Speaker 1: Welcome back to a Numbers Game with Ryan Grodski. Thank
Speaker 1: you for being here this week. As always, I'm one
Speaker 1: of my listeners that all the data on this podcast
Speaker 1: will be up on my substack and go read it
Speaker 1: and go to nappopnewsletter dot com for thirty day free subscription.
Speaker 1: So this week I would like to talk to you
Speaker 1: guys about money in politics and politics in general. It's
Speaker 1: a big conversation that we've had in the country because
Speaker 1: it costs a lot of money to run for public office.
Speaker 1: In the twenty one months the church along twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three to the twenty twenty four campaign cycle, billions of
Speaker 1: dollars run to the campaigns from the top of the
Speaker 1: ballot to the bottom. Cannot's running for president alone, just
Speaker 1: the presidency raised one point six two six billion dollars
Speaker 1: and spent one point three two three billion. But that's
Speaker 1: not all. Cants running for Congress raised three point two
Speaker 1: seven billion dollars and spent two point seven seven billion.
Speaker 1: Party committees raised two points one billion and spent one
Speaker 1: point eight and super packs raised twelve point twenty five
Speaker 1: billion and spent ten point nine billion. All together. That
Speaker 1: means candidates and their respected committees and packs running for
Speaker 1: federal office raised nineteen point twenty five billion and spent
Speaker 1: sixteen point seven nine to three billion dollars. Now that
Speaker 1: sounds like an insane number, and it is, but it's
Speaker 1: actually less than Americans spent on Easter. Americans spent twenty
Speaker 1: point billion dollars on Easter. But still a lot of money.
Speaker 1: And it's just for federalists, not including the local races,
Speaker 1: the governors that happened in twenty twenty four, the mayors,
Speaker 1: the city councils, of the school boards, the state legislatures
Speaker 1: which are a lot more. But it's still a lot
Speaker 1: of money, and it's only going to go up over time,
Speaker 1: especially people moving money to super PACs, which are allowed
Speaker 1: to raise unlimited sums of money. Fundraising for presidential committees
Speaker 1: actually hasn't gone up so much. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: that's when all the candidates running for president in both
Speaker 1: the primary and the general and third parties raised one
Speaker 1: point six billion dollars. Swell money in politics is very
Speaker 1: intimidating to a lot of people who want to run
Speaker 1: for office, even local office. They get scared. It's one
Speaker 1: of the most frequently asked questions I get from people
Speaker 1: who are curious about politics or the dream of running
Speaker 1: for office, or just working in this career. People have
Speaker 1: a lot of opinions about people who work in politics.
Speaker 1: Some are fair and some aren't, but they want to
Speaker 1: know more about the business side of politics. So that's
Speaker 1: what this episode is going to be about. Now, a
Speaker 1: little backsurround me. I've worked in politics since two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven. My first job, when I was nineteen, was
Speaker 1: working for the New York City Council. I worked for
Speaker 1: a councilwoman who was a friend of a great aunt
Speaker 1: of mine. She was one of those aunts who thought
Speaker 1: I was brilliant at everything, even when I wasn't. And
Speaker 1: the councilwoman had called her and said that her PR
Speaker 1: guy had died unexpectedly, and she said, well, you have
Speaker 1: to hire my nineteen year old nephew. He's so great
Speaker 1: at everything. So thank you Ann Susie. That nepotism changed
Speaker 1: my life. And then I worked odd jobs on different
Speaker 1: campaigns I worked. I ended up being an intern for
Speaker 1: the New York State Senator Tom Libis, who was the
Speaker 1: deputy Minority leader at the time, A wonderful man. I
Speaker 1: learned a lot from him. Sale died a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago in prison. But actually my first two big
Speaker 1: political mentors both went to jail. It was a very
Speaker 1: New York story. I worked for as a low level
Speaker 1: stabber for Michael Bloomberg's third mayoral campaign. I worked for
Speaker 1: lots of local races, and in twenty ten, I wanted
Speaker 1: to get a job working on a race I could
Speaker 1: really prove myself. And I'd heard a man named Bob
Speaker 1: Turner wanted to run for office against Anthony Meaner, and
Speaker 1: so I said to myself, I have to find him.
Speaker 1: I have to sit there and apply for this job. Somehow,
Speaker 1: I didn't have the experience. I didn't know what he
Speaker 1: even looked like, but I had heard he was going
Speaker 1: to the New York State Party convention. I told people
Speaker 1: in the crowd that I knew a little bit. I
Speaker 1: was like twenty two years all at the time. I said,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, I'm looking for Bob. Do you know
Speaker 1: where he is? And then one person pointed him out.
Speaker 1: I approached him cold and I said, my name is
Speaker 1: Ryan Grodski. I know this district by the back of
Speaker 1: my hand. I would like to work for your campaign.
Speaker 1: Sold myself and within like maybe thirty minutes, he introduced
Speaker 1: me as his feel director for his campaign, so it
Speaker 1: was very exciting. He didn't end up winning the election,
Speaker 1: but he did so well. You get over forty percent
Speaker 1: against Anthony Minor, who was an entrenched incumbent in a
Speaker 1: very democratic district. That when Anthony Minor left office like
Speaker 1: a couple months later and there was a special election,
Speaker 1: Bob was picked as the party nominee, and he was
Speaker 1: the first Republican outside of Staten Island to hold a
Speaker 1: seat in New York City in several decades. So it
Speaker 1: was a lot to prove myself and be proud of myself.
Speaker 1: Were but that's like the nature of politics in this
Speaker 1: business is a lot of times if you're trying to
Speaker 1: break into it to work in it, the best case
Speaker 1: scenario is a major consultant or an elected official will
Speaker 1: tell you you're my guy or you're my girl, and
Speaker 1: they'll take you under their wings, and then you could
Speaker 1: eventually branch off after working them and meeting all their
Speaker 1: contacts and all the rest of that. That's what happened
Speaker 1: to like the Ruthless Guys similar Ruthless Guys on that
Speaker 1: podcast that they worked for McConnell. Being someone's guy or
Speaker 1: someone's girl has a lot of benefits. The other way
Speaker 1: of coming up is by just working every job possible
Speaker 1: that is given to you. So after Turner, I did
Speaker 1: a race for an upstart libertary named Thomas Massey. I
Speaker 1: did his super pac, took a break, did media gigs
Speaker 1: for a couple of years. I ended up working for
Speaker 1: James o'keeff for a little while, which is another story
Speaker 1: for a different time. I'm we're older. I ran the
Speaker 1: super Pact for Chris Cobac when he ran for Senate
Speaker 1: by just pitching one of his donors cold. The first
Speaker 1: time I met him, I said, I want to I
Speaker 1: want to run this guy's super pac. I know you're
Speaker 1: supporting him. Fund the super Pack and bring me on.
