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August 2, 2024 13 mins
Secretary of State Frank LaRose on gearing up for the November election
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Chevron is leaving California over regulations. They're moving the
headquarters out of California. The state of California has these
strict regulations on the oil industry. I mean, no big
surprise there, right that they have the strict regulations, but
they announced they're moving operations to Houston, Texas. Point that
is the state of choice at Texas for a lot

(00:23):
of Californians. And whether it be a business decision, I
think Elon was talking about that, right, I mean he, yeah, Elon.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Has completely moved everything out to Texas because of the
over over regulations and how expensive it is to do
business just basically in the state of California.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
The latest major company, Chevron is to announce this move, Oracle,
Hewlett Packard, Tesla, and x which clearly that's Elon that
we were just kind of talking about. But a lot
of people and I've heard, you know, people like Glenn
Beck who live in Texas or other Texas. You'll see
maybe posted on social media where they're like, you are

(01:05):
welcome here from California. Just don't bring that crap with
you and expect to, you know, have that as your
way of life here in Texas.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
You would think they're smart enough.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
People leaving California are smart enough to know when they
go to Texas it's not going to be like California,
So don't bring that crap with you, which I thought
was kind of interesting. But man, that's a big deal, right,
Chevron leaving, it's a big deal.

Speaker 4 (01:31):
It's not I mean, how much i'd you know, what
impact is that going to have on the regular consumer?

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Probably nothing.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
It's not like Chevron's like, Okay, it's cheaper to do
business in Texas.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
We're going to lower the cost of gas. That ain't happening.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Oh no, But economically California is going to take a
hit with such a big company leaving there is my
point too.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, well, so, hey, California doesn't care. They do not care.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Staggering that they are taking that stance, but you're one
hundred percent correct, they don't care.

Speaker 4 (02:06):
Like Gavin Newsom literly said bye to them, just like
just kind of mockingly said, okay, see.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
You, Secretary of State, Frank LeRose is joining us. Now, Hey, Frank,
how are you?

Speaker 5 (02:16):
I'm goody, good Friday afternoon, Good Friday afternoon.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Welcome in.

Speaker 5 (02:21):
Man.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
There is so much on the political landscape clearly here
at home and then on the national scale as well.
The first thing I thought when I was speaking to
your people yesterday about you coming on was I was like, man,
I got to get your thoughts on Kamala and everything
that's happening at the national level, the way that she's basically.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Been installed and so on and so forth. As as
the candidate, do you have any thoughts on that?

Speaker 5 (02:46):
You know, that's really the business of the National Democratic Party.
I do think it's important to point out though, that
the people that you know wag their fingers at the
Republicans and say that we're a threat to democracy have
just completely bypassed the public process of nominating a candidate,
and they've they've kind of come up with this backdoor,
back room way of doing it. Hey, listen, if Democrats

(03:09):
are comfortable with that, I don't think Republicans would be.
We think the people should have a voice. And to
this point, Kayla Harris has received zero votes in a primary,
and so you know, if she if they're going to
make her their candidate, they have until the first of
September to do that. They've got to notify me so
we can put them on the ballot. Listen, I'm confident

(03:29):
that my party's candidate will win the old fashioned way,
no matter what kind of tricks they pull.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah, that's beautiful, man, that is beautiful. And you know what,
it is so hard.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
It's so hard to have that conversation or to bring
up facts or points with a lot of people. And
first of all, and I'm sure you don't you don't
deal with this either, but I try to not have
those conversations, these kind of conversations on social media. It's
it's literally it is a losing battle on there.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
And I'm sure conversation no.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
And by the way, nobody that's on there that is
against whatever it is you're railing on is ever going
to go you know what, You're.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Right, I'm gonna go ahead and switch or whatever. Nobody
is ever doing that either.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
So it feels like a useless conversation or I don't
even know that you would call it a conversation, but
that's exactly I feel like that's spot on the way
that you've assessed that whole thing, the Party of Democracy
and it's worth saving democracy and so on. Is this
has just been an enormous head scratcher with regard to

(04:32):
that and the stance and what they're trying to use
and the Party of Democracy and all of this. I
can't wait for this sugary, sweet, little, you know, honeymoon
period with her to kind of wind down and let's
start really drilling down on what she's about. She's flip
flopping all over the place on all of this stuff

(04:55):
and can't even tell you why she's going the other way.
I can't wait for all these questions finally for her
that she's going to have to answer at some point,
because we have not been able to hear anything about
that from herself.

