Derrick Holder: Indiana's 4th congressional district stretches further than people often realize. From research corridors around Lafayette and Purdue University, through farm country near Frankfurt and Delphi, growing suburban communities like Avon, Plainfield, and Zinesville, and across historic towns like Greencastle and Martinsville. It's a district built on contrast, agriculture and innovation, suburbs and small towns, old industries and emerging technologies. And that means representation here requires balance because when policy is written in Washington, it doesn't land evenly. It lands in classrooms, factories, small businesses and family kitchens across this district. Tonight's guest believes the Fourth deserves leadership that can connect those very different realities.
Joe Mackey: Yeah.
Derrick Holder: Our guest tonight is Joe Mackey, a Democratic candidate for Indiana's Fourth Congressional District, ⁓ a region stretching across West Central Indiana. Joe is no stranger to this He hasn't been part of the conversation in the Fourth before, stepping forward in earlier cycles to challenge the status quo ⁓ and bring attention to issues like healthcare affordability. education, and the economic realities facing farmers and working families. Joe lives in Lafayette and spent many years working in manufacturing, bringing a blue-collar perspective to a district that blends research hubs like Purdue with agricultural communities and growing suburbs around Indianapolis. His message is often focused on bread and butter concerns, especially the rising cost to health care. which he has described as a crisis affecting voters across party lines. Now he's back again, entering another crowded Democratic field in a district that historically leans Republican, but continues to attract candidates who believe the coalition to compete here can be built. Tonight, we'll talk about what he learned from his previous run, how his campaign message has evolved, and what he believes it will take to compete in a district as politically complex as the fourth. Joe, welcome to Hold'em Account.
Joe Mackey: Thank you, Derek. Thank you for having me on. I look forward to the conversation.
Derrick Holder: It's always a joy to talk about this district because as most of my viewers know, ran here two years ago. Joe was the district chair when I put my hat. ⁓ It's a very special district to me. So I want the best person to be the Democratic nominee. ⁓ That brings us to the first question. The fourth district combines suburban growth with rural counties. How would you balance those competing priorities in Congress?
Joe Mackey: We'll understand that there are needs going on in our rural communities which are not being met. ⁓ Primarily in the way of healthcare, in the way of funding education. ⁓ Definitely ⁓ needs now in terms of agriculture. And we need somebody that I believe has been in this district active in every county in this district for the last decade. And I mean, I'm not just learning these intricacies. I have been involved in the conversations with industrialists, with small business people, with blue collar workers, with farmers. You know, they're all a part of our district. How do you balance the needs? Well, it can be affected by the caucuses that you serve, that you work with. It can be balanced by the committees that you serve on. ⁓ It can be balanced by the messages that you take. We find too often, especially on the democratic side, ⁓ that programs don't reach, as you said, rural communities. you know, there's a special tie ⁓ our district. I don't think that we're being well represented in Congress. I don't believe we have been for some time. I think we have a corporate Republican who is more interested in serving ⁓ Donald Trump than he is in serving the people of the fourth district. So we have to put a floor under collapsing agriculture. Agriculture is a $35 billion industry here in Indiana. And if we stand by and allow it to continue its collapse, there will be no community in the fourth district that will go unaffected by this fall. out. In education, we need to restore Title I. We need to pay rural teachers a competitive wage. We have a hard time keeping teachers in rural communities because their interest is in maximizing their salary. And so we lose rural teachers to the larger population centers within our district, within the state. We lose teachers to out-of-state school systems. So retention it it matters. ⁓ Secondly, and we saw this with the shutdown when the pandemic hit more urban schools were able to pivot right away to E learning. Everyone heard about E learning. But we had rural schools that didn't have any internet. Every place they went, it's not uncommon for rural Hoosiers to take their children into a McDonald's or the library or some place that offers internet services for them to do their homework. And all those facilities were closed down and these schools, these kids in the rural areas were really left kind of high and dry. ⁓ So, you know, how do we manage that? You know, how do we keep these kids in the educational loop? Secondly, how are we going to pay for college education? bankrupting our kids who are going through four years of very expensive education and then coming out and finding there is no job market suitable to them here in Indiana. They're leaving. They're going where the jobs are and they're going where the wages are better and the benefits are better. ⁓ know, education matters and it matters to our district and our rural kids. We need some equity and I have argued that for a very long time. ⁓ You know, we need to talk about housing. ⁓ If you look, you know, how do you balance? Well, you know, clearly the rural counties aren't interested in having data centers and monolithic factories planted in their backyards on prime farm ground. ⁓ But I think they would be amenable to housing. smaller businesses ⁓ I think we can ⁓ ⁓ if you go out on my website, ⁓ you can read about housing, affordable housing and how I think we can structure it. ⁓ I didn't dream it up either. I this isn't Joe Mackey put this recipe together. I took an active program called Rapid Re-Housing, which we just completed a project here in Lafayette. ⁓ built a number of apartments and we're transitioning people out of homelessness and into their own apartments. And then we're supporting them with helping them get jobs and every building has a counselor and the counselors work with the residents. It's a great program, but what struck me about it was it was a ⁓ public-private partnership. So the county put up some money, both cities, Lafayette and West Lafayette, put up money. They worked with contractors and developers to build this apartment. at far under market price. And I'm thinking the only thing that we would have to do is ⁓ include the federal government in ⁓ rapid ⁓ first time house developing starter home development. And I think we can do that. We can work with communities at the local level and help them finance ⁓ starter homes. So I'm from Lafayette, as you mentioned, but I know that there isn't a community in Indiana that doesn't or isn't familiar with national homes. You remember the National Homes houses. I lived in two of them growing up. ⁓ And we've gotten away from that. And now these houses are all custom built and they're $180,000 and up. know, it just, we have gotten away from the sensibility of creating starter homes. My mother's first starter home was a National Homes. house here in Lafayette. ⁓ She lived in it. I think we lived in it for about five, six, seven years. And then she sold that and she moved into the second phase of National Homes Housing, which was a three bedroom, one bath, two car garage house on ⁓ a court. And ⁓ I think we can do that again. We made it affordable and I think we can make housing affordable again. by moving away from custom built and going back to national home style prefab houses. ⁓ We don't need the custom built. And the national homes, house, homes were all quality homes. They were all quality homes. I can take you through Lafayette today. I'm sure we could drive through Martinsville and show you national homes additions that are still there. The houses and their lovely homes. We can do that again. We just need to ⁓ put the political will behind it to do so. We can solve the housing crisis. It's not just here, Derek. The national house, it's a national housing crisis. It's everywhere. And we have a complacent government that's willing to let that crisis go on. So what happens? Typically homeowners, the home is the single largest equity builder a family can have. And we are at a point now where two college graduates can't afford to make their college payments, have a car and a new home. And this is ridiculous. So, there's things that we can do to bridge the gap. You know, you talk to the rural communities, there are a lot of people who are leaving the rural communities, A, because there is no housing. They want to live in their home counties, but they're not. They're moving into the more populated areas, Boone, Hendricks, Tippecanoe. And we're seeing now the results of that in rural communities is a rapidly aging population. And I think we can rejuvenate our rural housing and actually provide an affordable home for people who will drive to Lafayette, will drive down to Hendrickson Boone to go to work. I worked at Caterpillar for 30 years here in Lafayette. We had folks coming up from ⁓ Boone County, down from Cass, Newton, up from Fountain and Warren, all came to Lafayette to work. but manage to live in their home communities. So I think we can kill a lot of birds by just involving the government, the federal government, in some rapid housing development program.
Derrick Holder: Lafayette's economy is strongly influenced by Purdue University and research innovation. How do you ensure that growth benefits surrounding communities like Frankfurt and Delphi?
