SPEAKER_03 0:00

Thing I love about my job is I work purely on policy. Every now and then my wife asks, Would you ever want to run for office? And goodness me no. But this is great because my job as a legislative attorney and lobbyist is I'm policy adjacent. I work on policy, but I don't work on politics. Like I don't have to do the low skullduggery of attack ads and all of that. I just get to like be the guy in the background that and I I don't need the glory, I just like good balls to pass.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Hi, Huntresses. This is Talk Rich to me.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Where we get more comfortable talking about money and dealing with money.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

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SPEAKER_00 1:06

We have Sam Hooper with Sam Hooper Legislative Affairs. And this is part of our three-part series on politics and advocacy to understand how our voice and our money impacts how the government works. And I'm very excited to talk with Sam today. We met a little over a year ago at an event, and he's been a wonderful supporter of Huntress. We're equally fascinated by what he does, and we're excited to talk about legislative law and advocacy. So, first, um, and like the big word for that is lobbying, right? And that's like the L word. And people have like big reactions to the word lobbyist. But can you tell us what it is?

SPEAKER_03 1:50

Of course. Well, thank you first of all for having me. Big fan of your show and really honored to be here. Um lobbying is a word that, yes, it gets people's backs up. It generally doesn't have the best reputation, I would say. But lobbying is basically any time that someone communicates with a policymaker, and that can be an elected representative in a legislative chamber or someone from the executive branch or an agency trying to influence policy and genuine, generally either making money, being compensated for doing that, or expending money to do that in some way. Um so that can encompass what people think of as lobbyists, which is you know, men in expensive suits lobbying for big moneyed corporations, but it can also be anyone trying to do that. Lots of your favorite charities, for example, do lobbying at the state legislature and federally in DC trying to pass bills. So it's really just that trying to influence policy for the better, whatever you think the better is, and being compensated for doing that.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

How did you get into it?

SPEAKER_03 2:49

By complete accident, honestly. Um everything pretty much in my career has happened by accident. So um I'm a second career attorney. I was a management consultant for a long time. You can probably tell from my accent, I'm not originally from here. I'm from England. Um, but I got sick of being a management consultant and helping other companies make money. I wanted to do something more meaningful. So I decided I'm going to go into lots of debt, going to American law school. I had married an American by this point, so we moved over here, went to law school. Um, and I didn't want a typical legal career where you're just, you know, arguing in court or, you know, doing mergers and acquisitions and transaction contracts, document review, all that kind of stuff. I want to do something different. And my first job was working for the Texas State Legislature in Austin for an agency called the Texas Legislative Council, which is the non-partisan agency that drafts bills for the state legislature for all the members there. So basically translating whatever some elected senator representative wants to do into actual legislative language that people can then vote on. And I did that for a couple of years. It was awesome technical training in how the whole legislative process works. But I got really tired of having to be neutral all the time. In that role, you have to be strictly neutral. You cannot, you are just the scribe. You translate whatever the elected representative's ideas are, whether you think they're great or wacky, into legislative language, and you have no say. And I kept my feelings deep within me for a couple of years, and then I thought, no, I I have my own ideas about what makes good policy. So then I went to a non-profit, a nonprofit civil liberties law firm that works nationally on issues of property rights and housing and free speech and certain criminal justice reforms as well. And that was awesome because then I got got to work on things like housing reform and fourth amendment issues and all kinds of stuff. And I did that for a couple of years and was living what I thought was my dream job. And I got laid off unexpectedly a few months ago. Um that's pretty devastating. Um I'd had some creative differences, but I didn't see it coming. And I thought, what do I do with myself next? So I thought I could go work for another place that does that. Or I could do the most American thing, which is go work for myself, like be an entrepreneur. Um that's what I did.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

So you're now out on your own. And part of the decision of going to look for another job or going on your own was working maybe for your own ideas or for other people's ideas. What are some of your values and motivations for being in this space?

