All right, this is Jeffrey Lord filling in for our friend Sean Hannity. You can call us at eight hundred and nine four one seven, three two six, And we are going to talk now with a friend of mine from Pennsylvania, a great Pennsylvanian by the name of Jeff Bartos, who was a former Senate and lieutenant governor candidate himself and played, as I understand it, a real role, serious, big role in the campaign to get Dave McCormick elected
to the United States Senate. Jeff how are you happy New Year?
Happy to hear to you, Jeffrey, and thank you so much for having me on. And of course I hope you and your family had a joyful and relaxing and just very amazing Christmas holiday. As we wind down, probably you know, not many years in our lives more extraordinary than twenty twenty four.
Boy, I think that's the case. You know, as I said to people that I would meet in the campaign as time went on, I said, take notes, because you're going to want to look back, and you know, if you forget some of these things, this was a big deal. This was serious, major American history here. So what are your thoughts jeff on Pennsylvania. You know, I thought from the get go that it was entirely possible that President
Trump was going to carry Pennsylvania. And I thought that Dave had a more uphill battle simply because his opponent was Bob Casey Junior, but still at all they both came through. What are your thoughts on the electorate in Pennsylvania and is it shifting a little bit? Is it more more red than purple? Or what are your thoughts?
Well, President Trump, I mean, Jeffery, you were very you know, you were very involved in twenty sixteen, and you had a first hand view of the remarkable win that President Trump and the team, our friend Tay Christian and David Urban and the great folks that were all involved in that twenty sixteen campaign, and what President Trump was able to do. At the same time, Senator to me won
re election in twenty sixteen. So it was a fascinating study about Pennsylvania's electorate, which I think really is a microcosm of the country.
Right.
I grew up in reading, and I know, you know, you and I have deep roots in the Lancaster and Harrisburg area as well, and so you know Cheryl's from Allentown, but I feel much more familiar, if you will, Barks County and Lehigh County than I Montgomery County, where we.
Raised our girls.
And it just I think that what President Trump was
able to achieve in twenty sixteen never went away. You know, we had some years where we didn't win elections, and who knows we can look back on that, I guess, and articles have been written, but I always felt for me personally from the morning of October seventh of twenty twenty three right through four am on November sixth of twenty twenty four, I never I mean, let me put it more positively, I had an unshakable belief for me and Cheryl, our family and the people that we spent
a lot of time I'm with that not only was President Trump going to win, but that Dave McCormick was going to win. And as the summer went on, I felt very strongly that.
We were going to flip those three flippable.
United States House seats. We ended up flipping two of them, and of course Stacy Garrity and Day Sunday and Tim Defour were able to win. So the first time I think in my lifetime since the attorney general's race in Pennsylvania became an elected.
Spot where we've held three row offices.
So I think the elector in Pennsylvania microcosm of the country. The message that President Trump led with, you know, that uniting message of cutting through the silos of identity politics that the Left have been trying to build for the best fifteen years.
He obliterated them with a message.
That united all Pennsylvanians and all Americans around economic prosperity, peace through strength, a secure border, those cut across socioeconomic lines, racial lines, religious lines, age lines.
I don't know.
I'm still I mean, you can hear in my voice. I'm still as excited today as I was on the evening of November fifth and early November sixth.
Yeah, yeah, me too. Well, I think it's amazing. And from my own experience earlier in my career, one of the things I did in working for Senator John Hines, and I was his executive assistant in the Senate. But as you and you know how this works, when you get to election season, if you're going to be participating in the campaign, you have to leave the Senate staff and you know, go from Washington to Philadelphia and get
involved there. And one of the things that I did, I became a big coordinator of what was known in the day as Latinos for Hines, and it was very interesting. He paid a great deal of attention to the Hispanic community in the Philadelphia area and around the state. He would go to their events, we would be I would be talking on the phone to these folks all the time. And of course he won re election in in you know, considerable fashion, and I thought, there's a lesson there for
Republican candidates. You know, get out, don't just do the traditional sort of things that Republican candidates have always done, but go out to other constituencies and spend real time with him and and you know, create the bond that I've seen created. This is this is something that can be done. And you know, when I would drive around the state, as you know, yeah, I'd get invited to go here or there, and I would drive and it
always amazed me how many Trump signs I saw. They're all over the place, and I thought, hello, is there a message here of what's coming. But I really do think that you know, there are lots of grassroots enthusiasm for him, and I'm I'm wondering what your thoughts are for how it plays down the road. I mean, come January twentieth, that what well.
