// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

[00:00:00]
Brian Mackey: Today on The 21st Show, Republican Jim Marter first ran against Democratic Congresswoman Lauren Underwood two years ago. He lost that race, but like the old adage says, he's try — trying again. Marter grew up in Bartonville in Peoria County. He's currently based out of Oswego, and he's also run unsuccessful campaigns against Congressman Adam Kinzinger in 2018 and U.S. Senator Mark Kirk in 2016. We'll talk with Marter about policy, politics, and running as a Republican in a district drawn to elect Democrats. I'm Brian Mackey. That's coming up today on The 21st Show, which is a production of Illinois Public Media, airing on WILL in Urbana, WUIS in Springfield, WNIJ in Rockford DeKalb, WVIK in the Quad Cities, and WSIU in Carbondale. But first, news.

From Illinois Public Media, this is The 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey. We're now less than a month and a half away from the midterm elections. Today, we're continuing our series of interviews with the men and women seeking U.S. House — districts in downstate districts, I should say U.S. House seats in downstate districts.

The 14th Congressional District is in northern Illinois. It's a jagged triangle that connects Joliet, DeKalb, and La Salle-Peru. Democratic Representative Lauren Underwood flipped the seat in the 2018 election and narrowly held on to it in 2020 against businessman Jim Oberweis. Since the congressional maps were redrawn, she's won her last couple of races more comfortably with around 55% of the vote.

Republican Jim Marter is hoping to change that math. He faced Underwood in 2024 and is trying again to flip the seat back to red. He grew up in Bartonville in Peoria County. He's currently based out of Oswego, where he works in software consulting. He's been involved in politics for a bit more than a decade now. He previously served as Kendall County Republican chairman. This is his sixth time running for Congress. He's run in the 14th District in every election since 2020. Before that, he also tried to, uh, take on Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger in the Republican primary in the 16th District and challenged U.S. Senator Mark Kirk back in 2016.

Jim Marter joins me live for the hour today. Welcome to The 21st Show. Thanks for being with us.

[00:02:39]
Jim Marter: Well, good morning, Brian. It's great to be with you and on the show. You know, you got to keep trying like old Abe did. He lost a lot of races, won a few, but won the big ones — and the most important in history, right? So —

[00:02:53]
Brian Mackey: Yeah, we'll get into that. So, uh, and I should say just as a programming note, we have invited Representative Lauren Underwood to join us for an interview. We have had some communications with her team about that. We will — you'll know when we know if we get on.

[00:03:08]
Jim Marter: All right, well, that'd be great to hear that. We've challenged her to debate. She's been dodging that, so I don't know that that's gonna change, but we're still working on it.

[00:03:17]
Brian Mackey: Yeah. All right, well, let me also say, those of you listening — especially if you are in the 14th District, but really anywhere in Illinois — you can join us at 800-222-9455. What do you think of your representation in Congress, and what priorities would you like to see from your representatives? 800-222-9455 is the number. 800-222-9455.

All right, let's start with a little bit about your background. So you grew up in Bartonville. What do you remember about that? What's the shorthand version?

[00:03:48]
Jim Marter: Um, well, actually I just attended my 45th high school reunion with the Limestone [Rockets, class] of 1981. We had a great time. My dad still lives down in — not technically in Bartonville, but in Peoria County down there. So I'm down there quite often taking care of him, me and my brother, working hard to keep him at home still. He just turned 92 on Constitution Day, and he's an Army vet. So, no, I love Bartonville, love Peoria County, loved growing up there. I mean, we got — you know, just one of the best places to grow up. Was outside all the time, you know, running around, fishing, going in the woods and all kinds of fun stuff.

[00:04:36]
Brian Mackey: You worked for more than a decade in Michigan. What brought you back to Illinois? Because we often hear people saying — we hear about people leaving Illinois, right? That's one of the talking points you hear.

[00:04:46]
Jim Marter: It was primarily two things. I actually really love Michigan too — the outdoors. Love, love the access to all the things up there. But it was two things. It was primarily an opportunity to, let's say, further my career in software consulting, and then secondly, really just to get us closer to home at a time when both of our parents were still alive and a lot more family in the area. So those things combined — it was just a good time to move back. Landed in Oswego, and my wife Jill and I finished raising our four kids here. We have grandkids now. We have a total of six altogether. So basically, that's kind of what brought us back to Illinois. We've lived here in Oswego longer than any other place in our lives. So that's where we're at.

[00:05:35]
Brian Mackey: What motivated you to get involved in politics?

[00:05:39]
Jim Marter: You know, it's funny — if you asked any of my high school classmates and stuff, I'd be the last person that either I or anyone else would have thought would have been involved in politics. It kind of wasn't my thing, though I always paid attention. I always voted. But I was in Scouts up here — a Scout leader 15 years in [Troop] 63 in Oswego. The former village president — well, at the time he was village president — I got to know him through scouting. You know, we'd bring the Scouts in for meetings to work on government merit badges, and then when he decided to step down, he kind of nudged me to get involved. There was a little election shenanigans going on. There was a possibility to run as a write-in, get on the board, you know, basically unopposed, and so he's like, you've got to do this. So I jumped in against my better judgment, and the rest led to becoming part of the Kendall County Republicans. They appointed me a PC that year, and before you know it, I'm running in the biggest race in the state. So there you go. That's the short version.

