The Tudor Dixon Podcast: Untold Stories from the Campaign Trail

In this episode, Tudor and her staff reminisce about their time on the Michigan gubernatorial trail. They share anecdotes, from buying a pig at a fair to the high-energy rallies and the personal toll of politics. The team discusses the skepticism they faced, media bias, and the challenges of being political outsiders. They also touch on the divisiveness of modern politics and the impact on personal relationships. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network. For more visit TudorDixonPodcast.com

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. We are
going to do something a little bit different today because
we're going to take you on a walk down memory
lane of the campaign. We've never really taken you on
a behind the scenes look, so it is a party
of four here today. I have Sarah Broadwater with me.
She was our comms director on the campaign, still works

(00:21):
with us today. Kyle Olsen, you have all met him
several times. You know him as the founder of the Midwesterner,
but on the campaign he was a senior advisor and
behind the scenes with us every day, which sometimes I
think I maybe call you out on the podcast, but
I'm not sure if I do. But I'm going to
start now. Steban darn Sdeban Clark Brendle is with us.

(00:43):
He was our campaign photographer, so he knows like all
the dirty secrets. He has, like all the behind the
scenes because I ever.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Want to blackmail anybody I know, any of you guys, which.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
We think you're already doing. So yeah, that's true, that's true.
That's true. So we wanted to take you on this
trip down memory lane, and I figured I would start
with the first event I went to that none of
these people were at so that they could have a
little look into the first event and me still deciding
to run for governor. Anyway, it was so sweet because
we had this It was a Strawberry shortcake thing, so

(01:16):
strawberry social, yes, and it was it was straight out
of a Hallmark movie. If I were in a Hallmark movie,
I would have definitely married someone that was there that night,
because it was in a barn and they were lights
strung from the ceiling and there were the checked red
and white tablecloths. But it wasn't a Hallmark movie. So
there were all the other candidates and there are like

(01:37):
twelve candidates, and there was this one guy. My mom
went with me, which was so sweet because that was
the last event she went to. She saw how horrible
it wasn't She just like, why are you doing this?
So it was just me and my mom and the
girls and then all these other candidates. And I'd never
spoken in an event before or anything, so I would get

(01:59):
up and I do my And there was a gentleman
who was running. Kyle will remember him. His name was
Bob Scott, and he wore a hat everywhere. He had
this what kind of hat do you think that was No,
it wasn't. It was bigger than that.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
It was gigantic, Uh symbrero.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Definitely not no, no, but he was. He was like
very aggressive. So he was like, I'm Bob Scott and
I will be the next governor of Michigan. But for
some reason, he like focused in on me, and this
is my first event. So I'm like, oh, I had
still a Pollyanna view of what running for office was

(02:40):
at this point. This guy stared me down so hard,
and you know, I don't know, maybe at this point
maybe he has a chance of being governor. I don't
know anything about him. Right the entire event. Everywhere I went,
his eyes followed me, and I'm like, okay, maybe I'm
just imagining this. I get in the car, my mom's like,
why are you doing this? And that was first event

(03:00):
of many, and then we went on to you didn't
quit right then? I know, I was like how much
how hard could this get? And then well, ah, you
all know the rest it could get really hard.

Speaker 4 (03:12):
Was that like his intimidation tactic for you stare you
down the whole time?

Speaker 1 (03:16):
I feel like it was, But I don't know why
he zeroed in on me. Because you know, Garrett was
there and like, you have to remember, at this point,
no one knows who I am. I walk in this
room and people were like, give me a break. I
remember going to school and saying I'm gonna it's gonna
be a hard year for us, and telling the girl
at the front desk it's gonna be a hard year
because I'm going to be a running for governor. And

(03:37):
I remember the girl at the front desk the look
on her face was like, Okay, that's cute, good luck
with that. And I know she thought I was lying
because no one knew me. I mean, I came out
of nowhere. Kyle, you remember this.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, Well, so during the pandemic, I was covering Gretcha
Whitmer for Breitbart, and as I would talk to people
in Lansing, I'd say, so, who's going to run for governor?
And this was, you know, late twenty twenty, This was
prior to the twenty twenty election, and people would say, oh,
there's just you know, sort of nobody, and I said,

(04:14):
well what. There was one person I was talking to
at Lansing and I said, well, what kind of candidate
are you looking for? And this particular person who I
think at that time was pretty influential in kind of
you know, these sort of back room decision making things,
said we'd like a woman business owner who's running against

(04:36):
city Hall. And I thought, well, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah. This was the genesis of hey, I have a
great idea. I've learned now when Kyle comes to me
and he's like, so, I got to thinking that's the
statement I know to then walk away.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
So then so I called you and I said, explain that,
and I said you should run for governor, which of
course I didn't really know what that meant. Now a
few years later we know what that means. But then
you I connected you with a political consultant who had

(05:12):
other ideas for what you should do, and you met
with him, and I think he saw the potential.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
And I don't know. I look back at him like
do people is the machine just a machine? And they're
like at the beginning of the campaign, I would always say,
and I still look back on it and feel this
way that when you are campaigning, you're just like everybody.
All the consultants are walking their prize pig through the room.
You know, it's like, okay, look at her, you know,

(05:41):
she's nice, heavy, she's this will be a good one
for you, you know, she's it's like your pig. You know, Yes,
you said you're describing yourself that way. I mean that's
how you feel. Like everybody's looking you, at you and saying,
what could she possibly do? What are the benefits? Is

(06:01):
this a good person? And at first it's really I mean,
it's really kind of a gross feeling, you know, because
nobody is. People are just You're like a horse they're
betting on, and you really are. You come to realize
that that's the whole system. The whole system is like,
who are you going to invest in? And I appreciate

(06:22):
the fact that people are investing in you, you know,
And I think that it was when we came into it,
people said you're gonna have to rent raise tens of
millions of dollars and I was like, yeah, okay, I'm
on this, but I'd never raised money in my life. Never.
I mean you talk about a business owner. Yeah, we
were running a business from you know, the bottom up.

