Hello, I'm Zeke, and welcome to the Zekely Podcast. Let's talk, Pennsylvania.

The guest I have today is a lifelong resident of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He's a father, teacher, commissioner, and now running as a Democrat for Congress in PA's first congressional district. Thank you so much for being here, Bob Harvey.

For years, I’ve knocked thousands of doors all over Pennsylvania and poured my heart and soul into supporting candidates and causes that make a difference—from local school board races to national elections. The personal is political, and I take every election in Pennsylvania personally.

Where the mainstream media has failed you, I will give you truth and independence. You’ll hear from Democratic leaders, candidates, and change-makers who are working to improve the health of the Commonwealth, and it won’t be boring as hell.

No matter where you are, I’ll meet you with hope and a plan to make your community better one day at a time. Welcome to the Zekely Podcast. Let’s talk Pennsylvania.

Thank you Zeke, now I'm honored to be here. I appreciate you having me on.

That's great. Well, this should be a chip shot for you. This race is super important and we're going to learn all about you and your campaign and play some games. You ready? All right.

Sure, sounds good.

Well, first question I have to ask is what made you decide to run for Congress? It's a really big deal.

Yeah, it is a really big deal. It was something that I had been thinking about for a while and people had been asking me to consider it for several years. It certainly is a big change from being a high school social studies teacher, which is what I did for 26 years before I became a commissioner. I really kind of started answering that question.

with a question, which they always say is a trait of Irish people. I'm mostly Irish, so don't know if it's true or not. But I answer it. When people say, why do you want to be in Congress? Or why do you want to run for this office? I said, well, how could I not? I mean, look at where we are as a country. Look at where we're heading, which is not a place I think most of us want to envision ourselves heading or never thought that we'd envision ourselves heading as a country. And I just felt like

I had to step up. I was raised in a family that was very, very big on public service. My grandmother, ⁓ Irish Catholic, had a bust of John Kennedy on her dining room server, really, to the day she

I was raised in that tradition of the Kennedy belief that

Government service was a noble

That if you saw a problem, you didn't look around and wait for somebody to fix it, you fixed

This is very much as

very swing county. Austin Davis calls it the swingiest county in the swingiest state in America. And the district obviously is mostly Bucks County with a sliver of Monco. So it's time for change. It really is something I felt like I needed to step up.

I agree. I'm really happy that you're starting now as well. The primary isn't until next year, the general later in the year, November next year, but now is the time to start getting to know everyone and let them know that you're coming and that the current Congressman needs to look in his rearview mirror because Bob Harvey's coming for a seat.

Mm-hmm.

I'm extremely grateful you're running. unfortunately am not part of the MontCo that can vote for you, but if you're ever in the Lower Merion

You get time to move or you can move as lots of fun.

my kids would not appreciate that. But if you're ever in the area, I will give you the Lower Merion welcome. I promise you that.

Okay,

awesome. Sounds good.

Well, you grew up in Bucks County, and so I think it's only fitting to play What the Buck, all right? Where we are going to do some trivia that make you say, What the Buck, all right? it is illegal to sleep on top of this outside in Bucks County. What do you think? I mean, obviously you must know growing up in Bucks, you you tell people just don't sleep outside on this. What do think it is? These are actual laws that are still on the books, you know?

Okay.

Boy, I'm gonna say I'm gonna go with an odd one and say refrigerator.

Yeah, that is correct.

So you do know Bucks County. What the buck?

I know, but

What the buck, man? All right, you got the first one right. All right, you can sing in a lot of places in Bucks County, but it is illegal to sing in this. What can't you sing in in Bucks County, of all places?

Why can't you sing in a Buck's County?

Yeah, why

can't you sing in? I mean, to me, you already won this game because you got the first one right. So it's all, this is just gravy now.

like trivia I get very very competitive. So I'm gonna like, you know, I know I don't want to take up the entire podcast. I think of the answer. That's one question

huh.

It's a bathtub.

You can't sing in the bathtub.

Can't sing in a bathtub, not in Bucks County, unfortunately. I know. All right, got.

Huh. But you can sing if you're

you can sing if you're on top of a refrigerator. You're allowed to do that. Yes. OK.

Yes, on our refrigerator you're fine, but not in a bathtub, okay?

