Trump Voters Keep Telling Brad Smith They’re Voting for Him Over Grothman in WI-06

I think we need to make sure that right now the economic disparity and the differences between the top wealth folks and the rest of us is as big or bigger than it was even during the time of the trust busters.

And that's we're not on the right track.

We're simply not.

Hello and welcome to the Dr. Kristen Lyrely show.

I'm Dr. Kristen Lyrely.

My gosh, you guys, we've got Brad Smith.

He's running for Congress in Wisconsin sixth and you need to know him.

That's what this hour is all about.

So Brad, I'm so excited to talk to you.

Welcome.

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing your time.

We have a lot in common too, given your entire Fox Valley background.

That's like a solid half of my life.

I'm sure we'll touch on it.

So I enjoy the seven degrees or seven.

What is it of Kevin Bacon?

It's kind of that situation in Wisconsin when you go like Northeast Wisconsin, Central Wisconsin.

There's so many connections.

It's fun.

So many connections.

And the first time we met, I think we figured out that you were running a rocket and I'm a kakana ghost.

Good memory.

All right.

Yeah.

Well, there's so much more.

I mean, Yorah, let me get this right.

You're the first Smith in seven generations to go to college.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's pretty wild.

I have to check the generational count.

But my

six great-grandfather actually protected George Washington on horseback as a soldier during the during the Revolutionary War.

He was with him when Cornwall was surrendered.

So yeah, we've been here.

The Smith clan has been percolating for a bit.

But the vast majority of my family are Norwegians that came straight from Norway to central Wisconsin, like in my great-grandparents generation.

So but yeah, I'm you know, I I ended up

Serving in the Wisconsin National Guard to be able to get access to schooling back when it was even more affordable than it is now right with our amazing UW system So yeah, I was able to get an undergraduate and graduate degree from our UW system Thanks to you know the opportunity that presented to me But yeah first first with man there my my grandfather was a successful dairy farmer with an eighth grade education Was a lumberjack during the depression like old school hard knocks hard work, you know

learned a lot about work ethic from him and

then

same with my dad who you know ended up in agriculture at working at feed mills and kind of on from there in agribusiness and you know he had a high school education but built an amazing career for our family based on that and just hard work and now here I am right and so we kind of each we each get to take the next step from the people who came before us if things are working as we hope.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think about my grandfather also was a dairy farmer with an eighth grade education and how much I learned from him and not just like, I mean, some of the funny stories, like, you know, how he learned to milk the cow and the Schneider was the cow.

We learned to milk God and sweet things like that.

But also just some of the smart things about like, how do you plant and how much seed do you order and how smart he was?

His common sense was off the charts.

It's not about and it's not about a degree and it's not.

about like this pedigree of all of the things that you've checked off in your life but it's about how have you served your community and what kind of a family person are you and all of that stuff becomes who you are right now and Brad I mean George Washington.

I know it's got a crazy

right yeah

oh my gosh his

history goes hard he was

At Valley Forge, he came over here from Britain when he was 14, helped supply the Continental Army, then enlisted, was shot in the head at one point.

All in the National Archives, it was so cool to see.

And weird tradition, we also have Civil War Wisconsin service members with the Iron Brigade that's famed, also

shot in the head

at the Battle of Shiloh and survived.

So I'm just grateful that I did not continue that tradition when I enlisted, but it's a fascinating history.

I feel like there's like a forest gum tie in here.

I

know.

Like a Lieutenant Dan.

Yeah, it's a it's a it's a wild and interesting one when we're reading it.

And I'm, you know, there's a joke about when you become a dad and cliche things that you have to like get into brewing beer, smoking meat or loving military and World War Two history.

And I am so basic.

I check all those off.

I love this.

And when I got to find out about like our family service tradition, I'm like, oh, this is so cool.

Yeah.

Wow.

And you're a hunter.

Yep.

Yep.

It's like

a signed up birth for anybody in Central Wisconsin who has like egg origins.

I literally grew up eating exclusively venison pretty much, you know, because that was like, again, the family tradition of you get the deer, you eat the deer, and it's, you know, feeding the land feeds us, we take care of the land.

And so, yeah, I was

brought into that from a very young age when I was like five.

I got assigned a slingshot, then a BB gun, then a .22, then a shotgun.

So yeah, so I hunt on our family farm up in Iowa every single year.

Last year I

got an ice buck.

I was very excited about that.

And then...

We have hunting season coming up right after the election, which is going to be wild.

Yes.

This is like this is a complicated thing about running for office because it does bump right into hunting season, which of course bumps into Thanksgiving.