(06:42):
We took a business from bankruptcy. We never went and
asked people to invest in the business. I never had
to ask people to invest it. Now, I had to
go to people and ask them to invest in me,
and it didn't seem like I was like, Okay, how
hard can that be? But it's very competitive. There's only
so much money in this state and people are not
coming into the state from outside of Michigan. So it

(07:04):
was definitely different than I thought it would be. But
it was a blast.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
And what you were up against were two candidates that
were self funding. You had a grassroots sort of leader
kind of candidate. You had another guy who was, you know,
fighting with him for that title, and so you had
there was I think there was a lot sort of

(07:29):
going against you, and it was it was difficult to
find your lane, but you found your lane.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
And so at the beginning, it was just really Kyle
and me because our team was not in the state
of Michigan. So it was Kyle and me, and then
we had another girl who was working with us, and
she would drive me everywhere and we would go to events,
but we weren't camp We had never run campaigns before,
so it was us and I remember there were some
intimidating moments, like we were up against Chief Craig and

(07:57):
we went to this event in Claire and the chief
was late because he had something else going on that day.
But when we were all sitting there, it was like
four districts that came together, so it was a lot
of people in this old hotel and the chief comes
in and he had a full security team. But this
is early on, like this is when nobody knows anybody's
running for governor. If you don't care about politics, you

(08:18):
have not even thought about this race. At this point,
the only people who know anybody is driving around are
like hardcore Republicans. Right, So we have to stop the
event because the chiefs people have to come in and
sweep the room because they had to make sure it
was safe for him. I'm telling you, we're in the
middle of Michigan. No, it was. There was no chance.
It wasn't safe, Like it was the safest place you've

(08:41):
ever been. And I and I remember thinking at the time, like,
you know, what do I if this guy is so
important that he has to have this, Like how can
I go up against him? Because you go through this
and you're watching this happen. But we pretty quickly showed
that hard work was what mattered. It was really about
going places. And then you're going places and you're going

(09:03):
all over the state. You're literally you're in Traverse City
one day, in Northern Michigan, Detroit the next, you're Detroit
the same day. You know, like you're going everywhere. And
as you're doing this, you're watching the social media comments.
You're not even out there campaigning, and you're like, oh
my goodness. But over time, I think that built up,
and then you guys came like you were. You came

(09:24):
right before the primary, Rightestevan, and then you were.

Speaker 4 (09:27):
After the prime like you think after the primary, yeah,
you had very little of the fabulous experiences.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
But Esteban, you tell your story because I think your
story is interesting. I mean, so you were still yet
a child, still a child, Yeah, I was.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
I was two months out of high school when I
got the call from your campaign manager. And at that
point I had sent emails to a couple of different
campaigns about the possibility of working with them. I didn't
expect anything to come back from that. But I got
a call from a number from Florida, and naturally I
thought it was a scam, so I ignored it. And

(10:05):
then I got a text from the same number that
was basically.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
See rather, you've got a message and you're like, I
got it.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
I got it. I got a message that said this
is Tutor Dixon's campaign manager. Didn't give me his name,
by the way, and and and then uh. And then
it was like, give me a call as soon as
you can. And I started panicking, and I waited fifteen
minutes and then I called him back and he was like, look,

(10:34):
I saw your email. We'll give you a trial day
on Thursday.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
And then the rest is kind of history. Although I
will say this, and I've told you guys this before,
if I was your campaign manager, I would not have
hired me. I had no political experience, I had no
work experience. I mean, you're the campaign was my first job.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
In general, because you were in high school before.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
That, and I had I didn't have a driver's license
at the time. I had no way of getting around.
My mom and dad had to drop me off at
parking rides across the West Michigan area for you guys
to pick me up. And I made sure this was
all clear on the initial call. And then he's like, sure, okay,
you start Thursday and we'll give you a trial. Well,

(11:24):
I'll say this that that first Thursday, we started in
like the southeast area. There was like a farm meet
and great thing. No, we started at a racetrack first,
and then we went to a farm. No, I'm remembering
it now. No, we started have pancake breakfast. I'm just

(11:45):
adding things on. We started a pancake breakfast. Then we
went to a racetrack. Then we went to a farm
and that was the first like afternoon that wasn't even
a full day. And then and then after that, I
got a text from the campaign manager. It was like,
tomorrow we leave for the up for four days. Pack

(12:06):
your stuff and you were like at that point, I
was like, okay, well I'm doing this anyway. So I
packed my stuff. I bought a I bought a new
camera for your campaign, by the way, and I had
never used it before your cat Like that first Thursday
was the first time I had used that camera. In general,
it was a learning experience overall. And then we went

(12:27):
to the to the up and that was that was
the beginning of it. And then I think that was
a solid week before the primary. So I had a
week of the fun campaigning against other Republicans.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
Was that was that? That was so that was because
that was summer, so it was one. It was when
we had just we took my twins with us, right,
so we had just two of the girls with us,
so you were really immersed. You're trapped in the car
with us.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
I was stuck in an suv with you, Kyle, and
then the campaign manager and your twins, and I remember
they were watching some kind of Barbie movie, not the
Barbie movie, but like one of the animated Barbie movies.
In your campaign manager was really enthralled.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
That checks out with the Barbie.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Movie, so I thought, you know, this seems kind of fun.
And then we went to a bear ranch and a
bunch of other stuff, and.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, I know we did. We went to the bear ranch.
So if you aren't from Michigan, we have an actual
bear ranch in northern Michigan and they have like thirty
bears there and you can fee. I was a little
nervous because the girls were like, you can feed the bears,
So we're really excited. But feeding the bears was just
throwing an apple over the fence, and seeing bears up

(13:39):
close was shocking. My mom said something to me the
other day, She's like, have you ever noticed that, like
animals in the wild are all very clean except for bears.
And it's true there were like some significant angle berries
there on those bears. I just remember that being like, wow,
it's a dirty butt on the back of those guys.
It's good to know what you paid attention to, know
where you were looking.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
But but what's interesting to me about that is, so
you started in August, right before.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
The power I started in July.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Oh okay, so birthday with us right right, Okay. My
point is you started just before the primary. There were
state representatives that were, you know, showing you around. There
were legislators whatever. We did a trip to the up
in February of that year, and there was nobody we had.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
We had some of our team members. As you said,
we're from Florida, so we had one guy who was
Everyone was great, i will say, and they were all
super sweet to the girls. And we had all four
girls with us then. And the up in February is
cold and very snowy, and so Aggie comes out and
he has a T shirt that's like a white undershirt.

(14:56):
That's his whole shirt for the whole like four days
we're up there. That's the only he has. And a
light jacket that he wouldn't zip up no gloves. I mean,
the girls aren't in snowsuits, right, And it was the
week of the dog sled race. So we went out
and we saw the dog sled. We actually weren't supposed to,
but there was such a bad blizzard to Hote and

(15:16):
we couldn't get there, so we stayed where we were
and we got to see it, which they were very
happy about. But the funny thing is, like you think
back to then, no one even knew we're there, Like,
no one knew who we were. It was we could
go anywhere. And that quickly changed, which I never really
thought that would change, but it quickly changed. Not in
the realm of like I go places and people know

(15:36):
who I am. But if you go Republican places and
there's a group of people, then they're.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
Like, hi, yeah, it was from here where we're currently sitting.
It's like a six hour drive. It's a long way.
So you drive and we did Sue Saint Marie and
Newberry and bunch of places and ten people would show up. Yeah,

(16:03):
there was one. There was one you went to where
a legislator was there, but he was there to listen
and he kind of wasn't.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. People didn't know who I was,
and they were not going to acknowledge me because I
think they kind of just didn't want to have somebody
else in their candidate viewpoint because I didn't know politics
at this point. But I can see now why he

