Inside the States Project with Daniel Squadron and Melissa Walker

Daniel Squadron and Melissa Walker are an unexpected duo. Formerly a New York State Senator, Daniel Squadron represented New York’s 25th and 26th districts for almost ten years. After leaving public office, Squadron co-founded a civic engagement initiative called The States Project - of which he is currently President. Melissa Walker was formerly a magazine editor and journalist published in countless magazines such as Seventeen, Glamour, Teen Vogue, The NY Observer, and New York Magazine. Walker has also authored 10 young adult novels. After a fateful meeting at a holiday party, the two began working together on The State’s Project’s Giving Circles program, co-founded by Walker. The Giving Circles has engaged more than 35,000 donors and raised tens of millions of dollars since its formation in 2018 and works within the States Project to shift the balance of power in state legislatures - ultimately leading to greater political change nationwide. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:39Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. My guests today are a former New York State senator and a former journalist who now work together on a civic engagement initiative called The States Project.

• 1:57Alec Baldwin?

  Daniel Squadron previously represented New York's 25th and 26th districts as a state senator from 2008 to 2017. After nine years in public service Squadron resigned his office and helped launch the political initiative Future Now, currently known as The States Project with entrepreneur Adam Pritzker. Melissa Walker was formerly a magazine editor and journalist, published in countless magazines ranging from Teen Vogue to The New York Observer. She has also authored 10 young adult novels. Walker currently serves as the principal strategist for The States Project's giving circles.

• 2:42Alec Baldwin?

  Being New Yorkers who are immersed in democratic politics, I was eager to hear their reactions to the recent mayoral election here in New York City.

• 2:52Speaker 05

  So I do think that a mayor's race that more New Yorkers participate in than any time since John Lindsay is good news. I am partial to state lawmakers being elected to high and important offices. So this idea that Mamdani has never had a real job is incorrect. State Assembly Member is a real job. No one has had a job that prepares them for mayor. I don't know if you know what borough presidents do nowadays, but like, you know, it's or public advocates, which I ran for, you know, these are not jobs of enormous managerial complexity. I think as someone who loves New York, being optimistic and hoping for and trying to support his success is what we should all do.

• 3:37Speaker 05

  He has a vision that is responsive to the thing that is killing New York, which is affordability and livability. And we should be all hands on deck for him to overperform the skeptics and deliver the most ambitious possible parts of what he can.

• 3:55Speaker 06

  I really leaned into what my younger self would think. I thought about myself in my 20s and I thought about all these people who were out in the streets. I got canvassed three times in Brooklyn by people in their 20s. And seeing that made me feel energized. And I leaned into the kind of hope I would have had in my 20s. And I know I would have been out there canvassing. And that kind of helped me get over some of my own skepticism and get into that place of energized excitement.

• 4:26Alec Baldwin?

  I wonder what you think about that 1% thing, whether more of them are going to leave. The 1% that's paying the 40% of the tax base in New York. Does that worry you when New York's so strapped for cash now?

• 4:36Speaker 05

  I think the race to the bottom on public financing over the last 40 years is a real problem. You know, where you have these states that are basically using low taxes and bad services as a recruitment tool. And in New York, we need to be bringing young professionals, young artists in and then having them choose to stay. Four, 46 years. Four, 46 years ago. Housing, schools, livability. And if New York has that engine, despite the fact that people can now work remotely, New York does great. If New York is a place where a tiny portion of the 1% are choosing whether or not to move to Florida,

• 5:19Speaker 05

  and that's the only chance for its vibrancy and success, New York's done anyway.

• 5:24Alec Baldwin?

  You worked in the legislature for 10 years. And when you left, you questioned, you had your quote I have here about the corruption. "I believe in state government's potential, I still do, but over the years I have seen it thwarted by a sliver of heavily invested special interests in the state senate. For example, Democrats have repeatedly been denied control of the chamber by cynical political deals, despite winning an electoral majority." How was that? How were they repeatedly denied? What denied it to them?

• 5:52Speaker 05

  On the political nature, speaking of misdemeanors and felonies, I would consider this one a political felony. Obviously not criminal. But a group of Democrats, starting in 2010, announcing on the same day as Andrew Cuomo's first State of the State address, left the Democratic Party, group of Democrats, and gave Republicans the majority. Now, in 2010, Republicans already had a majority by one seat, but what they did is they gave them a cushion. In 2012, they gave them the majority, and they stayed with them year in and year out.

• 6:23Alec Baldwin?

  What was the name of those Democrats again?

• 6:24Speaker 05

  Independent Democratic Conference, which was misnomer on every one of those words. Nothing independent. They were with the Republicans. They weren't Democrats. They were with the Republicans. They weren't a conference. They were just a group of people.

• 6:37Alec Baldwin?

  Not a lot of conferring.

• 6:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. And the really shocking thing, though, is this was done with no political accountability for eight years. From 2010 to 2018, this was happening.

• 6:48Alec Baldwin?

  And Cuomo did nothing to dissuade them?

• 6:49Speaker 05

  Well, there's certainly speculation that he did things to influence them. I'd say this. Andrew Cuomo is known to care about control.

• 6:57Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 6:58Speaker 05

  And they announced on the day of his first State of the State address, and they lived to tell the tale.

• 7:03Alec Baldwin?

  Right. But he never did anything publicly to change that?

• 7:06Speaker 05

  Right.

• 7:07Alec Baldwin?

  I only ask that because when the Moreland Commission came and went, I was flabbergasted. Because I remember that the Brennan Center at NYU Law School, they would do a report every year. And one year, the report they did was an evaluation of the 50 state legislatures in the United States, and New York was 49th, just above Louisiana, in terms of its transparency and effectiveness and integrity. So, I mean, I'm someone who's grown up in New York my whole life, New York State. I grew up on Long Island. I've been in the city since 79. And, you know, you have a tough... Longest view of Albany.

