The Downballot: A crazy Dem special election overperformance (transcript)

Holy moly! Ohio Democrats just turned in an astounding special election performance on Tuesday night—in a conservative rural district they had no reason to think would be favorable in any way. Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard discuss what it means on this week's episode of "The Downballot," including why it's a bad idea to ignore the warning signs that special elections writ large are flashing for Republicans.

We also recap some wild GOP primaries in South Carolina and explain why Democrats should not challenge a successful ballot measure in North Dakota that would bar octogenarians from serving in Congress.

Our guest this week is Pete Maysmith, who runs political campaigns for the League of Conservation Voters, one of the leading environmental organizations in the country. Maysmith tells us about the top environmental issues that motivate voters—and why LCV is also happy to highlight other topics, like the cost of insulin, if it'll help climate champions win. He also zooms in on several of LCV's key target races this fall and explains how addressing climate change can be a winning issue even on red turf.

Never miss an episode! Subscribe to "The Downballot" wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes every Thursday morning!

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

David Beard: Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.

David Nir: And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. "The Downballot" is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency from Senate to city council. You can subscribe to "The Downballot" wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode.

Beard: Another busy election night on Tuesday.

Nir: There was indeed, and we are recapping all of the top races, starting with an unexpectedly exciting special election in a conservative district in Ohio. Then we have several GOP primaries that went all kinds of different ways in South Carolina; some juicy races to cover there. There was also a ballot measure in North Dakota that is a conservative stalking horse to pave the way for term limits.

Then on our deep dive, we are talking with Pete Maysmith of the League of Conservation Voters. LCV announced a plan earlier this year to spend $120 million on the November elections, which makes them one of the biggest players in this space. We have so much to talk about. It is a terrific episode and an excellent interview. So let's get rolling.

Nir: Well, Tuesday was a very fun election night. We have a bunch of juicy primaries to recap, but first there was a special election that really no one expected to be interesting, and that proved to be really, really interesting.

Beard: Yeah, yeah, it is pretty wild. Some election nights, particularly on primaries, you go through and everything happens pretty much as expected. It's pretty boring, and some nights you get something like this where something totally unexpected comes out of the blue.

Nir: Yeah, I absolutely love this. I was having a blast on Tuesday night, so to get down to it, Ohio's 6th congressional district: This is a very conservative slice of Appalachia that has moved sharply away from Democrats over the last 15 years. The seat was vacant because Republican Congressman Bill Johnson left earlier this year to take a job in academia. Democrat Michael Kripchak, despite this district's deeply conservative lean, turned in a massive overperformance compared to the presidential toplines. Now Republican state Sen. Michael Rulli still won the race but by a pretty subdued 55-45 margin. And the thing is, Donald Trump carried this district by a whopping 29 points. So that means Kripchak ran 19 points ahead of Joe Biden here.

Beard: Yeah, that's really a wild number to see. And if you think that maybe Kripchak was an elected official or had some sort of pull, that would mean that, "Oh, everybody knew him." That's not the case here at all. Republican state Senator Rulli was the second-term lawmaker. He won reelection in a landslide in 2022, and meanwhile, Kripchak is an Air Force veteran, which is a great position to run for office, but not exactly makes you well-known. He took a leave of absence from his job working as a waiter at a local restaurant to focus on his campaign. This was clearly somebody who just passionately wanted to make sure there was a Democrat on the ballot, but he came in and did this incredible overperformance.

Nir: Yeah, I mean, the dude is a consultant and works at a restaurant and he took time off from his job just to run for Congress, and this is despite the fact that Rulli obviously crushed him in fundraising. Rulli brought in almost $700,000; Kripchak raised just $20,000, which is a pittance for a House race, but completely understandable given the nature of this district and the fact that no one imagined that this would be competitive at all. And I've also got to say, watching the returns come in on Tuesday night was particularly fun because first you get the big batch of early and mail votes and those are going to favor the Democrats and Kripchak is up by a big margin, but you know that's not going to hold. And then more and more votes kept coming in on Tuesday night and Kripchak still was in the lead, and eventually of course Rulli overtook him, but way later than you would have expected.

And the ultimate result, of course, wound up being far closer than it should have been. And what was particularly funny to me, Beard, afterward Rulli claimed to the Parkersburg News and Sentinel that he expected something like a 10-point race. Obviously that's what you're going to say if you wind up underperforming by almost 20 points. He cited the fact that Democrats used to hold this district, but that's just ridiculous because the last time Democrats won the seat was in 2008; Democrat Charlie Wilson lost in the 2010 GOP wave. So we're talking about ancient, ancient history. And Rulli also said something that really struck me as funny in explaining the outcome. He said, "It's a divided country." Yes, yes, that's correct. It's a closely divided country, but not in your district. Not in your district, dude; you can't compare the two. They have nothing to do with one another. I mean, Joe Biden won nationwide by more than 4%. Trump won that district by 29%. You can't look at one and compare it to the other. Totally, totally different.

Beard: Yeah. It's sort of like if a Democrat had underperformed in Vermont or Massachusetts and been like, "Well, the state has a history of Republican governors, so really I didn't do anything bad." But sure that's true, but it's not really relevant, and anybody who thinks about it for more than a minute realizes how poor this result was for Rulli.

Nir: So Kripchak's performance was actually the best by a Democrat compared to the presidential results in a special election. This cycle, there have been six of them so far, and his 19-point overperformance was the strongest. And also this district is definitely not one that would've looked right for that kind of result. If you follow this sort of meta-narrative around special elections, you might've seen some folks question their predictive value because these special elections tend to attract voters who are on average better-educated than the folks who show up in aggregate for a typical November election.

