TALK 94.5 Liz And Nick
TALK 94.5 Liz And Nick
GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Rom Reddy 5.18.26
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Joining us right now is a candidate for South Carolina governor, GOP candidate Rob Reddy. Good morning. Welcome back.
SPEAKER_01How are you learning? I always love being on your show.
SPEAKER_04Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, we enjoy speaking with you, and as uh many uh have known that in the past we talked to you in the beginning when you were heading up a Dode SE to turn that into a campaign. A part of your campaign platform. So you're allowed to time for something different. What is the main difference? Because we have talked to you before um about this race, so I really want to dig a little deeper than just surface. How will you fundamentally change the direction that South Carolina is moving in currently?
SPEAKER_01Well, let me ask you. If your listeners believe this is a good direction, let me tell you what's going on. For the last 10 years, Liz, government spending has doubled, literally doubled. I mean, it's it's gone up a little more than two times. Taxes now were the highest income tax of any Republican-led state to keep up with the spending. Every major metric remains near the bottom nationally. Doesn't matter what it is. Education, roads, median family income, violent crime, they're all bad. And who benefits? Massive growth in government and donors. Donors have gotten all kinds of deals, including suite office deals, board seats on the ports, and everything else. And the growth in government, if your listeners knew, they would be stunned. I mean, administrative groups like the Department of Education has gone up from $2.5 billion to $4.5 billion, while education would remain 43 out of 50. Social services, 120 million to 333 million. Commerce from 27 million to 370 million. You and I love the parks and rec. We all like parks. 48 million 10 years ago, 220 million today. These people are out of control. Higher education, I don't know who we're educating, but in the last 10 years, 700 million to 1.8 billion. So my question to your viewers is this in the private sector, if you have a massive increase in spending and no performance change, you file leadership. That's what that's what I've done in all my companies that we bought and we fixed and we've grown, we fire the leadership. Here they want a promotion. I don't I don't get it. So it I mean it's it's a very uh clear example of what's wrong with politics and the money that's coming in, seven million dollars in secret money. You and I have no idea who is funding these people through these packs. And they use this money to obscure their record. Pamela says she's gonna fix everything. She's been in office there. Norman says he's an outsider, he's been there for 20 years. Why do these people lie to you? Why don't you just say, hey, you know what? I've been here, I've done nothing, but I'm gonna do something, and here's what I'm gonna do. So this this is the dichotomy we have. And I don't know. So what are you doing?
SPEAKER_04What are you going yeah, so you don't take any political you're not taking any endorsements, you don't take donations, you don't even take private donations, right?
SPEAKER_01No, I take nothing. Zero.
SPEAKER_04Zero. And there's a reason for that, and we'll talk about that also. But I wanted to ask you, what is it that you're going to do and how are you going to address all of that list you talked about where we are with with um you know uh education. That is a thing that drives me crazy. Is all this talk about education and and um you know, maybe a local school here and there is doing well, but as a whole, we're it's embarrassing.
SPEAKER_01It's not it's not just embarrassing, it's a it's a disgrace to our children. You know, my mom always told me, you know, education is economic freedom. And this is, you know, when 68% of fourth graders cannot read a grade level, that's economic tyranny. So the best way for your listeners to know what specific no one has done this, by the way. So if you if they go to readyforgovernor.com under the policy tab, I have a 12-page newspaper, literally a newspaper that we've mailed to a lot of people. But if you if you did not get it in the mail, there's a 12-page newspaper that you can download that tells you not only what we're gonna do, but how we're going to do it. That is, the people have seen it are taken aback. They said they've never seen anything like it. So at the bottom line is money and power has shifted from the citizen to the government. Everything we do, there's there's eight specific four principles and eight specific things that lay out in that newspaper. And I said, if I don't do it, I won't run again. It's as simple as that. Everything we do, money and power, has to shift back. So it's from eliminating the income tax the right way by cutting our costs. I got the agencies going from 100 plus to 35, all these boards gone, a whole bunch of stuff that I've laid out in there. Eliminating property tax on cars and trucks, also laid out there, freezing the property tax on everything else so we can fix it, because property taxes are being driven by local spending that's gone from 19 billion in 2019 to 30 billion today. And and uh reasserting executive authority and and crimes against children is horrible, what we're doing. I actually talk about a physical castration as a mandatory condition of parole in the document. And then, you know, Lynn, you you saw the crazy Joe Biden stuff with immigration and stuff like that. Ask yourself why. So these so the so the illegals can vote. That's why. So why in South Carolina do we not require proof of citizenship when you register? All you do is sign an affidavit. That makes any sense to you? It's a simple legislative change, it's not a constitutional change.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Simply say when you register, you have to have a birth certificate. Or a or a passport.
