Full Episode - Tuesday Was A REALLY Good Night For Democrats + Can A Democrat Win Statewide In Florida? - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode of the Chuck Todcast is brought to you
by Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first bake from
frozen subscription box for sour dough breads, artisonal pastries, and
fresh pastas, plus all the items conveniently baked in twenty
five minutes or less. Unlike many store brought options, Wild
Grain uses some simple ingredients you can pronounce and a

(00:22):
slow fermentation process that can be a lot easier on
your belly, little gut health there right, and richer in
nutrients antioxidants. There's also no preservatives and no shortcuts. The
Wild Grain boxes are fully customizable. In addition to their
variety box, they have a gluten free box, a vegan box,
and a new protein box. I will tell you I

(00:42):
have done the gluten free box. I have done it
a second time. I have also used the code the
todcast code. You use the promo code toodcast at checkout
you get thirty dollars off. I've already used it as
a gift to somebody else who loves this bread. It
is hard to find good gluten free bread. It is fantastic.

(01:02):
They give you step by step instructions. I really dig this.
There is nothing like having an artesian bakery in your freezer.
Right now, Wildgrain is offering my listeners thirty dollars off
your first box plus free croyissants for life. Come on
when you go to wildgrain dot com slash podcast to
start your subscription today. That's thirty dollars off your first

(01:23):
box and free croissants for life when you visit wildgrain
dot com slash podcast, or simply use the promo code
podcast at checkout. This is a sponsor I absolutely embrace,
so use that code.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
I am coming to you very early on Wednesday morning.
Even by the time you do this, I am taping
after our election night live stream. For those of you
that tuned in, I appreciate it. I get a huge
election night obviously, just having California vote, that's a big deal.
That's but New Jersey, Iowa, Montana, South Dakota, New Mexico,
California literally races coast to coast, and look a full

(02:09):
disclosure here, We're not going to have any California results
for days. Okay, so we've got some directional ideas of
what's happening in California, but I'm gonna set California aside
here If you, because we don't know what that situation is,
and it could make what I'm about to say completely
overshadowed if things go in any different directions in California.

(02:36):
But Tuesday night was a really good night for Democrats nationally.
If Democrats are if if you are the Democratic Party,
you are in better shape to win the House on
Wednesday morning than you were on Tuesday morning. And if
you're the Democrats, you're in better shape to win the
Senate on Wednesday morning then you were on Tuesday morning.

(02:57):
And why do I say that, Well, on the House,
it's because of a handful of developments, the biggest being
in New Jersey seven. New Jersey seven is home to
Tom Kaine Junior. We still don't know where Tom Kane Jr. Is.
He has not divulged where he is. He has simply
said he will run. Donald Trump endorsed him late in
this process just to make sure he gets the nomination.

(03:22):
The more important development is the Democrats that got the
candidate they wanted. And in this case, that candidate is
a former Navy helicopter pilot. And if that sounds familiar,
you're like, wait, isn't the governor a former helicopter pilot
in the military, and the answers, yes, she is. Well,

(03:42):
so is this candidate, Rebecca Bennett. This was the candidate
that they wanted it to, that the national Democrats were
hoping would win this primary. She won this primary. She'll
be facing off against Tom Kine Junior. Likely. Why do
I say likely, because there's only one other explanation for
how New Jersey, how the Kine family and the New

(04:03):
Jersey Republicans have been behaving in this race. There seems
to be he basically, he got out, he went, he disappeared.
We last saw him in early March, a few weeks
before the filing deadline. Filing deadline happened in the end

(04:24):
of March. He didn't get a major primary challenger. Obviously,
had this come out, he might have and he might
not have won this primary. But he's now won this primary.
New Jersey is the easiest state in the Union to
essentially switch nominees after a primary. Democrats have done it
famously in a Senate race Bob Torselli was headed for

(04:45):
defeat and they famously were able to switch candidates. They
got Frank Lautenberg and they were able to save a sendancy.
It's his idle speculation from a few consultants who are
like the old plausible explanation is X. So that's the
only thing I would say to keep an eye on

(05:06):
when New Jersey seven. But the whole larger issue is
this Democrats got the candidate they wanted. They didn't get
somebody that was going to be easily painted as too
far outside the mainstream. Moving to Iowa, they were already
before the night began, three house seats there were really
major primaries that were you know, there was a primary
to decide to the nominee was going to be in

(05:28):
the seat that Ashley Hinson is vacating to run for
the US Senate. But we knew that three were going
to be competitive, the first, the second, and third. They're
kind of always swing districts in Iowa, those three. But
the fact of the matter is that Democratic statewide ticket
got stronger after tonight. Democrats got the Senate candidate that

(05:49):
Rob san was hoping that they get that national Democrats
were supporting. They threw a bunch of money. Vote Vets
essentially was an unofficial arm of the Senate Democrats in
this campaign. They poured a ton of money in this
race to raise Josh Turick's name. I d at worked.
He swamped Zach Walls. Both of them has stirred in
the state legislature in some ways. Sack Wall started this

(06:11):
race with higher name recognition than Josh Turick. He explicitly
ran an anti Chuck Schumer campaign, and he got thumped tonight.
He lost two to one. But Walls was also running
a more progressive campaign. He was endorsed by Elizabeth Warren.
Josh Turick was endorsed by Tom Harkin, was getting all

(06:32):
of this extra help from Boat Vets. He's potentially a
very strong candidate for the Democrats for Senate. We'll see
Ashley Hinson, the Republican congressman I talked about before he
was vacating that second congressional district. She's also going to
be a very strong Senate candidate. She won quite easily.
She had nominal opposition. But the biggest problem for her

(06:54):
is not the fact that Josh Turk won the nomination,
though she would have preferred running against Zach Walls. The
biggest upset of the night anywhere in anywhere in the
country took place in Iowa was in the Republican primary
for governor where a gentleman by the name of Zach
Lane forged a path in the forged a path in

(07:17):
the Iowa governor's race in an Iowa state wide race
that many an Iowa Conservative has done before. There's always
there's a strong network of what I would refer to
as sort of non establishment Christian conservatives in Iowa. This
is the network that Rick Santorum famously was able to

(07:38):
tap into to tie or win. It all depends on
your point of view of what happened in that infamous
twenty twelve Iowa caucus between Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney.
But it was the pizza ranches and sort of and
there's always been this. It's a very well organized Gary
Bauer back in the day was able to tap into this.

(07:58):
Ted Cruz tapped into this, and this the candidate here
always gets thirty to thirty five percent. I've seen, you know,
there have been other statewide Republicans over the years. Chuck
Grassley had a primary challenge once from somebody from this
wing of the party that was once again able to
get into the mid thirties. But when you have a
crowded primary, the mid thirties are suddenly a winning number,

(08:21):
and that's essentially what happened here. So Zach Lane, running
more sort of a first time candidate, use some of
his own money. His spouse has some money, but also
tapped into the MAHA movement to Make America Healthy Again movement. This,
of course, we learn from the Iowa reporters that we
have in our livestream. And so while Donald Trump came

(08:43):
in very late for Congressman Randy Fiinstro from the fourth
Congressional District, that is the most Republican district in the state.
So in theory, Fienstro was running from what is the
state's Republican base, the fourth Congressional District, mostly in western Iowa,
northwest Iowa, but most of western Iowa. But he's also

(09:05):
known as the guy who defeated Steve King, so he
was the mainstream Republican who came in to get rid
of the far right congressman and Steve King. He endorsed
Ron De Santis during the presidential CAUCUSUS So the fact
that somebody got to the President and convinced him to
do this basically by saying, hey, it's the only way
we could be This was a case where Trump got

(09:28):
talked into being to taking one for the team, to
doing what was best for the party, and that the
National Party folks, both in the Senate side, they didn't,
you know, they said, no, you got to make sure
Fiensture is the nominee here. And it looks like Elaine
decision has projected and Fiatures already already conceded the race.

(09:54):
This Zach Lane won by less than two thousand votes.
But there's a couple of ways to look at this.
First of all, we had Maha versus MAGA. That's fascinating.
That's something that the fact that the Maha movement might
have proved to be stickier, might have proved to be
more of an outsider credential. Right, Mega, you get a

(10:16):
Trump endorsement. Yes it's MAGA, but in some ways it's
an insider credential. But you know, the politics of i
are very sort of are sort of in flux at
the moment. Right this is still a right leaning state,
don't get me wrong, but the terifts have done enormous
damage to the agricultural economy. This is also a state
that Donald Trump's never really Yes, he does well in

(10:38):
general elections. I remember he lost the Iowa Coxes when
he ran in twenty sixteen something. He still won't concede
that happened, but it did. The sitting governor endorsed DeSantis.
Randy Feinstrop, basically the leading Republican congressman in the state,
endorsed DeSantis. Jony Ernst was not really a big Trump

(11:00):
what you would say. Partner in the Senate, Chuck Grassley
has always felt comfortable criticizing the President on tariffs and
on a few things that he thinks. He also hit
him pretty hard on the weaponization fund earlier this week too.
So look, I think it's it's hard to sit here
and say what was the definitive reason why Zach Lane
beat Randy Finstra. But to me, there's a confluence of

(11:22):
events you can tap into. Number One, Randy Finscher's first
name is congressman. And I think just being perceived as
an incumbent not good. As John Covilian said during our
live stream, you know this has been true in a
lot of Republican primaries in general, where incumbents in competitive
Republican primaries, incumbents are usually more in more trouble on

(11:45):
the right side of the oven, on the left side
of the album. We saw that with John Cornyn getting ousted,
and now you have Randy Feinstrat And by the way,
South Dakota, which is going to feature its first ever
run off for governor, had another sitting member of Congress,
a statewide elect official who happened to be a sitting
member of Congress, and Dusty Johnson, and it doesn't and

(12:06):
it looks like he is going to miss out on
the runoff. Certainly underperformed, so having the last name of
Congressman not being seen as fully mega throw in the tariffs,
which yes, is a little bit mad at Trump, but
a little bit mad at you're elected officials in general.

(12:27):
So it's just a large stew of discontent in various ways,
and then you just sometimes just campaigns matter. Zach Lane
ran clearly ran a better campaign. He went from zero
to relevant. And it looks like Fainst just sort of
and his team just sort of took this race for granted,

(12:49):
it'll come, it'll happen, it's natural, and it didn't. So
what does this mean Democrats if there's a Gooba natorial
nomine in the country that they're more excited about than
Rob sand I don't know who it is. Rob Sand
is the only statewide elected Democrat in the state. He
won in twenty twenty two by the skin of his teeth,

(13:11):
but he was able to win even during that big
red wave that did sweep across most of Iowa. Sand's
been running in a pretty interesting race so far. He's
already done one hundred town halls. He's really been running
for governor for almost a full four years. Ever since
he won that race, it was clear he was I
in this moment to run for governor. Nobody thought cam

(13:32):
Reynolds was going to seek another term. There's no term
limits in Iowa, so she could have if she chose to.
She chose not to. Clearly the split with the president right,
she was on team Desantas, and we know what happens
to anybody that's on Team DeSantis from the presidential era.
It's not something that Donald Trump will ever forget. So

(13:54):
on paper, you know, Sand's been preparing to run against Fienstra.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Now.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
When I ran into Rob Sand at a at an
event that I was moderating where he was a participant
in the panel, he said, I frankly thought he was
spinning me a little bit. He said, ah, you know,
Finstre's not it's not a done deal yet. He's got
a tougher prime. He's still got to he's still got
to deal with the primary well turned out. You know,
Look he's traveling the state. All these candidates run into

(14:21):
each other, so they keep track of this. Sand's been
prepared to one run kind of race. Now he's running
against an outsider. Sand was the was essentially challenging the
Republican estestablishment. Well, now his opponent is an outsider who
was not endorsed by Donald Trump. So you can't really

(14:42):
run the He's too far, too closely associated with Trump mindset.
So look, it's possible Zach Lane is just too much
of a neo Fhight. He gets painted as too far
to the right. Sand is able to pull off a
high single digit, made even low double digit victory, and
if he could pull that off, that drags other statewide candidates,

(15:06):
in congressional candidates across the finish line. This is why
this Iowa race if if Zach Lane cannot be competitive
against Rob Sand and look, whatever anybody thinks of Randy Feinstrett,
he've been the nominee. This was going to be a
three to five point race. No matter what in going
in either direction. Now there's a lot more unpredictability. Look,

(15:28):
I'm not going to assume that an insurgent outsider that
is able to topple a sitting member of Congress in
or primary for governor. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
underestimate this gentleman. But if he has a hard time
sort of getting with the rest of the Republican ticket,
this is this is a cause for some concern for Republicans,

(15:52):
and this puts down I mean, I have identified Iowa
that if you want to test whether is twenty twenty
a wave election or not, my definition of wave will
be dependent on what the results are in the three
Iowa congressional districts that for grabs that US Senate seat,
and that governor's race. If this is a blue wave year,

(16:15):
I expect a sweep or near sweep of those five races,
with maybe one of the you know, I think I
think one of the two members of Congress could survive
in a blue wave year. But if you if this
is going to be a blue wave, the only way
I think you can call it a blue wave is
if these Iowa statewide races go blue. And I'm just

(16:38):
telling you tonight, the results that we saw that came
in are going to have the Democrats getty here on
Wednesday morning. They're going to feel better just simply on
what happened in Iowa. Forget everything else, and look, we've
got a long way to go to find out everything
all the different various matchups. Did any parties get locked
down in the top two with the whole California mess,

(17:01):
But just with what happened in Iowa, this was a
big positive development for Team Blue and Democrats have their
best shot at sweeping the top two state white offices
in Iowa since the Vilsack Harken era. Believe it or not,
that's nearly twenty fifteen, twenty years ago, and that's the

(17:24):
possibility they're staying. And if that happens, I promise you
at least two probably the first and the second, but
maybe all the first, second, and the third could all
come over there. You know, when you think about how
small the battlefield is and for the House in general,
right we think we may have about twenty five competitive
House seats. The fact that three of the twenty five

(17:44):
are in the state of Iowa, one of the most
competitive Senate races now might be in the state of Iowa.
The number one target race now for Democrats to try
to pick up a governor seat is Iowa. You can
see why. To me, it's the state we will use.
It's the barometer to test is this wavier or not?