But Ohio's 6th district has one of the lowest rates of educational attainment in the nation. In fact, it's in the bottom 5% in terms of the percentage of the population that has a college degree. Now, maybe all of those folks with a degree in the 6th district are Democrats. But remember that in 2022, some of the special election results, when of course we saw Democrats suddenly performing very well, were written off because they happened to take place in some affluent and well-educated suburban districts. Ohio's 6th is not a district that you could consider affluent or well-educated. It also has a very large rural component. So the naysayers on special elections are really running out of excuses.

Beard: And I want to take on this whole concept of these high-propensity voters skewing everything that's not a presidential election. And what frustrates me about it is that it's unfalsifiable, and what I mean by that is no result can prove it wrong. If Republicans overperform in a special election, that's just proof that Republicans are doing well and they had some advantage or whatever, but it doesn't necessarily contradict this theory for whatever reason. But if Democrats do well, no matter how well they do, it can always be chalked up to the idea that they're getting an advantage from high-propensity voters showing up or low-propensity voters staying home. And so as a result, special election after special election can go by and it can contradict the theory individually.

You can be like, "Hey, this is a very low education district. Democrats did really well here." It's kind of a struggle to connect those, and they can still be like, "No, if you just think about it was the high-propensity voters, they're the Democrats, they're the ones who voted. That's why there was no overperformance." As a result, there's no way to contradict it until the presidential election because only in this theoretical presidential election where all of these low propensity voters who are very Republican are going to come turn out, can you actually prove or disprove this theory? And so it is very frustrating to talk about and go up against, and it's on Twitter a lot for those of us who are on election Twitter. So I think it's certainly something to keep in mind.

Obviously I do think that there are a lot more college-educated voters who are Democrats, and there are certainly instances where there's greater turnout among that group of people, but it doesn't explain everything. It's not the entire theory of politics. And when democrats overperform to this degree in such a low education district, that's worth looking at and thinking about beyond this one observation.

Nir: That's such a good point Beard. And it reminds me a little bit of these analyses that you sometimes see that are just so racist or nativist in their implications where they say, "Well, if you looked at the results of this particular race but took out New York and California or took out these cities or only looked at white voters." Like, "Jesus. Yeah, okay." I mean, if you're going to decide that that's the legitimate electorate, you're engaging in some extremely troubling assumptions. And yeah, it does feel like these special elections, "Oh, well, they're really Democrat special elections because Democrats do so well with these high-propensity, high-turnout voters." Like, come on.

You can keep writing them off for as long as you like, until really the rubber hits the road in November, like you said. And as we always point out, you can't ever read too much into a single special election, which is why we keep tabs on all of the special elections. This cycle there have been 58 so far both at the legislative and congressional level and in aggregate democrats are running 3.8% ahead of Joe Biden's mark in 2020. And recall that Biden won the national popular vote by 4.5 points in 2020. So that suggests a national environment that's about eight points in Democrats' favor, give or take. And yep, that's very much at odds with the polls.

But as Daily Kos Elections Contributing Editor Daniel Donner has researched extensively historically, there has been a strong correlation between special election results taken in aggregate and general elections for the US House in November of the even-numbered year. Now, maybe this year is going to be an outlier, or maybe that historical correlation will simply come to an end, but at this point, there are going to be almost no more special elections between now and November. So these stats are pretty much locked in, and that means that in five months, we're going to find out which metric was the right one to be looking at all along. But I would just finish on this final note, which is that in 2022, folks who ignored the specials and only paid attention to the polls made a very big mistake in terms of understanding what was going to happen.

Beard: Yeah. And I think elections are great evidence for future elections. We don't get a lot of good evidence for future elections. Polls are useful but imperfect; special elections are also imperfect. And so that's why obviously I think the best thing to do is look at it holistically, look at as much information as you have. But to ignore one of the few real pieces of evidence you could have — which is these special election results, which are actually people going to the polls and voting — I think is very, very silly. So we will certainly continue to look at this as the election gets closer.

Nir: I actually want to throw in one more point. This correlation between special election results and House general election results, it's absolutely fascinating, and we don't really know why this correlation exists. Yes, it is true that the November electorate is going to look different than most of these electorates for these special elections, but the correlation has been there. And so I would say if you are a doubter, if you don't think special elections are valuable, well, then tell us why this correlation happens. It's worth exploring why this correlation exists. And if you think this correlation doesn't matter, then you need to answer why this correlation exists in the first place. I'm interested in the answer too, and obviously I'm a huge proponent of looking at special elections. It's something that we're going to dig into, but I think it's going to take a lot of very deep analytical work to figure it out. For now, though, we know that it has worked in the past and so far no one has come up with a good reason to say why it shouldn't work this year too.

Beard: Now, that was a really, really interesting election to dive into, but there were a lot of primary elections that took place, and we want to hit some of the highlights of those as well. And of course, we want to start in South Carolina where there were a number of important Republican congressional primaries, and we'll start with the first district, which was also the first stop on Kevin McCarthy's revenge tour. It didn't work out so well for him — about as well as his speakership went, to be honest.

