State reps run on the promise of standing up to the Speaker, and then shortly after being elected are saying no, I changed my mind, the way to "get things done" is to do what the Speaker tells you. What is going on, and how can we change it?
Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics.
You’re listening to Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our goal is to help people understand state politics: investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.
A video version of this podcast is available on Youtube.
Sign up to get updates.
State reps run on the promise of standing up to the Speaker, and then shortly after being elected are saying no, I changed my mind, the way to "get things done" is to do what the Speaker tells you. What is going on, and how can we change it?
Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics.
You’re listening to Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our goal is to help people understand state politics: investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.
A video version of this podcast is available on Youtube.
Sign up to get updates.
Producer 0:00
[This transcript was produced by a computer program then hand edited. It may still contain inaccuracies. The audio is the authoritative version of this podcast. Last edits were made on 5/27/2021 @ 2056ET by FL.]
Anna Callahan 0:00
Hey there, everybody. This is Anna Callahan and you are listening to Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our goal here is to help you understand state politics. We look at why it is so broken. We imagine what we could have in our lives if we fixed it. And we're here to help you get involved. So I love having my two co-hosts here: Jordan Berg Powers and Jonathan Cohn. Jordan, do you want to introduce yourself?
Jordan Berg Powers 0:26
Yep, my name is Jordan Berg Powers. I use he/him and I have 11 years experience in Massachusetts politics.
Anna Callahan 0:32
Awesome! Jonathan?
Jonathan Cohn 0:34
Jonathan Cohn. Also he/him. Here in Boston, I've been working on issue and electoral campaigns here in Massachusetts since 2013.
Anna Callahan 0:42
Fantastic. So, last week, we we talked about the power that the Speaker has inside the State House. And this week, we're gonna dive a little bit deeper into how deep that rat hole goes. I kind of think about this whole podcast as being like the "blue pill," or the "red pill," it's about taking the red pill from The Matrix. And if you didn't watch The Matrix, taking the blue pill means you're happy to believe all those comfortable things, that everything here is fine, and nothing is wrong, and Massachusetts is a progressive state, and you go about your life. But taking the red pill means learning the truth, even if it is deeply uncomfortable, and disturbing.
Anna Callahan 1:29
So today, we're going to talk about the sort of cultural reality inside the State House and why you can't just replace the Speaker, for example. So I'm gonna, I'm actually gonna quote Jonathan Hecht who came on this podcast, I think it was Episode Four of Season One. And so you can listen to that if you want his whole his whole thing. But he talked about how if you go back 30 years, the House met much more frequently-- it met several times a week in full session. And you know, a lot of other things happened more-- there's more debate, and more votes on amendments and all that stuff. So he said that in 2017 2018, the amount of time that reps spent in session together was about a quarter of what it was 30 or 40 years ago. More importantly, he said, if you go back 20 years, then you can see that the number of Democrats who were willing to vote against the Speaker, on any particular bill used to be between 20 and 35%. But in the last few years, it's been between 5 and 10%. So there used to be an active check on what the leadership-- the Speaker and the leadership team could force through. And now there's just no willingness to stand up and say, "No, we're not-- we're not going to do this." And what Jonathan Hecht said, he says, "The culture and the system reinforce each other." So it would require a significant change to both both to the systems, to the rules and the practices, as well as to the mindset of the participants. That if you can't change the mindset of the participants, you're not going to get change. And that's a tough nut to crack. I know, Jonathan, you you've talked about sort of the belief about how things work inside the building.
Jonathan Cohn 3:24
Exactly. Because when you think about how how a kind of such a culture becomes like, becomes deeply embedded in how everything works, what I think about is how how often state representatives will talk about how how much relationships dominate what happens in the building, and how their ability to succeed depends on having good relationships with various other legislators. And what that does-- if you, if that becomes your theory of change, and your theory of how the building works, and how you make-- you achieve whatever even if modest goals you want, suddenly, that that kind of changes the behaviors that that you'll take. If you if you want to maintain a good relationship with the person, the person who has who is the chairman or chairwoman of this committee, you'll then not want to do things that will ruffle their feathers, or that will make them look bad. And so for instance, when we're talking about voting, voting off, if voting against the Speaker risks making this nominally progressive chairperson that I want a good relationship with look bad, then I suddenly start thinking twice about whether I want to do that, even though like, I know what the actual principled position to take is, I want to maintain my relationship with that person in power. And it's and it's the type the power-- you can see the power of the Speaker in the way that it's not even just a series of one-to-one relationships of representatives to the Speaker, because you can also have the dynamic is that if I want a good relationship with, let's say Bob, and Bob wants a good relationship with the Speaker. I'm doing the same thing as if I were the one trying to get on the on the best terms with the Speaker, because I'm trying to appeal to Bob and Bob, Bob won't do anything that pisses off the Speaker. So suddenly we're all we're all falling in line, even if I myself would not believe that I'm falling in line with the Speaker, I'm just trying to maintain a good relationship with Bob.
