And now from the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN Audio, The Axe Files, with your host, David Axelrod.

Since November 5th, there's been a lot of discussion in Democratic Party circles about what happened and the lessons that should be drawn. Well, I want you to meet a young leader who might provide some clues. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is a congresswoman from timber country in southeast Washington state and one of the most thoughtful and independent minded Democrats in Congress. She owns an auto repair shop with her husband and speaks for and with and not at her constituents. That's why she has, for the second straight election, defied the tide to win in a district Trump has carried three straight times. Here's our conversation. Congresswoman. It is. It's great to meet you. As I told you before we were rolling, I've been wanting to for a very long time because you've been saying things that made a lot of sense to me. And those things have been underscored, I think, by what we saw in the last election. But before we get into all of that, I want to talk a little bit about your journey and how you came to be who you are and think the way you think. And so let's talk a little bit about that. You're not a Washingtonian by birth. You spent most of your childhood in Texas. Tell me a little bit about your family.

Yeah, Yeah. So my parents met at Western Washington University. My dad had some random aunt there. And when the government shut down the universities in Mexico, he went out there to get his degree. His father owned a bus factory. They made they made busses in Mexico. And so he was going to get his degree in engineering to help with that and met my mom in the cafeteria. And, you know, they yeah, they fell in love. And and, you know, my mom's family's all in logging. And my dad's family really wasn't supportive of the relationship and had him move to another college to graduate to kind of try and break them up. And they kind of I think they kind of viewed her as a lower social class than them. And that was really important to them. And they my parents stayed together, obviously got married anyways, and my dad got a job in Texas. I think he kind of wanted to be closer to Mexico and he got a job there and they, unfortunately my family lost the bus factory when the peso collapsed. But, you know, one thing I'm I'm proud of is like the, you know, the family lore, like there's, I don't know if there still are. But when I was a kid, there were people who were still living off the pensions like my my grandfather in Mexico made sure to take care of his people and make sure that that people were, you know, respected and, like, paid. And yeah, so I my my family's quite, they're nondenominational evangelical Christians. Faith is really important in my family. And my dad was the lay pastor of a Spanish language church. It's a Bible church which I like to say is sort of like Baptist but with less hairspray. So, you know, this was Texas under the Bush administration. And so I really saw closely the way that, you know, there's a lot of wage theft, there's a lot of just, I think, community reliance like on the church, making sure that the families were taken care of and and trying to keep families together.

And and you were you were you were home schooled, is that right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My parents home schooled us all. My mom homeschooled for like 20 years. The older two. So my oldest two siblings are homeschooled till till they went to college. And, you know, they, the school district wasn't great. And my, my mom, you know, we we it was a it was a very like you know, my parents don't believe in evolution. They're very conservative. So they didn't want us in the schools also. And so it was. I loved, my mom was a great teacher. My mom is I have so much admiration for her. And just the way that I was able to kind of follow my interests and and, you know, that she's quite skeptical. Like, I remember her making fun of Sesame Street when they would have these little episodes of they're like, hug a tree. Now, hug yourself. Hug a tree. She just thought that was so funny and just, you know, I think very skeptical of a lot of kind of dogma and and what's good for people and and what you what you ought to be trying to do with your life. They actually didn't want me to go to college. My parents were like, you should start a small business. And I it's was which is funny when your parents are right because that's exactly what I did.

Yeah, you did it. You did it. But let me ask you before, because I want to get into all of that, including your choice of college, because Reed colleges isn't necessarily the one that I would have guessed, a kid who was home schooled and whose parents were deeply conservative evangelical would have said, yeah, that's the spot for you. But we'll get to that in a second. I just want to ask you a question that I've often wondered about. You know, one of the things about going to school is you have a community of classmates, and it strikes me as kind of a lonely thing to be homeschooled. And I'm wondering, was that the case for you?

