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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Ep. 31: "Veep"stakes - Which VP Pick Will Be OurTransit Champion?
Reeling from the political whiplash of the last few weeks, we look to the future and discuss who Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, will choose as her running mate in the 2024 elections. We discuss each contender's transit record and decide who we think would be our best transit champion.
Doors are closing. Public transit that's my way to roll On the metro. I'm taking control. Full throttle. Bus stops, train tracks it's my daily grind. Daily grind. Public transit it's the rhythm of my life. On this episode of Transit Tangents, we take a look at some of the top contenders to join current Vice President Harris's run for the White House and serve as VP. How do these candidates compare when it comes to issues surrounding transit? We'll break it down on this episode of Transit Tangents. Hey everybody and welcome to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name is Lewis and I'm Chris, and today on the show we're going to talk about just the absolute whirlwind of everything that's happened in the last two weeks, basically Like a year's worth of worldly events A generation's worth of events in two weeks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is going to be one of the most timely, relevant episodes we've done. We're going to be talking about who the next VP could be and which ones would be the absolute best as far as transit goes, which is obviously what we talk about here on this program. So, obviously, unless you've been sleeping under a rock, President Biden is no longer running for reelection Within a couple hours. Vice President Kamala Harris.
Speaker 2:You think you just fell out of a coconut tree.
Speaker 1:Is now the presumptive nominee, essentially, Presumptive nominee yeah, yeah we're not quite at the convention yet, but all things are kind of pointing to Vice President Harris At this point.
Speaker 2:has raised nearly $150 million since Biden bowed out of the race, and then on top of that, has secured all of the pretty much all the delegates, the vast majority of the delegates for the democratic convention.
Speaker 1:so when we say presumptive, we mean yes, she's going to be the nominee, as well as all of the support from everything that matters is being the the first brat vp ever.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, yes, so we'll see who the, who, the, the vice president now pick is going to be all of this also follows the attempted assassination on former president Trump, which I don't know about you, but unprecedented times are among us and I am tired of living in unprecedented times.
Speaker 1:Yes, I would like things to get back to precedent. Yes, yes, but before we get into it, the most wild event that happened among all of this, far, far more important than assassination attempts presidents stepping down. Thanks to all of you, we're now well over it, but over 1,000 subscribers here on YouTube. So thank you all very much, seriously. Thank you for that. Obviously not more important than any of those things you said. What you said, yeah, you know what? I don't take it back. I don't take it back. I don't take it back. Way more important. Um, but yeah, this is going to be a little bit of a fun one, but we are going to get into some of the specifics of what some of the actual vp candidates are. Uh, again, to serve as vice president under kamala harris, uh, could be. Uh, some of them are more fun ones that would just be like the ultimate transit vp. Uh of them are more realistic, but also a couple of the real choices could be a major positive for for transit in general in the U S.
Speaker 2:So and and just to preface this, there's, there are over. I think there's a dozen or more people being floated right now, and vice president Harris is all over the country campaigning with folks and really trying to get a feel for these different candidates. We picked sort of our favorites and who we think is easier to talk about when it comes to transit.
Speaker 1:Totally so. Without further ado, let's jump into the potential VP candidates.
Speaker 2:All right, these are going to be in no particular order, but first on our list is Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. For those who don't know, governor Whitmer, she's the 49th governor of Michigan. Uh, for those who don't know, uh, governor whitmer, she's the 49th governor of michigan. She's uh had a strong focus on health care, education and, most importantly to us, on infrastructure. She's very active on tiktok. If you have not seen her videos on tiktok, uh, she's a huge advocate for a lot of these transportation projects in michigan lots of very enthusiastic bridge building videos.
Speaker 1:There's a really nice bridge being built. Someone I saw described it as a fangirl video over this, like beautiful international bridge over to canada, um, all sorts of stuff like that. Um one of her slogans when she was running also, uh, and I've got a little qualm with this. I'd like to see some other infrastructure being done, but her campaign one of them was fix the damn roads. Um, so a lot of the attention seemingly on a lot of car infrastructure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, in the state, but well, and she's coming from a state where cars are the economy or cars were the economy. Yes, I mean, if you think about automobile states, michigan's kind of high up there. But yeah, michigan, if you think of michigan, it's this sort of post-industrial state. There's a lot of areas that probably fell into disrepair when a lot of jobs moved overseas. Some of that's changing and they're doing a lot of work to try to reinvest in the economy there, which Whitmer's been a big advocate for. But fix the damn roads Kind of makes sense for a state like Michigan. That being said, maybe fix the damn rails, right, yes, that as well.
