Campbell Conversations

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher. Fans of golf were recently treated to another exciting finish at the Masters tournament, and one of the Masters greatest past players, Tiger Woods has also been in the news recently. He crashed his car, he was charged with driving under the influence again and now he's checked himself into a rehab facility in Switzerland. My guest today is Gavin Newsham. He's a veteran golf writer and co-founder of "Golf Punk Magazine," and he's written a new biography of Tiger Woods’ early years leading up to when he turned professional. It's titled, "Project Tiger: The Birth of Genius and the Price of Greatness." Mr. Newsham, welcome to the program.

Gavin Newsham: Thanks for having me, Grant, really appreciate it.

GR: We appreciate you taking the time. So, let me start with, you know, your book is a lot about Tiger's father, Earl, and their relationship and I just wanted to ask you this question right out of the gate. He's got kind of a, Earl had a had a founding story, if you will, an origin story for how he decided to devote all this time to developing Tiger's golf talent. He said, you know, the kid was, I think he was, he wasn't even a year old and he demonstrated that he could swing a golf club, looked like he knew what he was doing. And so that sort of turned the light on for him and then he said, okay, I'm going to nurture and groom this. Do you think that's actually exactly true, or did his father sort of have this idea that he was going to create a golf genius from the very beginning?

GN: I think there's certainly elements of truth in it, Grant. I mean, Earl Woods, incredibly complex man, really. But he was prone to hyperbole and embellishment and exaggeration a lot. So, a lot of the stories he told about Tiger's childhood were kind of changed as the years went on, you know, because he told them so many times, but they seem to get more and more hyperbolic as it were, so he was prone to that. But all this stuff about him, you know, from everything that I've heard, everything I've spoken to, yeah, all this stuff about him, sort of getting a club in Tiger's hands when he was like ten months old is all true. But, I think it also stems from the fact that Earl had three kids from his first marriage, and he was never there for them. So, I think there's some residual guilt there also into the amount of time he plowed into Tiger and his development, certainly as a golfer, but maybe not so much as a person as, you know, as time has gone on, I think.

GR: Yeah. Well, that's actually that's an interesting juxtaposition of the children from the first marriage. That's a common, I think, pattern for fathers. Well, I know you could talk about this for the entire program because your book is really a lot about this, but just in sort of brief fashion, how did Earl approach the development of Tiger's golf talent? How would you characterize the way he went about that?

GN: I think there were several stages to it, to be honest. I mean, from the early stage that we talked about when he was ten months old and through his, you know, early years into sort of elementary school, he was a pretty happy go lucky kid, by all accounts, you know, loved playing his golf. And, you know, the golf was a fun thing to do, it wasn't something that was expected of him so much, you know, he wasn't needed to be on the golf course every single day, you know, he had a pretty normal childhood. But I think once that talent became so, so, so apparent, you know, and so clear to anybody that cared to see him, whether that be somebody at the golf club. He had a coach from the age of four, you know, and straight away the coach said, I don't want pay because it's a pleasure to teach this kid. You know, I know what this kid is going to do is going to be great for my resumé at the end of the day, you know? And that happened with all Tiger’s coaches. Never, you know, not once did a dollar change hands between Tiger's parents and his coaches because he's that good. I think when he gets to high school and he's become a name, you know, he's known not just in California but beyond there, is like the best junior golfer in the country, it's then I think that you can see in Earl, there's like a shift in Earl's mindset where I'm thinking, right, okay, so my son's really good at golf, I know he's really good at golf. And they struggled financially, the Woods, taking Tiger around the country to all the tournaments coast to coast, flying here, there and everywhere. Earl didn’t make a lot of money, you know, he didn't have a great pension when he did retire. And so, I think the idea that Tiger could turn pro and make a significant amount of money suddenly became more of a driver in Earl's mindset, I think. As it, you know, inevitably would do I think, you know, and so from that stage on, Tiger's childhood really wasn't his own from sort of 10, 11 onwards, I don't think. His parents wouldn't let him play other sports, for instance, you know, not allowed, loved playing football, loved basketball, not allowed to do it just in case he might injure himself or jeopardize his golf career, you know? So, it's interesting how it changes, but also kind of understandable, you know, irrespective of what you think about the actual parenting style. I mean, you can see they're going to nurture and develop a talent, but, at what cost? That is the question.

GR: Yeah. Well, on that note, can you give me like, your single best example of Earl putting a lot of pressure on Tiger or being overbearing? Is there one, as you went through and researched this, is there like one greatest hit?

GN: One, there's several examples, I mean, especially when he was at college. There was a lot of trouble with the NCAA about Tiger's amateur status, you know, because Tiger was getting offers from left, right and center. And Earl was certainly getting offers as well, you know. I spoke to his, one of the assistant pros that used to be at Tiger's club when he's up to about 16, 17. And he said, that his dad that used to play there, he was a member, he used to turn up every single week with, like, hundreds of new golf balls in the trunk of his car, you know, and start handing them out. And you’re thinking, well, where did they come from? You know, and these are all people are going to Earl and saying, your son's really good, you know, maybe you want to come and chat with our guys, you know, and we can maybe sort of sort something out. And so, I think it's that point where you think, this has changed now, this has changed from being a kid who's good at golf to actually, you know, a meal ticket even, you know? So, I think it's an interesting but understandable way that Earl went, I think, given his financial issues as well, I think.

GR: Well, one of the reviews of your book called it a ‘searing indictment of Tiger Woods’ father.’ Did you write that book with that approach? Is that how you went into it?

GN: No, not at all. No, I mean, I, like many people. I mean, there's been, you know, thousands of books on Tiger, right? It's not like, you know, you have to go far to find one. But most of them have a similar thing about Earl being the overbearing parent, you know, the, the guy that pushed Tiger and pushed Tiger and pushed Tiger, and he did. You know, let's not get that wrong in any way. But the more you read about it and the more you see the change in his mindset as Tiger gets older, and also how, I mean, a lot's not been said about his mother. You know, his mother's role in this as well was equally important, you know, because everybody thinks he was Earl driving Tiger forward, but his mother was just as disciplined and just as focused on making Tiger as good as he could possibly be, especially on the academic side, because he was a bright kid, right, so, he went to Stanford. So yeah, between the two of them, a formidable backroom team. But, in terms of developing and nurturing this rare talent, they found themselves in possession of, you know, but, in terms of parenting, again, another question.

GR: I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with Gavin Newsham. He's the author of a new book about Tiger Woods. It's titled, "Project Tiger: The Birth of Genius and the Price of Greatness." So, let's go into Tiger's adolescence. You mentioned that once he got to be about 10 or 11, and then after that. Give us an idea of just the degree to which he differed from other child prodigies. You know, there's a lot of child prodigies out there in different sports, but from your book you get the sense that, like, he's a whole other level of this. Can you give us an idea of just what the distance was?

GN: Yeah, I think it’s earlier than age of 10, you know, 9-10 it because even if you look at the kind of golf he was playing, I'm not sure how much you know about sort of standards in golf, Grant, but okay, you know, he was six years old when he shot 48 over nine holes. I mean, I don't shoot that now, you know? First hole in one at 6, broke 70 at 12, scratch by the time he was 13.

GR: And these are on real golf courses, not like little kiddie golf courses, right?

GN: No, not little pitch and putts, right? These are like, proper adult courses, you know. And so, you know, you've got this kid that is known throughout California and beyond from an early age. And he's winning trophy after trophy after trophy after trophy. Each week he's coming home with, you know, a clutch of trophies in the whole house that he lived at in Cyprus, it's just like a 1500 square foot trophy cabinet, right? It's nothing else in the house. So, that's, you know, his mom made him give all the trophies away, so out there there's loads of people that have got Tiger Woods’ trophies from when he was a kid, now probably don't even realize that they picked them up in a junk shop or something, you know, it's incredible that he was so successful. But again, I think a lot of people I spoke to that went to school with him and knew him as a youngster and also as a teenager, said on the golf course, really happy go lucky guy, loved nothing better than being out on the golf course when nobody can get to him, right? So, he's in complete control on the golf course, in control of his game, in control of what he says, what he does, you know, even his parents can't get to him at that point. Maybe afterwards they would if they weren't happy with something that he did or didn't do. But the fact that he spent so much time as a child playing golf was one of the reasons, I think, that he didn't really have a childhood in any normal sense of the word, because he didn't have that time to invest in other people, invest in kids in relationships and all that, and make all the mistakes that the kids make and learn from, you know? So, I think it had a massive impact on him I think going forward, especially in like, his dealings with the media, because he's always been so super guarded and even more so since all the scandals in 2009 and everything, you know. There's just been a big barrier there, constantly. That's ever since probably went to college, the way he started becoming even more guarded I think, because that's when his celebrity reached a new level, becoming the U.S. amateur champion, you know, and also becoming the best collegiate golfer of his generation too.

GR: So, there's an endless debate over whether great talent is born, whether it's innate or whether it is created, it's made. I imagine the reality may be a mix of both, but I was wondering whether your research on Tiger's early life gave you any insights on that big question?

GN: I think, yes, you need natural talent, but obviously it goes without saying that you need to be, have a flair for what you're good at. But I think that combination of having a Svengali-like figure, like Earl Woods, who came from his military background, you know, he's so focused, driven, you know, prepared to do absolutely whatever it took to make Tiger as good as he could possibly be. I think he wanted to make him a, he said, a cold-blooded golf assassin was what his aim was to make his son. And sure enough, he did that. I mean, and then some right? I think that combination, that intersection of the two is when true greatness can be made, but it can also go the other way. Like you said, you've seen it so many times, you know, child stars, not just in sport, you know, but in entertainment, in acting, you know, in music, Michael Jackson, you know. It's just so many people fall by the wayside and it's, you know, it looks to be happening to Tiger as well, I think.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm talking with Gavin Newsham. The veteran golf writer has written a new book about the early years of Tiger Woods, it's titled "Project Tiger: The Birth of Genius and the Price of Greatness," and we've been discussing his book. So, you may have kind of intimated this when you were talking about Tiger being so focused on golf that he didn't have a chance to develop like a lot, like other human beings do, at least if things are going well for them. Not all the other golfers liked the young Tiger Woods when he was a professional. I mean, I can remember, I think it was Phil Mickelson who used to sort of snark about him. What was it that these folks didn't like? Was it the arrogance, was it something else?

GN: I think there's, I think so, yeah. I mean, I think the last chapter of the book is all about when he turns pro in August ‘96 in Milwaukee. And it's really interesting, I maybe spoke to like 10 players that were there that week with him. And while everybody, without fail said, that guy's the future of golf, you know, we can't deny that. He's hitting the ball further than them, he’s fitter than them, you know, he's got more creativity, but also he's got that that mental aspect of his game, he's got it all up there, and he's 20 at the time, right? So, there's a lot of resentment on the tour. You know, this kid can turn up, turn pro and have $60 million in his bank from Nike and Titleist, four times what the world number one was getting at the time, Greg Norman. You know, and he's 20 just dropped out of college, you know, yes, there's going to be resentment, right, you know? But I think in time that changes because in time, Tiger becomes the biggest sport star in the world, and you know, in turn all the purses in pro golf go up, you know, all the prizes go up and everything and everybody’s ship rises right at the same time. So, everybody's earning more, everybody's doing better at the end. It's kind of the way, I think, why Tiger has been forgiven so many times, I think, for all his many indiscretions off the golf course. And it's nobody's really held any grudges in that respect, at least not in the game. And that’s likely because, A, they know that their livelihoods are down to Tiger Woods and what he did in terms of changing the face of professional golf. But B, there's probably a lot of other players that are at it as well, right? So, I think it's like a very close shot when it comes to, you know, what goes on on tour, stays on tour, right?

GR: Well, that's interesting, the idea that he was kind of the, you know, built the industry that way. Something that I think I remember and you would know this, is it seemed to me that you mentioned that he was fitter than everybody else. I seem to notice that after Tiger Woods, you start to see a lot of these golfers that are kind of ripped or cut. Whereas before, that was not the typical physique of a golfer. It wasn't like they were all out of shape, but all of a sudden they start looking like linebackers.

GN: Right, exactly that. I mean, it's, you know, even at Stanford, you know, Tiger would use the football team’s gym because he was friends with Bill Walsh, right, so he’d go in and use the gym with the football team. He wouldn't work out with the golf team because the golf team didn't do that, you know, it wasn't a thing. Why do they need to work out, right? But no, he'd be in the gym at 4 or 5:00 in the morning working out. So, by the time he turns pro and he's smashing the ball 50 yards further than everybody else, it's a wake-up call to the rest of the golfers. It's saying step up or go away, you know, step up or step off because there's only one way this game's going now, and it's Tiger's way. And if you don't want to be part of that, then fine, you know, go and play on a lesser tour somewhere because, you know, you're going to have to get better. And sure enough, they did. I mean, everybody got longer off the tee. They even lengthened all the courses because of Tiger, because they were coming too short. And that's down to sheer power, you know, and that's what he had in abundance.

GR: Interesting. So, one of the things that you also document, of course, and this has been a topic of great discussion when it comes to Tiger Woods, the, just the vitriolic racism that was directed at him almost from the beginning. I mean, that would have had to put a zap on your mind of some sort. But can you give us an idea of just how nasty some of that stuff was that he was getting?

GN: Yeah. I mean, from an early age, you know, when he started playing at the Navy Club, which was Earl’s club, it's for ex-military. So, down near that house in Cypress. They didn't like Earl for a start, as a black man playing at their golf club, you know, still not really accepted. Tiger, they wouldn't let Tiger play until he was 10 at first, even though there were white kids playing that were like 6, 7, 8 years old, you know, they refused to let him play. And you know, this goes on through high school, where, you know, he routinely gets racially abused, when they're playing on the road, you know. And also at 16 when he played his first PGA tour at just 16 years old, and he played in the Nissan Open in LA at Riviera, he got his first death threat. A racist death threat that his father and the tournament organizers received that was on the answer machine in the tournament office for when Tiger got there the first day. They didn't tell Tiger about it, they told him after it, and yet he just shrugged it off and went, ah, here we go again, you know? But I think what Earl did, to his credit, was channel that kind of negative energy that seemed to follow Tiger around a lot, you know, in certain parts of the states especially, you know, but channel that into something that he could feed off and become even stronger, you know, and I don't think there's any doubt that he did that.

GR: Yeah, maybe, I see sort of reinforce that, as you said before, sort of golf assassin approach, you know? Okay, I'm gonna, yeah. In the course of your writing career, do you have a lot of interactions with Tiger Woods?

GN: At press conferences and things, yeah. I've never had a sit-down interview with him. But then I don't think many people have, only the chosen few get selected in that inner circle, I think. I recall a friend of mine I worked with on a golf magazine years ago, and he got the nod, he got summoned from the UK to fly over to California to interview Tiger. Obviously took him, you know, 10, 11 hours to fly there, another 3 or 4 hours to go and find Tiger in some golf club in the middle of nowhere and then had four minutes with him, not a second more.

GR: (laughter)

GN: And this has cropped up a few times. I mean, I interviewed Tiger's first agent, Hughes Norton. He's the guy who cut all the deals when he turned pro. So, the guy that made him a multi-millionaire overnight, you know, set him up for life, as well as setting up his parents as well, obviously, you know. And he said that Tiger didn't really care about the money. It was the time that he cared about, and he would never give anybody, be that the media, sponsors that were paying him 20, 30, $40 million, you know, endorsements, anything, not a second more than they absolutely had to give them, you know. And sure enough, every single person I've spoken to about that have reinforced that, that he's you know, I'll do the bare minimum, and then thanks for your time, I’m off.

GR: Interesting. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. And my guest is the golf writer Gavin Newsham. So, you mentioned some things about this in the book. Obviously, your book is focused on Tiger's early years and the end is when he turns pro, but Tiger has a son who plays golf, Charlie, he's pretty good. How has Tiger approached his own son's development as a golfer? He's not been another Earl, it doesn't seem like.

GN: No, I think of all the things that you can accuse Tiger of, you can't accuse him, well, at least now you can't, of being a bad dad, I don't think. Yes, obviously, what went on in 2008, 2009, you know, signaled the end of his marriage, you know, and pretty much his career, to be honest. But the fact that he seems to have maintained a good relationship with his kids, you know, Sam, his daughter, as well, is really quite nice I think to see, because a lot of the time Tiger doesn’t ever look that happy, but, he looks happy when he's, like you say, when you see him on those rare occasions playing golf with Charlie, he looks like a different guy, and I think that's really nice. I think he's also learned not to shove Charlie front and center in front of the cameras, like his dad did with him all the time, you know, and make him the focal point of the story. You know, that's, I think, he's kept that very private. And that's very different to how Earl used to behave, I think.

GR: Well, obviously, the thing that's hanging over this entire conversation is the fact that Tiger Woods has been in the news again lately, for his ongoing struggle with addiction to painkillers and for driving under the influence. Do you think that the early years give us some insight into that, or is this more about someone that just has a lot of back problems, which, you know, as I was reading in your book and elsewhere, the very nature of his swing sort of puts him in a position to develop those problems. Is it just a story like that, or is there something about his upbringing that that gives us some insight?

GN: I think there's something in his psyche that says that he can't give up, I think. You know, if somebody close to him would have taken him to one side, maybe after the car crash in 2021 when he nearly lost his leg, and said, that’s it Tiger, come on, you know, no more of this, you know, you've got a life to live, you know, you've achieved everything in the game of golf. Taken him to one side and just said, look, come on, just pack it in. Because, but he's not, I think there's something in his mindset that says, I can come back again, I've done it before, you know, I did it in 2019 at the Masters, you know, and it's, he can't let go, you know? And I think, you know, greatness, however you want to define it, it's not just about talent, it's not about focus and discipline, you know, it's about the it's about knowing when to quit sometimes as well, I think. And I still don't think that Tiger's got it in his mindset to do that. And I think he's got to, I really do think he's got to call it a day soon.

GR: And the connection to the addiction then, is he needs the painkillers in order to physically be able to swing the club, right?

GN: Yeah. I mean, even in the week before the car crash, I mean, he came back to playing golf again. He's got this indoor tournament TGL he plays in, you know. And you finally see him hitting a few golf balls and having a good time and you’re thinking, he looks okay, you know, maybe will play in the Masters in, you know, the week after. And then within three days, he's rolled his car, you know, he's arrested again, he's charged again, and he's off to rehab in Zurich in Switzerland and it's this recurring theme. When I started writing this book in, or the first idea I had for it was in 2021, when I was writing a piece in the wake of his last, that really serious car crash. It was a kind of, 'What Now for Tiger Woods?’ piece and just looking into his childhood. And sort of, this is where the book came from. And yeah, 5 years on, the book’s written and literally in the week of it coming out, he's done it again. And it's like, will this ever end? You know, the fact that he's still news shows you what an incredible golfer he was and the genuine star power he had, I think. The fact that he's still box office says a lot, I think. Maybe says a lot about the game of golf at the moment as well, that maybe there aren't enough Tiger Woods in the game, or enough people that can kind of bring a new narrative to the professional game.

GR: Right. Well, we've only got about a minute and a half left. I want to try to squeeze in a few more questions, and this will be kind of like our lightning round, because these are more kind of yes or no or name something here. So, we'll be a little quicker here. But I’m going to put you on the spot. Who's the greater golfer, greater golfer now, Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus?

GN: Tiger Woods. Do you want an explanation? I could justify it all day.

GR: Yeah, quick.

GN: Okay, 2000 – 2001, literally nobody has ever played golf like that, ever. Across the four Majors where he won the Tiger Slam, Pebble Beach being the greatest example. And nobody ever will again, I don't think. He's literally playing a different game to everybody else.

GR: I would assume you would also contend that Tiger Woods is the more important golfer between those two figures.

GN: Yeah, well, yes and no. In terms of what he could have, did he do enough for the game of golf that he maybe could have done? I don't know, but close call, close call.

GR: Okay. If we're going to have a Tiger Woods play or a Tiger Woods movie, what kind of play is this going to be? Is it going to be a tragedy, a triumph, a redemption? What's the one word to describe the theme?

GN: Well, if you ask me, redemption, I think. It would have been true before his car crash is a redemption story. It still can be, I think.

GR: Okay. And the last question, really quick, you've already kind of answered it, but do you think we'll ever see another golfer with the impact of Tiger Woods?

GN: No. No, not at all.

GR: Well, all the more reason to read your book then, we'll have to leave it there. That was Gavin Newsham. And again, his new book is titled "Project Tiger: The Birth of Genius and the Price of Greatness." It's a fascinating read, even if you're not a golf fan. Mr. Newsham, Gavin, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me, it's really been fun.

GN: Thanks for having me, Grant.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Grant Reeher: Welcome to "The Campbell Conversations", I'm Grant Reeher. Last week we heard from Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon. My guests today are the principal leaders of the county legislature and the Democratic Majority caucus there. Nicole Watts is the county legislative chair. Chairwoman Watts is in her first term of service and represents the 9th legislative district. Nodesia Hernandez is the legislature's majority leader. She's in her second term of service, and she represents the 17th district. Chairwoman Watts, majority leader Hernandez, welcome to the program.

Nodesia Hernandez: Thank you for having us.

GR: Really appreciate you making the time. And majority Leader Hernandez, I want to start with you. I wanted to ask about the transition for the Democrats from being in the longtime in the minority now to all of a sudden being in the majority party. It was quite a switch in the last election. Did it take some kind of reframing of a mindset, you know, to get out of sort of the party of opposition mentality? I've heard that from other legislatures in other places, and I didn't know if that would be something that was affecting you.

NH: So, like you said, I'm in my second term. So, we did two years in the minority, and then now you know, being in majority, you have to remember that you have some control now, right? And you have to weigh that you have some power play. And it takes the mindset of doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the minority and now being able to actually get some work done. And when I say that I mean, in the minority there were five of us, now there's ten of us. So having the five of us, it was a little bit, you know, easier as far as whipping those votes. Having the ten of us now, it's a little bit more difficult to bring all the minds together and making sure that we're all on the same page. But the transition part is making sure that we let our counter-partners know, our colleagues know, that we're here to get the work done. And it's a good thing to get the work done together. And we have to remind ourselves that we're often told that we need to collaborate, but in the situation we're in now, we need those to collaborate with us. It’s a good thing to collaborate with us, because we need to get some work done. (unintelligible) work together and get it done.

GR: And just to follow up quickly, so, in the opposition, you know, you're always thinking, okay, how do I criticize this, how do I sort of make a reasoned argument against it or, you know, push back? Well, now you've got to build things. So, did that, was there a kind of a mental shift that you and your colleagues needed to go through?

NH: Definitely. Because it went kind of from always defending our position, right, to now having defend our position, right? So, when I say that, I say things, I can give you a quick example, in the minority we were often having to defend why we wanted memorializing resolutions, right? Now, being in the majority, we can say we want these memorializing resolutions because it's what we need. So that mindset went from making sure that we let our colleagues know that we need them to be on board with certain things that we need to get done, and those things, the things that you weren’t on board with before, but now it's a chance. So, you know, maybe you might want to change for the better yourself and be on board and get some work done.

GR: That makes sense. Chairwoman Watts, the big picture question for you. How do you see the role of the county legislature in the governance of the county? Where does it fit into that that puzzle?

