The Charlie Kirk Show gets thousands of emails per week asking "What do I do now?" and "How can I do something to make a difference?" Today on the show, Charlie is joined by Joe Mitchell of 'Run Gen Z' to address those important questions with the best answer possible: run for office. They talk through the process of running, why it matters, and why anyone who feels a calling to public service should stand up and fight for America. For more information on this important initiative, head to 'RunGenZ.com' and follow @RunGenZ on Twitter and @Run.GenZ on Instagram. Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Hey, everybody.
Let's spring into action right now.
This short but important episode was caught as my friend Joe Mitchell was here in the office.
I just said, hey, let's do a podcast on this.
He is getting young people to run for office all across the country.
And if you're of any age, you should check out his website, rungenze.com, and run for office.
It's a great interview.
You're going to really enjoy it.
This episode is brought to you advertiser-free by those of you that support us at charliekirk.com/slash support.
What does that mean when you support us?
You allow us to have fact checkers, researchers, video editors, live stream operators.
When we did that 12-hour live stream last week, that was made possible by those of you that support us at charliekirk.com/slash support.
As always, email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com, and make sure you're subscribed to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast by hitting subscribe.
Joe Mitchell is here.
It's time to run for office.
Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
Turning point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
Hey, everybody.
Happy Saturday.
Let's be optimistic, positive, plan.
We live in a great country still.
And I'm here with a friend of mine who is an inspiration to so many people, and he'll be an inspiration to you.
And I want this entire episode to be about action, about doing something, no matter your age, no matter your state of mind.
Remember, we talk about a lot on this program that your actions and your decisions, the agency you have, is a gift from God.
We are here with Joe Mitchell, who's a state rep from Iowa.
Yes, sir.
How old are you?
23.
And when were you elected as a state rep?
I was elected at 21.
At 21?
Yeah.
And I met you, I think, almost two years ago, right?
So a year and a half ago, a year and a half ago, a year from September.
So at an event in Des Moines.
It was like right before I was going to Rome.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I remember I saw that you were a speak at an event in Des Moines.
Now you actually had this idea that we're going to talk about today, the Run Gen Z.
And I had this idea pop up in my head of we need to start this coalition of young conservatives mentoring the next generation of young conservatives.
Right.
And so I saw that you're going to be at this event in Des Moines, knew the people throwing it.
And so, you know, asked if I could come.
And, you know, they let me come and they introduced me to you.
And, you know, automatically we started clicking.
And, you know, you're like, here's my number.
I want you to come to SAS and speak at my conference or whatever else.
So yeah, it was about a year and a half ago that we met each other and I came to SAS 2019 and spoke and was there again in 2020 and had a breakout session and spoke.
So you got elected at 21 state rep. Yeah.
How many state reps are there in Iowa?
So there's 100 state reps.
There's 50 state senators.
And so you were one of 100.
Were you the youngest in Iowa at the time?
Yes, sir.
And one of the youngest of all time.
Sure.
Yeah.
And so my family's originally from Marshalltown, Iowa.
Sure.
Okay.
And so got some Iowa roots.
Yeah, I love that.
And so, but you made the decision at age 21 to run for office and win.
Walk us through that process.
That's not something every 21-year-old's doing.
Sure, sure.
Yeah.
So, you know, growing up, you know, my parents were never political, right?
They were always Republican, right?
We watched Fox News, you know, things of that nature, but they'd never had given to a political candidate.
They'd never been involved in the county party.
My parents are small business people, right?
My dad started a small business when I was, you know, five years old, started a manufacturing plant, you know, with nothing.
And I'd seen him struggle, but, you know, ultimately achieved the American dream.
And so, you know, that had always been the drive behind my aspirations in politics and, you know, wanting to be in there to make a change because I seen how the government could both help and hurt small business owners like my dad, right?
And so, you know, the more successful he would get, they'd take more money away.
And, you know, a personal thing to me is, you know, my folks have a 501c3 where we do missions all over the world.
So they actually give 50% of their profits to their charity where, you know, we give, you know, help people all over the world with healthcare and education and all kinds of different stuff.
And I saw how my parents could do more with their money than the government could, right?
And so that started getting me intrigued in school and American history and government and whatever else.
And so when I was 17, I was a senior in high school.
I went up to the Capitol to be a page in the Iowa House.
And so for those of you that don't know what the PAGE program is, it's like an internship for high school seniors.
It's a great program.
Lots of state legislators have that program.
So if you are a kid in high school right now, really consider looking into a program like that.