So at, I'll tell you a real quick personal story.
Yeah, lines.
We live in Laura Marion and you know, I say, a lot of highly educated people who may have a somewhat lacking in common sense, and we love most of our neighbors. It's also grown over the last twenty years to be a very hotbed a really kind of vibrant Orthodox Jewish community in and around where we live.
And oh gosh, it was a couple of days.
After the election, Charyl and I were going for a walk and a rabbi that I know, Orthodox rabbi that I know, stopped his car as he saw us walking, came over and gave.
Me the biggest hug wow, wow, that I've.
Probably ever received from a man, and not someone not in my family. And he just the joy on his face and the relief on his face that President Trump had one, that David won, and that we had had this big victory up and down the ballot. He didn't even need to say anything. It was just there's a lot of people I know and we saw a lot of Trump signs in our community, in our neighborhood that you never would have seen in twenty twenty and you didn't see back in twenty sixteen either.
So it was you.
Had the sense. And so for me looking forward, I think we as a Republican Party, we had a reconstituted, realigned Republican party with the statewide success that we had, the House race success, we had the state Senate, I mean that state senancy picking up a state senency in Philadelphia and northeas Philadelphia, right, we have a once in a generation you made reference to Senator Hines and of
course President Reagan at that same time. We have a once in a generation opportunity to really take this message of economic prosperity, peace through strength, safe neighborhoods, secure border, and we have a chance to take that, I think through for the next decade or more and really build a sustainable coalition that this should win a lot more elections, and it's on us to do it. We have, I mean, President Trump's a once in a one hundred year cana
that JD. Vance is a generational talent. Dave McCormick ran one of the best Senate campaigns in our lifetimes with a great team. So we have leaders at the federal level and across the state that they can take us there, and it's really up to us to deliver. And I'm as confident as I was that President Trump was going to win and A Dave was going to win and we were going to have this success. That's how confidence I am that we're going to deliver.
Yeah, well, delivery is all. And one of the things I learned in working for Senator Hines there was always two tracks to what he was doing. One was the thing that every United States senator has to do. You know, the issue comes up about some foreign policy situation, or do we vote yay or nay on some tax bill or budget bill or what have you. But beyond that, there's Pennsylvania itself and whatever problems may be current for Pennsylvanians that are not current for Americans and other states.
And when I was there, we were with the Philadelphia Navy Yard was a big deal and because of the Reagan build up, there was a constant battle to get the Pentagon to deliver ships. They called it the SLEPT program Service Life Extension Program, and to get these battleships and aircraft carriers into the Navy yards so that they could be reoutfitted and sent sent back out. Well, hello, and you will get this immediately. There was a guy named Trent Lott who represented a like the Philadelphia Navy
Yard equivalent in Mississippi or Louisiana. I know he was centered from Mississippi. But we were constantly doing battle and we had to, you know, bring the the Navy yard folks into the Pentagon. They had to se the Secretary of the Navy. They had to make their case, but we made sure that they got it. And I remember on one occasion Senator Hines and I was with him.
We were able to borrow thanks to the good graces of our visitor to the Navy Yard, that would be Senator John Tower from Texas, who was then the Chairman
of the Senate Armed Services Committee. We were given a loaner from President Reagan of Marine I and we flew from the Pentagon to the Philadelphia Navy Yard so that Senator Tower could be shown the USS Wisconsin, which of course had been in World War Two in all of this, and it was now in Philadelphia in the Navy Yard for slap and how important it was and it really helped a lot with all this and that's the kind
of thing. And then you know, this being a big state with different interests, you'd go to the other end of the state and you realize you needed to work on tariff issues with US steel. So that's the kind of thing that you know, is down home politics, if you will, that I think can't be forgotten. It isn't just the national issues here. And I think, wow, we
have such a diverse state. You know, I went to high school in my last few years of high school in Allentown, and Allentown is an area and it isn't Lancaster as it were.
So yeah, it's I find Pennsylvania having. It's been such a privilege to run twice statewide, once as a standard bearer of our party as a Republican nominee for lieutenant governor back in twenty eighteen with our friend Scott Wagner. What a privilege it is the campaign of the state like Pennsylvania because it's so diverse, and you never I mean, the issues are never forget boring, right, They're they're never dull, they're never easy. You're always challenged.
But we have the leadership to do it. I think a race to look for. Look, we should take a little break from looking at.