Nicole Watts: When I talk to neighbors, they often say, you're a what? A legislator? County? What does that do, right? And I often say it's the congress of the county, right, where the lawmakers, I think another really key piece that the legislature represents is representation. You know, we are each engaged with unique districts throughout the county, a broader geographic area with people that have very different experiences. That representation piece becomes all the more important. And so, when we're coming to decisions that are being put in front of us, we are all coming to the table with our district in mind, which might have a little bit of a different perspective, right? If you're representing Clay, where Micron's happening, it's a bit different than my district that's down the highway, where our poverty statistics look different than it looks in Clay, right? But we also are both significantly impacted by some of these things that are happening. So, I think that the legislature has a keen role in terms of representation of the people and the different voices that make up our county across the region. And then we're entrusted with responsibilities that have to do with the making of laws, whether those are like, laws as we traditionally think of them, or resolutions that are adopting particular practices. And of course, the very, very big piece, which is the budget, in terms of working through the budget and how the public resources are being utilized to serve the needs of the people of our county. We also this year have been focusing a lot of energy on making sure that we are not only equipped with the information about what's happening at the county, but we have an accountability just like it is at every level of government. That's why we were set up in the structure that we were, in our system of government was to have checks and balances. And so that other key piece of accountability, I believe it's really important for us to know, at least at a cursory level, what is happening across the many departments and the many different services and things that we offer. And so, we've been calling in a lot of the departments, actually, all of them, we've said that every department needs to come in to present before the legislature before the budget time, so that we have at least a starting awareness of how things are going, how the money is being spent, public monies, and so that we can enter the budget with a level of awareness and have an opportunity to ask meaningful questions that aren't trying to fit into the pressure cooker that is the budget process. So, I think that's the other key role, right? So, accountability, representation, lawmaking and the budget.

GR: Have you had to think about, I know you're in your first term so this is all new to you, but have you and the legislature had to think about fundamental change in your role? Because before the legislature was Republican and you had a, you know, obviously very outspoken, strong minded county executive, and so the tendency I think was to go along, whereas now are you thinking about, okay, we need to be a reactive body as well as a proactive body?

NW: Absolutely. The analogy I found to be helpful is a dance, right? So, the legislature historically has operated a bit like a waltz where you had a leader and the legislature kind of danced with the county executive. And now we have to dance the tango.

GR: (laughter)

NW: Which requires both parties to actively be dancing together. And sometimes there's a little tension in it too, right? And so, I think that we are learning that though. We've already done a few dances together where we didn't necessarily want to move in the same directions, and we've been navigating our way through that. I think it's important for people to see and experience the legislature as a strong and representative voice of their, what they want to see in government, right? We are not all one particular swath, we are not one particular politic. Whether you're looking at us as a legislature, even within our caucus, right, we represent different districts, different perspectives, and then that extends throughout our county government. And it's extremely important for the legislature to be its own entity, to have its own voice and to be respected as such, because we've been entrusted with a particular role that is distinctly different than what the county executive is responsible for. And it's really important for us to lean into that role. And I do think that we're doing that in a pretty distinctly different way, in terms of how we're hosting our meetings and some of the things that we're doing than had been previously done.

GR: And Majority Leader Hernandez, I know it's early days so far for the party, but what do you think have been your biggest successes so far as a caucus?

NH: The caucus right now, you know, the transition is going well because right now we're in a situation where we're actually getting work done, right? In the minority it was a lot of battling back and forth battle between the minority and the majority. But now I see our transition as us getting work done and collaboratively getting work done. I like to say, I was a teacher for 17 years, and I feel like I still have that educator hat on, right? I’m educating folks to learning and knowing what that transition looks like, what needs to get done, and at the same time, like Chairwoman Watts said, there's 17 of us, right? In my legislative caucus there's ten of us, and we do represent districts. And we also have to represent those districts in a way that we make sure our constituents are happy, because we do have to get reelected. But while we represent in those districts, we have to also make sure we represent the county as a whole. And that's the hard part, because representing the county as a whole and representing your district sometimes can have different ideas of what county government looks like and what is necessary to make all of our lives happy and successful.

GR: That makes sense. Chairwoman Watts, back to you. I wanted to push you a little bit on this relationship with the county executive. You would be really, I suppose, more than anyone else, the primary point of contact for a lot of things. So, what has your working relationship with County Executive McMahon been like so far? How would you characterize it?

NW: So, I think back to the analogy I use of the tango. We're both learning how to dance a new dance. It's been 48 years, and certainly the entirety of the current county executive's term has been dancing with a Republican legislature. And so having a Democrat led legislature is, some new things are required, right? And then I am also a new legislator in general. So, we are all learning on the job, as they say. But I think that we have had some good conversations on some different things we disagree on, and we are going to continue to disagree on some fundamental things, but I believe that we are going to continue to try to work together to find our way forward. We have the same exact county that we're serving, and so it's important for, at the end of the day, for the people of the county to have us doing the business of the county. So, I think neither of us are afraid of hard conversations that need to be had. And I have found him to be responsive, when I call him, he answers. And I'm grateful for that. I hope he would reflect the same back to me. We've been able to meet as a whole leadership with him on a monthly basis. And so, I'm hopeful that that will continue to be the case and that as we get more and more practiced at this dance, that we'll be able to accomplish the things that we want and need to see for our county.

GR: You mentioned that you have things, obviously, that you disagree on, and I know that historically, one of those was the aquarium and the Democrats were one of, you know, the main voice of criticism there. Are there other big policy issues that you think are, where there's most disagreement? What would those be?

NW: I think, generally speaking, we see the importance of transparency differently a lot of times. So, you know, sometimes I think transparency as I would define it as let's get as much as possible in the light, because things operate typically more honestly. And this is public policy, public money, public everything. But it does slow things down to do things in a more transparent, community, engaged way. And so, you know, I think sometimes the way that we see the value of that or practice that has been a bit different. And so I think it's been a very real growing pain, for there to be more departmental presentations and for there to be some more, you know, kind of, there was the ShoppingTown town hall the other day, you know, where the where sometimes the public are gathering together to ask some questions that might slow the process down, but I think are extremely important in terms of community involvement in our decision making. And so, I think that's some of the tension points, is kind of the level of transparency that we are calling for and the way that we're calling for it will continue to be an opportunity area. The aquarium is included in that in terms of where the money is coming from, that we weren't going to be spending more public money on that. That was a decision that was made prior to my term, it has been reiterated, and yet there's questions about whether that's, you know, been held true to, and what's actually going on there with the aquarium. Some of the industrial wastewater treatment, is another major question that we have related to just Micron, and we are all wanting Micron to be successful, we are all wanting the economic development drivers that we hope will impact positively all of our community, but just making sure that we're doing our due diligence to take our responsibility in that, and kind of the necessary conversations and decision making processes that need to go into that, is another key piece that I think we've had some sticking points on. And the last one I'll touch on is this executive order, if you may have seen, the executive orders that have been coming out for several years now related to migrants and immigrants, it was related to the New York City bussing of folks up.

GR: Right. You're talking about, to put the county on like an emergency footing on that.

NH: Yeah.

NW: Exactly. And, so, you know, we've done a little run around on the language, language still doesn't look the way that I want it to, I hope we will continue to work on that. But to me, it's extremely important to the people of our county for us to be very careful about the language we use in things like that. And so those are a few of the kind of sticking points that we've encountered so far. Like I said, I continue to find him to pick up his phone and to have the conversation. And now the key is just getting to where we really need to get to.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm talking with Nodesia Hernandez and Nicole Watts. Nodesia Hernandez is the majority leader of the Onondaga County Legislature and Nicole Watts is the chair of the legislature, they're both Democrats. Majority Leader Hernandez, I wanted to ask you this question about the fact that we've got this strange quirk in the electoral calendar that you just had an election not too long ago, and, again, early days for the Democrats being in the majority, but you've all got to go face the voters, all districts have to go face the voters again this November. I was wondering, does that complicate your challenges as a majority leader, particularly in the sense that, like, it puts more pressure on you, we've got to produce by this fall, even though it's an artificially short time frame?

NH: So, yeah. So, what I like to say is, you know, we're not in a marathon right now, we're in the sprint. And that's where it is quick, right? We don't have time to waste because tomorrow's not promising anyone, right? We didn't have an idea to know that we were going to be in the majority. So, we know and we are hopeful that we keep the majority. But we have a short time frame to get the work done. And, I like what Nicole was, Chairwoman Watts was speaking about because I feel like sometimes right now we want the things done correctly the first time. We want to get the things done and get them right. We don't want to have to backtrack and correct things that we're doing as far as policy, dealing with the Micron and dealing with the aquarium, a lot of times folks are saying, are you for Micron? Yes, we're for Micron, we're just not in a rush. But we are in a rush because we are all running for reelection. You might not know, but this year I have an opponent, for the two years that I ran, I ran unopposed. So, I am being looked at a lot. Also being looked at as a whole, because we're in the majority, so people want to see, they're excited, they want to know what we're going to do, what we're going to get done, what policies are we going to pass? How does it look like with the minority changing to the majority and going from Republican to Democrat, is the work still going to continue to be the same? Every day what I'm doing is making sure that I be respectful of all of the legislators in my caucus, right? Make sure that they get the policies passed and the support that they need to represent their districts. At the same time, I have to make sure I'm representing my district. So, there's a lot of heavy lifting going on, because of while I'm supporting ten districts, I'm also a part of those districts. And I have a unique district myself, I have the town of DeWitt and I also have the east side of Syracuse. I have a district that consists of apartments that are really now impoverished and being demolished because of their state. And then I have a district of residential homes, and I have a district where a lot of our seniors, you know, passing along and their houses are being, you know, put up for sale and who buys those homes. And there's a lot going on, I have a college in my district. So at the same time, while I'm making sure that we pass the policies that we need to pass while we get the work done, that we're also respectful of represent in our district and our constituents because we have to remember, that's what also helps us get reelected, making sure our constituents are happy in our district, as a county also as a whole.

GR: Well, you were talking about the diversity in the county of different points of view, and it sounds like you've got that diversity baked right into your own district, so you're probably a good person to be thinking about that.

NH: Yes, I do. Like I said, I have two colleges, I do represent some of Syracuse University, the whole Lemoyne College. Like I said, I have apartment complexes in my college district. I represent residential tenants, I represent homeowners, I represent now what we call our college students that are not living on campus, but are now living in our community as well.

GR: Well, I've got to ask you this question, because you mentioned in passing there that you folks didn't expect to be in the majority. And I don't think any of us did, you know, political analysts, anybody. And I just, I know you could speak for a very long time about this, but briefly, if you could, could you just take me back quickly to that night? And was there like, was it like a, oh crap, you know, this is happening or oh my God, this is unbelievable? I mean, it's, you know, I apologize to Duke fans, when I say this, but it's probably like that UConn-Duke game, you know, at the end of that game. But anyway, what was it like?

NH: (unintelligible) Syracuse and UConn because I do bleed orange. But that night was amazing. So, I remember defending myself that night to a couple of reporters and I was like, wait a minute, hold up, you don't know we're going to get the majority because we were always hopeful. So, we went out, we tried to look for some candidates, made sure we ran great candidates, made sure we supported the candidates. We utilized our time in the minority as a time to make sure that we also supported candidates and got some folks elected. We were hopeful for a couple of seats. We didn't know we were going to get all of those seats. I remember walking into now, Mayor Sharon Owens’ watch party, and I remember John Mannion coming up to me because I was in transition when it happened, because I was trying to be respectful and go to all of the candidates events and OCDC events. And I walked in the room and, John, Congressman John Mannion said, you made the majority, and he just started screaming and excitement on his face. And I looked at the screen like, wait a minute, we're in the majority. And I just remember looking around and looking at everyone and the excitement on everyone's faces. I remember one of his security guards would clap and I'm like, he doesn't even realize what happened. But we were just so excited to know that we did something that we've been trying to do for over 50 years. I sat on many of the Flip the County Blue committees and, you know, for maybe like four years now, and I remember, our past legislator, Mary Kuhn and all the work that she put in. So, the excitement right there, a lot brought tears to my eyes to just know that she wasn't here to see this. And this was amazing. It was a proud moment, just a proud moment of we got the work done, but now let's get the work done. (laughter)

GR: The other work done. Chairwoman Watts, I wanted to ask you this, other big picture question was, when you think about the future of the county, you mentioned already, Micron, but what do you think are the longer term problems and challenges for the county, the most concern you? I mean, Micron obviously is a great opportunity, but it carries concerns as well and maybe you want to speak to those, but either those or other ones, the big things out there that kind of from a county perspective keep you up at night?

NW: For me, A-number-one is housing, where it intersects with transportation, housing and transportation. We have, in all of our districts we have different types of housing issues going on, Leader Hernandez referred to some of them that are happening in her district. In my district, we have a number of people who are smashed into apartments that are two bedrooms and they've got, you know, nine people living in a two bedroom apartment, and they are unable to find affordable housing to move their family into. They might have sewage in the basement, but that is still just the reality that they have to live in because of the lack of quality, affordable housing throughout our county. We have statistics in our county that have to do with childhood poverty and housing and transportation has a tremendous role to play, along with other things like childcare subsidies and other issues that we really need to address. But I think that we have an opportunity to play a really unique and important role in addressing the housing and transportation issue across the county to work with local municipalities, where a lot of these decisions are being made to play our unique role. So, I am very hopeful that we can work together to make that happen. It's going to take all of us to lift the ship, the municipalities, the county government as a whole and the state and other parties as well. But I am very concerned, most especially about our most vulnerable people when it comes to this housing and transportation issue. The other issue that I am in, just very much, as you said, keeps me up at night, is how our people are going to benefit from the things that are coming to us. When I was running, initially, it was, on this platform of the things that happened to our community should benefit first, the people who already call the, you know, the most local areas home, right? That if it's happening in our neighborhood, it should positively benefit the people who live in our neighborhood, first and foremost. If it's happening in our county, like Micron, it should benefit the people who call our community home, first and foremost. We are going to be welcoming other people coming into our community too and be welcomed, right? But we need to make sure that there's pathways into the employment opportunities and other economic benefits that are ensuring that our people, many of whom have been left behind because of economic disinvestment, that there is some equity at play to ensure that they kind of get some first bite of the apple on accessing the economic opportunities that are headed our way. And again, I believe that the county really has a leading role in making sure that that happens. So those are two of the, to me, things that we must, they're a must, we have to do something about that, not only this year but in the coming years.

GR: Just listening to what you said and thinking back on my conversation last week with the county executive, I think there is some real overlap between the two of you on this intersection, interplay between housing, transportation and poverty. And so that may be a place where, you know, the two institutions can go forward. We've only got about a minute and a half left, but, Majority Leader Hernandez, I wanted to finish with you, probably, and ask you this question that is a follow up on the Micron discussion that Chairwoman Watts was talking about. And that is, I know that one of the big concerns about Micron, well, first of all, it was a big concern with I-81, and I think it's only gotten more of a concern since Micron. Is the issue of, and I'm thinking of your district in particular here, of gentrification and also the concern that there will be people who will be left behind by this? And so, while the city as a whole might look strong, it may exacerbate inequalities that are already pretty severe in the city and in the region. I'm sure that's been something that's on your mind. Can you speak a little bit about that? And I'm sorry, only about a minute to talk about that.

NH: Yes. Thank you for that question because, you know, as I mentioned before, the apartment buildings on Fayette Street are going to be demolished, right? And we were speaking about ShoppingTown Mall, I was speaking about what's coming to ShoppingTown Mall, but speaking about industrial businesses that are going to support Micron. So, as we see not just having the Clay and Great Northern Mall support the new industrial businesses, we're all now moving into different areas, specifically DeWitt. And we know DeWitt is far away from where Micron is going to be located. But knowing that we're already setting ShoppingTown up to support Micron, it brings you to that gentrification, right? I have constituents that are concerned when these buildings go up on Fayette Street, are they going to be allowed to move back in, or is it going to be a situation where you have the college kids move in? So, right now I'm just really concerned about making sure that when we do this and we get it right, and we make sure we benefit all constituents and we make sure that they have a place at the table, and we just not focus on the industrial part, but we focus on the residential part.

GR: I understand, okay, we'll have to leave it there. That was Nodesia Hernandez and Nicole Watts. Chairwoman Watts, Majority Leader Hernandez, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me, really appreciate it.

NW: Our pleasure.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is Onondaga County executive Ryan McMahon. The Republican is in his second full term as county executive and recently delivered his annual state of the county speech. Prior to his service as executive for the Onondaga County, he served as that county's chair of the legislature. County Executive McMahon, welcome back to the program, good to see you.

Ryan McMahon: Glad to be here.

GR: All right, thanks for making the time. So let me just start with the speech. What, you know, briefly, what is the current state of the county?

RM: Yeah, I think if you look at where we are, you know, we put forward a pretty bold vision coming out of the pandemic and made strategic investments and turning the White Pine Business Park into a mega site to attract a high tech manufacturer. We're now in a position where, let alone we were successful attracting one, but now the company, Micron Technologies, the greatest memory technology company in the world, is constructing and they're building. And with that, we're starting to see the first economic boom. And to support them, there's going to be massive infrastructure investments that are about to start. And that means jobs, and it means jobs for people, and it means more people coming into the community spending money on the community, which means more revenue for county coffers to address longstanding issues related to people. And so, the way we've talked about it, you know, towards the end of the speech, is if you look at the metrics of the county and what we do, we've cut your tax rates over 40% since we've been here, your taxes, as the assessment value in the community has gone up, we've given that back to you. Our poverty rates are starting to go down, which is obviously been a core mission of my administration since we've been here. Jobs are going up. We're exceeding every metro, essentially, in the state of New York. Private sector investment is going up, and it's really just getting started. And so, I think overall, our goal was to land this project at White Pine, now our goal is to create this central New York semiconductor cluster. And we're doing that and we're starting to see the supply chain co-locate. We announced the first, at the speech, the first win. Wonik Materials, the South Korean company is going to come to Onondaga County. And then, we are going to have a lot more wins to talk about later this year as well.

GR: So, just to follow up on that last point, and you anticipated a few of my questions there on what you just covered, I'll come back to them, but it sounds like the spin off from Micron is already beginning to happen, that there are these other companies now that want to be in the same physical location because of Micron, things related to that business or things that they think they can profit from being here, correct?

RM: Yeah, I think that's, if you look at this industry anywhere around the world, but, it's a little bit easier to look at here in the US where, certainly over the last 20 years the industry, you know, kind of, moved to Asia, but if you look at the pockets where it exists today in Oregon, legacy Intel operations, they have huge clusters, right? A lot of material supply companies. If you look at what's going on in Phoenix, that's the best comparable for what's going to happen here. TSMC being the anchor, Intel does have high tech legacy manufacturing there as well. Now all these supply chain companies, the gas and chemical companies, the tooling companies, materials supply companies, they're all locating there. In Texas, you have Texas Instrument and Samsung, right? So those are really the three clusters. What we're creating is the Northeast essential cluster here in Onondaga County. And it's really going to be driven by memory technology, with Micron being the anchor. And we've all seen how well Micron is doing as a company. AI uses memory technology more than logic technology, and so having the best memory company is a big deal. And it's going to mean that this is a really strong, sustainable cluster, and a national security cluster as well.

GR: One of, you mentioned the AI, and the relationship between that and what Micron does, and I want to ask you a question that's kind of related to that, in a way. I went back and I looked at the history of Micron’s stock price. And what got me thinking of that was, it had a bad month up until a couple days ago, where it had lost 20%. But if you look at the…

RM: Had a really good year before that. (laughter)

GR: Had a really good year before that, exactly, I was going to say. Then if you go a little bit further back, it has quadrupled in price and then yesterday went back up like 10%. My question is, that's just a lot of volatility, and it's great for investors if they can ride out, you know, the dips, but does just this fact that Micron is playing in the space where there's a lot of volatility and particularly with AI, a lot of uncertainty, does that worry you at all?

RM: No, for a couple reasons. One, the stock markets are stock markets, right? It doesn't look at the health of the company. Essentially that helps drive price, but, you know, Micron, when they announced this deal, I tease the CEO, Sanjay, about this, it was a $50 stock when they announced this deal in 2022.

GR: (laughter)

RM: Now it's probably at, it hit 440, right? That's what you're referencing, maybe a little higher.

GR: Yeah.

RM: And now it's probably in the high threes.

GR: I think so.

RM: But the fact, if you follow stock trading which I, to a degree I do, not really, don't really have the time for it, but the great companies all have like these big shifts, right? You know your Apples, your Amazons, your Teslas, your Nvidia's. So now the fact that Micron is in that league, we should feel pretty good about that, right? I think what we should feel really good about is that they can't even produce the consumer demand with their existing consumers right now and their customers, and so that means they have to grow and grow fast. Their competition are the Korean companies Hynix and Samsung. Samsung, not as much anymore, but Hynix. All these companies are all investing big in more fabs. And we’ll be their largest, you know, North American investment, the largest investment in the company's history. 100 billion is the number used, but Grant, it's going to be more than 100 billion. It's going to be, the CapEx on this is going to be much more than that when it's all said and done. So, I think overall we have the right company. Out of all the mega projects that we're competing for, you know, we learned from the TSMC deal, that's what basically gave us the confidence to go grow the site. We were in on the Intel project. Essentially, we built out the site for Intel for a long period of time, and then we won Micron. It's a good thing we got the Micron project, not the Intel project, as that stalled out Columbus. So, I think overall we're in a great position. They were here last week, community week, announcing, you know, $30 million, $35 million of investments in the community, everything from housing to transportation to child care, workforce. I just met with their team again, you know, making sure that, we get all of our infrastructure projects on time so that they can be making chips on time and, you know, continuing to work together to bring suppliers here and create that ecosystem.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon. So, you mentioned this in the outset of our conversation here, but one of the issues that you originally ran on was poverty. And I know it's been, you know, one of your top priority issues. How is that challenge been going at the county level? What been happening with that?

RM: Yeah. So, if you look at our time here, you know, we walked into a global pandemic where, tough to operate, put in policies to do things that changed life for a period of time. And also, because of all the money into the, to help address families, it also kind of camouflaged where actual poverty would settle at the end of the day. Once you're getting ,families are getting, you know, money for two years that they don't get anymore, they're outside poverty ranges, right, but artificially. So, I think overall, what we've learned is there are key aspects of, you know, we'll say, things that prohibit work that need to be addressed and I think as a community, we're addressing them. If you think about child care being a big one, there's an affordability piece to that, but there's also an infrastructure piece making sure you have enough child care capacity. Between the State of New York and ourselves, we are spending a lot of money on both sides of that. So, I think we are making progress there. Micron's investing in that as well. When you look at transportation, the ability to get people to work, we're making strides there. When you look at, you know, early childhood education, I think that's the biggest thing from a long-term. Kindergarten readiness, we spent a lot of money on that, and that's been something really important to me. If you're kindergarten ready, you are going to pass that third grade proficiency exam. If you do that, you're going to graduate high school. I'll share with you this one project that we do, Grant, and it's a project where we take moms and dads who are essentially second or third generation poverty, meaning that their parents were on and potentially grandparents were on some sort of county assistance, and we look at all these barriers to employment that create challenges. We look at child care, we look at housing costs. We look at, obviously, food costs, we look at transportation, then we look at the job, right, the end goal, the job. And we help address every one of those issues in this program. And we have over 200, you know, different individuals in it. We've had a lot of success. Over 60 of those individuals now, after we help support them, to get them comfortable in a career path, now aren’t on public assistance. But what we've learned is that if you don't have that high school degree at minimum, you're going to have a hard time, right? And so how do we get there? There's got to be short, mid and long-term approaches to it. We really view kindergarten readiness as being the long-term approach. And so overall right now what we've seen is, you know, we're making investments to make it easier so that poverty is a moment in time, not a way of life for people. But the one thing we've missed over the last 20 years since I've been in public life, essentially, is the jobs. We could educate every kid and graduate every kid, but if we don't have jobs, we're just creating workforce for another community. And now we got those jobs and we're getting them in a big way. And so now it's putting everything together. We're starting to see the rates drop, the city of Syracuse, the school district, just came out with data about a month ago showing that the rates dropped, I think 8 to 10% for childhood poverty rates there. We’re starting to go down, but they're really going to go down when we get to continue to this building boom. And then obviously, as we start the mass of hiring for manufacturing, with all these technician jobs and engineering jobs that are coming.

