Speaker 1: Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of Eating While Broke.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Coleen Witt, and today we have a
Speaker 1: very special guest. Our first time ever in the history
Speaker 1: of Eating Wild Broke, we have an actual elected official
Speaker 1: in House, Congressman Tony cardon Us is with us, and
Speaker 1: I'm like nervous, I'm excited. First time ever have I
Speaker 1: ever had the privilege of sitting down with an elected
Speaker 1: in an intimate settling, let alone eating a broke dish classic?
Speaker 1: So are you a little nervous about getting into the
Speaker 1: scene or at all?
Speaker 2: Just as long as the peanut butter doesn't get stuck
Speaker 2: in my mouth so I can't talk anymore. But other
Speaker 2: than that, we're good.
Speaker 1: Just a little backstory for all our listeners. I did
Speaker 1: have like Welch's jelly, like a cute little jar of
Speaker 1: peanut butter. I had some really nice bread because I
Speaker 1: didn't want to take them all the way back to
Speaker 1: total brokeness. And I loved that your staff, Gabriella came
Speaker 1: in and she was like, Tony was very adamant about
Speaker 1: these particular ingredients. So go ahead, introduce the dish and
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit of why it was so
Speaker 1: important to you to actually have the real eating while
Speaker 1: broke dish.
Speaker 2: Thank you Coleen. First of all, love this show, glad
Speaker 2: to be here. The reason why I wanted my staff
Speaker 2: to get a big tub of peanut butter, the biggest
Speaker 2: one they could get, is because I'm the youngest of eleven.
Speaker 2: My parents came from Mexico and we always ate Mexican
Speaker 2: food every single day, and my mom was a homemaker.
Speaker 2: But when mom was in in the kitchen cooking and
Speaker 2: we were hungrier, wold have you? We had to go
Speaker 2: to the fridge. He was left over what have you?
Speaker 2: But this right here is what we turned to. Like
Speaker 2: after school, we're hungry, can't wait till dinner? Is some
Speaker 2: cheap bread, the most non nutritious bread on the planet,
Speaker 2: white bread. There was a place called Weber's in San Fernando,
Speaker 2: and being with eleven kids my parents, it was like
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, they would sell the day old
Speaker 2: bread for ten cents a loaf, and they had bunches
Speaker 2: of it. So, for example, my mom would go with
Speaker 2: a buck a dollar and buy like ten loaves of bread.
Speaker 2: But that only lasts about a week. Yes, you got it.
Speaker 2: So we would buy Weber's Bread back then. I don't
Speaker 2: even know if they're still, you know, in business, but
Speaker 2: Wonder was the second choice, and then Skippy was. Luckily
Speaker 2: for us we got to have a name brand peanut butter.
Speaker 2: I don't know why, because most everything in the house
Speaker 2: was the cheapest we could find. That's what my cereal,
Speaker 2: all invitation cereals. When the government was given the powdered
Speaker 2: milk and the government cheese, you never thought you would
Speaker 2: get tired of real cheese, but yeah, we got tired
Speaker 2: of it because they used to give it in big
Speaker 2: old blocks. But anyway, so here we are. But this
Speaker 2: is the one that is my favorite. This is something
Speaker 2: that my daughter made and it's a marmalade, a lemon marmalade.
Speaker 2: And my daughter cooks, and my mother's no longer with us.
Speaker 2: She was a homemaker. She cooked from scratch every day,
Speaker 2: and she actually would make a lot of things from scratch.
Speaker 2: She would in frascat you say it in Spanish. She
Speaker 2: would jar things, pickle this, and pickle that, and jar this.
Speaker 2: So she actually used to make some jelly once in
Speaker 2: a while. If we had all the ingredients, she'd get inspired.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna make some jelly strawberry. What have you? So?
Speaker 1: Were any of your peanut butter and jelly sandwiches just
Speaker 1: peanut butter and bread?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Oh yeah, yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I was nervous when Gabriella brought the big peanut butter
Speaker 1: and the wonderbread. I was like, oh my gosh, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna have jelly today. And then I was happy
Speaker 1: to see the jar of marmalade. I've never had this soul,
Speaker 1: not the peanut butter. I've never had the marmalade. So
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and start doing peanut butter and jelly,
Speaker 1: the og classic.
Speaker 2: All right, let's start with some bread.
Speaker 1: So I'm just curious, out of those eleven eleven of
Speaker 1: you guys, how many of you guys were boys?
Speaker 2: It was almost even, even as you can get. It
Speaker 2: was six girls, five boys. I'm the youngest. All the
Speaker 2: girls got all the brains and looks in the family,
Speaker 2: and us boys we had to kind of like deal
Speaker 2: with what we got. But no, I say that because
Speaker 2: I love my sisters. I love my brothers. But my
Speaker 2: sister used to help me with my math homework. I
Speaker 2: became an engineer, but back in those days, my sisters
Speaker 2: were born in the forties and fifties, so by the
Speaker 2: time they were graduating from high school, it was the
Speaker 2: sixties and society and even my parents went along with it,
Speaker 2: were convincing them that they should just get married and
Speaker 2: get a husband who'll take care of you. My sisters
Speaker 2: could have all gone and got PhDs and things of
Speaker 2: that nature. So it really pains me to know that
Speaker 2: the person who helped me with my math helped me
Speaker 2: when I was struggling and I became an engineer, she
Speaker 2: didn't become an engineer and things like that. So so.
Speaker 1: Your sisters essentially ended up well they.
Speaker 2: No, look, they have a wonderful life. They have beautiful children,
Speaker 2: you know them and their husbands would go to work
Speaker 2: and they everybody's was able to own a home on
Speaker 2: first generation. My generation is first generation college on both
Speaker 2: sides of my family. My mother and father are from
Speaker 2: Demastiane Halley School, Mexico, which is this little dirt town.
Speaker 2: When they were little boys and girls, there were no
Speaker 2: formal schools like we have here in the United States.
Speaker 2: So when they got married, my father being twenty my
Speaker 2: mother being eighteen, they looked around and said, well, nothing's changed.
Speaker 2: If we want the next generation to have opportunities, we
Speaker 2: got to get out of here. So they came to
Speaker 2: California and then stayed here. You know, had us eleven
Speaker 2: kids until they passed away. So this is what we
Speaker 2: made for ourselves. My mom made a stack of homide
Speaker 2: tortillas every single day, a big pot of beans every
Speaker 2: single day, made some fresh rice and something else. That
Speaker 2: was the traditional food in our household. It was a
Speaker 2: third dish. And then rice and beans and tortillas. That
Speaker 2: was a staple every day.
Speaker 1: Wow. And then was it like meat was the luxury.
Speaker 2: Of yes, exactly, that was the third dish. It was
Speaker 2: either some chicken or some oh need it some kind? Yeah. Well,
Speaker 2: the thing is, let me clarify. We never lacked for
Speaker 2: what we needed in our home. Our mother and father,
Speaker 2: my mom stayed at home. That was the deal. They
Speaker 2: got married, high tailed it over here to California, and
Speaker 2: my mother and father made a deal that my mom
Speaker 2: wouldn't work outside the home. She would stay home and
Speaker 2: be a homemaker, and my dad would work work, work,
Speaker 2: and my dad, his average week was a six day
Speaker 2: work week. And so my mom was an amazing cook,
Speaker 2: thank god. But she made large quantities of everything every day.
Speaker 2: But what we're eating here is what we used to
Speaker 2: make for ourselves as kids.
Speaker 1: Eleven kids, though, is like I don't even think even
Speaker 1: if she sort of even like, even if we were
Speaker 1: in today's times, if she wanted to go to work,
Speaker 1: eleven kids, is you need one parent to stay right?
Speaker 2: Oh my god? Today a big family is you know,
Speaker 2: three four kids? Yeah, and that's more than a handful.
Speaker 2: And you know, I constantly speak respectfully of my parents
Speaker 2: because I remember growing up there were some people that
Speaker 2: when we're in the supermarket, you know, there's three or
Speaker 2: four trailing my mom and we're sitting at the checking stand,
Speaker 2: and I could understand English. My mom and dad understood
Speaker 2: very very little English, and I could hear the words
Speaker 2: of disrespect that they spoke of my mom, like, you know,
Speaker 2: talking in English to the other checker, like, oh, can
Speaker 2: you believe how many kids it would have? You, you know,
Speaker 2: they probably can't even afford them, and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But that's not true. We never lacked for food. My
Speaker 2: parents bought a home in nineteen fifty five and raised
Speaker 2: the so all in that home until they passed away.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm very very protective of the image that
Speaker 2: people have Immigrants come to this country and they have
Speaker 2: a bunch of kids, and those kids are a bunch
Speaker 2: of good for nothings or a bunch of troublemakers. Nah uh.
Speaker 2: Not one of us eleven kids growing up in Pacoima,
Speaker 2: not the you know, it's a low income community, a
Speaker 2: lot of beautiful families. They're not one of us ever
Speaker 2: ended up in a gang. Not one of us ever
Speaker 2: ended up, you know, in the backseat of a police car.
Speaker 2: So you know, to my parents, you know, and.
Speaker 1: One of you guys ended up, Yeah, changing a lot
Speaker 1: for the community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well apparently yes, I say this one once
Speaker 2: in a while. I speak truthfully about if you asked
Speaker 2: my brothers and sisters when they were you know, when
Speaker 2: I was like eight, ten years old, and you asked
Speaker 2: them right down on a piece of paper, where do
Speaker 2: you think Tony's gonna end up? They probably would have
Speaker 2: said some not mean things, but accurate things like I
Speaker 2: don't know, he's a big trouble maker. You know he's
Speaker 2: had I had the hottest temper of all my brothers
Speaker 2: and sisters. I was the one you could light me
Speaker 2: as like a match. I was the one that would
Speaker 2: bawl my fist up before I would think about what
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say. So God is good because they gave
Speaker 2: me ten older brothers and sisters to help keep me
Speaker 2: in line, and I needed every single one of them.
Speaker 2: They gave me two parents who were as strict as
Speaker 2: can be. So had I not had the upbringing that
Speaker 2: I was given and afforded by two amazing parents who
Speaker 2: were strict, ten brothers and sisters were like, Oh, you
Speaker 2: can't do that. I can't let you do that.
Speaker 1: Who knows everybody was checking? Oh yeah, I just to
Speaker 1: go back to the checkout line. I remember growing up
Speaker 1: poor and like our parents had food stamps, and I
Speaker 1: remember feeling shame like as a kid, like, oh my God,
Speaker 1: just like, let me duck out the back door. I
Speaker 1: don't even want to be affiliated with my poor parents,
Speaker 1: Like I don't want kids to know how poor we are.
