What Happens When Independents Work Together?

Michael Vick: Hey everybody, welcome back to Unorthodoxing. This episode is going to be a little different today. No guest, no long interview. Just me because I want to tell you about something that's happening this week that I think is worth paying attention to. Not only because I'm going to be there, and not only because it creates an opportunity for our campaign, but because it represents something much bigger that I've been talking about on the show for a long time. This week I'm heading to Washington, DC for For the Independent National Convention. The convention runs September twenty third through the twenty fifth, and its whole purpose is bringing together people who are trying to do politics outside the normal Democratic versus Republican framework. Independent candidates, third party activists, political reformers, organizers, funders, media people, and people trying to build institutions that can actually compete in American politics. And obviously as somebody running for governor of Illinois as a write in candidate with the Illinois Solidarity Party, that's a room I want to be in. The organizers describe the event in very practical terms citizens meeting leaders, candidates meeting funders, organizers meeting partners, and relationships hopefully turning into coordination, strategy, and infrastructure. That last word infrastructure is is particularly important. One of the biggest problems with independent politics in America is that there are a lot of people dissatisfied with the two party system, but what there generally is not is enough infrastructure connecting those people to one another. Longtime listeners of unorthodoxing know that one of the basic ideas behind this show has always been that American political life is more complicated than the two boxes we are usually given. You can be pro-life and deeply concerned about economic inequality. You can care about workers and small businesses. You can believe in environmental stewardship without thinking every solution needs to come from a massive centralized bureaucracy. You can care about religious liberty and civil rights. You can care about strong families and criminal justice reform. You can believe that markets have a legitimate role in society while also believing that there are things human beings should never reduce to a commodity. There are millions of Americans whose politics don't fit neatly into the categories that cable television gives us. One of the experiments at the heart of our campaign for governor of Illinois is asking what happens when some of those people actually start finding each other. Not agreeing about everything. Not pretending that differences don't exist, but finding enough common ground to work together where we can. That's part of what makes this trip especially interesting for me. I'm going to Washington as the American Solidarity Party's candidate for governor of Illinois. The American Solidarity Party is a relatively small national political party built around ideas including human dignity, the common good, social justice, environmental stewardship, and Community, family, and a consistent ethic of life. And I'll be at the convention with people connected with the American Solidarity Party. But I'm also going there to be spending time with representatives of another political organization that has become increasingly important to our campaign. That namely is the Independence Party here in Illinois. And the Independence Party is actually one of the organizations. Represented among the sponsors of this year's Independent National Convention. Now these are not the same political party, they don't have identical platforms, they don't have identical histories, and I think that's precisely what makes this relationship interesting. Because one of the things independent politics has to figure out is how different organizations can cooperate without everybody being required to become the same group. The two major parties do this constantly. They contain enormous ideological coalitions. Independent and mitor party politics, by contrast, has sometimes had a tendency to fragment into increasingly small groups of people. At some point if you want political alternatives to become sustainable, you have to get better at collaboration. There's a very personal connection between Between these two organizations in our campaign. My running mate, Gary Pierce, was running for governor of Illinois earlier in this very election cycle with the Independence Party. Gary and his then running mate Alejandro Cabrera undertook the extraordinarily difficult process of trying to get a new party gubernatorial ticket onto the Illinois ballot. If you've listened to my unorthodoxing interview with Gary, You know that this is not his first experience with independent politics. He's been thinking about the problems with the two party system and trying to create alternatives for a very long time. His independence party gubernatorial candidacy was part of that journey. Gary came on board with our campaign as my candidate for lieutenant governor. And then the Illinois Solidarity Party endorsed him for that role. So now you have this unusual situation. I'm involved with the Solidarity Party movement and increasingly working with people in the Independence Party. Gary remains involved with the Independence Party while also running alongside me on the Illinois Solidarity Party ticket. And I will also note That I was recently elected as the chair of the Illinois Solidarity Party while Gary serves as the vice chair. In other words, the relationship isn't just theoretical. We're actually living it out. And recently that relationship took another step. I went through the process of submitting a candidate questionnaire and being interviewed for an endorsement by the Independence Party. And they voted to endorse our writing campaign for governor and lieutenant governor this week. I'm deeply grateful for that, and I am particularly grateful for how helpful people in the Independence Party have been in creating opportunities for our campaign around this convention. Making introductions, helping us get into conversations, and helping make sure that people attending the Independent National Convention know that this campaign exists. For a statewide writing campaign operating without the enormous financial infrastructure of the major parties, Those relationships really matter. And they matter beyond this particular election. Because I'm interested not simply in what happens on november third, I'm interested in what we can build that still exists on november fourth. So what I'm actually hoping comes out of the Independent National Convention are relationships. They're going to be candidates, organizers, party leaders, and political reformers from around the country in one place. Some of them I'll agree with on a great deal. Some of them I'll probably disagree with on a great deal. But that doesn't mean there