Join me, Kevin Tinter for this week's episode, as I sit down with "America's Sheriff," Mark Lamb. We dive into the extraordinary journey of a man who leaped from running a pest control business to becoming a beacon of law and order. In this episode, Sheriff Lamb shares his heartfelt transition into law enforcement, driven by his core values of faith, family, and liberty. Discover the challenges and triumphs of a sheriff's life, from navigating the complexities of modern policing to standing firm on constitutional rights amid a pandemic. Sheriff Lamb's insights into immigration, the opioid crisis, and his vision for a secure, optimistic future make this a conversation you can't afford to miss. Tune in to be inspired by the story of a man dedicated to serving with purpose and passion.
To support or learn more about Sheriff Lamb, click HERE
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Join me, Kevin Tinter for this week's episode, as I sit down with "America's Sheriff," Mark Lamb. We dive into the extraordinary journey of a man who leaped from running a pest control business to becoming a beacon of law and order. In this episode, Sheriff Lamb shares his heartfelt transition into law enforcement, driven by his core values of faith, family, and liberty. Discover the challenges and triumphs of a sheriff's life, from navigating the complexities of modern policing to standing firm on constitutional rights amid a pandemic. Sheriff Lamb's insights into immigration, the opioid crisis, and his vision for a secure, optimistic future make this a conversation you can't afford to miss. Tune in to be inspired by the story of a man dedicated to serving with purpose and passion.
To support or learn more about Sheriff Lamb, click HERE
Subscribe and tell a friend!
Get my new book "The Seven Disciplines of Uncommon Freedom" on Amazon!
Visit bekandkev.com today to sign up for our email newsletter.
Access our Free health assessment HERE
Hey friends, welcome to the Uncommon Freedom Show. I'm Kevin.
Speaker 2:And I'm Becca, and we're your hosts, here to help you reach your potential and maximize your impact in every area that matters. Let's get started.
Speaker 1:Alright, everyone. Welcome to the Uncommon Freedom Show. Today I am joined by a very special guest, Sheriff Mark Lamb. Sheriff, welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I probably should put the hat on so people will recognize me. They're gonna be like I. He's bald what.
Speaker 1:I'm guessing your kids and grandkids probably don't even recognize you without the hat right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have it on most the time, even in the house. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, hey, you know this is our first time meeting in person. We had a conversation over the phone, probably about a month ago, maybe six weeks ago, and I first learned about you during 2020, when you were given the title America's Sheriff. So we'll talk about that in a little bit, but before we get there, I always like to learn. Let's rewind the clock back to the early days when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about your parents, your early life, growing up, because I think that those seasons have a huge impact on who we become and what we end up doing.
Speaker 3:No, I agree 100%. And you know, look, my, my family has been in America a long time. You take it all the way back. I mean, I come from nine of the I'm a descendant of nine of the occupants of the Mayflower. Wow, my family's home side came in 1630 on the Winthrop fleet, so we've been in America a long time. My mom was kind of from California, utah, arizona. My dad was a Chandler farm boy.
Speaker 3:I grew up, born, raised, went to Chandler High School, but he graduated from Thunderbird Business College, you know, international School of Business Management, and so he loved living abroad and we lived in Hawaii and that's where I was born and raised on the big island, in Hilo, and so I was there till I was 11. Then we moved to the Philippines and I lived in Manila for a year. Then we moved back to Arizona and I went to junior high and high school in Chandler and then, while I was in high school, my dad moved to Panama, my family moved to Panama, and so I would stayed going to high school in Arizona. My mom would go back and forth and sometimes my mom would just leave me and my sister to fend for ourselves while we were in high school, wow, and so I would go with. During the summers, christmas vacations. I spent all that working in Panama and then served a mission for my church in Argentina and then basically been in Arizona. Since then we had a short stand in Florida where I did pest control cells.
Speaker 3:We did a time in Utah where I was a herdsman on a dairy for a while, many years. We loved that job and learned the value of hard work, and then I just got into business. I mean, we can talk about the, the how my law enforcement came, career came about, but that's. That's the nexus of who I am. But my, my family are just Americans to the core. We love American values, we're religious, we believe in God, family, freedom, and my parents did a really good job of instilling that but never forcing us to it. They're honestly, we just grew up with a love of America, for the partly because I lived in so many different places and I saw firsthand how bad. You know how, even though those countries may be beautiful, they're not America. I wrote a book. In the first chapter I wrote was welcome to America, and I talk about all the different places I've been fortunate enough to live. That are beautiful places but they're not America.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've traveled abroad a fair amount, and whether it's uh, is Mexico considered a third world country?
Speaker 3:I don't know if they are anymore. I don't want they.
Speaker 1:They're pretty obviously there's a lot of parts that are third world. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, we got those in our country. We pretend like we don't, but we do.
