No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Virginia Republicans pull desperate stunt to cheat ahead of election

Episode Date: October 10, 2021

There is finally a resolution to the debt limit crisis. Brian interviews Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe about his upcoming election and a failed stunt that Virginia Republicans tried to pull to get him kicked off the ballot. And the co-founder of Run for Something, Amanda Litman, joins to discuss a major update on recruiting young candidates with the help of Snapchat.Want to run? Go to https://runforsomething.net/Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the resolution to the debt limit crisis and what needs to happen next. I interview Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe about his upcoming election and a failed stunt that Virginia Republicans tried to pull. And the co-founder of Run for Something, Amanda Lipman joins to discuss a major update on recruiting young candidates with the help of Snapchat. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So I hope this is the very last time that we ever have to talk about the debt limit. It won't be. it should be. So what happened this past week is that we had until October 18th to raise the

debt limit before the United States ran out of money to pay all of its bills, which would then force the government into default, send the U.S. into recession, wipe out six million jobs, send the unemployment rate to 9%, and eliminate $15 trillion in household wealth. Needless to say, the results would have been catastrophic for the United States. And so there was this standoff between McConnell and Schumer and the Senate, where McConnell was insisting that Democrats do it alone through reconciliation, which is a lengthy process. But Democrats purposefully waited until there wasn't enough time to do it through reconciliation, basically to force Republicans to either buck up and help them raise the debt ceiling,

just like the Democrats did three times while Trump was president, or let the country to fault. And so that presented McConnell and Republicans with three choices here. They could either refuse to help Democrats and force them to eliminate the filibuster to get it done with only 50 votes. They could help Democrats pass it through regular order, by some Republicans voting to end debate, or, of course, they could let the country default

and usher in a global economic meltdown. Now, ultimately, knowing that the whole default global meltdown option wasn't great, McConnell presented Schumer with a short-term solution that would raise the debt ceiling until early December. Schumer took that deal, and there were a number of Republicans who did vote with Democrats to end debate to overcome that 60-vote hurdle, which meant that they could then take a regular vote on the actual debt ceiling question, which passed 50 to 48 with zero.

zero Republicans voting in favor. And so there was some chess beating that McConnell blinked, but look, let's be honest here. The reason that McConnell blinked was just to take the pressure off of Mansion and Cinema to reform the filibuster. Like, think about it, if Republicans really weren't going to play ball and effectively tried to ensure that the U.S. defaults because there was simply no other avenue to pass it than through regular order in the Senate, then there's a pretty good chance the filibuster rules would get changed.

Like if those were the only options, if Manchin Cinema were faced with a full-blown recession or some changes to the filibuster, you'd have to be a special brand of insane to still defer to the filibuster, not saying it's impossible, but still. But because McConnell gave them an out, yeah, sure, he looks weak for a minute, but at the same time, he ensures that the filibuster remains intact, and ultimately that's his only priority. So it's kind of a win in the sense that, you know, McConnell did back down on this one thing and the world economy didn't melt down, but it's also not in the sense that here we are

trying to pass an agenda with a self-imposed 60-vote hurdle in front of us that will remain in front of us. But with that said, still McConnell only agreed to a stopgap amount that would get us to December when we're going to confront the exact same unnecessary crisis as we did this past week. Only when that moment comes,

McConnell's already announced that while he was willing to play ball to do his part, to so bravely help avert a global, economic meltdown, real stand-up guy, next time he won't. And so Democrats either have to use reconciliation to do it alone, or they can let the U.S. default and watch the catastrophe that follows. And I truly believe that Mitch McConnell would approve of both of those because his sole priority is doing whatever humanly possible to hurt Democrats, regardless of the impact it has on anyone else. So for Democrats, when that December vote rolls around, I would

assume if the options are reconciliation or default, the obvious answer here is reconciliation. Now, here's why Democrats ostensibly don't want to use reconciliation. If we raise the budget ceiling alone, then Republicans get to turn around and say, oh, there it is, Democrats' big spending strikes again. They own all of this debt now, even though that is completely false, because raising the debt limit isn't for future spending, it's for past spending. Like, for example, the $7.8 trillion added to the debt while Trump was president. But, of course, that doesn't matter because Republicans are going to pretend that Democrats own all of it anyway

