eddings 1

hello
hello this is france hello right
um uh good afternoon i'm jj liu
leo with wiki news yes
um are you yeah
are you or mr uh mr eddings
open for an interview at this moment uh
doctor uh uh
you'll have i'm his campaign manager so
you'd have me
all right thank you and i'm thank you
all right hello
uh before i begin just uh to tell you
the this call is being recorded so i
have a reference of
uh what you said when writing the story
tonight are you all right with that
okay very good and you're now who are
you with
uh wiki news w-i-k-i-n-e-w-s
okay okay very good yes uh well
could you please uh introduce uh mr
eddings and his history
more broadly daryl daryl j
eddings senior is a retired
senior non-commissioned officer
he has 26 years of military experience
and then part of that time he was also
working
for the u.s federal government so he has
30 years of federal law enforcement
experience and he's only 60 so that's
pretty
pretty incredible um he's a highly
decorated veteran
he was um you know i can't probably put
this in it but if you look at it
we can't talk about this really but uh
if you look at your uniform there's not
any place to put another medal
um just about any anything you can give
them from a purple heart um
he has earned um
he lives in middle of in texas
um his family ties his dad's family goes
back six
generations but he says by an accident
of birth he was born in california
so he returned uh he uh
he graduated from high school in
california and went
immediately into the military and then
when he
came out of the military his um he
became a senior
single father and so he went back to
california where his children were
and went into the national guard in
california and at the same time
he went to work for the u.s federal
service
so um with the u.s federal service he
was
the um non-commissioned officer
operations officer on the back he wasn't
the commander
of the plane but he was the person that
was in command of everybody that was on
the plane
with the u.s national service so he had
14
deputies under him and then he had that
he was supervising people from three
different federal agencies
on these federal uh as uso
basically i found that you'll say oh i
was in the military
and then when i peel it down and i peel
it down it's so much more complex
during the time he basically went back
to california thinking that he'd be
closer to his kids
but that was during the george bush
years
and if you remember what happened to
people who go in the national guard
during that period of time
he was deported more during that period
of time than otherwise he did
he was sent to panama on drug
interdiction
he um he patrolled
the united the u.s southern border on
drug interdiction
and he was the operations commander
for emergency management
with the state of california while he
was there
he was the senior non-commissioned
officer reporting to a one star general
during the rodney king riot the oj
simpson riots
earthquakes forest fires
um he was he supervised a aviation unit
that flew to
this big state you know surveying it for
bars he was responsible for moving
troops and equipment and people and
personnel
and also his team was directly
responsible for the security of the
governor
during and the mayor and their staff
during the o.j simpson and the rodney
king lives
so he has an incredibly wide range of
experience
in his foreign deployments and he's been
deployed all over the world
he was the provost marshal in iraq
and there was a tactical team that was
under his command
that was looking for the top generals of
the revolutionary guard
you know what right after uh uh
that kind of stuff um he was um
being a provost marshall he was it was
the equivalent being the
police chief over a city of 50 000
and a 75 mile radius so
um he's always been the person that
was responsible for the people before
above him and below him
he's always been the person that they
went to to find solutions
whatever was needed he was the one that
was supposed to figure out how to get it
and how to take care of it and this is
what he continues to do
all right thank you uh what would he
consider the powers of the u.s
representative
the power of the u.s representative in
his thing is the ability to
deliver for the people what they need he
thinks that what most people are doing
is not really you know that's not really
um
it upsets him to see
so many of our representatives
representing a very small
number of people instead of really
looking out for the majority of the
people
he takes very seriously he decided to
run
he'd been thinking about it for a long
time but he made up his mind january 6
because he doesn't believe that there
are he believes that there's too many in
congress that don't understand what
their oath of office is
they don't understand that their loyalty
is to the constitution of the united
states
not to any one person or a party he
he knows that there were too many of
them up there
that are applauding what trump did and
are saying that it was just
a demonstration marty was just a riot
and he's been in riots he knows what a
right is and he knows this was an
in an insurrection he believes very
truthfully that the one of the greatest
powers we have is the power to
vote and this was an attempt to abridge
the right of people to vote
and so a person that's in congress is a
representative of the people that have
elected them
and that's the power the people are the
power
we've lost it it's been lost because of
dark money
and uh gerrymandering and and
and many things in that area and there's
many there's many attempts right now
to abridge the vote even further
and uh and so he really feels like that
we have got to re
regain more of the seats so that we can
protect
why he and his friends
have fought so hard and given so much
to to give us you know so that's
i guess that's that's about as good
answers i know he did it for him
we've been through this stuff so much
now i've almost got a memoir
all right uh he's he's running as a
democrat in a host district which is
controlled by republicans
he was the chief of staff
and the security officer for dr shirley
mckellar who ran
three terms ran three times against
louis gomer down in east texas
and he helped to organize east texas
and um he was a very he was very much in
favor of
hillary clinton and so he was working to
try to help
uh you know get out the vote for hillary
during those those years that he was
working down there
and he's been he's participated in the
state conviction and in the federal in
the national convictions
all right well um uh my question uh was
uh he's running as a democrat in a host
district which has been
uh controlled by republicans since 1983.
