This week we sat down with Bale Dalton, the Democratic nominee in Florida’s 7th, a Navy helicopter pilot who went on to run a 16,000-person workforce as NASA’s chief of staff. We recorded a couple of days after Republican primary voters fired Cory Mills, and Bale’s theory of the general election against Ryan Elijah is simple: nobody in this district cares about labels. They care that 45,000 families here just lost their health insurance entirely when Congress let the ACA subsidies expire, and that FPL just won a $7 billion rate hike.

From Navy Helicopters to NASA Chief of Staff

Tahra Hoops: Hi, everyone. My name is Tahra Hoops. I’m here with my co-host, Gary Winslett, and today we have Bale Dalton here with us. Bale Dalton just won his primary in Florida’s 7th Congressional District. Congrats. He has served in the US Navy and Navy Reserve for 24 years, 13 years on active duty with deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and the Pacific.

As a Navy helicopter pilot, Bale flew medical evac missions in Kuwait, delivered relief after Hurricane Katrina, supported special ops in Iraq and Africa, and directed combat air support in Afghanistan. After active duty, he worked at the State Department and for Senator Bill Nelson in Congress, and as NASA’s chief of staff, he managed over 16,000 employees and helped run one of the federal government’s most effective agencies.

Bale, thanks for being here.

Bale Dalton: Tahra, Gary, great to be here. Thanks for giving me the time. Looking forward to chatting with you.

Tahra Hoops: So obviously with all those incredible experiences that you’ve had, not many people have lived a life like that. What do you think they helped teach you about getting into Congress to help build things faster and cheaper?

Bale Dalton: Well, yeah, I certainly have been blessed to have some amazing adventures and some incredible mentors and examples of public service along the way. In my Navy service, I was actually also the commanding officer of the Navy’s special operations support helicopter squadron.

So in that role, I was taking care of over 400 sailors, making sure that we were trained and ready and prepared for deploying to austere conditions where we were operating in combat. But also taking care of their families, right? Making sure that folks are prepared for the worst, and even in the normal course of action, are they being well taken care of while, sometimes, the single breadwinner is away?

So not just do we have everything ready in case something bad happens, but also, are folks gonna be confident that, A, their sailor’s being taken care of even though they know they’re in a dangerous situation, but B, is the family being taken care of, right? Because that’s so important for folks to be able to do their job, is to have that confidence.

And then when I was working for Senator Nelson, you know, Senator Nelson is a Democrat, but continues to have just wide support throughout all of Florida because he’s very well known for his constituent services. And we were all, I mean, that was drummed into us as staffers. I was on the legislative staff, so I was in DC working on policy for national defense and foreign policy and veteran services, ‘cause Senator Nelson sat on the Armed Services Committee.

And so when I was doing constituent services, it was usually the hardest cases that our district directors couldn’t tackle, or were having, you know, bureaucratic red tape. And so it was really an honor for me to work on behalf of folks like me, right? Florida veterans, making sure that they were getting the benefits that they earned and the care that they needed.

So really, again, a good example there of public service. He used to always tell us, public service is a public trust. And so that’s been ingrained in me for my life. And then we took that forward into NASA. You know, NASA is an incredibly cool agency, right? I mean, we’re doing like amazing things.

But brass tacks-wise, what I think some folks just don’t really know about, I mean, there’s 14 centers across this country, right? So we’re having folks from all different walks of life that live in all different areas of the country, who, you know, on a list of 10 things, eight of them may be different, and getting them all working together on these missions.

But the second part of that is so cool too, because we have folks that are doing so many different things, right? Researchers, scientists, engineers, astronauts, of course. So all the way from folks who are trying to manage programs and be good stewards of tax dollars, having good arguments with scientists who are like, “Look, if money were no option, I could do this, this, and this.”

So it was just really interesting on getting coalitions together, having teams work together to accomplish the mission. So I think in each of those kind of different buckets, I really was able to put together a life experience that is parlayable into being a good representative for folks from Central Florida in those cases.

