Marty Irby-Fighting Big Ag, USDA Corruption

Show Transcript

GOP Lobbyist Claims Big Ag-Govt Corruption

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: Hey, can you be a big time Trump supporter and still lobby to protect animals and family farmers at a right wing organization? In the case of our guest today, the answer is no and it's cost him the Leadership of Freedom Works, the conservative group that came to symbolize the Tea Party movement, but he is not fading quietly into the sunset.

[00:00:23] So stay with us. 

[00:00:26] Marty Irby, former c o of the right-wing lobbying group, FreedomWorks has left that post following attacks by the National Cattleman Beef Association and other influential conservative critics. They claimed he was embracing Democrat's woke agenda. Wouldn't wanna do that, Marty, that woke agenda man.

[00:00:49] Anyway, by advocating for animal rights and supporting such organizations as animal wellness action. 

[00:00:57] Irby's launched a new lobbying organization called Capital South and was quickly retained by Farm Action Fund to lobby for the inclusion of the bipartisan Opportunities for Fairness in Farming Act in the 2023 Farm Bill.

[00:01:16] That legislation, which is called the OFF Act, O F F Act, is backed by some 200,000 farmers and 58 farm groups that seek to reform the government's checkoff program, which Irby and the bill supporters contend is corrupt. Now in November, 2019, Irby was recognized by President Trump at the signing of the preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act that he helped get passed.

[00:01:47] He's been an unabashed Trump supporter, but also is committed to the humane treatment of animals. Now Marty grew up on a South Alabama farm with horses, cattle, and other animals, and eventually became president of the Tennessee Walking Horse Greeters and Exhibitors Association. It was then that he shifted his attention to animal protection and joined efforts to eliminate cruel training practices in the equine world.

[00:02:18] Marty, this is quite the story. I really appreciate you joining us today on the Lean to the Left Podcast. Usually conservative lobbyists shy away from us, so anyway, thanks for coming on. 

[00:02:34] Marty Irby: No thanks for having me, Bob. I'll never shy away. I've been on before and always glad to talk. If both sides of the aisle don't talk and communicate and get together, we'll never get anything done.

[00:02:44] Not sure that the Congress actually gets much done anyway, but we spend a better chance by talking to each other. 

[00:02:49] Bob Gatty: I know. And Marty, I enjoy talking to you and I appreciate it when you come on. You always have good stuff and you're well prepared. And and I'm grateful for that. Now, tell us the story.

[00:03:01] What's, what happened and why did you leave FreedomWorks and Animal Wellness Action? 

[00:03:06] Marty Irby: I had been in animal wellness Action, helped start the organization five years ago actually this month in June. And stayed up until about the end of March of this year. It was a great organization. We did a lot of good work.

[00:03:20] I think we got a total of 13 federal animal bills signed into law in that five-year period, including the PACT Act that you mentioned, that I was at the signing at in the Oval office. And I just felt like I had plateaued there and I had done all I could do. I was the number two person.

[00:03:37] We had a president, I was executive director. There wasn't any more room for me to grow or go upwards. So I was just looking for a new challenge. We all get to those points in life and had been looking around for a little bit and a friend of a friend contacted me that had taken a new position leading FreedomWorks as the number two there, and asked me if I would be willing to come on as Chief Operating Officer because of my background of having run my own business, I've run 5 0 1 c.

[00:04:05] Threes C fours and C fives. So I have a background in that as well as having worked on Capitol Hill as a communications director and a press secretary and a legislative aide. So I've a jack of all trades in that regard, and that's what a c o in many instances is. Really enjoyed working there for the two months that I worked there.

[00:04:24] Still have a lot of great friends there. My former boss is still a good friend, but. This group the Berman Company, which is a PR firm here in Washington, DC that is interestingly enough now owned by the managing partner, Jack Hubbard, who's the former c O of American Humane, and he has decided to leave the animal welfare movement and spend his time attacking animal organizations and attacking welfare advocates.

