Jenny Beth sat down with Andy Roth, President of the State Freedom Caucus Network to discuss the work they are doing to enact conservative policies in state legislatures across the country. Andy believes that the only way to save the country is at the state level and the work they are doing is truly incredible.
Jenny Beth sat down with Andy Roth, President of the State Freedom Caucus Network to discuss the work they are doing to enact conservative policies in state legislatures across the country. Andy believes that the only way to save the country is at the state level and the work they are doing is truly incredible.
Twitter/X: @AndyRoth @JennyBethM
Website: https://statefreedomcaucus.org/
Andy Roth (00:00):
When you're charging up a hill as a lawmaker, it's very scary to do it by yourself. And it's less scary when you've got a band of brothers and sisters with you in a Freedom Caucus charging up that hill.
Narrator (00:14):
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 (00:46):
If you find hope in the changes we've seen in the House of Representatives this year, first with the 20 brave Republicans who took a stand to make fundamental changes to the House rules, and most recently with the changing of the Speaker of the House, then you'll really enjoy my next guest. Andy Roth is the President of the State Freedom Caucus Network, and you're about to learn how the House Freedom Caucus is being replicated in states across the country. Andy, thank you so much for joining us today. You are making such a big difference around the entire country. Let's talk about what you were just telling me happened in South Carolina.
Andy Roth (01:22):
Yeah, our South Carolina Freedom Caucus, they found out that the Medical University of South Carolina, which is a taxpayer funded university with a medical center attached to it, they found out that they were doing transgender services on kids as young as four years old. And so our South Carolina Freedom Caucus, they put out a press statement that basically said, we see what you're doing, we don't like it. We're going to investigate you. We're going to look at your funding and if any laws were broken, we're going to come after you. And that was just a press release. Within three months, the university shut down their transgender clinic and fired their lead doctor, and we did that all out of session. There was no vote taken, no bill considered. It was just conservative state lawmakers being active and going after the liberal forces that are trying to spread their wokeness in South Carolina.
Jenny Beth Martin (02:14):
That is amazing. And that clinic was doing surgeries on kids as young as four years old. That is quite an accomplishment. So what network is doing this? What are you doing these days?
Andy Roth (02:28):
So I'm the president of the State Freedom Caucus Network, and basically what we do is we recognize a lot of your listeners believe that the House Freedom Caucus in DC are the true conservatives in Washington fighting for us. It's pretty intuitive that maybe we should have a House Freedom Caucus in all the 50 states in the state capitals. And I contend, and I will back this up, I believe that the 50 swamps are swamper than dc, a lot of bad stuff that's going on in the 50 states. And so we desperately need a Freedom Caucus in the 50 states. And so in December of 2021, we launched the State Freedom Caucus Network, and our first one was the Georgia Freedom Caucus, and then we moved from state to state to state to South Carolina, Illinois of all places, South Dakota, Arizona, Pennsylvania, on and on. Louisiana was our most recent one.
(03:25):
It was our 11th one, we launched them earlier this year. They've been doing fantastic work, but the goal is to get into all 50 states. California and Hawaii and Vermont are going to take some time, but definitely we believe that there are conservatives still in those states. And so we want to get to all 50 because I believe that the only way we can save this country is from the states. The good work that Scott Perry and the House Freedom Caucus is doing in DC is vital and we need them. But if we're going to take back this country, I think it's got to come from the states.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:01):
We recently saw just how important it is to expand that number in the House Freedom Caucus in Washington DC because across the entire conservative spectrum and even the Republican spectrum, people were calling for Jim Jordan to become speaker, and there were votes, and the votes on the floor. He just didn't get there. The good news is he got up to 200 votes, which is more than what we could have had in 2014 or 16, or I guess 15 and 17. But so we did better than we've done in the past, but we're still not, we don't have as many people in DC as we need.
Andy Roth (04:44):
Yeah, no, I completely agree. And this goes to my point about how swampy or the 50 states are, and I'll give you an example in Wyoming, this is ridiculous. It's coming out of my mouth and it sounds ridiculous. There are 57 Republicans in the Wyoming house and only five Democrats, 57 to five. Wow. And I think it's 28 to two in the Wyoming Senate. So you would think that they're just passing all of this awesome stuff, school choice, tax cuts, all sorts of amazing things, but they're not Well, why? Well, because if you're a Democrat in Wyoming, you know can't get elected with a D after your name. So you put an R after your name, and then you govern as a liberal. And so instead of 57 to five, when you look at the voting records, it's 36 liberals to 26 conservatives. So the liberals are in charge in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and that's why you have coalition government in the states, and we're worried about that happening in Congress.
