Russell McAlmond, candidate for US Senator | Season 2 Episode 30

 What makes someone step up and run for U.S. Senate? In this episode of The JoCo Republican Podcast, we sit down with Russell McAlmond to hear his story, why he decided to enter the race, what issues matter most to him, and what he believes needs to change in Washington. From the economy and government accountability to the direction of the country, this conversation gives viewers a chance to hear directly from the candidate in a long-form discussion instead of soundbites and headlines. If you want to know who Russell McAlmond is and what he stands for, this is the interview to watch. 

Watch the Full Video Interview here : https://youtu.be/NKdYsmKWs7M

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Part one, Russell McAllmond running for U.S. Senator. Let's get into it with Russell McCallmond. Yes. So you're running for U.S. Senate.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Yeah, so I'm running for the U.S. Senate and I'm also running for PCP here in Josephine County. So what is a PCP? Uh precinct committee personality.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Okay, so that's the full definition. Okay. So and have you the U.S. Senate thing, have you have you tried that before or was this your first time?

SPEAKER_00 0:28

No, no, no. This is the first. In fact, this is only the own the I've actually had three political experiences. My first one actually was up in Washington County. Oh. Oh. And they didn't. I was working at the time, I had a full-time practice, and I said, well, you know, I can't really get into politics. And and they said, well, you know, we don't want the Democrats to take this, we don't want the Democrats to come in and take both sides of the of the of this particular house seat. We want we want somebody, a Republican, to be there to keep the Democrats from claiming both the the uh Democrat and the Republican.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Which they can do if there's no Republican running. They can get, they can have some of their voters vote on the Republican side, and they can actually get the nomination for both Republican and Democrat. That's crazy. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. I'm not sure why that works that way. But but anyway, so I um so I said, okay, you know, I'm placeholder, basically, is what it was. So I'll I'll be the placeholder. And so I ran. I ran for the Republican nomination for the Oregon House uh district. I forget the district number, but in one that nomination. And uh, but then uh uh did not go on to the final because because that's not really what I was had planned to do anyway. The Democrats, it was it was in that area where the Democrats are dominant anyway. Republicans don't win uh in that district, and and so um so I went back to my practice and and uh got a little bit of flack from some of my clients because some of my clients were Portland clients. Oh no. Yeah, yeah. They didn't like the idea that I was a Republican, finding out I was Republican by by that. But but anyway, it was but you know, everything was okay, and we went on from there. And so that was my first kind of political experience. Uh actually my father was uh uh was a uh Democrat in the Portland area uh building r and actually won and actually ran for United States Senate himself. Oh, okay, cool. Back in back again, it was it for the Democratic nomination. Yeah. And it was for uh both Wayne Morse and uh Bob Duncan, this is way before your time. And and uh he got about a hundred thousand votes, uh, but he did not get the nomination. Wayne Morse ended up getting the nomination. Then Wayne Morse went on to run against Bob Packwood, the Republican, who was new, who was a new kind of face to Oregon politics, and uh Packwood actually beat him. Oh wow. In fact, Packwood came up to my father once at the airport and said, Thank you for because the way the dynamics of the race were, uh it was a it was a three-way race for the Democratic nomination. And Bob Duncan, uh my father had been the campaign manager for Bob Duncan and pulled Volt's vote away from Bob Duncan, which caused them both to lose and Wayne Morse to be nominated. And Wayne Morse was vulnerable that year. Everybody knew that, that's why my father got into the vo the to the election, and then Wayne Morse went on and and Ashley ended up uh losing because he was vulnerable that year. And so that gave Bob Packworth his first U.S. Senate seat and gave him the chance to, and he was in that seat for quite a while before he was finally kicked out because I think some sexual harassment things or something. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

So but you so you were in the Marines?

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Yes, I'm definitely a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, three years of my life, a 15-month overseas deployment, and that's one of the things that has come up in the in my my own race for the uh U.S. Senate, and um, which I think is really quite unethical. Uh so I've been a I've been uh had one opponent. So there's really only about three people that have a chance of getting the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate uh on the uh in this primary, and I think that's uh Perkins and Smith and myself.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

And Smith uh has actually attacked my service and said that he's he's questioning whether or not I ever served in the Marine Corps or not, which I think is uh pretty insulting for somebody who's not a veteran himself to to plant uh the seed of doubt in a lot of other uh voters out there, which he's doing on public Facebook, um, that I may not have served, and I'm just lying about the fact that I'm a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. So uh there's no way in the world that I'm lying about the fact that I'm a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. So, you know, it's kind of dirty politics in in an ethical politics, in my opinion. Um he's also lied about being more educated than I am, and that's that's not true at all. That's not true at all. You can look in a voter's pamphlet, and it would tell you that I'm far more educated than than uh Smith is. So and that brings the issue of ethics into the whole the whole conversation, because you know, I think one of the things I found out by running for Oregon Republican politics at both the local level as well as the state level is that there are some Republicans who have a hard time uh with ethics. And so, as I was mentioning to you before, I came out of an industry 20, 30 years, uh the banking industry and the financial planning, and I had my registered investment advisory practice. And it was an industry where ethics was everything. I mean, you had to be an honest person, you you had to be tell your clients the truth because otherwise you could actually go to jail, you could be fined for it. Um, and there are people who have been fined and gone to jail because they're lying to clients about you know the return on their investments or whatever. Or so ethics is an extremely important part. We have a code of ethics for this certified financial planner designation, which I'm a licensed certified financial planner, and that is the truth as well.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

