Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast. I'm your host, Jack Hopkins. Dr Annie Andrews is a pediatrician and a mom, not a politician. She spent her entire career serving South Carolina families, not donors and lobbyists, and she's running for Senate because kids and parents across the state are getting screwed by a system designed to work for the powerful but not the rest of us. After nearly two decades in children's hospitals, Annie saw how Washington's failures reach all the way into her exam room every day Kids shot in their own neighborhoods, Parents forced to ration medication, Families unable to find mental health care. So she got involved in advocacy and policy, and what she saw in the halls of power appalled her. She's running to defeat Senator Lindsey Graham in November and I'm honored to have her as my guest today on the Jack Hopkins Show podcast. I think you're going to like Dr Andrews and her vision for the future as much as I did. Okay, welcome, Dr Emmy Andrews.

Speaker 2: 1:05

Thank you so much, jack. I'm so happy to be here Okay welcome, dr Annie Andrews.

Speaker 1: 1:07

Thank you so much, Jack. I'm so happy to be here. Well, fantastic, I've been excited about having you on, and I'll get straight to the point. You are running to defeat Senator Lindsey Graham, and I don't think for most people listening why that is, it won't be a big mystery. But I'm going to let you talk about some of your specific reasons. But I want to start with some things that you've said in the past that I found particularly inspiring. But I know there's more to the comment. There's a bigger backstory and I'll let you talk about that. One thing I realized nobody was coming to save us, and I think most of us have had that feeling by now. If not, they've probably been under a rock somewhere or in a cave. But tell me about the context of your personal reason.

Speaker 2: 1:56

Yeah, happy to Thank you so much for this opportunity. I'm not a career politician. I never planned to get involved in politics. I'm a mom of my own three incredible children and I'm a pediatrician. And I actually decided to be a doctor when I was four. I told my preschool teacher when I grow up, I want to be a doctor and a mommy with three kids, and I set myself on that path. I never wavered from that path and I love being a pediatrician.

Speaker 2: 2:21

But most people don't have the privilege of spending their days inside the walls of a children's hospital, and what I saw there for nearly two decades is what drove me into politics. Because as a pediatrician in a children's hospital, I take care nearly every day of children who are hungry and don't know where their next meal is coming from. Children who are being diagnosed with a new chronic disease like asthma or diabetes and their parents aren't sure if they can afford their prescription drugs. Children who are in the throes of a mental health crisis and, despite their best efforts, their families can't find mental health resources for them. And far too many children who have been shot.

Speaker 2: 2:59

So, day after day, hospital room to hospital room, I grew increasingly frustrated and concerned about America's children. So I started looking upstream. I looked to my state capital in Columbia, South Carolina, and I looked to Washington DC and what I found appalled me. Far too few of our leaders are fighting for America's children, and a big problem there is. We have career corrupt politicians like Lindsey Graham who will sell our kids out as long as it means they can hold on to power. So I realized the system was broken. These broken policies were hurting kids and families long before they ever showed up at the children's hospital and, like you just said, no one was coming to save them. So I got off the sidelines and I got involved.

Speaker 1: 3:40

Fantastic. Let me ask you something. I was a hospital corpsman in the Navy and I later got out and did some nursing before I took the psychology track. But as a hospital corpsman I was a senior corpsman on an oncology floor for about a year and I know what it feels like to be giving care to somebody that you know is not going to live, and I know how helpless that is, especially when they're very young. So I know that. What I don't know, what I can't get my hands around but I have a feeling you can is how it feels to know that may be true for your patient, because the money's not there, that you could prolong their life or you could do something for them, but the funds are not available and you know right then, and there you're not going to be able to do what you could otherwise do. What's that like?

Speaker 2: 4:35

Yeah Well, first, thank you for your service to this country. It's heartbreaking, and a lot of people, when I'd made the decision to go into pediatrics specifically, a lot of people said how can you work in a children's hospital, isn't it so depressing? And I have found the opposite to be true, because children's hospitals are filled with families in their darkest days, but they're also filled with so much hope and love and empathy and bravery. And standing at the bedside of a child who is being diagnosed with a fatal condition or a child who has experienced a near fatal accident, like a car accident or a gunshot wound, that stuff stays with you and it moves me to do this work every single day.

