- Good evening, I'm Trevor Morrison,
I'm the dean of the law school here.
Thanks for joining us for the 19th Annual
Attorney General Robert Abrams
public service Lecture.
It's my job to introduce
and really to pay homage
to our distinguished graduate Bob Abrams
who will in turn introduce
our speaker this evening,
the honorable Heidi Heitkamp,
senator for North Dakota.
As I said, Bob will introduce the senator,
but I do want to pass
along my personal thanks
and gratitude to her as well
for traveling across the country,
potentially missing votes in Washington
or if we orchestrated that otherwise,
to be with us here this evening.
This is a special series of the school,
now as I say in its 19th year.
The school as you all know
is deeply committed to public service
and to public interest,
to training students to pursue careers
in public service,
and in part to modeling what
those careers might look like
by continuing to engage with
our distinguished graduates
who've made their own
careers in that field.
No one has pursued a
more distinguished career
in public service than Robert Abrams.
And we admire him deeply.
This lecture named after him,
supported by him,
reflects a 28 year career in government.
Bob was a member of the
New York State Assembly,
and served three terms as
the Bronx borough president.
Then in 1978, he was elected
to serve the first of
what became four terms
as New York Attorney General,
Position he held for 15 years.
Bob received numerous awards,
too many to list this evening for his work
as attorney general of the state
received unusually high
and consistent acclaim nationally.
A very unusual for someone
serving at the state level
and I think in many ways provided
the modern model for a
state attorney general.
We are deeply, deeply proud
to count him as one of our graduates.
His legacy and expertise
has not gone unnoticed.
His counsel is still in high demand today
and work he does in a variety of contexts,
including being appointed a member of the
advisory council for the retired
attorney pro bono program
by New York's chief judge
Jonathan Lippman, another
graduate of this law school.
Bob's extraordinary career exemplifies
the very qualities that we hope
that our own students will strive for.
He is, as I say, a tireless
and devoted advocate
for the public interest.
Bob, I want to thank you
for your ongoing dedication
to this law school
and I hope you'll all join me
in welcoming the honorable Robert.
- [Crowd] [Clapping].
- Dean, thank you so much
for that very gracious introduction.
And I want to thank the Dean
and Lisa Hoy who is the assistant Dean
at NYU law school for public service,
for their hard work in
helping us to continue this series
and to foster and encourage
discussion about public service.
It's the 19th annual session,
the 19th time that
we've had this program
and I want to let you know what
cause me to come to the then Dean,
John Sexton and lot of the idea
of having this kind of a series.
I was reading then as unfortunately
I read now in the newspaper about
people in public life who
betrayed the public trust.
Just Saturday in the New York times,
federal judge in the Eastern district
giving a 14 year term to a
member of the legislature,
for corruption.
For being convicted on corruption charges.
And my feeling was that
students, law students
are going to come away
from this kind of focus,
with a bad taste saying that,
gee, politics not for me.
It's a corrupting force.
No matter how good you are,
they're going to wear you down in the end.
Government politics,
it doesn't attract the very best.
It attracts subpar people.
And certainly people who don't,
who are not motivated by the highest
of standards and morals.
My own perception of
28 years in public life
was something quite to the contrary.
The people who I worked with and met
were very decent people.
Well, highly accomplished people.
Could earn a lot more money,
toiling in the private sector.
And so I felt it would
be critically important
at a critical juncture
in a law students career
to have them meet firsthand.
Somebody in public life
who represents the real values
that I think most public
servants bring to bear.
And I began to invite a series of people
who have come to this podium,
attorneys general, governors,
United States senators,
members of the federal trade commission.
And it offered the students an opportunity
to see somebody with
the kinds of qualities
who I think are for
the most part attracted
to public office.
And tonight is no exception.
It's a rare treat for me to introduce you
to Heidi Heitkamp.
I've known her for a long time.
From the time she came
then with long red hair.
When you meet her,
you're taken by her warm,
open, gregarious personality.
She's feisty, she's independent,
she is fiercely committed
to the public good.
And I saw that when she
became attorney general,
first of all, So who is Heidi Heitkamp?
Fourth of seven children in the family,
born to very modest circumstances,
farming, farming community.
Mother was a cook and a custodian
in the local school,
her father drove a truck,
Heidi herself, went into the workforce
early on doing a babysitting
at the age of 13,
getting to be on a construction road gang
while working away through college.
She's done it all.
She went to the university of North Dakota
for her AB degree.
She went to Lewis and Clark
law school in Portland,
Oregon for a law degree.
She worked for the EPA as a lawyer.
She was in the state
treasurer's office as a lawyer.
And later on she actually was elected
by the people of state of North Dakota
to be the state treasurer
and then to be the attorney general.
As attorney general,
she was a true leader.
She won the respect of her colleagues.
She was active in a
whole variety of issues,
important issues that
protected senior citizens,
that protected the environment.
She was a leader in the tobacco cases
that the States brought against
the major tobacco companies.
Where she brought $336
million back to the people
of North Dakota,
but tens helped to bring
tens of billions of dollars
back to the treasuries of the
States all across the country.
And then she ran for governor.
