The Tudor Dixon Podcast: Making Elections Fair Again

Michigan elections. Now, I've been trying to tell people all about this, but conservatives don't seem to be hearing it, and they don't seem to be getting that elections have changed. We need to change with them if we're going to win. I'm going to say that again, we have to change what we're doing in elections if we're going to win, because Democrats have changed what they're doing. And so that's why I'm really excited to talk to my guest today. The same old groups that you support right now in

the conservative movement, they're just not cutting it. They're not cutting edge. We're going to learn about that in this podcast. We're going to learn about what the Democrats are doing, and hopefully that means we're going to learn about what we need to be doing. So I would ask you, if you are donating to groups that say they are going to win elections, have them specifically tell you what is your plan to win that election. What will you do on the ground, what will you do to reach people?

You need to fully understand what they're going to do, and I want you to fully understand what the other side is doing. And that's why I'm joined today by Sam Lair. He is a PhD student at Hillsdale College right here in the beautiful state of Michigan. He's studying political theory and statesmanship of the American Founding. Really, Sam, I'm so excited to have you here today. I'm so excited to talk about this because I'm serious. It's been something that I've been trying to tell people we need

to change the way we're doing elections. But you have the deep dive in to what Democrats are doing, specifically in Michigan, So I want to get right into that. Thanks for joining me.

not representing the interests that they say they are. You know, Voters not Politicians started after the twenty sixteen election, supposedly by this young recycling activist named Katie Fahey spellcheck on that name pronunciation, but you know, she supposedly sent out a Facebook post talking about how she wants to tackle

jerrymandering in the state of Michigan. You know, she was distressed by the election results and supposedly went viral, and from there her star grew and other people lanched on to her, and they built this massive from the ground swell up of grassroots, you know, participation of the electorate, and they overturned the conservative tyranny that exists in Lansing. But if you dig a lot closer into what's going on there, some of the things are a little bit sketchier. Obviously.

You know, they come off as nonpartisan, that's the thing they like to claim. But if you look at who their board is, you know, they're mostly Democrats. If you look at what their platform is, they only support a democratic platform. There's only one party in this country that wants direct democracy, whatever that means. If you look at

their finances, that's what's really disturbing. You know, you mentioned the dark mund groups, you know, and you know, the first eye popping thing that came out to me about them is they we've received two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from Eric Holder's National Democratic Tradition Group. You know, that's kind of a strange thing to accept from a

non partisan organization. But even more disturbing me the fact that they've they're really funded and you know, propped up by these massive whales of dark money organizations like uh, these organizations tied with a group called REBELA Advisors. The rebelon network. It's what it's called. They have various networks and corporations that are tied to them.

ground for this was really Colorado. And so they looked at Colorado and they said, this is a red state that we believe has has holes that we can pull punch into and then expand and take it to a blue state. And we need a donor network. So, if I'm right, Arabella is their donor network is filled with donors organizations. They kind of pool that money and decide where they're going to go to have the biggest impact. Is that how you interpret that?

But so they have this for profit company owned by this guy named Eric Kessler, former Clinton administration official and former field director for the Legal Conservation Voters. That one advises other major liberal donors and how to spend their money.

At the same time, this corporation for profit corporation runs this conglomerate of nonprofit five to' one c fours that do all this lobbying an advocacy, like like I was saying, you know, sixteen thirty funds one of the big ones, but they've started to receive heat, so they've created a new one called North Fund, so that one's become popular as well, that they've been funding a lot of money into.

And I think they have three or four other ones, and it's estimated, you know, it's hard to tell with current finance laws, but it's estimated that they have a war chest of about one point six billion, and really any it's a good chance that anytime you see a left wing bout initiative showing up in your state, whether it be Michigan or Colorado or Montana, this money is going to be behind it in some way, shape or form.

incredibly powerful and bringing out people and voters. And they're picking these on purpose, so they're willing to spend the money to get the ballid initiative out there to make sure that they can do the campaign around that. And so I think what people need to understand if you are trying to figure out what Dems are doing in

elections and why we are losing. When we talk about a C four organization This is a not for profit organization that is supposed to be essentially educating you on issues, but this can educate you on issues against someone or for someone. So they can be going out and putting out mailings that say so and so is going to protect your guns, or so and so is going to take your guns away, or so and so is going to put guns in your school. The all of these

messages can be done through these organizations. And we're talking about one point six billion dollars. I think in the twenty twenty two or in the twenty twenty election, the total spend across the political world was sixteen billion, So we're talking about one point six in just this one

organization that can go out and turn votes. I mean, they're really These operations can go anywhere from just getting the message out, which could be text messaging, which could be ads, it could be TV ads, it could be YouTube ads, it could be ads on your websites, It can be mailings, but it can also be chasing ballants. Is that right?

