Transcripts For CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20160315

2016, cspanpaign takes you on the road to the white house as we follow the candidates on cspan, cspan radio, and cspan. Org. The former regional epa director susan hedman and former flint michigan mayor dayne rolling testify about Drinking Water in flint. They will take questions from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this morning, live at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan three. In the afternoon in, a hearing on self driving cars. We will hear from Auto Industry representatives and representative from google. Live coverage of the Senate Commerce and Transportation Committee at 2 30 eastern, also on cspan3. Next, a conversation on the role that state parties play in the National Political campaign. We will hear from state and National Party officials at this event, hosted by the brookings institution. Good afternoon, everyone. I am a senior fellow here at the institution and the founding director of the center for effective public management. We are pleased to welcome you here today. We welcome our cspan audience today to a panel called state parties and neglected past two healthier politics. State parties have always been the ugly stepchild of american politics. Voters never liked them. Everyone tells you they vote for the person, not the party. They been doing that for decades now and yet people with absolutely amazing regularity vote for the party. Today, we want to explore these parties as institutions. Parties are completely essential to a functioning democracy. Today, i think we have people appear who are going to talk about that and talk about the pros and the cons. Let me introduce them. I will him the floor over to jonathan andrzej, who has written a paper. We will have a discussion as we will also include the audience as well. To my immediate left is jonathan rauch. He is a senior fellow in the government studies program here at the institute. He is a contributing editor of the National Journal and the atlantic. He has written a lot of books and papers. My favorite is a paper that i encourage you to find called political realism how hacks, machines, bigmoney and backroom deals and strength in american democracy. If that does not get you interested, nothing will. To his left is ray laurent to. He is an associate professor of Political Science at the university of massachusetts at amherst. He also has a new book out called campaigns and political polarization. Jonathan and ray are the coauthors of the paper that we will be talking about today. To his left is jason. He is the executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party. After three years serving as the ed of the kansas Democratic Party. He also has the distinction of being the executive director of the president of the association of state democratic executive directors. He speaks for all the professional people who run Political Parties. To his left is john philippines. He is the chief counsel for the Republican National committee where he oversees all of the operations of the council office. This includes federal and state campaigns and compliance. The 2016 republican president ial nomination process. Which keeps him really busy. At the end of the panel is eliza dylan kearny. She is Senior Editor at american prospect where she manages their website. She also writes a weekly column on money called rules of the game. She contributes to magazine features. She is also most famously known for coining the term super pac. We now all have it as an easy part of the political lexicon. This is a great panel. They have interesting things to say nine going to turn it over first two jonathan and ray to talk about the work they did in preparation for this panel. Thank you all for coming on this beautiful day. It is good to seasonal friends in the group. Thanks of course to ray, my coauthor. I also need to recognize our Research Assistance and allpurpose analyst and friend. Extremely helpful. We could not have done it without you. Its chaos out there. Both in the campaign and on capitol hill. Ray and i do not need to belabor that point. What we decided we would do is go out there in the country and look for thing something that might perhaps reduce over the long term the amount of shook a awesome american politics. We think we found such a knob. We think it is hidden in plain view and it is the state parties. This is low hanging fruit. Theres a lot that can be done with bipartisan support. It would make significant inroads against political disorganization and chaos. We sent a survey to all 100 of the republican and Democratic State parties. We got back 56 of those in time to use. Its quite a lot. Second, we compared those results with earlier surveys from 1999 and 2000. We also interviewed 15 state Party Executive directors in a few chairs. We collected National Data to look at funding and other such questions. Then we tried to put all that together and what i hope is the most coherence picture of whats going on in state parties. What we found are interesting. I will focus on our findings about conditions and ray will focus on policy and recommendations. Two findings i would like to focus on. The first is that state parties are actually very much alive. They are still very much unique and important as political entities. And they have the aspect of something we call a public good. Let me try to unpack all that is little bit. There has been in recent years a trend in Political Science to view parties in general and state parties in particular as masses of people and networks. Interest groups and politicians and whatnot. Then there other people who said parties dont do much anyway. We found that is not true at all. State parties have a distinctive culture. They have professionals who take a longterm view of things. We found that they do things that are important. One is they are integrated. They look across races at every level simultaneously. They look across hierarchies and integrate the National Parties with the county parties. They stay in the middle of all of that. One of the things that is most important is the institution. Unlike a candidate who can slash and burn or an outside group, is one of them put it, we are the stewards of the brand. We exist forever. They had to accountable for longterm results. They do things like we talked to ned of the Democratic Party in a deep red state who said they were spending time and money we said why are you doing that . She said no. We need to worry about turnout for state offices. This is where we will get it. No candidate or Interest Group things like that. Only state party would. They also do Something Like gardening. We were keen to find out under what circumstances state parties will actively endorse a candidate. But its on the scale early on. They almost never do. We can talk about wine. Youll find in the survey results they almost never do that. The use to be gatekeepers back in the day. They are not anymore. But they are gardeners. They still do education and encouragement. They will go to a candidate and say you are a good candidate while to run for this . The kind of shape the landscape to try and make the race is more winnable and make the candidates a little more reasonable. They also virtually all recruit. That is a key function of the state parties. They develop capital stock. Knowledge data volunteers. These are all information and people that you can pass on to the next candidate. Let it. Ray and his colleague Brian Shaffer have a new book out. That was consistent with our finding. We talked to a state executive director who would come from a conservative Advocacy Group vigil this is perspective changed once he got in the party. For all of those reasons and others, state parties perform we think they are public good. As you all know from econ 101, they tend to be underfunded as no one is capturing all of the value that they put out. We decided to find out how they are doing. The answer is they are struggling. You will find in the paper charts one and two and three show what is happening. In absolute terms, their flat. Republicans took a nose dive but kind of fell back. Democrats are kind of flat. Size of staff for example and activities. What is different is the competition is running circles around them. Youll find figure three in the table, we looked at independent spending versus Party Independent spending. You will see the parties become miniscule compared to the resources outside groups are throwing into campaigns. What they tell us are things like this we believe we are fighting for our lives in the legal and judicial framework. The super pacs present a direct threat to state parties existence. The problem is not that day are falling behind in absolute terms, it is that they are falling behind in relative terms. Outside money is much less transparent and accountable than party money. Their interests are much more parochial and extreme. They tend to be polarized and they tend to be extreme. That is problematic if the public good is declining. Now i will turn it over to ray who talks about policy factors and what to do about them. Ray first, i want to thank brookings for providing resources and to this project. Our basic argument is the rules disadvantage state parties. The rules shackle parties from doing more of what they do best and that is grassroots Voter Engagement across the party ticket. Second, the rules make it harder to sponsor tv and lack the resources and leave outside groups. Starting with grassroots activity, by far, the biggest complaint we have heard is that mccainfeingold federalize this core grassroots activities at the state level. That is their bread and butter in the essence of the public good. Federal law just makes it harder. Federal laws must raise money in complex ways to do this and it minimalize is what they do and their byzantine rule that uses voters to register and get them to the polls. They make a good living off of this but i know we want to encourage more volunteers and they do to and we can