- Politics at its best is about getting things done.

At its worst, it's something much more sinister.

Today's guest warns that some politicians are experimenting now with autocracy in state houses across the United States.

Here's David Pepper this week on "Story in the Public Square".

(upbeat music) Hello, and welcome to a "Story in the Public Square" where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller with the "Providence Journal".

- This week, we're joined by David Pepper, a lawyer and former chair of the Democratic Party of Ohio.

He's also the author of a new book on the erosion of democracy in the United States, titled "Laboratories of Autocracy, A Wake Up Call from Behind the Lines".

David, thank you so much for being with us.

- Thank you, great to be with you.

- Well, you know, the book really it's a troubling read.

It's an important read.

Tell us why you wrote it.

- So, you know, I wrote it, I had no, so I write fiction occasionally and I had no plans last year to write a book but I was watching these nonstop attacks in states on voting rights, other new sort of styles of attacks on protests, on history teaching.

And I just started thinking no one is really paying attention to this at the state level.

We watch Marjorie Taylor Green and we watch Lauren Boebert and we talk about January 6th and we should, but the truth is it's back in the states where you have majorities of officials who are passing laws every day attacking democracy.

And so I literally began sort of frantically writing this book about last April and got it out as quickly as I could, because it's alarming what's happening.

The damage is deep and growing.

And I wrote the book as sort of a call to action.

And as you see from the second half of the title, I'm trying to do it in a way to say, listen, we in Ohio have lived this, other states like Tennessee in Indiana are living this, listen to us as we describe just how bad it is.

And I try and do it through storytelling, like the theme of your show as much as through policy or law so people can really understand the deep impact this sort of move into lack of democracy in states really has on the day to day quality of life in states like Ohio.

- Well then the title of the book is, as you describe the introduction evokes the message from Justice Louis Brandeis, who called America statehouses laboratories of democracy.

Why are you calling them laboratories of autocracy?

- It's actually, it's interesting, you know, that's been our history in many ways, what Justice Brandis wrote.

And we know that know a lot of the new deal came from state innovations and the Affordable Care Act came out of Mitt Romney's work in part in Massachusetts.

But there's also a darker history.

For the same reason that states can be these laboratories of good things, what's happening and what has happened in our past it's how we ended up with Jim Crow, states also have enough of power over substance and over democracy itself that they can also do great damage to our democracy.

And so, you know, unfortunately, and that's the point of the title and the whole book, we're in an era where statehouse after statehouse are using the levers they have over democracy, they draw up the rules of elections, they draw the districts.

They control the electoral college process to some degree, all those powers put to good ends can do good things, but if you have people dead set on undermining democracy, statehouses turn out to be the best place to do it because they have all the power described in the book.

But more than Congress and more than the mayor of Providence or Boston, no one knows who these people are for the most part.

So they can do a lot of this work under the radar.

And they've been doing it now for several decades.

And we wake up in 2021 and we see just how explosive it's gotten in all these states.

So they really are and one of the key parts about the title is not just the word autocracy, and they are undermining democracy every single week, it's laboratories.

They're always learning from one another.

They're learning from their mistakes and their failures.

And they correct for those failures.

the next time around.

If one state does something that's really effective in suppressing democracy, like one drop box per county like we had in Ohio, other states use it as a model, they do the same thing.

So just like Brandis said, they learn from one another and they keep going and going until they get it right.

So that's why we're seeing a real downward spiral.

It's accelerating as we speak.

- So you describe the Ohio general assembly as fundamentally broken and undemocratic.

Can you unpack those assertions for us?

I mean, obvious you are in a great position to know that because you're in Ohio and that's your home state.

- Yeah.

I mean, it just simply does not reflect Ohio anymore.

You know, gerrymandering has been around a long time, but around the country it was 2011 where it became so extreme that it truly locked people into office no matter what they did.

And I go through this in the book.

In Ohio, just for folks who haven't read the book, and I hope everyone does, it's sort of like, what's the matter with Kansas, but it's focused on Ohio about democracy.

So I use Ohio as a case study, but what I'm describing Ohio is, as I put in the book, is in many other places, we essentially, after 2011, have an entire generation of officials in that state house right down the street from where I'm sitting, who essentially almost to a person 62 out of 99 almost to a person have never been in a real election.

Their election was guaranteed for them their entire career.

And I go through the data.

About a third of the seats that they've guaranteed themselves over a decade averaged a 50% or more margin of victory.

Another 20 of those seats or so averaged a 30% margin of victory and a whole bunch of other seats averaged a 10 or 20% margin of victory.

The entire group, almost to a person has never worried about their next election.

And that has led to, you know, "law making" in quotes way beyond what you'd ever expect a normal democratic functioning sort of body to do.

They're truly immune from the voters.

And it means they can get away with doing all sorts of things that the population doesn't support.

