Above is a recording of my interview with Austin Ahlman, an independent candidate for Nebraska’s 1st District. Below is an editted transcript of the conversation. We discussed his heartbreaking personal story that inspired him to run for office, how corporations are ruining rural farmers, why immigration is a labor issue, and how BlackRock's buying up single-family homes is driving Nebraskans onto the street. If you haven’t yet, please watch Austin’s powerful campaign launch video.
If you’re as inspired by Austin Ahlman as I am, please consider donating to his campaign here.
Joe: I’m here with Austin Ahlman. Austin Ahlman, how’s it going?
Austin Ahlman: I’m coming off the most poorly timed episode of bronchitis, perhaps in human history. So if I sound a little raspy, it’s not because I’m just playing it up to seem sexy. Unfortunately, this has been my life since about 7 PM on Thursday, 12 hours after a lot of really cool stuff. So not great.
Joe: So it sounds like you put out your campaign video, which got a lot of attention. I’m sure you got a lot of media requests, and then you immediately got sick, which prevented you from speaking eloquently. Am I understanding the timeline correctly?
Austin Ahlman: Pretty much. However, we have a lot of things in the works for this week. People were gracious enough to wait, and we did plenty of print work in the interim.
Joe: That’s the real power of print journalism right there.
I’d like to start by asking about what I mentioned: a lot of people became aware of your recently announced campaign through this incredibly powerful campaign launch video you just put out. And I just want to read a quote from it that I have here. “My dad got cancer, and my mom’s employer collapsed. The executives got paid, and the workers got screwed. She didn’t have the heart to tell us, even when the bank took the house. And when she took her own life, the eviction notice was in her pocket.“
That really stuck out to me. One: it’s an experience that many people can relate to. But mostly because you were willing to share such a personal story. Not only as part of your candidacy, but right out of the gate. Can you tell us specifically why you are running for Nebraska’s 1st congressional seat? And then also, what is it about your personal story that has helped you make this decision to run for Congress?
Austin Ahlman: When it comes to sharing the story, I went back and forth a lot. And as I worked with my team about a launch video, there was a lot of discussion over how much we wanted to share. And eventually, what the way it was put to me was that if you don’t share this stuff, nobody will. Because there is, especially in areas like mine, there’s so much shame that’s foisted on you for the struggle. And that’s part of the reason why my mom really had a hard time telling us about what was happening. We didn’t find out. Piecing together what had happened after the fact was really painful. And I think that a lot of people have that experience of having to piece together where things went wrong and why, and why they couldn’t tell you, and why people can’t express what’s happening. And so I think I was persuaded because it is important.
It is important for people to understand how much people are struggling, especially in places like mine, in communities like Norfolk, that have just had one hit after another after another. The pride that we have in carrying on is phenomenal, but it shouldn’t be this hard. And I think if people were willing and able to talk about it a little more, you could start to build the political momentum and community necessary to change it. And so that was the thinking.
And then, in general, why I’m running is exactly what you see. I am tired of seeing this amount of pain in my community. And the current representative just could not be more different from me. I grew up the son of meatpackers, first in my family to go to college. He grew up with a silver spoon. I have made my career doing my best to break up monopolies — particularly media and tech monopolies. He is the local media monopolist, right? Like, while we were going through all of this in the house, and this is all recent, I think most people can intuit that it’s fairly recent, everything that happened, but it was really just January that we lost my mom.
And while everything was happening and I was fighting the bank tooth and nail to get the house back, you had Mike Flood sitting in Congress, doing his best to thwart Donald Trump’s own bill that would stop big banks from owning single-family homes. And all of those things together just boiled over to me to the point that somebody has to do it. And right now, right here in this state, given that it’s a district that Osborn won, given that the Republican has so many vulnerabilities that have never been exploited by a real, credible challenger, given that the Democrat frankly doesn’t come close to being a credible challenger. I was like, damn it, let’s do it. Like somebody has to. And if you put your money where your mouth is, it’d better be me. So here we are.
Joe: Yeah, that’s amazing. It’s weirdly refreshing when people are willing to talk about politics in human terms, right? Because it’s very easy to say, Mike Flood went against this bill preventing BlackRock from owning single-family housing and stuff like that. And we forget about what that actually looks like when we think about those policies on the American people, which is families being evicted. And so I do think, at least from my perspective, it was really powerful to see somebody who is just saying, I’m coming from a place of experiencing the hardship of this broken political system rather than someone speaking about hypotheticals.
I’d like to ask you about what you touched on there: this is a very unique race, right? So you are running as an independent, not as an insurgent Democratic primary challenger. The Democratic primary is over. So you are one of 3 candidates in this race. There is the Democrat, the Republican incumbent, and then you, the independent candidate.
And you tell us a little bit about why you chose to run as an independent rather than try to win the Democratic primary. Yeah. And what do you think is going to be your biggest challenge in a three-way race, which is very different from a two-way race?
