Latest / Blue Dog Radio / The Incumbents: Four Blue Dog Races That Could Decide the House

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The Incumbents: Four Blue Dog Races That Could Decide the House · Blue Dog Radio

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome back to Blue Dog Radio.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: Over the last couple of years, we've traveled around the country talking with people who represent places that can feel very far away from Washington.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_03: Timber County in Southwest Washington, farm towns in California's Central Valley, Wine County, Wildfire County, rural Northern California, the Rio Grande Valley, and the Gulf Coast of South Texas.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: Different economies, different histories, different politics.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: But spend enough time in those places and a pattern starts to emerge.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: The members of Congress who last tend to know the small stuff.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: They know which bridge needs replacing because they've driven over it.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: They know why the local hospital can't recruit nurses.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: They know what happens when the mill shuts down, or the canal runs dry, or the fire station can't staff enough trained workers.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: And this fall, several blue dog incumbents are facing some of the most consequential races in the country.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: Marie Glusencamp Perez in Southwest Washington, Adam Gray in California's Central Valley, Mike Thompson in Northern California, and Vicente Gonzalez in South Texas.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: The four races look nothing alike.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: One is a classic swing seat fight.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: One features an incumbent who won his first term by 187 votes.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: One pits two Democrats against each other.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: And one is happening in a district Republicans deliberately redrew to become much harder for a Democrat to hold.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: Over this episode, we're going to take a trip through all four.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: What has each incumbent actually done?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: Who is trying to replace them?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: And what do these races tell us about the places where control of the next Congress may be ultimately decided?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: Let's start in Southwest Washington.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_07: There may be no member of Congress whose political identity is more closely tied to the everyday life of her district than Marie Glusenkamp Perez.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_07: She came to Washington as an auto shop owner from rural Scamania County, talking about trades, timber, right to repair, small businesses, and the cost of actually making things in America.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_07: Three years later, the race for her seat still looks about as competitive as American politics gets.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_07: Every public poll has kept this race on a knife's edge.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_07: Her opponent John Braun held just a one-point edge in both the July Emerson survey and the late September OPB DHM poll.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_07: While outside race ratings have shifted modestly towards Perez, the latest OPB poll put Braun at 48% and Perez at 47% after leaners, well inside its 4.2 point margin of error.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_07: Braun is a serious challenger.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_07: He is the Republican leader in the Washington State Senate, a former Navy officer, and the president of Braun Northwest, a company that builds ambulances and emergency vehicles in southwest Washington.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_07: And, like Marie, he likes to talk about the experience of building things.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_07: And that overlap makes this race interesting.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_07: Two candidates are both trying to claim some version of the factory floor, but the closer you look, the distinctions become clearer.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_07: Take the war in Iran.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_07: During their October debate, Braun acknowledged that the conflict should not continue indefinitely and said the United States needs a clear ending point.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_07: But his answer stopped short of the kind of categorical opposition that Perez offered.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_07: Perez pointed to six votes she had already cast opposing the president's war and said there was no ambiguity about where she stood.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_11: And I would not support an open-ended war with no clear objectives to end it.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_11: This is a hard problem.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_11: We should acknowledge that.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_11: We want a good solution, but we cannot extend this war without clear, a clear ending point.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_11: And we don't have that right now.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Then the senator has said repeatedly that he doesn't know how he'd vote, that he needs to get inside the president's head before he can decide if this war was a good choice for our community.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Look, you're never going to get inside the president's head.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need to get inside the president's head to be a representative and reflect the lived reality here on the ground that people are losing their shirts right now.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: I have voted against the president's war six times.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: There's no point of uh murkiness or complication.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: This war has been a disaster for our families at home, for our military families, for our geopolitical security.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Every time that I'm thinking about our geopolitical engagements, the questions is does it increase our security and prosperity at home?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_07: That is a useful snapshot of the contrast.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_07: Braun is trying to present himself as a Republican who can occasionally create daylight between himself and the National Party.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_07: He has criticized Trump's broad tariff policy, for example, saying the aluminum tariffs have increased costs for his own manufacturing company.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_07: But Trump has endorsed him, and Braun has said he agrees with the president on many other issues.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_07: Perez has built her own brand of independence differently.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_07: Sometimes it means voting with Republicans, sometimes it means voting against Democratic leadership, and sometimes it means going home when something terrible happens.