Discussing Effective Lawmaking with Representative Soto

Alan Wiseman (00:00:08):

Hello, my name is Alan Wiseman, I’m the Associate Provost of Strategic Projects and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, and along with Craig Volden of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, I co-direct the Center for Effective Lawmaking. We’re very excited to welcome Congressman Darren Soto, who’s represented Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2017, to join us today. As many of you know, Congressman Soto currently represents Florida’s 9th Congressional District, which is located in Central Florida, and includes the cities of Kissimmee and St. Cloud. Prior to serving in the U.S. House, Congressman Soto practiced law as a commercial and civil rights attorney in Central Florida, and he was elected to the Florida State House in 2007, where he served for 6 years until he was elected to the Florida State Senate in 2012. Now, upon being elected to Congress and during his time in Congress, Representative Soto has distinguished himself from his peers in many notable ways in regards to his engagement with the legislative process and according to our data at the Center for Effective Lawmaking, his high level of legislative engagement dates back to his freshman term in the 115th Congress, which convened from 2017 to 2019, where we identified him as the most effective Democratic lawmaker in his freshman class, and the most effective Democratic lawmaker, regardless of seniority, in advancing bills related to public land policies. So, Congressman Soto, thank you so much for joining us for a Center for Effective Lawmaking interview. We really appreciate your time today.

Darren Soto (00:01:40):

Oh, it’s my pleasure. I appreciate the efforts you’re doing here at Vanderbilt. You know, we hear a lot of headlines, we hear a lot of controversy coming from Congress, but every day, a lot of us are also working hard to deliver for our districts, for the American people. And it takes, working with both sides of the aisle and the committee work, knowledge of the system to really get these things done.

Alan Wiseman (00:02:03):

That’s great. We’re going to really dive into the weeds to start to explore some of those topics in a bit more detail in a second. And to that end, you know, as I described to you a little bit earlier, we have a series of fairly general questions to try to get a sense of the ways in which you’ve approached and navigated the legislative process. But throughout our conversation, we’d really welcome you to provide us with any examples that might come to mind to provide greater context and highlight your own personal experiences that have really shaped the ways in which you engage with lawmaking today.

Darren Soto (00:02:34):

Absolutely, happy to do it.

Alan Wiseman (00:02:36):

Great. So, all that said, why don’t we just rewind the clock a little bit, because what Craig and I would like to do is take a step back and get a sense of the ways in which your background, and by that I mean before you were elected to the U.S. Congress, shaped your time as a lawmaker in Washington. So, you know, as I noted, let’s just start with the fact that you had previously served in the Florida State House and State Senate before being elected to Congress, and if we really rewind the clock, you know, close to 20 years now, I’d really like to hear your perspectives on, you know, essentially what were you seeking to accomplish as a lawmaker when you were first elected to the Florida State House in 2007, and how did your perceptions of lawmaking evolve from the Florida State House to the Florida Senate until ultimately you were elected to the U.S. Congress?

Darren Soto (00:03:22):

Well, throughout my political career, I’ve been a lawyer who wanted to write laws to help people. I started just after I passed the Florida Bar in 2005, working with Young Democrats, I knocked on doors for folks, I was a campaign manager, and I finally ran for office myself. During that time, I was practicing, as you noted, some civil rights law and a lot of commercial law, and so that’s one of the foundations, having to represent a lot of small businesses. I’ve sat through a lot of mediations. I’ve tried to find win-win types of, deals, because when you’re representing small businesses, they don’t make money litigating, they make money resolving their issues, taking the loss or the… or the claim that they are vindicated on as best they can, and moving on, and so I’ve taken that tact going into the Congress, and of course, back in the State House days, where I would rather have some major victories or incremental victories, and make some compromise to get them done, because the legislative process requires that to happen. You can’t do anything on your own in the Congress, so I remember I came back from winning a special election in 2007, and I was talking about some of the things I was fighting to stop, and town halls, and people were like, okay, that’s great, but what did you do to, like, advance positive things for the community? Thankfully, I had done a few co-sponsorships, I was only there that first session for a week and a half, but I got involved in apprenticeship programs and a few other workforce items, since economics has always been, and jobs is one of my main focuses. But I really took note for the next year, going back to session and I was going to not only have to show, being the minority, that I was stopping a few key things that hurt our region or our values, but also offensive initiatives I took forward. And in that first term, we had a young man who was killed during a street racing incident in the north part of our district. There was a huge public outcry, because a lot of these things were happening on some of the main roads at night, or even sometimes during the day, and so I met with local law enforcement and they mentioned they were able to ticket spectators and make sure if you did three or more instances of street racing, you could lose your license for some extended period of time, so, those were the recommendations as I’m responding to this great tragedy in the district, and I remember I was struggling for a lot of that time, because I had taken back a seat from the Republicans, so they weren’t exactly thrilled to help me pass a bill, but I ended up befriending, through some social events, the majority leader, a guy named Adam Hasner at the time, and he was from South Florida, and you know, we were at this event, we were playing pool, he and I, and he’s like, I know, Soto, you got that amendment you’re trying to get on, and I kind of agree with it, so I may let it go, I may not, I’m not sure yet, why do you think we should do this? And I explained about the situation in the district, and how it was bipartisan. I had a Republican Senate sponsor and, he’s… he told me, well, we’re not going to get it all, but maybe if you narrow it to just this first item, which was the spectator ticket, that, we might let that through. And, and then lo and behold, we get to Monday or Tuesday of next week, and that part of the bill passed as an amendment, and I was able to show as I got back home that I was able to pass legislation. Of course, a lot of constituents, they don’t distinguish between… you get an amendment passed that passes some law versus a standalone bill, I know you may focus on it sometimes as professors and intellectuals, but back home, if you pass laws, and even some co-sponsorships, if you were very involved. You can… you can certainly show how you showed leadership back home, and then the other thing I’ll say on being a state legislator first, you do learn the main tools in the tool chest, your lawmaking, appropriations, oversight, which takes a lot of people a long time. There’s a… once you even pass a bill into law, now you got to make sure that the agencies are following through on it, you need to make sure that the funding goes through. A lot of the biggest items that I’m known for back home are actually grants we got from bills I voted on for highways and airports, so even as I’m able to pass a lot of these, you know, important laws of regional importance predominantly. It’s the money that people focus a lot. But you also have the power to convene, which you, you never want to underestimate, bringing folks together, even if it’s not directly in federal jurisdiction, to kind of address major issues in your district, and then the bully pulpit, right, that, that President Roosevelt talked about back in the day. Being able to help express your values, to be able to help shape public opinion. All these tools in the tool chest you learn as a state legislator, going from the minor leagues to the major leagues. You learn some of those things in local government, although it’s not an exact equivalent, and then there are many other professions where people come into the Congress, and all that diversity is important, but it does help you hit the ground running to have a state legislative background going into the Congress.

