Central Air - Central Air Live at WelcomeFest

Episode Date: June 7, 2026

Listen to two conversations Josh, Ben and Megan had at WelcomeFest, the center-left organizing conference: one with San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins, and the other with Tejano singing legend-turned-congressional candidate Bobby Pulido.More next week, and thanks to those of you who joined us for our happy hour in Washington last week. Sign up for updates about the show and future happy hours at www.centralairpodcast.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe

Welcome to Central Air, the podcast where the temperature is always just right. I'm here with Megan McArdle and Ben Dreyfus, and I'm actually here. We are all together in a somehow a deep-themed hotel suite. It's lovely. Yeah, there's literally, we're looking at a picture of Selena Meyer. There's a reproduction of Selena Meyer's Yale degree and her daughter's degree from Smith. I actually feel slightly awkward bringing elected officials in here to talk with us under a famously terrible. elected official. Like, Selena Meyer was a really bad president.

I have to say, I hate this theme. Like, I, when we walked in here and I actually was first looking at, I didn't realize, I was like, that person looks a lot like Julie Loviz-R-R-A-Rifus. And then it occurred to me. And this is the tackiest shit I've ever seen. You know, this is the tackiest shit you've ever seen? I've seen many tacky your things. It's like framing a photo of fucking Will Smith and Independence Day. Okay. Get some fake impressionist art. Ben, Las Vegas, Ben. But at least Las Vegas knows it's a horror.

Okay. Las Vegas doesn't dance around. Washington, Washington, D.C. same. We're going to go play craps at National Harbor tonight. This is not even the tackiest thing you were going to see today. No, well, it's true. Those Maryland trash. So yesterday, or as we were taping on Wednesday, on Tuesday evening, we had our listener happy hour here in Washington, D.C.

We had quite a great turnout for this. It was great. I love our listeners. I mean, I always felt like I loved our listeners in the abstract. But when I met them in the flesh, they were awesome. I had a number of truly terrific conversations. We had, I just, like, squatted at a table because I'm super lazy and old. And also it had shade.

But there was an airline pilot who brought cookies. Those were really good cookies. Those were amazing. It looked like professional grade, like, like, you know, $5 at the fancy cafe. We had a cybersecurity expert who told me all about the business of trying to get companies to be secure and why passwords are bad and should be abandoned in favor of pass keys. It's like so many. There was a nuclear engineer who works on trying to get nuclear plants. And I have not even scratched the surface.

So I want to introduce, we've done a couple of interviews here at Welcome Fest. And first, here's our conversation with district attorney Brooke Jenkins. who has for four years been the district attorney in San Francisco, trying to make San Francisco less horrifying to Sam Bowman, our Irish guest from a few weeks ago, who basically thought he was going to get shot if he went to San Francisco. Dia Jenkins, welcome. Thank you. I'm happy to be talking with you.

So it's, you know, it's been a hopeful time in San Francisco, it seems like, from reading the news, at least from the East Coast, lowest murder counts since the 1950s in 2025. But we've been seeing this in a lot of cities. There's this really positive national trend in terms of declining crime. How do you figure out the extent to which that's happening due to things that you and the mayor and the SFPD are doing versus that there are things that are happening all around the country? Yeah, that's actually one of the criticisms that I get from both the far left and the far right is that, oh, this is happening nationally anyway. But the truth is our trend started sooner than the national trend did.

And we've been ahead of the curve as far as what the percentage rate of reductions has been. in reported crime. So we are actually kind of leading the nation in what those reductions look like. And so that's why I tend to say, yes, there's probably something just going on in our country that has improved things, but we have made a concerted effort that has now helped us to be a leader in showing how low you can get it. What are you doing differently? I mean, you came in just for listeners who aren't familiar with the history. There was a recall election of your predecessor who you succeeded and you've been in office for, what is it, five, five years now? It'll be four in July.

Okay. And so what does the DA's office do differently under you now that is affecting the crime trends? Prosecute crime. Okay. Sounds really wild, doesn't it? Right. I mean, my predecessor, you know, was a career-long public defender. He didn't believe in prosecution, literally, didn't believe that it should happen at all, really.

And so not only did he carve out a number of low-level crimes that he simply refused to prosecute in whole, but he also very cheaply dealt even felony crime. So we had a year 2021 where only three people charged with drug dealing in that entire year received a felony conviction. Everyone else who sustained a conviction was given a misdemeanor for selling fentanyl. And so you've essentially decriminalized it, even if you're still technically prosecuting. And so I've liked to say that I came in and said, no, no, no, I'm going to do the function of a real prosecutor. There will be accountability. There will be appropriate consequences depending on what you did. And it goes a long way when somebody realizes, oh, wait, they're not going to just let me run wild.

And so that's been the biggest thing, but also a partnership with the police department, which was non-existent when I took over. and that you have to have when you're on this joint mission together. Ben, you were mentioning earlier about when you worked at Mother Jones about people saying, well, why bother calling the police? Right. We had a sort of a recurring situation where everyone's car was broken into so often that people were out of the office constantly, you know, having to go pick up their car from the it was.

The aisle. The last place. Wherever it was. Yeah. And then I'm from Los Angeles. Like I had had my car broken in Los Angeles and I had gone to the police, you know. And I'd say like, did you go? And they would say, of course not, you fool. Why would we have gone to the police?

