Is Mobile Voting the Fix for Our Broken Politics with Bradley Tusk

Grace: 00:00:00

Hi, it's Grace, and this is Frogmore Stew.

Grace: 00:00:06

Today, we are going to meet Bradley Tusk. He's written a new book entitled Vote With Your Phone, Why Mobile Voting is Our Final Shot at Saving Democracy. This is one conversation you're going to want to hear.

Grace: 00:00:36

Bradley Tusk. Welcome to Frogmore Stew.

Bradley Tusk: 00:00:38

Thank you for having me.

Grace: 00:00:40

You have a really fascinating backstory, political strategist, startup advisor, campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg, spokesman for Chuck Schumer, deputy governor of Illinois and Uber's first political advisor. That's quite a resume, but you also have a new book and I have so many questions.

Grace: 00:01:00

What prompted you to write your book?

Bradley Tusk: 00:01:02

Yeah. So I've been working on this issue since 2017, but really it's something I've been thinking about. I've been in politics since I started working in politics back in 1993. And as you've mentioned, I've worked in city government, state government, federal government, executive branch, legislative branch, different parts of the country. And I took one thing away from it, which is every policy output is the result of a political input. Every politician makes every decision solely based on the next election and nothing else. And yes, there are exceptions. And in my experience, Mike Bloomberg happened to be one of them. But they're few and far between.

Bradley Tusk: 00:01:36

And because of gerrymandering, the only election that typically matters is the primary. And primary turnout in this country is usually 10 to 15 percent. And who are those voters? They are the furthest left wing, they are the furthest right wing, or they are special interests who can move money and votes in low turnout elections. And that means the extremes not only pick who gets to win our elections, but then dictate what they do once they're in office. And as a result, we get either government that is totally polarized. So think Washington, D. C. Or we get totally one sided governments and that could be the state of Texas on the right or the city of San Francisco on the left.

Bradley Tusk: 00:02:10

And once I noticed that and I kind of understood it, but I also thought, I guess people are just too apathetic and can't do anything about it. And then, as you mentioned, I ran a lot of the campaigns to legalize Uber and ride sharing around the U S. And we were this tiny little tech startup at the time, and taxi was a pretty big muscular industry. But through the app, we were able to convince and get and mobilize millions of our customers to tell their elected officials, Hey, I like this Uber thing. Please leave it alone. And it worked. Right. And the question I started wondering about was like, Oh, I don't think most of these people are voting at city council primaries.

Bradley Tusk: 00:02:46

I don't think any of them can tell you who their state senator is. But when we made it really easy, they did something. So maybe they're not too apathetic. So what if they could vote this way? Would that work? And so that's what led to the creation of the mobile voting project. And we kicked it off by funding elections in seven different states, including South Carolina, where they're deployed military or people with disabilities. Voted in real elections on their phones. Those typically worked. And we then started building our own mobile voting tech, which we're going to make free and open source to anyone who wants to use it once we're done.

Bradley Tusk: 00:03:19

And then I needed to write the book because then the really hard work begins, which is, Passing laws all over the country to allow people to vote on their phones, of which you want to unite the two parties and all the special interests against you, uh, try to change the system and make it easier for them to lose power. All of a sudden they'll all come together. And so the book was an opening kind of call to start building this movement in this campaign.

Grace: 00:03:41

Got it. I want to back up a little bit because your resume is so fascinating and the Uber piece I think is to me the most interesting. Because outside of New York City and big cities where people typically used to use taxis, Uber was a game changer because you couldn't schedule a taxi when you needed it, which meant you had to use a black car.

Grace: 00:04:03

Which meant a lot of money. And in a place like South Carolina, people were kind of like, who cares Uber taxi, whatever. So understanding the difference of how valuable your work was around that sort of relates to where you live a little bit.

Bradley Tusk: 00:04:20

And the other thing that I just found as I was doing those campaigns is there's, okay, what's the view of the public. And then there's also. What's the view of the mayor or the taxi commissioner? And sometimes it was the public might not care or they might even be for Uber, but the mayor was getting a bunch of campaign contributions from the taxi industry and then that was impacting it. And so in a lot of ways, taxi was using typical political corruption to try to prevent competition and we were able to burst through that with enough volume of people.

