Latest / Breaking The Meta / She Reported a Colonel at 20 and Paid For It. Now She's Running for Congress. | Maura Keller

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She Reported a Colonel at 20 and Paid For It. Now She's Running for Congress. | Maura Keller · Breaking The Meta

• Breaking The Meta: Hello everyone and welcome to Breaking the Meta. My name is Mike Wintz and today we are sitting down with Maura Keller who is running for Georgia's third congressional district, United States congressional district. Hello, how are you doing today? Maura Keller For Congress: I'm doing good, how are you? Breaking The Meta: I'm doing great. I'm excited to sit down and talk to you about what you hope to do for your district. how about we start out by learning a little bit about you if you wouldn't mind letting us know a little bit about who you are and why you decided to run for Congress in the first place. Maura Keller For Congress: Okay, great. So ⁓ I am a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel. I spent 26 years in the military. I started off as enlisted as a military policewoman and worked my way up the ranks. Once I retired, I did about 12 years as an independent contractor, working on projects and studies mainly for the Undersecretary of Defense for Personal and Readiness and the Chief of the Army Reserve. And then I got another degree. And I became a nuclear medicine technologist. And as I worked at various hospitals, I finally got my dream job, which was the VA, because I really wanted to get back with my vets. And those of us that have been in the military, you know, when we see problems, we see issues, we just don't ignore them. We acknowledge them. We come up with solutions. And I was constantly, you know, bringing these solutions to the leadership. And they were going nowhere. Breaking The Meta: Well, there you go. Okay. Yep. Maura Keller For Congress: And when I, you know, when I would do my patients and they would tell me some of the problems that they were experiencing, I would work them. And I thought, you know what, for everyone that I'm helping, there's another 50, another hundred, another thousand of you. So I finally thought, you know, I can't be mad all the time because nothing's getting done. That is why I decided to run for Congress. I'm originally from Massachusetts and no way. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Same. I grew up in Beverly. Maura Keller For Congress: Where? Born in Quincy, raised in South Weymouth. Okay. ⁓ I left at 17 when I joined the military, but I've lived here in Georgia for 30 years. So I really now consider myself a Georgian ⁓ with a New England accent. Wicked. Yeah. Along with other things. Breaking The Meta: There you go. Yeah. There you go. You still use the word wicked on things, right? Yeah. It's interesting that you talk about when you mentioned that as a military ⁓ veteran or just a member of the military, you see a problem and you go to fix a problem. cannot tell you the number of veterans that are running for office is mind boggling. I'm ecstatic about it. just wasn't expecting the number of people that are running that are veterans that have the same kind of mentality. They're like, we see this problem. We don't see anyone stepping up. So we're doing it. ⁓ Everywhere from Gen Z former tank commanders to ⁓ Air Force pilots who were working who were partially retired working in schools and were like, Nope, we got to do this. So it's, it's just amazing to me to see that. And so I just wanted to say what I thought you would be interested in knowing that because so but ⁓ Maura Keller For Congress: And that's, you know, the thing is we have served and we know what it's like to serve. We also know what it's like to work with everybody from all over. So this partisanship for many of us is very difficult because you're like, man, why are we not getting anything done because of the partisanship? And I was thinking because I do know some other people that are running that are friends. And I thought, man, if we got in. how we could make a difference because we could actually work together, solve problems, not use them as political talking points forever, and move on to the next thing. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Speaking of problems, ⁓ would you mind giving us an idea of, in your district, what the common pain points you hear when you go around and talk to people ⁓ as you are letting them know who you are and talk to Maura Keller For Congress: What was interesting is I ran this is my second run. I ran last year and on a positive note when they gerrymandered they gerrymandered my district. They were so kind to give me two additional red counties as well as they took away some of my blue. But we moved the needle three more points Democratic. So that was a good tell. When when I was going around I on a side note. The rural areas have been ignored for way too long. ⁓ Breaking The Meta: Mm. Wow. Yep. Maura Keller For Congress: But I heard the same things of affordability because people could, the younger folks could not afford the rents. They couldn't afford a home. My older folks that wanted to down, they couldn't cause there was no place for them to go to. And so that was a big thing. When it came to women's healthcare, we'll just say the OBGYN, I have deserts out of my 15 counties. have six of them that don't even have OB-GYNs because they won't come here to Georgia. Because of the heartbeat bill that we have, they don't wanna lose their license, they don't wanna go to jail, and they don't wanna pay hefty fines. So it's hard for some of the women. I've got rural hospitals that are being targeted for closure, where the people are gonna have to be traveling huge amount of distances. ⁓ Breaking The Meta: Wow. Mm-hmm. Maura Keller For Congress: And of course, affordability of the groceries. And way back then, I did a video ⁓ of, if I made 10 bucks an hour, I went to Walmart and I said, okay, this is what I'm buying. And I said, by the time the day is done, the week is done, I haven't even bought gas. I haven't even bought a week's worth ⁓ of anything my kids would need. And so it's like, I understand what it is you're going through. Because I got to say, when I was enlisted and I was a parent and there was a time that I was a single parent, I knew what it was like to live paycheck to paycheck. So I want them to know I hear them. Now I walked away and I still have them, five, three and a half inch binders. People would come up to me and tell me the problems and the issues. You know, then you still got the school and my farmers. I've got a huge farming community. