HEFFNER: I'm Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind.
The millennials and post-millennials...
will one or both of these cohorts rescue the American
political process from its seemingly incessant
dysfunction, rancor, and hatemongering.
Steven Olikara is here to answer that question.
He's the founding president of the
Millennial Action Project.
A national non-partisan organization dedicated
to activating millennial policymakers to overcome
partisan entrenchment.
In this role, Steven organized the nation's
first bipartisan caucus for young members
of congress: The Future Caucus.
This past week as of this recording,
Steven and his colleagues convened in Milwaukee to
host the project's red and blue dialogue series.
With newly elected office-holders and
community stakeholders.
"Milwaukee is not only special as my hometown,"
Steven reflected, "but also as the epicenter
of political polarization and segregation in this
country." Steven those were poignant words,
thank you for sharing them with me.
OLIKARA: Thanks for having me.
HEFFNER: Of course, a pleasure.
Can you reflect on your experience in Milwaukee
just this past week?
OLIKARA: Sure well I first of all love Milwaukee.
It's a great town, great music,
great culture, great sports.
But one of the things as you referenced
about the greater Milwaukee area, is it really is,
according to studies, the most politically
segregated metro area in the United States
and I grew up in that environment.
Before I got into politics I was playing music
actually, primarily jazz and so my music kind
of spanned across these major political divides
and as you mentioned last week we hosted these red and blue
dialogues in Milwaukee where we brought together
our local future caucus members who are young
and new elected officeholders, along with the community.
And it's really powerful because in this moment of
divisive politics, to see community members who
really want to rise above the tribalism and the lack
of respect we have for different viewpoints,
is really encouraging actually and at the end of
the dialogue a number of people said I thought we
had a lot that, a lot more in common than we expected.
And so this is just the beginning and I really
believe that change does come from the bottom up.
And so if we can model the type of leadership,
the type of political discourse we need,
it can really start to make a big difference.
HEFFNER: Steven, you perceive that to be a
plurality or maybe even a majority who were not just
fed up with dysfunction, which is a longstanding
American pastime, but want to engage
and see themselves as solution makers?
OLIKARA: That's exactly right.
You have the data, but also just the larger
cultural shift here.
On the data side, a plurality of millennials
are rejecting both political parties right now.
And I think they're really rejecting a two-party
duopoly that is really holding our country back
and is creating the type of tribalism
in our politics today.
And for millennials what you see is
we kind of want both, and I often call us the a la carte generation.
We believe that we, for example,
take on the debt.
And we need to do something about climate change.
And so we are seeing that which is really encouraging.
But beyond that with these young and new elected
officials that we work with,
they are done with the partisanship,
they want to get over that and start working on solutions.
I mean if you think about it,
you get elected at a young age,
you're probably impatient by nature.
And that impatience I think translates to how
they can, you know, pragmatically work
together to find a solution.
And you know I think that ultimately represents our
democracy at its finest.
When we marshal the best ideas from all sides
and ultimately build consensus
on the great challenges facing our country.
Now we're not doing that yet in mainstream
politics, but we are starting to see a bubble
up at the millennial level.
HEFFNER: You were telling me an encouraging
development in the state of Ohio with your Future
Caucus and one particular representative working
to end the process of gerrymandering.
Can you tell us about that?
OLIKARA: Sure. So the process of gerrymandering has taken
place for maybe 200 years in this country,
but as a result of technology and increasing
tribalism that you have seen an extreme level of
gerrymandering take place recently.
And we saw our Future Caucus and our co-chair
in Ohio do something that no one thought was possible.
Ohio which is a state gerrymandered for the
partisan benefit of Republicans there,
has caused a level of distrust there in just
the way that they draw the districts.
And our republican co-chair,
state senator Frank LaRose,
introduced the bipartisan legislation to effectively
end gerrymandering in the state.
This was a year ago when a number of people
thought this was impossible.
A lot of this, you can imagine,
establishment Republicans were actually against it.
And they're all saying like, this guy is crazy.
I asked him at one of our Millennial Action Project
forums, you know, Senator LaRose,
how are you doing this?
Isn't it at the expense of your own party's benefit?
And he said, no.
I think we should win because we have the best
candidates and the best ideas,
not because we cheated our voters.