SPEAKER_03 5:10

Yeah, it's interesting. And I think one of the reasons that I've done, I guess, reasonably well in what I do is I don't fall neatly into the American political divide. Like I come from a country that has its own like political traditions. I'm not typecast as a Republican or a Democrat. I've been able to maintain cordial relationships with people on both sides, but I do have my own views. You could call me a small libertarian on a lot of economic issues. I believe in a low regulation state generally is the engine of prosperity. I believe in property rights. And that really came up with the issue of housing. We have a housing crisis, everyone knows it, everyone talks about all the time how much more expensive it is and how no one can get in the housing ladder. And I learned through my work at the nonprofit where I used to work how much of that was bound up in restrictive zoning and um issues of building code and things like that. So I got very involved in not just in Texas, but in other states, trying to roll back some of those regulations. So tackling the housing crisis from a free market perspective. That became my overriding passion. That's the thing that I'm probably most interested in. The funnest thing I got to work on last session was a food truck bill, actually, um, in Texas. There was a bill, it was House Bill 2844 by Representative Brooks Langraff. He's awesome, he's based in the Permian Basin area. And right now in Texas, if you have a food truck, you need a separate permit, or until July 1st, you needed a separate permit to operate in every town around Texas. So you can imagine that gets really expensive. You're just trying to sling tacos or burgers, and you're paying 10 towns a fee to be inspected, to have the same health inspection, the same permit. We got rid of that, replaced it with one single statewide permit, which was cool. It's a core economic liberty issue. It made me very popular with the food trucks of Texas, which is great. And so I like working on stuff like that as well.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

So you're like famous with food trucks?

SPEAKER_03 6:52

I was briefly very famous with food trucks. I don't know if they still remember what I did for them, but hopefully they're grateful.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

You know, some people become influencers to get free food and you just lobby for food truck.

SPEAKER_03 7:01

I took a much more boring route to get there. But yes, that's what you have to do sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Amazing. Um I know there's a little bit more to your story on the housing, too. I know you kind of got there through work, but tell us how you met your wife.

SPEAKER_03 7:17

Sure. Yeah. So there's a particular form of housing reform that I'm really passionate about, and that's co-living housing reform. Um, a lot of people don't know about it. It used to be very common in America, and then around the mid-20th century, just sort of getting regulated out of existence. And that's co-living, also known as boarding housing or shared housing or single room occupancy. And that's for people that don't necessarily want to rent an entire one-bedroom, entire single-family home or a one-bedroom apartment or a studio. They might just want to rent a room and then share other facilities, kitchen, bathroom with other people. Like think Golden Girls. That's exactly what the Golden Girls did, right? Um, housing like that was common in a lot of other countries. It existed in London, and it's where I met my wife actually, because I'd just graduated from college, I was working as a management consultant, needed somewhere affordable to live in London, this really expensive city, and there was a building for young professionals that where you could rent a single room. And then as a building, we shared things like kitchens, some movie theater room, a gym. There was a management company that would put on social events so the residents could mix, and that's where I met this beguiling woman from Texas who was a graduate student at business school there. So we got talking, one thing led to another. Uh, after many years of wooing, we got married. Um, so co-living housing is personal for me because yeah, it's great for solving the housing crisis, but it's great for community, it's great for connections as well. I met a lot of my lifelong friends and my wife there. But unfortunately, it's illegal in lots of America. So my biggest passion right now is trying to re-legalize co-living housing.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Yeah, my um great aunt lived in I guess maybe a boarding house. It was definitely like and she lived there most of her adult life, and she ends up she was the accountant for it. The boarding house was her community, it was her family. Like these served the people she was with her whole life.

SPEAKER_03 9:07

Aaron Powell People going through life transitions, divorce, moving out of home for the first time. It's great for all kinds of people. Yeah. Golden girls housing for older people. I love that it's become known. These bills are known as Golden Girls Acts when they pass. And I think that's awesome. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Yeah, it was in Boston.

SPEAKER_03 9:22

And so Boston was the kind of home of single room occupancy for a long time. A lot of those East Coast cities, because a lot of people in the early 20th century, mid-20th century who were moving there from more rural places, needed somewhere to bed down while they established themselves. And that kind of housing exists. And you can trace the direct line, not to go off on a tangent, but between when they started banning single room occupancy with mid-century urban renewal and the spike in homelessness and displacement, they correlate exactly. And it's because we took away the lowest rung of the housing ladder and then wondered why people not everyone can upgrade to a large single family home with a white picket fence.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

What does the work actually look like? Because you work at the state level. Let's set that out on the table. But what does it look like when you're helping shape a bill?

