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Dec. 28, 2024 - Sean Hannity Show
29:11
What Is Pennsylvania? December 27th, Hour 3
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This is an iHeart Podcast.
All right.
This is Jeffrey Lord filling in for our friend Sean Hannity.
You can call us at 800-941-7326.
And we are going to talk now with a friend of mine from Pennsylvania, a great Pennsylvanian by the name of Jeff Bartos, who was a former Senate and Lieutenant Governor candidate himself and played a, as I understand it, a real role, uh serious big role in the uh campaign to get Dave McCormick elected to the uh United States Senate.
Jeff, how are you?
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year to you, Jeffrey, and thank you so much for having me on.
And of course, uh, I hope you and your family had a joyful and relaxing and just very amazing Christmas holiday as we wind down, probably you know, not many years in our lives more extraordinary than 2024.
Boy, I think that's the case.
Uh, you know, as I said to people that I would meet in the campaign uh as time went on, I said, take notes.
Because you're gonna want to look back and and you know, if you if you forget some of these things, uh this this was a big deal.
This was serious major American history here.
So uh w what are your thoughts, Jeff, on on Pennsylvania?
You know, I I I thought from the get-go that it was entirely possible that um President Trump was going to carry Pennsylvania, and I thought that Dave had a more uphill uh battle simply because his opponent was Bob Casey Jr.
But still in all uh they both came through.
What what are your thoughts on the electorate in Pennsylvania and is it shifting a little bit?
Is it more more red than purple, or what what are your thoughts?
Well, President Trump, I mean Jeffrey, you were very you know, you were very involved in 2016 and and you you had a firsthand view of the remarkable win that President Trump and the team, uh our friend Ted Christian and David Urban and the great uh folks that were uh all involved in that 2016 campaign and what President Trump was able to do.
At the same time, Senator Toomey won re-election in 2016.
So it was a fascinating study about Pennsylvania's uh electorate, which I think really is a microcosm of the country.
Uh I grew up in Reading, and I know you know you and I have deep roots in the Lancaster and Harrisburg area as well, and so uh you know, Sheryl's from Allentown, so I feel much more uh familiar, if you will, for uh with Berks County and Lehigh County than I Montgomery County where where we raised our girls.
And it just I think that what President Trump was able to achieve in 2016 never went away.
Um, we had some years where we didn't win elections, and who knows, and we can look back on that, I guess, and articles have been written.
But I I I always felt for me personally, from the morning of October 7th of 2023 right through uh 4 a.m. on November 6th of 2024.
I never uh I mean, let me put it more positively, I had an unshakable belief for me and Cheryl, our family, and and the people that we spent a lot of time with that that not only was President Trump going to win, but that Dave McCormick was going to win.
And as the summer went on, I felt very strongly that we were gonna flip uh those three flippable United States House seats.
We ended up flipping two of them, and of course, uh Stacey Gardy and Dave Sunday and Tim DeFor were able to win.
It's the first time I think in my lifetime since the Attorney General's race in Pennsylvania became an elected spot where we've held all three row offices.
So I think the electorate in Pennsylvania, microcosm of the country, um the message that President Trump led with, you know, that that uniting message of cutting through the silos of identity politics that the left have been trying to build for the past fifteen years.
He obliterated them with a message that united all Pennsylvanians and all Americans around uh economic prosperity, peace through strength, a secure border.
Those cut across socioeconomic lines, racial lines, religious lines, age lines.
Um I don't know.
I'm still ex I mean you can hear it in my voice.
I'm still as excited today as I was uh on on uh the evening of November 5th uh and early November 6th.
Yeah, yeah, me too.
Well, I think it's amazing and and from my own experience earlier in my career, uh one of the things I did uh in working for Senator John Hines, uh, and I was his executive assistant in the Senate, but as you and you know how this works when you get to election season, if you're gonna be participating in the campaign, you have to leave the Senate staff and you know go from Washington to Philadelphia and uh and get involved there.
And one of the things that I did, I became a uh a big coordinator of what was known in the day as Latinos for Heinz.
And it was very interesting.
He he paid a great deal of attention to the uh Hispanic community in the Philadelphia area and around the state.
He would go to their events, uh we would be I I would be talking on the phone to these folks all the time.
