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Write a Better Song: Bobby Pulido on South Texas and Public Service · Blue Dog Radio

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Blue Dog Radio.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: For this episode, we went to the Rio Gran Valley to spend time with Bobby Pulido.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: For more than 30 years, Bobby has been one of the defining voices in Tejano music.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: A singer, band leader, and businessman who grew up in Edinburgh, Texas as the son of another Tejano legend, Roberto El Primo Pulido.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, he's a blue dog endorsed candidate running for Congress in Texas's 15th district.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: But to understand Bobby Pulito's politics, you really have to understand the place he comes from.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we spent three days with him in South Texas.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: We rode around Edinburgh with his father.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: We stopped at taco shops and hat stores.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: We went to a high school football game, a wedding, and campaign rallies.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Everywhere we went, people seemed to know the Puito name.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Over our conversations, Bobby talked about his family, the music business, fatherhood, immigration, affordability, the political changes sweeping South Texas, and why a man who already had a successful life decided he needed to start another one.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Here's our conversation with Bobby Pulido.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Bobby, welcome to Blue Dog Radio.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: You've spent your whole life in the Rio Gran Valley.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: What does this place mean to you beyond simply being where you're from?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: When I think of the Rio Gran Valley, I think about humility.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think about the American dream.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: This place used to be called El Magico Valle del Rio Grande, the magical Rio Grande Valley.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was a farming community.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: I come from a family of migrant farm workers.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: My my grandfather was a migrant farm worker, so was my father when he was younger.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And um this whole area is like really filled with a bunch of people that were dreaming to try to make it.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um they don't come from generational wealth here.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's a lot of hard work.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very humble people, very simple, uh, very rural and um very Hispanic.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we've come a long way.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the city of Edinburgh used to be called Chapin.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was named after a guy that was kind of racist, right?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's uh they used to accept the Hispanics here.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: They did not accept black people.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: The only reason they accepted Hispanics is because they were the workforce.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, um, this is home, man.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is where we all share the same type of dreams of putting our kids on our shoulders and hoping that they do better than we did.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Your father was already a giant in Tejano music when you were growing up.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: What did being Roberto Polito's son teach you about success and about earning your own name?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Look, my dad is the most humble person I've ever met, right?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hard working, he's the embodiment of the American dream.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Went to college, got a scholarship, graduated with a degree in music.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um and yeah, it was tough.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Growing up, when I decided I wanted to sing, I didn't really want to sing, be a singer when I was growing up.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to study, I studied political science in college and love politics.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but music always is something that was a part of our lives, and it's a part of our culture.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it it crosses political boundaries, it's stronger than red or blue, it's who we are.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and it ironically, uh Tejano music, the foundation, was uh inspired by Czech and German immigrants that came a long time ago here.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And they brought over the accordion.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the uh Tejanos kind of got that accordion and bridged the the grap of accordion, and they fused it with an instrument called the Baco Sexto that comes from Oaxaca, Mexico, and it formed a beautiful combination, very organic sound, and it's it's it's who we are, man.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's how people would go enjoy their times and congregate, you know, like life is tough, you know.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine back in the day when they're out picking in the fields, and you know, at night they want to de-stress, they de-stress with the honour music and cojunta music, which is cojunto's the root uh style of music, which is basically according to Bacon Sesto.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: It used to be a Toroche and you know, an upright bass and and and drums.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: You studied political science and once imagined a very different career.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: What was the moment when music hijacked your life and took you in another direction?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's when I record a song with my dad.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was down vacation from from San Antonio from college, and he says, son, will you record a song with me?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Dad, I don't want to be a singer.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, No, no, no, no, this is just for me.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: He lied to me, basically, right?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's just for me.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And um I did.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I said, okay.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was never didn't know what it was like to sing professionally.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I went back to college, I forgot about it.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and lo and behold, like four months later, they called me, and they're like, I mean, a friend of mine said, Hey, can you sign my autograph?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: I heard you on the radio.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I looked at him kind of funny.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Yeah, you're singing a song with your dad.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, dad hadn't told me that he showed it to the record label.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the song actually had a lot of success locally, regionally.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I got two record labels interested in signing me.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And my dad was with Capital EMI, but I had Sony and Capital EMI in a bidding ward.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I ended up negotiating my contract and my father's as well in that same negotiation.