Speaker 1:A couple specifics here. So they secured over $66 million in RAISE grants for projects in Detroit, menominee and Kalamazoo to improve road safety, connectivity and reduce air pollution the reducing air pollution one. There's a lot of mixed things. Gretchen Whitmer is not great on some of that stuff. In my view, there's a couple specific instances in Kalamazoo that you can look into. Beyond that that's unrelated. Here Again, we talked a lot about road infrastructure. So there's road and bridge repairs over 23,000 lane miles of state-owned roads being repaired, 1,600 bridges and supporting over 89,000 jobs. There's kind of all sorts of things in the road department In the road department there's a lot of positives.
Speaker 2:It's not all roads and we're not trying to paint a bad picture of Gretchen Whitmer, but there was also positives for transit as well. They secured about $6 billion in economic development. $2 billion of that was for transit-related projects and mobility projects really aimed at enhancing public transportation and economic viability in cities.
Speaker 1:But recently though there was this is a little bit more on the downside. This is just in the last couple weeks, actually the budget for public transportation, and I want to read this off here, off here. So the latest budget for the state of Michigan this year had $246 million for local bus operating expenses, which is divided among 77 transit agencies statewide, and only $20 million of that is just one-time funding and likely will not be available next year. To compare that last year's was $261 million. So that is a decrease of roughly $20 million and maybe another decrease of $20 million after that, because there is a section of that that was one-time funding. So definitely a decrease in spending on local bus operations, which definitely hits transit networks hard, because if your bus is not running frequently, if you don't have the money for drivers, buses are expensive to operate. So minus one point there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's kind of disappointing for a state like Michigan where, like many states in this region, they're really trying to attract young talent. The Growing Michigan Together Council, which is a group that really focuses on trying to improve cities and find a way to attract younger people to Michigan to improve the economy, they were some of the people who really sounded the alarm on the fact that money was being taken away from public transit. So you know, the budget got passed. There wasn't as much money as we hoped, you know. So if we're looking at a potential VP, I think Gretchen Whitmer checks a lot of boxes and being, I think, pro-infrastructure and pro-transit, but her record so far has been heavily, heavily focused on private car ownership and roadways over things like improved train service All right.
Speaker 1:Next on our list, again in no particular order, here is the current governor of Pennsylvania, josh Shapiro. He's on the short list as well. A big part of the reason, obviously Pennsylvania is a big swing state. He won that state by a lot. I forget the percentages, but if Kamala Harris can carry Pennsylvania, everyone's saying that's why they're potentially going for Josh Shapiro. As far as transit goes a little bit of a mixed bag. I know you found a couple positive things in this first, and then I'll kind of get into being the negative Nancy a little bit here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you negative. Yeah, I don't know. One of the things that stood out to me was with the big infrastructure bill we had passed in Congress he was able to work with the state government to secure grants for passenger rail somewhere in the tune of about $140 million. That is going to improvements sort of across the state. But one of the big focuses is on the Keystone West Corridor which connects Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, so this train service should see more regular service improvements to it. So that's a pretty big win, I think, for residents of sort of that western side of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I also like to see too I mean just like looking at how Josh Shapiro talks about these sorts of things. When you look at his Twitter account and even press releases and stuff, he's happy to talk about public transit and how important it is and whatnot. He's happy to talk about public transit and how important it is and whatnot. It did look like they were actually going to have a pretty good funding mechanism set in place to help some of these transit agencies, including SEPTA, which is the transit agency running all of the public transportation in Philadelphia. It seems like it was close to actually having a pretty good thing happening there.
Speaker 1:I don't know all of the intricacies in it, but unfortunately it seems like some of that has fallen apart or at least the can has gotten kicked on the road. Alan Fisher, who, if you're watching us or listening to us, you've maybe seen some of his videos on YouTube. He's a big transit urbanism YouTuber who lives in Philadelphia follows this stuff very closely On Twitter. He was talking about you know, the VP stuff and he actually said please, not Shapiro. He absolutely dropped the ball on SEPTA funding and he feels like he's trying too hard to be authentic all the time. I don't know about the second part, I don't haven't seen too many clips of him, but I looked a little bit further into that and we'll have a link to this article in here from Metro Philadelphia. But I'll read a little bit of it.