And uh of course he won reelection in a in a in you know considerable fashion.
And I thought there's a lesson there for Republican candidates.
You know, get out don't just do the traditional sort of things that uh Republican candidates have always done but but go out to other constituencies and spend real time with them and and and you know create the bond that I've seen created.
This is this is something that can be done.
And we know when I would drive around the state as you know yeah I'd get invited to go here or there and and I would drive and uh it always amazed me how many Trump signs I saw.
They're all over the place.
And I thought hello is there a message here of what's coming but uh I I really do think that uh you know there's lots of uh grassroots enthusiasm for him and I I'm I I'm wondering what your thoughts are for how it plays down the road.
I mean it come January 20th then what?
Well so at a very pro I'll tell you a real quick personal story lines.
We live in Laura Marion and um you know very I say a lot of highly educated people who may have a somewhat lacking in common sense and uh we love most of our neighbors.
It's also grown over the last 20 years to be a very hotbed, a really kind of vibrant Orthodox Jewish community in and around where we live.
And, gosh, it was a couple days after the election, Cheryl and I were going for a walk, and a rabbi that I know, an Orthodox rabbi that I know, stopped his car as we saw us walking, came over and gave me the biggest hug that I've probably ever received from a man.
And someone not in my family.
And he just, the joy on his face and the relief on his face that President Trump had won, that Dave had won, and that we had had this big victory up and down the ballot, he didn't even need to say anything.
It was just, there's a lot of people I know.
And we saw a lot of Trump signs in our community, in our neighborhood, that you never would have seen in 2020, and you didn't see back in 2016 either.
So it was, you had the sense.
And so for me, looking forward, I think we as a Republican Party, we as a reconstituted, realigned Republican Party, with the statewide success that we had, the House race success we had, the state Senate, I mean that state Senate seat, picking up a state Senate seat in Philadelphia, in northeast Philadelphia.
Right.
We have a once-in-a-generation, you made reference to Senator Hines and, of course, President Reagan at that same time, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to really take this message of economic prosperity, peace through strength, safe neighborhoods, secure border, education.
we have a chance to take that I think through uh for the next decade or more and really build a sustainable coalition that that should win a lot more elections and it's on us to do it.
We have I mean President Trump's a once in a hundred year candidate.
JD Vance is a generational talent.
Dave McCormick ran one of the best Senate campaigns in our lifetimes uh with a great team so we have leaders uh at the federal level uh and across the state that that can take us there and it's really up to us to deliver.
Um and I'm I'm h I'm very as confident as I was that President Trump was going to win and that Dave was going to win and we were going to have the success that's how confident I am that we're gonna deliver.
Yeah.
Well delivery is is all and one of the things I I learned uh in working for Senator Hines um there was always two tracks to what he was doing.
One was the thing that every United States senator has to do.
You know, the issue comes up about some foreign policy situation or do we vote yay or nay on some tax bill or budget bill or what have you.
But beyond that, there is Pennsylvania itself and whatever problems may be current for Pennsylvanians that are not current for Americans in other states.
when I was there we were the Philadelphia Navy Yard was uh a big deal.
And uh because of the Reagan buildup uh there was a uh a constant battle to get the Pentagon to deliver ships they they called it the SLEP program service life extension program and to get these battleships and aircraft carriers into the Navy yards so that they could be re-outfitted and sent sent back out.
Well, hello, and you will get this immediately.
There was a guy named Trent Lott who represented like the Philadelphia Navy Yard equivalent in Mississippi or Louisiana.
I know he was the senator from Mississippi, but we were constantly doing battle, and we had to bring the Navy Yard folks into the Pentagon.
They had to see the Secretary of the Navy.
They had to make their case, but we made sure that they got it, and I remember on one occasion Senator Hines and I was with him.
We were able to borrow thanks to the good graces of our visitor to the Navy Yard.
That would be Senator John Tower from Texas who was then the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
We were given a loaner from President Reagan of Marine One, and we flew from the Pentagon to the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
so that Senator Tower could be shown the USS Wisconsin which of course had been in World War II in all of this and it was it was now in Philadelphia in the Navy yard for for SLEP and how important it was and i it really helped a lot with all of this and that's the kind of thing and then you know you would this being a big state with different interests you'd go to the other end of the state and you realize you needed to work on tariff issues with uh U.S. steel
um so that that's the kind of thing that you know is down home politics if you will that I think can't be forgotten.
