The jon kiper show

Jon: What's happening? My name is Jon Kiper. Welcome to the Jon Kiper Show. I'm here with my guest, Pizza Cat Boots, and our extra guest, extra special guest, Pizza Cat. 

Emily: He never comes up here. 

Jon: He's never been on the show. Oh, welcome, Pizza Cat. 

Emily: He's the baby. 

Jon: He's the baby of the family. 

Emily: Oh, 

Jon: So we're gonna give you a little update about the campaign so far, where we're at, how things have been going, and Emily's gonna do it through the, artful and therapeutic lens of a professional mental health counselor. 

Emily: Wow. 

Jon: Because that's the only way to do politics right now is with a smart and effective therapist by your side, right? Yeah. 

Emily: You gotta be cool about things. 

Jon: Yeah, sure do. So campaign's been going well. We've got a lot more volunteers than we had last time. We obviously have more name recognition than we had in 2024. we've been making pretty decent donations. not getting millions of dollars yet, but we've been having a trickle in of donations. And we're actually very surprised about a donation we got last week. And I've got to say something to all the donors. Out there, at least half of the donors, or some portion of the donors, I was wrong about y'all. So I had this assumption in my head that anyone that was gonna give me any large amount of money, like over, a thousand dollars, which no one's ever given us over a thousand dollars, I assume that they would want something from me. they would be pushing an agenda, or it'd be like a political action committee, and they'd want me to support like whatever their, thing was, environmental or gun control or whatever. And, Lo and behold, I was totally wrong. There is someone out there and they gave us, $10,000. This is a billionaire who didn't ask to talk to us, didn't ask us for anything, just wrote us a check or I guess two checks on our ActBlue. And so this was crazy. we were freaking out about money, totally freaking out. And like I said, we're getting some money coming in, but it was such small numbers. and part of the thing with the money too, is it's not just. The, the fact that you need money to run a campaign, obviously. It's also the fact that your fundraising is public. We have to publicize these numbers every couple of months or whatever the filing period is, and then people know. So if someone goes, oh, that guy's only raised five grand, or he's only raised 10 grand, or whatever the number is, they just frequently, will not take you seriously as a candidate. So we've been just doing everything we can. And the other thing that you want is if you can't get, a million dollars, what you want is like a thousand. Or 10,000 donations at $5, like small dollar donations, but a bunch of them looks good too. So if you raise a hundred thousand dollars and that's all you had, but it was all $5 donations, it means you have a lot of committed people. So one interesting fact, Marjorie Taylor Greene is the Congress person that receives the most in small dollar donations out of everyone in Congress. She gets the most, and it's because the people. That, support her are, lower income, and, so that's where her money comes from. So anyway, it's just funny. I had this thought in my head about how we, what we would have to do to get money from billionaires. I was wrong. There's benevolent billionaires out there willing to give a campaign like mine $10,000. And if they're willing to give me $10,000, I would assume that there's probably other people out there in the same category that aren't looking to control the campaign. They just want to be supportive and I want to thank that. that person out there, we're trying to meet up with them to publicly make a statement and obviously it'll be public, but, we're waiting until that day to like really say who this billionaire is, 'cause it's just such a funny relationship thing that we never thought would happen. So here we're, 

Emily: and that says a lot too about your campaign, 'cause this person saw something in you and doesn't even know you and you don't even know. That person. 

Jon: yeah, it's, pretty cool. So now it's funny 'cause I'm still making the calls, doing this call time, which if you didn't know, politicians nowadays spend literally 20, 30, 40 hours a week just calling donors, and most of that call time is spent getting voicemails. you're just leaving voicemails and you're just trying to hope that someone will pick up, that you'll be able to ask someone for money. And a lot of the people that I've been talking to are New Hampshire residents, and most of 'em say, who are you run against? And I say, nobody. And as of yet, and they say, okay, call me when, you know who you're running against. Which is a funny thing. Basically they're saying, if it's one of my friends or someone that I'm, that I know, then I'll have to donate to them, which is part of the game. And, that's why it's hard for an outsider like me, because I don't have 10 years of friends who are used to donating. And my friends, have donate, but they're not used to writing checks for a thousand dollars for a campaign. It's just not a normal thing. 

Emily: And that's why last time you were really heavy on, hey, if you can give recurring donations. Yeah. Even $2. 

Jon: Yeah. 

Emily: in doing the math, we, I feel like in one of our first podcasts we were talking about if everyone who voted for you gave 

Jon: yeah, 10,000 people. Yeah. 

