He's running for Congress: Robin Peguero

WE START OUR TWELFTH SEASON by talking to a former investigator of the January 6th committee who is running for Congress in from Miami and Key Biscayne 

ROBIN PEGUERO is a Harvard grad, novelist, and former Miami prosecutor who wants to be your next member of Congress. He's one of two Democrats hoping to unseat Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar

Listen and learn more! 

Transcript

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Live, this is Anti-Social, the podcast where we try to think of ourselves as a coffee grinder, extracting the good stuff and leaving the coarse, gritty stuff in the filter basket. I'm Tony Winton. And I'm Jan Dillo. Tony, it sounds like you've got coffee on your mind today. Did you get a bitter cup? Well, actually, I didn't get my coffee this morning. I've been thinking about it all day. I had a coffee maker problem, and it just didn't work out. it made me think, kind of what we do is we kind of filter stuff a little bit in a good way. try to, right? It's sometimes hard, given all the stuff that's coming at us these days. But today we are starting our 12th season. Wow, I will have to run the sound effects, hooray applause. But it is been, we both have been taking a bit of a break and both of us have been overseas, right? So we have some stories I'm sure we can regale our listeners with, but not necessarily right now. No, exactly. We did take, but you are now up in, you still haven't finished your travels because you're up in DC, right? Yes, I'm in a wonderful Montgomery County, Maryland. uh And that's where I'm coming to you from today. um And of course, here in the DC area, we still have all these National Guardsmen in place. I went into town the other day and I'm taking the fine Metro here and there's National Guardsmen at the ticket counters area. There's National Guardsmen on the platform. I don't know exactly what they're doing. They look exceptionally bored to me. um And they were like checking their phones or, know, I mean, it didn't, they were just there with their weapons. And I, you know, I don't, I'm not really sure I understand the purpose at this point uh or ever at any point of that, but they're still here in the nation's Capitol. And of course, that's not the only big news going on in town, right? We have, uh we had the East wing of the White House get demolished. I had nothing to do with that just because I got here, happened right after I got here. um And then earlier we had seven million people march by some counts at the No King. No, big match here and you were at the one in Miami, correct? go to it and I got my first photo credits. I'm pretty excited. Tell me. ah That's right, our guest. is time to introduce Robin Peguero, who is a candidate for the United States Congress in Florida District 27. It covers much of coastal Miami and lovely Key Biscayne. Welcome to the program. Robin, thanks for being here. It just is a bit of a bio. Robin, I understand that you're an attorney of a former Miami-Dade prosecutor and a novelist, so it sounds like you're kind of a renaissance man. You were raised in Hialeah, and you're a graduate of Harvard Law. It looks like you, well, you worked as the investigative counsel on the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. and as Chief of Staff for US Congressman Glenn Ivey. Academically, you're an expert on criminal law and procedure and the social dynamics of the jury. And you are the author of With Prejudice, written in 2022, a legal thriller, and One in the Chamber, written more recently in 2024, which is a political mystery murder. Welcome to Andy Sirstrel. Thank you so much, it's a pleasure to be here. Well, I guess the very first question is you're running for Congress. We'll start with the very simple one. Why are you running? Well, you know, it always started with my parents when they got to this country. They're both immigrants. My father from the Dominican Republic and my mother from Ecuador. And the first thing they did when they arrived here was enlist in the U.S. Army. And they did that independent of one another. They had not met yet. They both had the same thought. Let's try to serve this great country we're trying to become a part of. And so they met in the army. They fell in love. They had my sister and me. And that example has, you know, at every point in my life, inspired me to choose public service. It's why I became a homicide prosecutor right here in Miami, helping to keep our streets safe. And it's why I became an investigator on the January 6th trying to make sure that the folks who harmed officers on that day uh that that story got out and the American public had an opportunity to hear what happened so that we can try to avoid it from happening ever again. So that's why me but why right now and why this seat? you know Congresswoman Salazar is my Congresswoman and I was just fed up with the lack of representation uh she was giving for this community. uh Right now we have rising costs on you know on all sides affronting middle class working class families like my family and me. We have salaries that are way too low and at a time when we're facing these rising premiums in terms of healthcare and property insurance and groceries uh The Congresswoman is focused instead to vote to take away people's healthcare, which she did through the big ugly bill in order to give tax giveaways and tax buyouts to corporations