Weekly Skews - S6 Ep19: Good Skews – Democratic Candidates Are Dominating State and Local Elections with Joe Sudbay

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

 Matt sits down again with Joe Sudbay, host of State of the States on SiriusXM, to check in on what's actually happening in American politics right now — and why you have to look at the state and local level to see it clearly. Since the beginning of 2025, Democrats have flipped 30 Republican state legislative seats while Republicans haven't picked up a single Democratic one. Joe breaks down the pattern of overperformance showing up in special elections from Iowa to Florida to Georgia, why state legislative candidates are connecting with voters in ways that DC politicians can't, and how all of that local organizing and candidate recruitment is building toward something big in 2026. 

Hello and welcome to another episode of Good Skews. I'm Matt Hildreth. Today I'm sitting down with Joe Sudbay, host of State of the States on Sirius XM. Joe has spent many years focused on state and local politics. And right now, that's where the action is. Democrats have been flipping Republican seats all over the country, but because the national media is laser focused on D.C. and national politics, that story is largely flying under the radar. Joe and I are going to be talking more about these local elections and what it means. why it matters heading into 2026. All right, Joe Sudbey, thanks for joining us today. Joe, you've been busy on your show, State of the States. Do you want to just give folks a little bit of a context for the show that you host on Series XM? Sure. So since 2017, I've had a show called State of the States. It's a weekly show.

And my focus is on what's happening in this. state, state legislatures, state legislative races. I've long been of the opinion that that's where the action is. And, you know, I live in D.C. and I've been in D.C. for many years. When I started my career working in Maine, and I spent a lot of time in the Maine legislature. And then I came to D.C. And I worked on state legislative work at an organization called Handgun Control. And it really made me realize how little people inside the Beltway pay attention to what's happening in state legislatures and state legislative races. There was an ugly election in 1994. 2010 was a bloodbath in the state legislative elections. It was the second year of the Obama

administration. And it was pretty rough. And one of the things that happened in those elections, 2010 was those state legislatures did the redistricting. And they know how to, Republicans took control. They know how to do gerrymandering better than anyone. So it's interesting for all the lack of paying attention to what happens in the states, what happens in the states directly impacts what happens in Washington. Those state legislatures draw the congressional districts. Those state legislatures pass laws that end up sometimes in front of the Supreme Court like the Dobbs case. So anyways, I've just been obsessed with it, obviously, and you've heard me rant about this many times, Matt.

So I've been working part-time at Sirius XM and my then producer, Sean Bertolo, indulge me. We set up the show and we've been doing it. We did it mostly during election cycles for the first, election months for the first couple of years. But then we've been doing it year-round since 2023. And so I talk about what's happening in sessions and what's happening in elections. So some people might not be super plugged into what's happening in their state. I think a lot of times when people think about politics or they think about current events, they go straight to what they're seeing on TV at the national level or what they're seeing people talk about on TikTok or Instagram.

A lot of times those are big national issues with very complicated coalitions and just a lot of stuff going on. Talk a little bit about how what you see in the states is similar to those dynamics, but also different, just to give people a little bit of a grounding in the differences that you see between national politics and state and local politics. Sure. So, first of all, you know, there is obviously a lot of emphasis on U.S. House races, U.S. Senate races, the presidential race. I'm not going to diminish that in any way, shape, or form. but I think sometimes, and you see it a lot even on election ballots, there will be a drop off the further you go down the ballot. But I think it's gotten much better over the past few cycles. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has had more funding.

They've done a good job. There's a group called the States Project that's doing work at the state level. And I feel like we've seen more attention to what happens. in state legislation. I'll give you a good example. Like I mentioned the Dobbs decision in terms of a policy. That was a Mississippi law. But look what happened in Texas in the summer of 2025. Donald Trump called the governor of Texas and said redistrict. I need more safe seats. And that legislature did it. They snapped into it. Democrats put up a fight, but they did it almost immediately. And that's an example of how what happens in a state can impact Congress. Now,

then look, California, obviously they had a ballot measure, but let's look what happened in Virginia. And I love this story because I actually, and I've said many times, I think the Democratic leaders in Washington, D.C. would be wise to sit down and talk to the Speaker of the Virginia House, Don Scott, about his strategies for how to win. there was special, the way Virginia operates, and this is kind of geeky, but, you know, we're geek. So you need to pass Constitution amendments twice in two successive legislative sessions before they can go on the ballot. So Virginia has a very short session. They're usually done by February or March, right?

But what happened was Yonkin had called a special session in 2025 and it never adjourned. So in October, Speaker Don Scott and the Senate President called the legislators back and they passed an amendment that would allow for new maps, new district maps. See, Virginia has redistricting commission, so it's constitution you had to fix it. So it passed really unexpectedly. Like no one saw it coming in late October of 2025. A couple weeks later, the elections happened in Virginia. Democrats picked up 13 seats in the House of Delegates, won the governor's race by a huge margin, had the biggest turnout in Virginia, bigger turnout in that election than they had in the blue wave of 2025, elected a new lieutenant governor, new attorney general.