Austin Ahlman: The long and short of it is, I’m not a Democrat. I have not been. But when I first registered to vote as a wide-eyed 17-year-old, I registered as an independent. I’ve never had any strong identification with the Democratic Party. There have been a few times in my life when I have voted in Democratic primaries, mostly as an artifact of those who determine who gets to have a seat in many places where I’ve lived previously. But I wouldn’t run as a Democrat ever for any race because I’m not one. And, currently with the party in the shape that it is, I don’t see myself changing that philosophy anytime soon.
And so in Nebraska, independents have a different structure, a different window. So the primary phase, if you want to call it one, for an independent goes till August, when you can submit petitions to be on the ballot. And so I sized up the race, took one look at this Democrat who seemed likely to win for a little while, and thought, this guy is never gonna do it. He is absolutely never going to do it. He had enough money to buy the primary and some from unsavory interests, to say the least, but not nearly enough to actually run a competitive general election.
The place where he got the money is thoroughly corrupt. And then his background is not great. We can get into that a little bit later, but it’s not great. Not great morally, but then also just politically. Like, it is an albatross around the neck of a candidate out here to have the experience that he is touting as his reason to be the nominee.
Austin Ahlman: So all of those things together just, it was like, well, somebody has to do something because Mike Flood has to lose this year. He has to lose. This is a year you can beat him. People are very upset with Republican incumbents. He has voted and rubber-stamped the war. He has voted and rubber-stamped all the cuts to necessary programs that are really hitting hard out here. And so, you’ve got to do something. And so I did something, and here we are doing the something.
Joe: I do want to kind of stay on that one. Obviously, you’re not a Democrat, which makes a lot of sense. But also, you know, there is kind of an element of the Democratic Party that thinks that what we should be doing is running Democrats who are just more like Republicans in these red states, right? Kind of like the abundance-moderation mindset we hear from prominent liberal journalists. And I’d like to kind of hear like why, in your opinion, not even as a candidate, but as somebody who is from this community, like why you think that doesn’t work for putting aside all your stuff about not wanting to be associated with the Democrats, of like why you’re not wrecking a good chance of a Democrat winning.
And I, yeah, before I ask you, I want to share kind of like some of the stuff I read, which is the one, it was interesting to see this district has been represented by a Republican since the 1930s, with this lone exception of, I believe it was 1964, which was like LBJ’s huge blue wall, right? So like, this is a very Republican district. And then, I believe the Cook Political Report said it would take anemic GOP turnout and a very strong Democratic turnout for the Democrats to even have a chance. So that is why I think you're the best shot at bringing progressive politics to this red state.
But I’d like to hear from a kind of on-the-ground perspective of just a Nebraskan, like, Why is the Democratic brand failing to, you know, replace the Republicans who, as you have said, are doing nothing to help the people struggling? It’s depressing.
Austin Ahlman: Well, I think a lot of it is that the meaning of terms like centrist, moderate, progressive, they’re all filtered through like the D.C. bubble, like the D.C. media brain, which is incredibly, incredibly detached from real life, especially real life out here, right? And so what is the centrist view, as in like what does the median person actually think, is very, very different than the types of candidates that the Democratic machine churns out. They churn out the DC centrist view, which is like, we love the national security state, we should fund all these wars, absolutely moderate on everything, or not moderate, but trim down any of your ambitions for what we should do about the economy. Or the economic order. People love the power of elites. They just can’t get enough of the elites and their power.
Like, that kind of brand of politics, it’s not the center anywhere, but especially in the middle of the country out here, it is so unbelievably detached from reality that it drives you nuts, right? And so you were mentioning that this district has always been Republican, or has been for a long, long time. True, but it has also always been populist. Nebraska’s history is of— and again, this is different. The word— this word means a different thing than it means now, but the progressive Republicans, the populist Republicans, for decades and decades, their stronghold was districts like this one. And it is that, as both parties have become corporate, identity has become meaningless, and people here are adrift and persuadable. And that is why Osborn won this seat in 2024. And that was when he had to share a ballot with Kamala Harris, which is an impressive feat because I don’t think that many people around here are gung-ho about her, to be clear.
But if you are willing to go into a ballot box, click Donald Trump, then Mike Flood, and then Dan Osborn, it says you’re looking for something different. And if you don’t see that, what you’re going to do is you’re going to go with the devil that you know. And so I wouldn’t necessarily even say that what I’m doing resembles progressive politics, especially not if I’ve seen it. But it is populist politics. It is the politics embodied by the Republicans of the New Deal era, like George Norris, our most famous senator, who helped build the New Deal and did it by putting the culture war bullshit aside and looking at what people need economically and seeing what elites are standing in the way and being willing to actually name them and take them on.
Joe: I want to talk about the actual policies that you’re running on in a second, but it was so shocking to me when I was researching, you know, your opponents and the Democratic opponent. I’m going to pronounce his name wrong. Chris Bachmeier. It sounds like his leading endorsement on his website is from Foreign Policy for America. And if you look at it, like he’s, this is like the top one that he’s most proud of. And it seems like you turned the State Department into a political organization and then started endorsing people. So I’m not surprised to hear you say that that version of politics doesn’t work.