Joe Mackey: Yeah. Well, let's look at some of the things that Purdue does. First off, their cancer research is remarkable. ⁓ We have a very high cancer rate here in Indiana. So anything we do in the way of improving cancer treatment is going to be felt in those communities. Secondly, ⁓ we need to revive and restore USAID. ⁓ which benefited both the School of Agriculture at Purdue, it benefited small farmers, and we managed to feed four million people a year. It gave small Hoosier farmers their shot at a piece of that $2 billion pie that we were generating. It was good for small farmers. It was good for Purdue University. Research is good for Purdue University. And I think that we need to get back to that. I think we have lost or misprioritized our goals and objectives. And I think we need to reassess what our priorities are. When I think about the universities, I think about things like academic freedom. And we're seeing more more government control, more and more restriction of speech. And I'll give you an example. My wife has a degree in accounting from the Krannert School of Business. ⁓ economics plays a big part. ⁓ so ⁓ Purdue University, you have a diverse group of professors. ⁓ of them are teaching ⁓ the economics of a communist structure. Others are ⁓ ⁓ ⁓ structure of a democratic socialist ⁓ economy. We have capitalists teaching the capitalist structure of an economy. What this does when you come out of these different assorted of classrooms is you have an economic understanding of the world we're living in and the countries we're dealing with. If we cut ourselves off from the broader paintbrush of education, we also cut ourselves off from understanding the economies of say China or Russia or the European Union or Great Britain. ⁓ And so we need that academic freedom. These kids need to be taught broad array so that when we do produce these economists, they're not going out in the world and then having to learn about the nations that we're dealing with in terms of trade, diplomacy, all of that needs to be taught. And the universities are the most responsible ⁓ place to do that. So I believe in academic freedom. ⁓ I do believe in ⁓ freedom of speech. I think that professors teaching classes get called on for whatever reason and I think we need to be a little less ⁓ sensitive. At the same time, I know from what I've seen that some of that can get out of hand, but the university should be dealing with that, not the government. and that kind of gets under my skin. We have taken on a big brother mentality, Derek, and everywhere we turn, the government is just looking over our shoulders. We just watched the AI issue going on with the Pentagon and ⁓ Anthropic, and no guardrails on AI, and they're turning that on the American people. That's... You know, they say, we're going to use it abroad. No, they're using it here. They're collecting data on us. And I think that's wrong. I don't like the government spying on us and justifying it. ⁓ we're in a dangerous world. We've always lived in a dangerous world. It's never not been dangerous. I think the actions that we've taken recently have made it far more dangerous for us and other nations around the world. I think that, you know, responsible countries don't just work to secure safety for ourselves, but for the world. And I think we've upset that.
Derrick Holder: I I believe that I'm gonna have to hold up my Democrat card on this one. ⁓ What Reagan once said, the most dangerous thing that you can hear is we are from the government and we're here to help.
Joe Mackey: Well, I don't even see they're interested in helping. They're just here. And that's even scarier, Derek. I think that, you know, this whole thing about we're here to help was something he said about Democrats. But if Reagan were alive today, he couldn't be a Republican. His policies would not have let him be a Republican. He believed in ⁓ pathway to citizenships.
Derrick Holder: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Joe Mackey: you know, ⁓ bottom line is Ronald Reagan believed and he said it. You can't go to China and become Chinese, but anyone in the world can come to the United States and be an American. And we are so our government today is 180 degrees out from that sentiment. ⁓ So he couldn't be. ⁓ But, yeah, ⁓ think. ⁓ We run into these ideological clowns who literally are far more interested in social engineering than they are in development. They look at things like investments in research, investments in universities, investment in public schools as an expense, when the reality is that's our investment in the future. You know, they talk about, you should go out and get a 401k. You have to invest in your future. You should invest in the stock market. You have to invest in your future. But when it comes to educating our children, ⁓ it's, that's an expense. It's too great. It's insane. Now, we just watch now. ⁓ They spent how many billions so far? 20 billion in the time that we have been bombing Iran. But we can't afford public school education. We can't afford a public health care program. ⁓ You know, we can't afford homes. We can't afford groceries. Our energy bills are going up. But we're spending billions, which we did not budget for. You know, so we have the money. We just don't have the will to spend it where it needs to go the most.
Derrick Holder: ⁓ and then you were talking about the future. ⁓ we have people like Erica Kirk, who just got appointed to the board of the Air Force. Make it make sense for me, Joe.
Joe Mackey: Well, there is no sense to be made from this administration. And we could drive ourselves crazy trying to do so. It's almost like ⁓ putting someone in a round room and asking them to find a corner. ⁓ That's what this is. And we don't know what this administration is going to do from one day to the next, from one week to the next. We have yet to see anything that ⁓ was clearly planned out. ⁓ in the way of this government's behavior. ⁓ And we can go back, look at Kristi Noem and ⁓ ICE. That started, that was a campaign promise on the part of Donald Trump to go after MS-13 and other Latino street gang criminals. And he actually won the Latino vote on that. And what happened very quickly was it denigrated into tie wrapping the hands of a five-year-old. chasing 10-year-olds around a baseball diamond, snatching people out of immigration courts who were following the law. And this is a problem. It denigrated so badly that even Republicans are shocked and leaving their party, by the way. I am all over this district. I am doing multiple events a day and every day more and more Republicans are coming in to have a conversation, to talk with us, to understand where we're coming from. I think this is an important opportunity for us as a people here in this district to find consensus on the issues where we can and those are where we can focus our efforts. That's called politicking. You know, ⁓ Tip O'Neill had the famous ⁓ quote, politics is about ⁓ nobody getting everything they want, but everybody can get something. And I think when we look at consensus here, healthcare is a major issue. Education is a major issue. ⁓ Housing is a major issue. Agriculture is a major issue. So I think there are plenty of areas where we can come together and develop consensus. And that's not ⁓ a fabrication of politics. That's because I have been out in this district. I know many Republicans. I know a great many Democrats. I am not a stranger in these counties. And I understand what they're talking about. I have literally had Donald Trump supporters, MAGA Republicans, ⁓ talking about evils of Democrats and, know, God knows what. But then in a very next post, it was, why is my medication so damned high? So we have a link and I think we can build a ⁓ coalition of us. and not us and them. can be a we, but we need a congressman that's going to represent the district and not a congressman who goes to Washington to support Donald Trump. We don't need a congressman that supports a president or supports a party. We need somebody who works here for us in this district, all of us together. And that's how we build a better country and a better district.
Derrick Holder: You just mentioned agriculture. ⁓ remains central to northern counties of the district. How would you protect family farms facing consolidation and global competition?
Joe Mackey: Well, okay, let's look at it because clearly, row crops are gone. Corn and soybean, gone. We can't eat that crop and we've lost 60 % of the market ⁓ to Brazil and Argentina. Incidentally, you can point to the $20 billion that Donald Trump gave to Malay down there in Argentina to develop ⁓ his agriculture program and what are they doing? They're tearing up the soil and planting corn and soybeans. you know, we have a real problem here. I think the real answer is we need, our farmers need to diversify their crop production now. And I want to point this out. ⁓ It used to be we grew food in the fourth district. We grew vegetables here in the 4th district. Every little town had its own little factory and they were owned by Stokely or Van Camps or Green Giant. They're all gone with row crops. went away. But if you look, if you walk down a grocery store aisle, and look at the products, pick them up and see where they're made, how much of the food resources that we have are being shipped in from outside the country. Our fruits and vegetables are being shipped in from outside the country. We need to put a floor under these farmers. We need to put the will, the political will and the financial will together to put a floor under our farmers long enough for them to convert. to growing food again. It's a national security issue. And this has been pointed out by ⁓ politicians in Washington for some time. We're becoming more more reliant on outside nations for our produce. What happens to a nation that becomes so reliant on the outside that we're no longer secure? We are ⁓ at great risk. ⁓ So I want to see farmers come back and grow more produce. But there's other products that they should be growing ⁓ that aren't even in the market right now. ⁓ So, you know, this is how we transition our farmers. But first we have to put a floor under them. We have to work with them. You're not going to go bankrupt. We're going to keep you afloat. We're going to do what we have to do while you transition. And I think that that's something that the federal government can definitely play a part in. But that involves reinventing the Department of Agriculture. Doge came through and destroyed it. And the talk is, can we rebuild it? But I honestly think now ⁓ that the logical move going forward is to reinvent it. and come back to the basics, which is let the farmers tell us what they can do aside from row crops and then put a program together to help them. It takes ⁓ up to five days. for a head of lettuce to travel from Mexico to the store shelf where you're getting it. And what do we see when we do that? You buy a head of lettuce and a few days afterwards it's starting to liquefy, turn brown and rot. Well, if we're growing lettuce here in Indiana, we could feed the Midwest, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa. We could feed the country. And to be honest, if our farmers put their will together with the political energy, we could feed the world. It's good for us. That's really where we can really help agriculture.
Derrick Holder: That kind of goes with it would possibly open more small businesses if you do a farm to table type setup. So right now, small businesses anchor towns like Green Castle and Martinsville. What policies would help them thrive?
