Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Elon Musk has donated seventy five million dollars to Donald Trump's campaign. We have such a great show for you today. Legendary campaign manager Stuart Stevens talks us through the campaign. Then we'll talk to Joyce Craig about her run for New Hampshire governor.
But first the.
News, Molly, we're all talking about closing messages now that we are less than three weeks away from the selection happening. What are you seeing here with Vice President Harris's closing argument.
I don't know that this is the closing argument, but I definitely think this is part of what she's trying to do here, which is again create a permission structure for Republicans who are not thrilled with Trump to vote for the Democrat. And she's doing a rally tonight in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. That's a Republican, very kind of upper middle class suburb, a lot of Republicans who are college educated.
She's trying to sort of get these voters who are the kind of voters who have been more open to Harris. She has a bunch of people who had been in the Trump administration or who were Republicans joining her, which I think is really smart. She's going to have a sit down interview with Fox. This is really unusual for obvious reasons. Though Walls has done Fox Sunday twice now and he's done fine. I think it's really really smart
to try to pierce the echo chamber. And again, remember she's not necessarily going to win a ton of voters for Fox. But this is all about cutting the margins. This is all about picking up votes. Maybe you know, Bucks County is different, but there are certain places here where they're going to places that are red parts of the country where they're just trying to shave off ten
fifteen percent of the vote. So maybe he loses thirty seventy as opposed to eighty twenty, and she's able to use that ten percent to get her over the top and the rest of the state. So I think it's really smart, and I think we're going to see more of that over the next three weeks. It's a really good organized way to run a campaign.
A contrast, I spent a lot of my time on a former podcast where we documented QAnon very heavily enough. When I see the word shadow government, it's usually coming from someone wearing a tinfoil hat. But mister Trump just said it. What do you make of that?
So Trump is sharpening his closing message, and his closing message is crazy. He had an interview with Glenn Back. He said, and again, remember Glenn Beck, perhaps not the stable guy. You'll remember he's been in New York Times saying he wasn't going to be so far right. Then he went back to the far right. I mean, he's he's done it all.
Glenn Back.
One might say he sees where his bread would be buttered, and he picks them.
Is where the money is.
Trump claims that there's a shadow government that's running the country instead of President Biden.
By the way, I love a Trump.
Quote because whenever you read it, you realize the guy cannot speak English. So here it is. This is a direct, verbatim quote. And that's why when you read a verbatim quote, I want you to listen.
To just how unhinged it is.
I think it's a it's a committee of people, and they might not even know who the committee is. They may not even know themselves. Does that make sense, question Mark? And now I would like to add, no, it does not. It's a group of people at that are in different levels of DC.
This is giving real. Uh. The first rule of fight club is you don't mention fight clubs type stuff.
I mean, it's just an incredibly stupid thing to say, and it speaks to Donald Trump's fascinating, authoritarian slash insane closing message. You will remember he did boobop for thirty seven minutes earlier this week.
Oh the swaying and the dancing, the bopping. Yeah, it's going to stay in my brain forever. Okay, so let's take it down to Georgia. We're starting to see some early voting data and the news is looking good.
Dare I say, well again, you know, we don't know, but early voting in Georgia shatters records. More than three hundred thousand votes cast in Georgia.
That's humongous.
One of those votes in Georgia was a guy called Jimmy Carter, who had said that he wanted to stay alive so that he could vote for Vice President Harris. On Wednesday, he filled out of ballot and he dropped it in a dropbox right in Sumter County Courthouse near his hometown of Planes. It's pretty cool to hear that Jimmy Carter was able to stay alive long enough to vote for Vice President Harris.
Now, we just kind of worked hard.
I have to be honest with you.
Yeah, I mean we're all a little misty eyed here about one hundred year old Jimmy Carter.
I mean, I did see three hundred thousand of this headlight. I thought it was referred to his age, but yes, so listen. Kamala Harris has been doing some very unconventional media hits and one of those was she went on with breakfast club hosts Charlie Bade the God, which is it for those people who are totally illiterate to this is one of the most listened to black talk radio hosts out there.
