Stephen Cobb

Welcome to the fourth season of State AG Pulse. In this season, we’re diving into the state and federal political landscape in the run-up to the 2024 general election. We’re talking with our colleagues at Cozen Public Strategies to uncover information and insights to help business leaders make better decisions. This is Stephen Cobb and welcome to another podcast installment. But this is not one of our regular podcasts. In the special TV tradition of crossover episodes that we’ve seen in all time greats, like where The Simpsons meet The Family Guy or Family Matters meets Full House and the litany of Law and Order crossovers, today we have Cozen O’Connor’s State AG Pulse meeting Cozen O’Connor’s Beltway Briefing, joining together for a few special installments across 2024 as the election cycle takes off in earnest and we discuss issues of politics and policy as they sweep across the federal and state landscapes alike. Over the course of the year, we’re going to examine the races and the issues and what this will mean in the years ahead and most importantly, how 2024 will impact businesses and industries going forward.

Kicking off this special collaboration, we have the former attorney general of Virginia, co-chair of Cozen O’Connor’s State Attorneys General Group, Jerry Kilgore. We have the man from the land of Lincoln, five term former congressman, Harvard fellow and managing director here at Cozen O’Connor’s Public Strategies, Rodney Davis. And last but certainly not least, we have the knower of all things DC, the dean of troubled asset relief, and the CEO of Cozen Strategies, Howard Schweitzer. Howard, Jerry, Rodney, welcome to the podcast. It’s great to be here with you all. It’s great to combine State AG Pulse and Beltway Briefing to discuss these important issues. Welcome all three of you. Howard, why don’t you get us started, talk about a little bit about what’s going on in 2024 and some of the issues, races and politics that’s coming before the country, our clients and the races at large.

Howard Schweitzer

Sounds good. Thanks for the opportunity to collaborate on this. Obviously, it’s a big election year. We’re back to Biden v Trump, which is all we’re going to hear about for the next, however many months it is, seven months. It’s going to be a long seven months, but many, many critical down ballot races as well. The House and the Senate are both hanging in the balance. I think actually both chambers will flip. The Senate will go R and the House will go D, but we’ll see. It’s going to be close. We have a very narrowly divided country and it’s half red and half blue.

Stephen Cobb

Rodney, I think this is a great segue. You know, you were most recently on the ballot. What are some of those issues that, you know, if a candidate came up to you in a swing district and they said, hey, what are the top three things that you think I should be talking about to the independent voter that could make the difference in my success as a candidate? And they didn’t even tell you if they were a Democrat or a Republican. They were just talking about connecting with independent voters on, you know, what they will call kitchen table issues. You know, what are kind of those maybe two or three things that you think those candidates are looking at these days?

Rodney Davis

Well, Steve and Jerry, Howard, great to be on with you. First off, Stephen, immigration is a major issue right now for every single voter, not just voters that are in border states. Inner city voters are seeing the migrant surge of what’s happened in our southern border. Immigration’s been the number one issue for Republicans and Democrats in polling during these caucuses and primaries. And then you also have to ask about inflation. You have to ask about the economy and how inflation’s impacted their ability and their constituents or prospective constituents’ ability to go into the grocery store, to go into their department stores and their convenience stores and be able to afford things today that they used to be able to afford, even on a lesser salary just a few years ago. Those are the top two issues by far. And then thirdly, you’ve got to understand your district. You’ve got to understand the area that you’re running in, your constituency. And there has to be some local issues that you have to bring into the top three so that you can bring that local hook back to, and in my case, a national office that you’re running for.

Howard Schweitzer

Very different issues though Rodney, depending upon your political perspective. Obviously, abortion is a huge issue, at least nationally on the Democratic side of the aisle. So it really depends on your perspective. Immigration polls as a more significant issue on the Republican side of the aisle. So I think it depends.

Rodney Davis

Well, you’re right, Howard. It does depend, but that’s also dependent upon the counseling that I would give a candidate based on the district they’re running in. In many districts, some of those issues will rise to number one, number two. But nationwide, immigration has been the number one issue by voters in both Republican and Democrat caucuses and primaries during this primary season. And the economy, which is usually a catch-all for inflation and other issues, has been a close number two. So those, by far, are the top two issues that I think transcend both party lines.

