BONUS: JANUARY 6TH COMMITTEE HEARING DEBRIEF WITH FORMER PHILADELPHIA COMMISSIONER AL SCHMIDT

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Weston Wamp: I'm Weston Wamp, and this is “Swamp Stories,” presented by Issue One. 

Weston Wamp: Hi, I'm Weston Wamp, and this is a special episode of “Swamp Stories” focused on the January 6th hearings. A bipartisan committee in Congress continues to hold a series of important hearings to shed light on the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by rioters hoping to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. We're continuing our series of special conversations with leading political experts in response to the hearings to dive into what happened, what we learned, and how members of both parties are responding to events.

Weston Wamp: Today, I'm speaking with Al Schmidt, former Republican Philadelphia City Commissioner, and former member of the Philadelphia County Board of Elections.

Weston Wamp: Al, thanks for your time and for your service, both to your community, and then here in a historic set of circumstances to the country. There are some members of our party who would like for the events around January 6th to just kind of fade into history, I think, but you experienced firsthand the consequences of President Trump's statements undermining the integrity of our elections. Why is it important that we understand fully what led up to January 6th?

Al Schmidt: I think for a couple of reasons, some a little bit forward looking, and some a little bit backward looking, in terms of documenting history. I think one of the most important things the committee is doing is creating a historical record to lay out the chronology and to lay out the context of what led up to January 6th. How it was built around lies about the 2020 election that led to, for example, threats to election workers across the country, Democrats and Republicans in big cities and rural counties and their families, in my case, and many others. And also led up to the violence that we saw on January 6th. So, it's backward looking, I think in that sense, in a good way, that this be documented for history.

Al Schmidt: I think it's important that it's also forward looking so that we can go into the next couple of elections and cycles ahead with our eyes wide open to make sure that what occurred then and led up to then doesn't happen again. I think that's a very important part. It's distressing that members of our party choose to cover their ears or close their eyes to what occurred because there's none of them that would possibly embrace it, or think that it's a good thing. They all just want to write it off as old news.

Weston Wamp: What is the path forward for a party that has embraced narratives that even the election workers, I think this is where this becomes pretty personal to you, were implicated in some kind of grand conspiracy. That conspiracy theory is so detached from the way that we have and have always executed elections in a very decentralized manner.

Al Schmidt: You're totally right, Weston. As much as there is a diversity of opinions and people from different parties and different backgrounds in their positions, when you talk to election administrators across the country, there's no difference between the Republicans and Democrats. They are following the law. It's largely a ministerial responsibility. They all want their voters’ votes to be counted. If you don't want your voters’ votes to be counted, you really shouldn't be in that business to begin with. All of them do it with the utmost value of the integrity of that process, and never want that to be violated in any way. It's a real problem, to state the obvious, that our party is embracing and indulging in this paranoid fantasy that the 2020 election was stolen because it deceives a lot of people. A lot of people that you probably know, and I know, who are good and decent people who are smart people, and have just had their minds poisoned by all of the lies that they've been consuming. That's a real concern for the future, for sure.

Weston Wamp: I'm sure it didn't conjure up a positive experience for you and your family, but to those who downplay what happened both on January 6th and the president's role in perpetuating conspiracy theories, you were on the very front end of this as Philadelphia, even really beginning on election night, the day after, came into focus, clearly you could tell this was part of the president's strategy here was to focus on places like Philadelphia, where there may be a reputation a half a century old. Talk about your experience before and after the president mentioned you and used that now notorious term RINO.

Al Schmidt: It didn't exactly come as a surprise because they were pretty conspicuous about it leading up to the 2020 election. “Bad things happened in Philadelphia,” the former president said in a debate. His surrogates like Newt Gingrich were suggesting that the army should be sent in to run the election in Philadelphia and all sorts of crazy things. There's a big difference between seeing a punch coming your direction and that punch actually hitting. While it didn't come as a surprise, it doesn't mean it's not impactful. In my case, I had been in the safest place in the world, at the Pennsylvania convention center, surrounded by Philadelphia police officers on the outside, sheriff's deputies on the inside.

Al Schmidt: We were very safe. It's also probably why a lot of the threats were targeting my family, targeting my kids, mentioning them by name and their ages and our address, what they're going to do to them, and all sorts of other ugliness. The whole point is to terrorize and to coerce, and to get you to not do your job, which is to count your voters’ votes and tell the truth. I just want to add, I'm not alone in this experience. This happened across the country, Democrats and Republicans alike, in counties that Biden won and counties that Trump won.

Weston Wamp: I know that you and I have had similar experiences, albeit your personal lived experience was more harrowing, but we've had the same experience, encountering different degrees of skepticism on our side of the aisle about the 2020 election. I can't help but go back and point out how well Republicans down ballot performed. What is your go-to elevator pitch to those who are still trying to figure out what happened, was any of what President Trump was trying to stir up based in fact? Where do you go with fellow Republicans just to try to build a bridge?

Al Schmidt: It's strange from the standpoint of Philadelphia because not only did down ballot Republicans do well, but President Trump did much better. Former President Trump did much better in 2020 than he did in 2016. His vote total increased by about 25% in Philadelphia in 2020 than what it was in 2016, just extraordinary. But it was clear that they were going to target Philadelphia and Detroit, and a number of other cities around the country. I don't know their minds, but I can kind of imagine why they would target those places for political purposes in trying to discount our voters' votes and our results before a single vote was cast. But the president actually outperformed here, former president, did pretty well, Trump. I think there's a real disconnect that doesn't really stop anyone from embracing these things. None of these things have been said relative to Philadelphia, or any place else, with any evidence backing them up to begin with. Those facts are not getting in their way, for sure.

Weston Wamp: As we wrap up, your thoughts on the 2000 mules theory and quote, unquote, documentary that has caught on like wildfire in some conservative circles. You had a very close role in seeing exactly how the 2020 election was executed in a major American city. Can you talk about the specific allegations therein?

Al Schmidt: I so often say and think about how important it is to not be dismissive or condescending when talking to people who have a different point of view, even if there's no truth to it at all. It's hard not to when it comes to that. Using geolocation at locations for drop boxes in public places. Anyone who walked past the south side of city hall on their way to or from work, on their way tour from lunch, or both, or walking by to go wherever, any tourist, anybody else, would have shown up on their radar as having visited a drop box. Even if they were a hundred feet away, it would show up as having visited that drop box. It's not evidence. It's a desperate attempt to try to add some sort of empirical evidence to something that is entirely lacking any evidence at all, and what they're providing is not evidence of anything.

Weston Wamp: Thanks for listening to “Swamp Stories” presented by Issue One, the country's leading political reform organization that unites Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fix our broken political system. Please subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends. Even better rate and review it on Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners. You can find out more at SwampStories.org. I'm your host, Weston Wamp. A special thank you to Executive Producer Dokhi Fassihian, Senior Producer Evan Ottenfield, Producer Sydney Richards, and Editor Parker Tant from ParkerPodcasting.com. “Swamp Stories” is recorded in Tennessee, edited in Texas, and can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.

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