(18:04):
Iowa will deliver that answer. But for this primary night,
Iowa delivered for the Democrats in a big, big way.
And this upset in the governor's race. Look, we know
it's going to make the president nuts. Obviously they got
to him. Look, there was a poll that started circulating
John Colvulliam's firm, that circulated last Friday that showed that

(18:27):
Feinstro was trailing. It was that poll that was used
to convince Donald Trump, you've got to endorse fiinst in
the same way that he endorsed Mike Rodgers, even though
Mike Rodgers and Michigan wasn't his favorite type of Republican,
the same way that he endorsed Johnsonunu, even though the
Sonudu family was not a big fan of the Trumps
in New Hampshire. But it was the candidate that the

(18:48):
Senate Republicans wanted, considering what he just did to the
Senate Republicans with Ken Paxton and essentially costing them two
hundred and fifty the million dollars in extra spending that
is going to be necessary to try to save their
Texas Senate hide. He went ahead and agreed to endorse

(19:11):
a one time Dessanta supporter, Randy Finstrom. He's going to
he's not going to be happy about this. So let's say,
I can't wait to find out who who's going to
get blamed for forcing that decision on him, because especially
when he finds out that the Maha folks were already

(19:34):
behind Zach Lane, and I wonder if the person or
people who got him to endorse Fienstrom let him know
that the Maha side of the world had been siding
with another candidate in the race. Anyway, just a few
things on that one to think about. This episode of

(19:57):
the Chuck Podcast is brought to you by f You
can predict the playoff action all the way to the finals,
and we're here with Fan Duel Predicts. All you have
to do is sign up to get a twenty five
dollars bonus. You get to follow all of the finals dishes, swishes,
wishes and misses every move is a potential plot twist.
You'll predict the spread, the total points, even the game
winning moments to make the playoffs and especially the finals,

(20:22):
where one run, one rebound, one shot can change the
entire trajectory of the finals from opening tip to the
final buzzer. Stay locked in with every pass, every play,
and every moment that moves us closer to crowning a
new NBA champion. And yes, it's going to be a
new NBA champion. Sign up now for your twenty five

(20:42):
dollars bonus on fan Duel Predicts. So Game one is
going to be Wednesday night. So one thing I will
say is I think that over under to eighteen that
where I'm a little I'm not ready to go automatically.
One of them is going to be shocked at how

(21:03):
the other plays. And so I think Game one is
a feeling out game and I don't want to pick
a side. I'm going with the over. That's going to
be what I do. But it is notable to me
that the money line for Nicks to win the game
and the money line to win the series is must identical,
which to me provides you an intellectual way to handicap

(21:26):
the game. This is an offer by FanDuel Prediction Markets, LLC.
It's a registered Futures Commission Merchant eighteen plus. Bonus is
non withdrawbal and expires seven days after receipt. Trading derivatives
involves significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors.
Find out if that's you. Manage your activity with FanDuel's
consumer protection tools. Restrictions apply. See the terms at FanDuel

(21:49):
dot com Slash predicts, Slash Bonus hyphen offer hyphen terms.
I do want to spend a minute on out the
coda because this is so South Dakota in the mid
eighties made that so. One of the reasons why we're
obsessed with the Iowa governor. One of when the night

(22:10):
began is Iowa has a quirky law. If no and
this is true in either side's primary, if no candidate,
and this applies to all races, not just statewide races,
If no candidate a primary receives thirty five percent, then
a convention will decide who the nominee is. And it

(22:32):
doesn't and it couldn't be anybody, not even necessarily anybody
that filed in the ballot, believe it or not, and
there was a real chance that the Iowa governor Republican
primary was going to feature no candidate receiving thirty five percent.
Well the two winning The winning candidate got thirty seven percent,

(22:55):
thirty seven point eight percent, and Fienstrup just finished bying
them at thirty seven percent, so they across the threshold.
There's no runoff. South Dakota had the same law, but
in the eighties, instead of letting a county convention do it,
they decided to say, well, if this happens in a
primary state wide primary, and this one they just do
for statewide primaries, well then they would hold an actual runoff.

(23:16):
They've never had to do this, they will for the
first time. So July twenty eighth circle year calendars, folks,
July twenty eighth will be the only Tuesday, the only
state in the Union that will be voting on a
Tuesday in July. Last Tuesday in July. It's going to
be our friends in South Dakota, and it's going to

(23:38):
be a runoff between the populist outsider who we know
for sure, Toby Dodan either against the sitting up governor
who assumed office after Christy Nome was appointed Department of
Homeland Security, and know once she got fired from that,
she didn't get to go back to be governor or.

(23:58):
The sitting member of Congress, Dusty jo And right now
is sitting in third place. Look as I'm taping now,
there's still still anyway from five to ten percent of
precincts still remaining, and you got to wait for every vote.
Account we know it's going to a runoff. No candidate
at this point in time, nobody's even crossed the thirty
percent threshold. Believe it or not, Four candidates in this

(24:21):
race received at least twenty percent of the vote. Yet
a sitting Speaker of the House, sitting member of Congress,
sitting governor, and then this populist outsider, and of course
it's the populous outsider that ends up the top vote getter,
fitting the pattern that we've been seeing where when in doubt,
the undecided Republican primary voter is voting out, voting against incumbents,

(24:47):
which has been a phenomenon, as John Covillian noted, that
has been taking place really since the Tea Party movement.
But in these competitive primaries, you'd rather be somebody who
didn't have a resume filled with political offices than have
the resume filled with political offices. One other note on
both Randy Fiinster and Dusty Johnson. Right, these are two
sitting members of Congress, Conservatives, okay, but conservative members of

(25:11):
Congress who are not bomb throwers were not theatrical guys.
And I'll just be honest, I'm kind of personally disappointed
what I'm about to say. But basically they were too
moderate in temperament. They weren't They're not too moderate in
ideology and in their policy positions, but they're too pragmatic.

(25:35):
They're too they will they don't want to own the Libs.
They want to defeat the policy, but they're not interested
in sticking a finger in the eye of somebody type
of politics. Right, They're not performative guys. I say this

(25:57):
with a bit of a lament. Right. I think there's
a there's a there's a there's a certain if if
if sort of being polite to other people is a
net negative and a primary right now is is kind
of a big discipointment, because again, if you're apparently the

(26:19):
biggest sin that Randy finsterra and Dusty Johnson committed, we're
simply being not being bombos, not being performers, not being
social media bs artists. That's a challenge, right, If this

(26:40):
is what the system is going to reward. At some point,
maybe we'll burn out on this. I don't know, but
this is this It it's notable. You can't ignore it.
And as much as maybe I'm guessing some of you
that listen to this podcast probably share my view that

(27:01):
you know, this style of politics is kind of destructive.
It doesn't really get much done, but it's being rewarded
by voters. And as long as it gets rewarded by voters,
trust me, it's going to get replicated and we're going
to see more of it. But this, it's a pretty
notable trend. And right, John Cornan, the more running is

(27:24):
the more reasonable Republican Randy Feinstraw part of the mainstream Caucus, Right,
Dusty Johnson, the chair of the of the mainstream Caucus.
Not not a trend to ignore on this one. This
very much is Donald the Donald trumpification of the Republican Party,
even though he didn't necessarily. The irony is he endorsed

(27:48):
the least Trump like candidate and the voters went ahead
with the more trumpy or the more outsider, the more
as my friend Charlie Cook likes to call them exotic,
can't It's on that one, But history is made. South
Dakota will hold its first ever runoff for a statewide office,
and in this case, it will be for governor. The

(28:11):
question is will the current governor who assumed office after
Christino was appointed cabinet sectary? Can he get the second
spot in the runoff. I have a feeling that we
will have the answer to that question sometime on Wednesday
after before I get to California. One another note that
I wanted to make here. I had a few things

(28:32):
I wrote down here that I didn't want to miss.
Deb Holland, who was a cabinet secretary. She was member
of Congress Cabinet secretary in Joe Biden's cabinet, is officially
the Democratic nominee for governor in New Mexico, handily defeating
Alex Bragman's father, Alex Bragman, the baseball player. Well, Alex

(28:53):
Brigman's father is a city official in Albuquerque, and it
wasn't very close. Holland one bay. But if elected governor,
and she's going to be the heavy favorite for governor,
she'll be the first ever Native American woman to serve
as governor. So I just wanted to make a note
of that. So that brings us to California, and it

(29:13):
is going to be days because let me remind you
of something. The California law works as this for mail
in ballots. If the ballot is received by the county official,
is postmarked by election day, and that ballot makes it,

(29:33):
they know you have to have mailed it on election day,
so you have to have a postmarked by election day.
But they will receive ballots in the mail and process
ballots for up to one week after election day as
long as the ballot is postmarked on election day as
an election day postmark. So the point is ballots are
still going to be coming in all week. And this

(29:56):
isn't a small thing. Why do I say it's not
a small thing? Talking to my So this is about
sort of how this process worked this cycle. Because of
the topsy turvy nature of the California gubernatorial race, Democratic
voters were holding their ballot very late every just to
remind people, every single voter gets mailed to ballot in California.

(30:18):
The typical early voter is usually the sort of the
sort of the rank and file. I always vote in
primary Democratic voter, Well, that voter voted but didn't drop
off their ballot until the last thirty six hours. Up
until the last seventy two hours, there was some concern

(30:40):
that turnout for twenty twenty six was going to be
lower in California than turn out for twenty twenty two.
And at twenty twenty two there was no it wasn't
an open race for governor. There really won this serious
you know, there's not a serious contested race for governor
that's just going to it's going to automatically bring down turnout.
There was some thoughts. I mean, the early vote was
coming in so low that there was some thoughts, Boy,

(31:00):
are people holding their ballots at the very end or
is there going to be a low turnout primary. Well,
all the ballots now have come in, we have an
idea turnouts likely now going to be higher this cycle
than it will be in twenty twenty two, which it
should be because there's an open seat race for governor,
really the first purely wide open race for governor probably
since nineteen ninety eight, and that was the last time

(31:24):
we had a shockingly high spending candidate for governor, a
guy named al Checki, and the boring candidate Gray Davis
ended up winning the primary. Well, apparently jave Absara is
benefiting from being the boring candidate, the moderate and temper.
So here we were talking about the boring candidates don't
do well in Republican primaries, but the boring candidates sometimes

(31:46):
do well in Democratic prior to this is an all
party primary. But given particularly post swallwell, there suddenly was
an appetite for somebody that was a little less bomb throwing,
that was a little and the stier TV ads have
sort of are starting to wear people out, and so

(32:10):
Bessarah seems to be benefiting from that fact. Now, look,
in the first hours that the votes were coming in,
there's a bit of a what I'd call a red mirage,
which was kind of expected, and it's probably a bigger
version of it, but we're going to find out as
the votes come in. And why do I say it's
a bigger version of it, because of this unusual situation
with the early vote. Right the early vote came in,

(32:33):
Republicans knew who they were voting for. Early. They knew
they were voting for Spencer Pratt. They knew they were
voting for Steve Hilton, and that's why the earlier numbers,
as you've seen in and in fact, at this point,
Hilton may still be leading. My guess is by the
time some of you listen to this, Hilton probably will
have fallen into second place. The question is going to

(32:53):
be this count again. If they're receiving ballots for up
to a week, we're not going to have this. We're
not going to know for sure the second candidate is
in this California governates. We think until at least for
a few more days. We got to see what kind
of spread there is between second and third. But as

(33:13):
I record this, at the moment, Hilton still is narrowly ahead,
but it's narrow It's only by about thirty thousand votes.
But Sarah is second, and then there's a pretty big gap.
There's about a two hundred thousand vote gap between Besarah
and Styre, basically about a six percentage point gap. Stier's
number is going to grow, Hilton's number is going to

(33:34):
go down. The Besarah numbers probably going to grow a
little bit too. So we're sitting at twenty seven, twenty six,
twenty essentially at the moment with stire twenty, is that
a big enough gap for Hilton to hold on. Well,
A lot of it's going to depend on Bianca Bianco
was the other Republican in the race. With about half
the vote in, Bianco was still getting more than double digits.

(33:59):
That's not good for Hilton's chances of hanging on in
the primary. The expectation though, is as this later vote,
these later ballots come in, Hilton's numbers should hold fairly
steady and Bianco should start going down. Especially you've had
you had a bit of a paid Republican effort. Hilton
ran ads and was running messaging trying to consolidate vote

(34:22):
for him to prevent the Republicans from being locked out
of the general election. And then Donald Trump came in
with the endorsement really to try to guarantee the same thing.
I think there's a wide enough gap here between Hilton
and Stier for Hilton to hang on. My expectation is
is that when all the votes are counting, but Sarah

(34:43):
will be the top vote getterer. The question is is
how close does Styer get. We've seen a total collapse
of the Katie Porter vote total collapse of the Matt
Mayon vote, and that number continues to go down as
newer ballots get counted. Right, they were sitting at seven
and six percent when the first wave of early vote

(35:05):
came in. They're both now dipping below five. Well, how
many of those folks went to Stire? I guess you
would assume that the progressive voters are going to go
to Stire, the less progressive voters are going to go
to Bisera. How does that shake itself up again? I

(35:26):
think the Hilton number is large enough to hold off Stire,
but we know Stire had the money to run a
very sophisticated get out the vote effort, a very sophisticated
male balloting effort. So you know he's done spent an
enormous amount of money of trying to do this. If

(35:48):
you're Besarah, you obviously don't want to run against Styre.
You want to run against Hilt, no matter you know.
I think of the three scenarios right the Sarah v. Stire, Paseravi, Hilton,
Hilton b Styre, the most competitive would be Baseravi Styr,
though I would suspect that most of the establishment were

(36:11):
rolling around Basara. There is A. There is an exhaustion
that Styer has created with frankly political reporters, the political
side of it. I mean, he's just relentless right, and
he's just saturated television ads to the point where we
ran one of them. But Sarah ran A ran an
ad that that was just if you have YouTube TV,

(36:32):
if you ever gotten the the the instead of a commercial,
in lieu of a commercial, you can just get this moment,
a zen type of you know, it's just like nature
and crickets and all of this. Well, that's exactly the
ad of Bsera ran because tired of the Tom Stier ads.
But nobody speaks in the ad. It's just writing on there.
Basaravi Stier would be. I mean Styer spent over two

(36:53):
hundred million dollars for this for this first half of
the campaign. Uh spend at least that for another five months,
and it will tear the party apart, and it will
cause all sorts of problems. It'll probably raise boat right,
I guess, might help Democratic candidates a bit down the ballot. A.

(37:16):
But Sarah Hilton race I think is a very conventional
d versus our race probably won't be what the shift
Garvey margin was, but it will likely be double digits,
you know, I think fifty six forty four or something
like that. With the wild card being this scandal that

(37:42):
could touch Besara and if you're unfamiliar with it, a
former chief of staff of his who actually has also
has ties to Gavin Newsom, was essentially, you know, sort
of getting some campaign money on the side and whatever
he was doing. Joe Biden's Justice Department opened to investigation.

(38:02):
So this isn't Donald Trump's Justice department supposedly doing political weaponization, right,
this is a democratic justice department investigating a democratic former
chief of staff both to Kevin Newsom into Javier Vesara.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
What did be Sarah?

Speaker 3 (38:18):
Now?

Speaker 2 (38:19):
Right?

Speaker 1 (38:20):
Did he did? He really not know that his chief
of staff was looking away to supplement his income and
was complaining about the fact that he had to take
a pay cut in order to work out in Washington
with him at HHASS. So it is I don't think
it's as we were talking. In some ways, it's a
run in the middle scandal these days. I don't know

(38:41):
if it breaks through the way Swallowell broke through, but
it's not helpful and so you know, that's the only
wild card that hangs over Besarah here on that. But
Basara v. Hilton is a fairly conventional race and probably
it's probably look it actually helps both parties, right, it

(39:03):
makes for a clean general election campaign for the Democrats,
but there's a statewide effort to get Republicans to the polls,
so it might be able to help them save a
couple of House seats. And you know, for me, the
most interesting I think the house race I'm the most
fascinated with is California six. And California six is the

(39:25):
one one where Kevin Kylie, who was a Republican, decided
to drop his Republican party affiliation, become an independent and
run in the sixth Congressional district as an independent rather
than to try to either run again do a member
versus member race, and stay a Republican. I've spent a
little time with Kevin Kylie. I think he's dead serious
about staying as an independent. I think he's enjoying the freedom.