Steyer and his kind of baby that he created. And you know, it's another one of those nonpartisan organizations. And there I was always competing with them for voter registrations. And this is something that voters, not politicians, and all these groups do as well. So when they have a bout initiative or a campaign or an electoral cycle that they're trying to deal with, they'll spend the first part of all of this just going out and registering voters

in mass you know, in Michigan. You know, this is how effective this is is you know is questionable because of the automatic voter registration, right, but somewhere like Nevada where you don't have automatic voter registration, motor voter, you know, that could really swing an election.

We are so far behind in the system that we essentially can't catch them in time if we don't really start working on this. But I hear people all the time that are like, you know, look at this group. They're out registering voters. And that's the answer. That is just a tiny, tiny part of what we have to do, because the registering voters is simply the beginning, is it not.

Then on top of that, you know, they have access to the absentee voter list role that every other campaign has, you know, so coincidentally, when all of the apps to the voter lists gets sent out, they have the ability because of their master volunteer, to go out and you know, be there and ensure that people turn in their absentee ballots and they know they can inform them about the issues at that very moment, which is an interesting loophole.

You know, in every state, you're not allowed to electioneer, you know, at a certain distance from the polling you know, right, you have to be thirty feet or you know, fifty yards or whatever it is. But that's not a protection that we extend to absentee ballots.

They can go to their door, and they can do their civic duty to make sure that they're properly informed, you know, and they they can't fill legally, you know, they can't tell them who to fill out, you know, but if coincidentally they're there and they vote for that ballot initiative, or they vote for those candidates, or they receive a convincing piece of literature that helps sway their vote,

then you know, they're just performing their duty. And these are the sort of things that we're encouraging now, especially after twenty twenty. You know, we view these non parts and organizations as these enlightened you know, people that just care about our sacred democracy. I want to make sure every vote gets counted, but they never talk about which of those votes are and that they're only ever from one side.

the right of center news or even mainstream media. They're they're like, why do we not see democrats out there campaigning? You don't need to campaign as a democrat if you have these or organizations on the ground going door to door. But also, I mean they're not just going door to door. They use technology for this. They're getting them through text messages, they're getting them with little videos. Little videos are showing up on their phone. They have mailings going to their house.

This message is reinforced constantly with these people. So the Democrats have figured out that it takes about nine times nine voter context is the average, to get somebody to agree with your issue, and then you have to get their ballot in. So in the state of Pennsylvania you have a lot of time to get a ballot. In now Michigan you can actually vote early, and you also have the absentee ballots. So how do we combat this

if they have these organizations? I mean, we're talking about let me just put this into perspective, because when you talk about the voters, not politicians, this is a group that had in twenty the twenty eighteen election cycle, sixteen million dollars and in our entire campaign, I think we got to maybe a little over twenty. This is a group that can just do what they want in the entire state. We are looking at Michigan and I think about over ninety million dollars came in for Democrats in

twenty two and less than thirty for Republicans. How how do you fight this when you have organizations that are so wealthy and this is not even we haven't even gotten to the organization up in Traverse City yet, because I know we we sent that to you and talked to you about the undocumented organizers up in Traverse City that they had nine million dollars.

deal with the bed we made. And but you know, beyond you know, the fascinating topic of a voter finance or electoral finance law, I think there's a really big issue in regards to how these people market, which we talked about earlier. You know, part of the reason why they have this bona fide that's able to be you know, persuasive to voters is because they get to market themselves as nonpartisan. We're not with the Democratic Party, we're not

with the Republican Party. We're only here to support democracy, and we're only here to help this one issue, you know, And I think if you force transparency and you forced these people, you know, to really show their cards, and you can't hide around this you know, facade of you know, if this was a corporation, if this was a for private corporation, this is Coca Cola doing this saying that, oh, we don't have sugar in our Coca Cola, but clearly

they have sugar in the Coca Cola. You know, they would get hit with, you know, a false advertising lawsuit.