Joe Mackey: Correct. Crap. So, you know, one of the things that just drives me crazy is the tax rate that small businesses pay. Now, small businesses, Derek, drive the American economy. It is not the large corporations. And yet, when you look at the tax breaks that come along, when you look at the tax incentives, where do they go? They go to that top... ⁓ employment group, but small businesses overall employ far more Hoosiers in this district and around the state and indeed across the country than large businesses do. And I think that we've lost sight of that. ⁓ a result, we've allowed the Billionaire Boys Club to consolidate. I say we ⁓ when I was growing up, in the age of creation and invention and ingenuity. ⁓ because of the wealth gap that's getting larger and larger, our billionaires are in a... We've entered the age of acquisition. They're no longer creating, they're purchasing. Elon Musk didn't invent Tesla, he bought it. He didn't invent TikTok, he bought it. He didn't invent ⁓ SpaceX, he bought it. And we're watching this happen more and more. And the consolidation of these ideas under one roof stifles creativity. And I'll give you an example. We need some anti, we need modern antitrust laws. And let's just look at the last big antitrust law I can remember. ⁓ was Ma Bell. Remember they broke up Ma Bell and at the time Ma Bell's claim to fame was we've got a phone in six different colors that we can put on your wall or your countertop. This was it. Within a few years of Ma Bell being broken up everyone had cell phones and within a few more years they had the The progeny of that was the cell phones we have today. So the technologies got better, everything got better, and I think that we need to look at that. We need to look at breaking up large media companies. It used to be that there were restrictions on how much of a market a media company could own. And today there are no restrictions. Well, we look at Amazon and Walmart destroying small businesses. And in Walmart's case, they're paying less than minimum wage, or what should be, they're paying less than $15 an hour. I think they're paying, whatever, $7.50. But they also have people on staff who set you down and get you all set up for Medicare. And they advertise that as a job benefit. And I think that's the single greatest scam going on in the world today. We need to break up the health care conglomerates. You know, we watched AOC go through CBS as a health care conglomerate. And they own doctors. And they own pharmaceutical companies. And they own pharmacies. And they have their own treatment plans and they call it patient capture, where once you're in their system, you're locked into it. So there's no freedom there. There's no opportunity for us to ⁓ exercise our consumer privileges, if you will, when you're locked into a healthcare system that entraps you. So, you know, I think we can do better, but we need to break them up.
Derrick Holder: ⁓ Since we're, you know, kind of talking about healthcare, there's a couple questions. One is have you actually looked into Trump Rx? Have you actually seen that on that website they have like coupon codes? Those coupon codes
Joe Mackey: Sure. Right.
Derrick Holder: are good Rx coupon codes. Trump Rx is nothing except for good Rx. There's like 27 medications on Trump Rx. And that was one of his big things. Like it is absolutely fricking nothing.
Joe Mackey: Right. Correct. Right. Well, you know, I mean, look at it. We are locked into, Derek, what is called the healthcare marketplace. And we're not patients, we're healthcare consumers. And it's our responsibility to pick the best healthcare package we can. We cut the subsidies. Here in the 4th district, I want to say it's 22,000 individuals who buy their health care on the marketplace have now found it unaffordable. And these aren't Medicare patients, these are small business people, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs. that we're looking to get health care for themselves and their families and we destroyed that. We have crushed our own budding small business community is being damaged. So, you know, we have a real problem here. And then let me point out if your county contracts to an ambulance service, say to a hospital network, say IU Health or one of the others, Franciscan Alliance, Parkview. ⁓ You as a patient require an ambulance. They're going to take you to a hospital of their employment. And this happened specifically to a woman I know down in Fountain County in Covington who threw a blood clot. ⁓ put her in an ambulance. And I'd been talking not ⁓ long before that about the difference between ⁓ critical access hospital and a community outpatient hospital. And she messaged me after the crisis was over and she said, you know, I didn't quite understand the difference between a CAH and a COH until they put me in an ambulance and drove right past ⁓ hospital in Covington on our way to Lough yet. So, you know, we have some real problems out there in that respect. And I think we lack, I think we have the illusion of choice. But once you make that choice, you end up locked into it and there's no freedom of healthcare out there at all. There's no real ⁓ opportunity ⁓ to say yes to this and no to that. Then there's affordability issue, which now I know we have a problem and I will tell you what, you know you've got a real problem with healthcare when major corporations say this is as deep as the pocket goes. and they're finding it unaffordable now to keep up with the rising cost of health care. So we have that problem. We could come back and talk about the lack of specialists in this country. We're 100,000 medical specialists shy of being able to adequately treat the American people. And when you look at the cost associated with becoming a specialist, it then becomes prohibitive for those who have the talent to pursue those higher levels of skill training. And they satisfy themselves with being general practitioners. Most doctors come out of medical school these days as a GP, and they have $300,000 in debt. And they're quite ⁓ willing to forgo pursuing those higher... ⁓ levels of medicine simply because the cost is too prohibitive. And I'll give you an example, Derek. When our son Patrick was on the pediatric intensive care unit at Riley, I had a conversation with a young woman. I'd say young woman. She was in her very late 20s, very early 30s, a pediatric oncologist. She was a senior fellow. And her goal was to become a genomic transplant specialist. I said, how long is that going to take you? She said, ⁓ I'm going to be 37 years old before I get there. And then she looked at me and said, you know, I'm going to be a million dollars in debt on the same day I get that. A million dollars. So it is prohibitive. And we should be looking at subsidizing those skill level, those with the talent and the skill to ⁓ elevate ⁓ if we pass a Medicare for All bill. which I support, I would support that. ⁓ One of the things we have to be conscious of is we don't have enough specialists to treat everybody. And so I had a medical emergency a year ago. It took me four months from the day of my initial emergency to actually sit down and speak with a pulmonologist. And you know, four months. And I live in a community here in Lafayette with two critical access hospitals, umpteen dozen doctors, very few specialists. And therein is the problem. So ⁓ when it comes to like ⁓ say a Medicare for all. a part of that legislation has to be subsidizing that continuing education that these professionals require to be able to treat us. It's common sense. ⁓ Sadly, I don't see that written into any Medicare for All bill that I have looked at. ⁓ Secondly, You know, Medicare for All, ⁓ Bernie Sanders' plan, you know, he probably says we're going to cover 80 % of Americans. ⁓ Tantalizing as that is, the history of the Democratic Party is we don't settle for 80%. And that 20 % that he's talking about leaving out will not only see their taxes go up, who won't draw the benefits of the total package live in our rural communities. 38 % of the fourth district is rural. So, you know, if we don't have a means of bridging that healthcare gap into the rural communities, it would be wrong to raise the taxes out there and not change the circumstances they find themselves in. Our infant mortality rate among the worst in the country, highest in rural communities. Our maternal mortality rate among the very worst in the country, also the highest numbers in the rural communities. How do you justify telling them their taxes are going to go up 7 to 13 percent, but that loss isn't going to go down? So we have a very real Democrats in this district have a moral obligation to argue on behalf of 38 % of our district for the benefits of a Medicare for all plan. But we don't see that happening. And I don't hear ⁓ the other candidates addressing this issue. I do, I have been addressing it for years. And I think one of the things that and I would encourage you and your viewers. to go out and look at the mobile healthcare program the state of Nevada has developed. It is amazing. And we can duplicate that across the entirety of our rural communities. And we can do it at far less expense than building hospitals. So rural mobile healthcare, I think is the... Basic that we should be doing in our rural communities mental health in the rural communities virtually non-existent Derek we know when farm bankruptcies climb so do rural suicides and we're not there to help these these these communities Work through this trauma and it's a disgrace. It's a disgrace and we're in this boat because the man that's in this office right now is far more interested in rubber stamping whatever Donald Trump does than he is in addressing those issues we're facing here. It is a disgrace. Jim Barrett is a complacent congressman and that makes him a complicit congressman in all of these issues that aren't being addressed.
Derrick Holder: let's shift a little bit from healthcare to something adjacent to it, and that's infrastructure. ⁓ It impacts both rural towns ⁓ and suburban commuters. What's your top federal policy?
Joe Mackey: Mm. Alright. on infrastructure. honestly, I can tell you that ⁓ one of the major problems that we are going to face is water consumption.
Derrick Holder: infrastructure.
Joe Mackey: And when we talk about infrastructure, we really need to talk about the management of those limited resources that we have. And water is at the top of the list. We're already watching communities across the Southwest ⁓ who are struggling with water. ⁓ And I mean, just recently, ⁓ what is it? ⁓ the Port of Corpus Christi. That port city, it's one of the largest ⁓ liquid natural gas shipping ports in the country. And they have a year's worth of water left and then Corpus Christi will be out of water. We're watching water wars take place between developers in the state of Arizona. And we have, it is a limited resource. ⁓ And we need water management. And I'm throwing this out here, Derek. It would behoove us. to build more desalinization plants, which incidentally, there are people who are involved in ⁓ Corpus Christi's city government who were calling for this back in 2019 to support their, the primary body of water that supports that city is below 10 % of its capacity. So, you know, we have to actually look at critical development. in the way of supplying water. And apparently, with global warming, we're going to have a lot more water on our coastlines than we ever thought we would. It's going to happen pretty quick. So, you know, for me, water management would be the very first thing. I don't like these data centers and the fact that they're sucking up so much water and they're effluent. The water they'll be putting out is toxic. And our waste treatment plants, our municipal plants are not designed to deal with that. They are ⁓ anaerobic systems, so they deal with ⁓ organics, not chemical release. And those chemicals that are going to get released will end up in our surface water. Now let me point out, 85 % of our surface water has been declared unfit for sport or recreation. We have turned our state into an industrial cesspool. And I think that, you know, ⁓ Our Republican Party has been in charge here for the better part of 30 years. And look what's happened to us. So, you know, we really need people to come to the table and understand these where where are our priorities as a district. They won't be identical. Certainly the rural communities have their priorities. The urban communities have theirs. But we need to understand these priorities. And I think I have a pretty good handle on that because of my years in this district to address these issues across a broad base. And that's what my campaign has been doing. And we have Republicans joining our campaign ⁓ and working with us. So, know, is our message isn't being lost. It's actually being well received. And I think we can build the kind of coalition that focuses on the needs of this district and not the wants and wishes of a president or a party.