Speaker 1: When people were talking about your parents and you understood it,
Speaker 1: I'm just genuinely curious, did you do you feel a
Speaker 1: level of shame or did you are you mature enough
Speaker 1: to understand like you don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: I felt hurt that the market that we went to,
Speaker 2: all the time that my parents paid for everything that
Speaker 2: they But I felt as a little boy, I felt
Speaker 2: confused and hurt. Why are they saying that about my mom? Right?
Speaker 2: And and hurt because I'm like, my parents are good people,
Speaker 2: right and and I thought the checkers were good people too.
Speaker 2: I didn't hate them, they just confused the hell out
Speaker 2: of me. And but there's examples all over the place
Speaker 2: about how I was treated, being that I'm from Pacoima,
Speaker 2: by teachers, counselors, some police officers, et cetera. And I'm
Speaker 2: not saying all teachers, all counselors, all police officers, but
Speaker 2: there's bad apples in every bunch, and the idea the
Speaker 2: people that are supposed to be there for the children
Speaker 2: of a community would speak ill of them or tell them, Oh,
Speaker 2: you're not going to amount to anything. Just wait, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna catch you doing something wrong. I'm gonna put you
Speaker 2: in jail. I'm like, I was never that kid anyway,
Speaker 2: but the fact that I was in that neighborhood, they
Speaker 2: just labeled us all the same. So and that's one
Speaker 2: of the reasons why I decided to run for office.
Speaker 2: I never thought I would run for office ever. Growing up.
Speaker 2: I'm an engineer. I to my engineering degree.
Speaker 1: You liked math?
Speaker 2: Well, I like math?
Speaker 1: Who likes math?
Speaker 2: I liked it enough to see like I could be
Speaker 2: good at this, right, So I pursued an engineering injur Gee.
Speaker 2: I got it. I was working for Hewlett Packard for
Speaker 2: a bit and then I decided, I'm not feeling it.
Speaker 1: Now when you were at the time when you got
Speaker 1: an engineering degree, were there a lot of people that
Speaker 1: look like you?
Speaker 2: Oh, no way, especially Latina women or women of color.
Speaker 2: I went to UC Santa Barbara on the campus as
Speaker 2: a whold. I think back then there was about fifteen
Speaker 2: thousand students walking around the campus. On any given day,
Speaker 2: you could probably count only a few hundred black students
Speaker 2: and a few hundred Latino students. This is California, Yeah right,
Speaker 2: there was a lot of black and brown people in California.
Speaker 2: But nope, it was a very good school and they
Speaker 2: didn't let that many of us in. But those of
Speaker 2: us who got in we did fine.
Speaker 1: Now, even in those environments, did you feel like you
Speaker 1: didn't belong? Did you feel a little imposter syndrome.
Speaker 2: Or imposter syndrome? Trust me, imposter syndrome unfortunately will never
Speaker 2: leave any one of us. One. I still get it sometimes,
Speaker 2: but now I snap out of it, like in a heartbeat.
Speaker 2: I snap out of it, like, oh hell no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: I be long here. I earned being here. For example,
Speaker 2: when I went to UC Santa Barbara. You know you're
Speaker 2: a freshman, you're getting there. There's a brad ad and bushytail.
Speaker 2: You go around meeting people say hey, how you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm Tony, I'm Gloria or whatever, and you say, what
Speaker 2: are you studying? While I'm studying English? And then as
Speaker 2: soon as I would say I'm studying engineering, they would
Speaker 2: say two things. One they will man, that's hard. And
Speaker 2: then they would say, oh, you got in under affirmative action.
Speaker 2: Now hold on a second, affirmative action is necessary in
Speaker 2: a society that denies good people equal opportunities.
Speaker 1: Well, I've never heard someone say it's so eloquently like that.
Speaker 2: Well, the thing is what bothered me was that I
Speaker 2: got in on regular admissions. And yeah, some of my
Speaker 2: buddies who did graduate got in on an affirmative action,
Speaker 2: who otherwise wouldn't have been able to get that degree,
Speaker 2: that beautiful, amazing university. But I got in under regular admissions.
Speaker 2: So how dare somebody assume that I am substandard, like
Speaker 2: that I needed to get in because I was under
Speaker 2: the bar. No, I earned my place and I got
Speaker 2: my degree, and that that carries with me my entire life.
Speaker 2: But imposter syndrome, oh hell yeah, oh yeah. I talked
Speaker 2: to students all the time, I talk to interns all
Speaker 2: the time, and I tell them, like, you know what,
Speaker 2: I was a very very insecure little boy. How many
Speaker 2: of you are willing to admit that you have some insecurities.
Speaker 2: Some raise their hand, and I'm proud of them for
Speaker 2: doing that, because everybody has in securities. President of the
Speaker 2: United States has insecurities, right.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's crazy because you never think that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean yeah, because we're human beings, right
Speaker 1: exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: So I let them know and I and I raised
Speaker 2: my hand too, and they're looking at me, like, why
Speaker 2: is raising it? I said, I'm raising my hand because
Speaker 2: I have insecurities too, I said, I how about imposture syndrome?
Speaker 2: And then some of them will raise their hand and
Speaker 2: some won't, And I say, and I raise my hand too,
Speaker 2: and I say, but I have this much imposter syndrome.
Speaker 2: But when I was young, like you, I had this much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's me my whole life. Every day, I got
Speaker 1: a lot of it.
Speaker 2: I got extra Yeah. But but the thing is, what
Speaker 2: what I'm trying to get at is one of the
Speaker 2: reasons why people develop imposture syndrome is you have a
Speaker 2: cop who sees you on the street and pulls you over,
Speaker 2: and you're you're getting max I didn't doing things. I
Speaker 2: didn't do anything wrong. The ruin in your day. They're
Speaker 2: putting your face down on the ground or up against
Speaker 2: the wall in front of all your neighborhood. So their
Speaker 2: parents could be like, Oh, that's so and So's kid
Speaker 2: must have done something wrong. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: So that's that's that's bad. That that never leaves someone's heart,
Speaker 2: It never leaves their mind being treated like that by
Speaker 2: people that are You're supposed to have mutual respect for
Speaker 2: teachers who told me, I, you know you're too dumb
Speaker 2: using a word like dumb to a child. Yes, yes, again.
Speaker 2: Let me say most of my teachers were amazing, and
Speaker 2: some of them were like phenomenal. Thank God for them.
Speaker 2: Without those two three teachers who really invested me, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't be where I'm at. I wouldn't be successful at
Speaker 2: almost anything that I tried to do. But because of them,
Speaker 2: they helped me, they loved me. So the thing is,
Speaker 2: when I see that happening, I go back to what's
Speaker 2: my first nature as a person. I get pissed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say, where's that temper at?
Speaker 2: Oh well the temper I turned it into something positive. See,
Speaker 2: I'm a congressman now, I was, I was a council member,
Speaker 2: I was a California state legislator. I've been doing this
Speaker 2: for twenty eight years. So what gets to me is
Speaker 2: when I see injustice. That's the thing that really pisses
Speaker 2: me off. And the thing that I've been doing the
Speaker 2: most since I've been elected for twenty eight years is
Speaker 2: juvenile justice, criminal sentencing reform, things of that nature for
Speaker 2: the last twenty years. And when I started doing it
Speaker 2: in the nineteen nineties, oh man, I got criticized by
Speaker 2: liberal Democrats. Wow, would be like, oh, that's a great idea, Tony,
Speaker 2: but I can't help you with that. And I'm thinking
Speaker 2: to myself, how can you not help You're a progressive, right, Yeah? No.
Speaker 2: But the thing the reason why I did it is
Speaker 2: because I saw in the next and the next generation
Speaker 2: that if we didn't change things, they were going to
Speaker 2: be treated just like me. Wow, and not of sheer stubbornness.
Speaker 2: Did I move past that ridiculousness and still moved forward?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Did anyone say, can you table it for the
Speaker 1: next time?
Speaker 2: God, Yes, there's always manyana, there's oh no, not right
Speaker 2: now now, it's not the time.
Speaker 1: And then how did you respond to that? Was there
Speaker 1: ever a moment where you were like, fine, I guess
Speaker 1: I'll push it back.
Speaker 2: No, no, again, I'm more stubborn than smart. I'm more
Speaker 2: stubborn than anything else. Anytime somebody would tell me something
Speaker 2: like that, I would be like, no, but I'm here
Speaker 2: right now. I'm gonna do it with it without your help.
Speaker 2: But I would bring people along because I would do
Speaker 2: the work. Like I said, I'm an engineer. What engineers
Speaker 2: are taught to do is that there's a problem, there
Speaker 2: are solutions. Your job is to find a good one,
Speaker 2: not the solution. Because there's solutions to everything, right in
Speaker 2: a bunch of them, find a real good one and
Speaker 2: make fix the problem. And so it's really weird. People
Speaker 2: asked me, I was just talking to a couple of
Speaker 2: interns just yesterday in my DC office to Latina as
Speaker 2: one after Latina and another Latina. They had requested to
Speaker 2: sit down with me. So I made some time and
Speaker 2: I'm talking to them, and I'm trying to let them
Speaker 2: know that whatever happened to them, whatever injustices came their way,
Speaker 2: that doesn't define them. They can be whatever they want
Speaker 2: to be. And the thing is, we have a very
Speaker 2: flawed country, and the bottom line is this, but it's
Speaker 2: an amazing place where somebody like me can go from
Speaker 2: a mother and father who came and throughout their life
Speaker 2: never learned much English, but made it here in the
Speaker 2: United States, provided for their children and their youngest. They
Speaker 2: raised eleven of us. You know, most of us went
Speaker 2: off to college and got all kinds of degrees and stuff,
Speaker 2: but they're youngest got to be a United States Congressman.
Speaker 2: I literally it's a coincidence that we're doing this today.
Speaker 2: I was literally at the White House yesterday in the
Speaker 2: Oval Office. Wow, when President Biden was signing something that
Speaker 2: a few Congressional members from the House of Representatis where
Speaker 2: I'm a member. But the first Latino United States Center
Speaker 2: to represent California is Alex Badilla. He's the one that
Speaker 2: made it happen. He's an engineer like me.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't your and that wasn't your first visit
Speaker 1: to the White House, obviously.
Speaker 2: No, I've been to the White House many times.
Speaker 1: Did your parents ever get to witness any any of it?