(16:32):
was sitting that way. But he's sitting with his head
down so you couldn't even see him. And then somebody
was like, oh, the representative here wants to talk to you.
And then as soon as I was done speaking, he
just bolted it. And now he calls me all the time.
But at the time, yeah, it was because and you
go through that, I mean, that's kind of if you've
never campaigned before and you do a campaign on this
big of a scale, you have to get to the

(16:53):
point where you're like, Okay, people are just going to
walk away from me, they're going to ignore me, and
you really have to push yourself in front of them
in a non aggressive way. But then eventually people were nice.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, I mean it was really fun for me having
no experience whatsoever in politics, but also in just employment,
which was really good. But you know, I went from
not knowing anybody to having the numbers of a lot
of state legislators. I went from you know, figuring out

(17:27):
what my final project for high school was going to be,
to like running around following you know, a major candidate.
And and I'll tell you one thing. On my birthday
I turned I turned did I turn? I turned nineteen?
I didn't turn eighteen. I turned nineteen. On my birthday,
we went to the Southeast side. That was like a

(17:49):
Southeast Side day, and we went to a restaurant with
a food porn account.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
That just posted that was literally the name of the account.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, food porn Detroit, and did like content with them there,
and then we went to where did we go next?
We went to a fair, like a county fair.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Right, No, that was that the day we bought the pig.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yes, we're going to get I want to get to that.
But but we did something else there was like a fundraiser,
and then we went to the county fair and we
bought the pig. But that entire day we had been
hearing that that was the day President Trump was going
to endorse you for governor. And so the entire day

(18:30):
I was told to just keep a camera on you
in case you got a call, So every phone call
you got, I have a photo of every phone call
you got that day, just in case it was the
one and you were getting a ton of phone calls
that day. And then I think it was so we
bought the pig. I don't know if you want to
go into buying the pig, because I was.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Like, never, I had never done that before. I'd never
been to a county fair where you bought you buy
an animal and then it goes to get slaughtered. And
it's like sort of a sad thing because kids and
we went there. Since you're like a candidate, you're learning everything.
People are like all these kids, they raised them from
the time they're a baby, and then they take them

(19:09):
here and this is like the moment that the pig
gets to shine, because then they were shining. Yeah, they were,
they shimmered, they had like, yeah, they had glitter on them.
I mean they were like Sephora pigs. But they were
then slaughtered and it was horrifying because these kids were
actually crying while they were out. Were you there, No,
but you bought the pig to then slaughter it. I

(19:30):
don't I don't that's why you buy it.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, but I don't think did we send it to
get slaughtered or did we.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
Just no, no, they did slaughter it.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Well, you just dashed my drain.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
No, it's not in my back.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
But we got we got like a good pig too.
It was like the runner up, second best.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
It was. Yeah, it was very shiny. It was it
had been well taken care of by it's girl. And
the girl was so sad. I mean, I can't imagine,
Like I I read Charlotte's Web when I was a kid,
and I'm like, wait a minute, what I'm buying this pig?
And then it's yeah, it was very depressing. Yeah, the
learning experience.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
And then you bought a pig. And then on the
ride home, we stopped at a gas station and we
were all hungry, very hungry because even though we did
food porn, I don't think anybody ate anything.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yeah, I don't think I did, but that was the
one time I ate. None of you did.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, So then we started a gas station. We got
a bunch of like candy and stuff. And then on
the ride home, you got the call from Trump and
you had candy and doctor Pepper everywhere, and I got
a picture of it, and we couldn't use it because
you just had candy and Popper, Doctor Pepper all over
the car.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
We've never released the picture.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
The sad thing is, after a while, I think I
got rid of the picture. I think I formatted my
card and it was lost.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
I know, So sad, I say, we might have to
release the dime.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
I wish I have a nice one where you were
getting a call from Ben Carson though, Oh we can pretend.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yeah, right, everybody knows. Now, Sarah came in late and
you were just there to help us because we were
getting brutally attacked by the media. So she came in.
She was like this, you were so good at what
you did. I remember I was we were talking earlier.

(21:27):
I remember there was one in particular story and I'm
not sure I think it's the one that you were
talking about, but you were just like, I'm taking this
off the bus. We were on the bus at that point.
The bus was also an interesting experience. So we had
this bus that Parry Johnson had loaned us and we
were borrowing from him, and the bus was completely wrapped

(21:48):
so you couldn't see out the windows because you know,
like Tutor Dixon was on the outside. It was like
being in a submarine. So we had to strap Kyle
into the front seat where you're like just tangle like
a little bit. Maybe because he got sick on the
bus from being in there. But I remember one time
I was like, I cannot be trusted around things. So

(22:08):
we were just I think we're actually driving on the
we were on the highway. Yes, when I was gin's
what I'm gonna say, I was like, I wonder what
that button does. And it turns out the button opens
the window, the giant side window of the bus, which
might have helped you in your in your sickness mode.
But it was the bus driver was not wrong, not happy.

Speaker 4 (22:30):
It's like the entire right side of the bus just
all of a sudden, it was like, oh there's the highway.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yeah, don't do that, don't push that button. They should
have a bigger warning label.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
That was like ten days, wasn't it.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
The bus tour.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Yeah, yeah, it was horrible.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
No, it was not.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Yeah, it was maybe for somebody to get carsick, but
that was there were only like four people on the campaign.
I got carsick.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Usually usually I'm fine in a car, but there was
no looking out except the front windows.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
There's like the seat of shame at the front of
the bus that you it was over the stairs, so
like folded out.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
And you're like, yeah, I was in a high chair,
That's what it was. Like.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
It's great. That was one of my favorite things. Anyway,
Sarah tell us about what how you got to how
I joined the campaign.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
Well, I got a call from someone that I'd previously
worked for that knew you, that was from Michigan. And
this was like several months into the campaign I think
for you, so you were on my radar. But they
were just like, oh, yeah, she might at some point
want to hire someone. I said, okay, well that's interesting.
At the time, I was working for Procter and Gamble
and Cincinnati doing marketing. And then I think it was

(23:42):
I was I remember distinctly when I got the official
call that you were looking to hire someone.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
I was.

Speaker 4 (23:47):
My mom happened to be in town that morning and
I was like breakfast with her. Our campaign manager called
me and said, hey, can I put you on the
phone with Tutor right now? And I was like, oh yeah,
hold on second, let me walk outside. It's pouring down
rain outside, so I had to like go find this
little tunnel. I'd never talked to you before, so I
was like, I have to find somewhere that's quiet so

(24:07):
I can look professional here. And I get on the
phone and he puts me on with you, and I
think Kyle was on there too. I think we talked
for like fifteen minutes, and I think by the end
of it, I was like, Okay, yeah, I'll move to
Michigan next week, and I did, so I went. I
think that was over Labor Day weekend. I went into
p ANDNG the next day and was like, hey, by
the way, I'm leaving going out to Michigan again. And

(24:30):
then I moved up to Michigan and who knows. The
first couple of days were just chaos.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Well, yeah, yeah, what was the day.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
What was your first day?

