Pastor, we're going to do overtime now, and Jordyn wants to follow up where we left.

All right.

Yeah.

Which is just basically, you know, earlier you talked about wanting to eliminate property taxes in Michigan.

What is your plan to supplement the, funds raised through the collection of property taxes?

Okay.

if you Google or ChatGPT, it'll tell you that there's about 18 to $19 billion of money taken in property taxes in Michigan every year.

that sounds like an enormous amount, and it is an enormous amount.

But what we have to do is boil down t what does government exist for?

Does it exist to, check out the mating habits of the spotted owl?

you know, what is government for and what I, as governor, I would suggest, and I suggest I would ask every county, every township, every, city to follow a guideline.

How much are you spending on police and fire?

Because that's important for safety.

Infrastructure.

What are the needs that you have?

I've never seen a Democratic drain or Republican road.

Education.

it's constitutional.

We have to educate our children, safe and secure elections.

And then, as I mentioned, in the past, decentralizing local government because I'm tired of Lansing telling everybody what they have to do.

One size doesn't fit all.

So I would have for the first part of this would be having them figure that out, that local.

And then we would, of course, have people talking with them over the period of 6 to 12 months as we meet with all these, these cities and townships.

Then what I would propos is, statewide revenue sharing.

We already have that, here in Michigan.

And we would we would propose statewid revenue sharing so that counties and cities and townships, they know exactly what they're going to get.

what happens right now is Lansing mandates these things to them.

And now it's like they sit here as the city council and say, how on earth are we going to fund this example really quick?

Lake Odessa, there was a year and a half ago, there was a mandate that came out that you have to update your fire trucks and all this stuff for the fire department.

And the fire chief came out an he said, look, I can't do this.

this unfunded mandates.

Crazy.

And what would end up happening is we'd double our budget.

So I can't do this.

And that's.

So I didn't lose this testimony to, the city, the.

As I'm saying to you, that whole scenario has to change.

And we keep thinking, well, where are we going to get all this money?

Well, if we get governmen back to where it's supposed to be, it's going to be a lot easier to get to that point.

Pastor real quick on that, do you support the Axe MI tax proposal?

And do you think that' got a shot at making the ballot still?

Wow, that's a good question.

I have said that because that's what's going right now.

I have publicly stated that I'm in support of that.

The, the questions, there are questions that I have about it, and I don't know how much time we have, but they're, you know, the ax.

My tax proposal has gotten a lot of steam, so much so that now our legislators talking about what what Karla Wagner has been proposing and, you know, there was 100 there were 180,000, foreclosure filed last year because of tax.

break that tax breaks, inability to pay their taxes.

The problem is we have to address that.

And I don't like the citizens of Michigan being renters to their homes.

I don't like people losing their homes.

You know, if you if you're on a fixed income and your spouse dies, you lose your spouse, you lose your house.

Karla has been sayin that for decades or for at least several years.

And, you know we have to disconnect any taxes from homeownership.

But if it's so popular, why can't she get the signatures to put it on the ballot?

Well, I did talk to her a couple days ago, and she said she thinks she has those.

I know there's been that deadline's been moving for her because she was trying to support those.

I don't know the answer to that.

I do know that some people think, well, if I don't pay property tax we won't have money for schools.

We won't have money for police and fire.

So there have been red herrings thrown out.

In fairness, though, her proposal does not propose any kind of replacement, so that would effectively be defunding police, fire libraries, zoos, you know, al all those good sorts of things.

Yeah.

Well, what I've heard her say when I asked that question, she said, I'm not against a local tax and I gladly pay $5000 or $8000 a year for my for me to live in this municipality for these services.

But what I did hear her say is, I don't want my house losing my house connected to a tax.

And so that's that.

She has backe up, backed up on that somewhat.

However, we're a state tha makes things and grows things.

Let's take the grow part of it.

because all too often I think we don't talk about issue that relate to rural Michigan, but we grow a whole lot of things here.

What's one thing that you would do for the farmers in the state, and the people that make the things that go on our table every night?

This is going to sound very simple.

What I have talked with farmers, from dairy farmers to agricultural farmers, growing corn, wheat and things like that.

They've said that the mandates from Lansing are killing us.

I could give you the example of watching you know, and they take a cow to get slaughtered.

Guys have they're they're watching things along side of the road and Eagle and DNR, I guess pretty much Eagle, though.

They're coming to them saying, you can't do that.

Are we going to find you?

you're just washing the manure off on the side of the road.

This is out in the country.

There are other issues where people have come into dairy farmers that I know and they've said, you know, dump your whole load and you got a young person who's maybe their first job and they're trying to justify their job.

We all know that.

And and so they write everybody up in the bottom line is they end up going downhill from there.

So the whole point is getting government off of our backs.

Every every industry I've talked to has said there's too many governmental regulations.

That fourth branch of government, the unelected bureaucrats, are killing us.

You could do that through a con con.

Do you support that?

Explain.

Con con.

That's a brand new word to me.

The Constitution.

We are going to vote in November on whether to call in a constitutional convention to rewrite.

Right?

Yes.

I'm very much aware of that.

yes.

What was your question I do know what Con con is now.

I didn't know the.

Are you going to support in creating one?

You know, Tim, that's a great question.

I, I would be in favor of revisiting.

Why did you take so long to get there?

