Red State Resistance: The Lindsey Simmons Interview
Welcome to the “red state” resistance! This week Sarah interviews fellow Missourian Lindsey Simmons, a former Democratic nominee for Missouri’s gerrymandered 4th congressional district and an excellent analyst of Missouri as the bellwether of national decline.
Show Notes for This Episode Are Available Here
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the best-selling books, The View from Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight.
Andrea Chalupa:
I am Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker, and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine.
Sarah Kendzior:
And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising autocracy around the world. And I am thrilled today to have a fellow Missouri-based guest on our show, Lindsey Simmons, who ran for Missouri's 4th Congressional District. If you know Lindsey from Twitter, she's at Lynz for Congress, L-Y-N-Z-F-O-R Congress—hopefully, you know how to spell congress these days—where she has a very insightful account running down problems not just in Missouri, not just in “red states”, but nationally. We've seen a lot of discussion about how to change our political situation in states like ours but not a lot of folks from those states actually giving their viewpoint on things, which is why we’ve decided to invite Lindsey on. I asked Lindsey for her biography and I loved what she wrote back so I'm just going to read it and hopefully that's cool with you.
Sarah Kendzior:
She writes, "I no longer have a prepared media biography. I think most of what I'm going to say and why it's relevant is that I was born and raised in rural Missouri but went East for law school in 2012, where I saw a growing divide between how my classmates experienced the world and how my family and neighbors experienced it. These divides manifested in the 2016 election and as the toxicity grew, I felt a pull to try and build a bridge between these two parts of my life. That work largely resulted in my run for office in Missouri's 4th Congressional District, where I outperformed every single other Democrat on the ticket. Now I'm continuing to build bridges and build community through the Mighty Missouri Project." Lindsey is an attorney, a military spouse, a former congressional candidate, and a Gaslit Nation guest. So welcome to our show.
Lindsey Simmons:
Thank you so much for having me and thank you for continuing to use the platform that you have to raise awareness about the growing fascism and autocracy in my beloved home. Really appreciate it.
Sarah Kendzior:
Oh, well the feeling is mutual. And speaking of our beloved home, you have repeatedly referred to Missouri as a “failed state”. On what basis do you make that assessment?
Lindsey Simmons:
I think that if you go back, and anyone who has studied traditional characteristics of what failed states are will recognize that they're generally classified as areas that have limited resources for their citizens. There's a lack of democracy, there's great income inequality, there are all of these metrics by which you can gauge whether a civilization is succeeding or not. And obviously, Missouri is one of 50 states in the United States and so the correlation and parallels are not exact, but in Missouri we meet many of those metrics.
Lindsey Simmons:
We have a lack of democracy in the state, from the term limits that were implemented in the 1990s by the Republican Party in an attempt to run out all rural Democrats because they believed and were correct that it would be difficult to get additional Democrats elected after those terms were up. You then have a full Republican legislature that went on to gerrymander our state to the point where you now really only have three, maybe four counties in the state that vote Democrat, even though you have, historically, very strong Democratic roots in many of the counties.
Lindsey Simmons:
My home county, Saline, is a perfect example of this. We have significant wealth inequality in this state. People do not have hospitals. Where I live, we have a hospital in my hometown of Marshall, but if you live 30 miles away, 60 miles away, my hometown might still be the closest hospital that you have. There are people who have to drive more than two hours to get to the nearest hospital. We have food deserts. Even though we are a rural and agriculture-based community out here in rural Missouri, there are still places that lack food and people have to drive more than 10 to 20 miles to reach a grocery store.
Lindsey Simmons:
We have failing public education systems. I know that many rural school districts—and folks listening to this might also know—that students out here go to school four days a week, and this is a pre-COVID existence. And that's because we couldn't afford to keep schools open five days a week anymore. And I could go on, but those are just some of the ways in which our very existence is not a success. We are a failed state.
Sarah Kendzior:
What do you make of the fact that... I mean, first of all, I agree with you and I see a lot of the same problems that you're bringing up for rural Missouri here in St. Louis, in urban Missouri. We also are struggling with food deserts, with a lack of healthcare, with schools that are failing, and with apathy from the state legislature toward all of these problems. What do you think of the fact that, as a state, we seem to recognize this, we seem to be united in our disgust, united in our disillusionment, and when it comes to actual ballot initiatives—things like the Clean Missouri elimination of dirty money in politics, raising the minimum wage, medical marijuana, protection of labor unions, so on and so forth—those ballot initiatives tend to pass statewide, including in Republican districts, but we still have Republicans winning the elections. How do you explain that contradiction?