And I go through examples where they passed this very aggressive anti-labor, anti collective bargaining law in Ohio.

It got absolutely routed the polls, you know, almost every county opposed it.

Almost every one of these people's district opposed it.

Only one of the people who supported it, lost their next election, even though they had embraced this completely unpopular item, a toxic item.

So they essentially, and they've learned this over the decade, they are truly immune from the voters and that warps almost every incentive that we assume public officials have, you know, delivering good public outcomes, don't be extreme, work with the other side.

That's kind of what we assume people who are officer are gonna do.

But in a world without democracy where there's no accountability, it turns out they do almost the exact opposite of everything we expect.

And that's why Ohio and states like ours are seeing results that are just cratering in terms of healthcare, education, student debt, people moving.

But even while those outcomes are cratering and we have corruption, you know, as much as any state in the country, these politicians all get reelected no matter what, because their districts are rigged.

It's sort of this completely broken system.

But again, because it's under the radar, most people don't even pay attention to it.

- So, it's not always been that way.

What happened, what happened?

Why and how did it happen and not just in Ohio, but as you, of course state eloquently in this book, many state houses, how did it happen?

- You know, we've had history of all sorts of terrible things with elections.

A lot of them, you know, before the Warren Court.

But what really sped this all up was 2011.

There was two things that happened.

One was Karl Rove and I go through this in the book.

I guess wisely, focused on a bunch of state houses and states he could win.

And then once they got there and they won, they won a bunch of states, but once they got there, they didn't just say with that victory, we're gonna do substance that we care about.

That's when they did this extreme gerrymandering where, and I go through this in the book, they took a congressional delegation in Ohio that had been ten eight when Obama won in 2008, 10 Democrats, eight Republicans.

In a majority state house Democrat in Ohio in 2008, you know, mid fifties, four years later, Obama won in Ohio by the same amount basically.

And that 10 eight Democrat Republican delegation became 12 four Republican Democrat on the same blue map.

That democratic majority of the state house on that same Obama map, became a super majority Republican state house.

And for the entire decade since, those elections stay the same.

They basically got about almost 99% of the elections over the following decade did exactly as their maps would have you believe.

The 12 four congressional delegation, through thick and thin it was always the same.

But as I said, and in some states, here's how bad it is when you talk about lack of democracy.

In 2018, voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, a majority of voters by some degree, voted for a Democrat for the state house in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

But the election rigging there was so extreme those state houses were still run by a majority or super majority of Republicans.

So they were literally immune from the will of the voters.

Even when they're in the minority, they're still in charge.

That's the kind of system that Orban is aspiring to create in Hungary or something.

So it is undemocratic in so many ways you can measure it, you know, locked in elections no matter what, even when you're in the minority, you stay in power.

And in Ohio, almost not a single member of the majority of this state house has ever been in a real election.

They don't know what real democracy looks like.

And of course that means they're scared of it.

And so everything they do going forward is to keep democracy at bay.

All those things are happening in states like Ohio.

- David, how did you come to appreciate the power of state houses?

- You know, I guess it's through lived experience.

And I start the book with some funny stories about when I was a city council member, which I was in Cincinnati.

I had no idea what the state house did.

And in Cincinnati, we city council members were far better known than the state reps. And I go through in the book, a story where a bunch of city council members are on a podium speaking about foreclosures.

And my friend who was a state rep had to raise his hand from the audience and tell us what he was doing in the state house.

And I point out in the book, what he was doing was a lot more important than what we were doing at city council, but we didn't know it and no one in that audience knew it.

So I started out not appreciating it either.

But if you look closely, the substance of statehouses impact everything we all care about in politics, social issues, economic issues, climate change, regulatory issues, education, that's all done by the state houses and probably has a more direct impact on your life than whatever Congress does.

But the other major power these statehouses have is over democracy itself.

And so to go back to your initial question, the danger is that the average person doesn't know this.

But there are certain powers to be out there who know this perfectly well and they decided several decades ago, better than dealing with Washington, if you want to get your agenda accomplished, especially if it's unpopular, the easiest way to get it done is through state houses 'cause no one's paying attention.

And they have in many ways as much power over all these issues as Washington does and so for several decades, you've had a number of groups who are mainly to the right that have harnessed state houses to accomplish their agenda.

And now we're seeing other groups harness state houses to attack democracy itself all while most of us are still watching DC and not these state houses.

- So you are describing legislators who at heart have one thing of interest and importance to them and that's their self-interest, their own agenda.

What about the common good?

I mean, I'd like to believe there was a time when legislators at whatever level, at least paid some lip service or actually believed in the common good that we are a society, that we live together and that there's a larger good than the self-interest, talk about that.

- Sure, that's why I entered politics.

My guess is that's why a number of these state house members, Republican or Democrat enter politics too, by the way.

Here's the problem.