You know, so my background, I I don't lie about anything about my background because I'm just I came out of that industry. I'm an honest person, uh, and I feel absolutely no need to lie about anything. So that's the industry I was in, and so when I when I got into politics, and I'm a business businessman going into politics. I'm not a career politician, I'm not somebody who's been doing this for a long time. It's not something I ever wanted to do as a career politician. It's not, you know, even even if I win the U.S. Senate seat, I'm it's it's not a career. I I have promised to do no more than two terms uh at the U.S. Senate level. So I'm a strong believer in term limits. I think Congress uh sh should have term limits. I think that there's no way that they they should I don't think the whole path, the whole career path of a politician is a good idea for for any party. Yeah. And I don't think it's a good idea for the American people either. I think you need people that are accomplished things in their life and been out there in a business world, been out there working, employing, starting businesses like I've done, and then come into Congress and add that life experience, that value on policy. That's the way I think it should work. I think that's the founding fathers. I think that's the way they wanted it to work. So this whole idea of, well, we'll start at the county level and then go to the Oregon State Legislature and then go to the to the to Congress is, in my opinion, a very bad idea. It's we should not have career politicians. We should have, we should have people running. So the ethical side of the business, uh, when I kind of got into politics a little bit was to try to find out, you know, I I assume that people in politics would be honest, ethical people, particularly Republicans, uh, would be honest and ethical people and in politics, uh, because I came out of an industry where that was that was everything. Important. And uh then I find out that, oh, you know, in politics, uh even on the Republican side, people will lie about you, people will try to distort your background, people will, you know, which is what Smith is trying to do with his attacks on my military service. And um, and I just thought, you know, this is this is crazy. You know, I think, you know, there's no reason why anybody needs to lie about their opponent in politics. You know, so take somebody like Smith. All he has to do, if he's, you know, he wants to talk about all his legislative achievements, which I think are gonna be worthless when it comes to the final in November, because if it's all about legislative achievements, Merkley has more than he does. Okay. I mean, you know, I mean, if you're gonna run as a career politician against another career politician based on the fact that you've got experience in politics, you you know, you're not gonna win against another politician who has more experience and at a higher level. So how and with Jeff Merkley, how long has he been? Well, this is this, yeah, this is this the end of his third term. Okay. So he'll he's got 18 years in the U.S. Senate. So he goes he goes to Smith and he says, Well, you've got a few years at the Oregon legislature. I have 18 years at the U.S. Senate. Yeah. You know, you're not going to beat me, and he won't beat him. So anyway, but when you're in politics, in my opinion, somebody should be able to say, hey, look at this is my background, this is my strengths. Maybe I have some weaknesses, but these are my strengths, this is why I think I'd be a better candidate, and I think you should vote for me. Right. Well, you you know, I don't see why we can't have it that way in Republican politics, particularly, because Republicans take this idea, you know, have this, the party has this image of being the, you know, this the Christian party or the moral party or the you know, all this kind of stuff. And then they turn around and they're and they're lying about people and distorting things and uh uh to win. So I found that out when I first came down to Josephine County, was uh when I came down here, I found people uh that were actually um lying about fellow Republicans who were running against them in order to win elections. And I just thought that was that's crazy. Why would you do that?

SPEAKER_01 11:42

And I don't like to, you know, my my presence online. I try and be as ethical as I can. I don't want to like lie about people. Right. I mean, if I have to call somebody else.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Yeah, Jordan, you're Jordan, you're one of the ones down here I found it's actually pretty refreshing. You don't I haven't ever seen you lie about anybody. No, I don't think you wouldn't.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

I've been misinformed a few times and I've and and I and so you know I made mistakes and I've I've looked back at that and I'm going, well, you know, I guess I was wrong about that. Right. You know, there's been a few situations where I was like, oh man. Yeah. Um, but I try and do the ethical thing. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Well, down here when I first got involved in Josephine County and the county commissioners thing situation, I found out that that it's you know that that lying lying is part of the one person told me down here uh in uh Josephine County, well, you just don't understand politics. Yes. No, I think I understand politics. I just don't understand a line. Right. Politics. No, I've heard it's really like do you have to I don't understand being unethical in politics. I mean, I mean the Democrats, you know, they have a different moral standard. Right. There, I don't I expect that from them. Jeff Merkley lies all the time. Uh he's been lying about the ballroom recently. He's been lying about he's been lying about uh about uh not shutting down the government that blaming it on the Republicans when he's voting every day to keep the government shut down. I mean, so Wyden does the same thing. And why to Wyden and Mercury, I mean, the Democrats don't have that same moral standard, but Republicans, I think, should have a better moral standard. And they should have, they should stay on the moral high ground. And so what surprised me most about getting into local politics was the fact that that winning was more important than honesty and ethics. And that's that's an upside-down priority as far as I'm concerned. You know, it's here, honestly. I don't like that. Yeah. You should not you should not lie about people, try to distort and twist the truth about people in order to try to beat them in politics. You know, you there's in fact there's no reason for you to make any kind of com negative commentary like that uh about other people, unless of course it's the truth about what's the thing, what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Yeah, because sometimes there's things that happen and you gotta be like, well, and I don't like to call people out at all, ever. I try not to, but sometimes you kind of have to.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