They would do, there was no point. And my sister lives in ever since going out. And she says that, you know, the perception of that, that situation, which was a decade ago, has gotten much better, you know, that property crimes and those things are down. And I'm curious to know how that's changed. How, what's going on? Yeah. I mean, police have to feel motivated to do the work that they do. And when they knew that the DA at the time, you know, didn't believe in consequences, right, that their work was not being honored at all. They were demoralized. And not to say that it excuses not taking a reporter doing your job, but everybody felt that way. Police felt that way. The public felt it doesn't matter if I call. Nothing's going to happen. So this is just what I'm saddled with dealing with. And I've told them, no, no, no, you are not supposed to have to deal with this. In my view, public safety is a human right. If you buy something and you work hard, you get to keep that thing intact. It gets to be yours. And so with auto burglar in particular, again, this is why you have to have partnership. Both the police department decided to become more creative and strategic and things that they were doing to abate it. And I said on the flip end, when you pick somebody up for doing it, we will make sure that if these are those crews going around committing 10 or 12 of these a day, they will be held in custody right away. So, swift consequences, but also true accountability at the back end. And together, we've been able to

reduce auto-burglary by 74% since I took over. Wow. How much of that is just a handful of offenders? I've heard from when I talk to police, I talked to it. It's like, we knew there was one guy in this neighborhood and he was committing like all the burglars. We arrested that guy and suddenly burglary dropped 90% because he was no longer there to commit them. How much of it is this, you know, when you're strategizing how to do prosecutions, how do you do, decide who to focus on, who to target, how to, you know, what crimes to prosecute a lot of the things we've heard from progressive prosecutors in other cities, right, was we're not doing these low-level crimes because these people are in need and so forth. We're only, we're focusing

our resources on the important crimes, but then it turned out that actually they were just focusing their resources on not prosecuting. But you do actually have to make some of those trade-offs, right? So how do you think about those trade-offs? You do to an extent, although I, told San Francisco, and you'll hear me talk more about this this afternoon at the conference, all crime is illegal here. And people used to laugh. They bust out in hysteria when I would say that. I'm like, all crime is illegal again. Because we don't get to, as DAs, pick and choose. We're not legislators. Right. Right. We have to take every law that's on the books and enforce it. And so that was my promise was, I don't care what it is. We'll enforce it. But of course, we have to look at what are our top

priorities? What is of most concern to the city? What is plaguing the city, you know, in a way that we have to make sure that, you know, sufficient resources are given to that to make sure we deal with it? Auto burglary was one of them at the time. Retail theft was completely out of control. It was defining our image nationally. It wasn't, I tell people all the time, it wasn't drug dealing, it wasn't violence. It was viral videos of people going into Walgreens with a with a garbage bag filling it up. Can I ask you about that? because one of the, I got involved in shoplifting discourse, which was my absolute favorite social media discourse ever, because you would say, well, shoplifting seems like it's a problem because there's all these stores closing. I actually found myself in Massachusetts a few years ago. Ealing. After my father's died, no. No, we were, after my father died, we went up to, like, clean up his house. And my husband had just had surgery. And so he developed a slight cough and they're like, he must go to the dock ER immediately. We had to get him like antibiotics. And so we were in Beverly, Massachusetts. And so we were in Beverly, Massachusetts. And so we were in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Massachusetts, which is about an hour north of Boston. And I am wandering around while he deals with a pharmacist. And I run up to him and I'm like, honey, honey, they got the tide. It's just right down in a shelf for anyone you take it. And but like none that. And like everyone in this store is looking at me like I'm insane. And I'm like you have no. And then I realize no, I am insane. This is a crazy situation. But there were all of these people who would insist that it wasn't happening. It was drug stores blaming their bad management practices on crime. But one of the things are confronted in that is it actually was really hard to know how much shoplifting was happening, right? Because these guys don't, they self-insurer for shoplifting. They don't need to report it

to the insurance. How do you know when you've got a handle on a crime like that? So the first conversation I had to have was about reporting. I went and had meetings. I mean, I can't even tell you how many with small businesses, with big box chains, sitting them down and saying, first and foremost, you have to report what's happening. We can't give you resources to keep your business safe if we don't know what's going on. If you never call, then it looks like there's no theft in your neighborhood. And therefore, we send the police and all of our resources to where there is. And knowing and understanding that when you tell them that, that means there's going to look like there's an increase when they start to actually do what we need them to do. But we needed to

see the full picture. Thankfully, the larger chains, while even if they didn't report to the police, they keep internal documentation. So there were other things that we could use as metrics for them to explain, you know, what the full picture of what was happening was going on. The other thing that really stuck out to me is a few months in, to me being DA, we had a meeting with the owners of Westfield Mall. I don't know if you've heard, but Westfield Mall in San Francisco no longer exists. This is right on Market Street, sort of near the Powell Barth Station. Correct.

It was our premier mall in the city up until it shut down. And the owners were trying to implore us to do more, to make the mall safer, to reduce theft, reduce homelessness that was around the outside of it. And a statement was made in this meeting by someone to the owner. saying, hey, you know what? People are just shopping online now. I think that's the problem. And when I say I've never seen a more visceral reaction,

the owner looked, I mean, he literally got angry. And he said, just down the 101 Valley Fair Mall is our highest revenue mall in the country. This is not an online shopping problem. This is a San Francisco problem. And that's what we have to. acknowledge is that while all of these excuses could be made that people are shopping online, it's Amazon, it's all these things. Have you been in a store? Because I know I've seen people

walking out with things. I know I've had to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're not going to steal in front of the DA. Right? I've had my security at least. But to ignore reality was a part of the problem. That's why we had a recall because he kept telling people, everything is fine. No, everything is fine. It's just, it's just your imagination. No, it's right here in front of us. You mentioned, go ahead. Oh, I was going to say, you mentioned the, they contributed to this national image of San Francisco, which I think like, we all saw a few years ago, right? We actually had a guest on, an Irish guest on recently who, uh, was telling us how, you know, he was afraid of America specifically because of San Francisco, you can't go anywhere.