And sometimes, like, we go too long to talk about all these adventures, but I also was in the private industry for a year, helping a small business, running programs and a profit and loss sheet during COVID. So that was a lot of those things meshing together as well, ‘cause we had overseas employees that I needed to take care of and ensure they were safe in quarantine and on the job, as well as trying to get a very small margin company to be able to weather that COVID storm.

Everything Between Orlando and Daytona

Gary Winslett: So it’s really interesting with your military service, because your district doesn’t contain a big military base, like if it was next to Fort Campbell or Fort Benning or something like that. But Central Florida has a lot of retirees, and a lot of retirees have military experience, and they remember serving. And so I’m just curious how your conversations around your experience have gone when you talk to veterans in your district.

Bale Dalton: Well, Gary, we were talking about University of Florida previously, and so obviously this district is south of Alachua and Gadsden Counties. So for folks that don’t know, we’re sort of the whole area of land in between Orlando and Daytona Beach. It doesn’t include Orlando or Daytona Beach, but basically everything in between.

And what that means is we have an incredibly diverse district in terms of what people do, you know, for their livelihood and to get food on the table. We’ve got health services. A lot of aerospace is still paramount to Central Florida. We do have a lot of military retirees as well as just retirees in general.

And so when you go from west to east, it’s really cool to talk about all of the different things in this district. And yeah, folks in the southern part of Seminole and Volusia, they’re generally traveling to places like University of Central Florida and the research park there, which has really important relationships with our DOD, our Department of Defense, and NASA.

In fact, I’m very good friends with one of the top administrators at Kennedy Space Center. They live in the district and then commute down to KSC. And then we’ve got a lot of folks, too, that commute north. And so we’re sort of situated military-wise in between Naval Air Station Jacksonville in the northern part, and then Kennedy Space Center and Patrick Space Force Station on the south along the coast.

So we’re sort of like the area where everybody lives, and then they just travel outside the voting district for their place of work. But it’s just really a cool district. And of course, I’d be remiss not to mention that in sort of the middle, right, so we’ve got the I-4 corridor on the west, which is, you know, healthcare industry, aerospace industry, financial services, and then the East Coast, which we just talked about, a lot of tourism, a lot of retirees. But right in the middle we’ve got some old Florida ag there, citrus groves, celery fields. So we’ve got kind of a microcosm of the whole nation right here in District 7.

Gary Winslett: So for viewers, I went to University of Florida, so I lived there for years, and one of the things that I actually love about Florida is how internally diverse it is. You can go 20 minutes and go from Gainesville to Palatka, and another 20 minutes over to the coast on the east, and you’re in three totally different worlds in terms of socioeconomic status and experience.

And I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean it in a really positive way. You can actually see these cross-sections of America in really fascinating, fun ways.

Bale Dalton: Yeah, it’s awesome. You know, not to anchor here for too long, but as you know from your experience, we’ve got Wekiwa Springs and Blue Spring, talking about amazing Florida-only natural resources in the western part of this district where people will go swim with manatees, to sort of high ground where the orange groves are, and you’ve got that old sage, to the Atlantic Coast, where you can watch space launches over the coast as well as swim with dolphins.

So, I mean, it’s pretty amazing.

Property Insurance on Borrowed Time

Gary Winslett: I did wanna ask you one question about something that is, I don’t wanna say Florida’s the only place that has this challenge, but it is a very Florida-centric challenge, which is property insurance. It’s one of the most Florida issues there is. There’s been a lot of non-renewals across the state.

You’ve backed federal oversight and a reinsurance backstop, and this is something that I think is gonna be important to a lot of places as we continue to deal with climate change. So could you just walk us through how this backstop lowers premiums and helps people with the cost of living?

Bale Dalton: Yeah, you know, managing insurance as a job or as a program is very unsexy, right? So it’s really hard for some people to try to tackle what economic items can be in place, what incentives can be in place, both for the insured party and for the insurance companies.

And Florida and Tallahassee and our state leadership has tried to solve this in a number of different ways over the last couple of decades. We actually used to have a statewide elected insurance commissioner, something that we don’t have anymore, but has been debated in Tallahassee about bringing back.