(05:58):
But to your point, in DC people think that the Republicans before the speaker fight are unified or they're all for limited government. But what the speaker fight is showing is that there are liberals in the Republican party in the US house who have no intention of supporting somebody like Jim Jordan because they're threatening, because they're appropriators and they want to keep the spending going and they want to keep the spending going. They have no intention of doing anything, and that's why Jordan didn't win. And it exposed the fatal conceit, which is not every Republican is a conservative Republican in DC and that's exactly what we're doing in the states. Wyoming's a perfect example. South Carolina's a perfect example. Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, we're exposing this all at the state level. That hasn't been done in years.
Jenny Beth Martin (06:52):
Let's talk about Idaho for just a minute. I'm just shocked. They're a red state and time after time we see liberal policies coming out of there and it doesn't seem like it's another state where it shouldn't be that way. What are things like in Idaho? So
Andy Roth (07:07):
The Daily Wire came out with a four-part series that I encourage your listeners to read, but it basically outlined the problem that exists in the States and the Daily wire profile that it did. They found out that there are 18 states that are more read than Florida, but they're not as conservative as Florida. And so the article said, well, why is that? And it's exactly what I said about Wyoming, which is that there are so many democrats who have an R after their name that are running policy in these red states. And Idaho's a perfect example of that. They couldn't pass school choice, couldn't even get a floor vote School choice in Idaho. The governor is a big moderate, and he passed a crony capitalism bill and the Idaho Freedom Caucus, they killed it in committee. And we were like, yes, we did it. But then the establishment blob brought it back together and rammed it through and they were able to do it because they had the votes.
Jenny Beth Martin (08:15):
We do have a couple of really solid conservative people, I think in Idaho with Raul Labrador and Theo Wald. I love the is the best. Yeah, Theo is so awesome. For the listeners who probably have never even heard of his name before, he worked for President Trump and he was very strong in securing the border. And he told me that when he was, I think in college, he went to the first Tea Party protest with his parents. So it was very exciting for us to see that someone who had been to a protest was working in the White House so closely working to secure the border on one of the issues we cared about. Now, how do you decide who's going to be part of the Freedom Caucus Network and how are you doing right now? How many, you've got 11 states?
Andy Roth (09:11):
Yeah, we have 137 state lawmakers across 11 states. And to your question, it has to be organic. We cannot be the suits from DC that come into a state and say, U five are going to set up a Freedom Caucus. That's not it at all. What we do is we make ourselves available to these state reps and state senators and say, if you're interested in setting up a Freedom Caucus, give us a call. We'll walk you through it. We'll tell you all the things that you need to do and how you need to organize yourselves. But at the end of the day, it's their Freedom Caucus. It's them organizing themselves, talking with each other. We have a state director in each of our states and they're there to assist, provide expertise, communication, support, all sorts of things like that. But at the end of the day, it's theirs.
(10:03):
And so if a state comes up to us and says, Hey, there's eight of us that would like to set up a Freedom Caucus. We sit down, we talk to 'em, we make sure that the aid are conservative and that they're rock ribbed conservatives, and then it's off to the races. We give them a little bit of training on policy. We give them training on procedures. One thing that we've learned is that a lot of state reps, I would argue a far majority of them, haven't even read the rules of their chamber. How do you use the rules to leverage power against the bad guys? And so we walk them through that and then we give 'em media training. We just say, here's how you talk to the press. Here's how you do an interview, whether it's radio, tv, we give them all of these resources and then it's off to the races.
(10:55):
And one thing I mentioned about South Carolina is these are part-time lawmakers. These folks have full-time jobs elsewhere and they've got families, they've got a lot on their plate, and they're probably not getting paid that much as state lawmakers either. And they're only in session for two, three months out of the year. Well, who's defending conservative voters when they're out of session? The establishments full-time, the the agencies, the woke agencies that run everything. The lobbyists are definitely full-time. But when our lawmakers are back home with their families, who's minding the store? So we take these part-time lawmakers and make them a full-time freedom caucus. And so even after you gavel out of session, the Freedom Caucus is still there. They're still going after the agencies, they're still going after the executive branch. They're doing everything they can to defend our values 365 days out of the year.
Jenny Beth Martin (11:56):
That is really amazing. So you're doing that once people are elected, what are you doing? Are you doing anything at all to encourage people to run or is that a little too early to talk about because you only started in 2022.
Andy Roth (12:12):
So again, this is their Freedom Caucus. It's theirs to run, and that includes political stuff too. We've encouraged our Freedom caucuses to set up pacs. A lot of 'em require dues from each of them to put money in, and then they go out and raise the rest. And then they work with outside groups like yours and other groups in state to identify candidates and interview them and then ultimately, hopefully endorse 'em. And if they win, then hopefully that expands their numbers once they come into office.
Jenny Beth Martin (12:46):
That's pretty amazing. And then the really good thing is they learn how to fight before they get to Washington dc And I'm not saying they're all going to come to Washington, but hopefully some of them eventually will make their way into Congress because they're the kind of fighters that we want, but they're already going to have been tested before they get to dc Sort of like Andy Biggs, wasn't he the speaker of the house in Arizona?
