Jenny Beth sits down with The Honorable Ken Blackwell for a conversation about election integrity, activism, and some of the highlights of his fulfilling career.
Jenny Beth sits down with The Honorable Ken Blackwell for a conversation about election integrity, activism, and some of the highlights of his fulfilling career.
Twitter/X: @KenBlackwell | @jennybethm
Ken Blackwell (00:00):
We have to fight, we have to push back, we have to struggle. We have to understand that history is not a snapshot, it's a process and we can control the flow of that process, direction of that process if we in fact use the God-given agency that God has invested in each and every one of us
Narrator (00:20):
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 (00:52):
My next guest is an icon of the conservative movement and a tireless warrior for freedom. The Honorable Ken Blackwell is the senior fellow for human rights and constitutional government for the Family Research Council. He has served in government as Amer Cincinnati, the Secretary of State for Ohio, and under secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and as US ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. I am honored to call Ken a friend and I am excited to introduce you to him. Now, Kim Blackwell, thank you so much for joining us today. You are a man who has been involved in presidential administrations, so in the administrations and involved with election integrity, and you have been elected yourself as both a mayor and as a secretary of state, so you kind of understand the political spectrum from all sorts of angles. Let's talk first about election integrity. As a former Secretary of state from the state of Ohio, you really understand this issue a lot and understand there were a lot of problems in 2020 and we have to make sure we're getting those right in 2024,
Ken Blackwell (02:07):
Jenny, if we had to start out with a basic understanding that election administration is an enormously human enterprise, and so in a highly technological world, sometimes human beings get factored out and so as a human enterprise, it is not mistake free, but what you try to do is reduce mistakes and the way that you do that is by getting people engaged, in fact train to know what to look out for and what not to do and how to make that a highly efficient enterprise. Look, I start out by telling people all the time that there are 3,100 counties across the United States. We pride ourselves in our system being highly decentralized and we resist or we should resist the concentration of power. So we want to continue to make elections a precinct base enterprise in the community. And so what I know is that people are, they have other jobs other than the election day.
(03:37):
They're now in the election month enterprise. They are everyday workers, housewives, educators, construction workers who in fact are engaged in the process of governance. So first job that we have in election integrity is to make sure people are in the room. If you're not in the room, you're not in the game. And so recruiting at the precinct level is the first enterprise and an activity that we must be engaged. Now you and I and Cleta Mitchell and others, Mike Ante, we all know that what we have to do is not only get people engaged, we then have to make sure that they are trained in the ways of good election administration. And so that's what we're about, engaging people and making sure that they have the tools that are necessary for them to do their job in a competent way.
Jenny Beth Martin (04:47):
When you say they need to be in the room, it reminds me of the song from the musical Hamilton, the room where it happens. If you're not in the room where it happens, you don't have a voice, and so making sure that you're able to work the precinct is really important. Whether in Pennsylvania it's called an election judge, or in Georgia an election worker and in other places they're called different things throughout the entire country. But we need the people who are willing to go and be the ones who are peed from the county level to work the precinct all day long on election day and each day during the early voting period.
Ken Blackwell (05:25):
Absolutely, and there are basic tracks that we have to make sure that we understand the chain of custody of a ballot. What we want to do is to make sure as few hands touch a ballot, once that ballot leaves the hand of the voter as possible. And so when you have too many hands touching too many ballots, you increase the chances of something going wrong. So chain of custody is very, very important and that means that we in fact have to again have people in the room and efficiently making sure that that ballot is filled out properly and counted.
Jenny Beth Martin (06:11):
And then if you can't do it all day long on election day or work every day during early voting, there are also shifts available that allow people to be poll watchers for part of that time. And that's important as well. Not as important because you can't correct a problem, but you can at least report issues.
Ken Blackwell (06:29):
Absolutely. And that track is the verification, making sure that voters are who they say they are and they're doing what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it. But it all comes back to recruiting people to be involved if in fact they are discouraged because of what they see as voter fraud or a system riddled with errors, voter confidence. And the result is what gives it its integrity. And right now there are not only not enough people being willing to be involved and engaged, what we have now are some governors and some secretaries of state that are discouraging that sort of hands-on verification and basic engagement in the chain of custody of the ballots.
