 My name is Paul Dain, I am the Chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, and thank you all to our very first full day state convention. So if you haven't yet, make sure you grab a program, we've got all kinds of activities going on today for our current Vermont Republican members and town and county leaders. There's going to be a training, a couple different trainings during the day, that will be straight across the hallway in our new minority training room, and then everyone else is welcome to join us for six different policy panels that we'll have throughout the day. The first one right after breakfast that will start at 9.30 if we get out of here on time will be with Workforce Development with Senator Randy Brock. So that will be in the room just next door to us, and you can check out your schedule there in the program, we've got a few lined up in the hallway to take a look at. So thank you guys for coming, this is the first time we've done something like this, and it came from a lot of the feedback I got from many of our Republican members, town and county committee leaders saying, we need a little bit more, we need some more training, so we've got some folks, I'll be doing some training this afternoon, we've got some folks who are experienced from the RNC up here as well, and a few guest speakers, and our first guest speaker is Grover Norquist, he is the President and CEO of Americans for Tax Reform, and you want to hear much more from him than you do from me, so I will turn it over. Come on up Grover. Excellent, thank you very much. Grover Norquist, I run Americans for Tax Reform, a group that Ronald Reagan put together to help pass what became the 1986 Tax Reform Act, where we took the corporate rate down and the individual, we took the individual rates down to 15 and 27, those were what the rates were, then Bush began the process unfortunately of moving them up, and the Democrats keep trying to push them up, we keep trying to bring them back down again, but we were at 15 and 27, individual rates and the corporate rate came down to 50%, and then down to 35%, and then that is what the Republicans in 2017 took to 21, and so we also, in doing that, we ask all the candidates to take the pledge in writing that they will oppose and vote against all tax increases, two-thirds of Republican governors have made the commitment in writing, Vermont's governor has not signed the pledge, but has not signed a tax increase either, good start, and our friends, about 90% of the House and Senate have taken the pledge as well. The modern Republican Party, if you sat around in a big circle here, why are people Republicans, why did they vote Republican, why did they join the Republican Party? And 50, 60 years ago it was a question of geography, if you were a Republican you were born north of the Mason-Dixon line, if somebody told you they were Republican all you knew was they were born north of the Mason-Dixon line, didn't tell you whether they were for higher taxes or lower taxes or spending or education policy or anything else, parties were regional and then you had Southerners who were very conservative on a number of issues, but they were Democrats because Sherman was mean to Atlanta at one point, and then you had Republicans up in Maine who were Bolsheviks, but they were Republicans because the guy at Little Round Top was from Maine. During Reagan's lifetime the two parties divided out along principles, not geographic questions, and so you started to get more Republicans in the south and in the south and west and more Ds showing up in the northeast, and when you think about what's going on in the modern Republican Party there are lots of different tendencies, groups, people care about different issues, and at one point it seems like there are lots of different issues that people care about, but if you go around the room what makes someone as Republican is that on their vote-moving issue, on their, not on every issue, but on their vote-moving issue, what they want from the government is to be left alone. So you can go around the table, leave my taxes alone, don't raise my taxes, leave my small business alone, leave my ability to be an independent contractor alone, a gig economy, I want to be free to decide how I do, I don't want to be forced to join a union, and people from freedom of religion is the most important thing. Leave my faith alone, my ability to transmit it to my kids, leave us alone in that zone. Education, homeschooling, illegal in 40 states, 40 years ago, go to jail stuff, I know Vermont was always better at some of these issues than other states, but now talk about progress on homeschooling, we went from go to jail, truancy, to they went all the spelling bees, and in all 50 states it's largely either not regulated or lightly regulated. I don't know if this is still the case in Vermont, but I was up working with center-right different groups years ago, and there were three homeschooling groups, and one said, here's what you do, we have a fairly light regulatory system, so just tell them, all you have to do is tell the government you're homeschooling, send them a letter, done, and other said no, no no don't tell them nothing about nobody, okay, and then the third group said you guys are both wrong, the kids that they know about because they're in the public school you can take them out, send them a letter, they already know about those guys, but the other one's coming up, so there's three different groups on homeschooling with different senses of the line, where you draw the line, but again they wanted to be left alone, so around the table everybody wishes to be left alone on their key vote with the Second Amendment, I was 18 years on the board of directors of the National Wife Association, and gun owners, people with concealed carry permits, hunters simply wish to be left alone, they do not go around knocking on your door urging you to you know become a hunter, they don't insist that the public schools teach books entitled Heather has two hunters, just leave us alone, okay, and the religious liberty people do not ask for a Episcopalian stamps, they just want to be left alone, and that's why our coalition holds together better than theirs does, because you go around the room, nobody wants anything at anyone else's expense on their vote moving issue. Now the guy who goes to church all day looks across the room at the guy who wants to make money all day and says that's not how I spend my time, but that doesn't conflict with me being me, and they both look over at the guy who wants to fondle his guns all day, and they say well that's not how I spend my time, but it's not important that we all agree what's the most important thing in life, and how do you spend your time, or where you spend your evenings, just leave me alone in my zone, and then what we need are candidates who stand in the middle of the circle and say I'm going to leave your kids alone, your faith alone, your education alone, your guns alone, your business alone, your money alone, your life savings, your 401k, your IRA, and let's go fight the Democrats. The Democrats, and so it's a low maintenance coalition, because we don't have to sell people. Look, you, this is important to you, but you have to give up on it in order to be part of our coalition. No, no, no. What's the most important thing to you? That's what you bring to the table, and that is where the elected officials won't cross the line and leave. And successful elected Republicans simply stand there and check in with everybody and then help what fights they can, but they won't cross the lines to go after people on their vote-moving issue. I got a call when Hillary Clinton was doing that listening tour in upstate New York, remember, because if she did a talking tour, she'd have never gotten elected. So she did, she did a listening tour and never, she seemed so smart. She seemed to be agreeing with me the whole time. Yeah, she was. And Hillary said what the progressives need. See, they drove liberal into the ground, so then they became progressives to