Speaker 5 (05:05):
Well, voters need to know who she is, right And
the fact is, when they take a sober look at
her record, they're going to and listen, take the identity
politics nonsense out of this. Yep. What they're going to
realize is that the Democrats are about to nominate the
most extreme candidate in our nation's history, bar none. And
I don't think that's what our country is looking for.
I think for our blue collar, moderate Democrat friends, this

(05:29):
is not going to be what they're looking for. But
they're gonna have to come to that conclusion quickly.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Secretary of State Frank LeRose joining us now and saw
you posted on X I think it was yesterday it
was National poll worker Recruitment Day, and so how is
that going? And I'm sure you're still welcoming people who
would like to help out, correct.

Speaker 5 (05:51):
We absolutely are. It takes over thirty thousand of our
fellow Ohiolans to run the polls on election and you know,
I'm an army guy. That's like two infantry divisions worth
the poll workers. It's a big it's a big mobilization
of people that it takes to run election day. Half
of them Democrats, half of them Republicans. But guess what,
all of them patriotic Ohioans that care about running an

(06:14):
honest election. And that's exactly what we're going to do.
Ohioan step up. Listen, in twenty twenty, when other states
didn't have enough poll workers, Ohio had an over abundance
at some point. I mean, we had a lot of
people step up and say I want to help run
secure and accessible elections for my state. And that's exactly
what we have done, and that's exactly what we will
do time and again.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
So people can still sign up. Is there a specific
place that you would like to direct them or is
that something they can just kind of I mean, I
know you technically weren't coming on to talk about that,
but I just kind of was looking at your page and.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
All of that.

Speaker 5 (06:48):
Now here's the spot to do it. It couldn't be easier.
Vote Ohio dot gov. That's the website. When you sign
up there, you will be contacted by your county Board
of Elections. They'll sign you up for a time and
a location to do some training. They do about three
hours of training so you'll be well prepared, and then
they'll assign you to a polling location, probably close to home,

(07:09):
definitely within your home county, and you'll be part of
the crew that delivers again that free and fair election
that Ohios expect and deserve on election day.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Now, I know you only really can uh you know,
it's a it's an Ohio thing clearly because of you
know what you who you are, Secretary of State for
the state of Ohio. But as far as only Americans
should be voting in American elections, how dare you?

Speaker 3 (07:32):
I mean, you know, it's just like what what right?
I mean? I just think it is a.

Speaker 5 (07:37):
Pretty simple proposition, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
It is it is mind.

Speaker 5 (07:40):
Numbing to me.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
How you you are considered? You know, how dare you
say American? That's racist? That's this, that's that. Don't you
ask for an I D. You shouldn't have to prove.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Good lord, we know exactly what they're up to by
wanting to not have that in place. But talk to
me about this comprehensive audit of the voter registration database.

Speaker 5 (08:00):
Oh, you're right. It starts with this very simple concept.
The American elections are only for American citizens. That's pretty
common sense. It's the law both in federal law and
now in our state constitution. It's also what Ohio's expect.
And by the way, there's nothing racist or xenophobic about it.
You talk to a group of new immigrants, those that
have worked hard to earn their citizenship, they've raised their

(08:22):
right hand, they've sworn that oath. They would be the
first to tell you, don't devalue that thing I've worked
so hard to earn by callously giving it away the
right to vote to people that haven't earned it. So, yeah,
we're going to protect that in Ohio. We've done a
comprehensive audit of our process, of our voter rules, share
in Ohio. And the good news is we've found a
small number several hundred the latest round four hundred and

(08:45):
ninety nine. A few weeks ago, we found about one
hundred and thirty five. And guess what, We're going to
remove them from the voter roles and refer them for
criminal prosecution because it is against the law to vote
or to register to vote if you are not a
a state citizen. And that's something that you know, people
need to be aware of.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
So is this a complete has this? Has this actually like?
Is it a complete audit? If you will at this
point and you said you found a several hundred few hundred,
is the whole the state of Ohio?

