Eric Kaufmann on Race in Politics and Jeff Weninger on Sports Betting in Arizona
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Welcome to Broken Potholes with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. In the studio with us today, the irrepressible Kylie Kipper. And on the line, fantastic guest today, Eric Kaufman. Eric is a professor of politics at Birkbeck, the University of London, and author of, wow, this is a dangerous topic in academia, White Shift, Immigration, Populism, and the Future of White Majorities.

which argues that the current upsurge of right-wing populism in the West stems from the existential plight of white majorities in an age of large-scale north-south migration. And, boy, you have waded into some shark-infested waters, Eric. He wanted to lessen his Christmas card list. Welcome to the show.

Great to be here. Great to be here. Thank you so much for joining us. We both have really enjoyed reading some of your work recently and learning about what you're doing. But tell us a little bit about this premise and specifically, you set out the four main white responses to ethnic change, fight, flee, repress, and join. And so I want to talk about that and what those mean.

Well, yeah. So White Shift really is about, I mean, it really came about as people were trying to explain

the sort of upsurge in right-wing national populism starting in 2014 in Europe when a series of parties, the Front National in France, UKIP in Britain, Danish People's Party got around 30% of the vote in the European elections. And then from there, we then saw, you know, Trump being elected as head of the, in the primary of the Republican Party. You had Brexit,

and then Trump's election, and then rolling on and on with Slovenia and Italy. And so really behind this is an explanation which I think is largely to do with identity and culture, and that is the demographic shifts in Western countries are leading a certain part of the population, which is largely members of the ethnic majority, white majorities who prefer stability and order,

who see change as loss. And that is the key constituency really for a lot of these movements. And that's kind of, if you like, the white shift 1.0, explaining why this is

resurged and why I think it's going to come back, by the way, post-COVID. COVID kind of puts a damper on this temporarily. Once it goes away, you can already see in the opinion survey data, the immigration issue, which is the absolutely central issue for national populism, has returned. It is now the leading concern amongst UK conservative voters. It's a top concern

a leading concern amongst Republican voters in the US. And it's going to be rising across Europe, I would say as well.

So the conditions are returning to where they were just prior to the populist moment in Brexit and so on. The second bit really is about, okay, so looking at those four responses, I mean, one of which is the fight response, which is populism and electoral resistance to large, high levels of immigration. The second is a kind of flight response, which is more to do with social and residential, I won't say segregation, but sort of avoiding,

areas that are highly diverse. And this does seem to be a trend we see in the data I've seen in Canada and Britain, in the US, we see it in Sweden, we've seen it in a number of places. So that's a second response. These are not mutually exclusive. A third response is one where you can repress this concern through

political correctness and through norms which police the boundaries of what can be discussed, such as levels of immigration. That was a taboo in a place like Sweden prior to 2014, when the rise of the Sweden Democrats changed that. It was a taboo in the U.S. arguably before Trump

I mean, yes, you could talk about the border, but really to make it central to your political campaign, Trump was the only one out of 17 that was willing to go there. And we've seen similar things in some other societies as well. So repress is another option. And of course, sometimes repress is the right response.

But at other times, it's the wrong response. And I think it was largely the wrong response to concerns over immigration. And then finally, we have join, which is really about melting and the expansion in the definition of the meaning of white through intermarriage, which I think is important when we get onto the census question. You know, it's interesting that you point out that that early European white nationalism is

was garnering about 30% of the vote pretty consistently. If you actually look at the primaries here in the U.S. with Donald Trump, he really won the presidency because it was such a big field by garnering about 30% of the vote consistently and getting the plurality that way in a lot of those early states. Well, it's an issue again. So we're in Arizona, and immigration is the number one issue in Arizona right now. It's like 31% because we do have...

We have a border crisis. I know the media doesn't want to call it that, but it's a problem. And look, immigration, I mean, America is based on immigration, right? That's the uniqueness and greatness of it. We have one thing in common. It's the only place in the world, you know, if you grew up in Italy, you're Italian. It's the old Ronald Reagan saying, if you grew up in France, you're French. But if you come to America, no matter where you came from in the world, you become American. We adopt you.

But right now, the pitchers and people I know who have gone down there, they just say it's completely disarray. So in Arizona now, it's a number one issue above COVID. And we've had a bit of a spike in COVID out here. And no one's paying attention to it. No, no one. Because of that topic. And so what you have, it seems like you have people very concerned about it just because it is a humanitarian crisis.

I also think, and you can talk about it, there's a smidge of racism in it, too, on the right. Absolutely. And when you— But I think— Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. No, no, no. Go ahead. I'd like to know your view on it. Is this immigration something people should fear or should say this is life? It's going to happen. This is what happens in an interconnected world now.

