EP. 26 — CONVERSATIONS: FORMER REP. REID RIBBLE

(Transcripts may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.)

Weston Wamp: I'm Weston Wamp, and this is Swamp Stories, presented by Issue One.

Rep. Ribble: I think what the American people need to know is that in many respects, what they see and what they hear is a bit of a charade. It's like smoke and it just disappears. It's a bit unreal. It makes being a truth-teller really difficult.

Rep. Ribble: The cloud will pass, but history will record it. And I think there's going to be a lot of those folks who are going to wish they had that moment in time back, that are going to wish they could have cast a different vote. That they're going to wish they had a different courage profile in that moment.

Rep. Ribble: There's a whole machine behind this that's shoving it forward. Everybody telling you, boy, if you don't do this, you're going to lose. And you've got leadership, if you don't raise this money, you're going to lose. You got to be a team player or you're going to lose. The fact is if you really good member of Congress and you're a decent human being, you're likely to win.

Weston Wamp: Reid Ribble’s time in the U.S. Congress had a sort of Mr. Smith goes to Washington theme to it. He was a roofing contractor from a small town just outside of Green Bay, Wisconsin. He promised that he’d serve no more than three terms. And sure enough, he left office in January of 2017 after six years. And as you’re about to hear, Ribble is still a conservative Republican, but he has a very different perspective than many of his former colleagues on issues ranging from access to voting to the events that led to January 6th.

This is episode 26: A conversation with former Congressman Reid Ribble

Weston Wamp: I'm not going to blow any smoke because you wouldn't appreciate it. But I really respect former Congressman Reid Ribble. I'm grateful that you'd sit down virtually for this conversation and talk about some of the stuff that we've seen transpire and maybe some of what we can expect in the rest of 2021.

Rep. Ribble: Weston, I'm really glad to spend some time with you. Our admiration, it goes both ways.

Weston Wamp: Let's start here because I find your political career, which lasted not as long as a lot of people think of political careers, right? We brag about decade-long political careers, but you were a citizen legislator. How did you ever end up a candidate for Congress in the first place?

Rep. Ribble: I got frustrated. You know, the interesting thing is I was frustrated. This is going to sound archaic to somebody running the Millennial Debt Foundation, but I got interested in running for politics because of a $12.5 trillion debt and today it's $28 trillion. It took this nation from 1776 to 1886 to get our first $1 trillion national debt. They doubled that in three years after that. And when I went into Congress, it was just a little bit under $14 trillion and today it's $28 trillion. So in one decade, it doubled by that amount of money. It was that. That's what got me interested in it. And I just felt you need people in Congress willing, men and women from either party, willing to tell the American people the truth about our financial situation and also be willing to say no.

Weston Wamp: Being willing to tell the truth is an interesting way to talk about it. When we tell the truth in our personal lives it's a low bar. In politics telling the truth sometimes is not easy. It's not even necessarily good for your reelection. I always came from what I now call the Reid Ribble and Tom Coburn school of thought that if you say the hard things, ultimately actually it serves you well.

Rep. Ribble: It does. And people already know the hard things intrinsically. They actually understand it, but they don't necessarily want to hear it. But also, when it comes to telling the truth, I can tell you something that is truth, but it may not be truthful. And what I mean by that is I can say part of the truth, but by leaving out the fullness of the truth, you come to a different conclusion than you might have otherwise come to if you had had truthfulness. And politicians have become very, very good at dissecting the truth and only sharing the side of the truth that leads the listener to a specific conclusion that they want to have happen.

Weston Wamp: One thing I want to clarify early on here in this conversation because I think it'll be helpful to the listeners is that you as a former member of Congress, and we might get into this, but I think even as a member of Congress, expressed a lot of concern about President Trump's leadership style. And even at times, the policy. You though are not a moderate, wish-washy conservative. I mean, as I've gotten to know you, you are a very conservative business person. You had a very conservative voting record. You just think for yourself and there's a difference there. And I want the listeners to see this nuance or hear this nuance through our conversation.