Lindsey Simmons:
So, two things. First, I really love that you mentioned how similar the existence in rural Missouri is to living in a city in Missouri. There's so often rhetoric and language used to kind of divide those two situations. We have so much in common. We have so much in common. I love talking to folks who live in Kansas City and St. Louis because you realize very quickly that the struggles we're facing are incredibly similar and we would do ourselves a great service to work together rather than pretending that we're facing two totally different experiences.
Lindsey Simmons:
And I think that goes to show what you're talking about with these ballot initiatives, where folks in the cities and folks in rural areas united to protect labor unions and united to expand healthcare and united to try to clean up the gerrymandering that's happening in this state. And to the question of, why is it that we can vote on progressive ballot initiatives, but then vote for regressive politicians? The answer to me is kind of simple, but it has a lot of problems baked into it, which is that, when people have to think about the issue, it's a little bit more easy to go in a more progressive direction because progressive policies tend to help the most people. And most folks want to help other people and they want to help themselves. When you look at politics and just see an R or a D behind someone's name, that's when the polarization and the cultish following happens, and that is why we continue to elect folks who work against the very measures that we've also voted for.
Lindsey Simmons:
And I think a really great example of that—merging back into what we just talked about, with Missouri being a failed state—has to do with Clean Missouri, the effort to reform gerrymandering and to get money out of Missouri politics. I don't know if a lot of people know, there used to be no contribution limit in the state of Missouri. You could literally donate as much money as you wanted to. It's one of the reasons that Missouri is (I consider it to be) the capital of dark money in the United States and Clean Missouri worked to reform that. It passed by over 60% of the vote in 2018. So, of course, in 2020, the Republicans decided that they needed to put it back on the ballot and try and get ahold of it and they did it in one of the most disingenuous ways.
Lindsey Simmons:
And it ended up in court, where the court actually said that the language going onto the ballot was “misleading”, and indeed it was. So they had to rewrite part of it and it passed again with this bad language now, kind of stripping the good work that was done in 2018, but Republicans weren't satisfied with their new victory and, in the legislature in 2021—so just a couple of months ago—they actually introduced bills saying that the language passed by the legislature is exactly what goes on the ballot. They tried to pass a law saying that the courts could no longer change that language because that is what had gotten them into trouble previously. And then they went so far as to try and change the way that judges are even appointed in Missouri Courts.
Lindsey Simmons:
Missouri, for a long time, has had a nonpartisan court plan and they tried to reform that and allow the Governor, the Speaker of the House, and the Senate Pro Tem to just select who's on the courts now. And just circling back to the very beginning, one of the features of a failed state is where the political and economic system is just so weak that the government itself isn't in control. And instead, what we have is one political party in control, and we are a one-party state here. All of these things graph into one, but it diminishes the power of the people and it makes it even more difficult for them to pass better progressive ballot initiatives like we have in the past.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think a defining feature of living in Missouri is that sense of loss of representative democracy—that we make our voices heard, we come out and vote, and what we want is overturned. And we don't have representatives that even have a pretense of speaking or acting for the public interest. I think you nailed it on dark money. All the way back in 2006, there were legal studies, as I'm sure you know, of Missouri and its dark money problem, saying that even quid pro quo corruption is essentially legal in this state. We were the innovator here. We preceded Citizens United and in my book, Hiding in Plain Sight, I referred to Missouri for that reason and for others as the bellwether of American decline, as a state that functions as an early indicator of national trends, much as we used to on an electoral level where, historically, Missouri was always the state that picked the winner of the National Election and was always seen as a middle ground. Now we're kind of like a harbinger of doom. Do you agree with that theory?
Lindsey Simmons:
That Missouri is a harbinger of doom?
Sarah Kendzior:
Well, that it's setting the national tone, that it's maybe an early indicator.
Lindsey Simmons:
I 100% agree that Missouri is the bellwether of the nation in every way possible and in this case, it's not positive. I think that Missouri gets overlooked for a number of reasons. I mean, not to go too far down the rabbit hole, but it really dates back to the Civil War. So, I'll share a story with you about Missouri public education here. I was taught that Missouri was a Southern state that seceded from the Union during the Civil War and when I went East for school, everyone told me that I was stupid and Missouri never seceded. And I think that has a big role to play in how Missouri functions.
