Pod Save America - How Do We Push Back on Authoritarianism? (Crooked Con)

Episode Date: November 9, 2025

Live from Crooked Con, Jon Favreau is joined by Skye Perryman and Norm Eisen to hash out a strategy for the most effective ways to fight back against the Trump administration’s grave abuses of power. Then, Tommy Vietor talks with Morris Katz, Samson Signori, and Alex Ball about the 2025 election campaigns and what they’ll mean for America and our politics. Get tickets to CROOKED CON November 6-7 in Washington, D.C at http://crookedcon.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Head to Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, Go to Squarespace.com slash crooked to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's Squarespace.com slash crooked. talking about CrookedCon in this feed the past few weeks, just a few times. If you haven't, this was a first of its kind thing for us, bringing together some of the party's leading politicians and best strategists with Crooked hosts from across the network for difficult but fun conversations about where we go next. The big event finally went down on Friday.

It was incredible. We're going to be sharing some of our favorite conversations and moments with you all here. Today, we're bringing you my conversation about fighting back against the Trump administration. Then you'll hear Tommy's conversation with the key strategists. for Zoran Mamdani, Mikey Cheryl, and Abigail Spanberger about what they learned from their races and how we can best position ourselves for success in the midterms and beyond. Hope you enjoy them, and there's more coming soon. So one topic we thought it was important to talk about today is the fierce campaign

to fight Donald Trump's assault on democracy, the rule of law, and Americans who disagree with him, including people and organizations here at CricketCon today. Fortunately, we have two incredibly talented and dedicated people leading the fight, joining me today, Sky Perryman of Democracy Forward, and my old friend and colleague Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Fund. So the two of you together have probably sued Donald Trump more times than anyone else in America over the last year, I think. How did you get into this particular line of work?

Sky, start with you. Suing autocrats? Yeah, yeah. Professions that did not exist some time ago. Well, it's great to be here, and I'll just say at Democracy Forward, we've always known that suing your government or suing an autocratic actor can help change behavior, and it still does.

But when we started looking in 2023, actually, at early reports of Project 2025, we started seeing what far-right organizations were doing, and then that sort of developed more in 2024. We knew that if this administration came into office, contrary to what it said on the campaign trail, that there would be a very quick effort to dismantle so much of what means so much and serve so many people in America. and that the American people would have some tools. They could get in the streets, but the autocrat would probably start threatening them. You could vote, but there wouldn't be an election around the corner. But the ability to initiate litigation against your government when your rights are violated was a really powerful one,

not just to stop terrible things. Today, we've yet again stopped the administration from trying to stonewall the SNAP funding. We've won several court orders on that. Those have real-time implications for people, but it was more than that. It's also the ability of people to stand up publicly and say, I have rights that you cannot take away, and I'm going to force you publicly to defend what you were doing to me,

what you were doing to my community, and what you were doing to my neighbors, and so that's how we started building this strategy. Norm? Well, I got my start in tough legal battles representing favs, and Tommy Vitor in the White House. That prepared me for anything. We behaved, mostly. Mostly.

I'm bound by attorney-client privilege, not to disclose those stories. I got my start fighting Trump's authoritarianism in his first term. I have the dubious. distinction of being the first person to sue him first in both of his presidential terms the and and our sky and I are kind of siblings in the fight against authoritarianism she and I in our organizations co-hosted with a

conservative group the largest gathering in in 2024, late summer, 2024, to warn, because everything that has happened was right there out in the open. And we have over 200 cases and legal matters at this point, Favs, against Trump. It started when I applied to be a member of the Doge. I strongly favor government efficiency and effectiveness. And Katie Miller, Stephen Miller's wife, the spokeswoman for the doge, told the New York Times, we don't want Norm, he's a Democrat.

Boom. Lawsuit number one. Maybe if she had a lawyer like Favs used to have, she wouldn't have said that to the New York Times. And then often working in partnership and in coalition, Sky and I, together with the ACLU, are probably the most frequent litigants. But there's a wonderful big coalition, also including Protect Democracy, Public Citizen. We have met him at every turn. Our cases have included stopping his birthright citizenship. executive order. No, Donald Trump, you don't get to choose which baby's born here. Our citizens, we stopped his effort to take over elections. We won the Lisa Cook case at SCOTUS.

Working with Sky, we've saved tens of thousands of jobs in litigation, preserved labor unions. Oh, we got every AmeriCorps kid rehired. was our case. We don't only play defense. We go on offense. We disqualified Alina Haba. That's been a template for cases all over the country. And we were in court today. We were deployed across all of the places where there were elections to stop those

monitors, to stop attempted election subversion, and won a case in New Jersey to protect ballots. So that's been our story. It's a good story. So here's how the Atlantic has described the works that both of you do. This backbone of the Trump resistance has as much in common with political organizing and investigative reporting as it does with legal theory. Sky, do you agree with that? And how do you think about the work that you do? I do agree with that. And one of the things we want to make sure people understand. We're in court a lot and we win a lot, but we don't believe that it's the courts that are going to save the country or that's the courts that are going to get us to a new chapter. We believe it is the people. And the power of people to use the courts and to

initiate litigation is a huge power, as I said. But what we've seen in a fractured media environment and with the underinvestment in investigative reporting, right, with the fact that we don't have as many journalists anymore that have the freedom and the economic ability to engage in deep investigative journalism is that the cases that we are building and the stories that we are telling in our cases are actually now feeding to some degree the narratives that you see in the public square. So it used to be that you would go read the news. The lawyers would read the news and they would go to court with what they saw in the news. A journalist recently said to me, I feel like we're reading your court papers and we're reporting on them. So in the case that Norm mentioned where we have

sought to save as many civil servants jobs as we can, our nonpartisan civil service, and we've blocked a bunch of them from being fired in this shutdown, there were thousands of individual pages of stories in many of those cases about the harms that people would, you know, about the harms that people would experience. In the case that we at Democracy Ford are litigating with the ACLU where we have challenged the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, right? A case that many people didn't want us to bring because they thought we were walking into the president's trap, that immigration was some big, you know, powerful issue for him, but that we brought anyway the stories of Mr. Garcia and people who have been removed from this country without process, who when you

learn their stories and their backgrounds, those stories have changed the way that Americans not just here at CrookedCon view things, right? They've changed the way that Americans, even folks like Joe Rogan and others, are seeing the world because of those stories. So I agree with that, and I think that there's a lot of this mobilizing narrative building that's happening through the courts,

then, of course, others are amplifying, which is really great. Yeah. Norne? Similar impression. We brought the very first case, again, going on offense under the Federal Tort Claims Act suing for the illegal deportation of Venezuelan to Seacot.