Speaker 1: I'm just any of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My mother was. My father passed away in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three. I got elected in nineteen ninety six, and
Speaker 2: my mother was still alive, and so she got to
Speaker 2: see me sworn in. And literally the room in Sacramento
Speaker 2: when I became a state assemblyman and you all stand
Speaker 2: up and get sworn in, and there's a balcony. My
Speaker 2: mother was on the balcony. I could see her up
Speaker 2: there looking down at me and us, and she got
Speaker 2: to see it, and I could see it in her eyes. Again,
Speaker 2: she didn't speak much English. It would have you none
Speaker 2: of us had ever gotten involved in politics. I was
Speaker 2: the first one, first person of color in the entire
Speaker 2: San Fernando Valley history to go to Sacramento and get
Speaker 2: elected like that. And I could see it in her
Speaker 2: eyes when she's looking down at us, looking down at me,
Speaker 2: she's wow, this is big, right. She didn't know exactly
Speaker 2: what it was, but this is big, and so the
Speaker 2: thing is it's again imposter syndrome was part of me
Speaker 2: that day. Right here, I am going like, whoa, Well,
Speaker 2: it's literally gold leaved room. Yeah, and they're getting sworn
Speaker 2: in and and but it's gotten littler and littler and littler,
Speaker 2: but it's still there.
Speaker 1: So take me back. So you're eating peebee and jays
Speaker 1: at home with your siblings, and your siblings and your
Speaker 1: family obviously recognize you have Oh I'll make a own
Speaker 1: mess of this. No one judged me place. Your siblings
Speaker 1: have caught on that you have a little bit of
Speaker 1: a temper, but they're taming it. What's going on, Like,
Speaker 1: when do you start getting inching closer to becoming an
Speaker 1: elected official?
Speaker 2: Oh? That didn't happen until way, way later in life.
Speaker 2: I went off to college, was working at it for
Speaker 2: a company in Santa Barbara, wasn't feeling it. Came back
Speaker 2: home to live at home with my parents and.
Speaker 1: Were getting paid well.
Speaker 2: At that I was getting paid well. I had a
Speaker 2: company car, I had an expense account. I had what
Speaker 2: you call flex hours. That means if I wanted to
Speaker 2: sit on the beach and get my work done. They
Speaker 2: didn't bother me about that.
Speaker 1: And this was before COVID, so you were definitely living
Speaker 1: a good life way back in.
Speaker 2: This is the nineteen eighties, So I'm living a good life.
Speaker 2: It's about as a cush job as I could get.
Speaker 2: When you graduated back in the eighties, you wanted to
Speaker 2: work for one or two companies, one of two IBM
Speaker 2: or Heallip Packard. And I got to work for Healet Packard.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So I was like I was, I was cush job,
Speaker 2: one of the best jobs.
Speaker 1: For an engineer, and you give it up.
Speaker 2: I gave it up because I wasn't feeling it. I
Speaker 2: literally sat there one day at my desk, totally comfortable
Speaker 2: getting my work done, and I thought, I can grow
Speaker 2: old here. I'm going to be doing the same thing
Speaker 2: for the next thirty forty years. No, and I can't
Speaker 2: tell you what what else went through my mind other
Speaker 2: than I got up out of my chair. I talked
Speaker 2: to my manager Bob, and I said, I'm giving my
Speaker 2: two weeks notice and he said, Tony, is everything okay?
Speaker 2: Is there anything I can do? And I said, it's perfect,
Speaker 2: that's the problem. And he looked at me like I
Speaker 2: was nuts. He's like, I said, that's the problem about.
Speaker 1: And then when you go home to tell your parents,
Speaker 1: I'm just curious what their immediate reaction.
Speaker 2: Well, my mom's immediate reaction was, Mimi, ho's home, right, nothing,
Speaker 2: my mom.
Speaker 1: Let's cook. Yeah, when you're the baby, right.
Speaker 2: Whenever you walk into the house, mom always says, you
Speaker 2: look hungry. I don't know how they can tell you
Speaker 2: look hungry anyway, So my mom, I give her a
Speaker 2: big hug. I got my duffel bag and all that
Speaker 2: stuff in the car, and she goes me, oh, you're
Speaker 2: you're you're here, you know? I said, yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: I'm not working in Santa Barbara anymore. And the first
Speaker 2: thing she says is in Spanish. She says, oh, so
Speaker 2: you got a job in La And I said, no,
Speaker 2: I don't have a job. And then she looks at
Speaker 2: me like or Mexican we always want work, one, two,
Speaker 2: three jobs. What do you mean you don't have a job,
Speaker 2: I said, Mom, I got money in the bank. I'm fine.
Speaker 2: I'm going to figure something out. I said, but I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm going to be doing engineering anymore.
Speaker 2: And again she's looking at me like, you got a degree,
Speaker 2: Edison Keneto, You're you're an engineer, like, and I'm like, mom,
Speaker 2: everything's fine, and because then she's looking like something happened right. No,
Speaker 2: everything's fine, mom. I'm going to find a job that
Speaker 2: I like. So she's like okay, but oh, my dad,
Speaker 2: my dad just looked at me like, boll you better
Speaker 2: get busy other otherwise I'm gonna put you to work
Speaker 2: with My father. With my father, he he didn't like.
Speaker 2: He didn't like his kids be lying around like we
Speaker 2: we not that we had video games back then to
Speaker 2: speak of. But no, we couldn't sit around and play
Speaker 2: video games all day. Oh heck no, It's like we
Speaker 2: got work to do. Go outside. When I grew up,
Speaker 2: my father started off as a farm worker in the
Speaker 2: Central Valley and then they had I think four kids
Speaker 2: there and then they moved to LA and then were
Speaker 2: in some other part of LA. They moved to Pacoma
Speaker 2: when they bought the house in nineteen fifty five. Wow,
Speaker 2: And I was born in sixty three. So my father
Speaker 2: when he came to LA became a union construction worker.
Speaker 2: That was the good times because it was benefits and
Speaker 2: good pay. But when I was growing up, being the youngest,
Speaker 2: I used to go to work with my dad when
Speaker 2: he went from being a construction worker to being a
Speaker 2: self and played gardener, hit his little route. You know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. He would go from one house to another,
Speaker 2: doing the yard, picking up his little checks at the
Speaker 2: end of the month, and feeding the family. So I
Speaker 2: knew my father is a gardener. So there was always
Speaker 2: something to do. But cut down somebody's tree. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: Oh no, it was work. I hated it. I hated
Speaker 2: that work. But as I got older, I appreciated the
Speaker 2: work ethic. I appreciated the mindset of don't just sit around,
Speaker 2: get something done. And so as a congressman, that serves
Speaker 2: me very well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so life was grooming you to the position that
Speaker 1: you got. So you're in the house. How long were
Speaker 1: you down for?
Speaker 2: I got to tell the story this way because I
Speaker 2: think everything happens for a reason. My brother doesn't play golf.
Speaker 2: His friend, Michael Green doesn't play golf. And one day,
Speaker 2: shortly after I got here, my brother says, hey, let's
Speaker 2: go play golf with Michael Green. Like I picked up
Speaker 2: a club once in a while, I never I didn't
Speaker 2: play golf, like you know, let's go. So we went
Speaker 2: to some local golf course and we're playing golf three
Speaker 2: people who never play golf, and Michael Green strikes up
Speaker 2: a conversation with Michael Green went to high school with
Speaker 2: my brother. My brother's five years older than me. He says,
Speaker 2: what are you doing? You know I'm back home. Told
Speaker 2: him what I just told you, and he goes, what
Speaker 2: are you gonna do? I said, I'm not I'm not
Speaker 2: sure yet. I'll figure something out. He goes, well, i'm
Speaker 2: selling life insurance with a company. You should try that.
Speaker 2: I think you'd be good at it. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: my sales okay, I'll try it. So went over there
Speaker 2: with him. He introduced me to one of the managers
Speaker 2: and she goes, yeah, you're hired. Let's do this. So
Speaker 2: I sold life insurance for about a year. But I
Speaker 2: did so well that I bought a house.
Speaker 1: In our Yeah. Yeah, you wouldn't even think like an
Speaker 1: engineer would be I hate to sound like that, but
Speaker 1: you wouldn't think an engineer would be really good.
Speaker 2: I'm not insulted. I'm not insulted because a lot of
Speaker 2: engineers they say, you got IQ but you ain't got
Speaker 2: EQ right, But I get it. And that's one of
Speaker 2: the honestly, that's one of the reasons why I left engineering,
Speaker 2: because we're talking about nerds who are no longer fifteen
Speaker 2: years old. They're twenty five, thirty five, forty fifty years old,
Speaker 2: and they're telling nerd jokes and everybody's laughing. I'm like,
Speaker 2: this ain't me right, And so that was one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why I left engineering. It's just a little
Speaker 2: bit too rigid, you know, not well.
Speaker 1: And then you grow up with a large family, so
Speaker 1: your EQ is probably it would almost have to be
Speaker 1: higher because you have all these different personality the streets.
Speaker 2: You know, I grew up on the schools I went to.
Speaker 2: You know, it was a very very minority community, very
Speaker 2: blue collar. You had to have street sense if you
Speaker 2: were going to make it through Pacoima. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, luckily I got some EQ along the way.
Speaker 2: And so I'm selling life insurance and I make enough
Speaker 2: money to buy a house. I'm buying a house, and
Speaker 2: I'm watching the two realtors and again, everything happens for
Speaker 2: a reason. When does somebody buy a house where the
Speaker 2: listing agent she's never sold a home before and this
Speaker 2: is her first one. And the buyer's agent, my agent,
Speaker 2: had never sold the home before, and he was doing
Speaker 2: my job and they were fumbling and bumbling their way through,
Speaker 2: and I was like, these people don't even know what
Speaker 2: they're doing. But the deal got closed, so I thought
Speaker 2: it can't be too hard and its sales. So I
Speaker 2: got my real estate license. Oh wow, fell in love
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 1: I would have never seen that plot twist coming.
Speaker 2: No, I just fell in love with it. Said, oh,
Speaker 2: this is easy, I can do this. And then I
Speaker 2: started working for another company, really good company to work for,
Speaker 2: and then ended up in the top three salespeople there,
Speaker 2: so I was good at it. And then so again,
Speaker 2: bought another house, etc. Met my wife, Norma, you know,
Speaker 2: got married a few years later. So that was my track.
Speaker 2: I thought I was going to be a real estate
Speaker 2: broker for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: And how old are you at the time we're going
Speaker 1: to are we going to take a bite?
Speaker 2: Yeah, listen your show, so you tell me I can eat?
Speaker 1: Then all these this is lemon marmalae. It's good, it's
Speaker 1: very lemony.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: That's that's real official.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I told you if you like lemon.
Speaker 1: And I slathered that, so okay, now I get the
Speaker 1: difference between lemon and orange.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I told you it's lemon.
