This Podcast Is... Uncalled For - Sarah Preu (Primary Special)

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

Today we are interviewing Sarah Preu, who is running for the United States House of Representatives in the Kansas 3rd Congressional District, and will be in a primary with incumbent Sharice Davids.  She talks about why she chose to run, the issues we've experienced with the local Democratic Party, and the issues in the race. Sarah's website: sarahpreu2026.com

Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says good luck. O-Doo brings your business together on a single platform. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, visit O-D-com to book a demo. It's O-D-O-O-O-D-com. Check the mic will go live.

Stories told their eyes and dive. Topics fresh with every spin. You won't guess what's coming in. every week a new surprise minds away never lies conversations bold and free tuning now just wait and see this hi

welcome once again to the podcast so we have another primary special today so joining me today is Sarah Prue that's correctly that's correct yep all right great uh Sarah is running for

the United States House of Representatives in the Kansas third congressional district, and she is primaring the incumbent Cherise Davids. So Sarah, welcome. Thank you. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to a decision to run for Congress. Yeah, so my name's Sarah crew. I'm a technology director right now. I've been in technology for over 20 years. My side love has always been a nonprofit work. So I've always been someone who followed politics. I've volunteered in the Democratic Party for most of the last 20 plus years. I was raised a Democrat. I'm lifelong. So I feel like this is definitely my party. And I'm actually a four-time Sharice David's voter and I voted for four times. So this effort for me is to to because I felt responsibility

in some of the things I've seen over the last 18 months. So she's voted to vote to fund ice. She's repeatedly showed for the Lake and Riley Act twice. And after what we've seen in terms of ice abuses, I felt like that was just a line too far for me. And then, I started looking a little deeper because I've always said, well, I think I align with her. And then I did a little more homework. And I realized, you know, the truth is she's never signed on for Medicare for All. Medicare for All is a literal life-changing policy that could be achieved. I mean, it's a very straightforward plan that we have several we can choose from with Congress people right now.

But very much a life-changer, both for my family and families all around the country. So that to me is a disqualifier too. She also takes APAC money, which was something I also wasn't aware of, you know, 18 months ago. So she's actually the largest recipient of our Kansas representatives of the Israel lobby money. So, and again, she never signed on for ceasefire when we were watching the fall of Gaza and what is now widely understood to be a genocide. I'm not saying it's a genocide. I'm listening to the UN and genocide scholars around the world

who have been calling it that for a while now and have done the research. So for that reason, my tax dollars and your tax dollars, I think they'll deserve a better use than those things. So that's why I'm running. All right. Awesome. Of course, before we get into the meat of our discussion, my personal history was Cherise. I met her just before she started running for Congress.

This would be 2017. I did paid video work for the legal women of voters of Johnson County. And that's where I first met Cherise. We both wound up on a ad hoc committee. study in the media reform. I would later find out that Cherise herself is a podcaster. You can,

so shameless plug for Shrease David's podcast, Star Tea Pants, which you can find on YouTube still to this day. It's about entrepreneurship and specifically

entrepreneurship among minority communities and women. And then, of course, as I know, she ran for Congress in the 2018 and what was a very crowded fields trying to unseat Kevin Yoder. The less said about him the better. I would agree with that.

Yeah. And as I recall, she joins that race quite late. And there were more progressive candidates in that field to think Brent. Welder was one of them? Yep. Brent was actually my choice. Yep. He's a labor lawyer.

And to this day, I think, does really, really good work. Yeah. And I think he's nationally known to that I'm thinking about it. Yeah. And last time I ran into Cherise was actually the opening of the riverfront, no, not the riverfront main street extension for the street car. May in October, and she at first didn't remember who I was. Then again, I hadn't seen her since she ran for office the first time around. So understandable.

And I mean, unfortunately, this isn't, I have to lead with the differentiators with Cherise, because that's just the nature of a primary. But this isn't really a Cherise, you know, opponent sort of campaign. This is a framework problem within the party. Oh, I agree. We continue to sort of platform folks and then. And, Sheree, I can't say I don't know her personally, I've only met her a couple times, right?

But I can tell you that I don't get the sense, like, personally, she disagrees with these policies. I get the sense that she votes according to kind of the directives or the needs of the party. And listen, if it's on behalf, if you're going to be bipartisan, on behalf of working people. Absolutely, right? Like education, you're going to show up for those sorts of things. But when you're going bipartisan for things like the Lake and Riley Act that are widely,

you know, widely considered to be just, you know, divisive, I just, I don't, that's the part that I think a lot of us have a problem with, right? So, and I believe those are, I can't say for sure. But it feels like there's a lot of consultant fodder here in the mix. And I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I also can't act like these boats didn't happen and aren't still happening. So, I mean, even in February, yes, we wanted to reopen the government, but there was ICE funding in there. And I do think we need leadership. I think we need the ability, even in Kansas District 3, I think we need a representative who's willing to say, not on my watch, not on behalf of my district.