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_07: In May, 11 workers were killed at the Nippon Dinawave paper mill in Longview when a massive chemical tank failed.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_07: It became one of the deadliest workplace disasters in the country in years.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_07: Later, federal investigators disclosed that an inspection contractor had deemed the tank unfit for continued service 10 months before the failure.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_07: For the families in Longview, it was 11 empty chairs, hundreds of workers suddenly unsure whether they still had a paycheck.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_07: Perez pushed the company to continue paying employees while the investigation went forward.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_07: Then she went back to Washington and won an appropriations committee amendment adding more than$5 million and restoring the chemical safety board to its full$14 million funding level after the administration had proposed eliminating the agency's funding entirely.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_07: That is the independent federal agency investigating what happened in Longview.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is their lives.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is their land.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is their livelihoods.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: The mill workers I've talked to want full accountability.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: They want a comprehensive, unbiased investigation into how this could have happened so the failures can be addressed, so we can have safe jobs, come home to our families at night, and rebuild public trust.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_07: By August, she was back in Longview meeting with pulp and paperworkers, talking about mill jobs, workplace safety, and whether those jobs could remain both durable and safe.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_07: There is another piece of Braun's own record that deserves examination precisely because he makes private sector management such a large part of his case for office.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_07: In August of 2024, a 61-year-old employee at Braun Northwest was killed after a co-worker started and moved a newly built ambulance while the employee was underneath it.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_07: The fatal accident is documented in OSHA Records.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_07: Braun has disputed campaign criticism of his handling of the death, saying he spoke with the worker's son in person that day.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_07: When a candidate says the way he runs a manufacturing company is evidence of how he would operate in Congress, the workplace record of that company becomes rather relevant.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_07: Braun wants voters to judge his management.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_07: Perez wants voters to judge her representation.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_07: And in Southwest Washington, representation is increasingly meant being present for things nobody wants to happen.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_07: A mill disaster, a trade fight, a war overseas with consequences for military families at home.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_07: Perez has also spent her time in Congress doing less dramatic work that rarely makes cable news.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_07: Her office has pointed to millions recovered for constituents, navigating federal agencies, local project funding, and legislation focused on forestry and the trades.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_07: The work fits the political identity she arrived with.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_07: Fix what is in front of you.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_07: And right now, the clearest question in this district may be one of continuity.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_07: The federal investigation into the Longview disaster is still part of the community's life.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_07: The mill still matters, and the workers still matter.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_07: And the question of what happens next will extend beyond Election Day.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: It is about building something that is a reflection of your values, things that last, things that matter to people.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And not just the dollars and cents it takes to get there, but the manifestation of our culture and the heritage and the people who think about how many people in your family had to pinch their fingers in the door hinge to get you to the place where you are today.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: And being proud of that and saying that, like that's that's what is the wealth of our nation and it is reflected in the built environment around us.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_07: From Southwest Washington, we head south into the Central Valley of California.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_07: Adam Gray's first election to Congress took a month to decide.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_07: When the counting finally ended in 2024, Gray had won by 187 votes.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_07: Two years earlier, he had lost the same seat by 564.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_07: If there is a politician in America who understands the value of a single precinct, a single town, or a single family deciding to show up, it's probably Adam Gray.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_07: We spent time with Gray in the Central Valley earlier this year, and if there was one theme that followed him around, it was hard work, water systems, agriculture, medical access, roads, flood protection, things that either function or don't.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_07: Since arriving in Congress, that orientation has shown up in his legislative record.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_07: In February, Gray announced more than$16 million for 15 projects around the district.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_07: That money included flood protection, water and wastewater infrastructure, public safety improvements, roads and sidewalks.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_07: And Gray's explanation was refreshingly mundane.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_07: A bay door opening correctly at a fire station may sound small in Washington, DC, but it matters when you are waiting for the truck.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_07: And that is the gray argument in miniature.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_07: Government should work where people can see it.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_04: But because we actually live in a world where you have to fix problems, you gotta fix them now.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_04: And particularly in dairy, you know, if you're not familiar with dairy, dairy is run 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_04: And when something breaks, you don't call and schedule somebody for next Tuesday.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_04: You just have to fix it.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that's an attitude that we need a lot more of in our politics and in our policy making, which is just solve problems.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_07: He has also tried to carry that instinct into legislation.