Manchin Oct. 7 interview by and Adam Kincaid Republican leader for redistricting

1:01PM Oct 8, 2021

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First thing we can do. And we're not going to do it anymore and I said, Remember I told you before, this was, we were not going to default and we did not default and we will not be following through this again, work it out, reconciliation to show that you've already got the reconciliation to do this. That's, I have a difference I think the reconciliation will not hurt us, but I understand that there's a lot of people that don't want to and as against us as differences of opinion on that. But the bottom line is, we shouldn't have to go through reconciliation, we should agree that this is too serious for any of us to get in trouble. And the playbook is just too serious, but you will just 100% not agree to a carve out of the filibuster no doubt at all guys I mean, the filibuster is the only thread that we have to keep democracy alive in America. It keeps us the body that we are, it makes us even when it you see the kind of this this door is still realization, we have to work together. That's all. And if we didn't have if we didn't have the filibuster to where it can keep us coming back to stability from time to time, and you will see total chaos. Mitch McConnell asked me not to do that. You talked a lot. No no no, a lot of talk with everybody I talk as much as much as I do anybody else. And you have to communications, the name of the game here. That's what we're the delivery body. You can't be deliberate but if you don't communicate. You got to communicate so don't have to communicate with Biden today. Did you think that I'm doing the October 31 deadline I'm reconciliation is possible is that possible knock everything out guys.

Do you think October 31st is possible, you'd have a good break.

control they have no ability to impact the process in most places, and they're going to try to suitable it, just like they did last. So the reality is that they're going to keep suing over and over and over again until they get every single district that they think they're entitled to. And so if Republicans think that

in 2020 Democrats took full control of Washington,

and it will give Democrats control of the Senate Joe Biden has been elected, but Republicans stood up in the States,

there was no blue wave, democratic down ballot disaster is carried all the way to the state legislatures now,

we're the last line of defense against the Democrat socialist agenda, the ways

we're fighting back are bigger than you think.

Welcome back and thank you for joining episode 14 of it's bigger than you think a conversation about the politics that most impact our everyday lives. I'm your host anymore and joining me today is Adam Kincaid. He's the executive director at National Republican redistricting trust, as well as fairline America so Adam. Thanks for joining.

Thanks for having me.

All right. So, for those who may not know exactly what both organizations do, can you just kind of describe the roles of both in RRT and fairlands America and how they kind of are two different entities.

Sure, so we have kind of a group of organizations that are all affiliated together so the National Republican redistricting trust is our flagship entity was created in 2017 and its job is to coordinate a 50 state redistricting strategy. What that means is making sure that if there's a state legislator, or a commissioner or someone else who need in their states, we can help connect them with the people that they need to draw the maps that they need to draw right so redistricting is definitely a niche within America not just a very few number of grants or what you find the one that a lot of people that's all we've got that I have to find the right people to help them do their jobs so that's part of what we do for airlines American, our 501 C four is the data engine behind everything that we do. So, for airlines America's job is to build and facilitate a 50 state redistricting database. So gathering general primary special election data precinct maps all that sort of stuff very technical work it for lines America that's its primary function.

Cool, that's what I make sense, and then the National Republican redistricting trust counterpart is the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, There are so many acronyms in politics. And that's led by Obama's former attorney. Attorney General Eric Holder. What are they doing to influence the redistricting process.

