Staff Reports
This week the Jimplecute sat down with Aditya (A.D.) Atholi who’s running for the newly redefined U.S. Congressional District 1 seat.
A.D. calls himself the “Blue Collar Conservative.” According to his website, atholiforcongress.com, he’s worked on oil rigs as a roughneck and driller across Texas and New Mexico; writes for local audiences on Conservative solutions for today’s issues; founded “PLATFORM” which is currently developing a prototype to help local governments connect with local citizens better; is a U.S. Marine Artillery Captain; has worked for the D.C. office of Congressman Gohmert, graduated from Rice University with a degree in Management and Government, and is from Center, Texas.
Atholi is running against Joe McDaniel, who we interview next week, and Smith County Judge Nathaniel Moran, in the March 2022 primaries.
Following is a selected transcript of the discussion, or you can read the full interview on the Jimplecute’s website:
Jimplecute: So what made you want to run?
Atholi: I mean, the politicization of everything, but in general what made me want to run is the direction that the country’s headed in. I mean, it’s it’s absolutely unacceptable. You know, and I was always the kind of person that, you know, when the media starts talking about the skies falling down, or the politicians, I just turn it off, right. But last year is when I started noticing, the serious economists, and serious historians start saying, “hey, there’s something wrong with the direction we’re headed, it is not the way it should be.” And so that’s what I’m running at. There’s a specific, simple and practical plan that we can use to return to local self government, like we’ve had in this country for hundreds of years. And I believe if we can return to local self government to solve some of these middle class problems, like everyone is arguing about, you know, like health care public schools, that is what will return the country to be in a conservative nation, you know, like we used to be not even that long ago.
Jimplecute: You say there needs to be more local self government. What are you looking for?
Atholi: Yeah, it’s just exactly how the country was run from our founding, till the mid 60s, right? Just when LBJ started his Great Society Program. And all it is is, you know, the counties and states take leadership in governing priorities. So they’re the ones that thought about what do we do with education? What do we do with health care? And, and then the federal government plays a supporting role. Okay. What we’ve seen is since the 60s since LBJ is a great society, we’ve seen an expansion of the federal government’s power. And in the last 50 years, everything we’ve seen played out is because of that. So when we complain about, you know, big money in politics, that started in the 70s as a specific reaction to, you know, a lot of power being given to DC in the 60s.
You know, when we talk about businesses, so special interests, business associations, that left New York City and San Francisco, and moved to DC in the 70s, as a direct reaction to, well, I guess all the power and decision making is going to start happening in DC. So it makes sense for us to spend money to move there. Okay. And so over time, what what you see happening is, you see a strengthening of DC power and special interest power. And because of that strength thing, now you have a weakening of local institutional power at the state and county level. And more importantly, you see a slow grinding disappearance of the institutions of faith, family and community, because that’s what the country was built to be centered around those three institutions. But when do you start expanding the federal government power more and more? Will it start stamping out those central institutions or more?
Jimplecute: Okay. Do you think there’s a problem here? We have great days, so there are you advocating more or looking towards more of a pure roll back or some blend in the middle?
Atholi: Blend for sure. And this is, you know, I’m not the first one to say this is what Nixon and Reagan called New Federalism. Right. It is still what Republicans believe now. You know, so it’s nothing new. Right? What the plan is, is a new way of branding it so that regular people understand it. So it’s just a return to what they call it new federalism.
Atholi: Okay. Because going back with that terminology today would not go over well. I mean, and, you know, and someone Nixon’s policies put us in part of the mess we’re in today, especially with health care, that deregulated it and suddenly, everybody got screwed except the insurance companies. Reaganomics didn’t work. I mean, it worked for some, but not the way it was touted. So pitching those together. Where do you see the blend being at? I mean, is it a true blending of all of it? For example, you mentioned education, should counties and the state go back to regulating education? Or is that better at a federal level so we know everybody’s getting the same minimum?
Atholi: This is something both parties debate on all the time. And, of course, the Democrat position is, you know, the federal government, you can get the best experts in education, you can put them in one room, and they can run our education system from there. Okay. That’s generally how they want to do it. How Republicans generally want to do it is they think, parents, communities, teachers and principals know what students need best to learn and improve. And so they should take the lead in the education system, and the state and the federal government should play a supporting role. You know, whether it’s resources, funding, whatever.
Jimplecute: Currently, Texas takes the actual opposite of that. Texas runs it, period. Your local schools don’t have a say. That’s a Republican led state. So they’re doing the opposite of what you just said, though. Here in Texas, at least.
Atholi: That’s right. So what you mentioned is on the spectrum, that’s what I mentioned. Like most Democrats do not think it should be 100% Federal government. Most Republicans don’t know 100% of what we’re talking about, and are somewhere in the middle. We know that public schools are great in some places, but we know in some communities that they are horrible, and it’s not working. And the best way to do that is what the Republican Party proposes is, school choice, which is, each community can decide, does your public school work for you? Yes, then keep it, if not, then, use vouchers and give it to that charter school and give it to that private school.