Anna Callahan 5:26
Mmm hmm.
Jordan Berg Powers 5:26
Yeah, and it's it's a system that has gotten so much worse than when, than when, you know, I think even when I started at Mass Alliance and before Mass Alliance, as Jonath-- as representative-- As former representative Hecht pointed out, like everyone tells me how much worse it is. I said that the last time that they-- a conservative rep said to me that they imagined more freedom in Chinese, the Chinese Communist Party in voting.
Jordan Berg Powers 5:51
You know, when I first got to Mass Alliance, Mass Alliance used to be a place that had meetings outside the building sort of secretly, although I guess not that secretively: the Progressive Caucus. And it brought the Progressive Caucus, revived it, brought it together, tried to get it going. And the Speaker, Deleo at the time, thought that that was a threat. Like God forbid people meet with each other and strategize how to do-- how to pass legislation without his oversight. And so he, you know, sent by Representative-- former Representative Rushing to tell my former boss, the former executive director of Mass Alliance, Georgia Hollister Isman, that you should just stop, we've got the Progressive Caucus, we'll organize it. And so half the people in the Progressive Caucus ended up being people who were quick to tell the Speaker what was going on. And so there was a couple-- there was a bunch of-- there was a legislative fight. And it you know, it quickly dissipated, no one trusted anything that was said in the Progressive Caucus, and it just fell apart from there. We had a new person come into there, try to reform it, tried to meet outside the system. And he-- and that person successfully organized on some policy, we actually won something, some policy, through their organizing effort, but that-- but then that person had another rep tell on them to the Speaker. And then that person felt like they got stabbed in the back and they stopped trusting people and stop going to the, to Progressive Caucus meetings. And then that person, you know, that person's like, well, I'm going to, if I can't organize, because I can't trust anyone, and I can't trust anyone, I might as well try for my district and for the things I care about, try to move up into leadership because at least that that's a path, right? Like, at least, that's a rational thing.
Jordan Berg Powers 7:33
So you get this self reinforcing system, where because, you know, the because the leadership has been able to infect such distrust and such negative culture among each other, you get this place where no one trusts each other. And to be clear, they shouldn't, because people will trade information for access and moving up. They will trade your faith-- like faith in them with like *miniscule* opportunities for self-perceived power, which is disheartening and disquieting, but the reality.
Anna Callahan 8:09
And, you know, this explains a conversation that I had, when I first kind of moved back to the area in 2018. I was so excited, I was like going to, you know, all these meetings, and I went to a meeting with some state reps. And I talked to one of them afterwards. And I said, "Hey, like, you know, let us know what the Progressive Caucus is planning, because we can be your boots on the ground! Like we can help you, you know, build demand for the policies you need, and we can help you get the word out. I mean, you know, we could do all this stuff." At the time, I was talking about Our Revolution, and what I heard was, "Oh, yeah, the Progressive Caucus is like just a joke. Complete joke. It's people who get together, where there's always a few of those people, the only reason that they're there is to run until the speaker and stab everybody in the back so we all get punished." And I was like, what?!? My mind was like, I couldn't believe it. I was like, "No!!!" Like, that *can't* be true. But it sounds like that's what happens.
Jonathan Cohn 9:08
So this kind of reminds me of-- I remember hearing somebody who made made the joke before about the time at which the the US Communist Party had shrunk to the point where the only people attending meetings were the FBI agents spying on the communists. [Laughing] Kind of like, if a good share with the people attending the meetings regularly, are only there as informants, it-- you lose-- that you can have at some decent like, policy discussion, but you're not having organizing.
Anna Callahan 9:38
That's for sure. I know. So I've interviewed a bunch of former state reps, people who aren't state reps anymore, but we're within the last 10 years or so. And one of them said that in 2015, that was when the Speaker ended his own term limits, which were part of the reason that he got elected just because he was going to have term limits. And then he of course, once they came up, ended those. That was Deleo. When he got those term limits-- at the same time, they also increase the pay for all these, you know, chairs and co-chairs. But this state rep said that the worst thing that happened was that it increased the number of paid leadership positions to 80. And, you know, their their phrase was, you know, "why would anyone ever dissent again? Why would anyone ever dissent again?" They can control kind of a majority, I think, Jonathan, you were mentioning...