Well, my brother is 18 months older than me. And so we're really close. You know, fought hard, played hard, love each other, still love each other deeply. But yeah, it was lonely. I mean, we had we had like homeschool groups. So like, we had other a few other families from the church that were also homeschooling. So there's like a, you know, there's a group of us. But, you know, that's, yeah, like, that's like five hours a week. I worked a lot. I actually worked at a horse barn starting when I was like eight years old. I put up a flier there and was like, people paid me. I think I charged $1.50 to muck out a stall. And because I was homeschooled, I could go in the morning and and take care of people's horses. And, you know, I really I really wanted a horse. And my parents were like, we don't have that kind of money. But so I just I and I did actually eventually kind of get a horse for a while. But yeah, I worked a lot. And, but yeah, it was, it was, you know, you're kind of the only kid around often. But I also, I think that like the kind of homogeneity of only being with people who are your age is not natural necessarily. So you know, I was friends with older people and like retirees and but it was it was a great education. It was also, yeah, like lonely at times.

Yeah. And then you went, I guess in after like junior high school or.

Yeah, I went to eighth grade and I was such a nerd and like, yeah, I remember like there were a couple of boys that like, spit on me in the school bus and I like, you know, just totally unaware of social norms. Like, you know, I didn't know that the older kids try and sit in the back of the bus or like whatever. And, and it's funny because they say that, I read a paper once that was like, whatever you're doing in eighth grade is kind of what you're good at. Like your brain is sort of reorganizing itself at that point. And so kind of watching and thinking about what are people doing? Why are they doing it? Like what's what is what's going on here?

'And in terms of the social conservatism, I read that you the first political event or protest that you attended was an anti-abortion.

That's right.

Event. So how inculcated with you were you with all of that of sort of conservative dogma?

I would say deeply, yeah, deeply. We weren't the kind of family that really talked a lot about politics at home. But my parents subscribed to a magazine, a conservative magazine called World Magazine. I remember that. And my family. So all my American family is in Washington state. And so we would spend summers up there often. And like I remember all of that kind of dissonance between the Sesame Street, like hug a tree and then seeing trees everywhere and and seeing the devastation of job loss. All, you know, families used to have up these yard signs in Whatcom County, probably all up and down the peninsula, to like this home supported by timber bucks and and just all the job loss and all, you know, my cousins up there who were impacted by it and and that was definitely the the worldview that I, I was I was raised with.

Yeah. It's also I mean, we'll get to this later, but it's also something that informs your worldview now. I mean, you know, one of the things that so interested me about you is that you've been very clear in critiquing how Democrats have approached working people in this country. And I often say, you know, its Democratic Party is, it sees itself as the party of working people, but we approach them like missionaries and anthropologists. You know, we said we're here to help you become more like us. Yeah. And that also is kind of the kind of moral superiority. And so, I mean, I, I believe deeply that climate change is, is a threat, is a and we can see it. You can see it in forests, in fires and floods and hurricanes and so on. But if you if you make your living in forests, you know, in logging or if you make your living extracting energy from the ground, losing the job that gives you a good middle class income, that's an existential threat, too. So at least you have to have that conversation and understand what the other person is saying. You can't come and say it's your moral responsibility to stop doing what you're doing. So I'm sure that your early experience has helped inform how you look at the world now.

For sure. You know, and like I remember going on a tour of some conservation timberland and and somebody was like, I don't know why these loggers can't just follow the science. And I was like, Well, I do, because in living memory, we were told that we needed to straighten the streambeds and remove all the woody debris and, you know. Now you're helicoptering in root wads at great expense when our schools don't have, you know, central heat or whatever. The, you know, the AC system has been there since never or the 1950s. And it's like, yeah, science. Science changes. But science also needs to be informed and and by local experience and local expertise. Like Wendell Berry says, it's probably more important for a farmer to remember that his grandmother said don't do that than it is to have a degree in soil science. And and it's, everything is so specific. Like, yes, in a lab it works this way. You need to combine that understanding with the actual specifics of what happens with frost heave in this microclimate. And, you know, so it's it's interesting, you know, to have real. To be now, you know, on on in these meetings and and and.

In Congress.