(39:48):
I think he sees the freedom of not feeling the
pressure of partisan you know, leadership forcing you to vote
certain ways, and especially if Democrats are going to win
control of Congress, I think he's likes the idea of
a free agent. So it'll be interesting to see he
was he was leading early. He should make it into
the top two. Is it going to face there was

(40:10):
there's a Democrat and a Republican and I don't know
if it's a I you can that's an interesting scenario. Now,
I assume he ends up facing a Democrat because the
district was drawn to help a Democrat and to try
to help a Democrat win. So I assume the Republican

(40:32):
that was very it was a very fairly tight three
way race from about half the vote in. I assume
the Republican candidate in the same sort of red mirage
that we were telling you you were going to see
a slow fade of the Republicans across the board, so
that it would probably probably not quite get there. So
it's likely to be Kighie the independent versus a Democrat.

(40:56):
And the question is is Kylie take help from Republicans?
Does he say no, he doesn't want help with Republicans
because he doesn't necessarily want to organize with them. So
that's going to be an interesting decision because at the moment,
the party hasn't decided whether to help Kylie out. Let's
see what happens when he's the official I guess whatever

(41:18):
we call him now in nominees in the top two system.
So that's just a pet race of mind. And you know, look,
I've spent a lot of time. I've made no secret
I think the two parties are in a bit of
a rough spot and could use some independent third party disruption.

(41:39):
And anytime I'm seeing a disruptive Canada show up, I
think it's worth making note of. Obviously, the other race
in California that certainly gets plenty of media attention is
La Mayor and the Man from the Hills and Spencer Pratt.
And here's what we can tell you there. Maass is
definitely gonna make it. The question is she gonta run

(42:00):
against Spencer Pratt or Media Ramen. Now, Spencer Pratt is
running essentially to Bassa's right and Ramen is running to
Vassi's left. Pratt is really good at getting a lot
of attention. Pratt has made the issue of the fire
in the Palisades his issue. The problem for Pratt is

(42:24):
what's he going to promise the rest of the city. Right,
The rest of the city doesn't care about the rich
people as much as the rich people care about the
rich people when I'm referred to the ballisades. If you're
Karen Bass, you might prefer to run against the guy
that Donald Trump likes the best, and Spencer Pratt, then
running against somebody that's on Mom Donnie likes the best.

(42:48):
Because Nitia Ramen has been running essentially a running as
a Mom Donnie acolyte running to Bass's left, that is
a much more complicated race. Before I know, as I'm
filing this now, we have about about half the vote

(43:09):
in at this point in La Bass is going to
get there. Pratt's got a nine percentage point lead over Ramin.
That's probably enough to hang on. That number is going
to shrink over time in the same way, and she'll
get a little bit closer. Pratt will go down, but

(43:29):
it's hard to imagine that he loses that much altitude,
especially since he was actually starting to get even more
attention and momentum in the lighter part of this campaign,
So even late deciders may have thrown him a bone

(43:50):
or two. But as unpopular as Karen vass is, it's
a lot easier for her to run essentially a Democrat
versus returning Spencer Pratt into a trumpet Republican is going
to be a lot easier than running against somebody that's
a mom Donnie acolyte. And so it looks like Bass
is going to get what she wants there. So there

(44:14):
you go. Look, we got a lot more to go
in California. There's about seventeen thousand more house races that
I would love to dig into, and including Ken Calvert
and Young Kim. We actually called Ken Calvert spot in
the runoff a little bit quicker than we were able
to count Young Kim's and what happens in you know,
we some of those races will be easier to handicap

(44:34):
once we know will there be a Republican in the
top two for the governor's race or not? Right? That
has all sorts of implications on that. Sti Besara is
one type of campaign and Hilton v. Besera is another.
I don't The one scenario I don't think we're going
to get is Stire b. Hilton. For what it's worth,

(44:55):
I do think it's the one scenario that Hilton would
be a bit competitive. There is I think I think
there is a very low ceiling for Styre. And the
question is does he even have a high enough floor
to crack the top two. We shall see. But if
he doesn't crack the top two, that's a lot of

(45:15):
wasted money. That is a lot of money when you
throw in how much money we are talking. He is
getting awfully close to have spent in two campaigns about
a half billion dollars and I don't think he got
a single delegate for the presidential race. And I'm not
sure what he's gotten out of this. I'm not counting

(45:40):
him out yet.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
But.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
There's there's there's a there's an old saying about you know,
it doesn't matter what the packaging says. Sometimes dogs won't
eat the dogs just simply won't eat the dog food.
There's whatever it is. Maybe it's his personality, Maybe it's
just simply the fact that he's a billionaire. There's something

(46:04):
that seems to be and he's running sort of almost
an aggressively progressive campaign, so you would think and there's
a there is a a progressive electorate to tap into.
But there's something something about him that seems to turn
off a certain chunk of voters that in theory he

(46:26):
should be politically aligned with. But he has had a
hard time connecting as a presidential candidate, and I'd argue
he's had an equally hard time connecting as a gubernatorial candidate.
One more note on the gubernatorial race, and then I'm
gonna I'm gonna wrap up this analysis for the night.
Matt Man, maybe we have may have rest an independent

(46:49):
journalists former Ally Times reporter on the election night live stream,
and she made an interesting observation that I think has
been that that deserves some deserves some highlighting sort of
you know, up in tweet if you will, and that
is that if you knew who Matt mahon was, the
one thing and you weren't from San Jose, the one
thing you knew is, oh, he was big text candidate.

(47:11):
And she seemed to think that that actually was a
problem for him, that he was too defined by the
fact that he was the candidate that the tech community like,
because guests who ain't popular right now and on frankly
either side of the aisle, the tech community, you know,
Man was running as more of a technocrat. He was

(47:32):
on this podcast. Some of you probably heard him. I mean,
you you know he he's sort of he screamed technocrat,
which you know is something that that you know, I'll
admit I'm always you know, the technocrats, that the data
driven folks, So I'm always I'm the type of person
that gives them a second look, but not everybody else does. Uh.

(47:55):
But as we've discussed, you know, you got to you
gotta do a little solid, you gotta do little singing
for your supper. So we hit that wall. But I
do think it's I do think we shouldn't ignore the
fact that perhaps his biggest impediment was simply he was
associated with the wrong group of people in the wrong
campaign here. And who do I mean by that? The
tech community. So anyway, I just didn't want to let

(48:19):
let my stream of consciousness analysis from this night go
without making that point. So overall, if you're looking at
it nationally big picture, really good night for the Democrats,
really challenging night for the Republicans. I'd say, I'm not
going to sit here and say it was a bad
night for them, but it's a challenging night for them.

(48:40):
A couple of incumbent members of Congress can't get through
Gubernatoro primaries. You know that for me is a Canarian.
The coal mine about just being an incumbent member of Congress.
Not a great cycle. Democrats got primaries to turn out
the way they wanted to turn out in New Jersey
the way they wanted to turn out Montana. I left
on Montana Montana Senate Democratic primary is likely now is

(49:05):
going to be one by somebody who has hinted that
they might be willing to drop out of the race.
Why does that matter? John Tester is supporting the independent
candidate Seth Bodner in that Montana center race. Seth Bodner
would like a deal with the Montana Democrats that Dan
Osborne was able to put together in Nebraska with the
Nebraska Democrats in that center race, which is to get

(49:26):
the party to essentially take a knee. Don't feel the candidate.
Nebraska Democrats have agreed to do that. A lot of
Montana Democrats were grumbling about this, weren't ready to do this.
But at the last minute there was one candidate that
seemed to not you know, seem to be at least
open to the idea of doing this. And magically, this candidate,

(49:50):
Alani Bankad got suddenly got a little bit of money
spent on her behalf to make sure because Riley Neil,
who was also in this primary had said that she
was not not going to drop out, which would have
been a death sentence to Bondner, would have just absolutely
allowed the Republican nominee. Remember this is that race where
Steve Daines literally dropped out decided not to file like

(50:12):
an hour before filing, in order to guarantee that Kurt
all Me the US Attorney, didn't have a serious primary challenge.
If it's all Me v. Bodner, that's a very tight
Senate race that is up for grabs, that it's a
fifty to fifty race. But if it's all Me Bodner
and there is a somebody on the Democratic line, unwinnable

(50:33):
race for Bonner, it just isn't winnable. I mean because
a Democratic you know, there's enough sort of people that
just say, oh, what what party do I vote for
that will always vote one of the two major parties.
If it's five percent or more, it's over right. The
numbers don't add up for Bodner. And I guarantee you
if there's a Democratic name on the line in the

(50:53):
Senate race on the ballot, they're going to get more
than five percent. They'll probably get somewhere between. Even if
they don't campaign fifteen percent and that that becomes that
just makes the math there impossible. But Democrats got somebody
who they think they can.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
Convince to do. So.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
The point is everything went their way in New Jersey,
everything went their way in Iowa, everything seemed to go
their way in Montana. And we got a long way
to go. But at a minimum, they're not getting shut out.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Right.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
The big fear in California in the top two is
that they could actually get shut out. That's not going
to happen there. So all in all, a really good
night for the Democrats at best, a really challenging night
for the Republicans. And depending on what kind of candidate,

(51:48):
what kind of candidate that Zach Lane turns out to
be is the Republican nominee for governor Iowa. If he's
a bad candidate, then tonight we'll look back and say
this was a disaster for the Republics because one bad
statewide candidate for the Republican Party in Iowa could cost
them three House seats a Senate seat. Put all that
together could actually cost them control of both thousd in

(52:12):
the Senate. So that's why for now I'll just say
challenging because I think we got to give Zach Lane
a chance. Here see what kind of candidate he is.
But if it's if he turns out to be a
bad nominee. Tonight was a disaster for the GOP. All
right with that, We're gonna sneak in a break when
we come back my conversation, We're gonna stick to gubernatorial politics.

(52:36):
We're gonna stick to politics. I got an interview with
one of the candidates running for governor in Florida. It's
the mayor of Orange County, Jerry Demings. After the break,
this episode of The Chuck Toddcast is brought to you
by Soul. So if you love that end of the
day unwined but hate the hangover, Soul's out of Office

(52:59):
is for you. These sparkling THCHC drinks and gummies give
you the same relaxed social feeling without the alcohol, without
the calories, and without the crash. Soul is a wellness
brand that believes feeling good should be fun and easy.
Soul specializes in delicious hemp derived THCHC and CBD products
designed to boost your mood and help you unwind. Their

(53:21):
best selling out of Office gummies were designed to provide
a mild, relaxing buzz, boost your mood and enhance creativity
and relaxation. With five different strengths, you can tailor the
dose to fit your vibe. So also has a variety
of products specifically designed to help you get a better
night's rest, including their top selling Sleepy Gummies, a fan
favorite for deep, restorous sleep. Look, I have made no secret,

(53:44):
I am a believer in this stuff, in cannabis and
hemp derived. I do not partake in alcohol. For the
most part, I think this stuff is a lot safer
than alcohol, a lot less addictive than alcohol. And yes,
I have to say I love these drinks. It is
the glass of wine after work, That's what this is.
So no hangover and no excess calories like this. I'm

(54:06):
a big fan. So bring on the good vibes and
treat yourself to sold today, Right now, Soul is offering
my audience thirty percent off your entire order. Go to
getsol dot com and use the word podcast that's getsol
dot com promo code podcast for thirty percent off. And yes,
I too am a customer. Well joining me now is

(54:30):
as many of you know, I may not be an
official resident of Florida. But I still am a Floridian,
which means I'm always going to over index on Florida
politicians on this podcast. And joining me now is the
mayor of Orange County, also a candidate for governor. It
is Jerry Demings, mister mayor. Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
Thank you so much, glad to be here.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
I'll admit so I did a little research, and I'll
admit there's something in here that I was that you
have a terrific unusual background for a politician. The reason
I say this is that it's not every day that
there are elected officials whose first trade was accountant. And
given how we have so many governments who don't know

(55:16):
how to balance books at all, I think we could
use some more accountants in politics. Tell me how do
you go from accountant to police officer to sheriff to mayor?
Tell me about accounting? About that past.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
So, yes, I'm a graduate of Florida State University, where
I studied.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
All that against it, I tease that, and I'm married
to a knowle.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
It happens, it does happen, and so am I mayor
to a no. But when I was undergraduates, I was
highly recruited by various federal law enforcement agencies. But when
I got to graduation, the first job that I took

(55:59):
was as an accountant. While I was working for about
of years an accountant, the federal government continued to pursue me,
and quite frankly, they convinced me that a career in
law enforcement might be a good career for me. Secondly,
I saw some things happening in my neighborhook that I
didn't like, where the neighborhood was becoming infested in drugs.

(56:22):
I had a brother was addicted to heroin, and I
was just frustrated. But I wanted to do something about it,
and so I applied to the Orlando Police Department, and
obviously I got hired. I thought I would stay there
for a year, and I ended up staying there for
twenty one plus years and rising from a police officer

(56:43):
street cop to chief of police and had the privilege
of being appoint the chief of police in nineteen ninety eight.
But the accounting kind of helped me to run the
agency because it wasn't just about public safety at that point.
I was brought in seven hundred million dollar operation at
that part, and it just kind of set me up

(57:05):
perfectly for what I'm doing today because I started out
at the local level, the granular level, understanding the true
needs of people who struggle within their communities.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
You know, I was born and raised in Miami, and
I noticed that you're born and raised in Orlando. And
I'm sure you've gotten this because I get it. It's
like nobody's born in Miami. Nobody's born in Orlando. Everybody
moves to Orlando. But you're a native, and that's interesting
to me because you've seen you know, I've always say
Florida has changed more than it's not changed, as far

(57:41):
as my experiences have been. You know, you know, I've
left Miami in nineteen ninety. By two thousand, Miami was
more different than it was the same. And that's just
the story of Florida. Florida is always growing, it's always changing.
But talk about Orlando in the eighties when you became
a police officer to what Orlando is today.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
So and back to her the eighties. At that time,
it was a period of call for reform of the
nation's law enforcement agencies. We came off of a riot
in the nineteen eighty period of time and I was.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
We had three of them in Miami in the eighties.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
You know, you're correct. It was happening all over Florida,
all over the country. And so as I entered law enforcement,
there were these calls for police reform. And so here
I am forty five years later, and I will tell
you that there's still calls a police reform, but today
that call is for police reform of our federal immigration

(58:41):
and customs enforcement agents more so than the state of locals.
And so for my entire forty five year career of
a public it's always been a call to take a
look at the way we do business as a law
enforcement agency, as a local government. And so I've had

(59:01):
the opportunity now to live through four and a half
decades of change, concert change, and so here I am today.
I say that that experience of being here at the
granular level has adequately prepared me for the state wide level. Now.
Over these years, I've been able to have appointments to

(59:23):
different state oversight commissions, to federal oversight commissions. I had
an opportunity during the Obama administration to be appointed to
the FEMA National Advisory Council. I had the opportunity to
speak on behalf of the nation's law enforcement agencies and
how to bring about change as part of different national committees,

(59:44):
and the same with the State of Florida. Had opportunity
to serve on the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission
here in Florida that regulates law enforcement agencies, and I've
enjoyed doing it. But also I've had the opportunity to
really delve into some of the most significant issues facing

(01:00:05):
just working class people here within our state. And that
has set me up perfectly to be a mayor now
you know, and been a share of least chief mayor,
deputy county administrator. All of those things. The sun total
of those things gave me experience, broad experience by wish
to govern and also the measure the performance of our

(01:00:29):
state and local governments over the years.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Let me go to law enforcement training. What's the look?
There's no one. I don't want to sit here and
say there's just one answer here. But is it better
recruiting or better training? That should be the focus? You
know it should be? You know, is it is it
you got to recruit a certain type of person, of
a certain type of character or training matters more than anything.

