One Country Project's Hot Dish

Welcome to the hot dish comfort food for rural America. I'm Heidi Heitkamp,

and with me is my brother, Joel Heitkamp. Let's just admit

why there's that bounce in your voice, why you just seem so happy

that, you know what? Somebody could dent your car and you wouldn't care. Just tell

them and get it over with. Are we going to talk about, you know, how

I have the world's most beautiful granddaddy? Are we going to talk about that?

I think that's well within your rights there. Grandma

Heidi is a brand new grandmother. First grandchild ever,

and it's a little boy that already has baseball in his mind. You can see

it. Most important thing is he has red hair, so

congratulations. I mean, what's so interesting is Joel is

the youngest. Yes, I know that's hard to believe if you've seen pictures

of all of us, but he is the youngest of the clan, but has

some of the first grandbabies. In fact, was Tenley the

first great. Julie. Joel. Julie. Yeah, Julie. Julie.

But my sisters, me and Thomasine, have been

borrowing grandchildren for about the last 14 years,

15 years. And Thomasine in particular, has

created such a bond with Joel's granddaughters. It's just

been a joy for us. But we are, both

of us, so excited to welcome another

group of grandchildren. Her grandbaby, Petra, and my grandson,

Ashby, are going to be carrying the

toddler and kid load as Joel's grandchildren

move into teenage years. And that'll be fun.

We're going to start this episode by hearing from a lovely couple in

Alabama who tragically lost a son to drug addiction,

but established a foundation in his name to help men recovering

from addiction restart their lives. They'll tell us about

their work and the challenges that proliferation of fentanyl

is creating for first responders and drug treatment.

Will was our third child, grew up in a

suburban home in beautiful Alabama, did

really well through school until he hit middle school and hit those

golden years of puberty and pressures and all the

things that come along with that. He bought a pill

in middle school and was suspended from that.

From that point on, he really started to struggle. So he

was in and out of doing well, staying away from drugs,

and then would go right back to the point where we had him

in and out of rehabs from Alabama all the way to

California. Fortunately, he would do well in rehab, but

then would always relapse once he got back home.

So we lost will in 2012, and he

was 25, and we knew that we wanted to do

something to honor his name and to try

to remove the stigma. Know this can happen in any

suburb. It's not just in big cities or

rural. It can happen anywhere. So we started the Will Bright

foundation, and we wanted to focus on the area where will struggled

the most, which was that next step after recovery.

So our foundation is named the Wilbright foundation.

And our facility that we have in rural west

Alabama is restoration Springs. And there is where we

house men coming out of recovery but needing help with that

next step in life. Get a job, get their driver's license

back, housing, transportation, all the things that really hold

them back from taking that next step in life.

So just people talking about it is good.

It's much better than it used to be. When we first started

dealing with this. People are beginning to realize it's not a

choice, it's a disease. And then when we first got into it,

we didn't tell anybody. I mean, we didn't ask for help. We didn't know who

to go to for help. We just suffered ourselves together.

And then when it became known that will was an addict,

everybody said, oh, can you help us? My son's got a

problem, or my brother or my husband. And so now

it's like, wow, we know where to go to. We know who to call.

There are people in places and organizations now

so much more than there was ten years ago. We've

been relatively successful. We don't necessarily have a treatment

program. We take each individual that comes, and we try to design a program

for what their problems have been. And we've been really successful

in taking guys that we've had homeless

people, we've had people come from prison, we've had people come from the

rehab facilities, and they seem to respond very

well to what we're offering, because we're not just a

babysitting service. I mean, there are a lot of halfway houses, those kind of things

out there that are not much more than that, but we try to take them

and get them a job. And the jobs that we get them in Fayette are

good jobs. I mean, they all of a sudden have insurance, and they have retirement

plans and things they never thought they'd have before in life. The biggest thing

is they're ready to go to work. They'd been in recovery, or they'd been in

jail, and they're ready to start being able to send that child

support money back home, get legal issues

cleared up and out of their way so they can move forward.