and to billionaires. And I think that isn't right. I think we need a Congress person who again is going to focus like a laser on the middle class and on working class families and not redistribute income up to the wealthy and instead make sure that we're helping folks get by in this tough, tough economy. So that's why I'm running. Well, right now, one of the major topics is the government shutdown because it is affecting, it is starting to bite everybody. And it's the second longest on record now, the first, I think, being the last, during the last Trump presidency. Do you agree with the Democrats' approach focusing on healthcare? We have to, we have to be there to help people in our community meet their healthcare costs. And we can't allow those ACA subsidies to expire. This district, our community right here, the number one district in terms of ACA enrollees in the country. So Congresswoman Salazar has every, ah you know. Need to really take care that we don't see our premiums double or triple even right? We're gonna pay an average of $26,000 more per year on health care if these subsidies expire These are folks two hundred and fifteen thousand worth who are gonna see these prices skyrocket another 93,000 are going to Lose their health care altogether because they're going to be priced out from it. We absolutely agree that we have to be there. We have to have the backs of the people in our community. And unfortunately Congresswoman Salazar, she doesn't care. Well, to be fair, the Senate has said they're willing to have a separate vote on the Affordable Care Act subsidies. If after the Democratic Party agrees, you just not taking them at their word? it seems a little bit different than previous shutdowns. That's not going to the negotiating table saying that we're going to take a vote, that they're going to vote down, Allow again. We already see what type of votes they take. The congresswoman voted, as I mentioned. to give tax giveaways and tax buyouts to corporations and billionaires instead of protecting the health care of people in this community. Medicare, Medicaid, and ACA already because of that vote, a hundred thousand people in this community will lose their health care. And now on top of that, they want to offer a vote, up or down vote, right? And that doesn't guarantee that the folks in our community won't see these subsidies expire. That's not going to the negotiating table. It's quite simple. Reopen the government. and help people keep their health care. It's a win-win if they really wanted it, ah but clearly they don't. Most of the raters are saying that Ms. Salazar is favored to win and there may even be more redistricting. What are your thoughts about getting out your more name recognition and what's the current composition of the uh Democrats to Republican in this district? You know, we're pretty much split in three ways, Republican, NPA, and Democratic. uh I think, uh you know, you need to win the independence in Florida in order to win this seat. And you want to peel off, of course, Republicans. But people across the political spectrum uh realize that they didn't vote for this. They voted for a congressperson who's going to focus like a laser on the economy. Not only uh is she not focused on actually trying to reduce prices and help middle-class families get by, she's actively harming. She's actively working to take away their health care. as well as what we're seeing with immigration, we're seeing people in our community who have contributed so much to this country and to the economy, who have no criminal history, who have paid their taxes. They're being swept off the streets in unmarked vans by people who refuse to identify themselves, ICE agents who refuse to identify themselves and are masked and being put in cages and being deported to countries they've never even stepped foot in. without due process. so people in this district, they voted for lower prices. They voted for uh an immigration system that would secure the border, that would deport violent criminals, but not at all what's happening here, which is an unsmart, chaotic deportation policy that is ensnaring all of our neighbors and colleagues ah without due process into that net. And so uh these voters are open uh for a change, for someone who is going to speak truth to power who is going to tell the president that he's wrong and that he needs to change his uh immigration policy. And so there is an opening there. You just look at how the congresswoman is refusing to be out into the community. She hasn't held any town halls. She fled D.C. before even the government shutdown had uh happened. She wasn't interested in staying up there and working to try to keep the government open. And even down here in the community, she isn't meeting with folks because she's afraid. uh afraid of hearing from people in our community who are upset with these uh rising costs on all fronts. But let me pin that down. say she's afraid. And by the way, we have repeatedly asked the Congresswoman to come on this program now for several years. One time she agreed to come on and then canceled two minutes before airtime. uh And we just have been unable to get her to respond. the microphones are always open. If anyone's listening from her office, please reach out to us because we do uh want to hear your take on things, Congresswoman. But when you say fear, That is like kind of a recurring theme. Is she afraid of retribution from Donald