Absolute Power: Why 3 out of 4 Speakers of the House go to jail

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Today we talk about the insane amount of power the Speaker of the MA State House has over what bills are allowed to pass. He controls the salaries of more than half of the 160 members, and only he can control who chairs committees, where your office is, how many staff you get, where your parking spot is, and so much more. We dive into how this affects our democracy.

Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics. This is the audio version of the Incorruptible Mass podcast, season 5 episode 4. You can watch the video version on our YouTube channel.

You’re listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we 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.

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Transcript

Anna Callahan: 0:03

Hello, and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. Our mission on this podcast is to help you transform state politics. We know that together we can make Massachusetts policy reflect the needs of the vast majority of the residents of our beautiful state. And we talk about why state politics is so broken, what we could have here if we fixed it, and how you can get involved. So today, we talk about why Massachusetts cannot seem to pass the progressive policies that the vast majority of our residents want. We'll be talking about the insane amount of power that the Speaker of the House has over what bills are allowed to pass and what bills are sent to a quiet death. But before we do that, I want to introduce my super amazing co hosts. I will start with Jonathan Cohn.

Jonathan Cohn: 0:54

Hello, Jonathan Cohn, he/him, joining from Boston. I've been active on different issue and electoral campaigns here in Massachusetts for about- a little over nine and a half years.

Jordan Berg Powers: 1:06

And Jordan Berg Powers. My name is Jordan Berg Powers. I use he/him and I've been involved in Massachusetts politics for over a decade. And I'm coming to you from Worcester, Massachusetts.

Anna Callahan: 1:17

I am Anna Callahan. She/her. And you know, I've actually been like, pretty much full time involved in politics, first, national, and local, focusing a lot on local but in different states and state politics and everything since like 2016. So a while. So today, if you've been listening to this podcast, then, you know, especially with this latest season, that in episode one, we talked about what kind of amazing life we could have here in Massachusetts, if only our elected officials would vote for the policies that the voters want. In Episode Two, we talked about all the reasons why you should prioritize state politics, not just national, or local, that if you care about policy, even national policy, state politics is probably your best bet, in terms of getting that passed. In episode three, we dove into all of the ways that our state legislature is really letting us down, and is very out of step with the electorate, including many policies where even deep red states have better, more progressive policies and legislation than we have. So the question for today is, what is going on? Why is this so? If people want it, if the voters want it, and we have a democratically elected state government, what is preventing them from passing these policies that are obvious wins for everybody? Today, we will be talking about power, and how absolute power corrupts absolutely. And that is a great description for the speaker of the house. What should matter to us and to people listening to this podcast, which is people who care about all of the policies that we want to pass nationally, locally and state is that this one person, the Speaker of the House, essentially determines which bills are passed, and which bills fail. And this is why our state is so out of touch with what residents want. Now, to take things one at a time. What do we mean that absolute power corrupts? Do we just think he's corrupt? Because like we don't like the policies he's passing? Jordan, give us some information on why do we believe that the speakers, the last four speakers of the house, might be a little bit corrupt?

Jordan Berg Powers: 3:49

I mean, they- they have the ability to basically, they have the absolute power to sort of push through anything they want. And that ability to sort of get what they want lends itself to a sort of callousness, a sort of a desire and ability to do whatever it is that you want to do. And so that's why three out of the four last speakers have had felonies, gone to jail, and the fourth speaker DeLeo was an unindicted co conspirator.

Anna Callahan: 4:23

And these are felonies related to corruption and bribery, right. Let's be clear.

Jordan Berg Powers: 4:27

Yeah, or just hubris.

Anna Callahan: 4:28

Felonies related to corruption and bribery.

Jordan Berg Powers: 4:31

Yeah. So, for example, you know, Finneran went to jail for basically redistricting in such a way that was so racist, that the federal court threw it out. And in the process of trying to keep his racist districts, especially sort of really trying to dilute the power of people of color in Boston, he lied, in federal- in federal court, he lied about his own district. It was so egregious his lie was so big, was so stupid, that he went to court for lying to federal- in federal court. Imagine how much power you have to have that you think you are above telling the truth in federal court and you are so- you have so much hubris that you don't even, that you don't even care, that you don't even try to make it sound plausible, that you're just like, I'll just say whatever and nothing will happen to me. You know, then after that, DiMasi old fashioned corruption, just trying to sell, trying to sell, you know, the, you know, the way in which we tied MCAS scores to teachers things. So just old fashioned terrible government and corruption because there's a ton of money that was going into it, and to trying to sell it to the highest bidder. And when we get with DeLeo, so this is from an article a WBR news article in July 2014. It says, quote, "The prosecution's designation of Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo, as a co conspirator in an alleged scheme to bribe lawmakers ahead of his election, as speaker has no direct legal ramifications for the Winthrop Democrat," but it underscores the extent his involvement in a scheme where prosecutors say jobs were traded for votes.

Anna Callahan: 6:16

Huh, jobs were traded for votes. Okay.

