Episode 1: Steve Shook for CD 26 - The Old Fashioned

Steve Shook is the Democratic nominee for Texas Congressional District 26 with a background in healthcare. Our conversation over an Old Fashioned covered a range of topics, and focused in healthcare — what's broken, who's responsible, and how to increase Washington's political will to actually fix it. 

Today's cocktail recipe - The Old Fashioned

2.5 oz whiskey
3 dashes Angostura bitters
1 dash orange bitters
1 sugar cube
1 Maraschino cherry
Splash club soda
Orange peel

add Maraschino cherry, bitters and sugar cube to a splash of club soda and muddle

add whiskey (I used Clyde Mays Alabama style, you can use bourbon or rye for your own taste)

stir 30 times and pour over glass with rocks

Burn orange peel to express oils and rim glass

Smoke with cherry wood and enjoy

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

All right, well, welcome to Politics and Potables. We have here as our guest today Steven Chuk running for Congress in District 26. Stephen, thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. And Stephen has challenged me to make a classic drink, which is called an old-fashioned. So we're going to start out with a little bit of club soda and a couple of sugar cubes. And then not many bartenders do this. This is something I do. I put in maracino cherry, gives it a little bit of extra sweetness to put in Angostora bitters. This is a classic old-fashioned ingredient, and of course, orange bitter. I muddle all this together before we add in the whiskey.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

This is a very classic drink, but not easy to get right.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

No, it really isn't. This is kind of my secret ingredient. I used an Alabama style whiskey from Clyde May. This is not commonly used in old fashioned. Usually it's going to be a bourbon or a rye. So we'll put a little ice in our glasses. We actually drop the cherry into the old fashion itself. We've got the maraschino cherry. We're going to smoke this with cherry wet.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

This looks great.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

We'll let this burn a little bit and then we will close it.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

That's a cool smoker, too.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

It is. It's got the holes on multiple sides, so you get a full uh round of smoke. And let's see how you like this.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Let's see how you did. That's a very good old-fashioned. All right. Well setting. Like I said, not easy to get right, but that was well done. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Well, Steve, you're running for Congress in District 26, very interesting district. A lot of GOP history going back to Dick Army with the contract with America. You're in the medical profession. I know that's influenced some of your thinking about your policies and wanting to run it all.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Talk a little bit about that. So, you know, I've been uh nurse practitioner, I've worked in healthcare for almost 20 years now. Um, lived in North Texas my entire life, and I come from a family of healthcare providers. My mother's a nurse, my brother's a nurse, my brother's actually working on becoming a nurse practitioner like I am. When you start to see people's health care taken away, you start to see patients coming into the hospital that are not getting their basic needs of preventative medicine taken care of. To kind of back up a little bit, I work in critical care, I work in the ICUs. I've been specialty trained in trauma and critical care, and I do most of my work inpatient in the hospital. And when you start seeing patients come in that are in their late 30s, early 40s, they look like they take care of themselves, they go to the gym, they're in shape, they look very healthy, but I get a call from the ER doctor to come evaluate someone to come up to the ICU, and they've had a massive stroke. So when you go down and talk to that patient, you know, you always start with, what brought you here today? Okay, all of a sudden my left side stopped working. Okay, what's your health history? Well, I have high blood pressure. Okay, do you take medication for that? Yes, I used to take uh blood pressure medication. What do you mean used to? And a lot of providers these days are cynical and say, oh, this guy's just not compliant with his medication and now he's here with a stroke. But if you dig deeper, why haven't you been taking your medication for the last couple of months? Well, I couldn't afford it. I had to make the choice between my blood pressure medication and my rent, and I chose my rent. So now something that was an easy preventative uh healthcare issue with some correctly priced blood pressure medication has now turned into this man will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in the ICU, and at the age of 30 to 40 years old, he'll spend the next 30, 40 years of his life in rehab with special needs, with a paralyzed left side of his body, maybe with a feeding tube. And all of this could have been taken care of if we had appropriately priced medications in this country. So I've actually written legislation that's ready to go on day one whenever I get to Congress that will make efforts to significantly lower the cost of medication. Because uh usually I use an example of uh an inhaler. There's an inhaler I prescribe to people all the time. If you don't have insurance, it costs $700. If you go on to the new Trump RX program, it's $235 if you're low income. But the company that makes that inhaler, if you're low income, they already sell it for $40. That same inhaler in the European Union, 40 euros. So why is it $700 here? You know, we have a lot of direct-to-consumer marketing in the United States. Everybody's seen those commercials of, you know, hey, ask your doctor about this medication. We're only, there's only one of only two countries that does that. So that's billions of dollars that's spent on advertising budgets that make the cost of these medications that go up. So when you start seeing people that don't belong in the hospital there for reasons because we didn't take care of them in the first place, it kind of makes you want to stand up and do something about it.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