Craig Volden (00:08:36):

Yeah, thanks so much for that overview and for speaking with us today, really appreciate it, I’m drawn towards the way that it sounds like you approach lawmaking in terms of a problem-solving approach, so if there is a street racing issue that you could address, or if you found things in your law practice. You know, can you speak to a little bit more of what it means to be a lawyer in a legislature? Some people are, some people aren’t, does that help in a variety of ways? Does it just expose you to different problems that you’re looking to solve, does it help in the drafting of legislation, you know, how does that all play out?

Darren Soto (00:09:19):

Well, it certainly helps if you’re going to write laws to know a few of them, and coming in as a 29-year-old, people are looking to see whether you’re going to be too youthful and immature, and when you know the Constitution and the laws better than folks 20, 30 years or older, they notice that really quickly, and then youth can be an advantage, because people know you have the energy and vigor to really go the distance with a lot of these initiatives that your folks are counting on, but also have the knowledge. So, it can be a double-edged sword that can cut in your favor, if you have a strong grounds in the law. Now, you do have to make sure you’re not always speaking in lawyer speak when you’re talking to constituents, you need to be able to articulate both the… the fine, words of interpreting a Supreme Court interpretation with, saying things and value statements that people understand, and in layman’s terms, that you would talk to your friends or family members. So, you have to also unlawyer yourself in some ways, I would say probably a lot of what we do is more like a closing statement in a jury trial than necessarily an appellate court argument or even a motion to dismiss where you’re arguing matters of law. So, you have to have the law on your side, and you utilize that foundation, but you also need to be able to speak in plain language, and it can’t all be intellectual, it can’t all be cerebral, you know? More than half the people in a lot of studies, they respond to value statements, they respond to passion. While some people… passion is an empty statement, they want to know the facts behind it, so when you communicate, you have to do a little of both, and so law can be a strength, but you also need to unlawyer yourself a little bit as you’re working through all those things. Last thing I’ll say is Congress and most legislators used to be majority lawyers for many, many, many, many years, but with the rise of a lot of money, you have a couple… business… rich business people are the most likely profession of folks coming into the Congress nowadays. It is expensive to win, I work my way up, but some folks, they go straight into the Congress, they have financial means… We’ve also seen, some folks talk about how there’s… there’s efficiencies in the private sector they’d like to see in government, I think with the executive branch, running a major business, certainly gives you some administrative skills, like being a governor. I had a small business for 12 years, so I do talk about that quite a bit. And it’s popular, to a certain extent, to come from a business background, so, we lawyers are now probably the number two profession after business folks, and so that definitely shows in the Congress as we’re trying to debate the finer, topics of the Constitution, but it’s still an edge in the Congress, and you can always tell when someone has to say, well, I’m not a lawyer, but blah blah blah blah blah, and they’re allowed to make legal interpretations as legislators, unlike a lot of other professions, just by the fact that they’re a legislator on, but I then don’t have to do that caveat. I just go right into it, and if you hear us talking about a statutory interpretation, it’s very clear that a few of us who have legal backgrounds speak from a point of authority, because we’ve been dragged through admin law and environmental law and employment law, and so many of these other areas of law that we have to work on in the Congress.

Alan Wiseman (00:12:50):

Well, I mean, this is a great lead-in for the next question I wanted to pose to you, because Craig and I and the Center scholars, more broadly considered, are really interested in the reasons why state legislators choose to run for higher office, or some of the considerations they have. So, thinking about your own experience, I’d be curious to hear your perspectives on what were your considerations that you were juggling or navigating when you were thinking about trying to move up from the state legislature to the U.S. Congress about 8 years ago.

Darren Soto (00:13:22):