They came back in January and they passed it again, so it's on the ballot for April 21st. So again, if this passes, Virginia will be able to redistrict and go from a 6 to 5 majority to a 10 to 1, pick up four seats, probably wash out what happened in Texas. So the work everyone was doing in Virginia last year to elect House of Delegates and expand the margin. And when they passed this, the margin was 51 to 49. They'd picked up that majority in 2023 after losing it. So that is a good example of how important these races are. Look, some of these state legislative races,

people win by 50, 20, 100 votes. It can be very close, it can be very competitive. And the other thing that happens is your state legislators and legislative candidates, they do, unlike members of Congress, they knock doors. Like if you're running for a house delegate seat or a house or whatever, you knock doors. So you're talking to your voters. You also live in your district.

So people see you at the grocery store. They see you. The farmer's market, they see you when you're taking your kids to school. So I feel like it's much more responsive to kind of the electorate. And if you go to your state house, if you call you, I've talked to state legislators who say, I want people to call me. I put my number online. I want them to call me and talk to me because I don't hear from that many people.

You can have an outsized influence on your local state senator and state representative. Now, every state's different. I mean, I'm from Maine. Maine has 151 members of the House. California, which is like 40 million people, 50 million people, whatever, they have fewer state senators than they have members of their congressional delegation. They have like 55 members of the congressional delegation, 40 state senators. So every state is a little different.

And I think that's probably why we don't see a lot of national coverage of state and local elections. It gets so complicated so quickly. I mean, I always think of Steve Kornacki or whatever. The national pundits trying to break down what's happening in one county over another county. And I always, if you know those counties when you see the national pundits talk about it, it's such an oversimplification for, you know, a place that has, in some cases, millions of people, and other cases, thousands of people.

But they sort of come to one conclusion per county. And it would be impossible for MS Now or whatever it's called in CNN and, Fox News to really have a strong grasp of what's happening at the local level. And it's really hard for them at the state level. I think a lot of people don't realize just how different the state systems of government are. I live in Washington State. We have, you know, two members of the house for every district and then one state senator for a district that's very different than how they do it in South Dakota and Iowa. Then you have places like Pennsylvania and Virginia that are commonwealths. And if you call them a state, the, uh, the locals get really upset and there's a fundamentally different way of

doing things in the commonwealths. And, um, and I think that's probably why the, the mainstream media is missing so much at the local level. But I think when it comes to politics and, and getting involved and making things happen and improving our community, people are really missing an opportunity at the state and local level, because that's like you're saying, where you can have a direct impact on people. And I think people forget that the way the system was set up originally is that the states were supposed to be the place where democracy most happened. The federal government was always more of a, you know, at the federal level was always much more of like a way that the states could work together and figure things out between the states. But a lot of a lot of the ways things were set up is that you would have a direct. impact and have the most impact on your democracy at the state level.

And so as everybody has kind of gotten their marching orders, we'll say at the national level, when it comes to things like no king's rallies, when it comes to other things, it might not fit directly in what's happening in your community. What is your experience when it comes to paying attention to what's happening in the states? Where do you go not just for information in places like Maine where you're from, but also when you're keeping track of what's happening in all of these different states, who do you look to? I have multiple sources. I follow a lot of folks on Blue Sky that used to do it on Twitter.

I follow the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. They do a really good job of they've laid out which states have our most competitive rolling into the 2026 elections. And over the years, I've just gotten to know a lot of legislators from the work I've done and the folks and the people who work on the campaigns at the state legislative level. And it's really, you know, I really just really enjoy it so much. I feel one of the things that's so interesting is how often when I talk to a state legislator or a legislative candidate, they just thank me. They're appreciative that there is. a place where they can have these kind of conversations. And I learn so much from them. I learned so much just about kind of the mindset in their states. Like, you know, and I'll give you a good example. You're part of one of those examples. You know, the day after the Dobbs decision leaked, you were doing

door-to-door with Emily Randall, who was running for state senate in a district. I think she had won by like 100 votes the previous year. And you told me, every single door you knocked, people were furious about the Dobbs decision. So I was picking it up from talking to candidates and people who are knocking doors as well. I was hearing for people in D.C., they weren't sure if they were going to talk about the abortion issue because, you know, it was a sensitive issue and weren't sure how to message it and everything. And I was like, people are talking about it. Like, the disconnect that happens sometimes in this DC bubble versus where people really are. It was fascinating.

That was a good example of it. And last year in Virginia, immediately people, I talked to about 20 candidates. I talked to every single one of the 14 races that were targeted and a few others. And I always asked them, what do you hear on the doors? Because that's where I think we get the best information. Matt and I are both married to real. researchers. So when I talk about this, our research spouses may say, well, that's interesting anecdotal. But after a while, anecdotal becomes a lot when people are knocking hundreds and hundreds

of doors. And there was always the issue of affordability. And it manifested in different ways. I talked to folks in Mississippi. I talked to people in New Jersey. Talk to people running in different races. Affordability was front and center. That's what they heard on the doors. whether it's housed, whether it's food costs. Now, this year, it's already started into gasoline prices and issues like that because of the war that Trump started. The other thing that's really interesting, this go around is how much, you know, like I said, I've been doing this show for almost 10 years now. And usually the conversation is about, you know, what's happening in the states. And to some extent, D.C. may impact it.