San Francisco, they're just random, you know, he, he thought it was escape from New York, essentially. And we, I tried to explain to him that San Francisco is a relatively low violent crime rate as American cities going. He just didn't buy it. Yeah. He just didn't believe the fact he, because it was so embedded, whatever he'd seen, the viral videos that you're talking about and stuff, had just become this constitutional thought. And I'm curious, like, how you combat that, that sort of, not specifically the Irish,

but like, you know, this image that it's sort of, how do we combat the Irish? How do we finally handle this Irish problem? But, like, how you combat this sort of, that perception that became ingrained and somewhat travels on TikTok. And that's been my job for the last four years is to combat that. Not only to fix the city and make the reality on the ground be safe, but to repair our image to make sure that I took advantage of every opportunity, both through social media, both through local, regional, national news interviews to explain, hey, hey, hey, things are different now.

There's a different leadership. There's a different mindset. Here are the statistics. We have to message outwardly what the new. statistics are. We have to show videos of our city in the beautiful parts of it. Obviously, we've got a mayor now who is a social media personality, who loves to, you know, broadcast the great parts of our city. You have to do those things so that we change that narrative because people, yes, you're getting fed those algorithms that just keep showing you the toxicity and the negativity,

and now it's our job to create a new algorithm for people. Well, I think also part of it is like, you know, people, they, you can show them crime statistics, violent crime statistics. Often what they're really talking about is disorder. And they're related problems, but they're not exactly the same problem. And people have an independent interest in lower levels of disorder. You know, I find, I'm in San Francisco a couple of times a year, typically. And last time I was there, Union Square really felt a lot better than in the prior visits that I'd been over the last few years.

It did feel like retail was coming back. I also made my husband board the barth at 16th Street Mission for research purposes, which She was not happy with me about having him do. And it's like children of men over there. Like it feels like zombies super drugged out on fentanyl, people, you know, panhandling on the platform inside the fare controlled area. And I realize that Bart has, they have the new fare gates that are supposed to be helping with that. But it's sort of the going back to like what Sam Bowman, our Irish guest had to say is like the level of order of disorder that you see on the streets in San Francisco is alarming in certain places. And is alarming even comparing to what you would see on the U.S.

East Coast. Like I don't, I don't perceive that in New York. Why is it like that? Well, first, I like to point out, having lived in Chicago, having worked in New York, lived in other places, you're not going to have that because of the weather, right? People cannot live outside and do those things outside for at least half of the year in other climates. And so we attract a different element just because of our weather. But a part of the problem is the laws. We have been castrated. I hate to use that term, but that is the truth. From being able to address some of these quality of life issues

that used to be addressed through law enforcement when other means weren't sufficient. But each and every year we have watched the legislature watered down what the ability of law enforcement is to do anything about people who are suffering from severe mental illness and are committing low-level crimes. people who are drug addicted and committing low-level crimes or people who are just publicly using drugs, right? And so I think that that's a large part of this issue. And I tell people all the time, they don't want to hear stats, right? I could say, you know what, none of these people who make it feel like it's the zombie apocalypse are going to harm you. They're usually so drugged out that they can't. It doesn't matter. My perception of safety declines. The minute that I step into, you know, onto a side of, that is covered with people who look unsanitary, unsafe, all those things. And so that is a part of

safety is my feeling. And we have to be able to do something about it and we're trying. But what I've tried to do is be very transparent that it wasn't just local politicians who had an impact on this. It was state-level politicians who have had what I believe to be the largest impact on tying our hands. What tools do you have to do diversion programs into mandatory treatment? And can you talk a little bit also about involuntary commitment? I realize that's not part of your portfolio. But when you don't have mandatory commitment, like involuntary commitment for people who are severely mentally ill who are on the streets, cannot take care of themselves at any kind of a decent level, often that person is going to end up on your hands. So like, can you talk a bit about those two topics, which I think are related?

Yes. So let me start with diversion. We can do very little anymore. Mistaminer's in California with few exceptions are all statutorily eligible for diversion. That means when I was handling misdemeanors many years ago, it was up to the prosecutor to look at a case and say, hey, you deserve a chance, right, not to end up with a conviction. Now that is solely the discretion of the judge. And these judges are handing it out like candy. don't get re-arrested for the next 30 days

and I'll seal your record and dismiss 30 days. That seems very sure. What did I do to help you change your behavior? In 30 days, it seems like that would, it usually takes longer, right? And no classes, no drug treatment, no nothing. With felonies, it's, we still have some bargaining, you know, ability to say, hey, in lieu of jail, you can choose treatment. but even then we're seeing judges open plea cases, so they will take the plea out of our hands,

offer something much more lenient to a defendant, that for them they say, yeah, I'd rather take the conviction and just be out than take the DA's offer that will help me turn my life around. And so it's become really hard. When you talk about people, you know, this lack of involuntary commitment, there seems to be no appetite in our,

state to reinvest in locked mental health facilities. And unless and until we do that, we're going to continue to have the problems that we have on the streets of San Francisco and LA. It is, it's sad to watch people decline this way and us be able to do nothing about it unless and until they kill someone, right? And even then, sometimes our hands are tied if they still can't be restored to competency. People will say, oh, we'll use conservatorship. It takes sometimes years to conserve a single person. And when we have 200 people that need to be conserved, what do we do in the meantime? Can I ask about, you mentioned innovative things that SFPD is doing specifically with related to the car break-ins? Is that drone stuff? They are using drones

heavily. Can you, can you describe that? Because it's, it's super cool. And I don't think I've seen this elsewhere in the country. Yeah. So they, they send out abatement teams who are, you know, in the more popular areas for auto burglary, which are usually our tourist areas, once they spot somebody who appears to be casing, then now they can launch that drone into that or have the, you know, the real-time crime center launch a drone that comes into that area. I've seen footage where the drone is literally watching as these people are getting out of the sort of, you know, suspect car casing windows, looking into cars, peering. Once they, once they find one, bust the window, get something out, and the drone is recording this. As it's following, we build our case,

they move in, they make an arrest. It has been phenomenal evidence to present to juries because they can see in real time how this took place, how many people are working in concert to do it, right? It's not a single person. It's a getaway driver. It's two people hopping out of, you know, each door, you know, of the car to break into multiple cars at one. And, you know, And I think for me, it's been about catching people. Because if I show up to my car, even as it's being broken into, and the getaway car is right there, they hop in it, they're gone. You can call the police every day, but they've missed the opportunity to catch the person. Whereas the drone gets to follow the car.