And it wasn't a winning race.
Was an interesting race
in that in the middle
of the campaign, she was
diagnosed with breast cancer
and two weeks after surgery,
she was back on the campaign trail.
It wasn't a winning race,
but I think that's instructive also
because not everything in life
goes your way the first time
or it goes the way you
would like it to go.
Not everything you do is
going to be a total success.
But as Frank Sinatra said,
you pick yourself off the ground
and you go get back into the game.
You get back into the fray.
And she did.
And a few years later, she
ran what many thought would be
an impossible race.
For a Democrat to be able
to run for the Senate
and win in North Dakota.
And she did.
She won that race.
It was the closest race
of all the Senate races
in the country that year.
She won by less than 1% of the votes,
less than 3000 votes.
But she won because she presented herself
to the people of North Dakota.
As she's going to present
herself to you now.
A person of a genuine ability
of commitment to public service,
somebody who's honest, who's decent,
who's open, who faces every issue,
and they are difficult and
controversial issues these days
before the Senate, before our
country and before the world.
And she does her best struggling
grappling with what's
the right thing to do,
what's the right vote
in this particular case.
And so it's a source of great pleasure
for me to introduce to you
and for you to see firsthand
the kind of person that can
be attracted to politics,
can win and can serve
and still have all of
those essential values
that we want in our public officials.
The great Senator from North
Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp.
- [Crowd] [Clapping]
- [Bob] [Laughing] .
- Thanks so much, Bob.
Before I start kind of talking about
how I got into public life and
what that's meant for me
and why I think that this might
be a great opportunity for
you guys to think about,
public service as a career.
I want to talk about Bob Abrams.
And I know, I can see when I came in here,
this is the Bob Abrams fan club,
but there's a lot of young people here
who don't know who you are.
And politics is a fleeting business.
It's been a number of years since you
grace the front page
of the New York times.
But everyone who's ever
been an attorney general
in this country knows who Bob Abrams is.
Because he started this notion that yes,
it's a critically important
that you serve the people of your state
and that you protect people
who wouldn't otherwise receive protection
and that you do the things that level
the playing field
and create economic
opportunity for everyone.
But then he used that enormous personality
and that sense of public service
to rally all the other
AGs towards those causes.
Think about this.
This is a highly charged,
the national association
of attorneys general,
we used to laugh
as really the national association
of aspiring governors.
And so it's a highly charged,
institution and a lot of politicians
who see themselves as future senators,
future governors, future presidents,
but yet to tap that one
person who every day
called to the greater angels,
come together, let's
fight tobacco together,
come together, let's take a
look at antitrust lawsuits
where the federal government
may be dropping the ball,
but collectively if we work together,
we can change outcomes.
And it really was that sense
of incredible power
that I came to the national association
of attorneys general.
When I came thinking, okay,
this is going to be a group that
will spend all their time talking about
how important they are.
And not to say they don't,
but it certainly proved
to be a lot more substantive
than I ever thought was in fact possible.
And as a result,
we initiated the tobacco litigation,
which ended up,
I ended up being on the negotiating team.
In fact, we joke that every
time I come to New York
I have breakout and sweats
because it was just such a
grueling exercise for us.
But it was in that vein
that all of a sudden we held this industry
that had really escaped a lot of
financial culpability,
culpable and responsible
for the damage they had
done in public health.
And with the dollars that we receive,
we were able to build
public health programs.
And so the rates of smoking
have dramatically decreased.
My husband's a family physician
just to tell you the
power of public service
and the power of a group like this
to actually initiate on
an issue like tobacco.
There are surgeries he
used to routinely perform,
involving people's cardiovascular system,
because smoking is very, very bad
on your cardiovascular system.
And these would be young surgeries
to basically replace veins
and replace your basic plumbing systems
so that people could still walk.
He doesn't see those surgeries anymore.
You think about that.
You think about how incredible that is
and coming to the national association
of attorneys general and working together,
we began the fight in 1992
to criminalize domestic violence.
The president, Clinton had been elected
and these guys had been working,
but all of a sudden we
elected a bunch of women
to be attorneys general that year.
And we all kind of
separate from each other,
had this one goal in mind,
that we were going to change the face
for victims of domestic violence.
We're going to change
the outcome for victims
of domestic violence.
And today we've basically cut
the rate of domestic
violence in the house.
And so when you say it can't be done
and could you say it
doesn't change anything.
If I get into public life,
it's just going to be miserable.
I'm just going to spend
spinning my wheels.
I will tell you there's great leaders
who have plowed the
ground like Bob Abrams,
who enable the ones who come behind him
to work in a collaborative way
with a mission oriented goal,
to change outcomes.
And you know what?
We've changed outcomes
as a result.
And I can give you example after example
of the work that I did as attorney general
where I believe I've changed outcomes
and my staff frequently
teases me and says,
you really just want to go home
and be the attorney
general again, don't you?
Because it was really,
that place that was magical
in many ways,
in terms of how we were
able to collaborate
across party lines,
across geographic lines.
New York is not a state like North Dakota,
but we found common ground and worked
on issues together.
And Bob, I'm so grateful.
