Speaker 1: You're listening to comedy Central Governor elect Westmore, Are you
Speaker 1: using that yet? I mean, it's only even gonna be
Speaker 1: a firs short amount of time and then they'll be governor.
Speaker 1: Westernmar hasn't sunk in because you ran a campaign in
Speaker 1: a place where nobody expected a Democrat to be able
Speaker 1: to win the seats of governor and yet here you
Speaker 1: are and you've done it. What does it feel like?
Speaker 1: Let's start with them, you know, Um, it feels great
Speaker 1: because you're right. I mean, when we first started this race,
Speaker 1: we started a one percent uh you know, I say
Speaker 1: that I'm not voting was pulling higher than where I
Speaker 1: was pulling at it like people first, and um, but
Speaker 1: I think what we did was we continue to show
Speaker 1: people we're gonna meet people where they were, We're gonna
Speaker 1: go to every part of the state, talked to every
Speaker 1: part of the state. And that also meant even places
Speaker 1: where there weren't a lot of Democrats, and people would
Speaker 1: literally say to me, They're like, you're coming to a
Speaker 1: lot of places, not a lot of Democrats, And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of Marylanders and I plan on
Speaker 1: being their governor too. And I think the people show
Speaker 1: that that mattered. When you're able, when you're willing to
Speaker 1: put in the work and earn it, then the people respond.
Speaker 1: That is something that many people spoke about in your campaign.
Speaker 1: They it was very apparent, very early on that that
Speaker 1: you ran a different race to what many establishment politicians run.
Speaker 1: You you didn't pander to a base. You know, you
Speaker 1: spoke to the people of Maryland. You didn't make the
Speaker 1: race national unnecessarily. You spoke to the issues that were
Speaker 1: actually happening in your states. And I'd love to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit, a little bit about that. You know,
Speaker 1: I think i'll paraphrase you, and that you you said
Speaker 1: at one point you don't understand why patriotism is somehow
Speaker 1: like owned now by Republicans, when everyone can be a
Speaker 1: patriot and everyone can love their country and still want
Speaker 1: to fix it. Talk me through how you came to
Speaker 1: this understanding and whether or not serving in the military
Speaker 1: and your life that lit up to this contributor to
Speaker 1: thinking that way. Well, you know, it's it's it's will
Speaker 1: because I would hear people talk about this term of
Speaker 1: patriotism and I became so bothered by because I'm like,
Speaker 1: you haven't earned that right where where I I think
Speaker 1: about this, this constant where where my definition of patriotism
Speaker 1: was when I left my family and I put on
Speaker 1: the uniform this country and I served with the eighty
Speaker 1: second Airborne Division overseas in Afghanistan, and I was literally
Speaker 1: hearing people talk about patriots whose definition of patriotism was
Speaker 1: putting on a baseball cap and and storming the capital
Speaker 1: and trying to take down democracy. And so I think
Speaker 1: about it in my own life. I come from a
Speaker 1: family of patriots, because I come from a family of educators.
Speaker 1: I come from a family of people who have served
Speaker 1: as engineers and made this country with their hands I've
Speaker 1: served from. I come from a family of ministers. Right,
Speaker 1: these are patriots, and so and so I refused to
Speaker 1: be lectured, nor should anybody allow anybody to try to
Speaker 1: bastardize that term of patriotism, because we come from a
Speaker 1: place where I understand what it means to love your country,
Speaker 1: even when your country doesn't love it back, but you
Speaker 1: still love it. Wow. So for many people, they love
Speaker 1: the country. Many people love what they want the country
Speaker 1: to be. They have that ideas of what they want
Speaker 1: to do to fix it. You will actually now going
Speaker 1: to be in that position at a really interesting time
Speaker 1: in a Mary, Okay, at an interesting time, you know,
Speaker 1: for your state. Because you have a two billion dollar
Speaker 1: circlus you're in a position where you're going to be
Speaker 1: able to spend money to make ideas a reality, which
Speaker 1: is not often the case. Talk me through some of
Speaker 1: your plans, you know, for instance, reading through your life,
Speaker 1: there are many people who have read your book and
Speaker 1: they know the story. But for those who don't, you know,
Speaker 1: your your grandmother left Cuba, you know, and moved to Jamaica,
Speaker 1: Your mom left Jamaica and came to the United States,
Speaker 1: and so you you have a family that is from
Speaker 1: many different places in the world, you know, and so
Speaker 1: and so. You know, it's informed how you see healthcare
Speaker 1: because of you know, how young you were when your
Speaker 1: father died. It's informed how you think about education, how
Speaker 1: you think about basic services. So let's let's start with
Speaker 1: you know, one of the more basic ideas, losing your
Speaker 1: father at such a young age because he couldn't get
Speaker 1: the health care he needed, means you are now in
Speaker 1: a position to change that. What are you planning to
Speaker 1: change for the people in your states who may be
Speaker 1: in that same position. You know, I think about where
Speaker 1: everything that I am and everything we ran on has
Speaker 1: been influenced by my life right where my life has
Speaker 1: been consistently the consequences of broken policies and how it
Speaker 1: leaves people, how it leaves people behind. So when we
Speaker 1: talk about leave no one behind, which I learned in
Speaker 1: the military when I was seventeen years old, leave no
Speaker 1: one behind is not just a mantra, that is a
Speaker 1: value statement. And so my earliest memories were watching my
Speaker 1: father die in front of me when I was three
Speaker 1: years old because he didn't get the healthcare that he needed.
