| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| States and the wealthiest, most developed nation on earth, at that time and that ability to get care should be a matter of luck. | ||
| I believe it should be the law of the land. | ||
|
unidentified
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All this week, watch C-SPAN's new Members of Congress series, where we speak with both Republicans and Democrats about their early lives, previous careers, families, and why they decided to run for office. | |
| And on Saturday, at 9:30 p.m. Eastern, our interviews include North Carolina Congressman Addison McDowell, who ran for office after the death of his younger brother, who died from a fentanyl overdose. | ||
| We lost my little brother. | ||
| He was 20 years old, and it was tragic. | ||
| And I tell people it's like losing an arm and having to go through life without something that should be there that's not. | ||
| So it drove me to do this and to run for Congress. | ||
| That's why I'm here. | ||
| Watch new members of Congress all this week, starting at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| Here on C-SPAN, we've been introducing you to new members of the 119th Congress. | ||
| They talk about their early lives, previous careers, families, and what drove their interest in running for office. | ||
| Next, freshman representatives Sarah McBride, Jefferson Shreve, Laura Gillen, Craig Goldman, Nellie Poe, and Sarah Elfreth. | ||
| Democrat Sarah McBride is an at-large member of the U.S. House representing the entire state of Delaware. | ||
| She was national press secretary for the human rights campaign before winning a seat in the Delaware Senate. | ||
| Representative McBride is also the first openly transgender member of Congress. | ||
| She talks here about her career and getting started on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Well, my journey to serving the entirety of the great state of Delaware really started being born and raised in Delaware. | ||
| And in so many ways, just getting here has been a journey of ups and downs, a journey that really started in my own crisis of hope. | ||
| And, you know, I think for this Congress, for our politics nationally, the biggest challenge that we face is that this country right now faces its own crisis of hope. | ||
| I think rooted in the fear that we no longer have the individual or collective capacity to meet the scope and the scale of the challenges that we face. | ||
| And we increasingly see a politics and a Congress that isn't rising to the occasion to meet that crisis of hope and deliver for people and is increasingly toxic and unwilling to have conversations, sometimes difficult conversations across disagreement. | ||
| I think that's a challenge that all of us in Congress face. | ||
| You used the word journey. | ||
| I wanted to ask you about your journey. | ||
|
unidentified
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Viewers may or may not know that you are the first openly transgender member of Congress ever. | |
| So tell us about your journey. | ||
|
unidentified
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First on the personal side, talk to us about growing up, teen years, growing into adulthood. | |
| Tell us where you've been. | ||
| So as I mentioned, I was born and raised in Delaware. | ||
| I actually live three blocks from where I grew up. | ||
| And when I mentioned that crisis of hope earlier, it really was rooted in this fear that our politics couldn't work for someone like me, this fear that the heart of this country was not big enough to love someone like me. | ||
| And in that crisis of hope, I went searching for solutions. | ||
| I went searching for examples of our world becoming kinder and more just and more inclusive. | ||
| And I found a little glimmer of hope as I stumbled across books about this building, about the United States Capitol, because as I read those books, I saw that the through line of every chapter was a story of advocates, activists, and a handful of courageous elected officials working together to right the wrongs of our past, to address injustice. | ||
| And I found hope in those possibilities. | ||
| I found hope in the possibilities in our politics. | ||
| And so I got involved at a young age in advocacy and politics, working for our former governor, Jack Markell, our former attorney general, the late Beau Biden. | ||
| But really for me, my decision to run for office was rooted in my own passion around health care policy and building out our care infrastructure to support people through the inevitable challenges of life. | ||
| The most formative experience in my own life was serving as the caregiver to the person who would become my husband, Andy, during his battle with cancer. | ||
| And for anyone who's been diagnosed with cancer, particularly if you've been diagnosed in your 20s, as Andy was, you know it is like a punch in the gut unlike anything you've ever experienced. | ||
| You never expect to hear that word at such a young age. | ||
| But from those first moments after his diagnosis, Andy and I knew how lucky we were. | ||
| We knew how lucky Andy was to have health insurance that would allow him to get care that would hopefully save his life. | ||
| And we both knew how lucky we were to have flexibility with our jobs that allowed him to focus on the full-time job of trying to get better and me to focus on the full-time job of caring for him, of loving him, of marrying him, and eventually when he found out that his cancer was terminal to walk him to his passing. | ||
| And I decided to run for office because I do not believe that in Delaware, our state of neighbors, or here in the United States in the wealthiest, most developed nation on earth, at that time and that ability to get care should be a matter of luck. | ||
| I believe it should be the law of the land. | ||
|
unidentified
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I read that you had an interest in politics very young, even as a child. | |
| Was there a moment or a person or an event where you said this might be for me in the future? | ||
| Well, I didn't always know that I wanted to run for office, but I knew I wanted to be involved in politics. | ||