Well, the first thing is, I didn’t have this manifest destiny that I was going to go to the State Senate and to the Congress. I got elected in a special election. My job was just to simply do a good job for my clients, which were my constituents, much like in my commercial practice, and I was able to pass some laws related to public safety, related to, helping out with school bus safety as well, we did a major law to help out families of fallen firefighters, and also worked on some budget items, and people noticed after a while that I was delivering, and then you know, timing’s everything. It’s much easier to win an open seat than it is to take on an incumbent. When I was in the State House, but redistricting was going on, there was an open state Senate seat, and a kinda open congressional seat, but that seat was going to… Alan Grayson, who had held the seat for a while, was a multi-millionaire, was going to run in that seat, and I was like, I’m going to the Senate. This is a much easier fight. It was still a big fight, but it was one that I thought I could win and also, you know, these state-ledged districts, they’re about 160,000, 180,000 now. The Senate districts are about 450,000, so it does help that, you know, if your entire state House seat is in there, and you’ve been winning a couple elections, you’re talking to your people, the folks who you’ve been representing for a while, and then that has a momentum to, as you get to the State Senate. Then in the Florida Senate, it’s a good gig, it wasn’t like I was in a rush to get out of there, everybody gets to pass a few laws, it’s hard to pass laws in the State House, I feel like everybody gets a trophy or two in the State Senate, and then you get a lot more budget items, and those are, you know, what I’m all about, deliverables for each area of the district. I had, from 2010 to 2020, the fastest growing congressional district in the nation, so there’s constant pressure on me to bring back infrastructure, jobs, projects, environmental protection, among these other laws, and so that’s what I’ve always had to do, and have a vision of something new, like SunRail, or expanding I-4, or a new terminal at the airport. And so, working on these things, then, as I was in the State Senate, my predecessor decided to run for the U.S. Senate, and, you know, again, my, almost my entire state senate seat was in that congressional seat, I had already been delivering for many years, I felt like I could run on a record of accomplishment, which was one of the things that distinguished me, along with being bilingual—somewhat bilingual—Spanish is my second language, and having a connection with the community, and that proved to be pivotal, because I ran on a lot of things that I got done, and was able to raise enough money, won a primary, won the general election. But I will tell you, there’s a lot more people who focus on the Congress than on the state legislature or in the local government. It should be the exact opposite, right? People should probably know their city commissioners and county commissioners and school board members the most. They are the ones who literally affect from your garbage to your public safety to the local roads and all this but nowadays, things are so nationalized that people really pay attention to the Congress, so when I looked at my name recognition when they did polling, I had 26% of the new congressional district that knew who I was, and 25 out of those 26 liked me, so I was like, alright, that’s a good start, but that’s… that’s still a small amount of people for working for 10 years, working your tail off for folks. But it was a great foundation to work from now, because of all the ads and the, and this focus on national politics, and it’s almost like a sport to a certain extent, which we have to be careful about, right? It’s about 75% name recognition with all these elections going on, so if I go into the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, or if I go into the grocery store to pick up my groceries, or any of these other places, I constantly get people recognizing me, saying hello, and I love people, so I love doing it. This is the wrong line of work if you don’t like people, right? You got to… you got to like folks, empathy is one of the big things we stress in our office, putting yourself in people’s shoes, so, it does give you an advantage. But you’ve still got a long way to go to get and win those congressional races, and if those right circumstances weren’t there, I would have been more than happy to stay in the State Senate and do great work there, because really, what I want to do is legislate and deliver, and I want to do it, in ways that I could have the most impact, but you… but also, I’d rather be a state senator than running in a Don Quixote type of run for Congress that would end in failure, so it really had to line up right, and you deliver, and people give you other opportunities.

Craig Volden (00:18:05):

Fantastic, so then you get to Congress, and you had a lot of experience as a lawmaker already, in the state legislature, House and Senate, did all of those lessons apply once you got to Congress, or were there things that were very different and you had to start from scratch?

Darren Soto (00:18:22):

The surprise was, as crazy as you see on the news and all this controversy, a lot of the basics still worked well in the Congress. One, relationships are still so important. So, while all of us in the Congress will tee off on who the President of the United States is, or defend them, depending on who they are, if you treat your colleagues with respect in the Congress, especially your delegation, folks you serve with on committee, folks who are in caucuses with you, you can really develop really strong relationships, even as you know, President Trump is a controversial figure for we Democrats and some of the Republicans, and the Republicans certainly didn’t withhold any of their fire against President Biden when he was in office, so… and that’s our job, right? We’re there to hold presidents accountable, but we’re also there to be collaborative with our, with our colleagues and so, for instance, another advantage of being a state legislator, I knew two-thirds of the delegation before we got to the Congress, because they served in the state legislature. So that helped with those relationships and then you know, knowing the Florida delegation, we worked on different bills, like one of the… and having some… we had a Democratic senator at the time in Bill Nelson, so that was a big help with one of my first laws, the Hurricane Hunters Law, along with a post office. That had two laws passed, made me the… the freshman with the most laws, as you mentioned, but it… you know, it’s like… it’s like a game of inches between two laws and one law, and then, like most people, zero in their first term, right? In fact, many members of Congress are there six, eight years and don’t pass a single law, right? And so that relationship with our U.S. Senator, we work with him on the Hurricane Hunters bill—obviously, Florida gets a lot of hurricanes. Our aging aircraft that would literally fly into the hurricane to be able to assess it needed to be upgraded, so this bill that would… became law, helped to upgrade that fleet, as an example. And these relationships also matter in committee: there’s a lot of Floridians now in the Energy and Commerce Committee, both Kathy Castor and Gus Bilirakis are in leadership, I have excellent relations with both of them, and then we have, Dr. Dunn, Kat Kamik, Laurel Lee, who are now on the committee. So a lot of us, we have great relationships. We will vigorously debate ideas and leave nothing on the table when we’re talking about things we agree or disagree with, but we won’t personalize it to each other. We certainly won’t call each other out because we’re co-sponsoring and sponsoring different bills. I’ll give you an example, with, with Kat Kamik, she had big concerns about TikTok, and there was this bill to… to ensure that TikTok wasn’t on federal devices, because the Chinese are spying on us through that, and it wasn’t really my jam, right? I don’t really have that big of an issue against TikTok—A lot of constituents like it, in fact, a lot of us use it. But I got the national security issues, and she was really concerned about it. It was a really big issue for her, and I thought, okay, I’m going to help her out on this, and in the future, we’ll work on some other issues, and we have on agriculture, among other things. And then, Gus Bilirakis and I, you see, have had multiple bills together, including the sinkhole mapping bill that’s passed out of the House already this term, as an example, because Florida has a lot of sinkholes so those relationships really matter, treating your colleagues with respect, and then you got to build coalitions, right, although I will say one thing that’s kind of a misnomer, a lot of people look at the number of co-sponsorships as being this huge deal. It does when it’s, like, a big bill like the budget, but most of these bills, you need a few good members, and then you need to be on the right committee to pass it through, another key in additional relationships in legislating that I learned in the State House, the State Senate, you’re more likely to be able to pass bills out of committees you serve on than on other committees, because that chair, that ranking member, they got mouths to feed on that committee. They’re trying to make deals with them to work on their initiatives, you’re making deals with them in turn, so one of the key things about being effective is getting on committees that are subject areas that you want to legislate in that are going to have the most impact on your district. And so, a lot of what you talked about, public lands, well, I’m on the Natural Research Committee, and I’ve had to pivot on and off to that because of agriculture, too, in my district, so I’ve been on the Ag Committee for some of the farm bills as well, but that’s one of the reasons why I’ve been able to move a lot of those issues and then in technology, environment, that all goes through Energy and Commerce, because we regulate every Fortune 500 company in America, and so, some of the key aspects that have made it easier to pass laws, some of those basics still apply here in the Congress.