Yeah, somewhere between five and ten million listeners, and it's probably more than that. And it's really the group of people. They're politically active. They're not all black, but some are black. It's a really good way. And again we've talked about this earlier, but you know, she went on Call Her Daddy, which was five to ten million women, a lot of Democrats, but a lot of Republicans and independents, and she went on there to talk about issues that these Republican women
might vote on, things like reproductive health. So what she's doing here, she's going to where the votes are. And this is like the difference between media today in twenty twenty four and media in nineteen eighty.
In nineteen eighty, No, but I mean true.
I'm laughing because it's true. It's really did stay the same forever.
Right or even two thousand.
You could go to Time magazine, you could go to Vogue, and you could go to the New York Times and you'd sort of get everybody, and then you'd go on Oprah, you go on something like that.
You kind of get around.
But now media is so different, and these voters have these trusted messengers, and Charlemagne is a trusted messenger for a group, and so I think it's very smart that she's.
Kind of going where it is now.
Charlemagne can be very tough and has done very tough interviews. You'll remember he did a very tough interview with Joe Biden.
To be honest with you, he is notorious even in the entertainment world that he will ask some of the most unfriendly met the right word, but challenging and pressing questions to a whole host of people. Whether it's like a rapper with face tattoos onto a politician.
And so he asked her a question which I actually think. I'm impressed he asked this question because they talked a lot about different stuff. You know, very friendly. Mister Trump should be in prison, and she said yes. But then he asked her if she is too on script. So he said, you know, you tend to bob and weave and she said that would be called discipline. And I think that's a really interesting answer. And you know, that's a criticism people have made of her before. So I
thought that was pretty interesting that he did that. He pushed her on that, and you know, then there was a lot of other conversation. Talked about her economy for Black Americans, and she gave a long answer, and he gave her a hard time, but in a playful way. And I think that's a really interesting and important thing she did there.
Agreed. One of the things I think is always interesting is a scientific technology. I've studied a lot of innovation, and often the inventions have lots of inventors and people who could call themselves the father of things or the mother of things. I don't think Donald Trump, though, has done anything to qualify as calling himself the father of IVF.
Also, it's just very creepy to call yourself the father of IVF. Right, IVF makes babies, and he's going to be the father of all these IVF babies.
So Donald Trump's into town hall with women tonight.
He's trying to appeal to women because he he's losing them because he overturned Roe v. Wade and now women are dying while waiting to get miscarriage care in a town hall with an entirely female audience, right, talking about issues that impact American women because he has this gender gap in polling. He said when an attendee in the crowd asked him his possession on abortion access and in virtual fetalization. And you remember, Republicans are war with IVF.
They have this idea that it's called embryonic personhood, the ideas that an egg plus a sperm is a child and a five celled organism is a person. And so they want to eventually regulate IVF or maybe end IVF because The way IVF works is that sometimes these embryos get discarded and to them to this crew that is considered to be murder, which is insane.
So Donald Trump said, I love this. He goes, I'm the father of IVF.
So I want to hear this question you will say today wrote It wasn't immediately clear whether the former president was talking about his own family or the procedure more broadly. So maybe Donald Trump created IVF and none of us know about it.
I mean, I think this is funny when there's headlines today that Trump said that the fantastically attractive Katie Ritt taught him how IVF works, but yet he's the father of it.
It's all just incredible stuff. An incredible, incredible closing message from Donald J.
Trump.
Stuart Stevens is a legendary campaign manager and the author of The Conspiracy and America Five Ways My Old Party is driving our democracy to autocracy.
Welcome to fast politics, to work.
NICs for asking me to party, Milly or We're.
So happy to have you.
Now. I need you to talk to us about the state of the race.
Right now.
I feel very good about the race, sort of frighteningly, so I think the structure of this race is very stable. I think there's forty seven percent of the country that is MAGA, fifty three percent that's non MAGA. The ask for the Harris Walts campaign to coalesce as much of that fifty three percent be acceptable to them as possible. So we wake up today in a world in which Liz Cheney and Bernie Sanders are supporting the same candidate.
That seems pretty good to me. I think Trump has proven not to be able to move much north of certainly forty seven percent. And you look at the polls, but it's always better when the polls jib with what you're actually seeing. What is he doing to outreach the other voters that's working. I don't see that he's really doing anything. So the question in these campaigns is always would you rather be your guy the other guy? I'd rather be Harris Waltz.
Now, yeah, because it's funny because it's like everyone I know is vacillating between feeling okay and feeling freaked out.
