What Is It Like to Run for Office?: Wendy Davis
August 29th, 2024
”Giving voters a viable choice, a different choice was really important.”
We discuss what it takes for citizens to take action and run for elected office. Wendy ran as a Democrat in Utah because she wanted to give voters a viable, different choice. She knew it was going to be difficult to win as a first time candidate, but she ran so hard that she left a body mark in the wall. She lost by a mere 78 votes.
Wendy Davis is a former candidate for Utah House of Representatives and the author of The Fight You Don’t See – an honest memoir about her campaign.
Wendy’s civic action toolkit recommendations are:
Vote and encourage other people to vote
Work or volunteer for a candidate during an election year
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Wendy Davis
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer: Zack Travis
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Wendy Davis Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:00] Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like us the resources once reserved for big business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/hopeful. All lowercase.
Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
It's 2024 and the future of America is in your hands. Democracy is not a spectator sport, so we're here to bring you an independent perspective about the election this year and empower you to challenge the status quo.
Our beat is to talk to Citizen changemakers, people who take civic action. So we're always thrilled to be speaking with someone who has run for office at the state level. Our guest is Wendy Davis. She ran for Utah House of Representatives in 2020 and is the author of The Fight You Don't See, a brutally honest memoir about her race.
Welcome, Wendy. Thank you for joining us.
Wendy Davis: [00:01:20] Thank you for having me. It's a delight.Mila Atmos: [00:01:24] Congratulations on the memoir. It's really, really eye opening. You are clearly motivated by doing the right thing, asking hard questions and not backing down. You also have a lifelong passion for public service, and you even have a PhD in political science. So you knew that running as a Democrat in Utah was always going to be a big lift. And from the get go, you had a goal to not lose by a landslide. You are willing to both change the conversation with the constituents in your district and also potentially run more than one time. It takes a person like you to run this kind of race. You decided it was time because you thought that the people were asking for change. What made you think that your district was ready for change at that time?
Wendy Davis: [00:02:11] Well, thank you for the question. You know, first of all, running for office was something that I aspired to do from a very young age. And a lot of life
happens, and it was the right time for me and my personal life. But I was also really leading up to a very specific race that I knew was winnable. So with some background in political science and American politics specifically, I was able to look at the cycles for three races before the one I got into, to actually look at the numbers and look at the data, look at how the incumbent Republican had done in those previous races. Also look at citizen initiatives that had been on the ballot, and I could tell by the results. Even though the Republican had continued to win, the margin was shrinking ever so much, and the district was ready for change. Based on some voter initiatives, my district had voted to approve medical marijuana, to expand Medicaid, for example, so looked like if the right candidate got in at the right time, that district was primed for a change. So that's what motivated me to get in the race.
Mila Atmos: [00:03:16] Oh, great. Clearly you are very thorough, so it's great that you can share this with us, that, you know, you really took the time to understand what the constituents were looking for and what they had already voted on, and it was time to prove the hypothesis. So more concretely, tell us more about the issues that were important to you. What did you want to address that you talked about to the voters? And where did you feel that you could do better than the incumbent?
Wendy Davis: [00:03:41] Really fair question. In Utah, we are a very red state. We have what we call a supermajority in our House of Representatives, which means that it's it's virtually impossible for there to be fair and equitable, balanced politics, that the Republican Party can really just steamroll. And part of my objective was to help break that supermajority, to take away a little bit of power. But the issues that were most important to me, you know, something that I would say at the doors is I'm a mom. I'm a grandma. I care about my children being able to afford housing locally. I care about my grandkids having access to education. I care about taxes. I care about health care issues and really issues that I think resonate with most people, irrespective of party. And a lot of people agree on the issues, is often on the solutions that we disagree upon. So those issues really resonated with the voters and enabled me to have honest and open conversations with them.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:43] So what did you hear when you went door-to-door, when you talked to them about these issues?