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I got I got him a hundred percent raise.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, I was a broke college student to me.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I I know my first contract I negotiated at$60,000 for a CD that back in 1995 was good money.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I said, Well, you never know.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is funny, right?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's ironic.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I remember having that discussion with my father, and my father told me, You're not ready.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You're not a professional singer, you never sang professionally, you never sang with a band.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't wrong.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I I told him, Dad, I'm I'm really dedicated, I'm really uh somebody that is very disciplined.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, and more importantly, I'm gonna leave leave it up to the people to decide whether I am deserving of this.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it's kind of ironic because I'm kind of in the same situation right now in politics.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: You've spent 30 years touring, running a band, making payroll, and meeting people all across South Texas.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, what did that experience teach you that 30 years as a career politician never could?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you this: the music business is very up and down.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: People don't realize that.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: They think musician, they think riches and fame forever.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, that that is not uh uh the way it is.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Music is like like fashion.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Trends come in and trends leave.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one minute skinny jeans are in, the next minute baggy jeans are in.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Bell bottoms, really tight, uh, just long hair, the mullet was a thing, and then short hair became a thing.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, music's very much like that.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's it's it's a trendy thing.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard to stay relevant in a trendy world because a lot of times it's like in with the new and out with the old.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so you better be very savvy business-minded in order to be successful long term in music.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where branding is very important.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing your people, knowing what kind of music is coming on the horizon, knowing what fits on you, knowing how to budget your money.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: That way, when the times get tough, you have enough capital to withstand these changes and push through.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Music is a great, great as a as an industry and as a career, it's really good at preparing you for the real world, which can be really tough.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's not what people think.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yes, you have to balance budgets in music just like anywhere else, you know, and you and and and and I'll tell you, this just like athletes, there's a ton of musicians that went and spent money on sports cars and Ferraris and McLaren's and end up broke.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it happens, right?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh I think it hones you in in many ways.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because we are, you know, we are absolutely a poster child for uh for working class folk and and honestly, like how to manage your money, which I think the average politician sucks at.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they've been pissed poor at doing that.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: They never ask, can we afford it?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's always let's just do this and we'll kick the can down the road and figure it out because I want the headline to say I brought this kind of money.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: I hope to change that.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: We have to have an honest conversation about where as a country we are financially and we're in debt up to our eyeballs.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: If I balance my budget in my house, why the hell shouldn't we try to balance the budget in the country?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: You have four boys.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: How did becoming a father change the way you thought about your own ambition, responsibility, and leadership?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, being a father is not easy.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Being a good father is not easy.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Being a father is easy.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Being a good father, what constitutes a good father?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Being a good example, being a provider, um, showing love to your kids, also showing discipline, limits, uh, not spoiling them when they want to get spoiled or when their mother wants you to spoil them.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think it's it's not easy.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: But uh that's the thing that kind of I think in many ways defines us down here.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Look, my father is an old school kind of guy, and the way he thinks, and when I was younger, I wanted him to buy me a Mustang, and he he laughed at me and told me, like, one day you'll make enough money, you're gonna buy your own Mustang.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I find myself having those same type of discussions with my kids.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And down here, we love to raise our kids in this tradition that we were raised.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not exactly, but you know, sort of.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was raised in a very traditional household.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: My wife is doing a great job raising our son.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And um especially nowadays, because inflation and things are tough.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: It ends up being that an iPad's raising your kid.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's just not something that we chose to do.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I respect other people's lives and how they gotta live them, but I think we need to be as involved as we can as parents to make sure that our kids are raised and with this with the right values.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: You've said there came a point when music no longer felt like enough and you started looking for a bigger purpose for the next chapter of your life.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: What was happening when you first began to feel that?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: I got too comfortable.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like I was wasting a lot of time and a lot of my and the off time, not when I was singing but or touring, but in my off time I felt like I had so much more to offer.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it just came to the point where either I was gonna be the guy that sat there at the couch really angry about what I was seeing, or I was gonna do something about it.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like I always I I would say I'm just a guy with an opinion right now.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right, like everybody else.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we know what opinions are like, but if I actually run and I actually win, then I have a voice and I can be a voice for my people and be a representative that truly represents this region and this area and actually go do something.