You know, specifically ICE, right? Ice is abolish ICE. The term abolish ICE is thought to be this hugely divisive concept. There's really great research with independence. This is up to 60% of independence agree with that term. they're saying the same stuff we are. They're living through the same things we are. Now, they may not agree on what exactly abolish ICE means, right?

Then we go off and define it. We diverge. But that is not inherently this Uber leftist, progressive idea that ice has overstayed its welcome in its current one. It sounds a lot like the Black Lives, matter i i get the i get the idea that you know we're all about diversity and everything but um but yeah uh and i certainly absolutely don't believe in abolishing the police because um that's i do believe police needs to be reformed and i think ice needs to be heavily reformed all right there they're they they should be a focus on immigration.

They should not be used as Donnie's personal army. And I feel they are. Right. It should not be some paramilitary force that is at the discretion of the president and whoever he's got in his cabinet that day. Right. So to me, I'm with you. But I also think I'd actually take the other tack. I would tell you that immigration is, is.

absolutely needed immigration reform legislatively is needed. Customs enforcement, that's the piece of ice. That's the sea of ice. The sea part of this is actually very worthwhile, right? And they have anti-trafficking, cyber programs, all of these things that actually do work. So that's why it's really a disservice for these programs that are embedded with ice that actually do work to be conflated with the paramilitary extrajudicial work that we've seen over the last year and a half. It would be, it would behoove us all. It would be a benefit to all of us, including the good folks who do work in the customs portion of ICE to be rolled up into DHS and properly restructured so that they can do their work in the open without this, without this complicating factor of

this force of poorly trained. They've said this. We had whistleblowers come out and say, you know, they're not even doing the full, you know, 40 days or whatever of training. And they're being told to disregard constitutional rights. They're being told to disregard judicial warnings. Like this, this to me is not, when you really start to drill down into what's been happening, and again, we can see it with our own eyes.

This is the thing of believe what you see with your own eyes. we do need we need somebody who's willing to go out and say these things and build consensus and build consensus through the facts right um very recently just just some data coming out where nine may potentially 90 percent 91 percent of all arrested um detainees for ice were found to be without any sort of criminal history beyond the process of order yeah that is not what regular americans bought in for right that's not what they expect out of their immigration um enforcement so yeah well well of course immigrants and this is just statistical proven immigrants commit way fewer crimes than they have born americans uh that's just a statistical fact you know um it's it's 100% true and i have a by the I have four brothers. I grew up in a house with five kids, four brothers.

And only one of them is MAGA, but I will tell you, he told me, like he still really believes that Joe Biden led in all of these folks illegally so that they could come vote in elections. Like, this is the level of misinformation

that feeds the fear of saying abolished ice, right? As I told him, and I will tell anybody who's listening, like, have you, if you've ever spent five minutes with an undocumented person, you would know that they did not pay coyotes or slip under, you know, cloak of night into this country looking for a better life and more secure life just to go show up and illegally vote and risk all of that with an illegal vote. I mean, it's just not how that works.

It's not reasonable. It's not practical, right? These folks are coming here to obey our laws and to work and build a better home and a better life. So, yeah, I think most Americans know and agree with that, but I also think, like you said, it's sort of this triggering, it's this triggering phrase. But if you give folks the credit to that they will listen and hear the full message. And I do think they are, right? If you can get people past that initial nature reaction, right, the policies are actually pretty popular to reform these things. Sure.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You mentioned the Lake and Riley act a couple of times already. That is something I'm personally not familiar with, even though I know the rights use that as a cudgel on progressives and things. So could you explain to me and my listeners what exactly that is? Yeah. So Lake and Riley, I believe, was a young woman who was killed and it was by someone who was here. passed their visa. They have, of course, used that as sort of, even though Lake and Riley's family has requested the right to stop invoking her name to punish immigrants at large, right? They have used this as sort of their emblem for what they're going for in terms of keeping folks undocumented out of the country and not figuring out if they, deporting first and asking

later, right, for actual paperwork. So that was last summer. It was, it greatly expanded ICE's abilities to do what you've seen them doing in the street. So pulling over people just to ask for paperwork, targeting, you know, people in work fans, showing up at Agua Fresca stands just happened in Olathe this week, right? Claring shop and asking questions later. And that's the thing.

