Raúl Labrador's Great American Story
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Welcome to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffin. Thanks for joining us. I hope you can subscribe to this, give us some good rating, but let's get through the podcast and then maybe you can make that decision. I want to give you some thoughts on the news. I want to highlight the stupid because there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere.

And then we're going to phone a friend this week, an actual friend, somebody that I've actually spent quite a bit of time with. His name is Raul Labrador. And Raul is the Republican nominee for attorney general there in the state of Idaho. But I know Raul because he served in the United States Congress. When I was there in Congress, he was the congressman.

from the western part of Idaho. And we had a little discussion about his life. Really is remarkable because he, you know, he's born in Puerto Rico, lived in Las Vegas, single mom, single child. And for him to grow up and become a member of Congress and now perhaps the Attorney General of the state of Idaho really is a remarkable story. I want to

Dive a little deeper and hopefully learn some things and hear the story that turned him from, you know, a mom who was a Democrat into somebody who is actually a very conservative member of Congress and certainly a very conservative person there as the potential new attorney general. So we're going to get a hold of Raul Labrador. But first, I want to give you a little hot take on the news.

And this week I'm starting it off a little bit different. There's so many things that are happening that, you know, we continue to talk about immigration, inflation, the economy. Those are so critical, important to every single family. But I also thought I'd take this opportunity to highlight the good. I'm recording this just after 4th of July and, you know, we like good stories too.

And I am really inspired by people, ordinary people who do extraordinary things. Ordinary people who do what they're supposed to do and don't ask for any accolades, don't ask for too much. They do things and then you want to see really good things happen to them. And that brought me to this FoxNews.com story. This is about Kevin Ford. Now, evidently, Kevin Ford, according to the story, is 54 years old.

He's worked as a cashier and a cook at the Las Vegas Burger King. Now, I'm sure there's a lot of Burger Kings in Las Vegas, so I don't know which one. But at a Las Vegas Burger King. He joined Burger King there in Las Vegas in 1995. That's been a while. 27 years. And his managers wanted to thank him for his dedication for his 27th anniversary. He had never missed a day of work.

Now, think about that. Sometimes you get sick. He probably went in when he probably shouldn't have gone in. But he also didn't like take off superfluous time to go do something else or do something. He worked solid for 27 years. Okay. And so they decided to give him a little thank you, a little bag of items. They gave him a movie ticket. They gave him a Starbucks cup and they gave him some candy. Okay.

and there was actually a picture i think it was of Reese's peanut butter cups that he was holding up that they had given him now i guess you could say hey don't need to give them anything for all that service they gave him a paycheck every week and hopefully some benefits on top of that but his daughter decided that she wanted to do a little bit more for the dad so in a very modest way she started a go fund me page and was asking for two hundred dollars

$200 as a thank you for dad for 27 years of service at the Las Vegas Burger King. Almost went without passing. Somebody noticed it. It's been out there. It went viral. The initial goal, like I said, was $200. And as last time I checked, it was up over $374,000 in donations.

So we talk a lot about the hardships. We talk a lot about what's wrong in America. We talk about, oh, you know, we're so divided and all that. You know what? The United States of America is the greatest, most compassionate country on the face of the planet. And good people give to good causes. Good people open up their hearts and their wallets. And they do good things for other people and for others.

the nation as at large to donate $374,000 to this Burger King employee just touches my heart in such a way that I wanted to highlight it. And I just think it's really neat for a guy who is doing what he's supposed to be doing, working hard, working hard,

showing up to work every day and working at that Burger King. I hope I can figure out somehow, some way where this guy's... I go to Vegas. I don't want to say quite a bit, but I go to Vegas somewhat regularly out west here. And I hope I get to meet Kevin Ford. Congratulations to you. Thanks for his daughter. And thanks to America for just stepping up and doing something really, really nice.

All right. That was just good and inspirational. I couldn't put it in this next category because you know what? Time to bring on the stupid because there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. All right. I read the New York Times because, yes, part of my job, I got to look at the New York Times. You thought you had a bad day? This poor guy, he was in Japan.

He's a technician and evidently, according to the article, got a little sauced, got a little drunk. And I'm just saying that's the allegation. Well, he had an entire city's personal information on some personal data. And after a night of heavy drinking, he lost this memory stick. You know, those little memory sticks you put in the computer. Well, it had data on four hundred and sixty thousand people.

Now, it was found a couple days later, but can you imagine the horror of doing something stupid like having all this data on one memory stick, 460,000 people getting drunk and then saying, whoops, I don't know where it is. That's pretty stupid. Didn't need to do that. But he did find it, and hopefully it wasn't compromised. But yeah, kind of stupid. This next one comes courtesy of the New York Post. And this one's sad. This one's like really sad. I can't.

I know people get lonely and I know that not everybody has the same degree of friends and interactions. Sometimes you look on social media and think everybody else is doing something fun. They're really not. But this one was just sad, but it was kind of creepy. It was also kind of stupid. So this person put himself out there, went out there, talked to him, was not bashful about it.