[00:04:49] I dunno if they drove him crazy. He was just a front man for big agriculture all along. I guess the question's still out on that, but he launched a campaign called Freedom Woke trying to oust me from the leadership at FreedomWorks talking about how woke and liberal I was and all of these different things that I actually had nothing to do with.

[00:05:10] It was bizarre. It was more about my former employers being Animal Wellness Action and the Humane Society and the democrat political spending that they had done. I had absolutely no decision making power in at the Humane Society. And very little decision making power at animal wellness action on the independent expenditure front.

[00:05:30] So I thought that was interesting because one of the things that really bothered me at Animal Wellness Action was that they spent a quarter of a million dollars against Dr. Oz in the Senate race last year. And it wasn't that I liked Dr. Oz so much as I just thought that it was really harmful to our work because all of the other Republican senators in Congress were gonna be mad about it, and they were mad about it.

[00:05:49] And it did definitely do some damage. So you have to keep those things in mind when you're trying to lobby and really bring people from both sides of the aisle to work together. I happen to be out in Los Angeles at the Hollywood premiere of a film that I'm in, and I was a special advisor to wild Beauty Mustang Spirit of the West that is about the wild horse plight on the Western front and talks about the U S D A commodity checkoff programs we're gonna talk about today and the OFF Act.

[00:06:16] And I, my segment of the movie is actually about that and how these cattlemen are illegally using funds to lobby the federal government to round up the wild horses and other things. And We had some opportunities come up through that. I had someone else in Hollywood talking to me about potentially doing a movie about the big cat Public Safety act that I worked to get side into law last year with Carol Baskin and Howard Baskin from Tiger King.

[00:06:39] And I just decided that it was a place in time where I should leave and that was the best thing to do for myself and the organization. They didn't force me to leave or anything like that. Left in good accord and actually just went to an event last Monday night at their facility and talked to them and I'm still working with them on a different issue.

[00:06:58] But it just wasn't something that I felt really good about in light of that campaign against me. And I wanted to be out on my own where I could be my own boss and really just do what I wanted to do. Not have to answer to any higher person or anything like that. So now the gloves are off and I can go and pack the shit out of them however I want to.

[00:07:18] Meaning Berman Co. And all of his cohorts at the National Cattleman's Beef Association. And boy, they better get ready because they made a big mistake. I do not take things lying down and if I'm the type of person that they think will back down because of something like this, they just ramped me up tenfold.

[00:07:35] Bob Gatty: Before we get into all of that, Marty I just have to ask you, what the hell, why woke? Why is it that the Republicans call everything that the Democrats do, woke? What the what is it? 

[00:07:52] Marty Irby: To me the term woke has really meant in recent times, recent months, the last year the extreme far left.

[00:08:01] There are still a lot of Democrats I think, that are moderate and in the middle. I think actually was talking to someone the other day that's a very close friend, and she was a little offended by the, by what I said in the term woken. I said what does that mean to you? And. She told me and I said it doesn't mean the same thing to me.

[00:08:18] I'm for equal rights for people of all race, creed, or color, male or female. I have my own values on other issues, but we were basically in a similar place aside from federal spending. And I think the term woke has become something that's really centered around all of the transgender issues, sex changes some of the AOCs of the world and the ones that they call the squad up here in DC and is considered the far left, 10% that seems to be growing.

[00:08:47] I'm not saying that means the same thing to all Republicans, but that's the general classification and what we're in is a messaging war. Welcome to politics. Welcome to Washington. Welcome to Congress. 

[00:08:57] Bob Gatty: Yeah, that's for sure. All right. I apologize. I have a little Background noise. Some sneezing going on in the background, a thunderstorm.

[00:09:07] So I was gonna ask we looks like we're gonna have a little background music today. No problem. No problem. Anyway, so let's talk about the OFF Act. Why is it needed? What's going on? Exactly. What is the checkoff program? How does that work? 

