Meet and Greet with Rep. Ed Diehl running for Governer | Season 2 Episode 28

 Ed Diehl showed up with supporters and community members at River Valley Church Redwood Campus for a local meet and greet where he talked about his campaign, his background, issues facing Oregon, and the direction he believes the state should be heading. 

Watch the full video here : https://youtu.be/9CUPlHGP_ks

In this episode of The JoCo Republican Podcast I cover the entire event without commentary just the full recording from that day. Southern Oregon politics continues heating up as candidates begin connecting directly with voters across Josephine County and beyond. Make sure to like, subscribe, and follow The JoCo Republican Podcast on all platforms for more local political coverage, interviews, community events, and Southern Oregon news. 

​ ⁨@realdiehl⁩ ​ ⁨@RepDwayneYunkerForOregon⁩

#EdDiehl #TheJoCoRepublican #JoCoRepublican #josephinecounty #southernoregon #oregonpolitics #grantspass #republican #localpolitics #oregon #campaignevent #MeetAndGreet #RiverValleyRChurch #RedwoodCampus #podcast #politicalpodcast #conservative #communityevent #election2026 #JoCo 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Just I Republican is May 10th, 2026. Yesterday I went to the meet and greet with Representative Dwayne and Representative Ed Deal for Oregon Governor. So that was at the River Valley Redwood campus here in Grant's Pass. It was a great event. A bunch of awesome people. A lot of good turnout, good folks. And uh here it is. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_09 0:25

Um I want to introduce my wife. That light is so bright. Thank you. Is that okay? Can you still see me? Okay. And thank you, Tyler, for letting us use your your beautiful church character. Uh this is my wife, Jamie. Uh she's all in this with me. We have uh flipped our life upside down to do this. Um we we worked in our business together, and she's my chief of staff in the legislature. And that doesn't work out for every couple, but it works great for us. Um I've I just know that uh I don't talk shop until she's had a coffee in the morning and said her prayers, and then we can talk shop and we talk shop all day. But uh and happy Mother's Day tomorrow. So I currently serve as state representative for House District 17, which it covers East Salem through the Sandy Am Canyon, if you're familiar with that. The Highway 22 Quarter, Staten, Almsville, Turner, um, and then all the way up through Detroit. Uh a beautiful part of the state, but this is also a beautiful part of the state. And we were talking, I used to do work down here. I worked at sawmills all around the world, uh, and a lot of sawmills in Oregon and uh Cave Junction. We were talking about. I've worked there. A lot of sawmills are a lot of my customers are gone, and that's one of the reasons I'm running, actually. Um, I had the opportunity and I jumped at the opportunity to run the transportation tax and fee referendum, the no-tax Oregon referendum. Um, thank you to everybody who participated in that and volunteered to gather signatures. Uh, we you guys got to realize we made Oregon history with that thing. We did 250,000 signatures in 38 days, and we put Governor Kotec on her heels because she was not expecting it. In fact, she was told, she was told we could not, and I'll talk more about that later. She was told we could not do it. For me, that was like, hold my beer, uh, we're gonna show you we can do this, and people rallied and made it happen. Um, I'll tell you a little bit about my background and then uh talk about how we're gonna take back Oregon. So I I did not grow up in Oregon, but I didn't grow up in California either. I always want to make that clarification. Uh I'm I'm born and raised in Montana.

SPEAKER_10 2:59

All right. Western Montana. Yay, okay.

SPEAKER_09 3:01

See, that's the that's the response I usually get. It's okay. Plains. Okay. You know where Plains is?

SPEAKER_04 3:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 3:10

Really? Okay.

SPEAKER_04 3:11

Yeah, we're we're we were in South Central Montana. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_09 3:14

Many years. Yeah. So I I was born and raised there on a cattle ranch. My dad was a logger and a truck driver. And my I had one grandpa that was a sawmiller, and another grandpa that was a forest ranger for the same area. So that kind of forms my perspective. And I knew I grew up, it was a frontier area, uh, and I know what it's like growing up in a place far away from the capital where all the decisions are made. Uh, so that's the perspective I have when I'm in the legislature. Uh, and that's the perspective I'll have too when I'm governor. Uh, I did not um, or I had the opportunity, I got a scholarship to Stanford University, like Dwayne said, and I studied mechanical engineering. I have a bachelor's, a master's in mechanical engineering. And but the coolest thing is that's where I met my wife. She grew up in Sio, just out of Staten, just a few miles from where we live right now. But we decided we wanted to come to Oregon, get married, raise our kids, and build a business. And that's what we did. And we have two kids and three grandkids. My our son is a Marion County Sheriff's Detective. Our daughter, daughter, lives in Twalleton. She she works for a she's in accounting, works for an agency there. We've got three great-grandkids. Um, but but a few years ago also we we started a business. So I my business was in factory automation and control systems. So we put the computer equipment on the machines that make stuff. And that includes, like I said, a lot of sawmills, sawmill optimization and control equipment. We put uh our control systems put the rivets in Boeing 747 wings. We put the we uh our controls lay up the composite wings for the Dreamliner. Did a lot of work for Boeing. Um, our our controls did the nose cone for the Falcon SpaceX rocket. Uh, if you eat McDonald's French fries, our controls make French fries, Conagra Lam Weston, lots of French fries. Uh so that's that's the business that I that I built. I built it with two two other partners uh from up to 100 employees. We had based in Albany, Oregon, then we had an office in Washington and North Carolina. And I I bootstrapped this thing. I I sold a car, I leveraged my credit cards, uh, I left a good paying job with two little kids at home, and I put everything on the line to build this. If you if you've started a business, you know what it's like. Um, but but we were successful and we built it up to 100 employees. But I know what it's like to sign two sides of a paycheck. I know what it's like to pay your employees and hope there's something left. I remember those days when we were starting it up, and I know what it's like we rode through the 2008 recession, and we scribbed and saved and re held on to our employees and rode through that thing so we were stronger and better coming out of it. That perspective as a business owner and understanding private business and the impact government decisions have on business is missing, is missing in our government. Governor Kotek has no idea she spent her entire career in nonprofits and then in the legislature and then now as governor. She has no idea what private business is, she has no respect for private business, she just doesn't get it. And we're seeing that, we're seeing that across our state. We're seeing businesses leaving, good paying jobs leaving. And you guys know it. You experienced that with Dutch Brothers, right? Yeah, I was in White City, Pavati Boats. Has anybody heard of Pavati Boats? They're picking up and they're moving to Texas. At least they're part of their operation. Um, so so that's definitely something that that needs to change. And I'll tell you this: a career as a legislator does not prepare you to be an executive. And it and a governor isn't is an executive, the CEO of this of the state. A career in the legislature does not prepare you for that. I know I've been in the legislature for almost four years, long enough to know what's broken, but not long enough to to let it break me. So my my vision for Oregon, hey Nick, that's Nick Stark, Oregon Freedom Coalition. Um my vision for Oregon is simple. We live in the most beautiful state in the country. It's one of the reasons we live here. I love it here. But what good is that if you can't afford to live here? If your kids can't get a good education, if your streets aren't safe, and if jobs are fleeing. So my my vision for Oregon is to not only be the most beautiful state in the country, but the greatest state to live and to work, to raise your family, and retire in a place where your kids and grandkids don't have to leave to find a better job. Everywhere I go, I'm hearing that story. I've heard so many times again, things don't change, I'm going to leave. I had a guy come, I'm gonna help you and do everything I can to help you get elected because if you don't get elected, I'm leaving. It's like no pressure, no pressure. Um, and then I I've met parents and grandparents who've had their kids leave uh because they just they can't afford to live here, they can't find a good house. So I'm committed to make that change. And we can. The thing is, we can do it. For me, the three pillars are accountability, government accountability, a way of life that's affordable and a thriving economy. I'm gonna hit on just the highlights for that and then open it up to questions. With government accountability, we have four decades of one-party governance in the state. Four decades. It'll be 40 years to the inauguration day in 2027 that Vicatiya left office. Vicatiya was the last Republican governor. He was a business guy too. And he came in in a time of some economic instability. Uh, and he turned things around. Uh, he he got Oregon involved in more trade. Uh, he brought technology sector businesses into the state uh as our forests were locked up. So um, but what's happened over those four decades is we have agencies that are no longer accountable to the best interests of the people. We see that all the time. So, my commitment to you is to do a hundred percent performance audits on every one of our state agencies. Deep perform independent performance audits by fund and subfund to understand exactly where all the money's going and to root out fraud and the waste. Do you guys realize we've doubled our state budget? Double our state budget in 10 years. You can't explain that with inflation, you can't explain it with population growth. And when I look at our state agencies, yes, there's fraud and some waste going on, I know that, but there's just the biggest issue is misaligned priorities. Who here thinks the Department of Education has their priorities straight? Exactly. How about ODOP?