Speaker 1: He warned me. You were like, hey, just so you know,
Speaker 1: it's lemon. Okay, this is official.
Speaker 2: If you like lemon meringue, it's for you.
Speaker 1: I like lemon meringue, but I don't think I could
Speaker 1: quite prepare myself for that lemon.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: It's really good though. Shout outs to your daughter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, she's a she's a pastry chef. And
Speaker 2: and oh is she Yeah, my wife Norma, she's she
Speaker 2: right brain, left brain stuff. My three youngest are very
Speaker 2: are artists, incredibly talented artists. They get that from my wife,
Speaker 2: Norma and our oldest Vanessa. She started her own business,
Speaker 2: very very organized and stuff like that. So we have
Speaker 2: one that's very organized, very business oriented, and the other
Speaker 2: three they just want to create, create, create, And this
Speaker 2: is been. This is Alina's uh, this is her outlet,
Speaker 2: this is this is her art. She loves to be
Speaker 2: in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: Well, she's good at it. I'm going to finish this
Speaker 1: whole sandwich. It's really good. I think just the first bite.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're eating grape jelly all your life,
Speaker 1: first fight, will you? But I could honestly see me
Speaker 1: eating all marmalade. Mamar. That's really good. Really all right? Sorry,
Speaker 1: go on, huge story.
Speaker 2: So we were talking about, you know, uh, the transition
Speaker 2: going from engineering, how did I end up in politics?
Speaker 2: So I thought I was gonna be a real estate
Speaker 2: broker all my life, ended up leaving that company, starting
Speaker 2: my own company with a couple of buddies of mine.
Speaker 2: And we're now now off to the races, making more money.
Speaker 2: You're selling real estate, selling real estate right here in
Speaker 2: the northest valley in the hood where we all grew up.
Speaker 2: And so things were good, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: the Chicano activists who had met me. I was on
Speaker 2: a not for profit board with his wife, Leticia, and
Speaker 2: James say hey to He calls me one day, hey Tony,
Speaker 2: let's talk. Yeah. Sure, sat down with him, and then
Speaker 2: he says, you need to run for the State Assembly.
Speaker 2: The first words out of my mouth were people like
Speaker 2: me don't run for office. What I meant is people
Speaker 2: like me, like like I didn't have those role models
Speaker 2: coming up. It was all white people represented us in
Speaker 2: Congress and at the highest levels, to the city council everything.
Speaker 1: And how old were you at the time.
Speaker 2: I was in my early thirties. My wife, Norman and
Speaker 2: I she was pregnant with Andres, our third child, and
Speaker 2: later on we had Alena. We have four, We raised
Speaker 2: four children. And so I was like, dude, no, not me,
Speaker 2: I'm not a politician. And then so he kept bugging
Speaker 2: me for about six months, and then one day he
Speaker 2: told me, he goes you don't give a fuck about
Speaker 2: your community, and he lit me up. I got pissed
Speaker 2: and I lit him up up and I told him,
Speaker 2: you know what, you that's bullshit, I said, I care.
Speaker 2: I put a I opened up a business two blocks
Speaker 2: away from my high school on purpose so I can
Speaker 2: hire kids from my high school to teach them how
Speaker 2: to work in a in a you know, in an
Speaker 2: environment where we have to get dressed up and be
Speaker 2: professional like that. And then I said, you know, every
Speaker 2: time any one of my old schools or some nearby
Speaker 2: not for profit wants a little bit help, I help.
Speaker 2: I find a way to help. And I was just
Speaker 2: ratling off.
Speaker 1: Things and you were, and that he knew you from
Speaker 1: sitting on a board too, yes, which I think is
Speaker 1: also interesting because why why what board were you sitting
Speaker 1: on and what it was.
Speaker 2: It was called Escuela de la Hinte and it was
Speaker 2: a little not for profit board. It was a preschool
Speaker 2: in Paquoima, and you know it was struggling. You know,
Speaker 2: like in the hood they do beautiful work, but they
Speaker 2: don't have the contacts to get the big money. So
Speaker 2: you know, they were struggling. And I was on the
Speaker 2: board and we were all doing our part to make
Speaker 2: sure that they kept going. And uh so I just
Speaker 2: let him up and I just started rattling off all
Speaker 2: the things I do from my neighborhood. And then when
Speaker 2: I was done, he goes, that's why you need to run.
Speaker 2: I'm like, damn. He got exactly, exactly exactly shut he
Speaker 2: put James, He pushed my bad out, he pushed baths
Speaker 2: and uh and that's how I got involved in politics.
Speaker 2: I you know, after six months of him bugging me,
Speaker 2: I went home to my wife, Norma, she grew up
Speaker 2: in Pacoma two and I told her, hey, James said,
Speaker 2: we've never had somebody from the neighborhood represent us, blah blah, blah,
Speaker 2: and then she goes, yeah, if you want to go ahead,
Speaker 2: and we didn't know any better and then I literally
Speaker 2: told my wife if I get elected, I'm going to
Speaker 2: do it for two years.
Speaker 1: Twenty eight years later. So how much of being a politician,
Speaker 1: Like how much impact did it have on your family?
Speaker 1: Like what were the pros and the cons in that move? Well,
Speaker 1: and especially for Norma too, well the.
Speaker 2: Pro yeah, well Norma became basically a single mom with
Speaker 2: that decision. Because my job, my first job as an
Speaker 2: elected official, I used to fly back and forth to Sacramento,
Speaker 2: leave Monday morning, come back Thursday afternoon. And then when
Speaker 2: you're still when you're in the district, you got district
Speaker 2: events to go. Do they want you to go to
Speaker 2: this dinner or go to this ribbon cutting and all
Speaker 2: that stuff. So it's really like a seventy hour week job.
Speaker 1: But before we back up one step, when you're running
Speaker 1: for that position, is it hard? Like what is that?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard, Like you still have to have a
Speaker 1: day job and do this at night. Like can you
Speaker 1: explain that I.
Speaker 2: Had my real estate company which afforded me the flexibility
Speaker 2: to go do this interview or what have you or go.
Speaker 2: You know, just I didn't work for somebody else and
Speaker 2: work for myself. So it gave me that flexibility. And
Speaker 2: hats off to Al Sabedra, my business partner at the time.
Speaker 2: He said, Tony, you go do this. I'll take care
Speaker 2: of the business. And I'm like, no, that's not cool, dude.
Speaker 2: You know, I can't be getting the income when you're
Speaker 2: doing all the work. He looked at me. He says,
Speaker 2: he's from the neighborhood too, he says, Tony, he says,
Speaker 2: we need to get you elected. He said, don't worry
Speaker 2: about this. I got this, and he did. And so
Speaker 2: the business kept going and I spend more and more
Speaker 2: time doing the campaign full time. But this is the thing,
Speaker 2: the reason why we were able to finally break that barrier,
Speaker 2: which was my purpose to be the first person of
Speaker 2: color in the entire San Fernando history, to San Fernando
Speaker 2: Valley history, to go to high office in this case
Speaker 2: the State Assembly, was because we needed somebody who looked
Speaker 2: like the people we represent. It was eighty percent minority.
Speaker 2: It was seventy percent Latino, about eight ten percent African American,
Speaker 2: you know, another three percent Asian, mostly Filipinos, etc. But
Speaker 2: we'd never had a person of color.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, and I grew up there, and so I hired
Speaker 2: somebody who grew up there as well. He grew up
Speaker 2: two blocks away from me. He was ten years younger
Speaker 2: than me, went to MIT to get his engineering degree,
Speaker 2: graduated from San Fernando High School like I did, ten
Speaker 2: years after me. But we serendipitously met right around the
Speaker 2: time that James was bugging me about running for office,
Speaker 2: and then when I decided to run, I had told Dlex, Hey,
Speaker 2: remember I told you if I run for office, will
Speaker 2: you run my campaign? He said yeah, and I said, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to run, will you run my camp? Pain?
Speaker 2: His exact words were, this is typical Alex Bidia because
Speaker 2: I said I would, didn't I and Boom so well
Speaker 2: after the races.
Speaker 1: I love how everybody talks to each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we we.
Speaker 1: You were like real minorities, like I love it. I
Speaker 1: love it, says a real people are.
Speaker 2: And the thing is sometimes we went into a media
Speaker 2: and people couldn't hold back the laughter. They're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, You've never run for in your life.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, and you've never run a campaign? In
Speaker 2: your life. This is Alex Badia and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: and we're going to win. And they're like they would
Speaker 2: laugh in our face, not to be punks. They just
Speaker 2: couldn't hold it back. They're like this, this is ridiculous. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but we won. It was several people on the ballot.
Speaker 2: It was a it can ended up being a three
Speaker 2: person race. Alex ran a campaign where I won, and
Speaker 2: the second and third place person their combined vote was
Speaker 2: still less than what we got.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And the Alla Times had wrote an article a few
Speaker 2: weeks before the election was over that I was going
Speaker 2: to come in third place, but our secret weapon was this.
Speaker 2: I was the only candidate who spoke Spanish, and I
Speaker 2: was the only candidate from the neighborhood. And I was
Speaker 2: the only candidate who had four hundred volunteers and half
Speaker 2: of them couldn't speak English, but they were from the neighborhood. Wow.
Speaker 2: So we won.
Speaker 1: Wow. And what was your takeaway that day? Can you
Speaker 1: take me back to that moment?
Speaker 2: Oh? Oh, that moment was I remember standing there next
Speaker 2: to Norma when this guy named Leo Brionis did the
Speaker 2: the other part of my campaign. He would print the
Speaker 2: mail right and he came up to me. They were
Speaker 2: looking at the computers, and he goes, you're trending, you're
Speaker 2: gonna win, and he grabbed He was a full back
Speaker 2: in college, like a big football player, and he grabbed
Speaker 2: me and he gave me a hug. Literally, he's like
Speaker 2: six foot two or something. He gave me a hug,
Speaker 2: and then my feet came up off the ground and
Speaker 2: he was squeezing me so hard. I got leo. I
Speaker 2: can't breathe. So he finally let me set me down.
Speaker 2: And then that's when it set in. And I'm looking
Speaker 2: at Alex and I'm looking at James and everybody, and
Speaker 2: they're all going like it's it. It's over. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was an official, official whatever. It was like, it's done.
Speaker 2: And then I remember Norma sitting standing next to me
Speaker 2: and she gave me a hug. It was surreal. It
Speaker 2: was kind of like unbelievable, but it was beautiful because
Speaker 2: we put our heart and soul into it. We spoke
Speaker 2: to voters who everybody stopped talking to them. We went
Speaker 2: to people's house they were talking.
Speaker 1: To them at all. Because I think about it, they
Speaker 1: weren't even speaking Spanish exactly.