SPEAKER_03 10:08

Yeah, it can be a bunch of different things, and no one person's experience is entirely representative of the whole industry. But I think I've been around it enough. I can give you a fair sense of what it's like. Um it's very busy when legislative session happens. Like most states, they have a short period when the legislature's in session. A lot of states like Texas have part-time legislatures, so they're off doing their day jobs most of the time. Then you have 140 days of finesque activity when everyone's in Austin trying to pass bills. But there's a period before that when everyone's planning what do we do next session. They look at you know the problems that the state's facing, the priorities, what do we need to do. And that's happening right now, even though the legislature's not in session, everyone's busily plotting. People you agree with and people you very much disagree with are thinking, what do we want to influence? What do we want to change in the legislature next session? So they're having meetings with their trade industry groups, they're all meeting with their elected state representatives and senators, talking about bills that they might want to file. Um and then people start to draft those bills. So it seems boring, people don't know that this is going on. Like you might think, I've elected this person to represent me, and they're sitting there in the state capitol with a feather pen and they're writing the bills themselves. And they're usually not. Like some of them do get involved in legislative drafting, but usually bills are written by people we euphemistically call stakeholders, like people that work in the industries being regulated, right? Whether that's the car industry or data centers or anything. So they will often write bills and say, Hey, will you file this for me next session? Um, and then a bunch of other people that aren't industries, charities, non-profits are doing the same thing. They want to influence policy for the better. So they're also having meetings with state legislators writing bills saying, hey, this is what we think we should file to enact good policy. So that's all happening at the moment. In January, the legislature will go into session, then we have 140 days of controlled chaos where bills have to go through committee hearings, they have to pass through all these hurdles because every session, just in Texas, you have about 10,000 bills filed. Maybe I think it was 12,000 last session. Every session, only about 1,000 of those actually get signed into law. There's a zillion ways for even a really good bill to die. So the job of me and people like me is to kill the bad bills we think are going to do harm through various ways and make sure the good bills actually get their day in a hearing and then get voted on, hopefully get signed by the governor to become law. So at a high level, that's kind of what we do.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

I'm even surprised that a thousand get passed. That's a lot of change in 140 days.

SPEAKER_03 12:36

Yeah, and the Texas legislature is almost designed to kill ideas and slow government down, um, which in a lot of ways is a good thing. A lot of people have bad ideas or they react rashly to events or emotionally, and that's not always the best way to make policy that will let affect everyone for two years until they can come back again. So it's not entirely bad that it takes a long time, but it does mean that even good ideas sometimes it takes three or four sessions to get that idea across the finish line, which can be really frustrating if you see people being harmed or there's bad policy out there that you want to change. It takes a lot of effort and emotional investment and investment of money to actually get anything done. But that's by design.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Yeah, so for like the food truck bill, was that more than one session?

SPEAKER_03 13:19

That was pretty much one session. That was nice job. And that's because I'm so amazing, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

And everybody loves food trucks. I'm sorry. It seems like a pretty helps.

SPEAKER_03 13:27

Yeah, it helps having a popular client. Not everyone's clients are popular. Ask data centers right now who are having a hard time getting a fair hearing from the legislature. Ask, you know, self-driving cars, ask a bunch of people, the oil industry, you know, energy, like things like not everyone's universally popular. Most people, unless they've recently come down with food poisoning, don't have a problem with their local burger truck or their taco truck. So um, you know, my job, I would just walk around the state legislature with three or four food truck owners with me, and we would go visit state legislators and say, hey, these guys, they run a donut truck or a barbecue truck, and they're paying all this extra money to get the same health inspection in every city where they work. Like, wouldn't it be great if you would sign this bill or pass this bill? Um yeah, it was a lot easier when you have a popular client.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Well, and it's like, I'd love to give you a donut, but I don't have a permit.