Wendy Davis: [00:04:48] Well, interestingly, I ran in 2020, in the middle of Covid, if you can imagine. And that was a challenge. So clearly Covid was on everyone's mind. In fact, it was even a challenge to consider was I going to knock doors or not? I got a lot of criticism for choosing to knock doors in the middle of a global pandemic. And I'm like, listen, I can either sit home and lose or I can knock doors and maybe, just maybe, I'll have a chance. I was very safe about knocking doors, not ringing the doorbell. Stepping off the porch. And a lot of people were home. So I got to talk to a lot of people. And those are bread and butter issues that resonate with a lot of folks. Of course, the pandemic was on everyone's mind. It was also the summer that Black Lives Matter was very active and a lot was going on culturally. So there were a lot of issues on people's mind nationally. But always, always, always those local issues resonate with people. But most people, honestly, in 2020, were very concerned with their personal economy, their future. The global pandemic, in addition to all of those items that I just mentioned and the presidential election, was a massive driver with Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, challenging Donald Trump. So a lot, a lot of things to talk about in 2020.
Mila Atmos: [00:06:04] Yeah, so many things. So now from a distance, what do you think was the most successful aspect of your campaign?
Wendy Davis: [00:06:14] Well, it shouldn't be a shock to anybody who's local, I didn't make it in the legislature, so I can't say that the success of the campaign was to be found in the victory. But there were many, many other successes. I think the success of getting out there, giving voters a viable choice, a different choice, was really important. As you mentioned in your intro, my goal was not to lose in a landslide. That would have been mortifying, embarrassing after having spent that much time, energy, money, and really trying to achieve that lifelong aspiration. And that didn't happen. So the success for me was really creating one more pathway for the next person to come behind me and, and challenge that Republican supermajority in Utah as well. So knowing that, it's really, really hard for a first time candidate to win on their first go around and knowing that there is more work to do. I know that sounds a little strange, but that in and of itself was a pretty big success.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:18] Yeah. Totally agree. Well, you know, not a lot of people would put themselves in that position, right? Where, where they're cognizant that maybe their race would be one of the domino pieces that turns the tide, but maybe not the piece that
actually turns necessarily. So you lost by a mere 78 votes. It was the tightest race in Utah in 2020. For the record, we talk about this all the time on the podcast that local and state races are so tight that every vote counts that it's very important to turn out. So you just talked about your successes, but today, what do you think you could have done differently? On a personal level as a candidate.
Wendy Davis: [00:08:01] Mhm. Nobody has thought more about the aftermath of my race than me. And you know, one of the things I write about in my book is that it was really important to me to have a map of my district. I think a lot of candidates do this. And I went down to my county clerk's office and purchased a map, and I got it laminated, and I drew all of the precinct lines, and I labeled it with every fire station and every shopping mall and every school and every park in my district. And I looked at that map every day, and I made a goal to knock doors in every single precinct. It was always, always, always my intention to do what I call retail politics, which is just get out there among the voters. The end of the day, there were a couple of things that if I could turn back time, right. None of us have that privilege. There were a couple precincts where I wish I had spent a little bit more time when it broke down, Mila, if I had had two more people in every precinct vote for me, I would have won. When you break it down that way. So districts are the main body, and then the precincts are the neighborhoods within that particular district. So when you break it down that way, it's a little bit more heartbreaking and you beat yourself up saying, which of those neighborhoods, which of those voters could I have perhaps talked to a little bit more? So that's something I wish that I had played the politics game a little bit more, if that makes sense. My attitude -- and you'll see I'm a little bit feisty if you read the book and I'm not afraid to call things like I see them, my attitude was always what matters most is what the voters think. Doesn't matter what elected officials think, it doesn't matter what a party thinks. It doesn't matter what other people think. Except it does. And even having a PhD in political science. I missed those cues, if you will. It's one thing to take academia and take the theoretical constructs and then apply them at the ground level. So it was quite a life lesson for me, so I probably would have played a little bit nicer in those political spheres and worked a little bit harder with elected officials to perhaps get some endorsements and gain a little bit of favor there. But I was a newcomer and no one knew me. Those were probably the biggest things, and every candidate who loses in a close race beats themselves up about what could I have done differently. But one of my objectives, one of my friends said to me, at the end of this race, you want to run so hard
that you leave a body mark in the wall? And that's exactly what I did. I ran so hard and left a body mark in the wall that nobody, mainly myself, can say you didn't work hard enough. I did everything that I knew that I could do at the time and just fell short by less than 1%. I think it was even less than half of a percent.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:52] Wow. Wait, so you can't do a recount, in the age of 2020 when everybody was recounting? I'm not suggesting that you should have done that, but I feel like that meets the threshold. Correct?
