 Welcome to another episode of the SAP Entrepreneur. Today, we'll be speaking with our local representative, Mr. Jonathan Singer. Mr. Singer has been in office for over eight years and has done some amazing things since he's taken office. And without further ado, here's the man himself, Mr. Singer. Jonathan, how are you doing today? So far so good, thanks for doing this. Yeah, I'm really excited about our conversation today. So Jonathan, you've been in office for eight years now. Tell me about your experience being a legislator. You know, it's the honor of a lifetime. I'm still, you know, without words to really describe what it's like. It is an opportunity to be able to change the lives of millions of people almost in a heartbeat. And when you look back at those eight years, I couldn't have imagined what we actually accomplished, whether it was, you know, championing attacks on marijuana that went to schools and helped solve our opioid crisis, or whether it was working with our immigrant communities hand in hand to be able to stand up to Donald Trump and say, you know what, no, we are going to make sure that everyone gets a driver's license in Colorado if they pay for it, get car insurance. You know, I would have never imagined, you know, nine years ago as a child protection caseworker that I would have had the opportunity to do that and step up for foster kids, champion mental health, and, you know, change oil and gas laws in a way that no one would have expected that long ago. You definitely had some great accomplishments in your time in office. So what sparked your motivation to become a politician? You know, I don't even use that word. I say public servant. You know, I'm a career social worker. I started out in my 20s working in social work because I saw how the deck was stacked against the people who had, you know, the least cards to hold in the first place. And, you know, that always rubbed me the wrong way. And so I started getting involved because there was an old quote by Ralph Nader that said, you know, if you're not turned on to politics, politics will turn on you. And it's true. And so I took everything that I learned working with homeless families, working, you know, for government agencies on behalf of abused and neglected kids and said, you know what, I'm gonna flip the script and break through that bureaucratic wall. And the only way to do it was really to run for office and tell people what it's really like and then start changing the rules of the game for the people that, you know, deserve it the most. That's great. So tell us about that first run, that first time that you got the gull to just do it. So, you know, I'm not sure it was completely legal or constitutional the first time I did it. A lot of people don't know this story. But back in 2000, I wanna say it was 2000, I saw that, actually I was unaffiliated voter at the time and I saw that Bob Schaefer was running without any progressive opposition. And so there was a write-in ballot for any, there was a write-in section there. And so I just, you know, wrote to my college newspaper and said, you know what, I'm gonna run for office. And, you know, I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. But, you know, if I was to consider myself a party, I'd consider myself part of the person party because I'm the only person in my party. And I'm about people and standing up for whether it was, you know, workers' rights, women's rights, a lot of the things that Bob Schaefer didn't stand up for. And so it turns out that the only way to get a write-in slot on there was to get enough signatures, which actually someone else had done who was actually of legal age to run for Congress. So I didn't win, but I also didn't ask for a recount. So, yeah, no, it wasn't close because I probably shouldn't have even said that I was running for office. So, but, you know, basically I got bit by a bug that said, you know, if you don't feel like someone standing up for you, you should stand up for yourself. And that's, you know, what I've been able to do now in office and out of office. How old were you when you ran first time? 12. Now, I was, I think I was 20, 21 years old at the time, so. And what was the minimum age required? That's 20, it is still 25. You gotta be 25 to run for Congress. And even in Colorado, you have to be 25 to run for the state house. And we tried to change the constitution on that a couple of years ago. And even the voters wouldn't lower the age to run. So, figure if you're old enough to, you know, be tried as an adult, you should be able to change the laws that try you as an adult. But, you know, voters disagreed with that. We put it on the ballot and that's democracy for you. That's the way cookie crumbles, right? You know, if everything passed on its first go-around, we probably wouldn't have all the problems we have today. So. Speaking of legislation, what other legislation have you worked on or that you were planning on working on if you weren't term limited? You know, there's a ton of things that I would have liked to have gotten to. I mean, it really runs the gamut. So I'll only list a couple of them. There were a couple of bills that really unfortunately died this year because of the COVID crisis. You know, we didn't have as much time as we normally do. We only had a 120 day session. And I think we only spent about 84 of that, this