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Rhode Island Senate Candidate Connor Burbridge Takes On Jack Reed · Breaking The Meta

• Breaking The Meta: Hello everyone and welcome to Breaking the Meta. Today we are sitting down with Connor Burbridge who's running for United States Senate for the state of Rhode Island. And as someone who grew up in New England, I'm very excited to have this conversation. Connor, how are you doing today? Connor Burbridge: Great, Mike, thanks ⁓ so much for having me on. I'm really excited to talk with you. Breaking The Meta: Absolutely, absolutely. ⁓ So to start out, would you, if you wouldn't mind, give us a little background on who you are and why you decided to run for Senate in the first place. Connor Burbridge: Yeah, perfect. So I'm Connor Berbridge. I'm running for US Senate in the great state of Rhode Island in the Democratic primary coming up in September. And I'm an elder care worker, so that's my nine to five job. I am a small farm business owner. with some friends, we have a worker cooperative that is a small farm business. And then I'm also, I served in the US Army. So the reason I'm doing this is because I'm just deeply worried like many of us about the direction that our country is going in and ultimately about our the ability of our leaders to stop it. And so that's why I'm stepping up. I was waiting for other political leaders in the state to step up and you know leaders that I respect a lot progressive leaders and they didn't so I am primaring a 30-year incumbent US senator. ⁓ Breaking The Meta: Hmm. Connor Burbridge: At the end of his next term, if he would win this primary, he'd be 82. And I just think his priorities, his vision of the Democratic Party is not what we need right now. It's stuck in the Bill Clinton years. We need something more aggressive, more bold. We need to be talking about working class politics, taking on the billionaire class, things that he doesn't even mention nor seem to care about at all. And so, yeah, this is why we got into this fight. This is what I'm fighting for. I mean, it's very tied to my background and yeah, we're taking it all across the state. It's smallest state, so it's really easy to campaign here and talk to as many people as we can, really take it to the grassroots, farmers markets, know, hometown bars, everywhere across Rhode Island community fair. So that's what we've been doing for the last year and we're gonna keep doing and fighting all the way right up to the September. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Awesome. ⁓ So for people that don't know much about Rhode Island, ⁓ would you spend a little time talking about what the pain points are for the people over at Rhode Island? What kind of help, what kind of problems people in Rhode Island are talking to you about as you've been going around and talking to everybody? Connor Burbridge: Yeah, so for me, ⁓ I think there's maybe three that I would want to hit on. There's obviously so many, but ⁓ just three that I want to focus on right now. The first one, the major one is health care. So even though we're not a rural state, we are a smaller state. And so our health care system faces a lot of challenges. And currently we're facing potentially two hospital closures, two of the biggest hospitals in the state. are potentially gonna close. And so it's really scaring a lot of people. In addition to that, it was last year, the year before that a PCP doctor chain closed. 15,000 people in our state lost their PCP doctors and were just left scrambling and people had six to eight months wait to get a new PCP. Many people just gave up and said, I don't need a new primary care provider, doctor, whatever. And so healthcare I think is on the top of people's minds right now. ⁓ Breaking The Meta: Mm. Connor Burbridge: Yeah, we have a lot of people utilize Obamacare, the healthcare marketplaces, a lot of people in our state are on Medicaid. And so all these Trump cuts are going to hit our state particularly hard. So we're really taking on a lot of blows in the healthcare area and it's really falling apart. And ⁓ our leaders are doing really nothing to step up and proposing nothing bold like universal healthcare, which is we're pushing for. So the second part is housing. So, you I just got engaged in December. You know, I have, thank you so much. And so, you know, we're a young family. We're in an exciting time in our lives. We want to buy a house in our state, but you know, the price of a single family home, the median price in our state is somewhere, it lowered a little bit, but it was around $450,000 for a small couple bedroom home. And so, Breaking The Meta: Congratulations. Connor Burbridge: I mean, it's crazy. It's totally out of control. We're renters right now too. People are feeling the crunch on rent. For a few bedroom place, you're paying upwards of $2,000 in Providence and the cities around it. And so people are being squeezed. They can't buy new houses or they can't move. And then I said I'd do three, I might do four. Breaking The Meta: Okay. Connor Burbridge: The third is utilities. People are being really squeezed hard on utilities, right? I mean, I think that's something we're seeing across the country. I don't want to get on that too much, but it's a huge monthly expense. And then the last one is, and I think this is a key for the history of our state is, is we're a post-industrial state. And I still think that we, you know, we're not in the traditional rust belt, but you know, there's a lot of empty old factory buildings here. And so I think in a lot of ways that history is really important. ⁓ because all those jobs are gone. And I think in people's living memory, especially, you know, I work with elders like that is, that was a big part of their lives. And now we're dealing with a lot of the consequences of leaders like during NAFTA, letting China into the WTO. So we're dealing with, you know, a lot of impacts to this day from those decisions and all the factories that just left this country. