Ohio Democrat Pulls Off Stunning 20-Point Swing in Trump Country (w/ Don Leonard)

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Yep, No Such Thing As A Fish is where four of us get together every week to discuss our favorite, weirdest, funniest, maddest, most interesting facts we found that week. Anna, did you know that there is an island in Peru where the ultimate masculine gesture is to knit a bobble hat so well that you can carry water in it? That's why you're wearing 10 bobble hats today, is it James? Because I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I'm so masculine. Good on ya. All right, go to No Such Thing As A Fish wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, welcome back to Bulwark Takes. I'm Tim Miller. Could not be more pumped to welcome to the program, my guy, now Congressman-elect from Ohio, John Leonard. How's that sound, baby? Yes, sir. Let's go. We've got some work to do. I love it. For people that don't know, Congressman, are we doing Congressman now? How are you handling that? Do you want to be Congressman? Congressman-elect. I always told my students to call me Don, so you can pick your poison, dude. All right, bruh. Well, we met a couple weeks ago now, months, I don't know, times a flat circle in the Trump era when we had the fundraiser live event in Dayton for the Haitian community in Springfield. And we invited every Democrat around to come and be a part of that. And I think that there are obviously a lot of good Democrats in Ohio, a lot of people, who are concerned about the Haitian community, but maybe right before the election, they're like, eh, I don't know, this is a little risky. You, on the other hand, were like, hell yeah, I want to come. We talked about just the outrages of what has been happening by ICE and what you wanted to do about it. I'll tell you, Tim, part of it was incredibly personal for me. I don't think we got a chance to talk about it. I actually spent quite a bit of time in Haiti. I wrote my dissertation on Haiti and the Dominican Republic, why two sides of the same island had so different. And I think one of the things that struck me is that the Haitian people were just so proud of their history of rebellion and independence and liberty. You think about it, they got their independence 15 years after we did by throwing off another European colonial power. These guys are our revolutionary brothers and sisters. And it's just so wonderful to have an opportunity to get to know them and see that they have that same sort of air of exception. And it's something that we hope to honor and nurture going forward. Well, I'll talk a little bit more about the policy side of this, but for people who haven't got to know you, let's just kind of start with your backstory. You run in this district, Ohio's 15th. Trump won it by 10. You know, the forecast had it as a likely Republican district. Just a month ago, the Columbus Dispatch wrote a headline that said it would take a giant blue wave for you to win. And well, it happened. Why did you decide to get in the race? Like, what prompted it? Did you think you could really win? Just kind of give us the origin story. The origin story is this. My daughter was born on January 19th of last year. My wife and I are a couple of late bloomers. And the next day, Trump was sworn into office for a second time and all hell broke loose. The first thing he started doing was attacking top research universities like Ohio State for having allowed students to protest the genocide in Gaza. And then by February, they were deporting those students for having participated in the protests. So immediately, we felt like freedom of thought and speech on our campuses was under threat. By April, they were deporting folks like Ebrego Garcia, who were under federal protective orders. But the straw that really broke the camel's back for me was in June of last year when my former opponent, Mike Carey, not only voted for Trump's big, beautiful bill with its trillion dollar cuts to Medicaid. He bragged about it on the House floor saying it was deficit reduction for the financial health of our children. That SOB knows darn well that the 47% of the kids in my district get their health care directly or indirectly from federal Medicaid dollars. And Tim, if you can't pick up on it, this one's so damn personal for me, man. My mom and I, I was raised by a single mom. We got our butts kicked in the recession in 93, ended up basically homeless, living out of the back of a pickup truck. It was only because of Medicaid, food stamps, Section 8. That we were able to get a, you know, roof back over our heads, get me back into high school and get on with it. So when, when Carey did that, it was like, okay, it's, it's, it's fight or flight and we're not quitters. So we decided to enter the race. If you ask me seriously, I probably gave us about four chances in 10. We know the district's drawn about like that. My opponent won by 13 points the last two times he ran. And then we won by seven. You tell me, you're, you're, you're the pundit. I'm told that the blue wave for Democrats in the house this year was about 13 points. So the blue wave probably got us to a tie. Our seven point victory margin is really about the grassroots campaign we built and the coalition that we're going to carry forward to Washington. That's really something I'm just on top of it. Just if we're, if I'm going to be nitpicky, the son of a bitch that you mentioned, giving the speech about the, about the big, beautiful bill, it didn't even reduce the deficit. Didn't reduce the deficit, right? Like, so it didn't even do what they claimed it was going to do. They were punishing poor kids and the poor people in your district for nothing. And then saddling them with generational debts so that billionaires and corporations could get more handouts. Yep. Insane. You see, you said it was fight or flight. The fight continued into March of this year when you were arrested at a no Kings protest. Tell me about that. Mama tried. Tell me about that. And it was the same thing I did in October. Gave a speech on a city