hide who they were. But they, you have to be old enough to remember that before liberal, it was progressive. But that got too understood to mean Stalinist and pro-Soviet. So they're like, okay, when I, when I, we're not progressives, now we're liberals, then they drove liberal into the ground because that would spend too much money and let everybody be criminals. And then they went to progressives again, which they're proceeding to explain, requires you to have a third world living standard, because it's good for the trees. I passed out three handouts, and I'll go through them briefly, but do take them with you. It's always important to have paper handouts, given what trees did to Sunny Bono, and do not recycle them. Nasty things, trees. They'll get you. Hillary Clinton said, what the progressives need is one of those meetings like Grover runs in DC, and I have a meeting in a room that's a little bit larger than this. We put 100 people together, and 30 will get up and talk for three minutes about what they're doing on a project, not what their ridiculous hopes and aspirations are, not who they like for running for president or senator or whatever. What are they doing to move liberty forward in their zone? And hey, could you use any help? Here's what we're doing. If you want to help, here's what we're up to. And we pass out lots of paper so other people can see what everybody else is doing. And so the reporter says, what about this idea of Hillary having people sitting around a table the way you do on Wednesdays? And we, over time, allow all the liberal press to come in one at a time and watch the whole thing off the record so that they realize we're not eating children or something. And so they have a better idea of who and what and what we're doing. And my observation was, okay, I walk through them. What our room looks like. Everybody's there because they want to be left alone on their vote-moving issue. Who would be at Hillary's table, right? Trial lawyers, labor union bosses, big city political machines, the two wings of the dependency movement. These are the people who are locked into welfare dependency and the people who make $150,000 a year managing the dependency of other people, making sure they don't get jobs and become Republicans. And all the coercive utopians, the people who are better than you and me, they know how to raise our children, they know what we should be doing on Saturday, and what we should care deeply about. The people who on the Sabbath want you to separate the brown glass from the white glass from the green glass for the recycling priests. And then they create these light bulbs that convince you you have glaucoma. And they invented and mandated the toilets that don't completely flush. And because this is good for you. And they have a list of things you have to do and the things of list you're not allowed to do that's slightly longer and more tedious than Leviticus. Don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, and you have to do this, this and this. And it's not like a suggestion. They want the government to enforce it. So around Hillary's table on the progressive table, everybody there wants something from other people. Cash, power, attention, approbation. Okay. Tell us what's cool. Tell us we're wonderful around that table. And they can get along as long as we're stupid enough to throw more money into the center of the table. Okay, if we let them raise taxes or borrow and throw the money in the middle of the table, then they can get along like the scene in the movie after the bank robbery, one for you, one for you, one for you and everybody around the table is very happy. But if we do our job right and say no new taxes and meet it and stick with it and hold the line, then the amount of money in the table begins to dwindle down. And you and I might see billions there and think that's a lot of money, but they're looking at this dwindling amount of cash to share like, you know, the Kennedy kids and there's, there's like one six pack in the middle of the table, and they don't know what they're going to do. This is not going to work. So they will begin to push other people away from the table if there's not enough cash for everybody. When Reagan was first elected in 80, they could either get rid of the subsidies for sin fuels. This is back when the Democrats liked the idea of turning coal into oil and stuff like this at great expense and subsidized 10 billion for that or 10 billion for inner city kids to get government job, welfare, but they call it a government job for inner city stuff. And the Democrats turned around and they whacked the kids. They said that you're out because the sin fuel guys are paying customers. And so if they will begin to push other people out of the coalition, and people pushed out of the coalition and no longer getting money from the government or power or prestige or anything become available to us. Because now they want to be left alone. Not if I'm not getting something that I want to be left alone on something else. Our job is to say no, no, no to tax increases and never say yes. Democrats talk about tax increases and ask the same question kind of like a teenage boy on a prom date. He keeps asking the same question in different ways. And the goal is no, no, and you have to stick with a note. No, no, yes, it doesn't work. And so with with this, you just got to say, no, we're not raising taxes period done next conversation. And we did that with Obama and took $2 trillion off the table from his spending plans. He still spent too much. But he was he was forced to give up a great deal of what he would have done to us there. So a couple of quick thoughts. Not the one with the yellow line. This chart explains the world. So put it on your refrigerator. Over here. 1932. FDR gets elected. This 1994. During that 62 year period, the Republicans controlled Congress for four years, two years under Truman, two years under Eisenhower. Okay. Now Congress runs the country. Presidents start wars. Presidents have scandals. Presidents can veto bills and slow them down. You know, but you know, Nixon gets in. Oh, he won't let us do this. Well, we'll wait till he's gone. Then we'll do it. And Reagan gets in. He won't let us do this. We'll wait till he's gone. And then we'll do it. Because they held the house in the Senate for so long. All they need to do is wait till they won the presidency, pop out the projects they wanted. And then we'd elect a Republican president, and that would stop them or slow them down for a while. But we didn't get to run the country. Congress runs the country. And what we were doing, this was a one, we had a one party state. I mean, they ran the country, they made the decisions. We were the Washington generals. They were the Harlem Globetrotters. It looked like we were on the playing field, but we weren't really. And then something happened. In 1994, this is two years after Bush 41, Bush lost the presidency, a very successful presidency. He kicked Iraq out of Kuwait and didn't stick around for 25 years to watch. He managed the collapse of the Soviet Union when everybody thought that at a minimum, there'd be a lot of blood on the floor when that happened. But he managed that brilliantly. One small problem, one hole in the boat. He said he wouldn't raise taxes. That's how he beat Dole. He said he wouldn't raise taxes. When he said that he was 14 points behind Dukakis. He was losing to Dukakis. This is pathetic. I grew up in Massachusetts before moving to the United States. And losing to Dukakis is not where you wanted to be. But when he said, I'm never raising your taxes, I'm really Ronald Reagan, he won the election. Then he raised taxes and he lost. And that's the point at which Republicans said, take the pledge never to raise taxes when the primary take the pledge never to raise taxes when the general keep the pledge get reelected. 