But anyways, went up to the Capitol to be a page when I was 17.
And that was my first real introduction to politics, right?
I was up there and I got to learn how the process worked.
I got to network with different state legislators from all around the state.
And that's when I got the political bug.
And so I went to Drake University in Des Moines.
And so when I was there, I actually studied business because I'm an entrepreneur at heart like my dad is.
And so, but I kept on working at the Capitol.
Right.
So I worked in the state Senate.
I worked for Governor Kim Reynolds, worked for Senator Joni Ernst and at the U.S. Capitol.
And then it came down to where my predecessor, who'd been there for 24 years, decided to retire.
And my whole time working at the Capitol, it was great being a staffer.
It was great being able to help the legislators I worked for out.
But at the end of the day, I wanted to make the change.
I wanted to implement the ideas I thought were best for my community.
And so when my predecessor, you know, decided to retire, it was one of those feelings that was like, this might be my moment.
You know, the minimum age to run in Iowa for state representatives is 21.
So I was 20 at the time, but I knew I'd be 21 by election day.
And so, you know, that's when I had this epitome, like, you know, do I run or do I not?
And it was, you know, it was scary, right?
It was like, you know, what are my friends going to think of me?
What's my family going to think of me if I run for state rep at the age of 21?
You know what I mean?
Like, who are people going to think I am?
And ultimately made that decision to run.
Ultimately, made that decision to turn that activism into action and take that step forward.
And so I had a four-way primary.
And so the primary was against several different people, but one in particular that was pretty much picked up by the party.
Right.
You know, it was a female in her 40s who had a good name idea in the community and whatever else.
And so she was kind of the chosen one.
And that was fine and dandy and all, but I went out and knocked 2,000 doors.
I made hundreds of phone calls to potential voters in my district and won my primary by 100 votes.
And so, but what that proved to me is, first of all, she didn't go out and do any work.
She didn't knock any doors.
She just relied on her name ID and the signs they had up or whatever else.
But what I did is I went straight to the voters and made the case why there needs to be new blood in the government in politics today, because as we've seen, the generation before us and the generations before us have put us in this mess.
And so we need young people, particularly young conservatives, to be able to push forward and be the new voice for our country.
So you got elected at 21.
Now you're 23, two-term serving state rep. And now you're on a mission to get more young people to run for office.
Tell us about that.
Yeah.
So, you know, like I talked about, you know, about a year and a half ago, when I met you, I had started having this vision of, you know, we need more young conservatives in politics, right?
We need more young conservatives getting elected, not only to the state legislators, but also to the municipal elected officials too, city councils, county commissioners, school boards, right?
Because we've seen how important those municipal offices play now since the pandemic hit, right?
I mean, school boards, city councils, mayors, they have so much control of our lives, and it's completely crazy.
And so there's a lot of times, though, there's a rift where there's not a lot of conservatives that run for those offices, right?
You know, a lot of people, you know, they're just doing other things.
They don't think about why we need young, strong conservatives to be running for those offices.
So what I created was Run Gen Z and stands for Run Generation Z.
And the purpose of it is to get more young conservatives elected to office.
But what we do at Run Generation Z is we train you, give you a mentor that's already an elected official, that's a young person, and we help you be successful, right?
You know, when I was starting out, when our other, one of my other co-founders that are all conservatives under 25, elected to the state legislators, when we were starting out, we didn't have that moral support around us of young conservatives that are already elected to office.
We thought we were on our own.
We thought we were the only young person that age that was running for office.
And so that's not encouraging, right?
And so that's what we're doing is we're empowering, encouraging other young conservatives with our stories to say, hey, if we can do it, you can do it.
And that's exactly what we did at SAS here a couple of weeks ago, right?
So we went to SAS and it was our first conference that we went to.
We had a booth there, right?
We had a booth there and we had almost 200, 200 young conservatives at SAS sign up and say, I want to run for office now because you guys did it.
And we just stood by that booth and we just talked to every kid that came to us.
Every type of office.
Every type of office.
Yeah.
We just said, you know, you need to be thinking about doing something, right?
Like writing Facebook posts and ranting on Twitter doesn't help.
I mean, like, sometimes it does, but it doesn't do anything compared to if you're actually running for office, instilling those conservative policies and your state legislators on your city councils.
And so we at Turning Point Action are being supportive of what you guys are doing.
We love it and we want to help support you.
We appreciate that.
And so there's a lot of young people that are listening to this right now, a lot of older people that are saying, I love it.
But I feel like I'm losing my country.
It's all over.
Here you are, 23.
I'm 27.