Trump? Is that what you're saying? Well, she's uh entirely in complete lockstep with the president. She doesn't uh withhold her vote or try to gain any sort of concessions while she sees people in our community are being harmed. She gives the vote away for free. And in a closely divided house, that vote has so much value, has so much, it's so worthwhile that she can try to speak to him, to get him, to extend TPS, to not revoke TPS, to institute some guardrails, some due process in this immigration system. that he's completely tearing up. ah But she uh is so concerned with holding onto power. She's lost all sight of integrity, of standing up for what you believe in. ah Some things are more important than your in Congress. And unfortunately, she's forgotten that lesson. My understanding, I don't want to spend the whole time on immigration, um my understanding is that she's tried to introduce a couple of bills about immigration. em I think they were somewhat watered down, but that they never got even a hearing or got to the floors. Tony, we were talking about that previously, right? It's a perpetual topic. has introduced a number of, she has the Dignity Act, she'll talk to you about all the time. But there are critics who saying, really, these are not taking the problem head on, and certainly not doing anything in terms of ICE and the additional funding that has been put into the hands of this one particular agency uh to conduct this dramatic series of crackdowns all over the country. Then another question, because Some of the some other folks on the Democratic side of the aisle are really being quite uh outspoken about what they are describing and as authoritarianism. uh The governor of Illinois, the governor of California, these could be uh front runners for the Democrats in the presidential election to come. What do you think? Are we on the path? Are we already there? What's your concern? So quickly on the issue of the Dignity Act, she introduces the same bill every single Congress and it dies in committee. This is completely lip service. She knows it has no chance of being paid any attention to by leaders in her party. The Republican Party is moving to the right on immigration. ah And she puts that bill in just a pay, again, pay lip service while she's saying that Donald Trump will be the Lincoln that he will do for immigration, what Lincoln did for slavery, saying he gets it and that she trusts him in the how he's conducting immigration policy in this country. So she's completely talking out of both sides of mouth and that's intentional. As far as you know there are people in this community who fled from dictatorships. They know what it's like to live under governments where all the power is amassed in one person. These are Cuban Americans, Venezuelan Americans who make up a large makeup of the people who live in our community. And so when the president says things like maybe we like dictators, Americans like dictators, I take issue with that. And the people who fled dictatorships take issue with that too. We don't like dictators. This is America. We defeat world wars against them, we defeat dictators, we show through our love for democracy and equality and freedom that we are different from those countries and we will always be. And the issues that Congresswoman Salazar is saying absolutely nothing. She stays completely silent. Not one word when the president says ah that maybe uh American dictatorship is the way to go. That's insanity. We need to get back to the rule of law. We need to get back to the courts serving as a check on this president and Congress serving as a check on this president. They've completely given up. their prerogative that usually congresspeople of both parties have always tried, as the Article 1 branch in the Constitution always tried, to maintain their power. The power to tax and the power of the purse and the power to declare war. And now the Republicans in Congress, including Congresswoman Salazar, I don't even know why they're there. Do they want the job? Because they seem to just be rubber stamps for the president. Well, we only have a few minutes left, so as a news person, I have to fire some questions. Any reaction to the demolition of the East Wing? You know, the photos are heartbreaking. You know, I've had the pleasure of being able to go to the White House, uh one in my former role as chief of staff and another time pursuant to my role on January 6th. And, you know, to know that that no longer exists and what we're building instead will be even larger than the White House. Again, that's everything in this country. You know, there are checks and balances. There are uh people that we get approval from, people who have been elected by the American people. right? are electives, uh representatives in Congress or whatnot. And this is a president who unilaterally doesn't see the White House as a place he's renting. He sees it as a place he owns, right? When we rent a place, we can't knock down a whole wall. It doesn't belong to us. It's temporary. But maybe this president doesn't even think of his role as temporary, unfortunately. And that's sad. That's sad to see. He thinks of himself as a landlord, Right? So. Tony, I wanted to ask one question just to jump in. I'm moving into a completely different um topic, but I'd like to talk about education. I know that it's one of those topics where there's a lot of state issues and there's a lot of federal