Candidate Profile: Adam Cleveland

0:00Georgia politics moves fast, and now there's a new place to keep up. App and Media Group proudly announces the launch of GeorgiaPress.com, a new statewide news website focused on Georgia politics, power and policy, serving every corner of the peach state. From the gold dome to your hometown, GeorgiaPress.com delivers in-depth reporting, accountability journalism, and the story's shaping Georgia's future. And now, it's officially the home of the Georgia Politics Podcast, Georgia's number one political commentary podcast since 2019. Smart analysis, trusted voices, real journalism. Visit GeorgiaPress.com today. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Georgia Politics Podcast. I am Lindsay Coates, and I am joined today by Adam Cleveland running for Georgia House District 48. Welcome, Adam. Hey, thanks for having me.

1:00Yeah, I'm really excited. So to kick things off, this is a new little tradition I'm doing with interviewees. What's your favorite dinosaur? I think I still like to try stereotypes the best. Yeah, you're in great cut, but same. So we're clearly in the lead of dinosaur winnings. Okay, so you're a proud Georgia, and I want to get into your background a little bit. Tell us about growing up here. What did your family do? How did they put down roots? And how did it shape you in public service? Sure. So my dad's out of family. Apparently, he has been here for five plus generations, and anybody in my generation sees me that great a historian, so we just don't know or care. They were just here. My mom's side came over some around generation five or four. So my great grandparents were here, but their parents maybe not. I came from Russia, personally. And so there's, I was Jewish.

2:00Dad's, I was Baptist. And but they actually met. My dad's, I moved to Buckhead, and they showed a temple in church right near each other. And so anyway, so my family's got generations going back. At least my great grandparents on both sides in Georgia. That's just in the one Jewish and the other. We don't know how my dad's family's history came from. We knew my mom was in Russian. But anyway, and so the history for us in Georgia is that everyone, again, going back as far as at least my grandparents, went to UGA. Like, grew up here, went to UGA, came out, lived and worked in Atlanta. And so my grandparents lived in Buckhead. My folks lived in, what was Atlanta, unincorporated Atlanta, but now St. James Prings. And I live in John's Creek after doing my usual 10 years in Athens. How was your college experience? How was your college experience?

3:01So yeah, I was, again, I grew up in Georgia that was democratic. And so the public school system was great. Went through all the way through high school at North Springs. And we were one of the first years they had the hope scholarship. Everyone was this fallback school with my first choice school, which was UGA, but it was a great kind of first test in college to do the mathematics portion of what's your budget. My mom was fantastic because I had my tuition paid for, thanks to that scholarship. And it was great. I got a degree in biology there. But then discovered that it wasn't the most employable thing in the world to have a bachelor's degree in science that is not engineering and no graduate degree in science. So I got a job as a maintenance guy. And that turned out to be the most probably fundamental job I ever had in my life as far as what I did with the rest of my time and how I approached the world because fixing broken stuff is apparently where my OCD that didn't know I had kicks in. And that is how I approached everything else. Yeah, no, that's interesting. It's not the normal college job.

4:01Or I'm definitely a biologist to be a maintenance professional for a period of more than half a decade. That's interesting. Okay, so you and your wife, Katie, both went there, you know, helped two daughters and you're in John's Creek. What made you both choose to go to John's Creek? Why did you say this is where I want to build my life? Well, so even Georgia was never in the question. Again, she was from Marietta grew up there as well. So we'd always lived in the Atlanta area, you know, love this state. And we were both public school kids. And so the biggest thing for us was where are there good public schools? And we looked at East Cobb in the Walden district. And we looked at kind of, I think when I had in the Northview or Fulton in the Northview, I can't remember which one Northview is, but then also John's Creek High School was kind of our top three choices. And the most affordable home that we liked we could find was in the John's Creek district. So we moved there. And I think it's the other way. Yeah, it's fantastic. And I got to say, I have not regretted that for a moment.