But over the past year particularly, the impact of Trump's big ugly bill on states is just starting to be felt in terms of Medicaid expenses, snap cuts, hospitals, closing. These are things that have become front and center and all of a sudden they're on the, you know, they've, I think a lot of Republican states, Republican controlled states have just taken for granted that they'd have those resources and now they're not. So that's presenting a big challenge out at the state level, too. So anyways, you ask me. Yeah. I just, I think it's something that people don't understand is, you know, when you're watching the national news, a lot of their conclusions are based on polling. And just the process of going through a poll takes weeks. So somebody has to write the questions.

Then you have to say, okay, these are the questions we're going to ask. and then you hire a firm to make all the phone calls and they have to call, you know, they have to get a couple thousand people to respond. And these days to get a couple thousand people to respond, especially in a one or two different counties if you're trying to do local polling, takes a long time. And especially in today's news environment, by the time that poll finishes, the entire conversation would shift. So for example, right now with Iran, if you're relying on polling on what's happening in Iran from two weeks ago because you've been calling a thousand voters for the last two weeks, your poll is out of date by the time that you get your information back.

And the other thing that happens with polling is that you don't really understand what's happening until you've done a few different polls. So you pull one week, you wait a couple more weeks, and then you pull again. and you can see is the public shifting. And oftentimes the pollsters can only look in retrospective saying, you know, a couple weeks ago, this is what people thought or a couple months ago, this is what people thought. But I think the local elected officials have a much better sense of what's happening because they can say today, this many people reached out to me about this thing and yesterday this many people reached out to me about that thing. And there seems to be more that's happening.

there seems to be just a natural way that the local elected officials are more connected to the to the concerns of the voters. But there's also something that's been happening since 2024 where we've had a series of special elections. We've had state and local elections in New Jersey and Virginia. And in those situations and other, you know, sort of local elected places, these are these are instances where we can actually look and say how are voters responding. do you want to talk a little bit about what we're seeing in the response? I think people have a sense that things look pretty good for Democrats right now, and that's why we're having this conversation on good skews. But do you want to just dive in from your perspective, having looked so closely at what's happening?

Can you talk just a little bit more about what you're seeing? Sure. Let me take you back to January of 2025, right, beginning of the year. And, oh, man, it was rough, right? and there was this idea that Donald Trump was omnipotent. And the media was treating him that way, and Democrats on the Hill were. And there were actually a couple of special elections in Virginia in early January of 2025. And there was actually media reporting, CNN, New York Times, will Democrats show up?

Especially the two, there was a state house district and the state Senate district in Northern Virginia. And really, the media was treating this like, oh my God, Democrats might lose. they're so demoralized. Well, that's not what happened. Democrats overperformed by a little bit, overperformed terrorists. But there was another race down in the rural community, Senate District 10. And the Democrat there overperformed by about 14 points. And that has been a consistent pattern. So it defied the D.C. Conventional Wisdom, which was convinced Democrats were going to lose safe Democratic seats. And instead, a Democrat did really well in a Republican health. seat. At the end of January, there was a special election for a state Senate seat in Iowa. It was a seat

that was vacated because Kim Reynolds, the governor, pulled the Republican senator out of this very safe Republican seat to be her lieutenant governor. It was a Trump plus 25 district or so. Mike Zimmer, the Democrat, won. And we have seen that pattern to repeat. Democrats have picked up 30 seats from Republicans at the state legislative level since beginning of 2025. Republicans have picked up no Democratic seats. Overperformance is tracked really, a lot of this is tracked really closely by David Nier and his colleagues at the down ballot, which is just a vital resource as well. I mean, that's about resources. That's one I use. That in Boltz magazine, Daniel Nishinian, among others. So the overperformance has been real in the states. Even when Democrats, even when Democrats,

aren't winning, they're overperforming. I've seen a lot of that in Florida, a lot of state legislative races where Democrats were overperforming by 10, 12, 15 points. And then, of course, a couple weeks ago, we had major Democratic wins. Brian Nathan winning a Senate seat in the Tampa area because Rhonda Sanzas pulled the state senator out of a very Republican safe seat to be his lieutenant governor. And Brian Nathan, the Democrat won. then Emily Gregory winning in Donald Trump's district, house district down in, around Palm Beach.

So we're seeing, and one of the reasons I like to mention Florida is because Ron DeSantis wants to have a special session in a couple of weeks to do some redistricting in his state. And now you're seeing Republican members of Congress saying, we don't need that because if you're in a plus 20 district right now, You may feel a little safe, but if you get out to plus 12 or plus 11, you're starting to think, holy shit, I could be in trouble. And we owe a lot of that, too, to our friend and former colleague, Afton Dane, who overperformed by 13 points in Tennessee's 7th Congressional District, Afton, the state representative. And she ran a terrific race. Republicans had to spend millions of dollars.

