All right we are back now with overtime Vis a vis our state senato who wants to be the US senator.

So you've gotten some criticism for not reading into this whole sports thing and gender stuff.

What is your position on that?

Should you know where I'm going with this?

Yes, the sports should inherently be safe and fair, and the best place to make those decisions is at the governing body of the sport itself.

It is not a place fo politicians to be stepping in, because if Republicans are successful in moving forward the legislation that they are proposing on the federal level and very likely in the state level, then it opens the door for genital examinations of girls.

I mean, if you don't present as feminine enough as a young girl, somebody is going to sa you don't belong in this sport.

And we're going to check.

That should be horrifying to everybody.

Well, what if the local governing board of a athletic association decides to do that?

I mean, shouldn' somebody be setting the policy?

Yeah, the local governing body of the sport.

And, you know, they build in a policy where there are physicals or maybe there is a rule, depending on the sport, that if you are a trans athlete who is transitioned after a certain time in your life, that maybe there should be a rule about that.

But again, that is not a place for a politician to decide.

So you sort of laid out earlier your concept of this new American dream.

I'm still interested in hearing more about the policy specifics, like what does that look like in practice?

Does it look like Medicare for all?

Does it look like down payment assistance?

Can you talk about sort of what that agenda would look like?

Yeah, So I'm a big nerd and I've been reading a lot of Ezra Klein's work on the abundance agenda.

And number one, it's making government that works.

I think it's inexcusable that we would spend billions upon billions of dollars on things like a national network of EV chargers or broadband and have very little to show for it by this point.

Conversely, in Michigan, we've done an excellent job as it relates to housing.

We created the first permanen housing fund $50 million a year, and mission is on track to build 10,000 new housing units.

That is something that I think about as we bring to the federal level for success.

It's housing, bringing significantly more housing, a line, potentially a down payment assistance, universal paid leave, something we were unable to do here in Michigan, but that we need on the federal level.

So there's not a patchwork access to community college and college or the trades and then bringing i a lot of the work that I've done in my economic development committee to really support innovators, entrepreneurs, small business owner bringing grants into the state, not just for the same way that we've always done economic development, but for what's next.

Dug Song cam before my committee a few times, and one of the things that he said that I think about all the time is Michigan is really good at understanding what we've done.

We have a hard time imagining what's next and being able to create federal grant programs and then bring them down into the state to support that future.

Innovation i that I'm really excited about.

I did read the book.

I gotta rib Jonathan.

Right.

I'll get one over to you.

I'll check with you next week.

Helping you out Jonathan One of the things that I was curious about is you basically lay out, you know, hey Democrats aren't talking about how they're positively impacting people's lives enough.

Look at all these things we did in the Michigan legislature passing gun reform, tax changes.

But one thing the book didn't talk about is the House Democrats lost.

Yeah.

They did not kee their majority.

I wrote the book before election.

Okay.

There you go.

But you've done media interviews doing the same thing.

I mean, the state House Dems did all of this and then they lost their majority.

Why?

So the loss in the state House hurt.

I supported 13 state House candidates the cycle through my PAC.

I was campaigning for them all over the state and first of all, it was a loss of about 5400 votes across four districts.

Still a loss.

Still a loss, but very, very narrow and I still fundamental believe that a lot of that issue is people get so busy around her in terms of managing committee moving their legislation.

You put out your press release and then you're kind of done.

But going out and consistently showing and telling people this is what this lin item in the budget actually did.

Here's shovels in the ground.

Here's a community center that's being built in a city like mine in Oak Park that hasn't had a community cente and desperately needs one where constantly following up to illustrate in real life what government really does for people that isn't about the bill name or the title of the act or the PA. My God, nobody knows what a PA actually is, but showing people in their communities so that's what we're going to be doing on my campaign and hopefully showing a road map for people in my party to relentlessly communicate and communicate constantly.

So the house dems did not do that well enough?

I don't want to knock the House Dems.

This is a really hard year.

It was you know, Donald Trump won the state of Michigan.

It's really hard down ballot to buck what's happening at the top of the ticket.

So the fact that it was as close as it was and I've seen analysis post-election that showed that many of our House candidates overperformed the top of th ticket on the Democratic side.

That just means we got to get them next time.

When you talk to governors who have been governor of this state, they say Skubick If you really want to get something done and hel the people, you'd be governor.

You thought about it and rejected that.

How come?

I don't ru for things just to run for them?

I am very thoughtful about my skill set and my experience and where I can make the biggest impact for the values that we share and for residents.

I'm a legislato and I think I've become a pretty damn good one in terms of not only that, the legislative process, but in understanding how to actually build power, to move the policy agenda that you want to move.

On the political side, that's a very different skill set than being an executive.

Gretchen Whitmer was a legislator, Jim Blanchard was a legislator.

John Engler was a legislator.

I rest my case.

Are you trying to get me to run for governor?

No, I'm we already filed for the Senate.

That takes it off of you know, my point is, I thought as I looked at your resumé, the governor was a better fit from the standpoint of you wanting to get stuff done.

You're going to be alone in the U.S. Senate.

Okay.

Let's let's be honest here.

There's 100 people in there that have more seniority.

So how close did you come to running for governor?

That's some personal family conversations.

That.

Why Did you pause?

Do you have you have to put thought into these things?

You know, people are really sick of and I'm really sick of people who are so ambitious and just get out immediately and can tell you wha they're going to run for next.

I don't take any of these decisions lightly at all.

So ho close did you come on, Governor?

It was fairly close, but again, I looked at what I could do, and having now serve in the legislature for the past six, seven years, I see where there are gaps, certainly.

But the the issue that I couldn't solve in my head was I'm not sure I'm the person to solve them.

Well, did you look at the fact that Jocelyn Benson was going to win the nomination and you knew you couldn't?

No.

I mean, I ran for state Senate with 4% name I.D.

in the first place.

It's not anything that's ever informed my decision.

On the flipside of Craig' question about Democrats losing the state, House, Democrat still hold the Michigan Senate.

Do you feel like you all ar doing enough to build the case for restoring a Democratic trifecta?

It feels like the big thing you all have passed is FOIA.

What else have you done this session?

I mean, it's a tricky questio and one that we've been dealing with internally, which is in this moment, how much of our role as a caucus is to be a backstop against preventing bad legislation?

And how much should we be aggressive in moving things that we know may die in the House?

You'll see a lot more actio in the second half of the year, but this has been a real adjustment period for us to really figure out how we position ourselves.

So you'll see a lot on communications, on on what we have done.

Again, I think reminding people and showing the things that we did in the first two years are really important.

But that is is a big challenge and FOIA is something that should be broadly bipartisan.

And we sent it over to the House hoping that it would pass.

And Matt Hall immediately said there's no chance, okay, we got to get out of here.

Okay.

You promised Matt Hall.

You just brought him up.

He has said the house has a road plan.

We passed it.

The Senate has no road.

Where is their plan?

What's your plan to fix the roads?

We have one.

We have to pass a budge that works for people, you know.

So you're saying do it as part of the budget?

Isn't it part of the budget?

So what's the plan in the budget then?

You'll see it.

When the budget comes out, there will be a plan to fix the roads in the budget where we are working on it internally in the Senate and not just throwing something out there.

By the way, the House also threw out a supposed stopgap budget t prevent a government shutdown.

It's what, April the government wouldn't shut down until October and that budget slashes $5 billion from education.

So they are half baked plans.

In a word, how would you describe Matt Hall, Trumpy?

Oh, all right.

Thank you, Senator.

Thanks for doing our program.

We always good to see you Thanks for showing up.

Like wise Good luck with the book.

Thanks.