Paul Rodriguez and Rocky Chavez on Why California Republicans Need a Popular Vote for President [12-12-19]

Welcome to the Another Way podcast. I'm Jason Haro, executive director and chief counsel of Equal Citizens. Today we've got something a little different for you. It's a conversation with two plaintiffs in our lawsuits challenging winner take allocation of electors in the Electoral College. You may know who both of them are. One of them is award winning stand up comedian and actor Paul Rodriguez. And the second is Republican politician Rocky Chavez, who is a former California assembly person and is currently running for mayor of Oceanside, California. Powell and Rocky are both Republicans in California, which makes them both members of a large group of people. Over 4 million Republicans voted for Donald Trump in 2016, but also folks who don't have a lot of power in the state. And that's kind of where we start the conversation around the litigation to change the way the Electoral College works and, and make sure that Republicans have a voice. And as you'll hear Rocky talk about, he was really emphatic that one person, one vote is really important in our system. We also range pretty widely in the conversation as Zegira Paul is especially a person that has a lot of different interests and has had some interesting experiences being a Mexican American Republican in California. So we'll talk about that. We talk a lot about corruption and the feeling that many voters have and many politicians have that the system really runs on money and lobbyists and is not responsive to really solving problems. And that's something we think a lot about at Equal Citizens. And then we end by returning back to the Electoral College as well and talking about just the scale of the problem. And Paul and Rocky give a nice analogy of their hoping to be the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of this movement, sort of starting something. And they know it's a tough task, but it's one really worth taking. Reform the Electoral College, change the way we elect the president. And that's what we're doing here at Equal Citizens. So I hope you enjoy the conversation. Quick word. You can find us online at EqualCitizens US. You can find this podcast at EqualCitizens US. Anotherway, we also have a Patreon. So patreon.com equalcitizens you can find our podcast and you can support us as well because these conversations are free, as they always are. We do this for the public good. And of course, Equal Citizens us is where you can stay up to date about everything that we do. So a bit of context for this conversation. This conversation arises out of four pieces of litigation that we filed in 2018 and it was filed in four different states. California, Texas, South Carolina and Massachusetts. In California and Massachusetts, which are blue states, we represent Republicans like Paul and Rocky Chavez. And in Texas and South Carolina, we represent Democrats. And in all four states, the claims are similar, and they are that having winner take all allocation of electors in the Electoral College deprives people of one person, one vote, and dilutes their vote. Because it turns out that millions of votes are thrown away when the popular vote is tallied and translated into the Electoral College vote. So, as you'll hear during the conversation, There were over 4 million votes cast for Donald Trump in 2016, and they resulted in exactly zero representation in the Electoral College. So we sued around the country. Each state moved to dismiss the lawsuit in the lower court, and unfortunately, the lower courts granted that. Around the country, we appealed. We always were hoping to appeal and thought that taking the cases up on appeal would give us the best shot of success. We, so far, we've had one argument in our appeals, we argued the Massachusetts case, and we're awaiting a decision. And we're awaiting more word from the appellate courts in the Ninth Circuit, which some people have heard of in California, which will be the appellate court that hears our challenge there. And then the Fifth Circuit is Texas and the Fourth Circuit is South Carolina. We'll get three more shots there. And our goal is hopefully in at least one of those cases, to persuade the judges that, hey, there really is something constitutionally wrong with having an Electoral College delegation that throws away so many millions of votes around the country and renders so many votes irrelevant. And as you'll hear during the conversation, that means that the presidential election turns on only a few handful of swing states rather than the votes of every person. So Paul and Rocky are joining us in this fight. They are plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging winner take all in the Electoral College because they hope that their votes in California will matter just like they hope that votes everywhere will matter. So with that out of the way, enjoy my conversation with Paul Rodriguez and Rocky Chavez. Welcome to the Another Way podcast. I'm Jason Harrow and I'm thrilled to be joined in studio in Los Angeles, California by two plaintiffs in our lawsuits challenging winner take all in the Electoral College, comedian Paul Rodriguez. Paul, how are you?

I'm good, thank you.

Yeah, excellent. Great to have you. And politician Rocky Chavez. Hey, Rocky, how are you?

I'm great. Glad you called me a politician.

How do you like to describe yourself?

Oh, I like being a politician. I think a politician is an honorable profession.

Excellent. Well, we hope so. And we talk on this show about how to ensure that people have the right voices to elect honorable politicians in office. So before we get to what brought you guys here and the cases about winner take all and the Electoral College and the effect it has on the Republican Party and Republican voters in California, just because you guys are unusual guests, we have activists and sometimes elected politicians, Democratic presidential candidates. You are both Republicans. You have varied backgrounds, so let's get those on the table first. So, Paul, I'll start with you. So you're known as a comedian. You're a comedian, but obviously you have political interests and other interests beyond that. So tell us just a little bit about how you got involved in that.

I call myself an accidental Republican. Really. I had no interest in politics whatsoever. But an issue came up with my mom. Up in Northern California. We own a little bit of farmland and the water was cut because of these laws that I didn't understand at the time, the Environmental Protection Agency. And the fact is that a lot of us small time farmers and Hispanics really were suffering from the curtailing of the water. You know, it affected us directly. So my mom called me up, said that they cut the water off to her, and I figured it'd be just a question of me going over there, writing a check, paying the water and coming back. It was a journey that took me eight years. It changed my political affiliation. The way I see things made me far more conservative than I wanted to be. And it's cost me. It's cost me, you know, agents, managers. It's really turned my life into turmoil, you know, and I. I really don't understand why. Simply, you know, when you declared yourself more affiliated to the Republican Party point of view than the Democratic point of view, all your friends, they became vehemently angry and stopped seeing. But I'm not the kind of person that shies away from something when I believe something is right. And I've researched it and I believe this is the best way to go, I stick with it. And I figured they'll have to just open their eyes in the future and realize that they're wrong. But even if they view me like that, I never understood how our friendship would have anything to do with the way you vote. You know, as far as I'm concerned, Republican and Democrats are both Americans and they just happen to have a different point of view.