Yeah, so important. Primary care is huge. If we can just get everybody primary care, that would be a big change right there. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

I mean, you know, you have, say, we take Denton County that has over a million people in it, and the average employer um pays about $27,000 a year in health insurance to every working age adult. And you say we cut that number in half to get working age adults. That's 500,000 people that employers are paying $27,000 a year in their health insurance coverage. Well, if that money was shifted to a single-party payer, then that's over a billion dollars just from Denton County. Now you expand that to the entire country, and you've now paid for universal health care without taking any extra money from anybody. So there are easy solutions to these problems that don't raise the price for any American. They don't raise the price for the government, but they get everybody health care. So what's stopping all this? The insurance company lobbyists would be the biggest ones. I wanted to hear one of the county commissioners talk on data centers. So I went to a meeting where I knew a county commissioner was going to be talking on data centers. It turned out it was a Republican club meeting. I didn't know that going in, but hey, you know, I'm willing to talk to anybody. And it struck me strange that they discussed who they wanted to back in certain races that would stand up for these policies, but they understood very well that if those people actually stood up for those policies, the big dollar donors in West Texas would just primary them out the next time. So they they fully understand that their politicians are bought and paid for. So they're not willing to vote for people that will actually stand up for people and give them what they need because they know they'll just be replaced. So they'll just stick with the people that are already bought and paid for.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

It's a big problem in politics. So many people will choose the lesser of two evils. That's what we keep seeing over and over. What people believe is the least of a couple of evils.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

It's an interesting mindset. That that's uh part of the reason I've joined with a group called Take Back Congress. Uh it stands for behavior uh balance and accountability in Congress. Um, so it's Take B A C Congress. It's a group of congressional candidates from all across the United States that we have joined together in the effort that once we get elected, we will start taking on issues like stock trading in Congress, things like Citizens United, um, getting rid of how many years before or adjusting how many years before someone can go from Congress to becoming a lobbyist and get uh judicial oversight over the Supreme Court. So it's not draining the swamp like everybody was talking about a couple of years ago. It's changing the conditions of the swamp so the swamp monsters don't come back.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

Now, you said something interesting. Judicial oversight over the Supreme Court. Who's gonna have oversight over the Supreme Court if they're supreme?

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Yeah, that's that's one of those things that I've thought about ever since I was, you know, probably 12. You know, you you go to a a government class and they tell you, okay, these guys are for life, if you've got a job forever and you have no accountability, then where are you, where where do you stand on that accountability? And then two, why are there progressive or conservative judges? Why are why are they partisan? Why why aren't they neutral? You know, as someone that works in healthcare in my job, I have to put all my personal feelings aside when I walk into a patient's room. If somebody got there because they overdosed on meth, or you know, when I used to work in trauma, you know, they murdered three people but got shot by the police in the interim. I still have to walk in that room and take care of that person in an unbiased way. Why does our Supreme Court not operate that way? Why do they not just look at the law, apply the law? Why do they bring their personal feelings into that? Where that judicial oversight's gonna come from, that's gonna be a good question, but they're bringing their own personal aspects and skewing the their interpretation of the law based on their personal beliefs. I think that's inappropriate.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

Well, this happens in all kinds of professions. In in medicine, what do doctors do? They do what they learned in med school. I'll give you an example. My my own cancer journey, I spent a lot of time shopping for the right type of treatment to find the doctor who would treat it in the way I wanted. Yes. And I'm sure you see that as well.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Especially in critical care, you know, somebody to to be taken care of by me, you have to be about this close to death. So that's that's my specialty is to pull people back from that ledge of you're going to die tonight. Sometimes you have a lot of family members that are like, hey, why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you doing that? Why aren't you, you know, why don't we try this? And yes, I'm always willing to listen to the families on what their opinion and they know their family member the best on how they would like to be taken care of. But sometimes it's also these split-second decisions on if I don't do this or I take time for the, you know, have that long discussion, those couple of minutes matter. Um, but you do have to take into consideration what are somebody's beliefs. Especially, you know, the prime example that comes to mind is uh whenever I work trauma and you have somebody that's bleeding profusely, and uh the family comes in and says, Oh, okay, he's a Jehovah's Witness, we can't give him blood. Okay, well, if we don't give him blood, he'll die. Um, but his beliefs are he's a Jehovah's Witness, he doesn't take blood from anybody. You have to change your plan to how do we manage this patient if I'm not allowed to give him blood products. So you do have to be adaptable.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