[00:09:24] Marty Irby: The the opportunities for fairness and farming are off act, which is S557, HR 1249, is led in the House of Representatives by Congresswoman Nancy Mace, a Republican from Charleston, South Carolina near you and Congresswoman Medina Titus, a democrat from Las Vegas, Nevada, as well as quite an odd group of people in the Senate that you will rarely, if ever, see together. US Senator Mike Lee a very right wing Republican from Utah alongside Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey.

[00:09:56] I think he's about as far left as you can go. Alongside Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky, who's right up there with Mike Lee on the far right, and Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, who's over there on the left with Booker. So I don't think you could go any more far. Or any more far left than those two on one side and those two on the other, and they fall and land in the same place.

[00:10:17] Now, why do they land in the same place? I could give you several reasons. I think that Warren and Booker care more about the animal welfare side of this issue, climate change issues, and really the plight of the American farmer who's pretty much just been shit on by the federal government for the past a hundred years and big corporate uncontrollable agriculture that they fought against. I think for the far right it is more about government corruption, transparency, illegally using federal tax dollars to lobby the federal government and those sorts of things. But they've been a great team to work with. We have been working on this issue, or I have been working on this issue since 2016.

[00:10:58] I left my first employer that I worked this on and started working on an animal wellness action each year and then continue to work on it today as a contract lobbyist for Farm Action Fund. There's some great folks there Joe Maxwell and Angela Huffman who are from Ohio and Missouri.

[00:11:12] I worked with for many years on the issue, and during the last Farm Bill five years ago. This bill was one of only three amendments that got through the rules committee to get a vote on the Senate floor and be attached to the Farm Bill. Unfortunately, we lost the vote by, I think something like 40 members in support of it, maybe 50 members against it, and there were eight or 10 that did not vote.

[00:11:36] I think those that didn't vote were because they didn't understand the issue. For the most part, it's one of the most complicated issues I've ever worked on, and they were left scratching their heads because the vote wasn't partisan. And there was really no rhyme or reason to it. You would see a Republican from Iowa, like Chuck Grassley vote for it, and a Republican from Iowa like Joni Ernst vote against it.

[00:11:54] You would see Democrats in one state vote for it and another Democrat in the same state vote against it. It was all across the board. And I think the biggest thing is that people just weren't educated. And when they're not educated about something and they don't know all the details, the, it's an automatic just we'll just vote no and not take a position on it.

[00:12:14] I think we're in a much better place today. The farm bill only comes up once every five years. It's due to be reauthorized this year. I think it will likely get done by the end of the year in December, but it could roll over into next year. They could extend the current farm bill to make way for more time to allow this farm bill to really sink in.

[00:12:32] They haven't even released farm bill text yet. Probably won't see that until August. But now there are today in 2023 more sitting US senators that voted for the amendment in 2018 than against it. So we have that going for us. We have much more awareness, a huge lobbying team now. We have probably 10 or so people lobbying on this versus just three of us that we're lobbying on at last go round. A ton of organizations. You have everyone from the National Taxpayers Union to groups like Heritage Foundation to more liberal groups like the environmental folks and things like that.

[00:13:06] So it's a great coalition that very well represents the constituency and it's very much like the Lee and Paul and Booker and Warren Quartet. So it's a good group and we really feel confident that we can get this into the upcoming farm bill. 

[00:13:22] Bob Gatty: We need to talk about the checkoff.

[00:13:24] Marty Irby: So what is a checkoff you ask? A checkoff originally started in the early 19 hundreds where farmers would go take their livestock to an auction house, to a sale, and they would sell the animal and they would have a little piece of paper with some boxes on it, and they would check off the box of where they wanted certain portions of the funding to go to, if they wanted to pay into a pool for promoting the product.

[00:13:48] Different things like that. They had that option. It wasn't mandatory, but they could if they wanted to, and people did. And so fast forward to roughly the 1980s, early 1980s, the U S D A Commodity checkoff programs were put into place and they were designed to be Marketing campaigns and slogans and quasi-governmental agencies that would promote those slogans and campaigns for each of those products.