And the story of Adrian Nehrya Rangel, he's a barber. He's not a member of Trent Dioragua. He did a tattoo to honor his daughter, and the tattoo was made. interpreted the next thing you knew was he was in Seacot. Those kinds of stories are very powerful drivers to shift the public narrative. I will also say Donald Trump's plan, and it was clear when we did our conference in August 24, was to flood the zone. So Sky and I and our colleagues in this, it does take a village in this big coalition. We have Matt flood the zone with rule of law, shock and awe. And that narrative, Donald Trump, if you, we're going to bring a bazooka to this

knife fight. And that narrative that Sky and I and our colleagues and our wonderful organizations and everyone we work with and the clients and co-counsel, that narrative has also sent a message to the press you don't have to be afraid of the big bad wolf yeah and that has been a story that really i think um uh has been an important one over the course of the year yeah sky to the point you made about um the suit against the alien enemies act um i know that both of you guys in your organizations like right after like on inauguration day or right around then immediately started suing Donald Trump. And there were some Democrats, democratic strategists, officials, politicians who were probably a little nervous about that, I presume, because they thought, well,

Donald Trump wins this victory, and maybe we should look for ways to work with him instead of just fight everything he does. They had a Doge caucus. There were Democrats in the Doge Caucus. And you disagreed with that. What was it like, did you second guess the decision at all? Did you, what was the strategy like in thinking we're going to go at it? We're going to do the legal shock and off. Yeah, I mean, I think the decision was really about the American people, which is that the American people are not supportive of this extreme agenda, which we could already see on the campaign trail was going to happen, but you certainly saw it in the transition period, right? This was an administration that on the campaign trail acted like they didn't know who Russ

vote was, right? They'd never heard of anybody that rhymed with Project 2025, because Project 2025 was deeply unpopular, not just with progressives and liberals and moderates, but also with conservatives, right? And so this was an administration that got into office without leveling with the American people about what they were going to do. We could see in the transition that they were laying the groundwork to start day one with this shock and awe campaign. And the real thing for us was, how are we going to show people that you actually still get to be in charge in your country. The people get to be in charge. And what we know about this administration, and I think some were a little confused at the beginning, but people

are coming along. It's good. We love it. But we know about this administration is they know what to do with weakness. They know what to do with it. Split people off, pick people off, engage in a settlement, try to, they do not always know what to do with strength. They know what to do with weakness. They don't know what to do with strength. And so if you could find a way to show up with the strength of the American people, it's not just the lawyers that are suing, okay? In the first days of the administration

when we went into court to stop the federal funding freeze, you want to talk about SNAP being a crisis? Think about if there was no federal funding at all in any community, meals on wheels, heads start, the whole thing. We showed up with the American Public Health Association, with the National Council of Nonprofits, right? We just showed up on SNAP with the council of churches, with people and communities across this country that may have different interests or be committed to different things, but that

all are committed to a country and a government that needs to serve all of us. And so I think that was in those early days. You just have to have faith. We had faith in the people. The people did not vote for Project 2025. They may have voted for some immigration reform. Everybody wants comprehensive immigration reform. They didn't vote for disappearances in mask, people walking the streets.

And so that confidence in the people, I think, is what drove us in those early days. You both have so many cases, so many lawsuits. How do you decide which cases to publicize in a sort of a big, organized, coordinated fashion? Well, the... theory of change informs that how are we going to actually restore democracy, stop this backsliding, then go forward again. In political science literature, it's a called a democratic U-turn. It happens more often than you might think over, 70% of the time in the past, the post-Cold War era, when you've had an experience like we're having, the democracy is able to recover and make a U-turn.

So I attempt to, I think of it in our org, we think of it as court of law and court of public opinion. And we have very smart people we talk to who tell us this might really work. So, for example, and Sky's done the same thing, we have been very focused on the Trump Epstein files because they go to, there's kind of a triad. I was talking with Ben Rhodes backstage about this, of affordability, health care, and corruption. And other than tearing down the east wing, unpermitted,

There's no better example of the corruption than these Trump Epstein files. We know they exist. We know they're being hidden. So we hired some of the team. We worked with the victims. We actually hired some of the lawyers who got the big settlements for the victims on behalf of Epstein. We started a FOIA campaign filed the very first FOIAs. Both we and Sky are litigating Epstein issues.

And we're not letting up on that. I just had a conversation. I just had a conversation with the lawyers for the victims. And let me tell you, they are mad as hell. And we're not letting up because that, so that's an example of the kind of issue. You're looking for the issues that break through and communicate the corruption to the American people.

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Get $5 off your next order at magic spoon.com slash cricket or look for MagicSpoon. on Amazon or in your nearest grocery store. That's magic spoon.com slash cricket for $5 off. Norm mentioned the East Wing. I heard that you guys are filing or have filed a suit on that. Yeah, we've opened an investigation, which will probably result in a lawsuit. We're working on some other legal remedies there.

