Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors of Cooper City
Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
EP #159: Inside the Journey of a US Congressional Candidate: A Conversation with Chris Eddy
Do you know what it takes to serve as a US Congressional Candidate? Join us for a captivating conversation with Chris Eddy, who promises to share an insider's perspective on the journey to candidacy. From the roots of his father's business in New York, to his distinguished service as a Brigadier General in the Air Force and Reserves, and even his time spent at the FBI office in Florida, Chris Eddy has a story worth hearing. Ever wondered about the realities of local politics? Chris dispels common misconceptions and provides a candid glimpse into the realities of tax increases and permit processes at city level.
Our conversation doesn't stop at politics. Chris offers us an intimate look into his world, including his current role teaching at FIU and the values he instills in his own children. His dedication to fiscal conservatism and the representation of his district's interests, rather than the politics of Washington, are sure to inspire. And for all the students among you, gain valuable insights from his experience as an educator and how this has shaped his candidacy. Eager to support Chris on his political journey? Tune in to find out how you can get involved in his campaign. This episode is a fascinating look into the life of a US Congressional Candidate. Tune in, you won't be disappointed.
This is the Good Neighbor podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Jeremy Wolff.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, and welcome to the Good Neighbor podcast. I'm your host, Jeremy Wolff, and today I'm joined by a very special guest. I was actually at a recent Davey Cooper City Chamber of Commerce luncheon and I met our next guest. When we have Chris Eddy, he's actually a US congressional candidate for the 25th District and we typically have business owners on this platform. But when I met Chris and I saw what he was doing, I figured he would make for an interesting guest and he does have a pretty extensive backstory. So I extended him an olive branch and said Chris, why don't you come on the show and tell us a little bit about your candidacy and your background? So, Chris, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3:Thanks, jeremy. Big fan of small businesses, my dad had one growing up in upstate New York, so I know the challenges to start a business, to keep it going, especially when the economy is tough, and all the regulation that goes into it. I have deep admiration for anybody that can wake up every morning and do that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about your current candidacy or running for US congressional candidate, district 25. Tell us a little bit about that, and then we shall proceed from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know if you ever watched some of these politicians on TV in Washington. You go, man. Is this the best our country has really to offer? I'm both sides of the aisle? Honestly, no, I've never thought that before.
Speaker 3:So my wife and I are just thinking about that and I just couldn't yell at the TV anymore. We have high school kids and they use that dad logic on me that I use on them. They said, dad, why don't you quit complaining and do something about it? The same thing they said, actually, when I started complaining during COVID about the city operations of Weston. So I ran for city commission just a four month campaign really. We got in the last day of qualification and we ended up winning with the most votes in city history, despite being in a three person race.
Speaker 3:So that told me maybe there's a little bit of an appetite for some normalcy and middle of the road type of thinking on many of these issues, where I think a majority of Americans are. I think they just tune a lot of that DC life out to stop the stop the chaos. I guess. And I have a little bit of a background retired Brigadier General from the Air Force and Air Force Reserves, and concurrently I was in federal government service and I ended up at the FBI office here in Miami, Florida. We're one of 56 offices nationwide and in the span of just a few short years I built that intelligence program where I led 160 people and to be in the number one program intelligence program out of 56 in the entire FBI. I've been teaching at FIU as an adjunct professor, national security and foreign policy for last seven, seven, eight years or so and, as you can tell, I'd like to stay busy and involved.
Speaker 2:I can see that Well. So a lot to unpack there. So first off I'll say thank you for your service. Anytime I encounter a member of our armed forces, I always like to thank them because you do a lot of. You guys have done a lot of great things for us and certainly very appreciative for that. So I wanted to ask you about first the city commission in Weston. You said city commissioner in Weston, right, correct? What are some common myths or misconceptions that the general public has about specifically pertaining to elected local officials? Because I know sometimes you could sit around and, like you said, you could be quick to blame and say why can't things be done differently. But I think once you actually get involved there's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes that makes it difficult to get things done. So I was hoping you could share some behind the scenes about how that works.
Speaker 3:Sure, I knew very little of the city government. You know most people don't know their commissioner names and I was one of those people. It wasn't until I started playing about stuff I started to learn a little bit more. One of the reasons my wife and I moved to Weston from Coral Gables was, in addition to schools and safety, it's a fiscally conservative government. There's only 12 city employees in Weston. Everybody else is contracted out, so one of the very few cities nationwide are considered contract cities. So I liked that part of it.