Derrick Holder: There's a current bill in Washington. You might have heard of it. It was originally written by Jim Baird called the SAVE Act. What are your thoughts on the SAVE Act?
Joe Mackey: right. You know, ⁓ there's ⁓ an old ⁓ Irish politician out of New York, Al Smith. And Al Smith had this great quote, the only cure for the ills and of democracy is more democracy. But what we're seeing more and more, and this is not just from Washington, all the way down to the county clerks, is this effort to restrict voting. We have the lowest voter turnout in the country. And that is, by and large, the work of a Republican party on their own, because we have these super majorities. And they're concocting all these schemes to keep people out of the voting booth. And who does the SAVE Act affect most? An estimated 69 million women who could very well lose their privilege to vote because of this nonsense about documentation. know, mean, literally, this is ridiculous. ⁓ If a county clerk doesn't know you're not a citizen, shame on them. ⁓ It's easy enough to determine. you know, they make it sound so simple. All you have to do is show a driver's license or a passport, or in women's cases, because a name change has taken place, your marriage certificate. These are what I call the Neo-Jim Crow laws. They are Neo Jim Crow. They are designed to people, targeted people out of the voting booth. It is crazy. And it doesn't surprise me Jim Barrett is the author of that. ⁓ He's been about fruitless at everything else. So. you know, shame on Jim Baird, shame on these Republicans who do that. We see at the local level here at the state of Indiana, they're working overtime to restrict college students from voting with their student ID. And again, it's just another nail in the coffin of democracy. We just watched Derek as our Secretary of State and our Attorney General turned over 10 years of voting data. ⁓ to the federal government, a decade. And what they found was over a 10-year period, ⁓ 21 people had voted illegally, which, incidentally, wasn't enough to sway any single race anywhere in the state. So to suggest that our democracy is at risk is ridiculous. And more laws like this, even more so. ⁓ I think it's unconstitutional. don't think the government has the right to place burdens on its citizens just to vote. So that's kind where I stand on that.
Derrick Holder: Congress is often gridlocked. How would you deliver tangible results for constituents in this district?
Joe Mackey: Well, so you know, have ⁓ caucuses behind the scenes. One of them is the problem solvers. It's just one of the caucuses. You cannot join the problem solvers by yourself. As a Democrat, you would have to bring in a Republican representative and you would both have to agree to work on a problem together. And then, ⁓ You go before the caucus chairs who leadership and they accept you in and you go to work with someone on the other side of the aisle. This is really proven kind of effective. It doesn't always work to democratic policy, but in the end, that's what government is. And that's what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be negotiation, not hatred. ⁓ It drives me crazy because far too many of those appearing on news broadcasts and almost on a daily basis behave like feces flinging monkeys and they're far more interested in Trashing someone on the other side or trashing the other party. There's not enough discussion on policy and I think that's a crying shame we need to get back to the Dick Lugers and the Birch Buys and the Floyd Fithians, those who actually understood that the work they do is meant to better the districts they represent and not a party or a president.
Derrick Holder: and possibly the most important question to most voters right now, especially in a race that has eight people in it. Why you and why now?
Joe Mackey: Yeah. Yeah. So Derek, I'm not new to this district. And what separates me, I believe, ⁓ my fellow candidates, I refer to them as my brothers, ⁓ is the fact that they're very much introducing themselves across the district. But I have been in this district as a leader. I have worked on district-wide projects. I have ⁓ literally worked with candidates across the district, we still are. I have been in the district when I wasn't in a leadership position, when I wasn't running for office, I was still out with the counties, working through problems, talking about issues, helping these parties build up a base. So I'm not new to this. And I got to tell you, if you went back and looked at everything we did in 2020, I could quite literally run this campaign as an I told you so campaign because the very much the issues we're talking about today, we were talking about in 2020. So I'm not a newcomer to the issues. I'm the right guy at the right place at the right time to represent this district, all the people in this district, both sides of the aisle. I'm not interested in just one side. We have two sides of an aisle here, but there are a great many issues. We're all in the same boat. And we have to build that consensus with those who are willing to come across and listen to us. And I think that's kind of where I separate myself. I'm not going to rubber stamp a Medicare for All plan simply because it covers 80 % of our people. And I will tell you, you went back to your democratic roots earlier. Well, let me go back to our democratic roots. We created social security for all of us, not 80%. We created Medicare and Medicare for all of us, not 80%. We created public school education for every child in the country, not most of them. And when it comes to healthcare, we will create a healthcare program that covers all of us or it will not be a democratic program and I will not sell out 20 % of the nation for an 80 % success rate. That's crazy. Won't do it. They'll come to the table in Washington, but they have to have a congressman that will go there and fight for us. And I don't see that in my brothers at all. ⁓ I just don't see it. And you know, So that's what separates us. Our approach to agriculture, our approach to housing, our approach to healthcare, our approach to education is a cut above. And we stand out for that. And I can tell you that there are a great number of Democrats in this area who know me very well. And no, I have not been wish-washing, not in a decade. ⁓ I have studied these problems. have looked at these problems. I have talked to people. I want to point out before we quit real quick, I have a friend of mine who is a farmer up in White County. He's small farmer. He grew 20 acres of corn this year. And I was talking to him about the bailout. what kind of money are you to get on your field? He said, Joe, I don't know. So he called me one morning about 6 o'clock because he knows I'm up very early. And he said, hey, I got the bailout money on our cornfield. I said, oh, really, what was it? Now, he planted 20 acres of corn, you. It was $8. That was the bailout money. And that's what we're doing to small farmers. And that's why we get data centers. And we get unwanted factories out there. I call it industrial displacement, where these city, these monolithic factories are moving into rural areas. because rural areas don't have the financial wherewithal to fight them and the Economic Development Commission. The cards are stacked against our rural communities and they are being ⁓ terrorized, vandalized, scandalized. It's insane. So that's kind of what separates me from my fellow candidates. I'm running for Congress in Indiana's 4th Congressional District and I approve this message. See you at the polls.
Derrick Holder: we've talked about economic growth, rural priorities, suburban expansion, and the complexity of representing a district like the fourth. Now it's time to make things simple. No speeches, no policy white papers. This is Hold'em or Fold'em. If you agree, you hold'em. If you disagree, you fold'em. Quick answers. Are you ready? Let's deal the cards. Healthcare should be treated as a human right with movement toward universal public coverage. The federal minimum wage should be raised and indexed to inflation.
Joe Mackey: Hold ⁓ Hold ⁓
Derrick Holder: Workers should have stronger federal protections to unionize without retaliation. Candidates should refuse corporate PAC or questionable special interest money even if it costs them politically. Major federal investment in clean energy can create jobs across rural Indiana.
Joe Mackey: Hold ⁓ Hold I think the communities have the right to determine for themselves what kind of businesses they want to bring in.
Derrick Holder: Public education funding should take priority over expanding private voucher programs. Universal background checks are necessary to improve gun safety.
Joe Mackey: Hold I think that's a state's rights issue. The Supreme Court has always turned it back. We just watched Maryland successfully defend their state's rights on gun ownership. I think it's a state issue and I want losers to go out and vote in the Democrats. They believe we'll get that done here, but I don't think the federal government, according to the Supreme Court, has the authority to do that. And they've that's been an example in even liberal courts.
Derrick Holder: Housing affordability requires expanded federal investment in workforce housing.
Joe Mackey: Hold them.
Derrick Holder: Mental health services deserve significant new federal funding. Elected officials must be willing to challenge their own party when constituents' needs come first.
Joe Mackey: Hold ⁓ hold on.
Derrick Holder: Joe, running in the 4th district requires persistence. This district isn't ⁓ easy. We both know that. It stretches the college energy of Lafayette and Purdue, to the courthouse squares of Frankfurt and Delphi, to the growing suburbs of Plainfield, Avon, and Zionsville, to communities like Greencastle, Martinsville, and Rensselaer. It's a place where economic realities collide. Agriculture, manufacturing, higher education, and suburban growth all in the same district. You've stepped forward in this race before. That kind of persistence tells voters something important. That your interest in this district isn't temporary and that the issues you're raising now are part of a longer conversation about representation here.
Joe Mackey: Right.