Austin Ahlman: So you say that about the State Department. What’s really funny is that the man has been funded, quite literally, by large donations from Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, Ned Price, and so on. His donor list is basically a Rolodex of every discredited foreign policy leader. And it is just bizarre to think that one of the few issues that unites the base of the left, the base of the right, and independents is being fed up with the foreign policy of the last two decades. And now we have the avatar of the foreign policy of the last two decades being muscled into a winnable seat, and it’s just enough to make your, make your damn head explode, right? But that’s the thing, right? Just try the same thing over and over again.
Never admit any mistakes. Never admit that, you know, something different might actually work. Just muscle through and then call the new guy who’s gonna try something different a spoiler for spoiling a race that you were very obviously never going to win.
Joe: Yeah. I mean, it’s like they’ve been trying the same thing for a century at this point, right? And like, Oh, you got lucky once in the 1960s. And you know, it’s just baffling to me.
I do want to talk a little bit about, you know, the policies you’re running on and how you’re going to help everyday Nebraskans and Americans, you know, get by. And I’d really like to start by talking about an issue that I’m under-informed on, which is agriculture, right? So I was reading on your campaign website, and one of your policies is to champion family farms and ranches. Corporate agriculture consolidation is the slow death of rural America. We’ll crack down on big ag’s market manipulation and endless cost squeezes, making sure that people who feed this country can afford to feed themselves.
And so I’d like to, one, ask you about, you know, what are these dynamics that you’re seeing, you know, in affecting rural Nebraskan farms? And then I’d also kind of like to, you know, ask like, okay, like how does that, you know, help people who aren’t working on these farms as well? Because correct me if I’m wrong, I imagine that what is bad for small farmers is also bad for, you know, people in Lincoln, Nebraska, who don’t work on a farm, but like to eat food from farms. Yes.
Austin Ahlman: I think all of us do like to eat food from farms, right? No, the dynamic right now is that whether you are a farmer or a rancher, this is one of the hardest years you have ever had. A lot of it is just the growing pressure from big ag to consolidate. And then there’s also market manipulation among the middlemen, right? So then you have things like Tyson, the big 4 meatpackers that are just doing everything that they can to squeeze you. And then on top of that, you have the war in Iran, which is just skyrocketing fertilizer and fuel prices. And between all of those things, we’re probably on track to have the most family farms turned over or consolidated as a percentage of any year in recent memory. And it’s horrible.
It is horrible. It tears apart the identity of communities like this when a family that has been there for generations, that has been giving back to the community, that has been a stalwart of their hometown has to sell, right? It rips apart people’s feelings of place and self. And it is why so many people feel like their way of life is being taken away from them out here. And it’s because it is— it is being taken away from them.
And so one of the things we are really conscious of is revitalizing and actually enforcing some of the laws we have had on the books for a long time to address issues like this. So I mentioned in my video, I’m the son of meatpackers. I watched my parents, you know, endure horrors. Meatpacking is one of the hardest jobs in the world. My mother worked on the chuck line, where you cut specific pieces of fat off a chuck of beef. And she would come home, her hands stuck, because if you do that all day for days on end, you literally can’t move your fingers.
But it was one of the better jobs that exists in this sort of community in terms of benefits, in terms of wages. And Tyson took it all away at once. That plant closed in a matter of, I think, a month or two. And it was purely a price manipulation move. What they did when they closed the plant in my hometown they stripped it bare. They took all the machinery out, and you can’t easily sell this machinery, right? There’s no actual benefit to the producer of stripping all the machinery out.
And then they poured concrete down the drains, and then they set up a shell LLC with a restrictive covenant. And they made sure that nobody could ever buy this plant and run it as a meatpacking plant again. And so now, 20 years later, a quarter mile from my house, you can still see the plant. It is still sitting there completely inoperable, this monument to what rural America used to have. The things that used to sustain us.
Austin Ahlman: And the only change they’ve made is that, after they did the same goddamn thing in Lexington, Nebraska, last year, they sent somebody over to take down the signs from this plant that had been sitting there for 20 years in either December or January. That’s the only thing that’s changed on that property. And so we have laws on the books, like the Packers and Stockyards Act, that make price manipulation in agricultural markets illegal, and we literally do not enforce them. We just don’t enforce it. We have decided, since the Reagan and Clinton eras, that there’s no such thing as price fixing. These corporations can do whatever the hell they want. And we’re not going to be doing that anymore when I’m in Congress. I tell you that.
Yeah, that is— I mean, you know, talking about not only does that affect food prices and stuff like that, but I imagine, you know, hearing that story reminds me a lot of what I heard from autoworkers in Michigan in the Rust Belt who were just like, our entire town, my entire family has lived by working on this auto plant. And then it got sent away and, you know, our town died. So I can’t imagine, you know, how devastating that is for people.
Joe: And also, you know, you were talking about like there’s, you know, mentioning the Iran War, something that like the base of both parties don’t like. And I kind of think that there was almost like a Republican interest in Lina Khan. And, you know, business interests hated Lina Khan and would always call her a radical communist and stuff like that. But what she was actually doing was just saying we should enforce the antitrust and market manipulation laws that have been on the books for over a century. So I’m not surprised to hear that that’s, you know, an effective and much-needed political avenue.