and pretend that it's all connected to the build-back better package, even though that hasn't even passed yet, and so there's literally nothing to pay for. And because Democrats don't have an entire media apparatus to promote disinformation, there is a 100% chance that they'll be subjected to a barrage of Fox News, OAN, Newsmax stories on an endless loop about how the entire debt belongs to the Democrats

and how we're too reckless to govern, because as we know, the number one issue for Republicans, the moment that a Democrat takes office, This is, you guessed it, the debt. Okay, counterpoint, and this is where I stand as far as reconciliation is concerned, who cares? Honestly, a few things here. First, just get it done and be finished with it.

This is literally the Streisand effect right now. By trying so hard to make sure that it doesn't become an issue, it's currently becoming a really big issue. And second, if and when Republicans start wailing that Democrats own the debt, just remember, no one is voting based on the debt ceiling. Like, I'm just being honest here, there are no litmus test voters out there for whom the debt limit is what drives them to the polls.

If that's the best that Republicans have got, fine. It's better than default, and it's better than the chaos that surrounds an almost default. Both of those look bad, too. So let's just take the path of least resistance, raise the debt ceiling, recognize that voters don't care how it gets raised, listen to Republicans clutch their pearls for five minutes,

and move on with passing our agenda. which, by the way, is something that people are going to vote on. And I'm pretty confident that if we're able to get lower drug prices and add vision dental adhering to Medicare and universal pre-K and strong climate action and care economy provisions and expanding Medicaid, then that's going to be a hell of a lot more newsworthy than the method by which the debt ceiling was suspended for the umpteenth time.

Like we get so bogged down in the day-to-day minutia and winning the news cycle without considering the fact that no one's going to remember any of this stuff. But they will remember who got drug prices down. They'll remember who extended the child tax credit. They'll remember who was able to deliver hearing aids and dental coverage for seniors who made sure universal pre-K happened. So at the risk of being reductive, we need to work half as hard on the stuff that doesn't matter

and twice as hard on the stuff that does. Next up is my interview with Terry McAuliffe. Today we have the Democratic nominee running to be Virginia's next governor, Terry McAuliffe. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you, Brian. Great to be with you. So first off, what's the state of this race right now? Because Biden won Virginia by 10 points last year, but how close is this race as it stands?

Listen, these governor's races in Virginia are always close because we're an off off year. We have elections every year of Virginia. And I would also say for 44 straight years, the party that wins the White House, the other party wins the governor's mansion list in the following year. I'm the only guy to break it. I have, of course, one in 13, and President Obama won in 12. So it's really a question of getting people out to vote. I ran the state for the president here, and we won by 400,000 votes. So we just got to get everybody to understand that voting is critical. We have early vote here now for 45 days.

There's no reason not to vote. You know, I got recruited to run again by the leadership of the Black Caucus, the head of the House, the Senate, and everybody. You know, I took over the last time, Brian. We were in an economic chaos because of the great recession and sequestration. I built a boom and new economy, 200,000 new jobs, personal income went up 14%, record investment in K-12, a billion dollars. But I also was a social warrior.

I mean, as you know, I banned the Confederate flag from our license plates. I restored more voting rights than any governor of American history, 173,000 folks to erase 114-year-old racist Jim Crow laws. So I always leaned in. I had to keep our women's clinics open. They wanted to shut all our clinics down. I'm very proud as governor. I kept all 16 women's reproductive clinics. I also was the first governor after the historic Supreme Court ruling to perform a gay marriage in America, trying to show the world that Virginia is an open and welcoming state and our economy took off. Well, obviously the top issue facing people right now is coronavirus. So what would be the immediate effect of Glenn Young and your opponent winning Virginia with regard to vaccines, masks, mandates, and so on?