You should think about all of the things
that we got accomplished and know
that it was the leadership
coming out of New York,
that made that possible.
I don't think people
really appreciate that.
The leadership coming out of States where
they generously don't just
look at their political career,
but they look at change
and how they can be the change agent,
not just in a state like New York,
but also a state like North Dakota.
Bob gave kind of some of my bio.
And it's true.
I grew up, I love telling this story
because you all come from the place.
So although there are
a couple of people here
from North Dakota and know what that is,
I tell people I grew up in
a small town of 90 people
and yes it was 90 not 90,000.
My family was one 10th the population.
- [Crowd] [Laughing].
- when I was born, my mother had four kids
and the oldest was two
and there were no twins.
It's possible.
- [Crowd] [Laughing].
- It's possible.
But we grew up,
my dad was a seasonal construction worker
and my mom was a school
cook and a janitor.
For most of the time we were growing up.
My dad before that had a small business.
And so you say,
that's kind of an interesting pedigree.
How did you get involved in politics?
How did that happen for you?
And I love to tell people this,
that when I ran for the Senate,
Nate silver gave me an 8% chance
of winning that Senate race.
And when I was diagnosed
with breast cancer,
they plug in all these numbers
and they try and do 10 year predictions
on how long you'll live.
And they told me I had a 28%
chance of living 10 years.
So by the time I went, got to the Senate,
I thought I probably have a two.
If you combine those two statistics,
probably I had a 2% chance
of actually standing here
as a United States
Senator from North Dakota.
And so people,
your whole life will tell you, you can't.
And that's really a story
that I want to tell you.
Of all the people who told me I can't.
And all the times I said,
well, that just makes me
more determined to do it.
And so when I was a young North Dakotan,
in the eighth grade
or the actually in the sixth grade,
I wanted to be the
first woman on the moon.
And then sixth grade algebra showed up.
and I said,
- [Crowd] [Laughing].
- This is not my future.
I'm pretty sure.
And so I decided early
on I would be a lawyer.
You probably.
Lot of you were interested
or you have family
members who hate lawyers,
I said that makes perfect sense to you.
Guess what?
I was laughed at when I said
I was going to be a lawyer
because at the time,
maybe 5% of all the people in law schools
across the country were women.
Unheard of or a woman to be a lawyer,
what your options were.
You could be a school teacher,
you could be a secretary.
You only did that until you got married.
You could be a secretary
or a school teacher
in North Dakota school
teachers are at high calling,
you could be a nurse,
which is the highest of all calling.
Just ask my father.
Or if you really want a glamorous life,
you could be an airline stewardess,
but you were not going to be a lawyer.
Hey, you know,
and I think that a lot
of young people today
don't realize how
incredibly far we have come
because there's pioneers.
Sitting in this audience and there
are people who believe that,
that wasn't the right way.
And let me tell you,
you might think it's because
we thought about equality
and that we thought
about what we need to do.
The whole growth and women
entering the workplace
was designed to stabilize the economies
of American families.
You say, what are you talking about?
I'm talking about a movement called
the displaced homemaker
because as we saw social change
and more divorce and more
disruption in families,
more and more women were living in poverty
with their children.
There weren't the enforcement
provisions for child support.
There wasn't the ability
to go to the bank and get a loan,
because you were Mrs. somebody,
you were not your own person.
And so all of this,
all of this kind of attitude
that we grew up with,
all of this behavior we grew up with
changed dramatically in the '70s
because women started saying,
enough is enough.
We are going to take
charge of our economic life
and create economic opportunity.
And so women in record numbers
by the time I went to law school
at Lewis and Clark,
a third of the class was women.
It's probably now 50% here, right?
But 50% of your your law school class,
unheard of in medicine.
And think about this,
think about, you guys are all about
the same age as my kids,
may be a little bit younger,
but think about me opening up a textbook
or opening up Dick and Jane books
and actually seeing a woman who's a doctor
in the picture wouldn't have happened.
I mean, you would never have seen that,
you would have seen the nurse
and the doctor and we knew
which gender roles there were.
And so this kind of ability
to transcend or to begin
to think about women
economically in the workplace
really drove a lot of
what we did early on.
Thinking about equity,
thinking about pay equity,
thinking about, all of
the sex discrimination.
I talked today about,
I'm a mad men freak
and I just-- I say that
if you ever want to
understand early feminism,
look at what happened in
Joan's life on mad men.
How many of you watch men,
right? Joan,
you know, Joan, she started out,
she was the office manager
and she later became an account manager.
And all of the trials
and tribulations that Joan went through
is pretty much the way the reality was
for a lot of women in her generation.
As she struggled as a single parent.
And so when we talk about the changes,
we don't often celebrate
where we came from.
So what does that all have to do with
convincing you into leadership? Now?
I'm not just here to convince you
to go into public service,
because you're going to be motivated
one way or the other.
You're going to decide
what it is that you want to do.
And I will tell you,
going into public service
will be the most selfish thing
that you ever do.
Because it will give you
a sense of self worth.
It will give you a sense of your person
and who you are in a way that,
the ordinary job will never do.
