Win Florida: The Pam Keith Interview
Gaslit Nation is excited to welcome to our show Congressional candidate Pam Keith, a former U.S. Navy JAG officer, litigator, and environmentalist. Her Congressional district is right next door to Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago. She explains how Democrats can win Florida in 2020 and beyond.
Andrea Chalupa:
Welcome to this special episode of Gaslit Nation. We have an exciting guest today. I'm thrilled to welcome to Gaslit Nation, Pam Keith. Pam Keith is the Democratic Nominee for Florida's 18th Congressional District, which is right next to Donald Trump's district where he hosts foreign spies at Mar-a-Lago.
Andrea Chalupa:
Pam won the 2020 primary with 80% of the vote, a record for this district. Pam is the daughter of a U.S. Diplomat and a former U.S. Ambassador. She was born in Turkey and lived in Morocco, Syria, Brazil, and several U.S. cities before going to high school in Oakland, California and attending my alma mater, UC Davis, for her BA and Master's Degrees.
Andrea Chalupa:
She then attended Boston College Law School where she was Moot Court champion and made Law Review. Her desire to serve her country led Pam to commission into the U.S. Navy as a JAG Officer in 1995. She served for four years, including a tour as Officer-in-Charge of the Legal Services Office in Bahrain.
Andrea Chalupa:
Ms. Keith later served as the first JAG assigned to the Navy Task Force on computer network security. She speaks French, Spanish, and Portuguese. When elected, Pam will serve as the first Black female veteran in the history of the United States Congress. We are so grateful to have her here.
Andrea Chalupa:
I just want to add a very quick disclaimer. Pam Keith is one of the dozens of candidates that I've been supporting in this election. Her campaign just happened to reach out to me because we have an incredible podcast here at Gaslit Nation where we like to give voice to a lot of important issues. We're going to be going over some of them today, and we're honored to have that.
Andrea Chalupa:
But I just wanted to share that as a quick disclaimer that I did support this race, like I've supported so many in this election cycle, and I'm happy to put that out there. I'm proud to endorse Pam Keith for Congress. Welcome to the show, Pam.
Pam Keith:
Thank you so much for having me. It's just a true honor. I'm such a fan of yours and Sarah's and this whole podcast that just keeps people informed. I'm so proud to be here.
Andrea Chalupa:
Thank you so much. Well, we are so thrilled to feature your story here. It just speaks to this moment in time where America is emerging through these fires as a stronger phoenix because it just gives so much hope that someone as brilliant and progressive and fearless as you are just ... You're spreading your courage out to others by running in Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago district. Tell us, what has that reaction been like from Floridians there? That's Trump country.
Pam Keith:
Right. I will clarify that due to the wisdom of the Florida legislature, Mar-a-Lago got gerrymandered just on the other side of the line of my district. It's literally less than five minutes outside of [inaudible 00:03:08] district. I did check because people were telling me that it's in the district, and I'm like, "Hmm. I don't want to have that."
Pam Keith:
It literally is a less than three minute walk from Mar-a-Lago to the district line. It's just right there. What that tells you is a little bit about the weirdness of this district. I think the listeners need to know, first of all, what Florida's 18 is all about and why it is such an interesting district.
Pam Keith:
It encompasses the northern portion of Palm Beach County. When you think of Palm Beach County, you principally think about these really wealthy gated communities. These golf communities, Mar-a-Lago has got the most expensive real estate in the world right there on the Atlantic Ocean in the northern part of Palm Beach county, Palm Beach, Jupiter Island, you're talking extraordinary.
Pam Keith:
But then you go inland, right? So, if you go west from there you get West Palm Beach, which is sort of upper middle class. Then you go even west of that, you get into Royal Palm Beach, which is a lot of retirees, also a lot of gated communities but now you're starting to get much more working class, middle class people, blue-collar, even white-, or grey-collar.
Pam Keith:
Then as you move even further inland towards Lake Okeechobee–which is in the middle of our state– there you get agricultural. It's a completely different population there, right? It's migrant workers, and it's people who work in agricultural factories like sugar factories. It is heavily Latino but it is not Cuban Latino. It is Bolivian or Guatemalan or sometimes Venezuelan and quite a bit of Mexican as well. So, it's a very different looking Latino population than you would get in Miami Dade or Broward.
Pam Keith:
As you go north of the district, the next county you encounter is Martin County. Martin County is much, much, much more red and it is much, much, much more Trump red because there's a lot of red in Palm Beach County too, but it's sort of wealthy, northeastern, coastal red, which is a different shade of red than Martin County, which is very, very red district.
Pam Keith:
But it also has a component of blue. It just has more red. But the more red is redder. You know what I mean? It's just super pro-gun and so on. Then you get to St. Lucie County. St. Lucie County, above Martin County, is just this really interesting mix of it's more blue-collar, it is one of the 12 counties that's more Democratic than Republican. It has a historical and well contained Black community in Fort Pierce where I live, and it is a Black community that's way more, I want to say insular, but that's probably the wrong word.
Pam Keith:
It's just it's a historic community and everybody knows everybody, which is very different than a Broward or a Dade. We have so many people of color that are pocketized throughout the county.