Speaker 3:Every year when people get their tax bills and they notice they go up, we get some calls not a lot, but we get some calls saying, hey, why did you raise our taxes? In fact we've kept our tax rate the same in Weston for the last six years, the same with our business tax rate. The reason it goes up is because the county also has taxes that they increase. The school board has taxes which they increased a half point millage rate this year for teacher raises among other things. And you know the price of your home goes up, even if your homestead can go up 3%, so that valuation goes up. So these prices continue to go up. So even though we don't raise taxes and we try to live within our means. Their overall tax bill goes up.
Speaker 3:But I understand what the job was. When I came in I knew people would be calling me because their street lights out or their trash wasn't picked up, you know. Or dogs barking. And that's what I liked, you know, trying to have impact at a local level. I've had enough titles and awards in my life. I really don't need that anymore. I like to see where maybe I can help people get to some of the bureaucracy. We don't have much. We don't have to be a problem of it or at least provide an answer.
Speaker 3:And another example is a good one, which is the speaking of dogs. Barking is the permit process. In a lot of cities Our turnaround time is three to five days, but what we found is a lot of contractors very busy. They got multiple jobs going on. They might tell the owner well, it's stuck at the city. Then the owner calls me and then I could track it down because everything's online and say, no, that's been with the contractor for the last two weeks. So that's another misconception that cities just kind of make up these rules and hold on to the permit process when a lot of the rules are state-based and not really locally-based.
Speaker 2:So let's extend that out a little bit. So you're talk a little bit about your congressional bid. Apologize, my dog's excited. It's a Monday.
Speaker 3:He's getting ready for a good week. I had an impact on people and animals, I guess.
Speaker 2:So what exactly? For those out there that don't know, like myself, like, what is a local congressional candidate that represents a district? What are you ultimately running on? Like? What do you do for the country? What is the-?
Speaker 3:So the current Congressperson is Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz quite a while and a district they just redistricted a couple of years ago. Essentially it's from Weston all the way to Hollywood and Hollandaille Beach south of 595, just in Broward County, except for a little bit of salt plantation. When they draw those quickly lines everywhere and we represent our interests in our district, too many people you see them on TV a lot too politicians. They tend to represent the Washington district and like to be on TV and get committee assignments, all that fancy stuff, and then they forget really the struggles. That goes on. So we try to make sure that our district needs and desires are represented.
Speaker 3:Now our district's 42% Democrat and the rest are split between independence and Republicans. So we're a largely mixed middle of the road type of district. So we don't want extremes on either end. Right, we want just to make sure inflation's low. Same thing. We want to make sure we raise our family with minimal interference from government and make sure our books are balanced In the city, in the state. We have to balance the budget every year, but the federal government, they get a pass on that and unfortunately this year we have $800 billion in interest on the debt, not even paying off the debt. So that's $2 billion a day is on interest to the debt. That's more we spend on national defense and more than we spend on our veterans. So I get it. These politicians don't want to rock the boat, they want to get reelected, but somebody's got to do something sometime. I don't hear anybody talking about that in Washington, or very few people.
Speaker 2:Now going back. When did you join the military? When did you join the Air Force?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was right out of college. I couldn't afford college my last two years. So I saw the ROTC banner signed up and I was fortunate enough to get a two year scholarship to help me through my last two years and with that I owed them four or five years. Afterwards I got off active duty and then just stayed full time reserve. So I went from tour to tour around the world for about seven years, Served a lot of time in Korea, a lot of time in Europe, Caribbean, all over this great country, and just kind of put my head down and went to work and worry about promotions or anything. And it just kind of naturally happened. And I was very thrilled to get the call from Admiral Sturvidus saying I got picked up for breeder general and my last assignment was at the Pentagon working for a three star general. So when he or she was gone I would go in and backfill them and run the daily meetings and daily operations of their staff up there and I retired about six years ago from there.
Speaker 2:So when did you get involved with the FBI?
Speaker 3:So the FBI was right around 2006. So again, as a reservist it's many people think you work a weekend a month, two weeks a year, type of thing with the reserves, but in my case it was one to two weeks a year for well, it's full time for several years and one to two weeks a month for several, several years. So I would go to the Pentagon during the day and at night I'd go down the FBI office and work and try to catch up Anything in Germany during the day and then at night I'd sneak over to the FBI office and try to get some work done there. So I spent my last 13 years of federal service at the great FBI office here in Miami.
Speaker 2:How did you start teaching at FIU?
