 But yeah, this is an interesting race here. So tell me what's going on because you won the Democratic Party primary You're going up against the Republican and all of my viewers like they know about you know These races and they bring them to my attention and this is no different So I had a viewer actually reach out to me and say hey, you've got I get Adam Christensen on the program Why haven't you done this and I didn't actually know about your race? So I feel really bad and I'm glad that I'm correcting that right now But what was the dynamic in your primary like how many people were competing like was it relatively open? Like how did you manage to win because what we're seeing this time in 2020 is that? Progressive candidates who are you know running on Medicare for all, you know a living wage all of this They're seeing a lot more success this time around then in 2018 Which was kind of our first run where we had you know one big victory with AOC and a couple of other Successes with Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tali, but this time it's completely different. I mean we have Marie Newman Jamal Bowman You now winning your primary car Eastman. I mean the list goes on So how did you do it and you know, what can you say to other candidates running in primaries in the next cycle? Yes, so ours is a little bit different a little bit special So I am 26 years old So I am the youngest congressional nominee in the country on top of that we started in January we started almost seven months after everybody else and We had no money. We had no name recognition We had basically nothing and we got a bunch of college kids that basically I mean one I went out and I started trying to get petitions and basically said hey This is what I want to run on I think this can work and I think people need this and One person joined and then another person joined and within a week We had about 10 and then within a couple months We had about 50 and it was one of those things where it almost started organically But the biggest thing that we did was number one We ran on principal and we were able to actually connect with people and so for us We knew that we were never going to against our opponents We had two opponents one is a very progressive guy that has run I think this was his third time running for Congress in a row The other guy had run previously as an independent And had neither of them had done well in a general previously against Ted Yoho, but they had name recognition and they had some money and so for us It was number one. We had to build a field team. We had to actually do the groundwork We had to get in with the activists We had to do everything that we possibly could now most of the people on our team were organizers and activists That's most of that's what our entire team was made up of and so for us The way that we were able to actually get people to understand the number one We existed and number one They should care that we were running was because we actually integrated ourselves Into everything that was going on we had our name out there every single second of the day every single podcast every single new Cycle every single newspaper that we possibly could and it was a lot of hard work But at the end of the day hard work is not what is going to Win you races like this necessarily you're never going to win just based on Ideology or based on what you believe you have to be able to actually win by coming up with a game plan and a strategy And in capitalizing off of it so for us immediately What we realized is we cannot do this alone and there are house district candidates that are running here that if they Do well, we're going to do well And so we partnered with four out of the five house district candidates running for Florida house here in our Congressional district immediately one was a 23 year old named rock Abu Jadid who is running just north of us The other was a 23-year-old named Cynthia de la Rosa who is running just south of us Then we partnered with the lady who had her name was Yvonne Hayes-Henson She ran for Congress in this seat two years ago and lost but she was running for state house And then we were able to help and find somebody to run in the other district because for us You have to be able to attack every single acre of ground You have to fight for everything in these rural districts And what we also realized was we were never going to win the Democratic vote out of Alachua County No nominee for this seat has ever not won Gainesville University of Florida area and gone on to be the nominee We didn't win Gainesville. We had to win the rural counties in the rural vote in order to win this nomination And that's what we focused on. We knew we had to get at least 33% and we got 34% And we were able to do it and so number one we executed the game plan We came up with a game plan that was going to work and we built the coalitions that we're gonna actually get us across the finish line And that's exactly what it's gonna take to win in November as well Yeah, so this is what I think you represent to me so back in 2016 It was exciting to see congressional candidates who were kind of running on the same platform that Bernie Sanders was running on but my hope then was that by 2018 we'd see more candidates and We did and now in 2020 There's so many candidates running on the same platform of Medicare for all and whatnot I can't keep track of them and my hope for 2022 and 2024 is that there's so many candidates that are winning That that's what's difficult to keep track of and you kind of represent this to where I didn't even see this You came out of nowhere and it's so exciting Like I was really demoralized after the results from Florida because all of the candidates that I had followed You know Melville Pearson a Jen Perlman had lost their races So I thought I'm not even gonna make a video and cover this because I don't think there's any victories And then here you come along with my one of my viewers saying Mike. We just got a victory. What are you