| Again, rooted in that crisis of hope that I had as a young person, reading those books about the Capitol and the White House and seeing the history that provided me a little glimmer of hope. | ||
| I remember when I was 13 watching then State Senator Barack Obama deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004 and feeling inspiration in a way that I had never felt that I had only read about. | ||
| And really it was Barack Obama's rise and his campaign in 2007, 2008 that really showed me that the politics of the past really could be the politics of the present, a politics of conquering seemingly impossible obstacles and widening that circle of opportunity and freedom to more people. | ||
| In addition to your time in the State Senate in Delaware, you were president of the student government at American University. | ||
| What did those earlier experiences teach you just in terms of policymaking and politics leading up to today? | ||
| Well, I think the first thing that I learned early on was you shouldn't ignore opportunities for change right in front of you. | ||
| I was at American University, which is right here in Washington, D.C. | ||
| A lot of my students, student peers, were much more interested in interning on the hill, and those are great experiences. | ||
| We've got some great interns in our office, but a lot of times they ignored the opportunities to foster change and to take leadership opportunities that were right in front of them on our college campus. | ||
| And so one of the things that I really took from that is that you shouldn't always be distracted by the shiny big object. | ||
| You should look for opportunities right there in your own community to do good and to make change and to lead. | ||
| You know, the second thing I think I've learned over the last 15 years is just how important grace and kindness are in our politics. | ||
| I think that for a lot of people, their grace and their kindness has been abused. | ||
| There's no question about it. | ||
| But the course correction for that is not to eliminate grace and kindness from our politics. | ||
| It's to find the right balance between extending grace so long as people demonstrate growth. | ||
|
unidentified
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When you reflect on the time that you came out, and that was during college, correct? | |
| What do you think of? | ||
| I think about how scared I was. | ||
| I think about how seemingly impossible the service of someone like me in these halls was. | ||
| And I think about all of the change that I have had the privilege of bearing witness to over the last decade and how fragile that change in progress has been. | ||
| I think we've seen a backsliding over the last couple of years on so many different issues that trouble me, but I remain hopeful, one, because of that change that I witnessed, which seemed so impossible to me as a kid that it was almost incomprehensible, not just become possible, but a reality. | ||
| But also in the knowledge that I saw in those history books that history and progress is not always linear, that it's often two steps forward and one step back. | ||
| And that the only way that we lose is if we fall prey to cynicism and give up on our capacity to continue to deliver change. | ||
|
unidentified
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How would you describe your reception here in Congress among your colleagues? | |
| 98% of my colleagues have been wonderful and warm. | ||
| You share something in common with President Biden. | ||
| Of course, you're both from the state of Delaware. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| He did write the foreword to your memoir several years ago. | ||
| Describe your relationship with the president. | ||
| Well, first off, everyone in Delaware knows one another. | ||
| You can't go to the grocery store or a restaurant and not run into your governor, your senators, your member of Congress, or even the president of the United States. | ||
| We are a state of neighbors, as I mentioned. | ||
| And Joe Biden has been my senator, my vice president, and of course, for a couple more days, our nation's president, my president. | ||
| But I really got to know Joe Biden through the eyes of his son, Bo. | ||
| When I worked for Bo. | ||
| I served as an intern on his first campaign, but then on his re-elect, his body person, his driver, his field organizer, his field director, volunteer coordinator. | ||
| So I really got to know Bo. | ||
| And he was truly good and decent. | ||
| He was exactly behind the scenes, what he seemed like in public. | ||
| And his love for his father was as deep and as real as the public stories really demonstrate and convey. | ||
| And so I got to know Joe Biden through the eyes of Bo. | ||
| Since Bo's passing, I've gotten to know the president more personally. | ||
| And he is someone with a heart. | ||
| He is someone who genuinely loves this country and loves the people that he serves. | ||
| And I think that provides an example for all of us, that in this time of increasing toxicity and partisanship in our politics, that we have to recognize that our fellow citizens are neighbors, not enemies, and that those of us who are in positions of public trust are here to serve everyone, whether they voted for us or not. | ||
| We are here to love everyone, whether they voted for us or not. | ||
| And I think too often we see elected officials in our politics, unfortunately, particularly, essentially on the other side of the aisle, too often say, if you are part of a community, whether you live in a state or you have an identity of a community that I presume voted against me, I will not help you. | ||
| Or I will even actively make your life worse. | ||
| That needs to end in our politics. | ||
| We need to come together. | ||
| We need to serve everyone. | ||
|
unidentified
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How do you do that? | |
| How do you all come together? | ||
| Well, look, I think it's certainly difficult. | ||
| And it's the fundamental question of our democracy right now. | ||