GR: All right. So, one of the things I wanted to ask you about related to this is there's been a lot of political rhetoric about affordability. Most of it, I think, is being pushed by the Democratic side, affordability seems to be a word they've latched on to. Whatever it is we want to call that, that emphasis on housing, food costs, other kinds of things, do you think that that's going to help you in a way, like put a little bit more wind at your back of trying to get certain programs through? Will there be a synergy there, do you think that you might be able to take advantage of?

RM: Yeah, you know, if you look at data or polling, I think the issues related to pocketbook issues from a inflation concern to taxes to housing, when people are talking about housing, they're talking about how much it costs, right, for the most part. You know, I think about 55% of the public is concerned about that. I think overall, the real challenge right now is energy costs. And we talked about this in our state of the county, Grant. The CLCPA is about to, if enacted as-is right now, NYSERDA put out a memo saying it's going to cost 4 to $5000 more than the increases we just saw per household. These are not sustainable. Like, this is this is crazy. And this issue is like triple taxation because you are going to pay that with your NiMo bill, and then you're going to pay that for your school tax bill, your town or city tax bill, your county tax bill. Because my costs, and our wastewater treatment facilities are like $2 million more than we budgeted, and we budgeted huge increases. So, I think the one issue that, like, everybody's got to focus on from the state level that impacts New Yorkers and impacts us locally, is energy. I think there should be a reset on the CLCPA mandates for a lot of reasons. But, give us time to get this nuclear technology going, the cleanest energy, let that be the basis, recognize, let's have an honest conversation about natural gas. This isn't the coal burning facilities from 20, 30 years ago, right? It's gotten cleaner. That still needs to be a piece of this. Because if you have supply, that's going to help keep costs low. And then continue to do renewable projects. But what we've learned is the solar projects and wind projects, they don't generate enough power, and now they're being put in areas that the communities don't want them in. And so, I think overall, when I think of affordability, I think of two things. I think of the energy and I think of our ability to create more housing inventory so that the price points stabilize, your rents stabilize, and you have growth that is, you know, smaller than where we are now. And then, you know, if you're buying a home, my wife's a real estate agent, I see it all the time when people pay for houses now. You know, we want appreciating markets, we didn't have that for a long time here. But, you know, 15% a year, it's a little much. And so, I think what we're doing, a lot of the things we're doing this year are related to housing, make it cheaper for building, from a regulatory standpoint, incentivize so that more projects happen so that we can create more stability in the market.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm talking with Ryan McMahon. He's the Onondaga County executive, a Republican who's serving in his second full term. I have to tease you politically a little bit, County Executive, when you were talking about the overall picture of energy costs, you're beginning to sound like a governor there (laughter) and putting all the pieces together across the state, I'm just saying. But let me shift and ask you another question. It's been in the news almost since the beginning, what's the status of the county aquarium?

RM: Yeah, no, we're excited about the aquarium project. Construction wise, it will be complete. We have this really, amazing tank, right, this piece of glass that was made in Italy. We finally got it to the Italian port and into the ocean. That means we're going to be open late summer. But I think overall outside of the project, and I understand folks that either didn't share the vision or understand the comprehensive vision we have and why we do what we do. But overall, you're starting to see some of the partnerships come out. We have a partnership with film. This is a significant piece of infrastructure that gives us a competitive advantage to film more movies. And if you look at some of the films and TV series that have had aquariums, I mean, "Pitch Perfect", "Ted", "Aquaman" obviously, there's "Big Little Lies" from TV series, and we have a growing film industry, so this is a good piece of infrastructure for that. If you look at our economic partnership with the MOST, if you look at our new research partnership, we announced in the state of the county, was SUNY ESF, right there on the shores of Onondaga Lake and its tributaries at the harbor. These are all things that are happening. We actually got kids involved with the naming. We asked the students to help us name this. And so we got some amazing recommendations from the young people and we'll go through that. So, I think overall, people need to understand this is a piece of educational infrastructure for the community, it's an economic piece of infrastructure to help tourism. Certainly it's a catalyst for more investment in the inner harbor and people will start to see that over the next 12 months as we announce more projects. And, you know, just if you think about county government, we do entertainment infrastructure and we do professional sports infrastructure, we do the zoo, this is really an extension of the zoo just in another location. And we run our $1.6 billion budget on sales tax. And so when we're making decisions about spending your money, we always want to invest in areas that will drive more spend, either capture spend that's leaving here or bring in new spending, and that's what this project does. So, if you like some things we do, but you don't think you like this, this is going to help us pay for the things you do like.

GR: I'm really curious to ask you why you think this project has been such a lightning rod in the press and among Democrats over the years? And you mentioned the zoo, I'll just tell you a story to illustrate where I'm coming from here in my surprise about this. I first got here over 30 years ago, I think you were probably a kid learning to play baseball when I first got here. I was surprised to discover when I first arrived that the city had a zoo. I thought, you know, is this city big enough for a zoo? But I can never remember it generating all the snarky comments that I've heard about the aquarium. Maybe it did in 1914 when the zoo was first built, I suppose. But anyway, what's this fuss all about?

RM: Well, I think like a couple things, right? Obviously, I think there are certain elected officials that saw this as an opportunity to attack me. And that's something they probably couldn't do coming out of COVID. They attacked me on White Pine, but obviously those attacks failed miserably and they view this as an opportunity to attack me, I think that's literally what it is. I will give them credit, like they've created like this echo chamber of attacks where it's almost become like a little bit of a folk hero narrative where people can say, go do this instead of the aquarium, do that instead of the aquarium, right? It's like crazy, like, go pave everybody else's roads, fix their roofs and everything, even though it's not your job because you can build an aquarium. The reality is like, we're not an either-or community anymore, Grant. We're an all of the above community, and we're going to make investments to help people, to modernize infrastructure, to create opportunity and it's working. And this is going to work. This will be the only, this will be the second county asset that makes money. The first one being the amphitheater, which people hated when we were going through that process, and now they love. And so, I think overall it was a little bit of an attack. Some of it has become like, it's kind of like a just a common ground if you look at the blogs where people can just make fun of it and kind of get along with others. I'm cool with it all, right? Like, I like proving naysayers wrong. This is going to work. We announced the tiger shark going to be there, right? Like we're announcing all these amazing species that are going to be there. It's going to be at a price point lower than other aquariums. So, I think overall, it's going to be one of those things that once again, my political opponents are going to be on the wrong side of history on this one.

GR: Last question on this. And it's one, you're not going to like this one, but I have to ask it. It's the cheeky side of me that sort of overcame my other side in asking this. But the president's been on a naming spree lately. I mean he's, we're going to have it on our money even, so he's been putting his name on a lot of things. Do you think your name is going to end up on the aquarium? Is this going to be the Ryan McMahon Aquarium? (laughter)

RM: No, I don't think so. I think they have a wastewater treatment plant reserved for me. (laughter)

GR: (laughter) If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, and my guest is Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon. Quickly here, I have some other things I want to get into, but are there any other big challenges that you see coming up for the county in the coming year? Big issues that we haven't discussed so far, or did you already sort of touch on the big ones?

RM: Well, I think there's a, you know, the housing issue is one where we need to continue to lead, and continue to push some of our partners that control some of the regulatory laws and rules that are slowing things down and driving costs. Like, there's some things we can do at the local level, and we're going to continue to lead on that. We'll continue to invest to help spur more projects. These infrastructure projects we're doing are critical, they're going to create capacity for industry and community growth and new development, new housing. And we have a timeline, so we got to get those done, certainly. I think really the, but a lot of what we're doing is playing offense, whether we're playing offense on public health, whether we're playing offense on investments in a new vision for our convention center district, or new centers. One of the things at the zoo we're looking at now, we're going to get some land from the city, the old developmental center, they're doing a great housing project, great neighborhood. We're looking at creating what we're going to call the Savannah Connections and create, you know, a new investment at the zoo where we have giraffes and other habitat. So, we're playing a lot of offense right now, not forgetting our core competencies and our core missions. And that's why when we come back saying, comprehensively we've never been stronger, I believe that.

GR: Okay. And you've got a new legislature to work with, Democrat controlled. How has that working relationship been?

RM: So far, so good, right? I mean, these are things that I have experience being in the minority as a city councilor, being the majority, being a county executive. I think people don't realize the amount of work I do working with the state and federal government in this role, protecting us from what they do and asking them to help us and partner with us. So overall, we work with Republicans and Democrats every day. I think the challenge for these legislators, as many of them were elected, not based off of what's happening locally, but what is happening nationally. And so, all of a sudden, you have the most successful project in the country right now and this opportunity, do you become part of that, or do you try as you think you need to make partisan hay, which I think will hurt them electorally. They'll all be up again in November and we'll see how it shakes out. But I think I've had a good relationship with Chairwoman Watts. I think she's a professional and I enjoy working with her. And I think some of these other legislators are new, they're green, you know, still, you know, trying to figure it out, and we'll see. If you want a partner, we're going to partner, but if you want to try to stop progress, you know, we're not going to let you.

GR: I'll just to let you and our listeners know I'm trying to get a couple of the leaders from the legislature on the program next week. So we'll have a nice little…

RM: Yeah.

GR: You know, the two of you together. So, I'm sure they'll be keen to hear what you just said about the working relationship. Really quick on this, because I do have a couple other things I want to squeeze in in the couple minutes we have left. You mentioned the seats are all up again in November. It would seem to me that it's still probably not a great year for a Republicans. Do you foresee any major changes in the composition of the legislature after November?

RM: I think you will. Whether it's radical or not, I don't know, but I think it's not, I think for the Republicans it won't be as bad as last year. You'll have a top of the ticket, we didn't have a top of the ticket last year. The focus was totally on national issues. We had a government shutdown, SNAP was an issue for us at the county level weeks before, and again, people look at those who are in charge and they expect results. So, at the national level, the Republicans, even though the Senate, you need 60 votes and they don't have 60 senators, people don't really look at that, right? And so, I think the party got punished. I think this year you have a governor's race, which I think will be competitive at the end of the day. And the focus is going to be more on state issues, and some local issues. So, I think there's opportunities there for Republican legislators to make their case.

GR: Real quick, I know you were pretty serious athlete in high school and college. Who do you have winning the men's NCAA basketball tournament?

RM: I think Michigan's going to win. I think the championship game is Michigan / Arizona, really. And then, although if UConn beats Illinois, I mean, they have a DNA, a winning DNA. I hate to say it, but, you know, I do think Michigan does win.

GR: Okay. And I don't know if you're following the women's tournament enough to pick a winner.

RM: I think South Carolina is going to win.

GR: Okay. Really? I was going to say I think they're the underdog in this, correct?

RM: Yeah, I mean UConn is going to be there too. But I do think South Carolina, they've been playing very well.

GR: All the number one seeds made it through.

RM: Yeah.

GR: All right, great, well, we’ll have to leave it there. Those are your two picks, we’ll see if you’re right. That was Ryan McMahon, county executive…

RM: And I’m a big fan of Gerry McNamara, Grant.

GR: Oh yeah! I didn’t even… geez, yes, that’s right. I mean, that’s the big news here, right? I think everybody’s happy to see that. Well, that was Ryan McMahon, county executive. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. I enjoy it as always.

RM: Thanks, Grant.

GR: You’ve been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. The war in Iran continues to occupy the political attention here in the United States and around the globe. And here with me today to provide some deeper context and understanding of the situation and how it might develop is Mehrzad Boroujerdi. He’s one of the leading experts on Iranian politics, and currently serves as the vice provost and dean of the College of Arts, Sciences and Education at Missouri University of Science and Technology. For many years prior to that, he was on the faculty at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Among his many publications is a massive compendium of the biographies of all the political leaders and elites in Iran. It's titled "Post-Revolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook." Dean Boroujerdi, welcome to the program.

Mehrzad Boroujerdi: Thank you, Grant, for having me.

GR: We really appreciate you making the time. So let me start with something I heard you say the other day. It really caught my attention, and I wanted to get you to talk about it again. I've heard you argue that the Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7th, 2022 are essential in understanding the decision making regarding this current war with Iran, it really provided a turning point. Explain that briefly.

MB: Sure, my pleasure. Yes, so, October 7th really became significant in the sense that, you know, that terrorist attack by Hamas convinced Israel that, you know, they want to go and try to really subdue Hamas once and for all, right? And therefore, we have had this ferocious war, you know, for the last few years, even though supposedly, you know, a peace deal has been reached, there are conflict and killing, it still continues on that front. What was significant about that was that Israel then decided, all right, not only am I going to be going after Hamas, but also I want to try to weaken Hezbollah because of its attack from the Lebanese, you know, land, right? And then, you know, they went ahead and did that with a great deal of success. And then the question was, well, you know, while we are on it, why not go after the puppet master, which is Iran, right? Because of Iran's support for those two entities. Therefore, Netanyahu, who as we know, you know, has been the longest serving prime minister of Israel. And from the get go, you know, he has been dreaming about, you know, a regime change in Iran. I think he managed to really use the weight of the October 7th events and, you know, convince President Trump that this was really the time to go after Iran. So, as a result, we had the 12 day war of 2025, right, where, with US help they really managed to, you know, destroy a good chunk of Iran's nuclear capability. The fact that it was such a one-sided event, right, you know, led President Trump to declare victory. However, for Netanyahu, this was an unfinished job, because if his endgame is regime change in Iran, right, calling it quits after 12 days, they feel that they still have some unfinished business. And therefore, my sense is that, you know, he really did his best to try to convince Trump once again that we can go and this time bring about regime change, right? So that's how President Trump, you know, was declaring things such as, we do the bombing, then the Iranian masses, you come out and you take things into your own hands. Of course, this is happening after the, you know, December-January uprising in Iran, where, you know, millions of people express their opposition to the regime, right? So, they felt it's ready, the situation is ready. And yet I think they perhaps underestimated the resilience of the Iranian state in terms of staging a fight, right? And I think that's why we are now, you know, into whatever day, you know, for the fourth week of this conflict, right? Imagine Grant, you know, we're in 2003 when the US toppled Saddam Hussein, it took three weeks. So, this conflict is already, has taken longer than the 2000 war with Iraq. In 1991, when the US went to get Saddam out of Kuwait in that Gulf War, that thing also took 41 days, right? So, we are approaching that type of a, you know, time limit where U.S. military excursions have lasted, you know, 4 or 5 weeks, etc. but there is really no end in sight right now that this is going to pan out the way Netanyahu and Trump were envisioning it.

GR: Really interesting comparisons to previous US involvement there in that region. You've anticipated a couple of my other questions here, I wanted to draw on one of them. One thing that I have heard in the criticisms of the Trump administration and this war is that it has been overly influenced and perhaps even duped, depending on who's making the criticism by Israel. It sounds like you are saying, well, let me ask it this way, would you go that far in that account of why we're here?

MB: Yeah. I wouldn’t go really that far to say they were duped, because, you know, my exposure to the US government has led me to believe, right, that this idea of regime change and, you know, confronting Iran dates back, right? Many, many decades even, right, because of the hostage crisis and everything that that happened with Iran. So there have always been contingency plans, you know, by various US agencies, you know, to think about, you know, what might happen in Iran, right? But I think this time the forceful personality of, you know, Netanyahu, perhaps President Trump's lack of experience with the Middle East, the fact that he dispatched two real, inexperienced negotiators, right, to carry on the conversations with Iran, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, etc. I think all these elements and what they were seeing in the streets of Iranian cities led them to this false assumption that this is really the moment to do it. You see, what is fascinating is that Iran, since 1979 really, has been sort of the Bermuda Triangle for various US presidents. I mean, think of Jimmy Carter, right? What happened to him? Lost the election as a result of the Iran hostage crisis. President Reagan, the Teflon president, right? His reputation got damaged because of the Iran contra, you know, affair and so forth and so on. You know, Clinton tried to deal with Iran, you know, his secretary of state apologized for the 1953 coup in Iran, etc., hoping that, you know, there will be reach, but it didn't happen. And now I think this is the last chapter, right? President Trump really getting involved in a military confrontation that, of course, is going to, you know, leave an indelible mark, right, in the lives of ordinary Iranians for years and years to come, because the damage, even, you know, four weeks into this conflict is already more than the eight years of war between Iran and Iraq, right? Because the Iraqis could not really inflict that type of damage on Iran's infrastructure the way U.S. and Israel have been able to do over, you know, 13,000 strike points so far.

GR: Yeah, really interesting points. I'm Grant Reeher, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media and my guest is the Iranian politics expert Mehrzad Boroujerdi, and we're discussing the war in Iran. So, what has been Iran's kind of master counter strategy to these attacks? How is it seeing what it's trying to accomplish or trying to avoid?

MB: Right, so, I think from the Iranian perspective, it's important to realize that they feel, you know, that they are the morally right party. Meaning what? Meaning that, you know, it was President Trump that in his first term got out of the nuclear deal with Iran, the JCPOA, right? So, they feel, you know, they remain faithful to it, it was Trump that left the thing. Then they feel that they were negotiating twice. One in 2005 and now in 2006 with the US administration and then all along, right, the next day, the US attacked them along with the Israelis, right? So, from their perspective, they say, you know, we've done some wrong, we do not trust this administration, all right, we are not going to be fooled and, you know, get involved in a third round of, you know, negotiation only to be bombed again, etc.. President Trump might be buying time for orchestrating yet another attack for us, right? So, they are coming at this, you know, with that type of a mindset. Now, it's also important to realize that these guys have a realistic sense of their capabilities. They know that they are not really a match for the combined power of Israel and the United States, militarily speaking. Yes, they have, you know, an adequate supply of drones and missiles, right, that are, you know, indigenous to Iran. They made these things because, remember, Iran, a country of 92 million, has an enormous human capital, a highly educated, technically savvy population. And, of course, the government over the last four decades has concentrated a lot of its, you know, energy and money into building up its military industry, right? So, the Iranian strategy is that, okay, if we cannot be a match for the US, you know, Air Force, Israeli Air Force, what it is that we can do? Their thinking is that, all right, we will fire as many of these missiles and drones that we have as a way of doing a number of things, inflicting political pain in Washington and Tel Aviv so that these folks will rethink their decision about continuation of the war. But parallel to that, they think that by closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most, if not the most important choke point, right, for global economy, they realize that they can, you know, play havoc with the world economy, and, you know, successfully so, so far, right? They have shown that they can really increase the price of oil. They can impact this stock market and everything else around the globe, right? I mean, it's fascinating, Grant, when you think about it, that it's not just the price of oil that is going up, everything is now going up. Fertilizers, right, you know, semiconductors, because they need helium, the gas helium, right? Much of that gas comes from the Gulf region, right, etc.. So in the Iranian thinking that, you know, this is now a contest between military might of U.S. and Israel on the one hand, and the economic pressure that they can exert on this global economy, etc. and as such, they are going after their neighboring states because they know, A, these are key players in the world economy, countries such as UAE and Qatar, right? And that they have, you know, Washington listens to their concerns. So, by attacking them, right, they are sending the message to these folks that you need to become active, otherwise, look what we can do to your countries.

GR: Well, and so is it fair to say that Iran's goal is probably survival? Is that what they're thinking? And then in that regard then, it sounds like the way you've just described it, Iran has some pretty good comparative advantages in this if that's their goal.

MB: It does, it does, but also some important liabilities. You see, this also remains a regime whose legitimacy is contested domestically, right? It has a population that does not necessarily care for the Islamic Republic because of its repressive policies domestically, right? So, the question really for them right now, it's an absolute case of existential angst at the moment. They want to survive this war, right, and for them, survival, lack of regime change, is success enough regardless of what type of price they have paid in terms of destruction of the infrastructure, right, that's the bottom line, all right? But the question really is, what will remain of Iran as an entity, as a nation state the day after? What will these folks inherit? How will they be able to rule? How fragile of a state will it be economically, politically, right? You know, you have to feed 92 million people three times a day type of thing, right? And that's going to be a challenge for what remains of this state.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Mehrzad Boroujerdi. He's a leading expert on Iranian politics and the vice provost and dean of the College of Arts, Sciences and Education at Missouri University of Science and Technology. So, to follow up on what we were talking about before the break there in how Iran sees this, you also talked about what Israel wants, what Netanyahu wants, and what the United States and the Trump administration might want. Is there a probability that the Trump administration and Netanyahu, or the United States and Israel are going to start to see this thing differently as it continues to play out?

MB: Yes, absolutely. I think it's important to keep in mind that the US aims and the Israeli aims are not, you know, the same, right? As I said before, I think Netanyahu wants regime change, if not disintegration of Iran as a whole, because, again, his argument has all along been, as Israel being such a tiny country, Iran, one of the largest, you know, in the Middle East, and this history of animosity between the two, he wouldn't be shedding any tears if Iran disintegrates. You have a Kurdistan of Iran, you have a Balochistan and so forth and so on, right? But for the Trump administration that has other concerns, right, as a global power that has to deal what's happening with China, what's happening with, you know, Russia, Ukraine, conflict, etc., etc.. right? The US should not, cannot be as gung-ho as Netanyahu is about regime change in Iran. I think for the Trump administration, either leadership change or even behavioral change on the part of Iran might represent success, right? So, the question is, I think that moment will come, indeed. You know, there is reporting, recently about how Netanyahu was, again, encouraging Trump for calling upon the Iranian public to come out and try to demonstrate under, you know, these circumstances. And apparently the White House said no, right, because they knew what was going to happen and they have seen this movie before type of thing. So, I think it's just a matter of time where these differences, you know, appear. But look, you know, U.S. is the senior partner in this coalition, right? And just like Trump did last year with the 12 day War, when he applied the brakes and said, enough is enough, right? He can still do that. Israeli planes without, you know, support from the US in terms of aerial fueling and so forth and so on will have difficulty, right, conducting all these sorties over Iran, day in and day out. So, I think what the White House decides is going to be crucially important.

GR: So, you've covered a lot so far, but what would be the most important thing you think we haven't talked about yet that our listeners need to know about this situation that they might not know or sufficiently appreciate? What else do they need to know? Go ahead.