Wendy Davis: [00:11:02] It does not in the state of Utah, actually. In 20 maybe 16, there was a race that was lost by five votes and then the state law was changed. You have to be within 0.25%. So I missed that recount threshold. I think it would have had to have been about 43 or 45 votes. But I want to be really clear, 2020 was the year that the sitting president of the United States challenged the veracity of free and fair elections, and if anyone in the state of Utah had a cause to challenge the election, it was me. And I didn't because I knew that our systems were fair. I trusted the county clerk. I trusted the process of voting, and it was never in question to me. Was there nefarious activity happening? It just so happened that I needed 78 more votes to win. Yeah, that's that's really as simple as it is.
Mila Atmos: [00:11:59] Right, right. That's fair. Well, I like to say this all the time that the 2020 election was probably the most secure election in our lifetimes, and nobody talks about it in that way. But really, you know, in the middle of a pandemic, the poll workers, the election commissions across the states did a terrific job. And I think we need to remember that going into the election this year in 2024. You mentioned the party politics. We know that democracy and politics are a team sport, and the power structure of the party is a really necessary support system. But actually, the Democratic Party leader of the Utah House refused to publicly endorse you because he was friendly with your Republican opposition, and then party operatives essentially backstabbed you through negative mailing against your opponent. In your case, they actually really missed an opportunity to flip a seat. You got so close, like you said. So we just had a conversation about the importance of political parties on another episode, and our guest said, you know, candidates come and go, but parties are here to stay. Now that we've spoken to several people who have run as Democrats in local or state races, their
common complaint is that the party is not doing enough. Although nobody is quite as honest as you are in your book. What do you wish they had done differently?
Wendy Davis: [00:13:20] It's a fair question and candidates do come and go, but I would also offer that perhaps they come and go very easily because there is an infrastructure and party to support them, right? One thing I write about in my book, and one thing I learned, and I don't know why I didn't realize this. I've worked in the public sector for most of my career, and you're friendly with your coworkers. You care about them. You give them birthday gifts and Christmas cards. And I guess it just didn't occur to me that people who work in the legislature consider each other coworkers and colleagues as well. And there's a protective element there that seem to transcend party lines. And that in and of itself didn't surprise me. I mean, I've worked in and around state legislatures before, but I think what surprised me was that the leader of the party in the House took that stance. Right. And I come from the great state of Illinois, where I grew up and spent most of my youth. I've lived in Utah far longer than I've ever lived in Illinois, but I can't see a party leader from my time in Illinois ever saying to their Republican colleague, "you know, I'm going to back you. I'm not going to back this Democrat because they're new," right? So putting your arm around a new candidate and saying, I've got your back, we're going to get through this together would have been really, really helpful. And so that party structure does matter. But I think it's important for people to understand that there is a dynamic there that the average person might not be exposed to. Really, I know you don't consider it a workplace necessarily, but it really is. And when you add that layer, it gives you a different perspective. And that's what I'm trying to do in my book. It's not a tell all book. It's not a gotcha book. But if you deconstruct the power structures, if you will, and I refer to these as power structures, and a party is a power structure and you call it what it is and you give it definition, then we can have a conversation about it. So that's what I'm attempting to do in some of that. And I thought carefully about talking about that person in particular. They are a public figure. I did name them by name that that actually happened. There are dozens of people who'd heard that story before I ever wrote it down, and I stand by that story. A lot of people fixate on that because it is shocking that the party leader chose to not support me.