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or try, or die trying.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was that kind of aha moment in my life that I said, this is a crossroads.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, am I gonna continue down the comfortable path?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or am I gonna take on a Trump plus 18 district and try to flip it?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: When did running for Congress go from an idea somewhere in the back of your mind to, okay, all right, I'm I'm gonna do this?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was a period of about eight months.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was not a hasty hastily made decision.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh started in 22 November, that election when my congresswoman won for the first time.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: That took about eight months before I kind of knew that that's what I wanted to do.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, then I I once I said, like, okay, I I I want to run, were people gonna just see me and go, oh, he's a singer, what the hell does he know about politics?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that could have been the case, right?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's been many famous people that have run and not one.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the thing that I kind of saw it and I said, like, okay, this is I I knew that the district was really hard to win.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: But not impossible.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: What has changed about the Rio Grande Valley during your lifetime that worries you the most?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: You start seeing generational wealth.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're starting to see glimpses of for the first time in their family business owners when the last generation they were the workers.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now they're actually have their small businesses that they're starting.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Hispanics and Mexicans in general are super, super entrepreneurial.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: They'll go put up a uh uh ice cream cone stand or uh tamales or or tacarillas.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're super entrepreneurial, we're always hustling to try to, hey, we'll sell you this, we'll sell you that.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you start to see that a lot.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of small business owners that are that were flourishing, and I say were uh before Donald Trump came into the equation.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think politically speaking, this region has been trending towards the Republican Party for years.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're slow trends, but that they're trends nonetheless.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think we're at a crossroads.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm good friends with Mike Madrid, and and Mike talks a lot about a dealignment.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're in the we're in the process of seeing a dealignment again.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um I know a lot of people that grew up Democrats down here started trending Republican because Republicans were talking more in a language of business and opportunity and taxes, low taxes, and things like that.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think all the the trend was going hard.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: It really shifted in this last election towards that.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm seeing right now is a lot of disappointment.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And since they went like since they went from being heavily Democrat to being more Republican, now it almost feels as if they're all independent.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like they don't know what they are.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the irony is I tell them, well, I'm a blue dog democrat.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And when I describe it to my friends that have now had shifted to a Republican Party, they said, Well, then that's what I am.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's so funny, right?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I well, what's a blue dog?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I was a conservative Democrat.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, listen, I'm a Democrat, but I believe in helping each other out, but I also want to balance our budget and I want to be fiscally responsible.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And as a as a people, I believe in hard work, and you know, that's in our wheelhouse.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And almost to a T, everybody goes, that's what I am.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's shifted, but right now I think there's another shift coming where people that had gone to be Republican are now rethinking that and thinking, like, okay, this represents me, this is where we're at.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Does that mean that I don't have uh agreements with some of the, you know, people on the ultra-left to say that our healthcare system is broken and has been taken care of by big money?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm not a corporatist.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that every corporation is evil.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that we should cater to or give that much power to corporate America at the expense of small businesses.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I am a blue dog.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why that's what I believe in, because I think that's where we are.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm running in a tough district, and uh the odds are stacked against me.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: They've been stacked against me.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: But if we win, I think we're gonna have a little bit of a say to define what a South Texas Democrat really is.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and and and I saw that in the primary.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I can see where a normal politician would feel bullied into taking positions that are unpopular with the general public.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because the it they just they gang up on you and they're like, this and that and that.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you kind of have to filter that out and balance it out with what you're actually seeing in the real world, and that's the beauty of campaigning on the ground and getting in front of actual voters.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because then it kind of slaps you in the face and says, like, social media is not everything.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: It may be a little bit of a sentiment, but it's not my guiding light.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: My guiding light is what I see on the ground, and the more people you get in front of, the more you talk to them, that's where you see, like, okay, now I get it now.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: You've lived in the valley your whole life and seen a lot of the world.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: What does Washington need to understand about South Texas that it doesn't understand right now?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just DC, it's it's our party.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard a lot of times that we're the party of inclusivity.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: But yet I feel like there's all these litmus tests.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't pass it, you're not you're not a part of us.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's that's kind of the thing that I see right now is is that I I just did a conference call with with some really diehard Democratic donors.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And um you know, there but one of their biggest concerns is guns.