EP. 46 — FAREWELL TO WESTON

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Weston Wamp: In the winter of early 2020, I flew to Texas to hammer out a few pilot episodes of this podcast with my old friend Parker Tant, who has very capably served as the editor of this podcast ever since. We ended up re-recording all of those episodes, but in College Station, Texas we officially launched a most unusual podcast that would thereafter be recorded in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Over 45 episodes we’ve covered a lot of ground and tried to break down some of the swampiest practices in our nation’s capital into digestible episodes, complete with solutions for the future.

Weston Wamp: Last fall, I embarked on a personal journey with my wife and four children and ran for County Mayor of Hamilton County, here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. We narrowly won the Republican primary in May and won again in the general election in August. On September 1st, I was sworn in as mayor of Tennessee’s fourth largest county. As I step into elected office, I’m going to hand the keys to the podcast over to another host, who will be supported by the same great team. To wrap up my time with Issue One, we flipped the script and Ethan Rome and I spoke for my exit interview. Stay in touch with me by following me on social media @westonwamp.

This is Episode 46: My Exit Interview

Ethan Rome: Weston, you have been the host of this podcast for more than two years, you've done 43 plus episodes. You've also hosted the “Truthtellers” video series. And in the course of all that, you've brought a whole new perspective as a conservative, as a Republican, to the political reform space. What's it been like for you to play that role and what's it meant?

Weston Wamp: Well, this podcast, especially because you guys gave me the ability to tell stories that weren't about me, but they did come from this unique perspective, was in some ways brought full circle to my childhood, our family's interest and commitment to issues that we've never seen as partisan. And I would say reform efforts within government are as much about the spirit and the approach and the humility of those interested in them, as much as they are any specific subject matter. I mean, you can talk about this type of reform, or that type, or political reform, or democracy reform, or money in politics reform. But ultimately I think it comes down to an attitude, even a gratefulness for our country, it's what binds, I think people, frankly, like you and I who may have come from very different political persuasions or paths in life, but I think we have shared appreciation for the country we've been given.

Weston Wamp: And so in that we want to, as our former colleague Meredith McGehee, always described it. We want to come together and forge that more perfect union. And my earliest memories, I think I was four years old when my dad announced he was running for Congress against an incumbent Democrat. He talked a lot about what we now call political reform issues. He talked about the entrenchment of incumbents, the power of political action committees. And so by the time he got elected two years later, and when I was seven years old, when he was sworn in, my whole life, I didn't understand it all obviously, but from seven years old, first grade through college graduation was in a congressional family. Lived in Tennessee, so I wasn't in the dysfunctional bubble of Washington, but got to watch my dad often be a contrarian thinker, an ally of John McCain's, for example, back in the campaign finance reform days.

Weston Wamp: And so these issues were some of the first that I understood as a young person. And it's been a real joy to try to put it into words and even condense these episodes in ways that the general public can understand the complexities of backroom deals or potential corruption in Washington, or even real concerns that many of us share about our democracy moving forward.

Ethan Rome: So when you think about your past and growing up, are there specific things growing up around politics, around your dad's career that really shaped you? Your father was a so-called Gingrich Republican back in the day, but he also pushed Tom DeLay to resign and did a bunch of other things that were uncharacteristic of politicians in general. What about other things in growing up really turned you on both to politics as well as to political reform?

Weston Wamp: In order to be an effective reformer in American politics, it's almost a prerequisite that you are willing to criticize your own party, because the nature of our country is that we aren't finished. It's the whole design, it's the purpose of the country to continue to sharpen, to continue to self-improve, to challenge ourselves towards fixing our problems, fixing the bugs in the system, going and serving the people who've been underserved, bringing along those who were left behind to begin with.

Weston Wamp: And that's where I’ve made those comments about, I think the humility necessary to be a part of reform. Neither party has gotten this right. There's not good guys versus bad guys, at least as based on my experience as a child, adolescent young adult, and adult growing up entrenched in American politics. I think you've got to have an intellectual curiosity and an intellectual honesty to admit that your political party or both political parties, if you don't associate with a political party, have contributed to both the good and the bad. And that's part of the way that we can establish, I think, trust and some common ground from which we pursue bipartisan, crosspartisan reforms. But I heard it said a million times in my household growing up that neither political party has an exclusive on ideas or integrity. And I think that holds true today.

