435 Podcast: Southern Utah
Explore the heartbeat of Southern Utah with the 435 Podcast, your go-to source for all things local in Washington County. Stay ahead of the curve with our in-depth coverage, expert analysis, and captivating interviews. Whether you're a resident or visitor, our podcast is your key to unlocking the latest happenings and trends in St. George and the surrounding areas. Tune in now to stay informed and connected with our thriving community!
435 Podcast: Southern Utah
The Last Line of Defense: Willie Billings on Utah's Endangered Caucus System
In an era of political polarization and media distrust, Willie Billings offers a refreshingly nuanced perspective on local politics as the newly elected Chairman of the Washington County Republican Party. His mission? To save Utah's unique caucus system from the encroachment of outside money and influence that threatens to transform the state's political landscape.
Billings passionately explains how SB 54—the controversial "dual path" legislation—has undermined the caucus convention system that once allowed ordinary citizens to participate in politics without massive financial backing. He shares the startling revelation that even Senator Mike Lee admitted he would never have challenged incumbent Bob Bennett in a pure primary system, demonstrating how caucuses create pathways for new voices that money-dominated primaries shut out.
Whether discussing economic policy, media manipulation, election integrity, or hunting adventures in Alaska, Billings offers wisdom gained from 37 years in investment advisory services and decades of community involvement. His mission now is to educate voters about the value of informed political participation before Utah's unique political heritage is lost forever.
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[00:00:00] Intro.
[00:06:13] Media's Influence on Public Perception.
[00:12:05] Investment Advisor's Market Perspective.
[00:21:19] Understanding 401k Management.
[00:30:16] The Caucus System vs SB54.
[00:47:12] Water Challenges and Growth in Southern Utah.
[01:00:11] Political Elections and Recounts.
[01:22:29] Hunting Stories and Self-Sufficiency.
Well then, developers, big ones that come in from out of town. I'm not talking about the local developers and local builders. They want to maintain the heritage of the area, but it's these giant guys that come from all over the nation and they come in and they're just trying to maximize profits. They don't care what your town looks like 10 years from now. They want to maximize profits. We have to have a master plan that says we want to maintain the heritage of the area, and so we've put this master plan.
Speaker 2:From the Blue Form Media Studios. This is the 435 Podcast, the pulse of Southern Utah. If you're looking for a nice cup of coffee and you're in downtown St George, FS Coffee Co that's where you're going to want to stop. It's right there on the corner of Tabernacle and Main Street in downtown St George. So if you've got a bicycle, ride it on down there and grab a drip of coffee and tell them the 435 guys sent you, You're in finance, that's your primary job.
Speaker 2:You've done that for 35, 37 years. So everybody has an opinion on this. But, like you know, there's most of the economists are saying this trump tariff thing is not gonna pan out the way he's saying it's gonna pan out. I think it's a poker game. I think he's using this for negotiating on other things from the foreign policy. I'm not sure he's as uh motivated to um, I don't think he really believes that Americans are going to start like working in factories again. I think he's looking at okay, we need to incentivize American businesses to put money into, you know, uh, manufacturing 4.0, like automated manufacturing to make us competitive, but pushing the weight from a labor-based manufacturing to an automated manufacturing system. And the only way to do that is if it's cheaper to have a bunch of humans doing it for pennies on a dollar and we keep buying that stuff, then there's no incentive for us to ever get into that 4.0. This is what I think he's playing this kind of game. Okay, but what do you think?
Speaker 1:I think he plays chess way above what other people know. I think he's one of two steps and people say, well, you're just a Trump lover. I don't know that I love Trump, okay but I think he's a master at strategy and planning ahead of what any other politicians, because he's not. He's literally a guy that's been steps ahead of everybody else. And so, uh, with the tariff thing, there's a lot of economists I won't say a lot.
Speaker 1:There's some economists and some talking heads out there that act like they know what the heck they're talking about and they don't, uh, that are saying that the tariffs are going to destroy the economy.
Speaker 1:The way I look at it, after 37 years in investment and investment advisory services, is that it's going to hurt initially, of course, with the down market, I've had lots of clients calling me the last two, three weeks right, and I look at their circumstance and I try to decipher their goals and what we really need to do, but most of them are listening to things, the doom and gloom, because that's the stuff that always gets purported out there. If you go back 2001, 2002, when the economy was down for a long time and people lost enormous amounts of money, back then too. The news media didn't talk about that. But if you look at the dates, it's far worse than what's happened in the last three or four weeks and that was a long-term thing. But they were silent. The news media was absolutely silent on that because most of them support the Biden agenda and they didn't want to talk about the realities of what's going on.
Speaker 2:And they're just well, I better not say what I think of the news media right now, but maybe I will, maybe I will. If they're listening to this, they're probably not listening to the regular news media.
Speaker 1:And if they are, they're getting the little blurbs just like the little tiny clips. Then I'll say this and this isn't about. Obviously this isn't a clear picture of all journalism and that type of stuff, but the news media has become a source of controlling the way people think and they become master manipulators. And so the joke I have about this I actually call them the political media prostitutes, because they'll say anything they're paid to say instead of reporting the truth right.
Speaker 2:I mean my argument is that news like from newspapers to television media, I mean there was a brief window when television became the primary media source and news source for americans. I think there was a small window of time in there where journalism took on uh uh, because there was enough money in it at that time to just report on the truth and actually get it out, because it was, you know, used to be newspapers and you know, horses and and passing information took forever. But there was only a few people that controlled all of those newspapers and once we went to the television, it, it, it kind of spread it out to everybody.
Speaker 2:There was media, there was a lot of investment from lots of different businesses and there was truth in it and there was a lot of truth in it, and then it's been eroded away and now only three or four news agencies run all of the. It's almost like it's full circle. We've come full circle. So, now we're back to podcasts and you have this other alternative news sourcing that you can get because it's decentralized.
Speaker 3:Well, and that's why, you see, like some of these, like YouTube guys that are journalists and sub stack articles and stuff that are just blowing up, because I think people are sick of the yeah Well, they're sick of the lies.
Speaker 1:They're sick of the lies yeah, in fact, the lying has been going on so long and they're not even hiding it anymore, right, that there's no trust in the news media. That's why these podcasters and these things are coming up. People can go where they think they're actually being told the truth. The biggest problem in the United States right now, I believe, is nobody can tell what the truth really is. That's the issue. And so you become apathetic. When that, you become disconnected. When all that happens and because we know we can't trust the media, we don't know what the truth is because we're being told opposite sides.
Speaker 1:And when you come down to trump and these tariffs and those type of things, I literally I've been telling my clients it's kind of like a band-aid. You got on a, a sore. You can have it on there for a little bit, but eventually you got to rip that band-aid off. For off, for it to heal, and there's an initial amount of pain, yeah, but then the healing is going to begin. And so with the tariffs, I don't know how long or if the tariffs will even stay on long term, because what he's doing is playing that chess game and look how many countries now, including the EU, have come back and said, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I couldn't believe he posted on True Social he's like now's a great time to buy and you know, basically foreshadowing what he came to say three hours later, that they were going to put a 90-day pause on the tariffs. I couldn't believe that a president would do that. I couldn't believe that a president can single-handedly pump the market the way he did ahead of a huge announcement. It seems to me like why would he even say that? I just don't understand what goes on in his head.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know that he's. I think he's making decisions moment by moment based on what's happening and who's coming to the table and saying, okay, enough's enough, let's just go to free trade. But I know that the day before when the market went up big, if you look at the blip in the market the day before, it went up like a thousand points during the course of the day and then it dipped way back down because there was a, there was a fake youtuber by the name of bloomberg yeah, because that name that put out that they were going to do that uh-huh.
Speaker 2:And then all of a sudden in the white house like, uh, we didn't say we were going to do that right, but bloomberg and then the day later he does it.
Speaker 1:I'm like what is it going on? It's so well. You gotta remember he's playing a chess game.
Speaker 2:It feels like manipulation, though Like to a layman, to a normie I'd call myself still a normie, I guess like to the normal individual, like it comes off as he's trying to benefit the financial buddies. That's just what I felt like.
Speaker 1:That might not be true, but that's how I felt, yeah, and I could see why he could feel that way. But his interests are beyond our local and short-term market condition, true, and so he's doing things beyond that that. His thoughts aren't in that picture. He's saying how do we make this strong long-term? And what was real interesting is when that fake YouTuber came on the market, said that and that kind of spread like wildfire. The markets went up out of pure emotion and then the White House said, oh, we haven't heard anything about that. And immediately boom. See, back in the day, before all this immediacy of information, something could happen in China. We wouldn't even know about it, it didn't affect the American markets. But right now, if something happens in China or anywhere around the world, 10 seconds later it's all over every social media.
Speaker 1:And it impacts people's brains and they get fearful. I've been trying to talk to my clients and say listen, look at what's happened the last four times the markets crashed like this. Okay, you know 1980 and 84. What happened after a crash? 100% of the time, the next five years it was up 100%.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when it crashed in 87, 88, it was two years 08, 09, 02, 03, 01, 02, 08.
Speaker 1:I mean, I lived through that as an investment advisor and I watched clients' accounts go down. But what was really bad was the 401k market those people that have 401ks back in then I I back then I didn't manage the 401k portfolios at all and the school teachers would come to me sitting at a basketball game, or the janitor or the principal, willie, my 401k is down. What can I do? And I wasn't their advisor. They're just in a 401k and 401ks are horrible. As far as this was 08 0 0 0. 1 0 2 0. 8 0 9 both those big crashes.
Speaker 3:I remember I remember just starting college in 0, 0, 8, 0, 9 and I was talking to and we lived. We were living in downtown salt lake city and there was a and we lived in um a tiny little studio apartment, but in a super wealthy area downtown salt lake, and talking to my neighbor and he was, I mean he had to have been in his late 70s, early 80s and he said my retirement's completely gone.
Speaker 1:He's like I have nothing.
Speaker 3:As of today, he's like I have nothing. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:And what happens with the 401ks is the administration of the 401ks have done a terrible job of informing 401k participants about how they work and what their options are. They don't know anything about it. Yeah, you ask the average 401k participant why did you pick the funds you picked? They can't give you an answer. I think I've heard oh, the math teacher said I'm going. Oh, that okay. Why would you ask the math teacher? Because he does math, he's now the investment advisor? Yeah, right. But because he does math, he's now the investment advisor yeah, right.