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And first of all, when when you talk about legislative absolutes like bans, I think that's just lazy legislating.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's easy to say, we're gonna ban this, we're gonna ban that.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it never works.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people in the rural areas, like Washington's a city, and I get it, man.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's completely different than this this area.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a huge dichotomy right now happening in politics where Democrats are really strong in the cities and super weak in the rural areas.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of it has to do with respect.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is that people in the rural areas want to be respected?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that respect is about tradition.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: We don't embrace change as much as people in the city.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you go to Austin and there's cars driving around all over the place with no people in them, right?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: That is a shock to rural people.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, whoa, right?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's rope, you you you walk on the sidewalk and there's a robot delivering your food.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, now you go over there and there's tellers, there's places with no tellers.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh rural areas, it takes us a little bit longer to get there.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when people want immediate change, it pisses us off because it feels it feels like we're getting judged as being these back backward ass people.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we're not.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's just we live in a different reality.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I you can drive around here and not get in a traffic jam ever.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: I like that.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want you to make our lives different, we want you to make our lives better.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Make it more affordable.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: People are fleeing the cities to rural areas, and they're blaming the Democratic Party for that.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's going to be legislative seats lost from California, New York to Texas and Florida.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And until we finally get to understand that, and that we need to look at that and speak to the voter and more importantly, listen to the voter about their concerns.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't do that, we will do that at our own peril.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, as you've traveled the district and talked to families, what are they telling you about health care, wages, housing, and the basic cost of building a life here?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: We have an issue right now that is the biggest problem we have is there's no trust anymore.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: They don't trust elected officials.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because they feel like they're getting lied to.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, exhibit A.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Election in 24.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Trump.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Vote for me, I'll make everything cheaper.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: The economy will be booming with me.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no new wars.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm only gonna go after the bad people.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're all lies.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: So people right now feel like you said no new wars is a war.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: You said you were gonna go after the bad people?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: You see, tariffs would make would make things better.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're making things more expensive.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a novel idea.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Tell people the truth, even if they're hard.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And people, if they believe you and you're telling them the truth, they will understand right what you're trying to do.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: They will.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: But we get lied to constantly from both sides.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I want to bring a different approach to this.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, look, I mean, for us to get out of$40 trillion in debt, it's gonna take a b something bold for us to do so.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be difficult choices to be made.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: But in a K-shaped economy where the billionaires are getting a lot richer, uh, and people are getting a lot poorer, something's gotta give.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I fear for what's gonna happen.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have to have a noticeable difference in change, but you can't squeeze juice out of a rock.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's a rock.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we have a lot of people that are poor right now that have no juice to give.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want everybody to do well.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's our dream down here.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: But we do have a have a balance where it's not at the expense of other people.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I have a problem with.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is when a health insurance company starts monopolizing everything, getting too much power, and then they go sell you they buy these pharmacy benefit managers, and then they they go and they don't tell you transparently how much this thing's cost.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: They are doing that at the expense of you.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: The reason I'm a Democrat is because I like to fight for the little guy to at least give them a chance to make something with their life.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you're elected, what would a successful first two years in Congress look like for South Texas?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Is there one singular issue you feel particularly determined to work on?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: We need to do something about our immigration system, and it is so important on so many levels to us down here.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Historically, right?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a house in the Rio Gran Valley.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: A house or a building that's built without immigrant hands.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Not one.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: They don't teach those trades in school.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we have had a historic, I don't know, decades, decades, and decades of relying on immigrant labor to do these jobs.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: The Trump administration seems to think that you can just deport everybody and that miraculously those jobs will be filled with Americans.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Willing to do it.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, they don't have the knowledge to do it because it's skilled labor.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Pouring a concrete base foundation is skilled.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Roofing is skilled, because if you don't do it right, there's gonna be leaks.