Incentivizing Success With Lisa Nelson
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Well, welcome to the Jason and the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and thanks for joining us because we're going to give you a little hot take on the news. We're going to highlight the stupid because, you know, there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. And then we're going to phone a friend. This time it's Lisa Nelson. She's the CEO of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.

And they're just kicking off their annual meeting in Atlanta on the 27th, right as this podcast is being launched. But I hope you enjoy this conversation because I'm looking forward to talking to Lisa. She's been an impact player with Newt Gingrich, the contract for America. She, you know, in part in California with Reagan. And she's got this rich history of,

And now the CEO of ALEC, one of the most important think tanks that works behind the scene with state legislators.

and a whole array of policy that is good conservative policy. You know, it's the principle of limited government and federalism. And so we'll talk to her about all of that. She's a fascinating individual who really I leaned on while I was in Washington, D.C., and still do because she's one of the great thinkers and doers on this type of stuff. So I look forward to the conversation.

with Lisa Nelson. But let's jump into the news here a little bit. And, you know, we've been talking about this for a few weeks, where the president has some of the absolute lowest approval ratings that you could possibly have. And he seems to be mystified by this. Democrats seem to be mystified by it. I heard one Democrat, prominent Democrat in the House, say, how come people don't like us more?

And you know what? I think the only and real obvious answer to that is that the policies that have been implemented have been contrary to what America wants to see done. You know, it's the consequence of going through a campaign where the candidate sits in the basement, doesn't get any serious questions. They bypass one of the three debates on foreign policy.

And and maybe people overreacted a little bit to mean tweets. Everybody has to answer that question themselves. I'm just saying that. Why are we surprised about Joe Biden?

You know, there's been all kinds of adjectives and things thrown out. More and more you see in the news that Democrats complaining about the low energy, complaining about how foolish, how poor the communication is, how the policy doesn't fit. That's the same Joe Biden that was in office for 48, close to 50 years. There's no surprise there. I mean, this is a guy who had to drop out of the 1988 presidential campaign because, well,

A plagiarism. It's not as if he was the great orator of our time.

And Kamala Harris was in about eighth place, even in California, her home state, when they were getting ready to go through the primary. She had to drop out before they started voting because of lack of support. She wasn't exactly garnering big crowds and enthusiasm and didn't offer policies that were like, "Hey, America." Certainly not like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama did, not even in the same stratosphere as those people.

So when all of a sudden Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the leaders of the ticket, why are the Democrats suddenly surprised that, oh, is age is a problem?

Well, it's not ageism. Don't engage in ageism. It's the fact that he said in cognitive decline. But what that was that a surprise 18 or 24 months ago? No, it wasn't like that at all. The fundamental problem with the Democrats is they don't have a bench. Right. If you think about if it's not Joe Biden or Kamala Harris and there's all this chatter about who will be the next nominee for the Democratic Party.

You can really struggle to come up with a name. I mean, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, is out there trying to say, oh, it's mean running ads against Ron DeSantis in Florida. But does America really want to be like California with high crime and the immigration problems that they have, the homelessness problems, the high taxes?

I don't hear people clamoring. We talked previously about the U-Haul factor. You can look at the statistics of where U-Hauls are moving in this country. They're moving from California out to places like Idaho and Utah and Arizona and Texas and certainly Florida.

the u-hauls are going one way they're not moving to california people aren't saying i gotta get to california i mean they have great weather no doubt about it but um it's not as if america is flooding that direction because the quality of life is so good there so is that really the answer the point is who is up on the bench for the democrats we're not even halfway through the biden harris administration another factor is

How many people here we are, we're going into the election in November. Trivia question for you. How many people that are on the ballot has the president endorsed going into November? He's the sitting president of the United States. Um, the leader of the free world. Last time I read, do you know how many endorsements Joe Biden had of Democrats running for reelection? Three, three. That's not three in each state. That's a trend total of three in the whole country.

He went to Ohio a couple weeks ago. Tim Ryan, who's running for senator from the state of Ohio. Scheduled a little busy. I had a previously planned thing. Stacey Abrams running for governor of Georgia. Boy, she couldn't make it. She had a previous engagement. I mean, they're running away from this president, and we're not even halfway through his first term. That's how bad it is.

When you have poor policy combined with inadequate and embarrassing communication, you've got a non-dynamic leader. Guess what? You have a loser on your hands. And those are the Democrats. And Democrats, you're the one that picked them. You and you alone. And you have no bench. You have nobody who can actually, that everybody's saying, ooh, I bet they could do it and they'll do it better.

All right, so enough about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but that's my take on it. I don't think that's going away either. I want to go over and highlight somebody. I wasn't going to put them in the stupid category because I actually thought that was kind of cool. I want to bring you some of the stories that maybe you wouldn't have seen otherwise. But over in foxbusiness.com, Christian Cavalletti, age 50, from Milan, Italy. He has amassed the largest collection of Pepsi cans in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

How many cans of unique, unique cans of Pepsi does it take to have the world's largest Pepsi can collection? Think of a number. Think of a number. The real answer is 12,402. So Pepsi is operating in something like 80 different countries and has all different types of Pepsi type products. And, um,

He has the first ever Pepsi can edition from 1948, a 1960s prototype that really is pretty rare, a reproduction of a space can which was made in 1985 for a space mission known as Space Lab. He's also a... This started... I'm sorry. I don't want to offend anybody, but it started to make me laugh. He is a member of the National Pop Can Collectors Club,

And the Pepsi Cola Collectors Club. I'm sure every good American is a member, except me and my wife, Julie. And he hopes to turn his collection into an exhibit for the public. He is in Milan, Italy. It might be a little tough to go to, you know, go to see the Statue of David and go see the Pepsi can collection. All in one good trip to Milan and Florence and Rome. You know, you just kind of go and do the whole gambit there and the Colosseum and whatever.