Speaker 3:But there's nothing there. My experience in the corporate world is a lot of especially, you know, like employees and middle managers and stuff like that. They just pick their 401k plan that their employer provides and they don't manage it. They don't do anything, they just, you know, if it's like Merrill Lynch or something they just set it and forget it.
Speaker 1:That's been my forte the last 25 years and when I recognize that neglect, that literal neglect, there I've been like I'm an investment advisor representative that can handle and manage, actually internally manage 401k participants inside the Utah retirement system, IAC, Home Depot, all these things and the reason I got into that I recognized. Nobody knows about this. They don't even know the rules. They don't know the 59 and a half rule, they don't know the age 72 rule, they don't know any of them. And people lose enormous sums of money and when they hit 59 and a half they can actually move that money while they're still employed and they think they can't move until they leave employment. Yeah Well, at 59, if you don't move your money into something that has growth and safety and the market goes down like 08, 01, and 02, and 08, you're never going to get that money back to where it was before. You need the money in retirement, so we have to get it out of there and then put it in something that will grow but has some defense too. So maybe bottom line is.
Speaker 3:you've been there, done that, you've seen a lot of different things. At the the current moment, you're not freaking out, no absolutely not.
Speaker 1:No, because what what trump is doing has short-term uh pain, okay, but long-term if you think about the fact that he's stopping us paying hundreds and hundreds of billions, or even trillions of dollars in tariffs to all these hundreds of companies or countries, excuse me if that stops well, that's a massive influx of money that's now not leaving the United States and we're now getting fair trade or even tariffs on that. That's a complete reversal of revenue streams. Yeah, completely reversal.
Speaker 3:I think about the and this might be a little bit of a tangent, but, man, I think about the and this might be a little bit of a tangent, but, man, I think about the hundreds of thousands and probably millions of jobs that like, if they came back to them or they, or if they came to america, how beneficial it would be in the long term.
Speaker 2:Maybe not in the short term, right, I mean if but I still go back to the point is like is this actually going to end it? Like is there going to be a manufacturing boom with a lot of jobs? I don't know. Like, is Apple going to start making phones here? They're not. They're going to go to India.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, I think they've already. They've made that plan in 2020. When they started having the issues during COVID, they're like we probably shouldn't have all of the manufacturing of our iPhones in China and they started moving them into India, and so I don't necessarily think it's going to necessarily bring back jobs the way he says it will, but he's a politician too, so he's going to say the things that are going to sound good to people to help them get elected. It's part of the game which I've heard you talk about like not wanting to play the game, because politics has this element of you have to. You have to say certain things in order to get elected, even though the actual consequences of these actions might not necessarily benefit that constituency. It's the most unfortunate part of politics is, when you are honest and truthful, you typically don't get elected Sometimes it doesn't work.
Speaker 1:No, that's exactly right. What's interesting about that? I was talking to my wife the other day. I've been involved for 20 some odd years in this and I've seen the federal delegation, the state delegation, our local delegations, and what's interesting is a very high percentage of. Well, let me put it this way If you polled the voters out there and said what type of person do you want elected, they're going to say we want somebody that's going to tell the absolute truth.
Speaker 1:We want somebody that's going to be bold and speak up for us and be honest and tell the truth and ask all the right questions that are uncomfortable to ask but need to be asked. That's the type of person we want to elect. But yet when you look at a lot of the current legislators in either sometimes it's even municipalities, but county, state and federal those that have been in there a long time who do they want elected? It's not that one. They don't want somebody coming in there mixing up their game plan. They don't want somebody coming in there asking the tough questions which may pull back the sheets on what they've been doing. So there's a conflict between what the elected officials want and who that person is, and what the people want, and you're right. Though, if you tell the truth and you're bold, you're probably not going to get elected, because all of the elected officials will campaign against you. Right, and I've had that happen to me. Yeah, when I ran for the House and I lost by seven votes, 100% of the elected officials weren't for me, because they know I can't be manipulated. Right, I'm going to tell the truth, and even in this election for the chairman, all of the elected officials, except my wife, endorsed the other person. Yeah, but yet I got elected. That's a signal that the people know what's going on and they want somebody who's going to tell the truth and be up there and be bold.
Speaker 2:It's also a signal of the caucus system, which we could, kind of this is a good kind of dovetailing into. It is that the, the caucus system is a smaller group of and this is the argument sometimes, it's not always the case but of highly, uh, knowledgeable voters right, like the delegates within the caucus system. Those are the ones who voted for you right, and so, uh, being the chairman of the party means that you have party members that are actively engaged, not not normies, not people that are on the outside that don't necessarily know the ins and outs from the outside, has an opportunity to get into the system because it's not dominated by money, it's not dominated by just who you know. You have to land on your own principles and speak the truth right. Think about what you just said.
Speaker 1:Normal people can get involved and get elected because of that system. Right, Because it's not money driven.
Speaker 2:Right exactly elected because of that system. Right, because it's not money driven. Right, exactly, and so so, as you are a big um, you were the vice chairman of the Utah Republican party the state party the state party during uh SB 54.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when it was coming through legislation back 10 years ago.
Speaker 2:So just a quick. Give us a quick synopsis for those who might not know about it. Get what's the what happened with SB 54?
Speaker 1:for those who might not know about it, what happened with SB 54? Well, the real root cause of that. If you remember, mike Lee beat Bob Bennett in a state convention. Yeah, and Mike Lee actually told me this after the fact. He said, willie, I would have never run against Bob Bennett if it was just a pure primary system. He said I didn't have the name recognition, I didn't have the millions and millions and millions of dollars in his campaign coffers.
Speaker 1:After 30 some odd years I didn't ever challenge him in a primary but because of the caucus system I knew if I could go visit with the people and win in the caucus, because back then I think, the threshold I think was 60%, where if you win at the convention by 60%, that is a dominant win. I mean, that's almost two-thirds, that's almost a supermajority. Then all the other candidates out in that one individual now goes to the general election. Yeah, they're the only Republican on the ticket. Yeah, because they won in the caucus by 4,000 people voting. That are all of these knowledgeable voters like you're talking about. Well, he told me that personally over lunch one time when I was the vice chairman and that stuck with me for years.
Speaker 1:But him beating Bob Bennett gave birth to the brainchild of SB 54, because it sent a message to not just local or Utah money, big money, but giant money outside of Utah that our money can't beat the caucus system, we can't buy the delegates. And so what happens? They concocted this thing called SB 54. They were, there was a group called a fact that's still in existence. Count my vote. Interesting enough that they named something like that it's like the Patriot act yeah.
Speaker 1:They name it, to make it sound really good, but really they're trying to destroy our Utah politics. And so what they did is they threatened the legislature because they had a bunch of money behind him. And they threatened the legislature that if you don't give us this dual path to the, to the primary ballot that's SB 54, we're going to run a ballot initiative statewide and we're just going to get rid of the caucus convention system and become a pure primary state. Now, I was in those meetings because I was the vice chairman of the state party. They were naming it a dual path because it was more politically palatable back then.
Speaker 1:But the reality is we just want to be like California. We want pure primaries, we want money to be able to influence the elections as much as possible. And that's what happens. When you have three or four or five or six people on a primary ballot, then you only have to win by 20% of the vote. Well, does it stand to reason that somebody can become an elected official and 80% of the state didn't vote for them? But that's what pure primaries bring. So by bringing in SB 54, they called it a dual path where people could hire groups, have them go canvas neighborhoods, gather enough signatures and if you get enough signatures. Literally you bypass the entire vetting process. You don't have to talk to anybody.
Speaker 2:I mean and the argument can be made and has been made, that you could get signatures and not actually get signatures and get on it, because how do you validate?
Speaker 1:the signatures. Well, that was the big challenge. Earlier this year, were they validated yeah.
Speaker 2:Have they ever been validated yet?
Speaker 1:I don't even know how you do it.
Speaker 3:Has Cox has been validated? I don't think so. I don't think they've ever released it. I think there's a lot of people that have been asking for it.
Speaker 1:What's up with that? Why would you not?
Speaker 2:well, because you're afraid they might find something yeah, and I I mean that that whole thing it's this is politics like. It's very interesting. I'm not saying one way or another, but it does leave this weird open avenue to where money gets into the system, where I think 90 of the people that you, you would survey as a voter be like do you want money influencing the politicians? And it's a, it's a freedom, it's a.
Speaker 2:The argument with capping finance, funds and things like this always comes down to it's a freedom of speech thing is like you're telling me I think willie billings is a great candidate and you can't tell me I can't spend money to promote him and use my resources, time and energy to promote him and so I'm going to give money and push money towards getting him elected because I am in agreement with him, even though you might have some. You know there's some quid pro quo between us. It's like well, if I do this for you, you're going to do something for me, right? Most people are like yeah, it's freedom of speech, we can't really infringe on that, but do we want the money influencing the politicians? That way, everybody would say no.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they would say no, it's just like my wife's running a ballot initiative to get term limits on Hurricane City Council of two terms. Yeah, well, it's the mayor that's doing this darn thing. And we're trying to get it on the ballot initiative because if the people of Hurricane voted in November then you can't undo it. But if the city council says, yeah, we're in favor of term limits, and they do it, the next city council can undo it. So she's running that right now. But it's the same thing.
Speaker 1:I've been asking people for three weeks now do you support term limits? And they go yeah, because we all recognize that long-term politicians get worse and worse and worse and worse. But back to this. You're talking about the money involved in politics. It's always going to be there. No matter what system you operate in, it's always going to be there. But SB 54 created a way for the candidates to use the money to get signatures and bypass the entire vetting process. So they can just now go outspend in the primary by millions of dollars TV ads and radio ads and little flyers and all this type of stuff.
Speaker 1:But let me ask you this If you're just a primary voter and you're not involved in the caucus and your entire voting decisions are made on what you heard on TV radio and flyers and emails and robocalls and all that. If your vote is based on that and you are a delegate and you've gone and actually visited with face-to-face each of the candidates, you've asked them all the tough questions why did you vote on this bill this way? What were you thinking here? What do you support? If you've done that, there's a great divide between you two as opposed to the information you've got. You're going to vote one way and you're going to vote simply on money.
