515: Could This Libertarian Actually WIN This Board of Supervisors Seat!? (w/ Kelly Carden)

Brian Nichols  0:03  
focusing on winning arguments. We're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Happy Thursday there, folks, Brian, The Brian Nichols Show. Thank you for joining us on another fun filled episode. Today we are going to have a returning guest. He's running for the board of Supervisor of supervisors, supervisors, we'll get that right over in Kern County. But before we get there, we're gonna go ahead and talk about today's sponsor the the expat money Summit. 2022 hit the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash expat where you can sign up for this free virtual summit November 7 through November 11. Five days 30 expert speakers watch for a week reap the benefits for generations join us and yes, our friend Nick calthorpe, from the expat money show and the expat summit and you'll be able to check out the expat money summit 2022 at Brian Nichols show.com. Forward slash expat folks today on the program. Yeah, as long as I can get the word out right for Kern County Board of Supervisors district to return the program and Kelly Carden Welcome to the program.

Kelly Carden  1:19  
Hey, Brian, how's it going, man, thanks for having me on.

Brian Nichols  1:22  
Going good. My man, you are absolutely crushing it out in Kern County, and you're running for Board of Supervisors. But Kelly, before we dig into all the amazing things you're doing out there with yes, that bigger? Well, no, do you have the big L behind your name I forget.

Kelly Carden  1:36  
I do have an L. I mean, it's a nonpartisan race. But everyone's reporting me openly as a libertarian, like I make them talk about it. You know, it's not just about building myself as as a candidate. It's about growing the the, you know, our party, you know, making sure that people are noticing our party know that it's alive and doing well. And that it is growing and gaining attention. I mean, then the support that I'm seeing is completely across the political spectrum. At one point I was at a car show over the weekend, I had two Democrats, and a guy who was like pure libertarian and Republican and I was talking to all of them about the same issue with the same kind of response. And they all were like everybody for you.

Brian Nichols  2:15  
Well, that See, there you go. Because you're you you're speaking to what we're gonna talk about today that is, and the audience can say it along with me meeting people on the issues they care about, right? meet people where they're at, come on, let's do it, folks. And this is something that we we've talked about in the past. And we're going to get in this today, Kelly, but let's quickly before we dig into what you're discussing with the voters, let's have a chance for you to reintroduce yourself to the audience. And of course, the new members of the audience of The Brian Nichols Show.

Kelly Carden  2:43  
Yeah, Brian, so thanks for that again. i My name is Kelly Carden. I've lived in Kern County, California for my since I was nine months old in 1986. I'm actually a third generation Kern County resident, I decided to run for office when everything got really expensive in the middle of the pandemic. And I figured that was a good place to start, right. Um, I got quoted in the paper, people started messaging me just the issues. You know, hey, Kelly, nobody else is. Nobody else is, you know, taking care of and listening to us or taking care of us. So why don't you and I started getting a little bit hairy and party, and I decide to run for office, Matthew butts actually helped me kind of focus on an office that I wanted to run for. And we picked the Board of Supervisors. And after talking to my neighbors, we realized that it was kind of right for the picking that there's incumbent who is been there for 12 years, has a lot of negative name recognition right now, across the political spectrum. And we so we said, hey, let's before you know, and we've been running a grassroots campaign, I mean, like old school, like, I played a lot of bingo, and I've eaten a lot of them, even seniors. I've been at car shows and fairs, and craft fairs. And I've had a booth where people can just sit and talk with me. And just hearing what they have to say and being able to meet people where they are, like you said, and seeing that. Okay, they're so tired of what's been what's, why not try something different? And so it's been pretty cool. Just a cool experience over the last year. I've spoken. I don't know anywhere from 75 to 100 times at different events. I mean, it's, it's been pretty cool. And just a couple of weeks ago, we actually had a debate that was aired on NBC. And it was myself and two Republican opponents. And it was awesome. I mean, it was such a good time that the incumbent hasn't really hasn't shared the debate. Media

Brian Nichols  4:40  
that's how you know it's good with when the guy that's the income that won't even share it. Wow, that's fantastic. Good work, Kelly.

Kelly Carden  4:48  
We've actually had people post it onto his comments again to his own posts, and they get removed. It's pretty

Brian Nichols  4:58  
out of here. He's that embarrassed. Buy it. Yeah, no kidding. Oh, by the way, that's fantastic marketing. Good work there.

Kelly Carden  5:06  
Yeah, it's, it's great.