Craig Volden (00:23:17):

Great, can you tell me a little bit more about, kind of, what committees you wanted to be on, how you requested them, how you got on those or didn’t, and how that’s moved around, given their importance?

Darren Soto (00:23:27):

 Well, I knew I wanted to be on a committee that could deliver bread-and-butter issues and bread-and-butter deliverables to my constituents. Jobs, environment, infrastructure, healthcare, education. I’m very locally focused, and as I mentioned, because my district is still fast-growing, was the fastest growing from 2010 to 2020, there’s a lot of duty I have to deliver these projects to protect our quality of life, and to bring more higher-paying jobs to the region, something that Central Florida had lacked, many years ago and is now improving. And so my goal was to get on one of the exclusive committees, they’re exclusive for a reason, you can deliver a lot for your constituents through those committees, and those committees are ways and means, Energy and Commerce, and Appropriations. But, like, with everything, you have to pivot, so in my first term, never hurts to have a little bit of luck, so we take the majority for my second term, so I have a chance in my second term to get on one of these exclusive committees. Now you need those relationships, I had to line up my whole delegation, which is the Florida-Georgia delegation, and at first I wanted to be on appropriations, because my goal was… was to get into the Congress and to stay for, a decent clip to be able to deliver for my community. We’ve seen a generation before me, John Micah and Corian Brown, stay for 20-something years and deliver all these major projects. The first I-4 project, the new courthouse, the VA hospital, all these things that we desperately need, so I thought appropriations first. Oh, but, you know, I found out that Frederica Wilson and Lois Frankel wanted to get on a probes, and they had seniority over me so I was like, alright, well, what’s a better fit? And then I had to think, okay, if I was going to go for Ways and Means or Engine Commerce, I thought I would rather deal with the policy side of things than… than taxes and foreign trade. I’m like, I’m from Florida, we don’t even like taxes in this state, this is not something I want to deal with for the… for the rest of our career, like, so I thought you know, dealing… being a commercial lawyer, having strong background in all these different admin types of law, going to GW Law and studying a lot of this stuff, I thought energy and commerce would be a great fit. Interesting thing, when I started working on it, my closest colleagues regionally were the hardest ones to get, because there’s always a little rivalry in the… in the… in the same metro or in the same media market. Everybody’s worried about getting anybody else getting ahead of them, and… and it’s a friendly rivalry, you also work together very closely, so I literally had to then ask the folks from South Florida and Georgia knowing that I was struggling to get support in Central Florida, and one of those first meetings was with John Lewis, and, you know, I had, again, a great relationship. I got to sit next to him for 4 years, 2 of which would have happened at that time, on the Steering and Policy Committee, which is the leaders… Leader Pelosi’s leadership committee, and he had trouble hearing, so I’d always have to staff him a little, I’d be like, what’s that? What are they talking about? And then I talked to him about it, so I already knew this guy really well, and of course, he’s a legend, right and so he agreed, and then the whole Georgia delegation came on board. South Florida, I got Debbie Washman Schultz’s degree, and she, long-serving member. That was big for the rest of South Florida, then Tampa Bay kind of came in, then I came back to my colleagues locally, and I asked them again, and by then I was able to mention, oh, and I have everybody else’s support. Well, I’m like, well, okay, okay, I guess we’re going to support that, so if you don’t line all that up, you don’t have a chance to get on these exclusive committees, because you need your regions to be unanimously supportive, which is very challenging, because we all want to get on these committees, so I was able to line up unanimously the delegation, and then also having been on the Steering and Policy Committee at that time. That gave me an edge, because I was also voting on other people’s nominations, and so I had a little edge in the room, and then John Lewis gave the seconding of my requests, and people were like, you’re totally getting this, man! It was a humbling moment, because, you know, this guy was a living legend, and him seconding the motion was a very, very emotional moment for me but it took all that, when people ask me, the short version is it was like wrestling a bear to get on that committee. But since then, it’s, It’s been such a blessing, because every day I’m working on things that constituents see the relevance of. Right now, we have a big fight with Obamacare, with premium tax credits. I have the second most Obamacare enrollment in the nation in my district, and all 10 areas are in Florida, and so that’s just one example of the kind of issues I get to work on, people see every day as relevant. It’s tougher when you’re in judiciary or oversight or some of these other high-flying committees to show how this is going to help a single mom, or a struggling small business owner, or a college student that is trying to, you know, find… make ends meet. So, a lot of these things have been very helpful to deliver on… on issues of infrastructure, jobs… I’m able to work with a lot of employers around here, help them with various different technology issues, whether it’s waivers for autonomous vehicles, whether it’s getting DoD contracts to kind of start paying out when they were already awarded to working on highlighting simulation training, all these different, technology areas, aerospace, we work on all this stuff. So, that… being on a committee is a lot of the battle to be effective, because if it doesn’t go through your committee, you have far less influence to affect that issue to the floor, and once it’s on the floor, it’s really… it’s really past you, right, so, committees are a huge part of delivering and also making your impact on areas you care about and passing bills.

