Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast, where stories about the power of focus and resilience are revealed by the people who live those stories and now the host of the Jack Hopkins Show podcast, jack Hopkins.

Speaker 2: 0:20

All right, hello and welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast. I am your host, jack Hopkins, and today we have Arizona's Tim Stringham, who's running for the Maricopa County Recorder, which I would argue is perhaps the most important job of any race on this ticket. Important job of any race on this ticket because this is who protects your right to vote, so the other positions that we have and offices that people are running for. Without this guy, it's hard to say how the votes come out for any particular candidate. If our votes aren't counted, then clearly they don't count. So I want you to think about that as we talk to Tim today. This is a critically important position. Welcome, tim, thanks, thanks, jack. Appreciate you having me on.

Speaker 3: 1:36

Oh, absolutely, and while that might not be part of your campaign speech, in your head at least, is that kind of how you think about this position that you're running for. That the United States has ever had as a nation is who gets to vote? Do we allow African-Americans votes? We allow Native Americans to vote, we allow women to vote? And now we're kind of back in that phase where I am concerned that politicians are saying well, one of the ways that I can win is by picking and choosing when or how or who gets to vote. And again, I just think that that is the basis of any campaign for this job, which is to say that if you're a lawful american citizen who has not been found guilty of a felony, you have a right to vote. Whoever runs for this needs to affirm, first and foremost they protect that right for you certainly yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:18

One thing that um is is always gives me like this kind of rock solid feeling in a candidate when I see that they have prior military experience. Because I took that oath as well, I know how important that oath was when I took it and I know how important it is to me still. Can you tell me a little bit about how your military experience both in the United States Army and in the United States Navy, how did that form and shape how you think about things now?

Speaker 3: 3:00

Sure. So I have 15 years of total military experience as of last month, spread across the active duty and the reserve, two branches of military war and peace, four different continents. Four different continents, I mean. And when you take that oath and you go to work every day, you realize that it is not an oath of party. Nor are you serving with anyone on a partisan basis oath of party, nor are you serving with anyone on a partisan basis.

Speaker 3: 3:27

When you talk with politics with normal people, it normally isn't from a partisan perspective and as an officer, you don't walk in and think of things from that perspective and you're trying to protect everyone's right to vote and everyone's liberties. And again, especially after now entering politics, I'm very concerned that that's not how people always look at the system. When they're in politics they're thinking party first. They often have a financial incentive for their side to win and I think that is a problem. People are literally being paid to profit off of the divide that we often feel as Americans and that's not the perspective that you come into things if you're a service member.

Speaker 2: 4:09

Right. You know it's interesting because I just in reading through some of the things about you that that I found that's one thing that really stood out about you. You know, when you put the d after your name, that denotes the ticket you are running on with you and, perhaps more so than anybody else I've talked to, it was obvious to me that you were, you really had a grunt on. I'm running as a Democrat, but my position will be to protect the rights of everyone and, like you said, we are seeing more and more evidence of people serving in key positions like this who don't see it that way and, like you, I have deep concerns about that, as I think any US citizen should have. Let me ask you what are your priorities in terms of how you approach that job and that end goal?

Speaker 3: 5:26

Well, I think you have to be mission oriented and everything has to flow from that, and the job of the department is to ultimately make sure the leash on the government is in the hands of the voters.

Speaker 3: 5:40

When you go to vote or not vote, or vote for one party or another, you are a citizen exercising control over a government that is using your tax dollars to serve you, and that should be as painless as possible. It should not be a Herculean task for you to exercise control over your government. So that's that's the mission. You want to create an environment where you can vote and speak your voice in a way where the government's not fighting back and trying to limit your control over the government. And I think if you put that mission first and put politics and everything else aside, then hopefully people can say, oh okay, well, I understand where we're going here and bought in. People can say, oh okay, well, I understand where we're going here and bought in. And if you try to put party or this other stuff first, I think you're actually then going to hurt the mission. It's just you know, right.