Lindsey Simmons:
Missouri, for a long time, has acted in a way as though it does not have to follow federal law. It just blithely does things and the federal government doesn't really pay attention to it, again, dating all the way back to the Civil War. People don't pay attention to Missouri. They think it's one thing and in reality, it’s much worse than what is or what has happened in other places. By failing to recognize the rise of the Republican autocrats in this state, we have put the entire nation in jeopardy. The dark money that you mentioned—and I know that you know this and that people listening may be aware that the operatives that were very invested in a lot of the dark money operations here in Missouri have their tentacles in Mike Pence. They're certainly involved with the Josh Hawley fiasco. They stretch far and wide, very invested in what Trump is doing, down to some of the Georgia Senate issues and dating back for decades now.
Lindsey Simmons:
I mean, Missouri is really kind of a pathway to worse things in politics and to worse things economically and socially. And I think that because the nation has not really paid attention to Missouri, because we're not seen as a Southern state, because we're not seen as bad perhaps as the way that other states are portrayed, that folks here have really just gotten away with a ton of crap. I mean, there are laws on the books that are 100% unconstitutional that just exist, and there are things that happen in the State of Missouri for which folks have never been held to account because, in Missouri, it's legal, despite it violating federal law. And you will listen to people—and I'm a lawyer, so I hear this a lot—say, "Well, you can't do that." Well, you only can't do something if you're willing to stand up and fight it in court. And unfortunately, in Missouri, we aren't able to do that at the rate and with the breadth and scope that we need to in order to fix the problems here right now.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, absolutely. And that's a lesson that I hope people take to heart when they're looking at things nationally is that the idea that something can't be done because it's “illegal” doesn't really matter when you have an anti-constitutional executive branch that will literally rewrite the law, so that laws can no longer be broken as long as they're the ones breaking them. And on that note, I of course have to ask you about Josh Hawley, our Senator, the violent insurrectionist.
Andrea Chalupa:
The fiasco.
Sarah Kendzior:
The fiasco. What's your take on Hawley, both his prior actions and his ambitions?
Lindsey Simmons:
Joshua Hawley is a counterfeit Senator and a counterfeit human. I have a lot of feelings about Joshua Hawley, which I'm sure folks know because I've explored him at depth on Twitter and other places. He grew up in a town that's less than an hour away from where I grew up. And that's important because in small towns you know people from the other town. And let me tell you what I know from life, about Joshua Hawley.
Andrea Chalupa:
[laughs] Go ahead.
Lindsey Simmons:
And that is that he is a banker's son, which is totally, totally fine. He went to a very fancy school in Kansas City, also great, you know, I'm glad he had that opportunity for himself. Then he went to Stanford and then he went to Yale Law and then he got a couple of federal clerkships, and that's what he did. And then he comes back here, doesn't know what a flatbed truck is, and pretends to wear flannel but it's from Brooks Brothers.
Sarah Kendzior:
Mmmhmm (affirmative)
Lindsey Simmons:
And I just have to say that the word we use for him is counterfeit, because that's what he is. I think something that perhaps people don't appreciate and that was a little bit surprising to me when I was traveling during the campaign… Well, one piece that wasn't surprising is the amount of love and affection and reverence for Eric Greitens, which we can talk about later. But there is a lack of respect and a lack of belief in Joshua in a lot of the deeper rural areas here. And I think the reason for that is because he is counterfeit. He started out his career here in Missouri, coming back after working for a law firm, getting a job at Mizzou, and he immediately started, I think it was the Missouri Liberty Project, which was really a vehicle for him to go speak to every Republican group of every county in the state and campaign for his AG seat without him having to file the documents to do so, which, yes, is illegal.
Lindsey Simmons:
When he went on that speaking tour, he basically told people that he argued the Hobby Lobby case in front of the Supreme Court and that he beat President Obama. He even put this in a campaign ad of himself (and also, happy to source this should anyone require it). And what you can find out, because it's a matter of public record, is that Joshua was not even admitted into the Supreme Court until after the Hobby Lobby case was over. So there is zero chance of any possible way that he ever could have done the things that he went around telling Missourians that he did. He then says he's not going to be a typical politician. He's not going to climb the ladder. Puts out a video, again, of a bunch of ladders coming down in some weird inception-like commercial.
