Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
From LeverNews.com — Lever Time is the flagship podcast from the investigative news outlet The Lever. Hosted by award-winning journalist, Oscar-nominated writer, and Bernie Sanders' 2020 speechwriter David Sirota, Lever Time features exclusive reporting from The Lever’s newsroom, high-profile guest interviews, and expert analysis from the sharpest minds in media and politics.
David Sirota: [00:00:00] Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Lever Time. I'm David Sirota. On today's show, we're going to be talking about the swingiest of swing states that could determine the entire 2024 election. Michigan. I'm going to be sharing my interview with Hill Harper, the actor from ABC's The Good Doctor.
who's now running for Michigan's open U. S. Senate seat in the Democratic primary. Hill is running as a progressive and government outsider, which could be a huge selling point, considering his primary opponent is Congresswoman Alyssa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and Department of Defense official, and the preferred candidate of the Democratic Party establishment.
He'll also recently made national headlines when a wealthy donor offered him 20 million to drop out of the Senate [00:01:00] race and instead mount a Democratic primary challenge against House Rep. Rashida Tlaib, an offer for the Democratic primary. The Hill Harper turned down that interview with Hill is coming up in a few minutes for our paid subscribers.
We're also always dropping bonus episodes into our lever premium podcast feed coming up. This Monday is my conversation with media strategist Jason Kent about Facebook's parent company meta, which is currently suing. The Federal Trade Commission in an attempt to prevent regulators from reinforcing a 2020 privacy settlement regarding the company's monetization of user data from children.
That's right. Rather than agree to be regulated for harvesting data from kids, Meta is alleging that the FTC's authority is unconstitutional. Again, that bonus episode is coming up on Monday.
If you want access to our premium content, head over to levernews. com and click the subscribe button in the top right to become a [00:02:00] supporting subscriber. That gives you access to the Lever Premium podcast feed, exclusive live events, even more in depth reporting, and you'll be directly supporting the investigative journalism that we do here at The Lever.
All right, we're going to get right into my interview with Hill Harper. Michigan is going to be central to the entire 2024 election, and Democrats appear to have a very big problem there with Joe Biden at the top of the ticket.
Biden's support for Israel's war in Gaza has roiled the politics of Michigan, which is home to one of America's largest Arab American communities. How can Democrats compete for Michigan? Hill Harper argues that the party needs a U. S. Senate nominee who can energize the state's voters. Now, you may recognize Hill's name from his previous work as an actor on TV series like CSI New York and The Good Doctor or films like Spike Lee's He Got Game.
Now, Hill Harper is running for an open [00:03:00] U. S. Senate seat in Michigan's Democratic primary. He's running as a progressive outsider who, according to his campaign, will not be doing the bidding of lobbyists or wealthy donors. This isn't just talk. In November of last year, Hill received a phone call from a wealthy donor who offered him 20 million to drop out of the U.
S. Senate race and instead run in a primary against incumbent U. S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. Tlaib is the only Palestinian American member of Congress who's been lambasted. Over the last few months for her support of Palestinians in Gaza and her push for a ceasefire. Hill turned down that offer of 20 million, saying that he won't, quote, be bossed, bullied, or bought.
Contrasting Hill is his biggest opponent in Michigan's Democratic primary. Congresswoman Alyssa Slotkin. If the Democratic establishment in Washington, D. C. created their perfect [00:04:00] candidate in a lab. It would probably be something like Elizabeth Slotkin. She's a former CIA analyst who worked for the Bush administration and the Pentagon.
In her new iteration as a congresswoman, she's a donor friendly, establishment defending, status quo maintaining Democrat. If Hill wants a shot at winning that Michigan Senate seat, first, he'll have to defeat Elissa Slotkin in Michigan's Democratic primary. In today's interview, I spoke to Hill Harper about why he decided to leave acting and run for the U.
S. Senate. We also talked about what sets him apart from establishment Democrats like his opponent, Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin. And we talked about that controversial phone call he received, highlighting why there's a dire need for politicians who actually represent the people rather than wealthy donors.
Hey, Hill. How you doing?
Hill Harper: Great. Thanks, David. How are
you?
David Sirota: I'm good. Uh, hope the [00:05:00] campaign is going well. Um, you're running for the Senate in, Michigan, and I want to talk a lot about Michigan today because it's such an important swing state. The Senate race there is so important. It's obviously important for the presidential campaign, but you're not The typical kind of candidate who came up through a legislature or was a mayor or was a county commissioner, you come from a different line of work. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what you've been doing before this and how you decided to try to make a go of getting into politics.
Hill Harper: Sure. So, um, for me, it really starts with my grandparents. I, I'm named, my name, Hill Harper, I'm named after my grandfather, my, my mother's side named Doc Hill, who was a pharmacist in Seneca, South Carolina. He served the black community, uh, during Jim Crow when we couldn't go to Rexall or Walgreens. For those [00:06:00] youngsters out there listening, that's the CVS or Rite Aid of today, so you know that, um, and, and, he was someone that just talked about service.