And I think we see the demolition. We're on it. We're on it. And, you know, we were doing that at the same time. We were having to build the case to win Snap. And you might think, I mean, there's Snap and then there's the demolition of the East Wing and what do the two things have in common. And we really view what the President has done to the East Wing. And I think most Americans were seeing or viewing it this way as a metaphor to what he is seeking to do to our country and to the people of the United States. And so we think it's a really important. it's it's it's it's it's it's really important from a legal perspective i mean you have someone that truly does think he is a king i mean he says this without irony leveling off public buildings but it's also really important from a symbolic perspective that we are not going to allow this president to level the american people to level our constitution to level our democracy without requiring a public accounting and that's what we're doing

One thing I don't know if enough people appreciate is just how fast you guys have to move and how much work goes into this. I mean, like, I think we see Trump do something awful, seems unconstitutional, it seems like he's breaking the law, and then I think we're all just used to then waking up the next day and be like, oh, there was a lawsuit filed and he's going to court. And you guys have lawyers that are just, you know, they see the executive order, they see the action, and then they're just up all night, right? How does it work? I mean, sure. I mean, we've got lawyers up all night right now because we're waiting. We've already have five states have gotten their full snap payments, and there's going to be more tonight.

And so it is a around-the-clock thing. So I think there's a few things. One is this is a known playbook. You know, the thing about Project 2025 is they, like, laid it all out. So there was a lot of this preparation work that Norm and I and ACLU and many of our colleagues actually in our democracy 2025 coalition, there are over 650 organizations that are actively doing what they can do to contribute to what has been, and I'm just going to say this and we'll get an applause for it, what has been the largest and most successful affirmative litigation effort against an executive branch in United States history. I mean, that we have accomplished.

at this point, if you compare, and we are largely doing it without elite law firms doing their share of the pro bono work, right? Because, so this has been a real collaborative effort. But what it looks like is what you think it looks like. One, there's a playbook. And so those things we can prep for, we can plan for, we can work with each other, we can share information and make sure we know which communities are going to be affected. How can they get into court? Do they know that they can get into court and line that up. And then you have the Trump factor, which is sort of whatever just happens on a given day, and that does require a lot of caffeine and a lot of amazing lawyers on our teams, amazing lawyers who truly do work through the night to get into court

the next morning to ensure that the American people have their voices heard. And then the other thing we have, which we are really starting to focus on, and we want all of you to focus on, is what we call the kind of non-shiny object stuff. So not everything that this administration does is happening on truth social or at a big signing ceremony in the Oval Office or bulldozers at the White House. There are a number of things that are happening

throughout the federal branches of our government and agencies, throughout the government and communities that the administration actually doesn't want to answer about and they don't want to even say that they're doing. And so we do a lot of work to detect what those things are and then to make sure that we can also get into court not just to challenge what's happening,

but also to expose what's happening, which links back to your question about investigative journalism and making sure that people know what their government is up to. Norm, did you want to? The secret is not to sleep. Sleep and you're dead, right?

It has been very good. The litigation economy has been very good for Diet Coke and Red Bull. Some of the cases, we drafted our birthright complaint, which was the first of the complaints filed on day one. And then when the Supreme Court ruled, oh, you've got to have a class action. We had a class action on file two hours later. And now we're back at the Supreme Court. we drafted that complaint over the summer of 2024.

So some of it is having cards up your sleeve. Some of it is having this incredible, as Sky says, it has been an extraordinary coalition. And I should also shout out. They operate in parallel to the democracy groups, the democracy litigating groups. The AGs have been absolutely superb litigating partners. Often, we did a Doge case, they did a Doge case against Musk.

We did an AmeriCorps case, they did an AmeriCorps case. Sky did the SNAP case. The AGs did the SNAP case. Occasionally, we work together. We're in a case together. So the AGs have been wonderful partners. And I think it is part of the reason that you have multiple groups that are ready at all times. You know, no one org could.

have met, flood the zone with rule of law, shock and awe. But having a large coalition and clients and the labor movement ready to do that has made the difference. You guys have had a lot of wins. You're also facing a very conservative Supreme Court majority, much of it appointed by Trump himself. Frequently, when they offer a limited or temporary ruling in favor of Trump comes via the shadow docket with no opinion. I think this leads some people, you know, who casually pay attention to politics to think, well, since we don't have the court, like, what's the use here? Do we, are the courts really holding up because maybe we win in some of the lower courts,

but then when it gets to the Supreme Court, we lose? How much of an impediment to your strategy is the Supreme Court, or have you found the Supreme Court? you want to start yeah i i think that um that the birthright case is a good example the supreme court is tilting the playing field they haven't is not a sheer playing field you don't have to do rock climbing you got to pump your legs harder it's terrible what they've done with the shadow docket but you can win there the lisa cook case proves that you can be successful at the supreme court i think we've learned how to bring cases to the Supreme Court.

So in that birthright case, you know, there was the safety valve, multiple safety valves, including class actions. And in one of the big, this story will illustrate, I think, how you deal with the Supreme Court in this day and age. In the tariffs case, we represent a large group of conservatives. and Favs, you and I were Obama people from early on, much earlier since we were in law school together when Favs was still enjoying his elementary education.

We, in the tariffs case, represent a coalition of two dozen conservatives. many people who I had fought my entire professional career. Bill Crystal, I debated the Iraq War. He's now on my board. Joe Walsh, who founded the Freedom Caucus. He's the treasurer. So we put together this coalition, and they wanted to,

we filed a brief with the Supreme Court. They wanted to convey the men. to the court, this is not a liberal issue. This really is a conservative issue, and it is. So you have to do things like that, and I think it's working. Yeah. Yeah, the thing I'll just say is a few things. One is we just need to remember our history that, but for some decades in the last century and a smattering of winds in this century, the United States Supreme Court has not been an institution that has easily promoted our democracy and the equality of all people. And I say that with a love for the court and judges and a legal process and it's the person

that leads an organization that's in court all the time. But I do think that we need to remember that all of the fights in this country, the fight for abolition, the fight for women's rights, the fight for civil rights, the fight for LGBTQ rights, these wins were not handed down. by the Supreme Court, they were hard-fought wins that went up and down the court system many times before you achieved the ultimate thing that you sought to achieve at the court. And we're trying to make sure that people understand that. And that legal work was incredibly important in shaping the law and building movements and ultimately in prevailing. But in this moment, we want folks to know a few

