Original livestream of Chasten at NYU

Chasten: This is really special, thank you so much for having me. Before we begin, if you could do me a favor and stand up and look around and say hello to two people that you do not know.

(The audience do as told, a minute later Chasten says “if you can hear me clap once, if you can hear me clap twice,” to get attention from the audience. )

Chasten: I’m a teacher... (laughter).. This is the best part about campaigning, the best part about this project is getting out and meeting new people. And I think one of the most important things we’re doing right now is helping (inaudible) get to know people... people that are different than them, people who look different than them, practice faith different than them, love people... you know it’s the best part about campaigning for me. If anything - if this tops up - at least you walk away knowing 2 new people.

So I’m Chasten, I grew up in Traverse City, for any of you who know Traverse city, Traverse city is a really white homogeneous (inaudible) Michigan town. No one was gay - I mean no one was out in high school I graduated from a class of 550 people. Wasn’t the easiest place to grow up. I learned that actually more in my adult life looking back on how those experiences shaped me.

I studied theater because theater was the only place I felt comfortable, everybody outside was telling me I didn’t belong, and theater was the place where everyone was telling me I did. Loved theater education, love working with kids and seeing them light up when they try new things and explore new worlds. I taught theater education for a couple of years out of Milwaukee public schools. [Fell in love] with schools, got my masters. And by that time I was falling in love with a mayor in South Bend Indiana.

He kind of changed the trajectory of my life dramatically. So I taught at a Montessori school for a while in South Bend and Pete started uprising and here we are. So I decided to leave the classroom in January and become a full time campaign spouse and I’m having a blast.

I don’t talk too much about (explains that this will not be focused on policy) I want to spend as much time as we have together just talking, so let’s do this - don’t start with medicare for all (laughter).

Interviewer: Don’t worry I don’t have any of those questions.

Chasten: (lightheartedly) didn’t come here for a policy talk

Interviewer: How’s life on the campaign trail? [you’re pretty new and recent as] a national figure so how’s that for you?



Chasten: It is great. Like I said, I love meeting new people. Ali’s my assistant, she’s somewhere around the room - I feel like Ali and I get to do all the fun things and Pete has to go do all the boring things (laughter). Today we were in the Bronx anyone ever hear of the Green Bronx Machine? Like meeting kids and doing really cool farming work and we get to go make salads with them. I mean that stuff is so great, I love meeting people. It’s also really exhausting and really trying, especially for your first year of marriage (laughter). It has definitely made us a stronger couple - for sure. I typically don’t know where I’m going and what we’re doing (laughter). It’s great, it was worth leaving the classroom. I made a conscious choice of leaving behind the thing I was very comfortable with to step into something very new and a little scary because I felt it mattered.

Interviewer: How do you find time to relax (inaudible) when you’re bouncing from city to city, how do you just chill?

Chasten: Pete and I set some standards with the team from the get go, so we used to have date nights every week when he was mayor. Every Wednesday night (inaudible) the team knew - like you don’t call you don't text it’s date night - unless it’s an emergency. Now obviously things are much more compressed. So we usually have date-lunch (laughter), We were in Boston the other day so we got two hours so we took a ferry, got some lunch and stuff.



So we are very very adamant about carving out time to [be] together. Because we typically don’t have time to get to the gym so I’ve started doing workout routines on my Ipad in my hotel room. We just find 30 minutes together, whenever we’re in the same city we try to do these little routine items together just so that we have something to do outside of talking about politics or the headlines.

Interviewer: While you’re away who takes care of Buddy and Truman?



Chasten: We have a few friends who take care of the dogs. I think the dogs are actually more spoiled when we’re gone because they get walked twice a day, lots of cuddling. We actually now have quite a few people [to ask] “hey if you’re going to be out of town, I’d like to watch the dogs” offering, and I feel bad saying “oh someone else is already going to be watching the dogs” [they are] competing over our dogs. I’m very excited to get home, very very late tonight....

Interviewer: I want to talk about something that I think we all here have in common [and that] is student debt. You’ve been living with student debt for a long time now, how has that affected your career choices, your finances, and just your overall life plan?

