 Hello, everyone. I'm here with Lauren Hubbard running to represent the 22nd Congressional District of California. This is a district that was formally represented, and I use the word represented loosely here by Devin Nunes. It's now an open seat, and Lauren is here to fill that seat and actually represent the people in the district. Lauren, thank you so much for coming on the program. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Really excited to be here. Happy to have you. So I've got so many questions to ask you. First and foremost, what made you want to run for Congress specifically this year? Because I think that a lot of us are anticipating a loss of the Democratic Party of the House. So assuming you're elected, you are likely facing the prospect of divided government, which means that it will be a little bit difficult for you to accomplish anything. What made you choose this moment in time? For me, running for Congress was not something that I really actually even wanted to do. As my wife will tell you, we are very happy just being existing in our current life of going to work, raising our kids, and planning for those family vacations and things like that. We're happy to just be that. But I think what is really telling about it at running for Congress is, I don't have to. I really don't want to, but I need to. Something to be said that if I don't do it, I really don't know. We put a lot of faith in our elected officials right now to get things done. And they seem to want to screw us at every turn. So for me, what brings me into this race is, you know, I was born and raised here in the Central Valley, which is where the district is. I was born to a single mother and I had lots of unofficial aunt and uncles. And so I really know the importance that community plays to the success of our future. And so for me as an activist in my professional work, I'm an operations manager at the regional water quality control board. So I'm focused on environmental justice. I'm the racial equity chair at the water board. So those things are very community based. And I bring that into this into this congressional race. So I really am running because the challenges that we are facing and the people in this district can tell you are ones that are not political talking points that we actually have real lives. And there is a concern to put it mildly that the people in Washington have no idea what the hell they're doing. Yeah, absolutely. And when people who are running for Congress make it very clear that they don't want to run for Congress, I immediately trust them like a thousand percent more. Because who would want to run for Congress? I mean, the institution itself is essentially incapable of governing. So wanting to be a part of that mess is it seems very unpleasant to me. And so the fact that you acknowledge that is actually really nice, because it's the people who I think, anyways, want to run for Congress. So you got to look out for the people who talk about, well, you know, I've always wanted to be a member of Congress since I was a child. That's extremely strange. And, you know, if you're running, this is a serious answer. It's a total tech presenter. Absolutely. I mean, you should want to run because you see problems that aren't being addressed. And that's why you're running. And that's why I think it's so it's so perfect. Talk to us about your platform. What is it that you support? There's basically an infinite amount of issues that need to be addressed. But what are you going to kind of primarily focus on if you're elected? With my experiences here, you know, I have worked at the Department of Social Services here at Fresno, really on the ground level of getting to know our benefits programs. So those social security programs like food stamps and Medi-Cal, and then the number of people who are dependent on those programs and how we can really make some fundamental changes to those programs to increase the accessibility of those programs so that we don't have people starving in our community. You know, one of the things about Fresno that is really kind of disappointing is in California, which is, you know, the most populous state in our country, Fresno is number one for poverty. And one of every three and a half residents of Fresno is living in poverty. So what brings me to this race and what I really am focused on are speaking to my experiences in fixing the environment and expanding these snap benefits, expanding access to health care through Medicaid expansion. And then lowering the age for Medicare. These are things that we can do that will make real fundamental differences in people's lives. And there are things that are really personal to me. I lost my mother in my junior year of college to a situation where she had health insurance, but her deductible was so high that, hey, you might have health insurance, but if you can't come up with funds to pay a $10,000 deductible, you know, you're not really using that health insurance. If your health insurance doesn't cover your prescription medication, you're not getting those prescriptions. And that's because the situation that my mom found herself in, and she ultimately made the choice to, you know, put money towards other bills like rent and paying back student loans and things like that. And it was a decision that ultimately costs her her life. And so I'm just standing up and saying, hey, where are our priorities in this country where we can talk about Martin Luther King, Jr. One day and forget all the things that he talked about with poverty and militarism and materialism being the root cause of evil in this country. Yeah, there's so many things about the United States that make us a national or international rather embarrassment. I mean, the fact that we're the richest country on the planet and people in this country, thousands per year are dying simply because they don't have health care or maybe they do have health