So the only good news here is that we know it’s a problem. The bad news is, nobody’s really figured out how to solve it yet. And one of the main issues, as you mentioned, is this reinsurance, which is insuring, you know, basically giving insurance to insurance companies for, in a worst case scenario, like a Hurricane Katrina was to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama.

You know, we just recognized the anniversary of Hurricane Charley, which came through Central Florida about 15, 16 years ago and really was devastating. In fact, you can kind of track today’s insurance problems, they’re sort of back to Charley, because that was sort of the beginning of the end of some of the smaller insurance companies.

So talking about where government can make some good inroads on this reinsurance issue, so that the insurance companies are not passing all the costs down to the insuree, that’s something that we need to tackle. And with the increasing nature of devastating storms throughout our country, that’s something that we probably need to be tackling at the federal level as well.

I think there are times where we’ve done, you know, depending on the leadership, we’ve done well in being resilient and responding to emergencies. But what we’ve really gotta do better is preparing for and preventing against this economic devastation that happens, from the national level in terms of rebuilding infrastructure, all the way down to our families, who are like, “Hey, I pay a premium every month. What do you mean that is not covering me in this emergency,” right?

You know, folks are surprised by the copays that come out or what insurance can cover. So it’s a distinct and nuanced conversation with how do you give the insurance provider the incentive and tools that they need to provide insurance to those of us who need it, which is all of us here in Florida, at a price that’s reasonable, but also can take care of us in an emergency.

And what worries me the most is that we’re just, we’re on borrowed time right here. That’s a problem that needed a solution yesterday, ‘cause I’m worried that there are just so many Floridians out there who are going without insurance right now because of costs and risking financial ruin, not just for themselves, but for our state and for our federal budget as well when the storm does come, ‘cause it will.

What Won the Primary

Tahra Hoops: I wanna say that I definitely appreciate, one, how much you care for what your possible constituents would be, and how much you know about them. As we know, the primary just happened. We touched on the cost of living a little bit in this question. I want to zoom out quite a bit, because obviously we are in the thick of primary season, and people have been doing a lot of political analysis, like why one person won their primary versus why someone didn’t, X, Y, and Z.

I would love to know, what part of your campaign do you think spoke to voters the most that allowed you to get across the finish line?

Bale Dalton: Yeah. Well, you know, as a lifelong Floridian, I have been disappointed more times, I think, than I have been excited about what’s happening. But I am super excited, because I think, you know, Florida gonna Florida. Like, if anybody wants to write an article about what has happened in Florida on the primary or the last couple of cycles of elections, I mean, good luck. I hope you got 5,000 or 10,000 words, right?

But what we saw... So, as you might imagine, this is my home. I was born and raised here, and I’ve just been really laser focused on Seminole and Volusia County. And what I can hear from those folks who would be my constituents, should I be so lucky to win and have them vote for me, what I’m hearing is that absolutely the cost of living is top of mind.

But they don’t want, you know, a ten-dollar word out there. They want folks to understand the actual issues that they’re facing, right? So we know some of these things are nationwide, like our grocery prices, and we could have a very long conversation about why food is so expensive, because it’s a lot of different factors that have gone into that.

You know, putting gas in their car. We’ve already talked about property insurance pretty in-depth. But health insurance, I mean, the ACA subsidies being allowed to expire by this Mike Johnson-led Congress, that is devastating. I am flummoxed, as you can see, that we are not hearing more about that from Washington, because I will tell you right now, the folks that are paying these higher bills, they wanna know, like, “Why is no one talking about it?”

This is a crisis of Congress’s own making, and we’ve seen now in this district alone, over 45,000 families are now without health insurance at all. Over 150,000 families in this district alone have seen their premiums go up two to four times. So I think what’s happened is that folks are, I mean, as they should be, as am I, just mad as hell at being told what they need to think about and these divisive issues, and being told they gotta hate their neighbor.

You know who they hate right now? The people in Washington, D.C. who are supposed to be solving these problems that they are faced with every single day. And so I think what you’ve seen throughout whatever race you wanna analyze, you’ve seen folks that are like, “This person was not getting the job done. I’m interested in hearing from somebody who wants to get the job done.”