Jenny Beth Martin (07:36):
We've got to make sure that that doesn't become a permanent standard and that the local people are able to be the, I call it the checks and balances on the election system. We have checks and balances all up and down our government between one branch of government and another between the seats and the federal government and being there as a poll watcher or a poll worker is the citizens check andal on the way the government administers the election. You're
Ken Blackwell (08:07):
Right, and people always kidding me say, Ken, don't go too academic on me, Aristotle, he got it right early on. He said that there's a dynamic tension between the organized power of the state and individual liberty. The more concentrated power is in the state, the more threatening that is to individual liberty. Well, what we now know is that there are forces that are trying to centralize the administration of elections in the federal government. We want to not only keep it at the state level, we in fact want to go to the county and the precinct level and that's what's important. Look, biblically speaking, Nehemiah got it right when he went into the city of Jerusalem and he let out a clarion call, he said, come let us build together. And he understood that people had jobs to do right where they were and they had to fight off the naysayers of get 'em in saying ballot who told 'em, oh, you can't do this or You're not competent enough to do that. He in fact said, you do your job where you are. And that's to me, that's what the precinct is all about. We can in fact get quality elections if people are engaged at the precinct level, they're training trained and they have their eyes and ears engaged in making sure that the integrity of the system is protected.
(09:41):
We can get fancy, but it's all about neighbor to neighbor, church member to church member encouraging each other to be involved in the process.
Jenny Beth Martin (09:52):
Okay? Now I know for certain that there are going to be people who listen to this and they're going to say, well, you aren't paying attention to the big elephant in the room. And that is the machines. And the machines I think are a huge problem for all sorts of reasons, and I used to be a computer programmer, so I look at the way that those computer systems, and it's more than just the machines that people, the name brand that people know, but the pull pad system and the system to check in ballots and out ballots for absentee balloting. There are all sorts of other systems going on that aren't as well known. I don't think that the proper audit controls are in place with those systems and they are so complex that they get to the problem that you first mentioned, which is they rely on human beings to work with them, but they're so complex that it winds up making it much easier for a human being to make a mistake with them.
(10:55):
The second issue, based on what you were just talking about is that over 80% of our ballots in this country are counted by one of two computer systems. And that is not decentralized power. That is power in the hands of a very few computer programmers who created the code to count 80% of the ballots in the country. And for all sorts of reasons. That's a little bit alarming, A lot alarming to me. I can't even say just it is very alarming. And I'm not saying that the people who've designed the code are bad people, it's just that it is not the decentralized power that you were just talking about. So it's not necessarily that the code is bad. People would argue that there are problems with the code, but I'm not even arguing that. I'm just saying it is not decentralized.
Ken Blackwell (11:49):
Yeah, it's not decentralized. And I think what's important is that we are a very litigious society, so which
Jenny Beth Martin (12:00):
Is why I wasn't naming names
Ken Blackwell (12:01):
And
Jenny Beth Martin (12:02):
Being very vague there because I don't want them suing me.
Ken Blackwell (12:05):
So on the one hand, if elections come down to what I call the margin of litigation where the very close election is going to be settled in court, the second thing there is that we have to make sure that even with these systems that you just described, we have to have a paper ballot that has to be something that we can audit. And so making sure that these systems are not connected to one another, that there's a paper ballot and that we in fact get people involved in the processes. It's where we have to start. Let me just tell you, I've done elections all over the globe and one of the things that I remember most is in Indonesia, this is a developing country, they have a national election day, everybody's off. They vote from 7:00 AM to 1:00 PM and then they have a public counting of the ballots at the very local level, and every party that's on the ballot has a representative in this very public counting of the ballots, and then they sign off.