SPEAKER_08 10:39

No way.

SPEAKER_09 10:40

No, the governor for Department of Education, the governor is the superintendent of public education in the state of Oregon. As governor, uh, that agency is gonna look a lot different. Uh, we will get focused on excellence, accountability, and discipline in our schools. And what I mean by that is we will reinstate testing standards. We will give teachers the ability to discipline their own classrooms. I don't know if there's any teachers here. I've talked to so many teachers that are so frustrated with the ability to just control their own classrooms. There are people, the students in there that are threat threatening them. I've talked to teachers with scratches up and down their arms in tears, just telling me stories how they cannot control their own classrooms. We need accountability for those students and accountability for those students' parents. And I think that's important. Um we need to enforce uh truancy laws. Uh we we we don't we don't enforce truancy. Uh we have some of the highest absentee hitm rates in the in this in the country. But the biggest thing is we we have to get back to a curriculum that is focused on the basic fundamentals of a good education. It's reading, writing, and arithmetic, and using proven methods to teach. You know, we had to uh the state had to spend tens of millions of dollars a couple years ago to teach teachers phonics. They came out of the the recent teachers came out of the education system not knowing how to teach phonics. Is it any wonder we have bottom-setting uh performance? Near the we're ranked near the bottom, if not the bottom in the country for reading comprehension for fourth grade. Uh so so I want to get back to basics. I want to eliminate the the DEI portion of the curriculum that the state is directing to all the teachers, which is a real distraction. If you have a math teacher and she has to spend a third of her time teaching things about identity and activism instead of math, that's a problem. That that will go away. Uh, and I'm looking at how our government is spending more and more money in administrative overhead uh instead of putting that money in this in the classroom uh with the teacher, and that's gonna change too. Uh that's just one example of many agencies. When it comes to agencies like the the DEQ, Department of Fish and Wildlife, uh the governor selects who is in who runs these boards and commissions and who are who's in the leadership in these agencies. Um I want a DEQ that has common sense standards. We all want clean air and clean water, but common sense standards that match and are competitive with other states. And I want them to have an attitude of how do I get to yes instead of blocking progress. I've talked to people uh who've tried to get projects done for years, over you know, some over a decade, and cannot get basic projects done, like digging a digging a hole in their their backyard for rock, for example. It is it is crazy. And I see an opportunity here because I'm talking to businesses in Portland. When you have a business in Portland complaining about the DEQ, the same way a cattle rancher in Burns is complaining. I'm on to something. There's there's an opportunity here that crosses that urban world to buy. So I will be assigning new leadership to virtually every agency. I'll make sure that those agencies, like Department of Fish and Wildlife, have actual fishermen, actual hunters in those agencies, uh making common sense decisions. This is not gonna be easy, but it has to happen. It has to happen. It's gonna be a fight. Um, but I'm up for that fight, and I'll need your help. I'll need you, you're gonna have to have my back. Um, but but I'm committed to do that for an affordable way of life. Um, in addition to getting these agencies under control and actually reducing state spending, I'm calling for a 10% tax cut. Governor Kotec is every session she's coming for more and more taxes. Even though our spending has doubled in 10 years, it's still not enough. It's still not enough. She's building a massive welfare state. That's what she's trying to build. And it's gonna it's gonna bankrupt us. So I'm calling for 10% tax cuts in addition to the spending cuts. I'm calling for the elimination of the hidden sales tax, which is the corporate activities tax. If you talk to businesses about why they're not coming to Oregon or why they're leaving Oregon, that's one of the big ones. Uh, that is a tax on business revenue. Whether they make money or not, they pay this tax. But guess who really pays it? Every consumer. And it's a cumulative tax. It is a sales tax by another name. And you say, wait, Ed, sales taxes are unconstitutional in Oregon. Well, not if you call it a CAT tax. Uh, that's the difference. I'm calling for uh the elimination of the death tax. There's a petition back there for that. Uh, we have the most punitive death tax in the country here in Oregon. Want to eliminate that. I'm calling also for the freezing of property taxes for senior citizens. So well, and that's just to start. Um, we can do these things in Oregon if we get our agency spending under control. Uh then for a thriving economy, I will be a governor who is talking to business, who understands business, who will veto bad business bills, uh, and who will be encouraging businesses to grow and provide good paying jobs in Oregon. I will make sure that a business person's first contact with a governor is not the governor of Texas, it's the governor of Oregon. And what we have going on right now, like with Pabati Boats, they tried to reach and contact Governor Kotex. She would not give him the time of day. But they did have a conversation with Greg Gabbott in Texas. And he's given them an offer that is really hard for them to refuse. And that's what's going on. We have Governor Kotex traveling around the state on the on a prosperity tour and talk to businesses. Well, why, you know, how can we help? How can we help businesses grow here? And they're all saying one thing right now. They're saying, well, you know that Senate Bill 1507, where HR1, the big beautiful bill, gave us all these tax breaks and tax incentives. Well, don't sign Senate Bill 1507, veto that thing because it claws back hundreds of millions of dollars of those tax breaks. Those tax breaks were designed to incentivize businesses to grow and invest in Oregon. And Governor Kotek is clawing those back. Uh, but she did sign that bill. But uh we have a referendum back there to also refer that one to voters, and we want to show Governor Koteck she can't keep doing this to us. So I encourage you to sign, it's called the no-tax clawback petition. Uh, but she's traveling around asking businesses how we can help, and they're telling her exactly what they need, and she's doing exactly the opposite. Younger and I see it every session. More and more bills that make it harder to build a business, harder to start a business, harder to be a landlord. I mean, it's ridiculous some of the some of the landlord laws that we are going through. She does not respect or understand private business. In fact, she told the Medford Chamber, I was in there talking to the Medford Chamber the other day, she told them that it's we don't have a business climate problem, we have a PR problem. And if only we just sold ourselves better, we could fix the business climate. It's nonsense. Have you guys been downtown Portland? Uh-uh.

SPEAKER_14 19:00

Not really.