year, in part because of social distancing and not wanting to turn the capital into a, you know, a Petri dish that would have created a super spreader situation. And. Sippy. Right. Well, you know, it was, yeah, I mean, not to digress, but you know, there were some places that had some really creative opportunities and changes. I know one state actually used a basketball stadium. And so that way you could socially distance and still get your work done. So, but that being said, you know, we had some disappointing losses this year, probably the one that was most heartbreaking to me was a domestic violence protection bill that I'd been working on, especially in the era of COVID, that's even more important because people literally feel like they're trapped with their abusive partners. And so I always tell people, you know, don't be afraid to reach out, whether it's, you know, to the safe house progressive alliance or to, you know, wherever you live to the local safe house and get your options and make sure that you're safe. But that being said, you know, there's a loophole in our own gun laws that basically allows people who have restraining orders and protection orders that are already out against them to continue to hold onto their firearms. And it's because sheriffs can't enforce that law right now. It is really up to our judges to enforce that law. And our judges don't have the time, the money, the wherewithal and haven't done it for really the last six or seven years with any sort of frequency. And so we were really gonna flip the script and make sure that survivors of domestic violence wouldn't be at risk because their abusers are so easily able to get their hands on firearms right now. Unfortunately, that bill died because we ran out of time and coronavirus was really sort of ruling the issues of the day. You know, on a broader perspective, I would have loved to see, especially in an economic crisis, a universal basic income bill, I'd started working on one a couple of years ago. And, you know, anytime there's a new concept, it's really hard to get new ideas out there onto people's plates. And so we weren't able to get enough support to really find a way to get it introduced. And, you know, that happened with a lot of our bills this year. We were trying to create a city run or state run banking system. Once again, you know, a lot of those issues, whether it was on economic justice or justice for survivors of domestic violence, these things fell by the wayside in the wake of, you know, the worst pandemic that we've seen in over a century. That's tragic that those protections that you're working on weren't able to get turn into real legislation. In Colorado, there are term limits. You wanted to discuss that and elaborate a little bit? Yeah, no. So, you know, once again, Colorado is very interesting, but the voter's number of years ago said, you know, you can do your part for eight years as in the state house or if you want to run for the state Senate, same deal. If you want to be governor, secretary, state, treasurer, any of those statewide elected positions. You've got eight years to do what you want and then you need to go do something else. And, you know, as bittersweet as it is to have served for as long as I did, you know, I'm still someone that thinks that term limits are an okay thing. And it's for a couple of reasons. I think especially, it will really, at any level of politics, it is so hard to get started in this world and the power of incumbency, I can say, gives you a leg up, especially in a world where citizens united rules and there is no real campaign finance reform, especially at the federal level. When you have tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars being spent in dark money that's unaccountable, it means that, you know, we need a level of playing field. And so whether that's real campaign finance reform, like publicly funded elections or whether that is term limits, I think it's good to give people and other people a shot at, you know, governing. And that should really be a strength of our democracy because we should have involved citizens. And, you know, not to put too fine a point on it, but I was driving down to the Capitol to start cleaning up my office about a week and a half ago. And I was taking my four-year-old daughter who loves going there. I mean, she was really crestfallen when I told her I wouldn't be coming back. And I tried to explain term limits to her. And I said, well, you know how I tell you and your brother, sometimes you've got to take turns. This is what term limits are about, is it was my turn for eight years and the law now says that it's somebody else's turn for another eight years maybe. And so she's kind of quiet in the car for a few minutes and then, you know, probably about 30 seconds into it, she goes, you know, maybe there'll be my turn when I'm old enough. And I want people to think about that and think about, well, maybe it's your turn. And that's what a real citizen government should be about. That must have been a real beautiful moment. I said, I'm turning this car right back around, young lady. There's no way that I'm letting you make $30,000 a year working, you know, 100 hour weeks. It's not fair to anyone. No, I was one of those quiet proud moments for sure. And I'm grateful that my experience had such a profound positive experience. It was such a