Jimplecute: And that works in a major metro area. But [Congressional District 1], it won’t work. I mean, we’re Marion County with a population of 9,000. We have one school district. The next two closest districts are 20 miles away. If my district isn’t doing well, and I want to take my voucher, I don’t have a choice. The next closest charter school is 40 miles away.
And then you have then you add to that economics, because Marin County is at the second or third poorest county in the state.
Atholi: Oh, really?
Jimplecute: And you think 15-20 Miles isn’t that far to drive, right? You can do that driving for dinner, but do it five days a week, for 180 days of the school year, and then go to your job on top of that, and you can’t get there. Which means a vast majority are stuck in however their district is performing.
Atholi: That’s right. They [Republicans] don’t even want to pass school choice now. Because special interests like you know, the teachers unions or the school board, Right associations, you know, they’re against any kind of change to the status quo. And that is what the plan is, which is, the main reason that we can’t pass laws for the middle class is because it’s a marketing problem.
The middle class doesn’t even understand what the Republicans want to do with health care. The middle class has no idea what Republicans want to do to deal with failing public schools. The middle class has no idea how Republicans plan on bringing back jobs that the global free market has taken away from our middle class. And so, the idea is, and this is the central premise of the plan that I’m running on, is we have to make our policy proposals so simple, that your average middle class person knows it. And that’s what creates pressure on politicians in DC. And the main root cause of the direction that the country is headed. I mean, I think everyone agrees the direction is not a good direction. So the question is, what do you do about it?
You know, and the proposal and the plan is very simple. Like since 1932, we’ve been in the modern liberal era, as you know, historically. And so what we’ve seen is that pendulum has been swinging towards liberal values, big government, at the expense of family, community and faith and small government values. And so the pendulum now is basically towards the end, which is why the Democrat Party, historically Liberal Party is now proposing a lot of socialist ideas. You know, that’s not the same thought frame there. But it’s because most liberal ideas have been tried or implemented. And so now that pendulum is on the end, and that’s what we’re seeing. That’s why we’re seeing what we’re seeing now, which is, there’s a natural momentum one thing to swing back towards local self governing, like we had in the country for hundreds of years. And but the problem is the conservative movement is not giving concrete policy proposals. You know, whether or not we talked about is what we hate about what the Democrats want to do. We talked about socialized medicine is bad. Okay. But I think we can all agree we don’t need anyone to die in a rich country. You know, so what is our solution? Right? And we, we are horrible at marketing that solution, and that is what the plan is. It’s a specific, simple way to rebrand the Republican Party in an offensive strategy, so that everyone understands what We stand for for different issues.
Jimplecute: Okay
Atholi: We can talk about the plan if you want it.
Jimplecute: Yeah, I do, because I’ve yet to hear what it is. What any plan is other than we don’t like this. There’s no proposal to replace those things not that’s been marketed in any way. And I would say it’s more than just a marketing deal.
Atholi: You’re right. And that’s what I want to talk about is your 100% right. We’ve never, as Republicans, explained what we stand for. And that’s what’s causing this dysfunction we see. What it reminds me of is a toxic relationship.
It always starts out good, right. And then a few years later, real material problems pop up. Right, whether it’s, you know, you’re not making enough money to pay the bills. You know, we’re not spending enough quality, date time together, whatever, right? And if you don’t fix these real problems, you let them fester for 10-20 years, it ends up being worse. You’re no longer arguing about the trash being taken out, it’s, you’re a lazy person, that doesn’t care about me. That’s why you’re not taking out the trash.
The moral, ethical argument. And that’s what we’re seeing in DC, is that both the parties have been arguing about how to fix middle class problems, like health care, like education, since before the 90s. You know, you go listen to audio tapes, they’re talking about the exact same stuff. And so what’s happening is the Democrats want to do something. The Republicans thinks that is dumb, but we never offer solutions, right. And so you have a gridlock, and he’s gone on for 30 years, and now it’s no longer about health care. It’s about critical race theory and transgenderism. Right, you know, and it’s ended being you are an evil selfish person or party in this case, right? And it’s no longer about the policy.
And that’s what happens with a toxic relationship, right, you start out good. Now you’re arguing. It doesn’t work out. You’re yelling doesn’t work. You’re throwing stuff. Right. And that’s what we saw last year with the riots. I mean, that’s already stolen stuff. And now, it happens. It’s really shows. If you don’t fix that, you either go to divorce, which, for example, politics is secession, right? Or you go to subjugation, you know, which is, let’s say the husband completely dominates the wife and she’s very submissive. And in politics, we call that a dictatorship, right? You know, and it’s not gonna be a straight line, everything’s gonna be fine for a long time, and all of a sudden, one big event is gonna happen. And that’s when these things happen. And there’s no turning back.
Jimplecute: And I would say you probably have a series of those. It’s happened over the last three to four years between the SCOTUS mess of appointments, allowing appointments, not allowing appointments; the January 6 mass over certifying elections; and you get those kinds of things all flowing in.
