What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
Los Angeles is at a turning point. We are living in a defining moment. What happens next is up to us. Over the past few years, problems and challenges have shaken this city -- and tremendous opportunities for change have presented themselves. How do we rise to this moment and emerge a better place to live? What will it take to create a more just and a more equitable community? Working together, how are we going to create a stronger, forward-thinking Los Angeles? Mike Bonin, writer, teacher, progressive activist and former City Councilmember, looks at the issues and problems facing Los Angeles, examines ideas, and talks with the people who will lead us to a brighter future.
Produced in partnership with LA Forward.
What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
How do we fight Big Money $$$ in elections?
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How can we fix a broken political system? How can we re-energize grassroots democracy? How do counteract the poisonous influence of big money in our elections? One big idea is something called "democracy vouchers."
“Democracy vouchers” is a campaign finance system in which all residents are issued vouchers that they can donate to political candidates who, in turn, redeem them for public campaign funds. Democracy vouchers help democratize campaign finance by both: empowering ordinary citizens to participate more in the financing of political campaigns; and empowering political candidates to run for office without relying on — and spending as much time courting — wealthy donors.
In this episode, Mike talks with Mike Draskovic, an organizer working to get a democracy voucher program in Los Angeles, and with Teresa Mosqueda, the first person elected to the City Council in Seattle after that city implemented a popular and robust democracy voucher system.
Los Angeles for Democracy Vouchers
https://www.lademocracyvouchers.org/
@LADemVouchers
Seattle's Democracy Voucher Program
https://www.seattle.gov/democracyvoucher
Teresa Mosqueda
Government Site- https://www.seattle.gov/council/mosqueda
Campaign Site - https://www.teamteresa.org/
Twitter: @TeresaCMosqueda
IG: @teresacmosqueda/
What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward.
How can we fix a broken political system? How can we re-energize grassroots democracy? How do we counteract the poisonous influence of big money in our elections? One big idea is something called democracy vouchers. We're going to discuss that on this edition of What's Next, Los Angeles. Hey everybody, and thanks for joining me. It's Mike Bonin. Donald Trump likes to claim the 2020 presidential election was stolen. He's full of crap, of course. Voting machines weren't rigged, ballot boxes weren't stuffed, it's all lies. It would be really hard to steal an election, but it's pretty damn easy to buy one. Our elections are for sale all the time. They are bought by big money, by corporations, by a very small and a very elite donor class that decides which candidates are acceptable, which candidates are viable, and which candidates are going to have the financial resources to communicate with their voters. In most places and in most elections, when a person runs for political office, they are consumed by a need to raise money. When someone becomes a candidate, they enter a system that constantly pushes them to spend time finding and talking with donors at the expense of finding and talking with, you know, actual voters. And here's the thing: donors are not really like most voters. They tend to be older and whiter and wealthier, and they tend to have a much narrower set of interests. They're invested in making sure that the system and the status quo doesn't change too much. That influence narrows the field of who runs for office, of who gets elected, and on what issues elected officials address. This has been a function of modern American politics for a long time, and it got a hell of a lot worse with Citizens United. There have been lots of efforts to combat the insidious influence of money and how it poisons our politics. In LA, we've had a robust public matching funds program. Under that system, if a candidate gets a lot of small donations from residents of the city, those donations get matched by a rate of six to one with public dollars. It's a reform that has really opened up local politics and it's helped several insurgent and grassroots candidates defeat incumbents in recent city council elections. But a lot of folks don't think that reform goes far enough, and they are absolutely right. They are looking north to Seattle for an innovative new campaign finance reform called Democracy Vouchers. Under that system, every voter receives $100 worth of vouchers they can donate to the candidates of their choice. And because it doesn't require any out-of-pocket donations, anyone, regardless of their wealth or social status, can participate. It's a pretty wild idea, and I know it sounds foreign to a lot of people, so we're going to dive into it today. With a local organizer pushing for democracy vouchers here in Los Angeles, and with the first elected official in Seattle to run and win a campaign fueled by Democracy Vouchers. Let's start locally, and we're going to turn first to Mike Draskovic from the group Los Angeles Democracy Vouchers. Mike, welcome. Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. Glad to have you here. This is an exciting idea, and I'm eager for people to hear more about it. First of all, just tell me, tell our audience a little bit of who you are and your background and how you get into this.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Yes, my name is Michael Drashkovich, and I am a co-lead of Los Angeles for Democracy Vouchers, and we are a new campaign organizing for an equitable campaign finance system through a Democracy Vouchers program. And I've spent the past almost 15 years working in the policy and advocacy space, both at the national and international level, but more recently the state and local level.