It will give you a sense
of mission and purpose
that will build your
character for years to come
and at the end when you say,
what did I accomplish?
Not a lot of people look
at that bank account
and say, that's what I accomplished.
They look at the things
and the people they touched
and their reputation
and what they accomplished
for people other than themselves.
And so I'm not going
to spend a lot of time,
either you're motivated
to get into public service or not.
Either you believe that
you've got something that
is worthwhile or you don't.
Either you want to do
that work or you don't.
But I will tell you this.
The one thing I don't
ever want to hear any of
you say as young people
is I want to give back.
I always go, well, who the
hell made you so special?
Really, you want to give back?
Because when you say that
it creates the distinction between
those you're helping and yourself.
It creates a barrier almost immediately
and so this isn't about giving back.
I'm not giving back.
I'm trying to do work
that I think is important,
that gives me a sense of purpose.
It gives me a sense of mission,
gives me a sense of
working collaboratively and together that
we can get something done
the way I felt when we
did the tobacco settlement
or the way I felt when we fought the Wars
on domestic violence and we
were able to get laws changed.
I want that feeling every day.
Because to me, those are the legacy pieces
that continue long after you're gone.
So mainly I came here to
convince you to be leaders,
not just in public service,
but to be leaders.
And there's a lot of different ways
that you can engage in leadership.
And probably the best way that
you can engage in leadership
is if you find your voice and take a risk,
take a jump.
Whether it was running for office,
whether it is speaking
up at a town hall meeting
when you don't agree with something,
whether it-- And we have a colleague,
gentleman by the name of Jeff Amestoy,
Jeff Amestoy was,
I think one of the first
speakers that Bob brought in,
he's a hero, I talk about him everywhere.
He's a hero of mine.
I don't really know him that well.
In fact, I did. Wasn't attorney general,
I don't think ever with Jeff.
I think Jeff was gone and on
the Vermont Supreme court.
But he did something that
no one else had ever done
before in the history of this country.
He talked about equality and marriage
as a Republican attorney
general from Vermont.
And he created the idea that
there ought to at least
be available civil unions.
And that started a revolution,
because somebody was brave enough
to bring the case.
And Jeff was brave enough
to write a decision.
The same decision that in Iowa
basically got unelected,
almost half of their Supreme court.
They didn't reverse the decision,
they just got rid of the
people who made the decision.
So they're going to get their retaliation.
And so every day in America,
our leaders, people who step up,
who threatened and
challenge the cutting edge,
they challenge the dominant thinking.
And they do it at great
risk to themselves.
But at the end of the day,
I will always remember
Jeff Amestoy's name,
I will always remember Bob Abrams.
I will always remember
a guy named David Atkins
in Kansas as a Republican
legislator who stood up
and fought against a
constitutional amendment
on marriage equality,
on same sex marriage.
Lost his Senate seat as a result of it.
At least these are the people I remember
and these are the people
who challenged me every day
to be better at what I do.
And so don't just be good at what you do
and don't do just what
you're passionate about.
Take a risk and start
developing leadership.
And you do that by
every day thinking about
what the goal is in mind
and how do you move that goal forward.
How do you change outcomes
and what's the next opportunity
that you're going to have?
I throw out a couple issues
that are percolating right now
that you won't hear about.
We have the usual challenges
that stir out there,
but I'll tell you one is
the access to justice in this country.
I've been working with Cory Booker,
this isn't a real big
problem in North Dakota.
We have a disparity between
how I think native Americans are treated.
Part of that's cultural because
if you're Caucasian in North Dakota,
you get caught.
You go and try and cut a deal, right?
And culturally, if you're native American
and you committed a crime,
you just fess up and take
whatever sentence they give you.
And so when you have a system
that rewards the negotiator,
you end up with disparity.
When somebody takes responsibility
and doesn't negotiate.
And so that's not what the problem is
right now in America,
we have unequal justice.
We have literally thousands and thousands
of people sitting in solitary confinement.
Otherwise no one is torture chambers
in our country.
And they all need voices.
And if this is something
that interests you,
this is a growing movement.
And it could change the outcome.
It could change the paradigm
for minorities in this country.
I'll give you another example
of a cause near and dear to my heart.
One of the reasons why
when I was asked if I
would run for governor,
I decided not to run
for governor this year,
even though, it was really tempting
because I lost that other race.
So I wanted to go back and win,
prove that I could.
And Congress is pretty horrible right now.
- [Crowd] [Laughing].
- But I thought about
why I ran for Congress.
I ran, I'm a moderate.
In fact, when they did
the national journal,
did their report,
I was the 49th most liberal
and the 50th most conservative.
It's pretty right in the middle.
And I hope I'm not roadkill because of it.
But I thought about why I ran,
and I ran so that we
could work across Sial
and be collaborative
and actually get this
country working again.
Actually make decisions.
They may not be the
decisions you all agree on,
but actually do the job
of legislating for the
United States of America.
And that's been a huge, huge challenge.
But it's been a great opportunity
for me as people look
to the people in Congress
who would be the most,
likely to actually provide,
some kind of ability to compromise.