Speaker 2: Well, even if they showed up speaking English. They never
Speaker 2: even knocked on their door, They never even sent them
Speaker 2: a piece of mail. We literally went and talked to
Speaker 2: every single human being who was registered to vote in
Speaker 2: that district. We made an attempt and or we talked
Speaker 2: to them, We sent them information, We told them we
Speaker 2: we do care about what your needs are, right, and
Speaker 2: and so we won, and we raised one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty thousand dollars. Jim Valerie. The other two candidates they
Speaker 2: raised and spent three hundred and fifty thousand each. So
Speaker 2: between seven hundred thousand dollars and our one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty thousand dollars, we bested their combined vote.
Speaker 1: How did you not in those moments get intimidated saying,
Speaker 1: like to yourself, like do you really think we could
Speaker 1: do this?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Were there ever moments where you were like, I mean
Speaker 1: I'm going up against yeah, I mean you're talking about
Speaker 1: double trip way more budget.
Speaker 2: I I My purpose was once I once I talked
Speaker 2: to Norma and she said, yeah, go ahead. I knew
Speaker 2: that from what my father and mother had taught us.
Speaker 2: If you say you're gonna do something, you do it.
Speaker 2: If you're gonna if you're gonna do something, you give
Speaker 2: it your best, and also, don't you ever quit. So
Speaker 2: as soon as I called James and said I'm in
Speaker 2: what do I do next? I knew that I was
Speaker 2: going to put my heart and soul into it, everything
Speaker 2: I had into it. Alex Badia was the same way.
Speaker 2: He grew up the same way like me. His parents
Speaker 2: are grants Famaico, just like mine, and so we just
Speaker 2: put our heart and soul into the work. But the
Speaker 2: thing is that moment, my sister Nanni was my for
Speaker 2: free because we couldn't afford to pay somebody to collect
Speaker 2: the checks and stuff like that. For free. She was
Speaker 2: my treasurer. But Victor said, Vantez was a certified public
Speaker 2: accountant for my business because I owned a business at
Speaker 2: the time, and I had told Victor one day I'm
Speaker 2: going to run prophet. Say hey, have you ever done
Speaker 2: the books for a campaign? He goes, yeah, I did
Speaker 2: one once. And I go, well, how much he charged?
Speaker 2: And he goes, well, normally I charge, you know, like
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty bucks an hour or something like that.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I can't afford you, because I don't worry
Speaker 2: about it. I'll charge you a few hundred bucks a
Speaker 2: month and I'll do this for you. So luckily, you know,
Speaker 2: he did it at a cut rate. But Nanni would
Speaker 2: pick up the checks, and she picked up the checks
Speaker 2: one day and she ended up talking to Victor and
Speaker 2: she stumbled on a story that Victor told her and
Speaker 2: then she calls me crying. But right before she called me,
Speaker 2: I believe everything happens for a reason. You never leave
Speaker 2: the candidate by themselves. You pick them up at their
Speaker 2: house or you meet them at the campaign and then
Speaker 2: you're in the car with somebody the whole time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, No.
Speaker 2: You don't want the candidates to be ambushed by somebody,
Speaker 2: you know, you don't want them to be, you know,
Speaker 2: end up by themselves or somebody's like, oh I don't
Speaker 2: like you. Whatever. You always just got to make sure
Speaker 2: that they're you know, they're they're protected. But for some reason,
Speaker 2: that day, I ended up by myself and I walked
Speaker 2: into the campaign and I looked around. There's nobody there.
Speaker 2: It was very late at night. And then I look
Speaker 2: over on Alex Badia's desk. He was my campaign manager,
Speaker 2: and there's the La Times article that he told me
Speaker 2: not to read because the La Times wrote an article
Speaker 2: saying that I was going to come in third place,
Speaker 2: that I didn't stand a chance.
Speaker 1: And Alex told you not to read it.
Speaker 2: He told me, don't read it. There's an article. He
Speaker 2: didn't tell me about it. He said, there was an
Speaker 2: article came out in Ala Times. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 2: It's dumb. We're going to win, you know, just nor
Speaker 2: Let's keep moving forward. But if Alex would have been
Speaker 2: with me, he would have said, he would have grabbed
Speaker 2: the newspaper, said you ain't reading this. You know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying. But I was by myself. So I go
Speaker 2: over to his desk and I read the article and
Speaker 2: it's front page and another page and another page, big old,
Speaker 2: long article talking about all the logical reasons why I
Speaker 2: don't stand a chance. Jim or Valley are gonna win.
Speaker 2: Tony Gottanasis doesn't stand a chance. And then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, I started feeling like, what the hell was
Speaker 2: I thinking? Because it had never been done before. So
Speaker 2: the phone rings and I answered my sister Nanny, and
Speaker 2: she's crying. She goes, Tony, I got to tell you something.
Speaker 2: I gotta tell you something, said and I was already.
Speaker 2: I just read the article and I said, now, you
Speaker 2: don't worry about it, tell me tomorrow. She goes, no,
Speaker 2: I got to tell you right now. So she comes
Speaker 2: over to the office and she's crying and she says, Victor,
Speaker 2: my accountant, Victor just told me a story about our dad.
Speaker 2: I'm like what, And I'm thinking to myself, why is
Speaker 2: she crying? What's this all about? And then she goes,
Speaker 2: Victor told me that he just was telling his dad
Speaker 2: that he was doing the campaign stuff for a guy
Speaker 2: named Tony God than Us, and that, by the way,
Speaker 2: he knows my family because he went to school with
Speaker 2: my brother Jose and he he had gone to my
Speaker 2: father's funeral in nineteen ninety three. This is nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: six now, and that for some weird reason, he told
Speaker 2: his father that I'm the son of a man named
Speaker 2: Dreskadanas and he had gone to my dad's funeral Underscota
Speaker 2: Nas a few years earlier. And his dad looked at
Speaker 2: him and said, son, if that was the under Scottadanas,
Speaker 2: I knew I would have liked to go to his funeral.
Speaker 2: He said, why, Dad, He says, before you were born,
Speaker 2: I was working in the fields in Central Valley in
Speaker 2: California and Stockton, and my job was to burn down
Speaker 2: the field. I had a torch and I had a
Speaker 2: water pump connected to the levee, and I would burn
Speaker 2: it and control it, burn it and control it. And
Speaker 2: then the levee stopped pushing out water and the fire
Speaker 2: got out of control, and I was sitting there screaming
Speaker 2: for help and Spanish, so go so goro right, help,
Speaker 2: And he was screaming for help. And then he said
Speaker 2: to his son that he lay down and he was
Speaker 2: saying his last prayer because he thought it was going
Speaker 2: to die. And a man driving a tractor came through
Speaker 2: the fire, grabbed him and pulled him out. Wow. And
Speaker 2: I started crying because as a little boy, my dad someday,
Speaker 2: for some reason only God knows why, he told me
Speaker 2: a story about how he became the tractor driver on
Speaker 2: a ranch in Stockton, way before I was born. And
Speaker 2: he said that there was a guy who didn't speak Spanish,
Speaker 2: only spoke English. He gathered all the workers in the
Speaker 2: field and he pointed to the tractor and he said,
Speaker 2: whatever he said, he's pointing the tractor. He's pointing in
Speaker 2: the field and nobody could understand what he's saying. And
Speaker 2: my dad said he looked around and he's like, I
Speaker 2: think this guy wants somebody to drive that tractor and
Speaker 2: plow that field. And then so my dad looked around.
Speaker 2: He raised his hand and the man says, you come here, everybody,
Speaker 2: get back to work. My dad didn't understand him. It's
Speaker 2: just just got there from Mexico, right, And so my
Speaker 2: dad goes over to him. And then my dad's listening
Speaker 2: to him, and the guy's gesturing, and my Dad's like, okay,
Speaker 2: he wants me to till this field. My dad had
Speaker 2: never driven in a tractor in his life. Remember this
Speaker 2: is like nineteen forty eight, nineteen forty nine, you know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. This is like cars weren't a big
Speaker 2: thing and tractors were kind of new. Yeah, And so
Speaker 2: my dad looks at him and he's I remember my
Speaker 2: dad telling me. I waited for the man to get
Speaker 2: out of sight, and then I started figuring out how
Speaker 2: to drive the tractor. And then once I figured it out,
Speaker 2: they had me driving the tractor. So I knew that
Speaker 2: was my dad who saved him. Yeah, But my father
Speaker 2: never told any one of his children that story.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So the next day I go to my mom. She's
Speaker 2: still alive. I go to my mom's house and she
Speaker 2: was sewing like she always does. She used to make
Speaker 2: beautiful wedding dresses and stuff and working from home. And
Speaker 2: then I said, I gave her a kiss, and I said, Mom,
Speaker 2: did my dad save somebody's life when driving a tractor
Speaker 2: back in the day without blinking? And I she keeps
Speaker 2: so and she goes yeah. And then finally I stopped
Speaker 2: her and I go, Mom, wait a minute, how come
Speaker 2: he never told us? And She's like, because he was
Speaker 2: just doing what he was supposed to do. From that
Speaker 2: day forward, I had a new commitment in my campaign.
Speaker 2: For the first time, I said to myself, this is
Speaker 2: my neighborhood, this is my country, and I have a
Speaker 2: right to run, and I'm in a run.
Speaker 1: I was gonna add one of the questions I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you, but I think you kind of answered
Speaker 1: it here, was after the election, did you feel like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, what have I gotten myself? Insert? Because everyone,
Speaker 1: even with the firm commitment in hand, you still sees.
Speaker 2: Because I didn't study government growing up. I was an engineer.
Speaker 2: I was all about numbers and stuff like that, and
Speaker 2: calculations and all that, and I'm like, I'm going to
Speaker 2: go up there and make laws. I knew that that's
Speaker 2: what they did, but I never aspired to do it.
Speaker 2: I never studied it.
Speaker 1: Wow, So now that you are in this position, what's
Speaker 1: coming at you? What did you not foresee coming at you?
Speaker 2: Well, what I didn't foresee is that I would get
Speaker 2: some mentors, and thank god I did. I ended up
Speaker 2: serendipitously rooming with the first day that I got there.
Speaker 2: On swearing in day, we pick our speaker, and Cruz
Speaker 2: Bustamante became the first Latino speaker in over one hundred
Speaker 2: and some years in the legislature in California. And a
Speaker 2: good friend of his and somebody who supported me for
Speaker 2: running for office, was a guy named State Senator Richard Bolonko.
