Blue Dog Radio

What does it mean to be a Blue Dog in the year 2026?

Blue Dog Action co-founder and senior advisor Phil Gardner joins Blue Dog Radio for a conversation about a country exhausted by its politics, the revival of the Blue Dog movement, and what it takes to build a Democratic Party that is more connected to the places it represents.

Phil talks about managing Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s 2022 upset, helping rebuild the Blue Dog project alongside members like Jared Golden, what he looks for when evaluating congressional candidates, and why being deeply rooted in a community matters more than fitting neatly into a national political box.

We also look ahead to what the 2026 election might teach us, how newly elected Blue Dogs can avoid repeating the mistakes of past Democratic majorities, and why faith remains that we live in a country of builders, problem-solvers and people capable of changing course.

Four races in four very different corners of America and one Congress hanging in the balance.

In this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we take a trip through four of the country’s most closely watched congressional races.

We start in Southwest Washington with Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, then head to California’s Central Valley with Adam Gray, Northern California with Mike Thompson, and South Texas with Vicente Gonzalez.

Along the way, we look at the records they’re running on, the challengers trying to unseat them, and what these races say about the places that may help shape what comes next.

From mill towns and farm country to wildfire recovery, water, health care, border security and local infrastructure, this is a hyper-focused look at what representation means when the work is rooted in a place called home.

For more than 30 years, Bobby Pulido has been one of the defining voices of Tejano music. Now the Edinburg native, small-business owner and father of four is a Blue Dog endorsed candidate for Congress in Texas’s 15th District.

For this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we spent three days with Pulido in the Rio Grande Valley. Our time was spent riding through Edinburg with his father, Tejano legend Roberto “El Primo” Pulido, visiting local businesses, weddings, rallies, a Friday-night football game, and sitting down with Bobby at the beginning and end of the trip.

Pulido talks about growing up in one of South Texas’s most famous musical families, building a career that has lasted three decades, fatherhood, immigration and the border economy, affordability, fiscal responsibility, faith, and why a comfortable life in music eventually stopped feeling like enough.

He explains politics through a language he knows best.

If you write a song and people don’t like it, you don’t blame the audience.

You write a better song.

Zach Dembo is a Blue Dog endorsed for Congress in Kentucky’s 6th District.

His path to the race has taken him from an eighth-grade classroom in the Mississippi Delta to the Navy JAG Corps, federal civil-rights work, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

On this episode of Blue Dog Radio, Dembo talks about his ninth-generation Kentucky roots, a student he still thinks about years later, what military and legal service taught him about responsibility, why he left the Justice Department, and how he thinks about trust in government and representation.

At the heart of the conversation is an idea Dembo returns to again and again: public service means being responsible for somebody else. In Congress, he says, that would mean answering to “770,000 bosses.”

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has spent decades adapting to change.

Bethlehem Steel once occupied a quarter of the city and drew generations of working families from around the world. The Steel faded, the city grew in new directions, and the work of keeping Bethlehem going changed with it.

For this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we start with Lou Jimenez, a lifelong Bethlehem resident, military veteran, firefighter, and president of Bethlehem Firefighters Local 735. Lou talks about his parents immigrating from Italy and Puerto Rico, the changing demands placed on the city’s fire department, his own experience with fire-service-related PTSD, rising housing costs, and what working people need from their leaders.

Then we meet Bob Brooks.

Brooks spent 20 years as a Bethlehem firefighter before becoming a union leader and eventually president of the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association. He is also a Blue Dog endorsed candidate for congress in PA-07.

His connection to the job started even earlier: as a high school senior, Brooks stood outside and watched his family home burn to the ground. Years later, he became one of the firefighters answering those same calls.

Together, their stories raise a larger question about working-class communities across America: as our cities and economies change, who understands the people being asked to carry that change?

This is a conversation about Bethlehem, the firehouse, representation, and the people who keep showing up.

Florida’s 7th Congressional District is the kind of race that will take roots, credibility, service, and a candidate who actually fits the place.