But the thing that.
I'm struck by, and again the polls have not buried that much, is doing everything you could possibly be doing, right, Like she's going on box is trying to go on, Rogan, can you talk to us about this? I mean it feels like a play to trim the margins. Is that what it is? And since you're a campaign guy, you really can speak to exactly how it works.
Yeah, here's the thing. You sit in those rooms and pretty soon you're scratching your head about what can we do that's different and it's really difficult. And you look at the map and somebody says, you know, we should go to Richmond, we should go to Arie, we should go to Detroit, we should go to Grand Rapids. And the answer is yes, you can't do them all. So every day is Sophie's choice, right, and by going one place,
you can't go the other. I think there's also a dirty little secret in campaigning that the correlation between where you campaign and impact on the votes is very dubious.
Oh that's very interesting, you really think so well.
In the Romney campaign, at some point I asked myself, you know, we spend all this time and all this money running all over the world. Doesn't really matter. So we started polling like four days before we went into a market, pulling the day we're in the market, and four days afterwards, and what we found was it was pretty consistently about a point and a half bump, but then that point and a half bump reset within seventy
two hours. So we thought about this and pondered it in profound ways and decided that we didn't know what it meant. We kept doing the same thing. We didn't know what else to do. So, you know, did Hillary Clinton? They say, oh, she lost in Michigan because she didn't go there. Well, that she lose Pennsylvania because she went too much right right right? Who knows? Yeah, So you know,
causality is always the most difficult thing in politics. But you know, if you look at the state of these two campaigns, and I think of it like a sports team, the Harris campaign, to me has composure. They're calm, they have a sense of purpose. They are I think, in a good tone between confident, but not Erica, where at the campaign has clearly lost its composure. I would say this has been true since the day that Biden got out, and there was a question would this be temporary when
they figured out how to run against Harris? And I think the answer is they haven't figured out how to run against Terrace, right So I mean, there's not a poll, a focus group, or a strategist in the world that told Donald Trump, Look, the way to finish this race is saying that we're going to have military tribunals for citizens in generals. That means, like we tested that it works. Great, focus groups love it. Let me tell you he's out
there doing it. There's no focus group or a poll in the world that told him to go out and say you're the daddy of ava, which he did today.
Yeah.
That was crazy, Yeah, crazy and creepy. Yeah, he said that before They're lost.
And you know, we now know the Chris Hasovita according to Daily Beast, you know, making around twenty two million. So I mean, you say to Chris, okay, Chris, you could always threaten to quit if he doesn't do what you say. What are the odds that's going to happen? Not very good? You know, it's an irony here that Donald Trump disposedly great businessman is the biggest sucker for political consult Brad parcels Chris, they just up the truck
and he's like, okay, great. I think that there's a closing argument that the Harris campaign has I've always thought that they needed to do two things. I thought the same for Biden. It transfers to Harris, they need to be for the future. And I was ecstatic when Harris hit on this don't go back thing. But in America we are very hesitant to pass the church backwards. And you know, it is true that no one's been elected president's the seating a member of their own party who's older.
We just don't do that. We go to the younger. And I think they have to be the safe choice. Donald Trump has to be more risky. And I think that they're prosecuting that argument.
And what do you say to people who are like freaking out, she's up one, and she's up two, she's up three. That's not enough to win the electoral college.
