EP. 28 — CONVERSATIONS: FORMER REP. DONNA EDWARDS

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

Rep. Donna Edwards: When members are only in town three, three and a half days a week, and they don't have that time to get to know each other because those three and a half days, they have to put in fundraising, committee assignments, caucus meetings. When do you have time to reach across the aisle and say, "Hey, do you want to get together?"

I think we've discovered that we have a lot of people who believe in democracy, who believe in the United States as being at the forefront of that. So, I'm actually optimistic that we can return some sort of balance and that the majority of people are where we are.

People have such a completely wrongheaded view about what it is that members of Congress actually do. And part of that is the fault of members not really communicating with their constituencies and at least that gives people a better perspective of how to be engaged and what makes a difference in terms of contacting their representatives.

I believe in public financing of elections, because I've always said, if we don't own them, then somebody else does. And so, I'd rather have a system that reinforces small donor contributions and validates democracy. And I don't think the system that we have now delivers a better democracy.

Weston Wamp: Donna Edwards took one of the most unlikely paths to Congress, where she served for nearly a decade, and was also a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maryland. Today she remains an influential voice in progressive politics as an analyst for NBC and MSNBC and as a columnist for the Washington Post. 

Recently, she’s played a leading role on Issue One’s National Council on Election Integrity, where she worked with bipartisan luminaries — former government and military officials and civil society leaders — to protect our elections in 2020 and beyond. 

Our conversation spans from gerrymandering in Maryland to the RV trip that she took across America alone after the 2016 election to better understand the rise of Donald Trump. 

This is Episode 28: A conversation with former Congresswoman Donna Edwards 

Weston Wamp:  Congresswoman, thanks for joining us. This is just the fourth of our conversation series within Swamp Stories and appreciate your efforts and service to our country. And thanks for spending some time with us today.

Rep. Donna Edwards: Thanks. It's great to be with you. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Weston Wamp: It's always different in the case of every single member of Congress. So, let's just start here. How'd you ever get involved in politics and as a follow-up, what would 15 year old Donna think about the former congresswoman and NBC analyst that you are today?

Rep. Donna Edwards: Such an interesting question. First of all, the 15, 16 year old me actually had something placed in my yearbook that said, “one day I want to be in politics and I want to be a lawyer.” So, the 15 year old in me envisioned this, but it took me another 40 plus years before I was really in politics. And I describe myself sometimes actually as an accidental politician, because when I ran, I actually ran in a Democratic primary. Challenged a long time incumbent which is just not done. And it's because I looked around and I asked around and nobody would run against this guy. And so, at the last minute, I think it was on Good Friday, I marched myself into the board of elections, filled out a couple of pieces of paper, wrote a check for a $100 and became a candidate for Congress. That's it.

Weston Wamp: The rest is history. Now, what you wouldn't know about me because in politics, if you don't win, it doesn't really matter. In my twenties, I ran in a Republican primary against my incumbent congressman. And so, I know how unusual it is. I know how rare it is for incumbents to lose. I got more than 49% of the vote, so I almost pulled it off, but it's one of the things in your background I find so fascinating. We may end up talking about gerrymandering here, but here's a question that you may not have gotten often, or maybe you have because you're the rare Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who runs against a long time incumbent and wins. Should we, short of a scenario where all races are or all districts are competitive across party lines, should we see more contested primaries than we do?

Rep. Donna Edwards: Well, it's interesting because I actually lost my first race. When I ran, I ran basically a three month campaign and I lost by about 49% and I decided on that day that I was going to run again. The primary came up really early in a presidential year and I ran and won and beat the guy by like 23 points. It was literally a 25 point swing in the race from one election to the other. So, I mean and I've thought a lot about this gerrymandering because I used to describe my district as like ear muffs, right? So, you had two big blobs on either side and then a strip that was a highway across the middle to connect them.

