At the Restoring National Confidence Summit in Las Vegas, Jenny Beth sat down with Hannah Joy who is fighting for freedom in deep blue Washington state.
At the Restoring National Confidence Summit in Las Vegas, Jenny Beth sat down with Hannah Joy who is fighting for freedom in deep blue Washington state.
Twitter/X: @RealHannahJoy | @jennybethm
Hannah Joy (00:01):
It clicked for me that nobody's going to come save us.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:06):
No, you have to look in the mirror for the person who's going to save you.
Hannah Joy (00:09):
Right? And it made me very quickly realize our business was lost because of our lack of activism.
Narrator (00:17):
Keeping our republic is on the line and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she's most proud of is Mom To Her Boy, girl Twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:48):
This episode of the Jenny Beth Show was recorded on Radio Row at Turning Point Actions Restoring National Confidence Summit in Las Vegas. I hope you'll be inspired by my next guest. Hannah Joy is the executive board representative for Congressional District three in the Washington State Republican Party and the chairwoman of the Washington State Republican Liberty Caucus. She and her family have experienced some awful things at the hands of an extremely overbearing government in a deep blue state, but she's not letting that discourage her. Listen now as she explains how she's fighting for freedom in a state where it often seems all hope is lost. Anna, thank you so much for being with us today.
Hannah Joy (01:31):
Thank you for having me.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:32):
And you live in Washington state in the Bluest Blue. How did you wind up in Washington?
Hannah Joy (01:40):
So it's actually kind a fun story. I'm a strong Christian. My husband and I feel very strongly that we were led to Washington. So I actually was raised and I was born and raised in Savannah, Georgia.
Jenny Beth Martin (01:51):
Yay. I know home state.
Hannah Joy (01:53):
And my husband was military. He retired out of the military. We had had six children at the time. He said, I want to raise my kids back in the Great Northwest. I want them to go fishing for salmon and hunting for elk. And he said, let's go back. And I said, okay, let's do this. And so we found this little hardware store at the base of Mount St. Helen's and we were like, this is going to be our dream life and we're going to go and have a little hardware store and a little white dog and some goats and raise our kids.
Jenny Beth Martin (02:22):
And did it turn out the dream that you envisioned or was it a nightmare?
Hannah Joy (02:27):
It wasn't a nightmare, but I think it definitely revealed why we were led to go. I was a housewife. I was homeschooling my six kids, and we very quickly realized that Washington was very small business. We had historically been raised in entrepreneurial homes. We both had small businesses in Georgia. We understood what business was like, but when we landed in Washington and purchased that small business, we realized really quickly we weren't going to be able to make a living.
Jenny Beth Martin (03:00):
How did you figure that out? I mean, I can imagine some ways, but what did you experience?
Hannah Joy (03:05):
It is mostly the over taxation, the overregulation. It was this kind of snooty attitude towards small mom and pops, right? Washington pretends to be geared towards big box. We saw big box favored greatly during covid shutdowns, and that was kind of the key. So funny is when we first purchased our hardware store the next day after we signed our contract, the mountain caught fires, the Eagle Creek fire, and I thought, this is not a good sign. And then Covid came, and that was another realization that this state does not protect individual people, does not protect individual rights nor small businesses.
Jenny Beth Martin (03:49):
When did you move to Washington?
Hannah Joy (03:51):
About 2018.
Jenny Beth Martin (03:54):
2018. We're now in 2024. You've been through a lot of really tough times in Washington and what's happened with your hardware store?
Hannah Joy (04:04):
So we had the hardware store. We wanted to run it with our children. We want our children to learn mathematics on the register and great interpersonal skills with customers and knowing that it wasn't going to be enough to support our large family, we also opened a gun store inside of it. Very rural county, a lot of hunting, a lot of fishing, a lot of need for just guns that were more for that geared towards that. Right.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:33):
For hunting and sporting and also hunting for food that you're going to be eating in a rural community.