All right, I have two more for you. It is illegal to catch this with your bare hands in Bucks County.

I'll say fish.

That is correct. Very

good. I mean, I didn't know any of these, so you're doing a great job. What the buck,

here's the last one. Fall Fest at Shady Brook Farm in Bucks County includes the Pumpkin Fest, which features a contest where participants race while wearing what?

I've been to Fall Fest too. I don't know if I've ever seen the

Are they wearing overalls?

oversized clown shoes. Yeah. What the buck man? I know look you got two out of four. That's yeah you did a great job. Yeah well you know more about bucks than I do that's for darn sure.

What the buck? Yeah, jeez, I should have gotten that's about 500. That's all right. That's, know, yeah.

you were a high school social studies teacher for 26 years. What was your favorite part of teaching?

Um, you know, I really liked working with kids.

I've taught at bucks, can I technical high school in lower bucks County. I was there for 20 years. I taught ninth and 10th graders. And I was lucky that, uh, a lot of times I got kids two years in a row.

And it is neat to watch that development happen of the scared kid who comes in first day of freshman year high school when they don't necessarily know a whole lot of people. And it's a very uncomfortable year for them. I still maintain it's the most difficult year of high school in my grade. And then by the end of, I've had two years by the end of sophomore year.

you've really watched them develop and find their stride in a lot of ways.

I think that's definitely, working with the kids is the best part.

And when did you retire?

you mean, okay.

I mean, being a teacher is such an important job.

And I am grateful that you did it as a profession. And I hope that if there are any teachers out there, I'm just extremely grateful of what they do for the children in the Commonwealth and across the country. It's very important teaching the future minds of America.

Why are you a Democrat? And why do you choose to represent the Democratic Party?

Yeah, it's, you know, the easy answer is I was born a Democrat. You know, I joke about the fact that I was born and raised in on Roosevelt Street in Bristol. So, you know, my political philosophy was determined at birth, but my parents are Democrats and their parents are Democrats.

Mm-hmm.

came up believing that the Democratic Party stood for fairness. It stood for, you know, working class values. It was the party that was going to...

protect you from those who would abuse you in big businesses and sometimes the government even. It was the party that was going to stand up for civil rights. It was the party that was gonna fight for economic empowerment for people, for unions. The party that really looked into the future and tried to prepare you for it.

You know, I've never wanted to be anything other than a Democrat from the time I understood really what the difference was between the

But, you know, I do feel that the party

⁓ our party, the Democratic party, has not lived up to a lot of what it was based on over the past four decades or so. I think we've lost a lot of our

They think that Donald Trump is there for them and clearly he's not.

He doesn't care about working class people. doesn't care about unions. He doesn't care about helping people get that opportunity so that they can be the best they can be and live their American dream. He doesn't care about that. He cares about himself. I talked about Kennedy earlier and I think back about how far we've come from having a president who said, ask not. What your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. And now we have a president who asks, what are you going to do for me?

And we need somebody who's fighting for the people of this community, of this district, who are struggling to put food on the table. Because if they're worried about going bankrupt because of a medical expense they didn't see coming, or they're worried about how they're gonna put their kids through school, or what they're gonna do with their parents when they get older, if they can afford.

nursing home if they need one. You know, wanting to take the kids on a family vacation somewhere, put in a pool or fix the house up. If they're worried about those things, then nothing else is really going to get into their mindset about, well, you should be focused on this instead. No, the kitchen table issues are what matters.

It's always about how people can make their dreams come true by getting access to good jobs, good education, safe streets, and having that chance to live their best life. That's what the Democratic Party has always meant to me in terms of what they fight for. And I'm proud to be wearing that and proud to be fighting for those issues.

I really appreciate it. I always enjoy asking that question because I was not always a Democrat. I grew up in a conservative

And certainly when Donald Trump was elected the first time, I realized what a mistake I'd been making for such a long time. So I'm very grateful that you represent the Democratic Party and their values. And I know it's going to carry you far in life.

Thank you. appreciate that. And I appreciate what you're doing, I don't know the statistic. I know it's incredibly lopsided in terms of right wing versus I'll say left wing, podcasts and radio shows and everything else. But we need people fighting and you're fighting.

Yeah,

absolutely. This is my contribution to the Pennsylvania Democrats.

