NC Democrats oppose stripping Gov. of appointment power... like they did (11-21-2024--Hour2)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] Let's talk a little bit about Senate Bill 382. No, I swear this is going to be interesting. Because... there is not just Hurricane Helene relief funding in this package, but there is also... a power grab. Yes. So, here's the story by McClatchy's Dawn Vaughn, where she says the draft version of...

[00:01:02] It circulated among some lawmakers and the press. Oh, thank goodness. Thank goodness! The media got some copies of this thing before it got formally introduced, because otherwise that would be the end of the democracy. So, the media got to look at some of this draft version, I guess. I was not one of them, no. Republicans wrote the bill in secret!

[00:01:30] Oh, it just gets worse. Oh, it just gets worse. It just gets worse and worse. No, it gets even worse. They released it to the public one hour before beginning debate in the House, and they put it forward in a form that could not be amended.

[00:01:46] Oh, sorry. Right. Okay. All right. So, the proposal included $227 million in Helene disaster relief, as well as a series of power shifts. That, among other things, would take control from the governor and attorney general and give it to the legislature and a different statewide elected official.

[00:02:11] So, uh, hello? Uh, okay. So, I'm not gonna go too far into the, the Helene funding aspect of it.

[00:02:25] It's got, you know, $227 million in Helene funding. Democrats are very, very mad. Media's mad. Uh, they're like, oh, they're trying to box in the Democrats.

[00:02:35] You know, getting them to vote against Helene funding because they oppose these other things in the bill.

[00:02:41] This is what's called sort of an omnibus bill, right? We all know this term now, omnibus, which means you just throw a whole bunch of unrelated crap into one piece of legislation.

[00:02:55] And then it provides all these different politicians, different incentives. And so, you put enough stuff in there that, like, if I'm an elected official and I have to vote on this thing and I look at all of this and I'm like, well, I like more of it than I don't like, so I'll vote for it.

[00:03:11] And then my opponent can pull stuff out that I voted for as part of the omnibus and they'll say, Pete Callender voted for this piece of legislation.

[00:03:23] When in fact, I voted for the omnibus because there were more things in it unrelated that I approved of, right?

[00:03:31] And the exact opposite works too. If I voted against it, my opponent would come out and find things that everybody loves.

[00:03:38] Pete Callender voted against apple pie in America, you know, whatever.

[00:03:43] So, that's why I don't like omnibus bills. I don't. I like clean bills. One issue. Get people on the record on the one issue.

[00:03:56] Now, does that mean that fewer pieces of legislation, fewer bills will get passed? Indeed it does.

[00:04:03] I see that as a feature and not a bug. I like government acting slowly. I do.

[00:04:11] When government acts quickly, it acts even more stupidly than it normally does.

[00:04:18] So, I would prefer it to be a slow, deliberative process.

[00:04:24] Take your time, run it through the committees, you know, produce a proposal, let people weigh in on it, hammer out the differences, and then come forward with a clean bill about one particular item.

[00:04:36] See, that's why they don't do it for immigration.

[00:04:38] Because if you actually were to propose very targeted reforms of the immigration system, then you would not be able to get, like, for example,

[00:04:51] most people in office want to find a way for the quote-unquote dreamers, the kids who got brought here to America through no fault of their own.

[00:05:03] There's, I would dare say, almost universal support for giving them some sort of a pathway to American citizenship because they've known no other thing.

[00:05:14] Now, you may not agree with that, but I suspect that that's probably a majority view in Congress.

[00:05:20] And that's why it's used as a political bargaining chip all the time, much like this Helene funding, right, this disaster relief funding.

[00:05:29] So, that's the big line item in this bill.

[00:05:33] We're going to release another quarter of a billion dollars, bringing the grand total that the state has allocated so far to more than $1 billion so far.

[00:05:43] And they're going to come back next month and do another round.

[00:05:47] So, this allegation that is coming from the Democrats and media, but I repeat myself, that the Republicans aren't somehow prioritizing Helene recovery, that is a lie.

[00:05:59] Okay?

[00:06:00] That is a lie.

[00:06:01] They have already approved more than a billion dollars in state funding.

[00:06:09] But, let's tack on some other stuff in here, too.

[00:06:12] We're going to throw a couple of things into this bill.