Austin Ahlman: Yes. And not to say that we don’t need some new laws too. Things like the big tech companies, you need some new structures, right? The people who crafted these beautiful laws that do a lot of really good things when you actually enforce them, you know, they didn’t know that Google or Facebook would come up to exist and swallow our whole damn economy. So there’s a lot to be done, but you can get a lot of headway by just enforcing the laws on the books.
And what’s crazy is if you say that the post-Roosevelt laws should just actually be enforced again, people like Fox News are gonna swarm around you to call you a progressive or a crazy socialist. Meanwhile, JD Vance will secretly copy your homework but not actually submit it. It puts you in such a weird place, as far as the DC discourse goes, that makes it difficult to message some of this stuff to a national audience. But anybody out here, it just sounds like common damn sense.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. JD Vance will go on Fox News and call you a radical leftist and then leak to the New York Times that he actually, like, really likes your campaign. Right. I wanted to talk about immigration because, one, you know, it tends to be a more important issue in red states. They tend to prioritize immigration more. And I was really impressed by how you’re approaching the immigration issue. Reading from your campaign website here, secure the border and end corporate exploitation. It’s time massive corporations stop exploiting illegal immigrants in order to drive down wages for American workers. We’ll secure the border, send violent criminals back, and make sure those looking for a chance to be an American are given a fair shot at earning the privilege.
And what immediately stuck out to me is that you are talking about immigration as a labor issue, which— honestly, thank you so much for doing that, because I feel like that is what labor-minded people have been trying to do for so long. And immigration constantly gets wrapped up as a cultural issue. If you look at immigration and things like NAFTA, or how we didn’t really start asking workers for documentation until they started trying to unionize, right? It’s very clear that immigration policy is, at least in my opinion, an extension of labor policy.
And so I would like to hear your view on the ground in Nebraska. One, why are you approaching this as a labor issue as opposed to how Democrats and Republicans approach immigration as a cultural issue? And then also, you know, what is it about this that is different from like, you know, this is a very different statement from like a typical Republican statement, you know, what is it that you think that about this district that is willing to hear and willing to accept like, oh yeah, like this is a, a labor issue that affects all of us.
Austin Ahlman: I think of it as a labor issue, because it is one, especially out here, given what has happened to jobs and the economy in rural America. People do have a lot of resentment towards immigrants. Now, I’m not going to say that’s all correct, but there are ways in which people on the coasts and in large cities don’t understand how that resentment has been bred and who is responsible for it.
So again, going back to Tyson Meats, I want to say December. I was out in Dakota City, Nebraska, which is where Tyson has centralized all the jobs from the closed regional facilities. And I was speaking to a former line worker who now works as a Walmart greeter. And he was telling me about the working conditions at Tyson, and why he had to quit, even though he made twice as much money.
He was not that old. He was in his 50s, but he had to quit. And the reason was that Tyson has an incredibly well-tuned system of bringing refugees in, pretty much treating them like slaves, using that to lower working standards and conditions, and then driving out any worker that doesn’t— that would not stand for such a thing, right? And that leaves everybody in the equation worse off.
And I asked this man, I asked him, I said, well, do you ever, like, wonder if maybe Tyson is purposely pitting you against one another in a race to the bottom. And he said, you know, for a long time I really, really resented— and he particularly talked about the Somali community that has, you know, come into some of these working plants— resented them.
He’s like, but then I realized they have no power. They can be made to do anything. And so the fact that they will work overtime for no pay, that they will break their backs, that they will endure literal and, you know, metaphorical abuse at the hands of supervisors. How can I blame them for that? It is Tyson’s fault.
But so many people, though, have not had the time to process that. All they see is their factory closed, their town dying, and immigrants who are now in the new factory working those jobs. And they do feel like their way of life is being taken. And so you have to talk about it on the terms that people know are true.
Which is that there are forces, big corporations like Tyson, that are utilizing that resentment and actively feeding into it in order to, one, pad their bottom line, but two, also insulate themselves politically. Because if you can activate people around that, then they become the enemy, and nobody is going to pay attention to you and what you are doing, and they’re not going to be able to mobilize to take you on.
Joe: Yeah. Very well said. We have almost the same dynamic here in Colorado. To the north of me, up in Greeley, there was just a huge meatpacking strike at the plant. And you know, the organizers talked a lot about how the workers spoke over 50 different languages because this meatpacking plant was specifically designed to attract refugee populations. And I’m not a lawyer, but I believe all those visas are tied to employment. So people are much more likely to say, oh yeah, I’ll work for less or something like that, just so I can stay in the country. I think that’s like, I’ve heard Grant Platner say some stuff up in Maine around the same time, where, like, if you just kind of take the time to say like, yeah, you’re being ripped off along with the immigrants, like people will come around to that, you know? Yes. Because it is the truth.
Austin Ahlman: Yeah, absolutely.
