Good morning, peeps, and welcome to WOKF Daily with Me your Girl. Danielle Moody pre recording from the home Bunker as I am taking a much needed respite this week, but as always leaving you all with fresh content and interviews with people that we all need to know. Coming up on today's show is the co founder of Forward Majority, a political pack that is invested in building democratic power
in the state legislatures. Vicky Houseman is the co founder of Forward Majority, and her and I get into a really thoughtful conversation and dare I say hopeful one about how we need not fear that all is lost, that there have been significant moves that have been made at the state legislatures. We're looking at Pennsylvania, we're looking at Michigan, and how her organization is looking forward to twenty thirty.
Now I joke and say, I'm not quite sure we fucking get there, but hey, you know, give me the plan because critzy to think about it. But twenty thirty, which sounds sci fi ish because it sounds so far away, is only seven years off. So Vicki and I get into a conversation about what is going right in state legislatures, what states they are going to be focused on for their twenty thirty agenda, and where they think that Democrats need to be paying attention to as we enter into
the twenty twenty four election cycle. And also I know that so many of you DM me, message me, comment under shows and ask what can I do? How can I get involved? I don't want to feel hopeless. And Foreign Majority is one of those organizations that you can consider volunteering for, that you can consider donating to because they are doing the work on the ground. I think that for too long Democrats have only been focused on the presidential races and on some high level congressional races.
But we have ceded the localities to the Republican Party and look at what they have done right. States's rights is now all about denying women and people with uteruses, abortions, about denying trans people health care, about erasing black culture and bipock experiences. All of that is happening at the states, and the federal government is just sitting around with their hands in the air, like, oh, I don't know what
to do. And so I think that today's conversation with Vicky is a really important one and it's one that helps us feel hopeful, like work is being done and that all is not lost, folks. I am very happy to welcome to OKF Daily for the first time Vicky Houseman, who is the co founder of Forward Majority, a PAC focused on protecting free and fair elections and securing a representative democracy by investing in a long term strategy to reclaim power in state legislatures. We're all about free and
fair elections on this show. We're all about free and fair elections. I'd like to think in this country, but that is not really the case. So Vicky, tell me more about what it is that Ford Majority does and why you co founded it.
Yeah.
Well, first of all, Danielle, thank you so much for having me on your show today. Really excited to be with you and speak of you about this critical work. So in terms of Ford Majority, our work is grounded in the simple fact that state legislatures are ground zero in the fight for demodocracy. They are foundational to free
and fair elections and to representative government. And as you and I and many of your listeners may know, the challenge is that for the past fifty years until very recently, building power in state legislatures has at best been an afterthought, we're distant priority for democrats, while Republicans have patiently strategically invested to take over state houses across the country. And we've all seen and we've all lived with the results.
What were once described as laboratories of democracies in the states have become incubators of autocracy, quite literally, innovating on tactics of gerrymandering, voter suppression, election subversion, partisan power grabs, instituting minority rule.
So we saw this back.
In twenty sixteen when Donald Trump was elected, when all of us were you know, so many of us were having kind of a wake up call about how we approach politics, how we engage in democracy, and we saw that state legislatures create this unique opportunity to build power and this urgent need to build power. So we aggressively help democrats compete for power where they can have the biggest impact, where they can dislodge Republicans and state legislatures
that affect national power and affect democracy nationally. So we've been making great progress. I'm really excited to get in some of the details with you, and much more work lies ahead as we all work to make a more perfect union.
You know, it's it's really unfortunate. I think that Democrats have done such a poor job. You know. It's in the same way that they have neglected to really talk about the Supreme Court and engage people on the issues
of the Supreme Court and on federal judges. It is the same thing that we find ourselves that Republicans, to your point, over the last fifty years, have spent time seeding ground, right, like literally planting seeds, planting seeds in the state legislature, building a pipeline, planting seeds in the federal court system, build building a pipeline. And we are now at a place and Vicky, you tell me if
I'm wrong. We're playing catch up, and I wonder, you know, honestly, if we're so far behind, you know that we might not catch up. So what do you think about that? Like, are we just is it too far gone?
H It is a great question.