The Mona Lisa and, you know, all those. The Mona Lisa is actually in New York. But all those different. The Last Supper up in Milan. But yeah, hats off to Christian for collecting 12,400 cans of Pepsi. All right. That I just thought was cool. Didn't even get to our next category because, you know what? It's time to bring on the stupid. Because there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. I just can't get enough of Jill Biden referring to a...

Somebody as a breakfast taco. Okay. People make mistakes. I make mistakes. Everybody I know makes mistakes and things you say, and you're like, I want to put that back in the can. I didn't mean to say it. Didn't mean to say it that way. I could think of some that jump right off the top of my head. I feel bad about them. You know, but you talk in the public enough, that's going to happen.

The reason this one falls into a special category of stupid is the fact that this was a pre-planned. It was in the teleprompter. It was not impromptu.

Jill Biden is reading the teleprompter. Now, when you're the first lady of the United States of America, there is layer after layer after layer after layer of bureaucracy that looks at the comments before they get read. It's not as if she misread, which is oftentimes what we hear with Joe Biden. She read what was actually written down. That's why it falls into this special category of stupid. All these people look at this and say, nothing wrong here.

Now, I know the communications director is like moments away, if not having just stepped away. But she, come on, this whole communication apparatus is supposed to be the best in the universe. And it's not. That is so bad. The second one I want to bring on as we're bringing on this stupid guy shows up on my list way too often. But LeBron James, he's on camera. He's talking about Brittany Griner. She's the one that pled guilty in Russia.

And is I think she was sentenced to something like 10 years. Now, I know they don't think they should be in jail. I know maybe she wasn't the biggest fan of the United States before she went to there. But she really wants the United States and Joe Biden to help bring her home. And I'm sure the administration wants to bring her home.

But LeBron James, talk about an idiot of his time. This is his quote. Now, how can she feel like America has her back? I would be feeling like, do I even want to go back to America? This is the quote of LeBron James. America has been so good to LeBron James. And time after time, I hear him dishing on this country as if it's not the greatest country on the face of the planet. LeBron, if you feel that way...

You're talking about Brittany Griner here. But if you feel that way, you're more than welcome to move to Calgary or Costa Rica or China where you think so much of. Shanghai is really nice this time of year. And I'm sure you'll do really well in their basketball league over there.

But come on. Did you know he's apologized for it and wants to pull it back? But this was on a trailer. This showed up on a video. He like, again, wasn't necessarily reading something was written down, but didn't back off of it until America kind of rose up and said, are you kidding me, LeBron? Really? That's what that's the message here. Vladimir Putin's just got to be laughing about how how this thing's going down. He's getting all his money out of the world. Instead, that is doing nothing to help bring her home.

You know who did bring people home? Donald Trump. 55 times we had detained Americans around the world. And with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the ambassador, Robert O'Brien, who ended up being the national security advisor, they brought home 55 people through the years. They did know how to do this. ASAP Rocky, people like that.

They got home and that was Donald Trump. So you're going to have to keep talking to Joe Biden about that one. But LeBron James, you bring on a special, special degree of stupid. All right. Time to transition now to our conversation and give a call to Lisa Nelson, CEO of ALEC, the American Legislative Council. Fascinating background. Newt Gingrich. I want to get the story out of her. But for right now, let's let's dial Lisa.

Hello, this is Lisa. Lisa, Jason Chaffetz here. Thanks for letting me take part of your day. I appreciate it. Well, I'm happy to hear from you. It's good to hear from you. Where are you? I'm at a secret unknown bunker out in the western United States. It's highly classified, Lisa. You know that. And I'm inside the Beltway where nothing good happens. You are in the Devil's Triangle. You're right there in the Beltway.

I got to tell you, now, look, Lisa and I have known each other a number of years. And Lisa is the kind of person behind the scenes who, like, knows everything that's going on and everything that should go on. She has this wealth of experience. And I was very fortunate early on when I got to Congress to get to know Lisa better.

And lean on Lisa because you got some game. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I think I was just thinking about the first time we met, and it's when you capitalized on an issue. I think you might have been running for Congress. Yes. You capitalized.

issue that was near and dear to my heart as one of the senior government relations officials at Visa called the interchange issue. And you kind of leveraged that issue and turned it into something in Utah. And I think it might have been one of the crashing waves that brought you in. You know, it's funny because people who run for office, sometimes for Congress, they will call and they will ask me, they say, okay, so what do I need to do? What's the secret sauce?

And I say, okay, now listen closely. Read the Wall Street Journal.

And they're like, "Oh, that's it?" I'm like, "No, no. You've got to read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover." So this whole interchange idea, it kept popping up in the Wall Street Journal. And then I came to find out the guy I was running with is on the wrong side of that issue. I don't want to go re-litigate that. But that did leave me to Lisa Nelson, who's now the CEO of ALEC, which is the American Legislative Exchange Council.

And Lisa's had an amazing go in Washington, D.C. And I want to go through your background. And then I want to get to today because ALEC is one of the most important organizations out there because where the rubber really meets the road, where change can actually happen in America, it happens a lot at these state legislative levels. And that's where you're the top dog there.