SPEAKER_02And how'd you get involved in this issue in Los Angeles?
SPEAKER_01Sure. So one of our policy organizers at another group I helped co-found called the Democracy Policy Network. He came to us wanting to write up a policy resource for state lawmakers on this democracy vouchers idea out of Seattle. And so he wrote up this amazing kit on it. He wrote a book on it. And he was actually also a UCLA student. And so I went to him and said, Hey, what do you think about this idea in LA? And he did the research, he looked at the data, looking at where all the donations came from. And it was just astonishing to see how much money came from outside of Los Angeles, how much came from special interest groups. And then when we looked at, you know, from within Los Angeles where the money came from, uh, it was just these huge racial disparities. And so we just spent the uh past you know two and a half years, I want to say, talking to people, getting the word out, getting their input and ideas on how to make this a truly transformative policy for LA. And that's what we've been doing.
SPEAKER_02Tell me a little bit more about the problem as you perceived it in Los Angeles, about the disparities in donations and where the money's coming from.
SPEAKER_01Sure. So uh the first thing to note is just how much money is spent on uh LA city elections. So in the 2022 cycle, we saw nearly $150 million spent on uh local campaigns. Most of that, almost $100 million, or I think over 100 million, was from two people, uh Crusoe and Barma. Uh but excluding those uh wealthy self-funders, um about half uh came from uh uh uh special interest groups and those outside LA. And then when we looked at the remaining half of folks who were donating, like you and me, individuals from within Los Angeles, we saw a huge racial disparity. So um the average donation per person in zip codes that are majority white was $13.32. The average donation per person in zip codes that are majority people of color was only $2.25. So um that's a six times less than the uh uh major uh average donation per person in majority white zip codes. So there's a there's a huge issue, and we think it's it revolves around um disposable income being a requirement to participate in our campaign finance system. A lot of folks don't have that, you know, uh cash lying around. And so Democracy Vouchers program would fix that by provisioning everyone in the city uh vouchers that they can contribute to any campaign.
SPEAKER_02So right now you said about half the money comes from outside the city, and then the money from inside the city, I just want to sort of make this more concrete for folks. Uh what it means is that there's a lot more money, no matter what council race we're talking about, there's a lot more money coming from the part of town I represented, from Brentwood or Palisades or wealthier west side neighborhoods than there are from South LA or the East Valley.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And when you look at a map of where dollars come from, it's actually just as you described the hills. And so there was this great study in Seattle before vouchers that showed you could predict whether someone was going to donate to a local campaign, whether or not their house had a view of the water. I bet you can make that same prediction in Los Angeles. Uh, you know, if your house has an elevated view of the water, um, you're more most likely to vote um to donate.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'd bet on that as well. I'd bet on that as well. So uh what democracy vouchers would do is everybody would get basically coupons in the mail uh that they could give to the candidates of their choice. Uh and tell me, in your view, how that addresses the problem we've just defined.
SPEAKER_01Sure. So right now we're seeing that you know having discretionary income as a requirement for participation in our campaign finance system is a huge barrier to participation, especially uh from our working class uh communities and our communities of color. And that that those barriers show up in the data. And so democracy vouchers, what it does by giving everyone vouchers that they can contribute to any campaign, makes it so it's no longer a requirement. Anyone could be a donor. And when anyone's a donor, that means more people can run for office. When more people can run for office, you have more issues on the table being discussed in city hall. And so, kind of, you know, there's this downstream effect from vouchers and camp our campaign finance system, how it's structured to include or exclude groups, and what issues get discussed in city council.
SPEAKER_02So tell me what you've been doing to sort of organize around this idea in Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so um, as I mentioned, we spent the past two and a half years talking with community groups, municipal leaders, legislative staff, just informing them about this idea coming out of Seattle. Um, most recently, we did a big uh virtual briefing with um Courage California uh Advancement Project, now Catalyst California, Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance, LA Forward, uh Money Out Voters, and a few other groups, uh, Legal Women Voters of Los Angeles, um, with Nithya Raman, just raising up the promise of this idea for Los Angeles. Um, and that then uh spawned an effort in City Hall to study what this could look like for LA. So, right now there's a motion in City Hall that would study the feasibility of establishing a democracy vouchers program in the city of Los Angeles, including options for full public financing. And so we're at the stage where the motion's been introduced, but we need it to be scheduled in committee for a hearing. And so we are working to get the word out with a sign-on letter, encouraging folks that if they want to see us take a step towards a more inclusive campaign finance system to please lend your voice to our letter.