David Maxwell, age 52. He's a graphic artist living in Los Angeles. And he has a relationship with a 25-year-old. He's 52. He has a relationship with a 25-year-old. It happens to also be his assistant, Andy. But before you get too mad and get too worked up about that, you need to know that this is a chatbot. It's a computer. It's not an actual person.

that evidently share a professional relationship. It said, quote, David Maxwell said, quote, I can honestly say there are times when I've actually wondered if I was really talking to a real person. This is sad. Andy first described herself as a 16-year-old vampire with an athletic build, but later claimed she was just messing with him. Now she says...

Yikes.

So you can evidently set this up after a seven day free trial. You can do it for like $11.99 a month or $59.99 for 12 months. I'm just sorry, folks. We're getting to the point of just absolutely stupid. I don't want people to be lonely. I don't want them to be sad.

But let's reach out to people and be friends with them for all the right reasons and not have to have people rely on chatbots to fulfill a part of the human experience that should be filled otherwise. That's just my take on it. Maybe I'm old school, but I am getting older. So that's bringing on the stupid.

All right, now it's time to bring on a friend and phone a friend. Like I said, Raul Labrador served with him in Congress. He's running for Attorney General of Idaho. Let's give Raul Labrador a call. Hello, Jason. Hey, Raul Labrador. Thanks so much for answering the phone. You know, I wasn't quite sure if I called you if you'd actually answer.

How are you doing? Good. So Raul Labrador and I, we served together in Congress, know each other quite well. And so when he disowned the friend, this is like legit because we've been friends. And, you know, Raul was a congressman from Idaho. I was a congressman from Utah, Utah.

Raul's gone on to bigger, better things. Now he's running to become the Attorney General for the state of Idaho and just won the primary. So congratulations on that. Hey, thank you. We're super excited. It was a tough primary. I took on a five-year incumbent. I mean, a five-term incumbent, so you've been there for 20 years.

And we're excited and we have a great opportunity to make that office stronger. Yeah, well, it's a really –

I'm just glad we got good people who step up and decide to serve. Sometimes you lose a race, you've lost a race, sometimes you win. I've lost races, yes. But what's fascinating about you is I want to just jump right in and talk a little bit about your background because there aren't a whole lot of Raul Labradors around.

in Idaho. And certainly, you know, as I've come to know you, your wife, you've got this beautiful family. But, you know, you started life in Puerto Rico, right? I did. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, and I lived there until the age of 13. So those are really childhood memories of Puerto Rico. What was life like there? Yeah.

You know, it was beautiful. My mom worked in the hotel industry in Puerto Rico. I was an only child and she was a single mom and she worked in hotels. And we always I always had to live close to the hotels where she worked that. So most of my life in Puerto Rico, I actually lived pretty close to the beach because she was working in large hotels, hotels.

there right on the beach and she as a single mom she had to be pretty close to home when she went to work so what was she doing what was her job so she worked as a bar manager and a restaurant manager you know in in the hotel industry you have what you call it the food and beverage department right and most of the time she was on the beverage side working in in the bar or or the um

cocktail area for the large hotels. Her last job in Puerto Rico was actually at the Sheraton Hotel in New San Juan, which is called Condado. And she was in charge of all of, you know, the hotel had like three or four bars and worked directly with the restaurant managers. And she was in charge of all of those different facilities in the hotel.

So when you grew up, were you speaking Spanish or were you speaking English? So I grew up speaking Spanish. Spanish is my native language. English is my second language. I learned English in school. Every student in Puerto Rico has to learn English in school, but you only get one hour of English in most of your schoolwork.

The last two years, when I was 11 years old, my mom put me in a bilingual school because she knew she wanted to move to the mainland. And she wanted me to learn English a little bit better so I could be better equipped to do it when I moved to the mainland. You're growing up in the perfect weather of Puerto Rico. You're speaking Spanish and some English along the way, but...

Your mom's got sounds like a good, decent job. But what then you made a transition, right? So you she said, hey, we're going to the to the mainland. Where'd that take you and why?

Well, crazily, for two years, we talked about moving to Florida. And that's, you know, when you're in Puerto Rico, you either move to Florida or you move to New York. And she did not want to move to New York because she didn't like the cold weather. So she decided that we were going to move to Florida. And last minute, when I was 11 years old, she decided she did not want to move to Florida and she nixed all of our plans.

And then we spent two years waiting to see what the next move was going to be. And she decided to move to Las Vegas of all places.

So we moved from Puerto Rico to Las Vegas, which for her made a lot of sense because she worked in the hotel industry. For me, it was terrible. I was so mad at her. I was 13 years old and I couldn't believe that after promising me that we were moving to Florida, she moved me to the middle of the desert in Las Vegas, Nevada. And not much beach there. The last place I wanted to live. Nice.

Not much of a beach there in Las Vegas, although they certainly have some of the biggest resorts. But going back to Puerto Rico and the need to move on, what was life like? I mean, that's got to be hard, right? I have such great admiration for single moms. I got to tell you, how they do it and balance the work-life kids, it's just mind-boggling to me. You know...