Emily: just gave a dollar or 

Jon: $5 

Emily: or five 

Jon: and or 20. And the recurring donations are good 'cause if you give us $5 every month, then it's easier for us to budget for the rest. Of the campaign year, which is about, we're about a year out, or at least we will be in, in about a week or so. so that's how finances are going. Other than that, we really are just working on finding more volunteers, and if you're looking to volunteer, go to our website, vochybrid.org, shoot us an email. campaign manager Oscar will connect with you and figure out how you can help us. We have a lot of great people helping us with graphic design, our website, and outreach. But the big thing that we're gonna need is we're gonna need a team captain. In each region, each county of the state, who is gonna help with our ground game come June of 2026, when we're really gonna start hitting the, streets, knocking doors, text messages, the whole thing. So if you're interested in that, check out our website, voteky.org. and that's, that's really what campaigning is. We are, we do, we reach out for money and we're meeting up with town and county groups all over the state. and that's tricky too because there's literally hundreds of these little town Democratic committees. Sometimes the person who's on the website for the contact has switched 'cause they changed and somebody moved. Trying to track them down. That's what keeps us pretty busy. and aside from all the social media, making these posts, making these, podcasts, it really can keep us busy. now I want to talk about a funny thing that happened. We went up to Hopton. It was Hop, King Hopton, and Bo Dems. At the Gould Hill, cider house, which, how, what did you think? 

Emily: It was adorable. It was so cute. It was such a pretty view. We enjoyed our drive a lot. 

Jon: Very pretty view. it was a great drive, beautiful area of the state. great time to be driving too. the leaves are still popping. 

Emily: Delicious cider too. The 

Jon: cider they had is really good. 

Emily: Cider is so good. 

Jon: but it was funny because 

Emily: we show up, 

Jon: we showed up and, first of all, there was a woman named Lisa Boudreaux. Is that her name? 

Emily: I don't remember her last name. I 

Jon: think it's Boudreau. I'm probably pronouncing it wrong. I'm sorry, Lisa, if you see this. but Lisa had been someone that we had heard was running for governor before the convention, and then we heard that she wasn't running for governor and she did not speak at the convention. And then she was at this event and she is apparently running for governor. It was 

Emily: exploratory, I 

Jon: believe. So she's running, she's an exploratory committee, which just means that she's in the pre stages. She hasn't started actually. Running. It's a political jargon term, and it just means that there's actually limits, I think, to how much money you can spend. I don't know, but it's something people do before they run for governor if they're not sure if they wanna run. I didn't do that because I had all these signs in my attic. I was gonna run one way or the other. It did not really matter to me. so that was not really something that we did, but it was something that she was doing. And But before she spoke, we had a blast from the past when, who shows up but Cindy Warmington, who, really was the motivation for me running in 2024, 

Emily: absolutely was the biggest. 

Jon: She was really lit the, fuse that got me to, to go off and run for governor, because if you don't know this, and it's important that you probably know this part of my lore, is that. I was motivated to run for governor in the first place because Cindy Warmington announced that she was running, and I found out that she had been a lobbyist for Purdue Pharma and had been paid by Purdue Pharma to promote OxyContin, the opioid drug, which devastated communities in New Hampshire. And I thought. this is absolutely in 2023. I thought this is a ridiculous person to have as a Democratic nominee, aren't we? The candidate or the party that's of the people and not the big pharmaceutical lobbyists, 

Emily: and there's no chance that she'd win against Kelly Ayotte. That doesn't make any sense. 

Jon: Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. if you think about it from the independent voter's perspective, you've got Kelly Ayotte, who's a Republican, lobbyist, and Cindy Warmington, who's a Democrat. Lobbyists. They're both lobbyists, but Kelly Ayotte works for Blackstone. And if you're an independent, you probably don't even know what Blackstone is. if, but if you hear the words Purdue Pharma and OxyContin and, Cindy Warmington, you almost definitely know what that is from. And this is because there's a number of, TV movies on Netflix and stuff about Purdue Pharma and how they really poisoned New Hampshire. It was intentional, and they used people like, Cindy Warmington to spread that message. It motivated me because it made me realize how out of touch the Democrats were that this would be their nominee. And now it's important to know, Cindy Warmington's husband is on the leadership committee for the New Hampshire Democratic Party. She works for Shaheen Gordon, which is Billy Shaheen's law firm, which is Jeanne Shaheen's husband. So it's all really interconnected, the legal world and the Democratic Party of New Hampshire 