Chasten: Well, I’m a first generation college student. My family didn’t really know a lot about college. And college at that time in my life, when I left home and was [couch] surfing with friends and trying to figure out where I fit in the world, was also freshman year of college. I decided not to go to Michigan State, State of Traverse City and to just go to the community college. I had no idea how to survive, so I just kept taking out loans. And no one in financial aid was saying “oh hey by the way, you will have to pay this back one day.” Because when you’re in survival mode, and someone’s saying, “If you sign this paper I can give you $10,000” and in my mind I was like “I need money, I need to survive”.

And I was working a couple jobs and so unsure about where life would take me, and I wasn’t focused on “well this is an investment in my future, and one day I’ll get a job to pay back this money.” It was just “I need this money to live.” And that was a hole that just kept getting deeper and deeper, even though I was waiting tables and tending a bar and getting a job at a hospital, that was enough money to keep some food in the fridge. But it wasn’t enough money to pay the rent, get a tuition, buy the books, So I just kept agreeing to take out loans.

[I] never really had any thought, throughout my entire collegiate career, guiding me down a very healthy path. I just wanted to graduate and I wanted to have a degree because to me, as a first generation college student - a kid who got out, a kid who went to college - I wanted that piece of paper because I thought that would prove that I was worth more. And the sad fact was, when I graduated it didn’t mean anything for a lot of jobs, [in the economy in which] I was applying for jobs.

So that’s why I had to get another job out of undergrad just to get health insurance. Then, when you’re a teacher you’re barely making enough to scrape by, you just keep hitting income based repayment plans and you watch the principle grow larger and larger. So, it’s something that I’m still dealing with now because I made a conscious choice of becoming a teacher and I wanted to be an educator. But many at times in my life I’ve thought “Do I need to give this up so that I can go do something else so that I can make money so that pay this debt off.”

Pete’s been helping bury the burden (inaudible) now too, and that’s something we care very deeply about. I don’t understand why we just refinanced our home, and I can refinance our mortgage at an interest rate one-third of the percentage of my federal student loans. There’s a lot to talk about there and I don’t want to go to deep into policy, but it’s something that we care a lot about we still worry about. It’s something that’s impacting our household budget. Every time we sit down and try to decide can we patch the holes inside of the house or fix the roof inside the garage because racoons move in throughout roof (laughter), literally. But when you’re looking at the amount of debt you have and the amount of money you have to work with, student debt definitely doesn’t (inaudible).

Interviewer: We can go further than that [but that’s stuff for Pete] policy wise, so I want to transition and talk to you more about your work as a teacher, so can you explain how are you enjoying that, do you miss the classroom now?

Chasten: I do, I was having so much fun in the Bronx today because kids are amazing. When I went into theater ed I loved the idea of using theater as a tool to teach people things. I never realized I was gonna fall in love with teaching kids. First Stage in Milwaukee was the catalyst. watching kids start to believe in themselves and have fun in the classroom. I had really bad teachers for the majority of my school experience. Outside of the one or two teachers who tell you “you’re worthy,” I had so many teachers telling me to “dream less.” Or who would use homophobic language in the classroom, or racial slurs because everyone in our classroom was white, so they felt at liberty to just say awful, hurtful things.

And the more I started working with kids and realizing they kind of liked me and they liked being around me, and I liked watching them enjoy being in school and in class. And I thought “I’m really good at this, this might be a good job for me.” Especially as a person who understood how horrible school can be when it’s not making you aware that that’s a place where you belong. So my path going to DePaul for grad school was the conscious choice that “okay, I’m going to become a classroom teacher” and then I met Pete (inaudible) (laughter).

It’s the best job, and like Pete says I really do believe that we should start paying teachers more like doctors and treating them more like soldiers, because it is one of the best jobs, and the most important jobs in this country. I knew what I was getting into with paychecks, but every day when I was in school even if it just was a hard long day at school, I knew I was making a difference and that’s the best part about teaching.

Interviewer: [mentions Washington Post interview] From your experience as a teacher, what are some of the weaknesses in the public education system that you would like to address, possibly even as the first first gentleman. Or in the national media cloud right now?

Chasten: I’m really enjoying traveling the country right now and we’re being given a choice to go out and meet teachers where they’re at. Specifically implementing creative programs to talk about the importance of creativity, community, and empathy. When I was teaching in public school systems there was always this sense of anxiety that there was so much to do and there was not enough time or not enough resources.