Jordan Berg Powers: 6:17

I mean, that's, that's how he became, that's how he became speaker was trading jobs in, you know, jobs in the- what's it called department, the oversight of people who are on- who have done their time and then are out on- out on things. And so they were they didn't even care that it affected some of the poorest people who are trying to make their lives better, people who are out of jail, and trying to be better off, they didn't even care that they were putting employees that are putting into that system, people who were not qualified, who didn't really want to be there who were looking for easy jobs. And they were doing it just to make other legislators happy, right. They don't even care the extent that they were hurting regular people, people at the margins by doing this, and that's how Robert that's how Speaker DeLeo became Speaker DeLeo Right. So this system is super corrupt. And you know, one of my favorite quotes about this is one of the most conservative state reps at the Statehouse said to me that he imagines- like this is not a progressive, right? This is somebody who does, we don't align ideologcially, but he likes to call me up and laugh about how ridiculous the State House is. He said that he imagines more political freedom in the Chinese Communist Party than in the Massachusetts legislature, you know, this is a legislature that used to- that used to have some form of like ability to move things, ability to talk about things. And that no longer is true, there is a vise grip on our statehouse. They don't debate things. In public. They don't talk about things. They don't discuss policies, they don't even have real hearings, right. They don't do anything that a normal legislative body does. Everything is centralized into a few people, and mostly just the speaker at the top. And that is, you know, that creates a system where they really start to believe that they have absolute power, because in functionality, in their workplace, they do. Our state legislators don't work for us, they work for the speaker.

Anna Callahan: 8:19

And I'm just gonna piggyback a little bit on what you said about how things have changed, because I remember, in one of the early podcasts from season one I talked to Jonathan Hecht, who was a state representative for many years. And he was saying that in the I believe in the 90s. Go back and listen to podcasts for the exact timeframe. But that somewhere 20-30 years ago, you would find that, you know, up to 35% of Democrats might disagree with the speaker on any one particular vote. And that now, that is down to between five and 10%. No one will disagree with the speaker, because there are ramifications for your career. And what I want to do is talk about what power the speaker actually has over the state reps and why it is that they are so incentivized to do what he says. So people may not know this, but there is something in the constitution of Massachusetts that says that state reps will be paid the sort of median wage for a family of four. And that, you know, is now around I think$74,000 Did you say was just updated to $74,000. So it's around $74,000. And if you are a chair or a co chair of a committee, you might make an extra $5000 to $75,000 per year, right. So in case you're not sure if you heard that correctly. You can double your salary if you have one of these coveted top chair positions. Now, most of the chair positions pay maybe $20,000 or$30-$35,000. But the difference between being paid $74,000 and being paid $100,000. That's a big difference. So, you know, there used to be a certain number of these positions. And now there are way more. We'll talk about that in a second. But before we do, the-the idea that the Speaker of the House is the only person who can assign chairs and co chairs. So the only person who can give you that job that has $20,000,$30,000 extra dollars per year, is the speaker. And we know from former state reps that he, he, he really says, he tells people straight out, you need to vote the way I tell you to on this bill, or I will remove you from this position people understand in that body that you have to do what the speaker tells you to do, you have to vote the way the speaker tells you to vote. And if you do, then you'll get one of these chair and co chair positions. And if you don't you won't. Jonathan I think you know something about Jay- The Jay Kaufman example,

Jonathan Cohn: 11:07

Yeah, from like from a decade ago, that's about this now a decade ago, I was just looking at the article from 2013. That back in 2013, it was when there was a discussion, in early discussions about then about how the state needed more revenue, something the state still definitely does, to do things and that the governor had a- had a tax package that was more progressive than what the house was putting forward. And Jay Kaufman, who was the chair of the revenue Committee in the House was, was considering voting against the house package as being too weak. And the speaker flat out, said to him that if you do that you are no longer our revenue committee chair, then that he would basically be able to take away kind of the power to run hearings to advance bills as well as that financial, the extra kind of amount of money that that position has, an in effect basically demote him for his vote. And it's something that I think that that power becomes especially problematic when you think of how much of a one party system, the Massachusetts legislature is, that that becomes that becomes exacerbated where one could- like one can understand if you had a narrow majority, that you would want to try to do things that keep everybody together so you can navigate. When you have like 80% 85% 90% of the legislature, if you don't allow dissent within the Democratic caucus, there's no actual meaningful way of discussing policy, because- because it operates on I find, that the only power in the legislature that Republicans have is the power Democrats want to give them. Jordan?