Yeah. And in this role where you're like I would not have been invited to this meeting and now I'm convening it, you know, and trying to kind of rebalance and say like, who is considered an expert? Like who who merits a seat at this table? And I think to your your point about like the sort of anthropologist mindset or like the moral superiority, I think seeing on on both sides, it's like in the same way that you don't know whether or not that stream bed really should be straightened, you don't know, you cannot legislate someone's right to abortion. Like I don't I think you don't know what that specific medical condition is. You don't know. Like, these staffer bros do not know what they're talking about, and they're the ones writing legislation.

Let's get back. I want to get back to your journey here and we'll get to the your current conundrum of trying to figure out how to navigate the world you find out there. But tell me about this Reed College thing, because when I was. I mean, I grew up long before you did. Some people say I never did. But Reed College was like, yeah, you wanted to go to sort of a lefty, freethinking kind of place that, like, all my friends in New York thought, that'd be a cool place to be. So how do you get from being the sort of home schooled, kind of cloistered, very conservative young woman to there? And then what was it like to be there coming from where you came from?

Yeah. Well, I remember going to public school and like being so offended that I had to get a bathroom pass that I had to, like, asked to go to the bathroom. Like, I felt like that degraded my self view as like somebody with agency and who wanted to learn, you know, and then going and thinking about college and seeing some of these like textbooks where it's all about like buzzwords and leadership and whatever. And I saw in the curriculum that it's like a lot of classics. It's a lot of, you know, first sources and things like that, where you are at, you are, your agency as someone who can think and learn is held in, you know, that you need to have that view about yourself to be here. We're not here to, like tell, you know, tell you what to think. We're here to think about what other people have thought about. And you form your opinion about that. And I so there was a book that came out when I was in high school called "Blue Like Jazz" that was written by an evangelical Christian. And and he went to Reed and he or maybe he had friends there or something. He was he was in Portland. And where, you know, he was like, that's how I learned about Reed College was from that book. And that's when I started looking into it. And I, I did want to go to school in the Northwest. Like I knew I wanted to end up be around my family and and and be up there. And, and that's where I have I felt like my family is and my parents moved back there actually while I was in college. So, yeah.

But they. I also read that your parents, you exercised your right to think freely, conclude things for yourselves. And so in part of that, that you became less regular church attendee or something, but you. And they were pissed about it.

Yes. Yeah. I when I stopped going to church, they're like, we're not condoning. We're not giving we're not going to help pay for Reed if you're not going to church, if you're walking away from the church, like we're not going to support this. And so it took me. I think I was there for like seven years. I paid for it. I paid for classes, like, in cash and like like I was working a lot of jobs to to do that. And and that was a grind. But I'm pretty stubborn and.

I could see. But working those jobs was kind of life changing, as well.

'Yeah, I did piecework. I worked in a factory that made iPhone cases and, you know, and, and and I was also I was running the bike co-op. And so that was that was really wild for me. I remember teaching a physics major how to hold a wrench, you know, and it's like, what is going on? You know, like you do that, like you are going to get bloody knuckles, like you got to move your hand back, you know, and seeing sort of the disconnect between maybe an academic field and like what you can't be taught, but what you need to learn for yourself and the necessity of that, to come out with a skill that's worth having, you know.

Yeah, you're wrench story makes me want to ask where were you when I needed you? But. But I digress. So you are so you met your future husband in that period of time, I guess through make repairs and so on. Is that how you guys came across each other?

Yeah, pretty much. I was actually I met him, he was working underneath an RV and I was like, who's that? Like, he's cute. I found something for him to fix and I called him up and, yeah, we started dating and and that was, you know, that was fun because he would show up and he'd come get me, you know, dirty. Like, he was, like, greasy, right? And wearing shop clothes. And these boys at Reed were very, like, there are a few that were just very condescending, very elitist, very like came up wit. Nicknames for him, and, you know, it was like to see that directed, you know, I guess I thought that was sort of like something maybe old people did. But then to be like, this is just this is this is class. This is like, you think you're better than him. You think you're smarter than him and you're not. Like, that's very ugly.

Little bit of a microcosm of the discussion we were having a few minutes ago of the larger challenge of that for people who consider themselves progressive. There was an old expression in decades past, like in the 50s: the definition of a liberal, and I confess to thinking of myself as one, was someone who loves humanity but hates people. And I've been thinking about that a lot lately. There was something else I read, which is that you organized a group to build a bench on the Reed campus as a memorial to, I guess, a friend or a boyfriend of yours who had passed away. Then tell me about that.