5:03Like the kids had a great experience. It was actually very strange. We first moved in the neighborhood. The number of people told me how much they loved the elementary school was very step-ford-wise. Like you just kept happening. Again, we started to get a little creeped out. And then we went and we're like, oh no, where about to do this people too? Because it is amazing. We're drinking the Gullade. Yes, absolutely. I mean, like I said, we are. You believed in the Fulton County Public Schools system I grew up in. But it really is reaching levels that are, I mean, it's putting kids into colleges or nationally ranked. I mean, what you can do with the Fulton County education that we get in our district is incredible. Now how I can piece nationally is it? You grow up again. Like what was your stuff? I grew up in, again, it's what is now standing springs. But it was, you know, then just Atlanta. So if you go back down, spawning drive for my home in John's Creek or back down 400 if you're over that way, one exit, you're in where I grew up. Okay. I only made it out 16 miles in a long circuit through Athens. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I get the wrong. So you are a creditors attorney.

6:03And I remember when we first met, you're laughing. I want to know what that is out of funny way to say it. It's the most polite way to say collections lawyer. Okay. Okay. So I remember realizing when we first met and talked like, and I do this all the time, right? It's like, oh my god, there's another job I had no idea existed. So give us a little background into what it is. You do and how that transpires to potentially being an office. So it's not a thing that would normally lead to a relevance to being an office, except for how my path went specifically. So I, the job of a creditors lawyer is to work on behalf of institutions or entities or even individual people who have given out funds or given out products or services. And not been paid. So it's basically the most simple form of kind of legal cause of action you can have. Essentially, there's an agreement that you will either do something or deliver something

7:05or just give funds and be paid money back and exchange. And the second part doesn't happen. So it's, it's, it's almost childlike how simple the, the actions that fall in the collections or creditors per view are. Now there are more complicated versions of this. They go all the way up to like, you know, very significant disputes between businesses that are, they're complex and involved, but it is hard. It is that the school ground kind of quandary of I gave you a dollar yesterday, you're not giving it back to me. And, uh, and so we all understand that and we understand that for an economy to function, there has to be a way to make that recovery happen. Otherwise, everyone just doesn't give the money. Right. Right. Right. But no, no one likes the idea of collections when you talk about it just in a vacuum. Everyone says, Oh, you know, I don't like, and you don't want to be in that cycle at all. You don't want to be someone who owes because, you know, it's, it's, it can be a, an inescapable pit to be in to have too many things that you want once not enough income.

8:05On the flip side, if you are owed money and don't have access to a way to get it back from folks who don't voluntarily get it to you, you can find yourself falling into debt too. And that is another way the dominoes fall that ruins lives if you don't have a remedy at law. So, you know, our, our section, all of us creditors, lawyers, a lot of us work for, for banks of financial institutions, but we also have individual clients. And so we try to make sure that everyone's getting the same deal in the law, which is that if you can prove to a court that you are owed money for something, that you can use the court system to get it back. And so what happened in my personal case is that around 2015, I've been doing this for some time, and the primary law that our entire section relies on was suddenly declared unconstitutional by the Georgia District Court and the Northern District. And we had to, they created a task force to rewrite that law from scratch. And I got sent as representative to the Capitol in 2015 to be in that task force to write a bill for the 2016 legislative session.

9:06So I had to learn to do that from scratch on the fly. And then when we weren't satisfied that that bill actually accomplished the goals that they had been claiming to have, which was to make a functional enforcement of judgment's law, I had to learn to lobby and then go back and find allies and build coalitions to go and get both Republicans and in some cases Democrats on our side. A lot of times historically, Republicans have been the ones who more favor judgment enforcement, but in this case, we had some allies among Democrats too who just said, look, this is just good for the people to have remedies for what the courts say have been harms they experienced because there's no right without a remedy. And so we got good enough that we got a bill through that session that did pass and allowed a lot of it to exist again. And then the lawyer for another major entity in Georgia joined me in 2017 to come back and make another bill to fix some things that were still out there, that passed in 2018. And then in 2020, we're back again, again, wrote it for ourselves from Holcloth and that we passed unanimously through the legislature in 2020,

