Guests - Dennis Kneale, John Strand, Tracy Murphy
Dennis Kneale: Has the Socialist Wing Already Won the Democrat Party?
Dennis Kneale, best-selling author and acclaimed journalist, opened the week's show with a question prompted by last week's New York congressional primary results: has the socialist wing taken outright control of the Democratic Party? Kneale, who lived in Brooklyn for 43 years before relocating to South Florida in January following Zohran Mamdani's mayoral win, said he's been stunned by how quickly the movement has scaled beyond one charismatic figure. "Mamdani endorsed three socialist candidates, they all won," Kneale said. "The Democratic Socialists of America, the group that kind of groomed and backed Mamdani, they put out nine candidates and eight of them won — in the New York City area, the most capitalist center in the world, probably. Not for long."
Kneale was alarmed by the scale of acquiescence from party leadership, citing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries's conciliatory response that there's "room for all of us" within the party's ideological tent. He connected that posture to a fresh controversy: a Supreme Court ruling Mamdani indicated, on the day of the broadcast, he would not necessarily follow. "That's treason," Kneale said. "There's three branches of government — there's not just you're the king of New York." He noted the irony that Mamdani, who became a U.S. citizen only in 2018 after being born and raised in Uganda, is positioning himself as a defiant check on federal authority less than a decade into his citizenship, while President Trump faces sustained criticism for any pushback against the more than 600 federal district court judges who can issue nationwide injunctions.
Kneale pointed to a handful of moderate Democrats in Congress publicly distancing themselves from socialism on social media as a hopeful but underreported sign of internal resistance, while expressing skepticism that the movement's actual public support is as broad as its media coverage suggests. He cited turnout figures from the New York City-area primary showing only about 17% of registered Democrats voted at all, and noted that Claire Valdez, who won her Democratic congressional nomination, received roughly 38,000 votes out of 456,000 registered voters in her district — about 8.2% of the electorate. "That's not some mandate," he said. "It's just that people have to start standing up and fighting back and pushing back against this craziness."
Kneale, a lifelong registered Democrat until his move to Florida this year, framed his own party switch as part of a broader pattern of disaffected Democrats drifting away — though he argued the more productive long-term outcome would be for moderate Democrats to reclaim their own party's name rather than cede it to the socialist wing. He noted, as a historical aside, that the elimination of a prior legal barrier preventing declared communists from running for federal office traces back to changes made during the Clinton administration, predating the current moment by decades even though the consequences are only now becoming visible at scale.
Kneale's new book, Oregoners, uses Oregon as what he called "a canary in the coal mine" for where unchecked one-party progressive governance leads — a state he said hasn't elected a Republican governor since 1982 and has maintained Democratic supermajorities for more than 20 years. He cited Oregon's Initiative Petition 28, headed to the November ballot, which would extend sweeping new rights protections to animals, including guaranteed housing and exercise space provisions for livestock, while banning hunting and fishing outright — a measure that nonetheless gathered some 100,000 signatures. He noted Oregon and New York are now in a kind of race to the ideological bottom, pointing to four Democratic Socialists of America-backed City Council members elected in Oregon in 2025 who he said now dominate the local legislative agenda there.
Still, Kneale saw flickers of a potential course correction. He cited Republican gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan's growing strength heading into a rematch against incumbent Governor Tina Kotek, noting Drazan captured roughly 40% of the vote in the most recent primary compared to about 20% in the 2022 general election, helped in part by the absence of a third-party spoiler candidate this cycle. He also cited an 83% rejection by Oregon voters of a proposed $4 billion transportation tax increase pushed by Kotek's administration as evidence that even reliably progressive electorates have limits.
Kneale connected his broader argument to gratitude and national self-perception, citing a striking statistic that the income of the bottom 20% of American earners — even before accounting for an average of $35,000 in additional government assistance that isn't formally counted as income — exceeds the average income of a typical European worker. He attributed the gap to the comparative strength of the American capitalist system, arguing that the same system socialist-aligned politicians are campaigning to dismantle is the reason America's poor are, by his account, better off than much of Europe's middle class. He closed by noting that only 28% of Democrats in recent polling say they're proud to be American, calling the disconnect between that sentiment and the visible enthusiasm of international visitors in the country for the FIFA tournament a sign of how badly some Americans have lost perspective on what they have. "We don't appreciate it enough how great we are," he said.
