be empowered by. I think the combination of a voucher system plus A match system, in theory, over time, could kind of maximize the opportunity for engagement and empowerment. Because the voucher system, from a mechanic standpoint, is very easy for people to operate and to embrace. The matching system is what makes the candidate go chase that donor. If you look at the New York experiment, before they had a matching system, there were whole parts in New York City, almost whole boroughs, from what I understand. According to studies that were done where no one had ever made a small donation to a candidate for mayor or city council. And the reason was the candidates had no reason to go there. I mean, they couldn't collect enough dollars to power their campaign. So they turned to the Manhattan developer crowd and all the rest of it. When they put the matching system in, like flowers blooming in the desert, all of a sudden you started having these small donations coming from all over New York City. And one of the reasons was the candidates were showing up there and reaching out because it made a difference to them. They could collect that small donation and earn a six to one match, which is what it is in New York and what we've got in our bill. They could actually see their way to powering their campaign using that kind of resource instead of having to depend on special interests. So I think combining this idea of a voucher, I mean, there's a lot of ways that you can do this, Larry. We've talked about a tax credit, a refundable tax credit, an actual voucher that people have in hand from day one. All of those are sort of what gets get people onto the field of their own democracy and out of the bleachers, which is another metaphor I used to like. So you stop being a spectator. You step onto the field of the democracy. That's your voucher, that's the tax credit, or however you want to do it. And then when you're there, what makes you an actual power player is that match comes in behind you and boosts you up. And all of a sudden, you and 10 of your friends or 50 of your friends can compete with the K Street fundraiser that up till now has been the dominant force in our politics. And it's that competitiveness that is so empowering for people. And I think therein lies kind of the restoration of trust and engagement when it comes to our democracy.

So this year, Congress or the House passed the most important reform package that it has passed, I think, since the Voting Rights act of 1965. It was an extraordinary accomplishment that Nancy Pelosi took this up as HR1. This podcast this season is titled POTUS1, because we're trying to get presidential candidates to follow the same model. And you were the key architect behind, certainly, the campaign finance part of this, but pulling the package together and convincing the speaker to make it happen. Can you tell us a little bit about that story or that struggle? Because someday, when the democracy is won, people will want to come back and write the history of how, in fact, it was won. So what was that struggle like inside of the Democratic caucus?

So the first thing to understand is we could feel that the demand for something overarching, broad, comprehensive, once in a generation kind of reform, that that was coming organically out of the electorate. And we could tell that was happening because so many of the candidates that were running in 2018 had picked up that narrative. This idea that the system is broken, it's leaving people out, we need to fix it. We need to bring everyday Americans back to the table so that they can participate in this democracy and feel that their will is the one that's being translated every day. We could see that happening, and let's face, wasn't just happening in 2018. That same resentment and cynicism about politics and being left out by a rigged system was very consequential in 2016, because President Trump traded on that resentment. And I think a number of people who voted for him did so because he was carrying around this idea that he would come to Washington and sort of break furniture and show people what's what. And that was appealing to people, again, who feel powerless in their own democracy. But it even predates Trump. I've been in Washington now for almost seven cycles, just about every year I've been there. Every election has been what we call wave election, where you get 50, 60, 70, 90 members of Congress who are sent packing. And I view that as the public sending us a memo every two years saying, we're not happy with the system. Whether you're Republican or Democrat, we feel left out by the democracy. And so they kept sending us that message. We weren't reading the memo clearly. And so in 2016, they went and got that guy, and he came in with the same message. Now, if you look at 2016 versus 2018 in terms of the way the public feels, a 16, in my view, is an example, a case study of where the public takes its anger in trying to solve things when it turns in kind of a dark direction. 18 is an example, a case study in how you take that desire for change and that anger about corruption and you lean towards your better angels and you elect a team of reformers who come in saying, we have a plan, and we're going to put that plan in place in the first hundred days. So we knew last year that this was going to be a powerful, powerful part of the election narrative. And so we started to work with our caucus, the Democratic caucus, and the leadership to say, first off, let's make sure the public knows, we hear them, that we're taking this seriously, and let's put together a blueprint of what we would do to fix the democracy, reform things, if we get the gavel back and put that out there to the public before this election, so we can see if that's part of the reason they'll lift us up and carry us in there. We developed that blueprint, I would say, about a year out from the election, and then really started to try to put that into the bloodstream of the campaigns and these candidates running, they came to it organically. It was a natural thing, and they really lifted this issue up. And then what happened, Larry, is we got closer and closer to the election. This drumbeat that this had to be, you know, at the beginning it was, well, it's got to be one of the first things we do. And then it migrated from there to, well, it should be the absolute first thing we do. And then we said, well, let's put a name on that. Let's call it HR1 and start getting people to think of it as HR1, the first bill that Democrats, after eight years in the minority, will introduce if they're given the gavel. And that entered the lexicon as we were heading into the last six weeks of the election. So then when the gavel was delivered to the Democrats in January of this year, the gavel came with the very clear message from the electorate, hey, you told us you were going to go in there and do these things. We want to see it happen. And the pressure was there on our caucus to deliver that, as I say, within the first hundred days. And we achieved that on March, I guess, 8th, 2019.