And that's a real difference in this race. He has said day one, mass off, no requirement for anyone to be vaccinated. And let me put this in perspective. Just on Monday, 8,000 Virginians contracted COVID. We have 10% of our population has been infected. Nearly 13,000 Virginians have died. I'm calling for vaccination requirements. Every teacher, every doctor, every nurse.

I want every employer to require that every employee be vaccinated. Because Brian, if we don't kill this pandemic now, it's going to continue to mutate in different variants. I just met with the head of all infectious diseases at University of Virginia Medical School. He thinks we're going to have this for another two years. We have got to lean in and get everybody vaccinated. So if Glenn Yunkin gets elected, think of this. You're a parent and you got a six or seven-year-old. He is going to force you to send your child to first grade with a teacher who's not vaccinated and who's not wearing a mask.

and he continues to praise Governor DeSantis said Florida is the model. Well, today I'll tell you, Brian, in Florida, 225,000 children quarantined, 87 teachers dead, and the death rate of children has doubled in Florida. We just lost two 11-year-olds the other day here in Virginia. So I think it's disqualified to be governor. You're putting Virginians lives at risk, and his lieutenant governor will not admit if she was vaccinated or not. So think of this. She's been traveling around with Glenn Yonkin.

They're going to all these rallies, and you've got to presume she's not vaccinated and spreading COVID. I mean, this is so scary, so frightening. Well, you know, speaking of students, Youngen's also urging college students to use loopholes to get past university's vaccine mandates. Is there no acknowledgement of the fact that the pandemic that Republicans claim to hate so much will only be prolonged until everyone is vaccinated? Well, you're exactly right. So think about what I just said. His lieutenant governor is not saying if she's vaccinated. So she could be spreading COVID. We don't know. But she's not vaccinated and could be giving it to other folks. And he has told college students that if you don't want to take it, just fill out an exemption for whatever reason.

He has said, Brian, publicly, quoted. He goes on right wing radio and spews this anti-vax rhetoric. Now remember, he's been endorsed by Donald Trump four times. He has said so much of the reason I'm running is because of Donald Trump. But he goes on right-wing radio and says, if you don't want to take it, don't take it. He's also been quoted saying, there are many good reasons not to get vaccinated. But I asked him in the debate the other day, I said, okay, you're at a cancer ward in a hospital. You've got a patient who is already immunocomperized radiation chemotherapy. Do you believe that that nurse should be vaccinated? He said, no.

I mean, I got to tell you, anyone who works in a nursing home, a hospital, school, you need to get vaccinated. So you asked what Virginia would be like, COVID would continue. And I tell you, it's so dangerous, but it's also crippling to your economy. There's no business who wants to move to a state with high infection rates and low vaccination rates. Now, there's been an unlikely appearance in this race by Taylor Swift. Can you speak on that? Yeah, so it's interesting. So Taylor Swift went through this vicious battle where basic she felt all the rights to her recordings

that the Carlisle Group, led by Glenn Young, and came in and basically took them away from her. from her control. So she is very furious. She has been very public about the Carlisle group and what they did to her and her music. This is her music. This is who she is. And a private equity firm came in and literally stole her own recordings away from her. But, you know, we've seen. I mean, he has bought dental clinics and put children in unnecessary medical procedures. You know, they bought manner care. Twenty-five thousand senior citizens' lives were put at risk. And they all make money doing this, Brian. So, These private equity, they go in, they make billions, and then they bankrupt the company. They lay off workers, they cut benefits, and they ship jobs overseas. We don't want that here as our governor. I can tell you this. And his economic plan, 43,000 teachers would be cut. And don't take my word for it.

Washington Post editorial the other day said he would drive our economy into a ditch. He would defund police, and he would cost us 43,000 teachers. They've endorsed me, and they actually said, Brian, in their editorial, Well, if Glenn Yonkin is elected governor, it will be a grave mistake for Virginia. I mean, rarely did you see a paper say that. Have you seen any increase in interest in young people as results of this whole Taylor Swift, you know, situation? Two things. Number one, yes, because of Taylor Swift, but number two, because of the Texas abortion law.