• 7:42Speaker 05

  Well, this is why I ran. You know, I'd say tough, but not cynical. You know, it was right, right, just a couple of years after that report that I ran, I ran against a 30 year incumbent, a guy who had been the leader of the Democrats. He'd been ousted by David Patterson on his way to become governor. I was 28 years old at the time. And, you know, everyone said to me, this is the worst place in politics. And I said, that's exactly what's appealing about it. Couple of things. One, you can't underperform expectations, sort of the opposite of what our mayor-elect has. He's got very high expectations to perform against. But secondly, if you can just improve it nominally, the impact in the state and people's lives will be so dramatic. And I, and you know, we saw that. The moments of

• 8:24Speaker 05

  greatest competence were unbelievable. My first years in office, 2009 and 10, there was a huge amount of stimulus money to deal with the financial crisis from the federal government. And I chaired the Social Services Committee. We were able to create a billion dollars in new social services programs, all of which were tested for their effectiveness, and some of which still continue today. Andrew Cuomo deserves credit for, in 2011, his first six months, you know, pulling a political rabbit out of the hat and getting marriage equality passed in New York, with Republicans having the numeric majority and the additional majority with those turncoat Democrats. When state government rises above its most dysfunctional instincts, the outcomes are unbelievable.

• 9:08Alec Baldwin?

  Now, you had a long career in magazines and publishing.

• 9:13Speaker 06

  I did, yes.

• 9:14Alec Baldwin?

  And you did that for how many years were you in that business? 20?

• 9:17Speaker 06

  Oh, no, probably more like 10. I, I started my career in magazines at Rosie Magazine, Rosie O'Donnell's magazine.

• 9:24Alec Baldwin?

  Now, how was that, when someone said that was formerly McCall's?

• 9:27Speaker 06

  It was formerly McCall's.

• 9:28Alec Baldwin?

  So how does Rosie O'Donnell take over McCall's? What, how does that work?

• 9:31Speaker 06

  Well, Oprah Magazine launched with Hearst, and then Gruner & Yar, which was the publishing company that owned McCall's, was kind of looking for a way to jazz it up a bit. And Rosie O'Donnell on the cover had sold the most issues anytime she was on the cover. It was just phenomenal. Her talk show was on. And so eventually, they made a deal with her to take over the magazine and make it hers. And then she was on every cover after that. And that was where I had my first job.

• 9:57Alec Baldwin?

  And when you decided to leave the publishing business, I just think this is great. I was written for publications such as Seventeen, Glamour, Teen Vogue, Self, More, Cosmo Girl, Red Book, Family Circle, Fitness, Parenting, Brides, The New York Observer, New York Magazine, Ladies' Home Journal, Life and Style. I'm like, what base didn't you touch going around the bags there? What's the difference? What's the difference between writing for women's magazine and a men's magazine in terms of your writing skills?

• 10:27Speaker 06

  You know, I think I wrote a lot about lifestyle things. And I wrote a lot about psychology. I mean, I was really mining my own experiences as a woman in their twenties. And honestly, back then, magazines really didn't write about women much older than their twenties and thirties. I remember asking my colleagues, like, where do all the forty-year-olds go? Because it felt like there wasn't a voice for them, until there were some older women's magazines created like more. But back then, it really was what experiences were we living? It was dating, it was psychology, it was all the things that we were experiencing. First jobs, job changing, all that stuff. But I really found my voice in teen magazines.

• 11:07Alec Baldwin?

  Why?

• 11:08Speaker 06

  Well, I don't know if my internal dialogue was always set somewhere around seventeen, but when I started working at a teen magazine, that's when I started realizing, like, oh, this is my audience. This is who I want to talk to. I think it's partly because teenagers are fans. They're just fans of what they're reading about, what they're into. They're so enthusiastic about life.

• 11:27Alec Baldwin?

  When they like something, they like it.

• 11:29Speaker 06

  Absolutely. I loved that energy. And that's really why I started writing young adult novels, too, because they're such a universal experience when you're a teenager. And the irony is that every teenager thinks, no one has ever felt this way before.

• 11:43Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 11:44Speaker 06

  I alone know this and feel this way.

• 11:47Alec Baldwin?

  I have three doors, four doors.

• 11:47Speaker 06

  And the truth is, everybody's felt that way before. So there's a lot to write about and a lot to mine and a lot of deep caring among that audience.

• 11:56Alec Baldwin?

  Now, what happened, what year are we talking about when you transitioned?

• 12:00Speaker 06

  Over to politics.

• 12:01Alec Baldwin?

  To politics.

• 12:02Speaker 06

  Well, really, in the fall of 2016, you know, something happened. Donald Trump was elected for the first time. And back then, I was just writing young adult novels and middle-grade novels, getting even younger with my writing. And I realized that I hadn't been involved in the democracy and that something had happened that I couldn't believe. And so, I spent the month after Donald Trump was elected, kind of looking for ways to plug in and do something that was meaningful. And I couldn't find any. I was casting about, I was sending, you know, I was making those five calls a day, I was sending notes to Schumer, I was doing all these things, but I couldn't figure out...

• 12:42Alec Baldwin?

  Why, Schumer, you'd worked with Schumer?

• 12:43Speaker 06

  No, no, I was just writing as a constituent. I was saying, please, help with this, how can I do this?

• 12:49Alec Baldwin?

  Did they respond to you?

• 12:50Speaker 06

  Well, the form letters, you know. But it all felt a little bit like, you know, peering in windows at rooms I couldn't quite see. And I could not figure out how to insert myself into the democracy in a way that would help, until I went to a publishing holiday party in December of 2016 in Brooklyn Heights, and I heard Daniel speak.