Yeah, yeah. No, that makes sense. Obviously not too many people view it that way. And in California, you're outnumbered. Oh, yeah, yeah. And we'll talk about that. But Rocky, you're someone who, despite being Outnumbered in California has had success as a Republican politician. So tell us a little bit about that journey before we kind of get into the presidential election.

Sure. As you know, born and raised in California. My family was poor. My father was a migrant coming in. I worked in the fields, worked my way through college. I was a Democrat until I was assigned in Korea in the military as a Marine. I was a young lieutenant on the DMZ in Korea and Jimmy Carter was the president. And that's when I flipped from a Democrat to Republican. What makes me a strong Republican now more than ever? Because I'm often asked, rocky, why are you still a Republican? Because some of my more thoughtful views on immigration, on gays, opportunity economics, they say, why are you still a Republican? I say because of education. California educational system is ensuring that Latinos aren't graduating at the level they should

be or nobody cares either.

Yeah. And they won't change it structurally. And if our children cannot be educated, they will not have a future. And that's why I double down on being a Republican until we can fix the education system to give our children the future.

And so to be clear, you became a Republican and then you've recently run as a Republican in California elections despite being outnumbered by at times a super majority of Democrats in the legislature. So tell us maybe a little bit about your first race and then we'll get into presidential politics.

Sure. Well, my first race I ran was. First race I ran was city council. So I won both those races. But city council race is nonpartisan. And so I won in 2002. I retired Marine Corps in 2001, won again in 2006. And then Schwarzenegger called me to Sacramento to be the undersecretary of the California Department of veteran affairs. In 2009, when Brown came in, he asked me to leave. So I went down and ran for assembly in 2012, where I met Paul and won the race. The party in the primary was kind of open to everybody. I just walked a lot in neighborhoods and won the primary. The party chose to go for somebody else, their own party operative in that ways, to 12 for the general. I continued to walk and get to know people and won by what, about 15 points? So the. I have always found that if you can sit and listen first listen and have a dialogue with somebody and you tell them why you stand on points, very often they'll say, you know, I agree with you. Even though you're a Republican, I actually agree with you. That's. But they're not used to that. I think too Many times politicians preach, they go tell you this is what you need to think. People don't want you to tell them what to think, but people love it when you listen and they can have a dialogue with you. And that's what Republicans need to do.

Hmm, interesting. Okay. But despite any kind of dialogue that Republicans would want to have here, they have had no success in presidential races for the last several elections. And there's really no chance that your vote will matter as a Republican voter in California, even though it's the biggest state, even though it has the most electoral vote. So how did you not only sort of start thinking about that issue and how it affects you, Paul, but how did you get involved in our legal case and hear that people were trying to sue to change it?

Well, it's common sense, isn't it? I mean, all you would need to do is just look at the issues, prima facie. You just realize that you have. Of all the elections you have in America, one man, one vote does not count. And perhaps the most important one, which is the presidential election. You know, I really didn't want to get involved. I mean, my life is busy enough, I have enough things on the plate. But I believe it's probably the best thing that I could do. If I really do believe in advancing Mexican Americans, Hispanics in this country. The very name Republican conjures up very negative, visceral things for us Latinos, you know, and I think a lot of that is propaganda by the Democrats. You know, if you look at both parties and you see what party has done more or what party has a possibility of doing more, it's not even a close race, you know, like Rocky Chavez here we are an anomaly. You know, people are shocked. It's not something I open up a conversation. It's not something I do on stage in my act. But if you ask me, I won't deny it. Yeah, this is who I am. And this is what's happened with the Democratic Party and Mexican Americans in particular with Caspico, is they have turned it almost into a religion, you know, to not be Democrat. It's sacrilegious. It's shocking. What you know, and I think this has been done on purpose. The constant reelection of the same individuals committing the same mistakes, digging Hispanics deeper into the servitude and happiness and low paying jobs will not stop unless you sit back, take a cold shower and look at exactly what is it that they're asking you to do. I believe Ronald Reagan was right when he said that most Mexican Americans, most Hispanics are Republicans. They just don't know it yet. And I was one of them. I didn't know that my views were conservative, that I did feel this way, that I. That I was a person that had deep loyalties to this country. And I don't want to have dual citizenship. I'm not living in Mexico. I've got nothing to do with them. I don't have to answer for their corruption, their crime. And yet somehow Mexican Americans here are subliminally and outright told that you gotta care what's going on over there. You're still over there. You can't have two. You can't serve two gods, if you want to put it that way. You're either an American concerned about our security of the border, or you want to have one foot over there and one foot over here. And if that's how you want to live, it's okay with me. I mean, I think you have the right to be wrong, but, you know, it's like they say, I once was blind, but now I see.

Yeah, okay, but. So you're buying? But now you see there's 4 million other folks who voted Republican in the most recent election, but they obviously got no representation. They got no candidate visits. So given that problem of electing the president. So how did you say we need more of a voice here as the Republican Party in California and just people whose votes should be counted. I understand. Was it Luis Farah who killed you, or is it.