Rep. Ribble: I'm a very conservative person and particularly when it comes to fiscal matters, I might be so conservative that some people say I've actually gone full circle because I would say that the Congress of the United States is kind of like a board of directors. And if they want to spend money, they need to go make the case to the American people why they want to spend money. Like President Biden wants to do this trillions of dollars of infrastructure bill, he needs to go make the case with the American people and then he also needs to be honest in how he's going to pay for it.

If you're going to spend this money, you should be honest with the American people and say, we have to pay for it, and here's my plan on how to do that. And then the American people can agree or disagree. You want to cut spending in this country, tax for it. American people might agree with you.

Weston Wamp: You entered Congress different than a lot of the people who I knew growing up. My dad was actually a bit like you in that he had never served in office before, ran, was elected as a commercial real estate broker. And it was all new. I think to those who've been around politics, maybe they were staffers or they were state legislators, the way that the game is played is not all that surprising. As you now have an opportunity to reflect back on your time there and the way that it works, the way that it's broken, the way that it could be made to work better, what should people know?

Rep. Ribble: I think that what they should know, and I was really naive about it. When I went into Congress, I was put in the budget committee and actually thought that Republicans and Democrats would sit down in a meeting and we would debate the pros and cons of how we're spending the American people's largesse. And at some point, we'd find whatever middle ground there was and we would pass a budget, but I never saw a member of the Democratic budget committee until we had our first markup on the Republican budget. And what the Democrats did is they came with a bunch of amendments that were all kind of “got you amendments” about giving tax breaks to people who were on jet airplanes, as opposed to offering an amendment that would actually fix any type of problem that society faced. On the Republican side, what few amendments were offered were the same thing, to just get the Democrats to take a tough vote so that it could become a political campaign down the road.

And then the chairman of the committee said every Republican has to vote for this bill. And here's what we were told, this budget will balance in 10 years and the president's budget, at the time President Obama, his budget never balanced. So look how great we are. But then next year, instead of having a budget that balanced in nine years, we created a new budget that balanced in 10 years. And the year after that, we created a new budget that balanced in 10 years. And the year after that, we created a new budget that balanced in 10 years. So whose budget never balanced. Neither budget ever balanced because if you keep shoving it up 10 years, you never get it to balance. And I think what the American people need to know is that in many respects, what they see and what they hear is a bit of a charade. It's like smoke and it just disappears. It's a bit unreal. It makes being a truth-teller really difficult.

Weston Wamp: There's a lot of talk about reforming democracy or making democracy work for everybody. And of course, on the Republican side of the aisle, I always grew up hearing our form of government described more appropriately as a democratic republic. Forget how you want to define it exactly. The question I'm asking about is the system itself. The American people seem to feel like the system is broke, from a fiscal perspective, it is broke. The political system, a lot of people feel is broken. And when you poll the American people, Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly feel like money has too much influence in politics, that lobbyists have too much influence. H.R.1 is the Democrats' solution.

When we get beyond, let's say that H.R.1, which became S.1, fails on party lines as it's expected to by a lot of people, you move on, is there a place for Republicans and Democrats to meet at the water's edge on an issue like for example, dark money. Now, dark money, sort of a catch-all phrase for money that isn't disclosed. And this is a term that's been used for decades. It's looked different. It's functioned different throughout our history, but there's a very specific way that it works in the kind of post-Citizens United world. And it's that 501(c)(4)s pass money to super PACs and there's nondisclosure. One of the reasons I use the phraseology, the water's edge is because McConnell and Schumer equally used this funnel or loophole in order to disguise or to hide some donors. Now, if you donate directly to a super PAC, federal law says that if you, Reid Ribble, give to a super PAC, then you're going to show up in the disclosure. But if you start an organization or an LLC, you can evade I think the intent of the law.

Rep. Ribble: Yeah, for sure, but I don't think there's ever going to be a compromise because both sides benefit from it. The Democrats pretend that they don't benefit from the lack of disclosure, but the FLC [inaudible] have a super PAC and give money, but they don't tell which of their members they've confiscated that money from. And so big labor is buried all throughout blue donations. I mean, just constantly buried there. And then on the right, you've got their own collection of super PACs. The reason that's never going to get fixed is because members of Congress are addicted to that system. And I'm talking about at the leadership level, they're addicted to that system because that's how leaders advance in Congress. Is by using a system of going out and helping raise that money.

