Meet Catalina Lauf, 11th District of Illinois Congressional Candidate

BUCK:  We promised that we would continue to update you all on those races, those political contests that are on the razor’s edge could go either way and are critical pickups for the GOP in this midterm. We have one of those candidates with us right now. Catalina Lauf is with us. She is running in Illinois’s 11th District. A dead heat, my friends. The DNC didn’t see her coming. Democrat apparatus didn’t realize what they were up against. Catalina is with us now. Thanks for joining us.

LAUF: Thanks for having me.

BUCK:  So, what are you going to do, Catalina? How are you going to convince anybody in your district in this last stretch here that you, a political newcomer, are going to represent their interests best in the United States Congress?

LAUF: Yeah, well, we’re exposing Bill Foster for who he truly is, which is a far-left extremist progressive that has no business representing a district that is pretty moderate Republican at heart. We care about small business. We care about economic issues. We care about the fact that we have people in our district who are suffering right now because of the inflation crisis that has been there, because of people, like Bill Foster, who have been spending our taxpayer money and who have been spending billions of dollars of foreign aid when people in his own district suffer.

So, we are going to be showing our district and have over the last year now that we need real people who are going to fight for what they care about in Congress. You know, Bill Foster was and is has been backed by Mike Madigan, who was a corrupt, recently indicted former speaker of the Illinois State House. Illinoisians are done with the corruption and they’re ready for new people to represent them. And I’m honored to be that person for the Illinois 11th District.

CLAY:  Catalina, thanks for coming on. This is Clay. Buck and I both met you. Like we said, I think Buck’s known you for a little while. I met you in Park City. And one of the things you’ve been trying to do on this show is bring a lot of new blood into this show. You’ve got a really dynamic background. You’re young, you’ve got a lot of great energy. Introduce yourself to our audience and explain to them how you came, while still in your twenties, to be running, I believe for this office.

LAUF: Yeah. So, just a bit of background. You know, I was born and raised in the district in a very small town. My mother immigrated here from Latin America. You know, she she came to the United States to find freedom and opportunity. My dad was a small business owner here in Illinois, and they taught me the values of hard work, liberty and to love this country unapologetically.

And I saw the rise of the far left, particularly these women, and like AOC and The Squad that fundamentally are trying to destroy not only our culture here in the United States, but also our economic system. And I hope it’s the stories of, you know, kids who have seen what poverty and struggle look like. I would go and visit Latin America and I saw what real struggle was. And to now see what they’re trying to do here in our country, whether it’s overtaxing or the economic issues, you know, we really need to fight for what we care about here and bring back our values.

My sister and I started our own company right here in Illinois. And we also — I was a former appointee with the Department of Commerce. I was one of the youngest presidential appointees. And so I’m honored to now be back fighting for my hometown and making sure that we have better representation in Congress.

BUCK:  So, Catalina, even though you are the daughter of immigrants, you’re a Latina American, you’re a young person with a remarkable career already. I’m assuming you’ve gotten like the Vanity Fair cover treatment, you know, the Beto treatment, where they say they’re telling the stories about how wonderful you are — or maybe not so much from the media in your state of Illinois, you tell us.

LAUF: Oh, yes. Well, you know, Jill Biden calls me a unique breakfast taco. So, we have that going for us. If anything, they’re afraid of us, the media included. They’ve been running nothing but negative articles. Anything that we do is incredibly sensationalized, whereas they try to prop up the opponent. And that is just exactly what they have always been. It’s just now coming to light, right? All these Democrat progressives have always tried to sit there and say that they want more females, they want more diversity in Congress, they want more diversity in corporate America and all this cultural appropriation. But here you have somebody who is diverse, who is next generation, who is a female, and they will do everything to try to bring us down. And it just shows — we’re not victims — but it just shows how much they have lied and how afraid they are when somebody who has a different opinion of them comes to the scene and challenges one of their own.

CLAY:  Catalina, I’m guessing because we talk to people all over the country that the things people in your district care about the most are the economy and inflation, the rise of crime, and also our wide-open borders. Maybe also still fired up about Pritzker shutting down schools as much as he did in Illinois as the governor, I would bet. When you see Joe Biden arguing that teenagers need to be able to have surgery to remove their genitals 14 and 15 years old, it just feels so tone-deaf to me. I feel like we’re almost getting punked or pranked. That can’t be anything that your district cares about. Do you feel like Democrats are just whiffing on addressing any of the issues at all that the people in your district in this country care about?

LAUF: Right. They have a record to run on, which has been nothing but destroying our economy. You know, JB Pritzker, we had some of the most tyrannical lockdowns in the country and he destroyed small businesses. We still have businesses that are still trying to recover the supply chain issues, where also government induced a problem and our people are hurting. But that’s exactly the issue, is that they are so out of touch with the actual needs of the people that they will go and push their own agenda.

In Illinois, for example, JB Pritzker required tampons in middle school boys’ bathrooms, 8-year-old boys’ bathrooms. They are trying to push this stuff. And I’m telling you, though, it is getting mama bears involved because they see the growth agenda pushing by the far left and they are so livid of what’s going on in the schools. But I will also say they’re livid that these people are completely out of touch with the actual kitchen-table issues, which is why we’re so confident in our campaign, because we have been on the ground every single day on this campaign, and we know what our people want. We know what we need to fight for in Congress. And Bill Foster is completely out of touch with his constituency. Not to mention, he co-sponsored legislation to have biological males and females play sports that’s on his agenda.

CLAY:  Crazy. Is that, by the way, Catalina, in Illinois? This is the thing that people come up to me and talk about the most. This idea that boys can identify as girls and go play in girls sports.

LAUF: It’s absolutely ridiculous. And the more that we continue to play along with it, the more they’re going to push. Right. And it’s time that we put our foot down and say we need to go back to common sense. We need to go back to, again, what matters. And that’s the economy that’s closing the border, that’s making sure that our crime rates are not through the roof as what’s going on in Chicago. All of that crime is being pushed out to the suburbs as well.

You know, these issues are — these members have done absolutely nothing productive for the American people. And it’s time we bring back servant leadership of people who want to be there and who want to listen and who want to fight for what matters. People like Bill Foster are not it. And that’s why we’re firing him.

BUCK:  For people that want to help out, Catalina, we know you’re in a dead heat. We know you can win this one. But it’s going to take everything that they’ve got in the last couple of weeks here. Where should they go? How can they help?

LAUF: Yes. Any way that people can be helpful, whether it’s, you know, $5, $10 or just spreading the word, it means a lot. CatalinaforCongress.com and @CatalinaLauf on all social media platforms.

CLAY:  Outstanding stuff. Good luck. We are rooting for you to get it done there in Illinois. That’s Catalina Lauf.