And Afton overperformed by 13 points in a race where it, turnout match the last midterm, 20-22 midterm. So it was an apples-to-apples comparison. And then this past week in Georgia, we saw the overperformance in House District 14, where Sean Harris overperformed by 25 points in Margaret Taylor-Greensell District. Well, Georgia has also seen over-performances in state legislative races. In December, Eric Gisler picked up a Republican seat, over-performing pretty pretty. by about 12, 15 points, and Democrats picked up two public service commission seats in November in Georgia. So I think part of it is, Matt, I have all these anecdotes, as we'd be taught

but at some point, these anecdotes start telling a story. There's a pattern here. Yeah, there's a pattern. Can you talk a little bit about why this is happening? And I think it's one of the fascinating things for me is there's this assumption that, oh, the best politicians are all in Washington, D.C. or if you're really good, you leave the, you know, your state and you run for higher office. Sometimes that might be the case. Sometimes it's just the people with connections to donors or political ambitions leave and go on to a federal office. But it seems to me that the real, innovation, the real brilliance of a lot of American democracy is coming out of the states, especially. People that like you were saying are in a position where they might not have a bunch of money. They can't just rely on major donors. So they actually have to be a good politician

that knows how to be diplomatic and tough situations, that know how to fight for what their constituents want, who don't get distracted by. special interest in polling that, you know, convinces people if you just say magic words, you'll get reelected. That doesn't work when you're actually interacting with people on a day-to-day basis. So can you just talk a little bit about why this is happening, especially in light of the fact that there is no leadership right now from the Democratic Party at the national level? At the national level, right. So I think a lot of it has to do with a lot of good candidate recruitment. In Virginia, they had 100 candidates for 100 seats. They're doing that. That's the case in

Texas this year. South Carolina has candidates in every district this year. Ohio has everything but two, all but two. Democrats have done a lot of great recruitment. I actually was speaking to Callan Haywood, who's the assistant house leader in Wisconsin. And he told me that, you know, he's been, in the legislature since 2018, they used to have to call people and say, will you run? Please think about it. We'll help you. He said, now we're getting calls from people who are saying, okay, we want to run. We've convened a group of people.

We're trying to pick the best person. So I feel like one of the things is you're finding people who know their districts, who are frustrated with the way things are happening in Washington. You have groups like run for something that have really done a good job of bringing people cloud and getting them to run and training them and helping them. And there's something about state legislative candidates and state legislators that I really admire in that. When you knock doors, you know, you talk about magic words.

There's this thing. It's something I've watched in D.C. for so long. Like, you know, you'll have people create these multimillion dollar narratives. And if you just say these words the right way in this order, then you can win. But that's not how people talk. And when you're knocking doors, you can't be. bullshit artist. You can't go in with some preconceived, you know, scripted, focus group tested line because you sound like an idiot. And you have to ask people where they are and people want to talk

about their issues and people will have conversations with you, but you have to be authentic about it and you can't, you know, you can't, you know, and I think that's one thing that a lot of, you know, candidates running for Congress or the United States Senate. I always call it, they go through the high pressure car wash where you've got great people who are running and we have many people we like and respect who've run for office and I have friends who've done it but I still feel like at some point you have to go if you want to be in the DC democratic kind of pipeline you have to hire their consultants you have to hire their fundraisers and you have to do their message testing and you come out on the other side of the high pressure car wash and you don't like a real

person anymore. And I feel like that's one of the, one of the things that's really interesting to me is how after a while people start talking, I call it in the building, like when you ask someone a question, some member of Congress a question. And instead of talking like real people, they fall into the jargon and my committee's doing this and doing this and I'm introducing this legislation and blah, blah, blah, blah. And there aren't many who still maintain that kind of ability to talk like real people. and it's noticed. And I feel like when you're running for the state legislature or your state legislator, you can't do it.

It's like there's this whole industry in D.C. that I feel like is designed to train people how to talk as if people outside of the beltway, outside of the bubble, don't have bullshit detectors. Most people have pretty good bullshit detectors. And I'm not saying people don't follow bullshit. Trump is president right now. But, you know, I think that that's something I've really enjoyed about the work I've been able to do on state of the states is just meeting people who, you know, and state legislators too. A lot of them, they have other jobs. They, you know, most of them aren't

full-time. They are in California in a couple other states, but most of them are part-time legislators, so they're also working. They've got families back home in the district, and they're tied to their community. So, you know, I'm not trying to over-glamorize it. It's hard work. It's a grind. It's a lot of work, but I have a lot of admiration for people who do it because they understand the assignment. Weekly Skews is brought to you by Americans United for the separation of church and state. I grew up in a deeply religious community in rural Tennessee. Faith was everywhere all around. You know, in everybody's kitchen in the hallways at school, pretty much every conversation you

ever had. And I'll tell you what I learned from that is that faith is something real and personal, and it doesn't need the government propping it up to be meaningful to people. Here's what this looks like in practice. Americans United for separation of church and state has clients, real families, who got turned away from taxpayer-funded foster care agencies because of who they are. People like Liz and Gay Rutan Ram, a Jewish couple in my home state of Tennessee, who were ready to foster to adopt until a state-funded agency refused to work with them because they're Jewish. There's also Amy Madonna, a Catholic mother of three, who was rejected because she didn't

agree with an evangelical Protestant statement of faith. Fatma Maruf and Bryn Esplan were turned away because they are a same-sex couple on and on. These are qualified, loving families. These are children who need homes. And the state, using your tax dollars, is turning families away based on their religion. That's not religious liberty. That's discrimination with a Bible verse slapped on it. If you believe religious freedom is supposed to protect everybody and not be weaponized to turn away good families, then visit AU. slash crooked to learn more and become a member today. This fight is far from over and every one of us has a part to play.