And then my grandfather on my father's side, another physician, he had a 88 acre farm outside of a, a prison town in Iowa called Fort Madison, Iowa, and same deal, talked about service. And my mother became one of the first Black female anesthesiologists in the country, and my father was also in medicine.
And so I come from a family that has always emphasized the idea of education and service. as I sort of went through the ranks, um, when I ended up going to college at Brown University, I studied sociology and economics, and I wanted to See, you know, how can you actually make a tangible difference in communities and in people's lives and, and sort of continue that.
I went to Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government, and I decided to do a joint degree there in law and government. And during that time is when I started. To act more professionally and I'm not [00:07:00] saying I'm talking about professional acting and because in college at Brown, I did a lot of theater and I loved it, but I didn't know, you know, how do you make a career that or what?
What does that look like? I had no family that were in the arts, but I loved Harry Belafonte. He was a hero of mine and I saw him as an actor and as an activist. I love Sidney Poitier. I love Denzel Washington. I love what they represented and I really at that point in my life felt that you could make a true impact, particularly.
Um, in the black community, and diverse communities by representing the best of what a black man is and representing that in a way and, and, and so could I combine something I love that also had impact? And so, um, as I started to dig deeper into acting and doing a lot more theater, when I was in Boston in grad school, I'd go down to New York and do theater and auditions.
I realized this is something I loved and something I wanted to do and so ended up pursuing that. As a career, and I felt that as an activist and as an artist, that combination could be quite powerful. [00:08:00] And so, you know, one of the, I mean, there's a couple great things that I think about my, my acting life or my artist life of getting able to meet and be on a panel and talk with and be mentored by Harry Belafonte, Jesse Jackson.
Um. Is one of my mentors as well and even Ozzie Davis, we did a movie called Get on the Bus, with Spike Lee directed and I got to sit next to him for almost a month shooting that film and he would tell me stories about Malcolm X and coming to his, him and Ruby Dee's house and uh, In, in New York and, and so that just solidified my desire to continue to act and play characters and, and be involved in projects that move the meter in a positive direction.
But at the same time, could I use that platform or whatever that offered, like Harry Belafonte as a, as a vehicle for activism and a vehicle for change. And I think that historically in [00:09:00] the black community, you've seen plenty of athletes and you've seen plenty of entertainers. Attempt to fill, fulfill that role because oftentimes you're blocked from the opportunity of fulfilling it in a more traditional way.
Um, in, in, in, in that way. So all that said, that's led me down the path to here. You know, in my union, I got elected to the national board of my union and I served in that capacity. President Obama, who was a classmate of mine at Harvard Law School, appointed me, to the president's cancer panel. So for six years, we made recommendations to the White House around cancer policy.
And that, and that time in that window was a very important time because it was during the then Vice President Biden's moonshot against cancer. And so there was a lot of attention and a lot of funding. headed towards. So we worked with the NIH and worked with the moonshot to create real policy that I think is impacted.
I'm a cancer survivor and that's in part why I ended up on that panel. [00:10:00] And so, um, you know, that was my first entree into DC politics or DC type of work. And, um, and now, uh, first time in 30 years. Michigan, there's an open US Senate seat, and it's an opportunity, but it, but, but at the same time, and I'll say this, which is a very sad thing.
For the first time in 57 years in Michigan, there is no black democratic representation in Congress. which means we're going the wrong direction as far as diversity and inclusion and representation. And so this is an opportunity for a different type of candidate. As you said, I'm not a politician. I don't, I don't act like a politician.
I'm not trying to be a politician, but I'm trying to revert what I believe a U. S. Senate seat should, should represent, and that is the Senate is service. And, and too often we're electing politicians that do backdoor deals, that have lobbyist relationships, that work with special interest groups and are supported by them, [00:11:00] wholeheartedly, and they're not really serving the interests of the people or serving people.
And my candidacy represents that.
David Sirota: So you, you've decided to jump into a Senate race in which there is. A politically formidable Democratic opponent in this, in this primary, um, and I want to talk a little bit about, about that, that part of the race. I mean, if you created in a lab a sort of, perfect specimen of the, uh, bipartisan Washington establishment, it seems to me it would, you, you could come up with your opponent, Alyssa Slotkin, a former.
CIA official under the George Bush administration who worked on the Iraq portfolio, uh, under Bush, uh, also worked in the Obama administration, uh, in the State Department, Department of Defense, uh, known as a conservative, uh, Democrat. You deciding to jump into a race like that where this congresswoman now, Alyssa Slotkin has much of the establishment [00:12:00] institutional support in a race like this.
I think the question always comes up in a case like this is we've come to, I guess. understand that the Democratic Party establishment has done a very good job of winning primaries. I mean, if you could say the Democratic Party establishments on a lot of things that it doesn't do all that well. But one thing it does really, really well is crush Insurgent primary challenges from outsider candidates.
So when you were looking at this race, the question I would ask you is what made you jump into a race like this knowing the reality of how difficult it is to win, forget about the general election for a second, to win a democratic primary up against a candidate like this?