Hannah Joy (04:40):
Yes, and that's another thing. Prices are very, very high in Washington in a lot of people in my district or my county rather harvest their own food. It's almost a necessity in a way of life up there. So
Jenny Beth Martin (04:55):
Explain that because if you're in the suburb of Atlanta, that is not going to make a lot of sense.
Hannah Joy (05:01):
So most people in that area rely on whatever they can hunt, so elk or bear or they raise hog or raise cattle for their main meat source. You don't see a lot of grocery stores. Actually, we only have two grocery stores in our entire county and they are very small and very expensive. So unless you're willing to drive 45 minutes an hour to a large grocery store, you have to align what you grow or what you harvest.
Jenny Beth Martin (05:33):
Okay. So that's a kind of community that it is. And you've got the hardware store. You opened a gun store. Did that help you be able to make ends meet? It
Hannah Joy (05:41):
Did. It did. It was actually really, it was great. And actually more than make ends meet, it made us have this relationship with the community we never had before. We felt very much outsiders when we first came in, and it was kind of the pivotal moment where they were accepting us and like, oh, you're one of us. Oh, that's great. And my husband became commander of the Legion there and was helping veterans. We had a large group of veterans in this county we didn't even realize we're there. And they were in desperate need. They were hungry, they were cold, they weren't getting services they need. There was no veterans court. They were getting unfairly treated. And so another aspect of the gun store for him was kind of creating veteran services that we would do outside of, I mean, well inside the gun store. That brought us really close to the community. I really love for the community.
Jenny Beth Martin (06:35):
And then what happened? How did you realize, you mentioned before that it was not as welcoming to entrepreneurs and small business owners. So what kind of difficulties did you face?
Hannah Joy (06:49):
Well, mostly it would been Covid 2020 happened and we were kind of told we were non-Essential hardware store was non-essential. A gun store was not non-essential. They're two in the same. What Seattle doesn't seem to understand is that not everybody lives rural. And actually Washington State is mostly rural. I'm so sorry. Suburban. And so when you say a hardware store is non-essential, where we're almost the only provider for gas, we're the only provider for pellets for your pellet stove to keep you alive throughout the winter. We provide essential services. So that was our first real big hit was like, oh man. Then they passed a capital gains tax, which is just an income tax in disguise. Then they created laws that prevented our police officers from doing their jobs, which created this really big issue of smashing grabs and small mom and pops that were completely an unenforceable on top of that. You couldn't claim insurance on it, it would make your insurance rise. And Covid was a horrible, horrible time. And we kind of realized that moment that we're not sure if we're going to make it. And so we signed a lawsuit with Freedom Foundation. It was they do
Jenny Beth Martin (08:09):
Amazing work.
Hannah Joy (08:10):
They do, and they were so great. They came out to the store and they said, here's what we're doing. We want to say it's your first amendment to allow somebody in your store if you want to sell to them without a mask. I said, absolutely. We're not going to discriminate against anybody, in fact, by allowing them to come into our store. And what we saw was essentially saving lives. Some of these people didn't have any other means and it went nowhere. It went nowhere L and I was sent out to our store. We had an amazing share, L and i,
Jenny Beth Martin (08:43):
What is that?
Hannah Joy (08:44):
Labor and industry. So we had a group in our county that would repeatedly call this snitch hotline, and it was an anonymous snitch hotline
Jenny Beth Martin (08:54):
Saying Really the Soviet
Hannah Joy (08:56):
Very, and they said, we see people going in there without masks. They're letting them in. They're actually selling them things. And so how
Jenny Beth Martin (09:03):
Dare you
Hannah Joy (09:05):
Week after week. And so finally L and I came out and they're like, Hey, we've gotten like 35 calls that you're violating the law and week call the sheriff's office. And we're like, we need backup sheriff's. Amazing. Came out was like, you want 'em out of your store? We'll get 'em out of your store. We don't play with this. And we obviously didn't. We worked with them, but they didn't shut us down. But we definitely got some slaps in the wrist. It's eyeopening to live in America, small mom and pop shop. Your kids are the workers. And to have somebody from the state come out and say, you're violating a law by allowing somebody to come into your store to buy pellets, to stay alive through the winter, it's just unreal.
