Challenging Bryan Cutler in a GOP Primary is Exceptionally Dumb.

Let's talk about former House Speaker Brian Cutler's battle against challenger Dave Nissley in Pennsylvania's heated Republican primary. Strap in as we unpack the charged atmosphere where traditional conservative values meet the hard-hitting reality of political campaigns. You'll gain an insider's understanding of the complexities behind Cutler's unwavering stance during the tumultuous post-2020 election period, as well as the personal costs of his commitment to the democratic process in the face of partisan pressure.

Venture with us beyond the campaign drama to the broader implications of Act 77, a bipartisan effort that reshaped Pennsylvania's voting landscape in ways no one anticipated. We dissect the unintended consequences of this legislation, particularly its influence on mail-in voting during the pandemic and the subsequent shift in favor of Democrats. This episode challenges the vilification of cross-party collaboration and makes a powerful case for its essential role in fostering progress. Join the conversation as we extend an invitation to listeners to recommend candidates for future episodes, with a mission to enrich the political discourse through diverse perspectives and thoughtful debate.

Learn more about the Keystone Reckoning Project at www.keystonereckoning.com

Chapters

• 0:30 Republican Primary Election in Pennsylvania
• 12:26 The Impact of Act 77

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:31

Is there anything crazier than a Republican primary election? From what I've seen, the answer is an emphatic no. Good morning and welcome to the Keystone Recording Podcast. My name is Jesse White. I am your host. We're coming to you every weekday with all that's new and exciting in Democratic policy, politics and everything in between, with an emphasis on Pennsylvania. So let's jump right into it with a Pennsylvania-based story today. This has to do with the upcoming state House elections and we're going to talk about a Republican primary over in Lancaster County. That has to do with the Republican leader, former Speaker of the House, brian Cutler. He's being challenged by a guy named Dave Nisley. And okay, it's free country, anybody can challenge anybody in a primary and there's no problem with that on its face. But we need to talk about the ins and outs and the whys of this and really how the people of Lancaster County cannot possibly be this stupid on the Republican side in that district. And as a caveat, let me say and you'll be hearing more about this I actually have spent the last two cycles working a lot in Lancaster County.

Speaker 1: 1:57

It's about 40 minutes from where I'm at in Cumberland, right next to Harrisburg. So I've worked two cycles in Lancaster County. I'll talk a lot more about it. I have a lot to say about Lancaster County. I think in a lot of ways it is a microcosm of Pennsylvania politically and there's a lot of good, bad and ugly happening down there. But it's a good frame of reference for me because I actually have been there and I've seen it. And in this instance I actually have a little bit more of a reference because Brian Cutler is someone I actually served with in the state house. I remember when he came in as a freshman and he actually sat directly in front of me on the house floor for, if not for at least two years him and Ryan Ommett, who went on to become the state senator from that area and that was because the Republicans had such a majority that they spilled over into the center aisle, which is where I was, and we just happened to sit. He sat right in front of me, which meant long hours on the house floor. We were rank and file members, we talked a lot and I will say this and I've said it before and I'll say it again I do not agree with Brian Cutler's politics or policies on most things.

Speaker 1: 3:15

I will say that, unlike, at this point, the majority of Republicans serving in the state house. I believe he is a man of principle. He honestly truly believes what he says and vice versa. We've talked he and I spoke about our lives, our experiences, and I really feel that a lot of his views and perspectives come from a place of his true values. And here's the thing in a world where so many politicians are performative and clearly just say what they want the voters to hear on both sides of the aisle but Republicans, in a lot of ways, are just the worst when it comes to this. They know better. They just say what they know the masses want to hear. I will say that I don't get that from Brian.

Speaker 1: 4:10

I was, quite frankly, really shocked that he was able to ascend to the speakership in that Republican caucus because there was such a loud voice of the crazy conservatives in there, which at the time were the derro met caps of the world, who used to be the outliers and now they're the ones writing the ship. We used to call them the caveman caucus. That's it. I do believe that Brian Cutler is, if you're going to have a Republican in the state house which, by the virtue of the way some of these districts are cut. That's you know you're going to have some Republicans. It's just the way it works. He's the kind of guy you want. He was respectful, we could have conversations and that, at the end of the day, is what you're looking for right People that can be reasonable people. Reasonable people can debate, argue, disagree and still be reasonable people, and I can tell you there are a lot of people there now that are just don't fit that description. Again, both sides of the aisle, mainly on the Republican side, but so that's where you know where Brian Cutler sits, and it's important to note that Brian Cutler, when Push came to shove after the 2020 election, he was the sitting speaker of the house.