Yeah, on behalf of one Pennsylvania Democrat, thank you.

Absolutely.

Well, there are a number of people who believe, who believe this, that the current congressman serving in PA1, Brian Fitzpatrick, is a moderate Republican. And I don't understand how he continues to pull the wool over the voters'

Well, I think a lot of it goes back to the simple issue that you and I pay more attention to politics than most people

most people don't pay attention to how votes go down in Washington. They just don't, they don't have the time. They're taking kids to soccer practice, dance class, they're working two jobs, they're volunteering, they're firefighters, they're doing whatever they're doing and

Yeah.

I think us as a Democrat party, the mistake we've been making is that we assume that everyone, we trust in the better angels of everyone's

but I think some of that is our messaging and the fact that we need to get a little better at, at hitting on some core

And it's really about meeting people where they are,

Mm-hmm.

You know,

you know, what's their prior knowledge? What do they know is going on? Because that's what they have time to pay attention to and meet them there and start building from there. It's what you do with

As a party, we have to be better at that. And I think that's one of the things that that Brian Fitzpatrick gets by on, which is that, you know, people see him at their little kids, little league game, throwing at the first pitch, they see pictures or social media of him at a senior center, presenting a big check or something like

But, you know, they don't pay attention to the fact, and this is going to be my job to make sure they see this. They don't pay attention to the fact that, yeah, he's at that little league game, but

You know, he's not standing up for the department of education, which is going to make sure those kids get education.

he's not standing up for cuts that are happening to the VA. You know, he voted for a budget. I know he likes to talk about how he voted against the Trump budget.

The vote you have to pay attention to is when that bill came out of the House back in May.

And it passed by one vote It only got to the Senate because of one vote and he voted for it He voted for it and that was a bill that and it because this is the thing it kills me He says well, I sent it to the Senate thinking it would get better. Well, what? What? Why are you voting for so and and the thing he voted for? Increased the federal debt by three point eight billion a trillion dollars three point eight trillion it added it cut

Mm-hmm. And he voted for it, that's right.

What are you?

Mm-hmm.

Trillion, yeah, trillion.

Medicaid by I think was around 700 billion. It cuts snap by about 260 billion. It was gonna add tens of billions of dollars of responsibility for the states to have to pick up.

And that's what he voted for. And then it got

It's that it's the little inside baseball that people just don't have the time to pay attention to. And he's been he's been living off of that. But, you know, that's that's going to change. Right.

Yeah, and Mitch McConnell's money as well. I Mitch

McConnell is a huge campaign donor for Brian Fitzpatrick. I mean, I love that you bring up the voting record because so if you live in PA-1, please, his voting record is terrible. He didn't vote to impeach Trump for treason. He voted for the current Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, right, who believes that women should be home having children and not working.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

He did, as you said, vote for the first iteration of the big bullshit bill. And he voted to prevent the release of the Epstein files. I mean, when he is the swing vote, he votes with Republican, know, the more right-wing Republicans every single time. He is not a moderate Republican. He's a maga Republican. He is.

Yes.

Yeah. No.

He said of all these times he talks about being bipartisan, not one single vote that he's given.

has actually made a difference. Anytime he votes against his party, it's when they've already got it won anyway, or they know they're to lose by a ton. And they say, they give him permission. go ahead, Brian, you're allowed to vote no on this. Go ahead. Yeah, he's definitely not there when it

know, it is frustrating. And it's, you know, it's my job and our job to sort of make sure people see that and understand what's going on.

Yeah,

well that's what we're trying to do right now on the Zekely . podcast and the buck stops with the voters always, but certainly in Bucks County, we need to make a referendum and get you elected as the next Congressman of PA1 next year.

Well, I hope so.

Well, let's play moderate or MAGA, okay? I'm just gonna give you a couple of little sentences and you're gonna tell me, well, that's moderate or that's MAGA, all right?

Okay.

Alright, so how about eliminate birthright citizenship? Is that a moderate position or a MAGA position? There you go, very good. Off to good start. What about codify reproductive rights?

It's an unconstitutional position, but I'll go maga

Well, that's a moderate. Yeah.

Very good. What about cut funding for Medicaid? Is that a moderate position or a MAGA position?