It isn't just the national issues here.
And I think uh wow we have such a diverse state you know I I went to high school my last two years of high school in Allentown and Allentown is an area and it isn't Lancaster as it were so yeah it's um I I find Pennsylvania having it's been such a privilege to run twice statewide once as a as a standard bearer of our party as the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor back in 2018 with with our friend Scott Wagner.
What a privilege it is to campaign in a state like Pennsylvania because it's so diverse.
And you never, I mean, the issues are never, forget boring, right?
They're never dull.
They're never easy.
You're always challenged.
But we have the leadership to do it.
I think a race to look for, look, we should take a little break from looking at the upcoming races.
But there's going to be a primary in Philadelphia in, I believe, April or May.
We have a chance to take out the Soros-backed prosecutor.
Oh, wow.
And that will be, you know, in the Democrat primary, there will be people lining up.
And I wouldn't be surprised if we see some of the folks who got involved.
involved at national in national politics for the first time recognizing that they could be a uh a counterweight or frankly even a uh prevail over the Soros back which we did just you know last month uh we should be able to take some of that uh some of that energy and some of those wins and some of that organizing that we that we did just uh over the last year or last year and a half and take that to taking back cities like Philadelphia.
Philadelphia is critical to Pennsylvania's well being and economy and the only thing really not the only thing the major thing holding us back right now is a district attorney who won't prosecute crimes.
The Wall Street Journal today wrote it I'll bet about it I was shocked up in the Wall Street Journal and there's an op ed about Philadelphia and and I and the DA and how he back the mayor's progress.
This is the Democrats are eating each other for the good of Pennsylvania for the good of Philadelphia we really have a chance now I think to take out the just frankly the worst the worst elected official in in Pennsylvania right now and Larry Craster and put someone in there who will actually prosecute crimes.
Well I've become increasingly convinced I mean this whole business with Soros prosecutors around the country uh watching what's going on in I guess it was Los Angeles uh w where you know sort of a similar situation and finally there was a rebellion uh I forget whether it was Los Angeles or San Francisco but both both Yeah.
There was a rebellion to to all of this.
And you know, one of the things that I I think people sometimes forget, and this applies to President Biden as well, is w you you've got candidates out there that say elect me and I'll do A, B, and C. Then they get elected, and they actually do A B and C, and it turns out the results are terrible.
And and it backfires.
And in this case situation, you you you had, I think, uh people at the at the around the country that saw the Biden presidency at work and said, you know, thanks, but no thanks.
It was a a whole scale.
I mean, for the for the for the sitting president who's on his way out to to once again fail to take any responsibility for the failures of the administration.
Right, an administration where nobody was fired, going all the way back to the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, all the way forward to the to its last days.
Uh this is really I said about the the vice president's uh Vice President Harris' campaign.
It was uh it was a campaign born in desperation that meandered for a hundred and ten days or so without a message, and then you know, died uh not with a bang, but with a whimper.
And and you really could almost talk about the Biden presidency that way.
Remember they they they installed him as the nominee back in the spring of 2020 in desperation, and this is the presidency.
We will we will long forget.
Yeah.
You know, like they l little remember uh this uh this administration, I think 30, 40 years down the road, it will be I think you're right, Jeff.
Jeff, we are getting the uh hand sign signal here, so thank you very much for coming on.
Uh the future beckons, and I know you will be involved.
A healthy and happy new year to you and and your family and all of your listeners, and and thanks thanks for having me on today, Jeffrey.
Thank you.
You bet.
Bye bye.
All right.
Welcome back to our last half hour.
This is Jeffrey Lord filling in for our friend Sean Hannity.
And feel free to call us at 800-941-7326.
And as I read the board, I see that there is Bob from Massachusetts who knew me from Crescent Street where I grew up, and that his dad was my principal.
Bob, are you there?
I'm there, Jeff.
All right.
Give me your last name.
President, we're we're ready to vote for you and give you a room similar at Forbes Library that we gave Calvin Coolidge.
Yeah, do you know my dad uh held Calvin Coolidge's ward two seat on the city council when we were there.
