One Country Project's Hot Dish

Heidi Heitkamp [00:00:04]:
Welcome to The Hot Dish, comfort food for Middle America. I'm Heidi Heitkamp, and this is a special edition. Before we get started, we want to thank all of our listeners for your continued support. We love hearing from you, so please keep those questions and suggestions coming.

Joel Heitkamp [00:00:20]:
And I'm Joel Heitkamp, and I just want to remind you to reach out to us via email at Podcast@OneCountryProject.org. And be sure to check out OneCountryProject.org for more updates on what we're doing to lift up rural voices in Washington.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:00:38]:
Joel, you know, we talked a lot about your pumpkin patch. How's it going? You making any money?

Joel Heitkamp [00:00:43]:
No, we're harvesting. I'm not making any money. My grandkids are making money, but they're learning to shake hands and thank people for giving them money. But what they found out is grandpa should have been a farmer.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:00:55]:
I doubt that. I doubt that.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:01:02]:
Joel.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:01:03]:
I spoke with two special guests individually. I spoke with John Giles, the mayor of Mesa, Arizona, about climate action goals and immigration policies in his community and for the nation. But first, I spoke with George Goehl, an author and fellow podcaster, about his career as a political organizer and his deep connection to the people of rural America.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:01:25]:
All right, let's listen to that conversation today.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:01:28]:
I'm really excited to talk to my next guest, George Goehl, who is doing amazing work in helping organize rural America. He has founded a new project which is gaining steam called Addition. He's also an expert on something that I care a lot about, as you all know, being faithful listeners of the hot dish. And that's the intersection of rural and working class Americans. He's launching his second season of his critically acclaimed podcast to see each other, which shatters stereotypes about small town America. George, I want to talk a little bit about what you're doing in Wisconsin, and you're out there organizing right now ahead of this election. Can you give us some sense of what's happening in the places where you're working?

George Goehl [00:02:17]:
Sure. I'm happy to do it. Happy to be here. Been following you in this work for a long time. So just jumping right into elections. I would say in Wisconsin, there is a super hot issue, and I'd say in many ways a hot issue that I'm hoping democrats really discover in time. But Wisconsin has a rich history of county owned nursing homes. Some of them have been around for 125 years, and people love them.

George Goehl [00:02:43]:
They're beloved. They're five star institutions. The staff turnover rate is super low. The morale is super high, and therefore, the care is excellent, and there is a push by anti government conservative county boards to privatize them and sell them off, even though the finances are in excellent shape. So there's actually no reason to sell them off other than an anti government ideology. And it served up a hornet's nest. You've got, like, small towns, especially senior citizens, across partisanship. You got Democrats, independents and Republicans coming together and agreeing on this issue, flooding into county board meetings, writing letters to the editor, giving county board members a hard time everywhere they can.

George Goehl [00:03:24]:
And folks are now trying to pivot that work into election. And I'll just say one last thing about this issue. In the April elections in Wisconsin, this proved to be a strong political issue. In three counties where conservative county board members are trying to privatize the nursing home, two county chairs got booted. And these were actually pretty sophisticated politicians. And across those three counties, about ten county board members who are really pushing to privatize the nursing homes were replaced by candidates who wanted to keep them owned by the public.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:03:54]:
I think that this is such a great example of why it is so important for anyone who wants to have political influence in rural America to not just knee jerk this idea that they vote against their interests. No, they really don't. You just don't understand what their interest is, what you've done so well, I think in your, your work is try and not just tell people what they should care about and worry about. What advice would you give to other people who are wanting to see some changes politically in rural America and feel discouraged?

George Goehl [00:04:26]:
I love that question. I would say, start with listening and trying to really understand where people are at and how they're viewing the world. I grew up in southern Indiana, in a couple of different small towns. Grew up on Greasy Creek Road in Nashville, Indiana. But I eventually moved to Chicago, and they had a style of organizing where you went and knocked on doors and asked people, what is the one thing you most want changed in the community? And as long as that was within our value set, we'd work on that. We wouldn't say, oh, we got a grant to do this, or what about climate, or whatever the thing is. And so we weren't in Wisconsin, and we're working at where I work, we're working in a bunch of states, but we weren't like, there's a great fight to be had on publicly owned nursing homes. We went and asked people, we did 30 meetings with people in small towns in Wisconsin and asked them a number of questions and said, but the question of what issue like, keeps you up the most at night.