Speaker 2: 6:38

What are you finding on the ground when you are out talking to people, I would assume, some of the time, any candidate from any party that's running the time, any candidate from any party that's running. There are times you you run into the people who are happy that you are running and and sometimes you run into the people who maybe have a different point of view. What, what's the feedback that that you've run into?

Speaker 3: 6:59

well, there's a couple ways to to answer that question. Um, I think what's interesting is, even when you talk to democrats, what I hear quite a bit is well, now that stephen richard lost his primary, we're going to support you, and I think that's noteworthy, right that I'm hearing from people of my own political party that they had intended on supporting you know the republican, a popular republican, and I take a lot of things from that one. I think republicans can win a lot of these races as long as they're willing to put up candidates who who have broad appeal and not just who appeal to, to the hardliners in one party, and I I remind democrats in the state that you know I republicans are choosing to lose races. Um, I often hear that, though, from people who are, you know, have been far more involved in democratic politics for a very long time, more so than I have. I'm a relatively newcomer to the political scene, and so even people that you would think would be wildly partisan. That is not the defining characteristic.

Speaker 3: 8:01

Most americans, I think I really do think a majority of americans look at their ballot and they try to find somebody from the other party to vote for somewhere on their ballot.

Speaker 3: 8:10

It doesn't mean you're successful. You might not find that person, but a lot of people want to walk out of a voting booth feeling like I'm the rational, independent thinker and the other thing that I hear all the time is why is that even a partisan position? And so, if you're just tuning into this podcast, right, I'm running for an office which runs our local elections and you run on a partisan basis with an R or D behind your name, and I think that is still surprising to so many of us, and I think that is not the fault of any person or any voter. Right, there is a structural flaw in the system where we have created an incentive for politicians to attack the way that elections are held so that you have a platform on which to run when you run for office against whoever the incumbent is. That's a flaw, I think, in how we run these things. I don't think it should be partisan and I think, arguably, this is a position that should be appointed or hired on a bipartisan basis.

Speaker 2: 9:16

Right, you know it's interesting because as I listen to you speak on that topic, I have a very good friend who's a judge and I have two very good friends who are lawyers and in conversations with them and I hear it in you part of their thinking process through the profession that they are in, when they are dealing with client, or perhaps even when they're dealing with somebody on the other side of this kind of high-level competition, if you will, that they are in on a particular day. The one thing that nobody's asking is is this person a Democrat or Republican? If you are a judge, this is simply somebody who has come before you and the only thing you are considering is the relevant evidence to the case. I would assume it's very much like that for an attorney. So what can you say as to how much of a role that plays in how you think about the job that you would have as the Maricopa County recorder?

Speaker 3: 10:34

Well, firstly, I do worry that more and more things that we didn't think of in a political sense we are now beginning to think of it that way, and here in arizona there is a, a movement even to make school board candidates partisan races, um, and and obviously we've seen some politicization of, uh, of the courts, and some, you know, claims that this is a republican judge or democratic judge, and so I I have concerns that even those spheres are moving in the wrong direction. But I go back to my military background for how I think about this. When you take up a position as a first sergeant or a company commander, or whatever it is, operation sergeant anywhere in the military, you don't own the office, it doesn't belong to you. You know that you were there for a finite period of time, and so I think the truth truth is that most military personnel do not attach a lot of ego to their position, and so if you talk to a company commander, for instance, about whether that company should continue to exist, they don't attach it to themselves personally because they know that they're going to leave the office one way or another. And so you're trying to think about what's for the good of the mission going forward, the good of the men going forward. And if my position is invaluable, I'll say that because I know you're going to go find another position in me and I take that mentality into this job. I can go find another job.

Speaker 3: 11:59

Political offices do not exist as a welfare program for people who want to be politicians. They're supposed to exist for the good of the people, and so I think that's the mentality that we have to have going in what is really good for the system. And I really do worry that a lot of politicians don't look at it that way. If you have fewer political positions, that means there's no politicians and it'll be harder for me to get elected. And I think we've got to stop thinking about it that way and say really what's for the good of the people that I'm describing are such incredibly brilliant people, but we've created a financial incentive there. They now have a vested personal interest and I think as voters, we need to be very, very aware of that yes, that's a great point.