Sure, so the NDRC kind of took a very different approach when they found it and they saw a vacuum on the Democratic side, they looked at the dlcc and they looked at a lot of the other groups and they said, We can do this better. And so what the NDRC decided to do is try to play legislative elections for governor's races, ages, races secretaries of state judges all those sorts of things right. And so they started that up in 16, and started engaging these races. Their goal was to flip state legislatures flip governorships flip all sorts of things that Democrats have more control over the process, they spent 10s of millions of dollars and $400 million, I think in 2020, and one nothing, so they flipped no chambers. They flipped nothing of any note that really changed the formula on redistricting. And so they came up short. So what the NBRC is doing now, is they've got a different strategy. Their strategy is the same one that they deployed before, which is to suitably their job now is to bring lawsuits where Republicans draw lines in places where they don't think they adequately favor Democrats. Yet, remember the NDRC says that they're fighting for fair maps they say that they're fighting gerrymandering. That's the only thing that they're doing is fighting Republican redistricting control, you know the NDRC, is an organization that on their own 990 says that they exist to favorably positioned Democrats redistricting. And so what you can expect to see from them is that they'll show up in states in front of redistricting committees, where Republicans draw the lines, and, you know, call for the governor Young Republicans to draw maps that elect more Democrats, And when they don't do that they'll sue, and they're going to sue no matter what, if you look at North Carolina is a perfect example of that. So, North Carolina called South 17 lawsuits over the last decade, over its legislative and congressional maps, and the NDRC was successful in getting in North Carolina to redraw its maps before Congress in for state legislatures. The thing is, when Republicans redrew that map Democrats picked up two seats in Congress, the minute that map was adopted, Eric Holder came out and said he planned on zooming again because it wasn't good enough. So the reality is that they're going to keep suing over and over and over again until they get every single district that they think they're entitled to. And so if Republicans think that they can draw a few districts that favor Democrats that they're not going to get sued, it's just not true. Democrats are going to sue everywhere, no matter what. That's all they've got. They have no control they have no ability to impact the process in most places, and they're going to try to suitable it, just like they did last

season where they do have the ability to impact the process we're already seeing some of the most egregious gerrymandering. Begin. Already this year. In states like Maryland, Illinois, New York, how can Republicans fight the Democrats narrative that they don't gerrymander when it's perfectly obvious that where they can, they will.

Well I think Illinois is a perfect example of this right so Illinois has a rule where, if they cannot adopt legislative maps by a certain date, it commission draws the maps of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats. They actually draw the tiebreakers name out of Abraham Lincoln's hat, and so the interesting little bit of trivia for you there. But the. So, what the Democrats did Governor Pritzker when he was running for office said that he would not signed any maps that were gerrymandered right any unfair maps, he would veto all. So they're running up against this deadline. And what happens, legislature comes together passes maps. They don't even have census data yet. They have data based off of something called the American Community Survey which is what it is, it's a gigantic survey of the entire country, and huge margins of error, so they draw the maps based off of that, and Governor Pritzker had a chance to veto that map. Number one, it didn't use real data. Number two, it was clearly partisan. And number three, he promised a veto right he said that he wanted the commission to draw the map. Governor Pritzker his veto would have created forced the commission to draw the maps that he said he wanted to draw. And what did he do he signed it anyway. So, what we found is after those maps were signed into law. Republicans sued. And, you know, the Republican Senate and House brought a lawsuit saying that these were unconstitutional maps and that the commission should draw the maps, that's now being litigated in federal court after the census numbers came out, the Democrats came back together and redrew those maps, we'll see if those standard not my argument would be that they shouldn't have had the ability to redraw them, that it should have been a, you know, the, the commission should have been formed to draw those moves but we'll see what the federal courts say about it, but that's how much of a hurry they were to gerrymander they rushed to draw these maps before they even had the right data to do it and broke multiple promises in order to accomplish with the income. So, how we're fighting back, just look at what's going on Illinois Republicans Sue. That's not always been the case. A lot of times Republicans or, you know, these maps would be drawn by Democrats and Republicans never really brought their AG, they never funded these lawsuits, they just kind of say, well I don't like it and back down. Right. That's not going to happen anymore. We're going to make sure that in the states where Democrats gerrymander where conditions break the law, we're going to make sure that the folks that need to fund those to bring those lawsuits have the funding and resources and backroom back that they need to do it, and to be as successful as possible and bringing those lawsuits, so that's a big part of what we're doing, you know, another thing that we're going to be, make sure that we keep putting out is depressive poverty all of this, as we get through this process, you're getting more and more out Democrats are fighting for fair maps, but everywhere they can have control, they're going to try to get as many seats as possible. That's really what they're doing their job when Democrats talk about fair maps they don't mean you know fair maps that somehow are clean and pretty and everything else. What they mean by fair maps is map selects many Democrats possible over and over and over again, that's what very clear, they complain that a map is unfair, not because it's compact, not because it's clean, not because it looks good, but because Democrats didn't get as many seats as they thought they were.