things, everything that Norm just said, but then also, there have been about 500 cases in the last 260 or so days against this administration because of the extreme activity. The vast majority of those cases will never go to the Supreme Court, whether on the shadow docket or whether on the merits docket. And so part of the work here is to make sure that when this administration oversteps and it harms people in communities, people in communities can access a lawyer, and we do all of our work pro bono, as do many of the organizations that we work with, that they can access a lawyer and that they can get into court. The second thing is that this administration has actually been backing off many times when we go into court. Before even a case goes up on appeal,

the administration either declines to appeal it or walks away because they don't want the public pressure. That is how there is now $7 billion in the public school system this year that the president impounded. Because we and the AGs went to court, and they did not, they backed off. So there's a piece of that. And then there are the cases that will reach the court. And I think what Norm said is correct. It's bringing forward the salient voices that we know will mean something to the court. It's working to, um, to construct our cases in the best way. And then what I say to people like you guys is that the Supreme court tomorrow upholds our rights. The next day you got to be out marching because this president and this

administration is still going to find a way to violate your rights. And if the Supreme Court tomorrow does something terrible and doesn't uphold your rights, you better be out in the street marching because this administration will take that decision and try to do something worse. So the net of it is we all have got to be engaged. We've got to be supporting each other, building community out marching, doing things like this. That's what we've got to do, kind of regardless of what the court does in this moment. And that's what we are really trying to hope that people focus on. On that note, yeah.

I'll be marching with a sign that says term limits for Supreme Court justices. That's my sign. Last question. People are used to being asked to march, to organize, to vote, to donate, to run for office. Is there anything people can do to help with the legal battles that you guys are fighting? I know you're always looking for plaintiffs. What can people do? Well, I know Sky appreciates contributions to democracy forward,

so I mustn't be shy about asking them for the Democracy Defenders Fund. I will say we also have an outlet. It's no crooked. It's no Pod Save America. But we do have the contrarian. all profits from the contrarian go to fund the litigation also and the most important thing you can do I'll end where and then let Sky have the last word but I'll end where she began we won't be saved without the litigation but the litigation alone will not save us and the ultimate salvation of

American democracy. And I'm hopeful. My teacher, President Havel, when I was a diplomat in Prague, the great dissident, Votslav Havel, told me, you Americans, you're too optimistic. Don't be optimistic, but be hopeful. And I am very hopeful because of the people power that we saw just on Tuesday, growing and growing day after day, that the litigation is helping, but that ultimately the American people, every one of you, all your friends and family, get them out there in the streets, peaceful protest, and vote, vote, vote.

Yep. And I'll just say the thing that I say often, I mean, you can go to our organizations and support them. We love that, sign up, and get updates. But the number one thing, that an autocrat uses is not redistricting. It's not a PAC Supreme Court. It's not any of those things. It's people giving, it's people believing that they have no power. And so what we've been doing at Democracy Forward in addition to the litigation is really focusing on building community

because when we're in community with each other, when we defy isolation, when we come to places like this and say, I'm going to get together with some folks and defy isolation, even if I want to go be alone, we can overcome. And at Democracy Forward, we've got some programs called dinners for democracies and coffees for change and ways that you can engage in your own community with those that may not be ready to get out in the streets. And then we obviously want everyone out marching and demonstrating and protesting as well. Norm and Sky, I just want to say you two and all the lawyers and everyone on your staffs that have been working so hard. You guys are heroes of this movement, unsung heroes.

And I'm really glad we got to talk today. Thank you for singing. Well, because I'm... Won't you sing to us, perhaps? I'm always singing for you guys. But we are, on behalf of everyone, we are just so, so grateful for all the hard work you're doing and for what you're doing to help save this democracy.

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Zbiotics is back with 100% money-back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to Zbiotics.com slash cricket and use the code cricket at checkout for 15% off. All right, live from Crooked Khan, I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm thrilled to be joined by some of the smartest, winningest strategists in the Democratic Party who were just coming off huge election victories in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia. Alex Ball was Mikey Sherrill's campaign manager. She's also worked on the Hill, the D-T-T-Therpil C, Emily's List, tons of campaigns.

Morris Katz was a top strategist, an ad maker for Zoran Mamdani. He's also worked for Dan Osborne Senate race in Nebraska. a bunch of other stuff. And Samson Signore was Abigail Spanberger's campaign manager. He has also led statewide coordinated campaigns and done a bunch of hotly contested elections. So we're going to talk about how they won, what works, what the future of the Democratic Party looks like based on these elections, and we're going to have some fun. So first question to everybody, what's like the 60-second version of why you won? Start with Alex.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Thank God we all won. This would be really bleak. but I'm excited to be here. Yeah, I mean, I think this isn't going to shock anyone in this room, but affordability. I think having a disciplined message and also having the right messenger is really how we got it done. I mean, we were just relentlessly focused on talking about driving down costs for New Jerseyans, how what was coming out of Washington was going to make matters even worse,

and why Mikey was the effective, trustworthy, and competent leader to be the one to deliver going forward. Morris? I think it's two Pod Save America appearances over the course of the campaign is the key to. No, I think, you know, similarly a laser focus on an affordability crisis and also a real willingness to name the villains who are responsible for creating this moment of gross income inequality. And then I think just on top of that kind of a refusal to allow ourselves to be confined by what politics has been and a relentless pursuit of investing in what politics can't.

be bringing young people out, immigrant communities, communicating in ways other people have disregarded, and all having that around this laser focus that government can do more, government can do better, and government can address this affordability crisis. Absolutely, and thanks for having me, Tommy. Abbegill Spamberger won because she was laser focused on costs, while Republicans in the Commonwealth of Virginia were focused on divisive culture wars. And I think that Virginians and Americans broadly are tired of chaos and division, and they want a return to normalcy, a return to the basics, and they want to focus a little bit

less on politics. And in Abigail, they had a steady, pragmatic, focused leader who was laser-focused on what matters most, lowering costs, boosting the economy, and keeping communities safe. And that's one of the reasons, and I have to do a quick brag here, that we had a 15-point margin on Tuesday. the largest margin in Virginia since JFK was the president. And we won the LG, AG, and we flipped 13 statehouse seats delivering the biggest statehouse majority since the 80s. And I think as of right now, we have the highest winningest margin of the three.