Lindsey Simmons:
Weeks after he's elected, before he's even sworn in, already has a DC firm lined up to run the Attorney General's office to focus on sex trafficking in China, which are the two issues they thought would help propel him to the United States Senate. And everything about him is calculated. He knows exactly what he is doing. You cannot believe a word out of his mouth. He is not a person that understands the concept of loyalty. But beyond all of that, I think what's really important for people to understand is that he is a true believer in this kind of Christian fascism. He truly believes that the only way to be a good politician is to create a government in the way that the Lord would want him to, and he writes about this extensively.
Lindsey Simmons:
From high school, I mean, he wrote for the small Lexington Newspaper, he writes about this when he's at Stanford, he writes about it at Yale. He writes about it before he comes to Missouri. And when you read these just very earnest views of him, they're deeply troubling. They're deeply troubling because he talks a lot about the importance of control over the citizenry, and he talks a lot about manifesting his belief as what the government should be. When people speak like that, those are people who are not embracing democracy. Those are people who want authoritarianism to thrive.
Lindsey Simmons:
And we saw that from him on January 6th. We've seen it from him, frankly, before that as well. But you'll continue to see that from him because it's not just an act to try and sway the Trump base. It is something that he believes in earnest and has written about since he was a teenager. And frankly, the kind of ironic part about him seeking the Trump base, is that he's so counterfeit and isn't actually the country boy he says he is, so he will never win over that cult of personality, ever. So he is going to have to, I think, try and find a different path, but he's extremely dangerous.
Lindsey Simmons:
I mean, he installed one of his lawyers, one of his counsel in his Senate office, is now one of the six members on the FEC, overseeing election rules. Tracking his people and where he places them is really important. I find him to be incredibly dangerous and I find him to be more than just the joke that a lot of people take him for.
Sarah Kendzior:
So who's backing him on a national level? Do you know what his connections are to people within Trump's circles, people within higher echelons of the GOP?
Lindsey Simmons:
One tie that he has that's pretty strong is to Peter Thiel. The tie goes back to his days at Stanford. Peter Thiel was the founder of a journal that Josh wrote on and then I believe that he helped fund Joshua's project at Stanford to help rewrite curriculum, which should strike some bells, as he is currently very against learning actual history. But when he ran for attorney general, Thiel gave him a very sizable donation. He maxed out to him in the Senate race and launched a probe against Google when he was AG. And so, I think that that connection is one that people should really pay attention to.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. It seems ironic given that he goes on and on about the dangers of Big Tech and there are fewer people, at least in my view, more dangerous in that respect than Peter Thiel.
Lindsey Simmons:
And just on that Big Tech point: the thing he cares about with tech is Section 230. This is what he's always talking about. And he tries to frame the Section 230 conversation as though he wants to limit censoring, right? Because he says he's censored and Cancel Culture's got him, despite every four days on Twitter posting all of the reporters he's spoken to. And I think what people need to watch out for when people talk about Section 230, you know, Section 230 is an exemption for internet service providers to not be held liable for certain types of content that are posted on the websites by users. And the reason for that is really to mitigate any kind of litigation that would come against chat rooms or Twitter or social media now.
Lindsey Simmons:
And the reason for that is because if platforms had to regulate all of that, the thought is that there would be less free speech, actually, not more, because companies would be much more discerning over what appears on their sites. The reason that Hawley wants to get rid of Section 230 is precisely for that point. It goes back to his whole authoritarian worldview, which is that if you don't see Black lives being murdered by the police, if you don't see graves being dug for the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their lives to COVID, if you're not able to watch a video of a person in your town protesting for their rights, if you're not able to see it, then you don't know it's happening.
Lindsey Simmons:
And if he can shut down the internet in that way, if he can shut down our sharing of videos, if he can shut down the people's ability to communicate with one another across broad spans of geography, then you harm and really weaken the power of the people. And if you do that, authoritarianism is a lot more possible. And I think that that's really what he's after, frankly.
