The Wrighter’s Block Episode 75 – Rod Hodgkinson Gets Wrighter’s Block

DISCLOSURE

FULL TRANSCRIPT TEXT

[Music]
1:01
[Music] so
1:06
[Music]
1:55
[Music]
2:04
[Music]
2:14
cause if there’s room enough for one there must be [Music]
2:30
no [Music]
2:48
place is [Music]
3:03
[Applause] [Music]
3:16
while i i will only drag you down
3:29
[Music]
3:37
[Music] i don’t need anybody’s head
3:51
yes everybody it is me matt right here live with you on a thursday evening uh
3:59
on the writer’s block uh i appreciate each and every one of you for coming out
4:04
on a thursday to watch this show because there are a lot of things that you could be doing on thursday evenings and i
4:10
appreciate that you want to spend them here with me um first let me thank a couple of people uh
4:17
let me thank my parents because without them i wouldn’t be here and for that matter neither would you um
4:24
also let me thank superfan sarah andrea for being just a wonderful partner in everything uh let me thank the
4:30
narcissist cookbook uh for uh letting me use their music at the beginning and the
4:35
end of every episode and let me thank justin for the cava i am drinking on
4:42
this episode to all above and to everybody watching i say bulavanaka
4:52
so we’ve got a great show today it’s going to be uh fantastic for uh the people in the comments already who are
4:59
saying things about how much money is going to ukraine we’re not covering that today um but don’t worry i’m certain
5:06
this will get covered on the muddied waters of freedom next tuesday so be sure to tune in for
5:12
that um yes thank you joe hanouch for always
5:17
being here and being a supportive listener uh so let’s pay some
5:22
bills first and foremost as always nope not that one
5:29
is it this one it’s oh well we’ll start with them mudwater it is the most aptly named
5:37
sponsor we have ever had it is a coffee alternative for people who hate coffee
5:42
or as i call them sociopaths it is uh
5:47
has one seventh of the caffeine so you’re going to wake up and decide no i just don’t want to be awake at all today
5:53
and then it’s going to taste exactly how you would expect masala chai cacao mushrooms turmeric sea salt cinnamon and
5:59
that is it i highly recommend adding honey to it or else you’re just going to hate
6:05
everything about your life for the first few days um so if you want to make the switch to mud
6:11
water and get off of coffee uh head on over to muddy waters of freedom.com
6:17
mud and you too can decide what it’s like to live without caffeine
6:22
the gravy king the libertarian party waffle house caucus the fastest growing and
6:29
well the fastest growing waffle related caucus anywhere in the multiverse and the second largest caucus in the
6:36
libertarian party which is hilarious because we don’t do anything we just share memes
6:42
and that is it if you want to become a member of the waffle house party uh the libertarian party waffle house caucus
6:48
all you have to do is head on over to the special facebook group uh hit the join
6:53
button i think i don’t know whatever button makes you enter i don’t even think there are questions i’m not
6:59
100 sure we’re not real picky uh and you can become a member of the libertarian
7:04
party waffle house caucus today if you want to become a voting member all you have to do is head on over to the store
7:11
and the muddied water store at muddy waters media dot well
7:16
muddiedwatersfreedom.com store and uh you can
7:22
pick up a waffle house caucus button or a waffle house caucus shirt
7:27
joe soloski he is running for governor in pennsylvania and he is the only man i
7:33
would trust to do the job get away from the r’s and the d’s
7:38
get away from the rs and the ds if you live in the pennsylvania region of these united states and switch over to joe
7:44
soloski um switch over to joe soloski he will fight for your future and uh he is just
7:52
he has the voice for radio and the face for everything else so vote for joe soloski he is the key to pennsylvania’s
8:00
success now my next guest my guest not my next guest because he’s my current guest he’s
8:06
he is here he is he is looking at me right now i can see him um my guest tonight is i’m very excited to have him
8:14
on he has been a seated born board member of the kansas libertarian party since
8:20
2004 and he is currently the state chair uh that could all change in just a
8:26
matter of days we don’t really know because we can’t see the future but everybody please welcome with me the one
8:33
the only brad hodgkinson i totally spelled your name wrong here and i just realized that
8:38
no i’m rob oh is it right that’s okay okay wrong i spelled it wrong somewhere else then
8:44
uh hi everyone i’m doing good
8:50
it’s been uh you know libertarian stuff for as long as i’ve been doing it it’s always very interesting um
8:57
everything’s uh unique almost um as you go through the years
9:03
yeah i can imagine uh so you’ve been you’ve been a seated board member of the
9:09
libertarian party of kansas since 2004 so i’m assuming that you’ve been in the party at least since 2003. um
9:17
yeah i’ve been uh yeah i would i ran as a libertarian for the first time as a candidate back in 2002
9:23
um the um i haven’t been seated continuously since 2004. there’s been a couple gaps
9:30
um i was elected chair the first time back in 2005. um did four years um
9:36
backed off um at that point for a while i was going through some personal turmoil with the divorce
9:42
um some things happened in that way so i got out of the way um and then um i’ve been drafted a
9:48
couple times since where we’ve had state chairs who had to
9:53
resign for various personal reasons and so i kind of got back and that’s why i’m
9:58
the chair today i was elected a year ago to finish out our current three-year
10:04
term um at this convention we’ll reelect or elect um depending like you talked
10:10
about um a chair for the next three years okay so before before we get into all of
10:17
that and make your many accomplishments as a libertarian party member and
10:23
activist um how is it sometime before 2002 uh that you found
10:30
yourself deciding that you wanted to get away from the duopoly and kind of move into the
10:35
party of misfit toys i’ve always been
10:40
considered awed by my friends um in that um
10:47
so i’ve been able to vote in every presidential election since 1980 and i have voted in every last one of them
10:53
but i have yet to vote for a republican or a democrat i’ve never ever done that i i didn’t
10:59
know why i just instinctively knew the two-party system was harming us and so
11:05
i intentionally always went and looked for a third-party candidate or an independent so that i could vote for
11:12
and so that’s kind of the transition you figure i started back in 1980 i just you know would do movement just following
11:18
various candidates here and there ross perot of course would kind of caught my eye like a lot of people um kansas
11:24
actually had i think one of the highest counts for ross perot we were around 18 19
11:30
um here for ross perot um but you know so i’m i’ve always been
11:36