insurance, but they can't afford the deductible. As you stated, it's something that a lot of us don't necessarily talk about too much, but we should. It's really frustrating. So for me, I am somebody who's become a lot more cynical. I don't really have a lot of hope. One thing that I wanted to ask you about is you are seemingly optimistic, which I find good and commendable. I'm cynical and that's bad. But in your Twitter profile, the first thing that you put is proud Democrat. Now for me, I hate the Democratic Party, and I am basically an individual who has no choice because I live in Oregon and this is a close primary state. So if there's ever a progressive presidential candidate who's running as a Democrat, I kind of have to be registered to vote for them. So what makes you proud to be a Democrat? Is it a sense of, you know, this has always been my party? Is it a sense of I think that I can still save the Democratic Party? What makes you proud to be a Democrat? Because I have the opposite feeling. You know, for me, I kind of fell into the that cynicism trap and I kind of take away the lessons from my mom of always looking at the glass half full. I haven't always been a Democrat though. I am originally this area is is conservative at its heart. And so I grew up being a Republican, actually, and having those Republican ideas about freedom and opportunity and security. And growing up actually really embarrassing fact about me, my first, the very first election I could vote in, I actually voted for Rudy Giuliani in the Republican 2008. That was a long time ago. You can get a pass for that. But for me, you know, it's with with time has come a little bit of perspective. And those things that I once thought the Republican Party stood for as far as freedom, security and opportunity for all are really not those brands that they actually support. When we talk about freedom, the freedom for people to marry who they love, the freedom to choose if a woman decides with and with whom she has a child. Those aren't freedoms that they support. When we talk about opportunity, you know, opportunities to have quality education as far as a publicly funded university system, having publicly funded vocational training, those things give people opportunity. That's not something that the Republican Party supports. And then security. Sure, they talk about defense. And that's, that's, you know, anytime that Republicans and Democrats are on board with defense, my butt cheeks tighten a little bit, because I gotta go away. Well, this is just a big corporate grab when I look at the defense budget. But when we talk about security, we're talking about, how about protecting the little guy? How about fighting for for labor unions, who are organizing so that their employees have a better life? How about balancing the playing field so that corporations aren't aren't coming into an area like they are in my district coming into an area lowering the price of goods because they can take that loss until the mom and pop shops close. So for me, the Republican Party is a non starter. I was one of those folks that was really disenfranchised with their disillusioned with the Democratic Party in 2016. And I've had to come to not a come to Jesus moment, but a realization that for me, as a black man in this country, I don't have the I don't have the luxury of waiting for a progressive platform or progressive party to come along and actually have the institution to be able to win election so that we can see progress made. I'm one of those folks that I this is the the group that I'm running with. I'm going to pull them along with me kind of a kind of a take on the Democratic Party. But I totally understand that the the take of folks that are like, you know what, these are the parties are the problem in our in our government. I just happened to think that the Democratic Party is one that is closer in line with my political alignment. And I'm not ready to give up on the me at I was close. I was close. I wouldn't I register no party preference in 2016. That's part of it. I did too. Yeah, I did too. I had to change it back to in 2020 to vote for Bernie. Unfortunately, you know, I asked this because I think it's interesting the way that we view the Democratic Party, I think that it gives us insight into the way that you would govern. And for a lot of people, they make this choice, which is rational, you know, it's the Republican Party is so insane at this point, frankly, that they are, like you said, it's a non starter. But some of the reasons why you're disappointed with the Republican Party, such as military budgets, for example, Democrats also increase the military budget. So it's nice to know that you know, this is kind of you're not accepting the Democratic Party as is, you do want to change the Democratic Party. For me, my perspective is that I always feel like, you know, I don't have a choice. The two party system in the United States is kind of the illusion of choice. You have both parties who are completely beholden to corporate donors. One of them is just late stage capitalist and the other is late stage capitalist and also crazy quite literally, I think I mean, there are members of the Republican Party who should not be in power at all like Marjorie Green. I think it scares me to think that that individual has power. So yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's an imperfect system. But I absolutely understand candidates running under the Democratic Party, because if you run third party, our institutions quite literally disenfranchise third party candidates. So it's kind of either you run up the Democrats and have a chance, or you don't run with them. And you have no chance. Out of curiosity, what specifically would you change about the Democratic Party if you had a magic wand and you were in control? I mean, you're just if you were elected, you'd be just one member of the House. But if you if you could change