 Hello, everyone. I am here with Donna. I'm em running in the 31st congressional district of Texas She is challenging a build the wall Trumpian Republican in a race that is very interesting to watch It's a flippable district and she is here to tell us why she's going to win Donna. Thank you so much for coming on the program Thank you so much for having me Mike. I really appreciate it now I like this race because you were kind of explaining to me before you went on that Nobody's paying attention to this race and that really is a shame because you are so close to flipping this district You're 2.9 percent away from winning that seat. It's very competitive But yet the National Democratic Party and State Democratic Party They don't really seem to be interested because they feel as if this isn't something That is worth really investing in because it's not winnable Tell us why you decided to run and why this is in fact a flippable district Yeah, so I'm an average middle-class person that works for a living, right? I'm a computer engineer I've been working in the tech industry But over the last five years I started working on a non-profit and the reason I started working on a non-profit is Around 2004 2006 I worked in Lafayette, Indiana in an industry where on the bottom floor we had Manufacturing and every single one of those manufacturing workers were laid off They had no Reemployment opportunities no way to get out and some of them never worked a day in their life again That's that left an impact on me And that's why I chose a specific non-profit because it focuses on education it provides Free continuing education to anybody who wants it But why am I telling you this the reason is as I went through this non-profit? What I realized is no matter how much time I poured into it There were people in Austin, Texas that have been unemployed for years during the 2008 2009 downturn even though they were highly educated and today 2009 end of 2019 when supposedly the economy is amazing, right? People say the unemployment rate in Austin is low But guess what the unemployment rate in Austin is extremely high and it's high because people are working whatever job They can find they're working two three jobs even people with really great education So I felt defeated working in a non-profit I don't think any person should have to depend on philanthropy or a non-profit to get by Our system is completely broken and I wanted to find a way to be part of that solution I think if average people like me people who have never aspired to run for office people who are not necessarily Activists, right? They're just general people who work for a living trying to raise their families trying to give them a good education If we don't come together, we're not going to change the system. That's why I'm running This race you asked me why this is so exciting Texas has six districts that the D triple C is targeted because they're very very close This is one of them. The reason it's close is this Austin over the last five years has grown gang busters, right? It went from a small sleepy little town to a major city in the United States and It's pushed people out into the suburbs two three Hours out of the city center because they just can't afford to live in the city anymore, right? It used to be a very affordable city and as the push people out you have young families moving into the suburbs So I live in the north Austin area and this area includes Williamson and bell counties And it goes all the way to Colleen which has the largest military base in the United States largest armored vehicle military base This district has more veterans per square mile than anywhere else in the in and all of Texas This district is so close because just in the last Year after the 2018 cycle we had 50,000 more people moving to just one county because they're looking for a decent life and That oh that I know like I said, it's 2.9 percent as 8,000 votes. So this race kit is flippable It's winnable, but the crazy thing is this I am running on single-payer healthcare for all I'm running on education for all that incentivizes people to go serve in rural and underserved communities And I'm running on what I call real pay for all which says look You can't live on $15 an hour in most American cities Definitely not Austin, Texas I can guarantee you that and that people should be paid a Real way which means you can not only just pay your bills But you should have the ability to purchase a home put a down payment on a home And you should be able to retire someday if you're working full-time Okay, and the thing is people are like, oh, well you think that's gonna work in Texas You talk to every single person in Texas is 31st district It doesn't matter if you're Democrat independent Republican and you say we're trying to reduce the cost of health care because that's the real issue And single-payer does that we're trying to reduce the cost of education So kids in temple ISD and clean ISD can actually afford to live on UT Austin campus That message resonates we can flip this district blue on this platform. That's the crazy thing about it And that's so interesting So I was under the impression that the national party wasn't necessarily paying attention to this race But I think the real story here is that they're they're kind of overlooking you because there's this idea in these flippable districts that You cannot be a far left candidate You know, there's this fear mongering about that and the idea I'm assuming from the national party and even the state party is that you have to run a campaign That's very moderate center of the road because if you want to flip that district Then you need to pull in some republican party voters Can you dive a little bit more into the detail as to why that's a horrible strategy and why getting out the vote Is actually what will be conducive to a victory because I think that even though I talk about this people in that district You really need to understand why? Running, you know a campaign that is progressive and bold It's not a lost cause in fact This is your best bet But I want to kind of hear it from you as to why you think Being true to yourself and actually running on a campaign that you say $15 is not enough You know that would scare a lot of people just instinctively and thinking okay. She's she's too far left. She's no way She's gonna win. So why do you think it's important to kind of push back against that narrative? It's important to push back between that for that narrative because it's wrong So As a techie and as a product manager, I ran some large product lines, right? There are tens of millions of people who use