Every incentive that they face in these state houses is the opposite of the public good.

As I said, if you are reelected no matter what you do, the public outcome is no longer in an incentive on you in your public service.

You can have your schools falling apart.

You can vote for the worst collective bargaining law ever, and you know you'll get reelected.

But you have a very strong incentive to keep the people who are lobbying you around your state house happy.

Who's doing that?

Energy companies, in Ohio it's been for-profit charter school operators, including online charter school scams and you have an incentive in normal politics to work with the other side to get things done.

In a world without democracy, where your districts are rigged, your incentives to be as extreme as possible so you don't get primary.

So, I'm not saying everyone who's entered a state house didn't go there for the common good.

But every single incentive in these undemocratic worlds is almost the opposite what we want.

And that's why in Ohio, I can explain massive amounts of money have moved from public schools to those four private charter school operators.

The public schools have gone from fifth in the nation 20 years ago to mid twenties, the for profit charter schools some of them have literally been uncovered as scams, but the politicians who've been doing all that keep getting reelected because in their world, you do better helping the scam than you do helping your public schools.

So, and sadly, because wait, I agree with you on this, what the Koch brothers, what ALEC, the American Legislative Council, what the others have figured out is the people getting these offices are responding to all the incentives exactly how you'd think, public outcomes don't matter to them as much, pleasing private players does end up mattering to them a lot.

Being extreme is really important to them so they don't lose the next primary and also accomplishes goals for some of their supporters.

So all these people, whatever their initial motivation or not, are behaving exactly as these very negative incentives would have you think they'd behave.

And here's the worst part, it stopped mattering who the individuals in the offices are.

It almost doesn't matter because whether they have a term limit or they resign in scandal, the person who replaces them is doing the exact same thing they're doing.

So as long as the incentives are what they are, all these people are behaving in the same way.

And that's why it just never seems to end until we get into these state houses and add back accountability, in some sense, a democratic process, it's just gonna going this direction.

And I fear that it will only get worse.

- David, you know, one of the things that you describe in the book is the power of money in local politics.

And you know, one of the things that I think we've grappled with as a society is that the US Supreme Court has now said that money is speech and giving money is speech and it can't be controlled.

How is that not corruption?

- You know, if you look at what's happening in Ohio, we've had individual corrupt scandals, like massive scandals, that charter school one, but there's a deeper level corruption going on here that to your point, that even if someone isn't caught taking a bribe or something so directly, and they've been caught doing that in Ohio, we see a broader corruption of the public space through everything I've described.

The MO in many of these statehouse just like Ohio's, because of the factors I've described is a massive transfer of public resources to private players.

And that's why part and parcel, tied to the hip with these broken state houses is a downward spiral in public outcomes.

Schools are worse off, infrastructure's collapsing, by the way, this affects all of the state, not just blue areas, but red, small towns too.

Part of this overall corrupt system in these state houses where the private players are in the face of these anonymous legislators is this massive transfer so that you know, you see it in Michigan, you know, Gretchen Whitmer, fix the roads.

In Texas, the energy grid collapsed.

In Kansas, schools are down to four days a week.

There's a deeper corruption going on in that these legislators are literally serving private interest almost entirely and they're using public resources, public assets, public money to do it.

And that's really what's happening.

And that's why, honestly, if you look at a state like Ohio and my first chapter in the book does this, I talk about this great state that I've been proud of my whole life that doesn't at all match with the outcomes of the last 20 years.

Like we are cratering in public outcomes.

And it's because of this state house is taking all the greatness of Ohio and forking it over for the private interests that support them.

But one other thing I'd say about the money, in a gerrymandered world, the money isn't even about just the campaign money, 'cause these people are guaranteed reelection already.

The other money being spent is the money to prop up this entire broken system.

How is that money being spent?

Quote unquote, "scholarships" to fly these legislators to conferences all over the country, to eat dinner and play golf and go to conference rooms where they're handed the legislation they go back to their state houses to pass.

You know, why are they doing that?

To create those incentives I talked about that make them do all the bad things.

So there's a whole lot of money being spent by a whole lot of groups, not just on direct campaign ads, but to build an infrastructure that essentially weaponizes these state houses to keep doing what they're doing.

You know, conferences, fancy hotel rooms, golf trips.

I mean, can you imagine that the term they use to give money to a legislature is a scholarship as if public initials are there to learn from these people about how to do this legislation.

That's sort of the relationship.

The private players are the teachers and the legislators who've taken an oath through our state Constitutions are the students they fly around, they go back to state houses and they pass all this legislation that's written up by private groups in some private room somewhere.

That's what's happening.

And that's where a lot of the money is also going.

- David, we've got about six and a half minutes left in this episode.

So we wanna make sure we spend some time talking about the path forward.

So you've laid out really sort of a, a stark and troubling image of democracy around the country.

How do citizens respond?