everything, if you were a benevolent dictator, what would you change immediately about the Democratic Party? One of the things that we're trying to do here in California, specifically for the California Democratic Party is not taking fossil fuel money. Just be very open and transparent where our money and funding comes from. Because on the other side, we are going to we are getting attacked about, you know, money all the time that George Soros is going and funding Antifa parties. And apparently, George Soros has all this money to fund Antifa. He's funded me too, apparently. Right. As I say, as a captain in the California Antifa squad. I pay check at George. But you know, when you look when you dive into it, a lot of these like crazy white right wing QAnon setups are funded by Republican billionaires. You know, that may be talked forever about the Koch brothers for the last 10, 15 years about how crazy they they're, you know, they're funding of the Tea Party and the Tea Party got spun out of hand. And now we have the QAnon folks. But I think being very specific and upfront about where our money comes from, the second thing I would love to do. And this is kind of has bumped into my race here a little bit now that I'm it's been announced that as elder statesman, if you will, Jim Costa, who is currently representing California 16th congressional district, which is a neighboring district of this one, will be running in this district is that there is this this party line. Hey, why don't you, you know, you wait, wait your turn or this like, you know, this back room dealing that this person's the candidate or this is that or 2024, the change candidate Hillary Clinton coming to that choice in the matter. And just instead of presenting, it's really funny to me because Democrats, when we're talking about Republicans, you know, we always want to say, hey, you know, they don't engage with us on principles and on ideas and how we can have that back and forth and that dialogue about ideas and opinions, and that will move the country forward. But at the same time within our own party, you know, we're not having those engagements with each other. And that's really is kind of the needle that I'm trying to thread is if you are a moderate Democrat, you have to have a realization that that left wing, that populism, that is where the future of the party lies. Right. Okay, the younger people, they are more motivated. They are the ones that are knocking on doors. They're the ones that are making phone banking calls. I've tried to get a whole lot of others, older folks that hop on board to do stuff and they're like, well, how about I give you a donation, which is fine. I love, I mean, I'll take money, of course. But those are the most force, the younger folks are the ones that are engaged. You as a moderate Democrat are not going to win any more elections by just saying, these progressives, don't they know, they need us and not the other way around. It's a two way street here. You need us. We need you. I'm willing to take a candidate who has a lot of, I don't want to say question marks, but I'm willing to take a candidate who like a Cori lamb, who's like, we have some progressive positions, but is like, you know, in that moderate streak over someone like a Hillary Clinton. I think that needs to be the other way around, too, is moderate Democrats need to look at people in certain races and say, hey, you know what, this guy has all the folks, the grassroots folks, the organizations are behind them, the young people are behind them. Let's follow in line with this guy and let's have that conversation as a party. See, I kind of feel I have a different approach to this, and you can you can tell me your thoughts on this. I feel like the moderate and the left wing of the party, they're incompatible, and that's because the conflict isn't necessarily one of ideology. I mean, on the left, we have, you know, we're very strong, we adhere to our core principles and progressive values, but I don't actually think that's the case with the moderates. I think the moderates don't actually have any core philosophy. I think that it's all, they're beholden to their corporate donors, and that's almost exclusively what drives their behavior. So when you have these competing interests, I don't think you can ever really find that alignment. And what that ends up, what ends up happening is what we're seeing, where you have one wing of the party just trying to push the other side out. And I always hear Democrats talk about how this is a big tent party, but oftentimes I think that the party is too big and it's so big that they allow Republicans in, but that tent isn't necessarily inclusive of left-wing voices. So, you know, when you talk about issues with the Democratic Party, I do agree about the money issue and the funding, but I think that one critique that I have of Democrats who discuss the issue of money in politics is that if you just allow for more transparency, that doesn't necessarily solve the problem of corruption in American politics. Because a lot of us know about the fact that Joe Manchin is an oil baron, a modern day coal baron, taking $500,000 per year. Kirsten Sinema, you know, she ran on prescription drug costs being lower. She took so much money from the pharmaceutical industry, I think north of a million, and now she's against that. So it's such a corrupting influence that I don't think transparency is enough. I think you have to just eliminate it from the party, but the Democratic Party will never do that. So my question to you is how do we do this? How do we reconcile these irreconcilable differences between the moderates who are corrupt, in my opinion, and the leftists who are just trying, but they don't have the institutional power? All they have is grassroots support. But as we've seen in the past, you know, like in 2016, how you were disappointed, the Democratic Party establishment, they have the institutional