Speaker 1: That one of my earliest memories was when I was
Speaker 1: eleven years old when I felt handcuffs my wrists because
Speaker 1: I came up in a community that was over policed
Speaker 1: and we knew it that my mother was for I
Speaker 1: was fourteen years old when my mother got her first
Speaker 1: job that gave her benefits. And by the way, however,
Speaker 1: this is a woman who went on to earn a
Speaker 1: master's degree. So when we're having conversations, so when we're
Speaker 1: having conversations about about inequitable pay between men and women,
Speaker 1: or in equable pay between people of color and non
Speaker 1: this is not an economic exercise. To me, I don't
Speaker 1: need a white paper to explain this. I've seen this.
Speaker 1: And so when we say that our my entire platform,
Speaker 1: that what we're gonna do is build pathways for work, wages,
Speaker 1: and wealth for all Marylanders, we mean that when we
Speaker 1: talk about work, it means having an education system that's
Speaker 1: teaching our students how not just to be employees, but
Speaker 1: how to be employers. When you're talking about when you're
Speaker 1: talking about wages, it means making sure that people getting
Speaker 1: are getting paid a fair wage, because gone should be
Speaker 1: the days when we have people who are working jobs
Speaker 1: and in some cases multiple jobs, and still living at
Speaker 1: or below a poverty line. And then making sure we're
Speaker 1: focusing on wealth and that's simply the idea that you
Speaker 1: should own more than you owe, and that means doing
Speaker 1: things like being able to address unfair appraisal values and
Speaker 1: historically red line neighborhoods because housing is one of the
Speaker 1: greatest ways to generate wealth, and unfair appraisal vius has
Speaker 1: been one of the greatest wealth thefts that we have
Speaker 1: seen in our society, and it means getting a chance
Speaker 1: for people to have a sense of ownership, increasing liquidity
Speaker 1: to our small businesses, our minority owned businesses, women owned businesses,
Speaker 1: really creating a platform and a pathway for people to
Speaker 1: passing onto your children besides debt. So this is about work, wages,
Speaker 1: and wealth. It's it's a it's a toll task. You know,
Speaker 1: you seem like you're up for the job. You you're
Speaker 1: really motivated and you know what you want to do
Speaker 1: about it. Let's talk a little bit about you know,
Speaker 1: being handcuffed when you are eleven years old. It means
Speaker 1: that you have a view of the quote unquote justice
Speaker 1: system that is particularly unjust. You can see how it
Speaker 1: can go wrong so fast. However, in America, I've noticed
Speaker 1: a really interesting trend whereby it is almost impossible to
Speaker 1: criticize constructively a police force without being labeled as being
Speaker 1: anti police, you know, and then people say, you're not
Speaker 1: your anti law and order, you don't want anything to happen,
Speaker 1: when ironically many police men and women will complain about
Speaker 1: their unions and the jobs they do, et cetera. How
Speaker 1: do you find that balance then, between saying to the
Speaker 1: people of your states in Maryland, my job is to
Speaker 1: keep you safe. My job is to address what is
Speaker 1: happening on the ground that leads to crime. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, my job is to repair a police
Speaker 1: force that has lost trust in many communities and lost
Speaker 1: trusts you know, in the public in general, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think about with our race and our campaign.
Speaker 1: Our campaign was endorsed by both Progressive Maryland and the
Speaker 1: Police Union, and people say, how in the world did
Speaker 1: you pull that one off? Because basically it's the idea
Speaker 1: is this is that I was offering the same thing
Speaker 1: to both sides, a seat at the table, that if
Speaker 1: we are going to actually address these issues, we have
Speaker 1: to make sure that we're doing it collectively, and that
Speaker 1: we have to have a police force that is going
Speaker 1: to move with appropriate intensity and absolute integrity and full accountability.