[00:06:47]
Brian Mackey: OK. You know, it's interesting you mentioned scouting. I wasn't planning to ask about this, but what do you think of the changes in scouting? I mean, the fact that it's not the Boy Scouts anymore, for example.

[00:06:57]
Jim Marter: I mean, I think that was very ill-advised. I've seen how it's hurt the organization. I've seen how it's hurt the numbers. They thought they were doing it to increase numbers. I was totally against it, and I'd already more or less stepped out of scouting. I'd been in it 15 years anyway at that time. They changed it like one or two years after. Bad move, bad decision. I mean, we have three boys and a daughter. I did not want my daughter in Boy Scouts with the boys, although she did come to a lot of our events as family stuff. But we need to keep the boys separate from the girls at those ages, and, you know, it just makes a lot of sense to do that.

[00:07:37]
Brian Mackey: Hm. Interesting. All right, so why specifically a member of Congress? You know, you could have run for school board, you could have run for state legislature. Why Congress?

[00:07:48]
Jim Marter: So I'll comment on the state legislator real quick because my state rep at the time I got into politics was Keith Wheeler, and my state senator was Jim Oberweis, and my congressman was Randy Hultgren. So really, I wasn't gonna run for any of those because they were all good Republicans at the time. And of course, you know, the big race I got in was Sen. Mark Kirk — though he was a Republican, his voting record was like a Democrat. He was like 80% voting with the Democrats, 20% with the Republicans, and that kind of got my attention. I, you know, I just kind of gotten involved, knew enough to know how to do some things. I was like, you know what, I can't — I can't run and vote — or sorry, I can't vote for someone in a party that doesn't follow the party's platform like they only follow it at 20%, and that's kind of what got me going.

In the big races, and after that, you know, after one run of statewide — that's a big deal. I hit like 50-some counties in the state in 5.5 months. I made a lot of friends that I still have today all over the state, great Republican groups, learned a lot about the Republican Party, how counties and county chairmen worked. Shortly after that, became one myself, and that really focused me on — that's kind of why I didn't do any of the local stuff. When you get the local, like county board and stuff like that, as a traveling software consultant, I really am not in the county all that much, and I really don't know what you need to know and be present. County board members do a lot of hard work. They do a lot of meetings, a lot of committee meetings and stuff, and I didn't have the time, nor did I have really the knowledge for that. But I do a lot of national and international stuff as a software consultant, so I work with people all over the world every day of the week, including right now. And to me, you know, it was really a better fit for where I was at and what I was interested in doing.

[00:09:51]
Brian Mackey: What is a — you know — I don't know if you had the Richard Scarry books with your kids or grandkids, "What Do People Do All Day?" What does a software consultant do all day?

[00:10:00]
Jim Marter: What does that mean? So "consultant" is somewhat of a misnomer because for the most part, most people that have the title "consultant" are hired to do the work. So in information technology, you know, for us it's all kinds of things — installing software, modifying software, customizing it, making the forms, you know, add the company's logo to it, do all kinds of custom stuff that their business folks, you know, imagine and want done to the software that's different from what the software does. Mostly it's about a lot of teaching, training, communicating. You know, I do a lot of teaching as a software consultant. I know the software very well. I know the tools and techniques well, and I spend a lot of time teaching my customers and clients how to do things and also doing things for them, you know, to get them implemented, and then we kind of turn it over and teach them and let them run with it, and they run their business with it.

[00:10:59]
Brian Mackey: All right. If you're just joining us, this is The 21st Show. We're speaking with Jim Marter, running as the Republican nominee in the 14th District for the United States House of Representatives, facing Democratic incumbent Congresswoman Lauren Underwood. If you want to join us, 800-222-9455. 800-222-9455.

Well, since we're on the subject of software, artificial intelligence — AI, at least what we're calling AI — these large language models, but also other forms of what people are calling AI, has been much discussed this year. How are you thinking about the effects, the actual effects that we've already seen, and the potential effects on our country and our economy?

[00:11:45]
Jim Marter: Yeah, look, it's already pretty pervasive. It's already everywhere. You know, almost anyone who has a smartphone uses it. If you do a little Google search, it'll give you some good information. I do find that no matter what, if you're trying to rely on that information when you do things like that, you need to go check the sources and double-check it, if you're just looking for, you know, average type of thing. But there's a lot of good that can come from it. There's also a lot of bad that can come from it. It depends on, you know, what the source is, who's doing it. Most companies, by the way, build their own private, you know, ChatGPTs, if you will, and the other models, because they don't want their corporate information and their marketing information and their intellectual property out in the public domain.