One of the big issues
that took me to the United States Senate
was an issue that I worked on
pretty much my whole political career.
And it's probably not an issue.
A lot of you who aren't from the West,
if you're not from the
West, know much about.
And that is what happens with
native American children.
Native American children are
an endangered species in this country.
Al Franken recently,
he is my partner on this.
Recently went to
a rehab center,
drug and alcohol rehab and he said,
I've been to a lot of drug
or alcohol rehab centers,
visiting friends
when you're in the entertainment industry.
I suppose that's true.
Anyway, he said he's
never been anywhere where,
he felt more despair,
even though they had become sober
because they knew where
they were going home.
We had a tribal chairman from Fort Peck,
which is a reservation,
which is just crossed the border
in North Dakota,
from North Dakota.
And he was talking about
the rash of suicide,
native American children commit suicide
at epidemic rates.
And he asked,
brought in a bunch of people,
of course the suicides were
happening in junior highs
and public health people.
And they did a survey,
public health survey of
native American kids.
And one thing they discovered is that
these 11 to 13 year olds,
30% of them tested positive for STDs.
In what world does that happen
in the United States of America?
Only 30% high school graduation rates
if you live on the reservation.
Early introduction to drugs,
we had a tribal chairman
who was in the office
who said 40% of all the
babies born in Turtle mountain
are born Method icted.
We're failing.
And we have a special
and unique obligation
because they have treaty rights.
And because primary jurisdiction
for major crimes is with
the federal government
on almost every reservation,
there are 280 reservations.
And so these are the forgotten children.
And I had a woman once who
was working on a project
with me and she was a PhD.
And she had PhD in education
and she was standing in front of a group
when she was trying to secure some money
to put on a conference on
juvenile justice in North Dakota.
And she stood up and she told a story.
She said, when I was a young girl living,
Mandan Hidatsa and Arikara nation.
Said I had horrible dyslexia
and couldn't tell time.
She said, I was looking at a clock
because I was going to a birthday party.
I was watching out the window
and she said, I probably irritated my mom.
I kept saying, when are they coming?
Because someone was
going to come pick her up
for this birthday party.
And her mom said, well,
just look at the clock.
And she said, well, I
can't tell what time it is.
But the third time her
mother was really frustrated
and she took her hand
and she scraped the hand over a nail
that was sticking up on the window ledge
and scarred this young woman for life.
And this young woman held up her hand,
still scarred from her mother injuring it.
She said, and I remember
looking out the window
and these are words I never forgot.
And I remember looking out the window
and wondering who was
going to come for me?
Who is going to help me?
There are voiceless
people all across America
and they wonder every day
whether they matter
and they have adverse
childhood experiences
and they have historic trauma
and they have-- They need
trauma based therapies
and they need someone to care.
And we need a new strategy
because we're losing
generation after generation
of American children
to behavior and mental health issues
because we aren't doing what
it takes in this country.
And so that's just one example
of where you can be those voice.
You are the most privileged people
in the history of the world.
Robert Kennedy told the
graduating class that once
He said, understand this,
you are the most privileged people
to ever walk the face of the Earth.
Privileged because you were born American.
You were born with an
opportunity to think,
probably born into most of you,
into families that valued that education,
that helped you,
that encouraged you.
Not all of you, but many of you.
And as a result, you're
sitting here in an institution,
one of the most noble of all institutions
of legal learning in this country.
How can you be more privileged than that?
So you have to decide,
as Robert Kennedy said,
whether you're going to use
your enormous talent and privilege
for your own betterment
or the betterment of mankind.
And he said something
that's very important.
He said, but remember this,
history will judge you.
But more importantly,
you will judge yourself
based on what choices you decide.
And so I'm not here to tell you at all,
go into public service.
You've got to decide what it is
that you want to do with your life.
And I'm not here to
tell you that it's easy.
A lot of times, certainly
holding public office
in today's world is not easy.
But I am here to tell you
that there is work to be done.
There are people who need you.
There are changes that
we need in this country
if we're truly to realize the
dream of that constitution,
which I can't go and see
without crying because
it's the most amazing thing
in the history of the world,
our constitution.
And there's opportunity
for you to use those enormous talents,
to build and to change and to make sure
that the world that you leave
is better than the world
you were born into.
Thank you so much for letting me come.
- [Crowd] [Clapping].
- Senator Heitkamp, has said that
she would be delighted to
respond to any questions
that you might have.
So this is a unique
moment and opportunity.
So if you have a question,
please come forward,
come to the microphone and ask it.
It's always the icebreaker, Heidi.
- Yeah.
- You just need that first one.
And here we have a young woman
I think heading toward the microphone.
Yes. Okay.
- No she is heading for the.
- [Laughing] .
- [Betsy] I am Betsy
Foreman and I'm a one L.
I was wondering if you
could talk a bit about,
or give specific examples about
when your legal education has applied
and how you've used it.
- I think my legal education
is applied every day.
It will change.
Getting a legal education
changes how you think.
I mean, there's no doubt about it.
And it's interesting because
I get asked all the time,
why do you make your decisions?
I had a school teacher asked me this
at a closeup program, she said,
why do you make your decisions?