Pam Keith:
Here, all the Black communities are sort of concentrated into one area. Then you have a lot more teachers and firefighters and folks like that–that are these sort of blue-collar, gray-collar–and some wealth along the coast, but more of a Democratic county and more of a mixed income and sort of racially diverse population there in St. Lucie County.
Pam Keith:
That mix makes for a very difficult read on this district. Cook Report has it as +4 or +5 R. That's just along party registration lines. But there's like 160,000 people in this district that are non-party registered and they go very much with momentum.
Pam Keith:
So, this district has been won by a laser thin margin by a Democrat. It's been won by 20 points by a Democrat. It's been won by a Republican by 10 points, and all of that has happened in the last six years. That's not shifts in population, that's shifts in momentum. It's not really swinging; it's see-saw, right? It can go up or down. It can go 10 points red or it can go 20 points blue.
Andrea Chalupa:
The latest polling is saying that it's swinging four points Republican currently, that's not a lot given-
Pam Keith:
It's not really polling, that's just debating the general. It is D +5 or R +6. The polling is quite different, right? Because Joe Biden is leading this district currently by eight points.
Andrea Chalupa:
Wow.
Pam Keith:
Because of a 17-point turnaround between Hillary and Joe. The antipathy that people had towards Hillary is not translating to Joe.
Andrea Chalupa:
One thing I really I'm eager to point out because this is something that's been under discussed, is that St. Lucie County was one of the counties that we know now was targeted by the Russian election hacking, that they had success infiltrating election systems in St. Lucie County.
Andrea Chalupa:
Now you're telling me that St. Lucie County also happens to be a historically Black county.
Pam Keith:
Very much so.
Andrea Chalupa:
Wow.
Pam Keith:
St. Lucie County was the first place to explore, because it has an African-American woman as a supervisor of elections. It is a diverse, mixed population with a significant Black population, but it's not like under those sort of magnifying glass that a Broward or Dade or Orlando or Tampa would be.
Pam Keith:
It has historically, because of its breakdown of population, you could sell just about any kind of election outcome. You could sell a narrow D win, a narrow R win, a big D win, or a big R win, and any one of those would be considered plausible in this district.
Andrea Chalupa:
I want to get to talking about your story and what got you to run. But I also want to point out because the election hacking story is an ongoing story. I know we’re being hit by a lot of major breaking news.
Andrea Chalupa:
But I want to remind everyone that on the front page of the New York Times right next to the big Donald Trump tax fraud bombshell was an article on that very same page that Russia’s continued to hack our election systems.
Andrea Chalupa:
I just want to point out that St. Lucie County, being a historically Black county, targeting Black Americans generally was a big part of the Kremlin strategy in attacking our democracy in 2016. So, that's something we ought to be vigilant of. So, Pam, in terms of your story, what inspired you to run?
Pam Keith:
First thing that inspired me to run is listening to my inspiration. Only twice in my life have I had a kind of epiphany that made me feel like I was moved, called, needed to make a certain move. The first one was during Rodney King. I was a young woman, I was trying to decide what kind of career I wanted to have.
Pam Keith:
During those Rodney King hearings I was glued to the TV, but I was also kind of screaming at the TV about what that lawyers should be asking, what they should be arguing. I had this kind of “aha” moment, like, “oh, I should be a lawyer” because nobody in my family had been a lawyer. So, I was like, "Hmm, I think I should be a lawyer."
Pam Keith:
Once that kind of hit me, it was like “oh, I'm going to put everything I have into being a lawyer”, and I did. What I didn't do was plan on how to pay for law school. That was a different thing. But what I did do was plan to get in, and I did.
Pam Keith:
And I had this kind of vision of how I wanted to ... What I was going to do and so on. That was the first time that I had this really strong sense of being called to something, and I just did it, and I knew that that was the right move.
Pam Keith:
The only other time in my life that I had that kind of feeling was watching Marco Rubio give the answer to the State of the Union in one of Barack Obama's State of the Union. He was cotton mouthed and he was sweaty and he was drinking water in the middle of the speech. It was ridiculous.
Pam Keith:
I'm listening to the content and I'm looking at the performance and I'm thinking to myself, "How is this guy a United States Senator? How is it possible?" And it hit me: because he ran, because he tried. That was that second time where I felt like, "Oh, this intrigues me, I'm pulled to this."
Pam Keith:
Now I didn't act on it at that time because who does that? I was working in-house at a large, large company–one of the biggest producers of clean and renewable energy, a company called Next Door Energy–I was working in-house with them.
Pam Keith:
They were going through all these changes. They were making changes in the legal department and I'm sitting here going, "Okay, so what do I want to do? Do you want to stay? Do you want to go?" It hit me that what I really wanted to do, what intrigued me, what I couldn't put aside was this idea of going into politics and using all this experience that I have to be the advocate of the people.
Pam Keith:
That was kind of my Road To Damascus moment. Once I decided that my rest of my life was going to be advocating for the people and advocating for smart policy and using all of this experience, knowledge, education, whatever, I'm going to use it in service to my country and to my people. That was it.
Pam Keith:
There was really nothing I wasn't willing to give up in pursuit of that. Not that I knew I would have to when I started, right? I thought it would be so much easier than it actually is.