And by raising that money, they can then lord it over somebody. I remember talking to Congressman Gallagher when he was running for office and he was telling me about leadership coming in and doing a fundraising for him. And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. They are not doing a fundraiser for you, they're doing a fundraiser for them because you will then become beholden to them. And when they need a vote, they're going to remind you that they came to Green Bay to do this fundraiser. And so true independence would be when all of that stops and leadership PACs inside Congress stop. And just the American people individually can make individual contributions to whatever candidate they choose to make them as opposed to systems like super PACS or political parties and whatnot.

Weston Wamp: I want to talk to you about what the Republican Party, the party I've been affiliated with from adolescence on, the party that you served in Congress as a member of, and we'll talk about some of the challenges I think that our party's had with the truth. You talked about the truth at the opening. I think to set the stage or to give the listeners some context, you did have an interesting relationship with our former president. You've told me a story before that I'm going to give you the opportunity to tell, or to tell a less colorful version of, about one of your first encounters with President Trump at a House Republican Conference meeting. I think it would set the stage appropriately, or even a part of that story, for the fact that you didn't drink the Kool-Aid so to speak from the early days like some people in our party did.

Rep. Ribble: The reality is in confronting candidate Trump, I encouraged him in the most powerful words I could come up with to stop being so Trump-like. That the reality is that if you build an entire system around fighting with one another, the fighting will never end because the fighting is the act. And what happened is he didn't pay attention. I encouraged him not to say much else. I didn't think that Secretary Clinton was all that strong of a candidate and that virtually anybody would beat her on the right. And in fact, that's what happened, but I really encouraged him to just kind of back off from that constant barrage of criticism and calling people names and making the campaign into a carnival. I just didn't think it was beneficial for civil society to lead in that manner.

Weston Wamp: In Wisconsin, I've noticed, and it may just be the realities of a purple state, there is a certain amount of respect and deference given to those who are in a different party than you are. And a lot of times in a state like Tennessee, where a supermajority may control things in the state House, we've gotten further and further from that. I try not to use hyperbole because the country’s been plenty divided. We fought a civil war. We've been through nasty stuff and we can get through a bout of partisanship. But it's still worth pointing out that maybe after the events of January 6th, we have almost no bipartisanship that's apparent from this side of Washington at all. How do we get back there? I know one of the staples of your time in Washington is you made real friends who you happen to disagree with on policy, but they were your friends and you tried to work constructively with them.

Rep. Ribble: Yeah, tried to work constructively with them. And the only way that you can actually work constructively with somebody where you might have a philosophical disagreement is to have literally built into your psyche or into your heart, your soul, whatever you might call it, this intrinsic respect for each other. I never viewed anybody, even the most progressive folks in Congress, I didn't view them as anti-American. I didn't view them as traitors. I didn't view them as anything other than representing the voices of the people that sent them to Washington, D.C. to speak for them. And if you start from a position of respectfulness, you have a tendency to be able to hear what they're saying and be able to ask those questions like, well, tell me why you think that will work. Why do you believe that that's the best solution? And you can pull back the layers of that onion and until you begin to get to its smaller inner parts where you start to have places of agreement, and then you can build something back on top of it.

But until you're willing to be respectful at the front end, to open up the dialogue and get to someone's real understanding of a solution, all you have left is the fight. And I often described it as it feels like many of my Republican colleagues have got a paper sword and they back themselves in the right corner of the room. And many of my Democrat colleagues have their paper sword and they back themselves in the left part of the room. Remember the days when you were a kid and you'd have the gift wrapping and there was that cardboard core in the middle, you'd make a sword out of it, that's kind of like Congress. And the folks on the left are in their corner and the folks on the right are in their corner and they're flailing their paper swords around pretending to be fighting, but never actually landing a blow and never really solving a problem. And so what I wanted everybody to do is, let's put our toy swords down for a minute and let's try to understand each other at a real core American level, who you are. Because the disagreements between left and right have been in existence since the 1700s.

