Heidi, Saint John. Welcome to straight talk.
Thank you for having me Laurel.
It's really great to be here. Well, let
me ask you as a Republican,
why did you decide to challenge
the incumbent Republican
congresswoman Jamie Herrera Butler?
I decided to challenge her because we need
a true conservative voice in Congress and
for several years now I've watched as Mrs
Herrera Butler has voted for things that
I know the constituents of Washington,
Southwest Washington really want,
for example, the the water,
the the border wall around our southern our
southern border desperately needs protection.
It's occurred to me as I've watched her
voting that she votes more like a Democrat,
particularly fiscally,
and I think it's time for new eyes
on the situation of fresh voice.
The southwest Washington to bring real
conservative values to the forefront,
again to represent the people here
and why have all the 9
candidates on the ballot.
And again, the top two move
on to the general election?
Why have all nine?
Do you think you're best suited
to represent the third district
in southwest Washington?
Well, I think if people are looking for a
true conservative voice in Congress, I am
that voice on the only true conservative.
I'm running against a a Democrat
who has Communist viewpoints.
I'm running against another person
who claims to be a Republican,
but has absolutely no record of
voting for conservative values at all,
and in fact, leans towards socialism.
And I'm running against Jamie
Herrera Butler who votes more often
with the Democrats than almost
any other Republican in Congress.
And so I'm running to be a true
conservative voice for Southwest Washington.
And I also asked.
Another conservative
front runner in the race.
I think you're referred to him,
Joe Kent. This question.
Do you think Joe Biden
won the 2020 election?
I think that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
That seems to me that he's the President
of the United States of America.
The question that we're really all
alluding to is whether or not we have
fraud in our voting system and listen,
I've been a citizen of Washington
state for a long time.
I remember the election of Dino Rossi here.
I remember, and I'm sure you do, too.
Laurel, the hanging chads from Florida.
We do have fraud in our election system,
but I'm much more concerned at low
voter turn out and in going back
to voter integrity and voter ID.
And so those are going to be the
issues that I would focus on.
You you mentioned this,
you kind of inferred this in
in one of your answers earlier,
but you said you would drop out of
the race if one of the candidates
was endorsed by Donald Trump and he
did endorse your opponent Joe Kent.
So why didn't you keep your
promise and drop out and instead
decide to stay in the race?
Yeah, that's a great question
because it lets me highlight the fact
that I thought like many people,
probably including President Trump, that
that Joe Kent was an actual conservative,
when in fact he voted for Bernie
Sanders in the Oregon primaries in 2020.
2020 wasn't very long ago,
so this is a guy that registered
in Oregon in 2012 as a Democrat,
and now he wants to.
And so 10 years a Democrat in Portland, OR.
And now he wants to represent my
family and the district that I
live in and where my businesses
are as a conservative in Congress.
I don't believe he's a conservative.
And at the time I didn't know
these facts about Mr Kent.
I assumed he was a lifelong
conservative like I am.
When I was a child my granddad took
me campaigning for Ronald Reagan.
I love this country and I love
the principles of limited freedom
and limited or or or more freedom
and limited government.
And so I'm staying in the race
again to give Southwest Washington
a true conservative voice.
I don't believe Mr Kent to be a conservative.
We heard him say earlier in this
show that he voted for Donald
Trump in the general election.
He only voted for Bernie Sanders in the
primary to try to put up the weaker.
Candidate against Trump and he says he was
actively working to get Trump reelected
in 2020 when he says you were not.
Oh no, he he. No, he's completely wrong.
I was actually fired from my
literary literary agency for
my support of President Trump.
I have been an outspoken
supporter of President Trump.
Probably got more people to the polls
on behalf of President Trump than
Joe Kent could ever dream of doing.
And I'm not buying his line about
voting for Bernie Sanders so that
he could help President Trump.
That's the most ridiculous thing
I've ever heard in my life.
