Now this is the FCB Podcast Network. This is the Jeff Glorian Nick Show. Welcome to the Jeff Lauri and Nick Show. And here we are in the midst of winter and here in Ohio, and we have a very important primary election coming up in March. And today we have a special guest, none other than Ohio's Secretary of State, Frank LeRose. Good morning, Frank LaRose, how are you well? Hey, good morning, Jeff. It's so good to see you. Looking forward to this conversation. As always, as our audience knows you are a US Senate candidate in this upcoming primary, we want to just jump right into it. Tell us why should you be our choice in this primary? Well, thank you, Jeff, and again so good to see you, and I really appreciate your friendship over the years and enjoyed coming to worship with the church and everything else. The simple reason is that we've got a country to save. This country is heading into fundamentally dangerous direction. I know how to get that done right. I mean, talk is cheap that every candidate out on the campaign trail is going to make a lot of promises. I've actually proven it. I've proven that I'm going to fight for our values. That's what I've done for the eight years I was in the State Senate. That's what I've done for the last five years as a Secretary of State, where we've made it easy to vote and hard to cheat. Right. We've made elections convenient but also secure in Ohio. That's the same kind of leadership I'm going to take to the US Senate. I've really focused on a couple of things, Jeff. Number one is the economy. Because of the bad ideas from Sharon Brown and Joe Biden. This economy is hurting Ohio families because everything costs more, but wages aren't going up to keep up with it. We know how to unleash American prosperity by getting government out of the way, cutting to access, he can keep more of the money you earn, streamlining regulations, oil and gas drilling right here in Ohio so we can bring down the cost of fuel. It's about investing in the kinds of energy that actually work when the sun's not shining and the winds not blowing, to make sure that we can keep the cost of electricity down as well. We're gonna rebuild this economy by putting smart conservative leadership in place. The second one is I'm the only candidate in this race with school aged children. You know that I've got an eight year old to ten year old to twelve year old, three little girls, and I don't want to copare it with the government. Neither does my wife Laura. Laura and I want our children to be raised with our values. We don't want our children to be indoctrinative. We want them to be educated, and we certainly don't think some bureaucra I should be able to step between us and our children and try to make decisions about their healthcare or how they should be raised. Those are decisions that will make as parents. And then the other thing that I'm focused on, We've got to secure the US Mexican border. And listen, it's not because we hate the people on the other side, far from it. It's because we love our country that we want to secure the border. You know, I served down there. I was part of a counter narcotics task force on the US Mexican border when I was a soldier, and it was a tragedy what was occurring down there from the people involved, but it also was a real threat to our national security. It's gotten even worse now. There are drugs and crime porn across that border that are killing our communities, and we have to stop it. That means building the wall. That means supporting the border patrol, and that means taking away the incentive for people to come here illegally. So those are the things that I'll focus on, and I'm going to beat Sharon Brown in November so that we can finally get this country back on track. Thank you so much. To tell us a little bit about your military service. Yeah, so I enlisted when I was eighteen years old, left for basic training. I grew up an Akron and I was inspired by a former World War Two veteran who was one of the leaders in my boy Scott Troop, and so I got to hear stories about liberating a concentration camp and being part of the Normandy invasion. When I was a little kid, I thought, gosh, I want to do something like that. So I enlisted at eighteen starved with the one hundred and first Airborne Division deployed DA Kosovo, deployed to as I told you, the US Mexican border, and then I was given the chance to try out for the Army Special Forces and I thought, well, got to give it a try and was able to become a Green Beret. Served around the world, including in Iraq, Morocco, Alan. I was awarded the Bronze Star, and for me, the best part about it, other than of course serving in this country, was serving shoulder to shoulder alongside with some really amazing Americans from all walks of life, from all kinds of backgrounds in the United States Army, and that's something I really cherished. I still do that. I'm still a reservist. I get to be Sergeant first class Laarrose on the weekends every now and then when I'm not being Secretary of State of la Rose, and so I enjoyed that chance to continue serving. At forty four years old, I'm one of the old Green Berets now, but I can still keep up with the young guys. You've had a great political career. I shouldn't take career, but you served in the as a US I'm sorry, Ohio State Senator. Tell us a little bit about that your service, Therese, and you know, I appreciate your correction because I don't view it as a career. Listen, I can earn a living a lot of other ways, and Lord and I have decided to do public service because we believe that it's the best thing I can do to leave this country stronger for our children. And my time in the State Senate, I was really proud of the work that we did. It started with how do we cut the size of government so we can grow the private center. How do we attract more businesses to provide good paying jobs for people to come into our state. That was the focus that I had. Also keeping our elections secure. I did a lot also on public safety kind of issues and making sure that our neighborhoods are safe for our children. Those are the things that I focused on in the State Senate and then got elected Secretary of State and have been keeping the elections honest and convenient ever since then. That says a lot tell us a little bit about election security. Some folks will say, well, they don't trust the system, and some folks will say, you've gone too far. You know, you hear from the left that you've gone too far, you hear from the right that you haven't done enough. Can you just kind of clarify that, yeah, yeah, So again, we want there to be a Balloce. It's a false choice that you'll hear politicians really on both sides saying that you can't have both security and convenience. That's nonsense. We have secure elections and we have convenient elections, and that's what we want. We've got four weeks of early voting where you go down to the Board of Elections and cast your ballot. That includes evening hours, weekend hours. We have Sunday early voting in Ohio. Most states don't. There's only five states in the