Jordan Berg Powers: 12:53

Yeah, I just want to add too, because this is really important, what we're talking what this what Jay Kaufman was, was brought into the office for it was for a tax package that raised this, that raised the sales tax, raised the gas tax, added some other taxes that were super unpopular, and were regressive, which means that the majority of those taxes were going to be made by poor and low income people in the state of Massachusetts, it raised about $742 million. Governor Patrick had a proposal that raised roughly $2 billion, and the majority of that would have fallen on richer people, people who could afford it, upper middle class people, right, people- it would have been more progressive. So if you don't know Massachusetts, not only isn't, you know, we think of as Texa-chusetts. That's a lie. We're in the middle of taxation. But the thing that we do lead on is we have one of the worst tax systems in the state- in the country, our burden, the burden of the state, is overwhelmingly on the poor and middle class people and rich people largely don't pay enough taxes in Massachusetts. And so DeLeo wanted to get rid of Kaufman because he objected to policies that got repealed by voters on the ballot. A tax that DeLeo wanted, got repealed by voters. And the taxes that Kaufman was advocating for, were recently affirmed by voters. So we have a one party state where the speaker alone wanted to impose his will on a majority position of voters in this state, and one completely out of step with anything that could be considered the tenets of a governing Democratic Party. Right. Like there is no difference between Robert De Leo's tax policies and stary Murray's tax policies and Donald Trump's tax policies. Right. There's no ideological difference between them. And they tried to impose them through this authoritarian process on to the voters, on to us, right- opposite of what we wanted, because that's the only way you could get those sorts of things. And as people went along-

Jonathan Cohn: 14:54

And it's a striking thing as well when you see that that dynamic of effectively using the power of the speaker against where you have an alignment between a Democratic governor and a public and that the speaker is trying is using the kind of that kind of like heavy hand that the position comes with, to get people to go against both.

Anna Callahan: 15:15

Wow, what a great tie in to exactly what we're talking about, about policies that are totally out of step and how much the speaker absolutely controls them. So I touched on how many of these paid positions there are, and I want to go over just how much that has changed over time, because there used to be nine paid positions back in the 70s, there were nine. And then in 1977, they changed to 29, paid positions. These are chairs and co chairs that get more than what the Constitution mandates is the pay for state legislators. And then in 2015, it was raised to 55. But in 2017, that number of paid positions that the speaker alone controls was raised to 83. And what's- if you're not super into state politics, you and I know how many representatives we have, we have 160. So 83 is more than half, that means the speaker pays more than 50% of lawmakers. And we absolutely know that he does that only for people who vote the way he tells them to vote on bills. So if there's any question about how did we get here, you know, follow the money. There's, it's incredibly, incredibly clear, by the way, it was raised to 93 out of 160 in 2021. And I know when I interviewed Denise Provost back again in season one, her quote about this moment in 2017, when the number of paid positions was raised to 83. She said, why would anyone ever dissent again? And just to kind of button things up and be you know, thorough, I would love to let our our listeners know that it isn't just the pay. Right. It's not just the chairmanships, which do have a lot of control over what bills sort of make it out of committee. And those things. It is the number of staff that you get that's tied to the chairs and co chairs. It is where your office is and Senator now Senator Markey, who was in the State House had a famous commercial where he talked about how he was, you know, his office was a desk in the hallway of the basement because he didn't vote the way the speaker wanted. So this has been going on for a long time. It- he determined, he and he alone, determines where your parking spot is, he and he alone determines where you sit in the chamber. He approves all staff hires, so if he wants to be a pain in your butt, he can just not approve the one staff member that you get. He approves you-

Jordan Berg Powers: 18:01

And if you're a chair, you get more than one staffer. So it's not just that yeah, so you get. So if you if, for example, you want to maybe have some constituent services or want to be a better rep to your district, he controls your ability to do that.

Anna Callahan: 18:15

Yeah, you get one if you're- if you're on his bad side, and then you you get I think four is the the maximum number. He also approves reservations to use common rooms inside the statehouse, he approves the appointments to commissions, and to speaking programs. I mean, anything that you want to do as a state rep depends upon the speaker giving you these things. And it's known that he only does that for people who vote the way he tells them. In fact, there's a great quote, again, from Commonwealth magazine. That's where the Jay Kaufman story is in case you're looking for it. Where Cleon Turner, also another former state rep, says I don't remember the exact quote. But she basically says, Well, yeah, you don't get to be a you don't get to be a chair and vote the way you want. Like everybody knows that, duh. It's like a completely known thing inside the state house. So this is just the way that it works. They now- he now controls more than half a majority, the ability to pass any thing that he wants. It's the number of people that get paid. Not great.

Jonathan Cohn: 19:24

One quick thing I wanted to tag in on there's that I often like describe the situation in the house- in the house as being like a problem of two bosses, where you have if in most people's work, the person who can hire and fire you is also the person who can- who controls your pay. Whereas in the house, the people who can hire and fire you, your constituents, are not the same as the people who control your pay, the speaker or in the Senate, the Senate President, which then creates this kind of dynamic where since we don't have competitive elections very often to begin with, the people who can hire or fire you are not as salient in your, in your understanding of, of the people who would be your bosses than the person who controls your pay. Because they're, they're known to be far more willing to exert that power than the people who can hire.