Speaker 1: And he did. And then through Twitter I met a
Speaker 1: guy named Jadevance and when the Senate s he'd opened
Speaker 1: in Ohio in twenty twenty one, I texted him. I said,
Speaker 1: if you're running, I want to be on your team.
Speaker 1: And then two years later Our Star packed for school
Speaker 1: board elections nationwide at the seventeen seventy six Project Pack,
Speaker 1: which is almost entirely funded by small dollar donors. It's
Speaker 1: the most successful local government super pac right now in
Speaker 1: the country. And that's how I kind of broke into
Speaker 1: this business. And I say the whole story about my
Speaker 1: life because working in politics is about taking chances. I
Speaker 1: failed a ton of times. I've worked on insane races
Speaker 1: that we never had a chance, that things everything that
Speaker 1: could go wrong did go wrong, where I would have
Speaker 1: to stay afterwards and clean the bathroom. And well, I
Speaker 1: saw all the phones, volunteers made phone calls on I
Speaker 1: mean I did it all. I knocked on doors, I
Speaker 1: got petitions, every kind of odd job because no one
Speaker 1: said Ryan, you're my guy. Like that never happened in
Speaker 1: my entire life. People said, oh, Ryan's the last person here,
Speaker 1: let's give him a break. I've was constantly the last
Speaker 1: person picked for political dodgeball, but I just kept ongoing
Speaker 1: and I still do today. It's just about trying to
Speaker 1: open a door until someone lets you in. So last
Speaker 1: week I sent out a tweet and I asked people
Speaker 1: who don't work in policies what questions they had, what
Speaker 1: they wanted to show with the business, and what they
Speaker 1: want to know from consultants about what it's like to
Speaker 1: run for office, run a race, run a campaign, and
Speaker 1: if they aspire on for office one day, what they
Speaker 1: should do. So I got my smartest consultant friend, and
Speaker 1: we're going to answer them now. Luke Thompson is one
Speaker 1: of my closest political operative friends. He is a stellar
Speaker 1: track record of the last few year years working for
Speaker 1: the super Packs for many people including Representative Riley Moore,
Speaker 1: Representative Brandon Gill, Senator Bernie Marino, Senator Dave McCormick. And
Speaker 1: he was my boss for the super Pac supporting jd Vance.
Speaker 1: I have to Nudgeman said, he also worked for Jeb Bush.
Speaker 1: But Luke Thompson, thank you for being here.
Speaker 2: Great to be with you. Ryan. We we should get
Speaker 2: together more often.
Speaker 1: Luke, I don't actually know what was your first campaign.
Speaker 2: My first campaign I was, I want to say, seven
Speaker 2: years old. It would attempt to pass a bond issue
Speaker 2: in my hometown to build a second high school because
Speaker 2: we had far outgrown the old high school. But we lost.
Speaker 2: My parents were pro mil Levy increase, I think the
Speaker 2: only tax I've ever seen them be in favor of,
Speaker 2: because literally the students were going to class in trailers
Speaker 2: in the freezing cold.
Speaker 1: This uh y. So you were bred from this like
Speaker 1: there was, there was no second choice.
Speaker 2: It's in the blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. So I took questions from people on social
Speaker 1: media and I'm going to ask them. We'll just talk,
Speaker 1: you know, back and forth. So the first question we got,
Speaker 1: which is the most frequent question I got, was how
Speaker 1: much money does it cost to run for office? Even
Speaker 1: a local one?
Speaker 2: And great question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll say this. It costs as much as it
Speaker 1: does to reach all the voters in your target universe.
Speaker 1: So if you're running for local office like city councilor
Speaker 1: school board or even congress or state representative, you have
Speaker 1: not everyone votes, a small select people actually go and vote.
Speaker 1: The bigger the election, the more will vote, but you
Speaker 1: have to spend as much money as it costs to
Speaker 1: reach them. The rule I was always taught is you
Speaker 1: had to touch a voter seven times. I doesn't mean
Speaker 1: to speak to them seven times. It means if we
Speaker 1: see a mailer to just see your name and newspapers
Speaker 1: to make sure a voter remembers who you are, they
Speaker 1: have to see your name seven different times.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of rules of thumb
Speaker 2: out there about this, but I think another way to
Speaker 2: think about it too, because a lot of people who
Speaker 2: ask these questions are thinking about running themselves. Don't know
Speaker 2: what mental illness takes them over and makes them want
Speaker 2: to run for aufit. I'm grateful that it exists because, yeah,
Speaker 2: make my living off of it. Yeah. But you know,
Speaker 2: one other way to think about it too is like
Speaker 2: how much money do you, as a candidate have to
Speaker 2: put in or be able to put in to be
Speaker 2: a credible candidate? And you know what's interesting about that is,
Speaker 2: at a certain population level, everybody max is or should
Speaker 2: if you're going to be a serious candidate, max is
Speaker 2: out the one resource that everyone has under a sort
Speaker 2: of universal communism, which is the clock. Like everybody has
Speaker 2: the same amount of time per day, whether or not
Speaker 2: you use it all for politics or you have a
Speaker 2: personal life or things like that, those are separate considerations.
Speaker 2: But you and your opponent, you know, at midnight of
Speaker 2: a given day, will have the same amount of time,
Speaker 2: and how you use this up to you. However, even
Speaker 2: at the state legislative level, some state house races in
Speaker 2: smaller states, you can just out hustle your opponent right
Speaker 2: in a lot of places. Once you're even at the
Speaker 2: state senate level. It's not possible to simply knock on
Speaker 2: every single door enough times that everybody who might vote
Speaker 2: knows you and has formed an opinion of you. And
Speaker 2: so that's where money really enters. The equation is you
Speaker 2: have to be able to talk to people by proxy
Speaker 2: or through surrogate. The most primary surrogate mechanism is media.