And when we got started in twenty sixteen, Democrats had the least amount of power in state legislatures across the country than any other point in time in modern history. So we have been digging out of a hole. There are no two ways about it. I want to share two things with you. One is, we're making great progress. So there are so many reasons to be incredibly concerned, upset, outraged about the state of democracy today, but there also
were reasons for great hope and optimism. And I think a path we see back to back to power and a start for the democracy that we all want for the future. I point to the wins of twenty twenty two. Obviously Democrats outperformed all expectations. Obviously election deniers were defeated
up and down the ballot and key places. But what we saw was, you know, we were able to win state legislative power in the Pennsylvania State House, in the Michigan State House and Senate, in the Minnesota State House and Senate, and in these states, I mean Michigan has a Democratic trifecta for the first time in forty years, and we have seen what that has meant for policy. I mean, we live in a tale of two countries right now. Depending on whether your legislator is Republican or Democratic.
You live in Texas with a Republican legislature, you're literally living in the Handmaid's tale. You get pregnant as a result of rape or incest and you're forced to carry you know, the childhood terms. It's just insanity. And meanwhile, you live in Michigan and abortion rights have been protected in the constitution, voting rights are being expanded, gun violence and gun control measures.
Are being passed.
It's just a total dichotomy. So I think there's a reason for optimism. I can talk to you about how we think about the long term, but we'll leads hear what you think about your view on progress as well.
You know, But I appreciate it because sometimes I get so stuck in the what hasn't been working that I rely on folks like yourself to remind me, way, way, wait, right, all is not lost, Like we have been making in roads.
And I think that Michigan is a really good example because you know, the kinds of policies that they have been passing, whether it be you know, gun reform, policy is, whether it is around abortion, whether it is you know, codifying you know, equity and dignity for LGBTQ plus people. They are doing right, the very opposite of what a DeSantis and an Abbot are doing with their Republican controlled legislatures. And so I do think that it's important to say no,
these things are happening. And I think too because of this idea, the lie around states rights and why states should have rights and be able to not be dictated to by the federal government that has always been the Republican push, I think that more people are angry and recognize that they could run right. Like when you see some of the people that are up in this legislature, you're like, I become smarter. I think I could do this job right. Like, we've kind of removed they've removed themselves,
but we've also removed them from a pedestal. But you know, talk to me about the ways that your organization is working to strengthen to use the places that you have named, like Michigan, like Pennsylvania as a blueprint for how we need to go state by state in order to win back power.
Yeah, yeah, great question.
So you know, I think one of the biggest things we need to do is start aggressively competing and actually an addition in addition in Michigan, one of the states that I love to point to is Virginia, which has elections, big elections this November, but we're literally just competing and holding Republicans' feed to the fire in twenty seventeen, not even flipping the legislature led to the expansion of Medicaid to almost half a million low income families, like literally
poor children getting health coverage. And so a big piece of our ethos is aggressively competing. Let us not just hold on to what we have. Let us not just go after the most incremental wins. Let's go after transformational power.
And so we started off at the beginning of this decade, having been at the work for about four years and the run up to twenty twenty, saying, you know what, rather than just rinse and repeat and the definition of in sandy be doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome, let us dream a different dream and think of a different strategy. And so we said we are going to build a ten year strategy focused on the year twenty thirty.
Okay, yeah, Danielle, I see.
You looking at me, maybe thinking why that's futuristic sci fi year.
I'm alosto the same, Mickey. I don't know if we're making it there, but I like your optimism so well. Detail.
Look, we need to be able to walk and chew them at the same time. And what I mean by that is we work at Ford majority one hundred percent on finding the sixty three votes that flipped the Pennsylvania House in twenty twenty two. We fight the fights are in front of us. We do it through a frame and an orientation that's focused on twenty thirty for this very reason. In twenty thirty, we have a once a decade opportunity to shift how power is distributed in America.
That is through the redistricting process, when all of the congressional and all the state legislative districts are redrawn. It's literally seven years away. And so we've said we are going to fight the fights in front of us, but we are also going to invest in the districts that we expect to be the tipping points for power in twenty thirty. The lynchpins of Democratic majorities in six key states. The states will not surprise you, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, Georgia,
North Carolina, Virginia. We are laser focused on these one hundred districts, and we've built a strategy and started to build programs, one piece of which is a groundbreaking voter registration effort registering voters literally where there have been zero voter registration efforts on the ground, and starting to build for the fights ahead, including those that are going to be transformational for the future.
