The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Chris Peterson, Utah Governor Candidate Democrat 2020

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

Chris Peterson, Utah Governor Candidate Democrat 2020 - Gubernatorial Petersonforutah.com

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrissvossshow.com and the Resistance Radio. Coming to you with another great podcast, we've got a governor candidate for the state of Utah, Chris Peterson, who's going to be with us where we're talking to him about what he envisions for the state and what he's hoping to accomplish on the Democratic platform to make, hopefully, what I want, Utah to go blue. Although, you know, a good balance of government is always good as well. Be sure to go to thecvpn.com or chrisfosspodcastnetwork.com you can see all nine of our podcasts there you can subscribe to learn educate there's over 500 podcasts that are on those uh different platforms and you can learn so much especially if right now if you're just sitting around at home

maybe advance your life to the next level and everything else, or advance your politics to the next level with TheResistanceRadio.com. You can go to YouTube.com, of course, that's Chris Voss, and hit that bell notification. You can see this live video we're doing with Chris Peterson if you're listening to the audio version on our podcast network. And you can check out his website, which we'll get into here in a second. So Chris Peterson has spent his career fighting for working families. He's been a professor of

business law at the University of Utah. He's worked tirelessly to help industry to improve their lives, their employees and customers. His neighbors were losing their homes and the economy is crashing. Peterson went and took the fight to Wall Street greed, helping build a team in Washington, D.C. that returned $12 billion to cheated American families. Chris knows Utahns need a fair marketplace that treats consumers right and gives every business a chance to succeed. Welcome to the show, Chris. How are you doing, buddy? I'm doing all right. Thanks for having me, Chris. It's a pleasure to be here. Good, good. And I'm excited to have you on. I really, Utah has had 40 years of GOP, Republican governor rule.

And I, you know what, this is a great year for change. This is a great year for a blue wave, if we can get one, or purple wave is some of the different candidates we've had on for the Democratic Party but it's going to be exciting to have you on. So welcome to the show. Give us a little bit of background on yourself. What's your origin story? Where did you come from? How did you get here and all that good stuff? Well thank you Chris. I appreciate that and I share your sentiment about the need for some change in our state. And that's a part of why I'm running for governor. You know, I grew up here in Salt Lake,

in Salt Lake County. I grew up in West Valley City. I'm a fifth generation Utahn. All my ancestors were early pioneers. In fact, my great, great grandfather was John Taylor, who was the third president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But I grew up in very modest means. My mom was disabled. I grew up in a single-parent family. And I got my first jobs early on when I was a kid. I remember cleaning up trash at a strip mall out on 33rd South.

And I worked as a janitor in my way through college and eventually graduated from the University of Utah, but eventually decided to go to law school, became an attorney. And it turned out I was reasonably good at that and went off and made my way in the world. Lived in Washington, D.C. and Florida, where I became a law professor. And then eventually when that started to work well, I came home because it's where my family is, it's where my roots are, and where I wanted to be. And it's great to be here. It's great to be trying to give back to my community

and trying to serve. Let's get into some of your experience too. You have some government experience working in the White House and other things. Let's get into some of that before we talk about becoming a wannabe governor. Yeah, you bet. As a professor and attorney, I've worked on banking and business law, but my focus has always been on making sure that our businesses are doing a good job for not just

the business itself. That's important. Obviously, we need to have jobs and growth. Those are important things, but it's also important that businesses are working for their customers and that consumers have reasonable safeguards to make sure that they're treated fairly and that our products are transparent and honest. And I've focused on that my entire career, trying to fight for ordinary working families to get a fair deal in the marketplace. So after the financial crash, the federal government recruited me to come back to Washington to try to help build the new consumer protection agency they created. This is the, sometimes it's associated with Elizabeth Warren. It's the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So I went back to Washington and spent years helping build

that agency. Lots of people did, but my job was to help build some of the teams that tried to enforce the law to make sure that our financial institutions play by the rules. And if they don't, then they need to give their customers refunds or pay a penalty. Just like you and I, if we speed on the highway, we might get pulled over and have to pay a ticket. Doesn't mean, you know, we're necessarily bad people. Everybody makes mistakes, but we have