SPEAKER_09 19:02

I have because I'm trying to get votes. Yeah, so um, but uh downtown Portland is is a shell, and they're in what's called an economic doom loop. The tax rates keep going up. Portland is trying to tax anything that that moves. Uh they just added to the person's utility bill a tax for roads. I'm trying to figure out what that's got to do with my utility bill, but uh but tax rates are going up, tax revenue is going down. How can that be? Businesses are leaving. Uh people that built uh bought buildings for 800 million are selling them for 300 million, so the property value's plummeting and the tax associated with that's going down. And people of means are leaving. Uh it's gonna take us years to recover, but we have to have a vibrant portal. The state of Oregon needs to be a vibrant and healthy Portland. I like weird Portland, I don't like crazy Portland. I'd go back to weird Portland. I was the first Republican in over a decade to go speak to the Portland Metro Chamber, and I had a good reception there. And they realized that something has to change, and they're not gonna get it with Governor Kotech. So, with that, I've covered a lot of territory. I know you guys have a lot of questions uh about issues that are important to you, and I'm gonna guess which ones they are because I haven't talked about them yet. Uh, but uh I'd like I'd love to open it up to questions. Uh, and anything is on the table. I do not filter my questions like something right here.

SPEAKER_06 20:34

Okay, okay. I'm a small business owner. I have a dump truck. That's it. It's a dump truck. We've been trying to make a living for the last two years, and they've taxed us out. They the government is just clawing. Every time I do anything, 19 cents a mile for driving on the roads.

SPEAKER_10 20:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 20:53

Um, you know, gas tax, this tax, this tax, they just keep from me. Uh, will you look at that for us?

SPEAKER_09 21:00

I mean, I I will absolutely do it. So, one of my targets with cost of energy is we're paying a lot in our utility costs and our gas taxes, uh, gas costs for this clean fuels program or or basically climate mandates. This isn't about, you know, this isn't about arguing about climate science and climate change. It's an argument about am I getting a return for the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that you guys are spending in the name of the climate? Is it improving your life? Is it going to improve your kids' life? Is it improving the climate in Oregon? My argument is no. I will repeal the executive order of the Climate Protection Plan, which frankly, you guys even haven't felt the pain of that. Uh, it is like cap and trade on steroids. They're going to uh add a fee on anything that produces carbon, and that could be in natural gas, it's going to be gasoline. But the fee goes to a nonprofit called seating justice. This is a woke nonprofit, and they will take the money and feed it into climate justice programs. It's just like unbelievable. Unbelievable. That has to go. That will be repealed. Other executive orders related to clean tools that some of these are jacking your fuel costs up 20 20 cents. I could do a day's workflow. I just got a few hundred dollars to sell for it, you know, a full day. Those are gonna go away. Fortunately, well or unfortunately, a lot of the pain points we have in some of our agencies are in rule. So what that means is uh I can make an impact pretty quickly as governor with new leadership and new priorities, and we rewrite those rules, uh, even if I have a legislature that's not cooperating. And so I look at uh when I'm when I'm talking, I spent a lot of time over in Eastern Oregon talking about water challenges and the water resource board. The community will come up with a common sense solution to deal with their water challenges, and there are some serious challenges over there. But when you have the whole community, the environmentalists, the ranchers, the business people, just regular citizens agreeing on a solution, and then and then the state comes in and says, No, we don't like your solution, but it's based on modern science. Well, we don't like your science. Well, why? We just don't like it. That is the attitude that we have from our state agencies now, and that will change, Mr. Governor.

SPEAKER_07 23:50

Uh, what's your opinion on uh mail-in voting and the 800,000 allegedly regular register coding?

SPEAKER_09 23:58

Yeah. So with the 800,000 inactive inactive voters, judicial watch uh did a lawsuit, thankfully, to lead that because we Oregon is not complying with federal law to clean our voter rolls. Uh the Secretary of State reached a settlement, and so they he's saying they're in the process of cleaning the voter rolls to get the inactive voters off the list as is required by law. Uh vote by mail. I would personally love uh to go back to a time where I can walk into a walk into City Hall, cast my vote, take my grandsons with me, make it a holiday. Uh I I would love to do that. What I'm calling for is some some practical reforms that I know we can get across the finish line. One is voter ID, one is proof of citizenship, in addition to cleaning the voter rolls, uh, reforming our ballot harvesting laws. We we're like the Wild West with ballot harvesting. We need to look at how some others some other states do it. Uh, those are realistic things we can do. When it comes to vote by mail, here's the challenge in Oregon. We kind of invented the thing. Um in it, and uh we're a lot of Oregonians are attached to it. And I bet you most people here would would vote today to get rid of it. Um but if you ask most Oregonians, I know I know what they think, and most Oregonians would say uh they're not ready for that yet, they want to keep it. So, what I'm calling for in lieu of that is those reforms that I talked about, which will really help with integrity, and then transparency on the system. Let's educate voters what chain of custody looks like, let's educate voters what voter churn looks like. I've talked to Dr. Frank about this, and I actually agree on one minutes. Uh, let's look at signature verification and what the what the weaknesses are on that, and educate voters. Uh, but that's that's I'm just laying it out. That's where we're at. And so instead of going for the moon and getting nothing, I want to get something. Voter ID, proof of citizenship, clean up the voter rolls, and uh improve our ballot harvesting. There's a few other things I'm looking at too. Does that answer your question? Hopefully. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 26:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 26:26

In line with that kind of thinking, I think the motor voter connection easily discovered.

SPEAKER_07 26:34

I don't like motor voter.

SPEAKER_11 26:36

I think you have no proof that the person is a citizen, and I don't think the DMV is really qualified to determine that.

SPEAKER_09 26:44

So so here's what here's what happened. We passed motor voter and we told the DMV they they're responsible for this, but I I wouldn't talk to them. So they implemented a system as if they they had to do it, but they didn't want to do it. That's what the system looked like. Their job is to qualify drivers, not register voters. So I I used to write software. Okay, so I looked at what they put together for a system. I sat down with them uh and and went through it in detail. It was it was a terrible system. It was easy to make a mistake. And guess what? They made thousands and thousands of mistakes. Um, so they've they've since reformed that a bit. The other thing I learned, the Secretary of State was never actually auditing them to see what system you put in place. Is it working? Does it meet, you know, is it secure? None of that was happening. Uh it's kind of embarrassing. So I would love to get rid of motor voter. I don't know if we can get there. Um, we will try. Uh, but uh, but definitely we want to make sure that that it's working in a secure way and that they are required to uh to prove citizenship. It's Oregon makes it tough because we we provide driver's licenses to anybody.

SPEAKER_05 28:05

Right.

SPEAKER_09 28:05

I was in there and a guy was getting a so I this was the day I went there to look at the whole process and the flawed process it was. And then I stood behind the clerk who was who was registering somebody. This guy was getting an ID, an Oregon ID. He walks in, he's got somebody that speaks English that comes in with him, and he says he's from Venezuela. Maybe he is, I don't know. Because his passport, the only ID he has is an expired Venezuelan passport.

SPEAKER_14 28:38

Oh my god, I expired. That's like crazy.

SPEAKER_09 28:42

So they gave him an Oregon ID. Now he didn't get a driver's license. He wasn't registered to vote, but they gave him an Oregon ID.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

He's now a resident of Oregon.

SPEAKER_09 28:52

Now he's now now and so once he gets that, then he goes and signs up for benefits.

SPEAKER_14 28:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_09 28:58

So while I'm talking about this, do you guys realize that we have a system in place that pays, provides free health insurance for non-U.S. citizens?

SPEAKER_04 29:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 29:08

Um for whether you're a citizen or whether you're here legally or not.

unknown 29:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 29:16

Uh it costs us $1.2 billion every budget cycle. Oh, wow. And uh it's called the Healthier Oregon program. It does, it's not Medicaid dollars, it's not federal dollars because that's illegal. It is your state tax dollars.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Really?