| With bifurcated legacy media and individualized social media that gives us content that just reinforces our own pre-existing positions, it's hard to have a national dialogue in our broader body politic. | ||
| It's also hard to have that here, where the incentives, sadly, prefer and elevate outrage and division over collaboration. | ||
| But we all, I think fundamentally, we all can do what we can do individually. | ||
| And I am here as part of a rising generation of new elected officials who say that the politics of the last decade of division, of fear, of fear-mongering, need to end. | ||
| And we have big challenges. | ||
| We need serious people in public office. | ||
| We don't have to agree on everything. | ||
| And I think that's one of the things I love about my time in the Delaware State Senate where nearly every bill that I introduced and passed passed with bipartisan support. | ||
| I have fundamental disagreements with Republicans, but we have to, in a democracy, be willing to work across the aisle and have conversations across disagreement. | ||
| I was proud to be the first freshman Democrat to introduce a bill in this Congress, and I'm proud that that bill is bipartisan. | ||
|
unidentified
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Which bill was that? | |
| It's legislation that ends the scamming of consumers by credit repair organizations who are charging significant upfront fees in violation of the spirit of federal law on empty promises of improvements to people's credit. | ||
| And this removes the legal loopholes that allow those credit repair organizations to do this so that consumers aren't scammed by these entities, that they get the services that they pay for. | ||
|
unidentified
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And finally, as we wrap up and as we look ahead to your career here, what kind of mark would you like to leave on this place? | |
| Well, I think there's two things. | ||
| One, I want to be part of a coalition that helps usher in a new type of politics, a politics of grace, not of grandstanding, of progress, not of pettiness. | ||
| I want to help lower the temperature. | ||
| I want to help instill a spirit of collaboration in this place. | ||
| The second is I want to be part of a Congress, and it's going to have to be a Democratic Congress, that finally modernizes our care infrastructure by providing affordable child care for every family and paid family and medical leave for every person. | ||
| We have a 1950s care infrastructure for a 2025 workforce, and we are failing ourselves morally with that reality, but we're also failing ourselves economically by not catching up with the rest of the world and modernizing our care infrastructure. | ||
|
unidentified
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Republican Jefferson Shreve of Indiana is one of more than 60 new members of the U.S. House. | |
| He has an MBA in agribusiness and has served on the Indianapolis City Council. | ||
| Congressman Shreve talks here about also starting, running, and ultimately selling a successful storage business. | ||
| You heard about that. | ||
| The business with Storage Express. | ||
| And it's a company that I started right out of college. | ||
| Actually, I incorporated before I graduated my senior year at IU, Indian University. | ||
| What did I learn? | ||
| I learned everything about business by taking a business from a building and growing it into a portfolio. | ||
| I went from a, it was wholly owned by me up until the point that I traded it into a great big public company. | ||
| And so I had that experience of small startup business to a mid-sized regional operator, traded into a national company. | ||
| I took a seat on their board of directors. | ||
| So I learned an extraordinary amount business. | ||
| But some of it's pretty simple. | ||
| You've got to satisfy your customers. | ||
| You've got to meet your payroll, cover your payments, and do all those things to stay in business. | ||
| How does that experience and those lessons learned apply to someone entering Congress? | ||
| What will you bring to the program here? | ||
| Well, some sensibility from a fiscal standpoint that I think is much needed in government. | ||
| If you've got a small business or a big business, you don't have a printing press in the basement like we have in Congress. | ||
| And so that sense for being grounded in the math having to work, the budget having to work long term is a perspective that I'm going to bring to the team as we work to govern and to turn to manage the debt crises that so many of us feel we're facing to turn that trend line around. | ||
| How do you consider yourself politically? | ||
| How would you describe yourself? | ||
| I aim to be part of the governing majority here as a Republican. | ||
| And we have an opportunity going into the new Congress with a governing majority in the House, Senate, and the administration to get some things done that weren't possible in the 118th Congress. | ||
| And I know how frustrating that was for my immediate predecessor and others in the last Congress. | ||
| I think we have the opportunity, even the exigency with which we've got to govern and manage the fiscal affairs of our country in the 119th. | ||
| I would describe myself as a fiscal conservative, and my focus is going to be on the fiscal challenges facing our country. | ||
| We talked about your business career. | ||
| When did politics enter your mind? | ||
| Early on, actually I majored not in business, but in political science. | ||
| I took an elective poli-sci course and I liked the subject matter. | ||
| And I had the opportunity to come out here to Washington, D.C. as a young man, and I interned. | ||
| I had the opportunity to intern for Senator Richard Luger, who is a longest-serving senator in Indiana's history back home. | ||
| He started on the school board. | ||
| He was our mayor of Indianapolis, and then almost 30 years in the Senate. | ||
| And opportunities to watch, to work with, to learn from, and even enjoy a friendship with gentlemen like Mr. Luger and Governor Daniels shaped who I am. | ||
| And that perspective, my view of the world, of America's role in the world, that Hoosier humility, all those elements played into part of what makes me me. | ||