10:08which is the same year they couldn't agree who won the presidency. So we got good at doing all the legwork it takes to make a bill effective when you talk to all the parties that can be impacted by that bill so that we would walk into the legislature and testify in committees in both chambers and be able to say, we've already checked with these guys, and all of them are hearing from their lobbyists and their sources that, yeah, these guys have come to us, we've already done the legwork, you're good, you ahead and please vote for this. Yeah, so that leads me directly into what my next question was going to be about this legislation that you wrote. And so was it just the 2021 that passed unanimously or just the 2015? It does go on to pass unanimously. We had about, I think the 2016 bill there were maybe less than 10 holdouts across those chambers. I think the 2018 one that was from 2017 to 2018, it passed in 2018, again, we were probably under five and then unanimously in 2020. We kept getting better at knowing who cared and how to make sure we checked with them

11:09and got there, they're interested to be. And what was that learning process? What did you learn from one bill to the next? Because you've already done this legislating, right? You've literally created bills multiple times. So you've done the work. So I want to know what it took from that first time to the second and how did you realize what you needed to shift? I want to say it's the same thing that I feel like is lacking so desperately in our government right now, which is just having a little bit of empathy, right? Just standing as well as the shoes, even in your imagination, going, okay, if I'm writing a bill that needs to be effective for the folks who want to use it, what is being used against, so to speak? And so you stand in those shoes. And in our case, this bill had third parties involved and so we said, okay, what if we stand in their shoes? And so as you really force yourself to pretend that you are not just in the shoes you think of when you are creating something that you want to use for a purpose, but imagining that you're the person that might affect or the entity or the interest that might be impacted by it,

12:11you realize you want to build in protections that allow for some response and not just a complete obliteration of rights if it is used and you're on the receiving end. So yeah, again, you typically think of collections of lawyers as one sided but for our purposes, what we do is supposed to be even handed across all people and because any of those could be either of those parties at any time in our lives, right? A bad day, you're in debt. A good day, someone owes you money. It's not a great day, you'd rather have just paid you, but the point is it's not good to not think about the consequences of what you do if you're not the one putting it out there, but the one receiving it. And you went back last year to like test a bite against the bill? Not that bill. There was a Republican Senator, Ed Sethler, who had a bill kind of tagging along with a tort reform theory. They were bringing it in. And his bill, I'm unsure what his intentions were or whether

13:11he thought this through all the way, but the bill would have made it so that judgements, which is what a court awards when you are proven to have been damaged by somebody else, it awards you to go and reclaim your funds from them. The leans that we can get to make sure that a property you own is subject to the creditor, the person you need to be harmed, would not have applied to someone's personal residence. And the large part of how you can get paid on judgements in Georgia is that you create that lean and then either you sit passively on your judgment if they own real property when they go to refinance it or to sell it, then you get a phone call from the closing attorney who says, Hey, I see your leans on this property. What's your payoff? And then you get paid. That's the most economical way to get paid. It doesn't always work if they don't have a property if it's not worth a whole lot, but it does help some folks get paid back. But the thing that they hadn't considered is, okay, so I don't know who he was thinking of that it would be bad to have a judgment on their home about, but he definitely didn't think of his folks who, for instance, committed fraud and got a judgment against them for the amount they had

14:13frauded someone but bought a house with the fraud money. So if the dlean doesn't apply and you can't use the judgment against the house, someone just does fraud all day long and buys a million dollar mansion and just lives there free of you forever. Yeah, it's interesting to me because that you bring this up because I didn't interview with Rhett, president of Betsy Holland a couple weeks ago and and she was talking about the unintended consequences of certain bills that have passed and that kind of thing. And you just don't realize it sometimes, but in this case, it seems like you were able to catch it in time. Luckily. Again, we had a coalition come on the chair of our bar section these days and the trustees bar sections here called over and said, hey, you're all aware of this thing and then we all got down there together in a hurry. And I found good success over the years in the judiciary committees for both houses. Typically, they have more lawyers. It's dwindled somewhat, you know, they're people are usually more nuanced in their approach.