George Goehl [00:05:20]:
It was aging in a small town and in a rural community, and that included in home long term care, nursing homes and transportation and other issues. But really, what was most hot was this privatization of the county owned nursing homes. And so start where people are at. It's, we say it all the time, but it actually works. And I'll just say, and you know this, but like one, I think we forget about all the existing social justice fighters in rural communities. I'm convinced in every rural community in the country, there are a set of people, some small, some bigger, that are always the ones that stand up for what's right. And we spent so much time obsessing over the MAGA voters that we kind of almost write those folks out of the story. I feel like they were barely a footnote to the resistance to Trump.

George Goehl [00:06:09]:
So they're there and they want to get organized. And when they start organizing, we can bring more and more people in.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:06:14]:
Yeah, you know what I call them? They're the whisperers.

George Goehl [00:06:17]:
Yes, I'm a Democrat. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:06:20]:
You know I'm with you.

George Goehl [00:06:22]:
Exactly.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:06:22]:
It's always so interesting. I was in rural Minnesota and I was walking around with Harris walls shirt and it was just hot off the press. I must have had 20 people come up and whisper, I'm with you. Can we say it a little louder? And what's happened really, is that the kind of tactics of the MAGA movement, and I won't even say republican, but the tactics of the MAGA movement have really driven people underground. But they're there and people don't appreciate it.

George Goehl [00:06:50]:
No, I think it's, I remember 2016, after Trump was elected, speaking to a set of liberal progressive donors in Washington DC, and you could sense that the conclusion they had come to was not to fight harder for rural hearts and minds, but actually to write people off and just be like, that is not our future. And I think there are a bunch of people, you definitely among them, that have fought to tell a different story of what's possible. And I think we know if we actually write off the rural vote, we have not hit bottom. Like these 70 to 357-030-6535 percent counties moved to 80 20 in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. It's like game over. Like those states are off the board.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:07:31]:
Yeah. I mean, I always tell people, they say, well, good luck with that. I said, I don't have to win them, I just have to win. I have to go back to 60 40.

George Goehl [00:07:40]:
Yeah, I think that's right.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:07:41]:
And so let's, let's talk a little bit about this election, because people are starting to say prayers probably once an hour.

George Goehl [00:07:49]:
Right.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:07:50]:
For the country. But, but I think, more importantly, asking, I can't sit on the sidelines anymore. What should I be doing? What should I be doing? What would you tell them?

George Goehl [00:08:01]:
I love that question. I would one say to anybody, like, move from a stance of anxiety to one of action. I think about the last year, how many hours were spent worrying and not doing anything, and that actually didn't do anything good for the person that was worrying or for the country or for the election. So I just, like, figure out how to be in a stance of action. And I'll just even give you one story. A friend of mine who lives in Minneapolis was tracking some of the work we were doing in Wisconsin and Michigan and said, what can I do? And I said, well, some of these local groups and some of these local rural democratic parties need money. And she happens to be a square dance caller. So she organized a square dance, happened over the weekend.

George Goehl [00:08:44]:
She raised $1,500 and then asked which group to send it to. And it's, you know, not a massive amount of money, but that is somebody moving from anxiety to action. The organization I used to work for, people's Action, is a deep canvassing program, which, deep canvassing is nonjudgmental conversations that could be with a voter on issues or on a candidate. And when I was the director in 2020, we did 280,000 of these conversations with voters that we modeled to be movable. They were maybe leaning Trump. They were maybe undecided, maybe that when we did a model and we had 280,000 of these conversations and moved a bunch of folks to actually vote for Joe Biden. So if you go to peoplesaction.org, they have a deep canvas phone program that you can become a volunteer on. So those are, those are two ideas.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:09:31]:
That's a great idea. And I think rural people are better at talking to people than urban people sometimes, because sometimes questions come off as condescending. I don't think they're intended that way. But I, I have a friend who talked about canvassing and Iowa for Joe Biden. And when he knocked on the door, he didn't say, who are you going to vote for in rural America? That's a pretty private question. And he would say, what kind of country do you want to live in? What do you care about? And that would start the conversation. And what he would say is that it didn't matter if they were Democrats or Republicans, they pretty much gave the same answer, you know, what they wanted. And so we've built this whole narrative about how we're polarized across political ideology.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:10:17]:
And what's really interesting is we're not polarized much on issues at all.