Nir: Yeah. So Congresswoman Nancy Mace was one of eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy last fall, and she totally smooshed former state cabinet official Catherine Templeton by a 57-30 margin. McCarthy had spent heavily on Templeton's behalf, but Mace had managed to reinvent herself as a Donald Trump bootlicker after a narrow escape in last cycle's primary when Trump endorsed her opponent. This time she had Trump's endorsement. She also had plenty of money for herself. So yeah, Trump versus McCarthy, Trump won, McCarthy nothing.

Beard: And that's not really surprising to me. And one of the many weird things about Trump is how he likes to get former opponents to come back to his side.

Nir: Oh, yeah, bend the knee.

Beard: Talk about how wonderful he was and bend the knee. Yeah, so Mace is a classic example of that. And so once she proved willing to do whatever it took to get on Trump's good side, he was happy to endorse her and bring her back in; that obviously safely guided her through the primary.

Nir: I want to take a step back for a second, Beard. Think about how fucking nuts this is that the former GOP speaker of the House  — who had exactly one skill, which was raising money; I don't know why people love to give him money, but for whatever reason they did. This was his one skill: he couldn't count votes, couldn't get legislation passed, couldn't make anyone trust him.

And instead of spending this money to try to help Republicans hold onto their extremely skinny four-seat majority in the House, he is spending money trying to defeat Republicans in primaries. I mean, yeah, there have been a bunch of coverage of this and the whole McCarthy revenge tour, but my God, imagine the Democrats in disarray storylines if Dick Gephardt were out there raising money, trying to defeat people who had crossed him way back when. I mean, it's completely nuts.

Beard: Yeah, yeah. No, it's true that Republicans get away with a lot of this infighting that it gets covered for sure, but they don't treat it like a disaster for the Republican Party writ large in the way that coverage of intra-Democratic disputes get covered as a disaster for the Democratic Party writ large. We could do a whole episode about why the media covers the Democratic Party and the Republican Party differently, but it's absolutely the case, and this is a great example of it.

Nir: I also want to note that unlike the next two districts we're going to talk about, South Carolina's 1st district is a conservative seat. And in particular, it's that way because Republicans engaged in some very egregious racial gerrymandering that the Supreme Court green-lighted, but it's about Trump+9. And I want to point out that that's less red than the prior version of this district was in 2018 when Democrat Joe Cunningham flipped his seat. Trump had beaten Hillary Clinton by 13 points in 2016. Democrats have a very interesting candidate in businessman Michael B. Moore, who is the great-great-grandson of a legendary Civil War figure and Reconstruction-era era Congressman named Robert Smalls. Smalls has an amazing story.

In 1862, he and several compatriots escaped from slavery by stealing a heavily armed Confederate ship that had 17 slaves aboard, and they sailed it past rebel lines and into Union waters. Of course, this was quite some time ago, but it's an amazing lineage to have.

This is going to be a difficult race, no question. Mace is certainly the favorite, but Republicans wouldn't have rigged the lines here if they weren't worried about the trends in coastal South Carolina. And I mentioned a moment ago that Clinton had lost the previous district by 13 points, but four years later, Biden only lost it by six points. And I think these same trends, I wouldn't be surprised if we see them continue. I think it would take quite a good Democratic year for more to have a chance at beating Mace. But I don't think this race is going to be a total walkover.

Beard: Yeah. And it's pretty clear that if there's an area that's Democratic-trending that has this opportunity in South Carolina, it's the Charleston area. So if not this cycle, then in a future one for sure.

Now we've got two other Republican primaries in South Carolina districts that are much, much more conservative in the first district. First off in the 3rd district, we're headed to a runoff between Trump-endorsed Pastor Mark Burns and Air National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Sheri Biggs, who was endorsed by Governor Henry McMaster. Now Burns got 33% in the first round. Biggs got 29% with state Representative Stuart Jones in third place at 19%. The runoff is in just two weeks on June 25th. Now, we highlighted how disgusting Burns was in our preview last week. We're not going to go over all of that again. If you're interested, go back and listen to last week's episode. But he's really one of the worst of the worst when it comes to Republican candidates. And Biggs is a very conservative Republican, but presumably less crazy than Burns

Nir: Just to give a little flavor in case you don't feel like flipping back to last week's episode, Burns said that anyone who tried to stop Trump from remaining in the White House after he lost the 2020 presidential election, was part of a demonic attack from the gates of hell. And he claimed that the January 6th riot was a staged Antifa attack. He is as appalling as they come, and I feel like he's the sort of candidate who in the short term maybe would cause problems for Republicans with his big mouth, kind of like Mark Robinson, Lieutenant Governor in North Carolina, who of course is running for governor there. But in the medium term, electing guys like him winds up normalizing this lunacy. And I feel that a few years down the line, God, someone like Burns is probably going to feel pretty standard for a Republican and that's a disgusting thought.

Beard: Yeah, so that's definitely something we'll keep an eye on for two weeks from now. The last South Carolina district we want to talk about is the 4th district, where Representative William Timmons, who had been dogged by infidelity accusations, narrowly survived a primary challenge from state representative Adam Morgan, just 52-48. There wasn't a third candidate here, so there's no runoff. Timmons is free to the general election that he'll win easily. Now, Morgan is a leader of the state-level Freedom Caucus, which has caused a lot of trouble for the state GOP establishment in the state. So I'm sure there are a number of people who are glad to see him not win here. Timmons did have Trump's backing so that certainly helps you get through when you're in a tough fight like this. But who knows what might happen in 2026? This is obviously a very narrow election.