Speaker 2: And I didn't have a place to say. He said, oh,
Speaker 2: you can sleep on our couch, right, So I slept
Speaker 2: on their couch for a few weeks, and then every
Speaker 2: night they would come home and they would say, you know,
Speaker 2: they would talk to each other because they're both seasoned
Speaker 2: veterans and politics and stuff, and they would ask me questions.
Speaker 2: It would kind of make fun of me, really but
Speaker 2: teach me at the same time. Right, they say, hey, Tony,
Speaker 2: you know what happened in committee? They I said, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know. We voted on this. Why do you
Speaker 2: think the vote went down the way it did? And
Speaker 2: then they go, I'm like, I don't know what you're
Speaker 2: asking you? What are you getting at? So they taught
Speaker 2: me every night, every night, every night, something that a
Speaker 2: craft that I wasn't I wasn't aware of, I wasn't
Speaker 2: prepared that well for. But they brought me up to
Speaker 2: speed very quickly. They you know, taught me the through
Speaker 2: like the School of hard Knocks, just like how to
Speaker 2: read between the lines. And again there goes that EQ right,
Speaker 2: read between the lines, Read between the lines, Listen to
Speaker 2: what that person said when that person said this, that's
Speaker 2: why they said that They're district is like this. So
Speaker 2: this their district has that kind of industry in it.
Speaker 2: That's why they're you know, that's why they're they're questioning
Speaker 2: like that. So they brought me up to speed. So
Speaker 2: that was that was the best most surprising thing about it.
Speaker 2: I had two amazing mentors who also believed in something
Speaker 2: that I immediately gravitated to I wanted to elect as
Speaker 2: many Latinos as humanly possible to the legislature, to any office.
Speaker 2: Is if I found a good Latinoo was running for
Speaker 2: office or Latina, I was like, how can I help you?
Speaker 2: And I've been doing that ever since for the last
Speaker 2: twenty and.
Speaker 1: Now there's like, we just had an event with you
Speaker 1: and there was so many Latino.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was the first from San Fernando High School.
Speaker 2: Now we have We've had at least like seven go
Speaker 2: to the La City Council, to the state legislature. I
Speaker 2: became the first Latino to go to Washington and be
Speaker 2: a Congress member of Congress, and then Alex followed me
Speaker 2: later on and he's now the first United States Senator
Speaker 2: Latino to represent California and Congress. So I realized immediately
Speaker 2: that once I got elected, my purpose was to be
Speaker 2: the first. And I realized I said, no, no, my job
Speaker 2: is to make sure I'm not the last.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, just I'm gonna play just curious from an
Speaker 1: ignorant standpoint, imagine that I really don't. I don't. My
Speaker 1: dad's definitely plays a lot in the political circuit. But
Speaker 1: I tried to stay away, and from an ignorant standpoint,
Speaker 1: it's more like I'm down here. Can they really hear me?
Speaker 1: What advice would you give to someone that's more so
Speaker 1: like myself that's like, you know, like do I really
Speaker 1: have to vote? Cause, like I mean, I got all
Speaker 1: these problems down here.
Speaker 2: Well, you just stumbled on the reason why I told
Speaker 2: my wife I'll only do it for a couple of years,
Speaker 2: and now I've been doing it for twenty eight years.
Speaker 2: One of my main motivations and the reason why I
Speaker 2: kept running for office and helping other people run for office,
Speaker 2: is to make sure that there are more and more
Speaker 2: people who look like people who don't think that government
Speaker 2: is there for you, Like have you ever thought, well,
Speaker 2: I'll just call my congressman, or I'll call my.
Speaker 1: Mayor never have I ever? But lately they've been releasing
Speaker 1: a lot more like movies on like Netflix. I think
Speaker 1: I just saw one with like Shirley. It was called
Speaker 1: Shirley about this African American lady. But I think since
Speaker 1: Barack has been in office and some of those things
Speaker 1: which at the time when Barack Obama was running, I
Speaker 1: don't want to admit whether I voted or not. But
Speaker 1: again it goes back to ignorance. You know.
Speaker 2: Well, the thing is, I was an occasional voter most
Speaker 2: of my life until James told me you got to
Speaker 2: run for office. And when I said I'm gonna run
Speaker 2: for office, I vote every single time now, and I
Speaker 2: and I bugged my children to vote every single time.
Speaker 2: Every time I talk to my brothers and sisters, say
Speaker 2: whether you like the candidates or not, you got to
Speaker 2: you gotta vote. You gotta vote, you gotta make your
Speaker 2: voice count. But the main reason why I kept running
Speaker 2: for office is because I think of my parents Limited English.
Speaker 2: They paid taxes for decades, and they really, in their
Speaker 2: heart didn't believe that government was here for them, that
Speaker 2: an actual elected official would actually pick up the phone
Speaker 2: and say how can I help you? Because the country
Speaker 2: they came from, you either wealthy and or connected, and
Speaker 2: the government worked for you, but not for the regular people.
Speaker 2: And I detest that. I detest that, and that's one
Speaker 2: of the reasons why I kept running for office and
Speaker 2: making sure that I help other good people get elected
Speaker 2: to office. I've helped people become mayor of Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: I help people in their gubernatorial campaigns. I've helped people
Speaker 2: in the United States Senate campaigns all around the country.
Speaker 2: I made it my mission when I got to Washington
Speaker 2: to grow the Hispanic Caucus and the Black Caucus, and
Speaker 2: the LGBTQ Caucus, and the Asian Caucus and the Women's Caucus.
Speaker 2: And I'm very proud to say now that I'm leaving
Speaker 2: Congress after me being their twelve years, we have more LGBTQ,
Speaker 2: more women, more black, more brown, more Asians. It looks
Speaker 2: more like America than it ever has before. And I
Speaker 2: put my heart and soul in inspiring my colleagues and
Speaker 2: the Hispanic Caucus colleagues to say, we are not there yet.
Speaker 2: We have more to do, We need to grow, We
Speaker 2: need to keep coming the country to find good people
Speaker 2: of color, good people who have backgrounds where they've been
Speaker 2: disrespected and they can represent people and understand them when
Speaker 2: they're being disrespected by their government or by their community
Speaker 2: or by the system. And that's been a real big
Speaker 2: part of why I kept running for office, to make
Speaker 2: sure that when people call an elected officials office, there's
Speaker 2: a greater chance that that person's going to say Estabian
Speaker 2: Senora Nusupra Kupe in Spanish or in Korean or whatever language,
Speaker 2: assuring them that we're here for you.
Speaker 1: Why is it that you are leaving, Well, you're not running.
Speaker 2: Up for real. Yes, because when somebody runs for office
Speaker 2: and they have a partner and or a family, there's
Speaker 2: always that wonder how much longer, how much longer from
Speaker 2: the family, from your loved ones, because they're the ones
Speaker 2: who suffer through this awkward, weird life where you're not
Speaker 2: there that much. You're missing birthdays, you're missing anniversaries, you're
Speaker 2: missing special days. You're even missing funerals for some of
Speaker 2: your closest not your children, your wife, right, but like
Speaker 2: my cousin's funeral or my thes funeral. I miss some
Speaker 2: of those things because I was stuck in Sacramento, or
Speaker 2: I was stuck in Washington, And you have to decide
Speaker 2: do I leave and not represent the people on these
Speaker 2: votes because nobody can vote for you. You're there, you vote,
Speaker 2: you represent. If you're not there, your representation is zero.
Speaker 2: You didn't participate that day. So they suffer quite a bit.
Speaker 2: And in my case, my wife and children have been
Speaker 2: incredibly respectful of my choosing to be in this crazy
Speaker 2: career of being an elected official and They never asked
Speaker 2: me to leave. They never told me I want you
Speaker 2: to quit now, this is too much for it was.
Speaker 1: There was never like a moment where you had like
Speaker 1: an off day where you're like, man, is.
Speaker 2: This Oh No. There are days where I was like
Speaker 2: I fought for this job and I've got a day
Speaker 2: like this, But I usually snap out of it as
Speaker 2: quickly as I can, knowing that there's more work to
Speaker 2: be done. And that's just the moment that doesn't define
Speaker 2: the career. And so when I turned sixty last.
Speaker 1: Year, Oh you are good.
Speaker 2: Thank you. When I turned sixty last year, that was
Speaker 2: a that was a defining moment for me in my heart.
Speaker 2: And I told my wife, I think this might be
Speaker 2: my last term. I think, And she marks my words
Speaker 2: because if I would have said it is, she would
Speaker 2: have said, okay, right.
Speaker 1: Held accountable. Right, there was the last.
Speaker 2: Day I think it might be. And she even though
Speaker 2: we'd had those conversations how much long, how much longer,
Speaker 2: she still looked at me like are you for real?
Speaker 2: Like really? And I go.
Speaker 1: She carried a lot of weight too, because she's a
Speaker 1: single mom. Yeah, I just became a single mom. I
Speaker 1: have one. She had four yeah.
Speaker 2: And God blessed my children because sometimes my children will
Speaker 2: confide in me and on occasion and say, you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't think you were there for me, And that
Speaker 2: hurts that, that hurts hearing that. But I love the
Speaker 2: fact that they're brave enough to say it, because and
Speaker 2: then I have an opportunity to say, well, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to let that happen again. And so when I
Speaker 2: turned sixty, I thought, well, you know, I've been there
Speaker 2: for it's going on eleven years, and two years becomes
Speaker 2: two more and two more and two more. Could I
Speaker 2: could look back and say, shoot, now twenty right? And
Speaker 2: I thought, you know what, I got to get back
Speaker 2: to taking care of my family because I been giving
Speaker 2: my heart and soul to taking care of the community.
Speaker 2: No regrets. I love it. I'm blessed, honored to do that.
Speaker 1: In your community really loves you, like really loves you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can feel it. Yeah, yeah, if if I just
Speaker 1: was a fly on the wall, man, it is very
Speaker 1: evident that there's a lot of love there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And my dad he saw you and he was like,
Speaker 1: do you know, no one ever does this in politics,
Speaker 1: no one ever, No one ever does this, Like at
Speaker 1: the top of your game, like look at look at
Speaker 1: everything he's done, Like no one ever does this. Do
Speaker 1: you know how how crazy this is? Like no one's
Speaker 1: ever done it. My dad was just so impressed, Like
Speaker 1: this never happens. This never happens, That's all he kept saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been blessed that at every office I've held
Speaker 2: for the last twenty eight years, even among my colleagues.
Speaker 2: And I'm not bragging, I just say it truthfully. My
Speaker 2: colleagues have come to me and said, you need to
Speaker 2: run for leadership within us, like we want, we want
Speaker 2: you to run so we can elect you to the
Speaker 2: leadership position, even within our own caucus, within our own
Speaker 2: you know, elected officials, because you've got something, we need
Speaker 2: you to step it up and take it to the
Speaker 2: next level for the group, for all of us. And
Speaker 2: so I've been very blessed with that. And there's another thing,
Speaker 2: talk about imposter syndrome. I was elected three times to
Speaker 2: the state Assembly, elected three times to the Ali City Council.