1994 96% of all Republicans signed in Congress signed the pledge, and they have kept the pledge since we haven't had a Republican vote for tax increase since then. No tax increases passed in Washington DC, federal level, federal level, federal level. At the national level, the only tax increases that have passed are when the Democrats had the House and the Senate and the presidency for two years under Clinton, then they lost control of Congress for two years under Biden, then they lost control of Congress for two years under Obama, and they lost control of Congress. So the D's have to have all the stars line up to get a tax increase. Otherwise, the Republicans say, we're not raising taxes, and they hold it. From 94, when the Republican Party said, we're the party that will not raise your taxes, we have held Congress half the time, more than half the time. We went from one out of 15 years to half. We're competitive at the national level. Now, we may invade small countries, we can't pronounce, but we will not raise your taxes. And that has made the difference and made us competitive. This is a cheerful map on a national scale. And the red states, the 24 states, well, 23 states, a friend, Louisiana, just elected a Republican, he's not in office yet, but I think in what we handed out, we cheated and moved ahead. So this is in January. He will, that will be 24 states where the Republicans have the governorship in both houses. Then there are three states where Republicans can override a Democratic veto if they all get to hold together. Kansas, Kentucky, and North Carolina. And Louisiana was one of those when they had a Democratic governor, but we finally ran a candidate with few enough girlfriends to get across the finish line. In Louisiana, it's not zero, but it has to be single digits or lower. Anyway, so we found one of those and he won. So now we have a tax cutting spending less, good Republican there. Our competitive advantage is not only that is a leave us alone coalition, we can hold together and be low maintenance. And the other team has conflicts that we can exacerbate every time we cut taxes, every time we reduce the power of the state, every time we reduce spending, we weaken their coalition because that's what keeps their coalition together. So every policy victory is a political victory when we limit the size, scope and power of government. And anytime we get rolled or fooled or something or just overrun because they've got the votes and we don't, they become more powerful politically and it's worse for the country. The other advantage we have is federalism, okay? We snuck it into the Constitution way back when. And the advantage we have is since our ideas work, we can pass them in one state and watch them work welfare reform, Wisconsin first, we did Wisconsin. And then everyone looked nobody died, nobody lost an election, things got better. And then it started moving to other states. And then to 1994, 1994, 1994, 1995, tax reform act, which had been written by Reagan in 71. Okay. And Republicans had been pushing it. But we finally got it with both houses, Republican and a Democratic governor who feared Clinton who feared he wouldn't get reelected. And his advisor said, if you don't pass this bill, if you don't sign this bill, you'll lose. He vetoed it twice. He signed it the third times. He did win. But welfare reform, term limits, state by state. And then to Washington DC, the Republicans term limited with their own rules, committee chairs. That's why we don't have, you know, 80 year old committee chairs who've been doing this for 50 years and nothing, we actually all of our guys are much younger than their guys, because once you've been a committee chair, you don't want to go back to being a peasant again. So you move on and do something other than stay in the Senate or the house, whereas the Democrats intend to become a chairman and stay there until they pass away. And we're literally dozens of years younger than they are on average, both on leaders and on average legislators. We get new blood. And the people who do become committee chairs want to do good things right away. They're not sitting out. I've got 30 years. I'll get around to it. It really sped up the process that when we have Republican control, they move good bills as fast as they can really fast. If you have a Republican president, not so much when you don't just takes longer, but school choice would never happen at a national level. But it's happening state by state. I've always wanted to go to a single rate tax in Washington DC for the federal government. And there are 12 states that have a single rate tax. We've picked up several of them recently. And there are another 12 states looking to go to a single rate tax and on to zero. The green states are the states with no income tax, no state income tax. And the yellow states have a single rate tax. The advantage of a single rate tax is not that it's fair. Taxation is taking money from people who earned it and giving it to people who largely didn't. Fairness is not part of that process. But the good thing about a single rate tax is that when a politician wants to raise taxes, he has to look everybody in the room in the eye and say, I'm going to make you all less better off. Okay, how about that first start? And okay, now you've got our attention and it tends not to pass easily. That's why every Democrat president going back to Clinton said, okay, I'm only going to tax one or two percent or the people who make more than 250,000. They usually say people who make more than 250,000. Then they rewrite it as families that make more than 250,000. And then they go, oh, hell, I didn't mean it. But they always start with only two people, a couple, not you. Now, you may want to step out of the room. This is going to get loud. It's going to get unpleasant, but it's not you. This is the Richard Speck theory of tax increases that if you can't take on everyone in the room, you take them out of the room one at a time. You older people explain to the younger people who Richard Speck was later. They have to divide people up and a flat rate tax makes it difficult to divide the electorate. Illinois' income tax is less than 5 percent. Illinois, they should be up at 10, like New York and New Jersey. They're crazy there. What are they saying? Single rate tax. Single rate tax. The governor of that state, Prince Priskin, spent $50 million of his own money to put something on the ballot and pass it to go to a graduated income tax. And it lost. It lost by nine votes, nine votes by 9 percent the same day that Biden won by 16 percent. Okay. So even the Democrats like the idea of a single rate tax and understand that it protects people. Massachusetts, we five times defeated going to a graduated tax over the last 30, 40 years. And only in the last couple years did they actually by one point get a graduated tax. There's a 5 percent rate. Used to be 5 percent wasn't going up. It was a very low state. Now there's a 9 percent tax if you make too much money in their view. And people are beginning to do what Jeff Bezos is doing. Leave. Mass users faster than they had before. This would be very interesting to watch. But getting to a single rate tax makes it easier to cut taxes because then when you look everybody in the eye, you say everybody's getting a tax cut. It's going to go from 4 percent to three and a half. And everybody can get that in their head and know, okay, well, billionaires are getting more. No, but we're all getting four to three and a half percent. I get that, you know. And that's what's had. There are 12 states starting with, well, New Hampshire in a year and a half will become a honest, no income tax state. They've been lying to us for the last 90 years because that attacks on dividends and interest of 5 percent. Same as Massachusetts for crying out loud. You've retired in Massachusetts, moved to New Hampshire. You got nothing. Now they're now they're taxing your retirement, you know, your retirement income. But that is being taken down to zero. Senunu signed the bill. The Republican legislature made it happen. North Carolina for 11 years has been moving their income tax down. And the way each state is doing it, they all made mistakes when they started it. Oh, we'll just take