Speaker 1:That very true, but I mean, when you travel abroad even to, you know some of the better places, like Greece and Croatia or some places I've been um you can't help but have a gratitude for how great this country is. I'm not only a freedom, but just the infrastructure that we have is unbelievable.
Speaker 3:So and the freedom is palpable, even though we're seeing. I know we'll get into it, but it's part of the reason I'm in politics I'm why I ran for sheriff is I'm frustrated with the loss of freedoms in our country. And but even with that, you, you get people that come from other countries and they get here and they're like, wow, I can walk in in the store. I don't, I don't feel I was talking to a guy from Rhodesia. You know, and if you know anything, that they gave them 24 hours. Everybody that was white had 24 hours to get out, and he was telling me about that. He's like I came to America with $700. And you know what he? He's like it was safe, it was. I came with $700 and now I'm retired with plenty of money and and only you can only do that in America yeah, that's the only place you can do it.
Speaker 1:It still is a land of opportunity.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if it's so bad, why are there so many people trying to get here, right?
Speaker 3:And why do the people that hate it not leave? Exactly, if it's so bad, you're welcome to leave. Nobody's keeping you here. Yeah, if you don't love it, go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I've never understood that. Tell us about your family. I know you're married and you have some kids and grandkids that I know. Tragically, you went through a real horrible tragedy over the last year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, a lot of people go through bad things and we were one of them and we. I've been married for 29 years. I'm in my 30th year. This year will be 30 years. Congrats, beautiful wife, thank you.
Speaker 3:Originally from Minnesota, but spent most of her time in Arizona, mesa girl. We've been fortunate enough to have five kids, two grandkids that are living for kids living, as you mentioned, you know, last December of 2022, one of my sons, my middle son. We were just getting ready for Christmas you know presents and I was out at a dinner and done some Christmas shopping. Come home, it's 830 at night and we get a knock at the door. My wife opens the door and it's Sheriff Paul Benzone, two of my chiefs and two chiefs from Gilbert PD, and I looked at their faces and knew something wasn't right.
Speaker 3:And one of my chiefs has known my kids since they were little kids because we lived on the same street, right across from each other, and he just looked at me and said, hey, cooper and the baby are dead. And Cooper was my middle son, 22 years old, my 11 month old granddaughter, elaine, and my soon to be daughter-in-law, who was like a daughter to us because she had lived with us for two years and like the baby, was felt like our baby, because we spent so much time with the baby putting her to bed, because these are new parents and so it was a blow. It was a blow. They a guy under the influence of alcohol and drugs, going 70 miles per hour hit them as they were coming home from work and changes your life in an instant. And part of the reason we got into what we're doing now is because you realize there is no guarantee for tomorrow and that the only thing we take with us in this life is what we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, that's, that's heartbreaking. I was. I don't know if you remember this, but I was a cop for seven years and when I got into it I had zero, like zero, interest in DUI enforcement but actually ended up becoming my favorite thing to do because it was actually one of those things they told us. I don't know if the status true, but they said for every was it? I think they said every 10 DUI rest you make you save a life and that every person who gets caught drunk driving under the influence has driven. You know, it's like it's basically they drive 100 times under the influence before they get caught. So those are stats I heard, and training. I don't know if they're true, but I was like OK, this is actually one of the things I do where it can actually make a difference, but my heart goes out to you and your family.
Speaker 3:And that was what was hard for me is because, you know, I do, I carry a gun, I go out, I stop by.
Speaker 3:That was one of the things I like doing was stopping people that were driving under the influence, because you felt like you were saving somebody potentially. But you know, you realize there's nothing I could do to stop. You know, and I know we'll probably get into a lot during this podcast, but you know that's one of the things we believe is, you just can't certain things in life, you just can't control, and so you have to focus on the things that you do control. And so we had to make a decision that we could sit and lay in the corner or lay in bed and never get out and not get back up, or we could decide that we were going to, you know, make our attitudes right. And it doesn't mean that we didn't go through grieving, it's not saying that anybody who hasn't struggled with getting over grief is doesn't have their attitude right. I'm just saying for us we had to get back up and we had to just kind of process the grief in a different way.
Speaker 1:And obviously you've probably been on the opposite side of that scenario where you had to deliver that horrible news.
Speaker 3:I imagine right Actually, not long before this happened to me, I was out working one day and I actually had a media guy media guy with me, and so I pick them up and five minutes later there's a call for a motorcycle accident. And so I get there and I'm one of them. Me and another guy showed up at the exact same time. So I get out, I'm starting to do CPR. It's a 17 year old kid Motorcycle. It hits somebody that turned in front of them and so I'm here doing CPR. Then the other deputy jumps in. We're kind of just kind of treating them Well. Then I grab his ID and I look and I see that he is close by and I want to make sure that his parents know like we're in the middle of this. So I drive to his house, which was about five minutes away, less probably.
