Policy and Politics: A Candid Conversation with Tim Phillips

Tim Phillips is the President of Americans for Prosperity and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Under his leadership, AFP has grown from nine state chapters to 32 state chapters with full time staff on the ground and more than two million grassroots activists in 50 states. He is a veteran political strategist and a native of South Carolina. In 2014, Mr. Phillips was number 26 in The Politico 50.

When we take individual state races and turn them into referendums on national issues (Obama or the Congress), does that take power out of the states and put it into Washington?

I think it’s the opposite. The great, untold story of the last five years has been the once-in-a-generation movement of economic freedom-oriented legislation at the state and local level. Well over a dozen states have had dramatic tax cuts and budget reform – Indiana, North Carolina, Arkansas, Ohio, Michigan, to name a few. A couple of states have gone right-to-work, which is an enormous thing that hadn’t happened in several decades. Pension reform has happened across the country as well. School choice has been broadening education reform in almost two dozen states now.

So, I think you’ve had enormous movement on the policy side at the state and local level, but the federal government gets most of the attention. But really, there’s been more stalemate at the federal level with a few exceptions – Obamacare was a dramatic example of a massive new piece of legislation being passed into law, which we opposed, obviously. But I think it’s the exception more than the rule.

There’s so much work being done by our organization at the state level. For example, in South Carolina, we have a very healthy, vibrant operation there, where we spend a lot of time and money. It’s not in play at the presidential level, nor is there a senate race that’s in doubt. We do it because we want policy victories that expand individual liberty and economic freedom at the state level in South Carolina, and at the local level. Last year, one of our biggest policy battles was opposing a sales tax increase in Greenville County, South Carolina. We have state staff in South Carolina that said this is an important policy battle and we’re going to fight it.

Do you think there’s also a political credibility aspect to it? In that sense, it’s good strategy for the groups in Washington to go out and build a grassroots organization and approach these issues through people on the ground.

There’s added credibility when it’s a local person. Let’s use Wisconsin as an example. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, while they occasionally hit us on the issues, they know us. They’ve known our staff on the ground since January of 2005. So they know that when it’s AFP Wisconsin, it’s actually Wisconsin people. And local legislators, on both sides, although they may like or not like what our position is on a given issue, they know the guy talking about it and espousing it isn’t from DC. He or she is a Wisconsinite, and we’ve had staff there for a decade. And that does add credibility.

When you’re going up to grassroots volunteers and saying, “get involved: help us call and email these legislators to vote yes or no or turn out for this rally or please go door to door with us on this battle,” if they don’t know you, it’s going to be hard to get them to work with you. But when you’ve been there year after year, in a local fashion, they know. And that is such a crucial element to our model. A lot of groups have a DC office and consultants who fly around. We think that’s a bad model. It lacks integrity.

Where do you see opportunities to work with Democrats? How do you decide whether to participate in an election, to go against a candidate or to support a candidate or to abstain?

It’s got to be a case-by-case basis, but I’ll give you an example. At the state level especially, we work with a lot of Democrats and agree with them on education reform and school choice. They struggle with schools that are failing too often, that are normally in lower income areas and often disproportionately hurt racial minorities. Most of the time, the teachers unions do not want to do anything that would give parents a greater opportunity to have choices for their children to move them to other schools. We often ally with inner city Democrats against Democrats who are in more exurban and wealthier areas who, frankly, get support from the teachers union and aren’t willing to pay the political price.

That’s one issue. Some civil liberties issues we get involved with as well–cap and trade and the environmental agenda. We have a lot of private employee unions—sometimes Teamsters, Pipefitters, Steamfitters, and some of the other manufacturing-oriented unions—they know that the environmental agenda will kill their jobs. So we often ally with them to oppose the agenda coming from the climate change and global warming coalitions.

It’s more polarized at the federal level. At the state level, it’s different. When I was coming up 25 years ago, for the average Member of Congress, the greatest worry they had about their reelection was someone from the other party beating them. Half the seats were competitive. Now, a tiny fraction of Congressional seats are competitive. There are 242 Republicans in the House right now. The percentage of them that represent districts that Obama carried? 11 percent. That’s about 26-27 members. That means, for over 200 of them, there’s no danger of them losing a general election. They worry more about primaries. That doesn’t necessarily help bipartisanship on either side.

What are some structural issues that would enhance American democracy and better realize the vision our founders had for the country?

AFP does not advocate for or against structural things as much. So, I’m speaking more as somebody who’s been in the arena. I think that you could look at redistricting methods because the lines are drawn so precisely to make safe districts that it does dramatically reduce the number of competitive districts. I think that it’s good and healthy for there to be robust debates at election time in a large number of districts. I think that means general elections more than nomination elections. So, I don’t have a specific proposal there, but I do think we’ve gone too far with carving up districts to make just about every district “safe” in an electoral sense.

I strongly oppose – and here I am speaking as president of AFP – efforts to limit free speech. One of our most important and cherished freedoms – freedom of speech –makes us unique to most countries. Anytime government wants to more aggressively define what can and cannot be said in the public arena, Americans have every responsibility and right to be suspicious of that whether it’s from the left or the right.

Many Americans think our best days are behind us. What is the impact of policy given America’s baseline fundamentals, and are you optimistic for the future of the country?

I am. I think about how, at the state level, we’ve seen a once-in-a-generation flourishing of economic freedom and individual liberty policies over the last five years. Those policies are pushing back on larger government that is not efficient and doesn’t really help people. And so, I’m encouraged at the state level especially by the innovation that I’m seeing. At the federal level, it is daunting, and policies have real world consequences. I’ll give you an example. American corporations have over $2 trillion parked offshore. They’ve made money in other markets around the world, they’ve paid the taxes in those countries, and they want to bring that money home. But America has the highest effective corporate tax rate at the state and federal level in the Western world. They could bring that money back were it not for America’s outmoded – regressive, in many respects – corporate tax, that harms innovation. They could start investing that money or giving dividends to stockholders.

So, we have a lot of problems, but I tend to think that America’s fundamentals are pretty darn strong. We tend to have a lot more civic engagement than most countries around the world. That’s one thing we’re pushing and promoting at Americans for Prosperity. People want to decry Charles and David Koch and groups like ours being involved, but I think it’s every American’s right and responsibility to get in the arena and to try to make the country better by advocating policies that will make the country stronger and individual Americans stronger. We do not decry folks on the left who get involved, like George Soros. We think that’s a healthy thing. And I do think that sets us apart from most countries. We have an amazingly engaged citizenry. I know it’s becoming more apathetic in a lot of studies, and I get that, but we’re still among the world leaders. That gives me a lot of optimism.

 

Feature Photo: cc/(BLancasterUSA)