Well, I don't think it is just what happens. I mean, it's down to political will. This is worldwide. If you want to control it, you can control it. Singapore is a small country, very wealthy, could have lots of immigration, decides not to. Now, so I don't think it is automatic, but obviously it's harder to control 3,000 mile land border. But still, I do think it is a matter of political will,

But I think, you know, you mentioned the term racism there, and I think it's an important discussion, right? Because there's a very important distinction made in the psychological literature between attachment to your own and hatred of the other. And if you are fearing and hating the other because they're different, that is racism.

Right. On the other hand, if you simply want to protect what you have because it's your way of life, that is not racism. And these are separate things which aren't correlated. So in the American National Election Study, you can see that

If a white person feels really warm towards white people, they don't feel really cool towards black people. In fact, they feel slightly warmer towards black and Hispanic people than a white person who feels really cool towards white people. So it's not a there isn't this zero sum relationship. It is, however, the case that, yes, large scale immigration is more likely to change the ethnic balance quicker and it is not going to advantage immigration.

the white population, at least not in the short term. And so it is only normal or natural that some people are going to, you know, that more white people are likely to want to slow that down. Now, of course, there are also security issues and there's also issues around COVID and whatever, but I think it's not illegitimate to want to control the rate of immigration. Now, that was the big issue in Britain. If you looked at the lead up to the Brexit vote, you can see a correlation between the

immigration level and people's concern over immigration. And then that correlated with the rise in support for UKIP. Same thing in Europe. So, yeah, I think that is a legitimate issue for people to discuss, but it's very difficult for people to discuss it. Professor Kaufman, you wrote a great piece entitled What Liberals Get Wrong About Race. It was brilliant. And you brought up some points, for example, white liberals feel

thousands of unarmed black men are killed annually versus the reality is that's not true and thousands get killed in automobile accidents. Do you feel that this is just a narrative, we'll call them corporate media, just want to push to push an agenda? Why is there such a misunderstanding about that and why is that perception sticking in the mind, especially on center-left Americans?

Well, I think it's very much an ideology. The academic intellectual left has very much moved in the direction of cultural and identity issues rather than class issues. And there was really a conscious upsurge, which you could see on university campuses after 2015 with what Math Iglesias calls the Great Awokening. You could see it in the

in the newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post where you see a huge increase in use of terms like white supremacy, racism. That's tracked by the way by in the work of people like Zach Goldberg and David Rosado, you can see it very clearly. So you had this increased attention paid fueled to some degree by Trump's election. And then that pushes the narrative up people's list of concerns. And so when you then also throw in citizen journalism

and circulation of images on social media of white police and black suspects being killed. And that of course ignites the narrative. If it was a black police officer killing a black suspect, or if it was a white officer and a white suspect

as in the case of Tony Timpah, which is very similar to the George Floyd case, there was simply no coverage. And I think Goldberg has shown there's about nine times more coverage of every black suspect, unarmed suspect being killed compared to white unarmed suspects. So, yeah, it's about whether it fits this narrative, but it's very ideological and I don't think it's connected to events on the ground. It seems like it's also a bit clickbait.

Right. There was a great movie years ago. Shark Attack. Yeah, it's a great movie. There's a great movie years ago, which dates me, but it's Burt Reynolds and the guy who's played Superman, Keanu Reeves, who passed away. And Burt Reynolds is a producer of this news station. And he just kept saying, we need fires. People watch fires on the local news. So we need to find more fires. And.

And I feel like that's what this is, right? And it doesn't demean their deaths at all, but it does seem like this has become a clickbait for especially cable news outlets. Yeah, I think clickbait is a general trend for news with the end of classified advertising. That's absolutely right. And, of course, there's different types of clickbait on the right.

and compared to the left and they both do it. So I think that's general, but I guess if you're gonna talk about clickbait on the left, it tends to be a, you know, this is one of the flashpoints, the issue of race to a lesser extent issues around gender and Me Too and so on. But I think primarily,

The narrative of race and racism, if you just look again at mentions of those terms in the major progressive newspapers, we see a big spike that's empirically verified fact. And I think it reflects, yeah, this cultural mood that just swept out after 2014-15, amplified to some degree by social media and also by that new type of journalism you mentioned. Professor, we have to go to break here in a couple of moments. But when we come back, I wanted to

to hit on a point you made about the shift from class warfare to race warfare, because I really feel like that shift has been partly driven by the failure of the class warfare ideology. Broken Potholes will be coming right back in just a moment. Thank you very much.