Hill Harper: We're in a critical moment, David. I mean, this, this is, this is it. I think that we're fighting for, our democracy. We're fighting for the soul of our country and certainly Michigan is the front lines of that. And those [00:13:00] two things that I've already mentioned, coalescing at the same time, I don't think are coincidental.
You know, uh, when I mentioned the fact that it's the first open U. S. Senate seat in Michigan in 30 years. And to your point, the, the Democratic establishment is treating it as if it's an incumbent seat. They're attempting to slot in or, or, or insert a candidate, into that when it's an, it's truly an open seat and that's what democracy is supposed to represent.
At the same time, at the same time, for the 57 years, Michigan does not have a black Democratic elected in. Congress and the Michigan Democratic Party continuously. Goes to the black community here in Michigan and says, in the general election, and says, save us. We know Michigan's a red state until black people in Michigan vote.
Until Wayne County reports, [00:14:00] Michigan is, for those of you who aren't from here, Wayne County is where Detroit is. a significantly predominantly black city, and where I live, I live in the city of Detroit. And the fact that the Democratic Party. Says that to these communities and says that to this community in particular, save us.
The future of the world depends on making sure that you save us, yet we're not going to come to you and ask you who you'd like your next senator to be knowing. The open Senate seats come up in Michigan every 30 years, and the Senate seat is arguably the most powerful seat, um, in, particularly in the context of the 50 50 Senate where we're seeing right now, perhaps even more influential in many ways than the executive branch, just because we have a 6.
2 trillion federal budget, and those senators decide where that money goes, and, and so there are so many disaffected Democrats here in [00:15:00] Michigan. And I'm not just talking about the black community. I'm talking about the Dearborn community here, that I just took a meeting with folks in Dearborn, which for folks who don't know, is a, is a extremely large Arab population and they feel completely Disaffected by the Democratic Party.
Um, you know, I'm only one of two U. S. Senate candidates in the country that has called for ceasefire. And, and so when we think about these things, folks are disaffected and folks feel left out of the party. And my candidacy represents an idea of giving people a choice, a real choice, um, in terms of the type of Democrat. And I feel that my values and, and are much, much, much more aligned with the Michigan Democratic electorate, um, than my opponent.
David Sirota: Yeah, well, let's [00:16:00] let's let's talk a little bit about that. I mean, for for folks who maybe don't know the ins and outs of the race and the ins and outs of the of the policy differences, what would you lay out as the 234 major differences? Between you and your Democratic opponent in this critical Senate race, the major policy differences that you believe, if and when you got to the Senate, there would be a clear difference.
I would do this, my opponent would likely or has said that she would do this. What are those differences?
Hill Harper: Okay, well, you know, one difference would be we can talk about a vote, um, and we'll talk about specific legislation. So let's talk about, my, my opponent voted against it. the ability of folks who are willing to die for our country to fly their flag. They, she voted against, uh, the pride flag being flown or the ability [00:17:00] to fly on a military basis.
I would, I would have voted differently. I'm in favor of student loan debt relief. In fact, um, I'm, I'm, you know, 63 percent of black wealth goes back to paying off student loan debt. Um, I'm, I go further than just student loan debt. I'm talking about, I want high quality, free, pre K through 16.
And I don't believe we should be saddling young people with. Student loan debt. I have somebody on my campaign, David. Yesterday. I'm just sitting there. We're eating together. We're talking about student loan debt, and we're talking about student loan debt relief and how important it is and how I didn't believe we were even going far enough, let alone having some Democrats push back against President Biden about that student loan debt relief issue where he told me that in 2002 he paid 10, 000 into his daughter's student loan debt. She has still paying off, uh, uh, her, uh, [00:18:00] 10, 000 plus, plus. And I just did the opportunity cost math on that 10, 000 plus his interest. And that's 60, 000. In today's money, if he would have just invested that in a simple S& P investment and not had to pay the interest and not had to pay that, just think about that and think about how much wealth is taken out of communities that can afford it the least because we're convinced and told that if you get your education, that's your only way to actually advance.
That's what I was told. That's why I went to undergrad and grad school. I graduated 125, 000 in student loan debt when I came out of grad school. You know, that's that's that's yet another example. Another example would be, I would have been one of the first people to support and co sponsor, uh, Mark Pocan and, and, and, uh, and Barbara Lee's bill, the people over the Pentagon, which was just a drop in the bucket, a hundred billion dollar reduction and, and basically, um, An overture to say we're not just going to rubber stamp military spending, particularly in an [00:19:00] age when we don't know where that money goes and it's the people's money, you know, that that's just a few different examples.
I'm not, uh, I, it feels like, uh, folks that, you know, obviously, working in the CIA. Department of Defense, those types of things and another thing, I'll give you another one right here in Michigan. This is kind of an inside baseball one. Camp Grayling, Camp Grayling is attempting to expand into 100 preserve that surrounds it.
They've been PFAS polluters for years. They still haven't cleaned up their PFAS. There's no way I would support the expansion of Camp Grayling here in the state of Michigan. I'd be the 51st vote To end the filibuster because we got to pass the big things, environmental justice and flint and and what's what's going on.