George Goehl [00:10:22]:
In 2017, I was part of a group that decided to go out and have 10,000 listening conversations in rural communities. And we went hard in counties that swung from, like, either supporting Obama or pretty close to giving him the majority of their votes, and then had one of those, you know, some of those counties, like, had 20 point swings. And we listened and we asked three questions, like, what issues keep you up at night? We then asked, what do you see as the solution? We didn't want to make any assumption that if somebody said healthcare, that they thought public health care was the answer. So we just, what do you see as a solution? And then we asked, like, who and what do you think's responsible for? What are the challenging conditions in this community right now? And what was really interesting about that is, I think it was around 45% said people who get public benefits, some kind of welfare comment, 40 some percent said undocumented immigrants, but 81% said a government controlled by Wall street and big corporations. So there were two kinds of populism, for lack of a better term, or two kinds of meaning, making understandings of what were there. And so it's there. The anti immigrant sentiment is there, but there was actually an opening that we saw in that.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:11:37]:
And do you think the pick of Tim Walz, Governor Walz, will have political legs for her, or is that just.

George Goehl [00:11:44]:
You know, I think it's actually the biggest deal for those of us who said we have to, like, actually, like, love our rural communities, listen to people, and contest for the rural vote. Since Donald Trump got elected, I think it's the biggest thing that has happened. And I actually love, because I love this country. I love that it was a daughter of immigrants who happened to live in oakland, who made the biggest rubber stamp of that. We actually have to contest for the rural vote. So I just want to say that. And I was there in eau claire, the second of the events they did after Vice president harris picked tim walls, and that they had a family farmer introduce her. It actually wasn't even an eau claire.

George Goehl [00:12:21]:
It was actually out in a field surrounded by corn and soy so, I think it is a huge deal. I think his sensibility about what people's lives are like, yeah, we do change our own oil and our own air filter, and we like to go out and be outdoors. And, yes, I remember having people telling me I can't wear camo anymore because it seemed like that was a right wing thing to do. And I love that he has a camo hat. And so I think it's a huge deal. And really, as you know, if like a couple percentage points better in rural in this election, especially in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan. But the same goes for North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona.

George Goehl [00:13:02]:
That could be all the difference.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:13:03]:
Yeah, I think the biggest thing that it did for me is when people say, oh, the Democratic Party doesn't, they don't understand us. They don't even know us.

George Goehl [00:13:13]:
No, I mean, Tim Walz has shown he loves rural communities. That certainly did not come through in hillbilly ology.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:13:19]:
Yeah, we have a few minutes, but I do want to talk about hillbilly because I think there's an interesting kind of narrative on that, which is he basically said, the government's not coming to help you. Private industry's not coming to help you, you got to help yourself, which isn't a bad message. Right. But now it's like he's bought into the whole grievance thing, that every problem that there is in Appalachia is some elite New Yorker's fault.

George Goehl [00:13:47]:
Well, concerns me so much about that book is in addition to basically denigrating rural communities. And a lot of people that he grew up with is, I think as Trump ascended, I think a lot of people, and probably some listeners here, and a lot of people are like, who are these white rural people with red hats? And why do they love this guy? And the fascination makes total sense. It was a big shift in our politics. I remember meeting with some Wisconsin democratic county chairs, and they were just still wrestling with the fact that experience now had no bearing in elections locally. They actually had QAnon members that were on their school board, had no interest in education. But I think the fascination with the quote unquote mega rural voter means we don't see those rural Democrats and social justice people that are still there fighting. And I think we have to, like, see them and if we could invest more in them. So in 2022, feeling kind of cooped up from COVID I went and did 50 meetings with people in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana, and people were innovating like crazy.