SPEAKER_09 29:34

So I look at this and I go, okay, we're providing free health insurance for these folks. I serve on the health care committee. I'm vice chair of the health care committee. And I look, well, what's Medicaid for? What's state-funded healthcare for? It's for the elderly, people with disabilities, and children. We're shortchanging them while we're funding $1.2 million to folks that are not even citizens. I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's fair. And I I had a session a couple days ago, and a guy came in with uh his son just severely disabled. He this this father will take care of that son for the rest of his life. And uh we have a system to help provide some supplemental money for him to take care of his child, but it's limited to uh to like a hundred kids. And there's probably two or three hundred kids in the state that fall into that category. So we can't help those other 200 kids, but but we're spending 1.2 billion dollars uh on folks that come in from Venezuela with an expired passport.

SPEAKER_11 30:42

And it's not our veteran.

SPEAKER_09 30:44

And our passport. Yeah, yeah. Any other yes, sir.

SPEAKER_08 30:48

So uh with the supermajority, you know, in the Democratic side, what leverage would you have to put this stuff forward? Take on the teachers email to yeah.

SPEAKER_09 31:06

Well, I'm just gonna have Dwayne in there just rolling rolling over everything.

SPEAKER_08 31:10

No, you know, because your rules are great. You know, putting people in in the positions of uh leadership is excellent. Passing laws, yeah, is that not your your well here's here's the my take.

SPEAKER_09 31:28

It's gonna be tough. But here's here's how I see it. One, yeah, I can I'm assigning new leadership in the agencies. We have rulemaking, we can do. I have the veto pen, uh, line item veto ability. Uh, but here's here's how it goes down. Here's how I explained it to Willamette Week and the Oregonian when they interviewed me for an endorsement, and they were frankly appalled at what I said. Um said, when I come in as governor, it's gonna be an earthquake. It's gonna be an earthquake because we it's been 40 years since we've had a Republican in office, and that is a message, not just up in Oregon, but across the country, that Oregon has finally had it. Oregon has had it with these ideas that sound good, but have dismal results. And we want something different. So that comes with its own mandate, even if it's a narrow margin. And I'm coming in with an agenda, I'm not keeping it a secret. What I stand for. So that I'm bringing that agenda, the people's agenda, to the legislature. And I expect some action on that. I'm gonna look for common ground, uh, like I do right now in the legislature. I work with anybody, I focus on policy, not personality. Um, and I'll partner uh with anybody, Democrat or Republican, if it's the right policy. And what we have right now is we have a Democrat Party that is really fractured. And Dwayne sees this too. There are some more moderate Democrats that actually we agree with each other on business issues, not so much on social issues, but on business issues. Then there's the socialists, and I'm not I'm not exaggerating, they are Democrat socialists, and uh they are taking over the Democrat Party in Oregon. And if you talk to Democrats in Oregon on the side, they'll tell you the same thing. They'll tell you the same thing. The Democrat socialists do not believe in uh private property, they don't believe in capitalism, they have a completely different view of what America should be, and I couldn't disagree with them more. But that is the fact the fracture. So I will try and take advantage of that and form coalitions around that faction and get the agenda done. If they still are refusing to implement my agenda, which is your agenda, then I don't have a problem being the first governor to run petitions and bring measures right to the people and bypass the legislature and get our agenda done. That's the part when I told that to the Oregonian and Willamette Week, they were, oh my god, no, that's that's a terrible way to run a state. I said, What's terrible is a state that passes bills that are not popular with the people of Oregon. What's terrible is a gerrymandered legislature. We also have a gerrymandered Congress. How can five of six Congresspeople be extreme left wingers? That does not represent the people of Oregon at all. This is the problem, the biggest problem we have is we have a government that does not represent where Oregon people are at. That's why we ran this referendum. Governor Kotex saw, knew that this bill was unpopular, and she tried to sell it to you for months, and nobody was buying it. And instead of fixing the problem, which is make Odot accountable for the money they already have, she focused on what she does, and this is how politics works in there, and Duane sees it too. You appease the special interest. So she appeased the public sector union, the SEIU, who wanted more money. Uh, and then what she did is she said, Well, who might put up a fight? Who might actually fund a referendum on this thing? So she put bits and pieces in the bill to silence them and get them to neutral or a soft yes or soft no, uh, to make sure that nobody would raise enough money to get uh a referendum done. And in her callous view, spend her career in nonprofits uh and a career in the legislature, she'd done her job, and it did not matter what you guys thought. And she was guaranteed that if if she delayed signing that bill for 40-some days, that it was impossible, impossible for us to get this done with volunteers. But we proved her wrong. We proved her wrong. Um, but I'll tell you what, that's how we're gonna take back our state. And if the legislature is unwilling to act, I have no problem bringing those and rallying and using that bully pulpit to get the people's work done. We have the referendum process and the petition process in this state. It's we were the first state in the country, I think, to put it in our constitution and actually implement it. And if you look back in the history of that, it was Republicans that put it in there. And why did they do it? They don't trust politicians. And they were afraid that the special interests would take over and not represent the people. Well, guess what? That is exactly what's happening. Now is our time to use that process. Maybe it's just a threat. Maybe all I have to do is threaten that we're gonna do that. And and and they it will force them to act the right way. But I'm ready to do it. None of my other uh, none of my uh other folks running for governor are willing to do that, at least they haven't said it. Um but Willam Week was just appalled by this idea. Uh they called me a uh what are they calling? I led a rebellion with the transportation tax. I kind of like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 37:35

What with the rebellion? Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 37:40

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_13 37:41

I have two things to say. Number one, the revolutionary war was won by volunteers. Wow. Good point.

SPEAKER_09 37:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_13 37:52

My other question is how do you feel about term limits in the state?

SPEAKER_09 37:59

Yeah, I uh I have mixed feelings about terms. Well, let me back up. There should be term limits. I just don't know how long it should be. And I'll tell you, my my attitude changed a little bit because I get in the legislature and I sit on human services, and it half the state budget goes through that thing. And I'm a freshman and I'm pretty good with numbers, but there's a lot of stuff in there, it's complicated. And if you have a it takes a while to master it, and if you have a rotating crew of legislators, guess what you've done? You shifted the power to the administrative state, to the deep state. And I've I see the attitude with those guys, they're just biding their time, waiting for me to move on and go somewhere, and another person comes along, uh, and and they're in control, unless you have some people who are there for a few years. You know, maybe like maybe eight or 12 years, eight or 10 years would be would be a good term limit. But it I wouldn't want to see something that was shorter than that, because you'd never get anybody to figure out the game and be able to be able to do some good work. But I've signed the term limits pledge.

SPEAKER_13 39:09

Enough time to figure out what you're doing and not enough time to get it in somebody who's well, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 39:16

That's also a problem, right, Dwayne?

SPEAKER_14 39:20

Dwayne doesn't have that problem, but we're standing with ice.