So, New York has as opposed to independent redistricting commission but democratic super majorities in both legislative chambers are plotting to undermine the entire process and rig maps to eliminate five GOP districts and with the New York Times calls one of the most consequential shifts in power in the country this redistricting cycle, Eric Holder hasn't said a peep. What do you think about the hypocrisy of Democrats and their mission to under undermine the voters will by weakening the commission and gerrymandering themselves into power. Instead, for the next decade.

Yeah so this commission that exists in New York was passed on a bipartisan basis, both sides got together and enacted these reforms. Governor Cuomo supported them openly New York voters approved it, and then in the last two years, what we've seen after Democrats took control of the New York State Senate, is they've done everything possible to undermine it and cause it to try to fail, they refused to fund it for a long time. They held back funding for over a year, where they were trying to get up and running and get started. They passed a new ballot measure that'll be on the ballot this fall. That makes it easier for Democrats in the legislature to gerrymander if they want to but then ignore the commission. And then you know what we're seeing now is, you know, there's this whole drumbeat nationally, and you know from the new governor from Governor hopefuls saying that somehow it's her job to make sure that Democrats have, you know that they had their majorities, and that's not how this commission was set up the commissioner was designed to be something where both sides came together and would work toward a compromise map, no one would get what they want. The Democrats say that's what they want, they want independent commissions to draw these maps everywhere, but apparently not in New York state. So, you know we're actively engaged, they're making sure that you know the folks on the ground are talking to the people they need to talk to that they're showing up in front of these Commission hearings. They're building a record and making sure that they pull Democrats accountable, you know, trying to rush to gerrymander in New York just like everywhere else,

are these, you know, independent redistricting commissions are they generally independent like Democrats are claiming they are

commissions are a mixed bag, there's no two that are exactly the same, the rules are different everywhere, which is part of the problem. But the other part of the problem is that these Commission's Are you have Commission's that have Republicans and Democrats that appoint members to the commission you have conditions that are independent and that they have citizens that sit on them but they still have their own partisan events. I think if you look around the country at the Commission's right now. What you're going to find are that a lot of the independents tend to be liberals, that they have donated to people like Bernie Sanders, or they've worked for, you know, some sort of liberal campaign but they qualify as independence because they've never been a member of the Democratic Party, the sort of rules that would mean that you can't be a part of it but we see that everywhere Michigan has two people on there that are technically independence, according to the commission that are actually liberal opera, young liberals have worked for Bernie Sanders and support him in the past. Well, donated and supported in the past. So, I mean, these things happen regularly. If you go back a decade ago, pro publica has a fantastic article about how Democrats, gained the California redistricting commission, how they engaged, went through, made sure that their maps were the ones that were adopted, and really gained the whole system. And yet, all decade long Democrats have held up California as the model for the country. I can't imagine why they'd want something that they gained so easily to be the model for the entire country. But Democrats treat these conditions as kind of a, an arm of the Democratic Party, when they don't do what they want, they complain when they do what they want, they say that it's a fair map, and that's, you know how they treat these conditions they just, they think that they, they think they should be able to get the conditions to do what they want.

In Virginia voters just decided that there should be an independent redistricting commission that draws their maps, we're already seeing these Democratic politicians, using their role within the commission to promote, you know, more Democrat seats and like draw their own lines even. So according to reporting by the Virginia mercury, a week after noting a consultant drawn draft map would push them out of his district, Senator George Bart Parker, a Democrat from Fairfax, he drew an amended map that shuffled just a few precincts putting himself back in a senate district with no other incumbents. How can these people be held accountable to draw fair maps instead of maps that are gonna favorite Democrats.