I'll be talking about the future of the party later. We're going to talk more shit. Don't worry. That's just the beginning. So Donald Trump has blotted out the political. son for like the last decade. How did you guys think about the way to divide your messaging between like reacting to whatever he did that day versus what you wanted to talk about, which was obviously affordability? Jump ball here for anybody. Yeah, I'll take the first one. We were less focused on Trump and more focused on the consequences of Trump. And what we, because again, we were laser focused on lowering costs across the board. And the times that we spoke out against

Trump is when he made, when he roiled Virginia's economy. So you saw Doge federal workforce cuts that just gutted jobs across Virginia. You also saw the gutting of health care that spiked premiums for folks across Virginia and just a couple of weeks ago shuttered three rural health clinic. So from our perspective, it wasn't about Trump's personality. It wasn't about, you know, the destruction of the East Wing. It wasn't about the latest truth social thread for us. It was stay and laser focused on the consequences of Donald Trump to Virginia's economy? I think we took this approach of the idea that we weren't going to treat Donald Trump like the end-all be-all of the problems that New Yorkers were facing, and that viewing his power,

his election as a result of a fundamentally broken political system. And one of the first things Ron did after the election was he went out to one of the areas that flipped most dramatically towards Trump in the entire country and interviewed people on the street who had voted for Donald Trump and talked to them about his platform, his affordability agenda, and by the end of it, persuaded many of them to support him. And we ran this campaign kind of going right at the center of what Donald Trump claims to have his kind of political brand be. He ran an entire campaign centered on lowering costs and did nothing to lower those costs. And I think you can kind of have your cake and eat it too by going at him in that angle. Alex, you guys, like there's a bunch

of data that Nate Cohn at the New York Times wrote up that showed that you guys persuaded a bunch of Trump voters to vote for Mikey. How did, like, what did you see in your data? How did you target them? Like, how did you think about trying to get those crossover votes? Yeah, I mean, so historically, Mikey's always won over about 25% of Republicans, 60% of unaffiliated voters. So we knew she had that crossover appeal. I think for us, we were incredibly proactive on issues around the economy. So we saw energy rates spike this summer, and we were hot out the gate with a state of emergency where we said we were going to freeze utility costs. We got there probably three or four weeks before Jack Chitorelli did, which was just a huge misstep on

his part in my mind. And we also, we went on offense on taxes. So we had our outside expenditures signaled to them to go after him for raising property taxes at every level of government. So by the time we got to the end of the summer, we saw Fox polls showing that we were leading on traits of lowering taxes, lowering costs, who you trusted most to tackle the problems of the economy and utility costs, which are just historically traits that Democrats are not going to win on. And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that Mikey's service background, people saw her as someone who was coming at problems from a place of service and wanting to deliver for people and not as a place of partisanship. I think that was also kind of proven by the fact that she stood up to leaders in her own party time and again. And I think some of these Trump voters were just looking for something new and not a 30-year career politician like Jack Chitarelli. Also, I mean, you guys ran change elections, right? I mean, not necessarily this different party with Eric Adams, but it was a change message, the look, the feel, everything about the election. You had a tougher job, in my view, which is running for a third term, the Democrat, you know, after two terms of Phil Murphy.

was that a headwind? How did you deal with it? Yeah, I think it was. I mean, New Jersey, while our federal delegation is pretty blue, we like to swap back and forth on parties when it comes to the governor, and it hadn't been since 1961 that we elected a third term of the same party, so that was certainly a headwind. And also, you know, we had to walk a fine line. We couldn't just go out and rail on Phil Murphy, because why would you want to elect another Democrat? And, you know, know, he had done some good things for the state in terms of funding the pension and our credit ratings. So we focused on the, on the pieces where, you know, it just came back to costs and affordability. And, you know, I think our opponent tried to talk about a change election. But again,

30-year career politician, I just didn't land. Morris, you guys had some, like, unique ad strategies, ad buys, seemed to be very digitally focused. Do traditional TV ads work? and what did you do different? You're asking a TV consultant, Tommy. I know, but you guys, like, I think when people think of Zoron's campaign, it's like, there's the dude who walked to Manhattan, right? Yeah, I think that it's in all of the above. And I think so often we still have this approach of political consultants

pretending that the only kind of thing that matters in a campaign is how many points are we going to have on broadcast TV over the final six weeks of a race. And I think that era is over. I think New York might have gotten there, a little bit sooner than other places. Like, there's more of a social media presence in New York than there is in other places. It's more expensive to buy ads,

but I think we're all headed in this direction. It's never been harder to communicate consistently with a large group of people than it is right now. And, you know, people like to ask, is it the social media? Was it the TV? Was it the field? It's like, it's fucking all of it. Like, you can't leave one part of it out.

And for the ad campaign, we also did, you know, we thought a lot about the kind of emotional experience that people were going to be having. And so, you know, we first went up TV during the Knicks playoff run with the idea and vision that, you know, at a moment of hope for the city, if you could believe that the New York Knicks could, fucking Boston fans. But, you know, the idea that if you could believe the Knicks could win a championship, maybe you could believe that a 34-year-old Muslim socialist could be mayor.

So sorry. But that was the general kind of vision. Samson, you guys had like how many million dollars of attack ads run against you focused on? on an anti-trans message. Why do you think- About $40 million. $40 million. A lot of people think that the messages,

that the anti-trans ads run against Kamala Harris were effective. Why do you think that they were clearly not effective against you guys? Yeah, so I think that, I think a couple things. One, I think Republicans in Virginia were trying to run a tired playbook. I think they got way ahead of their skis on culture issues.