They're able to radio ahead where the car is traveling, make sure that we apprehend the suspects. which is the only thing that allows my office to then do its job. Because that's, I mean, the, like, you will get caught is, like, the best anti-crime message possible. Yes. Like, and, you know, we, like, we've been fans of, you know, the late Mark Kleinman for a long time and sort of this idea that you want, you know, you want criminals to know that they will be punished and that they'll be punished quickly. And then if you can do that, you don't need to lean so much on punishing them very severely, at least it's the hope. But so, you know, advances like this just seem very hopeful in that regard. They have been a game changer for San Francisco.

I have seen what's coming in from our real-time crime center, which is where these drones are launched and who's, you know, watching them on the screens. And countless cases where people would have gotten away with what they did, but for this technology. Also, I mean, it sounds like this is far less important than the element of this that you're talking about. But it's just, it is cool enough that it also helps travel

and push the perception with the Irish, you know? Like, it changes. It changes the, so much of it is based on. Oh, it's coming back to the Irish, Ben. Because remember a few years ago, I think it was Adam Schiff, who, like, came to San Francisco one day for a fundraiser or something, and, like, his car got broken into immediately. And there was, like, all these photos that went around of him at this fundraiser in, like, a track suit.

Well, there was also, CNN went to San Francisco to do a story on car break-ins and their van got broken into. Right. It's not helpful. And so, but then you have, like, a great way of formatting it is as just the neat, cool, innovative drone usage of things. that they're doing to work on it. It does seem like a, it works on that level as well. Megan, you had something? Yeah, I actually wanted to ask about court capacity, right?

Because part of the problem is when you're actually paid paper in cases, you then have to actually shove them through the courts or, you know, I actually was surprised to find out from a local lawyer here that prosecuting the January 6 felons actually created a problem because it became impossible to prosecute any other crimes because there were so many people in that mob that it actually meaningfully sapped the ability of the U.S. attorneys to pursue other crimes.

How have you found, as you are actually ramping back up and trying to bring more cases to judges, has the ability to literally just get the cases through the courts become a problem? And does that drive some of the stuff where the judges are like, oh, right, 30 days, don't come, you know, as long as you don't get arrested,

don't come back just because the court capacity isn't there? Absolutely. You're tying it all together. We have over 8,500 pending cases in my office right now. That is, it is skyrocketed from what was about 5,500 when I took over. And so the courts have not been happy. The public defender's office has not been happy. The public defender's office is now screaming. They don't have enough staff. And the courts, yes, have used their discretion and their power now to try to reduce their calendar. And that has come through the form of these, you know, offers of diversion left and right, these open pleas, more dismissals than we would expect. There's a new statute, relatively new statute in California called mental health diversion, which allows anything short of torture, murder, and rape to enter into a diversion program. Even child abuse, attempted murder, you name it. and judges are funneling cases into this diversion program, felony cases.

We have over a thousand felonies that have now gone into this diversion program to the point that that public health has said it's unmanageable for us. Right. But the court is just doing whatever it can left and right to get rid of cases and it's to the harm of safety. And so how do you fix that? Do you need more judges? Do you need more staff in the mental health department? Do you just need judges with a different philosophy about it?

I need judges with a different philosophy about it. at the end of the day, like I tell people, I get asked all the time. Well, the jail is full. Are you going to stop charging cases? Are you going to charge fewer cases? No, that's not my problem. I charge based on what we can prove. The court's responsibility is to balance public safety, is to do what is based under the law and responsible for the public. That should be the only thing that they care about. We figure out how to become more efficient, of course. If they need to increase capacity, then they need to talk to the governor's office about that. But what they cannot do is put people's safety in jeopardy to accommodate their lack of ability to do what they

need to do. And I think that that's the issue right now. We're here at this Welcome Fest conference in D.C. And everyone here is trying to figure out how the Democratic Party can win the middle back. And I think a frustration that you hear from a lot of Democrats who don't represent major prominent cities is that things happen in New York or San Francisco or Los Angeles and get blamed on the National Democratic Party and they're supposed to have an answer about these issues that they don't have any direct control over, which you do have direct control over? Do you feel like a responsibility there at all to the party to try to, you know, make San Francisco more of an asset, less of a liability for Democrats who don't control what's happening in San Francisco?

100%. 100%. I knew our party was being defined when I, certainly when I took over by what was going on in San Francisco and them saying, look at what progressive or liberal or, you know, Democratic leadership gets you. And for me, it was about a full stop of saying, no, let me show you how we can get it right. We have to prove to people it's not just about our rhetoric and our words and our ideals. Can we get it right? Because people don't care about anything else. Is my trash being picked up every Thursday at 9 a.m. like it's supposed to? Is my sidewalk clean? Am I safe when I take my kid to school? Right? Is my car still there when I come out of my job? Is the store I need to? Is the store I need to to walk into still open or did it close its doors?