[00:06:15] And so, if the Democrats, as they did, they voted against it, and now Republicans will be able to accuse them of voting against hurricane disaster recovery funds, which they did.

[00:06:27] That's how this game is played.

[00:06:28] I don't like it any more than you.

[00:06:31] But that is the game.

[00:06:33] That is the way it is played.

[00:06:35] Democrats play this game, too.

[00:06:36] I mentioned the other day the Inflation Reduction Act.

[00:06:40] They did this same thing.

[00:06:42] They pass all sorts.

[00:06:43] You realize Obamacare is the reason why the student loan crisis is a crisis?

[00:06:51] That was tacked onto Obamacare.

[00:06:54] Democrats did that.

[00:06:56] And then they rammed the thing through in a reconciliation process that was never designed.

[00:07:01] The reconciliation approval process was never designed for this kind of a monstrous spending bill.

[00:07:09] So, anyway.

[00:07:11] There is a very, very long history of stripping power from the governor and other executive-level statewide officials once elected.

[00:07:25] In North Carolina, there's a very long history of this.

[00:07:28] Now, you would not know that if you were simply reading the current news reports because I guess, like, history didn't begin before 2011 in North Carolina.

[00:07:42] I, I, I, it's the only thing I can assume because it just seems like nobody seems to know, like, what the norm has been in this state.

[00:07:54] Luckily, I do.

[00:07:56] More, more precisely, John Hood does, and then he told me in the form of this editorial that he wrote at the Carolina Journal back in 2016.

[00:08:06] 2016.

[00:08:08] So, this actually should be on your radar.

[00:08:11] If you are a North Carolina political reporter, you should know this history because it's kind of important.

[00:08:19] So, in 2016, you'll recall, oh, there was a great hullabaloo over the legislature trying to strip power from Governor Roy Cooper, who had just beaten Pat McCrory.

[00:08:32] And the legislature came into session right before Cooper gets sworn in, and they, they changed some of his appointment powers.

[00:08:41] So, he can't hire thousands and thousands of people into the executive branch.

[00:08:47] And outrage ensued.

[00:08:50] But that wasn't even the most, that's not even the most egregious.

[00:08:57] This has occurred three different times, basically, in my lifetime in North Carolina.

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[00:10:07] So in 1972, a man by the name of Jim Holzhauser was elected governor of North Carolina.

[00:10:17] I believe he was the first Republican governor elected since a bunch of angry Democrats and the Klan staged a coup down in Wilmington,

[00:10:28] took control of the state government after Reconstruction, and never gave it back until 2010.

[00:10:33] They never ceded any of that power.

[00:10:35] So he was, I believe, the first Republican governor since the Civil War or since Reconstruction.

[00:10:41] And that was 1972.

[00:10:43] Then, 12 years later, another Republican governor, Jim Martin.

[00:10:51] He won in 1984.

[00:10:54] Then, another Republican in 1988, Lieutenant Governor Jim Gardner.

[00:11:02] Okay?

[00:11:04] So these three Republicans became like the first three Republicans elected to the governor or lieutenant governorships since Reconstruction.

[00:11:16] But the legislature, in all three of those instances, was always controlled by Democrats.

[00:11:24] And what they did was strip the governors and the lieutenant governor of their powers.

[00:11:32] That's what they did.

[00:11:35] John Hood wrote about this eight years ago when Governor Roy Cooper took office and the Republican legislature did some power stripping of their own against him.

[00:11:47] And people were outraged.

[00:11:51] John Hood was the biographer for former Governor Jim Martin.

[00:11:56] So he says, I'm most familiar with Martin's experience.

[00:12:00] Lawmakers, Democrats in the legislature, limited his ability to staff agencies, including the State Board of Elections.

[00:12:10] Interesting.

[00:12:11] That's going to become pretty important here as we discuss what the Republican legislature is doing now.

[00:12:18] Now, the Democrats, when they controlled the legislature, took the appointment power over the State Board of Elections away from the Republican governor, Jim Martin.

[00:12:32] Why would they do that?

[00:12:34] The State Board of Elections is a nonpartisan, right, impartial, objective outfit.

[00:12:40] They subjected other appointments to constraints or confirmation hearings and withdrew gubernatorial control over state construction and administrative hearings, among other actions.

[00:12:55] I mean, they did a lot of stripping.

[00:12:58] Ew.

[00:12:59] Okay.