Speaker 1:That's just drilled somebody's face and name into you. So it's all name recognition, yeah, and so big money wants name recognition because they can spend money on it. They don't want the caucus system because you now know who the best candidate is. You actually know that person when you feel, when you ask somebody questions personally and you drill into that, you get more than just answers to questions. You get to feel of that person's spirit and they're seeing their eyes and feel what they really are, who they really are. But you watching a TV ad heck, the TV ad and the flyers. They don't even have to be true, in fact, I've got a joke, it's just name recognition.
Speaker 2:Most of the time people are like oh yeah, I know that name. He seems like a nice guy, I'm going to go with that guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, we all got those five by seven color brochures, hundreds of them right by all the candidates. I've been telling people if you spread those all over your kitchen floor just so you can see, no, they're all saying the same thing, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that is that's why I started the podcast. I was like I can't differentiate one conservative over another except for having a conversation with them, and I'm like, well, if I'm going to have the conversation, I might as well make it available for everybody else to see the conversation.
Speaker 1:But if you knew that your buddy here is a delegate and lives around the corner, you knew that he's talked to all the candidates and ask them the questions. And now you know that, as a primary voter, and you choose to call him to get the information, that is a lot more accurate information and that will change your vote to mimic his, will, it not? Yeah, absolutely, that's. My goal in becoming the chairman is to take the primary voters and bring their votes in alignment with the delegates, because this lie that the legislators are passing on that. Well, the reason there's a difference is because the primary voters are more centrist or a little more centrist than the caucus. It's my experience that's not the case. It's the information difference.
Speaker 1:So what I want to do is educate all of the primary voters out there that they have this party that's there for them. They've got neighbors within two blocks of them that are delegates and have talked to all these people, and that's where you go for the information about who these candidates are, firsthand information. And then I want to teach them. When somebody comes by your door to get a signature, to get a candidate on there, if you sign that you're literally giving them authorization for super PAC money outside of Utah to win our elections. You sign that right there. You're giving them authorization for money to win this election.
Speaker 2:Explain that again. Go back. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1:here. Well, if somebody comes by and says, will you sign this so that this candidate can be on the primary ballot?
Speaker 2:Oh, I see what you're saying. So, yeah, if you get, let's say, cox, he gathered signatures so that he can make it on the primary ballot. You're you're saying now Cox can use money from outside of Utah, because that the? I don't know if this is true or not, but he's saying the argument is that he's getting money from outside of Utah, which a lot of, especially congressional candidates that happens a lot where they get money from other states and other areas because they have coalitions. They sit on these specific committees, right, they have influence over whether it's space and defense or agriculture or whatever. They're getting money from other areas so that they kind of are in alignment with them. So that's what you're saying.
Speaker 3:Okay, that makes more sense they're paying people to go get signatures.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can use money to pay people to gather a signature. And what are these people saying? I've had them come by my door and I've played dumb. Yeah, okay, and they'll say hey, we'd like you to sign this petition, so your vote counts. You want your vote to count? Yeah, I want my vote to count, of course. Well, if you sign this, this person can get on the ballot. We really need that. They're not giving them true information here. They're not saying that by signing here, you're allowing this person to completely avoid all of the vetting processes and go get on the primary ballot without anybody talking to them, and then big money from Utah and outside of Utah will then pile in to help that person win. So by signing it, you're signing away something that says I'm approving of giant money in and out of Utah controlling Utah elections. Now, if they knew that they wouldn't sign, it would they.
Speaker 2:I think the hard part is you have a right, you have a far right, you have a right, you have a moderate, you have a left and then you have a far left right. You have this spectrum of voter in it, and in Utah there's what? Six senators that are Democrats. I think there's like only six senators that are democrats. So you have a. Basically, if you have an r, but after your name, you're more likely to get voted in versus a democrat.
Speaker 2:But that person that got the republican nomination, so to speak, um, if they go through the caucus and this was cox's argument he said that there was a small group of far-right radicals that might have taken over the caucus system. This is this. Those, those were his words during that, and I asked about this in my interview, because I interviewed Cox as well, and so I asked him and he said I shouldn't have said it the way I did. He said he regrets saying it the way he did, but this is what he said, and so his feeling is that that caucus system has become more and more right, and so if you're a moderate and you're looking at it's like, well, I agree with this, but all the delegates are far right and the person that I might want, who is a moderate, isn't going to get elected. So how do I have another choice? Because I don't want a Democrat Right and so it's it's.
Speaker 2:I think the separation between the two, the dual path, has eroded the caucus to where the right has now. The far right has really just centered around this caucus system and said we have to protect this because it's the only way we can have our voices. You know, have our voices heard. Do you feel like that's kind of where we've been at? Because there's a divide in the Republican Party, and to me it's centered around SB 54.
Speaker 1:Well, SB 54 has caused all kinds of problems, and that's one of them. But I abhor the idea that the caucus attendees are your far right. In fact, cox has even used wording like uh, uh, radical right and all this kind of stuff. I'll tell you who the caucus people are. They're your. They're your actual true conservative people that that love the constitution. But they've been labeled far right by people that want to label them. That's, that's how the media and things work.
Speaker 2:Now, if they can label you some type of negative thing, a, a, a, I've never heard the word fascist, Like I didn't realize, like how many ways you can describe a fascist. It's like how do you just use that word and say that it means the same thing? I just don't understand Well it.
Speaker 1:People use it if you disagree with them in any way shape or form.
Speaker 2:It's just throwing that word out there.
Speaker 1:But far right's the same thing. It's true, not the same thing as fascism, but it's the same thing. By using that term, you're negatively labeling a group of people that are actually your true conservatives, that are constitutionalists, that don't want big money, but when big money wants to control, they will label you.
Speaker 2:So how do you make this change?
Speaker 1:So if the likelihood of the legislature changing the policy is zero. So how do you make the change? Well, the legislatures and I've talked to them that won't change by legislation, because the threat by count my vote is still there. They're still organized, they're still well-funded and they're threatening that if you try to do anything to get rid of SB 54, we'll run a ballot initiative and just wipe out the caucus system altogether. That's the threat.
Speaker 2:So how do you which it's been wiped out across the entire country? I think there's only like three states, right?
Speaker 1:So how do you neuter that threat? Well, you take the primary voters and let them know how great the caucus system is. And this hasn't been done. This is my plan that I've had percolating for about 10 years, and it's what Rob Axson, the state chairman, said Willie, that's the plan. And that's what Phil Lyman said Willie, that's the plan. But let's not do it on a statewide basis. Let's take the most conservative county in Utah and get it done there. And my plan is to take the other 80% of the voters out there and engage them on a mass basis, by the tens of thousands. And it's not just meetings I'm going to have. I'm going to have a lot of meetings. I'm going to do something nobody's ever done in the state.
Speaker 1:Okay, as a chairman, I'm not after this to increase caucus attendance. Caucus attendance focusing on trying to increase that is a symptom. The problem is you've got 80% of the voting republic out there that don't even know a county party exists. They don't know what a caucus is, they don't know why it's good or not. Podcasts, live meetings, facebook lives, youtube live all this type of stuff and just do it the next year and a half, two years and reach out to tens of thousands of people this way, then I can teach them two things. Why Utah is so great is the caucus convention, all these people that got elected for years. They got elected under the caucus system, but they realized as an incumbent, they would rather just spend money. Yeah, you don't want to have to go back and be accountable to the people in the caucus system.
Speaker 2:And I think this comes it's especially like focused here in Washington County and across the state, obviously because our population has boomed by inbound migration rather than just growing up within the state and just knowing it. So I'm the vice chair of precinct seven in Ivins and so we have like 900 Republicans that are in my little precinct. Only 150 of them out of the 900 were registered Republicans before 2020. Only 150 in Ivins, in my little precinct, were registered Republicans before 2020. Out of the 900 that are in just my small precinct were registered Republicans before 2020, out of the 900 that are in just my small precinct. They don't understand anything about Utah and they're mostly coming from California.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're moving from California. They have no clue.
Speaker 2:They have no clue, they have no idea, and even my parents, my mom's, like it's just so confusing. The caucus system is just so confusing. Why can't it just be a? It's so simple, the primary is so simple. It's like well, you're, you're right, that is simple. But that just doesn't. That doesn't mean it's better.
Speaker 3:And to add to that too I mean kind of going back to our conversation a little bit earlier about people moving in from California, like like, those are the people that we want here.
Speaker 1:I mean they're going to move here anyway.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, they're conservative going to move. Someone's going to move here anyway.
Speaker 1:Have you heard how they label themselves? See, when they started coming in after COVID, I was serving as a bishop, so I was interviewing some of them, and then I'm an investment advisor. People would sell their homes in California, come here, build twice the house for half the money and they'd come and make a lot with all the money.
Speaker 2:What do I do with all this money?
Speaker 1:And I would always kind of have fun with them and they would pause and be quiet and they'd say I'm from the People's Republic of California. Or they would say I'm a California refugee and I had one guy say I'm from that place that shall not be named. They don't need to be afraid of where they came from. They came here because they love it. Why do they love it? Because we don't have primaries and we have great elected officials. Where did that come from the caucus system?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does, it really does. And if you're a proponent of Mike Lee, going back to his words, he wouldn't have made it if it wasn't for the caucus system. So again, how do we do it? So you change it in Washington County? Yeah, so meaning what?
Speaker 1:We take all of the other Republicans that aren't involved and we teach them about the caucus system and why it's created such a great state, and then how devastating SB 54 is, how it's disintegrating the caucus system and it's turning us to a pure primary system, just like California. And if we can get people to love the caucus system or at least be aware that we have a party here and there's people right in my neighborhood that I know that have vetted these candidates I'm going to call them to ask them about the candidates instead of the TV ads. I'm going to have them. I'm going to teach them to the point where they know any money resource that's coming at me is based on money and not necessarily truth. But my neighbor that has vetted these candidates, they're going to give me the real skinny on the email.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the challenges I've had in my precinct is I'm like, how am I supposed to reach out to my precinct? Yeah, oh yeah, we can't give you any other information.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm the chairman. Now we're going to get you that information.