So it's one of those things where it's like a hammer or a saw. If you use it right, it's great. If you use it incorrectly, maybe not so good. You know, you slam the hammer down on your thumb and that's not going to be — it'll be a little painful outcome. But I think we have to be careful of trying to use it to replace people all the time. Like, I do stuff every day, and even in my current recent contracts and clients, you know, they're like, hey, can you use AI to do this? Yeah, probably take me three times as long, but if you really want me to, OK. Because then I have to instruct AI to do the things that I have a lot of experience to know how to do. If you're looking for something that can help repeat a process that you've developed later, sometimes it's more effective for things like that.

It can't do everything. I'm sure it's going to get better over time, but again, we really have to watch about the misuse of it — where it's trying to — and every technology that's ever come about has replaced people, so to speak. You don't have any railroad brakemen anymore, right? Probably pretty good because that was a highly deadly job. So again, I take it somewhat with a grain of salt — the potential risk that people talk about — because maybe because I know it better than others do.

[00:14:13]
Brian Mackey: Well, yeah, that's what I was gonna — so yeah, that's where I was hoping to go, a little broader, because, you know, some people will say the best-case scenario is major job disruptions. Worst-case scenario, it's an existential threat to humankind, right? So where are you on those questions? And I guess that leads to, you know, what sort of government regulation do you think should or should not be involved here?

[00:14:35]
Jim Marter: Yeah, well, I think we should always keep those concerns in the forefront, right, because I think when you understand risk and concerns, then you can better address them, right? So I think those are extreme cases. Are they possible? Maybe they're possible. Are they probable? I don't view them as likely probable.

I do think that we do need to have certain sorts of regulations managing it — mostly around privacy and stealing intellectual property, as I mentioned, personal property, personal business images. One of the areas that it's really being used to, like, steal people's work is a lot of the art stuff that people are using it to generate, you know, all kinds of things with graphics and things, and there's a lot of heisting of intellectual property and personal images and property going on with AI. And I think we need to get that under control because we need to protect people's images, people's information and their stuff. I see right now that's probably the biggest abuse of AI going on right now.

But, you know, like you said, if you turn control over to a machine and you program it to do certain things and it has the capability of making its own decisions, so to speak — although it can't think, it's just doing what it's told effectively — I think we need to be careful about that kind of AI work as well.

[00:16:11]
Brian Mackey: All right, let me just share a listener comment here before we — we need to take a break. If you want to join us, 800-222-9455. Suzie from [Mahomet], Illinois didn't want to go on air but says we'd like to see from our representatives some backbone and that they actually represent the people they're supposed to represent. She mentioned her representative, I guess, is Mary Miller, but didn't really indicate where she stands on that performance.

If you want to join us — if you have a question for my guest today, Jim Marter, who is running for Congress in the 14th District, that is in northern Illinois, currently represented by Democratic Congresswoman Lauren Underwood — you can join us at 800-222-9455. That's 800-222-9455. We'll get to another caller after the break. This is The 21st Show. Please stay with us.

It's The 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey, and we are talking today with Jim Marter, who is the Republican nominee for U.S. House District 14 in northern Illinois. This connects the communities of DeKalb, La Salle-Peru, also Joliet in the Chicago suburbs. I believe Romeoville is in there. And if you want to join us, the number is 800-222-9455. 800-222-9455.

I should also say the incumbent Democrat, Lauren Underwood, we have invited her onto the show as well, and we hope to bring that to you in the future.

Let's — so we, before the break, talked about artificial intelligence and some of the questions around government regulation of that. As long as we're on domestic policy issues, let me ask you about immigration enforcement. That has been a hot topic. It's cooled down a little bit in the last few months, but it was certainly a hot topic in Illinois within the past year. How would you rate the performance of the Trump administration in terms of, you know, achieving the goals that it set out to do and how it's going about it?

[00:18:49]
Jim Marter: Look, I give them an A-plus because we're down to zero illegal immigration at the border — the southern border — and I think that also applies to the northern, but I think most of the time people talk about it, they're talking about the southern border, which was wide open. It was literally like a flood coming in under the Biden administration.

And, you know, there's this debate going on, and I don't understand it because I don't think that 40 years ago, 50 years ago, this was a partisan issue at all. I don't know why it became partisan. But, you know, we cannot allow massive illegal immigration in our country. Follow the rules, you know — and I told you I work with people from all over the world every day. I work with a lot of immigrants, naturalized immigrants. In fact, a really good friend of mine, Ajay Gupta, running for Illinois House [41st] District, which is partly inside of my district — he's a legal immigrant. I mean, do it the right way, come the right way. We have to have rules, we have to have some assimilation. We can't have a bunch of people coming in here that aren't doing any of that.

[00:20:00]
Brian Mackey: All right, let's go to the phones. We have a caller who wanted to ask about this. Doug is calling from [Kinmundy] on line one. Doug, thank you for calling in.