What I was doing presidential campaign, someone would say, are you worried about I would stop them there and say, yes, whatever you're about to say, we're worried about it. That's your job. But in this world that we live in now, he saw Hillary Clinton winning by three million, Biden won by seven. I think she'll win by more. I just don't see where the universe of voters available to Trump is expanding. I am super confident that at the end of the day, the Trump Black vote will be under
ten percent. Right, nineteen sixty four, gold Order got seven percent. Twenty twenty Trump got eight that's one point every fifty years. Don't think that's gonna really change, you know. I think the last Biden got like maybe thirteen percent of black men. As always talk about black men, but he got like ninety six percent of black women. Trump will probably do better with black men and black women, but it's going
to average out. So I think that's one of the factors when you look at these polls and they're saying, well, she's getting eighty percent. I've seen this in so many Republican polls. I mean all my life. I saw our candidate getting in states that had a signific black population, good pollsters right up to election day. I can't tell you how many times fifteen, sixteen, seventeen percent of the black vote, but I can tell you how many times it happened. Never, right, No, eight nine, that's what we're
going to get. So there's usually a trend that younger voters tend to gravitate more to the Democratic Party at the end as to Hispanics. So this is startling number that is out there now that for the first time in modern history, Harris is on track to win white women, right. I mean, I think Romney won them by seventeen points, you know, which is again one of my pet little
issues here we don't talk about race enough. I mean, if I said to you Mitt, Romney won voters under thirty against Obama, it's true if we're talking about white voters, Obama had a huge gender gap. With Romney. He won women by like sixteen points. Here you have they're white. Justice. Trump never won the working class if you consider working class was to make under seventy five thousand dollars. Here on whiteworp, Trump loses ninety percent of the evangelical vote
if they're black. There's something luck that's we have to look at that enough and to talk about it, because I think you can make a very good case that all of our politics is driven by race. Trump's coalition eighty five percent white, the country is fifty nine percent white. That is a dynamic that if for the first time a Democrat can win a majority of white women or
white men, that would be extraordinary. And you know, there was a looked like Hillary Clinton was going to win college educated Republican, which Goldwater won college educated republic You know this, But then the COMI letter happened and he lost just enough problem to push Trump up.
And his closing message really is authoritarianism.
Yes, it's you know, he's daring people not to vote for him. It's you know, blaming the Jews. It is going to be your fault if I lose. They don't have any ground game at all.
Right, well they have Elon living in Yeah.
The thing we're to start a superbact. We're going to put up a ground game. If Elon must volt that, it just you know, it shows he knows nothing.
About in Pennsylvania.
Yeah. So I always ask myself, could Elon Must get elected governor of Pennsylvania. I don't think so.
I can't imagine.
Yeah, there's not a long history of you know, South African weirdos getting you wretched. I think the trend here is what kept and theres been a trend. You have to really look at this pre Biden dropout. So Trump and polls say was three points up over Biden. Then you go to Harris. Now Harris is anywhere from two to five points out. That's six or seven points different.
That is a massive shift in today's politics. We wouldn't have seen anything like this since when Clinton was running in third place in May of the ninety two and ended up winning. So I don't know. I mean, I think the race is very stable. It is extraordinary that the Harris campaign hasn't had a disastrous day. I've always said it's impossible to get electric president without being humiliated is how you react to it. But so far they have avoided that. She's performed at a very high level.
I think there's a factor here that this campaign on the ground was built to elect Joe Biden. I think that they looked at this and they said, we're going to have to have a really fantastic ground game to win it. So they overbuilt it, and Harris is inheriting that. So I don't know. I just don't know what aspect of the campaign you would point to and you would say Donald Trump is beating Harris.
Yeah, explained to our listeners why Donald Trump wants you to sing that he's winning.
Oh well, that goes back to his whole you know, positive thinking, the art of positive thinking, to be able to sell people on that. The way that he would sell buildings. This is going to be the highest building or you know, the royals are going to live here. All these lives, He's always sold live It's always been a lie. You know, he's the guy calling gossip. Colin has paid sixth cold. They're saying that, you know, Donald on their soon name, saying Donald Trump is going out
with some moly shar. He's always lived in this fiction world. There is an enthusiasm factor, and there is some data to show that people tend to vote for who they think, to some degree, who they think will win.
But you will.
Remember that she has a ten point higher enthusiasm gap than he does. Right, Democrats are ten points more enthusiastic about their pan today.
Yeah, and all this talk about undecided voters, I really think that's a wrong terminology for it. I don't really think that these voters are so much undecided as they are deciding. Maybe one day they'll be for Harrison. I don't know, Maybe it may it'll be for Trump. They're not thinking about it. But the way they will break is based upon the favorable unfavorables of the candidate. Right, think about it. You wake up an election day, are you going to go vote for somebody of an unfavorable
opinion on no either not going to vote. You're going to leave him off the ballot? Why would give you that? So when you know, you look at poles and you look at undecided, it's Haley. Barbera used to always ask me, what's the ballot and amongst the undercideds, And what he meant was, what's the fave unfavor of one guy against the other guy? Because that will be how they break. Now, if they both have equal unfavorables and favorables, then they'll probably be a wash. But Harris has an advanty with
that huge. So I don't know. I think that the Democratic Party probably, you know, forgetting just the Democratic Party. A lot of Americans, if not the world, have sort of a PTSD after sixteen. But what we forget is Donald Trump has won one race in his life at forty six point one percent of the vote right and Republicans decided that that changed the world, and all every day we knew about politics are wrong. I don't think
it is. And when you look at Trump, like candidates in these states, like the guy ran for governor in twenty two against Shapiro, he got crushed Mark Robinson in North Carolina. If you're gonna get.