(01:00:58):
What would be your you know what matters more here what.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
Matters is not one of those things, but all of them.
You got to hire the right people in the first place.
And today and the competitive hiring environment that law enforcement
or public service finds themselves in in general, there's a
lot of competition out there, and if you're not careful
because of the competition, your lower your standards, and sometimes

(01:01:24):
by lowering your standards, you're not going to get the
right people through the door in the first place. This
is a huge problem, isn't it. Yeah, they could be
ethically compromised. But then training, Once you focus on getting
the right people who have backgrounds with the desired kinds
of backgrounds that you want to see from a hiring perspective,

(01:01:46):
then you have to train them adequately. And then the
third piece really is you have to provide adequate supervision.
If you lead men and women to the human experience
out there, sometimes they'll make a poor decision they need
because of the lack of experience of what happened. You
need to have good supervision. And the fourth piece you
have is you have to hold an account. That means

(01:02:09):
you have to have the appropriate discipline. One of the
things that we've seen now with the frustration immigration and
Customs enforcement. They've had to ramp up so quickly because
the President forced this quick ramp up until they didn't
have time to really adequately scream and hire the right people. Then, secondly,

(01:02:31):
they didn't provide adequate training because they wanted to get
them in the field so quickly they cut the training
in short. And then the third thing is they haven't
really supervised them. They don't have well experienced people who
are doing the supervision. And then lastly, they didn't hold
them accountable. And as a result of that, we saw
some outcomes that appear very cruel to Americans. Regardless of

(01:02:56):
what part are you're in, it was cruel. We saw
some consequences of that that. Unfortunately, when you put law
enforcement officers out there with a gun on where they
can have the authority to use deadly force or force,
that force needs to be appropriate given the circumstances, and

(01:03:17):
good law enforcement agencies are trained to avoid the use
of deadly force if they can. But you got to
have all of those ingredients that I just talked about
in order to avoid a calamity. And that's why we
have seen now the challenges that we have with immigration
and customed enforcement. Now, of course, we all agree that
you want to get the worst or the worst off

(01:03:40):
of our streets, the most violent offenders. We don't want
them in our country, we don't want them in our state,
we don't want them in our neighborhoods. But the way
you go about doing that still has to jive with
the law and best practices. And some of what we
have seen now is just not best practices. And when

(01:04:00):
it comes to law.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
Enforcement, well, you know, it's the recruiting videos that ICE used.
I watch a lot of college football, and so what
was it?

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
What was.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
Jarring during college football season this last fall was and
they would sort of target by community. Hey, Seattle, do
you want to you know, not not have be told
how to be? You know, are you tired of essentially
being told you have to follow a certain set of rules.
Come come to ICE, you know, and we're going to
throw all this money at you. What were the unintended

(01:04:36):
consequences for for a sheriff's department, like like Orange Counties
with these ad campaigns that were all over the country.
This was and it was essentially they were trying to
recruit other law enforcement, which of course only undermined local
law enforcement.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Yeah, even the sheriffs across the nation, and some of
the sheriffs here in Florida, they pushed back because quite frankly,
they were competing for talent. When you look at the
minimum qualifications to be a law enforcement officer, they're pretty stiff.
But what we saw happening is in this field of competition,

(01:05:21):
the sheriffs in the nation primarily said we're going to
cooperate with the federal immigration enforcement efforts. Certainly the sheriffs
in Florida did that. The over lheming majority of them
said hey, we're signing on board because in our state,
the majority of the sheriff's just happened to be Republicans,
and so they were playing They were playing an ice

(01:05:45):
with ice. But then Ice turning around on them and
started offering some of their officers and deputies incentives, signing bonuses,
and that frustrated the sheriffs, and so they began to
call him out and say, wait a minute, this is
supposed to be a partnership. We did not look for
you to be poaching from our men and women who

(01:06:08):
are serving our local agencies, and especially some of the
state law enforcement officers here in the state of Florida.
Many of the state law enforcement officers are the lawyers
paid law enforcement officers in the state of Florida, and
so even within the state, when Ron de Santis chose

(01:06:28):
to really step outside of his core responsibilities as a
governor to protect the state, he stepped into the arena
of doing federal immigration enforcement. Immigration is a federal responsibility,
not a state, although we all have to protect our
borders in order to keep our states safe. But he

(01:06:49):
really got all in at all costs. And the last
that I have heard, the state of Florida, with the
promise from the federal government is old over six hundred
million dollars that really could have gone to take care
of some of the essential needs of our state. We
have homelessness that seem to have spiked here within the

(01:07:11):
state of Florida, and many different affordability issues related to
our social issues that the state could have used those
dollars for to assist our local governments and really deal
with some of the affordability issues. But rather because they
jumped into immigration and customer enforcement, those dollars are no

(01:07:34):
longer available.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
Look, I want to move to why you're running for governor.
But one last question for you on on unt law enforcement.
Should the should the county sheriff be an elected position?
I mean, I know the state wants it to be,
but you know, and I know like Miami Dade County
had to add this. They didn't want to have an
elected sheriff, and then they, I think they're sort of

(01:07:57):
were forced to because not every community thinks that should
be something that's up for up for a vote.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Okay, so I've been through all three. I've been a
chief of police, an appointed chief of police by the
City of Orlando.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
Mayor working for a mayor, essentially right work a mayor.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
I've been a director of public safety working for the county,
and I've been an elected sheriff. And what I can
tell you is that sometimes as an appointed chief of police,
politics enter into the issues that I had to deal with.
Sometimes politics related to funding adequately funding my police agency.

(01:08:41):
Sometimes politics entered into the priorities about how we would
deploy resources. Now, I always said I'm forever grateful for
the mayor that appointed me, the only one to have
served as mayor of the City of Orlando Lyndie Hood,
but sometimes we had come flip as things were happening.

(01:09:02):
I was chief of police doing the events of nine
to eleven, and there was a nexus even here to
our local government with that. I won't get into the
details now, so suffice it to say, you know it
wasn't perfect then. As an appointed director of public Safety
by the county wide mayor, again politics kind of in

(01:09:23):
and into that. I had oversight for the jail during
that era, and sometimes you have frustration related to the
costs of benefit of how we were doing business. But
when you appointed, sometimes you are not free to be

(01:09:44):
as interesting fred as you want to be when you're
making statements to the public. But now I will tell
you my style was my agreement with both the mayor
both mayors was that you hired me to run this agency,
and if you want to run it, I'm not your guy.
But then, as a share a sheriff is elected an
electric constitutional officer and really can depoliticize to some extent

(01:10:10):
the breath of the responsibilities of law enforcement and can
I believe, more effectively advocate for a budget, can more
effectively be held totally responsible for the employ up under
their command, And so it really depends on the size

(01:10:33):
of the agency. Some of these law enforcement agencies, quite frankly,
are just not large enough and some of those duties
should be better handled by a medium to a larger
agency for just for cost efficiency, And so I see
all of them. It depends on the community.

Speaker 1 (01:10:59):
It's like you think size of jurisdiction. You being able
to deal with a mayor as a peer rather than
as a subordinate is you're making it. I mean, I
hadn't thought of it that way, but that's an interesting argument,
that you're peer to peer with a mayor on advocating
for money rather than having to play the internal political game.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
Yes, because some of the other politicians while here the
Orlando mayor is a non partisan position. The Orange County
mayor that I serve in now as nonpartisan. I didn't
get elected just by Democrats. I got elected by an
entire community. And in some jurisdiction, the sheriff is a
partisan position. In this jurisdiction, when I was elected as sheriff,

(01:11:41):
it was a part of some position. However, the role
and the responsibility that I had was a non partisan
role was to keep people safe. I really didn't care
what party they were in. I run as a Democrat,
and so I think there's something to be said about that.
And because of that, I topically always had bipartisan support.

(01:12:02):
I want all of my elections as a sheriff, I
was on the ballot five times. I won all five
of those elections by landslide overwhelmingly, three general elections and
two premieres during the decade that I was a sheriff
here and so I have the greatest admiration for the
men and women who serve, but I believe that I

(01:12:23):
had a little bit more authority being the high sheriff.
You know, the sheriff and counties considered one of the
highest local elected officials anywhere in the country, and I
had the privilege of being to serve in that role.

Speaker 1 (01:12:40):
All right, So here's the basic question, why do you
want to run for governor? Why do you want to
be governor.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
I want to run for governor because I care about
my state. I've demonstrated after forty five years of public
service now having been very active in our state's politics,
haven't been very active in setting the priorities for our
state from a local government perspective. Through numerous different organizations,

(01:13:06):
I have been part of from being part of the
Florida Chiefs of Police Association, to being part of the
Florida Supreme Court Mental Health and Substance Abuse Task Force,
to being part of the Florida Sheriff's Association, to being
part of the Mayor's Association, to being part of the

(01:13:28):
Florida Association of Counties, and even at the national level,
being active with the National Association of Counties, being acted
with our state associations. It has given me the opportunity
to lead in bringing about the type of reform, the
type of governance that we want to see at the local, state,

(01:13:52):
and federal level. And so because of that, I have
great joy in being part of the solution, real than
just being part of the problem, of sitting on the
sidelines and just rather than trying to make things happen
and bring about the change that one would want to see,
I've chosen to get into the fight. And the other thing,

(01:14:13):
quite frankly, that really forced me to finally make a
decision was the unfair, uneven reviewing the scrutiny that the
state was putting local governments under. They created this farce
of a Dolge process here in the state of Florida.
That was right then political agendas and they came into

(01:14:38):
our county. And just today, as a matter of fact,
the chief financial officer for the state of Florida came
into my county and criticized how we were doing business.
And he doesn't have a clue about one money management.
He has no real credentials in that regard. But he's
running for re election and so he's a onemous politician

(01:15:01):
that came in. But we are wrestling with the needs
of our community day to day. So just the prospects
of taking my level of interest and public service to
the next level, I'm really highly motivated to move to
be governor to kind of expand the work that we're

(01:15:22):
doing here. We can gain some one respect back as
a local government because our state has been pre empty
local government authority and that's frustrating for all of us
who serve at the local level, and it's unfair quite frankly,
to the citizens. So all of that has motivated me.
And then the last thing that I will tell you

(01:15:42):
that motivated me to get in this race, the Census
administration threatened to remove me from office, and all six
members of my border count of Commission. When I challenged
his zeal to forced local governments here in Florida into

(01:16:02):
supporting immigration and customs enforcement, and when I pushed back
on that, after all the other local governments had signed agreements,
I was pushing back all signing the agreement. And so
he announced publicly, you know, through media forums, that if
we didn't sign the agreement, he was going to remove

(01:16:25):
us from office. Now, this is because Florida had passed
legislation that said that all local governments must cooperate with
immigration enforcement using their best efforts. Failure to do so
will result in your removal from office. But we have
seen the governor here remove our prosecutor, our state attorney

(01:16:45):
from this jurisdiction, and so it was somewhat of a
real threat. But then when we really studied my legal
team and I studied the agreements, it really didn't require
us to do anything that we had not been doing
for a decade. And so reluctantly I signed the immigration
agreement in the Government services agreement, and it really didn't

(01:17:11):
require us to do anything because the jail reports to
me ultimately as the CEO for our county. It doesn't
report to the sheriff our sheriff had already signed the
two eighty seven g from the law enforcement perspective, like
all sixty seven other sheriffs in Florida had done. And
then in terms of the sixty seven counties, all the
other counties had signed it before before I did. But

(01:17:34):
it really has been effectively meaningless to us. We still
do what we needed to do. But all of those
things kind of frustrated me and said, you know what
we can do better and if we want better results,
then we have to elect people and send people the
talent has it to do the work it needs to
be done, that's not afraid to do so. And so

(01:17:57):
I'm here. I'm running now to be that person to
bring back some normalcy and some balance in our style
of governing here in the state of Florida. If that
makes sense to you.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
No, it look it makes sense. But let me let
me talk about challenge number one for you. Let's say
you get elected governor in Orange County. You've got a
county Commission that uh shares your worldview, at least politically
as governor, You're not going to have a legislature that's
probably going to share uh share your what you're going
to have a potentially a pretty combustible relationship. Who knows right?

(01:18:35):
How do you work? You know what? What's your How
are you going to work with a Republican legislature that's
you know, that can have a mind of their own.
Even Governor DeSantis would tell you that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
Well, I work with them now, uh with me? And
not all just about partisanship. It's about right versus wrong.
And uh, I believe when you focus on what's right
versus wrong, we all know what that looks like. Even
though today we have people and leadership positions who are
working really hard to make right look wrong and wrong

(01:19:10):
look right. So I look forward to going to the
state level having some common sense and balanced approaches to government.
My style of leadership is not to just always make
the decision, Uni Ladderman, but to involve the people and
making decisions for themselves. I never forget that we are
a government of the people and by the people. It's

(01:19:31):
we the people, and so when we get back to
doing that, and we can get back to doing that,
then we can perhaps bridge some of the gaps that
exist today along partisan lines. I happen to be a Democrat.
I'm registered to be a Democrat when I think I
was seventeen and a half years old, so we're talking
about about fifty years since I've been a Democrat. I

(01:19:54):
lined up there. But I'm a Democrat, and here in
our local jurisdiction, I don't just represent Democrats. I represent
everybody in this community and the governor. If the governor
is doing his or her job correctly, they shall never
forget that they represent all of the people, no matter
how you get there. And so I've demonstrated that over time.