Grace: 00:04:51

All politics is local.

Bradley Tusk: 00:04:53

Exactly.

Grace: 00:04:54

I do want to acknowledge too that you are an independent, right? You are independent politically. You say that all the time. You went to be the campaign manager for Michael Bloomberg. What was the draw to him?

Bradley Tusk: 00:05:06

Yeah. Um, so I had worked for Mike at city hall on his first term and really loved working for him. And he was just, He is the only person I've met who literally just has zero interest in politics while being the mayor of the biggest city in America. And I would argue the most important city in the world was so rare to see someone who just said, I'm going to do what I think is right, which by the way.

Bradley Tusk: 00:05:29

You or I might agree or disagree with him on a given issue just because he thinks he was right on something doesn't mean he was right, but he genuinely did it because he believed it was the right thing to do. And I've just never seen anyone behave like that before. Now, I know that he had the advantage of having billions of dollars and that gives you a lot of freedom and he didn't have to worry about making a living when he was out of office, but it was still so unique.

Bradley Tusk: 00:05:51

And I respected him so much that even, you know, After I left city hall to go be the deputy governor of Illinois, Mike and I stayed in touch and I would come say hello sometimes when I was back in New York and when the financial market whole collapse hit in 2008, I was working at Lehman Brothers and Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and took down a global economy and I get a call from Mike saying, what are you doing? And I said, I think you know, and he's like, yeah, I got an idea. Come see me. He wanted a, Try to run for a third term. And so we had to change the rules to allow them to run for a third term, which we did, and he asked me to run his campaign and it was an amazing experience because I got to work for someone who I just truly, really.

Bradley Tusk: 00:06:33

And look, I've worked with a lot of politicians and they're complicated human beings. Almost no one is all good or all bad. For example, Chuck Schumer. Chuck is very smart and very hardworking and he's not corrupt, but at the same time, Chuck is like the stereotype of a politician on steroids. Chuck is someone who desperately needs the affirmation of validation that comes with holding office and he will do anything to get it. And all of his decisions are motivated by what will get him attention.

Grace: 00:07:03

Political strategy-

Bradley Tusk: 00:07:05

Even strategy might be a generous way to put it. It's really more about personal psychological affirmation, right? But in many ways he's also good. I worked for rod blagojevich when I was the deputy governor of illinois He was the governor and in some ways rod was an utter disaster And he ended up with a 14 year jail sentence as a result of it And in some ways he was actually incredible because his political skills and instincts were remarkable.

Bradley Tusk: 00:07:27

And when he did care about something, he was able to mobilize support for it. And so we were able to do things like universal health care for kids or universal preschool. And that was in part because he had good qualities too. And so they all have both good and bad qualities, but Mike had. A lot more good quality than I had worked with before. And so when he offered me the opportunity, I jumped at it.

Grace: 00:07:52

What I really love about Bloomberg is exactly what you just said. He's very middle ground. He's policy focused, not long term political strategy focused. And I think to circle this background to voting, one of the problems that many states, South Carolina especially, has is that I don't believe that Most of the people here are that drastically different.

Grace: 00:08:15

There's a huge middle ground of people that are like, I feel this way, but I could nudge a little bit left or right to be supportive of a policy. But the way that we are set up as a state government eliminates basically any of that middle ground.

Bradley Tusk: 00:08:31

It totally Jerry, by the way, that's true everywhere, right? So take guns, just an example, 70 percent of Americans would say. We should neither confiscate everyone's guns, nor should it be easy to walk into a store and walk out with an assault rifle. Problem is, 70 percent of Americans don't vote in most primaries, so their views don't count. 70 percent of Americans would say, we should neither deport everyone here illegally, nor should we have open borders.