doing? So it's it's nice to see this like it's a good problem to have when you're winning and you don't even know it, right? So let me ask you about your opponent because you're facing off against the Republican kind of alluded to this race a little bit earlier But talk about your opponent your opponent who this individual is and how you plan to beat them Yeah, so the first thing is and one of the reasons it was a huge victory is we had a staff the entire staff all 50 People were under the age of 23. Wow, and I early youth led and the youngest nominee for Congress on the Democratic side Maybe ever just won a race in North Central Florida going for Ted Yoho seat. That's awesome So, yeah, it was a victory and nobody saw it come I mean, we knew it was gonna happen We were excited about it We thought it could and we thought we would shock everyone and it happened and that was what was incredible But at the same time we knew that it was going to be a warm-up because the real battle in the real fight is the general election Ted Yoho is resigned or retiring For reasons that he claims. I don't think those are the reasons But you know what let him have it fine his campaign manager former chief of staff who he demoted to deputy chief of staff and then Basically got rid of because he said quote. She had no moral character That is who is running in his stead with his backers with his donors with everything that that he has built for the last eight years So we are going against the Ted Yoho machine. It's just not his name on the ballot They had 10 Republicans on that side That was their primary the person who won which was her got 24% of the votes We thought it was gonna be another guy named Judson sap who had the backing up Roger Stone Matt Gates all of these People and he did not she won at the same time which was incredible was the fact that We thought she might get fourth or fifth Now what it's going to take to actually win We basically ran a general election strategy in a primary that almost never works for us We have to cut the margins in the rural counties We have to win a couple of the rural counties and we have to actually compete there No Democrat has ever really tried to compete there We're gonna run up the score in Gainesville in Alachua County in the University of Florida area with the Democrats with the progressives Just because that's what's gonna happen But for us the biggest inroads have to come in the rural counties specifically Clay County Their sheriff was just arrested And about a month ago He claimed that he was going to deputize every gun owner and send them after the Black Lives Matter protesters So this is the kind of like place that we have to make inroads in the way that we were able to do that We actually won Clay County in the Democratic primary the way that we do that number one you don't water down policy But what you can do is you can frame it in a way Not just to make it financial but emotional and that's something I feel like Progressives especially here have never been able to do it something Republicans do phenomenally well They make everything emotional where they don't have a good product, but they make people want it despite the fact They don't even have a product. And so for us, you know, we talk really about almost classical Conservative values. I'm talking the original progressive Republicans. I'm talking like going after Monopolies going after middlemen going after people like the insurance companies who nobody likes insurance companies Nobody likes cable companies. Nobody likes towing companies These people are just there designed to take our money and that is who we're gonna go against is these predatory companies And so we talk of a lot like that I call Medicare for all a small business tax cut because small businesses are on the line For healthcare and it's almost eight thousand dollars per employee per year. You get rid of that cost on small businesses Small businesses can now raise wages. They can now compete with the big guys They can now recruit and on top of that you just lower the amount of cost They have so it's a small business tax cut because you're removing the private taxes That is the shift we have made we have made the connection between there are two types of taxes Government taxes and private taxes and right now you are paying far more to private corporations Than you ever would be to the government and most people here They only care about what it's gonna cost them and whether or not it's gonna be a good investment And you connect those dots you connect it with the original like Teddy Roosevelt going after billionaires going after scammers going after people that we bailed out But we never got money back from and that's a solid argument to make Especially in the conservative counties and you can do that with it with with left progressive values That actually resonate in fact one of the craziest kind of like coalitions that we've seen is almost the far-right John Bircher society kind of people pairing with environmentalists to go after Nestle Nobody would think that's possible because Nestle is coming in to destroy basically bottle water out of our springs Which would destroy a town called high springs in this area Which would destroy their way of life and so now you're seeing all these conservatives rise up with environmentalists and say no We don't want that and so you're seeing kind of this crazy almost coalition forming That I don't think would have happened five to ten years ago Yeah, I would agree with that and your strategy makes sense because you're meeting people where they are Which is crucial like what we see from the National Democratic Party is that they often times will try to Adjust their message to appeal to Republicans But they water down their own policy and you know they talk about how they are a big tent party But that's not a winning message like people don't want to vote for Republican light candidates They want to vote for people who are authentic that are you know addressing their specific needs