Mike Morrill is a breath of fresh air in state Democratic politics. He’s challenging longtime state representative Tom Caltagirone for a seat in the 127th District . If ever an election depicted a bright progressive future against a business as usual status-quo past, this is it. My only regret after talking to Mike is that I don’t live in the 127th to pull that lever for him. Progressives should make it their business to see that Mike is successful. To help Mike, contact him at his website: http://www.morrillmajority.org/

CS2: You’re running for Tom Caltagirone’s seat in the 127th District for state representative in the Democratic primary. Can you tell me what the issues in this campaign are?

Mike: There are a lot of issues in this campaign. Perhaps the biggest issue is thirty years of missed opportunities. He’s in his sixteenth term. There’s very little to show for it. If you look back, at least at the last couple of decades, there’s not a lot that’s been accomplished for the people of Pennsylvania or for the people of Berks County. Reading has degenerated in lots of different ways. A state representative that represents the city bears some responsibility. Whether it’s crime or taxes, there hasn’t been anything substantial done. Reading is one of the most violent cities in the country. The murder rate is outrageous. All crime rates are outrageous. Property taxes in Pennsylvania are the most egregious in the nation. Yet there’s very little that’s been done to have any kind of progressive tax reform that would protect working families. These are things that have local impact even though they’re state issues. It’s not just Reading that has high taxes; so do many cities across Pennsylvania. There are people losing their homes right here in Reading and Kenhorst because they can’t afford to pay the property taxes. So in that way these are issues for state representatives to deal with.

CS2: Let me ask you this. You’re both Democrats. What do you bring to the table that will appeal to Democrats that he does not?

Mike: Anybody can put Democrat after their name. I believe in being a Democrat that starts with a capital “D.” Embracing democracy. Being a Democrat means more than just calling yourself a Democrat. There are certain values that the Democratic Party has that go back to the 1930s and the Roosevelt revolution. That is, standing up for working people and supporting unions. Now Tom Caltagirone has been very good at supporting unions. However, some general concepts issues that stand up for working people he hasn’t done that. For example, on issues of fighting racism by standing up for the rights of minorities, or women’s rights issues that have been championed by the Democratic Party Tom’s views on these issues are the opposite of what the Democratic Party stands for and are more in line with the Republican Party. On issues of concern to gays, women, and minorities, Tom holds Republican views. Tom got an 80 percent rating from Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition the highest of any Democrat in Pennsylvania. That’s who he is. There’s a website called Dino-Tom which describes Tom’s Republican-like attributes. If you look at issue after issue, the voting record is not what you think of when you think Democrat.

Now I’m not just running against Tom Caltagirone. I’m running on the politics of possibility. The Democratic Party had lost its way for a while. But now we’re going back to our roots, to the things that made this party great. We are the party of hope. We are standing up for workers. For the have-nots. For people who are riddled but don’t want to lose what they have. The Democratic Party is coming home to its roots to stand with the average person.

CS2: What does the future of the Democratic Party look like to you?

Mike: We can make a difference in people’s lives. What excites me in general with the party well, take a look at the presidential candidates. For the first time in memory there’s more than one candidate that really excites me. For the first time ever I could vote for the top four, five, or six candidates. Too often, we as progressive Democrats have looked at the candidates and said well, I really like this guy, I really like this woman, but we knew in our hearts that that person never had a chance. This time we have people who, even the most conservative of them, as Democratic candidates for president, are people who would lead us in a very new direction, are people who would lead us in lots of ways that we’ve been hoping for for a very long time. So when I talk about the politics of possibility I mean we have a possibility of changing foreign policy, of really doing something significant at the national as well as the state level. Governor Rendell has implemented a lot of ideas that actually I proposed six years ago when I ran against him. He’s been very progressive in terms of the environment and in terms of education. It’s very exciting that places like Massachusetts are moving from state colleges and universities that were raising tuition to now turning into a situation where they are saying tuition can be free. Every person in Massachusetts can have a free college education. That’s something that we could easily move towards in Pennsylvania as well. So on issue after issue there is a real movement towards a future that five, six, seven years ago we thought was just a dream, but now it’s a reality.