SPEAKER_04We keep our we are constantly told, whenever I bring this up, this topic of election security. Um I'm told that this election system here is safe, but it's on the honor system, and uh in honorable people are participating in the honor system and using it against us. And uh, you know, and and that's that's a huge flaw.
SPEAKER_01It is a huge flaw. And and even when they say it's safe, Ron DeSantis, who is a great friend of ours, and that they have an election integrity unit that at least checks to say, yeah, it is. He he does audits. We do nothing. We just say, trust me, it's good. Yeah, it's good, everything's good. And and not only are we not locking who can vote, um, we we have no idea whether we vote and what's happening. I'm telling you, the I said this before, and I'll say it again. South Carolina cannot be fixed. It has to be shrunk. The whole government has to be shrunk and rebooted. These guys will never do it. They got us here, all of them. Norman, 20 years in there, Pamela, eight years in there, uh Alan, 15 years in there, every one of them, they got us here. You think they're gonna get us out? No way.
SPEAKER_04We're speaking with Rom Reddy, he's the GOP candidate for governor, and the election is maybe June 9th. Uh, that's what we're thinking at the moment. Uh, we don't know what's gonna happen with that. But uh before we go on and talk about redistricting, because I wanted to get your opinion on that. Uh well in your newsletter, there's I just want to read this like one little passage here that uh you mentioned that South Carolina is crawling for, and I'm quoting, for with unelected agencies that exercise enormous power over citizens' lives. And you left CSS, DS, SDLT, DNR, for public safety. But I want I need to make sure because we've talked about the COVID journey that the state went through. I wanted to make sure that on the list is the Department of Health as well. Because we just saw the public health director. Um we saw the Governor Henry McMaster say that Dr. Brandon Crackler is now our director of public health. And when you do any little mild research on her, it's a nightmare. What they what they participated in regarding masking our children and and pushing vaccines and and all that. Uh you have your own personal story with vaccines and business being a business owner. So please share with us your thoughts.
SPEAKER_01First of all, these people are lying to you. And this Zimmer guy, this Zimmer guy, he was what we're running around the beach with a mask. This guy's a crazy guy. Now, the woman is replacing him is worse than him, if that's possible. It really, if that's possible, she's worse. This this is this is what we're doing. When during COVID, they said they didn't shut anything down. It's a lie. I was running a 500-pay uh person business. They they they they told me if I didn't shut down, it was $2,000 per person. I called McMaster and said, I will not do that. What kind of business people was it? Only because is it essential?
SPEAKER_04It was a non-essential, obviously.
