Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tea Party Patriots Action Fund Chairman Jenny Beth Martin to the newsmaker line to discuss the momentum for Republicans on Election Day and the importance of taking the U.S. Senate.
Leahy: We welcome to our newsmaker line our very good friend, one of the founders of the Tea Party Patriots, now the honorary chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action Fund, Jenny Beth Martin. Good morning, Jenny Beth.
Martin: Good morning, Michael. It’s so good to be with you. It’s always great to be with you.
Leahy: Of course, you and I were some of the early organizers of the Tea Party movement back in 2009. Does this midterm election seem a lot to you, like the 2010 midterm election where Republicans gained a net 63 seats in the House of Representatives?
Martin: It does seem a lot like that. The momentum just continues to build every single day, and Americans across the country think that we are on the wrong track. In the latest NBC poll, 72 percent of Americans thought we were on the wrong track.
And I think that Americans who think we’re on the wrong track and still are undecided about how they’re going to vote are going to walk into that polling place and vote for change, which in the majority of the cases means they’ll be voting for Republicans.
Leahy: Have you been out on the road campaigning with Republican candidates?
Martin: I have not really campaigned this election cycle. Our super PAC did make endorsements, and we’ve had volunteer-driven text messages and hand-addressed mail.
I personally have been so much more focused on making sure that we’ve got the poll watchers staffed, that we’ve got the volunteers that know how to get plugged in to become poll watchers, and that they have training that they need.
Just yesterday, we did two extra, very last-minute training sessions for election integrity leaders across the country. One was across the country and one within Georgia, just making sure everybody is ready to go.
Leahy: I get the sense that this year Republicans are going to be much more prepared for any election shenanigans compared to, say, 2020.
Martin: Yes, I think that is exactly right, Michael. And what a good thing that – I didn’t realize until last night, there’s a change in the law in Georgia, from the Georgia SB 202 law that says that at 10:00 or 10:30 at night – I just learned this late last night, so I don’t have the exact time – every election office in the state must announce publicly or post publicly how many ballots they have in total and how many ballots remain to be counted.
The good thing about that is that means that extra ballots can’t come in after that without knowing that they’re part of the total that they are waiting on. So that is a kind of check and balance.
My point in saying this is that we are ready. We’re more ready than we were in the past. And there have been changes to the law in many states, including Georgia, to help make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.
Leahy: So there have been improvements in Georgia. Are there some states out there, Jenny Beth, where the possibility of skullduggery still exists?
Martin: I’ll tell you what I’m really concerned about right now is there’s a very bad proposition on the ballot in Michigan, Prop 2. And that would basically be the federal government takeover of elections, HR 1, that we fought against so much last year and at the beginning of this year to prevent it from going into law at the federal level. It would take the worst aspects of that and put it into place in Michigan and codify it in Michigan.
There are three former secretary of states in Michigan that have come out against that proposition, and yet the advertising around it has not been exactly truthful. And in fact, I would go so far as to say there have been some flat-out lies about it.
And that is one thing that I’m going to have my eye on closely tonight. I hope that that proposition fails.
Leahy: In the event that Republicans take back the House and in the event that Republicans take back the Senate. Do you see us climbing back from the current disaster that the Democrats have placed the country in?
Martin: If they take back the Senate – I think the most important thing that can happen if they regain control of the Senate is to put the brakes on some of these nominees to the administrative positions within the executive branch that Biden has the ability to nominate.
And a lot of times we think of judicial nominees, and of course it’s very, very important, but some of the most radical regulation changes are happening because he’s appointing far-left socialists into positions within his cabinet and within the administration.
Being able to stop some of that from happening from the United States Senate, I think is very important in terms of helping with the regulatory state. Then, as far as the House and the Senate goes, combined, I think the Republicans need to make their case and say, these are the laws we want to pass.
These are the bills we want to pass. Pass them and make their case to the American people. And then if Biden does not sign it into law and make things better, after he will clearly have the mandate to do something different than he’s done in the last 22 months, it will be on some of the Democrats when it comes to 2024.
I’m not holding my breath for him to sign things into law, but maybe he will wake up and realize he’s got to do what’s right for the country instead of what he’s been doing.
Leahy: As you survey the country, where do you think the biggest potential Republican surprise wins will be this evening?
Martin: I think that will be – some of the more surprising wins will be if Governor Whitmer is defeated in Michigan and if Blake Masters defeats Kelly for United States Senate in Arizona.
Those are two that we still aren’t sure exactly where things are going. I’ve heard people talk about Oregon. I’ve heard people talk about the Washington State Senate race that could be up depending on how big the red wave is, and also in New Hampshire. So we’ll see.
Those last three would be signs of a tsunami. But I think as far as a red wave goes, watching the Michigan governor’s race and the Arizona Senate race will be an indicator of whether we’ve got, how big of a wave we’ve got.
Leahy: How long do you think it will take before all the results are in around the country and we’ll have a definitive answer as to who is in control of the House and who’s in control of the Senate?
Martin: I think that if it really is the kind of wave that we’re talking about the polls are indicating, then we should have a sense of who’s going to control the House and possibly even the Senate tonight because the margin of vote difference would probably be larger.
It won’t be as close as what we saw in 2020. So even with outstanding votes, we’ve got such large margins of difference. But there will be some races that are going to take days, if not weeks, before we know how everything pans out because of the way mail-in voting is going.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Jenny Beth Martin” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Background Photo “United States Senate Chamber” by United States Senate.