What was the resistance? What's the argument against it? Not by, you know, the Mitch McConnells of the world, but by your colleagues or the people who you would otherwise have thought of as allies.

I think the resistance is just. It's the devil, you know, kind of thing. You know, we have a system. People know how it works. Many of them are successful at it, particularly the campaign finance piece of it. I mean, as much as I decry the fact that the. The PACs and the big interests and so forth are underwriting a lot of these campaigns, it's very seductive to get used to that kind of way of doing things. You don't have to, in a sense, you don't have to worry about where your next meal is coming from. And people get used to that. They get comfortable with it. Even if they can imagine or hope for a different system someday, Getting from where we are now to that system is something that they see as very difficult to do. And no one wants to be a martyr to that, you know, that sort of undertaking. So I think a lot of it is just, we know the system, we know it's got faults, but it seems to be working for us for the most part. And what we kept trying to say to people is, you got to look at it through the lens of the average person out there. It's not about whether it's working for an individual member of Congress. It's about whether it's working for everyday Americans out there. And if they don't think it's working, they're going to keep shaking the boat the way they did in 2016, 2018 and so forth. They're not happy. Over time, we're not going to get good results. And frankly, being a member of Congress is not going to be a comfortable thing if 90% of the public thinks that you're freezing them out. So it was always the ambition, as we put the policy together, to look at it through that lens of will the average American, when they come and peel back the layers of this, will they see themselves on every page? We didn't want it to be talking points. We didn't want it to be a set of gimmicks. We wanted it to be real. And that was the North Star in this process. Larry, is that every time we had to figure out whether provision should go one direction or another, we would try to judge it by that standard. Will the average person view this provision as being built for them and not for some other interest? And I would say most of the time we landed in the right place doing that analysis. The result being that we have this gold standard of what democracy reform looks like in these three very important voting reforms, ethics and accountability and campaign finance reform. The other thing we were hearing from the electorate was you can't just do some part of this and not all of it. You can't fix the campaign finance stuff, but not have more accountability and transparency in terms of ethics. You can't do voting reforms but then have a system where the money crowd takes over once the elected officials get to Washington. You have to do it all together if you're really serious about letting the average person back into their own democracy. And that. So two things emerged. One was, this has to be the first thing. And the second was it's got to be all connected. It has to be interlocking in terms of these broad areas of reform. That's the only way it'll be meaningful. We achieved that, but, you know, we only got it done in the House. So we're in the top of the third inning and we have to keep pushing forward.

But, I mean, obviously you have been in this fight because you think it's the right thing to do. There must have been a debate among Democrats about whether it was the politically wise thing to do. I mean, was making reform HR1 better than making climate change HR1 or healthcare HR1? What was that debate like?