And I think that’s what’s been able to give our campaign and myself as an individual these inroads to talk to folks, Republicans, Democrats, Independents. People do not care what a label is. They wanna know, “Is this guy one of us, and is he gonna go try to solve these problems that we have?”

All of the Above, and Bury the Power Lines

Gary Winslett: I think that’s exactly right. One of the things that I wanted to ask you about in terms of solving these problems is, it’s August. Florida’s hot most of the year anyway, and it’s extra hot in August. This is when we crank the AC. And that’s also when your electricity bill will often be higher, right? Because you gotta stay safe and semi-comfortable.

I wanted to ask you about energy and electricity rates, because I know Florida Power & Light just went through this bruising rate case. And so I just was curious what your thoughts are on, what’s the federal role in getting more cheap green energy generation onto the grid faster? Is it permitting, interconnection queues, transmission? What are your thoughts on this?

Bale Dalton: I think the problem here with our energy is at least threefold. So, the three kind of things that I will talk about here. First of all, I don’t know when it became this politicized issue for the United States of America to have energy independence and to be a leader in research and development of new technologies to solve our energy problem going forward, right?

We know it’s going to be a problem going forward for a number of different reasons. And so, just to stick with generation of power for the moment, what is going on right now that we would just cede an entire part of emerging technologies in solar or wind or geothermal or any of these things that we need a lot more investment in to figure out, are these gonna be good solutions, and how can we make them more efficient, you know, better the efficacy of these things?

And so to completely ignore them, or to take away incentives and subsidies for folks in research and development to do these things, I just think is ludicrous. And so, like I said, I don’t know when that became a political football, but I’m an all of the above approach to energy, ‘cause it’s a huge problem now, and it’s only gonna get worse in the future.

You know, the second thing, you mentioned the rate increases. Here in Florida, we have got, you know, an appointed board in Tallahassee to provide oversight to our energy companies. And I, like, I need to double check, but there’s not a one of them that is actually an expert in energy production.

There’s not a one of them that has talked about how to be good stewards and how to transfer ownership and oversight between the public utility companies and the private companies. And unfortunately, what we’ve seen is, this is such a huge issue here in Florida, and we’ve seen a huge influx of political money into Tallahassee State House races and State Senate races.

And that creates, you know, we’ve been well briefed on that, right? That creates a problem when folks feel like they’re beholden to a private company in order to get elected, and that can change the way they try to actually tackle the problem.

And then the last thing I’ll say is sort of, you know, bracketing. We had creation of energy, but also the transmittal of energy, right? We know that our grid here in Florida in particular, and other places in the United States, is just working off of decades-old infrastructure. And we’ve gotta do better.

I wanna tell you two quick stories. The first on generation, right? When I go to a house in Florida that’s got solar panels, we know now that energy production has for some reason become politicized, right? So you might expect this person with solar panels to be of one particular party or not. In Florida, that is no indicator whatsoever.

This is somebody who is frugal, who understands that money savings here can be provided somewhere else. And of course, we have such great power of the sun. And even though the sun’s not always out, there are these things called batteries, which store the power and basically can take care of you during a storm.

So folks in Florida, they know what energy production is all about. And then the second thing that I’ll talk about as a story is, look, if we’re gonna have these storms, which we have, you know, high wind, high rain storms, why is so much of our infrastructure still above ground? I mean, we could talk about it as an eyesore, but this is just basically energy resilience, to have our power lines buried, especially when they’re going to our transformers and our power substations, ‘cause that’s gonna help us weather these storms.

But, you know, it’s also kinda nicer to look at in a beautiful state like we have.

Cheaper Beats Ideology

Tahra Hoops: I’m glad you brought up the cost component of this, because to me, when I look at the climate conversation, obviously a couple years back, the Biden administration really made climate the number one issue for their admin, and I think kind of read the tea leaves a bit wrong. People, if you look at the cross-polling, are not too worried about the future of our climate, which, like, I hate it.

I’m not proud of it, not happy to see it, but it just is where we are right now. But when you look at the advancement and the scale of clean technologies, one, not only does it help us achieve a future where we could possibly have a green economy better for the climate, it’s cheaper. And it is just a win-win that I see us leave on the table sometimes, where if we just talk about the cost aspect first and foremost, people don’t care about the ideology of where they get their electricity from.