Mila Atmos: [00:15:48] Yeah, it really was shocking.
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And now let's return to my conversation with Wendy Davis.
Mila Atmos: [00:18:11] You also talk about other factors that negatively influence your election. There's the way that the media treated your race, the teachers union, which stood apart from other unions that supported you. Talk to us more about what happens behind the scenes? What is the fight that we don't see?
Wendy Davis: [00:18:30] Thank you for that question. And one thing about the title, I titled the book before I'd ever written a word on the page. I needed to anchor to that title. And I thought, what am I trying to expose here? And the fight you don't see really describes it all when it comes to elected politics. I think there is just that proverbial metaphor of the iceberg and what you don't see under the the deep blue ocean. Yes, there were challenges. Again, in politics when different people have worked with other entities like a union, and they've passed legislation that is friendly toward a particular
labor group, teachers, education, they start to build up political and social capital. And I wouldn't call it political favors necessarily. I just think there's a level of trust with that particular person. They know how they work. They know how that organization works. They know together that they can get things done. So the proclivity for an entity like the teachers union who's worked with an incumbent, they're going to keep doing that. They're not going to necessarily give a challenger the chance. And I think the teacher's union endorsement was probably the most challenging for me because education is part of my core. So I had to work just twice as hard when I spoke to teachers. There was a teacher who actually called me one day and said, you know, I see on your literature that you say you're an advocate for education, but the teachers union didn't support you. Why? And we had a long conversation and she said, you know, I'm on an email group, I'm going to email all my teacher friends. So you just have to come at it another way. There are ways to address these various power structures, if you will. And that was one you mentioned. The media. An incumbent lawmaker has media connections. They can call up someone in print or, you know, TV media and say, "hey, there's a story that I think might be of interest to you." And I mentioned in my book, I called it a non-story. This happens in every election. Or maybe people don't know about this. I think it's kind of funny, but there are shenanigans, if you will, with political yard signs. People steal them, people move them. People write nasty things on them. Right? These yard signs have a cost. They actually cost money. It costs time to put them in yards and they mean something to people. Yard signs don't vote, but they are signals to your friends and your neighbors who you're supporting. Right. And so some yard signs went missing of my competitor. And my competitor called the news, and I had not taken the signs, but there was this air of implication that was kind of wafted out there that perhaps I had. And the entire time my name isn't mentioned. My campaign's not mentioned. I was not contacted by the media for comment, and that was my main concern, was that the entire time throughout the campaign, again running one of the closest races in all of Utah, my competitor being an incumbent and having these media connections had more leverage than I did. So the media can be challenging. And even on election night, I write in the book when I was really pulling in the best numbers and shocked everyone, my name was still not mentioned. And my husband turned to me and said, he's not going to mention your name, is he? Meaning the reporter. And I said, they never mentioned my name. And that was the hardest thing is as a challenger, you are just struggling. There isn't equity in races. Incumbents have an advantage. They have an advantage.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:12] Yes.
Wendy Davis: [00:22:12] That's the truth.Mila Atmos: [00:22:13] Yes. I mean incumbency is very strong as an advantage. Absolutely. As you well know, as a political scientist, but also on the media. You know, this idea that media is always two sides. It's it's like just false, right? Like there are two sides in it until they don't, which is to say they don't all the time. So on Election Day, even though you were ahead by 964 votes and the media didn't mention your name, it looked like you were going to win. Two weeks later, you had lost by 78 votes. And in those two weeks, you had to go around again to your constituents to cure their ballots. Obviously only the problematic ones. And so it was grueling work, especially given the heat of the presidential election that year and all the talk of stopping the steal. And you said you ran a classic retail politics campaign with a lot of door knocking despite the pandemic. What did you learn about the voters during that curing period?
