Welcome to the Kansas reflector Podcast. I'm Rachel me fro a staff reporter. And we're here today with Tiffany Mueller, the first openly LGBTQ Kansas public official, and current president of N citizens united in organization dedicated to protecting American democracy and working to get those people to vote. Alright, well, welcome back to the state. Thank you so much, are you excited to be here,
always excited to be here. And it was a beautiful drive from the airport into Topeka. And I think that it's easy to forget how gorgeous Kansas is in the fall. And the wide open sky, the beautiful leaf color. So it was a really lovely driving.
And I know you're here for your nephew's wedding, and also the governor's race, both equally important.
My nephew might say that his top saw and I'm very excited. He's getting married this weekend. But it also gave me a great excuse to come back to my home state and campaign with Governor Laura Kelly. And Chris man who's running for the for attorney general. And I'm just really excited to be here. And to get to campaign in my home state. I've been traveling all over the country talking about how democracy is on the ballot, the cycle, I've hit about 20 states and probably 35 races so far. But there's something so incredibly special about being back home. And being here for Governor Laura Kelly, who I've known since she first ran for state senate back in 2004. And there just could not be a more clear contrast in this race. And I think it's really important that the voters of Kansas understand what's at stake.
In what issues in the race. are you most concerned about?
Yeah, I think this all comes down to who are these candidates going to be working for? Right. And it is so clear that Governor Kelly is working to better the state of Kansas and to help people's lives get better. Everything from cleaning up the mess that Brownback laughed to fully funding education, to axing the food tax and getting money back into Kansans pockets to some of the largest investments that we've seen in job creation, in the history of Kansas, right. And then you have Derek Schmidt, who is constantly looking out for himself, right, he's really kind of just a political shell, who, whose opinion on any given issue depends on which way the wind is blowing at that particular point in time. And, you know, we've seen what he does, he voted to increase the food tax and then left it high for people. He is attacking schools and education and teachers. And he had continued lawsuits that had been brought by folks like Kris Kobach, and cost the taxpayers of Kansas millions of dollars. And in our Lena didn't Citizens United and let America vote, it was just uncovered that he's also been caught up in this pay to play scandal in his office where he was giving out contracts to people who have donated $50,000 to his campaign. That's of all about him looking out for himself and not looking out for the people of Kansas. And if you'll allow me to go on for one more minute, you know, I've known both Governor Kelly and Derek Schmidt, for about the same length of time, I can't believe it's almost 20 years now. But who they are at their core has been demonstrable since the beginning. And I'm going to, I'm going to give an example of that. So please do tell a story. So back during the 2004 fight on the marriage amendment, which is where Republicans were trying to force an amendment into the Constitution, to say that marriage was only between a man and a woman. I was the lead lobbyist, to try to fight that at the time. And Derek Schmidt was a new senator who is considered a moderate Republican, and someone who is going to listen to reason. And I sat down with him four or five times. And he ended up telling me man, a private meeting, which I'm going to now make on private and tell everyone that that he was with us that he would vote against that marriage amendment if it was just him, but he wanted to be attorney general and Governor someday. So 20 years ago, he was predicting this moment In time, and trying to figure out which way the political winds were gonna cast and not have any principles. And so they actually ended up to moderate the debate, they put him in the Senate chair so that he could not have to take the hard votes. And that's how I feel like he spent most of his career not taking the hard votes. Let's compare that with Governor Kelly, who the first time she ran for state senate was in 2004. So this amendment debate was going on. And she told me, if I'm elected, I will vote against it. And it turned out to be the very first vote, she had to take as a new state senator, the very first vote even before the rules of the Senate were set up. This was the first vote she had to take. And she proved herself true to her word, as she does with everything. And that's all I think you need to know about the two of them. One stands up and does what they say they're going to do. And that's Governor Kelly and Derrick Smith, just looking out for Derek Schmidt.
That's a really interesting point, right now with anti transgender legislation that some people have called it. Where do you think Schmidt stands on that? Do you think his transgender policies will be good for the state of Kansas? Well,
it is clear where he stands, which is wherever Ron DeSantis tells him to stand. Right. And I don't, I think that what we know is that parents and schools and teachers need to make decisions about the education of their children. What they need is the funding and the support to make sure that kids are getting a good education. What he's saying that he wants to do is insert more government interference into those conversations. It's a bigoted stance, it's a discriminatory stance. And more importantly, or just as importantly, it's taking away from time, effort and resources that are needed to put into those fundamental issues of just fully funding education, getting money back into the pocketbooks of Kansans, and helping our economy grow here in the state. And, yeah, so I think that parents see this as an overreach, I think it's more government interference. And I don't know about you all, but I don't want Derek Schmidt making the calls for my life or for any of my family's lives, either.