Jenny Beth Martin (09:50):
How did it make you feel?
Hannah Joy (09:52):
Angry. Very angry. This community, we had grown to love. They had grown to love us. We wanted to protect them and help them, and yet we were told no. And oftentimes we're told that the progresses are the ones of the love. They're the ones who want to see the small man make it so far from the truth. It made me angry. And so I got involved in politics.
Jenny Beth Martin (10:18):
Okay, now I want to talk about politics. But before we go completely into that, the fate of your hardware store was not a good fate, was it?
Hannah Joy (10:30):
It wasn't. We ended up selling it for, I don't want to reveal too much, but we ended up selling it for definitely less than it was worth, just for the fact that we needed to liquidate. We had our gun store was attacked in the sense that after signing the Freedom Foundation lawsuit, a couple years later we got hit with this very mysterious audit from the state, Bob Ferguson. Just very random. And we had an amazing accountant out of Oregon who kept our books to a T, just wonderful. Can't say enough about it. And at one point she said, you have to stop talking to them. Don't talk to them anymore because they are looking for things to get you on. I can't even tell you the amount of, what are you talking about? Well, this, this and this and this and this.
Jenny Beth Martin (11:17):
But your lawsuit was about First Amendment rights. Absolutely. And then your accountant was telling you not to speak, not to exercise your first amendment rights because if you did, then it would harm your business. So it compounded the First Amendment problems.
Hannah Joy (11:33):
Yes. Yes it did. And we ended up actually just, we compromised in order just to save what little we had left of savings in order to just close the business, surrender our FFL and say, you won in a sense. And it was heartbreaking. We weren't the only one. Most every small mom and pop gun store in Washington is now closed its doors. I could maybe name off of my two hands, any that are left in the state.
Jenny Beth Martin (12:06):
How did you feel the day that that happened when you closed everything and you sold it? What was going through your mind and your emotions and the conversations with your husband?
Hannah Joy (12:15):
Run, leave, save your kids. That's what we were feeling, just the constant attack of just trying to be left alone and just be alone. Raise my kids, help my community, love my neighbor. It's all we wanted. That's all we were out for. And I kind of say they created a beast because after we liquidated everything and we got our store shut down and we had to sell this and that, I said, that's it. We're going to going to go full-time politics.
Jenny Beth Martin (12:51):
Okay. And so you became active and had you ever been active before? Never. Okay. Never. Your husband was in the military. You were already giving your, now you make
Hannah Joy (13:01):
Me feel bad. Yeah. My husband was in the military, but I was never active. But
Jenny Beth Martin (13:04):
You were serving the country by being a military family. And that's incredibly important. And so now all of a sudden you're thrust into activism and
Hannah Joy (13:13):
Not by choice either. Not by choice at all. Actually, it's kind of funny. I got invited to the Republican party in my county and I'm like, that's it. I'm going to go tell them what for. I'm going to go tell them that they aren't protecting me, that they're not doing what they should be doing, that my rights are being trampled. And I went to this meeting and I said my piece. And then everyone just kind of looked at me like I was lost it looking back on it now. Yeah. I had lost it for a hot second. And they said, huh, you should become a PCO and solve all the world's problems. I was like,
Jenny Beth Martin (13:48):
I'll and A PCO for those who don't know what is A
Hannah Joy (13:52):
PCO? It's a precinct committee officer. Okay. Yeah. And I ended up not becoming a precinct committee officer, I ended up becoming a state committee woman, which represents our county at the state committee. And I did it with every ounce of my being. I tried to be the best state committee woman I could be because I was trying to prevent what happened to us, to anybody else. And that is when I began talking to legislators and senators and diving deep into RCW Revised Code of Washington and learning about policy and legislation. And it clicked for me that nobody's going to come save us.
Jenny Beth Martin (14:33):
No, you have to look in the mirror for the person who's going to save you.
Hannah Joy (14:38):
And it made me very quickly realize our business was lost because of our lack of activism.