That's right. That's right. And having fun. Everything's happening. Nothing's happening in D.C., Jason, as you know. Well, and you do have fun because like you golf, you ski, you ski really well. I couldn't keep up with you. My brother skied with you once because I couldn't keep up. But yeah, it's fun. But you also understand the wheels of of Washington, D.C., what's working, what's not working and how.

The future of America is all politics are local and they happen at the locals, the levels. And that requires these state legislators. So let's go back. Give us a little bit more about Alec because you're about to have this on July 27th, right? You have your annual conference. Tell us what you're doing there. Tell us about Alec. And then I want to go back and hear about Lisa, the little girl, and how you got into this role. And then I can tell you my life story. Yes. So.

Thanks for the question on Alec. It's an easy and fun one to talk about. It is our 49th annual Alec meeting, and they take place all over the country every year. This year is in Atlanta, Georgia, which seems to be the hotbed

of politics. That was a pure coincidence because we signed this contract probably five years ago. Anytime you have a meeting that's upwards of 1,200 or 1,300 people, you've got to sign these contracts well in advance. So we're coming down to Atlanta, Georgia, July 27th to 29th. We've got a three-day meeting

series of meetings and we'll bring together about 1200 people. And it'll be made up of state legislators from all over the country that want to work with business and enterprise and industry on developing model policy that they can take home back to their states. That will be the tenants of which are limited government, free markets and federalism.

And by federalism, I don't mean DC federalism. I mean the true sense of the word, the constitutional sense of the word, which is states' rights. So you can imagine we're a nonpartisan organization. We have Democrat members, but less and less of them because the way the parties are kind of spreading out, there's less and less Democrats who believe in limited government and they're looking for government solutions.

But what we always try to do is find the solutions to whatever the problem is, whether it's health care, whether it's education, whether it's tax relief or budgeting. We try to find the solutions that would mean the least amount of government intervention, the least amount of government regulation, and what would push the power back to the states. So that's essentially what we're doing. Our issues range all the way from health care to education, as I said, to communications,

and technology to free speech to campus, campus curriculums. And then of course, our bread and butter issues, which are the tax and fiscal and regulatory issues. So you know, when you when you your state legislature, legislator, and you start to rise the ranks, you very quickly understand that

Alec is like this think tank, this bank of you will of ideas, because I think a lot of state legislators, a lot of federal ones too, they decide, Hey, I'm going to go run. And then they, they're like, wait, where do I go for solutions? Like, I got to really think this through. Like,

I would lean on, for instance, the Heritage Foundation. And I thought, oh, my gosh, they've got a treasure trove of research and things that I can look at. And Alec does that as well. And the general public probably doesn't know a lot about it.

But in terms of thinking things through, understanding best practices, understanding that, hey, you know, maybe Pennsylvania did this and Florida did that and Georgia did this. But Arizona is doing that. That's what that's what's collectively is really, really strong. And that's I mean, you as the CEO, you can bring all that together.

Yeah, that's what's so cool about the organization. And you're right, you know, not a lot of people. We're not a kind of household name, certainly. But we've been kind of toiling at this, as I said, for 49 years. And, you know, if you think about that resource for a state legislator, we probably have 900 or more model policies on our website.

I call it the shelf, you know, on our website. So if you think about it as a library, you can go onto the website, www.allec.org, and you can look at all those model policies. So like you said, if you're thinking of running for office or if you're already a legislator and you've seen something move in a different state, you can, you know, as a model policy, you can kind of take what we offer, but you can tweak it.

and make it work for your state. You can talk to the legislators and in our meetings, there's a lot of networking and a lot of sharing of that information as you kind of talk through. One legislator from Idaho will talk to another from Iowa and say, well, how did that work?

And if there was unintended consequences or if there was things that didn't quite go as planned, they can kind of talk through that. And I would say at the outset, the reason that our model policy is so trusted by legislators is that our whole process of developing the model policy brings in the key stakeholders. So, you know, if we're going to talk about...

you know, tax and fiscal or health care or whatever the issue is, those industry stakeholders that would have a say and actually have a lot of information about how something is going to get impacted will will have an opportunity to talk to the legislators about what might happen if something passes or doesn't. So that education is

And that vetting makes it so that the model policies are that much more trusted. We actually work with an organization called Quorum here in D.C. that tracks legislation across the country. And what we found is ALEC legislators are three times more likely to actually get model policy, and it doesn't have to be ALEC's model policy, but get policy passed.

So there's lots of legislators who run for office and don't ever pass a bill. They just they vote on a lot of things, but they're not ever leading on a legislative piece of legislation. But ours are three times more likely, which kind of says we're maybe the wonks of the group or, you know, the real policy nerds that like to get together and talk through, you know, what works and what doesn't. Yeah. I mean, if you're a policy geek.

This is like heaven. So here's the thing. Again, people that are thinking about running or want to run or want to help on a campaign, you know, it's one thing to say, yeah, I really want to run. And then the big question is, OK, well, why and what do you stand for?

And, you know, when I ran, not that I had all the answers, but it worked for me and I did win is it took me two years to kind of fully develop that. And I had been chief of staff to the governor in Utah. So I kind of understood the state issues that I need to really think through the federal issues. And then it really drives the discussion in your own brain and your own, you know, trusted few about, OK, what's.

