Good evening and welcome to Arizona Horizon.

I'm Ted Simons.

Our series candidates and conversation continues tonight with a focus on the race for Arizona's first Congressional district, which includes areas of northeast Phoenix, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and Fountain Hills.

It's Arizona's wealthiest congressional district, and it's an open seat, with Republican incumbent David Schweikert having retired to run for governor.

Jay feely is the Republican candidate for seed1.

Feeley is a former NF player and sports broadcaster.

As for the Democratic candidate, he declined our invitation to participate in tonight's discussion.

Thank you for joining us tonight.

Jay.

Feels good to have you here.

My pleasure.

Good to be here with you as well.

Is that you or me that they don't like?

You have to figure that out.

Yeah.

We work that out later.

I mentioned Arizona's wealthiest district here, and so there's kin of a different set of problems than mayb in some of the other districts.

What is the most pressing issu in Congressional District one?

I think for sure the economy and affordability.

That's when I'm out knocking on doors and meeting with people and doing events.

That's the issue that people keep bringing up.

And, you know, people in general care about the economy.

They care about the future for their children.

You know, when you go to the grocery store, you look at prices when you buy gas, obviously that's a big one as well.

And, you know, I think it's a it's a conversation that you need to have because you have to understand the voter and you have to understand where they're at and then help them understand where we're going and give them a roadmap to the future.

That's what I've been trying to do when we're having conversations.

How do you improve the economy?

How do you improve affordability, especially when the president says everything' great, prices are coming down.

Affordability isn't even a word.

Well, I think, number one, you acknowledg the reality of what's going on.

And that's certainly what I do.

And you acknowledg the pain that some people feel when they go to the pum or they go to the grocery store.

The way that you combat affordability is, number one, real wage growth.

And the president has done that.

He's done it in his first term.

He did it now in the second term.

And the Biden administratio had had regressive wage growth.

They did not have wage growth.

And President Trump has been able to do that in both of his terms.

And then you get rid of regulation.

You know, you look at housing costs and about a quarter of the housing cost is because of regulations.

As you can cut regulations, you can build houses quicker, you get rid of the interes carry that builders have to have and that they pass on to the consumer.

You know, those are ways that you can continue to help, real ways to to help people have more money in their pockets.

What about things like tariffs?

Because the vast majority o folks, economists in particular, say the tariffs are not helping the economy.

Tariffs are one of the reasons the economy is sluggish.

And this recent what do you think of what's happening between the US and Canada?

Well, when I look at Canada in particular, the problems that we're having with the trade deal there relate to China and Mexico has agreed in acquiesce to do the dea that we wanted to do with them, because we want to make sure that our markets are not getting invaded with Chinese product that just get routed through Mexico or Canada, and in particular steel in Canada.

We want to make sure that Chinese steel isn't getting sent to Canada, and then they repurpose it and then put it into the US as Canadian products and get the benefit of those trade deals.

And all they have to do is agree to a trade dea that we agree to do with Mexico.

They need us much more than we need them.

At some point that's going to happen and they're going to agree to that deal.

So would you vote for or against the tariff?

The president wants 50% plus.

It's not going to happen.

He's using that as leverage.

Everything he does is about leverage.

To get the best deal for America.

You have to look at it in totality, you know, and I kind of break it down this way.

You know, Democrats care about inten when they're creating policies.

And if the intent is good, even if they don't get the right result, that's the right policy.

Republicans, conservatives.

We care about the end result.

It doesn't matter if your intent is good.

If you get the right result, that's good policy.

I think President Trump mirrors that more than anybody else because he's going to use leverage.

He's going to try to create the right parameters to get the right deal for the US.

I'm going to ask you about voters in CD one a lot here, because that's what you care about the most.

Do you think they agree that President Trump's economic policies are working and are a good thing?

I thin what matters is the individual and how it impacts them.

That's why I think you have to listen to everybody what they're telling you, because their experience is what's real to them.

It doesn't matter what the bigger picture is.

I think when you look at no tax on tips and you look at no tax on overtime, those are real measures that help the average everyday worker, that 90% of the peopl who benefit from those policies that the Republicans passed and that all the Democrats fought against that MSHA said he would he would undo and doesn't want that working families tax cut to be implemented and would be in place.

