[Below is part two of a wide-ranging interview that I conducted with my longtime friend Dan Schnur, who is running for Secretary of State. Part 1 can be found here. An this interview we discussed a variety of issues. For me, the highlights included hearing about Dan’s start in politics on the Reagan campaign, his candidness on the need to have real ethical reforms in the State Capitol, and why he disagrees with Pete Peterson on the critical question of voter ID laws. — Flash]
Dan Schnur
Flash: I want to chat a little bit about your thoughts about what’s been going on in Sacramento lately relative to now we have not one, not two, but three state senators that are facing criminal charges or convictions. And then, we’ll close by talking a little bit about how people reading this interview can get ahold of you and your campaign. So talk to use about Sacramento. We’ve got Senator Rod Wright convicted of eight felony counts of election fraud and perjury. We’ve got Senator Ron Calderon who is now facing enough charges about selling his office to face like half a millennium in jail, along with his brother the former Senator, Tom Calderon. Now we’ve got Leland Yee, the State Senator who…I almost want to laugh or chuckle when I say she’s been accused of trying to buy arms from Russian Extremists so he can turn around and sell them to Islamic Extremists in the Philippines. It kind of belies logic. What is going on up there?
DS: The common thread between each of these three scandals is that they’ve all taken place in a state capital that has become poisoned by a culture of corruption. Rod Wright and Ron Calderon and Leland Yee all have one important thing in common.
Flash: Besides being Democrats. Sorry, I had to weave that in.
DS: Of course you did. One other important thing in common: they all believed that the rules that apply to the rest of the people in California shouldn’t apply to them. Darrell Steinberg, State Senate President, said recently that one scandal is an aberration and that two scandals is a coincidence. And then he asked what does three scandals represent? The answer is, Senator, three scandals is a crime wave. The fact that there is a crime wave in our state capital taking place among our elected officials is embarrassing. It’s unacceptable and it needs to stop.
What’s most instructive to me is the contrast between the Calderon and the Yee case. In both of these instances you have state legislators accused of public corruption. After the Calderon case broke, the powers that be in Sacramento were fairly dismissive of the whole thing. When the Yee scandal became public, all the sudden they became outraged. So the lesson that we have to take from these two instances is that the ruling class in Sacramento believes that public corruption is perfectly acceptable as long as it doesn’t involve guns.
Flash: You’ve had some harsh words for the way the legislative leadership have handled these scandals. What upsets you the most?
DS: In their efforts to protect their corrupt colleagues, the legislature has embarrassed themselves. First, all three of these Senators – Yee and Calderon and Wright – are still on the public payroll. They have not been expelled and are actually still receiving their taxpayer-funded salaries. The State Senate has essentially given them a paid vacation that will carry them through the end of their time in office. That is outrageous.
Just as outrageous to me is the suggestion from the Senate leader that the answer to these problems is to institute public financing of campaigns. Several of his members are arrested on felony charges, and Darrell Steinberg thinks the answer is to force California taxpayers to pay for their re-election campaigns. Our tax dollars ought to be spent on police protection and teachers and firefighters, not on political consultants to make nasty television commercials. It’s a perfect example of how out of touch career politicians become when their own political survival becomes more important to them than the people they’re elected to represent.
Flash: Let’s talk about the office of the Secretary of State a little bit. Obviously we’ve talked about your proposal on the campaign finance side, but what else would you say is kind of on your bucket list of things that you would do as secretary of state to kind of make a mark?
DS: There are three overriding priorities. The first is the ban on fundraising during legislative session, as we’ve already discussed. The second will be increasing civics education in California public schools. I realize that sounds fairly distant from the responsibilities of this office, but let me take a minute to explain.
Flash: That’s why we’re here.
DS: My students, the millennial generation, vote in smaller numbers than any other generation in America today. But, they also volunteer their time back into their communities in larger numbers than any other generation in recent American history. I’ve come to believe that one of the main reasons for that are the lessons that we teach them and don’t teach them when they’re in school.
Most California high schools require their students to volunteer a certain number of hours before they can graduate. Mandatory volunteerism – it’s one of my favorite oxymorons. But all jokes aside, while they’re being required to volunteer, these young people are learning valuable lessons. They’re learning about the importance of giving back to their community. They’re learning about being part of a cause greater than their own self-interest. So, when they go on to college and when they go on to adult life they continue to volunteer in very large numbers.
By contrast though, most California public schools only require a single semester of civics before their students graduate. That’s usually offered in the 11th or 12th grade. So think about the message that we’re sending to California’s next generation of leaders. We’re saying that this politics stuff, this government stuff, this democracy stuff is so unimportant that we’re not going to bother teaching it to you for your first 10 years of school. But then, we want you to turn around a year later and be responsible citizens and responsible voters. So, I would not only expand civics education in our public schools. I would also relate it directly to the volunteer activity in which our students are already involved. That way, our young people don’t see politics as this strange and distant and weird thing. They see it as a natural extension of the work they do to make their community a better place to live.
My third goal as secretary of state would be to work to make it easier rather than harder for California small business owners and entrepreneurs to succeed. The Sacramento Bee did a series of stories last year in which they reported that our secretary of state requires eight to ten weeks to turn around an application for a small business license. By contrast, the State of Texas processes new business applications in three to five days. So, the Bee did further research to find out why that is. What they found is that the California Secretary of State’s Office does not keep business license records on the cloud. They don’t keep those records on a hard drive. They don’t keep those records on a floppy disk. In the calendar year 2014, the State of California keeps those records on index cards.
Flash: Nice.
DS: I thought it was a joke. I thought they were going to say that when you get a business license is it delivered to you by carrier pigeon.
Flash: Right. But it turns out it is absolutely true.
DS: The reason for that they found is because Secretary Bowen was called before the legislature to testify and she explained that the Secretary of State’s computer system could not handle the greater load. She said, you have to understand when we first got to this office there weren’t even enough outlets for our computers. Now, keep in mind she’s been there for almost seven years at that point. My wife and I moved into a new house a few months earlier and there weren’t enough outlets in our house when we moved in. Do you know what we did?
Flash: You put in some more outlets.
DS: We put in more outlets. That’s exactly right.
Flash: How hard is it to fix this?
DS: During my time at the FPPC I learned that this type of computer upgrade could be accomplished very inexpensively and very quickly. It defies the imagination that it hasn’t happened yet. So, one of my most important goals is to make it easier rather than harder for young men and women who want to start a small business.
Flash: Dan, we’ve got to finish up our time together. As always, I like to make sure that the people who have been reading this interview have an opportunity to find out more about your candidacy. So, if they were going to aim their web browser somewhere, where would they aim it?
DS: Our website is www.4schnur.com. And for those of you who are listening rather than reading, that’s www.4schnur.com. ]If you do go to the website, I hope you’ll look at everything we posted, especially my policy agenda. But, I also hope you’ll look at the endorsement page because what you’ll see there is that I’m not accepting endorsements from politicians. What you’ll see on that page is endorsements from my former students, young people who work in politics and public service and who work in the private sector. You’ll see endorsements from former students—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. But, hopefully you’ll see that young people can be motivated to participate in politics in public service. But we need to fix a broken system of politics first.
Flash: Alright. Thank you very much Dan.
[If you want to check out more about Dan’s candidacy, check his campaign website here.]