Why is the federal government even doing this? Shouldn't that be a state issue? Like what in the world? Why do they have their tentacles in that? As you go through all those gyrations, again, one of those core questions that really have to be answered in the right...

I'm going to run. What do I need to do? You need to read the Wall Street Journal like all day, every day, cover to cover. But then the other thing you got to do is you got to think through, okay, the policies and not just the platitudes of those policies. That's where you can go lean on like ALEC and Heritage and a few other, for me, conservative organizations out there to dive deeper into the policy so that you actually have something tangible about

There's something that Bill Clinton once said that I actually really liked. And he said, you know, for every issue, you've got to be able to explain it in 30 minutes, three minutes and 30 seconds. And if you think about it, it's really hard to do. The shorter the time, it's even harder to do to get it exactly right. But the principle is right. And that's where I think Alec is just I'm so glad. How long have you been there? You've been there now for a few years.

Oh, my gosh. I've been the CEO since 2014, since the end of 2009 years. And I would just say, you know, to your to what you were saying, you know, when a legislator first decide or when a citizen decides to run for public office and it doesn't have to be state legislature, it could be school board or city council or something like that. Something is going to pique their interest. You know, it could be we

It could be what the heck is happening in our schools and I or my children's my child's school. And I think I need to pay attention. And then, you know, paying attention all of a sudden, you know, develops into I need to sit on the school board. And then wait a minute, I need to do the appropriations of this funding for the school, you know, and stuff like that. So there's there's a lot of decision making. And I would say that our legislators, you know, go through that process. And then then they've got to kind of think through, well, you know, how would I vote?

How would I vote on an issue? And I think that's that process that you were talking about when you were chief of staff to the governor. You're thinking through, you know, well, the governor is putting his name or her name out, you know, on the line on a particular issue. How would I, you know, how would I cross that line? And what would I say about that issue? So you start to formulate that.

what's important to you. And I will say that some of our members come to ALEC because they're an expert in something. They're an expert in budgeting or they're an expert in civil justice or tort reform. And then they become a leader within ALEC on that issue. And there's that

you know, breed of legislator. And then there's other folks that come here because they're not an expert and they want to learn about that issue. We had a legislator from Wisconsin who was a nurse and she got involved in

um because of her child's school this was probably 15 years ago but she got involved because of her child's school and she she asked a simple question and didn't like the answer she got very involved within alec and the education task force and then became you know just kind of in a twist of fate the chairman of the healthcare task force because she'd also been a nurse

So she was able to kind of hone her skills in education and really learn about the conservative solutions for education, which are, you know, to not. We love public schools. We love private schools. We love charter schools. We love parochial schools. You know, so it's all of the above. And she was able to kind of hone that in.

understand the issues within education and some of the ups and downs with the public schools, but also the challenges with charter schools and

And school choice issues. But I would say that every one of our members comes for a different reason and then hones those skills as they as they are involved. One thing I can't remember if you had remembered this or not, but the other thing about ALEC is that we have about 90 members of Congress right now that are former ALEC members and 30.

13 U.S. senators. And I think it was I think last count it was seven sitting governors. So, you know, when you when you get that political bug or you want to you want to serve in public office, oftentimes you can kind of get schooled up at the state level and then become, you know, become a candidate for higher office as well, which is kind of neat to see. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Lisa Nelson right after this.

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Now, listen, you you part of what brings a lot of value of what you've done is what you did before. So we got to go through a little bit of life history here with Lisa because it kind of weaves through Newt Gingrich and some other interesting gyrations along the way. So, OK, so I was born in. That's where we're starting. I was born in. And let's kind of take a glide path from there and then we'll add back up at Alec.

All right. Well, like you, I'm a Westerner. I was born in Denver, Colorado, but I was raised in Palo Alto, California. So the heart. I can hear the collective boos now. Boo. Yeah. I wonder if we have audio we can lay down underneath this. Palo Alto. I was actually born in Los Gatos. I don't know if you know that about me, but I was born there. I couldn't help it, but I was born there.

Yeah, well, I was beautiful. It was different back then. California in the 60s was different. Absolutely. Although, you know, I was called what we affectionately called the Reagan baby, because when I was growing up and I was I was born in 61. So, you know, when I was in high school, I was in the 70s. And Ronald Reagan was ascending to office and was governor of California.

So a lot of us that were kind of Dick Worthland was an old pollster during the Reagan days, coined the phrase Reagan babies. And that's how all of this kind of generational labeling started to take place. I think there was the baby boomers and then there was this and that. Now we've got Gen X and millennials and everything else. But I'm definitely a self-described Reagan baby. I grew up.

hearing him as governor of the state and then watching him run, you know, as for president. And when I and then I went to Berkeley, California, bastion of conservatism. Right. Yeah. Well, there were three or four of you at least. Yes.

Yep, yep. I honed my debating skills there. I was a political science major, international relations. But I got bit by the bug, and I don't know if I've ever told you the story, but Ronald Reagan was president at the time. It was 1982.

And the queen, Elizabeth, still queen today, came to the United States for a jubilee. And it was the queen's visit. And he brought her to the Reagan Ranch down in Santa Barbara. And then he was going to have a state dinner at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. And my name was on a list of Republican volunteers somewhere along the way. I had volunteered on a campaign campaign.

And they said, you know, you want to come over and do advance work for the presidential visit. And I said, hell yes, I will definitely do that.