He wants to revoke it and remove it.

That helps individuals that make less than $100,000, 90% of the people who are benefit from no tax on tips, who benefit from the no tax on overtime.

The majority of seniors who benefit from most of the taxes getting removed from Social Security.

Those help the average everyday worker more than anything else that we could do.

The 2025 tax cuts are als being mentioned as a reason why the US debt National debt has topped 40 trillion.

Among the reasons 40 along with tariffs, $40 trillion.

I mean, so.

Let's be honest.

How do you square that?

Sure.

Two thirds of our debt comes from mandated spending.

That comes from Medicare, Social Security.

Snap.

All those things that Congress has nothing to do with unless they pass laws.

The president has nothing to do with tha because it comes from Congress.

A third of the debt comes from the things that you just mentioned, tax cuts.

So we have to be honest about it, because the only way that you can deal with 40 trillion in debt, growing at a trillion every 100 days, is to dea with all that mandated spending.

And we have to have an honest conversation.

Social security will be insolvent in 2032.

We have to have a conversation about, and nobody's been willing to do it since 1983.

How do you handle Social Security and how do you take and make those difficult conversations, but while still protecting seniors and protecting the investment that they put in?

Because that' what Social Security was.

It's an investment into your future and into your retirement.

But when it comes to the debt, you already have that given you already have the given that these Social Security safety net programs are causing an awful lot of money.

Why would you go ahead with tariffs?

Why would you go ahead with the tax cuts to it looks like amplify that debt.

So if the tax cuts in the end bring more revenue and generate more jobs and more better economy, then the end result is the righ result.

That's the right policy.

You know, if the tariffs in the end create onshore and or manufacturing, which we're seeing at level we haven't seen since the 1960s, if they bring trade parameters, equal trade parameters, which we haven't had in 80 years, and we have better trade parameters for all of our businesses around the world, then it's the right policy.

I understand that tariffs in the short term are certainly going to lead to an increase in prices.

That's true, but it's the end resul that you need to be looking at.

And that's what President Trump continually tries to do.

Should Mail-In voting be restricted?

I want to get to electio reform, an election idea here, because that's a very big topic and I would imagine pretty big in CD1 as well.

Mail-In voting, should that be restricted?

President wants it.

And the Supreme Court saying yeah, but maybe no, but we can block it now but don't block.

What do you think.

80% of people in Arizona use Mail-In voting?

I use Mail-In voting.

We just want to make sure that the voting is secure, that only American citizens are voting, and only the right citizen who is registered is the one that's voting.

And you only vote once.

And that's as simple as that.

That's what we should have.

We should make sure here in Arizona that we pass laws that are similar to Florida.

You know, like I grew up in Florida.

My wife and I lived there during the hanging chads.

They did an excellent job of changing their system and having it be able to be safe and done on election night.

That's what we need to do here.

But but so far there have been no fraud problems, no massive fraud problems her in Arizona, around the country.

There have been no election problems.

Why do we have to go to something like this?

Well I focus on today looking forward and making sure that we try to have secure elections.

That's an 80% issue.

It's not a Republican issue.

It's not a Democrat issue.

Everybody in America wants to make sure that our elections are secure and that you can have confidence in them.

All right.

But the idea o the United States Postal Service in charge of mail in ballots, does that make sense to you?

Well, I think they're in charge of making sure that who is sent t them is supposed to be voting, are the ones that are getting those letters.

That's all they're doing.

Right?

But I mean, that's far but they come in enforcement agency here.

Well that.

Comfortable for you again we could pass the Save act and we wouldn' have to do any of these measures and make sure that, you know, there's an ID and that the person who says they're voting is voting.

And and that's what I think most Americans want.

So with that in mind, the president says that widespread fraud in recent elections, he says it's rampant, it's there, it's obvious, etc.. Do you agree with that?

I'm focused on this election I don't want to look backwards.

I don't want to try to relitigate things.

I want to focus o on this election on November 3rd and moving forward and making sure, like I said, that people in Arizona and people around the country have confidence in their elections and that we get them done quickly.