Jenny Beth Martin (14:45):
Well, in your defense, we all have to be active. All of us have to be active. When you have that much pressure bearing down on you from the government, it's very difficult individually to be able to stop the full weight and force of a state government or the federal government. So don't beat yourself up too much about that because what you went through were extraordinary circumstances and extenuating circumstances in some ways yet predictable. I want to come back to your activism, but I just want to tell you, we just met today, so you don't know a lot about me, and I want to let you know that when Covid first happened, my now ex-husband and he went through a business failure and we lost everything. We've been through bankruptcy, we lost our cars, we just, everything a garage sale where you're selling every single thing that is worth anything so that you've got money just to pay utilities and make sure you've got food for your kids.
Jenny Beth Martin (15:49):
I've been through that. I know how hard that is. And when I hear stories about people whose business failed, I'm always very, very sensitive to it. But ours were a result of business problems that we cannot blame on the government. He did expand into California and that created some of the problems, which are what you have had dealt with. So there was some of those issues, but still at the end of the day, it isn't anything like what you've experienced or the people who've had government weaponized against him who are losing everything, just trying to stay out of prison. But when the government shut down in 2020, I was on Steve Bannon's podcast the day he launched War Room Pandemic or the day after, right around the time he was launching it. And he's like, you need to check out what is going on with this. So this virus that's moving around the world. So I was paying attention to that back in January, and we didn't shut down until mid-March. And so throughout all of January and all of February, I was learning every single thing I could, paying attention to what was happening to China.
Jenny Beth Martin (17:02):
My kids went on a mission trip out of the country. So I was tracking the virus around the world to make sure they weren't going to get stuck out of the country. They were in high school at the time going with a church group and no one else was paying attention to it. But I travel all the time. So that's something that I at least knew enough to kind of pay attention to. So all of this was going on as we lead into March, and I was telling everyone two weeks before we shut down, we are about to shut down the country. The entire supply chain is going to be messed up. Oh yes. I cannot explain to you how badly it's going to be messed up because if China shut down in January, it's going to take six to eight to 12 weeks for the product that would've been coming here to America not to be here.
Jenny Beth Martin (17:45):
And I knew that from work that I did in logistics when I programmed and people just looked at me like I was crazy and I said, we're about to have economic problems, this is going to be bad. Well, then we shut down and I'm like, okay. See, I told you. But for the first two weeks we were very calm, like, okay, we'll support this. We're not going to be out attacking it after 14 days to 15 days to slow the spread. My organization Tea, pretty Patriots action. And I were privately speaking to people in the White House saying, you have to reopen the country. What in the world are you doing? The country must be reopened because if you don't, you are going to crush small businesses. They're going to go bankrupt, they're going to lose their companies. And I know what this is like, I don't want that for anyone.
Jenny Beth Martin (18:32):
And then we came out more publicly and more forcefully about it. But my point is the world went through so many problems and some of them were so predictable. But then in Georgia, governor Kemp was the first one to reopen, and DeSantis and Christina almost say they didn't shut down, but Kemp, his shutdown was so limited. And then when he opened, he got rid of the limitations. So the seat was really the freest state in the country. I really think maybe North Dakota or South Dakota was the same, but it was really, he did a great job with that. And he was careful for small business owners and he was attacked for it. And I was like, I'm defending this man. He said in an interview, I don't want people to go broke. I mean, he got it. And so what he did versus what Washington State did are so completely different or what he did versus Chicago and New York and Illinois and California completely night and day. And yet the Covid outcomes are pretty much equal. It didn't matter. But the business and economic outcomes between the states are not equal. And what you went through and the tyranny you experienced is infuriating.
Hannah Joy (19:51):
And there was even kind of a tiered as a stack. Not only was the shutdown detrimental small businesses by making us discriminate on what business we were allowed to take in, but also telling us we had to shut our doors. And then this offering of governmental assistant money with supposedly no strings attached, which now in 2024, many of those small businesses took the PPP loan or took those loans are now having to find them being paid back immediately, which is shutting their business down. This was such a domino effect against small businesses in the state of Washington. I just can't even explain to you how awful
Jenny Beth Martin (20:29):
It was. So when we met just a little while ago, one of the first things I said to you is how your is your personal guarantees? And I was warning business owners who I taught to in 2020. I'm like, if you're signing a loan, you make sure it's a business signing the loan and not you personally signing it. Because if you're not careful for that in five or 10 years from now, your own home may be at risk and you're not thinking of it in the crisis. So desperate to save the company, but you have to pay attention to your home first. And I'm glad that I hate what you went through, but I'm also glad that you still have a home right now.