The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote web domain from godaddy.com. Get yours now.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts, Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. On the line with us, Professor Eric Kaufman of the Professor of Politics at Birkbeck University of London, an author of White Shift, Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities. Professor, right before we went to break, I was bringing up a point that touched on something you said earlier.

that the left has really moved from class warfare to race warfare. And I always feel like there are sort of two interests, if you will, competing in any society. One is the general popular interest, but one is the specific political interest of the parties and of various leaders within that society. And what I really have seen here in the last few years is that they tried very hard for decades to make a

class-based argument. But frankly, as much as you try, it's very hard because here in America, throughout Western Europe, and really all the developed countries of the world, upward mobility is a real thing. It's hard to argue that there are real class barriers. And then they moved on to race. And I feel like that was, as much as anything, a political shift that is just taking advantage of some underlying, as you pointed out, there is some underlying racism. There are some underlying issues that are there.

that have made that shift possible? - Well, yeah, I think, but intellectually, if you trace this, the failure of apparent failure of communism, it was already becoming apparent in the 60s really then.

this was not necessarily going to be the sunlit uplands of the future. And so intellectuals like Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School were starting to move towards race and other categories as bringing forth some kind of radical transformation. And so that starts kind of in those upper reaches.

And then it slowly kind of colonizes movements. And it's not just race, it's also identity movements around gender and sexuality. Those sorts of identity politics issues then start to crowd out. It's not that they're no longer concerned with the poor, they still are, but really the energy is really in these new social movement ideologies. And so, yeah, that then percolates down and then eventually reaches into the political parties. And now we're at a point where

the class composition of, for example, in Britain, here in Britain, the Conservative Party, which was always the middle and upper class party, is more working class or as working class as the Labour Party, which was the Labour Party, right? Because a lot of disaffected,

culturally conservative white working class people have shifted from labor to the conservatives. And similarly in the US, the Republican Party is more working class because again, that sort of university educated ideological identity left is just less appealing to your white working class voter. And so, yeah, I think this is an intellectual trend which has become part of the orthodoxy within left-wing parties in the West.

We're with Eric Kaufman. He's the professor of politics at Birkbeck University of London. So how do you decide to become an academic in particular? How did you decide to get in this specific field of thought and research? And how has it been received by your peers? I mean, you know, I, you know, if you read studies, um,

University campuses are not known for being this great, tolerant place to be an employee, which is the way it shouldn't be, but it is. What made you get into it? What inspired your interest, and how have your peers reacted to this?

Well, there's a lot of great questions there, Chuck. I'm not sure if I can get through them all. We have a segment. Yeah, the interest in nation is, I mean, I grew up, I'm Canadian. I grew up a lot abroad in Japan, for example. So I was always aware of being somewhat different. And that maybe started the interest in

And then I've kind of lived in Vancouver, where I'm from, also has quite a bit of immigration and ethnic shift. So let me ask you this. When was the last time you lived in Canada? You're in London now. When's the last time you lived in Canada? I've been in London for over 20 years. Oh, wow. Because Vancouver is one of God's great, beautiful places in the world.

Oh, well, thank you. And I wish I'd been to Arizona. My parents have been in golf there, which I hear is a great place. It is. It is. It's gorgeous. I'm sorry about that. Go ahead. Continue. Full of Canadians in the winter, by the way. But OK, so yeah. You're the polite ones on the road. Right, right. OK.

But yeah, then in terms of the book, I mean, I was very pleasantly surprised, actually, because I was going into what I thought was, you know, reasonably contentious territory, like saying that, you know, white identification is not the worst thing in the world, as long as it's done in a certain way. And so, but yeah, I would say generally the center and the center right have been, you know, have been well reviewed in publications like the, in Britain here, the Financial Times, which is a sort of somewhat left of center liberal publication.

And in the US, I was on Ezra Klein and he was very courteous and said nice things. So yeah, I think I have to say I was generally pretty pleasantly surprised. There have been some nasty attack pieces, but those are very few. Where I'm getting more problem is from the radical left within Israel.

either my institution or networked to other kinds of institutions. So you have a very small group of agitators who will try and smear you online. And I've had a number of these attempts. And of course, they just cause a big storm and they don't go anywhere. But yeah, they're quite unpleasant. But I wouldn't say there's been a sustained excommunication because of this book. No, it's actually, I've been very pleased. How have your students received it?