(13:20):
Now they have about 193 million people, so they're less populated than we are, but the reality is that's big enough. Our neighbors to the North Canada and people do this in one day, but it is about people being involved in the process at the local level and being able to have a system that is transparent in terms of how the votes are counted. Your ballot is secret, but in the counting process, people have to have faith that as once someone said democracy dies in darkness, we in fact have to push for transparency. We have to make sure that these systems and how ballots are counted as cleta like to say, who's counting? We have to be in the process at the local level. Counting has to be a transparent process. We have to have less dependence on technology and we had to make elections and voting a civic activity.
(14:33):
That's fun again. Yeah, we really do. I don't know if we can walk it back now from election month to election day, but that's going to be determined at a state by state basis on a state by state basis. I think there have to be those of us who are advocating that we reduce the time that voting can be cast. We might not get back to a day, but if we could get back to 10 days, that means that you reduce the chances of too many hands touching the ballot or you reduce the chances of ballots being lost.
Jenny Beth Martin (15:16):
You could get back to, I think it's eight days that Louisiana has, they have a week of early voting including on weekend days and I don't know if they vote on Sunday, but I know they vote on Saturday and then election day, so they don't have an extended period of time. I was actually kind of surprised to learn that about Louisiana this year. We might be able to walk back that long extended voting period if people knew that in exchange for making it a singular day, unless you have to vote absentee for some reason and there has to be a mechanism for people to be able to vote absentee, I do understand that, but if you rolled it back to one day and you said, and we're making it a holiday and it needs to be a paid holiday, I think people would be a lot more willing to do that. And
Ken Blackwell (16:08):
I think our work agenda is set out for us, but again, because of our decentralized system is state by state that we have to work on and let's both underscore something that sort of change's not going to happen in 2024. No, it's not. It's not. I understand that. No. And so what we have to do is to say if in your state vote by mail, you can do that over a six week period or a month period. Bank your vote, do what you can do within the four corners of the law. But after 2024, we're going to be right back with our shoulder to the wheel saying we need to in fact bring transparency to the system. We need to make sure that the chain of custody is tight and that we have verification systems. As you and I both know, one of the things we're going to have to do, and we do this with the public interest legal foundation, we have to clean up the voter rolls.
Jenny Beth Martin (17:14):
Yes, we absolutely do. And states and localities are blocking that at every turn right now. No matter how hard the people are working, they just keep getting blocked and blocked and blocked and we've got to get those cleaned.
Ken Blackwell (17:28):
And I forget what thief used to say, when asked why did he rob banks? He said, because that's where the money is. Why do those who want to manipulate our system block cleaning up voter rolls? Because that's where the opportunity is to in fact spoil elections.
Jenny Beth Martin (17:48):
That is, that's sadly very, very true. I heard something that Garland FTO from voter GA said, and I think it goes with your verification effort and it seems like it's something that legislatures could do in the coming legislative session because it won't change the process of voting. He thinks that the paper ballots should be subject to open records request with state open records laws after the election so that people can go and look at them themselves rather than relying on scanned images that the computer scans so that they can see and verify that what happened with those ballots is actually the result that the computer counted.
Ken Blackwell (18:35):
Well, I tell you, we at the America First Policy Institute working with states across the country, most notably in Ohio, making sure that they keep those records if for the required number of months is imperative because to go back and do the audit and then you find out that the ballots are gone in violation of the law. So we have to in fact say, follow the law, keep the ballots, make them subject to public open records initiatives. And I think that's the way you begin to rebuild confidence in the system. Right,
Jenny Beth Martin (19:21):
And the risk limiting audits that happen right now when you say audit, that's not what we're talking about because they're not actually real audits. Correct. I would call them rigged auditing. And one more thing just to think about as you're talking about making sure they keep the records they need to be keeping the computer devices that scan the ballots and not overriding them and reusing them either and just buy new ones and hold onto those for the required period of time. That's as a computer programmer, I think that needs to happen as well.
Ken Blackwell (19:56):
And that's why I love working in coalition with you and others because what you just said is above my pay grade.