So there's nothing quite like a resident that's with you for a few months,

and they get the driver's license back, or they get

that great job, and they can send money back to their mother

or to their families. And one thing we did see was

that bringing people to Fayette, which is very rural Alabama,

they get out of our facility and bring their families to Fayette

because they have a good job. So when we see those kind of

success stories, it just makes you realize that it's been worth

it. Probably the thing that's changed the most

is the accessibility and the ways that

you can get illegal drugs. The

federal government did crack down on opioid and prescriptions and that

sort of thing. And as that helped, we're seeing

a rise in older drugs like methamphetamine,

cocaine, and we see it a lot in our schools

through the source of vaping. So that's

become a hot topic. Vapes that are laced with fentanyl,

it's everywhere, and it's being laced

in everything that a lot of our young people are

experimenting with. The vaping is huge right

now amongst our students. And a lot of times they may not know what

they're getting when they are buying vape or something to put

in their vape, and it could be laced with fentanyl. At Restoration

Springs, we have Narcan in our dormitory

and our cabins as well. So we make sure that we have a good stock

of that. Fortunately, we have not had to use it yet, but we're

realizing that with the fentanyl use, which is much harder

to overturn, to reverse, you're having

to do five or six shots of

Narcan to revive someone, as opposed to when it was

heroin. Typically, one dose of Narcan would

revive them. So we are seeing positive things from that.

On a first responder side. In our city,

all of our officers and first responders are equipped with

Narcan and plenty of it. So if they run into a

situation where they've got to revive someone, they're not going to rely on

just having one or two doses. They've got a bag full in case

this person has been using fentanyl. But I am proud of the state

of Alabama for allowing FDA products

and antagonists to be used when it comes to

opioid and fentanyl overdoses. I think a big part

that bill and I have realized through the will bright foundation is

the advocacy piece. So exactly what we're doing right here, sharing

our story, we're noticing more awareness,

more people willing to get out and share their stories. Like Bill

and I have and not worry about what people think of youth,

because you want to be able to make a difference and help someone else not

have to live through what we have lived through. We're blessed

to be able to be in Washington, DC a few

times a year, to share it on the hill to our lawmakers

and to share the story of so many that have

lost their lives to addiction and let them hear it firsthand from

parents. That's very powerful. It's moving, and

I think that it's helped move the needle some on getting some legislation

passed on how we treat opioids and fentanyl.

So those type pieces of advocacy I

think are very important and are a vital part of what the Willbright foundation

does.

We're coming into an election year and everybody's nervous,

but we now know who the candidates are going to be. Not that it was

a big mystery before. And so I will continue to

believe that rural America will play an outsized role. And I

know your conversation on the role of rural radio

and what needs to happen in terms of using that method for

communication. And I don't think people really understand kind

of that value because it is the

connectivity and the tissue that holds rural

communities together. Our newspapers are dying.

People are now replacing that with Facebook. But people still turn

on the radio for weather. They still turn on the radio for news.

And it's definitely an opportunity to

have a conversation about issues other

know kind of the weather with a broader audience in

rural America. But I think you and your guests, Joel, both

agree that it's underutilized. Isaac Wright with the rural

Voter institute is going to join us. The thing to keep in mind is to

go where people already go to listen.

And I think that as Democrats, we've forgotten that so many

times you and I haven't, which is why in a

pretty republican state, you were able to be elected to the United

States Senate, because you don't forget where people go to talk.

And to be part of that conversation, I get a chance to visit

with somebody who's out there making a difference in a world that I live in

every day and that know, I'm a radio

guy. I'm on a number of radio stations talking to people in the rural

area. And then you see someone who's doing what

Isaac Wright is doing with the rural Voter institute, and it

makes you take a step back and say somebody else gets it, somebody else is

willing to work on it. And now I get a chance to visit with them.

Isaac, good to have you on the hot dish. It's great to be here.

It's best described by you. What's the rural

voter institute? So we actually started right after

the 2016 elections. The Truman National Security

Project is a national group that sort of leans into defense and

diplomacy. And they were deeply involved with Secretary

Clinton because she had been secretary of the state Department, et cetera.

And right after the 2016 elections, everybody took shock and said, oh, my God,

what happened in rural America? It was like nobody had been paying attention

for the last few years. And so they came to my business partner and

I, she's originally from rural South Dakota. I'm originally from rural northwest

Tennessee. And know, can you guys put together an autopsy of

what happened in the election to give it convention? And so we did. But then

we turned around and said, you know what? The autopsy has already been written. These

numbers are there. We can see what happened.