Speaker 2: 13:00

I'm going to ask you a question that I I don't often hear asked of candidates, and particularly your position. Again, because this is a position where you're such a guardian of the right of the voter, what can you tell us about, to anybody listening? What are some of the things that, if the wrong person wound up in this position, how much damage with the power they have in that office, just how much damage could they do to impact?

Speaker 3: 13:38

the right to vote. Yeah, so just to outline some of the duties of the department with regard to elections. When you go to register to vote, an office has to process that request. When you go to get a ballot, somebody has to actually put that list together right. Work with a print shop, create the ballot, mail it out to you. Somebody has to then receive your ballot, process the ballot, make sure that it gets counted. Every single step of that process is very closely controlled by legislation State legislation, federal legislation, county policies, budget parameters.

Speaker 3: 14:17

What I tell people all the time is it takes a long time to build a team that is capable of complying with all of those regulations, complying with deadlines, handling the logistics operation. Now, anybody who has ever tried to build a team whether it's being in the military or being on a football team or coaching a middle school girl soccer team it takes a long time to build a team and yet teams are very fragile things. It's very easy to break a team. For all of the laws in the world, you can break them very easily. It's very hard to build a LEGO Star Destroyer. It's very easy to break a LEGO Star Destroyer. In Arizona, we have very, very close elections, very close elections, to the point that we have had a congressional race here recently, decided by just 39 votes. Congressional districts, by the way, are 750,000 residents. Now, that race has been decided by 39 votes, and so if you have somebody who either isn't up to the task of running a large department in a large election or is careless as to the law, you know you could have somebody say well, I'm gonna delay when the ballots go out, I'm gonna delay when we count these ballots, I'm not gonna comply with this law and I'm gonna invite a court case and that's then going to be paid for by all of the taxpayers.

Speaker 3: 15:43

Or uh, you know, one of the criticisms that came up in the republican primary was well, you know the people who have been working in the county. They've been there for too long and we need to clean house of some of the employees. Well, institutional memory is a thing we all like to think that we can walk into an office and figure it out, but there's always somebody who sits in the back corner nobody thinks about, and that's the person who raises their hand at the meeting and says well, the reason we do it this way is for this reason. You know, uh, or they. They send out a monthly check no one else is paying attention to, but if they were gone, that check wouldn't go and suddenly, you know, the telephone wouldn't work or something.

Speaker 3: 16:19

And I think, as a leader, as somebody who's, you know, been an officer in the military for 15 years, I think you need to respect your team.

Speaker 3: 16:30

You need to understand that oftentimes the leader is the least important person on the team and you need to respect the people who are doing the actual work. You need to be patient, you need to be humble, and when you're stepping up into a position that has a $40 million budget, that has 140 full-time personnel, that has thousands of part-time personnel, I think the key to success is to be humble on the first day and the measure of success is if you remain humble on the last day. And, uh, I I just worry that we, as voters are sometimes picking politicians because they just project so much confidence and they think they have all the answers and, in reality, everybody who's had a boss who just wanders in the first day and think they know better than everybody, that's typically a bad boss, and I think we should be a little wary of that, as you well know, and that's one reason it's such a joy to to listen to you lay things out.

Speaker 2: 17:23

As you know, it's a, it's a reality check when you lead men in war, where life and death is the consequence.

Speaker 2: 17:36

It it's not like um making big campaign promises that you later don't fulfill and the only consequence is maybe you don't win the next election.

Speaker 2: 17:48

Leading in wartime, there's a finality to mistakes or failed promises, and I hear that in about everything you say.