SPEAKER_09 39:25

Ice. So let's talk immigration, all that. I believe wholeheartedly we have to have local law enforcement cooperate and communicate with the federal government to get criminals out of the state. We are harboring drug dealers, prostitution ring leaders, a lot of bad dudes with the laws we have. Now, I've talked to law enforcement, talked to our son about this, talked to my local sheriffs, and they point back the biggest culprit is an executive order that was put in place by Kate Brown in 2017, and then it was put into law in 2021. It's called the Sanctuary Promise Act. And what that did is it drew this hard line between law enforcement and the feds. You can't even talk to each other regarding immigration. And it is so absurd in Oregon. Our son was telling us you can come across the border, commit a murder, flee back to Mexico. We cannot cooperate with the Mexican government to extradite, bring that person to justice, face justice in Oregon. We have people who are here illegally commit terrible crimes, they'll go to prison. They serve their prison sentence. What would the common sense thing be to do after they serve their sentence? Law enforcement calls them grace and hey, I got this guy here, deport him. That cannot happen in Oregon. They're being released into the community. If you saw that, a lot of people, and so so what happens then? So then immigration is now going into the community to find these guys. That raises the temperature and spreads fear with a lot of people that should not be afraid. Yeah. And so, well, it's spread, it's just spreading a lot of fear, and so that that has to be resolved. And we also have to acknowledge there's some people here I know that have been here for decades, they're paying their taxes. I they seem like they're trying to do the right thing.

SPEAKER_14 41:22

I do something legal.

SPEAKER_09 41:24

I I don't know. Some of them are legal, but some of them I think are not legal. But they should become legal, they should become legal, yes. They need a mechanism to become legal.

SPEAKER_14 41:33

Well, yeah, yeah. And the test is a joke.

SPEAKER_09 41:39

To be a citizen, yeah, it's a freaking. Well, it's but the problem is more than the test.

SPEAKER_14 41:44

There's a bunch of start complaining that it costs too much and the test is too hard.

SPEAKER_09 41:49

Oh. I no no no.

SPEAKER_14 41:51

I take it for free.

SPEAKER_09 41:53

If that's all that's stopping you, then take the test. Yeah.

SPEAKER_14 41:59

Wow. I didn't know we should know what it's a commissioner. Um is more of ice. We have no IC rates at and you can change that.

SPEAKER_09 42:16

Are you saying you want immigration officials here in Graspass? Yeah, I you know, yeah, I'm focused on public safety and my law enforcement, and I'm leaving immigration to the feds. So what I would say is I will what I will do is cooperate and communicate with them. So I want to understand what their objectives are, who they're trying to get, and we'll have low, we'll have our local law enforcement cooperate with them. So you know, I'm not gonna be, I don't know if I'm gonna be encouraging them to go certain areas or not. Uh, I will say this, I mean, we we have we have cartels operating down here. Um our our DOJ is doing a terrible job. And part of part of the reason these guys can uh can do what they do is because of that crazy law. So I think once we get rid of that law, then we can start working with the federal government to go to specifically go after these gangs. And it's not just Mexican gangs or it's Chinese gangs and Russian. Yeah, so so on that front, what I what I see is going after those criminal elements uh in a way that's coordinating, cooperating with uh with the feds. We have to because this is interstate. These are interstate crime rings, right? We had what what was that guy doing that? Trente Iraqwa? Was he Trinite Aragua? He's living in Salem, a couple miles away from running a national drug ring in Salem. And why was he in Salem? Because he was safe. Yeah, wow. Oh yeah. Oh okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_12 44:05

Um that's right. It happened with all the um club members there and all the big bitty words.

SPEAKER_09 44:13

With the club members?

SPEAKER_12 44:15

Yeah, talk about gangs. Oh gang members.

SPEAKER_09 44:21

Uh you know, that one hasn't come up. Uh well Portland's got its own set of problems. That the governor can only do a few things. I when I'm talking to Portland residents, I tell them put put electing socialists in on your city council. That would be a good start. Um part of this problem, let's talk about the homeless problem. And I know that's a problem here in Grant's past. So, because some of what you're describing is related to that. Uh we are our policies are enabling destructive antisocial behavior that is not only harming the people that are living in these situations, it's also harming the citizens that are trying to do the right thing. When I when I look at the chronically the chronically homeless, okay, this isn't this is tough because everybody's in a different situation. But I'm I'm talking about street homeless, the chronically homeless, and I've toured, I've walked through one of the largest camps in the state, Wallace Marine Park. It's just about a mile from the governor's mansion. Uh I've talked to the people in that in that camp, and I've talked to people who come out of that camp. The first thing we have to do is acknowledge that for those people, it is not a housing problem. This is a drug addiction andor mental illness problem. You have to acknowledge that. Step one for me is to repeal House Bill 3115 and give communities and cities the ability to prohibit public heating. And I know how important that is and thank rep Yunker for forcing that bill. How many times, Wayne?

SPEAKER_05 46:11

Three times last year.

SPEAKER_09 46:12

Yeah, three times last. I have permitted to work with Rep Yunker uh to make that happen. So uh the other piece that comes with that, and this is kind of maybe it sounds rough to you, I call it compassionate accountability because I believe one of the problems we have is we're we're we're we're we're not we don't have an accountable society anymore. You go out with law enforcement and a social worker, and you say, hey, we have we have services here, we have transitional shelter, and I believe we're obligated to provide transitional shelter with with accountability. And there's some good nonprofits here, I know they are in uh in Grants Pass that do this, and they have empty beds, yeah, uh substance use treatment, mental health treatment, and wraparound services because we need to acknowledge that some of these folks don't have life skills that we take for granted. We need to help those folks through nonprofits, maybe some of it's through the state, but we have those services. You go out and tell these folks we have services available to you, we want you to take advantage of them, but you cannot camp here anymore. You can't camp in my kids' park, you can't camp out in front of my friend's business. So you have a choice. You have a choice. You go in and get treated. Heck, I I would I would support getting them into a trade program and teaching them teaching them a trade. I was talking to somebody, Utah does this. I'm gonna research that more. You you have a choice, you get into those programs or you move along or you go to jail. You know how many people I've talked to that have gone through jail and that forced them to get clean and to face their demons, and they are now out on the street helping people. Um maybe that sounds rough to you, but I'll tell you what, the system we have now, harm reduction and housing first, it ain't working. People are shipping, people are busing from other states into Oregon. We have built a system where we provide a lot of benefits, you're able to use drugs with no repercussions, uh, you have a place to live. Uh you can't operate a society. So, anyway, that's where I'm at. I I'll also add uh that uh we have some folks that are trying to do the right thing, and for whatever reason, they've ended up in a situation where they don't have, you know, they're living off Social Security, and that's it. They have no savings, they have no home, nothing. We have some housing laws and requirements that make it very difficult, make it very expensive to build homes. We can build tiny home communities that are safe, that look nice, that are friendly, that anybody could afford. Virtually anybody could afford. And I'm thinking of, especially if you're older living on Social Security, and that's all you have. And I've seen these places, and they take hardly any public money, and they can they can function. We should be encouraging those and change our rules and regulations around housing too.

SPEAKER_04 49:24

Uh yes, and then you I'd like to see, and I don't know if it's possible, but some kind of reduction, restriction of signage for all the pot shops. You go, you come here to Grants Pass. Where's the liquor store? Do you know where the liquor store is? We got we got one. You go down to Cape Junction, where's the liquor store? They got one. Is there any advertisement? No. Do you see advertisement for cigarettes? But you know what? You can't go one mile without seeing an advertisement for a pot shop. And pot shops are on every freaking corner. There's some kind of way where we can restrict this. It's only encouraging. It has to be licensed, it has to be restricted, it has to be controlled, and all that signage needs to be gotten down because all it's doing is telling everybody, hey, get high, everything's okay.

SPEAKER_09 50:24

Uh, you know, I really like that idea. I'm not a fan of the stuff.

SPEAKER_11 50:28

Um you can't even drive anywhere without it. Yeah, yeah. Heaven forbid you advertising taxes.

SPEAKER_09 50:34

I I would support signage restrictions on that. Absolutely. Yeah. Mr. Mayor.