Speaker 2: I get to Washington after sixteen years of that, I'm
Speaker 2: in my first term and I'm sitting in my office
Speaker 2: and for the first time in my life, and I
Speaker 2: said to myself in my mind, and then I forced
Speaker 2: myself to say it out loud. I am a leader.
Speaker 2: It breaks my heart to admit that. Because there I am,
Speaker 2: the community believed me to be a leader, and they
Speaker 2: elected me over and over and over again amongst my colleagues,
Speaker 2: amongst elected leaders. They pushed me and elected me to
Speaker 2: different leadership positions. Everywhere I went. I was a leader
Speaker 2: and a leader among leaders. But I never ever internalized
Speaker 2: in my heart and said to myself that I'm a leader.
Speaker 2: And the reason why I share that with you is
Speaker 2: because I want young people when they see this, or
Speaker 2: even people who are older and still haven't reckoned with
Speaker 2: their demons and the garbage that they're fed. You're not
Speaker 2: good enough because of where you grew up, or because
Speaker 2: you have an accent, or because your parents don't speak English,
Speaker 2: or the neighborhood or what have you. I want people
Speaker 2: to understand that that garbage stays with you. As much
Speaker 2: as you try to clean it out, clean it out,
Speaker 2: it stays with you somehow, somewhat syndrome monster. That's exactly
Speaker 2: what Imposter's syndrome is about. So much so that the
Speaker 2: community had elected me over and over and over without
Speaker 2: question that I am quote, I can you can actually
Speaker 2: say that I'm a leader? Am I the best leader? No,
Speaker 2: that's not the point. Am I a leader or not? Yes,
Speaker 2: But for the first time in my life, I said
Speaker 2: to myself, I am a leader. And then when I
Speaker 2: said it to myself and it echoed in my mind,
Speaker 2: I actually I was sitting in my office by myself
Speaker 2: in Washington to see that beautiful, beautiful place, and I
Speaker 2: said to myself, I am a leader. I am a leader.
Speaker 2: And I broke down crying because I knew that I
Speaker 2: was releasing garbage up paid there was pushed out to
Speaker 2: be was that was just people, whether they were well
Speaker 2: meaning or just ignorant or mean, you shouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: It was like it was like an invisible weight that
Speaker 1: was constantly with resolutely.
Speaker 2: And the thing is all we can do, or the
Speaker 2: best thing that we can do is just try to
Speaker 2: clean that out as much as we can. But those
Speaker 2: residi there's always some residuals there. It's like if you
Speaker 2: get a piece of charcoal and it drops on this
Speaker 2: this white cloth, no matter how much you clean it,
Speaker 2: you're gonna still see a little bit of that. So
Speaker 2: but the thing is, But that's fine. But people people
Speaker 2: need to realize that they need to love themselves, respect themselves,
Speaker 2: and realize that there are a lot of ugly people
Speaker 2: out there who don't love you, who don't respect you.
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier that there were some good teachers. Missus
Speaker 2: Telefair she loved me. She was just a first year teacher,
Speaker 2: and I could tell that she cared about me. She goes,
Speaker 2: you know what, Tony, you're good in math. We need
Speaker 2: to test you as gifted. You know, on the rich
Speaker 2: side of town, every kid gets tested for gifted. But
Speaker 2: on the poor side of town, people don't know this.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: The only way a child gets tested for gifted is
Speaker 2: that somebody has to ask that that child be tested,
Speaker 2: whether to see if they're gifted or not to take
Speaker 2: the gifted aptitude test. And at my set of town,
Speaker 2: my parents would have never done that, right, so she did.
Speaker 2: And then the fact that I tested that I was
Speaker 2: gifted in math gave me that extra confidence at least
Speaker 2: in math, I'm good at this. You get what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And then look how much it played a role absolutely
Speaker 1: when you go into when you go from not knowing
Speaker 1: the difference between the poor and the rich or the
Speaker 1: minorities and the whites, Like when you find out the
Speaker 1: difference in how these two lifestyles are handled, like you know,
Speaker 1: finding out that every rich kid gets tested for gifted
Speaker 1: and in the minorities.
Speaker 2: It's once and other happens. Since, how does.
Speaker 1: That make you feel? And what about that did you
Speaker 1: personally like end up like changing? Because I know you
Speaker 1: did a lot of great things when it came to youth,
Speaker 1: those youth, but like, oh, there's how much time do
Speaker 1: we have just a snapshot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I got the Sacramento immeditatey, I started to
Speaker 2: say we need to clean up our act and making
Speaker 2: sure that kids in the poor neighborhoods don't get the
Speaker 2: hand me down books and they can actually get books
Speaker 2: that are that are of the day. And so I changed.
Speaker 2: I was the first legislator to change the lottery in
Speaker 2: California to require that some of that money go to
Speaker 2: books and classroom materials because I know, when there's not
Speaker 2: enough money, the poor communities, the poor schools, they don't
Speaker 2: get anything.
Speaker 1: And how much did that break your heart to see that? Like,
Speaker 1: because you got to think, like all of our kids
Speaker 1: they come with these blank canvases. It shouldn't be the
Speaker 1: impact of your parents' economic either downfall on the way
Speaker 1: they get treated or the the color of their skin.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like now we're like everyone's kind
Speaker 1: of a blending pool.
Speaker 2: But obviously yeah, but but you know, racism still exists,
Speaker 2: Classism still exists. Assumptions about people what neighborhood they grew
Speaker 2: up still exists. And those are the things that I
Speaker 2: try to make sure that I make a difference on
Speaker 2: to make sure that we have more equity, that it's
Speaker 2: more fair when it comes to healthcare, It's one of
Speaker 2: the things I do the most in Washington making sure
Speaker 2: that we have There's a new term called disparities of health.
Speaker 2: That's code for, hey, if you're poor, white, black, or brown,
Speaker 2: you're probably not going to get treated the same way
Speaker 2: by the doctors or the hospitals. Then if you're rich
Speaker 2: and you're or you're wealthy, you're going to get treated better.
Speaker 2: And that the outcomes are could be death for somebody. Right,
Speaker 2: somebody comes in, Oh, my stomach's killing me. They don't
Speaker 2: do a cat scan, they don't do an X ray,
Speaker 2: and they just send them home with a couple of pills.
Speaker 2: And the next day they're dead. But they wouldn't do
Speaker 2: that to a rich person because they're afraid to get sued. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. And so these are the
Speaker 2: kinds of things that I've actually advanced policy to make
Speaker 2: sure that we put into law that people can't do that,
Speaker 2: and also put more money into the programs that poor
Speaker 2: people need to make sure that there is truly more
Speaker 2: access where they can actually have better machines on their
Speaker 2: side of town, etc. So these are some of the
Speaker 2: things that I've been doing. The thing that I've done
Speaker 2: the most though, is on juvenile justice.
Speaker 1: That was about to be my next but let's talk
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: Well. When I got to Sacramento after getting elected, I
Speaker 2: was sitting there again by myself in my office one
Speaker 2: day early on my first year. I was there and
Speaker 2: I said, okay, hot shot, you said if you would
Speaker 2: like me, brown guy like me. The first one things
Speaker 2: are I'm going to be different. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: be like all the rest. And then I thought to myself, Okay,
Speaker 2: what's that look like. Yeah, speaking Spanish, that's one of them, right,
Speaker 2: And then I started thinking about all my buddies that
Speaker 2: I grew up in my little neighborhood, and I was
Speaker 2: the only one to graduate and go off to college
Speaker 2: out of all my little buddies. I wasn't the smartest,
Speaker 2: I wasn't the best looking, I wasn't the most talented.
Speaker 2: But I was lucky because in my case, I had
Speaker 2: a two parent household. In my case, my parents are strict.
Speaker 2: In my case, had an older brothers and sisters who
Speaker 2: already went to college. So I followed a path, right.
Speaker 2: The path was easier for me, but my friends, I
Speaker 2: started thinking about, well, why is so and so. Why
Speaker 2: does he always work out with me in his backyard
Speaker 2: but we never go inside his house? And I started
Speaker 2: thinking about and realizing that image. Oh my god, his
Speaker 2: dad's an alcoholic and he's mean, so he would stay
Speaker 2: away from his dad, you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 2: then you know, he didn't go off to college. He's
Speaker 2: smarter than me. And then my other friend down the
Speaker 2: street from him, he didn't go out to college. He
Speaker 2: didn't have any role models. And then I started thinking about, Damn,
Speaker 2: that's the majority of the people in my community. So
Speaker 2: what's what is one of the things that I can
Speaker 2: do as a state legislator that can actually help break
Speaker 2: that cycle. And I realized, you know what juvenile justice
Speaker 2: because the neighborhoods like mine down near every kid walking
Speaker 2: the streets the cops, not every cop, most of the
Speaker 2: cops thinking, oh, there goes another another kid from the hood,
Speaker 2: probably up to no good, and little by little, they
Speaker 2: just get sucked into the system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they even regard to get Yeah, especially when
Speaker 1: they start really young.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: Like I had friends that went to school when they
Speaker 1: were real young, not school, prison when they were young,
Speaker 1: say fourteen fifteen, and they ended up spending their whole
Speaker 1: lives in prison. They would get out and they kind
Speaker 1: of go right back to the cycle. Yeah, it just
Speaker 1: became that was their new norm.
Speaker 2: It's basically the pipeline to prison.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, but we should have a school pipeline. We
Speaker 2: should have an education pipeline. So that's what I started
Speaker 2: working on in nineteen ninety six. It was not popular
Speaker 2: to do that, but I pushed through that and I
Speaker 2: got the most comprehensive funding bill in the history of
Speaker 2: the United States done in California for the state of California,
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty one million dollars, the most we
Speaker 2: had ever done before was ten or fifteen million dollars
Speaker 2: a year. Gosh, this is a state of at that time,
Speaker 2: like eight million people, lots of young people. And then
Speaker 2: I got it up one hundred and twenty one million
Speaker 2: dollars in one move, in one bill. It didn't take
Speaker 2: me one two, three four years. I got it done.
Speaker 2: I wrote it with good people, and I put it
Speaker 2: in the right place, and I pushed it through Governor
Speaker 2: Gray Davis actually vetoed it the first time. I got
Speaker 2: it to his desk.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And then I went ahead and through the help of
Speaker 2: Johnny Burton, we went ahead and let the governor know
Speaker 2: that you know, he's gonna get sued if he doesn't
Speaker 2: figure out how to sign that bill. The next time
Speaker 2: we send it to him, and we did and he
Speaker 2: signed it.