Do you make your decisions
based on your constituents
or do you make your decisions
based on your heart?
And I said, well,
I like to think I make based on my head.
And so I'm very methodical.
I think that the other thing that
the legal education has done for me
is I see a lot of different sides
to a lot of different issues.
I don't think that I
automat it because you have to be prepared
when you're advocating for a position.
You have to be prepared
to argue any side of it.
And so I think as a
result of being a lawyer,
I don't think myopically,
I don't think just
it's all one way or the other way.
And I think it makes
me a better compromiser
and me having done the
work that we've done
on major lawsuits and settlements,
we know you aren't going to win
every point that you want to win,
but I always try and position myself
to be in the best bargaining position.
And so every day I'm a lawyer.
I mean, whether I want
to be a lawyer or not.
Everyday I'm a lawyer
and I will tell you,
it is in education,
A lot of people say,
well, I don't want to be a lawyer.
I said, a lawyer is the way you think.
It's not what you do.
In my opinion,
that's what being a lawyer is.
It's the way you think, not what you do.
And do I need a legal degree
to do what I'm doing? No,
but because I have a legal degree,
I approach it,
I think differently than people would
who are physicians
in the United States Senate
Rand Paul approaches
problem solving different than I do.
It's true. Abrazo over it,
so I'm much more,
I think collaborative as a result of it
and much more open
minded as a result of it.
But being a lawyer is about
how you think, not what you do.
- So what surprised you the most?
You ran for the Senate,
it was a vigorous race.
People told you it was impossible,
you pull it off and you get there.
Were there any surprises?
- There was disappointments.
And I think the disappointment is
that there is a fundamental
unwillingness to it
to attack the major
problems of this country.
And by that I mean,
I have this saying,
I say every day in the
United States Senate,
we looked down and mainly
what we're looking at
is political messaging.
You see it right now, right?
What we're going to do when
we shut down government.
This is all about politics.
This isn't about
whether we're going to
actually provide contraceptive
services to poor women.
It's all about politics.
And so everyday we look down
and I just say,
and why can't we collectively look up
and see there's a train on
the tracks headed for us.
And that train is young people challenged
by student debt that they
can't get out from under.
They're living in shared economies.
Our whole economic strength.
We're consumptive based economy.
What are we doing that's different?
What are we doing to
provide for innovation?
I mean, think about Alzheimer's
and think about what,
Parkinson's and Alzheimer's
are going to cost us
as we live to be a hundred,
but yet we continue to cut NIH research
and make it impossible for the researchers
to get tools that they need.
We have a retirement crisis looming
and these are all things that
because they don't fit
in an election cycle,
people don't pay attention to.
And so for me, longterm,
surface transportation,
infrastructure development.
Changes that we need to make
in terms of how we work
with other countries
and how we collaborate.
What do you think is going to happen?
Yeah, everybody's worried
about the Middle East.
I think you all worry about Africa.
Africa is incredibly challenged continent
and a lot of the theory
behind folks moving North
and migrating is that
it's too hot in Africa
because of the consequences
of global climate change.
And so, we've got all of these problems
that nobody seems to have any
but we can't even solve today's problems,
much less the political will
to think about how we
solve tomorrow's problems.
And I think what's been
probably the biggest disappointment is
the lack of political courage
to solve these problems.
The lack of a willingness
to sit down and say,
you know what?
It doesn't matter if I get reelected,
let's just get the thing done.
And kind of move on with life.
I've never been somebody
who kind of dwells on this,
goodness knows I've taken
some votes that means
that reelection is going
to be challenged anyway,
but I figured if I can
always convince people
that I did it with the best intentions
and I did it because I use this.
And I thought through all this problems
that we could in fact change.
But I would say the biggest
thing is disappointment.
But I love telling this story because
it's an amazing story
as I bitch about being disappointed.
The day I was sworn in,
because no one thought I was going to win.
I spent the better part of two months,
talking to people who didn't
want to talk to me beforehand.
I always say it.
These are all the people who thought
I was going to lose.
And why waste your time visiting with her.
They had a moment of sock up
and so they had to come in
and spend a lot of time with me
so I was really busy,
putting everything together
and I hadn't thought about this
and have one of the
traditions of the Senator,
the freshmen members actually,
preside, it looks like
that's really important
and no, that's groundwork
when you sit in that chair and say,
objection, noted or whatever,
without objection.
And so, I opened up the Senate,
they had a prayer and I turned around
to say the pledge of allegiance
and put my hand on my heart
and I barely made it through
because in that moment
I thought about this remarkable country
where the daughter of a school cook
and a seasonal construction worker
from a town of 90 people
against all odds
is sitting in the United States Senate.
We have a country where
anything is possible,
if in fact we believe it,
if we're willing to work for it.
And so it's an amazing place that we have.
I think the Dean has a question
- [Dean] Hi, senator.
I've never stood at this mic,
so I couldn't resist.
So in the two roles that
you've highlighted for us
this evening, state attorney general
and now United States senator.
You've had a chance to pursue change
through two different kinds of mechanisms
that our students think about and study,
litigation and legislation
and each has a different way of addressing
any of the really deep social and economic
problems that you've identified.