There was never enough time to be creative, and I just felt like we were chasing our tail. We had all these complaints and in the teachers lounge all we would do is complain all day about the food our kids are eating, and the testing that we have to do, and how we wish we could change the homes that they were going home to and the communities in which they lived. And we were dealing with all the stress and anxiety of being thrown at us that we never got to - I felt like we could change it.

I could do a whole ‘nother talk about my view on the standard of testing, but I felt like we were always teaching to the test, we were always worried about the test. We were never thinking about being creative and innovative, nor were we ever empowered to be creative and innovative. We were just told “You know what shake it up, do something different, break the mold.” It was like this oppressive environment. Especially when things are coming from the top down, telling you exactly how you should do your job, and threatening your job with test scores.

There’s a lot to be done there nationally: how we empower teachers, how we talk about teachers, how we give them the resources - the tools that they need. I would love to just see a national program... I don’t want to get in trouble by policy. But I never felt empowered by professional development, you’re always just told that you’ve gotta get your PD (professional development) hours. Like you go do the thing, you sign it, you take it to the principal (inaudible). That should just be deeply ingrained in our education system - constantly pushing teachers not only to learn more but to do better and think outside the box and be creative. We could do a lot, a lot more as a country to empower teachers.

Interviewer: So how to you think your experience as a teacher has prepared you for the roll of first person?

Chasten: The thing I love about middle school is the middle schoolers (laughter) bear with me. Middle schoolers teach you a lot, about yourself and the world in which you live. They’re constantly questioning things, also at that time in your life everything’s annoying (laughter). Rightfully so, they’re so annoyed by systems that let them down, they’re so annoyed by a government that’s telling them they don’t belong, or that they don’t matter. In working with those kids you learn a lot about society, and community, and culture, and the world outside of my classroom walls that they’re observing.



Because we’re the adults, and our job is to make life better for them, but with kids - you work towards solutions. You get to sit them down and say “how would you change this? How would you make the world a better place? What would you like the world to look like?” And when there are problems and disagreements and issues in the classroom, it’s much easier to handle them because they’re children.

Honestly working with children has prepared me to work with adults. Adults lose that sparkle in their eye about the world, they lose curiosity. They are burdened by so many more things than teenagers are, so talking about the world with adults is sometimes more difficult. I think a lot of the things that I learned from my students in the way that I approach the world, in the way that I think about the world, how much better the world would be, prepares me to try to motivate adults to believe again, to have hope again, or to work towards making things better.

Interviewer: I think that’s a very valid experience, especially since there’s so many children in DC

Chasten: I didn’t want to say it, but you did. (laughter)

Interviewer: Tell us the story of when Pete said “I wanna run for president”

Chasten: I was folding clothes, (inaudible) In the bedroom, Buddy’s up on the bed, he comes home from a political retreat and I was like “what did you guys talk about?” [Pete responded] “Well we were sort of looking at who jumped in the race and...” I’m sure you’ve heard Pete, if you’ve watched a lot of his speeches, talk about what skills do you have, what does the field need, and if there’s a match... then you go for it, you don’t just run for an office run for (inaudible) office. [Pete was saying that] “I don’t think the field is shaping up, in a way that I would like for it to shape up, and I think there could be a moment right now for something completely new, something that completely breaks the mold. A voice from our region of the country, someone of this generation, someone who’s served their country in uniform, someone from a minority group.”

And the joke there is when he said president at first I laughed at him. The reporters keep writing about how I laughed at the idea, which is not true. I literally laughed because I’m 29 years old (laughter), and I just married this guy. Our life, I thought, was going in a very different direction. Everything he said made sense, it still makes sense I believe in him 100%. I think he will make a great president. But I’m very young and I didn’t realize like oh, life could look really really different for me, and for us, and our family, very quickly. I love him, he’s an amazing man, so when we had that conversation I was like “oh... alright, let me know how that shapes up” (laughter).

As we got closer to the holidays we had to make a choice. We were talking about adopting, and an adoption actually fell through. And... I felt like the universe was giving us a sign - go for it, maybe this is the right time, maybe we should do it. We counseled everyone at Christmas time and we said “Let’s try it.” so we did and here we are.