And that's always a family issue.

And then you're

into, you know, December, the New Year holidays, all of it.

It's a wild ride.

So all I know is I will be sitting quietly in the woods in mid to member.

And I

think I'll either be excited and ruminating heavily about what comes next in office or whatever comes next.

general so it's a I think it'll be a good restorative time because as you get older I feel like those quiet times where you just kind of you know have some time to be introspective are really rewarding so I'm looking for that and family time you know we it's my dad it's my brother-in-law it's my cousins it's the classic you know

everybody

coming together kind of thing

and you will have earned it because you are working so incredibly hard I want to just pivot a little bit so this is all the personal stuff but yeah you also have an extensive history in

business.

Can you talk a little bit about what you actually do for a real job?

My

journey is interesting because, again, I used the GI Bill to be able to go to college.

I always loved tinkering with technology when I was a kid.

I'm

that micro generation between Gen X and millennials, so my childhood was

100% hose water and exploring the bikes and you know non-digital and by

the time

like I got to high school it was like oh AOL what's all this stuff so I loved tinkering like that was always of a lot of interest to me and so I kind of followed that into a degree program where I learned to do digital media like so much of the production work

you know you

do and all those things right I learned I made a documentary I learned to do 3d animation I learned how to web design and all that stuff so it was a really cool

early degree program.

So I followed that into actually doing early web and graphic design here in Wisconsin, working with especially a company that did work with our Wisconsin manufacturers for outdoor power and motorcycles.

Think Briggs and Stratton, Harley Davidson,

all those

types.

And so then from there, I found my way into all of a sudden when e-commerce emerged.

And the next thing you have smartphones and all these rapid generational shifts of technology and how to impact

organizations at large, business and even just general organizations.

So I found myself as a tinkerer ending up in the leadership positions, helping places say, okay, this new tech showed up.

How on earth do we adapt and

how do we

modernize to it?

And so that's been my career where, you know, that first company I worked at, I started as a graphic designer, worked there for a decade.

I ended up on a leadership team.

We listed that as a small Wisconsin company public on the NASDAQ.

So learned a lot about hiring people.

building organizations, building teams, managing change, budgeting, right?

All agreements, legal agreements, all that stuff.

And then since then, I've done a lot of work with everything from not for profits, helping people get more people on bikes, which is a personal passion.

I worked with a small kind of startup type organization that was doing carbon accounting to help reduce carbon emissions to get in alignment with the Paris Climate Accord.

And now I had my own small business where I basically on a project capacity come in and try to help people figure that stuff out.

Usually small businesses, recent one was a large, well medium distributor here in the Milwaukee area that is a family owned third generation business.

So I was working with them to help, again, modernize as things are emerging and changing.

So that's kind of my story.

And it, it's really, I think it transitions and connects really well to Congress because it's always like, okay, we want to go

Well, we don't know where we want to go.

First, go solicit, discuss, define a vision, hypothesize a path, and then figure out how to build the necessary consensus and change to get there.

And I think

that's a really nice analog for what I'm after right now.

Yeah, the leadership piece and the tinkering piece.

And I want to just

We talked a little bit earlier about AI.

And

given your history of adapting to changes in technology and figuring out what's the next thing and how do we deal with that in the current world, what do you see on the horizon for AI?

Because it's unregulated right now.

It's the Wild

West.

It's the Wild West.

And again, I've talked about in my career and all of us have lived it as...

literal consumers of this technology as it's evolved, our technology cycles are moving faster and faster.

The adoption cycle, the impacts and AI is wild and

it's

bringing momentous changes, some of which offer opportunity, right?

Like I was just listening to a podcast about a woman who is able to create a machine learning base before the current model of AI's.

Program that was able to identify breast cancer earlier than anybody else have been able to figure out, but it's a black box They don't know why it can identify it, but it can right

when she

fed all these cases and outcomes So there's opportunity with it and certainly protein folding and different things that it can help solve novel challenges that can help people

but

there's also the capability for massive Disruption and destruction think about flock cameras enabling basically state surveillance think about the fact that the Houthis in Yemen

Over 50% of whom can't read were using Anthropics Clawed to design missile systems they

found out.

Oh wow,

really?

And that's not to mention the job displacement that's happening already and accelerating that's making jobs like the one I started out with gone.

So there's not really a first ladder on the rung on the ladder anymore for people in their careers.

So I'm, it is, it is just so urgent that we have people that are conversant.

and

understand the technology in Congress that can help legislate to protect against these downside risks.

Privacy risks, job displacement risks, supporting retraining, while harnessing the good.