And I'd wonder just sort of extending
on Bob's invitation to
reflect on your experience,
what sort of takeaway points do you have
for the potential and limits of litigation
to drive change and the potential limits
of legislation these days to drive change?
- If I can just start out by saying
they sound really different,
but at the end of the day,
it's about collaboration.
It's about persuasion.
And so both of those things require
persuasion skills
and that requires preparation.
It requires that you know,
why you believe what you believe.
I.e in litigation,
you better have a theory of the case
because you deviate, right?
If you learn nothing else,
if you're going to be litigators,
have a theory of the case
because the minute you deviate from that,
you've lost all credibility
and the jury can't follow you.
And so it takes preparation,
it takes persuasion
and it takes an idea of
what the end goal is.
And so I would say
in many ways the process
of resolving issues
really does fit in both ways.
I will tell you legislation
is more frustrating
because when you're a litigator
and when you're a
lawyer, you're in charge.
I mean you're making these decisions.
You don't have to,
you have to persuade a jury.
You have to persuade a judge,
you have to persuade the other side
if you're in negotiation,
but you don't have to
persuade your colleagues,
that it's an important issue.
You've got to resolve it.
And one of the big
challenges that I've had
is actually getting things on the agenda.
Because the agenda is not driven
by the rank and file members,
is driven by leadership.
And leadership is driven by politics.
And that's not particularly
a good formula for the
future of this country.
And that's why in the United States
Congress has a 9% favorbility rating.
Because we don't listen.
And so what I'd say is that
very frustrating.
- [Amy Larson] Thank you,
Senator for being here.
My name is Amy Larson
and I'm a to all.
I was wondering if you could talk
about some of the experiences
you've had and risks that you've taken,
that proved to be in retrospect,
particularly sort of fruitful experiences,
and ones that prepared you well
for the job you're doing now.
- I think running for office
is a risky thing to do.
Because think about this.
In my race in North Dakota,
a little North Dakota,
I think that that both sides
along with the independent
expenditures spent $30 million.
I think had I known
that when I got into it,
there's no way I would've done it.
I mean, it just was so daunting
when you think about it.
Because you're just
grinding it out every day.
And so a lot of the risks that I've taken
have been putting myself out there
and asking people to give me leadership.
I ran when I was 28 years old.
When I ran for the Senate.
That was my sixth statewide race.
Ran when I was 28 for state auditor lost,
ran it in 88 for tax commissioner, won.
Ran in 92 for attorney general, won.
By 60 when people said,
how do you know you could win?
I said, I used to
Maybe you got 65% of the vote.
The first time I ran for attorney general.
Ran for attorney general again in 96
and then ran for governor and lost.
Now imagine going to a job interview,
where every person in the state
can decide whether
they're going to give you the job or not
and you don't win.
That's a lot of rejection.
- [Crowd] [Laughing].
- That is a huge amount of rejection
and I tell occasionally
a story about what I learned.
People say, what did you learn?
Having this near death
experience from cancer?
I said, forget cancer.
I thought I was going to survive cancer.
Losing an election damn near killed me.
And the one thing I will tell you that
I did learn from losing that election
and is something I have
to remind myself today
is that I went through all of this.
I've won by 60, 65%.
People genuinely liked me.
I'm a pretty likable person.
And I really,
When I won by 65%.
You know what I had asked myself?
Why don't those other 32 like me?
- [Crowd] [Laughing].
- Right? The Nancy,
I called it the Nancy field
or the Sally fields syndrome,
I want to be liked.
You want everybody to like you.
With Donald Trump not withstanding,
most politicians do.
And so I learned that it was really
not the measure of who I was going to be
as a public servant.
Whether people liked me.
The question was whether
I was going to tell them
things that they didn't want to hear,
whether it was about a
native American kids,
whether it is about the challenges
of poor and moderate income families,
because that's where I came from.
That's my life experience.
And I think that's what I bring many times
to the United States Senate.
I don't have a pedigree.
And I always laugh.
People say, Oh, you know,
the Senate is the greatest
deliberative body in the world.
And Oh, is not wonderful
you're part of this group.
And I said, you know what?
I'm not sentimental about the Senate
any more sentimental I am
about a car that doesn't start.
- [Crowd] [Laughing].
- It's a wonderful institution
and it's the one that
constitution gave us,
but it's not functioning.
And so, I think,
I've gotten-- I'm more free
than it would when I was young
and if there's one thing
that I can tell you
is be true to yourself
more than anything else
and you won't be looking back
regretting decisions that you made. Tim.
- [Tim] Yeah. Thank you, Senator.
I have what I guess is
a someone more directly
political question and that's
about the Iran nuclear deal.
Barring something really
unexpected appears that,
president Obama has succeeded in getting
that deal approved.
I'm curious,
your views on it,
the views of your constituents
in North Dakota on the deal.
Be your views on prime
minister Netanyahu's
stance during the whole confrontation,
his decision to come to Washington
and address Congress.
And then finally,
do you think there's any lasting,
implication for U.S. Israel relations?