Speaker 4 (24:38):
I think it was that month, first Monday after Labor Day.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Okay, I had to go back to where you were
at the very end, so you didn't see a lot
of the craziness, but you were there, so there was
So Kyle is a quiet He's a low talker. We
all get annoyed the fact that Kyle is a low talker.
This is one of my favorite stories of the campaign
because Kyle will sit in the front seat and talk
and no one else in the car can hear him,

(25:03):
and they always assume that he's trying to whisper, so
no one hears him. And I'm like, he's just a
low talker. So we would yell at him all the time,
but he would never talk louder. And then we had
Tulca Gabbard with us for a part of the campaign
and like halfway through the day, Kyle is talking to her,
just to her, no one else, and she goes, is

(25:23):
that like a thing you do? And he was like
what And she was like, the low talking, being really quiet,
is that your thing? And the look on his face
was he was completely appalled. And I know the only
reason he was completely appalled was because we were all
sitting there like, hmmm, somebody else noticed.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
Yes, yes, that was a little embarrassing.

Speaker 5 (25:43):
He says, very quietly, what was that? That was a
fun day though, because okay, so this is also one
of my favorite stories. As you noted, we didn't get
we literally could get candy at the end of the day,
like we never stopped for food, and it was whatever
food you could get, was you were just going to
take it right, so and we ate a a lot

(26:05):
of interesting little places, but oftentimes we didn't actually stop
for food.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
So Tulsie Gabbard has she is a vegan, right, Is
that right?

Speaker 2 (26:12):
I think so?

Speaker 1 (26:13):
She so she had a very specific diet. So we
had one day where we are at the Polish American Club.
We had this big event and she was there, and
then we come back to the bus and they have
this nice vegan meal for her, the campaign team. They
bring it in a to go box and it looks delicious,
and then they bring me Perrogi's and sauerkraut, which also

(26:33):
looked delicious, but it was obviously not the same as
this fancily prepared meal. I just got something whatever was
left over in the tins in the Polish American Club,
and I felt like I was like, you know, like
sitting in my corner like eating my food, you know.
And she comes up and she's like, so do you
always request Polish food? And I was like what? And

(26:54):
she's like, is that what you do? Do you want
to have Polish food ever you go? And I was like, oh,
she's thinking this because people care about what she wants
to No one cares about what. I would just take
your souer kraut later. And I'm like and I'm like,
oh my gosh, Now she thinks I'm like mars sour crowd.

Speaker 4 (27:14):
No, because anything you want on a bus all day
with people.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
How horrible I would be as a person if I
were like, get me, where's this our crowd? And so
I was just like, oh no, huhuh. This was just
these are the I get the leftovers. That's I don't
get the pecan.

Speaker 4 (27:35):
No, looking back, I don't really know why we didn't
also just get you food as well.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
I mean it was fine because we were used to.
It was fine.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
We had like full days, like as full as you
could possibly do it without violating some kind of law.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah. I remember being like whoever was scheduling at the time.
I remember at one point being like, you, guys, I've
had four children. There has to be a bathroom break
built in at some point, like this cannot be.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
Because the bathroom on the bus didn't work, did it.

Speaker 4 (28:11):
I think we told people it didn't work because we
didn't want to go there, and it did work.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Don't you know, aren't you a resident of the bus?

Speaker 2 (28:19):
No? I did not use the bathroom when I slept
on the No, of course not.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Why would I because you were there all night, I know, But.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
I was sleeping in the back room. There's no access
to the bathroom and I was petrified from opening that
door because I thought that the bus would be parked
at the.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
Okay, I want to clarify, this was one night and
you wanted to sleep on the bus. We did not
force this.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
As soon as I heard that we were getting a bus,
I asked the campaign manager, can I sleep on the bus,
And every time I asked he said no. But then
this one night we found out that one of the
staff members didn't get a hotel room. It wasn't booked
for him. And I was like, oh, he can just
have mine and I can sleep on the bus. And

(29:03):
at that point the hotel I think was pretty full,
so I don't know if they could have booked him
another room. And so the campaign manager was just like, fine,
you can sleep on the bus. Today. It was my day.
And every time we had a rally, we would just
park the bus at a hotel and then drive it
to the rally spot the day. For this, for some reason,

(29:24):
we decided that the night that I slept on the bus,
we would just leave it at the spot where the
rally was going to be. So I was, I was
on the bus, and I was in my little back
room and I was sleeping on the floor. And I
woke up at like five am and I heard a
bunch of banging outside the bus and I was like,
what is that? And it was people setting up the
stage for the rally, because we had a really early

(29:46):
morning rally the next day or the day, and so
I was just so scared because I was awake on
this bus that people had no clue I was on.
They were making a bunch of noise. I had no
clue how effective the actual wrap of the bus was,
Like could people see through? It was possible. So it
was just constantly paranoid that people were watching me through

(30:08):
the wrap of the bus. And that was probably the
most terrifying three or four hours of the campaign.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Was there There was a bed back there like you.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
No, there was like a sofa, but it was curved
like a sea, so you couldn't really lay in it
that well.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
So you like chose to be in the position on
the floor.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Yeah, basically, would.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
You sleep on the bus again? If you were offered one, but.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
It would have to be parked at a parking lot
in a hotel, just because I would like to have
been able to get off that you could have Well, no,
because I had been told it wasn't working.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, I think I started that. Actually that does not surprise,
but it actually checks out, Sarah.

Speaker 3 (30:50):
It's a little little personal to be close to.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
It was a bad spot on the bus.

Speaker 4 (30:57):
I think there was a definite only number one ship
you had to go there would.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
Yeah, I was. We used as story no one showered,
but when the bus was moving it was loud, so
you wouldn't like hear someone going to the bathroom. What
about the smells, Yeah, I think I will. There was
the number one part two of that and apparently you
got a different memo I no use the bathroom.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Orle Yeah that was really wow. So you tell me, yeah,
well I was. I would have probably been too scared
to use the bathroom on the bus just because there
would be people around.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
I don't care. I mean, let's take a quick commercial break.
Will continue next on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Do you
have any other anecdotes?