Anna Callahan: 20:16

And speaking of that willingness, like we have, I think it's a, what I heard is that it's about a 3% success rate for challengers to incumbents to state house seats. So it is incredibly difficult to run a successful campaign against a state representative. And, you know

Jordan Berg Powers: 20:35

I might disagree slightly and say it's not, it's not hard, but it isn't done very often. And the problem that you'll run into is that you'll you have to be able to create your own sort of individual, you have to you have to create your own universe of people to help you do it, because a lot of the institutions that in other states might be able to help you, will be opposing you, right, like, you know, the community of organizations are going to also line up behind the speaker, so you're gonna have to battle them. And you know, the media has basically abandoned its role in educating the public about state politics. So you won't- you have to tell people what's happening by yourself. Right? So I think it's, I think it's not, I don't want to tell people because I think then they might not run, it's actually quite easy to beat these people, because they're lazy, and don't care about the voters, I think what's important is that you have to know that there's an infrastructure in place that you will have to also run against, and some and a lot of that infrastructure isn't oppositional, it's just a lack of like, they don't care, right, like, the media just isn't going to cover it. There's not, you know, and that super Corporation isn't going to pay a reporter to care about the intricacies of policies for your for your state rep race, right, you know, there, one there one sort of pay quarter away from making chatbot, you know, see GBT to do all the journalism for your town, let alone pay somebody who's like underpaid and doing 40 beats at once. Right? So I think it's, you know, it's you can run and win in Massachusetts, it's that people don't run, and when they do run, they're up against an infrastructure. And I think people are unprepared for that, that they think that, you know, the natural allies, people who, who should be advocating for the policies they want, they're actually part of this system of enforcing sort of the speakers will.

Anna Callahan: 22:19

Absolutely. And thank you so much for bringing that up. Because, you know, we, we want people to run, absolutely, please run, right. It's, it's not an you know, one thing that we should bring up is that we have, I believe, the lowest rate of challenging incumbents of any state.

Jordan Berg Powers: 22:35

Yes, that's the thing that I was saying. We have the lowest rate of challenging as well, you want- you want to get rid of chal- you want to get rid of incumbents you have to actually challenge them.

Anna Callahan: 22:43

Right, you have to actually run. So we want lots of people to run, please run, I will say, I ran once. And it was an amazing and fabulous experience, even though they didn't win. So I highly encourage people to do it. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about how totally awesome it was.

Jordan Berg Powers: 23:00

Oh, go ahead. Jonathan.

Jonathan Cohn: 23:01

Your point reminds me of somebody used to have an acronym to describe how rare basically of how rarely, elected officials in Massachusetts leave because of because of challenges of using the acronym raid for resignation, appointment, indictment, or death.

Jordan Berg Powers: 23:23

Yeah, so I just want to say I just want to say that the the way that this so that the system is in place, that the speaker has all of this power and that your your state rep, especially but also your state senator largely works for their for the person in power of the Senate and, you know, in the Senate leader or the or to a much greater extent, the Speaker of the House, and rather not you. And what enforces that into the local into the local population is that there's largely no coverage of this. It's an open secret that doesn't get talked about. So much so that even the people who cover the State House, their spouses, most recently have jobs because of the speaker, right? Like they are connected to the systems of government. These are not just people in power, these are workplaces and the people covering these workplaces are just as dependent on that right, they want access because they have to churn out for you know, 20 pieces a day, or you know, and so they're just largely copying and pasting press releases, the ability to get a press pass at all is dependent on the speaker, your ability to take pictures, to take video in the in the state house, that's dependent on the speaker, right? So your access is dependent on the speaker, you're in a workplace with- where all of your- all the people you talk to every day are in this system, in this culture, and your ability to- and maybe your loved ones job is dependent on the speaker or at least this system, right, the system in place with people in power. And so that is, you know, that's what we're running against when you're sort of out there and that's all of these things reinforce the speaker's power. And that's why it's grown over time. Right. And that's why it's coming in- it's harder and harder to challenge.

Anna Callahan: 25:09

Yeah. And Jordan, you are reminding me that we like take a little break in the middle, and talk about how you can help us. So if part of the problem is that nobody knows this is happening, then one thing you can do is forward this episode to people that you know, and we are sure that you know people that would be very interested in this podcast, there are at least 10,000 people in Massachusetts who have volunteered in progressive electoral work, if you know anyone who believes in fighting for social justice and reducing inequality and health care for all in affordable housing, and reforming our criminal justice system. And many more progressive policies, please forward them a link to this podcast. And the other thing that you can do is that you can donate to the show. So you may have noticed, we now have graphics, we now have an editor we have their transcripts are coming through, we are doing a lot more. And please consider donating any amount. So it might be the price of a cup of coffee per month, which would be fantastic. It might be a major donation would be amazing. And by doing so you're not just helping all of us together to transform the beautiful state of Massachusetts and the lives of 7 million people, but also transforming national politics as well. There is a link in the description to donate to the show. So why don't just click on it right now? And now we're going to come back and we are going to talk about how do we know, like we've talked about all the things that the speaker controls. But have we talked about yet exactly how do we know that this, aside from Jay Kaufman's article on these things, How do we really know that this actually affects any of the votes? Jonathan, I'm going to pass it to you.