And at one more time, A.U. org slash crooked. Weekly skews is brought to you by Zbiotics pre-alcohol. I tell you what, I don't bounce back the next morning way I used to after having a good time the night before. It's just a fact of life, you know. Zbiotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic.

Invented by Ph.D. scientists to tackle those rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in your gut, and it's a buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration in and of itself. That's actually responsible for rough days after drinking. Pre-alcohol produces an enzyme to break that byproduct down. So you just make pre-alcohol from zbiotics your first drink of the night, then drink responsibly, of course. And you will still feel your best the next morning. And I'll be real, you know, I was skeptical about this. But I tried it one night hanging out with some friends of mine, and I woke.

up the next day feeling pretty much the same you know couldn't believe it went for a walk made breakfast you know lifted weights didn't just lie there questioning my choices like i usually do it works so don't let a rough next day bench you this april go to zbiotics.com slash skew and use the promo code skew that's sk ew at checkout for 15% off your first order zbiotics is back by 100% money guarantee so if you're unsatisfied for any reasons they'll refund you no questions i ask well that one more time zybiotic com slash skew promo code SKEw for 15% off. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

Growing up without much money, you develop a constant low-grade anxiety about it. Shoo-wee, let me tell you. That background hum that never quite turns off, even when things get better. That stuff don't go away on its own. Not in my experience anyway. Apparently, I'm not alone. A lot of us deal with it. 88% of Americans said they feel some form of financial stress at the start of 2026.

But that's where therapy comes in, not to give you financial. advice, but to help you manage the emotional weight of the situation, to help unpack where your relationship with money comes from, to help build healthier ways of coping with the stress and anxiety instead of just white knuckling it through or letting it quietly poison everything around you. Better help makes therapy accessible. You just fill out a short questionnaire. They'll match you with someone based on your goals. And if it's not the right fit, you can switch anytime you want to. No problem. No harm, no foul. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. So sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash skews.

That's betterh-elp.com slash S-K-E-W-S. Betterhelp.com slash skews to get 10% off. Better help. Help yourself. Booster juice is going crazy for hazelnuts. No, not crazy. Nuts. Booster juice is going bananas for hazelnuts. I mean, there are bananas and smoothies, but that's not the point.

Banana juice is booster for hazelnuts. What? just stop. Booster juice is going nuts for hazelnut. Introducing the Nutty Monkey smoothie, holy hazelnut asai bowl and nutty booster ball, all made with rich, creamy hazelnut spread. Try them today.

Only at booster juice. Canadian born. Blending since 1999. You know, for people who are fans of music, you know, you might see some up-and-coming musician at a local venue, and they're amazing. It's one of the best shows that you've ever seen.

And then, you know, maybe a couple years later they make it big. They get a bunch of marketing firms, a bunch of advertising agencies, a bunch of sponsorships. And you go see them in a stadium and you don't even recognize them anymore. It's a completely different experience. I feel like that's something that happens with politics, especially with politicians who have to start out, you know, in a very Mr. Smith goes to Washington, but at a local level. can talk to their neighbors, have conversation about what's actually happening, be connected to actual issues that are happening in a community. But as soon as they get pulled more and more to D.C., they rely on people to tell them what's happening in their community

because they might only be home a couple weekends a year. And when they're home, they're fundraising and they're probably spending more time fundraising because it costs hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to run for federal office right now. Do you have a different perspective on the current political moment because you're talking to state and local elected officials? And I'm thinking specifically about within the context of, you know, hope and where you see the country right now. Because I think there was a lot of people coming out of the 2024 election who relied on, the pollsters and relied on the national, you know, marketing agencies or the consultants, the political consultants that came out of that election feeling like the country was headed

in a really negative place. And that was true for a lot of people who were just looking at the results and saying, yeah, Trump did win a bunch of young people. But for those of us that were knocking on doors and having conversations with people, we were realizing that a lot of people were voting for Trump, didn't like Trump, but hated the inflation and we're, we're frankly mad at Joe Biden because he said he was going to be a one-term president and he was going to be transitioning the party. And a lot of young people, I think, felt like they had been abandoned by Democrats. So coming out of the 2024 election for me, I just had a little bit of a different perspective. I was like, yeah, I think Trump did get a lot more votes than I wanted.

But I don't think his support is as strong as people think based on just talking with thousands of people on the doors. And now we've seen that that, I think, is, that's true. Donald Trump has lost most of the young people that he picked up in 2024. He's now losing Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes and all the other neo-Nazis that supported him. So he's losing people kind of on all fronts. But do you feel like in general you have a different sense on where the country is than maybe the average national cable news viewer? Yeah, you know, and part of it is, Matt, and I say this all the time when people ask me what gives you hope, what gives me hope. It gives me hope every week when I talk to state legislative candidates or state legislators.

And I don't want to sound corny about it, but I get to meet such amazing people. And especially in 2025, so many of them were winning, right? And you remember, like I said, in January of 2025, even February of March, in D.C., the mindset was. was Trump had a mandate. He didn't have a mandate. He barely won. He knew to get 50 percent, but they treated it that way. And there was that D.C. thinking that wasn't being reflected. You know, like I mentioned, Mike Zimmer winning, that should never have happened. But Mike Zimmer win, ran a really smart campaign. And we started seeing it over and over. James Malone winning a Senate race in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in I think it was around March of 2025,

a very Republican district. He was a small town mayor, and he ran against Elon Musk and Doge. And then we had the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin in the spring, in April of 2025, when Elon Musk was going to go out and win it for the Republicans and help them take back the majority. And the Democrat-aligned candidate won by 10 points.

