The Dispatch Podcast - Common Ground

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Two governors walk into the Reagan Library and find common ground. Steve Hayes is joined by Utah Governor Spencer Cox (R) and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D), to discuss bipartisanship, mutual respect, and the value of healthy conflict. The Agenda:—Defining tribes—Media outrage and news cycles—We should all join bowling teams—We can’t explain policy in 280 characters—Intra-party tensions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Maybe It's Mabelene is such an iconic piece of music. Hit the track. Everyone in the studio that I worked on this jingle with all had, like, childhood stories or memories. Yeah, we're around either watching these commercials on TV or sitting with our moms while they were doing their makeup. And it became really personal for us. I'm here with Fred Ryan, who's the chairman of the board of the Reagan Foundation and Institute. And we are here in Seamy Valley. I've just had a wonderful tour of the Reagan Museum, the Reagan Library, and we are about to participate in a panel discussion this evening with Governor Spencer Cox of Utah and Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham from New Mexico, a Republican, a Democrat, and we are going to talk about bipartisanship and civility and getting things done.

in a polarized political environment. Good evening, everyone, and welcome. Welcome to everyone who's here at the Reagan Library and those who are joining us across the country on video. I'm Fred Ryan, chairman of the Reagan Foundation Institute. but we're delighted to welcome so many distinguished guests here this evening, including New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Gwisham and Governor Spencer Cox of Utah.

Earlier this year, our Center on Sability and Democracy conducted a national survey. We wanted to see how Americans are feeling about the future of our country and how strong their faith is in democracy. And what we found gives us some cause for concern, but also some cause for optimism. It was concerning to see that, 52% of Americans surveyed believe that our democracy is weaker than in the past. And when you

break that down even further, older Americans, 72% of Americans over the age of 65 say it's weaker. So in other words, those who have seen the most of our past are most concerned about our present and our future. Apart from those concerns, though, we can be optimistic because Americans have a good idea of what they believe needs to change. 83% of American surveyed said, they want elected officials to work harder to find common ground with officials from different political parties. That's where the Center on Civility and Democracy comes in in our Common Ground Forum series. These events feature speakers from different occupations and different endeavors in our society because civility and democracy are not just political issues. They touch every

aspect of our country. President Reagan said it well in his final address to the Republican Convention. He said, whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone. I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts. And although decades have passed since he said those words, our mission today is to appeal to our country's best hopes, to our country's confidence. Tonight, we're delighted to be joined by two highly respected political leaders. Their politics are rooted in a commitment to civility and the principles of democracy

that make for a better country. when our leaders get things done in a fair and respectful way that benefits all Americans. Michelle Lujan Grisham is the Democratic Governor of New Mexico. She's a former member of Congress and state health secretary. She's a wife and a mother, and her New Mexico roots run deep. Her family has lived in the state for 12 generations. Spencer Cox is the Republican governor from Utah. He's a recovering attorney, a husband, and a father.

He previously served as chairman of the National Governors Association where he launched the innovative Disagree Better initiative. So for tonight's Common Ground Forum, please join me and welcoming the 32nd Governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham and the 18th Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, along with tonight's moderator, Steve Hayes, founding editor of the dispatch. Good evening, everyone.

Good evening. How's everybody doing? Good. Thank you so much, Fred. Thanks to the Reagan Foundation for having us here. Thanks to the governors for joining me. This is quite a treat to be here today. I had the opportunity to do a tour. I saw the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. This is an unbelievably impressive facility. If you haven't been here to do the tours and to take everything, I can't encourage it

enough. And my daughter and I are already planning our return engagement because we didn't take enough time to take everything in. So thanks for having us. And thanks everybody for joining us tonight. I'm going to try to fade into the background here and let the governors do most of the talking. But I wanted to start by going back to February of 2024 and you, Governor Cox, in Washington, D.C. You did an appearance at the White House, you're chairman of the National Governors Association. You appeared with President Biden. And in the course of the exchange, there were sort of laughter all around, as you joked, about the possibility of appearing with President Biden could hurt each of you politically.

That's a funny joke. It's a funny moment, sort of light. And yet, there was something true underneath all the laughter, I thought. And I wondered if you could tell us, how do we get to the point, given what Fred said about Ronald Reagan's long history of bipartisanship,

couldn't accomplish as much as he did without bipartisanship? How did we get to the point, 24 where merely appearing with somebody from the other party to say nothing of a president of the United States could be a negative. Yeah, well, thank you, Stephen. Thanks to everybody for being here. Thanks to Governor Lujan Grisham, my dear friend for being willing to be on stage. The incentive structure doesn't reward this and it certainly didn't reward me that night. As I was there, so there's this long tradition with the National Governors Association, one of the last bastions

of bipartisanship in this country. And we take turns every year. So I was the chair last year. Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat from Colorado, is the chair this year. And so this goes back over 100 years where the chair toast the president at the time. And it doesn't matter what party they're from. It happened again this year, a Democrat, Governor Polis was able to toast President Trump. But there I was a year ago.