tools needed to crush that. So how do you, how do you reconcile that? And this is a huge question. So I understand that it's, you know, there's no one right or wrong answer to this, but how do you reconcile that? Right. And I think that's like, you know, the thing that I've tried to grapple with, and the needle that I've tried to thread is that like, as a progressive, I know, well, I won't say I know I'm right, but there's a lot of issues that we are on the right side of history on. And as a litmus test, you know, that's, that's fine. I'm willing to, to have that, you know, be in place. It's that time and time again, we lose. And I'm so tired of losing that I want, I want to win just one race on those principles to show that we can do it, that we have that, that election ability, that electability to win elections based on, on our values alone. At the end of the day, I think that, you know, we live in a country where Citizens United is the law of the land. And at the end of the day, I understand it takes money to win elections. I get it, but damn, if I don't like, hate losing every time. Yeah. And you know, that's the thing. Just going to be like, oh, we died, but we were right. And I just know you're right. It's the core issue for leftist candidates because the conundrum is, you know, we're the principled ones, you know, the candidates who I talked to, they take zero corporate dollars. But simultaneously, everyone acknowledges that without a lot of money you lose. I mean, a lot of these races are nine times out of 10, they're determined basically by who raises the most amounts of money. So it's difficult. Let me ask you this. It's kind of a hypothetical situation. So I know that you are, you're, you're principled, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're taking grassroots donations exclusively. But let's say a benevolent billionaire comes along and he says, listen, Lauren, I really like your platform. And I think that what you're doing is, is fantastic. I'm going to give you, I'll form, have you form a super PAC and then, you know, maybe I will donate two million dollars to that super PAC. What do you do in that instance? Do you reject that money specifically because it comes from a billionaire and it's hard to shake that? I mean, we're all human beings, right? It's, it's hard to pass policies and vote on policies that might tax billionaires more if you take that money. Maybe you're more sympathetic to them, even a little bit. And maybe you don't acknowledge this, but perhaps subconsciously, or do you reject it and remain principled knowing that your chances of getting elected will be a lot, a lot worse. What do you do in that instance? Because this is a real question that I think a lot of people have to ask themselves, you know, before going to Congress. Yeah. And it's actually kind of a situation that I'm currently in where I have, I have contacts with people who are CEOs of mega corporations, media corporations. And I have not asked them for money for that specific reason. We've talked about the race and how things are going, but I've not made that, that reach out there. And it's to the, to the point where some of the people on my campaign are like, hey, don't you, I mean, don't you want to reach out to your person there? And I I have it for the reason that you just said, it's very hard to balance. It's really hard to take money from someone and then say, hey, I'm going to raise your taxes. Although I do think that's like kind of the on the on the flip side, it's kind of the message that we, how we talk to white working class voters the same way is like, oh, what's wrong with you? Don't you know that Democrats are this party is working to improve your economic outlook and they consistently vote against their own economic interest time and time again. And it's because they value something else, whether it's, you know, white supremacy or I'm just floating that. Could be a contributing factor. But on the flip side, you know, for us, I'm talking to folks don't do my donor call time every day, talking to folks that make I mean, they're not millionaires, but they're some of them are and some of them are really wealthy and they're giving me money, contributing to our campaign because their values lie with something other than money. And so I think in every situation, especially in the situation that we're talking about, where a person is like Michael B. Jordan, he was like, hey, Lauren, hey, man, I love what you do. And I'm going to say, Michael B, but maybe don't give me to me like that, but put me in your next movie and let me hold a campaign sign. But I think it everything depends on the source. Yeah. Yeah. I would agree with that because I mean, if you have a celebrity maxing out, giving you $2,700, I think that's a lot that's so different compared to the CEO of some media conglomerate who is donating a million dollars to a super PAC. You know, this is all untraceable money. This is all money that over time will corrupt. I think that a lot of politicians, they are running and initially they are progressive, like Nancy Pelosi, for example. A lot of people don't know. She supported single payer when she was first elected to Congress. And now she's raised more than a billion dollars in political contributions over her career. And she is one of the most corrupt politicians in America. So I think that people, they run for Congress and they think, you know what, I'm I'm I'm not going to be like other people. I'll take this money, but that doesn't mean I'm going to, you know, betray my principles. But with time, you know, being in D.C. so long, I mean, AOC talks about how you have all these sources in your ear influences try to drag you in one way and then another way. And it's almost overwhelming. And I think that with time, it's just the human response to succumb to that, because it's easier. You're tired of people in Congress, you know, for as many vacations as they