Or do I have to press a button at Walgreens or a Target and wait 10 extra minutes to get my tidepods or my toothpaste? I don't want to wait that 10 minutes. I don't have 10 minutes. And it's our job to prove that this is how we get it right because otherwise, who's going to buy our products? We can't expect anybody to buy it. And so, yeah, I think we owe it to the country to get it right.

That was Brooke Jenkins, District Attorney for San Francisco. By the way, if you want to know when we might be coming to your neck of the woods, so you can come to a listener happy hour and maybe even bring us some cookies, why don't you go sign up to follow us on substack? You can do that at centralairpodcast.com, and you could even become a paying subscriber if you're not one already. For our next interview, we moved from California to Texas. Welcome Fest was a conversation about how Democrats can win back the middle, and one place where we've badly lost the middle over the last decade has been South Texas. Weak national trends for Democrats with Hispanic voters, combined with the Biden-Iraiser. a border chaos have helped Republicans surge in the region. That's where Bobby Polito is running for Congress. He's challenging a Republican incumbent in the McCallan-based Texas 15th district, and he has a

unique candidate profile. He's a well-known Tejano musician. I tell people I'm semi-famous. If you get me in front of Hispanics that are Mexican descent, I'm super famous. Yeah. Luckily, my district is 80% Hispanic. Right. And so of Mexican descent for the most part. Right. But yeah, I mean, I've, my, my, My dad's a famous singer. My dad is a pioneer in the music business. We're kind of like Hank Williams, Hank Williams, Jr. in our genre. Okay.

And so I've been at it for like 30 years. I've been fortunate enough to win two Latin Grammys and my nominated like five times. And so I made my bones for 30 years and decided to throw my hat in the ring after... Actually, started thinking about it in 2022 when our congresswoman won. Yeah, what made you decide that you were interested in politics? Well, somebody, Vicente Gonzalez's wife, actually. This is another congressman in Texas, District 34. I hung out with him that day, election day, when Monica de la Cruz won.

And we spent the whole day together. And, you know, after hearing me talk on politics and all these issues, his mom wife said, have you ever thought of running? And I said, well, I always wanted to do that. I studied political science in college. So, you know, I've always followed politics really closely. I just never ever talked about politics on the stage or really publicly. Yeah. I just never wanted to polarize.

I knew how polarizing it was. And, you know, my music and my concerts are for people to come have a good time and not be pissed. or feel like they're getting preached to. So I just, you know, I never really talked much about it. So it surprises a lot of people. Like, why would you leave such a great career to go into something that you don't know anything about? I'm like, well, actually, I know more than you think, I know. And don't let the cowboy hat in the boots fool you.

Can I ask you about that? Because the funny thing is politics is often a performance, right? You have to, if you want to win, you got to get up in front of a group of people and you have to charm them, which is harder than it sounds if you've not tried to do it. Yeah. So you've presumably got that part down. But what has, what do you think that being in music for so long has taught you about politics other than getting up in front of a crowd? And what has most surprised you about getting, about so far getting into the process?

That's a great question. Well, thank you. That's a great question because. You have learned to answer questions by telling, by flattering the interviewer. That is, that really truly is a great question. And I'll tell you why. Because I think as an artist right now, there was an artist, now a candidate,

I think I'm held to a double standard. Right. And this has been something that I've been kind of getting, and it's really coming from the left. You know, there's one thing in music that you have to do that's really, really similar to politics, is you have to know your audience. Right?

So when I'm producing music, I know what kind of people and I know the music that my people want to listen to. I know my audience. And politics is very similar, right? I mean, you know that if you're going to go to the dance hall, you don't go take a symphonic orchestra. It's a dance hall.

They want a two-step. Right? So you have to know your audience. And in politics, it's very similar. You have to know. And sometimes, you know, I get people to say, I want you to give me this detailed policy on where you stand. And I said, oh, do you like James Tillerico?

Because I actually endorsed James Tullerico early on, right? And every liberal person goes, I love him. I said, give me his policies. I said, does, it's not red or blue. It's top versus bottom. Is that a policy? Is it a policy that love overcomes hate? I don't think so.

I said, but you're holding me to that standard. because I wore a cowboy hat and boots and I sing in Spanish, right? And you probably think that I'm not intelligent, but just know that, in my opinion, when I talk to actual voters, right? And I do that a lot, right? Take Q&A.

They don't want to hear my policy dissertations. They want to feel that they trust you will make the right decision when it comes to the, their lives. That's it. It's really like it's literally a trust thing, right? Because like every Congress person has their own policies. I mean, your policy doesn't mean shit to 434 other people in Congress. They have their own policies, right? It's can you work with them and try to make people's lives better? So yes, you can have a generalized view on policy and say like, okay, yeah, I believe in

this, I believe in that. That's fine. But it just feels like sometimes. sometimes they want me to get real detailed. And I think that what happens is as Democrats, and I can tell you, right, because I studied people, right, that talk over people because, you know, they're really smart. They went to college and you went to Ivy League school or whatever. But the average person that you need to vote for you didn't. And they don't talk that way. And so whatever they may throw at me as a weakness, I think, is my greatest strength. So what do they talk about?

Like what is the thing? What do you, what does your audience want? And what do you want to give them? I believe, first and foremost, I think my audience is where we've kind of failed them on a democratic level is we do not talk in terms of economic prosperity, especially to the Hispanic community. And you have to understand the Hispanic community. We come from nothing. We don't have generational wealth. We don't. We're barely trying to make it.

And we really don't have an economic message on the Democratic side. We talk about social justice, which is very important, but we shouldn't lead with it. I think we need to talk about economic prosperity and opportunity to people. And as you well know, as the Latino vote goes, I think the country goes. I mean, it's very important. And Texas goes, right? And so, you know, the Republicans are talking about, at least they say, we'll cut your taxes. It's like something that simple, right?