Andy Roth (13:13):
Senate leader, Senate
Jenny Beth Martin (13:14):
Leader. Yeah. And so he understood how the swamp works in a state before he got to dc. So learning how the swamp works, it's a little bit different in DC I'm sure than Arizona, but the tactics are the same.
Andy Roth (13:30):
And the other thing that we tell these state lawmakers when they launch a Freedom Caucus is that their state Freedom caucus is going to live in perpetuity. The members themselves will serve their time and retire or move to another office or come to Congress, but the Freedom Caucus itself is going to live in perpetuity. And it is a brand that you want your citizens to recognize and trust. Just like the House Freedom Caucus here, when people hear the House Freedom Caucus, they immediately understand that those are the guys that conservative voters can trust. That's what we want for our Wyoming Freedom Caucus or our Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus. And then once you are a member of that State Freedom Caucus and you do start learning how the establishment blob works, you learn how to appropriately fight back, how to message against it, then when the time comes, if a seed does open up in Congress, then those should be the ones at the top that conservative voters should pick.
Jenny Beth Martin (14:32):
I just think it's so exciting and it should give people hope. And for people who maybe are just tuning in to the podcast, if they did not hear the interviews that we did in Louisiana, I encourage 'em to go back and look at this. That's part of why we're interviewing you right now is because we want to hear more about these amazing lawmakers like the ones we met in Louisiana,
Andy Roth (14:54):
So about that. Like Louisiana, they have nine members. When we launched earlier this year, the Louisiana Freedom Caucus had nine members. They were fantastically successful during session. They picked fights on all of the issues. They fought on the budget, there were spending caps that they fought on. They did all these wonderful things, and the voters saw it. And then the Louisiana Freedom Caucus PAC went out and endorsed double digit candidates. And then when the primaries were held just recently, the Louisiana Freedom Caucus swept all of their elections. They all won reelection, and then they won a bunch of the open seats. So just by showing voters that you're principled and you're willing to fight our Louisiana Freedom Caucus is going to go from nine members, maybe double to 18 or to 20, and in Wyoming they went from eight to 16, they doubled. And so it's clearly resonating with the voters and it's clearly resonating also with their colleagues in the state houses. There's a lot of conservative lawmakers who aren't necessarily Freedom Caucus members, but they see that a Freedom Caucus got up and running and is fighting, and they're like, well, I kind of like how successful they're getting. Maybe I should join. And we're careful about who we let in and who we don't. But that's the profound effect that all of this has Tons of
Jenny Beth Martin (16:19):
Hope and hope and courage. It maybe the people were afraid to stand up. They thought they might be alone before, and they're willing to join with others to stand for what is right. It's sad that sometimes that's the way it works, but what you just described in Wyoming when there's such a huge Republican majority, but the conservative part of that is a minority. I can understand why it takes courage.
Andy Roth (16:48):
Yeah, it does. And the establishment has a playbook, and it doesn't matter whether it's in DC or Wyoming or Louisiana, it's the same playbook. And their playbook is very simple. If they see anybody get out of line, then they punish them, and then they separate them if there's more than one. So you divide and conquer and you penalize them. And then once you punish 'em, you say, don't you do that because that same thing will happen to you. But when you have a large freedom caucus of multiple people and you stick together and fight and you don't get peeled off, then that's when the establishment gets scared. And that's what you saw in the speaker fight in January is you saw a band of House Freedom Caucus members who said, we're not wavering, and they ultimately won,
Jenny Beth Martin (17:42):
And our country is better for it. That's right. Because the rules that they got change make the house function better if they stick to the rules and the
Andy Roth (17:52):
Processes
Jenny Beth Martin (17:52):
That they made the punishment, explain what that means. You and I know what you're talking about, but explain to the people how bad punishments could be.
Andy Roth (18:07):
So the establishment playbook, if it exists anywhere, it's probably on page one. It says, if anybody steps out of line, here are the things you need to do. Step one, you are friendly to them. With the carrot, you say, gosh, Jenny Beth, I don't know why you want to do what you're doing, but you should have given us a heads up. You make them feel guilty. And you say, now, come on, you got to work with us. Let's put this nonsense away and let's be part of a team. It's always couched in team and family. We're a family. We're a team. Team Jersey, you're getting out of line. It's a very, it's emotional terrorism is what it is, is they try to make you feel guilty. And usually that works for a lot of less principled lawmakers. You get in line pretty quick. Now if that doesn't work, then they get a little bit nastier and they're like, well, if you keep doing this, we're going to have to take away your committee slot. I've seen people lose their parking spot of all places. You have a desk on the house floor, they'll put you over in the corner or in the back. It's total high school garbage that's going on here. And then if that doesn't work, you keep going down the list in the playbook that results in nastier and nastier punishments. And then after that, it's they tell the lobbyist community no longer to write checks to you or just donors. They'll call
Jenny Beth Martin (19:40):
Your donors and then your donors will be calling you saying, you better do it, or I'm not going to donate anymore.