And I often wondered, and I'm sure people in the district wondered because they asked me about what they had in common with this part of the district versus the other part of the district and was very frustrating for them. And because I really didn't come out of the Democratic Party machine, I was never really part of that. And so, I wasn't wedded to this notion that districts didn't need to be competitive. And I mean, that went against the grain a little bit and somewhat got me into trouble in the redistricting that happened in 2010 after the 2010 cycle, because I ended up siding with the Republican governor, Larry Hogan, opposing the gerrymandering of the districts and Democrats across the board were just so ticked off at me.

Weston Wamp: Well, that's a position, frankly, that's aged well. I mean, I think there's a lot of people who've watched Republicans primarily take advantage of majorities in state legislatures in the last decade, especially. But you learn in Maryland that Democrats have been pretty effective at drawing lines. My dad represented part of East Tennessee in Congress for 16 years and a few years in his service, he had replaced a Democrat and really flipped the district to be pretty conservative and Democrats who then held the, this is in the late '90s, then held the Tennessee State Legislature, they, what I call reverse gerrymandered my father, where they basically said, "Okay, we're unlikely to beat you. So, we're going to take a few of your Democratic leaning counties." And I just think there's a lesson in humility there that a lot of people even engaged in a lot of the gerrymandering debates today may not realize, both parties aren't exactly innocent, are they, when we talk about gerrymandering, but I think it's another reason that the reforms ought to be bipartisan also.

Rep. Donna Edwards: No, I agree with that. I mean, here was my concern in our redrawing the lines, and it was that in one particular county, there were three distinct minority groups that collectively formed a majority. And what Democrats were trying to do is they basically took each one of those groups and drew them out so that they couldn't elect collectively a person of color in that district. So, they put Asians in one district, and Black people in another district, and Latinos in another district, and it effectively took what was a majority representation collectively and turned them into minority representations. And I just thought that was really unfair.

Weston Wamp: Tell me about representing part of the D.C. area in the U.S. Congress. Now I was fascinated, our family fortunately, my sister and I were able to grow up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and have a pretty normal life. I always felt bad for the members of Congress who had to fly back to Utah or California, but what's it like effectively, representing the home turf there?

Rep. Donna Edwards: Well, I have to tell you, you're on call all the time. During the week I would see some of my colleagues and they'd be doing movie nights or other kinds of things socially. And I would be at an Eagle Scout event or at a Girl Scout event or at a church gathering or something. And the funny thing is that because people in the Washington area really pay attention to Congress and what's going on, you have so many people who actually work in the executive branch, I would say, "Well, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make X, Y, or Z meeting." And they would say, "Oh no, you can. If Congress gets out at this particular time, it'll take you this long to get to this part of the district." I mean, they would basically map it out for me. 

So I think those are challenges that other members don't face. Another funny thing is that I mentioned that so many people work in the executive branch and I’d do a town hall meeting and I remember this one time doing this town hall meeting, and a question came up about the budget and I'm answering. I mean, I'd have to answer all kinds of these things. Questions about foreign policy, which most members never get in their districts, I got all the time. And so, here I am answering this fiscal question, this budget question, and it turns out that the guy who was asking the question was the staff director for the budget committee. And I'm like, "How fair is that?" What other member of Congress would actually get that? At one time it was a guy was the architect of social security who asked me a question about social security. A guy who had negotiated the first START Treaty, and he's asking me a question about foreign policy. I mean, I felt totally outmatched.

Weston Wamp: Yeah, this is set up. We'll get to a few issues that are more current, but I think it's often, it makes those conversations richer to hear about how we've gotten to where we are in part of your story. Just after you got to Washington, you had the unusual experience, and historic one, of protesting alongside John Lewis. Tell me that story.

Rep. Donna Edwards: Well, first of all, I think anytime anyone could be beside John Lewis in a thing, then it was a good thing to do. I had been working on in my work around human rights and work that actually predated my time in Congress and the issue of the genocide that was happening in Sudan in the Darfur region. And just the horrible — if you can call it governance — but you can certainly call it an autocracy of al-Bashir and his government and what was happening to the people there.