Speaker 1:So Governor Josh Shapiro's proposal to increase Pennsylvania's public transit funding was heralded as a way to overcome SEPTA's fiscal cliff and avoid what the authority's general manager has referred to as a death spiral of cuts and fair increases. It did not happen, however. When budget negotiations wrapped up last week in Harrisburg, septa and other mass transit agencies in the Commonwealth did get a pledge from the governor and legislative leaders to revisit the issue in September. Governor and legislative leaders to revisit the issue in September. So the plan to devote. The plan was to devote a higher share of state sales tax revenue to transit agencies and would have netted SEPTA an estimated $161 million a year to cover operating expenses. Instead, the authority will end up getting less than a third of that total under the current plan.
Speaker 2:So I also don't love the tax mechanism for that, though, either, because it makes it way easier for future administration to cut funding. I think when it's tied to taxes and also in times of economic downturn, that also is going to affect the amount of revenue that comes in. So I'm also not a huge fan of that particular method.
Speaker 1:Right, although I will say it is better than nothing.
Speaker 2:right now, when it like the.
Speaker 1:The issue is is like if, if this money does not come through, you're going to see major cuts, uh, for service for for folks in philadelphia, uh, as well as fair increases at the same time. So, uh, you know it's, it's not all the way over. It seems like again, they're, they're. Shapiro is pledging to revisit this in september. Um, but obviously people would like to see things just like happen now we want things to happen faster.
Speaker 1:We always do right, but as we've said many times before, things move at the speed of government yeah, and government could move faster if we had, if we had people who really stuck to their guns. But I don't know, maybe shapiro could go through and do it, but if he gets tied up in this race for vp, maybe he's gonna forget about pennsylvania, I don't know. No, but it's not all bad, it's not all bad.
Speaker 2:One other thing I wanted to call out for Josh Shapiro is his office was able to invest about $50 million in other types of transit initiatives. It was about $50 million in 58. Projects or communities in 37 counties around. I know that's a lot of numbers in like 37 counties around Pennsylvania and a lot of that work went into some urban transit projects, road projects. But a lot of it also went into better bike and pedestrian infrastructure, which also we'd love to see.
Speaker 1:Totally right, and we've done a whole bunch of content on that, relating to Vision Zero and speeding and traffic calming and all that stuff. So if you haven't seen some of those, we'll make sure that those are linked. You can check them out. We're going to jump right back into this episode in just a second, but first, if you have not liked this video, go ahead and do so. Also, leave a comment. We love reading all of them and respond to as many as we can, and be sure that you are subscribed so that you catch every episode as they come out.
Speaker 2:Please come out, please share this with your friends and if you don't have time to watch YouTube videos in the future you can catch us on any of the podcast platforms that are out there. Just be sure to leave us a rating and give us a comment. Next on the list is Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, minnesota, not a stranger to public transit projects. If you've ever been in the Twin Cities area between Minneapolis and St Paul, you know there's kind of a train that runs between. It's actually a really nice area of the country, totally. If you haven't been, I do encourage you to check it out. He is a member of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party, which I'd never heard of before. I actually haven't either. Yeah, but that is what is happening in Minnesota, I guess. Yeah, he was also part of the first congressional district of Minnesota, so he was in the US House of Representatives and before that, before he entered politics, he was a high school teacher and football coach and was also in the military before then also.
Speaker 1:So he, as far as running for office goes, he checks a lot of the boxes, if you will, which shouldn't matter, but it does. You know how things go. But in general, he's actually pretty solid on a lot of transit stuff. I am struggling to find the negatives here. I don't know I just said negative Nancy earlier and I don't know what it is but yeah, quite a few positives. So I'm going to run through a couple different things here. This person on Twitter actually pulled together a couple uh positive bullet points here for folks who are quote yimby, slash climate, slash transit uh interested, um. So we'll go through a couple of them here, because this is high level.
Speaker 2:That sounds like us.
