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Welcome to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. On the line with us today, Jeff Duncan, Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. Fantastic guest. Thank you for joining us, Jeff. Chuck? Yeah, glad to be here.
Jeff, thanks for joining us. So you have come out with a book that's just I have the hard copy right here in front of me. G.P. G.O.P. 2.0. How the 2020 election can lead to a better way forward for America's conservative party. Tell us a little bit what inspired you to write this book. You are in the state of Georgia. We are here in Arizona and both states have been rampant on the election was stolen.
And we understand the disappointment of many people. Our audience should know you are a big Donald Trump supporter. You campaigned for him. You're a rock-ribbed conservative. But you stood up and said, no, there is no fraud in Georgia. What inspired you to say, you know what, I'm not going to participate on this. I'm not going to try to walk a fine line. I'm just coming out saying, nope, the results were good. There's got to be a path forward. Let's stop this nonsense. But go ahead.
Yeah, good to be with you, Chuck. You know, I started actually writing GOP 2.0 kind of an outline before the election debacle even happened, right? I mean, I'm not the only Republican or conservative in the country that really, you know, aligned very well with the policies that both the Trump administration and just congressional leaders and Republicans in mass were supporting. It was the approach that just
I guess as a parent trying to raise their kids the right way, trying to do and say the right things in my community, it just kind of offended me. And it felt like there was, it was a short-term sugar high. So I started to draft an outline of what GOP 2.0 was even before the debacle. And then, you know, then of course, Georgia was front and center in Trump's crosshairs and others about the faux election fraud scenario. And for me,
It wasn't about courage. It was about kind of the number one conservative principle that's always been instilled in me since a kid, and that's honesty. I just was being honest with the people around me, the senators that were trying to look up to me as the president of the Senate as to what direction to go. Just said, look, I've asked all the questions I can ask. I've met with all the law enforcement agencies, the investigators, and there's no fraud. There's not even a single example of it.
And if I had to take on the president, to be honest, then so be it. That was the unlucky card that I drew. But at the end of the day, honesty is the number one thing we've got going for us. Hopefully, as a long term Republican, we need to get back to being honest. You know, Jeff, you said something at the start of that that I think is critically important because I've dealt with this with a lot of my friends who are fairly moderate or apolitical.
The policies of the Trump administration were one thing. Those would be accepted by a vast majority of citizens. But the approach turned so many of those folks off that they really could not even consider the policy at that point. And it really hurt the brand. And it was about dialogue and how we talk to people.
Yeah, I spent a ton of time in the book talking about that, right? So the book that just came out last week, GOP 2.0 is, you know, one, it's a behind the scenes look at kind of all the chaos that happened here. But then it's this forward looking game plan of what we do going forward. And I use an acronym called PET, P-E-T, policy, empathy, and tone. And if you just stare at the tone,
I mean, there's literally, I mean, there's nobody on either side of this issue that would argue with the fact that millions of people would have voted for Donald Trump if his tone was just better. If it aligned more with the way we talk to each other at our kitchen tables, in our churches, in our boardrooms, at our ball fields. I mean, nobody thinks that you get a hall pass for saying the things that he says to people. And you know, Arizona is a big part of my story about GOP 2.0.
I'll tell you this. So two days after the election, my wife had a trade show for her business out there in Arizona. So I got to travel as the plus one. Nobody knew me. It was great. I was just kind of traveling out of a duffel bag. And months before the election, it felt like the perfect time to go because what work was I going to have to do a couple of days after the election? And so I show up out there. And early one morning, I was out jogging and I saw this sign on a street corner. They were everywhere in Scottsdale. It said Arizona Republicans for Biden.
And it hit me. Arizona was in the crosshairs because of what he did to Senator McCain. So what he did to him when he was alive and after he had passed away and the legacy for 30 years, Arizona Republicans elected him to be their U.S. senator. 30 years. Who was Donald Trump to come in and untangle that because he was sideways with him on one vote that I didn't agree with, actually. But I certainly didn't. So we watched this play out over and over again.
I want to read three paragraphs here. It's from a Washington Post editorial about your book written by James Holman. And I want you to share your thoughts after I read it. Trump called him, meaning you, corrupt and threats poured in via voicemail, email and social media. A website appeared with his face centered in crosshairs alongside his address and picture of his home.
FBI agents told him Iran was behind that page, according to his book, as part of a broader effort to amplify the election disinformation. When his teenage son Baylor tweeted a family motto, doing the right thing will never be the wrong thing, the lieutenant governor liked and retweeted the post. His wife, Brooke, was furious with him because she feared he had exposed their son to an attack. Duncan writes, and she was right. State troopers stood guard as he played catch with his three boys in their yard.
Quote, imagine explaining that to your young children, he writes. Legislators privately told him they admired his courage. Then they publicly attacked. I found myself on an island, one that was getting pounded by bombs and artillery, Duncan writes. Lie by lie, the former president sapped the trustworthiness of every single Republican official. There's a couple points there. First, how did you explain it to your boys that playing catch in the front yard required state troopers? How dystopian.
Yeah, I mean, look, the whole thing seems surreal to some extent. I mean, one, living life as a lieutenant governor is, you know, there's a bubble somewhere, but nowhere near that type of level. And so, yeah, but, you know, this is a family thing. Chuck, you've seen, you know, we've known each other for a little while, for a number of years. This has always been about our family, and this has always been about doing this together.