change some of these things. Another problem is federal election activities. It is very broad and it captures basic grassroots work which is intended to help candidates and local state elections. Because of this, parties have to spend regulated money on traditional grass roots work. We were told simply telling voters to vote on november 8 and precinct 12 counts as federal election activity. So you leave off the part about when and where to vote. We want parties to be doing this. We want to beginning voters to the polls. In our view, parties could do even more of this. Why does it have to be restricted to these Mccain Feingold rules . The public good is providing candidates and a renegade candidate like trump at the state level hurts the party brand. We can talk about chairs and directors and if you are organizing together, you are going to push back against such renegades. The fact is the laws discourage party ticket campaigning, the kind of campaign that encourages this mutual campaign. You need to use these high cost federal dollars. In some states, Party Leaders focus on a few candidates in competitive races rather than the full slate. It makes the party act more like a super pac and encourages political fragmentation. The party isnt careful to circumscribe its activities. They stay in their lanes. That is what we heard a lot of. This is our lane, grassroots activity that is their lane, the super pac. Parties cope by specializing. They focus on two big things voter data, voter mobilization, and that is the holy grail of american politics. Parties seem to dominate year but they still face more and more competition. We heard concerns about the program supported by the Koch Brothers that work. They dont always share the data they collect. Let me turn to the tv side of things. Elaine strategy we show you those in our survey, have party said they advertise on tv and radio. We ask directors your something that was really fascinating we ask them to assess the environment for independent spending. There are stark differences in independent spending that give parties more free access to money. If there is no limit on contributions heres the problem with state laws it is simple math. If you restrict the party, you get more independent expenditures. In states that have contribution limits, 65 of respondents said independent groups sponsor more than half of political ads. States without those contributions, only 23 said that. States with contribution limits, 65 of our respondents said independent expenditures is often a key factor in governors elections. Less than half said that in the other state. We dont like this division of labor. Super pacs are rarely in the campaign for a long haul. Theyre like the tent circus. We also mentioned the way this Division Train drains talent. We think it is time to restore some balance. Based on some premises we laid out here, the party provides the public good, which we think are being undersupplied. State parties, even if they are not disappearing, are falling behind. Some people might not like this we think super pacs and dark money is here to stay. Here is our recommendation. Raise or eliminate contribution efforts to the party. This could do what brian and i describe as building canals not dams. You want to divert moneys to fall into politics, diverted toward the most accountable venues. We think that is the place. Number two, led parties coordinate with candidates and aggregate their spending as much as possible. Its exactly what state parties should be doing. Three, we recommend tax subsidies because parties divide underperforming public good. We have not thought through all the implications here, so we are just putting this out there for discussion. If state parties are treated like nonprofits, we talk about how the discount is good for them why not for tax purposes as well . If you can make tax reduction to places like gale, why not for parties performing this public good . For basic regulatory changes we agree with the Brennan Center to roll back the federalization of state and local activity. By narrowing the amount of activity that must be paid for with federal bleed federally compliant funds. Let state parties be state parties. Let me conclude by saying there are no magic bullets. We are realists and we need to start somewhere. We need to start eliminating some of the disadvantages the parties face, especially at time when parties seem so fragmented. Helping state parties is the low hanging fruit. Theres not even a great risk in making these efforts even if they dont achieve all the things they say they might achieve. It is certainly less risky than trying to amend the constitution or some of these very expensive Public Financing scheme. Elaine you can see we have quite a provocative paper here with even the recommendations. Let me turn it over to our discussion. Jason, do you want to go first . Jason yes. Thank you. This is something republican parties and democratic parties like are dealing with. My counterpart in kansas and i spoke about all of this. My counterpart in South Carolina talks about this as an issue. We are facing this every day. Most of my colleagues believe they provide three core functions. We are a large organization. A multimillion dollar organization. But it boils down to doing three things. We as an organization have to grow. We try to measure as many voters as we can and from there, we try to figure out a way to talk to voters in a meaningful way and keep them engaged during the election cycle and especially during the off years so folks know and are up to date on the issues that are important to us as a party and important to the state and the nation. The last thing we do is try to turn out as many folks to vote as we possibly can. All three of those separate things are considered federal activities. Everything that spawns off of them is considered a federal activity. As a result of the funds we have to use in order to pay for any activities that come about as a result, we need to use federal funds. Nonfederal funds are also in a separate bank account. Or some of the folks down ballot or doing some nonfederal activities in our states. The truth of the matter is, over time as a result of super pacs and a number of other things like the mccainfeingold act, state parties have been boiled down to having two pieces of article capital. We served as a male bank and ran a lot of mail through our state parties as a result of being able to pay for mail at a much reduced rate and we served as a place, as a data house. The Democratic Party has far and away the best data on voters and communities that any candidate would ever want to go after. We served as those two things and over time, asked staff and shares and organizations, we try to come up with more added value to our organizations, to our states and candidates. We did that by working closely with our county parties in order to figure out different ways to communicate and ways we could grow and turn out voters. At the national level, we are fortunate as the association of state democratic chairs to have a leader in rate buckley who serves as the chair for the New Hampshire democratic candidate. Not just democrats, not just republicans, but all of us. We put together a plan in order to address them. We directed the staff to put together a series of trainings for the purpose of understanding exactly what the impact of mccainfeingold has on state hardees because believe you made, the last thing you want is to get bob over the head freezing incorrect funds to pay for something. Through the leadership of the executive director and the training director, they have set up a Training Program for state parties to learn the ways of the fec. While neil i think is going to put his kids through college as a result of the legal work, we dont pay him enough to make sure we stay out of trouble. When some states do, we feel really fortunate to have someone like neil who has relationships with the sec to work with us on any issue. What i want to stress is what i started with this idea that its not just state parties dealing with this issue, its not just democrats state parties, we both are. What i would hope would happen at the end of the day is our federal legislators, our members of congress would start to sit down with us more often in order to have a conversation about the impact that their state party that may have recruited them to run way back when what may 1 entered Congress Continues to get them reelected and serve the democrat or republican parties and their state can hopefully hear the challenges we are facing on a daytoday basis and do something about the laws ray just referred to. We agree and issue of the contribution limits is an issue for us. We agree being able to coordinate more allows us to spend money more effectively and wisely during the course of a campaign. Making the contributions taxdeductible is an issue, especially for larger donors looking for a way to spend their money at the end of the year. And the regulatory rollbacks are something that hopefully we start working more closely with our members of congress that we can face and address. Elaine thank you. John, from the other side of the aisle. John thank you, it is a pleasure to be here and i want to thank ray and jonathan for their work and brookings for hosting a very important program. I am delighted, as jason is, that theres more attention being focused on the plight of state parties in todays day and age and i think theres a lot of room for Common Ground, but not just bipartisan. It could be ideological as well and it could be among people who have different goals or see different problems in the system right now. A lot of folks think there is too much money going to less transparent and grassroots oriented groups as the authors mention. If you have a problem with that, one way to counteract that is to create reforms that will strengthen the most transparent, most accountable to grassroots oriented groups in the system. One specific reform they talk about and we can get into those is raising more