Tudor Dixon on Her Quest to Vanquish Covid Villain Whitmer

CLAY: We are headed up to great state of Michigan, where my wife is from, where I was married, and where I was vacationing during the summer when it is truly fabulous when Tudor Dixon won the official nomination for the Republican Party in a dominant fashion. She is now running against a woman that I am describing as “awful” as both a governor and a steward of the state, Gretchen Whitmer. And we are joined now by Tudor Dixon. Congratulations — I know it’s been a while — on the primary win. We are five weeks out. Can you take yourself and finally solve this ridiculous Whitmer era and end it? What do you need from us and what are you hearing from the people of Michigan about the governor’s race five weeks from today?

DIXON: Well, we believe we can. Right now, we are in a situation where she has spent — she and her allies have spent — $23 million against us. And we’re just now getting back out on the airwaves — and our allies are just getting back out — because we had a primary and she did not have a primary. So, Republicans in many of the swing states, I would say, it has definitely been a challenge to be able to build back those resources. But we are in great shape right now. We are just coming off of a rally in northern Michigan and it was fantastic. We had so many people show up. The entire place was packed.

You know that we had a rally on the southeast side with Donald Trump, President Trump here on Friday or on Saturday night, this past Saturday night. The energy in the state is really amazing because when you lock people down, when you take away their livelihoods, when you take away their education, when their kids’ futures are at risk, people become very energized to make sure that can never happen again because at the end of the day, of course, we are all freedom-loving Americans and we believe that that’s the most important thing that we have our freedoms, that we are able to have the American dream, that our children are able to have a great future.

BUCK: Tudor, when you speak to people who are persuadable in your state, is there is there any doubt in their minds that what Whitmer did…? I mean, Governor Whitmer, really tried to muscle out, in my opinion, Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom (of New York and California, respectively) for the most hardcore — and now, as we know, insane, debilitating and worthless — covid lockdowns of any governor, of any state. Do Michiganders all see that or are some still a little caught up in the propaganda and think that if they get shot number five and stand six feet away from somebody, maybe it’ll keep them safer. I’m talking about the persuadables.

DIXON: It’s so interesting that you use that word, “propaganda,” because we were talking about this this morning. I was saying to one of the people on my team, “It’s so difficult in a state like ours where you really have a strong propaganda media that is going out and saying, ‘She’s great! She’s done all of these things.’” But when you talk to folks and you say, “You’re seeing these commercials saying she’s brought all of these jobs to the state. Do you know that while Gretchen Whitmer has been governor, we’ve lost 82,000 jobs? Do you know that when other governors, even Andrew Cuomo, decided that it was no longer a good policy to put covid-positive patients into nursing homes, Gretchen Whitmer doubled down and is now refusing to release the final report on how many seniors we lost in the state?

“Do you know that when she was given the opportunity to get kids back on track with reading scholarships, she thought that gave parents too much control; so, she vetoed that opportunity for our students, and now we have a 60% failure rate in our third-grade reading level across the state?” These are all things that pretty quickly people say, “Wow. This is catastrophic,” and, “Wow, the education system went from 38th in the nation — which wasn’t a great standing — to now we’re looking at being in the bottom five states in the nation coming up soon.” People realize that that means the future for our workforce, the future for businesses here is very bleak if we don’t turn things around.

And Governor Whitmer is not coming out and saying anything about what she would do to get people back on track. She has offered nothing in the form of a plan for the state, nothing in the form of a plan for small businesses. She has not brought more jobs to the state. She has not helped developers who want to develop in the state. In fact, she has created such a weaponized state agency conglomerate against business that businesses now consider the state the enemy of business, and they say, “We feel as though the state sees us as the enemy of the state.” We talk to them. We talk to folks about that.

Look, we can be partners again. Look at the states that are thriving, that are partners with their businesses — the Tennessees, the Kentuckys, the Texases — that are taking the businesses away from Michigan right now. We met with one of our largest manufacturers the other day and they said, “I’m going to very secretly tell you that we are building new factories and they are all in Texas because working with the overregulation in the state of Michigan — and the inability to communicate with the top executive officer, the chief executive officer of the state, the governor — has been such a nightmare. We’ve decided to build in Texas and leave Michigan.” We cannot afford to have more businesses leaving; 82,000 jobs is way too many to think about more of our businesses leaving the state is catastrophic.

