Lawrence Lessig wants to make it to the Oval Office, pass just one bill and then resign.
On Tuesday, the Harvard Law professor and reform activist, released a video announcing his exploratory bid for president. In the video, Lessig explained his plan to run as a "referendum president" on a platform of sweeping political reform—the core of which would be campaign finance reform—in an effort to fix America's "rigged" political system. In keeping with his platform, Lessig launched a crowdfunding campaign to fund his potential run. If he manages to raise one million dollars by Labor Day, Lessig will officially declare his candidacy and make a run for office for 2016.
Lessig believes that money in politics has stripped America of a truly democratic political system and wants to change that. This is not the first time the professor has delved into politics. In 2014, Lessig co-founded Mayday PAC, a super PAC billed as "a crowdfunded Super PAC to end all Super PACs and the corruption of private money."
With 27 days to go, Lessig's crowdfunding campaign raised more than $128,800 at the time of publication. Forbes spoke with Lessig about his plan to "unrig the system," his motivations and the challenges he has yet to face.
Some of the questions have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Can you explain your plan and this concept of a "referendum president"? How would your plan circumvent all these issues facing the other democratic candidates currently in the running?
It’s my view that if we had a referendum on this issue with the American public, it would overwhelmingly produce support for the reform. But we don’t have a referendum power, so this is a way to hack on into the system. So a candidate for president says, “I am going to do this one thing and when that thing is over, I will step aside.”
In that process you have a candidate whose election would be a mandate for that one thing and could stand up to Congress and say, here is that one thing and if you don’t do it, you are going to have the wrath of the people who say that you have not respected their mandate. When they do it then we will have created a Congress that is actually free to lead rather than compelled to follow the money.
What motivated you to explore this option?
I had been watching the Democratic Party candidates talk about really incredibly bold and inspiring ideas about what they want to do in the next administration, but I come from Massachusetts—our senator is Elizabeth Warren—and as Warren likes to say, “the system is rigged.” What increasingly frustrated me was the failure to connect that fact to strategy for actually making it possible to achieve these bold ideas. The system is rigged, what that means is that you have to unrig the rigged system first. So what is the plan for unrigging that rigged system and where is the priority for that plan?
What led me to do this was recognizing that I didn’t think that any of the candidates actually could do this. If you enter office with a mandate that is divided among seven or eight issues, it’s hard to stand up to the most powerful interest in the United States and say to them that you are going to have to yield to this because so much else is hanging on what the administration does.
What would you have to accomplish to fulfill your mandate?
We have identified three areas that get tied into a proposal. The core of the package, which we call the Citizen Equality Act, is changing the way that elections are funded so that we don’t have this grotesquely corrupted system, where candidates focus on the people at the front of the line—the funders of campaigns—and ignore people in the rest of the line who are ordinary citizens because they know that they have to raise money from the people in the front of the line if they want to have a chance to run. Change the way that campaigns are funded so that we all are funders rather than a tiny few.
That’s number one, number two is equal representation--end political gerrymandering, these games where the politicians pick the voters rather than the voters picking the politicians. Make it so people within these districts feel like they are citizens and have an equal say in who their representative would be.
Third, end the voter suppression that goes on through tricks such as ID requirements or holding elections on days where ordinary people have to work and can’t get to an election booth. Make it simple and easy for everyone to be voting so that we can have more participation in the political system. Those three changes are all about the equality of citizens, but the core one is to address this corruption in the way that we fund campaigns.
Is that why you have turned to crowdfunding in your effort because it is more reflective of the broader public?
Crowdfunding was the obvious way to go because this campaign succeeds or fails based on how it is embraced by the Internet, so we have to succeed there. My hope is that in the process of building support through the [Internet] we can get the level of financial support necessary to make this a serious run. That was the thinking.
What is your crowdfunding goal?
Our goal is a million dollars by Labor Day. If by Labor Day, we have raised a million dollars and the major candidates have not committed to making fundamental reform as their number one priority then I will step into the race.
And what is your strategy to hit that million-dollar mark?
Outreach as much as we can to groups and friends and the reform movements and people who have been committed to this idea and are excited about the idea of possibly doing something about it.
Let’s talk a bit about Mayday and your previous reform efforts. You have obviously been working toward this type of reform for some time now, so why this “Referendum President” plan now rather than continuing to work with PACs and the Mayday project to build influence?
I certainly believe that what Mayday is doing is important and valuable and that it will have a significant impact on bringing around members to commit to fundamental reform. But what I have been focused on is what intervention is likely to bring this issue to the top of the list and I have decided to try a different strategy. I think that what the reform community needs is a portfolio strategy. There are a lot of different strategies that push toward a common end and who knows what’s going to work? So, I am going to work hard on this one.
Say you hit the million-dollar goal and declare your candidacy. How do you plan to get the nomination and what do you think will be key to doing so?
I think that the critical thing will be to get this idea before the people. The big push right now is how we can get to a place where we could get in the debates. They have set the standards and we know what we have to aim for but I think that the real objective is to figure out how we can get the attention to this enough that it actually has the prominence to make it succeed.
Hillary Clinton is the clear frontrunner in the race right now and many political pundits give Bernie Sanders a slim chance of winning the Democratic nomination. Do you think that she is vulnerable right now and if so, what do you think her vulnerabilities are?
I think that Hillary would be an incredibly strong leader and an inspiration, and I think that the fact that we haven’t had a woman president is an embarrassment. I do think that she has had a career that has flourished in exactly the kind of game of influence that I am being critical of. I think that she needs to do a great deal in this campaign to show us that she actually recognizes why this kind of influence game is corrupting democracy. I think that she is very vulnerable on this particular issue. I do think that there are a lot of people supporting Hillary who are not necessarily as progressive as Bernie but who once they are brought to confront the reality of the way the system is not working are going to look for someone who offers a real plan to fix the system. I think all of the candidates have vulnerability in that.
What about Bernie? He is running on an extremely progressive platform. How does your plan line up with his campaign and what he is working toward?
I think that Bernie is going to come to a place on the substance that is right. But again, my point is not that he hasn’t checked the right boxes. My point is that he doesn’t have a strategy for fixing [the system] first. How do we get a Congress feels like it has to respect the president’s demand to fix this corrupted system?
Say you get elected and make it to office, what happens then?
I work as hard as I can and as quickly as I can to get Congress to pass this bill. I think that if Congress sees the writing on the wall, they on principle could work on the bill and pass it prior to the time that I would even be sworn in. Then I could serve for an hour or a day and then go back to Cambridge. That’s my ideal.
Then the Vice President would fill the role?
Yes, then the Vice president would step in.
Are there any candidates that you have in mind who would fill that VP spot?
Ultimately, they will be selected by the convention. The convention certainly needs to think about the right candidate who makes it possible for people to believe that this package would win. I want to make sure that the candidate is the sort that can excite the democratic base in a way that makes its certain that we would win. Certain candidates have done that. Bernie has done that fantastically. Elizabeth Warren has done that fantastically. That is the kind of candidate that I would want.