And to go through this with them was a whole lot easier than going through it without them. But their perspective is what really kept me in line. I mean, I'm not doing this elected office thing because I like to see my name in lights. It's because I want to protect and try to help be a part of my kids' future and this country's future.
It was surreal to know that the first threats that started to arrive were to my wife. And it was just unbelievable to watch this. I'd go on national television. I'd speak truth and facts about no fraud had been reported to us and that the election looked to be completely fair and legal and that Joe Biden was going to be the president-elect. And then within seconds after minutes, Donald Trump would tweet something about me. And then within minutes, there would be threats showing up to my wife's cell phone.
and then to my cell phone and to email addresses. It was a very systematic reaction to the truth and
And, you know, look, I think at the end of the day, it was hard to come to grips with trying to, I think the hardest thing to explain to my family was, hey, those people are out there to protect us against other Republicans, not against terrorists, not against quote unquote criminals, but against Republicans, you know, air tags here that are upset that I'm telling the truth. That's hard to explain. And it's really one of the reasons why I'm as passionate as I am, why I'm stepping away from the role of Lieutenant Governor, why I've written a book, why I continue to go on TV.
Because I want to grab the Republican Party back from the hands and the throes of those that are trying to hijack a party for personal purpose and not for policies. When I just read, there's two things that stood out to me, would like to get your comments on. First of all, regarding state senators privately telling you they respected your courage and then attacking you publicly. Have you ever called any of them and said,
hey, what's going on here? And what was their response if you did? Yeah, I have. And they're pretty quick to come back. I mean, I've tried to build an atmosphere inside the Senate of honesty. In fact, one of the first things I shared with the senators after getting elected, very few of them even supported me. So I'm one of the younger guys in the chamber. And of course, I'm the president of the Senate. I just always talk about the honesty is the currency that I trade.
And so there's a pretty good understanding that that's really what I'm made of. And so they quickly approached me after, you know, kind of having this back and forth quietly saying, you know, hey, good for you for telling the truth. And then in their districts or in their circles of influence being very proactively talking about fanning the flames is they come back to me and say, you know, look, you would just be shocked at the number of calls I still get and the number of people that meet me in the grocery store that just want to know what I'm doing about this fraud.
It's troubling. And until Donald Trump gets in front of his own disaster here, I think, unfortunately, it's going to continue to play out for an extended period of time. Absolutely. How long? I hope we're measuring that in months and not years. It was interesting. One show I watch every Sunday is a CBS morning show with Jane Pauley. And I like it because they have these great interviews with artists and Pauley. I mean, it's good. You know, you got the typical liberal diatribe on it. But they did a story with Ted Koppel going to Mayberry. Yeah.
The town that's Mayberry, and they have people visit the museum and so forth. And Ted, of course, turned this political. So he's on a bus with all these tourists who come to tour Mayberry. And he said, how many of you think the election was fair? And only one person raised their hands.
I mean, and this is a segment which I don't know how Ted got into election integrity on the Mayberry tour. But as you watch all these people on the bus who thought it was it was stolen, it was rigged. And, you know, these aren't bad people. I just don't know when it diminishes this belief. I mean, today, Maricopa County is at 1 p.m. Arizona time is releasing the results, which showed that Joe Biden won Maricopa County. I'm not sure that's going to solve anything.
these people's concerns. And so, Jeff, I'm wondering, I mean, I think you're right. We have to go get back on these issues.
Yeah, you're right. So here's my mindset, and I'm an optimist by nature, but there's no safe place for normal common sense Republicans to call home right now. You're either with Donald Trump or against him. And GOP 2.0 is about creating a safe place to call home for common sense conservatives that don't want to align with the outside 5% that are crazy, off the charts, unhinged with forgetting what Republican policies are all about and just like screaming at each other. Jeff, I have a good friend who put it this way.
Politics is not a line left and right, it's a circle and crazy meets at the bottom.
Yeah, and the outside 5% feels like it's driving the ship. It's not. It's going to take a little bit more time. We're watching national pollsters start to get out. In fact, I was just on a call 15 minutes ago with somebody who got some early indications from some national polling that's going month over month, watching some of this Trump fever starting to dissipate. And it will. Because if it doesn't, here's what happens to a guy like me that's a rock-solid conservative. We lose. We continue to lose. And so we're either going to make an adjustment
of trying to get back to doing this thing the right way, or we're going to keep losing and having no seats at the adults table. Jeff, we have to go to break here in just a moment. But when we come back, I want to talk a little bit about what actually happened in Georgia, because our very first guest on the program was Eric Erickson, who has talked about it. And this was no mystery. This was no surprise. This was work. And it was over a decade in the planning by the Democrats. Broken potholes will be coming back in just a moment.
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Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your host Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. On the line with us today, Jeff Duncan, Lieutenant Governor of the great state of Georgia. We're talking Georgia elections. We're talking Arizona elections. The fraud that, frankly, didn't just didn't take place. Uh,
But so what did happen, Jeff, or what did you see happen in Georgia that led to the result first of the Biden win? And then I think it was different mechanisms. But then of this, the Senate losses that we suffered that are really coming back to haunt the party right now.
Well, I think one of the things that really troubled me the most early on, before I actually realized how bad bad was going to get during the 10 weeks, was that I felt like we were playing in the hands of the Democrats. They had spent a decade trying to lay the groundwork of election fraud and all types of, you know, different nuances of the election laws. And we all of a sudden started carrying their talking points to the podium.