Crossed, can we talk about the down ballot candidates for a minute, because, for example, in Wisconsin, you have Tammy Baldwin ahead by four, sometimes as much as eight, sometimes six.
I've seen as little as two.
But he has a range of pulling significantly in a very like definitive way.
Right.
I mean, even though Cook did move it to toss up, I think that most of the calls, if you aggregated him fairly, would show that he's at least as ahead as Rip Scott is in Florida or.
As Ted Cruz is in Texas.
Right.
You know, Ted Cruse may be a little left, but she has a commanding lead that's at least two points. So, but then you have the top of the ticket so tight, and even like Arizona, let's talk about Arizona, you have Reuben Diego ahead by eight, nine, ten points, and then
you have the top of the ticket so tight. So does that mean that there are going to be all of these Trump voters who vote for Trump Diego or does that mean that these people are going to vote for Trump and then leave the bottom of the ticket bike, I mean, can you make this polling disparity makes sense.
Well, it would be very rare to have an undervote in a Senate race versus the presidential right, I think what you're seeing there is the lack of a coherent Republican message and what is the bargain that you get when you vote Republicans? And that's very unusual in a campaign. I mean every campaign that I've we tried to present a bargain. This is what you'll get. Now. Sometimes we are successful some times, but at least there was a
coherent argument to put there. Trump doesn't have that unless you buy that you can't go outside of your house because of you know, aliens or of space.
Well, he's trying to run on the border, right, he's trying to use the border.
I think that it's one of these things that is not as present an issue in people's lives as If you ask him in a poll you worried about the border, you'll probably say yes. I mean no, not at all. Sure, say yes doesn't mean it doesn't mean it's going to decide your vote, which is where you get into this whole thing or regression analysis. You know who's the terrorism? Not many, but how many people are deciding your vote on who's going to be toughest on terrorism. That's a
much small in number. I find it difficult to believe that if Republican loses Lake loses by nine points in Arizona, that Harris won't win. And I think how many of these demic candidate in blues state, I mean, are a battleground state. Are they really out there dying a campaign with Donald Trump? Not a lot? And I think that's very telling. So could already win.
He sure could, right, especially if they're under rating her bullet her what to her performance.
It's very hard. There's a certain limit at which people will not split their votes. I dealt with this in painful in detail when Bill Well as governor ran against John Kerry, a senator. You down and Bill Well had favorables about fifty points higher than John Carrey's, but he lost. Right Now, part of the reason for that was that there was a fall in the sort of conceit because if you liked votes, if you voted for carry, you
got to keep well with governor. Right, But Dole got thirty three percent in Massachusetts, and in all our modeling, dol had to get at least thirty six percent, well to win and you go with thirty six percent, it's not like a big lift. But he got thirty three, and there just is a limit.
You know.
This is what Hogan is dealing with in Maryland. It is how much is Harris going to win Maryland buys? It becomes very.
Difficult, right, It's impossible that there's just not the kind of split ticket voting you need for that, right, It really.
Becomes difficult at a certain point. I mean, if you look at when Ja d Vance was on the ballot in Ohio, the one time he's on the ballot, it is extraordinary that he got four hundred thousand fewer votes than Dewan.
He underperformed about twenty points behind the governor, right.
Sake, I mean four votes. I means four hundred thousand people woke up and said I'm going to go vote with de Want, but I'm not going to vote for this guy Van. That's really really unusual.
And still Trump picked him as his running made.
Yep. So look, I mean, is the race winnable for Trump? I mean you have to say, sure, yeah, one of these two people is gonna win. But I think that the odds that Harris will win are significantly greater. You know, I look at these betting markets. You know, I've always found these to be just sort of indications of lack of knowledge rather than inside knowledge. It never really seemed relevant to me.
Yeah, it doesn't seem like much. Tell me what she should do? What should her closing argument be? What should she be doing now?