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_07: He also passed three bipartisan bills through the House with Republican co-authors, one dealing with rural telehealth, one with wildfire smoke regulation, and one aimed at streamlining geothermal development.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_07: That bipartisan label matters less than what the bills are actually about.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_07: It's a rural family being able to see a doctor, farmers planning around federal policy, communities breathing wildfire smoke, energy infrastructure.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_07: The Central Valley tends to turn national arguments into very physical problems, and the district Gray represents has also changed.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_07: California's new congressional map pulls part of Stockton into the 13th district and makes the seat somewhat more Democratic than the version Gray won by 187 votes.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_07: His Republican opponent is Kevin Lincoln, the former mayor of Stockton and a Marine veteran.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_07: Lincoln is a credible opponent with a biography that will make sense to plenty of voters.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_07: He talks about public safety, taxes, the border, and affordability.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_07: So a useful question here is not whether Lincoln has a resume, because he does.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_07: The question is what each candidate has chosen to make central.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_07: Gray's first term has been relentless in its specificity to his district: water treatment, fire stations, farm policy, rural health care, flood control.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_07: And Lincoln's pitch is more closely aligned with the broader Republican national agenda.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_07: That is a legitimate contrast for voters to examine.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_05: Also focusing on economic development opportunities through workforce development opportunities, making sure that our region is strong, making sure our region has uh the workforce uh to continue to move it, move it forward.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_07: Then come back immediately to the local record.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_07: Gray represents a place where water is politics, whether anyone wants it to be or not.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_07: Every gallon diverted, stored, pumped, or withheld eventually becomes somebody's livelihood and problem.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_07: This summer he introduced a bipartisan permitting bill aimed at speeding certain infrastructure projects while retaining key clean water act provisions.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_07: His argument was that years-long permitting uncertainty creates direct costs for farmers, water districts, and communities.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_07: It's not a particularly sexy brand of politics, which may be part of the point.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_07: When we talked to Gray, he kept coming back to a simple distinction between fighting and working.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_07: Washington is very good at producing fights.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_07: A congressional district eventually needs someone to bring something home.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_04: People have to stop this constant fighting and start working to actually improve people's lives, and that's the example I've tried to set by finding opportunities for bipartisan legislation.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_04: And I think we need to be laser focused on making life more affordable.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_07: That idea matters because California 13 is a place where congressional margins have been absurdly small.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_07: Grays lost it once, and then he won it.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_07: And now he is running in a somewhat different district against a former mayor with national Republican support.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_07: The race may have changed, but the test has not.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_07: Can a member make the federal government useful enough that people recognize the work when they see it?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_07: Time will tell.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_07: From the Central Valley, we head north, past Sacramento, into a congressional race where both names on the November ballot belong to Democrats.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_07: Mike Thompson has represented Northern California in Congress for nearly three decades.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_07: In that time, he has helped deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in wildfire relief and flood protection, authored a disaster relief program that has sent billions to farmers hit by fires, drought, and other natural disasters, and helped protect more than a million acres of California public land.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_07: He has used his seniority on ways and means to steer federal resources back to Northern California.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_07: He has also been a leading house voice on gun violence legislation while remaining a lifelong hunter and gun owner.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_07: His experience has translated into tangible results for the communities he represents.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_07: His opponent, Eric Jones, is 35 years old.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_07: He has never held elected office.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_07: He is a former venture capitalist who moved to Napa in 2021.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_07: California's official party preference history lists him as a San Francisco Democrat through 2025 and a Napa County Democrat beginning that year.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_07: Most staggeringly, he has spent an extraordinary amount of his own money trying to replace Thompson.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_07: Days ago, Jones put another$4.8 million into the race, bringing his personal investment in his own campaign to roughly$14.8 million.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_07: It's a California record for self-funding a U.S.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_07: House campaign.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_07: His estimated net worth is as much as$86 million.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_07: And that fact matters because Jones has made money in politics one of the central moral arguments of his candidacy.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_07: He talks constantly about corporate PACs and special interests.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_07: He says his financial independence allows him to reject them.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_07: And there is a fairly obvious second side to that equation.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_07: It's obviously easier to refuse corporate PAC money when you have nearly$15 million of your own money available to spend on becoming a member of Congress.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_07: Jones's campaign had reported more than$18 million in total receipts by mid-October, and more than$16 million already spent.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_07: Thompson's argument is rooted in what he knows best.