And it just was troubling for me to validate things that we knew on both ends of the spectrum were not true and accurate. And really what we saw play out during the election period of time was these subtle nuances that the Democrats had talked about, the Trump administration and election campaign team had latched onto, created fake scenarios around it, and then used social media and regular media and influencers from around the country to embellish those hypothetical situations. And they just took off.
And they continued to go and go and go. And when you have a sitting president and his entire apparatus putting their weight behind conspiracy theories, they're going to gain momentum to the point where they got all the way to January 6th. I mean, that's I mean, we could feel that at least certainly I could in a handful of others could feel the direction that we were going in the national weight of the lies and the misrepresentations of the truth.
You fast forward into January 5th, which was the runoff elections. You could see this coming. You could see two very qualified conservative US senators that had represented Georgia well. Kelly Loeffler for a very short period of time, David Perdue for a full six year term, had done very, very well representing a very conservative state in nature. But essentially they by default hired Donald Trump as their campaign manager.
He ran their campaigns into the ditch for 10 weeks, all in pursuit of trying to flip his election. And then they showed up to the polls and 400,000 Republicans stayed home, didn't show up to the vote in the runoff, and they lost. And not just lost for Republicans in Georgia, but lost for Republicans for the whole country because we lost the majority in the Senate.
You could see it coming. You hope that we could short circuit the inevitability of the feeling. But we didn't. We fell victim to exactly what Donald Trump did. And that's his own his own strategy fail. Let me ask you a question. One thing that always this is the one thing you see online and you talk to some people. What what freaks them out? And I want your how you think we solve this problem is it's an optics problem.
They go to bed, Donald Trump's up X votes. Then the voting stops coming in, and then four hours later, boom, Joe Biden picks up 100 or 200,000 votes. How do we stop that in the future? I think that is something that just optically –
It's a common sense thing. You know, I think all of us here talking today understand what happens. But there's got to be a way to stop this optic problem, because if you're not involved in voter law or understand how county clerks work.
It looks weird. There's no way around it that you go, you're at, you're up, and then there's nothing coming in for a couple hours. Then, boom, someone pops up with a big lead. How do you think something like Georgia could prevent something like that in the future? Because it is an optic problem for our activists. You're spot on. And we actually went to that and solved that problem in this last legislative session.
Part of the final version of the election reform bill, which was a process and a half to get there, was exactly what you said. We now allow counties to start counting, or start tabulating absentee ballots prior to election day so that they don't have this massive influx that they have to count. And then all of a sudden you go to bed and you realize that the vote totals change 500,000 or 600,000 votes. So we've done that. We've also required counties to post
online what their total voting universe is before they start releasing numbers. So that way you know when you go to bed, hey, there's still 500,000 votes left to count in these three counties. And so we set expectations right. So yes, we absolutely did that because you're right, it is an optics problem. But quite honestly, the pandemic has played its way into this too. We had 300, I think 280,000 absentee votes
in 2016 versus 1.3 million because of the pandemic. And also, oh, by the way, some of the push in Georgia from Republicans was to do away with no excuse absentee voting. Two parts of that. One is it was a Republican initiative in 2005 that brought that into law in Georgia. And two, a massive number of Republicans wanted it. It actually made it easier for different people of different kind of backgrounds and backgrounds
demographics and whatnot. And, and we felt like it actually helped Republicans to be able to keep that. So we, I, I personally fought hard against that initiative. Unfortunately for us, it won. Jeff, Chuck, you worked a lot in Florida and other States, Chuck, and, and,
This is really just a matter of us getting in there on the ground and competing with the Democrats where they have these very strong turnout machines like they do in Georgia. Well, Jeff, and you probably agree this. Sam and I have talked about there's three legs of a stool that Republicans have ignored over decades. It predates all of us. One –
we have ignored public schools for school choice. Now, we're all big school choice proponents, but when you ignore public schools, when you don't run people for school board, guess who's going to take over? Progressives and unions, right? I mean, that's just what's happened. You know, two, we get very excited as Republicans, I'm to blame as anybody about national elections. You know, I love talking about national security, taxes, and judges, right? But the reality is we are ignoring
local governments or county positions. I mean, you know, is it unfair to say that if Donald Trump, if we had had an active Republican Party working in the city, Fulton County, that if Donald Trump had picked up three or four percent more votes, he probably could have won the state. You know, it's small numbers here and there. And so those are just two of the three, but those seem to be the things we're ignoring that are hurting us long term on these state elections. Would you agree with that? Yeah, 100 percent. Look,
I spent six years in the minor leagues, six seasons in the minor leagues. One of them was out there in Arizona, played for the Sun City Solar Sox back in the day in Mason. Those were some good days. But you've got to learn how to lose and learn from your losses. And one of the things I took away is we got boat raced by the Democrats in Georgia. Our state Republican Party absolutely dropped the ball. I mean, this was one of the most...
memorable moments from on the runoff day. So January 5th in the morning, the state party sent out the state party chairman who just for the record, I beat in the primary to be the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor.