Gotcha. And then just going back, I mean, you've been in this sort of political work for decades now. I mean, it was 2004. Was it when you're the first openly gay lawmaker, or? Yeah, just trying to get really specific here. So I mean, how you saw things change. What are you seeing today to?
It is amazing. I don't know when it happened, that I went from being the youngest person in the room in some of these conversations to suddenly being the seasoned veteran in the room. But you're right. I've now been doing politics for two decades, and started at a time when the conversation around gay rights was very, very different than it is today, right. There was nowhere in the country that had marriage equality. There were very few places where we could adopt, there was I think it was 35 states that allowed you to be fired just for being gay. And it's, I remember, during that time in 2004, while we were simultaneously fighting the discrimination here in Topeka, and fighting to protect the LGBTQ community, there was also this massive attack going on across the country, and using all of these tropes and stereotypes and discriminatory statements. And it's not dissimilar to what we're seeing today. Right, that the extremists on the other side are using any kind of wedge issue they can find. And what they have found is that the LGBTQ community continues to be a cudgel. Right. And, but, but Americans have changed a lot in the last 20 years. We now have marriage equality. I have a six year old daughter that we adopted. The the protections for job security and housing and public accommodations have so greatly expanded. And yet, we're still seeing people like Derek Schmidt lean into these discriminatory stereotypes about the community. What else have I learned? You know, one of the things I learned working here in Topeka is that people coming together in their community, going door to door having tough conversations can change the outcome. We were able to pass the anti discrimination legislation here in Topeka. We're able to protect that from a repeal effort that the Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church had tried to spearhead and it was only through that grassroots organizing through that community building that we were able to do that. And so that lesson has stuck with me no matter what I was doing through my political career, and now running in Citizens United and let America vote that's all about protecting our democracy. I'm so proud to lead an organization that's made up of 4 million members, because I know it truly is about having the people with us. And the having that grassroots power really behind an issue that can make all the difference.
Gotcha. I want to go back to that in a bit, but I am interested in the Westboro story. I mean, just tell me a little bit about what that was like.
Whoa, that was something. Um, yeah, I mean, as you pointed out, I was the first openly LGBTQ public official in the state of Kansas. And this was during a time when the Westboro Baptist Church was protesting here in the city of Topeka every single day. And we were I was known as being a gay activist who was fighting to expand protections for our community, proudly, proudly gay activist doing that. And it was by just a series of coincidences that I got, I was on the city council, and my district covered the Westboro Baptist Church compound, right. So they were actually my constituents. So it meant that there was a lot of they would protest me every single week at the city council meetings, I think I still hold the record for having my face and name on the most signs, which was seven, they had seven signs about me at the time. And obviously, they were very concerned with trying to keep the anti discrimination ordinance that we were trying to pass from passing. What ended up happening is that they ended up running one of the granddaughters in the primary in my reelect as well. So the, this was right, to take your listeners back. In 2004, the anti gay marriage amendments passed in like 30 states, across the country. And they were passing with 60 or 70%, support and so many states. And so Topeka, Kansas became a real, a real center of this, this gay rights momentum that we had going versus kind of the most virulent, anti gay homophobia and bigotry that we had seen became a real hotbed of for everyone to just look and see, where are we going to be able to make progress, or were we not? And so it was clear, she was only running because I was gay. And that's what the race became about. And I am proud to say that two Pekin stood together. And they voted to keep the anti discrimination ordinance on the books because they believed in fairness, and I won my primary. And then I promptly lost my general election. Perhaps I had made a little too much noise. But you know that there's not a single thing about that, that I regret or that I would take back. And it was, there are things I lessons I think I've learned over the last 20 years. I wish I had been a little smarter about 20 years ago. But I'm really proud of the work I did then. And I'm incredibly amazed by the work that everyone else in the community did, and just honored to have been a part of it. Yes,
and then switching focus again. Tell me more about your organization right now.