They ran in a campaign entirely devoid of anything focused on the economy, lowering costs, or coming up with any types of solutions to make life better for Virginians. So I do think, first and foremost, they got way ahead of their skis and those ads fell flat. And I think that from our perspective, we knew that these were likely attacks that were going to come. We had different ads cut and ready to go to be placed as soon as we knew that that attack ad was going to be put down. But I think first and foremost, we spent a lot of time at the beginning of the campaign credentialing Abigail, former federal law enforcement officer, former CIA case officer, mother to three girls. This is not somebody who wants to hurt

children. This is someone who literally, whose job it was was to protect children. And we also credentialed her as someone who was laser focused on the economy from the very get-go. So I think when when you had the Republicans try to put these ads together. I think what the Republicans were relatively effective at in 2024 was convincing voters that these were issues that Democrats really cared about and that they were out there proactively campaigning on, which just wasn't the case, from our perspective, by laying down a really solid foundation of us being laser focused on the economy, on strengthening jobs, on lowering costs and on keeping communities safe, those ads that they ran fell relatively on

flat ears because it just wasn't believable by the time that they put down this deluge. Another thing, just from a media strategy standpoint, you know, Morris touched on this. A lot of times people are looking at how many points are you running on broadcast TV at the very end. We took it and we stretched it. We started our paid media strategy much earlier than most campaigns do, certainly the earliest that has ever been done in Virginia before. And part of the reason for that was to lay down that strong foundation of Abigail as someone who's a federal law enforcement officer, former CA case officer, who's laser focused on lowering costs and on making your life a little bit better, so that when Republicans did come at us with those culture war issues, there's already a lot of inoculation that was done there.

So, I mean, what tactics did you guys try that were new that you think worked, and what sort of campaign tactics of the past need to go? in your view. I'll give you one. Please. It's a little spicy. Spice it up. Questionnaires need to be jettisoned from the party. Can you tell folks here what these questionnaires are? You can clap at all. So, and I do want to, I do want to confirm. There's a lot of awesome national and partner groups who do have a place in our party. And I think that questionnaires largely come from a position of good faith and trust. And questionnaires, oftentimes, very simple, easy ones.

that just want to, they get sent to candidates for candidates to fill out that talks about different positions to take. And on its face, that's fine. But the problem is when we have these highly, highly intensive questionnaires that go to candidates, that, especially when you're looking at state house candidates, ones that don't really know much better, and what they see is a potential endorsement, potential door knockers, potential campaign contributions. And they say, all I have to do is go down and just check yes in all of these boxes. Sure. Sounds great. Easy. But then what happens, and we saw this in 2024 with probably the most notorious campaign ad that existed, that they, them ad, that you get backed into a corner and you set your candidates

up for, not for success. So what I would say is if you were someone who works at a national organization, leads a national organization, I would look very hard at doing away with questionnaires and look more into, you know, coming at it from a position of, you know, candidate interviews. That was something that we did on our end. We filled out the questionnaires that we wanted to. We filled them out the way that we wanted to. But we also worked very closely with the State House caucus to make sure that candidates were not getting backed into a corner unnecessarily. So that's one tactical change that I would say. I think it's a pretty easy one too. Any tactical things you guys want to talk yeah i mean i don't like talking about this with morris right here but uh influencers are a thing

and uh we just got them in new jersey uh so it was really this untapped market that campaigns in new jersey just haven't used i mean new jersey's pretty old school and i think we did some really innovative things for the state um in terms of building up an actual political influencer class um there's about like 35 of them that have kind of formed their own ecosystem in the state. We do events with them. We give them special access. And really, unfortunately, the media in New Jersey is very much dying. And we really struggled with legacy media, taking our momentum seriously. I can't tell you how many headlines there were that Mikey Sherrill has a momentum problem. She has this problem. She

has that problem. Why was the polling so off in New Jersey? And are there any specific people you want to dunk on that tweeted about your demise over the summer now it'll take too long um uh you know there was definitely some polling that was right like uh our independent expenditure had is at 12 points in the last couple weeks um we are inching towards 14 points the RCP was like um or inching towards 16 yeah all right um but no there was a ton that were incredibly off um and it was clear in the methodology that they were off we had one poll that had us plus one but it had chitorelli winning blackboater's 64 We won black voters 95.5. We outperformed Harris in Essex County that has a large black

population by eight points. We won back Latino voters in Passaic County to win that county by 15 points that Trump won by three, and yet we had a problem with Latino voters. So it was ridiculous. But if you looked at the data, you saw that Mikey was winning on affordability. She was winning on utility prices. She was winning on taxes. And Jack was underwater every single time, and yet it was neck and neck, and it was anyone's race. So I don't know, but I mean, there's just so many, like, random people in, like, their parents' basement running polls these days and putting them on the internet. I'll say Atlas Intel, missed it big time. To Alme, fuck Atlas Intel. That's the headline coming out of this thing. Fuck Atlas

Intel. I think we had this exact conversation on the bud. Morris, you are infuriatingly young for being as successful as you are, as is Zoron, who was 34 years old, right? Your opponents tried to make age of weakness. How did you think about like making it a strength? Like obviously there's internet fluency, but like, how did you guys deal with people who are like, can a 33, 34 year old really run the city? Coming from you guys. Dude, I'm washed. I'm 45. No, I think we, it fit into the message framework. And I think Oftentimes, like, you try to run every campaign with the same universal message framework, and it's kind of the boilerplate, like, consultant approach.

And we were running a change campaign, and Zoran looked like change, and he felt like change. And I also think he fit into this moment uniquely for a city in which there's so many young people who love this city who can't imagine a future in it because they can't afford to raise a family here. They can't afford to buy a home here. And having someone who kind of was of the age group that is dealing with, frankly, existential crisis in the city fit, fit nicely. And we were never, you know, I think Zoran mentioned in his speech, they were like, you know, I'm young, I'm Muslim, I'm a Democratic socialist, and worst of all, I refuse to apologize for any of those things. And that was kind of the

ethos of the campaign. you know, Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill, like they are the types of kind of backgrounds in bios that the Democratic Party loves. You know, like 2006, Rama Manuel would have recruited the shit out of both of them to run. Right?

