On Monday’s Outside the Beltway with John Fredericks on Real America’s Voice News, Fredericks talks with Pennsylvania Gubernatorial America first candidate Lou Barletta to explain why he’s the best choice for governor of Pennsylvania and the importance of election integrity.
Fredericks: Joining me now, one of our best friends. We call them F.O.J. Friend of John. Not many people have that moniker, but certainly, Lou Barletta does. Lou Barletta is the Former Mayor of Hazelton, Pennsylvania.
Long history. The Mayor of Hazelton, Pennsylvania, made his name by stopping illegal immigrants from coming in and destroying his town, ran for Congress, became a member of Congress fighting illegal immigration in the House of Representatives.
Then he ran for the U.S. Senate got totally screwed by everybody three ways to Wednesday. Lost that race. But now he’s back and running for governor of Pennsylvania. And there’s a bunch of people in there, including Jake the Snake and others. So it’s a big field.
But Lou Barletta is with us now. Lou, I’m really excited about the fact you’re in this race. It’s going to be fun because my wife, Anne, and I were just as you know, we’re just in the midst of buying a new radio station in Philadelphia that reaches a huge swath of Pennsylvania.
It’s going to be in Chester. It’s going to be in Bucks County and that’s AM 740 and 103.3 FM. So you want to check that out. Welcome and tell us about your run for Governor, Lou.
Barletta: Sure, John. It wasn’t something that I planned on doing. I was enjoying my ten grandchildren. And then the pandemic happened and I watched Governor Wolf totally mismanage the pandemic here in Pennsylvania.
Picking and choosing what businesses can open, which had to close. It made no sense to me at all. You could buy a bicycle in Walmart, but you couldn’t go to your local bike shop. Who made the governor a King, that they could literally take people’s businesses away from them?
Then he stole the year’s education away from our children when science didn’t back what they did. And we don’t know the long-term effects of that. And if that wasn’t enough, he stuck COVID-positive seniors back into nursing homes when we knew they were our most vulnerable.
50 percent of our deaths here in Pennsylvania came from those nursing homes. Governor Wolf’s record on that is worse than Cuomo’s in New York, Whitmer in Michigan, and Murphy in New Jersey. And I had enough. Enough was enough. If not me, then who? I have ten grandkids and four daughters. That’s 14 good reasons to run for governor.
Fredericks: So who do you think will be the Democratic nominee? Because Tom Wolf’s term-limited out. There’s a couple of people running. Does it matter, or are they all the same?
Barletta: No. We know who it will be. There’s only one on the other side. And he’s been running for a long time. It’s Attorney General Josh Shapiro. You can look no further than Philadelphia if you want to know what will happen in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia now set a record for murder in Philly, and it’s just unbelievable what’s happening.
How crime has been allowed to get to a point where people don’t even want to go out their doors. Unfortunately, Josh Shapiro would rather go after the Little Sisters of the Poor than some of the drug dealers and criminals in Philadelphia.
So I would be a firewall between Joe Biden in Washington and those Liberal policies that would come here to Pennsylvania. Imagine if we had Biden in Washington and Josh Shapiro in the state House here. There would be nothing to stop them from literally destroying Pennsylvania and our future.
Fredericks: Tell me a little bit about what you would do as governor, how you would solve some of the voter fraud issues in Philadelphia. Trucks coming in Pennsylvania in the middle of the night, dropping off ballots, then disappearing. Or the fact that they wouldn’t let Republicans in during the counting.
A lot of people feel there was massive fraud there. We saw the hearings, I think, in Gettysburg that was led by Mastriano. We saw those. As governor, how would you address voter integrity issues in Pennsylvania and specifically in Philadelphia?
Barletta: Sure. I mean, over 2 million people feel that something went wrong here in Pennsylvania. And for some reason, the Democrats are afraid of an audit. What’s there to be afraid of if you really don’t believe anything went wrong?
And state legislature right now is working through a number of different ways that they can tighten the election. Listen, dead people have been voting here in Pennsylvania for a long time. Now they don’t even have to leave the cemetery to vote. They can mail in their ballots.