Weston Wamp: Who do you respect most in Congress today? Who do you watch on a weekly basis to see what they say about current events or bills that are before Congress?

Rep. Ribble: Yeah, I think it's natural for me to say Congressman Gallagher. He certainly is one of the people that have garnered my respect. But I respect folks on both sides of the aisle. I think here in Tennessee, Jim Cooper's become a dear friend of mine and a really pragmatic member of Congress. I certainly respect Joe Manchin. He's in a tough spot, but all of a sudden, what we found out is that the true power broker in the U.S. Senate today is its most moderate member. And so I respect Senator Manchin. And interestingly enough, those are two Democrat members that I just mentioned that I have high regard for. But I've also got very high regard for Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma because I view him as someone willing to speak the truth to people. I think there's a lot of men and women in Congress that I respect and I think are trying to do the very best they can in difficult circumstances.

But I wish that more of them would speak some truth to power, particularly about what happened on January 6th. That was a real turning point for the nation. It's the first presidential election in our country's history that there was not a "peaceful" transfer of power. And listen, I don't think everybody that showed up on January 6th was a hooligan. I think there were some really patriotic Americans that came because they believed what the president had been telling them for months, but they also didn't break into the Capitol. There were probably 300, 400 really bad actors there and I hope they throw them all in prison, the bad actors.

Weston Wamp: Let's talk about what led to January 6th. There were months of distortions and allegations and this is really before November. I mean, if you were paying close attention, the President of the United States, then Donald Trump, was seeding what would then grow into a massive fraud narrative by sowing doubt about the reliability and the security of vote by mail. Some of it was kind of crazy. Most of it was not based in reality. You represented Wisconsin in Congress, voting by mail is not that big of a deal in Wisconsin. In some states, it's a foreign concept. And I think that the president, he jumped on that. How does the Republican party reckon with the untruthfulness that we got really tied up in, I think both leading up to the election and then it got much more dangerous certainly after the election?

Rep. Ribble: Yeah. It's a tough spot because it's always easier to scam somebody than it is to convince somebody they've been scammed. So what happened was for months and months before the election, the president was saying if he loses it's rigged. It's because of this, it's because of that, because it was rigged. It was a phony election. Then after the election, he went to rallies and kept pounding this. Now 60 court cases didn't seem to matter. No evidence. None of those things seem to matter. Secretaries of state and Republican governors didn't seem to matter. He just kept pounding that message, telling people what they wanted to hear because you wanted to believe that the rest of the country agrees with you. And so it's easy to pass that on. The problem was it wasn't true. The election was secure.

Attorney General Barr who was really Trump's lead guy for many years there, very pro-President Trump, came out and said that the election was secure. There wasn't enough fraud to turn this election over. The Department of Homeland Security said there wasn't fraud, that we had a secure election. All the evidence was that we had a secure election and I think Republicans, members of Congress, elected officials at state and federal level, they need to start telling Republicans the truth and they need to start talking differently about the election. Otherwise, they're going to appear to be on the wrong side and let the left take the message of "suppression" and run with it. That's how you lose elections. Republicans are wrong on this issue. They ought to be telling the American people that we want to make it easy to vote.

In fact, we want to make it the easiest thing in the world to do. If you're a legal voter, we want every single voter to cast a vote. If it's by mail, do it by mail. If it's a ballot box, do it there. If you prefer to cast your ballot in public on Election Day, do it that way, but we want you to vote. On the same hand, they also need to say, we want to make it very difficult and painful to cheat. If you're going to cheat, that's going to be bad. Let's make it easy to vote, make it hard to cheat. And that becomes the core message and then you shut up.

Weston Wamp: That's common sense messaging. I mean, that was great. I haven't heard a Republican talk that clearly about voting this year. Why do we make it so difficult? Why do we get stuck somewhere between conspiracy theories and stuff that really doesn't, at the end of the day, matter all that much?