Ethan Rome: Absolutely. So one of the things you referenced, that's just so extraordinary about our country is that we're not finished. Our democracy has a lot of work. We have a lot of work to do on it. And part of what the two parties do is fight every two years and in between about the best way to make the country better on a variety of issues. But on political reform, that's often been dominated by Democrats and whether it's yourself or your dad and others like Congressman Reid Ribble and other guests that we've had, y'all are lonely a bit on the Republican side. And so what has that felt like, what has that been like for you particularly now, and we'll get into this, but now that you are soon to become the Mayor of Hamilton County?

Weston Wamp: Well, part of what I've enjoyed is that regular people across the country, and I still live in a part of the country dominated by and led by regular folks, they're not aware of those traditions within the beltway that it's the Democrats who've pushed harder for reforms. And then like most issues in American politics, there seems to be a sort of seasonality to it. I mean, one of our early episodes on this podcast used the words of Mitch McConnell decades ago when he advocated at one point even for the ending of political action committees in general. He has become in the decades since one of the most obstinate people to most types of political reform. But I think if you were to go way back into the country's history, the annals of campaign finance reform, another episode we did early on was about Theodore Roosevelt, who ended up stamping out in his own right a fair amount of corruption.

Weston Wamp: And I got to draw on these unique family roots, where I did grow up in a family where my dad's career in Congress, he served for 16 years, but it was always, it seemed, at odds with Tom DeLay who proved to be one of the corrupt figures in modern Republican politics. And then I'd say even a stronger part of his legacy was that he made the closing argument in the McCain-Feingold years in the House and became this champion, albeit a Gingrich Republican from the Bible Belt, not a conventional figure to be leading the charge on campaign finance reform or money in politics reform. But it was ironically lessons that he learned running against a Democratic incumbent that led him to believe money had too much influence in our politics.

Weston Wamp: So if we're willing to keep an open mind, and that intellectual curiosity, then we should be able to identify times when the system is broken and as our founder Nick Penniman talks about, we all have a shared interest, he uses this analogy that I just thought was brilliant. Two football teams come and play, one of the things that they've got a real shared interest in is a well manicured field. You got to have a good field on which to play the game, and then the game can be played. And so in a sense here, we're all angling for good, healthy turf and rules that we can all agree to play by.

Ethan Rome: There's nothing more true than the fact that when it comes to political reform, the rules of the game need to be followed by both teams. At the same time, one of the interesting things that we've covered on this podcast is that a lot of folks go to Washington and say they're going to change their country, or they say they're going to change Congress, but it turns out that Congress changes them. Talk to me about what that process looks like from your perspective. What are examples of that?

Weston Wamp: I ran for Congress twice in my 20s and I was running in some of the most improbable circumstances, against an incumbent in a primary and still nearly won. But a lot of what I talked about in my 20s, it was just one of the basic lessons I felt like I had learned growing up around Congress, was that just the personal profile of your member of Congress, their own life experience, their own career is going to have a lot more bearing on their decency, and ultimately even their success and respectability as a member of Congress, than their IQ or the degrees that they've racked up.

Weston Wamp: You've got members of Congress who, it is the greatest job that they'll ever hold, and they treat it that way, and then reelection becomes their priority. They obsess over politics. And then you've got the ideal member of Congress who as wonderful and privileged as the job of being a member of Congress is, is probably not the best job overall that they'll ever have in their life. And those people tend to hold it more loosely and more willing to take the political risks necessary for reform, for example.

Weston Wamp: The better you can understand the motivations and the heart of those who are running, are they running because they really think the spoils of the office would be cool? Are they going to be impressed by themselves because they have a pin that denotes that they're a member of Congress? Or are they really motivated by changing people's lives? Because if that is at the heart of an elected official's intent and purpose, then they're going to wake up more willing to take those risks. And then the big picture lesson is that if you're willing to take that path less traveled, and just go pursue aggressively, whether from a conservative or a liberal political persuasion, public service, the service of others, you will get reelected. Throughout our country's history, it has proven time and time again, that if that causes you to take confrontational, difficult, and at times unpopular positions, if you just wear your heart on your sleeve and operate with a sense of humility and transparency in both parties, you will be reelected. It is not the easiest path, but it's the most virtuous one.