Sarah Kendzior:
Well, I'm glad you're bringing that up because I do think people tend to minimize the threat, both in terms of actual policies that he's capable of enacting but also this broader autocratic vision. And so on that note, we have a Senator who has decided to retire, Roy Blunt, and there is quite a lively race going on for his seat, especially among the Republicans. We have the McCloskey gun lunatic who wanted to fire on Black Lives Matter protesters. We have your former opponent, I believe, the corrupt Vicky Hartzler is throwing her hat in the ring.
Sarah Kendzior:
But the candidate everybody is talking about who you mentioned before is Eric Greitens, our former governor. And for those who don't know Eric Greitens, he was briefly the Governor of Missouri until it was exposed that he had tied up a half-naked woman in his basement to a piece of exercise equipment, photographed her, threatened her, blackmailed her, also deleted state information, had a self-deleting app, stole from a veterans charity. I mean, there are a lot of crimes committed by Eric Greitens. He was indicted twice, not sent to prison, complicated story, and now he's back.
Sarah Kendzior:
We've spoken about this on Gaslit Nation and Lindsey, you brought this up too, that when people don't face any kind of consequences for their corruption, then they just reemerge even stronger. And you had mentioned that there is this kind of reverence for him. What do you think about Greitens and what do you think about this campaign?
Lindsey Simmons:
Absolutely, folks who are not punished for their crimes will repeat them. And that goes from the low-level thing I'm guilty of, which is speeding, to starting a domestic terrorist assault on the United States Capitol.
Sarah Kendzior:
Mmmhmm (affirmative)
So it goes from very low-level crimes up to incredibly insidious crimes. And Eric Greitens, to me, has always been the pre-Trump and that is because he has developed such a massive following here in 2016. And I think we talk about 2016 often, in terms of Trump versus Hillary, and in Missouri, it was—at least to me—it felt a little bit different. There was real excitement about Greitens and the possibility that he would be the Republican elected to Governor of Missouri ,because prior to that we had had Democratic governors, and historically have had, at least in my lifetime, more Democratic governors than Republican.
Lindsey Simmons:
And it was thought that it would be difficult to perhaps win that seat in 2016. Missouri still was seen as a bellwether, despite the Presidential Elections falling in 2012 to Romney, though in 2008 we were only a couple of thousand votes separating President Obama and Senator McCain. So 2016 was just a different time in Missouri and so folks were very excited about that race. Greitens positioned himself as an outsider. He called himself the Navy Seal, which is something that I just have to mention. He talks about deploying with Seals in combat which is actually something he's never done.
Lindsey Simmons:
He did complete Seal training and was a Seal, but when given opportunities to deploy to combat zones with a Seal unit, he did not do those things. And veterans and members of the team have come out and talked about his fraudulent claims for what they are, in addition to all of the crimes, as you laid out, that he's committed. And so he's elected, the Republican legislature at the time moved to impeach him. The Attorney General Hawley went to prosecute him, though I always viewed that as more of a political necessity for Hawley because Greitens has always been much more likable than Hawley, and frankly they fill kind of the same lane.
Lindsey Simmons:
They're younger dudes who went to fancy schools, who came back and are trying to do the politics game, kind of both unknowns, not really institutional political families like we often see here in Missouri. So, yeah, Greitens is back because no one ever prosecuted him. He can still pretend to be the outsider despite being the Governor of the State of Missouri previously. And people love him. They really do. The affection for Greitens is much more genuine even than you hear from folks talking about Trump. People like Trump because he's a bully and they feel like they've been bullied, which in some cases is true. There's a lot of legitimate economic frustration in this state. And they feel like Trump is on their side for better or worse.
Lindsey Simmons:
But when it comes to Greitens, they actually respect him, which, considering the amount of crimes that he has committed and the fact that he sexually assaulted a woman and we know that about him. The fact the Navy kicked him out. And then, speaking of the dark money we were talking about, he used one of those connections to get Mike Pence to reinstate him into the United States Navy, which the Navy did not want to do. So now he goes around continuing to say he's still in the Navy. And I think that the Senate race is Eric Greitens’ to lose. There are a lot of Democratic strategists, I've talked to a lot of them in the last couple of months, and I tell them all the same thing. There are people kind of hoping that it's Greitens because they think that he will have a Todd Akin moment.
Sarah Kendzior:
Oh, God.