Speaker 1: But we need to have the police force at the
Speaker 1: table to be able to make sure that happens. That
Speaker 1: we have to make sure that yes, we have to
Speaker 1: get violent offenders off of our streets and offer and
Speaker 1: out of our communities because no child, no child should
Speaker 1: have to compet the neighborhood they are afraid of, and
Speaker 1: we have to get these illegal guns out of our neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: But it's also but it also means but we also
Speaker 1: have to be very clear on this too. You're not
Speaker 1: going to rest your way out of this, and you're
Speaker 1: not going to militarize your way out of this. And
Speaker 1: I do think about it from the context where at
Speaker 1: eleven years old I felt handcuffed my risk. And if
Speaker 1: someone would have said to that eleven year old kid,
Speaker 1: you one day you could be the governor, I would
Speaker 1: have never believed them. So we've got to make sure
Speaker 1: we're investing our kids and when we say things like
Speaker 1: that that they actually believe. It's because if a kid
Speaker 1: thinks that you don't care, they don't care what you think.
Speaker 1: And so we've got to make sure we're coming up
Speaker 1: with pathways, true pathways for all of our children to
Speaker 1: understand that the future of our society, it isn't real
Speaker 1: unless they're a part of it. I would want to
Speaker 1: know for me as as somebody who's coming into politics.
Speaker 1: You know, you see so many politicians come in with
Speaker 1: with really key ideas of what they want to do
Speaker 1: and how they want to be, and very quickly they
Speaker 1: get slowed down in the sludge that is politics, whether
Speaker 1: it be you know, outside money, big you know organizations,
Speaker 1: d N C R N c whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: You see them slowing down and then they care more
Speaker 1: about being reelected than doing the job that they were
Speaker 1: elected to do. So, so I would start with this
Speaker 1: in the most honest way, what would you say is
Speaker 1: the big is challenged that you will have to face
Speaker 1: that people don't understand how challenging it is because oftentimes
Speaker 1: politicians we have to fix this, we have to fix it,
Speaker 1: we have to fix this. But I think we'll be
Speaker 1: interesting for policies to say this part here is going
Speaker 1: to be extremely difficult to fix because of X, Y,
Speaker 1: Z or Z. As you say here, like like genuinely,
Speaker 1: when you say, what do you say? What would you
Speaker 1: say is the toughest issue facing Maryland right now? Um?
Speaker 1: I still think it comes back to economics, because I
Speaker 1: still think people feel a very real sense of of
Speaker 1: an ease and economic uncertainty about where things are. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think that what we've got to do is,
Speaker 1: first of all, we have to let people know and
Speaker 1: and make sure they can believe that we can actually
Speaker 1: get this Donett, It's really important, right, and then also
Speaker 1: put the concrete plans in place about the things we're
Speaker 1: gonna to do to be able to address that, and
Speaker 1: it means things like when we say we're going to
Speaker 1: invest to get people back to work, it means we
Speaker 1: have to be able to do that in job reskilling
Speaker 1: and job retraining. Where you know, right now in the
Speaker 1: state of Maryland, we have two available jobs for every
Speaker 1: single person filing for unemployment. And people say, well, how
Speaker 1: does that make sense. It's because we have a dynamic
Speaker 1: economy in the state of Maryland. We're just not preparing
Speaker 1: people to be able to participate in that economy, right,
Speaker 1: So being able to put together the concrete practical plans
Speaker 1: in order to do that, it means being able to
Speaker 1: start earlier. And again, as a leader, I am data
Speaker 1: driven in heart led, right, I wear my heart on
Speaker 1: my sleeve and I acknowledge that. But data matters and
Speaker 1: I don't move without data. And I know this is
Speaker 1: that of brain development happens in a child by the
Speaker 1: time that child is five years old. So why we
Speaker 1: have children starting school of five makes absolutely no sense.
Speaker 1: We have to make sure we have PreK for every
Speaker 1: single child and meet in the state of Maryland. And
Speaker 1: so it really is saying we know what works. And
Speaker 1: again I have I've been a public servant for my
Speaker 1: entire life. I just haven't been a politician, right, but
Speaker 1: I've had a chance. I've led soldiers in combat, I
Speaker 1: let a successful small business helping first generation students go
Speaker 1: to and through college, and then I had a chance
Speaker 1: to lead one of the largest poverty fighting organizations in
Speaker 1: this country. I know what works. We know what works. Now.
Speaker 1: The question is can we derive the political will and
Speaker 1: the political and the political focus and intentionality to actually
Speaker 1: bring these things to scale? And that's where I think
Speaker 1: we had a unique value proposition that allowed the people
Speaker 1: of Maryland to say, let's go, let's go win this decade. Oh.
Speaker 1: If there's one thing even your worst protractors cannot argue
Speaker 1: is that you are not focused and you're not driven.
Speaker 1: You genuinely all thank you so much for joining me
Speaker 1: on the show. FeAs having you look to see what
Speaker 1: you do as the reality comedy like Westmore Everybody, What's
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