[00:14:12] In the beginning, poultry was the only commodity that chose not to have a checkoff. They were smarter than everyone else and they felt that they could take care of their own product and they didn't need the federal government to step in and help them sell their product. Today, in 2023, poultry has skyrocketed over the years and the other commodities like beef, pork, dairy and eggs have dropped. So we've seen a tremendous decline, and they all have a checkoff. These groups, the National Cattleman's Beef Association and Beef Checkoff is one that I single out quite frequently alongside Dairy Management Inc. Which is the Dairy Checkoff have been very controversial for many years.

[00:14:49] They've been caught in scandal after scandal. We've seen instances of corruption where they've been illegally using federal dollars to lobby. We've seen instances where they did not file their reports on time. Politico did a 2017 expose where the Dairy checkoff actually had not filed their report with the U S D A for roughly three years like they're supposed to.

[00:15:09] The Secretary of Agriculture. Then under Barack Obama was Tom Vilsack. He did nothing about it. As soon as he left office as Secretary of Agriculture after Obama, he went directly to work for the Dairy Checkoff for over $800,000 a year in pay for four years. And then as soon as Joe Biden became president, he put him back in the secretary's office at the U S D A.

[00:15:30] Now what I'm gonna tell you is interesting is probably by the time this airs, we're gonna see another big expose, and Tom Vilsack is gonna be in deep shit. That's all I'll say and allude to. I think it'll be fun to help us with this campaign because this is not about Democrats or Republicans.

[00:15:45] There's corruption on both sides of the aisle. My fellow Republicans have it, and the Democrats have it too. But we need to clean it up on both sides of the aisle and it's gonna take people from both sides of the aisle to do that. So this legislation actually does three things. It requires a new system of transparency, accountability, and checks and balances for reporting and auditing of the dollars that are paid into the checkoff.

[00:16:06] So every farmer that sells a pig pays 40 cents into the checkoff. Every farmer that sells a cow pays a dollar into the checkoff, and then there's another number that's a metric of milk by the gallon they use. So those dollars are going somewhere. But they don't necessarily know where they're going because they're not required to publicly report these dollars.

[00:16:27] Even though the US Supreme Court deemed them federal tax dollars they're not required to show them to the people because there's a little bit of a loophole since they're paid into the U S D A. And then the U S D A sends the funds to these organizations instead of being paid into the I R S. The second thing that the legislation actually does is it reiterates and underscores that the dollars cannot be used for lobbying purposes.

[00:16:51] So it codifies that Supreme Court decision in that regard. And then last but not least, the third thing the legislation does is it prevents any anti-competitive practice from occurring. So what that means is, I'll give you an example. These campaigns that you've seen in the checkoff programs are basically Got Milk?, Beef, it's What's for Dinner, pork, the other white meat, the incredible edible egg, and those things. When we think about the pork checkoff and the pork commodity, pork, the other white meat is probably the most well known I think, and people have psychologically associated good pork as being white meat and bad pork is being meat that looks differently.

[00:17:30] So there are thousands of farmers or were thousands of farmers that raised two different types of pork. The white meat comes from a pig like we think about on the farm from Wilbur and Charlotte's Web, the pink pigs that we all see everywhere on television. Those are actually the pigs that are most factory farmed, kept in confinement, kept in these 16 story high-rise hog buildings in China that we're seeing pop up in the us.

[00:17:54] Probably going to pop up even more and more. As time goes on, and there are other farmers who raise what we call Berkshire or Heritage Hogs, which are the spotted pigs that you may have seen before, and they have a red meat that looks differently, has more marbling. So when that campaign launched, those slogans were all around the country on television.

[00:18:13] Most people decided that the heritage of Berkshire Hogs meat wasn't as good as the other white meat. So that's a disparagement issue because these farmers are selling their pigs. They're paying into a fund that's then turnaround and basically putting them out of business because they're making their product look bad.