I think she ought to be out there constantly contrasting with Trump. I thought they did a brilliant thing. Was he yesterday at the rally? In the ear He seems like a million years ago. Yeah, So somebody came up with the idea like, we need the contrast for Trump. How do we keep Trump? You go, let's put his damn rally on the screen in our rally and show people. And let me tell you, if I was in that campaign,
I would go by that person a drink. That was very simple but brilliant, and I don't do it's ever been done before. So they have to keep it as a referendum on Trump. Trump needs to be the incumbent in this race, and incumbents tend to get what they get in the tracking, and I think that they understand that. Listen, I think they're running a brilliant campaign, and I think you can look back on this at odds are as one of the most perfectly executed campaigns that we've seen.
Ask how that happened, Why it happened. I think a lot of reasons. I think there's a Biden's campaign tream in twenty I think was underestimated and didn't get enough appreciation to beat an incumbent president. The last incumbent president who lost it wasn't in the federal funding system where both candidates got the same amount of money was Herbert Hoover, and he had a bed either. I think they got the better candidate, the better campaign, the better message, and they have more resources.
George Stevens, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you now.
Thank you. Molly.
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be? Well, so are we, which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make a limited series with the experts on what a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now, we have just released the final episode of this five
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Country, So please watch it and spread the word.
Joyce Craig is the Democratic nominee for governor of the Great State of New Hampshire.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Joyce crag Lollie.
It's great to be here.
Thank you.
So tell us what you're running for and what your sort of trajectory is. Yeah, so I am running for a governor of New Hampshire.
For the last six years I served as mayor of Manchester, the largest city in New Hampshire. Have been dealing with our state wide challenges and it's one of the reasons why I'm running. We've gotten very little support from the state and I know we can be doing better in New Hampshire. Reproductive freedom is under attack, our public schools are under attack. We have a housing crisis, and you know, we haven't focused on decreasing energy costs for our residents.
So there's a lot that needs to be done, and you know, as Mayor of Manchester, I have the hands on experience of getting things done and really want to bring results to families across our state.
New Hampshire is a really interesting state because it was for a long time a swing state now less so right.
Yeah, you know what we're seeing now is the majority of voters in New Hampshire are considered purples. They wrote for the people, and you know, in New Hampshire we pride ourselves on retail politics, so we spend a lot of time knocking on doors, having conversations with residents and small businesses, really listening to their concerns and then you know, taking that information back and building policy to make our lives better in New Hampshire. What we're seeing right now
is a coordinated campaign, a really strong coordinated campaign. They have about one hundred employees here with eighteen offices across the state. We have a number of volunteers who are coming out every single day to knock doors, to make phone calls, to write postcards, and you know, I just feel really optimistic in terms of what we can do
in our state. And I'll just mention, you know, the race for governor is the number one flip of opportunity that we have in the country, and so it's critically important that we focus in on this and flip this seat.
I think that's a really important point.
Explain to us why it's so important to have a democratic governor in this state of New Hampshire.
Yeah, so for the last eight years we've had a Republican governor who really has stood in the way of any progress. I mentioned reproductive freedom, and he prides himself on signing the first ever abortion ban in modern history in New Hampshire into effect. He has basically had an education commissioner who, together they implemented a dangerous voucher scheme that's siphoning millions of dollars away from our public schools and putting them toward private and religious schools, which is
absolutely wrong. We've not really done anything to address climate change or decrease energy costs for our residence, and we are in the midst of a housing crisis. We could be doing so much more, and there's a stark difference about, you know, sort of where I stand and where my opponent in this race stands.
New Hampshire has a lot of waterfront Rhode Island has been one of these states that has a lot of waterfront that has been very involved in climate action because of rising sea levels.
Talk to me about what it's like in New Hampshire.
Yeah, so we're encountering the same thing and we are seeing, you know, what we used to call these once in a lifetime storms happening now almost on an annual basis. The state is, you know, making changes and addressing the storms when it comes to infrastructure, but we're doing it year after year after year, and we really need to start focusing on sustainability and making sure what we're doing will withhold these storms and make sure we are protecting
you know, the beautiful state. You mentioned the waterfront that we have here. You know, that's not something that's happened and it's something that we have worked with experts across our state. We put forward an energy policy and we're
focused on doing that. You know, in New Hampshire we pay some of the highest energy costs and we really have to look at how can we decrease costs for residents and businesses and by doing that, you know, we need to diversify our energy and again protect the beautiful state that we live in.