Stephen Cobb

Well, Rodney, I’m going to push back on that because I’m going to take a slightly contrary position, which is that primary voters don’t necessarily make up the middle part of our electorate. And so if we are suggesting that it is the independents and the centrist voters that are going to determine the success or failure of candidates in the election, I’m not really sure that looking at primary voters and what their top issues were is necessarily indicative of general election success.

Rodney Davis

I agree, the independent voters in marginal districts are not going to go to the margins when it comes to immigration or inflation, but they have to come up with solutions. They have to be able to say, “I recognize that there’s a problem at the southern border” because you can’t lose your base on either side. Or “I recognize there’s a problem with migrants coming into our communities in inner city Chicago”. They have to be able to address those issues. And just because the talk shows want to always go to the extreme on the right and the left on the issues like immigration, it doesn’t mean that the independent voter doesn’t care about them.

Stephen Cobb

Now, Jerry, you’re a former statewide candidate. How do these things play out, not in district by district, but across, state-wide that can have a purple tint?

Jerry Kilgore

I would say in the past, you would have voters go into the voting booth and vote for a variety of candidates, Republican and Democrat, and you would have a mix in Virginia, of candidates elected. I don’t think we’re seeing that anymore, really around the nation. I think we’ve seen this nationalization of even local races where people go in and vote one party or the other. And we’re seeing that across the board. And that’s my concern or caution this year in that there will be coattails. And there will be coattails up and down the ballot.

Stephen Cobb

Howard, Jerry, I want to kind of flip that and pose a question to you both as to who has the coattails? And I think that’s kind of interesting because I think one of the things that we’ve seen state to state, particularly in some of these what we’ll call purple states, is a lot of the statewide candidates actually outperforming the presidential candidates, both in number of votes and vote share. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. North Carolina, Georgia, the last cycle, all of the statewide candidates outperformed presidential candidates. And so do we think that when we are trying to look at coattails going into the cycle, are we looking at how well things are going to go in North Carolina for those coattails? Are we looking at the Pennsylvania AG’s race as being indicative or is it going to be straight party? You know, is it going to be Biden Trump leading those races? Or can we look at some of these statewides who have really been leading the vote shares in these past several cycles as being, as continuing that trend going forward?

Howard Schweitzer

Whoever’s at the top, it has to have an impact.

Jerry Kilgore

It does, but you have to be able to screen through the noise if you’re running lower ticket. You know, for instance, in the attorney general’s race in Pennsylvania, they’re running directly under the presidential ballot. They’re the next office on that ballot. Those candidates, Democrat and Republican, have to be able to screen through the noise and talk about issues that matter in that race to get people to focus on the AG’s race and not just the presidential race in Pennsylvania and the same in North Carolina, where Trump has won, barely, both times he has run. And they have a governor’s race and North Carolina voters have been able to sort of mix and match there. They voted for a Democrat governor and barely a Democrat attorney general in the last two elections that Trump has carried the state. But we shall see in this election what’s going to happen in North Carolina.

Howard Schweitzer

I mean, on the presidential level, it’s going to come down as it has and does to half a dozen states. And in those states. Stephen, it’s, and we know what they are, the Rust Belt states and then Georgia and Arizona, maybe North Carolina, as Jerry was saying.

Stephen Cobb

Nevada.

Howard Schweitzer

But the margins in the rest of the country matter a lot. The margins at the presidential. And I think there’s a decent track record of down-ballot nominees outperforming, certainly on the Republican side.

Stephen Cobb

Rodney, one of the political issues that I think the president has tried to address, both on television and recently in the State of the Union, and certainly it has been a punching point for Republicans, has been on an issue of age. But the age of both former President Trump and the current President Biden isn’t the only age factor, obviously, particularly with Democrats.  Appealing to young people and getting them energized and out to vote is always one of the pillars of electoral success. How important do you think the issue of age could be in this cycle?