And right now, Congress looks more like a nursing home.

I bet you tend to one, Glenn Grossman has a jitterbug in his pocket.

And so, sorry, you know, not sorry.

So do you trust that guy?

who are also paid for by the tech bros

and I

have none of that funding I want none of that funding but I understand the technology so I'm eager to see what I can do to help

chart the path through this challenge and I think again with my professional background I'm uniquely qualified to do that.

Your professional background but also your commitment of service to your community and your family.

Can I just ask about Lego Robotics?

Yeah, thank

you.

It's such a cool program.

It's so

much more than people know or think about.

Yeah.

So this is something, go ahead.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Are you familiar with it?

I

am.

I'm a boy mom.

I've got four sons.

So they're like robotics kids and they did the competitions and just tying in the technology and the mentorship and there is so much to it.

It's not just cute little Lego things.

It is literally building the next generation of innovators.

Yeah.

And it's crazy.

I got goosebumps when you said it.

I'm so excited and proud and like I learned so much about that program by first getting to participate, supporting my oldest son in it

and

then also

of becoming a coach

of the

team.

And little did I know, and like most people, the name is Lego Robotics.

So you think all they do is build robots out of Legos, right?

Well, a lot of people don't know.

One of the biggest parts, arguably the bigger part of the entire thing is this innovation project that has nothing to do with robotics.

They give you a theme and a problem space.

Like this year is help identify and solve a problem that people working in biodiversity face.

That's

it.

They give no guidance and then it is the team's job and the students and we don't do it for them as coaches.

We help advocate and give them resources, but their job is to tart the path.

They have to find professionals in that field, sit down and interview them, identify problems that they face, hypothesize solutions to it, test them, get feedback on it and then actually build a working solution or prototype and then go in front of an adult board

to speak and present to what they've done, and that

is

wild.

The skill sets involved in that, man, I didn't develop those until I was in my late 20s, you

know,

after being a good way through a career.

So I talk very passionately about it because there's the whole STEM side of creating a robot and programming, which is already pretty big deal and

they

learn so much.

But that innovation project blew my mind and it's teaching them skills that are so transferable.

and teaching them how to think, not what to think, right?

And it's just so cool.

It's been so cool to be a part of.

The mentorship piece is what I love and that you are developing new leaders that are not only solving problems, but thinking about how can we pull together all of these different data sets and really literally serve our community.

And I'm going to make a hard pivot here because when you were in the National Guard, your unit was hit by Hurricane Katrina.

Yes, we were.

Yes, and I love this story because I think it really represents mobilization training, FEMA, the response and everything that you had to pull together to save lives and to like shore up this community that was devastated.

Talk a little bit about your experience there and what that taught you.

Yeah, I mean...

Leadership and practice is often it's so important to have training and education which I had through as I was a sergeant than a staff sergeant so you have the opportunity to go through leadership courses in the military to help you develop the skills.

But they're conceptual right and some of them are very specific and tactical but there's not there's no substitution for actually doing it and an uncertain circumstances and scenarios and so.

That was kind of like my accelerated growth.

I didn't have the opportunity.

I didn't participate in Lego Roddocks like my kid.

My son does now at a much younger age, but I was still now comparatively looking back at kid.

I was 23 and I was a staff sergeant, so I'm responsible for a number of people my age or considerably younger.

And like you talked about, we're from Wisconsin.

We're down there getting ready

to deploy overseas to the Middle East.

into, you know, an unknown conflict during the Second Iraq War, and that already was daunting enough, and then we were in fob training, which is when you're intense and preparing for forward operating base and all that stuff, and preparing for what could come with it, which is its own gnarly thing, and all of a sudden, yeah, a life-altering hurricane crept up on us and then hit everything, and it was wild because we ended up...

on the post we were in in Mississippi hunkered down in barracks and in the middle of the storm debris was flying like you know those train conics containers

they were

rolling like soda cans and it broke the gas main off our building and started dumping a hundred plus pound psi natural gas into our barracks so we had to go in a human body chain with body armor on

in the middle of the hurricane to go to a day kitchen to sleep on the floor and make sure people were accounted for, make sure everybody was safe, what was going on in the middle of this huge hurricane and then after that to your point FEMA was operating there to get food medicine supplies by helicopter in New Orleans but they couldn't access anything

so

classic Wisconsin guys and people that we had we went out there with chainsaws

and we're helping clear up roads and get access.

And then it was so cool because through that effort, we were awarded the Federal Humanitarian Service Medal, which is such a neat thing to have an opportunity to do and have that kind of impact.

And again, there's no playbook.