Brian Nichols  5:09  
It's Wow. Well, Kelly, let's um, let's now talk about your running for Kern County Board of Supervisors, and specifically, the why right now. Now, you mentioned the why in terms of people reaching out to you saying, hey, we need somebody to be alternative to what has been, really, in this case, a establishment, just individual completely isolated from reality, I think we've seen this across the board, especially the past two years here with the pandemic, those individuals who are making the laws and have to live in their own little world. Whereas you know, the real folks out here, we have to live with the laws that they're creating. But let's go towards those specific issues that you're going to be tackling head on. And I know, just by a quick glance at your website, that and you mentioned it a little bit here already. And that is number one term limits. Talk to me about why term limits is such an important issue to you, and why it's made the top of your website is one of your most focused issues in your race, therefore Kern County Board of Supervisors.

Kelly Carden  6:08  
So strangely enough, I don't typically support term limits, I think they're kind of there, I don't think they work all the time. The reason why is because if you follow the money, you're just changing the driver, but the seats, the seats under the same company, right. But in Kern County, we actually have really good finance or campaign finance laws, to make it pretty hard to raise money, you're only allowed to raise $500 from any individual entity, you know, and so it's a little bit more challenging to game the system. So there's so so that's part of why I do support. So I've always said I would support term limits. If you did this with a campaign finance, they did that. So I'm just gonna sport tournaments. The other reason is, our Board of Supervisors, every single one of them, well, I take that back four of the five members of the Board of Supervisors, four of the five members of the Board of Supervisors, holy cow, I gotta say that they would actually be term limited out right now. I mean, so I think the disconnect is very real. I think that the lack of, of turnover, his made them almost obsolete in the way that they interact with, with the general public. As far as it's just very, if you're connected, you can get hurt if you're not done. So that's why I supported tournaments, and and then also, it ended up on the ballot. So just by chance, I had already talked about it. And then an organization actually got enough signatures to qualify it to be on the ballot. So today, let's that if it has to, if it's going to win, as well, back here. Right. So there's a little bit of good marketing, you know, and but it is a huge issue.

Brian Nichols  7:40  
Yeah, well, and I've seen it, I know, we've all seen it in not just local, right? alliterations. But like, let's just look at the macro. Look at the the federal level, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, all those freaking dinosaurs, like the fact that they had been in office for in this case, decades. I mean, good God, Joe Biden literally was in office when he was 29 years old. What, like, and now he's president United States. And he's, like, 8080, some odd years old, somewhere in there. It's

Kelly Carden  8:16  
like, as long as you and I have been alive, combined

Brian Nichols  8:19  
it and yet, and yet these elected officials think that they have the pulse of the average person, Kelly.

Kelly Carden  8:28  
Yeah. So like here locally, in the debate, it was I had a lot of opportunities really highlight some of those some of those really just out of touch moments, Mr. Incumbent as and he kept saying, he wrote in his reelection letter, his reelection announcement that he will continue to provide first class public safety services to the residents of my my district. But my district suffers from like 90 minute response times. Wow. But but his town where he lives, and he would live in what I would consider to be the safest zip code in our entire county. So his reality is that he has first class public safety services. He just passed it off as to the rest of us as if it was our reality. And that's what happens when you have these guys who've made a career out of this. This guy has been in office for 18 years now, between city council and between the Board of Supervisors. That's a career man, like you're so far detached anymore. You can't possibly know what's going on.

Brian Nichols  9:28  
So let's talk about some of the main issues that Kern County is experiencing right now. Now, we talked about last time, I think one of the main issues everybody was experiencing was the COVID 19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns and government mandates, and all the restrictions, all that fun stuff that we got to experience. And then frankly, why I know millions of others have moved out of blue cities and blue states for that very reason. But let's go to some of the other issues that are out there that are impacting the in specifically the era area you Oh home, Kern County and I know that one of the areas that you're focusing on is the water issue and how not only is there a big water issue, but Kelly, a lot of the problem is actually due to government policy or government inaction No.