Speaker 1:Yes, it sounds like us and probably sounds like you. And if it sounds like you and you haven't subscribed to us yet, uh, consider hitting the subscribe button down below and liking this video. All right, sorry about that. So created new programs for fare enforcement with unarmed folks. So we're not having police enforcement but just having essentially folks to help at transit stations who are checking fares, but are also helping folks navigate the system. Included e-bike tax credits, um, as well as connecting unhoused folks to social services for all those people who are in the the cult of the e-bike, yes we haven't mentioned in a couple episodes yeah
Speaker 1:um. Uh also passed 650 million dollars to erase transit funding deficits. Uh funded bus rapid transit as well as new passenger rail from the Twin Cities to Duluth, created a robust requirement to require highway expansions to be offset by climate-friendly transportation, which is interesting there's an article here that we'll make sure is linked in the description for more information on that as well as committed $10 million for the new Borealis line. A lot of folks have probably seen the new Amtrak line that has opened in Minnesota. It's actually been wildly successful for having just started. Right now it's only like one trip each day, but it's looking like. The will to make it into multiple trips per day is definitely there and under Governor Walz's leadership they added $10 million in funding for that.
Speaker 1:A couple of interesting things of note as well. In previous episodes we've talked a little bit about the gas tax and how in many states the gas tax has not gone up. It's stayed stagnant while inflation has obviously gone up. So part of a recent bill that passed through Minnesota, the gas tax is now tied to inflation, which is it might sound small, but that's really important.
Speaker 2:No, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's an important here.
Speaker 2:It makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:A lot of sense.
Speaker 2:A lot of sense off the gas tax, okay.
Speaker 1:Another nice element to that, though, is some of that funding is actually going directly towards supporting public transit networks throughout the state, so the gas tax is going to be increasing. And also wow, you're really laughing.
Speaker 2:I'm still stuck on it, sorry.
Speaker 1:Yes, so yes, it does make a lot of sense. I want to read a couple of the specifics here, just to make sure we've got it in here. So Minnesota state lawmakers say they've created a national model for transportation funding with a new bill that creates more stable financing for roads and bridges, provides new recurring funding for public transportation, allocates $200 million for new passenger rail line and forces state agencies to make good on aspirational climate goals. What's really impressive about this entire bill also, and the inclusion of all of these things, is that, yes, waltz was the governor, uh, but they only had a one seat majority, uh, in the congress and the in the legislature to get this through, and they still made it happen.
Speaker 1:Um, frankly, I want somebody like that who is even with a narrow margin which whoever wins the presidency is going to have a narrow margin one way or the other. I want somebody who can make that happen to cross the finish line. So, right now, personally, I'm a Waltz fan. At this point, is there an endorsement? I don't know if I'm quite ready to endorse yet I might withhold my endorsement, but I'm definitely a fan.
Speaker 1:I also saw a really funny video of him at like the Minnesota State Fair with his daughter riding like the slingshot thing. Think we're gonna go do the slingshot, which I don't know what it is and they're keeping it from me, but then we're gonna go get some food corn dog, I'm vegetarian, turkey then Turkey's meat Not in Minnesota, turkey's special and we will go do some of those things and report back. Oh my God, oh my God, and that really just won me over. He just seemed like a real person out there hanging out with his daughter. He seems like a good guy.
Speaker 2:A guy you could have a beer with.
Speaker 1:Frankly yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, he does?
Speaker 1:He just seems normal. So many of these people are just not normal. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I want to see one of these governors stand up and say public transit doesn't have to be profitable. I just need one person to stand up and say get over it, it's not going to be profitable. Roads aren't profitable. This is the closest on our list. At least this is the closest somebody comes to saying it.
Speaker 1:All right. Next on our list is the one who Chris makes sure we get into every single episode here. I try, I try my best.
Speaker 2:Yeah, our new best friend, soon-to-be best friend, pete Buttigieg. Sorry, secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, or, as many people still affectionately refer to him as, Mayor Pete. He was appointed as Secretary of Transportation by Joe Biden. Before that he ran for president. Before that he was the mayor of South Bend, indiana.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and obviously, if you pay attention to any of this, pete Buttigieg has been pretty solid on public transportation in general, pushing for things like high-speed rail and all sorts of these different initiatives and trying to kind of mainstream some of these conversations that we have here. He does have a decent shot at making this happen. I know that this weekend he's doing some, uh, some funder sorry, his husband is doing some fundraising with, uh, vp harris's husband. Uh, they're out on fire island doing some fundraising. So, uh, that could be a sign maybe of things to come. I don't know.