And so it felt to me to give a toast to President Biden. I made that joke at the time, but you're right. It wasn't just a joke. I was up for re-election last year, and the photograph of that night ended up in my primary opponent's ads against me, attacking me for doing that. And so many people now believe that there is something wrong with that, the sitting president.

So you asked the question how we got here, And I could spend the entire night just talking about how I think we got here. There are lots of different threads that have kind of woven together to bring us to this disastrous moment. But I'm going to take you back to a book that was written over 20 years ago. A professor at Harvard University wrote a book called Bowling Alone. And he was doing some research. And he found that there were more Americans bowling than ever before. but there were fewer bowling leagues than ever before.

Now, you're wondering, what does this have to do with bowling? Well, what he discovered was there was a loneliness epidemic starting in our country. This is before social media and that Americans were lonelier than ever before. Now, we are wired, our brains are wired for connection. We know that sociologists, researchers have figured this out many years ago that we need human interaction. It's important for us. We're tribal by nature.

And there are good tribes like football teams, sports tribes, right, that kind of lead us, to bring us together in these communal events. And then there are not so healthy tribes, like political tribes. But I do believe that we are lonelier than ever before. And I believe that that loneliness has left us with a whole insight. In 1831, when Alexis de Tocqueville came to America, he found that Americans were different than Europeans. We formed these associations together.

A lot of them were religious associations, but there were others as well. I love to ask the crowd, how many of you belong to a service organization, the Rotary Club? Let me ask you. How many Rotarians do we have here? Bless you. That's probably the most hands I've ever seen in a crowd. There are four of you, right? Five of you, six of you.

My Rotarians are my people, right? 40 years ago, if we asked this question, almost every hand, would have gone up, right? So we don't do that anymore, and we're desperate for it. So if we can't have, you know, if we don't have any real friends, at least we can hate the same people together on Facebook, right? And that's what we do. We found our tribes. And that became so important. And, you know, when I was younger, we were, we were dads and we were moms and we were Utah fans. And we were Americans and we were Utah. First, you wouldn't have described yourself as a Republican or Democrat. That would have been 10th or 15th on the list. If at all. If at all. Now it's routinely number one or two, right? That's how we see each other.

So I think there are lots of reasons for it, but I think that's at the heart of it. And now we have these tools that allow us to get in these insular groups and to keep us from finding truth. We're only surrounded by people that sound just like us and we get rewarded by taking people down. So I'm speaking too long. You said you were going to fade into the background.

Did you find the right crew to fade into the background? the background. Like, wait until we put a quarter in her. This is going to be, this is going to be great. The guy who once introduced me as governor aggressive, aggressive. Now I said from governor passive aggressive. It's true. That's, wait, none of that is true. We actually, which that's also missing. You have to spend time. So your association with people, politics is, the environment today is the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, particularly because you've got 24-hour media outrage going on. And so it doesn't lend itself so that I can get to know my colleague a little better. And I can know a little bit about his spouse and his family and what makes him tick and

vice versa. You don't sit down and have lunch or meals together. You're not part of a softball team. You don't go to church together. You don't do any of that anymore. And it really has created such a terrible divide. And what we both think is this country needs to have the courage to make sure that your political affiliation is lower on that scale and your community participation is higher on that scale. And we both believe that that can reverse the consequences, but we're not minimizing how hard in this environment

that will be, and as politicians, we are rewarded for participating in that blood sport in that way, which is awful, and we are punished when we don't. And it doesn't lend itself if you're going to be reelected to, frankly, the kind of courage I've seen my colleague display over and over again, which makes Governor Cox a really easy guy to admire and work with. And that's missing. Good. Jason. Well, this is a new, a new record.

It only took four minutes for politicians to blame the media for the problems. And we're right. But I agree with you. I agree with you. And I think a function, part of the function of it is just that we're operating at hyperspeed. There is no break. It's always on. And the temptation to go with the tribe or leave the tribe.

is always there. I want to pick up on something you just said, Governor Levin Grisham. You served six years in Congress. You were there at the end of the Obama administration and the beginning of the Trump administration. And in my mind, I've been in Washington a long time, way too long. That time frame really saw the acceleration of performative politics. And it coincides with the rise of social media in particular 24-hour cable networks were there for a long time. Everybody knows what you need to do

to get on one of the cable networks. But really, we saw the rise of the predominance of Twitter, the rise of Facebook, the other social media networks. Can you just give us some insight into what it was like during your time in Washington to live in that kind of attention economy? When you had a bill that you wanted to get attention for, how do you do that? How do you compete with a loudmouth member of Congress who's willing to say the most outrageous thing to get on television?

And did it matter to you to get on television? Did you care about that? What were the incentives there? Oh, I have been on television a lot, even though my communications director would prefer that I not do that. But no, I didn't want to be on television and I wasn't seeking that kind of attention. You know, I went to Congress and I'm going to say both positive and harsh things about that institution today. I never wanted to be elected. I might have sort of ascribed to a different situation.