Speaker 2: Lower down, you're typically going to be, you know, having
Speaker 2: volunteers have literature to leave it doors. Sometimes those are
Speaker 2: the exact same thing that you mail. To save money,
Speaker 2: you're going to want to get some phone banks. You
Speaker 2: might want to get an office space or even a
Speaker 2: like in a coworking space. You might want to have
Speaker 2: a spot to drop things or a you know, a
Speaker 2: storage unit. As you get a higher and higher up,
Speaker 2: you know, say you want to run for congress. Now
Speaker 2: you're talking about you will have a full time staffer
Speaker 2: or several full time staffers, depending on the district you
Speaker 2: will need. You may use your family car for everything.
Speaker 2: You may want to lease a car for the term
Speaker 2: of your your race because you're not going to be
Speaker 2: the only person driving it. Probably or in fact, ideally,
Speaker 2: you won't be driving at all because you'll be on
Speaker 2: the phone calling who donors. Mostly the sort of rule
Speaker 2: of thumb that I have for people as they think
Speaker 2: about running for congressional district. Right, assume it's an open seat.
Speaker 2: Assume it's you know, set aside whether or not from
Speaker 2: a party standpoint, you you know you can win. Right.
Speaker 2: What I say is, go home, go through your phone book,
Speaker 2: go through your email, go through your classmates, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Make a list of people who if they give you
Speaker 2: the maximum that you can donate thirty five hundred dollars
Speaker 2: right where you can get for three hundred. That's for
Speaker 2: Congress or any federal office. Actually, where you can get
Speaker 2: three hundred of those people, because the reality is is
Speaker 2: you're going to think you're going to close. I'll close
Speaker 2: ninety percent of them. You're going to be lucky if
Speaker 2: you can close twenty five percent of right, Right, And
Speaker 2: so you need to have a list of three hundred
Speaker 2: people who you feel high degrees of congresence, not one
Speaker 2: hundred percent, but seventy five percent or better. They'll cut
Speaker 2: you a three thousand, five hundred dollars check. If you
Speaker 2: can't do that or you don't know that many people
Speaker 2: with that kind of disposable income. The reality is it's
Speaker 2: going to be really really hard. Now you can compensate
Speaker 2: for that by use it, putting your personal means in play.
Speaker 2: But now you're talking about, well, how much do I
Speaker 2: want to spend? How liquid am I what percentage of
Speaker 2: that liquidity do I want to spend? I have two kids.
Speaker 2: My kids I would like to go to nice school someday,
Speaker 2: and so you know, I got to pay for that. Also,
Speaker 2: they might need braces. I got to pay for that too, right,
Speaker 2: And so you know, those are the kinds of ways
Speaker 2: people should think about this and have really hard conversations,
Speaker 2: because if you can't raise from your network, a solid
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be mid six figures, but a solid
Speaker 2: six figure chunk, right, you know, quarter million dollars between
Speaker 2: what you know of people you call, or if you're
Speaker 2: not able to cut a check that's bigger than that,
Speaker 2: you're really going to have hard time hitting this sort
Speaker 2: of level of seriousness that's necessary. Now. The good news is,
Speaker 2: as you go through politics, you will meet people and
Speaker 2: they will give your work. Of people, you'll be connected,
Speaker 2: some of those people with donors, some will be affected
Speaker 2: interest groups, et cetera. And so you can start knocking
Speaker 2: doors and work your way up. Riley Moore friend and
Speaker 2: client of mine who you mentioned. You know I ran
Speaker 2: his congressional campaign in this cycle, the first thing I
Speaker 2: did for Riley. We were friends before he entered politics.
Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen, he sent me an email saying, Hey,
Speaker 2: I want to run for House Delegates in West Virginia.
Speaker 2: I've got you know, there's going to be five thousand voters.
Speaker 2: Here's the voter file. Can you tell me which doors
Speaker 2: to knock on and which phone owners to call? Did
Speaker 2: a little bit of math and set it back to him.
Speaker 2: He worked that list like crazy, and it wasn't a
Speaker 2: money question that got him that election. He won it
Speaker 2: by about one hundred and fifty votes, I think, and
Speaker 2: maybe misrememory it may have been a little bigger than that,
Speaker 2: but you know, it's not a huge margin, and it
Speaker 2: was a hustle margin. Right now, he's a member of
Speaker 2: House leadership as a freshman. So you can build it
Speaker 2: on a foundation of hard work, but it's a building
Speaker 2: block over time.
Speaker 1: And you can I mean money. When Luke was talking
Speaker 1: about money that's for federal levels. For local elections, you
Speaker 1: can get by on less money. It's not necessary. You
Speaker 1: can do the hard work. I remember I did a
Speaker 1: race for state Assembly from a guy his name is Thematas,
Speaker 1: very very nice guy, very wealthy guy, would not put
Speaker 1: the work in. He only wanted to work on Sundays
Speaker 1: because he didn't want to spend any time from his business.
Speaker 1: This man could so sell snowballs and snowstorms, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't get in front of voters ever, and we ended
Speaker 1: up losing. He did extremely well, shockingly well, but he
Speaker 1: just he just putting the man hours in for a
Speaker 1: local office is super essential. So okay, how does a
Speaker 1: candidate feed their families while running for office? Do they
Speaker 1: love of a savings or they spend campaign dollars as
Speaker 1: a substitute.
Speaker 2: So it's really hard. I would like a political culture
Speaker 2: that would sort of hate this word, but normalize people
Speaker 2: you paying themselves out of paying a salary out of
Speaker 2: the campaign, because I think if you're a donor to
Speaker 2: camp to a campaign, you should want the candidate to
Speaker 2: be working at that full time, not distracted by a job.
Speaker 2: Right on the flip side, donors get really unhappy about
Speaker 2: you paying yourself a nomenal salary out of your campaign
Speaker 2: for federal races. It's completely legal, you know, it's I
Speaker 2: think I don't know exactly what the amount is you
Speaker 2: have to disclose it. Most people don't do it because
Speaker 2: they feel like the political blowback is going to be
Speaker 2: worse than the upside.
Speaker 1: And so most you can pay for like meals, if
Speaker 1: your team is going out for McDonald's or something, you
Speaker 1: can pay for that the campaign funds or total.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, nobody's going to be mad if they see
Speaker 2: some meals and some gasoline. Now, people will to be clear.
Speaker 2: This is also where danger lies because you'll see, especially
Speaker 2: bad candidates will over itemize things, right, So it just
Speaker 2: makes their compliance really hard and it winds up costing
Speaker 2: them more to sort their compliance that would to just
Speaker 2: eat the light bulbs for three dollars that they paid for. Right.