the income tax and drop it over on top of the sales tax. Oh, look, no income tax. It turns out people who take sales taxes really don't like sales taxes and they are more active than the people who don't really believe you're getting ready to the income tax and the sales tax people are quite certain you really are going to hit them with the sales like that has never worked in the history of mankind. But what has worked is you say we're going to spend this much, which is you could set the rate 2 percent, 4 percent, inflation, GDP. And any time the income tax revenue pokes up above that line, we take that and make it a permanent income tax cut. So we don't get ahead of our skis, okay, but when there's revenue coming in, not one time revenue from the federal government, but ongoing recurring revenue, we permanently cut the income tax and in their state used to be the highest in the Northeast 7.7. They're down to 3.99. They just voted to go next is to 2.5, taking it down step by step. They're also phasing out their corporate income tax over a four-year period. I think they started 2.5 years ago. They will have no corporate income tax in a few years, and within the next five to seven years, they'll be at zero on the personal income tax just by having the government grow more slowly than income tax revenue had been coming in. Iowa has voted to phase down to 3.99. They were at 8.6. I always thought Iowa farmers, you know, they were Bolsheviks out there. I mean, they were ridiculous. They had a 12% corporate rate, now down to 7, and they had an 8.6 personal income tax, now on its way to 3.9, and then on to zero after this session, Nebraska is phasing down to zero. Arkansas is committed to going down to zero. Louisiana had a phase down to zero, but it's weak. They're going to strengthen it and speed it up. Arizona was at 4.5. They're down at 2.5, and then they're going to zero from there. North Dakota went from seven rates to two, and then they're on their way to one, and then zero. Both Ohio and Indiana are committed. This is the governor and the legislative leadership is committed to doing this. We're going to have a lot more, and this, and how this helps blue states, and I tell all my friends, I say, if you love your friends in California and Vermont and Massachusetts and other blue states, cut your income tax in your red state, because that will encourage each of the blue states to really think through. Do they really want to keep their marginal tax rates where they are now? We've stopped them from raising taxes at the highest level. New York, the legislature wanted to do it. Cuomo said no, they'll all leave. And there's that wonderful joke from the last dictator of East Germany, Honiger? Honiger, right? The joke goes, his wife says to him, why don't you open the wall and open the wall? And he looks at her and thinks that's odd. You're a loyal communist. Why would you? Oh, he says, oh that's sweet of you. You just want to be alone with me. And this is the guys who realizing in California, again they were going to go from 13 and a half to 15, through a ballot initiative, and the governor, complete left-wing tweet, maybe the guy who does this to Biden someday, and runs, but he said no. And they ran the campaign to stop the initiative because people will leave. And you just saw what happened in Washington state. They have a constitutional amendment banning an income tax, so they decide to have a capital gains tax that they passed. And after being told by the Supreme Court five or six times in the previous decades, don't do this again, an income tax is an income tax. Oh, this is an excise tax. It's not an income tax. And so they're going to try and take it to the Supreme Court, but they really tend to let state Supreme Courts abuse their people as much as they want to. I don't know they'll be able to fix that. It does seem so transparently wrong. I don't know how you quite get away with it, but they have so far, with the exception that half of the money they expected to raise was going to come from our dear friend Bezos. And he's leaving. So it's not going to be the cash cow. Oh, they also had this wealth tax that they were going to do. They're going to tax one percent of your wealth every year. That's the one that Bezos was half of. So we've slowed the growth of rate of taxation at the other states while beginning to take things down. And that's how we fix blue states, which is to cannot create enough good examples that you just can't avoid picking up on those ideas or taking them national. I think we'll get to a single rate income tax a lot faster today by passing it in not just the 12 states, but 24 states. And we'll be there in the next 10 years. Then, and again, remember, seven states are at flat rate because they're at zero. So we're actually now at 21 states at a flat rate tax. Zero is the best flat rate tax, very flat. And it's much more difficult to go from zero to one than from one to two. So zero is much preferable than, oh, they used to tell me in Indiana, oh, we're at three percent, two percent are personal income tax. It's almost nothing. I said, you do know Ohio's pledged to be at nothing and they're next door to you. Kentucky's passed the law to be at zero in 10 years. And our friends over in West Virginia have passed a law to be at zero in the next 10 to 12 years. And now they're going to go to zero because zero is the new orange or the new black or something. Zero is the new flat as the target. No, this is not tomorrow. This is not next week. This will take time and you don't want to get over your skis and and promise too much and have to back up or anything. But where was my other thought? No, that's, oh, this is a list of people who have taken the pledge. Trump took it last time, but we never physically got it. I do have a letter from him promising never raise taxes. We're negotiating on how we work this out, but he was very good on not allowing tax increases in the past. But we did get all of these nice people and a bunch of them that have dropped out as well. But we are making sure that as much as possible all Republican candidates run as candidates who won't raise taxes. When you talk to a very good person, I had this conversation with the Republican senator from Texas who ran for president in 1996. Looked like a turtle. I'll remember his name a second, but no, he's the economist. Phil Graham, Phil Graham, Phil Graham. From Texas to Phil Forbes, also the economist. But I said to him, you know, we really need you to take the pledge. Everyone, all the other cool kids have taken a pledge. And he says, well, everybody knows I'm good. And I said, yes, that's the point. Because there's a lady who's running for senate and two weeks from now she's going to hold the press conference. I signed the pledge and she doesn't have a voting record. And if you sign the pledge and she signs the pledge and she says, like Phil Graham, I signed pledge, then your credibility goes to her. People go, oh, she knows what she's agreeing to on the pledge. She's not just making something up. But if she takes the pledge and they say to Phil Graham, he says, no, they go, oh, the pledge can't be that important. Sign the pledge right there. Okay. He thought this was some test to see if he was hardcore. No, because you are the guy who would never raise taxes. You're taking the pledge helps the young person who's running for the first time to point out in my district, you know how you know this means something because of that. So those are my thoughts. Federalism beats stateism. We are going to reform education state by state. We now have about more than a dozen states with education savings account. If you move to, this is going to speed up everybody moving, by the way. It used to be you move from New York City, 14 percent income tax, city and state, 14 percent total. You move to Miami, no state income tax, no city income tax. So it's 14 percent of your income you get to keep when you move to Miami, Florida, or Texas, Dallas, Texas. But now in Florida, you also get $8,000 per child to go to any school you want