So that was happening around the country in special elections. Like I said, even when I was talking to candidates who didn't win, I would see the results and they'd overperformed by 12, 15, 20 points. And I thought it was really important to talk to folks who were running in some of the districts that seemed impossible. And then they pulled it off or they came close. And it's because they were talking to people. And they realized early on that people weren't quite sold on Donald Trump. And this whole Doge thing freaked people out.

And they were, and, you know, you know, you know, it. You think, oh, Doge was mostly aimed at Washington. Well, you know, where were we going to have elections last year? Virginia. Every part of the state of Virginia got impacted. I was talking to candidates in Georgia. The CDC is in Georgia. Everybody knows, you know, has some, people have some tie to it.

In smaller states and other states, you know, if you lost a couple of federal officials in your state, that was a big impact in some communities. So it was having an impact already. And I don't think it got picked up in Washington because, you know, Washington thrives on conventional wisdom. And, you know, Donald Trump, one of the things about Trump is after he won, there was a real effort. And this happens after every election. There's always an effort to figure out why the person won that has nothing to do with the candidate who lost or the people who made the strategic decisions or made the money. They always find some reason why the person lost is usually involved. punching down. I experienced it in 2000 when I was told Al Gore lost because of the NRA when he

stopped talking about guns. But after this election, it was about the trans community and it was about immigrants. And you and I both know, Kamala Harris didn't ever talk about the fact that Donald Trump wanted mass deportation. Trump wanted it. And one of the things we started to see immediately after Trump won was there was a backlash to what he was doing. People didn't like it in their small towns, in their rural communities, in their big cities, wherever, people didn't like it. But that didn't translate through the D.C. kind of bubble either. And it is something I pick up. It's interesting. I mentioned when I talked to candidates, over the past year and a half, past what's called 12, 13 months, I've noticed a couple of things.

One is it's always affordability first. They always want to talk about affordability. What are the costs? What are they dealing with? And then there's always a but or an and. It's about the chaos. It's about the confusion. It's about the ugliness. People talk about that on the doors, too. You know, Caitlin Dre is a good example who also picked up a state Senate seat in Iowa out in the western part of the state in August. And that was something she was picking up more and more and more. And her win actually helped Democrats break the GOP supermajority in that state. So, you know, and I picked it up a lot of it from Virginia candidates as well in the fall of 2025. And Emily Gregory, who won the special election in Trump's district, one of the things we talked about affordability. And then she said, and the other issue is ICE and what ICE is doing in our communities.

That's Donald Trump's home legislative district in Florida, where ICE was causing a backlash and helped her. win. I think there are so many examples of what you're saying, especially going back to what's happening in D.C. And the confusion, I'll call it, at the punditry level, there's this idea that I'm really interested in. I don't know, Joe, that you know, I've talked about it, but it's, you know, called manufactured dependency or problem solution capture, which basically means that the people who are defining the problem are doing it in a way that they then can benefit from the solution. And I think that that's something that we see in politics all of the time where you look at what happened with Kamala Harris and why did Kamala Harris lose in 2024. Now, I have a lot of thoughts on why Kamala Harris

lost in 2024. I was part of the campaign. I was the rural outreach director. And, you know, you can't switch a presidential candidate in the middle of when was it? it August? It was July. It was late July. Late July. You can't switch a presidential candidate in July and expect to win. And also, inflation was a problem for incumbents globally. Yeah. There's no money to make off of that analysis. Right. But if you say, well, Kamala Harris lost because she had the wrong message, well, we better go hire some pollsters and pay the pollsters to tell us what message she should have had. That creates a whole economy based on whoever gets to define what the problem was.

And I see that reoccurring in so many of the things that, you know, I do for my day job that you and I work together at role organizing on some of this stuff, where it's like, you know, let's see what voters are saying the top issues are. And we can do that, yeah, sure, maybe we pull them, we send them a poll. We can also just talk to them. You've talked to a lot of state elected officials who are having conversations with voters. You can also just know based on like interactions you have with people. Obviously, that's not representative.

That's anecdotal information. But you can still gather what people are talking about. No question it's affordability. No question it's health care. No question it's childcare. No question it's senior care. But we have this an entire ecosystem, mostly based in northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., that is keeping us.

confused and keeping us in analysis paralysis so that we have to pretend like we don't know how to move move you know forward and I think that the state candidates don't have to deal with that it's just it's just there's not as enough there's not the same amount of money to be in when you're involved at the state level when you're involved in federal politics you can make a lot of money as you know a consultant or whatever but at the state level you do it because you love it And especially if you're a Democrat in a small town, rural community, where it's mostly Republicans, you're not doing politics because you're going to get wealthy off of it. In fact, you're making sacrifices to run as a Democrat. And I think the fact that we're seeing so much momentum and movement in those places when it comes to candidate recruitment, it feels like we're in a moment where it's not just one group doing something.