Alan Wiseman (00:29:24):

There’s just some amazing, amazing content in those responses, Congressman, and a lot of what you said actually organically overlaps with a lot of the research that we’ve conducted at the Center, so it’s, really fascinating to hear the ways in which your own personal perspectives reinforce what we’ve found. I’d be curious to know, you know, turning to your personal background a little bit, and you made reference to Spanish being a second language as well. I’d be curious to really think about your legislative portfolio and the ways in which your personal background influenced that portfolio. So, for example, as the first Puerto Rican elected to Congress from Florida, I’m wondering how, if at all, your ties to the island have influenced your legislative priorities as a representative, even though you don’t directly represent Puerto Rico.

Darren Soto (00:30:10):

Well, it’s huge. One in every four of my constituents are of Puerto Rican descent like me. A little more than a half from the island, others from the Northeast, your New Nuyoricans, as we would call them, and so, they deeply care about what happens both in Central Florida and on the island, and the ties between us, and so, it is expected of me to stand up for Puerto Rico when I can. It can’t be all the time, it’s always Central Florida as the priority, but in areas where we can have a synergy in areas where the island’s being picked on because they only have one non-voting member of Congress, even though there’s 3.2 million Americans that live down there. I’m expected to stand up, and it’s not just me, most of our constituents, it’s big news, so they’ll see it on our local news if I’m standing up for various issues in Puerto Rico as well, much like the Cuban diaspora in South Florida and a lot of other examples throughout the nation, and we have the biggest diaspora of Puerto Ricans in Florida: there’s 1.2 million of us, well, about a little more than… about half live in Central Florida, the rest live all throughout the state, so they’re all following this stuff. Because we either have family members or businesses back on the island, and because the island is a territory, it’s heavily subject to federal jurisdiction and what happens in Washington, even more than the state of Florida in many instances, and so, areas like, keeping their Medicaid funding at parity with states is a big issue I work on. When that lapsed a few years before Hurricane Maria, we saw the devastation of these worn-down hospitals when they get hit by a hurricane, now we’re working on that. They get less money in their food assistance program, it’s called NAP, and so we’re trying to convert from NAP to SNAP, and then, there’s a lot of young people, they leave Puerto Rico to come to Central Florida, because it’s such an easy transition. They have… we have these large institutions like Valencia and UCF, and so we have this real obligation to… to help try to promote prosperity on the islands, more people will stay. So, that definitely shapes it on working on a lot of these bills that you would see in my portfolio, they would… they would deal with the island, but they’re very popular in Central Florida because we care about our folks back on the island. But also being in a district that has been either a plurality or a slim majority Hispanic, we’ve had to work on a lot of areas related to immigration, veterans issues, healthcare over the years that have been driven by those things. So, when I was in the state legislature, I passed a bill that allowed DREAMers to be admitted to the Florida Bar after the Supreme Court, the Florida Supreme Court had called upon us to do that, what a difference 8 years makes, because that law, along with Dreamers in-state tuition, was just removed. But at the time, we had passed it in a very dramatic fashion in the State Senate, along with in-state tuition so that drove us, stopping back in the day when I was in the state legislature, an Arizona-style immigration law, where people could get stopped for looking Hispanic was something we were able to be involved in while other states passed it, and then they regretted it, because it hurt their agroindustry, of course, and, now here in the Congress, one of our other big diasporas is the Venezuelan population, so a bill that I passed out of the House twice was temporary protective steps for Venezuelans, and we were able to, by showing that support in the House, even though that never passed the Senate and became law, we got President Biden to then do it by executive order. So that’s an example where, if you look at the stats, it looks like nothing happened other than it passed the House, but in fact, by executive order, we accomplished our goal, and I can… and my constituents wouldn’t distinguish that too much, they would just look at that as a… as a win, like, you passed it, that’s great. Now, of course, President Trump has removed that, and so now we’re in a big fight because a million legal immigrants are about to lose their status. Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians, from both the TPS programs and the parole programs, so now I’m working with a lot of… a lot of these folks are family members of citizens, right? And with Alcatraz, and all this fight that we have, which is crazy, because we’re a state that’s about a quarter Hispanic, so we’re a huge population here. So navigating all those things, and also being in the opposite party of the president, it’s my job to really step up to hold them accountable as best I can, and it’s hurting our economy a lot, particularly tourism, agriculture, service industry, construction, and so I’ve had to bring up the economic issues of that, because that applies to everybody. We saw during the pandemic, when we had a shortage of workforce, how many things just didn’t work, right? The hotels looked kind of kind of like they weren’t maintained, it was impossible to get Uber Eats, you couldn’t get anybody to serve you at a restaurant. All these different things were troubling, so it’s key when you’re working on these issues that you also try to bring in the biggest 10 possible, because you’re still trying to create majorities so even as I’m working on issues affecting the Hispanic community, I do as much as possible try to bring in how it affects the Anglo community, the African American community, the South Asian community, also big demographics in the district as well and so I’m constantly, bringing up those different issues. The last issue I’ll talk about is, in addition to Medicaid on the island, Puerto Ricans and Cubans love Obamacare. That’s why we have the biggest Obamacare exchange in the nation, and also because we have a lot of folks who work for small to mid-sized businesses that don’t offer player-based healthcare. In the Hispanic community, we’re very… we’re very entrepreneurial, and so, that’s an example where I would merge the big fight on Obamacare with the fact that a lot of Puerto Ricans and Cubans love Obamacare. As we’re working on this fight, to try to protect it, and so, it does shape a lot of different issues. But you always need to build coalitions in order to be able to prevail on a lot of these issues, and so I spent a lot of time doing that, and of course, I’m working on a lot of issues for those other demographics, and bringing in the Hispanic community to support, too, whether it’s ag issues for a lot of our farmers, whether it’s, on some of the larger businesses and tourism, whether it’s issues related to civil rights that may not affect us directly, so, you’re constantly in a diverse district like this, working on different deliverables for different communities, while simultaneously working on deliverables that help everybody out, and getting that balance is always something I think a lot about.