[00:12:59] In each case, Republicans cried foul.

[00:13:02] Democrats insisted that they were simply carrying out North Carolina's longstanding preference for?

[00:13:10] Legislative supremacy.

[00:13:12] Legislative supremacy.

[00:13:12] Now, I know people get a little bit concerned anytime Democrats start talking about supremacy because of their history and all.

[00:13:18] But the idea here is that the state legislature has the most power because it is, theoretically, right, it is the body closest to the citizens.

[00:13:32] Because there are more lawmakers.

[00:13:34] I've talked about this example, the grocery store example, which is, are you more likely to run into the governor of your state whilst shopping at the grocery store?

[00:13:44] On your weekly journey to the Harris Teeter, are you more or less likely to run into my good friend Ray?

[00:13:53] Or are you more likely to run into your local state lawmaker, your House representative, your state senator?

[00:14:00] And it is obviously your local elected official, your House or senator, or, yeah, House representative or state senator.

[00:14:08] Because they are in smaller districts closer to you.

[00:14:13] And that's the idea behind legislative supremacy.

[00:14:16] That North Carolina, since the founding of the country, North Carolina, has taken a position of, we don't like kings.

[00:14:27] They've been very clear on this.

[00:14:29] They're not fans of powerful executive officers.

[00:14:34] That's why we have 10 council of state offices.

[00:14:37] It's to diffuse all of the different powers into different elected officials.

[00:14:43] So the governor isn't in charge of agriculture stuff.

[00:14:46] And he's not in charge of running, you know, the Labor Department or the Department of Public Instruction and stuff.

[00:14:54] Right?

[00:14:54] It's separated out among all of these different offices.

[00:14:58] Legislative supremacy.

[00:14:59] That's what Democrats said.

[00:15:01] That, though, those many years ago, but now that the goose is in the place of the gander or whatever, then now all of a sudden, everybody switch sides.

[00:15:14] Everybody flip their positions.

[00:15:15] We're going to take the opposite position.

[00:15:17] And now, oh, it's very bad.

[00:15:19] Very bad.

[00:15:20] The end of democracy.

[00:15:21] All right.

[00:15:22] Hey, real quick.

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[00:15:48] Again, that's Pete at the Pete calendar show dot com.

[00:15:52] Let me finish out this John Hood piece.

[00:15:54] This was at Carolina Journal dot com dating back to December of 2016.

[00:16:01] He pointed out also that Roy Cooper, who was coming in as governor at the time and was having some of his powers stripped by those dastardly Republicans,

[00:16:11] that Roy Cooper himself had proposed or enacted.

[00:16:17] Restrictions on governors of both parties when he was in the legislature.

[00:16:21] So he was a guardian of legislative supremacy when he was in the legislative body.

[00:16:28] Also.

[00:16:29] Hood concludes Democrats upset with the special session because they called a special session to do all of this stuff.

[00:16:38] Democrats who are upset with the special session Republicans called might have been more persuasive had they chosen a different rhetorical strategy.

[00:16:47] Every time they accused GOP lawmakers of unprecedented acts of contempt for democracy or of being sore losers and the like.

[00:16:58] All Republicans heard was hypocrisy.

[00:17:04] What happened in 2016 was different in detail, but not much in degree from what happened in the past.

[00:17:11] A better argument would have been, yeah, OK, we went too far when we were in power and, you know, it came back to bite us sometimes.

[00:17:19] So don't make the same mistake.

[00:17:22] I would not find that persuasive either, though, me personally, because I don't believe that any lessons were learned because with the left, it's just about the power.

[00:17:34] That's it.

[00:17:37] That's it.

[00:17:38] The this is why I long for consistent applications of standards.

[00:17:45] And that's why I frequently say the charge of hypocrisy carries no purchase any longer.

[00:17:50] Not in politics, at least hasn't for 20, 30 years.

[00:17:55] Didn't matter.

[00:17:57] This is why I didn't it didn't matter to me when people were like, oh, Donald Trump, he's so terrible.

[00:18:01] Look at the way he treats women and all this stuff.

[00:18:04] Yeah, Bill Clinton.

[00:18:06] Y'all didn't care about that.

[00:18:08] You told me that if he could do the job, then I didn't have to pay any attention to his personal peccadilloes.

[00:18:14] Right.

[00:18:14] None of that mattered.