SPEAKER_02And uh for people who are listening who are intrigued by this idea, how can they either find out more or how can they get involved to help you out?
SPEAKER_01Yep. So if you visit us at la democracy vouchers.org, you can find ways to sign up to join our bi-weekly volunteer call, or if you'd like to lend your name to our sign-on letter, there's a link there uh for our petition.
SPEAKER_02Mike, thanks so much for joining me. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Mike. So uh Mike told us about the idea, the concept, but what's it like in practice? Up in Seattle, they've been using democracy vouchers in local city council elections for a few election cycles now, and it has had a significant impact on local democracy. It has re-energized participation in local government, and it has changed the makeup of city government. So I wanted to talk with someone who could tell us firsthand what it's been like. And now I'm delighted to have with us to discuss the impact of democracy vouchers in a real community in real practice. Uh, Seattle City Councilwoman Teresa Mosqueta. Teresa, thanks for joining me.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
SPEAKER_02How are things up in Seattle?
SPEAKER_00Things are sunny today. After about five months of rain and cold, we are starting to see spring. So light is at the end of the tunnel here.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. Well, it's always sunny down here. I was uh bringing sunscreen out to the people on the picket lines today.
SPEAKER_00Oh good. That's so wonderful. And send some of that sunshine up here, and we'll send vibes of solidarity down there.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Sounds good. So thanks for joining me. I'm really excited to talk to you because uh you were the first candidate to win using Democracy Vouchers back in 2017. To start, would you have been able to run without it?
SPEAKER_00Um, no, I think that the power of democracy vouchers really makes it possible for people who would maybe want to run one day, but have always been concerned about whether or not their old school Rolodex or their cell phone has the context to reach out to to actually fund and fuel a campaign. Um, I was able to run as a first-time candidate using democracy vouchers. And to me, it was one of the major reasons that I decided to run. And if if I can, I'd love to give you a little context to the how I got to a yes. Like many people, you know, I've been asked to run a number of times, and I always said no. Um, and especially for women, the statistics are uh it takes us about seven times to be asked to run for office before we even consider it as a possibility. Not when we get to yes, but before we consider possibly running. And so after being asked a number of times, after running and running a program called Path to Power with the AFL CIO and Washington State's State Labor Council, so many folks have been saying, we want you to win, we want you to run. And I had always said no. Well, Trump had won, supposedly, uh, the 2016 election. And in January and in of 2017, we were all still reeling from that impact. The fact that many of us in the progressive world did not feel like our voice mattered or our vote counted in that election, and really feeling frustrated, um, outraged, we were taking to the streets every weekend. And this seat came open. And I saw this, and the broader progressive community saw this as an opportunity to remind people about the power and the potential of local government seats and to make sure that our cities remain that last line of defense for attacks from the national level under the previous administration and the first line of offense for how we can be pushing forward on progressive policies like labor protections and housing. And so I decided to run because the democracy vouchers gave me a chance to go to communities, go to neighborhoods, go to doors, and talk about why I was running, but also remind people that democracy vouchers had just arrived in their mailbox. And this was an opportunity for people to not only vote for someone who looked like them that wanted to represent them, but to use those democracy vouchers to have more of a say in our local elections. And it was incredibly impactful for communities of color and also for immigrant and refugee communities who are also eligible for the vouchers, even if they're not eligible to vote. So it was an organizing opportunity, first and foremost. And then it was an opportunity for us to organize and pull, you know, a labor voice, a woman of color, a renter voice into the halls of city council to create greater representative democracy and to use it as a movement building and organizing opportunity to get those democracy vouchers utilized and get more people engaged in our civic process.
SPEAKER_02So usually in a in a typical system, when a candidate is thinking about running, uh they're they're badgered by lots of folks. How much can you raise? How much can you raise? Where are you going to raise it? You used to train people to before they ran for office, and you'd tell them the importance of dialing for dollars. Candidates, first-time candidates here in LA, they're always surprised at how much of their time is just spent on the phone asking people for money. How did the fact that you had democracy vouchers change how your campaign was organized and communicated with voters?