I mean, there's situations where you're I think you do, and I think, you know, and I've done this on Facebook and social media with I have both an X account and I have a social media account. And uh and and when Smith was trying to do to deny my military service, which as a veteran makes it gets me extremely upset. I bet.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Because Did you hold a so did you have a rank uh uh when you were in because you uh you said you were out of eighteen eighteen years old, so you I was eighteen, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Yeah, so you went to high school actually when I went in the Marine Corps and the country was at war at the time. Wow. And um and so I went into Marines. Um I wanted to be the the point of the spear, which the Marines are. Yeah. And if I felt that if you know if our country was at war, if I if I was gonna go into war, I wanted the best training possible. Right. And I thought the Marines would give me the best training to survive a war. So did you deploy? So I yeah, I I went into the Marine Corps at 18, uh, went to boot camp in San Diego, California, uh, graduated from boot camp, and um and then my first orders actually out of uh boot camp was to go to the first Marine Division 37 um and go to uh was actually to to go to Vietnam. Oh wow. And so I uh I uh had some medical issues uh that I had to have taken care of before I was going to be shipped overseas and then my orders changed. But eventually I was shipped overseas. I had a 15-month deployment um overseas uh and uh uh uh with with the Marines. And on the primarily on the island of uh Guam, which was we were bombing Vietnam from Guam, and we had service members on the island, and uh which is very, very close to to that whole Southeast Asia area. And uh I was so I was there for 15 months and then I came back and became a weapons instructor for the for other Marines because I was the highest shooter in the range one year qualifying for the rifle. And so uh they made me a weapons instructor when I came back to the States or to the world as we called it.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

And uh and so then I ended up my service. So I ended my three-year uh active duty service, so I had an honorable discharge, and it put me behind all my peers. So I it my peers who went on to college right after high school uh had a head start on me, and that this happens anytime you go into the Marine Corps, of course, or in into service, active duty service, as you're behind your your peers. And so I didn't I went started going to college when I was around 21, but I ended up, you know, it's kind of a long story, but I ended up going, uh getting out and getting married and having a family and having to work jobs and so on. But I continued my educational career uh throughout my lifetime. In fact, I just recently, in the last month actually, I just recently received my fifth degree. And so my fifth degree is a master's degree, and it's in biblical theology. Oh, cool.

unknown 17:30

Wow. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

All my other degrees are primarily finance and business oriented, but this one was in biblical theology because I wanted to learn more about it. So it's uh Bellhaven University is actually a great course, uh, master's level course, graduate level, and uh uh got a 3.7 GPA, I think, on it, and uh uh just finished it in April. I was I actually graduated in in April of 2026. So I'm a lifelong learner. I might still go on and maybe go for a doctorate someday, but but um but right now I have two bachelor degrees and I have three master degrees. Nice. And so when so when Smith comes out and says, Well, I'm more educated than you are, and he did this in public right in front of me out at Pendleton when we were out there at a candidate forum. And I thought, why would he say something like that? I mean, yeah, anybody can look at the voter's pamphlet and you can find out that I have five degrees, he has one. Wow, so why would he do that? Right, you know, and what I found out about about him as a candidate, which I don't have much respect for, is that he'll say he'll try to neutralize any kind of advantage that you have as a candidate. So I'm a veteran and he's not. So he's been trying to kind of neutralize that advantage by saying, Well, we don't really know you served. Well, I know I served. I mean, it was three years of my life. You know, I risked my life for my country, and you're trying to tell me, you're trying to plant seeds of doubt with voters around the state of Oregon that I may not have served, and this is all kind of some phony story when you didn't serve at all.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

I mean, I mean, it just really irritated me. And so, so anyway, that's it's still going on on Facebook today. Facebook today. Facebook today. Messed up. Facebook is a battlefield. He he and some of his supporters are still, well, you gotta you have to show us your DD 210. And I'm saying, I don't have to show you anything.

unknown 19:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Wow. I mean, you know, I I know what I did. And so, and there's the whole idea that he challenged something like that. So he tries to neutralize my veteran status, and then he tries to neutralize my educational status, my fact that I'm much more educated than he is, by going out there and saying, Well, I'm more educated than you are. And so that I mean, this this is not negative things about Smith. This is the truth about what he's doing from somebody who knows and was actually right there to witness it. And and so, you know, and there are a lot of people, I've he's Coos County is one of his districts, and there's a lot of Republicans in Coos County that have reached out to me and and told me, you know, this guy's not good news and he's not ethical. And and so I believe him, you know, and I truly believe that. So what I found out going from both local politics and going into Oregon state politics on the Republican side, is I found out that ethics is not a big, not a big thing in the Oregon Republican Party. I mean, that's crazy when you think about it. But, you know, uh, you know, the one thing that Republicans, Oregon Republicans have as an advantage over Democrats is if they if they can keep the moral high ground.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

And when you don't have the moral high ground and you're uh and you're lying, I mean, even within your own party in a primary, you're you're you're willing to give up your personal integrity to try to win an election, that's you know, that's you know, first of all, the Democrats are watching, and the Democrats are gonna are going to bring up some of these things. Like if I win the primary and go on to become the Republican nominee, the things that Smith has said about me, any kind of questioning, damaging type things, the Democrats will pick up and try to hit me with them, you know, going into the general election. And so he's just feeding an ammunition. Uh he's doing it because he wants to win the primary. Uh, but he's not thinking of what the consequences are. But there are consequences to unethical actions, always consequences to unethical actions. And so it's a very short-term attitude for somebody to say, well, you know, I'm going to say this about you, this person, because I want to win votes and get past the primary. Well, yeah, but what happens in the general? Because in the general, if he won, if he if he wins the general, what's going to happen is the Democrats goes, hey, you were lying about your Republican opponents in the primary. You're not an ethical person. And he's not going to have any defense to that because if they asked me, I would say, yeah, yeah, he was lying. You know, I'm not going to lie to protect him. And so, I mean, it it's so my my whole thing about this Republican Party stuff is that that Republican, Oregon Republican Party needs to have an ethics officer. They need to have, they need to have, they need to have somebody who, a person like myself running in a Republican primary, can say, hey, look at, you know, there's another Republican over here, he's lying about me, and I can prove that they're lying about me. And you should, you should investigate it, find out that this truly is truly a lie. I think they do have to do that. And then admonish the candidate and tell them, stop this doing this, or we're going to make it public to all Republican voters that you're lying about your opponent, because that's not going to make him look good. For, you know, if you if the Oregon Republican Party comes out and their ethics officer says something like that. So unfortunately, that's, you know, maybe in the past we may not have needed that quite as much. But right now, in uh in politics in general, I think, in particular in Oregon politics, because of what I've seen in my own experience, and this is firsthand experience. This is not rumors, it's not based on opinions, it's based on first hand experience that there are candidates, unethical Republican candidates, who are saying anything in order to try to win the nomination. And so uh we've and this is where we are, this is the reality of where we are. So let's not deny this reality, let's learn from the reality. And the reality is the Oregon Republican Party needs to uh step up and try to help police uh the their primaries, at least their primaries, to make sure that when we do vote for somebody in the primaries, that that candidate has not used uh dishonesty uh uh or whatever, lack of ethics in order to be able to win the nomination. Because frankly, uh I told Smith this as well. I said, I'm not gonna vote for you uh if you win the primary. And the reason why I would not vote for you is because I put ethics before party.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