Pam Keith:
But once I decided that that was my path, then I got on that path, and it's been four solid years of crawling over glass to get here, but I just stayed with it because it just feels like what I'm supposed to be doing.
Pam Keith:
I feel like, to whom much is given, much is required. Who better to put your talent and your energies and your passions and service to than the people of the United States? Who better? So, that's why I do it and that's why I feel like I'm willing to stick it out when it's hard.
Andrea Chalupa:
That is exactly right. Seeing Marco Rubio grasping desperately for water in his nervous State of the Union response, this little kid up there, shivering in his boots, and seeing those guys and just thinking to yourself, if they can do it, what's my excuse? The way we're going to take our country back is flushing these idiots out of power. It's about rebuilding the system by us becoming the new system. That's going to take a lot of brilliant, fearless, progressive people like yourself standing up and saying, “It's my turn now, you've had your chance, you got us down this destructive path, let's go.”
Andrea Chalupa:
That's what we need. We need so many people, from dog catcher, to city council, all across the board, just running for office, period. We all need to become the new system to save ourselves. What advice do you have for somebody listening who's not there yet, who is just doing their day job and they don't have their voice?
Andrea Chalupa:
Because I think one thing you and I could have our own show about is the power of finding your voice and how your voice does show up for you once you decide to claim it.
Pam Keith:
Right.
Andrea Chalupa:
What advice do you have for someone listening who's not there yet but we should be because we desperately need their talents right now?
Pam Keith:
Well I have three pieces of advice. Piece of advice number one: you are exactly who you need to be. There is no such thing as a model for what it looks like to be a leader. There may be a model for what it looks like to be a politician, but there is no model of what it looks like to be a leader.
Pam Keith:
What you are in this very moment, as you're listening to me, what you are right now is exactly what we need. We need you, because you are unique. You bring to the table only in the most unique combination, the things that you've been through and have experienced and are passionate about and the way you feel about it, the way you think about it is absolutely unique to you and it's valuable. The first thing I say is you're awesome and you're you and you don't need to be anything else.
Pam Keith:
The second thing I will tell you is nothing in your background, no mistake you've made, no error is unforgivable if you're willing to own it and you're willing to say, "Hey, this is what I learned from it." This concept of “I can't run because I have skeletons in my closet”, have you watched the GOP lately? They have whole cemeteries in there, right? There's nothing you've done that forecloses you.
Andrea Chalupa:
They've got mass graves in their closets. They literally ...
Pam Keith:
Right? Exactly. The notion that some mistake that you've made or some bankruptcy or a loss, or whatever, incarceration. Even if you've been incarcerated, that's not a deal breaker. There are probably a whole bunch of people who can relate to your story as long as your story is a redemption story or a growth story or a lesson learned story, then any mistake can be forgiven if you are honest and able to communicate what you got out of it and why that makes you a better leader.
Pam Keith:
The third thing I would tell you is always tell yourself “yes”. I don't have “no” in my vocabulary to myself because the whole world tells me “no” and I don't need to add my voice to that chorus, so I don't.
Pam Keith:
I always tell myself “yes”. Am I a bad ass? Yes. Am I smart? Yep. Am I hardworking? You got it, yes. I tell myself “yes” all the time. I know that sounds kind of trite, but as an African American woman in this game, let me tell you, you get so much feedback that you're not quite right or not a good fit or not a team player.
Pam Keith:
And you know, I'm not. I'm not a team player. I'm a team leader. It's a different concept. I'm building a team, and I'm the leader of that team. So, I always tell myself “yes”, yes, absolutely yes I can do it.
Pam Keith:
The last thing I will tell you is that the hardest thing about doing this is not policy. That's the easiest part. The second easiest part is getting out and talking to people about policy. That too is extremely easy because you're passionate about it, and what you're passionate about comes naturally.
Pam Keith:
But this game at this level is 90% patronage and power and 10% policy if that. Right? Politics at this level is principally about who thinks they can control you, who thinks they can get something out of you, who you have to partner with and parlay with, whose support you can glean, who has a pet issue or a pet person that they need something done for. It is horse trading of power.
Pam Keith:
So, if you understand that, you are way ahead of the game because that is something I absolutely did not understand when I started this. I was this bright eyed, bushy tailed person who was like “hey, the power is in the people and if they vote for me then I win.” That's true, but the people won't know anything about you without resources, and the resources are always tied to power.
Pam Keith:
So, you need to understand that. That doesn't mean you can't grow your power or generate your own. Andrea here has generated her own power, so has Sarah Kendzior. They've generated their own power by speaking their truth, by speaking their voice, by developing a sense of expertise, and people wanting to be validated by them.
Pam Keith:
When people want you to validate them, you are now powerful. So, there's a lot of different ways to build power but you have to understand the blocking and tackling of politics is not policy, it's power. If you understand that, you understand everything.
Andrea Chalupa:
Wow, that's incredible. Thank you so much. I feel like that's going to be a Gaslit Nation classic tutorial. What are some issues that you are hearing a lot about in your community? What are voters saying to you? What's the temperature there on the ground?