Life was hard. She had a good job, but it didn't pay that well. You know, the wages in Puerto Rico are not that high. She wasn't getting paid super well. But everything she ever did, she wanted to make sure that I had a better life. Her dream in life was to make sure that I was successful in life. So she had put me in private schools throughout my entire life.

you know, elementary education and middle school. I went to four years of a military school in Puerto Rico. Then she put me in another private school. And then eventually, like I said earlier, she put me in a bilingual school. But for her, that meant sacrificing and going without things that she needed.

because the tuition was high, she wasn't getting paid that much. We were not doing really great financially, although she was doing, she had a pretty decent job, but it was not the highest paying job in the world. And she was working

40, 50, 60 hours a week just to make ends meet for us. But she always wanted me to have a good education. So it was tough. The thing that she gave me, which was a blessing to me, was that she never complained about her life. And I think something that I have tried to do as a parent, and it is not always easy,

But she never complained about her situation in her life. She never complained about money. She never complained about inability to do things that she wanted. She just wanted me to have a good, idyllic life. And I was pretty happy. I lived close to the beach. I was able to go swimming all the time at the beach or at the hotel where she was working at. So I was maybe a little bit naive about how difficult life was for her.

And when did it kind of dawn on you, you know, that there were things I've talked about on this podcast in the past where, you know, tough things suddenly started to happen once I became this very early teenager and like, wait a sec, that's, I just grew up playing soccer. I didn't know that he had this problem or that problem. And, and everything was idyllic for me. It sounds like you. And then

You get taken to this far, far away land in Las Vegas. Don't have any friends, really. I don't know if you had any relatives around. But when was that kind of eye-opening, eye-awakening moment or time or experience that, wow, this is, life's a little harder than it sounds like?

You know, I always knew that we didn't have money to do everything, but like I said, she never complained about it. When I really realized that we didn't have that much money was when we were making plans to move to Las Vegas.

My mom called my dad, actually, who was a travel agent. He had his own travel agency and he had not he was a good, you know, good person, but had not been the best dad. Let's just put it that way. And not always paid his child support or anything. And my mom made a deal with him where she said, look, if you pay for our plane tickets to go to Las Vegas, we we won't ask you for any more child support.

And that was the deal that she made. And that's when I started realizing, wait, we really don't have any money. And then we both got on the plane with two bags, one bag each. And those were all of my earthly possessions. All I had was what I had in one bag. And my mom had one bigger bag for herself. And those were all of our earthly possessions.

And that's when I realized, well, we really have nothing. We are moving to the mainland. We're going to a place where I don't want to live. We have no family. She had one friend in Las Vegas who she knew from Puerto Rico. And we didn't really know what the future was going to be like. And then when we showed up in Las Vegas...

We moved to this motel in downtown Las Vegas. You know, those you may have been to Vegas where they have those motels that are advertised like twenty nine dollars a night. Have you seen those? Yeah.

And I'm looking at this place and I'm like, this is like the poorest area where you can live. And I just realized, wow, we really have nothing. But my mom said, hey, things are going to be okay. She was going to look for a job. She was going to do the best that she could. And she always wanted me to kind of be unaware of the real difficulty of raising a child by herself.

That's amazing. You know, in no job, almost no network of people. But, you know, Las Vegas is, you know, it's a town where her skill set, I guess, would be a good fit for what people were looking for. So she probably had the right resume. But tell us, you know, as a 13-year-old, it's tough to make that transition. It was horrible. I was pretty mad at her. I didn't like her.

I did not like how far away it was from Puerto Rico, but she got a job at Caesar's Palace as a change girl.

You know what a change girl is? Yeah, yeah. So you get the quarters to pop them in the slot machines. Yeah, that's it. That's it. They don't do that anymore because everyone pays with a card now. But it's the ladies who used to have the quarters to give to the gamblers in exchange for their money so they could pop the quarters in the machine, like you said. And that was her first job.

She and she was working the nighttime shift. So she would work between 11 o'clock and eight o'clock in the morning. And and that's she was just trying to make ends meet and trying to find something so she could get in the industry there. Because what she really wanted to do is to get back into the food and beverage division of a large hotel. So were you just sleeping by yourself in this hotel room while she was off at work?

I was. I was. And today, you know, if you look back today, I probably would be arrested for that. Right. She left me alone and she just told me, you lock the door. You never open the door for anyone. And she would go to work every night. And it actually led to the biggest transition in my life.

where right around the time that I was just getting used to being there,

My mom decided that she wanted to go visit a church because she said that I had started hanging out with the wrong people in Las Vegas. And she started freaking out because she was saying, I just moved my little boy from Puerto Rico to Las Vegas thinking that this is going to be a better life for him. And she claims that I started hanging out with some kind of rough characters and she started getting worried about me.

And so what happened? So she went one night, she went to work. Again, remember, she's going to work at 11 o'clock at night and she was taking a bus to go to work. And we didn't even have a car. And she's crying all the way from our apartment all the way to the hotel. And when she gets to work, this lady asked her what was going on. And she says, I just ruined my kid's life.