Wendy Davis: [00:23:07] So just a bit about curing for those who might not be in a state where this happens. In Utah, we have mail in ballots and we've been mail-in, all mail-in for a long time. We were leading on this, which is kind of interesting because there's a very right narrative, meaning right Republican, even right of Republican, that mail-in ballots aren't safe and secure. We've been doing it long before anybody else has, in a very red state. So because the ballots are mailed in, they have to be postmarked in Utah the day before the election, and then they continue to trickle in. Right. And so if ballots were mailed in like two weeks before, most of those are counted before Election Day, but the numbers aren't dropped, they're not revealed. Nobody knows what the totals are. It's very protected, if you will. And then there are some that kick out. Every ballot is opened, the signature is checked. And if they can't reconcile the signature, perhaps through your driver's license or some other kind of government system, it's kicked back and voters are notified that they need to cure the ballot or reconcile the ballot. So you could get a list from the county clerk and say, you know, here's 38 voters whose ballots kicked out. We're working with them. The party's working with them. But you as a candidate, here's their contact information. And so every single day me, a volunteer, someone on my campaign, my neighbor was coming with me to knock on these doors and remember the election was quote unquote, over and a lot of people's minds. But it wasn't over for me. I'm still fighting for every single vote. As I see these
numbers start to slowly tick away, I'm like, oh goodness, every single ballot matters. And you know, I'd knock on doors after work in the snow and in the cold, and sometimes I'd get to a door and people were like, I'm done. Like "my ballots always counted. I don't believe you. This is part of that steel thing happening." I'm like, "no, no, no, I'm actually the candidate. And if you voted for me, I'm just telling you your vote doesn't count. You can call the clerk. This isn't a sham." But there was a lot of distrust. There was a lot of voter fatigue. The 2020 election was brutal, and if you have a competitive congressional election, which we did, people were just done hearing about the election, and the last thing they wanted was one more political candidate showing up at their door between the vote and Thanksgiving, bothering them. And so there was some convincing that had to happen. But for the most part, voters were great. They were just ready to be done. They were ready to be done. They didn't want to be texted. They didn't want to be emailed. They didn't want to be called. They were just done.
Mila Atmos: [00:25:46] Mhm. So you very narrowly lost. I mean you really, really put a dent into the system and into the perception of what's possible in Utah and what happened next, I was not surprised by this turn of events, but I was nonetheless gobsmacked by the reality of you being cut out of your own district after Utah went through a redistricting process. Of course actually, the Utah voters passed proposition 4 in 2018. So this was before you ran. But the new maps didn't take effect until after they put together, or they voted for an independent redistricting commission in order to stave off partisan gerrymandering. But what followed is not what voters really intended. Tell us the response from the state legislature. And why are the new districts undemocratic?
Wendy Davis: [00:26:41] It's a great question, Mila. You know, gerrymandering is something a lot of voters don't know a lot about, or they know the word and/or there's a couple of key states or races or districts that they really care about. And so in Utah, as you mentioned, the voters in 2018 had voted for something called Proposition 4, and this was run by an organization called Better Boundaries. And the entire construct was the legislature should not be the arbiter of boundaries because they are then politicized and that they should be independent. And that ballot initiative passed very narrowly. Right. It was, it was very, very close. But it did pass. And so in Utah, ballot initiatives don't really have any teeth. Okay. So like in other states like California, they might have a little bit more teeth. But in Utah, since the legislature is truly the only body who can make law, the propositions come to the legislature and the legislature can immediately