Kelly Carden  10:13  
Yeah. So it absolutely it absolutely is. It's a man major, it's a manmade crisis. I mean, drought, like, it's obvious that there's less rain coming out of the sky. But in the month of March, they they the California government, allowed enough water to escape under the Golden Gate Bridge, that would have filled Mount Shasta to its its capacity. So the you know, they're lending out 100 times more than what's necessary. So the way that we make that local is by focusing on conservation, of course, and making it a governmental issue where we're, we're focusing on in our footprints, right? I'm so tired of driving down the street and watching the county maintain sprinklers just spraying the air. And it's literally everywhere, in every town anywhere. But they want to tell us that we have to take our grass out, because we're wasting water, you know, well, no, actually, the people, you you're wasting water and you're wasting the money that we're giving you to pay for the water. So stop wasting the water. So you stop wasting money. It's fiscally responsible. But then as far as the state issue is we have to build a coalition of other counties that are willing to go head to head on at the governor over this issue. So building a single issue coalition of, you know, 40 of the 58 counties and going and saying, Hey, Governor Newsom, you have to stop this practice of allowing too much water to flow out of the state. It's well beyond the minimum, and anything beyond the minimum is a waste. So that's how we attack the water issues locally, making it a conservation issue, and this and in building coalitions amongst the other counties and other elected officials in the state, and then making it a state issue, then by going to them and saying you're going to do this.

Brian Nichols  11:55  
Yeah. Well, and frankly, I mean, it becomes a it becomes like a continuity issue. Right. Like, and I talked about this all the time, when I'm meeting with like CIOs and IT directors, they're planning their business continuity plans. And you want to know, like, what are the worst case scenarios and what can you do to avoid those? Right. And, and that is, that is something I think we're seeing right now where a lot of the problems that we've ultimately had government, really cause have been completely neglected and then exacerbated upon and that I think re there's why so many people are waking up and starting to stand up and fight back. Now before we go to some of the other issues. Kelly will I'll go ahead and talk about an important issue. That is cybersecurity. I know cybersecurity is across the board is my day job and the number one way people are getting hit right now, phishing, let's go ahead and learn a little bit more. You're not going to believe this and cyber attacks have continued to skyrocket phishing attacks ranked as the second most expensive causes of data breaches According to IBM phishing attacks cause of businesses an average of $4.65 million in business email compromises BCS, which is a type of phishing where attackers hijack or spoof. A legitimate corporate email account ranks at number one costing businesses an average of $5.01 million per breach. But that's not the only way because you can lead to a costly breach attacks using compromised credentials were ranked as the fifth most costly cause of a data breach averaging $4.37 million. And how do credentials get compromised more often than not be efficient. While your employees can be your company's most valuable asset. They can also be the biggest target for cyber criminals head the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash fishing to hop on a call with me where I'll show how we can use customized targeted phishing campaigns that simulate real world phishing attacks and then take those Sealy threats and use them as training opportunities to help you understand your organization's real life risks. Again, that's the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash phishing don't let phishing attacks cripple your business one more time Brian cool show.com forward slash phishing

it helps if I unmute myself no true story. I actually saw a story today I say I saw I actually heard firsthand a story today from one of my prospects about a fishing a very going sophisticated phishing attack from one of their old jobs that turned into a ransomware attack $600,000 per day they're losing for a ransomware attack absolute insanity but that is that's a drop in the bucket. If you look at the the costs of what a home would be out in California and my god, Kelly that the cost of home has been increasing not just across the United States, but you look specifically those really blue areas it seems to be getting more and more expensive. Talk to us about the increasing home costs in Kern County.

Kelly Carden  14:45  
So it's just gotten so expensive. Kern County used to be great, you know, like I bought my house in 2013 I think for like 95,000 and it's it's gone up quite a bit but it's the rest of the market has gone up so much faster that I can't ever I will Don't ever hope to sell it and move anything else. So the way that we address those housing issues are by first off, really like working on relaxing the local regulations around housing costs, you know, first off the fees associated specifically, we can wave those to help encourage homebuilding and help flood the market. You know, letting us use letting homebuilders use alternative materials, some containers, many homes, other kinds of things. It and then again, unfortunately, in California, the reality is the state sucks. There's not much else other way to say the state is terrible on this issue, then, and you mentioned it earlier, it's they've tried to do good. And by trying to do together, they've made it so much worse than I could ever hope to be. And so it's going to again, be fighting with the state and building that coalition of other counties that are willing to say, hey, Governor Newsom, this isn't working. Like you have to write less than these regulations on the cost of new home building on the requirements that are driving costs way up things like solar, you know, on every home now, it's insane. And then, and then they're even Trump, but then so they want to every home on solar, but now they're also raising the solar connect fee. There was a protest in downtown LA actually is going on right now in downtown LA about it. And it's like, man, they try to get you everywhere they can.