Nir: And speaking of the Freedom Caucus, it looks like they knocked off a couple of incumbents on Tuesday night in the state legislature. It is really hard to overstate just how bitter the divide has become in a lot of these state legislatures between Republican leaders and Freedom Caucus types. There are now freedom caucuses in I think around a dozen states and growing. We talked about it several weeks back when Missouri Democrats took advantage of that incredibly deep fissure to successfully filibuster an effort to make the state constitution harder to amend. I think we're going to be seeing more of that. We're going to see more power devolve toward Democrats as these GOP leaders realize that they cannot rely on these lunatics on their far-right flank in order to get anything done. It's going to be very interesting to see how things unfold in South Carolina and other states.

One final note on South Carolina is that GOP primary voters also punished three Republican state senators, all of whom were women who last year had banded together to stop the legislature from imposing a near-total ban on abortion. One of them lost in an 82-18 landslide. That's just an astonishing spread for an incumbent. Another is currently losing by 31 votes, a recount could happen, but it's unlikely to change the outcome. And a third was sent to a runoff. She held off her opponent just 40-36. The state wound up passing a six-week abortion ban anyway, so it just shows you how extreme Republican primary voters are on this issue and how out of step they are with the general electorate. And as Jeff Singer noted on the show last week, Timmons ran these really stunning ads in his congressional race attacking Morgan for being too extreme on abortion. And I got to wonder if that message actually hurt him.

Beard: Yeah, it's almost impossible to disentangle obviously the other accusations swirling around Timmons and Morgan's support and these abortion ads, but it was certainly shocking to me to hear about and I would be really surprised if they helped. So it wouldn't have surprised me if they hurt Timmons in the end.

Nir: One final race from Tuesday night was not a primary or a special election. North Dakota voters approved a ballot measure known as initiated measure one, which was a state constitutional amendment that would bar anyone who would turn 81 in the final year of their term from representing the state in Congress. It passed by a wide 61-39 margin. Now, it may be that on the merits something like this is a good idea, but conservatives are not pursuing this as some kind of high-minded policy goal.

Instead, they're hoping that this will be a stalking horse that will pave the way for term limits. So by way of background, in 1995, the Supreme Court ruled that the requirements for congressional candidates set out in the Constitution, which include a minimum age but not a maximum age, can't be tinkered with by the states. They can't add anything onto that list of criteria and that includes term limits.

But that was a 5-4 decision and the dissent was written by Clarence Thomas. So that gives you a sense of the ideological leanings of the dissenters. And of course, the court has grown much more conservative since then, and we've seen how eager this far-right supermajority on the Supreme Court has been to completely shred precedent. So it's very possible that there are now enough votes to overturn that 1995 ruling.

And if that happens, then states would, at least in theory, be able to impose all kinds of requirements on congressional elections including term limits. And those have been a disaster in states that have imposed them on their state legislatures, which is quite a few because it means you wind up with a legislature full of people without any institutional knowledge. The old hands are people who've been there like six years and that just isn't sufficient. Running state government is a difficult job and man, Congress is even harder. The idea of term limits really scares me.

Beard: And if you think groups like dark money groups, lobbyists, and staff have too much influence now just wait until you term-limit the congressman and congresswomen who have that experience out of office, and then you're going to have a government run by people who are not elected, who have influence because they're the ones who know how to get things done. And so that's what you lose when you put in term limits.

You lose the people who know how to get things done in office, and then they have to be surrounded by people who know how to get things done and they can be influenced that way. So it's really, really not a good idea, and hopefully, we won't see this amendment lead to all of this happening.

Nir: Yeah, and I think that Democrats might be inclined to say, "Well, this is a measure passed by conservatives and precedent is on our side, so we ought to challenge this in court." My strong advice to Democrats: do not challenge this law. Just let it sit on the books in North Dakota. Don't give Thomas and Alito a chance to sink their hooks into it. We have seen time and time again democrats filing suits in the voting rights area where they relied on previous case law from the Supreme Court only to have the Supreme Court say, yoink at the last minute and say, "Oh, well, our ruling never said that. Oh, we're going to change the requirements for bringing that kind of case or simply overturn a prior ruling outright."

And you get to the Supreme Court and this case you thought was a slam dunk turns out to be a total loser. There really is no reason to challenge this. Democrats have almost no chance of winning a seat in the House or Senate in North Dakota anytime soon. And man, even if they do, do we really want to be running a candidate who's 80 years old? I strongly doubt that's going to be the case. Maybe some Republican will come along and challenge this ballot measure in a bit of kayfabe, but I think you'd actually have to find an octogenarian would-be candidate in order to have standing. So there's no reason for us to make it any easier for them to open this Pandora's box. Just leave well enough alone; this one doesn't matter. Pick a different fight.

Well, that does it for our weekly hits. Coming up after the break, our deep dive is with Pete Maysmith who runs political campaigns for the League of Conservation Voters, one of the top environmental organizations in the country. They are also a huge player in political campaigns in the United States. They will have a big role in 2024, and we have a great interview coming up, so please stay with us after the break.

Nir: Joining us today on "The Downballot" is Pete Maysmith, who runs political campaigns for the League of Conservation Voters, which is one of the premier environmental advocacy organizations in the country. Pete, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Pete Maysmith: Really happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Nir: Absolutely. So I'd like to start just by asking you about your personal background, how you got involved in political campaigns, and how you came to LCV. Also, for our listeners who may or may not be particularly familiar with LCV and especially its work on campaigns, if you could give us some background on that as well?

