- Well, it looks to me as if we have hit the 10 o'clock a.m. mark. And so I will begin with a little bit
- of introduction to the process for our candidate forum today. I am Sonya Learcamp. I go by my nickname,
- Sunny, and I will be your
- I am honored to be your moderator today. I'm vice president of the Brown County League of Women Voters.
- The start time has been set previously for 10 o'clock. If you are not a candidate, I would ask that
- you please mute your audio. If you wish to ask a question of the legislators,
- please send a direct message in the chat to one question moderator and just put in, I have a question.
- We will begin the questions in the order that they are received. Next slide. We want everyone to know
- that all of the Democrat and Republican candidates
- for this particular forum for Congressional District 9 have been invited to this forum. Aaron Houchin
- did not respond to our invitation. Tim Peck has a schedule conflict, and he is here, however, and plans
- to make a one-minute statement at the beginning of the forum. We are pleased to welcome also candidates
- Jim Graham
- and Brad Meyer. We are also hopeful that Kyle Rorick is going to join us. He did indicate that he would
- be joining us today. He may be just running a little bit late. We want everyone to remember how this
- works. This is an informative meeting, not a debate. We ask everyone to please be civil and respectful
- to one another.
- We will begin with a one-minute opening statement from each candidate. The participants will then present
- questions for the candidate. Again, I remind you to just type into addressing one question moderator
- that you have a question and you will be called upon in the order that your question has been received.
- If time permits, we certainly try to give individuals an opportunity to ask additional questions. The
- order in which the candidates will respond will rotate. The response time for each question will be
- 90 seconds unless I set a different limit. We will conclude with a one-minute closing statement from
- each candidate.
- Time will be moderated to facilitate participation of as many people as possible. The Community Access
- Television Services is recording this session, including the questions. So,
- We are ready to begin, and we're going to start. Tim Peck does have a conflict, and he will not be able
- to stay for the rest of the forum. And we give individuals in that situation one minute to make an opening
- statement, either themselves or a representative. And Tim has chosen to be here and make a statement
- for himself. So Tim, I would turn it up.
- platform over to you and ask that you make your one minute statement. Can you hear me okay? Yes, I believe
- so. Wonderful. Thank you. So I'm Tim Peck running for United States Congress. I'm an emergency doctor
- and was working overnight last night and I'm working again overnight tonight. So definitely need to
- have some sleep today. But in the morning right now, I'm seeing you from my kids T ball game.
- here in small town America and then after that we have a day of action where we are knocking doors in
- three different towns across district at once and that's the thing I would like to get across that people
- are falling behind
- It costs too much to work in this country and our rights are being infringed. We are here to bring forward
- our message that all of that can change and we need a new way forward. And we are doing that through
- a very organized campaign throughout the district. I have one minute here. So just want to stop with
- just saying so thank you so much for having me today. I wish I could be here for the whole thing, but
- the schedule just didn't line up.
- And thank you for your support. If you'd like to join the campaign, please go to our website, take a
- look at our positions, and then sign up to volunteer. Thank you so much. Thank you, Tim. All right.
- All right. Now we are going to turn to opening statements from the remaining candidates. And I'm glad
- to see that Kyle was able to join us and he is here as well. I'm going to start with Jim Graham.
- Thank you, Sonny. I grew up in southern Indiana. I studied engineering. I worked as an engineer with
- General Motors for about five years. I did graduate study at Purdue and then taught engineering at Purdue
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and at the University of Louisville.
- In talking with voters about this election, the key concern that comes to my attention is economic conditions
- in the ninth district. People are working extremely hard and just barely making ends meet. And if you
- take a look at my website, Jim Graham for congress.com, you will see that's the major part of my platform,
- together with common sense things like securing social security and Medicare and restoring the cuts
- that have been made to veterans programs.
- I look forward to this debate and telling you more about what I believe in and why I think I'm the best
- candidate for the job. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Brad, we will turn to you next. Thank you. Hi, I'm
- Brad Meyer. I'm running for the US House of Representatives. The work you guys do embodies the promise
- that this country should work for everybody. But that promise is under attack right now. And that's
- why I quit my job a year shy of early retirement to run for office.
- Some people think the only way that we can get back into power to make a difference is to be moderate,
- to think small, and offer timid changes. This is only going to lead to managed decline. I'm a progressive.
- For the last 100 years, we fought for food safety, women's rights, social security, Medicare and Medicaid,
- civil rights, and the right to choose. None of those victories came from playing it safe. It came from
- people who stood up and fought for a better future.
- And now it's our turn. If you want to learn more about my campaign, you can get information at bradmeyer.org.
- Thank you. Thank you, Brad. Kyle will now turn to you to give your one minute opening statement. Yeah,
- there's background noise there. I was just going to say there are individuals on this who do not, they
- are not muted and we're getting some background noise. Could you please check to make sure you are muted?
- Thank you. You may go ahead, Kyle. OK. OK. Yeah. So hi, everyone. Good morning. My name is Kyle Rourke,
- and I'm running as a candidate in this ninth congressional district. I'm a former UAW semi-line worker,
- Navy officer, father of four, Christian, and a former educator at Ivy Tech. And I'm deeply worried about
- the American dream. And essentially, I'm running to
- create jobs and create opportunity for folks in the ninth congressional. You know, our folks are under
- a lot of pressure, financial pressure, you know, either through gas prices, grocery prices, you know,
- housing prices, rent prices and the like, everybody's feeling it. So my platform is essentially the
- economy, the economy, the economy, educational access, as well as a government oversight, of course.
- Relative to the war, I'm still not convinced we need to be doing the war right now, but we're in it.
- So we have to deal with it at this particular point in time. But we do need to pass a War Powers Resolution,
- which Congress has abdicated its responsibility to do that. I'm a proponent of providing a check on
- the executive. And appreciate if you could vote for me and look at my record.
- HTTPSCowork.com. Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you. That's okay. Okay. I think we are ready now to get
- started with some of the questions. And I don't see that anyone has indicated that they're ready to
- be called on yet.
- But I'm going to encourage everyone, you need to be putting your name into the chat box, direct it to
- one question moderator so that she can let me know if there is somebody ready. Yes, we do, because I
- wasn't paying attention here. Tracy, face it. If you would unmute and ask your question, please. Tracy, face it.
- Sorry, I didn't know I had to come off mute and I just scrambled. So my question is to all the candidates,
- what is your plan for tackling the healthcare crisis and how did your plan differ from the other candidates?
- Thank you, Tracy. We will start with Brad Meyer. So I'm advocating for universal nonprofit healthcare,
- which is Medicare for all. I'll let my other
- Opponents speak to their plan, but we need this because people are going broke just trying to stay alive.
- The current system is not working for us and we need a big change. Thank you, Brad. Next, I will direct
- that question to Kyle Rorick.
- Yeah, I mean, I'm a proponent of keeping your private health care policy where plausible and implementing
- a universal health care policy as a supplement. That's kind of my platform. But primarily, I think the
- best path forward is to reinstitute the subsidies for the ACA that expired. That's something that could
- happen pretty quickly as soon as I'm sworn in as the congressional rep here in the ninth.
- Because assuming we have full control of both houses and Senate, we should be able to do that very quickly.
- And that would have meaningful impact to a lot of folks here who have ACA coverage in the ninth
- congressional. Relative to my opponents in this space, relative to health care plans, I think Medicare
- for all is a pipe dream. I just don't think it's going to work.
- for a couple of reasons. One is we have doctor shortage right now. Two, it requires a large tax increase.