[00:20:08]
Doug: Oh, you're welcome. Before I get — I just want to correct him on something. Democrats want the law enforced. It's the tactics we don't like. I mean, Obama deported a million people and we never saw citizens thrown to the ground, people thrown to the ground. We never saw, you know, Gestapo tactics at elementary schools. My granddaughter was terrorized when one of her friend's mother was grabbed out of her car and thrown [to] the ground. You know, you never saw U.S. citizens shot under Obama, and you never saw the Constitution just, you know — or masked men in the street. I ask them about that. Is that OK? That's like — you know, al-Qaeda stuff. And I also want to know, why don't they go after the employers? It seems to me if they wanted them to leave, they could enforce federal law and throw a few employers to the ground, and maybe they would stop hiring them and maybe they would leave. We want the laws enforced, but we want people's rights to be enforced as well. We want warrants signed by judges, and we want, you know, probable cause, and the right seems to be totally against anything constitutional like that. It seems to me that the right enjoys the process.

[00:21:20]
Brian Mackey: All right, Doug, thanks for the call. I appreciate it. Jim Marter, what do you say?

[00:21:24]
Jim Marter: Yeah, so look, I mean, you know, that's the kind of Democrat voter that should be voting for me because I stand with Numbers USA. They actually have a plan for how you tackle the immigration problem. I believe in enforcement the way he said.

And part of the reason you didn't see some of that stuff during Biden or Obama was that the media wasn't out there with film and cameras, and there weren't these like little [ICE] squads that some of these people were involved in that were out there literally illegally tracking what federal law enforcement was doing and interfering with their activities. I mean, most of that stuff never would have happened without the illegal — and it's very unfortunate that a couple people got killed, but they were actually interfering with federal law enforcement illegally. One tried to drive a car over the guy. So —

[00:22:24]
Brian Mackey: Hold on, hold on. Let me ask — what do you think about agents wearing masks? Which is not something, for example, that the Illinois State Police or, you know, the Oswego Police Department — they don't go around wearing masks, and they have to wear, you know, name tags or at least badges with numbers on them so they can be identified. What do you think about — you know, changing federal policy was —

[00:22:42]
Jim Marter: — a response to the doxing that was going on by these radical extremist groups that were out there that were literally illegally tracking federal agents, their activities and their enforcement [actions]. I mean, the criminals these guys are running up are the worst of the worst. I mean, we've had thousands of them. [Sheridan] — Gordon — [Gorman] — here in Chicago. Oh my gosh, the stories — they're just heart-wrenching what happened to our, you know, our young women and children and people in this country. There's literally 1,000 stories that we know of, of these people that were killed by these MS-13 gang criminals, foreign criminal cartels coming in here.

You know, what we can't really have is our elected officials, our government officials — and by the way, like our governor, JB Pritzker — being a co-conspirator with foreign criminal cartels and gangs and sanctuary laws. I mean, that's what's driving some of this nonsense that's creating these criminal activities out there.

[00:23:48]
Brian Mackey: I mean, statistics show that 70% of the people who are currently detained have no criminal records. I'm trying to remember exactly where I saw that stat. But, you know, obviously, yes — I think there you do hear bipartisan agreement on going after people who have criminal records or, you know, committed murder or something like that. But, as our caller indicated, the "tamale lady" — those sort of arrests, which have been used to juice up the numbers. Do you support that as well?

[00:24:21]
Jim Marter: Yeah, I'm not familiar with that case at all. I can tell you that there was one that was out east — I think it was in Boston or something — that the mainstream media was telling everyone, oh, this guy was a father and this and that. Well, it turned out none of that story was actually true when you dug into it. The guy was actually an MS-13 member — or it was either that or [Tren de Aragua], the Argentinian one — but it was a really bad guy, and they kind of manufactured a story that just wasn't really true about him. But I don't know about the case he mentioned, otherwise I would comment on it.

But look, I'm for law enforcement, just like he said. We need to have common-sense law enforcement. We don't need, let's say, citizen vigilante groups tracking and interfering with law enforcement operations. I mean, that's patently illegal. I would never do it. I think most people would never do that. And, you know, it's going to get you in trouble. I mean, we even had a congressional candidate — by the way, you guys might have covered her — that was in Chicago. Her name was Kat. She was out there doing the same thing. She kind of got tossed to the ground, but again, what she was doing was totally and wholly inappropriate. She was trying to get attention for a campaign. Didn't work out very well. Nobody got hurt, but she did get tossed to the ground, and, you know, you do silly things, you're going to find out what's going to happen when you're interfering with law enforcement. I stand with law enforcement because those guys — they don't know when someone's going to turn around, pull a weapon, and fire in their face. I don't know how many people have seen this. I've seen videos of this, you know, cops on the street, they go to pull over a pickup truck on a highway. Next thing you know, the cop's dead because the guy whipped out of his cab, pulled a gun on him, and he had no chance to react.

[00:26:20]
Brian Mackey: How do you reckon with the danger — how do you reckon with the idea that nine people now, their deaths have been linked to the Trump administration's campaign of deportations? And yet when a mob attacked the U.S. Capitol, the Washington, D.C., police and the Capitol Police — there were no — you know, there was one person shot — one person shot — out of that entire mob of thousands of people. How do you reckon with, on the one hand, people are being gunned down in the street, and on the other hand, there was so much restraint in that episode from law enforcement with people with very different political ideology protesting, in their view, what the government was doing?