Jenny Beth Martin (20:05):
There
Ken Blackwell (20:05):
You go. But again, we have skills and experiences and this is a very, it is a complex system, but it doesn't have to be complicated. And so that's what we have to continue to work towards. But the abolitionist, Frederick Douglas was fond of saying those who are whooped, easiest or whooped most often, and so we just can't be beaten off our track to improve the integrity of the system because election integrity is actually the foundation of our system. The founders of our country and our constitutional republic understood a very simple thing. We became the first country in the history of the world that says our fundamental rights are grants, gifts from God, not grants from government. And so we have to realize that and we have to be willing to continue to fight and we can't give up.
Jenny Beth Martin (21:19):
And I think that's so important. The people who have been working so hard on election integrity for going on three years now, by the time this podcast airs, it will be over three years. I'm certain of it. It can be very discouraging, especially if that was your first entry point into activism and you have not been active before that. It takes a long time to affect change and sometimes change. It's slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, and then the floodgates open. But they won't ever open if you don't keep at
Ken Blackwell (21:54):
It. That's right. That's right. We have to stay in the game in the room and we can't be tired. This is just a friendly conversation. I remember I was 15 and I thought I would try out Golden Gloves, boxing, and I won my first five bouts with relative ease six bout, I got hit so hard in the nose that I went home and told my mom I was going to find a more scholarly career to pursue. And I stayed away from boxing arenas until I was a freshman at Xavier University and Father EJ O'Connor, former Marine took me and a Jewish friend of mine out to the golden gloves bouts with him in the old Cincinnati Gardens. And we watched the 10 bouts the 11th bout young Irish Catholic kid from the west side of Cincinnati came out and before his fight he made the sign of lacrosse and Benji who was Jewish, leaned over to Father and said, father, what's that about?
(23:02):
He says, son, you can come to my theology class and I'll explain it to you, but for the night, it ain't enough if he can't fight. And so we really can't choir in our soup ring our hands. We in fact have to fight. We have to push back, we have to struggle. We have to understand that history is not a snapshot, it's a process. And we actually control the flow of that process, direction of that process if we in fact use the God-given agency, that God has invested in each and every one of us. That's what we have to do.
Jenny Beth Martin (23:46):
I appreciate that so much and I hope the people listening are inspired by that one and learn from it. One other thing, I think you can teach to people who are newer to activism. You and I, we coalesce on so many different projects with a lot of different groups and we understand why coalition is important, but maybe people who are listening to this don't understand the value of coalitions. And you are so good always about giving credit to other people and reminding people there are a lot of other actors involved in whatever the activism is that you're working on. Why do you think coalitions are important and elaborate on that for the general listener? Well,
Ken Blackwell (24:32):
I think it's important because in the conservative movement, we operate on a system of federation and a federation is sort of a coalition of sorts. We don't do well with sort of the top down corporate model, do it our way or the highway that's the left. And they get a lot of efficiency out of that. But we are not lemmings. And so we operate on principle and we operate on interest but have to operate and we have to be forced multipliers for one another once we settle on what our agenda is and what our objective is. And so that's what I try to do in terms of coalition building is to basically say we are a federation, a coalition, we have our individual strengths. And as I just said to you a minute ago, technologically you can lose me very quickly, but what I know a little bit about from my background from being a teenager up working in Clarksdale, Mississippi and at Chattanooga, Tennessee, I know how to organize and I came out of the civil rights movement. And one of the things that we understood is that again, we have to be forced multipliers for one another. Do what you can, going back to Nehemiah, do what you can with what you have, where you are, but do it.
(26:22):
This was some years ago, I was down at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta King's Church and there was a reunion of some civil rights activists at the front door. They had a book at the title of the book during the Civil Rights Movement, what did you do? And so people would come in and they would write, I babysat, I cooked, I drove, I prayed. And so that collection of works, you begin to see how people can be forced multipliers of one another in coalition and actually get something done. And so that's what we try to do is to recognize talent, making sure that people have a sense that they are important and that they can make a difference. They can't do everything. And again, I'm talking to you as the friend that you are. When I was coming up, I had gotten out of, graduated from Xavier, I had been active in the civil rights movement and I was going to run for the school board, and I did run for the school board and I lost by 500 votes.