Speaker 3:I knock on the door, the dad comes out oh hey, sheriff Lam and I said look, I'm not here for a good reason and I need to talk to you and your, your wife. And so he goes in and gets his wife and no, I said, your son's been in an accident. He said what you know they're you know, same thing.
Speaker 3:I had what? And I said, yeah, your son's been in an accident and it's not good, so she gets his wife. Well, when the wife comes out, she says Mark, and gives me a giant hug. We dated in high school. We've been friends forever. We grew up together in Chandler and so it was it. Just, you know, it hits home really quick, and so we spent some time with them at the hospital, but we had gone through a little bit of that with them. I know other people close to me and people that I don't know that I've had to deliver that message to, and you know so to get it delivered to you is, you know, sucks to be on the other side of that.
Speaker 3:It sucks to be on both sides of it to be honest, it does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I fortunately I haven't been on the receiving side, but I've had to deliver that notice more than once and it does suck, it's there's no bigger pit in your stomach than that right there. So well, our condolences. I know we heard about it on the news and we didn't know you, but we respected you and we're very sorry for your family.
Speaker 3:Thank you and to anybody out there. We had so much support. We had people, you know, praying for us, sending us messages. We had Walmart who helped us out, gave us food, like just I mean everybody was just really the community came together and it really helped us a ton, because we saw how much love there was in the community and we people were financially donating to a GoFundMe. I mean there was just a lot of outpouring of support. So thank you to everybody for the support and the prayers. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So let's talk about your. When did you decide to get into law enforcement?
Speaker 3:So I grew up, never wanted to be in law enforcement. I did want to be military, but when I came home from my mission I was. You know, it was like 93, 94. I lived in Panama. Nothing was really going on. Everybody in Panama that we associated with played sports with. They were military. And so I was like, hey, I'm thinking of getting into the military. Like, don't do that, there's nothing going on. And so instead next thing you know I was married with started having a family. I got to 30 years old, had five kids and I thought I wish I'd have done the military. Now it's like 2001, 2000, right after 9-11. And so I'm thinking, man, I missed my. I should have done that. And so I started looking into it, but I couldn't make it work financially. So I kind of moved on and never thought about being a cop. Nobody in my family's a cop, nobody in my wife's family's a cop.
Speaker 3:I had my own business. It was a pest control, slash, pigeon control business. I had had businesses all throughout my adult life and one of my neighbors just said, hey, you want to do a ride along? I was like man, I guess whatever. I mean I wasn't happy. I knew there was more to life than what I was doing. I just I didn't. You know how it is you get caught into where you're just paying for your bills and your family, and it was my own business. I liked doing my own businesses, but it wasn't where I wanted to be. I knew I could do more. And so he says, hey, you want to go on a ride? I'm like, yeah, sure, no intention of ever being a cop still.
Speaker 3:Well, that night we'd go out and it was on the Salt River, pima, maricopa Indian community. So on the reds, and we get a call for a guy who had found a 20 year old with his 14 year old daughter. They get into a scuffle. The kid, the dude, runs out the back. So we show up and on the res you'll have a house and then you'll have desert behind it and they may be an older band and travel trailer. Well, that's how this was. We show up and they let me out. So I'm out of the car with armed with a flashlight and courage, you know I'm looking around. I see this travel trailer. I look in there and amongst all the trash and debris in the car the travel trailer I see what I think is a quarter size of skin. And so I'm like, hey, I think he's right in here. And so they come in there. Sure enough, he's under there. So they grab him, they rough him up, taze him, put him in cuffs.
Speaker 3:I came home that morning and I woke my wife up and I said, hey, I'm gonna be a cop. Six months later I was in the academy and on my way to doing it, and I'm one of those guys that's kind of if you're gonna do it, do it well and give it all. Be a common master of your craft. And so I tried to become a master of my craft. I took all the shifts I could do, do everything. I was fortunate to be the rookie of the year, officer of the year next year, detective of the year next year as a gang and drug detective, and then I got on the actual awards committee. So they stopped giving me any awards because I was on the committee. We did a Federico case, we did a lot of stuff, and so I've been very fortunate and I fell in love with the career.
Speaker 3:Part of it is because I love America and I'm a believer that the strength of America, having been to other countries, what makes America different is the rule of law. The founding fathers understood it and the preamble, the very first charge of the constitution, is not in the articles or in the Bill of Rights. The very first charge of the constitution is in the preamble. When they said we, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, established justice. They knew how important justice would be to a functioning a Republic, a functioning society. And so I'm here now as a cop and I'm thinking I'm doing what the founding father said was really one of the most important things for us to do, and so I just kind of fell in love with the career. But I also understood that they needed better leadership. They needed stronger leadership. They needed people that had a different.
Speaker 3:Most cops start when they're young 1920. And that's all they know. They don't really know marketing, they don't really know business, they don't really know how to manage it, budgets, all that. Some of them learn it over time and many of them think they're good leaders. But when people are forced to be underneath you, like in the military or that, you think you're a good leader, because everybody shows up to work every day, because they have to, and I saw a lot of things that could be different and instead of being the guy that's sitting and complaining about it, I was like, ah, screw it, I'm gonna run for sheriff.