[00:27:00]
Jim Marter: Yeah, I'm only aware of the two that were in Minnesota. I'm not aware of any others, so I don't know what you're talking about there.

[00:27:06]
Brian Mackey: There have been people shot in Illinois. The shooting —

[00:27:08]
Jim Marter: The shooting of Ashli Babbitt in Washington — I mean, that was clearly outside of the line of protocol for any officer. Look, I do give officers the benefit of the doubt, no doubt about that, but that was clearly outside the line of protocol. Those were people that the Capitol Police actually ushered into the building, if those were in fact real Capitol Police, but they opened the doors and let people in. One of them was Dr. Simone Gold. She was just there for that day, and somehow — you know, there was a planned, scheduled speech and protest on the lawn near the Capitol, and somehow Nancy Pelosi canceled that without letting anyone know and pulled the plug on it. And that might have a lot to do with some of what was going on there.

[00:27:57]
Brian Mackey: This is an example of like where in America we just have two very different fact environments, because I mean, there are many videos from that day of people smashing windows, crawling through windows, police officers being crushed —

[00:28:09]
Jim Marter: I didn't say that. None of that was appropriate. But the question is, why was the planned protest — because I remember I wanted to actually go to that. I did not go that day, but I was like, hey, I want to go to that. They're having this big rally on the mall near the Capitol after the president's speech, and it got canceled without any notification. People were walking — went to Washington planning it for weeks to go there, and all of a sudden something that was planned, that was permitted, didn't happen and the plug got pulled. And that's on Nancy Pelosi. I mean, how do you — how does anyone explain that? How do they explain that Nancy Pelosi and the mayor of D.C. didn't have National Guard there when President Trump asked for it? There's so many things. As a member of Congress, I want to get into that and get to the real truth because the original committee, you know, they basically — they hid the truth, they lied about stuff, they deleted stuff, and they didn't allow us to see it.

[00:29:10]
Brian Mackey: We're talking with Jim Marter, who is running as a Republican in the 14th District, challenging Democratic Congresswoman Lauren Underwood. If you want to join us, 800-222-9455. Time is ticking away. I also have to — I want to ask you about the war in Iran. Gas prices are — I think I paid $4.80 a gallon. They're quite elevated this year. That is one of the consequences. Farmers are dealing with high diesel prices as a result of that as well here in Illinois, and I'm sure throughout the district you're running to represent. What do you think of the fact that we're at war with Iran, and how it's gone so far?

[00:29:50]
Jim Marter: You know, I think for like 51 years Iran's been at war with us. They're the No. 1 funder of terrorism in the world, and Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. And thank God we have a president that actually did something about it. We had a lot of people that talked about it — both Republicans and Democrats — no one got the job done. They were very close to that.

I heard JD Vance — Vice President JD Vance — speak on this, and he's spot on. He's like, look — so we got our — the gas prices are currently in my district right back up to where they were at the end of the Biden administration. They'd immediately come down almost $1.50 a gallon when President Trump started implementing some of his policies. They're back up. By the way, the price of a barrel of oil isn't as high as the price of gas as you reflect it. And part of that in Illinois — because I was just in Wisconsin on a fishing trip, and in Wisconsin I could get on average 30 to 50 cents cheaper in Illinois because JB Pritzker has totaled somewhere around 65-plus [cents in] direct tax, and then he's got a sales tax, so we're looking at somewhere around 80 cents a gallon in Illinois. And it's got an automatic increase — just keeps going up. So, you know, if you're near the state line, I just encourage you to go to Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Iowa to get your gas because you'll probably get about 30 to 50 cents cheaper.

[00:31:17]
Brian Mackey: I'll just do a little fact-check in there. I'm just looking at gas prices over time. It was actually September of 2024 — so a few months before the election — that gas prices took a steep drop and were below or around $2 nationally on average at that time. Obviously, Illinois [prices] are a little higher because of the tax.

So you generally support the war. How do you think it's been going? I mean, we've seen a lot of strain on the U.S. Navy ships, with crew that didn't get a break for months and months at a time. Is this something we should continue, do you think?

[00:31:50]
Jim Marter: You know, my dad is a 92-year-old Army veteran, and I have so much respect for the veterans and the active-duty folks, and I'm sure a lot of them don't get breaks. A lot of times it's never reported. So, you know, I think we do have to take care of our active-duty and our veterans as best we can. I'm not going to second-guess the commander in chief and his staff, who are doing an excellent job. But —

[00:32:19]
Brian Mackey: Isn't that the job of a congressman, though, to second-guess the president?