And it had reached this real crescendo and it was time for the world to act and to pay attention to that and to bring some democracy to the region. And so I, along with John Lewis and a couple of other members of Congress, went in front of the embassy of Sudan, it's right there on Massachusetts Avenue. And we knew that if you stand on a part of the step leading to the embassy, that that's their territory and that you'd be arrested. And so, we were arrested together. I mean, it kind of freaked my mother out a little bit, but when I told her I was with John Lewis, she thought it was okay.

Weston Wamp: Generally speaking, if you were doing anything with John Lewis, all of our mothers would give us a pass. Speaking of John Lewis, as a boy, I had the great privilege of knowing him and he was always so kind and my dad and he represented districts that were just about an hour and a half apart. He was an optimist till the very end it seemed like. Our politics are pretty nasty, they're very divisive. Sometimes they're just straight up hateful. What are you optimistic about?

Rep. Donna Edwards: Well, I mean, I think that over this last couple of years, and certainly this year in 2021, I think we've discovered that we have a lot of people who believe in democracy, and who believe in the United States as being at the forefront of that. And so, I'm actually optimistic that we can return some sort of balance and that the majority of people are where we are, and sometimes a lot of focus gets placed on minorities of our population and it turns out that we need to talk a little bit more about the 75% instead of talking about the 25%.

Weston Wamp: I've been reading a book by a guy named Arthur Brooks. You may be familiar with Arthur Brooks. He used to run AEI, he's a professor at Harvard now, and he writes about contempt. And I think he's been speaking across the country about contempt, even predating the pandemic, and how effectively the only thing that can combat it is love. Earlier this year, our country went through — and Congress particularly — a really ugly, historically ugly moment. When you think back to your time in Congress, it was a pretty divisive era you served in Congress. Were there some relationships that you had or maybe still have across the aisle that were more clearly defined by love than the contempt that I think people out across the country often associate with Congress?

Rep. Donna Edwards: Yeah, I mean, I actually think if you'd ask most members of Congress, there's someone, one person, two people of their colleagues that they have a relationship with, forget the party affiliation and even deep political divisions, and I have those too and I still have them. Some of them are people I worked with on legislation when I was in Congress, others, I played softball with, others I played football with, and I still maintain those relationships. And they're important to me. And we very rarely, frankly, find ourselves talking about politics and policy. They're like other friendships. I mean, those are just not the things that most people talk about in their friendships and I think that's certainly true of us. I will say, I mean, I was in Congress at the rise of the Tea Party movement, and I think in some ways for me anyway, that was the precursor to where we are now. And I often think back to that time and wonder whether there's something we could have done or a way that we could've talked that actually might've nipped that in the bud. And I think we're well beyond that now.

Weston Wamp: You took an RV named Lucille on a big journey, in like 45 states I think I read.

Rep. Donna Edwards: Yeah.

Weston Wamp: What'd you learn about maybe the Tea Party, what the Tea Party led to. I'd say, just from a Tennessee perspective, there are a lot of people who've been swept up in the rise of Donald Trump who weren't at all involved in politics in 2010 or 2011, maybe at no point in their life, but what did Lucille teach you?

Rep. Donna Edwards: I love my Lucille. I still have her and I still get out in her and that's my RV. It's a 24 foot RV and it has everything in it. So, I can go on the road, stay off the road. And I took her through Tennessee as well. And first of all, whenever you are driving and not just flying over the country, you can see it in a different way. And I urge anybody who can do that, do it. Whether it's in an RV or a tent, or just staying in motels across the country because people in towns reveal themselves to you. And I mostly did not take the interstates. I was on state and local roads. I stopped in small towns. I stopped in diners and talked with people. And to be honest, again, out on the road, most people were not thinking and talking about politics. So, well, in a way, if you're talking about your healthcare, in my view, you're talking about politics, but that is not the way a person talking about healthcare perceives themselves.