Rep. Ribble: The sheep are leading the shepherd. At some point leaders have to be leaders and say, no, that's not what happened. There's no evidence that that happened. And what you believe about it doesn't really matter because those things didn't happen. And listen, Dominion Voting Systems and these companies, there's a lot of lawsuits and people are going to lose a lot of money because they were on the wrong side of history on this thing. I mean, we want to have confidence and want Republicans and Democrats alike to have confidence, whether they win or lose. Sometimes you win an election, sometimes you lose an election, but you need to have confidence that it was fairly governed.

Weston Wamp: I know with certainty that just like your successor did, had you been in Congress, you would have voted to count, we started misusing the word certify, but to count the electoral votes on January 6th. There's been some talk in Washington that some Democrats refuse, I mean, Democrats in Congress refuse to work, at least for the time being, with their Republican colleagues who voted, effectively they tried to object to already certified votes. I mean, it's one of the challenges here is that Congress couldn't do what it was trying to do, but they voted to object anyway. How do you think the people who objected, it's the majority of Republicans, how do you think they will be seen by history? Will this cloud pass?

Rep. Ribble: Yeah. Americans have a really short memory, so the cloud will pass, but history will record it. And I think there's going to be a lot of those folks who are going to wish they had that moment in time back. That are going to wish they could have cast a different vote. That they're going to wish they had a different courage profile in that moment. They just need more time to get there.

Weston Wamp: I could have asked this question before that one, but it actually applies to where we're headed. It may apply to 2022 more. So a lot of the president's complaints leading up to November were about vote by mail. He would conflate terms. At times, I wondered if he knew the difference, because he would talk about universal vote by mail, which insinuates the government is sending a ballot that's unsolicited.

Rep. Ribble: You mean like the very conservative state of Utah does?

Weston Wamp: Right. Fair enough, right? I mean, Utah does that, but then I think what he was really talking about was no-excuse absentee voting, which is more like what they do in Georgia or Wisconsin. And now you've got quite a bit of pushback on the security of voting by mail in state legislatures. It's interesting, I interviewed a county clerk in Missouri a couple of months ago on the podcast and he said one of the ironies here is that it's actually easier in his estimation to detect fraud by mail than it is otherwise. So when you talk to operators, you get a different perspective quickly, but what are your thoughts on vote by mail? I mean, I never would have imagined that it could become such a hot topic and it is polarizing among Republican Party faithful.

Rep. Ribble: I'm having a hard time understanding it. I'm a big fan of no-excuse mailed-in voting because more people vote. We've had a historic vote this time due to the pandemic, but hopefully, the American people learned something about that. That we can get better civic engagement with it. And the reason I'm a big fan of no-excuse voting is why in the hell should I have to tell any government person or bureaucrat what I'm doing on Election Day? What business is it of theirs? Why do they get to dictate to me how I get to vote or you have to vote at this exact precise moment in time? Where do they get the right to do that? There's no constitutional right for the government to know what I'm doing on Election Day and I shouldn't have to tell them what I'm doing on Election Day. Maybe I went to work. Maybe I wanted to go swimming with my grandkids. I don't know. I don't need to explain to them why I'm not available to vote on Election Day. Give me my ballot and let me vote. I'll sign it before you. If you want me to show you my ID before you give me my ballot, I'm even okay with that.

Weston Wamp: You were elected and reelected in a state where this is the way elections are run.

Rep. Ribble: I voted by mail frequently when I was an elected official.

Weston Wamp: Well, for that matter, so did President Trump, but that's a different point. But you're serious, there was just no concern as a candidate and a candidate for reelection. You never had fraud concerns. You never had security concerns of voting by mail.

Rep. Ribble: I never did. You want to know why? Here's why. Because I believe that the American people take it serious. I believe that the American people already take it serious. I have a tendency to trust my fellow citizens without regard, whether they voted for me or didn't vote for me. I trust them to do the right thing. I was never worried about it, never once. And if the State of Wisconsin decided to send a ballot to every single voter, I would have been cheering them on because what that did is it put the onus on me as a candidate to go out and make my case.