[00:32:22]
Jim Marter: You know, here's the thing. Congress delegated this in 1973 to the War Powers Act, which was actually supposed to put a check on the presidents, and in fact it's more or less had the opposite effect. So as a member of Congress, I would be for looking into revisiting that War Powers Act to actually make Congress vote on it because I do believe Congress should vote on this. I don't think my opponent introduced a bill for Congress to vote on this. She's chimed in about it a few times, but she herself hasn't done anything to actually put a bill in to have Congress vote on this. I would say that we should have Congress declaring all wars, right. And there is some — you know — a little bit of ambiguity because the president is the commander in chief. So how do you kind of reconcile those things? And that's what was attempted in the 1973 War Powers Act. But I think, you know, the target was missed in that. They've basically given most presidents a blank check for the last 40, 50, 60 years. They've been going, you know, off the rails in some cases. In other cases, mostly legitimate. A lot of times Congress comes through and funds it anyway, but they never really take a position. So when Congress funds financing of what's going on, it's kind of a tacit approval, if you ask me. But I'm one who wants Congress to go on the record when we're in a conflict anywhere. I want Congress to go on the record. I will put bills down to make sure that happens when I'm in Congress.

[00:33:55]
Brian Mackey: All right. If you want to join us, 800-222-9455. If you are on the line, please hold a minute. We need to take a break. We're on a fixed clock on this program. We'll get to a couple more callers after the break. Again, the number is 800-222-9455. We're speaking with Jim Marter, who is a Republican candidate in the 14th Congressional District, which is in northern Illinois. It includes DeKalb, it includes Joliet and La Salle-Peru in north-central Illinois. Again, the number is 800-222-9455. We'll be back after a short break. This is The 21st Show.

It's The 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey. We are talking today with Jim Marter, who is a Republican challenging Democratic Congresswoman Lauren Underwood in the 14th District, which is in north-central Illinois, includes communities such as Joliet, DeKalb, and La Salle in the central part of the state. If you want to join us, 800-222-9455. And let's go now to the phones. We have Tom calling from Palatine on line two. Tom, thanks for calling in.

[00:35:36]
Tom: Hi, thanks for having me on. My question was regarding January 6th. You discussed it earlier. You seem to pass the blame off on Nancy Pelosi, and Nancy Pelosi was certainly in control of setting police and Capitol Police around the Capitol. But it was very much brought to Donald Trump's attention that there were going to be a certain amount of Capitol Police there, and he was suggested that there were supposed to be federal troops and National Guard there and chose to have extra ones without weapons at a different location. And when called, took four hours to respond to that call, mainly because one of the people that was in his administration had quit or resigned, and the person that was supposed to have duties had mistakes over that time period. So my question to you is, why do you think it's Nancy Pelosi's fault that the president decided to send people to a place he knew was not fully protected and then tell them to fight like hell?

[00:36:38]
Brian Mackey: All right, Tom, thank you for the question.

[00:36:42]
Jim Marter: Yeah, I'm not sure I could corroborate that version of the story. I think there were some facts slipped in with some innuendo there. But the bottom line to me is — and I believe it's the mayor of D.C. who has to ask for the — or sorry, for the National Guard — or the Speaker of the House. So it was not the president's call. It's documented that he did ask for the National Guard to be there beforehand and it didn't happen. So again, I'm not sure that that version of events — which is exactly why we need to get me to Congress so we can actually do an investigation and get the real facts of what really happened that day, because things like canceling that big event that was planned, the one that I was hoping to be able to go to that I never did — you know, nobody said anything about that. Nobody talks about it and why it was a big deal in what happened on that day. People attacking the building — I also saw a lot of people there that were trying to stop that, that were in the crowd that was there to support the president and support, you know, looking into the election interference and the recounts, which we never got to, by the way. So the net effect of that day was what — you know, nearly a million people —

[00:38:00]
Brian Mackey: 60-something court cases looked into election interference. No —

[00:38:06]
Jim Marter: Actually, that's not true. Most of those denied people on standing, which is ridiculous. I can't tell you how many times President Trump was denied on standing. The guy who was on the ballot — us voters that voted in that election — we were denied standing. I mean, it's the craziest thing. It's just like in Illinois — and this is specific to Illinois election law — we have zero ability to audit the vote. As a Republican county chairman in 2020, after the election, before [Jan.] 21 — January 6th — I went to my county clerk and I said, hey, I would like to audit, you know, some ballots and see them. And she was like, well, you can't do that. And I'm like, why can't I do that? You would have to have a court order. I said, well, how would I get a court order? She said you would have to prove there was fraud. How can I prove there's fraud if I can't see the ballot? So even though the feds and the state Department of [Revenue] can knock, bust down my door, come and audit my records, we the people cannot even audit our own elections, especially here in Illinois. We need to fix that. We need to fix it federally. We need to have an open audit process for all of our elections because right now it can't even be done. So —

[00:39:19]
Brian Mackey: I think two callers — I'm gonna try and get them back to back here and then ask you to respond — who have similar questions. Chris is calling from Rantoul, which is, fair enough, outside the district. But Chris, what did you want to ask Mr. Marter?

[00:39:32]
Chris: Hi, can you hear me?

[00:39:36]
Brian Mackey: I can, go ahead.

[00:39:37]
Chris: Great. I have to say, listening to this, I'm stunned by some of Mr. Marter's statements. They seem completely out of left field — conspiracy-theorist-type statements. I would like to ask him, in light of current events — CNN, MSNBC, Politico were banned by President Trump from their press duties at the White House, banned from the press pool. Does Mr. [Marter] think that the president should have the ability to deny news organizations their First Amendment rights based on how they report on him, whether he thinks it's favorable or not? Because I'll be darned if I know where he gets his information.