[00:18:29] So it prevents those type of incidents from occurring and really gives the farmer at least a fair chance. We would love to see the checkoffs made voluntary, but this legislation does not do that. We had a previous bill that we worked on. It wasn't ever gonna go anywhere, so we just stuck to these three main points with this legislation and it does not take a single dollar away from the checkoff programs.

[00:18:50] It just cleans up the corruption. The opposition to this the National Pork Producers Council, national Cattleman's Beef Association and others have been spreading the message that it would take all of their money away, which is a complete flat out lie. So we ensured that the senators did not introduce the old bill, the Voluntary Checkoff Act in this Congress because we did not want to have that confusion and these groups out there flat just lying to Congress about what was going on.

[00:19:15] Most people probably will never hear of a checkoff again and never have heard of it before. But there's your crash course in U S D A commodity checkoffs. 

[00:19:23] Bob Gatty: Okay, why should people give a shit? 

[00:19:27] Marty Irby: I think it's important because number one, it's what you're buying in the grocery store and you really wanna know where it comes from how it got there, what the policies are, and one of the things that's occurred is a result of this illegal lobbying that these groups have been doing. So the National Cattleman's Beef Association lobbied with other groups, probably about eight or nine years ago. I worked on Capitol Hill when this happened to repeal what was called Country of Origin labeling or, COOL.. So this is just one instance of all of this lobbying that's occurred.

[00:19:57] And Cool was repealed and what happened as a result of repealing cool, which is repealing the mandate that the label on the meat you buy identify what country it came from. That's all it required. That's no longer required. As a result, today, when you go into the store and you buy that steak on a tray and that styrofoam tray that's wrapped in plastic and it says made in the U S A, it was probably not made in the U S A.

[00:20:23] All that means is, To qualify for the made in the U S A label, it just has to be packaged and saran wrapped on that tray. It probably came from Brazil. The cow could have been slaughtered in Brazil. The cow may have been raised in Brazil and shipped to the us. So people have no way of knowing what they're buying at the grocery store and what they're eating.

[00:20:42] That's probably one of the more absurd things that I've heard about in Washington DC in the 10 years I've lived here. But the fact that you can literally buy a steak on a tray, it says made in the u s a that was just merely packaged with Saran wrap in the u s a is quite ridiculous. So consumers and everyone out there listening who buys groceries, we all eat, they should care.

[00:21:01] Bob Gatty: That's ridiculous. If the only requirement is that it be packaged in the us that's not telling people why should we care where it, where the steak comes from, what's, why should I care if it's the steak was from an animal, raised in Texas or in Brazil? Why should I care?

[00:21:21] Marty Irby: I think it's important because of the quality of care of that animal. I think most people who are conscious about what they eat and aware of what they eat, want the animal, even though it's slaughtered and killed for food ,to be treated humanely, to not have gone through some of the dire conditions that they do in South America.

[00:21:38] There's a lot of cattle in South America, mexico, that have had tremendous issues. And not that we don't have those issues here, but there are more there. In addition to that, it can be a huge impact on the quality of the food. Like when we've seen Mad Cow Disease some years ago that was from one Downer Cow in a facility. It spread all around the world and we can prevent a lot of those things from happening if we know where the meat comes from.

[00:22:04] So it's more about food safety and security than anything in that regard. 

[00:22:08] Bob Gatty: Understand. Now, is this a battle between you? You did, you, you alluded to the corporate farm corporate operations, corporate agriculture operations. So this is a battle between the corporate interests and the independent farmers.

[00:22:23] Is it? 

[00:22:24] Marty Irby: It is, that's exactly what it is. The corporate interests are groups like Smithfield. Most people think of Smithfield, North Carolina and Virginia and that happy ham, happy hog running around out in the pasture. And they do not realize that the Smithfield Corporation is owned by the Chinese government.