(01:20:17):
I've always had some bipartisan support in my elections, especially
now because it's a non partisan race. I probably had
as many republicanly vote for me as anybody else did.
And so the path of victory for me now as governor,
even though the Republicans have a one and a half

(01:20:37):
million or so registration advantage over Democrats, they won't be
Democrats and Republicans won't be the only ones who will
be voting in this election cycle. All of those minor
parties are no party affiliates or the so called independence,
they will vote. And even I tell you every day

(01:20:57):
I have some wonderful Republican friends who I respect. Just
today I was out of the airport at our board meeting,
and some of my Republican friends kind of talked to
me about what was going on in Cuba, and some
of them have supported me financially what I have had
to raise money. Some of them I have appointed to

(01:21:19):
various positions, and so I look forward to getting back
to a tallahasset that is not just focused on divisions,
because they're not healthy for our state. At the end
of the day, some of what we're seeing in our
state here a state where the President calls home, but

(01:21:40):
what is happening in Washington, d C. Is dividing people,
and people are seeing that. I believe people want something different.
So I got into this race to offer Floridians something different,
a person that is no drama. I'm not a performance politician.
You take the work that we do very seriously to

(01:22:02):
offer them an experienced leader. I'm an experienced CEO. Now.
My budget that I'm manage her in a Raunge County
is about nine point seven billion dollars this year.

Speaker 1 (01:22:14):
A dozen states.

Speaker 2 (01:22:16):
I handled real issues, dealing with homelessness, mental health related issues,
dealing with community issues, and that's what I'll take. Even crisis,
you know, I've had over the years, I've had the
kitchen sink thrown that million in terms of from responding
to a terror attack, the False Ninth Club incident, to

(01:22:38):
managing a global pandemic. So as governor, the governor's role
is to not just govern during the good times, but
bad times, and that means taking care of all people,
regardless of the political persuade.

Speaker 1 (01:22:52):
Well, look, I mean you, a strong case could be made.
You're as prepared as anybody I've ever seen to run
for governor. But as you know, it isn't always about
whether who's got the best resume, right, So what's your
diagnosis as to why Democrats have not elected a governor
since LTT and Childs?

Speaker 2 (01:23:11):
We lost our footing, okay, and I believe some of
that is because of part ofsan politics. Sometimes, quite frankly,
we perhaps didn't run our best and our brightest. And
in the state of Florida, there's been a deliberate attempt
to not pay our legislators in the State House or

(01:23:34):
the state Senate. Very well, you're talking about someone for
the work that they do, making twenty seven to twenty
nine thousand dollars a year, and quite frankly, it's a
part time legislature. We're probably will pass them being part time,
but it has been deliberate, I believe by the party

(01:23:56):
in power to keep the payload so that they would
attract a few of people who are I'm going to
say more suited, more experienced, and so that's a problem.
And so they have Jerry Manda the districts. They have
put their foot on the scale through redistricting efforts, through

(01:24:17):
the ability to appunt our members of the judiciary right
from the Florida Supreme Court all the way down to
our local county courts, and so all of that has
resulted in this dominance that we see of the Republican
Party within the state of Florida. And they don't intend
to change. They want they're doubling down. We see Jerry

(01:24:41):
Manda redistricting maps now based upon partisanship. Whether they will
admit it or not, that's quite frankly what they thought
that was unconstitutional. That's probably going to be unconstitutional. But
then this blending of the courts with the executive brands
with the legislative branches happened. But getting back to the

(01:25:02):
central core of your question, I think that Democrats could
have run better candidates, and I say that very objectively,
and we didn't and sometimes some of the positions that
we took were not consistent with where the majority of
Floridians were. And so we have learned from that, and
so we have to get close under the bail curve

(01:25:25):
where more people are because quite frankly, we shared some Democrats.
What I mean by that is there are some who
were Democrats who got frustrated with our party and they
left the Democratic Party and they are now no party
affiliates or independence and so we have to take ownership
in the blame for that because we didn't listen. We

(01:25:47):
were not listening to them. So the path to victory
for me is to make sure that I'm talking about
the issues that's important to the majority of Floridians. I
have to make certain that we create a pathway to
victory where we talk about the issues that's important, where

(01:26:12):
I'm perceived as being electable. Also, we have to make
sure that we organize and mobilize this grassroots movement that
we're talking about today, uh, in order for me to
get elected and at the end of the day, demonstrate

(01:26:32):
that you know, I'm confident and I'm competent to do
the work that needs to be done and broaden my
appeal to the masses, the overwhelming majority of people. And
so we have a way that we're doing that. I'm
running a campaign. I have to communicate what we will do.

(01:26:55):
We have to breathe some hope that back into the
Democratic partner. The Democrats in Florida have lost and lost
in since thirty two years.

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
Yeah, it's a little bit like the football. Yeah, I
don't know if they believe. I can tell you the
national people they don't believe.

Speaker 2 (01:27:14):
So you see this this pen that I wear. I
branded my campaign to Believe campaign, So I do have
to talk with people about believe again in your government.
Believe that you can have an impact on who gets elected.
And so that's what I'm doing. I'm running to create

(01:27:37):
this Believed movement and give them some of what our
Republican friends are doing right now. They're helping us. You know,
we're seeing some changes across the state of Florida where
we are seeing more Democrats elected to positions we've just
sold last evening in Georgia, you know, on the Democratic side,

(01:28:00):
Lance Bottom won that primary. We're seeing here in the
state of Florida in some areas, right in President Trump's backyard,
you know, Democratic House member got elected. We're seeing those things.
So we're seeing some signs that Americans are frustrated. People
within our state are frustrated and they want something different,

(01:28:23):
and we have to capitalize on this movement for change,
and so all of that is a pathway to victory
for us.

Speaker 1 (01:28:33):
What's the Santus done right in his eight years?

Speaker 2 (01:28:38):
I do believe that one of the things that DeSantis
has done right is he has focused the state on commerce,
on diversifying our economy. Our economy is striving, and we

(01:28:59):
are the land of our opportunity. The growth in this
state has continued where people are migrating here from all
over the world. He did, of course, he didn't do
it alone. I believe that the investments into our state
have been partly because of we're state with no state

(01:29:20):
income tax, and long before the Santis got in office,
he kind of he's been able to capitalize on the
momentum that the state had. But for the most part,
he's created some momentum with international business that is here.
And so I certainly don't agree with him with many things.

(01:29:42):
You know, as we were dealing with COVID. You know,
I sparred with him over COVID protocols. As it relates
to health care, I think he's done a terrible job
our state the costs of health care, and our state
has gone up significantly. Our healthcare from corporate perspective. Uh,

(01:30:02):
they are talks in the nation in revenue above in
terms of health care affordability, we rank forty fifth or
near the bottom in that regard. So, yeah, done a
great job there. And I can go on and on
about it, but you know, I try to be back.

Speaker 1 (01:30:20):
I know it's you got more cases against them, but
you know, you strike me as somebody that isn't going
to assume somebody is one hundred percent wrong all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:30:28):
No, rarely it is somebody one hundred percent role of
all the time. And no, are you one hundred percent
right if you're that person. Now, we see some personalities
on the national scene, Now I believe that they are
right one hundred percent of the time. Well, they're really honest.
That's that's yeah, that's I'm going.

Speaker 1 (01:30:47):
To pick up two issues that are very Florida centric.
You sort of hinted at one of them, you know,
when it when it came to the no income tax,
because it's about how your fund government when you don't
have an income tax. And we look, Florida ain't gonna
get an income tax anytime soon. I'm not going to
sit here and say that that's the answer. But does

(01:31:09):
the state need more revenues or does it need a
better or does it need to be prioritized better.

Speaker 2 (01:31:15):
Well, we're growing state, Okay, we're the fastest growing state
in the Union. When you're growing, it's going to require
more money. The cost of living has gone off. One
of the things I pride myself on is being a
good steward of the people's money. But sometimes these priorities

(01:31:40):
are shifting. We'll state where we're a peninsula. We have
been adversely impacted by major storms and hurricanes. That's cost here.
Those things are very unpredictable. We cannot control the global
economy with some of what we're seeing, with the influx
of people who are coming in who find themselves ill

(01:32:03):
prepared to really thrive in our environment, and so quite frankly, uh,
you know, the cost of living has gone up so
much our workers. In order to keep our workforce, you
got to pay people in order to get the food
to the market from the fields, you got to pay people.
We are relying on immigrants, and God bless the immigrants

(01:32:25):
who want to come here and do the difficult work
for the amount of money that they're paid paid. And
so as a result of all of that, I think
that our state needs more money. But government shall always
look for the opportunity to look for inefficiencies, and when
you find those efficiencies, you should use those dollars to

(01:32:50):
do other things well. But the fact that we are growing,
growing in complexity, I don't see a scenario where where
the budget really is going to decline. What our state
solution to these issues right now has been to deflect

(01:33:10):
them to the local governments. Where our state is.

Speaker 4 (01:33:15):
Not property taxes right and stuff like that. They're not
working hand in love with our local governments. They're putting
a burden on our local governments to come up with
the solutions to the most difficult challenges that we have. Housing, affordability, transit, transportation, healthcare.

Speaker 2 (01:33:36):
All of those things. They're putting on the backs of
local governments. While they can say, well, we reduce the
state's budget, but they've transferred it to us. And that's
what frustrates those of us at the local government.

Speaker 1 (01:33:49):
Because, especially one who's been an accountant, you actually know
how that legacy works. Not everybody, not every mayor does.

Speaker 2 (01:33:55):
Yes, I know how this works. As a mayor had
been the perfect that out for me to be the
governor to understand how we can more efficiently use money,
because really, if we invested more in some of the
social challenges, it's like treatment fundamentally ill, like treatment for

(01:34:16):
the substance abuser, like treatment for persons who suffer with
various behavioral disorders, are core occurring issues. When we work
with spending money on the front end to get those
individuals more self reliant in a self indulgent world, we
can get them more functional. Sometimes they're not committing crimes,

(01:34:38):
they're not stealing because they're on drugs. We changed our
public policy in our county and I've been part of
that now for quite some time, and by doing so,
we have avoided increasing costs in our county the state
of Florida. If we spend more time with health care

(01:34:58):
and mental health related issue, we probably will have had
less violent crime because some of these persons who go
out and commit violent crime their mentally ill with the
moss that was just attacked they or so ago in California.
I suspected those young people, those teenagers have been radicalized.

(01:35:22):
I suspect that they probably were in need of some
mental health counseling and treatment. But it's too late for that.
You know, they acquired guns and went and killed innocent people. Well,
if they had gotten the right treatment, maybe some people
would be alive today. In my experience, I responded to
these scenes where I've had law enforcement officers who were

(01:35:45):
seriously injured, shot and killed in the line of duty
because they were confronted by a person who was mentally ill,
who had a god, and so all of those types
of things we have to get serious about talking about,
I believe, as a nation, as a state, how to
more effectively address some of those types of issues. Because

(01:36:09):
if we reduce crime, we reduce recidivism. By getting people
healthy again, we reduce costs. And so that's what I do.
I take the cast savings and then I.

Speaker 3 (01:36:19):
Use it for some some other needs.

Speaker 1 (01:36:32):
But my mother lives in Seminole County, so I hear
about this a lot, which is the following she gets
a new insurance company. It seems like every six months,
right every year. You know she doesn't want to change
insurance companies. Insurance companies pull out or they decide they
can't cover homeowners. And we know why the problem is
this is you said it earlier. Florida's a peninsula and

(01:36:54):
it's just going to get more storms. There doesn't seem
to be a good answer. How do either entice more
insurance companies to come to Florida and write policies to
create better competition and hopefully lower prices, or do you
subsidize And there doesn't seem to be a good consensus.
And I don't know if there's a good answer. But
what's your plan?

Speaker 2 (01:37:15):
Well, I think you have to do really four things. One,
I do believe that Florida needs to incentivize profit casually
insurance companies moving in in the state of Florida, Okay,
through our regulatory authority. I believe that there's an opportunity
to do that, to create more competition by creating incentives

(01:37:38):
if that is reducing if they move into the state,
creating a center for reduction and property taxes for them
or business taxes for them. There's an opportunity to do that.
The second thing that if we create this competition, typically

(01:37:58):
competition drives price down. If we do are successful in that,
then the second thing that we should do is require
that when they make profit in this state beyond a
certain point, they should have to be required and reinvested
in the State of Florida in at orda since they
get the incentives. The third thing that happens in the

(01:38:20):
State of Florida is we have a lot of fraud.
There are a number of people who file fraudalent claims,
and the State of Florida doesn't do a really good
job of investigating the fraud that happens. At least three
different state agencies in the State of Florida stigation that's

(01:38:40):
related here. In addition to those, private and insurance companies
have their own fraud investigators. So for me, I want
to consolidate the responsibility for the investigation of fraud and
to launch state agency and then I law the person's
the staff to focus in that area. Right now, some

(01:39:02):
of our law enforcement in the State of Florida is
being pulled off of doing investigations and they're doing immigration
and customers enforcement. Right They're doing what the federal government
really should be doing and not what the states should
be doing. And then the next thing that I think,
we have a state that is heavily influenced by developers.

(01:39:26):
They kind of controlled Tallahassee, Uh, they go and we
see legislation that is introduced that preemps local government authority
it comes to land use related decisions. And when you
take the decision making out of the hands of those
local authorities and you invested really in the influence of

(01:39:48):
the legislators and the developers, we are building and places
that we shouldn't be on this peninsula. We are not
adequately recognizing the consequences of sea level rise and global
warming and all of those are things that are real,

(01:40:10):
and I believe through our regulatory authority, we can build
to a higher standard where we build when we're not
building homes, whereas in flood zones and what have you
there since you grew up in Miami, When I go
to Miami, I see all types of calamities there because

(01:40:30):
the building codes were not consistent, they're irregular. There are
people who were allowed to build too close to wetlands,
on wetlands and the like, and so from I believe
from a sustainability perspective, we have not done what we
should be doing in the state of Florida to protect

(01:40:52):
our environment, and so we have to make some improvements there.
So we do those things, harden the target for when
the hurricane made the storm comes, then we can reduce calls.
We can't do a lot of job.

Speaker 1 (01:41:08):
Should the state? Should the state ban manufactured homes? And
I say this, I'll give you an example. I had Rick.
I remember after what the hurricane that hit, So I say,
the hurricane so many hurricanes. I think it was Charlotte
or I'm probably confusing Charlotte County, but it was one
of the hurricanes that sort of came over Fort Myers, Naples, Charlotte,

(01:41:28):
that area of the state, and Collier County had banned
manufacture housing. Charlotte County had not. Even though the hurricanes
eye went over Collier there was more damage than Charlotte.
It's because those manufactured homes just can't withstand even the
category ones versus Collier County had less property damage because

(01:41:52):
they had high It was by county higher standards, and
you know it was I remember the senators got made
this point. Then I said, well, then should we not
have manufactured housing? And he sort of stopped. You know,
wasn't going to do that. And I understand the hesitancy
because a lot of developers, you know where it does

(01:42:14):
make homes cost more if you ban manufacture housing. And
here we are having a crunch on that. Where are
you on that?