- I think that it's yet to be determined
what the final outcome in it will be.
I think ultimately,
Israel will always be bi-partisan.
It will always be something that
both parties care a great deal about.
It is who we are.
We've made that commitment
and we believe that our
relationship with Israel
is one of the most important
international relationships we have.
Now whether, in fact we
have done injury to the
traditional structure
of APAP and the bipartisanship of APAP.
I think remains to be seen,
to see what happens, post vote.
But for me this was a tough decision
and I was one of the first,
senators to step up
and say Congress should play a role.
Because the president's position was
Congress doesn't have
anything to do with this.
And so I along with Senator
King and Senator Kaine
and Joel mansion, Joe Donnelly
and Bob Menendez signed
on the original package
that was negotiated by
Tim Kaine and Bob Corker,
which was in fact the
Iran disapproval package
that we all voted on.
And so when this came out,
I expected that there was going
to be a lot of dialogue
and a lot of back and forth.
The agreement got announced and within
seconds people were denouncing it,
without even having read it.
Now, there was a lot of advanced notice
about what was probably going
to be in this agreement.
But that told you something about how,
what lens people were looking
at this agreement.
I also serve on banking where
sanctions have jurisdiction.
So I got familiar early on
with the sanctions regime
and what that means.
Most of you know that,
we haven't done business with
a Iran for generations now.
We do business with countries
that do business with Iran.
And as a result of that relationship,
we were able to impose
secondary state sanctions
on central banks.
As a result of that relationship,
we were able to build
on the international coalition
and accrued China and Russia,
which was a huge piece of this
overall sanctions regime
that got people to the table.
And so once the cake was baked
and the agreement was done,
the question is,
if not this agreement,
What?
what's the alternative?
And so we look very closely
because there's a lot of people saying,
well, we could get
everybody back to the table
and negotiate a stronger deal
or we could just wait to approve it
and then trying to
renegotiate in six months.
And so we sat down with the
ambassadors of the P5+1,
and said, okay, what can we do,
a bunch of us, what can we do
to change the outcome
and to strengthen various pieces of this?
What can we do that
will make a difference?
And their voice was unanimous, nothing.
It's this deal or no deal.
And if it's no deal,
we knew that we were
within two to three months
of basically weaponizing the material,
It might've taken long to
actually build the bomb.
But we knew that
we would have enough material to basically
create a weapon.
And we knew that our allies
would not stand with us
as we looked at imposing
an increased sanctions.
And so we then going to
tell the bank of China,
the bank of Japan and the bank of India
where a lot of this money is held,
that they couldn't release sanctions
or we would impose
secondary sanctions on them.
Became very, very dicey.
And so the one thing that also
I think got lost in all of this,
and I tell people back
home in North Dakota,
I say nothing in this
agreement prevents us
from taking military action
or intervening and beyond the snapback
and the sanctions
that we can all talk about
whether that would work,
but nothing prevents us
from taking military action
in the event that we have any intel
that would tell us that Iran
is violating the agreement
or moving in a direction
to weaponize material.
Nothing. We can.
And we're probably in a better spot,
having signed the agreement
and participated with the
international inspection folks
to know what actually
is happening in Iran.
Now, with that said,
the biggest concern that I had
was whether in fact
the sanctions that had been imposed
on the terrorism sanctions,
what would happen to those?
And I think that the administration
attempted to clarify that
those would not be lifted,
that many of the
organizations and individuals
for which we've imposed terrorism
and human rights sanctions
would continue to be sanctioned
by the United States.
So it's incredibly complicated
and it really came down to
not trying to interject,
538 of us at the negotiating table,
but whether this was a deal
that we were better off
signing on than we were signing off.
And I think ultimately the original,
the interim agreement,
which was widely criticized in Israel
became kind of a model
and a lot of people said,
just continue the interim agreement.
And so--
Finally what I will
tell you about cheating,
Ernie moniz is a very smart guy.
And where there's other
people in the administration
that I'm not always enamored with.
I like her Ernie moniz
and I think he's a straight cheater.
And I spent a lot of time with him.
I spent more time on
reviewing this agreement
than anything else I've dealt with
in the United States Senate.
That is absolutely true.
And at the end of the day,
that's my judgment.
And it's a judgment based on
not what just I've said,
but went back home in
North Dakota, you say,
what do people think?
It's not really a big
issue in North Dakota.
We don't have a large Jewish community
in the Jewish community
we do have guess what?
Most of them are writing
letters encouraging me
to sign the agreement.
But I will tell you that
when I do explain
where the money's held
and how the sanctions regime works
and why we're better off in the deal
than outside the deal
and that the deal was going to go forward
whether we signed or not.
I think people kind of get that,
that this was a cake that was baked.
Whether they like the deal or not,
you don't get a chance to renegotiate.
- Okay. So the Senator
did us an enormous favor
by traveling long and far to get here.
And believe it or not,
she's got a nine o'clock
train back to D.C.
and we want to give her
a little nourishment
before she leaves.
But we also want to give her a big round
of applause.
- Thank you.
- [Crowd] [Clapping].
- Thank you Bob.
- [Crowd] [Clapping].