Speaker 2: 5:16

I've been in the health care system as a provider for nearly 20 years and our system is broken. Too many patients cannot access quality, affordable primary care and therefore they come into the emergency department with advanced stages of disease or uncontrolled chronic diseases that will impact their ability to contribute meaningfully to society. It is morally and ethically wrong for us to continue to live in a country where so few people have access to the quality and affordable health care that they need and deserve, and here we are on the precipice of this horrific bill that is being championed by Republicans like Lindsey Graham that will completely gut our nation's Medicaid program. Medicaid is the largest insurer of children in South Carolina and in the United States. We're going to rip away health care from the most vulnerable members of our communities our children who are growing up in poverty, pregnant women, disabled people and people on Medicare.

Speaker 2: 6:17

It's not okay. At the same time, they're going to cut Medicare and they're going to slash the NIH budget. Things will shutter. It'll start in rural areas and then it'll come to our large health centers, our academic health centers. They cannot keep their doors open. This is a coordinated attack on our nation's health care system and on our public health infrastructure that will take decades to recover from, and this is one of the prime reasons I decided despite my best interests probably to get in this race to run against Lindsey Graham.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Fantastic. Something else you said. I kept seeing the same story and for further context, I wasn't just treating sick kids, I was watching a system fail them, and the more I watched, the more I knew I had to do something. Now this goes back and kind of underscores what you just said. Could you talk just a moment? I know this is something most people, at least on the side fighting for democracy get, but this doesn't just hurt Democrats, this cuts across both parties. Can you talk just a moment about that?

Speaker 2: 7:17

Yeah, I mean, health care is something we all rely on, red or blue, and the fact of the matter is red states quote unquote red states like South Carolina that continue to send Republicans to Washington DC are going to be more negatively impacted by these Medicaid cuts. We have a higher proportion of our population on Medicaid than other states. We rely on these programs. And the other thing is some people might think well, you know, no one in my family is on Medicaid, so I don't need to get involved in this conversation when you cut our largest insurer of children and the insurance program that pays for 50% of deliveries in South Carolina, that's going to crowd our emergency departments. Because when your child loses their health care and you don't have anywhere to turn, you wait for them to get sicker and then you finally show up in an emergency department to seek the care that you should have been able to seek in a primary care office.

Speaker 2: 8:09

And so that means when my kid falls off the monkey bars and breaks the wrist and I show up to the emergency department, that emergency department is going to be overcrowded with people who could not access health care anywhere else. It is going to crowd our emergency departments. It is going to raise the cost of health care for all of us, and this is while our hospitals can afford to stay open. But when you have uninsured people showing up in an emergency department, those people receive care because that is the duty of the emergency department, and those costs get passed on to those of us with private health insurance. Our premiums rise to overcome the uninsured patients who are showing up. So this negatively impacts every single one of us, no matter what type of health care we have. So if the moral argument doesn't move you, then the economic argument certainly should.

Speaker 1: 8:56

Absolutely. My oldest daughter is an ER nurse right, and I live in a rural area. Seven out of 10 people voted for Donald Trump in the last election. A big portion of the people who voted for Donald Trump and I know this for a fact are on Medicaid right Now. My daughter made a comment I mean heartbroken because she told me and you know this better than anybody when people aren't feeling well and have something that probably is an emergency and they probably should come to the ER, they are not going to and some of them will die, you know, so let's I like this one.

Speaker 1: 9:32

He said I'm a mom, of course I fight. I fight for my kids every single day. That's not political, that's instinct. You know. That's such a refreshing thing for me to hear and, I think, for a lot of the listeners. For this reason, we have far too much politics where everything is cut and dry, black and white, there's no gray area, there are no feelings. That's not political, that's instinctual. Tells me that you just aren't thinking numbers, you are thinking feelings, emotions, lives, families. Expand a little bit on that thought of you know, of course I'm a mom.