MB: I think it's important to realize that this was a war of choice, right? I don't think the US really was facing any imminent danger from Iran. And look, at best Iran is a regional power and a fragile one at that, right? If you compare it to, let's say, a next door neighbor like Turkey, right, that is a major player politically, economically, militarily, etc., Iran is not there. So, I think this was a war of choice. And, you know, with the war of choice, you have to, A, ask questions about its legitimacy and also, what price do you want to pay? So for example, imagine if, you know, the current reports about us sending, you know, Marines etc., there, you know, for a, you know, ground offensive, right, materializes, then okay, this is a really a deepening of this conflict, right? And it's going to have repercussions because, you know, again, considering the assets that the Iranians have, you know, we will see bodies come back in bags, you know, again and again. So, this is something that I think the audience need to, you know, keep in mind. Secondly, you know, I think it's important to know that, both sides need to be able to come out of this conflict with the ability to save face, right? So, they have to be an off-ramp where both sides can claim some sort of a victory, right? It's not going to be a zero-sum game type of a scenario because again, of the internal dynamics, I mean, imagine for the Iranians, right? Total surrender is tantamount to political suicide, right? You have been attacked by two countries and you give in, right? So whatever legitimacy is left for the government will be lost in the eyes of the public. So, they cannot, you know, do that, they have to fight back as much as they can, etc.. On the other hand, we also know President Trump is not the type of politician who likes to, you know, suffer any defeats, right? So, you need to couch this in such a way that he's able to come out and still sell it to the American public as some sort of a political success story.

GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and my guest is the Iranian politics expert Mehrzad Boroujerdi. I wanted to ask a couple more personal questions if I could. You're originally from Iran, you know, you grew up there as child. And you also have some tragic family history in that country. Does that complicate the way you're seeing things right now? Does that make it difficult for you?

MB: Yeah. So my father was assassinated in the course of the Iranian revolution by a number of individuals who then came to occupy the most important military post in the country. I mean, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Minister of Defense, secretary of the supreme, you know, National Security Council, right? So these guys became household names in Iran in terms of the important positions that they have occupied. So, two of these individuals have so far been killed in the American Israeli raids, right, so in that sense, you know, I say justice served for these individuals. But, you know, Grant, really, throughout my career, I have tried to keep these sort of personal feelings, etc. separate from my, you know, more objective, you know, academic analysis of Iran, right? And indeed, up until recently, I wasn't even talking about what had happened to my own family as a result of, you know, these things because I wanted to sort of, you know, establish my own credentials and not necessarily, you know, be under the shadow of my father and what happened to him in this sense. So even today, you know, I try to formulate, I think a position that is morally right, meaning saying no to the Islamic Republic because of its oppressive reign, but also no to wars, because, you know, we have seen how destructive really wars can be, right? You know, I am from the southwestern province of Iran, near the Iraqi border, right? And I saw how my city of birth was basically damaged in the course of the Iran-Iraq war. And years later, over 30 years later, you know, these places have still not been reconstructed to what they were, you know, supposed to be, right? So that and, you know, the negative experiences that we had in this country with the Afghanistan war, with the Iraq war, right, leads me to believe that, no, war was not really the solution to settle, you know, this dispute. Iran was a nuisance for the American, you know, political establishment, but again, something that could have been dealt with short of a hot war.

GR: And going back to where this goes from here, you talked about the importance for both sides to save face and be able to claim victory of some kind. Okay, so what would it take for productive negotiations toward that end to happen, and what's the likelihood of that?

MB: Right. So, at this moment, the positions of the two sides are diametrically opposed, right? They are, you know, but, you know, that's sort of part of the posturing that has to happen in any type of negotiations, right, both sides put on their most maximalist demands and then they negotiate down from those type of, you know, positions. There can be common denominators that can, you know, lead one to think that an eventual agreement is reachable. Let's look at it this way. Iran's nuclear facilities really have been destroyed, right? Since last year, Iran has not been able to do any enrichment, so why not make that into, you know, a positive point? Why wouldn't the Iranians, for example, say, okay, you know, we cannot really do any enrichment, but now we are going to present it to you as a, you know, part of a package for which we are getting to get brownie points, right? No more enrichment, etc., but as a matter of necessity, they can't do that, all right? But this means they have to change some of the rhetoric and discourse about insisting on this right for enrichment and so forth that, frankly, has gotten us into trouble in the first place. On the other hand, I think, you know, Trump might be able to say, now, look, I killed the Supreme Leader, and many of the Iranian military leadership, I have inflicted serious damage on Iran's, you know, military infrastructure from, you know, naval forces to Revolutionary Guard forces, etc., etc.. right? So, he can, you know, come and claim victory in that sense. And perhaps if they have the diplomatic dexterity, right, and foresight to be able to realize that again, the other side needs to save face, right, then I think, you know, we can have the contours of an agreement. So, for example, you know, Iran's support for its proxy forces. I don't think it is, you know, something that is a sacred cow that the Iranians will not touch, right? That can be part of the negotiation. After all, Hamas and Hezbollah have been weakened, right? The Israelis are not going to let go of, you know, Hezbollah and Lebanon anytime soon, right, because of geographical proximity, Hezbollah has a front seat, you know, from southern Lebanon into Israel, etc.. So, if the Iranians are rational and I think they are a rational actor, right, they will then think about what it is that I can give up and what it is that I can get in return. Promise of no longer, no more attacks, lifting of some sanctions because they have to put their economic house in order, right? And you need some of that frozen Iranian assets to be able to do some of that reconstruction, etc.. Keep in mind, that on top of all this thing, you have a rather inexperienced, brand new supreme leader that needs to establish his credentials and so forth.

GR: So, we've only got about a minute, and I hate to put you in this position with only a minute to answer, but I wanted to make sure that I squeeze this question in, you've kind of already anticipated it, but I want to put you in the Situation Room with President Trump, okay? We're in the situation that we're in now, it's Thursday, March 26th. What's the most important thing that you would have to tell the president?

MB: I would tell the president, look, the longer this conflict continues, the longer US national interests and that of our allies is going to be damaged, right? So, let's find a creative way to bring this thing, you know, to an end, right? You have managed to inflict enough harms that Iran is not going to be a nuisance, right, in a serious manner, right, forget the rhetoric, the action. I mean, for a long time to come, right? Call it quits, you know, declare victory, etc. and move on.

GR: Okay, we'll have to leave it there. That was Mehrzad Boroujerdi. Dean Boroujerdi, I just want to thank you again for talking with me. I have learned a tremendous amount about this region and situation that I didn't know before. So, thanks for making the time.

MB: Thank you, Grant, for having me, it was a pleasure.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Grant Reeher : Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. In America, we seem to pay attention to only one international issue at a time, and lately, that's been the conflict with Iran. But the war in Ukraine carries on. And with me today to bring us up to date on that and also deepen our understanding of it, is Oxana Shevel. She's a professor of political science and director of the International Relations program at Tufts University. She's also the coauthor with Maria Popova of, "Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States". Professor Shevel, welcome to the program.

Oxana Shevel: Thank you for inviting me.

GR: We really appreciate you making the time. Let me just start with a basic question for you. What's the current situation in Ukraine? Where do things currently stand?

OS: The current situation is not that different from where it has been some months ago, and in some way even a year ago, when, of course, President Trump was thinking or saying that he could end this conflict very soon, like, you know, absolutely one day. But the conflict obviously still continues. And, in a way, Ukraine continues to resist Russian invasion, Russia continues to insist on maximalist aims. And this is why, I'm sure we'll get to the details, but this is ultimately why there is no settlement, because the demands and the interests of the two sides remain irreconcilable. And that has to do, again, with Russia wanting to subjugate Ukraine and Ukraine wanting to be a free state. And, you know, maybe the only sort of recent difference, and that's of course, was the war in the Middle East. The price of oil changing in a way that benefits Russia, so that's a concern. And at the same time, the weather improved in Ukraine and Russia has been freezing Ukrainian population with the strikes on the heating infrastructure through the coldest winter in recent history. So that's in a way, you know, a positive change in Ukraine that spring is here. But other than that, the conflict is pretty much where it has been for some months and years.

GR: And when you say, this is an obvious point but I want to make sure that our listeners are all on the same page with you, when you say that the war in Iran has helped Russia because of the oil, you mean because they are able to sell it for a better price and there's a higher demand for their oil, correct?

OS: Yes. There is high demand for the oil. Some sanctions have been eased. And again, you know, this war is very costly for Russia. They have been projecting an image of, you know, and I think in a way, some Western observers, including political leaders, are kind of buying this narrative that, you know, one way or the other, Russia has to win because it's bigger, stronger and so forth. But in a way, you know, Russian economy has been suffering with the sanctions and all of this. And the price of oil is very important for the war effort because, you know, certain prices projected as too they have to sell oil for at least that much. And now this price has been up a lot. So, in that sense, that's what that meant. Yes, that the increase in the price of oil helps Russia.

GR: And when you said that Russia is hanging on to its maximalist aims, just explain what maximalist means there in this context.

OS: Yeah. This is essentially what Popov’s and my book is about. That we have wrote this book, we were motivated to no small extent by trying to push back against the narrative that has been very prevalent in certain circles. This is sort of this realists take or perspective on the conflict that basically says that, well, you know, it’s bad that Russia invaded, but ultimately they invaded because they felt threatened by NATO expansion. And that's really what the conflict is about, that, you know, Ukraine had a change of government in 2014, it was going to enter NATO, it is threatening Russia and Russia invaded. And that's kind of what the root cause of the war is, right? But, you know, those who study Ukraine, who have studied Ukraine and Russian relations, who studied Ukrainian and Russian history as we have and many other experts in Ukraine have, do not buy this argument. And then again, the question becomes, what are the root causes of the war? And as we argue in the book, the root causes of the war is Russia's desire to not let Ukraine slip from its grasp. And we're not talking about just geopolitically, you know, of course, I mean, Ukrainian membership in NATO was never realistic and if it were ever was, Russia would look like it. But that's not really the main, neither necessary nor sufficient condition, we can say. And what it really goes down to is Russia not being able to accept Ukraine that is sovereign, that does its own thing in all sorts of policy areas, from historical memory politics to cultural development to economics. And again, we see this history of Russia becoming increasingly unwilling to accept this kind of Ukraine. And that's ultimately what this war is about. And so even if we look at specific, you know, disputes over, say, the territory in the Donbas, like I think some in America would say, and I think, again, that's part of the view in the current administration that there's some bunch of, you know, almost destroyed territory, what's the big deal? You know, just give it to Russia and then the war is over. But in Ukraine, nobody believes this because what ultimately it would mean that this is heavily fortified territory. If Russia were to take this territory, just opens the way for new aggression. And we've seen this since 2014, first Crimea, it's on the Crimea. Well, it wasn't on the Crimea because then there Donbas. And then sort of Donbas why it's not really because when they invaded in 2022, they go straight for Kiev. Why go straight for Kiev to decapitate the government if you are supposedly protecting Russian speakers in the east? Which, by the way, are the ones suffering the most from the bombing. So again, sort of in the same irreconcilable position, it ultimately goes down to Ukraine being determined, increasing this whole since ‘91 and especially since 2014, to have its own past, to be oriented to Europe, to be sovereign country, to not be under Russian dictate and Russia increasingly unable to accept that. And that's really why we have the clash of irreconcilable objectives, which have been there in ‘22, in 2014, and they’re here in 2026.

GR: So, I want to ask you a question about the United States for a moment, and then I want to come back and follow up on some of the things that you just said. Do you think that in the United States, the public attention on this war in Ukraine, despite the fact that it's the largest war in Europe since World War two, do you think that Americans are kind of suffering from an exhaustion of sorts with their waning attention or do you think it's the war with Iran has sort of pushed it out from people's attention span? What's your sense of that?

OS: Yeah, I would maybe mention two things here, because first of all, I think when we look at the opinion polls and, you know, if the American public believes that, you know, Ukraine should be supported and deserves U.S support, we still see substantial support. So this is, you know, this notion that, you know, Americans are tired. Actually in Ukraine there are memes about tired Westerners, like who should really be exhausted. It's not the westerners, but Ukrainians. But sort of that aside, first of all, there is still support, right, so even if, say, the administration is less skilled and less eager to support, I think the public understands, again, like this is, you know, very kind of the story that the smaller countries attacked by bigger country, by right and wrong. And this is really the conflict with right and wrong is very clear. There are many wars around the world, and when conflicts have lasted for generations where, you know, it's sort of confusing. Like who are the good guys? And I think here it really isn't confusing. But then again, you know, as you opened this program saying that the only one foreign policy issue seem to be kind of dominating the headlines. So, I think this is part of that, right? So again, we have a new conflict, obviously media attention has turned to that conflict. And then there is just less front page space, right? For everything else. And of course, you know, so I think in some sense it is understandable, but on the other sense, of course, it is also something to say, like, is this all media? Or to the working, you kind of latch onto whatever is in the news right now. So, I think both of these things are going on, as I said, the thing that is still substantial support and that's important to realize, but also the way the media prioritizes what to cover, something that is new and happening now and this sort of, you know, big and consequential in that way dominates the coverage.

GR: I'm Grant Reeher, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media and my guest is Tufts University political science professor Oxana Shevel. And her recent book is titled, "Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States". So, let's talk a bit about this entangled history part of your argument and your book. How are the histories entangled and why is that so important?

OS: Yeah, I think this is very important. And this is why we chose the ‘entangled’ as opposed to ‘common’ or ‘joint’ or something like this. Because even to say that countries had like a common history implies that there is some sort of similar interpretation of what has happened. With the Russia and Ukrainian case, even though, of course, there has been a lot of developments that affected these territories together and separately, the way how this history is narrated is what really matters. And here we have a sense of, again, two narratives. So, the narrative that has been dominant since the imperial period in Russia and then in the Soviet period and remains in the post-Soviet Russia, maybe with some modification in the early 90s, but now it is back in full swing, uses this narrative that Ukraine and Russia belong together by right, that, you know, all the good Ukrainians, but all is for Russian or wanted to be with Russia and whoever was against it were somehow traitor. So, if you look at any figures in history, be it the early 18th century leader hetman Mazepa who betrayed the Russian Tsar by joining with the Swedes. He betrayed the Tsar, eight? Sure, but for what purpose? He betrayed the Tsar because he wanted Ukrainian territory and Ukrainian Cossacks to have great autonomy that Tsar's promised but then took away. So, what I'm saying here, and we also talk about it in the book, that the same history could be narrated very differently. It could be narrated from the standpoint that there was always a Ukrainian political idea. Yes, it was very different, its shape it took was very different in different historical periods. And these attempts have failed before in no small part because Russia would not allow it, right? But then again, that was oppression of these people and groups and interests who stood for greater separation. There was all sorts of crimes committed from the 1930s, you know, the famine and earlier in the previous centuries. But this history has been suppressed. It has been suppressed in the Soviet period, it has been suppressed in the Cyrus period. And Ukraine only begins to recover in the post-Soviet period. And this is why Russia would not tolerate it, because as far as they're concerned, and again, because it serves as the grand narrative, if you are trying to say, you know, Ukraine and Russia belong together and you have some historical justification for it, like, it makes it the stronger argument, right? But this historical narrative is like, well, here is another instance when there is contestation over the future of Ukraine, when there are people and groups in Ukraine who actually don't want to be under Russian rule, right? And now they are actually succeeding, right? This sort of, you know, the entangled history becomes narrated in a very, different ways. And this is actually has been one of the key issues in the post ‘91 period, because once Ukraine became independent state for the first time in, you know, in history that the state has been established and lasted more than just a few years, then, you know, there is actually this recovery of historical memory that is now talk about Soviet oppression, about Cyrus oppression, kind of rethinking of personalities such as Mazepa. Like, was he really a traitor, or was he in some way a positive character because he betrayed the Tsar for the reasons that actually were pro-Ukrainian, right? And if there is absolute rejection of this kind of, you know, historical developments in Ukraine because it goes to weaken this myth of eternal Russian-Ukrainian unity and everybody being on the same page and on the traitors wanting to, you know, break this unity. So, history in that sense is very important because again, we see Putin is completely wedded to this imperial reading of history. And he talks about, you know, he tried to convince (unintelligible) of all people, you know, going back to 11th century and concocting some arguments as if whatever happened there somehow explains and justifies what he does now. But that goes to the entangled problem, right? So, it is entangled in a way that developments in Ukraine and Ukrainian-Russian relations could be narrated different ways, and they have been narrated in a certain way by the powerful states, empire Soviet Union, Russia. And now Ukraine is doing it differently, and Russia just cannot tolerate that.

GR: When we come back after our break, I want to follow up with you and then ask the other piece of this, which is about how the how the governments go in different directions, post ’91. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Oxana Shevel, she's a political science professor at Tufts University and the coauthor of a recent book on Ukraine and the war with Russia, titled, "Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States". Well, as I said before the break, I want to sort of ask the other piece of this. You laid out how the histories are entangled, there's competing narratives here. But the governments, the states, how do they diverge after ‘91? They go in kind of different directions. Tell us about that.

OS: Yeah. This is also an important element in our book because in a way, our book is, you know, as I said already, in one way, it is pushing against this narrative that, you know, war is NATO's fault, but it is also not just a book about Russian imperialism. (unintelligible) The argument in the book is not that, you know, look, Russia was always imperialistic towards Ukraine and now that Ukraine, you know, it's trying to narrate its history and distinct identity, that's why Russia lashed out. That's a big part of it, but it really works in conjunction with divergence in political regimes in Russia and Ukraine. So, in other words, you know, the explanatory factors are, one, is this divergence in identity politics and Ukrainians increasingly committed to narrate its history and establish its independence, statehood and nationhood. And Russia is increasingly committed to not allow this to happen. But war only becomes possible also when Russian regime becomes fully autocratic and Ukrainian regime is increasingly more pluralistic. And why does it work this way? Because first of all, you know, democratic Ukraine is additionally kind of threatening to Russia because if you are saying that here is this country that is essentially just younger brothers and they're able to establish a functioning democratic regime, but then shall we say, join the European Union, forget even NATO, like, we could say, you know, people in Russia might say like, well, why, you know, if Ukraine can accomplish this, like, why can't we, right? And that creates a challenge to the political regime. But also more importantly even, that if you have a pluralistic, at least somewhat pluralistic political system, as Russia had in the 1990s under Yeltsin, there is a debate, it was in Russia, there has been a debate. First of all, not absolutely everybody was pro-imperial in Russia. There were some voices, you know, (unintelligible) would be one example, (unintelligible) was killed, who was, you know, explicitly not kind of pro-imperial in the way that, you know, Putin and most of the Russian elite was. But even among the pro-imperial elite, there was a disagreement about what to do with Ukraine, right? So, if you have a pluralistic system, there is, the war is not the only option, right? Like you could say they talked about creating so-called liberal empire, which basically the idea was that Russia would become a functioning democracy, would become, you know, strong market economy and all other countries, first and foremost Ukraine, would naturally gravitate to it. And yes, Russia would still control everything, but it wouldn't be this liberal empire, right? So, this would, what would basically they were saying, and this is in the way it explains why invasion happens when it happens and not earlier, because this imperial thinking about Ukraine really had been there all along. Yes, it stands under Putin but it has been there all along. But through the 90s there was a political space in Russia to basically for political class to disagree what to do, right? And then that environment, it makes it much harder to say, like, we are going to send tanks across the border and we are going to bomb Kiev, which Putin is able to do as a personalistic dictator by 2022. But this is something that would have been essentially much, much less likely had Russia retained a degree of political pluralism, right? On the other hand, had Ukraine become an authoritarian state, which was a possibility when pro-Russian President Yanukovych, who was in power, first he fails to come to power in 2005, then he comes to power in 2010. And during the three plus years that he was in power, he actually tries to mold Ukraine kind of into Russia number two, like Belarus. There is closing of independent media, arrests of political opposition, he begins to change identity politics to (unintelligible) have political regime in Ukraine had been more authoritarian, maybe invasion wouldn't have been necessary because Yanukovych essentially could have delivered vassalized Ukraine to Russia in a way that Lukashenko did in Belarus. So, in our book, we talk about the interaction of these two factors. On the one hand, identity politics that was pulling apart. It was, you know, great imperial kind of bent in Russia and greater commitment to independence in Ukraine. And then this regime dynamics that was also falling apart and the way they interacted that really explains both the invasion and the timing of the invasion, say.

GR: Well, it sounds to me also and this is a question I wanted to ask you, you've kind of already just answered it. What you've just described then also demonstrates why it's going to be so hard for this conflict to get resolved, because there are deep differences in fundamental commitments to the kind of government you're going to have and what your national identity is and about that's going on here. I mean, that's tied into the conflict, and so it's going to be very tough, it seems to me, to untangle that, right?

OS: Absolutely. I think this is why, you know, we are where we are and there is no resolution in sight, even though after, you know, years or year now almost of intense diplomacy and various, you know, attempts. Because again, the fundamental irreconcilable difference in positions and again, the regime type is also very important because this whole emphasis on like how (unintelligible) this, as Russia says, and I think Trump agrees with it, that Zelenskyy somehow is a problem, right? Like if you get rid of Zelenskyy, then like everything. But Zelenskyy is a democratically elected leader. He is beholden to what Ukrainian society would not allow. And Ukrainian leaders have learned that in recent history that when they go against societal kind of preferences, society rises up, right? So, this notion that you can just install some puppet somehow, all right, and I think that was the plan all along, this is why they went for Kiev. And they actually flew Yanukovych, the post-president they flew him to Minsk in the early weeks of the war. The hope was that they would take Zelenskyy out and install Yanukovych, and then they can wash their hands. I mean, Putin said they didn't intend to occupy, right? Like, yes, they didn't intend. Even they think that the puppet could run the country. But Ukrainian society is just different. It will not, you know, and history is there, like it shows, it just would not accept this. And this is in a way sort of a tragedy that I mean, neither Russia elites and Russian political class wants to understand it. And I think also, you know, many in the West don't quite understand it. So, if we think about what it would take for it to resolve, I mean, one thing I think, you know, if we're talking about settlement like long term, right, some sort of stable peace, I think it would take change in Russia. I can't imagine as long as Putin is in power or somebody like Putin, that we would have like the true end to the conflict and sort of like a new beginning, no, you know, war is over. Because that would be, again, the goals are not achieved, right? Even if somehow they capture more territory, right, like the border, whatever, as a square kilometers. As long as the government in Kiev sits, and as long as it's sovereign and it does its own thing and it is not under the control of Russia, the goals of the special military operations, Russia calls it, are not achieved, right? And which means Ukraine would be constantly threatened. So again, you know, for the fundamental settlements, it may take, you know, Putin leaving office, you know, through death or otherwise before even a possibility. Even if he leaves, it doesn't mean it'll happen, but at least it opens the possibility. And I think this is very important to realize that it's not just Zelenskyy, you know, it's not some sort of specific sliver of territory, is it is about these irreconcilable objectives.

GR: That's a really important point about the necessary potential, necessary change in Russia itself, but also a depressing one, I'm thinking about ending the conflict. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is Tufts University professor Oxana Shevel. I want to apologize in advance for this next question, because it's going to seem almost perverse, really. And particularly given that you yourself are Ukrainian, as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong, but you are Ukrainian.
OS: Yeah.

GR: But I have to ask it because I wonder if some of the international community, the leaders of other countries, and maybe some of the people in other countries haven't had this thought cross their mind that in some ways, this entire situation, in part because of how you have explained how deeply problematic it is, that this situation would be in some ways simpler and easier for the world if the Russians had just occupied the country, taken over the country, as many people thought that they would, that, you know, many people thought Ukraine would fall very quickly, in some ways that would be simpler. I know you don't see it that way, but I just had to put that question out there.