Ethan Rome: There's no question that that's true. That's how Democrats and Republicans win races in districts that ordinarily are represented by members of the other party. They're mission-driven. They're not beholden. In a good way they're not beholden to their constituents, but they're responsive, and they're not beholden to the special interests.

Ethan Rome: So you ran twice for Congress early on, as you said in your 20s, one of those times you lost by just a little amount and we've talked about that race before. But tell me about the second race, because what interests me especially given your role as a reformer and given who your father, Zach Wamp, has been in Chattanooga, in Tennessee politics in general, but what was it like to take on a Republican incumbent? What were the issues that dominated that race and what made you want to do it?

Weston Wamp: I had a true head-to-head, at times down the stretch. Our own polling showed that we were ahead and we took this onslaught of negative advertising.

Weston Wamp: They had a photo of me shaking President Obama's hand when he had visited Chattanooga. And if you go back, this is 2014, really the peak of the Tea Party, the country I think was entering this era of polarization that's almost unrivaled at least politically. And so just a picture shaking the hand of the Democratic president was used against you. I talk a lot about, words that have just roll off my tongue all the time, generational stewardship, planning long-term, I've always been a believer that the way that we budget everything from a nonprofit we’re a part of, to a church or a synagogue that we're a part of, all the way to the federal government is reflective of your values. I took some contrarian positions, certainly as a young conservative candidate, that probably led to my demise in that race on issues like immigration. You had members of Congress back then, who would say as if it were a serious policy strategy, we should deport every single person without paperwork.

Weston Wamp: It would be economically catastrophic, of course, if you did this. Not to mention very immoral by any standard. But we still got 49.2% of the vote. Part of what was exciting about that race and I think is what led me not to be so deterred that I didn't run again, is that the district my dad had represented had gone through redistricting in 2010, after the 2010 census. And so the district that I was running in was the same hub, the Chattanooga area where we still live, but there were four or five new counties. And I won, in some cases with overwhelming margins, I won a few counties that my dad had never represented and that was, even though I lost, we were about to have our first child and it really was for Shelby and I kind of wind under our wings. We had just lost this huge race.

Weston Wamp: We had taken attack, after attack, after attack, but to have these parts of Tennessee that are really economically challenged, life is tough, to have seen the way they embraced our campaign. We got 60% of the vote in the county, on the Kentucky border Scott County, where Howard Baker's from. I could tell there, those people didn't really know my dad, that's two and a half hours from our hometown. They may have known his name, but they weren't voting for me because I was Zach Wamp’s son. I think that's what made me feel, even though we'd lost this heartbreaking race at 27, made me feel like I was still at some point headed in my life towards public service.

Ethan Rome: I want to move forward to the period in which you've been doing the podcast, and obviously Issue One. And you and your dad are concerned about campaign finance, and about ethics, and about congressional capacity, and strengthening elections. But next thing we know we've got the 2020 election and this new thing in politics that wasn't so much new, but called disinformation. And then what happened on January 6th, and now there's an entirely new Republican Party that's been created over, really, the last several years. So what do you do as a Republican who not only cares about political reform, but now as someone who's on the right side of democracy, and of voting, and respect for the Constitution and the rule of law?

Weston Wamp: To be clear, this is all about Donald Trump. Donald Trump in 2016, turns the party of Lincoln into a different beast altogether. Now some will argue to this day, it's the greatest thing that's ever happened to the Republican party. Some will argue it's the worst thing that's ever happened. Some of us fall somewhere in between that continuum, but let's just call it what it is. And these are all dynamics created in the wake of his shocking election that many of us who were advocating for different candidates, our family for Marco Rubio in the 2016 primary when Republican politics as we know it was upended by President Trump. 

Weston Wamp: And I think the real difference whether you're running for local office, like I have been, if you are a Republican who remained Republican, you fell into one of a few camps. One is you were going to say everything that you thought, whether you knew him or not, or were ever going to encounter him. You were either the type of person who was going to say everything you thought Trump wanted you to say. And a lot of people did that out of deference or fear that he would come into their race and endorse somebody else. And he brought in this new dynamic to American politics where he was. I don't know that in modern American history there is an individual from the presidency that used so much political leverage over the offices below him. So there's some people who would just say everything they thought they were supposed to say. Some people would draw lines in the sand. I think where they realize that their own political legacy was going to be defined if they weren't careful by just going along with an administration and an individual who just like he did in business, played fast and loose with the truth.