Interview: You mentioned that you see an opportunity with someone unique. I think something specific that I see in him and you, is that he’s taking on the religious left. He’s taking on the notion that the republicans, that the conservatives they own religion, he’s challenging that and I think that is something brand new across... I don’t think I’ve seen any other democrat do that. He and [you both] have a religious background. Can you talk about your experience of coming from a religious background, coming from the midwest, also being gay, and how that all works together?

Chasten: My husband and I are two very different people when it comes to religion. I grew up in a very catholic family and God was sort of always the reason for everything. Then when I came out, religion told me I didn’t belong. I was scared away from the church, I was told not to go to church, I couldn’t come to youth group. And kids stopped talking to - friends that I had stopped talking to me because of my ‘choice.’ The voicemails, and at that time like MySpace (laughter) messages like “Chasten I hope that you change your mind,” “Jesus loves you, but he won’t love you if this is who you are.”

I was done with religion when I came out because everyone who I knew that was religious told me I didn’t belong. So I washed my hands with religion pretty quickly. When I went home to visit Grandma, I enjoyed going to church with her, because that was special time with Grandma, my grandma is deeply religious. Because we were like Christmas and Easter Catholics (laughter). But outside of that I wasn’t partaking in any of the scripture being offered to me, until I met Pete.

The thing about Pete is he’s so patient, and so understanding that... it took me a while to even go to church with him, but Pete never pushed it on me. Oftentimes on Sundays he would wake up early to go to the 8am mass because he knew I would still be in bed by the time he got back, and it wasn’t impeding on our Sunday together, but he still wanted to partake in his religion.

We have such a loving church community, where I was finally made comfortable enough to start listening again. And honestly I’m still listening, I’m still trying to figure it out because for a long period of my life people were telling me that that didn’t mix with me. Now I’m in a community that is extremely (inaudible) and opening and welcoming and loving and I’m trying to figure that out.

I love the way Pete talks about religion because he’s not talking about my religion, me, it’s “this is how I practice my faith, this is how faith informs me, how it informs my life. I’m not gonna push it on anyone else, I’m just telling you where I get my values from.” I see that obviously on a national scale of him, but also on various deeply personal levels. Because sometimes when we’re hurt, or lost, or confused, or we lose someone we love, Pete has a very loving way of talking about “here’s what I believe in, here’s how it might help you.” He’s, you could say he’s still walking me down that path, because he’s offered that path to me, it’s not like he’s dragging me through it. He said “If you want to try this again, you can.” So we diverge a little bit on that topic.

Interviewer: I’m gonna need tissues after that one... (inaudible) Now that you and Pete are kind of national figures, well known, how has that been back in South Bend, has it been a warm reception?



Chasten: Yeah, I think the majority of the people in South Bend are thrilled that South Bend’s on the map, that South Bend’s part of the national conversation, that their mayor’s out there talking about our city, and they’re really really proud of him. I think if you only pay attention to news media obviously they’re gonna focus on - they find something, they find one person who hates Pete and they write a whole article about it like “well not everyone likes Pete in South Bend.” Well obviously - we only got 80% of the vote (laughter).

I find when I’m back home doing the grocery shopping, running errands, or walking the dogs in the park, everyone wants to stop, say hello say how proud they are. Even the people who have written terrible things online about us will still say nice things to your face, [ie] “wish you luck out there” - uh I know you don’t, but thank you (laughter). It’s really cordial there, and I think a vast majority of the people in South Bend are extremely proud of us and really proud of our city for being back on the map.

Interviewer: What would you think, watching the national news media that they have, that they portray it... what’s something wrong that they have done? Do you think Pete, you, your campaign, is accurately portrayed in the national media? I’m asking, is there a fake news (inaudible) out there?



Chasten: You guys ever take media training? (inaudible) There are all these little tricks to interviews, (inaudible) ...here’s what I mean (laughter).

Truthfully, my husband is an (inaudible). A deeply loving, caring, compassionate, service minded individual. I don’t think he would have left consulting, making all the money in the world, and having access to everything at your fingertips, if he didn’t think that service mattered. That’s why he gave it up, and that’s honestly why I really want to (inaudible) the date again (laughter). So when I talked about it, I said let me get this straight “You had all this money, you could travel, you saw the world, why did you give it up?” [Pete responds] “because it didn’t matter, I didn’t get anything out of it” - family mattered and service mattered, and I was really drawn to that.