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Maura Keller For Congress: And again, they feel ignored. So those are the big things here in the District of Georgia. Breaking The Meta: ⁓ One of the other issues that I think is very high on a lot of people's mind, and it doesn't matter whether you're progressive or conservative, right, left, it doesn't matter, is this idea of accountability or the lack thereof when it comes to our ⁓ current politicians in state and federal level. So my question to you is what does the idea of accountability mean to you? does having, what is being held accountable by your district look like to you? Maura Keller For Congress: having the district be part of, I mean, they are, they are, I'm looking at it like a coalition. You know, I am their voice. We, we've got to stop allowing DC to dictate to us what we want. We need to be able to dictate to them, this is, this is what we want. This is what we need. These are our expectations. I'm trying to look at being on committees that actually affect the district so that allows them to have a voice at the table. ⁓ Like right now, I'm trying to find ways that I can actually sit down and talk to folks. And it is in some cases difficult because I do not want to, I hate this democratic bubble that we seem to be in. I need to be out there to talk to people. They need to be part of the solution. Like go back to farming. Do I know anything about farming? Absolutely not. But If I sit down with you and you tell me what I need to know, if you take the time to teach me, then I can be your voice. accountability. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Yeah. Maura Keller For Congress: In the, I don't know if this would be along that line, but as a female in the military, I was not, not mentored. So I would have to, you know, look at people for their positive traits and try to make them mine. It was my Vietnam vets that took me under their wing and they were going to teach me to be a good officer. And there's two bits of information they gave me. Number one, never forget where you came from. Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Mm. Maura Keller For Congress: And number two, always remember that the decisions you make or don't make are going to affect that soldier in the field. That has been like my North Star in everything that I have ever done. And so I am accountable to them. I have to be looking out for them. And that's how I looked at it. I took care of my soldiers. I took care of my patients. And now I want to take care of the people of the district. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. I definitely feel like there is this also a lack of accountability in terms of Congress holding themselves accountable when things are going on. How do you see if you ⁓ get to represent the third district in Georgia, how you will try and start bringing back the idea of accountability within Congress itself? Maura Keller For Congress: You have to call out bad behavior. And I don't see that happening. And I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror at the end of the day. That was something my dad always said. If you can look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and say you did everything you could, this is great. If not, you better recalculate where you went wrong and figure out how you're not going to make that same mistake again tomorrow. That's, that's the way I look at it. To me that Breaking The Meta: Mm. Maura Keller For Congress: should not be a task, but apparently it is for a lot of people. One thing, I don't have a problem speaking out and I have no problem speaking out because right now the current administration, ⁓ they're only looking for the approval of one man. They're not looking for the approval of the people of their district. And here's what I see as the problem. The people end up then giving up. They feel like, vote? Why even call my congressmen? They're not listening. They're not answering. And so to me, accountability for them is vote them out. They haven't earned their pay. They're not doing what their job is supposed to be, which is to serve the people. Breaking The Meta: Hmm. So you talked about ⁓ the idea of working across the aisle, working with people you disagree with, things of that nature. What has been the response as you've walked around, as you've gone around your districts and talked with people who are consistently Republican voters, but in the end, we know that we all have kind of the same pain points, whether we are Republican or Democrat. But what is it like when you talk to them, especially when they see you got a D next to your name? Maura Keller For Congress: It's all over the board. I had a, I was talking to an army vet about a week ago and we were having a great conversation. And then he found out I was running and he said, what side of the aisle are you on? And I said, well, I'm on the democratic ticket. He said, why are you not running as a Republican? And I said, because I'm not a Republican. He goes, do you know how many votes you could get? Breaking The Meta: Ha ha ha ha ha. Maura Keller For Congress: Honey, I said, we had a good conversation. And he says, yeah. And I says, and we were agreeing