Maysmith: Sure, more than happy to. So I grew up in a household where social justice and organizing in politics was just part of the air that we breathe and in all manner of ways. I grew up in Colorado. This was during the peace movement protesting Rocky Flats nuclear production facilities. This is a long, long time ago, and I was a little tiny kid, but the point is that it instilled in me that when you think something isn't right, do something about it; if something society, I mean, isn't right, do something about it. So that led to being active and engaged politically in all manner of ways, and really my entire career has been around organizing and politics and advocacy and working to make this a better place for us all to live.

In addition to my personal background, I've been part of LCV and our Conservation Voters movement — that's our state affiliates. We have 32-plus state affiliates around the country and LCV as a national entity. We are the conservation voter movement collectively. I've been a part of this movement since 2009, and the reason that I do this work — and what LCV and the broader movement are all about — is advocating for strong climate solutions, looking at environmental justice, and thinking about democracy and what we need to do to strengthen and harden our democracy — obviously at the moment that we're in, given the assaults that we see from MAGA Republicans and from the leading Republican candidate for President Trump.

And so we do that through politics and advocacy and organizing. We say that we believe who makes the decisions around policy matters terrifically. So we find pro-climate champions and we work really hard to get them elected, and then once they're elected, that's not enough, right? We then need to do organizing. We need to do advocacy; we need to lobby; we need to do communications work and much, much more to translate a political victory into a positive policy outcome that makes all of our lives better. Cleaner air, cleaner water, less climate pollution, a more secure democracy that's more open and accessible to all of us. So that's who LCV is and a little bit about me and why I love doing this work.

Beard: I want to ask you about the past four years. Obviously climate change is a huge issue for a lot of people. People always want to see things moving faster. They're frustrated with the pace of change, but there's been a lot accomplished. So what would you say to somebody who really cares about environmental issues and climate change in terms of what's been the success over the past four years that LCV has seen?

Maysmith: First off, I would say thank you for caring so much about climate and environmental issues. That's how we make change, when people are passionate, engaged, and active on the issue. So that is totally, completely fantastic. These last four years, President Biden and Vice President Harris have been the most pro-climate president and vice-president in the history of the United States, period, full stop.

So what do I mean and what does that look like? Well, we've got the Inflation Reduction Act, which is, at a minimum, $369 billion to move forward with clean energy and climate solutions. There are other vital pieces of legislation like the bipartisan infrastructure law to clean up lead in our water and electric vehicle charging stations. But the point of those legislative victories is to jumpstart wind and solar and get us off of fossil fuels, which we obviously need to do both from a climate perspective. And because for too long they've poisoned too many of our communities.

So that's one huge reason that we've seen so much success or one area that we've seen so much success in the last four years. The other thing is really strong executive action by President Biden and his cabinet and his agencies. And there is a whole slew of rulemaking that's happened through the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Energy or the Department of Interior. He's protected, for example, more lands and water area than any other president in his first term ever. There are new rules on power plants, on cars, on trucks, soot, what goes up into our atmosphere, clean water, and much, much more. All that has happened because Joe Biden has led. So what I would say to people is, "Thanks so much for caring. The progress has been remarkable and there's a lot more to do moving forward. We clearly have not solved the problem, but boy, it's a hell of a start."

Beard: Now looking down more towards Congress and a lot of the primaries that you may play in or in general elections, what are your main issue priorities for 2024 that you're looking for candidates to endorse or care about as we're moving into the next Congress?

Maysmith: Well, we're just looking back for candidates that supported the Inflation Reduction Act. So that's kind of an initial vital threshold then you're absolutely right, "Okay, look forward, what more needs to happen?" We've jump-started this clean energy transition in such a significant way, but there's more that needs to be done. We have to get to 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. We're on the path to that, but there's both more legislative action and more executive action.

So a second term of the president, but also as you said, members of Congress — that needs to happen. What does that look like? It means that MAGA Republicans cannot be in charge of the US House of Representatives. They've demonstrated that they cannot govern, and when they try to govern, they're basically doing the bidding of big oil.

H.R.1, their flagship piece of legislation, the bill that they wanted to lay down as their marker when they narrowly took control of the chamber after the 2022 elections — that was a wishlist for big oil. So we know what the MAGA Republican leadership has done and will continue to do in the House. We have to flip control so that Hakeem Jeffries can become Speaker. We can build on the Inflation Reduction Act and move forward in a whole set of climate and environmental justice policy areas. So we're looking for candidates who are putting their hands in the air and saying, "I want to do more to tackle climate change, more for clean water, more for clean air, and more for environmental justice." That's who we're looking for as we look into 2025 and beyond, which we have to win this year to be able to do that in the years to come.

Nir: So you talked about the House GOP's H.R.1 as being their, quote, unquote, "wishlist for big oil." I want to ask you what your wishlist legislation might look like, but I know that of course when we're talking about a problem as gigantic as climate change, really the sky's the limit in terms of what we could imagine as potential solutions to the problem. So maybe tempered by the necessary realism of practical politics in the United States and the limits of what can be accomplished with what are likely to be at best small majorities. What would sort of a pragmatic wishlist bill look like in 2025 if Democrats can hold the White House and take control of both chambers of Congress?

Maysmith: Well, I think a couple of things. So here's an example, transmission is such a vital component. It is not sexy. It might make people's eyes glaze over really fast, but it is vital that we get transmission right. We've got old wires, old lines, old systems, old mechanisms for moving energy around in this country. As we make the transition to renewable energy, moving renewable electrons, which might sound really simple and might not sound exciting, is absolutely vital, right?