Right. Like we all agree that we want immigration reform. We don't want anybody here who's hurt somebody or has any indication that they would hurt somebody. But if you are going to an Agua fresca stand where people are trying to make a living, that is wildly unpopular, right? And you're spending our money to do it. That's the worst thing. Like I like to say is like this is not only a, it's a moral failure. And I think that one for me is a non, like that's non negotiable. But you may not win people over with that argument. But what is absolutely clear, right, is that ICE is a fiscal failure over the last 18 months, right? You are arresting innocent people throwing them into for-profit prisons. It looks like a scam because it is a scam. They are not staying there because they're not guilty. So that's, I mean, they're released. They're arrested and none on their way to mask this week and had to let her go within 24 hours. happened to be walking to mass without her paperwork.

She's Haitian. Like, I mean, this is, this is not what we understand America to be. So many of us from immigrant families, right? Immigrant bloodlines. So, so, yeah, so that's the Lake and Riley Act. Essentially, it gave more money and it gave the kind of the groundwork for the decision that the Supreme Court made last year about, yes, you can essentially racially. profile people if you're an ICE agent. You have good indication that they might be here illegally,

which would amount to, at times, driving while Brown. And that's not controversial. That's just the facts. We know that they're pulling people over without any warrant. They have no, they have no name. They have no address. They have no probable cause. These folks are not getting due process when they show up. So, I mean, this is a, by all accounts, this is a mess. And to say that we're going to reform that, I just don't see how that happens at this point. You can't reform this level of public distrust, right? And like I said, I think it's not fair to those programs that do work, right? And so I think we owe those folks a different, a different reality as well. Yeah, absolutely. I will never understand the obsession the right has with using deaths, particularly of young women,

to address to advance political agendas that are quite frankly dangerous. Here in the state of Kansas, the name Kelsey Smith comes to mind. Kelsey Smith, I remember my daughter was like, he was like one or so she used to baby. And I remember we had shopped at that target many times. Kelsey had been stalked by that person. What that actually was more related to was the fact that she was a young woman and how dangerous it is to be a young woman in this country, regardless of who's hunting you. Right. And so, yeah, I think that one stays with all of us in this district. I think of Kelsey Smith often. My daughter is now 18 years old and she works at a pool.

And I worry about her every, you know, every time she's closing late, it is a dangerous world to be a woman. women in it is. But yeah, they don't use that unless, you know, it's, you're right. And yet on the same token, you can't even get them to talk about gun control in relationship to school shootings. Like then that's just a bridge too far that we would use that we would politicize death, right? Yeah. So, so yeah, it's highly hypocritical. It's highly inconsistent. And shame on. And shame on Missy Smith for attacking me for pointing that out. That's why I ran for the Kansas Senate in the first place 10 years ago now to try to house Greg Smith, her father, who, by the way, is now the reason we can carry guns anywhere in Kansas without a permit and concealed. Tell me that's not a disaster waiting to happen.

Yeah, I mean, I think we've shown in America unequivocally that more guns doesn't equal more safety. I mean, we have more guns than ever in America and gun deaths are not down. So yeah, unfortunately, that whole Kelsey Smith, that was, there was something great that did come out of that, though, in terms of you're talking about legislation and governance at least, right? I will say the Kelsey Smith Act was very instrumental to other folks getting justice quickly and getting their loved ones records accessed quick enough to save them. So I do think that's that is a, that was a win there. But I often, I agree that I don't think we, we often talk about Kelsey Smith and just the, the reality of being a young woman or any woman, honestly, like elderly women have,

We've got, you know, history of like Prairie Village had something happen. Gosh, I don't know. You remember that probably 10, 15 years ago where an elderly woman was beaten and assaulted in her home. These things happen as to women. Like, it happens because violence against women is an epidemic. I think I'll agree there. So, so, yeah, yeah, 2016, I do want that. That's also a demonstration of,

I think you've experienced this recently, too, but the rights word shift of the establishment of the Democratic Party, certainly on the county level. Because they primaried me that year. Oh, okay. Yeah. They went to be running. Well, I was already on the balance, but that didn't stop them from primarying me with someone who is way.

to corporates for my taste and was also quite young at the time so they're saying me a punk-ass kid against a 30-something year old man yeah and that's the crux of my anger with the party right now is that they would do that and then blame me for um because of the attacks as this particular individual uh used against me like uh Like sending volunteers to my house, despite the fact that when you run for office, your address is public record. And people can just look up. Yeah, we probably should avoid that house. Yeah.