- And then obviously, what are the operational efficiencies? And thirdly, I just don't see that getting
- done unless we get back 60 plus votes on the Senate side. I just don't see it happening, unfortunately.
- Medicare for all or universal health care policy
- Japan has that in place, but places like that have different institutional structures to make that work.
- So we can go into that later. Thank you. Thank you, Kyle. Jim, would you like to answer that question
- now, please? Yes. I'm in favor of expanding and improving the Affordable Care Act.
- I think that a public option should be included as part of that plan. Clearly, as Kyle said, one of
- the first steps is reinstituting the subsidies for insurance coverage through the exchanges. That's
- greatly increased the expenses for a lot of people in our district this year. And I have to point out
- that obviously our current Congresswoman voted against those subsidies.
- So I think that I'm primarily in favor of the improving the healthcare system that we have. And I think
- there's plenty of things that we can do to do that. Thank you. Thank you very much. We will now go to
- the next individual in the queue. I believe there's only one
- person in the queue right now. So all of you need to be putting your question, your desire to ask questions
- in by addressing one question moderator. I would now call upon Maria Douglas to ask her question, which
- will be directed first to Kyle Rourke.
- Thank you so much. Thank you so much to the league and to the candidates for this time and this opportunity
- to have this conversation. I am curious about your thoughts on our Monroe County Sheriff and his litigation
- against the Secretary of State. And I'm curious about your
- Um, thoughts, feelings, plans to keep all Monroe County, uh, community members safe. Okay. Kyle. Well,
- I'm going to be real honest with you. Um, I'm that type of leader where if I don't know enough about
- the context and the litigation, I'll just tell you, and I don't know enough about the litigation actually,
- but I will tell you about, um,
- community policing, I do think we need to hire potentially more police officers where needed. We need
- to have good recruiting, but we also at the same time need to have body cameras. We need to have good
- police methodologies where police officers follow their tactics, techniques and procedures.
- and they're following the rules. So everybody has fair justice. And also from a judicial perspective,
- we need to continue to look at alternatives to criminal justice, such as reducing cash bail for non-violent
- offenders, additional probation opportunities for those non-violent offenders, and things of that nature to help
- People rehabilitate, right? We also need to look at our prison systems relative to early release for
- nonviolent offenders who are getting the right training so they can be released and have a vocation
- to get out and be a productive member of society for nonviolent offenders. Yep, thank you. Thank you,
- Kyle. I would next direct that question to Jim Graham. Yes.
- like Kyle, I have to start by saying I'm not familiar with the specific litigation that the questioner
- referenced. I will say that I certainly support the police. I think they protect and defend us.
- As Kyle says, they should be properly trained, properly supervised, or should be civilian review. I
- often say that I support the police as long as they obey the law.
- and I support protestors as long as they obey the law. I think both are important to our parts of society.
- And I just feel like that sometimes people forget that just how important police are when you have an
- emergency and you have to call them at 3 a.m. to come to your house. So I'm supportive of the police,
- unfortunately not familiar with the litigation in Monroe County. Thank you.
- Thank you, Jim. Brad, we will now turn to you to answer that question. Thank you. I think that that
- lawsuit is about ICE. And I'll say this, that one of the first things that I did in my campaign was
- I held a protest at Camp Atterbury against the use of that for ICE detention. What we have right now
- in immigration is a situation that really is
- an unfair system. We need an immigration system that is helpful to American citizens economically, but
- also respects the dignity of the people coming in to work and be part of our communities. I also think that
- There are other things you talk about just general safety We need to free up police to do things to
- protect us So I think we should legalize marijuana and get that out of the way of the legal system so
- that police can spend more time Protecting us against violent crime. Hi Thank you
- And we need to be looking at effective rehabilitation. Right now, 70% of people coming out of our jail
- system re-offend within three years. So what we're doing is we're housing people and we're not giving
- them a path forward. Thank you, Brad. Very good. Next, we have a question that Penny Giffins has a question.
- Sorry, I'm getting a little tongue tied this morning.
- Penny Giffins, I would call upon you to unmute and ask your question, directing it first to Jim Graham.
- Well, good morning all and thank you all for being here. I feel like there's a crisis with regard to
- mental health and substance use disorders in our community. I think that that taps into a little bit
- of what Brad was just referring to also with the number of people that we have incarcerated because
- We have far too many people ending up in our carceral system with mental health issues and substance
- use disorder issues. So what kind of programming would you propose to address that? Yes, Jim, would
- you like to answer that first, please? Yes. Thank you, Penny, for that great question.
- And that is a major problem in our society today. It shows up in prison populations. It shows up in
- the homeless population. Many, many families are dealing with the problems of mental issues within a
- family member. And there's just not enough support totally.
- So definitely that's one of the priorities I think that we need to have. I don't know exactly the best
- way to address it. We have many facilities and programs both at the state level and at the national
- level. To some extent, I think we need to coordinate those better. And certainly that's one of the things
- that congressional representatives do is make available information about where you can get resources
- from the government. And that would be a priority for my staff to answer those types of questions. Thank you.
- Thank you, Jim. Brad, we would now turn to you to respond to that question. So Indiana spends about
- $4 billion a year on treatment or the effects of a mental illness that's not covered. We need to get
- more resources into schools to help with early intervention.
- with children that are having troubles and struggles. We need to address, as I mentioned before, the
- mental health crisis of people in prisons so that when they come out they can be productive members
- of society. Mental illness untreated is a significant cause of homelessness.
- And it's very difficult. We need to hire more social workers. We need to invest in the pipeline for
- education and training for people. And it's a very difficult job. There's a lot of people carrying a
- hard load and supporting people that need help. And they need to be paid more, and it needs to be part
- of a universal healthcare system that I've advocated for.
- Thank you, Brad, or excuse me, Kyle, we would now turn to you for your response. Yeah, I mean, relative
- to my role as a US House representative, we have funding. So we have Medicare, Medicaid, we have CHIP
- to help support funding for mental health services. We have the standards that practitioners
- and mental health practitioners are supposed to adhere to relative to licensing and adhering to the
- best practices for supporting those services. We also have research that we can count on to best deal
- with folks who have bipolar, schizophrenia, different mental health or PTSD as a veteran. And then we
- also have integration policies that can help support
- between federal and state policies for mental health services. And then lastly is the protection part.
- You know, folks with mental health issues, you know, for example, in Floyd County, we have the Veterans
- Court. Different protections from a federal perspective could be used to support folks who have mental
- illness to keep their job and to provide those services so folks can rehabilitate and get back in the
- workforce pretty quickly.
- So I know I threw out a lot there, but hopefully I answered your question. But there's a lot there that
- the federal government can supply in terms of support for those who have mental illnesses. Thank you.
- I would now turn to Michael Starks to ask his question, directing it first to Brad Meyer. Michael, if
- you would unmute and ask your question.
- Thank you. I appreciate you all taking the time out of your busy schedules to participate in this forum.
- My question is, do you support overturning the Citizens United Supreme Court decision about funding
- of political campaigns? Brad, would you like to respond to that first, please?
- Absolutely, absolutely. I would like to overturn Citizens United. I'm struggling a little bit on how
- we can do that from the federal level, given that it was a Supreme Court. There are some interesting
- things. I think it's Wyoming or another state has come up with a thing at the state level that can help
- to ameliorate that.
- But the impact of money in elections is corrosive, and we can see the effects, and it's just gotten
- worse since Citizens United. They're estimating that for a Democrat to win, we're going to need $3 million
- over the next six months. So it is really unfortunate that raising money is a huge part of running an election.