And my claim to fame was I was I got to drive in the motorcade from the San Francisco airport up to the I think it was the St. Francis Hotel. And I got to drive Nancy Reagan's hairdresser. Well, we know they're an important part of the motorcade. So, yeah, the Secret Service isn't going to leave that person behind.

That's right. I thought I have arrived. That's an awesome story.

It was fun. But I mean, literally, I was bit. I was bit by the bug. And that was my senior year. And I thought, you know what, even if I don't have a job in the Reagan Bush reelect, because by this time it was 83 and they were just gearing up for the reelection campaign of 84. Even if I didn't have a job, I was just going to go to D.C. and make my way. And I had met some of the advanced guys from the White House. And they said, you know, if you come out, give us a call. And so I did. I bet they did.

I bet they did, Lisa. Hey, how old were you then? I was whatever you are when you graduate from college. I guess I was probably like right around 20 or 21. 21-year-old girl coming to, yeah, I bet. Okay, so the advanced guy said, yeah, call us up, Lisa. Okay, I believe that. That's highly believable. Yes.

And they did help. Actually, one of the guys was Robert Cubitosi, who was one of the, he was Frank Sinatra's advance man and bodyguard. And then when the Reagans went into the White House, he moved over to be Nancy Reagan's bodyguard. So that's kind of a fun story. And I thought you'd like that. But he was one of the guys I called.

I ended up taking a job working for the Republican National Committee and Frank Ferenkoff, who was the Nevada. He was the national chair of the party during the campaign. And so it was kind of, you know, the RNC was gearing up for the 84 campaign and I was in his office.

So luckily for me, I got to join the RNC. I came right in at the top, at the chairman's office. So I was exposed to a lot of the leaders of the party and the senators and members of Congress. I was answering phones and doing basic staff grunt work at the time, but I certainly was catapulted into the

the kind of the higher discussions and some of the, you know, major players within the Republican party. So that was super helpful. Okay. So Reagan goes on, he wins, he becomes a two-term president. And then, then what happened?

So I stayed at the RNC for a little while. I ended up doing site selection for the Republican conventions. I moved down to New Orleans. I got married to my college sweetheart. And after we got married, we moved to New York because he was going to work. It was going to go to business school at Columbia and college.

I had met, and this is where it gets kind of fun, because I had met this guy named William F. Buckley. I had helped him out at the New Orleans Republican Convention. National Review Magazine, if some of your listeners are familiar with that, is still one of the backbone of kind of conservative ideas and philosophy. And Mr. Buckley needed some help at the convention. I gave it to him. So when I moved to New York, I gave him a call.

and said you need to hire me and that we created a position and i was going to be director of special projects for the magazine um um you know working for william f buckley was was illuminating to say the least it was you know putting out a magazine every fortnight as he would say and um

We founded or I founded something called the National Review Institute, which now stands alone as the as the kind of owner of the magazine. At the time, it was created to just kind of support the magazine's efforts and to really, you know, build maybe not.

maybe crassly saying a fundraising juggernaut around William F. Buckley and the issues and the policies that they were trying to talk about in the magazine. So the Institute was formed. It now has a number of programs around the Buckley legacy, which I'm really, really proud of. And so I was there.

And it was at that point in my life that I met Newt Gingrich, who was one of the speakers for one of our conferences that we were holding.

And that's what the Institute really was doing, was having a lot of different high-level, senior-level discussions. We had Margaret Thatcher attend a number of them. She was the prime minister at the time. So we were doing a lot of kind of partnering with her policy team. I don't know if you remember a guy named John O'Sullivan, but he was Thatcher's policy director. And then he went on to be the editor at National Review Magazine for a number of years. So we had a...

a really great connection there. But we were in, I think it was a conference that we put on in 1992 at this point. So, you know, this has been kind of fast forward eight or nine years. I met Newt Gingrich and I met another woman by the name of Gay Gaines, who is a Florida

um, Florida political, um, operative and fundraiser and, and, um, is very involved in a lot of things that go on in Florida. And they asked me to come and run go pack, which was the organization that new was chairman of, um, that was at that point focusing on, um, this little project called the contract with America. And, um,

Newt had already done a lot of research and a lot of background study on what it would take to have a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. And that hadn't happened. I mean, people got to understand that was a far-fetched idea because Democrats had been in control of the House for how many decades? Forty years.

It had been 40 years. My entire at 29 or 32 years old by this time, you know, I had only lived in an America that has had a Democrat controlled house. Crazy.

Crazy. So I ended up and at this point now, you know, my husband and I are married. We're living up in New York. And I say, honey, I'd like to go back to D.C. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. And we kind of had a crazy situation where he worked in New York and I worked in D.C. That happens a lot.

more now. But, you know, 20 years ago, that was that was not happening. People didn't do that. But I came to D.C. and my husband kind of went back and forth and we traveled a lot. And I ran GOPAC. And lo and behold, 1994, after a lot of hard work and the contract with America, we can talk about that if you want to. But we won. We won. We were in down in Georgia on election night.

I was pregnant with my second child by this point, and it was 4 o'clock in the morning, and there was about 40 or 50 of us in the war room there, and we didn't go to bed that night. It was just absolutely insane, and nobody thought it could happen. Like you said, this was a far-fetched idea.