Rodney Davis

You know, as we’re taping this, it’s a day after the State of the Union, and I think President Biden did a good job addressing some of those accusations during the speech last night. He was not stumbling or speaking through applause lines. He was very good at going back and forth with the Republicans. But the sheer fact that was a number one concern of not just Republicans, but Democrats too, shows that this issue has some traction. But in the end, the voters who are voting in our primaries and caucuses have chosen the two oldest candidates to run for president in our nation’s history. So if somebody believes that age is the main issue you’re going to vote for or against someone, they’ve probably already made up their mind. Those who have not are going to be concerned about a wide variety of other issues that, as Jerry said, help separate who they’re going to vote for in down-ballot races versus this presidential race.

Stephen Cobb

I think that’s an excellent point. And so, Jerry, again, we’re looking at some of those issues that come to mind for those independent voters, second to the personality characteristics of the candidates themselves, what are some of those that you really see pushing through to the forefront?

Jerry Kilgore

I agree with Rodney that immigration and immigration tied to crime has been a big factor in state AG races and local races. I think you’ll see a lot of that in the upcoming election. But now Virginia has experience in the abortion issue being used against, for instance, the Republicans and the incumbents here. On the heels of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, that’s really the only issue the Democrats in Virginia ran on in the state legislative races last year. And they eked out control in both houses, running in the suburbs on the abortion issue and picking up a large majority of suburban women.

Stephen Cobb

Sure, and I mean, I think what we’ve seen over the last two years is any place that issues of reproductive choice has been on a ballot, when you look at places like Kentucky, when you look at Michigan, when you look at Montana, even in some of these very conservative states, when there have been statewide ballot initiatives, they have been passed overwhelmingly in support of women’s reproductive choice and against rolling back those protections. And I think you can look at Democrats to double down on that issue, in particular after the Alabama Supreme Court issue and its effects on in vitro fertilization and the chilling effects that could have not just in Alabama, but in all those states that have tried to continue to legislate on those particular issues. Howard, from a policy perspective, and when you’re talking to businesses and industries about how best to kind of position themselves through a very hard fought election year, looking as both a matter of politics and policy, what are the concerns that you’re hearing and what is the top level advice that you’re able to give?

Howard Schweitzer

Well, I think the concern that we’re hearing is that both parties, certainly at the extremes, but even arguably in the middle are skewing toward populism, that they’re playing a populist, they’re trying to appeal to people on a populist level. And so for big business, I think that really puts big business under the gun. For example, Big Tech. You have Lena Kahn who’s chairing the FTC, who is the Biden appointee and JD Vance, Senator from Ohio, said that he thinks she’d make a great FTC chair in a Trump administration. And so, you know, she has a very populist approach to antitrust enforcement. And so the parties, I mean, as far apart as we talk about them being all day, every day, some elements of the party are aligned. Another area: drug pricing. You have a lot of alignment between the parties on prescription drug pricing and clamping down on Big Pharma. There’s not a lot of daylight between them. If you’re a business you’re thinking about them and you have to think about them in a context in which notwithstanding the headlines, the parties aren’t as far apart on some things as you might expect.

Jerry Kilgore

I agree with Howard. Both parties have become populist and this isn’t, the Republican party is not your Chamber of Commerce party any longer. And it’s, they don’t just instinctively support big business or business in particular. They are looking for populist issues to take back to their constituencies and whether it’s drug processing, social media companies, data privacy, cybersecurity, the state AGs are aligned in a bipartisan manner on those issues and they tackle those issues together. And we’re seeing that across the board.

Stephen Cobb

It continues to be interesting to see kind of that overlay of what are those areas where they’re more alike than different and how that impacts that policy formulation. But really, I think more often than not, comes to play in the regulatory side more so than the lawmaking side of things, the regulatory process and particularly regulatory enforcement side that we see both at the federal and state level. Howard and Rodney mentioned FTC, but obviously with state AGs as well. And obviously there’s the potential for a lot of new leadership there within the state AGs. We have open races in North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington state. So there’s going to be a lot of new faces, and people with new priorities. But I still think that a lot of those issues, Jerry, that you were hitting on, right, consumer protection, data privacy, antitrust. Now, switching gears a little bit, and Rodney, not to put you too much on the spot here, but I’m going to put you on the spot. If you were looking at a few congressional races that you think are going to be kind of indicative of the national races, which are litmus tests of  which presidential candidate is going to win, how do we think control in Congress is going to go,  really kind of where partisan shift is leaning, where would you tell our listeners to look?