my notebooks There are you know semiconductor product lines that are in everything from your toaster to a high-speed train that I've worked on So I understand the financial aspect of this the fact is this real paper all is not out of reach And it will organically grow the economy and I can make that I can make a strong ironclad financial case for that I have white papers on every single policy proposal that I'm proposing and here's the thing When you tell people look You're gonna have health care guaranteed no matter what you're gonna have hundreds of thousands of people going into entrepreneurship That's gonna generate real jobs because they have that piece of the mind Hey, I'm not gonna die If I go and try to start a business out of my garage out of my living room Okay, when you pay people especially Something people who make less than $50,000 a year families that make less than $75,000 a year when you pay them an extra dollar You know what they use it for they use it to buy their kids a better pair of nikes A newer backpack they go out with their family on Friday night and get a pizza together That money goes right back into the economy. It creates more jobs and it creates high-pay jobs This is a message that resonates. It doesn't matter across It across party lines across thought processes. It's the way we talk about it when we start using various labels People can push you left and right. But the answer is this Every single one of us has the same challenges. We're trying to pay our rent or pay our mortgage We are trying to send our kids to school Why because we want them to have a decent future ahead of them and we want to be able to pay our bills We don't want to bag on the streets. We don't want to be homeless Most of us want to be able to go to the grocery store and live a dignified life And we want to contribute to our community And if we have the financial resource to do that Every single person is going to do that and there's a there's a solid economic case for that It's undeniable and that's the message that we need to get to people We keep you know living on fear. We're never going to get to this the biggest issue with districts like this Because it's been read from its inception. So the current representative has been in office for almost two decades Many people who believe in this Don't really understand how close this district is because when you run in a u.s. Congressional Canada, you know campaign Or as a candidate there's thousands of candidates across the country, right? So you get the least amount of exposure And not everybody's doing the research to find out. Hey, there are all these districts in texas There's one and you know north of austin. That's ripe to go blue We've got some great candidate there who's got these great ideas and people love it. I spent full time the first six months Of 2019 just going across my district from city to city talking to groups bipartisan groups non-partisan groups talking to Place talking to people in places like for example Lions clubs and just you know clubs that come together like business clubs that come together And every single person believes the same thing. They want opportunities. They don't want to pay huge taxes But they're willing to pay for what makes sense And you know when it comes to health care and education look mike You know this we are overpaying for health care by trillions of dollars right now Right, we're overpaying for education. The cost of education is completely inflated with technology The cost of education should be one tenth of what it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago It's the opposite right and we know that these are inflated just because they can be there's no actual logic behind it So what i'm saying is look, let's use technology. I'm an engineer. Let's use it Let's use it to drive down the cost of education in four years We want it to be halved in another eight years. We want to go down further Let's put the right incentives in place so we can get state universities to You know sign on to these initiatives, right? Let's incentivize them to give them money and let's do the same thing with health care Let's go to a single pair. Let's take out the billions of dollars that private health care insurance companies are making Let's put more physicians because we have a huge lack of primary care physicians in this country By the way that nobody have you heard anybody talk about this on The mainstream media that we actually don't have enough doctors Even if we want to cover the 80 million uninsured under insured Let's scale the health care infrastructure. Let's put primary care clinics on in every neighborhood So people can get preventative care So you don't get to third stage cancer, which is extremely expensive to treat, right? These ideas they resonate with every single person in my district and that's why i'm running. That's why I believe I can flip it And I would love any help because yes financially we're struggling Yeah, you're running up against an incumbent who as you said has been there for almost two decades John Carter was elected in 2003 and gradually over the years He is losing support But as I kind of alluded to in the beginning of this This is a trumpian republican Who is basically towing the republican party line and i'm curious because you talk about all these issues And it makes sense like these are the kitchen table issues so to speak that a lot of people talk about that affect individuals But i'm wondering how much since you're in the state of texas is he able to exploit issues And exploit xenophobia and whatnot and the issue of immigration Because he wants to build the wall. That's kind of his his go-to Thing he's benefited from trumpian uh trumpism So um, how much is that an issue that's coming up? And how are people responding when you try to basically center them on what's the real issue? It's not, you know immigrants who are hurting you economically It's the system itself. It's elites. It's the rigged economy How how does that play in terms of based on people who you've spoken with? Yeah, so he's not just a builder wall guy The current representative is a direct recipient of money from the geo group which runs the private prisons And it runs these cages that we're keeping these kids You know collars, Hernandez, right? 