Nobody coached, like I didn't go through leadership training and they're like, okay, you're going to get hit by a giant hurricane.

You're going to be in a human chain while stuff's flying around you, try not to lose people and then help figure out how federal emergency services can get supplies to

New Orleans.

That was nowhere in our planning, right?

But again, learn how to think, not what to think, and then figure out how to adapt it as you go.

And the opportunity to take not just these leadership skills, but also the commitment to the people that you served and all of that

to Washington D.C.

to represent your friends and your neighbors and generations of Smiths before you.

It's just such an incredible contrast to what we're seeing now because and it's not just Glenn Grossman who is the what six time incumbent because of this gerrymandered district where people have just been voting for Republicans because it's our tradition to vote for Republicans.

But it's all across Wisconsin where every single Republican congressperson right now, congressman I should say,

except for one more.

Their pawns, they are told what to do from the top down and you can hear it in their messages.

They say the same things.

They might use a little bit of a different way of saying it.

Derek Van Orden is so much more angry.

Glenn Grossman is so much more gullible.

But you know, they're all, they're not thinking about you.

They're thinking about what they have been told to do by their supreme leader and by the greater party.

And what I hear you saying is that it is your desire to go to Washington DC to use all of these leaders.

skills, all of the experience that you've pulled together to be able to represent the people who brought you up and who gave you this.

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that.

It's a service before self-mentality, and I think we've fallen so far off the mark of, listen, it's in the name itself, representative.

It's not about you.

It's not about the party.

It's not about the person on high who's dictating terms.

Your job is to work on behalf of your community.

And I gotta tell you right now,

So much of our community actually agrees that things are not working.

It's what we do next about it and whether or not you have to look at the jersey you're wearing to agree to move forward or not.

And

I feel like

this is a really interesting moment and I'm happy to elaborate on that where people are interested if you have somebody who is talking about a service first mentality and a community first focus to start working together a little bit more.

And I'm seeing the partisan divide.

It still exists.

Don't get me wrong.

But I think in this moment people are

starting to look at somebody who has the goals and the background like I do connecting throughout this community that I am genuinely trying to work for us and that's resonating even with people on the other side.

And on that note, I'm sure your family is the same, especially with farming on the east side of Lake Winnebago, I think I saw was where yours was

a lot of times.

That's right, the Holy Land, yep.

The Holy Land,

yeah, between

that and out in Central Wisconsin where my family were in Wapaka.

They were all Republicans.

My entire family were Republicans.

I thought I might have been a Republican.

You know, and then over time, you find who you are and where you fit and what your values are.

But I will tell you, like my grandpa, Buchholz, was the village president of Iola for like 20 years.

He was on the county board, hardcore Republican.

But

he's who I also learned how you take care of your community

is a town

of a thousand.

And every day grandpa woke up and did what he could and no job was too small to take care of his community.

I went out with them to the dump to take care of stuff in his little S10.

And so

there

was a prior model here where people did genuinely believe in service before self.

And I learned that and I saw that even for my conservative family members who he'd be rolling in his grave right now seeing what has happened.

And so I'm eager to be a counterpoint to what we've seen here.

And yes, I'm a Democrat, but I am also a Wisconsinite first.

And that's my message to people is service to Wisconsinites.

That's my goal.

Yes, I think it's changed so much.

You know, I think back to like the 80s when my family was pretty conservative.

I always voted for Republicans back then.

I wasn't really paying attention.

It was just what I did.

You kind of get

assigned the letter and you're like, who do we vote for?

Republicans.

Yeah, of

course.

What are you thinking?

Oh, yeah, I was in the

military and business.

It's like, oh, yeah.

Well, of course you must be, right?

Right.

But it's gotten so far off course that it's not about Republicans and Democrats anymore.

It's about the haves and the have nots.

And there are only a few haves.

Most of us are have nots.

where we live.

So how do you identify those problems and solve them in a way that people are going to be able to have a job where they can earn a living wage and have health insurance so they can get health care and their hospitals are open.

All of the things that we need to live a meaningful life.

You've been outspoken about this issue.

You've been outspoken about offshoring and CEO pay and coming from the background that you have already explained, describe to us where that

comes from and how you feel about it.

Yeah, I think you go through chapters of life.

I feel like I'm

just

far enough into it to feel like I have a little bit of introspection, but I recognize I have long ways to go.

But in our experience, I had that whole formative chapter of, OK, can I make it?

And I enlisted, I served, and that dominated my 20s.

My whole 20s was getting ready to be deployed, leaving, coming home, trying to reintegrate into life, seeing my friends going through acute challenges from their service and wounds and all this.