Weston Wamp: It obviously took a really nasty turn after the 2020 election, when the president of the United States begins to undermine in a lot of ways the foundational institution of our republic, that we hold elections, presidential ones every four years and the loser loses. And with hopefully a dose of grace is a part of a transition that is both peaceful, but dignified, right? And none of that happened and the president begins to make up, and some of his advisors and attorneys begin to make up wilder and wilder theories. The reason I say wilder and wilder is we've gone through thoroughly on this podcast, as the theories were debunked, or as they failed in court, it's like they got wilder. And of course, a lot of the real advisors, official advisors of the president were warning him as we now know, “Mr. President, there's nothing here. You got to stop.”

Weston Wamp: And so it caused the president to be surrounded by nuts like Sidney Powell or Rudy Giuliani. And they're the ones, all of a sudden, who are guiding the president as he goes down this unprecedented path of undermining elections. And that's where many of us said, “Okay, this is now different.” I still believe that many of the policies of the Trump administration were positive for America. All of that matters much less once you have a president who has undermined our institutions in ways that we may spend decades recovering from.

Ethan Rome: One of the things that I think we're also learning now is that there clearly is a Trumpism that's more powerful even than Trump and that is likely to live on and we have a lot of work to do around that, but let's just quickly just talk about your race. You ran for Hamilton County Mayor, as you mentioned, the primary was back in May and the general election a few weeks back in August, what was it like to run as a truthteller? And one of your opponents lost and actually tried to steal the election. So what was that like?

Weston Wamp: It was, I think, the experience of a lifetime. I mean, I think what I've just been through is probably, no matter what else transpires in my life, outside of being a father and the kind of core joys, this was probably the experience of a lifetime because in some ways against all odds as a person who has been very outspoken about my opinions and concerns about the direction of my party, about some of the disinformation from the former president, a lot of people would've said here in the heart of the south, you couldn't win as a Republican in a primary. I drew probably two of the most difficult to beat candidates in our area. Both of them were insiders to county government. A quick civics lesson: Tennessee's one of the states like Kentucky and Texas, that elects a head of county government. We call them county mayors in Tennessee. So Hamilton County, Tennessee is about 380,000 people.

Weston Wamp: If you were to drive from Atlanta to Nashville, we're about an hour and a half, two hours from each place. And the county seat of Hamilton County is Chattanooga. I ran in large part because I'm passionate about public education and we run one consolidated public school system, but I just can't tell you enough what a surreal experience it was. I was profiled because of my work at Issue One by the New Yorker in the middle of the campaign-

Ethan Rome: Clearly a publication that everybody in Chattanooga, I mean, reads, that obviously it upped your popularity in Manhattan, which I'm sure was helpful at the time.

Weston Wamp: Well, that's what I'm saying though. It was surreal that my two lives converged where I could run for office here, continue the work, we’re making podcasts that were by their nature not necessarily real popular in conservative circles, but I tried to maintain down the stretch that these were opinions I believe, or had formed after intense research and concern and-

Ethan Rome: Did you get confronted in public forums on any of those kinds of issues?

Weston Wamp: Very little. And I think one of the reasons I got confronted very little is that when we disagree with somebody, but we're not really sure we're right and we know the other person knows their stuff. I just think respectfully that there are a lot of people who didn't agree with me around here on some of these election issues or on some of my opinions about the president's role in January 6th, et cetera, who didn't really want to argue with me about it, you know what I'm saying? That's the feeling I got. It was almost an agree to disagree because they knew at the end of the day that I had done my homework and could defend my position well. Of course the last twist here that was really fitting, it was painful for our family, but fitting is that there is a pathway in Tennessee as there is in many states for a primary victory to be challenged.

Weston Wamp: And so out of 40 plus thousand votes cast, I won a three way race by 318 votes. The second place finisher challenged it on a crazy basis. It was honestly a challenge that I would argue was inspired by this new era, in the Republican Party, where if you don't like the results of your election, then you can challenge it. Fortunately that the body that gets to rule on these issues here is our elected, there's an elected Republican Executive Committee and a Democratic Executive Committee, they voted overwhelmingly. They basically held a political hearing. It wasn't a judicial hearing, they hold a political hearing, the members of the committee vote, and we won overwhelmingly affirming our victory. But just for me to be the guy who was doing as much truthtelling as I could prior to, and during a campaign, to then have an attempt to steal the election and for us to survive it, it was a painful couple weeks for our family, but very fitting.