Emily: and where the money is from the Democratic Party, 

Jon: and they have a lot of money. this is, this woman, Cindy Warmington, gave a million dollars of her own money. Into her campaign to run for governor. Like, how can I compete with someone who can put a million dollars in their own money? And not only that, but frustratingly, at one point she, this cracked me up. Okay? She got up there, she's given her spiel, and I heard her give her spiel a million times 'cause we were on the same, circuit, we're at the same events. And she said, People in New Hampshire don't have more money to, pay taxes. I started cracking up, 'cause I was like, no, Poor people in middle class don't have any money. You and your friends who all work for law firms have got plenty of money to pay more taxes. And to just even prove that point. If someone has a million dollars to dump into their own primary campaign for governor, they probably should be paying more taxes, 

Emily: and she is the 1% that the majority of Democrats, poor Democrats, fight against. 

Jon: Yeah. 

Emily: she is the billionaire. And 

Jon: she's definitely not a billionaire, but yeah, she's in perspective. Do you. 

Emily: Do you know that? 

Jon: I'm sure she's not a billionaire. Okay. I know that she's not a billionaire, and to be fair, the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is actually a ton of money. So I don't want to conflate the two. it's, a different, it's apples and oranges, but still massive wealth. she could easily buy up a lot of, support in the campaign and It's just a little bit frustrating. And so what she said was that she hadn't decided that she was gonna run again, but that a lot of people were asking her to, and that someone had invited her to this event because they want her to run for governor. And it's just funny because, just to remind you, if you don't remember, I started out running as an independent, and the reason I was running as an independent was because I thought that I had a better chance of winning. Because the Democrats are polling at 30% right now. It might have gone up a little bit, but they're polling lower than Donald Trump, right? And the reason I think that the Democrats are not polling that well. It's because the candidates that they pick are so similar to the Republicans. They need to draw a distinction. You have to be a different party. The Democrats functionally have to present a different image, a different message than the Republicans. But if they have wealthy people that are, for instance, lobbyists as their candidates, and the Republicans have wealthy people that are lobbyists, on the one side, you've got the Republican candidates saying, "Hey, I'm here to help the rich people and help corporations, and hopefully the money will trickle down to the poor." Now, we know that doesn't happen, but at least. They're being honest, whereas you have the Republican, the Democrats saying, "I'm rich, my friends are rich, I'm gonna help poor people," and then it never happens. And this is what people don't like about the Democrats. Is at least the Republicans are honest. they say they're gonna screw you, and then they do. The Democrats say they're gonna help you, and then they don't. And I don't see how a cant, Cindy Warmington is going to offer any difference from. Kelly Ott to the average voter, and it's, and just the lobbies for Purdue Pharma thing is gonna sink her again. There's no world in which she gets out from under that. I think she might think that the, it's different somehow, but I don't see how it would be.

Emily: then, John, what would you do if she ran?

Jon: we'll see. we, we got all options on the table for sure. there's, many things that we could do. one of the things that Democrats have gotta realize is. There's only really ever been two parties in the United States, right? Two political parties, but it's not always been the Democrats and the Republicans. What has happened is multiple times in the history of this country, one of the fa, the parties has become functionally, irrelevant and has been replaced by another party. And frankly, this is why I didn't wanna run as an independent, because this is what would've happened. Okay? I can tell you right now what would've happened. One of two things. I would've run as an independent and I would've offered the people a real difference. They would've had Republican and then Democrat, which is Republican Light, and then John Kuer, who is the man of the working class. Okay? Now, maybe I wouldn't have won. Maybe I only got 20% of the vote, but in a three way race, I would only need 34% of the. So let's say in 2026, I got 25. In 20, maybe 20, 28, I get, I get 30%. And by 2030 I get 35% and I win. And then what would happen to the Democratic Party? It would slowly die. It's dying right now. And I said this when I was running as an independent. I said, the Democratic Party's dying. Now in my head, I thought, I don't want to kill the Democratic Party right now. I don't want the Democratic Party to die right now because frankly, they're the only ones with the infrastructure to fight Donald Trump. And I had thought, perhaps naively, that the Democrats would realize this. Okay. And realize, hey, we have this bigger problem going on. Donald Trump and this authoritarianism is trying to destroy our country. We need to team up, corporate Democrats, conservative Democrats, centrist Democrats, socialist Democrats, progressives. We all need to be on the same team and be focused on this one issue. And frankly. I don't know if they're there yet. I don't know if they quite understand that we need to be on the same team to, to win this 2026 election and to push back against Trump, writ large. I don't know. What do you think? Do you have any thoughts on that? So this is and one of the things, it was funny, so I said to, Emily the other day, one of the ways that I defined my last campaign was holding the Democrats accountable for their actions because it seems like. 