it's been contested by
uh by the republicans and the
libertarians and in independence
why do you think texans would choose a
democrat this time
this district has been going purple
in 2014 we made a turn
in that district in fact uh the count
county is the largest part of the
district and it is now
purple um the two smaller view in fact
the last three elections the democrats
would have gone
if it hadn't been for the republicans in
the small
rural counties of navarro and ellis
um he lives in middle ocean and that's
the part of the county that is
ellis county that's been turning blue
and he has a lot of support
in that part and the democrats that are
running are not running against each
other they're running
together and um they're not
they're not in there and attacking each
other they're basically
running together and so the the district
has been turning steadily blue
there's enough people that are um
there's been you know it's a matter of
building
infrastructure you build political
infrastructure year after year after
year
and i believe that they really began
building that political infrastructure
in 2012 in that district and it's been
by certain
it's been by candidates that have run
and lost but they have put certain
things in place that the next month of
dealer
could deal with and so um there is
there's a possibility it's not a it's
not a done deal
but this district in case you remember
this is a district that phil brown
he was phil that lamb was a republican
who went to work for
he lost he ran for congress as a
republican and lost
he went to work for a democrat then he
ran as a democrat and won
and then he immediately went in and
partnered with ronald reagan to get
trickle-down
economics passed and um
he made tip o'neill mad and um
pulled him off of all of his committees
and he took his marbles and became a
republican it's been republican ever
since
trickle-down economics has not worked in
that district
um the district especially the two rural
counties have got poorer and poorer
ever since that happened and one one of
the things that really
caused it is that trickle-down economics
and also
the gop tax cuts that had no strings
attached
meant that companies no longer invested
in
employees education and training they no
longer had to invest
in upgrading their infrastructure on
upgrading their own on
on investing here in america we lost
american jobs and ellis and the royal
counties are two counties where they
really have lost a lot of jobs
and there's been a lot of things that
have happened in that district
the housing costs have gone up rapidly
um
they have less access to health care um
so there's there's been a real a real
place now that also joe barton was of
course
uh phil gramm's clothier and ron wright
was joe barton's chief of staff during a
large part of the time
that joe was on the energy committee and
the main thing joe did was protect the
energy companies
and here in january we had a very bad
storm here
and the uh protection that had been
given to the energy companies
really meant that a lot of texans lost
their life and many others basically
lost
you know were out in the cold literally
because they didn't force them to win a
rise
they didn't make them uh they they set
up a scheme
to where if they didn't produce the
energy
the in fact if you don't deliver energy
you can profiteer and charge much higher
rates so some people are waking up
on this there's also there are people
that are very staunch
this particular race in particular you
have a
real divide between those that are wrong
for donald trump
and those that aren't all all 12
of the republicans voted for donald
trump in november
there's only one out of the 12 that says
that he no longer deserves to be
the leader of the party because of
january 6.
so you have a a real agreement on on
trump's policies
and you also have a great many of them
that really believe that the interaction
was just right you know it was just fine
and dandy
there are a lot of people that don't
believe that and so um
that's that's that's basically what
we're saying you know
is that there's a difference in and
there's a difference in ideology
there's a difference in in saul
now they can't no one can say that he's
anti-law enforcement because he is law
enforcement
uh no one can say he's anti-military
because he is military
he's not anti-gun he is in favor of uh
background checks and and and controls
on
uh assault weapons but you know this is
someone that is
the very fabric of this nation but yet
at the same time he
and he values civil rights he um
worked for immigration for a brief
period of time but he's flown the entire
border
he's also been down in central america
so he understands what the root causes
are
that's why these people are coming
across the border now
he sees that there's no simple fix and
he knows that it's not
the policy of the current administration
that's causing that
he knows that these are factors that
would have driven them north no matter
who was president and um there are
situations that we've got to change
so i think that there are enough people
that
these issues resonate with now that they
may have been oblivious
to them before january and before the
storm in february but they're not as
oblivious as they were before
i think there's some republicans that
will stay home
um and so uh and this is also another
different story
usually a congressional race is only in
november
this is local this is this is a local
race
we have no way of knowing what's going
to happen because
most of the people that vote in the
primary and in the general election
never show up and vote in a local
election
so it's going to be real interesting to
see what happens
with this one i've worked a lot of
elections but this one is the strangest
i've ever come across
so so but basically if you look at the
demographics
the district has been steadily turning
blood
all right well you know um moving on to
the reason of course that this election
was called at all
uh the death of mr ron wright uh what
does he
feel about his governance
about uh what does he feel about the
governance of the late
wrong right um
ron wright was the mayor approached him
in arlington for a number of years and
at the same time
he was the chief of staff of
joe barton so all right is basically
just a shadow of john barton he was only
in office one year
he did not have the opportunity to
really make his own
mark on on the uh
on that area because for one thing he
was battling cancer
and he was denying covet and ended up
you know sadly dying from from clothing
19.