corner during a no Kings protest with a bullhorn. And this time the police officers decided to enforce a noise ordinance. They came up, they took my bullhorn. They informed me that there was a noise ordinance and I'd broke it. I said, okay, no problem. And they said, come over here. They ran my ID. I realized at one point I was under armed guard and there I could hear police cruisers swarming in, uh, into the area. And at that point, uh, the arresting officer asked me to go over to, uh, away from, you know, public witnesses over to his squad car. And I, I told him, no, I said, I'm not going to allow myself to be detained over a noise ordinance violation. If you guys don't know, that's like a parking ticket, right? You don't detain somebody over a parking ticket. You hand them your ticket and you get on with your business. Um, so I refused to, uh, comply with the police officer's orders. And, uh, he asked me to turn around, put my hands behind my back, got my fingerprints, got my, uh, mugshot and got to spend a couple hours in the Grove city jail. Next, you'll get to put your hand on a Bible, uh, as a free man and a congressman. So that's a pretty good trajectory. January 3rd. It's, uh, it's, it's wild, man. Again, it's just a symptom of the time we're in. There's just so much division, so much frustration right now. There's so little trust and, you know, I'm, I imagine we'll be talking about the kind of things that I want to do, uh, in Washington, but the big picture of all of it is how do we get back to a place where Americans trust their neighbors, where we trust in our government and we trust that, you know, there's going to be a future that we have to look forward to. Let's talk about what you want to do when you get in there. I mean, there are going to be a hell of a lot of you. Uh, and so on the one hand, um, I think Trump will be vetoing a lot. I don't know if there's a ton of substantive stuff that can happen the next two years. We'll see. Um, but, um, a lot of Congress people means that there's a lot of people that can focus on, you know, various priorities that they have, individual priorities. And, uh, you know, so what, what, what do you got your eye on? You know, I think there's a lot of low hanging fruit we can tackle without triggering the presidential veto about bringing, uh, federal resources back into our districts to, um, alleviate the suffering of hard living folks who've been on the street pretty much since Reagan, uh, defunded, uh, mental health facilities and, and all that stuff. All of this. Um, but big, big picture, we need to start moving towards transformation. Um, my constituents are sending me to Washington to renew the American dream. And so I am bringing what I call the Ohio plan for national renewal. It's not filled in in detail. It's something that I expect my colleagues will be able to contribute to. But fundamentally, here's the founding principles. We've got to take our government back from the corporations and the special interests that have for so long now been corrupting our politics. And I think that looks like a 28th Amendment. I think we should front burner that. Let's do it in 2028, not just because it's got a good ring to it, but because we need to make sure that crooks like Elon Musk can't spend another half of a billion dollars in a cycle trying to buy an election. We need to make an economy where one job is actually enough to support yourself, to buy a home, to start a family. And so there's things we need to do with health care, housing, child care, and aging. Those are the four big ticket items that get in the way of somebody being able to support themselves on one income. And finally, we need to start thinking about the future. Our kids right now, including my two-year-old daughter, do not have a future. We have a debt burden that's unsustainable. $40 trillion we're at now. That was at like 125% of GDP. We spend more servicing that debt, you know this, Tim, than we do on national defense. That is shocking when you consider how much we spend on national defense. We've got a democracy that's under attack. We've got, most of all, the risk to the climate crisis posed by data centers. These things are almost perfectly designed to pump carbon into the atmosphere and accelerate the climate crisis. So we've got to figure out ways to build these things that don't cook the planet and turn states like ohio into the saharan desert i want to come things that don't cook the planet and turn stable. back to the immigration part of this too and i guess one place where we could take some of that money from you're talking about in the debt is ice uh which is you know funded i think more than israel's military and more than our marines um and uh the amount of money that is being spent i know it's crazy the amount of money i'm just spent on these guys that are going you know causing all this havoc in our communities, you know, like we talked about and Dayton, you know, putting ankle monitors on occasions that came here legally, that came here through a legal process in TPS. It's insane. We had J.B. Pritzker on yesterday and he was talking about how, you know, he thinks that the Democrats in Congress now need to take a hard line on making sure that this is not funded at this level anymore. Where are you at on that and just on the broader kind of immigration conversation. Yeah. So specific to ICE, I have campaigned since the beginning that we have got to dismantle ICE completely and replace it with civil law enforcement. And I mean And I mean that in both senses of the word. When you overstay a visa, that is not a criminal offense. That is a civil infraction. What we need to do, Tim, is go back to the time when ICE agents were walking around with polo shirts and clipboards and name tags instead of kitted up like SEAL Team 6 playing out some childhood fantasy. We need to get our immigration law enforcement to enforce civil law through civil means. I have no confidence in the leadership. I have no confidence in the leadership of ICE to conduct operations in that fashion. So what I think we need to do