Like, no one is that online. They’re looking at their rate hikes happening every month, and they’re just looking to see how they can make it cheaper.

Bale Dalton: Yeah, this is exactly right. I think this is a perfect example of where sort of the punditry, or even our elected officials who are just so keyed in to keeping us divided, harp on these things where folks are either not interested in the argument or just fully ensconced in one side or the other.

But yeah, people want their energy bills to go down, because that is part and parcel to how they are taking care of their families. And so if we talk about it in the way that, you know, again, if we’re gonna have these geopolitical shocks, like for instance somebody embarking on a war of choice in an oil-rich part of the world, that is a huge issue to our supply chain. Well, we could be more resilient to that as an economy if we had more of our energy coming from either other parts of the world or from other sources.

So I think you’re exactly right, Tahra. This is an economic conversation for the taxpayer. We are being better stewards of taxpayer dollars when we are working hard to ensure that the real dollar effect for our families is increasing rather than decreasing.

And the other thing that I think folks have a little bit glommed onto, I think the absolute highest percentage argument is, how am I providing for my family, right? How am I keeping my costs down? The other thing too is, we are getting the floor wiped with us as a nation by other nations out there, who partially mean us harm, but certainly mean to be more powerful than us throughout the world, in terms of research and development of emerging technologies.

So I think that’s a huge issue too. And I think back to one story when I was working on Senator Nelson’s staff, where we were really trying to tackle this issue so that folks could understand this isn’t just one talking head against another. When we started talking about how much money it costs to rebuild our beaches, how much money it costs to make sure our naval air stations here in this state alone are resilient against the weather, how much it costs to rebuild after a storm, or to rebuild sea walls, or to raise buildings.

That’s all stuff, those costs can go out the window if we are more focused on making sure that we are doing things that are not going to increase the ferocity of some of these nature events that we see.

After Cory Mills: Defining Ryan Elijah

Gary Winslett: One other thing I wanted to ask you about is, a couple days ago in the primary, Republican primary voters understandably told Cory Mills to take a hike. For those of you who don’t know, he’s scandal-plagued, not a great dude. Totally understandable that they made that choice.

But that means you’re running against Ryan Elijah, who, you know, is not scandal-plagued in the same way, right? And so my question is, what is your theory for persuadable voters in the Florida 7th? What do you think is the message that’s gonna actually persuade them to vote for you instead of Ryan Elijah?

Bale Dalton: Well, I agree with you, Gary. I think there’s two pieces of great news here. One is that Floridians, especially in Central Florida, came together and said, “We are not gonna take it anymore. This corruption and grift that we are seeing, you know, the poster child for, here in District 7, he’s out. We’re getting him out.”

So that’s exciting to me, because sometimes you need a piece of good news, and Floridians are just not gonna take it anymore. Now, there is a long way to go, as we well know. But I also say sometimes, like I used to say to my pilots when we were about to land in somebody’s backyard to pick up a terrorist, “Control what you can control.”

So the Florida voters in the primary, they controlled what they can control. They’ve got another choice here in the general, because the good thing now is we don’t have to be distracted about one man’s terrible life decisions, in basically every bucket of life decisions. Now we can focus on the things every single day that are affecting our Floridians, my friends, family, and neighbors here.

And I tell you, I think the more people get to know this fellow Ryan Elijah, the more worried that they are going to be that he is what he’s already told us he is, which is just another rubber stamp there in Congress that is not really interested in tackling these hard things that we’ve just discussed.

But I think he’s just gonna be another one of these people that, you know, he wants to be famous. He wants to wear the pin. You know these folks that are just addicted to power. You can see it in his conversations as he brags about being recruited by other shady members of the Florida delegation who are well known to be in the pockets of DC lobbyists.

And he’s told us where he stands on the policy issues as well. I mean, he said that the economy is in a good spot right now. I haven’t heard that one time in Central Florida. He said that the tariffs are working. I don’t know if he’s spoken to any small business owner within the district, but they don’t say that.