SPEAKER_01No, we were making, we were manufacturing artificial turf um and we were installing it in in 50 states. And I spent liz I spent $400,000 in legal fees defending against it in multiple states. They tried to shut us down. I say, you're not gonna shut us down. And the Green Bay Packers wanted five people installing an outdoor field to have a vaccination certificate. I walked away from it. I actually made TV commercials, but they suppressed them on YouTube. They wouldn't even play them. Um, this these people are lying to you. The only one who stood up was Ron DeSantis. And uh I I I called Ron DeSantis when they had this $2,000 uh a day fine. It could have been a million dollars a day if they'd imposed that fine. I said, Governor, I'm not gonna do it. But these people are bad people, Liz. You can't just change this Zimmer guy and this other lady. So the whole organization is bad. This is what I'm saying. It has to be rebooted, it cannot be fixed. And if you're if it's your your your your listeners have uh a heck of a choice this year. They have to say, aren't we tired of this? How long are we going to put up with this? Nothing has changed in their lives. Nothing. No one can name anything while the spending has doubled. All these crooks are in office. They they take all this money, they take care of their donors. This is one chance to throw a grenade in the swamp and see what crawls. I don't think there's ever been a uh in the history of South Carolina a situation in a statewide gubernatorial race where someone is running with no money, not obligated to anyone, no donors, no special interests, no nothing. So if the citizens don't rise up, and rising up means not going to vote, because that's rigged too as you've you said. We have to overwhelm the vote. So when you go to vote, you've got to take five people with you.
SPEAKER_04And we've been through this before, um, you know, by doing that. So I have a question for you because you uh refer to Governor Ron DeSantis, and we've all admired what he and his surgeon general and his team have been able to do with Florida. It is amazing. But all um people in government here say, well, we don't have a strong enough government uh model for governor. And then and then I say, well, what about all those executive orders? And they were able to do all this stuff, all of the science. They always say, we can't fix this, we can't fix that, we have all these obstacles, you know, this whole thing between different things. Um, we're always given an excuse as to why the governor can't do all the things that Ron DeSantis can do to make the histate better. And yet we were under siege during COVID, no problem.
SPEAKER_01No, he's a lie. That's also but that's also a lie because just think of the constitution. People have forgotten, they don't take civics classes, so they don't know any of this. But the the constitution is set up for three co-equal branches. So each branch can hold the other in check, and we have a free people. That's how we built the greatest country in the world. So in in the South Carolina Constitution under Article 4, the governor is the supreme executive authority in the state. He has things like line item veto power that even the president doesn't have, but he doesn't use it. He says he can't uphold a veto that requires one-third of the House or one-third of the Senate in a supermajority state. This is not a system problem. This is a leadership problem. This, this, this, this this is, you know, I have four letters for this thing. It's called lazy. L-A-B-Y. These people are lazy, so they take the lazy way out of everything. They don't want to govern. They like the pomp and pageantry of being governor, or they're running for president or doing something else, or they're doing things for their donors. Their donors got amazing deals in the last 10 years, amazing, amazing deals. So the system is broken. And if we're either going to fix the system, and and we have the opportunity to fix the system, not listen to all these polished Norman says term limits. How's he going to get term limits? Two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote themselves out of a job. And what is he going to go say? Please vote yourself out. I've been in office for 21 years. Here I want to run another eight years. There's no moral clarity there.
SPEAKER_04You talk so Rom, I don't want to run out of time, but you talk about rebooting. Um, and how what do you have in your arsenal to do this?
SPEAKER_01So, yeah, well, we have a lot in our arsenal. First of all, we're just gonna what we're gonna do what President Trump is doing, reasserting executive authority. So we're gonna go to these boards and commissions that all are all over the executive branch and say, you're fired. And they say, they're gonna say, you can't fire us. Just did take us to court. I think we need to reassert our authority in court, and we're gonna have a set of constitutional lawyers. By the way, they're gonna have to be from out of state because the in-state lawyers are also cabal. Sorry to say, right, but it's true. And and it's gonna be fun. We're gonna literally go back 250 years to what our past gave us. Our rights come from God, not from government. Government's job is to protect those rights, not take that power and use it against us. And I will just say one thing. The last sentence of the declaration said, with the firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor in the defense of these principles. So what's happened to us? We have to have the courage to do that, Liz.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Rom, in the time we have remaining, and we're speaking with Rom Reddy, R-E-D-D-Y. You can go to readyforgovernor.com, and if you click on policy, you can um also uh policy tab, you can find this newsletter. I wanted to do a rapid fire with you just in these final minutes here, just to get your opinion on certain things. Is that okay? Sure. Okay. Uh data centers. What is your take on that?