Hannah Joy (21:11):
One benefit of homeschooling is you get to pick your curriculum. One of the years for one of my high school students was learning people like Frederick Bastia and learning all about these ideas of socialism and how they affect people. And when 2020 hit, I saw it a mile away. I was like, oh, we just went through this study. And so we took our savings and we did, we purchased our house and we thought, okay, if it all goes really bad, at least we'll have land to grow food on. At least we'll have land to grow cattle on. I mean, we were really preparing, we were talking to our friends like, who's going to take care of this resource and this resource? When you live in a rural county that's completely dependent on each other, you really have to go that far. Because we were talking about are they going to shadow the highways? Are we going to be able to get in the city? What is
Jenny Beth Martin (22:05):
It? We had no idea. It wasn't out of the, it was smart to be thinking that way.
Hannah Joy (22:09):
Yeah. Our governor at one point said, make sure you look into the windows of your neighbors and if you see they have friends over for Thanksgiving, call the snitch hotline. Yes.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:16):
Soviet Union in Washington state. Okay. So now you're active. Yes. You're in the state committee.
Hannah Joy (22:24):
Yes.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:24):
You are not just in the state committee, but you have a bigger position than just state committee woman from your county now, right?
Hannah Joy (22:32):
Yes. Definitely not a bigger position. I say the largest position in the state party is a precinct committee officer. They are the greatest because they have the most influence, the most close connection to the actual voters. And then I actually don't have a position on state committee. I have a position on executive board,
Hannah Joy (22:52):
And I see myself as the person to disseminate information, resources that I gather from everywhere to bring downward to them so that they can do the great work of contacting those voters and getting them out and giving the resources they need. So I am excited about this being an executive board member, but I'm even more excited about running for RNC member as National Committee woman because one of the greatest things we see is a lack of good communication, a lack of transparency, and there's very much like the supply chain. There's a broken chain of information from the top to the bottom, and it's got to stop because the bottom is where it's at.
Jenny Beth Martin (23:34):
Right? As we were preparing to be here at this conference, we're trying to train local leaders and county leaders so that they can ready to secure and win in the fall, but for a party chairman or a leader locally in a county to be ready for poll watchers and poll workers in the other work that must happen in the fall and then voter ID and getting out the vote, there's a lot of groundwork that has to happen in January, February and March to be ready for the influx of volunteers later in the year. And I reached out to a county party chairman in Georgia and I said, Hey, do you have a workbook or anything? Is there any kind of manual to help you prepare so you know what you're doing? I was going back through looking at all the materials that I've had and accumulated over the years, and she said, no, we don't have anything like that. We have a precinct committee, man manual, but that is it.
Jenny Beth Martin (24:34):
And I said, okay. So I have to figure that out before Monday, and this is on Friday just a few days ago, but the lack of communication, the lack of tools that a brand new volunteer person who is stepping up to be a chairman of a party or stepping up to be a vice chairman, or even starting a local group, whether it's a pro-life group or a conservative group or liberty group or whatever it might be, any of those, there are things you have to do to be prepared if you're trying to get out the vote in an election year and what you're talking about, that broken chain, we have to figure out a way to put it back together.