OS: I appreciate the question. I think whoever asked this question should really ask themselves, what do you mean by simpler? Like, simpler for whom and simpler in what way? Because let's imagine this scenario, right, that Russia has succeeded to occupy Ukraine, as you know, most expected. We know from evidence that whenever Russian occupation authority moved in, they had, literally, kill lists of all the people who they considered to be not sufficiently loyal for Russia. So, people have been arrested, people have been tortured, people have been detained, people have been disappeared, right, we have mass graves. That would have been happening on the scale of a much larger, basically with whatever territory they occupied, that would have been happening. Is that simpler, right? It is simpler maybe because in the West, people wouldn't know about it because no independent media is allowed to operate, right? So, to say it is simpler, I think it's a little bit of a misnomer, right? It is simpler as in, like, it's not in your news, but it is still happening. And these crimes would have been happening on a huge scale. Think about refugees. We've had some 6 million people who left at the beginning of the war, people would not want to live under occupation, right? We would have tens of millions probably, you know, certainly many, many more millions going to Europe, creating, you know, challenges associated with this. And then we would have also, which is maybe the most consequential thing that would not make it simple at all, if you think you in the medium to long term, as opposed to like immediate short term, this aggression is rewarded, right? The world essentially allowed a democratic country to be gobbled up by this resilient dictatorship on pretense. And then, you know, this aggressive, emboldened Putin is now on the border with Western Europe, right? What is there to prevent him, especially if the narrative is that, you know, we can't sort of, “Russia cannot lose” because it has nuclear weapons and then the worst thing happens. What is there to prevent him to go next? Why not Moldova, which is not even the NATO EU member? They have the Transnistria region with Russian speakers. In fact, that was original plan, if Odesa were to fall, like, you know, the map’s were shown that that’s Russia’s next goal. What about Estonia? They have, you know, plenty of Russians and those in Estonia, the government is quote unquote Nazi as far as Russia’s concerned. Who is going to go fight over Estonia, right? So, like that would be at least a question. So, I think if we begin to think in sort of what actually it would mean, and we can continue this list, like what it would actually mean for the world, for the West. I think the idea that it would have been simpler, I think it begins to collapse pretty quickly. So the only way it would be simpler if, you know, you can sort of close your eyes and close your ears and say, like, you know, people may be killed in Ukraine and thousands and tortured, but I don't read about it in the news because our journalists are not allowed to report and I'm going to pretend that it's not happening, right? I think that would be maybe the only way in which it would have been simpler.

GR: We've got about two minutes left, and I want to try to squeeze in two more questions if I can. So, I'm going to put you all under a little bit more of a time pressure here at the very end. The first one is a personal question and again, I know you could talk about this for quite a long time, but if you could be brief. I mentioned that you were Ukrainian, how has it been for you as a Ukrainian to see all this unfold, from a distance?

OS: You know, I grew up in Ukraine and now I’ve lived in the US longer than I lived in Ukraine. And I certainly, you know, I identify with Ukraine in some sense, but I'm under no pretense that it is somehow harder for me, given what people are going through in Ukraine. So, I consider myself, you know, even though of course, I'm affected maybe more than somebody who does not have family in connection with Ukraine, I'm very aware that whatever problems I have or whatever stress I may be under is nothing in comparison with what people are going through in Ukraine. So, I try to do my bit including, you know, talking to the media and writing academic and policy facing work to educate the people of what goes on. I feel like that's the contribution I can make to share my expertise, so that's what I would say.

GR: Okay. And then my last question here and again, we'll have to be very brief under a minute. If you were advising President Trump, what would you be telling him to do? What should America be doing? Very quickly.

OS: Pressure Russia. That would be my advice, pressure Russia. Don't believe Putin's gaslighting, this whole notion that they are like inevitably winning, that Ukraine has no cards. If you look at the evidence and the course that they’re suffering, Russia, and the sort of snail pace in which they may be, you know, take something over and the strain the economy is under, US has a lot of leverage. Pressure Russia, make Putin see that he cannot accomplish more than he already has. And he has to be forced to an agreement, ceasefire or the current contact line that Ukraine is willing to go for. So, I think that would be my advice, don't fall for Russian gaslighting.

GR: We'll have to leave it there. That was Oxana Shevel, and again, her recent book is titled, “Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories diverging States” and certainly understanding how complex and interwoven these two countries are, and you'll get that through this book, will help you understand why this war has been so hard to end. Professor Shevel, thanks so much for taking the time with me, I really learned a lot from this conversation.

OS: Thanks very much.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. Diversity is a concept that's at ground zero of our political wars in recent years, and my guest today has written a history and a spirited defense of the idea. David Oppenheimer is a clinical professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of a new book titled, “The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea.” Professor Oppenheimer, welcome to the program.

David Oppenheimer: Thank you very much. It's a delight to be here with you.

GR: Well, we really appreciate you making the time. So, I want to set the stage for our listeners by doing one thing myself here, and then I'll start asking you questions. But I wanted to read what you name as the diversity principle, and it's the very first page of your book. And so, it's a short paragraph. I'll read that, and then I'll come in and ask you a question after that. Here's the diversity principle, “People with different backgrounds, experiences and viewpoints benefit from engaging with each other. That's why it's important for people who are insiders to expand their circles to include outsiders, and vice versa. The experience of being an outsider is often influenced by age, religion, ethnicity, gender, race, language, disability, economic class, and other forms of identity. Compared with groups that are more homogeneous, diverse groups do a better job of solving problems, making discoveries, teaching and learning from each other, and improving democratic discourse.” A very good summary I think of an idea that is somewhat slippery at times. So let me ask you this to start, you tell a history of this principle and this idea, where and with whom does your story start?

DO: Well, my story starts with Wilhelm von Humboldt, one of the great figures of the German or Prussian Enlightenment and the founder of the University of Berlin in 1810, where he decided to create an experiential university which has become the model for research universities around the world, and decided to include Catholics and Jews in order to benefit from a more diverse learning community.

GR: Interesting, okay. And so, my next question is going to force you to kind of take something that you spend almost 200 pages writing about, but to condense it into a reasonably brief answer. How does this concept then wind its way into higher education more generally? That's the University of Berlin, but where do we go from there?

DO: So, Humboldt influences John Stuart Mill and Charles Eliot, the transformative 19th century president of Harvard University. Eliot takes Humboldt's ideas and applies them at Harvard, and transforms Harvard from a sort of a sleepy college into a great university through bringing in, again, Catholic students and Jewish students and faculty and black people and immigrants and poor people with scholarships. And when he steps down, says that the thing he's most proud of about Harvard is the deep diversity in terms of racial and ethnic and religious and class diversity. And once it becomes part of the DNA of Harvard, it spreads to other American universities, it spreads to free speech law, it spreads to academic freedom law, it spreads to civil law, to civil rights law. And it all carries from there from Humboldt and Mill, or the Mills, to Eliot.

GR: And then in your story, you kind of locate this as you just did in the academy. And, you know, the things that you just articulated are things that we would associate with almost any university in the United States with, you know, a couple of exceptions, I guess. But then how and why does commerce and science come on board this diversity train that was originally put on the tracks by the academy?

DO: Well, businesses figured out the value of diversity through business school professors who were one foot in the university and one foot in the world of commerce. There was this early, very influential article called, ‘From Affirmative Action to Affirming Diversity’. And once business school professors and then psychology professors started testing the idea that diversity really has measurable value, they found that it did. They found that companies, for example, with more diverse boards and more diverse C-suites and more diverse management, made more money. And that was the point of what they were doing. And scientists, one, began studying diversity in many environments and finding that it really made a difference, and two, finding that in science, in science labs that were more diverse, they were making more important discoveries.

GR: Interesting. And then one of the things that I wanted to see if you had any thoughts about, I was thinking of some of my own discoveries about diversity that I've made along the way, and one of the ones that kind of surprised me when I first came upon it was in the workplace in the United States, you could argue that really one of the biggest leaders is the United States government. That they do quite well in comparison with the private sector. And not only if we think about the military, but the civilian workforce as well. I don't know if you had any comments about that.

DO: Well, one, I completely agree that the U.S. military, has been much more diverse and has done a much better job of creating opportunity for women and for black Americans and Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans than private industry. And then second, yes, the government, all the way back to the reconstruction period, and with the exception of the Wilson administration, which was really terrible toward black federal employees, but with that exception the government has had a more diverse workforce, and has been better at having rules that required employment decisions to be made, looking at a broad pool instead of simply, oh, I've got a friend who could work for us, let's hire him.

GR: I'm Grant Reeher. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, and my guest is University of California at Berkeley law professor David Oppenheimer, and we're discussing his new book. It's titled, “The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea.” So, you have kind of a two-pronged way of talking about this concept. And it's, you know, the way that it gets argued about. And one is sort of as an issue of fairness and as an issue of justice. But you've also emphasized the fact that, hey, you know, it's not just a good thing to do, it's good for business, it will make you more money. And so there's the self-interested aspect of it from a collective perspective. I was wondering if you had some reflections on, as this concept then is wending its way and becoming more and more accepted in different kinds of realms of our lives, is there an impact back on the concept itself? Does the concept itself go through any formative changes in that process?

DO: Well, it certainly has, from an idea that seemed like a good idea into the business world, where it was very heavily analyzed by the business consultancies who were training, HR people and training businesses and looking for feedback. And that's how we saw the movement from a diversity principle to diversity, equity and inclusion. As businesses concluded and their consultants concluded that they were recruiting a more diverse workforce, but they weren't bringing them into the community of the workforce so that there was no sense of inclusion. And in the absence of inclusion, they weren't fully gaining the benefits of diversity.

GR: Interesting, interesting. And I wanted to pick up on that. You know, you mentioned DEI, it's obviously a, you know, like a flashing neon light political phrase right now. Do you think that this concept has suffered in recent years with what many people perceive as a hyper focus, especially on the left, on gender, race and sexual orientation as the be all and end all of diversity that, you know, has that sort of weakened the strength of the concepts some way, do you think?

DO: Well, certainly it's important that we recognize that there are all kinds of diversity and all kinds of diversity contributes to the diversity effect. So, for example, there's a criticism that American universities are too left.

GR: Yeah, I want to come back to that a bit later, but go ahead.

DO: Okay, Well I'm sorry to jump ahead.

GR: Oh no, it's fine, it's good.

DO: But certainly, I agree and I probably agree more from having studied diversity, that we need conservative voices on our faculties in order to, one, improve our own research as professors, because we're hearing voices that today we're not perhaps hearing enough. And two, improve the teaching of our students. So just as it's important that women's voices be heard, just as it's important that racial minorities be included in the community, just as it's important that people with disabilities be part of the community. I think it's also important that there be political and ideological diversity in order to gain fully the benefits of diversity.

GR: Yeah, I wanted to come back to that. I wanted to ask you a different question, though, might be related to it in a way. And it's about the academy, and it's based in part on my own experience, but you've already alluded to it. In this focus on certain kinds of diversity, there also seems to me to be a return and an embrace of what I thought as a society, we were trying to work away from in the name of diversity, if you will. And that is the notion that the differences between genders, between races are essential, that they are immutable. And that seems to me to go against Martin Luther King's notion of being, for example, judged by the content of one's character rather than the color of one's skin. There is this essential quality being put on that. Not by everyone, but I think it's fair to say by some people in the assumptions that they make. How does that fit with diversity and your principle, does it sort of work against that purpose in some way?

DO: Well, it seems to me that the experience of growing up as a member of a racial minority in America, or the experience of growing up with a disability in America, or the experience of growing up as a woman in America, affects a person's understanding of critical issues. And let me give you an example that I think shows that a commitment to diversity is not a commitment to essentialism.

GR: Okay, great.

DO: One, on our Supreme Court we currently have two black justices. They couldn't disagree more about most issues. Although I have to say no one would accuse me of being anything other than a liberal, and yet I am an enormous admirer of the civil procedure opinions of Justice Clarence Thomas. I teach civil procedure, I teach his opinions with great admiration. But as much as it is true that the two black justices on our court diametrically disagree about almost everything, look at Justice Thomas's opinion in Black v. Virginia, a case in which the then eight white members of the court agreed that burning a cross was a political statement that deserved recognition as a political statement under the First Amendment. And Justice Thomas's eloquent opinion about how burning a cross was not a form of political speech, it was a form of terrorism and intimidation that deserved no recognition under our First Amendment. This was part of his experience growing up as a black man in America, that I don't think any of the white justices on the court, liberal conservative, however you want to describe them, understood.

GR: That's a great example. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with David Oppenheimer. He's a professor at the University of California, Berkeley Law School and the author of a new book titled, “The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea” and we've been discussing the ideas that he raises in the book. Well, I wanted, David, to come back to something that you alluded to before the break, which was the criticism of higher education, that there isn't sufficient diversity of viewpoint or ideological diversity there. And it has struck me more in recent years. I've been in the academy for 30 plus years now, and it seems to me that it is a real problem for DEI and for those that are advocating diversity. I guess I wanted to ask you, do you think that that fact, you and I seem to be in agreement that there isn't a lot of ideological diversity in higher education, or at least that a lot of institutions, mine, Syracuse University, the faculty is overwhelmingly liberal, overwhelmingly Democrat, you know, to the tune of beyond 20 to 1 I think in terms of party identification. I'm sure, well, Berkeley has an international reputation for being on the left. Do you think that this has been a problem for the concept itself? Do you think that this has hurt the notion of diversity?

DO: Yes. I think that if the advocates of diversity policies came from every part of the political spectrum, and I think that if the academy, which has been one of the major sources of the advocacy for diversity policies, represented itself a more diverse political environment, that people would be more open, and particularly conservatives would be more open to considering the value of diversity. And instead, I think what happens is that they try to carve out viewpoint diversity and say, well, viewpoint diversity is a good thing, but other kinds of diversity are not real.

GR: I see. So, that's your criticism of the criticism then.

DO: Right. Well it was, by the way, John Stuart Mill had a great response to that. Mill wrote about that and spoke about it in this remarkable speech at Saint Andrew's, where he was the rector of the college, now university. And he said that it's essential to one's education, that you be exposed to people with different ideas, and what gives people different ideas is their experiences and their backgrounds. And that means that you need to include people from lots of different nationalities and religions in order to gain a diverse and therefore richer education.

GR: Yeah. This one's a big question. Why in the end do you think that this concept, particularly in recent years, is so ripe for attack and exploitation from the right? There's lots of things that conservatives could be upset about, why is this one such a magnet?

DO: The power of the diversity principle is that it encourages us to create greater opportunities for women and for people with disabilities and for black Americans and Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans. And that, I think, is threatening to white men who, and now you can put this two ways, who worry about losing their supremacy is how a liberal would put it. Or, who worry about becoming themselves the victims of discrimination is the way a conservative would put it. But either way, there is this strong sense of self-interest in opposing the lessons of the diversity principle.

GR: Well, let me push you on that a little bit. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is Berkeley law professor David Oppenheimer. So, I have heard that response before, and what doesn't fully convince me is how that accounts for the conservative attacks on this principle from people who aren't white males. And there are a lot of them, you know, that self-interested argument, if that's what's driving it at the core. How do you fit that in to that?

DO: One, I dispute that there are a lot of them.

GR: Okay.

DO: If you look at it statistically. And certainly, black conservatives, conservative women, benefit within conservative circles from the fact that they are not white men because they make good spokespeople, because there's this symbolic value. I get that.

GR: Go against type, yeah.

DO: Yeah. But I think if you look at data on who opposes diversity policies, it's mostly white men who are driving this.

GR: Okay.

DO: So that would be my response to that.

GR: Okay. We've got about five minutes or so left, and I want to try to get a little more personal now with some of my questions, if that's okay with you, because you hinted some of those things in your book. One of the blurbs for your book says that you were formerly a skeptic of diversity, now you're a believer. So, tell me quickly, I know you could go into great detail, but why were you previously skeptical? I assume it's more than just the fact that I'm looking at a white man right now.

DO: Oh, yeah, my skepticism came from thinking that this was just sort of a pop psychology excuse for including small numbers of women and minorities and not a principle aimed at creating a more equal and fair society.

GR: Okay. And why did you change your views? What happened?

DO: I discovered the long history and the depth and the thinking of the people who have developed this idea. And the more I read, and the more I studied, both about the history and about the current scientific, empirical data about the power of diversity, the more I realized that this is a real thing and this has to be taken seriously.

GR: When you were doing the research for this book and the writing of it, did you have your own sort of diversity ‘a-ha’ moment in terms of the people that you discovered and you were writing about?

DO: Well, in a sense, in that three women emerged in the history who either I hadn't heard of or I didn't appreciate their significance. And I came to realize that for each of them, they contributed both amazing ideas about diversity, and they contributed diversity to the development of those ideas. And those were Caroline von Humboldt, who was married to Wilhelm von Humboldt and clearly had a major influence on his sense that the world is such a vast place with people who are so different, and that those differences contribute to the power of ideas. And then Harriet Taylor Mill, who for 25 years was John Stuart Mill's companion and lover, and then when her husband died, they married. And she was the co-author of much of his work and the lead author of some of his work, which I hadn't understood. He always said that she was his co-author, but people couldn't believe it because she was a woman. And it's been amazing to see how we have finally, in this century, begun to recognize her importance. And then finally, Pauli Murray, who was probably the most influential civil rights lawyer of the 20th century in the United States, maybe the most influential lawyer in the 20th century in the United States, and the role she had in convincing Thurgood Marshall to take a diversity approach to his arguments in the cases that led to Brown v. Board of Education, to convincing Lady Bird Johnson to get Lyndon Johnson to get the Senate to keep sex discrimination in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Her convincing the ACLU to hire Ruth Bader Ginsburg and then convincing her to appreciate the diversity element in the arguments that they constructed together about sex discrimination and the 14th Amendment. And then at the height of this remarkable legal career, and as, I think the first black woman to be made a tenured professor at Brandeis became an Episcopal priest.

GR: Well, we'll have to leave it there. That's fascinating, and a really interesting story about how you went through your own story when you were writing the story of this principle. That was David Oppenheimer. And again, his new book is titled, “The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea,” and in the spirit of the book, I will say that whether you agree or disagree with his argument, your understanding of the issue will be enhanced by grappling with it. Professor Oppenheimer, thanks again for talking with me. I really, really appreciate this and really, really learned a lot.

DO: Thank you so much for having me.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. When it comes to generating data that can be used against us by the government, are we are own worst enemies? My guest today has a lot to say about that. Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is a professor at George Washington University Law School, and he's the author of a new book. It's titled, “Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance." Professor Ferguson, welcome to the program.

Andrew Ferguson: Thank you so much for having me.

GR: Well, we really appreciate you making the time. So, I'm going to spend, I think, most of our time just unpacking a very provocative sentence that you write near the beginning of your book. You write, “you are, at best, a warrant away from having your most intimate personal details revealed to a government agent looking to incarcerate, embarrass, or intimidate you.” There's a lot to unpack there. So, that's going to be our roadmap. But first, I thought it would help to set some of the context for this by breaking down some of the building blocks for your analysis in your argument. So let me start with this one, you write of certain kind of data sources, and it's right in the title of your book, you call them ‘self-surveillance’. Just give us a clear idea of what that means, the kinds of data mines that you're talking about there.

AF: Sure. So, if you live in a world where you have a smartphone in your pocket or a smartwatch on your wrist, or drive any modern car that is essentially a smart surveillance car, or have a ring doorbell camera on your front door, an Alexa in your home, use the internet, ask Google questions, you are creating data about yourself. And the thing that I think we haven't fully recognized is that all of our smart devices are surveillance devices. In fact, that's sort of what you're purchasing. You're purchasing some insight about yourself, about your life, about your patterns that you think will add value to your life. The downside risk is that all that data is available to law enforcement, to prosecutors. And it is, as you said, at best, a warrant away from being revealed. And what the book does is try to explain how we have sort of built this world of self-surveillance. Not to judge us, we are all digital citizens in one way or another, but to recognize that these purchases and these choices have costs and that we haven't really wrestled with the costs of that self-surveillance.

GR: So, in your book, you take the first several chapters breaking out that different kind of data, and you just gave us an idea of that when you just listed the different kinds of devices that, you know, a lot of us have, certainly almost everybody has the cell phone, the smartphone. And you talk about data that's in and about our homes, and you have one about our things, our bodies, our cities, our papers and our likes. Now, some of those I think we understand immediately. And when you just described that list that you gave, you know, we all can relate to that. I was curious to hear you spell out a little bit about what our cities and our papers mean in those chapters. That's less clear on the surface.

AF: Sure. So, we as a society have invested a lot of money in building surveillance devices in our cities. Whether they're automated license plate readers that catch the license plates that drive down your streets, cameras that are connected to real time crime centers where police can surveil the city streets from the comfort of their command center. Whether it is other forms, you know, drones and other new technologies that are watching us. That is a form of self-surveillance. It’s democratically mediated, it's our city council saying that we think that we can buy a world of safety through surveillance. But these are choices. Choices that we make with our tax dollars, we make with our elected choices of representatives. And it is another form of this world where we are building surveillance devices for when we go out in public, but also, of course, as we are in our home. And the papers part, again, the chapters that begin the book talk about how our homes have been transformed into smart homes, our bodies have been transformed using biological markers, be it your Fitbit or your smartwatch or your smart pacemaker or whatever it would be. But papers, papers also date back to the founding fathers. We have papers, effects, persons in homes as our Fourth Amendment protections. And most of what we do now is mediated through a digital form that takes the place of papers. You know, my parents used to get a bank statement in the mail, literally every month, that they saved in the attic so we would have boxes of papers and that was your financial records. Now it's all digital on your phone. We used to write letters. Again, they actually had love letters that they wrote back when they were courting in the air and now people have, like, texts and maybe an email or two to do that. But all of that digital information is recorded somewhere, usually held by some third party, and is available if there is a criminal prosecution, if there is a warrant, if there is a desire. And what I don't think we realize is that that exposure, that digital exposure, leaves us all very vulnerable to political winds that change, to certain kinds of targeted prosecutions. And it's something that we should just have a conversation about, and the book is trying to start that conversation.

GR: Yeah. Just a couple of quick observations about our cities. I just want to, you'd be interested in hearing this, but that question and that issue has been one that has come up in Syracuse, because Syracuse has been instituting these. It has been framed as something that will make the city run more efficiently and provide better services. But at the same time, there has been conversation about this idea that we are, you know, increasing our sense of monitoring. And I remember I worked several years ago over a number of different summers in London, and it was often said, I remember it being said that because of the heavy use of CCTV, that pretty much anywhere in London, you were on television somewhere. And I remember taking some comfort in that as a pedestrian walking around. But I see the other side of this now that you bring it up.

AF: And that's part of it, it's that duality, right? It's not that smart cities are bad, it's not that security cameras are bad, but in an unregulated world, in a world where that technology can be weaponized for other things that we didn't agree to or don't think is wise, we run into problems. And that's the hard part. We are not wrong in thinking that maybe certain forms of surveillance will help law enforcement. It will. And the book is actually filled with stories of people getting caught because of their data and like, bad people getting caught because of their data. And that's not a bad thing. The danger is that who is bad or what is criminal can change politically, can change because of who's getting targeted and without rules and regulations to limit it. It really does expose all of us to essentially the whims of who's in charge and what they want to prosecute.

GR: Yeah, anyone who's watched British crime television knows, the first thing that detectives all go to is the CCTV. But you're right, the double edge-ness. I'm Grant Reeher, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, and my guest is George Washington University law professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson and we're discussing his new book. It's titled, “Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance.” So, give us some more examples, maybe some of the ones that you think are most telling or the most intriguing or the most disturbing of how the information can be used against us. I mean, we understand that there are some good things that can be done with it, but as you say, it depends on whoever is in power and using this. Give us some examples of things we might want to be worried about.