Over the course of the year,
Frank and others on the ground built support.
We then launched our Democracy Reform task
force which he is a member of and provided additional support.
And ultimately he was able to get the bill passed
through the legislature, and then just recently
the voters approved it with 75 percent of the vote.
This is not only an extraordinary example of
leadership but also how, you know,
voters are willing to go beyond their own tribal
self interest in the betterment of their own government.
And these stories unfortunately are too rare
and are covered far too rarely.
But you know, this is a great example
of a step in the right direction.
HEFFNER: You do have a federal congressional
element within your future caucus.
You were naming those representatives,
and I think our viewers would like to know who they are.
OLIKARA: Sure.
HEFFNER: They have not been able to bring
to the floor of the US House or to the Senate,
any of the kinds of legislation that would
garner and engender bipartisan support. Is that right?
OLIKARA: Well I think we've seen actually,
quite a bit of momentum at the congressional level.
Not as much as maybe you would see at the
state level just because things move
a bit slower in congress.
But our leadership team which includes
Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema,
Congressman Carlos Cabello,
Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy and Congressman
Mike Gallagher, a bipartisan leadership team.
We have about thirty members in total.
They actually have at the beginning of this year
for example, introduced a bipartisan bill to help
veterans seek employment and get skills training
for these new technological areas.
And another good example is recently
when the Parkland students came to Washington DC
and they were shaking the moral conscience of this country
and said, we need to go beyond party to reduce gun
violence in this country.
Our leadership team with Congresswoman Murphy
really leading the charge there,
was able to get bipartisan support on a bill to lift
a decades long ban on the CDC from studying gun
violence as a public health issue.
The first Republican to sign on was our
co-chair Carlos Cabello.
The second was another member,
more and more Republicans signed on.
Ultimately it passed and got signed into law.
HEFFNER: So at this juncture,
the CDC can do research on the effects of gun violence.
OLIKARA: Yeah.
HEFFNER: Something that had been barred.
OLIKARA: It had been barred,
exactly, exactly.
And these are the type of...
HEFFNER: Incremental.
OLIKARA: Yeah incremental change. Incremental change.
HEFFNER: In contrast to what was an amazing
achievement in Ohio.
OLIKARA: Right.
HEFFNER: And you're right, the press far too seldom,
rarely cover these developments.
OLIKARA: Right.
HEFFNER: But in part, Steven isn't it because
that bipartisan future caucus and the like-minded
solutions oriented problem solvers caucus
in the House of Representatives.
They're not focused on the issues that are most covered.
Like the Mueller probe or undocumented or illegal immigration.
OLIKARA: Right.
HEFFNER: Or the Dreamers.
Those political crises, which may well become
constitutional crises, given the current climate,
demand that the four representatives you
describe are not just part of the future,
but part of the present.
OLIKARA: Yeah.
HEFFNER: How can you get them to be part
of the present?
OLIKARA: Well that's a very good question.
When we started Millennial Action Project,
we very strategically started choosing issues
that would build momentum to more and more difficult efforts.
So for example we started working on issues
like entrepreneurship and how you can build
crowdfunding for these new startups.
Another big one for us was the sharing economy.
Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, how do you embrace innovation
but also protect consumers?
So these were the types of issues that were not so
much left versus right, but more generational.
And as a result, those members were able to build
relationships across the aisle.
And I often liken bipartisanship to, like, muscle building.
It's a muscle that needs to be exercised,
and over time it becomes muscle memory.
So now that we have this momentum,
we have these early wins, you can start taking on
bigger ticket items.
And what's been really great is to see how even
the sort of side effects of our work can translate
to the big issues. So you mentioned immigration.
Right now Congressman Cabello is leading an
effort to force a vote on immigration reform
that would be bipartisan so we can protect the Dreamers.
And a lot of the people leading that effort are,
you know, part of our Caucus and they trust him
because of the work that they've done previous to this time.
HEFFNER: The reality though,
tragic reality, of the current congress
is that Speaker Ryan refuses to put any legislation
that might have bipartisan consensus compromise
on the floor.
OLIKARA: Right, right.
HEFFNER: How do you address that problem?
OLIKARA: Yeah. So, and what you're referring to here
is this issue of the Hastert rule which says you need
a majority of the majority to bring a bill to the floor.