illuminating contribution limits. A lot of people say thats more money into the system, and to begin with, that isnt true. Keep in mind theres not a dollar that can not go into the system now that would be in the system if state parties could raise money for themselves. Its just a matter of where its going to go. Increasing contribution limits could have the ironic effect of increasing the strength and influence of low dollar donors because what you will see a state parties are much more driven by low dollar donors and super pacs are and the mix would change as more high dollar money comes to state parties but its going to be a mix, not 100 high dollar donors. The other thing you need to look at in that respect is the National Committees have high limits compared to state Party Committees. That doesnt mean we dont raise low dollar money. The fact is it costs a lot of money to raise low dollar money and money that could come in the door from high dollar contractors could be used to build low dollar fundraising programs and the state funding state parties dont have the resources to do that just now. Increasing or eliminating limits could have a positive effect on state parties. A couple of other points i will make and one thing you may be wondering is why is the guy from the National Party committee here . Two reasons i think are important for the discussion. The Party Committees are very well integrated. The system is not just a matter of National Parties, state parties and local Party Committees. We all need to be strengthened but the regulations in place have drawn fissures between the Different Levels of Party Committees. For instance, as mentioned in the paper, National Party Committee Officers can not even raise money for state accounts and state candidates. The chairman of the Republican National committee is banned by federal law from raising a single dollar for a state candidate for local candidate or state Party Committee to help state and local candidates. Measures such as rolling back those kinds of restrictions could help the state parties. The other reason i think im here from a National Party perspective is we are set up a little differently on the republican side. I worked with state parties all day, every day. We dont have a separate state parties association so i get questions from state parties all the time and as i read this paper, one of the things that struck me is how much of what i was reading was reflect in the kind of questions i get an sentiments i hear from folks on the ground every day and the frustration and confusion. I teach election law at the state level on a regular basis and its very complex. The most highly regulated entities in the political system and the least equipped to deal with it because they are so highly regulated because there are so many structural daises against them. I try to walk them through the rules and how to allocate costs between state and federal accounts. Hopefully not exclusively. Partially the other two laws, all they want to do is grassroots activity and all they want to do is engage with voters and they find out they cant do that without employing lawyers and not spending time on actual voter context but instead on mere compliance. I think theres a lot of room for reform and i think there is Common Ground and i think theres looking i think brookings and the authors of this paper for their work. Eliza thanks to brookings for this event and ray and john for taking this seriously. Civic engagement, accountability and transparency some of these ideas are excellent and i support them, but others i would say we need to be careful in crafting our solution so we dont bring about the opposite of what we intend and have the effect of weakening state parties by exciting voter anger at big money. It wasnt too long ago that we had deregulation of the parties in the form of soft money. Before the mccainfeingold law took effect, we had a series of scandals involving the lincoln bedroom and buddhist monks. The donors were rewarded with ski vacations and getaways and exclusive access. Some of them got what they wanted. Anyone who needs reminding of the problems of that era can look at the record that was the Supreme Court ruling that upheld that law. What that record showed was that no one was happy. Donors were unhappy and felt shaken down. The voters were increasingly upset and that is why that law was enacted. We shouldnt forget that. That wasnt long ago and there were some dangers that occurred when parties were deregulated that would be a shame to replicate. One feature of that euro that speaks to this paper is at that time, there were elected officials who set up leadership packs, their own Political Action committees in the state, taking advantage of the fact that the states had no contribution limit. That is something i think is a little bit of a red flag in this paper because it is revoking the band on that the and on National Party officials raising money. I would be full to make sure those types of abuses did not take place once again. A couple of contradictions im going to quibble with a little bit. On the one hand, state parties are presented as pure and virtuous and outside groups are secretive and polarizing. State parties are forwarding the goals of establishing infrastructure and sitting with a lasting brand. They are described as less corruptible than candidates, but lets not forget it is elected officials running for office who are running the state parties and they are the ones tasked with raising this money. To say they are less corruptible than the candidates is a complicated article. Given a clear role candidates play in running and raising money for these parties. The paper also does say these parties and outside groups are competing to hire the same people, duplicating messages and tasks. If anything, that illustrates the fuzzy line between parties and outside groups and we see that in this election or the republican party, some established leaders are concerned about donald trump. The one group that came out first against trump was none other than the club for growth. An outside group of the type resized as meddling in primaries. But they were the first to do what establishment Party Leaders wanted to do. I dont know if we can really say state parties were parties in general are that separate from outside groups. I think often they have similar goals and i dont think they are less corrupt. Theres a strong question raised in my mind by the statement in this paper that corruption is less important than moderation. I think that is at odds with the anger voters feel right now. I think voters feel is a huge problem and its turning up in poll after poll as being a huge concern to voters. If parties become perceived as being driven by special interest donors or big money, voters might go against it rather than becoming part of the grassroots army. Theres a perception we move money from one place to the other, will have trans parent see and accountability. There is some evidence here that in states with less regulation, that is happening. There is a danger that will that there will be more money and if the problem is outside groups are not disclosing, maybe we should focus on disclosure. Virtually unanimously, the Supreme Court upheld in the Citizens United ruling. Having said that, there are some great ideas here. That includes the idea that they should allow contributions to be taxdeductible. I think that is something that is of interest to republicans as well and i would use that as an example. A tea party reform group called take back our republic support tax credits. I think thats a strong possible area of Common Ground. I also agree it is way overdue to let parties coordinate with their candidates. I think that is something you can an act today. I know there are dangers to that in there probably would be people who argue against it but i think a lot of lawmakers would rally around that. We could narrow the definition of federal activity by state parties, but with the caveat that it needs to be done with extreme caution so federal elected officials dont turn state parties into personal slush funds away they did before mccainfeingold. In closing, i would say nature we talked not just to one another, but voters in this process. I think there is an alternative model for state parties. It has been proposed by congressman john sarbanesoxley match low dollar contributions for candidates and i think that could be applied to state parties. I think that would be more calculated to strengthen them because once people make a small contribution, they are invested in the process. A final note i would say is the federal parties already have quite a bit more access to unrestricted money as a result of the fec ruling in 2014, without going into too much detail allows joint fundraising committees to raise much larger contributions. And this is actually happening. Elected officials on capitol hill are setting up joint fundraising committees and raising contributions up to 300 and a time to give to Political Parties for new special accounts created by a spending bill that allows parties to operate special accounts with much higher contribution limits for buildings and conventions and recounts. That money is coming in and i dont see a change in the strength of the party. Its a complicated Political Landscape and i think we need to proceed with caution. Elaine thank you very much and thank you to everyone. I thought i would give ray and john a couple of minutes to respond before we go to the audience. Ray i want to point out one thing what we are talking about is state parties. On the lincoln bedroom thing, i think it is almost quaint that was our biggest worry. You can only fit one couple in the lincoln bedroom at the time. And we knew who they were. There was a guest list. Thats not true anymore. Trust is a funny thing. During the height of soft money, there was more trust in congress and the government and at any point in the 10 years before that in the 10 years after that. Im not sure people make the distinction between