isn't value in knowing each other and working together where we can find common ground. And second, I want people involved in independent politics nationally to know that something interesting is happening here in Illinois. We have an American Solidarity Party gubernatorial ticket. We have a relationship developing between the Solidarity Party and and the Independence Party. We have people coming together from different political backgrounds to work together. Gary's political journey is different from mine. The people joining this campaign don't all come from the same party, and that's intentional. Third, I want to learn. One of the dangers in politics and frankly in almost any institution is assuming your own organization has already figured everything out. We haven't. Neither has anybody else. So I want to hear what other independent candidates are doing. How are they organizing? How are they dealing with ballot access laws? How are they finding volunteers? How are they communicating when they don't have millions of dollars for television advertising? How are they building organizations that last beyond one charismatic candidate or one election cycle? Those are questions worth asking. And I think there's a larger philosophical point here. When most Americans hear the word multi party, I think they imagine parties constantly fighting with each other. But a healthy multi party political culture requires something else too, parties learning how to cooperate. You might have one organization focused heavily on electoral reform. Another could be rooted in a particular political philosophy. While another is organized around an issue. Another might be focused primarily on recruiting independent candidates. Those organizations don't necessarily need to merge. They don't need to pretend that they have identical platforms. They can remain themselves while recognizing areas where their interests overlap. That's one of the things I hope we get better at, because if political pluralism simply means replacing two hostile tribes with six hostile tribes, we haven't accomplished very much. The better possibility is creating a political culture in which disagreement doesn't prevent cooperation. You can say here's where we agree. Here's where we disagree. Here's something useful we can still build together. For our gubernatorial campaign specifically, the timing of this event is important. We're now in the final stretch before the november third election. Our campaign website lists Gary Pierce and me as writing candidates for Lieutenant Governor and Governor. We're trying to make people aware that the option exists. That awareness challenge is enormous for any writing campaign. People can't consider a candidacy they don't know exists. That's why opportunities like the Independent National Convention matter. It's a chance to introduce the campaign to national networks of politically independent people, organizations, and media. It's a chance to tell people what the Illinois Solidarity Party is building. It's also a chance to tell people about the relationship we're developing with the independence party. And potentially it's a chance to develop relationships that continue well beyond this particular campaign. Now there's another piece of this that I'm excited about. We've recently produced our first campaign advertisements. That's a major milestone for a campaign like ours. Producing an ad is one thing, and getting people to actually see it is another. Anybody who's ever worked in communications knows that distribution is often every bit as important. As production. You can create the greatest 60 second video in the world, but if it sits on a YouTube channel with a few hundred views, it isn't accomplishing the same thing as an ad that reaches tens of thousands of people. So we're entering a different phase of this campaign. We've spent months developing the message, putting together the ticket, building relationships, working through the write in process, creating the website, producing content. And building the basic infrastructure. Now the question increasingly becomes: how far can that message travel? And that means media. It means events like this convention. It means earned media. It means people sharing information organically. And it also means paid advertising. When I get back from Washington, I'll tell you what happened there. I'll also tell you who I met. I'll tell you what conversations stood out. I'll tell you where I saw real possibilities for cooperation, and probably where I saw some disagreements too, because this is unorthodoxing. The interesting part isn't pretending everybody suddenly agrees. The interesting part is seeing what happens when people who don't fit comfortably inside the political establishment get into the same room and start talking to each other. Maybe that's the larger experiment here. Can independent politics become more than isolated candidates running isolated campaigns? Can small political parties cooperate without giving up their identities? Can people with very different political backgrounds build institutions together? Can we create a political culture where cooperation doesn't require total ideological conformity? I don't know all those answers, but from September twenty third through the twenty fifth, a lot of people who are asking those questions are going to be gathered in Washington DC. And I for one am looking forward to being one of them. So follow along while I am in Washington. I'll be sharing what I can from the Independent National Convention, and we'll talk more about what comes out of it after I'm back. If you want more information about our campaign, including our platform, upcoming events, campaign videos, volunteer information, and contribution information, you can find it at votevicusa.com. That's V as Invictor OTE V as Invictor ICK USA dot com. You can also learn more about the American Solidarity Party at Solidarity-Party dot org. The Illinois Solidarity Party can be found at illsolidarity.com While the Independence Party is at Indy, that's I N DY Voters dot org. And the Independent National Convention can be found at Independent National Convention. com. Whatever comes out of this particular election, I think the relationships being built among people willing to work outside their traditional political boxes are worth watching. That's exactly the kind of conversation an Orthodoxing exists to explore. Thanks as always for tuning in. We're going to have at least two more episodes this week. The first will drop tomorrow morning, so be on the lookout for my interview with Connie Becker, a progressive anti abortion uprising. And later this week on Thursday morning, we'll have my interview with Lauren Pope, Executive Director of Rehumanize International. And as I mentioned, I'm also hoping to do some live hits from DC. I've been your host, Mike Vick. Thanks for joining me. Until next time, Unorthodoxers, you stay faithful, and I'll see you from Washington.