People were making fun of us, you know, thinking that we were crazy. But we took the majority in the house that night. I mean, that contract with America, that was – everybody thinks, like, oh, let's just replicate that every year and, you know, it'll be easy. But that was also a really kind of innovative idea, but also the blueprint that actually –

did affect about as much change as we've seen in a long, long time because there was a mandate to actually go implement it. Well, what was so inspiring and Newt's brilliance on this was not only did he develop the contract with America, which was a line-by-line agreement

item of things that he would do that all had approval ratings of 70, 75% or higher. So he looked for...

is to kind of bring Americans together. He looked for kind of those binary choices where you're, you know, how could you not be for, you know, lower taxes? How can you not be for better education? So the platform itself was really a great platform, but then the brilliance is, and he said that in the first hundred days, he had a whole separate list of all the things that they would do if they were in the majority.

And that's risky because, you know, gosh knows, you know, you don't have total control over anything in Congress. But the things that he put out there were a lot of process issues, a lot of things like cleaning up at the time. And I don't know if the audience remembers this, but there was a there was a lot of scandal after 40 years of Democrat rule. There was the check writing scandal. There was the post office scandal where, you know, people were using the franking for for

for different things. I mean, there was a lot of things that were going on that are a lot more tightened up now, but a lot of that

A lot of those process issues were the ones that he said in the first hundred days, we're going to clean this house up and we're going to really make sure that our our process is transparent, that, you know, Americans know what's going on. He communicated with the press every day, all day, very communicative. And I think I think it just was a it was really revolutionary in the way that he did.

So, I mean, it was, and it was a revolutionary and it was effective and it changed the trajectory of the nation. And so once you won, what, then what was your role moving forward?

Well, so he became speaker, Newt became speaker, and I was still over at GOPAC. And a couple months later, I guess, I mean, I was fielding a lot of press calls and a lot of, you know, things around, you know, just the election results. But I came into Newt's office in the speaker's office.

as the head of public liaison. So essentially what that means in kind of Washington speak is I ended up being the liaison to the business community, you know, and that's liaison, you know, in loosely term, loose terms is making sure that if we're talking to the business community about something that, you know, everybody's getting that, getting those messages and hearing what we're saying, but also being, you know, kind of incoming and outgoing, right.

But I did it with the business community. I was liaison to the governors. And interestingly, and fast forward to where I am now, I was liaison to the state legislators as they were working with Congress on things. I would say that that role as liaison to the governors was really important because what Newt

was able to accomplish on getting welfare reform passed. And Bill Clinton finally signed it after the third time. He takes credit for it now, but it took three times. He vetoed it twice, the same bill. But that welfare reform bill, there was a lot of work that had to go on between Congress and the states. And so Governor Schaefer of North Dakota, Governor Engler of Michigan, Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, those were the real

people that carried a lot of heavy water on making sure that the states were well represented in that negotiation. So needless to say, Lisa Nelson is right in the thick of all this, as you've always been. And then you continued on. You represented, you worked for Visa, right? You were...

Well, then I went to the dark side after all my public service. And I think I left the hill when Newt stepped down as speaker. I ended up going to work for AOL, America Online, as I had five different offers. This was the one that I thought was kind of the saddest and the most exciting because the Internet was just coming online.

We really, when I was in the speaker's office, I tell our interns here at Alec now, we had beepers. We didn't have cell phones. It's true. It's true. We had pagers. Yeah. Literally operated with beepers. And if we needed to be someplace else, we got beeped and, you know, it would tell you a location and you'd run over to that meeting or, you know, whatever. But, uh,

I went to work for AOL and I was there for about eight years. And in the course of those eight years, it became AOL Time Warner. And then a couple of years later, within that eight years, it became Time Warner. So that was a very interesting time to kind of see the convergence of Internet and content.

And then from there, I got recruited away to run the global government relations office for Visa, the credit card company. And that was near and dear to my heart because at this point, my kids were getting a little older.

and my parents are out in california and i wanted to work for a california company so this one came knocking at my door and it was a great opportunity so i remember i actually visited you at your office i think twice there downtown san francisco it was uh it was my one friendly out there in san francisco it was good

We had a great CEO, Joe Sanders, that I worked with very well. And it was a great eight years at Visa. But so corporate America, 16 years of corporate America was fascinating and taught me a lot.

about how to run a budget, how to manage a team, how to think globally but act locally, all the things that a good CEO would need. And when I quote unquote air quote retired from Visa,

Alec came calling. I really thought I was done. I had worked for now, you know, 35, 40 years straight and had my kids through out all that. And I really thought I was, you know, kind of worn out and tired. And Alec came calling and said, look, this is the combination of all of the things that you've done. This is the state and local. This is the campaign work. This is the political work. This is the policy work.

It's the, you know, it's the nexus between elected officials and business and developing that model policy. And we had been members of ALEC when I was at Visa and AOL. So I knew the organization, but I didn't work with them on a daily basis. My state government relations guy, you know, had that portfolio. Right.

Um, but you know, I knew the organization, I knew it did great things. I knew it stood for all the things that, that kind of, I was comfortable with, which was, you know, a lot, a lot of the business issues, frankly, um, and, and limited government and, and, you know, all the things that I had been kind of working on with Newt and working on with Buckley and Reagan and, and everywhere else. So, um,

Took the job thinking I would be here a couple of years and I'm just I'm having a ball. Well, I can tell. Yes. And I've seen you in action and it's it's fun to watch. And and the leadership that you provided there and its effect on literally thousands of state legislators across the country through the years, it's.

It really is a very important organization that probably, unless you're a state legislator, you probably haven't heard of a whole lot, but is really as important of an impact player as there is. So...