all this money that goes to super pacs our pouring our point is if they are not making the distinction, at least give it to the parties who are going to be more accountable. They are the people who have to govern eventually. Put as much money as possible to the ones who are going to face the burden of actually having to govern and face the people. They are not really the same people. Some of them are. But just as one example, why do you think senator mcconnell faced so much difficulty pushing in a writer from the tea party because he wanted to have more money to coordinate . They know it is giving the party more power. So there are differences out there and one of the most telling stories we had was it depends on where you sit. We had one executive director who was working for a very conservative group. His perspective changed entirely. My job is to get republicans elected, not conservatives. When i was doing that, that was my job. This equation that they are all the same is problematic russ. Let me stop there. Jonathan thank you for the comments there. Especially allies of. If we had magic bullets with no downside, all of this would be easier. It is possible if you lighten the contribution limit on parties, more money would flow in. Im not sure we think theres anything wrong with that. Money flowing to parties can strengthen their relative clout in the system and if you have looked at the president ial race right now, you might think strengthening relative clout might be a good ring. Not looking just at the amounts, but look at where they are going. Its not enough just to look at the individuals and the names and say its all the same people. The incentives are very different whether you are an insider or outsider, whether you have a longterm stake winning elections, in which case you are likely to look toward the median voter or if you are just and for the shorthaul. I often worry our Reform Community has lost sight of that and boiled everything down to a simple follow the money rubric. The idea of matching low dollar contributions to state dollars is interesting. We didnt evaluate it for this paper but it could use evaluating. We also think it is less likely to happen. If you go to the American Public and say should we match contributions to parties, we think they would give you a resounding no. A tax break might be more practical, but it is certainly worth a look. Thank you all again for your wonderful and challenging comments. Elaine jason or john, any thoughts . John i will respond to allies a just a little bit as far as Mccain Feingold and what they did and what was nearly what was merely speculation at the time. We can talk about the lincoln bedroom, but those were National Committees. The restrictions were driven by mere speculation that National Parties and federal candidates would use parties to circumvent the national softmoney ban. Without any evidence. We are in a different time and a different system with a lot more groups involved. Theyve been freed up to be more involved by citizen united and theres every reason to take a look back and say what has been the experience and mccainfeingold passed and is the mere conjecture about circumvention that existed at the time enough to keep state parties so restricted in this new day and age. I wouldnt courage and examination of that. Jason the way in which i drilled down a little bit is on coordination. We have state candidates on the ballot almost two years no matter what state youre in. The idea we can coordinate with them because there is a congressional candidate on the ballot and the inability to participate in a coordinated way, despite the fact that we are all democrats are all republicans seems absurd. It also seems absurd a state party cannot put out a mailer that we could use state funds that lists all of those candidates running for office on the democratic side without being forced to use one type of funds, one type of activity. It just doesnt seem logical and also seems very restrictive and something that is unnecessary. We are an added value to all the candidates running for office, whether its at the munich to the level, and the state level all the way up to the president ial level. We can provide that added value but these laws restrict the added value we are able to provide. These recommendations may and john set forth at least start the process for us to be more engaged and in order for us to get more people engaged in the process. If we are restricted and the ability to do voter registration, less people will get registered to vote. If we are restricted in a way we can communicate meaningfully with voters, less voters could be engaged. If we are restricted in the way we turn out voters, less people are going to turn out to vote and those are things everyone would agree we should be doing more of. More people should be registered and we should be having important conversations about the impact of laws and regulations and more people should turn out and vote in order to share their voice with the American People or with their communities. Eliza i thought i would take the prerogative to enter my two cents since this is a topic near and dear to my heart. One of the things we will see when the general election begins is that there will be people in many states in the united they to do not get a president ial campaign. The candidates will simply not go there. They wont go to hawaii emily will go to alaska. But they also will not go to the safe states. They will simply stay away from all but about 10 states. Theres a lot of speculation that over time, the polarization, which is a result of lots of things, people moving to where there are near people like them gerrymandering theres some speculation that there so many states where your vote does not matter. If you live in the middle of nebraska, your vote probably doesnt matter and maybe you dont other to vote in the president ial race. Because there are more and more people who feel like that, its got to have an effect on participation and everybody in the country, no matter how they are concerned, everybody believes in maximizing participation. And yet the institutions which do that are consistently, as we have been hearing, hobbled in their ability to do that. I go back to when howard dean was chairman of the democratic National Committee iran something called the 50 state strategy. The first thing he did was there were some states that were in such had state that such a bad state that they could not afford a lawyer or accountant. So he did simple, Building Block infrastructure things like that. The second thing he did was he looked for blue voters in red states, which i thought was a big, big change. Most people now think his holding of the party held the democrats get out of their slump to take over the congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008. I think there is some evidence that parties really can increase participation and increase that connection to elections in a way that the super pacs cannot. I agree with ray now to think act on the scandals, the lincoln bedroom compared to dark money, compared to the Koch Brothers, many difference organizations and what they are doing, i think there are bad things that happen all the time and we might be looking at them much lesser of two evils. Other comments . Eliza just briefly, i want to go back to the idea of the risk of corruption and appearance of corruption. If voters see they are raising the kind of money that would go to super pacs, that is what i worry about. I love the parties as much as everyone else and a door engagement and i would hate to see voters turn away from the parties because they perceive them to be doing this. John i would agree to that but theres a lobby for what is termed campaignfinance reform. It is frankly folks with a position that they want less money in politics and they are hellbent on convincing the public that money equals corruption. Frankly, thats not the case. The appearance of corruption could be there. Dce lobbyists to have a stake in that game are convincing people money equals corruption. I wouldnt give too much credence to that sort of argument. Elaine any other comments . Why dont we go to the floor. There somebody with a microphone. Why dont we start in the back of the room . I saw the oped in the New York Times several days ago, can the Sanders Campaign go local . Im wondering what the role of the state parties would be in allowing and insurgents to play a role in the campaign . We ask that and what they say is that its not our job to prevent insurgents. We dont lock anyone from running. We give our data to anyone who asks who is a candidate. They tend to have an open door policy except in unusual circumstances when they feel they have no circumstance but to step in. We ask why they step off and virtually all of time. Eliza Lyndon Larouche is the actual one. Jonathan they said it is because if we are seen as stepping in and stopping people, there will be blowback against us and people will run against the party and it has been effective. What we can do is this kind of gentle process of having a lot of conversation with a lot of people and encourage people to run for the spots and educate people and they say they will. If someone is hopeless, they can be less aggressive in supporting up person among the margins, but it is a soft power kind of approach. Jason i can give you some tangible things that we did. My Deputy Director is on leave working for senator sanderss campaign. Shes actually in michigan. They moved her from South Carolina to michigan and we have cultivated staff that wound up working on the campaign. We provided an office space for both campaigns to do training of their volunteers, to hold press conferences, to have meetings with surrogates, to do any number of things. We do it in a completely even keel way. Before senator sanders even announced before secretary clinton or martin omalley, they had access to all of that information equally and at the same time. They had access to all of those resources and access to information at