Bradley Tusk: 00:08:55

Same problem. Even abortion, our most controversial issue, the third rail of American politics, everything, about two thirds of Americans would say, yes, women should have the right to have an abortion. Now you can debate 12 weeks versus 16 versus 24. That's a reasonable discussion to have. But even our most controversial issue isn't actually that controversial. The problem is, like you said, because of gerrymandering, the only election that ever really matters is the primary. Right. Very few people currently vote in the primaries. And that's why we're stuck with this hyper partisan world. And that's why I want to do mobile voting. Because to me, 97 percent of Americans under the age of 50 have a smartphone.

Bradley Tusk: 00:09:32

Even 76 percent of Americans over the age of 65. Have a smartphone. And I'm not proposing getting rid of any form of voting. I'm just proposing making it another option, but a lot of people are not going to take their kid to school on Tuesday or be late for work or whatever it is to vote in a state or local primary.

Bradley Tusk: 00:09:49

But if you said to them while you're waiting for your coffee at Starbucks, or while you're sitting on the bus or whatever it is, if you press a few buttons, you can have your voice heard. A lot more would do it and then all of a sudden That larger view of people who agree on things like guns or immigrations or whatever it is Their views start to matter it forces the two parties to work together Even if you take your state, i'm not a huge fan of your senator lindsey graham But even when he did try to do something good on immigration ultimately He couldn't, he had to panic about what would happen to him back in his primary if he moved too far to the center on that issue.

Bradley Tusk: 00:10:25

And even though the business world of America desperately needs better immigration policies. And quite frankly, we have so many baby boomers that the only way to pay for social security and Medicare is to bring a lot more legal taxpayers into the system, right? Otherwise, I don't know how we're going to afford this thing. So a lot of Republican principles. Are really upheld by having more legal immigration, not illegal immigration. Still, because turnout is so low, someone like Graham, even when he tried to do something good, could do it. And that's the problem on both sides of the app.

Grace: 00:10:57

And it leads us to where we are in this state, which is out of 124 state house races, we have 60 that just have one person in the race. And it leads you to non democracy where you don't even have a choice on election day.

Grace: 00:11:15

I think you bring up a really great point in the book about low turnout of younger voters that they should actually be the biggest turnout because The people we're electing are going to be affected by it for the longest period of time and yet they have the lowest voter turnout I get all the emails from the heritage foundation And I did get one today that said I bet you've heard that voter fraud doesn't exist It's just a ploy.

Grace: 00:11:41

That's the baseless narrative constantly pushed by leftists and their mainstream media. The reality is that voter fraud does exist and is on the rise despite endless attempts to minimize the issue. They then are doing this survey that says your answers will help us pursue aggressive policy reforms and hold those who enable fraud legally accountable.

Bradley Tusk: 00:12:00

That's so funny because I have a stat in my book that says point zero zero zero zero zero five zeros. 6 percent of votes cast are impacted by voter fraud. Do you know where the study came from? The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation. Yeah.

Grace: 00:12:14

Really? Okay. But that's a narrative. And then on the left, it's that voting is being suppressed. Where do you fall into that? I'm just convinced.

Bradley Tusk: 00:12:22

The reality is. It's based on the 30 years that I've seen in and around politics. And then what have we built to try to deal with that? I just have not seen much of a voter fraud. I worked in Chicago politics. That is as ugly as it gets. And I saw all kinds of bad stuff. I've testified at corruption trials. I never saw one example of voter fraud or anyone even accuse anyone of voter fraud. In terms of suppression, I think there are states like Georgia and Texas that have passed laws that are designed to try to limit turnout. I still think that's not the norm by any means either.

Bradley Tusk: 00:12:53

Though I'm doing an event in Atlanta this week with MLK III at the Carter Presidential Library, and one of the reasons he does support mobile voting is because he thinks it's a good way to combat voter suppression. Much like with Uber, one of our biggest bases of supporters were African Americans, because every African American's had the experience of having their hand up in an empty taxi, passing them by, and they were really frustrated with that. We were able to say, Hey, when you come in, Press the button on your phone for an Uber. Like no one sees the color of your fingers. So you don't have to worry about that. That turned out to be true. But either way, look, I think that there are totally legitimate things to be concerned about with mobile voting.