He sends out a tweet still questioning the validity of a lawsuit for the presidential race instead of trying to drive voter turnout for a runoff that eventually cost every Republican in the country a Senate majority. Right. I mean, meanwhile, Stacey Abrams front and center. I disagree with every policy she's got, but somebody needs to watch how hard she's working.
and trying to pull out some of these big ideas to get folks registered and get them to the polls. It's working. Well, Eric Erickson had a good comment when he was on our show. He said in 2012, she went to her donors and said, if you do this plan, I'll turn Georgia blue by 2022. Yeah.
And I'm telling you, as a person who works with the party committees a lot in the base, we have no donors who think long term like that at all, at all. We're with Jeff Duncan, lieutenant governor of Georgia. He is the author of a new book. Please go get it. G.O.P. 2.0. How the 2020 election can lead to a better way forward for America's conservative party. We're taking a quick break. This is Broken Potholes. We'll be right back.
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Welcome back to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Chuck Warren, with Sam Stone. And today we have a special guest, Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan. Jeff, as we were talking in the last segment about elections and what the election integrity bills you have done a little bit in Georgia, it reminds me of a quote I saw recently from John Maxwell that says, sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.
And we probably need to look more that way going forward on this. I want to talk about something you had talked about earlier about the tax via email, phone calls, so forth, on your family, that you've had 24-7 state trooper protection.
Has this made you, I know you probably haven't thought about it much, but you have this great family, fantastic spouse and great kids. And you had that there, and that's a rock to lean on. Can you imagine going through this without anybody on your side?
Yeah, I couldn't imagine trying to navigate this without my family, right? I mean, just, I mean, in the throes of a pandemic, in the throes of a whipsawing economy, and having a sitting president literally hour by hour trying to discredit, embarrass, you know, and whatever other actions he was taking. Having my wife, who I got to meet in high school and
And day through college and got married and having three kids that really looked up to what dad was doing. And Chuck, quite honestly, a big part of this was I knew my kids every night when I go to the TV studio to do whatever night show I was doing. I knew my three kids and my wife were watching on the other end of the TV cinema living room.
And when I got home and to be able to sit at that kitchen table and to be able to, you know, just share a conversation about doing the right thing is never the wrong thing was very rewarding. And it helped me get through some very tough, tough days. Let me ask you this. It's a two-part question. I'm having a hard time hearing you, Chuck. Can you hear me now? Is that better now? A little bit better. Okay. Let me ask you this quickly. Two things. During this whole process, what have you learned about yourself? And what do you think your children have learned about you? Yeah.
I hope to think that, you know, I'm not a politician. I think I validated that, right? Like I've campaigned, you know, as an underdog in the state house and I beat somebody who'd been in politics for a long time. I campaigned as an underdog against all odds for Lieutenant Governor. And I just told everybody along the way, I wasn't a politician. I put policy over politics.
And I feel like I'm validating that. I feel like I've answered that call. And that's really truly who I am. And I didn't lie for the last 10 years in politics that, you know, just saying that, but not actually doing that. Yeah. Chuck, what I think makes that answer so interesting is Jeff is one of the guys who was brought into office because he's an outsider, right?
Right. And because you fit the frankly, you've had experience, you've run a business, you've made payroll, you've done all these things in the real world that lifelong politicians will never accomplish. And that's what got you got him into office. And you were, Jeff, a huge Trump supporter throughout for those same reasons, because we need some fresh air in the space. But the turn.
When you didn't go along with this narrative, it's really pretty scary, quite frankly. Well, it really does show you who's there for serving and who's not. So, Jeff, I want to go back to this question. So that's what your children learned. You're a Christian. I know you're a believer. This is a refining fire. This is a refining— One of the best chapters that I got to write in that book was chapter 6, where I just talk about my faith in a way that's not—
Any other way just than to be encouraging. Right. So you've gone through refining fire here. What do you feel through that refining fire that you've developed more of these these characteristics that make you more of a leader, more of a better neighbor, a better husband? What what is what is the refining fire done to you personally?
Yeah, I think this whole refining fires helped really kind of hone in the policies that make sense, right? But also the approach. You know, I talk about the power of two, the power of three, the power of more. And that I've really learned this through politics. The power of two is go find somebody on the other side of the issue or the aisle to talk to on a regular basis to get the other side of the story.
I think we've created such partisan corners through this whole process, and not just partisan in capitals, but partisan in our break rooms and in our ball fields. The power of three is go get your information for more than just the TV channel that makes you feel good for 10 minutes. Go pick up a Wall Street Journal and read an article. Go turn on the other, whether it be CNN or Fox News, whatever's on the other side of the aisle from you.
You know, go find new ways to get information. And the power of more is go get involved in your community. Don't live in such a silo.
That, you know, because as a Republican, we think we want to help people. We still think the government should help people. That means we as Republicans got to go find ways to get involved in charities and churches and community efforts to try to help those in need. So I've learned a lot in this period of time. And the other thing I've learned is leadership is lonely, Chuck. Oh, yes, it is. And it's a reminder that I've had going back to running my businesses. Right. Some of those days when I got to walk in the conference room.
and kind of, you know, crack the whip or, you know, or drop the realities of, hey, we're not making as much money as we thought we were, or we've got to cut back on hours or whatever. Leadership's lonely, but it's worth it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Great point. Jeff Duncan coming right back on the program for our final on-air segment here. Broken Potholes coming right back.