looking for an alternative well 1996 night and 2000 i saw i’m looking
11:42
for candidates again only this time i’m at that stage of my life where i’m actually looking
11:48
at the candidate and so i found harry brown and um started looking into harry brown and
11:55
why he was doing what he was doing and i’m looking at his stuff you know in my college days i was always considered an
12:02
oddball republican because you know my fiscal
12:08
policies i want to tight small government from a economic standpoint but i wrote papers
12:14
back in 1977 for my english comp classes i wrote papers about the plight of the
12:20
palestinian people um so you can see the kind of weird dynamics
12:25
yeah for a republican that’s a weird contrast yeah right and so you know all my friends say you’re just you’re just
12:31
an oddball republican you know and i know like okay i can live with that um so you know at that time it’s like
12:37
whatever um but i found harry brown started reading about him and realized that damn that’s me
12:44
you know the libertarian philosophy uh you know the non-aggression the um
12:50
freedom is why i’m here today um back in so in 2000 i voted for
12:57
uh harry at that point i started trying to get active a little bit in the in the libertarian party um in kansas i live in
13:05
the kansas city area um in kansas at that time wichita was our big area where the libertarians were
13:11
really doing things so it was hard for me to get involved with the party at that
13:17
point because there wasn’t really anybody in kansas city that was doing much but
13:22
i live a quarter of a mile from missouri so across the state line in cass county
13:28
missouri at that point in time there was a group that was pretty active with the libertarian party so i went over with
13:34
those guys started working with them learning how to be a volunteer learning how to be an activist
13:40
and getting very involved became good friends with several of the missouri libertarians at that time and and
13:48
understood more well then i also found similar to what nationals trying to do
13:54
today um with the the training that they’re putting out there um with both a
13:59
candidate and an affiliate track is that um
14:04
i went to atlanta i just picked up went to atlanta and you know the advocates for
14:10
self-government were holding a class about the secrets of libertarian persuasion
14:17
and harry brown was one of the speakers and one of the teachers um so i i picked up and went to atlanta and so
14:24
and i got a chance to meet harry i got a chance to be with him all weekend um with him and a couple other of the
14:30
teachers michael cloud um a couple you know that may be a name old that’ll give old libertarians the heebie-jeebies um
14:38
but you know the um got a chance to to work with them and learn
14:43
more about how to present the libertarian party in a way that makes sense to others not just preaching to
14:49
the choir right and instead of an echo chamber right right
14:55
so i went to the national convention um my first national convention was atlanta
15:01
um you know it was interesting with nolan and and bad and eric and and those
15:06
guys getting you know with the that that convention actually went down because we didn’t know who was going to win going
15:12
in right and so that convention for being my very first convention was pretty exciting and i got to do this
15:19
stuff i became good friends with gary nolan i became good friends with michael banaric um you know the um that whole
15:25
thing so that and at that point i got active more nationally so then i became friends
15:31
with a whole bunch of different people mark rutherford out of indiana who was a state chair at that time um and you know so i started getting a
15:39
hold of those kind of people i became active with what was then called um you know the state chairs
15:45
group and then it kind of morphed into the leadersh the libertarian leadership group and now i think it’s kind of gone
15:51
away but um so i i was once a year i was meeting
15:56
with state chairs from all over um and so you know i got the chance to talk to him what’s working with for you
16:02
what how does this you know those kind of things happen well as you can guess in the libertarian
16:08
world a lot of times um anybody that holds their hand up right um is is kind
16:14
of drafted that’s so interesting that’s how i ended up on my county affiliate when i was still involved i
16:21
was like oh you need somebody to be secretary i’ll do that and then next thing i knew i was vice chair and i was like wait what how did this happen yeah
16:28
well and in my case it was stature um so it became you know poof hey hey rob’s
16:34
doing good stuff let’s get he needs to be the chair um so that’s how i became chair in the first place um
16:40
we’ve grown since then there’s been a lot of things that have happened over the years um in 2006
16:46
i was state chair at that point and i was running for secretary of state to help us keep our ballot access
16:53
um and it dawned on me at that point we needed more libertarians on the voter rolls
16:59
we you know the libertarian as of today the libertarian party of kansas has been a
17:06
recognized political party for 30 years in kansas okay we’re one of the few
17:12
um that have been around that long that have hey we haven’t had to do any petitioning we’ve been on the ballot air you know
17:18
and we we’ve kept our ballot access consistent for 30 years now well in 2000
17:25
in in 2006 i realized it’s because i was running for secretary of state and of course
17:30
voting becomes an important thing right um and so it dawned on me hey
17:35
we need registered libertarians and so i started the push back in 2006
17:43
to start do getting more and more people to register as a libertarian in the voter rolls since
17:51
that time every single year since the libertarian party of kansas has grown
17:57
with those numbers that’s amazing okay if you look at the national numbers
18:03
i think just raw numbers we come in like number seven out of all the 50 states um
18:08
in the number of libertarians that are registered um if you look at the percentage we’re fourth
18:15
right on going into third and second um you know so real quick real quick you’re
18:22
you’re like immediately jumping into like my questions that i have set up for you here
18:27
just started going all like i could have just stopped and let you go for an hour but i feel like i need to like at least interject every
18:34
once in a while um but yeah
18:40
so um yeah that’s one of the things that uh i was gonna say is right now your state is
18:45
fourth highest in the nation with libertarian voter registration which is absolutely amazing um
18:52
it’s absolutely incredible that you have that kind of like that you have that sort of
18:58
attraction to the libertarian party in kansas um i used to know where florida was and i
19:03
don’t remember where we are anymore uh but why
19:08
why do you think that why do you think that kansas has gotten where it is like what what were the
19:13
reasons what was the draw that kansas had well i think that
19:19