And besides, when he put that vote
in for Bernie Sanders claiming he
was trying to help President Trump,
Bernie had already dropped out
of the race and endorsed.
Joe Biden, so the story doesn't hold water.
I think his campaign was shocked
to find out that he had in fact
voted for a socialist,
came up with a story,
and the story is not working for me.
Well, let's turn to some kitchen
table issues and and a big one.
Is inflation. Polls show it's become
a top concern for Washington voters.
What plan would you support for a
post pandemic economic recovery?
Well, I think the first thing we got
to do is stop with these crippling
regulations under the Biden administration
we are at somewhere in the neighborhood
of $2 billion in regulations and
government handouts that Thomas Sowell
said that inflation is a quiet but
effective way for the government to
transfer resources from the people
to itself without raising taxes.
And that's what you're seeing happening
except for we're getting hit with a double
whammy because they're raising taxes.
Listen, we should be cutting
taxes as a business owner,
I would like to see the regulations
lifted and taxes or rolled back.
And that we can unleash
American ingenuity again.
And I believe if we can do that,
we will see the economy coming back.
But we are in a recession and I
think it's gonna be a rocky ride
for about the next 12 to 15 months.
And another top issue for a lot of people,
Americans and Washingtonians.
You've said you were unapologetically
pro-life if elected,
and it came up for a vote in Congress.
Would you support a federal ban on abortion?
So I am 100% unapologetically pro-life.
I have been one of the leading voices in
the pro-life movement for many many years,
but I would not support a federal
ban on abortion and let me tell you
why the Supreme Court of the United
States just reversed Roe V Wade,
which was the right thing to
do on 100 different levels.
I have huge moral problems with the
taking of an innocent human life,
which is what abortion is,
but it is not the role of the
federal government to either
permit abortion or to ban abortion.
And when if we want.
That to happen from a
governmental standpoint,
what we need is a constitutional amendment.
According to the 10th amendment.
If an issue is not given directly
spoken to in the Constitution,
it becomes a state's rights issue.
And that's what SCOTUS did.
They rightly ruled that this was
never something for the federal
government to be involved in,
and they kicked it back to the states.
I believe that if we go ahead now,
and we say, well,
we want a federal ban on abortion,
we're going to wind up with the same
problem that that we see that we've
seen for the last 50 years only.
On the other side,
I'd love to see a constitutional amendment.
That protects life in our
Declaration of Independence.
We stated that we've all been
given certain unalienable rights,
and the first one is the is life.
It's life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
But the wrong way is a
federal ban on abortion.
That's the wrong way to protect life.
And since you believe in states rights,
abortion is legal in Washington state.
And Democrats want to protect that right?
Would you support overturning Washington's
Reproductive Privacy Act, which became
law in 1991 at the legislative level?
If it, if it's a states rights issue
and we're talking about Washington
state becoming anything but a sanctuary
state for abortion, I would support it.
I am a pro-life conservative.
I believe in protecting all life.
I think we should protect the life of a
mother and her baby that we should never
take one life to prefer another life.
So we should always care for
both a mother and her child.
So to me this is again it's
a states rights issue.
If this comes before the state legislature,
I would lend my voice in support
of the unborn and in.
In defense of life,
let's talk about education.
I know that's important too.
You have seven children.
You've homeschooled your children
as an elected congressional member.
Would you support public schools?
Absolutely, I think our
public schools need support,
but I'll tell you what,
what we don't want is the federal
government meddling in education.
And that's what we're seeing happening.
The Department of Education.
Again, this is not in the Constitution.
This is not the role of
the federal government.
There are at least 33 agencies,
federal government agencies that leave
a lot of us scratching our head going.
Where is that in the Constitution?
And so I believe in school choice.
I would love to see that happen at a
state level and I would like to see
the federal government stop giving
grants to things like critical race.
Marion, stop propping up crazy woke
gender ideologies telling children
that there are more than two genders
and that they could be a narwhal
way by Friday if they want it to be.
