Former Naval officer Andrew Learned wants to see more veterans in office. That's just one of the many reasons he's running for Congress and is hoping to flip Florida's 15th district blue.
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00:00I always joke that if every Democrat watching, every Democrat out there went and they convinced
00:04one Republican to vote for us, vote blue in 2020, we would handedly win the election everywhere.
00:11And I'm going to get my mom. I'm going to get her.
00:22In the years after Vietnam, about 70 to 80 percent of the members of Congress were veterans. Now it's
00:28less than 20 percent. Not to hate on my lawyer friends out there, but we have a ton of lawyers
00:33serving in Congress now, but we don't have a lot of people who know what it's like serving in
00:38uniform, especially in harm's way in the Middle East. We have a ton of veterans coming home. I'd
00:43like to see them be able to use their GI Bill and their veterans benefits to be able to start a
00:48business instead of necessarily having to put that towards higher education.
01:00If you work around children and they don't inspire you and make you have a have a smile on your face
01:04when you go home, you're just you're really just not doing it right. So I enjoy that. The downside
01:09is I started the whole thing on about $150,000 of credit card debt. So that was the hard part,
01:14but once we once we got through a couple of hurdles and now we're off to the races, we have
01:19about 12 teachers who work for us and helping all the kids. The people who can afford private
01:23tutoring like I provide typically are the parents who can afford private tutoring. It's not necessarily
01:30the ones who need it the most. And one of the things that I'm trying to do from this run
01:34is be able to bring those services to other folks just by like fixing the schools in the first place
01:40so fewer kids needed the extra the supplemental education that people like I provide.
01:57The further down your ballot you look, usually the more direct impact that person will have on
02:04your life. When you're talking about your your city council member, your school board member,
02:09that's your kid's school. That's whether that school is going to force you to buy uniforms
02:15that maybe you can and can't afford or whether your school has to get bused halfway across the
02:20city to deal with desegregation laws. You should really start at the bottom and work your way up
02:25in my personal opinion. Those are the ones where the research matters. And also that's where some
02:30of the candidates who, you know, no offense to anybody running down ballot, I'm one of them.
02:36Some people sneak through with some really out there outlandish ideas and you should do
02:41your research because some of those people sneak into office and get re-elected time and time again
02:46without the qualifications that those offices also deserve. Because whether you're a public servant,
02:51you should be a public servant whether you're the President of the United States or whether
02:54you're a local dog catcher or school board member.