you know i’m a fifth generation kansan i grew up you know the got a ton of family that grew up on the farm
19:25
we’re hard workers we and we want to keep what we’ve earned we don’t want to be just giving it away to the government
19:31
for no reason um and so that mentality i think permeates the state
19:36
yeah we’re a red state right now we’re super majority with the republicans in the legislature um you know but that
19:44
always has a little bit of a yang yang swing or the pendulum swing um kind of thing that goes but that
19:51
basic um libertarian philosophy of we’re going to work hard
19:57
we help our neighbors it’s that same thing the barn burning when you know a barn goes down
20:02
our neighbor we’re over helping them build the new barn our neighbor has a knee replacement we’re over harvesting
20:09
his wheat right it’s the libertarian philosophy of we’re not yeah you know everybody in the
20:15
media loves to tell we’re the self-esteem bees right and that
20:20
when you listen when you really really look at the libertarian philosophy that’s not the truth we’re more like
20:26
all these kansans that i grew up with where we do our thing we work hard and we help
20:32
our neighbors and do those kind of things so um that philosophy then
20:39
when i’m talking to people and and like you mentioned i’ve done easily thousands of hours in oph booths in you
20:46
know whether it’s a state fair county fairs those kind of things um so you get a chance to talk to people and they look
20:52
at you and when you do that it creates credibility it creates confidence and they go
20:58
wow it makes sense so i’ve got a little spiel that i always used at that point to try to get them to
21:04
file you know right fill out their voter registration right there on the spot and that was basically here here’s how
21:11
you can help us it doesn’t cost you a single penny you just re-register to vote
21:16
as a libertarian here’s why it makes a difference when you’re registered as a libertarian
21:21
those numbers start going up as those numbers start going up the media starts paying more attention to us
21:28
the more the media pays attention to us the more we have credibility the more we have respect the more that happens it’s a vicious
21:34
circle in the right direction for a change and it just keeps circling itself up so we get more people signing up the
21:40
more the credibility the more the media pays attention to us and on and on and on and that’s what that’s the way
21:45
i have worked that over the years in the last and that’s why we’re kansas is in the spot it’s in
21:51
that’s that’s actually a really good uh that’s a great tactic and a great way to go about that um i know that
21:58
there have been people here in florida that have kind of gone with that but most of those people ended up leaving the party um
22:05
because yeah you get i’ve seen a lot of people come and go i understand you’re right yeah absolutely
22:10
um uh something you say you’re like yeah the so many people uh the media paints
22:17
us out to be the selfish party uh when i first was admitting to being a libertarian
22:23
not when i was out in my partying days and i’m like i’m a libertarian everybody’s like oh yeah because he likes drinking and doing
22:30
other things right of course he’s a libertarian he doesn’t want to get arrested for this uh but
22:36
like later on when i was like no i’m a libertarian you know because you know fiscal reasons and social reasons uh and
22:43
people started saying oh well that’s because you’re selfish that was always my response was i’m not selfish i want i
22:49
want communities to help each other i think communities help each other better than governments forcing communities to
22:55
help each other absolutely um and we don’t need uh
23:00
we don’t need somebody nannying us telling us what to do when to do it what we need is for communities to rise up
23:06
realize we are a community and that we can do things together but we don’t have to be forced to do it
23:13
um so uh
23:18
there was a question that we already had uh immediately
23:24
uh oh joe hanouche uh here he’s one of he’s one of my floridians here uh he
23:30
asked how many libertarian congressional candidates are running in kansas this year with the with the amount of
23:36
libertarians you have in the state from a federal standpoint right now
23:42
i’m aware of one u.s house candidate and one u.s senate
23:49
candidate we have four spots in the u.s house um i don’t know that we’ll have any
23:55
others until saturday and we actually have our convention and people start standing up and i the last couple days i’ve started
24:02
hearing from people um you know that are running for the kansas house that i had no idea we’re running for before monday
24:08
um so and that’s usually the way it goes is that we start getting all these people um so at this point
24:15
we have one uh that i’m aware of that’s going to run for the kansas or the u.s
24:21
house and then we’ve got one running for the u.s senate um and then we’ll have
24:28
i think two or three other statewide races because our governor race is this
24:34
year um and i think we may have i believe we’ve got somebody filed already
24:39
to run for the state treasurer and i think we’ve got somebody that may be running for commit for secretary of
24:44
state um so that will give kansans a chance to vote on at least four libertarians um statewide and then we’ll
24:52
have the lower level stuff that’s popping up so we’ve got like we’ve got one really good one
24:58
kansas house that could um actually be kind of a marshall burke for kansas um
25:04
he’s been elected twice as a local he was elected to his uh city council and he was elected mayor um and now he’s
25:11
running for the kansas house this year so we’ve got somebody that
25:17
um knows what he’s doing he’s a good candidate he can govern
25:22
and he’s proven he can govern and it’s going to be a very marshall bird type thing in kansas so we’re gonna put we’ll
25:28
obviously put some effort behind him um and try to help him get elected okay and what what’s this candidate’s
25:35
name uh oh yeah you had to go and ask me that
25:40
um give me a second okay i get it i i have those
25:47
yeah i do because i have got so much stuff because of the convention going on but his name is pete his name is peter sully peter sully okay
25:54
so if you uh are in kansas and you want to look into another party or into another candidate look up peter solid
26:01
although if you’re watching the show you probably already know who he is um so
26:06
uh switching gears a little bit you have a certification
26:11
uh matt clark just shared uh petersoully.com in our comment section um you have a certification in affiliate
26:19
leadership fundamentals and certification in campaigns correct
26:24
what does that mean well this year the national lp
26:30
start put together training for libertarians um cara schultz the big reason why a lot of this stuff
26:36
going on michelle mccutchen um you know we’re there um so i went to utah um
26:42
kansas is part of region one right now so i went to utah salt lake city went through the affiliate side training
26:49