country that has Sunday early voting. As you know, a lot of faith communities have organized what we call Souls to the polls where people can come out and vote after church on Sunday. New Ohio has that most states don't. We also have absentee voting where you can vote from the comfort of home, and that's four weeks and get all the information about that at our website, the Secretary of State's website vote Ohio dot gov. And then of course we've got election Day from six thirty a m. Till seven thirty pm. But we also check IDs and there's nothing discriminatory about that. It's insulting for people to say that somehow because of your skin color, you can't have an ID or something. In Ohio, we accept that very simple idea that you have to prove who you are when you come to vote, and that's what most other states do as well. And guess what, if you don't have an ID, you can get one for free. In Ohio. All you got to do is go to any BMB location and you can get a free ID. So we don't want to keep anybody away from the process of voting. We also take dead people off the voter rules. I don't apologize for this. We work on a monthly basis to get the list from the Ohigh Department of Health and to remove the deceased voters from the voter rules. We also make sure that only citizens can vote, and we run a secure process that's cant bipartisan. Here's my call to action. If anybody that listens to your program thinks that maybe they're concerned about something they've seen on YouTube, or I've seen on Facebook or whatever else, go be a pollwark, sign up to be an election official. Learn firsthand why I say with confidence that it's both easy to vote and hard to cheat in Ohio. And you can do that again at vote Ohio dot gov. You get paid for it. Not a lot of money, but you know, a couple hundred bucks. But you're really going to get a great education. And how honest are elections are in Ohio. Here's the last thing. There's a lot of conspiracy theories out there that relate to voting machines. People have a lot of wild ideas. It's important for Ohioans to know that every ballot is on paper. Of course, we use a voting machine on election night to give you that quick result because we want to go to bed and knowing the result on election night, but that's not the final answer. We go back three weeks later and we count the paper and we compare it to the electronic result. We compare them side by side, and they have to match up. During my time as Secretary of State, our accuracy rate has been above ninety nine percent. In fact, ninety nine point nine to eight was our accuracy rate in twenty twenty. Ninety nine point ninety nine was our accuracy rate last year. We're proud of the way Ohio's Republicans and Democrats work together to run good elections. Yeah, I think that's so important to let the voters know, let the public know how Ohio's elections rank nationwide. Can you speak to that? We are unquestionably the gold standard. Other states admire the way Ohio runs elections. This is why. This is why I was the only Secretary of State in America to get Donald Trump's endorsement in twenty twenty two when I was running for reelection. This is why I was elected to be the Republican Secretaries of State chairman next year. Because other states really value the way that Ohio runs elections. This is why I've testified in numerous other states legislatures because they want to know how does Ohio do it so well even when they continue to struggle. This is something we're proud of. But don't We don't stay the best by just staying in place. We're constantly innovating. We've got legislation that we're working on right now to improve the security of our elections. For example, we found a loophole that allowed a Swiss billionaire to try to pour money into campaigns in Ohio, and so we're working to close that loophole because we don't want a Swiss billionaire funding campaigns at Ohio. Those are things that we're doing to constantly stay on the cutting edge of election security. Well, I personally would like to just thank you for the exceptional job that you're doing and keeping voting records accurate, keeping your files accurate and different in all of eighty eight, all of the eighty eight county boards of elections files are updated constantly, and that you're auditing them. And I think that's the thing to do and something that we as citizens should be proud of. Can you imagine, I mean, I just can't imagine they're being dead folks on voter files and voter files full of folks that haven't voted in decades and things like that, and folks that have moved without saying so. So I think you're doing a stellar job and the citizens of Ohio, both Democrats and Republicans, must be proud of the job that you're doing and the service that you've done in the Ohio Senate and a Secretary of State in it and hopefully in the US Senate. JEF, Honest elections are the foundation of our entire form of government, and it's my solemn obligation to make sure that people can trust their elections. Think about this, the only legitimacy. The only permission that any elected official has to do their job comes from what the founders called the consent of the government. All that means is that the citizens have all the power and they allow some of us to do these jobs. But that consent of the government only comes from a trustworthy election. If people don't trust their elections, anything else falls apart. And that's why we work so hard to make sure that again you can trust your elections and it's easy to participate in the middle. High. Well, thank you for taking this time out to just share with our audience why you should be our choice in this March primary and then in November. Any closing statements in remarks you'd like to make, We're just about out of time. Hey, Jeff, as you've heard me say, I took an oath when I was at eighteen and I joined the army, and I said, this country is so precious that it's worth dying for. I believe it is. That means that this country is also so precious it's worth living for. And that's why I'm asking for your vote for the United States Senate. I'm asking for your prayers and please check out our website frank Lerooes dot com to learn more about our campaign and please become a part of it. Sign up to be a volunteer with us. We'll go out and knock on doors together. We're gonna win this primary, and we're gonna win the general election, and we're gonna put our country back on track. And having your support would be a real blessing and I appreciate it. Thank you so much, and thank you to our audience for staying with us. Let's remember to keep fighting a good fight, and let's remember that we can all do better. So let's do our part keep making our communities and our country a better place to live. Thank you all. Thank you a Secretary of State, Frank LeRose and US candidate. We want you to win, win, win this March and move on to November to be the next US Senator from the state of Ohio. Thank you again, God bless you all. This has been a presentation of the FCB podcast Network, where Real Talk Lives. Visit us online at Fcbpodcasts dot com.