Speaker 2:Because the other thing would say, rather than me reaching out to them, my thought would be go to them and say because if it's me having to go through that, I'm thinking of it as an individual delegate. I'm like man, that's 900 people. That's a lot of work to go to.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of work. So I'm about to put you to work, mr Precinct Chairman, oh goodness. But I'm not going to load you up with an impossible task. I'm going to give you the party resources where we help get to hold those people with you. They do come to you, okay, emails or texts or phone calls. Now you'll be busy, but then we're going to set up a series of meetings in your precinct, or maybe yours and five other precincts in a general area, and we're going to do a live meeting and Facebook Live and YouTube, whatever all that stuff and webinar. Everything's going to be happening at one time so that the 200 people that were invited that couldn't be there live are sitting at their home watching it under some medium. And we're going to teach them those two things. We're going to teach them how the caucuses has created this great state, and it's easy. You look at the numbers the last 13 years we're the number one state in the United States. Yes, across the board.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, why For voter turnout?
Speaker 1:Well, no, I mean talking quality of living, blah, blah, blah, generally speaking. I mean, cox has been touting it and before Governor Herbert was saying we're the number one ranked state, blah, blah, blah, and we're in the top three in this category and this category, well, what brings all that on? It's not just because we live in a beautiful area, you guys, it's the people that live here.
Speaker 2:You know this might sound crazy, but I hate real estate agents and, after being with myself for the last 10 years, I know the good ones from the bad ones. If you're thinking about buying, selling or investing in real estate here in Southern Utah, we want you to interview us for the job. Go to realestate435.com and give us a call.
Speaker 1:We promise you're going to love us and the way we select our elected officials has created that and big money is trying to disintegrate it, and that's SB 54. And I'm going to fight the fight to take Washington County and turn everybody on to how great the system is and even if they don't get involved in the caucus system as a delegate or come to caucus meetings, at least they know that. My neighbor here here, a guy through the block right there, knows all this information and they're going to turn there for the information about the candidates and I'm going to teach all of them that if somebody comes by and asks you for a signature to get a candidate on the ballot, the answer is absolutely no. Yeah, absolutely no. You're not buying my vote.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense, absolutely no, you're not buying my vote.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, I mean it makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. Nobody's ever attacked it from this basis. They keep trying to increase caucus meetings. Yeah, that's just symptom of the problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I also hear oftentimes it's like all that stuff costs money. All that stuff costs money and we don't. I mean, historically speaking, we haven't managed the money as the Republican Party gone in Utah very well, we finally got a balance, we finally got a surplus in it but then election time comes and we send that money to other areas to help get other politicians elected. I'm like, why are we spending the money that we raised for the party to get other candidates elected in other states? I get that that's an important battle, but where do we stop? Like, why do we just spend the money?
Speaker 1:We need to help other candidates when we have, when we, when we know that ours are going to win based on things and it's that's kind of easy in Utah. But but the reality is some County parties gather all this money up and they just keep the money and they don't use it to help help people get elected. And I'm going, I'm not donating. When I donate money, I expect it to be used. I don't think anybody donates to the party for it to sit in the bank account. They want that money used to get good candidates elected. That's why people donate. Well, we shouldn't be.
Speaker 1:But I'm going to raise lots of money. I mean, 12 years ago, when I was the chairman here, I raised $98,000. My goal was $100,000. Everybody looked at me and said you're crazy, willie. Why do we need that much money? It only costs $17,500 to run the party. I said we don't need to just exist, we've got to help candidates get elected and we even gave money to Mia Love. We helped our local candidates. We did all of these things that people expect us to do, not just keep the money in an account for what? Yeah, and I'm not going to put the party in a bad situation economically, I'm going to raise a bunch of money too. Yeah, so, but this is, I'm the chairman now. Because of that, I want to. I want to change how people view the caucus system and tell them the truth about SB 54 on a mass basis. Yeah, that makes sense, all right.
Speaker 2:I got a question. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, I got a question. Yeah, aside from that, I wanted to take a little turn, and this is more of a political, like what's going on in Southern Utah, because this is a running thread in the podcast. It's water and housing. We're real estate agents. We know these things are issues. How do we grow without over-reg regulation at the local government level? Right, you know, we we have this balance between stop growth because we don't have enough water and traffic's bad, but then also we need housing for our grandkids. I know I think you have five grandkids and seven, seven, seven.
Speaker 2:You have yes, I want them living around me yes, we want them living here and so, but affordable housing runs into. There's three arms of affordability. There's the median price of the home, the wages and the interest rate. None of those three things can we really impact. So what I keep hearing from every politician is we need to build more houses. Right, and, in principle, supply and demand. You're like you have more supply and the demand stays pretty low as it is right now. Prices will decrease or at least not increase at this insane rate that we have over time. How do we deal with that density issue? How do we, how do we balance out without over regulating the local? You know, city councils and zoning regulations, all that. How do we balance these two things?
Speaker 3:well, I think. I think that hits home too, because I mean not only is the area grown a ton, but I mean hurricanes like a hundred times more populous than it was 10 years ago, when I when we moved there in 1990 there was, I think, just under 6 000 people that lived there.
Speaker 1:When my wife grew up there, there was three yeah, I think it was like your grandfather.
Speaker 2:Your uncle were like the, the, the, the canal riders were one of the cameras. My wife's uncle, your wife's uncle, yeah, the. The only reason hurricane exists is the hurricane canal riders were one of the cameras it was my wife's uncle.
Speaker 1:The only reason hurricane exists is the hurricane canal yeah, she was telling me that people died by the dozens building that canal and hung a canal along the cliffs, yeah, but that's what brought the life blood to hurricane valley, which that why is why they're the town there and um her. I'm not sure who the relative is, but the very first ditch rider, which is the person that rode the ditch on a horse at night with the light making sure it stayed flowing, yeah, and the last ditch rider was both Nanette's family.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So she's heavily rooted and that's why she ran for mayor and city council was to keep the heritage of that area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's still water challenges. There's water challenges in Hurricane, there's water challenges in Ivins and you know Washington City even. There's water challenges in Ivins and you know Washington City even.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's always going to be water challenges, but it's not about how much water we actually have available, it's how much water we have retained, have accessed and retained. I mean, you look at California. They keep wanting all this water. They would just build reservoirs for the 20 feet of snow that falls every year in the Sierra Nevadas and capture some of that water. They'd have more water than they need.
Speaker 2:But all these environmentalists shut them down. Well, the Colorado River Compact allowed. They're the only state that gives an actual quantity amount rather than a percentage of the flow. So, no matter what they get this water right flow. So no matter what they get this water right, and every, every state along the way has to restrict themselves from that water Cause they only get a percentage of the flow where they're like Nope, we always get this much, so we're going to always use this much, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they're getting water out of the Rocky mountains, right, that's what feeds that. Yet they've got the Sierra Nevadas. That that there's. It has higher snowfall amounts every year, and if they would grow a brain down there and find ways to capture and retain that water, they'd have no water problems.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was just reading, I couldn't quite remember the name of the reservoir it's Oroville Lake. Yeah, and they just can't. They can't run it right, they can't keep the water in it.
Speaker 1:That has to do with politics and who's elected?
Speaker 3:you guys, yeah, and how big a sissy, lala they are when it comes to facing that environment, that almond company, the wonderful company.
Speaker 2:That's a whole other conversation. I saw that documentary.
Speaker 3:Those guys own all of that water, yeah, and so thinking about how do we navigate this.
Speaker 2:I mean, we just keep building reservoirs and then just keep growing. Are you an advocate for continuing the growth?
Speaker 1:Well, we can't stop the growth, you guys. I mean, we have this little thing called the Constitution and people have property rights and that is a sacred thing, so you can't tell them they can't move here and build on their property. What you can do and what Nanette's main goal was in getting on the council and being mayor is to stop giant developments not your local guys, but the big boys that come in from out of town from coming and buying that 100 acres of alfalfa at greenbelt prices and put in high-density, high-rise apartments in it. Now it should be. We have a master plan for the city, okay, and if you want to buy some land and build on it, you build on it according to the zoning you bought it at. Don't come in and ask 10 times to try to force the city council to give you a zone change. You knew what it was zoned at at the time you bought it.
Speaker 1:But if you don't have a master plan, well then, developers, big ones that come in from out of town. I'm not talking about the local developers and local builders. They want to maintain the heritage of the area, but it's these giant guys that come from all over the nation and they come in and they're just trying to maximize profits, and so they don't care what your town looks like 10 years from now. They want to maximize profits, and so we have to have a master plan that says we want to maintain the heritage of the area, and so we've put this master plan and there's places for a little more high density housing for plan, and there's places for a little more high density housing for apartments.
Speaker 1:There's places for these things. But also, in the same token, you can't have everybody have an acre lot with a half a million dollar home either. There's got to be places for our kids and grandkids. There've got to be places for people that do our emergency services at the wages they make, and all these wonderful workers that are working the normal jobs out there that don't make $150,000 a year. We have to have places for them. And so what's funny is I have Californians come in here and they're they're here two or three years and then they want to shut the door. Well, wait a minute, we let you in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, so do you think, what about like, in terms of like SITLA and how SITLA operates? Do you feel like that's just one of those parts it's out of our control? Like thinking of Desert Color. You know they basically had big, they built a city. They built a city on a piece of SITLA land and you know, really St George didn't have any say in that right, washington County doesn't have any say in that.
Speaker 1:That's tough when you got a government agency like that that's. I'm not sure how controlled that is in the first place um.
Speaker 2:I had kyle paisley on.
Speaker 1:We talked a little bit about that yeah, and but when they can override our county commissioners and our and our mayors and city councils and just just do whatever they want to do?
Speaker 2:that's tough. From what I understand they they don't even answer the governor so I was going to say a quasi-government agency.
Speaker 3:Well, there's a lot of those, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which I'm not saying is right or wrong yeah, I just you know, look, look, look in the constitution and tell me where special services district is lame, is named yeah, yeah, I've never.
Speaker 2:I've never seen it in there okay, it's not, it's it.
Speaker 1:it's a another government organization that leaks power from the others around it, and the tendency of every government organization is getting bigger and bigger and more and more powerful. You know, you know, bring the power to themselves. So we have to have somebody, they have to answer to somebody, and if they're not answering to even the governor, we got a real problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I mean, it's's a, it's a challenge that we're going to continue to face. Do you feel like, um, we're on the right track? Do you feel, like the local politicians just on in your connections, do you feel like we're headed in a positive direction when it comes to, uh, housing and and making zoning laws at least balanced enough to where they maintain the heritage of the area and those master plans that you've seen?