Speaker 3:Through my contacts with the FBI I wanted to make sure that we got out to the community. We might not always have the best and brightest ideas that there might be some good analysts in academia. So we started an outreach program with the FIU International Relations Program and Government Affairs Program where they're training future Intel analysts. So I said, oh well, how about we get them to write some analysis that we might need on something in Latin America that was our territory and they could learn the process and we could benefit from their extra analysis. And when they go interview for jobs they could say, well, look what I did for the FBI in Miami.
Speaker 3:So that's how that started. And eventually they came to me and said hey, would you mind writing some courses for us in teaching? We need people with real world experience teaching and not just some theoretical models. So I've really enjoyed it the last seven years. I do about two or three classes a semester a year round and it keeps my fingers in the pie and it helps. I'd like to feel like I'm giving back a little bit and training future analysts so they don't make the same mistakes that we did as we went along.
Speaker 2:You mentioned you had high school kids.
Speaker 3:I do. Yeah, I got a ninth grader and a senior getting ready to go off to college doing that college application process.
Speaker 2:Exciting. I'm not far behind you. I got nine and well, a little bit far behind, I got a nine and 11 year old. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's exciting times. Obviously, times change, work ethic change and we just try to roll with it. As parents my wife's a retired FBI agent as well as where we met and just like everybody else, we do the best we can and put our head down and hopefully instill them with the right values and work ethic. So when they go off on their own, they're not important to society.
Speaker 2:What do you guys like to do for fun when you're not working? My?
Speaker 3:son's a basketball player state champion this last year. He's very competitive so we like being involved in that going to his games. My daughter does that. I'm one of those little girls that does everything from crochet to stargazing. Now she's in the junior ROTC program at Cypress. She really enjoys that, so we're busy shuttling them around. My wife's an avid athlete, an Olympic qualifying triathlete, so she's a station shape for the both of us. I can't keep up with her and we during the campaign, not much time for anything else, but we really like to socialize with friends and we do volunteer a lot, especially with a couple local charities that give back to sick and disadvantaged children. We used to donate and try to provide services nationwide, and over the last few years we just want to see what kind of an impact we can have locally. That's why we're involved with the Rotary Club, not only of Weston but of Hollywood and Davey Cooper City Rotary Club as well, and then other great organizations like the Chamber of Commerce.
Speaker 2:What's the one thing that you'd like to leave our listeners with?
Speaker 3:I think, at least for my candidacy, we need some normal people, more normal people in Washington. Those that aren't just out there for the limelight are hey, I want to be a committee person, so I have to vote yes or no on this bill because that's what my party said, even if it's not in the best interest of their constituency. I'm not a politician. I don't come from that background. I had no aspirations to do this growing up, but enough is enough. That's the kind of way I feel.
Speaker 3:I'm a very fiscal conservative guy and I think we need to pay our bills and I think it's a national security issue and we need to watch for our pennies and dollars to go in, Because if we don't, it leads to inflation. We see our small businesses struggling. I know a couple of restaurants locally have been in business a long time. They're really month-to-month with their bills and a lot of that is because of the food inflation, labor inflation, insurance and everything that goes on top of that, and I don't really hear many people in Washington talking about it in representing their district. So I wanted to put my hat in the ring. We're working hard every day to try to impact that change and I think we're getting great traction from both sides of the aisle. I was an independent my whole life and I think that's what people were looking at somebody with some critical thinking skills.
Speaker 2:How can listeners learn more about your candidacy? Where can they go to get more information? How can they reach you? Great question.
Speaker 3:They go to eddydy, the number four congresscom. You have everything on there. I'm pretty transparent about my background and the policy things and I'm not everyone's cup of tea. So for those that think the government should be run more like a business and thinks the government's maybe a little bit too intrusive in our lives, I urge you to check it out and, if you want, there's a little volunteer button. We got teams of people out every day actually knocking on doors and doing social media, so it is nice getting out in the community seeing people that do want to have some positive change as well.
Speaker 2:All right Sounds good. We will, of course, link in the description below to all of your contact information. Chris, thanks so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure getting the opportunity to learn about your background. Thank you for everything you've done for our country in the past and everything that you are planning on doing for our great community moving forward. So thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, I look forward to seeing you more in person too. Yeah, likewise, you have a wonderful day. And to our listeners, thanks for tuning in and we will catch you next time.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast Cooper City. To nominate your favorite local business to be featured on the show, go to GNPCooperCitycom. That's GNPCooperCitycom, or call 954-231-3170.