to. Okay, because if you don't go to the public school they assign you to, you could take half of what they spend, the $8,000. Someday we're going to get all 16, but we start with eight. We are Fabian anarchists here. Take it step at a time. $8,000 follows your kid in the backpack to another public school down the street that you like better or in another town, or to a private school, or to homeschooling, or to a parochial school, up to you. And so it used to be when people hit 40 and they go, I got another 20, 25 years of working and I make this much. And then the difference, the delta between a 10 percent personal income tax and zero or two or three is a big number when you think of it over 20, 25 years. Now when people start thinking about having children, they're going to go, you know how much it costs us every year to stay in this state where we don't have any essay? If we moved to a state you would have both not full funding for your private education or homeschooling or whatever, but right now half, and that was our opening bid by the way, that was not our final demand on where we want to go, plus the income tax reduction. So those things are going to speed up putting pressure on states that haven't gotten there on reducing the size and scope of government, and that's why we're going to win. Thank you. All right, thank you very much, Grover. It's always encouraging, right, sometimes in Vermont, we're thinking, oh, all that great stuff that's happening in Florida or in New Hampshire, and he's right, it puts pressure on us in Vermont, and it gives us something to, we all know friends, family members who've moved out of state, and it does put pressure on these blue states to not get too far out of control, so that there's a little bit of hope in there, and I appreciated that idea that we're a low maintenance coalition. We just want everybody to be left alone, and that's something that can keep us together as long as we're willing to fight and defend other people's right to be left alone, we can hang together. So next up, I'm going to have Georgia State Representative Misha Maynard join me on stage and we'll do a little interview, so please give a round of applause. Well, Misha, thanks so much for for joining us up here in Vermont. You're from Georgia, so how's the Vermont weather from your perspective? It was great yesterday, and when I woke up it was totally different. It's always 60 degrees in November in Vermont, right guys? Well, like this is great. You should come back in July, it's amazing. So we'll get into a little bit about why you're here. I'd love to hear just a little bit about growing up. Did you grow up in Georgia? Grew up in Georgia. I actually represent the community that I grew up in, but of course I represent much more than the community that I grew up in. So I represent about 60,000 people in Georgia, but where I grew up is in the middle of Atlanta. There's a hospital that people see on the highway called Grady Memorial Hospital, and so the inside joke is you are really from Georgia if you are born in Grady Hospital and we call ourselves Grady Babies. Oh, interesting. Oh, very good. So just tell me a little bit about kind of growing up in Georgia. What what's your, you know, kind of what your politics were in your family, and and how did you get from being, would you say a gray baby? Grady. Grady baby. How'd you go from being a Grady baby to being elected to the state legislature? Okay, so I am, I grew up in a single mom household. I have one brother that died by suicide, which really significantly impacted me, which is why mental health is so important to me. My mom, the area that we grew up in, it used to be a nice black community, crack cocaine came in, but the house that I grew up in, my grandfather actually built the house. He was a Navy CB, his brothers were in the Navy, my dad was in the Navy, my stepbrother was in the Navy, but the school system was not the best, and so my mom would use someone to dress the family member, and I moved to, not moved, but I went to school in a better performing school district, and my cousin happened to live next door to Hank Aaron, so that kind of showed you the difference in the type of schools that I was in, a crack infested school neighborhood versus a neighborhood where Hank Aaron's home was in, and from there many of the mayors of Atlanta went to my high school, so Ambassador Young, I went to school with his son, the current mayor of Atlanta, Andre Dickens, we were friends in high school, Congressman Kwanzaa Hall went to high school with him, so really my mom making that switch impacted me a lot. The second part of your question, how did I get here? I was a Democrat because really that's all I knew, no one in my household talked about politics, talked about policy, we did talk about going to vote and how important voting was, but that was it, and so everybody was a Democrat, so fast forward, I called those people, the people that I used to be probably Democrat loyalists, you know, we really don't know why we're Democrats, we just kind of were born into that, and that's all we know, and we think that that's what we're supposed to be. And what did that mean to you at that time to be a Democrat? Like what did you associate that with? It didn't mean anything to me. Interesting. It didn't mean anything to me, I was a Democrat. When I joined, or when I decided to run for office, I'm a physical therapist, I was not in politics, I did not go to any political meetings, all I did was go and vote, that was all I did, and I went into politics because I took my kids on a ski trip to Utah, and on that trip, my mom called me and said the city council person passed away, and it was a fleeting thought, oh I'm gonna run for office, and she was like, you're a physical therapist, and I was like, I'm gonna run for office, completely forgot about it, and about 30 days later in December, someone called me and said, hey I'm running for city council, will you vote for me? I was scratching my head, I was like, that's what I'm supposed to be doing, so I researched how you run for office, I prayed about it, I asked my family and everybody said no, you are not a politician, you are a physical therapist, no, but my heart was so convicted for some reason, and so I ran, it was about 12 people in that race, the city council person had cancer, so people were really waiting for him to pass away, when I joined, you know, this slate of people, I literally told the people, they said, what is your platform? I said, I don't know what a platform is, they were like, what is the GOTV, what station is that? I knew nothing, what radio station that is, GOTV? Right, and I said, well what I can do though is, I can solve problems, I'm a physical therapist, my job is solving problems, so I can do that and I can do it really well, so I ended up doing good, I did not win, but that race went to court, because it was a two-vote difference between second and third place, and the judge said, well anybody on the ballot can be a litigant, which means you can question people on the witness stand, and I know you guys have heard a lot about Fulton County elections, but at that time I really had a problem with Fulton County elections, because the lines in the minority communities to vote, it would be nine hours, and so I took that time to question them under oath, everything that I asked them, they said, no, no we're not doing that, no we're not doing that, no we're not doing that, and then that's when the spirit told me, okay this is why you ran, it wasn't for city council, it's to run for state house, so you can change the laws, and I've been convicted in that. Yeah, wow, that's amazing, I think it's so it's so great to hear, you know, your story, first of all your family was like stay out of politics, my family told me the same thing, and how important it is for people who, you know, you don't necessarily have to have all this training and support, and sometimes people who aren't part of the political system make some of the best candidates, because you're out there in the private