| What's it been like navigating things on the Hill so far? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I'm very early into this. | |
| This is week one. | ||
| And so navigating is an experience that I'm going to yet learn. | ||
| You know, I don't come out of the farm system of politics. | ||
| My background is in business. | ||
| I didn't serve in the General Assembly. | ||
| But as my immediate predecessor, Greg Pence said, he didn't either. | ||
| And that's not necessarily a bad thing because you don't have to unlearn anything and you don't come in with expectations as to the way it worked at the Indiana State House because things are different out here. | ||
| We will have a narrowly divided chamber, like one seat to start. | ||
| Back home, the Republicans enjoy a super majority in both chambers. | ||
| And so the stage is set pretty differently. | ||
| What else did you learn from Congressman Greg Pence? | ||
| Plain spoken, Hoosier communication skills with constituents back home. | ||
| And I've had benefit of opportunities to learn from his brother, Greg Pence, too, because they both represented the Indiana 6th District between the two of them for 20 years. | ||
| Mike Pence. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mike Pence. | |
| Mike Pence represented the district for even longer than Greg Pence did. | ||
| And they've both been really helpful to me. | ||
| And although siblings, they're pretty different men in lots of respects. | ||
| Tell us about your family and what they think about all this. | ||
| My family was all out here with me for swearing-in activities just this past week. | ||
| They're excited. | ||
| It's such an honor for me personally and for them to see and experience the history, the proud tradition of this place. | ||
| And so, you know, it's a great honor and it's an honor that I and everyone else coming in with me feels the challenge to live up to, to deliver, and to make our constituents proud. | ||
| Whether they voted for me or not, my aim is to make the people back home proud of the work that I will do here. | ||
| One of more than 60 new members of the U.S. House is Democrat Laura Gillen of New York. | ||
| She had a career as a commercial litigator and has served as town supervisor in Hempstead, New York. | ||
| Representative Gillen talks here about how she was able to flip the fourth congressional district in New York from Republican to Democrat. | ||
| We worked relentlessly. | ||
| We learned our lessons from the 22 campaign and we just had a longer runway to raise the resources that we needed to win. | ||
| And we made sure that we had a really, really aggressive constituency-driven organizing program. | ||
| And we knocked over 300,000 doors and just made sure we communicated my message to the voters and inspired them to come out and vote for me. | ||
| Tell us more about your background, where you're from, how you grew up, family, experiences, that kind of thing. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So I actually was born in the district. | ||
| I grew up in the district, did a little time here in D.C. when I went to Georgetown for undergrad and then my first year of law school and then moved back to the district after I had my second, or right before I had my second child and have been living there since. | ||
| So I have deep, deep roots there, raising four children there and very much in touch with the people who live there. | ||
| Did I read that before law school you worked in Thailand for a while? | ||
| What did you do there? | ||
| I did. | ||
| I was a dive master at a scuba school on an island called Kosumui and I spent some time there, worked there on my way to India. | ||
| After I left there I went to India and I lived in Calcutta and worked for Mother Teresa. | ||
| What brought you across the world to do that? | ||
| What was the motivation? | ||
| So I had gone to visit a friend in Hong Kong the year before. | ||
| She's a friend from high school from the district who was a Chinese language major and was living in Hong Kong for a while. | ||
| So I went and visited her, did a little bit of traveling with her and with her sister and got the travel bug and decided that I was going to go explore more of the world where I was single and in my 20s and had the opportunity to do that. | ||
| But I did want to have a focal point for my travel. | ||
| So I found a book called Volunteer Vacations and looked for different volunteer opportunities and found that you could, if you show up in Calcutta and you want to work for Mother Teresa, you can. | ||
| So that was the focal point of my trip. | ||
| What did you do for Mother Teresa and what was the overall experience like for you? | ||
| I worked in Kali Got, which is her home for the dying. | ||
| So your tasks there could be anything from cooking breakfast, cleaning up, bathing patients, feeding patients, just providing comfort to the patients, doing the laundry, all kinds of tasks. | ||
| Where there are people willing to work, they will give you something to do. | ||
| And you go there to give, but you get so much more. | ||
| It was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. | ||
| What did it mean to you? | ||
| Tell us more. | ||
| You just learn to be grateful for all the things that we have here when you see people who are suffering and have so little. | ||
| I believe that all of us are responsible to giving back to our fellow human beings. | ||
| And that was one way I could do it in my 20s. | ||
| And this is the way I'm trying to do it right now. | ||
| And back here in this country, you were a commercial litigator for a number of years. | ||
| When did politics enter the picture for you? | ||
| Well, I was a government major at Georgetown, and I worked as an intern on Capitol Hill under Senator Burrow of Louisiana. | ||
| And so I always had an interest in politics, but I thought it might be too much of a mudslinging sport for me. | ||
| But once I had settled back in the district and was living there, and I saw rampant corruption in our local government, it inspired me to get involved and not sit on the sidelines. | ||
| I couldn't complain if I wasn't willing to do something. | ||