Now you've talked about reducing the cost of drug prices, Supreme Court. What are some of the other aspects that you'd like to implement?

SPEAKER_01 11:34

The way I've always kind of prioritized them, every time I go out and give a speech, I talk to people that I want to be their representative. It's right there in the job title, U.S. representative. So I want to hear from the people more than anything else on what issues are most important to them. It's not only the issues that I find most important, the ones that I would consider myself most knowledgeable in are is our healthcare issues, um, accountability in government, you know, all this stuff we see where we've got cabinet members that are showing up to Congress and they're not wanting to answer questions and then they just let it go. How why are we not holding them more accountable? It's because we don't have the numbers right now. Uh what we're doing with immigration right now, how ICE is being funded, how they're detaining immigrants, how they're using division basically as their platform to say, let's blame the immigrants for everything, let's blame the Muslim community for everything, let's but none of those things are lowering gas prices, lowering health care costs, lowering grocery prices. And then from there we move to, you know, we have a lot of discussion around LGBTQ rights and voter rights right now. And human rights have always been my red line. You know, if if we're trying to take rights away from people, then that's a hard stop. Any bill that has, okay, we're gonna take rights away from people based on who they love, who they worship, who they want to be, how they want to live their lives, that's a hard stop. And then from there, anytime anybody's asked me on a specific topic, if I don't know the answer, I do know somebody that is an expert that is running on that platform, and I am willing to work with them on that.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

What are your some of your observations about the differences between the general election audience and the primary audience?

SPEAKER_01 13:24

The primary was interesting because in the primary I ran up against a very good man uh named Ernest Leinberger, very well known in the community. A lot of people in the community were, hey, why are you running against Ernest? He's a good guy. I was never running against Ernest. That was never my intention. That was a little obstacle to get over. So getting over that obstacle of what are the differences between me and the other Democrat, had to go and discuss with a lot of people on what were the subtle differences between us. Now that the primaries are over and we're moving on into a general election, it's a much more wide field because it's very easy to tell what the difference is between what I'm running against and what Brandon Gill stands for. I mean, this is a man that has done absolutely nothing for District 26 in the last 18 months that he's been our congressman and usually just votes along party lines on what Trump once done. You know, done everything he can to bring about that division I was talking about. It was it was an interesting observation, I will call it, that uh I met with a lot of groups out in uh Frisco, Flower Mound, Little Elm, where they talked about, hey, we we actually campaigned for uh Brandon Gill, we donated lots of money to him, and this turn this turns out to be the Muslim community. He went to them, said, Hey, you know, I'll do all these things for you. They campaigned for him, they door knocked for him, they gave him lots and lots of money. And then as soon as he was elected to Congress, he exploded with Islamophobia. So they feel very good betrayed because they were lied to. Now we're we're trying to to answer your question, you know, what's what's the difference between that? We're we're trying to actually fulfill those promises that were made and give people a representative that actually represents everyone in the district.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

Well, betrayal is a good reason to vote for the opposite party the next time. What about other types of groups or are there other demographics uh others that you feel could be to your benefit?

SPEAKER_01 15:35

That's that's a great question because there are a significant majority in Denton County, Wise County, Cook County that are democrat demographics that just feel like they are not represented. There's the the Muslim community is one, the the LGBTQ community, they feel greatly like they're not represented because every time you turn around, Ken Paxton's got a lawsuit against them just trying to live their lives. Now we're moving into this these new gerrymandering laws where they're trying to take the vote away from black voters. So more more and more people are feeling less and less represented. What we're trying to move towards in our campaign is to show them that everyone's voice matters. I want to hear from everyone personally. We've even uh got a uh computer program now that people can log into and tell specifically how they would want me to vote on a particular bill so I know what each individual wants before I even step in the door to to vote on a bill. I know what my constituents want before I even get there. I don't have to go out and block walk and you know say, hey, what do you guys think about this? I don't have to guess. They can log on there and tell me, we like this bill, we don't like this bill, this is how we think you should vote. And then I take that into consideration and look at everything and say, okay, the people in the district want this, this is what I see from it, and we take all that information, put it together, and it'll show everybody a record of am I voting along with the district or am I voting against my district? And so that I can be held accountable.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Any other key differences you're seeing in the just the the uh voter base? Because the democratic voter base is pretty unique. Now you're expanding beyond the base into swing voters. Yes. Uh, what are you seeing amongst the swing voters?