We're not that far apart.
And we're like, no, we got to act more.
We got to fix our voting system.
We get it.
Okay.
We understand the problems, but we're Americans.
What makes us different than the Belgians and the French is that we don't complain.
We do stuff in this country.
So what is your message to the people that are apathetic, cynical, pessimistic?
My message to everyone listening right now is that we have a group of young patriots right now in this country that are ready to run for office.
And that might be you right now listening.
And we want you to check out what we're doing.
We want you to go online to our website, rungenz.com, visit our Facebook.
Rungenz.com.
Yes.
Go to our Facebook page at rungen Z. Go to our Twitter page at RunGenZ or our Instagram as well.
But we want you guys to be involved.
We want you guys to fill out the form we have online to be a candidate.
We want every single person listening to this podcast right now to be a candidate.
And it's not just for Gen Z. There can be other people that, I mean, focus on Gen Z, but you can help pepper around other people.
They're 28, 29, 30.
And we don't have, if you're 26, we're not helping you out, right?
I mean, this is the energy, though, is coming from Gen Z.
This is a broader theme, right?
It's we want young conservatives to be running for office.
And so, you know, every single person listening to this podcast, you can do it.
That's my message is you can do it too.
And so, you know, we just were not trained to think that way, but that's what we're trying to do at Run Gen Z is to let you guys know that, you know, if you are passionate about this country, you're passionate about what's going on right now, there is hope, and that's what we're here for.
So you're in Iowa.
President Trump won by seven points.
Yeah, eight and a half.
Eight and a half.
And one of the reasons why you see states change is all of a sudden you see precincts change and you see counties change.
So a lot of people email us.
And I don't mean to beat up our audience.
I mean, they're understandably a little bit deflated right now.
I mean, things are going to get, they're going to become a horror show.
Yeah.
Right.
And we have to find hope and optimism and do action.
Right.
And people are emailing us a lot, freedom at charliekirk.com.
And they say, Charlie, I don't feel as if I can change the state of Arizona myself.
But, Joe, Iowa used to be a battleground state.
Yeah.
Now it's a deep red state with the trifecta, right?
You have the House, the Senate, the governors.
Yeah.
Had for four years, too.
Two Republican senators, and Trump has won both in 16 and 20.
A lot of it's because of grassroots patriots like you that rose up, started to knock on doors, make phone calls, tell the story of Iowa, which, by the way, no allegations of voter fraud.
Pretty secure elections, I have to say, right?
It is, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And no one really ever got into any of the funny business of Iowa, if I'm not mistaken, where there's other states that are just a catastrophe, right?
Walk us through how Iowa has become this deep red state.
And I think it's because of people like you that have just risen up and take, like, I'm going to change this state or at least change my neighborhood.
Yeah.
So what I would like to tell people about Iowa is that House Republicans right now, we represent 97 out of 99 counties.
In Iowa.
97 out of 99 counties we represent Iowa City, maybe.
Yeah, we represent either the whole portion or part of the portion of that county.
Democrats represent, I think it's about around 10.
Which would be a portion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because they're split up in different districts and stuff, whatever else.
But that's what you're talking about.
You're talking about that, you know, we've had this message in Iowa that we're going to stand up for the working people of the state.
You know what I mean?
And so, you know, this week we started a session in Iowa, right?
We started back at session.
And so, you know, on opening day, normally, historically, you know, the precedent has been, you know, this is a uniting day, right?
This is a day where, you know, Democrat, Republican, we're opening up session.
We're going to work for Iowans, whatever else.
You know what I mean?
And then you fight later.
Yeah.
And then you fight later.
That did not happen this year.
The minority party, the Democrats, came out and just started throwing hands.
They started, number one, started blaming Iowa Republicans for what happened at the Capitol last Wednesday.
Started talking about how, you know, our biggest, how our biggest problem in Iowa is climate change.
That was our biggest thing.
Okay.
So it wasn't about working class families getting back to work.
The pandemic.
It wasn't about wages.
It wasn't about, you know, the pan.
So it's, it's, it was, it was crazy to me, you know what I mean?
But it was just, for me and my colleagues, though, you know, on my side of the aisle, it was, this is why they lose elections.
They don't get it.
You know what I mean?
Like this year, so this year in Iowa House, it was 5347 last year, right, before the elections.
And so there was a lot of noise about how the Iowa Democrats are going to take back the House.
Because of Teresa Greenfield and we had millions and millions of dollars coming from Silicon Valley and New York into the Iowa elections.