(27:48):
But in that race, there was a group of executives in Cincinnati that saw me and they knew that I could speak to groups of people that they couldn't speak to. So the CEO of Proctor and Gamble at the time brought me into his office and said, we are going to teach you municipal finance and we're going to get these corporate leaders and talk to you. And behind him, he had a pen lighted map and he said, let me first tell you something. He said, pro and gamble understands that with our budget we can do a lot of things. We just can't do everything. And once I got that concept, I tell people all the time, the challenge of election integrity is too big for any one organization or one individual. And so if you grip the reality that I can't, I can do a lot of things, but I can't do everything. But Jenny Beth can do this. Cleta Mitchell can do that. Bishop EW Jackson can do that. When we talk to one another and we engage one another in coalition, we don't always win, but I can tell you we do our share of winning and that's what I try to commit. Howard Morgan's taught me a lot. He was the CEO of Proctor and Gamble with your resources, you can't do everything, but you can do something.
Jenny Beth Martin (29:36):
I think that's so important. And for people who are new to activism and there are who are new and a lot of people are new because of what happened due to the elections in 2020 and then others are new because of Covid and what happened in their schools and what happened to their kids. It's important to remember that when you decide you have a goal, whatever the goal may be, that you look for all the different groups who are also working on that and you align with them and you work with them on that issue, you may not agree on every issue and then when you don't, don't work with those people. But if you can find the agreement and agree to agree where you disagree, just compartmentalize it, we become much more effective.
Ken Blackwell (30:21):
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. When I came out of statewide office, I had been blessed not only to be mayor, but then I was treasurer of the state of Ohio and then Secretary of State, I came out and there were two people who they were there for me to say, okay, what's next? One was Tony Perkins and the other was Brooke Rollins. Now Brooke was down at the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Texas, and I did fellowships. I worked on social security for Brooke and the Texas Public Policy, but dealt with religious integrity, religious liberty and economic empowerment for Tony. And so what we have to begin to realize is that the power of our movement is that we're not just social conservatives, we're not just economic conservatives or national me tells you all the time, tells us all the time, the three-legged stool. Now you concentrate on a set of issues, Tony concentrates on another brook on another. But the fact is if we're in honest dialogue with one another, we have a common agenda set of objectives and vision and commitment to individual liberty and our constitutional republic. We get things done. We really do.
Jenny Beth Martin (31:48):
Absolutely. And that three legged stool, what are the three legs
Ken Blackwell (31:52):
Of the stool? National security, economic and cultural social issues.
Jenny Beth Martin (31:57):
And where did that come about? Did that come about during the Reagan years? That analogy or before that?
Ken Blackwell (32:05):
It came about during the Reagan years began to realize, and it wasn't just Reagan, it was Jerry Falwell and a number of other folks who understood that we were not just spiritual beings, we are economic beings and we all want to be safe. And so looking at the total picture was what started to get us together. Now again, as we talk about coalition building, there are folks who specialize in national security. There are folks who specialize in economic development and free enterprise. There are those who are more rooted in the cultural and religious liberty issues. But what we know through the Conservative Action Project is that we can sit down at the table and we can talk about our strengths and weaknesses and who can do this, who can do that. And we get jobs done. And the one thing that I've found as chairman of the Conservative Action Project is that people might not want to engage on the religious liberty issue and they're more rooted in the economic issues. But we have agreed that we do not publicly trash one another, that our framework is a common framework and it works. We don't win every battle, but we win our share. But it goes back to what we're talking about now, getting people engaged in the process.
(33:49):
The communities around this nation own our constitutional republic. It is not the product of the swamp. As a matter of fact, we have to protect it against the swamp. From the swamp.
Jenny Beth Martin (34:07):
That's right. And the Constitution really is laying out how we protect our freedom from the government. That's right. Not how the government grants those things, but how we protect our freedom from the government. That's right. Did you know Martin Luther King Jr?