Yeah. Well, that was a really difficult thing. But there was a storm and and a really large tree came down. It was a over 100 year old fir tree. And yeah, I got, I got I, you know, this is like the mentality of like, you don't ask if you can do something, you ask how you can do it. And so, you know, worked with the school to be able to get this this memorial up because they don't allow memorials for individuals anymore. And we got this got this tree. We got a six foot span of an old growth fir and got, students organized it. We we cut it. We whipped it with what we call a misery whip, a two man misery whip. It's an old, you know, it's the old crosscut saw. And so I had it set up in a parking lot and on a pallet and we could get kids out there. It was during finals week. So, you know, come take a break from studying and come, you know, saw this log with us and got that that put up. And it's still there, I understand.

Let me let me ask you, and feel free to tell me you don't want to talk about it. But obviously you felt deeply enough to want to build this memorial. Was this that the first big loss in your life?

'Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's, yeah, pretty, pretty tragic. I mean, I think suicide in young men is, it's on the rise and it's, you know, you. People are people are suffering. Young people are suffering. There's just a lot of. I think. I mean, it's a it's a really brutal time to be trying to get your feet under you and and have pride and and self self-worth and I guess self-sufficiency, I think, is like a very deeply American, you know, and just, you know, young people want to be self-sufficient. They want to have agency. And and, you know, it's it's an epidemic. It's an epidemic right now.

Did you know that your friend was suffering?

I did, yeah. I think you don't know the depths, you know, but you see things going wrong and and it's, yeah, it's difficult to talk about, I guess. Still.

Yeah. You know, the the reason I ask is that everyone who's listens to, listens to this podcast regularly, and now, you know, I've done more than 600 of these conversations so they know everything about me. But you know, I lost my dad to suicide very suddenly and unexpectedly. Probably if I had been older, I might have anticipated something more readily. But it is painful to think about people so trapped in that long, dark tunnel with no light and no hope. And so I try and talk about it, because one of the reasons that people don't get help is because we stigmatize it and we treat what is an illness as a defect of character. I just I suspected that that was what happened. And so I wanted to ask you about it. We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of The Axe Files. And now back to the show. So you married your husband? Dean is his name?

Yeah. Dean. Yeah.

And you guys moved to an excurb of Portland, but you opened up an auto repair shop in Portland. But you got involved in local community issues and politics. Why? What attracted you to that? And I don't even know, how do I pronounce your county there?

Oh, Skamania. Skamania County. We're Skamaniacs. So, Dean. Dean. When I met Dean, he was running a mobile repair shop out of the back of a Vanagon, and it was like a sick setup. Like he had, like, waste oil, he had, you know, he had hose reels. He had air compressor on the roof. So, like, pretty solid rig. And I started helping him. He shortly after we met, he started renting space inside of a shop. And then, you know, when I graduated, you know, he needed help with a few things. And so I started working with him and helping him. And then we were actually living in a school bus and kinda getting chased around Portland with that. And and I knew I wanted to live in Washington. And a customer of ours actually offered to sell us some property. So we moved the school bus out there. And, you know, part of why, I joke, that we still have our freedoms.

And so then you got involved in the, you got pretty active in the community.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I was I think looking. Yeah. Looking for community and at the time I still wasn't going to church regularly and started hanging out a bit at the Skamania County Dems and just, you know, meeting neighbors and talking to people about what was going on. And our county is, is a timber county. It was it was a big producer of timber. Most of our, like it's 97 or is a very high percentage of our land is owned by the federal government. It's national forest. And so timber harvest rates and, and you know, just the health of our lumber mills, paper mills, very important. And, we don't have paper mills, that's right outside of our county. But but so yeah. Thinking about the ways that I saw a lack of regard for the local experience. Like I remember my my husband's family is, is you know, relatively they're pretty liberal and we were like driving up to the coast and we were going past a clear cut and it was like somebody was like, oh these clear cuts are so sad. And I was like, well, actually, like, I think it's. I don't think it's sad. Like I like I like I like to have housing abundance. Like I think, I think it's sad when people are living in mobile parks or mobile homes or there are RVs parked in the national forest. I think that's what's sad. Like, I think the context, like, you know, looking at the fuller picture to me is what was motivating.

