Mr. Harper, for doing the overtime segment here on Off the Record, I want to follow up on the answer you gave to the last question on the first part, which was signing the no tax pledge.

As you know, in the Democrat mantra, that's a huge no no, because if you sign a no tax pledge, who knows what's going to happen down the road when you might have to reverse that pledge?

Are you not buying that argument at all?

No, no, I don't buy that argument because I think we all have to commit to making our being a better fiduciary of taxpayer dollars.

There's no question about that.

And there's no question that the amount of spending that we're seeing, we can get all of the things that I want to get done, all the things universal health care that includes mental health care, pass the pro act to undergird and strengthen our unions, get get the job those voting rights in advance.

When I get women's reproductive freedom done, all of these things can get done secure and really help we underspend it.

I'm public education here in Michigan to the tune of $4 billion a year, and it's a shame we can get these things done.

You were talking in the earlier segment for I came on about Governor Whitmer's commitment to, you know, pre-K education.

We know that's one of the best investments we can make, which pays us back $8 for every dollar we spend early, early childhood education and pre-K. And so that all of those things can happen under the egis of a $7.2 trillion budget.

We we unpack it and you start peeling back the onion and you start seeing that we're rubberstamping the NDAA every year to the tune of raises of 2%, 3%, 5%, sometimes even higher.

You know, this is something that we can do without raising tax burden on people and and the money's already there.

It's just how it how we spend it.

We have to do it significantly more efficiently.

And I don't think that that's to that.

I think there's a there's a push out there saying that Democrats just want to tax and spend, tax and spend it.

It's not true.

I'm a small business owner.

I understand what it means to make sure that you're really watching what you're spending, what you watch, what you're not spending, and that I'm very much a very solid Democrat who has carried water for the Democratic Party, for the last 25 years.

But I think the mantra I remember, if you look historically, it was actually the Democratic presidents that were able to balance our budget.

So we as Dems can do and we must do a much better job with with with of taxpayer dollars.

And we don't need to raise we don't need to raise taxes.

Mr. Harper, you you know, you talked a lot about the uncommitted vote and appealing to those folks and that you think you might have a better position there in the general election.

What about folks, you know, outstate Michigan, let's say Traverse City, an area with a fairly sizable Democratic base?

What's your message to voters in that part of the state about why a better candidate than Elissa Slotkin?

Sure.

You know, simply put, I want to fight for folks that feel that they haven't necessarily had voice or agency in the process.

I was I was actually in Traverse City and I ended up meeting with a group of farmers, and there was one farmer in particular who's a blueberry farmer that she's putting our farm up for sale.

And it really was heartbreaking as we were talking because she felt that she didn't have any represented lives that were fighting to protect the small family farm she felt.

You know, there's like 54, 55,000 farms in Michigan.

50,000 of them are small family farms where you have another 4000 or whatever.

Big consider big AG.

And she truly felt that nobody federally was fighting for the small family farmer.

Now, certainly folks talk about oh, fighting for big AG and but but she was like, listen, I need protection.

I can't sell my blueberries and compete against folks from Peru bringing their blueberries here.

She also said, I want to I need a right to repair my my, my, my equipment.

I've literally leveraged my house for this super expensive equipment that I have, but I don't have a right to repair, you know, And blueberries is not the only thing she's doing.

She's doing other things.

And so if what's so, so amazing to me is that the feeling that no one's fighting for her, that she didn't have voice or agency in the process.

And I'm not saying that everybody and all the Dems in Traverse City aren't farmers at all.

But the simple fact is, do you want a representative who the clear mandate and my mandate will be to go to the U.S. Senate and fight for folks?

That's why we we just had a piece out where I don't know if you've seen it, an ad where people are signing the seat, the actual seat that I'm going to sit in in the U.S. Senate.

I'm bringing all Michiganders with me.

And to be quite honest, I don't care if there's an R by your name, a D, by your name, or you're an I, I'm going to represent everybody because that's what my charge is as a U.S. senator from Michigan.

And whether it's rural, whether it's urban, the fights are the same.

And also, I just want to say this.

We keep talking about how divided we are.

I think we're well, we're not as divided as we are disconnected because I was talking to this guy in Midland and he was basically saying, I'm going to vote for Trump, but I'd like to vote for you after we start to talk, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I said, because I just ask him, I said, What do you want?

And he listed to me a good, good, safe place where kids go to school, affordable housing, a living wage, health care, you know, blah, blah, blah.

But that's the exact same thing.

A single mom on the east side of Detroit at the corner of Mack and Drexel told me.