Bradley Tusk: 00:13:29

And so let me tell you both what we built and how I think about it. So what we built is we use the U. S. Vote Foundation reports recommendation. So they said it needs to be end to end encrypted. And, and verifiable, have multi factor authentication, be air gapped, have biometric screening, and be open source for auditability. So we've built all that. So here's what it looks like in real life. Let's assume that we're a voter in Charleston for sake of this example. So you download the app from the Charleston Board of Elections. And the first thing they do is say, okay, is Grace a registered voter here in Trumpston? They determine that you are.

Bradley Tusk: 00:14:05

Next question is, is Grace really Grace? Right? So the first thing would be multi factor authentication. So the same way that Google or Amazon is texting you a code to your phone, you have to punch in to show that you're, you have to do that. Then your identification requirements are the province of local jurisdictions. But we have built this to be able to do biometric screening so that you can do a facial recognition scan or whatever it is so that it's very clear that grace is grace because they've identified it in a way that is as solid as could possibly be. So we've done that. Now the ballot pops up and the idea is to make the ballot look as simple as possible because the goal is to make it easy for people to vote.

Bradley Tusk: 00:14:43

But it does because it's electronic. You don't worry about stray pencil marks. If you remember the dreaded hanging chads, that's not an issue. You can't undervote. You can't overvote. So you, you make your choices, you check it over, you say, okay, this is definitely what I want. You can submit. Two things happen. Your ballot is immediately encrypted, which means it's very hard to crack. And two, you get a tracking number, like a FedEx package, you can track the progress of your ballot throughout the process. And then it goes back to the South Carolina Board of Elections or the Charleston Board of Elections. And they do something called air gapping, which means they take it offline.

Bradley Tusk: 00:15:16

So now I'm no longer connected to the internet and they don't decrypt it until it's offline, which obviously would make it much harder for anyone to access if it's not connected to the internet in the first place. Then they print out a copy of it. They mix it in with all the other ballots. And then finally, 1, you can track where your ballot went through the tracking code. So you can know that it was submitted, received, tabulated, printed, all that to the open source code means that people can check for any errors, any bugs, anything else. By making it open source, anyone can check it. One of the reasons that we have built this technology out of my foundation is there are private companies that were working on this and they're great, but they're private companies, which means they can't make the code open source and free because they can't stay in business.

Bradley Tusk: 00:16:01

I've spent about 20 million of my own money so far doing this. And I did that. I've done this a lot of my foundation and the reason why. It was necessary to do it philanthropically is I can make the code open source because I don't need to make money on this thing. I can't make money on this thing. It's totally nonprofit. So that's what we've built. And I would argue that when you compare it to the other forms of voting, and again, I'm not trying to get rid of any form of voting. I'm just trying to give people another option. And before we started talking, you mentioned you have a daughter who will go to college next year.

Bradley Tusk: 00:16:28

I dropped off my oldest at college this year for the first time. And what was interesting was she got a room key. We got there. Obviously she got a bike room key. And it didn't hit me till after I got back to New York that mail room key mailbox key never came up. And the truth is she would like to vote for what she hopes will be the first female president this year. But is she really going to do the whole absentee ballot process in the mail? Unlikely. Has she checked her phone 42 times since you and I started this conversation 20 minutes ago? Absolutely. Right. And so, I just want another way to meet people where they are. And then when you say, okay, even with everything you built, Bradley, couldn't there still be risk?

Bradley Tusk: 00:17:09

And my answer is yes, there's nothing bulletproof in life and I'm not going to pretend there is, but here's what you have to compare it to. Number one, the risks and vulnerabilities in the current forms of voting, hanging chads is what got us the outcome of 2000 that led to the person who didn't win the election becoming president. And by the way. Choices that he made leading to the Iraq war that I would argue turned out have what we know had nothing to do with 9 11 commissioner alone said that and led to a million deaths and 1. 7 trillion of taxpayer money wasted for effectively no reason and no benefit whatsoever. You know, hanging chads have significant vulnerabilities.