issues. But we are talking about getting rid of the Department of Education. And the Department of Education is one of the, it doesn't set an agenda or a curriculum for the entire United States. one of the things that it does seem to do is enforce uh the federal laws and the rules uh that we have passed about funding children with disability and the right to an education that you can understand through ESL. And reducing the size of it, which I think it's already been cut in half, reduces the ability to enforce those kinds of things that we have as a society, et cetera, important. So I guess my question really is, is there anything, is that something that you think that you could do something about? mean, what are your feelings on this? And what can Congress do to try and head off? the threat to some of these things, which are very important in this district where we have a lot of multilingual people. extremely important and as somebody who went to public schools my whole life was able to set me on the right path to get me to college into law school and the son of a school teacher my father in the public school systems here in Miami-Dade all his career. uh Education's supremely important to me public education we need to continue to fund public education and if we are cutting the whole department that is there ah to try to make sure that we're putting you know we're forcing kids to go to school as we should right we're going to make sure if we're going to do that that we're giving them the facilities and the care that they deserve. ah It's compulsory. And so we're making a promise to them that, you you got to come to the school, we got to feed them. There's always these issues about free lunches and about how we have kids there who are starving and obviously it's affecting their education. Our kids are who we will leave this great country to. And we need that next generation to be the strongest workforce, to be the smartest workforce. uh And so I'm extremely upset about the cuts to the Department of Education. threats to get rid of it. And in terms of what we can do is we got to take over the House, the Democrats do, so that we can have, again, the power of the subpoena to investigate, to uh hold committee hearings, to call up the head of the Department of Education, to ask what's going on, and to engage in some meaningful oversight. Because again, the president feels that he can just collapse entire agencies illegally. And he can uh redirect funds that have already been uh put together by Congress. Again, Congress is the Article 1 branch of the government. It's the first thing that our founders listed in the Constitution. And he can't do any of these things unilaterally. He needs the support and the approval of Congress. And when we have Democrats in charge of the House, again come 2026, we'll be able to be a meaningful check on his lawlessness. Well, we only have a couple of minutes left, so I have to just talk really briefly before you get to that stage, and I know you want to, you have to get past a Democratic opponent, Mr. Lamondon. There was another person in the race, of course, the former Key Biscayne mayor, Mike Davie, a friend of the program, and he withdrew and endorsed you. So we'll note that. But why do you think you're the better choice compared to Mr. Lamondon? Well, I'm proud to say that I out-raised the Congresswoman this quarter. My first quarter raised $330,000 to her $215,000. She actually spent more than she raised this quarter. And that shows all of the excitement on our side and all of the donors fleeing her on her side. And this was actually the largest haul of any Democratic challenger in a targeted district in Florida this cycle. so that speaks to how it is over 2,500 different donors. So it's small dollars. donations from people across the district and across the state who really believe in this campaign and in flipping this seed. But you I am the only Hispanic candidate in the race fluent in Spanish, grew up speaking Spanish with my parents who are as I mentioned immigrants. This is a community not only filled with immigrants but it is 75 % Hispanic. We got in that we're on Spanish language media. I've been doing way more Spanish language media than I have English language media because we can't see that ground to Congresswoman Salazar. When she lies on those channels, we need the other side there. And they've been so eager to have me on because they do want that other side given all the unfortunate things that are happening in this country. I have a record of public service, the only one who's done public service. And in fact, I have more experience in Congress than the Congresswoman does. I've worked over seven years in Congress starting off as a junior staffer all the way up to chief of staff over the last 20 years. uh And last I'll say is that somebody who was raised in working class, my father a school teacher, my mother a mail carrier, somebody who went to public school uh the whole time that I grew up, we want folks who have had this lived experience, we want to make sure that when you get to Congress, Congress will stay focused on middle class and working class people and not corporations and billionaires. It's best to have somebody who actually has lived it and not just empathizes with it. Gotcha. So you say if you look at my resume versus my opponent, I have that and I also have the ability to raise funds and be a credible threat. Can I summarize that