it’s a weekend full of training um that’s that works specifically on how
26:54
can you make an affiliate better um it’s one of those situations where i’ve been involved in the party for 20
27:01
years the state party has done a massive upgrade
27:06
over you know where it was when i first started but you can never
27:12
you can always learn a whole lot more about how to be more effective with a group so in today’s
27:19
like this year um about a year well i guess it’s been about a year and a half now we started
27:24
we put together an operations group in kansas that we’ve never had before so we’ve got people that are working for
27:30
our marketing social media we have somebody matt clark who you just mentioned he’s our candidate we’ve got
27:36
al terwelp who’s our political director and has been doing a wonderful job with the kansas legislature we’ve got
27:42
allison who’s been doing our blogs we’ve got we now have this group of an operations team we’re not complete
27:49
yet that’s part of the thing i need to do in the next three years is to complete that group so that then we can
27:55
really grow and get an executive director and and we’re almost to that
28:01
we’re working towards that that situation but the the training
28:06
was how do you take a group like that that operations group how do you make mesh with them how do you
28:14
you know make things better for the state of kansas for the people of kansas and the libertarian
28:19
party um and it was very eye-opening in a lot of ways because there’s good ideas
28:25
i’m like mercy i never thought of that kind of stuff um and then on the flip side of that is i
28:31
also went to the region training was region six this time was in des moines um and
28:37
for the candidate side of things so that i could see what they’re teaching and how to become a good candidate
28:43
and you know that kind of thing and of course i’ve run for public office six times myself
28:49
um i’ve helped us keep ballot access twice um you know so i’ve got i’m pretty
28:54
good um when it comes to you know being a candidate kind of thing um but again you can never ever know everything
29:02
you could there’s always and carol is great because she always had she always caught she
29:07
there was always something that carol would say and it’d be like the light bulb would go off and be like oh my god
29:13
even though i’ve been doing this for 20 years that training is wonderful yeah there’s
29:19
no matter how much you practice at anything it doesn’t matter what it is if it’s uh if it’s
29:24
swimming if it’s studying uh biology if it’s whatever uh you will never know
29:30
everything and you will forget things that you already learned so to having somebody there that’s going to be able
29:35
to lift you up in those moments in order to kind of remind you of what
29:40
of what you are missing is huge and very like it’s very important um
29:47
so you mentioned that you had run for office a couple of different times um
29:52
i know that you have run for a house seat ascendancy and secretary of state
29:58
um and the last time was in 2018 when you ran for secretary of state um are
30:05
you running for uh do you plan to run for office again are you running now is there or are you just kind of focusing
30:10
on building this uh coalition that you’re talking about
30:17
in order to get to the exec in order to be able to have an executive director or are you kind of more looking towards
30:23
uh and building those candidates or are you thinking about doing it again um this time around i want to be working
30:30
more building other candidates um for two reasons one i think as the state chair i’ve done that where i was state
30:36
chair and and i ran for statewide office it it becomes
30:41
a challenge um to do both to say the least um because kansas is one of those states
30:46
you know everybody thinks it’s flyover country right it’s flat you know we’re 400 miles long one way at
30:53
200 miles the other way and 105 counties and i’m telling you you know in 2018 i
30:59
put 26 000 miles on my truck traveling the state campaigning it gets old fast i just want to say that you you
31:06
have 105 counties in kansas um correct here in florida i think we
31:11
have like 68 and in my head and i could be completely
31:19
wrong in my head florida is much bigger than kansas well you’ve definitely got more
31:25
population um as far as square foot miles i would have to actually look uh i have no idea i you know i don’t either
31:33
we you know because we’re a big square so um that 400 one way 200 the other you can pretty much take it as a big
31:39
rectangle i guess right but and you know add that up but
31:44
from a population standpoint florida just blows us away um in that regard
31:50
right yeah it’s just because when you said 105 well when it was in the notes 105 counties i
31:55
was like that is a lot of that is a lot of counties to have in in my head kansas
32:01
does not have the square foot i like the square mileage as uh florida i could be completely off base there and
32:08
just a hundred percent wrong but yeah that’s just where my where my head went to on that um so how how many house seats do you
32:16
guys have there’s we have uh the kansas legislature has 125 house seats okay and
32:23
we run 40 senate seats okay um and this election the 125 house
32:28
seats are all up for re-election because they’re up for every two years and that’s where peter sully’s going to
32:33
be at he’s in the 109th as like a lot of states we’ve just gone through redistricting um we’ve had to redraw all
32:40
the maps for the various places peter is actually in a new district he get
32:46
the 109th um so um he’s in a great situation where
32:51
there’s technically no i’m coming i don’t think and then so you know anybody that comes in there
32:57
um it’s going to be kind of a wide open uh situation and so he they drew redrew the maps that way
33:04
what’s happening in kansas has happened in a lot of rural states probably indiana the same as us is that the main
33:11
metro areas wichita topeka and kansas city are drawing the people because that’s where the jobs are so where do
33:17
the populations are exploding in the big cities and the rural areas are just shrinking
33:23
so what happened in this this reset with the census the rural areas lost
33:29
to house seats and they jumped into johnson county where i live now
33:35
so and johnson county has 21 or 22 house seats now just in the county there’s you
33:41
know because just like florida we are very populated as a county um so johnson county is becoming that
33:50
juggernaut if you will in the in the legislature to get what they want done the farmers kind of get hung out to dry
33:56
sometimes um you know the whole worst part of democracy where you know
34:01
mob rule they just take you down right and yeah that is that is the issue that you have with democracy no matter
34:08
it is the many telling the few what they have to do um
34:13
it is one of the biggest issues that i have with it uh just so you know just for a fun fact if you ever want to
34:19
impress somebody with trivial knowledge kansas has 82 000 square miles florida is 65 000.