Derrick Holder: Tonight you laid out your case again. Why healthcare affordability still matters. Why working families deserve stronger advocacy. And why you believe the 4th district can still be competitive. Ultimately, voters will decide which candidate earns the nomination and carries the democratic banner the general election. But showing up again and putting your ideas before the public as part of how democracy works, and from everyone watching and listening here in Indiana, across the country, and to our friends following along from Europe. Democracy doesn't just happen once, it's a conversation that keeps returning, election after election, until voters decide where the future goes. So stay informed, ask questions, and as always, hold them accountable.
Joe Mackey: Yeah.
Derrick Holder: Our guest tonight is Joe Mackey, a Democratic candidate for Indiana's Fourth Congressional District, ⁓ a region stretching across West Central Indiana. Joe is no stranger to this He hasn't been part of the conversation in the Fourth before, stepping forward in earlier cycles to challenge the status quo ⁓ and bring attention to issues like healthcare affordability. education, and the economic realities facing farmers and working families. Joe lives in Lafayette and spent many years working in manufacturing, bringing a blue-collar perspective to a district that blends research hubs like Purdue with agricultural communities and growing suburbs around Indianapolis. His message is often focused on bread and butter concerns, especially the rising cost to health care. which he has described as a crisis affecting voters across party lines. Now he's back again, entering another crowded Democratic field in a district that historically leans Republican, but continues to attract candidates who believe the coalition to compete here can be built. Tonight, we'll talk about what he learned from his previous run, how his campaign message has evolved, and what he believes it will take to compete in a district as politically complex as the fourth. Joe, welcome to Hold'em Account.
Joe Mackey: Thank you, Derek. Thank you for having me on. I look forward to the conversation.
Derrick Holder: It's always a joy to talk about this district because as most of my viewers know, ran here two years ago. Joe was the district chair when I put my hat. ⁓ It's a very special district to me. So I want the best person to be the Democratic nominee. ⁓ That brings us to the first question. The fourth district combines suburban growth with rural counties. How would you balance those competing priorities in Congress?
Joe Mackey: We'll understand that there are needs going on in our rural communities which are not being met. ⁓ Primarily in the way of healthcare, in the way of funding education. ⁓ Definitely ⁓ needs now in terms of agriculture. And we need somebody that I believe has been in this district active in every county in this district for the last decade. And I mean, I'm not just learning these intricacies. I have been involved in the conversations with industrialists, with small business people, with blue collar workers, with farmers. You know, they're all a part of our district. How do you balance the needs? Well, it can be affected by the caucuses that you serve, that you work with. It can be balanced by the committees that you serve on. ⁓ It can be balanced by the messages that you take. We find too often, especially on the democratic side, ⁓ that programs don't reach, as you said, rural communities. you know, there's a special tie ⁓ our district. I don't think that we're being well represented in Congress. I don't believe we have been for some time. I think we have a corporate Republican who is more interested in serving ⁓ Donald Trump than he is in serving the people of the fourth district. So we have to put a floor under collapsing agriculture. Agriculture is a $35 billion industry here in Indiana. And if we stand by and allow it to continue its collapse, there will be no community in the fourth district that will go unaffected by this fall. out. In education, we need to restore Title I. We need to pay rural teachers a competitive wage. We have a hard time keeping teachers in rural communities because their interest is in maximizing their salary. And so we lose rural teachers to the larger population centers within our district, within the state. We lose teachers to out-of-state school systems. So retention it it matters. ⁓ Secondly, and we saw this with the shutdown when the pandemic hit more urban schools were able to pivot right away to E learning. Everyone heard about E learning. But we had rural schools that didn't have any internet. Every place they went, it's not uncommon for rural Hoosiers to take their children into a McDonald's or the library or some place that offers internet services for them to do their homework. And all those facilities were closed down and these schools, these kids in the rural areas were really left kind of high and dry. ⁓ So, you know, how do we manage that? You know, how do we keep these kids in the educational loop? Secondly, how are we going to pay for college education? bankrupting our kids who are going through four years of very expensive education and then coming out and finding there is no job market suitable to them here in Indiana. They're leaving. They're going where the jobs are and they're going where the wages are better and the benefits are better. ⁓ know, education matters and it matters to our district and our rural kids. We need some equity and I have argued that for a very long time. ⁓ You know, we need to talk about housing. ⁓ If you look, you know, how do you balance? Well, you know, clearly the rural counties aren't interested in having data centers and monolithic factories planted in their backyards on prime farm ground. ⁓ But I think they would be amenable to housing. smaller businesses ⁓ I think we can ⁓ ⁓ if you go out on my website, ⁓ you can read about housing, affordable housing and how I think we can structure it. ⁓ I didn't dream it up either. I this isn't Joe Mackey put this recipe together. I took an active program called Rapid Re-Housing, which we just completed a project here in Lafayette. ⁓ built a number of apartments and we're transitioning people out of homelessness and into their own apartments. And then we're supporting them with helping them get jobs and every building has a counselor and the counselors work with the residents. It's a great program, but what struck me about it was it was a ⁓ public-private partnership. So the county put up some money, both cities, Lafayette and West Lafayette, put up money. They worked with contractors and developers to build this apartment. at far under market price. And I'm thinking the only thing that we would have to do is ⁓ include the federal government in ⁓ rapid ⁓ first time house developing starter home development. And I think we can do that. We can work with communities at the local level and help them finance ⁓ starter homes. So I'm from Lafayette, as you mentioned, but I know that there isn't a community in Indiana that doesn't or isn't familiar with national homes. You remember the National Homes houses. I lived in two of them growing up. ⁓ And we've gotten away from that. And now these houses are all custom built and they're $180,000 and up. know, it just, we have gotten away from the sensibility of creating starter homes. My mother's first starter home was a National Homes. house here in Lafayette. ⁓ She lived in it. I think we lived in it for about five, six, seven years. And then she sold that and she moved into the second phase of National Homes Housing, which was a three bedroom, one bath, two car garage house on ⁓ a court. And ⁓ I think we can do that again. We made it affordable and I think we can make housing affordable again. by moving away from custom built and going back to national home style prefab houses. ⁓ We don't need the custom built. And the national homes, house, homes were all quality homes. They were all quality homes. I can take you through Lafayette today. I'm sure we could drive through Martinsville and show you national homes additions that are still there. The houses and their lovely homes. We can do that again. We just need to ⁓ put the political will behind it to do so. We can solve the housing crisis. It's not just here, Derek. The national house, it's a national housing crisis. It's everywhere. And we have a complacent government that's willing to let that crisis go on. So what happens? Typically homeowners, the home is the single largest equity builder a family can have. And we are at a point now where two college graduates can't afford to make their college payments, have a car and a new home. And this is ridiculous. So, there's things that we can do to bridge the gap. You know, you talk to the rural communities, there are a lot of people who are leaving the rural communities, A, because there is no housing. They want to live in their home counties, but they're not. They're moving into the more populated areas, Boone, Hendricks, Tippecanoe. And we're seeing now the results of that in rural communities is a rapidly aging population. And I think we can rejuvenate our rural housing and actually provide an affordable home for people who will drive to Lafayette, will drive down to Hendrickson Boone to go to work. I worked at Caterpillar for 30 years here in Lafayette. We had folks coming up from ⁓ Boone County, down from Cass, Newton, up from Fountain and Warren, all came to Lafayette to work. but manage to live in their home communities. So I think we can kill a lot of birds by just involving the government, the federal government, in some rapid housing development program.
Derrick Holder: Lafayette's economy is strongly influenced by Purdue University and research innovation. How do you ensure that growth benefits surrounding communities like Frankfurt and Delphi?
Joe Mackey: Yeah. Well, let's look at some of the things that Purdue does. First off, their cancer research is remarkable. ⁓ We have a very high cancer rate here in Indiana. So anything we do in the way of improving cancer treatment is going to be felt in those communities. Secondly, ⁓ we need to revive and restore USAID. ⁓ which benefited both the School of Agriculture at Purdue, it benefited small farmers, and we managed to feed four million people a year. It gave small Hoosier farmers their shot at a piece of that $2 billion pie that we were generating. It was good for small farmers. It was good for Purdue University. Research is good for Purdue University. And I think that we need to get back to that. I think we have lost or misprioritized our goals and objectives. And I think we need to reassess what our priorities are. When I think about the universities, I think about things like academic freedom. And we're seeing more more government control, more and more restriction of speech. And I'll give you an example. My wife has a degree in accounting from the Krannert School of Business. ⁓ economics plays a big part. ⁓ so ⁓ Purdue University, you have a diverse group of professors. ⁓ of them are teaching ⁓ the economics of a communist structure. Others are ⁓ ⁓ ⁓ structure of a democratic socialist ⁓ economy. We have capitalists teaching the capitalist structure of an economy. What this does when you come out of these different assorted of classrooms is you have an economic understanding of the world we're living in and the countries we're dealing with. If we cut ourselves off from the broader paintbrush of education, we also cut ourselves off from understanding the economies of say China or Russia or the European Union or Great Britain. ⁓ And so we need that academic freedom. These kids need to be taught broad array so that when we do produce these economists, they're not going out in the world and then having to learn about the nations that we're dealing with in terms of trade, diplomacy, all of that needs to be taught. And the universities are the most responsible ⁓ place to do that. So I believe in academic freedom. ⁓ I do believe in ⁓ freedom of speech. I think that professors teaching classes get called on for whatever reason and I think we need to be a little less ⁓ sensitive. At the same time, I know from what I've seen that some of that can get out of hand, but the university should be dealing with that, not the government. and that kind of gets under my skin. We have taken on a big brother mentality, Derek, and everywhere we turn, the government is just looking over our shoulders. We just watched the AI issue going on with the Pentagon and ⁓ Anthropic, and no guardrails on AI, and they're turning that on the American people. That's... You know, they say, we're going to use it abroad. No, they're using it here. They're collecting data on us. And I think that's wrong. I don't like the government spying on us and justifying it. ⁓ we're in a dangerous world. We've always lived in a dangerous world. It's never not been dangerous. I think the actions that we've taken recently have made it far more dangerous for us and other nations around the world. I think that, you know, responsible countries don't just work to secure safety for ourselves, but for the world. And I think we've upset that.