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Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Be sure to catch Broken Potholes on Apple, Spotify, Substack. We're going to be on Facebook with our podcast soon. Anywhere you can find a podcast, you can find your Broken Potholes right there. On the line with us today, Lieutenant Governor. I think he should be the governor at this point. He's making sense. Lieutenant Governor Jeff Duncan, great state of Georgia.
You know, Jeff, you fought hard to get Trump elected. I mean, you fought hard to make that happen and to make him and to get him reelected. And then when this went south, you took the brunt of a beating that few people can understand. That's got to be really tough from a personal perspective. But tell us a little bit about that fight to get him in there in the first place.
Yeah, I talk about this in the book quite a bit. I mean, there's a couple of different stories. I opened the book up with two days before the election. I was the keynote speaker at a large outdoor rally that he flew into on Air Force One at an airport. And, you know, it was eye opening to me. At that point, it was like a 47 minute speech. He spent the first three minutes talking about, you know, the Supreme Court, the vaccine acceleration, you know, warp speed, etc.
tax reform, all that in three minutes and then 44 minutes ripping the face off of every human being that's ever said anything bad about him. That was a little bit of an eye opener reminder that, you know, hey, this could be different. You could flip those.
I also talk about some stories in The Beast, but make no mistake about it. I voted for Donald Trump. I campaigned for him. I didn't like his approach. I offered my advice to him in The Beast one time. He asked me something about an interview he had just done on CNN. I told him, just leave it alone, Mr. President. There's no reason to say anything. Just keep winning. Just keep winning and reminding folks of winning. And I gave him a baseball story. I said every night I'd show up on the mound, everybody would say this, Duncan doesn't throw hard enough to win, but I kept winning.
And he said, Jeff, I really like that advice. That's great. And he kind of looked out the window for about eight seconds. He looks back and goes, but I can't help myself. I've got to say something. And he opens the door and he jumps out in the media and does what he's going to do.
Look, I'm not a rarity, right? I mean, there's tens of millions of Republicans that agree that he needed a better approach. And quite honestly, I look at this election period, and unfortunately, he missed an easy layup with nobody around him. He did.
But we're going to pick up the pieces and figure out how to make the next layup, because at this point, Joe Biden is making it easier for us to develop a story about real leadership matters. You know, I mean, just turn on the TV every day and you're watching his leadership go on display, whether it be Afghanistan, the border, the economy, inflation, the reaction to the mandates on COVID. I mean, there's just crazy stuff going out of our country right now. And we can't miss another layup.
If Trump hadn't thrown it away, I mean, the fact of the matter is he had policy achievements that stand with any U.S. president of the last decade. Absolutely. I mean, look at the border. Operation Warp Speed, the vaccine. I don't care what else you think. That is a major accomplishment. The border is another. Taxes were a third. You could go on and on. Jeff, don't you find that amazing about the vaccine that this literally was almost like putting a man on the moon and.
It's like Democrats and Democrats would not accept it when Donald Trump got it done. And now we have a lot of people who are conservative, who just think it's a whole government conspiracy where that vaccine would still be in development.
If Joe Biden had been president from 2016 to 2020? Well, yes. One, the realities of the COVID situation is we're now on the backside of our fourth wave in Georgia. Thank goodness the numbers are pulling back. Our infection rates are coming down day by day. Our hospitalizations are coming down. So we're on the backside of the wave. I cannot imagine facing this latest wave without nearly 50 percent of Georgians being vaccinated. That's just scary to think about.
But it just goes to point, Chuck, about how politicized everyone, every side of this angle is. The Democrats politicized the vaccine on the front side. Trump comes out of office and now he's politicizing it. I mean, I think if he was if he really cared about the future of this country in a nonpolitical format, he'd be on every commercial break with it, with a public service announcement telling people, Republicans and conservatives to go get vaccinated or get their questions answered. No, no mistake about it.
But instead, it's this cat and mouse game, this politicized game. It's just awful to watch. Well, let's get to more topics. Tell us a little bit about more about you, your business background, and tell us a little bit more about your professional baseball career, which you did six years and fortunately one year here in Mesa with the Solar Caps. But tell us a little bit about that and how you enjoyed that process and what happened and what did you learn about yourself? Solar Sox. Let's have pride in our Sox. Solar Sox.
Tell us a little bit what you learned about yourself going through that process. Yeah, so lived in seven states growing up, kind of did a lap around the country before I was a senior in high school, got here to Georgia, met my wife really the first day of school.
And I got a baseball scholarship to Georgia Tech, got drafted in 1996 by the Marlins and spent six seasons having a blast. In fact, my entire career is summarized in those two blast jars with those are memorable baseballs, no hitters and strikeouts and first wins. So I almost feel like it's like my earn. But, you know, loved a lot. You know, the whole the whole baseball thing for me, I thought was about making money and playing baseball.
But now looking back as my business career, I was able to have the confidence and the work ethic to start a business and sell it. I was able to have the confidence and work ethic to get into politics as a complete underdog. Every time I sign up for these politics, political campaigns, I'm always the underdog and I hate it, but I'm really good at it.
But yeah, it gave me the confidence to get into politics and to really work through this process. And look, the most exciting thing I've done in my life is not being elected office. I just gotta be honest with you. It's being a dad, it's raising three boys, it's being a former professional baseball player in front of tens of thousands of people doing amazing things. I have all kinds of cheesy baseball stories in the book.