to have, as you say, Chris, law and order in our society. And I'm very proud that I helped work on that team and helped do my part to form that team. Eventually, we returned over, you know, about $12 billion in refunds and restitution to Americans all across the country that had been taken advantage of because at some point in the process of a loan or collecting a debt or a banking account, there were untruths that were told by employees or by the company and people were misled. And that's not okay. I fought to fix that. And I also, in addition to that, worked for a time at the Pentagon, the United States Department of Defense, doing the same kind of work for our active duty military soldiers and

sailors and Marines and airmen. The military knows more than just about anybody that if their employees that are soldiers, they get into trouble financially because they have products that don't work for them. And that doesn't just hurt that soldier or that Marine, that sailor, it could mean that our military readiness declines. And so they asked me to come and help redesign some of their rules. It was one of the highlights of my career, I got to represent the Pentagon in negotiations with the White House. It's about, you know, those are pretty important government institutions. It's not quite the same as working in the Utah State Legislature, but I think that it's a legitimate source of experience. And I believe that it's given me some insight about how we can improve our government here at home. What made you decide to just flick that switch and go full with Chris Peterson as a candidate for governor?

Well, there's a number of things. I think that it seemed to me that our state has, for too long, not given Democrats a chance to try to restore some balance to our government. And when the Democratic Party, frankly, came and asked me to run, tried to recruit me to do so, it made me chuckle. I thought, well, you should probably go get a state senator or CEO of a company. But, you know, I think they were having a hard time getting somebody to step up. And I thought, you know, the more I thought about it, the more sad it makes me that so many people in Utah struggle to get by day after day.

And that's only gotten worse since this coronavirus hit. We have people who are working two, three jobs, just barely making ends meet. We have a lot of workplace safety issues. We have the largest gender pay gap in America right now. We have the lowest per pupil funding for our public education system in America right now. And that's even though our economy is doing relatively well in comparison to many other states. But for some reason, we just don't have the leadership right now to get that money back to the people who needed the most, our kids and the single moms

who are taking care of them. And I believe that I can do a reasonably persuasive job presenting some of these policy issues, trying to raise those challenges and pressure our state leaders. And if I can get the poet to get behind me, become a leader myself to try to make a difference in people's lives. I'm running, Chris, because I have nothing but the most altruistic motives. I want to help people. I want my life to be a meaningful life of public service that gives back to our community. I think we can do a better job than we've been doing.

And I believe that my campaign is going in that direction. And what's really cool is you have a female lieutenant governor who's running for candidate as well with you. And so hopefully we're going to have her on the show. We've sent her out an invite. And she's right now, I believe, helping the Navajo Nation out, which is having a huge crush from this coronavirus. And so I think she's out there doing some stuff. I saw an update on your guys' website. Yeah.

You know, you mentioned my fantastic running mate, Karina Brown. She's really an amazing person. She was one of the original signatories and sponsors for the proposition that increased the ballot proposition that increased the coverage for Medicaid expansion. She's a real healthcare advocate. She's worked on child safety issues and making sure that they're taken care of. Victims of child abuse are taken care of. She's also been a great advocate for small businesses. And she's been spearheading a wonderful program to celebrate the 19th Amendment, the centennial of the constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote. All just examples of her, you know, enthusiasm for public service. We've got a project right now that we're doing in collaboration with

the Devin Thorpe for Congress campaign to try to get more resources down to the Navajo Nation, as you mentioned. And I think that all of that is oriented or is consistent with the message that we're trying to portray, that we need to have reasonable, balanced government. For too long, the Republican Party has had a bit of a stranglehold on power. And that's not to say, it's not a criticism of Republicans. We have lots of Republican friends and neighbors love and care about them and wish them well. And we need to have the Republican Party be a vibrant and solid institution. But the more time in any given political system where power is located within one power is located within one party, the more likely that corruption, lack of transparency is to start to settle in. And I believe we've started to see that, you know, we've passed a number of ballot measures in recent years, only to have the state legislature say that

they know better and start to undermine those ballot measures by cutting them back here and there. And most recently, the effort to raise food on, sorry, raise taxes on food, which was overwhelmingly opposed by both Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike. The legislature for now has pulled back on that. But I want to be a voice for protecting those propositions, for listening to the overwhelming majority of Utahns who want to have reasonable common sense government that works to solve solutions in a practical way across party lines. Our word is corrupt and there needs to be balances. There needs to be checks and all that sort of good stuff. At least that's what I think. I agree with you, Chris.