Speaker 2: The flip side also is you will see people who
Speaker 2: will do things like buy gas cards and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden they're kind of using the campaign as petty cash, right,
Speaker 2: and that's where you can get in real truck.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is a great consulting question. How do consultants
Speaker 1: have the good judgment to know who to work for,
Speaker 1: who will be a strong cant running for office for
Speaker 1: the right reasons, or who is an egomaniac who you
Speaker 1: won't follow your advice. I have worked for many an
Speaker 1: egomaniac that will not follow my advice. I've only ever
Speaker 1: quit one campaign my whole life from a state senator
Speaker 1: who was out of control and like abusage to the staff.
Speaker 1: As far as like a good judgment. When you're for
Speaker 1: a lot of consultants, it's about who's going to hire you, right,
Speaker 1: because it's it is a you only are ever really
Speaker 1: working for two years if you're working on just campaigns.
Speaker 1: It's important realize people who work on campaigns don't always
Speaker 1: go to work for Congress or work in the state legislature,
Speaker 1: for the govern or, whatever you're doing. It happens a lot,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people like Luke and I work
Speaker 1: for campaigns. We just do campaigns a year after year
Speaker 1: after year. So if that's your life, just the campaign hustle,
Speaker 1: you're always both looking for new work while doing work
Speaker 1: with the expectation that your job is only a year
Speaker 1: to two years long.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's why I do so many super PACs,
Speaker 2: is so that I don't have to deal with the candidate.
Speaker 1: That is true, and you work with soup Bac, you
Speaker 1: have a lot less anxiety moments.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well there's the anxiety is more donor related.
Speaker 2: Are they going to give? They're not going to give.
Speaker 2: I know they won't come through now, I look, it's
Speaker 2: a really hard question. And the reality is when you're
Speaker 2: starting out in this business, you just have to hustle
Speaker 2: for everything right, and you can wind up working with
Speaker 2: some real freaks and some real losers. And you know,
Speaker 2: the trick is not to get stuck there, and that
Speaker 2: requires a kind of I think moral discipline to say, yes,
Speaker 2: I know Smith sucks, I know he's not going to win,
Speaker 2: and thank god he's not going to win, but damn it,
Speaker 2: John Smith, for you know, select campaign is going to
Speaker 2: be the best damn Selectman campaign anyone's ever seen. And
Speaker 2: in my experience, you know, when you do a good campaign,
Speaker 2: people will notice. Not always, but sometimes they will notice.
Speaker 2: And you know, so you can a campaign can transcend
Speaker 2: its canon. The other thing you can do is just
Speaker 2: you know, do what I do and convince your friends
Speaker 2: to run for office. You know they do.
Speaker 1: I have to, Luke, No, not really, okay, I guess
Speaker 1: I have to run.
Speaker 2: Exactly well, it's this is the bait and switch I
Speaker 2: pull as I spend years convincing them they should run
Speaker 2: for offs. Then when they finally sit down with me
Speaker 2: and they're like, I'm ready to have the talk, the
Speaker 2: first thing I say is, you don't want run for offs?
Speaker 2: It's stupid. Why do you want to run for office?
Speaker 2: You have a great life. Your life is good, your
Speaker 2: your spouse likes you, You're doing well in business, you
Speaker 2: see your children every day. What are you out of
Speaker 2: your mind? What do you want to run a like
Speaker 2: low grade fever for the next fifteen months. You want
Speaker 2: to hear the same joke fifty five times? You want
Speaker 2: to five hundred to sell the Times? Yeah, tell the
Speaker 2: same story. Yeah, yeah, but no. I think you know
Speaker 2: one thing to keep in mind, and this is especially true.
Speaker 2: I think as the millennial population boom enters into sort
Speaker 2: of middle age, there's no definition of who a candidate
Speaker 2: is or what a candidate looks like. The barriers to
Speaker 2: entry that I enumerated are very real, right, to be clear,
Speaker 2: they're very real. On the other hand, they're not fatal
Speaker 2: right that they can be overcome if you're strategic and so,
Speaker 2: you know, go out and meet people, meet people who volunteer,
Speaker 2: meet people who knock on doors. Assess whether you think
Speaker 2: they're good people, whether they're smart people, whether they're thoughtful people,
Speaker 2: whether they're hard working and honest people. You know, politics
Speaker 2: could be a business with a fair amount of deceit
Speaker 2: in it, but both within a legislature and I think
Speaker 2: within a campaign, honesty is the current and see that
Speaker 2: you have above all else. And as long as you
Speaker 2: have an honest relationship with your client as a consultant,
Speaker 2: and as long as you instill in your client that,
Speaker 2: especially if going into a legislature, you cannot lie to
Speaker 2: your colleagues because they will never trust you and never
Speaker 2: forgive you and isolate you and make you miserable. Well,
Speaker 2: I'll use an affirmative example. You know, I when when
Speaker 2: our mutual friend Vice President Vance was then maybe Senator Advance. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, he went into the Senate as something of
Speaker 2: a hot shot, well known entity, you know, conservative firebrand,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But his attitude towards the Senate. We talked
Speaker 2: about this a lot, was like, I'm going to be
Speaker 2: straight with me. I know they disagree with me on
Speaker 2: several issues, but I'm just going to act with complete integrity,
Speaker 2: and I understand some people are going to be sneaky
Speaker 2: around me, but my colleagues will see that. They'll see
Speaker 2: that I act with integrity and they will trust me,
Speaker 2: and down the line that will pay off. And he
Speaker 2: was able to build relationships with people who were not
Speaker 2: ideologically akin to him. Right. Susan Collins is a great
Speaker 2: example of this. They don't agree on a lot, there
Speaker 2: are a lot of issues where they go back and forth,
Speaker 2: but they were always very straight with each other. He
Speaker 2: really admired the way that she operated and the way
Speaker 2: that she was very upfront and told people where she
Speaker 2: was on things, and learned a lot from her. Conveyed
Speaker 2: his gratitude to her for that, and as a result,
Speaker 2: you know here in this confirmation fight when he sat
Speaker 2: down and talked to her about certain nominees that carried
Speaker 2: a lot of weight because she knew he wasn't lying.