As a governor, I would sign a bill that would come from the legislature that would do away with the mail-in ballots. It’s ripe for fraud. They’ve mastered it here in Pennsylvania, and that’s the best way to stop it.
The bar shouldn’t be higher if you take the time to go to the poll, than if you just mail in a ballot where your signature doesn’t have to be verified. And we just know what happened in the last election.
And there really should be an audit so that we can fix the problems going forward. And again, why would you object if you didn’t think there was anything wrong?
Fredericks: So you’re pledging that as governor, you would encourage the General Assembly to pass voter reform legislation that a key component would be to get rid of mail-in ballot altogether?
Barletta: Absolutely. It’s too ripe for fraud, John. There’s no way to control it here. We’ve seen that before. Some of the obvious things we need to do are voter ID. Even Democrats agree with that.
There are some simple things that we should do. But right now, they have no way of controlling the fraud, the voter harvesting of what’s going on here in Pennsylvania.
We need to have free and fair elections so that people feel confident that the election, that there’s integrity there. And that’s a must. That’s what we have to do. Until we perfect it, I don’t think we should give more tools where people can commit fraud.
Fredericks: Lou, you’ve got a very large field running for the Republican nomination for governor. Has your primary been set? What time period is that?
Barletta: Right now for May, however, until there’ll be new maps drawn. So until they’re finished, there’s a possibility that the primary could be pushed back a month or so. We don’t really know when the primary date will be, but right now, it’s set for May.
And the nominating process or our audience is clear, is a plurality, 15 people, 10 people. Let’s say 10 people were in the race. Basically, whoever gets the most votes wins, there’s no 50 percent plus one, no majority, no run-offs. Technically, somebody could win with 35 percent if there’s a big field, right?
Barletta: That’s correct.
Fredericks: This is a very big field. We’ve got Senate President Jake Corman who is in it. As well as we understand Doug Mastriano. He’s another state senator. He’s getting in. Got a bunch of other people.
What is it that separates Lou Barletta out from the field? Why should you be the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania?
Barletta: I think it’s my experience, my resume, actually, you need to go should be able to govern to the governor. And I have that experience. I had a business. My wife and I had started our own business, so I’ve signed the front of checks.
We grew a business from nothing to the six largest of its kind in the country. I was a mayor for 11 years, as you know. I stood up against illegal immigration when no one else in America had the courage to do that. I stood there by myself and fought it all the way to the Supreme Court.
Cities all around America have imitated the ordinance that I created in Hazelton. I think that’s the kind of strength that we need right now as a leader here in Pennsylvania. Someone who’s not afraid to stand up and fight for their people, who won’t back down.
And I’m the only one in this race that has the statewide name ID that I have. And I believe it’s those qualifications that make me the best choice for those here in Pennsylvania. We need a strong leader at a time when we can’t have somebody who will be pushed around by the media or by the Democrats.
Fredericks: How do you beat Shapiro?
Barletta: Well, we look at the record. We look at inflation, we look at the border. We look at what’s happening. Those problems don’t stay in Washington. They come right here. Look at Philadelphia, look at the elections. We can go on and on and on. We are an energy state.
We could be exporting energy all around the world. We have that much energy under our feet, John. It’s just amazing. We need to build pipelines to get that energy to the market so that we could have lower energy costs.
Josh Shapiro and the Democrats are doing everything they can to stop that. And that’s Pennsylvania’s future. But it’s not only the future of Pennsylvania. It should concern everybody here in America because we could be a supplier of energy that would lower the cost.
We shouldn’t be begging OPEC for energy when Pennsylvania has it right here. Having this natural gas under our feet without the pipelines is like being in college and having a keg of beer without the tap. What the heck good is it? We’ve got to get it out, get it to market, and have these regulations that are killing our role.
Fredericks: Lou, I got to go. People want to follow your campaign. They want to get involved. Where do they go?
Barletta: Loubarletta.com.
Fredericks: You can’t make it any easier than that. Loubarletta.com.
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