Our federal representatives in this state have not fought have not fought in anywhere near the level that they have to michigan. I don't know how long you want me to go on. Michigan has 21 percent of the world's fresh surface water supply in in Lake Lake. [00:20:00] Michigan and the adjoining lakes, and our federal politicians are not pushing back against Enbridge, the pipeline.
If the Line 5 pipeline bursts
David Sirota: mean, I mean, thinking about this, I know about this, the Enbridge pipeline. I mean, it is one of the scariest things
to think about for the whole country.
Hill Harper: it's already reached its point of, you know, it's that 50 70 year milestone. Um, it's supposed to be stable. Already, Enbridge already poisoned, you know, the Kalamazoo River, et cetera, uh, you know, and things like that. So, so, so when we think about this. I live in a state that has 21 percent of the world's fresh surface water supply and everyone in this state has to drink bottled water.
David Sirota: I mean, say, say that again, 21 percent
Hill Harper: 21 percent of the world's,
David Sirota: freshwater.
Hill Harper: world's fresh surface water supply touches Michigan shores.
David Sirota: Yeah, it's incredible.
Hill Harper: Okay. [00:21:00] And everybody here. Drinks bottled water, and has to drink bottled water, and private equity bottles that water and ships it everywhere else. And, and, and, and people are acting like that's okay.
Our politicians are silent on these issues, as if that's okay. It's not okay. And it's not okay to be silent. The people want change, fundamentally. And so you ask the, you know, we scrape all of this back, and we ask, You know, why in the world would I leave my job that, you know, was, I was doing all right, doing the job and, uh, feeding my family with the job.
Why would I leave that to, to, to, to try to battle an uphill battle where I, you know, going into it, you know, they're going to have an in, a massive independent expenditure to be able to smear my name and play stories that Our [00:22:00] half truths and make them seem like, you know, this, that, and the other. Why would I do that?
I do it because we got to fight back. Good people, common sense people have to run for office. And if we continue to allow the bullies, the lobbyists, the special interest groups to bully us around, to buy off candidates, if we continue to allow that, then There is no future for my son. My son's eight years old.
He just turned eight years old. And, so fundamentally the biggest difference would be leading. As service, I would be there to serve and not be there to be on a platform and sit there for 40 years telling people. And basically in Michigan, I've been crossing the state, David, because obviously this is a grassroots campaign.
So, you know, we're not going to rely on being able to pay for a bunch of paid media. Well, you know, I've been actually talking to people going at crisscrossing and they keep telling me the exact same thing. Every senator we've ever elected they show up at election time and we never see them again. In fact, we don't even know how to reach them.
So one of the things [00:23:00] i've done is I instituted a you know a texting number so folks can just text they can text the campaign because I want the campaign to feel like What I would be as a senator you're going to be able to reach me the senate should be able to serve people No one has been able to tell me yet.
Not one person out of the Tens of thousands of people I've spoken in front of, because I always, I always ask the same question. Can anyone here raise their hand and tell me how their past or current U. S. Senators in this state have made a difference at their dinner table?
David Sirota: I mean, it's a, it's a brutal question and there aren't really great, great answers. And I think your, your point, I mean, when you think about Michigan. Michigan is emblematic, a kind of democratic leaning state that has produced senators who, I'm not running them down, but senators sort of who have been in office for so long that it speaks to a question of, and now a sort of a primary unfolding [00:24:00] where the democratic machine is putting, trying to put in place a candidate Where there is no contested primary at all.
I mean, this speaks to a lack of a healthy democracy, right? I mean, that's what it really speaks to. It
Hill Harper: Our democracy is being crushed by, I believe, Our party, the Democrat party, as well as, as, as the Republican party, I mean, because here's the deal, both of the party leaderships are in on the fix. They don't, they, I, I was talking to, a very dear friend of mine, I'm not going to say who, she's, she's a congressperson that I went to law school with.
And, and she's a supporter, uh, et cetera. But, you know, she, I don't, she hasn't given me permission to publicly say that. I think that she's like, you know, endorsing me. So I, I won't say who, but she was basically kind of, I was talking about campaign finance reform and the need, the absolute desperate need for campaign finance reform, full scale campaign finance reform.
She's like, Hill, never happened. Hill, you [00:25:00] won't be able to get it done. I said, well, and I made a joke. I said, well, it was As long as filibuster is in place, then, you know, give me a catheter. I'll stand there on the floor and I'll just make sure government doesn't go forward until, until we do it. But, but, but, but, but, but here's the deal.
since money. And this is the point that she made to me, since Citizens United, and a lot of people think, and this is my point, David, I think a lot of people think that the reaction to the Obama victory was the Tea Party. No, I think the reaction to the Obama victory was Citizens United. And basically the idea of saying, and both parties colluding on this, and this is where we, you know, we start to talk about power, money, and collusion and corruption, saying, hey, if we make money so determinative in electoral politics, then if you're an incumbent, the party candidate and the establishment will always win.
