Session Voices: Jenny Eck - Finding Common Ground

Today, we’re joined by former Montana State Legislator Jenny Eck. Jenny served three terms in the House of Representatives, including two terms in leadership roles. We’ll discuss her path to the legislature, and the importance of finding common ground with one another, in order to effectively move the political process forward. 

Guest Bio: Jenny is the Communication and Development Director at the Indian Law Resource Center where she promotes the organization’s mission of supporting the rights of Indigenous peoples across the Americas. She is passionate about authentically helping those impacted by secondary trauma to find resilience and healing through awareness and connection, and works providing leadership trainings in this area.  She became interested in this work after serving three years as Executive Director of the Friendship Center of Helena, a nonprofit organization providing shelter and crisis services to those impacted by domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. 

From 2013-2018, Jenny served three terms as an elected legislator in the Montana House of Representatives, including a two-year term as House Minority Leader. During her tenure, eleven of her bills were passed into law, reflecting her focus areas of safer communities, mental health, consumer protection, justice system reforms, and gender equity.  She was one of the lead negotiators in the 2017 Legislative Special Session and chaired the subcommittee which overhauled the Legislature’s anti-harassment policies and procedures. Jenny got her start in politics working on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008 and went on to run Hillary Clinton’s Montana campaign in 2016.  

In 2015, Jenny was chosen as a Rodel Fellow with the Aspen Institute and in 2020 she was one of fifty people worldwide to receive the Rotary Peace Fellowship.  Jenny recently graduated with honors from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, having earned a masters degree in International Peace and Conflict Studies. During this program she had the opportunity to travel to one of the most remote areas of Nepal where she interviewed women about climate adaptive agriculture, social discrimination, and personal protection.

Jenny lives in Helena, MT.  She loves spending time with her two adult children, Sage and Owen, and hiking the hills near her home.

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Transcript

We've entered the second half of Montana's legislative session, and at Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, the Montana Coalition, we're continuing to learn more about the people, organizations, and processes that support families in our state at the legislative level.

0:14

I'm Emily Freeman, and you're listening to Session Voices, a special series of the Mother Love podcast.

0:20

Today we're joined by former Montana state legislator Jenny Eck.

0:23

Jenny served 3 terms in the House of Representatives, including 2 terms in leadership roles.

0:28

We'll discuss her path to the legislature and the importance of finding common ground with one another in order to effectively move the political process forward.

0:38

I'm Jenny.

0:39

I was in the House of Representatives here in Montana.

0:42

I was the minority leader for the last 2 years that I served minority whip for 2 years prior to that, and then rank and file 2 years prior to that, so 6 years in the legislature as a House member.

0:54

What was your path to the legislature?

0:56

Had you always been interested in a career in politics?

0:58

No, it's funny.

0:59

I'm an introvert and I used to be incredibly shy.

1:03

I had to overcome a lot of that going into politics, but I ended up majoring in government in college just kind of by default, cause I just kept taking courses related to government, not thinking that I would ever end up working in government.

1:15

I went on to serve as the committee secretary in the House.

1:19

Judiciary Committee in the legislature and kind of fell in love with the whole process.

1:23

And I realized that my perspective just wasn't really being spoken.

1:27

I had two small kids at the time and had been reading about, you know, what does it mean to lean in as women and, and what does that look like?

1:34

And so I ended up running for the legislature.

1:36

I'd worked in government for several years as committee secretary, then I went on to work for the Attorney General for a few years doing meetings and Organizing for him and then felt like I knew enough to run my own campaign and ultimately ran a 14 month campaign and came out successfully, winning my first race and then was up there for 6 years.

1:55

So there's so much to learn outside of the content of the work.

2:00

There's this whole other layer, right, of decorum and the specialized language and how to dress and how to behave and what to call one another.

2:08

What's that?

2:08

Process like for new legislators getting up to speed with all of that.

2:12

I think it partly depends on your background and how much exposure you've had to the legislature.

2:16

I I had spent time up there, so I had some sense of that.

2:19

And then living in Helena, of course, you get more exposed than you might from other communities.

2:22

I remember my first term being a freshman legislator and just wondering why don't we all always have to talk like this.

2:28

This seems absurd.

2:29

And then I quickly learned why.

2:31

It's because things get really emotional.