And if we don't do that, what are we left with?
We are left with every single election feeling like an existential crisis, quite literally being an existential crisis where we can hold on to what we've got at best by the skin of our teeth, but we never have enough power to make change. And I'm tired of it, to.
Be honest, Look, I feel you because there is a level of exhaustion. And this is what happens is that people become so exhausted that they tune out right, that they go back to being what I refer to on this show political ostriches, burying their heads in the sand
and just waiting for somebody else to fix it. And I think that, you know, I want to get into the states that you've chosen, and you know, just for the audience, why those are the states, why they are these one hundred districts, because I do have you know, one of my thoughts has been around you know, what we have seen take place in a space like Georgia, where Democrats had long abandoned Georgia until Stacy Abrams and a bunch of localized you know, electoral organizations built infrastructure
from the ground up that guess what, the D Triple C and the DNC and the D s c s weren't providing them right, but they did for themselves. And because of that, Georgia turned blew not once but twice, right. And so I wonder, you know, one, walk us through your selection of these states and why, and then do you think just as a larger party, we have been seeding too much ground in southern areas assuming that they're just going to be Republican forever.
Yeah, great questions. Stacy Abrams also got her start in the state legislature.
By the way, this is the bench for the future.
And in terms of the states that we selected, so one of the things that we've really prioritized as an organization is bringing top talent people who never thought about our work on state legislative races before, where we've tried to create a model for them to engage in this work.
And so one of those folks is my colleague Ethan Roder, who's run our data operation, who built Obama's date operations campaigns, and when we started the decade, we said, we want to, in the words of Wayne Gretzky, not skate where the puck was, but skate where the puck is going. We worked where the future is and we asked him to identify the key states that are going to be most
competitive in twenty thirty. We're state legislative power. We're literally having the ability to control the redistricting process, having the ability to control elections will make the biggest difference in democracy, not for the twenty twenties, but for the twenty thirties, right, And so we identified these states as being the most competitive where there's going to.
Be a path to flipping the state legislature.
Some of those legislatures we've already flipped, and we need to hold on to Pennsylvania, Michigan, others were on the cusp of Arizona has been the State House in Arizona has been in Republican hands.
Get this since nineteen sixty six LBJ.
Was in the White House. I mean, it's just like a different era entirely. And in the past election cycles, Democrats have come within three thousand votes of flipping that chamber.
Why do you think that is a yeah in Arizona, and in particular, why do you think that is Is it immigrate like Republicans say, Oh, it's immigration in the blabblah blah bah blah, But what is it? Is it the demographic shift.
There's so much dynamism in Arizona.
It has one of the fastest growing populations in terms of in migration, in terms of job growth, despite the one hundred and fifteen degree days they seem to have every day of the summer. So there's a lot of just dynamism change. And by our expectation, it is of the fifty states in the nation, the one that is moving fastest to becoming a more blue state, closely followed
by Texas. And so to your question on southern states, I think the rust belt, right the Midwest, the heartland has been kind of a core piece of the blue wall for a long time, and I think it has been, you know, part of our success as we think about the election of President Biden, as we think about winds in twenty twenty two.
But the future is in the sun Belt. It is where the population has growing.
Fastest, is where electoral power will continue to migrate. Congressional seats and electoral college votes are distributed based on population. That is why Texas looms so large. It has forty congressional seats forty electoral college votes. So flipping Texas making Texas competitive. It's not going to be blue anytime soon, but purple would be a thunderclap for the entire nation. And that power building, durable power begins in the state house,
begins where the rules of the game are set. In every decade, we see that the Texas State House becomes competitive. On the back end of the decade, the gerrymander simply cannot hold. There's too much population growth and change, particularly in the suburbs where we need to win. That gerrymander decays, and Democrats have not been prepared to capture that opportunity. So we want to change that.