 

Rodney Davis

That’s a great question. I will tell you when I was running for reelection in 2014 and then running the subsequent 2016, 2018, 2020, I would always look at South Florida because there were districts down there that would flip back and forth and I always knew I was going to have a good night when we were winning districts in South Florida that were supposed to be very competitive. And our candidates like Carlos Curbelo and Carlos Jimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar were winning these seats, that would tell me that it’s going to be a good night in Central Illinois, in my district. But those districts have kind of solidified now. You can’t use them as a barometer. So I would look to states like New York. When you look on the East Coast, figure out where’s the momentum. And then you can also look at some seats like in Virginia, Jen Kiggans and others that are more swingy seats. And as you go into more of the central time zone, there’s really only, there’s not many competitive districts outside of a Don Bacon in Nebraska. And you can also look westward a little bit at a Juan Ciscomani in Arizona. And really the number of competitive districts overall has shrunk so much since I first ran in 2012. And that has to do with states being controlled by one party or the other and gerrymandering most of those congressional districts into a solid Republican district or a solid Democrat district. But the states that you also want to watch out for are states like Wisconsin, where you’re going to have competitive races like Bryan Steil, Michigan, John James, and a few others that you can look at.

That’s where you see if the low propensity Trump voter has an impact on those congressional races, because that low propensity Trump-only voter that only comes out to vote when he is on the ballot is a big margin and could be the margin in states like Georgia, could be the margin in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and even North Carolina, as you just mentioned.

Stephen Cobb

Howard, how about you? What are you looking at?

Howard Schweitzer

Well, we’ve got very, very close races for the Senate. You know, you’ve got Montana and Ohio. Those are both neck and neck where you have Democratic incumbents running in what are now solidly Republican states. You’ve got Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, so some very, very tight and important Senate races. And I’ll be watching those in addition to, you know, many other things.

Stephen Cobb

And I think it’s, it’s interesting. It’s just showing how much politics has changed over the last years and decades. And so the point that Jerry was making earlier about kind of how there’s been a kind of a shift sometimes for people who used to split ticket, but when you look at Ohio and Montana, there are going to be thousands of voters who vote for Sherrod Brown and Donald Trump. And I don’t know who that voter is.

Howard Schweitzer

I do. Union voters.

Stephen Cobb

Okay. There you go.

Howard Schweitzer

Union voters because, I mean, the unions themselves are pro-Biden, but many of their members are pro-Trump. But Sherrod Brown obviously has a track record on organized labor and is well liked. And we don’t know yet who the Republican nominee is going to be. But yeah, I mean, that’s a key constituency for both races. And I think Trump gets many, many, many more union votes than a normal Republican candidate would.

Rodney Davis

And where Howard is going with this, the blue collar voter has changed a lot over the last 10 years that I was in office. I used to have UAW workers tell me they could never vote for me because I’m Republican. At the end of the decade, they would remind me when they thought I wasn’t Republican enough. But it works both ways on that labor issue. So Democrats who go in and vote for Joe Biden will also vote for a pro-labor Republican. So it does balance out too, but Howard’s absolutely correct on that split voter in Ohio.

Stephen Cobb

Does that bleed outside of the Midwest?

Rodney Davis

Yeah, I mean, it has to, absolutely. You look at polling and the work experience of those polled and the education level of those polled, you’ve seen a shift to the Republicans from those who are high school grads versus college-educated adults. College-educated adults in the suburbs used to vote Republican up and down the ticket. Jerry can tell you that, where a lot of times he ran strong in suburban Virginia, probably he wouldn’t run as strong in suburban Virginia now.

Jerry Kilgore

You’re exactly right. But as you know, Stephen, in Virginia alone, the western part of the state used to be the battleground. Because you had the union influence, you had the conservative Democrats in the western part of the state, union supporters, but that’s no more.

Stephen Cobb

I mean, it’s hard to get a Democrat to even stop by there more than once.

Jerry Kilgore

Exactly.

Howard Schweitzer

And it’s definitely not just the Midwest because take Nevada, for example, the casino workers union is very influential. And probably less impactful in a state like Georgia, but we’re talking about states where it’s a sliver of voters that at least at the presidential level are going to make a difference. And that’s the world we’re living in.