sector just saying, somebody's hurt, how do I help them? Here's a problem in my business, how do I fix it, and did you say you came in second or third in that race? No, it was about 12 people, so I came in like number five or six. Sorry, but it was like 200 votes, you know, 300 votes, it wasn't a lot of people. Out of how many? Like what's the total size of that? So the person that won the city council district eventually, I think he won by 265 votes. Okay. No, he had 265 votes. Gotcha, okay, yeah. Okay. It sounds like some of the races we have in Vermont, you know, we had a race last year where somebody lost by seven votes, and we've had a couple, a couple years ago, we had the same race in two different elections, one person one by one, and then two years in the rematch, the other person one by one vote, so we were not a stranger to close elections there. And I think you have the same experience that I did, the first time you ran, you lost, and it's so important as one of the things I tell the candidates that we recruit, you got to run and run and run. Bernie Sanders ran five times before he became a congressman. And you know, Republicans are very efficient, right? It's like you do something, doesn't work, forget it, move on. But in politics it can be helpful to run. So how did your state rep race go? What was that like, and how was it different from your city council race? So city council race, it was a special election, so that was three weeks. The state house race, it was in the middle of COVID, and as a physical therapist, you know, I don't think anybody really knew how to campaign during that time. So it was literally I have two girls, one is a freshman at Boston University. But she and I, and the little one, Alexis, we literally would run up to someone's door, knock, and then go all the way to the sidewalk and be like, hey, I'm running for office. That's pretty much how it went. But really another interesting story to this is someone on the city council race said I want to help you. And she said, are you going to do some mailers? And I said, I don't have money for mailers because I also didn't feel comfortable asking people for money in the middle of COVID when people weren't even working. And I was like, I can't do mailers. That's $30,000 in Atlanta, I said. But the Lord said he was going to get the word out. The Lord told me to run and so the Lord is going to have to get the message out because I will not have mailers. As soon as I hung up the phone, someone from high school called me and said, hey, I got your mailer. And I was like, what? And so I called my friend back and I was like, someone said they have a mailer. She said we'll call back and get a picture, call back out of the picture since it's a her. She was like, no, we need the other side to see who paid for it. So I called back and it was the American Federation for children. I didn't know who they were, but literally I fell to the floor crying. I was like, I cannot believe someone knows I care about children. So happy, but immediately after that people in the communities started calling me saying denounce them, tell them that you do not agree with them sending this mailer out for you. I was like, I'm not going to do that. No one is helping me. I'm not going to do that. And I was firming that. Why would they be against? Because they support school choice. Oh, okay. And in Georgia, if you're a Democrat, you're not supposed to support school choice. So fast forward. I win the election and by the way when I was canvassing people would say, I got your mailer, I got your mailer. I ended up having about five millers. So I win the race and education is a hot topic, highest budget in Georgia. And all the education lobbyists are coming to me for and against and the first year was a special needs scholarship bill. And so a lady comes up to me and she says, are you going to vote for this special needs scholarship bill? And I've redlined it. And I was like, no, I can't really because it's some stuff in here that I don't agree with. She said, well, let me come to your office and let's talk about it. And I was like, okay, I'm a freshman in the minority party. And I was like, okay. So she comes, we go through everything I want to don't agree with. And she says, well, I'm going to take this back and see if they'll accept your changes. I did not know who we was. I did not want to know who we was. But she came back a few days later and said, they're going to make all your changes. Will you vote for the bill? And I was like, yeah. And as she did that, I said her name is Jamie. I said, Jamie, did your organization send out mailers for me? And she said, yes. And so I told her the story and she said, well, my last name is Lord. So technically, the Lord did get the mailers out. Isn't that amazing? And God has been working like that continuously in this space for me. Wow, that's amazing. So how did that go with your Democratic colleagues when you started to vote for the school choice bill? They didn't like it to say the least, but I was like, I'm a physical therapist. I worked at Children's Hospital. Why would we not support kids with special needs like out of everybody? You know, why would we not support a child with a special need? They were kind of dead set on we do not support choice for anybody and just being convicted stood up in the well and I said I'm voting for these kids because they need us. And that's it. So what was it like for you after you made that decision? You kind of broke with your party, did what you thought was right for your constituents. What was it like around the State House? What was sort of the fallout after that? So that was the first of many. That was the very first one. The next one was defunding the police. I was like, no one wants to defund the police. This is ridiculous. I live in the middle of like I live in the middle of Atlanta, my constituents. It doesn't matter if you're in a lower socioeconomic or a higher socioeconomic. Nobody wants to defund the police. So that was another one and then there was a workforce development bill giving free training to people in technical colleges. They voted against that. Then it was a prosecutor oversight bill. A lot of people think that that bill was related to Donald Trump. It actually wasn't. That bill was first put out and we started working on it my freshman year and I'm the victim of stalking and so I had a problem with the prosecutor. So I went to my Republican colleague and I said I support this bill and I want to help you with this bill. So Bill had nothing to do with Donald Trump. The bill has to do with rogue prosecutors. So that was another bill that they didn't like and in this past session it was the another school choice bill. It was the tax saving credit bill. I mean just on and on and on and on. Yeah, wow. So what got you to the, you know, were you getting, you know, threats about getting primaried or I don't know how things work. You know, did Democratic leadership say that we're going to, you know, treat you differently? What were some of the potential consequences of doing what you thought was right for your constituents? Well, I never really fit in with the Democrats. From the moment coming in, literally the entire Democrat establishment was against me. They, their mailers were for other people. So I was not their choice. But I won that race with almost 60 percent more than three people in the race without a runoff. So the people wanted school choice. The people didn't want to defund the police. The next year or the next race, Stacey Abrams did mailers and endorsed my opponent and I was the incumbent and I won that race for almost 70 percent just for the same things. Right. And so I really was in a space of I have some Democrat friends that also feel exactly like me, but they wouldn't dare step out and do the things that I did. But really for the most part, the colleagues that I work with have always been Republicans. But leadership would say you want to be on the out, they wouldn't call my name out. They would be like if you want to be on the island