- Thank you, Brad. We would now direct that question to Kyle Rorick. Yeah, I would definitely agree. Citizens
- United needs to be overturned. But the reality is, since it came from the Supreme Court, you really
- can't do much in it. The Supreme Court has spoken on that issue. The only way to deal with that issue
- effectively is a constitutional amendment. There needs to be a campaign finance constitutional amendment.
- That would effectively weaken or basically override the Citizens United case. But we all know how hard
- it is to get our congressional friends to agree. It's very hard to see that changing anytime
- soon. Unfortunately, we'd have to get 66 or 67 votes obviously in the Senate, plus the majority in the
- House. But I do agree.
- The campaign, the amount of money going into these campaigns is unbelievable. It's corrosive. I mean,
- I just saw John Corning going against Mr. Paxton down there in Texas. I think there was $70 million
- spent just in a primary. It's just unbelievable the amount of money that's coming in. And it's definitely
- corrosive to democracy. It's not good. A constitutional amendment is the only path forward and we have
- to get it done.
- Thank you. Thank you, Kyle. Jim, would you like to respond to that question now, please? Yes, a number
- of people have asked me, what have I learned in this one-year campaign that I've been involved with?
- And one of the things is I've got a very close-up look at why our government is so dysfunctional. And
- unlimited amounts of dark money going into campaigns is at the top of that list.
- difficult to run against incumbents because of that purpose. And it just really makes no sense. Recently,
- Elon Musk put $10 million into a senatorial campaign in Kentucky, which is ridiculous. He's not a citizen
- of Kentucky, has very little business dealings in Kentucky. Why should he have that much influence over
- who's going to end up representing Kentucky in Congress?
- And unfortunately, we see the ads every day down here in this part of the world. So it was a very poor
- decision. It will probably go down in history as one of the worst decisions of the Supreme Court. It
- needs to be overturned. Unfortunately, it's going to be a constitutional amendment to do it.
- All right, thank you for asking those questions or answering those questions. The next individual in
- the queue is Jeff Richardson. Jeff, I would ask you to unmute and direct your question, first of all,
- to Kyle Rorick. Yes, thank you very much.
- I am interested in your position or positions on how to achieve affordable housing. And I know perhaps
- a separate question is how to deal with the homeless situation. So depending on the nature of your response,
- you can incorporate the homelessness into your response or just focus on affordable housing. And thank
- you so much. Well, affordable housing obviously is a major concern
- without question, and it really comes, at the end of the day, it comes back to supply, supply of affordable
- housing. So from a federal perspective, we need to look at the cost of construction, you know, all the
- inputs to the cost of construction materials, building materials, nails, wood, shingles, and the like,
- right? We also need to look at providing financial capital.
- or low-interest subsidies to developers who have an interest in providing affordable housing. And then
- we also need to look at tax incentives for development in general for developers who want to develop
- a maybe 20, 30-acre piece of property and provide housing that way.
- And then we also need to look at regulatory reform. What are some of the regulatory issues that are
- causing a barrier to entry for developers? Environmental, now obviously we don't want to reduce our
- environmental regulations, but there's got to be some other regulatory reforms we can put forward to
- help developers get access
- to that development and get it done in a timely fashion. So we can drop the price of these housing units
- so folks can buy a house and get in a house very quickly. It's literally out of reach. I mean, since,
- what, 2000? Time. OK, my time's up. All right, thank you.
- I will tell the candidates when she says time. I believe you still have 10 seconds to finish your sentence
- if you're in the middle of a sentence. We would go to Jim Graham next on that question. Yes. In my opening
- statement, I spoke about people working tremendously hard and just barely making ends meet.
- In some cases, not making ends meet and continuing to rack up unlivable amounts of debt.
- And a big part of that is the cost of housing. If housing is scarce, rents are going to be more expensive.
- And so we definitely, that's something we definitely need to work on. It's a problem that's a joint,
- local, state, and federal. And I will point out that there are a bunch of federal programs already available
- to improve housing and make housing available.
- I think a lot of the work needs to be done at the local level on regulatory form zoning and other things
- that cause the cost of housing to be so expensive. So I don't I think that, again, I think Congressional
- Office needs to be a good clearinghouse to help developers find out what sort of low interest housing
- information is available and funding is available to support their efforts. Thank you.
- Thank you, Jim. Brad, would you like to answer that question now, please? Absolutely. So there's a couple
- of things. First, you look at single-family homes, which I think is what mostly the other people were
- talking about. We have to stop speculation by out-of-state companies. It's not appropriate. Sorry,
- say again? Jeff Richardson and Sue Medlin, would you please mute?
- your thank you. Thank you very much. You can go ahead, Brad. Thank you, ma'am. So we have to
- stop speculation. Tariffs have driven up the cost of materials. So building new homes is expensive.
- There's been federal policies that I won't
- that don't incentivize people to build new homes. When you're talking about developers and we had that
- in the past and it was very effective. And the other thing is earnings. Earnings have not kept up with
- inflation and the average wage for an 18 to 34 year old in real terms has dropped by about 20%. That's
- part of why they can't get into a new house. So we need to help first time buyers get in. But also, you know,
- You talk about homelessness, it's not, although we have a massive housing shortage, mental illness needs
- to be addressed. There are issues that even if we had lots of homes would still need to be addressed
- to help with homelessness. Thank you, Brad. We have a couple of individuals in the queue who have second
- questions. But I think before I do that, we had some questions submitted
- by the Brown County high school students in the political science class of Emily Llewellyn. And I thought
- we might sneak one of their questions in here. First of all, the question is, in what ways do you plan
- to support rural public education? And I would direct that question first to Jim Grant,
- education really is the source of the commonality that we are largely at all share in this country,
- which has worked so well for 250 years. And it's now under stress. It's under stress from a whole bunch
- of things from giving vouchers to non non public schools, from cutting budgets to schools, and to, you know,
- an insufficient salaries for teachers. So public education, I feel, is so important to what makes this
- country work that it needs to be a priority both in rural counties and in the urban areas. There's problems
- both in both ways. And so I just think I'm very much against this proposal to eliminate the Department
- of Education.
- I think it does important things in terms of support for student loans. It does important things for
- researching new educational methods and for also for tracking the performance of educational schools
- with high schools and other schools within the country. So I think it would be a mistake to eliminate
- that department. So that's my response. Thank you, Jim. I'd now turn to Brad Meyer to respond to that question.
- You need to unmute Brad. Sorry, ma'am. Thank you. So about 90% of education funding and policy comes
- from the state and constitutionally, that's what's required. The federal government through the Department
- of Education does several things. One of them is they act as an important scorekeeper to let parents
- know whether the education system is meeting the needs of the children.
- There are also, and in the case of special needs kids, especially in rural communities, the federal
- government supplies additional funding to help because local communities just don't have enough money
- to provide education for special needs. That's primarily the bounds of federal policy on local education, but at
- The state level, we also need to be helping with student loans, and we need to be trying to nudge the
- states into getting back to their primary responsibilities for funding schools, which they've
- been underfunding. Universities, only about 15% of funding comes from the state, and that's limiting
- opportunity for people. Thank you, Brad. I now ask Kyle Rorick.
- to respond to that question? Yeah, sure. So public education, I mean, let's just start with the big,
- beautiful disaster of a bill taking, you know, cutting 13 billion over the next 10 years between Medicaid
- and SNAP benefits. Obviously, I would want to repeal and replace the big
- beautiful disaster of a bill and reinstate those SNAP benefits because those SNAP benefits are used
- for elementary kids and middle school kids to help subsidize those meals. Obviously from a STEM perspective,
- we need to pay teachers more. Can't get enough teachers in the STEM community, whether they're math,
- engineering, or physicists to come and teach, we need to pay them more. Student loan forgiveness, we
- need to continue to try to do that.