Weston Wamp: Really. So you're okay with the idea of what is usually referred to as universal vote by mail. Where the government would send a ballot to everybody. Now they would obviously have to choose to fill it out and return it.

Rep. Ribble: Yeah. Right. It's pretty darn hard to cheat that system. It really is. And the fact of the matter is it also forces candidates to go out and do their job, to engage with the public and tell them why they should vote for me versus somebody else.

Weston Wamp: I don't mean to belabor the point, but I'm confused. I'm hearing you make these arguments. I don't disagree with you. Of course, I've grown up in Tennessee, which is not a universal vote by mail state. Why is it do you suspect that Republicans act, they may not be, I know the difference in Washington, you don't always really believe what you say, but why is it right now Republican messaging that vote by mail is this big threat? And universal vote by mail would be the end of the Republican Party if you believe what some of the people are saying.

Rep. Ribble: I'm going to say something that will make me less popular than I'm already. That is because they don't believe in what they believe. They don't believe in what they say. If you as a conservative, if you as a Republican believe you will have the high road on the debate about a particular issue of this or that that's important to the voter, why would you not want every voter to vote? If you look at the registration numbers of voters, there are more Democrats in this country than Republicans. And so they don't believe they can actually win those Democrats over to vote for them. And that's just not true. I was able to do it. Mike Gallagher is able to do it. Most members of Congress outperform the top of the ticket. So how does that happen when the top of the ticket is the party leader?

The fact of the matter is there's all kinds of Democrats that voted for me and independents that voted for me because for whatever reason they decided that I was the better candidate in that moment of time or that they trusted me to be their proxy in Washington. And so I had a lot of confidence in what I believed in and what I was saying in part because I spent a lot of time listening to voters and listening to what they have to say. So I didn't fear voters, I respected them.

Weston Wamp: For some reason what you've said there reminds me of one of the real challenges. And this is not just a challenge. I was going to refer to it as a challenge of conservatism, but the truth is it is a challenge of progressivism just as much, and that is the threat of populism. I think we're in such a populous moment that we don't actually often hear the sort of deepest gut instinct of those who represent us, but we hear what they think the people might want to hear. And right now there's a lot of fear-mongering on these subjects.

Rep. Ribble: That's core populism. That's populism right at its very heart. I'm not a populist. I think populism is really a bad system because it functions by mob rule in many respects, almost like a pure democracy. And so just give the people whatever they want. They want $2,000, give them that. Just tell them what they want to hear. Just pander to them as much as possible. It's an excuse for leaders not to lead. And I think this country needs leaders right now. It needs bold leadership.

Weston Wamp: There's a lot of people, I'm not sure that they've spent a whole lot of time studying American history or the Constitution, but they do think of everything in politics as 50% plus one. If the American people, 50% plus one of them think that we ought to have free bubblegum, then they believe that's how the country ought to function. I feel like that's indicative of a real lack of civics education. Do you believe a lack of civics education is part of our problem?

Rep. Ribble: I do. I absolutely do. I think in some districts, civics is taught in eighth grade and I think that's a good place to put it, but then I also think you ought to do it again when you're a senior in high school. I think civics needs to be taught as a mandatory class in all schools, public and parochial, right on the last year before these young men and women become of voting age. They need to understand what the Constitution says, what it limits. The Constitution was written to protect the minority from the majority, not so that the majority could lord it over the minority. Political parties made that system.

Weston Wamp: Where do you think we're headed? What does the rest of 2021 hold? The cycles get longer and longer. A congressional cycle, you've already got people running for Congress in primaries that will be at the ballot in August of 2022. The presidential cycle, if you pay attention to who's making visits to Iowa, maybe it's already begun. Where are we headed?

Rep. Ribble: I wish I knew where we were headed, Weston. I don't know, and I'm not typically prone, I'm mostly an optimist, but I'm discouraged by what I see. I wish that there was a better delineation between left and right, but because of populism, there's been a merging of left and right because there is a populist element of liberalism and a populist element of conservativism, but it's the same. And so I'm very concerned about where we're headed because shaking free of populism is difficult. But if there's ever been a moment in U.S. history where our global connections, I didn't say entanglements, I said our global connections are necessary to a free people, it's in this moment. But yet we talk as if having partnerships around the globe is a bad thing.