2:34

They get really heated, and if you're able to just speak directly to one another rather than what they call going through the chair, where you're supposed to direct everything to the chair, the chair of the board or the chair of the committee, even though ultimately you're really addressing somebody else.

2:47

The reason for that is it makes you temper yourself.

2:49

It makes you think about what you're gonna say, and the chair is making sure that nothing's getting too far out of control.

2:55

And that's what a lot of the rules are supposed to be about.

2:58

And we've seen evidence over the last couple of sessions of Unfortunately, the deterioration of some of that respect, but I think it does serve a purpose.

3:07

And once you kind of accept it and embrace it, you pick it up like anything, and they have scripts available for legislators too, so that when you're introducing a bill, you make sure to use the correct language.

3:18

And if you're making a motion, you have some of that cheat sheet in front of you, so you're not just winging it every time.

3:24

How does the role of the legislator change outside of the 90 day session?

3:28

So you're elected.

3:30

For a term that's longer than 90 days, what does that look like during the summer or in the interim year, are you still sort of on the clock?

3:39

Yeah, so in the house, it's two-year terms that you get elected to in the Senate it's 4 year terms.

3:44

So my first election would have been in November of 2012, which means that I went into session starting the first week of January in.

3:54

In 2013.

3:55

That's not a lot of time to go from being an unelected citizen to being an elected official.

4:02

And that first year is definitely drinking from a fire hose, that first session is intense because you haven't had a chance to get your feet under you before that session.

4:10

But you do serve for, as I said in the house, 2 years, and there are interim committees that meet throughout those 2 years, so typically you're assigned to a committee that will meet every few months, and you're getting communication about that committee throughout the interim, and you're also hearing from your caucus, whether you're Democrat or Republican, from the leaders of your caucus.

4:30

, and there's sometimes there's special sessions that happen.

4:34

I was in a special session in 2017 when we had a budget issue because of all the fires had been going on the previous year.

4:41

My big focus during the interim is always meeting with constituents and prepping for the Next session, and it's a time to really be able to reflect and slow down on deeper issues that you just don't have time to think about when you're in session.

4:57

Session moves at a million miles an hour.

4:59

I mean, my days at the session would start at 7 in the morning.

5:03

And very often I wouldn't be home until after 7 at night, and that would get longer as session went on toward the end of session.

5:09

You're literally on the floor sometimes till 10 p.m. So it's not a great time to learn and to try to digest more complicated information.

5:17

The time for that is definitely during the interim, between sessions.

5:21

There's a lot of encouragement during the session for people to make their voice heard, reach out to their legislators, testify.

5:29

Can you speak to the Benefit of doing that outside of the session as well?

5:33

Is that maybe a better time to connect?

5:36

I think that both have value.

5:38

A lot of the groundwork for those bills that you hear about during session have been laid during the previous two years.

5:44

There's a lot of work that happens behind the scenes well before session starts, and that may not be apparent to the public, right?

5:51

The press comes in and focuses on the legislature during those 90 days, but for built to be successful.

5:58

Usually there's work happening in the previous years where coalitions are being built, lots of different interest groups are being brought together.

6:05

There's strategy, there's a lot of back and forth about the bill draft and going back and forth with legislative staff and the legislator about what that bill's going to look like, trying to think through how is this going to be received, who's going to be against it, how powerful are they?

6:21

What do we need to do to change The bill to get more support.

6:24

A lot of that is happening well ahead of session, and with good reason, because, frankly, if you wait until sessions start to start that process, it's likely that bill's not going to be successful.

6:35

And then one session begins, then the question is, how do we get the votes for this?

6:40

How do we put the pressure on in committee?

6:43

So it's really important for people to turn out and testify or to make calls or write letters during Session, because that's when the voting actually happens.

6:52

So it's a both and I wouldn't say it's an either or.

6:55

You want to have the best possible bill going into session, that's been thought through, that's been drafted and redrafted and think through all the implications of that bill.

7:03

But then once you get to session, it's game time and you got to show up and you got to have the numbers.

7:09

So sometimes it happened a few times where I would agree to carry a bill, I'd get to my committee to present the bill.

7:15

And the people who'd really been asking for help and wanted me to carry this bill didn't turn out supporters, and that's the worst feeling.