I was appointed by three different governors for 18 years in two different departments, both Republicans and Democrats or Republican in two. Democrats. And I didn't want any part of their reality of being elected. I just wanted to do the work. And it didn't really matter to me so much their politics. What mattered to me is that they trusted me to do right by the people that they were appointing me to serve. And if that was the case, then I could transcend the rest of it. And then something switched for me. I had to learn health care by the seat of my pants because my constituents, even before I was at the Department of Health, all needed health care and didn't have access. All retirees before Medicare covered prescription drugs and so many things. And every client, every person I was serving could not make

ends meet. And they were making like we still do today choices between paying the rent and getting their insulin drugs. And I literally took people across the border to get American bubble pack drugs because that was the only way they were going to get access to prescription drugs in the 90s. And all of a sudden, there are two democratic politicians, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who are debating health care. Now I find this to be very exciting. And for me, even today, we're not going to fix health care states, even big ones like California. The federal government has to shift what it's doing about health care. I mean, all of the systems, are directed and funded by the federal government.

That's just a fact. And there's a lot of them. It's not just Medicaid or Medicare. There's a lot of them. And so I now want to participate there because if I can do something there, then that makes the people I was serving even better in my state.

So I just ran, and I got my clock cleaned, but I'm not a quitter. So I kept running, and I did a local job first. I was a county commissioner, and then that position came up again, I ran again and won. And I was in the minority for Obama and 435 people. There's a lot of people to do arm twisting.

But I found that because I like relationships. I'm a relationship seeker. I had relationships with nearly everyone anywhere. I joined the congressional bowling team. If there was a team, and my best friend from high schools here, and she will tell you that I'm no. different than I was 50 years ago. Join every team no matter how bad you are. You'll likely find something that you're a little better at. So I'm in every click. I'm with the new kids,

the old kids, the cool kids was the name of one, the Senate club, everyone. And it made a difference. And I spent a lot of time at my dear friend, Representative Cole's office because he was the key to getting Alzheimer's funding, and I brought him food. This is Tom Cole. It's Tom Cole. I brought him food every day. And he said that if I would stop bringing him food and I would stop being in his chair in his office when he arrived every morning, he would fund whatever, excuse my language,

the hell I wanted. I just needed to stop coming over because that was so odd. You don't go over. I was always in somebody else's office. I felt like you could get things done, but I learned about the theater with C-SPAN. Nobody's down on the floor. You're speaking to no one but yourself.

It is all theater. I was very disappointed in the committees. All theater. You have five minutes. These are complicated issues. It's like Twitter. I can't explain it in 280 characters. And frankly, for some of these issues,

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Obama was very rigid in his style. Members of Congress could get in, but not as often as I think they should have for conversations. Trump was easier that first term to get in. So I want to, that's something that we need presidents to adopt. I somehow was also the chair of the congressional Hispanic caucus during the repeal of protections for dreamers and then that forced me into the spotlight and I might be remembered for sneaking into the West Wing when the president disinvited me to

a very important meeting so I rolled up in the back to the back. This is really true. This happened. Yeah. With Stanley Hoyer I rolled up back there like a burrito and went right in and that That does not make you welcome for the next meeting, but it's in my character to be assertive and find another way to get attention. I think there are fewer and fewer ways to do that successfully, and there are fewer and fewer people who have any kind of relationship. And my colleagues in Congress tell me today there are no relationship. This is what I find so incredibly striking about what you just said. I mean, it's been, it's not been a doubt. decade. And that is so anachronistic. People don't operate that way. And there are some. I don't want to

overstate it. I don't, but they are few and far between. People don't, people, people, people aren't relationship legislators in the way that you're describing just in the past few years. Now you have people I would point to Marjorie Taylor Green on in the Republican Party, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Democratic Party, who have gained power, earned power. by their star power. They're prodigious fundraisers. They can, if they hold a press conference, compete with leadership in each of the parties, in the houses.

Can you just help us understand in the time that you are there to today? What drives that change? Is it really just all 24-7 media and their ability to do this? their willingness to say things that are edgy and outrageous and attention getting? Part of it, but that attention getting one-liners without having any depth about what the issues are creates these groups in these fundraising cycles. And so, I mean, they're prestigious fundraisers because they are on the extreme edges of their political parties. and those draw huge groups, right?

If they're populist messages, just different parties. And so you have millions of people who see it, read it on the internet, and they all do a dollar or $3. So when either one of them sometimes says on TV, well, you know, the corporate Democrats, I'll pick on the Democrats, you'll have to pick on a Republican.