Speaker 1:Okay, so what agency did you start with? Was it the-.
Speaker 3:So I started with Salt River. Salt River, okay, yeah. So I went on that ride alone, put my application in and six months later I was in the academy with Salt River and I spent my first seven years there seven.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's interesting that you talk about positional leadership. I'm a huge John Maxwell fan and in his book the Five Levels of Leadership, he talks about positional level is that first level. And in the book that I wrote I gave a shout out to John Maxwell my acknowledgments, because when I read that book I was new in business and, having come out of 11 years of law enforcement and in military, I realized I was a great positional leadership leader, which is not a good thing to be. You know you're used to. You know I went in as an officer so I had, you know, 30 year veterans that were enlisted saluting me and it's really hard to not let that go to your 24 year old head.
Speaker 1:You know you're like, oh, you think you're big stuff and it's ridiculous and people do things just because you're the boss and if they don't, they get you know, njp to court-martialed. But that's not leadership. And I saw the same thing even in my law enforcement careers that you know there's. There are a lot of people that go right into it and there's a lot of benefit from having some non-government experience, some business experience where you understand, man, I'm getting paid by taxpayer dollars and every program that we talk about requires taxpayer dollars, and it doesn't grow in trees right. There has to be productive taxpayers out there making money through business for us to be able to collect the taxes, to be able to do all these awesome projects and pay all these salaries right, yeah, exactly, and that's how I felt too.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:And I felt like I tell my people all the time the taxpayer is your investor. You can't ignore the investor. You can't never give them any information. You have to communicate with the investors because even though they don't choose to invest with you, they are still investors nonetheless. That's a great perspective and so we treat it much like. While law enforcement and government shouldn't necessarily be entirely treated like a business, there are aspects of it that if you treat it like a business, I think you can see some real benefits, and we have in Pinal County.
Speaker 1:So is that where you first ran for sheriff?
Speaker 3:So I lived in Pinal County when I was working at Salt River and I was just standing there one day with my guys in the gang unit and I said you know, it was actually and not to get I don't know how political you like to get on the show, but I didn't like Obama and I didn't think that they what I could see is his vernacular was he wanted to fundamentally transform America and the way that. I think anytime you wanna break America down, you have to undermine the rule of law. It goes back to what I said. They know that that's the backbone of America as well, and so the way you do that is you deteriorate it, you make people have less faith in law enforcement. You don't hold the criminals accountable, you over hold the protectors accountable and it's all by design to create chaos and instability in society. Well, I could see that he was doing this.
Speaker 1:You know, remember the Gates case, the professor, I'm running through my head right now. I remember when that happened and it really pissed me off.
Speaker 3:And really it was like one or two cases can really damage that relationship between law enforcement and the society, and not to mention, there was a racial implication there as well, and so I just couldn't stand by and just complain about it. I'm not. That guy Sounds like a screw it. I wanna run for sheriff, and I can accomplish two things I can push back against this political agenda that I see on the rise, and I can also bring what I think is better leadership into a profession that needs solid leadership, true leaders, and so, instead of being the guy that just talks about it, I did it. Those guys thought I was crazy, like whatever, whatever. I was like, no, no, I'm gonna run for sheriff. They're like, oh sure, whatever.
Speaker 3:Six months later, I was in Pinout. Well, it took me a little bit of time because I didn't hear from them for a little bit, but then next thing, you know, it went like that and I was over at Pinout County and spent a couple years there before actually leaving in 2014,. I said look to my wife. I said I've gotta move back into the private sector so I can make enough money so that I can run for sheriff. So I went back to the private sector started a marketing company, ended up really kind of pushing solar more than anything, but we were marketing a lot of different products, a lot in Utah, we were doing some work all in different places and then I finally did put the. I almost didn't do it that's another story, but I almost didn't do the sheriff thing because I thought, oh, my business is going good, maybe I'll just keep doing this and I'll push that. What I felt like I needed to do. I'll push it down the road a little bit because it was inconvenient.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's definitely a sacrifice.
Speaker 3:It is. And you know, like I didn't, the business was going good. I read a lot of articles. I knew nothing about politics. I was political, I was mindful of political issues, but I was not a politician. I knew nothing about running for office.
Speaker 3:And so I called my wife. I was in Utah, we were working with our marketing company, and I called her and I said, hey look, I've been reading some articles and all this and I don't know, I don't think I'm gonna do it. Maybe all the business is good, maybe I'll do it down the road. And she's like hey look, I support whatever. I couldn't stop thinking about it. For the next 24, 48 hours, all I could think about was running for sheriff, running for sheriff. So I called her back two days later and I just said screw it, let's do it, awesome. And so we jumped into it, didn't know anything about it, but I knew marketing, and so what I would do is I would go to places. They would say you gotta talk to Kevin Tinter, you know. So I'd go over and I'd say, hey, I'm thinking of running for sheriff.