SPEAKER_01100% against it. It's another hoax that they're that they're uh putting on us. And I again it's in that newsletter as to there's a long article I've written as to why I'm 100% opposed. Any local people where they come to you say no.
SPEAKER_04Income taxes.
SPEAKER_01We're overcollecting all um uh income taxes uh need to be eliminated. We do not need these income taxes. They're taking it and growing government. It needs to be gone and it has to be gone the right way, which is you've got to cut costs, not say how do I replace it with some other tax? And I have a plan to do that, uh, starting with these agencies that go from 100 plus to 35, the boards, uh, these commissions. They have a board of higher education that they $100 million a year. What's wrong with these people?
SPEAKER_04What do you think is gonna happen with the redistricting fight here and the move, the possible move of the primary?
SPEAKER_01Uh the primary is not gonna be moved for statewide elections other than possibly for Congress. Uh, I think that if they do it, they're gonna have two elections. I honestly don't think they're gonna do it. So partisanship, uh redistricting on partisanship is allowed. It's constitutional, and I have no issues with it. If we can do what we can do, we should do it. Uh, however, remember, we're asking the arsonists to put out the fire. These literally, these are the people who created it. In in 2020, uh, when Joe Cunningham won um as a Democrat in District 1, they took parts of downtown Charleston and parts of West Ashley and put it in District 6. They did it the same for Joe Wilson when he was close. They took parts of Columbia and put it in district six. So now we're telling the arsonists, go in there and put out the fire. These people are incompetent, Liz. They I'll tell you what they'll do. They're going to screw this up and they're going to get all these districts messed up. They're incapable of doing anything right. I'm sorry to say. So I'm very supportive of redistricting. I'm worried about these same guys who created this problem uncreating it.
SPEAKER_04Property taxes.
SPEAKER_01Oh, property tax out of control. As you know, property taxes are all go to local government and local municipalities, not to the state. They've gone, uh, their local spending has gone from 19 billion to 30 billion in the last six years. Why? Because the state government has taken their hands off the wheel of local government. They think they're sovereign and they're not sovereign. Local government was created by the state. We have a forensics audit that's simply going to go in there and say, where's the cash coming from and where is it going to? Uh, administrators now exceed teachers in the school district. It's crazy. And they and they make $50,000 more than a teacher on average.
SPEAKER_04So, do you plan on using the forensic audit AI tool that was developed by your Doge SC to go through every single agency?
SPEAKER_01Not just agency. We've got to go through the local municipalities. And the first thing they're going to do is they're going to say, home rule. And I'm going to say, Really, home rule. Great. Rule your home. You're going to cut off state funds tomorrow. Because I have a fiduciary responsibility to my taxpayer. And I am not putting state dollars into your municipality until I know where the heck you're spending your money. And I think you're going to find this is what I said throw a grenade in the swamp. You're going to see what crawls because these municipalities are utterly corrupt, starting with Ori, by the way, one of the most corrupt municipalities that exist.
SPEAKER_04Yep. Yep. I have one more question, and then we have one on the text line. What is the uh what do you think about the criticism you receive for not going to every single event they have for candidates all across the state, like all different types of entities are having these meet the candidate things.
SPEAKER_01Yes. I I I don't do that because uh we actually put out a note on that on social media in the last few days, simply because they go out there and uh, you know, it they've got these one-liners for 15 minutes, they make a speech, it's all one-liners, no substance. Most of the people who go there say we already know the answer before we ask the questions, the standard consultant-driven answers. Our meetings, we're the only ones that do solo meetings throughout the state. We have hundreds of people come to these and we take questions from all over. It's entertaining. I think you've been to one in Ori and we answer every question. I also do twice a week a Zoom call for one hour where I take every question under the sun in depth because we we're all about getting results, not about like Nancy says, I I submitted 65 bills. How many became lost? Zero. You may I have six. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. I was just gonna say I said if I have sixty-five at bats, I need to get 50 hits, or I'll sync the company.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Um, I have to ask you this real quick. I promised that was my last question. But uh, it says you will get the education to the top 20. Right now, what are we like 43rd or something?