You've got it. That's why I'm running for governor. We have some checks and balances to make sure that the public, that the ordinary working people have a say in our government and are steering it toward a reasonable path. And Utahns, by and large, have larger families. And I know that when we talk with, I believe, Ashley Matthews was on the show. She's representing Zone 38, I believe, in Kearns. You know, she talked about how the unions here and stuff, or at least with the state, there's no minimum contract payment or no minimum wage that people have to pay if they get a Utah government

contract for like, you know, work on construction and things of that nature, where at the federal level, there's, you know, there's those guarantees put in place. I know one thing that's probably going to be impacted with Utah's economy is with COVID and stuff. Have you laid any plans for COVID-19 and maybe how you're going to deal with that, bringing the economy back or dealing with the issues of the economy, et cetera, et cetera? I do. So on the coronavirus challenge, it looks like we are starting to bend the curve down and decreasing the number of infections in many areas of the state. But we are still facing overwhelming challenges down on the Navajo reservation. And there's the real potential, as you look at there are people rushing now to try and get that done.

But until one of those two things happens, we are still vulnerable to an infection. And I think we need to continue to be careful. We need to continue to maintain social distancing to the extent that we can. We need to try to wear masks when it's appropriate to do so. And we've got to continue to gather data and be ready to intervene quickly to try to stop the spread of infections. So I think that means we need to keep continuing to press forward on our efforts to have testing. We need to be ramping up the number of contact tracers. So people hired by the public health department to track down where

infections are, reach out to people who have been in contact and make sure with those who have been infected and make sure that those people are getting to safe and healthy, good places to quarantine to prevent the further spread of that virus. And if we don't do that, there is a real chance that in the coming months, especially as fall approaches, that we could have an even bigger wave of the virus that reoccurs. That happened in the early 1900s in the Spanish flu epidemic in many areas. So we're not out of the woods yet in terms of public health challenges. Second, in terms of our overall economy, we do need to get people back to work. We need to revitalize our economy because

that's a public health risk too. People need to have a livelihood. Our businesses need to be thriving in order for us to get living wage jobs and the healthcare that you just talked about. And so I think it's going to be a complicated process. Our employers need to be making sure that they're making adjustments to the way they do business to try to prevent spread of infection. But we also need to get out and start supporting local businesses and getting our economy back up and running. And some of the policies I've been advocating, we need to make sure that we are hitting the pause button in some of our debt collection efforts to give people time to get caught up. Right now, I've called for the governor to extend his eviction moratorium, which just expired last week. Many places around the country, it's currently not lawful to evict someone from their home because of the public health and financial crisis. But here in Utah,

for many types of landlord-tenant arrangements, it's okay to kick a family with children out on the street now if they're a month behind in their rent. That's not right. We need to give people a little bit more time to catch up and to try to adjust and find jobs. Many people still haven't received stimulus checks from Uncle Sam. It's tough to get that stuff out there. And we need people to have a little bit more time. That's not to get that stuff out there the the the and we need people to have a little bit more time that's not to say that this should all be put on our landlords they're important small businesses in many instances we need to get assistance to them too we've got to come together and make practical solutions to get our economy back on track definitely definitely and then i

love the fact that you have the background of financial protection. So you have the ability to look at these instruments and what people are doing and go, hey, this is either good or bad and stand up for the little guy, because that's going to be important to them. And I know school resources are a big issue. You have, like I said, larger families here. Schooling is an issue. What sort of quality education sort of platforms do you have or planning for education here in Utah? Sure. I think that public education is one of the biggest policy challenges the state is facing. You know, we have currently the lowest per pupil spending in