Speaker 1: All right, That's a great example. Or you could be
Speaker 1: a senator from many senators who they copied their colleagues bills,
Speaker 1: they reintroduced them for themselves to claim credit for it
Speaker 1: so they can get hits on right wing media. Then
Speaker 1: they just write books endlessly in toward the books until
Speaker 1: they do some other job, like, for a complete random example,
Speaker 1: become the president of the University of Florida or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know who knows, but yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: great question to Paul blast One. How do you commnce
Speaker 1: a good person run for office? And can you dissuade
Speaker 1: a bad person who shouldn't be running for office? So
Speaker 1: I'll say for bad people, I'll say sometimes the party
Speaker 1: bosses or the powers that be or major donors can
Speaker 1: sit there and they could say to them, we use
Speaker 1: they use a carrot and say, listen, if you you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you could run for a party delegate, maybe you
Speaker 1: could have this position. Maybe you go to that position,
Speaker 1: but don't run for the office you want to run
Speaker 1: for it. Or they could use a stick and say,
Speaker 1: if you do this, we're going to spend a gajillion
Speaker 1: dollars against you and ruin you. So don't do it
Speaker 1: like they could do. People do that. Can consultancy that
Speaker 1: not really not so much. I mean I've never seen
Speaker 1: it personally where a consultant can just bully somebody out
Speaker 1: of running for office.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, I think in general, though,
Speaker 2: this is really asking the same question, which is how
Speaker 2: do you motivate people in relation to public office? And
Speaker 2: the reality is is that everybody who thinks about running
Speaker 2: for office is ambitious. Right. They don't do this because
Speaker 2: they don't want to win. And I think we have
Speaker 2: a culture that treats ambition as a crime, and that's foolish.
Speaker 2: They're ambitious, right, I mean, there's not a single person
Speaker 2: who pulls papers for state legislator that doesn't think in
Speaker 2: some dark moment in the back of his or her
Speaker 2: mind about the oval office. Like they just all it's okay,
Speaker 2: it's okay.
Speaker 1: Present the truth though, everyone. If you're running for like Dogcatcher,
Speaker 1: you're thinking, I could be.
Speaker 2: Praising you know, I'm I'm three pitbulls away from state
Speaker 2: selectmen and from selectman that I'm gonna run for that
Speaker 2: state Senate district. I'm gonna jump over the lower House entirely,
Speaker 2: and once I'm in the senate State Senate Andy Barley
Speaker 2: dor because I'm going this rocket show. Yeah, that's true,
Speaker 2: and you know what good good? Right? I mean, the
Speaker 2: framers of the Constitution, founders of this country were utterly
Speaker 2: unabashed about their desire for virtuous fame, right, for for
Speaker 2: earned fame and and the you know they they talk
Speaker 2: about it in speeches and their private ridings and their correspondence,
Speaker 2: et cetera. The desire for ambition, the ambition for office, prominence, esteem, leadership, power, fine,
Speaker 2: the hedonic treadmill is a universal. And so don't go
Speaker 2: around looking for someone and saying, well, I don't like
Speaker 2: this person because he's ambitious, but I do like this
Speaker 2: person because she doesn't seem like she wants the office.
Speaker 1: Right right now. Usually they very rarely win if they
Speaker 1: don't really want.
Speaker 2: Right Either you're misreading her and she's really actually quite ambitious,
Speaker 2: or like she's just not going to put in time.
Speaker 2: And that's fine, right, But don't try to dragoon somebody
Speaker 2: into something they don't really want to do, because the
Speaker 2: reality is they're going to put themselves and their family
Speaker 2: and sometimes you through hell, but not nearly as much
Speaker 2: as you will be putting them through. Help. Now, they're
Speaker 2: also the principle, they're the candidate, and so it's to
Speaker 2: them redounds the benefit, redounds, the fame and the power, etc.
Speaker 2: You are a staff player, you're a bit player, you
Speaker 2: are support, right, and don't ever forget.
Speaker 1: That that is so true. Consultant should never be more
Speaker 1: popular than there candidates they work for. What is the
Speaker 1: impact on a candidate's family and what should they expect
Speaker 1: and how should they prepare for it.
Speaker 2: It's a really haution. Yeah, it's a great question. It's
Speaker 2: really hard. So a lot gets demanded of the family
Speaker 2: because simply absence is a big part of that, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, when are prime campaigning times weekends when you
Speaker 2: might be you know, going to games, uh, you know
Speaker 2: some a while people are connunations exactly. So you know,
Speaker 2: one thing is to be very clear with your family
Speaker 2: up front, like hey, look, this is this is going
Speaker 2: to cost us things, and have frank conversations as a consultant. Also,
Speaker 2: you need to build a trusting relationship with the spouse,
Speaker 2: all right, Like the spouse is never the problem, and
Speaker 2: if the spouse is the problem, you need to get
Speaker 2: out of a campaign because it's dysfunctional. But in a
Speaker 2: situation where you can't just be like, oh he's being
Speaker 2: unreason or oh she's being unrealistic, Like you're asking way
Speaker 2: more of the spouse than is reasonable to ask of anyone,
Speaker 2: even if you're running for like state legislature, if you're
Speaker 2: having spouse problems, it's because you've failed to manage expectations
Speaker 2: or you failed to execute. Now that's not a huge issue.
Speaker 2: Just learn and get better and think about it in
Speaker 2: that way. The best way to think about that is
Speaker 2: the same way you think about a candidate. What are
Speaker 2: the motivations and what are the aspirations? Right?
Speaker 1: And then what do you go into a marriage? When
Speaker 1: I was thinking about like is this person you should know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: my spouse is going to do something someday and I
Speaker 1: have to be prepared for it.
Speaker 2: Correct correct.
Speaker 1: If they have that fire in, then it's probably never
Speaker 1: going to go away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And look like I ask every client I work with,
Speaker 2: like have you had the talk? Where is missus or
Speaker 2: mister X on this? And if mister and missus X
Speaker 2: is not all in, then I tell them you really
Speaker 2: shouldn't do this. You know. I know people who fresh
Speaker 2: off a divorce want to run for office because it's
Speaker 2: like I got to get some in my life. And
Speaker 2: it's like, well, that's tritherapy in church, because this is
Speaker 2: not a spiritual.
Speaker 1: Hospital you're listening to. It's a numbers game with Ryan Grodowski.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this message, how in depth
Speaker 1: are background checks? And when you want to run and
Speaker 1: they bring in a consultant for background checks. Okay, so
Speaker 1: background checks don't happen usually for local office. A lot
Speaker 1: of times they don't happen, even for congressional offices. Remember
Speaker 1: George Santos won his election without anyone knowing anything, and
Speaker 1: well most people they don't know anything. No one picked
Speaker 1: up on it. He could have been picked up on it.