Joe: Always, always good to have the benefit of the truth on your side. I do want to touch on a little bit about foreign policy, right? And so I know we were talking about Bachmeier, your Democratic opponent. In your interview with the Nebraska Examiner, where you kind of launched this campaign, I believe this interview came out the same day as your announcement video. Right as you got sick, you know, you were talking a lot about his time at the State Department, and you specifically mentioned, you know, his work on Yemen and then also the Iran deal. And I’d like to hear just, you know, from your view, like, why are those two things where you, I believe you also said Israel was a reason that he was running as well. What is it about, you know, Israel, Yemen? Iran, that, you know, is relevant to the people of Nebraska?
Austin Ahlman: Well, people here are sick and tired of paying for foreign wars that they can’t explain why we’re fighting them, or even worse, why somebody else is fighting them, and still we’re paying for them. It doesn’t make sense to anybody around here. It never has. It has always been deeply, deeply unpopular, and there’s starting to be just a tiny bit of understanding of that fact.
But I say that because it is so frustrating to see somebody who has sat in the State Department for 20 years in various positions, rubber-stamping 20 years of failed bipartisan policy. I’m talking about going all the way back to Bush, who has been in the position of power, greenlighting 20 years of policy that people around here just loathe. They absolutely loathe it, and it does not matter their party identification. It does not matter their background, their income. Nobody here can understand why we’re doing it.
You look at my side of town here in Norfolk, the side that the meatpacking plant was closed on, which still looks like a war zone 20 years later, and try to explain to somebody that’s driving through there why we’re dropping million-dollar-a-piece bombs on some country they can’t find on a map. It doesn’t go very well. So I think that each of those policies that you mentioned, Yemen, Iran, Israel, is a piece of it, but it is the overarching feeling more than anything of being screwed, of being exploited, of the fact that the only people that are struggling that we seem to care about are abroad, and we’re not helping them. We’re just bombing them into more struggle for some reason.
It is not necessarily because people around here have deeply held views about— I promise you they don’t when it comes to Israel and Gaza and the contours of that conflict. They don’t. They just know that we’re paying for it for some damn reason, and they don’t understand why. And I’m not going to try to explain to them because I don’t think we should be either. And to put a nominee out there who will try to explain why we’ve been doing it, up against a representative incumbent who keeps voting for it. It is so naive when it is one of the biggest wedge issues of our time, and it needs to be activated. And unfortunately, we just refuse to nominate candidates on any party line that is willing to activate it.
Joe: Yeah, you know, I’ll go one step further. It sounds like Chris Bachmeier was not only supporting these policies but was actually instrumental in them, right? Like, you talk a little bit about how he flip-flopped on the Iran deal, which, you know, I have many criticisms of the Obama administration’s foreign policy.
I do think the Iran deal was like kind of the crown jewel of his of at least his second term, you know. And I think losing that is one of the reasons we’re back at war, and all this is going on. But yeah, it seems like it’s like, okay, do you want the guy who’s voting for it or do you want the guy who created all of it and is now like pinky promising that he’s really— I guess he’s not even apologizing for it. He’s just saying, We need it. Yeah.
Austin Ahlman: So, yeah, no. So, I mean, yes, I have been willing to give him the narrow bit of credit for playing a serious role in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal under Obama, which I think was good. Diplomacy is good. Anytime that we are not wasting our blood and treasure on places thousands and thousands of miles away, but instead of just having conversations and figuring it out, that’s great.
Then Trump 1.0 comes in. And he turns around and is immediately signing off on talking points, new sanctions, all these things that ripped apart the deal. And then under Biden, obviously, there was just a total failure, total, total failure to put that deal back together. And then, as far as I could tell, he was back on board with full maximum pressure with Iran until he took a doge buyout in May.
And so what this says to me is that this is not somebody who has sincere or strong beliefs about much of anything. It is somebody who is a rubber stamp, which means that when you have another rubber stamp who’s already sitting in Congress, you’re not going to get anything meaningfully different. And I don’t think anybody out here expects to. And that’s why it’s impossible for the guy to win.
And in fact, when we did our polling on this, we pretty much copied and pasted from his website. And when you copy and paste from his website, you get his own description of his own work over the last 20 years. And then you do the same thing with Flood. The starting head-to-head between the two, his own description of his own career, makes him drop like 6 or 7 points because people hear that and they’re like, what the hell? You want me to— a State Department official who’s been doing— you’re telling me Middle East policy? And you said he’s been doing it since Bush? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah.
Joe: That is, it’s so wild, man. Like, just the hubris of like, they must not— I wonder if they’re actually testing that stuff or if they’re just like testing it and being like, we don’t care, you know, these red state voters, they— what they really want is you know, the Foggy Bottom policy, like brought to Lincoln, which is so crazy.
Austin Ahlman: Elite impunity is a principle that must be defended at all costs.
Joe: You know, Democrat and Republican members of the elite class, as they bicker with each other. But I think as we’ve seen with a lot of the Epstein stuff and how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are protecting each other in the open, you know, they have unwavering class solidarity. And I think it’s a long time since the rest of us started to, yes, take note of that.
Joe: I do want to talk about affordability, right? Because that was, you know, a big topic of your campaign launch and, you know, just it’s one of your leading issues, which I think is awesome.