7:23

That's so as a legislator, when you're, you're there and you're like, come on people, where are you?

7:28

It's super important to have those voices and support during session because that's when the legislators are actually voting, and you want to make sure that there's enough pressure for them to vote yes on the bill, or no, as the as the case may be.

7:39

I mean, it's awful important to turn out against bills if you are.

7:43

Read about them and their implications.

7:45

And when you were a legislator, where there's certain, you know, there are all these different ways to connect, right?

7:50

You can send an email, you can write a postcard, you can show up and testify.

7:54

We there certain kinds of engagement or styles of political engagement from constituents that land differently?

8:02

Yeah, I mean, the first thing I would say is not to wait until session to build a relationship with your representative.

8:08

I think in Montana, we have a really unique opportunity.

8:12

To engage with our legislators because each legislator has such a small district.

8:18

So when I was in the house, I only represented 10,000 people in the Senate, it's 20,000.

8:23

Most of the folks at the legislature have another job, or else they're retired, but they have a lot of other things going on in their lives.

8:30

This is just one aspect of their lives.

8:32

I spent 14 months knocking on doors before I served before my election, and Many of those doors I knocked 2 or 3 times.

8:40

The people knew me, they recognized me in the grocery store and drove my kids crazy, but very often someone would pull me aside in the aisle and want to talk to me about X, Y, or Z.

8:50

And that's something that you just get used to, and I think it's something we should embrace as Montanans, you know, that you can ask your legislator out to coffee.

8:57

I never turn down an invitation from a constituent to me.

9:01

I felt like that was my job, and so I made it work.

9:04

And then the nice thing is, once you've built that relationship, then during session, when your legislator is drinking from a fire hose, they're much more likely to respond to you if they know who you are, and they know what you're about, or they even call on you for expertise.

9:18

You know, if you start talking to them about a certain issue, they may even reach out to you and say, hey, what do you think about this?

9:23

Or do you want to come in and testify on this?

9:25

I mean, legislators are people.

9:26

They're people and they have specific interests, specific backgrounds.

9:30

They have experiences that may lead them to believe certain things and take certain positions, but their job is to listen to you and so you can Provide education for them because it's this crazy position where you are as a legislator voting on a myriad of issues.

9:48

I mean, an infinite number of issues every day.

9:51

It's just impossible to be an expert up there.

9:54

You really have to be a generalist, and so you really rely on all the resources that you can find to make sure you're making the right decisions.

10:01

What do you suggest, or what did you find helpful for communication across Lines of belief, whether in a committee meeting or Between an elected official and a citizen.

10:16

I did a lot of soul searching about that question, because I was in the minority.

10:21

So in order to get anything accomplished, you really have to be able to work with folks across the aisle, and we came to a few things.

10:27

One was really not taking on anyone else's drama, so I would really work to see a person as another person.

10:37

Not as a letter, not as a gender, not as a party, and not assume motive.

10:43

I think it's really important that we never assume we know where someone's coming from or why they're coming from, where they're coming from.

10:49

Give them the space to surprise you.

10:52

Too often I think people go up to the legislature and they take their position in opposing corners and just throw rocks at each other.

10:59

And there's a lot of pressure to do that, right?

11:00

There's a lot of political pressure to do that.

11:02

It's something that I had to deal with from the party all the time, the party wanting me to do these big gestures that might be really embarrassing or degrading to the other side, and ultimately would make it harder for me to actually accomplish what I was there to accomplish.

11:17

So, You know, just that basic respect that we might apply to anyone in our community of I don't know you.

11:24

I don't know what you stand for.

11:26

I don't know why you're taking the position you're taking.

11:28

I'm gonna come at this with curiosity and see if we can find something that we agree on, then start from a place of both have kids, you know, like, there's a starting place.

11:38

We love our kids, right?

11:40

We would do anything for our kids.

11:42

That's the point of common ground, and I don't mean to sound Pollyannaish.

11:45

I mean, also you gotta know when to fight.

11:46

There's a difference between compromising and being compromised, and you gotta know the difference.

11:52

And so that's it, that's an inside work thing.

11:56

The other piece of inside work that I did a lot, and this is gonna probably sound really weird, but it's true, and I did it all the time, cause I would sit in committee and I would be listening to someone who I just completely disagreed with what they were saying, and then they found it utterly offensive, and I'm do meta.