Derrick Holder: I I believe that I'm gonna have to hold up my Democrat card on this one. ⁓ What Reagan once said, the most dangerous thing that you can hear is we are from the government and we're here to help.
Joe Mackey: Well, I don't even see they're interested in helping. They're just here. And that's even scarier, Derek. I think that, you know, this whole thing about we're here to help was something he said about Democrats. But if Reagan were alive today, he couldn't be a Republican. His policies would not have let him be a Republican. He believed in ⁓ pathway to citizenships.
Derrick Holder: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Joe Mackey: you know, ⁓ bottom line is Ronald Reagan believed and he said it. You can't go to China and become Chinese, but anyone in the world can come to the United States and be an American. And we are so our government today is 180 degrees out from that sentiment. ⁓ So he couldn't be. ⁓ But, yeah, ⁓ think. ⁓ We run into these ideological clowns who literally are far more interested in social engineering than they are in development. They look at things like investments in research, investments in universities, investment in public schools as an expense, when the reality is that's our investment in the future. You know, they talk about, you should go out and get a 401k. You have to invest in your future. You should invest in the stock market. You have to invest in your future. But when it comes to educating our children, ⁓ it's, that's an expense. It's too great. It's insane. Now, we just watch now. ⁓ They spent how many billions so far? 20 billion in the time that we have been bombing Iran. But we can't afford public school education. We can't afford a public health care program. ⁓ You know, we can't afford homes. We can't afford groceries. Our energy bills are going up. But we're spending billions, which we did not budget for. You know, so we have the money. We just don't have the will to spend it where it needs to go the most.
Derrick Holder: ⁓ and then you were talking about the future. ⁓ we have people like Erica Kirk, who just got appointed to the board of the Air Force. Make it make sense for me, Joe.
Joe Mackey: Well, there is no sense to be made from this administration. And we could drive ourselves crazy trying to do so. It's almost like ⁓ putting someone in a round room and asking them to find a corner. ⁓ That's what this is. And we don't know what this administration is going to do from one day to the next, from one week to the next. We have yet to see anything that ⁓ was clearly planned out. ⁓ in the way of this government's behavior. ⁓ And we can go back, look at Kristi Noem and ⁓ ICE. That started, that was a campaign promise on the part of Donald Trump to go after MS-13 and other Latino street gang criminals. And he actually won the Latino vote on that. And what happened very quickly was it denigrated into tie wrapping the hands of a five-year-old. chasing 10-year-olds around a baseball diamond, snatching people out of immigration courts who were following the law. And this is a problem. It denigrated so badly that even Republicans are shocked and leaving their party, by the way. I am all over this district. I am doing multiple events a day and every day more and more Republicans are coming in to have a conversation, to talk with us, to understand where we're coming from. I think this is an important opportunity for us as a people here in this district to find consensus on the issues where we can and those are where we can focus our efforts. That's called politicking. You know, ⁓ Tip O'Neill had the famous ⁓ quote, politics is about ⁓ nobody getting everything they want, but everybody can get something. And I think when we look at consensus here, healthcare is a major issue. Education is a major issue. ⁓ Housing is a major issue. Agriculture is a major issue. So I think there are plenty of areas where we can come together and develop consensus. And that's not ⁓ a fabrication of politics. That's because I have been out in this district. I know many Republicans. I know a great many Democrats. I am not a stranger in these counties. And I understand what they're talking about. I have literally had Donald Trump supporters, MAGA Republicans, ⁓ talking about evils of Democrats and, know, God knows what. But then in a very next post, it was, why is my medication so damned high? So we have a link and I think we can build a ⁓ coalition of us. and not us and them. can be a we, but we need a congressman that's going to represent the district and not a congressman who goes to Washington to support Donald Trump. We don't need a congressman that supports a president or supports a party. We need somebody who works here for us in this district, all of us together. And that's how we build a better country and a better district.
Derrick Holder: You just mentioned agriculture. ⁓ remains central to northern counties of the district. How would you protect family farms facing consolidation and global competition?
Joe Mackey: Well, okay, let's look at it because clearly, row crops are gone. Corn and soybean, gone. We can't eat that crop and we've lost 60 % of the market ⁓ to Brazil and Argentina. Incidentally, you can point to the $20 billion that Donald Trump gave to Malay down there in Argentina to develop ⁓ his agriculture program and what are they doing? They're tearing up the soil and planting corn and soybeans. you know, we have a real problem here. I think the real answer is we need, our farmers need to diversify their crop production now. And I want to point this out. ⁓ It used to be we grew food in the fourth district. We grew vegetables here in the 4th district. Every little town had its own little factory and they were owned by Stokely or Van Camps or Green Giant. They're all gone with row crops. went away. But if you look, if you walk down a grocery store aisle, and look at the products, pick them up and see where they're made, how much of the food resources that we have are being shipped in from outside the country. Our fruits and vegetables are being shipped in from outside the country. We need to put a floor under these farmers. We need to put the will, the political will and the financial will together to put a floor under our farmers long enough for them to convert. to growing food again. It's a national security issue. And this has been pointed out by ⁓ politicians in Washington for some time. We're becoming more more reliant on outside nations for our produce. What happens to a nation that becomes so reliant on the outside that we're no longer secure? We are ⁓ at great risk. ⁓ So I want to see farmers come back and grow more produce. But there's other products that they should be growing ⁓ that aren't even in the market right now. ⁓ So, you know, this is how we transition our farmers. But first we have to put a floor under them. We have to work with them. You're not going to go bankrupt. We're going to keep you afloat. We're going to do what we have to do while you transition. And I think that that's something that the federal government can definitely play a part in. But that involves reinventing the Department of Agriculture. Doge came through and destroyed it. And the talk is, can we rebuild it? But I honestly think now ⁓ that the logical move going forward is to reinvent it. and come back to the basics, which is let the farmers tell us what they can do aside from row crops and then put a program together to help them. It takes ⁓ up to five days. for a head of lettuce to travel from Mexico to the store shelf where you're getting it. And what do we see when we do that? You buy a head of lettuce and a few days afterwards it's starting to liquefy, turn brown and rot. Well, if we're growing lettuce here in Indiana, we could feed the Midwest, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa. We could feed the country. And to be honest, if our farmers put their will together with the political energy, we could feed the world. It's good for us. That's really where we can really help agriculture.
Derrick Holder: That kind of goes with it would possibly open more small businesses if you do a farm to table type setup. So right now, small businesses anchor towns like Green Castle and Martinsville. What policies would help them thrive?
Joe Mackey: Correct. Crap. So, you know, one of the things that just drives me crazy is the tax rate that small businesses pay. Now, small businesses, Derek, drive the American economy. It is not the large corporations. And yet, when you look at the tax breaks that come along, when you look at the tax incentives, where do they go? They go to that top... ⁓ employment group, but small businesses overall employ far more Hoosiers in this district and around the state and indeed across the country than large businesses do. And I think that we've lost sight of that. ⁓ a result, we've allowed the Billionaire Boys Club to consolidate. I say we ⁓ when I was growing up, in the age of creation and invention and ingenuity. ⁓ because of the wealth gap that's getting larger and larger, our billionaires are in a... We've entered the age of acquisition. They're no longer creating, they're purchasing. Elon Musk didn't invent Tesla, he bought it. He didn't invent TikTok, he bought it. He didn't invent ⁓ SpaceX, he bought it. And we're watching this happen more and more. And the consolidation of these ideas under one roof stifles creativity. And I'll give you an example. We need some anti, we need modern antitrust laws. And let's just look at the last big antitrust law I can remember. ⁓ was Ma Bell. Remember they broke up Ma Bell and at the time Ma Bell's claim to fame was we've got a phone in six different colors that we can put on your wall or your countertop. This was it. Within a few years of Ma Bell being broken up everyone had cell phones and within a few more years they had the The progeny of that was the cell phones we have today. So the technologies got better, everything got better, and I think that we need to look at that. We need to look at breaking up large media companies. It used to be that there were restrictions on how much of a market a media company could own. And today there are no restrictions. Well, we look at Amazon and Walmart destroying small businesses. And in Walmart's case, they're paying less than minimum wage, or what should be, they're paying less than $15 an hour. I think they're paying, whatever, $7.50. But they also have people on staff who set you down and get you all set up for Medicare. And they advertise that as a job benefit. And I think that's the single greatest scam going on in the world today. We need to break up the health care conglomerates. You know, we watched AOC go through CBS as a health care conglomerate. And they own doctors. And they own pharmaceutical companies. And they own pharmacies. And they have their own treatment plans and they call it patient capture, where once you're in their system, you're locked into it. So there's no freedom there. There's no opportunity for us to ⁓ exercise our consumer privileges, if you will, when you're locked into a healthcare system that entraps you. So, you know, I think we can do better, but we need to break them up.