And so, I had a lot of conversations with people just about the things that were important in their lives. Their jobs, or their grandchildren finding a job, or their retirement, or their healthcare circumstance. And I just found, first of all, I think we have so much more in common in terms of our concerns, whether we're in small towns or in urban areas, and we don't often get to explore that. And I learned also that small town America and particularly rural America has been decimated. A lot of people have left these smaller towns and left their rural communities — the young people have — because they didn't want to farm, they didn't want to stay in those towns. They've migrated to the cities. And when you drive across the country, you can't just talk about it, you can see it. You can see the main streets where there are boarded-up buildings.

You also experience, as I did, that the lack of broadband and how profound that is, and that when you don't have broadband in the 21st century, it means that you can't participate in the economy effectively. And so, I experienced that because I'd be in places where I just wouldn't even be able to have any kind of service at all. And I thought, “God, how can people live here like this and be so completely disconnected from the world at large, the world around them? If you're producing something in your garage or your living room, you're making something, something that would be a great product to have on the market, how do you do that if you don't have access to the internet?” So, I experienced that and it was just very revealing to me about where the divisions spring from in the country.

Weston Wamp: Is there anything that surprised you in that process, in conversations with supporters particularly of President Trump because I mean, one thing is, your experience with people who quote unquote supported President Trump was probably mostly with political people and I would say those people weren't really the original Trump supporters. I mean, there were no Republican politicians in the early days or very, very, very few. Most of the Republican politicians were trying to run him out, but it became this insurgence within the Republican Party that obviously had staying power. Is there any surprises that were different than what you anticipated?

Rep. Donna Edwards: Well, I'll tell you this, I can count on my hand the number of Democrats I met when I was out on the road and when I was in campgrounds and I mean most of the people that I met were Trump supporters. And I remember being on, and I've written about this, on Inauguration Day I was in an RV park down in Pensacola, Florida, and I remember, it was just, there was jubilation in that RV park. I mean, people were walking their dogs with an extra step, the televisions were on, you could hear them. And I was surprised because, one, you rarely hear about politics at all in an RV park, but I was surprised to find that I remember after Inauguration Day, it was mostly done on television, I was sitting around the campfire with a group of men. They were all men. I don't know why that is, but we were sitting around a campfire having a couple of beers talking and they told me why they voted for Donald Trump.

They were excited about him and they heard in his inauguration speech what I didn't hear. I mean, they were enthusiastic about it, they were excited about it and in my thinking, all I could hear was American carnage and it was over for me, but that's not what they heard. And so, that was revealing. But I have to say, for all of that and all of the Trump supporters that I met in the parks across the country, and there were many, they knew I was a Democrat. And some of them occasionally knew that I was on television. So, they for sure knew I'm a Democrat and they would just want to engage in a friendly way but not in a confrontational way. And that was early on. I was on the road January to April, and that was early on, but I think something about the tenor of the conversation has changed and that is largely because of the Trump presidency as opposed to those early days of jubilation.

Weston Wamp: You know, this outsider coming in and becoming the president of the United States, a political outsider, but as a candidate, he said a lot of things that I think drew moderates, maybe even the interest of some Democrats. He talked about draining the swamp and when he was a candidate, he actually talked pretty specifically about what that meant. And he talked about campaign finance reforms that ought to take place and he actually pointed out with surprising specificity some of the problems in the system. You seem to have real problems with our political system when you were in Congress. You even introduced an amendment to the constitution that would repeal Citizens United. How would that help? What's broken and why is it broken?

Rep. Donna Edwards: Well, I think when the Supreme Court decided that corporations could spend directly from their treasuries, which they had never been able to do into our politics, it really changed the nature of the game. Even a candidate anymore doesn't really fully have control over what their message is because all of these outside groups and the dark money gets spent, and I know as a candidate when I was running, I kind of hated it when all the independent expenditures came in. That wasn't mine. In fact, I got crushed in my Senate race because of a message that came not from my campaign, but from outside of it, but it was attributed to me. And so, I think when Donald Trump talked about draining the swamp, I think there are many voters who took him at his word that that's what he was going to do.