Well, Senator Ruben Gallego likes to talk about the big ass truck. That's exactly right. He's a good friend of mine. And I agree with him. I have a big ass truck. Oh, yeah. Yes. I happen to have a-

What model? It's a Dodge Ram. Oh. I do you think that you're right that, you know, the grammar of prosperity or an opportunity is something that like the Democrats have just generally been moving away from and pursue, or they've lost the ability to do it, really. In a way that, like, they used to, you know, Clinton was obviously good at it. Obama was good at it.

And it seems like, you know, we really didn't, it's not a, it's not part of it. And I think that you make a really good point about that being something they need to bring back. Of course. So I feel like they're often trying to bring it back by just talking about billionaires and how they're going to tax billionaires. How does that land with a constituents you're trying to reach? I have one billionaire in my district. Right. Like, I mean, I get it.

I do think that the system is geared towards really, really hurting the middle class, right? And let me tell you, right? That's the thing, right? The Republican Party is obviously for the really wealthy people, right? And I think the Democratic Party, a lot of times wants to treat people like they're poor. But the people where I'm from don't consider themselves poor, they consider themselves broke. And there's a lot of middle class people

that are just above the poverty threshold. They're having a really hard time right now. They sometimes have to work two jobs to actually make ends meet, right? And they're really frustrated. I think that's where the biggest swings come from where it goes, okay, we're voting. Republican this cycle. Okay, we're voting Democrat this cycle. Because nobody's paying attention to the

middle class. Nobody's doing anything for them. The district you're running in extends from McAllen on the border up through sort of areas. It goes to Gonzalez County. It's like east of San Antonio. It's a big district. It is a big district. It's, you know, the Republicans keep redrawing these maps trying to gain advantage. But the, you have a piece of the border. And the narrative that we get about South Texas nationally, you know, because basically one of the worst deteriorations for Democratic Party over the last 20 years in terms of vote share. And that, you know, there's these economic issues and you have national trends, Hispanic voters moving to the right, but that there's also immigration stuff that is specifically about the border and the chaos that happened at the border doing the Biden

administration. And I'm just wondering the sort of in two phases how immigration has landed in your district because my, it seems like there was outrage about the chaos and the failure to enforce. And then also, you know, people, you know, they vilify border patrol, but border patrol is like a lot of people in the community down there. And then in the last couple of years, the coverage has been very focused on what's happening in northern cities in Chicago, Minneapolis. And you've had, you know, real swing against ice among Democratic voters and, you know, abolish ICE coming back as a slogan. How are people thinking about immigration and border enforcement today in South Texas? You can't look at it as just one issue. It's really two.

there's immigration on the border border enforcement everybody's for that we down there want a secure border right border patrols actually pulls very positively down there people don't have a problem with the job that they're doing

it's the enforcement when they go to workplace raids when they go to a house and violate people's constitutional fourth amendment rights and just go without a judicial warrant and pull people out of there houses. It's when they go and racially profile somebody or profile them based on their accent. It's when they show up to a job site, right, that has half of the people undocumented, but half of them

are actually have their green card and are U.S. legal residents. And then they still take them for five hours to check them out while the concrete is still wet. And you have a 30,000. dollar investment there now left unattended to and you're a Latino Hispanic business owner that has a construction company, you're pretty pissed. That's what is, that's where they are failing. And this is what is really angering the people down there. So it's not the border per se. It's the enforcement in the communities that is not popular because they told us, I'm going to go after the bad guys. We're going to go get them and they lied to us. You know, after they went,

let me tell you, you go get the bad people at the very first three weeks or whatever, they got a lot of bad people out. That was good. Nobody was complaining about that. But then when they run out of those, then they go, okay, we want quotas. Yeah. And Stephen

Miller calls ICE directors and ICE people in there and berates them and says, go to Home Depot, go this. What do you think is going to happen? And so that's that's what's happening over there that is really turning the tide, right? I mean, it just is. People are not happy. Can we talk about the Kinsaneras? Sure.

So this is your opponent made a remark to the effect that, you know, well, this election isn't about who you want to appear at your kids Kinsenero. I want to sing for them. And so you responded to that. You've been going all over the district of Kinseneras. Yeah. Singing for your prospective constituents. True. What sort of reception are you getting with?

Because I assume you end up seeing a lot of people who are not that political. And you probably also see people who are Republicans and Democrats. Yep. What sort of reaction are you getting? Also, what's the most requested song? They don't get to choose that. I have two songs that I sing. Oh, yeah, which ones?

Hermoso Carino and one of my biggest hit, Desvelado. So I sing both of those. Yeah, on election night, she tried to insult me. About a week later, we kind of said, you know what? I think Quintanato's are great. I'll take that as a compliment. And you know what? If you want me at your Quinceaniera, invite us and maybe we'll show up and sing a couple

songs. We got a thousand invites in one day. Wow. 60% were in district. And that's kind of kept and held. We've had 4,000 invites to date. Wow. We send everybody a video, personalized, even if we can't go to their Kinsenera.

this has been political gold for us on so many levels. You know, when you're campaigning, and I'd never run a campaign personally as a candidate, but my uncle was the longest serving district attorney in Texas. And my other uncle was a county judge. We're a political family. We have a lot of, so, you know, the hardest thing when you're campaigning is expanding your electoral.

getting in front of different people. And what this has allowed us to do is we get in front of so many different people, working class people. It's such an odd insult, too, because what did they say? You know, oh, my God, you're going to be welcomed into these homes

to celebrate our daughter's important birthday. That's great. It seems like a compliment. Yeah, let me tell you why it's great. Because on so many levels, right, first of all, we ask them for permission to sign up their people. And so we're collecting data when they get there and they sign in and they tell us, yeah, of course. So we get a lot of people that are registered to vote that just really have nobody to go vote for and don't normally go vote.