The upcoming race is but there's going to be a primary in Philadelphia in I believe April or May. That's we have a chance to take out the Soros backed prosecutor. And that will be you know, in the Democrat primary. There will be people lining up and I wouldn't be surprised if we see some of the folks who got involved at national politics for the first time recognizing that they could be a counterweight or frankly, even a prevail over the Soros back which we did just you know
last month. We should be able to take some of that, some of that energy and some of those wins and some of that organizing that we did just over the last year or last year and a half and take that to taking back cities like Philadelphia. Philadelphia is critical the Pennsylvania as well being an economy, and the only thing, really not the only thing, the major thing holding us back right now is the district attorney who won't prosecute crimes.
The Wall Street Journals today, I'll bet about it. I'm shocked up in the Wall Street Journal and there's an o bed about Philadelphia and the DA and how he's backed the mayor's progress. This is the Democrats are eating each other for the good of Pennsylvania.
For the good of Philadelphia.
We really have a chance now, I think to take out just frankly, the worst, the worst elected official in Pennsylvania right now and Larry Krafts and put someone in there who will actually prosecute crimes.
Well, I've become increasingly convinced. I mean, this whole business with sorrow's prosecutors around the country, Uh, watching what's going out, And I guess it was Los Angeles, where you know, sort of a similar situation, and finally there was a rebellion. I forget where there's Los Angeles or San Francisco.
But both both.
Yeah, there was a rebellion to all of this. And you know, one of the things that I think people sometimes forget, and this applies to President Biden as well, is you've got candidates out there that say elect me and I'll do a B and C. Then they get elected and they actually do a B and C and it turns out the results are terrible and it backfires. And in this situation, you had I think people at the around the country that saw the Biden presidency at work and said, you know, thanks, but no thanks.
It was a whole scale I mean, for the for the sitting president who's on his way out to once again failed to take any responsibility for the failures of the administration. Right then administration where nobody was fired, going all the way back to the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is yes, twenty twenty one, all the way.
Forward to its last days.
This is really I said about the vice president's Vice President Harris's campaign. It was a campaign born in desperation that meandered for one hundred and ten days or so without a message, and then you know, died not with a bang, with a whimper. And you really could almost talk about the Biden presidency that way. I remember they installed him as the nominee back in the spring of twenty twenty in desperation. And this is the presidency we will we will long forget. Yeah, you know, like they
little remember this, this administration. I think thirty forty years down the road, it will.
Be I thank you, right, Jeff, Jeff, we are getting the hand sign signal here, So thank you very much for coming on the future, Beckons, and I know you will be involved.
A healthy and happy new Year to you and your family and all of your listeners. And thanks thanks for having me on today.
Jeffrey, thank you you bet bye bye. All right, welcome back to our last half hour. This is Jeffrey Lord filling in for our friend Sean Hannity, and feel free to call us at eight hundred and nine four one seven, three two six. And as I read the board, I see that there is Bob from Massachusetts who knew me from Crescent Street where I grew up, and that his dad was my principal. Bob, are you there, I'm there, jeff all right, give me your last name.
President. We're ready to vote for you and give you a room similar at Forbes Library that we gave Calvin Coolidge.
Yeah. Do you know my dad held Calvin Coolidge's Ward two seat on the city council when we were there and I was a kid. Wow, And I always say Calvin Coolidge is the one president who really worked his way up from the bottom. He was I think first a town clerk, then I think he became the town solicitor. He got elected to the city council, then mayor, state representative, state senator, lieutenant governor, and governor, vice president and finally he hit the big one and became president.
But and that was it. He said, that's enough, Yeah, exactly.
And in the later days he passed in nineteen thirty three, as I recall, but Missus Coolidge was alive and well, and my mom was the chair of the Hampshire County Republican Women and she and her colleagues in that group, it was one of the things to do was to go pay a courtesy call periodically on Missus Coolish and talk to her about what's going on in politics and all of that kind of thing. I always found that kind of fascinating. So so, what'd you.
Call about Bob A Christmas story? Yeah, your dad and my cousin Bobby, who was in the Navy and Submarines. He had gotten released in Norfolk, was on the Beltway hitch hiking up to Barry Vermont, but he didn't get there. Your dad picked him up, took him up to Crescent Street and of course my aunt's house Qui's on fifty seven Crescent Street down near the Magna House, and so they had a long talk all the way up until you made the curb up there where the the botanis
live where you live. Yeah, yeah, And basically it was just such a nice thing that this poor guy got out of a submarine and your dad saw sale or hitch hiking on the road literally and he got to Bury the following day. Of course someone hauled up hauled him up there and all that. But what a what a neat thing that your dad did. Oh those are great people.