How do we fight back?

- So there are two major things.

And in my book, I go through 30 concrete steps that everyone can do most of them.

But two things have to happen on a larger macro level.

The people who care about democracy need to stop thinking about what's going on in the narrow terms.

You know, the side that supports democracy is generally thinking that democracy is stable.

And if only we win federal elections, then we win.

The side that's attacking democracy is doing it 'cause they know that their worldview would not survive in a strong democracy.

Almost everything they're pushing is unsustainable or unpopular or leads to the terrible outcomes I talked about.

Their battle isn't for federal elections.

It's to weaken democracy itself, to keep their views in place long term.

The side for democracy needs to see that it's a battle for democracy.

And once they see it that way and my book goes through this, then they see you gotta fight in all 50 states, in every district at all levels, every year.

Let's go win federal elections, of course.

But if the heart of democracy is drawn in our state houses, you better be competing there too just like they are.

You also start to see, as Stacy Abrams did in Georgia, that when you see it as a broader battle for democracy, it's a long battle.

Don't judge everything by each cycle.

Judge it by the progress you're making.

Are you registering more voters?

Did you run in every district?

Did you win Supreme court or Appellate Court seat in states to protect democracy?

Always be building and gaining and learning and spend resources following that broader long game all across the country, not just in the presidential year.

So that's the big frame, but the second one is, for every listener who isn't a senator or a donor or something which is most of us, I call upon people to think about your own footprint in the world of influence.

Use your footprint in any way you can think about to fight, to uplift democracy.

If you're on the board of a homeless shelter, is your homeless shelter registering people who go through there?

A food bank, a children's service organization, do you know a mayor?

Is the mayor using their rec centers, their libraries to register people, to tell them about early vote.

We can't wait for Stacy Abrams and Michelle Obama to register everybody.

If we wanna scale it up, we have to all think about what's our footprint in this world, how do we use it to lift democracy?

And that kind of broader effort is the only way we're gonna fight back about this nonstop effort to undermine democracy.

And there are many specific ways I go through the book on how people can do that.

- So David, do you see any examples anywhere in this country where that is actually happening now?

And do you have any sense of optimism that along with those efforts, new efforts will happen and people will join this campaign?

- Absolutely, Georgia is blue because Stacy Abram saw it as a long game there.

And even when she didn't win her Georgia governor race, she said we made progress 'cause more people voted, more people registered.

And all of a sudden, two years later we see what happened.

One of the best parts about this book for me is how many people have come forward to me and said, I'm doing what you're talking about, but no one knows it.

So all around this country, I see some really innovative ideas of registering voters, of supporting candidates in every district, not just swing states, not just swing districts.

I go through all the case studies in my book of what worked.

But if I were to write a new book and maybe I will, they're far more I could add.

And so one of my goals going forward is to highlight and find support for all the things that are being done in the right direction.

And again, get people those who support democracy out of the sort of losing narrow game they're fighting where they're only focusing on swing states in federal elections and mainly the presidential election.

It may feel good when you win some of those federal races.

But if the other side is attacking democracy every single year in states, ultimately they're always winning while you're only winning occasionally on a narrower playing field, we have to change that but yes, there are a lot of people doing this great work.

They need more amplification and they ultimately need more support.

- David, one of the issues that we've paid considerable attention to on this show, is the importance of local newspapers to the health of American democracy.

You make reference to it in the book as well.

I wonder from your perspective, what is the importance of those local independent sources of news?

- It's a huge part of the problem that these news outlets are falling apart in their tough sort of economic model.

The lack of statehouse bureaus, the lack of small hometown community papers means there's very little coverage of these places.

If your goal is to use state houses to do bad things, that really helps you because you can push forward all sorts of laws and no one back home in these states has any idea what those laws are, they have no idea what their own legislator is doing.

So one of the steps I put in in terms of improving your footprint on democracy, subscribe to any local paper that's there and covering that stuff.

Put your money where democracy is, don't go around the paywall.

We need these papers to survive because in the past, these were the places that would say, here's your state house person, here's their opponent, here's what they stand for.

Here's our editorial board opinion on who has done what.

Most of that is disappearing.

And it means, again, it contributes to this lack of awareness of what these states are doing.

So it's a big part of the problem.

It makes statehouse a more attractive place to do bad things.

But everyone who's listening can play a role in trying to help there by subscribing.

And by the way, there also are new profit outfits, journalist outfits that are cropping up, help those as well, they're a really important part of the new journalism and they're in many states covering these state houses as intensely as any of the old models, help them as well.

- David, it's a remarkable book, "Laboratories of Autocracy".

He's David Pepper, thank you so much for being with us.

- Thanks guys, really enjoyed the conversation.

- That is all the time we have this week.

But if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square", you can find us on Facebook and Twitter or visit pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time, for more "Story in the Public Square".

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