• 13:09Alec Baldwin?

  So, he was the bait. His ideas were the bait.

• 13:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, the ideas and a little bit of a challenge, which he is wont to throw around, I think, sometimes. You know, he really, he started talking about state governments, he started talking about how everything we care about is decided in state capitals, not in Washington DC. He was talking about education funding, environmental policy, healthcare, civil rights, voting rights, abortion even back then, gerrymandering, all of those things. And he connected the dots for a bunch of things that hadn't made sense to me from the Obama years, like the bathroom bills passing all over the country, starting with Raleigh, and the stand-your-ground gun laws, starting in Tallahassee, letting Trayvon Martin's murder go free, then starting, again, spreading to 26 states. I started to realize, like, these things are happening in state capitals, I don't

• 13:57Speaker 06

  know the names of those lawmakers. There are 50 mini-congresses around this country, and I haven't been paying attention to any of them, not even my own. The night after I heard him speak, I Googled, "Who is my state senator?" on the way home, and figured out that I had never heard of my state senator. I had no eyes on Albany at all. But I thought of myself as a pretty well-informed person. So, I realized this was a place I could plug in.

• 14:20Alec Baldwin?

  Going to this meeting with him, you went to a meeting of Future Now?

• 14:23Speaker 06

  No, you know what it was? It was a, it was a publishing holiday party. It was a party that happened every year. It was like one of the best parties of the year. This big brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. And I thought I was just going to, to the party. But we were all feeling pretty down because-

• 14:38Alec Baldwin?

  Trump.

• 14:39Speaker 06

  Yes, because of Trump.

• 14:40Speaker 05

  The state project hadn't been launched. I was, I was just a local state senator.

• 14:44Alec Baldwin?

  At that time?

• 14:44Speaker 05

  Who had been invited to speak at a holiday party.

• 14:48Alec Baldwin?

  They want you to speak about what?

• 14:49Speaker 05

  Well, that was a-

• 14:50Alec Baldwin?

  Trump.

• 14:51Speaker 05

  A good question. And that was what they wanted because, you know, I was in office nine years and at no other point was I ever invited to anyone's holiday party as the politician to speak.

• 14:59Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 14:59Speaker 05

  There were times I was asked not to come to people's holiday parties for fear I would speak about politics. And so the, but you know, the invitation, it actually happened to be my son's third birthday, was my wife's friend's friend who invited me, who's actually a wonderfully successful novelist. And I didn't really want to go at eight o'clock after putting my three-year-old to bed on his birthday. But I also figured, you know, I'm a state senator, beggars can't be choosers here. They want to hear me. I'm going to go, I'm going to do my thing. No one's going to listen. And so I went and I basically said, you know, if you feel like you're, you're not meeting in the moment, that's correct. If you feel like you're an observer to the destruction of the democracy, that's right. There is a thing you could do-

• 15:44Alec Baldwin?

  Came with a cheery holiday message.

• 15:46Speaker 05

  Right. And if the people in this room committed themselves for a year to changing the direction of a state, they could. It often costs less to change power in a state legislature than a single congressional district. And then I said, you know, and you know, I hope you'll do it. If you real, we can save this country. You are a part of it, but you need to choose to be strategic and to look where your impact will be, not where your glamour is. And I stopped speaking. It was a jazz era microphone there. Jazz band started coming up. And I figured I'll do one loop around the room. Maybe there's some constituents here, or maybe someone will thank me for the recent traffic light. And Melissa and another young adult author stopped me. And her friend, Gail Foreman, says, we can do it. What can you do? I kind of tried to move away.

• 16:31Speaker 05

  Melissa blocks the other side and say, no, we're going to raise a hundred thousand dollars. And, and what do we do next? And I said, you know what? Here's my email. Email me if you're still interested in this on Monday. And I decided not to do a walkthrough of the party. I turned around, I went home. I actually went home, turned on Saturday Night Live, and you were the cold open playing Donald Trump, doing a social media-

• 16:52Alec Baldwin?

  Guy's gotta eat.

• 16:52Speaker 05

  Doing a social media gambit. And I thought to myself, I actually remember, I thought to myself like, now that's how people engage politics. This state legislative thing, never.

• 17:01Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah. Now, describe for me, I'll ask you this question, and we're both of you, but you first, Melissa, and that is, so Future Now, describe what that was, and over what period of time does it morph into states?

• 17:13Speaker 06

  Honestly, from my journey, you know, I started what we started to call a giving circle with a bunch of other children's book authors. And we decided that we would try to focus on a state, just like Daniel had said we wouldn't do. And when we had amassed a bunch of pledges together, we called him back and said, we're ready to do this. We've got pledges, we just need your guidance on where to go and how to do this. And he said, okay, well, hang on a minute. And a bunch of other things happened too, including you met Adam Pritzker. And that summer, Daniel resigned from the state senate to start Future Now, which is now the state's project, and start focusing on state legislatures. And we became the first giving circle to support the electoral work of the state's project.

• 17:57Speaker 06

  So that was fall 2017 was lunch.

• 17:59Alec Baldwin?

  The giving circle for my listeners is just fundraising.

• 18:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's a group of people coming together. It's actually fundraising, but it's also a lot of learning. None of us had any idea about state legislatures.

• 18:11Alec Baldwin?

  Programs you can learn.

• 18:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, once we started getting together and learning about, you know, how much power they had, and how, you know, from 2010 to 2016, Democrats had lost nearly 1,000 state legislative seats as Karl Rove and Project Red Map got into action and flipped all those seats, and then took over state houses and state senates, and really made people's lives bad. Defunded education, put in right-to-work laws, gutted environmental protections. But again, most people blame what they can see, and the spotlight stays on Washington, DC, the president, and maybe congress. So once people started seeing that, light bulbs went off in their heads, and they were ready to say, yeah, I'll give an annual donation for this. This seems like something I can actually impact. And that's how we started our giving circle, learning together and giving together.