And Glenn Yonkin was caught on tape saying when he's governor, he will defund Planned Parenthood and ban abortions here in Virginia. And I got to tell you, that is life-threatening for women, and it is crippling to one's economy. You know, I wrote the bid and submitted for the Amazon Project HQ2, the biggest deal in 25 years in America. We won that here in Virginia. Why? We're an open, welcoming state. So I think between with Taylor Swift and the issues of abortion, and he's against gay marriage. Now, you, that's one's individual rights to believe whatever they believe.

But you just, Brian, cannot be governor of a state when we're not. you're trying to recruit big technology companies, 21st data companies. They're not. Let me be very clear. They are not coming to states. It discriminate against women, gays, or anyone else for that matter. It is crippling. I brought 1,100 new economic development projects to Virginia. I traveled the globe, 35 trade missions. I went to five continents bringing businesses back here. And our economy took off. Unemployment went from 5-7 to 3-3. Unemployment got reduced in every city, County of Virginia when I was governor. That won't happen with Glenn Yonkin. He's going to bring this far right Trumpian. He has said the number one issue facing Virginia, number one,

not jobs, not health care, not education. You know what it is, Brian? Election integrity. Right, of course. That's what he says is the number one issue. Are you kidding me? Now, I do want to speak about election integrity, but first, just building on what you had mentioned about abortion, as far as abortion rights in this country, you know, we've already seen states with the Republican governors running off the cliffs in terms of restricting access to abortion. Now, Yonkin was caught on camera saying basically that he can't really say what he wants to say on abortion because he risks losing independence. So what's your response to that?

Sickening. He's a fraud. I mean, he says, this is what I'm going to do. He tells his closest supporters, this is the top of mind, Jenna. This is what I'm going to do. I'll go on the offense was his word. I won't go squishy, he said. But then he says, as you rightfully pointed out, then he says, but we can.

can't tell the voters this because if they find out the independence won't vote for me. I got to tell you, Brian, I tell you what I tell you here today, I will tell everybody every day. I don't change what I say. I say what I believe in. I'm an authentic person. Whether you like it or not, you're always going to get straight talk for me. How about a politician saying, here's what I'm going to do, but we can't tell people and they won't vote for me? So, you know, he's dangerous. As I say, he wants to ban abortions. He doesn't believe in gay marriage. I mean, he's He would take Virginia backwards. He has said, quote, so much of the reason why I'm running is because of Donald Trump.

But, you know, if people don't get active, they don't get in it. So I would hope, Brian, that everybody who's watching this podcast, go to Terry McAoff.com, look at the 21 plans I have. And if you could text, text the word Terry, T-E-R-O-5-O, you know what? Get in this campaign. We've expanded voting rights. I restored more of felon rights than any governor in American history. I banned the Confederate flag

from the Virginia license plates. I have opened to upvoting. We can't go like these other 38 states that are trying to disenfranchise folks. You know, they're trying to take your vote away. Let's not let them do that to us here in Virginia. Well, you know, building on exactly that,

Yonkins called for an audit into voting machines. So what's your response in light of him effectively campaigning on the big lie? Yeah. So for eight months, the only thing Brian he had on his website, nothing on education, nothing on health care, was election integrity. He continually said it is the number one issue. And you're right. Two days ago, he came out and said he wants to audit all of our voting machines. And then Donald Trump immediately, as you know, put out a press statement congratulating him for doing that. We don't have any election fraud issues. He's running to divide people. He talks about critical race theory. Well, guess what? Critical race theory is not taught in Virginia. It is a dog. whistle. It is racist. It is dividing people. I always try to unite people. You know, I even had 20 prominent Republicans endorse me. Bill Crystal endorsed me. I try to get everybody to come together to move Virginia forward. I like us to lead the country. He is doing dog whistle after dog whistle. Voting rights are voting machines. We don't need an audit. We beat, let me be clear, Brian,