That story is out there. Let's turn to how we do a better

job as people in office, as elected officials, as

candidates, talking to voters in rural communities, talking with

two way communication. And so we said, between the two of us, we've

spent 40 years at that point in our lives in

campaigns and office holders offices. And we said, we'll just turn

to that treasure trove of research that's out there, all the polling that's been done

and focus groups. And it turned out there hadn't been in ten or 15

years. So we turned to social science and folks who

specialize in rural communities, social science, social

psychology, and looked at and realized that a lot of the problems weren't

values based, they were communications based, and how we

communicate values, how we do a better job of talking with people, not talking

at people. And so we sort of created a thesis on how people

do a better job in public policy and public office,

communicating with rural communities. And then it sort of took off from there, and it

started taking up more and more of our time. And eventually it turned into the

rural voter institute. And some folks know, here's funding if

you want to go fill that gap in research that you see is lacking.

That passion came from mean,

Isaac. It did. I mean, not giving up on rural areas where every day you

got to get in your pickup, go somewhere and have somebody ticked off if you

got the wrong bumper sticker on. I mean, that passion comes from

somewhere. So tell me, what drives mean.

Where'd you grow up? What do you remember? I mean, explain to people what it's

like to think what you think

and live in one of these rural areas. So I grew up in rural northwest

Tennessee. When I was growing up, it was about an hour's drive to a chain

restaurant. Now they've got an applebee's in the county's next door, which is a big

deal. I remember my senior year of high school, we got the first and still

the only super Walmart in the county, which meant there was something legal

for us high schoolers to do past 08:00 on a Friday night. That was a

big thing. And my hometown, my home county, anyway,

was where Ms. Pauline Gore was from. That was.

She was. Miss Pauline was a hometown hero. She was the first

woman to graduate Vanderbilt law School. My grandmother knew

her. I wound up my first job on a campaign, was on the

staff of the Gore campaign. And then I saw my home county

vote against Al Gore despite

his ties to our community. And

it blew my mind. And I have watched that change over the years.

I did Mike Biebee's races for governor in Arkansas. You probably remember

him. He was the last democratic governor of Arkansas and learned a lot

from that. He was a guy who

had an agenda for the state, had a clear vision,

and he got reelected. Let's see, in 2010, which

was an anti incumbent, anti Democrat year, if you remember. It was a rough

year. And he got elected with a larger margin of

any governor of either party that year on the

ballot as an incumbent southern Democrat in a red

state. And he did so after, in his first term, he passed the

two largest tax increases in state history and the largest tax

cut in state history, remaking the tax code to be more progressive.

But he spoke to people on a values basis and about why it mattered.

And he was all about making people's lives better. And so those experiences

together made a big difference for me. Both my parents were first generation

college students. I grew up with GI Joel and transformers. And I know my

parents sacrificed for me to have that opportunity. And there were opportunities

for them because of people in public office who saw the opportunity

that if we open the door, there are people willing with hard work to

come through that door and change generations. And I was a product

of that generational change. And I don't see how you come from that,

how you have that experience and you don't want to continue that opportunity for other

people. So you no different than myself, other than

age. You're younger and you're out there getting after it,

yet where I'm kind of the old crippled, two fake knee guy now, but

you're sitting there and you're saying, what can we do about it?

What can we do about it? How can we connect with rural

voters. And you say that the autopsy had already

been done. I get it. I understand it. I'm just

wondering if anybody's willing to read the autopsy report,

which basically would tell people that they

don't understand what the rural voter does

once they get up in the morning to go to bed at night anymore. They

just don't get them. They don't understand the men and

women who, on any given day, they could be sitting next to in

church. I mean, how often do you hear people in public office

talk about the wage gap in rural America? Right. Rural Americans make

$0.75 on the dollar compared to their metropolitan counterparts in this

country. And we have all these huge problems with

brain drain, with upside down population pyramids as

our generation, the people my parents age, for example, are getting older,

and there are less and less people to take care of them. And that's just

not just like nurses and medical facilities, but that's literally their adult

children to come by and check on them and those kind of things, because people

are leaving to find economic or educational opportunities

in other places. And if we don't care for the communities that

power America, those communities could.