SPEAKER_01 17:35

So I actually did a pretty interesting experiment. I've have gone from town square to town square in different areas of my district and in other districts. Um, just hey, if I happen to be there and I've got a camera and a microphone with me, I will walk around the town square and say, My name is Stephen Shook, I'm running for Congress. I don't tell them if I'm running as a Democrat or Republican, I don't ask them if they're a Democrat or Republican, and I ask them, what do you want from your representation? Pretty universally, you get the same answer. You get, I don't, I don't want to pay this much for my groceries, I don't want to pay this much for my gas, I don't think we should be in this war in Iran, we should, you know, have this much problems with our social security. And then if you and then, you know, for fun, if at the end, once you're done recording, you can say, hey, are you a Democrat, Republican, undecided? And you know, they'll tell you, and you find that it's pretty universally across the board. Democrat, undecided, Republican, they're all telling you the same thing. They all want the same thing. But is it what are their representatives actually doing? And what special interest groups have bought which politician? So it's it's it's it's a fun experiment because you get out there and you talk to people and you're like, okay, what without party polit without party alignment in in any way, what do you think? Because you know, you make a post on Facebook or something and somebody's gonna say, I'd never vote for uh Democrat. But if you take all that out and just ask them what they want, it all boils down to the same couple of core issues.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

It's interesting when exploring initially the run for Congress found the same thing. We're not as divided as people think we are. We're really not.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

I mean, there's a couple of the the hardcore issues. Uh, usually the example I use is the pendulum. So with every presidential election we've had over the last couple of decades, we you the pendulum swings farther. You know, you have well, we'll just take the last few, you know, you you had Barack Obama, and the pendulum swung a little bit to the left, and in response to that, you had a hard swing to the right with Trump, and then people got real upset about that, and you had a hard swing farther back to the left, and you had Biden, and then with Biden, you know, people swung even farther back. But 90% of Americans live in the middle, not on these extreme ends on right and left. So you actually go out and talk to people, and it's like, what do they want? And it's most of these things that are right there in the middle. So, how do we get these things that people actually want taken care of that are there in the middle? How do we get those taken care of without focusing on these extreme, which bathroom is somebody using, who's able to get what healthcare rights where, you know, things like that. So it's fixing fixing the middle to improve the lives of Americans. I mean, you know, they're they're they're talking about make America great again and America first, but they forgot about the part about make Americans first. It's how do we make Americans' lives better?

SPEAKER_02 20:57

What else would you like people to know about you, your campaign?

SPEAKER_01 21:01

I was born and raised in North Texas. I've lived here my entire life, never lived anywhere else. Um I think that's a pretty another pretty stark difference between uh myself and Brandon Gill. He was born in Texas, I think he was actually born in New Mexico and then lived in Texas for a while, but then you know, lived in Washington, D.C. for a while, was handpicked to move down here to be a uh the MAGA party pick to run for this seat. But if anybody knows North Texas and knows what North Texans want, I would think it would be someone like me. And our campaign is grassroots. We don't take any pack money, we we only take donations from the people that we plan to represent. I don't want to be holden to any group, special interest organization. Um the only person I want to be beholden to is the people I represent. So I would encourage people to go to my website at uh shookforcongress2026.com and look over my policies. Uh there's places there to volunteer. We would love to have people come out and volunteer for the campaign and help us get out there and bring some real representation back to North Texas.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

All right. Anything else you'd you'd like to cover today?

SPEAKER_01 22:27

I think we've had a good conversation. I think that covers it pretty well. Um had a fantastic drink, covered uh a lot of good information. All right, excellent. Well, I want to thank you for your time, really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you for having me. Thank you for the drink.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Oh, you're welcome. Cheers, cheers.