Ken Blackwell (34:24):
Yes. Reverend Elvy Booth was a good friend of Reverend King, and he would have him come to Cincinnati all of the time. Cincinnati is the headquarters of Hebrew Union College and Reform Judaism has deep roots in Cincinnati. And so Rabbi Ock was the president there and a guy by the name of Abraham Hessel was one of king's lieutenants in the civil rights movement. And so Cincinnati was a focal point of a lot of activities. And so yes, I had the pleasure of working with him and Andy Young and Stokely Carmichael before Stokely went crazy. So it was a good part of my experience. That's why I went to work in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I have family in those places, but I was there and engaged even before I could vote. Once I got my license, I could move lunches from this place to that place. And so I sort of come up in that in the belief that the human condition isn't a spectator sport. You can't sit on the sidelines.
Jenny Beth Martin (36:06):
I'm from Atlanta originally, and I grew up hearing about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And Andy Young, of course, because he was a mayor of Atlanta when I was much younger and going through the Atlanta airport in terminal E and concourse E, not terminal E, but it's one of the two international concourses. There's an art display with the signs from the civil rights movement. Not a lot, but just a few. And there's a tribute to the Civil Rights movement in different parts of the airport. But right there, it really focused on what happened in the movement with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And I always just go through there and think about the difference that they made and the obstacles in that movement were, I think, much greater than the obstacles that we're facing right now. It seems like the end of the world every time we turn around, but it isn't as difficult. We don't have as difficult of a time as the people who are fighting for civil rights did.
Ken Blackwell (37:18):
That's right. If
Jenny Beth Martin (37:18):
You could do it and they could do it, we can make a difference as
Ken Blackwell (37:22):
Well. We really can. And if fascinating, Dr. King, as I said, he was a protege of LV booth, Reverend Booth, and their comradery was fascinating because I think Daddy King was a Republican. And so it was always been fascinating. Andy. Andy became a democratic mayor, but he in fact, or at least I always reminded him that his dad too was Republican and it is something that they understood. But there was a comradery there. I followed, Andy was the UN principal ambassador to the United Nations, and then I came in the nineties and I was the US Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, which was on that second rung of ambassadors at the United Nations. But Andy and I talked all the time about something that he understood, and that is that respect. And Rabbi Hasell used to always say this respect discovers the dignity in others.
(38:47):
And so whether I'm working on an economic issue or working on an election integrity issue or national security issue, the reality is that I tried to respect the dignity of others, and I found that that is a way that we get a false multiplying effect and we get things done. That was a great lesson of the movement. And quite naturally Alavita who was the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, we were kids together. And what people don't realize is like Alavita, that she was a state legislator. Mitchell was a state legislator. So the reality is that we have a breadth of experience that we can put against actually moving the needle, making, making change, making history,
Jenny Beth Martin (39:49):
Making change, and making history because human nature remains the same and we're fighting the same battles. Like you were just talking about Aristotle's liberty versus freedom, and it continues. And we have to learn from things that you did and Cleta and others have done in the battles we're fighting right now. It's better to learn from you than to have to learn the lessons on our own. One more aspect. Well, two more aspects of what I know about you. I'd like to talk about one. The first one is you were also appointed. Were you appointed by President Reagan to hud or what was your position
Ken Blackwell (40:31):
With Well, I was undersecretary and undersecretary of HUD with Jack Kemp. And Jack had been a buddy of mine. We had met at the NFL Charities. I laugh all the time. Jack played 10 years in the NFL. I played 10 days, but we were friends. And when Jack ran for president in 88, real quick story, he called me one night, I was watching Murder she wrote and he said, Hey man, I'm going to make this bid for the presidency. Will you come and help my campaign? And I said, yeah, I can do it. He said, I want you to do it Ohio and Indiana and maybe West Virginia.
(41:18):
Jimmy Beth. The next day I was in a city council meeting. I was chairing a finance committee, and the clerk of council came up to me and said, you have a phone call? And I said, his name was Sandy. I said, Sam, what are you talking about? I said, I'm right in the middle. He said, you have a phone call. It's the White House. So I went to the phone and the secretary said, will you hold on for the vice president? And George HW Bush came on the phone and he said, Hey, Kent. He said, I want you to be on my steering committee for my, I said, I said, just last night, sir, I just signed up with Jack. And he was just so gracious. He said, okay, that'd be short. Had a short shelf life and you can come and work with. And sure enough, that's what happened. And then he tapped Jack to be his secretary of Hutt. Jack tapped me to be one of his undersecretary.