Speaker 3:I'd even add like water infrastructure, like, if you feel like add that into that question, I can't speak for the other cities.
Speaker 1:I know, I know I reckon cause I. I live with the mayor. And so we we we have conversations when she comes home with you would not believe.
Speaker 1:So she is a true statesman or stateswoman for the people? She, yeah. So she is a true um statesman or stateswoman for the people she is. That's the person she is, and so everything, all the decisions, is revolving around what's best for people. But that doesn't mean everybody's happy with you, because a lot of people get all tied up in there. They're one thing that affects them, and if you didn't help them get that done, well, you're not a good mayor, right? So you know you can't please everybody in this game. You shouldn't even try or drive you crazy. But as far as I can't speak to the other cities and what they're doing, that. But from a water perspective, I want to warn everybody government or government agencies like to gather and centralize power unto themselves and money unto themselves, doing it by, uh, manipulating and manipulating data or withholding data, and they like to get people to what's the word I'm looking for? Go along out of fear.
Speaker 1:So whenever people say we're running out of water, we're not running out of water, we're getting low on the water we've currently accessed and retained. That doesn't mean we don't have vast amounts of water to access, we just haven't accessed it yet. I mean, I've had geologists tell me there's massive amounts of water flowing under Hurricane, under Enterprise, but we haven't tapped into it. My wife is the mayor. She's drilled, I think, three or maybe four more wells and they're pumping out enormous sums of really, really good water. And then Tokaroville Reservoir, which Hurricane owns the water coming out of that. Every time they re-drill in there it doubles the supply. So we have water, but how do you get people to comply with your demand? Scare them, fear them into compliance. And that's what government agencies are about. And that's how they convince you that it's okay to charge more money. We're running out of water, you guys. That's not true.
Speaker 2:Interesting, that's an interesting point what do you got?
Speaker 3:Jeff thing that's. That's an interesting point. What do you got, jeff? I mean, what water waters? You can't live without water. Right, we can't grow without water.
Speaker 3:People are going to keep moving here anyway yeah that's one of the I mean the american, the American dream. When you hear the American dream, it's centered around buying land, buying property, right, and so we have the ability to do that. And there's always this small contingency of folks, whether it's on social media or at city council meetings or whatever that are just they moved here at one point in time and they don't want anybody else to move here. So, you know, as citizens, as people that are driving on the roads every single day, how do we, how do we deal with that and how, how can we be like what's the right word? How can we be good stewards of the area that we live in and grow in a right way? Because we can't. Just. Well, rob and I were having this conversation a couple of days ago. Maybe we can, and what that would look like. We can't necessarily just stop issuing building permits. I mean, maybe we can. What would that look like? Probably wouldn't look very good. Maybe, I don't know, that would be devastating you guys.
Speaker 1:The price of homes would skyrocket If you close the door and say nobody else can. That's market manipulation.
Speaker 3:Well, I always look at like a Scottsdale or Boulder. Colorado is a really good one. I lived just outside of Boulder for a few years and I mean Eventually we get there where we just can't build anything else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, eventually.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, I mean the Kempsey Gardner Institute. I think, if I remember it from one report said just from, based on a topography perspective, the area can handle about 800,000 people for everything that we need. Now I don't know if we'll ever get there, but you know, I bring up Boulder, boulder, colorado, because it's nearly impossible to get a building permit. And Boulder, colorado, and eight years ago the median home price out there was a million dollars, yeah.
Speaker 1:So well, when you slow, when you, when you stop people from building and then the premium price of the homes go up right, well, when a price is out of citizens being able to live here, you know you can't, you can't manipulate the markets that way and and and interesting.
Speaker 3:Interestingly, most of the people that are vocal about that are people that made money in other parts of the country, retired here Now they don't want anybody else to move, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they moved here because it's a great area and you got the secrets out of, especially about hurricane hurricane. I don't even like to come to St George. I come over here to go to the temple and outside of that, I got everything I need to hurricane now Because people are complaining about the traffic on SR-9 going through a hurricane.
Speaker 2:Well, that's how you get to Zion.
Speaker 1:But if you go a block off of State Street, what traffic we have. A great country living here, the standard of living and the quality of life and the freedom we have is unbelievable in Hurricane and here I'm talking about that because it's true. But we can't stop people. But what you can do is through planned growth. We have a master plan that says this is going here, this is going here, this is going here. And no, you can't change our master plan because you want to make more money. You know what we really need. We need truthful developers and contractors that are I'm not saying they're not, but we need truth that say I want to come in and truly participate in building affordable housing and then actually do it and not immediately get them built and then jack the price up to market prices.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the hard thing and I've talked to Chris Mayer-Hart about this is you could build it affordable out of the gate, but as soon as it's finished, how do you keep it affordable? You can't.
Speaker 1:Because people are willing to pay money to come here. Yeah, you can't force.
Speaker 2:So it's a subsidy right, and the person that takes a hit is that initial developer, but then it transfers to that that home buyer, and then the home buyer moves, or the home owner the current homeowner now then moves and just makes up that difference. It just goes into that individual residence. So so then it's a lottery Like who well then, who gets those affordable houses?
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, there are ways of doing it. I don't know the exact law or the program, but there are ways of doing that where you can control that for a 10 or 20-year period of time. When somebody else moves in there, they go into it, understanding your body. Yeah, he's talked about doing deed restrictions on them and saying, hey, there're going to, we're going to sell these.
Speaker 2:And the value, the ratio of that value of the land to the house stays that same ratio and, you have to believe, be below this when you go to sell it the next time.
Speaker 2:But then it's like, well, where's the enforcement mechanism, like you add in all of these other like bureaucratic functions into it and does that actually? Is that actually going to work, or is it even legal? There's been lenders that say, well, if you have a deed restriction on it, then the lending doesn't qualify. So then you you can't get the affordable people that need it because of FHA rules and Freddie and Fannie Metz. You know like you get into this cascade of all these issues where we think we have this problem solved but then you have, you know, all these other things that are out of our control keeping it from happening.
Speaker 1:Well, human beings have an innate ability to screw everything up. Yeah, we do, you know, and it's all based in money. Yeah, and so it's a problem. It's a good problem, but I think through proper zoning and sticking to your guns on the zones and controlling how your city looks, because you can control that growth to some degree by by sticking to zoning and not a good point and not just rubber stamping. I mean, before nanette got in there, the hurricane city council had rubber stamped almost every zone change that walked in the door, and I don't quote me on this as far as this the stats, but I think there was something like 21 000 building permits issued.
Speaker 3:Well, I think part of that too was um has to do with the fact that Hurricane is the largest geographical city in the state.
Speaker 2:Third Third so close, yeah, but it's the biggest in the county, biggest in the county for sure Until Washington annexes Warner Valley. That's what their plan is, if they can actually do it or not.
Speaker 3:So from a city standpoint it probably was easy to just rubber stamp everything because there's so much space. But that's not really the case anymore.
Speaker 1:No well, there's still lots of land to do it, but the rubber stamping is a derelict of duty. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, you're on the city council or the mayor, especially city council will have all the votes. Your job is to be the mediator between the government and the people. That's why you got elected by the people is to discern, yeah, yeah, and mediate that. And local elections matter folks more more so than federal, absolutely Cause that's the people. Those are the people that are going to be voting, affecting your day to day lives right there in your own town, and people come out to vote for those less than they do on a federal level and it's just because they don't understand.
Speaker 2:But it's very important and that's the interesting thing about doing term limits right. Is that now you have this battle. If you have two terms, now you get this rotation within the city council is that you might have a couple of great city council members that have the discernment, but then one election comes by and then now, all of a sudden, you don't have that person anymore.
Speaker 3:I think that's the argument against it is that it's not quite enough time to really build something solid.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well you could go for two years or two terms, excuse me, which is eight years is a long time, okay? And then you can go to be the mayor if you wanted to, or if you are in two terms in one position but you want to do, you can go out for two years, which is a half a term, right?
Speaker 3:And then run again.
Speaker 1:And then run again and people have said well, willie, what about people like Nanette? Well, we want to keep her in. There's other good people that can do this, and if we can't find anybody, that's a bigger problem. Yeah, that's a good point. It wasn't meant for people to stay in here long term. Anybody that's planning on staying for years on end, more specifically as their career, that person is, if not right now, they are a future problem. Because people get an office and the longer they're in there they're making all this money and that's their career. They start to become bullyish, they start to become less attentive to the people because they've been there so long and they know better than the people.
Speaker 2:I had one legislator say Willie, I just see it from a higher, a higher level. I said you're supposed to see it from our level. Yeah, you know, I'm not. I'm not going to call out any names, but there's some state legislators, uh, in our county, that it, it seems like. You know, I've been in the game long enough to where I don't really have to listen to what anybody says, and I know I'm going to get elected.
Speaker 3:So there it is you know, I uh, I entered, I've watched.
Speaker 2:We've watched it like right at the local level. If it happens, you know, so close to home, it's it, it's absolutely true that was like my.
Speaker 3:One of my introductions into politics was I interned at the state legislature in 2011. Okay, and uh and met met a lot of those types of folks and uh and it was, it was eye-opening um to you know, to, to talk to the the, the dynamic between talking to a state legislator who had been in there for 20 years versus, um, a new state legislator was completely different.
Speaker 1:It is, yeah, they change, they turn into robots, whether they want to or not, maybe like they might go in with good intentions yeah, but but don't we teach our children, though, that be very careful, very careful, who you associate with? Yeah, because that's going to be who you become. Yeah, well, when you are a legislator long-term and you're around that group of people, you tend to start agreeing with stuff that maybe five or six years ago you didn't agree with. Then you got all these lobbyists hammering you, all this stuff, pumping money at you, yeah you, you all this stuff Pumping money at you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got all this stuff, and they do change. They see things differently now. We see it from a higher perspective. No, you have just changed and you're not as good a representative of the people as you used to be.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But they won't admit to that because there's egos that get in the way. There's all kinds of stuff that get in the way there. So I'm a fan of term limits. Yes, there's a couple of negatives to it. I've had people say why is your wife trying to do this? We don't want her. She's a fantastic mayor. Well, but she can't be there forever. Yeah, but when?