Pam Keith:
Everything is rising and falling on COVID, the COVID response, healthcare related to COVID, job losses related to COVID, unemployment benefits related to COVID. Florida has a unique incompetence and immorality around unemployment benefits and the difficulty in accessing them.
Pam Keith:
It was by design. The Republicans believed that it was perfectly correct and morally sound to have people pay into unemployment benefit systems through payroll deductions and to not be able to access those benefits when they need them when they could lose employment. They thought that was perfectly morally sound.
Pam Keith:
So, they created a system that was designed to frustrate, confuse, and make people walk away and give up before they actually get a check. They made it as duplicative, as confusing, and as onerous as possible. So, because in their mind the only unemployed people are people of color, and they're willing to cannibalize people who are not of color, by the way, to hurt people of color.
Pam Keith:
I'm going to say that is intentional for that purpose because that's the lexicon and the narrative that they use around it. So, I'm not making an accusation that they haven't already admitted to in various and sundry ways. So, there are very, very serious issues here.
Pam Keith:
This is a state that relies very, very heavily on tourism revenue and seasonal resident revenue. The coronavirus is dampening very significantly towards coming to Florida. There's really no way to backfill that revenue in our budget. You're not going to raise income taxes in Florida because we don't have an income tax. There's only so much you can do with sales taxes before you stifle spending.
Pam Keith:
Your options here are real estate taxes increase–which by the way the Republicans would detest–or just cutting services to bare bones but the problem is that Florida is a bare boned services state to begin with. So, it's like a really, really weird budgetary situation here.
Pam Keith:
I think that the governor's mansion is doing everything it can to try to not bring attention to the budgetary consequences of these choices.
Andrea Chalupa:
What about climate change? Because you guys are right there on the water. Is that an issue that comes up? Do you have a lot of concerned conversations with voters?
Pam Keith:
It's interesting that you raise that. My district has the St. Lucie river that flows through it. The St. Lucie River is a natural river, but a manmade connection was created between the St. Lucie River and Lake Okeechobee.
Pam Keith:
St. Lucie River is a tidal brackish river. Lake Okeechobee is obviously not salty, right? It's polluted to the nth degree but it's just very, very big, a very, very shallow lake. Imagine it is like the world's biggest pond. Historically, before man put their hands on it, Lake Okeechobee expanded and contracted with the rainy seasons.
Pam Keith:
But then eventually people figured out that the land around Lake Okeechobee was really, really fertile land because of that constant contracting and expanding of water and the sediments. Sediment is excellent, robust earth in which to grow stuff. So, they put a wall around Lake Okeechobee and said, "Okay. We're going to use this land for cultivation."
Pam Keith:
The problem is that when a shallow lake that's supposed to expand and contract, you put a wall around it, what happens? It goes up and down instead of out and in. When the lake goes to a certain level of up, it just starts to overflow that wall–that levy–and it floods the land around it.
Pam Keith:
That, of course, kills crops. So we now manage the water in and out and around Lake Okeechobee around the needs of agriculture. That decision has created an untenable situation with water management where, when the lake gets to a certain level, they release water into these rivers.
Pam Keith:
On our side it's the St. Lucie River, on the western side it's the Caloosahatchee River, that flows into the Tampa Bay, right? They flood those rivers with water from Lake Okeechobee. Now, even if the water in Lake Okeechobee was clean–which it's not, but even if it were–it would change the salinization level of the St. Lucie River and kill off grasses and wildlife, and it does, right? Even if it weren't polluted.
Pam Keith:
But, sadly, it is very polluted, right? Because it's got the runoff from Orlando, it's got agricultural cattle ranching runoff from this sort of central part of the state, and it has pesticide runoff. And that pesticide has chemicals–phosphorus and glyphosate–that feed blue-green algae.
Pam Keith:
It creates this algae, this frothy, green, slimy muck. That muck goes into the rivers when they release water from the lake and that makes it stinky. It's noxious. It creates a grotesque smell. It's dangerous and we've had cancer clusters and liver issues related to people who are around the water.
Pam Keith:
So, then it also befouls this beautiful, extremely expensive and valuable riverfront and beachfront property. Once it flows out into the ocean, it creates red tides, right? Where do our red tides come from? Polluted water coming from the river. Right?
Pam Keith:
So, it has these really serious ecological consequences. We're in a constant battle in South Florida of figuring out how to not have algae in our rivers, not be changing the PH of our rivers, and moving water where mother nature intended it to go because, back in the day, water from the lake would flow into the Everglades. That's what fed the Everglades.
Pam Keith:
If you put a wall around that, the Everglades start to dry up and get saltier and that is exactly what is happening. So, if you're an environmentalist like I am, you are concerned about the problems with feeding dirty water into the Everglades, the problem of not enough water into the Everglades, the problem of drying up of the Everglades, you're worried about the salt level in the river, you're worried about the riverine environments–the lagoons, the mangroves, the manatees, the waterfowl–you worry about all that.
Pam Keith:
But if you're a phony environmentalist like my opponent, the only thing you're worried about is the muck on your riverfront property, right?
