WashingTown

In this episode, Congressman Ben McAdams meets with St. George Mayor Jon Pike and Clearfield Mayor Mark Shepherd to discuss what Congress could learn from the way local governments solve problems and deal with issues. They touch on priorities, including an airport expansion in St. George and infrastructure and minimum wage issues. Mayor Shepherd talks about decisions he thought might cost him his job, and why he did it anyway.

In this episode, Congressman Ben McAdams talks with another newly elected representative – Veronica Escobar, a Democrat who represents Texas’s 16th Congressional District, the heart of which is El Paso. Rep. Escobar talks about how the mythology surrounding immigration, including incorrect or misleading crime statistics shared by President Donald Trump in his State of the Union address last month, make immigration and border conversations more difficult. Congressman McAdams shares his own thoughts on the complexities of the emotionally-charged debate, as lawmakers attempt to fix an immigration system that is failing U.S. citizens and immigrants.

In this episode of WashingTown, Congressman Ben McAdams sits down with one of the thousands of volunteers who helped him win the closest election of the 2018 midterms. Adam Gianelli had some unique reasons for volunteering to call and canvass for McAdams, and he wrote about it in a personal essay for the Washington Post Magazine. The poet and University of Utah graduate student felt volunteering for the campaign offered him the chance to have both his political voice and his actual voice, which includes a stutter, be heard. Essay link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/02/13/feature/i-found-my-stutter-prone-voice-by-exercising-my-political-one/?utm_term=.2d5291a41e8a

While many members of Congress made political statements with who they invited to the State o the Union speech last week, Congressman Ben McAdams took a different approach. In this episode Congressman McAdams (D-Utah) talks about why he invited his very Republican brother-in-law (and early Trump supporter) to the State of the Union address. The two men have preserved their relationship – and peace at family gatherings – by avoiding politics, but they share their thoughts on the ability to listen through disagreements after President Trump’s State of the Union address last week.

This is the first episode of a podcast that will explore whether a successful democratic mayor from a red state can find a way to accomplish anything of significance in the deeply partisan Washington, D. C. Ben McAdams earned a narrow victory over the Republican incumbent, and he now represents Utah’s Fourth Congressional District. In this first episode, he discusses being sworn in during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, and he interviews his wife, Julie McAdams and the wife of New York Representative Antonio Delgado, Lacey Schwartz Delgado. Welcome to WashingTown!