we beat Donald Trump by 400,000 votes here in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He can audit all he wants, but we're not spending money on an audit. He's going to cost us 43,000 teachers with his economic plan. We're not wasting money on an audit. I'm going to put money into education health care. Now, that's not the only Trumpian move that the Virginia Republican Party has pulled. They've tried to pull this 11th hour stunt, basically, where they filed a lawsuit this past week seeking to remove you from the ballot because your signature is missing from a candidate form. Yeah. I don't know. Nothing screams confidence quite like trying to get the other. other side's candidate taken off the ballot altogether. Yeah. And first of all, my signature on that

form was not required. Once again, Glenn Young can order read state law. He knows nothing about Virginia. You know, at one point, they said they wanted to eliminate property taxes. Well, guess what? Governors don't do property taxes. That's a local issue. But those suits, obviously were all thrown out. But talk about desperation. He's trying to get the nominee of the Democratic Party actually thrown off a ballot. But it's all the Trump stuff. Listen, let me be clear to all of your viewers. Donald Trump, as I say, he's endorsed him four times. He issued another statement yesterday on voting rights. Donald Trump wants to use this to begin his comeback for 2024. We all know this. I have beaten Donald Trump twice here. I've run the state. I did it in 16 and 20. I beat him twice and he hates it.

He wants to win this one and begin his 2024 campaign. There are parts of our state, Southwest of Virginia, where I campaign, there's already Trump 24 signs everywhere. You've said in the debate that the price tag of the full Build Back Better agenda is too high. Yeah. The provisions contained within the Build Back Better Act are monumentally popular. So what do you say to those progressives and even the moderates who don't understand why we have to settle for subpar legislation? Yeah. And I say that as a governor who has to negotiate every day and bring people into my conference room, Republicans and Democrats, I got 74% passed from a right-wing legislature.

So I say that is someone, if you got a couple senators who want it pared down, if you need that to get their vote, okay, sit in a room, figure out what your priorities are and how much it's going to cost. And that's the point I'm trying to make. Get in a room. You know, you don't get everything you want. I can tell you this as a governor. I didn't get everything I wanted. But you know what?

I compromise and guess what? Virginians were a lot better off at the end of the day. So I want to see this infrastructure bill passed. and then let's get the human infrastructure. Let's get, you know, I want to see, you know, family medical leave. I think it's important, elderly care, child care. I like universal pre-k. So the things I would love as a governor, but let's look at it.

But they got to get this done. I'm just tired of it. They need to do their damn job. And here we got control of the White House and the House and the Senate. And we are just looking foolish because we've got a bill that overwhelmingly passed in the Senate. it. We can't get it through the house. Get in a room. Quit talking to the press all day. And all they do is go out and chitty chat and talk to the press. Get in a room and figure out what's going to help America and get a pass. Signed in the law. I'm just tired of the bickering

and we are losing. Americans are losing. We have control of all the levers of power, Brian. Let's use them and let's lift people up. Now, how can we help get involved? I mean, like you said, there's only, you know, we're in the final stretch here and Virginia. As you said, it doesn't have, doesn't exactly have a history of electing a Democrat when a Democrat's already in office. And I think that's what surprised everybody because they, oh, it's a blue state. We're not blue. You know, we're elections every year. So we're off off, no federal candidates, just myself, Lieutenant Governor. And we'll make history. Hallelaya will be the first Afro-Latina elected as Lieutenant Governor. And Mark Heron will be our Attorney General. I've got four.

five-seat majority in the House of Delegance, I got to keep that. So we need your help. Get engaged. Come knock on doors. Come make phone calls, donate. Go to TerryMcCoff.com. Text Terry to 50-5-0. Get engaged.