Speaker 2 (01:42:22):
Well, I do think that some of these manufactured housing
posies that I'm seeing now they can stand a Category
two of three with this move modern technology in the
way they construct some of them. But clearly in coastal communities.
Coastal communities are more likely to have a direct hit

(01:42:44):
from hurricane versus an inland community, like my account. But
in two thousand and four we had three hurricanes major
member category hurricanes go across our count and we're inland,
our manufactured homes really fare well. So I think the
conversation has to be about where you build and what

(01:43:05):
you build. And so I believe that through having some
type of guidance from the State of Florida. I said earlier,
my stylar leadership is to bring subject matter experts together
and this is gonna This is an area that I
would love to tackle, is to do a full reset
and review of Florida's building codes and adopt some standards

(01:43:28):
that make sense, and some of those standards need to
be based upon geographical location. Some of those standards need
to be based upon affordability, because some of the tiny
homes arecessory dwelling units that are being built now. They
are they're pretty good. And I can tell you in

(01:43:48):
our inland counting, our manufactured homes have fared well historically.
So there are some things that you can do to
mitigate the damage how you require them to be constructed.
But then you know, if you're out on the coastal community,
you know there's some challenges there. So I think there's

(01:44:12):
some room for change. And so these are the types
of things I enjoy tackling. We know that that's a
serious issue, but to get the best outcome where we
don't introvertently drive up the cost of rent payments that
are already through the rules, I want to make sure
we have the right solution and use modern technology and

(01:44:35):
making these types of decisions.

Speaker 1 (01:44:37):
All right, I want to I always like to end
on a little lighter note. But before I get to
the lighter note, the subject matter that I'm going to
end on actually has gotten a little heavier over the
last twenty four hours, the NAACP is calling on African
American high school students to essentially boycott state go to

(01:44:57):
going to state universities in the South, in states that
are remapping and getting rid of predominantly African American congressional seats.
That would you know that, you know how important college
football is in the state of Florida. And it's certainly
an interesting idea that the NAACP is coming with, And

(01:45:20):
I understand where they're coming from on this. You think
that would be fruitful, You think that would be useful
in a positive protest.

Speaker 2 (01:45:31):
I believe that what happened when people get chronically stressed,
they sought to extraordinary responses. And what the NAACP is
doing is responding to the extraordinary circumstances that we find
ourselves in. Where we live in a nation where the

(01:45:54):
President by executive water did away no a do women
business enterprise related programs. We live in a state where
the governor and the legislature passed legislation that prohibits local
governments from investing in diversity, equity and inclusion types of programs.

(01:46:14):
As if the playing field has been level to where
we see these gerementary district districts that is underway. This
has caused the response that the NAACP has join in. Now,
I'm a lifelong member of the NAACP, and I wouldn't

(01:46:36):
have some of the civil liberties that I have. I
wouldn't have enjoyed some of the successes I have today
but for the fight that the na a CP of
the NACP has been involved in. However, have I said
all over that I do think that that's not sustainable. Okay,

(01:46:58):
Here in the state of Florida. When our governor adopted
some of the policies that he's adopted, the NAACP said,
you know, supported a band on historically black college and
universities coming into our state to do business, with national

(01:47:21):
conferences coming into our state to do business. Because I
represent the number one tourist destination in North America, I
knew that that would not really benefit my constituents in tourism.
You know, ninety plus percent of the people who work

(01:47:43):
in the industry, they are black and brown people. And
if our tourism in Florida goes elsewhere, we potentially put
people out of work who they are fighting for to
have a seat at the table. And so sometimes what
you see is when these narratives come about, they're motivated

(01:48:06):
by different reasons. Sometimes it's geography. There are other states,
there are other regions that would love to have, uh
the economy that Florida enjoys, and UH, sometimes decisions are made,
sometimes very short sighted uh and not looking at the
long long term goal. Because quite frankly, if Florida's economy, UH,

(01:48:33):
if these football players are higher education institutions, UH, suddenly
you know, stop having black athletes. What you're going to
have is you'll have segregated institutions. And some of our
largest uh institutions, higher education institutions in this state are
public institutions. The University of Florida, UH, the University of

(01:48:58):
Central Florida is the largest right in Orlando by student
by the enrollment Florida State University where I went, Well,
you just decimated some of those institutions. If these players
decided to go somewhere else, couple with the nil and
the professional payments that these athletes who are supposedly not

(01:49:25):
yet professionals, you know, UH, the money is there. I
think that it's not sustainable long term, and we could
introvertently hurt people who you don't intend to hurt by
by by the response. So we'll have to see. That's
that's kind of my position as governor. I would do

(01:49:46):
everything that I could to keep our economy training, to
keep business coming in, uh, to keep our universities, a
focus on educating, and get out of the cultural wars
in the politics. The banning of the boots, all of
that is just dividing us along racial lines. And so

(01:50:09):
but I understand where they are because the actions that
our state has taken is the visit and so that's
the pushback that the NAACP finds themselves in today.

Speaker 1 (01:50:25):
Well, when you're in Orlando, that's Gator country, is it not?
It must be tough for seminals.

Speaker 2 (01:50:32):
No, this is uh, it's probably as many seminoles as
there are Gators here.

Speaker 4 (01:50:38):
Well that's good because go to Gainesville's and you want
to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:50:44):
Yeah, for that, but uh, but we we have our
fair share here because the University of Central Florida is
the largest public institution in the state of Florida.

Speaker 1 (01:50:55):
You've watched that school go from literally a commuter to
your school right to what it is today.

Speaker 2 (01:50:59):
It's this is kind of like night country around Central Florida. Uh,
you know, their support.

Speaker 1 (01:51:05):
That's probably better Orange County politics.

Speaker 2 (01:51:07):
Yeah, you know. So you know with space exploration, commercial
space space exploration being what it is that's taking off.
You know, NASA's has a substantial number of this employ
who will graduates from the University of Central Florida.

Speaker 1 (01:51:24):
Uh, Mayor Demis is good to meet you. I look
forward to talking with you down the road if you
make it to the next.

Speaker 5 (01:51:29):
Round, I look forward to it. All right, my friend,
let's all thank you, sir. So that was Jerry Demings.

Speaker 1 (01:51:43):
He is one of two candidates on the Democratic side
of the isle. There's actually a three way primary on
the Republican side too, with Byron Donalds being the big
leader of that race. A huge amount of money that
Donald's has been raising, so it doesn't look like the
primary is going to be much up. He took the
early endorsement of Donald Trump. The question is whether either

(01:52:05):
David Jolly or Jerry Demis can make this a very
competitive race if they're the Democratic nominee. Maybe you know
you've good news is you've heard from Jolly, you've heard
from Demings. I would argue they're sort of coming at
this slightly differently, right. I think Demings is coming at
this saying, hey, I know how to govern. I've been governing.
I've governed one of the largest counties in the state.

(01:52:27):
I've governed one of the largest police forces in the state.
I have all the qualifications you would expect to be governor.
I think Jolly comes at it more of saying, hey,
I used to serve with him, I used to work
with the Republicans that I can tell you that sort
of thing, and we'll see how this works. I think Demings,
in a competitive primary, could have an advantage with African

(01:52:48):
American voters. Jolly coming from Tampa Bay, that's not a
bad place to be either. And he's got the help
of the Graham family, Gwen Graham in particular, who was
almost the nominee for governor back in twenty eighteen. So
it's going to be I think the question is how
competitive is Florida going to get. There's definitely a lot

(01:53:10):
of anxiety on the right side of the isle. Republicans
are a little nervous. I think the whole property tax
there this. If you follow Florida politics at all, you
may have heard he's trying to basically Aronda stants trying
to put a reference on the ballot that would start
to phase out property taxes for people of a certain
income level and of a certain value of their house.

(01:53:32):
It's pretty clear why he's trying to get this on
the ballot this cycle. They are desperate to try to
motivate people to the polls. The biggest problem Republicans are
having across the country. Florida is no different. We've seen
it in these special elections. It's can you motivate the
Trump voter to show up when Trump's not on the ballot.
So DeSantis is hoping to add a property tax, hoping
that somehow if he can get this on the ballot.

(01:53:54):
He's working through it now. It'll gut local government, folks,
and all it's going to do. It's not going to
cut your taxes. The most likely result is that local
governments will have no choice but to perhaps jack up
sales taxes. And there'll be all sorts of different ways
that you will see taxes being raised. But this will
look like a shiny metal object, right, and it's it's

(01:54:17):
it is, it is. It is one of those things
that looks like it's saving you money and I it's
I'm in New Jersey tried something like this. They made
a big deal out of a statewide cut, and the
local governments had no choice but to jack up taxes,
and so people's overall tax will ended up going up,
not down. It was like Donald Trump's tax cut in

(01:54:39):
twenty eighteen. Every taxes went up, then go down. He
was you know, sort of you know, he was able
to cut taxes in one place, but then it got
rid of deductions in another, and then the money needed
to be replaced and he got taxed again. So the
but the big picture here is they're desperate to get
this on the ballot beca to get the voters out.

(01:55:01):
So this is why obviously, being a Fluoriding I spend
a little more. I have a little more interest in
Florida politics. But I also think Florida is a state
that you can never take your eye off of. There
are always a half a million new voters every election cycle,
and they can easily change the direction of the state.
That is why before the last cycle and a half,

(01:55:22):
Florida was the most competitive state over the last two decades.
And it's more likely to get back there than it
is to get redder. That's something you can probably take
to the bank. All Right. It's top five list time.

Speaker 4 (01:55:36):
Top five top.

Speaker 1 (01:55:43):
And I got an intriguing one today. It's sort of
built off of the news that Donald Trump is trying
to replace Tulsea Gabbert with one of his personal you
might call him weaponization zars. Bill Poultzi was that over
you know, who was using a perch over at the
Housing Authority to investigate people, to try to get Lisa

(01:56:05):
Cook on the FED fire, to try to get some
members of Congress that were enemies of Donald Trump in
trouble over mortgages. Basically, he was clearly violating some privacy,
sort of weaponizing a government agency in order to do
some political bidding. So what does Donald Trump do. He

(01:56:28):
wants to appoint him to replace Tulca Gabbard, who has
resigned Slash been fired from DNI, And we're going to
talk about DNI here in a second. Well, what's interesting
is that almost immediately the Republican Party started pushing back
on this. And what's astonishing is what John Thune said

(01:56:51):
in the immediate aftermath of finding out that he was
the nominee. John Thune told reporters quote we don't need
a weaponized Director of National Intelligence. Chuck Schumer didn't say this.
John Thune, the Republican Senate leader, said this his immediate reaction,

(01:57:15):
he did him and Hall. Look, there's most of the
actions Donald Trump has taken in personnel or something that
John Thune hasn't been in favor of, but he always
dances around it. Well, you know that's we're going to
let the Senate work its will, or he would hide
behind one of those cliches. There was no mincing words here.

(01:57:37):
We don't need a weaponized his quote director. Now some
of you might say, well, Tulsa Gabbard used her purchase
D and I to do all this phony beloney twenty
twenty election stuff. So we've already had a weaponized Director
of National Intelligence. Now, look, I think the bigger issue

(01:57:58):
is this is a useless position. The only thing it
is useful for is foreign adversaries getting a crack at
an individual person who happens to sit at the nexus
of all intelligence information supposedly coming into one. So there,
you know, after nine to eleven there was worry about
stovepipe of information. The intention was to make the Department

(01:58:19):
of the Director of National intelligence, He said, essentially the
head of the intelligence community. It may be on an
ORC chart, but it is not. The CIA has won
this turf battle. I told you this before. They won
this turf battle. Essentially right after Obama's first DNI failed,
and his failure just everything shifted back to the CIA.

(01:58:42):
Barack Obama put his chief intelligence picks at the CIA,
not a DNI. Donald Trump did the same thing in
the first term. Joe Biden did it and his first
one term, and in some ways Donald Trump did it
again in this second term by moving by putting Ratcliffe
at DANI and putting somebody who couldn't have been more

(01:59:03):
un Well, that's not true, right, she was incredibly unqualified
Telsea Gabbard for the job. Bill Polti actually is making
Telsea Gabbert look a bit qualified. Long story here, This
is a kind of my big wind up here in
the top five list, Why am I signaling out Poulty
and why am I singling out John Thune? Because you're
starting to really see that if Republicans want to push

(01:59:26):
back at Donald Trump, they can, And in this second term,
we've seen a handful of times where not just disappointing
rhetoric where actions actually changed because of semi unified pushback
by congressional Republicans beyond just complaining about what he was

(01:59:49):
doing and not anonyesst not anything like that. So I thought,
with my top five lists, I will do the five
instances where republiclkens have actually successfully pushed back at Donald
Trump and made him change, either pull back a nomination,
change a direction of a policy, or retreat. Bill Poulty

(02:00:15):
doesn't make the list yet. He hasn't been He hasn't
been his nomination have been pulled yet. So it's Poulty's
not going to make my list, but it's my opportunity
to bring this one up. And by the way, for
those of you, Bill Polty doesn't have a lot of
friends within the administration. Poulty is the guy that's got
Bessn't threatened to punch in the face because he was
upset at what Pulty was doing in harassing somebody that

(02:00:37):
bessnt cared about that was trying to get a job
in the administration. It was clear that Poulty was just
using the government databases as basically personal opposition research files.
Imagine putting that at d N. I I mean it is.
This is completely irresponsible, and so kudos to John Thune.
Do immediately say we can't have a weaponize director of

(02:00:58):
National Intelligence. He went right there. No Democrat has to
say the word. This is the Senate Republican leader saying it.
So Poltes's nomination is dead. The Senate Majority leader isn't
going to vote for him. We already know the Yolo
caucus in the Republican side of the aisles are going
to vote for him. So it's dead. But it's not
dead yet. So it doesn't crack my top five lists. So,
but where are the five instances where you can tangibly

(02:01:21):
say Republican pushback made Trump change directions Number five in
the let's see Epstein files right. In some ways, it's
one of the cleanest forced reversals that we've seen in
the Trump era. He personally whipped against the discharge petition.
He was trying to prevent the files from being released,

(02:01:43):
prevent the discharge petition from happening. It didn't work. At
the last minute, when he saw that it was going
to pass, he flipped and said, Okay, they've passed it,
go ahead and released the files. Well, we know he
didn't like it. Why because you know he was so motivated.
The only reason he went after Thomas Massey was not

(02:02:05):
over his lack of support for Israel, although that certainly
won the President allies in helping find financial resources to
defeat Thomas Massey in a primary. He went after him
for one reason, because he was the chief Republican making
this bipartisan. And he went after Marjorie Taylor green and
he threatened a primary Jones of Loan Bolberg. And in

(02:02:26):
the threat of all of that, in the face of
all of that, these folks still did it. They still
pushed back and you would see, I mean, the House
passed the bill that distarched position eventually four in twenty
seven to one. So have we gotten everything? We don't know,
do we, But we certainly have gotten more stuff than

(02:02:48):
Donald Trump wanted to see released. And again I go
back to he's petrified of this story. We have yet
to find the thing in the file that makes him
so petrified in the story, but we do know he's
petrified of the story. That's number five in the list,
number four, his threat to take over Greenland, right, And

(02:03:09):
it was some of the more loud Republican opposition and
Mitch McConnell went on the Senate floor and warned that
it would shatter the trust of all of our allies,
and he was hearing pushback all over. And this is
when this instigated the essentially the Mark Carney split, the
fact that Middle Powers and allies are cutting deals with

(02:03:30):
China out from under the United States. It's did enormous
damage just his threat to take over Greenland. But he
finally gave up the push in January, and he had
to give up the push because he wasn't getting any
Republican support for this. Now the White House calls that
it climbed down and they just simply say it's for now.