Okay.
And I was the kid.
And uh Wow, and I always say Calvin Coolidge is the one president who really worked his way up from the bottom.
He was uh I think first uh a town clerk, then I think he became the town solicitor.
He got elected to the city council, then mayor, state representative, state senator, lieutenant governor, governor, vice president, and finally he hit the big one and became president.
But uh once and that was it.
He said that's enough.
Yeah, exactly.
And in in the in the later days, he he passed in nineteen thirty-three, as I recall.
But Mrs. Coolidge was alive and well, and my mom was the chair of the Hampshire County Republican women, and she and her colleagues in that group, uh, it was one of the things to do was to go pay uh uh a courtesy call periodically on Mrs. Coolidge and talk to her about what's going on and uh politics and all of that kind of thing.
I always found that kind of fascinating.
So uh so uh what'd you call about, Bob?
A Christmas story and your dad and my cousin Bobby, who was in the Navy and submarines, he had gotten released in Norfolk, was on the beltway hitchhiking up to Barrie, Vermont, but uh he didn't get there.
Your dad picked him up, took him up to Crescent Street, and of course my aunt's house, QE's on fifty-seven Crescent Street down near the Magna House.
And so they had a long talk all the way up until you made the curb up there where the Novatenys live, where you live.
Yeah, yeah.
And uh and uh basically it was just Such a nice thing that uh this poor guy got out of a submarine and your dad saw Sailor Hitch hiking on the road and literally and he got to bury the following day.
Of course, someone called up hauled him up there and all that, but what uh what a neat thing that your dad did.
Oh, those are great people.
Yes, they were, and he was going to Barrie, Vermont.
As you could guess.
What's that?
He was going to Barrie, Vermont, did you say?
Well, that's where uh where Bobby Mitchell, who's now a Queen's cop retired, of course.
Uh-huh.
Um, and he uh his son, by the way, is I think a general now.
Wow.
Went to uh West Point.
I mean his his dad served under patent.
I mean, it was a military family.
Wow.
Uh don't hey, my dad wasn't a shrieker either.
He doesn't talk about it, but he was uh Antinian when the Inola gave off and ended the show.
Wow.
Wow.
I bet you didn't know nothing about that.
You just knew him as a principal at Bernon Street.
Yeah, and and his last name was Morriarty.
Oh, Mario Mr. Moriarty, of course.
Of course, exactly right.
Got it.
We were he was terrific.
He was terrific.
Uh I gave up I'm a conservative like you, and I you've been on the Howie Carr show and I wasn't able to catch you in there because you're on that to give you the old Northampton treatment.
But we have a room available at Forbes Library, which by the way, my dad ended up being trustee of in every election.
He got the most votes of anybody in town.
Wow.
And you know, but you knew him, of course, as just uh the principal at Bernon Street.
Yes.
And uh I think you moved on before I went to Hawley.
Did you go to Halloween?
I I left uh after the eighth grade.
So that would be circa 1965.
Those did not have, it wasn't integrated like it is now.
Well, they make the eighth graders blend in and all that.
And uh then you moved, I guess, to Pennsylvania, great state there.
We moved first to Virginia to Stanton, Virginia.
Dad was in the hotel business.
We were there for two years, and then we went on to uh Pennsylvania.
And uh the they stuck around and uh I got involved, I got, you know, graduated from high school from college there, and uh and then went to work uh my first job in the Pennsylvania State Senate Republican communications staff.
And uh never after it was Pennsylvania as home, and still is, I might add.
Oh yeah, it's a great state.
It it bailed us out and gave us Trump.
If you think you're gonna get help from Massachusetts, oh my uh hey, the Reagan, right?
I I go to the tribute for Coolidge, and uh it's right on near the courthouse.
I know exactly where it is.
I I I think I was in the White House when President Reagan called to to that was part of the ceremony for that.
Um Northampton, don't you get it?
You had a president of the United States and you were not respecting him.
Oh, well, I was a big uh Coolidge fan, and we had a double connection in our family with Coolidge.
Uh um my father's mother, uh my grandmother, uh her family uh lived on the farm that was next to the Coolidges, and they were friends of the Coolidge family.
And if you know the tale, his namesake son, Calvin Jr. died when Cal was in the White House, and he was playing tennis on the White House tennis court, got a uh blister, it got infected, and he died.