And the insurgent [00:26:00] candidate won't be able to replicate what Obama was able to do. Come from forty, forty five points down by assembling groups of people that are passionate about the candidacy. And creating a grassroots movement. So that's what we're trying to do here in Michigan but we're fighting.
against Citizens United. We're fighting against dark money. We're fighting against special interest money and the threats. When I tell you the threats that I get from, but they're money threats.
David Sirota: right? And I want to talk, I want to talk about that. And that's a good segue to my, to our next question. And to be clear, the Citizens United stuff, you're, you're, you're speaking my language. We're working on a huge project as the Lever subscribers know, a huge project about the legalization of corruption.
And I think you've contextualized it, correctly in a lot of ways. It is not just a, a one party situation. It is a both parties situation. Both the leadership of both parties like the system as it is because it means they get to use money from their donors, their huge donors to control the [00:27:00] process.
Hill Harper: me take it even further though, David, I just want to say this because it's important and but it goes even deeper than that. And that's why you see the level of divisiveness. Because what both parties do is that if you're able to create a boogeyman, you can raise money off the boogeyman. Right? And so therefore people are sold.
Upset that people want to create all this divisiveness and actually not just get solutions, common sense solutions done to support people. And the reason why is because the money and if, because if I can make you a villain or the boogeyman, and then I can run an ad about how bad you are scaring people, and then I can raise money off of it since money's determinative, then therefore I'm, I'm stuck in that position.
I can't work with you because if I do work with you, then I can no longer make you the villain, make you the boogeyman, make you the bad guy. And so therefore, you start getting stuck and you start doing much more [00:28:00] inflammatory things negatively about other people. And all of a sudden it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
And so that's what's important. And because these parties and the establishment and the candidates are chasing the money.
David Sirota: Yeah. And, and, and I think it used to be. Uh, up until, I mean, it was never perfect, to be clear. it's always been difficult to win a primary, uh, against either party's establishment, to be clear. So not just the Democratic Party, but the Republican Party establishment candidates. It's not been easy. That's never been an easy thing to do.
as an example, I mean, I am married to a Democratic, uh, state representative who won the first primary. against an incumbent in decades in this state. And I remember saying to my wife at the time, I'm just letting you know what you're trying to do in running in a primary against an incumbent Democrat.
That's like the hardest thing to be successful at in all of American politics, is to [00:29:00] win a primary against an incumbent.
Hill Harper: Can I do a call with her and she can maybe give me some advice?
David Sirota: She, she, I wasn't telling her not to do it. I was just saying like, Hey, and she, she understood that challenge. So to your point, but, but what I was going to say is that I think that it used to be at a certain level, the democratic primary big D democratic party primary process was one of the, was still one of the places where, where there, there felt like there, the races could be small enough that money wasn't in the past.
As determinative, as you put it, as it is now, and I think what happened, to be quite frank, is that when AOC won her primary, I think some people thought that was going to be, to be the beginning of primary, successful primaries like that, because it was so surprising. And what I think ended up happening. I think the history bears this out, is that the establishment forces in the [00:30:00] Democratic Party, uh, sort of the corporate forces that control our politics, understood how scary that was to them.
And in subsequent years, they have gotten a lot even more serious about buying Democratic primaries than even they had been In the past that that sent a shockwave through the sort of the donor class. and I think that's what, that's why we've seen much fewer, uh, successful contested democratic primaries against, uh, incumbents and or establishment selected candidates.
Now I want to get into this question of how determinative money is in the context of Michigan and in the context of Michigan's, large. Arab population, and in the context of the Israel Palestine situation, there were some headlines a couple months ago or a couple weeks ago about how you were reportedly offered a lot of money, [00:31:00] politically and electorally in regards to the Israel Palestine situation.
Tell us what happened.
Hill Harper: So, um, I was driving to, uh, a fundraiser in Pontiac. Uh, where, wasn't going to raise a whole lot of money, uh, and I don't think I did. But, so, but, but definitely grassroots, wonderful folks coming out, so I don't begrudge the 25 and the 50 that they, that they provided. But on, in that call, I got surprised, uh, I was called by, uh, a major donor, Saying, hey, we have 10 million in soft money and, uh, would be able to raise you 10 million in hard money, um, if you would drop out of the U.
S. Senate race in primary, uh, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.
David Sirota: And Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian
American member of Congress,
Hill Harper: well, first of all, there's no way in the world I was going to primary the only Palestinian member [00:32:00] of the United States Congress, and the fact that, you know, systemically, as we've been talking about, the fact that someone has even the ability to make this call is abhorrent, and moreover, uh, you have to politicians are there in the world?
I mean, there's, there's, there's probably two I could name right now in this election cycle, uh, where this has happened since October 7th. So, uh, you know, at the end of the day, it's shameful and it's sad. And in this case, you know, in, in their minds, they were going to get a twofer. I was not going to be running against their candidate.
In the U. S. Senate race, and I would also be targeting a candidate that they desperately wanted out, in fact, probably the candidate that they most want out of, uh, of the U. S. House of Representatives.