(02:03:50):
But I think it qualifies in the list, and that's
why I put it at number four. You've noticed Cuba
maybe on the list, but Greenland is no longer on
the list. J Powell is number three on this list
where you saw successful Republican pushback. Basically Tom Tillis, who
had the ability to do this, said that he was

(02:04:12):
going to block every FED nominee over this manufactured investigation
into then FED Chair J. Powell over the over the
remodeling of the Federal Reserve offices and Tillis stuck to
his guns, and after the loss in the attempt by

(02:04:35):
the administration to fire Lisa Cook on the Supreme Court
said that they couldn't do that, and you had And
then finally they realized they weren't going to get a
new FED chair unless because Tillis wasn't going to let
it happen, and he had the power in the committee
that he sat at to do that. And so the
Department of Justice in April twenty fourth drops the probe

(02:04:57):
on Palell. Donald Trump gets his nominee, and Jay Powell
stays on the FED and Lisa Cook is still on
the FED. So this is a case where Republican pushback worked.
It made him change behavior, and it made him pull
back on that weaponization attempt to target j Powell. Number four,

(02:05:20):
excuse me, number two on my list, not number four,
number my fourth one, but number two. I'm going in
reverse order here. The Matt Gates nomination. Now, there's a
part of me that believes Mat Gates was never intended
to be a confirmed Attorney general. That the whole point
of Matt Gates was to basically throw you know, throw

(02:05:40):
some you know, throw a bleeding fish to the sharks
let him gnaw on it, and then meanwhile, you you know,
you let you get hag Seth, Kennedy and gathered the
three incredibly unqualified cabinet secretaries to be confirmed. So if
you wanted to push back on me and say, well,
the Gates thing was that it's possible that that's what

(02:06:00):
it was, right, that Gates was never an actual intentional
nominee to be Attorney General. But the universal pushback, and
yes it was technically before he actually became president, it
was universal, and it was threatening to derail everything from
the start if he actually stuck to his guns and

(02:06:21):
tried to get him through. Now, I'll be honest, that's
the sliding doors that I'm always very curious about. Could
Trump You know, how stiff were the spines of the
Republicans at that moment in time. There's no doubt in
my mind Matt Gates never would get through today. But
if he'd really twisted arms, I mean, I look, I
never thought Pete hag Seth would get confirmed as Defense

(02:06:43):
Secretary based on the conversations I had, based on the
emphatic opposition that existed on the Republican side of the aisle.
And yet Donald Trump and his cronies were able to
intimidate a handful of Republican senators to cave. So that
has always been a question that hangs over the head

(02:07:04):
for me. On Gates that said, it's still important to
put on the list, and that's why I put it
in number two because it was early, but it was
one can only imagine what MATC. Gates would have done
its attorney job. But number one just happened, and it
appears to be the death of this anti weaponization fund.

(02:07:27):
The Republicans in Congress basically said we're going to stop
working with you, We're going to stop legislating, We're going
to stop these reconciliation bills in order to fund DHS
and fund some other things. And he clearly didn't want
to pull back. But after the judicial ruling that made
it clear that this was going to be exposed as
a shady, intentional deal that somehow was cooked up by

(02:07:51):
the president's personal lawyer, who, for some ungodly reason is
technically the acting Attorney general. That in itself, right, you
want to talk about using the plot, we have lost
the plot here that we've allowed somebody's personal defense attorney
to become the chief weaponizer of the Department of Justice.
But unfortunately that's what we have here in mister carte Blanche.

(02:08:15):
But guess what there is clearly, I mean the defeat
that Look, this was an e this was enormously unpopular.
You can argue this was easy to do, but it
also is important you know the timing of this. Right,
most filing deadlines have passed. I think every filing Not
quite every filing deadline. I think there's a couple of more,

(02:08:35):
but most filing deadlines have passed. So it is safe
to oppose Donald Trump. You may say, wow, he could
still rally a primary challenger in twenty eight He could,
there's no doubt, but he's incredibly unpopular right now. And
if they lose both houses of Congress, his own more
people in his own party are going to start turning
against him. Not in droves, but is you know, an

(02:08:59):
erosion of sorts. So I think you're starting to see
I think the the the death of this, essentially, this
weaponization fund that they that that Donald Trump and Todd
Blanche are trying to concoct using taxpayer dollars, your money
in my money, in order to pay off January sixth
rioters that apparently was an enormous bridge too far for this.

(02:09:27):
So look, it's there's two lessons they take away from this.
One is they can push back on him if they
want this idea. They're powerless, they're not. Yes, it can
be career painful to the career, but it's not totally destructive.
But this is how guardrails work. It's not pretty, they

(02:09:49):
get dented up, it gets kind of ugly, but that's
you know, they're not it's not a clean it's not
a guardrail that's going to make you stay straight on
the tracks. But they're there. And I know many of
you were concerned they didn't exist at all. You know,
you can sit here and say, but they didn't do this,

(02:10:10):
and they've let this go, and they've let this go,
and they've let this go. Yeah, the question is what
are they going to do with the really bad stuff? Well,
guess what with the really bad stuff? They stood up.
I'm not going to sit here and give them a
gold star for essentially doing the bare minimum herror, but

(02:10:32):
it's pretty important for the Republican, for the system that
there is a line that can't be crossed.

Speaker 2 (02:10:38):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:10:39):
The line moved, the line shifted, but there's still a line.
By the way, you need one more reason why, Bill
POULTI will never be a confirmed head of the Department
of National as Director of National Intelligence. And I'll I will,

(02:11:01):
I will eat the cover. I will. Let's see, I
will eat the cover of a Roger Stone book if
i'm if he's actually becomes a confirmed Director of National Intelligence,
Bill Poulton. So why am I saying Roger Stone? Because
a guess who's being credited with convincing Donald Trump to

(02:11:22):
a point, Bill Poulting to that position. Guess who saved
Tulsea Gabbard a couple of times before she finally decided
to walk. It was Roger Stone. I think it's a
fair question to ask why Roger Stone cares so much
about this particular position that serves as the nexus of

(02:11:44):
all intelligence that comes into the United States government. As
I've hinted at before, if I were running a foreign
intelligence agency and I were looking to find somebody to
flip or to use or to coerce into giving me intelligence,

(02:12:09):
it would be in the office with the Director of
National Intelligence. So you want to talk about this ain't
a yellow flag for me. It's a big frickin red
Flag of Roger Stone is working with Bill Poulting that
Guaran that is likely a death sentence now for Poultice
nomination at Vienna. So there's your top five lists. The

(02:12:33):
five things that Republicans successfully got Trump to change, pull back,
or change his mind. Number one that weaponization fund, Number
two Matt Gates's attorney general. Number three, the probe into j. Powell,
Number four Greenland, and number five we think the full

(02:12:55):
release of the Epstein class. Ask Chuck, all right, let's
do a little asked Chuck. First question comes from Michael
T Chicago, Illinois. He goes, Hey, love the podcast, especially

(02:13:16):
the recent Common Cause interview. You asked for some reform ideas,
and I wanted to throw out a few, including one
banning congressional stock trading, two expanding the House, three improving
member travel. I'd like to understand that more improving member travel,
and five strengthening the FEC, the Federal Elections Commission. Curious,
which of these or others do you think are most

(02:13:36):
realistic in today's environment. I'd like to understand more on
improving member travel what you mean by that, per se,
because it's we're all right, you know, it's it's you
know some members, you know, you live across country. How
often do you go back and forth? Can you make
it easier for members to do their work in their
district offices? Considering how expensive it is go back and forth?

(02:13:59):
How time can assuming it is things like that. But anyway,
I will confess Michael that I'm not quite sure the
reform you're asking about an improving member travel, what the
specific thing is. But let me take the other three
Congressional stock trade. I think it's Look, this is this,
This isn't hard to implement, and it seems to me

(02:14:21):
that it is that this is a this We need
a structure, We need a system, because this isn't just
about I mean, the fact is, cabinet secretary shouldn't be
stock trading. Anybody pulling a six figure government salary as
a political appointee or an elected political representative shouldn't be

(02:14:44):
trading stocks on this. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be
allowed to have investments, but they should not have it
should be and you can actually I mean, look at
this point, I'm not I know some of you're gonna say, oh,
we don't need a bureaucracy, but we might, and you
might need an act, actual agency that just simply handles
this blind trust stuff. And I and I actually think

(02:15:06):
if you institutionalize it, it's it's more likely to stick
than if you just do a congressional ban. But then
what are you going to have whether you have you know,
look at look at the corruption inside the Defense Department.
We've got Pete Hegsett's attempts to try to uh uh
make investments deals off of defense contracts. Right, So it

(02:15:28):
is you know, you can't sort of solve this problem
and not do this. And and I don't want to
not do something just because it isn't going to have
the reach it should have inside frankly the judiciary and
the executive brand. That's why institutionalizing it gives it where
essentially it's it's it's across the board. Again, I this

(02:15:52):
is the hemin and Hawing on This tells me that
whatever gets past is going to have so many loopholes.
Sort of reminds me of following the name, image and
likeness bills that all these college football programs have been
lobbying their own state legislatures to pass. You know, they're like,
oh no, we want, we need to have some certainty,
but within the certainty or nothing but loopholes for rich

(02:16:16):
donors to be able to go in and manipulate the system.
So I am a little concerned about that. But I
think there's no doubt that in order to rebuild trust
in government, this isn't necessary and absolutely is necessary, but
it has to also apply to the executive branch and
the judiciary. So this has to be a whole of government.

(02:16:40):
Does that mean we may need to you know, it's
possible we need a constitutional amendment. But I also think
what Congress ought to do not only do it for themselves,
but set up the institution that you said, because this
isn't easy, and I wouldn't you know, I've put it
in blind trust. You know, my brother in law handles it.

Speaker 2 (02:16:56):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:16:57):
You don't want that either, right, You kind of need,
I think in this case, and an institution to deal
with this, strengthening the Federal Elections Commission. I think the
question is do you strengthen it or do you start
all over and come up with something a bit different
because this isn't working. Just simply getting a quorum of

(02:17:20):
enough commissioners appointed at the right time so that you know,
Essentially everybody's going to gain the system of control on
this or as stalemates to too, and there's you know,
there's no third entity. I'd like to see a massive
reform of the FEC that had the commissioners not be

(02:17:42):
members of Congress, like I think we ought to have
this as jury duty or something like that, something akin
to that. Meaning, I don't trust the Senate Republican leader,
president of United Democratic President the United States or Republican
president of the United States Center Democratic leader to appoint
commissioners who are going to do anything other than look

(02:18:03):
out for the partisan interests of their sign So uh,
you know, for a long time we thought bipartisan could
could sort of that tension could could balance us out.
I'm not sure that works anymore, and we might be
better off with actual individuals being recruited or getting you know,

(02:18:24):
outside entities or a random rotation of judges. You know,
the the members of the FEC need to be as
far away from political stickiness as possible and yet at
the same time have credibility. But we've you know, you've

(02:18:48):
also got to have a you know, the part of
the FBC's challenge, Michael, it's the fact that there are
no laws that stick. So you pass one set of
campaign finance laws or one set of disclosure laws, and
it doesn't apply to a different type of committee that
is oh no, no, no, This is an education committee
that is just educating voters. It has nothing to do

(02:19:08):
with the campaign and it technically meets that that. You know,
So in order for the FEC to be viable, we
probably have to simplify and strengthen our actual campaign finance laws,
and we probably need a constitutional moment on that. So
I've here, I've taken two of your ideas and already

(02:19:29):
complicated by saying you might need a constitutional amendment. It
doesn't mean they're not necessary. It just means this is
why it should explain why these are been harder. You know,
these aren't new in some wadys, are not new ideas,
they're just been harder to make happen because ultimately you
run into whether it's separational powers, or you run into
other constitutional issues. But the simplest one expanding the house.

(02:19:52):
But you know, you know that itch, I scratch it
almost every day, and that's something you don't need a
constitutional mement for. It seems to be pain fully obvious
to me that we need to expand the House for
a variety of reasons, but fairness is the biggest. If
we are going to clean up this and create the
perception of fair representation, again, we're going to need to
expand the House because I don't think you know, the

(02:20:14):
more you're relying on people drawing fair lines, the harder
this is going to be. More districts mean less necessity
to gerrymander. The bottom line is, all of your reform
ideas are good ideas, in some cases necessary ideas, much

(02:20:34):
harder to implement than they should be. Next question comes
from Jim Tobahana, Pennsylvania, and he says, how often here
you say Democrats are held to a higher standard because
they claim to be the party of higher standards? And
I'm not sure I fully understand that. What do you
base that on? And is it something you've heard directly
from politicians on either side? Shouldn't all elected officials be
held at the same standard, especially at the highest levels.
Appreciate you elaborating, So it's a little bit of just

(02:21:02):
looking at their behavior, right, the tolerance of Trump and
what he's done, there's obviously this lower standard here. If
the Democrats are out here preaching that no, no, no, no,
we think there needs of h they got to live
by the same they've essentially as they are. You know,

(02:21:23):
look free districting. No, we're for fair districts. Then they're not.
Then they get mad that we're somehow you know that
some of us in the media are holding them more
accountable for their flip fop than from Republicans who never
were serious about it in the first place. They weren't
the ones that owned it. So it's it's more on
some of these important reform or some of these important
character questions. Democrats have been running multi year campaigns about it,

(02:21:46):
and then suddenly they look the other way when it
happens to them. Then they get mad that the media
sometimes gets harsher on a Democratic misstep like that than
on the Republican Party. But the Republican Party is not
out there saying, you know, we're going to nominate people
of the highest ethical standards. They're not trying to do
that anymore. They're the party of Donald Trump. They have
become the party of self dealing. They have become the

(02:22:07):
party that you know, ends justifies means, and so I
think it's a That's what I mean by that. Do
I think, of course, I think everybody should be judged
by the same high set of standards. But I'm going
to be tougher on somebody. You know, It's like we're
going to be tougher on the Catholic priest that tells

(02:22:29):
us to live a moral life and then doesn't. Then
we would on somebody who isn't claiming to be on
the highest of high high ground and then misbehaved. So
that's what I mean by that. And you know this

(02:22:51):
is it's the basis for the for my column this week,
which you can find on both the Newsphere and substack,
which is simply know and I think Democrats are They're
playing with a little fire here come twenty twenty eight.
It may not matter in twenty twenty six, but you
know the idea that they look. You know, they have
questionable characters on their side of the island. They rationalize

(02:23:14):
it away, just like the right was doing. Well, here
we go hypocrisy all around. And I'm not saying Platinus
somehow done things that are worse than Ken Paxton, No,
I don't think so. But again, you can't claim high
moral ground over here. And then ignore it over there.
And I think that's why, you know, when when Democrats

(02:23:38):
get annoyed or peoed at me because they think, you know,
I get tougher on them, I'm like, yeah, they the
party has promised to be better, and I think the
party's benefit of the last ten years by not being
Trump but promising not to to sort of play by
the Trump rules. And I think this decision to essentially

(02:24:00):
play by Trump's rules, whether it's on redistricting, character, you
name it, it's gonna buy ch in the ass. I
don't know when. Maybe it'll work this cycle. Maybe, and
if it just because it works a cycle doesn't mean
it's a good idea. All right, Sophia T right Hey.