[00:22:41] They have bought up our corporations, they've bought up our land. Most of the hogs that are raised in North Carolina have the meat being shipped over to China. So it's not even feeding people in the US A lot of it is, but most of it is shipped over to China. That's a terrible thing in my personal opinion, I don't know how others feel about that..

[00:22:59] We have other companies like J b s, they're Brazil based. You have Cargill. They're basically four big packers. And those big packers control the industry and they have really almost destroyed and just stamped out the American family farmer because they can control all of the slaughter processes.

[00:23:16] And the farmer can't just go slaughter his cow because of certain laws. They have to actually take them to a U S D A inspected facility. Almost all of the facilities are run by just these four multinational conglomerates that control our food system. It's also very dangerous because when you have four companies control the entire food system in the us look what you're relying on.

[00:23:37] Look, when you have a Covid 19, they're all kind of supply chain issues and these folks were part of the problem.

[00:23:42] Bob Gatty: I'm curious to know you, you worked At a time you were involved with the Tennessee Walking Horse Association, right? Yes. And it was at that point that you decided to get into animal wellness protection. 

[00:23:57] Marty Irby: It was, I've always loved animals. When I was a kid, I didn't have any human friends and horses and dogs are my friends.

[00:24:02] So I tell people, number one, I like animals better than me, Marty. That's understandable. But but also, they saved me as a kid and I feel like it's my turn to help save them. I was president of the Walking Horse Association and had been a competitor for many years, was an eight time world champion equestrian, and I saw all of these things growing up.

[00:24:20] My father was a horse trainer. I saw many people in my own family across the industry just do, I won't even say questionable things, downright out abuse that was very rampant and evident almost the norm in the Tennessee Walking Horse world. It's a game of who can out cheat each other, and I always wanted to do something about it.

[00:24:39] So when I became President of the Breed Registry most of the people in the industry thought I would do whatever they wanted, and I did quite the opposite because I knew it was a now or never thing. And had been working with the Humane Society behind the scenes and the U S D A for years. No one knew.

[00:24:53] Talking to them and giving them information. And they did an undercover expose on the Tennessee walking horse with a trainer named Jackie McConnell, who A B c Nightline called Brutally Beating and torturing a horse in 2012. And as a result of that the past Act prevent all Soaring Tactics Act that would help in soaring was introduced and I became one of the most outspoken advocates for the legislation, testified in Congress in 2013 in support of the bill .That led to a bunch of death threats and basically my whole world falling apart. It sounds like a broken country music song, but I lost my wife and got divorced, had to file for bankruptcy, lost my business, and didn't speak to my father for five and a half years over the issue. But we're still working on it. That legislation has not passed, but we've made a lot of headway and gained a lot of ground.

[00:25:38] And that just opened the door for all these other issues I've been working on to give me that opportunity. And it, it grew into something far greater than I ever imagined, but I'm really thankful for it. 

[00:25:48] Bob Gatty: All right. That's very interesting. I'm glad to know about that. Now are you up for talking a little bit about politics?

[00:25:55] Yeah, sure. Anytime. All right. So tell me what you, right now we have an increasing number of Republicans who think that they should be president. Handicap what you're seeing out there so far keeping in mind that your hero, Donald Trump has got himself some serious legal issues right now.

[00:26:19] Marty Irby: He does. He's clearly still the front runner. I think. There's no law. Is he still your hero? I would say he has been a hero to me for many years and in the past. 

[00:26:27] Bob Gatty: And really, you like game show, you like people that know how to run game shows, right? 

[00:26:31] Marty Irby: I do. Yeah, I do. Trump's career was in real estate development and building hotels.

[00:26:36] You have to know that. 

[00:26:36] Bob Gatty: Yeah, I know that. Yeah. 