Right.

So we fundamentally want the same things.

The question is, who's going to fight for the little guy?

And that's me.

And simply put, I'm not going to be beholden to big donors.

I'm not going to be beholden to special interests.

And I'm going to fight for the interests of Michiganders and people.

That's why my candidacy is resonating with people across the board, because that's fundamentally what everybody wants, no matter how they identify.

But when you got into this race, I think there was a thought like Hill Harper, he's got Hollywood connections.

He's going to be able to bring national resources into this race.

And if anybody can compete with Elissa Slotkins known ability to raise prolific money, it's him.

But it just doesn't seem to have happened to, you know, you're not, as you mentioned in the first segment, you know, she has a significant advantage in resources.

Why is that?

Why why do you think you've not been able to pull together those types of donors?

I think I think it's a couple reasons.

Number One is it wasn't and hasn't and, you know, you could say, boy, this is bad strategy or not.

It really hasn't been my focus.

I haven't been focused on sitting in a room nine or 10 hours a day making phone calls to try to get someone to give me $2,000 or 30 $300 maxed out and stuff like that.

That's just I've been out there talking to people and meeting voters and also focusing on my signatures.

You know, no one ever talks about this.

I turned in my signatures two and a half months before any other candidate from either party, and we were out in a primarily volunteer led operation.

Right.

So we were out there actually signatures, I think, over the whole course of time, collect like 34, 35,000 signatures.

And then we actually went through them and a lot of it started falling off and a lot of them started falling off because of this.

And watch this.

And this actually got my attention and I started to do it more, really focusing on this.

So many of the signatures started falling off because of mismatch addresses in particularly in zip codes where the lowest income people it at or below an already low poverty line.

And you start to realize, wow, these folks aren't even getting their voter information.

And so we look at voter turnout in these communities and we start saying, oh, is it voter apathy among poor black communities?

And actually there's a systemic problem folks have.

If you have housing fragility, you're moving three times a year and and you're you're sick, you're working two jobs and a side hustle.

You're not going to secretary of state dot gov and updating your address.

So they're not even getting their voting information.

And so this process has been amazing to me.

But sitting in a room raising money has not been my focus.

Now you can say.

Hill strategically, that was the wrong move.

You know, you shouldn't be out there meeting voters and going on blocks and knocking on doors and talking to people.

But I feel differently about our democracy and I trust our people.

I trust people will recognize the work and in the in the community work and the fact that I want to represent everybody.

And so and that's it.

And there's there's another factor, too.

And I don't want to gloss over this.

During most of this run of many, many, many, many, many of my friends were on strike.

They weren't working.

And so they that when people aren't working, they're not necessarily apt to write donation checks to political campaigns.

In fact, I talked to a friend last night who's a good friend, and he still hasn't work.

You know, there's a lot of people in the entertainment industry have not worked for over a year.

And in that thing and I'll say one thing, one thing that did hurt my heart, my opponent actually took in a decent amount of money from Hollywood execs that we were actually striking during the strike.

And if you want to talk about something that is a scab behavior or something that you should not do, and that is take money from people that a union is striking against.

And and that was uncovered to me, that was brought to my attention.

And I was shocked that that that that happened.

And then it's I think it's a shame because we have to stand with our unions.

I'm a 32 year union member who's elected the national board of my union.

I was actually on strike, but I went to all the strike lines.

UAW nurses strike, SEIU, health care.

We we went there, showed up, the casino workers, we went on the lines, gave out stuff.

And so, I mean, you know, we have to support our workers.

We have to support labor.

We have to for our unions.

I'm you were talking a little bit about going all over the state, talking to voters, a gentleman in Midland who sounds like he's voting for Trump and also for you.

You're also we're talking about being in Detroit and protesting.

He's not on the ballot.

He said Trump's not on your August six ballot, so I'm going to vote for you.

I said, okay.

I'm curious, having all of these conversations.

Of course, Donald Trump won Michigan less than 11,000 votes in 2016.

Biden then wins in 2020 by a little more than 150,000.

What do you hear from voters about the presidential election in Michigan's general?

Who do you think it's going to go to and why?

I think Biden, Harris, Harper wins Michigan.

I mean, I think that that that's it.

You got to remember, there's straight party voting.

You guys know the exact percentage better than me of who is it, like 94% straight party.

Something like that.

And so when you think about who wins Michigan, you have to turn out votes.

It's about it's a turnout race.

And I think that a lot of Dems, particularly nationally and this is at least what I heard, were shocked by the disparate turnout in the February primary.