- for folks who wanna go into teaching and support, and they work in a school for 10 years, they should
- get student loan forgiveness. And then TAs, my wife is a teacher and I've discovered that through her
- work that there's not enough teacher assistance, and especially in elementary schools that need that
- additional support. And another thing just on a side note,
- They've shown over time, over the last 16 years, the scores have been going in the negative direction.
- And a lot of that is because we have too much digital technology in school. So I would advocate for
- a no iPhone policy for schools. And I know I'll probably get lynched on that comment, but the truth
- is there's too many distractions with these iPhones in these schools, middle school to high school.
- Yeah, we need to continue to look at that as a policy. And I would advocate for no iPhones in public
- high schools. Thank you. OK. Thank you very much. We now turn to the next individual in the queue. I
- believe that Tracy Fawcett has another question. Tracy, I'd ask that you unmute and ask your question.
- Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. So yesterday, excuse me, Trump said everyone who came within 200 feet of
- the Oval Office will be fully pardoned for any crimes committed. So do you support Trump's impeachment
- and any other means to ensure those in power get punished for the crimes they've committed? Hey, I direct
- that question first to Brad Meyer.
- So, yes, I'm in favor of impeaching Trump. The biggest thing for me is, I mean, there's a lot of reasons
- to impeach him, but the fact is the Iran war is completely unconstitutional. The American people needed
- an opportunity to weigh in of whether this was a war that we wanted done in our name, and he's completely
- bypassed that.
- bypassed other laws and usurped the responsibility of Congress, and Congress hasn't done their job.
- So we need to impeach, we need to start having hearings, we need to hold these people accountable if
- we're going to preserve our democracy. Thank you, Brad. I now direct that question to Kyle Rorick. Yes, I mean,
- where do you start? I mean, he's been impeached twice. We all knew going in, he's going to be impeached
- again and again. I mean, the American people, you know, we voted for this. I hate to say it, but we
- voted for this. I mean, we all knew he was a convicted felon, legally a convicted felon. We knew this
- was going to happen and it's happening. So, but what we can do to,
- you know, deal with this situation and try for impeachment again, and hold those accountable where possible.
- Now, he did say he's going to try to pardon all his underlings, and that probably will happen. And we'll
- have to deal with that, and that's unfortunate. But as of right now, here's what we can do now.
- If the Democratic Party takes back control, we can start impeaching the secretary of war. Well, we were
- talking about impeaching Miss Bondi, but she got fired. But any of his undersecretaries that are doing
- all the work, that are doing some shady things, we need to start investigating those folks and impeaching
- those folks because he hasn't pardoned them yet.
- He hasn't pardoned them yet. So we need to take a proactive approach to start to hold those folks accountable
- now, effectively in January. That needs to be top priority because once he gets ready to leave office,
- they'll be all pardoned. And then you can't hold them accountable after that. Thank you. Thank you,
- Kyle. Jim, we'd now turn to you to answer that question. Thank you. And thank you, Tracy, for the question.
- I think it points to a bigger issue of the need for government reform. There are tremendous ethics issues
- within the Congress of individual members trading individual stocks. There's issues about needs for
- ethics reform of the Supreme Court in terms of acceptance of gifts and conflict of interest. And there's
- a big conflict of interest that goes forth in the pardon process.
- This was really a holdover from the era of kings. And unfortunately, our framers never thought we would
- elect somebody as malignant as Donald Trump. It was a failure of their imagination. But I think that
- the pardon policy has been abused both by Democratic and Republican presidents over recent years.
- Trump has just taken it to a new level, pardoning a convicted middle American drug lord, pardoning people
- that has business ties to himself, of all things pardoning the people that rioted at the Capitol and
- actually led to the death of police officers. That's just beyond the pale. There's certainly currently
- something in Congress called the Pardon Integrity Act,
- And I would certainly support that as a congressman. I think it's long overdue. Thank you, Tracy, for
- your question. Thank you, Jim. And we would now turn to the next individual waiting to ask a question.
- But I also want to remind everyone, please
- Get your name in the queue if you have a question. There are a lot of important issues out there for
- these individuals here to give you their opinions and impressions on, so don't hold back. The next individual
- I would call upon is Kelton O'Connell.
- Kelton, if you would unmute and ask your question, directing it first to Kyle Rourke. Thank you. I'm
- a student at Bloomington High School North. I heard about the idea of banning cell phones in K-12 education.
- Indiana passed Senate Bill 78, which bans phones entirely at schools. But I'm wondering what the candidates'
- positions are on the underlying issue, which is social media companies and how they manipulate
- youth and how that can affect our mental health. So what are candidates' positions on social media platforms
- and how maybe that can be regulated more? Thanks. Thank you for that question, Kelton. And again, Kyle,
- could you respond first? Yeah, you know, just recently I did see that there was a decision passed down.
- I think Metta was getting sued.
- for 400 million civil case. Well, it might not be just meta, but I think Google was in there as well
- about meta. Oh, Kyle has frozen. While we wait to see if Kyle can
- reengage. Why don't we turn to Jim Graham? Would you please respond to Kelton's question? Yes.
- Thank you, Kelton, for that question. I think we've all become aware that social media and certainly
- social media in conjunction with AI
- poses a great risk to our youth. And it's a big oversight that we haven't addressed this more forcefully
- before now. I, like Kyle, was happy to see the decision against Meta and Google for not providing better
- safeguards for minors in terms of use of their technology. And it's certainly something that Congress
- is going to have to investigate in depth going forward.
- I think that we've kind of let the people in Silicon Valley get away with harmful activities too long
- with AI coming on. It doesn't even work in a lot of cases. It has these solution nations where it generates
- completely false returns. And so to not have guardrails on the development of AI,
- would be a tremendous mistake and has to be addressed by the next Congress. I would be a person that
- could do that. Thank you for that response, Jim. Until Kyle comes back, I will stay in this order. Brad,
- would you like to answer that question, please? Yes. There are great benefits to social media for young
- people, and there are also risks.
- As they grow from youth to young adults into adulthood, we need to provide increasing or decreasing
- controls. But the younger you are, the more protections you need. And there are some predatory behaviors
- that social media has to bring in business that really need to be reviewed under antitrust and
- the predatory nature of some of these practices have shown been really dangerous and causing a lot of
- distress for young people and a lot of anxiety for parents. Other countries, Australia has, and European
- countries have digital rights that we do not, and those companies operate under those successfully.
- So they can do it here as well. They just choose not to and Congress doesn't hold them to the standard
- that they should. Thank you very much for that response. We will now be turning to the next individual
- in the queue, which is Maria Douglas has another question and she is the last one we have in line. So
- please make sure to get in line if you have some questions.
- Maria, if you would like to unmute and ask your question and direct it first of all to Jim Graham. Again,
- thank you so much. A couple comments first. Kelton, pride of Bloomington North. Great question and thank
- you for pointing out that our state legislature, which ended in February, had passed that cell phone
- ban. I'm also happy to hear
- that we are not condemning social media entirely because I've heard several of you talk about education
- being important. And one of the reasons why we have a high dropout rate is because education is not
- keeping up with keeping students engaged. Okay, so my question is, I am more interested in systemic
- change. It is high time, past time.
- None of these issues, housing, healthcare, things like that, none of these challenges happened overnight.