I think that was a debate about this idea of sort of connecting the dots, having more and more people in our caucus recognize that all the other priorities that we stand for are unachievable if we can't break free of this rigged system fundamentally. And so that it's the gateway issue. It's the first thing you need to do. It's the foundation you set. The way I used to talk about it is, you know, before the menu even comes in that you're choosing from in the restaurant, you got to look around the table and see how the table's been set, who's sitting at the table and who's sitting against the wall. If on the menu is tax reform and the people sitting at the table are Wall street and working people in unions are sitting against the wall, you're not going to get what you need when it comes to tax reform. If it's about the environment and the oil and gas industry sitting at the head of the table. When you're choosing things off of the menu on environmental policy, you're not going to get what the public wants. They're against the wall, et cetera, gun safety, the list goes on and on. And so I think our members, the members of Congress, began to really assimilate this increased awareness on the part of their constituents that, hey, all these other things we want to get done aren't going to happen unless you fix this problem. And I, I often talk about, if you're standing in front of a group of constituents, this is the sound check on the microphone. If you don't start by talking about fixing the broken system, a lot of people's eyes will glaze over. You can talk about increasing the minimum wage you can talk about renewable energy, gun safety, and they agree with you. Yeah, let's go get that done. But in their minds, they're saying it'll never happen because the special interests are running the show up there. So you have to come in and speak on that issue. And what I say is it caffeinates all the other issues. It gets people excited and engaged because they think, okay, now we're talking. Maybe we're going to actually change the system so we can go do those things. So I think it was that awareness and members really starting to hear directly from constituents that they wanted to see this kind of fundamental change. And in the absence of it, they were either going to withdraw, which you've seen a lot of people do, kind of resign themselves to a broken democracy and walk away from the political town square or become incensed by it and say, you know what, I don't care anymore. I'm going to go find a guy who tells me he's just going to go up there and break glass and I'm going to put him in there. And they know probably at some level that there's something destructive about that, but they're so angry about the current system that they've reached that point.

Okay, so then what I don't get is why that isn't more obvious in the presidential debate. I mean, first of all, let's be as positive and optimistic as we can be. Like, the fact is there are more candidates who have made democracy form the first thing they will do than at any point in American history. I think we count seven who've said their first initiative would be a kind of POTUS one initiative. And we've seen many people talk about really ambitious ideas. Again, Gillibrand's, I think, was the most ambitious. Yang has talked about ambitious ideas. People have talked about endorsing, obviously what you'd been been so successful in advancing the idea of matching funds. But if you look at what's seen as the top three candidates right now, though, they all would in some sense remark the brokenness of the system. Certainly Senator Sanders and Senator Warren quite clearly. It doesn't feel to me that we yet have anybody who has articulated the point as clearly as you've just done it that has said, look, this is the thing we need to do first, and if we don't do this first, nothing else matters. And so here are the things that I will get done first. Am I just hearing it in a negative way, or do you understand more why this hasn't been at the center of what they're telling the American people they're going to do well.