I'll give you, I have a list. Fair game. Okay. When they say, well, they're just corporate Democrats, say, just do whatever those corporations want because that's who funds them. But the second that that political person says that, a million people send her a dollar. Yeah. So she said it, knowing full well that she will raise money. Now, you have to raise money in American politics, so I don't begrudge that I raise money. I still call people to raise money. So I don't want

anyone here to think that I haven't done the money raising part that's required in American politics. But it's a bit disingenuous to say that the reason one person has an idea or a strategy that's different from yours is because they're the only ones that are fundraising. They are all. We are all fundraising. And that bothers me a bit because it leaves the wrong impression. And if you don't do research, you don't see that. And it keeps drawing these tighter and narrower groups of individuals. And as governors, and I'm going to pitch it right to. to Governor Cox. You can't govern in extremes. You cannot. You have to be pragmatic and practical and even-minded and even-handed.

And that environment makes our jobs incredibly challenging. And our constituents are getting really frustrated because our legislators, legislatures, around the country are sort of having that same aspect now occur in their work. And so you've got a Republican supermajority. I have a Democratic supermajority. And then they lean to those extremes. And you can't, I can't govern with that. And I can't get a valid budget with that. And I'm going to guess you find yourself sometimes

in the same situation. Yeah, I want to ask about those intro party dynamics in just a second. But if I can, if I can get you, Governor Cox, to follow up on that exactly. I mean, one of the things, I think if you look at Washington, one of the reasons that you have so much, many representatives and senators are willing, able, eager to command attention is because Congress has voluntarily given up so much of its power in the past several decades.

And I want to create the impression that there's nothing to do. There's stuff to do. But not as much as there was when Tip O'Neill was speaker. That's not true as a governor. you've got to get stuff done. How does that affect your sort of ability to manage your legislature

is the fact that you need to produce. You can't just give speeches. You can't host a podcast where you're effectively a political pundit. You have stuff to do. No, we do see. And look, I mean, James Madison would be shocked. The founders would be shocked

looking at what's happening in our nation's capital right now. I mean, this whole idea of the three branches of government that they would be held in tension with each other. That was very intentional. And Congress was always meant to be the most powerful branch of government. They all expected Congress to be the most powerful branch of government. And now because of, I think in part, because of the performative piece of all of this,

the lack of relationships, everything we've talked about now, Congress has completely ceded their power to both the executive and to the judiciary, and they're not doing their job, which means now that we get caught in this cycle. with the last administration, you're seeing it with this administration, where, because Congress won't do their job, the executive, and really kind of Obama famously started this when he said, I'm not a king when it comes to immigration policy. We have to get immigration policy done. Congress got very close, and you worked so hard. I mean, we're right there. Then it fell apart. Then he said, well, I guess I'm going to have to do this anyway. So it doesn't be executive order.

Then there are lawsuits. So now the president is using his power. Now the nine members of the Supreme quarter making their decisions to hold them in check. And we get this whiplash. It was, it was just nothing is lasting. Then, then you get a new president who undoes everything the last president just did. And, and that's, that's not how any of this was supposed to work. And so at the subnational level, we have governors. And we're sitting here looking at what's happening in D.C. And part, I will say that there's one other piece of this that is really important. The other thing that the founders intended was that the states would have much more power than they have right now, that there would be this federalist system where the states would be kind of co-equal to the federal

government. That has drastically changed over time. The federal government has gotten so much more powerful, which I think is a mistake because what it does is, it makes, back to the original question, it makes it more polarizing when we think that one size fits, all. California should be very different than New Mexico. New Mexico should be very different than Utah. And if we allowed that to happen, I think there would be less hatred amongst Republicans and Democrats. But it's not happening. Whoever's the president gets to make all of these decisions that impact all of us. And so there's a lot of unrest. And so here we sit as governors. And we like to say that the potholes aren't partisan. You just have to get stuff done. And so that's why we're

able to have, I think, these conversations. We actually, most governors really like each other. We do. The idea of laboratories of democracy, that all 50 states would be these laboratories and we would try things at work. When Governor Lujan Grisham does something that works in her state and we're having a problem, I'm going to steal that idea. I may or may not give her credit. And that's okay. And I always give her credit. And vice versa. She was just with the governor of a very conservative state, the governor of Wyoming, Mark Gordon, a dear friend of ours, they were in Japan together, working on energy policy with the Japanese, a Republican and a Democrat. Their states couldn't be more different. And yet there they were. And we do this all of the time. And it's true of most

of the governors. Now, I like to say that the governors are very bipartisan and they work together very closely until one of us decides to run for president. And then we tend to leave that aside a little bit because that's what it takes to get elected these days. So it's nice that we can have forums like this. And I do think that if you look at the polling, while most Americans have a terrible view of the president of Congress, Most of them like their governors. And I think it is because we just, we get stuff done. Yeah.

Let's explore a little bit this intra. Uh-oh. I hope that wasn't about it. I know. I mean, maybe they don't like their governors. I'm like, I don't know. There's only a couple Utahans here, so I feel okay. Yeah, that's true.

But I think, I think factually, you're right. I believe the poll. The polling shows that. Morning Consult poll. I think there was literally one governor underwater, if I'm not mistaken? I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's...