That's number one. Number two, we're driving the algorithm nuts because almost most of the people that are in there are streaming when I'm singing. And so we are literally everywhere on social media because of it. Oh, wow. Because we actually are accessing all of their friends and all of the people that they know. And more importantly, too, like what we've learned when we're running and campaigning is cash on hand is really important. This is incredibly budget friendly. We don't have to pay for the place.

We don't have to feed them. We don't have to give them liquor. We just show up and sing to them and make them happy. And tell them I'm Bobby Bolito and I'm running for Congress and I appreciate your support. Who is more likely to lose their minds, the girls or their families when you show up? You know, you won't believe me, but it's everybody. No, I will absolutely believe you. I am now imagining having like a rock star show up at my Sweet 16 party.

and that would have been extremely cool and I would have absolutely lost me. We have like Spotify streams. I got like 8.8 million monthly streams. So, and I'm not trying to brag, right? But what I'm, what, this is for catalog music that I recorded 30 years ago. The only way you can get that kind of listenership

is when your music jumps generations because most of the Spotify listeners aren't 65-year-olds. Right. And so we've been very blessed that my music has jumped and jumped three, four generations, right? And so three generations. And so literally we have older women, 70-year-old women go crazy. And we have 18-year-old young men go crazy, too.

Like, it's really something to see. Do you think it's an advantage that your opponent underestimated you? because she thought, like, this is about Kinsenero, but I mean, that was like, just incredibly smart. She tried to be like Trump, right? She tried to be Trumpian where I want to insult and give him a nickname. Yeah. And we just jujitsu on her ass, you know.

And so now I heard a transcript where she actually said, the Kintaneda, I mean the wedding singers. And I was like, now I'm Adam Sandler, right? Is that your next act? I guess. We have graduated from the wedding. Yeah. It is interesting what you're saying. I feel like her trying to be Trump and trying to do the stick, you know, play the little thing. It's a problem for Republicans in general. Like, like, Paxton's trying to do the same thing. Yeah, exactly.

Tell a freco. And they're like, yeah, hell yeah. I'll make T-shirt to it and say I'm a T-shirt. Right. Like, it only works with Trump. Only works for him. Yeah. And so, so. Yeah. He's losing his fastball. Yeah. I mean, these, these nicknames aren't as good anymore. He's not as good at it. But yeah. But she's like, she's really scared. And we feel like, based on the metrics that we've seen, we feel like we're going to win this race. And I know on paper it looks like it's damn near unwinnable. But, you know, in our primary, we turned out in a district that Trump won by 18 points,

we outvoted Republicans by almost 25,000 votes. Wow. And so our undervote totals, which the undervote is how many people skip that particular race, it tells a really good story, like, of how much excitement there was for our race. Because, you know, you have a chance to either vote or skip. Right. Yeah. Right.

And so that number tells you a lot. And so, you know, James Telerico and Jasmine Crockett had a 6.4% undervote. We had a 1.7. Oh, wow. Yeah. So that means 5% of people are pulling a ballot and voting in your race and not voting in the Senate primary. Correct. Yeah. Can I ask you about Texas broadly? Because, you know, Democrats are excited about Texas. Democrats have gotten themselves excited about Texas a number of times over the last. Yeah, down their heart broke. Yeah. Right. And I think I saw you talking with James Telerico about was that was you about oil and gas there. Of course. Yes. That was me. And sort of, you know, you can identify a whole list of issues on which Democrats have lost touch with voters, not just in. Texas, but maybe especially in Texas, energy being one of them. What is, is the party effectively

bringing its image back? I mean, Republicans are, you know, they have all the tape of all of the things that James Talleyko has said over the years about gender and that sort of thing. Yes. And it looks like he and a lot of Democrats now are trying to send out a new, you know, image of, you know, oh, we, you know, we've moderated on these things. We really want a strong fossil fuel industry in this state. Yeah. Are people buying that message? I don't know if he's promoting it as much as, like you saw it. it, but it hasn't been a commercial. Yeah.

Right? Like, I mean, I don't know. I know that when I go talk to these folks in the community, I do get asked that question. What's your view? And what do you say? I mean, listen, it's, are you in favor of the Green New Deal and banning fracking are the questions that they ask?

Uh-huh. And I'm like, of course not. I'm not for that. I'm not for taking food off of your table. In many of these small towns, the best paying jobs are oil and gas. Right? You're from a small town. You make $100,000 a year in a small town.

That goes a long way. And but I also tell them, but I also care about your drinking water. And the Republicans have defunded the EPA. And I also think that's madness, right? And so I do think that we need to be responsible about the environment without taking food off the table of people and not. allow them to not be able to provide for their families. And I think that a lot of times when we talk in these absolutes of ban fracking, ban guns, ban assault weapons, things like that,

it just freaks people out and allows them to weaponize these things on us, right? I mean, think about this, right? Like, DEI was something that's really good in that you want that, who doesn't want diversity, equity, and inclusion. We all want it. But they weaponize our own policies against us and then go out there and just demonize it, right? And so they did the same with awokeness, right? Like, hey, I'm aware that things are good, but then they'll go pick out the most ridiculous example of people in our own party and say, they're all like that. Right. And so we have to be careful about not giving them the ammo to then shoot us with,

because that's exactly what happens sometimes. Is Wokenness an issue that lands on the Hispanic community? Yeah, I mean, I know Latin X was not a big hit. Look, pronouns. Right. Pronouns are not a thing in rural Texas. I can tell you this. People that are in rural Texas,