America. We're dead last of all the states and the District of Columbia in per pupil spending. And we have been for 20 years, you know, either last or dead second to last. For years, we've been neglecting our public schools. Now, oftentimes our kids are still getting, you know, middle of the road scores in our standardized tests. But ask yourself this, if we had really been investing in education, what would things look like over the past 20 years? What would things look like today? You know, in the future, it's more important than ever that we have a highly educated workforce that can build companies here at home and attract companies from around the world that can help Utah become a leader in the country. Why should we give

that ground to San Francisco or to Boston or to Connecticut? Let's have Utah be one of the high technology visionary states for the country. And in order to do that, we've got to educate our kids. And that means preparing them not just for college, but for technical schools and trades. And we've got to increase our investment. So that's going to be one of my highest priorities if I'm elected governor. I promise here and now, Chris, that if I'm elected governor and you give me four years, we will not be dead last in per pupil funding in this state anymore. That's awesome. You know, like you say, Utah actually has some really cool stuff going on, especially down here in Utah County where I'm at. I forget what you guys call it.

It's kind of like the Silicon Valley of Utah where there's Adobe here. There's a bunch of technology companies. There's even the NSA here with their thing. And you guys have tried to, you know, kind of be a resource to bring people here. I think, I think either Facebook or, or Google or some other companies have come here and set up shop. And now we're starting to see where Silicon Valley, which is a large part of my technological base and networking is, we're starting to see that it may disassemble and start spreading across the nation. Same thing with Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook. And that area has been just struggling for so long with traffic and just the cost that's there. I mean, the nightmarish mortgage and rental costs are insane there. And so I think what's going to happen is we're going to see some different

shifting with this coronavirus that's going to make us rethink how we do business, our business models. We talk about a lot of this on the Chris Voss show. And so it may be that there are more of these people that will want to spread out, move to Utah, get involved in the things, maybe just from a cost standpoint, because I'm sure a lot of these employers will be like, you know, if we move some employees to Utah, it's much cheaper, you know, the cost of living is much cheaper than keeping them here in San Francisco and your quality of life is a whole lot better. I already have a lot of my San Francisco friends that are talking about moving to either here or Las Vegas or different places that are still kind of in that semicircle.

But, you know, they're kind of tired of how much California costs for that matter. I've been there and seen that movie. Utah has a lot to offer there. And I would say not even just moving those, some of those jobs to Utah, to Lehigh or Salt Lake City, but also considering maybe Carbon County down in Price, a lot of really talented, hardworking people down there that have been struggling to find, revitalize their economy as coal has been maybe a little less competitive. You've got a lot of great agriculture in Utah that is a proud tradition that I really am supportive of and want to make sure we're doing everything we can to

support it. Let's get some more high technology integrated and some clean technology generation integrated into our agricultural sector and revitalize that too. I think there's a lot to be said for Utah as a great place to do business, both along the Wasatch Front and also across the state. So how do you feel about K-12 schools making higher education more accessible? We'll just package this all in one thing. They had voted down a raise in taxes for education. What are your feelings on that, making community colleges free to more Utah residents and accountable too as well for the monies that they give to them? I know colleges

are probably going to have to rethink their business model as well. So you may be working with them to go, well, let's figure out a way we can make it beneficial to everyone. Well, for K-12, we need more financial support. We've got to retain and celebrate our teachers. We've got to get our class sizes down, and we're going to have to generate some revenue to do that. I think we need to generate revenue by looking a little bit more carefully at the loopholes and tax incentives that we don't pay careful attention to that get reintegrated into our budget each year. We also need to consider whether or not a flat tax was the right approach that was adopted back during the Huntsman administration, where we increased taxes on low-income people and decreased taxes on the very most wealthy people. The legacy of that decision has been continued chronic underfunding of our public schools. With respect

to higher education, I think we've got to get the prices down. We need to make sure that we're not spending – we need to help our universities and community colleges continue to be competitive and provide great services and do research. They're a real engine for economic growth and technology. So we need to support them and make sure that they're being successful, but we do need to get the cost down for our students. I also think that we need to try to work on decreasing the amount of student debt that our borrowers take on, our students. You know, that's a big problem all across the

country. It's especially a problem for private for-profit schools. You know, some Stanford do, and people take on enormous debts and then struggle to repay them. So we need to make sure that we are ensuring that these for-profit schools are doing as good a job as, say, for example, our community colleges are and our technical schools, which are a much better value and are giving better training and dedicating more of their tuition dollars to actually providing high-quality instruction. And I've seen that. Owning a mortgage company for almost 20 years before the 2008 crash, I would see these applications and you know, it's like a P&L in someone's life, a profit and loss, just like a business P&L.