Of course that's not in the constitution,
that's basically a norm that has been created
by speakers over the years.
And so that is something we need to change.
And so what you're getting at is a much larger issue
of how do we move towards non-partisan governance?
And it's our belief, this is why we're so bullish
on the next generation.
It's our belief that those who are most likely
to change the process are those who have not been
made comfortable by and profiting off
of the system as it has been for the last thirty, forty years.
It's going to be these reform minded young
members who are willing to challenge the status quo,
and we've already seen this,
a lot of our members highlight congress from
Mike Gallagher for example,
who really has been willing to step outside of
his party's norm to be working on reform type issues.
And I think that's been very encouraging.
Another good example related to that is the
need for a cooling off period for retiring
congressional members as they're going into federal lobbying.
Currently there's just a one-year ban.
And they're proposing to increase it to five years.
Because if you think about it,
members really shouldn't be just trading on their
influence and profiting off of it.
And so these are the types of reforms that again
you're not seeing from the establishment,
but are absolutely necessary for us to
actually start trusting our government again.
HEFFNER: And the Parkland students in particular,
epitomize a group of young people,
post millennials. You and I are millennials.
OLIKARA: Yeah, we're already old now,
Alexander (laughs).
HEFFNER: But these are folks who have come of age
in a climate of persistent dysfunction.
In which they didn't see any compromise.
We have barely memories, but we do have those
memories of the 90s and the post 9/11 culture.
Which was resilient, America, patriotic.
And this leads me to this question,
which is there is a feistiness maybe born out
of the social media moment,
within the post-millennials,
that was not present in the millennials and not
the Obama coalition either.
That was not, I wouldn't call that a feisty.
It was courageous, but it wasn't feisty.
OLIKARA: Yeah.
HEFFNER: Parkland has a feistiness, rightly so.
But isn't there a signal, a tacit signal
from the retirements of all of these congressional officials.
You allude to it, I think of Congressman Dent
in particular from Pennsylvania,
that in order to restore our democracy right now,
we need to have a check on the Executive.
And that means that patriotic Republicans
like the Florida congressman you mention,
have to stand up and say, well,
we need one of these chambers to be a check on
this President because of the persistence of
corruption in his administration.
OLIKARA: Yep.
HEFFNER: Which is just the reality.
OLIKARA: Yep. Absolutely.
I mean, congress has to reassert its role as the
check on the Executive during Democratic
administrations, and Republican administrations.
And a good example of this is the fact
that we just let now presidents start
declaring war and start interfering abroad
without the congressional approval that is required in the constitution.
And so I completely agree on that point that we need
a new group of members in congress who believe
that congress needs to be passing a budget,
needs to be authorizing wars that needs to be
providing an appropriate accountability to the
Executive branch.
That gets to the fundamental value of
separation of powers.
And so, I mean we have seen a number of our
members say for example that we need to make sure
that Robert Mueller is protected.
But unfortunately we are still living in a highly
tribal environment.
We are not seeing the levels of patriotism required,
I think, of our major elected officials,
who are really driving the day-to-day,
in order to be putting a proper check on the Executive.
And I think that's a huge problem.
Not to say that, by the way,
I think there's been a huge obsession also,
on this probe as well.
And I agree with a lot of my conservative friends
who I talk to in Wisconsin that,
look, we're missing out on some of the major
challenges of the day if 100 percent of our
attention is on the investigation as well.
And I just think one of the great challenges we
face right now is the historic level of distrust.
I mean, in the 1960s, trust in government
and our institutions was closer to 80 percent.
Today it's down to about 15 percent.
That is not sustainable in a democracy and if we're
not having a national conversation about the
ways we can reform our political process and our
congress, then I'll tell you what,
the type of energy we saw electing Trump in 2016 is
just the beginning if we don't actually enact some
real reforms in the near term.
HEFFNER: That energy can be channeled in support
of a congressional candidate running
in your home state.
OLIKARA: Yeah.
HEFFNER: Randy Bryce,
OLIKARA: Yep,
HEFFNER: Who is seeking to replace the speaker.
OLIKARA: Yeah.
HEFFNER: If you ask Congressman Cabello
if he'd rather keep his seat or elect a Democratic majority.