Brian Nichols  16:23  
Yeah, well, and then the question is, how much of it is is actually do good policy? And then how much of it is extortion? We're going to be if we're going to be really, you know, not mincing words here. But you do see this, right. This is not unfortunately, exclusive to California, especially those blue states. It's gotten very, very, very bad. I saw Philadelphia and I was leaving, they just raised the the property tax assessments and and there's certain areas, the assessments were went up 30 to 50%. Could you imagine if you were a homeowner, and you were on a fixed income, trying to pay an increase of 30 to 50%, in your home assessments for your property taxes? Absolutely insanity. It's not it's not viable. And yet, you see a split. And this is the part that drives me crazy Kelly, you've had all these, these blue states, who have been able to go out and tell how great their economic prospects were, how much money they had in the bank, after all the money they were given over the past two years from government and government handouts, and then also with the tax revenue. And now they have the audacity to go out of their way and try to nickel and dime whenever they can, when we're facing one of the biggest inflationary crisis, as we've we've experienced in the past 40 years. And that goes to the next point I want to focus on and that is the economy, which is not just hitting us, you know, in specific areas. It's across the board, Kern County included, talk to us about what the impact has been with regards to the inflation the different issues we have with supply chain, and of course, the continuing effects of the COVID 19 pandemic and government mandates and lock downs.

Kelly Carden  17:56  
Yeah, so Kern County isn't really having any more issues with mandates and lock downs currently, um, that we do, I do have a lot of voters, a lot of people in the county that are concerned with the governor is going to continue to ramp them up. And there are several bills that have been discussed in both of our both our hard levels in the State Assembly in the state senate, about those things. So there's definitely some fear there. But as far as like the economy, it's still bad. I mean, you know, we've lost so many small businesses, we were losing farms. I mean, the state is hampering our oil production. At a time when we need the oil production the most and making it harder to pump oil. It's, it's absolutely insane. So the way that we build that, and then and then the county government, they have the plan of let's just recruit large companies that come into the county and open up shop, of course, then they send those profits back home to wherever they're from, and then reinvest them locally, but whatever, they don't care. I mean, it looks good on paper, you know, versus where I think we should be making it easier for small businesses to open. Again, we can be relieving fees, right? We can be expanding, we have micro grant programs, that that will give people a little bit of money, if they to help them with some of the COVID issues that they've had over the last couple of years. We should expand that to first time entrepreneurs and people who lost their businesses to COVID. And let our small business small businesses come back. They fill our store friends, which I mean, it's any employee people, it's like, it's immediately fixes so many more things. It's a faster way to fix the economy. But again, like with oil, it's I've told people that we're going to have to approach the governor from a position of strength. We just had a lawsuit dismissed that our county filed against the governor. And I The problem is it was just that we should have had every other county that produces oil should have also been on there. And with that lawsuit, you know, I mean, build some pressure like, but they can't do it because everyone in California is so heavily divided politically and so partisan. That you know, I go out there and I'm able to talk to everybody, you know. And I think that's the game changers. We need somebody somewhere who can talk to everybody. And so if I make it in, then you have me, Jeff Hewitt. And then I think there's another guy, Brian Kelly, from another county. He's just libertarian. That's three, you know, we can start approaching other counties and start pushing back a little bit on the state.

Brian Nichols  20:24  
Yep. Well, and we talked about this in sales, how to eat the elephant, one bite at a time. And Kelly, that's what we're doing here. In our local elections in our state elections. We're taking steps one at a time we're getting there are starting to make a difference. And if we want to keep on making a difference, well, rumor is your election is literally just around the corner. We're airing this today on June 2. Kelly, next Tuesday, June 7, you have a an election, it is technically a primary, but rumor is that you could actually go ahead and be claimed the next Kern County Board of Supervisors winner is that true based on the election results here on Tuesday?

Kelly Carden  21:07  
Yeah, so in Kern County, we have an open primary. And it's it's a top two, so top two finishers go on to the next level. However, for the county specific, here, the counting specific seats, if you get 50% plus one, you win the election. So we could have a winner next Tuesday, it could be me. I've done the work. I did the debate, you know, I had plenty of media appearances, you know, but in the end, it has nothing to do with me, it has everything to do with the people of Kern County, those that have supported me here locally, as well as amongst the Libertarians all over the country that have pitched in. So you guys, you know, it doesn't matter if I win or lose. What matters is that we push Liberty forward. And that's what I'm hoping to do.