amend them. They can rescind them, they can do all kinds of things. So the tenets of Proposition 4 were changed by the legislature. And really, the strength of it at its core was really dismantled. And so when the initiative went forward, there still was an independent redistricting commission, but it was really still only suggestive. The legislature didn't have to take those maps from the redistricting commission. And the biggest challenge for me was that the legislature is also not required to tell the voters in any way how their maps are drawn and the criteria that they use, so it's really just spectacle at this point in time. So again, let's go back to Covid, and 2020 is a census year. So in the year of the census, when there's an enumeration of all United States citizens that helps us know how many... Well, we always have the same number of seats in Congress. But how we draw those boundaries. Some states lose seats. Some states gain seats based on the population shift. Most states then take the opportunity to say, all right, well, since we're redistricting at the federal level, let's do that at the state level. So in Utah, our congressional boundaries are just terrible. I mean, Salt Lake County is the largest county in the state, a little over 1.1 million people, about a third of the population. And all four congressional districts intersect on one street in Salt Lake City, fracturing the most Democratic county in the state, ensuring that there's not a Democrat. So a lot of attention was placed on that federal boundary. But the state boundaries are ones where people don't pay enough attention. So the state boundaries were also affected. And think about this. Think about things that have happened since 2020. Roe versus Wade. Right now, largely, reproductive rights are being decided by states. So you think, oh, these state boundaries, it doesn't really matter. Until it does. And more and more issues being punted back to the states as states' rights issues. And suddenly these state boundaries become even more important. So it didn't shock me that I was quote unquote, cut out of my district. So redistricting happened late because of the delay of the census. We needed census data to be accurate in order to redistrict congressional districts. And then they use that data to also determine state districts. So it didn't happen in 2020 like it normally would have. It happened in 2021, very late in 2021 in Utah, not until November of 2021. Okay, so all candidates are going to file just a couple of weeks later to run for 2022. So for the entirety of 2021, I had no idea what district I was going to be and what House district I was going to be in. And so it did not surprise me that I was cut out of my district. In fact, I took it as a badge of honor. So just to give some perspective, I live 1.3 blocks away from my old district. If I moved two blocks over, I'd still be in my old district. That was intentional. It was absolutely intentional. And to make matters worse, I was redistricted into an incumbent House
district with a Democrat and a Senate district with a Democrat, basically saying, all right, go ahead. You want to do this again, you're going to have to run against one of your own, right? So, you know, I take it as a badge of honor, but I also didn't take it lying down.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:27] Yeah. Tell us more about that, because basically it precluded you not only because you were in a district with incumbent Democrats, but also there is a technicality that basically prevented you from even registering to run.
Wendy Davis: [00:31:41] Yes. Or at least I gave the apparent air that there was a technicality. So the Utah State Constitution says that in order to run in a House district, you have to have lived in that district for six months, which makes a lot of sense, right? You don't want somebody to just coming in as a carpetbagger and and living there for three weeks and running. So when the legislature had created those new state boundaries in late November, and the time that you had to file to run for office in early March, there were not six months there. Right. So there was three months and a little bit. So in reality, all of the new districts did not meet the six month threshold. So the legislature was out of compliance. The law was out of compliance with the state constitution. The two were not reconciled. And a lot of people gave a lot of passes to things during the Covid era. But to me, maintaining the integrity of the law and the Constitution is one thing that should not be given a pass. So my contention was I can't run in my new House district because I haven't lived there for long enough and I live still currently in my old House district. So let me run there. It was intentional to have them deny me the opportunity to run. And my whole point was, you know, your laws aren't fair. They're also not in alignment with the Constitution. So maybe there's a legal way to fight this. And that was the path that I started to go down, was fighting it from a legal perspective.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:18] Yeah. Well, you abandoned that in the end. Tell us a little bit more how you came to this decision in the end, because you tried several paths and you decided in the end, okay, well, I'm going to, I'm going to give it up. But you went, I feel like, you went all the way as far as you could.
Wendy Davis: [00:33:34] I feel like I did as well. And it's very simple reason in the end why we weren't able to pursue it. And it's it's very simple. It came down to money.