It's a cruel position, so MAGA

You got it. What about student loan forgiveness? Is that a MAGA position or a moderate position?

That's a moderate position and a smart one.

Yes,

I agree. And what about prohibit stock trading in Congress? Is that a moderate position or a MAGA position?

To ⁓ be honest with you, to me, that's a moderate position. I don't think members of Congress should be trading stock when they're in office.

Mm-hmm, absolutely. it's important that people know where you stand on these positions because we need someone like you to reverse a lot of damage that's been done by the current congressmen and lot of Republicans in Congress.

Mm-hmm.

you initiated and ran the Beyond the Books program, which brought dozens of military veterans from World War II and the War on Terror into classrooms to share their experiences with students while you were a teacher. What inspired you to start that program?

was raised in a family of veterans. My dad was in the Army in early 60s. My mom has five brothers, all five served in the military. One in Korea, two in Vietnam, and the other two brothers were served in between those two wars.

Five

uncles who all served in the military. must have been... Wow.

five uncles and ⁓

my grandmother had four brothers all served in World War II. So I've had relatives ⁓ in service to this country. If ancestry.com can be believed back to the revolution. So including losing my three time great grandfather was in the Union Army, was killed in action at Fredericksburg fighting for the

wow.

Honorable cause.

it's always been something that was very close to me. And as a department chair, really at Bucks Technical High School, you know, it was another teacher who had had this idea. he brought in a veteran that he knew just as his kids to talk about World War Two. And we started talking about it. I said, yeah, we could probably do something like this on a big scale. And the first year we had 60 World War Two veterans

And unlike a lot of programs that schools run, I'm not criticizing other schools because anytime you have the veteran come in, it's valuable. We didn't have them like in the auditorium with all the kids gathered around. We had them in small groups and we had them in something like 30 or 40 different classrooms. And kids rotated for first half of a school day, just meeting somebody who was at D-Day or somebody who liberated a concentration camp or somebody who fought in the South Pacific.

or, you know, and it grew from there in terms of the number of veterans is always pretty much the same. But we started adding in Korean veterans, Vietnam veterans, war on terror, we started adding Cold War veterans who really hadn't served overseas in a conflict, but they were in Germany or in South Korea,

it really helped the kids understand a bunch of things. Number one, and I always emphasize this, that all the people we found were local. You know, they were from Bucks County, some from MontCo some from Philly. But I used to tell the students, said, these are people that you walk past in the mall. You know, they're your next door neighbors. they live, you know, and they have these incredible stories.

that history is all around you. And also understanding how complex the military is just because you had kids that all they know is well, now it's like Call of Duty and the video games or movies and things and that's all always focused on

I said, for every one soldier in combat, there are about nine who serve some support

But one of the people who came for a long for a long time was a dentist who served in the US Army. And he was a dentist in the US Army. And it was the kids and especially in technical high school where you've got kids who are dental hygienist students or allied health students, you know, in the classroom and they're thinking, yeah, this is, you know, and the kids had never thought about

That's cool.

Mm-hmm.

You need a dentist in the army, if you're in the military, yeah, if don't, yeah, you need a dentist, sure.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah,

I remember if you've ever taken a tour of the USS New Jersey, I took my kids and there was a whole room that was just dedicated to dental work. They had the dental chairs in there and everything so that when the sailors were out at sea for months at a time, if they had a cavity or whatever, they could go to a dentist while they were out on the ocean. So yeah, that's a great story.

Mm.

I had several veterans who told me afterwards or during the program that they'd never

their time in the military and that this was the first time they'd ever done it. they felt like just being in it. And even if they're in a room with other veterans, and I was usually mixed up who was there. So you could have a Korean War veteran, a World War II veteran, a Vietnam veteran, and somebody who had been in Afghanistan. And you're hearing from all of them and...

you're going to get a to get a first-hand view of that primary source that you can't replace.

That's extremely powerful. I think it's great that you started that program. I hope it's still

veterans sacrifice so much for this country, some of them with their lives, a lot of them with parts of their body and even psychologically. So they deserve so much and I really appreciate you giving them that platform to share with the younger generation.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

people in this country are angry at what is happening, myself included, and they are looking for people with the spine, you people who will not back down from extremism of the Republican Party. What can you say to people to convince them that you will be their defender in

Mm-hmm.