- So I am curious about your thoughts and plans, not thoughts. I would be curious about your plans for
- systemic change, and then I'd also be curious to know what your theory of change is. Thank you.
- All right. Thank you for that question.
- We turn first of all to Jim Graham. Yeah. And I was going to ask if Maria could repeat the last part
- of her question. I didn't get it. You're interested in what my plans are for systemic change and what?
- Yes. Thank you. What your theory of change is. Oh, my theory of change. OK. Very good. So this is a
- good political science question.
- You know, I'm an engineer, so I'm not as knowledgeable as possibly I should be in that area. You do
- bring up an important issue, and that is, you know, what we can do as young legislators. We're going
- to be first time there. We're kind of at the bottom of the queue. There's, you know, I think it's one
- of the important things is for
- is for us to get to know the other legislators on both sides of the party and start to work together
- for common sense solutions to our problems. I think that that's the best way that we're actually going
- to move forward. It used to be, I can remember when others, even sides of the party could really argue
- about a point, but then could come together and come up with workable solutions.
- We've forgotten that because a few years ago, a group of people ran for Congress on the thing that they
- would not compromise with the other side. And that's one of the worst, that's beside Citizens United,
- that's one of the worst things that's happened to our government.
- because compromise is not a dirty word, it's how things get done. And if I were elected to Congress,
- that would be one of my key things is to try to find places where we can have win-win solutions and
- start attacking some of these critical problems we have such as immigration, such as secure and social
- security and Medicare, such as affordable housing. So to me, that's the answer is the return to reasonable
- bipartisan discussion and finding solutions.
- for everybody. OK. Thank you very much for that response, Jim. I'm going to ask Brad Meyer to respond
- to this question. And then Maria, I'm going to ask you to repeat the question since Kyle has just rejoined
- us. And then he can have an opportunity to respond as well. Brad, would you please give your response?
- Thank you, Maria. This is a wonderful question. And it's the heart of the question of electability here
- in southern Indiana. My position is that we need to actually be fighting for systemic change. When
- And I'm not against bipartisanship. I'm not against compromise. But the fact is we need to stand firm
- on what we believe and what our values are. We need to be working for these changes. We need to be advocating
- for these changes. And if we start out by saying, we're going to run to the middle and we're going to
- try to snuggle up next to the other side, that isn't the beginning of a bargain. That's the beginning
- of capitulation. So my theory is, and my plan is,
- is to reach out to voters from the other side and show them that our ways are better and in their best
- interest and get them to come over and vote for us instead of trying to be softer and soften and undercut
- our own positions. For systemic change, I'm advocating for not just universal healthcare, I'm advocating
- for a constitutional amendment that guarantees the right of healthcare for
- federal budgeting, I'm advocating for a balanced budget amendment that forces Congress and the government
- to act responsibly. And I'm advocating for an immigration policy that changes immigration to an economic
- question so that we can begin to deal or communicate with the other side of why it's in their best interest
- to allow controlled immigration. We need to be reaching out.
- Thank you very much, Brad. And welcome back, Kyle. I'm going to have Maria repeat her questions so that
- you have an opportunity to respond. Oh, man, I hope I remember what I said. OK.
- So I don't know if Kyle was on when Kelton pointed out that the cell phone, that our state legislature
- already passed a cell phone ban in the legislature that ended in February. So, Kel, I know you don't
- have to worry necessarily about that anymore. Also, my question was that I am interested in systemic
- change, housing crisis, mental health,
- uh, healthcare has not, these challenges have not happened overnight. And so, like I said, I'm interested
- in systemic change. And so I'm curious about what your plans are for systemic change and what your theory
- of change is. Kyle, yes. Systemic change. Okay. What, in which area, um, are we, are we talking about
- mental health? Are we talking about childcare? Are we talking to,
- Can you be more a little bit more specific in what in an area? I'm not sure that I need to be specific
- in in a in an area. Just overall systemic change would maybe think about what what that means to you.
- What how you're going to address what your plans are to to and so you could pick you could choose what
- what area you want to be specific about if you would like. Yeah, OK, so.
- I'll just start with issue identification of the constituents here in the night. So it's obviously
- affordability, educational access, governmental oversight, right? So if you just go to those top three,
- my goal is to figure out from an economic perspective how to ease the pressure on grocery prices,
- gas prices, housing prices.
- And I talked a little bit earlier about the housing issue, but basically we have a supply issue with
- housing. We need to provide housing subsidies to encourage folks, developers to get access to basically
- develop property at a reasonable price at a reasonable cost. So that's kind of a tidbit on the housing.
- And then obviously wages, wages have to come up.
- It's $7.25, they need to go up north of 15, maybe even $18 an hour. I'm a pragmatist, we'd probably
- land at 15. But with all these issues I'm talking about, it really comes down to developing relationships
- once you get in office and trying to build legislation. So for example, Congressman Baruch develops
- a piece of legislation, I author it, boom.
- I have to go around and work with all the other House of Representatives to get them to buy onto the
- bill. They will co-sponsor the bill and build those relationships to build that support. That has to
- be passed. And then of course the Senate has to debate the legislation. They have to pass. And then
- obviously it will go to the president for signing. But that's the job about change. You have to have that
- that personality, that relationship skill set to be able to build those relationships. And if you don't
- have that skill set, you're not gonna be able to build relationships to get things done. That's the
- job. So hopefully I've helped explain my change theory and how I present myself in that role. Okay,
- thank you very much for responding back to that question.
- I have had a request from Jim Graham to do another round on this question. We don't normally do that,
- but if all three candidates would like to have another minute to expound on this particular topic, I
- will do that. Otherwise, we'll move on to the next question. Do either Kyle or Brad wish to answer any
- further on this particular question?
- I mean, sure. I mean, I can expound a little bit more. I mean, though, it all comes back to those top
- three, affordability, educational access. I think I hit on affordability a little bit. Educational access.
- We really need to provide subsidies for Ivy Tech, for example, folks who want to go to be electrician,
- be a pipe fitter.
- be a plumber. We need to make those educational tuition benefit, those prices a little bit lower through
- subsidies. So because I think that's critical. So folks can get access to that educational program.
- They can come out of that. They'll secure a degree and get a high paying skill trades job. Okay. That's
- important. Another program. Say you want to go be a phlebotomist, you know, a medical tech program.
- you know, at IU and Columbus, right? And you get a two-year degree. You have a hard time paying that
- tuition. And the government comes in and says, listen, this is a high-demand area. Skill trades is high
- demand. So is medical. We're going to help subsidize that program to get you access to that program.
- So when you graduate, you can get that high-paying medical position. So I'd advocate for those policies
- that help folks get into that next level of income of wages that'll help support their families.
- Thank you. Okay. Jim, what did you want to add to your response to this question? Yes, thank you, Sonny.
- To me, this brings up the key issue of electability. We've lost this race eight times. Many of the things
- that have been mentioned today have been brought up and rejected.
- by the voters soundly, eight times. I think it's time for a new playbook. And I think the answer is
- that we work, that we focus on bipartisanship, on solving our problems together, rather than hoping
- that people are gonna change their mind after voting eight times against a lot of the things
- we're suggesting. So I think we gotta be reasonable and get off of fantasy island and get back to actually
- talking about things that appeal to independence,
- appeal to a fraction of the Republicans because that's the only way you're going to get a plurality
- of the votes in this district. It's been proven time and time again. I feel sometimes like we're on
- Groundhog's Day only without the happy ending. Thank you. Jim, thank you. Brad, would you like to weigh
- in with a little more information on this topic? I would very much like to weigh in on this topic. This
- is the heart of the difference that has to be picked on May 5th.