Bradley Tusk: 00:17:44

Mail trucks get lost. Polling places have to close because there aren't enough poll workers or last year, Maryland was a giant brawl outside of one of them. So things go wrong in all of the approaches. So you have to compare it to that. The other thing is, what's the cost of doing nothing? Right? I would argue that we have a society that is decaying so fast. That if we don't fix this problem, I don't know that we're going to be one country in 25 years. So we are heading down such a terrible road that yes, you have to consider is there a risk to mobile voting, but also what's the risk of maintaining the status quo, And that's why my view is, let's start small.

Bradley Tusk: 00:18:17

Let's start with city council elections, school board elections. Let's just see what works, find elections that are clearly not going to be of particular interest to Kim Jong un or whoever it is. And if it's working, great. We can expand it to state elections. That's what, maybe congressional primaries. We don't have to move fast, but at the same time, if we do nothing, we're going to do nothing to fix all the problems of this country. And we can't afford that.

Grace: 00:18:41

I know you just laid out all of the reasons that it's safe, but how do you see convincing people who think we need to actually go back to a hand paper ballot? Yeah.

Bradley Tusk: 00:18:50

There are some people I'm not going to convince. So for example, there's a group called verified voting. And if you want to think of who they are, they're the anti vaxxers. They're the people who love Bobby Kennedy, right? But here's what I know when I talk to regular people. So I polled nationally. And about 75 percent of people said, if it's secure, we should be able to vote on our phones. I need to mobilize the people. I wrote this book to try to start making the case to the people.

Bradley Tusk: 00:19:15

And if you look at every meaningful movement in our country's history, the status quo didn't want it, but enough people stood up that it happened anyway. They didn't want to let women vote, but ultimately it had to happen. They didn't want to pass the civil rights acts or the voting rights act, but it had to happen. They didn't want to allow labor unions to be created or same sex marriage or any of those things. But enough. People demanded their rights. And when that happens, things change. And so that's what we're going to have to do here too.

Grace: 00:19:39

You said that we have it in two places, right? Did you say South Carolina is already using it for the military?

Bradley Tusk: 00:19:44

South Carolina is for military as does a handful of other states, seven states total. We ran elections where we paid for the government's cost to administer that. So it was South Carolina, West Virginia, Utah, Virginia, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington.

Grace: 00:19:59

They use it for all elections for primaries.

Bradley Tusk: 00:20:01

Yeah, but just for deployed military. And in some places also for people with disability. So it's, which is good, but ultimately if the goal is to get enough turnout to take power away from the extremes, it can't just be one or two groups. It's gotta be the whole state. Everyone gets a chance.

Grace: 00:20:17

Yeah. Did you talk to them about, Hey, if this goes well, then eventually do you?

Bradley Tusk: 00:20:23

Yeah, we're going to need to pass legislation. So typically speaking. The people that we worked with were pretty innovative and they said. Look, I don't have the legal power to just say, here's how it is now, but I do have the power to say, let's try this as an experiment for deployed military or the blind or whatever it is. And so those are the people we worked with. The next step is going to be passing bills itself. And so what I'm trying to figure out right now is what are the cities around the country where there's enough appetite? For something like this to the change, for example, in South Carolina, Steve Benjamin, who was the mayor of Columbia for a long time, we've been talking about mobile voting to say, do you think Columbia might be into this?

Bradley Tusk: 00:21:01

And Steve is a very genuine, honest guy. If he thinks it's doable, he'll say yes. And he says, no, he's going to tell me no. I'm meeting with mayors and elected officials all over the country to figure out where's their appetite. If I could in 2025, maybe get five big cities. To say, yeah, let's try this thing out. Like we got to start something.

Grace: 00:21:21

Cities that have big colleges and then make the most sense because, because in South Carolina, for example, if you're living here from New Jersey or wherever you're from to go to college, you can't vote in the state of South Carolina. You have to have a South Carolina state ID in order to vote in the state. I would imagine there are scads of kids all over the country that, that just don't vote because. They're not going to fill out that form, like you just said.