Andrea Chalupa:
[laughs]
Pam Keith:
So, I am the person that understands how climate change is affecting blue-green algae. I am talking about sea level rise and the effect that that's going to have on our beaches, and of course the value of beachfront property, which is a whole thing, right?
Pam Keith:
I'm talking about the burning of sugarcane in those sugar fields south of the lake and how that's putting pesticides in the air. I'm talking about sonic boom mapping off of our coasts to do oil exploration, which has a serious effect on marine wildlife and mammal migratory behavior.
Pam Keith:
I'm talking about all of that stuff because I'm a deep, deep environmentalist. My opponent only cares about that river right there. He's what I call a micro environmentalist. He's an environmentalist only on the micro portion of St. Lucie River that's riverfront property.
Andrea Chalupa:
Right. Exactly right. Rich people don't care until it affects their ... Yeah. Oy. So tell me about your opponent, Brian Mast. He got into a bit of trouble. Ironically, there are some comments that he made on Facebook that the QAnon crowd would go after him for where he was talking about a 15 year old girl. Could you tell us a little bit about Brian Mast, this Republican opponent and his weirdness?
Pam Keith:
Brian is in his second term. He is an army veteran. He was combat wounded in Afghanistan, lost his legs from an IED. He is what I call the perfect political chameleon. When he thought it was in his best interest to look like a moderate, he sounds like a moderate. When he thinks it's in his best interests to sound like a Trumper, he sounds like a Trumper. If he thinks it's in his best interest to take a position, he'll take it but he will never stick with anything that harms his political power.
Pam Keith:
He is not like I am: deeply, morally committed to anything. Right? He's deeply, morally committed to his own power, and his own power rises and falls with the will of the GOP and with the will of Donald Trump. So, that's the truth of kind of how he governs.
Pam Keith:
But his mastery, if he has one, is public relations. He is the master of glossy flyers that tell narratives. They're not true but they look really good and they are very persuasive to the mind that is subject to that.
Pam Keith:
The other thing is that he shares in the same kind of misogyny and white supremacy of the rest of the members of his team. That shouldn't surprise you, but it was a stark contrast to the sort of spit and polished hero image that he's been all this time creating.
Pam Keith:
Find these Facebook posts, where in one, he was encouraging his now campaign manager who was vacationing in South Africa to have sex with as many 15 year old girls as he could because he thought it was legal in South Africa.
Andrea Chalupa:
So Brian Mast was promoting pedophile sex tourism in a foreign country–
Pam Keith:
Yes.
Andrea Chalupa:
That he probably in his head thought was a shithole country, right? Because only in a shithole country could you have sex with children, and that's what he was promoting was sex child tourism. Even in a joking way it's disgusting because that stuff actually does go on.
Andrea Chalupa:
I lived in Ukraine. I kid you not, this was a common site when I lived in Kyiv. I would see some big old western white man with a cowboy hat on the street talking up some young Ukrainian girls. Ukraine, for a very long time and to this day, is a sex tourism destination where western men flock.
Andrea Chalupa:
It's disgusting how they treat it like their own personal candy shop and in this vicious system, children are extremely vulnerable. So, even joking about this and normalizing it with a joke like this on Facebook–whether or not he was joking, whatever, however he wants to defend it–it's deeply disgusting.
Pam Keith:
Yeah. It wasn't a joke in the sense that he wasn't trying to be funny, right? He may or may not have believed that his friend would have followed up on it. But Brian really wants this to be about his words and this issue here is about his thoughts.
Pam Keith:
Words like that reflect a certain kind of mindset. That's the very mindset that allowed a guy like Jeffrey Epstein to succeed as long as he did in trafficking teenage girls right under our nose right here in Palm Beach county, right?
Pam Keith:
Our ad out right now that just hit the street today, I think, or yesterday, is putting those words against Jeffrey Epstein's face and saying, “No, he's not the one who said this”, because it would have made perfect sense if he did. Brian is the one who said this. So, how is he different than Jeff? Maybe he didn't execute it, he didn't build the whole international ring around it, but he is certainly encouraging men to be customers of Jeffrey Epstein, is he not? That's the sickening thing here.
Pam Keith:
Keep in mind, he was on active duty in the military. He was married, had a kid. This is very bizarre thinking to my way. The other comment when he was sort of saying that a good pick up line for a man was to say, "Hey, don't turn this rape into a murder." Really? Really? That's what you think? That's hilarious to you?
Pam Keith:
Because that sure isn’t hilarious to me. At the time, he was a senior enlisted person in the army. He may have had women in his unit. He may have had women who reported to him or worked with him. It's not like we don't have a sexual assault problem in the military based on the abuse of authority. We do.
Pam Keith:
So, the guys who do that are guys who think like that. That, “I get to use my authority and my power to silence you and intimidate you after I assault you.” That's what happens in the military all the time. So clearly Brian isn't part of the solution because he's part of the problem.
Pam Keith:
So, I'm looking forward to our debate on Monday to have a chat about that.
Andrea Chalupa:
We got to get you in there, Pam. We got to get you in Congress. This guy has to go. This is so dangerous. It's the mentality, it's the culture, it's the normalization. This is what we're up against. Ugh. Okay.