is dismantle ICE completely and replace it with good civilian law enforcement. We are a nation of laws. We've got to secure the southern border. But what we need to do is make sure that once we've secured the southern border, we create a pathway to legal residency for those folks who have been living in this country, starting families and businesses in this country, following the laws, paying their taxes, even if they don't have a visa. If they don't get into programs they don't ever even be able to collect on, we are not going to build a class of second-class citizens any longer. It's time for reform. Republicans want it. Democrats wanted it. So I understand Trump shut that down during the Biden administration. Let's get on with it. And what about the Haitians in particular, taking us back to when we first met? What at this point do you think can be done? Yeah, for the Haitian people, this is an absolute embarrassment to this country. We invited these folks to come here fleeing violence and famine to the United States, because our guests and communities like Springfield, Ohio asked for them because they had a shortage of workers. And these folks were contributing to the local economy. They were paying their way. They were great neighbors. And unfortunately, in the case of a remarkable young man named Pierre DeMoss Bell, who is a scholar and an athlete in his high school, he had just graduated and was going on on a scholarship to go play soccer for a local college here. The. The indignity of being asked to report to a federal detention facility, put an ankle monitor on him like he was some kind of criminal. Kid couldn't even play soccer. He stepped into traffic and took his own life because he was too dignified to subject himself to the cruelty that the Trump administration has perpetrated on these guests of the American people. I think it's a shame. And I think in the name of Pierre DeMoss Bell, we have got to, as a people, recognize that Haiti today is still rife with civil violence, six million people are at risk of famine. We've got to stand up and show that the most prosperous country in the world has a place of shelter for those who are fleeing violence and hunger. It's got to make you feel pretty good that in January, you're going to have a job and Vivek is going to be unemployed. I'm sure he'll go try to fake some other drug medication and try to make his second billion. But hopefully folks are wise to just what a snake oil salesman that guy is, literally. I think people have got the message. And once you've gone too low for MAGA, I think, uh, I think it's tough to come back from that. This episode is sponsored by Casper. You know, when you wake up and you have kinks in your neck and a sore back because you just couldn't get comfortable at night, you do this all day. Ah, ah, well, guess what? I don't do that anymore. 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Right now, when you go to Casper.com, get a king size mattress for the price of a queen or queen mattress for the price of a full. And besides Casper.com, you can find Casper at retail stores all across the country. One last time. That's C A S P E R.com. And get a king mattress for the price of a queen or a queen mattress for the price of a full. You know, I'll tell you one thing Tim in terms of the leadership. I'm with you a hundred percent. What is so frustrating to me is that the people who voted for Maga share a lot of our values. They wanted transparency when it comes to stuff like the Epstein files. They wanted an economy that worked for working people. And most of all, they wanted no more dumb senseless Wars, you know, Maga was bigger. Than Donald Trump. And I think some of their anger and frustration was was not misplaced. You know, you think back to 2016 when you had two high-profile presidential candidates totally unwelcomed by their parties, you know, Bernie Sanders on the left, Donald Trump on the right. Both of them were persona non grata by the establishments. Trump just happened to be the one that broke through. But you know, as well as I do how many people said I'm either for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. Again, I think at the core of it is this frustration with the establishment. On both sides of the aisle. I like that mindset. All right, man. Well, you're getting in there. If you thought like, what are you going to do? Who's going to work for you when you came to the event in spring and Dayton, you know, you had a couple buddies around. It seemed like I mean, just, you know, it felt like it was a little bit of a motley crew. You had on the campaign. So who's going to be in the office with you? My my political director, Adrian Vitus, former congressional candidate up in Youngstown, my daughter, who's two years old, calls him buddy. So we about rolled over and died when we saw your clip from the other day. It was like this guy. He shows up with a couple of buddies. Adrian's nickname is now buddy or at what was already buddy around the office. My campaign manager was there. Ron Holmes. He's run. He's been finance director for some high-profile Senate races, including Graham Platner until the scandal started coming out there. What I think it speaks to though, is the fact that we have built a team that is unified around these. Fundamental beliefs that the Rome is burning and we have got to get in there and fight and we're having a hell of a great time while we're doing it. So I don't think you're your instincts are wrong, but now we've been blessed to hear that though staffers that seem like buddies, not staffers is good. I had Marie glues and camp Perez on God probably a year ago now. And one thing that stuck with me that she said that she did was like she's like, no ivies. No, I was like, none of nobody on my staff went to the ivies that none of them go to these. Liberal arts schools on the coast. Like I it's my top priority is that I have regular folks that work for me. And and that's like I think DC could use a little more of that. Well, look our campaign manager Ron Holmes. This guy remembers the day in the