(02:24:34):
I recently saw your take on potential twenty twenty eight
Democratic candidates and agreed with your points, especially on more
whitmer and footage. Surprised to see Wes Moore left off
some recent discussions. Given his background and potential appeal, do
you still see him as a top tier contender even
as he publicly downplays a run. Look, I do. I
think he's being I think he's being correctly. I think

(02:24:57):
he's correctly showing a little bit of humility about a
second term. Doesn't want to be presumptuous about winning a
second term in Maryland. I think that that's you know,
you got to be careful of that. Bill Clinton in
nineteen ninety was running for reelection, and there was some
concern he could, you know that, and that his opponent
could use his presidential ambitions against him. Now, Bill Clinton

(02:25:18):
pledged to serve four years, and of course broke that
pledge within nine months. Barack Obama broke his pledge. But
when I meet the press to announce that he's breaking
his pledge not to seek the presidency in twenty oh
eight when he decided to do it. So there's certainly precedent.
It's why I treat him as a top tier candidate.

(02:25:39):
But he has said it a few times. He's careful
with how he says it. I mean, for a guy
that's not interested in running, He's already made a number
of trips to certain early states, including South Carolina that
certainly in Texas Tribune Festival, things like that, there's no
doubt he's thinking about it now. I do think the
real issue, and it's my understanding I've done my own

(02:26:01):
reporting on this is his family, and I think that's
a serious thing with him, meaning if he doesn't think
his family can handle the scrutiny, handle the spotlight, all
of that. Uh, he's you know, he's in his mid forties,
no reason why he has to run in twenty twenty eight.
But I still you know, when you look at his resume,

(02:26:24):
you know they're you know, for me, there are you know,
there there have been three, maybe four candidates that stand
above everybody else right now on the Democratic side, uh,
Raphael Warnock, Mark Kelly John ossof Wes Moore for uh,

(02:26:46):
and I'll put Pete Bootagets there, although I think I
still think biden baggage is heavy, you know, I think
those are in that sort of non that that sort
of I think those are all Democrats who have a
good shot at unifying the party. That could that could
get the business Democrats and the Progressives comfortable in the

(02:27:07):
same tent. Maybe not excited, but comfortable. And I think
all would be on paper pretty strong to potential general
election candidates. Now, look, who knows how they'd wear, how
well they'd wear, and all of that, But right now,
right it's it's there. I'm I'm I've got got a

(02:27:27):
little more skepticism. And all the other governors, I'm not
saying any of them. May you know, Look, I think JB. Pritzker,
if he grabs the progressive lane, if there's no AOC
or Bernie and Pritzker is able to grab it, not
ro Connachard's got the resources to be a formidable candidate there.
And I don't want to underestimate him. I'm just not
quite sure he could unify the party right away. I'm

(02:27:53):
not sure in Josh Shapiro, I'm not sure an ambusher.
I think they're all going to be excellent potentially excellent
candidates and and and could provide opportunities. But no, I'm
I'm you know, there's a reason I put more on
my most likely you know of people who have not
run before, most likely to be in the in the
top tier of the twenty twenty eight race should he

(02:28:14):
choose to run. He's got he's got to I think,
a very good story to tell. Now, like anything, how
will he hold up? Right, there's going to be vetting,
there's going to be you know, people can look good
and then all of a sudden they look like Graham

(02:28:34):
Platner does at the moment. Right. You know, this is
a guy who a month ago people are saying, hey,
could he end up being a presidential candidate? Right now
there's talk of whether does he stay on the ballot, right,
So this is how quick this stuff can come and go.
But this is why I sort of him leaning on
the candidates who I think have shown an ability to

(02:28:55):
stick around and have had staying power and have kind
of already maybe been around the block, gone through a
rough go. Right. You know, Warnock's been through some tough
campaigns already, two of them Osoff has Mark Kelly has
been vetted once for VP.

Speaker 2 (02:29:14):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:29:16):
I probably the one guy that hasn't really had it
had to take real incoming just yet is Wes Moore.
So he will be you know, so he will be
you know, taking incoming for the first time winter if
he does decide to run. But you know, right now,
in the on paper primary, I think Wes Moore is
a top three candidate, all right, Tim c and Mount

(02:29:40):
Clemens Michigan. Rights, Hey, if Republicans were to lose more
than forty House seats, do you think Mike Johnson's position
as leader would be at risk? I don't think Mike
Johnson is going to be the House Republican leader if
they lose the House, whether it's nine seats or forty seats.
Mike Johnson was only speaker because nobody else wanted the
job and had the votes, and Donald Trump decided he

(02:30:01):
would have Mike Johnson's back. But I think the last
thing Johnson wants to be is House minority leader. So
I don't think he'll be minority leader. My guess is
it's probably going to be somebody like Jim Jordan that
it's that it's a little bit more fire brandish. We'll see,
but I you know, I I think Jordan's been kind

(02:30:25):
of staying quiet sort of you know, it's almost like
he wants to follow the path of MacArthur. Remember McCarthy
got denied the speakership before he ever got there the
first time, and then sort of licked his wounds and
came back and ended up leader again and all of that.
So I think that's what Jim Jordan is potentially eyeing.

(02:30:46):
Maybe it's it's somebody new, maybe it's somebody younger, but
I would I you know, look, I know that once
people get some power, they don't want to give it up.
But I'm just on a personal note. I think this job,

(02:31:08):
this wore him down. I think he'd like a break.
I don't think he And it's tough to go from
being the most powerful member of Congress to minority leader.
You know, despite the title she gave herself a Speaker America,
there really is no title for Speaker America. So I

(02:31:30):
imagine that if they lose the House by one seat,
let alone nine or forty as you put in there,
that Mike Johnson can be later Michael al Wrights, Hey,
do you think here Starmer can survive as prime minister?
Do you think Nigel Faraj is on his way to
becoming prime minister? Well, I will tell you this, I'm

(02:31:51):
surprised that Starmer, as of this writing, and as of
your question, and as of this moment in time on
June second, that I'm recording this, I'm surprised he's still
prime Minister. So it certainly seems as if we get
a snap election today that Nigel Farage will be the nominee,

(02:32:15):
would be the likely next prime minister. In some ways,
there's ay, it's like, oh right, you want the car,
go ahead, Let's see how you do. I am skeptical
Forage is going to be a successful prime minister. I

(02:32:36):
have a feeling, you know, when you get when when
a you know, it's it's when a when an insurgency
grabs power. They a lot of times the insurgency doesn't
know how to govern and and doesn't know how to
stop being an insurgent.

Speaker 2 (02:32:55):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:32:55):
Trump has really struggled with this. He hates being the establishment.
He wants, you know, he wishes he were an insurgent
figure still and he struggles with it. And I think
this explains why Trump has been terrible when he's been
the incumbent, whether whether in a midterm or or running
for reelection. And he's and he's much more comfortable being

(02:33:18):
a challenger, as he says, a counterpuncher. So uh, you know,
I if the Reform Party is going to be the
leading party, I don't see how Farage doesn't get a
shot at this. So now I fully expect that Farage

(02:33:39):
is going at the next the next prime minister after
the next elections in the UK will be Farage. I'm
not going to sit here and say the next prime
minister after Starmar is going to be Farage. It's you know,
it still seems as if the party's desperate to find
a replacement for Starmer, But the fact that it hasn't
happened yet, I think it shows you that there's just
there's a lot of factions.

Speaker 2 (02:34:00):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:34:01):
It's like, you know, Biden was nobody's first choice, and
I don't think Starmer is anybody's first choice. But you know,
you can't beat somebody with nobody and is as hard
to you know, It's like maybe it's an equivalent of
answering the other question about about Mike Johnson, Like watching
Republicans desperately look for somebody that could get two hundred

(02:34:23):
and eighteen votes, it doesn't appear that there's an alternative
to Starmer that can get a majority of Labor to
make this happen. But there's no question that Labor's got
to find a new face, right. Starmar is just not
you know, he's trying not to. He's just he doesn't

(02:34:45):
he doesn't project strength. I think he's ideologically about where
Labor needs to be and when they're the majority, but
he's kind of weak in how he projects his ideas
and how he project excess power. And I think that
and I think that weakness certainly, and then you've got

(02:35:08):
the whiff of losing on you right now, as it
does right because the party just seems but you know,
there's a part of me we're really blaming Kiir Starmer
for this, right and it was just sort of like,
you know, Labor won because they weren't the Tories, and
I think this is this is it's very similar to
like the Democrats won in twenty twenty because they weren't Trump,

(02:35:32):
but then they governed like they had won some big
landslide and the voters totally rejected that, you know, the UK.
I continue to believe the UK is a little bit
ahead of the United States on this sort of rejection
of its two major parties. Right already you've seen both
of the UK's major parties or not even in the
top two. Right, it's reform, it's it. Maybe it may

(02:35:54):
be the lib Dems and it may be the Greens
that end up, you know, ahead of both Labor in
the Tories. Our system makes it a little more difficult,
but it's pretty clear if you just look at voter
registration role that voters are rejecting the two major parties
in this country in droves, particularly voters under the age
of thirty five. So no, I don't expect starmers survive,

(02:36:20):
and yes, I do expect that in the same way
that it was pretty clear there were enough Republicans that
are like, no, we want to try this Trump experiment.
We know everybody thinks it's a bad idea, but we
want to try it anyway. That's what Nigel for ours
feels like to me to the UK electorate. All right,

(02:36:41):
last question, Caitlin Nee and Bristol, Pennsylvania Rights, longtime follower
from your White House correspondence dates. Thank you, big fan.
Really like your idea of expanding the House, especially given
how much larger districts have become over time. Do you
think a more virtual governance model could work alongside that
keeping members more rooted in their districts will still convenient
when needed. Yes. In fact, I want to share with

(02:37:02):
you one of the fantastic ideas one of my students,
and I'm I still plan to do this. I want
to share one of the things that I had my
class at USC do for their for their final essay
was to essentially pick something to fix to make Washington
work better. So one of the ideas that one of

(02:37:23):
my students had was to move Congress move the entire basically,
and I'm i'm, i'm I'm adding some flourishes to this.
But think of it as, Hey, every year the NFL
now holds the NFL Draft in a different city, well
maybe every two years, Congress is going to go to

(02:37:46):
a new city. And wouldn't it be great if residents
in Montana got to host Congress for a session. Wouldn't
it be great? If the citizens of Mississippi got to
host Congress session. Wouldn't it be great the citizens of
Maine got their host Congress session to sort of you

(02:38:08):
know it. I love the spirit of it, and it
gets to this virtual governance. I look, what I think is,
you know, I'd like to see Congressional offices be more
fully staffed in the districts than they are in Washington.
I think the committee staffs should be in Washington and

(02:38:29):
your personal staff should be in your district, and you
figure out the balance of that. But the ability to
do so many things remotely. Ultimately, you're a representative of
your constituency. You need to be as close to your
constituents as you can at all times. So I'd love
to see the ability for members to vote from their offices,
and maybe you would only you know, they can't vote

(02:38:49):
from their bedroom, they can't vote for their home office.
They actually, you know, a district office almost becomes a
virtual you know, you make it a ski, a skiff,
a place where it's secure and all of that. So
I would have some limitations about where they could remote vote,
but I think that there's some especially look, especially if
you're going to have eight to nine hundred members of

(02:39:10):
Congress like I am advocated, it is going to be
hard to put them all up here. And I think
everybody should get offices in DC when they're here, and
we have plenty of office space. If members of Congress
or committees didn't have suites of eight to ten to
fifteen offices, right, they could have that in their communities.
They don't need it here in Washington, DC. And you

(02:39:32):
can have your staff in different places like that. So
the answer is yes. I mean, I have partnership the
production company I partner with for this podcast. We're all
over the country, and we're able to have all sorts
of meetings, make all sorts of decisions. We all you know, frankly,

(02:39:56):
the downside is we're all always available to work the
But if you're working for the pax payers, that's a
good thing that you're always available, you're always on the clock,
you're always available to work. So yes, I'd like to
see more virtual governance, and i'd take it a step further.
And yeah, it's a little you know, you might you know,
I'm you know, the the idea of moving Congress. I've

(02:40:20):
actually wanted it. I absolutely believe that if you know,
make the lobbyists go find you. Right, I'm not saying
you're ever going to get rid of the lobbyists. And
they're good. Look, lobbying is is necessary, and they're a
good lobbyists and they're bad lobbyists. But lobbying itself is
neither good or bad. It's the lobby It's the person

(02:40:40):
behind the lobby that decides whether it's good lobbying or
bad lobbying. But I think just frankly, bringing Congress to
different parts of the country, bringing the focus of different
parts of the country, front and senator members of Congress,
you know. And one it sounds crazy pie in the sky, right,

(02:41:03):
And on the other hand, it seems like, you know
what if we had had the ability to do this
in seventeen eighty nine, when we were devising this constitution,
the idea of Congress rotating among the thirteen states would
have been an easier sell. Then well, we got to

(02:41:25):
find a capital. Yeah, I don't know if it should
be New York. No, I don't know if it should
be Philly. Why don't we manufacture a city. The point
being is, if we logistically could have pulled it off
in seventeen eighty nine, my guess is the founders would
have been all for us. That. You know, Congress is
an institution, is permanent, but that Congress when it meets
to decide, they rotate again. It's a crazy idea that

(02:41:53):
makes way too much sense. And with that, I will
it's been a week, and I appreciate you coming in
for the live stream. By the way, I've got a
new episode. Let me give you a few things. I
got a new episode of Dynastic Up. We do the
Warriors from the Philadelphia Warrior Days to the San Francisco
Warrior Days to the now current Golden State Warrior Days.

(02:42:16):
We go from Wilt Chamberlain to Rick Berry to Steph Curry,
and I will tell you I learned a bunch and
I hope to share everything. I hope I shared everything
I learned with you in this episode with my pile Jayadande,
but it was a labor of love and I hope
you will check it out. That episode is now streaming
wherever you get your podcast is also obviously I share

(02:42:38):
my own feed with it, and of course I appreciate
all the election night live streams. Appreciate you coming in
with the long election night that we have nothing like
the West Coast and the never ending counting that comes
with the state of California. So with that, I will
see you in twenty four hours. Thanks for listening until

(02:42:58):
I uploaded it. Hey,

All Episodes

Full Episode - Tuesday Was A REALLY Good Night For Democrats + Can A Democrat Win Statewide In Florida?

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Hey Jonas!

Crime Junkie

Betrayal Weekly

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Full Episode - Tuesday Was A REALLY Good Night For Democrats + Can A Democrat Win Statewide In Florida?