You know, it's I like the visual of gerrymandering decaying. It can't disintegrate fast enough. But I also think about the fact that while jerrymandering is the Republican's political tool, like it is what they use in order to suppress
the vote. And so when we think about the state legislature, you're also thinking about the candidates, right, because you have to think about the people that are going to provide a sense of hopefulness, a sense of passion, a sense of intrigue to want to get people to jump all of the hurdles that they have to jump. And so in thinking about what in your as you're creating these models for victory, what is the secret sauce? What a
what a what are we? What are we going after to try and then make the blueprints and make the status quo for gaining political power.
Yeah, So the hard truth that I would share with you is I think that the candidates, the inspirational leaders, are a huge, huge component of success. But given jerrymannerd maps and or just the way in which Democrats have geographically sorted themselves in states, it's often not enough to have a great set of candidates to get to a majority. So one thing that we've identified is a huge voter registration gap in the heart of the state legislative battleground.
It's really interesting because you know, voter registration has been is one of the most important tools in a democracy, right, expanding the electorate and ensuring folks can have access to the franchise. But it also has been an incredibly important tool to help Democrats win. Just as you said in Georgia, what we've seen and you know, if you'd asked me two years ago, if you take a state like Arizona again, you know, are Democrats doing everything they can to register
voters in Arizona? I would have said absolutely, I bet they are. You know why why wouldn't they be? And the reality is Democrats are doing everything they can to register voters in big cities and on college campuses where the work is efficient. This is incredibly important work. It's incredibly important to winning any election we want to in a state like Arizona. But it doesn't touch the suburbs.
It doesn't touch the suburbs because.
They're fifty percent Republican. They're less dense, they're harder to navigate. The work doesn't translate. You might actually register Republicans and you know, boost their advantage. But the challenge is, if you want to flip the Arizona House, if you want to undo what has been their advantage in the state legislature since nineteen sixty six, we need to be registering voters in these suburban districts. There's no two ways about it.
So what we did last year was we identified one point five million unregistered Democrats and the most important districts and brought that.
Is so many, that is so many people, It's so many.
And we designed a program that uses data analytics to actually go to specific doors, go to specific strip malls, coffee shops and register Democrats without registering Republicans. And with this we are able to help raise the floor on democratic performance. We're able to help these great candidates who are inspirational leaders and should have the gabbles, should have governing power, We're able to help them perform in these
races that are tough but winnable. So that's a big piece of you know, one of the programs that we've designed and are rolling out now and see as a potential path to helping to build and hold on to these legislatures now through twenty thirty.
But it's also democratic votes to vote for Joe Biden, who vote for.
US Senate candidates, congressional candidates. So there's a layer cake of value here.
I mean, I think that that's extraordinary. I mean, that is a tool and just the fact that my god, one point five million people not registered to vote that are unregistered democrats. I mean we're talking, you know, to your point earlier about elections that were decided in the hundreds in some places, in the one hundreds of votes, right, and to think that they are just people that have still not been included, are or welcomed, right pulled into
the electoral processes crazy. My last question for you, Vicky is that you know, the WOKF audience is an activated, passionate audience who is always looking for ways to get involved, to get involved in their state, to be able to contribute. And so please tell us how folks can connect, get involved, volunteer and get to work.
Yeah.
Absolutely, well, we would love your listeners to get involved. I think one of the reasons that state legislators have become these incubators of autocracy is because they fly in darkness. It's a huge amount of power and nobody pays attention.
No one knows who their state legislator is, so literally where you live, starting to pay attention, starting to actually reach out and be in touch with who represents you and your legislature and understand the issues at stake is like a core piece of the fabric of our democracy and how this works in terms of our work. So you know, one of the biggest things you can do right now is help support the voter registration effort we're
building on our website, Forward majority dot org. We would welcome any contributions that folks want to make for folks who want to knockdoors, write postcards.
We work with some great partners.
Sister District is one of them who organizes volunteers to go to competitive districts and help candidates knockdors and as we get deeper into the cycle, that type of activism and activity is essential.
Again.
While state legislatures are like higher on the radar these days, unfortunately post the fall of Row, I do think that in a presidential election, these candidates will need all the help they can get.
Well, I appreciate you so much for making the time to join wilk F. I appreciate the work that Forward Majority is doing in any way that we can continue to be of service on wokay if we will be.
Thank you so much, Danielle.
That is it for me today, dear friends on wokay. As always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.