| So that's kind of what made me get off the sidelines, as Senator Gillibrand would say, and get into the arena. | ||
| What was your first seat in elective office and what was that experience like? | ||
|
unidentified
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So I was the first Democrat in 112 years to be elected Hempstead town supervisor, which sounds like a small job, but it's actually a really huge job. | |
| It's the largest township in America. | ||
| I had 774,000 residents, a half a billion dollar budget, and roughly 3,000 employees. | ||
| So it was a very challenging situation. | ||
| Again, first Democrat in 112 years. | ||
| I had a Republican-controlled town board, so I had to find a way to work together to get things done. | ||
| And so what do you take from that experience that you could apply here in Washington? | ||
| I think it was the perfect training to come down here in D.C. Again, like I'm very focused on trying to get bipartisan results to deliver for my residents and listening to the other side and finding ways to get things done. | ||
| That's what I had to do in Hempstead, and that's what I'm going to do here. | ||
| How would you describe yourself politically? | ||
| I would say I'm a moderate. | ||
| Moderate politically. | ||
| And tell us about your family and what they think about you being here. | ||
|
unidentified
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So I have a husband and four children and one child out of college, one child in college, two in high school. | |
| And for my high school kids, politics has kind of been in the mix for most of their lives, so they're used to it. | ||
| And I guess everybody's used to it now. | ||
| But they're really excited that I got here. | ||
| You know, it was disappointing when I didn't get here in 22, so they're very happy that I'm here now. | ||
| And we're settling into the new normal of me being in D.C. a couple days during the week and then back home on the weekend. | ||
| One of more than 60 new members of the U.S. House is Craig Goldman of Texas. | ||
| The Republican has worked in real estate and spent more than a decade in the Texas House of Representatives. | ||
| In Congress, he now represents the 12th district in Texas and talks here about filling a seat once held by some major figures in that state's political history. | ||
| It is a legendary seat, especially in Fort Worth, to have Speaker Jim Wright in the seat, Pete Guerin, who left the seat to become Secretary of Army under President Bush. | ||
| And of course, Kay Granger Rossbrow Jr. called her a living legend. | ||
| And he's absolutely correct. | ||
| She's the first Republican woman to be elected to Congress from Texas, the first Republican woman ever to be chair of appropriations here in the House. | ||
| And so absolutely a legendary seat and tough shoes to fill. | ||
| What did you learn from those experiences from Kay Granger and what you know about Jim Wright in terms of representing that district? | ||
| Well the good thing is I've been able to speak to Congressman Granger and former Congressman Pete Guerin a number of times about coming up here and what to expect. | ||
| And their advice and counsel has been just amazing to be able to have. | ||
| And so it's nice that I can be able to go home and still able to talk to them about what to expect or problems that they can help solve for me. | ||
| You were born in Fort Worth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Tell us what it was like to grow up there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Tell us about your family. | |
| So born and raised in Fort Worth, I'm a fifth generation native of Texas, fourth generation native of Fort Worth. | ||
| So it's been fascinating to trace my family roots. | ||
| My great-great-great-grandfather moved there in the late 1800s to help build the original TMP Railroad from Fort Worth to El Paso. | ||
| And we know this because there was an article written about him in 1910. | ||
| And so his name was Ike Gronsky, and he was a character. | ||
| And so, you know, just really establishing roots and helping build not only Fort Worth, but Texas, you know, helped build Texas. | ||
| My family's been part of for a number of generations. | ||
| So, yeah, with that kind of base of my family being there, not only in Texas, but in Fort Worth, I know, and it's kind of been instilled in me from the very beginning, from a baby in Fort Worth, is we're here to serve the community. | ||
| And so any and all opportunities I've had to be able to give back to the community that I love so much, I've been able to do it. | ||
| And then, you know, got into politics about 12 years ago, 13 years ago, and I've loved every second of representing Southwest Tarrant County and now the great honor of representing western Tarrant County and northern Parker County. | ||
| Do you recall political discussions at home? | ||
| Oh, very much so. | ||
| In fact, as we have Jimmy Carter's funeral today, I remember as a kid the 1976 presidential election and watching that on TV at the dinner table on small little black and white TV at the dinner table. | ||
| We watched that election during dinner. | ||
| You did real estate for a while? | ||
|
unidentified
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Is that correct? | |
| Before you ran for elective office. | ||
| How long were you in that business? | ||
| Well, you never get out of that business technically, you know. | ||
| So been in that roughly 20 years. | ||
| And prior to that, my father and I ran a family wine and food store. | ||
| So I've been a small businessman almost my entire life. | ||
| How does that inform you as you begin this career? | ||
| Well, it certainly helps. | ||
| I mean, I know the struggles of small business people. | ||
| I know how to meet a payroll. | ||
| You know, what every single small business owner is going through every single day in this economy, I've gone through it with them. | ||
| So having that experience and that knowledge, I hope to be helpful to small businesses across the United States. | ||
| You spent a dozen years in the Texas House, is that correct? | ||
| Twelve exactly, yes. | ||
| What are you most proud of in terms of accomplishments? | ||