Speaker 3:And then politics and politicians want to tell you everything they know. So they'll sit and go. Well, you need to do this and you need to do that, and I would listen and make notes and then I would say, okay, this is what my opponent will do. How can I accomplish this? By spending less money and being more effective. I love it. And so that's what we did, and they honestly thought that they were gonna beat me. I was the underdog. He had way more experience. I had 10 years in law enforcement, he had 25 years in law enforcement, he was the chief deputy there, and we got all the way to the end and they thought they were gonna beat me and I was like they're not gonna beat me, I'm gonna win by at least 10%. And we won 63 to 37%, having been outspent five to one and having really all the political groups supporting my opponent. But what I understood is how to get the word out to the people in the community, and we were successful and that ultimately shifted the vote.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 3:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:So the role of the sheriff is very unique in this country and the longer I went in law enforcement and the longer I've been out of law enforcement, the bigger and bigger fan I am of sheriff and in all honesty, I tell people. In fact, I was having a conversation with another candidate a couple of years ago and I said if I were governor I would work to eliminate all police departments and have sheriff departments take over all law enforcement functions. But can you talk about, like, what is unique about the role of a sheriff and why are they so important in this country?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the beauty of what the sheriff is.
Speaker 3:Most people don't understand the difference. The sheriff is an elected official. It's the only law enforcement elected official in this country, in the country Right, even federally. Those people are not elected, those are bureaucrats. They're placed there by whatever political class is governing at the time. And so your sheriff is your only elected official saying we, the people, think you can protect us and our constitutional rights the best.
Speaker 3:The problem with police departments is they work for politicians, they work for city councils or mayors, and that's. There is not as much power there. Because if a guy gets a job for $200,000 as a chief, he says well, I can't say what you can say. And I always tell him yes, you can. You just might lose your job if you do it, but you can say it. There's nobody's saying, there's nobody stopping you with your hand over there, your mouth, you can say it. You're just don't wanna lose your job and I get that Like, I don't hold that against people. That's why people like me exist, the sheriffs, because if you don't like what I say, then you have to wait till the next election to get rid of me, and but then you have to take the whole of my four years, of what we've done in the sheriff's office and frankly I'm very try to be very cognizant of what the people are asking me to do, and because of that I've been fortunate enough to be elected twice. I got reelected and obviously we're making some changes now.
Speaker 3:But there is the sheriff. The power of the sheriff is I don't work for anybody. You know, a lot of people have a hard time understanding this. They say no, no, but who's your boss? And I'm like I don't have one. My electors are my electors are my boss. There is no one boss. I don't work for the governor, I don't work for the president, I don't work for any of the chiefs in the county.
Speaker 3:As a matter of fact, the sheriff is the highest law enforcement official in the county and so there's power in that. Then you can say no, we're not gonna do the lockdowns, or we're not gonna do a mass mandate, or we're not gonna do vaccine mandates, or if you violate people's rights, we're gonna have a problem with that. That's the beauty of where the sheriff is, and I agree. I think one thing you could push is because then, if the sheriff is in control of law enforcement, you're gonna see a lot less overreach of policing in our communities because right now chiefs don't wanna lose their job so they cater to whatever these city councils want. And, frankly, the city councils and all these elected officials are afraid of the woke mob and afraid of these bullies, political bullies, who will bully you into doing something. And so they end up pushing that off under their police departments. And then their police departments are doing things they're uncomfortable with, but most of them and for good reason they don't wanna lose their jobs. They got families to support.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's what I saw, especially in 2020, 2021. When you would hear these stories of, like one I'm remembering is a mom in Ohio that's a very red state Like, I mean, you're down to earth people in most of Ohio and she got tased by cops because she was watching her child play baseball or softball and she wasn't wearing a mask. Now, mask aside, what in the world leads a cop to do that? And it's exactly what you're talking about. It's the chief says, well, the city council did this mandate and I work for the city council, the mayor or the manager, and if I don't do what they say, I'm gonna lose my job and I care about my job more than I do my oath of office. And then he pushes that down to his commander's lieutenants, who push it down to the sergeants, who push it down to the officers, and it's everyone is now in.
Speaker 1:Instead of actually recognizing their oath of office, they're saying, well, I got family at home, I need to keep no food on the table. Therefore, I'm going to compromise. I can, and you can really justify just about any decision you make, like probable cause to make an arrest. You can justify yourself to get there if you want to. It's the reality of it and it is tragic. So after all of that, I just I realized that the sheriff is where we need to be so funny story about that lady who got tased in the stands.