Well, to the extent they are aware of it, I mean, a lot of the students at our institution are mature students who attend in the evening. And so they're a bit different from your ordinary students. And they're generally fairly open-minded. So I haven't had any issues really there. So yeah, I think it's generally a very noisy and very online networked radical group that tends to do the canceling. They've tried their best, but at least here in Britain, we've got a pretty good media

media and a pretty good, now the government is protecting academic freedom with a new bill, which is coming into force next year. And that will essentially make it very, very difficult for universities to discipline people for speech. We're more likely to eliminate cancer than we are trolls.

In the next 10 years. What is one question as you've done this book that you've been asked or someone's pushed back against that made you relook at your research? Has there been a question that someone's asked you that gave you pause and made you relook at your conclusions? Yeah.

That's a really good question. I don't think my essential view has changed a whole lot. I think that this is fundamentally, you know, national populism is culturally driven. I haven't seen any real data and evidence to contest that substantially.

Of course, part of my book was also about the rise of the cultural left and the way in which it shuts down debate, which allows for, I mean, in a way, populists emerge because mainstream parties are too afraid to touch these issues.

Again, I haven't really seen, no, it sounds a bit arrogant, but I haven't really seen a very powerful argument to the contrary on these issues. I mean, there's some papers that show small effects of deindustrialization on populist support, actually.

So there may be a small input from economic forces, but I still think that's pretty minor compared to the identity shifts and ethnic transformations that are driving it. Facts stink sometimes, don't they? Yeah. Well, and I think the professor made a very good point about the rise of Trump and some of these other populist politicians coming from that reprobation. Because I experience this in my work all the time.

I get called a racist all the bloody time. And if you're always a racist, then you're never a racist. You're a Jewish racist, too. Yeah, exactly. I'm one of those, too. Sign me up for the Gestapo. I'll kill myself. So this is a fantastic topic. Professor, thank you so much for being on. We're going to bring you back here in just a moment. Broken Potholes is coming back. It's the new year and time for the new you.

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Welcome to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Chuck Warren, with my co-host, Sam Stone. You can find us at brokenpotholes.vote. Today with us, we have Eric Kaufman. He's a professor of politics at the University of London, and he wrote this great piece entitled, Is This the End of White America? And this is based on the recent U.S. Census, which frankly should just be redone because it was an atrocious mess due to COVID, but no one's going to do that. So anyway, Professor, talk to us a little bit about that piece, and what it's about.

what people may not be reading between the lines, what they should be aware of. And let's talk a little bit about that in this six-minute segment.

Yeah, well, of course, you had a number of news headlines come out about the shrinking, the historic, you know, the first time in American history that the white population has shrunk in absolute terms as a result of the 2020 census results. And a lot of people like Michael Moore on the left sort of piled in on this saying this was the greatest day ever and so on.

And really, my point was really, first of all, that this was completely to misread the evidence, number one, because the census question had been changed to offer a write-in box underneath, which sort of led to, and it's well known in social research that if you mess around with questions, you can often get quite sharply different answers. So what happened was you got a huge increase in the number of people who said they were white and something else.

as a result of these write-in boxes. And that was particularly amongst Latinos, but also amongst some non-Hispanic whites as well. I think that to read that as a, to read the drop in white alone numbers as some kind of drop in

social whites, the number of people who would be identified as socially white, I think is a big mistake. So I thought it was really the media hyping up a story which wasn't really there. And sort of what I was interested in is why that took place and why it is that on the one hand, you have on the left a great desire to see this happen. It's kind of a great hope. They think this will lead to a sort of

permanent Democrat or liberal majority. And then on the right, you have a great fear, of course, of this. And I think both narratives are powerful, whereas the narrative that says, well, actually, there isn't as much change as you think. There's a lot of assimilation occurring as the boundaries of whiteness blur a little bit. I mean, that's not represented very well. Well, you quoted in your article that 10 percent of white liberal Democrats

feel cold towards white people. That's statistics. And so I'm wondering, do you think of things like now, like 23andMe, which allow you to go look at your ancestry? Is that allowing people to say, well, I'm really X. I'm not white. I mean, is that allowing that now, you think?

Yeah, I think there's a bit of an Elizabeth Warren effect happening. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, the COO of my company, she's Peruvian, and her partner is a white male, and they're having a baby. And, you know, is the baby white or Peruvian? And, you know, a good friend of ours, his former spouse is of Mexican ancestry, and he's often said, are my children Peruvian?

Mexican, Hispanic, or are they white? You know, and I don't think any of them consider themselves Hispanic. I think they consider us white. So I think it's a real, it's a real interesting, I like how you said that we should ask the question, what do people view you as? That's probably more of an accurate way of reflecting what people think they are.