And I will put ethics before party every single time. And I did it here in Josephine County. I got blasted by Republicans in Josephine County because I would not vote for what a person I consider to be an unethical person. I supported another person that I did not consider to be unethical. So to me, and I think this really should be the position of the Oregon Republican Party, it should be the position of all moral Republicans, is that you know, that you you will not vote for somebody uh who is being dishonest uh uh for for public office. Because if they're gonna be dishonest in an election, they're gonna be dishonest with with their politics.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Everything else, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

You know, I mean, how can you trust somebody who who's lying to to just get past the primary? I mean, what happens when they come up to a to a U.S. Senate vote, you know, and and they're gonna be dishonest about what they're doing at that level? I mean, that's so uh, you know, we have when I was in the military, I got a I got I got a uh a secret clearance from uh from the Marine Corps because of some of the things I was involved in. So I had to have a very high classified secret clearance. Um, a person like Smith wouldn't even qualify for that. I mean, they would shut him down because people have said that he's been lying. And and that's and that could be verified and easily proven. So, I mean, the US Senate's at a pretty high level. You know, you can have you have intelligence committees and different kinds of things in the U.S. Senate. You know, you've got to be an honest person. You've got to be a person that has uh some personal integrity before you can get any kind of a secret clearance. Yeah. And so uh, why would we ever try to get somebody into office like that? So what I told uh well I told Smith because he is dishonest uh about me. You know, if he wants to be dishonest about himself, I mean I may not be able to figure that out, but but when he's dishonest about me, I know he's being dishonest. I mean, this this is not an opinion either, it's a fact. I know he's dishonest. Of course I was a Marine veteran. And um so and uh so when you get to that point where people are are willing to do that kind of kind of thing, then you just you you realize that the re the Oregon Republican and then he's he gets endorsed by all these establishment Republicans. I call them I call them Salem Salem Swamp Republicans, people like Bruce Starr and Christine Drezen and uh some of these other people that have actually endorsed Smith, even though he's he's a dishonest person. And there are a lot of people from his this is not just my uh opinion either. It's it's coming from a lot of people in his in his district. I mean he's got some real detractors out there. Um and and I understand why now. So so ethics becomes a ethics should be a very, very important part of Oregon Republican politics, and what I found out again at the local level and at the state level is that it's not it's not important. Winning, winning seems to be the only thing that's important to them. And so and so they what we end up with is we end up with Oregon Republic Oregon Republican uh nominees, some in some cases, who are just very bad candidates because they're unethical people. So it's no wonder that we don't we we lose elections. Well, look, you know, look at somebody like Perkins who who basically uh has had the nomination the last two times, has lost the nomination by a large margin the last two times, and um and is running again this time. Uh she was in the C D five race first, and then she switched from the C D five race to the back to the U.S. Senate race. Well, I don't have no idea why, but uh so she's back in the U.S. Senate race. And uh I've been attacked on Facebook by her supporters because I said you know, she's lost it the last two times by large margin. The last time she ran against Merkley, she lost by 18 points. Oh wow. Eighteen points.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Almost 20 points. And she lost against Wyden. And this isn't the last two Republican Senate elections. So one was one was uh with Merkley, and that was six almost six years ago when he was running, and she lost by a huge margin, and then she lost to Wyden when he ran two years later and by large margin, fifteen points in that one.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

So if you win, let's let's you know, if that happens, what are you gonna do for conservatives? Like uh you know, some of our values like LGBTQ stuff, uh I mean, how do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_00 30:04