middle of the 2008-2009 financial crisis that the bank came to repossess the family minivan and about a month later their house and evicted him. He is experienced firsthand. What happened when the Clinton administration Democrats deregulated Banks and repealed by by repealing Glass-Steagall. heading us straight into the financial crisis of 08-09. So again, this neoliberal consensus around deregulation, privatization of core government services, free trade rather than fair trade, the consensus between establishment Republicans and Democrats on these issues has cost the trust of the American people. And that's something that I'm running to go to Washington to restore. You are, we're still gonna get rid of the dumb tariffs though, right? We have to get rid of the dumb tariffs. And I am not against- Just making sure, I got a little nervous. Sometimes fair trade is a little, is a code, you know? And so you gotta- It means that if we're gonna give someone tariff free or almost tariff free access to American markets, they ought to be meeting the same labor standards and environmental standards that our companies working here in the United States have to meet. If you don't wanna meet those, you can still sell stuff in the US, but you're gonna pay tariffs like everybody else. If you want free trade or access to this market, we have to put our workers and our communities on a level playing field with our trading partners. That's the floor beneath which we should not sink. Right now, what we've got is this race to the bottom that people were angry about, that Sherrod Brown spoke up about in the 90s. I don't know if you know this, Tim, but part of the reason Sherrod Brown has this magical fairy dust around him here in Ohio is that he was one of the few Democrats to speak up against Clinton and NAFTA because he knew that Ross Perot's warning about the giant sucking sound was gonna be a reality. So what Trump did is install a bunch of tariffs that had no strategic value in balancing our trade relationships. What they do is force corporations and heads of state to come to the Oval Office with their gold bricks and kiss the ring. It's an absolute abomination. So while we do need to get rid of Trump's tariffs, I do think there is a need to reevaluate our tariff schedule with our trading partners. I'm with you on that. All right, let's end with this. You know, you talked about the struggles that you had with your single mother early in life. And I just kind of wonder, you had to be thinking about that a lot this week and, you know, about your mom and how she'd be thinking about this. And so I'm just kind of wondering, you know, if you want to reminisce about that or meditate on it a little bit. I'll tell you what, Tim, my mom is 86 years old. She flew out to Columbus for our victory party on Tuesday night. I didn't write a concession speech and she didn't write a Christmas letter to the family that had a scenario where I lost my race. She is with us. She is proud as a peacock. And we are marveling in the fact that I've been able to live, you know, my own version of the American dream. What's so important is that we don't kick out the ladder from behind us so that the next generations can dream even bigger dreams than we could possibly imagine. What killed me so much about J.D. Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy, was he talks about the ways that public schools and Section 8 housing and OSU and the Marine Corps, all of these experiences set him up to become the person he is. And all he can conclude from it is this cult of personal responsibility that he somehow had better character than the people around him. And now look at what J.D. Vance is doing. He's trying to kick out the ladder from underneath him. He's trying to blame poor folks for their lot in life. And he's betraying the own values that he described in his own book. So I hope that the American people recognize that going into 2028. The American dream is absolutely on the brink of collapse and we have got to move in a different direction. I just so much appreciate the work that you guys are doing on the bulwark and that my next generation, you know, you've had Brian Poindexter on that dude is amazing. Christina Knickerbocker pulled off a win over in Dayton. We are the next generation of the Democratic Party and we are not going to accept, you know, incrementalism and strongly worded letters as a response to this moment that we face. So mom's still there or did she go home? She's still here, man. We took her to my first interview with the Columbus Dispatches as the candidate-elect and she's an old journalist. So newspaper journalist. So again, she's just smiling ear to ear, man. I'm so grateful that she lived to see this moment. What a journey. I love that brother will give her a big squeeze for me and we'll be keeping in touch when you're in Washington. All right. Thanks so much, Tim. Thanks for the work you guys do. All right, good to talk to you. Kids and teens use the internet every day to connect, play, learn, and explore. That's why conversations are so important. If you have conversations about online safety, shouldn't wait until something goes wrong. This holiday season, make time to check in. Ask what they're doing online, who they're talking to, and remind them they can come to you. Teach them NOPE. Notice what feels off, own your boundaries, protect your privacy, exit and ask for help. Talk early, talk often, stay involved. Learn more at acf.gov/nope. - Hi everyone, this is James and Anna. We are two thoughts of the hit UK podcast, "No Such Thing As A Fish." - Yep, "No Such Thing As A Fish" is where four of us get together every week to discuss our favorite, weirdest, funniest, maddest, most interesting facts we found that week. - Anna, did you know that there is an island in Peru where the ultimate masculine gesture is to knit a bobble hat so well that you can carry water in it? - That's why you're wearing 10 bobble hats today, is it James? - Because I'm so masculine. - Good on ya. All right, go to "No Such Thing As A Fish" wherever you get your podcasts. you