Lindsey Simmons:
And for those who aren't Missourians and don't know of Todd Akin, he is the person in 2012, running against Claire McCaskill who made his “legitimate rape” comments. And the problem is that the Republicans of 2012 are not the Republicans of 2021. There is nothing so indecent that Republicans won't stand by you anymore. A lot of my friends recently watched Rachel Maddow where she went through all of the crazy crimes that Republicans in the Missouri legislature, just this session, have committed but some of them are still in seats. So there's nothing Greitens can do or say that is suddenly going to convince Republicans not to support him, certainly in a general election.
Lindsey Simmons:
Trying to push for him as the crazy one who can somehow be overcome is not a strategy that will work because the reverence for him is too strong. People feel like the system was unfair to him and that he has overcome, and he hasn't even raised that much money. There's a huge kind of grift that's going on with him, but he will still win votes. His support never drops below 30% and in a primary where... I forget exactly how many have entered now, but seven or eight of them, I mean, him getting 30%, mathematically, he can win just with the support of his base. And if he gets the nomination here, I mean, he'll win the general and then Missouri will be represented by a sexual assault, Navy stolen valor human who should be in prison, AND an insurrectionist domestic terror promoting, counterfeit weasel.
Lindsey Simmons:
So, I think that's pretty bad. We have to stop trying to play some kind of chess game with who we elect and recognize that elections have very serious consequences, especially for us here in Missouri, and we're sending that to DC now and there's only going to be more problems. I tell people all the time, we did not survive through 2020 and things are fine, we're in the eye of the storm. And if it feels a little calm for you right now, that's just because the other side hasn't hit you. And it's going to. I hope beyond everything that we can survive that, but I'm very concerned about it. Again, I think Eric Greitens, I think this is his race to lose and anyone who thinks he's a joke of a candidate is going to be sorely mistaken.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, unfortunately, I agree with you about all of that and I've seen the same sort of veneration for Greitens, both in 2016 and in 2020—and now, I mean—as well as the tendency of the National Democratic Party to not quite grasp the dynamics here. When you talk to folks from the DNC or from other National Democratic groups, do they understand what you're saying? Is it getting through to them at this point?
Lindsey Simmons:
Unfortunately, no, I don't think that it is. I think people... Well, there's a little sexism played into it, but I don't think people believe me. I think I am seen as this radical figure that's very disruptive to Democratic politics in Missouri and that I can't be taken seriously, and, you know, that's fine.
Sarah Kendzior:
Oh, I hear you. [laughs]
Lindsey Simmons:
That's fine, but I'm right about this. This is my home. I know my home better than I know anything. And when you have people who, to this day, have Trump flags flying high, who have taken their American flag and flipped it upside down as a sign of distress—and this is in military country, Missouri—that is a big deal. And to ignore it as if though, "Oh, it's just this kind of fringe thing" is exactly how January 6th happened. Anyone who lived in Missouri during the 2020 election and was on the Democratic side of things, especially in rural areas, was harassed, had things burned in their yard, had their home vandalized, had violence against them in a number of ways. And especially, if you were a person of color, that happened even more violently toward you.
Lindsey Simmons:
By the time we get to January 6th, no one that I know who I worked with here in rural Missouri was surprised that that happened. We were told repeatedly by people at the Sale Barn, by folks at the Casey's, by people at the Dollar General, that there was a Civil War coming on the 6th and we better batten down the hatches. I mean, everyone knew. And so when you see the same thing, we're talking about Greitens repeating himself, I mean, Trump is repeating the exact same strategy he employed to make January 6th happen now as he calls for being reinstated. It is wild to me that people can watch this happen and still dismiss it as a joke.
Lindsey Simmons:
I mean, eventually, people are going to have to realize that their belief that there's another election coming is unfounded because if you lose democracy, there is no more election to win, there is no more political jostling you to do. At some point, you have to decide that what you care about beyond everything else, is preserving democracy and preserving this nation, even if that means you don't preserve your seat of power.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yes, very well said, strongly agree and on a microcosm level, I think we're living through those consequences. One thing I want to ask you about is, in 2020 in Georgia, Democratic activists—in particular, Stacey Abrams and other grassroots organizers—pulled off what many thought would be an impossible feat, which is that the state voted for Joe Biden for president and then elected two Democratic senators. And of course, Georgia, much like Missouri, was blown off for a long time, as “a deep red state”, as a state that couldn't change, and it did. And now, of course, it's facing brutal voter suppression laws to ensure that change never happens again. But that said, in the aftermath of the Georgia election, a lot of folks talked about bringing similar strategies to states like Missouri, is this happening? Can this happen? Could we also produce that kind of outcome here?