None of which I thought were going to be impactful when I actually had them happen to me. But, you know, certainly they've shaped my life. I'll give you a quick story from the book about John Allaroo. My first big league spring training game I got to pitching. I come in thinking this is going to be great. I'm going to strike out the side. First guy gets a hit. Second guy gets a hit. Third guy walks. Base is loaded. No outs. John Allaroo gets in the box. Best hitter in baseball.
And I get him three and two catcher comes out and says, Jeff, you got to throw this guy a changeup or else he's going to take your head off for the fastballs. Okay. I'll throw a changeup. I throw it to him. He pops it up to the shortstop one out next guy, ground ball, double play innings over.
What I realized was 20 years later was I had to have the confidence to throw the right pitch, but also had to have the skill to throw the right pitch. And to me, that's what GOP 2.0 is all about. It's having the confidence to speak up against what seems to be the easy way to go now, but also to have the ability to do it as a rock star conservative, as somebody who's fought for those values and voted for those things every step of the way.
That's fantastic. Tell us here on the state level, what are the top two or three things you think Republicans should be focusing on? And on the national level, if you were a senator or president, what do you think are the two or three things on the national level conservatives and Republicans should be focusing on?
So I think they're almost parallel, right? Here in Georgia, we've got a crime issue like everybody else across the country. This should be we should not let the Democrats get off easy on this. They they they they spoke about defunding the police to as a campaign slogan that backfired on them and unfortunately for the rest of us in Georgia and across the country.
We should never think about defunding the police. And I've actually created legislation that's gonna be heard in January on how we refund the police through a tax credit in communities all over the state. And quite honestly, I've watched the vacuum of leadership around healthcare. We've passed over 50 bipartisan healthcare bills in Georgia. I think we need to start taking the lead nationally. I talk about some of these issues in the book
around healthcare, we should be innovative and launch a strategy that allows small businesses to be the epicenter of healthcare. Because if we can have access points with small businesses, then we encourage employment instead of government programs. I think there's other things we need to start talking about as Republicans around immigration.
You guys obviously share a border with another country. I think we ought to have rock solid border security. But I also think we need to have a conversation about the 16 million undocumented folks. Some are embedded in the economy. Some are not. How do we have that conversation as Republicans in parallel tracks so that we can start to make sense when we walk into a room and start talking about immigration reform? Build the Wall was a great project name, but it was not an immigration reform.
We we've got to make sure we take on that issue. Democrats don't want to take it on because as long as it stays out there as an issue, they feel it's a winner for them. And it is. And things like, you know, I want to have conservative gun policies in place. I'm a huge supporter of the Second Amendment. But I know that there's a couple of things out there that we are. We've just become, you know, ignorant to even listening to those conversations. We've allowed small outside groups to just, you know, kind of.
you know, enforce their policy positions on us. I think we ought to start to have some conservative conversations around things that folks want us to around the Second Amendment, right? I mean, we talk about magazine capacities, right? I don't know what the right number is, but we ought to at least have a conversation. Is it 100? Is it 50? Is it 75? You know, should we close some loopholes that make sense to folks all over the country? The polls tell us we should. An overwhelming majority of even Republicans talk about wanting to start conversations. Yes.
We can't ignore that. We can't allow small, you know, special interest groups to hijack the realities of of today's today's electorate. I had I have a Democrat reporter friend whose wife's a therapist and we were talking about assault, their term assault weapons. And I said, well, what if instead of banning them, what if you have to require a note from your doctor that you're not on any bipolar depressive medication?
And then you have to take 10 hours of training, right? Because it's a different gun than a handgun. I mean, I was just throwing something out question-wise.
And he literally this guy is always on this anti-gun tirade. And he goes, oh, you can't do that. That's that invades people's privacy. So you want to take everybody's right who wants to do this. And I'm giving structure, which conservatives would hate. But, you know, I mean, I think all of us here would probably agree that if you are under the care of a mental health professional and on medicine for depression, you probably shouldn't have one.
You know, it's not a right. Also, you should have some training. I mean, look, I'm a gun owner. I have one, and it's a different gun than a handgun. Yeah.
This whole conversation is one that's worthy of having, because as a conservative, as somebody who wants to protect the Second Amendment, I have no seat at the adults table right now in D.C. around any of these policies. I don't have any voice in the White House. I don't have the U.S. Senate and I don't have the U.S. House. So if the Democrats want to run the table on their version of gun control and hijack our conservative gun policies, they can do it.
We literally have no say so. So I'm willing to start to engage in some of those micro conversations to show the folks that are maybe more moderate in nature that we're willing to at least talk about it and gather the facts and the data. But look, there's so many other things we can do. Public-private partnerships ought to be front and center for Republicans and conservatives to start to utilize. We've done that here in Georgia.
We ought to, like I said, immigration, healthcare. There's so many things that we can start to do. And oh, by the way, we forgot the last four years to remind the electorate of the policies that we're really, really good at, right? Like national security. We shouldn't have to wait for Afghanistan to play out the way it did to start beating our chest as Republicans that were really good at thinking about national security.