Yeah, well, actually, Luis is a Democrat himself. You know, I have friends that have yet to convert, you know, but I don't go around, beat them over the head. I think all you need to do is to look at your life, look at how the political situation has affected your life. It's very easy to reach a conclusion that the things you're doing aren't working. So you have to make a change. You know, I was never involved with politicians, but all the Democratic politicians at one time or another came to me for a fundraiser. Can you show up to this? Can you do that? I did not thinking about what they stood for. I figured, you know, their last name ends with a Z. You know, I'm cool. I figured I'm helping.

Good enough for you?

That was good enough for me. You know, and I voted like that. I go down the list and I say, any Hispanic names? I vote, you know, not knowing what they believed and what they were doing, what their record was. And after a while, you realize that you're not doing any good. There are some very corrupt people I think these people should be called out regardless what ethnicity they are.

Yeah. So, Rocky, you were an elected Republican politician in 2016. I think right. During the last election, you were in the California assembly, so you had been successful. You knew there was a Republican community. You knew there were people who could be brought out to vote. Millions of them and hundreds of thousands in your district. And yet you also knew that in the 2016 election, that vote wasn't going to matter. Right. That the Democrat was going to. Hillary Clinton in particular in 2016 and Barack Obama before that in 2012, were just going to sweep the state very easily. So did that kind of frustrate you and what from your constituents? How did they feel about that?

Well, I always thought the Electoral College was an unfair system. I think actually Paul was the one to contact me on this. I was in a car driving around. He called me. You know, if you look at the amount of Republican votes that win in California, it's more than the votes, let's say in Massachusetts or Connecticut, easily. Yeah, but our votes don't count. They just roll them all up and say everybody in California is going to go to the Democrat. And that, to me was just unfair. Because if your issue is the presidential election and you know that your votes aren't going to count, why should I even turn out? And so the one person, one vote, to me, just made a heck of a lot of sense. So this was easy to get on board with this for Electoral College. You know, we have the technology now that we didn't have in the 1800s to do this. And so why do we have this Electoral College? And I bet you if you ask people right now, most people aren't informed. You go vote, you put your ballot in, you think your vote counts. A Republican. But some system called the Electoral College is gonna negate all my votes and go somewhere else.

Not only that, but it leaves itself open for a lot of corruption. I believe the electoral. The people who are out there representing you. First of all, we've been discounted. If you're a Republican in this state, but you're not aware I didn't give you permission to vote for me. Like he said, the Senatorial College came about. My understanding of it is when the United States was a vast area, we didn't have the means of communication. But we do now. We do now. And this system for electing the president should go the way of the Bull Moose Party. You know, it came to be in.

And it's not no more.

No more.

Right. Yeah. It's A good analogy. I don't think I've heard the Electoral College compared to the Bull Moose Party before, but maybe we'll run with that. So, you know, Rocky, I wanna kinda get back to the stories on the ground because so you're campaigning, you're talking to voters and the numbers show that even though not everyone knows about the Electoral College, Paul, as you were saying, people understand that votes count differently. It's not one person, one vote. And so people in Florida know that they're a swing state and that their votes are important. And people in California know, eh, it doesn't matter if I get up. How does that affect the, you know, trying to turn people out to vote, trying to get people say, all right, I know in 2012, you know, what the presidential election result's gonna be, but come out for my race anyway or come out for other important races, cuz there's a lot more that's important. You both were talking about education. That's not really solved by the President of the United States. That's solved by people in their community. So how's that, how does the lack of competitiveness in California presidential elections affect that?

Well, there is, as you know, in California there's a big difference in turnout between the governor's race and the federal and the presidential race in California or in any state, by the way, there is a Department of Education at the federal level. So it does.

They do have.

Right, okay, just all levels. Yeah, I didn't mean to say they have no role.

Okay, want to highlight that point because I think that's a whole different discussion. Had to be looked at. But the, as far as coming out by the Electoral College top the tickets affect things. Everybody, every Republican who's running in the state of California, the first question that's going to be asked of them from the Democrat or the Republican is going to be, where do you stand with Trump? They may come out and they have a totally different position on the economy, on education, on the economics. Between Mexico and the United States, there's hundreds of issues. They may differ from Trump, but they will never get past that first question.

Right. They just block.

That's right. We know like polling. I know it. By just talking to people. President Trump is not a very positive figure in the state of California. He may be positive in some others, in Wyoming, someplace else.

And to be honest, I don't think he's my first choice. He was my first choice. I mean, he's an entertainer, really. He doesn't have the ability to communicate. He takes things Personal. I don't want a president tweeting. But he did get duly elected and this is who we have and this is what I have to do. I think it's disrespectful to the office. But like Rocky said here, and I'm sorry for interrupting him, the very, very center of our situation, of our contention is education. The levels of ignorance. Our children are coming up, coming out of high school with a high school diploma that they can't read. I mean, this is. And nobody seems to be bothered about that. You know, black and Latino students. And look, I grew up in this very neighborhood that I'm talking to you from. I am from South Central. You know, I was made. I wasn't supposed to succeed. You know, we're not supposed to have an education. I am supposed to grow up and have a leaf blower on my back. This is where society wants me. But no, there are children in this neighborhood and there are children in a lot of ghettos and barriers of America that have ambition, that have goals. They have the intelligence to reach these goals. They don't have the education. Because I try to tell Latinos that unless we open our eyes and realize that the only power we're gonna get is the chastity is through the insides with political power. They think you're crazy. They think you're sold out. They think you want to be white. They think that you're one of them. So they never debate you on the facts because again, they didn't come from an educated area. I don't know what's happened to our children, but the American dream is vastly becoming nebulous and unachievable. I mean, I have relatives of mine who have diplomas from high school that can't read them. They don't know basic math. And we're not the only ones. Are we having dumber children? No, the adults are the dumb ones. We are not educated. We're not using our dollars. This wouldn't work in the public sector. We have the highest paid teachers and the lowest performing students. What's wrong about this? Why isn't anybody angry about this? This would not happen in the public sector. If I hire you and you're doing a lousy job, why should I give you a raise? But it happens here. And I'm baffled. I don't understand why parents aren't angry, demanding that teachers be certified, that teachers be qualified to teach. We have teachers that are. Oh my God. They're just not the best the wing yet.

