Tad Devine & Hillary Braseth

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:00)
Hi, I'm Molly JongFast, and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. We're on vacation, but we still have an amazing show for you today.
Former Bernie Sanders, chief strategist, and Devine's top spy, to talk about his new book, How the Democrats Screwed Bernie Sanders. But first, we'll talk to OpenSecrets' own Hillary Braseth about her organization and how it's shedding light on money and politics. Welcome, welcome, Hillary.

**Hillary Braseth** (0:33)
Thank you, Molly. It's great to be here. Big fan of the podcast.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:37)
Oh, so let's talk about OpenSecrets. You guys have a lot on your plate here with this democracy, as we call it.

**Hillary Braseth** (0:45)
It's a good way of putting it. It's a ripe time, we'll call it.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:49)
Yes. So what does the job look like right now? And what does the landscape look like right now?

**Hillary Braseth** (0:55)
Yeah. To answer that question, it's always helpful to share a bit of context because some folks immediately know our work when they hear our name and others have not. And even those who have heard our work or gone to our website might not know the history of the organization. And it actually dates back to the 80s. So I don't know if you knew that, Molly.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (1:16)
I did know that.

**Hillary Braseth** (1:17)
You did. Great.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (1:18)
But give us the history of it.

**Hillary Braseth** (1:20)
So I love sharing this story because it's quite uncommon in today's times. But the genesis of OpenSecrets actually began with two senators on opposite sides of the aisle, how novel, who saw money as a growing factor, a growing variable in the political and decision making process, everything from lobbying to the way that candidates do fundraising for their elections. And these two senators, Frank Church and Hugh Scott, decided that this information should be made transparent and public as a part of the accountability ecosystem. And so OpenSecrets actually started out as a three-inch thick, 1,500 pages long book.
It was a book that was literally titled OpenSecrets, and you can go to the library, look for your member of Congress and see who funded them. Eventually, when the Internet was born in the 90s, they digitized all of that data.
And hence today, we have the website, opensecrets.org. You can go on there, you can search for your member of Congress, you can see who funds them, you can see how much of their money comes from inside their district versus outside of their district, male versus female donor breakdown, how much money are they receiving from what's called outside spending or the main vehicle where dark money comes into the picture. So when we look to today, this iteration of OpenSecrets is very different in that we went through a merger a few years ago and we now have all data across 50 states, which means we have state legislature, candidates, governor, any level of state governance you could imagine, and also the federal data. So we're really busy right now integrating these major datasets, especially ahead of the midterms and making major updates to our website to just make it easier for you to understand what this information all means. As a voter, as a journalist, as a professional, as someone who's just interested in and genuinely concerned and engaged as part of this country.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (3:22)
So let's talk about what are the tensions about this kind of transparency and who are the people who are likely trying to not share this information or make sure this information doesn't get out.

**Hillary Braseth** (3:38)
Yeah, tension is the best word, I think, to describe this process, because on the one hand, I think money on some level is, of course, inevitable in this process.
On the other hand, I think the scale and the volume of money that we've seen with our own eyes, having followed this for as long as we have, has exponentially increased over the last 15 years since those court cases back in 2010 So who doesn't want this information to be public? Of course, I know on one hand, political candidates like our data because it's another tool for how they run for office and strategize. On the other hand, I don't know that they love all of their ish being out there all the time. So that tension is a challenge but also useful. And then of course, the ultra wealthy who with the rules as they've now been etched, just in general have greater ways to influence and get heard by publicly elected officials. And these folks love their anonymity.