Andy Roth (19:45):
And then it just feels like you're getting ganged up from all sites. And then if that doesn't work, then it's the ultimate punishment, which is we're going to find somebody to run against you and we're going to give them boatloads of cash to go against you. And so don't go that far. But then our Freedom Caucus guys go from zero down to the most violent punishment of all. And if you can withstand all of that and you're as a freedom caucus, you're loud and you're communicating to your voters, then you become invincible. And that's what our freedom caucuses are doing. And that's so fun about the job.
Jenny Beth Martin (20:26):
It's very good. And that communication back and forth to the voters constantly really is very important because at the end of the day, the voters are the ones who elected them.
Andy Roth (20:36):
So when we work with our state freedom caucuses, we tell them to do four things. We tell them to vote together all the time, plan together, meet, strategize, talk to each other all the time. Three, defend each other. When the establishment blob comes out publicly and wax one of your members, you need to not let that go unchallenged. You need to confront whoever that is and make sure his or her voters know what he said about the Freedom Caucus. And then fourth, be loud in everything that you do, whether it's in session, out of session at a town hall, in the newspapers, on the radio tv. Be loud. Because if people can't hear what you're doing, you're not going to have the support that you need. And the grassroots support is absolutely critical, which is so wonderful. What you guys are doing is that when you're charging up a hill as a lawmaker, it's very scary to do it by yourself. And it's less scary when you've got a band of brothers and sisters with you in a Freedom Caucus charging up that hill. But even if you have some of your colleagues charging up that hill, it doesn't mean anything unless you can look around and see a big swarm of grassroots supporters who are just as loud as you are going up that hill with you. It's essential.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:03):
It's hard to understand how important that is until you've been sitting next to one of the people who are just being absolutely punished as you describe. And I remember during the fight to defund Obamacare on Capitol Hill, ultimately we were pushing for and achieved a government shutdown. And someone's going to say, you achieved that. How dare you say that's an achievement. But we were trying to push, the ultimate goal was to push not to fund Obamacare until after the next election and to kind of pause it and let voters vote on whether they wanted Obamacare to actually be implemented. And I saw members of Congress who had come out of meetings with leadership and their conference, and they were, I could tell they'd been crying, and these are grown men, and they'd been crying and he said, it was so bad, it just was horrible.
(23:04):
And I'm sitting in a room with them with two or three other leaders from grassroots groups or national groups and just going, you have to keep going. You can do this. Keep fighting. You've got it. But to be so the emotional terrorism that you described, that being so intense that it makes them have tears in their eyes, it just, it's hard to understand. Or I was in Louisie goer's office a few times and he would just say, Jenny Beth, I'm going to be the only one voting against this bill. And I'd say, well, I'm standing right there next to you, so you just go ahead and do it. And you are not alone. You may be voting alone, but you are not alone. And it's important that the grassroots momentum to let them know you're doing the right thing, and we understand it, and we may lose this battle, but we know that it is important for someone to stand up and do the right thing. Yeah.
Andy Roth (24:04):
Jim DeMint, when he was a senator, he would just get beaten down in DC in the Senator lunches and the conference meetings, but then he'd go back home to South Carolina to heroes welcome. And that's the thing that gave him strength on and on. But the one thing that we talked to our state freedom caucuses about is the establishment playbook that I've mentioned a couple of times. Once you tell your Freedom Caucus members how the establishment operates, and then you see it in real life happen, then it kind of makes it sort of a joke. The emotional terrorism isn't as bad once you realize that they're just walking through the steps. This is how they punish you. And once you recognize that, you can almost ridicule and mock it so that, I mean, none of us are impervious to the emotional attacks that can go on. But once you recognize it for the silliness that it is, then it's so much easier to handle. So the great thing is about our Freedom Caucus members, I think they lean into it a lot because they recognize how ridiculous it all is, and it makes it
Jenny Beth Martin (25:18):
Easier. And I think back when defunding Obamacare was happening, that was a new fight for some of the people. And now
Andy Roth (25:30):
Water off the dust back,
Jenny Beth Martin (25:31):
Bring it on, bring it on, and you expect it. You can predict it. Well, we're going to win this one. We're going to lose that one. I can tell you when the fights are going to happen, when funding ends, that's when fights normally happen. And just be ready. We're going to need our armor on during that time. Yeah,
Andy Roth (25:48):
Yeah. No, it's true.
Jenny Beth Martin (25:50):
So loud. You said Be loud. Give some examples of members who have been loud and what have they been loud about?
Andy Roth (25:56):
Well, so I gave you the example in South Carolina about the transgender clinic in Illinois of all places, a very blue state that's dominated by Democrats super majority as an Illinois Freedom Caucus, and there are seven of 'em. It's not realistic to think that they can introduce a bill to cut taxes and it's just going to go through. But the one thing that they do have is a soapbox. And so being loud in Illinois is that Illinois freedom Caucus's chief weapon against big government. And earlier this year, Indiana, right next door, they effectively banned all abortions. And JB Pritzker, the very liberal governor of Illinois and the Democrats, they basically wanted to set up an abortion tourism program to attract people to come across the border to get an abortion. Well, we found out that in a small sleepy town in Danville, Illinois, downstate where it's much more conservative than near Chicago, we found out that there were plans to open up an abortion clinic.