Bradley Tusk: 00:21:49

Yeah. There's an example in the book about Chicago had a mayoral runoff in 2023. And do you know what turnout was for voters under the age of 30? It's 4%. So the people whose lives are most impacted in many ways, because they're going to make decisions. Do I want to stay in the city? Do I want to raise a family here? Is it safe for me to be here? Do I think they're going to be the kind of jobs I would want to do here? All those critical things.

Bradley Tusk: 00:22:12

They're impacted a lot more than someone who's much, much older and at the tail end of their life. If they're not voting because simply the way they live their life and the way that we vote are so incompatible, the people in some ways who have the most at stake have the least opportunity and we have to change it.

Grace: 00:22:30

Okay. I have one more thing I wanted to ask you about, and this is outside of the book, Mayday Health is an organization that you started or helped start that connects women in red states to medical providers in blue states. That can write prescriptions for Myofloprostone and misoprostol. So, as someone living in a red state with a very strict abortion ban, this is a critical solution for women who desperately need healthcare that they are not able to get here.

Grace: 00:23:01

There's something that you said, like, if abortion can solely be decided by a state legislature, Then women in red states who want an abortion need to pay attention to the presidential election is something that you brought up, but you have a really unique position on why that is. And it's not just because at the federal level, potentially they could change anything, right?

Bradley Tusk: 00:23:21

That's really kind of a technology solution in some ways, maybe conceptually similar to mobile voting in a way. And by the way, As you know, better than me, the three Republican women state senators in South Carolina who tried to fight for that all lost their primaries and turn out in their primaries were less than 10%. So that is exactly emblematic of the problem. So I, my day job is I'm a venture capitalist. I invest in, in early stage technology companies. And we invest a lot in telemedicine right now. Telemedicine is basically a patient and a medical professional speaking to each other over an electronic device with a prescription that sometimes being dispatched, maybe one day surgery gets performed in the metaverse.

Bradley Tusk: 00:24:03

I don't know, but that's not where we are right now. When it became clear that Roe was going to get overturned, I started wondering, like, how is abortion. Really different than Viagra. So like I'm an investor in Roe, which is a men's health company that their biggest product is Viagra that you can get prescription via text. And so while it's not really like an investable category where you've got venture capital money, I'm thinking about it saying, isn't it kind of conceptually the same thing? And if you're a woman in South Carolina and you want access to abortion meds. What if you talk to a doctor in a blue state who wrote the prescription and the prescription was filled and the meds showed up in the mail in a plain paper envelope?

Bradley Tusk: 00:24:43

They are 99 percent effective and even in the 1 percent cases whether or not they just present as a miscarriage. There's really no real way to stop it. So they can pass all the laws they want and look, this is also why mobile voting will ultimately be successful. Technology always wins at the end.

Grace: 00:24:57

Yeah. Progress.

Bradley Tusk: 00:24:58

Yeah. And so Mayday Health is an education nonprofit. Yeah. Yeah. that helps women in red states see where they get access to doctors in blue states. Who are willing to talk to them and if appropriate, write them a prescription for medication, how they can fill that prescription. And then we've been passing laws in some of the blue states to really make sure that there's strict legal protection provided for the doctors and practitioners, everyone who is involved in the process, they can feel comfortable being part of it. And the reason why I think especially, I think you were referring to a couple of my wrote on my sub stack for Harris is I just think there's opportunity here for her in the sense that Women in South Carolina assume, well, you know, as it, when I'm deciding how to vote, abortion is not a viable issue because my state legislature has already said no to it, but the truth is the federal government will have a big impact on the ability of tele abortion to continue or not continue.