Emily: Whoa. Oh, 

Jon: the voters are holding them accountable by not voting for them, but they're not holding the leadership accountable for those failures, and they're not replacing the leadership. And, Emily said an interesting thing. I said, I, feel like I'm in this role to, hold the Democrats accountable because it just seems like somebody needs to hold the leadership accountable and they don't wanna be held accountable. And they, frankly, get very upset when anyone tries to hold them accountable for their failures. and 

Emily: then, you can't, really hold them accountable if you wanna be part of them. 

Jon: This is a tricky part. How do I do that? 

Emily: you are, you have a knack of wanting to rustle, like ruffle feathers. And I think that's makes you electable for a lot of people. But I, yeah, I think that's like a big piece of trying to find the boundary of changing things, making change without being alienated from the party that you're supposed to be a part of. 

Jon: Yeah. 

Emily: And so it sounds like a lot of the, what I'm learning as someone that's not political, being a part of the Democratic Party just through you, is that a lot of them are. Elite. And a lot of them are, I am timid to say, a little narcissistic. Narcissistic. they have a hard time with, hearing any shift like change. Or anything that they're doing wrong or anything that they could do to change to be better for their people. Yeah. and they, seem really rigid in that, almost like they're, it's attached to their own ego. 

Jon: Yeah. 

Emily: Just like a lot of, rich people that it seems in general that's like how. Some rich people seem, 

Jon: yeah. it's the thing that I find odd is that they don't seem to understand that a political party needs to win elections. And that if the goal is no longer to win elections, like if it's to raise money and to reward, loyalty and reward people who have, waited their turn. But it doesn't matter whether or not they win an election. What is it now? At a certain point, it's just a club. It's a politically minded club that advocates for issues but is not there to win elections. 

Emily: and that's a simple equation. It's if they, if, a group of people aren't picking the best candidate to win the election and they're, but they're choosing candidates that will bring their party money. Then what are they doing? 

Jon: then, and then where's the focus? And this is, something that it occurred to me recently, was that the, pyramid scheme that is the Democratic National Committee or the New Hampshire Democratic Party requires rich candidates who are have rich friends to donate to events. And it's so funny 'cause I've been saying this for a, little while now, and I turned on, I turned on Social Media Day and Chris Hayes of MSNBC said the exact same thing. And I, it blew my mind that I, was on, was right about this, 'cause it was just something I had a hunch about. Somebody else had told me this, but I didn't know that it was like common in the political vernacular that people realized that this is what they're doing. recently, Graham Plattner. It has had some troubles in, in Maine, and it's interesting 'cause I made a, video on TikTok. It did really well. Just basically saying that the party wants wealthy people and people that are politically connected, like Janet Mills, who have rich friends and now have rich connections to the party, to drive in, to bring in the donations. And that's really what it's all about. 

Emily: and it's hard to see the evidence of that, This is my own opinion, my own observation. But at the convention, there was this funny moment with the speakers where, at the beginning, they pulled, straws from a cup or something for when it comes to the order of the speakers. I felt like that. It was hard for me to believe that, because all the speakers at the beginning were the rich ones, the ones with a lot of money. It felt 

Jon: was it 

Emily: Pappa spoke first? Good 

Jon: Land spoke. Oh no, sorry. So that, so the reason Paps and Good Land got to speak first is because they're already elected. Do you know what I mean? So this is like the incumbency bias that they'll talk about. So 

Emily: maybe, so 

Jon: they have a bias because they're already elected to CD one and CD two. When it comes to these conventions, they're put in a different spot, even though they're running for reelection against other people. 

Emily: So then where, was it in the lineup that our leader of the Democratic Party came forward and said, that's it, that's the end of our show? So before you spoke, before any of the people I like spoke, 

Jon: what she's talking about is that during the convention. There was basically two parts of it. One part where they have everyone that's on the board of the NHDP, on the stage, and they're talking about what they've done for the year, what they're gonna do, and some of the people who already hold office give speeches like Pappas, Maggie Hassan, and Jeanne Shaheen, all that. And after that segment, when there was 12 people waiting to give speeches that I'd worked a lot of time on, for some reason, Ray Buckley, who's the chair, got up on the microphone and said, okay, the convention's over, and two thirds of the people just left. Also, it was the day of the No Kings rally, which is an unfortunate day to plan the event. But I think that was probably done a while ago. And so as a result, like we're giving these speeches to like a third of the crowd that were there, which was a little bit frustrating as you could probably imagine. 