15:14And so when you bring something so real concerned, not kind of bloviating to them and say, you know, do you mean for this to happen? They typically will reconsider unless they are hard-core down party lines on something they will either pause it or take notes or make amendments. And so again, having had the experience of doing that, we knew who to talk to to kind of get ourselves there. And thanks on the day we were able to prevail. So our judgments didn't become largely meaningless for folks who use the word process instead of some golf or self-help remedy to try to get money back to someone. No, that's good. Shifting gears a little bit. So we just had qualifying week over earlier this month, March 6th. You registered to run back in October of last year. What was the moment conversation, what breaking point potentially that made you like, I'm doing this. So there were a couple of things that led me there. I think one, and as far as the thing that made me think,

16:15I might need to run for office, was previously when the US Supreme Court ruled that there is a person that, among us in the country, who can not be prosecuted for crimes, commits. You know, he or a future she, but the point is, there's a role that allows citizens to be exempt from prosecution for crimes is the exact opposite of a Constitution Republic. Like every person subject to the law is a Constitutional anything. You lose it at that moment. So we found ourselves in a situation of needing to get back a Constitutional Republic. And so that drove me a lot. I had watched one candidate's campaign for a state office that I had had high hopes for, flounder. And I was dissaddened by that. And so I wanted to try to do better. But then the last thing I think that really inspired me was watching Deborah Shapley and Aphrodite and kind of Cherokee County run for office trying to help in campaigns. I kind of moved through over the years voting consistently through all the elections

17:16and then voting and donating. And then with Deborah voting and donating and canvassing. And I was like, well, she made a great effort, I thought. She brought all the points that I believe in. Her campaign was about not just her opponent, but also the things that Republican opponents like that in Georgia allow, basically Donald Trump to take over our state. Like that plate of allegiance they swear is not to the Constitution or to America is to one guy. And she drove that point home, but it still fell short. But, you know, to her credit, being willing to up into her life to fight that battle inspired folks like me to go and say, well, you know, damn it, we're not going to give this thing away in the state that we love and we've learned to have belonged to us to origins. You know, whether you moved here or whether you're born here, being a part of the state means that you choose to let our independence be your priority instead of just giving away, especially for those who have nothing but political ambition in exchange. Right. And it is frustrating to see that you can tell the ones that have been in for a while

18:17and are just, or are trying to get in breakthrough, even at more local levels so that they can hold higher office. And it's just the system of where we're constantly bashing on our politicians that are elected and saying, oh, they're just doing it for the money and then they get in office. And then anyway, I don't know where I'm going with that. I just get very frustrated because we continue to bash our politicians, but yet continue to elect the ones that are clearly there to do this thing. I think my race is one that kind of, there's two sides to that one. No political party in my estimation has got it right because Georgia has right that we have part-time politicians, which is not perfect because there's still influence. Do you agree with that? Do you? I've been struggling with this. So here's how life theory goes and we'll see if folks you resonate with this or not. I know one should be a career politician in my estimation.

19:20That career should not exist here yet. And so at the federal level, I would love to make it so that you have a maximum of four years as president and eight years in a congressional office with a set or a house just staggered out to the terms. Four years as president. Four years. Because really, we get two years of a president's first term and they start running for office again. So we've lost two years if they were good. Hopefully they were distracted for the last two years if they're bad. But the point is we don't get four years of work out of a first term president. We get two years of work and two years of campaigning. Okay. And so four years as president is time to get a lot done. We've seen how much president's for good or bad can get done in four years of actual work. They just usually spread it across two terms of eight years. Right. And then again. Georgia legislature. Let's talk about that. Okay. So Georgia legislature. The good thing about it is, I mean, the downside is it pays you very poorly for the time you're in there. Which means that people like me who have a pretty good paying job take a huge hit to go run for office. The flip side of it is it takes so much time to run for office and so much money and so much investment that essentially no one who hasn't got

20:23those means has a really good way to do this campaigning at all. So campaign finance would be a necessary part of trying to get a little more honesty and politics and less political ambition. Because what a lot of folks are doing is try, like you said, trying to use that part time office to seek higher offices, seek being a career politician. If you take the political career off the table because it's too limited to make an entire lifetime. Then you get folks who go in with an axe to grind, which is for me the right way to go into politics. It has to be a sacrifice. It should be that you are zared for a cause that you don't want to be there for its own sake. And having a part time legislature helps that because essentially that way you have to go out and live with the consequences of what you did just like I wish Congress had to do. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. What are your thoughts around now that I didn't plan to go down this path, but now that you're talking about it. What are your thoughts around how short or legislative session is and how that's kind of like related back to farming days and things like that. So again, I because I am so against career politicians, that's fine for me.