Yeah, New Hampshire has a pretty interesting tax structure which has served Democrats.
Will you explain to us sort of how it works there.
Yeah, So in New Hampshire we do not have a sales or an income tax, and you know, as a candidate for governor, I have said that I would veto a sales or an income tax if it would come across my desk. So really what we have to focus in on is how do we best decrease local property
taxes we're seeing right now in New Hampshire. Is I mentioned the state isn't funding public ad education, for example, and when they don't fund public education, that gets pushed down into the local communities and affects our local property taxes, and coming from a local level, I understand that and want to change that process. I think it's really important to note as well that you know, my opponent is all for giving tax breaks to the most wealthy, to
millionaires in the state of New Hampshire, like herself. That again would increase property taxes for our hard working families, and that's where my focus is, how do we decrease costs for hardworking families.
You were the mayor of Manchester. How does being a mayor inform what you sort of want to do as governor?
Well, yeah, certainly being mayor, and I have to say of my hometown was an incredible opportunity for me. You know, I'm a fourth generation resident of this state and was able to work with my community that raised me to make my city stronger. So, you know, being a mayor, you're on the front lines dealing with many of our state wide challenges, and so I was able to implement
evidence based solutions to address these challenges. So you know, for example, when it comes to housing, I was able to allocate thirty million dollars toward affordable housing and we now have two thousand homes and apartments in development. When I took office, crime rates had hit historic eyes and so I immediately got to work with our police department.
We hired more police officers to be on the streets to build relationships with our community, and we worked together and we saw a forty percent decrease in violent crime.
Manchester is home to the largest planned parenthood in the state, and we were seeing, you know, issues with planned parenthood not being funding and families not being able to access the services that they needed, so I supported and partnered with Planned Parenthood to make sure that families had the access to affordable, quality, reproductive healthcare that they needed.
Right exactly, And that makes a lot of sense.
What do you think the sort of big issues for New Hampshire Urians is? Is that how you say it, Granite Staters, grantede staters, Okay?
You know, one of the things that continues to come up as I'm traveling around the state is the concern about reproductive freedom in New Hampshire. We are the only state in New England that hasn't codified access to abortion, and we saw this past session Republicans actually propose a fifteen day and then a fifteen week abortion ban and those failed. But as long as access to abortion is not codified into law, we will continue to see these
threats on reproductive freedom. And I think it's really important to note that, you know, my opponent, Kelly Ayott, as a Senator, voted multiple times for a national abortion ban. She voted multiple times to defund Planned Parenthood, and has said if elected governor, she would continue to defund Planned Parenthood. You may recall that she was the person who shepherded Neil Gorshich through the Supreme Court process and then celebrated when Roe v.
Wade was overturned.
And so we cannot trust her when it comes to reproductive healthcare in our state. You know, I trust women to make their own health care decisions, and I will fight to make sure it stays that way.
Yeah, she was a senator, and she has the Senate voting record. Do you feel like voters are tuned in to voting records.
Well, we're making sure they are, you know, So you know, it's something that we're highlighting in ads. For example, we're using her own words to show to residence in our state where she stands on these issues. And while she may be trying to communicate a different message. Now, as my mother used to tell me, your actions speak louder than your words. And we've seen what she's done in the past, and we cannot trust any thing that she says.
Right now, she's basically saying and doing anything she can to get elected.
I mean that's sort of what Trump's doing too, right.
Well, And yeah, and speaking of Donald Trump, you may recall that, you know, in twenty sixteen, Kella Aodd had said, you know, I can't support Donald Trump because he's sexually assaulted woman and it's the wrong thing to do. And now he's sexually assaulted woman, it caused an insurrection, and he is a convicted criminal. He's now her choice for president.
Yeah. Do you think Republicans are just doing this because it's expedient and they want his voters?
I mean, is there any more to it than that?
You know?
I wish I knew the answer to that question. It doesn't make sense to me. As we're having conversations with residents across the state. You know, people understand what happened. We have Republicans who are supporting us and supporting Kamala Harris because they know that that's the right thing to do. But you've got these politicians who are continuing along this line,
you know, for whatever reason. But I have to trust that people have been paying attention and all of the work that's happening on the ground here in New Hampshire and across our country.