34:27
ah so we are bigger yeah thank you to alex flores in the comments for letting me for telling us
34:33
um hey alex hadn’t seen saul’s lake
34:40
um so obviously you don’t have an issue with public speaking um i’m assuming i’m
34:47
assuming that you have done this a lot uh you know you’re you’ve run for multiple things
34:53
you’ve been you’ve been on the board you’ve been on the the the libertarian party’s uh
34:59
board for years the executive committee for years so i’m assuming that you’ve done this a lot
35:06
um a lot of libertarians that i know
35:12
and i hope nobody gets offended by this but a lot of libertarians that i know aren’t used to talking to people
35:21
off of the computer um they aren’t used to that face-to-face
35:26
yeah i understand that one completely right so what advice what advice do you have for libertarians
35:32
who might be nervous uh who who want to run but they’re nervous about having to go out and speak publicly
35:39
oh i um i guess the the way i look at it is because one of the things that i’ve done
35:46
um as chair off and on is that i go talk to the you know our colleges um
35:53
political science classes i go to the high schools and talk to the government ap classes um those kind of
35:58
things and those are great environments to go talk to people about the libertarian party
36:05
because you never know what you’re walking into even in kansas the the dynamic is so different you go out to
36:10
fort hayes state which is out in western kansas out there and you know out there in the middle of nowhere if you consider it that way um but that particular
36:19
university is so far right so conservative you so all their questions
36:25
come from that side of things right um and why how do you how do you justify this how do you do
36:31
that um wichita state university and ku the university of kansas
36:36
were the exact opposite you’ve got the the full full-blown liberals the full-grown
36:43
democrats that are going you know how do you you know um you’re a selfish libertarian um you know kind of thing
36:49
and you get that same kind of thing and i love doing that i also love doing
36:55
radio shows live taking calls because it it’s very eye-opening at
37:01
times but my thing would be go talk to some of these high schools and talk about the
37:06
libertarian party now when i’m there i don’t get super political i talk about
37:11
some of the challenges we have as a small party so you know i talk about ballot access issues the fact that we
37:17
have to have a nominating convention we’re not part of the primary you know those kind of things i talk about those
37:23
differences and how they’re holding this down and rather than getting real political i don’t get in there all libertarians are
37:30
pro-life or no libertarians are pro-choice right i don’t get into that too much i don’t get into the the
37:37
platform as much i just get into here’s why we exist we believe in freedom the easy way to put it and then
37:45
um so i have taken uh generally i take the world’s smallest political quiz with me into those
37:51
classes okay set it up and and and i let the class take the test
37:57
um it always gives me a really good idea kind of where everybody’s at in the class right and i kind of get an idea um
38:03
and i like to do that because all the classes are timid almost always they’re timid they’re they don’t want to they don’t
38:10
want to hold their hand up they don’t want to you know oh my god you know uh
38:15
there’s a libertarian in here um you know and so uh
38:20
um i use the quiz to kind of open things up and they start reading the questions and
38:25
it jogs their minds and it makes them go well what about this and then we open up the questions and i
38:32
le i tell them up front i said you can ask me anything you want to
38:37
there’s no holds part ask me whatever question you want and i’ll give you an answer as best to
38:42
my ability i’m not going to skirt it like the republicans and democrats always do
38:48
okay and so that gets things started and after you get the first couple questions then everybody’s like hey wow this is
38:54
neat and they start asking more questions and you just go go and all of a sudden that hour is gone
38:59
and you know the and everybody’s like and the teachers are like wow this was good um and
39:06
that trend that kind of speaking practice you’re in front of a group of high schoolers or a group of college
39:12
kids there’s no pressure there’s no intimidation
39:17
they just want to know the knowledge well that gives you that ability to chat with others
39:24
one-on-one or a small group like that whether it’s 20 you know 10 to 20 kind of thing
39:30
and you get to where you just spend that just just just like everybody else yeah
39:35
i’ve done the bigger group do i but the that’s where i would say hey go talk to
39:40
your local high school you know do you still know your old political science tech cla teacher talk to them they’ll
39:46
probably let you come and talk no um yeah no i don’t um i’m not even sure if that
39:54
person is still teaching um but yeah yeah well trust me my class teachers are all gone
40:01
man so like kind of touching on the uh like when you come in they’re like oh man i
40:07
don’t know and everybody’s kind of timid what i found is that doesn’t matter because obviously like i was i i wasn’t
40:14
always a libertarian i was republican for a while you know i i dabbled in the democrats for a short period of time um
40:21
and then i found the libertarian party i was like okay this is what makes sense to me but um
40:26
even when i was involved with other parties uh when i would talk to people
40:31
about you know candidates or whatever nobody ever wanted to tell me their political affiliation and there’s an old
40:37
dave chappelle joke about it that’s crass and you seem like a pretty wholesome guy that i’m not going to repeat this joke online um
40:45
but basically they like people will have no problem giving up their uh like the most intimate details of their
40:51