It was just a really formative time for me.

Then next was, can you afford a home?

Can you have a family?

And I'm thankful to say, because of, again, in so many ways, the opportunity, the stepping stones I had, I was able to get there.

And then you start observing and looking around.

And so I kind of

I enjoyed being a tinkerer and I enjoyed trying to solve problems.

And that's kind of where I followed where my career went.

And that was really, really rewarding and meaningful in many ways by seeing the way that you can, through employment and opportunity, help your community higher, keep people employed, all those things.

But I felt a bigger calling still.

And so what

do you do with it, right?

And I started through it through volunteerism.

That's how I came to be in the Lego robotics coaching world.

That's how I also

I was a mentor for National Science Foundation project through UWM and I'm trying to figure out how do I make the limited time and the skills I have have an impact on my community in a meaningful way.

And so trying to continue to climb, climb corporate ladders while I respect that that's leadership and has value for me.

It didn't feel like that was where I was going to get the biggest impact that I was seeking in my community.

And so that's kind of what led me into this journey along with other forms of volunteering because I'm kind of in this, this new chapter of, okay,

I feel stable enough to try to focus on doing what I feel I can help.

And that's kind of what made me turn the corner.

And I do feel like we've jumped the shark on business culture and community and all that stuff where outsourcing has run so rampant

for all

the blue collar jobs and a lot of our industries and employment here has really.

fall and pray to that when you look at some of the industries in the Fox Valley, we can name a number of them that either left or threatened to leave.

And I'm seeing that actually now in the digital world too.

A lot of companies and in the technology realm are exclusively hiring people overseas.

And so it kind of makes you scratch your head and go, well, wait a minute.

People here need to be integrated and have opportunities and work and we drive the economy So how do we make sure we have a counterbalance to that?

And so that's where I'm interested in finding the right balance to it And I think we need to make sure that right now the economic disparity and the differences between the top wealth folks and the rest of us is as bigger bigger than it was even during the time of the trust busters and that's

We're not on the right track there.

We're simply not.

And so I'm eager to use my skills and understanding and experience that I built to be an advocate for that.

And I can go back and forth between rural and the business world, which is important to be able to negotiate those discussions because those are two very different worlds that usually see themselves.

They don't see that Venn diagram overlapping.

So I'm

trying to

be a messenger that can unify there.

You not only can but you have Yeah, I want to talk about health care a little bit because obviously it's my belly wick But it's something that it has affected you personally.

Yes.

Yeah, your grandparents In a nursing home.

Mm-hmm.

That is no longer there.

Yep

How do we for our most vulnerable members of society how do we ensure that they are going to be able to live out their golden years in a safe place and have access to the care that they need and deserve in this environment where people just can't afford.

Healthcare and that puts stressors on families and entire communities.

You've seen it yourself.

Yeah, and I'm I mean, I'm sure you are too in the sandwich generation right now where we're looking at and caring for our parents generation.

You know, we lost my mother-in-law who you know is like a mother to me to terminal pancreatic cancer and we went through that journey and trying to help her.

My father-in-law has very bad Parkinson's now.

We're trying to figure out what resources and how to help him and navigate that journey.

We've got kids who, you know, my oldest son was randomly hospitalized with a really bad, dangerous breathing issue and he ended up hospitalized in children's.

And we're bouncing between all these things, trying to work it out.

And what you can see is just the resources that have been there historically in the programs.

are continually being undermined, costs are going through the roof, and no matter what kind of programs you look at right now, at best it's catastrophic coverage only that still costs an arm and a leg with really very little emphasis on prevention, which is how we stave off the worst outcomes.

You know this better than I do, by all means, but certainly prevention is where we can help.

head off where it comes down the road that frankly drive up costs anyway, that when people go to an ER, we're bearing those costs now.

We're just doing it in a very poorly designed unintended way.

And

so I feel like when you look at Medicaid, the fact that Glenn Grossman, my incumbent said in his last town hall he had a year and a half ago, maybe two years, cutting any funding from Medicaid would be a huge mistake.

And he turned around and last year voted to cut Medicaid.

Yes,

through the one big beautiful bill which is going to take health care from I think an estimated 300,000 Wisconsinites who needed 30,000 the sixth district to turn around give a trillion dollars of tax breaks to people are already doing well

Yes,

how do you square that right so?

we need to Turn the ship we need to reinvest in that because it is a foundational support for our communities to your point and I view health care as a critical infrastructure investment in our

in our people and our communities and our workforce that when they thrive our communities and yes our economy do better because

they're

able to participate, right?