Jonathan Cohn: 27:03

One example of that which was quite funny, from a few years ago. So you had the situation it was during the Rules vote, and I'm pulling this stuff back from 2019. And although there were many contested, like hotly contested, parts of the votes back in 2019, around the rules, one thing they came up with, I forget what it was it was a Republican amendment that was fairly anodyne. And at the time, now retired representative Petrolati was kind of presiding over the chamber for the speaker. And he basically had an operating assumption that it's a Republican amendment so everybody should vote, like the vote should all be no. And then you have this moment where suddenly that they realized that the speaker actually didn't care and like that it was actually fine with this getting the speaker was okay with the amendment passing. And you could hear on the mic, on the mic, I guess, no pun intended for what comes next. Somebody's saying switch em Mikey, asking Mike Moran, who kind of one of the other members of the House leadership to change people's votes. So the screen went like then immediately changed from like, kind of a lot of votes no to a lot of votes Yes. With 63 Democrats having changed their votes, right after Petrolati changed the speaker's vote. And it was a fascinating thing to see in real time, but people often just like talk about it, okay, maybe, let's say, like, talk about it behind closed doors or allude to is happening and like no, you can actually see in real time how they they just play follow the leader on far too much.

Anna Callahan: 28:40

And to be clear, like, it's not that Mike Moran, like switched everybodies votes, right, it's that they switch the speaker and Petrolati's votes, and then each individual legislator, switched their own vote, right? They, themselves, 63 Different people who had said one way, they then were like, Oops, I don't want to- I was only doing this to do whatever the speaker wanted. And now I better change because I better do what the speaker wants now, right in the middle of a vote, 63 of them and they hadn't even all voted yet. It is truly, truly amazing. And, you know, I know we- it's not the only example. There are other examples. But I know, Jordan, you also really wanted to talk about the ballot initiative about the pay and the ballot initiative that set this sort of wage.

Jordan Berg Powers: 29:33

So it's really important that people know that the reason that the base pay is, it was voters decided that the median income for a state rep. So the median income for a family of four Massachusetts is the pay at$73,600. That's the median income that a family of four makes in Massachusetts, and that's the base pay for your state rep. And so, voters voted on that they amended it to the Constitution, and this system where 93 of them get a pay

Anna Callahan: 29:59

And I love this topic, because, you know, different from that base pay bigger than that tied to the speaker is an end around around that law, it's basically saying, We don't care that that's what the system is in place for. And it actually is a perfect encompassing of this problem, which is that voters want- the reason that ballot exists is voters want the state reps to be accountable to them, to live like them. And basically, the speaker is like, what if we give you these other things so you can do what I want, not care about regular people's lives. And I think the thing that, this sounds insidious, and the examples we have are votes that happen. But actually, what mostly happens is nothing happens. This system isn't really a system in place to change votes, it's the- And there are examples of them changing votes or making them take back votes. But actually, the system's biggest purpose is to make sure nothing happens. Yes, right. It becomes it becomes a bottleneck in the Senate president's office, and it becomes a bottleneck in the state houses office and the Speaker's office, where basically nothing happens, the mechanisms of legislating, which are normal place in all other democracies do not function and are non democratic, autocratic systems in both of these chambers, the mechanisms of democracy aren't happening. And by that, I mean, they're not taking in information from us adjusting, seeing what's happening, and then legislating accordingly. Right. They're waiting around for the speaker there's a great report last year about the statehouse and how to tell them what they're allowed to do, and then occasionally doing some of those things. And so that's why you get the fact that the best that we can hope for is to celebrate legislation that was introduced 20 years ago, 18 years ago, because that's how long it takes to convince one person to agree to do it. Right, the mechanisms- like we're fixing, we're fixing early 2000s problems in this system, because the mechanisms of democracy are broken in this process, and nothing happens. That's overwhelmingly what I want people to take away. It's not that they're changing to do bad things, it's that the things that you care about on a day to day basis, being able to afford where you live, get health care, you get the health care when you need it, get around the state in a way that's not so carbon focused, that's easy to get around, right? Having a job that you can depend on, having benefits, having good pay, having a school that's well funded, that's actually forward thinking that has that wasn't built in the 1900s. All of those things are bottled into one person deciding whether or not they happen.. dysfunctional it is. And one of the things it talked about is, you know, there's 160 legislators there, 160. And yet, they're almost all completely locked out of writing and updating legislation. And what that means is that, you know, even if the speaker were in line with the voters, or the residents, or both, which- which he is not, and it's always a he, even if he were, then he still can't write the amount of legislation that 160 people could write, but he locks everyone out of that process. No one is allowed to do any of that work. Everything has to go through this bottleneck. I want to talk a little bit about the groupthink culture at the statehouse, we've- we kind of alluded to it with the Cleon Turner quote, where he says, Oh, everybody knows that, like everybody knows that, like, you're gonna vote how you think you should get your constituents want you to vote. He didn't say this Exactly. Right. I'm kind of putting a little bit into his words, right. But the basic understanding among all state reps that like you can't just vote the way you think you should vote for, like the things that matter to you, and are your values and be a chair, right? If you want to get the money, if you want to get the power, if you want to move your career forward, you better do what the speaker says. But, Jonathan, I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about how it's not just the speaker enforcing this. It's the whole culture at the Statehouse.