Breaking News: A Tucson Officer Turned Away at the Polls
Winn interrupted the show's normal flow to share a fast-developing local story tied directly to her ongoing federal lawsuit over uniformed voting rights. The day after testimony concluded in her case — which remains under advisement awaiting a judge's ruling — the City of Tucson issued an internal memo to police employees imposing new restrictions on how and when officers could vote while in uniform. Winn's legal team filed an emergency motion for a preliminary injunction the same morning the show aired in direct response.
She reported that a Tucson police officer had already been turned away from a polling location after testimony in the case concluded, asked to leave because he was carrying his service weapon while voting. Winn connected the timing directly to Mayor Regina Romero's administration, which she described as having a long record of being unsupportive of, and underfunding, local law enforcement. "If you wear a uniform and you carry a gun and you want to vote on Election Day... we're fighting for you," Winn said, "and we're fighting for you whether you're a Democrat, independent, Libertarian, Green Party — I don't care what party you're in. I care that you are not compromised."
Winn was emphatic that the policy — which she said the Tucson Police Department is now implementing by requiring officers to store their duty firearms before voting — runs directly counter to public safety. "The worst thing that TPD could do is say, oh, if you see our officers on Election Day, they're not going to be armed," she said. "That's like saying that we have a gun-free zone for schools. You create targets." She promised continued updates as the legal fight develops, framing the episode as confirmation that the concerns underlying her lawsuit are not hypothetical.
John Strand: A January 6th Defendant's Path From Prison to Congress
John Strand, a Republican candidate for Florida's 19th Congressional District seeking to succeed Byron Donalds — who is running for Florida governor — joined the show to discuss his candidacy and his nearly three-year incarceration stemming from the January 6th Capitol protest. Strand was emphatic that he never accepted a plea deal despite sustained pressure to do so. "It would have been bending the knee to tyranny and to lies," he said, noting that he ultimately contested the charges and had them vacated with prejudice by the Supreme Court — full legal exoneration rather than a presidential pardon. "I was not pardoned but actually legally exonerated."
Strand described Florida's 19th District — covering Naples, Bonita Springs, Fort Myers, Cape Coral, and Lehigh Acres along the Gulf Coast — as "a cornerstone of freedom" in a ten-candidate Republican primary field he characterized bluntly as mostly "Rhino rejects." He drew a sharp distinction between himself and his self-funded opponents, noting he was the only candidate in the race who qualified for the ballot through voter petition signatures — gathering nearly 4,000 — rather than paying Florida's roughly $10,000 candidate qualifying fee available to those who don't collect signatures. "Every other candidate bought their way onto the ballot," he said.
Strand's campaign centers on his book Patriot Plea: The J6 Journey of a Political Prisoner in the Divided States of America, with a foreword written by author Eric Metaxas. He listed an extensive roster of endorsements supporting his campaign, including Metaxas, Dennis Prager, Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA, General Michael Flynn, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of the Freedom Caucus, Congressman Scott Perry, Dr. Robert Malone, Mike Lindell, and Dr. Simone Gold of America's Frontline Doctors — where Strand serves as creative director. He noted one of the organization's affiliated physicians, Dr. Joseph Lapado, now serves as Florida's Surgeon General.
On policy, Strand's platform centers on eliminating the IRS and federal income tax entirely, restoring what he calls the "Tenth Amendment" balance of power between federal and state governments, and funding the federal government primarily through tariffs rather than direct taxation — citing this as the funding model the founders originally intended before the Sixteenth Amendment overrode it in 1913. He's proposed what he calls the "20/20 Sovereignty Act," calling for twenty years of zero net immigration and a target of 20 million deportations over four years — roughly 5 million annually — through policies like debanking illegal aliens and strict E-Verify enforcement designed to encourage self-deportation with less direct enforcement burden. He's also committed to abolishing the Department of Education entirely, citing his own experience being homeschooled as formative, and praised Education Secretary Linda McMahon's efforts to shrink the department's footprint even amid pushback from what he called entrenched bureaucratic interests.
Strand cited an endorsement from Data Republican, an independent forensic-accounting account on social media focused on tracking government and NGO financial fraud, as evidence of his commitment to reviving DOGE-style oversight efforts at the federal level, while also praising ongoing state-level fraud-reduction work by Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia. With roughly seven weeks remaining before the August 18th primary, Strand said his campaign has shifted into active ballot-chasing mode and is working to secure a formal endorsement from the Trump administration to help clarify the choice for voters and donors in a crowded field.