But also, you know, remember we had caucuses in 16 as well. What's, I'm in the 21st Senate District. Just a, so what's in a district do you live in? Gosh, I don't remember at this point because we just moved here a couple of years ago. I didn't even think we'd been here in time. Okay. So Dinah Sykes is my current center. Ethan's mine, so I don't actually know.

Okay, so you're in, okay, so this just, Ethan Gorson, right for governor. So yeah, yeah, this probably wouldn't affect you because, when it affected you because that, I forget who was running in that district. But at my caucus that year, my opponent had a volunteer who was allegedly telling voters, sign the petition to get him on the ballot or you won't be allowed to vote. What does that mean? Yeah, that's illegal. That's illegal. You can't suppress people's rights of votes just because they don't support opinion.

putting your candidate on the ballot. By the way, that's volunteer was Brandon Woodard. Oh, okay. Yeah. So that explains my beef with that guy too. Because not only did he run

in 18 for that house seat against another progressive, Matthew Calcarra. It happened in 2020. Guy living right behind me, names Randon Smith ran and

was also primaries from the censor swing. And yeah, it's just difficult for progressives to run in this county and not get targeted by the corporatists. Yeah. Well, and that's why this is, I will say that's pretty common knowledge, right? And that fact that you just stated there. And so you get a lot of people kind of who are in the party who complain, you know, that I don't know what I'm doing. She's just she's doing this just to be a spoiler or whatever. No, I have been watching Joe Co. Democrats now for over 15 years and how they operate, right?

I know exactly what I'm doing. There's a reason I ran this campaign this way. I did. So there? You know, dog catcher. You know what I'm saying? Like they, they, like she hasn't paid her dues. You guys don't let progressives pay our dues.

So that's the problem, right? So I may as well shoot high because then at least I'm moving the needle and letting other progressive, getting enough views on progressives in this county that I let these other folks know that we do have critical mass. And by the way, a lot of people don't call themselves progressives. I didn't actually for a long, one time. I didn't think of myself as a progressive. But then, like I said, when I started looking at the actual policies, I'm assuming that my rep goes to Congress and represents.

All right. That's a quite different way of approaching. So. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. It's cutting in and out a little bit. yeah this is usually my best spot this is fairway so the trees can get a little okay that's fine that's

fun but yeah 15 years so you probably are familiar with um amy bell trying to see to barba bouleye when bulliier was still republican and uh yes yes and i i've had amy on a couple times and uh she relayed that story to me the first time she was on that's uh when she was running against Bullier, the Democratic Party was no, no, we like her, so don't run against her.

Last time checked, Barbara didn't switch parties until 2018, so. That's right. That's right. I have seen, and I think this is nationally too, right?

You're seeing it right now with the national party freaking out about democratic socialists, right? within the party. They are fighting that harder than they fight Republican GOP abuses of power. I mean, it should be eye-opening to every Democrat to see, you know, these centrist, these militant, quote-unquote centrist, right? I consider, and by the way, in a world where you have a party run by a literal felon, right,

And the Supreme Court this week essentially agreed that the man is a sexual abuser, allowed a lawsuit to stand, right? In a world like that, being bipartisan still puts you on the wrong side of history. So you're still engaging with folks who are not acting in good faith. And that's what I'm saying. Like you need to really know and really be able to trust that you're, party is an opposition party. And if it's going to, if it's going to have, you know, these kind of fits over factions within the party that are calling it to higher standards, then yeah, I think a lot

of Democrats are having a moment right now of looking around and saying, wow, what happened to my party? Yeah. This is, I thought we all agreed, you know? Yeah. I thought we all agreed on these policies. I mean, right, this cycle alone, it's not just what you're going through, but I've had two other Senate candidates. We got 11 people run for the Senate, and I've had two of them on already. They're experiencing the same thing because they hold progressive views. They're being shut out.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Some of us aren't a good fundraising. And, you know, we got, um, got to take that into accounts, you know, just because we're bad at fundraising doesn't mean, uh, our message is any less valid, you know? Well, let me talk a little bit about that fundraising thing, though, right? Um, that fundraising, see, uh, floor was not given to us prior to that decision. If there was a floor, we were not informed of what that number was. Was it number of donors?

Was it, I mean, I couldn't even to now tell you that there was any official number. I've heard several versions of it. So that's not really acting in good faith, right? Like what you hear from the party as well, they signed in the media inclusion policy. Well, the media inclusion policy was written very broadly for anybody who ever has to, like, evaluate contracts as a part of their work. Like, I read that thing immediately, and I was like making a checklist in my head of all the ways in which they really did. didn't want a candidate included in their media, they would have an out, right? There were probably four or five different outs that were baked into that contract.