Pam Keith:
I did want to mention to your listeners that there's actually two Republicans on our ballot because we have one of these QAnon conspiracy theorists running as an independent. In Florida, we have closed primaries, which means that people who run as a non-party make it to the November ballot automatically.
Pam Keith:
So, we have this QAnon conspiracy theorist named K.W. Miller who is just over-the-top nutty. He's the one who claimed that Patti LaBelle is part of the Deep State and that she's being paid by Soros to bring Barack Obama back to the White House.
Pam Keith:
He claimed that Beyonce is not Black and that she's a white woman from Italy pretending to be Black to get attention. He said that the reason white women join Black Lives Matter is so that they can "fornicate with Black men." That's how wackadoodle that guy is, and he hates Brian because he thinks Brian is insufficiently supportive of Second Amendment rights.
Andrea Chalupa:
Wow.
Pam Keith:
Brain’s got an A from the NRA. But apparently right after Parkland, Brian took a hot minute to advocate an AR-15 ban. When I say hot minute, he stayed on that topic for all of 18 seconds. The NRA called him on the carpet, the GOP probably said, "Hey, we'll pull our funding if you don't shut up." He backed down and has never mentioned it again since. And Parkland happened a while ago.
Pam Keith:
I'm the candidate that's totally pro gun control. Everybody knows that. But between now, it’ll only take 2% or 3% of the vote to go to Miller for Brian to be in real trouble. That's already happened.
Andrea Chalupa:
My gosh. Okay. This is fascinating. Your district is such an interesting national snapshot. So, let's talk about Florida in terms of what's going on across Florida because you ran for U.S. Senate in Florida. You've been in every corner of that state. You've been talking to voters.
Andrea Chalupa:
A lot's been happening. There was that referendum that was passed saying that former inmates can indeed have their right to vote. Obviously, voting and the right to vote and run for office, that's a sacred right that should never be taken away.
Andrea Chalupa:
Taking away the right to vote, period–whether you're in prison or not–should just absolutely never happen. Since that was passed by voters in Florid, giving former inmates their rights back, the Florida GOP reacted by saying, “Okay, but not until they pay their fines”, Essentially enacting a poll tax, which Michael Bloomberg then swooped in and said, "Well, I'll pay it off." So, he's paying off a lot of those poll tax fees.
Andrea Chalupa:
But then the system in place to hunt down how much is owed is so archaic that it's even difficult to confirm, in many cases, how much is indeed owed. So, to even resolve those cases is difficult.
Pam Keith:
I'm going to clarify a few things that you said there, Andrea, because I think they're so important. In Florida, we pass referendums that only pass if they pass 60%, or 60, 61. So, we passed that on 67% of the vote, which takes millions of dollars and millions of hours of rote because you can only get it on the ballot through massive petitioning.
Pam Keith:
So, you have to have something like 165,000 or 175,000 petitions that are not only signed but verified, which takes millions of dollars, right? But it's the principle way that we get around a legislature that has been GOP-controlled for 20 years, right? So, if you want something, you need to do that.
Pam Keith:
Second thing that your audience needs to know is that Florida has more things that are felonies than just about any state out there. You said “inmates” but that's not accurate. Many, if not the overwhelming majority of these people who have "felony convictions" never spent a day in jail. Right? Never were inmates, aren't violent offenders of any flavor.
Pam Keith:
Many of them have non-violent drug offenses–marijuana or whatever–and many, believe it or not, the single biggest thing is driving on a suspended license. If you've gotten enough driving on a suspended license, then it escalates to a felony. In the State of Florida, if a check bounces of $250 or more, or $251, I think it is, that goes from misdemeanor to felony.
Pam Keith:
That's what it means to have a state that criminalizes the things that poor people step into and make them felons. It becomes one of the best, inherent voter suppression tools there is.
Pam Keith:
And then, when we vote to give them their rights back, then it creates this other thing, and it is not fines. Because if you're fined by a court, it's in your judgment that you've been fined $500 and you have to pay $500 into the court coffers, right?
Pam Keith:
This is fees, right? The cost for the bailiff, the cost for the court reporter, those are not placed in your documents regarding what your court order was. So, you have to go to the court and ask what their standard fee is or for one day of litigation or whatever.
Pam Keith:
So, if you were convicted 15 years ago, how do you find what the proper fee was for the half day that you were in court? That's the reason why we have an 85,000 request backlog to ascertain what the fees were, let alone pay them off.
Pam Keith:
There are some good judges out there–especially in some of our blue districts, thank God–who have just decided that they're not going to go hunting and pecking and they just assess a fee of community service or assess a fee on $1, because they can do that.
Pam Keith:
But just getting the paperwork to get before a judge is onerous. It was the most effective voter suppression tool that the GOP created and they did a very effective move to keep their tool in play, despite and in contrast to the will of the people of Florida.
Andrea Chalupa:
It's just so reminiscent of the 2000 Florida election. Katherine Harris did a massive voter scrub leading up to the 2000 election in Florida which helped tip George W. Bush into a victory in Florida.
Andrea Chalupa:
They targeted inmates or... it's always Black people. They're always targeting Black voters. It's so reminiscent of that.