Yeah, but I think I agree with Everything Paul just said there. But I would like to transition, I think, an opportunity for Republicans in particular, to get more votes for us. And one of the issues is I told a story before to some people about an experience I had at Berkeley. Now, I went to Berkeley. They have this nice class where they would get about four or five hundred students in a big theater, and they would introduce you when you go in there. And when they introduced me, everyone have something. Remember Colonel Rocky Chavez give a presentation? Yeah. It was like, boo. And you could hear shuffling the chairs, like, oh, man, who's this guy? When I left, I had a standing ovation. They're all cheering because, you know, what you have to do is take the opportunity to go to them and talk about something they're caring about. I'll give you an example. I went to him and I said, somebody asked the question, should we legalize marijuana? That was the big issue when it's coming in Vota. And I said, you know, I'm a child of the 60s. I'd never smoked a joint in my life. But I tell you what, I'm sorry to hear that.

Right? We could change that.

I said, what I tell you to do is. I said, you should buy good stuff for your friends every time before you have a test, because it's shown that smoking hard take good off when they should be studying. Probably won't do that well in the test. And you're at Berkeley and you want to be very competitive. And whoever gets the A and whoever gets a C goes on. And when you guys go apply for jobs, buy your friends the best drugs you can get them so this way you can get the job and do better. In the interview, they all started laughing. And so they start talking. What do you think about socialism? And I said, well, first of all, socialism is not social media. And they all started laughing. Yeah, people think, oh, social. We're going to talk to people. We're going to get along really well. I said, that's not socialism. Socialism is this. I said, you guys are Berkeley smart kids. You over here bust your butt to get an A. And you over here decide to smoke a joint, and so you get a D. And when we give you all a test, we're going to give you all a C. It goes from each of you to your ability to everybody for their need. And everybody's got to keep a C to stay in at Berkeley. So let's give everybody a C. And the guy goes, I don't want that. I go, hey, that's socialism. That's Communism. Read Lenin, Marx. That's how all this works together. The last thing they talked a little bit is said about the. You know, they called me the baby killer. And I went to him and I said, you're all here in this nice little Berkeley. You probably have families at home. Is anybody breaking your doors open, taking away your sisters and girlfriends and raping them? I said, it's happening in Africa. Those young girls that were taken out of school, that were put into human slaves, they don't do it here. You know why they don't do it here? Because we have a strong military. And they know if they come in here, they're going to have a problem because we can defend ourselves. And that's called Second Amendment. So all you people out there that have a problem with the military, this is not a safe world. I've been to the Philippines. I've been to Indonesia. I have been in the Caribbean. I have seen children starving because the system has fallen down. And in every one of them, they're taking advantage of them. We have laws here, and we have the strength to keep those laws. That's what the military does.

Yeah, we live in a very insulated world, you know, I mean, I myself have traveled the world. I, too, have been to Africa. More places than I care to go back to. Here in America, you really don't miss America until you leave it. When you leave America, you realize that a hot shower is not a guarantee. It's not a constitutional right. Our standard of living continues to be high, largely due to the fact that nobody is going to mess with us. We have a strong military. I myself did six years in the United States Air Force. I'm very proud of that. I'm tired of debating people who have never worn the uniform, who have never put themselves on the line. It's easy to talk about how much you love America, but you never really have paid the price of loving this country. We are not free because it's free to be free. If it were so, the whole world would be free. This is a very dangerous world, filled with lunatics, psychotics. And you can't emphasize to them because when you were at Berkeley smoking pot and getting seized, it's okay. I think it's part of this millennial complex where there are no bad guys. Everybody gets a trophy. Let's average it out. The real world is different like that. You know, I'm running a business. I don't want to hire a C student. I want an A student. That's how I'm going to succeed. You can see that not everybody gets a trophy. There are losers in this world, and you don't want to be one of those. It was hard to understand about that.

And it goes to the electoral College. One of the things I use all the time when I talk to kids and stuff about politicians, you notice I started off saying, I'm an honorable politician. I recently went to a meeting with a bunch of people and they introduced me a politician. Everybody kind of joked around the table and I looked at him and I said, you know, politicians are people that are elected by the individual. You people, you know, the whole idea of the concept of being self governing, we the people, was a new idea. And it was debated in Hobbes and Locke about could we be self governing. So you guys, people like me, that's why I'm a politician.

Now.

There's an alternative government source that's been around from the beginning. They're called dictators and kings and the guy with the biggest gun. So you could have a choice. You can have an authoritative government or you can have a democratic system with politicians. Which one do you want? If you got a problem with your politician, you need to look at it, mirror who are you voting? Are you actually taking the time to research where they stand on issues that impact your life? And I'm very proud to be a politician. That's what makes our system work.

The United States, with all its problems, and there are many, still continues to be the best form of government. There's a lot of work to be done in order for this government to maintain as free as it is. And we're fighting from the inside. Every year it's being curtailed. People seem to be more interested in a song or a singer or sports than they are. The fact that the Fourth Amendment was whittled down while we were all busy watching the NBA or the NFL were distracted. And it's not accidental. I don't think it's on purpose.