It's not just indivisible, although indivisible in the no king's rallies, I think. think have been so important. But it's not just that. It seems like something is happening in the country that is bigger than any one group. It's bigger than the Democratic Party. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that we have a president threatening, you know, to end civilizations and genocide as as a negotiating tactic. That probably has a lot to do with it. But I feel like we're seeing more of the response to that at the local level. Do you think it's going to translate then into the federal elections as we get to this November? Yeah, I do.

And I think part of it is, I'll give an example of North Carolina. The House Democratic leader there is Robert Reeves. I have enormous respect for him. One of the times we talked back in 2024, he told me that they wanted to field candidates in every single district at the state, Senate and House level. because they knew, they know there are Democrats, and it's something you say all the time, there are Democrats in every single district they needed to bump up the numbers, right? And his hope was that if they got enough people out, they could help Harris and Walls take the state.

Well, they didn't get Harris and Walls, but they got a Democratic governor, lieutenant, governor, attorney general, superintendent of education, and they had a Supreme Court victory by 734 votes. I talked to him a couple weeks ago and I said, I give you credit for that. He goes, Alison Riggs, the Supreme Court Justice, gives us credit for that too. Well, this year they've done the same thing. They have full slate of candidates, everyone running. And it's an understanding that them fielding those candidates, first they're going to help end the supermajorities. They've done it in the House, but North Carolina is probably the most gerrymated state.

But they know they're going to help up ticket. There's a group in Georgia called Fighting 50. They've recruited candidates, and they've done that to help up ticket. Our friends at Rural Ground Game, they understood the assignment. They worked with the Speaker of the House who said, I can't do every race, but we want candidates in every race, gave them some resources. They recruited candidates. And again, highest turnout.

South Carolina. Wisconsin, they're doing great recruitment in Wisconsin. Let me just tell you this. let me just tell you this one little fact about Wisconsin. It relates to the Supreme Court race this week where Chris Taylor won 60, 40 a blowout. Like everyone is shocked by it. We know she won seven of the eight congressional districts. In 2024, there are 99 assembly districts in Wisconsin.

In 2024, Democrats picked up 10 seats after. they ended gerrymandering because of Supreme Court wins. So picked up 10 seats. Trump won 50 of the districts, Harris won 49. And they, like I said, picked up 10 seats. On Tuesday, in the Supreme Court race, Chris Taylor won 70 districts and the Republican candidate Lazaro won 29. So those kinds of numbers are really amazing.

and it'll help with their recruitment. They will have more Democrats out. They can take back the Assembly and the Senate possibly pick up, and if they have a governor, they'll be able to do a trifecta. But I think part of it is this energy that's being out there, this candidate recruitment. In Texas, Matt, in Texas, like I mentioned, they have candidates in every district, right? State Senate and State House. Dan Patrick, who's a lieutenant governor,

who's as crazy as you get in terms of Republicans. He's been around for a long time. He's an institution. He told some right-wing group this week, he's not sure Democrats can keep the Texas House of Representatives. They control it right now, 88 to 62. That's how things aren't. And the more, the better they're doing at those levels

and getting out the vote and finding the Democratic voters, the better is going to be a ticket for the U.S. House seats and Tala Rico at the top of the ticket. And the governor's race as well. And I just want to dive into that just a little bit more because it sounds, I think, a little bit counterintuitive that when when people say, okay, Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump, the maybe the conventional wisdom is, oh, Kamala Harris should have said these magic words or those magic words. And that would have resulted in Kamala Harris winning in North Carolina. But there's another perspective that's out there. And I think I agree with this perspective that investing in local. parties in the local Democratic Party and investing in the local candidates has a direct impact on who's running for president. So for example, and tell me if this is right, but the more that people are engaging at the local level, maybe that they're getting involved in a mayoral race or

they're getting involved in a state house race or state Senate race, people get involved. They go and talk to their neighbors. When they talk to their neighbors, if you've ever had somebody stop and talk to you at your door, they're filling out a form and saying, okay, this person living in this house is a Democrat or this person living in this house is an independent or they're a Republican and there's no way they're going to vote for us. All of that activity gets counted and it gets aggregated and it makes it so that when a governor is running, not only are the people getting involved at the local level because they want to turn out and vote for a mayor that they like. And also, oh, by the way while I'm here. I'm also a Democrat. I'll vote for the state governor. But that's also true

for the president that year. If it's a presidential year, they'll say, well, I'm, I'm really voting because I care about my friend who's running for mayor or this person I know who's running for mayor. So I'm going to get out and vote. And I'm going to vote for the mayor, but then also the governor and then the president, Kamala Harris, maybe. If you live in a community and there's no local candidates running for local office, there's no reason for the Democrats to turn out. There's no activity. Nobody's knocking on doors. Nobody's talking to anybody. And, um, and ultimately, you might just end up with people staying home saying, well, politics doesn't really matter. My vote doesn't really have an impact. Um, I'm not a huge fan of Kamala Harris. I'm not, I don't even really

know who the governor is. So I'm, it's not worth me giving, you know, giving up a morning or an afternoon, taking off time from work and going in and voting for somebody. So the, the, the, the argument I think that that you're making and that others are making that rural ground game in Virginia, others that you mentioned, is that by getting involved at the local level, it has implications up the ballot. And also, the more that you get involved in 2024 and you start building out the local infrastructure for your state party or your indivisible group or whatever, you can take that infrastructure that you built in 2024 and you can use it in 2025,

maybe for a county commissioner race. And then in 2026, you're starting on step four or five instead of one or two. Is that kind of what you're saying? Yeah, I think that has a lot. Exactly. And you're building the infrastructure. You're at the local level. And a lot of communities, there isn't a civic infrastructure.