We are not in a place right now, but Congress even considered doing something about that because the price for that would be more fossil fuels, more drilling, more siting of fossil fuel, big oil facilities like liquified natural gas, methane gas, and LNG facilities. We can't do any more of that, period full stop. Joe Biden put a pause on LNG export terminals a number of months ago. Huge step forward. So important. But my point is we can't get transmission done right now with MAGA Republicans running the US House. So that's one. Two is we've got to really focus on decarbonizing industries that are harder to get at.

So cement, airlines, we can't just... we've done some of the lower hanging fruit. There's so much more that needs to happen as we really look to get to, I said a 50% cut in carbon and climate pollution by 2030, and then we have to move forward to a hundred percent net-zero. That's going to mean getting at those harder-to-decarbonize industries, and that absolutely has to happen.

The third thing I would say is we have got to fix our democracy. We know it is under assault literally and figuratively. Literally on January 6th, of course, and rhetorically almost nonstop from this presidential candidate Donald Trump, and not just him, but MAGA Republicans up and down the ballot. And so having control, pro-climate, pro-democracy control of the US House; we have it in the Senate, so maintaining it in the Senate. That means we can move forward a set of policies to further bring people into our democracy and to make sure that it can't be subverted, which is clearly something that MAGA Republicans are actively trying to do, well, right now.

Nir: I want to put a pin in that democracy piece that you mentioned because I find that very interesting. But I want to drill down on something that you mentioned a little earlier in your answer. You talked about things like energy transmission as not really being a very sexy issue. That's totally understandable. When you do talk to voters or when your campaigns and candidates talk to voters though, what kind of environmental issues or issues in LCV's general brief do actually excite voters and get them interested and they really find compelling and are the kinds of things that candidates can talk about?

Because I imagine you don't really want to advise a candidate to talk about issues that are going to make people's eyes glaze over. So if you're giving advice to a campaign, what are your one, two, and three of like, "These are the things that are going to get voters to perk up and listen"?

Maysmith: Absolutely. A couple of things. First off, climate change has become a kitchen table issue. It is core to economic policy and economic issues that people care about. What do I mean? I mean jobs, right? The Inflation Reduction Act and the legislation that this president has signed 270,000 new jobs in the clean energy space since that became law, right? People care about a good-paying job that helps them provide for their family, one. Two, lower cost. Clean energy is cheaper energy as we move away from fossil fuels, then that price fluctuation and being tied to, yoked to the whims of what big oil wants, and let's be clear, what they want is to make a bunch of money at the expense of all of us, right? We just learned that — I mean, well, sorry, we've known that for decades — but we saw more evidence of it in the last couple of weeks with this merger where the CEO of Pioneer, which is an oil and gas company, had text messages colluding with OPEC to keep prices higher.

We pay more, he gets richer, and they all get richer, right? So climate is an economic issue. It's a kitchen table issue. We talk about it that way. Our candidates talk about it that way. And you know what? Voters respond to that. That's one. Two, clean water and clean air are just fundamentals that voters care about.

Here's the most recent example, the special election in NY-03 back in February to replace the disgraced George Santos — even he got booted out of the US House by his MAGA Republican leadership and rank and file, I guess, right? Tom Suozzi, the candidate who won it, who was well known in that area, had been both a local elected official, had been in Congress, and now wanted to come back, and he won. We ran a large independent expenditure effort where we knocked on people's doors in the Queens portion of this district.

It goes into Long Island, right? I said, Long Island, the Long Island sound. It's part of the district, it's part of their community. It's part of what they experience on a daily basis. And you know what, they both remembered that Tom Suozzi had worked on what they flagged as concerns and they wanted to see progress on. Cleaning up the Long Island Sound. Water, right? Water.

So sometimes I think people think we need to get overly cerebral and brainy and theoretical. People care about a good job. They care about lower costs, and they care about having a healthy family and a healthy community. All those are environmental and climate issues. Talk about those in a way that resonates with voters. They want to show up for the pro-climate candidates, and they are Tom Suozzi, just that one example, for one. And weve got a lot of important races ahead of us in the next 145 days or so.

Beard: Now, with that huge election coming up, I know LCV is going to be doing a lot of programs to reach voters and talk to them. So run us through the program that LCV has planned for the run-up to the election.

Maysmith: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the absolute core things that we're going to do is the field program. I talked a little bit about what we did in NY-03, take that and put it on steroids times 10. So we will knock on millions of doors all around the country, and of course, it's going to be in the key battleground states and races and US House districts that you would absolutely expect we're not going to knock on doors when we know the race is going to go one way or the other way.

We're going to be in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona, and I mean, that's not a full list, but again, you can imagine, right? So we're going to be knocking on doors and we're going to be talking to voters. That's not enough. We need to make sure that we're communicating in multi-level with those voters.

So we may also call them on the phone. We'll serve them digital ads to meet them where they're at in their online life that we all lead these days. We'll send a mail in their mailbox. We'll just communicate with them in all manner of ways, one, to make sure they're clear on what the stakes are, and who the pro-climate and pro-democracy candidate is in their particular set of races. It might be presidential, Senate, or US House; it might be multiples. And then make sure that they know how to vote, where to vote, et cetera, which is actually a really important part of the work is literally just the mechanics of it because that really helps people turn out to vote. So that's a whole basket that we'll be doing. In addition, though, we're going to have thousands of people — mobilizers is how we talk about them — who will be reaching out to their friends and family.