AF: There’s a story that I think both captures the promise and dangers and just difficulty of these issues. (It) involves a gentleman who had a smart pacemaker in his heart. So, I think we can all agree that the medical inventions and interventions that allow someone to live better because their heart is beating at a certain way and recording that data for the individual themselves so it can take care of themselves, go to the doctor, but is also that data is also being forwarded to the doctor's office is a good. That's actually the kind of thing that we should encourage, we would like. But the case in the book is when detectives go to the doctor's office and get this guy's heartbeat and use it against him in a criminal case, because, and this is the tension, he was involved in some insurance fraud. He was basically, burned down his house, claimed it was, you know, an accident when really it was arson. And the detectives wanted to disprove his story by showing that his heartbeat didn't match what he said had happened. And this is, you know, the detectives aren't necessarily doing anything wrong in the sense of they have a crime, they're trying to investigate it. But the idea that our own heartbeats could be used against us in a court of law, I think raises some really difficult questions of, are we okay with that? Because the truth of the matter is, there is nothing too private. The data from your smart bed, your smart toothbrush, your period app that tracks your menstrual cycle, your digital diary, whatever it is, there is nothing too private that cannot be obtained with a warrant. And those stories are only going to multiply and grow as we become more dependent on technologies. When we have sensors in our home, listening to our conversations called Alexa or Echo, or we have video doorbells on our doors watching what we're doing. And there are reasons for that. There are reasons why someone might want to buy those technologies, but the danger is you are surveilling yourself far more than you're surveilling anyone else. And the question is, is that trade off worth the while?

GR: And to that point, let me put the question to you that a district attorney might put to you. And you probably will anticipate this, but the information at least is reliable in and of itself. I mean, what we conclude from it, we can debate. But, you know, in the case that you just made the gentleman's heartbeat was what it was. And so, if we compare that, say, to eyewitness testimony, which is notoriously unreliable, or say a false confession that is, you know, pulled out of somebody by overly aggressive police tactics. The question is, if I'm innocent, why should I be worried about this? I mean, couldn't I probably just use this to prove my innocence more often than it might be used to indicate a false guilt?

AF: I think that there are, you know, strong arguments for why there's law enforcement use. But I also think that, you know, if you're pregnant in a state that just criminalized abortion, like, you being innocent might mean something different, right? Your smartwatch is revealing, you know, certain pieces about your heart and your bodily, you know, your heat and everything else. And your period app is revealing, you know, certain very private things. And, like, what is criminal can change. If you walked out of the house with ‘No Kings’ protest sign, guess what? Your doorbell camera probably caught that. And that might be evidence to use against you in a way where, suddenly, dissent in certain forms is criminalized. And so that's sort of the tension there that we have a reality of, like what is criminal and can prosecutions be weaponized? At the same time, there is no question that this data is helpful for law enforcement. But what's weird or what's strange or what's different is that we have now just opened our lives up in ways where that data just wasn't available, you know, for decades, you just couldn't have found what was going on in someone's house. But now that they put, like, a cat-cam to watch their cat while they’re away at work, suddenly we have a perfect record of what's going on inside their house. And the question is, should the normal rules where we really couldn't have gotten that beforehand, now apply to this new world where we've created so much data? And we all do it, right? Google, the things you Google, probably has a better sense of what's going on in your head and your immediate concerns then lots and lots of other people. Maybe more than your spouse, right? You might Google like what is this strange rash? Before telling your spouse about the strange rash or whatever it would be? And like, the fact that those sort of thoughts now put out to a third party are open for government investigation is problematic because, ‘what is that rash?’ might be like, ‘how do I obtain an abortion?’, or, ‘how do I get services for my trans kid?’, or, ‘how do I protest a government I don't think is actually in the way I think is law for a constitutional?’. And the fact that all those digital trails and thoughts are now potential evidence against you is a problem. There are good things when there are, and there are cases in the book that talk about like, people are like, how do I dispose of a dead body or how do I get rid of the smell? And like those are also quite revealing about someone's culpability in a crime. But right now, we don't have rules that distinguish between those two, and we haven't, as a society, agreed about whether we trust the government to have all of our intimate data to use as they wish.

GR: And want to come back and explore exactly what the situation is regarding government rules on that when we come back from the break. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Andrew Guthrie Ferguson. He's a professor at George Washington University Law School and the author of a new book titled “Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance,” and we've been discussing the book and the difficult and thorny issues that it raises. I wonder if part of the reason why we're in the situation we're in is just the rapidity of the change in this arena. I mean, it's, you know, I've been around for a while, I'm relatively old and I've seen a lot of different changes, and this one just seems to have come pretty quickly, even within the internet age. Do you think that's, like, we're just not catching up to the reality of this? Is that part of it?

AF: I think that there is a disconnect between the speed that the technology has evolved and just become so consumer-friendly, and the laws and rules and regulations around it. I also think it's hard. I think that sometimes the reason why you don't see legislation covering some of this information is that it's very difficult. Like in the book, I actually try to take a piece of it. I'm trying to actually focus on not data privacy writ large, but again, it would be wonderful if we had, you know, a federal regulation on that or even, data protection in a certain sort of European framework. I'm really talking about, could we set up rules about how this data can be used in criminal cases and criminal prosecutions? In part because that's my background, I teach criminal procedure and criminal law. I was a former public defender before teaching, so I see the world in sort of the criminal process. But also, I think it's just an easier balance. Like, we might be able to come up with agreements about this is okay, this is not okay, oh, this is really private, maybe we want to have a higher standard and it's not going to be perfect, but we might be able to move forward.

GR: So, tell us what the current rules are, generally, regarding the criminal justice use of this data. Is it sort of like the general warrant? You know, I have a reason to go to a judge and I say, here's why we could use this data and the judge decides one way or another?

AF: So, a lot of the data that we create and we give off to third parties doesn't even need a warrant to be obtained. You've either given it up as sort of a condition of using it, using the technology that you probably signed some form you didn't read, and agreed that law enforcement get access with sometimes just a request, but sometimes a subpoena. Sometimes you literally paid for it, right? You paid your taxes, paid for the camera that's capturing where you're going and what you're doing out there. Sometimes, if it gets a little bit more private data, there is a warrant requirement. The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution requires a probable cause warrant. Again, a pretty low standard. It’s definitely lower than 51%, that's like a preponderance of evidence, so it's lower than that. It can be wrong. And really, with a predicate like allegation, there's a crime, it's pretty easy to get almost anything that has been created. So, all of your work in your computer, on your phone, with a warrant, it's all available. We have not seen federal law that would regulate this kind of technology in any real way. Like, you know, a lot of the federal laws that exist were written, like, decades ago. And while we seen some states move to sort of counteract sort of consumer privacy, sort of how the company and the individual might interact and your control of your data, most of those state privacy laws have a law enforcement carve out. So, law enforcement get access, but we'll limit how the companies get access. And so, we have not had a national debate about whether or not this data should be used against us. There is, you know, percolating cases. The United States Supreme Court is hearing a case on geofence warrants, which is the idea of using a warrant to get your Google data, your location data. So, in that case, a gentleman was accused of robbing a bank, and his cell phone basically gave him away because he was there. But in order to get the cell phone information about this particular defendant, the police had to essentially search your cell phone data and my cell phone data. In fact, everyone, like 500 million people of Google, were in this sensor vault that they sort of collected everyone's location data. So, to find the one bad guy they actually surveilled us to probably if we had Google services enabled on our phones, which most of us do. So that's, you know, part of the tension. So, the courts are slowly moving forward. The legislators, I'm not sure we're seeing a whole lot of action in Congress right now, but maybe we could be. But the point of the book is to kind of to try to provoke citizens and communities and families to sort of debate this, discuss this, in the hopes that we could push this conversation forward.

GR: You mentioned some states doing some things. Is there any state in particular that you would regard in the forefront of thinking about this from a criminal justice perspective?

AF: One of the interesting states, Illinois, had this thing for biometric evidence. And so, there's this law called the Biometric Information Protection Act, BIPA, that was the first sort of biometrics. So, think about facial recognition, think about the ability to take your sort of biological marker data. And because Illinois had a law, it actually somewhat thwarted companies trying to move nationally because every time they had data from Illinois citizens, they could, like, run afoul of this. So, Facebook, which, of course, has everyone's data, also had Illinois citizens. And when they were running their own facial recognition matches, it could create a problem. And so, in certain states, for certain kinds of data, there are some protections. But no state, even California, which tries to be ahead of the curve on a lot of these sort of privacy and definitely has some consumer privacy laws that are good, haven't really figured out what we can do and what the balance is. Essentially, I think the fair takeaway is if you build it, if you create the data, the police can come for it and use it against you.

GR: Interesting. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is the law professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson. You know, when you're talking about this and I think about the politics that would surround it, it would seem to me that, although it does tap into some areas where there is deep partisan division, I mean, criminal justice obviously is one where Democrats and Republicans have really fought pretty hard against each other in recent years. It also seems to be the case that there's a lot of room for political overlap in terms of concerns about privacy. On the one hand, suspicions about how government might overstep or misuse something. I'm just curious to get your sense of your reflections on the political environment in which these conversations are going to happen.

AF: I think it's bipartisan because both sides should realize that their data can be used against them. You know, just a few years ago, people who were a strong sort of Second Amendment supporters were really concerned that the federal government would come up with like a federal database of gun owners and be able to, like, bang down their doors and steal their guns. Well, with automated license plate readers that read, you know, who's driving their cars, of you put an automated license plate reader outside a gun show, or a gun range, or a place you buy ammunition, like you don't need that federal database, you can find out who you are. All of our data reveals the things we do and whether we want to, you know, privately pray in a certain community, whether we want to protest in a certain way, it all gets revealed and it can be used against us. Like, ironically enough, like, Donald Trump's data was used against him. Like, he was actually upset that his texts and stuff were being used in a criminal prosecution and felt the same sort of violation. This feels like it's wrong. And we're seeing now, as the Trump administration is using this data to go after, like, you know, Jim Comey, who, you know, former FBI director, like literally a career prosecutor about a straight an arrow as someone might think that despite his, like, political, interference, like, not necessarily the person you would think would be targeted to have his data targeted and revealed about him, but he too is now a target and it shows that everyone is vulnerable. Even if you are powerful, even if you're affluent and privileged, like the aperture of surveillance of who is being targeted has expanded far beyond where we used to target, which tended to be poorer communities, black and brown communities, places that did not have the political voice to respond. But now, everyone who uses a digital device, who uses digital means to communicate, has essentially revealed themselves and is still simply sitting there, vulnerable to the political winds shifting to target them.

GR: Setting aside the government for a minute, just thinking about private companies, publicly owned corporations that have this data, they pretty much have carte blanche, right, to use it, or at least they often set that up if I'm going to join some kind of system that I've checked the box somewhere, or I'm thinking of employers. You know, you and I work at universities, I'm assuming that the university can, at any time that it wants, go and look through our emails. Am I right about that?

AF: You are. And you've agreed to that. And sometimes you get that, you know, pop-up screen when you log back on. That's true. And what's even, I guess, more difficult for the company is like, if you're a U.S. company and a law enforcement officer with a duly authorized warrant shows up to get the data, there’s really, there's not much you can do. That’s the law, you have to turn it over. So, if you have it, and some companies have chosen not to collect it, but if you're a data collection company and that's your business plan, like collecting it is what you're doing, so if you have it and they come for it and they have a warrant, it's very hard to push back. It's very hard to say no. And that means that the warrant protection, the that we kind of have in our back in our head, oh, there's some judge, you know, who will make sure this isn't abused, isn't that protective. It's not nothing, it's something, it's better than, you know, not having it at all, but it shouldn't give you confidence that your data will remain secure. Because it's very easy to get a warrant to get it.

GR: We've only got about a couple minutes left, and there are two big questions, and I'm sorry that I'm going to be unfair to you this way, but two big questions I want to try to squeeze in at the end. One is, give us an idea of at least the kinds of changes you might like to see. I know you said the main point of the book is to stimulate our conversations about this, but, are there any big changes that if you could wave a magic wand, you'd like to see?

AF: Sure. You know, toward the end of the book, I have separate chapters, I have a book essentially written for judges to say, this is what you could do using the Fourth Amendment to sort of strengthen our protections of data privacy using existing law. And my various, you know, academic theories about this. I have a chapter for legislators, like if you are in the legislature and you're concerned about the issues raised in this book, here's how you can build in certain kind of heightened protections or build on parallels that (we) already have in the law is actually not that high a step to do it. We can do it pretty easily, and I try to lay out what those answers would be. And then for communities and what communities can do and how communities can support this sort of collective action. I purposely don't focus on individuals because that's sort of a false framing. I think if it’s always, like, I can't negotiate with Amazon or the FBI as an individual, like I can't change those terms and services. But as a community, we can say maybe we don't want this kind of technology, maybe we don't want to share our data in certain ways. And legislators can regulate any of this or all of it if they wish to. If they had the political will, they could easily make those choices.

GR: Well, let me focus on the individual with about 30s left. I get what you're saying about we don't have the same leverage that governments do at different levels or judges. Well, if you could just, with a couple seconds left, what advice would you give us as individuals to practice better self-surveillance hygiene? I suppose is the way I would put it.

AF: Sure. I mean, you should educate yourself. I think you should make informed choices about whether you really do need the cat-cam to watch your cat when you're working. Whether the connections, right, you can have a ring doorbell and not connected to a larger system, you can make those choices. You can not necessarily click ‘I agree’ and give away all your data for all reasons just because you're too lazy to figure out what, you know, where it might go. And more importantly, you can support the advocacy groups, the community groups that are pushing back against these technologies in more cohesive and forceful ways. And so, like, there's a whole chapter on supporting the journalists who are exposing the technology and the legislators who are doing some real hard work on this.

GR: Well, we'll have to leave it there. That was Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, and again, his new book is titled “Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance.” If you're already paranoid, my advice is not to read this book, but otherwise it is a fascinating read as well as eye-opening. Professor Ferguson, thanks again for talking with me, really appreciate it.

AF: Thank you.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is Will Barclay. The Pulaski based Republican has represented New York's 120th State Assembly district since 2003 and was the minority leader of that chamber from 2020 until just last week. He recently announced that he was stepping down from that position, and that he would not run for reelection to the Assembly this coming November. Assemblyman Barclay has been on the program several times in the past. Assemblyman Barclay, it's bittersweet, but welcome back to the program.

Will Barclay: Thanks, Grant. As always, I appreciate you having me on. I will say this is the first interview I have done since I made my announcement that I wasn't seeking reelection and since I've stepped down as minority leader. So, I always appreciated your interviewing style and I think you give a good, fair shake to all sides, so I appreciate that and look forward to talking with you today.

GR: Oh, that's very nice of you, well thanks so much, I appreciate that very much. Well, let me just start with a basic question about the timing of your decision and the timing of your announcement. What were some of the factors that went into that for you?

WB: Well, I think primarily the biggest factor was personal. I served for 23 years. You know, I live in Pulaski, I have two boys and my wife, and they put up a lot with politics and I think I put my time in. So, the timing just seemed right from a personal perspective. I’m 57, so I'm not, I'm older, but not so old that I can't do other things in my life and I figured if I kept running for reelection, some of those other things that I would like to do, you know, I had a shorter time period to accomplish them. So that was a primary reason that I decided to get out. There's other factors, like outside income for one that played a role, but I would say that was a relatively minor role. And I think also it's good to have new blood come in to, you know, I have been leading the conference for six years, I gave it my best shot and there's a lot of successes I think I had there, but it's always good to, I think, get new energy. So that also played a role and I feel very confident with the new leadership that's come in in our conference that's going to lead it appropriately going forward.

GR: You mentioned in the course of that, the outside income limitations and I appreciate that you did that. I was going to ask you about that and concerned that it might be a little sensitive for you, but you brought it up. So, what I'm assuming that is that, you know, there's this new rule, new law, and it's been challenged, but it looks like now it's going to take effect next year. And it limits the outside income that state legislators can make, I believe it's $35,000 a year. Is that correct?

WB: Yeah, that’s correct.

GR: So, I guess what I'm taking from this, then, is that you are a lawyer, and you've had a law career so that that was going to constrain your ability to push out on your law career, is that what you mean?

WB: Yeah, I'm involved in a number of different things, but yes. So, there is, you know, Mrs. Barclay would like me to earn more money. (laughter) I think anybody's family would like to see spouses, you know, earning more money. So, again, that played a role. But I don't want to overblow that, even though I do find that outside income limitation, really a misdirection by the state and bad public policy. You know, we have public financing of campaigns, now we're going to have full time legislators. And what you're going to see is full dependency by members of the legislature on leadership, because they control all that power. And if you don't have enough income or outside job, you're less willing to take, in my mind, risk. And this was never meant to be a full-time legislator. In my mind, I think it's important that we can attract people with backgrounds, you know, with all different occupations. And I worry that, you know, making this a full-time legislature just will not attract maybe some of the people that I think would be very helpful to good government and legislators. But I don't want to dwell too much, because that was a bit. I’m (unintelligible) it didn't play any role, it did play some role. But, you know, I could have gone on for 2 or 4 more years with, you make a very good salary in the Assembly, so it wasn't like we're going to be impoverished by any sense of it, but it did drive me. And one thing, Grant, it did point to sort of a bigger issue that, you know, I've had frustration with all my time serving down there, but I think it's become more acute over the years is the one-party rule. And we hear a lot about the Republicans drifting right. You know, I don't change my ideology. A few issues I've changed on, some to the left, frankly, and some to the right. But, generally I've had my same beliefs since I've been down there. Where I've seen the biggest drift is from the Democrats moving more to the left and that's because it's hard to have a check on that, because, you know, they control the Senate, they control the Assembly and they control executive branch. So, it's been very hard. And that frustration has probably grown in me over the last few years. And that's another reason I think maybe someone new in my position can give a different, maybe it’s perspective or a different fight than I've been doing. Not that I think I did a bad job, but again, I think some new blood, can re-energize things which I fully support.

GR: Well, you know, it's interesting, this is not about you now, with the income. I'm thinking about it more generally, but you brought up something I hadn't thought about, of creating a lack of something to fall back on if you're in the legislature and thinking then about this needing to be your career because you're doing it, not only full time, but it is your entire livelihood. And what just went through my head really quickly was thinking about Congress. Members of Congress know when they get out that they've got, they can take that time in Congress and leverage that into something that they can make quite a bit of money at. And we see all sorts of former members of Congress doing that. I guess that's less true for the state legislature. And so that's a yeah, I hadn't thought about the way it might affect things differentially in that regard. It's an interesting point. Well, let me ask you about some of the positive things, and then I do want to dive into some of the things that you just brought up where your frustrations have been. But what do you think you're going to look back most fondly about your service in the state legislature? What’s going to rise to the top of your fondest memories?

WB: Well, I'll talk public policy and some of the successes we had there. But I think what, you know, I went down there, I thought I would serve six years and here I am serving, by the end it’ll be 24 years. And, you know, the reason being is because I love the people that I was able to work with. And I love my colleagues on both sides, I mean, many on both sides of the aisle. So, I ended up making friendships a lot more deeper than I thought, maybe when I first went down there in the first few years that I served that ended up, I think, keeping me there longer than maybe I initially thought I would, so that was good. I think from a public, one thing I love, I love this area. As I've told you many times, I'm 8 generations, so I'm not moving out of the area. My boys are ninth generation, they love here. I love trying to help my area, Oswego County, particularly is where I'm from, Pulaski. So, you know, I look back and some of the successes, some of the things I've been able to accomplish for the area, and that makes me very proud and makes me think my time in politics was worthwhile. Probably on the apex of all that is being able to save the Fitzpatrick nuclear plant. Albeit I didn't do that alone, but I certainly played a, I think a large role in able to save that end up saving thousands of jobs. And lo and behold, look, now we're even looking at possibly getting another new plant here in Oswego County. So, you know, if I had to point to one thing that, I guess I would say was probably my greatest success or the thing that brought me the greatest happiness in the whole thing was saving that plant. There's a lot of other things, being in the minority, I was like, you know, I didn't have the opportunity to pass a lot of state-wide type of legislation, but I can point to a number of things that either we were able to stop or get reform on that I'm also very proud of because I thought the best I could, I was able to use the bully pulpit to sometimes be able to either stop legislation or shame the Democrats into making changes to that legislation. So, there's a whole host of things I'm very proud of during my career and made it all, for me, made it all worthwhile doing it. Even though people often say, you know, you're in the minority, you can't get anything done. I never, like, took that to heart. You can. You just have to have a realistic perspective on it and not think you're going to be able to change the world in a day.

GR: I'm Grant Reeher, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, and my guest is New York State Assemblyman Will Barclay. So, in a similar vein there, thinking about the institution itself, the way the institution works. What do you think your biggest impact was as minority leader on either your conference or the Assembly more generally?

WB: Well, I can speak very easily on my conference. One thing I saw when I came in, and some of this started with the prior leader too, but we wanted to become more professional. I wanted to have our members be able to have an in-depth understanding of all the issues, so when they were questioned on it or when they had to make a decision on how to vote or what to support, they had all that information at their fingertips. And, you know, one thing I'm again, very proud of, again, I didn't serve in any other conferences in Albany, but I think we brought some professionalism to this operation. And again, it wasn't just me, it was a whole team that was able to do it that I think our members are probably as well informed as any other legislators in Albany. So, I'm very proud that I also think I left a unified conference. Sometimes regional and ideological differences can really weigh on a conference, but at least in my feelings, maybe you could ask some of my fellow members of the council, they may disagree, but I feel like we're very unified going into, and it's necessary to do it because, again, our voice has been diminished as Republicans in Albany. So, if we're not all singing from the same hymnal, it's very hard to get a point across. And I would also extend that to the Senate Republicans. You know, in the past there has been differences between the Senate and the Assembly Republicans mainly because Republicans used to be in the majority, but, we've been able to work very effectively together, I think, over the last few years. And I'm very proud of that relationship too.

GR: Well, you mentioned that your views, some of your views changed over time while you were serving there, and some of them, you said, even moved to the left from where they were originally. I'm going to frame this a little differently and say, when you look back, what do you think was the most significant thing? Or issue that you were, at the time, wrong about as you look at it now?

WB: Yeah, I can think of two things. One, this may not seem as big and probably for younger listeners, they might not even recognize it, but the indoor smoking ban was something that I didn't support. But, personally, it turned out great. You know, I love to be able to come home from a restaurant or somewhere or not smell like smoke. And I didn't realize maybe that impact that it would be afterwards. But, you know, I often concerned my ideological standpoint about the heavy handedness of government, but that was one, I think if I could do over, I probably would vote for. Another big one is gay marriage. And I think that's the country's evolved substantially and I think our party has evolved substantially since that vote. But that was another one that I voted opposed to, and maybe if it was today I might not, you know, I probably I would support gay marriage.

GR: Interesting. I tell you on the first one, I appreciated that the first time I, through several summers I worked in London for a good chunk of the summer. And the first time I went over there and I went into a pub, it was like, oh my God, you know…

WB: Right.

GR: Where is this fog coming from? And it was secondhand smoke. And I remember I just realized how much I appreciate that.

WB: Yeah, it's shocking, isn't it? I mean, you go to some other states or places and it is, it's almost unbearable.