Hannah Joy (25:13):
And I'm actually really proud of Washington. So we have a new chair now. He's actually sitting legislator. So he flipped his district from blue to red. That's amazing. And he came in and he was ready to go bull in a China shop. And previous to him, a lot of us had been coming together doing things like ballot harvesting. And yes, it's legal in state Washington, don't freak out. And you have
Jenny Beth Martin (25:33):
All mail-in ballots in
Hannah Joy (25:34):
Washington, a hundred percent mail-in ballot, nowhere to vote in person. With the exception, maybe you can go to your auditor's office, fill out your mail-in ballot and right. But we came up with ideas that were out of the box thinking. We decided that the RNC was not going to provide us what we needed, and the infighting was not going to help us at all. That we had to go past and beyond that. And we had to create our own systems of information, our own systems and our own ways of reaching the voters. So a lot of voters in the state of Washington have gone independent. They see well along with extreme voter apathy. I mean less than 40% voter turnout. We're talking extreme voter apathy, especially for Republicans who've just been hounded and told over and over again that their vote doesn't matter, that they're not even told they're minority.
Hannah Joy (26:26):
They're told that they're the problem. And it's heartbreaking because actually, I got a good story on this one. I started a newspaper to combat this biasness. I published it my own money. I took my savings. I published this and started this newspaper, and I got this letter and this letter from this mom of two. And she goes, I thought I was the only one. Wow. She said, I never knew there were other people in this county who thought like me, and I was too scared to talk about it. And in that newspaper for that woman was just what she needed to keep going. And I often think, how many voters in the state of Washington feel like they are absolutely the only one? And I guarantee you there's enough of them to flip districts if we reached out to 'em. I
Jenny Beth Martin (27:12):
Think that you're right about that in Washington. And I also think across the entire country, there are a lot of voters who would love to step up and volunteer in some way. They just don't know how, and they've never been asked and they've not connected
Hannah Joy (27:26):
And they're scared. I mean, the reality is they're scared. We don't see any less of attacks for our conservatism.
Jenny Beth Martin (27:33):
Some of my friends are facing indictment in Georgia.
Hannah Joy (27:36):
Yes. And a lot of us are facing our business being shut down.
Jenny Beth Martin (27:40):
The tea party was targeted by the IRS and donors to the Tea Party were individually targeted by the IRS. So yes, all of that, it has a chilling effect.
Hannah Joy (27:51):
It does. One of the things that made us really upset during Covid was there was a competing hardware store in the next town over, and they were very much discriminating. You couldn't even be on the property without a mask on. You had to social distance. They went moneyless, contactless. And a lot of our people were angry. And they came over to our store and they're like, I can't believe they would do that to me. I've been with them for 25 years and I gave him my business. And then the moment the mass mandates were lifted, the loyalty was gone. And it just made me think. We often see progressives. They will promote a business and say, go save them. Go give them your business. Boycott them, boycott them. Don't boycott them, and they'll listen. When it comes to the conservatives, we don't have the same mentality.
Hannah Joy (28:42):
I'm not necessarily getting angry about it. I'm confused and would like to know more about that phenomenon. Why conservatives don't do that same thing. It would've saved tens of thousands of small businesses. I think it was close to 21,000 small businesses died within the time covid hit to today. And 25,000 families left the school district in 2020 to 2021 because the vaccinations and masking and well, now we have DEI and all of the awful things have come down. Families are just hopeless. And I'm no longer going to be hopeless, and I'm no longer going to live in fear. So my campaign and everything that I'm talking to voters about is we're longer, we're no longer functioning off of fear. You're no longer to function off the fear of your kids being taken and your business being taken. We're going to function off of hope that we did it once when we created this great nation. We can absolutely it again, it just takes remembering.
Jenny Beth Martin (29:44):
That's exactly right. Now, if someone's listening to this and it's the first time that they've heard about the, it's the first time they've heard of you, but it's the first time that they've thought about how else they can be active, what are things that you would recommend to them to do generally speaking, and then in Washington State specifically,
Hannah Joy (30:05):
Talk to your neighbor. I guarantee you guys have something in common. You like to bake. Bake something, bring it to 'em. I found so many times that when I would canvas in these large neighborhoods, nobody even knew who their neighbor were. They didn't know if they had children. They didn't know their name. They knew what they drove. But that was about it. And the isolation was so palpable. It was dystopian. And so if I could say, if you want to get active, but you're worried, the first thing you should do is reach out to your neighbor. That's the first step. Just go knock on their door and say hi. It doesn't have to be political, but just by passing that one barrier is the beginning of us healing our nation and healing the divide and the misunderstandings of each other. And that would go a long way.