Speaker 2:But fire island, famous for being an lgbtq plus uh place to go on vacation, and one of my favorite memes that people have sent me over a dozen times lately is LGBT stands for let's go by train because, because queer people love transit, for whatever reason. Yeah, I know, I love people to judge. I like his record on a lot of the work that he's done in the office of being the transportation secretary. If you ever listen to him, just get grilled at a Senate hearing. He's so good at responding. If you haven't seen it, go back and watch his hearing about EV adoption in the US. He's so good about defending the current administration's record on promoting EV adoption Totally.
Speaker 1:And whether it be on things like EV adoption, transportation or even just like politics in general. One thing I really respect about him is he's willing to like go on. He'll go on Fox News all the time, even though that's, like you know, not his territory necessarily, but he'll go on and like do a really good job holding up the arguments and all that sort of stuff. So I think that that's extremely notable and important when thinking about a VP pick, even beyond the transit elements of it. But obviously, you know, pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, who we've seen be the one actually talking about all these projects in the United States, would be a top tier pick, probably the most top tier if you only care about transit and the VP out there. I don't necessarily know that he's got the best shot at it, but notable for sure.
Speaker 2:Notable for sure, and I think if anybody on our list, he's going to be like you said, he's going to be the best for transit as a whole. Yes, you know, out of the current administration, we've seen the infrastructure bill get passed. His department really ran with it and set up a lot of really awesome funding mechanisms. Out of that infrastructure bill that's $4 billion going to 14 major transit construction projects around the country. It's the TI FIA 49 initiative, which works on transit oriented development in cities all around the country. He's worked on BRT systems. You've talked about high-speed rail networks. Really, just Like we said, if there's anybody that knows public transit, it's going to be Mayor Pete.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you had to find one qualm, I guess the only qualm that I could think of and this is minor in comparison to everything else is, like a lot of the funding that's been put out there, there has been a ton of money still for highway expansions and even like some of this money involved in these like reconnecting communities, grants and whatnot, can literally still be used for highway expansions, even though you're putting a cap on it or something, if you had to find a qualm. But overall, I don't think that that's necessarily even something that he personally wants to be pushing for, but it's just like part of the gambit, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:And a lot of the money is open to states to choose what they do with it. Like we looked at the discretionary versus the grant-based funding and the formula funding, so there's various reasons why a lot of the money goes towards roads.
Speaker 1:All right. Up next we have Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. He is heavily focused on issues like health care, veterans affairs, as well as renewable energy. Most notably for me, he's an astronaut, which is pretty awesome, pretty awesome. We could see the forefront of space travel, space transportation. I like space transit, space transit, front of space travel, space transportation I like, I like space transit, space transit maybe someday would be pretty cool probably not happening under the next administration, um, but it's fun to dream about it. Um, uh, he also, uh, is well known, as his wife is former congresswoman. Uh, gabby Giffords and yeah, so along with that, you know, collectively they've advocated for more gun control measures, all of that sort of stuff. As far as transit goes, though, what do we know about Mark Kelly's backing, or lack thereof, of transit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, when you first think of Arizona, you don't initially think of public transit, although they did have the new rail line outside of Phoenix that opened up not too long ago and that made a lot of news. So you are starting to see more public transit efforts in Arizona. Some of the things that he has supported in the past is the Valley Metro Streetcar Extension. He, along with Senator Sinema, were able to secure about $40 million in the RAISE grants to get that program really off the ground.
Speaker 1:And some of those expansions I don't know if it was necessarily tied to this grant happened in, like the last year, even in Phoenix, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we see some progress there. You have the Yuma Multimodal Transit Center as well. He secured about $10.6 million in funding for it, so really supporting these sort of transportation hubs in Arizona. Also, we have the bipartisan infrastructure law that did pass, and he was a major, major advocate for it and one of the big forces in helping get that law through the Senate and the House and then into President Biden's hands.
Speaker 1:Last on our list and, if I'm being totally honest, uh, his name is not in contention for this at all. But if we were going to pick the like a tier top transit vp, uh, to be serving alongside our current vp, harris, I think it would have to be the congressman from massachusetts, seth molten are you ranking him above? Our good friend pete budaj.