by yourself, be on the island by yourself, don't expect to get any help from us. You know just, it was a lot of bullying. It was really hard and made me feel very uncomfortable in a lot of places. And I guess really the very last thing is after that school choice bill in March in April, I had a colleague who graduated from Yale Law School, has no children, lives in one of the highest socioeconomic communities in suburban Atlanta. He decides to put up a check for a thousand dollars to say to the world if you will run against my colleague, Misha Maynard, I'll give you this thousand dollars. So at that point, even that didn't bother me. It was a big deal in a paper. I told the news media, look, they have it wrong. I don't have it wrong because that was the question, would you change party? It's just like I'm not changing parties. I would never change parties. I am a Democrat. They have bad policy. It's not me. So then fast forward a few months later, they came back attacking me on social media again and I really had to just sit back and say, okay, why are they attacking you? You don't believe in defunding the police. You don't believe in keeping kids in failing schools. You don't believe in suppressing children with special needs. You don't believe in suppressing anybody. So Misha, this is a policy issue because you know I, this is where I came up with the term Democrat loyalists. You were a Democrat loyalist but did not know why you were a Democrat. It is policy. You don't know about policy until you're actually reading the policy and that's when I decided, okay, I'm going to switch to the Republican Party because I believe in their policy. So that, that, that must have been, that must have been a little, a little nerve-wracking. Had you known anyone else who'd done that before in Georgia or elsewhere or what was that process like that kind of, did you talk to Republican leadership first? Did you just make the switch on your, on yourself? How did that, how did that happen? Well, I am, I did not know I was doing this but now I am officially the first black woman Republican serving in the Georgia General Assembly. Wow. Wasn't trying to do that. But how do you do that, right? How do you switch parties? There's not a textbook for that. So I went to the Georgia State GOP, I mean, and I said, we have a new State Director, Josh McCoon, his wife Jacqueline McCoon, they were very inviting, answered all my questions. We went to dinner, kind of tried to get to know each other, talked about some pros and cons, from there I went to the House leadership and I spoke to Speaker Burns, I spoke to his staff and a lot of people were like, well do you want to be independent? And I was like, I don't think so. I don't think so. And so there were some people that said, well just be independent. You know, we want you back in office, so be independent. And I was like, I don't think so. And so much so where I actually just went in front of them and announced because they were like, well just wait, but my heart can fix me and my heart leads me to where I need to be. And so we did the press conference. As soon as I did the press conference, my constituents started texting me, calling me, emailing me saying, we don't care what letter is next to your name, we're still voting for you. Wow, wow. And it has been like that ever since. So I did a town hall on Tuesday. After the town hall, people were coming up to me saying, I just want you to know I'm voting Republican. I did a town hall about an hour away from Atlanta with Senator Kelly Loeffler. I didn't advertise it because my district is 90 percent Democrat, so you know marketing is going to be a little different. But some constituents saw the advertising somewhere. I had constituents come an hour away and say, hey, we're here, we're in Representative Maynard's district, completely shocking. And so I guess the message really is, if you're convicted in something, you can't worry about what other people are thinking, you can't worry about what other people are saying. If the Holy Spirit is telling you to do something, you do it and that will work everything out. I think it's such a testimony to your to your constituents too, because they saw, you know, that you were fighting for them. You were listening to what they were saying, what was important with them, and you continued to disturb their interest regardless of the party affiliation. And so it's, I can imagine that that's got to be a tricky situation to be in, but that must have felt pretty good kind of getting that confirmation from people. Yes, I got another great story for you. Being a Democrat was very stressful, and just because it was constant battling with people that were supposed to be your sisters and brothers, your colleagues. Do you think they weren't really tolerating you? So the next day was my annual physical and the nurse who takes your blood pressure, she said, 118 over 76. And I was like, that's not right. I was like, that's not right. She took it again, it was 118 over 76. I was like, that's not right, because I knew the pressure that I had been under went to the doctor's room, they took it again, it was still 118 over 76. So that just shows you stepping out on faith. It was such a stress relief, like my heart was no longer stressed. I am in such a better place because I am not doing something that other people want me to do. It just, it feels really good. Now, you know, we're all Republicans here. We know we've got some problems too. Was there any hesitation or are there, you think in, you know, when the, when some people were saying that, would you consider being an independent? You know, I think what kind of constructive criticism do you have for the Republican Party if we want to find more people like you who want to do what's right for the people that they serve, regardless of the party and focus on the policy, what do we need to do to make sure that people don't say, yeah, being an independent is a good idea. Like what's been helpful for you as you kind of become a Republican, going through that transition, and maybe how has your perspective of Republicans changed now that you're with us and we're not the other guys? Right. So when I first switched, many people were like, Misha, we have our own problems. We are not perfect. And I'm fine with that. Nobody is perfect. No group is perfect. No party is perfect. People do have to figure out what their values are, and they need to, you know, align to what their values are. The advice I would give is, well, let me say one thing I love about the Republican Party is there is an umbrella for many different thoughts, many different visions versus as a Democrat, you can only have one vision. There's only one way to get here versus Republicans, we have one vision, but we're all maybe fighting about how do we get there. So that's a plus. I think that if you wanted to, if you wanted to attract, say, some Democrats into the party, one, you must admit your faults, right? Because at the end of the day, voters like authenticity, you think that you're saying great messaging, but really how you want to message people may not be how people want to receive the message. So you must understand how different demographics like to receive information, that's just in any business, that's just marketing, you have to poll things like that. I would say be authentic, say that you're not perfect. And an example that I have given to state GOP parties or communities in Georgia is, I would say Democrats are like, if you have two children, and children are never the same, right? They're never the same. If you have a children that are like raise your hand. So the Democrats are like your artistic child. You know, they are the dramatic child, but your Republican child is your STEM child. You're, you know, they like engineering and robotics and they go by objective data. The Democrats are going by subjectivity, how they feel. And I think that is why they're winning a lot of the passion feel. So my advice would be you've got to make the objective data, which is important, that's what I