• 18:55Speaker 05

  How about you? When you started Future Now, what was the goal? So, I can't tell you how surprised I was that they took me up on the challenge. I wasn't being cute. I really thought no one had, probably I'd made a similar speech 100 times before. And it really changed me. I could not stop talking about it. In this moment, with Trump, maybe people will finally be willing to be strategic and focused. Told everyone I knew about it. Adam Pritzker was selling his first business. He knew two people in New York politics, and they both said, "Well, you want to do something really interesting." He's a very interesting thinker. "You want to do something interesting, you should meet this guy who's got this strange obsession with giving circles for state legislatures and kind of wants to do something in Virginia this year, Virginia's odd year elections."

• 19:38Speaker 05

  So Adam and I met, and to my shock, he said, "This is great." Like, "I don't want to go just do something." I said, "You know, you're not going to get credit for it because it's state legislature." He said, "I know, but it's really, this is..." So he was seed money? Lot smarter. He said, "Let's do it together. I'll make it possible. I'll seed it. You have to resign to do it full-time. And let's partner up, and let's see how we can build this." Were you primed to resign by then anyway, according to your remarks about Albany? Look, I was certainly extremely frustrated with how much a single politician could do to change the system, especially as it felt like the democracy was starting to crumble. Now, my district was the greatest district on earth. It was Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. You know, I had the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, both sides of the Brooklyn Bridge, World Trade Center site.

• 20:22Speaker 05

  You type New York City into a map, it pushpin came down right in the middle of that district. I was never tied to that district. But there are two things. As an elected official, your best job is to take what comes and try to make good decisions, try to improve it on the margins, or to serve your constituents and what they need. That was an incredible way to spend 10 years. But this is a systems problem, this lack of attention to state legislatures, their potential to either be a source to destroy the democracy or improve it. And when Adam and Melissa and her first giving circle together made it possible to do something that really also wasn't partisan. The other thing that was important, Adam, is this is not about party. Obviously, you need to choose in a two-party system in each election who's better.

• 21:05Speaker 05

  But it's about these outcomes in the world that you talk about, that when you really look at it on paper, states can deliver and no one's trying, except for the radical right, who was, by the way, doing a damn good job of it.

• 21:22Alec Baldwin?

  Daniel Squadron and Melissa Walker of The States Project. If you enjoy conversations about New York City history and preservation, check out my episode with Rob Snyder of the Island Institute and Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.

• 21:40Speaker 07

  We need to have affordable housing all throughout New York City. The problem is that the approach that a lot of people take is instead of saying, "We need affordable housing, let's build affordable housing." They say, "Well, we need to unleash the market and build as much market rate housing as possible, flood the market, and then that's going to bring the prices down for everybody." The way to get affordable housing is to build affordable housing and to keep the affordable housing that you have, which we're losing at a breakneck pace.

• 22:10Alec Baldwin?

  To hear more of my conversation with Rob Snyder and Andrew Berman, go to hereisthething.org. After the break, Daniel Squadron and Melissa Walker share how The States Project operates beyond New York State and targets all 99 legislative chambers in the country.

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• 24:07Speaker 10

  The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trials that are more efficient, that would finish faster. That was the motivation to bring computational tools and technology closer to biomedical researchers.

• 24:41Speaker 09

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• 24:57Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. When Melissa Walker first met Daniel Squadron in 2016, she was inspired to start her own giving circle to help raise funds for local state legislatures. In 2018, she co-founded a giving circle for the States Project to help engage networks and raise funds towards the goal of creating political change at the state level. I was curious how these giving circles have evolved over time.

• 25:30Speaker 06

  The first year we started doing it, there were 28 Giving Circles, all in New York, and really just kind of along my walking paths in Brooklyn and Manhattan. It was people who were gathered in cafes, writing postcards to voters, and I would kind of knock on the window and say, can I talk to you about state legislatures? Because what I thought happened every time I walked into one of those rooms was I said, I know you're trying to impact what's happening in this country, and I'm about to tell you a way that you can have an impact that you never thought was possible. And people would really light up at it and think to themselves, maybe I can do this. Because, you know, I wasn't someone-- I was writing one young adult novel a year and for many, many magazines, as you noted. But I wasn't someone who could host a senator in my living room, you know?

• 26:13Speaker 06

  But I was someone who could gather 10 friends over for pizza and wine, and everyone pool some dollars, and actually change what's happening in a state legislature, who's in the majority. And that first year, we raised around $100,000 for Virginia. And they have odd-year elections. We were trying to flip 10 seats that year to change the balance of power in the House of Delegates. We funded the final campaign gaps for 10 candidates. Nine of them won their seats. And the balance of power got so close to flipping, just one seat away from flipping entirely, that the next year, Virginia expanded Medicaid. 400,000 people got health care who hadn't had it before. And we felt connected to that policy outcome. And everyone who'd given any amount to my Giving Circle said, let's do this again.

• 26:58Speaker 06

  Let's choose another state with the States Project and do this again. And so that's when I started a Giving Circles program with the States Project, because it was the most impactful thing I'd ever done. It was the most energized I felt. And I really felt like what we were doing was making a difference. And that feeling has gotten stronger every single year.

• 27:19Alec Baldwin?

  But in that way that you can harness that kind of thing-- I mean, for you with Giving Circles, is it like, do you make sure people don't come unless you know what they're going to give?