12:14

I would literally just sit there and do a little bit of like sending love and kindness to that person.

12:19

To just try to shift the energy between us and a lot of times it would.

12:24

I mean, not always.

12:25

There's a lot of people that just sort of ultimately just write off it's like we're never gonna agree and there's just too much baggage here, but more often than not, I found that with the majority of legislators, regardless of what side of the aisle they were on.

12:39

I could find common ground and the ability to communicate and an ability to like one another, even if we couldn't ultimately vote the same way on the same issues.

12:49

It seems like it's an interesting opportunity for people who, you know, it's very easy to just sort of be isolated to a social group or a family group that kind of reflects our own beliefs and biases and all that.

13:03

And that idea is for 90 days, sitting in rooms with people from different points of view, different political parties, different belief systems, and, and your job is to figure out how to communicate.

13:18

Together.

13:18

It's almost like a boot camp and interpersonal communication, and I would imagine, I would hope that some people come away from the session, having leveled up their social skills a little bit, that maybe they never met someone like you, they never met someone who believed or understood something a certain way.

13:35

Maybe there was someone in their home community that they just never could understand why they acted or believed the way they did.

13:41

I want to believe that that happens, that there's, do you think there's any validity to that?

13:47

Absolutely.

13:49

Because our work as as humans, and I think we're in a particularly trying time, but I think that's our work.

13:55

And again, it can sound Pollyanna-ish to say, but I think it's actually critically important that we figure out how to keep talking with one another, how to keep seeing one another as people, how to continue to understand or seek understanding with one another and figure out.

14:13

Where are the places of common ground and start to break down these barriers of distrust.

14:19

It's just so easy to caricature one another, and that's really dangerous because like this other thing that happens where we turn people into symbols and it makes Very, very easy to destroy someone who you see not as a human, but as a symbol of something.

14:35

That's a dangerous place to be.

14:37

And focusing on what we don't have in common versus focusing on what we do in a more densely populated part of the state, just by default you wind up surrounded by people who sort of share your worldview cause there's just a lot of them, you know, no matter what your worldview is, and then you come to a small community.

14:54

And you're all in the same spaces.

14:56

There's one school, your kids are in the same activities, and so you must learn to focus more on what you have in common than what you don't, or you're just gonna be lonely and angry all the time.

15:06

I do think that there's some work that happens there and it's easier to do sometimes in small communities, even if you're in a small community where you feel like you're Belief system is in the minority, you have that great opportunity to stop doing that otherizing and that kind of, well, they're like that and we're like this, you know, like you're just all in the same small space, much like, I suppose, being in the same meeting room with a committee, hour after hour, day after day, eventually you start to see the humanness in one another.

15:35

So you do, I mean, you're together all the time, you go through the fire together.

15:40

What would you say to someone, maybe somebody listening who is thinking they might wanna set their sights on Whether a run for state legislature or just getting involved in politics, what's your best advice for someone who's not as far along on their journey as you, but has had their interest piqued?

15:57

I would say relationships are critically important, and relationships make the world go round, and that is probably no more true anywhere than in the legislature.

16:07

All about relationships and building trust.

16:10

What's beautiful about running for office in Montana, it's not all about the money.

16:15

We still have campaign finance limits, which is awesome for someone like me who came in as completely the underdog.

16:23

Nobody thought I had a snowballed chance in hell of winning my race.

16:27

I ran against two older men who were much more established in the community than me, but I just started knocking doors six months before they even started thinking about it, and I got out and talked to people and I asked them what they were worried about.

16:44

I talked to them about their flower gardens, of how beautiful they were.

16:47

I talked to them about their biggest priorities.

16:49

I talked to them about their kids baseball games, or whatever they wanted to talk about really is about getting to know me.

16:54

It wasn't about the issues a lot of the time.

16:57

And so by the time I finally was on the ballot oring me.

17:02

So I think it's still about hard work here, it's still about relationships, it's still about communicating.

17:08

And that's really refreshing, cause I think it's just sort of and that's just not the case in a lot of other places, not only in the US but in the world, a lot of places you're groomed from a very young age, and you come from elite families and it requires a ton of money, and there's just no way to break into the system if you don't have.

17:24

Those advantages, but that's just not the case here, which is really exciting.