They were very obvious and clear, right? So I have to say, I wasn't totally shocked, right, that we got that. I'm not, but it doesn't mean it's right. It doesn't mean I'm not going to put up a stink about it, right? Because I still consider it to be inherently disingenuous for the people's party to essentially come in and say we're going to curate a list and it's going to be based on how much

money this person pulled in or how much money we think they can pull in. And let me talk even a little bit more about on a too much tangent, but a little a little bit about that money that they're talking. Am I cutting out?

Yeah, a little bit. Your reason up. Yeah, so it's happening both ends. Okay. Am I back? Yeah, you're back. Yeah. So, Jed, just to talk about campaign finance just a little bit, right?

So they told me to win this race, I need $1.5 million. And that is from the Joe Co. Dunn leadership, my meeting with them very, very early on March, April, maybe. And when I heard that number, I'm not saying that number's wrong. I mean, clearly they should know more than I know, right? But when I quizzed them, and really whenever anybody gave me a number like that early on, I quizzed them on, break it down for me because I'm a project manager type person. That's kind of, you know, one of the many hats I wear in my technology directorship, right? Tell me line item by line item.

Give me, break it down month to month for me, right? They could not tell me how to spend that money. They topped out at about 40K a month, okay? And if you're talking 40K over the span of three, three months-ish, right, that doesn't come anywhere near $1.5 million. No. $1.5 million is something somebody pulled out of the air to tell me that's what you need to have in your bank account to look like a big deal, Sarah, right? That is not, I would venture to say we still do have votes that are. free. They don't cost money just yet. And so the fact that you go, if you're another candidate,

and you can get $300,000 from a pack in 24 hours, and you're another candidate who's been working for six months and you've maybe gotten together 20,000, right? Does that mean that the person who spent 24 hours has more voters than the person who's been working for six months? I don't think so. And I think it would be really hard to make that argument to regular voters, right? And I think that's why they're mad. Like, they're rightfully mad, right? While it might be reasonable that the party only has X amount of resources and whatever, right?

That's true, true. It doesn't cost extra money to print someone's name on the voter guy, right? Like, they don't charge it by the letter, right? And when you say that, it makes folks not trust you as leadership. So, so yeah, there's many reasons and many ways in which this was stumbled. I will tell you personally, I felt like it was a gift to me because I'm out here saying you're elitist and you're saying that you're taking corporate money and you're bought by corporate money.

And what did you just show up and do? You showed up and said, what matters is money. That's what matters, you know. if it really took that much money, tell me how the current incumbent has, you know, three, four, five million dollars in their war chest at any given time, right? They're sitting on it cycle to cycle. It doesn't take that much money. Yeah.

Yeah. Money at politics. That's right. That's right. And I don't take a pack money. I don't take corporate packs. I don't take dark money. And it's going to stay that way.

And I am going to, I am going to make. the establishment have to work and I'm going to do it on the cheap. All right. Now, one last question before I have to wrap this up because we're running at time. Should you succeed in the primary? Is there a Republican running for this seats that you know over? Because I've been out of the loop all about this. Yeah, there are two primary.

There are two primary contenders. They had a third, but I believe he pulled from the race. So there's one guy out of mission. There's another fella, I think, is a little more on the maggot side of things. And he got in a little later. The first guy, his campaign fund was initially incorporated another state. It was weird. and he's in an apartment in mission.

So I don't know what his stories will find out, I suppose, but I do think they are not necessarily strong candidates over there. And I don't think that we've seen a whole lot of strong candidates. Yeah. Yeah, nuts and you're out. I agree. All right. So, all right.

Where can folks find you? learn more about your campaign. All right. I would love for you to join the Prue crew. We are volunteers pretty deep right now in door knocking and phone banking. And you can find out more information at Sarah Prue-20206.com. Sarah, S-A-H, Prue, P-R-E-U-N-26.com. All right. And I'll put that in the show notes. So thank you, Sarah, for coming on and best of love with your campaign. This podcast is Uncall. For is hosted, produced, and edited by myself, Mike Charnifsky. Our opening music is the, this podcast is Uncalled for Theme, which was created at suno.com,

SUNO.com. Our outro music for this special edition is America the Beautiful by Pipe Choir, licensed at Creative Commons by attribution of 4.0 international license, and you can find this music at free music archive.org. last disclaimer I was not paid to do this episode. The candidate came to me and asked for this time and I godly granted it. Please support the podcast and purchase our exclusive Uncalled for Merchandise. T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, stickers, and so much more. Go to www.comfeefelled for listening. We will see you next time.