21:28Now it is I will admit for anyone who's trying to make a living. Because again, my opponent and I are both pretty well to do so we can hold this off. I think he's stopped having an actual full time job some while ago and just campaigns for office all the time. We're going to get into that. But point is, you know, without significant means it is difficult to make ends meet if you're going to sacrifice your actual regular job for the three months. Well, really plus the other time that they ask of you the rest of the year to prepare for those three months. But I still think that it is worth having that limited time as opposed to being a legislative full year round because you will make a career legislator if you make it a year long engagement. And again, I think that is a bad thing. I think having to be a regular person living alongside your fellow regular people. Despite going and doing some legislation in the meantime is a slightly safer system than just having some people become a class apart from the rest of us whose income is derived from keeping a government job. Because I don't I don't trust people. I trust their motivations and when your income is based on keeping a job.

22:33You stop being so motivated to do the job folks who go into the office as a legislative rate to lose that role to do it right. Yeah, I'm so glad that we ended up touching on that because it is it's been something that it's been on my mind just kind of like rolling around in the back as I talked to different people in the legislature talk about term limits talk about all this stuff that it is involved in our specific. The legislation system and you we I'm going to skip around a little bit. I'm going to jump forward to where I wanted to get to because we did talk about your opponent is an incumbent Scott Hilton and he left South State bank and 24 and is now the managing director of a capital firm, a real estate investment firm. While he simultaneously serves as a state legislature on the ways and means committee which deals directly with tax policy and effects real estate investment.

23:42So when legislators day job overlaps cleanly with his committee assignments. How are we is voters supposed to think about that. How do we know who he's actually governing for or representing. So again like I said don't trust people trust the motivations and I hate to say in this case the motivations are you know to do things that will benefit his income strain mean and that's in fairness any of us subject to that. If I get into office is a very good chance that I will make bill like I would not be disinclined to say no to credit or friendly bills. The difference is you know what kind of back stops are there on your worst instincts for self interest while in office. And unfortunately our current legislature has almost none like you said we don't see a lot of recusals. That's what I was going to ask you. What do you propose. No that's that's the answer is that you there needs to be something that causes you to recuse even if you bring a bill yourself.

24:44You should not be part of the vote on your own bill. You know I think that you if you can't convince others. That what you're doing is good for the people then you have no business doing it and so that's your best bet is recuse. And I've seen Scott leave the room on other votes. Things would have been difficult explain to either side of his voter base. And so he's capable of of recusing all attempts to be just not being present for a vote. Which is called tactic. We've all seen lots of politicians whose parties allow them to take a pass on a vote that would look bad for them in their district but is kind of required for that party's voter base. But in this case I think the answer is that you find some. Some mechanism to enforce against a legislator that they do not vote on their own bills like you must actually recuse. You know or you must find other sponsor for a bill that you like that there should be a way that we can enforce and this the thing is there's usually a fix for most issues that we can identify the problem is.

25:45The problem is that we have legislators who have active businesses probably because we're part time legislature and don't force folks to digest themselves. But at the same time they are actively championing bills that benefit their businesses directly. And so the fix that is recusal the very least. It should be the policy and it should be enforceable through the courts that if you do not recuse so much that right to a civil action against you or you know some. Yeah or I guess an intro legislator legislative right to remove you from committees or unwind a bill. If you didn't follow the procedure to recuse yourself before a vote happened that's the least I can think of. There was one that I heard of recently and I do not remember the legislator's name. They're milled to order somewhere maybe around making and it was he has business to do in the death industry essentially. And that was the main bill that he was passing like you had to go through XYZ steps that would directly benefit his pocket into the day.

26:48It's like how are we. Nobody else is going this out. I've got one almost as bad. They had no name his name but it was a judge who was investigated by the judicial qualifications committee. In previous years for some tremendous sexual impropriety in his role as a judge. And he stepped down from the bench became the legislator for his district went to join the judicial committee. In the legislature and then crafted and championed and successfully passed the bill that re unwound the JQC that had disqualified him from his judge job. And put them more as a function of the legislature that person did that directly that was again same thing just that pure self interest. Or in this case, vindictiveness, you never went back to the bench, but the point is it's just that we don't. That intent. Yeah, that no one can call out and stop it is partly a function of our legislators though that we are so partisan that if that person is in your party, you don't.