Speaker 1: Luke made a face, me, that's what. Yeah, But George
Speaker 1: has had a million red flags flopping in the wind,
Speaker 1: the size that you would see a flag you would
Speaker 1: see a car dealership in like Midwest. That's how big
Speaker 1: the flags were. And they were not picked up until
Speaker 1: the until the New York Times brought it up trying
Speaker 1: to write a puff piece about him and saying, oh wow,
Speaker 1: nothing he says makes sense. So for local office, very
Speaker 1: rarely to ever being picked up. Maybe if you're like
Speaker 1: running from mayor or something like that, but very rarely.
Speaker 1: Higher office it happens more. I mean, there are people
Speaker 1: is very expensive to do big background checks some people,
Speaker 1: but there are people to do it. It costs a
Speaker 1: lot of money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are degrees of vulnerability study. Right, you should
Speaker 2: pay somebody to run a Lexus Nexus whack on you
Speaker 2: and just run your name and addresses through Lexus and Nexus. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because that's not that expensive and that will That's eighty
Speaker 2: five percent of what most opposition research is going to
Speaker 2: look like.
Speaker 1: And for God's sakes, by the way, clear your social
Speaker 1: media history. Clear it, I don't care what it is.
Speaker 1: Download every picture of your face with it you want
Speaker 1: to keep, and wipe it clean. Wipe everything clean. The
Speaker 1: amount of candidates who lose because they were insane on
Speaker 1: social media five six, seven, eight, nine years ago is
Speaker 1: and it's sort clear your social media.
Speaker 2: Ryan, are you admitting that you have a New to
Speaker 2: Africa account to it? Yeah? Exactly right. Well, the other
Speaker 2: thing that's valuable here too is you know a lot
Speaker 2: of times people don't understand what oppositional research is. They think, oh,
Speaker 2: opposition research, it's going to be a PI going through
Speaker 2: my trash to see if I'm cheating on my wife. Look,
Speaker 2: if you're running in a competitive frontline senate district, yes
Speaker 2: someone's going to ruffle your trash probably, but maybe not right.
Speaker 2: The reality is is that most opposition research surfaces tendentious
Speaker 2: things that can be spun a certain way. Oh, you
Speaker 2: had a boundary dispute with your neighbor, very normal thing, right.
Speaker 2: We weren't sure where the leans were. We couldn't figure
Speaker 2: it out. We wound up going to court. Right. In
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen was when I was at the NRSC. We
Speaker 2: spent millions of dollars convincing islands, which was pretty easy
Speaker 2: to do because it was true that Bruce Brayley, then
Speaker 2: a congressman running for Senate against Junior, was an asshole
Speaker 2: because he sued his neighbor over some chickens. Right now,
Speaker 2: Bruce Brayley, if you ask him like, hey, are you
Speaker 2: an asshole, He's gonna say no, I'm not an asshole. Okay,
Speaker 2: But you run a lessis search on and you go
Speaker 2: suit your neighbor over some chickens. Huh. Oh, that's gonna
Speaker 2: leave a mark. I can write that, right. And so
Speaker 2: it's often really pedestrian things that you wouldn't think about. Right. Oh,
Speaker 2: I had somebody file a complaint against my insert small
Speaker 2: business over insert totally normal thing. We disputed it, it
Speaker 2: went away, et cetera. Right. Oh, you know, pregnant lady
Speaker 2: in car accident left hung out to dry by Canada.
Speaker 2: Why again, On the merit you can win these things
Speaker 2: a lot, and in some cases, as I've done in
Speaker 2: a few races, you can get takedown orders if they
Speaker 2: try to put it on broadcast TV. But like you
Speaker 2: want to know what those are so you can pre
Speaker 2: butt them. And you know, sometimes these things happen live
Speaker 2: on the fly and you can't anticipate what they're going
Speaker 2: to be because they're just crazy, you know, the like
Speaker 2: the Ohio Senate primary. I was, yeah, I was working
Speaker 2: for Burning Marino Superpack and like, one of our opponents
Speaker 2: was shopping this story that he had an adult FriendFinder
Speaker 2: account that was like obviously a prank and obviously had
Speaker 2: never been used. They shopped it and shopped and shopped it,
Speaker 2: and like, I'm sure they were doing this on campaign
Speaker 2: side as well. I was on the superpackside. We were
Speaker 2: killing it over and over and over again. And then
Speaker 2: a week before election day, the Associated Press runs the
Speaker 2: story with glaring factual errors in it, like glaring factual errors,
Speaker 2: but they just run the story and like, we were,
Speaker 2: you know, we were prepared. We retaliated, We took it down.
Speaker 2: We found the guy who built the initial database infrastructure
Speaker 2: for adult friend Finder, and he was just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: iPhones didn't exist in two thousand and sixty EIGHTIO. It's like,
Speaker 2: this isn't Jeoe located. This is just a lat long
Speaker 2: lookup table, which we could tell and we sort of
Speaker 2: had that ready to go, but we needed an authority
Speaker 2: to rebut the AP story because the AP had run
Speaker 2: this thing and put it in print, which was insane. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 2: all this is a long witted way of saying, like,
Speaker 2: there's some stuff that's just going to happen now if.
Speaker 1: You're not, it's not as in depth, especially for local office,
Speaker 1: as you would think. I think that right now, that's
Speaker 1: mostly a movie version of what running for office like
Speaker 1: that is.
Speaker 2: Now, if you are addicted to drugs, if you have
Speaker 2: a gambling habit and like eighteen extra marital relationships going on,
Speaker 2: or really any extramarical relationships going on, first of all,
Speaker 2: you have don't have the time to run for office.
Speaker 2: You are already over committed. But like, just don't don't.
Speaker 2: All right, this is not the place to work your
Speaker 2: shit out. Okay, It's just not like America will be fine.
Speaker 2: We don't need you in this capacity.
Speaker 1: Some men would rather run for office than get therapy
Speaker 1: any such cases. Okay, well, it's three more questions really quick,
Speaker 1: because I know it's been a while. So first, how
Speaker 1: much better is internal polling compared to public polling? And
Speaker 1: do the cam pagns know a lot more than the
Speaker 1: news organizations? So I will say this one. It's not
Speaker 1: about because a lot of people do public polls also
Speaker 1: do internal polls. It is not a matter of necessarily
Speaker 1: that they know more. It's kind of what kind of
Speaker 1: polls are they doing. Is it a mixture of text
Speaker 1: message and phone calls? Is a live call or is
Speaker 1: it just internet? It's really about the polling organization than
Speaker 1: necessarily who does it? Tony Fabrizio, who did President Trump's polls?