[00:26:38] Marty Irby: That's that's one important factor. My former boss and mentor that founded Ritz Carlton actually worked with Trump and I knew him and met him back in 2007. Started watching The Apprentice for many years, but he did do a lot to help me when he was president. He actually signed more animal protection bills into law than any president in US history. A large part as a result of not only my work, but his daughter-in-law, Laura Trump, who's a good friend of mine. So he's a hero in that regard to me. I know he has a lot of problems today. I think it's interesting because it seems like the more indictments he gets, the more the base likes him, and there's no law.

[00:27:12] I, someone was talking to me about this the other day. It's quite bizarre, but there's on the federal level that would prevent him from being elected president, even if he were sitting in jail and convicted. 

[00:27:22] Bob Gatty: Oh, I know. 

[00:27:22] Marty Irby: That's a little scary to think about, right? Yeah, it is very scary. But it's it's definitely become interesting, I think aside from Trump you have to, you set him aside and look at the rest of the field.

[00:27:31] Yeah. We'll see what happens with him. I'm not a huge DeSantis fan. He was here in Congress and I worked with him a little bit. Nice guy, but just doesn't have a lot of personality in my opinion, and didn't really go out and work as hard as some others. I'd have to honestly say my favorite pick of the rest of the lot would be Nikki Haley, easy..

[00:27:50] I like her a lot. Your former governor? I met her several times with Nancy Mace. She seems to be more reasonable and moderate than some of the others. And I hear a lot of folks like her as well. I don't know if she stands a chance or not but she could be a potential VP pick. If Trump ends up dropping out, she could be a potential front runner, or if he were to become president again, she could be a potential cabinet member as well. But if I had to take the rest of the field, I'll take Nikki Haley any day. 

[00:28:18] Bob Gatty: Okay. I know a lot of people in South Carolina feel that way too. Although when she was here no, it wasn't her.

[00:28:25] It was when Scott was down here doing a rally. Local reporters asked, Scott asked people what they thought about Scott and they said he like Scott, he's fine, but we like him as a VP candidate, not as president. And And the same with Haley. A lot of people just speculate that both of those people are running, really running for vice president.

[00:28:48] Marty Irby: Yeah, I think they both are, I like her a lot better than Tim Scott, just because I found Tim Scott's office to be generally non-responsive. That I know of. They've never really helped once on any of the issues I've ever been working on. I spent some time down there helping Nancy Mace and a lot of it with Nikki Haley while I was in South Carolina last year.

[00:29:08] And she just is very warm and personable. Definitely loved by the people in South Carolina. Really has a way of, I think, bringing people together on both sides of the aisle. And in addition to that, the female suburban voter is the voter that's going to determine this election.

[00:29:25] And I don't know if females care whether Tim Scotts vice president or not, but I can guarantee you there are a lot of female suburban voters that love Nikki Haley and would vote for her because of that. And, but her be, if she were the vice presidential candidate. Trump, let's say he's the nominee.

[00:29:40] If he picked her, I think he would pick up more votes with her as vice president than any other person on the ticket that we could have there. 

[00:29:48] Bob Gatty: Okay. That's very interesting. Marty, you got anything else you wanna talk about pal? 

[00:29:52] Marty Irby: Just election wise one of the things I learned in my brief time at FreedomWorks, they did some polling and we had a big convention earlier this year.

[00:29:59] Was that roughly about 30% of the population are Democrats, 30% of the population are Republicans, and the other 40% are independents. So the bracket of independence is larger than either political party. And I think what everyone needs to remember in this election is independents, suburban females are a section of those independents and many times, but, and independents are gonna determine the president, and they're gonna determine the outcome of this election and within that bracket, female suburban voters. 

[00:30:32] Bob Gatty: Okay. Excellent. Thanks for that insight. I tend to agree with what you just said.

[00:30:38] Yeah. Okay. Listen I appreciate it. So next time you have something cooking, get back to me and we'll do this again. 

[00:30:46] Marty Irby: Absolutely appreciate you covering this issue and all of your listeners out there, Bob, you have a great show and really looking forward to listening to it. I appreciate it. Thank you, Marty.