And I think one of the things we've seen in our research, and we've collected

data for, what, going on five years now in midwestern

battleground states with rural and small town voters. One of

the things we've seen is there is a very real fear

that the rural way of life is under attack. And you know what? There's some

truth to that. There are economic threats,

there are predatory threats out there that really

pose a threat to the viability, long term of our

communities. When I was growing up, I remember, which I'll just brag

for a minute, my senior class was the biggest senior class of my high school

to graduate any county in county history. There were 126 of us. That's

double the size of my class, for the record. That's why I'm

bragging. Exactly. And not everybody made it

through, but we gave it a shot. But I was around during

school consolidation. Right. That was part of the reason why we had such a big

senior class. And at the time, in our community,

in the communities in our region, there was this fear that if your school was

consolidated, your town would go under. That was the bedrock of your

community. And what we found in our research is

over 20 or 30 years. Oh, I'm admitting how old I am. That

hurts. That perception of threat has changed

dramatically. And right now, the threat is this fear

of main street small business. And if our main street,

small businesses, go under, so will our community. And when

we've talked to folks about how they define those small businesses,

that's not just like the mom and pop hardware store, although it is that,

but it's also the coffee shop. It's the guy who prepares your taxes every

year. If those businesses go under, there

is a real threat to the viability of the community. And that's one of the

big concerns, that we have to do a better job. People in public office have

to do a better job of addressing. And it's not just about talking at

people, right? It's about talking with people. Clearly, what you're doing

is trying to teach people how to connect and do the very things that you

just said. But I think what you and I have in

common, and a lot of people wouldn't be able to say that,

is that we understand their daily

life because we live it. It's what and who we are.

And somewhere along the line, progressives forgot

that or woke up in the morning, didn't care about it. And

I don't know which one it is or if it's a little bit of both,

but it's still there. For 19 years, I've

worked in AM radio. Granted, we're on FM, we're

simulcast, and we're out there on the World Wide Web, which is great, too. But

my job was in AM radio. And if you listen

to people on the coast and you talk to them about AM

radio, they just roll their eyes and think, the Ford shouldn't even have an AM

radio state in it. Know? Okay, best example

I can give, Isaac, and I'm curious what you think about this.

So I'm sitting in the shop with all my buddies, right? Guys that I grew

up with, hunting, fishing. So we're drinking beer. This was a couple

of years ago. We're sitting in his shop, and one of

my friends looks at me and he says, I just can't take you anymore.

You're so liberal, and

I can't listen to you anymore on the radio. And

I said to him, now, remember, we're in his shop. And I said to

him, I said, well, that's your choice. You don't have to

listen. I mean, there's a reason we're number one. Somebody is listening, and there's

a reason we're making money because somebody is listening. But

since we're in your shop, let's go out back and let's turn on the

combine. Let's turn on the tractor, let's turn on the terrorist and let's find out

what you were listening to when you shut them off. And he looks at me

and he goes, you know, Joel, you can really be an

ass sometimes. He was listening to me. He

was listening because that's what they listen to. They don't always

have to agree, but they're going to find something in there. They're going to find

something in there that's worthy of a conversation. And somewhere

along the line, people forgot how to connect with rural

voters that way. He didn't necessarily like my

politics, but he was willing to listen to them, which

means that the other people in that room drinking beer with us were sitting there

going, he got you. You see what

I'm getting at, Isaac? Absolutely. I've been on a few

bird hunts before when I knew the topic of

politics was something that divided us. But as long as I was the one hitting

the birds, nobody argued. At the end of the day,

that's. A great way to put it. So how do we

fix it? My biggest problem

now when I go out and recruit candidates to run is I can't

win with that letter behind. My mean, there's no way I can win with that

letter behind. So it's gone beyond

winning elections to now having people not even want to

run for them. Yeah. Cornell did a study recently

about exactly what the drop is when you put a

d beside somebody's name for office. Now, this is saying, let's say that we

read Joel Hykamp's bio, right? Talked to people about it,

said, would you support Joel Heitkamp, yes or no? Then you do the same

thing, but you say, Joel Heitkamp, Democrat, and what

difference does that make in the drop off? And they regionalize it around the country.

And I'm not going to necessarily get it exactly to the number. Right. But

ballpark, it's about a 13 point drop in rural

northeast. These are strictly rural and small town voters in the regions of the

country. In the southeast, it's a little more than that.

And I think the biggest drops were around 21 points in the

Midwest and 23 points in the west. Think about

that. Somebody that says, I agree with your values. We

share the same values. I trust you. I believe in what you're going to

do. And the minute you put a letter by their name,

21 point drop in support.