Jonathan Cohn 10:29
Exactly, that kind of-- that speaks-- if you have 80 seats already of people who are indebted to you for their position. And they know, as we spoke last week, that running afoul of you without having expressed advance approval. Quickly aside, one thing that does often happen is representatives see if they're, if they're planning to vote against the Speaker, ask for approval for doing so. So that it's not even that kind of check on power that you discussed before. It's more theatrical than that. So if you want to fall in line on that, you've already have a situation that you have the majority locked in. And that sets the conditions well, where it's then in anybody else's in perceived best interest to fold.
Jordan Berg Powers 10:31
Yeah, so for folks who don't know, 80 is a majority in the State House. So if you-- so you have only 160 reps, and if 80 of them, their pay is linked to being loyal to the speaker, then you've built in a system whereby they will always have the majority.
Anna Callahan 11:30
Yeah. And I do also want to add a little bit to our list. Last time, we did like a list of what the Speaker controls. And I was looking at my notes from some of these former state reps. One of them went through like a long, extensive list of the ways that the Speaker controls your life as and your ability to do your work as a state rep. So things we mentioned last time are like whether you're a chair or a co-chair, which is you know, in a way allows you to, to partially control the agenda of those those committees. What your pay is because you know, you can increase your salary by 20, 30, 40, 50, $60,000. How many staff you get, where your office is and where you sit in the chamber.
Anna Callahan 12:10
The things that we didn't mention last week that I kind of dug up in my notes are: they control your committee assignments, so like which ones are even on. The Speaker approves all staff hires-- you have to send a letter to the Speaker for anyone that you want to hire. The speaker controls-- assigns your parking space. So how far you have to walk to get into the building! The Speaker approves reservations to use the common rooms for meetings. The Speaker decides who gets to travel for meetings paid for by the House. The Speaker gets to appoint people to commissions and the Speaker gets to determine whether you can be on any official speaking programs. It's like insane, insane, the amount of things the Speaker can control within your life and your ability to get your work done.
Jordan Berg Powers 13:02
I worry that the Chinese Communist Party is going to start taking notes, how to better control of their members.
Anna Callahan 13:08
[laughing] So, Jonathan, I know you have-- I love the way that you talked about it, which was like people get convinced that what it's about is relationships inside.
Jonathan Cohn 13:28
Yeah. As we noted before, that you can really see that about how it's-- it really just to speak to the the the self-reinforcing nature of the culture with that. About how if you have so many, if you have so many incentives stacked up to say that you want that you want to fall in line, you want to fall in line with the Speaker that you want to fall in line with those who are trying to fall in line with the Speaker. And like every step down in the way, it gets to what we were discussing before about how it's how it's kind of a deeply embedded cultural problem that resists one off solutions.
Jonathan Cohn 14:04
And it speaks to-- as well as-- one thing that we were kind of discussing before. Part of the ultimate solution is electing-- is electing new and better representatives in many of the districts in the Commonwealth. But you also need kind of-- a constant set of reinforcements, because anybody that you're electing, is immediately going-- is immediately going to start falling into the quicksand that is the Massachusetts House. Anybody who was like a small child in the early 90s knows that like, has it, like knows that like quicksand is everywhere. And so you're in a situation where like, almost like every every week of the session, people are being worn down. And, and especially if you see all of the obstacles to you trying to accomplish what you believe you're there to accomplish. You're at constant risk of being worn down and accepting that, that you just need to abide by the rules, the quote unquote rules of the game. And if you're not constantly kind of reinforcing- constantly trying to bring in additional people who have the ability to like, help them get out of the quicksand even even partially, that they'll fall further, the new people fall further. And you have-- and the system remains intact.
Anna Callahan 15:26
And you also have talked about the idea that, like the leadership team is very good at painting this picture that people can actually accomplish something. Like they get a little something, they're accomplishing something if they do what they're told. And you've talked about how like how small those things are, and how they--
Jonathan Cohn 15:47
Exactly. It's the case where state reps will develop a theory of change that, that it's not, it's just a it's not 100% false, but it's not quite true, either. And so it exists in that space, where there's an internal logic of knowing that, Oh, I got this earmark for my district, right, because of, because of, take-- because of voting against things that I cosponsored, got me these earmarks for my district, it shows that I've actually succeeded at something that I've wanted to do. Or if this, this bill of mine managed to finally get in at the last moment.