Atholi: Right. And I first noticed this would happen when I was working in the old field. You know, I was working as roughneck and I was waiting to go to the Marine Corps Wait, my application fell through. And I noticed a huge disconnect. This was back in 2014-15. I grew up in Center, and I roughneck with, and my buddies that I went to Rice with, and I work in you know, both houses of Congress, White House, different federal agencies, the disconnect is huge. And I knew that it was going to cause something to be wrong with the country back in 2014. But I thought it would be, you know, decades down the road. You know, after we were all retired and all that kind of stuff I thought you’d see. I didn’t think it happened as fast. Because of the disconnect, and you still see it happening now. It’s getting worse, like my friends in DC, they really think we’re all backwards Hicks here who are all racist and selfish, which we know is not the case, right? And so the solution to the question is, what is the solution to that? You don’t hear a solution ever? From either party?
So this is what I’m proposing, is when that couple is fighting each other, right? You cannot walk up to a couple yelling at each other and say, Hey, y’all just get along? Right? Why can’t y’all just hug and makeup. They don’t have unity and work together and bipartisanship, it ain’t gonna work. So what has to happen is one part of the couple, either the husband or the wife, has to find some self control. They have to fix the underlying problems in the marriage. Whether it’s making sure the trash gets taken out, or making sure we are at work enough hours to pay off all the debts, or making sure you have date nights. Once you fix those underlying material problems, then you can talk about bipartisanship in unity and coming together as a culture.
And so what I’m suggesting is, I think there is a way that we can get the Republican Party to have an offensive strategy to fix these material problems, like health care, like education. And once we fix these material problems, that’s when the social issues, figure themselves out over, you know, decades. And we can talk about exactly what that offensive strategy is, whenever you want to.
Jimplecute: Yeah, because I’m kind of curious how you kind of got two choices. And even in that using your same analogy, you’ve kind of got two choices, even in trying to figure out a strategy to fix those problems. What both parties are doing now is a “my way or the highway,” or you have to compromise. And I don’t think the leadership in either party from the state level up, is willing to do that compromise. So short of tossing all of them out of office and starting over, which we’ve seen is not going to happen, right? How do you get there?
Atholi: So you always turn to history for answers, right? And historically, what we see is, when you have bipartisanship, what really happens is you have one party completely in charge. So if you look at what historians called this is the party system, okay. So you had first party system from 1790s to the 1820s, which was the Federalist Party or Federalist Democrat Republican. Right? And the Federalists basically ran everything those 30 years, and it keeps going on after the Civil War for 60 years, the Republican Party had like 80% of the house. Right now we live in a democratic era, which is from 1932. Okay, which was when FDR first got elected after the depression till now. So that’s 90 years. How many years have Democrats been in power?
Jimplecute: A vast majority.
Atholi: Yeah. So 34 years? Yeah. Republicans have been in power eight years, right out of the last 90. And out of those eight years.
Jimplecute: Well, I guess when you are qualifying that by meaning controlling two of the three houses of government, both the House and the Senate and the Presidency?
Atholi: Yes, sir. And out of those eight, eight years, six or two years with Trump and four was with Bush Jr. So in other words, in the 20th Century, from 1932 to 2000. That’s 70 years. Republicans ran the government for two years. The Democrats ran the government for 34 years.
Jimplecute: So an oversimplification, but okay.
Atholi: And, in fact, even out of those, if you just look at just Congress, Democrats ran for like, 50 something years, right. So what we’re seeing is from 1932 to the 60s that was Democrats, or from the 60s to the 90s, once again, was generally saw a Democrat era. And then in 1994, the Republicans under the “Contract with America,” the Republicans won back the house, after how many years of Democrat rule? 40 years. So what we’ve seen since the 90s till now, is neither party is in power. We both would constantly switch back and forth, and we’ve seen a complete, pretty close to complete dissolving of the bipartisanship issue as a result.
Jimplecute: So the question is, “what is the solution?”
Atholi: And the solution is exactly what happened right after the Civil War. And exactly what happened after the Great Depression, which is one party, the one that’s connected to most of the middle class problems, solves those middle class problems, and gains the love of the middle class. And then rules in that way, until generally 30 to 60 years later, they become powerful, disconnected from the middle class, and then your other party by nature is now more connected to the middle class. And now they take over. Okay, so what we’re seeing is in the last 30 years, neither party can do that, because neither party solves middle class problems.
Jimplecute: Because both parties have swung to the outer edges.
Atholi: So what is the solution? And that’s what I’m running on? Is this solution for that? The reason that the Republicans do not solve middle class problems, is because we have a defensive strategy. We call ourselves the party of small government, which is excellent. Right. But it’s a defensive strategy. So it’s good at stopping or slowing down what we believe isn’t okay. Just, we’re good. Yeah, so we’re good at stopping or slowing down what we believe which Democrats should not be doing, right. So Green New Deal, socialized medicine, whatever. But when we get the ball in our hands, and it’s time to score touchdowns for the middle class, like healthcare prices, we can do it? No, because we don’t have control.