Craig Volden (00:36:56):

Yeah, I mean, I’m very interested in how you achieve that balance, right? So, all in all, it sounds pretty exhausting, but taking on so many different issues, each of which sounds really important, at the same time, kind of, maybe limits… “I’ve become an expert and the go-to person in one single issue”. How do you think about, kind of, that balance between you know, Trying to solve a bunch of things versus really specializing in maybe a single issue or two.

Darren Soto (00:37:27):

So I think it depends on what we’re talking about. For the budget, you have to have a wide breadth of issues you’re working on: jobs, education, infrastructure, healthcare, environment, veterans issues. So, you do that by learning over time, I’ve been doing this 19  years, I didn’t learn this overnight, I probably knew a thimble’s worth of knowledge on what the district was like at my first days in the State House versus now, and you have to maintain that knowledge, so I’m constantly going on tours and, getting briefings on everything. Just a week in the life, I was at our new Goodwill facility, learning about, helping our less fortunate. I went to one of our senior centers, and we talked about veterans’ benefits issues, and we played a free game at Texas Hold’em there, and they told me about how important it was to work together, and I also was at our facility that helps children who are victims of abuse today, and you have to get really into, like, all the resources they need to make sure to protect these families. So, I do a lot of small business tours, too, because they’re small business owners, they know the front lines of all the trends happening in the community, a lot of healthcare tours go to different schools, so you do it over time. Now, I’ll tell you, the one thing easier about Congress is it’s a full-time job, when I was in the state legislature, I had my state legislative duties and also my law practice to worry about, so I could probably do more oversight now, and have the bandwidth now to do a lot more than when I was always constantly going back and forth between practicing law and being the state legislature. But we have a citizen’s legislature, so it was expected that it would be that way. But oversight and knowledge definitely suffers from it, as well as the follow-through that you need. So you learn about it over time, and you have to maintain that knowledge, and for the budget, you have to work on every area you can imagine that your community needs resources. As opposed to legislation, where I focus a lot on issues that go through my committees, but I also get all these issues that come up from constituents. I mentioned that first issue back with the street racing, you know, we, we get, ideas from constituents all the time. A new bill I’m working on, involves some mom-and-pop radio stations in the area, because I’m on the telecom subcommittee, who don’t have strong enough signals for their AM radio, and so from 9 p.m. till 7 a.m. in the morning, the stations from Cuba blast so strongly that their signal gets taken over by communist propaganda radio at night, and of course, you know in Florida, that is not a very popular thing, we don’t like communism in Florida, In most of the nation, I’m sure, right? And so, that’s anecdotal issue happening, we’re trying to get both the Florida and the Alaska delegations, because they’re near Russia and North Korea together, to help these mom-and-pop radio stations not literally be able to have, different equipment to… to be able to block those transmissions from taking over that radio wave for that period of time. So, that came to me through local radio stations, right? It happened to line with my committee this time, but it doesn’t always, so, you’re constantly looking at these things. A lot of… some issues I think about, but others, they come to me, and and we put them into a forum that might be able to help through legislation or funding.

Alan Wiseman (00:41:03):

I want to turn back to some of the points that you were raising about the nature of the legislative process, and building coalitions, and getting to know people, and identifying potential partners. So, at the Center for Effective Lawmaking, quite a bit of our published research essentially finds that bipartisan lawmakers tend to be more effective at moving their legislation further through the lawmaking process. And you’re currently a member of the Bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. So to that end, I’d be curious, especially given your experience in the House, the Florida State House, as well as the Florida State Senate, you know, what do you see as the advantages or potential disadvantages of bipartisanship in Congress, especially given the current political environment in which we sit,  and how do you personally go about building lawmaking coalitions, either within your party or across party lines?