Speaker 3 (31:48):
Well, I would I would just say you're talking about
the rallies and the bus the the number of people
that turned out two events that I've been around Michigan
politics for a while, and the amount of people that
would turn out for a governor's race rally was incredible
and one of the very few events that I didn't

(32:10):
go to, like because you can probably count those on
one hand. From the very beginning was the at that
farm in Genesee County or wherever that was, and the
amount of people that turned out. But when we did
the whole tour through you know, sort of the border counties,

(32:31):
hundreds and hundreds of people would turn out to these rallies.
It was the energy that people had, and I think
it was because you were I think the rallies fed
off the energy that people had from the debates and
your performance and the debates, but also people were just

(32:53):
sick of Whitmer and they wanted somebody fighting back, and
you were doing that.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Well. A fun fact that I think a lot of
people don't know is that we actually received the most
votes of any Republican gubernatorial candidate in history in Michigan.
So we had a very high turnout, not high enough,
but I to this day will say that the Democrats
have done a great job of coming into Michigan and
infiltrating all different areas, and I mean, you look at

(33:20):
the counties that are the biggest counties, and I don't
think we've put the focus that we needed to into
those counties. And they're slowly being peeled away by Democrats
and they are doing a great job of getting messaging
and educating. And everybody says to me, all, is Trump
going to win Michigan and will Trump win the country?
And I just say that we are not at We

(33:43):
were not at that point in our campaign, and I
didn't know because when we were coming to you know,
this is my first campaign, and when we're coming to
the end, I'm like being told, you know, there's so
many moving parts, and you have a team that's telling
you there's a ground game coming in. They're going to
do all the work, and they're going to get out
the vote in the and tee ballots will be chased
and all of that, and none none of that happened.

(34:04):
And I think none of that happened. And we still
had this high number of votes, so Michigan is winnable,
but we didn't win. And I believe it was solely
because we didn't have the organization on the ground that
they had and the education. They were doing these ads
that were everywhere, and we couldn't play ads. We didn't
have enough money, but we also didn't have the strategies

(34:25):
that they had. But that's my concern with everybody who's
super comfortable with November with Trump. I'm like, don't get
so comfortable. Don't feel like you can just step back
and not do anything. There's so much that needs to
be done and the media is brutal and Sarah was
a part of that. She saw the media here. It's
media in Michigan is a nightmare. They hate Republicans. They

(34:46):
don't even try to hide it.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (34:47):
I mean, I've worked in multiple states, worked in DC,
and I've never seen state media. And I say that
as state media because they worked directly for Gretchen Whitmer
like I have in Michigan. I mean, there is nothing
get They carry her water till the end. And you
talk about the debates. I think, especially up until we
were able to have our first debate with her, they

(35:08):
could the media could just write whatever narrative they wanted
about her, and she loved it because it was all
glowing pieces about her because no one fully knew what
you were capable.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Of at that point.

Speaker 4 (35:17):
And then I think, you know, we can tell the
story about how those debates went down, but I think
once you were on the stage with Whitmer and she
had to go toe to toe with you, suddenly it
was like the rug was pulled out from under the
media and they had to face the facts a little
bit more that they've been carrying water for a woman
that truly was not at her best.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
Yeah, I was. I was doing a lot of tests
in the primary. One of them was the handling the
media requests and all of that. And so right after
you won the primary, obviously the next big task was
selecting a running mate and then getting that person through
the convention. And there were some of your former opponents,

(35:59):
you know, didn't care who you wanted as a running mate.
They wanted to go to the convention and try and
be the running mate and you know, just displayed their
uh personalities there. But what happened was right after the primary,
I had a couple different TV reporters and station representatives

(36:20):
reach out and say, we'd like to, you know, begin
scheduling these debates and so they were coming to me.
The campaign manager was going to be, you know, managing
and negotiating, negotiating all of that. And the way that
the debates happened was we said to one of these reporters,

(36:43):
which should we name the person who cares? So Rick
Albyn from Channel eight would tv H called and said,
you know, we want to do these debates, and so
he was one of them, and so I sent him
to the campaign manager. The campaign manager just said, we've
got to get through the convention, which was just a

(37:04):
couple of days away. I mean, it was something that
could have waited. So once we get through the convention,
then you know, let's negotiate the terms and the dates
and all of that. That day, the Whitmer campaign puts
out we've accepted two dates and they were one was
the middle of October and the other one was the

(37:26):
end of October. And of course ballots go out and
think of how.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Pathetic that is. She knew she couldn't debate, That's what
it was. She knew she would fail miserably. I didn't
know she was so bad. I didn't know she would
be so pathetically bad at it. But I had never
debated before. So to me, it was shocking that she
wouldn't do it until after absentee ballots were out. Because
she was an attorney, she was a prosecutor. You would

(37:53):
think that she would be phenomenal, she would want to
get to the debate stage.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
And a long term legislator. She had been in the
legislature for a decade in the House and the Senate.
She was the Senate minority leader. So she was getting
all kinds of media attention and was trying to articulate
a message. But my point about all of that was
that the media didn't say, no, for the good of
the voters, we're going to have debates earlier. They just

(38:19):
went right along with what the Whitmer people want.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
In this state was afraid of her. There's no people
don't like her. They're scared of her. That was the
overwhelming we used to say. No matter where we went,
people would say, we're just afraid that she'll come after
us if we support you. Were afraid of what she'll
do to us because she had been known for shutting
down businesses, taking people's license if they went against her.

(38:42):
She used the power of government to really crush them
and hurt them. But we had no idea what the
debates would be like, and so we're practicing the debates
and we had the person that was playing Whitmer, and
it was a guy, and he was so good at it,
and he would say things like, well, that's just not true,
and I thought that this is not how she's going

(39:02):
to act. The whole time I kept thinking, but he
was really funny, but I kept thinking, I am, she's
going to have better responses than this. But it was
so spot on. Oh my gosh, we got in that room.
Then I would say something and she would have that response,
and it was almost it would almost throw me off
because it would be the exact facial expression, her hands
would move the same waymen. He had her down so good,

(39:23):
and she was so.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
Panicked because she sorry. She's just so predictable. And that's
I think what people need to understand going forward, is
that she's so predictable. And so as people talk about,
you know, she's going to run for president and she's
a you know, what a compelling candidate she would be
and everything, they haven't actually looked at her in terms

(39:45):
of studying her personality and studying how she responds to
things and how she acts and all of that, and
I think once people actually do that, she's not going anywhere.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
She's so easily flummixed.

Speaker 4 (39:59):
That's the I remember that first debate. It was a
closed debate, so I think I could only go in afterwards.
It was just you and Whitmer and Rick Alvin. I
can't remember who else was doing the debate that day.
And I walk in after it's all said and done,
to get you ready for the media scrum afterwards where
you're gonna take questions from the press. They'd let everybody in,
and I walk up to you and I'm like, you

(40:20):
looked at me, and You're like, I don't know, how
do you think that went?

Speaker 1 (40:22):
I was like, it was great, you were awesome because
you did you really, because you were just supposed to
say that no, But I kind to make me feel good,
But I mean, you kicked your butt.