take, you know, when they are there actually legislating, it can be really difficult. You have to read a lot of bills, at least if you care. I mean, we all know that people like Louis Gomer, they're not reading anything. But, you know, it's a lot of work if you care, right? So I think it is important. I I'm glad that there's more of an emphasis, emphasis on money in politics, especially given this day and age, where it's, you know, we have billionaires, for example, like Michael Bloomberg, who try to buy their way to the White House and he didn't, you know, make it, thankfully. I mean, we didn't get someone that much better. But I mean, he didn't make it. But just the fact that that's possible in our system kind of shows how far we've fallen as a country, how much we've commodified elections and why that's such a bad thing. So real quick, before we go, can you tell us basically a little bit about the dynamics of this race, how many people are running in this primary? How many people on the Republican side have entered? What does it look like in terms of competition? Because I know that sometimes these races can get really crowded, especially if they are for high profile seats. I mean, Devin Nunes's seat, everyone kind of knows about that. So is there a lot of people in this race? We're currently running in a special election that has north of six candidates in it. OK, OK, with myself, there's three Democratic candidates running myself. And there's another candidate for this seat. He's basically been running for Congress for three years. Oh, he ran against Nunes in 2020, lost and immediately said, hey, I'm going to run again. And I could understand if it was a situation where he was like, you know, razor thin margins where he was really close. But he was I think he lost by eight and a half points. And the person before him lost by five. To me, he wasn't a strong candidate, which is why I decided to run in this race. The other person in this race is Eric Garcia. He is a also a Democrat. Don't know a lot about him. I think I've never met him in any of the events that we go through through the whether it's through the local party or any of the other organizations that are working in our district. So I can't tell you anything about him. I will talk about Elizabeth Heng, though. She is a Republican who is running. She ran in 2018 against Jim Costa and lost. She was going to challenge Padilla for his US Senate seat here in California and subsequently decided she was going to run. Instead, she's another one of those people that is. You know, thinks that the electorate is dumb and that they we can run any kind of nonsense ad and that they will buy it. So she was it's kind of known here in the area for running basically an AOC attack ad at our triple a baseball stadium during games and that's her like claim to fame. Is she one of those Republicans who like will print out a bill and then shoot it? Like is she doing that with the Green New Deal? Yeah, yeah, like the ridiculous most. Off the wall, computer generated explosions and everything else. Love it. Love it. The other the other other gentlemen is County Board of Supervisor currently Nathan Magsing is his name and he is trying to walk the line of being Trump. But not we're seeing that. We're seeing that balancing act by a lot of Republicans as of late, which is interesting. Like a glin, yonkin kind of. Yeah, yeah, talk, but, you know, not not mentioned Trump by name, but talk about his policies and I'll do the same thing. But yeah, that's interesting. Tell me about because, you know, it's kind of interesting to know what's going on. I mean, this is a GOP leaning district. But in terms of the Democratic Party primary, how would you say you're different than the other candidates? And there's a lot of people jumping in. So I'm sure it's kind of difficult to keep up. But just broadly speaking, like, why are you different than the rest of them? Why do you think that people should vote for you over the other candidates in your opinion? Well, so the thing is, the district has kind of really changed with redistricting, where we were a plus five Republican Advantage Registration Advantage District to now being a plus seven Democratic Registration Advantage District. So the district itself is very Democratic. And one of the things I think is the misconception is a lot of the folks that they added through redistricting just because they're registered Democrat doesn't mean they're going to show up and vote there. They're very much low income people of color, the traditional people that would be prime for the Democratic Party to pick off. But we've had candidates that don't speak to their issues. And so I think what's different about me is the same thing that we talked about about the millionaire. And would you take that money like my mother, who's not here to fight for herself? That's something that's that's varied in me and that I'm not going to lose. And so for me, the issue it becomes talking about the things that people are concerned with, because they're the same things I'm concerned with. My wife is a registered nurse. We've been living two years in a pandemic and the situation where she doesn't have PPE going into work or right now they're trying to do contact tracing and she's got 180 something cases. Our community hospital here has seven hundred employees that are out because they've tested positive. Wow. Wow. That's that's ridiculous. So with the situation that we have on the ground here, not only with COVID, but in the situation that I talked about with with with poverty and everything else, those things are not being talked about by any of the other candidates. You know, we get a lot of these they call them platitudes where it's like, yeah, I support people having access to health care. That's that's such a bad code where, yeah, I have access to health. Everybody, almost people have access to health care now. Doesn't mean that they can be