Speaker 2: 10:11

Yes, you know people don't believe me when I say this, but I am an introvert. I am not a joiner, I am a rule follower. But I shed every single insecurity I had about what spaces I may or may not belong in when I became a mother, because the stakes just changed. You know, I have three beautiful, amazing children and I do this work for them, and it doesn't matter if I feel uncomfortable in these spaces or I need to learn how to be an effective public speaker. Raise my hand and run against one of our nation's top Republican villains.

Speaker 2: 10:44

I'm doing it for my kids because I have no choice, because we have one political party in this country that wants to keep child care unaffordable, that wants to rip away health care from children, that cares more about the gun lobby than children's safety in their classrooms and really does not, frankly, give a damn about America's children.

Speaker 2: 11:04

It is not about red or blue for me, but I am a proud Democrat because I see the Democrats fighting to lift children out of poverty, to provide them with health care, to provide them with a quality education, to address the climate crisis, so our children and grandchildren can enjoy this beautiful planet we call home. And so, yes, it's my mama bear instinct that lit this fire inside of me that keeps me going every single day, and I want people to understand my story so they can see that agency within them, because there are so many pissed off moms and dads and grandparents but they don't necessarily feel like they're capable of doing the things that I've done. But I was just like them. I was essentially a checked out, busy mom, busy working mom. But I see the stakes. I found my own agency and my own voice and I have put myself out here in the biggest, most dramatic way possible to fight for the things I believe in. And everyone else has the power to do that as well.

Speaker 1: 12:02

Now tell me, correct me if I'm wrong, but at one point you had actually put your practice on hold to get involved in some very important work. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Speaker 2: 12:13

Yeah, you know I was a full-time pediatrician working in the Children's Hospital here in Charleston, south Carolina, for nearly 15 years when I decided to run for Congress in 2022 against Nancy Mace and during that election cycle, you know she played really dirty not surprising and made it a lot about the issue of gender affirming care, because she sees that as a cultural wedge issue to divide our communities and, of course, she doesn't care about throwing vulnerable children under the bus.

Speaker 2: 12:43

And it got very heated and I worked at the public institution here in Charleston, south Carolina, and there was a lot of vitriol being shared online and so ultimately, I did take a leave of absence towards the end of that campaign for my own personal safety, for my family's safety, but also for the safety of the sick and injured kids and their families in that children's hospital, because I didn't want what Nancy Mace was saying online about me to lead to someone showing up at that hospital looking for me, looking to do harm A very public statement that I will not be in that building anytime between now and the election. And it was to protect myself but, more importantly, to protect the kids and families in that hospital, because they will play so dirty they don't care who they're endangering. And enough was enough, and yes, so I took a leave of absence at that time.

Speaker 1: 13:29

And there again, is that motherly instinct? Right, you said it somewhat for your personal safety, but your body language betrays that a little bit, because I can tell it was about the kids, right, if there would have been no kids involved, it would have been a different thing. Again, I just want to emphasize that motherly instinct. For this reason I'm 59 years old Now. My mother just passed away in October, but prior to that, when you have some heartfelt thing, some emotionally complex thing, who do you go to? Most of the time you go to mom, right, because she's got that blend of understanding of, she's not got this macho ego she's trying to protect and she can think from a different place. Right, my patients taught me how to lead. I don't come from politics, I come from pediatric exam rooms where I learned what real strength looks like. Where did that come from?

Speaker 2: 14:32

It goes back to what I was saying about what it's like to have the privilege of working inside of a children's hospital, and when you take care of children who are battling cancer, children who have just had brain surgery, children who are in and out of the hospital all year long because of their chronic disease, it really shifts your perspective on the battles that people are facing and what really matters. Those sick kids and their families are leaders, they are advocates and they are fighting for their own children, their families and, many times, for a better healthcare system for all of us. So when you compare that to the childish behavior that we see from so many of our elected Republicans currently, it's just it's hard to take them seriously and you realize what matters, and that's why I'm not afraid to fight against someone like Lindsey Graham. He doesn't scare me. I'm fighting for sick children and their families. I'm fighting for the most vulnerable members of my community and I am certainly strong and brave enough to stand up to a bully, whether it's Nancy Mace or Lindsey Graham.