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm going to get it done. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get it done.
Speaker 2: No, because the thing is, it didn't matter that he
Speaker 2: was a democratic governor. It didn't matter that that you
Speaker 2: know what he wanted. I knew what needed to be done.
Speaker 2: It wasn't even about what I wanted. I knew what
Speaker 2: needed to be done, and it had never been done
Speaker 2: before in California and California was supposedly a progressive state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's a huge feat that was like, that's
Speaker 1: a huge, huge accomplishment. So now I guess it's not
Speaker 1: to close out. Is there anything you would like to
Speaker 1: tell our listeners that that they wouldn't otherwise know about you?
Speaker 1: Or politics? Or politics? I feel like your secret to success.
Speaker 1: I feel like a part of the golden nugget that
Speaker 1: I'm taking away from you is somehow you've mastered a
Speaker 1: way to come bat imposter syndrome. I definitely feel like you.
Speaker 1: I at that there was a pivotal moment where you
Speaker 1: identified your purpose and you stuck to that, and I
Speaker 1: like that your aggression side, I feel like it's a relatable,
Speaker 1: but I liked how you were able to channel it
Speaker 1: to do great things. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I was a little boys to ballop my
Speaker 2: fist when I got mad. Now as an adult, now,
Speaker 2: as an elected official, I don't balloup my fist. I
Speaker 2: go back to my office and I might cuss her
Speaker 2: or what have you, because it pisses me off that
Speaker 2: that person doesn't get it. But I immediately get together
Speaker 2: with my team and say, we're going to solve this problem.
Speaker 2: We're going to get it done, and then I turn
Speaker 2: that energy into positive energy and making sure that we're
Speaker 2: constantly thinking about how can we positively change this because
Speaker 2: getting mad in gonna do it. Just being mad isn't
Speaker 2: going to do it. How do we put that into action.
Speaker 2: But one of the things I'd like to let people
Speaker 2: know is that please don't assume that all elected officials
Speaker 2: don't care about you. Get well, some don't, some don't.
Speaker 2: We got some, especially Republicans that I work with, who
Speaker 2: run for president every four years, and trust me, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't invite them over for dinner. I don't have time
Speaker 2: for them because they're just not good people. But there
Speaker 2: are a lot of good ones on both sides of
Speaker 2: the Republicans and Democrats. So please don't assume that you
Speaker 2: shouldn't call them that they don't care. Find out if
Speaker 2: they do, challenge them to show that they care about you, constituent,
Speaker 2: and whatever language you speak, and make sure that you
Speaker 2: participate in democracy. One of the reasons why poorer communities
Speaker 2: get disrespected by too many politicians is because, for example,
Speaker 2: congressional seats in California are all about one hundred just
Speaker 2: over seven hundred thousand people human beings each. But if
Speaker 2: you look at a seat on the west side of town,
Speaker 2: they might have of the seven hundred thousand people, they
Speaker 2: might have about three hundred thousand registered voters. And like
Speaker 2: in my district, I might have like two hundred thousand
Speaker 2: registered voters. But wait a minute, we got the same
Speaker 2: number of people. Yeah, right, But in my district, I
Speaker 2: might have maybe three hundred and twenty thousand eligible American
Speaker 2: citizens over the age of eighteen who could register to vote.
Speaker 2: And then another district I just described, they have about
Speaker 2: three hundred and twenty eligible adults who can vote, but
Speaker 2: three hundred thousand registered to vote, and my side of
Speaker 2: town one hundred and twenty thousand don't bother to register.
Speaker 2: And then we take it down and chop it down
Speaker 2: even further. On my side of town, when election time
Speaker 2: comes around, of the two hundred thousand who are registered
Speaker 2: to vote, only one hundred thousand decide to vote. But
Speaker 2: on the other side of town, we're three hundred thousand
Speaker 2: registered to vote, two hundred and fifty thousand turn not
Speaker 2: to vote. All of a sudden, the governors and the
Speaker 2: mayors and all that stuff, they're going like man there's
Speaker 2: a lot more people paying attention to who they're voting
Speaker 2: for on that side of town, and the ain't that
Speaker 2: many people are paying attention to who their mayor is,
Speaker 2: or who their governor is on that side of town,
Speaker 2: or president of the United States. And so sometimes they're like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to spend my time paying attention to people.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna paying attention to people.
Speaker 1: Over there, so we that's why we have to vote.
Speaker 2: That's why we have to vote. If you want respect,
Speaker 2: you don't have to yell, you don't have to go
Speaker 2: around screaming or anything like that. The loudest thing you
Speaker 2: could do for elected officials and people who want to
Speaker 2: be your representative is vote. That's the best way to
Speaker 2: get their attention. And you don't even have to speak
Speaker 2: English to vote. As long as your United States citizen,
Speaker 2: they'll even let you vote in another language.
Speaker 1: Wow, I will say this, just being completely transparent some
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I know I've been hesitant to
Speaker 1: vote in the past. Oh God, just going to buy
Speaker 1: me in. But is sometimes I feel, especially come from
Speaker 1: marketing advertising background, I'm always like, what if I vote
Speaker 1: for somebody, and you know, I'm like, I like this
Speaker 1: one agenda that they have, but they may have another
Speaker 1: agenda that I don't like, and I make the decision
Speaker 1: based off this one thing that I like. I vote,
Speaker 1: but I mess it up for everyone because I wasn't
Speaker 1: reading the fine print. Is that, Like, how do.
Speaker 2: You that that is a recipe? If you think like that,
Speaker 2: that's a recipe for more often than not not voting
Speaker 2: than voting. Yeah, let me put it this way. My
Speaker 2: wife and I next week will be married thirty two years,
Speaker 2: and I can guarantee you she doesn't like everything about me,
Speaker 2: but that commitment has lasted thirty two years. I mean,
Speaker 2: I love everything about her. What's there not to love about? Norma?
Speaker 2: But I'm not perfect, But yet there's a commitment to
Speaker 2: that relationship. If you care about your community, the best
Speaker 2: way that you can show your love and care for
Speaker 2: the community is a lot of things, but one of
Speaker 2: the things is is don't worry about being the perfect voter.
Speaker 2: Be more concerned with letting people believe that that community
Speaker 2: doesn't care enough, And therefore you're encouraging selfish elected officials
Speaker 2: or candidates to not care about your community either. So
Speaker 2: the best thing you can do is participate is participate,
Speaker 2: don't worry about being perfect.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, it makes a lot of sense
Speaker 1: when you paint the whole.
Speaker 2: Who on this planet after the age of thirty or
Speaker 2: forty or fifty has only ever ever dated one person
Speaker 2: in their life because they were waiting for that perfect,
Speaker 2: perfect person.
Speaker 1: It doesn't exist, doesn't exist, right, So the thing.
Speaker 2: Is, why are you going to put that standard on
Speaker 2: you participating on voting for people to represent your community.
Speaker 2: How many roads get fixed in your community depends on
Speaker 2: elected officials. Whether or not they help out that hospital
Speaker 2: or put one in your community depends far too often unelected.
Speaker 1: That's why when you go over to Beverly Hills, I
Speaker 1: hate to say this, but like you never see like
Speaker 1: a liquor store or like a McDonald's over there, because
Speaker 1: they're always voting and participating, and then you come to
Speaker 1: our neighborhoods and we're not really participating. I did not
Speaker 1: know that that alone, not participating had such a.
Speaker 2: Huge impact down to how many liquor stores you have
Speaker 2: in your community. Your darn right.
Speaker 1: I know there's a school also in Panorama City where
Speaker 1: the liquor store. I think the principles were going up
Speaker 1: against the liquor store because they were selling alcohol too
Speaker 1: close to the school and the kids were walking in
Speaker 1: with it. But okay, okay, I am definitely encouraging. I
Speaker 1: hope everyone else out there is encouraged to participate and
Speaker 1: be the voice of your community and the voice of
Speaker 1: who you are as an individual in your family. That matters.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 1: That's one thing I definitely learned. I'm so glad that
Speaker 1: you came down here. I was super, super, super nervous.
Speaker 1: I was like, man, he has no idea what he's
Speaker 1: walking into. I pray for him. I hope it's not
Speaker 1: too uncomfortable. But I'm thankful that you were really passionate
Speaker 1: about this interview and really brought it home. So I
Speaker 1: appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thanks for inviting me, and I learned a lot today
Speaker 2: and I really appreciate you.
Speaker 1: You learned oh yeah, oh yeah, like this is how
Speaker 1: that silent voter thinks. Okay, thank you guy for tuning
Speaker 1: in to another episode of Eating while Broke. You can
Speaker 1: keep up with Congressmantoni hardness. I'm pretty sure at Rep.
Speaker 1: Cardness on every social media and everything.
Speaker 3: Okay, peace out, guys.
Speaker 4: Secret ingredient After my conversation with Congressmantoni Cardness. One thing's
Speaker 4: for sure. This man is seasoned through and through with
Speaker 4: an adamant portion of his secret ingredient purpose.
Speaker 1: See most politicians, they get all wrapped up in the
Speaker 1: white bread of the political game, the backroom deals, the
Speaker 1: partisan gridlock, the ego trips. But not Tony Cardness.
Speaker 4: This man didn't just stumble into politics by accident.
Speaker 1: Nah. He saw the injustice, the disrespect his people were facing,
Speaker 1: and he said enough is enough.
Speaker 4: That fire in his heart, that unshakable drive to lift
Speaker 4: up his community, that's the purpose that powers his.
Speaker 1: Every move, and you better believe it's opened some major
Speaker 1: doors for him. When others are content to pump fake
Speaker 1: and flex on empty rhetoric, Cardiness is out there moving mountains.
Speaker 1: He's passing landmark legislation, mentoring the next generation of leaders,
Speaker 1: and making damn sure everyone, no matter there's zip code,
Speaker 1: economic background, or skin color, gets a seat at the table.
Speaker 1: So take notes, fam when purpose is your secret ingredient,
Speaker 1: ain't no obstacle too big, no opponent too tough. You
Speaker 1: just put your head down, channel that energy and get
Speaker 1: to work reshape in the system itself.
Speaker 4: That's the card in this way, and if you ask me,
Speaker 4: it's a recipe we.
Speaker 1: All need to be following.
Speaker 4: I'm calling wet and you just got a taste of
Speaker 4: eating wild broke, So stay hungry, y'all.
Speaker 3: Peace out
Speaker 1: For more Eating while Broke from iHeartRadio and The Black Effect,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.