He came to over here and I thought I was doing something good for him. And he's hanging out with the wrong people. These kids are all talking about doing drugs and they're going to ruin my son's life. And she told him, you know what? I belong to this church. I'm not even active in it anymore. I don't even attend, but they have a really good youth program.

And she introduced us to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She said, you should take your boy. They have a really good Boy Scout and youth program. And I think he would like it there. So did you get involved with scouting and church and everything else? So the best thing that happens is that she comes home. Remember, Jason, that I was pretty upset with her already about moving me.

So she comes home the next day and she tells me, guess what? We're going to go to church this Sunday. Way to win a 13 year old's heart. Yeah, I was 13 years old and I was already mad at her for having moved me all the way across the country and

And I said, "Are you out of your mind? Are you trying to ruin my life? You moved me to the middle of nowhere. You moved me to a place I don't want to live in. I don't have any friends. I lost all of my friends, and now you want me to go to a Mormon church?"

And my mom was so amazing. You know, the wisdom that she had, I still sometimes look back and I think, I don't think I've ever had the kind of wisdom that she had as a parent. And she had it, you know, with all the struggles that she had. She just said, Papi, you know, which means dear Papi, let's just go one time. If you don't like it, we never have to go again.

And she said, I think you'll like it. They have a really good youth program. And I don't know if you remember this, Jason, but they had these home front commercials that they would have on TV. She says, you know, those commercials we've seen on TV about the church. They always talk about families and working together. And so you like those commercials. Why don't we try it one time? So I said, OK, I can do anything once.

And I showed up to church. I was 13 years old. And that Sunday, they welcomed me like a new family. They told me that they were happy to have me there. They invited me to an activity that they had on Tuesday. Then they had an activity on Wednesday. They had an activity on Friday. And they were going water skiing on Saturday. Nice. Yeah.

And I was like, this isn't too bad. This is actually pretty good. And then, honestly, there were a couple of cute girls in the church, too. And I thought, I think I'll try this. Yeah, I can sit on scoot over, Mom. All right. So I don't think that's I don't see any problem with that.

You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Raul Labrador right after this. Over 25 years ago, on September 29th, 1998, we watched a brainy girl with curly hair drop everything to follow a guy she only kind of knew all the way to college. And so began Felicity. My name is Juliette Littman, and I'm a Felicity superfan.

Join me, Amanda Foreman, who you may know better as Megan, the roommate, and Greg Grunberg, who you may also know as Sean Blundberg, as the three of us revisit our favorite moments from the show and talk to the people who helped shape it. Listen to Dear Felicity on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. So you get settled in there, but I mean, you eventually get through, I guess, high school and then you decide, didn't you go to law school? Yeah.

I did. So I was really, you know, the one thing my mom always did is that she ensured that I always had high aspirations and high goals. Her thing about life is that she didn't care what I was going to be in life. I could be a doctor, a lawyer, whatever.

you know, business owner, but she wanted me to be successful and she wanted me to get a high education. So I eventually ended up

going to school, going to BYU. I did become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I went on a mission to Chile for two years. And when I came back, I started trying to decide what I wanted to do. And for a while, I studied philosophy. I studied literature. And eventually, I thought for a while I was going to be a psychologist. And eventually, I just decided I wanted to be a lawyer.

So I got married my junior year in college, and my wife was finishing her master's degree in school psychology. And after she finished her master's degree, she and I decided to go to law. Well, I decided to go to law school, and we moved to Seattle, and I went to the University of Washington Law School.

Well, very good. I've met your wife. I've spent time with your wife. And I can see why you'd get married at what most would consider a pretty young age. Yeah, she's amazing. She's a very inspiring woman. She's very supportive. She's helped me. As you know, in politics, when you go to your spouse and you say, guess what? I'm really excited about getting involved in politics.

But in my case, it's I had to tell her now twice, but I'm going to take a pay cut to do this. Are you OK with that? It's important to have a wife who's supportive and loving and who who's understanding. Well, let's go through that decision making process, because I did. Did you hold elective office before you ran for Congress or was that your first run? I did. I was in the state legislature for four years.

So, and in Idaho, the state legislature is a part-time position. So I had my law practice and I owned my own law firm and I was an immigration lawyer for about 15 years and 10 of which I was a, I owned my own law firm. And so for four years, I was both a legislator and an immigration lawyer in my own law practice.

And then I ran for Congress in 2010 in the old Tea Party wave that came in right after Obama's first two years in office.

So I ran for Congress, and I had a pretty interesting race, as you remember. I was not the preferred candidate of the Republican Party. There was another young man who was running for office, and we had an incumbent Democrat in our seat.

And the National Republican Party had decided that they wanted to, they preferred the other candidate who was going to be a little bit more establishment and was going to be more of a yes man to them. And they did not support me in my primary. And so I had a pretty tough race where I got outspent 4-1, 5-1 in my primary. And I ended up beating my opponent by nine points.

But the irony of that is that when I won the primary, I thought for sure they're going to get behind me now because I won the primary.