SPEAKER_03 14:17

Exactly, yes. Yes, no, right.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

You know. Um so when when has it gone well? Tell me about a time that and you've got an idea through.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

Generally speaking, like the food truck thing was an exception because it was not to toot my own horn, it was one great state legislator, Brooks Langraaff, me, a few other people, and all the food trucks of Texas that got that done. Most bills it takes a village rather than like one or two fanatics to get anything done. And housing reform, I think, is the best example of that last session. People realized the average age of a first-time homebuyer in Texas had ticked over the age of 40, which is crazy. Everyone knew something had to be done about housing. The previous session, people had tried to pass reforms legalizing accessory dwelling units. All those bills just got killed by people that say, oh yeah, we want housing, but they didn't want it near them, right? They didn't want their neighborhoods to change. MIMBY MIMBYS, yes. Um But with a we we learned from those mistakes in the previous session, and this time we built a big coalition, and it was everyone from the Baptists, the Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops, right-wing groups like Americans of Prosperity, left-wing groups, uh, groups like Texas Appleseed, Habitat for Humanity, all came together, all lent their logos to Letterhead, and all supported these bills. There are about five really good pro-housing bills that passed last session. They made it easier to build starter homes, they made it easier to build residential in commercial areas, so you can actually have housing near jobs and entertainment. And that worked because you could have a big bipartisan coalition. Housing hasn't yet been sucked into the all-consuming culture war like other issues like guns or abortion and things. So you can actually get Democrats and Republicans voting for something because they know it's good for their constituents. So it helps if it's not a polarizing issue, and it helps if you can build a big coalition as well. And that's why I think housing was successful.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Yeah, it's really interesting because we talk about finding the middle, the US has gotten so partisan. Plenty of partisan stuff gets through too, right? But that all goes down to like elections and and balance of power. But even in that world, the more coalition building you can do around an idea, the more likely it is to get through.

SPEAKER_03 16:29

For sure. And I think that's one of the good things as well that I think still distinguishes state policy making from federal policy making. Like we all see the the drama that goes on, the soap opera that is Washington politics, and it's just dominated by cable news and factionalism. But at the state level, it's still possible to get good stuff done. One, because there's not so much attention paid, whether it's the dearth of local media not covering it. People have more room to make those kind of deals, make friendships across the aisle that just can't happen when you're in the glare of Washington's media spotlight. And that really helps, I think.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Yeah, because there's this act that they have to put on, right? So the idea that like you actually could be friends with someone across the aisle, but you have to pretend to hate them.

SPEAKER_03 17:10

Exactly. Yeah. And that does happen at the state level as well, but not as much. You can still get stuff done. You can build these bipartisan coalitions to work on some issues. Not everything, but and things that matter, like housing, that really matters. And you know, some of the bills are sponsored by Democrats, some are sponsored by Republicans. They all pass with bipartisan support, and that's really great. And I would love to see more of that next session. Like I say, like co-living housing policy is my passion right now. We're hoping that we can build a big coalition around because again, it helps a bunch of people. Groups like AARP like the Golden Girls aspect, because retirees need when they're downsizing, they need affordable housing. Workforces like Amazon need housing for their workers. So I think we can build a big coalition that will appeal to all kinds of people. And that's the story I'm going to be telling when I meet with legislators anyway. We'll see whether they listen, but that's the goal.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Yeah. So a big part of the job is storytelling, right? Even the framing of calling it a golden girls bill is branding and marketing. How do you help put the stories together?

SPEAKER_03 18:06

That's a really good question. Um, my background is as a lawyer, so I'm deep in the nerdery of writing legislative language. So everything else I've kind of learned through trial and error. But I've learned that yes, like you can't just show a really well-crafted bill and expect people to be amazed by the logic and the structure and say, of course you're gonna pass.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

I'm imagining you like slamming it down and being like, here you go.