Emily: and why would someone do that? Was that related to, hey, the rally's over for the people that are. 

Jon: The people that matter. 

Emily: That's what it felt like. 

Jon: Hard to, I would agree with you. The one thing is that. Stephanie Shaheen had not spoken. She's definitely on, the insiders. See, Morris Sullivan is definitely considered like an insider, and they, were part of that group too. So if it had been after, they had spoken, maybe, I, I would believe you. Sure. But we learned, actually another thing at the convention, there's another woman named Mary Beth, and I can't remember her last name. I'm so bad with last names. who is also doing exploratory committee for, governor. She has been a state rep in Beau for a while. S was really hard to connect with, I would say. we were trying to talk with her. She 

Emily: wouldn't smile at me 

Jon: and she did not smile at Emily. So I don't know what that means for her campaign, but, interesting. We're gonna have these, at some point we're gonna have debates and that sort of thing. 

Emily: I'm not that sensitive, but I was just over and over. It was very funny. 

Jon: and the thing about there being a primary is I'm not opposed to that. We need a primary. In fact, it's good for me to get. more exposure to debate with people and to get on, hopefully, the WMUR debate stage where it'll be hopefully me and whoever the other candidates are. And that's really good. And more 

Emily: people should feel comfortable running for governor. 

Jon: Yeah, people should be. Yeah, that's fine. Totally fine. I, I'm not afraid of people get, I, think we should have primaries and that sort of thing, but the thing I do not want is someone who is the party insider with a bunch of money immediately getting all of the endorsements and funding and basically blocking out anyone who's not. In that little group of people that work for, she and Gordon. So that's where, it seems like the deck could be stacked against us, if you will. 

Emily: Sure. 

Jon: But it's just, it's a crazy time. 

Emily: Yeah. they're both interesting people. 

Jon: the crazy thing about it is we're sitting here, I give my spiel at these meetings: housing, property, taxes, education. Community first. At the same time, Donald Trump just tore down a third of the White House. He literally tore down the East Wing of the White House. And I'm sitting here and I'm thinking, property tax is a big concern, but I think there's some bigger concerns right now in the States. It's so 

Emily: hard to care about a, on the state level, like it's, feels so important to go to these events and talk about. Housing and Medicaid for all. a lot of people are talking about Medicaid and the issues in that and SNAP and, all these things that are affecting our communities really locally. But when we're looking at the news and seeing that Trump has no respect for the American public, 

Jon: he just doesn't seem to care about the country at all. He doesn't seem to care about anything but his ego. you think about if, for some reason, Joe Biden wanted to tear down the East Wing of the White House, first of all, there's a whole procedure that they're supposed to go through with historical buildings in DC, and they're supposed to, there's a committee and a commission. It's supposed to go through this whole process, which obviously didn't. But the other thing is that, if it was me and I really wanted to tear down the Eastway to the White House, I would probably have a group come in. Take it down and reassemble it somewhere else in DC as like a, as a library or a museum. it's a historical, it's a historical architecture. 

Emily: and if you go in there as a kiddo, for a tour, one of the first things you're ever taught is that the, the White House is. Ours. Yeah. The White House is like the people's house. The people's house, yeah. And it's like such a big piece of like history, of we, the American public, owns that house. And for the president to come in and identify it as home, which he doesn't like. He doesn't even do that. He lives in, he doesn't care. Lives freaking Florida. Yeah. it's just, it's not even about the White House, to be honest. Yeah. it's not about the White House. It's not about no one's gonna notice the East Wing is missing in real life. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, just the matter of fact that he can do whatever he wants and he's showing us all the ways. There's so many loopholes and you've, taught me like. All these different places that the Constitution was this, there's a lot of unspoken rules around the Constitution and around the rules of the president that we would've never known, because we've always had people that we might not agree with, but they were like, alright people. Yeah. For the most part. And so they wouldn't have done this. 