George Goehl [00:14:55]:
One group of older women had a basically befriend, a former Dem turned Trump voter, and they would have a coffee with them every week when they were just playing the long game. It was like 30 women in one county were doing this, and Walworth county people were contributing $30 a month so they could have two offices in the county. They had actually more physical presence than the Republicans and even some of them that were pretty beat up when I met them in 2022 and were struggling to get yard signs out to rural communities. One of them, they were pretty beat up when I met them. They started this thing called the Tri County Influencer Campaign, and they are now providing signs, messaging, radio ads, and billboards to 40 counties in Wisconsin and now to counties across the country. So it's like, I just hope we move more of our focus to those folks. They're the ones doing the work. They can't, like, turn off their notifications so they don't have to see a let's go Brandon sign.

George Goehl [00:15:51]:
Like, that might be their next door neighbor, but they're out there fighting and fighting and fighting and, like, let's give them more attention.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:15:56]:
Truer words were never spoken. I mean, the stuff that you've done, the work that you've done. Have you published your visits? Can people read the stuff that you've been putting out there? And where would they go?

George Goehl [00:16:08]:
A few places. I mean, the podcast, to see each other. There was a season in 2020 that followed five rural organizing groups that were busting all kinds of stereotypes about rural communities. And then this year follows one of the fights around the privatization of these nursing homes. So these are just really, these are stories that give you hope, and they also tell a more accurate story of rural communities. The organization I used to work for and still love people's action, has a report on those thousands of conversations I mentioned and also on deep canvassing and how it helped move people on issues used to divide us. So those are a couple places to look.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:16:44]:
Keep up the fight. I'll keep up the fight. And let's hope that in 2028 that this won't be an afterthought. It will be okay. We're going to think about persuadable suburban women. We're going to think about our traditional base, working class men and women. But this intersection of working people and rural people that help build the modern democratic party has not been nurtured the way it should have been nurtured.

George Goehl [00:17:11]:
That's right. I'm so glad that you're connecting the two, both rural and working class, wherever they live. That's who we got to fight to get back.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:17:20]:
Anyway, thank you so much, George. So appreciate you coming on. I know you will give hope to so many people out there listening. Let's get back together after the election and talk about lessons learned and what the next steps are.

George Goehl [00:17:34]:
Yes, and hopefully celebrate.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:17:42]:
We want to share that throughout October, the documentary "Odd hours, No Pay, Cool Hat" will air on PBS. This film takes viewers into the heart of the volunteer fire service and by extension, on a journey through many facets of America. Joel's interview with the executive producer Peter Yoakum will be in an upcoming episode of the Hot Dish, so stay tuned for that. And I will tell you that the volunteer fire department is the backbone of first responders in rural America, and the challenges are many. And so this is a really important component of keeping rural America viable. Check out when the documentary will air near you on their website, PBS website or on the website OddHoursFilm.com. Great documentary. Please find it on your PBS station.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:18:35]:
Check out their website again at OddHoursFilm.com. I'm very pleased to welcome Mayor John Giles of Mesa, Arizona. The mayor has been a transformative leader with forward thinking policies and solutions on issues I know many of our listeners will find important, whether that is immigration, affordable housing, which is such a big issue, and climate action. He serves as the chair of the Immigration Task Force for the US Conference of Mayors and is also a prominent voice in the efforts to end childhood hunger and promote sustainability. Welcome, Mayor, to The Hot Dish. We are very excited about your participation today.

George Goehl [00:19:25]:
Mayor thank you. I'm equally excited. I'm looking forward to talking about whatever's on your mind. But, I mean, there's a lot to talk about today.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:19:32]:
You recently made some headlines by participating in the DNC in spite of being a lifelong Republican. And so I'm sure that has created some interesting dialogue where you live. And I'm interested in your rationale for that, why you took that risk.

George Goehl [00:19:51]:
Thank you. It wasn't something that I decided to do without some contemplation because I come from a pretty conservative city. We are. A few years ago, Politico did an article about Mesa, Arizona, and said we were the most conservative large city in the United States. And I am a lifelong Republican. And so I was elected in a nonpartisan election. And I'm proud of the fact that I think our city government functions in a very nonpartisan way. I've got progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans on my city council, and we get along wonderfully and we focus on solving problems.