Jerry Kilgore

My, one of my questions I have for our two national guests here today is, what impact will international relations have on the race? If any. I mean, do people vote based upon international issues, whether it’s the war in Ukraine or the Israel conflict?

Howard Schweitzer

I’ll go first. If I were Joe Biden, I mean, it’s obvious he’s very worried about the Arab American vote in Michigan. It’s very localized, but Michigan and then, Minnesota is another state, I think they’re very, very worried about the impact that the conflict in Gaza could have on voter turnout. And I think that’s why you’ve seen the administration scale back a lot of its rhetoric. That is the only reason they are scaling back their rhetoric because Joe Biden and his administration came out, very appropriately in my opinion, my personal opinion, strongly pro-Israel after October 7th. But they’re doing all sorts of things now to try to make it look like they’re moderating their position. And that’s why and everybody knows that’s why. It’s the election. I don’t think Ukraine itself has much of an impact, is going to have much of an impact. Rodney, do you do you have a different view?

Rodney Davis

Most of those who are basing their vote on Ukraine support have already made up their mind. They’re not a swing voter. But I agree with Howard when it comes to issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Israeli-Hamas conflict. And I’ve said it on the BBC when they’ve asked me to come on and talk about these issues. The Biden administration and President Biden is trying to have it both ways. And that could mean that an issue like this could have a larger impact in really making both sides angry at the president for trying to say he’s pro-Israel in one setting versus another, where he goes into Dearborn, Michigan and flips the script. And those voters, and enough of them in those states, could run away from him and have a tremendous impact.

Howard Schweitzer

It’s a very, very good point.

Rodney Davis

One thing to think about though too, when it comes to, you’re talking about international issues. For most Americans, the southern border is an international issue. We see Ukraine, we see Israel, we see NATO, we see other issues across the Pacific and Atlantic as international issues. But the majority of voters who don’t live, eat, and breathe politics every day like all of us, they see the southern border as their international issue. So let’s not discount that and the impact that can have.

Howard Schweitzer

I think the one other issue area is of course China. But Jerry, I mean, there’s really no daylight between the parties on China. I mean, I say this all the time. It’s not like Trump left office and Biden rewrote China policy. They’re basically the same. So, I don’t see that, I mean, that’s probably as far as obviously we’ve got these conflicts but the most significant ongoing international relations issue we have is China. And there’s just, it’s another one where there’s no daylight between the Rs and the Ds. Very little.

Jerry Kilgore

Do you think there will be a third-party impact on the presidential race, whether it’s Kennedy or others?

Rodney Davis

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think especially in a race that we expect where a small number of four to five to five to six states are going to determine who the president is. And it could be by less than 100,000 votes nationwide. Of course that third party candidate is going to make a difference. And you have to look at polling to see how much of an impact they’re having. If Kennedy’s on the ballot, I think it could have an adverse impact against Trump and Biden. Also, probably a little more so against Biden. But the third-party candidate’s effect on an election is only relevant when it is a close election in states that we’re talking about, and also if the candidate has some resources to be able to put into that race and garner at least a larger share of those voters who are disenfranchised and disappointed with those two major party candidates.

Howard Schweitzer

I agree with Rodney on the fact that the race is so close, the course can have an impact. This is the election of the so-called double haters because these candidates both are very, they’re disliked by a majority of Americans. Both of them are. And those double haters are looking for a home for their vote. I think we’re going to have a lot of people that don’t either don’t vote at all or don’t vote for either one of them. Now maybe they’ll write, maybe they’ll write folks in, but maybe they’ll pull the lever for one of these third party candidates. It’s very possible.

Stephen Cobb

I think it’s possible, but if the election is held today, I don’t think that any of the currently announced third party candidates have enough organization or resources to make the necessary impact in any of those five states that we’re talking about. Most of the votes, I think, as Rodney hit on, for someone like Kennedy, are going to come from really extreme parts of both parties. And I don’t necessarily think those folks were necessarily going to vote for Biden or Trump anyways. And so I have a hard time thinking that we were looking for those, either Democrats or Republicans were looking to bring those votes home.