Speaker 2: 17:59

You, you think so much about the structure that is in place. You have a clear understanding of the importance of that structure and I love you said institutional memory. That tells me you are somebody who is aware of the importance of the people already there, of the importance of the people already there, and that your role locks up with them, it depends largely upon them, and that's such a sign of somebody who is an effective leader, because I don't hear you talking about all of the things you are going to do, because you are so smart, you've got it all figured out and everybody before you is wrong. And it's so refreshing to me, as I think it is to many people watching and listening, that you've got such a clear understanding about how everything works together and we don't hear that a lot I, I think we live in a world where, um, everybody is so quick to think that the guy standing next to them is a moron and we all do it.

Speaker 3: 19:21

I'm guilty of that too, right, everybody. Oh, this, this doesn't work. This guy's's an idiot. This person's late. They must be dumb, and I don't think we give enough respect to the people around us.

Speaker 3: 19:32

And one of the things that you're very blessed to do in the military is you never thought in your life about going into the military to be an electrician, right? But then you went to a forward operating base and you saw the electrician set things up and you maybe sat around the smoke pit and you asked that person some questions. You never thought about being an engineer, but you know, all of a sudden you had combat engineers out with you and you're sitting in the middle of a field napkin and you get an appreciation for these things. And, um, you know we live in a world where we are taking for granted the it professionals. You know, nobody thinks much about the it professional when they walk through the office, but the entire office shuts down if the internet's not working, if the network is down, if the internet's not receiving, if the server's broken and and right, and from your perspective it's just well, the email's not working, it's right and it's just conclusory, okay. But why isn't it working and what is the failure that got it to that and how will we get back there? And the worst bosses I ever had were the people who just sort of stomped their feet and demanded that something worked again. And when you're down the pipeline a little bit, you have to troubleshoot and spot these things and figure it out. Uh, you realize really quickly that you didn't have the answers. You had to. You had to work with a team and talk to the right people and, um, and so I I think that's the perspective that you, you ultimately bring to it.

Speaker 3: 20:54

If you've been out there in the real world and not just in politics, right, you realized, oh shucks, you know there's uh, everything nowadays is a, is a part of a complex ecosystem. And, yes, so you know to run the voter roles, just to get registered to vote. You now have an interaction between the state motor vehicle department and the reporter's office, that's two vpns and whatever servers through which they interact, and this line of code goes back to 2005. Well, I don't care how you smart you are. You know, I challenge any politician to say, yep, I'm going to take office and I'm going to go through all that code myself because I'm a computer programmer. And well, no, you're not. You don't even control all of it. Some of it belongs to other government departments, and so if you're going to get people to go and do that work for you, they better feel respected. And I worry that we are entering into an era where we offer each other, as human beings, too little respect.

Speaker 2: 21:57

Yes, you know, tim, something that jumps out so loud and clear, and it's not something you even verbalize.

Speaker 2: 22:07

You say it and communicate it by what you aren't saying, and that is as a listener. I hear you communicating your focuses on the integrity of the office, and I say that because one thing I haven't heard from you that's very typical of a conversation with a politician during the election period of time is one campaign promise after the other, but rarely anything centering around the integrity of the office. And now, perhaps more than in any other time in my lifetime for sure, it's the integrity of the office that must be so important, because we've seen what people who have no regard for the integrity of the office can do. They're like a bull in a china closet. So is that, when you think about the overarching, I guess, meta value of yours am I on with that that your focus is on the integrity of the office that you are running for? Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. You know, I'm somebody who grew up loving sports. Right is on the integrity of the office that you are running for.

Speaker 3: 23:27

Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. You know, I'm somebody who grew up loving sports, right, and I like the team mentality that we had in the military. And one thing that I have always said, from the day that I was a lieutenant in the army to my team, is, if I'm making a mistake, I want to hear from you first and let's have that honest communication. I'm making a mistake. I want to hear from you first and let's have that honest communication, because we are in a world that all of the information and all of the solutions they're out there. We just have to know the problem exists.

Speaker 3: 24:01

And I worry that some people are so wrapped up in the image of success that they don't stop to think about what success really means. Let's figure out what our problems are and let's try and work the problem. And in politics I think we do things a little bit backwards. Well, success is the popularity comp test. You know, success is the, the, the illusion of success, and it's well, wait, what if you actually just solved a problem? You know what if you actually accomplished something for somebody? And, um, you know it's.