So it was, it was staggering the numbers of out-of-state money from that Democrats were pouring in.
And so, you know, we had our hands tied.
And so we were pretty much written off.
They said, you know, the Iowa Republicans, they are losing the House, right?
We ended up picking six seats up.
And they didn't win.
They didn't flip one district.
The Democrats now flipped one district.
We flipped six.
And Joni won decisively.
And Joni won by seven points.
And that was supposed to be a top talk.
They said two weeks before the election that she was down 12 points.
Unbelievable.
So, I mean, the thing is, is that they don't learn from their mistakes.
I mean, these people in Iowa, they want to hear about, you know, how we're going to help their family, how they're going to be able to pay their mortgage and their car payment and send their kids to college.
They don't want to hear about, you know, these, these fringe ideas that the Democrats have been displaying.
And so, you know, it works on the East and West Coast, right?
And in these other places that, you know, they've been campaigning, but it doesn't work in the Midwest.
And that's what they're starting to find out.
You know what I mean?
It's a deep red state.
Yeah, it's becoming a deep red state.
And that's because of the ideals that we've been pushing.
It's America first, you know, vision.
So a lot of young people are listening right now and they say, ah, running for office, it's tough.
Make the case why they need to run.
And they have to, they have to, even if you run for the supervisor of the dog catcher, whatever it is, you've got to run for something.
My message would be: you know, we do not preserve America.
And I don't say change America.
Democrats want to change America.
We do not preserve America and the ideas we have here in the Constitution unless you run.
Because right now, people aren't running.
People are discouraged.
And we are the generation of hope.
We are the generation that's going to bring this country back to where it is and preserve the ideals that we have here, not change it.
We don't want to change America.
We don't want to change the Constitution.
We want to preserve what we have because what our founders came up with was a great document.
You know what I mean?
And so we need to make sure that our generation is the generation of patriots that rises up and makes sure that we preserve what we have here and preserve the American dream.
So talk about it, Run Gen Z. You have other young legislatures too you found.
Aaron Carpenter.
Talk about some of these people.
Yeah.
So my co-founders of the organization, so it was actually four state representatives were the co-founders of the organization.
Two from Florida, Josie Tomcow, Amber Mariano, both elected under 25.
Caleb Hanna from West Virginia.
He was elected to 18.
He was the youngest.
He was elected the state legislator at 18.
Caleb's amazing guy.
And then Joe Alexander from New Hampshire.
So Joe is elected at 25 in the New Hampshire House, I believe.
And so, but what I did was I knew about all of them or had met him before.
And I reached out to him.
I said, hey, I have this vision of us founding this organization of being mentors for the next generation of conservatives that want to run for office.
Every single one of them is on board.
And so that's the mission.
That's what we've grown.
That's why Aaron's coming on board, right?
Aaron's a city councilman from Ohio.
And so just forming this coalition of young conservatives that wanted to mentor the next generation.
And we've done that.
It's organic, right?
You know, it's something that should have been done a long time ago.
You know, I always say it's kind of like the big brothers, big sisters of politics.
That's what we're trying to do.
And it's a natural thing.
And that's what we're all about at Run Gen Z.
And it's going to make a difference.
I don't think it's going to make a difference.
It is going to make a difference.
Very good.
Rungenz.com.
And how can people follow you or get involved with what you're doing?
Like just you personally.
Yeah.
So my Twitter handle is at joyrep84.
And then my Facebook page is Joe Mitchell for Iowa House.
But then again, please go visit our website, like Charlie just said, rungenz.com and our Twitter handle and Facebook at rungen Z.
And you'll be governor of Iowa maybe one day or something.
We'll see.
I don't know.
I don't know.
We'll see about that sometime.
Very good.
Well, Joe, keep up the great work.
Everyone listening, convert that sadness into action.
Do something about it.
Go to rungenz.com.
I'm totally behind it.
We're helping financially at turning point action.
We're helping any way we can.
So get behind it.
Make a plan to go run for something.
School board, city council, water reclamation district, anything.
And veto abatement.
No, all that stuff exists.
Yeah.
And especially this spring.
If you are in a position of sadness, convert it into action.
Put points on the board this spring.
These municipal elections are so important.
They're so important.
And that's what we're here for.
And the turnout's so low in these elections this spring.
So go and turn out everybody.
All right, everybody.
Thanks so much.
Rungenz.com.
Joe, thanks for being here.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
You want to get involved with Turning Point USA, where we play offense with a sense of urgency to win America's culture war, go to tpusa.com, tpusa.com.
Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
And if you want to support us, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.