27:51Still, I'm going to say you need to get out of this. What you're doing is bad origins. Yeah, that's just the blinders on. All right, let's shift again. Your opponent Scott was a vocal champion. And this is one that really grinds my gears. So I'm excited to get into it on education, but of the Georgia Promise Scholarship Act. And he literally stood on the floor and told colleagues that voting yes for school vouchers was a yes for raising teacher pay. And isn't that funny considering now as both of us are product at Fulton County schools and realizing the major deficit and not. All contributed to these vouchers, but it's certainly especially in North Fulton where we are is attributing to the tens of millions of dollars of shortfall. And reducing teacher pay. Talk to me about that. Let's talk about the framing.

28:54I occasionally check in on what Scott's up to and his web page had previously said that one of his three pillars of his campaign was women's rights. Even though he is actively against reproductive freedom. So I'm curious about what he would choose that. Well, most recently he came out with something saying his pillars and he named them. You know, he's a strong advocate for education. Like again, you just like you pick the thing you are most actively working against and say you're for it. I don't know what the tactic is there besides pure dishonesty, but yeah, it's very frustrating to watch. I mean, look at the property tax bill they tried to bring this year to change our constitution to know how much of public good relies on good public education. And then to actively go and undermine that intentionally and undeniably is a bad hypocrisy. And I won't even talk about the distribution of his chosen between public and private school for Scott personally. But for those who know, it's doubly hypocritical. But the point is it is very frustrating to watch anyone claim to advocate for education and instead be seeking.

29:54And again, this is kind of a traditional way of kind of uber traditional Republican mindset, which is that everything's better private. So essentially, you know, we have government do for people with a candy for themselves. Public education has been a part of that for ages, but there is that wing. The most mega, the most extreme, the most beyond conservative because public education is a conservative value. But it's been bastardized into this thing now where no only private industry can do that for us. And so therefore it's fine if public funds don't go to public resources, but instead come back to our own pockets. So we can give them to institutions that serve only the select group that can pay the remainder of those balances. So they're essentially asking the public to help them send their own chosen to private schools. And at the cost of the public schooling, everyone previously had available. It's, I mean, it's directly, it's telling your voters, I don't care about what's good for you. I want you to do what's good for me, which is essentially my feeling about his whole career. You know, he's the guy that voted to put money into Donald Trump's pocket directly from our DA's office in Fulton County, which is already in part of the same budget that funds our schools.

30:58Made a loss straight from scratch that said, hey, if you had a district attorney in this weird one-time situation, you can come and sue that county for all those funds. They leave now we have a further shortfall. So it's again and again, giving up the best interests of the county and the constituents in favor of political ambitions in his seat for some higher office of some future, you know, advancement by Trump or camp or whoever he's chosen as his, this is, this is, we are serious to. Yeah, you brought up women's health care, and this is something obviously near and dear to my heart, not just because I'm a woman, but I've been very public about the losses I've experienced it, experienced second trimester losses. And this was pre-dobs. And I was still almost forced to stay in that strong wording, but they, my doctors at Northside for side wanted me to stay. They helped me stay at the hospital for two nights, three days.

32:00And before they would give me the person, give me an abortion, essentially, to, to, so I could go home and be with my other boys that were at home. And so he has been in office at post-dobs decision and post our, our six week abortion man or during. Women in this district are having to drive to other states. I know personally a couple of them to get health care that was legal to them just a couple years ago, and he's done nothing. So what is your commitment to fighting for these reproductive rights and for women? So the, the section that actually imposes that ban is just with our Georgia code, it did not even a constitutional amendment. And therefore all I have to do is go back and take out the limitations, replace them with, you know, whatever level you're comfortable with.