'How'd that land with the in-laws?

I, you know, they were thoughtful, but, you know, but, you know, it's just a different kind of. There's a famous story about Jimmy Carter actually flying. He flew out to see, after the Mount St Helens explosion. They took him in a helicopter out there to look at it and they were flying over clear cut. He was like, my God, the devastation. They were like, Sir, that's a clear cut, you know. But that's the thing. It's like you can't look at it from a helicopter, know what's going on. It's not, it's, you know, you need to be like from there you have relationships there.

You ran for a couple of offices. You ran for the county board out there. You ran for a utility board out there. You lost both those elections. And so, of course, you did what anybody would after losing two elections for a local office. You said, I think I'll shoot higher and run for Congress.

The cemetery board would have been the next, you know. But I saw that like, you know, I really well, I love PUDs. I love our public utility. We have a very cool system in Washington state. We're right by a lot of hydro. And I just think, you know, my my degree in college was in economics. And I really love I just think public utilities are very interesting.

Yeah, they some of them have transformed the country.

Yeah. And our PUDs are really interesting because the base is they were basically it was the, the grange halls that they saw, their lock systems were, they were kind of getting shafted by shipping rates on their grain. And so they were trying to figure out how to get their products to market. And they'd started working on locks, that turned into dams, which turned into public power, which turned into PUDs. I think when you are really motivated by loyalty to where you are and to your neighbors, like you can do some really cool shit, like you don't know where it's going to go. It's going in the right direction if it's for your community. But yeah, so I, you know, I've built relationships with people from all different political stripes and I knew who was very religious about putting up yard signs and who. And I had seen, you know, at those county meetings, I had seen the local Dem, you know, the Democrats for Congress coming before who were campaigning and sometimes wearing bow ties. You know, just I mean, I would say often unwittingly condescending. You know, it was like they were doing us a favor by coming out there. Like, they didn't want to be there, necessarily. They couldn't say the name of the county they were in, you know. And I think when I went to more urban areas, they were sort of like, this person's God's gift to politics. But I knew that in our rural counties, we didn't have that experience. We felt like they were making the same mistakes that every other kind of national politician was making. And so I saw I saw after Jamie, my predecessor, Jamie Herrera Butler, voted to impeach Trump, it was like blood in the water. Like suddenly everybody was coming into primary her, and looking at all like places that had always put up Jamie's yard signs before it started putting up yard signs for Joe Kent. And I was like, Who's this guy? Because I was like, I, you know, started watching his YouTubes. And I was like, my God, he is completely out of touch with who we are. Where did they find this guy? And and also.

He was a he was a veteran, a war veteran, a right wing ideologue, I think is a fair.

Yeah. They found him. He was from Portland. He was living in Portland. And they they moved him out to Yacolt.

And he he obviously was an avenging, the avenging sort for Trump, you know.

Yeah, exactly. He ended up getting Trump's endorsement and he was just saying crazy shit online, like we should arrest Fauci for murder or seize Bill Gates' land. You know, we should, citizens should have every weapon the U.S. military has. He was talking about he thought like the elections were stolen. Culp is our real governor, you know, and just just completely. But I also saw.

Some of that some of that stuff, by the way, is stuff that people in potentially in high government positions in the next administration were saying as well. But yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Well, he also had, I saw this like other specific more vulnerability, like besides from being from Portland, was that he somebody asked at a Republican primary candidate forum to name just three lakes in the district. And we have a lot and he couldn't do it. You know and literally could have said Silver Lake, Blue Lake, you know, Lava Lake, you know, but he couldn't do it. And I was like, this is somebody who's not from here. He's not interested in us, you know, he's for a political agenda. And this is not an agenda that is oriented around our priorities or our values. It's imported from somewhere, from somewhere on line. And I had felt that like, you know, a Democrat that is not I didn't know if I could win, but I knew that I could at least challenge the narrative that all Democrats are these very like urban elite ideologues with, you know, you know, white collar. And I was like, no, we we work in the trades. I live on a gravel road. Like, I get my internet from a radio tower, like I pump my own gas, like, you know. Like I thought I could challenge the cultural narrative that that Fox News was putting out to my neighbors.