especially, I just say that because that's where I live, right? Cities are very progressive. they vote for progressive candidates. They love change, right? You go to Austin, Texas, and there's Waymoes on every fucking street. And they're driving without a person in the car. And then you'll see on the, like the, you know, on the,

on the curbs, you'll see these robots delivering food. Rural does not want you to try to change their life. They don't want you to feel, to make them feel guilty for driving a diesel truck. They like their diesel truck. And they say, I need the torque because I'm pulled bailes a hay. Right. And so we have to, I think, the missing link that we have that actually Donald Trump

brought into the political discourse was a lack of respect of people that don't think like you. Yeah. We have to respect people. I told people, you know what? I got progressive friends that I respect. And I may disagree with them on some issues, but I agree with them on a lot of things. Right. But I don't ever get dismissive of them. And I don't think they should be dismissive of people that live in rural areas either. When we're here at Welcome Fest. Yeah. And, you know, we're sort of all trying to figure out how the Democratic Party can win the middle back again. Yeah. And I think one theme that you see over and over again in these efforts is that you have candidates like you who are in, you know, in districts that are Republican leaning. And they have

positioning that is appropriate for those districts. But, People's view is obviously influenced by the National Democratic Party. And they, you know, they see whether it's AOC or Chuck Schumer. Yeah. But every political party everywhere in the world has a range of opinions and there's always a more extreme fringe of a political party. So what do you do so that, you know, when you, when you know, you obviously go to these people with respect, you go to them with a different set of issue positions that are more appropriate for them? What do we do so that voters can believe that when you go to Washington, you actually have influence so that the fact that you are different from other Democrats, actually matters in terms of how Democrats will govern if, you know, if we get a majority back.

That's a good question. I will tell you there's a, now that I'm in it running, right, there's this, there's a mirage and there's a huge disconnect. A hundred or 200 people on social media can appear to be 100,000 and they will bully the shit out of you. but it's so important to go out and talk to real voters because some of the times a lot of these people, you don't know if they're real people or they're people that don't live in your district. Right. Right. And I think that a lot of elected officials succumb to that pressure

into thinking that that's the real world because they don't go talk to voters. So I go talk to voters and I'm like, well, shit, I'm getting hit over this issue. but the voters aren't asking me about that. That's not a concern to them. So it's really important to know your audience. And that's why we are the party of grassroots. We should be. We should be a party of the people.

But we cannot have these disconnected politicians that only want to win on mass media and commercials and mailers. When you're out there, what is the number one issue that your voters are talking about affordability? Is it you know, and if it's affordability, is it

health care? Is it education? Is it just the gas? Like, what are the, what is the number one thing? All of the above. It is everything you just mentioned. But if you had to rank one, that's the one that comes up the most. It just depends.

It's, it you know, like, again, affordability is the one that probably comes up the most. But I'll tell you what gets asked to me more is people want to know is are you loyal to me over the party?

Right. They ask all the time. Will you make those decisions in our best interest even if your party pressures you into trying to vote a certain way? Right now, the reason why the independent has grown as political affiliation over Democrat and Republican is they have lost faith in both parties. They're unpopular.

And because so many people have shown that their loyalty, and I'm running against one, that is a rubber stamp maga monica della Cruz, right? Like, whatever you want, I, I boss, I will vote that way. And people do not want somebody like that. They want a leader that stands up for something and the values that they are most important to them. Let me ask you the exact opposite question. Of all the issues, the nationalists that you go around in the world, what's the one that your voters don't give a shit about the most? Like, what's the one that we're all talking about in Washington and never hear about it? Yeah, exactly.

Oh, geez. I'll tell you what was kind of surprising, right? and it got weaponized in the general. I mean, in the primary. I had a contentious primary, and I got clipped where I said, well, I'm personally pro-life, but I don't think that the government should get in between you and your doctor's decisions, right? Like, I don't agree with the whole thing of abortion, but it's not my place to tell you. Your body is, you know, it's, only you know your reality.

That got clipped really hard, and I got hit. really hard. But I had done at the time like 240, 240 town halls. I got asked about abortion three times. Were you hit from the left? From the left. Yeah, that left. Yeah. From the left. Yeah. But I got asked three times. And I'm like, hmm. I think this goes by my theory when the Dobbs decision was handing down and that actually what was going to happen was that it was going to stop being a national issue and that like local places we're going to find compromises that roughly worked for them. And you can disagree with, but you may live in a state where you don't like the law. But that law is probably over the course of the next five to 10 years going to end up roughly

mirroring the majority preferences of the electorate and that this is probably net healthy for the country. So I'm glad to hear a confirmation of my. I will tell you that. I was surprised, right? Just, I mean, and that's, if you would have gone to social media, oh my God. Yeah. They beat the shit out of it. Yeah. But then you won that primary two to one. Exactly. Yeah.

So. But that's the moral of story. Right. But like, like I had consultants saying we have to run an ad like this. And I went, no. I know what I said. They're weaponizing this. They're trying to clip it.

And I know I'm very. And you're on the ground at the Kinsenegeras. Yes. Like, exactly. Yeah. Well, this is before the Kinsenegas. But yeah, but I had already been doing the ranch holes. Yeah.

Yes. Bobby Polito, candidate for Congress in South Texas. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That was Bobby Polito, candidate for Congress in the Texas 15th district.

I hope you enjoyed our show from Welcome Fest. And if you want even more Josh Barrow at Welcome Fest content, you can also check out the interview I did with Mark Cuban on the main stage at the conference. There's a link to that on the page for this episode at Centralair Podcast.com. Central Air is created by me, Josh Barrow, and Sarah Fay. We are a production of very serious media. Jennifer Swaddick mixed this episode. Our music is by Joshua Mosher.

Special thanks to the team. Welcome for inviting us and assisting with audio production. Thank you for listening and stay cool out there.