Harvard Divinity School alum turned campaign

finance reform missionary- my guest today

is at the forefront of democracy and youth empowerment.

Co-founder of Run for America and

Chief Operating Officer of the Mayday PAC,

Szelena Gray advises this Super PAC to defeat

all Super PACs.

An extension of this campaign is the New Hampshire

Rebellion, a citizen movement against

big money corruption in the fiercely independent,

first in the nation primary state,

poised to restore integrity to a broken political system.

In her newer role, Szelena Gray is developing Run

for America's citizen powered movement to elect

a new breed of millennial politicians,

in the spirit of the nation's founders.

While Mayday's candidates did suffer some bruising

some defeats last cycle, 2016 presents a new opportunity.

So first let me ask, Szelena,

how are these organizations going to capitalize

on the profound frustration with American

democracy today.

GRAY: That is an excellent question.

We live in an era of untold spending on

elections and with that, I think,

new and creative opportunities for how to

combat that spending and the corruption that it breeds.

Mayday PAC is very much borne of that irony,

and is the brainchild - as you said - of somebody who

wants to exploit that irony for ending

that brutal system.

So I think as we look to 2016 and what Mayday PAC

and New Hampshire Rebellion and so many

other organizations in the democracy reform space

are trying to do, what we are seeing is a really

creative exploration of how we can use the

political toolkit that is what has bred the corrupt

system that we're in -- in a way that redefines it

and opens up new opportunities to fix it.

HEFFNER: Fix it.

So your mentor, Larry Lessig wrote recently

an op-ed in The New York Times.

"If the core problem is politicians beholden

to their funders, then giving Congress the power

to limit the amount spent or the amount contributed

would not resolve it..." And he identifies the

movement from Secretary of State Clinton and Senator

Sanders who add a Constitutional Amendment

that would add some restrictions to campaign financing.

"Regardless," he continues,

"...regardless of how much was spent,

the private funding of public campaigns,

even with limits would inevitably reproduce the

world we have now." GRAY: I think Mayday starts

from a very simple place, which is addressing

the issue of Congress.

And that is one, one of many pieces that

we have to think about.

But just starting with Mayday,

I think what Larry's getting at and I think

what we all understand is that there is a problem

in our government, we have to fix it.

We know that most Americans believe that

corruption is something that all members of

leadership and government need to address,

especially looking at 2016.

But we also know that Americans don't favor

reforms that require excess spending in a

system and in a political climate,

frankly, where that excess spending is already making

us all feel very nervous.

So it's easy for leaders at the Presidential,

Congressional, at any level,

to advocate for something like a Constitutional

remedy because that doesn't require thinking

through the legislative remedy.

It's hard to advocate for public financing,

which is really what we need,

um, and where Mayday starts.

So Mayday's mission is to clear a path to reform

in Congress by, um, encouraging members of

Congress both through our direct grassroots work

this year and through, um, making that work dovetail

into electioneering in the election years.

Um, encouraging members of Congress to support

one of a few different remedies that could

create a small-dollar public financing system.

And that is how Mayday seeks to address this problem.

But Larry is absolutely right that,

uh, no matter what, if we don't address the system

of public financing, if we don't advocate for small

dollars in our elections, no matter what,

there is no real solution to this problem.

HEFFNER: In terms of the corporate influence...

it's rigged in their favor now.

How did we get here?

GRAY: [LAUGHS]

HEFFNER: How, how do you think that we, that we got here?

GRAY: Campaign finance reform actually has a long

history in this country.

And forgoing the, the long,

long history and just going back to,

you know, 30 years ago, McCain-Feingold was really

in response to the soft money boom that started

in the '70s and 80's and 90's.

And when McCain-Feingold was passed as this remedy

to the increase in outside money,

um, it was thought actually to be the

solution that we needed.

Unfortunately it was not.

And as we all know, from 2002 to Citizens United,

the, uh, increase in outside spending,

um, and then the, the further impact that

Citizens United and then SpeechNow had on our

current system have only made things worse.

But as Larry says, the system was broken the day

before Citizens United.

The system remained broken after Citizens United.

The system was further broken after McCutcheon

and we sit today in a true conundrum where we have

many, many rulings and many,

many moments in history where things could have

gotten better and instead, the flood of money

has just increased.