Derrick Holder: ⁓ Since we're, you know, kind of talking about healthcare, there's a couple questions. One is have you actually looked into Trump Rx? Have you actually seen that on that website they have like coupon codes? Those coupon codes
Joe Mackey: Sure. Right.
Derrick Holder: are good Rx coupon codes. Trump Rx is nothing except for good Rx. There's like 27 medications on Trump Rx. And that was one of his big things. Like it is absolutely fricking nothing.
Joe Mackey: Right. Correct. Right. Well, you know, I mean, look at it. We are locked into, Derek, what is called the healthcare marketplace. And we're not patients, we're healthcare consumers. And it's our responsibility to pick the best healthcare package we can. We cut the subsidies. Here in the 4th district, I want to say it's 22,000 individuals who buy their health care on the marketplace have now found it unaffordable. And these aren't Medicare patients, these are small business people, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs. that we're looking to get health care for themselves and their families and we destroyed that. We have crushed our own budding small business community is being damaged. So, you know, we have a real problem here. And then let me point out if your county contracts to an ambulance service, say to a hospital network, say IU Health or one of the others, Franciscan Alliance, Parkview. ⁓ You as a patient require an ambulance. They're going to take you to a hospital of their employment. And this happened specifically to a woman I know down in Fountain County in Covington who threw a blood clot. ⁓ put her in an ambulance. And I'd been talking not ⁓ long before that about the difference between ⁓ critical access hospital and a community outpatient hospital. And she messaged me after the crisis was over and she said, you know, I didn't quite understand the difference between a CAH and a COH until they put me in an ambulance and drove right past ⁓ hospital in Covington on our way to Lough yet. So, you know, we have some real problems out there in that respect. And I think we lack, I think we have the illusion of choice. But once you make that choice, you end up locked into it and there's no freedom of healthcare out there at all. There's no real ⁓ opportunity ⁓ to say yes to this and no to that. Then there's affordability issue, which now I know we have a problem and I will tell you what, you know you've got a real problem with healthcare when major corporations say this is as deep as the pocket goes. and they're finding it unaffordable now to keep up with the rising cost of health care. So we have that problem. We could come back and talk about the lack of specialists in this country. We're 100,000 medical specialists shy of being able to adequately treat the American people. And when you look at the cost associated with becoming a specialist, it then becomes prohibitive for those who have the talent to pursue those higher levels of skill training. And they satisfy themselves with being general practitioners. Most doctors come out of medical school these days as a GP, and they have $300,000 in debt. And they're quite ⁓ willing to forgo pursuing those higher... ⁓ levels of medicine simply because the cost is too prohibitive. And I'll give you an example, Derek. When our son Patrick was on the pediatric intensive care unit at Riley, I had a conversation with a young woman. I'd say young woman. She was in her very late 20s, very early 30s, a pediatric oncologist. She was a senior fellow. And her goal was to become a genomic transplant specialist. I said, how long is that going to take you? She said, ⁓ I'm going to be 37 years old before I get there. And then she looked at me and said, you know, I'm going to be a million dollars in debt on the same day I get that. A million dollars. So it is prohibitive. And we should be looking at subsidizing those skill level, those with the talent and the skill to ⁓ elevate ⁓ if we pass a Medicare for All bill. which I support, I would support that. ⁓ One of the things we have to be conscious of is we don't have enough specialists to treat everybody. And so I had a medical emergency a year ago. It took me four months from the day of my initial emergency to actually sit down and speak with a pulmonologist. And you know, four months. And I live in a community here in Lafayette with two critical access hospitals, umpteen dozen doctors, very few specialists. And therein is the problem. So ⁓ when it comes to like ⁓ say a Medicare for all. a part of that legislation has to be subsidizing that continuing education that these professionals require to be able to treat us. It's common sense. ⁓ Sadly, I don't see that written into any Medicare for All bill that I have looked at. ⁓ Secondly, You know, Medicare for All, ⁓ Bernie Sanders' plan, you know, he probably says we're going to cover 80 % of Americans. ⁓ Tantalizing as that is, the history of the Democratic Party is we don't settle for 80%. And that 20 % that he's talking about leaving out will not only see their taxes go up, who won't draw the benefits of the total package live in our rural communities. 38 % of the fourth district is rural. So, you know, if we don't have a means of bridging that healthcare gap into the rural communities, it would be wrong to raise the taxes out there and not change the circumstances they find themselves in. Our infant mortality rate among the worst in the country, highest in rural communities. Our maternal mortality rate among the very worst in the country, also the highest numbers in the rural communities. How do you justify telling them their taxes are going to go up 7 to 13 percent, but that loss isn't going to go down? So we have a very real Democrats in this district have a moral obligation to argue on behalf of 38 % of our district for the benefits of a Medicare for all plan. But we don't see that happening. And I don't hear ⁓ the other candidates addressing this issue. I do, I have been addressing it for years. And I think one of the things that and I would encourage you and your viewers. to go out and look at the mobile healthcare program the state of Nevada has developed. It is amazing. And we can duplicate that across the entirety of our rural communities. And we can do it at far less expense than building hospitals. So rural mobile healthcare, I think is the... Basic that we should be doing in our rural communities mental health in the rural communities virtually non-existent Derek we know when farm bankruptcies climb so do rural suicides and we're not there to help these these these communities Work through this trauma and it's a disgrace. It's a disgrace and we're in this boat because the man that's in this office right now is far more interested in rubber stamping whatever Donald Trump does than he is in addressing those issues we're facing here. It is a disgrace. Jim Barrett is a complacent congressman and that makes him a complicit congressman in all of these issues that aren't being addressed.
Derrick Holder: let's shift a little bit from healthcare to something adjacent to it, and that's infrastructure. ⁓ It impacts both rural towns ⁓ and suburban commuters. What's your top federal policy?
Joe Mackey: Mm. Alright. on infrastructure. honestly, I can tell you that ⁓ one of the major problems that we are going to face is water consumption.
Derrick Holder: infrastructure.
Joe Mackey: And when we talk about infrastructure, we really need to talk about the management of those limited resources that we have. And water is at the top of the list. We're already watching communities across the Southwest ⁓ who are struggling with water. ⁓ And I mean, just recently, ⁓ what is it? ⁓ the Port of Corpus Christi. That port city, it's one of the largest ⁓ liquid natural gas shipping ports in the country. And they have a year's worth of water left and then Corpus Christi will be out of water. We're watching water wars take place between developers in the state of Arizona. And we have, it is a limited resource. ⁓ And we need water management. And I'm throwing this out here, Derek. It would behoove us. to build more desalinization plants, which incidentally, there are people who are involved in ⁓ Corpus Christi's city government who were calling for this back in 2019 to support their, the primary body of water that supports that city is below 10 % of its capacity. So, you know, we have to actually look at critical development. in the way of supplying water. And apparently, with global warming, we're going to have a lot more water on our coastlines than we ever thought we would. It's going to happen pretty quick. So, you know, for me, water management would be the very first thing. I don't like these data centers and the fact that they're sucking up so much water and they're effluent. The water they'll be putting out is toxic. And our waste treatment plants, our municipal plants are not designed to deal with that. They are ⁓ anaerobic systems, so they deal with ⁓ organics, not chemical release. And those chemicals that are going to get released will end up in our surface water. Now let me point out, 85 % of our surface water has been declared unfit for sport or recreation. We have turned our state into an industrial cesspool. And I think that, you know, ⁓ Our Republican Party has been in charge here for the better part of 30 years. And look what's happened to us. So, you know, we really need people to come to the table and understand these where where are our priorities as a district. They won't be identical. Certainly the rural communities have their priorities. The urban communities have theirs. But we need to understand these priorities. And I think I have a pretty good handle on that because of my years in this district to address these issues across a broad base. And that's what my campaign has been doing. And we have Republicans joining our campaign ⁓ and working with us. So, know, is our message isn't being lost. It's actually being well received. And I think we can build the kind of coalition that focuses on the needs of this district and not the wants and wishes of a president or a party.