Watch any of the meetings that I've had as a commissioner for the past five and a half years. It started after COVID when people started getting attacked by people on the right ⁓ for masking kids and closing schools

Mm-hmm.

forcing vaccinations on people and really some really disturbing

You know, any of the personal attacks

corrupt politician who was cozy with corrupt labor unions from Philadelphia.

which didn't go over well with the or unions in Philadelphia. They were not happy about being called corrupt. And so, you know, that obviously didn't work

I'm not shying away from a fight. ⁓

If I was going to shy away from a fight, I never would have ran for commissioner. Even when I ran for a township supervisor, was my election flipped control that board. And that was not an easy race.

I'm in this to win. I've never lost an election. I'm not going to lose this one.

I that. I like that a lot. All right, Bob, I need to hear it. Say, I'm Bob Harvey and I have a spine.

I'm Bob Harvey and I have a spine.

Yes, all right, Bob Harvey for Congress. Let's go.

the year to the day you were sworn into office as a Bucks County Commissioner, our nation's Capitol was attacked by a mob of violent

on by Trump and Republican politicians, and the current Republican congressman serving in your district voted against convicting Trump for treason. What did that day mean to you, and how would you address election integrity while in Congress?

was tough to process. It honestly was.

in my mind, I was envisioning something that wasn't nearly the size of what was actually going on. I was imagining...

you know, a handful of people who are causing trouble. I wasn't imagining thousands. I wasn't imagining, you know, them using bear spray and pepper spray to assault police officers and using flagpoles to assault police officers and threatening to kill police officers and the vice president. I wasn't envisioning members of Congress clutching gas masks and the House representatives and having to run for their lives.

know, that was something I wasn't...

you know, can imagine even when I was finally seeing

it was something that you see happening in other countries, not here. The thing that kind of bothers me the most is how anybody who defends the president, who, or who, created that situation, or any of the

you people who excuse it, how any of them can claim to be pro-law enforcement is really kind of disgusting to me. Because if you're pro-law enforcement, you should have been furious then, and you should have been furious, you know, what was it, six months ago or so when the president pardoned 1,500 of those people.

it certainly sets an incredibly disturbing

Certainly with integrity of elections, until we have news agencies and politicians who stand up and tell the truth, all of them, that our elections are fair, that our elections are conducted by professionals in counties around the country, and until we have that, we're really never gonna get past the belief being as widespread as it is.

that there's something fundamentally flawed in our election

I was a committee person for a long time. So I worked outside the polls at my precinct for a long time. Actually, the first election I worked, I was I think 12 years old. My uncle was running for mayor in Bristol Borough. And I went door knocking and doing lit drops. And I worked outside the polls on election day and got the count and rode around on my bike to share the numbers from different

as a committee person, as an adult, I was there before polls opened and I stayed until polls closed and went in afterwards and did the count sitting next to the Republican committee person and comparing numbers, making sure numbers were right and just kind of talking about the day. I didn't know how complex the system really was until I became a commissioner and got on the board of elections. And you really learn how necessarily and ⁓

complicated it is intentionally and how skilled and professional the people are who work the elections in Montgomery County, in Bucks County, every county in this country. That's really where the work gets done. And they take their job incredibly seriously. And you would have no idea when you walk through these offices what political party these people registered as. And so I bristle really when people talk about elections being stolen. Because who are you talking about?

You know, I'm not there counting votes. I'm not down there like, you one over here, one over there. I'm not doing that. That's not my job. That's the job of the dozens of people who work in our board of elections in Bucks County and all the county employees who come and work on election day to help them do their jobs. So you're calling them criminals. You know, that's what you're doing really. And these are people who, this is a job for them. They take it seriously and they're good at it,

And so that's the thing that really bothers me.

I'm extremely grateful that you were one bothered by what happened on January 6th because not everyone is bothered by it. And I am very grateful that you respect the integrity of our elections and agree that all the investigations have shown that our elections are still at this time free and fair. And a lot of these people who work during Election Day all across the Commonwealth, they don't get paid. know, committee people don't get paid. The people who count ballots, they're volunteers.

Yeah.

No. Right.

And democracy works because we choose to show up and make it work. And I really appreciate that you have been doing this for your county and all the people who show up every single year for elections across the Commonwealth.