And Dr. Hill talked about it yesterday in the hearing. She said this whole attack came from this Russia coming from Putin. And she talks about Putin's whole issue is to get us to divide and fight among ourselves. And she said all the argument that he was pushing Trump, she said, would have been the same. He was pushing Clinton, he was spreading it over. It didn't matter if it was Clinton or Trump. His idea was to have us divide. And she looks at everybody at the hearing, she goes, and look at us now. Are we divided now? Dr. Hill laid out a very good deal. And that's why I Think the individual vote is so strong and that's why the Electoral college needs to go away, because we need to get people to understand their vote counts. They need to be engaged and their vote can influence the future of this country.

You know, you're doing a documentary. We're being filmed for this. I challenge our documentarians to go out and just out in the street, pick somebody, find out the level of ignorance. They don't know who their congressman is. They have no idea who their senator is or what a senator does. Civics is not something that's taken. They don't know how our government functions. You talk to them about the House and the Senate, they look at you like, what is that? They couldn't name you the vice president because their attention is drawn to many other things. Young people today, it's very difficult. When I was coming up, there was three channels, three channels, and that was it. Those are choices. Now there's a myriad of challenges to foster more ignorance. I believe until we fix this broken wheel that we have, things are not going to be rosy. I don't want to be a the sky is falling kind of naysayer, but it's pretty grim. The America that we inherited is not the America we're going to leave our children.

But there is something that's going on that's very interesting in that area, and I've been watching it closely in California, is that the young voters, what parties they're going to, the Democrats are pretty much flatlined. The Republicans, granted, are going down, but the decline to states are going up. In fact, there's more decline to states in California than Republicans.

Independent.

Yeah, they're independent. And so what? They're pretty much what I see these young people are saying. They're saying a pox on both your houses.

True.

We expect something better. And so I think either party who decides to start talking to people on issues that they care about and when I talk to young people, it's what we were talking about earlier about education because we have kids, there's nothing better. You care about your kids education and you'll find out that if you have a nice housing area, then you probably got a good school next to it. If you live in a barrio, probably don't have such a good school. And so the. We need to solve the housing issue, the housing crisis in California, and build more affordable housing, smaller housing density housing along transit issues. So there's solutions out there and young people are asking for it because housing and education and, you know, and new energy, trans, you know, Electric cars and things.

Look at, look at Los Angeles. Los Angeles. Homelessness here has gotten to a point where it's walk out. See that? Why? Because people don't realize how expensive it is to live in California. California, you have to be more than just middle class in order to have a house. Owning a house has become a dream. It's not going to be achieved, especially if you don't know how to read, especially if you know how to do these things. I mean the amount of homelessness has gotten so bad and everybody says, well why? Why? Because the, just for the government to buy a piece of land here in California and the minimum house, the minimum a no nothing house, really, you're talking about 300, 400,000. I'm probably low balling it, right? You can buy very, very nice house just about every other state except here. I think a lot of that has to do with weather. But to get to the point, there are people that had houses 10 years ago, we're living the middle class life and they're homeless. And we have already been trained to think that all these people are just drug addicts. These people have mental problems. Oh, you know, was your president, I get Ronald Reagan who opened up these crazy houses, you know, and that's why all these people, you know, they're very, very hard, ordinary people living in the street because you need the first and last month's rent just to get a house. And where are you going to find that? You know, the average medium thing I think is close to $3,000.

I'll give you two things, two points on the population. Housing and the quality of life in California. This is the first year California's population is going down. People are leaving this place. This is another number for you. Back when I was a secretary of Veteran affairs, there were more veterans in the state of California than any state in the union. That changed this year. There's more veterans in Texas. Veterans are leaving the state of California to live in other states because of the price of houses and the facts that we tax their retirements. So people are leaving California because it's just so expensive to live here and the inability to, you know, to get a house. And so in taxes, I mean, California love. I did, I sat in the assembly every time. They would just love to put a fee on something or a tax on something. You know, we're going to keep on doing this. And after a while people are saying, you know what, I'm going to go to Texas or Missouri or some other state. I'm out of Here. And so it's sad because there's a lot of.

You know, when I first started to get involved, there weren't that many elected Latino. They have true power in California in the legislature in Sacramento. You know, all the elected officials. You put that with the. I've spoke to them before you with the Black Caucus and the Hispanic Caucus. They're downright the majority.

Yeah, they run the place.

But the average person doesn't know that we still have that mentality. We're the minorities. Oh, woe is us. No, we've elected. We've done job one. We put them in office. Problem is that once they get there, they're bickering over such menial stuff. Well, you didn't come to my fundraiser, and I'm going to vote your way. I mean, I don't know what the problem is. I'm a child of the 60s and 70s. We're talking about marching with Cesar Chavez. This is not a person that I heard of. This is a person that knew me. I knew him. I walked. I broke bread with him. This was not the dream, the goal for all of us to march. Our generation marched. We made a noise. And that got us to the consciousness of electing of people of our color. We figured that electing someone whose last name ended with a Z was going to make things better, but they're not incorruptible.

And let me give you a point on that. In the Latino Caucus, I think I find very interesting the issue that they get together, say we are the Latino Caucus. They would not let me in on it.

No, they want to fight the racist.

The guy's name is Chavez. Okay, Chavez. They won't let him be part of the caucus because he's a Republican.

Right, right.

And then when I laid down all the issues, I said, well, let's go through the issues that you guys care about. Immigration, reform, housing, education. I'm with you guys on this stuff. What's the problem? Well, you're a Republican, and I'm saying this whole idea of shared government, responsible government. When the founding fathers put this country together, they said it's better to have open, transparent dialogue. One person, one vote. Get rid of Electoral College. Let's get together and find the best solutions. What this country's become now is I'm a Republican, you're a Democrat, we're going to war. Even though you have a good idea, I don't want you to be in my party, and I don't want you to be in my caucus. And so that mentality is going away from the foundations of this country where we believed that individuals can be self governed.