So I think we had about Dems were more worried about 785,000.

That included 110 or 115,000 uncommitted votes.

And then you had I think the Rs were somewhere around 1 million, 1.1 million or whatever that number was.

And so that's a pretty significant turnout difference.

And so there I think there is there there are folks that are nervous.

And so the thing that's clear to many people and this is what I keep hearing all the time, is that our campaign is speaking to groups that the the Democratic Party needs to turn out in November.

That's when specifically talking about is Joe Biden's campaign doing enough in Michigan to help that voter turnout?

I think that there are some good people working hard on that.

I think this is just my personal opinion.

But this is historic.

It's not just Joe Biden's campaign that the Democratic Party has never spent GOTV money on primaries, which I think is a strategic mistake, because I think the earlier you get people engaged and involved, it rolls over to November.

The tendency is to not spend any money on the primary.

It's almost like the primaries not happening.

And then as soon as the primaries over September, October, you flood with tens of millions of dollars in ads and, you know, save the country.

You know, you've got to save the country, turn out.

And I think that people kind of see through that and they feel it.

And that's why it goes back to our point about the debate.

You know, that's a problem.

It's a problem going to impact you not just now, but also in November, because they see the disingenuousness of it and just saying, hey, you're just showing up for my vote and you don't really want to represent me.

And so I think, you know, Eddie McDonald is working the Joe Biden campaign here in Michigan.

He's fantastic.

He's doing a great job.

I think that they're putting together some events.

We just had Representative Crockett come into the state.

I was with her.

She's doing a phenomenal job, lighting people up and talking to people.

And so they're doing a good job picking who they're bringing in.

Mr. Harper, let's talk about your political chops.

Have you ever voted for a Republican?

No.

Why did you take 5 seconds to answer that?

Because the video is glitching.

I feel like I'm pixilated.

I don't know if you guys can see it, but my video is super pixilated, so I could see it's glitching.

So obviously you have no bipartisan chops.

The Republicans have never fielded a candidate that you felt comfortable with.

Not not really and not really.

So for me, you have to understand that I vote for the candidate and it's always been the best dem that I voted for.

But at the same time, if there was a Republican that I really felt strongly that I thought was a fantastic candidate, you know, at the end of the day, we need great representatives and we need diverse voices and diverse ideas and diverse thoughts in particularly the U.S. Senate.

The U.S. Senate is the most powerful body in all.

When I was at Harvard Law School, my constitutional law professor would hammer home that everything else is subordinate to the United States Senate because the Senate fundamentally does two critical, critical things.

One confirms lifetime appointments of federal judges, which we all know and we can see is extremely important.

And two, a 100 people decide where all the money goes.

And and that's it, right?

That's it.

And so when we think about how important these roles are, having different voices, particularly in the case of the Senate, where a place like Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota has fewer people each then greater metro Detroit, yet each has two senators and one congressperson.

And and so when an open Senate seat like this comes up, who gets in that seat really, really matters.

And that's why I'm proud that so many Michiganders want me in that seat.

Now, if you talk about Republicans voting for me, in other words, voting cross party, I do hope I do hope that we appeal to a wide cross-section of voters.

All right.

And but for me.

All right.

I promise that I have to get you out of here for your next meeting.

But just very, very quickly, I know you assume that you were going to win this thing, but let's assume that you don't.

Would you be interested in running for mayor of Detroit?

No, absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

All right.

Will you come back and do the show later on?

I would love to.

Okay.

I would love to.

You guys are great.

You're smart.

And this is to me, I'll just I just want to say this.

And just from my heart, this is what democracy looks like.

The conversation that you guys just had before I even came on about in-state politics and educating people about what's really going on inside is is so important.

And it needs to be, I think, double clicked on high lit, blown up, pushed out because that's how we get people back in.

And when we look at communities where voter turnout is so low, it's not because they're apathetic is because no one's talking to them.

And you know, we have to do a better job, all of us.

I'm talking about the media.

I'm talking about the experts, the pundits and folks who are running for office.

All of us have to do a better job talking to everybody and saying everybody has a voice in this process because that's what makes our democracy great and that's why I'm running for office, quite frankly.

So I'm so happy that I got I was able to be on early to see you guys talk about things that are specific to Michigan, specific to what's happening in Lansing, and the fact that it's it's so important for folks to hear that.

Thank you, sir.

It's great talking to you.

Good luck to you.

We'll keep in touch.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, everybody, for watching.

More of the same next week right here for Off the record.