Because, first of all I didn't know what con con was.

Secondly, as I was thinking about it, my mind went back to article five of the US Constitution and our founders put up, article five that we could do a constitutional convention there.

And I'm thinking, well, if they were thinking, that's a good idea from the federal level, it's a good idea here.

But do you think it's worth opening up the Constitution again rather than just creatin amendments to the Constitution?

Well, as I said, I'm a I'm a originalist when it comes to the Constitution.

So to for me to say yes to that, is because I believe that the council, our founders, saw the da that we're living in right now when they said we're going to have a runaway legislature, we need a check and balance on the legislature.

So that's why I would say I'm in favor of we need to check and balance.

There' there are too many things going on, too much information, too much, too many lies being shared in our spread.

So if we can, if we had a kind of new constitutional convention right here in Michigan, I could see if I was leadin that, that it would be done well and it would benefit all.

This is what Governor Snyder wanted to make Michigan a top ten education state.

he had to admit, by the time he left, we weren't even close to it.

But we may be starting to get on that roll.

What would you do to make us a top ten education state in Mississippi and make the improvements that they made?

Why can't we make those same improvements we can, we can.

But the cultures of Mississippi and Michigan are different.

I could give you example of that, but the bottom line is, for the last four years since the since I ran in 2022, I've been askin teachers, educators, principals this, these questions, what about the education?

How do we fix that?

And my opponents want to just throw the Mississippi miracle at people and say, hey, here you go.

You're going to learn phonics You're going to learn letters.

And I actually, I thin maybe in Bridge, Simon Schuster?

He writes for us.

Yes, yes, yes.

So I mentioned letters is a good program.

But my question is why is there a problem?

You can't just throw a book at a kid and say, here, you're going to learn.

So here's what I've heard ADD, autism, class size, disobedience.

The list goes on.

And unless we address those issues, we're still going to have the same problem.

And that's Chuck.

I'm a problem solver and I look at the bigger picture rather than just, oh, here's a simple solution, because that' what political professionals do.

They do one of two things.

They either say, look, we're going to throw money at this program because it needs money, and we're going to wash your hands.

Or they say, let's pass legislation, have the governor sign it and we wash our hands.

The net result is nothing's changed.

We have spent over $22 trillion and social programs, in the last 60 years.

And I know you all know this.

We're worse off now.

We have more mental illness.

We have more uneducated people.

We I mean, I could just go on, but I don't want to spend that time.

The time we have left just, telling you things that you already know.

I believe the Michigan population knows that.

I'd rather answer your questions.

Pastor, you've been fighting to make debates dangerous.

this week, John James is campaigning.

Asked to be removed from a flier for an upcoming debate.

even though it's afte the candidate filing deadline.

What do you make of that?

your question is two parts.

One is I've been removed in 2021.

They did the Republican Party again.

This is I'm spilling a lot of these here.

They kept me off o a debate stage in Grand Rapids.

there was an event in Saginaw that, the people there would rather not have me in charge is governor.

And so they had 100 people at their event.

We did a press conference after that.

There were 50,000 people who listened to what I had to say about the silencing of me back on this event.

So nobody's doing it now.

I mean, Vance Patrick.

yeah.

I mean, we're floode even after the convention last, two Saturdays ago, we're floode with requests, and I can't be.

I'm not.

I'm the president, so I can't be everywhere.

But the bottom line is on that, the second part with John James, I tell you, I'm really disappointed.

he's made a promise that he would after.

There's a friend of mine who has a text from him that he who's a county chair, I believe he said, when Joh James responded to our request before the election for a debate, he said, we'll wai till after the filing deadline.

Then I didn't see it, but one of my campaign staffers said, he said on the news, I'm not going to debate until after, the primary.

And I'm just thinking, here' a man who claims to be a warrior getting in the fight.

He should be getting in the figh if he can't defend his positions in front of friendlies like Republicans, how is he going to defend that position in front of UN friendlies like Benson and Duggan?

I mean, that' so I just answered in one word, disappointed.

Well, he has a right not to debate if he doesn't want to.

Absolutely.

But I'm still disappointed.

So what do you make of it then, that polling suggest that he is the frontrunner for this race so far?

Well, a couple of things don't trust polling number one, you probably remember and you could some of you who remember more specifically Joh Engler was down like 12 or 13% going into the election day, and he ended up winning.

President Trump was supposed to lose to Hillary and to, Kamala.

He won the polling.

All the polling was wrong.

Do you think you're beating John James right now?

I would say yes.

Have you been to.

Oh, yeah.

Let me let me just that I see the signs here.

Let me just give you a quick story.

We were at Mar-A-Lago for an event, and as we were walking in, from the bus, there was my wif and another lady were walking.

I was walking with another guy, and there's another gal walking next to us, and we just struck up a conversation.

She asked me who I was and I said, Ralph.

And she said, I know that name was it.

What are you doing?

And I said, well, I'm running for governor of Michigan.

This lady lives in Florida.

She said, that's right.

We were just talking last week that you are the only candidate who can beat John James.

I'm like, how does this lady even know who I am?

In Florida, voters can't participate in Michigan's election.

I just reminded, oh, I do know that.

But my point still made that clear.

Thanks for being on.

I have a record.

It's been a blessing, brother, I appreciate it.

Appreciate you all Thank you for the work you do.

Thank you sir.