he was doing quite well from what i
understand and
battling his cancer and then he
contracted code that he was dead almost
immediately
um but he was um
very extremist in many areas um
he was you know mr eddings is a very
devout christian but he doesn't go
around
[ __ ] the bible he doesn't go around
using his religion
as a tool um ron wright did
ron wright and um the um
now i don't know mr eddings would say
this but i would say this but as uh
the um tax collector parrot county
he had in god we trust put on all the
envelopes so when you got your tax
notice from terrorist county you got in
the city and god we trust
he had that clearing it on the side of
the of the vehicles
and i'm a christian too but i don't
think that was the appropriate thing to
do
in those places and he and it was it was
done in a very area but also when he was
when he was the mayor pro tem of
arlington
he helped to push through
a very extreme
gas drilling program
the way they did that is that they came
in and they
first of all they leased the city
property the county's property and the
school district property
and they had the flat ponds and the
wells
already in all of these neighborhoods
and then they came to the people and
they said oh
if you don't sign your uh you don't sign
the gas the
the gas gas contract we'll take the gas
anyway
but you know you've already got this
industrial waste dump in your
neighborhood
and so arlington had by the time he was
no longer mayor of pro town there were
over 300 gas wells in the 99 square
miles of arlington
i used to live there and um
i had to leave because i couldn't
breathe the air quality was so bad
i had watched our former
congressman um a wonderful man tommy
vandergriff
who was also a democrat and then
republican but i had watched him
work for years to get to where we had a
good zoning where you knew when you
built a house what was going to be next
to you
and in that one that one administration
you know when ron wright was there they
managed to and of course he was
basically
also working for joe barton to push this
food for the energy companies
and they basically just completely
ruined the entire zoning
of our of arlington and um
you know it's really problem made a real
problem for homeowners in that area so
there's a lot of problems with ron ride
in
what he did and he basically did not do
anything for the people
there wasn't anything that he saw he
voted time and time again against health
care
and this district has a higher infant
mortality rate
than most third world countries it has a
higher
maternal maternity rate mortality rate
than most third world countries you're
more likely to die within a year giving
birth if you're a woman living in tara
county
then you are if you live in most african
countries
so he basically is voting against health
care
while and and and voting against
birth control saying that he's pro-life
while he's putting in place policies
that are causing women
and babies to die and um
not doing anything about it he didn't do
anything about bringing good jobs to the
area
he was so content he was so determined
to uh he and joe barton vote
to protect the big oil companies that he
didn't do anything
about he wanted he kept their subsidies
in place
and did nothing to subsidize the new
industries that could create jobs for
people
and so these are some of the problems is
what he
what he failed to do and then the way he
managed to you know who is who is
flindsworth
and there is a place for uh daryl
eddie's is not anti-fossil fuel
he's not anti-energy he just says that
you know we've got energy
companies that have been here for a long
time we don't need to subsidize them
they're already here what we need to do
is we need to
go in and help the new industries get
started so that people can have jobs
that are here
and we need to revise our tax code and
restore
um you know the top the top percent
shouldn't have the
amount of tax breaks they have we have
to get a working
middle class again he would prefer to
see us go back to the policies that were
similar to what
eisenhower had you know eisenhower
put in the interstate uh highway
department highway system and we it
opened commerce for the nation
we've got to put in a really robust
internet system
so that people can work at home in in
ellis in the borough county
there were lots of people that their
kids couldn't go they couldn't
they couldn't study at home because they
didn't have the internet connectivity
people have trouble working from home
because the internet is so quality
we've got to get it to where every home
in america has
reliable connectivity so that we can
move into the new way of working in the
new way of studying
okay uh what are some of the most
pressing issues
mr eddings would raise the congress have
elected
health care housing affordable housing
health care housing and education the
cost of healthcare
housing and education has escalated much
more rapidly than people's paychecks
so we have to be we also have to address
the national debt the way to do that
is to get people at work at good paying
jobs
people say oh 15 minimum well he's not
just interested in a 15
minimum he's interested in people who
are not working to be able to get
a good paying job and then the ones that
are working
to have an opportunity to get the
college and the training that they need
so they can qualify for higher paying
jobs
so if we get people back to work and
then we get people that are
underemployed employed better and and
have a career level
most people don't have a career ladder
anymore i'm an old woman
and there was a career out later when i
started out but you know
uh when you create a world like has been
created
by phil gramm and ronald reagan and
those that have followed them
um where independent contractors about
the best you can get
that uh you can get your college degree
and you can be one of the best
uh data people in the world but you're
competing with people
on the other side of the world and the
employers here are hiring them in
india and china instead of hiring them
here
in your own community we've got to
change that
and it's it's not just what we have done
with our computer jobs we're going to
have a new way of new
new industry technologies that we
haven't even thought of
and they're going to be the jobs that
are going to employ the next generation
we have to make sure that those patents
and those jobs
are here in america if we do the r d we
need to get them and have them here in
america
and the only way to do that is by
revising the tax code
so that it's not an incentive to invest
abroad but there is an incentive to
invest here
and to invest in research and
development and
upgrading technology and employees you
know
in the training and the education of
your voice these are things that need to
be restored to the tax cut
and it can be done out of that
percentage of tax
that has been gained has been given in
these big
republican tax cuts recently that
they've given us such a hard time and
when we do that that's going to go ahead
and help us rebuild
the the middle class and it will help us
get over the debt that we're going to
have to
go into to take care of code 19.