profound experience for her. That's awesome. So you alluded to it briefly, but let's talk about the benefits of being a legislator in the state of Colorado. It's not as glamorous as people might think. Well, you know, I think it depends on how you look at the concept of benefits, you know. I will say that the people that sacrifice the most are my family. You know, we say that we're in session for 120 days a year, but really, if you want to craft good legislation for almost six million residents in Colorado, you've got to do this year-round. And I really, you know, took full advantage of it. I think I passed over 100 pieces of legislation over eight years. And the reason that I did that is I felt like there wasn't time to waste. There's so many things going on. And whether it was for environmental justice or economic or racial justice, there's so many problems that needed solving, I couldn't sit still. And so what I did is basically start my mornings at six in the morning and there were nights I didn't get home till midnight or later. There were some nights I didn't even make it home because we went till three or four in the morning and I knew I had an eight o'clock or seven o'clock meeting that wasn't, you know, wasn't going to wait for me. And so rather than, you know, risk my life on the road or other people's lives on the road, you know, there's, you know, there's places to stay nearby that, you know, you know, or thankfully people would put me up and put up with me. So it pays $30,000 a year. Well, now it's up to 40,000. 40,000. Yeah, it's up to 40,000 now. But I always tell people, look, as a social worker, that's basically what I was making. I was basically doing the same hours and I had more threats to my life as a social worker than I ever did as a lawmaker. Really? It's best selling life as a social worker? If you're a child protection case worker and you're trying to protect kids from violent family members, if they're going to be violent to kids, who aren't they going to be violent towards? Wow. And so I don't mean to be flippant about it. It's a serious thing. Whether, I mean, no one should feel like their life is at risk because they're passing either gun safety legislation or because they're trying to protect kids. But that's the reality of both. And so, yeah, no. I mean, I have one, you know, now one and a half, half-time aides at the Capitol. They make $15 an hour because that's what the state pays. You bring in your own office equipment. You bring in your, you know, you have one government-issued iPad and one government-issued laptop. That's kind of it. And so when you're representing 77,000 people and trying to govern for 6 million people, you're given not a lot of tools to, with a lot of responsibility. And, you know, like I said, sounds just like social work to me. And, you know, I look back on it and every minute was worth it. That's, it sounds like a really rewarding time and that's so cool that you've been able to do that. Now, I know people who are in D.C. that talk about how behind the scenes, Democrats and Republicans, they all are chummy and they, you know, go do their own, you know, events together and whatnot. Does that occur in local politics too? Are we, Democrats and Republicans chummy behind the scenes? What's the environment like politically there? Well, I didn't forget to be behind the scenes. I would say 95% of my bills were bipartisan. Actually, it's really funny. There was a court decision just a couple of days ago on civil liberties issue that is so far under the radar but important to people. So if you go through like a roundabout or a traffic circle right now and you don't use your turn signal when you're getting in or getting out of that roundabout, you can actually be pulled over, ticketed, arrested if something else was going on and that by itself could be probable cause to pull you over and then there might be other crimes that you could be arrested for, right? And you know, in this day and age of, you know, defunding the police and criminal justice reform, I think that we had a bill to actually eliminate that ticketable offense. That bill died. The courts just upheld that concept of what our bill was about just to say, you know what, it's too confusing for people to have to turn on and off their turn signals in a traffic circle and probably creates more of a public safety hazard. So the courts did what the legislature couldn't. That bill was carried by a conservative tea party member, Senator Kevin Lundberg. He was the Senate sponsor. I was the House sponsor. And like I said, I think in the era of criminal justice reform that bill probably would have stood a better chance, especially now that the Black Lives Matter movement has been able to step up. He and I did so many bills together on changing our child protection system, holding our county child welfare agencies accountable by creating a new third party office that would be able to oversee what they were doing. Because he and I both believe that, you know, kids aren't able to be lobbyists and our government deserves to be accountable to the taxpayers. You know, I might come to different conclusions at the end of the day on so many different things, but that doesn't mean that we don't work together on the things that we do agree on. I always said, let's start where we agree. We'll see how far we get. That's a great quote. I