(27:14):
It was not open yet. It was a closed down dentist office. But we pulled the permits in the local city council, found out that it was true that this abortion clinic was going to set up. And so our Illinois Freedom Caucus called an impromptu press conference right across the street, made a lot of noise, got a ton of coverage in the media, and then they worked with the city council to pass an ordinance, and they shut down the abortion clinic before it even opened up. And it's just by being loud and in Wyoming, the Department of Corrections, they're in charge of the prisons. We found out that their bylaws allow biological men to be in the women's prisons if they identify as such. Well, our Wyoming Freedom Caucus said, this is nonsense. They put out a press statement and within 24 hours, the Department of Corrections changed their policy.
(28:12):
This is kind of like the cockroach theory is like if these things are out in the open and we recognize it, how many bad things are happening that we don't know about, that we can stop simply by being loud and just being vocal. So a lot of our work is doing research and trying to find out what these agencies, these woke agencies are doing in very red states and in states like Illinois that we can bring attention to. And so if we find them, we will expose them and hopefully shut 'em down. But that's what we're doing. And you have to be loud, and you also have to enlist the help of the grassroots to help you do that, because we can't go through all of the agency's bylaws and all of the rules that are promulgated by all of these different outfits. But if we've got concerned citizens who want to help out, go find a department or a medical board that's doing, that's yanking doctor's licenses on Covid or doing all sorts of things, occupational licensing boards and help us find them and our lawmakers are ready to go, that's the fun part.
Jenny Beth Martin (29:21):
That's good. That's good. And there are so many examples of those kind of things like what's happening to doctors because of covid. That's one that just makes me crazy. And also what's happened, I would imagine another area would be what's happened to some of the attorneys who have defended President Trump, although right now it seems like some of the worst of that is happening in California. I don't imagine you have a Freedom Caucus area. No,
Andy Roth (29:54):
We don't.
Jenny Beth Martin (29:54):
California has a lot of work to do. Georgia has one, and Georgia had problems because of people who defended President Trump. And two of your members of the Freedom Caucus Air spoke out about that.
Andy Roth (30:09):
Yeah, Colton Moore, a state senator, was just absolutely livid at what Fannie Willis did. And so he came out with a resolution that says, let's have a special session right now in the Georgia legislature. Let's bring everybody back to Atlanta and let's investigate, see what she's been doing and defund her if need be. And it's like crickets. You couldn't get any of the Republicans in the legislature to do anything about it. It's one of the most remarkably upsetting things I think I've seen in my two years, well, actually in my 20 years that I've seen working in politics, the deafening silence of Republicans who are too scared to fight
Jenny Beth Martin (30:52):
On that one. I am from Georgia,
Andy Roth (30:58):
Front row seat,
Jenny Beth Martin (31:00):
Front row seat, and I spoke at a press conference that they did about it, and it is absolutely maddening what's going on with that. And the legislators who are not doing anything, they do what we see elected officials do. So often they say, oh, well, there's a board that's going to take care of it. And so they delegate their constitutional authority to some made up board who has no accountability to voters, no accountability to anyone who's appointed. They don't even go through a confirmation process. They just get appointed onto the boards. Maybe in this one, there's a confirmation process and I'm wrong, but they go through all of this and the board wasn't even established yet. So they're like, well, we're waiting for the board to be established and create the rules for it, and then the board can deal with a problem. And in the meantime, the people who were indicted are putting up six and seven figures, seven figures to cover their legal fees. Yeah, it is just it. I just sit there going, no, this is wrong. In any day that they have, first, if their attorneys are defending them, they have to pay for the time, and they can't just wait for six months for the legislature to do something. So every single day that their attorney is defending them, it is an injustice. They should not even have to defend against these bogus charges.