CLAY: Tudor, you have four daughters, and one of the things we’ve been talking about on the program is the amount of angry moms — and dads as well — out there about schools being shut down. You just mentioned the loss of learning that Michigan has seen happen as a result of Gretchen Whitmer’s awful stewardship relating to covid. How much do you hear from moms and dads out there still furious about her leadership there and what big costs were borne by children over there not being able to go to school?

DIXON: I just actually about 5 minutes ago had a mom say to me, “What you said about our public school system not having enough students? My son would be a senior this year and he’s so far behind, he was embarrassed, and he decided to take himself out of school and go to night classes to try to get his GED because he’s so embarrassed that he’s so far behind; he decided to give his senior year up.” That was the first time I had heard something like that. But we know we’ve lost a massive amount of students from our public education system. The public education system has been harmed so significantly, and we have to figure out how to get that system back on track.

Parents across the state… I had another mom say to me, I have… You’re right. I have four daughters. Two of my daughters will go into fourth grade this year. We have twins. And one of my girlfriends, her son will go into fourth grade as well. She said to me, “Can your girls read?” and I said, “Well, my girls have been in person,” and she said, “My son has been in and out of school for two years because of this and he missed that crucial step,” and she said, “We’re parents that sit with him every day. I sit with him every day and try to help him read. And the school says they don’t have the resources to help me!”

She said, “What is happening to all of the kids that are in a worse situation than us?” Well, that’s the problem. The kids that are in the most critical situations are the ones that are being hurt by this, and where does that leave them? Where is their American dream? Where is their future? If they don’t have family members at home that have the time to sit with them and get them back on track, it falls on us as members of the state to say, “We’re going to come around public ed. and make sure that those resources, those tutoring hours are there to make sure that there is no wrong path in education for any student in the state.

BUCK: We’re speaking a Tudor, Dixon. She’s running for the governor’s office in Michigan. Tudor, just one more for you. We’ve only got about a minute or so. But the crime issue has overtaken, even in the polling now, abortion. So, more people are motivated on crime than on abortion one way or the other. So many states we talk about here, the cities, have been in really rough shape in the last few years under Democrat rule and administrations. Detroit and Grand Rapids, Lansing. What’s going on in the cities in Michigan and what has Gretchen Whitmer done to try to turn things around?

DIXON: First of all, she’s done nothing. But I would say this is directly related to the school issue we’re just talking about, because we see kids that didn’t return to school in our most vulnerable areas. We’ve seen a 30% increase in homicides in the state of Michigan and over 700% increase in carjackings.

BUCK: Wow.

DIXON: This is a catastrophic problem in the state, and she has offered no solution. It’s exactly what I’m saying is, “Okay, well, what is your plan? What is your plan for the future?” The only thing that anybody has gotten out of her so far is, “I’ve put record dollars into education.” That’s great. Funding education is very important. But we’re looking at what’s coming out of education not just what’s going into education. And right now, if you end up stealing an education from these kids, you can actually predict your prison population based on your literacy rates, and we’re seeing the effects of these children that were kept out of school and then decided not to go back in the fact that we have a massive increase in crime in this state.

BUCK: Tudor Dixon. Tudor, we’re trying to mobilize our Michigander audience to help you get across the finish line here because it would mean so much for the people in that state. So where can they go? How can they get involved?

DIXON: Yeah. Please tell them to go to TudorDixon.com. It’s T-U-D-O-R-D-I-X-O-N.com Check us out on Facebook and Twitter @TudorDixon. Anything you can do to help spread the word, prayer, help, donate, that would be great. (chuckles)

BUCK: Thanks so much, Tudor. Best of luck. We’ll talk to you soon.

DIXON: Thank you.

BUCK: I mean, Clay, the best name in politics, the coolest name in politics right now? There are some cool names out there, but is Tudor Dixon your number one at this point for just coolest name?

CLAY: Way up there. And also, I just I said this earlier: Mom of four. Tiffany Smiley running in Wisconsin. I think she’s got three or four. I think Christine Drazan running in Oregon for governor has three or four. You’d think somebody would put together a story about all of these badass Republican moms running for statewide office. If these were Democrats, it’d be on the front page of the New York Times. All three of them are incredibly accomplished. And again, running with young kids because they’re fed up with what they saw from Democrats. That, to me, is how Republicans win, because those women — certainly better than you and me — can talk to all the moms in the neighborhood and say, “We’ve got to get things fixed.”