See, that's that's the that's the that's the um that's one aspect of all this is that you're voting for a Republican, you're voting for a lifelong conservative, you're voting for a U.S. Marine veteran, you're voting for a person that has an MBA and three master degrees who believes in conservative values. Yeah. You know. I mean, you know what kind of position I'm gonna have. Yeah on a lot of people. There's like vote by mail, there's some of these issues. You know, I don't really feel like I need to necessarily explain my issues because I'm a Republican. You know, obviously I agree with. And you've got the picture of Reagan over here, and I think the Reagan Yeah, I see that. I think the I think that one of the quotes about Reagan, and this is this would apply both to the Oregon Republican Party and to the Josephine County Republican Party, and that is that he believed that if you've got a person that agrees with you 80% of the time, that doesn't mean they're your enemy 20% of the time. It means they're your ally. It means you're they're your ally. They just don't agree with you 100% of the time. And that's you find that really, really badly here in Josephine County, because you've got people who are purists who are litmus test type people here, Republicans here in Josephine County. And if you don't agree with them on everything, including supporting somebody like John West, County Commissioner, rather than Colleen Martin, both of them are Republicans. You know, if you don't agree with them that that West is the best person and Colleen Martin is not, I mean, two Republicans, you were two conservative people, then you're that they'll trash you, or they'll name call you, or they will attack you, or they won't let you post on their on their social media sites or whatever, because you don't agree with a hundred percent of everyone in their position. And Reagan said, and he believed in a big tent Republican Party and not a small tent Republican Party. People like that believe in a small tent Republican Party. They believe you've got to be a purist, you've got to be our kind of Republican, you've got to be the kind of person that's that thinks the same way we think about everything 100%. Otherwise, you're out. You're out the party. And that's what, of course, that led to that whole split here in Josephine County about about uh with the uh uh the the the two, actually the kind of two kind of hardcore groups that split up. Yeah. And uh uh so you know that's Reagan would say, no, no, no, no, no. That is not what you do with Republicans. He says, in the Republican Party, we're a big temp party, we welcome a diversity of opinions. As long as you've got the core principles of being a republic, limited government, lower taxation, you know, strong defense, border control. I mean, you know, some of these things that are kind of the Republican issues that we all kind of want to agree on. Um, the secondary issues, you don't have to. And so there's that purity test for that, which I think is extremely harmful and divisive for the for the uh Republican Party and Josephine County. I think it's also, and we see that every day. We see on social media, you will see every day how divisive it is for some Republicans to attack other Republicans only for only for the reason that they don't agree with them 100% of the time. I've seen that too. So Reagan said 80-20. Yeah. 80-20, maybe 70-30, but but 80-20. I mean, he says they're not, he says they're they're not your enemy 20 to 30 percent of the time. They're your allies if they're 70 or 80 percent. Yeah. Republicans are allies. Sure, you know, and then the other side of it, the ethical side of it, is you know, it's this idea of loving your neighbors. Yeah. Loving your neighbors. Loving your neighbors is not about hating somebody who who doesn't b doesn't agree with your support of West for becoming a county commissioner again. I mean, you know, and name-calling is hate. And trying to denigrate somebody is hate. Disagreement is not hate. It's fine if you have discussions. You we agree to disagree. You and I have had discussions. We agree to disagree. You take one position, I take the other position, you try to convince me, I try to convince you, and then at the end of it, we say, well, I guess we're not gonna get anywhere if we all greedy, greedy, disagree, and go our separate way. But we're not gonna we're not gonna name-call each other. Yeah, yeah. We're not gonna demonize each other, we're not gonna say you're stupid or you're an idiot, you're, or whatever other name you want to call it. You know, I was in the Marines and I was called the worst names under the sun by Marine Corps drill instructors. Nobody can call me a worse name than the Marine Corps drill instructors. So I'm immune to this kind of stuff where people think profanity and I don't use profanity, but people think profanity is is uh is going to maybe be shut down on social media. Some people try to do that. And it works for some people. There were there. People are very intimidated by people who name-call them and and use profanity. They just they'll back off, they won't comment any further. So some people use it as intimidation on social media, but it doesn't work on me. No, it doesn't work on me either. It doesn't work on me. And that even bothers them even more. Then they get even worse, and then they finally give up because they're not getting anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Well, as soon as they're using insults with a conversation with me, they've lost. Yeah. You know, well, you can if you can have a debate and not insult somebody, that's great. And I'll continue that. But as soon as they start using insults, I'm done. Yeah. You know, and I I see it all the time.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And philosophically, we we talk about arguments and logic and all that rationality. And the philosophers will always tell you that the person who starts name-calling has lost, has lost the argument. And that's true. Because if the only thing you have to say back in the argument, if the only thing you have to say is, I'm gonna call you a name, I'm gonna call you stupid, right? You know, well then you've lost the argument. You don't have any other nope. You don't have any other reason, rationality, no, no position that's gonna make sense. Yep. So you're gonna name-call somebody. Yeah, and I see it all the time. Yeah, and it happens too often, way too often. And it happens with Republicans against Republicans, which is also pretty stupid, in my opinion. So you can't have a big tent Republican Party by having a bunch of people out there name-calling people who don't agree with them on pretty minor little issues. Now, I think, you know, the moral principles of moral values of Republican being a Republican or conservative, maybe being a conservative is more important than being a Republican, but but the moral values of that, we share all those values, you and I share those values. And I share those values with probably most every Republican here in the county. So why do, and you know this, and most people who have been here for a while know this, that why do people attack me? Why do people demonize me? Uh well one of it, one of it, one of the reasons is because I'm Jewish and that that doesn't seem to work out very well with some people. Yeah, yeah. So you're a rabbi too? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

I'm no longer a rabbi. Okay. And um I was a rabbi, but I was a rabbi. And uh and people people have attacked me for that. And that's the other part of the Big Ten thing that uh that Reagan talked about too, is that the idea that in the purity, purity litmus tests that people have for their collect collectives, their you know, within the party. And that is that you have to be their kind of Christian, not just Christian, you have to be their kind of Christian in order to be become the true kind of Republican they want you to be. First of all, Republican Party is a secular party. It's a secular political party, it's not a Christian party, yeah. It's not a religious party, it's a secular Christian Christian party. So the other day I was on social media and I said I told people I I believe in God, which I do. I believe in God. And so I had a couple of people here locally that say, Well, yeah, but you believe in God exactly the way I believe in God. And I said, Well, are there two gods? Yeah, right. Are there two gods? No. I said, I believe in God. Yeah. Do you believe in God? Well, you believe in God, I believe in God, and we're the same. Yeah, exactly. You may see God differently, you may have a different idea of who God is, but it's the same God. So why do you why do you why do you still why are you saying that I have to see God exactly the way you see God in order to be a good, a good Republican? And that's crazy. And it also is very insulting to people who are not religious. I'm religious, but other people are not religious. It's very insulting to uh people who are of different faiths and uh who may be politically conservative, strong political conservatives. Uh I think uh the one guy that was running for the Republican nomination, Vit Vik uh Vivik? Vivek. Oh, sounds familiar. Vivek is actually Hindu, but he's a strong, he's a strong conservative Republican, but he's Hindu.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