He’s an extremely selfless man, the amount of work that he puts into his job flabbergasts me. He’s so deeply committed to service, he never stops writing, reading, or talking to himself - unless I tell him to. I wish you could just see it for 24 hours the way he continuously applies himself to study “what’s going wrong, how can I do better, how can I make this city better, how can I make myself better?”

I think it’s common to be painted into a lane or a box or a place somewhere on a spectrum, or be pigeon-holed into being this candidate. He’s a policy wonk, but he’s also a deeply loving, committed, service-minded individual and I sometimes see him being painted as someone who is only focused on the data, only focused on the numbers, only focused on the policy, when that guy can’t sit still back home.

He’s so committed to improving the lives of everyone even though he couldn’t change everything in eight years. That city was - South bend in the four years I’ve lived there has come so far and I applaud him for everything that he’s done and I know that he’s tried his best. But there will be stories and there will be profiles that he’s a person who’s only focused on the data, only focused on the policy, [that] he didn’t care about people who didn’t look like him, [that] he didn’t care about people who didn’t live in his neighborhood. Which I think is wrong, because you don’t give up everything, you don’t go into service for self-betterment. You do it to make a community better, you do it to make the world better. So I’m wary of those profiles and those articles painting him as someone who didn’t care.



Audience Questions: The questions asked weren’t always audible and are paraphrased here

Person: Hey, what do you do to the issue of [people being intense and mean online, rivalry between supporters] can the democratic party turn it around?

Chasten: Well the firing squad’s not healthy, when all is said and done I think every candidate in this race is gonna agree on 75%, 80% of policy platform, so I think it’s about messenger. I don’t see how it’s a healthy conversation when we’re saying “well I’ve suffered more than you have”, because then we’re talking about ourselves. And I’ve found that many interactions with people on social media, combating one another because of the candidate they are choosing, they are talking about the candidate, and, at least from our campaign we want to be talking about you.

That’s the whole reason for the project, to go out there and reach people, who for a long time have been so disenfranchised by politics saying, “nobody is talking about me, why isn’t anyone talking about me. The only way I can respond to that is to be aware that it’s unhealthy, but I’m conscious of the meaning of where I am now. I’m conscious of the ability that social media has to pit us against one another, and I think that a lot of the conversations that happen on social media would never happen in person.

We wouldn’t talk to one another that way, we wouldn’t dismiss one another that way. We disagree with ideas, not people. So when we paint people off as ‘bad people’ because of who they support, in the end all we’re doing is talking about ourselves and the candidates, when millions of people in this country are waiting for us to be talking about them and how we’re going to make their lives better

Person: Pete, when he gives interviews or participates in town halls is so calm even in the face of difficult challenges and questions, and you’re sitting in the audience watching, what’s going on in your head in those moments [and] how do you stay calm when your husband is under all this scrutiny and are there any mantras that you tell yourself in those moments?

Interviewer: Ask that question after the debates (laughter)



Chasten: What’s going through my head? Pride. He always makes me proud, I love him, I’m so proud of him. I don’t know how he remains calm because he has never raised his voice to me in the four and a half years we’ve been together. Pete, he’s here (motioning with his hand) the whole time. I mean I’ve seen him get upset with the dogs (inaudible) the trash. But honestly, he’s always just so calm and level-headed and it’s frightening sometimes, because I can (inaudible) a very frantic person, and I haven’t been doing this for very long.

So when the attacks come, and the hate mail and the death threats, and I start like [thinking] holy cow, we’ve really opened ourselves up to this scrutiny and this hate and this analyzation. Pete is literally the solace, he’s what gets me through it. He’s always there with like a calm hand on your shoulder saying “it’s gonna be okay, this is why we’re doing it, this is why it matters... the rest of its noise” Don’t read the comment section, that’s my mantra. Everyone says that, but then they do. It’s like “don’t read the comments section... but I wanna know what people are saying.”