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. One of the other things that we often talk about as an issue, especially in regards to our politicians, ⁓ regardless of what side of the aisle you're on, left, right, conservative, progressive, is this idea of accountability or the lack thereof when it comes to our political leaders. So my question is, What do you, how do you see the idea of accountability? How do you see your state if you become a senator holding you accountable? Connor Burbridge: Yeah, that's a great question. I think the ⁓ first part of that answer is just going right into campaign finance reform, right? Like when people can often be accountable to their donors, right? When corporations are donating hundreds of thousand dollars to your campaign, they want a return on investment. And so, they're going to hold you accountable for what they give you. So our campaign, you know, we have hundreds of small time donors. We're not taking any money from super PACs. Our average donation is $29. And so, you know, I think that's ultimately, you know, we do town halls online. We send people emails, we keep them updated. And so there's that just level of like, here are our values. We are accountable to you because you fund this campaign, not corporations, not the rich. You know, we're not in country clubs. And I mean, think the other part of it is accessibility, not being afraid to be out in public, not being afraid to, you know, come back to your own state on a weekend, especially, Rhode Island, you can just take the train back and, you know, go into a hometown bar. And if someone wants to yell at you, you know, you, you talk about it with them, right? You talk about the issues. mean, we do this, right, with our friends or just random people at the bar, we get into it on politics or at the community fair or whatever, but it's just. being out there in the community, feel like a lot of these politicians that have been there for so many years, they just like to hide, know, maybe they'll post email here and there, or maybe a YouTube video, or probably not a YouTube video. They'll just go in the news and do an interview with the legacy media, and that's it. So I think, yeah, so I think that accessibility, and then guess part of that accessibility is social media, like, you know, posting updates to social media, not being afraid to do first. person profile views and responding to people's comments. I don't have time all the time, but when I can, I respond to people's comments individually, hear what they have to say, their questions, their concerns. ⁓ So yeah, so a couple elements there, but yeah. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. So the I like to call it the Jeff Jackson method of interacting. He was my representative in North Carolina, and he was very well known around here for getting on TikTok and making videos about what was going on. ⁓ So obviously, although Rhode Island is a very blue state and in a blue part of Connor Burbridge: Yeah. Breaking The Meta: you know, a blue part of the country. There are Republicans in Rhode Island. And I'm always interested in, as you've gone around and talked to people, what has it been like interacting with people that maybe normally vote Republican when they interact with you and find out that you aren't a Republican? Connor Burbridge: Yeah, so that happens every time that I go and see my dad. So he's a three time Trump voter. And so, you know, he donated to my campaign and he said, you're the first Democrat and probably the only Democrat that I'll ever donate to. But, you know, so we do get out. mean, ⁓ but also, you know, like over the years, like we, when I was younger, I just turned 30 years old. But ⁓ when we were young, when I was younger, I used to really duke it out with him. As I've gotten older, I've realized, you know, obviously there are things that we can fund. We have fundamental disagreements on, but there are places where we have our priorities. He's a deeply Catholic man. He goes to church almost every day of the week. And so obviously with issues around abortion and LGBTQ issues, we have a lot of huge disagreements on that. But, you know, he's a humble man as well. And he thinks that rich people are completely immoral people. They're totally separate. They have a total different value system that they're out of touch with us and that he has a lot of deep anger about the lives they kind of lead and the way they treat people in this country. And then the other thing too is re-industrialization, like good union jobs. ⁓ He was a union worker. He was a part of a union. And so he sees the value in that. And he goes to a lot of towns in our state. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Connor Burbridge: ⁓ Wonsaka, Pawtucket, all these former industrial areas that are really, really struggling now. And he's just like, what happened? And to a certain extent, he blames the Democrats for that. I mean, it was a both sides issue. Both parties had a consensus to globalize trade and just destroy all these jobs. And so that was Bill Clinton. Obviously it was also George Bush and Reagan to a certain extent. Democrats are left holding the bag too and Democrats to this day are still parading around people who helped make those decisions, including ⁓ while Senator Jack Reid was against ⁓ NAFTA, he did support bringing China to the World Trade Organization, which give them favored nation status so that they could then trade and that really opened the floodgates for China there. So, I mean, yeah, these people are still in office and they made these decisions and yeah. We're still living with them to this day. Breaking The Meta: ⁓ Speaking of trade, ⁓ obviously for the last 80 years or so, this country has pretty much had their foot at the head of every single table around