Speaker 4 (40:30):
And then you look behind her podium and she had
like housed like five water bottles in the time of
the debate, and she clearly Whitmer went off into a corner.
All the media flocked to you. I mean every station
in town wanted to talk to you because they knew
that you overwhelmingly beat her, and I mean, as far
as I remember, she ran off pretty quickly because she

(40:51):
was totally taken aback.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Well, and I think that was that's the most telling
part about her. When she panics, she runs, she doesn't respond.
I mean we saw her just last week when the
person came up to her and started yelling at her
in the restaurant. She just freezes. She doesn't know how
to handle it. And so beforehand, you know, you have
all these rules and you might not know this because
I didn't know this, but you have like the station
managers talking to you, and they were like, you know,

(41:13):
the governor has her whole staff, and you have to
be careful of the governor, like you're the second person,
but you're not. You know, she's the governor. So you
can't get near her, you can't, and you can't cross
her path. You can't do anything. And they're like, in
after the debate, you have to wait in the hallway.
And this to me was shocking because I don't think
this is how everybody would be, But they demanded that

(41:34):
I wait in the back hallway so that she and
they showed me where I would have to wait and
I could have one staff member wait with me while
she went upstairs, because she had a group of people
there that she was going to go up and I
guess celebrate with, and then they would come and get
me when she had left the building. Because she couldn't
see me, they and they made it clear. It so
total power play. She couldn't see me. She was demanding

(41:54):
that she not have to see me. And after the
debate they were like, it was she didn't go back
upstairs to see the people. She went walked right. She
never changed because she had changed clothes there and everything.
She never went up to change. She bolted to her
car and took off, and so I didn't have to
wait in the corner in the shame corner. I was
like all right, And I still didn't know. I'm like

(42:17):
I don't know what that means. And then after we
got out, people were like, gosh, she just was horrible.
I think the reason is like, what did she what
could she say? She's governed terribly. The state is a failure.
She couldn't hide behind Barbie in a social media post.
You know when you have to actually stand up and
talk about things that really matter. And all she has

(42:37):
is I'm governor Barbie and abortion. That was it, and
abortion was very effective for her. But and she's lucky
she didn't have to run again. But if you are
looking at the state of Michigan, that's why I say
it is a shame if we can't win it because
it has been so destroyed. But it also falls on
us for not having a good ground game and not
educating people you don't have to live like this, I mean,

(42:58):
go to Michigan like. That was another thing. There were
a couple times that we went to other places during
the campaign to raise money and one of them was Dallas,
and I think that was really Oh we went to
Connecticut one time. So I went to Dallas and we
went to Connecticut. Yeah, that was a whole That was
another part where the media was like, but you go
to those cities and they're just like, so much different

(43:21):
than any place in Michigan. There's no place that is
built up that much and has that much activity and
business and prosperity. And we've been through this whole state
and it is dying on the vine. And that was
the thing I think that affected me most during the campaign,
And that was the hardest thing about losing that erase

(43:42):
was all these people that over and over again came
to me and said help us. It was not it
was not like hey rah rah, We're on your team.
It was devastation. Please please do something to bring this
state back. People who remembered state when it was good
and the state has been totally destroyed. And that's the

(44:05):
shocking thing to me about politics is like, how does
nobody see this? And I think now that we're on
the inside, we see so much more of the back
deals the parties. I mean, there is a lot of
uniparty stuff that goes on, and people that are the
puppet masters of politics are oftentimes people who are lobbying

(44:27):
for their own good and they are putting their money
in different places so that it comes back to them,
and sometimes it can be very discouraging. Let's take a
quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tutor Dixon podcast.
At the beginning of the campaign, somebody said to me,
I talked to somebody else who had been a governor,

(44:49):
and he said, my recommendation to you is your ten
closest people, keep your ten closest people around you, and
at the end of the campaign, you will still have
five people that you trust and I mean that was true.
It's like, man, the people that you thought you knew.
I mean that was the other shocking thing. People that
we'd been friends with our whole lives, like our whole

(45:11):
adult lives here in Michigan just turn on you. They
do terrible things to you. Like politics is so personal
and cut throat, and they're just so people are so
obsessed with it that it's like they'll call you up
and talk to you and then they will take what
you say and twist it and turn it. And oh man,
I was like.

Speaker 4 (45:29):
This is our side, you know, Yeah, this isn't even
then you had the media on top of it and
the Democrats and.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Yeah, it's off to the races. It was shocking, and
yet we're still here.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
I mean it. It was tough for me because I
mean I was in high school before then, so all
my friends were really young and I went to high
school and grand lets. Yeah, so I was the only
eighty year old in high school.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
Joe Biden in high school.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
But like, all of my friends were definitely not so
portive of you. And at one point one of my
one of my closest friends texted me, I think this
was at convention, so I was already I had my
mind on a bunch of other stuff. And she texted
me and was like, dude, you're selling your soul to
do this, and I just I read that, and I just,

(46:19):
first off, I couldn't. I couldn't put myself in the
position of texting somebody that because all I did was
take the pictures, like that was my job. I wasn't
in charge of policy. I wasn't in charge of strategy.
I took pictures. And secondly, what does it matter who
I work for? I mean, we had been friends since

(46:41):
sixth grade and this was this was after high school.
We had been friends our entire like middle and high
school career and then have I haven't talked to her
since and it and that story, I mean, you've had
stories like that. That story is very common.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
I know, but this is not how it was when
I was young. I do not well. I also wasn't
into politics, so you can argue this with me because
you were a politic person of politico. As a child,
I don't have.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
Any friends, so I didn't lose any friendship.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
But I don't remember in college or like high school.
In high school, I didn't know what anybody thought about politics,
and then it just wasn't a thing. Now it's I
guess it's social media though. And we also didn't have
the twenty four hour news cycle. Like I remember going
home from school and watching you know, shows like Friends,
and then the news came on at ten o'clock because

(47:39):
we were on the Central time zone, so the news
came on at ten o'clock and that was the only news.
Like my parents didn't watch news all day long. And
now we're so tuned in, but it's not news anymore.
Like we're watching that Joe Scarborough thing today where he's
like the New York Times is growing Joe Biden essentially,
you know, putting out these polls and it's messing with

(47:59):
people minds. It's because the people on the news, and
I say this from a place of knowing this, they're
trying to tell you come to our side, Come to
our side, because it's not news anymore. It's opinion.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
It is it's affirmation of beliefs.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
It's what did they what do they call it? It's
some infotainment now, yes, yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:23):
This is where the left exells though, because they want you,
you have to be part of the group. And then
they're very good at demonizing anyone that's on the other side. So,
I mean Asteban talks about it. You're taking pictures, you're
doing a job. You know, you don't go to someone
else and criticize their career. But in politics, for some reason,
that's like the one area that you're able to just
personally attack like you never would be able to in
any other industry.