HEFFNER: How does money operate the system now,

in your estimation?

GRAY: Sure.

I mean, there are a couple of ways to think about this.

You know, first and foremost and I think Larry

is great at describing this,

um, we have in this country two elections.

We have the money primary and then we have

the primary-primary, the real election.

And what that means is that if I'm a person

who is running for Congress or thinking about running

for Congress, the first question that I'm going to

ask myself or that any party person is going to

ask me is how much money can I raise?

And the real litmus test then for thinking about

who leadership is, and who is stepping up to

leadership is really this question of fundraising.

We also know, for instance,

thanks to many, many news reports on this fact,

that when people come into Congress and

as people are electioneering into Congress,

they are spending upwards of 70 percent

of their time fundraising.

So, leadership, as we think of it in government,

is really about fundraising leadership.

And leadership, as we think about it in terms

of running this country, um, isn't happening.

because members of Congress and elected

officials are spending most of their time,

unfortunately, dialing for dollars and not doing

the jobs that they were elected to do.

And now that is not to say that those members

of Congress are evil or terrible or awful,

um, but that they exist in a system where

the cost of entry, getting into Congress,

is getting higher and higher and higher.

And in order to keep up with that,

they have to keep fundraising and

fundraising and fundraising.

HEFFNER: Well you described the system here,

uh, in terms of forecasting what's going

to happen, Szelena.

Uh, "... in the name of giving my demographic,

this is younger women a voice in the 2016

election, an intricate and expensive campaign

apparatus will come to life at the hands of an

expert political class.

It will attempt to charm me with its understanding

of my burdens and my fears,

and it will stoop to scaring me with horrific

predictions for what could happen if I don't act

to support it." So this is a very personal take

on the exploitation, if you will, of the American voter.

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

HEFFNER: But the American voter doesn't see

it as exploitation.

They don't see the moneyed system as guaranteeing

that their interests are not served.

GRAY: I think very simply as we look into the next

election cycle, what we have to be aware of as

voters, as citizens, as people who hopefully care

about the future of this country,

is that the people who are running for office

are going to try to tell us over and over again

that they believe that our government needs fixing,

that they believe that we need reform.

Everybody from Lindsey Graham to Ted Cruz to

Chris Christie to Hillary Clinton are going to be

saying, I want to fix government.

I want to make this better.

HEFFNER: [LAUGHS]

GRAY: And what I think is very

important is that we realize that those are

very thin words, that without real commitment

to a system of small dollar public financing,

those are just words.

And I think as we know as a country,

we have been in this situation before.

We have had former Presidents commit to us

that they are going to fix this country.

We have had members of Congress and leaders on

all levels of government commit to us that

they see this problem as acutely as we do.

Maybe we don't all call it corruption

or campaign finance reform.

But we see the problem.

We have to be aware as voters that if they

do not commit to a real public financing option,

they are not actually admitting that they see

the problem and are committed to fixing it.

HEFFNER: So that's the problem.

And as you identified from the outset,

there was the great paradox of this effort

that is a Super PAC to end all Super PACs

as the LA Times reported on you.

GRAY: Sure.

HEFFNER: The- and, and that paradox,

I don't think, is hypocritical but it's,

it's as much as it is, uh, hard to resolve in

actually making progress...so if you'll bear

with me for a second, you have lobbyists,

you have mega-multi-billion dollar

corporations that would invest in individual campaigns.

GRAY: Mm-hmm.

HEFFNER: You have smaller donors whom you are

courting to support your campaign to ultimately

overtake the influence of the one percent,

if you will, of the, the vast preponderance

of campaign contributors.

But did you see, was there any incentive on the part

of the moneyed interest to help topple their peers.

GRAY: I mean, this was the beauty of Mayday PAC.

It wasn't just small dollar,

grassroots donations, in and of themselves.

It was small dollar donations matched

by big money, matched by wealthy people who

could otherwise use their money to buy influence directly

but instead bought into this idea of let's invest these

dollars to create a system whereby we could

all have a better voice.

So Mayday, for all of its successes and challenges,

um, succeeded at this one thing- bringing a new class

of donors into the political process.

And our first FEC report filing,

we, we noted internally that I think something

close to 49 percent of our contributors are people

who had never contributed before to a political