That he was going to root out all the influence of lobbyists and the campaign contributions, but that's not what he did. In fact, the swamp got even, I think, got more entrenched. But I do think there is a problem with having so much outside money in the system that's not identified, not attributed and the levels of donations that are being made, even though there are a lot of small donors who were in the system now, the internet makes that possible, that pales in comparison really to the large donors who really seemed to control. It isn't just that they control giving the money, but they kind of control the agenda. They have the access, they have the influence.

Somebody who gives you $50 or $100, they're not calling you to pass a piece of legislation that is important to you, they're just investing in you. And so, we do have to do something about this campaign finance system. I mean, over a billion dollars, I think, was spent in this last election cycle. Think of all that we can do. And we complain about spending money on X, Y, and Z. Think what we could do with all of that money. I believe in public financing of elections, because I've always said, if we don't own them, then somebody else does. So, I'd rather have a system that reinforces small donor contributions and validates democracy. And I don't think the system that we have now delivers a better democracy.

Weston Wamp: I don't think a lot of people realize, particularly given that you ran against an incumbent in your own party, how much the odds are stacked against that happening from a money standpoint. I think it would surprise a lot of people to realize, even if you're a bad incumbent, your ability to raise PAC money, for example, corporate PAC money is going to be infinitely greater than a challenger, even if it's a really good challenger, even if it's one who was able to raise a lot of personal money, there's just a very, very low likelihood that any PACs are going to be giving to a challenger and maybe even more so in that primary scenario. How did you manage to fund two very competitive, the second was just an overwhelmingly successful race against an incumbent? 

Rep. Donna Edwards: I think I mostly raised it from individuals. I had a little bit of union PAC money, but most of the unions were like, "We want to stay out of this fight." And so, I mostly raised it from individuals and because there was so much energy around the campaign, we had tons of volunteers knocking on doors. I can't even tell you how many doors I knocked, how many streets I walked, and I was able to run that kind of campaign. But the fact is that we should have that kind of competition in more than just one outside chance run against an incumbent. I think when I won that year, somebody told me that 94 or 95% of incumbents win their races.

And so the whole idea that I broke through that in a majority, also keep in mind my district is a majority African American district, majority Democrats. And they just don't vote outside of that box. But that's a rarity. And I think that the kind of competition that we've discussed, I think we'd have a better Congress if we had a little bit more competitive races. Now, I mean, that doesn't mean that a district like mine would not just be filled with Democrats because we've just got a lot of Democrats around here, but there are some other districts where the divisions would be smaller and you'd get a little bit more competition even in a state like Maryland.

Weston Wamp: Well, I think you could argue there's ideas and fresh thinking that comes from these internal battles, these primaries. By the way, the percent of incumbents who win primaries is up above 99%.

Rep. Donna Edwards: Oh, wow. 

Weston Wamp: Well, if you think about it, there'll be cycles that go by, entire cycles where an incumbent doesn't lose a primary and you may have a few handful that lose to the other party. But it's just very, very rare. And that's unfortunate because we often are told because of gerrymandering that the vast majority of seats are either strongly Republican or strongly Democratic and we know how important primaries are now. We often talk about the ills of that. It seems to me that maybe there ought to be more energy around, especially if we're going to democratize the way that campaigns are financed to some degree, let's have more intraparty competition. I always thought it was a good thing and it didn't have to be inherently negative. That it could still be iron sharpening iron, but not a whole lot of people agree with, you know, those of us who've run in primaries.

Rep. Donna Edwards: No, that's absolutely true. But I do think primaries give a lot of energy to the electorate, but the parties are so opposed to them. And look, I wasn't part of the Democratic Party infrastructure. I didn't come up through the system. I had never run for office before. Running for Congress was really my first political office that I ever ran for. And a lot of people discouraged me and they said, "Well, why don't you run for some county seat or some state legislative seat?" And I said, "Because I'm running for the job I want and I'm not going to run for a job that I don't want in order to prepare me for a job that I want." That seemed kind of ridiculous, so.