You know, it'll all work out. Yeah, that makes sense A man. I hope so too.
And I do feel like it's such an important race and just explain to us sort of the governorship. I mean, if Trump wins, which we don't think you well, and we certainly hope he doesn't. But governors can sort of protect their state from some of the worst of trump Ism, right.
You're absolutely right, Molly, And that's why this election is so important. We've seen the impact that governors have had protecting their states and advocating for their states and making a positive change in the lives of so many. We're seeing important decisions, you know, being pushed down to the state level to governors, and that's why this election is so critically important.
Yeah, in normal time, when Liz Cheney doesn't have to come out for Vice President Harris, in a normal time, you would be able to have a Republican governor because they would be Republicans, would be sane. But right now we are in such an extraordinary moment in American life, and we don't know what's going to happen, right with another Trump administration. He's promised already to run as an Autocrat.
Right, and to do away with basically public education. I mean, it's just it's not what we need for families to thrive in our country, right, And so we need strong governors to stand up for the values of hard working families and that's exactly what I've done, you know, my entire career.
Right exactly. And I think that's a really good point. Will you sort of tell us a little bit about what you're seeing. I just want like, what's the mood in New Hampshire And has the change at the top of the ticket changed the trajectory of the race?
Sure?
So, we certainly did see a change in enthusiasm and volunteers when there was a change at the top of the ticket. I will say, you know, in New Hampshire,
we did everything with a right in biding campaign. He has tremendous support here in New Hampshire, and I will tell you you know, as mayor, I worked with his administration and the federal delegation here and you know, we won some really competitive federal grants and as a result have over one hundred million dollars of federal funds coming into the city, you know, to increase jobs and increase investments in infrastructure and so much more. So, you know,
tremendously grateful for the Biden Harris administration. But you know, when the change at the top of the ticket happened, we saw volunteers come out who had I had never seen before.
You know, our.
Campaign offices have been full of people really excited to elect Vice President Harris and Governor Wall. You know, I just left today gathering with a number of teachers. Public education is a passion of mine, and have a teacher at the top of the ticket is incredibly exciting for so many of us because, you know, I just truly believe that quality public education leads to thriving communities and
creates opportunities for our kids and their futures. And to have you know, the vice president and his wife, the public school teachers, you know, will just really lift up this profession and the importance of public education.
If you have a trumpy relative or undecided relative, what is the message.
I think we have to try to find common ground, and we have to listen to each other. And while it's really difficult, we've got to hear each other out and we've got to listen to each other. I have those relatives, and I know how hard it is. But at the end of the day, we've got to focus collectively on doing better, doing right for residents in our state and for me, you know, and I think no matter what political party you are, it's about cutting costs.
You know, we know that people are having a hard time cutting costs for people. It's about making sure we have adequate, affordable housing and quality public education and protecting our rights. Those are basic needs for families, and those are the things that we're focused on that I'm focused on. You know, I'll just point out my opponent. You know, we are in the midst of a housing crisis in New Hampshire, across our entire country. She spent the last
eight years on these corporate boards. One of them was Blackstone, where she's made millions of dollars. This company has jacked up rents and pushed people out of their homes. It is like the complete opposite of what we need and a leader in New Hampshire to address a housing crisis.
Right, really good point, Thank you, thank you, thank you, thanks for joining us, Thank you, We're all.
Jesse Cannon by junk Fast.
You know, the uh thing that keeps me up the most right now is thinking about all the legal fuckery that we're going to have to be talking about for weeks after this election is over, and we're already seeing it. What are you seeing here?
So Republicans have just been filing lawsuits that are aimed at trying to see doubt with the outcome of the twenty twenty four election in the event that Trump loses.
If Trump wins, they will be totally fine with it.
In case you're wondering, very unsurprising, but they're doing a ton of it. You'll remember that in Georgia, they're making it so that ballads need to be hand counted. They want to make it so that the certification can be delayed so that Mike Johnson can somehow punt this to the Supreme Court. And I think Trump really thinks that he has enough juice with this Supreme Court that he might be able to have them overturn the election results.
Think about how scary this is. This feels really really scary to me.
And this is where we are.
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