Jonathan Cohn: 34:13

Yeah, and I think that's such a key point that when you think about how power reinforces and reproduces itself, it is going to be quite rarely that concrete example of somebody making a direct threat to somebody else, because you only- that's actually- if your power is only enforced by that direct threat, it's actually quite weak power. It's like the example of the examples go through but the- the best demonstrations of the power is by getting people to not even consider doing it in the first place. And how that then how that then works, where you as a legislator, even if you don't necessarily care that much about being on the bad side of the speaker, you exist in the building with a number of colleagues. And there are plenty of people that you're- that you need to work with on a daily basis who want to be in good relationship with the speaker, or the people that you want to be in good relationship with want to be in good, good relationship with people who want to be a good relationship with the speaker, however many degrees of separation that there need to be, and it makes- and if that will make your life unpleasant, if suddenly, then by by going afoul of the speaker, then suddenly, people don't want to, they don't want to work with you on bills or that they don't really want to support the things they don't really want to sign on to your bills because like that, because they view you as like somehow outside of that system and that- it helps make everybody else fall in line by having a number of other people creating the incentives to get the system to work as it intends. Or as I said, the design from on top, that one thing that I have, I have to remember is that when the speaker changed when I had gotten- Bob DeLeo and then became Ron Mariano certain legislators said that Oh, actually, Ron Mariano had said that he'll be less of like a running things with like less of like a take control that Bob DeLeo had, and that he's more willing to see what some people have called, like the Christmas tree votes with the mix of green and red, or to bring things up to the floor when they only have a simple majority, as opposed to needing every single Democrat in line. And that really hasn't happened. Like we don't really have examples in the past session where that actually, that we were, you can say, Oh, they were clearly okay with everybody voting their conscience on things. And even though I think the one example I can think of everything I've heard, is people saying that they actually weren't happy with that happening. And you can see how like, the power exists, because you can say, Oh, my like, my, like my caucus, you are welcome to vote your conscience. And nobody believes that. And nobody even wants to bring something up to a vote to make that pass, like, make us able to even see that as a possible reality. And so having the way that Jordan was saying, the vote simply don't happen, that that by people knowing that there is this threat that exists. And that is reproduced, both by people's desires for good relationships, as well as the kind of the wise counsel that gets passed from, like, well meaning but systemically deleterious, kind of advising people to kind of go along with that system, which is not necessarily, which is not necessarily, passed on with like ill intent, but every time that it's passed on, will just reinforce that same, that same dynamic of the system.

Jordan Berg Powers: 38:02

Yeah, I just want to. So we've made allusions to this quote. So I just want to quote, Cleon Turner, who's one of my favorite state reps, that we've ever had. So Cleon Turner said in Commonwealth magazines article, quote, it didn't surprise me a bit said Turner, a Democrat who spent 10 years in the House and is now a lawyer on Cape Cod. This is now quoting Cleon Turner. That's the way it operates. That's how leadership works. You don't vote your own way and be a chair. You don't complain about what the speaker is doing and be a chair. End quote, right. So I think that that's, you know, and I think the important thing is that Jonathan's getting at is, it's it's not reinforced just by the speaker, the speaker will, you know, DeLeo is famous, I mean, excuse me, on Ron Mariano, who's now this speaker is famous for being DeLeo's person who would bring you into a room and yell at you, if you weren't going to go along, right, like scream at you behind the door, like there were votes delayed where they would talk about nonsense, where, though, you know, like, on one side, the bringing up the Boy Scouts to give an award in the middle of the session, seemingly very out of step, but it's actually Ron Mariano in the back yelling at a legislator who sort of doesn't want to go along with this crappy system. And so that, you know, that sort of culture in there where they'll yell at you, they'll threaten you, they'll tell you that they're gonna pull things take money from you, right, where you don't get to speak your own mind or say what you actually want, that is there. But a lot of what happens is just other people who aren't the speaker, who are aren't speaker's sort of main leadership, people, people who don't even have access to the, to the to the speaker themselves, right, or at least access. I mean, like, the speaker will care about what they say beyond maybe five minutes of pretending to care about them, when they come to meet with him once a year. Like you do the King, right, like, that's basically the only time that legislators gonna say is like five minutes. So you meet with the king for a few minutes. But aside from that sort of terrible system, largely, the state reps don't have access to this to this sort of, you know, to this sort of autocratic system. And yet they themselves will be a part of reinforcing the system. And then our organization's themselves are the ones that you give money to that work on the Statehouse that do this stuff. They also with like, you know, some great examples of like, not people who are adversarial to it. But a lot of a lot of the group's themselves will then infect it. They'll tell legislators that they can't vote off, they'll tell, you know, you will get an aggressive mass going and saying, Look, we're going to, we're going to tell voters, well, how you're voting, and a progressive group, who may even be working on an issue similar to it will go tell the rep and secret you can't vote for this. Yes, it's my bill, but you can't because the speaker will be mad at me, the organization, and they'll be mad at you for fighting for our bill. But that's a bonkers system. Right? So the groups, even the groups you're paying money to to advocate for things are actually in the rooms telling reps, No, don't vote for that. Right? Don't do that. I remember there was a legislator who I won't name because she, I like her. And I don't want to put her on blast. But she said to me that like, on one side of it, I was getting a phone call from progressive activists asking me to do a thing. And the and, people who are lobbyists, professional lobbyists, for progressive organizations telling her to not do it. Right. So she's hearing from progressives, two opposites, but your access to the speaker, right? So the closer you are to the speaker, the more likely you are to want to reinforce this system. And at no point did the speaker ever say, I want this or don't want this. She was like, you know, I don't even know if the speaker cared. Right. But that's how much this system reinforces itself is that he doesn't even need to be there. He doesn't even need to tell them what to do. Just the implication that you may be out of step with the king is enough to be like, look, you'll behead us all we can't, we can't be out of step with the king.