Tracy Murphy: A 35-Year Officer's Retaliation Case in Washington State
Tracy Murphy, a candidate for Lewis County Sheriff in Washington State and a 35-year veteran of the Centralia Police Department, joined the show to detail what Winn characterized as a story closely paralleling Arizona's own Heather Lapin case — a pattern of entrenched law enforcement leadership using internal mechanisms to target a credible challenger.
Murphy, who spent his career largely free of disciplinary issues — zero sustained complaints, with one internal investigation roughly a decade ago that was not sustained — was terminated from the Centralia Police Department in April following an anonymous complaint filed with Washington's Criminal Justice Training Commission, the state body responsible for officer certification, similar in function to Arizona's AZPOST. The complaint alleged Murphy had repeatedly claimed that sitting Lewis County Sheriff Rob Snaza "acquires and protects cocaine dealers" — an allegation Murphy flatly denied making. "I didn't say that," he said.
Murphy detailed the sequence of events: his own police chief, Andy Caldwell, initially declined to open an internal investigation into the complaint, determining it was politically motivated, and responded to the Training Commission accordingly. The following week, Murphy said, Sheriff Snaza pressured Caldwell into reopening the investigation. The complaint had been filed January 31st of this year, several months after Murphy announced his sheriff candidacy in May or June of 2025. When ultimately terminated on April 29th, Murphy was offered the choice to resign or retire in lieu of termination — at 52, one year short of full retirement eligibility under Washington's law enforcement pension system. He declined both options. "I have done nothing wrong," he said, "and the only way to stand up to the wrongs and actually have a voice for the truth to come out is for them to impose discipline and me to be able to fight that discipline in front of an independent arbitrator."
The timing, Murphy explained, was not incidental. Washington's filing window to run for sheriff is a single week each year, opening the first week of May. By terminating him April 29th, the state's Criminal Justice Training Commission placed Murphy's law enforcement commission into suspended status just before that filing window opened, which Murphy said would have disqualified him from running entirely — had a separate legal development not intervened. A Thurston County Superior Court judge issued a ruling, the same week Murphy was terminated, placing an injunction on a newly enacted Washington sheriff's law that several constitutional sheriffs across the state had separately challenged as unconstitutional, on the grounds that it improperly gave the Training Commission authority over elected sheriffs' eligibility to serve or run for office. The injunction preserved Murphy's ability to file. "I had been praying about whether God wanted me to continue down the path of running for sheriff," Murphy said, framing the ruling's timing as confirmation he should proceed. The injunction was subsequently upheld by the Washington State Supreme Court on May 5th, though Murphy noted the underlying law still faces a full court process before being permanently struck down.
Murphy, who grew up in a public-service household with a father who served as a fire chief, described his career highlights spanning patrol, K-9 work, a stint in motorcycle traffic enforcement, training management, and supervisory roles including DEA task force group supervisor. He emphasized relationship-building and mentorship as central to his leadership philosophy, arguing that properly supported officers — given adequate training, tools, and supervision — provide more professional service to the public. He's one of four candidates in Lewis County's sheriff primary, the only one running from outside the current sheriff's office, and ran previously against Sheriff Snaza in 2022, capturing 47% of the vote in a loss decided by roughly 3.1 percentage points. Sheriff Snaza, who is not seeking reelection after three terms, has reportedly sold his Washington home and purchased property in Maricopa County, Arizona.
Murphy connected his own situation directly to Pima County's Nancy Guthrie investigation, telling Winn he would grade Sheriff Chris Nanos's handling of that case an outright failure based on what he's observed publicly — specifically citing the apparent refusal to bring in FBI and federal investigative resources early in the process. "No one agency has all the answers and has all the skill sets and has all the tech," Murphy said. "If we're gonna silo ourselves and just keep it all to ourselves, that's not doing justice for the victims, for the people we serve." He cited the importance of acting decisively within the first 48 hours of any major investigation, framing failure to use every available resource from the outset as a fundamental breakdown in service to the public regardless of jurisdiction.
Murphy's primary is scheduled for August 5th, with the general election in November; listeners can find his campaign at TracyMurphyForSheriff.com. Winn closed the segment reflecting on the broader pattern connecting Murphy's case to Arizona's own fights — including Heather Lapin's experience being effectively silenced during the final weeks of her own campaign — framing both as examples of entrenched officials using institutional levers against credible challengers, and encouraging listeners to recognize that the same dynamics undermining accountability in Pima County are playing out in jurisdictions across the country.