fairly? You can. I'm the stronger candidate to go up against Congresswoman Salazar and that's what we need. We want to win. We want to make sure that we can flip this district and actually represent the people. All right, Robin Piguero, uh candidate for the United States House of Representatives, Florida District 27. Primary is in August, and then of course we have the election a long time away, but it seems like we're in this perpetual news cycle and we want to thank you for coming on to introduce you to our listeners. I hope we get to talk to you again as we get closer to the voting period, and I'm sure we'll see you on the island at times as you're campaigning. But thank you for being our guest. Thank you, Robin. much, I appreciate it. All right, and we'll be back right after this. All right, so uh you can hang up, but before you do that, leave your computer connected because what happens is uh it actually is making a pristine copy of your audio. And then if there were any glitches in the live, it uploads it to us. So you might see a little notification says uploading or something on your screen. Just leave it connected for a couple of minutes. And that way the file will finish uploading and it'll be done. But you just leave it open. You can hang up. or hit stop, but you don't, you, uh, I I think it just hang up. It's a little red button that says leave. Yeah. You can leave, just leave, leave it running for a little bit and then it catches up. Thank you. Okay, I'll do that. Thank you guys. Was that okay? Alright, I appreciate it. Take care. Okay, bye bye. All right, Jan and we'll just, he's doing his thing and we'll just keep going. All right, so just in your mind, the music has faded and you say, we're back and you know the drill. Okay. Just now? Okay. And we're back. um I'm Jan Dillo and this is Antisocial. Well, that was an interesting conversation with someone and we know, I wish we had more time. We try to these, keep the major points in these podcasts interviews. He has such a rich resume. We didn't even talk about January 6th and his investigation and what it meant to go over the evidence of what happened on that day. And, you know, the fact that the president and many of his allies are trying to spin a different narrative of what happened. ah even bizarrely, the president Trump blaming people who weren't even there for things that happened. ah It was just very strange. Yeah, I know, I think that being in the middle of that must have been quite an interesting thing. Maybe some those, uh maybe some stories leaked out into one or two of his books. Maybe we should read them. I didn't mention that either. That was a whole other topic. We had another thing. We could go through the novels and say, what about this character? Is that really you? Are you talking about yourself? Is it autobiographical? I don't know. There'll be debates eventually. And if he succeeds making it, hopefully eventually there'll be a debate with Ms. Salazar. Who knows? Maybe that'll be the big question. has she ever had a debate with a... I she's done them, but I mean, it's been... uh I really seriously did not know that. Yeah, but it's um a uh strategy that of not uh necessarily getting involved in the, rather than talk to the press, which is odd for someone who was a former journalist, quite frankly, ah she has decided to have this managed communications approach, which is we write our own stories, I do my own social media, I do my TikToks, I put all this stuff out. I go to news conferences and they're always, you know, we haven't had the ability to really interact with her as a member of Congress. And I did it to remind our listeners, Congresswoman Salazar lives in Key Biscayne. She lives in our primary reporting area. it's, again, the door is open. I really hope you come on and talk about why you think the way you're voting is correct and how you're serving your constituencies. the right way to do so. want to hear from the people who represent them. if you could, anyone does reach out to her, we'll reach out to keep reaching out and ask her to come on and have her join the program. But Mr. Pagaro, uh and we've had Mr. Lamondon on the show as well. You can go back and check our file. He was on last season and we'll be covering it as we go forward. Yeah. Maybe we should just make one comment, is that this is our 12th season, but a season is not necessarily a year because we have not been doing it for 12 years. I mean, what is a season? In the old TV days, it used to be 13 weeks, right? You do the fall season and that's it. now it's 26 weeks or 13 weeks. And you have streaming shows and they have four episodes and that's a season or five, 10 episodes and that's a season. But we sort of break them out. So we're calling this our 12th season. Yep, that's right. So Tony, what's new with you? Well, you've said what's in your feed. I'm from the DC area, and I actually would love to go to see the White House and what it looks like now, because that was just an iconic thing. When we went into DC, we would almost always walk by. Mr. Our guest talked about being there. I uh went to the White House several times, not so much to the East Wing because my job would take me mostly to the West Wing. And that's where the news media, you know, there's what the press area is. The East Wing uh was the offices of the First Lady and had, uh I think I was there on a White House tour once, but it wasn't something that I would