Political Payoffs, Culture Wars' Cost, and Grassroots Power for Change

Can political payoffs and culture wars be costing you more than you think? 

Explore the hidden financial and social impacts of ongoing legal battles between Republicans and Democrats, and consider the potential taxpayer savings if these divisive conflicts were lessened. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 State-Level Political Influence and Advocacy
• 9:03 Supporting Grassroots Political Campaigns

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The dirtiness of it, of political payoffs and jobs to attack minorities. That is so cruel.

Speaker 2: 0:10

Yeah, it just doesn't make a lot of sense, you know, and who ends up winning on these kinds of fights? And then the advocacy groups hire the legal best legal teams in the country and then they light them up, and then the governor's office is then fighting in a legal industry battle versus them, and the only people who benefit is the legal industry. They only benefit from when the Republicans and the Democrats fight each other. And you know and this is a big issue out there in this world, we, we, we, the taxpayer, is the one who loses every time this happens. And it's about time that we wake up as taxpayers and want to say why don't we have a more balanced legislature in some of these extreme states, so that way we don't have to worry about fighting all these legal battles down the line? Think about how much money that's going to save our state, your state, wherever you're watching, if we stop having all these BS, culture, war, legal battles. It's a big issue.

Speaker 1: 1:18

There's a case coming up later this year in front of the US Supreme Court out of Tennessee, the Scrimetti case, which is going to make a determination on what the standard of review is on these bans for gender-affirming care and whether, being trans trans there's has to be a compelling state interest of some kind, or there has to be a basis more than just we don't like trans people, which is what they're getting away with right now.

Speaker 2: 2:22

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean that makes me think of the Amy Stevens ruling, which you know, of course, gave us the groundbreaking ruling for the protection for transgender workers and that people couldn't be fired for being trans. So that was a Supreme Court ruling as well. So you know that that happens and yeah as well.

Speaker 1: 2:50

So you know that happens and yeah, yeah, I'm hoping that we get that same type of decision out of Gorsuch and maybe another justice or two. I am going to go back and watch that argument when it happens. Being a member of the Supreme Court bar, I think it's important that we have trans individuals in the courtroom when they're arguing this so that they can see who this affects.

Speaker 2: 3:09

Yeah, yeah, definitely it's, yeah, it's a big issue. I mean, you know, this is, this is another reason why these, these local elections really matter, right? I mean, like, obviously, representation at the state level can, can help us to protect us long term around these decisions. You know, obviously, supreme Court is one piece of our governmental three governmental branches on the federal level, but a lot of people don't realize this that the states also have their own rights, and this is a big thing for Donald Trump, right? He's all proud about.

Speaker 2: 3:45

Oh well, let me throw it back to the states, like that's his ultimate catch-all thing that he tries to do, because he knows there are more red states than blue states and then, once again, it's bordering a supermajority as well.

Speaker 2: 3:58

In that scenario and I challenge people who are watching this also to Google Article 5 of the United States Constitution, if you want to know why state house races are just as important as to who your Supreme Court justice is that my race for the state house of representatives is just equally as important as that. Go ahead and Google Article 5 of the United States Constitution and then come and argue with me as to whether or not it's not important or not, because I can tell you right now that the states that operate in this gray area, purple area. It's a huge opportunity to protect civil liberties for people who live in America, because if we get too many red states which is literally the Republican Party's goal surrounding all these anti, anti, everybody bills it's to scare people and get them to all move to new york, california or chicago. Right, because if they can condense us all to three states, they can then have that super majority across the states as well, and this is really important.

Speaker 1: 5:04

People don't talk about this at all and that's one of the reasons why I moved back to Nebraska is because I needed to go into where that was being done and fight back on that. And so, on a more personal level, and one of the first podcasts I did was the candidate for district attorney here in Los Angeles, and one of the things that I thought was really cute was he got his, his daughter, involved in the campaign and doing that. You have two kids. Are they involved at all in your campaign? A little bit.