You know because I think he is a patriot.
OLIKARA: Yeah.
HEFFNER: I think he would say the latter.
He would rather the chamber become not
beholden to the Administration,
OLIKARA: That's right.
HEFFNER: Than actually preserve his own seat.
OLIKARA: Yeah. Right.
I mean a major shift you're actually seeing
amongst the younger folks getting elected today
and the first of our generation,
the millennials are now getting elected to these
offices, is a view that politics in elected office
is not a long term career.
They see it in the view that the founders really
saw it, which is a citizen legislature.
You go and serve in public office,
write laws, and then you move back into private
life to live under those laws.
And I really feel like we're bringing that back now.
And so if you think about some of those young
elected officials you referenced,
they're not afraid to be courageous.
They're not afraid to get voted out either.
They believe that public service truly is a public service.
They need to get the things done, do the right thing.
And ideally, you know the way leadership works,
is you have to bring people with you.
You have to make a public case for why you're doing
x, y, and z. And then ideally they come with you,
but one of my favorite books is "Profiles In Courage"
by President Kennedy. And he highlights, you know,
US Senators who in many cases,
lost their political careers for doing the right thing.
And I often say, the most scarce resource
in politics today is courage, and we need more of it.
HEFFNER: I was thinking of the same book and the fact
that, as I've said on this show,
there have been profiles in cowardice that have
dominated our politics of late.
The millennials and post-millennials coming
to the floor now, hopefully will bring back
the courage, even if they're risking their own
electoral chances moving on.
But how is your project considering the necessity
of this kind of patriotic duty to not just install
constructive decision and policy-making,
but that accountability.
OLIKARA: The most important thing we're
doing right now is trying to build a governing
culture, and a governing structure that's capable
of building consensus, and without that,
the further our political institutions degrade.
And you were referencing how the post-millennials
have grown up in this era of dysfunction.
And that's all Gen-Z-ers know,
and that's largely all you and I and our generation
knows as well.
And so, what the cultural and the structural changes
will do is create an environment where we are
not so tribal as you're referencing here,
where we are actually building accountability into government.
Because in the wake of that,
or in the absence of that, then it is the politics
of resentment and as Kathy Cramer-Walsh references,
and George Washington references in his farewell
address as well, is you know when you have these
kind of warring factions just going up against each
other, then you start to see revenge-like behavior
at the expense of norms, values,
and the real ideals of this country.
So that's the contribution I believe we are making
and will continue to make, is again a cultural change
in the way that we govern, that's much more
non-partisan and collaborative.
And then the structural reforms that are required
to ensure that we have a system that people trust,
and also a governing process where it is more
possible to build consensus on the big issues.
Just to give you a sense on the structural side
that the reforms that are very important are,
for example, rank-choice voting,
having an open primary system.
That'll allow more moderate candidates to emerge.
But also people who aren't just having to appeal
to the extremes who come out in low turnout primaries.
And then similarly as we were referencing earlier,
the Hastert rule needs to go.
There needs to be more non-partisan way
that we're bringing bills up for consideration.
And then another big one is the way
that we're financing campaigns.
We've seen so many young candidates who start
running for office, and the number one factor
whether they are successful or not,
is how many rich people do they know?
And that is totally insane.
But we are starting to see some positive reforms.
One good example is in Connecticut,
where they have a system of what they call
the Clean Elections Law, where you have
to raise some small dollar donations to demonstrate
you're a legitimate candidate.
Then you get some funding from the government,
and you can run a competitive campaign.
What's really interesting is it was young
legislators who really have championed that law
and protected it in the face of a number of threats.
HEFFNER: Those young legislators are pivotal
to achieving those outcomes that you just described.
OLIKARA: Yeah.
HEFFNER: And there is a mountain to climb.
And there is a tsunami right now
of that resentment that is so deeply embedded
in our politics, in no small measure because of
Donald Trump, and his particularly vicious
and hyper-partisan politics.
Remember, he said he was this negotiator who was
gonna work with both parties because he alone
could fix our problems.
Well, turns out, his soul, if he has one,
was bought and sold.
Sold to the radical extreme.
Did millennials not make a mistake,
that I think their post millennial brethren are learning from.