SPEAKER_0143. Uh, we go between 42 and 43. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04How are you gonna do that?
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's uh if you just look into education, you'll see what's going on with education. First of all, there's no one in charge. They have oversight, they have an oversight board that needs to be gone. Uh, then they have a state education board that is completely political, it needs to be appointed by the governor, which we will do. And then you've got this these school districts that are out of control. So, in my in my opinion, if we don't fix these school districts, 81 school districts, each of which have preemption, which means they can override um a state policy. We uh there is a 10-state coalition where they give reciprocity to teachers. We don't belong to that. Then we say we don't have enough uh teachers. These kids cannot just be promoted like they are from one grade to the next. If you can't read, you're redoing third grade. I mean, there is there is no way. We've got to have progressive testing during the year so we know where these kids are. And then we've got a remedial program going on right now, a test going on through my foundation at Edgefield School District on math and science. It's amazing. It's amazing what these tools done. The parents can work with the child on these tools to help them with math and science. So we got a whole thing laid out. It's actually laid out my Ready Room newspaper that you referenced earlier. Uh, this can be fixed, but not fixed by all this happy talk. You know, they've done nothing. They've done nothing. $11 billion in spending on schools in 2019, $17 billion this year, no resolve. Who does that?
SPEAKER_04We have a question for you on the budget blinds text line.
SPEAKER_00I'm sure this is a great way to close it as well, because is there any way I can get this person my phone? Number. I'd love to talk to him. I'd love to help out his campaign. I'm not sure you can do that. So how do I help this person?
SPEAKER_01Info info at readyforgovernor.com. INFO info at readyforgovernor.com. Please get in touch with us. We always by the way, I scan those info at Ready for Governor. I response. People say we're the most responsive ever because that's how it should be.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, exactly. Rom ready. Anything else you want to add before we go? Um, you know, maybe an upcoming event or anything else?
SPEAKER_01We uh we have lots of upcoming events. We're in uh Spartanburg on Tuesday, Greenville on Wednesday, Anderson Pickens on Thursday, Somerville on Saturday. Please come see us. We also have Zoom calls twice a week on this week today, Monday at six o'clock, and on Friday, and I answer every question under the sun. And like I said, check out our newspaper if you didn't get it in the mail. It's really people look at it and say they've never seen anything like it.
SPEAKER_04And and how do you get in on those Zoom calls?
SPEAKER_01You just go to our website and register. Very simple. Ready R E D E Y for Governor.com.
SPEAKER_04All right. All right, very good. And uh uh we appreciate your time and coming back on. Um, you're like you're one of the only candidates. Everyone's avoiding our show. We had Ralph Norman uh join us, um, but but that's it so far. Everyone's been invited, but I don't know, maybe they just don't like my questions.
SPEAKER_01These people join you, Liz. You know, they they you already know, you ask them a question, you already know what they're gonna say. Some consultant talking plan. I guarantee you do the test next time. You probably already know the answer. But with me, my wife says, uh, you never know what's gonna come out of this mouth because I just say the what whatever I think I say, I say the same thing to you that I say to her around the dinner table.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and there's so much more to uh to talk about. We only have a few minutes every time, but uh, you know, uh we wish you the best of luck and we'll t we'll talk again, I'm sure. The primary is June 9th. Very good chance that either that election or the runoff will be deciding who will be the governor, uh, you know, because uh the the chances of a Republican primary winner becoming governor are very high. So uh I keep telling people how important it is, and you have to pay attention and stay plugged in. So we appreciate your time and sharing uh your platform.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. And and please, oh you've got to overwhelm the vote. And by the way, we we are going to be in Ori on the 30th, I'm told.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Excellent.
SPEAKER_00What's uh do you know exactly where or we can find that out probably from your website?
SPEAKER_01We're gonna put we're we're gonna put up on our website the next day or two.
SPEAKER_00All right, because we're getting questions on that as well.
SPEAKER_04All right, very good. All right, thank you so much.