SPEAKER_00Well, democracy vouchers means you're not sitting in a windowless room dialing for dollars. You're not picking up the phone or texting people that you have never met before because your walk of life doesn't interact with people who have deep pockets or um, you know, million-dollar homes and that kind of thing. It doesn't mean that you are subject to just the power and the potential of those who are wealthier being able to fuel your campaign. I'm gonna give you an example of what the orientation usually is outside of the democracy voucher world. When I ran the Path of Power program in Washington State with our state labor council and the AFL CIO, we would go through this exercise of saying, I want you to pull out a piece of paper and write down 20 people that you think could give you $500, 10 people that can give you $1,000, five people that could give you $2,000. How incredibly limiting is it to actually have to go through that exercise? Because most people don't know or don't think that they know people who would be interested in giving them that level of funding. And I want to make sure to encourage people who are in places that don't have democracy vouchers to still go through that exercise because you'd actually would be surprised by where there might be overlap with progressively minded, uh progressively aligned and um and civically minded people who want to support candidates who are pushing your agenda. So if you don't have democracy vouchers, do the exercise still. Think about running, get to yes and go for it. But with democracy vouchers, we benefit from not counting ourselves out because often candidates pull themselves out of the race before they've even entered because of that fear of not being able to hit those fundraising goals. And when you have democracy vouchers, it is truly a win to your in this in your sales to carry your campaign through. In 2017, when I ran for the first time, we qualified for the democracy vouchers, which means $10, small dollar donations of about, I think it was 150 people, and also signatures from local residents who say, Yes, I want to support this candidate. I'm gonna sign here to say I support her, and I'm gonna do $10. Fantastic. We qualify, the democracy vouchers start coming to me little by little at the doors. People are so excited, and I'll tell you a story about that in a second. But I was picking up democracy vouchers here and there. But what I didn't know was that the conversations I was having at the doors and community centers and out in the broader Seattle area, that was filtering to other people, and other people were hearing about our campaigns and directly sending their democracy vouchers to the city. And the city then collects the vouchers and they'll send you a check every month. And the first check was $5,000, the second check was $12,000, the third check was $40,000.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00That is unheard of levels of fundraising for first-time candidates and also for candidates who have not had to sit in a room and dial for dollars. And it was really an example of grassroots organizing, mobilizing, and the power of the word of mouth. Once somebody sees that you resonate with them politically, you represent them perhaps with your orientation, and they want to see you in office, those democracy vouchers in their pocket give them the power to make their interest in you count and it fueled the campaign. And, you know, I have the experience now of um running for a seat that does not have democracy vouchers, and it is so incredibly challenging because the people that I represent and I want to lift up and I invest in, they're hardworking, working families. And so I have greatly appreciated the generous support of the community, but it pales in comparison to what you can do with democracy vouchers when you can actually be at the doors having conversations with people, talking with them about why you want to run and learning from them what solutions they have. That's what democracy vouchers allow for. Greater time to interact with community, to hear from individuals at the door, and to literally be in neighborhoods that have never had their door knocked before to encourage people to participate in our local elections by using democracy vouchers, and that carries through to increase voter participation too.
SPEAKER_02And just to clarify for folks who are listening, you you serve on the city council, which has the democracy vouchers. Now you're running for the King County Board, and that system does not have democracy vouchers.
SPEAKER_00Correct, yes. Seattle is the only jurisdiction in Washington State that has democracy vouchers. It was passed by a vote of the people in our honest elections initiative that um was voted on in 2015. And 2017 was the first year we had the chance to see democracy vouchers in action. Uh, and so that has um not only been an effective way to encourage more people to run for office, but it has been an effective tool in getting a diverse population to donate to candidates and thus be civically engaged uh in in terms of donations. And then it's changed who's ultimately got elected as well.
SPEAKER_02So talk me through a little bit how the system actually works. Say I'm a voter, you're a candidate. How do I get the vouchers and how do you get them from me?
