[captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [laughter] [applause] thank you. [applause] lets get the show started. I think youre clapping for the governor. Im the Senior Editor at politico in washington, d. C. I think you might be able to hear me now . Lets check this thing on the side. Any better now . Ok, lets do it. Hows that now . Better . Good. Good. We are going to do it. Feedback,for the thats the sort of participation we want over the next 80 minutes, you might be able to tell from my accent im not from around here. We are looking at how we can solve problems and fix americas political system, apparently it is still broken and they need an australian here. But we have just meant to tell us how to fix us its governor steve bullock. And we have a panel of distinguished guests and we will go into the details of working in pieinthesky ideas of how we are going to fix american politics. As an outsider, before we get started, feel free to try some innovations like not talking about impeachment for 20 minutes. We are going to talk about some real ideas over the course of the next 80 minutes. And we would love your fest19ipation, use trib if you would like to throw some ideas my way. And i want to thank our sponsors politicolitical tent. Lets get into the discussion governor. You are the governor from montana, also a president ial candidate for 2020. You contributed an idea to our Politico Magazine issue around the idea of campaign finance, if you were elected president , from day one you would issue an executive order that required anyone wanting to do business with the federal government to disclose all of their corporate donations. And he would push for a disclose act and bring all dark money out into the open. That is something you have had a long track record working on, including on the Citizens United case from your time in politics in montana. So it sounds like you want some big structural changes. Tell us about that, and is this the sort of structural change we see from your competitors like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren . Thank you. and thank you for having me, its not because its knowing in montana that im happy to be here. When you look at the challenges we have in this country, it comes back to money. I thought you were already giving me the beloff it comes back to money in politics. When Lindsey Graham says we have to get this tax cut through to make donors happy, 44 of americans would not have 400 in their pocket in case of an emergency. We payoff the prescription drugs of any other country in the world and they are pretty active. Generations of workers are placed by independent con tractors and Union Membership is half of what it was in the 1980s. Companies are doing well, the republican can party is the only Major Political party in the world that no longer acknowledges that Climate Change is real. We have to take steps if we are african to get washington, d. C. To work again, to at least kick the dark money out of our system. Itor to Citizens United, equated money with speech and corporations with people. 2 of the spending of outside groups were from groups that dont disclose their donors. This last Midterm Election it was over half. At the end of the day this is what drives the political system. I was in attorney general before i was a governor and i wrote the brief that the majority of saying itned on, should not be corporations behind these, because montana has this long history that we may or may not get into, it ought to be about people. We took the case to the u. S. Supreme court, taking on Citizens United and we lost on a 54 decision, right now it taught me to never underestimate what one justice can do. But also something about not giving up on something important. We pass this law, with a two thirds Republican Legislature that says i dont care if you call yourself americans for america for americans whatever it is, for the last 90 days you have to disclose all of your spending in our elections. 2016, for reelection in the Koch Brothers did such a good job and they even showed up and they said are you really that much of a creep . And on day 90 it stopped. We kicked them out of montana, you ought to be able to kick them out of texas. Lets followup there. You kicked the Koch Brothers out and foreign donors out of montana. What was the actual effect of that . Effect,lock the actual if theres one day every two years where we are all equal, and thats on election day. And more more people are not participating because they think their vote doesnt matter. What it did is that it made it much more about the candidate than theampaigns outside spending groups who arent disclosing their money. And as the only state in the country, until we can get rid of Citizens United i cannot necessarily change that. But heres something simple. If you want to contract with the state of montana i cannot tell you you cannot spend in our election but you have to disclose every single way that you are contributing to influence our election. Think of the federal government did that. The every in company in this country is contracting with the federal government. We ought to know who is do the sponsoring. Youre on the frontlines of the president ial campaign, what is something you would change about the system if you could rewrite the culture or the rules. As an australian, im looking at a two year Long Election Campaign compared to six weeks and i think thats nuts. What would you do. Gov. Bullock i think thats nuts. But its also awesome because of the recognition, a poll came out , 9 of the people in the country have made up their mind who they will vote for on the democratic side. Away,s still four months the early states always take a big deal and make it small. 