Darren Soto (00:41:52):

It’s essential to have bipartisan relationships, you can’t do a single thing by yourself in the Congress, there’s 435 members, it’s like a mid-sized high school, right? So you really need to have friends that you could work with on various different items, and you’ll notice that most of the bills I pass, I have a Republican co-sponsor or a Republican sponsor in the Senate, so I’m working on a bill dealing with allowing the FTC to use AI to track injuries and fraud online, and in the House, it’s, it’s my bill with a couple other members, and in the Senate, we’ve gotten both a Republican senator and a Democratic senator, both of whom used to serve on the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House, by the way, so that… that never hurts, and so it’s absolutely essential. One fun thing about the Senate is, if you serve with the Senator in the House, you have a great relationship with him, if they’re maybe your state, your state senator, you probably know them, too. If not, you don’t know them, and you’re never going to get to know them, so, when you’re talking about relationships, that’s another fun thing, is the longer you’re in the House, more and more your friends end up in the Senate, and they’re a huge help with, with bills like, like this one that we’re moving forward. So, It does… it’s a lot easier to pass legislation that is bipartisan legislation. You still also have to maintain a balance, because there’s some values you’re going to disagree with, and this is fundamentally to your district, right? And you have to learn to be able to debate stuff really toughly in committee without personalizing it, to anyone, so I may have one of my colleagues who are like, man, I really didn’t like what you had to say, they’re not mad at me, they just thought what I said really bothered them. That tells me it was an effective argument, and I’ve had them question their own beliefs on that issue, but they’re not mad at me, they’re more like, it’s more like, you know, in a football game, where you have a good hit, and afterwards, people know, like, okay, you know, that hurt, but that’s part of the game, and it wasn’t personalized, it wasn’t, like, a dirty hit or anything like that. So you got to… because your constituents still want you to fight, and well, I’m not really in the Congress to be involved in the culture wars, you get dragged into them, and I’ve never voted present on anything. I always either vote yes or no, and so, naturally, by having to vote on all these things, you get dragged in a lot of things, and there are values are different in my district versus some other districts in Florida, and so you still got to be able to stand up for your values, but do it in a way that you’re not insulting your colleagues as you got to get things done. One of the areas that’s most bipartisan is the budget and the grants, so, for instance, we passed the infrastructure law a couple years ago. In fact, it’s almost 5 years ago, so we’re already starting to work on the next one. Not that that’s any guarantee, and out of that came a letter that I led with Mike Waltz, who ended up going into the administration, but he, at the time was the representative from Volusia County, they have I-4, goes all the way over to… to Hillsboro and connects to Pinellas, and I knew, as this was in the works, that it looked like it was going to pass, that we needed to make sure we had unanimous consent, unanimous support, that we wanted funding to expand I-4, because I-4’s got terrible traffic on it, and so, when I came up to him, I said, you know, a generation ago, Corian Brown and John Micah were able to get together to get the money for the initial I-4 expansion, and they’re further apart than you and I are, so certainly we can… we can do this, we can get this together. He’s like, yeah, that’s true, and my folks commute into Orlando, and they hate that traffic, so let me, let me, let me look at it. We ended up agreeing to do that, and because of that, every member from Pinellas to Volusia County, all across Central Florida and Tampa Bay, signed on, and when you’re going to ask for billions of dollars, you need to make sure an administration wants to know no one’s going to afterwards be like, oh, this is such a waste, what are you doing? They want to be universally either recognized or say nothing at all, right, and so that letter was the foundation for a lot of the efforts that went on afterwards, like constantly talking to Pete Buttigieg about the importance of the project, and then working with the state, where it was… we worked a lot with the Florida Department of Transportation. Even as the governor has sharp elbows, we have to work a lot with them, and with the Department of Environmental Protection, and Florida Wildlife Commission and other committees that have a lot of overlap with those agencies to do these things. So, you’ve got to simultaneously do that, while Mike and I might have debated, vociferously, other issues that are, that we disagree on, in maybe the extent of what the military should be utilized, for some of the social issues. But, we’re able to come together for that, and that’s the biggest federal project that’s come to Central Florida since the last I-4 expansion, $3.4 billion, half federal, half state, but it started with a letter and a conversation. So, the bills are great, but the budget is what people really, really recognize, and the hard thing for you all will be, it’s hard to track the budget, right? How do you track that? Then all of that stuff led to you know, these people working on it together. It’s my job in the never ending battle of credit to talk about it over and over and over again, but… but there’s always going to be some limitations into how you assess, effect… how you assess effectiveness, because the budget is harder to track, but it is, in many ways, more impactful because it’s a regional effect specifically, right? So, but I use that as an example of, without that bipartisan support, who knows whether we would have been competitive enough, even with a Democratic administration, to get that funding to Central Florida, and that is the… that is the biggest project we’ve had in a long time.

Craig Volden (00:47:58):

Yeah, I appreciate all of that. And… and… You know… over the years that you’ve been in Congress, you’ve navigated that degree of bipartisanship under a unified Democratic government, unified Republican government, divided government, House being Democrat, Republicans in the Senate, and vice versa. How does your personal lawmaking change under those different circumstances?

Darren Soto (00:48:25):