Weston Wamp: You've got children who are about my age. I fear that we have gotten so good and so passionate at turning on each other, especially in the pandemic year, which has now been a bit more than a calendar year, we have missed developments around the world or we've not paid adequate attention to developments around the world that could have generational implications.

Rep. Ribble: Here in the U.S., we look at it in two or four-year increments. Two years for members of the House, four years for the presidency, six years for the Senate. It's a very, very short-term myopic view. And in a capitalist system that actually works. And because we were a representative republic, there was a correction that would take place if you pivoted too far. But now what we have is a pendulum that swinging far-left then far-right and far-left then far-right. And I'll tell you something if you get rid of the filibuster in the Senate, it's going to be even worse because there'd be no reason for any side to find common ground. They'll just lord it over the other while talking about bipartisanship.

Weston Wamp: All right, the last thing I want to talk about and it's funny, it's connected to what you just said. Because Raphael Warnock won and Jon Ossoff won, we went from what felt in November and December like a presumed Republican majority, divided government, to a hard pendulum swinging I think as the days have worn on you realize that Joe Manchin is as we've discussed, a very unusual Democrat. But what we've seen is the value, literally and figuratively, of one seat in the U.S. Senate, particularly when we're willing to game the system and use reconciliation however we can in the most effective way to serve our own political purposes.

I think this ties back to an issue I've been fascinated with since my father was an ally of John McCain in the 1990s. Campaigns in America require a lot of money. Money's always been in politics. Can't take it out of politics, but it's gotten insane. And that runoff in Georgia, which in hindsight this may actually be some sort of a discount if you think about it tilted American government, but it was a half a billion dollar runoff. I don't know if you've heard that number, but there was a half a billion dollars spent only in the runoff in Georgia, which is not a small state, but it's not one of our biggest states. It feels to me just having grown up, literally, my first memories in life are on the campaign trail in congressional politics, I feel like the money that's fueling American campaigns is somewhat unsustainable. How do you feel about just the state of American campaigns, knowing that the balance of power, and it may very well be this way in 2022 again, it could come down to one race in one small state?

Rep. Ribble: It could, and that number that you cited is about 10 times the amount of money it cost Ronald Reagan to win the White House the first time. And that was a national presidential race. So you can see where it's gone in 50 years. I don't believe it is sustainable. And I believe that at some point members of Congress themselves will get fed up with the difficulty of having to just do nothing but fundraise because Senator Warnock is up in two more years, so he's not going to be doing a lot of governing because he's going to have to be back in Georgia raising money to try to win his reelection in two years from now. And at some point you would think members of Congress would revolt from this system. And there's a couple of things, easy things, that could be done.

You could simply just say, whatever committees you are on in the House or Senate, and it's much harder for senators because they're in a lot of committees, you cannot raise money from the industries that you're overseeing on the committee of jurisdiction. So if you're on the agriculture committee in the House of Representatives, you can't go raise money from people in agriculture. If you're on the financing committee, you can't go raise money from the banks and stock market and what have you. And you start to pull that money back because I think that would actually hold constitutional muster.

Weston Wamp: And maybe we get to a point, and we're not all that far out, in these races that become completely overwhelmed with toxic advertising. I do think there comes a point where people begin to turn it off. So you can spend money, but with diminishing returns.

Rep. Ribble: I think that's going on right now, Weston. And that's been going on for a while. I think by the time Election Day comes or people can start to vote, they're just anxious to vote so they can completely tune it out. The American people are mostly fed up with this. It's politicians who believe, and they believe it falsely that they must be married to raising this money. You don't need to spend as much money as you had. I won my first race against an incumbent who had way more money than me, had big labor pushing him. I spent, I don't know, a third of what they spent and I still won. Money matters, but it only matters to the degree that you get your message heard. Beyond that, it's just noise.