Speaker 1: 15:33

And let's point out something that is very clear you are fighting for children. Lindsey Graham is fighting for Donald Trump. The difference couldn't be clearer. That's right. I've got some questions for you now. What have your children taught you about leadership? That no medical degree or political campaign ever.

Speaker 2: 15:54

I love that question. I learned so much from my own children and from the children I have the privilege to care for. They've taught me that people are always watching and it matters less what you say and more what you do, and we must always set a good example. You know, I said this a lot in my last election cycle. I want to not have to turn the TV off when my kids walk in the room because our president is on and I'm worried what he's going to say. That flies in the face of everything I taught my children about what it means to be a good and decent human being. We need to get back to leaders that our children can look up to, whether they're red or blue and whether we're red or blue. We should expect our leaders to set a good example for our children. Yet we expect more from our children. You know you talk about what we expect from our children and what I've learned from my children, and I think this is a really important point to make. I talk a lot.

Speaker 2: 16:47

I travel around the country to talk a lot about the gun violence crisis and gun violence prevention, and one of the points I always make is we must be braver than we expect our children to be.

Speaker 2: 16:58

My youngest child, when she came home from her first day of first grade, I was in the laundry room folding laundry. She ran in and she said oh mom, school was so great. I have twin girls in my class. I love my teacher and we don't have a bathroom in our classroom, so that means when a bad man with a gun comes in the building, we hide in the corner. But it's okay, because our teacher bought lollipops and those are in the corner and we get a lollipop and that'll help us stay quiet while the bad man is in the building, and then she just like went on with the rest of her afternoon. We have normalized this for our children. We expect our children, as young as preschool, to hide from bad men in their classroom, robbing them from their sense of physical and psychological safety, and we expect that of every child in America. But we can't be brave enough to step up and use our voices and fight for this democracy.

Speaker 1: 17:47

What a fantastic point, wow, yeah, when they can say that and then just skip to the next subject and there's not even a blip, it tells you how wrong things have gone.

Speaker 2: 17:57

Yes.

Speaker 1: 18:00

Wow, A single treatment. We know things usually don't work that way, but if you could prescribe single treatment to cure what's broken in American politics, what would it be and why?

Speaker 2: 18:11

That's a very great question and a serious question, but I'm going to start by making a joke, and what Lindsey Graham needs is a very strong laxative because, as I said in my launch video, he is completely full of you know what?

Speaker 1: 18:25

Right, that's beautiful.

Speaker 2: 18:26

We need. Our country is in desperate need of authentic leadership. We have a broken political system that's been broken for some time but has been expedited by the complete Republican Party collapse under the reign of Donald Trump, and it has shown a big bright light on what is broken with this system. On both sides of the aisle, we have career politicians who are frankly in it for themselves and not in it for the folks who voted to have them represent them. It's no longer seen as a privilege by most people to represent them. It's seen as a career opportunity. We have so many elected officials that are enriching themselves. We need to find a way for candidates like me, candidates who are driven to get involved because of the problems they see in their day-to-day life, in their job, in their career, and who raise their hand, are brave enough to step into this fight. We need to support those candidates when they show up and we need to do everything in our power to get them elected and keep them in those seats, because until we start electing a different kind of person, we're going to see the same problems over and over and over again. I've spent a long time working in academic health centers and the thing that I hate to hear the most when I'm in meetings is well, we've always done it this way, so we're just going to keep doing it this way, or we tried that once and it didn't work. We need to start thinking innovatively.

Speaker 2: 19:48

As a Democratic party, as a political system, we need to run different kinds of candidates, we need candidates to sound differently, we need to put our candidates in different places so that we can meet people, and we also need to start thinking about things that inspire people, because we're so caught up playing defense right now and talking about how we're the anti-Trump party.

Speaker 2: 20:07

We're the choice if you don't like Trump, if you don't like Lindsey Graham, but we fail to sell what we're selling, and what we're selling is a brighter future for everyone in this country. We need voters to understand that we're not just going to go up there and stop Donald Trump, but we're going to fight for you. We're going to fight for an expanded and permanent child tax credit. We're going to fight for lower prescription drug prices. We're going to go to bat for you. Voters lose sight of that because we're so stuck in this rut of playing defense. We just need a different kind of leader that inspires people to get out and vote, and then we can finally see the change that we and our children so desperately need and deserve.