Yeah, so the Virginia Commission is really interesting when you've got your Republican legislators and Democratic legislators on that condition right and if they can't agree on a map, then the Virginia Supreme Court's gonna end up hiring someone to go and draw it for them. And so I think that, you know, Virginia's is a very interesting one I think that from day one, we've kind of viewed as a commission that was conceived of that was going to fail, just because of the way that they built it. I can understand where where Senator Barker is coming from. He doesn't want to have to run with a lot of other people but the commission itself voted to maybe and maybe not look at members addresses, and you know they went outside of the commission structures, my understanding to go and do this and didn't do it within the commission itself. And so, that's what's gonna happen, we're gonna see these games being played Michigan is the other spot to look at where yesterday they came out with draft maps for Congress and in for, you know, different I think the state house or state senate so far, and immediately Democrats started howling, saying these maps don't give us enough seats in in Congress. It had four Republican seats for Democrat seats, and you know five competitive districts, apparently that's not good enough, that somehow we need more, more than that Democrats need more than that, so they're gonna keep pushing for that over and over and over again, everywhere. And so we have to keep pointing that out make sure people realize that Democrats are trying to gain these systems, and make sure that when we have Republicans on these Commission's that they're hearing from folks on the right, not just the liberals who show up, you find a lot of times that common cause and League of Women Voters and all those sorts of groups are the ones that drive people to go testify and our side has been traditionally quiet on, and so we work with folks in state, to make sure that where that's necessary, that conservatives and folks in the right have the ability and the opportunity to go and advocate on behalf of their communities, and not just watch them get carved up while democratic communities of interest get held together to elect

more their people.

So, what all is NERT doing to try to fight back against some of this liberal gerrymandering.

A number one we're making sure that folks in the states have resources. If you're in a house majority minority or Senate Minority you may not have the resources that the majority has right that's pretty typical. So, we do. And so we work a lot of times with different folks in states to make sure that they have the tools they need to propose maps to, you know, to fire back against these things to bring lawsuits to make sure that they have as good if not better data than the data that the left is using to draw these maps, number one, number two is making sure that when Democrats gerrymander that we're holding them accountable that we're talking about it for a long time Republicans just kind of sat back and said, didn't say anything about it somehow they thought that they were quiet about redistricting that it would, you know that it would just go, go away. That didn't go away, and the exact opposite happened. So you know we push back against all those sorts of things. And finally, it's not just new minorities, minority parties in some chambers, it's also, you know, In state C force and nonprofits and other things who want to engage, making sure they have the tools and resources they need. And so we do a lot of that sort of networking, helping connect people with the right people so that they can do their jobs in their states right so those are the big things that we're doing, but you know, in the next few years as we get through this, there's going to be a lot of litigation, we're going to be funding lawsuits all over the country, Democrats will as well we're going to make sure that where Republicans have drawn maps that comply with the law that they have the resources they need to defend those maps, where Democrats have drawn maps that don't comply with the law, we're going to go off and we're going to bring challenges we're going to make sure that you know everything they've done is brought out in the light and that people have the opportunity to see, you know, what Democrats have done and why they've done it and why those things are illegal and unconstitutional, those are things that Republicans and folks on the right have not done really well, and regularly, before we've just kind of let it go, and been on defense, and that's not sustainable. We have to go on offense, we have to make sure our folks are defended. And that's what the trust is focused on doing,

what are some things that Republican elected officials can do to ensure fair maps are drawn, whether they're in the majority, minority or they have an independent commission in their states,

or if you're a Republican elected official who's in the majority and you have the ability to draw the lines. Follow your state's criteria if you have them follow federal law. Listen to your lawyers and draw the maps you draw, right, that's it. It's really that simple and just follow the law, as far as, you know what to do if you're in the minority. If you're going to have fair maps, you need to make sure that you're holding Democrats accountable where you see them, relying on information they shouldn't be using point that out. If you see them drawing maps that break criterias and your state point that out if they're hiding things from the public that they should be making public point that out, called for it, call us let us know that that stuff's going on, hold them accountable if you're on an independent redistricting commission or you know that somebody is, or you have one in your state, you should be doing the same thing, these Commission's are supposed to be transparent and you should be calling for transparency. You know you should be looking to see if elected officials, particularly in states like Michigan and California are, if the commissioners are talking to people they shouldn't be talking to, or if they're talking to him outside of their open records. Now, all those sorts of things are important. These Commission's are supposed to be transparent and when the commissioners are not being transparent, you need to make sure that they're held accountable. And that's something that I'm sure we're going to be seeing more and more over the next few weeks and it's going to be a big part of legal challenges here too. You know I think Democrats, again, They like to say that California's process is somehow a model for the country that gained it a decade ago, if they're doing that again I have every confidence that will come out in litigation over the next few years.