SPEAKER_00So democracy vouchers are fueled by a small property tax. I believe it's around $12 to $14 annually that um individuals pay as part of their property tax to the city. The money gets collected at the city ethics and election office. And then at the beginning of each year, four coupons, paper coupons get mailed out in the mail to all registered voters. And those are paper coupons that are worth $25 each. So a voter gets uh $25 vouchers, they get four of them. That's a hundred dollars that you can put towards any candidate that is accepting democracy vouchers. And democracy vouchers are, as I mentioned, are eligible for residents of our city. So if you're not registered to vote, if you're a citizen but not registered, or if you are a lawfully permanent resident, an immigrant refugee that's an LPR resident, you can apply to get those vouchers even if you're not eligible to vote. Uh so it really is broadly available for Seattle residents. And then as the voter, You take those coupons and you write the name of the candidate that you would like to see receive that $25 coupon. Some people split the coupons among various candidates so that maybe they can increase the opportunity for a host of candidates to make it through the primary. We have a top two system here. So perhaps they want to see two people of color make it through, or the messages resonate from two of those candidates. They might split them, they might split them four ways, or they might lump them all together and give $100 to one candidate. And then the city receives the coupons, or the candidate receives the coupons, and they send it off to the city. The city then counts up how many vouchers each candidate has received and they issue you a check. And it gets sent to you in the mail, and it is like winning the lotto. First time candidate, when I saw that $40,000 check, it was like winning the lotto. And there's a cap, right? There's a cap on how much you can spend with the intent to try to really um recognize that we are attempting to level the playing field. So as you receive these democracy vouchers, there's still a cap in terms of how much you can raise and spend. And some of those dollar amounts are always in discussion about whether it's enough or whether it's too much. But that that's how it works operationally within the city of Seattle.
SPEAKER_02Are there other restrictions or requirements you agree to as a candidate about types of money you take or number of candidate forums you have to do?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I think one of the important parts is that you need to commit to engaging with the community and being part of the civic engagement or discussion process. So there's at least something like three forums that you have to participate in and you have to do your reporting. You have to stay in line with the candidate reporting requirements. Um and and really it's about committing to that civic process. Um, you know, I I I'm excited that other jurisdictions are taking this on. I think that there's three questions that are that I ask about democracy vouchers. Um and the first question that we all want to talk about is can we change who is running for office to try to encourage more people to see themselves in these positions of power and even entering the race in the first place? So, by way of example, the same seat that I sit in in 2015 had two people run for it, both happen to be white men of different ages, but both happen to be white straight men. Two years later, the same seat comes open, and in this race, once democracy vouchers were available, eight people ran. Seven of those eight happen to be women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and younger and renter folks. That is the type of difference that we saw not only in 2017, but in each two-year cycle since we have seen an increase in the number of people filing and the diversity of who's filed. Number two, is does it change who donates? And we have impressive maps that maybe you can show for your listeners. But if you look in 2017, we have a great apples to apples comparison because I'm a citywide seat. There's two citywide seats in Seattle. The mayor, obviously citywide elected office as well. In that 2017 race, the mayor was not eligible to use democracy vouchers. And so you could see side by side, citywide, in 2017 a comparison between who gave to the mayor, mayoral race and those candidates, and who gave to the citywide candidates. And because democracy vouchers were eligible for the city council citywide races, it is a stark difference between who donated. In the mayor's race, it was typically wealthier, wider neighborhoods along the waterfront. Also, a lot of folks who had previously donated to candidates in the past. You look at city council race in 2017, um, and it was renter neighborhoods, community of color neighborhoods, inland, so not on the waterfront. And it was folks who had never donated in the past. So does it increase who runs? Yes. Does it increase who donates and the diversity of who's donating? Absolutely. But the third question is does it get money out of politics? And that is where we still have a ton of work to do at the national level to get money out of politics generally, but this does help level the playing field for who can run.
SPEAKER_02And when when you talk about who's donating, I I read somewhere that the the number of donors in Seattle has increased by 500% as a result of this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm gonna round these numbers a little bit just to give you a sense of um of who is donating and when it happened. But in my race, when I ran for the first time, uh, we were coming off of the 2015 elections prior to that. So there was about 3,000 people who donated overall in a citywide race in 2015. When democracy vouchers came into place, um, we saw that number increase from individual donors from about 3,000 to about 8,000. Two years later, we saw the number increase from about 8,000 people in the 2017 race. In the 2019 race, we saw diversity increase in terms of who was donating, and the numbers increased to about um uh 24,000 people. And then in my last election for Seattle City Council in 2021, that number doubled yet again to about 48,000 people. Wow. So we went from 3,000 to 8,000 to 24,000, and then to nearly 48,000 in the span of a four-year process. Um, or I should say three, three election cycles.
