Breaking News from Pod Save America - The Math Teacher About to Flip a +17 Trump District

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

Tommy Vietor speaks with Jake Johnson about his leap from high school math teacher to the Democratic candidate for Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is running to represent Minnesota's first congressional district. Jake Johnson, welcome to Potta of America. Thank you so much, Tommy. Appreciate it. It's great to meet you. So you're a father of four. You taught math for 20 years. You're heavily involved in your union.

That sounds like a busy life. Why make the jump this year to run for office? What compelled you to do it? Yeah, no. I mean, it's a great question. It's a question I get more than any other, honestly. I mean, the reality is I grew up in Southern Minnesota in a work. working class family. And so a little context there, a little color, my dad was a garbage collector.

My mom was a meter reader at the gas company. And I have 10 siblings. And so when you grow up in a household like that, you know, we certainly were hardworking family. We also needed local community supports. So we had access to, you know, a school community and a church community that wrapped their arms around our family. Next door neighbors, extended family members. They would send help how they could, when they could. But I was also a snap kid, right? And we were a Medicaid family, and I wouldn't have gone to college if it wasn't for Pell Grants and subsidized Stafford loans. So I went to college, got my teaching degree, married my wife Molly, who also grew up in Southern Minnesota in Stewartville, same town. We moved back to Southern Minnesota, and I started

teaching. And I taught for 20 years. My wife is a paraprofessional. She works with deaf and hard of hearing kids at the middle school. I teach high school math. I got to live what I think the very best of our country is in southern Minnesota. I got to live what we affectionately call the American dream where even though my parents were nobody's, even though we had no money in our pockets, we were still worth investing and believing in. And so when I saw our congressman so actively going after that dream, super proud of cuts to snap, super proud of cuts to snap, super proud of cuts to Medicaid, slashing the Department of Education, it just didn't feel like a good time to sit on the sidelines, hoping that somebody else might do something about it. And so

jumped into this race with a pretty simple idea. The good people of Southern Minnesota need a voice in the halls of Congress again instead of a party rubber stamp that we currently have serving in that place. So I want to talk politics, but you got to walk me through some logistics here. I have two kids. We have another on the way. I'm already worried about the shift from man-to-man defense to zone. You're one of 11 kids growing up. How does that work at dinner time? How does that work at the bath? Do you have an assembly line? Are you going in shifts? Like, what's the process here? Hey, I mean, I will tell you, the dinner table and holiday time is a wild, wild situation. There is no doubt about it. I mean, the truth is everybody pitches in. Everybody

in. Like, I spent most of my middle school, high school life watching for caretaking my siblings because two parents just couldn't do it, right? And so a lot of my time was spent, you know, watching my six younger siblings grow up. And honestly, it was some of the most cherished moments of my life sitting around the table with piles and piles of sweet corn. Or, you know, I spoke about the church community that cared for us. There were people that would open up their gardens in the fall and say, guys, come on in, pick all the tomatoes you can carry. And we did.

And we would bring it back and we would can it so that we would have, you know, chili spaghetti sauce for the winters. And so it was just this sense. I was so proud of growing up where I did and how I did. And the fact that, yes, we took care of each other, but we also felt like we were part of a community in Stewartville, small town, southern Minnesota, where everybody knew us and everybody, everybody helped us make it.

And now, again, we were lower, lower class. And now, you know, my siblings are dentists, they're college professors, their nurses, I'm a teacher, salesman, like across the board. You know, my siblings have just gone and done incredible things. and it wouldn't have been possible without that support, without that community wrapping their arms around us. But yes, even to this day, holidays when everybody, everybody who can gets together, it's tight. It's cozy. I can't even imagine.

You know, 11 kids in the family plus spouses plus their kids, that's a lot of people. But I guess the takeaway from your story is when you're one of 11 kids, no two parents can raise you alone. It takes a community. It takes a village, as someone once said. So let's talk politics. opponent won the district by 17 points in 2024. I know that there's some polls out that have you in the lead now. Do you believe the polls? And if so, what is driving voters away from the Republican Party? What are the big issues you're hearing about? I mean, what I do believe in is the energy that we're seeing in southern Minnesota. And so, you know, our opponent, he's made his decision. He has chosen long ago his party over the people of Southern Minnesota. He's chose the president.

over the people of Southern Minnesota. And so people were frustrated. People were frustrated when they started hearing about cuts to snap, cuts to Medicaid, cuts across the board. And they reached out to their congressman and they said, you know, we would really like the chance to chat with you in a public forum. Sometimes, you know, we call them town hall meetings.