Lawsuits are very, very expensive. At the time when I realized that there was this problematic issue between the state law and the Constitution, I'm like, I think there's something there. I got a lawyer. The lawyer was like, there's something there. Got permission to take the case on. Made sure there was no conflict of interest. We had a strategy that I would file to run in a certain district with the intention of being denied to, therefore cause harm and so forth and so on. And when I got into the depths of it and I'm like, all right, you know, there's several thousand dollars of an investment to start this. How much is this going to cost in the end? And when he shared those numbers with me, I took a deep breath and I was like, I need to get back to you because he said, you know, in order for us to prove that there was nefarious intent in cutting you out of your district, we're going to have to subpoena lawmakers because they do this behind closed doors. There's no transcripts, there's no public meetings, there's no public record. There's no documentation of how they drew the lines. And so we are actually going to have to put them in front of a judge and subpoena them. And I was like, and how much is that going to cost? And when I heard those numbers, I'm like, I'm not independently wealthy. And that's a power structure. People who have the funds, the resources to fight, can fight differently than someone like me, who's a fairly average person. I had to to dissolve that relationship with that attorney and say, like, we can't go forward. But I gave it one last shot. I just couldn't let it go because I knew that there was something there. So I called in a friend and said, do we know anybody who might take this as a pro bono case from a constitutional perspective? And the case sat in front of several lawyers for several weeks, and I knew when I hadn't heard back right away that it was likely that they wouldn't take the case, I'd already decided that that was probably the case. And the attorney called me and said, listen, I want you to know we really looked hard at this. We actually think you're right. We just don't think we can win.
Mila Atmos: [00:35:52] Mhm.
Wendy Davis: [00:35:53] And I said you know I think I'm okay with that outcome. I need to be okay with that outcome because I really didn't have any other choice. And that was the time when I felt I'd ran, I'd left a body mark in the wall. I picked myself up. I kept fighting and fighting and fighting, and I needed this fight to be done so that I could release that and move on. And that's the fight you don't see, Mila. That was the fight that I kept fighting for. More than a year after the election results were finalized, to keep fighting not just for myself, but for the fairness of the democratic process. I think it's
patently unfair that lawmakers get to make their own boundaries and that voters are disadvantaged by that. I still have people four years later--just happened a couple of weeks ago, a former voter said, are you going to run again? I've kept your signs in my garage. I said, "oh, I was cut out of the district. I was gerrymandered." No idea. Just no idea. The average person doesn't know the detail that goes into something like redistricting, or what I've referred to in the book is, in my case, gerrymandering.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:03] Mhm. Wow. Well, that's really sweet that this person kept your sign. And I'm not surprised to understand, to find out today, that she did not know that you were redistricted. But now that all of this has happened, now that you've run the race, the redistricting happened, you fought the curing period. All of these things. You talked to thousands of people. How do you feel about democracy now? Like, what do you really feel is at stake in our democracy?
Wendy Davis: [00:37:36] There is so much at stake. The book ends on a very hopeful note. I'm still fighting for candidates for the democratic process, encouraging people to run. I think there's more at stake now than there has been in a while, maybe even in my lifetime. And now is not the time for people to get discouraged and tap out and say, you know, I'm not happy with these candidates, with these choices, with the way things are going. I'm just going to be disengaged. I don't need to vote. My vote doesn't matter. The opposite is true. Now is the time to become engaged, to encourage young people to vote, to not cloak their voices, to not stifle student protests, to not ban books, and to stifle thought. Now is the time to encourage those things for the betterment of our democracy, quite frankly.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:30] Mhm. So we're always trying to bolster our civic action toolkit here at Future Hindsight. What are two concrete things an everyday person can do beyond voting to get civically engaged?
Wendy Davis: [00:38:43] Well, you said beyond voting. But I do want to say this. I think that every person should encourage others to vote, and also make sure that your friends and neighbors, your children, your grandchildren are registered to vote. I see so many young people who have a lot of energy and perhaps are enraged at certain things, but they don't vote. We need to encourage people to vote. And one year -- I can't remember what year it was, probably 2018 -- I told my kids, the only thing I want, I don't
want Mother's Day present. I don't want a Christmas present. I don't want a birthday. I just want you to vote. So on Election Day, they all sent me their "I voted" stickers and they were good for a year. If that's the only gift they give me.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:20] I love that. I love that. Yes. Just vote.