be at very often, but it was used a lot by others. And it's part of the complex and it's been demolished in this very uh way that's really kind of shocked a lot of people, just the entire way it's unfolded. uh getting the same kind of construction noise that all of us that live in condos in Kibis Gain are getting? You think we should send them a noise reduction earphones just in case? well, yes, uh it probably can't be very, can be very pleasant in terms of that. And then how long the construction will take and what the final form of it will be. It's all up in the air. And then just as I said, you know, having uh the last time I was here, I want to say uh before the national guard deployment to Washington, DC, uh now just going around town and seeing these soldiers everywhere. It's a bit jarring, you know, I don't want to say completely uh different because we have seen them in major metro areas before, especially New York, usually to back up police when there are terrorism threats or uh big transportation. I've seen them at Penn Station. I've seen them at Times Square uh and basically backing up local law enforcement in a support role. So it's not completely there, but it is a bit unnerving to see them just you know, patrolling the area around the ticket machines in the metro system. uh A friend of mine lives in DC and she was saying that she was driving, the traffic had gotten uh detoured by them down by the C &O canal and she said, she was asking them what's going on and it was apparent, have a, sumac is this very invasive plant that's like once it gets hold it is nearly impossible to get rid of it. There's a lot of sumac that they were basically trying to get rid of and I mean she said you know what I think that the sumac is going to win on this one so if that's the war that they're waging she didn't have high high expectations for them. So a lot of news in Key Biscayne as of late, since we broke uh for our little, we just took a couple of months off to resume our series of podcasts. We do have some great guests coming up and I can tell you that Mayor Danila Levine Cava will be on our show in November. you can look forward to that. She's committed to that and we have other guests who we'll be able to announce soon as well. We wanna keep bringing you this podcast and keep you informed on. all that's going on. One big topic we'll be talking to her about in this transition is all the things that have been happening involving the Rickenbacker Causeway, primarily the Sequarium and the uh end of that institution as a tourist attraction as we know it. Yeah, that's a big, that's gonna be, a lot of people are very, very concerned about what that means for us um in our traffic situation going forward. So yeah, I think that will be a good one. And you know, just a shout out to our listeners, if there's particular topics that you think that we should be covering, please let us know. We're easy to get in touch with through our website, kbsgainindependent.org. and we'd love to hear what your thoughts or what you think is relevant for us to be covering. And with that, we'll remind you that this is listener supported. uh And as you're listening to the podcast, it's also reader supported. We are nonprofit community journalism where we'll be ending, starting our fundraising season. Really, by the time you hear this, it'll probably be already running. uh Starts November 1st and we have the News Match Program. What does that mean? It means that your dollars are matched. So it's an especially good time to... to make a contribution to the local kind of reporting that we're doing. We cover the Rickenbacker Causeway, we cover the Village Budget, we cover uh things involving youth soccer, and that's a big story that we've been covering. cultural and arts events, uh we've been expanding a lot of that coverage, but it takes resources and we count on you. So uh please, we appreciate your generosity and it's hope it will continue. And just a shout out to remember that Give Miami Day is coming up November 20th. But don't wait. Our match starts right. Exactly. yes, if you're planning, that's it. And again, uh one last thing, if you really love us and you want to think of something, the best way to do that is to create a matching gift because we have found, and it's kind of true in the fundraising world, when there's a match, it just encourages others to give. it's a way of directly doubling not only what you're giving, but encouraging others to give more. So it's kind of like this wonderful circle of uh generosity that you can help inspire. So if you'd like to, we would give you recognition for that. If you'd like to reach out to us and be a match sponsor for this upcoming season, please let us know. You can write to us at info, I-N-F-O at kbindependent.org. uh And we'll be happy to get back to you as well. And with that, are looking forward to. Okay, uh you have to just talk over the music. So I'll start that again. We'll edit that again. you could keep, just ignore it because it sounds louder than it is. It's gonna start in the background. So ah how did you do it? Just wanna wrap it up and then I'll say I'm Tony Winton and thanks for listening or something like that. Okay, all right, ready? Hold on a second, here we go. And as always, we'd like to thank our listeners for listening to us, and we're looking forward to bringing you more news about Key Biscayne. I'm Jan Dillo. I'm Tony Winton. Be safe, everyone.