On this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we talk with Bale Dalton, the Blue Dog-endorsed Democrat running in FL-07.

Bale is a Central Florida native, Naval Academy graduate, helicopter pilot, veteran, former NASA chief of staff, and someone whose life has been shaped by missions bigger than himself.

He talks about growing up in Central Florida, hunting with his dogs, fishing for redfish in the Indian River Lagoon, the Bible verse his mother tied to his birthday, the Navy service that brought his family to Sanford, the power of helicopter crews, picking people off rooftops after Hurricane Katrina, and what NASA taught him about what government can still do when the mission is clear and the work is serious.

The conversation also gets into the cost-of-living crisis in Seminole and Volusia Counties, the voters who feel ignored by both parties, the difference between public service and political performance, and why FL-07 is exactly the kind of hard but hopeful race that matters in November.

This is a conversation about place, responsibility, local leadership, and the Blue Dog bet: run candidates who belong where they’re running and good things will happen.

For this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we spent several days on the road with Rep. Adam Gray in California’s Central Valley.

Gray represents California’s 13th District, a place where water, agriculture, rural health care, ag technology, and community infrastructure are basic conditions that determine whether farms can plant, students stay, communities can grow, and families can build a future.

Recorded in Merced, this conversation follows Gray through the place that shaped him: the house his grandparents built, the family dairy supply business a few blocks away, the farm fields and water systems that power the Valley, and the institutions now being built to serve the next generation.

Gray talks about why water reliability matters, what people misunderstand about Central Valley agriculture, the promise of UC Merced and Merced College, and why he believes politics should use the word “work” more than “fight.”

At its core, this is a conversation about representation, loyalty to place, and the unglamorous work of getting things done.

Sacramento County District Attorney and congressional candidate Thien Ho joins Blue Dog Radio for a conversation about immigration, justice, public safety, redemption, and the long journey from a refugee boat in the South China Sea to a campaign for Congress in California’s 6th District.

Ho reflects on fleeing Vietnam as a child after the fall of Saigon, learning English through Bugs Bunny cartoons, growing up in California immigrant communities, and the sacrifices his parents made to build a life in America.

The conversation also explores Ho’s role in the prosecution of the Golden State Killer, his views on public safety and immigration reform, labor and infrastructure, corruption in government, and what he means when he talks about earning the opportunities this country gave his family.

At its core, this is a conversation about second chances and whether America is still a place capable of offering them.

Subscribe to Blue Dog Radio for more conversations from the complicated middle of American public life.

Raised by a single mother and a grandmother dealing cards in Nevada casinos, Shannon Bird learned early that opportunity rarely arrives without a fight.

In this episode of Blue Dog Radio, Bird's story ranges from a Reno trailer park to the Colorado legislature, reflecting on class, public schools, dissent, housing, democratic faith, and the women who taught her backbone.

This is a conversation about stewardship over performance and why government should still be in the business of watching out for people.

From quiet Sundays in Reno to running for Congress in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, Bird makes the case that politics is, at its best, a way of watching out for people.

And sometimes, it means fighting like hell.

“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.

In Episode 2 of Blue Dog Radio, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Jared Golden go Back to the Land — a conversation inspired by the writings of Wendell Berry. They explore the difference between knowledge and wisdom, the value of generational work, and how staying rooted in home and community shapes their approach to public service.

Welcome to Blue Dog Radio, where we cut through the noise and talk about what really matters to Americans in every corner of this country.

This show is about common sense, community, and making politics work the way it's supposed to, for real people in real places.

Episode One – “What It Really Means To Represent Home” – is the first of a three-part conversation between two of the youngest Blue Dog leaders in Congress: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto repair and machine shop owner from Washington’s Timber Country, and Jared Golden, a Marine Corps veteran from the Great State of Maine.

Together they explore the connections they each have with the communities they represent and lay the foundation for what it truly means to serve all Americans.