And I’d like to ask about something that I’m uneducated on, which you mentioned a little bit further earlier, which is how the Iran war, you know, is driving up food prices for farmers? And by extension, I assume, you know, the rest of the economies that are centered on that, right?
I think you mentioned fertilizer prices are going through the roof, and correct me if I’m wrong, but if I remember correctly, there’s, I believe, a lot of, maybe it was nitrogen, that comes from that area of the world. And like a lot of people have been saying, like, yeah, gas prices are going up, but our agricultural industry is about to be hit by a ticking time bomb, where even if we reversed everything right now, it would still take us years to get back to.
So I’d love to hear, like, you know, bringing that off from the Iran War, like how is that making life just so much harder for the people you’re trying to represent?
Austin Ahlman: Well, so people, you know, everybody understands that a bunch of oil comes through the Strait of Hormuz, right? But it is not just that. It is, as you said, nitrogen-based fertilizers. A huge share of the world’s supply is shipped through there, and it has been ground to a halt just the same.
And it is that on top of fuel prices, right? It’s like you have to use a lot of fuel just in this part of the country generally, because everybody has to, you know, drive. But specifically, farmers have to use a lot of fuel and a lot less fertilizer, and both of those input costs, which they have to, they have to try to map or plot out well in advance, right? When you are planning your year’s harvest, you have to make many of these projections way in advance.
And the thing that is so devastating is when you have big, sudden, explosive things like this that blow your budget for one part of your input calculation, it will be years and years and years and years before you catch up. And so you have to then build into future projections the costs of paying back and recouping all the extra costs from the prior-year loss. And so we can’t— that, I mean, in general, like, a lot of that is unfortunately that, that ship has sailed. A lot of that cake is now baked. We will just have higher food prices for several years that we did not need to have because of this pointless, stupid war.
And what we’re going to do, I’m sure, is the same thing that we’re doing with beef now, where we’re importing this horrific, like, beef supply from Argentina in order to give another dumb leader a favor. We’re going to relax our import restrictions and further undercut the farmers that we keep screwing over. It is going to keep the cycle of resentment going and keep tearing apart rural communities.
And honestly, I wish— I wish that you could say if we ended the war tomorrow that you could— that you could seriously do something about that. But you can’t. That ship has now sailed largely. And it is a damn shame. The only thing that we can do now is put relief packages in place, try to offset some of those extraordinary costs that should have never been shouldered by those farmers and, and again, you know, end it, end the war so that next year their projections actually pan out instead of being tossed aside by somebody in the Oval Office who just doesn’t seem to care at all about real people’s experiences and what happens to them when we start shooting missiles willy-nilly everywhere.
Joe: Yeah. I— one thing you mentioned was the Argentine credit swaps, beef deals, and similar things. And I remember this was actually when I started to learn a little bit more about how this stuff just ruins rural communities. Like, a bunch of— I believe it was farmers in Alabama, maybe, who were, you know, self-described Trump voters who, it was really sad, were like describing how, you know, this was going to undercut their family business, that they had gone into so much debt to, you know, make their profit for the season, which they all lived on.
And it was like a really revealing, really saddening story that all these people were telling because I was unaware that, you know, these farms are going into huge debt and, you know, if something as simple as soybean production falls, like there goes all their money for the next 3 years and stuff like that, which is, you know, it’s really easy just to be like, oh, soybeans are 1 cent more expensive. But then you actually look at how very similar it is to how you brought your personal experience into, yeah, this campaign, like how that actually impacts people.
Austin Ahlman: Yeah. I mean, and it is from all sides. Farmers and ranchers are just getting it from all sides. During the pandemic, a lot of farmers really had to cull their herds, right? Like, we got to a place where we have some— right now we have some of the lowest cattle herd— supply isn’t the right word, but, you know, probably by a hedge, some of the lowest herds in a long, long, long, long time.
And theoretically, that should be a good thing for the cattle ranchers. They now have some market power. Hopefully, they can get some better prices and have a few good years of windfalls. But instead, we are undercutting that. We are now bringing in all this beef from Argentina, destroying those cattle ranchers and farmers’ ability to actually recoup and rebuild their enterprises. And it’s going to leave them long-term just totally insolvent.
And what happens then, of course, is consolidation, right? Like those ranches, they will get sold. They will be one big player that owns them all. And then, because it is now a big corporation, of course, they’ll be treated favorably in future considerations. And it is, it’s just killing people from all sides.
So I mean, there are a lot of things that we need to do about it. One, we just need to stop favoring other belligerent world leaders who can’t seem to manage their economies by letting them flood our market with their imported beef products. But then there are a lot of things just on our side that we need to be doing, right? Like I was saying earlier, enforcing the Packers and Stockyards Act, stopping price manipulation at the middleman level, which is so damn consolidated.
We do need standards for country-of-origin labeling. I think most Americans, when they walk into a supermarket, would be quite happy if they could just tell automatically what steaks that they were buying, what burger they were buying, were born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in this country instead of all these different pieces. But it’s going to— it’s getting scary.