CS2: I’d like to ask you a few issue questions. First I’d like to dispense with the 2,000-pound elephant in the room. Earlier this year your opponent cast a bizarre vote that resulted in a Republican being elected majority whip. What is your take on that?

Mike: I can only speculate on why Tom Caltagirone cast his vote for a Republican. And I don’t know why he did it. What I do know is what the consequences would have been if he had been able to stick with his plan.

What we do know as a fact is that he met in private with former Speaker of the House, John Perzel, a Republican from Philadelphia. He wanted to vote for Perzel again for Speaker of the House, even though the Democrats were the majority. So if he had his way, not only would we have the Speaker of the House, John Perzel, a Republican, but every single committee chair would have been a Republican as well. He would have voted for Sam Rohrer as committee chairman, he would have voted for Russ Fairchild as committee chair, one of the most conservative, right-wing politicians in Pennsylvania. The committee chairs determine what issues will be voted on, which will get out of committee, and every single committee, with one exception, the judiciary, would have been chaired by Republicans. The judiciary would have been chaired by him, Tom Caltagirone. Every committee would have been run by Republicans. There would have been a 102 to 101 majority on every issue as well. I do know what the consequences would have been. The consequences would have been that no Democratic legislation would have come forward. Even though it would have been difficult with a 102/101 Democratic majority, there would have been no possibility of Democratic legislation if he had his way.

CS2: In Pennsylvania there seems to be a dichotomy among the Democrats over what to do about the health care crisis. Govenor Rendell has his plan, there’s also a single-payer plan. Where do you come down on this decision?

Mike: I’ve been a single-payer advocate for most of my adult life. I’ve traveled around the world, I’ve been a beneficiary of a single-payer system. I was once in Switzerland where I came down with the flu, a very, very bad case of the flu. I slept for 24 hours straight, woke up, and the people I was staying with called the doctor. The doctor came to the house and took care of me. When she was doing this I asked her how much this was going to cost. She laughed at me and said, “We don’t charge for medicine here.” I’m a hundred-percent supporter of single-payer. Some 50 million people have no insurance at all. A disgrace. Now, if I were in the legislature and the only option was Govenor Rendell’s bill or nothing, I expect that I’d vote for it. But I’d continue to press for single-payer anywhere we could get it at the national or state level because my policy and belief is single-payer. As a matter of fact in my campaign for governor in 2002, we put together a plan called Prescription for Pennsylvania, which was a single-payer plan.

CS2: In every campaign in the state of Pennsylvania, every candidate is forced to address the issue of property tax reform. What would your idea of property tax reform be?

Mike: Well it’s not just property tax reform. It’s the entire Pennsylvania tax system. It’s one of the most regressive in the nation. It’s pretty startling. We are like Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas in the lack of progressivity in our tax system. We tax low-income workers at a much higher percentage of their income than wealthy taxpayers. It’s the entire tax system, not just property taxes. We need a progressive income tax for Pennsylvania. If we had a progressive income tax, wealthy individuals would pay more. My suggestion for reforming income tax would be to first determine what we need in revenue to operate and then take a percentage in what you pay in federal taxes, thus retaining that which is progressive in the federal system. We wouldn’t have to overhaul the whole tax structure, just determine what we need statewide and apply a percentage of federal income tax. The first thing this would do is shift some of the burden of state taxes to wealthy individuals. The second thing this would do is allow you to fill out your state income tax form in about five minutes. You would take the number from your federal tax form and just apply the percentage (worked out by actuaries) to it and you’re done. Now, getting back to property taxes, it’s a complicated, convoluted problem. We need to get away from the one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach and let municipalities determine what works best for them. Instead of having traditional property tax which taxes buildings on the land some municipalities may decide to have a land value tax (which some municipalities across Pennsylvania have been allowed to do). But some municipalities, for other reasons, have not been allowed to do this. Land value taxation would be a recognition that the real value of a property is in the land itself. So, for example, if the city of Reading decided that it wanted to have land value taxation policy, then they would determine what the actual value of the land is worth. That does a number of things. It allows for people to improve their property without penalty. It also penalizes landowners who allow their property to deteriorate so it punishes slumlords and rewards homeowners who improve their property.