You can correct me. You're living to me like... No, crazy. No, I mean... I might be wrong. I am at the end of my term, and so I don't care about any of those polls anymore, but I do care about until the very last second.

There's so much I didn't get done. And I think good governing, no matter what elected office or what organization you leave, you should leave that job. That last day, at midnight, you should still be working on the things that were left undone. It should matter to you all the way through. So those polls are, I think. Well, it's a perfect setup to what I want to talk about next, which is these intra-party tensions.

Why, you had a supermajority of lots of Democrats in your legislature. Why haven't you been able to get as much done as you'd wanted to get done? Was it just a matter of time? Did you get resistance from fellow Democrats? Was there, is the incentive structure such that you need to cater to the extremes on the left of the Democratic Party? One of the, and maybe something I don't do as well as I should is I don't cater well. I like discourse and an effective democracy means that, yeah, you have to disagree, and I really admire disagree better. You don't have to be disagreeable.

but you can be firm in your intentions, as long as you leave a little bit of room to be persuaded for a different design or a different idea or strategy. Typically, most people want to get to the same place. It's how we get there. And then this is what governors are also really good at, even those who are not running for president. I have gotten a lot done. And if you're not in this job like Governor Cox and myself and you're not proud of the work that you've done, then shame on you. So New Mexico's poor state. really diverse, very rural, lots of challenges. We have more independent sovereign nations as a state than anyone else. And that, then I have another whole level of government. I have 22 tribes. I navigate and we're equals. So there are lots of governors in New Mexico. But in two years, we went from 50th in childhood poverty to 17th. Your lights are on. Thank you. your lights are on because New Mexico powers L.A. County.

So it's the Western states... By the way, Utah also powers L.A. County. No. So the Western states are going to provide all the energy to the United States. That's also a fact. And we have the cleanest oil, and that may seem to some of you like,

that can't be right, but it is. We lower that carbon footprint. Our gas is the cleanest gas. in the world. So that means we lower carbon footprints all around the world, the Western states. And we have very different energy ideals and portfolios, but we know how to move that effort, more transmissions happening. So I could do a lot and I'll do this and then I'll answer the question.

We are also the only state in America, universal free child care, universal free pre-K, three and four-year-olds. we are beginning to move the needle in literacy. We've got a long way to go in education. That's an area that's been really challenging. For me as a governor, that's an area that I wish I don't see eye to eye with my legislature. I think that the public school system ought to have outcomes. I think they ought to teach the science of reading.

And I think that they should care about math outcomes. And we disagree about that. I think it should be a mandate and they don't. So that would be one area where we are just not on the same page, but bipartisan, my Senate Finance Committee gave me $30 million in an instant to create a structured literacy institute. So it's not all bad. But it's typically, that's the big one where I'm worried about public safety. New Mexico's public safety issues are severe in many places.

I think there needs to be accountability as well as prevention. where Republicans want just accountability, the Democrats want just prevention. Nobody wants to do both. So the pragmatic aspect that if you commit a crime, it should be held accountable for that. I've had trouble navigating that, so that means I have to find other strategies that work,

and I typically do, but it ruffles some feathers for sure. I want to get to some practical advice that you have for other political leaders on exactly. how to operate on a bipartisan base without a game. But I want to just give, I have to. So while we're in the green room and they're micing us, Governor Cox's lovely spouse, she's brilliant and amazing. And it's a family commitment and everybody's doing work. Pulls me aside and wants to talk about, you know, children's services and fostering and foster family and training. And Utah's doing something really well after they got sort of held by the federal government.

to your point. And I'm struggling in that area. I get good advice in that moment, and I'm going to take it. And so the other thing that's lost is the art of having someone be open to, Governor, I think you're struggling on this issue. Here's an idea that I think will navigate it for you. And for another governor to accept the same. You know, it isn't always perfect, and it's not always roses. And there are people who do far, better than I've done in a number of areas or haven't done as well. We should be sharing those strategies without feeling like you're failing or you're always competing. It should be a race to the top. And states do that better than anyone, but it's because we have these relationships

and they're built on trust and respect and admiration. Thank you, Abby. Governor Cox, talk a little bit about the Republican party in this moment. Last year in the midst of, or I guess toward the tail end of your disagree better campaign with the National Governors Association, you ended up endorsing Donald Trump. And I think even for some of your bigger admirers, there was a moment where they said, look, whether you like it or whether you don't like it, not many people point to Donald Trump as the avatar of civility, right?

for I think his supporters, that may be a bonus. They like it, right? They say it's about time we've got somebody in their fight. Why did you endorse Donald Trump? And did you, you wrote him a letter. I did. Encouraging him, maybe you could share some of the details of the letter and give us a progress report on how he's doing on civility. Yeah, well, I think if you were here, he would probably tell you it's not his top priority. But we, so this is important. It's something that the Governor Leon Grisham said, I think really matters. She said, we talk about civility. And civility has, in its modern connotation, people kind of recoil when they hear the word civility. When I launched Disagree Better, what I heard a lot from, what I heard from the right was, oh, you just

want us to go along to get along. That's what civility means is we just have to do, you know, we just have to compromise and we just have to give up on the things we believe in. From the left, I heard a little or more, you know, I will never listen to those people. Those people don't want me to exist or those people, you know, I hear a lot of that. And again, there was a mixture on both sides. And I think both of those are very dangerous. And so when you look at, when you look at what civility really means, and the idea behind disagree better was healthy conflict. Conflict is neutral. Conflict can be good and conflict can be bad. And we've certainly seen that the bad side of conflict, unhealthy conflict. We wanted to focus on what healthy conflict look like.