- So there are people who should go nameless, Jim, that are explicitly saying that we need to approach
- it one way and I'm saying we are not. We have been losing for a long time. We've been losing for a long
- time because Democrats have really good ideas and frankly do a crappy job of selling it because we talk
- about it out of our feelings and how we feel about it and our sense of morality instead of talking about
- it from self-interest.
- the self-interest of the voters, why it's important to them, how it's important to them. And all of
- these arguments about we can't do this and we can't do that, they said it about food safety,
- women's rights, social security, Medicare and Medicaid, civil rights, and the right to choose. All of
- these things we had to fight for. And we're not fighting near hard enough. And the reason we're losing
- isn't because we aren't fighting, it's because we think fighting is a strongly written letter to the Congress.
- from Congress to the president. We need to stand up for our rights because we're never going to press
- forward if we don't. The systemic change that Maria's talking about is what we need in this country,
- and it's going to attract voters. Voters want courage. Thank all three of you for your responses on
- that particular question.
- Can't make any more exceptions, Kyle, sorry. I didn't get a chance to weigh in on the electability part.
- That's the only thing I'm saying.
- Well, you can perhaps address that in your final remarks. We're going to move on to the next questioner,
- who is Pat Slabach. I will advise everyone that he is the last individual that's in the queue at this
- point in time. We just have about 26 minutes left. If you have a question to ask, make sure to get in
- the queue.
- Excuse me, Pat, I will ask you to unmute and ask your question, directing it first of all to Brad Meyer.
- Hi, can you hear me?
- Yes. Yes, I can hear you. Great. I think you've already said something that I was asking that the District
- 9 has not elected a Democrat for eight election cycles, which is very discouraging to me. I'm a progressive
- Democrat and I'm looking for change. So why are you the best candidate who can actually win? And what
- are you doing to assure that? Thank you for that question. Go ahead, Brad. I'm sorry.
- This comes down to the question of electability. And years ago when Trump was first running. I was talking
- to a guy, complete stranger and he said you know he said I don't know whether I want to vote for Bernie
- Sanders or Donald Trump, but I want, and I said you know they're diametrically opposed he said yeah
- but I want something different.
- alternatives to what people are seeing. The people that are struggling don't want our sympathy. They
- want their problems fixed. We need to be advocating for a $20 an hour minimum wage and the first $20,000
- free and universal health care, Medicare for all, that's going to really make a concrete difference
- in people's lives. That's what electability is going to be because
- You know, the meek may inherit the earth, but they're never going to take back the house. We need to
- show courage and we need to stand up for our values and our priorities. And we're not doing that.
- Thank you, Brad. I'd now turn to Kyle and ask you to unmute and respond to the question. Yeah, yeah.
- So there's two issues here that have led to the last seven, eight election cycles, us getting beat, handling.
- One, the Republican party is really, really good at labeling, and it's kind of our fault too, labeling
- the candidate that we put up as woke or too progressive or too liberal, right? They're very good at
- that, right? Okay, maybe it's justified, maybe it's not. Okay, fair. Two, the economy. The economy has,
- it's kind of like, you don't have any lock on the front door
- until somebody breaks into your house and then you decide to put a lock on. That's what's happening
- with the Republican folks. They have like, whoa, I got to wake up. My gas prices are up. My housing
- prices are up. My gas, all these different pricing issues are impacting them. So now they're looking
- for a reason to vote for Democrat, but it has to be the right reason, the right Democrat, that centrist
- Democrat who wants to put more money in their pockets. Period. It's that simple. They don't want to think,
- As soon as we start talking about being progressive or Medicare for all or other issues that are on
- centrist to put more money in pockets, you lose that Republican voter. You lose that independent voter.
- They wanna know what you're gonna do for them right now. I believe that is the central issue between
- deciding my candidacy or Brad or potentially
- I feel I'm the best person, obviously, to bring that message home in the general. And I believe I'm
- the only one, you know, between myself and Jim, Jim and I are pretty close on a lot of these issues,
- but definitely we're big golf between, you know, myself and the other and Brad. Brad's a good man, but
- we just have a difference there. And I truly believe
- The Republican and an independent, that's what they're looking for. They're looking for that centrist
- voter in that background like myself, who's I worked on assembly line. I put myself through college
- eight, nine years. I was in the Navy for 11 years. So I'm that person. It's focused, hyper-focused on
- the economy and trying to provide more money in people's pockets, period. It's that simple. And I believe
- I can bring home that message and bring home those independent and Republican voters.
- Thank you, Kyle. Jim, would you like to respond to that question now? Yes, I think I'm the best candidate
- because I've lived over half my life in this district. I spent over two years traveling around, visiting
- with people in the district before I decided to actually enter this race. In those hundreds of conversations,
- the thing that came up loud and strong was the economics, the personal economics. I'm struggling, but
- my family's not making it. There's no jobs here.
- in this community for my kids. My kids are gonna have to go someplace else. And I agree with Kyle 100%
- that the message is economics. The other thing I think is that we have to, I'll repeat myself, we have
- to have a message that's gonna be accepted to independents and some Republicans. And those hundreds
- of conversations, I did not have one person indicate that they felt we needed universal healthcare.
- If I brought up the issue of health care and would you support universal health care, maybe one in 10
- said, well, maybe the rest felt like it was a government overreach, a government takeover of health
- care that they would be worried about and would not support. And I don't think we ought to be turning
- away potential voters right off the bat. So I think we got to get realistic about working and finding
- those independents and finding those Republicans, not what we think everybody should want, but what
- the voters actually want. Thank you.
- Thank you very much, Jim. Well, there does not appear to be anyone in the queue at this point in time.
- So I'm going to pick another question from the list of questions submitted by the Brown County High
- School political science class. Please give an example of how you have worked with people on opposing
- sides to accomplish something.
- So I would direct that question first to Kyle. Oh, boy. Woo. That's a great question. I was in the military
- for 11 years. I've been in the private sector for 20 plus years, 25 plus years. I would say the biggest
- example is when I was in the military. I mean, you always have competing views on providing a solution.
- I'm an electrical engineer by trade.
- So it was always in situations where we want to build something faster, quickly and under cost. Um,
- and you want it to work over five to 10 years without bad things happening at breaking and causing,
- uh, harm to somebody. So there was always a competing views on different things on how we should approach
- a problem, how we should solve the problem, how we should providing me meaningful solution to that problem
- and who's going to pay for it.
- And so I really think what you have to do is everybody's got their own personal perspective on how to
- solve a problem. But you have to have empathy. I think that is the key as a congressional representative.
- You have to be able to put yourself in that other person's shoes and understand their perspective. Because
- if you can't understand the perspective, you're not going to build that rapport in that relationship.
- that is gonna bring them on board with a piece of legislation you wanna put forward to get it passed.
- And if you understand empathy, I think you can build those relationships and you can bring that best
- solution to that problem to bear. I think the problem in Congress a lot of times is pride. Everybody
- thinks they know everything about everything. And the reality is, is nobody knows everything about everything.
- You have to find the solution to the problem, figure it out quickly, and help people's lives, make things
- better for them. And that's it the other day. That's what your goal is to do, improve people's lives
- in our congressional district. Thank you. Thank you, Kyle. I would next direct that question to Jim
- Graham. Yes, that's what I spent most of my life doing.
- is working with people, strong-willed people with disparate views and coming together for solutions.