most of the world, pretty much since World War II. And in this last year, this administration has single-handedly ⁓ destroyed our place at the table. whether you're talking the tariffs or Venezuela or Greenland or a myriad of other things that have happened. How do you see America's place moving forward knowing that a lot of these countries might not trust any deal we make knowing that another president could come in and do exactly like this president did and just say, you know what, who cares if we have a trade deal? We're going to put 100 % tariffs on you if you don't do what we say. Connor Burbridge: Yeah, right. Like, you know, people were happy when Biden got elected, at least around the world. And then when he wasn't elected and Trump was elected for a second time, now we're living in all this chaos. And I agree. I think a lot of this is going to come. I think we need to focus maybe our politics internally as much as we reasonably can, because, you know, you look at presidents like FDR that completely changed. the political landscape for generations. And I think that's what we need to focus on now ⁓ in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party for right now in general. yeah, like we need to find those policies and have the courage to fight for them that are actually gonna deliver for the working class, that are gonna make their lives better, that are gonna relieve this crisis that we're experiencing on multiple fronts. And I think... Breaking The Meta: Mm. Connor Burbridge: that if we can do that, if we have the courage, the clarity, the grit to fight for that and get it done, I think then, you know, we could potentially have the generation loyalty of a whole group of working class people across this country and win nationally. And, you know, like the FDR, the New Deal Coalition, that lasted almost into the 90s. Like, yes, we lost the presidency, the Democrats, but if you look at Congress, like, Congress was controlled by Democrats going up into the 90s. And so that New Deal coalition held for 60 plus years. And so I think we have the opportunity to do that again, but we need to fight and we need to deliver. We need to call out the billionaire class, call out the big corporations. We can't be afraid to do that. Too many people in the Democratic Party are just afraid and shaking in their boots and saying, but these are our donors or like, know, capital flight or whatever, you know, like. It's just like bullshit excuses for not, you know, taking on the people who fucked a bunch of people over. So yeah. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Do you foresee this country having to potentially make almost make more steps than we normally would have to try and earn back the trust of these other nations that have historically been our allies. Connor Burbridge: ⁓ I think if we can form like a stable coalition, like politically, like what I was talking about, and it seems to last a couple of election cycles, I think we're one of the biggest countries in the world in terms of population. People are gonna wanna trade with us. And so I think that we can pretty easily rebuild that trust, especially if we have this, you Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Connor Burbridge: I mean, like, look at all the European nations. Like, they have social democratic policies. So if we're fighting for similar things that they believe in and we'd be like, look, we pushed for these things. We were able to win a stable coalition and it lasts some election cycles. I think that, yeah, we can bring people back to the trading table with a level of faith and trust. And they're going to want to work with the United States. Yeah. Breaking The Meta: ⁓ Let's, let's future cast for a little bit. So ⁓ we, you get through the primaries. ⁓ You, you, you win, you go on to the general election, you win. January 2nd comes around or I forget what it is for senators. I think it's like the seventh or eighth. I forget. ⁓ You get sworn in as a senator for the state of Rhode Island. What is the first thing that you do? Connor Burbridge: Yeah, so we have, we'll have six bills ready to go and we'll give them to the Senate clerk on day one. These bills that are part of our working class agenda. And there's six bills there that address kind of the crises that our state's dealing with, but people across the country. And so ⁓ we can get into them. They're on our website, birbridgeforri.com if you really want more details, but. Breaking The Meta: Ahem. Connor Burbridge: It's a sovereign wealth fund is the first one. That's the Wealth for American Workers Act. It would create a sovereign wealth fund that would give every American worker $1,000 per year as kind of like a health stipend. The second one is, yeah, affordable utilities. So we're going to take on the big utilities companies and we're going to allow, we're going to support municipalities or states or communities that want to form cooperatives to buy back their utilities from these Breaking The Meta: Okay. Connor Burbridge: you know, big companies, these monopolies that are jacking up electric prices and also giving preference to new customers like data centers, which jack up the electric prices. Then we're proposing as a first step towards universal health care, universal elder care. While we have a great system with Medicare and Medicaid for elders, it's very limited and it leaves out a lot of people and people, you know, lose tens of thousands of their family wealth that they worked hard for in helping to take care of their parents or Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Connor Burbridge: you know, their relatives and stuff like that. And so this would cover assisted living and home health aids. So people, if you're, you know, taking care of your aging parents, you can actually, if they choose, your parent chooses, they can pay you up to $30 an hour to help take care of them. And so you