And finally, he said that, basically, he’s supportive of our actions in the war in Iran, which I think pretty much every American has got one problem or another with. First, why is there no long-term solution? Second, why does it seem like the only way out is to be worse than the status quo was before we got into it?

And last, what is going on with our political leadership, who seems to be hanging our servicemen and women out to dry on these extended deployments, not getting the supply ships to where they need to be, lying to us about where the casualties are, how they’ve happened, and what these counterattacks on our bases and the land and the nations of our allies are?

I mean, this is a huge issue. And I was just on the doors two days ago talking to a grandmother whose grandson enlisted a couple years ago. He’s finished with boot camp. He’s about to go on his own deployment. And she said, “Look, I’m always gonna be worried about him, right? He’s doing a dangerous job in harm’s way no matter what. But now I’m even more worried, ‘cause it seems like nobody even cares about him when he’s out there.”

These Americans, these human people that have put their lives on the line, are just being used as pawns in a game that seems to have no win, because we’ve not heard what the long-term plan is.

And these are all things that Ryan Elijah is supportive of. So, look, Florida does their primaries late. I mean, there’s like 70-some days until the general. But we are gonna be defining, you know, the two of us. Floridians have heard about me, and they’ve seen me defined through some of my life experiences and what I think is important, through having listened to them.

I think when they learn more about the Republican nominee, they are not gonna be interested in another rubber stamp, you know. Doesn’t matter whose name is on a rubber stamp, people are tired of the rubber stamp.

Tied to a Sinking Ship

Gary Winslett: Yeah. Well, and you can’t ever overstate when something’s being so badly mismanaged. What’s so shocking to me about the way the war has been done is, the most obvious counter response by the Iranians, obvious to everybody, was going to be to do everything they could to block the Strait of Hormuz, shut that down.

That was obvious to everybody. And the Trump administration had no clear plan as to what to do once this obvious countermove happened. It was just mind-boggling that that was not top of mind for them.

Bale Dalton: Yeah, I think this is what happens when you have someone who is just so against having anybody disagree at any point in time. I mean, we know what happened very early on in this administration at the National Security Council, like, you know, sort of embraced in this DOGE effort.

Look, if we wanna talk about government overreach and bloat in the government, I’m here for it. But firing all of your Middle Eastern advisors and experts before you go into another Middle East conflict, that just doesn’t make sense to me.

And I think what we’re seeing here in Florida, on the doors and in the phone calls and in the meetings, is, look, this district voted for Trump by a majority all three times, right? And I know, ‘cause I’ve heard from them, right? What were they voting for? They’ve been voting for a government that’d be working more efficiently, an economy that would be getting better, and a leader who said that he was gonna be focused on our struggles here at home.

Not one of those three things is happening. And whether folks feel like the president is getting bad advice from the folks around him, they are just not interested anymore in somebody who is just going to go along with the party line. I mean, we have data in this district, actually, that says, by a 2% margin, generically, folks would prefer a Democrat be successful in this election than a Republican. By a much wider margin, we have folks who say they are interested more in somebody who can work across party lines to solve this cost of living crisis than someone who’s just going to back whatever’s coming out of the administration.

So I think people are here for a change, and they are here for somebody that’s gonna actually fight for them, and not for one party or another, or one singular person. And, you know, again, talking about defining this new opponent in Ryan Elijah, I mean, he is quoted as saying, “I did this for the president. I did this for my party.” And I was like, “I’m doing this for Central Floridians.” So I mean, I think it’s a pretty clear choice.

Tahra Hoops: I do not think the GOP understands how large of a sinking ship they are tying themselves to. Every time they get out there and defend the astonishing economic record that he has just plummeted in such a short amount of time, and they say, “Yep, I’m here for this.” Like, for example, I was reading today, Walmart executives have come out to say that they have seen consumer behavior shift. For the first time in years, they’re seeing a decline the same month that they saw gas prices shoot up.

It is clear that consumers are not happy with the current economy, where especially people at the bottom rung of the economic ladder are struggling the hardest. But people would rather sit with the brownie points or the Truth Social post they might get from the president, because it matters more to their future career and resume. It just boggles my mind.