| The most thing I'm proud of, hands down, is Molly Chain's Law. | ||
| We passed it several sessions ago. | ||
| It got sexual predators off the streets of Texas. | ||
| Molly Jane Matheson was a young girl in Fort Worth who was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered by a sexual predator. | ||
| And he had committed the act three or four times prior to Molly, not murder, but a molly murder and three days later, committed the same act of murdered another girl in Plano. | ||
| So we were able to get him off the street. | ||
| And one month after the bill was signed by Governor Abbott, they caught someone else and put him behind bars. | ||
| So it's a bill I'm most proud of. | ||
| It's the most important legislation I've ever passed. | ||
| I hope to pass it federally. | ||
| In fact, it'll be the first bill I introduce here in the United States Congress. | ||
| Did you always have your eye ultimately on a seat in the House and open it up? | ||
| No, you never. | ||
| So I'm a former staffer here. | ||
| Who did you work for? | ||
| I worked for Phil Graham for five years, and he sat next to me on the House floor when I got sworn in the other day. | ||
| Remind our viewers about that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, Phil Graham was a U.S. Senator from first he was a congressman from Texas. | |
| At the time he represented all the way from Bryan College Station all the way up to the fourth area. | ||
| That's how big the districts were back then. | ||
| Not so much anymore. | ||
| And so then he talked about, in fact, I had a group here and we were on the House floor the other night and he talked about the time when he helped author the Reagan budget plan as a Democrat. | ||
| And Tip O'Neill basically stripped him of everything and said, you won't matter here. | ||
| And so Senator Graham, instead of just switching parties, as one can do, he resigned his seat as a Democrat, went back home to Texas, ran in the same district that he served in, but ran as a Republican, and asking the people of Texas of that congressional district, if you want to have me, have me back, but I'm going to be a Republican and not a Democrat. | ||
| What did you learn from him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, everything. | |
| I mean, he's my second father. | ||
| I mean, the advice and counsel he gave, as he famously says, you know, he paid me $18,000 a year, my very first job, to have the pleasure of working in his mailroom. | ||
| And when I complained that he paid me $18,000 a year in Washington, D.C., mind you, when I complain, he says, the education you got, you should have been paying me. | ||
| And he was absolutely correct. | ||
| Family? | ||
| Family, I mean, eight nieces and nephews, two brothers, one sister, and two parents still going strong. | ||
| What do they think about all this? | ||
| They're on cloud nine. | ||
| I mean, I can't believe it. | ||
| And I told the story the other night. | ||
| I came here with my father. | ||
| I came here with my parents. | ||
| They brought me up early on. | ||
| My dad grew up with Martin Frost, a Democrat congressman. | ||
| I remember actually eating Navy bean soup with him in the members' cafeteria or restaurant. | ||
| So I look forward to doing it as much as I can. | ||
| Anybody who comes up, especially from the district who wants to spend time with me up here, I'm ready to spend time with them and show this place off the way I was treated as a kid. | ||
| I'll never forget it. | ||
| One of more than 60 new members of the U.S. House is Democrat Nellie Poe of New Jersey. | ||
| She spent most of her earlier career working for the city of Patterson, New Jersey, and has served in that state's legislature. | ||
| Representative Poe talks here about entering the race for Congress quickly after the sudden death of her predecessor, Bill Pascrow. | ||
| Let me just say it was a very quick election. | ||
| It was actually a 64-day campaign for me. | ||
| Sadly, it was as a result of the passing of the late Bill Pescrell, who was our congressman and a beloved person to all of us, especially from where I come from, the city of Patterson. | ||
| So everyone who knew Bill knew him because of his days of his beloved city. | ||
| But it was indeed a very quick election, you know, a quick turnaround. | ||
| And of course, you knew Bill Pescrell. | ||
| What did you learn from him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What was your relationship like? | |
| Oh, my, there's so much to say about, you know, what my relationship with Bill in terms of the number of years that I've known him. | ||
| He was our mayor, the mayor of the city of Patterson for so many, for a very long time, but he was also an assemblyman. | ||
| So when Bill actually decided to run for Congress, he was both mayor and assemblyman back then. | ||
| In New Jersey, back in that time, we had dual elected officials, dual office holders, as it was called. | ||
| So when Bill went to Congress, I got the nomination to fill the unexpired seat for the assembly, ran, won that election, got elected. | ||
| So Bill and I, literally our trajectory in terms of our elected time in office, stemmed from the same amount of time. | ||
| We were both there for nearly three decades, like 28 years or so. | ||
| So when he, sadly, as I've mentioned, passed on, I wanted to move into the possibility and be considered for the nomination for the Congress. | ||
| You were born in Patterson, New Jersey. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What was it like growing up there? | |
| and what experiences do you remember most? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, Patterson is truly one of, for me, is my love. | |
| I lived in Patterson practically all my life. | ||
| I raised my children in Patterson. | ||
| I was born in Patterson. | ||
| Most of my family are all from there. | ||
| My parents actually came from Puerto Rico. | ||
| They came separate times, you know, they didn't know each other actually. | ||
| They met in New Jersey. | ||
| So Patterson is certainly a place that I hold very close and dear to my heart. | ||
| Growing up as a young girl, I have wonderful memories. | ||
| It was very different. | ||