So a warm contact, someone they know, people they know in their contact in their phone and text people and talk about, "Hey, I'm voting this fall. Here's why. Here's who I'm voting for. Here's why I'm doing it." And again, "Here's how to do that." And we're going to have tens of thousands, really sorry, hundreds of thousands of those conversations with mobilizers, again, in targeted places around the country because we know data tells us that people talking to their friends and family and encouraging them to vote, explaining why they're voting, is a very powerful motivator to turn people out. Separately from all that, the other big thing that we're going to be doing is communicating on airwaves, and I say airwaves, I maybe use that term a little loosely.

We're going to be on TV, broadcast and cable, but then also in the digital world that we all live in today, right? So whether it's an ad that plays before you watch your Hulu show or on YouTube, and then obviously also working on platforms where people increasingly are finding their news and their information like an Instagram and plenty of others like that. We want to meet people where they are and communicate with them the stakes of the election, who's better on climate change in the environment, and then how to vote. And so we'll be doing both of those things, that field program and that communications program that I mentioned starting this summer and obviously going through election day, of course.

Beard: Now, you mentioned that obviously you'll be in all the places you would expect, so we know what the key Senate races are. We know what the key house races are, but what are some of the races that you're particularly focused on, climate champions that you feel like are most important for LCV to elect or bring back?

Maysmith: Yeah, absolutely. Boy, there's a lot to choose from, right? So maybe let's touch on just a few of the US Senate races. So someone like Jacky Rosen in Nevada; she doesn't put her name in the spotlight. She doesn't have the Klieg lights on her a whole lot. She is just someone who shows up and gets the job done for Nevadans in the US Senate and has been a terrific pro-climate champ. The primaries were just earlier this week in Nevada, there's a Trump-endorsed MAGA opponent that she'll be facing in that race, and that's a really important one. So that's an example of one like that

If you go up to Montana, and of course obviously you only have one seven-fingered organic farmer in the United States Senate; his name's Jon Tester. He is so authentic, he is so true to his values, his beliefs to representing Montana, and he stands up for climate change and for democracy and a whole lot of other really important issues, veterans, abortion access, and many, many more things. He's running against somebody who's not from Montana, who came in, made a bunch of money closing off public lands, charging people to go hunt and fish on lands in Montana. That's not what that state's all about.

And so Jon Tester and that race, we'd been there before first Senator Tester when he ran the first time in 2006, his first reelect in 2012, again in 2018, and we'll be there again in 2024. So I mean, again, that's not a full laundry list by any sense.

I guess I should just mention Ruben Gallego in Arizona. He's a current member of the US House. That seat is open because Senator Sinema chose not to seek reelection. He's running against Kari Lake — I mean, how MAGA can you get? She ran for governor. She lost; she still doesn't accept that she lost that race. Donald Trump didn't lose, and she thinks or says that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential race, which we all know is a load of crap, right? Well, Ruben Gallego, I mean, you talk about a champ, right? Now he's only represented a congressional district, so he's got to introduce himself to the whole state of Arizona, and we're very much going to be a part of that.

We already are running a spot in Arizona, but Somos our great friends at Somos, it's a Spanish language spot talking about who Ruben Gallego is growing up, military background, supporter of the Inflation Reduction Act. It lowered insulin prices and it's creating clean energy jobs in Arizona. That adds running right now, and we're going to do a lot more like that. So those are just a couple of samples of some of the races that we're excited about.

Nir: I'm curious to know how far down the ballot does LCV's work go, and in particular, if there are any challengers, folks running against incumbents for house races, trying to flip Republican seats that you might want to highlight.

Maysmith: Yeah. Well, we actually go really far down the ballot in partnership with our state LCV affiliates. I mentioned earlier the Conservation voters movement. I said we've got 32 plus around the country. Full disclosure, I used to run one of those. I ran Conservation Colorado for a long time and was their executive. That group's executive is a totally, completely fabulous role to have. I was lucky to have it. So we work with our LCV affiliates in states all around the country.

I'll just highlight one. I'll go to the US house as well, but let's go to North Carolina. So of course everybody knows not that many governor seats up this year, but there are about a dozen, and one of them is in North Carolina. For us, it's our top priority. Roy Cooper, two-term pro-climate Democratic governor, is term-limited out. Josh Stein, the current Attorney General Democrat, is pro-climate, pro-democracy.

He'd be so important to have in that governor's seat in North Carolina. Having a pro-climate governor in the south to stand up for environmental values and take on really critical environmental issues in the state of North Carolina is just vital. He is running against the lieutenant governor who, I can't believe I'm about to say this, maybe makes Donald Trump look not totally or less completely bananas in the extreme. The lieutenant governor is just, I don't even know how to describe him. So far out in left field, beyond left field, past the fence, and you got to keep going to understand how out of the mainstream, the Lieutenant Governor is, this MAGA Republican that our candidate Josh Stein is running against. So that's an example.

Nir: Surely you mean Mark Robinson is out in right field.

Maysmith: Right field. There you go. I totally appreciate that correction, Nir, thank you very much. I misspoke with deep apologies. So that's an example of a race. In terms of other challengers, and look, I want to go back a little bit to the US House. New York and California are both opportunities to pick seats up. Republicans comparatively overperformed in those states in US House races in 2022; we have to go back and get a number of those seats. And so someone like George Whitesides in one of the key California battleground seats is someone like that we're super excited about and there's plenty of others as well. So we'll be engaging in a number of house races.