And he got blasted for being a Hindu by some people, of course. So this other idea of the 2080-20 thing, it also applies to things like secondary issues, like what's your religion? Yeah. You know. So to me, a true Republican is somebody who believes in conservative values, um, you know, the kind of in the kind of values that we had from our founding. We want to conserve, to be a conservative, you conserve the values of America's founding. And of course, that gets back to this whole idea of well, what are those founding values? What are those founding values? And are we moving away from those values? Are we are we uh are we are you know are the Democrats moving away from those values? And I think the Democrats are. But I also see Republicans doing the same thing, and that's the problem. So something like the Democrats were really got into anti-Semitism a little while ago, and now we've some Republicans are into anti-Semitism. Tucker Carlson, Candace Owen, and some of these can so-called conservative speakers are trying to convince people that uh you know to hate Israel and all this kind of stuff. Yeah. And so so I think they're going terribly wrong there. And so that's but but but the idea that that that you have to be a certain kind of religious believer in order to be a good Josephine County Republican is crazy. Is and it's it's un-American because uh we have freedom of religion in America. No one ha no one has to be the exact kind of religious person you want them to be in order to be a good Republican. We're not we're not a we're not a religious party, we are a secular party. Right. And and Reagan was all in favor of a big tent party where everybody who shared that 80% of our values was welcomed into the party. And we would agree to disagree on certain points, but we're still all good Republicans, and we certainly don't want Democrats to to beat us in elections. So our our our primary battle is with the Democratic Party, not fellow Republicans. But the problem with Josephine County is that Josephine County has a has will always win the Republican Party vote down here because there's more Republicans than Democrats, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's so it's not really about what the problem the we've the reason why this becomes so dysfunctional down here in Josephine County is because you're a dominant party. Um we're a dominant party down here.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

Yeah, it's like 38%, and then Democrats are like 12%. Yeah. The NAVs is like 54 or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

Those aren't the exact numbers, but it's Yeah, so the Republicans are always going to win down here. And and and so it's not a matter of winning elections from Democrats in Josephine County. What they've done is they've twisted that whole thing and they've made it into we want, we only want to, we only want to have pure Republicans win in Republic in partisan positions or even nonpartisan positions. That's the other problem that they had down here, is that they tried to turn the county commissioner's position into a a partisan position. It's not a partisan position. By charter, it is a nonpartisan position. And really it's better that way because county commissioners should represent everybody in the county, not just a particular party. And that's what people need to understand that there's there's a benefit of having county commissioners be nonpartisan rather than partisan. Yeah, there's several of those, like the sheriff, right? There's a bunch of them that are Yeah. And it's for that reason, so that so you don't have county commissioners winning and and and only doing whatever Republicans want them to do and not trying to represent the rest of the United States.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

Or listen to the Democrats at all. Like that's that's a bright.