And I would look at people that had gone to college and even people that had gone on to be doctors or people that wrote prescriptions or dentists and stuff. And I would look at the amount of service that they were putting into their debt service for their, their college loans. And they'd be making, you know, a hundred grand, but by the time they paid their loans and you know, the things that everyone else has to have for, you know, raise children and family house and car,

they were almost living on minimum wage. And I'm like, this is almost like indentured servitude sometimes. And I've known people that it's taken them 20 years to pay off their loans. And many don't see a return on the thing. And I'm hoping that with COVID-19, and this happened in 2008, we're going to see a lot of models of business and college and education. We're probably going to be re-looking and re-changing everything. Maybe the cost will go down because we're going to have to operate for technology.

So instead of me going into buildings, I'm working from home instead of taking up campus space. I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see how we come out of it, but it's going to need leadership like people like you who have a vision, who understand the financial instruments too, and understand things from a common man sort of thing. I mean, I get tired of these mostly, and I don't know much about the state of Utah's legislature, but I get tired of seeing in Congress these multimillionaires who, you know, they're like, well, we Congress, these multimillionaires who, you know, they're like, well, we gave you guys 1200 bucks, you know, and you should be able to live on that.

Right. And you're like, honey, I don't think you've ever learned 1200 bucks in your life. Like, you know, and it's good to have an everyman. What about minorities in our state working class families raising the minimum hourly wage uh do you want to change the health benefits or or what goes on with the assuming we still have obamacare if it holds up in the courts um etc etc any changes you want to make with that sure i i believe in uh supporting a living wage and that uh it's a a terrible tragedy tragedy that Utah still has a minimum wage that's so shockingly low and hasn't been updated in generations. The standard economic argument is that if you increase the minimum wage, that that will decrease the supply of jobs that are available. But the reality has

been very different in areas like Seattle and many other places around the country that have raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour. it turns out that that puts more money in the pockets of low and moderate income workers who then circulate that in local businesses and increase the available customer base that helps some small businesses grow and thrive and can in turn revitalize the economy. One of the challenges we've had in America in the past 10 to 20 years is that we're getting so much separation between the people who are doing the best and the people who are struggling to get by

that there are fewer people out there who have the resources to actually invest in the kind of new businesses and opportunities and restaurants and services and whatnot to make the purchases. We need customers right now for our businesses. And one way to do that is by increasing the minimum wage. You mentioned the Affordable Care Act. I get a little bit tired of seeing some of my friends on the Republican side who talk about making sure people have access to health care,

all while the state of Utah continues to litigate in court trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which has been, it's not perfect. It's not a perfect statute, but it has been the best development for getting access to health care we've seen in our country in decades. So I would be trying to preserve that and increase it in any way that I can, looking for opportunities to decrease costs of prescription drugs, increase the amount of people who are covered by federal programs and benefits, and make sure that the insurance products that people do have through their employer or purchased on exchanges are high-quality insurance products offered at an affordable price and getting the medical care services to people that need them. It should not be in America a recipe for if you get sick, if you are in an accident and have to take an ambulance, you shouldn't have to go bankrupt because of that.

We are at a point in our society where we can take care of people if we get ourselves organized to do so. That's what I'll fight for if I'm governor. Awesome sauce. And that's something to do. Is Utah part of that? I know there's several Republican AGs. I think Texas is leading the charge on it where they're trying to get Obamacare overturned. And it's really funny because we're in the middle of a pandemic.