But the folks in Washington weren't big believers in that.

You know, we I had I it was like.

I mean, Washington, the other Washington, Washington, DC.

'No, I could not get a meeting with people in DC to save my life. I mean, actually, Susan DelBene was actually the only one that endorsed me pre-primary, which was great. But it was, it was quite difficult to get people to see what I was seeing and seeing the opportunity and possibility here and the urgency of the situation. I was like, you don't understand. Like this guy is dangerous.

Yeah, you just beat him again in a rematch. Which we'll talk about. But two things I wanted to ask. One is you. I read you had a bad experience talking to people in my old profession, which was political consulting. I was embarrassed but not surprised to hear about these conversations. But they were, some of them were belittling of your.

David, they chortled at me. Like they were like. Like. Like somebody was like, one of these consultants was like, you have an eight month old? Like, like hope you never want to see your baby again.

Nice. Nice.

Class act. Class act. Yeah.

I just want you to know in my own defense that, you can ask him. When Tom Vilsack was running for governor of Iowa in 1998 and was considered a very long shot, there were some consultants from Washington who were in before me. They left. I went in to pitch in. Later, Vilsack told me I hired you because your shirttail was out. And he said, he said, I figured there's a guy I can relate to. So. But anyway, you. You ended up winning the nomination, winning that race. And was it liberating to come to Washington, having not had all these encumbrances? Having not had all of?

For sure. For sure. It was like, I don't owe anybody anything. Like this is, my community sent me here like, like my neighbors brought me groceries and doorknocked for me. You know, like, this is something that is very homegrown and, like, my my loyalty and and, you know, allegiance is like. It was really, it was quite fun. It is fun.

Talk about the fun of it, because it seems to me like you are the proverbial skunk at the garden party in some ways. I mean, you were not, you were one of the most independent of Democrats. I mean, you had a high level of support for Biden, but among Democrats, among the lowest. You split with him on student loan forgiveness. You've taken a strong position on the border and you know, and a number of other issues. How has that worked? How have you have you navigated that? How have you navigated the environment on the other side, which seems a little insane right now? That's an editorial judgment on my part, but I don't think a lot of Republicans over there, if you had, if you talked to them privately, would disagree with that characterization because of the nature of their caucus. Tell me what you what you've experienced and what you've learned.

Well, somebody, actually a Republican colleague, was telling me about a past a sermon they gave recently where they were talking about, you know, everybody thinks about King David as like a king. But everybody forgets that first he was first he was a musician and then he was a shepherd. And that, like joy, is the first thing that precedes stewardship and stewardship is what is the foundation of, like, actual leadership. And but you have to have joy. Like you have to have, you have to see what is good, what is worth fighting for. And that is what keeps your head straight. It's not a commitment to like power itself, like that's corrupting. It is joy, what is good. And, you know, I think really hanging on to that and really celebrating what I love about my community and getting to I mean, it's crazy. Anybody will let you into their living room now. Like, I can go to any floor, I can go to any, you know, it's just it's fun like getting to go to shop classes and tell kids like, yeah, like the congresswoman wants to meet you because she thinks you're cool, like. And, you know, listening to people and and with curiosity and humility and figuring out, like, what, what, what can I do here? Like what? What do you, what do you need? Like, what can I do?

Isn't that in some ways the challenge for the Democratic Party? Those words: humility, curiosity. It seems to me that, you know, what is lacking is not a desire to be helpful. In the main, it is sort of a respect. The idea that, yeah, those people who make things and build things and transport things and care for people and do all these things that actually make the country go, they deserve our respect. That's good work. That's hard work, you know? Isn't that sort of the essence of what we're talking about here?