that they're getting the care that they need. We're talking about preventative care. I'm talking about my grandma being able to go to the doctor before she gets diabetes. You know, that's the kind of things that we're talking about. You know, as a person, I got student loans. I understand one of the things I advocated for on social media is, OK, I get that, you know, Kristen Sinema and Joe Manchin, they're bumps on a log, they're not going to do anything. Let's look at the executive action that body could take. If you're really talking about improving the lives of Americans, what's an executive action that you can take? Yeah, do you know the sort of stimulus that having student loans? We've been they've been, you know, on pause for this long. Just out of I mean, yeah, yeah, it's it's a simple solution that's so popular that would make them so popular, make Biden specifically more popular. It's it's it's frustrating to know that that's not what the struggle is doing. Yeah, yeah, it's ridiculous just look like you're doing something like, well, you know, we pretend today about about 50. Then we're about, you know, forgiving $50,000 in student debt. And not it was this this this person and we're really going to see if we could just look like you're doing something. That's the most frustrating thing as a candidate. And I'm just waiting for somebody to tell me what does the Democratic Party stand for? I know what this person who's a Democrat stands for. I know what this person who's a Democrat stands for. What is the Democratic Party stand for? If you don't want to lose a house in 2022, give us something to run on. Because right now I'm the only person talking about these issues that affect everyday people. And I've met with a lot of citizens because we didn't get bill back better, because the bipartisan infrastructure bill was. A corporate slash one, there's some stuff in it that helps. But, you know, it's what are the tangible things that I can go out and I tell somebody, hey, you know, I'm running for office. And these are the things that I would love to see happen and that I'm going to work for. And at the same time we're watching stuff on the on the news every night. Democrats tried again to pass voting rights. Things that you would think would be so fundamental and we can't get it done. So as a as a leader of the party, I would love for Joe Biden to stand up and say, OK, you know what? We're going to do this stuff without these people. This is what I can do by executive action. If you give me a full majority, a greater majority, look at how much more we will get done. Look like you're doing something. So much of this is stuff that I've learned from Trump. He was really good at looking like he was doing. Yeah, you know, his daily schedule. He worked for maybe, you know, three hours of the day. He had a call that had some executive time. Had a lot of box news, a marathon every day. Yeah, I've heard similar things about how, you know, back in 2020, a lot of the candidates running then were really trying to win when it was like an uphill battle, because once, you know, Bernie had dropped out, all of the enthusiasm had kind of been deflated. And then it was just, OK, Joe Biden isn't Trump. And that's something. But it's kind of hard to get people excited about that. And you're kind of describing the same characteristic, which is it's frustrating. So here's what I want to do. I want to give you the opportunity to kind of plug your campaign. Let us know how we can help you get elected. Do you need any donations? Do you need volunteers? And is there anything we can do to send like your wife a care package? Because, oh, my God, being a nurse during a pandemic, I don't know how she's doing it. The fact that she's still doing it in the third wave now. Send her all of our love because I just I'm not mentally strong enough to do it. So she is she's got to be heroic. So so let us know if we can help you, though. Yeah, we totally appreciate every every dollar that we get goes straight into outreach. So if you want to be able to to help us reach voters in this district, I'm one of those people I'm working full time while I'm doing this, too. And so I'm not taking a salary from my campaign like some of the other candidates we are putting on every dollar that we get into into our campaign. So if you want to go and make a contribution to our campaign, you can do so at LH, the number four C.com or go to www.laurenhubbard.com. And on our website, you can check out our platform for progress, all the things that we're talking about to really move the country forward. Because we do be that much. That's our whole campaign is based on we deserve better. How about making some investments in us? And especially after the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday this week, where people were talking about, oh, Dr. King, this and Dr. King, that and and forget that he talked about a country that invests more in its military than the social investments and its citizens does not need to exist. And so that's the basis of our platform. We invest in America, invest in us. We deserve it. We deserve better. And then if you want to reach out to my wife at Hubbard family on Instagram, because we have two kids, one of them's here now making all kinds of noise. You want to say hi to people? She's in the background running around. Five and two and one of them's here now. She's our campaign mascot. Oh, hi. And so my wife has been fantastic. She is taking the kids. She's doing this. She's going to events with me. She's got all this stuff going on with covid. She's got your hands full. A family campaign. Yeah, you all have your hands full. I mean, how could you not vote for someone who is bringing on an adorable child like this? That's adorable. Hi. Well, thank you so much, Lauren. It's been a pleasure. We'll be following your campaign closely and good luck. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.