Yeah, yeah. So I'm reluctant to interrupt the Rocky and Paul show, which by the good suggestion for your next, if you guys want to continue a podcast, great stuff. But I do want to talk because you know what? On this podcast and in our organization, we work on the electoral college in one person, one vote. But a lot of the stuff you were saying also Paul, right, the nonpartisan Republican or Democrat, put that aside. Why are people out raising money instead of solving problems in the educational space with respect to veterans? Right? So maybe Rocky, since you've been there, you've tried to be in this sort of system that so many people view as corrupt because of all the money and because of all the time you've got to spend dialing instead of talking to your constituents. But you said you consider yourself an honorable politician and are known as an honorable politician. You knocked on a lot of doors. You didn't get the big money from the central committees. So can you just talk a little bit about like what is the pressure of money like and how it's dividing people and then what are some solutions that you've seen?

Why would anybody want to have a. What's a congressman mean? I'm ignorant of that, but I would.

A couple hundred thousand bucks, I think.

Couple hundred thousand, right. Why would a congressman have to spend two years raising not hundreds of thousands, but millions of dollars for a job that only pays 200,000? Why would you say that leaves yourself ripe for to be taking bribes? I'm not saying they're all crooked, but you know, here's the situation. Until we reform, the reason why they have to get these war chests is because access to the media is so expensive, you know, to buy a commercial here in Los Angeles, a couple million dollars at a prime time, right? Going to reach the people. I think eventually there's going to have to be a bill. We're going to have to pass a law that once the primaries are done, once the two most viable people, that all this media, these media companies should be forced to give free commercials equal time to both of them so they won't have to raise these big war chests because that leads them, right. For corruption. I mean, look, If I donate $50,000 to you for your running for some office, I'm gonna want something for that $50,000. I want access to you. Access is not gonna be granted to somebody only gave $5,000. That's common sense. Probably it's just business, right? Until Some law is passed that these Congress don't need to spend the vast majority of their time just to get reelected, you know, and that they're not voting, they're not doing their job. When they're out here having to go every day to every schmo, every company, whatever, every. To raise these funds. I mean to be a senator in this, in this country is. You almost have to belong to a machine. You have to get into a big pack, a big. Where they have big funds. And you know, you have to literally, I believe the, the one of these lobbies makes them sign loyalty to them.

Sure.

Before they get the dollar.

Right.

That's ridiculous.

Right. How about loyalty to your constituents? But Rocky, you tried that, right. And with some success.

Yeah, well.

Cause if the race is contacting 750 people or 450 people, like in my case, an assembly member, half a million people, you can do it at a grassroots level and do it. But when you're gonna run for the Senator of California, when you're trying to talk to 39 million people across major media markets like San Francisco, Louisiana and San Diego, you're talking tens of millions of dollars. So that's very expensive. You need to go to Sacramento and look where the capital is. And then look around the capital and you'll see all these high rises and they're all filled up with lobbyist and they, and they move a lot of money. Now every night in Sacramento, starting at 5pm that goes to about 7pm There will be a series of members events and you will go there and there'll be all those food and all those things seduced. And you'll see the lobbyists roll through and they'll all be dropping off max out checks, you know, whatever the number is, 2,200, $2,400 checks to you saying we showed up here. Now lobbyists are. And you saw this with the California Chamber and you saw it with some of the agricultural areas businesses generally, they were seen as Republicans. But now that there's a super majority with the Democrats in there, you can see where their money's going. They're hedging their bets because at the end of the day they need votes. And some of these members make it very clear if you don't show up at my little event, you're gonna have a problem. And then when you start having the speaker and the pro tem call some of the agricultural groups or the pharmaceutical groups, they'll influence them. Additionally, California is so large, any policy that we pass to deal with energy, cars, Pharmacies can be a standard across the country. So then you bring in federal people because they're saying, you know what? We need to either kill this or support this in California. Translation, we need to write a check.

Exactly.

And so that's. So a party that's in power right now, the Democrats, look how much money they're raising. In my own race in the 76th Assembly District, once I left, the lady who's running there, who is an avid, in my opinion, socialist, who went after Tri City Medical, which is her largest, one of the largest businesses in her district, is responsible for the health care of her district, has not visited once, but went out of her way to shut it down with an audit. And I had to go to Sacramento to stop her. And she's never been there yet. But she is building up a war chest. And even though she's been totally bad, you can't get anybody to run against her because everybody knows Democrats will put five to $6 million. Five to $6 million to influence 500,000 population, which probably means about maybe 250, 300,000 votes. Just do the math.

She'll win.

She's gonna buy it. She's gonna buy it.

We literally have the government we can afford to buy, you know, and the laws that are coming out. There was a politician here in California named Jess Unruh, I believe, who said that money was the mother's milk of California politics.

Yeah.

And it is true, because like I said, the reason why, when you go to a city, the biggest buildings have the name of a bank in it. Because that's. That's the money.

Yeah.

If you have the money to build that. Well, when you go around Sacramento, a politician walks out and he is swarmed by a lobbyist, special interest group, lumber company and all of that. Now, the man probably went to Sacramento with. With really noble ideas. You know, what's this movie that we all saw as a kid, Mr. Smith goes to Washington. I'm Going to change things. A lot of them did go there, but by the time they get there, they realize that if you don't raise this kind of war chest or you go against their views, they will find someone and fund them to run against you and beat you. Because to have access to the media is.