80 of the folks said they are not committed. So i dont think the unending campaign does anything constructive for Representative Democracy. Its difficult in ways to limit that, we will talk about that in the upcoming weeks, but it is one where elections still are about a connection with people and people talking to people. I was the only democrat in the country to get reelected where trump won. He took montana by 20 and i won by four. 25 to 30 of my voters voted for donald trump and is not because i, god forbid, acted like trump. People believe that i listened to them, i respected them, they might not agree with me on all issues but i would be doing the job. ,ou look at these debates whats really coming out of it . Its more trying to get your moment. The next round of debates in october, 12 candidates it looks like on stage, that sounds like a version of hell. Are you sad to be missing that debate or do you want to be on that stage . Gov. Bullock for the continued National Exposure i would love to be on it. Mayd not get in until because i still had a job to do. My legislature was meeting we had to get Medicaid Expansion reauthorize. I think the dncs intentions were well, they want to make sure that we are not the party of big donors. But by putting in the stoner threshold requirement candidates are spending 60 in 60 to 80 percent of their dollars on google ads to get a one dollar donor. Are you doing that or did you decide to skip that . Gov. Bullock i decided it was more important to invest in places like iowa with field staff than to play the dnc debate game. I think its a sad state of affairs when we are less inclusive when it comes to debates than the Republican Party ever was, and if our premium is chasing donors is more important for then saving health care, something is wrong. But we are a long way from the election. Everyone is gonna pay attention, but voters will just start tuning and now. What would be a fair system, in your mind, or a fair set of criteria for who is going to have a chance to revise that. Gov. Bullock on the one hand, the only governor left in this ace, the one who has one in trump state and has taken on dark money, that stage is missing something by not having me on it. The republicans, all the way into 2016, there threshold was a 1 polling threshold. Thats probably much more reasonable. It should not be National Parties and stuff that actually take a big field and make it smaller. If its notmned voters who do that. You know how to win an trump country, lets poke into that. Obviously her strengths are your governing experience, and theres an argument about electability. I want to ask whats the difference between what works and montana in terms of Winning People over in the center, and in the suburbs of milwaukee and detroit and tampa because those are not the same places and people dont all have the same concerns. How are you going to win those counties . Gov. Bullock they dont have the same concerns. But a couple things, this election is really about math. We have to get 270 electoral votes. We could run up the numbers in california by 3 million, if we cant win in michigan, wisconsin, or pennsylvania, we will not win. The way i have one in montana, the fourthlargest data in the country, i dont have the luxury of going to those pockets of lou. I have to go across states, listen, engage, and hear what people want and make them believe that government can impact those ways. I begin from the base presumption, whether you or someone from milwaukee or montana, the values that most people have, we have these great political divides, but the values people have, most lives are too frantic and busy to care about politics but they want a safe community, a roof over their head, decent jobs, clean air and clean water, good public schools. Generation after you can do better than your generation. When 60 of people have not had a real pay increase in 40 years, two thirds of the counties in this country lost business over the last decade, they are saying those values that i hold are not being reflected by washington, d. C. Certainly not reflect by the Republican Party. Theres even a disconnect in the democrat party. What would you say distinguishes you from some of the other candidates in the field . We hear a lot about people being in certain lanes are being very liberal and moderate. Is it about the promises you are making, where you think youre promises really can be kept versus others that are more elaborate . Or some other distinction . Gov. Bullock a couple of things. At the core of the word progressive is making progress. I put my record on health care, education, kicking dark money out of elections, against anybody in this field. As a governor you bring in a different perspective. You have to get stuff done. I have 13 elections in a red state as a prochoice, prounion, populist democrat. I think washington has become a place where talking has become the substitute of doing. Being off the coast helps. Hearing you are in texas, we have 22 states in the country that are controlled both state byses and the governors republicans. If we cannot compete across texas, just like this country, theres a longterm viability that we are improving health care, improving education, making sure that theres a quality and it becomes more challenging. Heres a leadership test we love test that politico one test is in an electrical electoral system that rewards parties and candidates playing to their base, telling voters what they want to hear, rather than what we need to hear, my challenge to you is to name one thing that you believe in personally that you know is not popular nationally that you think needs to be issued. Of x you are on the side but it does not have a 60 rating nationally. Saying we need to do this and im going to bring on the journey. Gov. Bullock the way i have done thing in montana is to think about whats best in the long term. Lets talk about Climate Change. We have to address Climate Change. Recognize that our seat fire season is 78 days longer. But often you have people who have spent their whole life