all right thank you um
yeah your website states uh quote tea
party republicans have neglected
residents and
quote ronald reagan's trickle-down
economics leaves too many people out in
the cold uh could you please elaborate
quite truthfully and a lot of it is what
i was just saying trickle-down
economics was originally when bill
graham and a long lady basically said
we're going to start giving tax cuts to
industry
because if we do a tax cut in the
industry then
then the businesses will their their
profits will trickle down
but it didn't work that way they gave
the non
no no strings attached tax breaks
and instead industry either the people
that got the tax breaks either just
banked it
and usually offshore or they invested at
our shore
instead of investing here and so that's
where we are and in doing that
we lost those jobs there were lots of
people
in ellis and navarro county that had
union jobs
that were they had security they had
retirement they had training
they had um health care and they knew
that they had a job for
for as long as they did a decent job and
all those jobs are just that long away
but there's a lot of others but the
others didn't come in you know they
really did not come
come forward now daryl eddings is a
small business owner
and so he knows you know he's not
anti-business
but he comprehends that we have got to
be able to
get our american workforce
with some level of protection and the
way we have to do that
is we have to outfit protection to real
world um
investment we have to invest in our own
workforce
and people aren't going to do that
unless you know it's a shame
that it's altruistically and why wisely
they're not doing it but what we've
found is we've found that a lot more of
these businesses
have just been sold you know off by
um you know somebody's
buy it and then sell it to make a profit
buy it and sell it to make a profit buy
it sell it
profit take all the profit out of the
good ones there's nothing left for the
people
and each time a good example is media
a very good example i started out in
newspaper when i was a young woman and
we didn't have the greatest
you know we never made a lot of money in
newspaper we thought we had a hard time
but as i have watched
colleagues of mine that'll work for the
fort worth star telegram and the dallas
morning news and these others
every time their newspaper gets sold
they get less and less and less
and and also it's now gotten somewhere
they have cut
there are very few newspapers in the
united states that really even have an
investigative
journalism team um so
and of course everybody else always went
to the newspaper to find out what the
what the background was before they got
on the television they got on the new
on the radio and so uh it's
it's on the almost every level but
that's just one example
we've got to get to the point where we
have a tax code
that encourages people to invest in our
companies here and invest in our
workforce here
and workers and little companies look
up and say you know our workers are
valuable
and it used to be that way workers used
to be you wanting to retain your workers
you didn't want to just have them be a
contractor and walk away
and so we've gone over the cheap and
it's cost us yearly
and it was very it was very obvious
with cobit we didn't have this a plane
size the supply chain in
in place to be able to have the
equipment that we needed to take care of
our people
so it's a national security issue it's a
jobs
issue it's an economy issue it's a moral
issue
um and and it's not right for the middle
class
to be the one that's bearing the brunt
of the taxes
and those who are the most wealthy not
paying
their fair share so um you know and of
course
donald trump always talked about i paid
all these taxes well he's talking about
employee taxes he didn't pay any income
taxes he paid employee taxes
that was the money he collected from the
employees out there with only
it wasn't just exactly you know and so
they look at it and say well i want the
check
and i've been a business owner too i
know it's hard to write those checks
when it's time to play your employee
interest but your employee
your employee uh in uh taxes
is not it's not employment taxes you
know you what you collect from your
employee
employees your past known we've got to
get to the point
where it's not the employees that are
bearing the part of it
we need to share it around better we
need to be fair it needs to be more
equitable
and so this is something that is going
to have to be debated
and it's not going to be popular but it
has got to be done people have got to
stop running away from that
and face it that we do not have a
workable tax code