SPEAKER_00 43:42

And that's what the reason why you have the recalls, too, is because we've had very partisan people be elected as county commissioners, and and naturally the the people who are not Republicans don't like those kind of people and will jump on the things that they do wrong, and of course. They do do some things wrong. And so they get recalled. So I mean, so we have this whole drama thing going on. Yeah. Yeah. All being caused by the fact that the Josephine County Republican Party wanted to make the county commissioner spots partisan. They couldn't do it by charter because they couldn't get enough signatures to do it by charter. So they wanted to just implement it. When I ran for county commissioner, they wouldn't even talk to me because at the I what I did is I changed from being a Republican to an NAV so that I could run for County Commissioner. Oh wow. Because I felt that there's a nonpartisan position and I wanted to be honest about the fact that I would run as a nonpartisan. And so I did. And so then they wouldn't even they would have me come and talk about being a county commissioner. They only invited Republicans, and they would only endorse Republicans.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Which is which is making county commissioner position a partisan issue. Yeah. Yeah, which is just kind of crazy. But but so I think there's a lot of things that that the Oregon Republican Party and the Josephine County Republican Party needs to do to work on its ethics, on its ethics. That's right, I heard about that. Yeah. And so uh so it you know, to me it's unfortunately it becomes amusing, amusing somewhat that some Republicans will attack me on that, and because it just shows me they don't really understand what human equality is all about. And so and so, and I've had some I've had some of them do that, and even Joe Ray Perkins attacked me. Oh, you're all about DEI. Well, she actually went to the Center for Human Equality site, she'd find out that we are utterly opposed to DEI because DEI does not treat people equally. No, it doesn't. So I founded the Center for Human Equality. You know where that equality comes from? No. Founding value. Founding value of the United States of America. In our Declaration of Independence, it says we are all created equal. Yes. All created equal. Rights. I'm promoting human equality. Yeah. Guess what? Ties directly into the founding documents of the United States of America. Not only that, not only that. John Locke, who was the English philosopher that came up with the expression of life, liberty, and private property is what he said, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is what Jeff Jefferson changed it into for the Declaration of Independence. And his the reason why he came up with this structure of government, the reason why this government should enforce these rights. The only real purpose for government is to enforce the rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, right? That's the reason for government. Had no other purpose. And his word for that, which I think is something that we should remind ourselves, is human flourishing. Now, John Locke was a Christian philosopher, English, and he was writing his philosophy was how what is the optimal human government that we can have that can create the best environment for human flourishing, allowing each individual human to become as much as as much as they can, like Elon Musk. I mean, to allow Elon Musk to come from hardly having any money, being an immigrant to the United States, to becoming a trillionaire. I mean, that's the flourishing society that that uh John Locke wanted to create. And so the United States of America, and more Republicans really should learn more about the history of the United States of America and the founding principles and values of the United States of America, and they wouldn't get caught up with all the stuff that Democrats are coming up with. But the founding values of America are based on this idea that we are going to give you equality for each individual. Each individual is going to be considered equal in value. Equal in value. And we're going to we're going to base your rights on unalienable, unalienable human rights, human rights, not group rights. Human rights. Human rights are individual rights. They're not group rights. I had a woman say, well, what about the LGBTQ? And I said, those are group rights. No, I don't believe in group rights. I believe in individual rights. So human rights are about individual rights, not group rights. So so, you know, things like marriage and all those kind of things, those are civil rights. They're not, they're not individual rights. So what happens is that so you have to go back to this idea, this concept, you know, with all ideas, and this is things that's interesting, I think really interesting and fascinating about politics, because politics is about ideas. And so how do you how do you think about ideas? How do you judge ideas? How do you evaluate ideas to determine what's a good idea and a bad idea? Well, you have to you have to go to the founding values of what that idea is. So if the founding values of America in America was the only country in the history of the world, history of the world, that was ever founded on individual rights. Every other country in world history, in human history, was founded on, well, we have royalty and we have aristocrats and we have peasants and we have classes here and classes there, some sort of a human hierarchy, right? Yep. Every other nation in the history of the world of humankind was founded on those kind of hierarchies. And the USA was the only country in the history of the world founded on, no, you're equal. So there's a horizontal line, nobody's above the line, nobody's below the line. You're all equal. And you have all of you have these individual rights that apply to every single one of you. It doesn't apply to just groups, doesn't apply to this group or that group. You're not royalty, you're not peasants. Marxism even had, you're not bourgeoisie, you're not, you're not the proletariat. I mean, he had these classes of people. All that Europe, that's all European stuff, by the way. That all comes from Europe. And that's what the Democrats want to go back to, by the way, with DEO. But so you have all these, you have all these classes of people. And America was founded on this idea, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're equal. Yeah. And we don't have classes. Nobody gets above, nobody goes below. There are no superhumans, there are no subhumans. The Nazis, Nazis thought they were superhumans, and the Jews were subhumans. You know, there's none of that kind of stuff that should happen in American society. So when Republicans or conservatives become anti-Semitic, like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owen and some of these kind of, in my opinion, they're no longer conservatives, because they're not conserving the values, founding values of America. Why? Because you can't be an anti-Semite, you can't be a racist, you can't be a sexist, you can't be all these other isms. You can't hate groups of people if you're if you truly believe in American values, where everyone needs to be judged, as Martin Luther King told us, by the content of their character, not by their skin color. Content of your character is what you individually have, skin color is what the group has. Right. So you can't be judged. You know, all white people are privileged is ridiculous. And it's racist. It is. It's a group judgment. And so you can't have those kind of judgments if you believe in the founding values of America, because founding values of America said, no, no, no. We're not about groups. You're not a group, you're an individual. In fact, you're an individual has equal value to all other individuals.

SPEAKER_01 53:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

So those concepts, very, very powerful, very, very important concepts, those kind of concepts have to be the foundation of all government policies. Right. All government policy has to tie back directly to those kind of founding values, and it's not. DEI is not tied back to that founding value at all. No, no. And so people who have promoted DEI programs are basically promoting racist and anti-Semitic programs around the country and universities. Harvard University teaches DEI, which shows you that academia has also lost touch with American values because antisemitism, racism, all those kind of things are un-American values. And so ask so Republicans should not buy into this stuff at all because you're drifting with the Democrats. You're drifting away from American values and you're going over here and becoming like the Democrats are, and you're seeing, you're judging people by groups. Christians have to be also very careful about this, because when you judge people who are not Christians and you give them lower value because they're not the kind of Christian that you are, or they're not Christian at all, and you judge them based on that kind of thing, you're judging by group, which is un-American, and it denies freedom of religion in America for other people. Christian nationalism is totally wrong. You cannot do that. You cannot apply, take a religious group and elevate them into government and give them higher values into government because that denies equality. You know, Christians all of a sudden become elevated above the above the equal line. They're now better. They're better. No, you can't do that. So so you know, so American values, if people understood American values, and I think they really need to be taught this. A lot of kids in school, public schools, those kind of areas need to be taught this. Yeah, oh, big time. They need to be taught this this idea that, you know, you have to have, you have to have in order to honor America, in order to honor the United States of America, and the reason why we've become so successful is because we are the only country ever founded on this idea of cons uh this uh idea of individual rights. Yeah. And that allowed human flourishing, as John Locke talked about. It allowed human flourishing, and that allowed the US to become the most the most successful, financially successful and and and uh economically successful and everything else. Because capitalism, capitalism is the economic system for human flourishing. It's tied directly into individual rights. Capitalism supports individual rights. Socialism supports group rights. Right. And that's why socialism is really bad for the country. And it's also slipping back into that European idea of collectivism, collectivism being more important than individuals. That's not what we were originally about. That's not what the founding fathers fought for. But you know, a lot of Republicans and conservatives don't cannot give you that same spiel, cannot cannot tell you, here's why we need to to uh to not support some of the things that the Democrats are doing, or here's why we need to to go after the Democrats for what they're doing because they're violating the founding values of America. So it's one reason why I ran for the United States Senate, because Merkley, of all pe you know, of all people, and Wyden both, have uh bought into his aligns with the Democratic Socialists. Well, the Democratic Socialists are both advocating for socialism, Bernie Sanders type socialism, yeah, and they're advocating for this collectivism, DEI type programs. You know, and so and what that does is it's you know, they call themselves progressives, but the reality is that's regressive. You're regressing back into human tribalism and group orientation, which comes from Europe and comes from other places, it's going back into the past. That's reverting that. So calling yourself a progressive doesn't change that. In fact, it's extremely misleading because you're not being a progressive when you're dragging human relations back into the tribal days. Tribalism has been around for thousands of years. You know, how about going forward with human relations rather than going backwards to that? And so the Center for Human Equality promotes this idea of individual rights and in and equality of every human being that comes from the Declaration of Independence. And I've actually had somewhat conversations with AI about this, and I've talked about talked to it, you know, I've submitted some of these ideas with AI. And of course, AI can go back to Plato and Aristotle and sure, you know, all Maimamities and all the different kinds of philosophers and say, well, you know, compared to this, compared to that, you know, this kind of works or or doesn't work or whatever. And so I've said, okay, take these ideas and take them back. Take them back to the Declaration of Independence, take them back to John Locke's philosophy about human flourishing and the idea that that we have, that we have of doing this. Does that match up? Does does it does what the Center for Human Equality is promoting, does it match up with what the Declaration of Independence said? And AI said, yeah. Cool. Yes. It's the only, it's the only, in fact, it says it's the only human relational philosophy out there that is doing that.