Read a book or get a mindfulness app on your phone or play a game. When you are tempted, if you see the garbage headline, the clickbait - when you are so tempted to click comments and watch the world burn, go do something else. Exit out of the app, talk to someone, call your mom. Literally do something else, because if we just sit here and focus on the vitriol and the hatred that’s happening on social media, especially when you’re two out gay men in Indiana, who are deciding to run for the presidency - well he’s running for president, not me (laughter) (inaudible), - of course there’s gonna be hatred. And there will always be hatred if you go looking for it.

Person: Hi, so you get called Pete’s secret weapon... Did you know before joining that you would have this power? When you talk about Pete we can tell, you are Pete’s secret weapon, do you think it’s flattering?



Chasten: I’m gonna be really careful about that. I don’t know a lot of the other spouses that are in the race, and whether they made a conscious choice to just not take interviews, or they just decided “I don’t wanna be in it,” maybe they have jobs they’re tending to, children they’re tending to, a community they’re tending to, and they don’t want to be as involved.

I think it’s unfair - I’m flattered by that - but I wanna be really careful about painting other spouses as not helpful or effective or loving of their spouse. I like talking to people, I like doing a thing, I like going out there and meeting people, and honestly I don’t think my relationship with Peter would work if I were at home twiddling my thumbs and watching him traverse the country. I think we’re a better partnership because we’re together. Even if we wake up at 6am, go in separate directions and we only see each other when we get back together at midnight. As long as we can crash into one another at the end of the day, we share that experience. I think that’s what’s getting us through it.

So if I’m like the secret weapon or the super vocal spouse that’s great, I also don’t like being painted as the one who humanizes him. I hate when they use that term they work it on every spouse though like “they humanize the candidate.” I didn’t marry a cow. (laughter) He’s a human, he’s a human being. That doesn’t make any sense to me because in every way he is just as loving and caring and compassionate as I think I am as a human, there’s another thing the media (inaudible) we’re all just people.

Person: [You and Pete] talk about a national service program, [not necessarily military] just the idea of serving your country.... How do you think Community service is helpful and sort of unifying?

Chasten: For sure, I think about - I totally agree with Pete that I think we need to revisit national service. I think I would have been a better educator and a better college student had I gone on a national service year before I went to college. I didn’t really work with or study with people who looked different than me, who practiced faith different than me, and who loved different than me, until after college, until after I moved to a large city where I was working in an urban school population.

And I think about what national service could have done for me if I had packed up my bags and moved to a different city and submersed myself in service. Also by putting others before myself. I think sometimes we go to college and we’re so absorbed in ourself like “What am I gonna be, what am I gonna do, what am I gonna study? Me, me, me ” Want to meet all the friends and go to all the parties. Because that’s what’s been sold to us, as the college experience, that’s what it’s about. Service is about going out there and figuring out what you can do for your community and for your country whether it’s city (inaudible) or AmeriCorps, Peace Corps - all of these great national service programs that ask you to go mix it up with people very different than you, of all backgrounds. And then go to college, if college is the thing for you.. Or maybe you discover you don’t need to go to college to pursue something that you fell in love with. I think it just has a great opportunity to build some bridges and bring people back together, before we just make that choice to, [so that] the moment we graduate we go out into the world and start doing what we’ve decided we want to do.

Person: How do you guys figure out how to play along with the midwestern niceties and inject those values back into the campaign and take them back from the right?

Chasten: The value of kindness, where’d that go? (laughter) We’ve asked our team to sign a values statement, in the way we conduct ourselves in this campaign, how we talk to one another and how we treat one another. I think midwest nice is about (inaudible) - people in the midwest just approach the lived experience with the idea of kindness. Even if they’re saying hurtful hateful things, they are still guided by this idea that they are doing well for other people. Like the religious right telling me “repent or die” they’re doing it as a care value (laughter).

But that’s where I think a lot of mid-westerners come from, that idea of service and kindness. It just depends on how you deploy those values. So if I’m using those values, service and kindness and empathy I should only be using them in ways that are going to improve other people’s lives. The idea of if you don’t have anything nice to say... That’s a lot of the mantras we have in the Midwest, which are some of the same mantras we have in this campaign. What’s that quote, “Do as much as you can with as much [as you have]”... that’s the idea of this campaign. If it makes us look Midwest nice just because we believe in talking about improving the lives of other people and how we can make this a more loving, kind, compassionate, country, well great, everyone could use that. That’s what Midwest nice is - I’m all for it.