We’re going to get to the point soon: if we don’t open our eyes, we’ll have a few mega meatpacking facilities that largely process cattle from other countries, and our domestic supply will no longer exist. And the people who have kept that domestic supply going for centuries will have nothing left.
Joe: Really scary. I think that’s the right word. I do want to kind of end by asking you about housing. I will say we’ve got a few questions in the chat that I’ll get to at the end. So if anybody has any other questions, throw them in. What I was really interested in was your housing policy, you know, and I think you even said earlier here with us that we need to stop Wall Street, private investors, stuff like that from owning single-family homes. And there has been, going back to, you know, how out of touch Washington, DC, is with districts like yours, there has been a, what I would consider, a concerted push over the last couple of years to say, oh no, it’s not BlackRock buying your homes and stuff like that.
That’s the problem. Overregulation, stuff like that. And I’m not saying that, you know, there isn’t overregulation, but I am hesitant about anybody who tries to paint with a broad brush on housing because I came from Boston, and the reason why Boston is in a terrible housing crisis is that there’s literally nowhere to build, right? And then when people try to apply that lesson to a state like Colorado, where there are tons of areas to build, I feel like it just doesn’t really fit. So I’d like to hear, you know, what some of the housing-related issues are that are driving up rents and home prices in your district? And what are some of the ways that you think as a congressperson you would be best to, you know, combat that and protect people and keep them in their homes, and honestly avoid the terrible foreclosures that, you know, you, one of the reasons you’re running for Congress.
Austin Ahlman: Yeah. So, to zoom out, largely the problem here is the structure of the economy. Consolidation is happening at the corporate level, but that also means it starts at the community level. So a town like Norfolk, which is where I am right now, where I was born and raised, is the central hub of a small, you know, broader community.
We have towns like Madison and Hader, and other things like that, all around. And what happens more and more is that, as consolidation occurs in economics, it also occurs at the community level. So more and more, as the real industry gets ripped out of these communities, everybody centralizes into the one micropolitan hub, as it’s called, if you were gonna use the census terms for it, right? And then costs are driven through the roof, while wages don’t come anywhere close to matching them.
So after the Tyson plant here closed, you saw this huge flattening of the middle class in this economy. There was an upper class that still owned all the new franchises. Right? But then the lower class just ballooned. And then you have housing shortages because there’s still not really enough building going on, but that is because it’s not really profitable enough. And it’s not— it has very, very little to do with regulation, right? It’s not profitable enough because very few people are earning wages high enough to buy a new house out in these parts anymore. And so a lot of it is just structural in the economy.
Beyond that, there, there, there’s just not nearly enough investment in affordable housing at any layer of our economy, right? Things like trailer parks, which are looked down upon, are actually one of the key ways people get ahead out here. I know that because I have lived in one. And without having that type of housing available, you don’t have the ladder upwards towards success.
And there’s a lot of controversy here because just a couple of months ago, there was this, there was this development that was slated, pitched as it was going to be affordable housing. And then you turned around, and when it finally got built, it was, I think, one floor of affordable housing and the rest were like luxury condos. And people talk about that as in like, oh, well, that just happens all the time. No big deal. Well, of course, it happens all the time because we’re not actually investing in affordable housing.
And then, very little of it has to do with land-use regulations. We have lax land-use regulations compared to just about anywhere in the country. There are all kinds of places to build. But our economic structure is built around making sure there is no ladder up for the lower class, that they stay in their place, that they work their service job, that they pay for their overpriced apartment, and that is the only life they’re ever going to have.
And then now even the homes that are left are being bought up by Wall Street. It is happening, and people deny it. They deny it right up until you try to ban it. And then they say that it’s essential for the future of the damn housing market, right? And then, Mike Flood, who again is the key person standing in the way of the bill that Trump and Elizabeth Warren worked on in the Senate, which actually meaningfully restricts this, says he’s doing it on behalf of the build-to-rent sector. Are you familiar with the build-to-rent sector?
Joe: I’m not. And I feel like it’s about to be just some draconian nightmare you’re going to tell me about.
Austin Ahlman: So the build-to-rent sector, which is the most, the worst people that you know with the globe, you know, little emojis and all that shit. They will tell you it’s just, oh, well, one of the few places where we’re building new housing. And that is because, after the Great Recession, Wall Street realized, oh, we have an opening to turn houses into an asset class. And what if neighborhoods, instead of being these organic things that pop up as people sort themselves out and try new frontiers, what if we got to control when, how, and why they were built, right?
And so now you see, and not here, right? Again, this is not happening in my district. There’s not enough. Economic mobility for people renting entire subdivisions of new homes. But the reason he is allegedly holding up the bill is on behalf of this enterprise, which is quite literally Wall Street centrally planning the development of new homes and making sure they can never actually be owned by families.
It is blocks and blocks and blocks of identical houses designed by some damn boardroom in New York meant to keep the population there captive forever. And we call that a market. And it is, it’s insane. It is absolutely insane.