| It was very different, but truly a wonderful experience. | ||
| I come from very humble upbringing. | ||
| My parents, my father was a blue-collar worker, and my mom was actually a seamstress up until the time that she had, both she and my dad. | ||
| Our family grew and my mom then became a full-time caretaker for all the children. | ||
| I have two sisters and two brothers. | ||
| When and how did you first get interested in politics? | ||
| At a very young age, actually. | ||
| I was doing volunteering for local campaigns and I volunteered. | ||
| I actually started knocking on doors and doing community grassroot activities back then. | ||
| During my years, I did that for a very, very long time at a point when then later on I decided to consider putting my name out there for an office holder. | ||
| What is it about politics and public service? | ||
| It's about wanting to do the right thing. | ||
| It's about wanting to make sure that you work for the people that you represent. | ||
| It's about really trying to help and do all that you can as an office holder. | ||
| For me, that's been the core of my success, if I can say. | ||
| It's part of what I've been accustomed to. | ||
| It's part of how I grew all these years in politics. | ||
| So my constituents come first, and their needs are one that I will do everything within my power to make sure that that gets well represented. | ||
| Now you have a long experience in the New Jersey State Assembly. | ||
| What do you bring to Washington from those years of experience? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I actually spent 14 years in the Assembly and then later 14 years in the Senate. | |
| So I just, just prior to getting elected to go to Congress, I served in the New Jersey legislature for 28 years. | ||
| So indeed it was an amazing learning, wonderful experience for me. | ||
| It helped to develop my skills. | ||
| I consider my years in office one that has certainly prepared me for this next step. | ||
| And having served as someone who has been in government for a long time, I feel as though that that has certainly helped to prepare me for what I'm here for today. | ||
| And you represent a first for the district in terms of your heritage. | ||
| Tell us more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Indeed, as the first Latina woman ever elected in the state of New Jersey to represent a congressional district, I am truly proud. | |
| I'm truly proud not only of my roots and where I come from, but I'm also proud to be able to be a voice for those that really didn't have a voice. | ||
| So I'm happy to be able to represent. | ||
| But it also comes with a huge amount of responsibility because I want to make sure that when you use your voice, you're using it to ensure that it is one that helps to create the opportunity for so many people. | ||
| I do not just believe that any one person represents any one group. | ||
| I represent the entire New Jersey 9th congressional district. | ||
| But I am truly proud of my roots and my upbringing and being a Latina, being Puerto Rican is something that I'm very proud of. | ||
| And during that short campaign, you needed to do ads in two languages, English and Spanish. | ||
| Tell us what that means in terms of your community and folks who come from different backgrounds, speak different languages, can come together and understand each other for the benefit of everyone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I have one of the most diverse districts in the entire country. | |
| I am, and I'm proud of that. | ||
| I'm extremely proud of my district. | ||
| I'm proud of the fact that I represent so many people from so many different parts of the world. | ||
| At the same time, I think it's important that we are able to communicate to everyone in the best possible way. | ||
| Communication is very key, and doing so is one that helps to ensure that your message not only gets across, but that the people that you represent feel as though that we are indeed connecting to one another. | ||
| So they need to be comfortable with me as I need to make sure that I'm able to make them feel that I am the person that they can come to and feel as though I'm taking care of whatever their concerns are. | ||
| Tell us as we wrap up more about your family and what they think of this new phase of your life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my family is excited for me. | |
| My husband was here for the swearing-in, and he wears his spouse pin very proudly, I might add. | ||
| So I kid him all the time about that, but he's very happy for me. | ||
| I have two amazing children and four grandchildren. | ||
| So I am super proud of my family. | ||
| They are truly my foundation, my rock. | ||
| They're the ones that I am able to smile every day, knowing that I have someone and people back home who are not only proud of me, but also have my back. | ||
| Sarah Elfrith of Maryland is one of more than 60 new members of the U.S. House. | ||
| The Democrat is a graduate of Towse University in Maryland and served as a student member on the Board of Regents for the state's university system. | ||
| Representative Elfrith comes to Washington, D.C. after serving several years in the Maryland Senate and won a 22-person primary for her new seat in Congress. | ||
| Grew up in South Jersey, grew up in a union household. | ||
| My father drove trains for SEPTA. | ||
| My mother was a probation officer, and those unions really stepped up, particularly when my stepdad got hurt on the job. | ||
| He was able to retire early, kept all his benefits. | ||
| Really important that I make sure I am championing those issues because they're really important to my family too. | ||
| What took you to Maryland? | ||
| We had a deal in my family. | ||
| You had to pay your way through school and I was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship to Towson University, studied political science, got really involved in student government, eventually got appointed to the Board of Regents for the University of System of Maryland and just fell in love with the idea of public service. | ||
| What is it about politics and public service? | ||