SPEAKER_05 50:42

Yeah, um, Mayor Surfair, City Grants Pass. Uh got a quick question for you, and it kind of brings it back full circle. We talked about uh the executive order kind of making a sanctuary state out of the state of Oregon. Um, also as previous administrations have basically kind of made Oregon welfare state.

SPEAKER_09 51:03

A what? A welfare state. Welfare, okay.

SPEAKER_05 51:06

So basically, to kind of bring that back down to the topic of homelessness, I personally, with the city of Grand Cast, have been dealing with this homelessness issue for a while now. Um from some of the research that I've done, the state of Oregon is one of the only or states in all 50 states that does not require Oregon residency to collect social services for homelessness. So realistically, we our previous administration for the state of Oregon had made this a homeless tourist on top of having a drug experiment with probably one hundred or whatever it was a few years ago. The city of Grand Pass went through two major losses revolving around homelessness. So we basically put a big on sign out on I5 and we've been dealing with it ever since. My question full circle, and I'm sorry this is long and drawn out, but as a governor, would you actually start to look into repealing back the sanctuary status of the state so it would actually directly impact the social services of the state? That if taxpayers were paying for social services, the fund social services would only be given to people that reside in the state.

SPEAKER_09 52:23

When you say sanctuary, you're you're not talking citizenship, you're talking about residency.

SPEAKER_05 52:30

When I go to UCAN and I ask UCAN why why are you not asking for government ID to give them a free sleep bag and an E-card with 900 bucks on it? They said that it basically goes back to the sanctuary status of this state that they are not required or not obligated to ask for an Oregon driver's license to distribute those social services if that person is claiming to be homeless.

SPEAKER_09 53:02

So that's interesting because anybody can get a driver's license in Oregon. You don't even have to be a citizen to get a driver's license in Oregon. So I don't under, I don't get the connection.

SPEAKER_05 53:12

Well, but you are you go into our camps, all these camps, and they're specifically on 6th 7th Street now. Majority of those people are not from this state, they've come in from different states to collect social services.

SPEAKER_09 53:26

Yes. Well, and it doesn't take long for you to declare residency. I think it's more I'll put it this way, and I I don't talk a lot about this because I'm still exploring how to do it. I want to cut off the money supply. I I don't I I agree with you. It's absurd. You come here, you immediately get on SNAP benefits and whatever benefits, and a phone, and now we enable you, we give you clean foil and clean pipe. Yeah, it it's it's absurd, and it's costing us a fortune, and it's making our communities miserable. So I agree with you. I don't know what the right answer exactly what the answer is on the money supply. Huh?

SPEAKER_05 54:06

I'm just asking that.

SPEAKER_09 54:07

I will absolutely look into it as a governor.

SPEAKER_05 54:09

There's a Harvard study that was published a little while back, and it was it was uh announced on Fox News, and they they did a poll across all the United States, and they ranked all the states on the amount of social services that you can collect. Oregon ranked number seven in the top ten, and they said if you work the system completely, you can you could pull $89,000 a year out of all of our social services.

SPEAKER_07 54:34

Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_05 54:36

So as the man at the top, that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_09 54:40

Well, no, I uh we're gonna change that. That is part of the problem. In fact, I was talking to my wife's father about that. And you need to cut the money supply out. Yes, yeah, thanks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_12 54:57

Um, kind of sort of on that, but not really. Um you said you want to change some things, and maybe they're already doing this with with the policing and so forth. A lot of times in those camps, uh, the whole hustle camps and so forth, the only reason I know this is because I've had at least a decade of experience with it. I haven't recently, but they have a real problem with sex trafficking. I see it often. I'm driving down the street, and I see a young man taking a young woman somewhere, and I know what's gonna happen. And it's sickening me, it breaks my heart. Is there something more we could do? Because it goes up and down the I-5 corridor, and we are a stopping point. We are it's right back.

SPEAKER_09 55:48

I-5 corridor is a human trafficking corridor.

SPEAKER_12 55:50

Yes, it's not just women, it's children and men too. Young men are being exploited, and it's wrong.

SPEAKER_09 55:56

And we do not, as a state, we do not prioritize it. You remember Will Lathrop? Yes, ran for attorney general.

SPEAKER_06 56:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_09 56:03

Part of the reason I was so excited about him is because he understood that he was going to prioritize it. And I worked my butt off to help him get elected, it didn't work out, right? But he's endorsed me uh for governor. Uh, but I want to prioritize it. Within our own Department of Justice, the the budget for the for the human trafficking piece is one person, and I think we have enough money to pay for their desk and a laptop, and they have to go get a grant to get additional money to fund their office, which which they have a small grant for. One person, the whole state. Yes, now they work, they'll work with local law enforcement, but that's really sketchy. Yeah, because the challenge is this is interstate stuff. Yes, you need a state coordinating with the feds, with other states, and it has to be a priority. I that's an area I want to put more funding in at the at the Department of Justice level. Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00 56:59

So uh accountability for nonprofits, that's kind of my question. So I was homeless myself from 2002 to 2010, right here at Grants Pass. Um, all I had was like lunch at the soup kitchen, dinner at the mission. That's it. There was no free tent, sleeping bags, there was none of that. You know, so we what got me out of it was like I was gonna freeze to death, or I had to join the gospel rescue mission, which I chose the latter. And here I am.

SPEAKER_09 57:26

Umbring bar outside.

SPEAKER_00 57:30

So but my question is like accountability with the nonprofits, because there's 93 nonprofits and grants passed helping the homeless. And they only have to give like 10% of their funds to actually helping the homeless, the rest of it they pocket. Well, what do we do about that?

SPEAKER_09 57:46

The accountability, I ran a business, okay. And you look at how the government runs their agencies and how they distribute money, there is hardly any accountability. When like I threw out a I did this in the debate, and I threw out a number of how much Portland's spending on the homeless. And I I think I muffed up, I think I gave a number that was for Vancouver. But I said it Portland spends $180,000 per homeless person. Yeah, I think it's actually Vancouver because I was fact-checked, and the fact check came back and said, Well, actually, we have no idea what we spend on the homeless. They don't, because they don't, we don't require them to track who they're serving, right? Because that might be offensive or racist or whatever. You have to, it's ridiculous. So for me, these uh these nonprofits have to have clear goals and objectives. And if you're if you're helping the homeless, what's the objective to transition them to be productive citizens? And there are ways to measure that. And I've talked to groups that have systems in place that know how to measure that and actually score some of these nonprofits on those metrics. So I mean, to me, it's simple. You you have to who are you serving, and what are the outcomes? And if we're not measuring that, you're not gonna get any money. Uh also that gets me to something I want to do with the budgeting is performance-based budgeting. If you're gonna if you're gonna come to us, like once when COVID happened, we got a bunch of one-time money from the feds, and we propped up these institutions now. Uh, are we measuring the outcomes for any of these agencies or projects this programs we put up?

unknown 59:33

No.

SPEAKER_09 59:34

No. If you're gonna implement a new program in Oregon, or you uh we do what's called performance-based budgeting. You have clear objectives and you have a sunset on that program. And at the end of the sunset, if you're not demonstrating that you're meeting those objectives, the program either goes away or you redesign the program to meet those objectives. We do not do that. We do not do that, and part of the problem is we're we're intentionally not measuring. We have built a homeless industrial complex in the state that's costing us hundreds of millions of dollars. The problem's not getting any better, people are moving in to take advantage of it.