- I did that when I was a process engineer with General Motors, trying to get the UAW to accept changes
- in the way things were produced in the plant. I did that when I was a department chair at the University
- of Louisville and dealing with 22 PhDs, all of whom had egos. And in all of these cases,
- I was able to come up with solutions that actually worked. I think that bipartisanship, working together
- with solving problems, has to be our way forward in this country. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. I would
- now direct that question to Brad.
- All three of us have had long careers. I spent 25 years in manufacturing leadership roles, and I spent
- nine years as a subject matter expert as a civilian for the Navy. And you always run into these situations
- where there are competing interests. Different organizations or subgroups always have different perspectives,
- and they're trying to maximize the good for them, and they sometimes forget that they're needing to
- maximize the good for everybody.
- And my approach in general is when things start to get heated and there's conflict, I stop talking and
- I listen. And I've been listening. I've had two universal healthcare forums, five round table discussions
- with experts and 15 town halls to listen to what people are thinking and what they're worried about.
- And Kyle is right.
- that empathy is important, but you have to understand where they're coming from and then help them understand
- that we're trying to maximize the overall good, not just the good for one or another group. And eventually
- people come to the table and work it out. And that's the heart of compromise. So I'm talking about fighting,
- but it's not just
- yelling at each other. It's about advocating for a position and helping to find that common ground that
- both sides can live with that makes a difference and moves the ball forward. That's what leadership
- is about. Great question. Thank you, Brad. We do have a question that was posted in chat by MW.
- And that individual asked if I could address this question to the three of you. What is your view of
- the growing incarceration system, such as seen currently with detention camps? And I would direct that
- question first to Jim. Yeah. Thank you, Sunny. And so the United States has one of the highest incarceration rates
- of any developed nation. And I think that has not served us well. We've already had the issue about
- repeat offenders and that people are not getting the education and the skills they need so that they
- can make it in the outside world. I think that the idea that private industry or private organizations
- can run prisons better well than the government, I don't think that's been proven. I think it's mainly
- put a lot of money
- in a lot of pockets. And so I think that we certainly need to restudy our imprisonment system. I'm totally
- against the mass imprisonment under ICE. I think that arresting people that have simply come here for
- a better life and have lived here peacefully, again, is not serving us well. It's making us,
- look bad in the world. And I just think that it's unfair, and it's against my personal Christian values.
- So I'm definitely 100% opposed to the ICE incarceration, high incarceration. You know, elect the criminal,
- I mean, arrest the criminals, but don't incarcerate the rest of the people. Thank you. Thank you, Jim.
- And I appreciate that you covered both privatization of incarceration,
- plus the immigration aspect of detentions, because I do believe the questioner wanted to have both of
- those issues addressed. And I say that for clarification as I turn to Brad to answer the question next.
- Thank you. One of the first things I did in my campaign, and I mentioned this before, is I led a protest
- against Camp Atterbury
- not against Camp Atterbury, but against the policy of using Camp Atterbury. And we had 500 people there.
- We got national press with Rachel Maddow. We need, and that's only a small part of the, it's an expression
- of a bad immigration policy that needs to be fixed.
- We need to work on not just the symptom, which is the detention, we need to work on the overall policy
- and break this 40-year logjam on immigration. There's a way forward. And it's on my website, bradmeyer.org.
- The second thing is, again, 75% of the people that are in prisons
- going to get out, and 50% of those reoffend. So we're clearly not addressing recidivism, which is an
- important aspect, and the answer isn't making a profit off of people that are being incarcerated. I
- don't think that if you're trying to make a profit, I don't think your interest is in helping
- find a way for these people to become productive members of society. I think it's to minimize cost and
- maximize profit while they're in your control, not care. So I think we've got real problems to address.
- And when I get in Congress, I'm going to be working on that. Thank you, Brad. We'd now turn to Kyle
- for his response. Yeah, so relative to the private incarceration,
- Um, you know, I'm a proponent of alternatives, uh, to, uh, private incarcerate alternatives to, to do
- judicial punishment basically for nonviolent offenders. Um, so we talked a little bit earlier about
- probation. We've talked, uh, about reducing, um, uh, cash bail opportunities for nonviolent offenders.
- We've talked about house arrest.
- You know, there's other forms of providing relief to incarceration for folks who, instead of going to
- jail, basically, these are some things they can do to provide correction. I see that as a necessary
- thing to, you know, to deal with the recidivism issue. Also, we need to look at folks who actually get sentenced
- What are we doing in jail, right? Are we providing trades, trades training, any kind of training to
- help them so when they leave the judicial system, the prison system, that they can actually make a living.
- They can get out and get a job and provide some kind of meaningful income. In terms of the ICE piece,
- I really think it all comes down to
- E-Verify, that's why we have the problem we have now. E-Verify is a system where it basically requires
- tracking of your immigration status while you're in this country. And it requires employers to basically
- sign you up and requires you to pay taxes. And if you don't pay your taxes and you don't track these
- employees who are actually here working, then you will get fined.
- you would get fined. The government would come in and, you know, for example, if you're a meat packing
- plant, you would get fined for not having all these employees have an e-verified number. And I really
- think it all comes back to money. We could really get our immigration system under control if we really
- stuck to the e-verified system because it goes after the actual employer who employs illegal immigrants
- who come here to work
- And that's fine, they can come here and work, but we have to have a guest worker program that tracks
- their status here in the US. And so, because the reality is, is we need ICE to do national security,
- right? We have a lot of folks in this, you know, from other countries, China, Russia, and Latin America
- who want to come and harm us, right? Cartels, for example. So we have to deal with those hardened criminals
- So sometimes it's just justified. I mean, ICE was created after 9-11, and we cannot defund
- these organizations because if we do, we jeopardize our national security. So thank you. Thank you for
- that response, Kyle. I don't believe I have any other individuals in the queue at this point in time.
- If I'm mistaken,
- Let me just break in to say that our one question moderator got knocked off chat. So if anybody has
- a question, I guess the thing to do would be to put it generally in chat or directly to Sunny. Either
- one of those will work. There was actually a question in chat from Ellen. We've seen so much damage
- done by the current administration.
- Do you see that one, Sunny? I do. And I can read that. She has posted, we've seen so much damage done
- by the current administration, not only to our internal affairs, but also damage to our foreign relations.
- What are you going to tackle first to reverse
- this damage. And this may need to be our last question, because we're going to need to leave time for
- final remarks from each of the candidates. I would direct that question first to Brad Meyer. Do you
- remember the question, Brad, or did you see it? I've got it right in front of me. OK, thank you. The
- first thing that we need to do is we need to get our system of government back up and running again.
- Congress has completely
- abdicated their responsibilities. They have not done what they need to do for oversight. We need to
- ensure accountability. Kyle mentioned, which is true, that we have impeached the president a couple
- of times. And we still have to swing at that pitch. And we have to swing at the pitch of holding our
- leaders accountable and at least going on record to say, this is not what our democracy is about.
- This administration over the last eight years has done, or seven years, has done enormous damage to
- our reputation internationally, and it's going to take decades to fix the problems. There is a basic
- distrust of the American government at this point. Even if Trump is pulled out, they're afraid that
- somebody new is going to come in. We're going to have to work
- If we wanna talk about external, we're gonna have to start by working internal to help people understand
- why international relations is tied to their life, why it's relevant to them so that they care, so that
- we can overcome this poisonous isolationism and short-sighted isolationism that has gripped us and our
- foreign policy. Until we can overcome that,
- We are going to have a lot of trouble on the international front. And if we don't, it's going to hurt
- us economically. We're 4% of the world's population and 33% of the world's wealth. And a lot of that
- has to do with friends and allies abroad. And we need to get past this isolationist fever that we're
- in right now. And in Congress, I'll do what I can to help with that. Thank you, Brad. Kyle.