Yeah, yeah. And I, you know, myself, I'm a quarter Latino, quarter Chinese, so I sort of have a sense of this as well. But yeah, so it's sort of, yeah, but they've done surveys that show, you know, that, I mean, to some degree, this is a political decision. If you have somebody who's, say, part Hispanic and part

sort of white European. If they're a Republican, they're more likely to identify as white. And if they're a Democrat, they're more likely to identify as Latino. And so that's one of the things that's going on. But in addition, studies have shown, I think, that there is, you know, amongst third generation Americans with some Mexican ancestry, I think 60% identify as white on certain surveys. So there is this process of melting that's going on and somewhat of a blurring of

or beijing of the boundaries of whiteness. But that's something that gets lost in this battle about whether whites are increasing or decreasing. - You know, something else you pointed to in your piece about the census is the changing demographics of Hispanics where their birth rate is dropping, really starting to match white birth rates across the world. And I really think a lot of these trends that people say, you know, demographics are destiny,

They're forgetting that a lot of these populations are going to change behaviors just like that as they reach higher and higher levels of prosperity. Well, yeah, I mean, that convergence of birth rates is very much happening and will. You just have to look at what's happening to birth rates in Latin America, where they've been falling pretty steadily down towards 80%.

at the replacement level or below. So I don't think that's in doubt. But the interesting thing in terms of politics is, you know, everyone talks about, you know, it is true that Hispanic Americans are more likely to be Democrats than non-Hispanic white Americans. But if you're looking at, say, ethnic change in the population shifting every census, you've also got to look at...

at what proportion of Latinos are voting Republican. And if that's moving at a faster rate towards from Democrat to Republican than the demography, then actually you're never gonna get to this inbuilt Democratic majority. And that's often- - The destiny is not written. Professor, thank you so much for being on the program today. "Broken Potholes" will be coming right back.

The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote domain from GoDaddy. Get yours now. Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. In the studio with us today, Kylie Kipper. We want to thank our previous guest, Professor Eric Kaufman of the University of London,

And now on the line with us, a politician in Arizona. He probably doesn't like me calling him a politician because, frankly, he's better than that. But he's a guy who is at the convergence of some very big things going on here in Arizona, Jeff Wenninger. He is a member of the House of Representatives, previously served on the Chandler City Council, including as vice mayor. But.

Also, one of the key sponsors of the sports betting bill here in Arizona. And I don't know if you're like me and you're a sports nut, you're probably getting bombarded with everybody's betting sites and draft sites and draft kings and all these guys coming out on your Facebook and social media feeds. It's going to be a pretty big shift in Arizona when that is fully in effect. And Jeff, welcome to the program.

Thanks so much for having me. It's an honor. First, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, how you got to doing this, how you got into politics and signed yourself up for this much punishment and torture.

Yeah, you bet. It actually kind of goes along with the gaming that we're talking about. Real quick story. Yeah, I moved here from Wichita, Kansas with a friend to open up restaurants. And we have opened up a few. That was 1993. And we still have our two original restaurants here. Which are those restaurants? Which restaurants are they? Dilly's Deli and Floradino's Pizza and Pasta. So what do you like doing better, deli or pizza?

I mean, I love them both. I'm in front of my deli now getting ready to work after this, and our pizza and pasta place is booming all the time, but especially at night. I actually did not know you were one of the founders, owners of that. That is a fantastic deli for those who haven't been there. Thank you. Really worth the visit. This is coming from a fat guy, so you can take this gospel.

So one night during the poker craze, I was having a big poker game at my house, and I've always been interested in politics, been a precinct committeeman. And I asked a buddy of mine, there's about 20 of us, I said, who's running for Chandler City Council? Because I wasn't happy with some of the fiscal things going on. And we talked about it and thought I could possibly win, and the election was only four months away, and we just...

poured our heart and soul into it and got in there and won. I was lucky enough to win and served there for eight years and then went on to the legislature where I've kind of stuck to the same kind of bills, a lot of bills that deal with business, regulatory freedom with business, and just

and just making it easier for business people and financial services and different things, innovative products to thrive here in Arizona. And that's something that you, the legislature, and the governor, frankly, deserve a great deal of credit for from these last few years because the business environment now in Arizona has been...

pretty significantly transformed from what it was a decade ago in terms of the regulatory environment, licensing, a whole number of issues. We are in a much stronger place now than we were before you got in there. Well, thank you. And I agree. It's been good. It's some of the things you don't see. But once you open up those opportunities, you don't have the heavy-handed government constantly, you know, riding you. A lot more innovative and great things happen.

And you see that with the growth of businesses here, the ability of people to open those up. That's an underrated feature in Arizona's economy, I think. And I think it's been really, really important. But Jeff, before we go on talking about this stuff all day, because you and I are both nerds on all deregulation, taxing, all these kinds of things. But I want to talk a little bit about also you're stepping up to run for another office. Tell us about that. Yeah.