life but they they don’t want to give up uh that piece of information to people
40:57
and i understand their reasoning behind it uh because you get you will get judged on
41:03
your political affiliation much quicker than you will on your
41:09
personal predilections for whatever it is uh and it won’t
41:14
in absolutely no time so i can understand especially in a college class where kids are like i don’t want people
41:21
to know how i filled this out because i don’t want to be judged based on however
41:28
whatever this test says um joe hanouch says remove political party
41:34
affiliation from voter registration cards and ballots yeah i mean i i don’t think it needs to i wouldn’t have a problem with that yeah i don’t think i i
41:41
actually you know um i’ve testified in front of the kansas house in in favor of ranked choice
41:46
voting um yeah i would you know i doing away with with that would make
41:52
people all of a sudden go who am i voting for instead of the you know instead of this
41:58
team thing this us versus them and in kansas it’s really bad um you know that whole republican
42:05
versus democrat now kansas is very red but the you’ve we try to
42:11
push our way in there a little bit um you know you know to get into that mess but the
42:17
if we were to get rid of those tags and they actually had to look at the candidates
42:23
i’ll bet i could have quadrupled my voting account easily um i’m running for secretary because i
42:30
can’t tell you how many people i’ve been glad like i said i was traveling all over the state and i can’t tell you how many people went damn you’re the best
42:36
person of the three right and and i’m gonna vote for you
42:41
well obviously that i don’t didn’t have that kind of money but um
42:47
we would as a libertarian it would be and i think you see a lot of that exactly
42:53
with kind of the city county races that are nonpartisan yeah everybody knows joe blows a
42:59
republican or you know jane is a democrat right but that’s not on the ballot
43:05
so you have to you need to go looking for the name and i that would be great in my opinion yeah i i have thought that for
43:13
years i felt like i two things one you should not know like obviously you know joe biden’s
43:20
democrat but like when he’s running it should not say a d next to his name um and also i’ve also believed for quite
43:27
some time that uh political people shouldn’t make public appearances or appear on television or have their
43:34
photos taken so you don’t know what they look like either um because i think i think that many
43:40
times people vote for the person they that they think is more attractive um
43:46
i think it’s a subconscious thing built for radio yeah i get it
43:52
so like about like i’ve always thought no political affiliation next to the name and then uh no public appearances
43:59
um so that way you know that you’re gonna get a candidate that you agree with uh
44:05
i’ve i have thought that for ever uh and not much will make me change my mind on that
44:11
um uh yeah johannes says looks matter yeah they do looks looks absolutely matter
44:18
and it’s sad but it’s true um so uh we’ve got a little bit of time left
44:24
but let’s talk about this weekend uh what is it that people can kind of look toward look look forward to this weekend
44:30
what’s going on at the uh lp kansas convention well we’re doing a whole lot of different things um we of course our two
44:38
main speakers are joe and spike um so we’ve got you know some
44:43
the two presidential candidates are president vice president coming into town um
44:49
we’ll start off friday night with a mixer where everybody just gets together um spike and tasha are going to be there
44:55
um and mix with us and talk and you know do their thing on one on one basis not as a big
45:01
speaker kind of thing um and so that people get a chance to meet him um
45:06
that’s it’s a seven to ten kind of time frame um every other one i’ve ever been to was more like seven till they close
45:13
the bar um but you know the um we’ll get together and we can you know
45:18
talk and do those kind of things saturday’s more of a business um day right um in the beginning from that part
45:24
of it we’ve got a few bylaws and a couple platform things we need to change look at there’s some proposals that
45:29
we’re looking at changing um in the afternoon we’re looking at going with um we’re
45:35
gonna we need to elect our delegates to the national convention um kansas gets 13 this year we just missed
45:41
getting the 14th one um and uh um we’re also electing our candidates because
45:48
again this is our primary as a minor party so we will be electing our candidates this weekend as well so
45:54
um and we have to have at least one statewide candidate because that’s how we keep our ballot access we have to get
46:00
at least one percent of the vote in one of the statewide races um that’s always been pretty easy to do one percent it’s
46:07
just the protest vote generally is enough um we get good candidates and we we’ve almost hit the thing in kansas we
46:14
got an oddball rule where to get major party status to be considered the same as the republicans
46:20
of democrats and be put in the primary we have to get five percent of the vote in the governor’s race only
46:26
so that’s the only statewide race that works and it’s every four years um and it’s been a challenge um to get to that
46:33
five percent number we’ve gotten close a couple times but um realistically um you
46:39
know we we really run into that um i can’t vote for you because it’ll take the vote away from my democrat or i
46:45
can’t vote to you you because it’ll take the vote away from my republican uh you know real quick
46:51
real quick i remember in the first election that i was helping out with um it was a special election here in
46:57
pinellas county and it was a close race it was it was the most i believe at the time it was
47:03
the most expensive special election ever and uh there was a libertarian in it and
47:09