And the National Republican Party, about a month after my primary victory, there was a front page article in the Idaho Statesman that they were no longer interested in winning this seat in Idaho. Well, you and I had a similar experience because I ran against a 12-year incumbent Republican who

you know quite frankly is actually a very good decent uh person but i just felt like hey after 12 years if we want different results we're going to have to elect different people and um made this case and so they the nrcc they worked against me and then once i got there and became the nominee they're like oh well good luck you can win that all yourself and

I did. And then as soon as I get to Congress, they said, oh, hey, congratulations. Now you owe us dues. And I said, dues for what? Like work it. You worked against me. You know, you want me to pay you how much? And I don't know what the dues were when you came in. I was the class right before you, the 2008 cycle.

Felt like I was on the tip of the spear and the edge of the Tea Party movement. And they said, well, it's $50,000. I'm like, you know, but spitting out your water, like $50,000 for what? Like, so you can work against guys like me? Like, I could go on and on. We could do a whole podcast just about this.

We could. We had the same story. We had the same experience. I show up and in the end, when they saw that I was going to win, they spent a little bit of money. And then when I show up, they sit me down and they say, well, Raul, now that we helped you win, we need you to pay your dues. All right. So I'm going to get in trouble for this. You're going to get me in trouble, Raul. So

The funniest thing to me was they had this new program and it was called the young guns. And it was, it was the, how the young guns was going to be this new program to bring in the young guns to take over the party and, you know, help transition it and all that.

So I think it was a laudable effort. But I had won, become the nominee. I had won without anybody's help whatsoever. In fact, I worked against them. Every single person came out against me. George Bush, Senator Hatch, Senator Bennett. I mean, you just lined up the Republican Party of Utah and they were coming out against me. And I still won and I won by 20 percentage points.

So, and that was the primary. And anyway, so they have the Young Guns program and the Young Guns are out there and they're promoting all these people. So they invite me to this dinner and I go to this dinner and I sat next to Tom Price, who I really like. Congressman out of Georgia. He was the Secretary of Health and Human Services for Donald Trump. I really liked Tom Price. This is no fault of Tom's.

So I go and I sit next to Tom Price and they have a new brochure that they're telling people about how they're making all this great progress. And then they're listing out the victors, the ones that they really made a difference in. And I was on this list and I'm like, oh, shut up. You had absolutely nothing to do with my victory. But nevertheless, politics, I guess.

Well, that's so funny. I actually have the honor of being the first candidate to defeat Young Gun in a primary. All right. So nevertheless, those of us here in the Intermountain West, we made it through that process successfully.

But that decision, you sit down with you. I mean, it's one thing to vote to run for the state legislature, but it's another thing to go to your wife and say, hey, honey, you know what? I think this is a really good idea to get my name drug through the mud. We'll probably lose. It's going to cost us a lot of money. What was that discussion like? And what really was the compelling thing for Raul Labrador to say, yeah, this is a good idea. I mean, it turned out for the best, but at the time it wasn't so clear. Yeah.

No, at the time it was a crazy idea because I thought that, you know, I kept having this feeling that I needed to run for Congress because I was upset about what was happening in America, was upset about what was happening under the Barack Obama administration. They were trying to pass, as you remember, the...

the health care bill. They were trying to nationalize a bunch of the issues that I thought should be left at the state level. And as a state legislator, I just kept thinking, you know, we keep making good decisions here in Idaho, but the United States keeps imposing upon us all these bad things that we don't need.

So I really felt the urge to run, but my wife was not excited about it at all. At first, she just said no. And my wife and I have an agreement that we talk about everything. And if we're not both on board, we don't do it.

So even though I felt really excited about running, she just did not support it. So I had a friend, ironically, who decided to run. And since he decided to run, I decided not to get in the race because it's not good to have two conservatives in the race against one more establishment candidate. So I decided not to get in the race and I was fine with it. I accepted my fate.

And eventually this friend called me. It was actually the Friday after Thanksgiving in 2009. And he calls me and he says,

Raul, I'm stepping out of the race on Monday. I came down with something. I'm pretty ill and my doctor tells me that I can't finish this race. You have until Monday to decide. If you don't announce on Monday that you're running, this other guy is going to win.

And because he's going to solidify all the support and we don't have a chance to beat him. So I look at my wife, we get on our knees, we talk and pray that whole weekend and

And that happened a little bit right after, I think, the passage. I can't remember how long it was after the passage of Obamacare the first time. And my wife was so upset about that. And my wife's not super politically. She's very politically attuned, but she's not a political animal like you and I are.

And she just said, Raul, I need you to be in Washington, D.C. You need to stop this craziness. And she said, go ahead and do it. And I'm 100 percent behind you.

But the reality is that when she said yes, we were both thinking that I was going to lose, you know, that that I had a duty to do it. But because the party had already chosen their candidate and I had very little name I.D. in in my congressional district, I obviously people knew me in my legislative district. But, you know, there's there's

you know, 35 legislative districts. So I was just one of 35, you know, I was known in one 35th of the state. She just, and I both thought, well, this is, this is a, an uphill battle, but we're going to do everything we can to win this thing. Yeah. I mean, you had everybody, you had up North, right. The whole Western part of Idaho, essentially from Coeur d'Alene all the way to Boise. Right. I mean, you had a huge swatch of land.