And so one of the things we've got to do is just address the brand

deficit, right? Because it's not about the values. It's

even less about how we communicate than it is about the brand. Although communication is

a key point. But Democrats for

decades stopped defining themselves in

rural and small town America. And in politics, if you don't define yourself,

somebody else will do it for you. And that's exactly what happened.

And the problem is now, when you hit certain buzzwords, when you

communicate the wrong way, a brick wall goes up and nothing

else you say is going to get heard. And when we don't hear each other,

that's when problems happen. That's when things break down. And so we have

to do a better job of communicating. You said something earlier that really triggered a

thought with me, and you made a brilliant point about

how we define ourselves, people from our communities, how

we define ourselves, and how it makes us define the way we relate to the

world around us. And there was actually a study about

that by the journal of the Rural Education

association where they found that

adolescents, and we all go through that phase in adolescence right when we're trying on

personalities. For me, it was, I had the

hawaiian shirt on in high school and the big jeans with the

bottom that you couldn't see the sneakers, and you'd even know I was wearing the

right sneakers to skateboard, which I didn't know how to ride a skateboard, and I

was president of the four H club. But what we're doing is we're going through,

we're trying on different personalities in adolescence to define our

own identity. And that's part of that process. Well, what

they found in the study was one of two things generally

happens with rural adolescents in America.

Either they reject the rural identity, and we all know those folks.

They're people we grew up with who move away, and they say, well, you wouldn't

believe where I come from. And they put onions in their red eye

gravy. That's a shout out to my friends in North Carolina. But they

make those comments and wisecracks about where they grew up, and they put it

down. That's rejecting the rural identity. Or the other

thing happens, what psychologists call overbinding.

And they overbind to the rule identity. It becomes a

fundamental part of how they define themselves, how they

define the world around them, and how they define the way they relate to that

world. And so when we take that for granted,

when people in public office take for granted that a

fundamental part of how you define yourself is then haunted by the

fact that there is a $0.75 on the dollar wage

gap because of where you live, not because of

how hard you work, not because of the kind of work you do, but because

of where you live that. That becomes a fundamental

thing to be addressed. And when you start off in a

conversation and it just hurts my heart when I hear people walk in and

say, I'm here for your vote. I'm going to bring rural broadband to your

community. Man, you just talked right

past everything that rural broadband matters for.

You just missed the boat. And we have to do a better job. People

in public office have to do a better job of having that fundamental,

foundational conversation of the values that

matter. I've got two theories that I want to float by you

and get your take on. The first being that we're the victim

of our own success. When I was growing up in North Dakota,

every state executive branch

position that was elected was held by Democrats, everyone.

We had two U. S. Senators for

years that were Democrats, congressmen. For years, the congressmen had

sagged into being the senators. It was that

easy to predict who was going to be the next United States senator.

And my theory on some of this, and in my old

legislative district, for you folks that haven't listened to the hot dish

that much, I served for 14 years in the state

senate, and I think we succeeded. And

you're talking about the things that we absolutely need to do now and

at least acknowledge now. But I'm going to give you an example of

my district. We build bobcats. We build

skid steers there. Okay? So, yes, it's farming based, but it's

also got an industrial base, right? And so a big part of my voting

block were union boys, union men and women

who I marched the line with in the rain for three days because they were

making them work Saturdays without even talking to them. Because

we didn't strike because of pay. They struck because of respect.

Right? So we got that fixed. We got workers comp

fixed. We got family leave fixed. We got

the state to acknowledge certain levels of pay

fixed. We got all this stuff fixed. And the minute we got it fixed,

they started voting Republican. And when you asked them why,

they said the same thing. Gods and guns.

Gods and guns. And I went to the union meeting and I said,

you guys, I mean, you didn't vote for my

successor here. You beat him out. I was there

with you. I was in that line with you. And they said, your party is

just so out of touch with who we are today. I

went home mad, and the next morning I woke up and I

didn't know if I should have been mad at them or myself.