Lindsey Simmons:
I think that we definitely can do that work here but it has to be a deliberate effort to build community. And we don't have that right now. We don't have a number of things. One, we don't have a candidate, we're talking about this Senate race. We don't have a democratic candidate who has the infrastructure and the goal of building community statewide. We don't have the same kinds of demographics that Georgia had at play. Atlanta is growing, St. Louis is not. Atlanta is also kind of in the heart of Georgia, if you will. Missouri's power is split between Kansas City and St. Louis, both towns of which straddle state lines.
Lindsey Simmons:
And so some of that power and some of the interest for Democrats goes to Illinois or to Kansas, which is actually experiencing its own kind of come uppance. It's certainly more friendly to Democrats right now than Missouri is, which used to not be the case. I think that we lack a strong Democratic infrastructure in the State of Missouri to do that work. The Missouri Democratic Party has a lot of work that it needs to do and it is not in a position to lead that charge, so it's going to have to come from outside groups. I think that it certainly is possible here, but we have to understand that what worked in Georgia, though we can take lessons from it, is not a direct cut and paste job here in Missouri because Missouri is just different.
Lindsey Simmons:
And one of the big obstacles that we have in Missouri is bridging this urban/rural divide and really improving those communities. That is, in my opinion, the most important thing that we can do. Missouri, again, in a kind of different space than Georgia, in addition to being the epicenter of dark money, has also been kind of the epicenter of disinformation. We have radio stations outside of Kansas City owned by the Russian government that spit out propaganda hourly. We had Rush Limbaugh in the Southern part of the state spitting out racism and hate and bigotry for generations. And so, Missouri has a real problem with ending that disinformation campaign here in a way that I think other states don't quite have the same level of problem that we do in that space.
Lindsey Simmons:
Frankly, it's going to take a lot of money. It's going to take a lot of people. It's going to take a concerted effort, that what we're trying to do is build community and build bridges and not necessarily win an election next year. I mean, it's going to take real-time and real investments in taking care of these areas. The example that I always like to use for people comes from my home county of Saline, which in 2010, voted for the Democratic candidate for Congress, Ike Skelton. Then gerrymandering happened and the new district lines were cut, and we were put in the 5th Congressional District, which is Emanuel Cleaver, who largely represents Kansas City. And so a very different community than the rural one where I'm from.
Lindsey Simmons:
What has happened, because of the lack of investment in a county that my whole life was a Democratic county, is that for the first time, in 2016, they voted for a Republican. And that has continued to increase. Now, that doesn't mean we can't go back and gain back what we lost, but it does mean that we have to have some kind of vision and some kind of understanding that the problem is not solely the dark money and the misinformation and the bad media. Part of the problem is that, as Democrats, we did not invest and do the work and create the culture, and the environment, and the infrastructure needed to sustain long-term growth. And we're experiencing the fallout from that now where, in 2022, there's really not an exciting Senate frontrunner. We don't have anyone running statewide for auditor now. And that's all products of not having a bench, of not having trained people, of just kind not doing the work when we have the opportunity to do it.
Lindsey Simmons:
So, I think that there's a lot of issues. There's not just one. And there's a lot of work to be done, and it's only going to be done if all of the organizations in Missouri work together and if all of the people in various communities work together. That's the only way we're going to come out of this, truly. And we're going to have to do it ourselves because there's no national group that's going to decide like, "Hey, you know where I want to go? I want to go to Missouri." That's not going to happen. It's just not. And so we have to do it ourselves and we have to do it together.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yes. You can't see me, but I'm giving you a standing ovation right now. That is absolutely right. We're about out of time, but I just want to ask you about what you've been up to. You mentioned the Mighty Missouri Project. Can you tell us what that is or what folks in Missouri—or I guess donors from outside Missouri—can do to help us out of the quagmire in which we currently find ourselves?