Pam Keith:
I think that it has been the GOP playbook for years that the way to win is to suppress the people who don't agree with us. It has been the passivity of Democrats for years to let them do it and to not make hay about it, and to not criminalize it, and to not insist on media attention on it, and just to be gnashing our teeth about unfairness and wrongness.
Pam Keith:
If you think about what happened to Stacey Abrams for Georgia: for the good of the state or the good of the country or the good of the district, or good of continuity or stability, blatant cheating was tolerated. The problem with Michelle Obama's perspective of “when they go low, we go high”, the problem with that is that when they go low and we go high, the low road becomes the preferred road because there is no obstruction to it.
Pam Keith:
We have not put in obstruction to voter suppression, so they keep doing it and they get better and better at it, and it becomes more and more effective. That's the truth. The truth is we let them do this.
Andrea Chalupa:
What you're saying is we need to criminalize voter suppression?
Pam Keith:
If it were left to me, if you mess with somebody's vote not only do you go to jail and pay a massive fine, but you lose your right to vote forever. That is a permanent bar to ever voting yourself. Because it's not an injury to an individual, it's an injury to the democracy.
Pam Keith:
To me, voter suppression, election fraud is an injury to the United States and it should be treated that way. It should be on par with treason. If you are intentionally taking a vote from someone because they don't agree with you, if you are intentionally perpetrating a fraud on an election result to get something you want, that ought to be right up there with the most unforgivable crimes against your nation because it is exactly that: a crime against your nation. Not just against Black voters, right?
Pam Keith:
It is a crime against the intention of the founding fathers of this country, and it should be treated that way. That's my opinion.
Andrea Chalupa:
So, in terms of the current state of Florida–it's a swing state–there is massive voter disenfranchisement as historically has been. There's also election vulnerabilities with election hacking as we saw in 2016.
Andrea Chalupa:
With all of this combined, what are the chances of Biden winning Florida, and how could Biden overcome all these obstacles?
Pam Keith:
It is very hard to say. I don't know if you know who Rachel Bitecofer is. She's a data person, statistics person. She dives in and does these really deep analytical takes on things that are going on.
Pam Keith:
Her take is that Florida is Biden's to lose. I think I agree with her. We have what we need here to win in terms of votes, but we have execution issues and we have focus issues and we have resource issues.
Pam Keith:
The Republicans are treating Florida like it is the alpha and the omega of the election. They are outspending Democrats five to one here. The Democrats–especially the donor class–are obsessed with the senate, and rightly so. I'm not saying that that's wrong, I'm just saying it's ubiquitous, which means that because Florida doesn't have a Senate race it's just like we are the wicked step child of the election cycle.
Pam Keith:
We only have three, what we consider competitive pickups. We have two that are sort of border, just outside of what we consider competitive and then we have one major one that we're defending in Miami, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. That's it. That's a total of 6 out of 29 seats.
Pam Keith:
Of those six, only a handful are drawing money from out of state. Does Joe Biden's team make up the difference with hundreds of millions of dollars? Well, even if you were to say, “Yeah Bloomberg money is going to be playing here”, but it's playing in Orlando, Miami Dade and Broward. It's playing in the big media markets to buy ads.
Pam Keith:
To some extent, I guess it's augmenting other kinds of spending, but the problem is that big campaign–that gubernatorial or that senatorial that would do all the work of organizing volunteers up down in congress–that is missing.
Pam Keith:
To the extent that the Florida Democratic Party is doing grassroots work–and it is–it's doing it principally with respect to voter registration and vote by mail registration. It's not doing it in terms of getting candidates names out or connecting voters to candidates, mind you.
Pam Keith:
So, this is the problem. We are building an entire state turnout model on the degree to which people like or don't like Trump and Biden, and that's beyond foolish. Because as we've found out last night, the narrative between Trump and Biden can change on a dime.
Andrea Chalupa:
Last night being the Trump testing positive for COVID.
Pam Keith:
Right. That draws the narrative of the presidential into total whiplash chaos, right? But if I'm building rapport and name recognition and brand with the voters in my district, I'm the safe harbor for them. They're here for my success and it's my campaign that's organizing all of that.
Pam Keith:
So, we have 600 volunteers that we organize and deploy to get people to vote for me. But also at all. Right? And that's not dependent on the mood nationally, that's dependent on what's going on on the ground here locally.
Pam Keith:
Not having that local ground build is just incredibly foolhardy. I think to a certain extent that was the mistake that the Hillary team made in Florida and I'm seeing the same mistake being made now.
Pam Keith:
Florida is unusual in that it has such a diverse, caucatised minority vote. Right? It is not like Texas where the overwhelming majority of Latino voters are from Mexico or Mexican heritage. Here, we have a totally different attitude and background from the Cuban immigrants and also when those immigrants came to Florida, because if they came in their 20s and 30s, they are completely different politically than the people who came during the Bay of Pigs time, who are completely different than the people who are coming now, right? Totally different voting ideas there.
Pam Keith:
We have Dominicans who think very differently than Venezuelans, who think very differently than Guatemalans. Complete, radically different world views. And we don't seem to have the kind of pocketized messaging that's effective with that kind of diversity.