CS2: Is there a growth vs. sprawl issue here? Recently in Kutztown we had a battle with a Wal-Mart that was trying to move in. How do you feel about these kinds of issues and where should the balance be struck?

Mike: Well, I think that Pennsylvania has the lowest growth rate in population of the fifty states but it is number one in sprawl. There’s something very wrong about that. Part of the problem is that we don’t encourage renovation. Rather than building new developments on farmland we should be instituting incentives to force the renovation of existing housing. In West Reading, the city of Reading, and to a lesser degree Kenhorst, which makes up the district, there are a lot of properties sitting vacant. Around the country there is a trend of building luxury condominiums in vacant warehouses and factories. It’s not happening here or in Pennsylvania. That’s something we can definitely do to help Reading. Reading has hit bottom in lots of things. There are very viable places in Reading that can be revitalized. There are empty buildings that can be made into apartments.

CS2: If I’m correct you were the Green Party candidate against Ed Rendell some years ago?

Mike: Yes.

CS2: Can you tell me the odyssey or thinking change that made you become a Democrat?

Mike: I’m a Democrat at heart. A small “d” democrat all my life. A capital “D” Democrat almost all my life. But there was a period where progressives like us were isolated. We were told the policies that we cared about could not win elections. So we should just shut our mouths basically. That if we didn’t like it we could go somewhere else. Well, I didn’t want to shut my mouth. I didn’t want to go anywhere else. But I didn’t see a place at the table for progressive Democrats. With many defeats at the hands of George Bush, the party began to realize that they just couldn’t follow what the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) told them to do. After seven years of George Bush the grassroots of the Democratic Party knows that we cannot be Republican-lite. We had to go back to our roots. To the things that had brought us success. After watching Bush win a second term, it’s clear that the DLC strategy doesn’t work. In 2006 we actually won, not with a DLC strategy but with a Howard Dean fifty-state progressive strategy that made a difference. There were progressives running all over the country. After 2004, when I saw the re-emergence of progressives back to the Democratic Party, I came back to the Democratic Party. I saw the party heading back to the values that Roosevelt made great. True progressives standing up for working people and really being the party of the people. I’ve been welcomed back with open arms in most quarters. I’m excited to be back.

CS2: How will the issue of economic populism play in your district?

Mike: I think that economic populism is another way of saying democracy. Our economy has never been short of capitalists. But looking back, the times when our country has done the best is when we’ve instituted things that some would call socialism, others economic populism or economic democracy. That means a recognition that our economy is best when all people are being helped by it. Economic populism means all people have the adequate necessities. I hate when I hear that the war on poverty was a failure. The war on poverty was a failure if you mean that there are still poor people. There are still poor people. But poor people aren’t dying for a lack of food in this country as they did in the 1940s and 1950s. The war on poverty has been a success, but there’s still much to be done and economic populism recognizes that. Economic populism seeks to address our inadequate healthcare system. Economic populism seeks to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

CS2-Who are the influences on your thinking, and who in public life do you admire today?

Mike: Not to be trite about it but some Biblical heroes who helped liberate, like Moses. People like Jesus. Our Founding Fathers. Like Thomas Jefferson. Like Henry Wallace who changed the progressive movement in many ways. People like Hubert Humphrey who because of the Vietnam War never became president. Howard Dean, who was unfairly criticized for some things he did in his campaign. John Edwards who runs his presidential campaign talking about poor people even though there is no political reason to do so. People like Barack Obama who are really motivating and uniting people. Even Hillary Clinton, who is not my favorite candidate, but someone who is and will be admired by generations of women.

CS2: Last question. Pretend this is the end of the debate with your opponent and you have to say something in sixty seconds. Sum up you in sixty seconds.

Mike: The next two years with Mike Morrill as state representative will be two years of working toward our dreams. We have incredible possibilities. We all know the problems, but we have differing solutions. I will not sell out my values. The values that I care about. The values that I have lived my life on. The values that represent our democracy. To create a society collectively, that is very different from the society we have today. A society that works for everyone.

CS2: Mike, thank you, and we at CS2 wish you luck in your campaign.

Mike: Thank you.

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