And I, I just cannot believe that a guy like Mike Flood cares so deeply about Wall Street’s ability to centrally plan new communities in Phoenix, Arizona, that he feels the need to stand in the way of Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren, shockingly enough, teaming up to try to get something done about Wall Street’s entries into the housing market.
Joe: Man, that stuff is so crazy because every, like, I’ve been trying to listen to different people who are familiar with housing in each different section of the country, right? Like, I hear a lot from people in LA, and they tell me the problems are different from those in Houston. But one of them is that they all kind of say, like, yeah, private equity and stuff like this should not really be involved in housing. It seems to be unanimous, except for, like you said, the people who will deny it until you try and ban it, and then they’re like, actually, this is really good. You know? Yeah. So crazy.
I also really appreciate you talking about housing as an issue driven by wages and stuff like that, because people will say, like, oh, we need to cut regulation. It’s supply and demand. And a big part of that factor is whether or not people have enough money to live in the apartments that you’re building. And I feel like that gets really brushed aside all the time.
Austin Ahlman: Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah. The big question in the chat is, people want to know about your relationship with Dan Osborne. Have you talked to Dan? Are you guys, you know, in touch? And I guess like, not even outside that, but, you know, I, correct me if I’m wrong, I assume his independent bids were a reason why you kind of were like, I think I can make this work. So I’d love to hear, you know, what your relationship is with Nebraska’s most famous independent?
Austin Ahlman: I have a lot of respect for Dan Osborn. He has blazed the trail for an independent to run in a seat like this and be taken seriously. Right. I have spoken with Osborn’s team and him in the past. Right now, we are each running our own races. Ideally, you know, I would love to, at some point, become simpatico and jibe. But right now he is focused on a, frankly, a more important race, taking out Pete Ricketts. I’m still here proving my viability. I’ve been in the race for all of 5 days. I think it would be a little crazy for him to have already endorsed me.
Joe: It would be cool.
Austin Ahlman: I’m not saying that he shouldn’t. So Dan Osborne, if you’re listening, I would happily, after much pondering, accept your endorsement. And of course, offer mine back. But that’s a conversation that’ll have to develop. I think a lot of it will come down to proving viability, seeing where the Democrat ends up in the race, seeing how Flood handles this all, and then seeing what the pathway is. Because I think all those things are there, those pieces are in place, but an operation like that that has already been through the wringer is laser-focused on their race the same way that I’m laser-focused on my own right now. Yeah.
Joe: Awesome. Austin, you know, how can people support your campaign? I’m pretty psyched about it. Just, you know, when I shared a lot of your stuff, I got huge levels of engagement from, you know, take everything with a grain of salt, but people saying like, never voted for a Democrat in my life, like would absolutely vote for this guy and stuff like that. So how can people, whether they’re in Nebraska or outside Nebraska, you know, support you and help you get elected?
Austin Ahlman: Share our stuff. And pitch in. It is incredibly difficult to run a campaign like this, frankly, without small donors, because you’re not going to get any of the big donors. We, one, we wouldn’t take most of them anyway. We’re not taking any corporate PAC money. We have blacklisted every lobbyist and said, “ Do not donate to us, which is frankly where a lot of the candidates that say that they’re not taking corporate PAC money get a lot of their money. We’re not doing any of that.
We were incredibly fortunate to have a launch that just popped off, and we are in a much better position than I think any independent House campaign has probably been in decades. But we can’t rest on our laurels. Seizing on that momentum requires significant investment from many people. And the go-to line that my campaign people tell me I gotta keep saying, which is absolutely true, is that if you want to send one of us to Congress, it’s going to take all of us.
And so chip in, keep sharing our message, keep helping us get out there, keep helping us defy the odds, because it is crazy that we got this much attention and support out of the gate. And we’re doing everything we can to capitalize on it, including—we already have yard signs and all kinds of cool printed materials, things an independent campaign usually doesn’t have for months. We have gotten out of the gate because of the outpouring of support.
But to keep it going and to keep up with two candidates that are just absolutely bought by elites, we need people’s continued buy-in. So anything you can do to help, pitch it in, and know that we’ll appreciate it, and we’ll spend every dollar on local vendors here in the state, just like we did with the launch video and the signs, local union printers. The bank account is even at a local bank, Elkhorn Valley Bank. All of our values are being lived, and we are doing our best to honor every dollar. So know that if you decide to be a part of this movement, it will not be taken for granted on any level.
Joe: Awesome. Thank you so much. I’ll put all of that information in the episode description. And then, yeah, Austin, thank you for your time. Incredibly grateful to get to talk to you. Good luck. I’m pulling for you. Good luck with your worst time illness in human history, which is— I almost wanna laugh cuz it’s just so, so poor timing. Yeah.
Austin Ahlman: My, my thinking is everything else went so fortuitously about the launch that, of course, there had to be something. Like, it would be ridiculous if just every single thing weren’t right. And so I’m taking it with a grain of salt, rolling with it, and I think it’s gonna be fine. We’ve got lots of things lined up, and it was a pleasure that you were one of those things. Thank you, Joe.
Joe: Of course. I’ll talk to you soon. Take care.
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In Solidarity — Joe