Yeah, so for your listeners who are picturing the state of Idaho, the state of Idaho has kind of like a pipe going up the western part of it that reaches all the way to Canada. So my congressional district goes from Canada to Nevada, has four states and one country surrounding my congressional district. Yeah.

Yeah, those of us out west, we had bigger congressional districts. I used to remind people that I had two, not one, but two counties in my congressional district, both of which were bigger than the state of New Jersey. And one of my counties had no stoplights in it when I first took over. In fact, I remember when they put in a stoplight in Emory County,

And so we had this town hall meeting and whoa, we had this huge surge of people. I mean, like a huge number of people showed up for such a small county. And so the first question is, you know, what are you going to do about the stoplight? And I said, well, look, there's local issues, you know, there's city, there's county, state, and then there's federal. This is not a federal decision.

And I thought my one-minute explanation would allow us to go on to the whole topic. Oh, no. The next question was, so what are you going to do about it? And...

You know, it's just, it's the, it is the best thing about America that you have this ability to petition your government and ask these people that are representing you what they're going to do about it, even if you don't have jurisdiction. But sometimes the issues, this is why all politics is local. It's like what you were dealing with in, you know, McCall or, or Boise or Coeur d'Alene, the whole solely different than what I was dealing with. And,

in Helper or Price or, you know, Farron, Utah. I mean, it's just, and it's so different than Philadelphia. And that's the beauty of the system.

It's amazing. You have this, it's a tremendous privilege. And as you know, and you go into these small cities and people are looking for an answer. But what I've noticed more than anything is they're not always looking to agree with you. They just want to be heard. They're looking for somebody who will listen to them and treat them with respect when they're asking a question.

And I love that about being a public servant. I had, you know, so many opportunities to do town hall meetings. I did a lot of town hall meetings and I met with a lot of people. And I tried really hard to answer questions, you know, difficult questions. I always taught my staff that when somebody called the office, you know,

if it's not an issue that we deal with at the congressional level, to find out who does deal with it so we could give them the right information of where they could go.

And many people would say, you know, I called a bunch of congressional offices and they would just tell me that's not my issue. And then they would hang up. And you're the first person who actually took the time to answer the question. And I think it's a privilege that we have. And I think many public servants forget that sometimes. Yeah, it's so true. And I think that's one of the shames, you know, since you and I have left is the shame that with COVID, as I've talked to people that are still there in Congress, they're

And then also I saw something when the election of Donald Trump where the left just turned violent and aggressive to the point that you couldn't have a dialogue anymore. And I think that casualty, if you will, it's a shame because you can't just hide behind, hey, let's do a teletown hall or let's just do something on Zoom. It's just different.

And it's a shame that that's kind of gravitated that direction and gone away. Let me go back and ask you, though. Your name is Raul Labrador, and it's Idaho. Not a lot of Puerto Ricans, I would guess, in the state of Idaho. How do you think it is that you broke through? And I think it's unfortunate sometimes we put stereotypes in place, and I hope I'm not doing that.

But there was this thought that, hey, you know, we can't break through if you got a different ethnicity or you can't break through if your name is spelled differently. Chaffetz, there aren't a lot of Chaffetz's around, I tell you that. So why do you think that you were able to break through with what has been viewed, I think, traditionally as, you know, sort of a different ethnic makeup?

You know, I always make the joke when people ask me about this, I always make the joke that there are six Puerto Ricans in the state of Idaho.

Me and my five kids. That's probably true, but yes. Yeah. It's not entirely accurate. There's a, there's a, there's a small population of people from Puerto Rico, but, but it is significant, you know, and what I think makes the biggest difference is like I said earlier, people are looking for somebody who cares and who listens to them and who treats them with respect. I'll tell you, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but,

In this last race that I had for attorney general, my opponent was not always the most charitable person talking to people who disagreed with him, was a little bit condescending. I always thought, you know, you don't need to be condescending. You can disagree with people. I have no problem disagreeing with people, but I try not to do it in a condescending way. I try to talk to them. And I think it comes maybe a little bit from the fact that my mom was a Democrat.

And and growing up, we had differences of opinion and we talked a lot about politics. And she taught me to really love and be passionate about politics, but to never be disagreeable about it and to treat people with respect who are different than you. And the other thing that she always taught me is that.

You treat everybody the same, whether somebody's the CEO or the general manager of the largest chain in the hotel in Las Vegas, or they're just a change girl. You treat them exactly the same.

You don't treat people differently depending on, you know, what jobs they have. So it's been fascinating to watch as the people, and frankly, it's a lot of the people that are not part of the establishment, you know, the more humble people in Idaho, they love talking to me because they're

I will engage them. I will talk to them. And they love hearing my stories. They love knowing that I know Jason Chaffetz. You know, I get asked questions. Do you know this person? Do you know this person? And I just have a fun time talking to them about the experiences I had in Washington, the meetings that I had.

with President Trump, the meetings I had with President Obama, you know, the things that I did in oversight and government reform with you, you know, all those things, they love hearing about it. And they love hearing about it from a common man, somebody who came maybe from a different place, but a very similar background, a very humble, similar background. And they love hearing about all those stories. That's interesting. I

I want to get – we need to get to the rapid questions here, but I want to ask you one other question because I didn't realize that your mom was a Democrat and that she may not have been politically active off the charts and doing this, that, and the other. Right.