You have to take different strategies with each different Congress. I’ve been through now, this is my second unified Republican government. Me, personally, I like being in a unified Democratic government, but… but, you work on different areas. In divided government, it’s a lot of singles and doubles you’re working on, you know, issue laws that are important, very bipartisan, that can… Things like consumer protection, or sinkholes is one of the things I’m working on right now as an example, that affects our whole state. So something that’s very bipartisan that we could… we could move… we still work on a lot of these regional budget projects, regardless of who’s the president, which is all the more a reason it’s really important to always have bipartisan coalitions. So right now, we have a Sunrail Brightline expansion that we’re working on, that’s a $6 billion project. While the vote to get the infrastructure law provided the money. Now there’s, like, a 5, 6, 7-year battle to get all that down here, and about half of that $6 billion project would be from the federal government. That project’s going to connect our initial sun rail to the airport, to the theme parks, and then Brightline’s going to connect to Tampa, and it already is connected from Orlando to Miami. So, huge project, and Daniel Webster and I have worked a lot on that, Maxwell Frost, Corey Mills, and Scott Franklin and others, so, regardless of who’s present, we have a bipartisan coalition to work on that. I also have Orlando International Airport in the district, which, huge economic driver, 40% of all the tourists come in through that area, and so we need a new TRACON, which is the building that works along with the air traffic control tower, something that has been under intense focus right now. So that, we got those same players together. Since I do a lot of the regional focus, it was my idea to do those letters, everybody jumped on board, and now, even with this change of administration, we’re on the list, the TRACON’s under design, the FAA founded the site in Orlando International Airport, and now we’re working on the 60, 70 million that we’ll need to build it to maintain air traffic control. So, those will be two projects, but I have a bunch of other ones that I’m working on, and I still would have bipartisan support… would want bipartisan support, whether it’s a Democratic or a Republican administration. There’s no doubt, though, with a Democratic president, I’m able to bring larger amounts of money down, than with a Republican president. We are still Florida, the president’s home state, so we’re able to get some things, but… but, for instance, we brought a mass amount of funding to create a microchip manufacturing center called NeoCity in Kissimmee. We make aerospace microchips, it’s a great niche with aerospace and space out of Cape Canaveral, and we have Skywater runs it, but we have Lockheed Martin involved, and all these other areas, and so, we lined up about a half a billion dollars in funding between DOD contracts, CHIPS funding, and American Rescue Act funding. It was still bipartisan. Webster helped out, Senator Rubio helped out at the time, among others, but, the other thing is, when we were in a unified democratic government, we passed some pretty large pieces of legislation that had funding opportunities, that definitely helped, right? We’re not doing as many of those now, but I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful that we’ll get another infrastructure package next year, and then we’ll be able to say, look, now we can start all over again with all these new projects that we’re starting to work on. So, it could ebb and flow a little bit on the projects, but to stand the test of time, you always want to have these be bipartisan, and then we highlight them, and all of us can show our constituents we’re working together, even if we’re maybe fighting like cats and dogs on one of these social issues that come on that, that our constituents just vehemently disagree about.

Alan Wiseman (00:52:34):

That’s really helpful, Congressman. We want to be mindful of your time, and that said, because the Center for Effective Lawmaking is located jointly at Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia, which are academic institutions. We wanted to know whether or not you had any further particular advice or insights to share with college students today regarding public service, or your perspectives on policy.

Darren Soto (00:52:59):

Absolutely. All politics are local, so take it to heart. More than half, I think about two-thirds of my staff all went to Florida universities or colleges. Most of my interns are from Central Florida. Everyone who works in my office but one has lived in Florida some period of time. So, you want to, your best chance to break through is with your local folks, whether it’s in Tennessee or Virginia or other areas, that really makes a big difference, right? And then, I encourage universities to have internship programs that they help sponsor on the Hill. My chief of staff now was my intern in the State Senate from the University of Florida, right? My chief and my district chief switched because she wanted to go back to Florida, and so that opened up an opportunity for my deputy chief to become the chief of staff, and she started through a program run through the Bob Graham Leadership School. Those internships are the foot in the door, and it may not pay dividends right away, as in that you may not be able to automatically convert that to a paid position, but over time, whether you go and work in business, or as a reporter, or in academia, or as staff, or you’re crazy enough to run for office yourself, those internships are very helpful. So I’d encourage both you all and the University of Virginia to consider giving your students opportunities, and students who are watching this, take advantage of those opportunities, and it doesn’t have to be through the university, there’s other programs, too, I’m the chair of CHCI, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, so we sponsor dozens and dozens of interns of Hispanic descent on the Hill as well, so feel free to look into CHCI. As well as an… An opportunity for… for folks as well, but, but that is a huge way, and then campaigns. I’m not going to get too into that, but you start knocking on doors for other candidates, and and volunteering, and and that is another way, if you… if you… if you cross the… the… the channel with William the Conqueror, you know, you’re… you’re going to have a bright future, right? So, getting in on the ground floor with some of these folks who win, and yes, it’s high stakes, because most people lose, right? So you’re a volunteer for someone who didn’t do it, it doesn’t work out, that’s why a lot of this can be, so high stakes, but you get on enough campaigns, hopefully you’ll pick a winner, now and again, and that always is another way, and then, policy, too, you know, we have legislative teams in the Congress, and those are some of the positions where we may not be as likely to promote from within, or from an intern, unless they really had a good grasp of that subject matter. So, legislative is also for grad students, and an opportunity as well, and then administrations. When it’s an administration you agree with, there’s 5,000 plus appointed positions, and a lot of those folks start as interns, then in the next time their party has the administration, then they might be an appointee, and then they move their way up, and so that’s another amazing way, and it doesn’t hurt to work on presidential campaigns, too. Again, high stakes, right? But but those are all ways to… to… to be able to get involved in the political process, but the most important, I think, is working through your local universities and trying to get one of those initial internships to… to get an assessment of whether it’s something you like and something that you want to continue to work with.

Craig Volden (00:56:33):

Well, thanks so much for sharing those insights. Thank you for your public service, we… you’ve been very kind to answer all of our questions, but we’re not sure we asked you absolutely everything we should have, before we wrap up, is there anything about effective lawmaking, either at the state legislative level or in Congress, that you’d like to share with our viewers?

Darren Soto (00:56:54):

Well, it helps to be an optimist and have unending energy and believe in what you’re doing, and it’s from talking with thousands and thousands of people every year, and hearing their hopes and dreams and their challenges. I draw a lot of energy from that to, to get the courage to stand up when I need to. When I think about the folks at home, that’s what really drives me, and and hopefully, if that’s something that might motivate you, this might be an opportunity for you in the future.

Craig Volden (00:57:24):

Thanks so much, really appreciate it.

Alan Wiseman (00:57:26):

It’s a great way to wrap things up, thank you very much, Congressman. Take care.

Darren Soto (00:57:30):

Appreciate it. Keep in touch.

Alan Wiseman (00:57:32):

You too.