George Goehl [00:20:26]:
And so I rarely wade into partisan politics if I can avoid it. But occasionally there are a, we're confronted with situations like the one we are now. And I think that silence is not an option. I think in order for me to do a good job as mayor. I need to protect the interests of my community, and that would not mean being silent with the prospect of a second Trump term.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:20:50]:
Well, it's so interesting to me because of all of the kind of history of Arizona in 2020 and what that meant. I obviously know the governor pretty well, Governor Ducey and also Governor Hobbs. So I know that Arizona has still got that incredible independent streak. And, you know, it's kind of the ethic of so many Arizona politicians that I know, and I'm good friends with the McCain family. It speaks volumes about, I think, the American west and how we were formed. But I want you to talk a little bit about your community, Mesa, because many, many North Dakotans winter in Mesa. And so it's a place that we know very well and we have watched over the time, just explode into this very large population and diverse community.

George Goehl [00:21:41]:
I'm born and raised in Mesa. This is my hometown, and that's what attracted me to this job. You know, I have a lot of affection for my hometown. And ten years ago, when, when this opportunity presented itself, I didn't think I was interested. But the more I allowed myself to think about it, I realized there's nothing I would rather do professionally than spend full time trying to address the challenges of my hometown. I am a lifelong Republican, but we're elected, as I indicated earlier, in nonpartisan elections. And local government, I think, is still one of the last places in our political culture where partisan toxicity hasn't really found a home yet. I mean, even in our school boards now, it's sad to see national influences that are coming in and derailing our school boards.

George Goehl [00:22:33]:
And so far, so good in terms of the Mesa city council, we've got some level headed people, and it's been a great experience. But Mesa is one of the larger cities that maybe aren't, isn't on the tip of everyone's tongue. We're right next to the fifth largest city in the United States, which is Phoenix. We're part of the Phoenix metro, but we are the 36th largest city in the country, 520,000 people and still growing. We will soon overtake Tucson as the second largest city in the state of Arizona. The weather here is ideal. It gets a little warm in the, in the summertime, but. But people from North Dakota and Canada and everywhere else, you know, love to be here for the majority of the year because we've got blue skies and shirt sleeve weather most of the days.

George Goehl [00:23:18]:
So it's a great place to live. And politically, as you mentioned earlier, there's, I mean, Arizona has a reputation for being staunchly independent in some ways. I mean, you go back to the Barry Goldwater and John McCain, you know, kind of iconic Arizona politicians that they kind of were famous for, you know, being truth tellers and not being obsessed with being loyal to, to the party hierarchy. They would tell it like it is. And I think that spirit is still very much alive and well in Arizona. I'm a disciple of John McCain, so I aspire to follow his example. And that means maybe occasionally not being thought of as being a good Republican because you just have to vote for the best candidates and you have to, when people are wrong, you have to tell the truth about it.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:24:09]:
Well, I'm curious about your work in climate because, as you know, there isn't a consensus, political consensus that this is an issue that we need to take on. But yet we see a lot of local leaders, even if they are republican, basically saying, we need to do something about this. And so tell me how you got to your work in climate.

George Goehl [00:24:31]:
You're right. For some reason, climate action has been viewed as a partisan issue, and I don't for the life of me understand that. And so early on in my service as mayor, I was confronted by some climate activists. They came in and laid out the facts and said, mayor, what's your plan? And I had to, I was caught a little flat footed and I said, I don't have a plan. Let me do a deep dive into this. And I realized that I needed to set, you know, model some behavior for republican elected officials and be a climate activist myself. So I was very proud of the fact that we were, we adopted a climate action plan, you know, several years ago when it was pretty unusual for a republican led city to do that. And we not only adopted a plan, you know, we've been very thoughtful and very intentional about taking steps to make progress in those areas.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:25:26]:
So it is really fabulous that you're leading the effort and that you're speaking about this, especially with other mayors, because I believe when the tale is told that local government intervention is on the cutting edge and can, in fact, lead the dialogue. But, you know, one of the major issues, mayor, in this election is immigration. And you are there at what I would say, kind of ground zero. And so tell us a little bit about what your city is doing to address the challenges of migration. And, you know, what advice would you have for the rest of the country?