And it's exactly what Governor Lujan Grisham said. It's believing, being true to your core principles, but treating people with dignity and respect, listening, giving an opportunity to learn. And you'll often find that you do have common ground, that there's more in common than we thought. Sometimes you can't get there. And that's okay too. And so with President Trump, and he and I have a great relationship. And it's been, to me, it was important to be able to have those conversations with the president and with my party.

It's no secret that I supported other candidates for president. He was not my first choice. He was far down on the list. This is no secret. He knows this. He and I've had these conversations. And yet, you know, there's a moment where I could just burn it all down

and say that's what's going to happen, or I can try to help and try to make things better. And that's certainly what I've attempted to do in this space. We have had conversations on things where we agree. We've had some conversations on things we disagree about. And so I don't, obviously would love him to adopt the disagree better mantra. And I think he would be more successful if he did that. I think when there's been opportunities for him to reflect and change course to bring people

together. He can be really good at it. But again, we live in this moment where that is not an incentive that is working. There's not a lot of that. And so I'm just grateful there are some people who will get on stage with me and have these conversations. I want to take the ruined 15 minutes that we have and sort of get practical. And I want to ask each of you, if you can explain to us or share with us, your proudest bipartisan moment, what you accomplished, and the things that you had to do, active steps that you had to do in order to achieve it. I'll start with you, Governor Fah. Yeah, it's an interesting question. It's funny because as Cameron Leone Grisham talked about right now, so many of the bigger fights are internal to the party. We certainly see a lot of that,

But we've had some major bipartisan wins in our states, some things we're proud of. We have something that we refer to as the Utah way. There's been lots of articles written about this, our ability to bring people together and work together. If you're a Democrat in Utah, even though we have a super majority of Republicans, about 90% of our legislation is near unanimous or unanimous, which is pretty incredible in today's age. Now, it's getting to be more of a challenge, for sure, as social media and kind of performative politics, it's infiltrating a little bit, our legislature.

The biggest win came several years ago, I was actually lieutenant governor at the time working with then-governor Gary Herbert and the Republican legislature, working with our LGBTQ community on protections for gay people in our state. So employment, housing protections. This was something that people thought was impossible in a very red state. But we had faith leaders come together. We had our LGBTQ organizations come together. We had the Republicans come together. And it was tough. It was really hard.

There was, you know, as I've been in this building, looking at the, looking at Reagan and Gorbachev in Reykivik, where they had these summits. It was a lot like that. They were in these rooms having very hard conversations. and somebody would give a little and then it would fall apart and we think it's over, it's never going to happen, and everybody came back in, and they agreed that they weren't going to leave until they found something that worked. And so it was this remarkable process where they learned to love and trust each other, all of the people that were working on this

and negotiating it. And they assumed the best in the other person. So that when something came out or the media, something leaked or somebody else, there were lots of people that didn't want this to work on both sides, that wanted to tear it apart. And people, they stayed in there. And it was this beautiful moment. I'll never forget. It was the, I think it was the last week of the session, maybe the next to last night of the legislative session. And we were all together in the rotunda of the state capital.

And there were thousands of people there. representing very diverse groups that you would never expect to be together. Lots of hugs and signing that legislation was, we call it the grand compromise in Utah and really a model to the nation. One, I wish the nation would have taken up and I still think there's time for that.

But it was cool to see people come together and we're really proud of how that came together. Yeah. I'm really bad at just my one answer. So my first legislative session is 2019. Of course, I had a bunch of them under my belt as the cabinet secretary and my predecessor. And I'm rejoined more bills later in my career too, so I should be careful. but I created a thing called a rocket docket

so that if you had a bill that was vetoed by the former governor that was nearly unanimous and the issue that you were, the problem you were trying to solve still existed, or it was still going to be an effective strategy, then I had those bills on my desk in about a week and a half at the beginning of the session and they were largely Republican bills and I signed them all. And so it,

It created then that trust so that you can move forward. We had a new Senate minority leader, and he was trying to fix a problem with a local tax that the voters in a Republican, largely Republican-performing county in southern New Mexico, Valencia County, and were trying to raise money for a hospital. and the way in which they asked the question and collected the tax was never going to let them actually build a hospital. It's for services, not a structure. And so they couldn't fix it. And the money was sitting. And the people who wanted a hospital were getting very cranky. And that legislator passed a bill asking me to overturn what voters voted for. And I said no.