And actually, there's not a lot. Look at the percent of elected people in the assembly that were staffers. I would bet you it's about 40%. So. So they, they didn't go there with the attitude of, I'm going to meet the lobbyists. They Were already there and figured out the system. And when their member is leaving, their member anoints their former chief of staff or whatever. And I think there's no. They share the information calling numbers. And then if you really want to go into it, look at the. You have your candidate, you have your lobbyist, but you have a system that's designed to raise money.

Yeah.

And those people have the phone numbered list to go there. And if you want them to work for you, but they're going to take 15 to 25% off the top of everything you raise.

It's a business.

But if you go to that person that says, hey, I want you to be my fundraiser, they'll go, okay, but this is the rule. You got to come over here and they'll have a little room with all your little phones with the little. So you can dial really quick. You need to spend a minimum of 15 to 30 hours to sit here and raise money. And they track you in and out. Because I remember when I got elected, my staff says, well, who's your fundraiser guys? I'm here to go to committees. They go, go to committees here you're supposed to be across the street raising money.

Exactly.

And I, I didn't do that. I'd have two events a year I'd make, you know, probably, you know, there's

no better, I'm sorry, there's no better example of being disappointed as a politician than, let's say, our friend Arnold Schwarzenegger. He came in with so much idealistic ideas. He wanted to handle this as a, as one of his movies where he comes in as Conan and slashes his opponents. I think he left with this tail between his legs. I worked with him closely. He's a man that came in that he wanted to do this. He saw himself overwhelmed and swamped. I don't think he got a good taste in his mouth because, you know, the politics has been so ingrained with special interest groups that if you're a small time, let's say you're a mom and pop, you own a little store, right. And you are trying to stop a Walmart or somebody to come in and just rape every inner little small towns, which they've done all through the Midwest, you know, you will never get to this man. You're not going to get to him. I had a piece of land in Northern California. Thank God, I'm whore now. Let me just say that I had a piece of land that Walmart wanted to buy. I had every. This little town come to me and go Paul, you can't do that to us. Walmart comes in here, I'd have made a lot of money. I told him, but look, if I don't sell somebody, they're just gonna move next. Somebody else will sell. Yeah, but you don't want that kind of, you don't want that kind of stain on your good name. So I said, oh, well, yeah, my good name is Arawan Nostein. Well, they did the same thing. They killed Little America and I didn't get the cash.

So I mean, there you go. So to start wrapping it up too. I mean, the last couple things I wanted to know were. So, Paul, you mentioned at the outset of the show that you got a lot of, made a lot of enemies by saying you were Republican. But the things you're saying now, that the system is corrupt by both sides, its special interests rule it. I think that's popular among a lot of different people. So maybe for both of you, how do you get people of both parties to come together and say, hey, let's solve the problem of getting rid of super PACs, let's solve the problem.

They don't want to. I'm sure they are helpless in this situation until there's legislation saying that

the

media should be given free or with. Or with a cap. With a cap. You know, so I'm not saying, you know, that a broadcaster work hard to own a station to give away prime time. There should be some monies, but the monies are outrageous. Try to buy a 30 second commercial on a primetime show here in this market, who has that kind of, you know, what are they going for? A million something? Half a 30 second commercial. You know, in the media access, the prices are outrageous because that's what the market will bear. This is capitalism, right? If you own Coca Cola, you can afford that. But if you are Joe Schmo trying to represent your district, you can't compete with that. So consequently somebody else will. Like you said, this is a whole industry. I don't think the voters are aware of just what it takes to be. And we're not talking about high elected office, we're talking about your humble fellow councilman.

So we'll end by bringing it back to where we started with some focus on the electoral college. And that is just California sheer size. Right. You talked earlier, Rocky, that the number of Republican votes in California are more than the number of Clinton votes in many blue states that got all these electors. So how does that disenfranchising this many people really affect the game?

It affects it a Great deal, because people who know that their vote doesn't count are going to vote. And so that's why I'm strongly supporting one person, one vote and getting rid of the Electoral College because there are more people, Republicans in California than many states have populations and our vote doesn't count. That's why I'm all on board of getting rid of the Electoral College.

I believe there are more Democrats on a one man, one vote. We'd never have. There wouldn't be another Republican president really, you know, because they have all these huddled masses that are coming. This is why I believe that the Democrats are so lenient on immigration. This is a ready made. You cross the border, you're a Democrat. There's nobody from Mexico crossing the border going, I'm Republican, it's not heard of, you know, and I believe that this create votes. But still. Right is right. I think one man, one vote is.

Yeah. And I think Paul, I mean, and Rocky, maybe you have an opinion on this too. I think a lot of the view is if you had one person, one vote nationally, the whole issue would change. Right? So right now many Republicans don't run for the votes in many immigrant communities because they're not there. What do they care if they get more votes in California? Right. It doesn't matter to them. But imagine if we had one person, one vote and imagine if those votes in California mattered, maybe the Republicans would try to win a broader coalition and therefore change and be a little more like some of the, solve some of the problems we've heard here today.

And I've been in that discussion in the caucus because you'll often hear the issue of, well, especially in California right now, you can register and vote on the same day. The new issue of the ballot harvesting effort that's going out now where you go to somebody who may be registered to vote, that never votes, that you can go get them and, and take their vote and sign it and move it in. So all these policies get people to vote. I challenge the Republicans to say, well, why don't we just make issues that people care about and go out and talk to them or make issues that they may care about, but they don't even know that their party's against them, like education. And so if one person, one vote counted more, then I think there'd be a driving effort for parties and politicians to talk to everybody.

We need to grow like New Hampshire. I'm sorry, why does a state like New Hampshire has such disproportionate power, you know, and really Deciding who the candidates are. New Hampshire, I got more people in my garage, you know, but yet they.

How big is your garage?