SPEAKER_12 1:00:12

If you build it, they will come.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:14

If you build it, they will come and that's going away. Yes, yes, that's why.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:18

Sorry, Dwayne. So we are not a business-friendly state. Not at all. The governor, they have done their best to push business out, but all idea is affordable housing. And the reason why we don't have affordable housing is because of Salem. We can control local government on the coast, but Salem is killing us. We're an R66 for insulation in a ceiling, but electric bills go up. I it's it's insane. If if we can get rep less regulation for the businesses and less regulation for the homes, we can have business and we can have homes for people living in. What are you gonna do about that?

SPEAKER_09 1:01:03

What I'm gonna do about that is back off some of those regulations, which make our homes expensive. I'm exploring, you know, having standard designs that we could use. I want to defer system development charges to the end of the project instead of the beginning, and making sure those system development charges are directly related to the cost of the infrastructure. Um, but you're right, we're we're uh there's a point of diminishing returns on some of these housing standards. Uh, and I think of it, I'm an engineer, so I think about those things. So this guy, some of it doesn't make any practical sense. That's why I'm saying we can build afford, we can build homes that people can afford to buy, uh, but we're we're intentionally not. The other part is uh with with land use, and I believe that local control is better. Uh I know we have a landmark, so landmark law or land use law was put in 50 years ago by a Republican. Um, it's and uh and it was designed the way I think of it this way, you know, it was put in place to clearly define uh urban growth boundaries and exclusive farm use. But I don't think the intent was to write it on a stone tap. The whole idea was to make sure that we have uh uh supported our quality of life in Oregon. But when that law becomes a burden and is hindering quality of life, when my kids have to move to some other state to find a home that they can afford, then I'd say, you know, maybe we should look at how we're implementing this thing because it's not contributing to quality of life. And my answer to that, I want to see local control over those boundaries, I want to see planning. Okay, what's Grants Pass going to look like over the next 20 years? What how does that urban growth boundary change? And I think we need to have those conversations. I've talked to some local communities where uh you know the land use board is blocking them from progress, and then there's other communities that don't want to do any growth, and so the state is forcing them to do things that they don't want. It's kind of a weird situation. So, anyway, it's one of the most complicated challenges we have in the state because there's a lot of different opinions, but um, but we have to acknowledge that that part of it is access to land. I want I don't want to build subsidized apartment complexes, I want to build homes that people want. I want my son to be able to buy a house with a yard so my grandkids can play in a yard. And that requires land. And we don't we don't need half sprawl like Arizona or Texas. That's not what I'm talking about. Wow, there's a lot there, but thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, then like I'm sorry. You you you interrupt.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:03

I worked two jobs in a row. One was with On Track Rogue Valley, and they try to, I was a peer support person. They tried to help people get off drugs and you know get them hooked up to good resources and whatnot. Then I worked for all care for one year. I quit the day I started a year later. I walked out. I didn't give two-week notice. I'm like, no, I can't do this. Uh the problem is they insure the homeless drug addicts. So, what can you do about that? Giving them health insurance. They probably have better insurance than I have.

SPEAKER_09 1:04:35

Well, yeah, we uh we have some very she's asking about the Medicaid program, basically. Oregon Health Plan. Yep. We have a very generous Oregon Health Plan. And the the current leadership, their goal is to get as many people, they're for universal health care. They're trying to get as many people on that plan as possible. And frankly, we built a system we can no longer afford. Uh, and I I serve on the health care committee, and I'm actually on a special subcommittee looking at this issue because it it is it's unaffordable. So we're talking about ways to scale the benefits back to be more realistic. Um I welcome the changes coming from the feds that will change the eligibility requirements for Medicaid at SNAP. You know, if you're an able-bodied, working-age adult, you should be working or learning how to work. Uh but not an Oregon. Um, so and when it comes to the homeless and drug addicted, I if you're not trying to do the right thing, I'm not gonna pay you to feed your addiction. But that's what we're doing right now, and it gets back to what what uh the mayor was talking about. Um I haven't explored how to actually make that that happen. But to me, the the the benefit should be tied to doing the right thing. Right thing. If you're gonna go into treatment, if you're gonna learn a skill, if you're gonna be a productive citizen, I'm I wanna help you.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:08

Right.

SPEAKER_09 1:06:08

I want to help you. I want to teach you the life skills.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:11

We you hold like the insurance company.

SPEAKER_09 1:06:12

But you gotta you gotta have some accountability. You gotta have some skin in the system.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:15

We hold the insurance companies accountable for that.

SPEAKER_09 1:06:18

The insurance companies are supposed to do that. They're mandated by law to do that.

SPEAKER_10 1:06:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:06:26

They are the the uh the CCOs are required to to provide that uh to everybody.

SPEAKER_13 1:06:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:39

But most of us heard that Sante is gonna have to lose about $50 million a share. But if you my question is because you're on healthcare, I used to be there that got rid of me because I asked you a hard question, I guess. Is we have a system since 2014 that's got up almost 800,000 more people on Medicaid, which is hurting our hospital as in Oregon or a resident Josephine County or Jackson County. We all need a good hospital. It's not a Republican, they Democratic, they intimate. We all need a good hospital. How is you as a governor gonna help fix our hospital system so we can have healthy hospitals in the state of Oregon, knowing that the Medicaid system is hurting our hospitals? And you know about this when we get a bill this year, last year. But can you talk about that? Because we all need a healthy hospital for no help stuff.

SPEAKER_09 1:07:32

Well, part of it is uh the way we've structured the Medicaid program. We've actually uh some of the programs we have, and this gets wonky, I'll try and just do it at a high level, but yeah, uh we've structured it so we've moved some people off private insurance and put them on Medicaid. So Medicaid offers great benefits, but it doesn't reimburse the the doctors very well. So you this is how a hospital works. I'm on the board of a hospital, uh small hospital, but uh they they make money with private insurance, they lose money for uh virtually every person they see on Medicaid. So if you're in private insurance, you are subsidizing the Medicaid. So if you take a population of people and you set up an uh a Medicaid insurance program, it's called the Bridge program in Oregon, um, it moves people off of private insurance to public insurance and it reduced the reimbursement rates for the hospital. That's that's one thing. Uh I think eligibility uh eligibility requirements, the Fed's requirement, which will move people into work uh and off the Medicaid program is another thing. But also I look at there's an imbalance in the way we're um we're reimbursing. I I think uh and we have to look at where the where the money is flowing because it's not flowing to primary care physicians, it's not flowing to the typical typical things you think of when you think of medicine. Medicaid dollars today in Oregon are used to provide uh housing subsidies. Uh it's used to provide air conditioners, refrigerators.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:11

Can I get one?

SPEAKER_09 1:09:13

You probably don't call for it. Um it's called uh uh social determinants of health. And the idea is it the feds have with the Affordable Care Act, they kind of opened up the floodgates with Medicaid dollars. And the state looked at that and said, you know, how can we get more and more federal money? It's in Medicaid, it's in Medicaid. So let's do an experimental program, social determinants of health, and we'll we'll direct we'll say it's related to health because everything's related to health. If you don't have a house, you might get sick. You know, if you don't have an air conditioner, you're gonna get hot. Yeah. Uh but I don't know where it ends. I mean, are my shoes a social determinant of health? Because if I'm walking out barefoot, I'm gonna get my feet are gonna get cut. I don't know where it ends. But we're spending money on these programs. Uh, and we're also spending money, I said, on uh this is another place where a bunch of money's going, uh, is with people who are not U.S. citizens. And we're we're encouraging them to come here. If you want free health care and you're not a U.S. citizen, you come to work, and that's where you're gonna get it.

SPEAKER_13 1:10:29

I keep telling you.