SPEAKER_03 18:28

I do it doesn't like I've been up till 3 a.m. writing this bill, just to acknowledge its brilliance.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Look at this sentence, it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 18:35

Yeah, sadly, other people aren't necessarily moved by that. They've come to accept the unfairness of that, but that's the way it is. So, yes, storytelling matters. So there are a lot of firms out there that will kind of do some of that work, that communications, that storytelling. Obviously, if you're uh have a client with deep pockets that can pay for that, that's great. That makes it a lot easier. Um, if you don't, then a lot of my when I worked in a non-profit, you know, we were we had to be wise custodians of our donors' money. So we didn't have a lot of money to spend on things like that. So it was me and my Instagram account going round to a bunch of food truck parks, standing in front of them doing awkward pieces to camera, saying, Hey, if you want this taco truck to be in your town and not have to spend a thousand dollars, tell your representative to support this bill. So you can do it more professionally, but honestly, people like authenticity, I think. I think people like when things aren't slick, they don't have a logo, they're not professionally done. People don't like AI slot, but they like real stories. And so I try and tell some of those sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Amazing. Um what's a time that you haven't gotten something through?

SPEAKER_03 19:42

Oh gosh, so many. Um for every, like I say, 10,000 bills filed in Texas, 1,000 become law. So that means that anyone fails more than they succeed in this job. I think that's absolutely true of me as well. Um, some and it's really painful seeing a good bill die, particularly you can almost get to the finish line, and then it dies for a dumb reason. So I'll give you a really random example. This is in Oklahoma, neighboring state. Right now, if you're in Oklahoma and you want to sell a funeral casket, you have to be a licensed funeral director. You have to have gone to funeral director school, you have to learn about embalming, you have to do an apprenticeship for years just to make and sell the wooden box that someone wants to be buried in the ground with. Okay. We think that's unfair. We think that the funeral industry is a kind of cartel. And we had clients that wanted to just make and sell it was called caskets for honor. They sell beautiful custom caskets and they specialize in, you know, for fallen service members, for but they'll design for anything. You know, if you want if you want to be buried in like a Bob the Builder fire truck casket, like they will do it for you.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

And they kept being Is that what you want to be buried in, Sam?

SPEAKER_03 20:50

I have ideas, like I haven't I haven't decided yet. I need to put that in my will, I guess. But um but they kept being raided by the Oklahoma funeral board who were saying you can't do this without a license. So we had a bill and we thought it stood a really good chance of saying carving out a narrow exception, saying, Yeah, embalming fine. Like do go to school for a long time, learn that. If you're just making a box of people to be buried in, a casket, you shouldn't have to be a licensed funeral director.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

And it's like, who's against that?

SPEAKER_03 21:17

Funeral industry. And guess who the most powerful? Guess who is a well-established member of the community in every congressional district, who knows has the ear of their state legislator, the funeral directors. So we got this bill through committee, we got it through I think both chambers, the House and the Senate in Oklahoma. And then it just got traded away as a last-minute priority. Like there was something the governor needed to get in the budget, they were looking for things they could trade. And this bill, and it sucked, it was hours of my work, but more than that, it was hours of these casket makers who came to testify, who did all the hard work of lobbying themselves, and we decided to tell them sorry, it's this is not going to happen this year. And we're trying to sue the Oklahoma Funeral Board now instead. My father. Former employer, so hopefully they'll have success that way. But you can do everything right and it still doesn't work out sometimes. And that's not even counting the times where I don't do everything right, which are too many to count. I screw up all the time as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

I mean, um, who doesn't?

SPEAKER_03 22:14

They I'll give you an example of that as well. Why not? So we were in New Hampshire, we're in Concord, New Hampshire, and I was again advocating for housing reform, uh, specifically parking reform, because if you mandate that a new development has to have a certain number of parking spaces rather than just letting developers let the market decide, you end up using up too much land for parking that's rarely used, and it just forces house prices up. So there was a minimum parking reform bill in New Hampshire. I'd gone to testify as a kind of technical witness, and I made the mistake of mentioning the city of Austin, which is parking reform, which was really successful. And I knew as soon as the word Austin left my lips, I was looking above myself, looking down, saying, No, don't do it. But I'd said it, and the eyes of the the New Hampshire Municipal League lobbyist who was there to oppose it lit up, and then it was his turn to speak. And he said, Well, I didn't know about these big city folks coming here from Austin, but New Hampshire is not like anywhere else on planet Earth. And we believe in local control. And I just felt so bad because it's like it was a throwaway line, and I just handed them like a cheap rhetorical cudgel to use against a bill. Ultimately it didn't make a difference, but you'd have to be really careful what you say sometimes. So I learned that lesson the hard way.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

How do you track what's happening in all the states?