They didn't run for office.
They started Facebook and Twitter and they
galvanized people, initially for good. Then for bad.
But not enough young people ran and sought
office over the last decade.
And millennials engaged in volunteerism but not
in elected office.
Was that not a lesson that these post-millennials
need to learn?
The Cameron Kaskys and David Hoggs,
they have to run for office.
OLIKARA: Well they certainly do,
and I think now, not just the Gen-Z-ers,
but also Millennials who are actually old enough
to be running for most of these offices now,
you're seeing a huge, huge wave of young people
deciding to run in the current,
you know 2018 midterm elections.
But to get to your broader point here,
one of the dichotomies we noticed when we were first
deciding to found this organization,
was the fact that Millennials have the
highest levels of service participation rates in the country.
That's volunteerism and social entrepreneurship.
And yet the least trust and confidence in government.
And so you have this civic idealism to govern
participation gap that did create a huge problem,
and I do think you saw a number of our best
and brightest going not into public service but many
other careers including technology and moving out
to Silicon Valley. And so that is absolutely an issue.
But the good news is that people are waking up right
now and a lot of them are trying to figure out,
not only how they run for office,
but also how they can be part of a number of these
larger reforms to the system.
And I'll make one prediction here.
I think this November, we'll see the highest
midterm voter turnout ever for millennials.
HEFFNER: How are millennials and
post-millennials going to rescue the heartland
and in particular, your native Wisconsin?
OLIKARA: Well you're right.
I mean I think the rust belt has been a decisive
factor in American politics recently.
And part of the reason for that is because you've had
the hollowing out of the industrial sector of the
economy and you've had a lot of people lose their jobs.
And they've been out of work for a long period of time.
And for those who have work,
their median incomes after adjusting for inflation
has been largely, you know, stagnant.
And so you have people who are just frustrated
with the economic situation.
But then they see their politicians are just
shouting at each other all the time.
They realize, I have no connection to,
or no agency to really, you know, change things.
And so I'm really optimistic though,
I'm hopeful, that things will change.
And I think if you think about Wisconsin,
you do have a number of millennials who are in,
not only Milwaukee and Madison,
but also in a couple weeks we're doing an event
with millennials up in Appleton.
In the Fox Valley which is close to Green Bay Wisconsin.
And you have you know young professionals
who are getting engaged.
The real question is where that energy will be channeled?
Where that frustration will be channeled?
Will there be political leaders who will inspire us,
not to just serve our worst tribal instincts,
but ultimately serve the better angels of our
nature in these very divisive times.
HEFFNER: And I'll never forget Kathy Cramer saying
here that it was rural Wisconsinites who were
blaming Madison because of a perception that all
state government was doing was serving people who did
not look like them.
OLIKARA: That's right.
HEFFNER: All state government was doing was
implementing an affirmative action
program, which was not helping them.
OLIKARA: Yeah.
HEFFNER: Which was denying them opportunity.
Last predictions because we're running out of time:
Does Randy Bryce win, and does Governor Walker win
a third term?
OLIKARA: I'll make a couple predications here.
And we'll see how well they do.
I think first of all the Randy Bryce seat is a seat
that's just, basically the Chicago suburbs really.
But also just south of Milwaukee,
and really the heart of the rust belt.
You had a General Motors plant close down in Janesville.
And so I think the voters there are really frustrated.
I think ultimately it really will be a toss-up
now that Paul Ryan has said he's retiring.
HEFFNER: And Scott Walker?
OLIKARA: And for Governor Walker,
I actually think that his organizational
base in Wisconsin is extremely strong,
and unfortunately the Democratic field of
candidates is extremely week.
You have about ten or so candidates who are running.
HEFFNER: The rest is history.
OLIKARA: Yeah, so we'll see what happens.
HEFFNER: We're out of time,
Steven, it's been a pleasure.
Thank you for your work.
OLIKARA: Thank you.
HEFFNER: And thanks to you in the audience.
I hope you join us again next time for a thoughtful
excursion into the world of ideas.
Until then, keep an open mind.
Please visit The Open Mind website at
Thirteen.org/OpenMind to view this program online
or to access over 1,500 other interviews.
And do check us out on Twitter and Facebook
@OpenmindTV for updates on future programming.
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