SPEAKER_09 1:10:30

There's a lot of a lot of issues around it, Dwayne. It's uh that but there's other things that we need to do to be more effective. You know, we should be negotiating as a state for for drugs, drug prices. State level negotiation, we don't do that, and there's a few other things we can do to save money, but it's a big problem.

SPEAKER_08 1:10:51

Yeah. So President Trump signed a job about uh doing some studies on the psychedelics. Yeah. So I worked with uh also a product of the of the gospel rescue mission uh years ago. And I've I've worked with folks that have been on drugs uh on drugs and the subox and the drugs that they that they use replaced their illegal drugs are just as bad. They're it's designated or it's designed to keep them addictive. Yeah, honestly. There's a new drug that's coming out that's uh ibocaine, I think is what it's called. And the results are you take a white and you lose your friends. Yes. So if that comes about, would you be supportive to make that the mandatory um uh answer to those that want to seek treatment because it obvious it evidently cures them overnight through PS PTSO?

SPEAKER_09 1:12:03

So uh Oregon is actually doing some work in this area, and this this came through our healthcare committee and and uh Representative Alex Scarlatos, if you know him, he was involved in this. Uh, and what it's doing is it's it's helping military who are suffering from PTSD basically. And I've I've researched it or you know, read up on it. It is it is amazing. It it is uh a painful thing to go through when you're getting treated, but you come out of it and you are cured. No. Uh so I I'm encouraging we should continue to study it and in a in a very controlled way and understand it. I'm supportive of it. I don't know if I'm gonna mandate it. Uh, I feel that the science needs to show whether it makes sense or not, but I'm I'm supportive of it because it's making a difference in a lot of uh a lot of people's lives. I'll take one more question and then uh I'll close it out. Oh, two people over now. I'm gonna go with the lady over here. Sorry. Did he ask already? Go go ahead.

SPEAKER_14 1:13:08

Um, what is your take on mental health in the state?

SPEAKER_09 1:13:13

Uh we we do a lousy job of treating mental health.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_09 1:13:18

We do a lousy job with youth.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_09 1:13:21

Um, but it's more than money. Uh we do so I I'm opposed to uh this all this gender-affirming care for kids. I'm opposed to it. I fought it, I fought it like crazy in the legislature, fighting House Bill 2002, which mandated these procedures on minors. And I was the tip of the spear in the legislature to try and kill it. I brought detransitioners in that talked, and I got gaveled over this stuff. Anyway, what I'm getting at is unfortunately, a lot of our behavioral health uh people do affirming. This is they do the affirming method, they don't even need a diagnosis, they're rushing these people into these medications and into surgeries, and I think it's atrocious. And that's what gives me pause when I say we need to spend more money on behavior health. I've also seen the state spend money on behavioral health and not be accountable for it. Uh and uh in ways where we had a uh a treatment center that was convicted of Medicaid fraud. So there needs to be more checks and balances. Uh, we're also we also don't spend it in a wise way where we're we're we're kind of over over uh overpaying therapists who are providing you know weekly soccer mom talk therapy, and then we're underpaying the the person that's working for the county that's trying to deal with a uh a manic depressive schizophrenic. So it's more complicated than throwing more money at it. Um, but I'm looking at I want to reform the way we're we're providing behavior health for kids. We do a terrible job at that. And I brought some legislation. This is actually an area I agreed with the governor on uh and worked with legislation on that, and it failed. Uh but uh yeah. I I don't know if that's what your point was.

SPEAKER_11 1:15:23

Well that's what it was because uh suicides with the country that get the people that have everybody's invisible daddies that you're walking down the street talking to our.

SPEAKER_09 1:15:38

So I I I get it. I'm but I'm nervous with states and you know, with our with our government that thinks it's okay to put uh litter boxes in kids' bathrooms. Okay. So um yeah. Are are they really gonna are they gonna really provide therapy that makes my kid healthy or teach them nonsense? And that's that's something that we have to watch out for. Uh okay, well hey, I'll wrap this up. Um I can stay for a bit for more questions, but uh I'd like to cover how we're gonna win this thing and how we're gonna take back Oregon. And here's my take, and why I believe how I'm gonna do it anyway. So, number one is I want to leverage the referendum. The referendum that brought Democrats, Republicans, libertarians, non-affiliated voters, constitution party voters together, like we haven't seen, and energize people who were never involved in the political process before. And I think it awakened a lot of people to see a government and a governor that was not representing them. I am going to leverage that energy to get the 120,000 Republicans that are not voting to vote. I'm gonna work my butt off to give them a reason to vote. I'm gonna work my butt off to give the 120,000 or so non-affiliated voters that are conservative minded that are not voting. I'm gonna give them a reason to vote. We are gonna overwhelm them with votes. I know I don't like the integrity of our election system, but it is what it is. Uh, we're gonna overwhelm them with votes. The other thing I'm gonna do is once I get past the primary, I'm gonna work Portland and Eugene and some of these uh places like nobody's business. And I want to focus on earning trust. I think Republicans have a trust issue. And the trust issue is because we have some Republicans who say one thing when they're talking to a conservative group, and they say another thing when they're talking to uh the liberal media, and I think that's wrong, and that makes it, and we we've kind of earned this distrust thing. I just want to be straight up and authentic, and uh and I'm not expecting them to agree with everything that I'm saying, but I I'm trying to get their agreement on the big things that matter to us, and I believe I can do that, and I've heard from some folks uh already on that front, and I'll I'll tell you an example. This this guy lives out just outside the metro area. He said, I want one of your campaign signs. Uh I'm a Democrat, lifelong Democrat. All I've done before is voted. Um and I don't agree with you on all your social issues, but I do agree with you on the other things that are that are uh really hurting Oregon, and I can no longer support uh the Democrat that's in office right now. That gives me hope. If I can bridge that urban world divide and focus on those issues that are unite us as Oregonians, unite us. We all want good paying jobs, we're all fed up with our taxes, we want an education system that works. We got to fix this homeless problem. These things unite us, and a lot of Democrats are saying, you know, these ideas they sounded good, but they suck in implementation and they're costing us a fortune, and life's not getting any better. So I I'm gonna work those areas and unite. Uh, and like I said, I was the first Republican in a decade to talk to uh talk to the Portland Metro Chamber. And the third thing is I'm gonna remind voters between now and November what Governor Kotec did. And I think I'm in a unique position to do that. How she divided the will, defied the will of her own people and ran this legislation down their throats. And you know, it's one thing, Oregonians don't want to be taxed anymore, but it's another thing to be ignored. And she ignored them in a callous way, and I have no problem reminding her and reminding voters of that every single day between now and November. This is within our grasp, guys. This is a time, and I'm committed to working like nobody's business. I hope I can earn your vote, and thank you for your time. Let's take back Lori. Um, before before we break, uh please sign those petitions back there. We have uh I've got signs and we've got buttons and bumper stickers. Uh and I and I'd also ask uh this campaign takes money as well. We got a great grassroots team, but every dollar I get goes to radio ads, goes to T. We're running on TV spots now, uh, we're on streaming services. My challenge is to introduce me to people who don't know me. And so you can help by donating. Uh, you can also help by calling people. Call five of your friends, call 10 of your friends and tell them, hey, you got to check this guy out. Go to eddeal.com. But if you can, if you can't support us financially, there's envelopes back there. You can also go to my website, eddeal.com, and donate online.

unknown 1:21:01

Sign up to volunteer.

SPEAKER_09 1:21:02

And you can sign up to volunteer. And it does, you know, 25 bucks, 50 bucks, you know, even you know, Phil and I gave a million bucks, but not to the right guy, gave it to the wrong guy. But I am taking million dollar checks too, you know.