Speaker 3 (48:44):
I think a big reason is because there's this mentality
now that if you don't validate me, and if you
don't accept me, then you hate me. And it's like,
if you don't you know, just do if you don't
believe everything that I believe, then it's such a you know,
shocking sort of hate and you just you must.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
Hate me, and it turns into you're a horrible person.
And that's the part that's very odd, and I think
that's the part that is hard to get people to run,
and normal people to run. I mean, when I was running,
there was not a single person that had been elected,
and we had twelve people in the race, you know,
and we kept saying, some legislator are going to get

(49:25):
in and they're going to say, you know, I have
all this experience and there was no one. And I
think it's because it is so brutal and like soul sucking,
and you do have that situation and then and I
feel bad about it, you know, I'm like, oh my gosh,
and I feel bad because I have even a girlfriend
of mine who at the end of the race was like,

(49:46):
posted on Facebook instead of calling me, post on Facebook
if I'm so glad I never have to see a
commercial about the perfect example again, because they attacked me
because I had talked about how they manipulated all these ads,
and so the one ad that was the most powerful,
which Whitmer admitted to, knowing that it was cut and paste,

(50:06):
like a cut and paste that that's not what I said,
that she doctored it, right, she admitted to this, But
that doesn't matter because it's like the court of public opinion.
So this ad goes out and they asked me, you know,
do you think a fourteen year old should have to
give birth? And I said, that's the perfect example of
how terrible this law is, because predators can force a

(50:27):
girl to go and get an abortion over and over again,
and there's no parental consent, and no one would know
this is happening, and then later in the interview, I
set a life as a life, and they cut that
and put it together so it made it look like
I said, getting raped is a perfect example of why
you should have to give birth. It was terrible, but
I mean talk about looking like a monster, you know.

(50:48):
And for me, I am pro life and that I
am not ashamed about. But I said, the whole time
people can vote, they can vote for that, and they
don't have to vote for Whitmer. It's a choice of
the state. And I think that's the bit thing that
Trump has been saying, like, hey, yeah, I overturned Roe v.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
Wade.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
People wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. Look, the Democrats are
the ones that brought the court case to the Supreme Court.
It wasn't the Republicans. They were the ones that wanted
the Supreme Court to rule on this. I'm sure they
knew they would be able to run on this across
the country and then they could have the most radical
laws across the country and the states that they wanted it.
And so it goes back to the states. But in
the meantime, it just destroys people because they use it

(51:28):
as such a terrible weapon. And so I had people
say to me, you know, will you run for Senate?
And I'm like, you don't want me to run for Senate,
Like this is not the moment for me to run
because people will still say that I would do anything
to overturn that, which I clearly multiple times said, if
this is what the people vote for, I would not
touch it. It's what the people would vote for. And

(51:50):
she kept and she lied about that too, she said,
oh she can, the governor can. I mean, they're just horrible,
but it's all about power. It's all about power.

Speaker 4 (51:58):
Well, and the Democrats as though they're above it all.
But then you hear stories like that and they're just
as devious. I mean, they will lie to get what
they want, and at the end of the day, they're lying,
and they pretend as though they're so far above this.
What is it, Michelle Obama, when they go low, you
go high. I mean, it's just the exact opposite of that.
They lie because they feel as though they're doing this

(52:19):
for some greater good, but it's just because it's what
they believe. But then they have to demonize anyone that
doesn't agree with them.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
Right, And I've had multiple people from the campaign, which
that's the first time you told us that story. So
I've apologize to you. I've apologized to Sarah and I mean,
but welcome to the club, Esteban. I'll be your friend.
It's so sad. I feel guilty about it, though, seriously,
because you guys work here, you can't. You get cut

(52:46):
out of things, and that sucks. And I always feel
like if you sat down and talked to me, you
might find out that I'm not the citiest beast that
you think I am. But that's because I'm me. I mean,
so I assume people aren't gonna hate me, but I've
found out that that's not true. It still happens. I

(53:08):
love how joyfully you laugh after you say that. Still
a conservative, Yeah, I'm still one of the bad people
that Joe Scarborough hates. But you know, yeah, I think
about this and what do they really hate? If you
break it down, we're not that far apart. It's it's
the people get triggered with these issues and these ads.
And I mean, we've been getting those abortion ads for

(53:32):
two days now, Sarah and I've been getting abortion ads
from the left that are saying Donald Trump is gonna,
I don't know, take away all our rights.

Speaker 4 (53:40):
It's gonna be Handmaid's Tail all over again.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
It's such blogne. I mean, it's like that's all you
have to run on. And it makes me sad, Like
it makes me sad that people your age can't see
through that. But I don't know what I was like
when I was your age. It probably was stupid too.
I mean not that I'm saying that.

Speaker 4 (53:54):
Wow, Okay, I quit the rest of us at this
table to say we don't No.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
I mean I would not. I think that it's I
wouldn't blame you for any of that. I mean, I
wouldn't put any You were run like you never you
weren't running as a like, you were running as you.
I guess people people show their true colors, and when
they do that like that, it's out in the open.
My friend obviously didn't value me as a friend, because

(54:25):
if they did, I probably would still be friends with them.
But I will say this, I.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
Think it's a culture though that has taught students, and
I shouldn't. You're right, I shouldn't say that they're stupid.
I think they've been manipulated by a system, even in
their schools that has said if someone is not like you,
does not believe what you feel strongly in your heart,
you cannot have a relationship. They must be cut off.

(54:51):
And that to me is incredibly dangerous because that's like
the wrong think theory is very dangerous because one to
start attacking people for wrong think and you put them
in a bucket. I mean, that's how you end up with. Okay,
these leftists that are calling for re education camps for
Trump supporters, you know, and then you have a massive

(55:12):
amount of people who are saying, oh, yeah, they do,
they do need to think differently. They are the thought police,
come after you. The wrong think is strong. You have
to be put into a system that's going to re
educate you can come out differently.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
I mean from my perspective, I don't know what happened
to me, but I don't you know, I don't care
who you vote for. My mom.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
We actually never know what Esteban's thinking, which I love
about you. I don't know mean what you think.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
My mom didn't vote for you. She made it very clear.
We joke about it. How we we probably couldn't we
probably we probably shouldn't have voted because we just canceled
each other out, but you.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
For canceling your own mom, that means so much.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
I'm just kidding, but I'm saying, like, there is no
way for me to exist in my sphere of friends
where if I cut people off because they believed something
different than me or they voted differently from me, I
would be in like I would be in a silo
and the only people I talked to would be you four.