Republicans in Congress blocked the release of the Epstein files while Democrats voted to release them. Would you have voted to release the Epstein files?

Absolutely.

I don't care who's on them. I I would have voted to release the Matt Gaetz report as well. If you really want to have transparency, you would really want to call people out. I know that now there's some buzz about the abuse case that Jim Jordan was involved in at Ohio State. And it's important to keep in mind that there was a time when Jim Jordan was running for Speaker of the House a couple of years ago. And Brian Fitzpatrick voted for him twice.

That's right.

for Speaker of the House. No, it's not very smart either.

That's not very moderate, I don't think. There's nothing moderate

about that, which is not surprising. Yeah, mean, it's just every accusation is a confession, I feel like, for these Republican politicians. They accuse everyone else of being dangerous to children and dangerous to other Americans. But I mean, they are literally the swamp that they refuse to drain. These are people that have actually hurt other human beings, and they're protecting

Mm-hmm.

Right, absolutely.

the person who was a convicted rapist, who is our current president. And is anyone surprised that they don't want the Epstein files released? I mean, it's all there. We don't really have to have it released to know what's in there, but I'm glad at least that you would want that transparency for anyone who's in it, whether they are a Republican or a Democrat. I think that we can both agree that if you've committed a crime, you deserve to be punished for that. So I'm glad to know.

Yeah,

yeah, absolutely.

the most common cause of death for children in America is gun violence. What would you do to help address this senseless crime against children?

know the NIH has wanted to do work on studying gun violence and of course Congress has blocked them. Why should I Republicans in Congress have blocked them?

know, I think everybody really knows or should know that we have a gun problem in this country. And I'm speaking as someone who is a gun owner. There is a common sense that needs to be in place here.

We're in Pennsylvania. Hunting is a way of life for a lot of people in this Commonwealth, and that's fine. I mean, if people want to go hunting, it's whatever they're hunting, and they're doing it, you know, safely and intelligently, and it's, know, parents teaching their children how to do it, a safe way and respect for, the firearm and how to use it. I have no issue with that. I have no issue with law-abiding.

citizens who want to carry a gun.

of all the lessons I got as I went through education classes

never had a class about what to do when an active shooter comes in your

And I ended up when I was at the Bucks County Technical High School, ended up on the safety committee and

wrote the handbook at the time about

⁓ school safety, including active shooter drills and actually ran active shooter drills or helped run them at the tech

I remember having a conversation with a younger teacher

And he said, well, you know, if someone comes into the school with a gun, he said, you know, how do we make sure no one gets killed? And I looked at him, I said, you can't.

Yeah.

And I was as blunt as I could be. said, you know, I said, the people come in, if someone comes in the school with a gun, people are going to die. And he looked at me and he was, I think he was expecting me to give him a sort of like a nice fluffy answer and said, no, this is, this is reality.

It is a problem that, you know, there is a lot of emphasis put on guns being the solution to every problem. And it's not.

And if more guns made people safer, we'd be the safest country on earth. As I believe, we have more privately owned firearms in this country than we have

Yeah, that is true.

we need laws that have common sense to them. If you are convicted of a

that should impact whether or not you carry gun. If you're on the terrorism no-fly list,

you probably shouldn't be able to go into a store and buy a

Assault weapons are made for

they're not, they're made to, know, for soldiers going after soldiers. You know, they're being used in Ukraine right

there's no place for them on our streets. And the thing that always bothers me again is you cannot tell me, you can't tell me that police officers are safer with, you know, automatic weapons on the street or semi-automatic weapons on the street. They're not. They're not safer.

So, ⁓ I mean, there has to be some common sense

Yeah, yeah, you're right.

Yeah, we're not going to have any common sense gun

Republicans in control. We're just not going to. You know, it's just time and time again when Republicans say they care about children. How can you care about children when the most common cause of death for children in America is gun

No. No.

That is not a party that respects life.

No, no, and it was really, somebody asked this question at the town hall in Horsham a couple of weeks

Sandy Hook.

I'm a realist when it comes to a lot of things with politics. I, you know, I don't expect zebras to change their stripes too quickly or at all. But still, you know, I came out of Sandy Hook believing, OK.