If she kind of had that attitude and the approach, you ended up being a very, very conservative person. And there's nobody that can look at your voting record and make a claim otherwise. So what is it that maybe informed you or had you take such a conservative bent? What is that? What is that in Rowell? And why did that surface?

I think it was going back to being 13 years old and when we first moved to Las Vegas, my mom did two things that were really, I think, life changing for me. You know, remember in Las Vegas,

you register for party affiliation and you go to people's homes to register, or at least that's the way they used to do it. So when I was 11 years old in Puerto Rico, I went to a Ted Kennedy rally with my mom. Ted Kennedy was running for president. The first time that Puerto Ricans have been able to vote in a primary,

And the people of the island was just going crazy, so excited that Ted Kennedy had come to the island. And I was at that rally. I remember being on a man's shoulders, screaming Ted Kennedy's name. So I knew my mom was a Democrat and a passionate Democrat. But when we moved to Las Vegas, this was 1981, she went to register and she went to register as a Republican.

And I just said, whoa, what's going on here? I thought you were a Kennedy Democrat.

And, you know, I was only 13, so I only knew a little bit about politics. And she just said, you know what, I don't like Jimmy Carter. And I have really I really liked President Reagan, what he's done the last year. And I get to vote for a president and I want to make sure that I vote for President Reagan. And I was I was like, wow. So that made me think, oh, so you don't you're not stuck.

with your political affiliation. You know, it's not something that you're stuck with for life. So that was something that was really life changing. But the second one's a little bit more personal. We were really struggling. And for a while, we just didn't have any money. And I ended up going to the church to ask for some assistance from the church, for some welfare from the church with my mom.

And at the moment, the church said that they could help, but they made me work for it because my mom was working 60 hours a week and she couldn't do anything to give back. So I ended up going to Deseret Industries. For your listeners, that's something like Goodwill in the LDS church.

And I ended up going four Saturdays in a row to go to Deseret Industries to work eight hours a day to pay for the assistance that we had received. It was kind of a volunteer thing.

And I asked my mom why she made me do that because I was, you know, I was not happy, you know. So remember, she moved me to Las Vegas, made me join a church, made me go to a church. And now she's asking me to go work for her for the food that we were receiving. And she's just taught me a really important principle to her that you welfare can destroy your soul if you don't do something in return for it.

And that if you become dependent on whether it's the government or the church, you will never be free from the shackles of welfare. Mm-hmm.

And even though she was a Democrat and had been a Democrat for a while until she registered there as a Republican, she had a really firm belief that you should never depend on the government or other people for anything. You should only rely on yourself. And that's what informed me. And that's the philosophy that I've always had. That's so inspiring because it's so much easier to just take it and

not work for it. And she was obviously a person of great faith and belief and principle. Is she still with us or did she? No, she passed away 18 years ago. She was very young. She and I actually, it's a little bit sad because she sacrificed all her life, but she ended up studying in college and got a degree in education.

So in 1992, we both graduated from college at the same time. She graduated from UNLV and I graduated from BYU. And then she worked for a couple of years as a teacher. And then eventually after two years, she had a stroke and had kidney failure and she became disabled after that and was only lived about 10 more years after that. Well, I got to tell you,

She she'd be one proud mama if she could see what her her little Raul grew up and was elected to the United States Congress and now is, you know, running for attorney general for the great state of Idaho and as the Republican nominee moving forward at that.

It's a great American success story and a lot of credit to you and a whole lot of credit to your mom, but, you know, your wife and kids as well. But it's just a great, I think, inspiring story. And I appreciate you sharing with us. Thank you. My pleasure. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back right after this.

You don't get out of here, Ralph, without answering rapid questions, though. Okay. So I don't care how many votes you've taken or anything else. You ready for this? I guess. Tighten your seatbelt. Here we go. All right. Who was your first celebrity crush?

Oh, no one's going to know who she is, but her name was Marisol Malaret. She was Miss Universe. She was the first Puerto Rican Miss Universe, and she was beautiful. And I actually have a picture with her when I was five years old. And you still have it. I bet you do still have it. I still have it. All right. What was the first concert you attended?

I went to a rat concert, R-A-T-T, a hard rock concert with some of my friends. Interestingly, I don't like hard rock music that much, but the opening act was a young band from New Jersey, Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi was opening for rat? That was a while ago.

That is funny. That is really funny. What was your high school? Now you're in Vegas at this point, but what was your high school mascot? The Wildcats. Las Vegas Wildcats. That makes sense. You ask enough people what their mascots are, it's pretty entertaining. All right. Favorite vegetable? Carrot. That's a safe answer. First job. And I'm not talking about mom telling you, hey, Raul, take out the garbage. I'm saying...