You know look at California.

California.

You don't have confidence in California.

It takes a month to count up all the ballots.

That's not a system that creates confidence in the average voter.

But the leader of your party friend, you know, you know, President Trump, he says that there has been rampant fraud and something has to be done about it.

He says he won when he lost.

Can you concede that he I mean, I'm trying to get Republicans to just concede the fact and then we can move on.

Can you concede that fact?

Yeah, President Trump lost that election.

And we need to make sure that going forward, everyone has confidence in the election process going forward, that it's safe and secure.

Thank you for that.

Iran war.

Are we waging the Iran war?

Are we doing the right thing over there?

So my question is for anybody who's against the Iran around war, what was the alternative?

Right.

The eternities did do nothing, right?

Right now.

And they were stockpiling and manufacturing at a very rapid pace, these long range missiles, China was helping them.

If they got enough long range missiles, no one would be able to go in there and chec and make sure that they're not creatin and developing a nuclear weapon.

It's the same thing that happened in North Korea, except you'd have the country that supports terrorism all over the world that has advocated for destroying the United States, destroying Israel with a nuclear weapon.

And so I think President Trump actually should get some measure of respect for doing what he believes was in the best interest of this country, even if it wasn't in his own personal best interest or the best interest of his party, the Republican Party, because they knew that in the short term it would drive up energy costs.

They knew tha that would drive up gas prices and that those things would work against them in the midterms.

But but isn't that the job of Congress?

I think a big factor in all of this is that there was no War Powers Act.

Congress was not.

I said, you and I both know like Biden did, the same thing.

Obama did the same.

That doesn't make it right.

What I'm saying is.

That is the way the presidents, both parties, though, have advocated and done their job when it comes to taking those decisions.

But do you want to go to Congress?

Would you just see that would just give an olé to the president when he wants to do something like that?

I think you have to follo the laws and follow the rules.

And I think if you look at both parties, they have taken measures and leeway when it comes to deciding the actions that they're going to take.

If you go to Congress, would you hold the administration, this administration, the next administration, more accountable than this particular Congress is doing?

I think Congress in general ha a very low favorability rating.

Democrats are the lowest they've ever been.

I think your job in office is to advocate and to protect the people that voted for you to get into office.

So my first job is to protect the people of the first Congressional District.

Second job is to make sure we're creating the right economic environment for people, individuals and businesses to succeed.

And your third job is to make sure we're following the law.

Last question again, I mentioned that President Trump, we're friends.

You know, the man I had a relationship.

Do you want him out here in Congressional District one campaigning for you?

Well I'm transparent about who I am.

I'm not going to try to be somebody different than I was in the primary.

Now in the general.

Obviously you endorsed me in the primary.

We've been friends.

We've known each other since well before he ran for office and before I got into office.

I think it's going to come down to a choice of two thing in this district in particular, and really two visions of where the country is going.

You know, you have common sense measures of Republicans on the right, and you have socialist measures and, and a Bernie Sanders type guy in a mission who's been campaigning for Bernie Sanders for ten years, and he believes in these DSA policies all the way back to 2019.

He talked at some of these DSA rallies, and he believes in these crazy policies that they want to implement.

But things like, you know no borders, no prisons, no, no private property rights, these are these are ideas that I don't think resonate with the people in the first Congressional District.

And I don't think they resonate with normal, average people around the country.

And if you were here, I certainly would ask him about those things, but.

He could have been here to defend him.

I appreciate you being here, but the last question before we were out of time here you didn't answer my question.

Would you want the president out here helping you?

Because in Congressiona District one, that's a very slim majority district for Republicans, if it even exists anymore.

With so many independents and his approval ratings are pretty low, how do you handle that?

I handle that by talking to people, by going door to door, by having events.

We're going to have some town halls with independents and Democrats.

Anybod who wants to come and talk to me and hear our story and hear about why we care about people and how I want to do that in Congress and do it the right way.

That's how you handle it.

You have those conversation and you communicate with people.

You didn't get my questionnaire, but I thank you so much for coming in.

We appreciate it.

Good to have.

You here.

Thank you.