I declared for a state treasurer, uh,

two days ago. And I had been thinking about it for a while. I had been thinking about it while we were in session. And Regina Cobb is a very good friend of mine. We came in to the legislature together. We shared an office together. And she was thinking about it, too. And we determined we would not run against each other. She was a much further along in her decision. I didn't think it was fair for me to hold it up. So I deferred to her and she would have been great.

Then about a week ago, she called me and told me that she had this amazing opportunity to head up an association here in the state. And she was kind of waiting for, you know, different things to come through with it. And so we kind of did a joint press releases and announcement that she was, you know, stepping out of the race for this opportunity and endorsing me. And I was I was stepping in. So as treasurer.

You basically are responsible for $23 billion in assets, and you handle about $40 billion of the state budget as the cash management guru. What do you want to accomplish? Why do you want to run for treasurer, first of all? And what are some things you want to accomplish as treasurer, or is it more of it's running great now, I want to continue that legacy and maybe do this alteration or that, but want to keep it a pretty steady course? What is your reasonings for running for treasurer?

Well, I do think you need a steady hand in there and things are going well. Things have been going well with Republicans in there for the last, you know, Governor Ducey was there before. You need a steady hand. You don't want a, you know, a kind of a loose cannon who's trying to come up with, you know, all these really radical ideas. Right.

I mean, realistically, Jeff, I'm sorry to cut you off, but it's a position that you really want someone who it's not about their personal ambition and not about their political ambition, but simply about managing the state's finances and creating, you know, helping us have more money to do the things that we need to do.

without taking it from taxpayers. That's a great way to put it. I mean, you want somebody who's not, you know, just looking at it as a stepping stone. You need someone who's going to be happy just to do the job. I

I think I do some good things down there, but I think you know. I'm not the guy who's fishing for praise and trying to take all the praise. I just try... I think it's being a business person is that you want the results, and you let the results speak for themselves. I'm very competitive, and I'll work very, very hard at anything I do, but the accolades and this and that doesn't mean a lot to me. It's just

it's just too important we just need that office to run well i have a lot of experience you know i have over the last 25 years had you know over 100 employees at any given time uh managed the budgets in chandler you know development agreements with intel and uh and now at the state level uh you know chairing commerce uh vice chair of banking

When I first came in and a lot of these are the same issues and things are going well and we need a steady hand. But there are things, you know, that I'm sure will get in there and I can use my experience in finding innovative ways to solve problems and, you know, embracing technology and things.

to further the office. One of the big bills I did run was the FinTech sandbox a couple years ago. Attorney General asked me to run this and it basically creates a sandbox that in

innovative financial technology companies can deploy in here in the state without these burdensome financial regulations over them. They still have to behave. They can't do anything against the law. But it allows you to incubate new technologies, new kinds of businesses that attract businesses here. And I think there can be a real linkage in ideas and stuff still with the legislature, my relationships there, in trying to keep attracting these companies and we can be a part of that.

Chuck, you and I have talked about this a lot, but as you listen to what Jeff's saying, it strikes me again that in local government, having people who have had to make payroll

who have had their family's livelihood at stake on their own enterprise makes a huge difference in just starting with the mindset that you approach this with. Oh, absolutely. Since you're an owner of two restaurants, how did COVID affect your business and what did you learn from it being a business owner and then taking that knowledge into the legislature?

Yeah, it definitely affected our businesses. I mean, you learn, and this is where small business sometimes has an advantage. A lot of times you don't have an advantage over chain, but you have to adapt quickly. And we pivoted very quickly, especially at Floridino's. I mean, we do anywhere from, you know, any given time of year, 700 to 1,000 people a day through that restaurant.

And now all of a sudden we're completely shut down. So we pivoted to curbside takeaway. And it's been so popular that we still do curbside takeaway every day. It's not going away ever. And we have, you know, essentially 20 spots. And there's times of the day where every one of them is full, somebody picking up and, you know, you'll have your food in three minutes from us. And so you have to adapt quickly. And different people did different things. It was a black swan event. You didn't,

know everything. We at that time said, one, most of our employees have been with us for 10, 15, 20 years. We want to take care of them. We didn't lay off a single person. That says a lot about your partner and you. Yeah. Right. Now, we did it for the right reason, but I will tell you, it helped us in the long run. I have friends who they laid off everyone.