First of all, I think the question at this stage doesn't necessarily have to be why aren't they embracing what you and I are talking about aggressively and staking out this idea that this kind of broad resetting of the rules has to be the first thing that happens? But rather, are we in a place where we could see that by the time we get into the general election, our candidate, or, you know, no, I can't do it. I was going to try and give Trump credit for picking this up, but I can't do it. So I'll say the Democratic candidate has embraced this understanding that, that it is what the country is looking for. And I think the good news is that even beyond the seven who've been relatively articulate on the point of reform, I think anybody in this field is positioned, if pressed and encouraged and reinforced by the electorate, to make this the priority, to make it the number one thing that we do, to understand how it connects to everything else, that it's the foundational element of really giving people the policy that they want to see. Now, that's up to anyone who is motivated by this issue, like you and I are, to keep pressing the case. I think it's about pointing people to the solutions they've already found at the state and local level and say, hey, your appetite shouldn't stop there. You should push to make this happen at the national level. And every time you encounter a presidential candidate or their campaign, you should be pushing them on this issue, which we obviously intend to do, and we're going to try to encourage that in the coming months. But I think that the other thing that's going to focus people, frankly, candidates, is I think Trump may go back to this, this idea of, you know, I'm the only guy who's looking out for the downtrodden. And even with all of the stuff he's done to deepen the swamp rather than drain it, there's still this group out there, and they're a pivotal group that are kind of hanging onto this idea that he was the guy who came along and decided to shake this system up. And as long as they hear glad glass breaking in the distance somewhere, they sort of give them a little bit of credit. If we don't meet that audience, that part of the electorate where they are, which is at a place of continued anger and disgust with a system that they think doesn't listen to them, we're going to be at a competitive disadvantage in some very important states. And I think as that reality becomes clearer to whoever the emerging nominee is for the Democrats and in the 2020 election, they're going to pivot hard in that direction and they're going to understand that to again, get people to pay attention, to do that sound check on the microphone so that people actually listen to you. You've got to talk about this issue of corruption, but this is important. Don't just talk about it in a negative way. Don't just talk about fighting corruption and cleaning up government. Also put it in that frame of empowerment and lifting people up and giving them their voice back. What I love, Larry, is that on the one hand, you see people that look at government and feel left out, and that's depressing. But the fact that they're still angry, inspiring to me, because it means they still care enough about their democracy to get angry about this. They want it back. So that's inspiring. The second thing is, even though people are really upset with the system as it's operating, because they see that special interests have unfair access and call the shots on policy and that money has too much sway and so forth, there are other polls that show that Americans still believe government can be a tool for good, that it can serve them. They want it to work. They want government to fight on behalf of them and their families. And so there's a path back here, and we've got to make it a sort of positive narrative of reclaiming our democracy and giving everyday Americans the power and the voice that they deserve. And I think whatever candidate can kind of grab onto that narrative and push it forward is going to compete very well with that 2016 case study of how you solve your anger about democracy. And that's kind of what we're saying to people. There it is, folks. 2016, that was a way to solve your anger about feeling left out. Donald Trump, 2018, you picked a team of reformers, not a demagogue. You picked a team of reformers who had a plan and you elected them. And look what they did. They followed through. So if your Choice is the 2016 option or the 2018, why wouldn't you go with the 18 version of things? And that's what we're going to encourage people to do, and encourage them in turn to press on the Democratic candidates to do. That's the better approach here. The other thing I say to people is, when it comes to your power, don't put your confidence in a person, put it in a plan, and then make the people say they'll support the Plan. That's what we have. We have a plan to do this. It's not just talk. It's not just gimmicks. It's real. We've done it. Let's keep pushing it forward. Let's make it HR one again. Let's get it done in the Senate, and then let's get somebody in the White House who will commit to signing that as the first order of business.

So is your money on the idea that we're going to have a POTUS one candidate? The candidate who says, this will be the first thing I do, and that the elements are just as fundamental as HR1 was?

That's my hope, and I think it's very doable. You said a moment ago that you're generally optimistic about things. I am as well. I'll tie it back to a story I tell a lot. You've heard me say this because when I came and marched with you in New Hampshire a few years ago, we had that gathering at the University of New Hampshire Law School one night, and you were quoting a newly released poll that you'd commissioned that showed that 96% of Americans felt that money in politics was a problem, but 91% thought there was nothing we could do about it. And I remember you talking about, you were sort of wondering out loud, who are these 4% who don't think it's a problem and marching up to farmers in their fields and asking them, are you one of the 4%? And they say, not me. I was inspired and excited by the fact that there were 5% who thought. Thought we could do something about it, because I figured, if there's 5%, we can start there and build on it. And I remember I told that story when I was campaigning in Maine for their ballot initiative. And the executive director of the effort, he got excited. He said, well, if we win the referendum up here, maybe that 5% will become 10%. And then I told the same story in Seattle, and they said, well, maybe the 10% will become 15%. And before you know it, we can make it happen. So absolutely, we have to do this. This is the moment to do it. This is the moment to put this democracy reform agenda in front of the country and insist that the next president pick that up as the first order of business. And I think we can do it. Now, it's not going to be easy because you are shaking things up with the kind of reform we put together, and it would definitely alter the status quo. But when people say it can't happen, I just look I say right back to them, what do you mean it can't happen? Donald Trump is President of the United States, and frankly, a lot of the reason he's there is because this kind of feeling and sentiment in the country was left unaddressed for so long. So we have to seize upon that and channel it, like I said, towards our better angels, towards real solutions. I think we'll get a presidential candidate that will understand that, and they'll understand it both because they'll see the need to embrace it to be competitive in this race with this president, but they'll also embrace it because they understand that to serve in a democracy that doesn't have those new features in place is not going to be fulfilling. It's not going to get us to the policy that we want to see as a country. So I'm very optimistic about it.