Speaker 3:Okay, the day before or two days before that, I got a call to a high school for a volleyball and they there was a lady refusing to wear a mask. So they wanted to kick her out. And so she calls the police and I actually know the lady. But I show up and I'm the first guy to show up. So I get there and the school comes out and I say what's the problem? And they said she doesn't want to wear a mask. And the lady was standing right there and I said, ma'am, you're free to go into the gym. That was the first thing I said to her. I said, ma'am, you're free to go into the gym. And they're like wait, wait, wait, hold on what's I go? She has every right to be here. They're like, well, no, this we don't, we don't want to hear if she doesn't have a mask on, okay, well, you don't have that, right. I mean that's not your choice. And they said, well, this is private property. I said, no, it's not, this is a school. This is a tax funded school.
Speaker 3:And so I and I've had a few of these fights with football and with basketball. But this particular night I said look, we're not doing this, we're not fighting with people because they don't want to wear a mask. She has every right to be in there. And, frankly, the second you open the doors for all fans to come in. That doesn't belong to you anymore. That belongs to me. Like, if you want to control the court, that's your thing. You want the people in the stands, that's us. And if you don't want people to come, then tell all the parents they can't come.
Speaker 3:But you can't, you're not going to single this person out because she doesn't want to wear a mask. And so and I said and frankly, I want you to have your principal come out here so I can tell him. And then the next day I called the but I told the principal, I said, think about what would happen if the issue, like if you push her. The very next day, or two days later, that lady got tased in the stands and I went back to school and I said did you see what I was saying? Did you want that in your school? I said was it worth it for you to have that in your school. Just because you didn't, you felt uncomfortable about having somebody without a mask on. I'm like, look, if the mask worked, then everybody else's mask should be protecting them from her anyway.
Speaker 3:Right, so it was the timing on that was we made it and nobody knows about us making that decision. But the other one was very and I said, see, that's what you're gonna run into if you do this, and so I think they got a better understanding. They didn't like it at first. They were mad at me and I was like I don't really care if you're mad at me or not, we're not doing this.
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Speaker 1:Yeah, and I guess the reminder for us man, if you love your freedoms as an American, you can't just vote for the president every four years, like voting for your sheriff and these lower level elected officials. They have consequences.
Speaker 1:In fact we all think that the federal stuff matters the most. The truth is, what impacts our quality of life and your freedoms is the lower level stuff. I mean you look at how many people were fleeing California in 2020, 2021 to come here. That wasn't because of who was president, that was because of who was city council mayor and governor.
Speaker 3:You are saying exactly what I say when I go speak places. I was speaking after one of the state legislatures. They had me come up after and I said you know, what's funny about this is we've gotten into society is make us think that the US senator or the US representative are more important, and I'm here to tell you they're not. That guy, that state senator, is probably more important to your daily life, what affects your daily life than I am. Everybody has the same second amendment rights on a federal level, but not everybody has the same second amendment rights on a state level. Why? Because state legislators, state senators, local jurisdictions, local mayors, local city councils have implemented many times, I think, unjust executive orders, mandates, not laws. They've done orders and mandates and they're not appropriately passed laws and those start at the local level. So your quality of life, your daily life, is more impacted by school boards, sheriff supervisors, state legislators and state senators, yet most people don't pay attention to those elections.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. What does it take to become a sheriff? Do you have to be a sworn law enforcement officer to even run for sheriff, or how does that work?
Speaker 3:So there's two ways to be a law enforcement officer in the state of Arizona. One you have to be AZPOST certified. So AZPOST is the Arizona Peace Officer's standards and training division.
Speaker 3:It's going to the academy basically, yeah, it's going to the academy and then every year you have to have so many years of training. The second way you can become a law enforcement officer in the state of Arizona is to be elected the sheriff. So in theory, you do not need to be a police officer prior to being elected the sheriff. The second you become elected sheriff, you're the sheriff. You can start arresting people. Got it Now? I would highly recommend and I know of no sheriffs in modern time that were not police officers before becoming the sheriff and then you know like, for example, you can keep your certification or not keep your certification. You don't have to have your certification as a sheriff for AZ post anymore. You can or you can't, it's up to you, but you can just become the sheriff without having had any law enforcement experience.
Speaker 1:Not every state is like that. Just hypothetically speaking. And to my wife don't freak out. If I wanted to run for Maricopa County Sheriff, I don't have an Arizona certification. It's been what? 11 years, since I was a police officer in Oregon, I could still run for sheriff and got elected. I don't have to go to the academy or anything like that. I'm a. That's. That's the the workaround or the workaround it's the other way to become a law enforcement officer.
Speaker 3:That's right, got it Okay. Yep, you do not have to be. And look, there's people that do that. They run. I don't know if too many that win or have any of that a won. All the sheriffs that I know now have been police officers, many of them for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna let everybody know Kevin's running for sheriff.