Well, the fun thing, and you might not remember this, but being from Utah, Jason, we have one publication that we've put out now for 15 years called Rich States, Poor States. And it is essentially, you know, 18 kind of criteria that we measure the states by. And Utah has been ranked number one for all 15 states, I mean, for all 15 years. And this is done, the authors are Dr. Arthur Laffer and

and steve moore the economist and then jonathan williams who's our alec economist and for 15 years now utah has been number one and what's super exciting and kind of goes back to what you were saying in the beginning is that the states are now almost in competition to try to stay in the top 10 and they will come to us and say what do we you know they know they might not be able to be

I'll tell you, Florida is coming on strong to try to beat Utah. They call us up and say, OK, what did they do? OK, what can we do? And they've bumped up. But we have buttons that we wear at our meetings. What's your state ranking? So that we can encourage a little friendly competition among the states. And it's really exciting to see. And Utah should be very proud of its ranking.

Yeah, and you know what? It's a lot of credit to the state legislators here who have taken a very conservative, business-friendly approach, and it serves our state well. I mean, I think one of the big issues for Utah, quite frankly, is how to slow down the growth here a little bit because the secret's kind of out. You hear a lot about Florida. You hear a lot about Texas. They're huge states. But, boy, if you look at what's going on kind of between Utah, Idaho, I mean, there is a –

definite surge of people that are coming here because it's wonderful climate beautiful state has all the friendlies but it's a great business climate and the legislature has created this predictable environment where business can come in and thrive it's really incredible and the in-migration of utah is the same as the in-migration of some of these other places yeah and it's

You know, which brings on a whole other set of problems, like how to deal with growth and everything else. You're listening to Jason in the house. We'll be right back.

We've got to move on, Lisa, because you have been an impact player, everybody from Newt Gingrich and the Contract for America and Visa and everything else, and certainly Alec. But I've got to ask you these rapid questions to get to know you just a little bit better. I don't even know the answer to these questions, so are you ready to strap it on and put your seatbelt and answer these questions? Is this a lightning round? This is a lightning round. We don't go too fast, but, yeah, you just –

You'll be ready. You'll be okay. You ready? Okay. First concert you attended. Oh, my gosh. Probably the Grateful Dead. I've been to 18 Grateful Dead concerts. That's my Berkeley. Yes. Yes. You're a deadhead. You and your husband, I can just see you there in your tie dyes. That's good. I'm impressed. When you graduated high school, what was your high school mascot?

We were the Vikings, the Palo Alto Vikings. Because there were a lot of Vikings in Palo Alto at the time. Oh, yeah. It's a big green and white ship. And for the homecoming weekends, we used to make the floats at my house. My parents, they traveled a lot. So we had a lot of parties at my house. A little Grateful Dead play in the background. I get it. All right. That makes sense.

Who was your first celebrity crush? Oh, gosh. Probably Ronald Reagan. How geeky is that? Oh, my gosh. I'm not saying that just for your audience, but I think Ronald Reagan was my crush. I still have a crush on him. I will tell you, that is the second geekiest answer. The first goes to Kennedy.

Kennedy, the host of, you know, she does a Fox business show. You've seen her throughout the network. She was at MTV. She told me this is before she was at MTV. She had a crush on Dan Quayle. She said she had a poster in her room. Who makes who makes Dan Quayle posters? She had a Dan Quayle poster in her room. That is the geekiest answer I've ever heard.

From somebody I never expected it from. I might be a little embarrassed to admit that, Kennedy, but that's okay. Seriously, who makes Dan Coyle posters? But they don't really show up in your cereal box. I don't know. That was my favorite. Just anyway. What was your very first job? I'm not talking about, hey, your mom or dad saying, hey, Lisa, take out the garbage. What was the first kind of real job that you had done?

Well, you know what? This is an interesting one because I think it's part of kind of almost who I am. And I lied on my application, Jason, because I've always been one of those people that likes to have my own money.

And when I was 15, I wanted a job over at Stanford on campus in the Tresitor, it was called Tresitor Union, and it was the hall where the cafeteria was for the Stanford students. And so I rode my bike over there. I lied on the application. You had to be 15 1⁄2, and I was not 15 1⁄2.

But I got the job and I flipped burgers and put pizzas in the oven for the Stanford students at Tressiter Union. And then my next job, which ended up being, I think, I think maybe even a catalyst for, for why I'm such a, such a kind of capitalist was I sold shoes at the Stanford shopping center at the CH Baker shoe store. And,

And it was the first time I was taught about incentives. And if I sold more than three pairs of shoes in a night, I would start to get a percentage of what I sold. And when I started learning about how much money I can make, I mean, I had everybody in the whole town coming to buy shoes for me. And I was I was making a ton of money.

But that, that kind of incentive and that, um, that taught me a lot. And I think that still to this day, it's about individual responsibility and incentivizing success. Yeah. You know, it's amazing. And then you hear stories sometimes will started doing so well. They told me I couldn't make so much money. I'm like, you guys are idiots, but, um, uh,

That is a great story. I think if I had to fess up too, I'm pretty sure I lied on my first application too. Because you know what? There was no internet. There was no verifying that I was 15 and a half. And you didn't have a driver's license because you weren't old enough to drive.