[00:40:37]
Brian Mackey: OK, Chris, thank you for the call. Mr. Marter, what do you think about that? And if you can say where you get — you know, do most of your news and information consumption — but particularly his question was about the White House banning reporters from certain outlets whose coverage they don't like.

[00:40:52]
Jim Marter: You know, I used to — I actually started watching, back when it was the only cable news network, CNN, many, many years ago, watched a lot of shows. One of my favorites back then was "Crossfire." I actually — because I'm very busy both campaigning and doing my day job — I almost don't watch any of the networks, or the fake news especially.

But, you know, here's the thing: The White House press pool — that's a finite group of people, and I believe every president since it was kind of established decided who can be in there or not. Long time on the conservative side, a lot of news groups were blocked from getting access to that.

[00:41:34]
Brian Mackey: Fox was never blocked from — [under] Obama was. No —

[00:41:37]
Jim Marter: I'm not saying Fox. I said a lot of conservative outlets were never — you know, maybe it's because they're not big enough or they're not this enough, they're not that enough, but it's a finite pool, so you can only let so many people in there. So people are consistently, you know, misreporting the news, and I don't think he's reporting that based on his opinion of how they're reporting them. He's basing [it] on whether they're misreporting and leaving facts out or making things up. Which is clearly happening and it happens a lot, and it happens on both sides. So the fake news is a real thing, and whether it's right or left fake news, we should all, you know, stand against that. So with the caller, I do agree on that point. If we've got people out there promoting fake news, we should be calling them out and standing against it.

[00:42:23]
Brian Mackey: So where do you get your information, then?

[00:42:27]
Jim Marter: You know, like I said, it's funny because I am so busy now that it's mostly things I do subscribe to, you know, a lot of different sources of stuff. I actually go straight to government websites for like congress.gov and stuff like that to find out things. But I mean, as you know, it's like in this day and age, information is blasting at you no matter where you're at. You've got stuff and you can't stop it, right? It's on my phone, it's on my computer. I do listen to the radio. I listen to various things on the radio show, so, but not a lot. I used to do a lot more of that, but at any rate, there's a ton of information out there. I do a lot of my own research, you know, searching, using the tools that we have this day and age and getting information. I like to direct-source things. I like to go to where the original documents are. I like to do my own analysis on data that I get off of various websites. So —

[00:43:27]
Brian Mackey: All right. Another caller — Roger is calling from Mount Carmel, line 5. Roger, thank you for calling in. Roger, are you with us?

[00:43:40]
Roger: Yes, I'm here.

[00:43:42]
Brian Mackey: Hi, Roger, go ahead. We're short on time, so please go ahead with your comment or question.

[00:43:47]
Roger: My question is, how does the governor — or a candidate for governor — lose after winning 101 counties in the state? And then we get Cook and Will and La Salle counties counted, and all of a sudden it's changed up and JB Pritzker's won. My question would be, will you please take a look and investigate this situation?

[00:44:21]
Brian Mackey: All right, Roger, I appreciate the call. Just as a matter of fact, I've just looked it up. 13 counties is what Governor Pritzker won. And, you know, obviously counties don't vote in Illinois — people do — and he won nearly 2.2 million votes to 1.7 [million] for Mr. Bailey. So hundreds of thousands of votes difference there. I'm not quite sure what you're implying or referring to there, but go ahead, Jim, if you want to respond to that.

[00:44:47]
Jim Marter: Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing. I know it wasn't 101. I knew it was a little bit less. But to his point — you know, more than 80% of the counties in the state were strongly in the Bailey camp.

Look, there's a lot going on, and I'm big on election integrity. I want every legal citizen to have one vote in the district where they live, in the state of Illinois where they grew up, where they're registered — and that's it. And I think there's a lot going on that warrants a lot of investigation in Illinois. Some of this I've learned over the years just from people, you know, door knocking and campaigns, and talking to people — a lot of them, let's just call them former Cook County residents — would tell me literally how the system is working there. Let's just say lots of coercion, lots of people out there voting that may not be legitimate voters, at least in the district they're voting in, sometimes not legitimate voters at all.

Um, checks and balances — you know, this is why I support the SAVE Act. My opponent, Lauren Underwood, doesn't think we should validate that only U.S. citizens are voting in federal elections. I do. But I think we need to put election integrity seriously in the forefront in Springfield because Springfield controls our elections. Even the federal — they have a play in it, right? So we need to make sure our Illinois election laws are fair, honest, and — oh my gosh, we don't need 40 days of early voting, and it's very expensive, by the way. It's one of those things the county clerks can't stand because of the cost of all this mailing stuff — these huge packets and stuff going on. 40 days, it's ridiculous. We need to get back — I'm not against, you know, like, let's say a week of early voting, and even a shift available [for] early voting during that week, but 40 days is nuts. It's crazy.