i was working with him trying to help him get elected and uh he
47:15
he didn’t do well uh but he um like the next day
47:20
after after the election the republican uh this guy david jolly he ended up winning he beat uh alex sink
47:26
um he the next day i had a bunch of republicans mad at me their team won
47:33
they were mad at me and they said you almost made my team lose and then a bunch of democrats were mad
47:38
at me and they said you made my team lose and i was like both of you can’t be mad at me here
47:43
i could not we we didn’t take votes from any of you because we earned every vote that we got
47:48
but uh you both can’t be mad at me that’s just not fair you guys can just be mad at each other i’m out and uh
47:55
like that’s that’s why the whole i the defensive vote is one of the greatest
48:01
fallacies that i see in voters yeah and it’s going to be i’ve got a uh interview set up for spike
48:08
on sunday evening um the the radio host is a former legislator and he’s a far
48:14
right republican um and the very first question he’s going to ask spike he’s already told me the very first question
48:20
is how can you take votes away how could you let trump lose
48:26
right um i’m like well because trump sucked too but you know
48:32
yeah um you know but you know that it’s it’s an ongoing thing and and
48:38
it’s obviously educational that we’ve got to get more people to realize that that defensive
48:44
voting as you put it um is just nonsense and yeah and that’s
48:50
when um back in 16 uh back in 16 when gary gary johnson was
48:55
running against uh trump and clinton um i was i was talking with a friend of
49:01
mine and he was like so you you’re gonna vote for trump i was like no i’m gonna i’m voting for johnson
49:06
and he goes no you’re gonna vote for trump and i’m gonna tell you why and i said i bet i know every argument you’re gonna give me and every one of them was
49:14
if you don’t vote for trump you’re gonna be giving the election to the democrats and blah blah blah and i was like
49:21
no i’m voting for the person that i believe in the person that i think would be do best at the job i’m not voting
49:28
against somebody else i’m voting for somebody i get to say i vote for somebody um i’m not voting against
49:35
anybody right um well i get that completely so um you know kind of maybe get us back on
49:42
track here we don’t know how much time we’re going to have left but uh from the convention standpoint we’ll you know we
49:48
so we’ll elect all our our candidates um then we also will elect four of our officers we’ve got our regular we do a
49:54
rotation um so the entire xcom doesn’t go away at one swift blow
50:00
um we keep some institutional knowledge that way by doing a rotation and so we’ve got three positions that
50:07
are up for the regular spot and then we’ve got one that we need to fill that we have a resignation
50:12
um so that gets done um as well saturday
50:17
then we get to do the fun stuff we have our banquet spike is going to be our
50:23
keynote speaker at that banquet so um you know this
50:29
convention will be easily the the largest state convention kansas has ever held
50:36
on sunday morning joe jorgensen will be in town she’s going to come in and talk about the
50:42
campaign and then you know what she went through and some of the stuff that happened with the campaign on sunday
50:47
morning we also if we need it sunday morning we can use it to kind of finish up some business if
50:53
we have to otherwise i’m going to do some training things that fit in kind of like what i just
50:58
talked about with using the world’s smallest political quiz to talk to people do how do you do this you know
51:04
how do you set up a booth at a county fair those kind of things we’re going to be doing some odds and end little act you
51:09
know activist training um kind of type of things that we’ll be doing if we have time um after we break um officially we will
51:18
end the convention you know adjourn the new executive committee will meet
51:23
very quickly um just so they can come together the new chair if it’s not me
51:29
you know takes over and they’re ready to rock well tomorrow sunday afternoon we’re still doing some other things
51:35
we’ve got a spike throwing um we’ve got a kind of a fundraiser we’ve got an axe throwing we’re you know with spike i
51:42
didn’t we’re not throwing spike um so the um uh but i was gonna say that
51:48
he has ms you don’t want to just throw him around i’m certain that’s not yeah i don’t that totally came out wrong
51:57
and then also um sunday afternoon we’re doing a homeless help we’re doing a community outreach um where we’ve been
52:04
we have been connect collecting um donations and then we’re going to go out and hand them out to the homeless in
52:09
wichita on sunday afternoon and do that and then of course like i talked about earlier um i’ve got a radio
52:16
thing with spike on sunday evening so um you know we’re
52:22
from an overall concept we’ve got a lot of different things we’ve got fun stuff we’ve got business stuff and we’ve got
52:27
even more fun stuff no i mean exactly it sounds like it’s a uh it sounds like
52:33
it’s gonna be a great time and i i i’ve seen the spike show like i know
52:38
what’s coming for you all and uh it’s i’m looking forward to it yeah no it’s gonna be a good time everybody’s gonna
52:44
enjoy it um so before i let you go uh you have been a delegate or an alternate
52:53
to national seven times are you gonna be one of the 13 that goes this year
53:00
if i’m elected to do so yes do you do i mean are you so you’re going
53:06
to be one of the people that are going to put your hand up and say yes i want to go yes
53:11
okay um so we’ll we’ll see how that goes obviously um there’s a lot of people
53:17
that want to go from kansas um so whether i can be one of those 13 we’ll see
53:22
okay well hey you know that is the most humble answer i think i could have ever gotten from that question most people
53:28
would just be like yeah i’m going um well i
53:34