And I can't remember the, there was a report, I think either in WAPO or the Washington Post or I don't have it readily before me, but it basically said there's like 60 million or something people that are going to lose their health insurance because they've been laid off because of COVID-19 and they can't afford the payments on it. Because I think within 60 days, most of their COBRA stuff runs out and then they've got to start paying for it themselves. We're going to run into a real big issue. And I, and I hope any Utah that listens to me realizes that we're still at the fresh part of this, this crisis. People are still kind of

running on there. There's people in food banks and people that are really struggling and they're out of money. Well, you know, some people are still running on their savings. Some people are still getting by, but there's going to come a point. I don't know. You, you might know better than I do probably about four to six months from now, where we're going to see bankruptcy start going through the roof. We're going to start people in really desperate times where they've run out their credit cards, they've run out their things, they've sold their stuff, the pawn shops are filling up. You know, I lived in Las Vegas and watched this happen in 2008. And I mean, I lived on my street. I lived on in Las Vegas. Fortunately, I can work anywhere in the world off the internet.

And so it didn't impact me quite as much other than losing our big companies. But I lived on a street where every fourth home was empty because it had been abandoned. We had squatter problems. You know, every night you turn on the TV and there'd be homes setting on fire because they lit a fire in some abandoned home.

And I would literally go outside every night and you would hear crickets all up and down the street. And people would be like, are those crickets? And I'm like, no, those are the fire alarm batteries from all the homes that are empty and no one's changed the batteries. So it's just, they're just chirping away all night. And we're going to go through this really tough time.

I don't think we'll go through it as bad as Las Vegas is. I think Las Vegas is number one in job losses right now at almost 30%. And in some cases nationally, we're higher than the Great Depression. And I think, is it Mr. Powell, the Federal Reserve Chairman, said today, this is unprecedented. This is unprecedented in modern times what we are going through. I mean, there's a lot of tricks and different things that they can do. And there may have to be a lot of legislation that's going to have to be spent either at a local and national level to bail people out. And $1,200 isn't going to be enough. And health

insurance is going to be a factor, uh, getting the economy back and going. Uh, let me ask you this. Cause somebody, one of the people that, um, uh, had sent in some questions, uh, that were really excited to hear from, um, you know, an extra point of view, um, from the Democrat party was, um, how do you, how do you feel about working with let's just say that president Trump wins again. How do you, how do you feel about working with someone like him? There's definitely a bit of toxicity, you know, he can be a little, and of course building a bridge and offering a handout to the Republican party in the legislature.

Well, if we're going to have to talk about President Trump at some point. I mean, everybody does. He has such a personality that he dominates so many conversations. Here's one thing that I think about our current president. I understand that there are so many Utahns who have a favorable approval rating for him. I ask them to respectfully consider whether or not President Trump is a positive role model for our children. I find, you know, I find that I'm raising my three kids. I want to remind them that and kids at home, anybody that's listening on this podcast, it's not okay to speak the way that he does to others.

It's not okay to constantly tell mistruths. And it's not that, look, I'm not, I don't want to be the first one to cast a stone. I've made mistakes. I will continue to make mistakes. It's easy to make mistakes and it's hard to not make them, but there has never been a modern, any president of the United States who has been so sustained in his incivility, his infidelity, and his dishonesty. And I believe that we as a society here in Utah are well positioned to be forthright in our rejection of that type of behavior. And I will give. And speaking of going across party lines, I'll give Senator Romney some credit for taking some courageous votes and maybe taking a

bit of a stand to try to nudge the president back towards a little more decency when he strays across those lines. But that being said, if he is elected to presidency again, then I'll do everything I can to try to work with him and to try to be civil, just like I suggested he should be, and to try to work to give effective representation to the state. In terms of here at home in the state legislature, well, that's a lot easier because most of the state legislatures that I've met are decent people that work regular jobs and are trying to get by. We don't always agree on things. We're going to disagree. I'm sure we're going to have some sharp disagreements. But what you can expect from me is relentless, aggressive competence and cheerful civility. That's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to keep approaching trying to win them over, negotiate, negotiate, try to get them to doing a little bit better on each bill, try to get the bad parts out, the good parts in, and fight for ordinary working people and for civilized, responsible government. That's what I believe in. That's what you'll get. And to add what I said earlier, and I think that's awesome, to add to what I said earlier about how, you know, I've heard some people say, well, you know, Utah is, you know, we're not doing too bad. We're not New York, we're not California. But a lot of the big companies like Adobe and different things like that that are here in Utah, they might have some layoffs coming through across nationwide. You know, we've already seen Uber now is up, laid off 6,700 people. There's probably more bloodletting coming that way.