Speaker 2: 5:35

Yeah, so my oldest is a freshman in college and so he's really focusing mostly on his college experience. He's supportive of me, but he's really, you know, focusing on that. And then my youngest is definitely passionate about our campaign. He's helping wherever he can. Both of them have attended events for the campaign as well, but, yeah, my youngest also works about 30 hours a week too, so my kids are kind of like fully emblazoned and kind of cultivating, growing their own lives too, so I'm trying to be respective of that as well. At the same time, uh, as you know, happy whenever they do want to come and be involved in something. And really this is one of the reasons why I was comfortable to say yes to running was because, you know, in that moment I, I, I knew that, uh, you know that I wasn wasn't gonna be, you know, putting them in harm's way because they're, you know, they're doing their own thing now, which is also equally cool.

Speaker 1: 6:34

Yeah, that that was one of the concerns I had in looking at running is my children are very private. They don't necessarily want to be, you know, known and and I was certainly afraid to a certain extent that that they would get drug into it, and so that's something I'm still if any future potential run I've got to consider on that. But the fact that they're very supportive of you and it sounds like you are instilling into them the same work ethic that you develop by going out on your own at 17.

Speaker 2: 7:06

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I think it's so important that we, you know, share the positives but we also educate around the issues. You know, this is a big thing from our discussion. Right is that we can't ignore the things that maybe weren't great. We have to also talk about that. We have to use those as teachable moments. This is how we get better as a society. Is we bring people together. Right? I always say empowering differences. Right? It's an opportunity for us to give authority and power, to connect it to other people.

Speaker 2: 7:36

And every time we have an opportunity to, you know, change someone's perspective. I'm not going to move someone who's, you know, a full blown Trumper, who doesn't want me to have any rights. I'm not going to move that person really to going voting for me right, and that's not going to happen, okay. But certainly I know that I can talk to that person and have a conversation with them and be civil and maybe potentially I can get them to move to, maybe not actively campaign against me.

Speaker 1: 8:05

You know and that's a win in my book.

Speaker 2: 8:08

Okay, you know and then I know that they realize that I'm an actual person and that I'm going to do some really great, great stuff when I get elected. You know. That's that's the issue here. Is going this right back to the main issues, you know, and I think that another thing too. I know that I guess we're getting low on time, but I think it's also important that people, if you're watching the podcast and you're trying to think what can I do to get involved or how can I help Ashley?

Speaker 2: 8:39

Yeah, you can, from anywhere in the United States of America If you're over 18, you can donate at AshleyBrundagecom. That's a good place to start there. You can find me on Act Blue. You can just type my name in on Act Blue, you'll see. You will see us come up on the on the radar there. But also, if maybe you don't have any financial resources, you could also go to Ashley Brunagecom and click the volunteer tab and you can actually sign up to make calls for us from anywhere in the United States of America. You can help us to fundraise. You can help us to call voters. You can help us to register voters. You could help us to request mail-in ballots, because Ron DeSantis canceled every single mail-in ballot on purpose, so that way people wouldn't have an easy path to getting to vote and adding more obstacles to voting. You know, this is part of why he's done this kind of stuff and we're going to be passionate about this race. It's so important that we get people involved.

Speaker 1: 9:43

And I'm pretty sure that we're going to have down in the comment section a link to your website so that they will be. We'll make it easy for people to help you out. I have donated to Ashley and I'm going to donate some of my time to make some calls for her, and so it's very important that when we have candidates who are viable, who stand a chance of winning, that we support them all that we can, because it's so rare that we get people into positions where they can make a difference, and getting Ashley into Tallahassee and getting her to face up to all of those people who want to do harm to our community is going to be something that she is going to be able to help change minds in Tallahassee. Now, it may not happen overnight, and it probably won't happen overnight, and we may end up with situations like we ended up with Zoe Zephyr in Montana, where they purposefully changed the rules to, you know, marginalize us and prohibit us, but we make change, we make differences.