| Oh, it's really easy for me. | ||
| It's getting things done and helping people. | ||
| I mean, that's what gets me up every morning. | ||
| That's what makes me fight so hard for my district. | ||
| It's we're in a unique position where we have the ability 99% of the time to solve a problem for people. | ||
| And we have the ability to move the needle on policy in a way that's pretty unique to this job. | ||
| You are 36 years old, is that correct? | ||
| And you were elected to the Senate in Maryland in what year? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In 2018, sworn in 19 at 30, and was the youngest woman ever elected to the Maryland Senate, which sounds great. | |
| I hope I'm not the last young woman mistaken for a page a couple of times there. | ||
| You know, I always joke someone had to be the youngest, and we had an incredible, I had an incredible experience in the Maryland Senate. | ||
| I just came from there today, actually. | ||
| Talk to us about that experience. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What you learned, what you want to be remembered for as a member of the Senate background. | |
| As a member of the Senate, somebody who can get things done, somebody who can work across the aisle. | ||
| I was able to pass 91 bills in my six years, all with bipartisan support in a chamber where we had supermajority of Democrats. | ||
| But it was really important to me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I was on the Senate floor this morning, they gabbled into session at noon, and I went to hug my colleagues who I haven't seen since last session, mostly on the Republican side, because I haven't seen them in a while, and I really am going to miss working with them. | |
| I'd like to be known as a problem solver, somebody who can get things done, and somebody who wants to be collaborative. | ||
| And now you're in Congress representing the third district in Maryland. | ||
| Remind us what part of the state that is and how it's different from other parts of the state. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, so it's newly redrawn. | |
| It used to be a lot more dispersed, but now it is about half of Anarundo County starting in Annapolis, which is where I live, going north, and then all of Howard County, including Columbia and Ellicott City, and about four precincts in Carroll County. | ||
| So it's the southwest of Baltimore City. | ||
| Really unique district in terms of the natural world that we have, particularly in Anarundo County, so much of the Chesapeake Bay. | ||
| Also provides quite a bit of a risk and a threat in terms of sea level rise, which we see in Annapolis, and then extreme flooding we see in the northern part of the district in Ellicott City. | ||
| But it is an incredibly diverse district, historic district, one I very much love. | ||
| Talk to us about your continuing education about all these issues. | ||
| How do you learn your way to be an effective legislator? | ||
| Well, I think first of all, it's knowing that I can't be the expert on everything. | ||
| I have to be an inch deep and a mile wide on many policy areas. | ||
| I love policy. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| This is a different set of policies. | ||
| I have state down. | ||
| I'm learning federal, spending a lot of time with people who are much smarter than I am. | ||
| So spending a lot of time with CRS, our wonderful staff here in Congress, spending time with folks in the district who are experts. | ||
| I got lobbied on a Social Security change today when I was at the State House. | ||
| It's appreciating. | ||
| I can't know everything, but I know and I will learn who I can go to, who I can trust to be fair actors who are going to give me the best advice possible. | ||
| Did I read this correctly for the seat you currently occupied? | ||
| You survived a 22-person primary? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, they just kept coming. | |
| What was that experience like for you? | ||
| I love campaigning. | ||
| Win or lose, there's no better way to learn your community than being on the road, knocking on doors, putting yourself out there. | ||
| And it was an experience. | ||
| I've always had tough races. | ||
| I've always had tough generals as my first tough primary, but I think it's just made me a stronger candidate. | ||
| And at the end of the day, it makes me a much stronger member of Congress. | ||
| And at the age of 36, what are you thinking long term at this point? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, God. | |
| Not getting lost in the tunnels, honestly, right now. | ||
| No, I have so much capacity being in a nearby district. | ||
| I drive in every morning. | ||
| And so, being able to be in my district as much as possible, be here in DC, it's a pretty unique situation for a member of Congress with so many of my colleagues having to fly. | ||
| So, just showing up for my constituents, doing my best to work across the aisle, particularly in this Congress, and again, just building a reputation here of being an effective, hardworking problem solver. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum, inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington to across the country. | ||
| Coming up this morning, Principles First Founder Heath Mayo talks about the focus of the organization's summit this weekend and future of the Republican Party. | ||
| Then, American Principles Project's Terry Schilling on this week's annual Conservative Political Action Conference and the role of social conservatives. | ||
| Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern this morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Today, day three of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, will continue with remarks from Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, UN Ambassador nominee Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, and others. | ||
| You can watch live coverage beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Saturdays, watch American History TV's 10-week series, First 100 Days. | ||
| We'll explore the early months of presidential administrations with historians, authors, and through the C-SPAN archives. |