Speaker 2:we get to Nor does she really want to. She doesn't want to. I mean, you guys, I think Like those are the policies you kind of want, the ones that are no.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't want to be the chairman of Washington County. To be the chairman, I want to be here because we have an opportunity to attack a problem and change the course of this thing. If we don't do it now, it's gone. So I want these two years to attack this problem and be an example to the other 28 counties of this is how you do this to make SB 54 irrelevant in your county. This is how you do this to make SB 54 irrelevant in your county. This is how you do it Model it.
Speaker 1:Yes, and then take it.
Speaker 2:It's like modeling at the end. So is it for sure going to be on the ballot in Hurricane in November?
Speaker 1:The term limits? No, because we're still trying to get signatures. So, hurricane people, if you're hearing this, contact Nanette or contact me or something. If you're pro, term limits this is it? This is your opportunity. We're down to the last four or five days I think I think four or five days of getting the signatures. If we don't get enough, it won't be on the ballot in November.
Speaker 2:Oh geez, See, this is important. When's the date?
Speaker 1:I think it's the 13th, oh, no, 14th, I think it's the 14th.
Speaker 2:How do we get this thing out? Okay, so we were doing it. That's why I need to do it live. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But the right way to do this type of thing is through the people, because it can't be undone except through the people. How many signatures do you need? I think it's like 1,300 signatures, and we're probably in the realm of 1,100 or something. We need a couple hundred more signatures. So we're getting close A couple hundred more signatures.
Speaker 1:So we're getting close, yeah. But I mean Nanette and I and my daughter and my son and another gal, Amy, was with us last night. It was her birthday, my wife's birthday. We went for a hike down in the Confluence Park with our kids and grandkids. Come back out, we go to leave and we drive by the Hurricane City ball fields. Well, there's little league or tee ball games going on all in the outfield and there's like 300 people there and we say let's stop and go get a bunch of signatures. So we all just converge on there and said are you from hurricane? You from hurricane and got a bunch of signatures like that? Nice, so we're trying hard in it.
Speaker 2:So I think it's you have anybody who's like?
Speaker 1:no, I'm not signing that um, it seems like I haven't personally had anybody say that. Um, I have had people say, but what about when we get somebody good? And I've had people say, well, that's not in the constitution. Well, it kind of is. The president has term limits, yeah, and so, you know, most people agree with term limits and I think, I think the the the positive to it far outweighs the negative of doing it. You know, and and and that's just that's the way it goes, so I goes, so we're a big advocate for that right now, and it's unique that the mayor is trying to do it. That is unique.
Speaker 2:That is cool, I didn't even know that. Yeah, because I don't live in Hurricane, there you go.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, that's all right.
Speaker 2:I live in Ivins. It's the other side of it. It's like it's windy and ivans too. It's very windy and ivans too well, I'm an advocate.
Speaker 1:I I mean these people that are moving in. I I don't want to stop them, I want to control it to where it happens, right, but these are precious human beings that are moving here, and they're moving here because they fell in love with the area just like we do. Yeah, and we can't shut that door. Um, do I want to just have it grow as fast as possible? Absolutely not, and there's ways of controlling that, but in my opinion, the lord's bringing these people here for a reason.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah there's some, there's something, something brewing, okay. So last last question uh, I'm curious, the legislative session 582 bills. I mean, what's your critique on, on how the legislative session went? Do you feel like you know, especially from, like the balancing the budget, the addendum A of allowing income tax being used for public schools, that got taken off the ballot? What are your thoughts on that whole thing? Because I know you've been an advocate on both the two elections that you ran. Teachers, like funding teachers, education. It has always been a big, big important piece to you. How do you feel about what was going on there?
Speaker 1:Well, to the teachers thing, I believe that and I'm pretty strong in my beliefs here that the people that have a bigger influence on our children and their children's influence above their parents is our K-12 teachers, and I think they're a lot bigger influence than they are on the college professors as far as who those people grow up to be, but yet we pay them significantly less than the college professors, and then we pay a lot of money to go to college to get indoctrinated in a lot of cases, yeah, and in fact, our kids go to college nowadays to have and we pay for that so that these people teach our children that what well your parents taught you in the home is wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I think we need to make it very attractive for people to be to come here and become a teacher, but we need to be very, be very careful and cautious about what's being taught. Okay, parents need a bigger role in that. Parents are the largest stakeholder in that situation. Yeah, yet they're treated as though you're a minor stakeholder. Wait a minute. It's a privilege to teach my kids. Yeah, it's a privilege to teach these kids and it's an honor to do so.
Speaker 3:So I've said this before and I don't mean to cut you off, but what and I have heard a couple arguments against it. But and the dollar amount may be irrelevant, but you think about if teachers and police officers? What if the starting pay was $100,000? That might be too high, I don't know, but something significant where we would be able to pick and choose the best of the best.
Speaker 1:Well, there's pluses and minuses to that, like anything else. I don't know that $100,000 is the figure. Yeah, right, but they do need to be compensated fairly so they can, so good. I mean, barry Bonds played for San Francisco for a reason, right?
Speaker 1:And so if we want the best teachers, we have to be able to attract them. It doesn't have to be the highest in the United States, but it's got to be attractive enough where people want to come here, because, literally, we have great teachers leaving this area and they're not leaving the area because the place is ugly, they're leaving for more money. And so I've had people come to me and just argue with me to the end of the word that they only work, you know, part of the year and blah, blah, blah. But these are the people that, in my opinion, are the most influential in our children for the informative years. Right there, I think that's important. And we've got great teachers, I mean for the most part. I mean the problem is with federal regulations, you can't identify a bad teacher and get rid of them. Right, you know that's a problem. And I think, getting rid of the National Board of Education, all that stuff is a problem Measuring how good of a job they're doing is very difficult, very difficult it's not
Speaker 3:an easy thing to do.
Speaker 2:Right, and I don't know if, right now, the system that we have to measure the merit of which that they're teaching is all that great. No of which that they're teaching is all that great, and I don't know how to fix that either, which is a challenge.
Speaker 1:It's a tough one because you may get a group of kids that come through and are just fantastic and the next group of kids that come through are more of a challenge, yeah, and so that's tough, and I realize that I've talked to a lot of teachers about that and I don't know that merit-based pay is the thing.
Speaker 1:But what about incentives? What about, hey, if, if you get this done this year and I don't know how you put that together, but I promise you how to put that together is not in the brains of the legislature, that's in the brains of the teachers, the intelligent people that need to figure that out and make those proposals. So we have incentives for teachers to make more and more money if they do this and this and this, or if they accomplish this on this year. And that has to come from the ranks of the teachers, because they're the ones that really know what's going on. These legislators up there, I mean there are a lot of good people, but the reality is, uh, they don't know everything and they, they, they pass laws. I've, I've talked to him about land issues and about wildlife issues, cause I, I guide, yeah, I, I, for 20 or the 37 years I've guided moose hunts and elk hunts and deer hunts for free.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:I just love being in the hills. I've done it and I get a lot of people that call me because they know I do it for free. But it's just fun for me. I'm selfish, I want to go hunt and guide hunts, but nobody in that legislature. In fact, if you combine all of those legislators up there, the combination of them, they don't spend as much time in the mountains as I do on an annual basis. I know the habitat, I know the, I know the. So I make these recommendations on things and these legislators just look at me like nah, nah, nah, like, you know, you know, you know we, we can't, it's, it's, it's against the law to carry a bat to to influence somebody Right and you don't want to ever do that.
Speaker 1:I'm joking totally there. But when you get people that are arrogant enough because they're in an elected position where they think they know more than the actual people that spend time in the field, they've lost me, Because if they'll do that with one issue, they'll do it with all of them. They think they know better and they should be getting their information from the public. Isn't it the people that actually know? That's where the information should come from? From the public, isn't it? The people that actually know? That's where the information should come from, not the guy sitting next to him on the legislature that rides around in his four-wheeler with a gun. That's not hunting.
Speaker 2:So back to the bills. Do you feel like we've made any mistakes in this last run on the bills? Is there anything where you're like man, we shouldn't have done that.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I didn't prep you for the question, either I didn't know because I have, because I wasn't as as involved the last couple of years as I have been in the past. I didn't track the bills like I have in the past and, quite frankly, to run and be the chairman of the county party was was more of a I was convinced to do that.
Speaker 2:There's elected officials that should be doing that.
Speaker 1:I shouldn't have to do this, yeah yeah, but now I'll be more engaged and involved in that stuff and be an influence in lobbying for the right things. But when you come to talk about the 500 bills the first I heard that years and years ago I talked to the legislature. I said what are you guys doing? 500 bills really. I mean, do you realize a bill and a new law is just imposing more restrictions and more regulations on people, right? Yeah?
Speaker 3:And they don't get rid of any laws, they don't recycle any, they don't improve.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing. Here's the thing Getting rid of bad, outdated or just nonsense laws are as important as making new ones. But what I have learned by talking to the legislators is a lot of those 500 bills, are that? Because if you want to get rid of this bill, you have to run a bill to do it? Yeah, so they're doing a good job. That's a good point. Amendments to the amendments, or or just or just a new bill?
Speaker 2:Amendment a was passed by the legislator in 23,. Uh, legislate sure in 2023 to allow for income tax to be used for public schooling and other funds. Yeah, there's like this open-ended thing that Well because they had.
Speaker 1:They had income taxes only going into a bucket. They could only be spent on education and they want that. But that's so that that there's so much of the money coming in for that and their coffers are so filled right now with excess funds. They sitting there looking at it and they got these two problems over here that we don't have the money because we can't yeah, we can't pay our teachers.
Speaker 2:I'm so confused now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Right, but what they were saying was that we can't take money out of this bucket to solve this problem over here, because that bucket is only for education.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is my argument with the TRT, the transient, because the state required that we use these funds for and then half of it was to go towards marketing more tourism, which is great, and it's good because the hotels and the restaurants, they all benefit from that marketing of saying come to Zion, come to Southern Utah, come golfing and do all those things Right. So they're allocating, you know, basically 50% of the TRT funds to go towards marketing more tourism, basically 50% of the TRT funds to go towards marketing more tourism, and at the same time, that tourism is taking a toll on the infrastructure of those local economies at a disproportional rate, right, it's affecting Southern Utah significantly more than it is Fillmore.