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Framing is skilled.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you don't do framing, then you're gonna have big structural problems.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of skilled labor involved in building a house.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're decimating our economy down here.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: If they really wanted to reform the system, they would have invested in trade schools for US citizens to go out there and learn the trade, and then maybe you can tighten up on the immigration thing.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: But they're doing it the backwards end.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of mixed status families here where one of the parents is not documented, but the rest are American citizens.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And what really bothers me is they come here with this flag of Christian faith and God.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that Jesus Christ would not approve of that.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: He would not be okay with separating families.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's very personal.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: I have a friend of mine, 65 years old, married a Mexican girl ten years ago, has an eight or eight nine years ago, has an eight-year-old daughter.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because of some technicality and the immigration judges serve at the pleasure of the DOJ, and the DOJ serves at the pleasure of the presidents, they're not exactly neutral.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: My friend is gonna have to be deported with his wife de facto to stay with his family.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the punishment on that is ten years for her.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Which means that would put him at 75 years old.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know if he'll still be alive at that age.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Don't tell me that we cannot make an exception so he can be with the woman that he loves and his American daughter.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And my friend is eighth generation Texan.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that affordability is ranks higher than everything else, and we need to work on that.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: But people don't really realize that our immigration system down here is tied to affordability.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: We need to build more houses so that the price of the houses can go down, and you don't have a workforce, guess what?
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: That bill that they just that just passed doesn't mean anything.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a workforce to actually do it.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm not a calculus major or you know, like that.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I do know that when you take a a percentage of the population out and you start depopulating your area, there's less money circulating in an area that relies on small business.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wins.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't care.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Plain question.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: What do you owe the Rio Grande?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: I owe it my love and my respect.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because the Rio Gran Valley is is the place where I was born, I saw go.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I respect this area.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's truly unique.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I and I think what I also owe the Rio Gran Valley is to promote it in the best way possible.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because I tell I travel all over the place for fundraising because we don't have a lot of money down here.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I tell people I'm from the Rio Grande Valley and everybody asks, Where's that?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is it Houston?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Is it San Antonio?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is it El Paso?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I tell them, no, no, it's south and it's on the border.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing they say is, Oh my god, how is it with the cartels?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, actually, there's no cartels in the Rio Gran Valley.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the US and Um it's a really safe place to live.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're an area that deserves a promoter of this region.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Promote everything that's great about it.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're much more than all the negative stereotypes that they try to portray of us.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: My last question.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: When this campaign is over, regardless of the result, what do you want your community to understand about why you chose to run for office?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: I I want my community to know win or lose that I did this out of love for them.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: I did it because I did not like the representation that we had.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I want it to be a voice and a an example for them.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's called public service.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not I I don't view it like a politician, it's more like of a public servant.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: And listen, I mean, music I do for I started doing music because I love to sing and I love music.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's in my blood.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're able to get people's votes to go represent them, that's an even bigger honor than to sing for them.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Bobby, thanks so much for coming on Blue Dog Radio.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: That was Bobby Pulito.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's one question we asked Bobby near the end of our conversation that stood out.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: What do you owe the Rio Grande Valley?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: His answer was simple: my love and my respect.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Then he talks about traveling around the country and telling people where he's from.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: He says that when people hear the border, they often imagine cartels, crime, and whatever version of South Texas they've encountered from a distance.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Bobby sees something else.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: He sees the place his grandfather and his father worked, the place that gave his family a life, the place where his father became a legend, where Bobby became a star, and where generations of families are still trying to put their kids on their shoulders and give them something better.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: After three days there, one thing becomes pretty clear.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: The Pulito family is woven deeply into the fabric of South Texas.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: The music has always been personal.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Bobby started singing because he loved it, it was in his blood.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: But representing people carries a different kind of weight.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can read more from our three days with the Pulito family at the Bark on Substack and find more conversations from around the country wherever you listen to Blue Dog Radio.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, thank you for listening.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: This has been Blue Dog Radio.