National security, military members, CIA. Zoran was not the plug-in-play. Are you saying Rama Manuel wouldn't have recruited Zoran Maldane? Zoran was not like your plug-and-play candidate, right? And he's like, interesting. Background, his parents are acting. academics. He's a younger guy. How did you think about, like, that bio? Was it liberating

to not have to kind of play a part? I think this applies to Zorn, but also I think this applies nationally right now with, like, you know, some of the kind of Senate stuff happening with Grand Platner, with Iowa, with other places. I was like, there are no people, I think, right now, who have a worse read on what electable means and like less of a pulse on voters than the Democratic establishment in D.C. And the Mamdani coalition is not just, I think, what it's easy to be kind of viewed as on social media and other places. You know, over 10% of Trump voters voted for Zahran Mundani. Zoran flipped multiple neighborhoods that went for Donald Trump in a general election with more votes than Donald Trump got in those very places.

He reshaped the electorate. He won back immigrant communities that had left the party just a year ago. And that wasn't, I think, you know, it sells votes. or short to pretend that they're not going to be able to see past someone names on Mamdani, and it's a lesson that we seem like we're just not able to learn. Yeah, I noticed that myself. So Democrats, we constantly fight about whether the way you win is turnout versus persuasion. I would argue it is a false choice, but certainly in a campaign, you have a finite number of

resources and you have to allocate them in the way you think is most likely to help you win. How did you guys think about that kind of allocation and whether you need to just turn out the base or convince all these, you know, crossover voters that you got? Jump ball here. I'll say something that sounds really obvious, but I think it's a little less obvious to folks. Driving turnout gets you one vote. Persuading a voter gets you two because you have taken it from the other side and put it into yours. I would say that from our perspective, our victory was a comprehensive. of persuasion and turnout, but Morris touched on something that I think is important. And I think that our victories across the board were not just landslide victories, but

coalition redefining victories. Across the board, we had, we had Abigail Spamberger flipped counties that went for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024. If you look at, we are looking at the over the overperformance compared to 2024. And broadly, we overperformed almost every county across Virginia when you compare it to 2024. But most interestingly, the precincts that we overperformed 2024 the most by are also the ones with the highest percentage of Latino voters. In addition to that, Abigail brought back in a huge swath of non-college white voters to the table. And that was by visiting rural Virginia, right? We were just in, she was just in Lee County last week, which fun fact for for folks that are less familiar with Virginia

geography is so far into the southwest of the Commonwealth that is actually to the west of Detroit. She was just out there last week in a diner. And I know that that sounds basic, but a lot of it was just us showing up and us showing up with a message of lowering costs. And that led to what, in my opinion, was a shattering of the Trump coalition that he has put together. You know, people have reported that he made inroads with, you know, communities of color, with black and brown voters with non-college white voters obviously and what we went out there and did and I think what we all went out there and did was shatter apart that coalition and take a bunch of people back into our frame because they're tired of the chaos the division the culture wars and they saw a

democratic party that was actually united under one message which was lower your damn costs yeah I was like I think obviously I agree that it's kind of a false choice and we were dealing with in the New York the you're capped on what you can spend because of public matching funds and so we were just getting like it's eight million dollars which is nice but in the new york media market goes very quickly yeah and we had about like 45 million dollars spent against us so a little uh under under match or overmatched um but i think that it speaks to a broader issue kind of in the party of if you have the right message you're not having to choose between turning people out and persuading people it's the same thing that excites all of those people did anyone care that chuck schumer didn't endorse who

Fair answer. Alex, you guys also, I mean, speaking of breaking the Trump coalition, you guys had considerable success winning back Latino voters, the Democratic Party had lost. Was that something that was part of a wave? Was that part of deliberate targeting and choice? Like, how did you approach it? Yeah, there's a lot of signs coming out of 24 that we were going to have a lot of ground to make back, particularly with Latino voters. I think, like, all of the national press was watching Passaic County in particular because there's a large Latino population there. So we did invest heavily on the ground, hiring people from the community

to go and talk to their neighbors. But we also spent a lot of money on Spanish broadcast, cable, digital, mail, all of it. And I think New Jersey is a really bilingual state. So you could try to get away with just doing general population messaging, but it's not enough. And I think our opponents in both the primary and the general made a mistake by not making that investment. And I think also we try to overprescribe what we think, you know, some of these constituency groups want to hear from Democrats, but we didn't change our message. We talked about affordability, and we knew that that was the message that was going to resonate because that's what we were hearing from people on the ground as Mikey went in and talked to these voters, sometimes in some broken Spanish. But, you know,

connecting with them with where they were, and I think it went a long way. So when I think back to the OA campaign, I like remember the good days you don't really remember, but I remember like where I was when I first saw the Reverend Wright video, which imploded our race for like four months. It was like my JFK being shot moment. You guys have, sort of, do you guys have like a worst moment, a biggest mistake you made on the campaign that you're now emotionally able to talk about in hindsight? I'll say one thing, it's less a mistake and one thing that really scares me about the future

that we saw on our end. And that is these fake AI videos. Yeah. We saw a lot of them, and I won't name names. But there was one that the Republicans put out, and it was just a ridiculous AI video. I won't get into the details. But we had a couple top national level Democratic consultants and operatives call me and say, what the hell kind of video are you guys putting out there? This is ridiculous, because it was meant to look like it was from our campaign. And the other thing is it was put on X. And people know that at GROC is the AI bot that you can tag and ask. questions about tweets and people are asking grok is this really a uh a campaign ad and who's coming back saying yes this is in fact an ad uh that the spamburger campaign put out and and put out there and that was something that scared the shit out of me because it's something we as the campaign had absolutely no control over so we had a digital team that quickly reached out to twitter and say hey like or x and said hey please readjust grok this is totally false we did political calls on iron

to make sure that people knew that this is a ridiculous ad and we're smart people and we never put something like that out. But that is something, just looking into the future of campaigns that I think that, one, there's hopefully some kind of legislation to help, but also that we as campaign and campaign workers need to be prepared to help candidates and campaigns respond to. That's terrifying. That's also why we need a younger consulting class.