Lindsey Simmons:
Well, I'll just say this, if anybody wants to drop, like, 5 million bucks into this project, we can get the ship turned around real quick. And I say that kind of flippantly, but I'm actually serious. If there is a mega-donor out there and you want to change the lives of people in Missouri, we need you to invest in us. What we're doing with the Mighty Missouri Project is trying to answer the question that so many folks had when I was traveling around, which is, you know, "There's a CAFO being built out here and now my water's contaminated. I want to get involved, but I don't know how?" Or, "I want more funding for my kid's school, but I don't know how to get involved." Or, "I want to start a Black Lives Matter protest in my town, but I don't know how." There's a huge barrier to entry in doing a lot of this work in Missouri.
Lindsey Simmons:
And so the very first project that we are doing is bringing all of the organizations across Missouri—and there are so many, there are so many amazing groups that do work in this state—and building a database so that people can just go to the website and they can run… I call it Tinder for organizing, where folks can match their interests, their talent, their geographic region, maybe the kind of work that they want to do, and they can find organizations seeking people with their skill sets or those interests or in that locality. And so we can help match the doers with the organizations doing the work. So, that's kind of step one.
Lindsey Simmons:
Step two after that is that we have to build a really strong infrastructure that enables all of these groups to communicate with one another. So that's kind of phase two of the project, and the overall goal of this is to have individual benchmarks and metrics that we can meet each year. The first goal that I have in 2022, is ending the supermajority in the Missouri legislature, which would be a very big victory, and that requires winning either two Senate seats or seven additional House seats. And that is not a task that is too big to do. Frankly, a good $600K could get that done in this state. So again, any of you big spenders listening, your money can go far here in Missouri.
Lindsey Simmons:
And to take from going from the state legislature and hopefully, over the course of the next decade, getting us to the next opportunity to redistrict in a more fair way, in an effort to preserve legitimate democracy in this state, that's the ultimate goal, but doing it by bringing people together and using the resources and the skillsets and the experiences that have already been developed here instead of trying to create something new and battling over territory or something like that. The real goal of the Mighty Missouri Project is to help you as an activist, you as an organizer, you as just a person who wants to do something to help, getting you in touch with the organizations doing that work.
Lindsey Simmons:
And so you can sign up at mightymissouriproject.com and the website, the Tinder for organizing has not gone live yet, but we're hoping to make that happen this summer. We're going to have a really big kickoff, and so if you are interested in that and want to be a part of it, just sign up and we will let you know when it is. Everything is free. We are not accepting any money from anybody right now… Again, unless you want to be a big donor and just buy it for us. But times are hard, so we're not taking donations quite yet, but that's what I've been working on since the campaign.
Sarah Kendzior:
Well, that's great. It's a pleasure to talk to you. It's a pleasure to talk to someone in Missouri who loves this state, is fighting for this state, who respects the people of this state, which is something I don't often see, either nationally or from our elected officials. And I'm really glad you came on. This makes me feel hopeful. I hope that people take your suggestions seriously, especially the big spenders out there. And I think we should have you back at some point. This was great. And if I'm ever out in Marshall visiting Jim the psychic Wonder Dog-
Lindsey Simmons:
The Wonder Dog, oh, my gosh.
Sarah Kendzior:
[laughs] I love that. I love that. For folks who don't know, Missouri is the only state in the country that has a monument to a psychic dog from, I believe the 1930s, is that right?
Lindsey Simmons:
Yeah.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is what Missouri is up to. And we're going to have a bill passed through the legislature to memorialize him in some more formal capacity. Maybe that can unite us, that can bring us all together?
Lindsey Simmons:
He has his own Memorial garden now.
Sarah Kendzior:
I've been to it.
Lindsey Simmons:
Okay.
Sarah Kendzior:
I actually drove to Marshall exclusively for this purpose. This was the goal.
Lindsey Simmons:
Excellent. Well, then we have succeeded.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yes, yes. You've drawn me in and I didn't even bother going all the way to Casey. I just turned right around and saw the sights.
Lindsey Simmons:
Right there, between 5 and 70.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, exactly. We had this whole intellectual conversation, we're going to end on the psychic dog. I actually feel like that's a perfect Missouri moment. It encapsulates the ludicrous nature of living in this state. Well, thank you so much for coming on.
Lindsey Simmons:
Yeah. Thank you for having me. And thank you all so much for the work that you do in sounding an alarm that many people wish wasn't going off.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. Right back at you.
Andrea Chalupa:
Our discussion continues and you can get access to that by signing up on our Patreon at the Truth Teller level or higher.
Sarah Kendzior:
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