Bale Dalton: Yeah, and I think some of these elected representatives, or wannabes, who have chosen to just toe a party line, need to wake up. Because I will tell you that I’ve spoken to quite a few Republicans and what we call in Florida no-party-affiliated folks, and again, they are not interested in a label.

They’re not interested in a party. They’re not interested in who’s loyal to who. They want somebody that’s gonna be loyal to Central Floridians and actually take care of these things, rather than continue to be gaslit, that, oh, just a little bit of pain now is going to be better in the future.

Well, a little bit of pain, how long has it been? 20 months with a lot of pain? I talked to a guy who owns a landscaping company the other day, and he’s got some older lawnmowers, some of which require diesel. So this is a guy that’s trying to put diesel in a truck, unleaded in his machines. He’s got four or five crews out there, and he’s like, “Look, I can’t make margins anymore, which means I can’t take care of my family, which means I gotta let some employees go, all because the cost of gas is so high, I can’t run my business.”

So I think that there’s some folks out there who have sold their soul that are in for a rude awakening. And it’s really a shame. You know, look, growing up here in Central Florida, I got friends, family, neighbors that are all stripes. Republicans, Independents, third parties, no party affiliation, of course Democrats. And it’s like, folks are, A, tired of being told that they gotta hate their neighbor, and B, tired of a government that just seems to be filled with people who are just addicted to getting reelected and will go wherever the wind is of the leader of a party in order to stay in the cool kids club.

People don’t want somebody in the cool kids club. They want somebody who is going to tackle these things and get things done. And I think we’re gonna see those folks come out in droves in November. No matter what district we’re talking about, we’re gonna see those folks come out.

And that’s good, right? Because our country is better when we have folks talking about policy, and we have representatives who are focused on their constituent needs. And it’s been... I mean, it’s a damn shame how long it’s been since we might have seen that, you know?

Day Zero: What Gets Cheaper

Tahra Hoops: I always say democracy is not a spectator sport. It works better when you get involved and prove what you were talking about through your actions. So I do hope that we see a very large turnout in the upcoming midterms, which are soon. I would like to end this also on a more positive note.

Four years from now, you’ve won the election. What is something in your district that you think is cheaper now thanks to the policies that you’ve helped push?

Bale Dalton: Well, I’ve talked about the incredible increasing cost of healthcare across the board, and you’d have heard me say that having these ACA subsidies expire is a crisis of Congress’s own making. You know, it’s a very common question asked, like, “What’s a day one thing?” That’s like a day zero thing. That could be done now if we had the right people in Congress, right?

So I think for sure, health insurance, especially for the families most in need, would be cheaper in November of 2026, ‘cause we’d have a Congress that would have the spine to stand up for those most in need in their districts.

Certainly, we would attack these illegal tariff taxes. I mean, again, the fact that the Republican Party is getting behind tariffs, and out of making sure that our businesses have what they need to succeed, I’m flummoxed by that. I mean, our small businesses are getting squeezed on both ends. So I think you would have small business owners certainly feel more comfortable about their bottom line when we get rid of this chaotic implementation of these tariff taxes.

And then lastly, hugely important to me is taking care of not just our veterans, but our current servicemen and women. And, you know, every price of everything is going to go down when we stop this Iran war.

We talked a little bit about the cost of groceries. One thing that I think folks sometimes don’t realize is that fertilizer is a petroleum product, and we’ve already had our farms, corporate farms and family farms, plant much less this year, and that’s baked in. That was last spring. So food prices are gonna continue to be expensive and increase until we actually solve this supply chain crisis that’s just been created out of nowhere through this Iran war.

So I think those are three things that you will see be in a better spot in November of 2028, and hopefully much more.

Tahra Hoops: That is great, and I hope it is something that we definitely do see. We said at the start, again, congratulations on winning your primary, and we hope to see you possibly win in the upcoming midterms. Thank you for being here.

Bale Dalton: Well, thanks so much for y’all’s time and your interest. You know, Gary, like we said, Florida gonna Florida, so it’s always a fun place to follow. And I think folks are really interested in the change, and we’re gonna give it to them.

Tahra Hoops: Amazing. Thank you so much.

Bale Dalton: Thanks, Tahra. Thanks, Gary. Great to see you.

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