This is, and I don't have to tell you, Brian, and that's why Speaker Pelosi and President Biden and everybody's been here campaigning for me, everybody. They know this is really important for setting the stage for 2022. too. And this is very important to the president. I've had the president here. I've had Vice President Harris here. Everybody's here. We cannot take our foot off the gas. We've got to hold these folks accountable. We got to win this election. But I can't do it without everybody getting in and helping. So come on here to Virginia. Virginia's for lovers. We got everything here. I got 300 plus vineyards. I got 280 crap breweries, eight varieties of oysters. Virginia's for lovers,

man. We got it all. Come on in here and spend a weekend with us. Yeah, I know a lot of people look to California and like to think that that was a harbinger of things to come, but Virginia really is a bellwether. And obviously, we all know how important. Yeah, and there's a big difference, as you know, the Democratic Registry. It's a good point you're raised that. We're not California. We're pretty evenly split here, Democrat, Republican. We're pretty evenly split. This is not a California situation. We have got to date. We know the votes are here, obviously, with the President Biden. And obviously, we won with President Obama. But we can. got to get those folks out. They got to realize, you know, a governor is more important to your day-to-day

life than the president is. I mean, governors run education. We run health care. We run the economies. We build the roads. We clean the roads. So your everyday life, you know, Medicaid, Medicare. We administer all those programs at the state level. So it's really important we get out. We want to continue to make great progress. We have got to elect myself and my and and and Hall and Mark as well as keep a great. I mean, look at the progress. We've, made here, Brian. When I ran eight years ago, we had the most anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-environment pro-gun legislation in America. Literally, if you remember, we had that horrible ultrasound bill, remember in 2012, made us a laughing stop. The trap laws to shut the 16 clinics down. I stopped

all that nonsense. We're a different state today, but we can't go back. We've got to go forward a progressive way. Terry McAuliffe, thank you so much for coming on and good luck in the upcoming election. Thanks, Brian. Appreciate it. Thanks again to Terry McAuliffe. Now we've got Amanda Littman, the co-founder of Run for Something. Thanks so much for coming back on. I can't believe I'm on the same episode as the future and former governor of Virginia.

What a dream. That's right. Well, you've had a big week at Run for Something, so I was hoping to bring you on to build on that. Can you speak on what's happening with Snapchat? Earlier this week, Run for Something and Snapchat launched an amazing partnership along with nine other candidate recruitment organizations.

Now, if you open Snapchat, and you type in run for office, an incredible new mini will pop up that allows you to enter your zip code, look up the offices you might want to run for, nominate friends who might want to run for office. And most importantly, sign up with one of these amazing 10 partner organizations to help you run. This was an incredibly ambitious project by Snapchat that they had no idea if it was going to work. But already more than 3,000 young people have signed up with run for something. and tens of thousands more have signed up across the organizations, more than a million Snapchaters use the many in the first two days.

What we have seen is that young people are excited. They are ready to be asked to run for office. And it's been such a cool partnership to get to work with them over the last year. So of those 3,000 people who've signed up, how many of them actually convert into candidates? Great question. So we know from previous benchmarking that at any given point, between 6 and 10% of the people in our broader pipeline are actively running for office.

And we've worked with a data company to literally match, you know, names and zip codes and information to folks who'd actually filed. So what that tells me is that, let's say, 4,000 people have signed up with us through Snapchat this week. That's 400 new candidates who are going to actually run for office. So the broader we can reach people, the more likely we are to find folks who actually are able to get on the ballot. Now, the candidates that you recruit and endorse are younger anyway. These are primarily state legislature candidates, school board candidates. But how did the ages of those that you've recruited from Snapchat align with the normal recruits that you deal with? We're still digging into all the data, but one would assume that since Snapchat reaches 90% of people ages 13 to 24 in the country,

basically every young person in America is on Snapchat, but they're predominantly a little bit younger. But that's okay because that's the target audience to run for something. You know, we work with people ranging from in their teams all the way up through 40. We're running exclusively for things like state legislature, school board, library board, water board, local, local government. And our focus is really on first-time candidates. So the people who signed up through Snapchat are exactly the kind of people we were excited to reach. And of course, those people will graduate into bigger roles. I know that we've spoken before.