[00:18:15] You guys still had you had him at your last convention for crying out loud.

[00:18:23] So he's still welcomed in all of the elite circles and parties and such.

[00:18:28] So, no, I don't believe you.

[00:18:30] And if you were to come to me and say, well, you know, we may have done these terrible things also, but we learned our lesson.

[00:18:37] I don't believe you.

[00:18:38] I don't believe you learned a lesson.

[00:18:39] I think that if presented with the opportunity to once again grab more power for yourselves to advance your left wing agenda, you will do so.

[00:18:49] And that's largely due to the fact that the media will run cover for you.

[00:18:53] You don't have to answer for this stuff.

[00:18:56] You never.

[00:18:57] It's the big D shield.

[00:18:58] That's why I call it that.

[00:18:59] You are protected.

[00:19:00] You're a Democrat.

[00:19:01] And so you get to just raise that little shield up.

[00:19:04] And it may be big.

[00:19:06] It's big.

[00:19:07] Well, I mean, I don't know.

[00:19:08] It's metaphorical.

[00:19:09] So it could be any size necessary to repel the incoming attack.

[00:19:12] And, you know, media like this goes to another thing that the media seem to be completely incapable of discerning Democrats political motivations for anything.

[00:19:25] Anything, whatever the Democrats say as their cover story.

[00:19:29] You know, we're doing it for the children.

[00:19:32] And that just gets reprinted.

[00:19:34] There's never any exploration as to whether or not that's true.

[00:19:38] It's a convenient cover story.

[00:19:40] It's a convenient argument to make.

[00:19:43] But is it actually true?

[00:19:46] Are there other motives at play?

[00:19:49] Now, reporters seem very capable of discerning political motivations for Republicans.

[00:19:54] Now, maybe it's an either or thing.

[00:19:56] Maybe when you go to journalism school, they give you this bargain.

[00:19:59] They're like, OK, we're going to teach you how to discern the political motivations.

[00:20:03] But you have to pick only one party.

[00:20:07] We're going to teach you how to discern the political motivations of either the Republicans or the Democrats.

[00:20:12] And then the journalism school kids are like, well, I'm a Democrat.

[00:20:15] So I already know my motivations and they're all pure.

[00:20:18] I just want to help people.

[00:20:19] So I want to find out how evil those Republicans are.

[00:20:22] Maybe they all pick Republicans and that's why they all have the same superpower.

[00:20:25] I don't know.

[00:20:28] So in this latest round now, Senate Bill 382, you got the incoming new Democrat governor, Josh Stein.

[00:20:36] And one of the things that the board, sorry, the Senate Bill 382 does that the lawmakers have now passed and sent over to Roy Cooper.

[00:20:45] And he will veto this, I am certain.

[00:20:47] And then the Senate and the House are going to try to override it before they lose their super majorities.

[00:20:54] And one of the things that they intend to do in the bill is to take the power to appoint the state board of elections away from the governor and give it to the state auditor.

[00:21:07] Is that a good idea?

[00:21:09] How about we start there?

[00:21:10] Is that a good idea?

[00:21:12] Well, Democrats seem to think it was a good idea when they stripped a Republican governor of that power.

[00:21:18] And then gave it back after the Republican was gone, gave it back to the governor.

[00:21:22] So.

[00:21:23] What's the benefit, right?

[00:21:25] If you take the politics, take the partisan hackery out of it.

[00:21:29] And I'm not saying that this is what Republicans have weighed.

[00:21:32] I'm just from me as a citizen, I'm looking at and saying, OK, is it better to be appointed by the governor or the state auditor?

[00:21:41] And I think I can make a decent case for the state auditor.

[00:21:47] It's what they do, right?

[00:21:49] They audit books.

[00:21:51] They pay attention to details.

[00:21:52] They they comb through the law, make sure that you're in compliance with stuff.

[00:21:56] They they're a bunch of rule followers over there.

[00:21:59] Right. Auditors.

[00:22:01] That's what they do.

[00:22:01] So if you're trying to run a tight, clean and properly administered system, then it does kind of make sense to be in the auditor's office.

[00:22:15] Does seem there does seem to be some value over there.

[00:22:18] But I know we can't we can't look at the idea on the merits because apparently we as a society and our political press corps is incapable of looking at a proposal on its merits.

[00:22:34] Is the policy a good policy?