Speaker 1: 5:24

He was and we know this now because it's all come out but he was pressured heavily by the Trump campaign, by Rudy Giuliani, by members of his own caucus, by people like Scott Perry, other elected Republicans, to get the state house to do what needed to be done to try to undo the election results in favor of Donald Trump. We know that happened and, to his credit, brian Cutler said no. At the end of the day, he allowed the rule of law to prevail. That in of itself, looking back on the way so many elected officials conducted themselves during that period of time and since that says a lot and that cannot be overstated, it matters. So the kicker to that is that, as that was all going on and I got this, the Republican accounts, but I also got some private accounts from some folks that he was really harassed, right, shocking right. You know who would have thunk it Trumpers, you know, being jerks but he was really harassed to the point where and I won't go too deep into this, but they came to his house and when his family was there and his kids were there and beyond the pale, just beyond the pale, and, quite frankly, with stories like that, that made me reinforce the fact that I have no desire to be in that job anymore. Not that it was entirely my choice, but you know, it's just so different now and things have gotten so out of handed, so violent, that it's just, you know, having kids it's just not worth it, it's just not worth it. So, with all of that context, cutler has this primary opponent and they are blasting him for, you know, not being conservative enough and you know he's an insider and all this garbage.

Speaker 1: 7:32

And what's interesting is that the campaign is being backed vocally by a group called make sure I get it right, because you know there are a million different groups out there that use like the same six words and you know it's like word salad and it's like patriot, truth, liberty. They all call themselves alliances for some reason, like they're on like political survivor They've never quite been able to figure that out, but anyhow, okay. So it's a group called the Pennsylvania Liberty Alliance yeah, pennsylvania Liberty Alliance, and they have a PAC, a political action committee called the Pennsylvania Liberty Fund, and it's based out of Bethel, pa, and there's an article that talks about. You know, they have a history of supporting conservative candidates statewide. So my first thought was, okay, who's really like behind this, right? Is this like a big money? You know, because those PACs exist. Right, they're just vehicles for people to funnel money and big money, and you know, you see that on the Democratic side, with school choice and things like that. So I was like, okay, what is this? So you know, I go and search it on the PA campaign finance website and I was actually, in a weird way, pleasantly surprised, because it does appear that the Pennsylvania Liberty Fund is largely a grassroots organization, which you know is terrifying in and of itself for a lot of reasons, but it's not some like front for like a national group or something crazy like that.

Speaker 1: 9:10

So the one thing that was kind of concerning looking at their campaign finance reports, their largest expense every year is to a gunsmith by the name of Dave Kiefer, who I looked him up, he seems like just a legit guy. I'm not trying to cast any aspersions on him, but it was just interesting. And it says for a raffle and I don't. So I guess they're raffling off a bunch of guns, but like 20, it's like 2,200 bucks a year. That's like no joke. But it's funny because they only raise, you know, at any given year. I think they've raised maybe 20 grand and I didn't see any donations larger than like $500. And a lot of it comes from the main guy whose name is Dean Kompf.

Speaker 1: 9:55

So, okay, it's like a grassroots organization and if you go to their website, you know if you're just really, you know a sadist and you want to do that. It's pa liberty alliance dot org and it's you know the about us and they have a blog and you know it's exactly what you think it is right and but it's interesting that it is a. You know, here's what they care about, right? These are the issues they care about. They care about election integrity, they care about abolishing the property tax, the typical Tea Party. You know, it was the typical Tea Party agenda, with a splash of Trumpism thrown in, and.

Speaker 1: 10:38

But this is where it all falls apart for me, right? The? It shows me that they have no concept of how politics, elections and government tie together, right? So you have Brian Cutler, who was the speaker of the House, who is now the Republican leader, presumably and it's not out of the realm of possibility, given the razor thin right there, you know, unless there's a big shake up in their leadership, he's right there. But given that he's still the Republican leader would lead me to believe that, you know, we're the Republicans to retake the majority. He'd be right there, front and center, back in the speaker's roster.