Oh, I love talking about this. I love talking about all this. But yeah, so I am president of an organization called in Citizens United, and let America vote. And our mission is really simple. We want to get big money out of politics. We want to protect and expand the freedom to vote. And we're a grassroots powered organization made up of 4 million members across the country. And for those who don't know, Citizens United was a Supreme Court decision in January 2010. That, to me was one of the most disastrous decisions of our lifetime. Because what it did is it took these two really terrible ideas and merge them together. And it said money equals speech. And corporations are people and it basically allowed all this unlimited and undisclosed money to flood into our politics. And what's really happened is it's drowned out the voices of everyday Americans, right. So you have all these big special interests, whether it's, you know, big pharma or big oil and gas, dumping in hundreds of millions of dollars every single election cycle to not only by the outcome of elections, but to also then by the outcome of policy debates. And it has stopped progress on so much of what we need as a country to make progress on. And so we're trying to fix that. Right. And we do it in a couple of ways. One is we endorse and try to help elect champions for our democracy, folks like Governor Kelly, or Chris man who's running for attorney general. And then we work with those champions to push for good legislation. So over the past year, our biggest focus was the freedom to vote Act and the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act. And these would have they're really common sense. It's all about setting national standards so that whether you live in Kansas, or you live in Texas, or you live in Maine, that your access to the ballot boxes are the same, so that the disclosure and transparency and our system is the same. So that we don't have gerrymandering where politicians are picking their voters instead of the other way around. So that's what we do no way we are fighting every day to save our democracy, which I think is under threat in a way that we've never seen in our lifetimes. And you don't have to look any further than the 500 bills that have been introduced across the country to rollback voting rights, or what happened on January 6. We know our democracy is under attack. And so we all have to come together to help strengthen it.
And one interesting thing too, about the website is you can look up each state's and they have their own democracy reading. I looked up ours, and unfortunately, we are sitting at an F right now. Can you tell me a little bit about that ranking? What makes kids is not so great for democracy right now.
So our state democracy scorecard is one of the only scorecards that looks at each state, and gives a comprehensive rating about democracy. So it looks at voting access and access to the ballot box. It looks at ethics and anti corruption pieces, it looks at money and politics. Are there limits, is it fully disclosed, is it transparent. And we look at redistricting and gerrymandering as well. And so you can look on the website, and you can look at the methodology and see where each state came up short. But the things that we're seeing states across the country tried to push to do are to insert more of that disclosure and transparency into the process so that voters can hold public officials accountable, and expanding the access to the ballot box. You know, look at early voting matters. Because not always Can someone take off work to go vote on Election Day. And you know, being able to vote by mail is both safe, secure, the military does it and it's convenient and needed for so many working families. So just as two examples, but yeah, I I highly recommend if you look at the website, you can see the breakdown and which parts are affected, which scores.
And then I noticed that the bottom of ours is also recommendation. It's like a warning thing saying or Attorney General's, or Attorney General's raises maybe like one candidate is preferred over the other.
Yes, we definitely prefer Chris man. I mean, Kris Kobach, has helped lead the efforts to undermine people's people's voting their registration. I mean, he's such a bad lawyer that a judge told him to go back to law school. Right. And his bogus lawsuits and fake conspiracy theories have cost Kansans millions of dollars. Right. And he's running to be the chief law maker in the state. And I think what some folks forget, is that the attorney attorneys General's across the country, they don't just prosecute crimes, it is also their job to defend the state in court. Right. So in states across the country in 2020, we saw attorneys general have to go to court and defend the certification of their elections. And that's a really scary prospect, if that's Kris Kobach. doing that. So I think there's a very clear choice in that race as well. And you know, speaking of attorneys generals who sign on to bogus lawsuits, Derek Schmidt was also one of them that signed on to try to overturn the 2020 elections, despite the fact that clearly Kansas US had safe free fair elections. He signed on because again, that was which way the political wind was blowing.
And besides these two are the there are other candidates in the November election that you have your eye on?
Sure. We also work very closely with St Davids, and she's been a great ally and partner in Congress. And despite the state legislatures attempts to gerrymander that district in such a way that she couldn't win and cracking apart Wyandotte County and disenfranchising voters of color. I think she's got a great shot to hold on to that seat. And we are excited to have keep keep her voice and her leadership in Congress. But she's fighting all the time to clean up corruption. She was one of our primary sponsors on the freedom to vote act and trying to push for more disclosure, transparency, etc.
Got it? So for you, what should the local Kansan look at when going to the polls? You know, like, what should they be aware of?