Jenny Beth Martin (30:50):
I think that that is so important. It's building those relationships and it's remembering that united, we stand in this country. If we don't find a way to unite with our fellow Americans, our country is in really deeper trouble than we can even imagine.
Hannah Joy (31:06):
Absolutely. A lot of Washington state's problems are not partisan. And once we stop thinking in a partisan way and just reach out and love and say, how are you struggling? What is this law affecting you? It doesn't have to be a partisan issue. How are you dealing with the fact that you have no childcare? How are you dealing with the fact that gas is $6 a gallon? How are you dealing with a mileage tax on top of that, an increase in property tax? How are you dealing with paying into a Washington Cares fund for your entire life without being able to get anything back for 10 years and then you only get two and a half months of care? How are you dealing with the fact that you are struggling? And then let's fix that.
Jenny Beth Martin (31:52):
And you mentioned the new state party chairman flipped a legislative district,
Hannah Joy (32:00):
So he was the one who flipped it. He's the legislator that flipped it. Right.
Jenny Beth Martin (32:04):
And I hope that you are working with others who are running for office across the state of Washington who are working to do that this year. Very much. They need to hear from you. You need to go campaign around the seat so that other people can hear from you so that they'll vote to help flip Washington, if not from blue to red, at least from blue to purple,
Hannah Joy (32:23):
Right? We do.
Jenny Beth Martin (32:25):
Or deep blue to turquoise or something.
Hannah Joy (32:28):
We're working it. So this year I represent CD three, which is Joe Ken's district. He's running from Congress. He's probably made the news several times. And we have a plan this year to do active canvassing like we've never seen before. I personally have knocked on thousands and thousands of doors for candidates across our state. I'll drive three or four hours to knock on doors for candidates that I truly believe in because I know that's what it takes. It takes feet on the ground. And sometimes I'll bring my kids because nothing like good civic lesson, but by doing is inspiring, by telling is not inspiring. And so as long as I am still being active in these campaigns by volunteering my time to phone call and canvas and stuff, envelopes and put stickers on, that is the hope that I can inspire others to do the same.
Hannah Joy (33:20):
And it is catching on. We are finally seeing CD three major unity. We're seeing people coming together and doing these things they would've never done before because they're too scared because they see others doing it. So I am very excited this year for 2024, I have full faith that we'll be flipping seats. We actually just flipped a seat in Yakima. Matt Brown, who's running with me as National committee man, did a ballot harvesting program this off season and ended up flipping 15 out of 22 races in his district. One that had never in the history of Washington been read before. And so we know it's doable.
Jenny Beth Martin (33:57):
It's amazing work.
Hannah Joy (33:58):
Yes. Yes. And with very little money. That's another thing people think you need massive and massive amounts of money to flip these races. You really don't. You need really good planning, really good strategy, and you need some flat foots. You need people out there just doing what they're doing. Right.
Jenny Beth Martin (34:14):
Well, that is great. I'm so excited about the work that you're doing in Washington, and I hope that as people have listened to this and watched this, that they have a little bit of hope about Washington State. It's people like you who are on the last line in Washington state, and you're holding that line, and I appreciate that very much about you.
Hannah Joy (34:32):
Well, thank you. I appreciate it. There's too many out there who don't have a voice yet, and I will be it for them until they find it.
Jenny Beth Martin (34:39):
I am Jenny Beth Martin with the Jenny Beth Show, and we are at Turning Point Actions, restoring National Confidence Summit. We're on Media Row, so you might have heard a little bit in the background. Mike Lindell is somewhere over there, so you might even hear his voice a little bit. But it's really great. Thanks for joining us today.
Narrator (34:55):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mohan and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin (35:15):
If you like this episode, let me know by hitting the light button or leaving a comment or a five star review. And if you want to be the first to know, every time we drop a new episode, be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications for whichever platform you're listening on. If you do these simple things, it will help the podcast grow, and I'd really appreciate it. Thank you so much.