Yes they were. And he was going to Bury Vermont.
As you could guess what's that He was.
Going to Bury Vermont.
Did you say, well, that's where where Bobby Mitchell, who's now a Queen's cop retired. Of course, and he his son, by the way, is I think a general now wow, went to a West Point. I mean his dad served under patent. I mean it was a military family.
Wow.
Don't. Hey, my dad wasn't a shrieker either. He doesn't talk about it, but he was a Tenian. When the Leonola Gates who often ended the show, I bet you didn't know nothing about that. You just knew him as a principal at Vernon Street and his last name was Moriarty.
Oh, miss Moriarty. Of course, of course, exactly right, got it. Yeah, he was terrific. He was terrific. I gave up.
I'm a conservative like you, and you've been on the Howie Carr Show, and I wasn't able to catch you in there because you're on that they give you the old Northampton treatment. But we have a room available at Forbes Library, which by the way, my dad ended up being trustee of In every election he got the most votes of anybody in town.
Wow.
And you know, but you knew him, of course, as just the principal at Vernon Street. Yes, And I think you moved on before I went to Hawley.
Did you go to HALLI I left after the eighth grade, so that would be suck in nineteen seventy five, not.
Have it wasn't integrated like it is now. Well they were. They make the eighth graders blend in and all that. And then you moved, I guess to Pennsylvania, great state there.
We moved first to Virginia, the Stanton, Virginia. Dad was in the hotel business. We were there for two years, and then we went on to Pennsylvania and that they stuck around and I got in I got, you know, graduated from high school, from college there and uh, and then went to work my first job in the Pennsylvania State Senate Republican communications staff, and ever after it was Pennsylvania as home and still is, I might add.
Oh, yeah, it's a great state. It bailed us out and gave us Trump. If you think you're going to get help from Mets to chooses, Oh my, hey, Reagan. Right. I go to the tribute for Coolidge and it's right on near the Court House.
I know exactly where it is. I think I was in the White House when President Reagan called to that was part of the ceremony.
For that, And I was looking like, north Ampton, don't you get it. You had a president of the United States and you're not respecting him.
Oh well, I was a big Coolish and we had a double connection in our family with Coolidge. My father's mother, my grandmother, her family lived on the farm that was next to the Coolidges, and they were friends of the Coolidge family. And if you know the tale, his namesake son, Calvin Junior, died when cal was in the White House and he was playing tennis on the White House tennis court got a blister. It got infected and he died.
So my grandmother was invited to the funeral and took my then ten year old dad and went to it. And I had the presence of mind to get my grandmother on audio tape talking about this, and I can still hear her saying, I can see Cal's red hair glinting in the sunlight. It was pretty amazing. And then all those later, Dad gets elected to Calvin Coolidge's seat in the City Council and Mom is spending time with
missus Coolidge. It was it was interesting. And you know, when I went to work in the White House, one of the first things President Reagan did when he took office was hanging Calvin Coolidge's official portrait in the cabinet room, so that every single time there was a meeting, a cabinet meeting or whatever in the cabinet room, they would be reminded of Calvin Coolidge and the conservative president. President Reagan really liked Calvin Coolidge a lot.
Hey, Trump would like him.
Yes, I think that's I think so. And you know, of course, he had this reputation as being very taciturned, in other words, not speaking a lot. And the joke was that some society lady sat next to him an event and said, mister President, and I have a bet that I can get you to say more than two words, to which Coolish replied, you lose.
That was coming. It's it's sad that they really let the Coolidge room at Forbes Library go to hell.
That's too bad because I've been there. I went, you know, this is a number of years ago. I went, oh, yeah, uh, you know, fascinating stuff. And my one of my best friends from school, the Mazorskis, lived Caddy corner to the house there that was on Massasoytte Street where the Coolidges had lived, and then they got what did they call it the beaches?
I think that was the Yeah, that was over on tom Ary Terrace.
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, if.
I'm kicking in, I know that you left a long time ago, and it was my stopping although I worked all over the country.