Jonathan Cohn: 42:14

One- one thing about this, I found to be kind of so interesting, as well, is that there's there's an example last session of one bill that the House has held up, like for decades now that they continued to not pass, despite the Senate always passing. And I had heard late in the session that the advocate saying well, it's clearly because of the lead sponsor having voted off against the Speaker One time, when, you know, maybe that's true, but it's also a very self serving thing for for the to those in the building and to want to say to other people as cover for what happens so often. So considering that it's not like that you would hear from people that oh, that they were actually going to finally do this this session for the first time in 20 years, if not for this person's vote, which always felt a little bit too convenient for me of an argument for why something didn't happen, rather than the forces of inertia that have dominated blocking the bill for so many decades doing the same thing that it always did. And people having, trying to find something to grasp onto and then using it as a way, like, again, like I'm very self serving way from the building to try to convince others.

Jordan Berg Powers: 43:35

And so we should, we should wrap up. But I just want to say like what are some of the threats specifically that state reps get? So the first thing is they'll say, you're not going to get so your district, the the state, what they do is they basically create a budget where they have a bunch of slush money, and legislators come in and ask for money for their pet project in their district. And you know, it's a couple of $100,000s, maybe a million dollars, depending on what it is, or who you are, how favorable you are the speaker, and that money goes for things that are good projects, almost always very good projects in your district. But the first thing I'll say is, you're not gonna get that this year, you're not gonna get earmarks. Right? So that's the first threat. And if you're a state rep, and you can't pass legislation that makes those things more affordable, get around anything else, the only thing you have is that park, because you don't got anything else, they're not passing anything else of substance. So that's the first thing they'll threaten, then they'll threaten, they'll say, they'll start threatening your staff, they'll say you're gonna, you're going to move down. Nothing you co sponsor, so even bills that you don't, even bills that aren't connected to you like, aren't your favorite things in your district, but are just like things you might care about. We're going to make sure none of those pass, and then they'll start threatening things like, you know, one of the things that I hear a lot of reps say is the reason that they can't go against this system is because while we can't get big things and by big things, I mean, structural changes that affect millions of people in the state? Right? We can't pass those pieces of legislation. I can't remember the last time we passed legislation like that. So what they'll say, so that they'll start. So what they will take away is those mid size, you know, things that affect 10,000 people, 20,000 people, things that aren't nothing, but are the only thing that especially progressives have to pin their hats on as accomplishments, you know, the things that make sense marginally better in the short term, for a few people that won't affect people in power, right, those sort of middling things, and snapping things down, those sort of middling things, we're not- you're not going to get those, right, those are out. And then if they if that doesn't work, if none of those things are the things that you can get to work. And by the way, this is all done through yelling at you, then they'll threaten to have their super PAC run somebody against you. They'll have your local DTC start to threaten you. Right, they'll try to make sure that the, you know, maybe some, some of the local, some of the progressive organizations will come threaten you as well, they'll say we're not going to endorse you because the speaker is mad at you.

Anna Callahan: 46:04

If it's redistricting time, then sometimes they have redistricted people right out of their

Jordan Berg Powers: 46:09

You're Denise Andrews and we'll literally redistrict you out of your district just to screw with you because you spoke up publicly against the speaker. Right? Your State Rep. Denise Andrews, redistricted simply for saying that the State House is a boys club. Gone. We don't want you anymore. redistricted out. Right, purposefully hurt. So yeah, exactly. Right. Like there are ways that that so that's what the threats are they just ratchet up threats, you're- you're Matt Patrick, and we'll replace it with the Republican districts. Yeah. and or your, you know, in your what's face and Seekonk. Right, like we'll replace it with Republican will spend, we don't even care. Right? Because you've been because you've had the nerve to speak up against this system. And that's the threat that happened.