George Goehl [00:26:02]:
Sure. Well, you're right. Border states, this is something that we've been painfully aware of for a few decades now. And we've been lobbying Congress for some comprehensive immigration reform. And it's only been in recent years that we've seen the mayors of large northeastern progressive cities and cities and states all over the country join into the choir of really demanding some sort of immigration reform in our country. And in this election, the presidential candidates realize that the economy and the border are the two issues that will probably determine the outcome of this election. So for those reasons, I have felt very compelled to interject myself at the national level with any opportunity I can and appreciated the opportunity through the us conference of mayors to do that. The thing that I want to remind people about on this issue is that the executive orders that you hear so much about, the most recent ones from President Biden, have impacted asylum seekers.

George Goehl [00:27:04]:
And even going back to President Obama's DACA orders, these are, they have an impact. Absolutely. They are very. They're on shaky legal ground, but they're subject to litigation. And because just to give, you know, get back to civics 101, you know, the executive branch doesn't write laws. That's what Congress is for. And so any executive orders that you're seeing related to the border are not a substitute for congressional action to fix the loopholes that are in our border and immigration law. So I think that's why you saw so much disappointment when the bipartisan Border and Immigration act that Senator Sinema and Senator Langford and others worked so hard on was effectively vetoed by someone who's not the President of the United States.

George Goehl [00:27:57]:
Donald Trump did not want to see progress on this issue because he wanted to use it, exploit it for political purposes. So that was really disappointing for those of us from border areas and even mayors across the country that are feeling the profound impact of the border surges.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:28:16]:
You know, just as a point of reference, I would tell you that one of the moments that I remember most from sitting in the United States Senate was voting for the comprehensive immigration reform that John McCain and Jeff Flake had such a huge part in. You know, bringing their expertise, bringing their sensibility and the sensibility of the people of Arizona. We passed it almost with 70 votes in the Senate, but was delayed and vilified in the House. And Paul Ryan didn't want to take it up. And so when people say, oh, what? Nothing has happened, I always want to remind people, you know, this was now almost ten years ago, when we had a solution that was bipartisan, that was well negotiated, and so we can do it if we have the political will. And I think it's going to take local leaders to step up like you and tell the story and basically say what the needs are.

George Goehl [00:29:12]:
Here's the last thing I'll say about the immigration issue is that these are all issues that can be all of the problems related to the border and immigration and asylum, these are very fixable problems. There's some really bright people in government that if we let them, we could have great policies for the border and for immigration laws and fix these problems very, very quickly. But we just refuse as a country to look at this as a problem to be solved because we are so committed to it being an issue to be exploited, you know, to raise money on and to pander and to create fear over. If we could just get past that and say, okay, let's sit down in a bipartisan way and identify the issues. And we know what the answers are. We know how to fix this. Let's go ahead and fix it.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:29:59]:
I think people say, oh, well, we don't know the answer. Most of the issues that we deal with, whether it's debt, deficit, whether it is immigration, whether it is housing, we have some idea. It's just, do we have the political will and why are we constantly in these election cycles? But mayor, it is a joy to talk to you, and I feel like I know quite a bit about Arizona, have spent a lot of time down there, and I just always am amazed by the quality of the leadership of Arizona. And so I think you, when you say John McCain is your hero, I think he would be very proud of you stepping up and speaking truth to power. So you should be congratulated.

George Goehl [00:30:42]:
I hope so. And I do know exactly where he would be at in this election and what he would be saying and how hard he would be working to have an influence. So it's up to those of us who were impacted and drawn to this by his great example, I think, to be his voice.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:31:01]:
Thanks so much for joining us on the hot dish, Mayor. I think this has been a special episode with these two unique guests showing important perspectives. And I hope you enjoyed hearing them. Let us know what you think. Ask us your questions and give us, please, please, please, your suggestions.

Joel Heitkamp [00:31:20]:
And, you know, I just want to remind you again, you can email us Podcast@OneCountryProject.org. That's OneCountryProject.org.

Heidi Heitkamp [00:31:29]:
And thanks for joining us today on The Hot Dish, which is brought to you by One Country Project, making sure the voices of the rest of us are heard in Washington. Learn more about One Country Project at OneCountryProject.org. We'll be back in two weeks with more Hot Dish, comfort food for Middle America.