Speaker 1:I am literally ranking him above pete budaj disagree yeah, uh, if anyone's got some weird connection to seth molten, he is pete budaj. Is your like dream guest on the show right now? Mine is seth molten. Now, seth molten is in my top tier, all right, uh, a category here? Uh. So seth molten? Uh, for those of you don't know anything about him, he's a Harvard graduate, a former Marine. He served four tours in Iraq, earned the Bronze Star Medal for his service. He was elected to Congress in 2014. He's really been pushing for veterans affairs, mental health, national security, generally on the more progressive side of things. But on top of literally being a war hero, he is very much a transit hero. He is currently the main representative pushing forward the High Speed Rail Act, which he's got several co-sponsors on it, mostly on the Democratic side. There might be one Republican actually on board, if not. He said he's working on trying to get some Republicans on board, but they're trying to spend $205 billion To get on board.
Speaker 2:To get on board. Yes, on board.
Speaker 1:There you go $205 billion over five years to build out the kind of backbone of what could be a high-speed rail in America.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're talking about like $205 billion With a B yeah, with a B that would be dedicated to this high-speed rail Right and, frankly, I think we should absolutely be pushing forward stuff like this.
Speaker 1:And do I think that this is going to happen in the short term? No, but I'm honestly very disappointed in our members of Congress for not getting on board with this, Like if you want to talk about modernizing the country and having real transportation alternatives and if you actually care about, you know, green energy and more green transportation.
Speaker 1:Economic opportunities Economic opportunities, all of this sort of stuff, this High-Speed Rail Act, like, if we don't do do it now, it is only going to get more expensive the longer we wait for it. Um, so, uh, major props to to seth moulton for pushing this forward, getting folks on board. Um, I think that it's, it's what we should be pushing for, absolutely, and then he's also, uh, been a big advocate back home in massachusetts as well.
Speaker 2:He's been a key proponent of the north south rail link, um, which is a line designed to connect commuter rails in Boston. This is a huge potential benefit for the region. I mean, we're talking like $30 billion in economic benefit. Yes, you know that could be used to create about 150,000 new housing units.
Speaker 1:Yes, so that would be huge for the area housing units, so that would be huge for the area. It's cool to see a member of Congress so excited about these sorts of projects, because you don't see that at the federal level. Very often it's mostly your local politicians and whatnot, which is a good message that we should say here. We're talking about national politics and whatnot and all that's coming up in November. Alongside those elections, though, you're going to have city council elections, mayor's elections. Alongside those elections, though, you're going to have city council elections, mayor's elections. And if transit is one of your top tier issues for voting, those elections matter so much more frankly. I mean these ones, the national ones, are important, but, you know, these local elections are really where it can be like are you getting a bike lane or not? Are you getting a better sidewalk? Is your bus service going to be increased better? Will you get that transit expansion? So, while we've talked all sorts of issues surrounding who the best VP pick would be, I think that's really important to note.
Speaker 2:Honest opinion. What's your thoughts on Kathy Hochul?
Speaker 1:Man, Kathy Hochul could be a real great choice for the car lobby. She could help with fundraising. I bet the car dealers would love to continue to support Kathy Hochul all the way to the White House.
Speaker 2:Congestion Kathy for VP.
Speaker 1:Yes, Congestion Kathy for VP.
Speaker 2:I think with that, that's a good overview of some of our top picks for candidates. If I had to choose one, my dream candidate is obviously going to be secretary pete, but I think you kind of sold me on on tim waltz, so yeah I think, realistic picks that might actually get there.
Speaker 1:I am, I'm hoping for tim waltz. Um, yeah, I think I think he would do well as far as transit goes, but also helping the ticket win, yeah, um.
Speaker 2:But so there you go. There's our very, very important endorsement from Transitangents.
Speaker 1:Yes, Tim Welch has secured the Transitangents endorsement. Cue the breaking news graphic All right. With all that being said, we probably made this episode a little too long. I'm not sure If you have thoughts on any of these candidates. If you think that somebody else should be the pick, let us know in the comments below. We love reading all of them. If this is your first time seeing us, please consider subscribing, liking the video if you haven't done so already, or rating us on your favorite podcast platform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. If you go to our website transittangentscom, there's a little link in there that says support.
Speaker 1:If you click that, it'll take you to buy me a coffee, and you can buy us a coffee absolutely and, with all that being said, thank you all so much for watching. We really appreciate it and enjoy the rest of your transit. Tangents tuesday.