So my grandmother was invited to the funeral and took my then ten-year-old dad and went to it.
And I I had the presence of mind to get my grandmother on audio tape talking about this, and I I can still hear her saying, I can see Cal's red hair glinting in the sunlight.
It was uh it was pretty amazing.
And then all those years later, dad gets elected to Calvin Coolidge's seat in the city council, and mom is spending time with Mrs. Coolidge.
It was uh it was interesting.
And you know, when I went to work in the White House, one of the first things that President Reagan did when he took office was hang uh Calvin Coolidge's official portrait in the cabinet room.
So that uh every single time uh there was a meeting, a cabinet meeting or whatever in the cabinet room they would be reminded of Calvin Coolidge and uh uh the the conservative president President Reagan really liked Calvin Coolidge a lot.
He Trump would like him.
Yes, I th I think that's uh I think so and you know of course he he had this reputation as as being very taciturn now in other words not speaking a lot and the joke was that uh some society lady sat next to him at an event and said Mr. President I have a bet that I can get you to say more than two words to which Coolidge replied you lose that was coming it's uh it's sad that they they've really let the uh Coolidge uh room at Forbes
library go to hell that's too bad because i've been there i i went you know this is a number of years ago i went oh yeah uh you know fascinating stuff and my uh one of my best friends from uh school uh the mazorskis lived uh catty corner to the house there that was on massasoyed street where the coolages had lived and then they they got uh what did they call it the beaches i
think that was the Yeah that was over on uh Pomeroy Terrace.
Yeah yeah but if I'm kicking in uh I know that you you left a long time ago and uh it was my stomping round although I worked all over the country so yeah well I went back uh I guess it was two summers ago I went back.
First, I went with a friend.
We went to Boston to see the Red Sox play, of course.
And then she had to leave, so I hightailed it to Northampton and did sightseeing, saw some old friends, and it was great.
Great memories there.
Dad and Mom, very involved in politics, and they helped elect one of his friends, Durbin Wells, who was also a friend of his son, Teddy, was a good friend of mine.
And so, you know, it was good times back then.
Innocent, I must say.
So, okay.
All right, well, Bob, thank you very much for calling.
And on we go here.
I'd like to go to, oh, wow, Frank in Denver.com.
did your family bug you for White House tours when you worked for Reagan yes I'm here i it wasn't it wasn't just uh it wasn't just my parents in fairness you know and that was uh it was interesting to me is that that was part of the uh assignment of the uh White House political staff you know you'd you'd have your work day done by you know six o'clock, seven o'clock or whatever.
But then you had to stay and take Reagan supporters that who had called in to announce that they were coming to Washington and all this and give them a tour, a West Wing tour, which uh I did over and over and over and over again.
Uh every night after work it seemed and then also on uh the weekends on Saturdays and Sundays.
I remember on one occasion we had some uh a couple and their kids and they were from Pennsylvania.
I didn't know them uh their congressman had called and asked if I would uh take them around so I do this but it was going to be on a Saturday and I thought well okay so it's Saturday nobody's generally around on a Saturday.
So they arrive and I start to take them on the tour.
And we get stopped suddenly by the Secret Service that said, the president's in the Oval Office, so you have to wait outside.
Well, they were pretty agog.
And I thought, oh, my goodness.
And sure enough, within a matter of minutes, out came President Reagan, nicely attired in a dress sports coat and tie and all this because he felt that working in the Oval Office was sacrosanct.
so he was always well dressed and came out and I introduced him to these people and told them they were Penn State fans and by chance Penn State happened to be playing that day and so he off the top of his head goes into all sorts of stuff about Joe Paterno whom he knew and what was going on with Penn State and all that.
So it was uh it was quite fun.
You never know I got to know who you were going to meet when you did these tours.
So well Frank, thank you very much for calling.
And I want to move on to uh Jose who from Texas who wants to talk about uh election integrity being the number one issue facing the country.
Yes sir can you hear me?
I can Jose I can.
Merry Christmas and happy new year.
Senator Arlen Specter he had the presence of mind to challenge the results he did so and the federal judge overturned the election and said there was a massive scheme by Democrats to steal it and they had to redo the whole thing.
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