So I'm glad that you're willing to reach out, you're willing to work. I think we need to have a government that has checks and balances, that is balanced, where there is Democrats and Republicans working together to make things better, to respect each other, to have that check that's so important. One thing I started to mention was when I came to Vegas, I really pushed for women to be in office. And I literally went down my ballot. I took a picture of this post on Facebook and I made a big deal for about six months. I said, I'm only voting for

women. No, people can do what they want. But that was my thing. And in Las Vegas, we elected the largest influx, blue wave of Democrats and women out of any legislature in this nation. And they are doing the wonderfulest things for that state, child care, health care. And it's all about the kids. It's all about quality of life. And so I want to implore Utahns that if you, you know, we've had 40 years of governor rule for the GOP. That's great. Maybe you've liked that so far, but let's change the flavor up. Let's balance out the legislature. Let's balance out the thing. I'd love to see more women in office. I'd love to see more minorities in office.

I'd love to see a change of face that represents what Utah's about and America's about. The one thing I hope that's going to come out of this coronavirus is, you know, we've had kind of this partisan fight over a long time over health insurance and Obamacare and, you know, this, that, and I don't want to pay for your health insurance. We should help you and you should help yourself and all this stuff. But I think what we're going to hopefully come out of this coronavirus thing is that your health and your quality of life depends on your neighbor as well as you. Like, we all got to hopefully come out of this coronavirus thing is, is that your health and your quality of life depends on your neighbor as well as you, like we all got to start taking care of each other.

And that's kind of what we're learning from this lesson of wearing masks and, and trying to be, you know, it's not just about you anymore. It's about, you know, if your neighbor is unhealthy, you might get the flu from because they're next door.

And so I'm hoping that we're going to kind of learn a very important lesson here that we all got to take better care of each other and kind of get back to what America used to be. We used to know your neighbors, you used to care about people and everything else. Well, that's well said, Chris. I hope so too. We do need to take care of each other,

not just because it's in our own self-interest, but because it's the right thing to do. We need to have a vision for Utah that's inclusive and doesn't leave people behind. And that's one of the things I'm going to fight for as governor. And if you don't mind, I'm going to peg you with one more question. This comes from the Utah Democratic Caucus for People with Disabilities. Full disclosure, I have two sisters in Utah care

centers, one with the state who had cerebral palsy, I mentioned earlier, and another with MS, who, you know, she's now in a demented state, who's in a private care center. What's sort of your platform or ideas on protecting people with disabilities, making sure there's adequate funding for them? I know Utah has been playing a little bit of shell games with the sort of protections they have and things of that nature. Well, first off, I think we need to make sure that we're supporting people with disabilities and celebrating the fact that they add to our culture and economy and that their families and their communities are a vital part of our community, our state. And I also, like you, have a long history of people

with disabilities in my own family. You know, my mom also has multiple sclerosis. And, you know, that's a complicated disease that kind of ebbs and flows for some people. But all throughout my early childhood, she was in a wheelchair. Some of my earliest memories as a child were pushing her around in a wheelchair in the grocery store out in West Valley City. And I saw her struggles on a daily basis trying to find employment, trying to get the tasks of daily life done. And those things could be either thwarted or assisted by relatively small changes in the way that we organize our businesses, our government entities, our homes. And we need to try to do what we can to make reasonable accommodations for people. I support the Americans with Disabilities Act. It's robust enforcement.

And that goes both for private institutions and public institutions too. And so I'll fight for funding for people with disabilities and celebrate their differences and their unique experience. I think the greatest thing about you, Chris, and this is going to be my personal perspective, especially having this conversation with you, is you're the everyman dude. I mean, you started out as a janitor. You didn't come from some rich family and you got money and you're just buying your way into government. And of course, you're going to help all your crony friends out like they do in Washington and stuff. You're not going to do any of that. And you care about people.