Can you speak on what the run for something alumni are doing, right now. Yes. And that's part of the idea is that if you build the funnel, which is our candidate pipeline, to be as big as possible, and some of them run for a local office, and some of them win, and then some of those winners go on to run for a higher office. We're building a bench. And a few of the folks have already started to move on to run for things much bigger. I won't say better because I think being school board is so much more interesting than being United States Senator, but things that are a little bit bigger. Malcolm Kenyana is running for United States Senate in Pennsylvania. He is amazing. He's already been endorsed by working

Families Party, among a number of other organizations. It's a competitive primary. It's a long shot, but I think he's got a chance. Jevin Hodge is running for Congress down in Arizona. We've got a couple folks running for state Senate, and we're moving up from State House. Kelly Crout in Arkansas is running for Lieutenant Governor, which will be a really interesting race, especially because on the Republican side, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is running for governor. interesting statewide elections in Arkansas, and we've heard from a number of other candidates that they'll be announcing sort of higher campaigns or higher office campaigns in the coming months. Now, I'm assuming that because the demo of these people that you recruit from Snapchat are

people interested in running as Democrats, but is it exclusively Democrats? And because yours is a progressive organization, what happens in the event that someone uses the Snapchat tool to run as a Republican? Well, Snapchat was really smart about this. And they recruited a variety of of partners across the ideological spectrum. So Run for something works with young progressives. They also recruit an organization called Run Gen Z, which works with young conservatives. Women in Public Leadership Network works with women who are more conservative. Ignite, works with high school, young women who are not ideological or nonpartisan.

So no matter where you might fall, there's an organization as part of Snapchat's team that is there to help you. And has Snapchat released any data about the percentage of people, that are being funneled into each organization? Not publicly yet, but stay tuned. Okay, got it. Now, for the people that you've spoken to, is there one principal barrier

that's otherwise stopped them from trying to run before? Well, for a lot of folks, I just don't know what's an option. You know, nobody's ever asked a 17-year-old or a 21-year-old if they want to run for office because that's not how candidate's recruitment has worked in the past. So simply asking the question

expands the idea of what somebody's possibilities and aspirations could be. A lot of them think it's too expensive. A lot of them think their career is not in the right place. Or maybe they don't know where they're going to be for school or where they're going to go when they graduate or even if they're going to go to school at all. But that's one of the things around for something is here to do

is navigate those logistics. Well, for those people who don't think that they have what it takes to run, all it takes is about five minutes of listening to Madison Cothorn and just misattribute some quote in U.S. history to somebody else. And then all of a sudden, you know, there's a world of possibilities that opens up. There are just so many idiots serving. If you don't think you're qualified, turn-on-seas ban.

Yeah. Now, has the Texas abortion ban had any impact? Because, you know, I'd assume that taking away the bodily autonomy of a woman might factor into the decision for young women to get involved in politics. We absolutely saw a surge in candidate signups around the weekend after the abortion bounty ban went into effect. And I think what it does is illustrate exactly how important it is to compete for state legislatures, especially in places where maybe we can't.

flip them. Maybe it's a long shot. It's not going to be at the top of the radar for most national organizations. But even having a little bit more leverage in places like Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Iowa, Ohio, it matters. It really matters. That we have a more powerful minority there that's willing to be able to push back at least a little bit. We'll move the needle over time. And in places where we can flip it and win pro-choice majorities, it can save lives. Yeah. Well, now, how can we help? Best thing listeners can do is there are two things. One, if you're thinking about running for office, go to run for what.net.

We want to help you, whether or not you fall on our demographic, we have resources for you of varying levels. And if you want to help us help the thousands of new people who signed up for our pipeline this week, we would love your support. Run for something.net slash donate is where to go. Every dollar means the world to us. We are up against opponents with hundreds of millions of dollars and we've got three maybe four for feeling good today um so every every donation

goes such a long way of our work and we'll put that link in the show notes of this episode Amanda thank you so much for both what you're doing and uh for taking the time to talk today appreciate it always happy to thanks for having me Brian thanks again to Amanda that's it for this episode talk to you next week you've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out briantylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.