Andy Roth (32:33):
Well, the good news is that Colton and Charlize helped expose that, and that's the point that we make about why the 50 states are swamper than DC is that the state swamps love to operate in the dark. There is so much attention on DC that you turn on your TV and you're immediately looking at what's happening in dc. But the 50 state capitols, there's very little attention on this very little news coverage. And if there is news coverage, it's biased and slanted. Unfortunately, most people don't know who their state rep or their state senator is. So these capitols, these establishments, they're able to get away with so much because nobody's paying attention. But then once you expose it, then they overreact with such emotional violence and such anger that they don't know what to do, and we've got 'em. We expose them. And that's what Colton did. He was kicked out of the Georgia Republican Senate Conference because of what he did. Our entire South Carolina Freedom Caucus, they got kicked out of the house, GOP caucus. They have been ex-communicated because they were conservative and because they were loud,
Jenny Beth Martin (33:55):
The swampy establishment, blah, as you're politely calling it,
Andy Roth (34:02):
The cartel, the uni party, multiple
Jenny Beth Martin (34:04):
Names. They were more angry at Colton, I think, than they were at Fannie Willis. Right. Hello, where are your priorities? The chairman of the Republican party got indicted. Why aren't you standing up for it? You're supposed to be part of the Republican party. And by chairman, I mean the state party chairman. It's not like just a county party chair. I don't them. That makes me so angry, just watching what happened with that,
Andy Roth (34:34):
I think for years, and it's collectively all of our fault, but we have been in such a tribal war that we think Democrats are bad, Republicans are good. But now you're starting to recognize that it's not R versus D, it's establishment versus conservative, principled voters and lawmakers. And if you can separate the partisan argument and reframe it to be big government establishment versus constitutionally conservative, limited government people, then it's much easier to understand the fights. And that's why in all of these red states, Georgia, Wyoming, South Carolina, Louisiana, the ones we're talking about, the biggest fights aren't against the Democrats. The biggest fights are against these liberal Republicans that have been operating in the dark for so long with zero accountability, and now we're bringing them accountability and their feelings are hurting. So we're airing the dirty laundry for everybody to see. Right.
Jenny Beth Martin (35:38):
That's exactly right. And I think that you're right. The reframing is correct. There are even times when some of the people on the left, well, we agree on the problem. So as American citizens, we see that there are problems, and we can tell the way things are going is not the way it should be. We don't normally agree on the solution, unfortunately. But the first step is realizing that there is a major problem that we have to deal with, and that is the establishment who just, not just clings, but cleaves to power and tries to be one with power.
Andy Roth (36:20):
I mean, in the States, especially their job, I mean these state establishments in the 50 state capitals, they're basically organized crime, which is they are required to move the money and the budget comes up and they've got to move the money, and they've got to deal with the special interests, who they're beholden to. And so they pass all these different bills. In South Carolina, they gave 1.3 billion to a Volkswagen electric vehicle plant. And under the old playbook 10, 20 years ago, it was all jobs, jobs, jobs. And you as a Republican were like, well, I don't like subsidies, but I like jobs, so I'm not going to fight that hard on it. But now you have Republicans that are actively passing, not only cronyism, which we know is bad because there's winners and losers and it's corrupt, but they're now bringing the woke ideology of green energy and green new deal into their communities with this stuff. And these companies are going to push a progressive agenda on our communities. So you're literally giving money to your enemies to come into your backyard and promote an agenda you don't agree with.
Jenny Beth Martin (37:47):
It doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't. And I see that happening in Georgia and I see it happening in other parts of the country. And they'll even the progressives are so bold that they will go into the reds parts of the state and push forward with their green energy plans.
Andy Roth (38:09):
You go into dc, go onto Capitol Hill, and most Republicans, and I say this perhaps skeptically, most Republicans are like, no, green energy is bad. No green energy, new deal. No bad, awful. You go into the 50 state capitols, you look at the governors, you look at the Republican lawmakers, they're like, oh, green energy. That means we get to open up a plant in our district that means money, and they fall over themselves to support the agenda that as a movement, we absolutely oppose. But they do it because they care more about their pocketbook than they care about the principles of limited government scary stuff.
Jenny Beth Martin (38:54):
It really is scary. It's scary, and it just ticks me off. It really just makes me so angry because they should know better and they should be there helping stop it. That's part of why they're elected. And instead they just let those principles that they claim to have had when they were running go right out the window. And
Andy Roth (39:16):
The point I made earlier about the Daily Wire article that there are 18 states more red than Florida. That's where we can have the most profound effect, is that if we clean house in those 18 states and we show the voters how corrupt and how liberal a lot of Republican lawmakers are, we can make an enormous difference. And I love everything that the House Freedom Caucus does, but they're outnumbered in DC We need them to fight, we need them to do everything. But in DC it's effectively a bloody draw between Democrats and Republicans. But in some of these red states, we can score massive victories and we can do it rather quickly if we just bring attention to it. And we have healthy, strong freedom caucuses in these states.
Jenny Beth Martin (40:04):
Well, and I think that the voters of those states would appreciate it. They're voting Republican. They're voting for what they think are conservative values. They're not voting for subsidies. They're voting for limited government and fiscal responsibility. And I'm sure also socially conservative and strong national security as well. But they're voting on those traditional conservative values.
Andy Roth (40:31):
And the other thing is that people don't know it, but a lot of the stuff that happens in the state capitals directly impact people on their daily lives. Now, the Inflation Reduction Act or the Inflation Accelerant Act or whatever they call it up in dc, people may not know precisely how that affects their family, but school choice at the state level, they know how that affects their family, the property taxes that affect them, they know how that affects them. The pornography and schools, the transgender stuff, they know how that affects their family. And that's all happening in the state capitols. And so that's where we've got to fight is in the state capitols because that's what directly affects people and their families.