They're like, look at this ad. Oh, my God. I also don't name the ages of the people that reached out to me either. Yeah, I guess. mine which is like a half cheat but it is I think obviously it's all worked out well but I won't forget seeing so many in the democratic establishment the democratic donor class embrace Andrew Cuomo in the primary and seeing someone who everyone universally demanded resigned from office just two and a half three years prior who covered up the murder of seniors in nursing homes

who sexually harassed his staff and then intimidated and bullied the victims was then being funded by Donald Trump's biggest donors and seeing so many fall in line behind him because it was politically convenient. I think it's just a real, real indictment in a lot of ways, and I'm glad we won. I'm glad we're moving past it,

but I think that kind of that looms large. That's gross. Alex, any trauma? I, too, will talk about mistakes other people made. You guys don't know, like, I just care too much, you know? That was my mistake. The bed wedding that happens in our party has got to stop. Yeah.

Like, the Republican side, like, while their candidate was, like, continuing to underperform and, and, frankly, like, lose on things that he should have been winning on, they were so rock solid in their support of him on Twitter, on Fox News, in the New York Post. They were all aligned, and I get. who owns all of those media sources and it's like all the same people. And so we don't have that luxury. But I will just say, like, we, our enthusiasm could have taken off a bit more

if people in our own party stop being unnamed strategists who want to talk about all the issues we're having, whereas, like, I will give credit to the Republicans because they are all on the same page and we need to do the same thing or else we're going to just keep getting in our own way. Name names, Alex. Can't. They're unnamed Democrats. I know, I know, I know.

Cowards. For a while, it seemed like Zoran was running to be U.S. ambassador to Israel. It was like all you guys talked about. I noticed on like Election Day, maybe the day after, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, he went on Morning Joe and he said that he's going to hold Maldani accountable. And he launched something called the Mamdani Monitor. And then something, tip line to track anti-Semitic incidents in New York. Curious what your reaction to that is, like how Zoron wants to work with groups like the ADL

to like, you know, have conversations with people about the legitimate problem of anti-Semitism, but not play into this idea that Greenblatt is promoting that Zoran is going to lead to a spike of incidents. I mean, to be clear about Greenblatt for a second, this is someone who's lied repeatedly about Zorn throughout the race, that he didn't go to synagogues when he'd gone to multiple synagogues, that he wasn't meeting with rabbis, when he was meeting with rabbis, that has really flamed or fan the flames of division across the city. I think that there's a bit of a kind of social media issue around this issue specifically

where Zorn will be at a presser about free buses and he's going to get asked eight questions about Israel and then those are going to be clipped and kind of fed into an algorithm that's meant to feed division and then it's well Zorn why are you always talking about Israel and it's like well no I'm trying to talk about free buses and then it becomes this kind of echo chamber But I think he's been relentlessly clear throughout the race of the urgency to fight anti-Semitism

and with a deep kind of commitment to it, a list of policy proposals to do just that. And I think what you also saw is a lot of Jewish New Yorkers showing up across the city who reject the kind of Cuomo-backed notion that criticism of a genocide is the same as anti-Semitism. And I think that was far more dangerous. All right. I could have gone on for twice as long. but we've got five minutes left, so I'm going to do what I called

my brain-dead cable news lightning round. Who is the face of the Democratic Party? Mikey Cheryl. Mikey Cheryl? Tommy Vittor. Doug Schumer. Abigail Spanberger and all Democrats

who are committed to lower end costs. What's the winning strategy? DSA or CIA? You don't really have to answer these. All of your campaigns were successful, but which one was correct? This is just a bit. I think all three. All three easily.

But like this is the, this is the, like, you guys all want to. You rank them, you rank them on your favorites from one through three. Oh, this sucks. I love you all. I mean, like this is. the fight, right? Like, the Democratic Party, we saw it on Twitter. The Twitter warriors were out with their, you know, shields and swords election night being like, we got to go left, we got to go right. I mean, obviously, the middle ground is state by state, but I don't know. Do you have a

theory of the case? I mean, I think they're just applying labels to completely different electorates. Like, we all had landslide victories. Sure, we all talked about affordability, but we all did it in very different ways. So to say that we all have to fall the same blueprint. I mean, it just doesn't, it doesn't really make sense or match up at all. I think, like, we should be a big tent party. And I think, like, this is a great example of it's like, we should be a party that can Alexa Armandani in New York and Mikey Sherrill, New Jersey, and Abel Spanberger in Virginia. And I think too often we use the big tent as it's like, it is a big tent that can go as far to the right as you want it to go. But there's a very rigid edge on the

left. And I think it doesn't, it doesn't have to be like that. and I think too one thing that's really important because I agree I'm not I'm not big on the labels I know I've always thought of Abigail as a pragmatist she's been put into moderate or centrist buckets before but always thought of her as a steady pragmatist but I think one thing that's different this cycle that hasn't always been the case over the last 10 to 15 years is that regardless of the spectrum of the democratic party that you were from we are all united behind the inherent challenges facing americans and that is that life is too expensive and regardless of where on the political spectrum you're from um and the the big tent of our party

comes down to the kind of approach and ideas and the way that you message lowering costs and that can look like it's a lot different in bedford virginia versus versus bedstai but as long as you are united around the the need to lower costs i think that we can have as a big tent party can i also i agree And I would also add that we're all united in the fact that government has a role in lowering costs for people and delivering for people. And that's the difference with the other side, I think. The last question I wrote down was MJ versus LeBron, but I don't know that that's going to play in this room. Okay, that's it for our panel. I just want to say thank you to Morris, Alex, and Samson.

These guys are not only just coming off massive winning campaigns. They're also now doing the transition, which is doubly hard because you have to stap up entire. government so I'm really grateful to all of you first of all for kicking ass because this whole thing would have sucked um we hadn't won but also for being here and being really thoughtful and smart uh and successful so thank you all thank you thank you guys if you want to listen to pod save america ad free and get access to exclusive podcast go to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on supercast substack youtube or apple podcasts also please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket.

Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Ilic Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reid Churlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seiglin and Charlotte Landis.

Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Carol Pellevieve, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.