So I vetoed that bill and told the senator, I'll put it. which is a huge amount of money for New Mexico and a huge amount of money for me because I get, you know, billions of dollars in requests. I said I'll put $50 million of my capital into a hospital. You're going to need that money. Further, I want to do a rural health care delivery fund, which I don't think he ever voted for,

but I tried so that it'll cover some of those operating losses so that it'll actually hold in the community. And he didn't believe that I would do it. And so he went to his tribe and lambasted me for a long time. And then we had a medical malpractice problem. And the minority leader, the same leader, and the majority leader for the Democratic Party, they are at an impasse. And so they are in my office. And they cannot agree.

And I have to break it and fix it all at once. And I wouldn't let any of the lobbyists in and said, You know, we are three smart individuals, and we can figure this out, but what I don't think you have is all the facts. And I don't think I do either. And one of those facts was an insurance company was saying some things I didn't think worked or were true. So I just got on the phone and called the CEO and put them on speaker in my office and said, hello, you're talking to the governor and the two legislators. Is it true that you're planning not to sell insurance in New Mexico because that's illegal? And I just needed to hear it for my. myself. I've got the AG just next door. What is it going to be? And he says, oh, we'll sell, we'll sell, we'll sell. And so I said, great, I'll work out the details. And I hung up and the minority leader said, that was really smart. And it never occurred to me to just do it myself. And so that hospital, the grand, you know, the ribbon cutting in the shovel, and I couldn't be there. And that cranky sometimes and really tough politician,

who may run on the Republican ticket for governor someday, said, take her at her word, I didn't build this hospital, she did. And we owe her a great deal of gratitude. And that's hard because his tribe is not going to reward him for that. That's the way it should work. I respect him. I disagree with them all the time. He disagrees with me most of the time.

But I call him up even now, and he's no longer in the list. I'm asking for advice. How can I make the case to residents of Valencia County? I mean, I can't get through. What am I doing wrong? With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca.com.com. Did you lock the front door? Check.

Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision? No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection, and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web? Uh, I'm looking into it.

Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply. Yeah, well, I was going to do a follow-up with the Catholic Church. You want to just do it? No, you tell them the story behind. We were talking before we came out here about some.

And I just realized that I was miced, so I don't know why I was saying that should be off the record. Rule number one, don't let them mic you and then forget about it. It's like Leslie Nielsen and Naked Gun. Yeah, I do it all. She did not go to the bathroom. It was great. Thank God. But so for my entire career, even.

I mean, I was at the Department of Health and went from aging and dealing with guardianships and prescription drugs to drugs and sex at the Department of Health. That's public health. That's what you're doing. And one of the issues I had to address was I had to reduce the rate of teen pregnancies in New Mexico, which at the time were some of the highest in the country. I'm proud to tell you that is no longer the case. But I am squarely pro-choice. I am a big believer in age-appropriation. comprehensive sex education from kindergarten until 12th grade. I have school-based health centers that provide an array of those services, including contraceptives to teenagers if they go and get mental health counseling and all the stuff. And I put money into primary care clinics so that

women not only in New Mexico, but women and their families in surrounding states can get reproductive care. It also brings OBGYNs and primary care doctors to women in rural areas that otherwise would have to drive three or four hours to screen for cervical cancer. So I'm a staunch. That's the point. In a Catholic state, and I'm Catholic. And you might imagine that the Catholic Church does not like that much. And my archbishop would call me and say, you know, could you make my life any harder, would you? I've got three very conservative bishops who are very upset. And, I mean, what they do is you can't go to communion.

I can't go to church. And I don't think they can quite excommunicate you for that. Divorce, yes, this, no. And so, but they're really, they're having hard time talking to their parishioners, right, about the stances and the decisions and the opinions I have as a governor and as someone who's Catholic. So I know Catholics. I went to a Catholic school. My dad was Catholic. My mom was Catholic. In my family, you are born. All right? You are registered as a Democrat. You are baptized Catholic and you were enrolled in Catholic school all on the same date. All right? So it is a bit. It's a big deal. And so I know Catholic. So I say, I'll tell you what, you have these bishops come to my house for dinner because, you know, bishops, priests, archbishops, they like good red wine. They love a little bit of cognac.

Cigars are completely appropriate. I like a fine cigar. That's where Mormons and Catholics are different. We are so different in so many ways. So different. We like those things. And what happens, as I tease about the fact that we are sharing a really lovely meal, some fine beef, some fine wine, and cigars out on the porch,

is that they get to know me as a person and we agree on the following things. We need to do a better job at unwanted, unplanned pregnancies and we need young people in particular. We need to address those root causes they're in. Two, we agree on immigration policy. Three, we agree on poverty policy.