Jonathan Cohn 16:25
And it did, you managed to get a real, you've managed to get a tangible small win. But your larger ambitions out of the building, if you have them, not everybody does-- and that's also part of the problem that many of them have, their greatest ambition in life is to cut a ribbon at some new new opening in in their district. But if you do have larger ambitions, those small wins, and and kind of accepting that as enough, becomes-- makes it harder to achieve, achieve anything more ambitious. As well as it also creates a dynamic where one can even even accept that if you were to be a rep and you accept that you're going to take a small lane-- a small-wins, "perpetually foreclosing off the ability of the changes that make big wins possible" strategy. You even say, okay, you accept that road and do it, but at least allow others to embrace an alternative strategy and to recognize that they want to ultimately help you to achieve more in the possible-- more down the road. That won't happen either, because of the dynamics of the person who is accepting that that path of small wins foreclosing upon long term gains, will likely view it as a personal offense of that other person's strategy, as well as-- So you'll have that dimension of that of a they think that that will make them look bad. So don't want somebody else taking that strategy. They also, even as we talked before, even if they view themselves as being well-meaning, could likely in that type of paternalistic, almost paternalistic way "Oh, you don't want to do that. You'll get nothing" as a way of tried to bring bring that those people further and further in. And so it just ends up rein- kind of reinforcing that culture that makes actual systemic change of the scale needed increasingly difficult.
Anna Callahan 18:26
And let's not leave this podcast without talking about how we fix this thing. Right. So it's, it's not impossible.
Jordan Berg Powers 18:35
Yeah, I mean, I guess I'd say, I've talked to a lot of people who think, you know, really, what we need to do is fix the systems or the culture. And I am always suspicious of those things. I've, I guess, long believed that what we need to do is just replace the Speaker-- this toxic system with a progressive who will be a little bit less toxic, right? Like that's, I think, my very, very, at this point, cynical belief on what is possible in the Massachusetts State House. I hope I'm wrong, I deeply hope I'm wrong. But I am cynical about them being able to reform themselves in any sort of real way.
Jordan Berg Powers 19:10
I actually believe that where there is hope, where there is a way that we can fix this system, is with *us*. Like I just think, you know, there-- the way that we will fix this broken system is for us to actually fix ourselves and have a functional outside-the-building community where when people do things, we thank them for doing the right things. And when they do the wrong things, we say publicly, "you did the wrong thing." And we don't just say it to ourselves. We don't just say it on Facebook, although I will say those are critical parts to good communications. We are saying them to the local media in their communities, and we're calling their voters in real time and talking to them about the good things that people are doing and the bad things that people are doing. Not because we like or dislike somebody. Not because they're the you know, they're bad or good but because you need people to know, voters to know, when people do good actions and when they do bad actions. It's really simple. And it's, you know, it's the way most functioning states have a functioning outside their, their elected bodies, righ?. Like, that's how you function as a community. You inform voters and let voters sort of say, I didn't like that, or I did like that, right? And you rest your future on those things. So the power is with us to fix this thing. Like, you know, there are things that we can do, we should have better-- we should send elected officials who understand this broken system and are interested in not just being a part of it, but are interested in going there and sort of being outside the system for a little while till we can get enough people to take it over, or to fix the culture. Right? But we also need to fix *us*, and we really need to be focusing on what are *we* doing to pressure them to do the right things and not ourselves replicating or being a part of this really broken system.
Anna Callahan 20:57
Yeah, I think I'm probably as cynical as you because I think in addition to having an engaged public, I mean, I knocked on doors, you know, as a state rep candidate last cycle. And what I heard over and over was, "No one has ever come to my door to talk to me about state politics." I heard people just outraged. People were like, "what?! I had no idea!" And the only people who vote in, they know everything about national politics, and they vote in their local elections, like these are not disengaged people.
Anna Callahan 21:28
So the number one, I totally agree with you that we need an engaged public, like for sure. Like people need to understand that like we could be having an amazing, wonderful life here in Massachusetts and it is the failure of our state government that we are not. But I also believe that we're not, we're not going to bring the reps we have back. I think we need to replace a ton of people with a group that has been trained in the culture and in how to work together and not like rat each other out to the to the Speaker into the powers that be and who have deep relationships with, you know, their own constituents, and with a, you know, a coalition of partners, statewide as well. But I think I think it can be done. I think that we just, you know, get everybody focused on state politics and make it happen. That's my theory. Jonathan, any thoughts about that?
Jonathan Cohn 22:24
So one, one idea that your comments gave me was how it'd be very fun to get state rep to videotape candidates for State Representative giving messages to their future possibly elected selves, about what they would say to them in their future selves start parroting all of the bad excuses that they're criticizing on the on the campaign trail. And then whether you whether you T it up with some specific lines that they might end up saying, or just allow free forum. It would be a fascinating exercise to do. And as we kind of have that type of reality check and grounding that I think is so important for politicians really, at all levels to keep
Anna Callahan 23:06
Great, well, we'll make them do that next time. Thanks to you both. We'll see everybody next week.
Jonathan Cohn 23:12
Thanks so much.