They didn't want to come back to work. They had to hire and retrain all new people, and that was if they could get people to apply. So we did it for the right reasons, but it was a blessing in the end. And how did you take that knowledge? How did that knowledge affect how you handled the legislature with COVID programs or updates or restrictions and things of that nature? How did that knowledge affect your voting record?

It definitely showed me that one, business owners, yeah, they need to have autonomy, but also just how knee-jerk reactions from D.C. or wherever can just drastically affect your business. And these things affect all these people who actually own a real business with employees, and there are a few of us at the legislature. I mean,

minimum wage, health insurance, everything under the sun, these decisions affect us. And you just learn quickly either to adapt or try to affect change by lobbying D.C. I lobby my own senators on policies I hear about that's coming from D.C. But

I went down to Yuma the other day with Tim Dunn, who's a great businessman down there. And sometimes what you've learned, it's like my fifth trip down there, but my first trip, I didn't know anything about farming down there and what that whole community really does. And so I try to get legislators to actually get out, go to a business, talk to these business owners, go to the different parts of the state so you can really see what they're going through.

Because you can talk about it all the time, but until you see it up front, it's not the same thing up front. It's personal. Yeah, those field trips, those personal interactions, seeing it are just crucial opportunities.

any decision-making process and I feel like we've almost become a society of social media and spreadsheets and we've missed that human connection to see what's really going on as we try to investigate and solve problems you know I always he's not the most popular name in the Republican Party right now but I actually always go back to John McCain when he made his first really serious presidential run and did it as kind of a grassroots candidate and had to just spend all that time going around talking to people meeting with business owners and

That changed him very significantly. Then I think he sort of migrated back to his original positions, but that changed him very significantly. And Jeff, I think you're absolutely right that that's something that politicians have to do because it's so hard for anyone to understand life other than their own. Yeah, 100 percent. You know what you know. And if you don't, if you can't empathize and see it through someone else's eyes, then you can't make the best decisions.

Absolutely not. We're going to take a quick break here soon, but quickly want to ask you, as we got about a minute left here for the next segment, tell us a little bit about your background or married kids. Tell us a little bit more about you for our audience and where they can find more about you.

Yeah, married over 22 years. I have three kids, a 30-year-old son, a 21-year-old son who just had his first legal cocktail at least that I know of the other day, and a 14-year-old daughter who started high school this year. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I'm very blessed, and I see –

I see some nights where I'm going to be coming home and not have anything to do because she's going to be out of the house pretty soon. But I cannot complain at all. How do they like your politicking?

Oh, they like, oh, believe me, it's just old hat to them. If you get a big head at all, which I don't, I get brought back to reality very quickly when I get old. Yeah, I hear from a lot of my friends that 14-year-old daughters are really good at bringing you down to earth in a hurry. They're very knowledgeable, very knowledgeable, have very, very loud opinions on things. Right.

And my website is JeffWeniger.com, W-E-N-I-N-G-E-R. And you can contact me through there on email. I'll give you a call if you want to talk about any issues. Fantastic, Jeff. Thank you so much. You're going to join us for the next segment, which, folks, you can only get online via our podcast. Apple, Spotify, Substack, all the places you find podcasts. Broken Potholes is there. Coming back on the radio next week.

It's the new year and time for a new you. You've thought about running for political office but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain. This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from godaddy.com today.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes. This is our special podcast-only segment. I am your host, Sam Stone. With me in the studio, my co-host, Chuck Warren. The irrepressible Kylie Kipper. We don't have a sunshine moment for today. She'll be bringing that back next week. But on the line with us still, Jeff Weninger, Arizona State Representative, running for Treasurer, and also one of the leading authors behind something we want to talk about now, the bill to allow social

sports gaming here in Arizona. So Jeff, can you give us a little bit background on that, how that came about, and what your involvement was, and what it means for Arizona going forward? Yeah, definitely. So when I first came in the legislature in 2015, it was something I was talking to the governor's office about back then, just that we should have sports betting here, especially fantasy sports. It was

It was interesting when this bill passed, I had a few people contact me through Twitter and showed me tweets of mine to them in 2016 when it was said that all these states were doing this daily fantasy sport.

and we couldn't. When draft came to them, it just blew up. I said, well, it's ridiculous. I said, well, thanks. Sorry it took me so long, but we got it done this year. The governor's office approached me before session and said, look, we're finally ready. We're very close with the compact, and we want the sports betting bill. We started working on it. It

It's a very long and complicated bill, but there's a lot in there, and there's even some Easter eggs in there, some things kind of that don't jump out at you that's in there. But it basically does a couple things. It legalizes the daily fantasy sports in Arizona. Anyone can get a license for that. You've got to go through the process, but it's open for everyone to get a license on that. So it's about your fantasy leagues that you do.