Jenny Beth Martin (42:14):
Okay, so that was with George HW Bush. So you just have this history of activism and engagement and public service that it's just fascinating to me. You have worn so many different hats.
Ken Blackwell (42:31):
Well, I've been blessed my dad who died at the age of 56, but I was glad that he was able to see me become mayor of the city. And they sort of introduced me on that day. I was sworn in. They talked about all the things that I had done, and I had grown up early part of my life in public housing. When my dad came back to Cincinnati from World War ii, there was still vestiges and segregation. There was a housing shortage. And they ran down what all the things I had done up until that point. And he sort of leaned over and said, you seem to have a difficult time keeping a job, don't you? I've been blessed. I've been blessed to do a lot of things. And
Jenny Beth Martin (43:20):
I don't know that it's a difficult time keeping a job. And so you do so well. People want you to do more.
Ken Blackwell (43:25):
Thank you.
Jenny Beth Martin (43:26):
And then just a fun story about you. How in the world is there a photo of you wrestling a bear? What happened with that?
Ken Blackwell (43:35):
Well, we had a boxing team in Cincinnati that had been, some members were hurt in the airplane crash. And so we were trying to raise money to rebuild the program. And Victor de Bear was a bear that was going from sports bar or sports bar. And somebody said, Hey, will you wrestle this bear if in fact we can raise money on every round that you stick with the bear? And so I trained. I trained, and Victor and I had a great time. The first round, Victor smacked me upside the head, and I rolled over the second round. I got up a little bit, but he came this way and hit me and broke this finger. All I had to do is if I got straight up, I would win. Okay. And I got almost up four fifths of the way up, and Victor threw his muzzle because he was muzzled. He in fact tried to lick my face. And Rosa and my wife said, if you let that bear lick your face, you better not come home. I'll pull back. Victor flipped me up. But it is a great story now. And my kids say something's wrong with you.
Jenny Beth Martin (45:02):
You've had quite a few adventures. I've heard of some of your
Ken Blackwell (45:05):
Pictures
Jenny Beth Martin (45:07):
And your wife Rosa is absolutely just such a lovely lady and she has been a superintendent,
Ken Blackwell (45:15):
Superintendent
Jenny Beth Martin (45:16):
Of schools, so she really understands education. And she was your childhood
Ken Blackwell (45:20):
Sweetheart? Absolutely. We started dating right out of the ninth grade. That's my story. Her father who was a West Virginia coal miner, we didn't tell him that we were dating until about the 11th grade.
Jenny Beth Martin (45:36):
And how long have you been
Ken Blackwell (45:37):
Married? 55 years.
Jenny Beth Martin (45:38):
That's amazing. That's wonderful. And she really is just a true support.
Ken Blackwell (45:43):
She is.
Jenny Beth Martin (45:44):
And she let you wrestle a bear and go bungee jumping and a few other things.
Ken Blackwell (45:48):
It's a lot. It's a lot of fun. But we've been able to do a lot of traveling together and as she tells me, she's a competitive shooter with trapping skeet and sporting clay, so we have a lot of fun. Well,
Jenny Beth Martin (46:09):
That sounds wonderful, and I didn't know that about her. Now I've got, next time I see her, I'm going to ask her all about that so I have something else to talk to her about now. Well, Ken, I really appreciate your time today and I hope that what you've told people gives people hope and encouragement about election integrity and about activism and the way we can truly make a
Ken Blackwell (46:28):
Difference. Dean Beth, it's a joy working with you. We got a lot of work work to do, and I know at the end of the day we're going to run through the tape.
Jenny Beth Martin (46:43):
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Ken. This was Ken Blackwell and I am Jenny Beth Martin. This is a Jenny Beth show.
Narrator (46:51):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Han, 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 (47:10):
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.