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_07: He says, experience matters.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_08: We need someone who knows what they're doing.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_07: The distinction becomes clearer when you look at what Thompson means by experience.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_07: Northern California is a place where congressional work can become painfully tangible.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_07: Wildfires destroy houses, smoke destroys crops, floods move through communities.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_07: A bankruptcy at a food processor can suddenly leave family farms without buyers.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_07: Thompson helped pass federal tax relief so qualifying wildfire survivors would not have to pay income tax on settlement money intended to rebuild their lives.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_07: When Del Monte's bankruptcy left California peach growers facing the collapse of long-term contracts, Thompson joined the push for emergency federal assistance.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_07: He sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, one of the places where tax, healthcare, and economic policy actually get written.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_07: And that kind of leverage takes time to accumulate.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_07: Jones's career before politics was spent accumulating a very different kind of leverage.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_07: He was one of the earliest employees and eventually a partner at Dragon Ear Investment Group, the San Francisco venture capital firm where he focused heavily on healthcare and technology investments.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_07: One of the companies he backed was Carbon Health, where Jones joined the board in 2021.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_07: This year, California's Attorney General announced a proposed$4.5 million settlement with Carbon Health and its co-founder over allegations that included false advertising, improper billing, overcharges, double billing, and unlawful corporate control over medical practices.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_07: For a candidate running heavily on the idea that corporate power has corrupted Washington and healthcare, his own career inside venture-backed healthcare deserves some scrutiny.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_07: And Jones's politics have become harder to neatly categorize as the campaign has gone on.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_07: He entered the race with progressive support, and then he finished a distant second to Thompson in the June primary and began aggressively courting the Republican voters left without a candidate in November.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_07: The Republican who finished just behind Jones ended up endorsing him.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_07: Jones's own campaign says that Republican came to him with expectations around fiscal discipline and local infrastructure that Jones listened, engaged, and agreed to, and quotes Jones as saying, I have made commitments that I intend to keep.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_07: There is nothing inherently wrong with engaging across party lines.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_07: Blue dogs have been doing that for years, but it is worth paying attention to how a candidate changes or the promises he makes while trying to win a race.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_07: And the contrast here is ultimately less glamorous than old versus young.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_07: One candidate has spent decades building a record in his district.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_07: The other has spent barely five years living in Napa and is spending nearly$15 million of his own fortune trying to convince voters that longevity itself is the problem.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_07: Thompson's supporters point to wildfire tax relief, agricultural assistance, telehealth, constituent work, and seniority on ways and means.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_07: Jones asks voters to believe a newcomer can arrive with big ideas and wind in his sails.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_07: And Thompson's answer is that this particular moment, with wars abroad, economic uncertainty at home, and a house where a handful of votes can decide almost everything, is a strange time to throw away experience simply because experience has become unfashionable.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_08: I'm running for re-election because we need the best team on the field.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_08: We need people that can fight this president, can fight his mega enablers, someone who's battle tested, someone who's experienced, and someone who is effective.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_08: This is not the time for on-the-job training.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_07: After almost 30 years, voters have plenty of evidence with which to judge Mike Thompson.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_07: He has built relationships, seniority, and the ability to get things done.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_07: Eric Jones is asking them to take a much larger bet on someone they have barely had the chance to know.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_07: Our last stop takes us more than 1,500 miles southeast.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_07: Back to South Texas.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_07: South Texas has become one of the most politically scrutinized regions in America.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_07: Every election cycle brings another national theory about Hispanic voters.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_07: Another story about the border.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_07: Another consultant announcing that the Rio Grande has permanently shifted one direction or the other.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_07: And then you actually go there, and the place is far more complicated than the theory.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_07: Vicente Gonzalez has made a career inside that complicated place.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_07: He is a moderate Democrat from McCallan.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_07: In twenty In 2024, Gonzalez won re-election even as Trump carried the district under its old lines.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_07: Trump's margin in the old district was about four and a half points.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_07: And now, Gonzalez is seeking re-election in a district Texas Republicans redrew to be considerably more Republican.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_07: Under the new boundaries, Trump would have carried the 34th district by about 10 points in 2024.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_07: The district lost Democratic-leaning territory around Hidalgo County and added more conservative territory around Corpus Christi.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_07: Gonzalez's opponent is Eric Flores.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_07: Flores is a former assistant U.S.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_07: Attorney and Texas Army National Guard infantry captain.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_07: He has a support of Donald Trump and other prominent Texas and congressional Republicans.