the same time, so there was no there was not an ounce of favoritism at all given to any of those folks that would lend itself to any type of campaign, whether it was an established when establishment one or insurgent one. Jonathan i think one answer is why should they be any less corruptible than the parties and i think you just heard the answer. Where a party sets, its harder to favor a particular gender because they are all your customer. Elaine how about right over there . Im Richard Skinner with the Sunlight Foundation and this is for ray and jonathan. What did your respondents have to say about the role of National Party organizations like the Republican Governors Association and democratic Governors Association . Ray they do play a role but we did not ask them about that. What were you thinking . Right. Thats probably a function of the fact that the money is not the money is not going to the state party. We have to rely on the outside organizations to spend the money. It is a deeply secondbest solution, to have to run state campaigns from washington, was there anything else that you are alluding to . This is party money as well. Allif you care about folks over the country, they will probably get them and care about the governors race in michigan and so on and so forth. You aret curious as to, talking a lot about super pacs but you are talking about the organizations. Were only talking about the super pacs that are party packs and Senate Majority packs which are closely aligned with Party Leaders. We did go across that a little. One thing that people may say is that if you rattle all these parties off, you will have corruption issues. What some of the state parties do, they areng to trying to set up their own super pacs. It now goes up to the Supreme Court, eventually as they are finding themselves saying, if they cant raise the money inside the state party, it will take a former state Party Chairman and set up a separate super pac and we cant coordinate with that group but we know them and they will break in the money and spend it. No one that we have talked to think that is a good solution. But that is where it is headed if you dont openly door to let it money in. These are natural consistencies of donors. So in that sense, i dont think it is a great solution. I want to point out one thing that often gets overlooked. When the amendments were made in 1974, the parties could raise 10,000 for their federal cash per year. Today, it would be 100,000 inflationadjusted. The parties are still a 10,000 per year. That is equivalent of 4000. So they are going backwards in terms of how much they can raise. Since 1974. A simple social a simple solution, lets just set it at the value of 1974, 100,000. Even that would have been a better solution. I still have an adjusted for inflation. Is that true . I dont know. Ok. They didnt even index. They did not index the limits and just want to make sure everybody here heard that. I think that should have at is a fixed that i think that has bipartisan support. And let me just say a word about bipartisan support. In 2008, there was a big worry that we were going to start the president ial nomination system at thanksgiving. We could there were many states trying to jump ahead of iowa and two hampshire. And if you remember, we did have Iowa Caucuses two days after new years which was not ideal. And the two parties got very worried about that and had some formal and informal coordination into the hearers since. You will notice that everything has started in a much more civilized fashion. Both of these parties agreed on these states before we got into these states. So in this time of massive or sometimes it seems that if the democrats say black, the republicans will say white, there has been a history of cooperation in her to preserve the prerogatives in the nomination system. I think it is very likely that you will see a lot of Cooperation Among the parties as we move forward. Because every cycle, one of these super pacs does something that a candidate or the party really doesnt like. Mitt romney, at the end of 2012, took claim on the super pacs and each of my fee ads and he thought they went off method and were detrimental to the message. So i think slowly, the political establishment is coming to say to themselves, what have weve brought here in these super pacs . And how can we constrain the growth and the activity of the super pac . More questions . Yes, right here on. John sanders. You just made my sense for me. I thought the parties with the outsiders but it has been involved it has been my conviction that the whole point of Campaign Finance regulations was ruined by the suppressing. Hat is of the things t being done when you suppress outside institutions is to, in fact, make it easier for insiders cannot be challenged. Incumbents love that. So is it the case, in fact, that we should all be wary of these kinds of rules and institutional changes because, in fact, they have decided insider things, insider ideas and interests . I wonder how there wouldnt people are is a when you think that because anyone under is actually not a legitimate part of a group . Case, that they should be aware of these kinds of rules and additional changes . Because it is a decided insider thing. Decided insider ideas. Ray i see your point about protecting incumbents. Its one reason for this contribution limits. But of all the organizations that income is should feel the most is the party. Parties want to take control of the legislature. They will use their funds to get the other side. Thats why incumbents dont like strong parties. Unless they are on the verge of capturing the legislature. Then they need the parties. Now they are relying on these outsiders to do it for them. So im for, you know, limits on the candidates. No limits or very high limits on the parties. To me, that would be the best way for having competition in the system. Anybody else . Elaborating on that, you sue see this as two versions of the same question. Do we favor people we like . One of the nice things about rays idea of building channels, not dams, is that we are not on board with saying the outsiders cant spend the money. Even if we were, i dont think its enforceable. We just dont see why the insider should be so persistently and consistently disadvantaged. With respect to knock down the dams and compete on a more level playing field. Let the people out there who are making the decisions decide where the money should go. That isnt engineering the system, it is d engineering fee system. Protection,umbent there was a book that came out. They discovered that back in the days when the parties, rather than the republican primary selected the candidates, races were more competitive. It turned out the parties had more interest in recruiting strong challengers and were able to find a good fight. When the party stepped out, you had witchcraft advocate stepping in. In fact, you have a much less balanced, less competitive system in a way when you went to open primaries. Think hard about where the incentive really lies here. Back to the audience. Over here, this young man by the wall. I young, i appreciate that. With jasons comments earlier about people stay in their lanes. That is kind of guaranteed raise for advertising time. Was there any discussion in giving state parties a better guaranteed rate to let them go up on the air is here and spend money in a more effective way, leahy at a more effective way for donors to spend their money . I do not believe so. The single most attractive thing for donors to super pacss anonymity. When i asked for contributions from people, the question is, will my name show up somewhere, especially when i am talking about large dollar donors. So our ability to raise the funds to go up on your, regardless of the price on it, is incredibly impacted by the fact that i have to report those contributions for people who want to give to me. These are folks who want to give so that we can grow our party. We can add more people to the electorate. We can talk to folks in meaningful ways. They want us to build better model so they can turn out better voters. But the last thing they want is this to turn up on a state report. That is the single biggest return from large donors, apart who a tax incentive. Eliza i want to follow up on what jason said. I think that a lot of people are going to give to the anonymous groups simply because they want to be anonymous. Even if you try to create channels, they wont go to the state party because they dont want their names disclosed. It isnt the super pacs that dont disclose. Because they have the full disclosure imposed upon them. But it is the politically active taxexempt groups. Use with european television. Thank you for a fascinating conversation. I am from germany. Also the most boring thing you can possibly imagine that the reason is because the Political Parties have total control over the nominating and recruiting process. And covering the united states, i see donald trump and statelevel candidates who would raise many eyebrows in here. Could you speak to the way state parties recruit candidates and what they actually do . Do they approach people or to wait for someone to show up . I dont know. Yes. For our lawyer, our resident billionaire. We are going through this process in South Carolina. He process is not anything other than you might think. We have a group of people who know a lot of folks, get in a room and identify what races are on the ballot this year and we try to go out into the communities and identify the strongest candidate who will carry a message that enough people in their communities will believe in and get behind in order to win. Some stay parties get into it a little later than others and some get into it very early. What i have found is that the state parties who get into it earlier are able to cultivate a can is better and provide them with more resources. Their name are you mission will be better than the ones who get in late. We also are finding that the ones who get in late the ones who can finance their