Our congressman pushed back, said he wasn't going to host any town hall meetings. And he went even further calling our constituents here in Southern Minnesota a pitchfork-wielding mob throwing a hissy fit. Okay. Yeah. That's one way to talk about your voters. That's one way to do it. And so he's chosen his path.

We are on the other side of that. And so we said early on that we're going to host a town hall meeting in every county in this district by election day. We've done that. And not just that. And I'll tell you about those conversations in a second. But it's really important, I think, for people to rebuild their faith in democracy to know that it's not just a one-off. conversation, but this is part of a bigger relationship and conversation. And so we're hosting a town hall meeting in every county, every term until the good people of Southern Minnesota kick me out

of office. And what we have heard and sort of the frustration that would lead some folks who may have voted on the Republican side previously to consider, you know, me and our campaign, one, the fact that I show up matters. You know, the fact that we're willing to converse with everyone and welcome everyone into the conversation matters. And they can see with their own eyes that things continue to get more expensive. I mean, I'm running against a guy who in 2024 promised to bring down inflation from President Biden. Then he went to D.C. and just actively has implemented policies that make things worse when it comes to cost of living, whether it's the Iran War or tariffs. They're really, really harmful in a district like ours where there's a lot of agriculture.

And I have farmers telling me all the time, Jake, we don't want you. checks in the mail. What we want are markets to sell into. And those markets are drying up because of my opponent's tariffs that he's helped implement. And now that our farmers are out in the fields trying to pull in a record harvest, they're now paying $640 a gallon for diesel. And so it's a crisis. And I think the biggest two things that I hear, one, things are too expensive, two, things are too corrupt. Jake, we got to bring down costs. And we got to got to rebuild our faith in the fact that, you know, our governmental leaders can actually get something done.

And like I've said, you know, throughout this campaign, I am willing to work with anyone who is willing to make that happen. Pod Save America Breaking News is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Let's be honest, ZipRecruiter is everywhere. Why? Because top talent is everywhere too. Just like you, your ideal candidates are tuning into business, sports, and podcasts, just like this one.

When these candidates hear all these ads, it increases the chances of them going to ZipRecruiter and responding to your job post. So ultimately, you meet them sooner. Of course, you can't meet them unless you go to zipRecruiter.com slash Crooked to try it for free. Once you post your job, ZipRecruiter's matching technology finds top talent quickly. And ZipRecruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first, so you meet them faster. No wonder four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. But you've got to go to ZipRecruiter.com slash cricket to post your job for free.

Again, that zipRecruiter.com slash crooked. Oh, and if you forget where to go, don't worry, you'll hear another zip recruiter ad soon enough. I want to ask you about this question of faith in government because I saw some polls that had Peggy Flanagan's race closer than I expected it to be than I wanted it to be. So I reached out to some buddies who had worked in Minnesota politics. One of them told me that he thinks that the political advantage Democrats have nationally because of all the issues you just mentioned, this idiotic war with Iran, the tariffs, inflation generally. that has been erased a bit in Minnesota because voters there are frustrated about some of the high profile fraud cases. There's Medicare fraud. There's nonprofits basically stealing from kids.

Now, look, the Trump administration has used those issues to demagogue the Somali community and I think really racist and unfair way. But there was real fraud that took money away from poor kids, right? And that is a terrible thing. So do you think that person's assessment is accurate? And if yes, how are you convincing voters in your district that Democrats hear them, that we care about these issues, that we're not going to let it happen again? Yeah, I mean, I will tell you, I've walked a lot of parades in this campaign. We've held a lot of town hall meetings.

The idea that fraud is a crisis in Minnesota is not new to the people of southern Minnesota. It is probably the biggest frustration that I hear is Jake. We want our money back. We're ripped off. We're hardworking taxpayers, and we want our money back. I share that concern. As a taxpayer of 20 years, I am furious about what we've seen when it comes to fraud in Minnesota. I've been very clear.

What I think we need to do is get our money back in the form of tax cuts equal to the amount of money lost for working people, tax cuts for working people in the amount that was stolen. and I do think we need an open investigation into how was this allowed to happen? Did anyone break the law? And anyone, anyone of either party in any position who broke the law, needs to be held accountable and sent to prison if it's appropriate. And then we need to learn from how was this allowed to happen? Where were the failure points within the state of Minnesota so that this never happens in any state across the country again? And then I also think we need support from the federal government.