David Sirota: When you got that call, I mean, were you, were [00:33:00] you, were you surprised? Were
you, I mean, like, were
Hill Harper: was, I was, I was shocked well, first of all, I mean, you would know this because of your wife, when you're running in a race. And I'd heard rumblings, you know, because people were, because, because they'd asked certain questions that were similar to yours.
They'd be like, is, is, is he running for a different reason? Like, is he setting up a run for something else? Is he, you know, what does he do? Because he, he, you know, how is he going to win this thing? And what is he thinking? You know, this is so hard. He's got, you know, he's got this, you know, it's good. And, and, and, but I've been so unifocused on my Senate race that when someone calls me and talks about a different race.
Particularly an incumbent Democrat,
David Sirota: I just be curious. I mean, the question that I would ask you is, it's sort of from the different, a different angle, which is talk about the presumptions. that are baked into a call like that.
Hill Harper: without question, the, the, the, the fundamental presumption of a call [00:34:00] like that is that anyone who's running for public office is for sale and because they're more interested in it. Being in a seat of power, you know, in this case, having that button on your lapel and being able to ride the little tram that goes back and forth underneath the Capitol, then actually wanting to serve in a real way. And that's the great thing is like, you know, my friends called me, they're like, man, they didn't know who they were calling. You know what I mean? I will not be bought, bossed or bullied in any context of my life. I mean, there's so many, even if we think about my acting career, there's so many roles that I turned down over the course of my career that would have made me a lot more.
Money and a lot more famous because I didn't feel that they represented the way I think a black person or the community I represented or how I wanted to represent myself. And when I think about young people looking at the [00:35:00] roles or the projects, I want them to. To look at me and the characters and the projects with a sense of pride, not denigration.
And so, you know, if I wasn't going to get bought then, I'm certainly not going to get bought now. but that's the point, David. We need more people running for office that take that position. Because if they did, it would actually discount the value of the money to the point where you, we would be able to.
Get the 51st vote and the filibuster. We would be able to pass full scale campaign finance reform. We would be able to to codify women's reproductive health, women's reproductive rights. We would be able to ban, what I call weapons of mass murder. You know, these are the things that we'd be able to do, but since money is Whether it's the NRA, whether it's AIPAC, whether it's Big Pharma, whether it's Big Oil, it doesn't matter which group it is, it's just that they yield so much power.
I was talking about healthcare, healthcare costs, and you [00:36:00] know, the number one cause of personal bankruptcies is healthcare. And obviously, what I told you at the beginning of this and my family, being in healthcare is something that's big to me. My mom still, when she's not home in Colorado, lives here in Detroit with myself and my son, and we talk about this all the time.
Big pharma spent $375 million on elections in the 2022 election cycle. What are they gonna spend in 2024? Probably $500 million. I mean, and, and then you sit back and ask yourself, who's bearing the cost of that? Right here, from where I sit, it would take me 10 minutes to get across the bridge to Canada to get right there.
13 x lists for a vial of insulin.
David Sirota: You're talking to a guy who helped Bernie Sanders organize his first bus trips with seniors to Canada in the late 1990s as his press
secretary. I remember talking about this, that issue. 30 years ago, or 20, whatever it is, 25 years ago, and I remember as a young person, sort of understanding through [00:37:00] those bus trips, how insane this situation was and being confident that that situation was going, was on its way back then to being solved.
The fact that we are sitting here 25 years later, and it is still the same. Problem is, is a an unbelievably disturbing commentary on how much power the health care industry as a whole has and how much power specifically the pharmaceutical industry has over our politics that we tolerate that and no other country in the world tolerates that, especially sitting there in Detroit.
Where it is literally right there. It's, it's right over there. I mean, it's, it's, right? The, the cost of drugs being, you know, 10, 15 times the price, the same drug from the same manufacturing plant in Canada. I mean, it boggles the mind. That, that's one of those things. It still gets me
pissed off.
Hill Harper: 2024. [00:38:00] I, I mean, private equity in health care is the idea that we, I can even say that sentence, private equity owning health care
David Sirota: Yeah, it's like a dystopian phrase.
Honestly, it's like something out of, out of another Detroit reference. It's like something out of RoboCop. It's like something out of the movie, the old movie RoboCop projecting a dystopian future, private equity, equity, and healthcare together. We're all of that. Right. And we are still here dealing with it.
And it goes back to, I agree with you, what we've been talking about. The money,
the
money is at the root of
Hill Harper: politicians that won't fight for us. And, and to me, that's, that's what's so perplexing. But it goes back to our money point. Is that if you have enough money to run the flowery ad, literally every commercial break that says the nice things, and then you have unlimited I. E. money, On the soft side that runs the negative [00:39:00] ad that really, you could say anything about anybody in the ad, about your opponent, you can overwhelm them so much that it's, you can, you literally can't overcome it.
Now, even, even this and people say, well, hell, what about social media ever since I came out for ceasefire? Instagram has shadowbanned me in terms of my reach. So, it used to be my reels, I, you know, I'd be talking about democracy and, you know, it's great, we're gonna vote and this, that, and the other.