So Mitch McConnell says it's all a Democratic power grab. How effective is that response? Do people see what HR1 is and think this is just the Democrats trying to change the rules to benefit themselves, or is that response just not going to. Not going to take hold?

I don't think it's an effective response. I think the evidence in the days immediately after he made that claim bear that out because people were reacting, and it wasn't just Democrats who were reacting. People across the political spectrum were saying, wait a second, this isn't a Democratic power grab. This is a power grab by the people of the country. And you can try to put labels of it being partisan and just a Democratic thing and so forth, but the polling and frankly, anecdotal evidence doesn't support that. The reforms that are in HR1 are polling at 75, 80 and 85% across the political spectrum. That means there are, yes, a lot of Democrats, but a ton of independents and Republicans as well that support these kinds of reforms. So that puts the lie to the idea that this is some Democratic conspiracy, some Democratic power grab. No, this is a people power grab. And frankly, that's why from the beginning, we've always gone back to what is the public demanding. We aren't building this for Mitch McConnell. We aren't drafting it for any particular set of policymakers to satisfy their goals. This is drafted to meet the demands, the priorities of the broad public. And I think it does meet that standard. And that's why it's going to be so, I think, resonant and compelling as we move forward.

Well, you've done an extraordinary amount of work, and I know, though we don't yet have a long list of Republicans who have joined the effort. I know you. You've done an extraordinary amount of work to convince Republicans to come around to this. And, you know, I think of all the people in this movement who have inspired me to think that this is going to be possible. I think of all the people who've given me a sense or given me hope that this was going to be possible. I think you have been at the center and I'm so grateful for the work that you've done. I know that you're going to be in it until we've won this. But I think more people have to join the movement, which is bigger than a presidential campaign. It's a movement about restoring a democracy. So in Mitch McConnell's word, it's a Democratic power grab in the small D sense of democratic. It's about the people once again having a system that they can feel responsive to. I'm grateful for your work in this, Congressman Sarbanes, and I'm so thankful that you would take time to talk to us about it.

Well, Larry, I appreciate your taking the time to talk this afternoon and I want to thank you for your work. It's not a surprise that a lot of the energy I got for this I can trace back to the meeting we had years ago. And there's a lot of sort of dog ears in your book Republic Lost and other things that you've produced essays along the way, because in many ways that's sort of the canon we turn to in terms of what democracy reform, particularly campaign finance reform, should look like. So this is really, this is about whether the public wants to come get this thing back. I mean, it's that simple and it kind of remains to be seen. But we're going to make sure we've put something out there that we think is real. And I'm going to finish kind of there. This has to be real. The reason I was so tentative is not the word cautious. Deliberate in the early days of this is because it's too important to treat as just a campaign slogan. This is what determines people's hopes and dreams, whether they can have faith in their democracy. And I hope we'll succeed. I think the strategy of being deliberate, building this thing carefully over many years and then being ready, I'm so excited that we were ready, that we had this policy, this blueprint ready to go, ready to hand to candidates, ready to hand to the public at this crucial moment in time. Now we just got to build on it. We got to maximize. We got to seize this and I think we can do it. But of course, I'm an optimist like you. So let's keep working.

Thank you so much. It's been great talking to you, John.

All right, take care. Bye bye.

These podcasts are produced by citizens us. You can find us on the web at Equal Citizens Us and find this podcast at Equal Citizens Us. Anotherway. There's a place to share this podcast and to give us feedback and your ideas. Please do both and especially share this broadly, because the only way these ideas take hold is if people hear them and think about them in the slow democracy format that is a podcast. Many of the ideas discussed in this season of Another Way are also discussed in the new book that is coming out this fall. They don't represent us. I just finished recording the audio version for that book which will be coming out at the same time. So you can as in you definitely should pre order one. I'm now favoring pre ordering 55 copies of that book. You can do so@hc.com representus hc for HarperCollins.com represent us. This is Larry Lessig. Thanks so much for tuning in. I don't know if one tunes a podcast, but if you do, thanks for tuning in and stay tuned for the next episode, which will follow with yet another critical reformer in what you know, I think is the most critical fight that our nation now faces.

Thanks very much, Sa.