I mean, you've seen some of the abuses that companies have done, the predatory lending, things of that nature. And yeah, I mean, to me, it just makes sense here in Utah, especially with the high cost of family living, the quality of life. Quality of life is going to be really important. And like I say, a lot of voters, I want them to understand that you're not even going to see the full effect of this depression area sort of movement that we're moving into, the job losses, the bankruptcies, there may be even more of that coming after November in the elections. And so you want to look really good and hard at the candidates that are coming up in this governor's race and in the legislature and be like, is it time for change? Is it time to get some fresh blood? Is it time to get people in

there that know how to, you know, look at sort of these things that can revitalize the economy, that can bring things back? Or is it just going to be the same old, same old, you know, protect our wealthy friends and make sure that, you know, the top 1% are taken care of? So I really implore Utahns to give you a chance, give the Democratic Party a chance and change it up. Let's break that 40-year cycle. Let's turn Utah blue or maybe purple, as Ashley Matthews said it. And, yeah, let's – I mean, it's all going to be about how we rebound

about this, and it's going to be down to leaders like you and everything else to guide us through this coronavirus crisis. I mean, Bank of America CEO says we not, may not have an economic rebound until the end of 2022. That puts you two years into your term. And, and there's going to be a lot of roll up your sleeves work to be done by both the legislature and the government. So that's my piece. Well, thank you, Chris. I couldn't agree more. It is time for a change. And I do think that some of the challenges we're facing right now are very serious.

And I believe I am well positioned to try to help this state weather the storm and do so in a way that cares for the people who are most vulnerable. And too many of us think that it's not somebody else, it's not us. In the last month, 160,000 workers lost their health insurance. And now, many of them as they're scrambling to find new jobs are waking up to a reality where they may have trouble making that next mortgage payment, making that car payment that's on the horizon. And if you elect me as your governor, I will be caring about you putting your interests first and fighting to make sure you have access to good living wage jobs with affordable health care and fair treatment

in the marketplace with a good high quality public education for you, for your children. Those are the things I'm going to fight for. Awesome sauce. I love you, Chris. You seem like a really nice, honest guy who's going to rock and roll. Give us your website. Tell us how people can either donate to you or maybe there's some other ways they can help out. If they're tied on funds, maybe they can – I don't know what you're doing in the coronavirus thing because you can't really door knock or, you know. Yeah, it's a real challenge. But, yeah, come on down to my website at peterson4utah.com, and you can sign up to volunteer. We do need a lot of help. We need help with people who are willing to host a virtual meet and greets. I, myself and my

Lieutenant Governor of Running May, we'll get a group of your friends together. We'll come and we'll have a conversation with folks in your neighborhood. Try and raise a few bucks that way so we can compete with the Republicans on the other side. But also, I need help online. I need people who are engaged in social media to follow my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, and also reach out to some of the newsprint media folks that may not be covering my campaign as carefully as they are the Republicans. We need to raise our voices together through all the different channels that are out there to try to forcefully, politely, with civility, press for affirmative change and party politics here in the state of Utah. Awesome sauce. Check it out. You go to peterson4utah.com. I've pinged Karina Brown to come

on to the podcast, so hopefully you should come on. We have a whole plethora. I think there's about 20 people who have signed on the democratic party blast email that we sent out to him to come on the podcast. Devin Thorpe, of course was here. Ashley Matthews, really exciting candidates that you guys have. And, and like, and like you say, we want to give them more platforms so people can get to know them. Anyway, it's been wonderful to have you on. I could talk to you for hours, and I really appreciate what you're doing

and support it. We're going to blast this out across social media. Everyone go check it out, petersonforyoutah.com, and be sure to subscribe to us on youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss. Hit that bell notification button so you get all the notifications for everything we're doing. Go to thecvpn.com or Chris Foss Podcast Network.

You can see nine different podcasts over there. Of course, The Resistance Radio, speaking for the Democrats here on the left, go to that, theresistanceradio.com. Thanks to Chris for being here, and my vote's on you, buddy. We'll see you in November. Bye-bye. All right. Thank you.