• 27:29Speaker 06

  No, no, really. I mean, it's, it's kind of fascinating. So when I started doing this work, I had a friend a couple of months in say, oh, how's the fundraising going? And I said, oh, I'm not, I'm not fundraising. I'm flipping state legislatures. And she was like, through fundraising, right? And I was like, oh, am I fundraising? Oh, my gosh. And I really still kind of approach it that way. I want everyone in a room to really understand how power works in this country and how foundational state legislatures are to that power. And I, I hope they all leave with that kind of knowledge. And I hope they all leave with enough kind of tidbits to spread that knowledge a little bit. And then, yeah, there's an ask in the room. But I have found that not having a minimum and

• 28:13Speaker 06

  not having a maximum can really do the most for a room, because it's never with giving circles about one room. It's about seeding something in a room and raising some dollars. But then spreading those seeds out among the people who were there to host the next room and the next room and the next room, or a lunch they want me to come to with someone who's really important. And that way, it has spread so much more organically, I think, than those kind of one-off political events.

• 28:38Speaker 05

  And this is one of the big differences. I don't think there's a single person who says, I love political fundraisers. Occasionally, you're glad you got the picture and the grip and grin line so that you can show everyone else. But no one had a good time. That's true in a small one. It's true in a big one. The difference with the giving circles and with Melissa's, sometimes it's been difficult for me, insistence that it's not just about fundraising, is that it's actually a good time because you're actually going, and there are two things happening that never happen in a political fundraiser. The first is you're actually learning something. You're not just scoring the pall on how much they can tell you what you want to hear. And the second is, you're doing something that feels like

• 29:20Speaker 05

  you discovered the best next band that no one's heard of. And so you show up thinking you're going to be at a political fundraiser, and you walk out with a totally new perspective on American politics that, by the way, happens to be true. And like a little bit of like an insider indie kind of cred that you can carry with you everywhere you go. And if there was a minimum, if everyone was there, it was like, here's the 250, here's the $1,000 check, it wouldn't be that.

• 29:47Alec Baldwin?

  It wouldn't be the same. I believe that, again, harnessing that energy, people want to think it matters. People want to give. They want to care. They want to help. They want to learn. They want to do all these things, based on one really horrible thing, and that is that they've completely lost faith in the government of this country.

• 30:05Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 30:05Alec Baldwin?

  They have completely lost faith. You only come when you want something from me, and then once I vote for you, you disappear, and I never hear from you again. I never hear from you again. And people are sick of that. What's the path now with the giving circles? You raise some money, you educate people, you have a good speaker, somebody who's really, really interesting and informed and so forth. And then the money goes where? Where does it go?

• 30:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, so with giving circles, they get to choose the target state from our list of targets that they'd like to impact.

• 30:36Alec Baldwin?

  Not just their home state?

• 30:37Speaker 06

  Correct. That's right. Yep. So we are only in states where we see a threshold of power that needs defending or that we think can be challenged. Exactly. So, for example, we just finished up this year working in Virginia, because it, again, has odd-year elections, working on the House of Delegates. So many of the giving circles working this year were focused on Virginia. And when they give money to the giving circle, 100% of the amount that's raised by the giving circle goes out the door to the state. And we are working in the state as the state's project with the state caucus, the Virginia House Democrats, and working on targeting the set of districts that are possible to win to shift power. In this case, we were trying to deepen power. We had a one-seat majority

• 31:19Speaker 06

  that we won by 975 votes in 2023. So trying to deepen that majority this year, protect it and deepen it.

• 31:26Alec Baldwin?

  I went down there, went door to door the last election.

• 31:28Speaker 06

  Oh, good for you.

• 31:29Alec Baldwin?

  With People for the American Way.

• 31:30Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, it was really important. It was a really important thing to do, partially because there was a governor's race, too, and there was a chance, just on Tuesday, to make Virginia a trifecta, meaning control of the governor's management. Majority in the House and majority in the Senate. And that was achieved on Tuesday. And Virginia became the 16th Democratic. And the AG, correct. Yes, absolutely. 16th Democratic trifecta in the country. And that has a lot of power to not only do things to improve Virginians' lives, but also to impact the entire country. And that really was made possible by the State's Project's investment, which was the largest investment of any national group.

• 32:13Alec Baldwin?

  And who, with the State's Project, or someone you're affiliated with, is doing the strategic research as to where the money's going to go?

• 32:21Speaker 05

  So our team does that. You know, I think another barrier to people getting involved in politics, giving money, letting themselves become emotionally invested, is the feeling that it will be wasted, that campaigns don't really matter, or they just enrich consultants, someone's cousin, whatever it is. And so that's a barrier we need to help people get across. So we have a whole internal team that is constantly looking, actually, at all 99 legislative chambers in the country. As I'm sure you and all your listeners know, Nebraska is a unicameral state, but every other state has a House and a Senate. And so they're looking at all 99 of those legislative chambers, trying to figure out both which chambers could be flipped, but also which seats and which candidates are most likely to do so.

• 33:04Speaker 05

  And then trying to figure out the most effective ways to spend money so that those dollars are well-spent to communicate with voters and convince people. And you know, one of the things that they've found, that we've found, is in state legislative elections, getting candidates off the phones, raising money from special interests, and out-knocking on doors in their communities is an incredible way to win elections and do something about corruption. And so the way to think about it is, there's going to be money in politics. The State's Project program makes sure that money is well-spent, but also that the candidate is not being asked to do something. We don't have a litmus test other than,

• 33:48Speaker 05

  one, serve your constituents, they're the ones who hired you. Two, do you believe in the American promise, the idea that it's self-evident all people are created equal with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and government secures those rights with the consent of the governed? And then go work for the people who you want to represent.

• 34:06Alec Baldwin?

  Now, why is Nebraska the only unicameral?

• 34:10Alec Baldwin?

  You blew my mind there. Why is that the only unicameral?