I just did one with my daughter the other day. But it's basically every week you can do an entirely new team. And so that's that one. And then it also legalizes sports betting in Arizona. There's 10 licenses that basically the major sports teams have access to. I think eight of them got issued, which means there's still two available. And

And then all the tribal nations get a sportsbook, and then there's 10 online sportsbooks for them as well. And any of the 10 partners outside of the tribal nations can do the online ones as well. And then they partner with people like DraftKings or Barstool Sports or MGM.

in any of those groups and they kind of run the back end for them. And it all launches, you know, there is a lawsuit out there. We're hoping and confident that that's just going to be swatted down. But it goes live on September 9th and that was

One, I put an emergency clause in it so no matter how late we went, you know, they could start setting up the rules and stuff like this. And then two, our ultimate goal was always by the opening day of NFL season. And that is on Thursday, September 9th. And it looks like we're going to hit that date. Well, that's wonderful. So what are the financial benefits for the state of Arizona do you see conservatively short term and long term?

So conservatively, so JLBC, our budget arm, they put it very, very conservatively, I think, at about $35 million a year.

I've always said I think it'll be approaching $100 million a year. But that doesn't include, and that's taxes through it, that they're taxing the entities who are doing the betting and assigning them the licenses. But you've got to think, and you guys understand this, the downstream effect. I mean, do you think if everybody, a lot of people are going to be betting on sports now that

sports bars are going to be busier during the day on different days and everything. You've seen the advertising. I mean, so the advertising alone of DraftKings and all these things has been you can't turn around anywhere without seeing it. I think we're going to get more conventions. I think

People who are here for baseball in March who come here for the whole month and then maybe one weekend or week they go to Vegas for March Madness Fest. I think a lot of those people aren't going to go. They're going to stay here. You're right. A lot of people who go up there from here aren't going to go. Is there any money set aside? I've seen this in other states. Is there any money set aside for gambling addicts in there for...

I know we have money from the state gambling compact. So what is that program? What is that part of the program? Yeah, there's a problem gambling aspect to it. It's a continuation extension of the existing one that is at the tribal nation. And so that will be going. There's lots of help. There's self-exclusion lists. And if somebody does get excluded for any reason,

that all these betting partners have to have their databases updated constantly. So if you get, you're not allowed to bet at Eagle River, you're not allowed to bet at the Cardinal Stadium either. Oh, that's great. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right about downstream consequences. I think $35 million is a really, really conservative number. Well, I know I used to own a pizza restaurant myself, Jeff, and I just know we could have had that

those who have been the Shangri-La days, right? That's a big deal for business. It's a big deal for business.

I mean, also in there, you've got to think, we also legalized Keno in this. And I insisted that the service organizations get it. So the American Legions and the VFWs will be able to have Keno in their places. And I think that's going to be a big driver for them. And they do so much help in the community. I mean, why wouldn't we want them making more money than they give right back out to them? So my parents actually started...

the family business because my mom won $500 at Keno in Reno 45 years ago. So Keno is a great originator of startup capital. That is awesome. You know, Jeff, as we were talking a little bit about you running for treasurer,

And I think one of the things that the left always forgets is that it's the pie that we have for all these services and everything they want to do is not static. That if you actually go out and cut regulation, if you create opportunity for small business, if you create opportunity for an entirely new class of business like this, you're going to have more money to spend for the things they want to spend.

And so that's where I think people like you have a tremendous role in talking about and really articulating to folks out there how important these type of opportunities are, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one example I use a lot is Intel did a $3 billion expansion during the recession. So like in 08, 09 and businesses, including mine and Chandler. Yeah, we were hit by the initial recession, but we were booming and recovered much more quickly because they had 5,500 construction workers who moved here to build out that facility. And

when you bring these jobs, TSMC that we successfully recruited here, I mean, when that is built out, they have so much land, you could be talking $40, $50 billion. You're talking about the world's largest semiconductor factory. That's going to be a big deal. Yeah, absolutely. And then you know, because you were to all these...

sub-businesses and subcontractors and suppliers locate here that feed into that. And that means the restaurants in that area are busier and busier. I mean, you're right. Try and drive that home to people that it's not just one pie. Just because this person wins doesn't mean you lose. Everybody jump on the train and get it done. Jeff, thank you so much for being on today.

Really appreciate you being here. Folks, if you're listening out there, make sure you like, share, pass this segment around to your friends, email the heck out of it. Broken Potholes, coming back next week. The political field is all about reputation, so don't let someone squash yours online. Secure your name and political future with a yourname.vote web address from godaddy.com. Your political career depends on it.