So I'm really frustrated with the messaging that this is all cost and cost and cost and waste, fraud and abuse.

How about actually having people be healthy well and thriving

in

your communities and then that helps them participate in this economy that it seems that everybody is so concerned about proliferating.

But instead, everything's being cut out and privatized, which is my other concern, is that the profit-seeking side of it is in the driver's seat.

And the idea of what the Hippocratic oath and trying to do no harm is so far lost in this.

And it's not going to work.

And you alluded to this earlier.

But with the Medicaid cuts and the cuts to the ACA subsidies, which haven't even taken effect, that happens after January 1st.

So they conveniently waited until after the midterms.

Quite the design.

I have to give them

credit.

Their evil gamesmanship is top notch.

Yes.

And for me, 40% of my obstetrical patients are on Medicaid.

So that is a giant burden for these families.

And what happens when people don't have health insurance and can't afford it?

Like you said, they end up in the emergency department.

Well, who pays for it then?

Well, they go bankrupt.

Yeah, and when the hospital can't pay for it, insurance prices go up.

Hospital prices go up.

It ends up landing on all of us.

So yeah, when Glenn growth man held that really miserable town hall where he got beat up I think that might have been the last town hall that was held in Wisconsin because they just can't they can't appear in public because people are so dissatisfied with what's happening that they they don't feel comfortable with it and they shouldn't They are not representing.

So let's talk about this district because this is a tough district bread and this you won your primary, but you are

are not the only non-growthman candidate in this race.

So what is the landscape for this district given there are independents running, it's you, it's growthman, this incumbent, what does it look like for you?

Yeah, it tells you how acute the moment is.

Like literally, I think it was a 2022 cycle, no one ran against him,

right?

Yeah.

Which is wild that you go from, let me just frame this.

He went unchallenged a number of cycles.

to this cycle, there was an eight-way democratic primary.

That's amazing.

Eight-way to start with.

So I'm honored to have been a part of that journey and have a number to learn from and have a number of those folks join.

And we work together now, and that's amazing, but eight.

And then there's also three independents or various stripes of third party running now, too.

So it shows you the energy and the desire for change here.

But the landscape is really interesting, because the district is so

Seriously, Jerry Mander.

Anyone who's not familiar, it's 11 counties.

It's from Ozaki County to Manitowoc County, west through the Fox Valley, all the way to Washera County down to the Delzenbach.

So you've got, it is artfully designed to pull in a bunch of really red farming areas and pair them as much as they can with kind of suburban

manufacturing areas like Winnebago partially, certainly into Fond du Lac.

You look at Sheboygan County.

And to try to keep as many blue votes out of there as they can.

But it's starting to break down.

Again, one, the demographics of the district are shifting.

We're seeing a number of folks in the Fox Valley especially, here in Ozaki and a number of areas shift more towards progressive policy and have an appetite for that.

But also, the

The the shine is off the penny as my grandpa would say on the on the MAGA and the fealty to Trump when

it's

voting against every interest in everything that even the rural and manufacturing communities are asking for tariffs war naren fuel prices lack of health care access Reversing broadband investments reversing infrastructure road investments.

These are all things that they wanted and they're voting against them, right?

so

I think that's creating a big shift.

And for the third party in Independence, I just don't know where that goes and what that looks like.

We're in uncharted waters.

But I'm pleased to say that I have been on our campaign up until the primary dead over 10,000 doors ourselves.

And then since then, we've hit 60,000 doors with the coordinated campaign.

And I have had people

Of course, Democrats who are bought in and want to move this direction, huge swaths of independence, but I've actually had some pretty far right-maga-type people and lifelong Trump voters who shocked the heck out of me and told me they're voting for me without me even asking or selling them and going, whoa.

So I think we have the right message, the right formula, and I've spent 14 months in every community.

I put on almost 40,000 miles on my dang truck.

Literally visiting everyone which is great, and I've gotten to learn so much and I think I think we're gonna see that paid evidence for all of us

on November 3rd.

We'll see how much.

I mean, there's no way to know what's going to happen.

And with those independents, it's so hard to know.

Are they going to pull from Glenn Grossman?

Are they going to pull from Democrats?

It's just a big wide open.

And I think it's important to mention that you are part of the wow counties and part of the bow counties.

And for our listeners who don't know what this means, the wow counties in the past couple of elections have been where things have really been changing and shifting blue.

And they've been kind of like the barometer.

for Wisconsin and now they're kind of reliably blue and now we're starting to focus our attention on the Bau counties which is brown out of gamey and Winnebago, you're Winnebago, you're Winnebago and you're Ozaki.