• 34:13Speaker 05

  It got shifted. So, you know, the requirement in the Constitution is that all of the states have a, quote, "Republican" form of government, small r, not party, although I think.

• 34:23Alec Baldwin?

  Some people have misunderstood that.

• 34:24Speaker 05

  Exactly. And so, actually, a bunch of states were already bicameral as of the time the US government was created. And then there was a move, sort of in the progressive era, that unicameral would be better. Only Nebraska did it, sort of playing a plains progressivism. There's actually some real arguments for it. The relationship between the legislature and the governor is very different in a unicameral legislature.

• 34:46Alec Baldwin?

  In what way?

• 34:47Speaker 05

  When you need two chambers, the governor can play them off each other and increase their power significantly. A gubernatorial veto, just as an example, is much easier to override in a single chamber than a bicameral legislature.

• 34:59Alec Baldwin?

  What do they call the members of the unicameral chamber?

• 35:01Speaker 05

  Senators.

• 35:01Alec Baldwin?

  Senators.

• 35:02Speaker 05

  Yes, I mean, they're politicians. You don't think they wanted to call themselves assembly members, do you?

• 35:06Alec Baldwin?

  Plebes, yeah.

• 35:06Speaker 05

  As a former senator, upper House matters. But the other interesting thing is it's the only nonpartisan legislature. So while people have parties, they run on a nonpartisan ticket. So as recently as 2019, members of the Nebraska Senate, supermajority Republicans, the number three most powerful person in that chamber was a Democrat, even though a supermajority of Republicans. The different possibilities for a different kind of partisanship across the 50 states, I mean, you would really lose all your listeners, but is fascinating.

• 35:40Alec Baldwin?

  Now, is there a state that you basically say to yourself, "Don't bother"? You wouldn't even bother going down there to try to influence the state legislature because it's so concretized?

• 35:49Speaker 05

  So, you know, it's actually not a light question at all, because I would argue that the Democratic Party and progressive activists have basically been sending the message, "We don't need all the states," for a number of years now. The idea that we're letting the competition, partisan or ideological competition, in places like Idaho just wither on the vine. For years, we're in Mississippi. Hopefully, that's now shifting. We were in Mississippi in 2019. You know, it's an incredible... State with a really interesting political history, obviously very ugly one as well, but also some hope in it. We were able to help a candidate, I think, outperform what

• 36:30Speaker 05

  she had done the year before, the election before, by 70 points to win the election. So I would say there's some cultures that you wouldn't want to get involved in. I think that maybe for non-New Yorkers, people might think the New York political culture is one of those. But there is no state where we shouldn't be saying at a time when you have a political movement that wants to undermine democracy, we should be able to build a coalition that's pro-democracy, including, by the way, if you have an R by your name on the ballot, not just a D.

• 36:59Alec Baldwin?

  Now, when you were doing that district in the Senate, you were Brooklyn at that time.

• 37:03Speaker 05

  I've always lived in Brooklyn, Brooklyn and Manhattan. So I never lived in Manhattan. When I was in the legislature, I was considered very Manhattan, because two thirds of my district was Manhattan and how I come across. But I actually grew up in the Bronx and lived in Brooklyn. I've never lived in Manhattan a day in my life.

• 37:17Alec Baldwin?

  The Bronx, in Riverdale?

• 37:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 37:19Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, yeah. Your dad.

• 37:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:20Alec Baldwin?

  That's where he raised everybody. Got it, got it, got it. Would you say that when you do these projects, because when I was there at the thing that you both were attending that was Sarah Jessica was there and Jay Smith, Cameron and so forth. And I went to that event, which I'm very glad I went to, although there was that, again, hallucinatory moment when I was like, I've heard this before. Where have I heard this before? But do you find it's easier to corral women than it is men?

• 37:46Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, I find that, yes, giving circles are largely led by women and they are organizing other women. There are some men who lead giving circles with us, but I would say 80% of our leaders are women. And it's really an exercise in organizing people. So I always say it's, you know, it's the person who's organizing the potluck, it's the person who started the book club, it's the person who hosts the dinner parties, it's the person who brings people together.

• 38:13Alec Baldwin?

  Are you saying that women are more organized than men?

• 38:15Speaker 06

  I mean, I'm just saying.

• 38:17Alec Baldwin?

  I'm not arguing with you.

• 38:17Speaker 06

  I think there's a community building aspect to it that really is, tends to be women, for the most part.

• 38:26Alec Baldwin?

  Daniel Squadron and Melissa Walker of The States Project. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeart Radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Daniel Squadron and Melissa Walker discuss how The States Project was able to flip 12 state seats in Pennsylvania in 2022 with the help of giving circles.

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• 40:56Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. As a New York State senator, Daniel Squadron focused on many important public policy and funding issues. Among his many contributions were federal funding for public housing, ethics and campaign finance reform, and public parks projects on the Lower East Side, Governor's Island, and the Brooklyn Bridge Park. I wanted to know more about Squadron's desire to protect open spaces and how he worked to save Brooklyn Bridge Park from developments.

• 41:29Speaker 05

  Well, originally, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

• 41:33Alec Baldwin?

  The state.

• 41:34Speaker 05

  Well, a by-state agency, actually.

• 41:37Alec Baldwin?

  Sure.

• 41:38Speaker 05

  The reason that's...

• 41:39Alec Baldwin?

  State-level power.

• 41:40Speaker 05

  The state-level, and then it was a conversion, and it was in the district I was running for. And the plan to get it funded was to build luxury housing within the limits of the park and have the tax dollars from that housing fund the park. I had real concerns about that because I think that privatizing public space with parochial local interests is a serious issue. It's the same thing that's now become sort of the NIMBY question when it comes to housing. But I think you see it with open space all over the place as well.

• 42:10Alec Baldwin?