16 year old kid who died on a cold concrete floor This is happening under our watch No american nobody in texas 31 no patriotic person on this earth is going to say That's okay. There's nobody in my district that's going to say that's acceptable for you to take money from the geo group The group that runs these prisons where this boy died In his own pool of blood There's nobody Who believes that the wall is going to help them Be able to afford Education for their kids to send them to ut austin Nobody believes that you couldn't even make them believe that And it's completely distracting But what we have unfortunately what these leaders have is they have certain mainstream media That are echoing this over and over and over again And that's all these people hear and we have to cut through this the only way we cut through this Through this is we run candidates who are talking about issue You know challenges that can be solved and we talk about the solutions The only way that we can combat this is that we have hundreds and thousands of us congressional people that talk about solutions We've got to stop talking about these generic keyword Issues that are out there that we're supposed to use. Let's talk about health care. How do we get it? How do we reduce cost? Let's talk about education. How do we reduce it? How we how do we get it to every single kid doesn't matter if they want to go to trade school or college or two year doesn't matter, right? We have to talk about that and we have to talk about it until we drown out the fake news That's going around and saying that immigrants are the challenges. Look, I'm an immigrant I came to this country the reason that I've been this successful and built a decent middle-class life for myself Is because I got a great education a debt free education I got to do my graduate studies completely free on scholarships and assistantships I didn't have to worry about $250,000 of debt I was able to put a down payment on a phone because I had what a high paying job I want that for every single american I know we can get that to every single american and I have the financial case for what we democrats believe Is the morally right thing to do And I love your answer and I like to ask this of people who are running in red districts because it really gives you a sense of Whether or not they have the right strategy And I think that you do like there's a lot of people who I think They're going to vote for donald trump or the republican regardless, right? So what matters is that you don't deviate from your platform and try to appeal to these types of people The goal is to get out new people and people who really feel like they haven't been represented Who don't really care about these types of issues and who just want someone who's going to look out for them But they kind of feel like you know the republican or the democrat even in certain districts They haven't been representing them. So, you know, what's the point of voting? They stay home a lot of people kind of checked out and so I love your strategy and people like you because you're you're basically Doing something that hasn't been done You know energizing a portion of the electorate that has not participated in politics Like if we if we want to live in not just a democracy Functionally speaking but one that's thriving We need people to to participate and they're not currently voter turnout is low. Thankfully It's up increasingly, but I mean generally speaking comparatively speaking It's low and people like you are trying to change that which is phenomenal And I don't think that a centrist is going to flip that district if that district is flipped And I think it will be it's going to be because of you So I want you to talk through the dynamics of this primary because this is currently a competitive primary You're running against other democrats and if I had to make a prediction before you tell me Um, you are not someone who the establishment is taking much interest in So talk through who you're running against and who I'm assuming that you know more establishment corporates democrats have kind of coalesced around because there always seems to be in each district One candidate who is pulling in the most amounts of money Usually from special interests talk a little bit about the dynamics here and um Where you kind of stand out Yeah, so we have five people in the primary. So our filing date was uh yesterday by the way And we have our primary early voting is february 18. So we're literally You know less than two months away from early voting and our actual primary day is march 3rd. Okay So out of the five candidates Most of us really don't have any kind of Background and politics as in we're not traditional politicians. There is one person that's ran before But the here's here's what makes me different. Okay All of these folks are coming in and they're running basically on bread and butter democratic sort of messaging, right? And I am I am running on very specific policy. I am saying look, I believe in single-care healthcare But in order to accelerate medicare for all which I want to right. I want to accelerate single-care medicare I want to scale the infrastructure. I want to make sure we incentivize more primary care physicians. So When medicare for all gets implemented, it'll actually be successful The what differentiates me is that I'm trying to bring ideas and solutions that will actually work They're executable and we can pay for them and there's a financial case behind them education same thing I'm saying look If we want to get school teachers and social workers and physicians to rural places We got to incentivize them. We have to pay off Their student loans completely and say come come out and teach in Salado, Texas come out and teach in temple, Texas Come out and teach in clean, Texas, right? The biggest challenge with most, you know, folks that are running in the primary right now is that they don't realize that For example, my district in bell county. There's a 25 to 30 black american population, right? No one realizes that you need to go and ask for their vote and you need to give them something to vote for They're not just going to come out and vote for you because you're a democrat, right? I've spent You know the entire year Talking to all leadership and all the communities and the black community for example, and you know what they told me This is fact. They said donna We know you love to talk about health care But black people we've never had health care We can't even get a job To us the justice system is a huge problem And I listened to them. I formulated my own equal justice for all policy proposal I have a white paper. It's published on my website I sent it out to all the black leaders that I could and I know in the community I asked them to review it give them their feedback and they did they gave me edits They told me the problems that they faced especially If you've been incarcerated for whatever reason it is so impossible to