“When you overperform like that… you do it again.”

Rebecca Cooke came within two points of flipping Wisconsin’s 3rd District in 2024.

Now she’s back.

A waitress, small business owner, and daughter of a dairy farm family, Cooke doesn’t talk about working class life as a message. She’s lived it and loves it.

In this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we sit down with Cooke to talk about the campaign that almost broke through, what she learned from a narrow loss, and why she believes this time is different.

We get into:

• growing up on a farm and what it meant to lose it
• restaurant shifts while running for Congress
• what voters in western Wisconsin are actually worried about
• why she thinks Washington keeps missing the point
• and what comes next in one of the most competitive districts in the country

The Central Valley has a healthcare problem and Washington keeps sending politicians.

In this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we sit down with Dr. Jasmeet Bains, a practicing family physician, current California State Assemblymember, and Blue Dog candidate for Congress in CA-22. Here we talk about what it looks like to serve a community that’s been overlooked for too long.

Before politics, Bains was treating patients in rural clinics across the Central Valley. People without insurance. Families losing coverage. Communities trying to hold it together while the system fails them.

This isn’t a conversation about healthcare in theory. It’s about what happens when it breaks in real life.

We get into her path from selling cars at her family’s dealership to becoming the only doctor in a rural town, what she’s learned serving in the Assembly, and the vote by Rep. David Valadao that ultimately pushed her to run for Congress.

At one point, she puts it plainly: “This is a life and death problem here.”

This is a different kind of candidate and a different kind of conversation.

Jamie Ager-North Carolina 11

This week on Blue Dog Radio, we sit down with Jamie Ager: fourth generation farmer at Hickory Nut Gap Farm and candidate for Congress in North Carolina’s 11th District.

We spent a week with Jamie in Western North Carolina, walking the hills of Hickory Nut Gap Farm, talking through the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, and digging into what leadership looks like in a place forged by land, legacy, and fierce independence.

In this conversation, Jamie reflects on growing up in Fairview, building a regenerative agriculture business from the ground up, learning how to lead, and why he believes Western North Carolina deserves a representative who shows up. Especially when it’s uncomfortable.

We talk disaster recovery, immigration, small business, environmental stewardship, and the challenge of representing a district that stretches from rural mountain communities to Asheville’s creative core.

It’s a conversation about time, responsibility, and whether a farmer’s long view can bring clarity to a complicated political moment.

Recorded on the farm. A real conversation about what comes next.

Johnny Garcia-Texas 35

In this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we sit down with Johnny Garcia, a deputy sheriff from Bexar County who’s running for Congress in Texas’s 35th District.

Johnny talks about growing up on the west side of San Antonio, the influence of his mother, and working construction and plumbing before entering law enforcement. He shares what he learned managing programs inside the county jail, serving on patrol, and working as a SWAT hostage negotiator. Experiences that shaped how he thinks about public safety, trust, and accountability.

The conversation moves beyond talking points into everyday realities facing working families: groceries, gas, healthcare, housing, and what it means to show up for a community when people feel stretched thin and unheard.

This is a grounded, human conversation about service, responsibility, and what representation can look like when it’s rooted in lived experience rather than ideology.

What does loyalty to a place really mean?

In this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we explore what it looks like when work, community, and identity are rooted in the same soil.

You’ll hear from Virginia Olsen, a fifth-generation Maine lobsterman, on the meaning of working waterfronts and generational stewardship. From the forests of Washington State, Peter Janicki, a generational logger, shares what it means to balance working forests, family livelihoods, and responsibility to the land. And to close the episode, Congressman Vicente Gonzalez joins us to talk about life, work, and trade in South Texas. He details what border communities actually experience beyond the headlines.

Together, these conversations paint a picture of an America shaped by place and tradition. Where loyalty isn’t forged in nostalgia, but responsibility and love of home.

Politics spends a lot of time talking about voters and not nearly enough time listening to them.

In this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we talk with political analyst Simon Bazelon about the people who actually decide elections. Not the loudest voices online, but the voters in the middle who are trying to get through the week with some stability, dignity, and hope.

Here we dig into what these voters really care about, why life feels harder than it used to, and how the economy, costs, and basic quality of life shape political decisions far more than party lines. They also talk about institutional trust, what campaigns get wrong about non voters, and why pragmatic, results focused leadership still matters.

This conversation sits between our recent episode on the non market economy, tying together one big idea: people vote with the realities of their daily lives.

There’s a kind of wealth that doesn’t show up on Wall Street. It’s measured in sleep, sanity, and the time we give to one another. It’s the real economy of American life.

In this episode we explore what’s called the non-market economy through three conversations that reveal how time and dignity shape our daily lives:

• Dr. Jamie Zeitzer, a Stanford sleep scientist, explains how the biology of modern society has fallen out of rhythm and what that means for health, productivity, and happiness.
• Dillon Savory, Executive Director of the Fresno-Madera-Tulare-Kings Central Labor Council, talks about building community power, redefining the value of work, and fighting for time that belongs to families.
• Chad Guimond, a Lewiston, Maine Little League coach, reminds us of the quiet joy of passing the game and a sense of place down through generations.

Produced by Blue Dog Radio, this episode looks at the parts of life you can’t buy and the values that will always hold this country together.

In this episode of Blue Dog Radio, Representatives Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Jared Golden sit down for a candid conversation about faith. Where it comes from, how it anchors their work, and what it means to hold belief in something larger than politics.

They talk about the traditions that shaped them, the values that still guide them, and how faith helps them stay grounded in a world that too often rewards cynicism over service. From humility and forgiveness to the idea of grace in Washington, this is a reflection on how belief can help all of us find steadiness, purpose, and compassion in the work of building a better country.

Faith and the Common Good. A reminder that conviction and curiosity can still coexist in American politics.