on everything. He goes, yeah, I will never vote for a Democrat. So that's him. But then I've actually received emails from people to say, Mara, I didn't vote for you, but I'll vote for you now. Because this was not what we got is not what I expected. And... So those are the folks that I have to be able to reach and let them know that I am not looking at it through a partisan lens, that I'm looking at it that everybody in the district is part of the solution. Breaking The Meta: This last year, speaking of things not happening as we thought they were going to happen, this last year as a whole has been very difficult, especially in the United States regarding our things like our foreign policy, our place at the table. For the last 80 years, we have been at the head of the table and it feels like in the last year, we're getting kicked off the table, ⁓ whether you're talking tariffs or Venezuela or Greenland. or a bunch of other things. Regardless of what this administration thinks, we are not going to come out of this at the same place on the world stage that we did. How do you see America having to move forward in regards to our foreign policy and our interactions with our allies to try and reverse a lot of what has been destroyed? Maura Keller For Congress: It's going to take a long time for us to mend with our allies. ⁓ Because we saw some of it during Trump's first administration. Here, we're looking at it where they know where they stand with people like him. They're fearful because we don't know. when he's gone, what the next Republican president will be. Will he finish it off or not? ⁓ So like I say, it's going to take a long time. They will definitely be looking at us like, yeah, I hear what you're saying, but we're not going to put all our eggs in the basket again with you guys. Absolutely not. You look at, you know, Hegseth. I mean, they don't believe truly. in Article 5 with NATO. They don't believe, or he doesn't believe in the Geneva Convention. He believes that puts too many restrictions on our service members. You see him having Trump pardon three people of war crimes right after the January 6th folks. So where is accountability within ourselves? And this is what the other countries are looking at. If you go and look at the America First Policy Institute for the America First, what they're following, one of the things is we will no longer promote democracy. And when I read that, I'm like, that is crazy. To me, their fingers are on the trigger too fast and there's no more diplomacy. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is definitely frightening. I've said multiple times that I've wondered at this point, how can any ally or former ally trust any deal we make won't get flipped around? Even if we get a Democratic president in 2028, if we get a Republican president in 2032, they can do the exact same thing if we continue to run this country in the same way that we're currently running it. Maura Keller For Congress: Totally agree. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. So I want to do a little bit of future casting, if you wouldn't mind. ⁓ So I don't know if you are you running against anyone in the primary or are you the only one running? Maura Keller For Congress: ⁓ jeez, okay. I am running against someone who doesn't seem to be doing much. So I don't know. We'll find out when we ⁓ first week of March, we have to pay our money to get on the ballot. Breaking The Meta: Gotcha. So if you are running against anyone, you get through the primary, you get through the Georgia primary, ⁓ November 2nd comes along, you win the general election. ⁓ January 2nd comes along, you are sworn in as Congresswoman of the third district of Georgia. What is the first thing that you do? Maura Keller For Congress: Ooh, first thing. Well, one of the things was the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. I want to finally, put that out there. Let's get that passed. The second one, I would like to see the Equal Rights Amendment finally passed after over a hundred years. Those are two things I would really like to see happen. Breaking The Meta: Hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I definitely can't argue any of that. ⁓ There's obviously a lot of problems that we are dealing with in this country and a lot of pain. And some of that pain has made it that we cannot, we feel like we can't talk to each other in the same way that we used to. So how do you see, and maybe the answer is there isn't, but how do you see going forward if you get in a position like this, how do see us being able to heal all of this pain that has, all of what has been broken in this country where we've gotten to this point? Sorry to give you such a big one. I see so much pain and we always talk about unity and we always talk about healing and I just wonder how people think that we can get that. Maura Keller For Congress: Again, that'll be something that's going to take a little bit of time, you know, because we have, I see the environment right now where we are definitely putting people into all these categories and their categories are then, it's like a self-worth. put women, we're seeing what's happening, you know, the degradation of women. We see the degradation of black and brown people. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Maura Keller For Congress: We see our LGBTQ community. You know, as we were all coming together and everybody was being able to be given the same opportunities, we're seeing those opportunities be shredded. So we have to find a way to be able to bring that back that we were, America was made up of so many different people. And those of us that have been in the military, we've worked with people from all over. Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Maura Keller For Congress: And it's hard for us to see that we have to not like this group or not like that group. So it's going to take a lot, a lot to kind of bring us back together again, because the genie's out of the bottle. We allow racism to be right out in front of you. We allow misogyny to be right out in front of you. So we have to figure this out. Breaking The Meta: Do you see our leadership, specifically our government's inability to work together and at least the way that they interact in the public eye as an expansion of the problem that we currently have, which could also mean a potential start of the fix of the problem if we can get to that point? Maura Keller For Congress: I mean, just look from whether it be the military or some of our government agencies, how the leadership, the safeguards have been removed and they're being replaced with yes people and people that will do what they're told. That's not what America was. Departments were independent so we could have trust and faith in them. And now we are all just kind of melded into one and Congress isn't doing their job. They're happy. They're happy to do whatever he wants. And with him creating all these executive orders and them not saying or doing anything, they're like, okay. ⁓ we see the same thing with the Senate. So it's all become one big glob. And then again, all these, the judicial system, my God, they are no longer independent. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. For those of you that are listening, ⁓ on the day that we're recording this is the day that Pam Bondi had her hearing in front of the House Judicial Committee. And hoo boy, was it wild. ⁓ It did not make me feel very secure in our judicial system ⁓ right now. ⁓ for anyone who has listened to everything that you've said that everything that we've talked about and gotten this far, if you were to give them ⁓ or two things that you would want to make sure no matter ⁓ they heard that they came away with knowing about you and your campaign, what would that be? Maura Keller For Congress: can't be bought. And that and that sounds cliche because a lot of politicians say that. But my word is my bond. And my integrity, my character and my moral values cannot be compromised. ⁓ Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Maura Keller For Congress: There was a situation in the military when I was a young lieutenant and I reported ⁓ illegal activity that was going on. And when I went to go report it, I was a single parent and I was told who are they going to believe a lieutenant or a colonel? And they, and they, and this individual, the IG said, I know this guy. I think he's great. So I had to step back and say, Mara, what you're about to do will just absolutely tank your career. But my values said, I can't allow this to continue because if I don't say anything, I am as complicit as them. So I did, I reported it. The retribution that followed my career, ⁓ let's just say it was a lot. It followed me throughout. The allegations were proven. But the thing I want you to walk away with, I did that with so much at stake. And I didn't allow my personal feelings to say, I don't see any of this, it doesn't exist, and then move on. I did what had to be done, knowing the consequences to it, but I did it. I did that at 20. I can still do it now. So nobody has to worry about me not making the right decisions. Wrong is wrong, and I'll go ahead and I'll make it right. Breaking The Meta: If anyone who's listening wants to learn more about you or support you, whether ⁓ volunteering or donations, where can they find you? Maura Keller For Congress: please, it's marakeller.com and you can go and donate securely through ActBlue. We do not take PAC, we don't have PAC money, we don't have lobbyist money. ⁓ My person that I'm running with already has a million dollars. So everything I do, I consider myself like the coupon clipper campaign. We will do what we can with the small dollar donations that we get, but we will make that go far. Breaking The Meta: the Maura Keller For Congress: and we will use that very, very wisely. Breaking The Meta: Maura, thank you for sitting down with us and letting us get to know you and about your campaign and what you hope to do for your district in Georgia. I really do appreciate it. Maura Keller For Congress: Thank you for this opportunity. I appreciate you. Breaking The Meta: Absolutely. For anyone that's listened and gone this far, if you like what you've heard, please consider hitting all those buttons down below. Like, share, subscribe, all of this stuff. It really does help me and make it possible for me to do what I'm doing. Also know that one of the reasons that I'm doing this and I'm interviewing all of these progressives that want to make changes, that aren't taking PAC money, that ⁓ want to break the status quo, that want to make real change is they're doing what we've been asking for years to do. We want to get money out of politics. We want things to change. We want to be able to trust our government again. ⁓ These people are doing it the right way. And ⁓ we need to start doing stuff that can help, which means watching videos and helping visibility and name recognition. So that's not just my videos, it's their videos. ⁓ Those are kind of things you can do that are free. All they take is a little bit of your time to watch and share. especially if you know people in their districts, that helps obviously even more. So please consider liking, sharing and spreading this, Mara's and everyone else's ⁓ content because this is how we get the change that we've been screaming for. And just a quick thing, if you don't know much about ⁓ Breaking the Meta, this podcast is all about having hard conversations when necessary, breaking the status quo and fighting for the idea that all people, no matter your race, religion, gender or identity, get rights, respect, dignity, and safety. Mara, thank you again for being here. I appreciate you and everyone else. We'll see you next time on Breaking the Meta. Bye guys. Maura Keller For Congress: Thank you.