get a decent paying job Even if you want to turn your life around, right? We developed equal justice for all policy. We made it a core platform portion So we're addressing the needs of the people in texas the 31st district directly You see what i'm trying to say which is Most democrats they're not they're running on a generic message and you can't win you have to engage people You have to give them a reason to come out and vote and you have to give them a reason to believe That somehow you're going to bring change because just running for office doesn't matter If you can't bring real change the impact of people's lives We have people here who have less than 400 dollars in their bank account and they literally cannot pay For their grocery bill Imagine if you're a kid and you come home from school and you're expected to do your homework And there's not a single snack for you. How do you focus? How can you ever? Want you know expect that that kid is going to have a life that's accomplished Compared to somebody who comes home and their mom is at home or their nanny's at home And they have a meal in the refrigerator and they can focus and they do have a high speed internet connection So they can do their homework. You can't expect the same out of those two kids That's reality We have to talk to reality and stop talking in generic terms and that's how we're going to flip this district And I think that that is so important that you said that because a lot of politicians They're running because they love the sound of their own voices Right, they talk at people and not get their feedback and talk to people And I think that that's really such a crucial part of what makes a good campaign because In each district there's going to be a very specific set of issues that impact voters differently people of color will have different Experiences in certain parts of the country and certainly different experiences than their white counterparts There's all these different concerns that people Have but they haven't had anyone just ask them What do you need, you know, what issues affect you? What type of policy do you think would help your life? And I think that that's so different and we're we're starting to see a paradigm shift in this country where People aren't just running on that generic platform. I mean they are right You're experiencing that with your with your opponents But more people are rising up and they're they're trying to actually do something that hasn't been done And that is represent the people, you know, the house of representatives is the evil's house You're supposed to represent the people But we've kind of we've gotten fixated on This generic idea that we have to appeal to moderates and be center of the road and these purple districts or red districts And it's not working people aren't voting for democrats because democrats aren't listening to them and you're changing that So anyone who's watching this I think is going to be convinced that you're the real deal And if they want to flip that district they've got to vote for dana So give us your pitch and let us know what we can do to help you if you're inside that district, especially What can we do to volunteer? Okay, so there's there's a couple of things you can do one If you're out if you're inside the district, we need you we can put you to work in many different areas We need we need you to go talk to your neighbors when we need you to go talk to your organizations We need you to knock on any door. We need you to make calls On behalf of us. That's how we reach people. We have to have that conversation that point of contact there's only one of me, okay, and there's only so much I can do and Until we get everybody involved in this movement We can't flip this district. You don't win a district because you have a great candidate You don't win a district because you have a great message You win a district because the people in that district demand change. They demand new representation And so we need you if you're in that district now We also need money because at the end of the day you still have to print Content and literature and go door to door and you need some people to help you with van And you need some field organizers to cut you lists So We need every dollar we can get look. We're a completely grassroots campaign. No corporate pack money We barely have any large donations. That's all small donations So any dollar amount you can throw our way before december 31st would make a huge impact And i'll tell you what for a campaign like ours november and december are really complicated and hard times to raise money But more importantly a candidate like me was running for the first time I spend most of my time campaigning going to events trying to meet people So I don't have the eight or nine hours a day to be calling people and asking for money Which is what a lot of the corporate candidates are doing The every single corporate candidate tells me they spend a minimum of eight hours on what's called call time That's calling wealthy donors and asking them to make twenty eight hundred dollar contributions I literally do not have time for that I've I've been trying to go out meet with the community and shake their hands and tell them who I am Because they've never met me. They don't know who I am So you can see how important it is to have that contact because people Trust you based on looking into your eye and talking to you and seeing what you're going to do for them That's how they develop trust, right? So, yes, there's lots of ways you could help and even if you're outside the district You can help make phone calls and and call inside the district and and and tell people about us We can do this. This is a winnable district Help me get through the primary and I promise I'll deliver you texas 31 and I'll turn texas blue That sounds absolutely phenomenal and imagine if we brought in the squad in congress So to speak and got someone from texas elected that would be absolutely just amazing And I think the establishment would be shocked and to kick out a republican who's been there For almost 20 years who's a trumpian republican? I mean imagine how amazing that would feel if you contributed to that process So, uh, one more time. Tell us the date of the primary before we go So the date of the primary is march 3rd early voting is february 18 Uh, and if you want to check out my website or my policy It's at vote for donna.com All right, we'll also have that information up on the screen donna. Thank you so much for coming on We will be rooting for you and watching this raise very closely Thank you so much mike. I really really appreciate it