We have got to start getting back
to teaching our kids, reading,
writing, and arithmetic.
That's what our public schools are for.
They're not there to
indoctrinate our children,
and it grieves me as a mother and
a grandmother to see how far our
public schools have fallen from
the original role of educating
our children so that they could
be a success in the marketplace,
not in the marketplace of woke
social experimental.
Ideas?
There's a new poll in Washington
state showing a majority of
Washingtonians would support
a ban on assault weapons.
Would you support a ban on
those kinds of firearms?
Well, first we have to decide
what an assault weapon is, right?
No one can agree.
Listen, I'm going to be a
defender of the Constitution.
The Second Amendment guarantees
us the right to self-defense,
and it says that the right of
an American citizen to keep and
bear arms shall not be infringed.
And I would like to see the
conversation moved to why we are
having mass shootings in this country.
Why, why do we have such
a high fatherless rate?
Why is the suicide rate so high?
We keep talking about fruit issues and
we don't want to get to the root issue.
And I do not believe.
That disarming honest,
hardworking American citizens who
want the right to defend themselves,
will ever be the solution to
gun violence in our country.
I think that there are lots of
solutions we can talk about,
like allowing teachers to carry
if they would like to,
but disarming the American people under
the guise of banning assault weapons,
I think,
is a very bad idea.
So if we were able to define
assault weapons like the type that
have been used in mass shootings,
you still would not favor a ban.
No, again I believe in the in the
Constitution saying that the right
of an American citizen to keep and
bear arms shall not be infringed.
You know the moment we start saying,
well this this weapon is a good weapon
and that weapon is not a good weapon.
Pretty soon you're just taking one more
step to disarming at the American people,
and now pretty soon you're Australia.
You're New Zealand and I don't think that
the founding fathers ever had that in mind.
They were escaping tyranny.
They knew what would happen
if the government ever had the
opportunity to tyrannize its people.
They came from tyranny,
and they put the 2nd.
Then into our Constitution to
protect future generations of
Americans from governmental tyranny.
That's why it's there
as Clark County and Vancouver have
grown, we've seen crime go up.
What plan would you support to
help reduce crime in your district?
Well, we understand that crime is
terrible in in Southwest Washington.
Absolutely climbing just like it is
in the Portland metropolitan area.
This does not a federal issue,
but I would like to see if to have
conversations about what's happening.
Most of the issues that you see with rising
crime are coming from our state legislatures.
Olympia is awoke embarrassing mess
right now we're limiting the role
in what police officers can do,
how they can pursue a criminal, for example.
And So what are we seeing?
We're emboldening criminals.
We see this with people
setting up drug camps.
You can't park.
Your car overnight on mill Plain
right now without having your
catalytic converter stolen.
We've got huge issues.
Our jails are turning people away.
Our prosecutors are are
refusing to prosecute criminals,
and So what are they doing?
They're they're committing
more and more crimes,
but again,
this is an issue for the state,
and for the state legislature is not
necessarily a federal government issue.
We're about out of time, Heidi.
What message would you
like to leave with voters?
You know what? I have so much
hope for Southwest Washington.
I love this area.
My husband and I have been
married for 33 years.
We've raised our children here.
Our grandchildren are being raised here.
We have a leadership crisis
in Southwest Washington.
We have a leadership crisis from
our school boards all the way to the
federal government from STEM to Stern,
and I am running to give the people of
Southwest Washington a true voice to
come home to listen to their concerns,
to put our heads together around a table
and start coming up with ideas that
move the needle that actually bring hope.
And prosperity back to the
citizens of Southwest Washington.
I've been going back and forth to
Olympia and to Washington DC to talk
about the issues of limited government
and freedom for over 17 years.
And I would like to take my voice to
be a voice for freedom and limited
government on behalf of the citizens
of Southwest Washington to Washington
DC and represent them in Congress.
Heidi Saint John. Thank you for
joining us here on straight talk.
Thank you for having me.