Speaker 1:I'm just kidding, Not yet. My wife will have a heart attack. So let's go back to 2020 and like the politics of it, because it was a very divisive. Divisive and tumultuous season. And masks no mask. Vaccine no vaccine. Forget about that. The bottom line is there was a lot of politicians trying to people tell people what they couldn't, couldn't do, and you this is when you. This is when I first heard about Sheriff Mark Lamb is because you were the only one that I knew of that was actually saying we're not doing this. This is unconstitutional. If people want to, they can. If they don't want to, they don't have to. But we are not enforcing it. We're not enforcing curfews that are really unconstitutional and violating the rights of the people. Why did you like what were the governing principles that gave you the integrity or the courage to to be criticized by most of the media and probably a lot of your colleagues? How did you have the courage to do that?
Speaker 3:God, family freedom in the Constitution. You know, really, those are my, those are my, that's my guidelines. I don't make it complicated.
Speaker 3:People said well is it hard now with it's crazy out there in the media is all after you and I said no. Frankly, it's really easy to me the the line is very clear that they are violating this law. You told people all of a sudden they couldn't go to church. That's the first amendment. It's the very first thing in the first amendment, yeah, is your freedom of religion and I was telling churches you can have church, I don't care, I'll support you, yeah.
Speaker 3:But I'm going to tell you right now, you better have, you better have thick skin. Yeah, because they're going to come after you. And I was telling businesses no, you don't need to close down. Here's somebody called me and they go Well, what point do we close down? I said never, yeah, you don't close down.
Speaker 3:Here's the thing about America. Freedom is has a double edged sword. With freedom, you can excuse, you can sort of the skies, you can make a ton of money, you can achieve whatever your dreams are, but you can also run yourself into the ground too, and you have to accept it. You can't have one without the other. You can't pick and choose. You know, and Thomas Payne said something.
Speaker 3:Thomas Payne, if anybody doesn't know, one of the founding fathers, wrote a series of pamphlets called the American crisis, has a great book called Common Sense Common Sense. But one of the things he said is the greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes, the ones that you should be concerned about, or when they're telling you it's best for society. This is good. You know, you, you're not. You don't care if you don't wear a mask. No, no, knock that nonsense off. You're violating people's rights. Let them choose. I never told anybody you, you can't wear a mask. I just said you can choose. You can choose, yeah. And what I would tell people is look if you are concerned, if you are scared, you should stay home. Do if that's where you feel more comfortable, but you can't impede other people. Other people are not scared and other people have families to feed and those people need to go out.
Speaker 3:One of the biggest things that I hated the government saying was we're going to these are non essential workers. Who determines that? Yeah, like to me, to every father, every mother out there that was providing for their family. They are essential right In their world. Their job is essential to them. So for the government to say that was our non essential jobs was a bunch of BS. So all of those things, in my opinion, violated God. They violated the family, they were creep, they were creating rifts amongst families, they violated freedom and it was violating the Constitution and our Declaration of Independence for our pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. All of those things were being violated and for me it was really easy to say no, we're not doing that.
Speaker 3:And people did not like it. They were. I was getting phone calls and one lady calls me and she says well, you're the only one doing this. And I said hold on man. I listened to her and I said I'm not the only one that believes this way. I'm the only one that has either. I mean, that's either dumb enough to say it or bold enough to say it. But I promise you, other people think and feel the same way I do. And I said I'm just going to say it. And so that's the beauty of being the sheriff is, they couldn't really say much about it and fortunately we were proved right.
Speaker 1:So it is amazing. I mean, every parent is guilty of saying, well, if all your friends jumped off the bridge, you know, would you jump off the bridge with them? And during COVID it was like, well, everyone else is jumping off the bridge, so we're going to jump off the bridge. I mean, it was just like it was.
Speaker 3:I was boggled Like. I thought. I did eventually have one sheriff stand with me on the lockdowns. One of the other sheriffs there's 15 of us one other sheriff stood up and said I'm with the sheriff lamb on this. And then I got COVID. When I went to the White House a couple months later, I got COVID at the White House. I found out I had it. I didn't get it in the White House. I found out I had this whole story. But then I got. I had to get quarantined. It was very public in the media. Sheriff who defies governor's orders gets COVID.
Speaker 1:It was, it was their, it was their dream come true. Oh, it was their dream come true.
Speaker 3:We had to turn off our messages on Facebook. You couldn't even believe the negative messages we got.
Speaker 1:It was awful. I was like I'm glad you got it.
Speaker 3:I hope you die, kind of stuff, yeah, but I did one interview with this news channel and I'm in quarantine in my casita. You know I haven't. You know my. My wife would bring sandwiches into the laundry room, because it's separated by the laundry room. Yeah, and I would get the sandwiches out of the laundry room and eat them over in the casita. I didn't leave the casita other than the walk outside in my backyard and I I'm there and I do this interview and they're like well, are you going to change your policy? You know what you feel about mass. And I was like, no, why would I change? Look, I accepted the risk that I could potentially get COVID. That's okay, I had the freedom to do that and so, no, I'm not going to change my pot, my policy of mass, because of the fact that I got it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's crazy. So let's move on. Let's talk about the, because Pinal County is a border county, correct?