Wendy Davis: [00:39:23] Encourage people to vote. Ask your neighbor. You might be surprised who's not registered and help them to do that. So that's thing number one. The other thing I think people can do in an election season, specifically work for a candidate. And what does that mean? Sometimes they just need somebody to walk with them. They don't need you to say anything. Maybe you can address some postcards. Maybe you can hang some door flyers for them. People get very intimidated about knocking on doors because there's some confrontation anxiety that happens. Pick a candidate that you like. A school board candidate, whomever that happens to be, somebody that you are passionate about, and you have no idea how much it will help bolster their campaign, just really help them on any given day. And everybody can walk with somebody, right? And there's got to be somebody that you're behind at some level of the political election schema in this season.
Mila Atmos: [00:40:13] For sure, especially at the local and state level. And, you know, when you said earlier that when you broke down the numbers, it was two votes per precinct. So all the help that candidates need, they need it. So if you can volunteer, I totally agree with you. People should go out there and volunteer and support candidates who are running. So as we're closing out our conversation here today, looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Wendy Davis: [00:40:40] There's a lot that makes me hopeful. I mean, it seems very cliché, but I do see a younger generation that seems to care about things, right? And maybe not even political things, but they seem to care about their work life balance. They seem to care about their jobs. They seem to care about the cost of food, whether they can afford housing. They might not yet associate those as policy issues. But if we can draw those dots and connections for them and encourage them to get engaged, they will. There's a young man in my local school district who is 19 years old, running for the school board. I am so enamored by him. And he said, "you know, I was just a student. Who knows better than me what students need?" A 19 year old! That gives me
so much hope. My former campaign manager is a young woman and she -- young to me -- she's 30 and she's a city councilwoman in her city, and she's running for county council at Salt Lake County Council, which is... We have a very large county. And and she gives me so much hope. And I see younger people being engaged. I see the student protests in my state for the war and the conflict happening in Israel and in Palestine, and it gives me hope that there's spark in people. And if we can just ignite the spark and not dampen it, like let their spark shine. If you don't agree with them, listen to them, hear them, what makes them fired up, and maybe we can all learn something. Right. That gives me a lot of hope. We need younger people engaged. I think they desire to be and we need to let them. We need to let them be engaged where they want to be engaged.
Mila Atmos: [00:42:30] Mhm. Hear, hear. I totally, totally agree with you. I've had this conversation many times. We need to listen to them, at least hear them out, even if you disagree. Because if you're not at least modeling that to them, then we're really in trouble. You know, I say this to my children all the time. They're 20 and 17. And I say, listen, we're going to disagree with people for the rest of our lives. That's how life is. So we need to practice listening to people that we disagree with because otherwise we're never going to get anywhere. Well, Wendy, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show. Congratulations on your beautiful book. I recommend it to everyone.
Wendy Davis: [00:43:06] Thank you. Mila, it was a pleasure to to join you today and thank you for this conversation. I really appreciate it.
Mila Atmos: [00:43:12] Wendy Davis is the author of The Fight You Don't See, and was a candidate for the Utah House of Representatives in 2020.
Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Lee Drutman. He's senior fellow in the political reform program at New America and co-host of the fellow democracy Group podcast called Politics in Question and author of Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multi-Party Democracy in America.
Lee Drutman: [00:43:45] Our electoral system really limits our choices to only two parties, or in many places, really only one party, and that is a consequence of our use of single member districts, which is a pretty antiquated system of voting. Most
democracies around the world use proportional representation, and the challenge is that this is a diverse and big country. And to tell everybody that you have one of these two choices, neither of which a lot of people feel really represents them, is both demobilizing to a lot of people. And it also exacerbates this binary hyper partisanship.
Mila Atmos: [00:44:30] That's next time on Future Hindsight.
And before I go, first of all, thanks so much for listening. If you liked this episode, you'll love what we have in store. Be sure to hit that follow button on Apple Podcasts or the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app, so you'll catch all of our upcoming episodes. Thank you.
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This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me. Until next time, stay engaged. The Democracy Group: [00:45:27] This podcast is part of the democracy Group.