33:01I'd say second trimester for sure. But the point is, it's never supposed to be anything more than a woman and her doctor making decision about her health care period, reproductive or otherwise as far as I'm concerned. And so it, it's an easy commitment for me to make to say, duh, like my, the irony is that my wife and I and Scott and his wife, you know, were pregnant and had our children in Georgia in the, you know, Roe versus Wade period. So we had the options, whether you exercise them not, that people are supposed to have when they have true freedom. And now I know he's got a daughter. I've got to, and the response is that they shouldn't have the same rights we had if they become pregnant in Georgia. I mean, I've never known that a society society can succeed where future generations have fewer freedoms than the ones before them. It's not the trajectory we're supposed to be on as a species. So yeah, it's a duh that you just go back and strike through the addition of the criminal penalties for doctors. And essentially, just rewrite the section to say, you know, anything that a woman and her doctor choose in the context of pregnancy is the right decision period.

34:08You know, you could actually go farther and say the government cannot be involved in this. Can I, can I be prosecuted? Can I be civilly liable? Like just take it the opposite direction and say this for the folks who spend so much time telling us that they are about small government. The overreach to say, I want to be in your doctor's office with you. I want to be in your bedrooms for your romantic relationships. I want to be, you know, telling you every aspect of your life is the exact opposite of small government. It feels sometimes like I'm the only conservative running in this race. The stance is get out of all these options that you want them in Scott. That's a really great point. All right, last question before we get to a lightning round. This is a district that Republicans have held roughly 54 to 46 margins ish and both 22 and 24. What makes you believe this is winnable and beyond just flipping the sea. What do you want to actually say that you've accomplished in two years? So what makes you think this winnable and what do you want to have on your resume in two years?

35:10It's the same thing actually. The thing is that I want for us as Georgians and as people in this district are options and opportunities that apparently Scott is unwilling to offer. It's been six sessions in the legislature collectively and has never brought bills for the things I think are most important. Obviously, you know, we're objective freedom is one. But I mean, there's things as simple as saying in our voting code that you can't have a person who's been elected president twice. Be on the ballot for presidency a third time. It should be a duh, but the correct president of the United States has said repeatedly since 2016 he wants that we should as a state codify in one sentence. Nope, can't have it doesn't because right now it's just whatever the party nominates becomes on the ballot as president. That needs to be that needs to be changed. These are simple fixes, but they're important to do on behalf of Georgians. Other things that people don't get into often enough for my taste is ranked choice voting independent district maps. I mean, they Scott lost the seat in 2018 and they put it out to pasture until they read the maps in 2020 to bring his guinet city into three

36:15fault in the cities that they thought would be affluent and apathetic enough to allow him back into office. Despite his entire contribution being walking around the district is saying, hey, anybody know any good laws that can make for you? Not big stuff, just small stuff. Anything kind of, you know, trivial that I could put out there as a bill and make you happy. Whereas the person who just does this job and what I hope that was my legacy is that I'm shooting for the big things that can make all of our lives better. You know, try to encourage politicians entirely trying to make it so that we have every vote count whether you vote for your your most far shot, you know, best hopeful candidate and it trickles down to somebody who is not your first choice, but not your last choice. And everyone's votes are never wasted. You're not playing a prisoner's dilemma with others to see who you think you're safe to vote for. And then our district's actually matched where we are that we don't have politicians choosing who they want to vote for them. But they actually say this city, this town, this neighborhood votes together and we work our way up until the whole map is when you can point to and say, I don't need to have a line by line in front of me to tell you where my district is. Like we need of us can do that. None of us can can say.

37:17The exact boundaries of our district because they are so convoluted just to make it work for the purposes of a politician who drew it rather than for the purpose of the people who need to have one of their own go represent the many level of legislature or in Congress. Well, that's exactly what we experienced. I mean, it was our new rosal mayor. So yeah, totally agree with that. And the district thing has been on the forefront of my mind as well as the Jerry meandering topic and it's something that I'm just how do we take the politics out of it? Like it's just all agree to and then we'll be great, but that's not so easy. Well, the answer is you bring the you bring the bills that Scott scared to bring and you make folks vote against them. That's the answer. That's what he's too scared to put out there the good ideas that we all know work. I mean, it feels like I bring you 80 plus percent ideas right towards voting is like a hundred percent idea among anyone who even knows what it is. Yeah, out there, you have full support and you bring a bill and say, okay, politicians show us how you won't vote for us to have more options as voters.