like, you've got to make the objective data a story. You also have to, and this will be a good example, this is something I said at this conference with Senator Lafler. The thing about transgender is we don't in Georgia. We do not think children should change their bodies, you know, like surgically. We we just don't think that you should do that. But that doesn't mean we're saying if you're 40 years old and you want to be transgender, fine. Do whatever you want to do. But I think when you, when we talk about transgender, we're not saying that second piece. Do whatever you want to do. Be free. You can be whoever you want to be, but we're trying to protect children. So I think when you do the message, you have to make some some clarity. You know, you have to clarify some of the messages. Yeah, no, that's that's that's good input. You mentioned that overall that your constituents, you know, were saying, hey, we're with you regardless. Did you have anybody who kind of maybe initially had a problem with what you did? And how did you respond or react to to that kind of situation? That's a really good question. So I went to Howard University, which is the best historically black college university in the world. It is absolutely the best and so some of my HBCU really just won. It was a couple, a husband and wife that I'm really close with and they called me and they were like, what is this? And you know, she was really mad and it was we're on three-way and the husband was like, so yeah, I'm trying to understand and da da da da. And then I was like, have you ever been to a political meeting? No. Have you ever read some legislation? No. Have you ever been to a school board meeting? No. Okay, I think you don't understand because you haven't done any of that. And so we had a great conversation where they realized, okay, I've got to get, not me but them, I've got to get more involved before I can just have an opinion because they were passionate with no data. And I kind of told them, look, you've got to go and get data because right now you're just coming to me with passion. And so that was really the only thing but I think people know me well enough where they know that I'm still the same person. They know at the end of the day I love to just help people. I've been a physical therapist. The kind of therapy I do is home health. So I've been in people's homes for over 20 years. And the people know that I'm not changing. So I really have not had a bad transition besides online. I've received death threats. I received terrible emails, terrible social media. And I kind of just handle that by screenshotting what people were sending me and saying, Dear Democrat, I'm so sorry you feel this way. To make a point that this is a Democrat doing this. This is not a Republican doing this to me. This is a Democrat. So eventually that stopped. Yeah, I think that's interesting how when you were a Democrat, Republicans, I don't want to speak, but it probably didn't bother you as much as now that you've changed. Or did you find that to be the case that that were you getting harassed by Republicans before? Republicans have never harassed me. In fact, I got several bills passed as a Democrat, which is unheard of, as a freshman in the minority party, all because Republicans helped me. Yeah, wow. So every single bill it was a Republican that helped me. Yeah, wow. What are some, you know, maybe closing thoughts you have for Republicans who either want to, you know, maybe not every elected Democrat is going to switch. But I think there's a lot of voters who are in the same position you were in. What maybe, you know, kind of parting thoughts do you have about how we can continue to be looking for people like that and what's the messaging maybe that you think we need to adopt more closely? Okay, I'm happy to answer questions too if we have time. I would say in Atlanta we had a mayoral race and there was Mary Norwood, who was a white woman, and then there was Cesar Mitchell or somebody else who was a black man. Mary Norwood was in the middle of the black community knocking on doors. The black man wasn't, and so the black community voted for Mary Norwood. And so you've got to go whoever you want votes from, they need to see you. There's, I think there's a misconception that people are so different when at the end of the day someone just wants to be hurt. So if anyone in here, as a group, went to a community, said how you feel without, you know, saying Democrats are bad, but just saying how you feel, you'll probably get their vote. Because guess what, no one else's, the Democrats are probably not doing that. I found the same thing when I was running for office that, I think this is especially true in Vermont. A lot of Vermonters want a reason to split their ticket. I think, you know, some estimates have almost 40% of Vermont voters, you know, identify as independent. And I found that, yeah, you go and you knock on doors of some people, you know, when I was running, you know, single-payer health care was the big discussion, and I found that if you were willing to listen to them about what their concerns, what their problems are, sometimes they're not as tied to a particular answer. You know, the average voter isn't as they are that this is a problem, this is a, I heard about this solution, so I think I'm for that. And I found the same thing when I went and listened to what the issue was and said, well, here are some of my thoughts. People who seemed like, you know, single payer or bus would say, yeah, that could work too. And it is going there, and I think for two reasons. First, you show that you care because you go to where people are, and that's so important. And the other thing is that you listen, right? I think part of the problem is a lot of Republicans don't know how to reach those voters because they don't go and ask what's important to you. And I know many of our legislators who have been successful knock on doors, and we hear it from everybody, right? If all you do is go to the Republican meetings, you have a certain view, and you go and you knock on those doors, and you listen to independents and swing voters, and sometimes, you know, progressives and socialists. And if you get that focus back on the issues, there, a Republican can win a vote from somebody who doesn't think that way. I had plenty of people tell me, you know, Paul, you're the only Republican I'm going to vote for. I'm not even voting for Phil Scott. You're the only one, because I showed up, and that's what people care about more than anything else. That is a winning ticket just talking and listening. All right. Well, maybe we'll take one or two questions, if there are any. If not, well, yes, Judy. And I'll just just tell me and I'll repeat the question. So the question is about energy policy in Georgia and then on the federal level. So my district in Atlanta, I have the highest energy burden community in the metro area, meaning people in my district can't even afford to have electricity on. So you see kids outside selling water, they may be outside selling water because they don't have electricity. And so one of the first things and bills that I passed was creating something called the Fulton Technology and Energy Authority with the thought of how do you decrease energy burden. You can do it two ways. You can increase someone's income level or you can decrease energy costs. So the authority is a workforce development program for technology and energy as well as can sell power at a discounted rate. So that probably doesn't answer your question, but my position is this. Americans want lower energy costs and whatever we need to do to lower energy costs is my position and my priority. All right. I think we'll wrap up. If thank you so much for being here for coming to Vermont in November from Georgia. It's been really wonderful to talk to you and hear kind of about your experience and encourage us. If you if you want to hear more from Misha, she'll be at the education panel right after lunch, but let's give her a nice round of applause and a warm Vermont welcome.