Transcript
Mike (0:00)
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Darina (1:05)
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Mike (2:10)
Executive producer Isaac Saul.
Carol (2:13)
This is Tangle.
Will Kbach (2:24)
Hi everyone and welcome to welcome to the Tangle Friday edition. This is Will Kbach. I'm Tangle's senior editor, coming to you on a lovely August Friday here in Brooklyn, New York, where I'm based. And today I'm going to be reading our Friday piece which is a response to feedback and questions we received after we put out our YouTube video where we followed representative Jake Auchingloss. For about three days in June while he was on the Hill. The idea of this video was to get a behind the scenes look at what it's actually like to be a member of Congress, the things you might see them do on a day to day basis, the people they interact with, the things that they're working on, and generally give you a peek behind the curtains at what this incredibly important and serious job is actually like. The video generated a ton of feedback, thoughts, questions, criticisms, and when that happens, we sometimes like to dedicate an entire edition to responding to it. So that's what we're going to do today. We also think this will be a great way to follow up on the story since there was a ton we weren't able to fit in that video. If you haven't watched it yet, we'll put the link to it in today's show. Notes There's a few points where we reference specific moments and if you check this out in the newsletter, you'll see we've linked to specific spots in the video. So it might be a good idea to also check out the newsletter if you are subscribed and read through it there. So you can watch the moments of the video that we're referencing. But for the most part everything should be clear in context. All right, without further ado, let's jump into our mailbag. What happened behind the scenes with Representative Jake Auchincloss? Our first question comes from Jonathan from Omaha, Nebraska. This was awesome. Will you do more? Will you do a companion piece for a Republican, an independent or a Libertarian perspective? Here's our response. As our team and resources continue to grow, we definitely want to do more videos like this. And if we can do A Day in the Life video with a Republican representative, we'd absolutely do it. And we're already looking for a willing participant. I also think it'd be interesting to turn this into a series that explores a wider range of people operating in government. What is A Day in the Life of a judge? Like, what about a campaign manager or a legislative director or a governor or a city council member, or a Secret Service agent? Or even if we could make it happen, a president? There are a lot of different options and we had a blast making this video. We're really proud of the result. And so yes, our plan is to do more. And a small but important note just up front is that we have the video team and the resources to do videos like this because of memberships and donations. So if you're able, please support our work. And if you have. Thank you. We'll put a link to our membership page and our donation page in today's show. Notes the next question comes from an anonymous reader in Stockholm, Sweden. How did you pick the congressperson? Who else did you ask and did anyone else accept? If not, why not? If so, how did you decide to choose Representative Auchincloss? Here's our response. We wrote a bit about this question in our introduction to the video when we posted it a few weeks ago. But to recap, Representative Auchincloss is a Tangle reader and he occasionally writes in or messages Isaac directly from with thoughts about a particular issue. During one of his exchanges with Isaac last year, he floated the idea of us shadowing him through a full day in his life on the Hill, offering our viewers a behind the scenes video of an average day in Congress. Auchincloss loved the idea and that was that. In other words, we weren't picking from a list of options. The opportunity came together organically with a specific representative who was already familiar with Tangle. With that said, we do want to do this again with a Republican representative and potentially more representatives representing different facets of each political ideology. But we're looking for somebody specifically who checks the following boxes. First, they can offer us full access to their day, barring reasonable restrictions on what we could and couldn't film. Next, they will give us insight into committees, initiative groups, et cetera, that they are a member of. Next, they work on issues that would be salient to our audience. And finally, they should not have participated in a similar behind the scenes kind of profile before. Just to make sure that what we're putting out is fresh and unique. The next question comes from Eric from Rosslyn, Washington. I've read that Congressmen spend at least a third of their time fundraising. Did you see any evidence of this with Auchincloss? Here's our response. This was one of the most common questions we got, specifically that note about spending at least a third third of their time fundraising. And I think that's because of a series of stories that NPR did around 2012 exposing how much time members of Congress actually spend fundraising. That's where that one third figure came from. But straightforwardly, we didn't see Representative Auchincloss spend any time fundraising, literally not one minute while we were with him. We suspect that was for a few reasons. Number one, he knew we were coming, and I doubt he wanted us to see him spending time on the phone with donors versus doing his actual legislative work. Number two, he's in a very safe district Auchinglass ran his 2024 primary and general races unopposed, and he got 97.4% of the vote in the general election. Members like him don't need to do much fundraising for their own reelection. Finally, as you see in the video, he did spend some time thinking about what to do with money he has raised through his political action committee, his pac. And when he was thinking about that, he was deciding which rising stars in the party or colleagues of his in competitive districts he wanted to send money to to help out. So while we didn't see him raising funds specifically, we did see him thinking about how to allocate money he had already raised. Those are some theories about why we didn't see any fundraising while we were there, but we thought it was worth putting the question to Auchincloss himself. So Isaac shot him a note on Wednesday night. Here's what Isaac asked him Doing a Question and answer about our video this week. A lot of people have asked about you conspicuously not doing any fundraising when we were there. Given how much time we know members of Congress spend raising money, I have some thoughts, but was curious to give you a chance to address that. How much time do you spend fundraising? Were you concealing that work when we were there? Thoughts? Anything you'd like to share with our readers? And here was his response. Hey, yes, fundraising is part of the job. I don't spend nearly as much time doing it as some readers may think, especially in Washington. It's not unusual for me to go weeks in Washington without fundraising. I write a bit in my substack about some reforms I would support that would lead to more competition and less concentrated raising and spending. All this is to say I think it's totally believable that for Representative Auchincloss, fundraising is just not that important. Certainly not as important as it is for many other members of Congress.