  What did they wind up doing? Did they build luxury housing?

• 42:13Speaker 05

  So they did. So I was able to delay it, to reduce it. And you know, it's actually, Brooklyn Bridge Park is working really well because, in a way, I underestimated it. It's so popular.

• 42:22Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 42:23Speaker 05

  All of us who were able to accelerate it.

• 42:24Alec Baldwin?

  I used to know that my kids would play lacrosse there.

• 42:25Speaker 05

  It's so popular that there's no parochial interest that could take it over. So there are people who live in Brooklyn Bridge Park. You ask anyone who does, they're sure their tax dollars go to Brooklyn Bridge Park. But the political constituency, and the folks who designed it, Regina Meyer, who ran it when it was first getting built and opened, really, to their credit, built a park that would draw people in, even who could never afford to live in Brooklyn Heights. And that has, in a way I underestimated, allowed it to be a truly public space. It also, I would say, is by far the best-funded public amenity, maybe, in the history of all humanity because of what's happened to real estate.

• 43:02Alec Baldwin?

  So the land was owned by the joint authorities, and they sold it to the developer to build the housing?

• 43:08Speaker 05

  No, before I ever came in office, the Port Authority transferred it to a public corporation that was controlled by the state at the time. All of the land is on ground leases with the developers still owned by the state, but part of this whole negotiation-

• 43:21Alec Baldwin?

  So the buildings are just renting the land?

• 43:22Speaker 05

  Uh, yes, but under long-term leases, in some cases 99-year leases. And actually, another thing we did that I'm really proud of and we were able to do in Governor's Island too, is change the governance structure. So instead of some buy-state, no accountability, in both cases, we were able to negotiate with the Bloomberg administration and the governor, at the time Governor Patterson, so that the city controls Brooklyn Bridge Park. The mayor's responsible. The city controls Governor's Island. The mayor's responsible. Sort of like what you see with the mayor will control the schools. And one reason I think those, both of those parks have done so well is mayors care about making them better in a way you never would if it was this alphabet soup that we're talking about.

• 44:02Alec Baldwin?

  Now, the land was leased by the developers. They built and erected housing there, high-end housing, and they kept the money. They profited from that, from leases they got for it. So the only thing they paid, they didn't pay a vig on the housing, or do you guys say pay taxes?

• 44:18Speaker 05

  No, they did. So, I mean, so there's a bunch of different types of housing there. So there's a rental unit, there's a building that was a huge conversion, that warehouse that you might sort of be able to picture at Pier 5 there, and then there's some new developments that were built, one of which is actually 100% affordable. Actually, the de Blasio administration and I both supported that. So, there's a mix. There was some cost of the ground lease, but mostly they're, they have something called pilots, payments in lieu of taxes. So, they don't pay property taxes to the city. The property taxes for those, all of that housing funds the park directly.

• 44:52Alec Baldwin?

  So the city and/or the state have realized some money from the sale of this property, the housing?

• 44:58Speaker 05

  I'd say the city doesn't, the city treasury doesn't have to pay to keep Brooklyn Bridge Park going and being a competitive place.

• 45:03Alec Baldwin?

  It's funded by this mechanism. And then, and then the land that the park is on, there was, there was no park there?

• 45:10Speaker 05

  No, there were, there was piers. It was, it was piers that had been basically in disuse since the containerization.

• 45:16Alec Baldwin?

  And where did the money come from to develop the park?

• 45:19Speaker 05

  So that was capital money that was part of the deal we made to give the city control. The Bloomberg administration put a really large amount of capital investment in as part of the deal to take control of the park. There's a board that has 17 appointments on it. So if you so, you know.

• 45:36Alec Baldwin?

  Who appoints them? Hokel or?

• 45:38Speaker 05

  Well, let me tell you, because we made the deal. So obviously, the local state senator has an appointment.

• 45:42Alec Baldwin?

  I knew him once. And what did he do? He was walking around lost in Manhattan.

• 45:47Speaker 05

  And the local assembly member, the local city council member, the Brooklyn Borough president. The governor still has a few appointments, and the mayor has a large number. The best thing to do with a five-year-old in New York City is get on one of those public ferries, take it to Governor's Island, spend a little time on Governor's Island, get back on the ferry, take it to Brooklyn Bridge Park, go get some ice cream, get back on the ferry, take it back to Manhattan. Think of a day where like, you know, you spend less than $10 and maybe $20 with the ice cream cone, and you you experience the greatest view, the greatest community on earth.

• 46:19Alec Baldwin?

  My wife and I take my kids to St. George all the time. My kids would love to go on the ferry. And they'd say to me, you know, you rode the ferry, Dad, when you were young? Did you ride the ferry? I was like, yeah. When I was in them, I used to ride the ferry. Then I could have had to cut the story short because it involved me smoking a joint, drinking a bottle of wine, turning around, coming back, and going to Whoa Hop in Chinatown and just blowing it out on.

• 46:39Speaker 05

  The Dollar Miller High Lifes on the old Staten Island ferry? That was the free ferry with the Dollar High Lifes?

• 46:44Alec Baldwin?

  We got as wasted as we possibly could. It was glorious. Statue of Liberty. It was so. It's fun for all ages, you know? It was good for all ages. And I remember I walk up to the ferry with my kids, and I go, where do I pay? I hadn't been on the ferry in 15 years. And I walk up to the there's like 10 cops in a huddle. And I go, where do I pay? The guy goes, ferry's free, Mr. Baldwin. Ferry's free. I go, what? He goes, yeah, it's free. That's another thing I can save money on with my kids. We're going on the ferry. Again? Yeah, come on, come on. Get your coats on. Now, what is your goal in the coming years or even months? What's the goal in terms of you want to just continue along? Or is there another goal you have, a broader goal you have?