So yeah, well I went back. I guess it was two summers ago. I went back. First, I went with a friend. We went to uh Boston to see the Red Sox play, of course, and then she had to leave, so I high tailed it to Northampton and uh, you know, did sightseeing saw some old friends, and uh, it was it was. It was great, you know, great great memories there. Dad was dad and mom very involved in politics, and uh they helped elect one of his friends, uh Durban Wells, who was also a friend of his son was a
Teddy was a good friend of mine. And uh so, you know, it was it was good times back then, innocent, I must say. So, okay, all right, well, Bob, thank you very much for calling, and on we go here. I'd like to go to Uh oh wow, Frank in Denver, did your family bug you for White House tours when you worked for Reagan? Yes, I'm here. It wasn't it wasn't just it wasn't just my parents and fairness, you know.
And that was it was interesting to me, is that that was part of the assignment of the White House political staff. You know, you have your work day done by you know, six o'clock, seven o'clock or whatever, but then you had to stay and take Reagan supporters who had called in to announce that they were coming to Washington and all this, and give them a tour, a West wing tour, which I did over and over and
over and over again every night after work. It seemed, and then also on the weekends, on Saturdays and Sundays. I remember on one occasion we had some a couple and their kids, and they were from Pennsylvania. I didn't know them. Their congressman had called and asked if I would take them around, So so I do this, But it was going to be on a Saturday, and I thought, well, okay,
so it's Saturday. Nobody's generally around on a Saturday. So they arrive and I start to take them on the tour and we get stopped suddenly by the Secret Service that said the President's in the Oval Office, so you
have to wait outside here. Well, they were pretty agog and I thought, oh my goodness, And sure enough, within a matter of minutes, out came President Reagan, uh nicely attired in a dressed sports coat and tie and all this because he felt that the working in the Oval Office was sank re sank, so he was always well dressed and came out and I introduced them to these people and told him they were Penn State fans, and by chance, Penn State happened to be playing that day,
and so he, off the top of his head, goes into all sorts of stuff about Joe Paterno, whom he knew, and what was going on with Penn State and all that. So it was it was quite fun. You never got to know who you were going to meet when you did these tours. So well, Frank, thank you very much for calling. And I want to move on to Jose from Texas, who wants to talk about election integrity being the number one issue facing the country. Yes, sir, can
you hear me? I can, Jose, I can merry Christmas and a.
Happy New Year, Yes, sir.
So I'll keep it.
Short because I know we're you're running out of time here, but I just think that you know that if we do, if we don't put voter integritymost important at the top of the list, we're going to lose everything because we will no longer be a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
You know, you.
Can't you can't buy cigarettes, alcohol, a vehicle and numerous other things without an ID. But yet we have so many states that don't require a voter ID to vote, and that's probably the most important that we have in America.
Yeah, I totally agree with you, Jose. You know, as I was saying, I have lived in Pennsylvania since high school, and I came up through the Pennsylvania political system, you know. I was in the teenage Republicans and the college Republicans and all that kind of thing. And if I learned anything to my sorrow, it is that my home state of Pennsylvania has had a pretty not so good reputation
for election integrity. And we had in uh it was nineteen ninety four, there was a special election or state Senate seat in Philadelphia and the next thing, you know, it was on the front page of the New York Times, of all places, and the deal was that the loser, so called in quotes, was the Republican. But he was somebody I know. He'd worked for Senator Arlen Inspector. He
had the presence of mind to challenge the results. He did so, and the federal judge overturned the election and said there was a massive scheme by Democrats to steal it and they had to redo the whole thing. So well, I guess, Jose, I'm just about out of time here, so thank you very much for calling, and thank all of you, and we'll be back in a minute. All right, welcome back. I recognize that music from my youth. Wow,
the monkeys. This is Jeffrey Lord. I have filled in today for our friend Sean Hannity, and I wish you all a happy new year out there. Twenty twenty four was, to say the least interesting. That is one for the history books that you will be telling. For those of you who are going to be having great grandchildren, You're going to be telling them this for a very long time to come. It was quite remarkable. So now we
move on. So now we move on to the second Trump administration, and we've all I've gotten to know him a bit, and doubtless he has all kinds of plans that he is going to go out of his way. He is very focused. I've gotten to know him a bit. He's a very focused guy. He knows what he wants to do. He asks questions, and he says, as I recall the other day in a speech, that he wants to make this America's Golden Age. So with that in mind, thank you very much. We've got a lot, a lot
to look forward to. This is Jeffrey Lord filling in for Sean Hannity, and on we go to twenty twenty five. Happy New Year,