17:27

I mean, if you don't want to run, there's lots of opportunities to participate.

17:31

It's easy to think, it doesn't matter whether I call the legislature, call the main line or not.

17:36

I will tell you that it does matter.

17:38

Every person who calls.

17:40

That message that they leave gets put on a piece of paper, and that piece of paper gets put on the desks of the legislators for whom the message is for.

17:49

So if you call 5 representatives, they will all get those messages on their desks, and every day as a legislator, you walk on the floor and you have a stack of messages on your desk.

18:00

And you pay attention.

18:01

I would pull all the ones that were from Helena, and I would respond to every single one.

18:06

I was tracking what was being supported, what was being opposed, and, and, and, and in what numbers, and I know all legislators do that.

18:13

So that's a very simple thing you can do.

18:15

It may be that you don't have the time or the ability to Drive to Helena and testify in person on a bill.

18:21

You can absolutely call the main number on the website and you can make your opinion heard, and it will be delivered to the legislators.

18:30

So that's a small thing you can do, but it adds up and it's significant, and it's really, really important.

18:35

I, I think spending time.

18:37

At the Capitol during the session is really instructive and educational, even if you haven't necessarily gone up to testify or you don't really even know what you're doing.

18:46

It's just such an interesting place to be and soak it all in when you're in Helena and you're curious about the process.

18:52

They're so nice at the information desk, they'll give you a map and just sit and listen and watch and You can learn a lot just by being there, I think.

19:02

Yeah, literally anyone can walk through the Capitol doors at any given day, and you can sit in on committee meetings, you can sit in on floor sessions.

19:10

So there's a gallery above the floor where there's lots of seats, and you can go and just hang out and watch the bills being voted on and hear the debate on the floor.

19:20

I think it's also worth Understanding the rudimentary basics of government, and I would say don't be embarrassed if you don't.

19:27

Most people I think at this point in our history, don't necessarily know how a bill becomes law or what the three branches of government are.

19:36

but there's a reason that the process is so slow, and I think that can feel very frustrating and confusing if you don't understand that this is actually by design.

19:46

The founding fathers designed the process to be incredibly difficult to get any kind of legislative change through, because change is hard for a society to absorb at a very fast rate.

19:58

It's not meant to happen overnight, and a lot of times it'll take multiple sessions for a bill to get passed because the bill starts in one house, right?

20:07

We're a bi-caramal system, we have two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

20:12

Bill starts on one side, it has to go from committee, be voted on and pass out a committee, and then it has to have 2 votes on the floor, and then halfway through session, all the bills that started in the house, they go to the Senate and they start in committee there, and then they have to have 2 votes on the floor and then a 3rd vote, and then ultimately the governor can veto if he wants to.

20:31

So, you know, for a bill to become law, it's a very difficult process by design.

20:37

So that's one thing.

20:38

And the other thing to understand is that we have three branches of government that are meant to balance one another out.

20:44

So there's a judicial branch, the executive branch, and the legislative branch, and a legislative branch is meant to Make the laws.

20:53

The judicial branch is meant to interpret the laws, and the executive branch is meant to enforce the laws.

20:58

Now, unfortunately, we're seeing many examples where the executive branch has decided that they're the ones to make the laws, that's actually not constitutional.

21:06

And that's not really the what the purpose of the executive branch is.

21:09

So the legislative branch is the branch that's closest to the people.

21:14

There's a lot of representatives so that they can each represent a small group of people, and those people can have access to them.

21:21

Understanding those very simple facts, you can start to lean into the process a little bit more and see where you can fit in, but it's meant to be that.

21:30

That voters interact with their legislative branch.

21:34

That is where you have the easiest access.

21:36

I mean, think about it, how often do you get to interact with the judge or the Supreme Court or the governor, right?

21:41

Those aren't meant to be super accessible branches.

21:44

The branch that you're meant to have the most engagement with is the legislature.

21:47

Well, thank you so much for your time.

21:49

Yeah, thanks for the invitation.

21:52

A lot of fun to talk with you.

21:54

Mother Love is a project of Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, the Montana Coalition, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the health, safety, and well-being of Montana families in the 0 to 3 years of parenting.

22:04

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22:10

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22:16

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22:21

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22:26

Thanks for listening.