And I'm really curious what your take on that is. Isaac,

let's break that into two topics, but that's okay. Let's talk about God. Let's talk

about guns. Guns first, I'm a hunter. In fact,

I made a decision a few years ago. My kids and I, the

only meat we consume in the house are things that we

harvest ourselves. Now, that said, man, if I'm out on a road trip,

Taco Bell is my guilty pleasure. But when I'm at

know, it's venison, it's elk, it's wild turkey,

it's pheasant. When I can get an invitation from a

friend in the Dakotas, I'm just dropping a hint there. If you want to give

those fake knees a workout, it's open, buddy. You come on up. But

it's stuff we harvest ourselves, right? So obviously, I'm a firearm owner.

I'm a hunter. And when we talk about

guns, we have to face a certain reality of. There are

different segments of gun owners having this conversation,

right? There are those who are hunters who have

the firearm. I have my great great

grandmother's single barrel 20 gauge that she used

to shoot snakes off the front porch of the cabin. Let me tell you something.

When you harvest a squirrel with that for dinner, that's a cool thing, right?

And there are people who have those firearms because they are part of our family

tradition. They've been passed down. They are part of how we put meat on the

table, right? Those are folks that we can have a serious conversation

with, that their values often more closely in line with us than anybody

else. Because when I talk to my buddies who are deer hunters,

they don't want the guy who's a prepper, who's never hunted

deer before, who's preparing for the zombie apocalypse. So he takes his

AR 15 out to the deer stand and he's just going to shoot wildly because

you know what? They're going to hit me or my kids, right? We're only one

field over. So those folks we have

a serious conversation with to be had about gun safety, about

responsible gun ownership, about conservation. Because you know what? My

kids are eating the fish out of the water. They're eating the animals that were

roaming that land. Those things matter to us. Then there's the other

set of the folks who say, I need

500 assault weapons because I'm

preparing for when the government falls in the zombie apocalypse. We're not going to be

successful in that conversation. Let's not force a round hole

into a square peg. If your firearms are because you're planning to

overthrow the government, we're not going to agree on this stuff.

Right. But if they're there because you're putting meat on the table, because this is

part of your family tradition, culture. Yeah. We have a conversation to

be had. So that's number one. Number two on God. And

this is something we've actually studied some at the rural voter

institute. And that's a serious conversation. And in

fact, I'll reference, I was raised baptist, and if you've ever been to baptist training

union, which was something I don't think they do anymore, but many decades

ago, I had a pastor in my childhood make the point,

you can never argue somebody into changing their mind, but you can love them

into it. And that's part of the conversation we need to have is

about quit arguing with people and

start being the things, practicing the things that we

preach, live in the change, if you will. But

when we talk about faith and we talk about people of faith, one thing

is people need to be genuine. Right. If that's genuine to you, to talk about

your faith tradition. A big part of my

political conviction comes from Matthew, chapter 25. Right. When Jesus said,

we will separate the sheep and the goats, we will judge

believers based on how they treat the sick, the poor,

the widow, the orphan. Right. These are things why I believe people

should have access to health care. Right. But if

it's not part of your tradition, if that's not part of who you are,

don't force it. But if that faith tradition is real for you, be open

and talk about it. Right. Respecting other people's beliefs.

But people want to know what motivates you, what brings you to believe

the things you believe. Because if

you are putting food on the table, if you are saving,

because one day you hope you might get to retire or put a kid

through school, then you probably don't

have the chance to sit down and read the New York Times, the state

daily, the local weekly newspaper, cover to cover and watch the evening news

every single day, to know every vote your elected representative

took. Right. But, you know, if you can turn your back and trust them while

you go live your life. And that's why people want to know what our

convictions are. We also found that talking in

moral language, right, simply saying right and wrong

is just as effective. Being able to

say, Democrats are often cursed

with the fact they're right. And they think that if

they just explain the numbers over and over logically, everybody in the world will

believe them. But that's not how we work as human

beings. It's not how we make decisions. And so we have to

do a better job of saying, hey, my tax plan

is the right idea because all the numbers work on a spreadsheet. And we have

to do a better job of saying, hey, this tax plan works because the

billionaires at the top who've profited the most from the american dream they had

the chance to live, have the bigger responsibility to put

back, to make sure that everybody has a chance to live that american dream

than the person who's stocking our grocery shelves. They shouldn't carry that burden.