Speaker 1:Well, emergency services, because there's so many people coming through here that require emergency services.
Speaker 2:Exactly that's why that's important and I think they were. We were talking to, who were you talking to, and that's why that's important and I think they were. We were talking to who were you talking to and they were talking about? I think Jordan was talking about how that might be on the next legislative, using it towards emergency services.
Speaker 1:Representative Ellison has been involved in trying to get some of these other funds allocated where we could pay towards emergency services and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:You lost by seven votes to Ellison. Is he a good guy though?
Speaker 1:Great guy. I have never had a single problem with Joe. Our campaign was really cool. We were respectful towards one another.
Speaker 2:I watched the Washington County Women's Republican debate. It was like you, seth and Colin Jack, because he's running opposed, but it was the three of you up there. I'd never heard in a debate so much laughter, like everybody kept laughing. You guys were all cracking jokes. This is the most entertaining debate I've ever watched well as far as joe's concerned, I, I.
Speaker 1:It was one of the things where two really good people were running joe joe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I said seth. Yeah, it's joe.
Speaker 1:And two really good people were different in the in our area of focus and what we're going to attack when we were there. So if there's something I'm sad about, I had some issues with lands and wildlife and other things I wanted to attack, and so you don't get to then, right, but Joe's a great legislator, he's a great man, he's a great husband, great father, all of that, yeah. But the problem is you can have two individuals having a clean race together, but people that support both sides necessarily aren't as nice. Yeah, and sometimes you don't have control over that, especially with social media, and so people I had people say things negative about me and I had people questioning my integrity, you know, and those types of things. And then people that supported me that they're not on my campaign team. Yeah, I don't have any control over what they say in a live meeting or what they say on Facebook or something like that.
Speaker 2:And you never say I don't want your endorsement. Please don't advocate for me. I actually have.
Speaker 1:Have you. I've actually said it. I said if you're going to treat people— this is why you didn't get elected, Willie.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1:But I'm okay with that. I mean, I've told people that people, I don't want your endorsement, I don't want your vote Because, at the end of the day, whether I get elected or Joe gets elected, is that that big a deal? Who's there?
Speaker 2:No, it's not.
Speaker 1:It's just not that big a deal. And when that vote took place because I won in the convention by 62%, which meant Joe should have been out, but he used the signature gathering path, which meant he went to the primary ballot Then we went to war in a primary election situation and that was a clean election. We talked about each other, but again we had people on both sides that weren't as nice as they should have been. But when I was down by seven votes, well then I said, okay, well, we need to do a recount, right. And then so they did and I asked for a hand count.
Speaker 1:And the reason I asked for a hand count is that during the course of my campaigning I went to 700 or 800 homes. I mean, I worked my guts out knocking on doors and almost every single door that I talked to. They were a little bit different on the political spectrum, but one thing they had in common is everybody said something to the effect of well, I don't even vote anymore, it's all rigged From there to I don't. I just not sure. Everything's on the up and up and everything in between there. That was the consistent belief system in the voting public out there, yeah. Yet your elected officials deny that that's the truth. So when it came down to seven votes, I thought they won't even talk about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like they will do everything they can to not even have the conversation. They're like I don't want to talk about voting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and because to some degree they're afraid of retribution from the governor and the lieutenant governor, all that kind of stuff. But so, looking at all that stuff, I went, okay, this is my bigger cause. We have to get the faith back in the election process. We have to have people have faith and trust in it. So what I did is I turned when I was down by seven votes well, let's do a recount, because you have to based on how close it was. And I asked them to do a hand count and they could have, because I drove up to Salt Lake City and visited with the lieutenant governor and she told me right there oh yeah, they could do that. But the then county clerk said no, it's my choice, I'm not doing it.
Speaker 1:But the reason I wanted it done wasn't so I'd win. Now, when there's only seven votes, is there a chance? You'd find enough there to yes, there is. And was I hopeful? Yes, but the bigger cause was I wanted Washington County to be the beacon on the hill that listened to the public. They did a hand count. The hand count came out the same as the machine count and we can quell everybody's fears and say look, and then be an example to the other counties and to the state of look, let's prove the accuracy of these machines and then we can settle everybody's fears. That's the only way to do it Right, and when they wouldn't do that, people were upset over that issue and I was a little bummed about it because of my intent.
Speaker 2:Is there an argument? It's hard.
Speaker 1:It's harder, cost my argument, just, it's hard. It's harder, cost too much money. Bullcrap. It's not too hard. We how long did we hand count before this, I know. And if it means we bring the faith back to the election process, it's worth every dime spent and every hour spent doing it. Yeah, but they didn't want to do that, uh. And then I had people saying that uh, well, willie's saying that that the, the county personnel are, are, uh, they're cheating or they're not honest. No way, not a chance in heck, have I ever said that. I've had people tell people that I said that, but I don't. I've said this many times. In fact, I've been booed on stages when I've said I think everybody in the county are good, hard, honest, working people. There's no nefarious thing going on right there whatsoever. Not tongue in cheek, not tongue in cheek no on right there whatsoever.
Speaker 1:Not tongue in cheek, not tongue in cheek. No, You're being honest. I've been told, I've been booed in speeches I've given by people because I've said that. But when they did the hand, I mean when they did the recount through the machines because they did the recount the statute said you had to do a hand recount audit. So when you hear the words hand recount audit, doesn't your brain move to the fact that there's going to be some type of tabulation? Yeah, Okay. So they did this hand recount on it. There was no tabulation, they just matched the actual paper ballot and the dots on it to the physical or the electronic vision. So we sat there for three or four hours Didn't even count.
Speaker 2:It doesn't count, it just validates whether it was an official ballot or not, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Were they the same? And yes, it was the same. Okay, but then people not me, but other people in the room said well, what's the tabulation? How many did Joe get? How many did Willie get? The machine doesn't do that. Are you telling me that a program doesn't tabulate? All of them tabulate, you guys.
Speaker 2:Isn't that? The first thing that a computer did was count.
Speaker 1:Especially when the name of it was hand recount audit. So that made some people mad. But what they didn't know is there were two people in that room, independent of me. I didn't even know they were doing it. They showed up, they counted every vote One for Joe, one for Willie, one for Joe, one for Willie and they were just doing it. And it was easy because a lady was saying Joey, joey, listen, and then you could look on the computer screen and see it. So there was time to make an accurate accounting and both of those people that did those counts came out the same and I won by 62% 62%.
Speaker 1:Of the random audit, which the oh, oh oh, I see what you're saying. The random audit takes all of the things and they randomly pick precincts randomly and it was pretty random. I mean there was Tokerville, Lavergan, hurricane St. They were all in there.
Speaker 2:Dang, that's a crazy percentage.
Speaker 1:And I had a statistician look at that and they said that it was 7,000 to one odds that I would lose by seven votes. But in a random audit, which they do all the time, jones and Associates do all these things and they said no, if it's over two or 3% difference, we start asking questions. That's starting on a 1%. They did a 3% sample and I won by 62% of those votes. So I was wanting to get it in front of a judge just to force them to hand recount it. And any one of the elected officials, if you got down and looked them in the eye and said, hey, if you lost by seven votes and they did a recount and they sampled 3% and you were ahead by 62%, wouldn't you want an actual full recount to make sure? Any of the elected officials, if it were them in that position, they would have said yes, yeah, of course, okay, but they were fighting me on it. The lieutenant governor was fighting me on it and so, because it's bad press, well, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, I think maybe what would have happened was if they found a problem or they just didn't like you, I don't know that they didn't like me. I've had good relationships with lots of people, mm-hmm. But I think that one of the one of the uh commissioner's friend was was Joe. He listened close, you know, and I don't know what that played into it at all, and he's a good man. I don't have any problems with him. He's uh, but he's uh, it wasn't. I don't think that they liked me, I think. If they found a problem, what does that do to every other election in the state?
Speaker 2:It's interesting. It's interesting because the thread it keeps coming back to hb54, because it's like joe went the signature route, you went the caucus route, so it's easy to like, point the spotlight on, like no, this radical right, like it's this, this, uh, they're, they're this in. There's this group of insane people that do this caucus thing and that's that's trying to take over the system. Because all these people that are winning are going the signature route. That's the ones that are winning, and so if any opportunity that the caucus you know candidate wins, it's like it's back to this game.
Speaker 1:It's it's a loss for the signature route if somebody from the caucus wins right, I've heard that just from this last election at me for because if you look at who got elected in this county, that's a conspiracy, obviously, but what I'm trying to say?
Speaker 2:it's weird that it just keeps coming back and pointing at us.
Speaker 1:It's true, because that's how they try to label it, to make it illegitimate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he did, cox for sure, labeled it that way.
Speaker 1:He absolutely did.
Speaker 2:There's no question about it, and a lot of our other legislators do that same type of thing and so, and I like cox, I'm being honest with you and I'll tell everybody who's listening I I like him because he he's a governor for all of utah he is. He is a moderate in a lot of ways. There's some things that I don't agree with, but every governor, there's going to be things you agree with it's always right yeah, but I think he's doing a pretty, a really hard job.
Speaker 2:Pretty dang good on, honestly, if I'm honest with you people on Facebook that are going to absolutely disagree with that.
Speaker 1:But you know what? Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:But just because people.
Speaker 1:Just because he's doing a lot of things good that we like, but some things doesn't make him a bad governor, because he's absolutely better than some other alternatives right, yeah, when you compare him to other states and things like that. But people have a hard time separating themselves from emotion. But people have a hard time separating themselves from emotion and if you didn't do exactly what I want in that situation, you're a loser.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's just not the case, and that's the way I feel. I might not like his decision not to sign the flag ban, right, like I think. I'm like ah, that's kind of chicken shit in my way. It's like, honestly, man, you're not signing this when it's clear that this is what the vast majority of your state wants, you're not going to sign it. You're going to let it go through and say that you get to wave this banner to say, well, I didn't sign that just because it's a political token. I hate that. I think that that's not cool. But it doesn't mean that he's doing a bad job, and not that I'm not on the majority, satisfied with the job that he's doing. Right, I'm not on the majority. I think he's doing a good job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm not. I don't think he's. I think he's a good husband, father, and I think he's done a pretty good job. But is he my, is he my choice moving forward? No, probably not. He wasn't my last choice the last couple of elections, but that doesn't mean I hate the guy. Yeah, that doesn't mean that. And people need to get back to. How you treat people in this world is how you're going to be measured, and how do people feel when they're around you? Do they feel better because you're there? And how do you treat them? That's how we need to focus on things. Yeah, that's a good point. I like that. And people are forgetting that the first great commandment is to love the Lord and the second is, like unto it love your neighbor as yourself. Well, are you following that principle or is it just when it suits you? And so we need to love each other and treat each other with respect and those type of things. But politics and athletics brings out the worst in all of us. It does.