SPEAKER_03 23:29

Yeah, it's it used to be really difficult, and it still is because 10,000 bills filed every session in Texas. Repeat that across every state in the union. Like who can keep track? There are databases now that can kind of help with that. Just like there are databases for other lawyers that show lawsuits that are filed and court decisions. You can see, and I have alerts set up, so I know when someone's filing a bill that's to do with co-living housing or food trucks, ping, I'll get like something in my inbox, and and then I can, you know, reach out to the sponsor and say, Hey, do you want help with this? Or hey, this is what we learned from trying to do it in Texas, and it didn't quite work. So things like that help you, at least lobbyists and lawyers that work across all states, they give you a good idea of what's happening everywhere. So that's really helpful. And also people start up coalitions and groups, like Yimbies, pro housing people have groups that keep track on all of this stuff. So and they're not shy asking for help. So when um Connecticut was trying to pass a Golden Girls housing bill, you know, they asked for my help. So I went to I remote testified in their hearing and I asked for people's help all the time, and I'm trying to pass stuff in Texas. So you make friends along the way and they they'll give you a heads up on what's going on as well, which is nice having fellow travelers to rely on.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

I have taken a training on like Texas legislative tracking, and so there's a website that you can go and like flag bills, and then you get notified when they like move forward and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

TLO goes to Texas Legislature Online. The thing is capital.texas.gov. You can go there, you can set up alerts for all the bills, all the things you're interested in. It'll tell you when it's coming up for hearing, so you can go to Austin and have your say, like any citizen can go do that. I strongly encourage people to do that because people don't know how low the barrier to participation actually is, right? Like it's not like in DC, it's a little bit more difficult. Like anyone can go to testify in support or against a bill. Anyone can go meet their state legislator or senator, and you should do it. Like people listen to their constituents, like they have to run for election, like they will rather listen to you than me, like a paid lobbyist any day. So I encourage people to do that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Yeah, I'm a big fan of people calling their reps, even though it's really scary. It is they're really nice.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

They are, and they want to hear from they want to hear from their constituents, and people make it easier. Like if there's a campaign group for housing or whatever, they will give you talking points that you can use. Like you don't have to sit there coming up with everything yourself. But yeah, reach out to them, make make friends and do it now, establish a friendly relationship with them now before session so that they know and like you when session comes around and then you need them for something. And great example. So the bill, there was a very narrow co-living bill that passed in Texas last session. In Texas, often one way they try and get rid of co-living or boarding houses is they limit the number of unrelated people that can live together under a roof, um, which is just a great way of stopping student housing or Golden Girls housing. So a bunch of Texas AM students worked with a senator, uh, I think it was Senator Betancourt, to work on a bill that would relax those laws, specifically in college towns, so that so it's easier to have student housing. And, you know, these people in the early 20s, some of them might have even been teenagers, but they rocked up to the state capital in Austin and they led the effort on that bill with the senator to get it passed. They devised a legislative outreach strategy, they helped actually write the wording of the bill, they went to testify on it. If they did it, they're students. If they can do it, anyone can do it, and people should. Not everyone can do that, and that's why people like me exist. Like maybe your favorite housing pro-housing charity will then hire someone like me to go do that on their behalf, right? Because sometimes it helps have a professional who knows how the rules of the game work, they can navigate it more easily.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

And certainly more efficiently. Um, so how if I there is something I'm interested in influencing, how do I find groups to support?