Yeah, I think there is not a. Like, I think respect is sort of at the bottom of the pyramid of of human needs, you know, And like there are there are a few other members here who I feel like get it, too, and are with me in this work and and you know are curious and and respectful of, you know, you know, knowing how to do things in. And it's not just that. It's not just that somebody doesn't know how to pass safe a logging truck. It's that they didn't care enough to learn. You know, it's not the absence of the skill. It's the lack of interest in learning that's kind of the this the the root, I think the core of the problem. And there was a really good book, The Art of Logic in an Illogical World. This logician talks about taking these cultural issues and breaking them down into their their more fundamental argument. So like, you know, with Hunter Biden's laptop, it was like I was getting a ton of letters about that. And I think when you lift open the hood on that, what a lot of my constituents were saying was that they feel like there's a different, there's a different justice system if you have money and access to power. And that's something that Democrats agree that we we want to fix that. And and so, you know, I think really trying to be trying to understand, what is the what is the moral argument here that you agree with? Like take out, like delete the celebrity name from it, like, and say, like, is there a part here that we can work together on? Being curious and not defensive about it?

We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of The Axe Files. And now back to the show. You were unsparing in your reaction to the pardon of Hunter Biden by his dad.

Yeah, I think going back to that, it's like we do what we do because it's who we are. You know, it's not I'm not here to argue for like a relativistic moral code. It's like I don't I don't care what they're doing. I know who I am. And and to not to kind of, you have to hold that center of gravity of of. And, you know, and that's that's what I hear from my constituents. And part of my job is to represent what I'm hearing at day care drop off, you know, at the grocery store, as a member of Congress.

Speaking of daycare drop off without dignifying the asshole who said what he said to you about your eight month old baby, how hard is it been to juggle you live halfway across the country? I mean, does your child travel with you or what?

No, no. My my husband and son are like, basically feral. Like it would be cruel to bring them here. And I don't, I mean, this is like, my my friends are at home, you know, my family's at home, and I'm proud of where I live. And I chose to live there intentionally. But, like, you know, like my great, great, great grandparents are buried there. Like, you know, it matters to me, where I raise my son matters to me. And so it is difficult. But I also think I think there are maybe maybe ten members of Congress who have a child in daycare out of 435. And I think it has to be, to have a representative body, like that is how you get agency on things that are reflective of the needs of of our country. Not, you know, because because in my county, there's one licensed daycare facility. Like we drive like four hours a day there and back and there and back to get our child's daycare. And that's kind of normal in rural America. So, yeah, I think really trying to reflect the experience and the urgency and the priorities of ordinary Americans.

Who are vastly underrepresented in Congress.

Then it's like the experience of having a child, a young child. It's you know, when the well system goes out at daycare, like, it impacts my family, just like it impacts a lot of Americans. Right. And so, like having I don't want to be insulated from the. I could not I could not do this job well without being, while being insulated from the friction of of being a parent and living in a rural community. I think it's I think it's a necessary part of doing this job. But it's it does suck. Being on a plane this much sucks.

I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure. Honestly, it that should be. I mean, as I ask the question, I'm sensitive to the fact that it should be, it should be, it should suck for the men who get on planes who have young kids. So let's just note that in reading about you, one of the things that struck me was that it was cool that, you know, the Democratic Party has become a very secular party and in many ways, and the fact that you could have these colloquies with your colleagues and you're, I guess, part of the prayer group there, but that you can, they quote scripture and you quote scripture back. Does that surprise them?

I, I yeah, I think it does. I think it's it's been, it's been really important for me to have like, you know, I go to the Bible study because I need more Jesus, not because I need more politics. But I think it's really damaging to the, the, the whole of dialogue when it's like, when it becomes one sided. You know, like when we were debating the farm bill, somebody quoted, a Republican quoted Corinthians where they say, like he who doesn't work, won't eat. First Corinthians. And I was like, yeah, well Leviticus also says not to harvest the corners of your fields. You leave it for the widows and the orphans and the bastards. There was a system in place and and you got to look at the whole thing and not, not to use it, but to be used by it.