Speaker 1:It really does the two things you're not supposed to talk about right Sports and politics, sports and politics, and it should be what we talk about on a regular basis Religion, civilly Sports and politics?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Religion sports and politics. Yeah, yeah, I mean which is why we have this podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I talk, hey, I did go back to the NCAA games in Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight back in New York, New Jersey.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:How was that.
Speaker 1:It was great, except BYU lost that first game. I don't know if any team could have beat that team the way they shot that game.
Speaker 2:It was like energy in there.
Speaker 1:Duke learned from it, saw what happened to BYU and they changed the game plan and they stuffed them. They made them put it on the floor instead of shooting those threes, that's 60%. Dang, that's crazy. Yeah, it was crazy to watch the game. I'm just sitting here going.
Speaker 2:Have you ever been to a NCAA tournament?
Speaker 1:No, I've been to conference tournaments, I've never been to NCAA, and I just really wanted to go back there where BYU is in the Sweet 16. It was just my wife and I went back there with some brother-in-laws and sister-in-laws and just had a really good time.
Speaker 3:It probably would have been more fun if it was not in one of the worst places in America.
Speaker 1:You know, I was.
Speaker 3:let's just put it this way.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying I was not impressed with New Jersey, no so.
Speaker 2:There's some good spots I've been to New York, but I've never been to New Jersey.
Speaker 3:Newark is awful, no really.
Speaker 2:Newark is awful.
Speaker 1:No, really, newark is awful. Yeah, sorry, newark, it's a tough place, terrible. That is not speaking of the people, that is speaking of the area, of the place itself. I just Now there's outlying areas that are suburbs of that. They're in the hills. That are nice places, but downtown I was.
Speaker 3:You know, new Jersey has more brown bears than any other state in.
Speaker 1:America brown bears than like any other state in america. Yeah, there's, the people live out in those hills I was talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they've got bears in them here than their hills.
Speaker 1:You're like, let me get a bear, yeah yeah, and we, like we, have you ever hunted a bear? Uh, I, I had a tag to hunt one about 11 years ago and my wife was diagnosed with cancer for the second time, and so that just shut that down. But my wife shot one last year. Oh really, yeah, she, yeah, she's doing very well health standpoint.
Speaker 3:Up in Alaska.
Speaker 1:No, she was right here in Utah, whoa.
Speaker 3:And she got a great big.
Speaker 1:If you want, I'll show you a picture of what she done.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a great big, it's kind of a cinnamon in color.
Speaker 3:It do you eat the?
Speaker 1:meat. Do you keep the meat and eat it? We eat some of the meat. A lot of the meat on a bear is not really good to eat. Oh, okay, some of the meat is back straps and some of that stuff. Yeah, but it's just, it's not like an elk.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know, we've got a freezer filled with red stag and elk meat and moose meat because I got a moose.
Speaker 1:Last year, sweet Very, I bought a freezer out of a Maverick store that they were going to tear down. You know those freezers when you walk in and it's eight feet long and seven feet wide in glass doors, yeah Well, they're going to knock it down, I said well, my wife actually said, will you sell us that freezer? The? Guy got on the phone with corporate and sold us that thing for like 700 bucks.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:It cost me 1,400 to get the condenser put in and the 220 electric. But it 1400 to get the condenser put in and the 220 electric. But it's in my garage now and so it's just this beautiful freezer in there. We got lots of yeah so. So if a zombie apocalypse comes true, everybody now knows where they can get some meat.
Speaker 3:I'm going to Willie's house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can hunker down here in.
Speaker 1:Southern Utah for a while. Yeah, yeah, between the meat we've got and the guns we own. I heard you don't.
Speaker 3:Even if you're an Alaska resident, you can kill like three moose a month with no tag or something like that. I don't know about a month, probably a year, maybe a year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and those white mountain goats. I think you're a resident. I'm actually going up there in July to do a fishing trip and then I'm going up to hunt a bear in Alaska next May Not this May, but next May. I dropped my tag. And I'm going to for a moose tag. I killed a caribou up there on uh kodiak island you, if you don't want to be around bears, don't go to kodiak island.
Speaker 1:That's the that's the hub of of the biggest bears out there. Man dang, that's crazy. Yeah, so I, yeah, I've done a lot of hunting, my in my never been hunting cool oh man, you're missing out I know, that's what I keep hearing yeah, yeah, I. I like to people ask me about these, uh, like these celebrities that think they know everything about life. I'll tell you what if they come spend about three months with me they'll learn, they'll learn. Learn something, learn. Learn the truth about a lot of life.
Speaker 2:And then downtown new york city is, uh, is only a tiny portion of life yeah, the the big apple, but it's a small apple compared to the rest of the world.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah yeah, when you see these things like, I saw a newspaper article one time that said uh, why do hunters, why don't they just go to the store and buy meat where an animal doesn't have to die? And I'm going are there people that naive in this world, I think, unfortunately. I think there are I don't think so. It's just a funny meme it's a funny meme, yeah, I hope not.
Speaker 1:Anyway, yeah, I'll stay optimistic well, I talked to a lot of people about it and there's literally people that don't agree with hunting and I'm okay. So if you want to talk about going green, all the meat I have is far superior to what you're eating. It's got no injections, it's wild fed, it's lean, it doesn't have all the fat content, it doesn't have any of that stuff in it, that's all we eat.
Speaker 2:I was watching. There's a series called Alone. It's on Netflix. It's on a couple of different shows, but they dropped 10 people. They've done it all over the world. We just watched the one that's in Tasmania. Have you ever seen it? I haven't. I've heard of it but I haven't seen it. And they have to survive and the last person to tap out wins, right, so you just go until you tap out, okay, and so, and, and most of the time it's they go until they starve. It's the person who starves the last, last, exactly that's exactly how it is.
Speaker 2:But even um, like one of the guys, he was in um siberia this was alone siberia he took down a moose with an arrow, not a compound bow. He can only take a straight bow that he made no, no, he brought it, you could bring.
Speaker 2:You could bring a bow, so you get 10 items all you get is 10 items and he brought a bow, but it can't be a compound bow, so it just has to be a straight bow. And he hits this moose and he takes it and he still was losing weight because, uh, uh, it was one of the scavenger, uh, badger, it's not, not the, not a badger, but one of the scavenger animals up there, um I'm trying to blank on the name stole the liver and like all of, like the fatty organs and everything. He. He put it up in a, in a, in a tree, like to hold all the meat up. I don't know what they call it, uh, but he put it up there. But the thing climbed up there and got all like, took the liver, like the first night he lost the liver and all this stuff. So he had all this meat but he was still losing weight like rapidly, because there's not enough fat just in the meat.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a message there. That is pure protein, pure protein. That is just, and if you want to eat healthy game, meat is the healthiest meat. Elk is one of the best. Elk is great. Red stag is fantastic, moose is fantastic.
Speaker 2:He won, by the way, Spoiler alert, he won. He did get the moose. Everybody else they had a hard time. They were pulling a couple of the guys though they were pulling fish out of the lake. That was right there. They dug ice holes and they had, uh, gill nets. They had run a gill net underneath he did as well, which is where he got a lot of his fat was from the fish, but it was. It was quite. There, was quite an abundant amount of life for, like those contestants there, it was the cold and then just shivering. You just lose calories so much faster when you're, when you're that cold. That's tough. It's pretty crazy show.
Speaker 1:I might have to watch that. Yeah, I'm gonna have to get more interested because there's like a psychology, psychological.
Speaker 2:A lot of the contestants leave because they're like I, I have to go home. I can't be alone anymore. Like it has nothing to do with, like the environment's, like I can no longer just sit here in silence with myself and try to talk to myself on a camera. I want to go home. I want to be with my family. I don't want to waste any more time sitting here doing nothing. I can see how that would be, but you know, if you keep yourself.
Speaker 1:it's like anything else. You keep yourself actively engaged in a good work, and feeding yourself is a good one, and staying healthy is a good one.
Speaker 2:And your motivation is very it blows around. So they go, these extreme highs to these extreme lows. And so a lot of the best candidates, a lot of the best contestants. They would do some type of artistic activity, like in the meantime right, to keep their mind occupied. They'd either sing or they'd make a musical instrument, or they'd do something to tell stories or create crafts and things like that to keep their mind from just going nuts. Which is pretty. It's a pretty cool show. There's this whole range of elements inside of it.
Speaker 1:What comes to my mind when you're saying all that is?
Speaker 2:Wilson yeah, of elements inside of it.
Speaker 1:What comes to my mind when you're saying all that is Wilson, yeah exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:There was a showing. I had a showing the other day in Washington and I looked down and there's just a little Wilson it was a volleyball with like the Wilson hand on it, Just like looking at me. I was like that's funny. Is this a joke.
Speaker 1:Wilson's sitting there at the door.
Speaker 2:All right, man, we're like an hour and a half, so we're going to wrap it up, thanks for coming on, man I really appreciate it. I appreciate your opportunity the new chairman of the Washington County Republican Party. Yeah, good to have you.
Speaker 1:All Republicans get a hold of us. We want to teach you how you get engaged and, more importantly— why the caucus system works and why we've got to lean into it and how to find people that know about the candidates. That's a big issue. Yeah, absolutely so. I appreciate the time, guys. Thank you very much. Thank you much.
Speaker 2:Okay, guys, we'll see you out there, thank you. Thanks for listening in. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe. Make sure you're following us on all the social media websites. We love your support. We love the dialogue. We want to continue that going.
Speaker 3:Find us at realestate435.com. We We'd love to help you find a house here in town or help you get wherever you're going.