Weston Wamp: The last few days have actually been the period of time coming out of an election cycle when members of Congress are flexing their muscles to show how much money they raised, which is just kind of wild. I mean this is the first fundraising period after an election. I remember when my father, after five terms, six terms, built up, if my memory serves me right, about $1 million in his account and it was a relatively safe seat. He wasn't going to be beat in all likelihood, but this seemed like a monstrous amount of money and he was fairly influential and he was an appropriator. There are several, some rank and file of Congress, who raised $3 million in the first quarter, members of the House. I cringe when I see how proud they are, first of all. But it takes time. I mean, I do wonder now if we're coming up on a moment where just the raw amount of time that members of Congress spend fundraising is not helpful to the system. Maybe the pandemic gave them more time on their hands.

Rep. Ribble: Yeah. But in some cases, and I know one particular member of Congress from Georgia that raised $3 million. She raised that money from notoriety, not from hard work. And so there's this incentive to get on TV all the time. There's this incentive to say the most outrageous things and be the craziest rhetoric because you get news coverage and there's enough people that'll write $50 checks and say “yeah, go get them.” What's really unfortunate is the more pragmatic members, the more rational members who don't do that, they're the ones that have to spend all the time away from work to raise the money. And they're enticed to pick up on that language because it works. When it stops working, they'll stop doing it.

Weston Wamp: Can we make the last point here that you don't have to play that game, right? I mean, you're a guy who served the three terms you said you would and then you left and you don't have to play the game. I mean, we always talk about the dues system you're expected to raise a certain amount of money for your party's congressional committee. And most members do their best to do it. But the members who refuse, like I remember I was in Peter King, now former Congressman Peter King's office, and he said I just never did it. They kind of needed me to get reelected in New York and I just never did it. And I feel like we just need more people in Congress who will be their own arbiters of what's right and what's true, and not even mess with the games.

Rep. Ribble: Yeah, I completely agree because they bought into a bit of a fallacy that you have to raise that much money. There's maybe 45, 50 districts in the U.S. that are truly competitive. Everybody else is going to win. I mean, 95, 97, 99%, depending on what election you look at, incumbents win. People are a little worried about primaries, but that's all fake. You shouldn't be worried about primaries. Go and do your job. You don't need to spend all that time. You need to be a good member of Congress and show your value. 85% of the people just want you to go do your job.

Good policy ends up being good politics. There's a whole machine behind this that's shoving it forward. Starting with your chief of staff and folks that are beholden to you for their job, but also, all the media people and political consultants, and everybody telling you, boy, if you don't do this, you're going to lose. If you don't do this, you're going to lose. And you've got leadership, if you don't raise this money, you're going to lose. You got to be a team player or you're going to lose. The fact is if you’re a really good member of Congress and you're a decent human being, you're likely to win.

Weston Wamp: Well, Reid, this has been fun. Thank you.

Rep. Ribble: It has been fun.

Weston Wamp: For the good of the order, do you have anything to close with?

Rep. Ribble: To the degree that the listener is willing to do this, I will give you the advice that I give myself every single night and that is to please don't be as cynical as you are. The fact of the matter is the American system has proven itself to be faithful to its citizens for 200 plus years, and it will continue to do so.

Weston Wamp: On the next episode of Swamp Stories, we’re going to examine the important role of the Federal Election Commission. We’ll explore why its recent dysfunction has contributed to chaos in federal elections, and we’ll look into how it can be fixed.

Weston Wamp: Thanks for listening to Swamp Stories, presented by Issue One, the country's leading political reform organization that unites Republicans, Democrats, and Independents to fix our broken political system. Please subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends. Even better, rate and review it on iTunes to help us reach more listeners. You can find out more at swampstories.org. I'm your host Weston Wamp. A special thank you to executive producer, Ethan Rome, senior producer Evan Ottenfeld, producer Sydney Richards, and editor Parker from ParkerPodcasting.com. Swamp Stories was recorded in Tennessee, edited in Texas and can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.

EP. 26 — CONVERSATIONS: FORMER REP. REID RIBBLE

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