Jenny Beth Martin (41:19):
And that was what was going on. Even with the Covid lockdowns too. Yeah,
Andy Roth (41:23):
Right. Exactly. I only wish we had state freedom caus back in 2020 when this started because we could have stopped a lot of this madness or at least put up one heck of a fight.
Jenny Beth Martin (41:34):
And we had some good governors who stopped much faster than others, but not nearly enough. How is South Dakota? You said you've got one there?
Andy Roth (41:47):
Yeah, we do. And Christie Nome is not exactly a freedom fighter. Well, here's one crazy thing that we stopped almost immediately right out the door. We launched the South Dakota Freedom Caucus last year when they were out of session, but when they came into session in January, we know this from our civics lessons, the executive branch, the governor's office, they cannot introduce legislation. Only the legislature can, but in South Dakota, the governor can introduce legislation. And when we found out about this, we were like, this is nonsense. We have to stop this. The South Dakota Freedom Caucus put out a press statement saying, all of those bills are going to be met with violent opposition by our members because that's patently unconstitutional. And we shut it down. And now naturally, the governor then just gets a lawmaker to put their name under a bill. But if you're a lawmaker, you're like, well, I'm not sure I like this bill.
(42:52):
I don't want to put my name on it. So you start having regular, not regular order, but you're now having a separation of powers. One other thing that happened in South Dakota, and this made national news is Iowa wanted to, well, there was a pipeline that went from Iowa to South Dakota to North Dakota, but it's not carrying oil and natural gas. It was a carbon capture pipeline. So this is a green energy garbage thing, and it's a big boondoggle. And all three legislatures passed bills to authorize this despite the South Dakota Freedom Caucus. We were not able to stop it, but they put up a ton of opposition. And then Christie Nome signed it in South Dakota, our South. If the South Dakota Freedom Caucus did not exist, that's where the fight would've ended. We tried to stop it, we couldn't stop it. Oh, well, onto the next fight. But the great thing about our freedom caucuses is that we fight battles to their natural conclusion, and that fight was not over.
(43:59):
So our South Dakota Freedom Caucus started identifying the landowners whose property was going to be taken by eminent domain to build this pipeline. And this is a private company that's putting in this pipeline. So the eminent domain issue should be totally unconstitutional to begin with. And so they built up this broad base of support to defend these lawmakers, and we found undercover video of this pipeline company trespassing on these people's property and opening doors into their barns, and some of 'em were carrying weapons. And we caught this online and spread it on social media and all sorts of things, and we just created this huge national uproar that people's constitutional rights were being violated through eminent domain. Well, out of nowhere, the North Dakota Agency that's supposed to provide permits for all of this eminent domain abuse, they were like, okay, we've had enough. And so they canceled the permits.
(45:09):
Well, the way pipelines work is that if one state doesn't go along well, then the other states probably can't go along too. And so South Dakota then canceled the permits, and then Iowa canceled the permits. And effectively the company was like, well, shoot, we're out of luck. Well, maybe we can try next year. But then they're like, well, that's going to cost too much money. And they concluded that it wasn't worth the time. So they pulled back all of their lawsuits that they had on eminent domain because it went to the courts. So they pulled all that away, and this was two, three weeks ago.
Jenny Beth Martin (45:47):
Wow, that's amazing.
Andy Roth (45:48):
And we declared victory. So not only did we save the taxpayers money, we saved a lot of landowners from losing their property that they probably held for years and years and years,
Jenny Beth Martin (46:01):
Maybe generations even.
Andy Roth (46:02):
Yeah. And we basically said, don't try that garbage again because you're going to be met with the same fate. And so it sent a great signal to all three states, and I fundamentally believe that it wouldn't have, it only happened because of the South Dakota Freedom
Jenny Beth Martin (46:18):
Caucus. It's amazing. It's very good work. It's very fun. So how did you get started in politics and then doing this? Just let people know a little bit about you. We just jumped right in without doing a lot to make sure they know who you are. Yeah.
Andy Roth (46:35):
So I came to DC in 2003, and I remember it vividly because there were 25 Republicans who were going up against George Bush on Part D, the Medicare Part D fight. And I saw the principal position that the 25 took, and I was like, this is cool. And so I got a job at the Club for Growth. That is an organization where they do a lot of advocacy, but they mainly get involved in Republican primaries where they see a conservative candidate and an establishment candidate in the Republican primary. And the establishment candidate always has tons of money, tons of backing from the lobbyists and business community. And the conservative has very little money. So what the Club for Growth does is try to level that playing field so that the conservative has more resources. And then ultimately, if we're lucky, then they win. And I spent 18 years there and I got to see all of the House Freedom Caucus members before they were even elected.