And frankly, it is the Catholic Church in that diocese that helped me get free child care and I didn't mention, we also have universal free college, two-year, four-year, part-time, full-time trade, apprenticeships. And I could not have done that without the efforts of the Catholic Church. That's just two conyaks, my friend. I'd like to end with one final practical question.

And it's one that I get a lot running the dispatch. People want to know. We have a group of subscribers and members who are very civic-minded, very focused on what they can do. And we get this question all the time. They're not happy with the state of our politics right now, and they want to know what they can do. And, you know, I can give them advice.

I have some thoughts. But I wonder if you'd share with people watching around the country, with people in this room, what would you tell sort of the average citizen or for people in this room, the above average citizen, that they can do to help improve things, to help create the kind of incentives for elected officials to do the kinds of things that we've been talking about for the past hour. Governor Cox, I'll start with the year. Yeah, well, again, thank you for being here. This is one of the things that you can do is to come to events like this and to engage in in this type of civil discourse.

There's a lot of research. They're just not far from here. Stanford's doing great research. They have a depolarization lab where they look at these types of things and interventions that can actually make a difference. And what I tell people when I get asked this question is that the solutions aren't going to come

from Washington, D.C. They're most likely not going to come from our state capitals either, but we get the elected officials we deserve in this country. That's always been the case. And so if we want to change that, we have to change us and who we are. And the way you do that is exactly the way that Governor Lujan Grisham got bills passed in Congress.

You have to have relationships with people that are different than you. You actually have to get to know your neighbors and spend time with people that are different than us. So I tell people to turn off cable news. It's really important. I'm 12 years sober now. And it was the best decision we made. By the way, this is a real thing. Researchers show this by turning off cable news. But we get addicted to outrage. Dopamine is released when we see or witness outrage. So there's a dopamine hit just like fentanyl, drugs, just like gambling. This sugar is similar. We get addicted to outrage. And so we have to turn that outrage off. This is very important. So get away from that. It will make you happier, healthier.

your family life will be better. All of those things are real. The second thing I would say is service is so important. Building community, serving, giving back. Also, a lot of research. In fact, so many people now, so many psychiatrists are prescribing service before drugs to help people that are struggling with mental illness. Service changes us, changes the way we think about people. We don't care if you're Republican or Democrat when we're serving and building our community. So those are two, I think, very powerful ways getting off social media or at least engaging only in healthy social media, but getting out, meeting your neighbors and serving them, giving back to your community. I just have to say after touring this place, I'm a Ronald Reagan acolyte. He was the president I remember first, and I still believe it's morning in America. America is great. It's great because of us, because of our people. And I just, I believe that we can break this, we can figure it out.

Our mutual friend, Yuval Avin, says that he's not optimistic. He says, optimism is a vice, not unlike pessimism. Optimism is this idea, the good things are just going to happen. He says, good things have never just happened. He says, but hope is the virtue that sits between the vices of optimism and pessimism. And hope is the idea that good things are going to happen because we make them happen. And we've chosen as a nation to be a nation divided,

a nation of toxic, hostility and division. We can choose to be a nation of unity. We can choose, again, to have friends who are different than us, to learn from each other, to push back when we disagree, and do so in a way that respects each other. Because at the end of the day, there's nothing more un-American than hating our fellow Americans,

and so I'm grateful that we have an opportunity to love our fellow Americans again. Great. Come in on, Grisian? I don't know that I can say anything better than that. But if you're going to watch cable news, watch all of it. Yeah. You cannot be watching MSNBC or CNN and not Fox News. You've got to do all of it.

Those different perspectives, and you'll be angry from either side and then you won't and you'll realize that a lot of it doesn't make any sense whatsoever that is wrong you should you should read the dispatch

I will just tell you that I'm not going to argue with that independent news that we need news we need to be informed I think this notion that nobody should be informed is problematic but I do think

we need to spend a little bit more time talking to each other. I do a lot of town halls. I know that you do. I go right in, particularly the areas where I think before people get to know me what they see on TV, they do not like. I mean, they absolutely, they cannot fathom how I got elected. How did that possibly happen twice? Well, you cheated. And so did I. That's what I hear all the time. I don't get that. I know. I think they're more mystified and they can't get to the cheating. But if you talk to someone so that you can explain why you feel the way that you do without trying to tell someone you have to believe the same thing. That changes that dialogue all by itself. And I do think

that America, you know, we're teenagers. We haven't, there's something to be said, Spencer, for a little maturity. I'm a lot older. I think that our best days are to come. And if you think about that analogy about where you don't think you can live one more second with your teenage son or more likely than not your teenage daughter, I had two of them at once. And now they are, and they were then too, the loves of my life, the joys of my life. And I couldn't be prouder, but it was a thing. And she's got, it was a thing. Mothers and daughters, it's a thing. So we're growing into a very interesting phase. And we can choose to, let it just happen, or we can choose to engage and be our best selves. And the people who do that will be happier, their communities will be healthier and stronger, and it will be an example to the rest of the nation. Thank you for having us tonight. You know,