SPEAKER_02And I guess that a voter who donates is more likely to vote, more likely to engage more deeply in a campaign and increase their civic involvement.
SPEAKER_00That that is that is the the rationale ultimately, right? We want people to continue the process and the the participation that they have in our local elections by first getting engaged with democracy vouchers and then following that through with voting. And the initial results are positive. People are doing that.
SPEAKER_02So Seattle's the shining example of democracy vouchers. You're you're also sort of a poster child for uh attempted corporate influence over city politics with Amazon. Amazon spent truckloads of money in your elections a few years ago. How did democracy voucher candidates fare against Amazon deep pockets?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, in 2019, I actually had just had my baby. She's now three and a half years old, uh, and I was on maternity leave. Uh, she was born in the beginning of October. I was on leave. In the month of October leading up to that November election, Amazon poured over a million dollars, excuse me, um 1.3, I think, million into city council races to try to buy Seattle elections. And that spurred me to put on my jacket and head out of the house with the baby in toe to protest that type of interference, the attempt to try to buy our elections. And there was about four candidates who um were running as, you know, progressive candidates who were strongly endorsed by unions and the broader progressive community. And then there were four people who were more in alignment with um with uh the Chamber of Commerce and Amazon. Um, the power of democracy vouchers carried three of those seats, three out of the four seats over the finish line, even in the face of that level of intervention that they were attempting by putting that level of investments into city council races. So the democracy vouchers um are incredibly powerful. And I will, I will, you know, I will say I think that they're powerful not only in terms of like helping to finance and fuel campaigns like the colleagues that I just mentioned who were able to get across the finish line because of democracy voucher support, but they are incredibly powerful because of the organizing capacity to get out there and get people excited about the local elections, to get them to feel like their voice and their vote is counting, and that if they cannot vote, that they still have an opportunity to help support candidates who will represent them. We represent every resident, whether or not you vote or not. If you live in this city, I represent you. I want folks who've been left out of our voting process to also have a way to engage, and democracy vouchers provide for that.
SPEAKER_02And when you won and took office, you were at that point the only renter on the city council, right?
SPEAKER_00That is correct. And then two years later, when folks signed up to run for office and put their name out there, I was no longer the youngest person on Seattle City Council and no longer the only renter. Um, and we had about uh three additional people come in who were renters. I mean, ultimately the goal is to make sure that people can have a first-time home ownership opportunity. I was afforded that in 2019 when our baby was on the way. Um, but you also want people who have the lived experience of being in this city as renters. 52% of our population are renters in Seattle currently. And I, along with my colleagues, help to bring in the perspective and the lived experience of being a renter and trying to keep up with the cost of living in Seattle. If you look at the diversity of the makeup of our council members in terms of age and ethnicity, it is a very diverse council, and I'm hoping that democracy vouchers keep fueling that.
SPEAKER_02And I'm I'm curious, democracy vouchers open things up. You have a more diverse council in all the ways you just described. How has that changed the agenda and affected uh legislation that you may have successfully passed, either you or your colleagues?