Yeah, I rode my bike, you know, over there. I went straight over from high school. It was not a problem. I mean, you know, I mean, my mom laughs about the fact that, you know, I went ahead and did this on my own. They didn't know I was going for a job interview. And I came home and said, oh, I've been working at Stanford Trusted or Union for a couple months. And they were just like,

We thought you were hanging out with your friends. Oh, my parents thought it was the greatest thing in the world that I kind of lied on my application. They bought me, I had a moped. This is going to the general cinema corporation and it was just a few miles from our house and it was Arizona in the summer. And this was not like a Vespa, you know, where you just, you know, turn your handle and there goes the juice. Oh no, this is one of those pedal ones.

where you had to pedal it really fast in order to kick on the engine. And then it was not fast enough to outrun these dogs. Oh, my gosh. It was so slow and embarrassing. Did you wear a helmet? No. Did you wear a helmet? No. This is, no. I was, you know, 14 years old. I'm not wearing a helmet in Arizona. I haven't got hair.

So, no, I didn't. But I had to come home at like 1, 1.30 in the morning, and my parents were tired of picking me up. And so I'd ride this Vespa in the middle of the night. The dogs would come running after me. This same stupid dog would come out after me every single time. There's no getting around him. He'd love to chase me. I'd kick him. He'd try to bite me. It was just unbelievable. Anyway, all right, let's keep going. Dogs or cats? Cats.

It's dogs. Although I did have a cat, but I had a, I had a cat named Reagan and we had a golden retriever. I know it's embarrassing. And then we had a golden retriever named Maggie.

And she passed away, but I've always been a dog lover. We don't have one now because we do a ton of traveling. I gave my two dogs, we had cockapoos to my parents out in California. So they kind of take care of them. But Maggie was the golden retriever and Reagan was kind of an alley cat that we got when we were living up in New York.

And she ended up being so independent that she left us. She just went off and did her own thing. I think she got better food someplace else. Yeah, just decided to leave the cat's life. Yeah, all right. So if you and your husband could have just, you're going to have dinner, and you can invite anybody, dead or alive, anybody over to break bed and share a meal with, who would it be? And I'm not letting you pick Reagan again. So somebody other than Reagan. Oh, gosh.

Oh, God, this is one of those tough questions. It's one of those philosophical. It is. I've spent some time with some pretty amazing people, with William F. Buckley and Nick Ingrish. This is anybody in history. Steve Case, anybody in history.

I think right now I might like to sit down with Queen Elizabeth, and she's still alive, because she's been at the seat of power for so long, and she's seen so much. Her impact on the world. Yeah. That would be a fascinating dinner. I'm going to ask you to invite me over if you pull that off. Sure.

I might just pull it off, Jason. You never know. I have no doubt with you and your ability to do it. Any unique talent that nobody knows about?

Oh, shoot. Well, you already mentioned golf and skiing. I played tennis all through high school and I still play every Saturday with a group of women. And then I golf. I try to golf every weekend, too. So those would be, you know, fairly athletic. I don't work out at all, but I like to I like to play sports and I like to be competitive. You're very athletic. I don't.

You may not have the formality of a rigid workout, but come on, between golf and tennis and skiing, you're a pretty athletic person.

Yeah. Yeah. I love, I love just getting out there. I love being outside. Um, we do, my husband and I, Dave and I like to hike, um, a lot and, uh, we're going after, uh, you know, I don't know if you know this, but I'm going to be a grandmother in another month. I might, I might've told you this, but my son and his wife were expecting a baby. So we're going to go up to Connecticut and do that. And then we're going to London to go to the Lake region to hike for about a week after that. So that'll be really fun. That will be awesome. Yeah.

Congratulations. Pineapple and pizza, yes or no? Yes. I'm embarrassed. You know that Hawaiian pizza is sometimes pretty good. Although I would never order it, but if someone brought it to me, I would eat it because I like pizza. Okay. The judges do not like this answer. Last question. Best advice you ever got?

Well, I use this one when people ask me something like this, but take the cookies when they're passed. And what that means is, you know, when opportunities come knocking, you know, don't just automatically dismiss them. You know, always look for always be positive.

Always look for the opportunities and try to take the piggies when they're passed. And you might not like them. They might not be the best, but certainly they open doors and open new opportunities for you. Well, it's great advice from somebody who's seen and done a lot and had an impact behind the scenes more than most people know. And Lisa Nelson, she's the CEO of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and

And their big event in Atlanta starting July 27th. So good luck with that. And thanks for joining us on the Jason in the House podcast. I do appreciate it.

Well, thanks for having me, Jason. It's always fun to talk to you, and I hope I get to see you soon. We will be streaming live all of our plenary sessions. And actually, Newt is one of our speakers. Jason, you spoke at our meeting last year out in Salt Lake City. But look for us on ALEC.org and watch us live for all of the meeting content. Thanks so much.

That was Lisa Nelson. I hope you find her as fascinating as I do. She's just wonderful in person, a great leader, somebody who sinks their teeth in behind the scenes and just makes good things happen. And you know what? She's a perpetually happy person. I've seen her many times through the years, always happy. And I love that. Good leader, solid thoughts, got principles in place.

And she's happy. You can't ask her more than that. So I can't thank Lisa Nelson for joining us. I know I've got a busy week with Alec there in Atlanta.

Thank you for listening to the Jason in the House podcast. I hope you can rate it. Please rate it. It's kind of important to us. And subscribe to it if you can. You can go over to foxnewspodcast.com for other types of podcasts out there. Got some good ones out there. And I hope you join us next week. I'm Jason Chaffetz. This has been Jason in the House.

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