I, you know, the reels would get like 10, One of my reels, 125, 000 likes. Now, since then I, 400 likes? I'm a little, I'm serious. 400? 600? So, the ability to shadow ban, the ability to control, because people say, well, it's much more open now, just use social media. you know, it's, it's not that way, and if you can't run the ads on social [00:40:00] media, and you can't pay to get your message out on social,
David Sirota: it's a, it's a completely, you're talking about a completely money controlled and algorithm controlled information environment, which to say the least is not conducive to democracy. I mean, it's just, it's just not. So I want to, I want to, I want to just before, before we go here, I just want to talk a little bit more about, about Michigan and, and, and the state of the political situation there, because as you mentioned earlier on, we are told that.
Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, talking about Michigan are the, the, the so called blue wall between, the Democrats winning or the end of the world, right. You know, AKA Trump winning that's, that's the story that is told. So I think one question I have about Michigan is why do you believe the polls right now seem to Donald Trump in a prison, you know, [00:41:00] Projected, uh, one on one matchup or what multi candidate matchup general election matchup with Joe Biden.
Why does Donald Trump seem to have a pretty significant, uh, sizable support in Michigan? What is going on there? What do you think that means?
Hill Harper: goes back to what I said at the beginning, there, there are people, many, many, many people here, and I've been across the state that are disaffected Democrats, uh, they voted for Democrats, they voted for Biden in, in 2020, um, but they feel that they have been taken advantage of.
They feel they haven't been represented properly. And so part of the strength of our campaign, to be quite honest, right now, um, to the extent that we're battling uphill, uh, you know, pun intended, is, um, is, is that people know that if you don't have. A large African American turnout in Michigan. There is no [00:42:00] way that president Biden can win. And our candidacy is the only statewide candidacy that could pull out the type of numbers. That President Biden will need to win. So someone called me who's, you know, they, they have all these independent polling, this and polling that, and they ran some type of poll with my name, you know, Biden, Harrison, and my name would be right under it on the ballot versus my opponent's name on the ballot.
And there was the, the, the difference in African American turnout. In that is massively different and the idea being not buying into the Democratic Party establishments, you know, kind of rhetoric that what's best for general election would be the establishment candidate. No, what's best for the general would be the insurgent candidate because the insurgent candidate brings people back to vote Democrat that otherwise wouldn't.
So let's talk about what does this look [00:43:00] like? ultimately, I believe it was about, uh, 140, 150, 000 vote difference across the state in 2020. Now, we mentioned Dearborn earlier, and we mentioned the Arab community earlier. I've had many, many meetings with leaders from both the Arab and Muslim community.
someone made a statement at one of my meetings. I'll never forget, you know, cause we were talking, I said, well, you know, why would the community even think about voting for Trump? You know, he's Muslim ban and these things. And the person said to me. And this is the type of pain that folks are feeling.
I said, Hill, I'd rather be stabbed in the face than stabbed in the back. And I was like, whoa. And then I've heard different versions of that same type of comment. And so, unless we are able to say, you know what, the Democratic Party is diverse, [00:44:00] and it's open, and there's opportunity for everybody to have a voice.
Unless we say that, President Trump's gonna win Michigan. There's no question about it in my mind. And so we have to change our tune. We have to say, Hey, your voice is welcome. We have to bring people out that haven't been voting. Michigan's largest voting block are people who don't vote. Why? Because most of them are disaffected Democrats who feel what's the purpose.
I don't get represented anyway, so why should I vote? Those people have to be brought out in 2024. And certainly I'm hoping that I can bring them out for the primary and win in August. It's a very late primary, August 6th. So we, we are building this thing. And then two weeks later, whoever wins this primary, August 6th, will be prime time in the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
And then, you know, two months later, it's going to be November. It's going to be bam, bam, bam in Michigan. [00:45:00] With this Senate primary and then the general, there's not going to be time to sort of rebuild and re gird it. No, it's going to be who represents the passion of the people and can bring people to the party.
And, and I'm telling you, you're absolutely right. Everywhere I go, I even hear Republicans tell me, Independents, Republicans, they say, Hill, I vote for you, but I'd probably vote for the other guy. I don't, you know, I don't like to say his name. but here's the problem in Michigan that a lot of people may or may not know.
They're straight party voted and most of us do understand human behavior and that most people, take the path of least resistance, uh, and don't really fill in all the bubbles. There's some super voters out there that in a general election I'm talking about, obviously primary, that's your super voter, but in general election there's a lot of just take the easy way out.
And if you're, and you're voting on the top line and then you straight party vote, you know, you're going to get a whole [00:46:00] ticket full of winners from one party. and if we don't, if we don't do a lot of work to bring people back in and show that we care and will really represent them, it's not going to be a pretty story in November 2024.
David Sirota: Well, listen, I can say this having worked on campaigns and I don't do endorsements or anything like that, but I can say I do agree with you in the in a general way that In states like Michigan, Wisconsin, even Minnesota, uh, Pennsylvania, that in an election like this, I mean, just separating out even, you know, Biden specifically, that in a presidential reelection year, uh, with a president who isn't wildly popular, uh, for the president, the incumbent president's party, the incumbent president's party, uh, That is a difficult situation, no matter what.