SPEAKER_00Well, I'll give you a few examples. Um, you know, I came from the Labor Council, AFL CIO in Washington State, as I mentioned, and I unapologetically ran as a pro-worker, pro-union, pro-housing and density candidate. And the commitment was that I was going to come in and lift up the, you know, the policies, the priorities for community members that had either never been invited to the table or their priorities had always been put on the back burner. Immediately when I came into office, the first community members that contacted me were folks from the disability community who said, Did you know that we still have permissive language in the books, allowing for workers with disability to be paid a sub-minimum wage? Outrageous. Wow. In 2018, that that still existed. That was one of the first policies that we did. Um, and we were able to, you know, meet people at the door who had given us those examples and change that. When I was doing doorbelling around the university district, talking to people about the democracy vouchers, renters there told me, Did you know that there's these platforms that are allowing for basically eBay for rental units and people outbid each other and it just scales up the cost of rental units? We should be prohibiting those types of platforms from being in our city, and we put a moratorium on those platforms because I was at the door and hearing from folks about that issue, we were then able to immediately in office change that. So immediately it changed who I was engaging with on the campaign. And then I took those issues and acted on them within the first few months of getting into office. That's what you can do with democracy vouchers when you're not locked in a room dialing for dollars and actually at the door talking to voters about what they want to see. And then in terms of sort of like the community that I think looks at me and thinks now we are getting closer to more representative democracy, women, folks of color, younger folks, members of the labor community. We have been able, in my now going on six years of work in Seattle City Council to push historic policies on labor protections. I'm talking about the Hotel Workers' Bill of Rights, which ensures a minimum wage, rest breaks, protection from retaliation, creates a standards board. National model, first city to do it. I'm talking about hotel worker protections, largely women of color, immigrant workers working in hotels cleaning who were doing back breaking work at higher rates of back injury than in the construction sector, and had no limitations on how much work was being expected of them in their work period and would get penalized for not cleaning X number of rooms. We had maximum standards of work requirements. We have panic buttons and emergency buttons for when someone is facing assault or injury. We have the historic legislation that we passed in the suite of hotel worker protections for guaranteed health insurance. They said it wasn't possible because of ERISA. We guaranteed gold level standards of health insurance. And so, you know, you look at that population. Let's talk about gig workers, right? Largely immigrant folks of color drivers, whether it's Lyft or Uber or delivering our food. In this role, I was able to guarantee a minimum standard of pay, even though many of these folks are independent contractors, minimum standard of pay for gig workers, sick leave protections, which we just codified permanently after doing it temporarily during the pandemic, and a dispute resolution board so that it was like a quasi-like place to take disputes that you might otherwise be able to take internal to a true employer-employee relations relationship, but because they don't have that, they didn't have a place to dispute, and gig workers are getting shut off left and right. These are communities of color, immigrant communities, women workers. And because this is the priority community that I talked to out there on the campaign, who have helped bring to light the issues that they were facing, they helped fuel the solutions. We were able to pass it. That's what has been made possible in the last six years.
SPEAKER_02If if we were doing video, people would be seeing me with a ridiculously large smile as you talked about this. That hotel stuff, I sponsored uh a lot of that legislation here in LA, and it's just it's powerful and great stuff. Kudos to you.
SPEAKER_00Kudos to you too.
SPEAKER_02L has some work to do on the gig workers, though. You you set out an agenda, I'll pass on to some of the new council.
SPEAKER_00We have we have some great model language to pull from.
SPEAKER_02We've I'll make sure folks are looking at it. Uh, any final thoughts, words to people in Los Angeles as uh democracy voucher proposal works its way through the process?
SPEAKER_00I think Seattle has proof of concept. We not only have evidence that this increases the number of people who run, increases who donates, and creates greater equity across your jurisdictions and in your city for participation, it also changes who is able to get into these seats, make it possible for us to get to yes, I will run, and then helps make it possible to win those campaigns. It has been a great equalizer, in my opinion, in terms of who is stepping up to run and then the types of policies that are possible to push forward. With this last cohort of council colleagues that are here in Seattle City Council, I was able to champion the Jumpstart Progressive Payroll Tax on companies like Amazon and other large tech sector companies, folks with more than 7 million in Seattle payroll, who have high incomes, you know, incomes over $165,000 a year. We have now the largest progressive tax, payroll tax, that is allowing for us to invest in our working families, in our infrastructure, creating Green New Deal investments, and have quadrupled the investments in affordable housing. And I believe it's because we've been able to really rely on the grassroots movement to help fuel more progressive folks getting into office and having their voices heard and representing that progressive base across our jurisdictions. I hope folks take us up on any uh language that we have in Seattle to offer how we can spread democracy vouchers across this country.
SPEAKER_02Looking forward to it and looking forward to connecting to you again and telling you it got passed and instituted here. Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, thank you for joining me on What's Next Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_00See you soon.
SPEAKER_02All right, and that does it for another episode of What's Next Los Angeles. If you want to learn more about democracy vouchers and how to engage in the movement to get a democracy voucher program established here in LA, check out the show notes. My thanks to Mike Drashkovitz and to Councilmember Teresa Moscada for joining me. My thanks to Brian Holmes for editing and producing this podcast, and my thanks to you for listening. If you liked what you heard, please follow the show on Apple or Podcasts. If you liked what you heard, please follow the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen. And if you have suggestions for topics or guests, drop me a line at what's nextlosangeless at gmail.com. I'm Mike Bonin. Until next time, peace and take good care.