Mail-in ballots — you know, we used to keep those very strictly, a very tight protocol on it. Now it's wide open. No election judge ever gets to see the person signing the ballot, casting the vote, etc. They get a document, maybe in the paper, maybe delivered by them, maybe in the mail, maybe dropped at a drop box. Nobody ever saw the voter actually vote or saw them sign the document that they actually made that vote.

[00:47:14]
Brian Mackey: All right, just a few minutes left in our time together. I want to end with sort of a big-picture, philosophical conversation. There's been a lot of change in the Republican Party in the last decade. I'm sure you've seen that running for office, the type of people who are running in Illinois — you are, you know, trying to affect some of that change. What right now — and again, only a couple of minutes left — is there a difference between, or among, being Republican, being a conservative, and being MAGA, or for Trump?

[00:47:43]
Jim Marter: Yeah, well, first of all, MAGA was Ronald Reagan's. It was his 1980 campaign. He had the word "let's" in front, as in "let us make America great again." So I don't know that the hats —

[00:47:54]
Brian Mackey: So yeah, just — we can drop [MAGA] then, say just being [for] Trump. You're right —

[00:47:59]
Jim Marter: He brought it back from Reagan, but I love it. I love it because — who in America should be against making America great again, right? I mean, we should always be focused on that. And Trump says this to other countries — you know, if you're in Mexico, you should make Mexico great again, right? Let's — everyone in their own country should be focused on that.

I don't think there's — it's not like a club or a card you sign, whatever. But I can tell you this: The Republican Party is the party of the working family. One of the most important speeches in Dallas was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s. By the way, I read his dad's book from 1959 a couple of times many, many years ago. It was on my grandmother's shelf — that's how I got it. And, you know, he said, look, the Democrat Party's walked away from what we used to be. It's the Republican Party [that] is the party of the working people. You've got him, you've got John Fetterman out there — probably going to dump the Democrat Party soon — but he's out there stumping for the Republicans.

We can't go crazy [with] the socialist communism, and that's what the Democrat Party is becoming. They've been taken over by — both my grandfathers were Democrats. I can tell you they were very conservative, Christian, God-loving, faith, family and freedom type men, and that's why I'm for the Republicans and faith, family and freedom.

[00:49:19]
Brian Mackey: Jim Marter is challenging Democratic Congresswoman Lauren Underwood in the 14th District, which encompasses Joliet, DeKalb, La Salle-Peru in northern Illinois. Mr. Marter, thank you for being with us and sharing your views.

[00:49:33]
Jim Marter: All right, thank you. I really enjoyed it.

[00:49:48]
Brian Mackey: That is it for us today. Coming up tomorrow on The 21st Show, Fulton Sheen was a bishop — arguably one of the best-known Catholic leaders in the mid-1900s. He had a big TV and radio show that went across the country. He is on the path towards sainthood, taking a big step in that this week. He is originally from Illinois. We'll talk about his life and Illinois story tomorrow here on The 21st Show, which is a production of Illinois Public Media. I'm Brian Mackey. Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you again tomorrow.

---

**Flagged for Human Review:**

- [00:03:48] — Marter references his high school as "Limestone class Rockets class of 1981." Formatted as "Limestone [Rockets, class] of 1981" — please verify the school name and mascot.
- [00:16:11] — The caller's city is transcribed as "Mahamt." Rendered as [Mahomet] based on contextual inference (a city in Champaign County, Illinois); please verify.
- [00:18:49] — Marter references "Illinois House 4first district." Rendered as [41st] District based on contextual inference; please verify the specific district number.
- [00:20:00] — The caller's city is transcribed as "Kinmandy." Rendered as [Kinmundy] based on contextual inference (a city in Marion County, Illinois); please verify.
- [00:22:42] — Marter references locations in Chicago that appear as "Sheridan Gordon Gorman." This sequence is unclear and may refer to specific neighborhoods, streets, or individuals. Retained with brackets [Sheridan] [Gordon] [Gorman] pending verification.
- [00:24:21] — Marter references "[Trender], the Argentinian one," possibly referring to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal gang. Rendered as [Tren de Aragua] based on contextual inference; please verify.
- [00:29:10] — Host references "the war in Iran," which may reflect the actual geopolitical situation at time of broadcast or may be a misstatement (e.g., intended "war with Iran" or conflict in the region). Please verify the geopolitical context and whether this accurately reflects events at the time of broadcast.
- [00:38:06] — Marter references "before 4/21 January 6th." Rendered as "before [Jan.] 21 — January 6th" as the date reference is unclear; please verify.
- [00:38:06] — Marter references "the state Department of Treasury." Rendered as "Department of [Revenue]" based on contextual inference (Illinois Department of Revenue conducts audits); please verify the intended agency.
- [00:39:32] — The caller refers to "Mr. Margarett," which appears to be a mispronunciation of "Marter." Retained as [Marter] per speaker label rules; no bracket applied to speaker label itself.
- [00:41:34] — Host's statement "Fox was never blocked from — [under] Obama was. No —" is fragmented and unclear. Bracketed word added for readability; please verify intended meaning.