like that. What's your next steps? I mean, you unfortunately lost your primary election to Marta. What's next for Mr. Singer? Well, first of all, you know, as soon as the election results were clear, I called her up, offered Marta my congratulations of my support, because I do think that as important as the issues that I brought up, there's not, I'm not more important than the process. And the voters just happened to not think that, you know, it was my time. They wanted to support someone else. And that is- You guys were right there neck and neck, right? Well, yeah, no, look, I'm not saying that I'm not staying up till the wee hours of the morning rethinking how I could have done it differently. But what I am saying is that, you know, even in a close race, you know, I, you know, on the first day that we met and discussed this issue, I said, whoever wins, you know, I just want you to let you know you've got my support if you're the victor. And so, you know, I'm holding to that. And I said, look, I look forward to getting our two teams together to talk about how we can come together. Because the number one thing on my mind right now is making sure that progressives across the ballot, everywhere from president to county commissioner, win this year. The stakes literally have never been higher. We say that every year, probably because it's true every year. But it's now in the era of a pandemic and a fiscal crisis. And in the era of Black Lives Matter, it's even more important that we speak with one voice to the voters. And, you know, we can't let our differences overwhelm, you know, what is the larger issue at hand. So I'm gonna be volunteering for causes that I believe in, which is no different than what I would do in any election year. You know, in terms of, you know, I get my family back, you know, originally I said running for office for, you know, the last eight and a half years. Longer than that, it seems like. Six a.m. to midnight with two kids under the age of five, they didn't get what they deserved. And they deserve to have a dad at home. And so they're sleeping in, which is why I'm out here in my backyard right now. And, you know, I'd love to get a job where I could actually afford a place to live on my own. I'm a renter right now. And my family deserves, you know, to be able to have a home of their own and a life of their own. And so as grateful as I am to my family, I'd love to be able to make sure that they get what they need. So I don't know what that means. I don't know if I'll run for office again. I'd like to say that, you know, but I'm gonna continue in public service. I don't know what that means in the short or in the longterm, but, you know, if Biden wins, hopefully I can help them out on human services issues. If the state wants my help again at the executive branch level, I'd love to figure out a way that I could do that. The book is wide open right now and it's just a matter of recalibrating and finding, you know, the next opportunity because, you know, climate change isn't gonna wait. It's gonna happen. Same thing on mental health, same thing on our opioid crisis, same thing on our affordable housing crisis. So I did a lot with my title, but there's a lot of people that have done a lot more without a title. Wow. That was very, you know, generous and courageous for you to talk so openly about those types of things. So thank you for that. I think that you should run for office again. You've done a great job so far. So I'd be happy to back you on whatever you decide to do. Speaking, let's rewind a little bit back to term limits. Federally, there's obviously no term limits. People at the head of both parties have been in office for 30, 40 years. What are your thoughts on that? You know, I actually worked with another Republican to actually work to end congressional term limits or to bring in congressional term limits and the current system as it is. Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention, I don't get a congressional retirement. I know. That was not on the table. As a state legislator, you do not get, you know, you pay into para like every state employee. So unless you're there for 20 or 30 years, you're not really gonna see a whole lot. So in terms of congressional term limits, I do think that, you know, I introduced legislation with actually the other Longmont representative, Laurie Sain, who represents the Weld County side of Longmont and said, you know, we should really, you know, rethink our constitution in this day and age. Once again, not very popular, didn't get any yes votes in our first committee. So, you know, for every bill that I ran that passed, you know, there were a handful that didn't pass, but the idea was really to start a conversation about making sure that residents know that they can be involved in our system and that it's, honestly, if we didn't have term limits, I don't think the criminal justice reforms that we did in the last couple of years would have happened. If you get the same people doing the same thing over and over, you're gonna get the same outcome. It's very rare that people change and change their minds. It's beautiful when it happens, but it's very rare. And so, you know, the last minute work that I did to make sure that the governor had the ability to do a mass pardon of anyone convicted of possession of marijuana under two ounces, probably