Weston Wamp: You and I have made the exact same argument. Tell me this. Let's just put Donna Edwards in charge for a few days. Okay? Imagine a world where you're in charge. You mentioned public financing. How would you design, I mean, I think our former government has served us pretty well, but, more specifically, acutely, our campaign finance system, our political system, as we refer to it, feels pretty broken. How would you fix it?

Rep. Donna Edwards: Well, it's interesting you asked that because I've actually thought more in terms of some internal mechanisms in terms of the working of Congress itself — and I served in the House so that's what I'm experienced with — that could actually facilitate more working together. One of those things has been and I hope it continues, is expanding earmarks. I think getting rid of earmarks was one of the worst things to happen to Congress because there are not any incentives for people to stay in the game. If you have some skin in the game, then you're going to stay in it, but if you don't have anything in there, you're not. And for the relative percentage of 1 or 2% of earmarks, I actually think it's worth it in terms of moving legislation, getting agreement on legislation. 

The other thing internally in terms of the way Congress works is I don't like the work schedule. I think it's not conducive to working together. When members are only in town three, three and a half days a week, and they don't have that time to get to know each other because part of working together is developing trusting relationships where you work together, then they don't work together because those three and a half days they have to put in fundraising, committee assignments, caucus meetings, a whole bunch of stuff packed into three and a half days. When do you have time to reach across the aisle and say, "Hey, do you want to get together?" And so, I think the schedule has actually gotten worse over the last several years. 

And then the third thing that I would do internally in Congress is to shift the law writing away from the leadership offices. I think since Newt Gingrich was speaker, more of the legislative work happens within the leaders' offices and not in the committees. And so, it has disempowered committee chairmen so that you don't have any discipline. And so that members across the aisle can't work together to find solutions to problems that then become bills that they put on the floor and get a vote on. And I just think empowering those committee chairs again would actually help to resolve some of these issues. 

And, then of course, there's always, you've got to change the fundamentals of the system and those fundamentals have to do with gerrymandering, campaign finance, and, I think, voting rights. If you don't have voting rights, what's the point of it all? If you're going to be a democracy that doesn't respect voters, then what's the point of it all?

Weston Wamp: Last question is this. I've always found people's varying answers to be fascinating. How would you encourage people, regular people in Tennessee or Illinois or Oregon for that matter, to engage in the forging of a more perfect union? I think a lot of people flip on the TV at night, and whether it's MSNBC or Fox News, they, I think, are actually more aware than they might have been in recent years of what's going on, but maybe they feel like it's all more out of touch. My life around politics has told me that's not true, but how would you encourage people to engage?

Rep. Donna Edwards: The way I'd tell him to engage is to turn off the television. I think the cable networks in particular have their own silos. And so, it's like the same people talking to people who agree with each other. And when you really engage in politics, it's not just about casting a vote. It has to be beyond election day, that you have to stay in touch with your representatives at the federal, state, and local level. And you do that by going to their offices, get engaged in organizations of interest, and then showing up at things like town halls.

I mean, I'm sure that your father could probably tell you the numbers of town halls he would do and it would be the same people who show up all the time. You know, getting engaged in that way. And, also, I think representatives have to do a better job of reaching out to people, letting them know what they're doing all the time. I think people have such a completely wrongheaded view about what it is that members of Congress actually do. And part of that is the fault of members not really communicating with their constituencies and at least that gives people a better perspective of how to be engaged and what makes a difference in terms of contacting their representatives.

Weston Wamp: On the next episode of Swamp Stories, we’re going to examine the outsized role of “megadonors” in American elections. 

From 2009 to 2020, one in every 13 dollars in American politics came from just 12 people — six on the right and six on the left. And it appears that the 2022 midterms will bring more of the same — but with a twist.

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.

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