Speaker 1: Any did Jadvance's US Senate polls? He also has polls
Speaker 1: for the Wall Street Journal. They don't look very much
Speaker 1: different than each other. He's not trying to hoax the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal because he's given the good stuff over
Speaker 1: to President Trump. It's also what kind of questions that
Speaker 1: they ask. Campaigns will ask different types of questions, the
Speaker 1: less persuasion questions like hey, if I talk about this,
Speaker 1: or if my opponent is if no, my opponent believes this,
Speaker 1: how will sway the election? Journalists or news organizations are
Speaker 1: not going to ask those same type of questions. A
Speaker 1: different style of question that they're going to ask.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean news as a general proposition, all things
Speaker 2: being equal, private polling is better than media polling. Right.
Speaker 2: In general, it's better because the campaigns are going to
Speaker 2: spend more because it's going to guide strategic spending. They're
Speaker 2: also going to better because they're gonna better written.
Speaker 1: Because most of news organizations, why, they do not pay
Speaker 1: for any polling. I've learned that it's free. It's price
Speaker 1: the publicity for the pollstar. Some do, some do, some
Speaker 1: of most do not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the uh, you know, just media is interested in
Speaker 2: election anticipation polling. That's their goal. They want to know
Speaker 2: who's popular, who's unpopular, how happier people with the country,
Speaker 2: what's the ballot going to look like? Right, it's if
Speaker 2: the election were held today. That's what they care about.
Speaker 2: You know, when we're writing polls for a campaign, we're
Speaker 2: thinking about our ad budget and we're thinking about what
Speaker 2: segments the electorate do we need to work on, what
Speaker 2: messages work with those people, What are the aspects of
Speaker 2: us that we're not hitting on What are issues that
Speaker 2: are really important? Are we messaging on them effectively? Where
Speaker 2: are we getting bounced by our opponent? Et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And you know, especially in primaries where structural factors don't
Speaker 2: matter as much and strategy is more important. Sorry, that's
Speaker 2: just the truth. You know, you can you can start
Speaker 2: to see, like, okay, which parts of the party and
Speaker 2: ideological tendencies or demographic tendencies are moving with, which person
Speaker 2: who's really vulnerable, et cetera. You know, I'll use I'll
Speaker 2: use another example from from the Ohio Senate race. You
Speaker 2: know Frank Lrose, who I like. I've got a good
Speaker 2: relationship with Frank. This is not a personal thing, this
Speaker 2: is a professional thing. Frank was running against my client.
Speaker 2: And you know, Frank had traditionally been if you had
Speaker 2: done a poll on which parts of the party he
Speaker 2: was most popular with, it would have been more moderates
Speaker 2: versus very conservative voters. Ignizing that this was going to
Speaker 2: be a problem in or Republican primary, he undertook projects
Speaker 2: to bolst his conservative boat feet days. Totally normal candid behavior.
Speaker 2: That's not cynical, that's politics, Like it's the smart right
Speaker 2: thing to do, and it helped he drove up his
Speaker 2: his fave on fave with very conservative voters. It damaged
Speaker 2: him with his previous base of voters because they were like, Oh,
Speaker 2: this isn't the guy I thought it was. Maybe I'm
Speaker 2: not such a big fan of. And I saw this
Speaker 2: in the polling Over time, as I looked at where
Speaker 2: Frank was doing with tendencies, and I knew that I
Speaker 2: had some messaging that would really undercut his stance with
Speaker 2: social conservatives. I had, I had from the research and
Speaker 2: et cetera. I had put together all this stuff, and
Speaker 2: essentially what I found was that he was out on
Speaker 2: a limb that I could cut off behind it. And
Speaker 2: that's not me. You know, the ballot on any of
Speaker 2: those polls, and even the fave on faves, they weren't
Speaker 2: actually useful to me in and of themselves. It was
Speaker 2: only who's he most popular with, who's the least popular with?
Speaker 2: How did these issues resonate? Et cetera. And so it
Speaker 2: was about putting together the combination of, you know, if
Speaker 2: every campaign is a question time, territory and resource, right,
Speaker 2: I had a pretty good sense of what my resource
Speaker 2: was for money, I need to know what my ideological
Speaker 2: resource was because or what my ideological territory was. And
Speaker 2: then timing was just a matter of getting close to election.
Speaker 1: At what point do you tell your candidates, quote, homie,
Speaker 1: shit is bad. That was one of my questions. So
Speaker 1: it's a great question. It's a great question. So, like,
Speaker 1: first of all, you need to be bluntly honest with
Speaker 1: your with your clients, like in a very very normal,
Speaker 1: not a normal way that you would do like your friends.
Speaker 1: I had a client one time who I was being
Speaker 1: very polite to and I was like, you need to
Speaker 1: go before we take pictures to use everywhere. You need
Speaker 1: to get your teeth cleaned because your teeth are orange.
Speaker 1: Like I can't emphasize enough. You need like you need
Speaker 1: to be so blunt with them and be like, no,
Speaker 1: this is not this is not working at Like, you
Speaker 1: need to do something with yourself. When the race is
Speaker 1: coming down to the water, needed to sit there and
Speaker 1: say something. You know, if it's a matter of winning
Speaker 1: and losing. You also have to know your client. If
Speaker 1: your client is just illusional, and I've had a few
Speaker 1: of them and you're like, look, you're not living in
Speaker 1: the world that I'm living in So if you're having
Speaker 1: a good time, you're having a good time. But there
Speaker 1: are people that you sit there and say you know
Speaker 1: that you're like, you know it's a serious win or
Speaker 1: lost thing. You need to sit there and say you
Speaker 1: neither A invest more money or b stop investing money
Speaker 1: because there's no amount of money. Did you as this
Speaker 1: whole like you need to be out there to protect them,
Speaker 1: and that's crucial. The perfect example from history was like
Speaker 1: Susie Wilds in twenty sixteen telling Donald Trump, I think
Speaker 1: she needed like a million or ten million more dollar.
Speaker 1: I think it's ten million dollars to win Florida for him.
Speaker 1: She's like, I need ten million more dollars cash from
Speaker 1: you right now. And he screamed and he cursed. This
Speaker 1: is in the political on or those organizations. But Susie
Speaker 1: Wilde had a track record for winning this election. She
Speaker 1: knew she could do it. But it was bluntly honest,
Speaker 1: and he cut her the check and she she helped
Speaker 1: win Florida in twenty sixteen by less than a point.