Do you think that the secular nature of a lot of democratic politics, and I want to make a, look there's a there are all kinds of pockets of deep religiosity within the party, but generally the, so I don't want to create a caricature. There is this it is a more secular party. The voters are more secular. Is that another thing that divides the party from the 90% of the counties in the country that went the other way? Leaving aside the oddity that Trump is the sort of least I mean, I always joke that he's he's a broken 11 of the Ten Commandments. So he's not exactly a, you know, a persuasive exponent. But leave all of that aside. But it does go to the sort of respect, curiosity, understanding thing, doesn't it?

It does. And it's like I also think it's just a fool's errand to ask people to choose between their faith and their politics. I'm a proud Democrat. I also like I'm a Christian and it is a mistake to. I, they're not in conflict. And holding both of those things and and being a whole person in either context. I'm a Democrat at church. I'm a Christian in our party. And I think they are separate things. Right. You know, but I think they're definitely mutually informative. Should be.

Yeah. I mean, one of the things, just to be fair about this, one of the things that is insidious is the weaponization of faith on the other side, the idea that your political choice is a, you know, a matter of loyalty to the faith. And, you know, I've had long talks with Tim Alberta, my friend who writes for The Atlantic, who wrote a book called "The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory." His father was an evangelical pastor, and he wrote a book about the sort of political capture of the evangelical church. And that's a whole other issue that is troubling. But let let me ask you a question as a as a Latina. One of the other things that happens is we've become so absorbed in identity and the assumption among some liberals in the party is that if you're Hispanic, and the Hispanic communities are very diverse, that's the first mistake. So but secondly, if you're Hispanic, that immigration has to be the sort of organizing issue in your mind, where you have Hispanic families like other families who are second, third, fourth generation. They're working class Americans.

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, look like we own small businesses in the trades. That's the reality. And and we're proud of it, you know, in the same way that, like, respect is, is necessary. Not like a prescriptive, like paternalistic, like, we're we're doing this because, you know, you need our help. No. Like, you should do it because you think it's the right thing to do and you're doing it because you're. You know, when people. When people say stuff like, like Democrats are for the little guy, it's like nobody asked you to call me the little guy, asshole. Okay. Don't put me in your hierarchy that way. Don't like. You know, you do what you think is right. And I'm going to do what I think is right. And. And don't tell me I owe you a favor because you did what you think is right. But yeah, I mean, I think that's the thing. It's like this shift in I think what was it, like 46% of Hispanics voted for Trump?

55% of Hispanic men.

Yeah. And it's I think a lot of it is the respect. Like, I don't need your help. I need you to respect me.

And maybe take an interest and listen to what I have to say and understand my life and my concerns.

You know, one example here is, like, I think it's actually a pretty impoverished idea of equity that you have achieved equity by having lawyer gobbledygook that you need to navigate to run a small business translated into eight different languages. If I still need a lawyer to run a small business in this country, you haven't done it. That's not it, pal. And so saying, like, where, like are you are you respecting people enough to meet them where they are?

Yeah. What is your best advice to a party that is now or should be engaged in some soul searching about how to reconnect with the constituencies that it believes it represents?

I think curiosity is is deeply necessary. And not in an anthropological sense, but in a like, what do they know that I don't know? Like showing up and being like, like, go to the shop floor and bring your boots, you know? And and bringing that that version of empathy, the empathy that shows up, that physically shows up and listens. And, and stop stop telling people what you think they need. You know, and it's not that you're going there to to convince someone to do something, you know, you're trying to figure out. You need to figure out what is important to people, and how do we get there.

Well, listen, I wanted to speak with you because I had some sense of how you're thinking. And I hope a lot of people listen to this podcast because they could learn a lot from you. And I, this has been a great hour. I'm so happy to have spent it with you. Thank you so much.

Thank you. This was really fun. I really appreciate the chance to talk and meet.

Hopefully in person next.

Would love that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Listening to The Axe Files, brought to you by the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN Audio. The executive producer of the show is Miriam Finder Annenberg. The show is also produced by Saralena Berry, Jeff Fox and Hannah Grace McDonald. And special thanks to our partners at CNN, including Steve Lickteig and Haley Thomas. For more programing from IOP, visit politics dot uchicago dot edu.