38:22Independent district maps, you go, okay, here's how it can make it make sense every time to every person. Okay, politicians show us how you won't do the selfish thing and deny us the right to have our political choices from within our own people. That's it. I think it sounds like angels. Yeah, that's exactly it's sanity is what I've done. That's the fluid conditions that drive me crazy is someone likes not and they think the only job they had is to keep their job. It's not you blow the damn thing up. If you're going to make a difference with people that you're going to come back and live among, not live beyond. I cannot agree more, cannot agree more. Well, thank you so much. We are going to move into the lightning round. I've got five quick questions for you before we wrap up. All right. Something you've changed your mind about. In my life. Yeah, sure. And your adult life. And my adult life. Is there something on your job?

39:22Yeah, although I think it's part of the times doing collections, especially from free the great recession to now. It felt then like a lot of times folks were holding on to you intentionally. And I found these days that by huge majority, it is folks who would love to have paid you and things are just hard as hell for a lot of people. So owing money is no longer a moral choice for almost anybody. It is just a terrible situation that is independent of their morality or their options. That makes sense. That makes sense. What do you do in your free time when you're not ubering the girls around? I'm not sure that is that much of that despair these days. Those kids are active as hell. I know that life. I'm too deep to believe. I'm so glad. I'm thrilled to death that they are out there doing things in the world not on a screen all day long. But man, oh man. I cannot wait till they can properly drive. But so I used to play ultimate frisbee with every spare minute I had. And I am.

40:22It takes too much time to much driving. It is too far away a lot of time for for the between, but tennis is in my neighborhood. And so I do a ton of that. Also video games I play far too few of, but when I get the chance, I completely veg out and do that. Which game? So well, it depends. But for arcade machines, it's three five or three third strike. And for the computer, it's world of work. I'm not world of work. I can't do that anymore. I'm not loud. It's actually Diablo. Excellent. Yeah. Married to a gamer. Also have gamers. So boys. So I totally get that live. What's your favorite date night with Katie? Oh, man. All right. So we used to go to a place down in the Revenia called the grotto. But I think now it is literally anything that is outside of our house. Just just that. You know, and have like just a full hour need or end. Yeah. That's enough. That's how you know she.

41:22No, that sounds glorious. I get that. I get that. What? What surprised you about running for office so far? Well, it's all horrifically similar to the collection's practice. It is because you spend all day calling people from money. Yeah. I'm like, I've had two decades to train for this job. I never would have wanted by coincidence. Yeah. Oh, every candidate knows that. That pain. What? Last one. What do you wish more people would ask you about? Ranked choice voting. Okay. Period. I want the world to know that it's a thing. And then ask me about it. I will. And then give me the time of it because I will go all day. I don't have all day. How much does it change our entire country? If we just had every state, every municipality, everyone have access to that form of voting. I mean, you'd have third, fourth, fifth party candidates get into offices. You'd have, you know, you'd have an entire new legislature in every state and across the country.

42:27And we'd have bipartisanship and tri-partisanship and actual coalitions of like-minded human beings who weren't married to some ideology that was just about not being the other thing. Way more representative. And I will add that this has been a conversation in debate within our own app and media tips, threads. And Hans, Appen and I are on your side. We agree. I do subscribe. I'm very proud of you all for trying to kind of bring back our paper media in the area. I've missed the AJC's paper productions. But I mean, y'all are doing the thing that we need more of which is actual journalism broadly happening, you know, and having some- Hyper local. Yeah. But the point is, it's just like my run to this office because I can't go directly affect the federal legislature to fight against Trump and his authoritarian ways in the country. But we can do all these things locally and work our way up. Basically build the country back in the bottom with the checks and balances we're supposed to have in which case we include the media. That's exactly right.

43:27That's exactly right. Instead of demonizing them. Well, Adam, I greatly appreciate this. Thank you so much. This was a joy. I appreciate everyone else that has listened along so far. Thank you for joining us. Again, I am Lindsay Coats with Appen Media's Georgia Politics podcast. Please join us next time and check out the other episodes from my counterpart, our kid, too. And we look forward to next time. Thanks so much, Adam. Thank you.