And this is where I think my opponent owns some of this failure. When it comes to, we need inspectors general whose job it is to prevent this fraud, look into it at the federal level. Unfortunately, through the ill-fated doge cuts that our congressman was terribly proud of, many of those inspectors general were fired or resigned from their positions. And so it's going to take coordination from both federal and state leaders to make sure that this never happens again. Yeah, people are very, very angry when they see their hard-earned, you know, hard-earned tax dollars being wasted and stolen by fraudsters for sure. It is understandable.

Maybe a math teacher can help them kind of find some of that money. Speaking of math, hypothetically speaking, if you were talking to someone who, like, talks out of his ass for a living, doesn't do a lot of math, sucks at it at the time is worse at it now. You wouldn't know anybody, would you? Hypothetically speaking, like, do we still need math? We got AI. We got calculators. Does it still matter? I mean, math at its core is, first of all, a beautiful universal language to help us understand the world around us.

It is about at its core, it is about problem solving, it is about critical thinking. And the skills that we teach in a math classroom, if done well, are applicable to lots of places in life. Probably now, especially with the rise of AI, now even maybe more than ever, it is important that people can think critically and solve problems. That's what math's all about. It's what I've spent 20 years in the classroom, you know, impressing upon my students. And so for anybody who might be questioning, like, math, is it worth anything these days?

You know, I think if done well, if taught well, math is one of those skills that you can take with you for the rest of your days, even if you're not using logarithms in your daily life. Not taking calculus. Did you grow up, were you like gifted at math as a kid? Did you grow up like doing well in math class? Or did you kind of just love teaching? Hey, I'm going to tell you one of my proudest moments as a student, third grade, we were playing around the world.

This is the flash card game where two people stand up and your goal is to get them right and then move around the room. Without getting one question wrong, multiplication flashcards went around the classroom three times. Very, very proud of that in my third grade, Mr. Whiting's math classroom. You still remember his name? Uh-huh, uh-huh. Was that the moment? Was that the moment you were like, all right, I'm pretty good at this. I'm going to be a math teacher someday?

It was actually my, I remember it, my honors algebra two teacher in high school was my favorite teacher of all time. Ms. Case is her name. And by the way, supporter of the campaign. Thank you, Ms. Case. I love that. We love you. And she really just, because she cared about math so much, she really helped me see the beauty in it.

I always liked it because I was, you know, if you're kind of good at something, you'd like it. But that was the first time I really kind of saw the beauty behind it and how it really does weave together a lot of different things. And she gave me that gift, which I'm forever grateful for. So it was probably 10th grade or so when I was like, you know what? Math's a cool thing. And I think I could do this for a long time. All right. I respect that. Final question. Are you aware that there's an actor named Jake Johnson? He played Nick on New Girl. Yes. Yes. Has he endorsed you? Have you reached out? Have you connected? If you've got a phone number, if anybody has the phone number for the actor, Jake Johnson,

I think there's some really cool, you know, media that we could put together. We could steal a little bit of his time. But absolutely, Jake Johnson from New Girl, if you're out there, if you're listening, if anybody knows him, reach out to our campaign, Jake Johnson for Congress.com. We can get connected. I can see a very, very cool campaign ad coming. Yeah, we're big fans. He's done so much stuff since New Girl. He's probably going to be so pissed at me for short-handed. But look, we all love that show. He's really talented actor.

He's very funny. So I think he should fly to Minnesota right now and come and campaign for you. Well, listen, Jake, we're rooting for you here. Where could folks go if they want to support your campaign, chip in five bucks, knock some doors, whatever? Yeah, absolutely. No, we have built a grassroots campaign here in southern Minnesota. We don't take corporate pack money. We are funded by the people of this.

of this state in this country who are concerned that we have a Congress that isn't willing to listen to us and fight for us. If you want to be a part of our campaign here to take back a very winnable seat in a winnable year, go to Jake Johnson for Congress.com. That's F-O-R, Jake Johnson for Congress.com. Chip in what you can, your time, your talent, your treasure, anything you're willing to give us to help give the people of Southern Minnesota in this country a voice again, it would be greatly, greatly appreciated. The more money you give Jake Johnson, in the candidate online, the last time he has to spend in this little tiny box that you see here, calling people and asking them to donate. So if you're considering it, if you want to help

a frontline congressional candidate in a seat that would have seemed like a stretch last cycle, but that we can win this time, check out Jake's campaign. Thank you so much for doing the show. Best of luck out there. Thank you, Tommy. Appreciate it. Appreciate it.