Speaker 1: 20:42

Wow, wow, perfect. I really like what you said about you know, if we keep doing the same thing, look, someone with diabetes can go and get the top of the line insulin and treatment protocol right. But also, if they continue to drink a 12 pack of Pepsi every day, if they do the same thing they've always done, even when they're trying to treat it, you've got to do something different, right? Yes, and boy, I know we don't have the time, but I could talk to you forever on that. Next question During a night shift at the hospital which I assume you've not had to do those for a while and probably happy about that but was there ever a moment that made you consider not running for office and what changed your mind when you were doing your, you know in medical school, right, if we have to go that far back for night shifts, and again the question is, was there ever a moment that made you consider not running for office? What changed your mind?

Speaker 2: 21:42

So when you're talking about night shifts, it brought up a memory that I haven't talked about in a while, but it actually everything I ever saw, even when I didn't realize it was informing this future career path of mine. Everything I've seen since I started working in hospitals has informed the things I fight for today. I was working overnight as a resident in Cincinnati, ohio, where I did my residency on New Year's Eve and this very sick boy came in. He was previously healthy but he came in with jaundice, so his skin was yellow, his lab values were all out of whack, his liver was inflamed, his blood counts were off. He was clearly very ill from a yet-to-be-determined serious disease. Lots of subspecialists got involved. I was the doctor working in the emergency department. He got admitted to the ICU. He got lots of doctors at his bedside, lots of tests being run. Ultimately they diagnosed him with a rare blood condition that required a bone marrow transplant.

Speaker 2: 22:38

But I had been working in the ED that night taking care of this boy. Several days later I was walking in one of the hospital units and I saw his parents and they stopped me and they said doctor, do you remember if you signed his admission order before or after midnight. And I said I don't know, like that question totally took me back. I'm like why? Why do you need to know that? And he said well, we've been on the phone with our insurance company and if you signed it before midnight, we're going to owe like hundreds of thousands of dollars more because we had already met our deductible for that calendar year. But if you signed it in the new year, then we're not going to have to pay as much.

Speaker 2: 23:11

And I'm thinking these parents have a critically ill child in the ICU and they're having to spend even a moment of their time on the phone with their insurance company to figure out if they're going to go into complete debt over this. I mean, what a shameful indictment on our healthcare system. And that's just one story from one night in the emergency department. But it just tells you how broken this system is. We do not have a patient-centered healthcare system. We have a profit-motivated healthcare system and it is not serving patients and, frankly, it's not serving the providers either. Right?

Speaker 1: 23:45

Wow. Stories like that. They're just nuts, you know, I mean, that's all you can say. They're just nuts and there's no heart, there's no emotion involved. It's data. Before I forget, because I've wanted to say this, like I said, I've seen you on TV in multiple places talk shows and I've got to say, right now in politics and you utilize it not intentionally but very unconsciously and effectively you've probably got the best smile in politics right now. So when you are just talking about something lighthearted, you're projecting a feeling that this nation really needs right now. Look, we've got to talk about the serious issues. We've got to know when to be serious, but we also can't lose sight of some enjoyment in our day and to be able to laugh and to be able to smile. So I just want to say I like how that just naturally kind of falls into the conversation with you and I think that's a real strong point.

Speaker 2: 24:44

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 24:45

Tell our viewers, our listeners, how can they help you and where can they go to do that.

Speaker 2: 24:51

Yes To the point you just made, though you're exactly right. We cannot let them steal our joy. That is, you know, a very important part of the fascism playbook to steal our joy, because if we lose our joy we won't remember what we're fighting for. So it's okay to still make jokes, it's okay to laugh, it's okay to tune out for an evening and go do something that you enjoy with your family or your friends, and we cannot lose sight of that. That is such an important part of our shared humanity. But if people want, go ahead.

Speaker 1: 25:23

No, that's a slogan. If we lose our joy, we won't remember what we're fighting for. Dr Annie Andrews, that captures it all. So I'm sorry to interrupt you, but yes, no, that's okay.