Speaker 3: 24:42

It's interesting the things when you get into politics. There are these little things like that like how you approach something that I think are strange. You know, and on November 5th, you know, people are going to be cheering one way or another for their party and and my thing is sort of like, well, well, wait a second. Presumably you're running because you want to accomplish something for a human being out there. You know, did you? Did you actually set the conditions when you were running to solve the problem? You know so. So if I run saying the elections department is terrible and now people don't want to work for me and they quit the day I get into office, well, congratulations, you just took over an office that doesn't have anybody working for you. You're not going to be very successful in that office. I can't very well. You know what I mean. Uh, I do, and and so I I really worry that there's something about professionalism that that is just lost in the political arena yes, oh, I, I would agree.

Speaker 2: 25:40

And again, that's that's why I'm feeling so good about this conversation, because I'm hearing and seeing professionalism. You aren't telling us that you are professional and that you are demonstrating it, and people who are listening and watching are comfortable that they are picking that up too, are picking that up too, that just by the very nature of how you are describing the structure of that office and the importance of it, the professionalism aspect is coming through. And in how you talk about that, where can people find you and and donate to your campaign?

Speaker 3: 26:28

sure so we're. We're on twitter, facebook, instagram, all the the social media platforms that I loathe and detest. Um, we're on all of those places, um, you can find us there. We also have a website. You can go to timstringhamcom. Um, and, and we're canvassing like crazy. We're gonna going to be in Scottsdale on Saturday morning, I think. Friday we'll be at Arizona State University meeting with some students. We're every day trying to go to four or five events, although, strangely enough, as we get closer to the election, so many people are now already voting that actually things are slowing down on the campaign trail.

Speaker 2: 27:06

Interesting.

Speaker 3: 27:08

Yeah, and it makes sense by the end end of the week, I think we might be. You know, I wouldn't be surprised. By the end of the week or or shortly in the next week, 50 of of people who will have voted will have voted. You know, right and uh. But yeah, you can find us at timstringStringhamcom. If you haven't voted yet, I hope you'll do so soon.

Speaker 2: 27:31

Fantastic. So, as we kind of start to close this out, then I have this question for you, and you've likely been asked something along these lines already. If somebody were to say, maybe in an elevator, although there aren't a ton of elevators in compared to other cities but if somebody were to say what's the benefit to me, as a citizen of maricopa county, of voting for you? How, what, how does that benefit me and and why should I vote for you? How's that conversation go?

Speaker 3: 28:09

Yeah, there are all of these governmental functions which exist in the background which you don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about, so that you can focus on other things, so that you can focus on your family, on your work, on your job, and one of those things is the county recorder's office. And one of those things is the county recorder's office, and I hope that if you vote for me, we'll run a professional outfit, something that doesn't make a lot of mistakes, something that takes accountability when we do make mistakes, and so that you can go about your day and not wonder if your government is creating problems for you on your dime.

Speaker 2: 28:44

I want everybody listening to know this. This is not something Tim has said, but this is something I said in the beginning and I will say it again now. In the political climate we live in today, I think the office of the county recorder is perhaps the most important office that there is office that there is. If you can't vote and trust that your vote is being counted, it negates a whole lot of other things. So I hope everybody who felt the professionalism and the integrity again that he demonstrates as he speaks and talks about things, I hope you felt that as powerfully as I did. Tim, I wish you well. I want to tell you I'm very impressed with what I'm hearing from you and, again, it's such a lovely thing to not have somebody tell you how great they are. But you come to that conclusion on your own, by them not having said it, and just talked about how they think about things, and you go, oh, that guy's pretty great, so that's cool well I appreciate your time.

Speaker 2: 30:02

Thanks for having me on jack very much and, uh, we'll talk to you again soon, tim.

Speaker 3: 30:08

Thanks, have a great day. Bye.

Speaker 2: 30:10

You too, we'll be right back.