Derrick Holder: There's a current bill in Washington. You might have heard of it. It was originally written by Jim Baird called the SAVE Act. What are your thoughts on the SAVE Act?
Joe Mackey: right. You know, ⁓ there's ⁓ an old ⁓ Irish politician out of New York, Al Smith. And Al Smith had this great quote, the only cure for the ills and of democracy is more democracy. But what we're seeing more and more, and this is not just from Washington, all the way down to the county clerks, is this effort to restrict voting. We have the lowest voter turnout in the country. And that is, by and large, the work of a Republican party on their own, because we have these super majorities. And they're concocting all these schemes to keep people out of the voting booth. And who does the SAVE Act affect most? An estimated 69 million women who could very well lose their privilege to vote because of this nonsense about documentation. know, mean, literally, this is ridiculous. ⁓ If a county clerk doesn't know you're not a citizen, shame on them. ⁓ It's easy enough to determine. you know, they make it sound so simple. All you have to do is show a driver's license or a passport, or in women's cases, because a name change has taken place, your marriage certificate. These are what I call the Neo-Jim Crow laws. They are Neo Jim Crow. They are designed to people, targeted people out of the voting booth. It is crazy. And it doesn't surprise me Jim Barrett is the author of that. ⁓ He's been about fruitless at everything else. So. you know, shame on Jim Baird, shame on these Republicans who do that. We see at the local level here at the state of Indiana, they're working overtime to restrict college students from voting with their student ID. And again, it's just another nail in the coffin of democracy. We just watched Derek as our Secretary of State and our Attorney General turned over 10 years of voting data. ⁓ to the federal government, a decade. And what they found was over a 10-year period, ⁓ 21 people had voted illegally, which, incidentally, wasn't enough to sway any single race anywhere in the state. So to suggest that our democracy is at risk is ridiculous. And more laws like this, even more so. ⁓ I think it's unconstitutional. don't think the government has the right to place burdens on its citizens just to vote. So that's kind where I stand on that.
Derrick Holder: Congress is often gridlocked. How would you deliver tangible results for constituents in this district?
Joe Mackey: Well, so you know, have ⁓ caucuses behind the scenes. One of them is the problem solvers. It's just one of the caucuses. You cannot join the problem solvers by yourself. As a Democrat, you would have to bring in a Republican representative and you would both have to agree to work on a problem together. And then, ⁓ You go before the caucus chairs who leadership and they accept you in and you go to work with someone on the other side of the aisle. This is really proven kind of effective. It doesn't always work to democratic policy, but in the end, that's what government is. And that's what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be negotiation, not hatred. ⁓ It drives me crazy because far too many of those appearing on news broadcasts and almost on a daily basis behave like feces flinging monkeys and they're far more interested in Trashing someone on the other side or trashing the other party. There's not enough discussion on policy and I think that's a crying shame we need to get back to the Dick Lugers and the Birch Buys and the Floyd Fithians, those who actually understood that the work they do is meant to better the districts they represent and not a party or a president.
Derrick Holder: and possibly the most important question to most voters right now, especially in a race that has eight people in it. Why you and why now?
Joe Mackey: Yeah. Yeah. So Derek, I'm not new to this district. And what separates me, I believe, ⁓ my fellow candidates, I refer to them as my brothers, ⁓ is the fact that they're very much introducing themselves across the district. But I have been in this district as a leader. I have worked on district-wide projects. I have ⁓ literally worked with candidates across the district, we still are. I have been in the district when I wasn't in a leadership position, when I wasn't running for office, I was still out with the counties, working through problems, talking about issues, helping these parties build up a base. So I'm not new to this. And I got to tell you, if you went back and looked at everything we did in 2020, I could quite literally run this campaign as an I told you so campaign because the very much the issues we're talking about today, we were talking about in 2020. So I'm not a newcomer to the issues. I'm the right guy at the right place at the right time to represent this district, all the people in this district, both sides of the aisle. I'm not interested in just one side. We have two sides of an aisle here, but there are a great many issues. We're all in the same boat. And we have to build that consensus with those who are willing to come across and listen to us. And I think that's kind of where I separate myself. I'm not going to rubber stamp a Medicare for All plan simply because it covers 80 % of our people. And I will tell you, you went back to your democratic roots earlier. Well, let me go back to our democratic roots. We created social security for all of us, not 80%. We created Medicare and Medicare for all of us, not 80%. We created public school education for every child in the country, not most of them. And when it comes to healthcare, we will create a healthcare program that covers all of us or it will not be a democratic program and I will not sell out 20 % of the nation for an 80 % success rate. That's crazy. Won't do it. They'll come to the table in Washington, but they have to have a congressman that will go there and fight for us. And I don't see that in my brothers at all. ⁓ I just don't see it. And you know, So that's what separates us. Our approach to agriculture, our approach to housing, our approach to healthcare, our approach to education is a cut above. And we stand out for that. And I can tell you that there are a great number of Democrats in this area who know me very well. And no, I have not been wish-washing, not in a decade. ⁓ I have studied these problems. have looked at these problems. I have talked to people. I want to point out before we quit real quick, I have a friend of mine who is a farmer up in White County. He's small farmer. He grew 20 acres of corn this year. And I was talking to him about the bailout. what kind of money are you to get on your field? He said, Joe, I don't know. So he called me one morning about 6 o'clock because he knows I'm up very early. And he said, hey, I got the bailout money on our cornfield. I said, oh, really, what was it? Now, he planted 20 acres of corn, you. It was $8. That was the bailout money. And that's what we're doing to small farmers. And that's why we get data centers. And we get unwanted factories out there. I call it industrial displacement, where these city, these monolithic factories are moving into rural areas. because rural areas don't have the financial wherewithal to fight them and the Economic Development Commission. The cards are stacked against our rural communities and they are being ⁓ terrorized, vandalized, scandalized. It's insane. So that's kind of what separates me from my fellow candidates. I'm running for Congress in Indiana's 4th Congressional District and I approve this message. See you at the polls.
Derrick Holder: we've talked about economic growth, rural priorities, suburban expansion, and the complexity of representing a district like the fourth. Now it's time to make things simple. No speeches, no policy white papers. This is Hold'em or Fold'em. If you agree, you hold'em. If you disagree, you fold'em. Quick answers. Are you ready? Let's deal the cards. Healthcare should be treated as a human right with movement toward universal public coverage. The federal minimum wage should be raised and indexed to inflation.
Joe Mackey: Hold ⁓ Hold ⁓
Derrick Holder: Workers should have stronger federal protections to unionize without retaliation. Candidates should refuse corporate PAC or questionable special interest money even if it costs them politically. Major federal investment in clean energy can create jobs across rural Indiana.
Joe Mackey: Hold ⁓ Hold I think the communities have the right to determine for themselves what kind of businesses they want to bring in.
Derrick Holder: Public education funding should take priority over expanding private voucher programs. Universal background checks are necessary to improve gun safety.
Joe Mackey: Hold I think that's a state's rights issue. The Supreme Court has always turned it back. We just watched Maryland successfully defend their state's rights on gun ownership. I think it's a state issue and I want losers to go out and vote in the Democrats. They believe we'll get that done here, but I don't think the federal government, according to the Supreme Court, has the authority to do that. And they've that's been an example in even liberal courts.
Derrick Holder: Housing affordability requires expanded federal investment in workforce housing.
Joe Mackey: Hold them.
Derrick Holder: Mental health services deserve significant new federal funding. Elected officials must be willing to challenge their own party when constituents' needs come first.
Joe Mackey: Hold ⁓ hold on.
Derrick Holder: Joe, running in the 4th district requires persistence. This district isn't ⁓ easy. We both know that. It stretches the college energy of Lafayette and Purdue, to the courthouse squares of Frankfurt and Delphi, to the growing suburbs of Plainfield, Avon, and Zionsville, to communities like Greencastle, Martinsville, and Rensselaer. It's a place where economic realities collide. Agriculture, manufacturing, higher education, and suburban growth all in the same district. You've stepped forward in this race before. That kind of persistence tells voters something important. That your interest in this district isn't temporary and that the issues you're raising now are part of a longer conversation about representation here.
Joe Mackey: Right.
Derrick Holder: Tonight you laid out your case again. Why healthcare affordability still matters. Why working families deserve stronger advocacy. And why you believe the 4th district can still be competitive. Ultimately, voters will decide which candidate earns the nomination and carries the democratic banner the general election. But showing up again and putting your ideas before the public as part of how democracy works, and from everyone watching and listening here in Indiana, across the country, and to our friends following along from Europe. Democracy doesn't just happen once, it's a conversation that keeps returning, election after election, until voters decide where the future goes. So stay informed, ask questions, and as always, hold them accountable.