That's their technical termament for the irs, where they're not able to leverage that and abuse the system and really subvert our constitutional process and really disrupt and forced reforms that wouldn't be possible in any other way.

bring out people that had never voted before. There was an anomaly there that is not going to happen again. They've figured it out. After that. They doubled down on this in twenty eighteen, said it's never going to happen to us again. We were sitting back thinking everybody loves us, and then twenty twenty happened, and twenty twenty eighteen happened. People said, oh, it's a mid term. This always happens, it goes to the other side. Twenty twenty happened. There

was all the rumbles. Oh you know that it wasn't fair, this was stolen. We got distracted away from actually seeing what was happening in twenty two. We weren't prepared because we were distracted by the rumblings of something that was not the real cause of why we lost twenty twenty. So how do you get Republicans and Republican donors to engage in the idea of doing an enlisting people in the ground game. They used to make fun of Obama for being a grassroots organizer. Turns out that was the key.

Their app on Friday morning tells them to go to that person's house, check to seat. They keep going back until they get that ballot. They also continue to use AI to drill down and micro target these people. Okay, they're going to accept this message, and that's going to get them to get their ballot back. They are really into the business of elections. We are still running elections like this is a popularity contest and you're going to come to our rally and then go vote.

Like I said, the left and the Democrats have been the party of grass roots organization for you know, one hundred and twenty years, so they have a leg up, and so we can't just look out their homework and copy it word for word, right, because we don't have the same voter base. We don't have unions, we don't have the a fl CIO and all that kind of stuff. So you have to find a way to mobilize the

voter base in a conservative way. And I think Trump, to his credit, found a way to do that, you know, and a lot of candidates have, you know, and finding that mix in between borrowing the tools of our opponents while at the same time retooling it to a way that's effective for conservatives is really the question that is moving forward. But we also need to keep in mind that we have to find a way to cut the

knees out of these organizations that are forcing us to lose. Now, so you you know, conservatives think it's usually one or like, oh, we just organize or we just fight these organizations. Now you need to do both of them simultaneously, and you need to put you know, you really need to be you know, in two places at once, putting your all in both of these fights.

But when I look at your article and when I look at the groups that are effective on the Democrat side, I do not see the DNC. I see these organizations that are supportive and coming around, and I think people forget that the RNC is not going to be in your local state house election. They have their own lane is a federal lane. So I think that there is also some confusion or maybe passivity of sitting back and saying, well, we've always you know, the RNC should pick up everything,

but that's not possible. We're and we're a very large country, and we have many states that look at a lot of different ways. The Democrats, I think, are good at saying this state will accept this, and this organization can thrive here. We need support organizations as well, don't you think? Or am I crazy?

those anymore in a political party. You know, no one is going over you know, very few people are going to their local Republican meeting, and the people that do go are you usually not. You know, the most mainstream conservatives or the people that are really going to donate are the people that really have nothing else to do, and so you don't have the incentive base for it. You know, the carrots and sticks that makes a political

organization effective and the way you do. Five to one C fours five O one C s fours in my opinion, are the political party of the future. You know, they do the gay out to vote drives for the DNC. As we mentioned, they have patronage. They can hire you as their door knocker. You know, they can get you. You go work for one of these organizations. And there's a billion other organizations that exist out there for people

amongst the left, you know, to run their careers. You know, there's the backbench of leftist organizations, you know, not even just you know, think of starting naming all the mainstream ones that you can think of off the top of your head, and you can go on for thirty minutes and now go on and start throughout every single one of those local groups or state level groups, and you'd be counting for you know, the rest of the week.

operation was not robust. Our door knockers were sometimes knocking on the same doors. They were just getting a list. There wasn't a way to get feedback back. They weren't getting paid. They were all volunteers. The C four organization, I mean, we have some information. We have something to learn here, because I think it is our responsibility to say,

the RNC can only do so much. What am I going to do to raise the funds and to create the organization that can stand on maybe just one issue but still stand well.

the keys is the paid door knockers, you know. And that doesn't mean you go, you know, pick up a homeless guy off the street and then you know, pay him twenty bucks to go harass your neighbors. You know.