GR: Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with New York State Assemblyman Will Barclay. The Pulaski Republican who represents the 120th district, served as minority leader of the chamber until just the other week. And he's announced that he will also not be seeking reelection to the Assembly this coming November. And we're discussing his career and some of the things that he will most take with him when he leaves the institution. So, I wanted to come back and ask you a bigger picture question. It's kind of related to some of the themes that you introduced earlier, and I hope here I don't veer off too much into editorializing, but it does strike me that with your retirement, what we have is yet another loss of a particular kind of conservative, a particular kind of Republican that New York used to be famous for and used to excel in. And here's my description of it, and then you can tell me if I've got you wrong and, attach another question to it. But it's a mold of a principled fiscal conservative who doesn't get worked up too much over social issues, isn't a barn burner in that regard, wasn't always entirely predictable politically, and who could talk across the aisle, work across the aisle, and again, as I said before, wasn't really a political bomb thrower. So, two questions here. Do I have you about right? And then my bigger question is, is this political species or subspecies endangered in New York or worse, is it becoming extinct? What's going on?

WB: Well, it's interesting, I think there's a lot of maybe answers I could give to that. You know, again, as I said, you know, I think I stay pretty ideologically similar to when I started my career, other than a few issues here and there where I haven't been. You know, I don't consider myself maybe a bomb thrower, but I certainly believe that I speak as loudly as I can on issues that I strongly believe in, and I encourage Republicans to continue to do that. Maybe where you might see a little difference in me and maybe some others in the Democrat or Republican Party is, I never took anything personal, really, Grant. You know, I see my colleagues, particularly from the city, who have just really very, very different political views than I have, but they're representing their constituency, and they're trying to do what they think is best for their constituency, so I never take that personally. Sometimes, personalities and people bring in different, you know, things, unfortunately, it's just not my personality for that. I think I can see, even though I disagree and don't always understand where they're coming from, at least can understand that perspective. I think things have changed in politics, and maybe I am becoming (unintelligible) or maybe that's why it's good that we'll have new leadership in the Republican Party. But, you know, the social media aspect of it, the soundbite aspect of politics, that has certainly accelerated over the last several years, so it's harder and harder. I remember when I started to put a press release out and probably get some coverage on it. Now you really have to do social media, you have to react quickly. And sometimes I think with that quick, fast reaction, you don't always get maybe careful consideration of the issues, unfortunately. And then you're kind of stuck on a train going down a rail. So, I still think, you know, I wince a little bit when people say, well, you're not really a bomb thrower. I’m not a bomb thrower, but I certainly hope people know I spoke loudly down there, and I fought for the issues that I strongly believe in, and I certainly didn't shy away from any debate on those issues and I'm still willing to enter that fray. But yeah, one, I didn't make it personal, so I think that might differentiate me from some. And maybe my ability to react quickly isn’t as strong, or my willingness to do that is probably less than maybe some other elected officials on all sides, both sides of the aisle.

GR: Interesting. Okay, thanks. Getting back to something that you were talking about earlier as well, sort of where the state is going politically, where it is. The question I wanted to put to you - the states lost three congressional districts in the last two censuses. It's on track to lose two more in the next one in 2030. So, we will have gone in New York from a peak of 45 seats way back in the 1940s to 24 after 2030, in all likelihood. Do you think there's ever going to be a serious reckoning with this in Albany? I mean, in the broadest respects, it does seem like the state just keeps doing what it's been doing in terms of spending and taxes, it sets a new record every year. When is this going to get a serious look?

WB: Well, I'm hoping this next election, frankly. And maybe that makes me the optimist here, but, yeah, it's tough to say. I think as you continue one party rules from I mean, just from 2020, I think to 2024 we lost 900,000 people in New York, so something's not going right. And, you know, I lay the blame on the feet of the one party rule in Albany. You know, they talk, let's take affordability. You know, we hear more and more about affordability. The governor certainly mentioned it a lot in her State of the State, she's mentioned it on the campaign trail everywhere. But I don't see anything coming out of her office or out of either the majorities in both the Senate Assembly that really is addressing affordability. And so what we see is more, for instance, you know, environmental type, sticking with the environment, for one, you know, every year there seems to be onerous types of mandates coming down to electrify things or go to non-fossil fuel based generation. Well, there's a cost to all this. And now people are starting to wake up and they see their utility bills skyrocket. And of course, you know, the Democrats will blame everything. They blame the president, they blame greedy utilities, you name it. But ultimately, if anybody looks at it, it's really because of the policies that were created in Albany that have a huge expense to them. And it’s not just environment, there an issue of health care you could go down, you know, any almost anything out there, housing, you name it, is because of a lot of policies that we pass in Albany. I always say these things, you know, theoretically may sound good, but we don't pass laws in a vacuum and there are real world consequences for some of the stuff we do, and those real world consequences are coming home to roost. So the challenge Republicans have, we've always had is probably, maybe, the ability to point where and why those problems are happening. I think one of the challenges we have is, unfortunately, in my opinion, Democrats now control a lot of institutions in New York and across the country, whether it's not for profits, whether it's higher education or any education institution for that matter, the media all tends to be, and I don't want to sound conspiracist, I mean, this is just the reality I think we deal with, tend to be left wing. So, it's very hard for Republicans to get a counter message out. So, every time I've run, and I've had an opponent, Grant, that my opponents always run on the issues that I have run on and basically run on the same message that I've run and they've just been able you know, they can, I've been successful because I happen to be in a, you know, pretty good Republican district, but they tend to run on our issues. And then people say, oh yeah, he cares about or she cares about affordability. But ultimately they go down and they vote on these things and they'll give a good reason why they want to vote on these things. But, that whole affordability or any of those types of consequences of those policies seems to go out the window.

GR: Do you think it has something to do with upstate / downstate? Downstate often gets blamed for this, too. And I was thinking about this and I was thinking, well, New York City needs a thriving New York State and if there continues to be outmigration from the state, eventually it's going to turn around and bite New York City, even though New York City may not be experiencing that outmigration. Is it, do you put it more at the party level versus urban, suburban, rural?

WB: Well, I think that definitely plays a role. I mean, there's no doubt that the stronghold the Democrats hold in New York City allows them to be on the offensive upstate, you know, in a real political type manner. You know, so, you know, they have districts down there, I think they have something like 40 or 45 assembly districts with 90 plus Democratic registration. You know, that's almost as much as we have as a Republican conference in the Assembly. So that just gives them the ability to be on the offensive in so many other areas. Now, you asked me, do we have any hope for things changing? I think so, because we've been able to pick up five seats in the city that maybe, you know, even eight years ago, we would never have a dream of picking up those seats. So, there is some realization of the problems that have been created by these policies, but, it's still very hard. So, yeah, from a, just a political ability to get things, they start with such a bigger base than a Republican does upstate. And unfortunately, a lot of the population loss is our base. It’s a lot of rural areas that are losing their population that maybe traditionally voted Republican. So that compounds the challenge or the problem.

GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is New York State Assemblyman Will Barclay. We’ve got about, only about four minutes left or so but I want to try to ask you some more personal questions, if I can. And I apologize that I'm not going to be able to give you very much time to dig into these. The first one is, you mentioned your age originally when we were talking earlier, you know, you recently turned 57. In politics these days, that's actually pretty young. You also recently turned down an offer to run for lieutenant governor. So, what, if anything, might be next for you politically, do you think?

WB: Well, I'll never say never, Grant. And, you know, I'm happy to stay in the fray. I still, again, love this area and still want to fight for it. So, I don't have any political aspirations going to, you know, maybe some would say Congress would be a logical step, but that doesn't interest me at all at this time. But again, who knows? Things change. I'll never shut the door and I’ll always consider it, but it really comes down to, one, is it right for, you know, me personally and my family, but also, do I think I would be the best person to, you know, fight for the issues that I believe in.

GR: And what would the 34 year-old Will Barclay, that's how old you were when you started in this position, be most surprised about the political career of the 57 year old Will Barclay?

WB: Well, one, I never thought I'd be in the politics this long. So that's probably the biggest eye opener would be for me. I never expected that I would have the honor of serving as the leader of my conference, so that was the other kind of eye opener, you know, circumstance I would be if I was 34, now. But, I don't know, I would hope, you know, I had a lot of optimism when I came into office. I still have optimism, it hasn't worn me down that much. But ultimately, you know, it's public service. And I hope, you know, if I was 34, I would still be willing to take up the mantle of public service that I know now as a 57 year old.

GR: Well, that may be a perfect segue to my final question. And that is, what advice, encouragements or cautions would you give to, say, a 25 year-old version of Will Barclay contemplating going into politics right now?

WB: Well, I love that because I do talk to a lot of school groups, I talk to college classes, I have the opportunity. I would say go for it, it's worth it. It can be frustrating as hell, I think is an understatement. But ultimately, anything you can do to help your community, I think fighting for, you know, public policy and issues that you believe in is a very honorable and worthwhile thing to do. And when you see you can make changes, it makes, you know, the, the 23 years, 24 years and I will be doing this all worthwhile.

GR: So, just, we have one more minute, I'm going to follow up on that. And that's that my students, one of the things they tell me about why they don't want to do this is because of the nastiness. And you said earlier you're able not to take it personally and you don't make it personal. What's the secret sauce there in 30 seconds or less for how you're able to do that when other people aren't?

WB: You know, I'm smiling because I remember when I first was going to run. There used be a blog, believe it or not, and I don’t know if there’s even blogs around anymore, that was ultra made everything personal, ultra critical of, it would have been me and everybody. I said, my God, I'm not going to be able, this would be too much. You get thick skinned after a while. It doesn't bother you as much, and sometimes it can be very funny. So, I think all the benefits of doing it and being in that arena far outweigh the negatives, and there are a lot of negatives, but I don't want anyone to be naive about it. But again, it's a worthy undertaking in my opinion.

GR: Well, one of the pastimes that you and I share is fishing. So maybe it has something to do with dealing with the disappointments of fishing somehow.

WB: Yeah, exactly right. So what do they say? A day fishing is better than a…

GR: Bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work. (laughter)

WB: Exactly.

GR: Well, unfortunately, I have to leave it there. That was Assemblyman Will Barclay and Assemblyman Barclay I just want to thank you. And if I can, if it's okay, I want to thank, by extension, your late father as well, who I knew, for both of your service that you've given to the state of New York. Very important and should be appreciated.

WB: Well, thank you. And again, thank you for always being a great interviewer. And, you know, you debated one of my, when I was running for the Senate, too, and I always appreciated that debate and that didn't work out the way I hoped it would, but…

GR: But you got a fair moderator. (laughter)

WB: I did get a very fair shake in that, so I appreciate it, Grant. And I hope you won't be a stranger too.

GR: Okay, me too. You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is Will Barclay. The Pulaski based Republican has represented New York's 120th State Assembly district since 2003 and was the minority leader of that chamber from 2020 until just last week. He recently announced that he was stepping down from that position, and that he would not run for reelection to the Assembly this coming November. Assemblyman Barclay has been on the program several times in the past. Assemblyman Barclay, it's bittersweet, but welcome back to the program.

Will Barclay: Thanks, Grant. As always, I appreciate you having me on. I will say this is the first interview I have done since I made my announcement that I wasn't seeking reelection and since I've stepped down as minority leader. So, I always appreciated your interviewing style and I think you give a good, fair shake to all sides, so I appreciate that and look forward to talking with you today.

GR: Oh, that's very nice of you, well thanks so much, I appreciate that very much. Well, let me just start with a basic question about the timing of your decision and the timing of your announcement. What were some of the factors that went into that for you?

WB: Well, I think primarily the biggest factor was personal. I served for 23 years. You know, I live in Pulaski, I have two boys and my wife, and they put up a lot with politics and I think I put my time in. So, the timing just seemed right from a personal perspective. I’m 57, so I'm not, I'm older, but not so old that I can't do other things in my life and I figured if I kept running for reelection, some of those other things that I would like to do, you know, I had a shorter time period to accomplish them. So that was a primary reason that I decided to get out. There's other factors, like outside income for one that played a role, but I would say that was a relatively minor role. And I think also it's good to have new blood come in to, you know, I have been leading the conference for six years, I gave it my best shot and there's a lot of successes I think I had there, but it's always good to, I think, get new energy. So that also played a role and I feel very confident with the new leadership that's come in in our conference that's going to lead it appropriately going forward.

GR: You mentioned in the course of that, the outside income limitations and I appreciate that you did that. I was going to ask you about that and concerned that it might be a little sensitive for you, but you brought it up. So, what I'm assuming that is that, you know, there's this new rule, new law, and it's been challenged, but it looks like now it's going to take effect next year. And it limits the outside income that state legislators can make, I believe it's $35,000 a year. Is that correct?

WB: Yeah, that’s correct.

GR: So, I guess what I'm taking from this, then, is that you are a lawyer, and you've had a law career so that that was going to constrain your ability to push out on your law career, is that what you mean?

WB: Yeah, I'm involved in a number of different things, but yes. So, there is, you know, Mrs. Barclay would like me to earn more money. (laughter) I think anybody's family would like to see spouses, you know, earning more money. So, again, that played a role. But I don't want to overblow that, even though I do find that outside income limitation, really a misdirection by the state and bad public policy. You know, we have public financing of campaigns, now we're going to have full time legislators. And what you're going to see is full dependency by members of the legislature on leadership, because they control all that power. And if you don't have enough income or outside job, you're less willing to take, in my mind, risk. And this was never meant to be a full-time legislator. In my mind, I think it's important that we can attract people with backgrounds, you know, with all different occupations. And I worry that, you know, making this a full-time legislature just will not attract maybe some of the people that I think would be very helpful to good government and legislators. But I don't want to dwell too much, because that was a bit. I’m (unintelligible) it didn't play any role, it did play some role. But, you know, I could have gone on for 2 or 4 more years with, you make a very good salary in the Assembly, so it wasn't like we're going to be impoverished by any sense of it, but it did drive me. And one thing, Grant, it did point to sort of a bigger issue that, you know, I've had frustration with all my time serving down there, but I think it's become more acute over the years is the one-party rule. And we hear a lot about the Republicans drifting right. You know, I don't change my ideology. A few issues I've changed on, some to the left, frankly, and some to the right. But, generally I've had my same beliefs since I've been down there. Where I've seen the biggest drift is from the Democrats moving more to the left and that's because it's hard to have a check on that, because, you know, they control the Senate, they control the Assembly and they control executive branch. So, it's been very hard. And that frustration has probably grown in me over the last few years. And that's another reason I think maybe someone new in my position can give a different, maybe it’s perspective or a different fight than I've been doing. Not that I think I did a bad job, but again, I think some new blood, can re-energize things which I fully support.

GR: Well, you know, it's interesting, this is not about you now, with the income. I'm thinking about it more generally, but you brought up something I hadn't thought about, of creating a lack of something to fall back on if you're in the legislature and thinking then about this needing to be your career because you're doing it, not only full time, but it is your entire livelihood. And what just went through my head really quickly was thinking about Congress. Members of Congress know when they get out that they've got, they can take that time in Congress and leverage that into something that they can make quite a bit of money at. And we see all sorts of former members of Congress doing that. I guess that's less true for the state legislature. And so that's a yeah, I hadn't thought about the way it might affect things differentially in that regard. It's an interesting point. Well, let me ask you about some of the positive things, and then I do want to dive into some of the things that you just brought up where your frustrations have been. But what do you think you're going to look back most fondly about your service in the state legislature? What’s going to rise to the top of your fondest memories?

WB: Well, I'll talk public policy and some of the successes we had there. But I think what, you know, I went down there, I thought I would serve six years and here I am serving, by the end it’ll be 24 years. And, you know, the reason being is because I love the people that I was able to work with. And I love my colleagues on both sides, I mean, many on both sides of the aisle. So, I ended up making friendships a lot more deeper than I thought, maybe when I first went down there in the first few years that I served that ended up, I think, keeping me there longer than maybe I initially thought I would, so that was good. I think from a public, one thing I love, I love this area. As I've told you many times, I'm 8 generations, so I'm not moving out of the area. My boys are ninth generation, they love here. I love trying to help my area, Oswego County, particularly is where I'm from, Pulaski. So, you know, I look back and some of the successes, some of the things I've been able to accomplish for the area, and that makes me very proud and makes me think my time in politics was worthwhile. Probably on the apex of all that is being able to save the Fitzpatrick nuclear plant. Albeit I didn't do that alone, but I certainly played a, I think a large role in able to save that end up saving thousands of jobs. And lo and behold, look, now we're even looking at possibly getting another new plant here in Oswego County. So, you know, if I had to point to one thing that, I guess I would say was probably my greatest success or the thing that brought me the greatest happiness in the whole thing was saving that plant. There's a lot of other things, being in the minority, I was like, you know, I didn't have the opportunity to pass a lot of state-wide type of legislation, but I can point to a number of things that either we were able to stop or get reform on that I'm also very proud of because I thought the best I could, I was able to use the bully pulpit to sometimes be able to either stop legislation or shame the Democrats into making changes to that legislation. So, there's a whole host of things I'm very proud of during my career and made it all, for me, made it all worthwhile doing it. Even though people often say, you know, you're in the minority, you can't get anything done. I never, like, took that to heart. You can. You just have to have a realistic perspective on it and not think you're going to be able to change the world in a day.

GR: I'm Grant Reeher, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, and my guest is New York State Assemblyman Will Barclay. So, in a similar vein there, thinking about the institution itself, the way the institution works. What do you think your biggest impact was as minority leader on either your conference or the Assembly more generally?

WB: Well, I can speak very easily on my conference. One thing I saw when I came in, and some of this started with the prior leader too, but we wanted to become more professional. I wanted to have our members be able to have an in-depth understanding of all the issues, so when they were questioned on it or when they had to make a decision on how to vote or what to support, they had all that information at their fingertips. And, you know, one thing I'm again, very proud of, again, I didn't serve in any other conferences in Albany, but I think we brought some professionalism to this operation. And again, it wasn't just me, it was a whole team that was able to do it that I think our members are probably as well informed as any other legislators in Albany. So, I'm very proud that I also think I left a unified conference. Sometimes regional and ideological differences can really weigh on a conference, but at least in my feelings, maybe you could ask some of my fellow members of the council, they may disagree, but I feel like we're very unified going into, and it's necessary to do it because, again, our voice has been diminished as Republicans in Albany. So, if we're not all singing from the same hymnal, it's very hard to get a point across. And I would also extend that to the Senate Republicans. You know, in the past there has been differences between the Senate and the Assembly Republicans mainly because Republicans used to be in the majority, but, we've been able to work very effectively together, I think, over the last few years. And I'm very proud of that relationship too.

GR: Well, you mentioned that your views, some of your views changed over time while you were serving there, and some of them, you said, even moved to the left from where they were originally. I'm going to frame this a little differently and say, when you look back, what do you think was the most significant thing? Or issue that you were, at the time, wrong about as you look at it now?

WB: Yeah, I can think of two things. One, this may not seem as big and probably for younger listeners, they might not even recognize it, but the indoor smoking ban was something that I didn't support. But, personally, it turned out great. You know, I love to be able to come home from a restaurant or somewhere or not smell like smoke. And I didn't realize maybe that impact that it would be afterwards. But, you know, I often concerned my ideological standpoint about the heavy handedness of government, but that was one, I think if I could do over, I probably would vote for. Another big one is gay marriage. And I think that's the country's evolved substantially and I think our party has evolved substantially since that vote. But that was another one that I voted opposed to, and maybe if it was today I might not, you know, I probably I would support gay marriage.

GR: Interesting. I tell you on the first one, I appreciated that the first time I, through several summers I worked in London for a good chunk of the summer. And the first time I went over there and I went into a pub, it was like, oh my God, you know…

WB: Right.

GR: Where is this fog coming from? And it was secondhand smoke. And I remember I just realized how much I appreciate that.

WB: Yeah, it's shocking, isn't it? I mean, you go to some other states or places and it is, it's almost unbearable.

GR: Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with New York State Assemblyman Will Barclay. The Pulaski Republican who represents the 120th district, served as minority leader of the chamber until just the other week. And he's announced that he will also not be seeking reelection to the Assembly this coming November. And we're discussing his career and some of the things that he will most take with him when he leaves the institution. So, I wanted to come back and ask you a bigger picture question. It's kind of related to some of the themes that you introduced earlier, and I hope here I don't veer off too much into editorializing, but it does strike me that with your retirement, what we have is yet another loss of a particular kind of conservative, a particular kind of Republican that New York used to be famous for and used to excel in. And here's my description of it, and then you can tell me if I've got you wrong and, attach another question to it. But it's a mold of a principled fiscal conservative who doesn't get worked up too much over social issues, isn't a barn burner in that regard, wasn't always entirely predictable politically, and who could talk across the aisle, work across the aisle, and again, as I said before, wasn't really a political bomb thrower. So, two questions here. Do I have you about right? And then my bigger question is, is this political species or subspecies endangered in New York or worse, is it becoming extinct? What's going on?

WB: Well, it's interesting, I think there's a lot of maybe answers I could give to that. You know, again, as I said, you know, I think I stay pretty ideologically similar to when I started my career, other than a few issues here and there where I haven't been. You know, I don't consider myself maybe a bomb thrower, but I certainly believe that I speak as loudly as I can on issues that I strongly believe in, and I encourage Republicans to continue to do that. Maybe where you might see a little difference in me and maybe some others in the Democrat or Republican Party is, I never took anything personal, really, Grant. You know, I see my colleagues, particularly from the city, who have just really very, very different political views than I have, but they're representing their constituency, and they're trying to do what they think is best for their constituency, so I never take that personally. Sometimes, personalities and people bring in different, you know, things, unfortunately, it's just not my personality for that. I think I can see, even though I disagree and don't always understand where they're coming from, at least can understand that perspective. I think things have changed in politics, and maybe I am becoming (unintelligible) or maybe that's why it's good that we'll have new leadership in the Republican Party. But, you know, the social media aspect of it, the soundbite aspect of politics, that has certainly accelerated over the last several years, so it's harder and harder. I remember when I started to put a press release out and probably get some coverage on it. Now you really have to do social media, you have to react quickly. And sometimes I think with that quick, fast reaction, you don't always get maybe careful consideration of the issues, unfortunately. And then you're kind of stuck on a train going down a rail. So, I still think, you know, I wince a little bit when people say, well, you're not really a bomb thrower. I’m not a bomb thrower, but I certainly hope people know I spoke loudly down there, and I fought for the issues that I strongly believe in, and I certainly didn't shy away from any debate on those issues and I'm still willing to enter that fray. But yeah, one, I didn't make it personal, so I think that might differentiate me from some. And maybe my ability to react quickly isn’t as strong, or my willingness to do that is probably less than maybe some other elected officials on all sides, both sides of the aisle.

GR: Interesting. Okay, thanks. Getting back to something that you were talking about earlier as well, sort of where the state is going politically, where it is. The question I wanted to put to you - the states lost three congressional districts in the last two censuses. It's on track to lose two more in the next one in 2030. So, we will have gone in New York from a peak of 45 seats way back in the 1940s to 24 after 2030, in all likelihood. Do you think there's ever going to be a serious reckoning with this in Albany? I mean, in the broadest respects, it does seem like the state just keeps doing what it's been doing in terms of spending and taxes, it sets a new record every year. When is this going to get a serious look?