Jon: they just accepted a certain level of unspoken norms and a certain number of like unspoken agreements. Like you don't just tear down. Chunk of the White House. you don't just, take a private plane from Qatar as a gift for Air Force One, You don't, cancel SNAP benefits because of a, shutdown. it's just, it's absurd. And I think the issue that people need to realize is the symbolic destruction of the East Wing of the White House, to me, is. Is it represents the destruction of a part of America that we're never gonna get back, and people need to get over the idea that we're ever returning to a status quo of what existed in 2024. We're not. That America, frankly, is dead and cannot be resurrected. We cannot continue. Frankly, we are gonna need to completely, I think we're probably gonna need to rewrite the Constitution if we get through this. Because Donald Trump has proven that there's all of these pots, parts of the Constitution that he can just ignore. There's no enforcement mechanism. there is a. A person. I can't remember her name. I, dude, I'm so bad with names. 

Emily: we're working on it, but it's not working well. 

Jon: There's a woman who just won a special election. Her, dad died in Arizona. She won the, House seat and has been a month, and Mike Johnson refuses to swear her in. Okay. Now there's no rule that he... What? Yeah. You didn't know about this? 

Emily: No. 

Jon: Okay. Her name's Aida. I can't pronounce her last name. dude, 

Emily: what? 

Jon: So she won this election in 20, in, in a month ago, and Mike Johnson is simply refusing to, swear her in. So she doesn't have an office, she can't do 

Emily: anymore. Does he have to be the one to do it? 

Jon: Yes. 

Emily: This is garbage. 

Jon: And it's not written. There's no law that says when or how he has to do it. He's just, and that because it's shutdown, he's just saying, oh, we're not meeting. But here's the thing about this woman. Her vote would be the deciding vote that would give them enough votes to release the Epstein files. 

Emily: What, 

Jon: how did you not know this? Okay, I'm sorry. I 

Emily: don't, but it makes me wanna shut this off to learn about it. 

Jon: Yeah. her name's Aida. God, I, can't even try to pronounce the last name, but, yeah, so she basically won this special election. Like I said, her father died, he was in office. She won, and now she's just waiting around. And what if they never seated her? what if, we win in 2026 and a bunch of seats and Mike Johnson just says, we're not gonna give these people, I'm not gonna swear them in. Oh my God. and frankly, people gotta understand something. If, you don't, if you haven't been paying attention that long, the problems in the United States functionally in the beginning of our constitutional crisis began. When Mitch McConnell refused to let, the Senate vote on, Merrick Garland's, Supreme Court seat. For those of you that don't remember, Obama appointed Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court and it was like a couple months before the election, before the 20, 2016 election. Yeah. And. He, just refused to let them vote on it because he knew that Merrick Garland would get in, and they blocked the seat. 

Emily: Because like now we're in the spot. 

Jon: And, I, think it's just so important. I heard this. It's from a, a sci-fi book, this quote, and I can't remember the book. God, my memory's not good. I should probably write all this stuff down before we make the podcast. But, so the quote is, strong men make good times, and good times make weak men. And weak men make hard times, and hard times make strong men. And we are in the part, and I, mean you could say women too, but men and women, sure. Ugh, people. 

Emily: I need a little sound that I make every time. It's you're annoying. 

Jon: No. but the, idea is that. Good leaders make good times bring, soft and weak people. Weak people bring hard times and hard times bring good leaders. And we are at that part of the cycle where we had it too good for too long. We all got weak, we got politically lazy. And this is the outcome. it was so funny. I was going to the King's rally, the No King's rally after the convention and we're walking up and there's all these people leaving the rally. And they had signs, political signs. So I went up to everyone, I gave 'em one of my cards and I said, Hey, I'm Jon Kiper. I ran for governor in 2024. I'm running again. I'm the only one currently running against Kelly. None of them knew who I was. None of them, any idea, like I ran in the primary. They clearly weren't paying attention to the Democratic primary and I didn't put up TV ads. they were limited. the advertising that we did. So not a lot of name recognition, not a lot of name recognition apparently. but the frustrating thing was, I'm like, if you guys just paid attention more. Like all the time, we wouldn't be here protesting. you wouldn't have to do this if we'd been paying attention. And been realizing, how bad of a candidate Joe Biden would be, like, just 

Emily: and the protesting is beautiful and coming together for a goal is great, but what is, your, what does it mean and how are you gonna do to actually change it? Because the protesting is bringing people together and revving them up for action. What's the action? 

Jon: And action has got to be political change. and that's what's people gotta remember is protesting is great. It's helpful, it's one of the. Steps. It's one of the actions, but the final action has got to be working on political change, and that's why I invite you to come help me. Vote Hyper dot org. It's a great show. Thanks, Emily. 

Emily: Are we done? 

Jon: Yeah. 

Emily: Okay, bye.