(56:16):
Like that's it because all my other friends, all my
other friends, to put it nicely, hated you.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
So at least his mom did talk to me, though.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
Yeah, my mom talked to you. I remember one time
we were just completely randomly. I had no idea you
guys would be there, but we went to get gas
at a gas station and I found you guys at
the same gas station packing because you were going up
north for something. And my mom talked to you, and

(56:45):
it was it was cool because for most parents it
would be kind of scary to ship your kid off
with random strangers you had never met for multiple days
at a time.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
Yeah, my parents were really chill about it. I remember also, especially.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
Since she was like, and I'm not voting for that person.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
Yeah, but like they drove me to places so that
I could meet you guys. I mean I had I
didn't have a driver's license. I got my driver's license
a little after the primary, and I remember that because
I got my driver's license and there was also an
event happening in Lansing. So my very first day with
my license, I had to drive to Lancing to meet

(57:26):
you guys at the capitol for a press conference. And
that was scary. That was really scary.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
I can't even imagine it. Your glasses get stepped on.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
Her glasses got stepped on.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Then you have to drive home with no.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
Well, I didn't drive home. I drove with my dad,
So that was because he needed his car. I didn't
have a car either, so he needed a car. So
I drove with my dad and then he drove back.
My glasses got stepped on, so thank goodness he drove back,
because otherwise I would just be stranded in Lansing. Oh man, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
But what was such a good experience.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
It was a lot of fun. The entirety of the
campaign was probably the coolest thing that will have ever
happened to me.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
No, yeah, that's just because you're still in your twenties.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Well, it's all downhill from here. I've learned.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
Thanks. That was just campaign number one for you asked
about it was.

Speaker 3 (58:18):
Like, hey, I think I hit the bottom yet.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
Not yet, it gets worse.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
Great.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
He doesn't even say anything. He's like, no, it's gonna
get better.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
I mean, we'll see, but I think that if it
doesn't get better, this was a really cool experience, Like, truly,
this was I don't know what I did in a
past live to get so lucky in this one.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Oh my god, gosh, I'm hi, that's so sweet.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
Can I get a raise now?

Speaker 1 (58:50):
I see what this is about. Okay, Well, we've taken
a lot more time than we normally take, but I
think that this was kind of I mean, for us,
it was really fun to go down memorily memory lane.

(59:11):
And we would like to honestly, we'd like to do
this more often where we have all of us kind
of chatting about we'll chat about news.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
Of the day.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
What I love about this group and that I get
to work with every single day, and I am blessed
to work with them, And it is kind of this
motley crew that came together for this campaign. And I
look back and We had a great time with everybody.
Like I really look back at our team and think
our team was really fun and worked hard. No one ever,

(59:40):
I know, I don't remember anyone ever complaining. They probably
probably have blocked that out in front of it. To me, yeah,
not to me, thankfully. They were very good to me.
Was I like a tyrant?

Speaker 2 (59:50):
No? Okay, No, they mainly complained about other people. Okay,
everybody was super nice to you. About Sarah.

Speaker 4 (59:58):
Yeah, I'm not even going to comment on that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
You weren't supposed to talk about that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Sarah was she I had to be tough all the
time though, because she had to deal with the media.
So I don't remember you being tough on anybody else though,
except for lying about the bathroom, which obviously.

Speaker 4 (01:00:21):
Yeah, which now you're finding that out later on, but
you know at the time that was for the good
of the group.

Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
I mean, I think everybody respectfully knows No. Number two,
but sometimes Number one had some emergencies.

Speaker 4 (01:00:32):
You like to think, but you learn a lot of
people about people.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
That's true. I guess there are people who would just
drop a deuce in that care.

Speaker 4 (01:00:40):
We were a male heavy campaign team, so I just
I don't like to make assumptions on anything.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Because girls don't do that exactly. Yeah, girls don't do that.
So anyway, on that note, we'll we try out you
let us know, end us a message, let us know
if you enjoyed hearing from us. We want to do
this more. We want to have all four of us together.
And I was saying, I am blessed to be with

(01:01:07):
these characters every single day, and so I want you
to get to know them too, because they are so
fun and they have lots of opinions and all different.
That's the beauty of it. Like Kyle and I are
really old. He will always tell everybody I'm older than
him by a year. So he likes to tell me
I'll never be as old as you. So I am
the oldest person here. And then Sarah is our resident

(01:01:30):
millennial and like, what are you? You're not a millennial, right,
I don't know? You're a gen xer. I I don't know, No,
you're a gen zer.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
You turn I turned twenty one in I don't know
how many days a month, maybe two months.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
So someone in their twenties, someone in their thirties, two
people in their forties. One at the end of that
and no one lets me forget. So I think we
have an interesting perspective on all of these different topics
that are going on in the world. And I love
having you guys here because you're from I think both
of you come from the generation of people who feel like,
if it hurts me, I have to cut it out,

(01:02:08):
like I have to block what up the wall, not
be near it. And that's something that I was hearing
someone the other day say, this has become a real problem,
like what we're seeing on college campuses right now. Part
of the problem is that that mentality has been so
strong in your generations of like, if I don't agree
with it, there's no debate. We don't We lost debate

(01:02:29):
at some point where it was like, we can like
your friend, I mean, why wouldn't she call you even well,
I say, it's your generation, my friend instead of calling me,
which I then of course called and was like, hey, why.
I like when people do that to me that I
know on Facebook, then I like to call them and
they never answer. But but it just this interesting to

(01:02:50):
me that we've become this culture that stopped talking to
each other, and we also became a really mean culture
where you can send a message and then like peace
out and never talk to the person again. It's like,
what fully ghost people?

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
That's yes, and you were simultaneously more connected than ever,
but also more disconnected than ever because you can easily
just shut somebody out if they say something you don't like.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
I know, this is not something that happened in my generation.
I mean we didn't but we didn't have cell phones
and we didn't have it was better. I sound like
my mom now. When I was a childhood, life was better.
We had to go outside and.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Yeah, we'll blame the internet, blame alcore.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
Did you have play dates? Were you that generation?

Speaker 4 (01:03:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Of course I had play dates.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
Did you have plates? Yeah? If you had play dates,
of course I would have played it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Like that's that's beyond age. Everybody has plays.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
I still have play dates. Yeah, no, but like arranged
play dates. It wasn't called a play date when I
was a kid. It was it was called al d
Like when I was a kid, did you have plays?

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
I mean I played with kids like it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
Wasn't It wasn't like a term. I don't remember.

Speaker 3 (01:03:51):
I've never heard of that. I've heard of it since
being a parent.

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
Not ours was just he went outside and found out
who else was outside and hung out.

Speaker 4 (01:03:58):
Oh yeah, my mom would be like, just be home
when it gets dark, please, yeah, And then maybe I
would be.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
Oh my gosh, I don't know how your mom looked
through you. She's very defiant, which is it works for
some situations, not all not all all right, So we're
going to do this more often, but for now we're
going to let you all go. Thank you so much
for joining us on the Tutor Dixson Podcast. Thank you
all for being here and sharing your stories about me

(01:04:28):
in the campaign. It was fun, So stay tuned, come
back for more Tutor Dickson podcasts. You can always go
to Tutor dixonpodcast dot com and as you can subscribe
right there or head over to the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and join us
next time on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Have a blessed
day everyone,