- I would ask you to weigh in on that question now. Yeah, unfortunately, we have a pay for play system
- right now in the Trump administration. That's very apparent. It's very apparent. And our allies, I think,
- have got that message.
- Don't come knocking at the door unless you have something to offer Mr. Trump and his allies.
- So, unfortunately, that's where we're at. Very corrupt administration by any account. I think everybody
- sees it. It's out in the open. And unfortunately, nobody cares, especially on the Republican side. That's
- what they do. No, not really. No, this is unprecedented what they're doing relative to, I mean, we've
- all seen Trump's
- net worth, I think it went from one billion, now it's up to seven billion, right? It keeps up and up
- and up, right? So this is what we got. So it's going to be a massive cleanup, you know, when the Democrats
- take control relative to investigations, impeachments and the like. But in 2028, there's going to have
- to be a new presidential reform act relative to money on the politics, ethics and the like. But the
- answer to the real question is,
- How do we get along with our allies? I mean, it comes back to credibility and not criticizing them,
- right? You know, treat others as if you'd want to be treated. Not wanting to go take over Greenland,
- which is a sovereign country. You know, treating them with respect, not saying lewd and vulgar comments
- to them. Treat them as if you would want to be treated. It's that simple. Because the more allies we have,
- We don't need as many guns and bullets when we have to go to war and protect our interest. Thank you.
- Thank you, Kyle. Jim, would you like to weigh in on that question for us, please? Yes, I would. And
- I'll note that even though Brad and I disagree on a few things, we agree on a lot more things than we
- disagree on. The statement that Congress has abdicated its responsibility, I agree with 100%. The question
- is, what's going to happen
- when the new Congress comes in. And I think there's a good chance that the Democrats will have control
- of the House, maybe even a small majority in the Senate. However, it's not gonna be possible to impeach
- the president. It's not gonna be possible to overcome presidential vetoes, to pass a lot of legislation.
- My suggestion is, rather than start a whole bunch of investigations and try to bring people forward
- and investigate,
- that we make a deal with the Republican minority in Congress. That is, we won't impeach the president.
- We won't waste your time doing that. Instead, let's work together to try to solve some of these big
- problems we have. And here's some of our suggestions. And so I would take Brad's suggestion about trying
- to work with others to try to do that, because if we just, if the Democrats just come in and start a
- whole bunch of investigations and make a lot of noise,
- we're not going to make any progress at all in the next two years. And the Democrats might well lose
- the next race because the public will be fed up with the fact we didn't get anything done. So it's a
- double-edged sword. That's all I have.
- Thank you very much, Jim. I want to commend all three of the candidates who are present today for addressing
- the questions in a straightforward but respectful manner. I think now we will turn to your final remarks
- and we will start with Kyle Roark. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate your time this morning.
- The reality is, is our constituents, assuming I get elected, they're gonna expect results.
- Like Jim just said, they're gonna expect results. You can do some investigations, but you have to be
- able to do that at the same time you gotta pass meaningful legislation that provides a meaningful financial
- impact to our constituents. Meaning, what are we doing to lower gas prices? What are we doing to lower
- grocery prices? What are we doing to lower housing costs, rent prices?
- What are we doing to improve healthcare costs, right? They're gonna want results and we very well could
- lose in two years if we don't provide some results. Show me the results. At the end of the day, that's
- what has to happen. So if we can walk and chew gum at the same time with some investigations but at
- the same time provide meaningful legislation, so be it. I don't know if that's possible or not.
- But regarding my candidacy, obviously I believe I'm the most delectable here. I have the blue collar
- background and military experience to understand DOD and what's happening during wartime. I've done
- recruiting, I've done, I was a civil engineering officer in the Navy, and I'm a electrical engineer
- by trade. And I feel like I can pull in those independent and those disenfranchised Republicans with
- my financial
- message that impacts them directly. And I have the experience of service. I spent 11 years in the Navy,
- and I have that background to substantiate people who trust me. I have that background and that experience
- to say, this guy actually put his name in a hat and signed up to be a Navy officer. Thank you, Kyle.
- I did it for 11 years. All right. Thank you. Appreciate your support. No problem. Thank you so much.
- I would turn next to Jim and ask him for his final remarks. Yes. When you decide who you're going to
- vote for in the primary, you need to evaluate the candidates in two key areas, message and personality.
- In terms of message, is it a clear and concise message that the candidate's delivering?
- that's consistent with basic democratic principles, but can also appeal to independence in some Republicans.
- This is a message that truly reflects the desires and the concerns of the people in the district, not
- what we think their concerns ought to be. I very much think that winning message is economics. In terms
- of personality, I think you have to ask yourself, can this person stand toe to toe
- with the Republican opposition and not back down and call out the horse manure that she's going to throw
- at us for exactly what it is, manure, OK? We're in a street fight for our democracy right now. I wish
- it wasn't so. I wish we could get back to rational debate about high principles, but that's not going
- to happen this time or in the near future. We need a fighter to fight for us. And so if that's what
- you want, I'm your guy.
- I think I'm the best candidate for the job, and I hope you don't vote for me on May the 5th. Thank you.
- Thank you, Jim. Brad, your closing remarks. Maria's point about systemic change, I think, is fundamental.
- This election isn't about one or two problems. It's about the future of our democracy, and our democracy
- wasn't our inheritance. It was something that our forefathers gave to us in trust for the next generation
- and how we leave it is going to be important. And it's clear that our systems aren't working for us
- and we need to leave better for the future. Economics is important. And I'm not, I'm talking about making
- systemic changes. I'm talking about making practical changes. I'm not talking about changing the color
- of the overpasses. I'm talking about things that are make a difference in people's lives.
- But we also have to remember that if we focus just on economics, if that's all we care about, then eventually
- we will end up selling our democracy for a bowl of rice. We need to fight for our freedoms and we need
- to fight for a better country and a better future. And fighting isn't just arguing, it's about changing
- minds and convincing people that we have better answers.
- And we do, as Democrats, have better answers. We tried running in the last election. Tim Peck ran as
- a centrist, and he got beat. And he got beat 11 points worse than other Democrats that didn't run as
- a centrist. The centrist message, Republicans don't cross over for Republican wannabe, and Democrats
- don't turn out for a meet.
- a Democrat that isn't a Democrat. If you look at my business card, it says Democrat for Congress. I'm
- proud to be a Democrat, and I'm not going to hide my values and my priorities. Vote May 5th. Thank you
- so much, Brad, for those closing remarks. We want to remind everyone that early voting has already started.
- An election day, as a couple of candidates have already mentioned, is May 5th.
- I want to, at this point in time, give a shout out not only to the candidates for participating, but
- all of you who joined us to ask questions and hear answers. I also want to thank Community Access Television
- Services for recording this forum. Our other partners include the League of Women Voters,
- Bloomington, Monroe County, League of Women Voters for Brown County, and League of Women Voters for
- Johnson County, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Kappa Tau Omega Chapter, the Indiana University Political
- and Civic Engagement, Monroe County Now, the NAACP of Monroe County, South Central Indiana Citizens
- Climate Lobby, and the Unit
- Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbus. We thank all of them for joining us in sponsoring this.
- Please make sure to direct people to vote 411 if they want to learn more about candidates in their area.
- We wish everyone the best results possible on May 5th. Thank you. Thank you, Sunny.