Anna Callahan: 46:53

I want to add in that it isn't just threats, right. So there's threats, and there's promises. And and these promises, like a lot of times there are mirroring. So there's the threat that your bill won't get out of committee, there's the promise that your bill will get out of committee, there's the fact that you won't get the you know, earmarks, then the promise that you will get the earmarks. But part of this whole thing is that and this is also what affects a lot of the progressive organizations is that every two years, every session, they pass one meaningful piece of legislation, right? They'll pass one big-ish, not it's not a thing that's gonna affect 7 million people, right? They're gonna pass Medicare for all, they're gonna not gonna pass. They're not gonna make all of our schools great. They're not going to do that kind of stuff. But they will pass one meaningful piece of legislation so that anybody who says oh, the statehouse never does anything, blah, blah, blah. They can say, What are you talking about? We did XYZ. And I do want to throw in, because we passed the driver's license Bill, thank goodness, that I know someone who worked professionally on that bill for 20 years, 20 years, on that bill. Right. And for people who care about family separation, like that bill was causing families to be separated right here in Massachusetts, children from their parents, people being deported. I mean, it's insanity. That that was happening here for as long as it was. And the person that I know who worked professionally on this bill for 20 years, said, I asked why did the bill pass when it did. And one reason was a coalition was really strong. But the other reason, big major of only two reasons that this person mentioned is because the speaker changed. Different speaker, you know, probably was just personally not so against it. And if, if what we are left with is the whims of whoever happens to be sitting in that chair at the time. Wow. Like, It's good to be the king and it sucks to be the

Jordan Berg Powers: 48:51

It's good to be the king. other 6.999 million people. Oh, my gosh, I feel like this, this has been a very downer of an of an episode. Positive note and a long one too positive note from each of you? Jordan. I guess I'll go first out. I'll say that I think the thing that the two things that I always take a lot of heart from is one more than any state I've ever done politics in. Our opponents are dumb. They're not bright. They're not the they're not the best people. They're not the smartest people. They're relatively lazy. They've gotten into this. You know, the reason the speaker went to jail is just Hubris. Hubris, like, they're not smart people. These people, they're not chess players, right? They're checkers players. They're obvious. They're easy to move around. We just need to start doing things in a more strategic way we need to the more that we bring regular people into this bubble, that it affects it. In fact, if you get 20 people to call your state rep who aren't the like, mes, right? The normal people who call, they will freak out. Right? It's not a lot to push this system into action, not as almost no rep wanted to work on fixing policing in this state. They don't care about black people. They there's no, there's almost none of them, almost none of them. And some of them, almost none of them care about black people. Right, let alone poor people, people who are at the margins, people who are who are on the tail end of this terrible incarceral system, like they don't really care about the people. But they but they do care that a bunch of people their district started talking about it started freaking out after George Floyd summer. And they didn't do something. Right. Because of how much the people around them were like, yall got to do something, right, something right. And even that not awesome bill is like miles further than we would have, if just a few people started talking to the reps and be like, we got to do something about this. So it's a system that is paper thin, it is a card, you know, it's a deck of cards, Castle, that we if we bring people in to can blow down.

Anna Callahan: 51:18

Fantastic, Jonathan.

Jonathan Cohn: 51:19

So my positive note is that I do think that, that the legislature's current state of inertia is still an actual improvement from where they were a decade ago. And the work upon us is to continue moving it forward to be more proactive and doing stuff with progressive Mass when I look at the old scorecard cards that we still have on our website, and they're a great resource on our actual Like scorecard dot progressive mass.com has recent stuff. We go further back on our website, and I look at votes in 2011. And 2012, for instance. And our legislature was straight up right wing on a number- overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, but passing like Republican messaging amendments with abandon. And when I think about the fact that we've now moved to a place where that no longer happens, where we go to the place where Republicans know that their messaging amendments can pass to where Democrats send the Republican messaging amendments to study so that they don't have to be on record against them, just simply them not even being roll called anymore because Republicans know that they're not going anywhere. That's actually progress. That it's and it's weird to call inaction progress. But from when moving from bad action to inaction, we have actually moved forward because of the increased engagement in the state. But there's a lot more that still needs to happen to move from inaction, to like to kind of proactive legislating.

Anna Callahan: 53:08

I have three quick positive notes. Number one run for state rep. You person who's listening, if you're not interested, maybe your sister is interested, your coworker is interested, get them to run, if anybody is curious, reach out to me, I can tell you how much not just, it was a good experience. It was joyful. i It was one of my best, you know, times that I've had in the recent past. And I can tell you how to do it in a way that is joyful and wonderful. So that's one thing. Number two, systems don't always change slowly. systems change slowly, until they change very quickly. So if you're worried about getting involved in something that's going to take 50 years and you're going to die before anything ever happens, that believe me, there's change a comin'. And my third one is the reason we don't get change at the Statehouse is nobody runs for office and nobody knows what's going on. Take this podcast forward it to your friends forward it to your mom forward it to your dad forward it to your kids, and we are so- I can't believe how much fun I have talking to Jordan and Jonathan. Every week. It's the best. We were looking forward to talking to everybody again next week.