reno’s gonna be insane this year it’s gonna be a good time uh it’s gonna be a good time uh it’s there’s gonna be some
53:39
fireworks but it’s still gonna be fun uh so i’m certain if you do go it’s gonna you’re gonna have a blast uh yeah well
53:48
part of my going to reno is you know because i’ve been doing this for so long i’ve got so many friends in the libertarian world nationally um and a
53:56
lot of them will be there at reno and i’ll get a chance to meet him one-on-one again um you know and and catch up i
54:02
hate there’s a lot of them i haven’t seen in 10 years i’d love to catch them and and you know be able to get chat for
54:07
10 15 minutes and catch up no absolutely yeah that’s that is my
54:13
favorite part about conventions is getting to meet the people that i’ve been friends with on facebook
54:20
for years and i’m like oh good i finally get to meet you in person um i used to say that instead of name tags
54:26
they should do facebook profile pictures so we know who everybody is um
54:33
you got my little dog exactly yeah exactly because so many times i’m like i know that name why do i
54:40
know that name and then i look it up i’m like oh that guy that guy all right got you the one with
54:46
the dog all right got it yeah um well thank you so look thank you so much rob for coming on the
54:53
show i do appreciate it uh is there anything that you want to pitch uh where where can people donate to the
55:00
libertarian party of kansas or the kansas liberty yeah the best is our website it’s lpk
55:07
lpks.org um and then slap slash donate
55:12
um in kansas you can donate anywhere from five dollars to fifteen thousand fifteen
55:17
thousands the annual max we do not we are not a federal filer as a party um
55:24
we just we are state party only um so that’s our rules um in that regard
55:30
but you know any kind of amounts can help um if you’re willing do a recurring um every month kind of
55:38
thing and we can give build that up to where we know our budgets um when we know our budgets and that’s when we’ll
55:43
be able to start taking a serious look at at an executive director um those kind of
55:49
things so um the donations are always always very welcome
55:56
excellent well thank you so much for coming on uh good luck this weekend uh i’m rooting for that
56:02
uh i’m rooting for you i don’t know who you’re running against but i’m rooting for you uh so i hope that this works out well
56:08
um and uh yeah again thank you for taking the time to come out today i’m certain you’re
56:14
gonna have a blast and you’ll have a blast in reno uh and
56:19
lp ks i don’t know why that didn’t come out as a link not sure what um
56:26
but yeah so anyway thank you so much uh thank you so much uh and hand me on anytime you need
56:33
you know when you need that flyover country opinion give me a book you know
56:38
i will take you up on that uh because i will definitely need it at some point again in the future thank you so much
56:44
and i will talk to you again very soon all right everybody have a good night everybody
56:51
all right yes that was rob hodgkinson’s out of kansas
56:56
um fantastic fantastic time great person can’t wait to hear about how that goes
57:02
this weekend um anybody out in the kansas region of these united states who uh is thinking about heading over to the
57:09
uh kansas libertarian party convention you should definitely do so they’ve apparently put together
57:16
quite the time so everybody should go out there and check it out and if you are going vote for rob if
57:23
you’re a delegate if you’re not don’t because that would be unethical um
57:29
thank you to all of you who have tuned in to this episode of the writer’s block
57:35
again so this is friday junior and i appreciate that everybody chooses to
57:40
spend friday junior here with me as opposed to
57:45
at ladies night at your local tavern brew pub
57:51
whatever you have there um tomorrow
57:56
two o’clock p.m eastern uh jason lyon will have a brand new episode of mr
58:03
america the bearded truth where he will have spike’s disowned son david fight
58:09
and they’re going to be talking about candidates so we’ll see how that goes
58:15
um we will see how that goes uh and then spike will be in kansas all
58:22
weekend you probably won’t see much of me online um
58:28
and then next week you can find us right back here
58:33
tuesday night eight o’clock me and spike cohen parsing through the week’s events like the sweet
58:40
summers winter spring arabs that we are uh on muddied waters
58:46
of freedom spike will hang on i’m gonna before i speak out of turn here uh and say things that aren’t
58:53
true i’m gonna look at his schedule yes next week he will be back with his guest natalie bruno
59:00
uh which is going to be fantastic and then you can meet me here
59:05
next thursday for a brand new episode of the writer’s block
59:10
where i will have aaron edwards and alex martin from
59:16
float f-l-o-t-e float uh who are going to be talking about float fest and i’m
59:22
excited to have it aaron’s been on the show twice so uh very excited to have her back on and it’s going to be an
59:29
absolutely great time your fun fact of the week is man that is the same page i opened up to
59:35
last time uh
59:41
mel blanc who voice bugs bunny was allergic to carrots i actually already knew that i didn’t
59:46
need a book to tell me that uh so there’s your fun fact of the week everybody have a great weekend tune in
59:51
tomorrow for uh mr america the bearded truth um if you’re in kansas go to the convention if not enjoy your weekend and
59:59
remember no matter if you’re white if you’re black if you’re hispanic if you’re asian if you’re fat if you’re skinny if you’re somewhere in between if
1:00:06
you are straight cis het trans whatever at the end of the day
1:00:12
it’s night [Music]
1:00:32
[Music]
1:00:39
i don’t need anybody’s help yeah [Music]
1:01:02
turns blue [Music]
1:01:21
i’m [Music] broadcast in the evening news
1:01:30
[Music]
1:01:40
[Applause] [Music]
1:02:04
hey [Music]
1:02:14
[Music] i don’t need anybody’s
1:02:19
[Music]