It's going to take a change. Know folks who are

listening to this podcast have the opportunity to make, to demand

better from those who make decisions about who goes out to talk

about what topics. Yeah, Isaac, tell people where they can

find the rural voter institute. Tell them how they can get active. Learn from it,

take advantage of it. Ruralvoterinstitute.org. We have five

years worth of studies published there on our website you can pull

down and read. We do trainings at party

conventions and meetings across the country. You can write in through

our website to talk about those. Our latest report came out this

week and it's about the important role of terrestrial radio. That's AM

FM radio in small town in rural America and what a cornerstone it is

and how it is an important medium and how to best use the

medium to communicate with people, to talk about our values, about where we

stand. Isaac, I could do it all day, man. Here's my word

to you, okay? You get yourself an out of state license. You come up

here mid October, November, by noon you will have your

limit. When it comes to, I'm there, I'm there.

I've been hunting South Dakota for years. I want North Dakota to push past

my record. I'm in. All right. Thanks, man. Thanks for coming on the hot dish.

Thank you. It's been great.

The problem is as Democrats

nationally, we don't get it or we don't care. One

of the two. But it's seen as know, hey,

nobody listens to am radio anymore. You know what? In the rural area, they

listen to AM radio. And if Rush Limbaugh taught us anything,

it was the fact that he can affect politics through the radio.

And it worked. It absolutely worked. And if people don't

acknowledge that, then they do so at their own peril.

Yeah. And shows like yours give us a look

into leading political indicators. Right. The

postal service in North Dakota was horrific when I was in

the Senate. It hasn't improved much. And there's pockets of

North Dakota. Here's a great story. Well, it was in the

middle of a huge hiring problem. I mean,

lots of workforce. And so the post office thought they were going to nickel and

dime it. So they basically replaced some of the old time rural

postal carriers with new postal carriers.

Unfortunately, those people didn't know how to deliver the mail. And my

favorite story, Joel, is up in Minot, North Dakota. This woman

got hired to deliver the mail by some company that came in

and underbid the old time rural postal carrier.

And what she was, she was addicted to

story. And so I remember this story. So she

would put all the mail in the first mailbox along the road

because she knew when that know when she went out to get her mail,

she would say, oh, I've got Mildred's mail, I've got Clarence's mail. She'd

drive down and deliver the mail for so this woman could drive back to

Mina and play. So I am not

exaggerating. We found bags of mail in the ditch

where people had just thrown the mail in the ditch.

The point I want to make is when you raise some of these

issues that are happening on a show like yours where people can call

in, all of a sudden you get a handle on what people are talking about,

what they care about, what their fears are, what their concerns are, what their

hopes think. I don't think there's a

better medium in America, in rural America, than

rural radio. And that's true, actually. I want to make this point.

It's very significant on reservations. Tribal radio is

huge. Oh, absolutely. It's great. It's a

wonderful way to communicate. And people can do it

without folks knowing who they are. Anonymity, I mean,

that's the key, right? My show, for example,

they're mad enough to call in. They're happy enough to call in. Whatever reason they

call in. They can do so without

everybody knowing who they are. And that's the beauty

of it. They get a chance to, for the first time ever, not

sit there and be outed for whatever belief they have. Yeah. And one thing I

would say for the folks who listen to us who are

curious about this, there's a number of radio stations. In fact, I'm going to give

you a call signal, KFGO. When you ask

Alexa to play Kfgo, she says,

kfgo, the mighty 790. It's so

much fun. But anyone can listen to rural radio. And I really

think that political operatives across the country ought

to spend some time just dialing in and listening to

what people are talking about. You don't need an expensive focus group if you can

find a talk show where people feel like they can

call in and talk about what's going on. And the people who are talking,

they're trying to convince you, Joel. They're trying to convince your

listeners that they're right.

Well, thanks so much, Joel. Enjoy your vacation. Enjoy

your. I think it might be your first honeymoon. Last time I

remember, you were too broke to take a first honeymoon. So this might be your

first honeymoon. Well, we were too busy buying diapers on our first

honeymoon, just getting ready for it. So,

yeah, there's a reason. I had grandkids at a very young

age. Okay, well,

listen, thanks, Joel, for joining me, and we hope

you all will tune in once again to the hot

dish. It's where we go. Comfort food for middle

America. Please continue to listen, and

if you're interested in what we do at one country, check us

out at

onecountryproject.com. And if you have suggestions or for topics or

for anything else, please email us at podcast

at

onecountryproject.com.