So how are these blue shifts going to impact you?

Not even taking into consideration Fond du Lac and Sheboygan and some of the other little blue nodes that are looking even bluer in this election cycle.

Yeah it's been exciting and it's been so fun because

I have a weird experience.

The map is terribly gerrymattered.

But

I have an emotional and lived attachment to all these areas.

I spent half my life in the Bao region

and

half my life in the Wao region now.

And so it's kind of funny.

I've gotten a front row seat to it, much like you have in the in the Bao counties.

And so it's been really interesting to see.

And I think so much of it goes into there is an eagerness and a hunger to invest in our people in our communities.

And people are starting to

not accept any longer the idea that talking about healthcare is something like, oh, you can't do it.

It's just impossible.

What are you talking about?

And

they're not accepting that standard stock BS answer because look at all the other places in high income nations where they have more social safety nets, they have more healthcare resources available, and they pay lower per capita than we do with better outcomes.

So I

think people are waking up and saying, okay,

And then you're watching the enrichment of Trump and the, you know, the tech bros and the reflecting pool and the arc that he wants to do and the ballroom.

And these things are all happening.

And that's where the news cycles are going.

Well, people are struggling in our very own communities.

And that I think that has become wildly nonpartisan in many ways and a unifying cry for where we need to go.

And so like you said,

We have a demographic shift that's going on where I feel a lot of people are coming into these communities because we have they're great to live.

We have great education.

We have great public schools as long as we can keep that going.

Yes.

And so that's bringing in a lot of these people from areas that are traditionally a little bit more blue.

But I'm also seeing these soft old school conservatives and I say soft because they're like I was fiscally conservative but I'm socially progressive.

The number of people I talk to self-identify in that.

Yeah.

they're firmly like our policies and our goals are very aligned with their camp too.

And we haven't even talked about authenticity.

You know, when you look at the donors for the Republican Party, most of them are three people.

Three people have given so much money to Republicans.

That's why you're seeing all of these negative ads, because three people, two of them don't even live in Wisconsin, are funding all of this while you're out knocking tens of thousands of doors and having real conversations.

Glenn growthman won't show up in his district to have a town hall.

He'll show up for a picnic.

You won't show up for a town hall.

And you are talking to people who are saying, I typically don't vote this way, but you're not even asking for their vote.

They already know because they're so desperate for change because they want that authenticity that you and so many other Democrats bring in this cycle.

When I'm proud on that point, two-year point, I set out with goals of how I wanted to demonstrate how I intend to do this job.

And that involves showing up everywhere, engaging.

Even with people who aren't on my side of the aisle, because if I have the honor to get to represent people, my goal isn't to pick and choose who I'm representing and say, sorry, you're not on the team.

I'm

not going to

listen to represent you.

My goal is to represent everyone.

It's going to be really hard.

But we need to do that so I've shown up in every community and I've shown up in very traditional red groups and very traditionally blue groups and have the Engagement there, but I've also you know set out and said I will not accept corporate PAC money.

I have not I'm not taking a PAC money.

I don't plan to any of these groups that are generally influencing politics with very very large dollar sums.

I am I am doing this as grassroots as I truly can so 95 plus percent of my funds

our raise from individual Wisconsin families.

You can go look at my filing and you'll see that.

And we've actually been able to raise pretty effectively.

It's not huge.

It's not going to, you know, make anybody's eyes pop out of their head.

It's like $300,000 now.

But the other part that doesn't show is my entire team, which includes my Treasurer is, you know, a present role of a credit union.

My

communications director owns a digital marketing business in Milwaukee area.

They're all volunteers.

I have one partially paid staffer.

So if you add into that to my financials, it looked a lot closer, 500, maybe a million, but it's all sweat equity from people who give a shit.

Excuse me if I can say that on your podcast.

Okay.

That they just do.

And so I'm really proud of that.

And I don't think anyone else can say this in the race.

Even when you look at the third parties, one candidate's funded by outside billionaires,

which

is

curious.

One is self-funded as a wealthy person, and the other person hasn't filed a report yet.

So, you know, and then Glenn's got a million dollars in the bank.

We will see what comes next.

And you know where his money is coming from.

So

I'm trying to, in every action I take, demonstrate how I intend to do the job.

And I think we should be able to expect that of our elected leaders.

Yes, and this is what people say they want, right?

People universally say they want money out of politics.

They want leaders who listen to them.

They want leaders who are who they can touch and talk to.

And they know that they're not going to agree on everything.

But at least you can have a conversation.

And that's not at all what we're seeing right now.