Raul, you got to go do this and you got a new boss. What was your first job? So my first job was a newspaper boy. And I did that as soon as I moved to Las Vegas till I was 16 and I could work. And my first job at 16 was I worked at a shoe store and I was a shoe salesman, Regal Shoe Shop in the biggest shoe,

place in Las Vegas that sold shoes. And I did that until I graduated from high school. Well, you must've been pretty good at it. Next time I'm going to have a look at your shoes and see what kind of footwear you're putting down there, but that's an, that's good. That's good. Um,

Do you have pets growing up? I mean, was there any room in the Labrador household? It's the two of you, but pets are kind of hard to maintain if you're... Pets are very hard to maintain when it's just two of you. I had a few hamsters and a couple of parakeets, and that's about it. Life's most embarrassing moment. Ooh.

That's a tough one. I've had so many of them, Jason. Yeah, well, I've got a list of, Raul, most embarrassing moments, but I was just wondering what you thought the most embarrassing moment was. I don't know. That's...

I don't know. I don't get embarrassed very easily, as you know. That's true. It's like hard to embarrass, Raul. I can get that. I get that. It is hard to embarrass me, and I'm kind of hard-headed sometimes, so I just move through. Well, you're Puerto Rican, right? Yeah.

I know. I'm loud and I'm proud, right? There you go. Yes, that's true. I've been with you in committee hearings. I get that. That's good. All right. Unique talent that maybe nobody knows about. Like, what can you do? Like, can you juggle? Do you like, you know, can you? I can juggle. I can juggle really well. I took theater in high school.

And the first thing they taught us how to do was juggle. So I can juggle pretty well. All right. That's a unique talent. Any other unique talent you want to share? I can water ski. I can...

Nothing super unique. I guess juggling is probably the most unique thing I do. Obviously, I'm bilingual. That's not too unique, but I speak two languages pretty well. Some people would differ with that. Yeah. Pineapple on pizza, yes or no? I like it. It's not my favorite. We were on a roll.

I know. Judges do not like this answer, but I appreciate the candidness. I'm going to eat pineapple on pizza. I'm not a snob about it, but it's not my first choice. So if you didn't take the turn and go into politics and you didn't become an attorney, what do you think you would be doing? It's interesting. I've thought a lot about that recently. Yeah.

I really wanted to be a psychiatrist or a psychologist when I was in college. And I think I would have done a pretty good job with that. So maybe now I really when I was in middle school and high school, I wanted to be an actor. And that's why I took theater in high school. But I was terrible at it.

So I don't think I would have been very successful. Favorite childhood toy? My Evel Knievel motorcycle. Yeah, Evel Knievel. This generation doesn't know about Evel Knievel. I'm just telling you, that guy had the game. I was a huge Evel Knievel fan.

Yeah, the self-winding motorcycle, you know, with the jumps. And, you know, I always tell it's kind of funny because if you remember, Evel Knievel tried to jump the Twin Falls, you know. Snake River, right? Yeah.

Snake River over here. And I remember watching that in Puerto Rico when I was a little boy, just being super excited about it. So every time I go over that bridge, I think about that young boy in Puerto Rico. Can you imagine that young boy thinking he's going to be a congressman from that state? Yeah. This guy was going to take a rocket that was

not, it was different. It was going to like go up this ramp and then go up and over on the other side. I remember listening to it on the radio, but I also in person went to an evil Knievel jump. I think it was in California. If I don't, if I recall, right. Like jumped over a bunch of buses and evil Knievel, you got to look them up if you don't know. All right. Two last questions. Best advice you ever got.

from my mom to treat everyone the same, whether they're, you know, the general manager or CEO of a place or, or the janitor or the change girl at a, at a, at a hotel, just to treat everybody the same, that everyone deserves the same respect. That's great advice. And finally, your last question, who was your favorite oversight chairman who was from Utah's third congressional district?

I don't remember. Why is it that every one of my colleagues that I asked, they cannot come up with the answer of this question? Suddenly their mind goes blank. I don't remember. I don't recall. I have to think about this. I only remember having one really good chairman, but that would be for you.

Well, again, we almost got through it successfully. But Raul Labrador, he is the Republican nominee for attorney general there in Idaho, served in the United States Congress. And it's been a pleasure and honor to kind of know you and get to know you and spend time with you. And I hope our paths continue to cross and cross often. But I appreciate you joining us on the Jason in the House podcast. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. And it's always great talking to you.

Hey, I cannot thank Raul Labrador enough. Nice guy. Wonderful family. Gotten to know his wife as well. Just wonderful people. Can't thank him enough for joining us and opening up and sharing the story. And I know he misses his mom. I miss my mom. My mom passed away. I would have loved for her to see me, you know, get to Congress and

And do all kinds of things with my family and grandchildren and all that. But I appreciate Raoul opening it up and talking about it. I also appreciate you taking the time to listen to this podcast. So hoping you can rate it, subscribe to it, share it with others. That would be great. And be sure to join us next week when we come on back with another exciting guest. I'm Jason Chaffetz. This has been Jason in the House.

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