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_07: He talks about border enforcement, lower taxes, and deregulation, while also saying he supports bipartisan immigration reform and protecting South Texas water and rural communities.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_07: So again, it's not a race where one candidate has no credentials, but Flores has them.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_07: The contrast is about the difference between the record of an incumbent and the program of a challenger.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Eric Flores, and I am President Trump's endorsed candidate for Congressional District 34.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: A secure border, a resurgent economy, American energy, dominance, peace through strength, and a government that puts its citizens first again.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: That vision is not theory here in South Texas in the coastal band area.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's personal.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_07: Gonzalez has a long list of projects to answer with.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_07: This year, his office says he secured nearly$13 million for 15 local community projects.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_07: One example,$919,000 for a new firetruck and equipment in La Villa.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_07: Then in October, Gonzalez announced$6 million for a regional nursing training facility in Kingsville, built in partnership with Texas AM University Kingsville.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_07: The goal is straightforward here.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_07: Train more nurses where South Texas actually needs them.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_06: This investment in our nursing school will be transformational for our region.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_06: And we all know we have a massive shortage of physicians, and we have an even more massive shortage of nurses.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_06: So to the nurses, thank you for all you do.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_06: Uh we look forward to producing more nurses and hopefully at one day at some point being able to level off the nursing shortage that we are dealing with in hospitals across South Texas and in the coastal bend.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_07: He has also delivered funding tied to law enforcement and border security.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_07: In Cameron County, his office announced federal funds to put bullet-resistant windshields on 61 patrol vehicles, along with nearly$3.9 million in Operation Stone Garden money, supporting border security personnel, overtime, and equipment.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_07: And that matters because it complicates the easiest national caricature of a South Texas Democrat.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_07: Gonzalez doesn't talk about the border as though enforcement and community are mutually exclusive.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_07: He represents a district where Border Patrol agents, immigrant families, sheriffs, ranchers, port workers, and small business owners may all live within just a few miles of each other.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_07: So of course the politics are less tidy.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_07: His opponent's case is that a Republican aligned with the White House and House leadership can bring more influence to a district whose voters have moved rightward in presidential elections.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_07: Gonzalez's case is that he already knows how to deliver while crossing political lines.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_07: That claim is now being tested against a map specifically drawn to make his job harder.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_06: I brought home eight billion dollars of federal funds to my congressional district.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_06: We intend to do that in the new portion of the district, which is here in Corpus Christi.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_06: Um I think creating a balance in Congress will push back on some of the policies that have come out of this administration, like tariffs that have been attacked on the American people, uh unpopular war, which the majority of the American people, 79% do not agree with, that have brought food prices, gas prices uh through the roof, and created a serious and affordability problem for folks in the in this country.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_06: And the only way to do this is to create some balance uh in in the Congress.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_07: The numbers explain why the race attracts so much attention, but numbers often flatten a place.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_07: In South Texas, federal money eventually becomes a fire truck, a nursing lab, a school program, a fishing pier, a bullet-resistant windshield on a deputy's vehicle, and that is where the Gonzalez record becomes easiest to understand.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_07: The district has been redrawn around him, the electorate has changed, the national parties are seeing this as an opportunity, and here Gonzalez is once again asking voters to judge him less by the color of the district on a map than by what has actually arrived in the district while he has been there.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: Four blue dog incumbents, four completely different political landscapes.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_03: Marie Gloosencamp Perez represents a corner of the Pacific Northwest where two mills, timber communities, and the growing Vancouver suburbs all have to fit inside the same congressional district.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: Adam Gray represents the Central Valley, where almost every large national public conversation eventually becomes a question about water, agriculture, healthcare, and infrastructure.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: Mike Thompson is defending the value of nearly three decades of experience against a younger member of his own party who thinks the district is ready for something new.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: And Vicente Gonzalez is running on a terrain that was literally redrawn beneath his feet.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: What connects them is the part of congressional politics that is easiest to miss from Washington.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: The work eventually has an address, a fire station, a paper mill, a farm, a nursing school, a flooded neighborhood, a family trying to get help from a federal agency.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_03: Those places tend to remember who showed up.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: And over the next few weeks, voters in each of these districts will decide what that work is worth, what they want to keep, and what they want to change.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_03: This is the first stop in our trip around the country's blue dog priority races.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: We'll be back soon with another.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: Until next time, thanks for listening.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_03: This has been Blue Dog Radio.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_10: Say look a here, mist! Stay look at here, mist.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_10: I need a place to stay.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_10: A hotel room is at that I pick up and I will wrap.