We should not try to let the wait for crime, increase in crime to talk about how Republicans really are better at community safety and criminal. You know, that ought to be our issue. But yet we forget to remind people of that. Does Florida having no state income tax make it difficult sometimes for you to recruit or expand businesses in Georgia?
since they're your neighbor yeah it's a good call in a perfect world i would have no state income tax right now but the the trade-off of what you do to to cover those tax you know you've got to have a higher sales tax so we've actually cut our sales tax uh here in georgia over the last a few years governor kemp uh and i and and the legislature worked together we don't really lose any businesses to florida at least i'm sure we do to some extent but not any of the real businesses
We're trying to really, you know, this has been a big economic driver of my initiatives has been for Georgia to be the technology capital of the East Coast. And we're watching that gain a tremendous amount of momentum about creating an ecosystem, how we educate our K through 12 in the 21st digital century, how we invite investment from around the world and how we cultivate collegial talent from out of Georgia Tech, where I went to school and other places. We're not losing any sort of businesses. I don't think necessarily with Florida.
Yeah. You know, one of the things that I think people ignore a lot of times is the total tax burden. It's not just income tax, which obviously is important. But then you look at the regulatory costs, all these other things that have just gone through the roof in blue states.
There are a lot of red states, including Georgia and Arizona, very competitive when you look at those things, even with the zero income tax states. Yeah, Georgia is, look, you know, this is a very conservative state. It's all eight statewide constitutional officers are Republicans, and we hope it stays that way. Ryan Kemp is the most conservative governor in Georgia's history, despite what Donald Trump wants to try and do. Absolutely. Jeff, I'm sorry to cut you off. We have to go to a break. We're coming back with one final segment. It's available online only. Broken Potholes will be right back.
The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote domain from GoDaddy. Get yours now. Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Chuck Morin and Sam Stone. On the line with us today, Lieutenant Governor of Georgia Jeff Duncan.
wrote a fantastic book, GOP 2.0. Highly recommend you go out and grab that book, read it. Jeff, where can they find that book right now? Well, hopefully at every bookstore in their neighborhood. They can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all the online outlets, Walmart, Target.com. Super excited. Simon & Schuster has done a great job of distributing around the country. Fantastic. Now,
Or in one other spot, they can go to GOP2.org, which is our website, and order it there. Oh, great. Yeah, folks, go there. GOP2.org. Let's get that. Get the book. It's worth a read, folks. I don't care where you are on the election fraud, the Trump stuff, all of this. We need to start considering some other opinions. We need to re-broaden our ideas.
It's a great place to start with this book right here. Jeff, do you still follow, do you follow baseball still? Do you have time? Do you look at the box scores when you're in a car between meetings? What do you do? Yeah, no, I still follow it. You know, it's, it's, I've got three boys and my oldest two are sports nuts. So I normally get, get my, uh, my sports center update from them, right? I'll make a five minute call and see who, who hit for the cycle the night before, who's winning the division. I got to ask when you were talking about earlier about your experience here, uh,
Every professional athlete, every professional athlete, anyone like yourself who's made it at that level, is a tremendous athlete. Compared to the average member of the public, it is night and day. But is there anyone you met on your minor league journey where when you saw them or when you played with them, you just said, oh, my God, they are different?
Yeah. So that's pretty much everybody I played against. So I'll tell you a funny story. So my first big league camp that I got to go into, I walked in the locker room and
And, you know, I had half those guys' baseball cards under my bed still. They all look like freaks of nature. They're all, you know, 6'4", look like Hercules, chiseled out of stone. And I felt like the Bat Boys were bigger than me. But, yeah, you know, look, it was one of those things. I learned how to compete. That was really the muscle that I grew in professional sports was just the willingness to compete and how effective that can be.
how you can short circuit the system by just being able to show up and compete every minute of every day. And that's really what's helped me the most in politics. That's fantastic. Your boys, are they ready to go to college? Are they baseball fanatics, football fanatics? What do they prefer?
Yeah, so my oldest is a sophomore at UGA and he was a travel baseball kid all the way till he got to high school and he was then he realized he was an incredible golfer. So he played four years of varsity golf there and got to play in a couple of state tournaments. That was fun. My 15 year old is a sophomore and just actually picked him up from football. He plays varsity football and varsity baseball and
And then my 11 year old is in fifth grade. He's actually an actor. Crazy enough as it is. Oh, my goodness. So he's a he's a little Nickelodeon show and he's got some some commercials. He's done a wide variety of talent here. What has surprised you about being a father? We all have these perceptions and theories when we go into things. What has surprised you about being a father?
how much you love your kids, right? Like that, that is the most genuine feeling I've ever felt in my life is staring at those kids when they were born and just, I mean, you will literally do anything for them. And, and I think the other thing too, is the burden of being a good parent of just trying to constantly be a, be a good parent. Cause we all, we all drop that ball every minute of every day. Absolutely. I told my daughter who got married this last April that,
And she was talking about what were my surprises. And I just said, I don't think you realize how much we love you. You can't put it in words. And two, just that how much we worry about you all the time. You know, when you get older, things that concern you most concern you most about your kids. You know, are they happy? Are they what can I do to help them more? You know, is this lesson going to be good for them? And that's been one of the lessons for me is just how much they occupy your your mental space.
Yeah, I think one of those learners for me has been to to say, I'm sorry. Right. As the parent, you know, you're in charge and you're going to do or say something you shouldn't be your kid. Overreact, underreact, whatever the wrong outcome is. And to be able to be willing to humble enough to say, hey, I'm sorry, I didn't do that right. Can I get a hall pass? And that, I think, makes a huge difference for them as kind of the way they view you. Would you tell somebody who's an aspiring candidate?