own campaigns because of the amount of money necessary in order to win and the amount of time it takes to raise 2700 a clip, if you are running on the federal level, or the 5,000 a clip on the legislative level. But its just a group of people within our party or the community who would like to start winning races again or continue to win races at the party level, we just formed a committee. It is really that simple. Thank you. In terms of candidate recruitment, i want to use this question to a related point. It is something that struck me when i was going through the survey. Comparing the 99 study to the it looks likee state parties do spend more on candidate recruitment now, particularly the biggest jump at the local office level. Yet their contribution to local candidates were down. A letter fewer state parties were getting the candidates then we were used to. I want to highlight that and i wanted to see if theres anything behind head. Sometimes in d. C. We lose sight of what is going on with the little with the local level, in particular, where the local parties are having challenges themselves and they have strict limits that they have to abide by in order to stay outside of the complex federal regulatory system and it strikes me that it is problematic to be draining Party Resources for among the reasons we have talked about. It means less resources for local candidates, in an age where not only is there inflation, by campaign costs are going up regardless, there may be cheaper ways to reach voters than there used to. But the medias a fractured now, there are so many Different Things you have to spend money on to reach the same number of voters and make the same kind of impression. You factor in things like early voting and thinks that drag it through the fall. You used to be able to recruit your friends. Anymorecant do that because huge percentages of people have already voted. So how many people dont have to buy . It appears to be less and less of a resource for those who need it. Did you want to add anything to that . Yes, cohead john. Ask why the state parties are moving away from direct contributions and towards recruitment. My guess would be because the latter is less regulated and because it is the lane strategy. It is easy for them to compete on localization then on monday. Did you have any thing to add to that . One of the things we noticed overall is the type of activities that state parties are now gravitating towards. To us, they feel like they have less influence over a reputation and among those are the advertising put also, these are the sorts of things that they need to do in order to recruit candidates. It is important. So what you have is a party that is serving the needs of the candidates. But it is in partial ways. Their ability to build brands, to the extent that is done on television is less and they are less nimble than the organizations. Here we have all of the private organizations. We spoke to so many different state parties who talked with turnover and inconsistencies in their own leadership. And their own strategic focus. Private organizations are able to craft effective strategies and that doesnt make state parties less valuable but what it means is that in order for them to be able to support their own judy to bring out images of the brand, they need to have a level playing field. I wanted to go back a couple of questions, there were comments made about the invalidity. I think that is what we are against. The phenomenology. It weeks of corruption. That is where the voters get angry. I was asked a couple of years ago, there was a prominent former senator here. Do theose the question, people on capitol hill understand how angry the electorate is . This was two years ago and enforced and unfortunately, he gave me some mealymouthed political answer oh, of course they do but nothing changes. And that is with the electorate is really angry about. The anonymity is the perception of corruption and nothing changes. I want to make a brief comment. The true irony for me is that they are engaging in the same exact activity as state parties and yet they dont have to have the same reporting requirements that stay parties do. Those groups are doing candidate recruitment. Those groups are making sure that their candidates are getting over the finish line. Those groups are building a volunteer apparatus. Americans for prosperity is recruiting people to go doortodoor to make sure the bills that alec whats in front of state legislators are passed. Air doing the exact same thing. But they are not required to report in the same way. This issue is difficult and complicated. When you ask politically active groups to subject themselves to federal election laws, the danger is that you will capture groups who have a constitutionally protected right to engage in lobbying with lawmakers. So this is something that people have to Start Talking about. It is not as simple as namecalling. Behalf to get into the nittygritty about how we can requirementsure that dont tread on free speech. Next question. Right back thereby the wall. Im very interested in jonathan and raymond. Purists. Ts versus and speaking about perception. I cant help but think about superdelegates. Theres one superdelegate sitting in the panel right now. I guess my question for you to is what does it mean when a superdelegate and the dnc endorses a candidate outside of the party, such as an independent, and what does it mean on the other side of the aisle when a note when a lawmaker endorses a row candidate. Im not saying doubled trump, but we can think donald trump. Eliza the state Party Chairman are superdelegates. Well, first of all, the dnc members who are superdelegates do get elected. So i could imagine, for instance, if i endorsed donald trump tomorrow, that come time to elect a new democratic National Committee, i suspect that maybe i wouldnt be on the slate and maybe nobody would vote for me. So there is an accountability mechanism in there. The elected officials and members of congress on the democratic side are superdelegates in on the republican side or not. The Republican Committee been are all superdelegates. But a congressman who did that would be paid news and it will be paid news in his or her district and they would get a primary challenge the next time around. This is the power of parties. Parties, for all of their weakness, are still incredibly powerful. They organize democracy. Weve never had a democracy that that doesnt have Political Parties. As much as people dump on them, this is how people organizing cells in democracies. There are accountability mechanisms to the voters take party seriously. There are many avenues through which you can punish superdelegates who go endorse somebody outside of the party. As for the mirror your question there has up a lot, been superdelegates in the Democratic Party since 1984. They have never voted differently than the publicly elected delegate. Again, for the same accountability reason. Unless there was some compelling reason, the superdelegates are going to vote the way the voters vote at it with the publicly elected delegates vote. You could see a situation where maybe the voters decide, where you going to a convention and there is a third and a third and a third. Then, they would have some power to make a decision. As opposed to overturning the will of the voters. I really dont see that happening. One last question. From some intrepid there are more hands there we go. The entire panel seems to say that its a good thing that we increase participation. But my understanding, perhaps misunderstanding, is that republicans particularly dont want increase in participation. How do i put those together if i do . That sounds like a question for me. I will say this, as a republican, as an employee of the national Republican Committee, we are all very excited about the huge advantage we have in voter turnout in the primary and caucus season this year over the democrats. So we are all for participation so the election of our state soislative election, it is important for the purposes of drawing maps. They are also important for the purposes of laws that can be passed that would create voter intimidation and suppression within our state. Right now we have a slew of secretary of states who are writing laws that are inhibiting people from getting to the ballot box. They are also not doing something important, which is educating people on those laws. If there are new laws on voting on the books, a majority of the americans that live in a community in which those laws were changed have not been educated sufficiently about those changes. But if there is a change in the speed limit, you better be sure theres a roadside out there a road sign out there that you can go 45 instead of 55. In america, we have done such a horrible job of educating people about those changes so that, when they show up at the polls, they dont go confused, they dont feel alienated, and they dont feel like their vote wont matter. I think thats the issue. Right now, as democrats in these states where these laws have been passed, we are accepting it for what it is. Were hoping to elect people who might change the laws. The more importantly, we are putting pressure on the secretaries of state and the people running the elections to educate voters on the changes. Otherwise, we will see less and less voter turnout. It is very important that we talk about this issue and educate more people about it. So that more will participate participate. And like to thank our candidates and mean thank our participants and everyone who came today. And if they want to read about this more in, go to the website. You can go to the state of state parties and how strengthening them can improve our politics. You can get it for free on the brookings website. Thank you very much for participating today. [applause] [indiscernible] campaign 2016 takes place today with primaries in missouri, illinois, North Carolina and florida. Live coverage of the candidate speeches gets underway at 7 00 p. M. Eastern. Taking you on