(47:35):
I got to interview them, I got to meet them. And then three years ago, the genesis of this is unclear, but I just know that there were so many conversations with Andy Biggs, then the chairman of the House, freedom Caucus, Scott Perry, Mark Meadows, all of these folks were talking about state freedom caucuses. And we were like, that's a really good idea, but we're so busy with all these other things. We will do it one day. Well, in my final year at the Club for Growth, I started talking to a lot of state lawmakers, and every single one of 'em to a person said, man, I wish we had a Freedom Caucus in our state. And so I started talking to them and I started learning about how bad it is in the States. Like I mentioned, they don't have any staff, zero. A lot of 'em don't even have an office like the desk on the house floor at the state capitol.
(48:35):
That's their office and that's it. And when you don't have any resources like that and you're going up against the establishment blob that has consultants, lawyers, press, team, bureaucrats, advisors, all this money, all this resources, it's no wonder why we're losing at the state level. And so under Andy Bigg's leadership as House Freedom Caucus chair on his way out as chairman, his term was ending. This was one of the things that he was like, we need to do this. And so after talking with him, after talking with the great folks at the Conservative Partnership Institute, we finally decided to take the plunge. And that's how it all started. And it's been a joy ever since.
Jenny Beth Martin (49:20):
That's wonderful. And you're in 11 states. And how many employees do you have? Are the state directors part of your organization?
Andy Roth (49:27):
They are, yeah. Okay. And that's the key. When I talk about how state lawmakers are part-time and they don't have any staff, that's what we provide is we have a state director in each of our states, and their job is to just be there to do the bill analysis, make vote recommendations, look into all the agencies we talked about, the Wyoming Department of Corrections. That was done by the great work of Jesse Rubino, who's our state director there, and just organize the lawmakers. And I joke that you've got to be a policy wonk. You've got to be a part-time therapist, because dealing with all of these politicians, you've got to have multiple hats on. And so we've got this great stable of state directors. They're just phenomenal. And then they're all out in the states. And then I've got Justin Ette, who's our vice president.
(50:23):
I call him the Battlefield General because he was the executive director up here in DC who was in charge of keeping the House Freedom Caucus members together. When he saw what we were about to do, he was like, I want to be part of this, because he saw all of the opportunity available in the States. So he's now our vice president, he's in charge of the strategy and figuring out how to have these legislative battles. And then Greg Price is our communications guy, and we stumbled. We got lucky with Greg. He's 26 years old Philly guy, and he's got this huge following on Twitter. He's like one of 80 people that Elon Musk follows. And Greg just knows how to get stuff out and to amplify anything. And that's one of the great joys of this job, is that you take a sleepy little issue like a pipeline in South Dakota and you turn it into a national issue to expose it. And that's a lot of the work that Greg does. And so between the three of us and our state directors, it's just phenomenal.
Jenny Beth Martin (51:26):
That's great. That's really good. So if people want to learn more about the Freedom Caucus Network, is that what it's called? Or is it State
Andy Roth (51:36):
Freedom? The State Freedom Caucus Network, and you can go to state freedom caucus.org and on there is kind of a map that shows where we're at. And if you're in a state where we're at, obviously reach out to those state lawmakers and see how you can help. If you see a state where we're not currently in, reach out to us, or better yet, reach out to some state lawmakers in those states who you think would be good Freedom Caucus members and have them reach out to us to get the ball rolling. And then obviously if you go to our website, you can sign up for our substack, our Twitter handles and everything like
Jenny Beth Martin (52:12):
That. And they should follow you and Greg and
Andy Roth (52:16):
I meant at Andy Roth and Greg is I think at Greg Price 11 or something
Jenny Beth Martin (52:23):
Like that. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. He does really good work.
(52:27):
Well, I really appreciate your time today and telling people all these amazing things that are happening in the States. It's so easy to get frustrated with Washington DC where everything, it just seems to be in a permanent state, a broken, unless you're the Biden administration, and then it's a permanent state of pedal to the metal. Just go, go, go. Because they're trying to expand government as much as they possibly can while they have power. And it's good to know that there are people around the country in these states standing up and saying, we're trying to get things right.
Andy Roth (52:59):
Yeah. Well, and let me say thank you to you too, because we've been around long enough. I remember the Tea Party days when you guys launched. I remember Tea Party Patriots from the moment you guys started to now, and you've guys have done amazing work. And I really do fundamentally believe that if we're going to win, take back this country, it's got to be at the States, it's got to be in the States and the grassroots and the activists and the moms and dads who are so angry with what's going on, they have to be a part of it. And you guys are doing a lot to make that happen. So thank
Jenny Beth Martin (53:34):
You. Well, thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you for being with us, Andy, and I look forward to people learning more about you and more state reps and state senators getting involved. We need this in every single state in the
Andy Roth (53:46):
Country. Thanks for having me.
Jenny Beth Martin (53:48):
And this was Andy Roth with the State Freedom Caucus Network. I'm Jenny Beth Martin, and this is a Jenny Beth show.
Narrator (53:55):
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 (54:14):
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