Howard Schweitzer

Question for you guys. So as we always say, AG stands for aspiring governor. The vice president is a former state AG. Many members of the Senate are former state AGs. Many governors are former state AGs. So who are you all looking at as current AGs that have potential for higher offices in the future?

Stephen Cobb

Gosh, I mean, that’s a good question. And, you know, some have already, they’ve just taken the jump. I think we’ve seen, what many of us already knew is that Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania was an incredibly talented attorney general, and now is showing himself to be a very talented governor. I think people are already looking at him on the national scene. By the nature of the states they represent, Tish James and Rob Bonta are obviously regulatory forces of nature. Josh Stein is going to be a formidable candidate for governor in North Carolina and is doing a wonderful job. Andrea Campbell, I think her star is still rising in Massachusetts.

Howard Schweitzer

It’s why it’s so impactful that we have all this under one roof because I mean the AGs, and we obviously are constantly talking about our state AG practice to our clients, the state AGs, Jerry, you and I have done so much together over the years, they’re just so powerful and you know, no, they’re not the governor, no, they’re not a senator, but they have so much, it’s like the ultimate combination of politics and legal enforcement authority and they’re just, they’re so impactful. And then they take that and they go on and they do more.

Jerry Kilgore

Right. But you have both Missouri senators are former, are the past, very past state attorneys general. And you can look for, you know, Ashley Moody in Florida, Chris Carr in Georgia, Alan Wilson in South Carolina.

Stephen Cobb

Aaron Ford in Nevada. They’re all going to be running for governor.

Jerry Kilgore

They’re all going to be running for governor, maybe Miyares here in Virginia. Everybody’s going to be running for governor and moving on up.

Howard Schweitzer

What are you guys looking at this year as the most significant kind of cross-cutting state AG and by cross-cutting, I guess I mean multijurisdictional. Where are state AGs, where are they focusing most of their attention now?

Jerry Kilgore

Anything dealing with consumer protection, particularly protecting children and the military. So social media has been a big aspect of the state AGs’ agenda for the past year or so. They just sort of are concluding the opioid lawsuits and multistate investigations. And they’re going to continue looking at cybersecurity and data privacy, antitrust issues. I mean, they all come together on those types of issues.

Stephen Cobb

Yeah, I’ll throw two more on top of that. Artificial intelligence. I think when you’ve seen both the EU, Congress, but especially state AGs, and here, this is an area in particular where I think they are still figuring out where their regulatory enforcement is going to lie. But every single conference, every single meeting you have with state AGs, there will be some panel, some discussion, some roundtable that is focusing on artificial intelligence because it is a going concern and they are still trying to figure out exactly where they feel that their regulatory powers are going to be most effective. And the second is always going to be in competition, right? Antitrust, anti-competitive, then that crosses all political boundaries. They are all involved and will continue to make their voices heard there.

Howard Schweitzer

Interesting. Yeah, look, it’s a continuum. I mean, obviously we share many clients and there are issues that, there’s not, there’s an actual interplay between the state AGs and the federal government because you have state AGs weighing in on things at the federal level. But it’s also I think the need exists to tackle things on multiple levels because sometimes when Washington can’t move the needle on something, it’s the states that will move the needle and vice versa. So it’s just, it’s an interesting time and we’re lucky to have all of this together here at Cozen.

Stephen Cobb

Howard, you’re too kind and I think that’s reciprocal. I think many of our clients always benefit from the wonderful work that Strategies does, not just in D.C., but in state capitals around the country as well, because it’s not always just the regulatory enforcement side, but there’s the policy side that is continually and ever evolving in state legislatures as well as Congress. And so it’s always a pleasure when we can partner up either on podcasts or on policy.

Howard Schweitzer

There you go.

Stephen Cobb

So thanks everybody for taking the time. Rodney Davis, Howard Schweitzer, Jerry Kilgore. This has been a special edition of State AG Pulse in collaboration with the Beltway Briefing. We look forward to many more collaborations over 2024 as we bring you insights into this presidential election cycle. You’ve been listening to State AG Pulse, brought to you by Cozen O’Connor’s State AG Group and the State AG Report. Please leave us a 5-star rating and of course, tune in again in two weeks for our next episode.