But they have, they have this disproportional effect, you know. Well, you hear on the news all the time. He did well in Wisconsin, he did well in New Hampshire. You know, who was that candidate that the, that hollered, had a yippee IO moment, and then really, it cost him. He's a president, he's a Democratic. Howard Dean. Right. Yeah. Boom, he's out. Right. He's a decent man, but a full part like that. But what I'm saying is, by the time they get to the real states of the matter, California, Florida, Texas, these large states, New Hampshire has decided for you because of the Electoral College.

And what does it mean? Do you think that so many of these swing states, right, as you said, New Hampshire, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, where we all hear about, they have very different populations than the country. Right. They are whiter than the country. They have fewer minority communities. They have, you know, not many Southwestern energy issues that we have. How does that skew the way people view the whole presidential election?

I don't think it's skews. I think diversity is good. You know, there's a real good book I've been telling everybody about called Hillbilly Effigy, and it talks about why a large group of white who have historically been undereducated and have moved out of Tennessee and Kentucky and have gone to Michigan, Indiana, where the Rust Belt was, where they worked in the mines and now they're unemployed. And now a lot of them are Trump voters. Those issues are good issues. People are suffering from meth. You know, they have a large drug impact. Those are good issues we need to deal with. And giving people an opportunity to go into new industries, not go into the steel industry, going into the mines, but get involved more in computers or other skills. You can't tell me they're not smart enough to do it, because they can. So I think when you have a diverse country like we have, and you have, if you really want to move the entire country up, then these communities that may be unique or diverse, that don't represent LA or New York, those are. They have real issues that would make New York and California better, you need to go out and accept them. What we've done with the Electoral College is we divided people apart and the Electoral College supports division. And that's what you have right now in this country. You got the reds against the blues, and that's not helping this country it goes against the foundation of this country. One person, one vote. We can be self governing. We need to have a system that allows us to be self governing. And the electoral college goes against that concept of being self governed.

Not only that, right now we're in the middle of impeachment trials, for example. People don't know how dangerous this is. There are militias in this country that would literally raise arms to impeach the president. Right or wrong, you know, I mean, they are, the Democrats are fighting this one. I'm not defending the Republicans, you know, but they've done it. It seems to me they've spent their entire energy on trying to get this man out of office. You know, I don't think President Obama got that kind of scrutiny and I think he did suffer also that he received a lot of resistance. Why don't once we, look, we have a system of government, once we elect a president, we get behind that man, put our differences aside and think patriotism, get the country going. But no, we've divided into, okay, I couldn't get you out the ballot box. I'm gonna get you with this law and that law. And it's all, I mean, I get tired of watching, you know, when I was a kid, if Walter Cronkite said that we landed on the moon, we land on the moon. The man had credibility. There's no credibility in the news media now. You see cnn, everything Trump does is wrong. You see Fox, everything Trump does is right. You know, if it weren't for the social media or the friends to friends, I think a lot of voters are like, I am. We're confused. We're sitting there going, look, I know I love this country. I know I want this country to prosper. How do I go about doing that? So we have Rocky Chavez here and myself, yours truly. We are Don Quixote. We are. He's Don Quixote. I am Sancho Paza. I'm his loyal servant. We're on top of Dulce Nea. And for those of you that are listening, that don't know what I'm saying, education is what I was talking about anyways. What I'm saying is we are fighting windmills. We know that our odds are against it, but I think history will favor us. I don't think I'll live to see it, but I believe that the Republicans, unless they woo, unless they come to voters of color and speak to us and take us out on a date and show us and stop their own internal rhetoric, the words that frightens my people from, you know, oh, you're with them. You know, they're racist. They want to do this, they want to do that. I think protecting the borders of the United States is not a racist thing. I mean, if there were Chinese people now say there's a border, it's not a racial thing. It is a thing that we must have accountability. I'm an immigrant. For me to say those words is blasphemous. I have friends of mine. Well, you forgot where you come from. No, no, no, man. It's the opposite. Because I remember where I came from and I don't want to return there. You know, my parents didn't come here to America because we wanted to be white and have blue eyes and blonde hair. We wanted to have a chance that our government, where our children can be judged by their intelligence, not by the color of their skin. You know, I don't want my son to grow up with a shackle, have to carry that. I work very, very hard to get myself from the bar, from the ghetto to the suburbs. I'm not going to apologize to nobody for that.

If I could hit the one issue I think we're seeing right now and I'm going to lay the blame on the parties. I remember when Obama was first elected, the comments in the Republicans was a one term president and they attacked him, attacked him, attacked him saying, you know, he's not even a citizen, you know,

he wasn't born in this country, he

wasn't born in this country, all the stuff, he's not all black. So from the right side, attacking him isn't right. Because regardless of what people think, when you win the election, he's the president, get behind him. So the parties did that to Obama. So now we get Trump elected, which I wasn't a big fan of, but he won the election through the electoral college at the popular vote. What's the first thing it is? He gets attacked from the other side the same way. So I'm not saying Republican, Democrat. I'm saying there are operatives within our country, the people that raise the money, the people that want to stay in control, that influence this whole system. And the only way we can stop it is to get one person, one vote and allow politicians to get involved in things that people care about and not systems pushing them through.

Just like Harry Truman. Just like Harry Truman. I believe in the common sense of the common people.

Yeah, that's a good place to end. We appreciate your being our Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in these lawsuits. We're continuing to appeal. We're continuing to try. Paul, I hope we change the Electoral College during your lifetime, and we'll keep it going. So thank you for, for joining me today. Thank you for being part of our, our lawsuits and trying to, to bring one person, one boat to the Electoral College and elsewhere.

Thank you.

Sam.