No one can be okay with this. No one can say, no one can make up an excuse as to why we shouldn't take some kind of action now. And, you know, I mean, there's definitely been times when I've really questioned where we're going as a country. That was a serious time.

Yeah, I mean...

what I really

thought that if this doesn't do it, if this doesn't take people and wake them up, I have no idea what will.

Well, that's why we need to get more Democrats elected up and down the ballot because they're going to be the only ones that take this epidemic seriously.

have a master's degree in education and I have to assume it is painful for you to see Trump and Republican politicians dismantle the Department of Education. What do you think you're going to try and do in Congress and try and slow that down?

Well, I'm hoping there's something that can be done by, because I don't know how quickly this is going to work. mean, in terms of you're talking January of

know, it's a long time to do a lot of damage.

But I prided myself on the fact that I had students and I taught honors kids who were pretty bright kids. They didn't know what political party I was. You know, they would try to figure it out all year because I talked about modern American history. So we talked about,

know, the civil rights movement. We talked about, the women's movement, all the big social movements of the 60s, the gay rights movement, everything else. We talked about Nixon. We talked about Clinton. We talked about these controversial presidents and things that happened.

and they still couldn't figure out what party I was. now that became harder when Trump came into office because now I had students coming into the classroom and they were saying, well, you know, saying things that were completely untrue, factually not even close, but they were hearing it from the president of the United

And so I had the, I had no choice, but to correct them.

and but try to do it in a way that they understood that I was focusing on the facts, not on who was stating the untruths. And that was incredibly hard because I could see in the face of students that they were like, you know, kind of question, well, you know, what the president said this, he's the

I think we're seeing the ramifications that people just don't understand the process of how a bill becomes a law, what the powers of government are. And I think we need to get back to that.

that's exactly

destruction of democracy down.

it certainly is disturbing on a level that I don't think people quite understand yet. And I don't know when they will understand it. And I'm afraid that it might be too late or it's gonna be much harder to fix by the time it's, people start to realize, you hey, my kid's school doesn't have the funding it used to have. This program isn't there anymore. And,

Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

How come what happened to these extra staff that used to be here to help my kid with study periods and things and well.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah, it's going to be a lot harder to get those things back.

Well, we're going to play a trivia game, which you like trivia, right, called majority rules. OK, so over the last 40 years, Democrats, when they had full control of both House and Senate in DC, have passed more laws that brought broad, measurable positive change to the most people in America. OK, that is a fact. So I'm going to ask you some questions. Let's see if can get the answer. All right. So what did

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. Put me on the spot here.

This is, this is, this is nerve wracking. Okay. Go ahead.

It's okay. So what did the 103rd

measurable positive change to most people in America

is a big one

There

was a first Clinton term, the motor voter bill is the first thing that pops in my head that expanded access to voting rights, which we still have today. There was also an assault weapons ban, I think in that time period, the early, the first couple of years before the Republicans came in in 94. I haven't hit the answer yet, huh?

That's a good

Those are

I about that one. Yeah, of course. That's a huge one. Yeah.

Yeah, it is, absolutely.

Well, Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act obviously is massive one. Yeah.

There you go, that's right, the Affordable Care Act. Yeah, that is definitely the biggest one, right? 30

million Americans gained access to healthcare, but that wasn't the only thing. Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Protection Act, which regulated banks after the financial crisis, and the Fair Pay Act was also passed.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Right.

⁓ boy, you can take your pick on this one. The American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure and Jobs Act,

I know there's a lot, there's a lot.

Bingo.

or the Inflation Reduction Act.

Yep.

it mean really, really massive, massive

Mm.

it's funny, as those were being passed, I recognized the fact that I worried about the legacy of them.

because I understood that none of them were going to be quickly implemented because they're so massive. You know, the chips and science act, mean, all this, you know, investments and that it would take decades for people to realize the impact of these. And I knew that as well, Biden's passing these, Biden won't get the credit for them because there's just going to be, by the time people realize how many bridges are getting built and everything else that's going on.

Yes. ⁓

Yeah.

It would be many, many years later on. unfortunately, it's being born out. And obviously more unfortunately is what this current president is doing to gut a lot of those laws and the Republicans allowing him to do it in Congress.

I know, with the yeah, the big bullshit bill. I mean,

those laws that were passed by Biden and the Democrats with the majorities were huge. I they cut child poverty in half, sped up vaccinations during COVID, infrastructure, you said, you know, creating high tech jobs. I mean, they helped working class.