It means you get a young, smart conservative that lives in that goes to college, who's aware of the issues, who understands what time it is, and you can you know, talk them up on what the issues are, you know, polish them intellectually and hone their skills, you know, and then train that person to go and be an effective door knocker. The thing that I think the left is good at, which helps them, is that they're passionate about

these issues. They really do believe they're saving democracy by taking down jerrymandering, and you don't always see that sort of enthusiasm amongst the right.

it's something that they have historically been passionate about. They can get sucked into something to have that excitement of being an activist, and we're not doing a great job of meeting those people, finding them and having them come out on our side. But I think that we have so many really smart issues to tackle right now. Right now. The fact that we could go after safe communities. Let's

have safe communities such a common sense idea. I mean, it's a fundamental government that we're going to provide safe communities, and we have missed with young people on that. That says a lot about what we're not doing. I mean even family values, economy, these issues that are so common sense. We've missed on these issues, and we've let the left just move into this place. So I think that what you said was key that we have to be fighting back against their machine and seeing if there's a way

to recap their machine. But that doesn't mean we don't have our own machine.

you need someone to make the case intelligently. And you know, like you said, you need nine voter contacts, you know,

to make your point to someone. And you know one of those has to be you see, you know, the sign on your neighbor's porch, and then you know, you get the text message, and then you see the commercial and then you make gets you thinking about it, and then all of a sudden, you know, you get a knock on your door on Sunday morning and you see, hopefully a well dressed, intelligent young man or woman who can articulate the issue to you and make you go

oh wow. You know, that's I didn't think about it that way, you know, And that's the cherry on the top. And then you have that voter if I can talk to one thing really quick. You know, the R and C part of the issue of how the right does grassroots organization is they're really compare concerned with just blanket numbers. You know, there's like you need to go knock you know, a gajillion doors. And for someone who worked for the

rn C, you know, you get tired. You know, you're working sixty hour weeks, and they're so focused on just the number of contacts and just making that contact. They're not concerned with actually making convincing that voter about the issue. And that's the thing that we really need to be focusing on, is how to defeat the advantage that the left has in marketing and show the people what these things are. Take abortion for example, So what.

do you support abortion after twelve weeks? And the majority of people say no, And they have no idea that all three of those things, like the heartbeat thing and the twelve weeks are actually the same position. Being for Roe v. Wade and being for against abortion after twelve weeks are antithetical positions, right, So you have to find, you know, and you can do this on a number

of myriad of issues. You know, I personally think that the nuclear family, restoring and educating about constitutional government, being the party of the middle class or are major winning issues. And like I said, educating a smart, young, you know, outfit that can go out there and make that case the voters nationwide at the local level is the key to win. You know. You have to take these tools

and we have to retool them. It's pretty simple, you know, I mean, easier said than done, you know, but the playbook is sitting right there in front of us, and we're being defeated by every single election cycle.

in politics. You know, these are systemic organizations. I have a professor, Kevin Slack, who talks a lot about the long march of the through the institutions of the left. You know, this has been burgeoning on below the surface. It has just been now starting to spill up for the past sixty years, if not more than that. So

it's going to take time. That doesn't mean that we're defeated, that doesn't mean there's not wins to be made, but it does mean that we need to reorientate ourselves to a modern idea about politics and focus on ways that we can actually win. You know, yes we need elect Republicans, Yes we need to point out blatant voter fraud where

it exists. But you know, let's not put all our eggs in one basket and then when the court case falls through, you know, sitting there with our hands in our pockets, been like, oh, well, the court case didn't win. You know, guess there's nothing else we can do.

those battles because that's simply not going to work. I had so many people afterwards say, why aren't you saying you want a legal battle and you want this and that I mean that just is it's not something the court wants to do, is to overturn an election.

activist judges are mostly on the left. You know, you have in Wisconsin this past time a judge running on overturning abortion or overturning abortion you know, restrictions in the state, which I think is obscene, you know, But we just we have to accept that we don't have those sort of judges on the right, you know, And so the only way we're going to win is in the ballot box. And we have to accept that we're fighting in a

system that is structurally positioned against us. We need to find ways to be creative, you know, to be competitive, and that doesn't and that means getting out of the framework that this is still the nineteen nineties or the two thousands. Things have changed. Do we need to adapt with time?

We have an opportunity in twenty four to change that. So talk to the folks that you know are activist, our activists, or are are putting together a C four. Give to those organizations if you feel like they're going to do the work on the ground, but ask them what they're going to do to get there. I think that's been something we've been blindly giving to groups that haven't necessarily been doing that on the ground, and I want to see people really doing that. Sam Lair, thank

you so much for being on the podcast today. Really appreciate it.

make actual, effectual change in this country. And so I hope that people, you know, hear this message and think about really the way that they can be participate in, you know, our republic and help to get in the good fight and push the ball a little bit more further for you know, the values that this country was founded on.