WB: Well, I'm hoping this next election, frankly. And maybe that makes me the optimist here, but, yeah, it's tough to say. I think as you continue one party rules from I mean, just from 2020, I think to 2024 we lost 900,000 people in New York, so something's not going right. And, you know, I lay the blame on the feet of the one party rule in Albany. You know, they talk, let's take affordability. You know, we hear more and more about affordability. The governor certainly mentioned it a lot in her State of the State, she's mentioned it on the campaign trail everywhere. But I don't see anything coming out of her office or out of either the majorities in both the Senate Assembly that really is addressing affordability. And so what we see is more, for instance, you know, environmental type, sticking with the environment, for one, you know, every year there seems to be onerous types of mandates coming down to electrify things or go to non-fossil fuel based generation. Well, there's a cost to all this. And now people are starting to wake up and they see their utility bills skyrocket. And of course, you know, the Democrats will blame everything. They blame the president, they blame greedy utilities, you name it. But ultimately, if anybody looks at it, it's really because of the policies that were created in Albany that have a huge expense to them. And it’s not just environment, there an issue of health care you could go down, you know, any almost anything out there, housing, you name it, is because of a lot of policies that we pass in Albany. I always say these things, you know, theoretically may sound good, but we don't pass laws in a vacuum and there are real world consequences for some of the stuff we do, and those real world consequences are coming home to roost. So the challenge Republicans have, we've always had is probably, maybe, the ability to point where and why those problems are happening. I think one of the challenges we have is, unfortunately, in my opinion, Democrats now control a lot of institutions in New York and across the country, whether it's not for profits, whether it's higher education or any education institution for that matter, the media all tends to be, and I don't want to sound conspiracist, I mean, this is just the reality I think we deal with, tend to be left wing. So, it's very hard for Republicans to get a counter message out. So, every time I've run, and I've had an opponent, Grant, that my opponents always run on the issues that I have run on and basically run on the same message that I've run and they've just been able you know, they can, I've been successful because I happen to be in a, you know, pretty good Republican district, but they tend to run on our issues. And then people say, oh yeah, he cares about or she cares about affordability. But ultimately they go down and they vote on these things and they'll give a good reason why they want to vote on these things. But, that whole affordability or any of those types of consequences of those policies seems to go out the window.

GR: Do you think it has something to do with upstate / downstate? Downstate often gets blamed for this, too. And I was thinking about this and I was thinking, well, New York City needs a thriving New York State and if there continues to be outmigration from the state, eventually it's going to turn around and bite New York City, even though New York City may not be experiencing that outmigration. Is it, do you put it more at the party level versus urban, suburban, rural?

WB: Well, I think that definitely plays a role. I mean, there's no doubt that the stronghold the Democrats hold in New York City allows them to be on the offensive upstate, you know, in a real political type manner. You know, so, you know, they have districts down there, I think they have something like 40 or 45 assembly districts with 90 plus Democratic registration. You know, that's almost as much as we have as a Republican conference in the Assembly. So that just gives them the ability to be on the offensive in so many other areas. Now, you asked me, do we have any hope for things changing? I think so, because we've been able to pick up five seats in the city that maybe, you know, even eight years ago, we would never have a dream of picking up those seats. So, there is some realization of the problems that have been created by these policies, but, it's still very hard. So, yeah, from a, just a political ability to get things, they start with such a bigger base than a Republican does upstate. And unfortunately, a lot of the population loss is our base. It’s a lot of rural areas that are losing their population that maybe traditionally voted Republican. So that compounds the challenge or the problem.

GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is New York State Assemblyman Will Barclay. We’ve got about, only about four minutes left or so but I want to try to ask you some more personal questions, if I can. And I apologize that I'm not going to be able to give you very much time to dig into these. The first one is, you mentioned your age originally when we were talking earlier, you know, you recently turned 57. In politics these days, that's actually pretty young. You also recently turned down an offer to run for lieutenant governor. So, what, if anything, might be next for you politically, do you think?

WB: Well, I'll never say never, Grant. And, you know, I'm happy to stay in the fray. I still, again, love this area and still want to fight for it. So, I don't have any political aspirations going to, you know, maybe some would say Congress would be a logical step, but that doesn't interest me at all at this time. But again, who knows? Things change. I'll never shut the door and I’ll always consider it, but it really comes down to, one, is it right for, you know, me personally and my family, but also, do I think I would be the best person to, you know, fight for the issues that I believe in.

GR: And what would the 34 year-old Will Barclay, that's how old you were when you started in this position, be most surprised about the political career of the 57 year old Will Barclay?

WB: Well, one, I never thought I'd be in the politics this long. So that's probably the biggest eye opener would be for me. I never expected that I would have the honor of serving as the leader of my conference, so that was the other kind of eye opener, you know, circumstance I would be if I was 34, now. But, I don't know, I would hope, you know, I had a lot of optimism when I came into office. I still have optimism, it hasn't worn me down that much. But ultimately, you know, it's public service. And I hope, you know, if I was 34, I would still be willing to take up the mantle of public service that I know now as a 57 year old.

GR: Well, that may be a perfect segue to my final question. And that is, what advice, encouragements or cautions would you give to, say, a 25 year-old version of Will Barclay contemplating going into politics right now?

WB: Well, I love that because I do talk to a lot of school groups, I talk to college classes, I have the opportunity. I would say go for it, it's worth it. It can be frustrating as hell, I think is an understatement. But ultimately, anything you can do to help your community, I think fighting for, you know, public policy and issues that you believe in is a very honorable and worthwhile thing to do. And when you see you can make changes, it makes, you know, the, the 23 years, 24 years and I will be doing this all worthwhile.

GR: So, just, we have one more minute, I'm going to follow up on that. And that's that my students, one of the things they tell me about why they don't want to do this is because of the nastiness. And you said earlier you're able not to take it personally and you don't make it personal. What's the secret sauce there in 30 seconds or less for how you're able to do that when other people aren't?

WB: You know, I'm smiling because I remember when I first was going to run. There used be a blog, believe it or not, and I don’t know if there’s even blogs around anymore, that was ultra made everything personal, ultra critical of, it would have been me and everybody. I said, my God, I'm not going to be able, this would be too much. You get thick skinned after a while. It doesn't bother you as much, and sometimes it can be very funny. So, I think all the benefits of doing it and being in that arena far outweigh the negatives, and there are a lot of negatives, but I don't want anyone to be naive about it. But again, it's a worthy undertaking in my opinion.

GR: Well, one of the pastimes that you and I share is fishing. So maybe it has something to do with dealing with the disappointments of fishing somehow.

WB: Yeah, exactly right. So what do they say? A day fishing is better than a…

GR: Bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work. (laughter)

WB: Exactly.

GR: Well, unfortunately, I have to leave it there. That was Assemblyman Will Barclay and Assemblyman Barclay I just want to thank you. And if I can, if it's okay, I want to thank, by extension, your late father as well, who I knew, for both of your service that you've given to the state of New York. Very important and should be appreciated.

WB: Well, thank you. And again, thank you for always being a great interviewer. And, you know, you debated one of my, when I was running for the Senate, too, and I always appreciated that debate and that didn't work out the way I hoped it would, but…

GR: But you got a fair moderator. (laughter)

WB: I did get a very fair shake in that, so I appreciate it, Grant. And I hope you won't be a stranger too.

GR: Okay, me too. You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is the pollster, John Zogby. Mr. Zogby is the founder of the Zogby International Poll and with his sons, Jeremy and Benjamin, he serves as senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. He's also the author of a recent book, it's titled, “Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should”. Mr. Zogby, welcome to the program.

John Zogby: Hey, Grant. Good to talk to you again.

GR: Good to talk to you, always good to see you. So, my questions are going to be driven by your book and also your background. They'll also be driven by my own background, as you know, I’m a political scientist. So, I'm going to draw on some of the discussions I hear from my colleagues when we're talking about polls and surveys, get your take on those. And then I also wanted to ask you some questions about some recent survey and poll data that's been out there and has been in the news. So let me just start with a basic question here, one question that always comes up a lot regarding polling in recent decades is how all the big changes in communication technology have complicated it. I mean, let me just throw out a couple things. You know, landlines are basically gone, people don't answer the phones if they don't know who's calling them when they see the number coming in or the person. It may be harder to find certain demographic groups to tap for their opinions and so on. So, I just wanted to get your sense as a pollster, what in your view are the biggest challenges for polling that have arisen since those golden days when we all used to have landlines and answered the phone when it rang?

JZ: Well, of course it's technology and non-response, or low response rates. When I started in business in 1984, response rates averaged 65%. Two out of three that you reach, actually reached by phone we're willing to conduct a survey. However, change has been part of this business from the beginning and the pace of change has increased greatly. So, you know, imagine in the 30s, 40s and 50s, folks like Gallup and Roper and Harris would develop sampling points throughout the United States, identify people in each of those sampling points to travel to those sampling points, mail envelopes to them with survey questionnaires, instructions on First and Elm Street, fifth door on the left-hand side, and conduct the survey over 3 to 6 weeks, mail the surveys back. And that's, you know, providing everything that went out came back, then you'd get results. Well, our world got faster, things move more quickly. We moved to the telephone. As you pointed out, that was a perfect world. 95% of people had a landline telephone and socially, they welcomed a long-distance call, making them feel important. And then that all dissipated. The answering machine, *69 when they would call you right back and find out who you were, call waiting, that sort of thing, and we had to adjust. You know, by the mid to late 90s, response rates had plummeted to 15%, in major metropolitan areas, 7%, 6%. So, we have always had to adjust. The internet was not welcomed just as, incidentally, the telephone wasn't welcomed in the beginning. How are you going to know who you're talking to? Same thing with the internet. And now, of course, you know, technology has changed rapidly and people who conduct polls can't wait 3 to 6 weeks. Frankly, Grant, they can't wait 3 to 6 days. They want their data and analysis right away. We've had to make those adjustments. So, for every advance, and it has been an advance, there have been detractors.

GR: So let me ask you a question about the phones specifically and how things work today. Has there been discussion, among you and your polling colleagues about simply just moving away from phones entirely to, say, the internet? I'll just tell you, political science research in recent years has essentially done that. That all political science survey is done by the internet, but that has introduced a whole new set of problems. But how are you folks dealing with it? What do you do with that?

JZ: We have well, we had a very large 124 phones call center in Utica. We don't have that anymore, we farm it out, you know, to call centers. I mean, that's obviously one change, but we encourage as much to be done by internet, by email as possible. We also use text to web, so we'll send out emails, we'll also send out texts, but ultimately inviting people to a secure web site to conduct the poll. To answer your question directly, there are still some applications where you really can only do it by phone. If it has to be spontaneous, if it has to be ultra confidential, not to say that the internet can't be confidential, but there are applications, very small areas or very targeted audiences, you know, may require the phone. But I would say, you know, of our survey work, 85%, 90% is online.

GR: I'm Grant Reeher, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, and my guest is the pollster, John Zogby. He's the author of a recent book titled, “Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should”. So, polling regarding the elections always involves this subset of people that are called likely voters, whether that's likely voters in a primary or likely voters in a general election. How do pollsters identify those people, and does that introduce some kind of inevitable error or challenges? I'm remembering, I think I'm remembering this right, but you correct me, I believe that was one of the problems in the early polling that thought Dewey was going to beat Truman, right? Was the guess about who was going to be voting in that election. So how do you folks deal with that?

JZ: Well, first of all, that's 1948, a long time ago. And, the last polling was done two weeks to ten days before the election. And so, those who have read about it or may even remember it, that's when Harry Truman was on his famous whistle stop, and he had built momentum at the top, you know, two weeks before the election. He felt he was going to lose the election. That's why he manically, you know, traveled throughout the country. ‘Give ‘em Hell, Harry!’. And so, there was the issue of timing as well. And to a great degree, there still is the issue of timing. So, first of all, likely voters we ask, we have 3 - 4 question screen that we use to determine if they’re likely voters. Now, of course they could be lying, but it has served us well. You know, what does anybody get out of lying to a pollster? And then how do they create a conspiracy of a thousand people who are also lying? That's, it doesn't happen. You know, I think folks like to beat up the polls and say, oh, you were five points wrong. But when you're talking to 1500 people, five points wrong ain’t so bad. You know, when you think about it, you at least get a direction. So yeah, we poll likely voters when it comes to politics and policy because they're the ones that matter.

GR: And you mentioned some of the pollsters getting beaten up recently. And I wanted to ask you kind of a more specific version of that. There has been a lot made of the supposed inaccuracies of polling in very recent years, and particularly regarding Donald Trump and elections that either he's in or he's been heavily involved in. And there's been a lot of different kind of effects that have been hypothesized to be going on that might be driving some of that, maybe people, you know, a bias and who's responding and not responding. And like you said before, maybe not necessarily a conspiracy, but a general sense of, you know, I'm going to tell the pollster some garbage because they don't like Donald Trump or whatever. What do you think's going on there? Is there anything real in that? Is there a Donald Trump effect of some sort?

JZ: No, I don't think so. I think if we close our eyes and picture, you know, the red, ‘Make America Great’ cap again, Donald Trump has a lot of people who are ready to jump and scream and write and attend rallies and be proud that they're for Donald Trump. That secret Trump effect, maybe you could have said at one point on college campuses. A professor may not have seen it in his or her best interests to be wearing a MAGA cap, or to sit at lunch, in a...

GR: (laughter) That's putting it lightly. I can tell you from my experience at the university. Not that I would put on a MAGA cap, but I could just tell you if someone did, their life might be in danger. But anyway, go ahead.

JZ: But, you know, there hasn't really been anything measurable. Donald Trump finishes strong. And the thing is, many of the pollsters conduct their last poll Friday or Saturday before the election. I try to keep the lights on longer, so I'll go till Monday night. Sometimes I've even gone into Tuesday morning, meaning, of course, Election Day to capture that last minute spark or whatever happens, or the last-minute lack of spark where you begin to see. Let me give you a prime example, you know, in January 2008, the focus in New Hampshire was Obama having won the Iowa caucuses against Hillary. And usually a candidate gets a big, huge bounce after Iowa, and then there's two weeks into New Hampshire. This one year, Iowa was on Thursday and New Hampshire was on Tuesday. And so, there was momentum up to Obama, you know, by Sunday night leading by 12 points. And then, Monday night, Obama is still leading by 12 points, we get to 5:00 and our last 125 calls had Hillary leading by six. So now what do I do? You know, do I report that, or do I do what the responsible thing is? It's a running average. I've got to average the previous 24, 36 hours in with that and I still came out with an Obama double digit lead. Hillary won by six. And so, we all got it wrong, we all got it wrong. And part of the problem is, there are some folks who love to bash the pollsters, you're only as good as that last number you put out. No nuances. Those are seen as excuses.

GR: Well, so quick follow up on that and then we'll have our break in the middle. But, so just to clarify, you do not think though, as I have often heard and read in the media, that there is a systematic underreporting of Donald Trump's support in polls, not approval rating, but you know, trying to predict what the voting outcome is going to be.

JZ: I do not. But there is a noticeable difference between our polling and a few others, and other polling, mainly like the networks and so on, over-representing Democrats under-representing Republicans.

GR: Interesting, okay. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm talking with John Zogby. The pollster is the founder of the Zogby International poll, and with his sons, Jeremy and Benjamin, he serves as a senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. He's also the author of a recent book, it's titled, “Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should”. I want to, John, to pick up on the point that you made, which was that the mistake that pollsters tend to make these days is not the one that I had identified in terms of some specific Trump effect, but rather they oversampled Democrats as opposed to Republicans. Why is that happening? What's going on there?

JZ: Initially, it was a demographic thing. Back in the 80s, you are more typically a Democrat as a blue collar person and as somebody who, not afraid to share opinions and wanted to feel important that somebody was asking you. Republicans more than likely to be, you know, suburban, professional, and not wanting to be bothered on the telephone. The interesting thing is, though, that I determined that an adjustment needed to be made for a political party. That we were getting, maybe 1 or 2 points more Democrats, maybe 2 or 3 points fewer Republicans, that's a 5 or 6 point swing. And given the fact that 90% of self-identified Dems are going to vote Democrat, then same thing with Republican, that could impact the election result. What I was finding in my colleagues and I mean, the top of the line colleagues, was that they were coming in with 15, 16, 17 point swings, like 42, 44% Democrat when it should have been like 36, and 28% Republican, 24% Republican. And you know, that bothered me, because that was really skewing the results. There was a seeming real Democratic bias in it. And there were two implications. One was folks at the New York Times told me they used out of work actors and artists on the telephone to make their calls, and immediately, boy, you know, some middle class, some blue collar woman would say, “ Good afternoon, I'm doing...”

GR: Right, right.

JZ: The other thing is that, personally, I'm a progressive Democrat. My firm has always, I hope, been independent. And I became, like, the darling of Republicans.

GR: For pointing this out.

JZ: For pointing that out. And Rush Limbaugh and the New York Post and all of that, you know, adopted me. It was said at one point that Republicans are going to be naming their firstborn, Zogby at some point. And it stuck in my craw a little bit, but that was the honest thing, that it was more of a demographic and partisan thing, and not based on whether the candidate was black or, like the Bradley effect that we talked about or Obama effect or the Trump effect that they talk about now.

GR: That's fascinating. And, well, you also have to remember, John, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and so that's why that happened. But it's fascinating that political polarization amplifies this problem. I hadn't really, I hadn't made that connection before. Political polarization is just involved in so many different things, it's fascinating. Let me move to a different kind of polling, which is approval ratings and President Trump's recent approval ratings, in particular. They've been very low, dipping below 40% in some recent surveys. Is there a particular number regarding those that suggest either a tipping point or an inflection point? Is there like a panic level for Republicans in terms of Trump's approval rating and have they hit that?

JZ: Well, generally, if you hit, you know, in the high and mid-30s, that's the real trouble. That's on the surface. When you look at those numbers, though, and you see that Trump was elected with over 50% of the vote, that's the second real trouble. That means he's dropped 17 points. When you realize that 42% is the MAGA base, and there are polls that have him well under that MAGA base and getting trounced among independents. You have to ask, where is he going? Where's he going with numbers like this? So, it's more a dynamism than it is a hard and fast rule.

GR: Right, placing it in context like that, yeah, that's a very good point. You know, I'm sure you saw this, Gallup recently announced that it's no longer going to do its regular approval ratings of the president. It’s been used for so many years, 88 years, I think, and they're going to stop that for other officials as well. What's going on there? What do you think is happening?

JZ: Well, you know, several years ago, after the aggregators, you know, the Nate Silver’s, the Real Clear Politics of the world where they aggregated averages of polling and waited for certain track records and so on. The focus became too much on, did you get the election right to the percentile or did you get it right within a point and a half? A whole point and a half. And Gallup said that they weren't going to do the presidential horse race anymore because they were tired of being embarrassed.

GR: Okay.

JZ: Pew followed with the same thing. Now you won't see any daily tracking from any of them. Now, you're not going to see anything from Gallup, I think Pew will follow shortly. I stopped, doing, you know, the daily tracking or the frequent polls. Number one, we didn't need it anymore and number two, like Gallup, I didn't need anybody telling me, oh, you got the last election within 1.8, that placed you 23rd among pollsters for having a 1.8 differential between your polling and the final result. So, the focus became too much on, I think the Icarus syndrome. The aggregators had a few elections where they flew too close to the sun and, you know, this kind of science I don't think was ever designed to tell you exactly how much the election, down to the 10th of a percent. I was fortunate to get a lot of those right, but I don't consider myself wrong if I'm off two points.

GR: Gotcha, yeah. Well, yeah, the point prediction problem. I assume, though, that there will be organizations that will tell us how many people, or what percentage of people are approving of Donald Trump, right? That information will not be lost to us completely, correct?

JZ: No, it won't, but there is a further problem, and I promise I'll take 30 seconds on it, and that is the standard deviation. So, we're getting at a 42% average when you'll have five polls that have 47%, that neighborhood, and five polls that have 36-37%. That's not the way you should be getting a mean, you know, of 42 or 43%. You should have them mainly clustered around that average number, then here and there, an outlier. So, I believe what's happening is you've got polls with a distinct Democratic bias, polls with a distinct Republican bias, and what they're doing is they're coming up with, I think, what is an artificial average.

GR: Very interesting. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and my guest is the pollster John Zogby. Let me ask you one more question in this vein, then we'll turn to something else. But the generic ballots, these are, you know, if the election were today and all you knew was one candidate was a Democrat and the other one was a Republican, who would you vote for? And they're heavily used in the midterms, and they've, been a lot of discussion about these in recent weeks that the Democrats have opened up, you know, a pretty good lead, historically, over the Republicans. I think it's ranging from, you can correct me if I'm wrong, like 3 to 6 points right now, depending on who's doing it. Does that spell real trouble for the Republicans in the 2026 midterms?

JZ: Yes, today it does. So, let's look at that generic ballot. It's not the greatest measurement, but it is very useful. And overall, because of gerrymandering and because of Republican domination of state legislatures who do the reapportionment every ten years, the Democrats need to lead by four and a half to 5% to be nationally, to be in the territory where they're gaining seats. So right now the average is at about 5% lead, which means they're not in comfortable territory, but they're in, you know, they're heading in that direction. When you add to that, though, the special elections that they have won, or at the very least overperformed, say in very red districts, Trump may have won the district by 20 points, Democrat lost in a special election for whatever it is, state legislature by four points. Then you're seeing that, and I think that's mainly on the basis of independent voters swinging way over to the Democrats now. But there's a long way to go, a long way to go.

GR: Interesting, yeah. I'm thinking of the special election in Tennessee where Matt Van Epps won, but it was much closer than expected. So, we've got about, oh, really just a couple of minutes left, unfortunately. I could talk to you all day about this stuff, but, in a couple of minutes left, I want to turn to a couple of things that come more specifically out of your book, and I'll start with the title. If you could briefly just tell us, other than the fascinating conversation we've had so far, why should citizens pay attention to all these polls?

JZ: Well, I think we want to feel connected. We want to feel that, hey, this is my opinion, but is the majority with me? Is the minority with me? Am I part of a very vocal, intense minority? But I want to feel connected. I want to know where my opinions stand as far as the Main Street is concerned. And, you know, secondly, I do want to have some kind of an idea of who's ahead. I don't need to know who's winning, or going to win, not this early, but, you know, have some sort of an idea where voters nationwide stand. That is supposed to prevent the notion, oh, he'll never win, nobody at the barbershop supports him.

GR: I see.

JZ: Which usually is translated into, nobody in America supports him. Why? Because I was at the barbershop.

GR: Right. Or my grandmother or whatever.

JZ: My grandmother, who was usually, you know.

GR: Right. So, we've only really got a minute left. I mean, these are going to have to be sort of our lightning round. What was your worst mistake as a pollster? I know there's a longer story there, but what was your worst mistake? You're very open about your mistakes.

JZ: My 2004 election had the numbers absolutely correct, Bush over Kerry. I thought Kerry was going to win and said so.

GR: Interesting, okay. Finally, things pollsters hate, you've already indicated why, but I do want you to make some just one word point predictions for 2026 midterms. In the House, who comes away with the majority? How many seats?

JZ: As of today, Democrats 20-plus seats.

GR: Wow. That's a big shift. And then what are the chances, percentage-wise, in your view, that Democrats could retake the Senate?

JZ: Less so than the House, but I think it's, I think they're both in play. In fact, there’s some, you know, some new races that weren't expected.

GR: Interesting, interesting. Okay, I’ll have to leave it there. That was John Zogby, and again, his recent book, it's titled, “Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should”. John, thanks again for talking with me, this is fascinating. I had fun and I also got better informed, thank you.

JZ: Thank you. Grant.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.