SPEAKER_01 59:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 59:00

Because this could be a whole nother hour-long discussion on how we do that and what was promoted by the Center for Human Equality. So, but the but the overall arching idea of this is that Republicans, local Republicans, and even statewide Republicans now don't seem to understand that the Center for Human Equality is the most conservative founding organization, nonprofit, non-uh secular, and nonpartisan founding organization you could have in the state of Oregon. Cool. Absolutely. Bar none. I'll have to look into it more. Yeah. I mean. Because the reason why they don't understand is because first of all, they don't understand what the Center for Human Equality even promotes. They put that word in there, equality, and they're like, oh, they yeah, they instantly think of rainbow flags and all the rest of it, you know, which LGBTQ issues and all that kind of stuff, which is totally wrong, totally opposite of what the human Center for Human Equality is all about. So if you can kind of tie in Center for Human Equality and Declaration of Independence, tie those two together. Okay. Yeah. That's how you should think of the Center for Human Equality. Or even MLK's I Have a Dream speech, where he says, don't judge my children by the color of their skin, judge them by the content of their character. That was don't judge my children by which group they're in, judge them by who they are as an individual. Yeah. That's what he was saying. A lot of people have misinterpreted that, and left on the left side, MLK days have become promotion of DEI type stuff, and uh, which is totally wrong because that's not what he said. And so um, but if you tie the Center for Human Equality in with the Declaration of Independence, then you write then you understand what the Center for Human Equality is all about. And it's about it's about promoting and maintaining and conserving the founding values of America, the John Locke values, the Thomas Jefferson values, the founding fathers values of what created the most successful country in world history.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:24

And if so, how can anybody attack that? I mean, how can any conservative or any Republican for that matter attack the Center for Human Equality when it's tied directly into the Declaration of Independence? They fear what they don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:39

You know, that's the thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

Well, then yeah, that's that leads to a whole nother educational issue. You know, but I do think oh so so the Center for Human Equality is I call myself a human rights activist, right? And uh and I am, but they have to understand, and I gave a speech to the Klamath County Republicans early in my candidacy. At that time, actually Ed Deal and myself were together, and we were we were over at at Klamath Falls, and we were giving a speech, and it was for a Lincoln dinner. And so I thought, well, wow, you know, this would be a great opportunity to talk about Lincoln and the kind of first Republican president and what he was all about, right? And so so we went to uh so we went there and Ed talked about his campaign. I actually gave a speech about Abraham Lincoln, and uh but what I wanted what I what I said in the speech, it was a short speech, you know, not longer than 10 minutes, but it was a speech about how the Republican Party needs to reclaim its title as a human rights party, because Lincoln was a human rights president. Lincoln was the first Republican president, his entire platform was human rights, equality of humanity, center of human equality type ideas, made up the Republican platform for Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, and not only did he free the slaves, which he did, the Democrats at the time, of course, were the pro-slavery party, not only did he free the slaves, but the Republicans went on to pass the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th constitutional amendments, which gave them the right to vote, which gave them equality, which gave them all the all the rights that everybody else in the country has, over the over the objections of the Democrats who oppose the 13th and the 14th and the 15th Amendments. And the Democrats even tried to stop the Civil Rights Act of 1967, 64. But anyway, they tried to stop that Civil Rights Act and uh which was overcome and eventually passed. So the but the Republican, majority of Republicans supported it. So when you look at the political history of the Republican Party from Abraham Lincoln, our first president, all the way forward, you will find a pattern of always celebrating human rights. Yeah. Always celebrating human rights and always doing the right thing when it comes to human rights. And you know, the KKK was founded by the Democrats, not Republicans. Correct. You know, Jim Crow laws were founded by the Democrats, not Republicans. And so we are a human rights party. We have the best track record on human rights of any political party in the in America. We're going to lose that if we start becoming anti-Semitic and we start becoming, you know, we start becoming anti-anybody who's not Christian, you know, or those kind of things. We will lose that moral high ground that we have as a party. And so what I'd like to see the Oregon Republican Party do, and Justin County Republican Party do as well, is to promote, as part of the platform of the party, both locally as well as for uh the Oregon Republican Party, have our number one platform be based on human rights. And what that number one platform should be for the Republican Party is to go back to our founding values with Abraham Lincoln and say we are a human rights party. And the way that we're a human rights party is that we believe that people should be judged by their unique individuality and never, ever, ever, ever judged by their group. No black this, no white this, no brown this. It's you individually, uniquely, you are judged based on who you are as a unique individual, not. Based on what group you belong to or what group somebody can put you into, you know, or whatever else. Well said. Well said.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:09

So we gotta we thank you for coming. Sure. Appreciate everything. Um wrestle in the comment, everybody.