Ethan Rome: That story is obviously incredibly rich given all the circumstances. So thinking about the politics of the moment and what's happening in D.C. and obviously things in Hamilton County are more localized, but when you think about what's at stake for our country and what's happening in our politics, what are you most worried about? And how do you think about fixing it?

Weston Wamp: I'm most worried that we just lose sight of what we've been given, that short of those of us who've served in the military active duty in recent years, short of those people, things we've been given that we didn't deserve or earn really. I think part of what has held the republic for a couple hundred years is this shared appreciation, if not for each other, for what we have and what we've been given, and the role we get to play in really the first true self-governed country in the history of mankind. And we're so far away from that, that some people have grown, seems resentful of our country on both sides of the aisle, certainly more so at the extremes of both sides of the aisle, rather than diligently and passionately being committed to working together, to continue to push it forward.

Weston Wamp: And I know it's the story of American history. Hard times are coming that will jerk a knot in our tale and will teach us, will command us to see that more clearly those moments like 9/11 or generations ago, World War II or Great Depression before that. There are these moments where we all of a sudden are jolted into the reality that we all love each other and we are Americans, and there are oppressive regimes that do not hold the same values that we do.

Weston Wamp: And so I think that's my fear is just that we have grown somewhat soft, Ethan, and it has led us to become preoccupied and even obsessed with our relatively minor differences, rather than seeing our role in the arc of human history as the stewards of the greatest country that's ever been.

Ethan Rome: Yeah. And I think part of that has always been that we have these extraordinary values of justice and equality and have been united ultimately in the cause of making our country get closer to achieving its promise. And that has very much been some of the greatest work that we've all been a part of. And I was reminded of that after the passing of Representative John Lewis, your dad sent a photograph of him and Representative Lewis, that's sort of the most beautiful photograph I've ever seen of either of those two. And its just made me think about if that's what our country can look like on a regular basis, then I think we have a good future.

Weston Wamp: Yeah. Well, I mean I can just say, and maybe this is a sign of the times changing, but we can get back there. My sister and I had the privilege of growing up on the House floor. I mean we were seven when my dad got elected and so every time we were in Washington, we were with him every minute and it's been a tradition of the House that children under a certain age are invited, and we would be left on our own reconnaissance, which is really kind of hilarious. But I set it up that way just to say that for a period of time, I knew pretty well about every member of the House because my dad was, if nothing else, one of the self-appointed social chairs of the Congress and knew the name of all his colleagues.

Weston Wamp: There was not a member of the House who was more revered in our family than John Lewis who represented a district two hour south of us who probably by the letter of policy, we didn't have a whole lot of alignment with, but in the spirit of things in the spirit of life and in the spirit of forging a better country for everybody, he was certainly a hero of our family and we all ought to be able to operate in that type of, I think, respect for those with whom we don't always agree politically, but who we share ultimately the same destiny and mission and values.

Ethan Rome: Absolutely. Weston, I just want to say that it's been just a great honor and a tremendous amount of fun to produce this podcast with you and we at Issue One will miss you very much and really appreciate the contribution that you made to creating a bipartisan product that lifts up political reform. And so I wish you the best of luck as mayor and look forward to crossing paths again.

Weston Wamp: Thanks, Ethan. My final comment here as we wrap up the podcast and it'll be good content I hope for years to come out of what we've created. I am hopeful that we are, but years away from seeing some of the real goodness of our country rise again. Selfishly, I'm hopeful that it will be the millennial generation that sees past political toxicity and can agree to disagree respectfully in a way that previous generations have inspired us to do. I just think the work that we've all been a part of is just a small example of what civic activism across, like I described, at the arc of our country's history is all about. And I intend down here in my corner of the country to continue to be involved in the fight.

Ethan Rome: Outstanding. Weston, thank you so much.

Weston Wamp: Thanks, Ethan.

Weston Wamp: I had to say it one more time. On the next episode of “Swamp Stories,” you’ll be hearing from a different voice. It’s been an honor to be on this journey with you.

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 Apple Podcasts 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 Dokhi Fassihian, Senior Producer Evan Ottenfield, Producer Sydney Richards, and Editor Parker Tant from ParkerPodcasting.com. “Swamp Stories” is recorded in Tennessee, edited in Texas, and can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.

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