• 47:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, so we now have over 200 giving circles working with the state's project.

• 47:26Alec Baldwin?

  Nationwide.

• 47:26Speaker 06

  Nationwide, correct. And my goal really with that program is to keep everyone who's in it on a steady course, not in this kind of reactive politics that makes us all so tired, but to keep them moving steadily and focused strategically on these particular nodes of power where they can have impact. You know, these are races that are decided on the margins and these giving circles are actually impacting results, not just of single elections, but who is holding the majority in states. And, you know, 2022 Pennsylvania is a great example. We were able to flip 12 seats that year with the help of giving circles. And we got the final 12th seat by 63 votes.

• 48:08Speaker 06

  63 votes shifted power in Harrisburg that year. And I believe that every single giving circle that chose Pennsylvania that year was responsible for that victory, because if one of them hadn't been there organizing a living room in a backyard, a gathering, or a Zoom room, then I'm not sure we would have gotten those last 63 votes to shift power. So when I meet a new giving circle leader, what I say to them is that they are turning on the porch light for strategic political giving for their communities. And my goal is to make sure that people have a focus and people have a place where they feel like they're making a difference. And that's what the Giving Circles program does. So staying in it, staying steady, not being reactive to politics, but really focusing

• 48:49Speaker 06

  on where they can have an impact foundationally for the country, and then spreading that to other people, saying, who else in your community should have a giving circle? Who else is feeling like there's nothing they can do? We do not have to be witnesses to what's happening in our democracy. We have power, especially when we gather people and do it together. And so giving circles are never about what one person can give, but the magical math problem of bringing people together to learn about this, have a focus, and strategically work with us to target specific seats.

• 49:20Alec Baldwin?

  I love when I went to the meeting, both meetings. The one at Rothman's house that I first went with you guys was a bit smaller. And that other one, that woman who was the host in that magnificent carriage house, at first I was like, oh, my God. I'll give money just if I can come back here and have some more canapes and some sparkling water. But I know her house was stunning. But the idea being that, you know, finding people, I guess, nationwide who are State's Project's material. My question for you is, what's the budget of State's Project now, roughly?

• 49:49Speaker 05

  In the 2024 cycle, we were the largest outside state legislative effort in the history of the country. We raised more than $70 million over that two-year cycle. And, you know, it's a lot of money. But when you think of the fact that a single congressional race nowadays costs about 25 million, or, you know, they're spending $25 million. You're talking about less than the cost of three or four congressional races. To have candidates who believe in America and believe in democracy, free to go meet their voters around the country, in every state that matters. And giving circles, including ones that raise cumulatively $5,000 and contributions of $50 at a time,

• 50:31Speaker 05

  or raise 10 times that, are often the single biggest giver in one of these races in a smaller state like New Hampshire or Maine.

• 50:42Alec Baldwin?

  So the budget of State's Projects is what, per year?

• 50:44Speaker 05

  It's a two-year cycle, so almost the vast majority of the money goes out to actually be contributed to campaigns.

• 50:50Alec Baldwin?

  And I'm sure the administrative costs are low, but how many people in the staff?

• 50:53Speaker 05

  Forty people.

• 50:54Alec Baldwin?

  Forty full-time people. Great. And your office is where?

• 50:56Speaker 05

  Totally remote, unfortunately.

• 50:58Alec Baldwin?

  Totally remote. You don't want an office?

• 50:59Speaker 05

  No, I said unfortunately, I mean, because I love, I actually love our team. And when we get to be in person, it's great.

• 51:05Alec Baldwin?

  Did they have an office prior?

• 51:06Speaker 05

  We had an office before COVID, but then, as we were growing during the COVID period, we started hiring people from around the country, and now we have this great team.

• 51:14Alec Baldwin?

  My kids, you can have my apartment.

• 51:15Speaker 05

  If you can convince our team to move to New York by doing happy hours for them once a week, I'll take it. I'll take it to the leadership.

• 51:23Alec Baldwin?

  You know, when I saw you guys speak the first time, I mean, I think a lot of people have the same idea. There's a collective consciousness, and they have a variation of the same idea of like, well, let's go, let's work the states. I think what you're doing is really the only meaningful work that can be done right now, or more meaningful in that way.

• 51:39Speaker 06

  Well, it gives me a lot of hope to work on these campaigns where the main thing is, we want you to go door to door and talk to the people in your community, right? We want you to, like, we want you to listen. We want you to talk about the traffic patterns and the grass on the softball field and the local school. And that is how you connect with people as a neighbor. And you do that persuasion knocking, talking to people like a neighbor. That, to me, is part of the connective tissue that's been missing. And it's really heartening to be able to work on campaigns where that is a main tactic. Because that person-to-person contact is so effective and so important for healing people in this really disconnected time.

• 52:22Speaker 05

  I'm really sympathetic to people who are discouraged by politics. And I actually sometimes think, how hopeless about politics must people have been to vote for this guy, again, knowing what they were getting? Knowing. But it's on those of us who are doing this full-time, on those of us who care about the democracy, to make it less hopeless, to make it seem worthwhile. And that's not going to happen by watching more cable news or spending more time on social media. It's not going to happen by choosing, you know, Burger King, McDonald's, Republicans or Democrats, in the national conversation.

• 53:00Speaker 05

  When you get into states, you start feeling like, wow, I have power in this democracy. Wow. That thing that made no sense, suddenly I understand. And most importantly, things really can change for the better. And I just want people to have that chance, because being discouraged and being hopeless is the end of the democracy, whether it's this guy or someone else. And knowing you're a part of it is the hope.

• 53:32Alec Baldwin?

  My thanks to Daniel Squadron and Melissa Walker. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese, and Victoria DeMartin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's The Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

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