Beard: Now, a question a little bit in the weeds. Obviously LCV is, as you said, dedicated to environmental justice, fighting climate change, democracy — but of course, sometimes the most important issue on someone's mind might be something else, like reducing the cost of insulin, something else you mentioned. So how does LCV decide if they're going to run an ad, they're like, "Does this need to be an ad about environmental justice or climate change or democracy or if the issue of the day for this grace is the price of insulin, will LCV run an ad on the price of insulin to elect a pro-climate change candidate?"

Nir: I'm so glad you asked that Beard because that was exactly the same question that I had too.

Beard: And to be clear, when I said pro-climate change, I mean fighting climate change. Just to clear that up.

Maysmith: Beard, I totally got that and I appreciate it and it's not shocking that the two of you are on the same wavelength, that you had the same question. Look, it's such a good question. Here's the thing, we're here to win. We are not here to make a point. We're not here to feel good. We're not here to try hard. We have to save the planet, we have to save our communities. We have to stop big oil and God knows we have to stop MAGA Republicanism and the march that they're on. And that means we are here to win.

We know that climate and clean energy are issues that work for voters, that voters care about, and the ways I talked about earlier, economic, kitchen table, clean air, clean water, et cetera. And we also know that sometimes it makes sense to talk about other issues. I mentioned it really briefly in passing, but let me go back to it. We're doing this really great Spanish language spot in Arizona in support of Ruben Gallego in that US Senate race. We're doing a partnership with Somos, a really terrific group and partner.

If people don't know them, they should. They're just terrific, right? We talk in part, the whole ad's not about capping the price of insulin, but we mention it because we know it matters to voters, right? They're getting gouged by big pharma, families and individuals that need that life-saving drug. They should be able to get it at an affordable level, that matters to voters. We are not hesitant to do that.

In 2022, we talked about social security and protecting social security in a couple of our advertisements. We talked about abortion. I mean the end of Roe, thanks to Donald Trump and his MAGA appointees to the United States Supreme Court, is obviously a devastation in all manner of ways, and we know that's an important issue. And so we talk about abortion. We've talked about Social Security. I mentioned capping insulin, which was a part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Those are all things that, to a degree, connect with voters. We aren't going to shy away from talking about those because we are here to win, period.

Nir: I'm going to ask one last question in that vein. I found it really interesting that you mentioned North Carolina, which is a pretty stubbornly light-red state, and you talked about Roy Cooper and Josh Stein there, and of course, up in Alaska, Mary Peltola won these amazing victories in 2022, and I know that she is a candidate that LCV also feels warmly about. In these more conservative areas, states, and districts, what sort of advice do you give to Democrats who are running and maybe have a little bit less room to operate than someone in a bluer area, but still, as you've mentioned, these sorts of issues, these kitchen table issues, these personal concerns are really quite universal. What kind of advice do you give?

Maysmith: We understand that candidates or members of Congress or the Senate, they're representing their communities and their states. One, they know them well. Two, as you said, they don't all look the same. North Carolina is different from California and Washington state or Alaska, depending on where we are on the political spectrum. So we both understand that we are not intolerant maybe, right? And I want to be clear, doing the right thing on climate change, getting us off of fossil fuels, moving towards solar and wind as fast as possible: it's good for jobs, it's good for people's bottom lines, the cost issue, and it's better for their communities.

And candidates in even more conservative states know that. Go back to Jon Tester, proud supporter of moving forward on clean energy. Look at Sherrod Brown in Ohio. That's a state that is, I think the phrase you used, Nir, was light-red for North Carolina. I mean, at the federal level, Ohio is light and trending, maybe even a little bit more red.

Nir: At least light-red.

Maysmith: That's right. But Sherrod Brown knows that good policy makes good politics. He knows how. Again, strong supporter, big, big, we are a huge fan of Sherrod Brown. He knows how to both stand up for good policy and make it good politics in his state. I think he'll demonstrate that again this year. We're pleased to support Senator Brown, and there are lots of other examples, but I'll leave it there maybe for right now.

Nir: Well, we have been talking with Pete Maysmith from the League of Conservation Voters on this week's episode of "The Downballot." Pete, before we let you go, where can our listeners learn more about the LCV? Where can they find you online and on social media and also you personally?

Maysmith: Great. Well, again, just thanks so much for having me. Folks should go to lcv.org. We do so much more than I just said here, so you can find out about who we are and all the great work that we're doing. On social media, LCVoters is where you can find us on Twitter and Instagram and throughout the social media world. And I'd certainly love to see folks and connect on social media as well. And you can go to P. Maysmith, my first initial, P, last name Maysmith, and you'll find me on Twitter, and I look forward to hearing from folks.

Look, the most important thing is that people engage. I mean, obviously people listening to you all are engaged. I know that, right? Of course. But now is our moment. We've got to charge forward. We've made more progress on climate change in the last four years than we ever have previously in the history of this country. And we cannot let big oil and MAGA Republicans try to yank us back the wrong way. And that's from the presidential to the US Senate, to the United States House, to the governor's race in North Carolina, and lots and lots and lots of other races that we didn't get to today. So yeah.

Nir: Well, I love ending on an optimistic message like that. Pete, thank you so much for joining us on "The Downballot" this week.

Maysmith: I so appreciate you both having me on. Thank you very much.

Beard: That's all from us this week. Thanks to Pete Maysmith for joining us. "The Downballot" comes out every Thursday everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to "The Downballot" and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our editor, Drew Roderick, and we'll be back next week with a new episode.