Speaker 1: 11:15

Now, why does that matter If you're not, you know, familiar with with how the state house functions? The speaker carries an insane amount of weight and clout in terms of to drive and helping to drive the agenda and getting things passed and making things go and all. And you know there's a ton of behind the scenes stuff, you know appointments to commissions and boards and things like that that actually matter, right, it matters a lot. And if you are living in Brian Cutler's district, right, and you fail to recognize the insane benefit of having the speaker of the House the top member out of 203 to have the top dog as your state rep, if you don't see the benefit to that, then you probably shouldn't be involved in this process, because it's kind of a big deal. It's like kind of a big deal. It is a big deal. Now, I get that he's not conservative enough, he's not Republican enough, but let's talk about that for a minute.

Speaker 1: 12:27

One of the big complaints about Cutler is that he supported Act 77, which was the 2019 law. That created no excuse mail-in voting in the state. But but if you look at Act 77, it was actually a compromise bipartisan bill that was largely supported by both parties because the election code had to be updated. There were things in there that were so arcane and so ridiculous that they just had to be fixed. You know a lot of it was processed stuff and whatever, but on top of that, that bill was a compromise.

Speaker 1: 13:04

Republicans got a lot in that bill. One of the things they got was the elimination of straight party voting. If you've noticed over the, you know, since that bill passed it used to be you would go into the voting booth and you would get. You would look and see you could vote straight party Democrat, straight party Republican in the general election. You can't do that anymore. The Republicans got that as a concession in the Act 77 negotiations and Democrats didn't like it because in heavily Democratic areas, you know a straight party ticket would help all the down ballot candidates, whereas now you could go in and vote for a Democrat at the top of the ticket and just kind of ignore everybody else if you don't know them or whatever. Like the ballot drop off concerns were real, right. So it mattered a lot and you know, at the time mail in ballot, mail in voting, wasn't viewed as a big deal.

Speaker 1: 13:59

Look at the calendar 2019. Now, how did the Republicans know? I mean, you want to talk about a lucky break, right, in terms of the fallout of a bill. The thing that the Republicans got is kind of evergreen. You know it's going to be okay forever. The giving mail in voting up in 2019 was not as big of a deal in retrospect as it became because of COVID and the fact that you know mail in voting.

Speaker 1: 14:25

If we did a mail in voting in 2020, you know Donald Trump wins Pennsylvania right, like that just happens, and you know it would have given Republicans an insane advantage. How could they have possibly known that? So it's easy to go after the fact and say that, but it's just not accurate. You know and talking about. You know working with the other. There are mailers going out that you could see now that I'm looking at online that are being paid for by the Pennsylvania Liberty Fund. You know attacking him. It's got the picture of him working with Tom Wolf at a bill, signing or whatever. You know that's just crap. It's just crap because, unlike you know in the federal Congress, where you know signing a bill or working with the president, you know the border bill, right, perfect example. It was exactly what Republicans wanted and they were like no, not passing it because we don't want to give Joe Biden a win, right.

Speaker 1: 15:22

When you look at that and condemn it and then you see someone who's willing to get some things done by working with the governor, that is to be applauded and I would say that if the rules were reversed, I mean we have Democratic leaders working with Republican governors in the state house. Now, we never had the state Senate, so it was always a much weaker negotiating point. But the point is, at the end of the day, if the job, if we all say the job is to get things done, then when someone actually gets something done, even if we don't like all of it, that's the definition of a fair deal, right? Nobody is particularly happy at the end of it. Everybody gets something, nobody gets everything. That's the definition of a compromise, which is what government, at the end of the day, generally is.

Speaker 1: 16:10

So to go after this guy for those reasons, when the benefits of having him there financially, in terms of things he could bring to the district real money, real opportunities, like stuff that really matters and would improve the quality of life for the people living in that district, for them to walk away from that over this fundamentalist approach by a group that's outside of the district. Like, dear God, people, don't be that dumb. That's just dumb. I don't throw that word around lightly, but it's dumb. Don't be those people. It's gonna be a Republican seat anyway, right? So it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, stay with the guy that can get you more and can actually get things done.

Speaker 1: 17:09

Now will that happen, who knows, but it's a fascinating primary, one of many that I'm watching and that we will be able to talk about in the future. So that's that. We'll keep you up to date on that. I do wanna say that we are looking to talk to as many candidates and campaign people as possible. If you know anybody that would be willing to have a conversation, either on a short form, daily, or in a longer form one conversation for the weekend we'd love to talk with you both sides of the out, quite frankly. Or if you have any ideas for specific episodes I have a bunch that I'm putting together, but I'm always open to new ideas. You can email us at info at keystonereckoningcom that's info at keystonereckoningcom or you can hit us up on our social media pages. We're on all the places and you can hit us there. So thank you very much for listening. We will do this again tomorrow and have a great day.