[00:22:36] Because what is the case to be made for keeping it under the purview of the governor to have political appointments by the party in charge?

[00:22:46] What do you think that does?

[00:22:49] Why is the governor's office?

[00:22:51] The one that is most properly trained to provide the oversight of the state board of elections and to make these appointments?

[00:23:01] Why the governor's office versus any other office?

[00:23:04] You can make other arguments like, oh, Pete, it should be under the agriculture commissioner.

[00:23:09] Whatever you want to make those arguments.

[00:23:11] I'm open to hearing them.

[00:23:13] The board of elections right now is appointed by the governor who can give his party a three to majority, which Democrat Governor Roy Cooper has done.

[00:23:23] Right.

[00:23:23] Every governor has done this.

[00:23:25] Well, except for the Republicans when they stripped them of the power to do so.

[00:23:30] State lawmakers have tried to reform and change how the state board of elections is comprised.

[00:23:37] And Roy Cooper has sued them repeatedly to protect his power to appoint the state board of elections.

[00:23:46] I am quite certain we're going to hear from all the former governors.

[00:23:50] They're all going to come out probably and write a letter that says, hey, don't move it from the governor.

[00:23:55] Don't take away any of his power.

[00:23:57] That to me is an institutionalist argument, though.

[00:24:01] It's an argument that says we need to preserve the powers of the governor versus the legislature.

[00:24:07] But here's the thing.

[00:24:08] They're not moving it to the legislature.

[00:24:09] They're moving it to the auditor.

[00:24:14] So that's just an institutionalist argument.

[00:24:16] Just we need to protect the precious powers of the governor because governor.

[00:24:20] Like, that's it.

[00:24:21] OK, that's not that's not a persuasive argument to me.

[00:24:25] OK, let's go over and talk to Snake.

[00:24:27] I don't usually I don't usually talk to snakes, but here's one.

[00:24:30] Hello, Snake.

[00:24:31] Welcome to the program.

[00:24:33] Hey, Pete, you talk to me a lot.

[00:24:35] I know.

[00:24:37] I want to make the case in favor of the legislature instead of the state auditor or the governor,

[00:24:42] because the state auditor to me is somebody that nobody knows the name of.

[00:24:49] Nobody knows even what party they're from.

[00:24:51] And they haven't ordinarily been vetted because there's nobody really that interested in who it is.

[00:24:58] And I think I think these cases, as we've seen over the last 20, 30 years, have been, you know, ordinarily what the state board of election does is pretty darn boring.

[00:25:09] But but when it's not boring, it's like it's like landing the airplane on one engine.

[00:25:14] It's like really important.

[00:25:16] So I that's my that's my take.

[00:25:19] And I do think the governors are very, very horribly political about it.

[00:25:24] So I don't like it in the governor's office.

[00:25:27] Well, and so the state legislature has tried repeatedly to get more appointment power and they have been sued by the governor and they've lost.

[00:25:40] And so they can't get that power away from him.

[00:25:44] And so this is the way that they're trying to do it by moving it from him over to the auditor.

[00:25:49] And I suspect if there were to be a Republican governor elected, they'll probably move it back to him, you know.

[00:25:57] So baby steps.

[00:25:58] I got it.

[00:25:59] You know, we meet we need more Republican justices, I guess.

[00:26:02] Well, part of the issue.

[00:26:04] Yeah, I mean, I think part of the issue also is that I mean, you think about it.

[00:26:08] Pat McCrory's four year term is one term that was the only time since like the 80s that a Republican has been able to kind of get any kind of oversight or control and appointment power over the board of elections.

[00:26:23] And I'm not sure that that's enough, that that was enough time.

[00:26:27] And so if you're trying to clean up the election system and you're getting blocked at every step along the way from doing so, then this is sort of a drastic measure is to say, you know what?

[00:26:39] We're going to do what Democrats did.

[00:26:40] We're going to strip your appointment power, move it over to the auditor.

[00:26:43] Oh, and while it's over there, he's not only because they make the appointments based off of the recommendations that come from, I believe, that come through the the local either counties.

[00:26:53] I forget I forget how that process works, but the governor makes the appointments based on recommendations.

[00:26:59] So now it would be in the hands of the auditor and that auditor would be making the appointments probably a three to majority of Republicans.