Speaker 2: 25:39

But I need support from every corner of this country if we're going to hold Lindsey Graham accountable. So I'm putting myself out there to do this big, scary thing, putting my professional life on hold, taking time away from my kids, and I'm doing it because I believe so deeply that we need folks like me to step up and run in these races. But I need support from everyone to do that. And you don't have to be a South Carolinian to invest in this race to support my candidacy. And what an incredible feeling it would be to wake up the morning after the election and having a Democrat win statewide in South Carolina and send a villain like Lindsey Graham home. So if they want to be a part of what I'm doing, they can go to Dr Annie Andrews dot com. Sign up to join our email list, sign up to be a monthly donor. Every dollar helps and that is what fuels these campaigns. I don't like that. Money has such a big role in our politics, but that is just the playbook that we have right now.

Speaker 2: 26:36

It's just a fact yes, it's just a fact. I spend so much of my time on the phone asking people for donations, and the more people who get involved, the stronger this campaign will be, and we will force Lindsay to take me seriously. We'll force the GOP to spend money and time in South Carolina that they'd rather be spending in Michigan or Pennsylvania, and we can really give Lindsey a run for his money and honestly give him hell for the next 18 months, but I need people with me to do that.

Speaker 1: 27:04

If you are watching, if you're listening.

Speaker 1: 27:06

Look, I often have people when I, when I will put out somebody's link right for their campaign.

Speaker 1: 27:11

I often have people tell me, jack, I'm retired and I'm on a fixed income. And my answer to them, very respectfully, is that's exactly why you should give. If you are riding so razor thin, that when your freedom, when your democracy, when your livelihood, healthcare is on the line and you don't have any discretionary income to give, that should speak to a larger problem in this country, and that's why you've got to find something, even if it's $5, find something that's a non-essential this month, cut it out and donate it to somebody. And then when they say, you know I can't donate to everybody, I find a lot of people use that as a reason to donate to nobody, right, and so I say you don't have to donate to everybody. Pick someone who's on the side of democracy, who's fighting for you, and give. And, like you said, it's just the way it is. It's how politics runs today. If you don't have the money, then you aren't running as effectively as you could be with more money.

Speaker 2: 28:17

That's right.

Speaker 1: 28:18

In closing, let's do this I want to know something about you personally, because I love to know about the people I'm voting for. What are some hobbies of yours? What are the things that you? It doesn't sound like you probably have a whole lot of free time, but when you do, what kind of stuff do you love to do?

Speaker 2: 28:40

Well, I did say that I'm an introvert, so in my free time sometimes I stare at a wall, because that is how I recharge from having to be on all the time and be in these rooms with people who are so excited to meet me. I love to be outside as much as possible. I live in the low country of South Carolina, which is one of the most beautiful parts of the country. I sit on my side porch in the evening with my children watch them play soccer. I'm also a Peloton girl.

Speaker 2: 29:01

I know that I need to keep physically active to make and I love to read. I don't have a lot of time to read right now, but I am so focused on the task at hand. But I also have a rule with my team that I'm not going to do this if it's not fun. So it's good vibes. Only, you need to remember again why we're doing this, and it's because we want to get back to a time when we can enjoy our lives without worrying about the fall of American democracy. So I do have a lot of fun in my day-to-day life, but I also spend some time quietly sitting alone in my bedroom at the end of a busy day.

Speaker 1: 29:37

And I understand that. You know people might assume, because of what I do, that I'm an extrovert. I'm not, I'm an introvert. And so when I'm not doing this, I'm not out with big groups of people or, you know, having a swarm of people over to the house for a barbecue, of people over to the house for a barbecue I'm being quiet, right. So, no, that's fantastic and that you are able to bridge that gap because of what you realize needs to be done in this moment. Dr Andrews, it has been a pleasure and I want to extend an open invitation to you to come back anytime between now and November. If there's anything going on or whatever the case, you just reach out and we will do it again.

Speaker 2: 30:19

Thank you so much, Jack. It's been really such a pleasure to talk to you today.

Speaker 1: 30:23

Likewise, I'll talk to you again, hopefully soon.

Speaker 2: 30:26

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 30:27

All right, bye-bye, bye.