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Is that audit complete? Or is that just part of it?
At this point?

Speaker 5 (09:20):
This is just part of it. And this is a
multi step process. You know. We also check the roles
on a monthly basis to remove the ceased voters that
shouldn't be controversial. We take dead people off the voter roles.
We you know, we're going to do more checks of
these because remember the deadline for voter registration comes up,
you know, thirty days before the election. So we're going

(09:40):
to do another check right before that. And this is
a complicated process. It's more complicated than it needs to be,
and honestly, the federal government needs to fix this. This
is why I'm a big fan of a bill introduced
by Chip Roy out of Texas called the Save Act.
Every one of Ohio AND's every one of Ohio's Republican
members of Congress vote for it. Every Democrat from Ohio

(10:02):
voted against it. But guess what it goes to Chuck
Schumer's Senate to languish and die because they don't think
this is important. It's a complex process. We've been able
to weed our way through it. We had kind of
all hands on deck. We had over thirty staff members
working on this. At one point we had to jump
through a bunch of hoops with the federal government. We
got it done. We need to now replicate this in

(10:23):
another state. And one good piece of news is I'm
the chairman of the National Republican Secretaries of State Committee,
So my fellow Republican secretaries around the country have selected
me to lead our national group, and with that platform,
I'm going to be working to make sure that other
states follow Ohio's good example.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Well, I was going to say too, the you're probably
getting challenges or resistance from the usual suspects. So if
we're talking about a national look at this whole situation.
Is that correct or it's just you're just doing like
republican type state. I'm just trying to figure out exactly
from a national standpoint what types of challenges you'll be
up against other states that are going Now, we don't

(11:02):
want you know, and I know the answer to this,
but I just kind of wanted you to clarify.

Speaker 5 (11:06):
Yeah, they're rolling marbles under my feet, and you hear
the same kind of idiotic arguments for why I shouldn't
do this. Even I see it on social media. Leftists
have been attacking me saying, well, this isn't a problem,
why are you focusing on it? Well, they point to
the fact that we only found several hundreds. Well, guess what.
Carjackings are pretty rare in my neighborhood. But when they happen,

(11:28):
I want law enforcement to investigate and bring the bad
guys to justice. And this is the same thing. It's rare,
but it can have an impact, especially in close elections,
and we want to make sure that we enforce the
law because it's my duty, and it's what Ohioans expect.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
It's labor intensive, right, I mean, it's not just you know,
a couple people and boom, it's done within like a day.
I mean, it's pretty labor intensive going through, but incredibly important.

Speaker 5 (11:53):
Sure. Well. And what we start with several different processes. One,
we work with the Ohio Bureau Motor Vehicles. Thankfully, they've
been great partners in this, and they help us do
kind of an initial search and with that we're able
to find some non citizens just using data from BMV.
And then there's a separate process where we have to
drill down and do a lot of manual entry with

(12:14):
a federal system called the SAVE database. Now, to do that,
we've got to get things like the what's called the
alien registration number that's hard to find. We have to
notify the individual that we are checking their immigration status.
We notify them by mail. And yeah, we go through
all those steps because we think this is we know
that this is important and we know Ohioans want.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Us to do it.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, it's the old joke about you know, haven't you
heard when you die you can still have your families
vote for you. I mean, it's the old joke, and
I don't know it's you.

Speaker 5 (12:46):
Know, there's a saying I'll clean it up for the
radio mess around and find out. If you try to
do that in Ohio, we will catch you and you
will add a new title to your resume felon. And
that's not something that you want to mess around with,
because again we'll catch you and you will face law
enforcement action for doing that.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Secretary of State Frank LeRose, Frank, thanks for jumping on
with us today.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
Appreciate you, man,
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