So it's being built. And campaigns are a good way to help build that infrastructure. I also think county party chairs are important. I mean, I was, look, you know, we're geeks and we fully own it. But it was kind of cool to see the Chattuga County Democratic Party chairwoman, Cynthia Hubler, who there were 3,60047 votes cast in Chituga County on this special election in Georgia 14. The Republican won it pretty convincingly, but the shift was 25 points towards Democrats. So now Cynthia and her colleagues at the Chitoga County Democrats have had some success, and they've probably brought new people in.

Sean Harris brought new people in. And let's not forget, Georgia is a state that Donald Trump lost famously by just over 11,000 votes. So all these votes at the local level, when you can start bringing in a couple hundred votes in Chituga, a couple hundred votes in Bull County, that adds up to the top. It's cover versus coattails. Amanda Littman from run for something talks about it. And a lot of the DC kind of crowd will kind of roll their eyes. And I'm sure they would be rolling their eyes. They're listening to me right now. But it does matter. When you hear, when I can hear when someone who I, people who I have enormous respect for like Speaker Don Scott and leader Robert Reeves are talking about the importance

of reverse coattails and finding candidates who can represent their communities, who can talk to the Democrats in their communities, who can bring out the vote in their communities. I'll believe them over some of the, you know, Smarty Pans crowd here in D.C. So running for local office and losing as a Democrat might be frustrating because you feel like it makes no difference at the at the super local level but it might help if you might help your state senate candidate that's on the ballot that's that's running for higher office than what you're running for it might help the congressional uh candidate that's on the ballot it could help the governor um and i think that's why i have a ton of respect for people

that are living out in smaller towns and rural communities running for office knowing that hey you know what i might not win this year i might not win next year but we're building something for the long term. I think that's something that gives me hope. I think that in 2026 and ultimately in 28, we're going to start seeing more candidates winning because people started doing this back in 2016 when Trump first won and in 2020 and in 2024. I'm looking at indivisible groups. I'm looking at people that are going to know King's rallies. They're getting more turnout than they ever had gotten in the past. You have a lot of people that are leading the individual, indivisible groups at the local level, now having 10 years of experience when it comes to local politics, maybe back in 2016, they were afraid to put out a press release.

They didn't know quite how to do it. Now they're running full campaigns to get local people elected, maybe not through indivisible, but through their own networks on their own time. So I think that that's really building. I think we're going to see something in, in 2026. I don't think it's going to be just the result of people saying magic words, but I think it will be the result of people investing cycle after cycle in their own communities. and I think that's having an upward trend. Do you have any other thoughts, Joe, before we close out here? Anything else that you're watching as we start getting into 2026? Well, I think there are some great folks who are out doing this kind of work. I met Bob Herndon from Fighting 50. He and his colleague, Pam Woodley, put together this organization that went out and recruited candidates across Georgia.

Jess Piper, who we adore, is doing. it in Missouri. So there are great people out there doing this kind of work. And I think Jess has a great substack. And she's just, I mean, we just love her. But there are great people out there doing this kind of work. And, you know, and they do a lot with a little. And, you know, so I'm out, you know, if you're thinking of, you know, where to donate, you know, donate to your candidates for Congress, if that's where you are. But take a little bit and donate to your state legislative candidates or adopt a state, you know, state's project does some of that, the DLCC. It just every little bit helps. And I feel like, you know, I feel like growing, you know, we're

a little under seven months away from the election. I feel like the momentum is going to continue to build. And I feel like, you know, it is, we're in a crisis in this country, certainly at the top. And I feel like, and it sounds so corny, but I feel like voters understand the assignment. I just want to say one other thing about no kings. I, you know, in addition to my show, I guest hosts a lot on Sirius XM, and we actually do live coverage for events. So I did live coverage this past No Kings and I did it for the other two. And I have to tell you, this past one March 28th, I was, I talked to people from over 20 states. We only did it for two hours. I just took calls because the calls were nonstop. I took calls from people in over 20.

states and almost to a person they were telling me they were from a red area, a small town. People were in tears and emotional at the crowds being much bigger than they expected, even bigger than the previous one, which had exceeded expectations. And even the people who were driving by were honking. Like they'd say, only one person gave us the finger. There was only one other protester. It was really important, I think, for that to happen. And part of it is, you know, I wasn't getting calls from the people in the big events

because it was impossible to call from New York or Chicago. But people, we got so many calls, Matt. And it goes to the point you made about how important these are. And it's people finding other people and building from that. They were tabling. They were collecting names. They were doing all that kind of work. And again, they understood the assignment.

And I think sometimes the D.C. crowd doesn't understand how much people in America really understand what's at stake and understand what they need to do. Well, Joe, thank you so much for joining us. Glad to do it.