Americans, elderly people, marginalized communities, I mean this is what Democrats can do when they have power and the majority. And that's why we need you to win, because the current congressman, who is not a moderate Republican, who's a maga Republican, is not going to want to pass these types of laws, because his party doesn't want to pass these kinds of laws.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

And he

Yeah.

is going to vote on party lines when they matter. you did a great job on that trivia game, but it just goes to show what Democrats can do.

What role does social media play in your campaign strategy?

it's a massive role because it's a massive medium. Obviously, we know that people, they're not getting their news from NBC, ABC, like they did decades and decades

people are on their phones constantly. They're picking up social media. They're,

watching you on, Tik TOK and, and, and reels and podcasts and things like that. So, yeah, I mean, we, do a lot on social media, ⁓ try to post as much as we can, just getting out things that have happening in the campaign.

events that are coming

highlighting anything we're seeing coming out of Washington.

to make sure people understand where Brian Fitzpatrick really is on these issues. And so, yeah, certainly encourage people to follow us on all the major social media platforms. You my website is, Bob Harvie for Congress. Last name's H-A-R-V-I-E. my grandfather used to say that we spell it right, everybody else spells it wrong.

That's great.

It's funny because my last name is spelled T-A-Y-L-E-R and my grandfather, yeah, and my grandfather said that O is for ordinary and E is for extraordinary. I can relate on that one.

I did notice that. Yeah.

Ha ha ha.

Bob, what gives you hope?

I'm given hope just by the primary numbers for voters in Bucks

was a record high gap between Democrats who came out to vote and Republicans. Way, way, way, way more Democrats than

and that that gives me hope because We know just from the past decade or so that if there's that big a gap actually if there's any gap in the primary in terms of Whatever party turned out the most in the primary wins in November And so I think you know that gives me hope yeah, it does it's Yeah, so that that really helps, you know, and and I to the people I talked to

That's great sign. Yeah, that gives me hope. That's great.

every day as I'm talking about my race. And there's definite anger. I worried after November, I didn't know how people would react. I think people went through different stages of how to handle that loss. Yeah.

I went through all of them, Bob. I went

through all of the various stages after that election.

Yeah. And when people are you worried about when they're going to come out of it? What, know, depression certainly hits and sort of, you know, hopelessness. And it's turning now to anger and action. And certainly I don't expect that to change because this administration is not going to suddenly get more competent or less cruel.

they're not they're not going to suddenly decide, oh, wait, we shouldn't be giving tax breaks to billionaires and cutting health care.

and support for our seniors and veterans, we should be doing the opposite and helping those groups and they're not going to do that. So the anger is going to be maintained and the fact that people are now moving into that feeling and that emotion and they want action, I think is good for us.

Your hope gives me hope.

And my last question for you is, what plans do you have to get yourself through these next few years?

Uh, well, I it's, it's all about just working. You know, it's just working. It's, it's relying on people, to put their faith in me, which I understand is, is, you know, is a big deal.

been reelected since the Civil War.

so I ask asking people to put their faith in me and their trust in me and help me in any way they can. Certainly, we're going to be looking for volunteers when it comes time. We want to get through this November election to get people in the school board races and the, you know, borough council and county races, township supervisor races, etc. in both counties.

We're focused on that. And so we ask you to help them. But when it comes time, if you can contribute to my campaign, thank you. If you can help knock doors, if you can just repost things we're putting on social media, anything you can do. Because certainly no one wins these things alone. And so I will, I'm gonna be building, I have a campaign manager, I have a finance director. We're gonna be building out that staff obviously as we start moving.

I'm gonna be relying on people like yourself, people in MontCo and people in Bucks and people really around the country. We've gotten thousands of contributions to the campaign from as far away as California. Some people who recognize that this is a seat that needs to flip.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

It's time for change. It's time for Bob Harvie to get this seat. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been a pleasure getting to know you and I have a feeling we are going to cross paths again.

No, thank you.

Well, I probably, yeah, probably, but thanks. really appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Well thank you so much for joining me here on The Zekely Podcast. Stay hopeful and get involved and until next time, let's keep building a stronger Pennsylvania together.