Is it worth running for office? Is America worth fighting for? That's a good question. Yeah, the answer is unequivocally yes. I had a great friend along the way when I was running for state house seat. And I was against all odds and felt like the world was working against me. And, you know, it felt like wins and losses, right? Like I was only going to be successful if I won the race. And this friend said, look, make this about the journey and not the trophy. If every room you walk into, you get your opinion out there that you think matters or it's going to make a difference.
Talk about how you think limited government makes sense. Talk about how you think the four C's, churches, charities, corporations, and citizens ought to rise up to make a difference with those in poverty. You know, just get your message out. That way, when you get to the finish line, whether you win or lose the election, you've won.
And I encourage everybody to do that. And even if you're not running for an election, just wake up and tell people, you know, just be willing to share that opinion that you think makes a difference. But yes, running for office makes sense. And look, that's the only way we're going to get back on track. I'm not fighting this fight because it's fun. I don't like picking up the paper and seeing Donald Trump call me every name in the book as a Republican.
I don't like knowing that there's all kinds of turmoil and maybe somebody says something to my wife or kids at the grocery store. I'm doing it because I think this is the right way for our country to get back on track and actually be the place that has got a future. It's got a place, you know, that once again, we become the icon of the world and they look to us for leadership. That's why I'm doing it. Well, this is why they tell politicians that they want a friend, get a dog. Do you have dogs? Do you have dogs? I've got three kids for now.
Jeff, very much appreciate you being on the show today. Fantastic to have you with us. Once again, folks, GOP2.org. They can go there, get the book, GOP 2.0. Really worth the read. And I don't care where you are on the Trump spectrum. It's worth the read. Love him, hate him, somewhere in between like a lot of us. Worth the read.
Jeff, thank you very much for spending time with us today, my friend. Yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity. Great to see you guys. Great to see you. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Fantastic discussion today, Chuck. Really, really appreciated having Jeff on the program. We get a great range of opinions on here. We've had some people I disagree with intensely. We've had some people I agree with intensely. This is one of them I agree with. He's taken a really...
He's taken a beating that was undeserved in every aspect. I think the thing that's disappointed me the most about the election integrity issue is not that people have opinions that it was stolen.
I mean, I think there's answers, you know, like he addressed it. You know, when people go to bed and your guy's up 100000 votes and you wake up and he's down 100000. I mean, it looks weird. I don't care who you are. And there's an explanation, but it looks weird. And we've talked about it. Twenty sixteen. Sixty five percent of Democrats thought the election was stolen. Yeah. Yeah. So this is not a Republican issue. The thing that has disappointed me the most is.
You have two parties. One party would not declare faith as their number one issue. Most of our activists would declare themselves good Christians or evangelicals or things of that nature. And just how they have spread this vitriol and this hatred, and it's just...
It's mind boggling to me. I want you to I want you to live what you preach. Yeah. You know, I have a really hard time with that because obviously having worked at City Hall in Phoenix, you're there with people that by and large you disagree with. And some of them really disagree with. But we're still civil. I mean, you can still have a conversation. You walk that hall. You can talk to the people there.
That's what this book is about, quite frankly, that he wrote. But that's what we're missing right now. Well, and this is why I also am a big proponent of professional sports franchises. It is the one thing that can unify a city. When the Suns made their run this year, no one cared if you're a Democrat, Republican, Trumper, anti-Trummer. None of that stuff. No, you just wanted to go to the game. You just wanted to go get me. You wanted to talk about it. And I think when people say...
I mean, I just can't tell you. I mean, in Utah, for example, you have the U of U, BYU divide. You have the LDS, non-LDS divide. Right. But the Utah Jazz unite everybody. And we need more things that unite us. And you can be united by your rivalry. You know, here in Arizona, we have the University of Arizona, ASU, right? Terrible rivalry. It's taken a lot more seriously in Tucson than here in Phoenix. Sure. Let's be honest. Because they have the little brother syndrome. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Well, deservedly so. But I mean, you know, look, at the end of the day, this unites the state, these things. And it's why I object so strenuously to the politicization of sports that we've seen in the last year and a half or two years. Right. Because, folks, I, you know, make your statement off the court. But frankly, what athletes do on the field or on the court is.
That is like one of the last components of unity that we have in this country. Right. Right. Sad to say. Sad to say. Very sad to say. Well, great show today. Absolutely. We'll be back next week. I don't know. Who do we have next week? Kylie? We have Lacey Cooper. She's running for AG. Oh, fantastic. Thanks, Kylie, for setting that up. That's going to be an important race, too. It's a big race, and it's probably on all the statewide races.
It probably equals about treasurer. Yeah, nobody pays attention. You've got governor, probably number one here, Senate. Right. Then you have secretary of state, which may be above Senate for most people's minds. A lot of people. For activists at least. Yeah. Then you've got the AG treasurer sort of tied. It's a weird situation how important an AG is. An AG is huge right now with this anti-police movement. Yes. It's really a big deal in states that have these progressive AGs.
The police are really under fire. Yeah. I mean, they're under fire here in Arizona and elsewhere, too. But the difference having a AG who actually supports your police department makes, it's enormous. Right. Folks, thanks for visiting us today on Broken Potholes. You can find us at brokenpotholes.vote. Also visit us on Spotify, iTunes, blah, blah, blah. Substack, Apple. Blah, blah, blah. Just find it. Thanks a lot. Have a great week.
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