powering this country. People in the fossil fuel industry and so on, democrat sound like they are part of the problem. We cannot leave communities behind along the way. We have to let science guided this. There are times when i have stood up and said lets figure out the best way to make sure we have universal prek for everyone. Not everyone in my party even agrees with the way that i get there. But i think the test of leadership is trying to say we have to bridge these divides. I think the greatest issue confronting us today, the biggest problem we have is actually ourselves. When we are united as a country, we can deal with anything. But its really the deep political divisions forget about twitter and facebook, think about thanksgiving dinners where politics divide us, i think we have to find more commonality. Hopefully this question is not seem impertinent, gov. Bullock i do like how you say impertinent. On paper you look like the perfect candidate, all those points about you winning an trump country, you had this experience and you are pulling in single digits, what does that say about how politics is being disruptive and how jarring does that feel knowing that you take the boxes but its a struggle to get the campaign to the point where you are gov. Bullock i would much rather be higher at this point, but its also telling that im the only governor left in the field. In part i think that was the d c debate rules. That we are nationalizing i just got done of being the chair of the National Governors association p i spent 10 years in Political Office avoiding cable television, because its about conflict. But we really are nationalizing all of this. Barack obama is the first term of senator, the last senator that we nominated before that was john f. Kennedy. Because governors have to govern and get stuff done. Its a challenge in the system right now, but i think its also that its now politics is bloodsport and a 24 hour engagement. If you watch anything on ofevision, and at the end the day, what continues to give me hope is that it is still long timeits still a away from now before we are even dealing with most of our primary states. I think we have learned this week that a week is a long time. So lets turn to the inevitable impeachment inquiry. Do you support the impeachment inquiry knowing what we now know about trumps dealings with ukraine. Gov. Bullock prior to this past week i said no, because i dont want to make the next 14 months about donald trump. And it struck me that in 60 some meat and greets meet and brought upowa, they health care, no one raised any questions about impeachment. The ideaek the of withholding foreign money and sang to a president that you have to do us a favor, directing the ukrainian president to start ag and aith the personal lawyer, trying to cover this up. Necessarilyk its good politics but for the good of our country i think we have to do it. So as a lawyer in addition to being a candidate gov. Bullock we have to do it. And theres a third of this country that will just look at this and say, no matter what, this is just something to take down trump. What we have to do, we have to be judicious in going forward. How we do this impeachment proceeding and how we run this race, at some point we have to deal with the fact of how fractured this country is, and we cannot feed into that through this process. I guess thats an argument to say effectively that if trump came in at the ballot box he would prefer him to be removed at the ballot box. Gov. Bullock i absolutely would, but this has been a great 240 year experiment called Representative Democracy and i dont wanted to be completely dismantled by the abuse of power and what he is normalizing. A few final questions because we have a great panel, would you like to get your hands on the transcript of these conversations with the Saudi Crown Prince and putin . Good from the perspective to know exactly what all else hes either been promising or suggesting to other countries. Really giuliani be prosecutor, knowing what we know about his involvement . Gov. Bullock we have to finish of the inquiry to know what he has done, but this is one where nobody should be immune from prosecution or the law. Governor bullock, thank you for your time. Gov. Bullock thank you. [applause] for part two i would like to welcome onto the stage are. Anelists, we have four let these guys get seated before we do our introductions. What we are doing at Politico Magazine that brought this panel into existence. And the point i want to make is that we are freethinkers at politico, i hope you can still hear me. Is that better . Good. Contrarian,tle more bolder than some outlets, and we are specifically nonpartisan. That feels like a novelty in 2019, and our panelists come from a group of around 80 who have contributive ideas on how to fix american politics. A hundred uput there on politico. Com they range from mandatory Civics Education to making the house of Congress Virtual and we have arguments for and against raising the salaries of politicians. Theres a lot to chew through. And for what its worth, im from two countries, australia and belgium, both with compulsory voting. You have more than 90 of people turning out to vote. In australia you could be fined for not voting. It sounds extreme but one of the effects is that it forces all of the candidates to appeal to all voters, they cannot just appeal to the most partisan people in the system. Lets introduce our panelists, im going to turn to you for questions as well. We have a microphone in this session. Ellen weintraub is the chair of the u. S. Federal Election Commission, we had the codirector of Duke Universitys center on law, race, and politics, next to me is margaret , the education secretary in the george w. Bush administration and now running texas 2036, and i did not mean to skip over you, i just wrote out differently. Localce president for initiatives that