Bradley Tusk: 00:25:49

There's a question of whether the FDA has the authority to make these drugs nationally legal, there's enforcement, there's all kinds of issues, telemedicine regulations. And so, while. Harris nor Trump could do anything about South Carolina specifically. What they each could do is make groups like Mayday more effective or less effective. And so in a lot of ways, if you're a woman voting in a red state where abortion is banned or severely limited, it is on the ballot because if Harris wins, then the ability to access. Abortion medication through telemedicine is going to be significantly greater than if Trump wins, right? It is a real issue for everyone.

Grace: 00:26:30

Yes, for sure. And there are so many things like that that are so much bigger than just one election that affects everyone's day to day life when we're voting. It's not just, Oh, I like how she looks or how he sounds. It's so much more than that. And the mobile voting is such a great game changer in so many ways. Bravo. I'm so happy.

Bradley Tusk: 00:26:55

I appreciate it. We're trying our best, but at the end of the day, no one has ever built a successful movement on their own, and this is only going to work if lots of people join together. So if you like what you heard, one, please consider checking out the book. It's called Vote With Your Phone While Mobile Voting is Our Final Shot at Saving Democracy. If you want to learn more about mobile voting, go to votewithyourphone. org or the mobilevotingproject. org and learn more there. Um, and we would love to work with anyone and everyone because we need all the help we can get to make this happen.

Grace: 00:27:24

One last question.

Bradley Tusk: 00:27:25

Yeah.

Grace: 00:27:25

Talk to me about PNT knitwear.

Bradley Tusk: 00:27:27

Sure.

Grace: 00:27:28

Lower east side on Orchard Street.

Bradley Tusk: 00:27:29

Yeah. So you're a former New Yorker, so you know the neighborhood. I love books. This is my third book and I had always thought, wouldn't it be fun one day to own a bookstore? And then when the pandemic hit New York city lost about half a million jobs and not that my bookstore is a huge employer, but I'm lucky that I've made money in technology and other things and that gives me some flexibility financially.

Bradley Tusk: 00:27:52

And I thought if you're going to do something nice for the city from retail perspective, Do it now when they really need it. And so when my family came to this country after world war ii They lived in refugee camps that the u. s Military ran and then finally a cousin sponsored them to come to the u. s in the very late 1940s

Grace: 00:28:10

From where

Bradley Tusk: 00:28:11

so they were in the dp camps in kassel germany My grandfather was from Poland. My grandmother was from Russia. They met in Siberia where they had my dad and my grandfather and another guy he knew from the DP camps opened up a 300 square foot sweater store called P and T knitwear on Allen street. And when I signed the lease for my place on orchard street, I texted my dad and said, Hey, where was that original store?

Bradley Tusk: 00:28:35

I knew it was around there. And he said, Oh, Allen Street, which was one block over from Orchard. And I said, remind me of the name he wrote P and T knitwear, but you cannot name a bookstore P and T knitwear. So the minute my dad told me I couldn't do it, it was, it was happening. Um, so we are a. Bookstore a podcast studio. That's the only one in New York. That's free for anyone to use an event space in a cafe And there's just a good indie bookstore. It's a terrible business, but I love running it knowing it Luckily, I can afford to lose some money on it. Yeah, but we make good coffee. We have good books So if you're in town,

Grace: 00:29:08

it sounds like my house except I don't have much to my husband's dismay the sale That's true.

Bradley Tusk: 00:29:14

You have the podcast and the books. I have coffee. Yeah. I have an event space, but other than that, it sounds like it's pretty similar.

Grace: 00:29:21

Need to start some sales to make some money coming in.

Bradley Tusk: 00:29:24

Trust me, books are hard to sell.

Grace: 00:29:26

I cannot thank you enough. This is such a fun conversation. I hope we can convince South Carolina to do this.

Bradley Tusk: 00:29:32

I hope so too. And I really appreciate you giving me an opportunity to talk about it.

Grace: 00:29:36

Thanks a lot, Bradley.

Bradley Tusk: 00:29:37

Thank you.

Grace: 00:29:37

That's all the stew for today. Talk to you next week.

Credits: 00:29:51

Frogmore stew podcast is written and hosted by Grace Cowan, editing and it support by Eric Johnson, produced by TJ Phillips with the podcast solutions network.