Brian Nichols  21:49  
So well, at the end of the day, Kelly, I think your average person is waking up or seeing this as I always talk about the average person, I'm sure the audience is saying, Brian, we get it. But I think we have to revert that to who is it we're speaking to, we're not speaking to select target groups of people. We're not going after hyper partisan groups of people we're going after, at the end of the day, your average person, and that's exactly who we need to make sure we're focusing on and I think that's exactly the beauty of your campaign, you're going out and you're quite literally speaking to your average person. And guess what that matters, that means something to those people. So I appreciate you for doing that. Kelly, and do us a favor. We want folks to be able to go ahead and support the campaign. Yes, June 7 Is the election but where can folks go learn more about you? They want to dig into more about your platform. And of course, I know it's towards the end of the the election here you're not going to like it but the sales guy in me won't let me not do it. If they want to go ahead and support your campaign financially. We're gonna go ahead and do that.

Kelly Carden  22:53  
You go to the website, it's www dot carbon for Kern ke r n.com. www dot Cardin for kern.com. You can go in there, there's a whole bunch of information you can you can send the emails, there's pictures, there's other media appearances that I've had. I believe the debate is posted there. Watch it. If you're a Libertarian candidate, and you're in you've not yet if you've not had a debate yet and you want to see how you can shake the the right at the very least the Republicans can watch that debate. I mean, I really thought I did a great job. I was a little underdressed. I brought a suit coat, but it was it was too hot. I wasn't going to do that to myself. Don't do that to yourself. I would have been so uncomfortable that it wouldn't have made sense. You know, I mean, I was I was sweating bullets as it was. In some insight. I've had some hate on that. People say well, you got to wear a shoe I wanted to. I was dying. your

Brian Nichols  23:51  
authentic self don't. And that's one thing two people really appreciate Kelly like, frankly, watching you in the debate. You were different. And in this case in a really good way. Right? Like you weren't the traditional stuffy suit and tie. You were quite apparently an outsider in the best of ways.

Kelly Carden  24:11  
Yeah. And that's that's what people want, you know, if nothing else, I mean, the same thing over and over. Well, we don't regardless of what they've thought about me it's well we don't like the other guy, you know, so and then they want and then they want to ask questions and they they're already looking for something else. I mean, people are so tired of the same old same old were they're ready for new things and we need to make sure that we're running amazing libertarian candidates across the country. If you're listening guys my pitches and anything about me if you can, you can be the change that you want to see. So look into what's happening look into the offices that are being announced in the next month over all over the country. School boards City Council's things like that. Guys run for these things. A lot of them go unseeded if you live in a larger city, run through your neighborhood councils, they go and see it almost all the time. Guys, this is the chance for us to take over We can do it by winning elections.

Brian Nichols  25:03  
We can do it by winning elections. We're going to do it by winning hearts and minds work. And here's the best part. It's already happening. So we're going to keep it from happening. Keep keep it from happening. No, we're going to keep it. And what we're going to do is first and foremost, direct folks to Brian Nichols show.com. If you have not had the chance yet, folks, please head over there. Because what are we doing here? Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're doing what we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win the world of politics. So if you want to go ahead and check out all 500 Plus episodes of The Brian Nichols Show, we actually just had a great episode here yesterday Episode 514, police policing bodies, law, sex work and desire in JOHANNS Burg with India to see great conversation there. I'll make sure I include that video in the show notes. And for folks who are interested in learning more about Kelly's campaign, they're over for Kern County Board of Supervisors, we will make sure we include all of those links in the show notes for you audio listeners, we got to do click the link there at your your podcast catcher, I'll bring you to Brian Nichols show.com, where you can check yes on today's episode Plus, you can find the entire transcript from today's episode. And as I mentioned, all of Kelly's important important social media links and I'll make sure I include the donation link to and also folks if you want to go ahead and share the episode I would not be opposed to that I'm sure Kelly would not be opposed to that either. Make sure you go ahead and give them a tag and please go ahead and give yours truly a tag as well at be Nichols Liberty now. I mentioned it back a second ago India two since we joined us on the program yesterday. You can find that episode right here below me. I'll make sure I include that for the video watcher here on YouTube. And again, for you audio listener, you're missing out if you haven't checked out our youtube channel yet, head over to the Brian Nichols show.com. The link there for the YouTube is available. Click it hit that magic subscribe button and of course make sure you hit that bell so you're not missing a single episode every time we go live. So with that being said, it's Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Kelly Cardin. We'll see you tomorrow

Unknown Speaker  27:01  
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