No, if you don't show up, you're not going to have a dialogue.

And I've been joking because Glenn and I have been invited to like, I don't know, seven or eight nonpartisan things.

He's declined all of them.

He won't debate.

We had 12 town halls and non-political spaces.

We invited everyone and we even had conservatives join us.

Didn't show up or wouldn't engage those.

So he's basically just trying to hide.

For me, this is a job interview.

If

you don't show up for the interview, you don't get the job.

So

hey

buddy, step aside.

You're not actually doing the work.

It's time for you to open up the seat for somebody who's trying.

Have you considered offering food at these events?

I have.

I

joke them

up.

Broughts go pretty hard.

You know, Johnsonville is in the district and

I

actually, oh it gets better.

I have a farmer who is part of the Farmers Bureau that I met at a Farmers Bureau meeting and she's supporting me and she said I

make and sell brats and pork products and I will donate them to the campaign.

Amazing.

But this

is

it.

It's finding all the friends, it's finding all the people who are doing it out of love because they give a shit in your words, Brad.

It's a basic mantra, but I think it's one we can all appreciate, right?

Yes.

So for our listeners and our viewers who are inspired by you and get it, how can they find out more about you and maybe even pitch in with your campaign?

Yeah, yeah, I'd be honored.

Water's fine, come on in.

It's a great time to be involved in a campaign.

Even the conservatives that you might feel like, oh my gosh, Magda, people are gonna yell at me.

It's not that chapter.

It's not that time.

People are

willing

to have dialogue.

So you can find me online at bradsmithforcongress.com.

That's F-O-R, not the number, bradsmithforcongress.com.

We have a get involved section where you can learn about events.

Come chat.

I'd love to meet you in person here from you.

You can also see...

fill out a volunteer form, and we have a job for anybody and everybody.

We have people volunteering and organizing across every one of the counties.

They're non-paid, they're just in here because they give a shit, and we can go out there and you can, if it's write a letter to the editor, that's a great thing.

You can help write a postcard, you can join us on canvassing.

We'd love to have you.

This is truly a community-built Organization and that's what I hope to see so I'd love to welcome everyone into it and then we're on most of the socials So

you're on a lot of socials.

Yeah, Facebook tiktok Instagram X is a little bit, you know So you can find us on most of socials at Brad Smith for Congress stuff Brad Smith for Congress Yeah,

and all of these things are going to be linked in the show notes, so it'll be for people to find

Brad, thank you for taking the time.

I know you're crazy busy right now.

Oh, thank you.

It's so fun.

Thank you for just stepping up.

You could be doing a million other things with all of your talents and your tinkering and your family and everything you've got this beautiful, rich life, but you are choosing it to serve the people of Wisconsin, the people who raised you.

I'm so incredibly grateful.

Well, and thank you too.

You've been a part of this journey and you're continuing to help elevate all of us and all these voices of us who care about the community.

So thank you for everything you're doing and for also sharing your time and audience with me too.

It really means a lot.

to sit around the Fox Valley more.

That's right.

I'll be there like every other day for the next 21 days and then I still, my family's still there.

So we'll definitely be around.

There's got to be some sort of Kakana Nina football game coming

out.

Oh, there has to be.

Wait, is there any beef between Kakana and Nina?

Cause everyone's while I meet people where I didn't realize there was as much of a rivalry and they're like, oh

Nina.

I think it's more like a, Cacana is the stinky paper mill town.

And he knows where the, like the fancy paper mill town where the money people are.

This is my historical remembrance of it.

So.

Oh

yeah.

Whenever the wind would blow southwest, we would get a little, a little sample of Cacana and we'd always give them a little bit of grief.

You know what we call that though.

That's the smell.

That's the smell of money.

Oh is it?

That's

what my dad called

manure, by the way.

My dad called manure that, which is so Wisconsin.

It's all.

Yes, that's pretty funny.

Welcome to Wisconsin, smell our derriere.

Yeah,

it's a paper mill and manure, let's go.

And maybe some brat fries in between.

All of that stuff.

It's just a beautiful melange as Wisconsin.

That's my favorite.

Again, thank you, my friend.

And for all of you who are listening, please do like, share, comment.

Help us get the word out about Brad.

That is how he wins this congressional seat.

It is a challenging seat, but we can make this happen.

Let's

go get it.

Last poll showed a single digit.

It was down to eight points, and it's a weird time.

So we can push.

We can push.

We

sure can.

We sure can.

Well,

thank you, Kristen.

It was an honor and pleasure, fun chat with you.

Thank you, my friend.

Alright, take care.