So this is my last question, what's one thing you would encourage reporters who are covering redistricting to ask Eric Holder about his hypocrisy.

I think reporters should ask Eric Holder if he thinks that Democrats in New York should gerrymander to their maximum ability, I think you should, they should ask him if he thinks Illinois maps are fair. I think he they should ask him if Maryland's maps are a model for the country as I've heard some of their academics talk about, You know, some of their academics say that Maryland's congressional maps are fair, if you look at Maryland's congressional maps, it looks like someone dumped a bowl of spaghetti on the state and traced around it. So I think that those are things that they should ask him, that they haven't asked them, and I think they should keep asking over and over and over.

Now we got to hold them accountable. Yep. All right, any, any final thoughts today

redistricting Semi long is gonna take months, we may not have our final maps until sometime in April, May, June of next year. Primaries are going to get shifted, and it will be fun to watch for all the people that are, you know, big nerds and like this sort of thing. And so, yeah, I think for anyone who enjoys the political side of the stuff, they'll find redistricting fascinating if they haven't watched it in the past. I do want to just say one more time that Republicans out in the States, they need to realize that playing nice drawing the maps that elect as many Democrats as possible. That's what them, but you're still going to get sued. If you do that sort of thing, draw maps that, you know, comply with the law that meet your criteria that achieve your objectives, and let that be the map.

Alright well thank you for so much for joining today. Thank you. Definitely. Yes, glad you came on and then thanks everybody for listening, don't forget to subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to and always remember, say politics have an impact that is bigger than you think.

Anytime, anywhere, right from your smartphone or tablet, mobile for free for download the Geico app now and see just how easy it is to go mobile.

Thanks so much for your patience. So I did look over

the notes. Yeah,

they did.

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't see that when I checked my email so not sure why.

You just wanted to confirm that your mom was on there.

I mean, technically, I think, I mean they asked me only about my mom, you know, in the email, they said you know who is she who is say the hug in relation to you, and I told him to my mother. I didn't ask about my father, although he's going to be on the new refinance deed. So, yeah.

Okay, let me just ask them really quick. What was his name is Celeste show as an additional

insured, actually it should be it should be my dad, his first, because it's really hit, I mean, it's like they're both on there but my father is one who's always had the job so. Um, so, now of course he's elderly and retired but, so it would be like, you know his name and then my mom would be the additional that's really how it should be but whatever I mean as long as you know,

we wouldn't be able to achieve,

okay, it's okay. Then you can just go ahead and do it, you know, the way you were gonna do it cuz I need it today. Yeah, ASAP. Yeah.

So, I hope, like next week. We can have maybe Monday we'll have a meeting to introduce like some update of the team. I think we need to I need to update the team about it, including a new hire, and their content curation, and also we are setting up a team in Singapore, and maybe Moorish Africa, Asia. So, I hope we can get a lot of emotion off the bone there. And so, maybe next Monday. And so you may notice something on the front page finishes on the front page, we have some very small checks. So, as before, we usually pin some article here, maximum three usually is one or two. And now we have more slot to pin story is like this one. So, and this one. So, maximum we can pin. Certain story in the top news section now, but we didn't do that much. It's usually four to five. Article Kinja. If the story do really well. Then, we can't hear them. We hope until my email was

updated policy.

Okay yeah I see it. Okay. Okay. Let's see, do I see. So,

okay, okay,

yeah, yeah, I see. Okay, so I think that sounds good. No, that's awesome. Thank you.

Thanks to my

YouTube

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