Yeah, I think that it's always important that voters are informed on that they know what's at stake. But, but, and what what's at stake in this November's election is, like I said earlier, nothing more nothing less than our actual democracy, right. And so I think that for voters, they need to look at, you know, who is going to help their day to day lives, who's going to help fund education, who's going to help make sure that they're good jobs, that More money's getting back into their pocket. And in the governor's race, that couldn't be more clear, that is Governor Kelly. Here's the other thing. We need folks to vote, register to vote, go vote, make sure you get five of your friends and family to go vote. We've seen Kansas, really set set high expectations around voter turnout, but especially with the August primary that just happened, which was incredible. But we need to continue to make sure we have high participation and high turnout, because that is how our government works best is when there is full participation. Got it?
And then on a national level, I mean, what have you seen? What are the trends here?
Yeah, um, I think that this, this midterm is going to be really interesting. You know, historically, the party in power, typically loses seats, I think it's only twice since the Civil War has the party in power, not lost seats in a midterm. But the country is also at one of its most polarized moments, right. And I think we all are feeling the urgency and the importance of all of the issues and priorities that we need to address as a country, right? From still coming out of the pandemic, to fighting, rising cost, to jobs, to education. All of these things are what's on the ballot. We we can win as a country if we continue to show up if we continue to participate if we continue to demand that our representatives work for us, and not for the special interest or the folks who are giving them the most money. And so trends across the country. There is I would say most of these races are a toss up like a flip a coin today, and it is just going to be a very, very, very tight election night. And I would also remind people to be a little patient, because I think results are going to take a little while across the country as well. But we need everyone to get out there and to knock doors and to make phone calls and to talk to their friends and family. Because there is I believe it's 25 days left. So we're in the final stretch.
And then one more interesting thing is some of the people I've talked to you what kind of the thing they've said they've experienced, like increasing hostility when just out and about. I mean, what do you think? Do you think like the political climate right now has gotten to a point where we can no longer have like discussions across the aisle or
I'm really that that's sad to hear. I'm sorry to hear that. I have. I have been really pleasantly surprised by how many people I've gotten a chance to talk to across the country who it's their first time going out and knocking doors or it's their first time making phone calls, and how what fantastic conversations they're having. There are always people who are hostile and I tend to just move quickly on to the next door. The thing I I always find so heartwarming and inspiring when I'm knocking doors is how much we all have in common, right? That normally if we start with what we have in common, that even if we end up disagreeing about who we're going to vote for the conversations can be civil and engaging and enlightening. But most of us are really concerned about, you know, our jobs, our school money, price of groceries, right, like, we're concerned about those things. And so, I love doing doors. It's one of my favorite things, because I like to hear directly from people. And what I've always found is that even when folks disagreed with me, most of the time, if we started with finding that commonality, we could build a good conversation from there, even if we didn't agree on the ultimate outcome. I guess I still have hope and belief that we are still that country
culture. And you mentioned like grassroots activism for young young people trying to get into that, what would you recommend? How should they start?
Oh, there's so many great, great organizations to get involved with, including, you know, they can get involved in the coordinate campaign and go knock doors and help make sure that Governor Kelly gets reelected. And but then there are also lots of great organizations, from organizations like the League of Women Voters, who helps get folks registered to quality Kansas who does LGBTQ work. There are always depending on their interests. My but my recommendation is, get involved. And it's a little scary at first, but stay with it. Because I think IT pros can provide such meaningful interactions and long term friendships. And I don't know, I know that it has helped propel my life and career.
I know you were featured in the book by CJ, January. Last Last name. Yeah. And you were saying that we're at a crossroads here today. That's kind of interesting to me. I mean, I guess just what would you say to the young LGBTQ kids is facing issues like the transgender ban? That kind of thing?
Yeah, um, I would say that first, CJ is incredible. And I was an honor to be a part of that project and a part of that book, and telling, telling the stories of people and our lives and our families and our, what we face is important, and it changes hearts and minds, we used to always say that coming out was a political act, because we know that when people know folks who are LGBTQ, it changes their opinions on our rights. And so I would, I would tell the folks who are younger and feeling under attack, that we've also seen the ability and for this country to change very quickly on LGBTQ rights. In 2004, it felt like there was no way in the world we would ever have marriage equality in this country. And in 2013, DOMA was struck down in 2015, marriage equality was the law of the land. That's a huge change in a short amount of time. But I would also say, find your communities of safety, find your support. I know there, there are so many people right here in Topeka, who I would not be anywhere without the community of support and friendships and safety that I had within that community. Club Cosmos had had me way over there almost every night. But um, so I think that finding those safe spaces is really, really important to be able to just share how how much it sucks to be a targeted community and a political battle, right? But also your powerful use your voice, get involved, and help organize against this.
Well, that's all the time you have today. But thank you for being here. And thank you for listening.