And continuing to run the same kinds of [00:47:00] candidates, the same establishment selected candidates, is a very, very dangerous game for the Democratic Party. Uh, to be playing, uh, a game that does not, uh, suggest, forget about, you know, nice ideas about democracy, just about winning, trying to do the same thing over and over and over again, uh,
and
Hill Harper: a different
result is the definition of insanity. Yes.
David Sirota: I, it is, I, mean, it's the, it's definition of insanity, right? So, so, think. What you're saying and the fact that you are willing to, as you said, step away from a career that you've been working on and successful at to try to run a real grassroots outsider candidacy, amen to the idea that more people need to be doing that.
More people need to be running for office. That, as I've said, I joke to a friend, it's kind of a kind of a Sad joke, but you know, if you think Donald Trump is the only [00:48:00] threat to democracy, wait till you find out about corporations and big donors buying every single election in the last 10, 20, 30 years, then you'll really understand what the complete comprehensive threat to democracy is.
Donald Trump's certainly a threat to democracy, but when we're talking about democracy, you got to look at the whole picture and the whole picture is not a very pleasant picture right
now.
Hill Harper: let's before, before we run, we got it. We got to end on good news. I, I always, I always like to leave people with good news. And so let's just talk about, we're talking about Michigan. Let's talk about the UAW. You know, I'm a proud union member. If I'm elected to the United States Senate, I'd be the only union member in the U.
S. Senate. And I would fight to pass the PRO Act, which, you know, will get rid of, of, of funding, you know, right to work and give the NLRB real teeth, all of those things, but look what Sean Fain, the UAW, my friend, Laura Dickerson works at the UAW, who's a leader there, they were able to do, and when people told them no, Can't do it, wrong time.
I was out on the picket lines multiple, [00:49:00] multiple days with them, with, with the casino workers who struck here recently, with SEIU who struck here recently, and still is in the middle of SEIU healthcare in the middle of it. Nurses, I was on the picket lines with them. The, the labor movement is alive and there's a heartbeat there.
And so if we can literally match. That energy that came out of the very bold, aggressive labor movement, which is also UAW is also called for ceasefire, which people are like, what, what's going on? You were talking about bold, bold, bold, strong leadership that I believe it's grassroots based and it can come back because the energy is there and it can happen here in Michigan.
So all's not lost. There is this heartbeat and if we can actually expand it more and unfortunately, my. My opponent wasn't the biggest, uh, supporter of the UAW and the union movement, but, but hey, you know, uh, listen, everybody's going to come around, uh, because, because unions and supporting labor, supporting living wage [00:50:00] is critical and it shows that we can do it if we come together.
And that's what happened here. And I think that we can do it even in an election. We
David Sirota: And I should mention there is one piece of Michigan trivia that I remember from, because I was a kid when it happened, but I remember it being invoked a lot on the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2020. Michigan, of course, 1988 was the place that
Hill Harper: Jesse
Jackson
David Sirota: won One, the primary in one of the biggest upsets in America, certainly Democratic Party history.
So it is a place that, uh, has some history, uh, of defying these trends. Uh, and so listen, good luck with what, with, with, with your candidacy. people can find your, website at hillharper. com.
Hill Harper: That's right.
David Sirota: please keep us posted on how
Hill Harper: I will. And let, and David, let me give people this number because a lot of the people I'm talking to these days. They actually don't go online like that, because we're talking about communities where people do most of their information shared through [00:51:00] texting and things like that. And so here's the number folks can text me at 313 942 4455, 313 942 4455.
Because what I'm realizing is you got to meet people where they are and asking someone. That doesn't really go to websites to go to a website that probably not going to happen. We want if folks do all their communication via text, Hey, text us, let's stay in touch via text. That's, we want to do this because we, we, it's only going to happen collectively.
And so I appreciate this and I, this is a wonderful conversation. And so thank
David Sirota: Thank you. Thanks for, thanks for joining
us.
Hill Harper: Absolutely.
That's it for today's show. As a reminder, our paid subscribers who get Lever Time Premium, you get to hear next week's bonus episode. My interview with media strategist Jason Kint about Facebook and its parent company Meta, which is currently suing the Federal Trade Commission over the company's harvesting of [00:52:00] data from children.
David Sirota: To listen to Lever Time Premium, just head over to levernews. com to become a supporting subscriber. When you do, you get access to all of Lever's premium content, including our weekly newsletters and our live events. And that's all for just 8 a month or 70 for the year. One last favor. Please be sure to like, subscribe, and write a review for Lever Time on your favorite podcast app.
The app you are listening to right now, take 10 seconds and give us a positive review in that app. And make sure to check out all of the incredible reporting our team has been doing over at levernews. com. Until next time, I'm David Sirota. Rock the boat.
The Lever Time Podcast is a production of the Lever and the Lever Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, David Sirota. Our producer is Frank Capello with help from Lever producer, Jared Jacang Mayor.