SPEAKER_03 27:08

Yeah. Um, pretty much anything, you know, Google is your friend. If there's an issue out there that you're passionate about, chances are someone else in a big state like Texas is passionate as well, but it applies to any state. So go find them. They might not necessarily be super organized, but you can be the person that kind of lights the spark. Generally, if it's a big issue like housing reform or you're trying to oppose something, or if it's to do with education, there are already groups set up and they will welcome your help, you know, both when it comes to campaigning at election time, but also then influencing policy when legislative session rolls around. And they generally make it easy for people to get involved up to the level that they have time and resources. So if that's just, you know, writing a letter to your state rep, it could be doing that. If it could be coming on lobby days where everyone descends on the Capitol and they go around, meet as many legislators as they can in one day. They'll make it easy for you. So, generally speaking, the bigger, more well-established the issue, the easier it is to get involved. But don't let that stop you. If you have a really niche interest that you think isn't getting enough attention, everything started like that, right? No one was talking about housing reform ten years ago. It was a few people, and look at it now, it's a national movement. So you can do that with your issue as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

So, what are some of the like do's and don'ts as an individual kind of calling a rep or speaking in support of something?

SPEAKER_03 28:25

Yeah, there are very few don'ts. Not enough people do it. So most committee hearings that I'm in, it's tumbleweeds. There's like a few other lobbyists there, maybe someone from the Texas Tribune sitting in the back trying to stay awake. Like, no, that they're always awake, they do great. But most hearings no one's at. The big blockbuster ones, so school vouchers, things like that, they go on until three in the morning. There's cues out the door to testify. Most bills aren't like that. Even the food truck bill, the committee room was half empty because the opponents saw it coming, which is awesome. So there's nothing you really shouldn't do. Like, turn up, get involved. Like, if you make a mistake, it won't kill the bill. And it's great because you can make a positive difference, but the chance at the risk of doing something calamitously wrong is so infinitesimally small it's not worth worrying about. Show up, get involved, like make friends, find other people at work that are passionate about the issue as well. Um, people like hearing about personal stories. Everyone already knows ideologically generally what they think about most issues, but they are moved more by personal experiences. So with the food truck bill, that's what we led with. Like I could go in and talk about economic liberty and theories of you know libertarianism, but that's not what's going to move a Democrat in a suburban Dallas Fort Worth to support that kind of bill. What they do care about is hey, I started a food truck, I want to grow to food trucks, I'm now employing four people. I would love to grow more, but to do that and move to another town means I've got to pay another $1,500 in permit fees and inspections. I can't afford to do that. If you get rid of that, then I'll be able to grow and expand and hire more people, and then you've got a local business success in your district. And so personal stories, that's more effective than anything else. So and that's where your audience is best equipped to participate, I think.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Personal stories and then like finding other people.

SPEAKER_03 30:09

Strength in numbers, yeah. And the more differences you have among you, but you agree on one thing, the more persuasive that is as well, right? We we can come together on this one issue, and but in the process of doing that, you actually realize you have more in common on other things. These people your opponents aren't two-dimensional villains. They are living, breathing other texts and you care about their families and communities and just want to go about it different ways. I think it's helpful to remember that, especially right now, like when everything's so polarized and with midterms coming up and everyone just caricaturing the other side. Most people mean well. They just have a different idea of what it means to get there.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

I I do think one other important thing to highlight, like on the money of it, if there's lending your voice, but there's also lending your money. We've talked a lot about like finding the charities who are probably going to be hiring the lobbyists, right? What are some of the rules of money with lobbying?

SPEAKER_03 30:59

Yeah, so I think it's important to separate. So there's campaign finance, which is one thing. So that's when you're giving money to a candidate, like trying to aid their election, you're giving money to a super PAC or to a political party that will then give that money. That's one thing. Lobbying's kind of different. There are different ways that organizations structure themselves. And depending how they organize themselves at the IRS, they can do more or less things. And a lot of people don't know how that structure works. You don't really need to know how it works. But so for the nonprofit where I used to work was what we call a 501c3 organization. So they're very limited in what they can do. So they can do outreach to politicians, and I would meet as an employee of that law firm all the time with politicians to explain the benefits of a bill. But we couldn't, for example, take that politician to dinner or you know, buy them gifts or do things like that. Um, I could just persuade people with the power of ideas, which feels kind of limiting, but it's more rewarding when you actually get something done that way, right? There is other organizations and other forms that places can take where they can do more stuff, they can make donations to political parties, to candidates, things as well. Often organizations will have both structures at the same time. They'll have one non-profit structure that exists to do outreach and education and one that's more politically active. But generally, I don't think you need people need to get too in the weeds of what happens. If there's an organization you trust and support, give it to them. They'll generally be transparent on their website about how that money gets to put put to good use. I know there are charity kind of websites that rank transparency and things like that as well. Always good to kind of rely on that as well, because you don't want money to get caught up in overhead and paying too much people like me rather than going to the end products for whatever the charity is trying to do.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