the road to the white house. That is on speed span. Org. More coverage coming up. Next, donald trump campaigns in ohio with Chris Christie. Then john kasich holds a on this mornings washington journal, we will preview the president ial primaries. The former regional epa director and former flint, michigan they are came rolling testify about Drinking Water inflict. Fromll take questions members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, live at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan three. In the afternoon, a hearing on self driving cars. We will hear from Auto Industry representatives in the director of googles self driving cars program. Ive coverage and 2 30 on cspan3. The Supreme Court has an outside amount of power, and with it comes great responsibility. It has been sitting on the court for 30, 35 years. It just doesnt pass the smell test when it comes to modern democracy. Sunday night, gabe roth talks about changes he would like to see of the Supreme Court, including opening of oral arguments to cameras and posing term limits on the justices, and requiring them to hold to the same code of ethics that either a federal judges follow. All americans are aware of the third branch of government, and in the last 10, 15 years it has become so powerful, the idea of the issues on voting and marriage and health care and immigration and womens rights, pregnancy discrimination these issues that 20, 30 years ago would be figured out with a compromise. That doesnt happen anymore. It has fallen to the Supreme Court in a way that is unprecedented. Given at the Supreme Court is making these very impactful decisions in our lives, the least we can do is have them comport with modern expectations of transparency and accountability. T in 00y night at either 0 eastern on q a. Republican president ial candidate donald trump spoke about trade, border security, and the iran nuclear deal. Hes introduced by new jersey governor and former gop president ial candidate chris chris. Chris christie. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the governor of the state of new jersey, Chris Christie. And the next president of the united states, mr. Donald j. Trump. [cheering] [applause] gov. Christie good evening, ohio. My name is Chris Christie and im happy to tell you that tomorrow you will make ohio trump country. [cheering] America Needs a strong leader to restore our hope and our strength and there is only one man to do it and that is donald trump. America needs someone in the white house who knows how to create jobs because he has done it and that man is donald trump. America needs a leader who will restore our military and have the backs of the men and the women in the army, and that is donald trump. America needs a leader who the rest of the world will respect because he is going to make America Great again. That is donald trump. We do not need what you have to put up with here in ohio. Higher spending from government. We dont need bigger sales taxes. We dont need that in washington. We need someone who will make government smaller, smarter and working for you, not the other way around, and that is donald trump. Tomorrow, tomorrow, we need each and every one of you. Your family, your friends, the people you work with, your neighbors to get out to the polls and make sure you vote for the person who will make America Great again. Donald j. Trump. It is so great to see such a great crowd here today. We want you to go home after this, get some sleep, get up tomorrow morning, get to the polls and make America Great again with donald trump. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor and my privilege to introduce to you the next president of the united states, donald j. Trump. [applause] mr. Trump wow, thank you. Thank you, chris. So great. I got a call a couple of weeks ago from Chris Christie and he said i really think what has happened. It is something special. Whether it is momentum or whatever, we have something going that people have not seen before. It is really a drive. Honestly, they are talking about one of the greatest things they have seen on political history. It has been on the cover of time, every newspaper. It is really something special. We are going to make our country so much better. It is going to be great again and it is going to happen quickly. [applause] so, i just wanted to i changed my plans a little bit. We are doing great in florida, great in illinois. Missouri, i think we will have a tremendous day. I have to come out here and explain a couple of things because what is going on i dont know if you read the art of the deal, but i worked for a long time in ohio. It was in cincinnati. It was a great success. It was a horrible job. It was a mess. I took it over, i fixed it. I come out here all the time. I bought it for x and sold it for x. After that, the job did not do too well but we were gone. Usually we hold but this time we did not. It gave me an unbelievable feeling for the people of ohio. I have stayed here, work here, and i love the people of ohio. It was really one of my first big jobs. 1164 units and we bought it from the fha for nothing and sold it for a lot of money. It is like if you are a baseball player and you get that first hit, or if you are a golfer. It gave me a great confidence and i have always loved this place. I just wanted to tell you that, folks. Thank you, thank you. This all began very strongly in june. June 16, to be exact. I said to my wife, we have to do this. This is something we have to do. Our country is being so badly led, led into this horrible deal with iran. This deal will repay 350 billion. We get nothing. We should have never started negotiating the deal until we got our prisoners back. [applause] they never once walked, did anything. Constantly, you would see back in iran, people dancing in the streets before the deal was done. They are dancing, calling us all stupid. The deal was a joke. It was a joke. It was one of the worst negotiated transaction of any kind i have ever seen. They could have walked, they could have gone in and said before we start, we need our prisoners back. This would be 3. 5, four years ago. They would have said no. The persians being great negotiators. And then, we get up and walk and we go out and doubled up the sanctions. Within 24 hours, they would call back and say we are giving you back the prisoners. Then, we go in a second time and say, listen, we have a problem. We owe 19 trillion. We cannot give you the 150 billion back. Cannot do it. I tell that story. Some of the media who, by the way, are the most dishonest people on earth. The worst. [applause] [booing] mr. Trump boo. So true. So true. Like, look at his massive crowd in this big hangar. We set this up like, what, 15 hours ago, right . Just look, because i wanted to come up. This is a place i want to win. This is going to do it. Ohio is going to make America Great again. [applause] kasich cannot make America Great again. Cant do it. He can do it. If you didnt hit oil, you would have had a disaster. This would have been as bad as any of them. You got lucky. Oil has now gone way down but yet your budget has gone up 35 more than any other state in the united states. That means you will have a big problem. It has are even talked about. Two days ago, i was in cleveland. It was unbelievable. Like, 25,000 people. Just before i went on, one of the managers of the arena came over. Patrick and raymond park, they own it. They do a beautiful job. He said it is so sad. Right over there, edencorp going to mexico. Ford going to mexico. He pointed to other places and i said, wow, that is sad. That is what is happening, folks. With me, it will not happen anymore. We will not be the dummies anymore. We are not going to be the dummies anymore. [applause] you are losing your job, your income, your factories. They are going to china, going to mexico. Japan is killing us with the cars. Now it is vietnam, india, everybody. We dont make good deals anymore. We dont win anymore. Where do we win . We lose on trade, the military. We cannot beat isis. We cant beat isis. Here we have a military and cannot beat isis. We all know how to win anymore. It is not in our culture anymore. The old expression, to the victor belong the spoils. I did not want to go in. You are going to destabilize the entire middle east and they went into iraq and it was a mistake. Now, obama gets out. The way he got out was so bad. He puts out a date. The enemy says, wow. They cannot believe it. He pushes out a date. Bad thing to do. In all fairness, we should not have been there but we should have left some troops behind. Iran is taking over iraq. Iraq as the second Largest Oil Reserves in the world. The iran deal i used to say one of the greatest deals i have ever seen was the iran deal, but actually, the greatest deal i have seen is just now. Iran is taking over iraq. Second Largest Oil Reserves in the world. That is the greatest deal. They have been fighting with the iraq forever and they go 10 feet oneway, 10 feet the other way and then they rest. Then they go again. For years and years, they fought. But they were the same. They were equal military strength. Saddam hussein would drop gas. They would complain, they would drop gas. This went on forever. And then we obliterated one of the two powers. To me, it was obvious. I said, dont do it. Now, iran is taking over iraq. Iran is going in with yemen. They dont want yemen, but they like the long, big, beautiful border that separates yemen from saudi arabia. Ive been pretty good with these predictions. When i wrote a book in the year 2000, i mentioned in the book Osama Bin Laden. Everybody said dont forget that was a year and a half before the World Trade Center came down. Everybody said, i dont believe it. An announcer in the morning said, wait a minute. Trump was talking about Osama Bin Laden before he knocked down the World Trade Center. The guy said no way and they looked at the book. That is what i did. We had to take them out. We had opportunities to take him out. Im good on the prognostication. Years ago, i did this whole crazy political thing. We have been supporters and friends for a long time. I said take the oil. I did not want to be there, but now we are. If you are going to leave, take the oil, take the oil. I kept saying that and they said you cannot take the oil. What a terrible thing. This is a sovereign country. A country that was blown off the face of the earth. You have the leaders that were left behind were totally corrupt. [applause] horrible. These were corrupt people. That is what happened with isis. They would not include these people and isis turned out to be a lot tougher and smarter than the people we chose. They did not include them. Who has the oil . Iran has the oil and isis. What do we have . We spent years there. 