Speaker 1: So it's a matter of really knowing knowing yourself, where
Speaker 1: the state of the races, and then being confident with
Speaker 1: your relationship with your client and unless they could fire
Speaker 1: you is the worst they could do. But you that's like,
Speaker 1: that is that's really where it is to understand where
Speaker 1: they are. And and uh, there are some delusional clients.
Speaker 1: A lot of them literally lives upins on nerves all
Speaker 1: the time. And generally the clients who always think they're
Speaker 1: going to lose what something, it's terrible, they are the
Speaker 1: easier ones to deal with than the ones who are
Speaker 1: confident they're always going to win.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess two bits of just tactical
Speaker 2: advice here. One is you should never have the it's
Speaker 2: bad talk when the client brings it to you. You
Speaker 2: need to set the terms of that, decide when it's
Speaker 2: going to happen, and you need to say, hey, we
Speaker 2: need to have conversation because if they bring it to you,
Speaker 2: they're just going to be spun up and like they
Speaker 2: won't trust you, they won't feel like they will be
Speaker 2: like wait, wait, you knew this and you didn't bring
Speaker 2: it to So so if you think the gay things are bad,
Speaker 2: like get it on the get it on the calendar,
Speaker 2: and like get it on the calendar fast, and you
Speaker 2: need to bring it to them, right, number one. Number two,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're going to lose by more than
Speaker 2: ten and the client doesn't know that, I mean, as
Speaker 2: long as they're not spending their own money, like you
Speaker 2: should be blunt with them. But it's not. You know,
Speaker 2: obviously you don't want to hurt the family, you don't
Speaker 2: want them to suffer embarrassment, et cetera. But you need
Speaker 2: to have strategic conversations around that sort of thing. If
Speaker 2: it's going to be a race that's going to be
Speaker 2: within ten points either way, then the answer is and
Speaker 2: then the answer is to you don't actually know if
Speaker 2: they're going to win or lose, right, you just don't
Speaker 2: be honest with yourself. And number two say to them, look,
Speaker 2: you could win this or you could lose this. It's
Speaker 2: close enough that no data that I provide you is
Speaker 2: going to change your behavior either way. So just act
Speaker 2: like you're down by five and go bleep bleep bl campaign.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, Last question, this is a good one.
Speaker 1: What is the craziest thing you've ever seen in your
Speaker 1: consulting career in a campaign?
Speaker 2: Found a dead body in Mississippi?
Speaker 1: Once you found a dead body in Mississippi, a dead
Speaker 1: body where would you what campaign was that?
Speaker 2: That was the body? It's a Sad Cochrane for a
Speaker 2: Missisippi centate campaign.
Speaker 1: The dead body was behind you, Thad Cochran from Misisippi.
Speaker 1: Where did you? Where did you? Where did you stumble
Speaker 1: on a dead body?
Speaker 2: It was in a It was in an exurban neighborhood.
Speaker 2: I want to say, I don't remember where it was
Speaker 2: Visa B. Jackson.
Speaker 1: Did they still sign the petition to get the count
Speaker 1: on the ballot.
Speaker 2: During the un so they were already on the ballot.
Speaker 2: I didn't. I called it in. There's a police reports.
Speaker 1: I did a campaign one time where it was really
Speaker 1: eccentric guy, very wealthy guy in New Jersey who told
Speaker 1: that one of the knocking on doors and kind of
Speaker 1: more rural New Jersey and they said, you know, he said,
Speaker 1: how can I earn your boat? And this old lady
Speaker 1: was talking at the door and she said, you get
Speaker 1: rid of the beehive, nest on behive on my roof.
Speaker 1: And he climbed the roof, was stung a thousand times
Speaker 1: and kicked off a beehive, and like I mean, was
Speaker 1: being stung repeatedly. I've done a race in Ohio where
Speaker 1: a man opened his trunk to put palm cottnap punk
Speaker 1: cars door signs in it, and it was there was
Speaker 1: a hamsters. It was not ferrous, it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was Gerbils. It was gerbils. There were Gerbils in
Speaker 1: the trunk of his car. And I said there, I said, sorry,
Speaker 1: you have gerbils in your car, so oh you should
Speaker 1: see my garage. They were all over the place as
Speaker 1: if that was like the absolute normal response. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've my favorite Luke Thompson story was one time you
Speaker 1: did a camp. You were at it, you were in
Speaker 1: West Virginia, western Maryland and doing a campaign, and you
Speaker 1: said you were working on the you're working in the
Speaker 1: door and someone started saying a conspiracy theory to you,
Speaker 1: and then a second person came with an even crazier
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory where the first conspiracy theory said, this is
Speaker 1: too much. Was this guy's nuts?
Speaker 2: You know. It was in a polling place I had
Speaker 2: I'd had somebody who'd gone into details about like and
Speaker 2: I mean details about some chem trail stuff to me,
Speaker 2: I mean details, and then somebody else came by and
Speaker 2: unloaded like a whole other thing, and the kem trails
Speaker 2: guy looked at me and I'm like, that guy's out
Speaker 2: of here. Man, I don't know. I I once I
Speaker 2: had a guy answer, uh, answer the door, shirtless but
Speaker 2: packing heat and his pet rooster ran out and tried
Speaker 2: to get my rental. That happened, and I have a
Speaker 2: I have a toy rooster that the kids work on.
Speaker 2: That campaign got me to commemorate that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, answer the door naked is actually startling.
Speaker 2: You see some wild ship. Like the number of people
Speaker 2: who sit in their chairs shirtless, eating cereal out of
Speaker 2: the box and just migrate directly to the door in
Speaker 2: that state of affairs, It's like very high.
Speaker 1: Luke, thank you so much for being on this podcast.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Where can people go to find
Speaker 1: your stuff that they want to see you on? Your
Speaker 1: Twitter is really funny. It's a lot about Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess lt Tompso on Twitter, No end
Speaker 2: at the end is the best place to go, Ryan, Ryan,
Speaker 2: you just go throw a retweet on there.
Speaker 1: And then I want to do it.
Speaker 2: To do it for sure, I've probably toned it down
Speaker 2: a little bit as I've gotten older, But you know,
Speaker 2: there's a few bangers out there.
Speaker 1: This saucy Yeah all right, Luke, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. Yeah, thank you everyone for listening.
Speaker 1: We will be back next week. Please like and subscribe
Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get to
Speaker 1: your podcasts.