Pam Keith:
The Haitians don't want to be viewed as same as native Black here. Neither, by the way, do Jamaicans or Bahamians. Don't confuse Jamaicans with Bohemians or Trinidad and Tobago immigrants. They don't want to be viewed as the same.
Pam Keith:
The tough nut to crack in Florida–in terms of mobilizing from the ground–is that it requires not only a tremendous amount of resources but also it requires a tremendous amount of local knowledge and pocketed communication, which the party never seems to be able to unpack.
Pam Keith:
It seems to have this one size fits all Latino engagement model that works in Nevada but will really not work here. That's why the congressionals and the gubernatorials and so forth provide that kind of local intelligence about how to talk to these pockets of votes.
Pam Keith:
That's being just completely cannibalized in this election cycle because we just don't have that big eye popping race that brings money to Florida. On election night, if Florida is in the red column, what does election night look like?
Pam Keith:
Let's think about the strategy of the GOP here. Their goal is to put Florida in the red and then attack the late count midwest states who are going to be counting ballots after election day. Then they're going to try to force courts to stop the vote counts, throw out those ballots, say that they are fraudulent or whatever. They're building that narrative right now. Right now they're building that narrative. Right?
Pam Keith:
So, if Florida is in the blue column on election night, none of that other stuff matters, right? They're not going to win if Florida is in the blue. But the whole thing is now in jeopardy if Florida is in the red. So, when I'm on call time calling donors all over the country and I'm saying, "Hey, we need your help here." They're like, "Oh, congress is good. I'm not giving congress. I'm only giving to the Senate and Joe." I get that literally over and over and over and over again. I'm like, "Yeah, but Florida is still 29 electoral votes." Don't think of me as a Congressional candidate; think of me as the Senate candidate for Florida, because this campaign is the one that's going to do the pocketized, local, savvy work to turn out those votes.
Pam Keith:
If that's what we need to win Florida, then this is the campaign that's doing that.
Andrea Chalupa:
Wow. So how can people listening get involved? How can they get involved to help your campaign?
Pam Keith:
First and foremost, go to the website, find out more about me. But second of all, go to Facebook. We have a great Facebook page–I hate Facebook but we do have a Facebook page–called Go Pam Volunteers. Go Pam Volunteers. That is how you can interface with the campaign by doing text-to-voter. We are very, very robust with text-to-voter.
Pam Keith:
We have note cards, we have letters to voters and of course we have own thinking, which is incredibly impactful. We are a campaign that will be getting on the ground and door knocking and being on the ground in the community.
Pam Keith:
I know there's risk involved. I know we're going to do everything we can to be COVID safe, but we're just not going to foreclose the most effective way to involve people in politics, and ask them to believe that their candidate actually gives a damn about them, and I do, so we're going to be out there.
Pam Keith:
So, if you're interested in that, please go to Go Pam Volunteers. Of course, resources, resources, resources. We got to pay canvassers in this day and age. So, if you have a few spare bucks you can go to PamKeithFL.com, my website. PamKeithFL, for the state of Florida, .com, and give what you can. If it's $5, it's impactful. If it's $50, it makes a difference. If it's $500, it makes a difference. Every contribution is an act of resistance and an act of salvage of our future.
Pam Keith:
So, a $1 contribution is a $1 drop that loads the buckets towards salvation of our country. Enough drops fill a bucket and the bucket tips the scale and the scale comes our way. So, I feel the thing that's going to save this country is us. It isn't going to be the courts, it isn't going to be the media, it isn't going to be the Congress, it's not going to be the Senate, it's going to be us, and everybody has to deputize themselves as a warrior in the salvation of our country because nobody else is going to be deputize you to do that. It's up to us.
Andrea Chalupa:
Thank you so much Pam Keith for that urgent reminder. Grassroots power is the only reliable power we have left. So, please go to PamKeithFL, FL for Florida. PamKeithFL.com. Make a donation. Go to the Facebook page and make some phone calls, send some texts. We need Pam in Congress and we need to win Florida. Win Florida. Save the world.
Pam Keith:
Exactly. Win Florida and better yet, help me win, and a progressive, Black, woman, veteran will walk over to Man-a-Lago on election night and tell Donald Trump he's fired. Now isn't that delicious?
Andrea Chalupa:
[laughs] Video or it didn't happen. All right, Pam. You are amazing, and thank you so much for all the work you're doing. It's so inspiring and we're excited to share your message with the world.
Pam Keith:
Thank you. Thank you for what you are doing. Thank you for speaking truth and keeping people cognizant of the risks. Nothing that you guys have said, nothing that I have said on Twitter two years ago and three years ago has been patently disproved to the contrary.
Pam Keith:
What Sarah has been screeching about from the mountain tops and I have been echoing to my Twitter feed is that we are in danger. She has been educating people up, down, and sideways about the risks. So, I want to personally extend my gratitude to her and to you. You are not just bloggers and you are not just activists. You are patriots and I am honored to have been on this show.
Andrea Chalupa:
Our discussion continues and you can get access to that by signing up on our Patreon, at the Truth-teller level or higher.
Sarah Kendzior:
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Andrea Chalupa:
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Andrea Chalupa:
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Andrea Chalupa:
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