[00:27:08] And then maybe they'd be able to go through and see why is this being run the way it's being run?

[00:27:14] Why is you know, why?

[00:27:15] Why do we have like five counties that were still counting, you know, 12 days after the election?

[00:27:22] Oh, you know what?

[00:27:24] With that context now, I'm I'm figuring out now that the auditor must have the Republican must have won that.

[00:27:30] Yes, correct.

[00:27:32] And if you want to just clean up the swamp, then I'm with you.

[00:27:36] Yeah, right.

[00:27:37] I think that's what's going on.

[00:27:38] And right.

[00:27:39] And, you know, Republicans can make this case, but they're going to I mean, they're getting dragged over it anyway.

[00:27:44] And I think a lot of times they just prefer not to engage in in a debate through the media because they don't get they don't really get a fair shot in expressing their why they're doing this stuff.

[00:27:58] And look, it is it is political.

[00:28:00] No doubt about it.

[00:28:02] I'm not naive.

[00:28:03] It's political.

[00:28:04] So but it's political when Cooper makes his appointments to.

[00:28:09] Oh, it's yeah.

[00:28:11] Yeah.

[00:28:11] No, it's it's it's always political.

[00:28:13] It's just, you know, what what can you do to make it less so?

[00:28:16] But, yeah, I'm it definitely needs cleaned up.

[00:28:18] And I'm I'm with you.

[00:28:19] I've I've seen it personally.

[00:28:21] That is a dirty, dirty place at the Board of Elections.

[00:28:24] Oh, so.

[00:28:25] Well, that's because they lost funding for the for the janitorial services contract.

[00:28:29] I think.

[00:28:30] No, I'm kidding.

[00:28:31] All right, Snake, I appreciate the call, man.

[00:28:33] Thank you.

[00:28:35] It's like the gerrymandering debate.

[00:28:38] Right.

[00:28:39] That, oh, North Carolina is supposed to have this many seats for Democrats because of the

[00:28:43] way the votes went and all this other stuff.

[00:28:45] But did you know that if you were to look at the map of the United States and look at

[00:28:50] the breakdown of all the votes that were cast and everything like that, that Republicans

[00:28:55] should have somewhere by the by the Democrats rationale in North Carolina.

[00:29:01] If you were to apply that to the United States at large, Republicans would have somewhere.

[00:29:07] I think the data I saw was like a 30 or 40 seat majority.

[00:29:11] Oh, no, it's different.

[00:29:13] No, no, no, no, no.

[00:29:14] We don't mean it for every place.

[00:29:16] We just mean it here.

[00:29:17] We want fair maps here.

[00:29:18] Oh, well, because, you know, New York just gerrymandered Republicans out of seats up there,

[00:29:23] giving themselves some extra seats up there.

[00:29:26] Oh, no, no, no.

[00:29:27] That's different.

[00:29:27] It's different when we do it.

[00:29:30] This is why I don't I don't believe any of these arguments.

[00:29:34] They're not coming from a place of good faith.

[00:29:36] They're not actually trying to figure out a way to solve a problem.

[00:29:40] They're trying to figure out a way to gain control.

[00:29:43] When Democrats say fair maps, they mean maps that benefit them.

[00:29:48] That's it.

[00:29:49] That's it.

[00:29:50] And here's the kicker on all of this.

[00:29:52] In about another, what, five years, six years, all of this is going to get blown up

[00:29:59] because California and New York have been losing population at such a rate,

[00:30:07] particularly California now.

[00:30:09] They're losing population at such a rate that they're going to lose congressional seats.

[00:30:16] They lost seats, I think, last time in the last census in 2020.

[00:30:20] They lost seats for the first time in their history.

[00:30:24] New York lost a seat.

[00:30:25] They're going to lose even more in 2030 with the next round of census.

[00:30:29] And by the way, there's now an acknowledgement that the census miscounted.

[00:30:35] They overcounted blue states, undercounted red states.

[00:30:39] So if you factor that in as well,

[00:30:42] if we can actually get a census that is counted accurately,

[00:30:49] Democrats are in some real, real trouble.

[00:30:52] So now I expect all of the appeals to principles and higher standards,

[00:30:58] which they did not adhere to when they had control.

[00:31:01] All right, that'll do it for this episode.

[00:31:03] Thank you so much for listening.

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[00:31:20] And don't break anything while I'm gone.