If they do have a separate like I'll name, I'm specifically thinking like there's the Planned Parenthood and then there's the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Those are different things. And so it's like if I want to influence the government on it, right? I'm should I go towards the action fund? And whereas the other one is like providing services.

SPEAKER_03 33:01

Do you know so with Planned Parenthood, I don't know specifically, like having worked with that organization, but they should be fairly clear. If you just do like a little bit of digging, you'll find out which one is more on the policy and education or providing services, like operating the centers, I guess, and which one's doing the trying to elect a slate of candidates that will they think in the long run advance those goals. And maybe you want to give to both. And um, but because they're different structures, generally you will have to direct your donation to one or the other, and that keeps the firewall between the two of them, which is important for all kinds of legal reasons.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

Well, and one's tax adaptable and one's not.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

And the same thing, yeah, with a whole bunch of things, the way that you know, whether organizations can coordinate with candidates and stuff as well. But I the thing I love about my job is I work purely on policy. Every now and then my wife asks, Would you ever want to run for office? And goodness me no, like one, I'm too introverted, too. I I like to be liked, and just the idea of half the country thinking I'm the devil and burning me in effigy doesn't sound fun. But this is great because my job as a legislative attorney and lobbyist is I'm policy adjacent. I work on policy, but I don't work on politics. Like I don't have to do the low skullduggery of attack ads and all of that. I just get to like be the guy in the background that and I I don't need the glory, I just like good rules to pass.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Look at the sentence I wrote.

SPEAKER_03 34:14

Yes. I've written some really good sentences as well. So I I I'm gonna frame them someday.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Final questions that we wrap every conversation with. And the first one is what advice do you have for the huntresses out there?

SPEAKER_03 34:26

Advice for you huntresses the barrier to getting involved in local politics and local policy is way lower than you think. Anyone can do it. So if there's an issue you care about, if there's an area of policy that you think you'd like to see change in, it's not something that just happens to you. Like you can get involved, you can do it. If there's not already an organization set up, found one, find other people. And the barrier to just getting your voice heard in the halls of the state capitol or city hall is a lot lower than you think, and it's a lot less scary than you think. And you'll get a much warmer reception than you think as well, because they don't hear enough from regular people, generally speaking. So you'll be welcome in your local legislator's office, they will want to hear from you, and you can actually move the needle on issues. And I think that's a really important message when often people feel helpless and just they maybe feel like mullied interests are carrying the day, and that politics is this remote thing that is done to them. Like, no, you can be involved in that. Um, I learned that I'm an immigrant, I've only been living in this country for six years, and I testify in state legislators around the country, and you don't have to be that involved, but you can also play as big a part as you want in policy.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

There are no rules. Okay, there are some rules, but that you can disregard it.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

Just go do it. Just go do it.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Um okay, and what does rich mean to you?

SPEAKER_03 35:40

Oh gosh. I know you asked this question to everybody, and I'm really glad you didn't bring me on to talk about financial advice because I'm full of what not to do's. What rich means to me, I suppose it's not so much about being able to afford everything, it's about having a degree of freedom. Um freedom to pursue the things that matter to you. And that can be you can be rich in time, you can be rich in personal relationships, you can be very wealthy in money and be poor in everything else, and that's something that I've only learned as I've aged a little bit and entering middle age. Um, my metrics of what wealth is and richness is have changed, and I'm more about now pursuing experiences and as you know, age creeps up and meet accomplishments that I hope will outlive me and live beyond me, you know. Someone says, you know, planting trees under the shade of which you'll never live yourself, and maybe it sounds corny, but I think there's something to that as well. Maybe that's what wealth is, it's like passing something on that that will live on beyond you.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Beautiful. Thank you so much, Sam.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

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