get paid for that labor, because you might have to work part-time while you're doing that. Equal education amendment. So we would propose an amendment to the Constitution for equal education for all. Your zip code shouldn't determine the kind of education that you have. We should have it just enshrined in the Constitution. Everyone has the same opportunity, has a fair shake at it to have a quality education to excel in life. ⁓ Climate Superfund Law number five, that's making polluters pay for climate change. Families, communities shouldn't have to pay for all these retrofits, know, preparing for storms, preparing for heat that we're gonna have to do. It should be the people that caused this mess. caused all the pollution. ⁓ And then six is ⁓ no more forever wars. You know, I served in the army. I've seen the effects that forever wars have had on this country. And so we would strengthen the war powers agreement so that the president couldn't just on at, you know, based on his whim to, you know, basically take ⁓ concrete military action on countries all around the world from Venezuela to Greenland to Iran. And it's up to our democratically elected representatives in the Congress to declare war if we needed to. And so bringing that power in. Yeah. So. Breaking The Meta: So just a couple things that you would do right away. Connor Burbridge: So that's day one. First 100 days then, every weekend we're coming back to Rhode Island. We're doing the Rhode Island version of the Fight Oligarchy Tour. So every weekend we'd be going to multiple towns, talking to people in bars or at the public library or at you know, farmers markets and all that good stuff. Senior centers and we go to every town and we talk about how we need to take on the billionaire class. We need to fight for this working class agenda that we just proposed, these bills. This is, you know, why. And ⁓ And yeah, we'd be super busy. We wouldn't stop. We wouldn't stop. Breaking The Meta: Yeah, yeah, you would. ⁓ So. If if anyone who is listening has gotten this far and has heard everything that you have said up until this point, ⁓ what? No matter what, what are one or two things that you would want anyone who got this to this point to come away with knowing about you or your campaign, no matter what? Connor Burbridge: Great question. I think, you know, we are part of a movement of people all across this country that is fighting for this type of politics. And I mean, that's part of the reason why, you know, Bernie Sanders fight oligarchy tour, people fighting these rough primaries, right? Win or lose, they're taking the fight to the establishment. And ours is the Rhode Island version, and we're doing this across Rhode Island. ⁓ But, you know, there's probably candidates. like all over probably near you and they could use volunteers, they can use support or if you're inspired by our campaign in particular, we can use ⁓ support as well. But like that this movement is so important that it's a key time right now to push for this type of politics and there's people doing it all over. Yeah. ⁓ Breaking The Meta: That's it. All right. So if anyone does want to learn more about you or is interested in volunteering or supporting your campaign at all, where can they find you? Connor Burbridge: Burbridge4RI.com, that's B-U-R-B-R-I-D-G-E-4-R-I.com. ⁓ yeah, our policies are there, we expand on them a little more. Our socials are there where we're posting and describing our policies a little bit more in depth, you know, every day. And yeah, just send us an email if you're inspired by what we're doing and let's talk. Breaking The Meta: Yeah, absolutely. Connor, thank you so much for coming on here and letting us get to know you a little bit and what you hope to do for the state of Rhode Island. Connor Burbridge: Yeah, Mike, thanks for having me on. Great to be here. Really inspiring and keep up the good work on your end too. Internalism is so important and just having different voices outside the legacy media and that's why we're doing this and that's where the people are really at on YouTube, everything like that. So keep it up. Breaking The Meta: I appreciate that. Yep. Thank you. I appreciate that. For anyone else that did get this far, thank you so much for listening. We really do appreciate it. ⁓ Please, if you like this podcast at all, please hit any of those buttons down below. Like, share, subscribe, all that stuff. It helps me continue to do what I'm doing. And one of the things that I'm trying to do is interview as many progressives that are running for office, people that aren't taking PAC money, that are trying to do a grassroots, that wants real change, that want to be held accountable. by the people that voted them into office. Things that we have been screaming about for years, if not decades. ⁓ There are hundreds, if not thousands of people that are running for office across this country that want just that. And ⁓ what they don't get because they're not willing to take millions of dollars from PAC money is they need visibility, they need name recognition. And one of the things that you can do is watch this content and share this content. So if you know people in Rhode Island, share this content about Connor. That's how you can help more than anything. Watching it and liking it and interacting with it. It helps the algorithm. Chances are it pushes it to more people in Rhode Island. So all those things, they don't cost any money, but they can be super helpful. Whether it's my content or their content, their own content, ⁓ it all is really helpful. ⁓ any help on that is extremely, extremely needed. ⁓ And also if you don't know anything about our podcast, ⁓ Breaking the Meta 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. ⁓ So thank you all for being here. Connor, thank you for being here and letting us get to talk to you. For everyone else, we'll see you next time on Breaking the Meta. Bye, guys.