2 trillion in costs. Thousands of lives, Wounded Warriors who we love all over the place. What do we have . We have nothing. If our leaders would have gone away, tell them to go away to the beach and sun themselves for four years, we would have been better off. Saddam hussein was not a good person. Who cares . He was great at killing terrorists. He would kill terrorists. Now iraq is Harvard University for terrorists. That is what they do. They kill. We dont do they develop terrorists all over the place now. It is far worse than before we started. In the meantime, we have our country. It is crumbling. You look at our airports, hospitals, roads and highways, the bridges are falling down. You look at our schools. Our country is falling apart. We have become third world in many respects. You go to dubai, qatar, some of these places and you land at airports. You say, oh, man, look at this airport. I was in qatar and they were showing me this beautiful airport. I said akbar nice guy. I get along with everybody. They were showing me, the head of the airline this is this and this is that. We have spas for the people. I said this is beautiful. He said, no, no, this is just a temporary. The real airport is being built over there. I get back on my plane and land in laguardia with potholes all over them. We are becoming third world. Here is a story. It is so important to vote tomorrow. You got to vote. If you have a headache [applause] if you are dying, i mean, if you are dying if you just went to your doctor, although that would cost too much because of obamacare. We are repealing and replacing obamacare. [applause] but if you go to your doctor and he tells you it is over, it is just done. You are done. You are going to be dead in three weeks. Doesnt matter. Get out tomorrow and vote. Think about your children, your family. Get out tomorrow and vote, ok . You got to do it. It is a Movement Like they have not seen. I tell you what, the cover of time four times, take a look. That is what they are writing. The single biggest story in Politics Today in the world is what is happening, of all things, to the republican party. We had a party that was obsolete. Mitt romney could not run for dog catcher. This guy was a disaster. We had a party that should have one the last election. I backed mccain, he lost. I backed romney, he lost. I said this time we are going to do it ourselves, folks. We are going to do it right. [applause] we got to do it right. So, the biggest story in politics worldwide, it is all over the world, is what is happening with the republican party. Here is the story i have won 16 states. I think we will have a great day tomorrow. [applause] the ones that is closest is you get out and vote. I think we will have a phenomenal day. Florida is looking fantastic. Florida is really looking a senator that does not show up to vote. How would you like to have a senator that does not show up to vote . You cannot have that either but florida is looking really fantastic. They have a little bit of the same characteristics. You have rubio who does not vote. And your governor is absentee. He goes listen to this because i know. I still work. I have a job. So, your governor kasich, if you look at him im being totally impartial. He goes to New Hampshire, he is living in New Hampshire. Wheres chris . Even more than Chris Christie, he was there. Right . Even more. I hated to do that, but i had to make my point. He goes to New Hampshire. He lives there. He loses badly. He gets killed. I win in a landslide. I love the people of New Hampshire. They gave me my first big victory and it was early on. Everybody wants to win iowa so they can win New Hampshire, i won New Hampshire. We go to South Carolina. Im not supposed to win that because it is heavily evangelical, but im a great christian and i understand evangelicals. An evangelical is smart and they dont want to remember lying ted cruz. He is lying ted cruz. He walks in with his nonsense, his phony stuff. He lifts the bible up high and says here i am, im lying ted cruz and then he starts lying for the whole night. He knows what your position is. He tells people of the opposite. What he did to ben carson, who just endorse me by the way. [applause] great guy. In iowa, ben was doing really well and i was. Ted cruz said that ben carson just quit the race and the voting was not close to ending. Right after the race ended, he called him and apologized. Give me a break. I dont know if ben has forgotten that were forgiven that. Ben endorsed me a couple of days ago. You know who else endorsed me was sheriff joe. You know you are tough on the borders if he endorses you. We have sheriff joe. We have sarah palin who endorsed. Jerry falwell, jr. From Liberty University so great. He really helped me with evangelicals. We go to South Carolina and that is going to be ted cruz country. That is lying ted cruz country. We go and everybody says he is going to win. Who wins . Trump. Who gets the military, the vets because when they are leaving, they do the polls. I won with the military, the vets, evangelicals, everybody. I won with women, men. I won with highly educated. I won with less than highly educated. We won with every single category. It has been great. Same thing with nevada. I win with nevada in a landslide. The big thing is this i say hello to the people that work at the polling booths. A woman comes up to me in New Hampshire and she says you know what, i have been doing this for 40 years. In 40 years, we used to have three people, another four people. It was very light. I looked at the lines. They were five blocks long. We have taken in millions and millions and millions of people within the republican party. They came out from the democrats. They came as the independents. The thing im most proud of i see it when i sign and shake cans with people every 20th person says, you know, i have never, ever voted before. We are talking about 40yearold people. Are you going to vote . Have you never voted before . Thank you. That is so cool. Who has never voted before . Wow. And you are all voting, right . Im telling you. They just said it on one of the stations coming in. It is a phenomena and it is phenomenal. So many people. They said i never wanted to vote because i have never seen anybody i wanted to vote for. We have the democrats and we are up millions and millions of votes. It is interesting. I watched lying ted a little while ago and he was saying im the only one he is a good debater but he cannot talk he says on the only one who can beat trump. I beat him five times. It is like a professional debate artist. I have won every debate. I dont understand it. According to drudge, they do the polls after the debates. After every single debate, time magazine, drudge, they do polls. I think i have won every single one. Really. Lying ted goes, i have to tell you, im the only one who can stop trump. Nobody else. I have beaten him five times. And then i said to myself, is anybody going to speak up . Nobody does. At the debate, he says i have been him five times. And i said, yeah, but i have been you 15 times. [applause] i dont know. He is lying ted. So important. We have so many different problems. I want to read you something because i love it. We need security. We need borders. We are going to build a wall. The wall will be built. [applause] the wall is going to be built, 100 . Build that wall, build that wall, build that wall. [chanting] it is going to be built. And, and, whos going to pay for the wall . Mexico. 100 . We have a trade deficit with mexico, folks. They used to say you cannot build a wall and then i said the great wall of china is 13,000 miles long, much bigger, and it was built 2000 years ago. Why cant we . The other day, i hear these guys saying were going to build a wall. My wife heard it and she said i think they just said that. Then, they say, you cannot get mexico to pay for the wall. Ok, remember this anybody in the audience can do it. Almost everybody in the audience is smarter than the people running our country. [applause] remember this, remember this. The wall is going to cost 10 billion. A lot of money. It is going to be like the old post office. Under budget, ahead of schedule it is going to be a great. The thing i do best is build. We are going to build it. It is going to cost 10 billion. That looks pretty good. That is up there. They dont build them like they used to. It is going to be right up there. Probably higher than that. 4550 feet. Here is the story. So, they say, you are never going to be able to get mexico to pay 100 . No way, these are the people of running against. We have a trade deficit with mexico. 58 billion, right . The wall is going to cost 10 billion. They are going to pay for the wall. When you have 58 billion, and you want 10 billion to pay for the wall there are various ways they can do it and im not pushy. They are going to pay for the wall. So easy. You probably saw this the other day. Vicente fox, the expresident. What did he do . He threw out the f bomb. If i did that, i would get the electric chair. They would say it is the electric chair. Nobody even talked about it. What he did was good because he said there was no way we are going to pay for the you know what wall. Vicente. There is no way really angry and arrogant. I love the people of mexico. I have thousands of employees