wouldn't have happened six or seven years ago because the people there, they weren't beholding the special interests. They were beholding to an older way of thinking, you know, and a way of thinking in the past. And we need to progress fast as a society, especially now, we don't have time to waste. That brings up an interesting point. So within the legislature in this Colorado state government, what would you say the breakdown would be between conservatives and progressives? So that's an interesting loaded question, actually. So in the state legislature, what I'll start off by saying, so in the house right now, there are 65 lawmakers. In the Senate, there are 35 lawmakers. This makes for an even 100. So good round numbers to count around. So right now, we have 19 Democrats in the Senate, 17 Republicans. And so basically, you know, it's a pretty close, you know, it's a pretty slim margin there. In the house, it's a little different. We have 41 Democrats, 24 Republicans. It's almost a super majority at this point. And so with a commanding majority like that, you know, there is a, there's an impression that, well, that means Democrats can sort of run roughshod over any sort of Republican issue. And I will say, you know, every bill that came up to ban abortion died pretty quickly. I will also say though, that even this year, over 90% of the bills that passed had bipartisan votes. At least one Republican, if not 10 or 20 or dozens voted for the majority of our legislation. And that's because most legislation isn't inherently political. You know, there's only a couple of ways that you can talk about some certain issues, you know, when you're dealing with, you know, the Department of Agriculture. Department of Agriculture is not an inherently political, inherently political place. We may have our differences on things like GMOs and pesticides, but ultimately we all want farmers to be successful, right? And so it's a pretty commanding divide in the house and it'll probably remain that way for a couple of years. The Senate sort of hangs by a thread between Democrats and Republicans. I'll say within that though, Democratic Party is pretty big tent. And so that means that, you know, not every Democrat is gonna tow the same line that I do. I mean, I really had to work to pull teeth to do a lot of the things that I wanted to do as a lawmaker, even with my own colleagues. And so one of the first bills I ever ran was on the concept of wage theft. This is the concept that if your employer promises to pay you, they should pay you, right? We are against slavery in this country. And so I said, just like you steal a car or TV and you can go to jail, if you steal someone's wages, their ability to put a roof over their head or feed their families, that should be a crime too, that should be treated like theft. That bill died its first year, it died the second year. And the third year we were able to get administrative mediation process, still wasn't sending people to jail. Last year finally, the Human Trafficking Commission came back to us and they said, this is how human traffickers operate. They don't pay people their wages, we want a front door or a side door to get these human traffickers out of our system and in jail and prison. And at that point, this bill that I couldn't convince enough Democrats, definitely couldn't convince any Republicans, became a bipartisan bill passed with, I think, three no votes total, like minimal, it might've been zero no votes. And so partisan differences are important, majorities matter. The civil unions bill that I saw in 2012 died, not because it wasn't bipartisan, not because it wasn't bipartisan it was, it was because the speaker of the house was a Republican and wasn't going to see that bill pass and made sure through rules that the bill never saw the light of day. And so after it passed three committees, it died on the house floor, basically at midnight on the last possible day to pass it. And the voters saw that in 2012 and gave Democrats a majority the next year and it was a bipartisan bill that passed. And so I think partisanship plays a huge role in our political system. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but what I will say is that a lot of our solutions, I mean, vast super majority of our solutions are bipartisan. That's nice to see. You'd like to see people working together. I mean, whether they do on the federal level is one thing, but it's good to see that they're at least doing a... I agree, yeah. So Jonathan, I really appreciate all the time you spent with us. Do you have any parting words for our audience? You know, I would say, you know, I'm going to steal some other words that have been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but you know, the price of democracy is eternal vigilance. And so regardless of where you stand on any particular election, any particular year, keep fighting for what you believe in because change doesn't happen overnight. But if you keep fighting, it means you're winning and you just maybe haven't won yet. So keep up the fight for what you believe in and I will be there right by your side on those progressive causes that we care about. Awesome. Thanks Jonathan, I appreciate it. Look forward to talking to you again soon. Thanks. I learned a lot speaking with Jonathan Singer and I hope you enjoy the conversation. Until next time, stay savvy.