Speaker 3:Oh, we're one county off, One county off but you still deal with the border.
Speaker 3:And so people understand this. So we're 52 miles off the border on the south end, where the Tajana Odom Indian Reservation is, and that reservation actually goes into Mexico. It's on both sides of the border, oh, interesting. Which is why there is no wall. There's not a foot of wall on the Indian Reservation, it's all three, three strands of barbed wire fence, or it's Normandy barrier, or some places. There's nothing. So we have always traditionally in the past, during Trump's administration, most months we had more apprehensions than some of the border counties did, because people were put, the cartels were pushing people through the deserts and it's very remote, and so what they would do is come through the reservation and they would load out into my county.
Speaker 3:The reason why Pinal County is very important also another aspect of it, especially now, is we are 71 miles off the border where the I-10 comes through our county.
Speaker 3:We also have the US 60, believe it or not, they traffic down the US 60 all the time Anybody that comes across the border.
Speaker 3:And, by the way, they estimate that 50% of all illegal drugs in America come through Arizona's borders. So whether people be in traffic or drugs be in traffic, when it comes across the border at some point its destination is to hit Phoenix first and then from Phoenix boom out. So most of that is going to come through Pinal County at some point. So even now we're not on the border, we actually probably catch more of it funneling into Pinal County before it gets into Phoenix. So we feel a real responsibility to either stop the human smuggling or the drug smuggling or the guns and the money going back to Mexico. So we spent a lot of time doing interdiction stuff trying to stop those things. But Pinal County, even though we're not on the border, the federal government, through some of their federal funding, treat us as if we were a tier one county, even though we're not right on the border, just because of where we're at the logistics of it, people coming through to get to Phoenix and then distributed out throughout the rest of the country.
Speaker 1:Can you talk about, I mean from your firsthand experience, like what are the legitimate issues that our poorest border funnel or create in this country from the standpoint of drugs and just the human trafficking piece as well?
Speaker 3:Well, the greatest threat to national security for Americans is not in the Middle East, it's not in Taiwan or China, it's not in Antarctica. It's right at our southern border. Every day, thousands of people are coming across that border and most of them are military age men. They're not coming from necessarily Mexico or Guatemala, which is what the media wants people to believe. These are families coming across to make a better life for themselves. These are 90% plus military age men. They're in the ages between 15 and 30 years old, 40 years old.
Speaker 3:These are men that come from Senegal, chad, mauritania which, by the way, mauritania is one of the leading breeding grounds of al-Qaeda right now. They come from Egypt, they come from Morocco, they come from China, they come from Russia and you think I'm exaggerating Uzbekistan, afghanistan. They come from Iran, iraq. They come from everywhere and right now that is one piece of the national security People say well, sheriff, will we have? Could we potentially let terrorists in? They're in, like, if you don't think that terrorists amongst the government admits it's been about 9 million people since this administration took over. I think that number is more like 12 to 15 million. So you're saying, amongst those 12 to 15 million, you don't think there's anybody in there that's terrorists or that hate America or they want to do harm to America.
Speaker 1:If you believe that you're the conspiracy theorist, I mean even if 1% fall into that category right. And I think it's probably higher than it's higher than that. And 1%, that's what. 90,000 military age terrorists that have come into this country.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then it's huge and there's a lot of. So the FBI and I just talked to the FBI's guys on this the other day. They said look, we're really good at capturing people that are on the terrorist watch list. Let's take John Gotti or Al Capone. Do you think Al Capone was out robbing stores or shaking people down for money? He wasn't. He was the guy that the FBI was watching. But the work was demeaned, done by tertiary, by secondary and tertiary people that were wanting to work their way up in the organization. So, whether you have a terrorist on the watch list, he was like look, it's the secondary and the tertiary people that we're concerned about. That are not on. Those they're flying below the radar. They're flying below the radar and those are people that are willing to do the work to be able to come into this country, to get in here or to do for Allah or whatever else they believe in. That would hurt Americans. So that's a national security threat.
Speaker 3:And Eli Crane, who is a Navy SEAL, who is one of our congressmen here in Arizona, he was questioning him the other day and he had a great. He really. He says is this an invasion? And these guys are like well, you know, we think so. Well, let me give you the definition of an invasion. The Webster's dictionary version of an invasion is an incursion of a large group of people into a sphere or place of activity. Check, or an unwanted intrusion into somebody's domain. Check. That's the definition of an invasion. So he says look, if you don't think we're being invaded, let me put into perspective and you'll understand this because you've been a leader in the military. What is a command-sized battalion is 10,000 troops. Every day we're letting in a command-sized battalion across our southern border. 10,000 people are coming across our border. So military guys get it, because if we had a command-sized battalion, that a combat battalion, that's 10,000 troops.
Speaker 3:We have 10,000 troops coming across. We have 10,000 people coming across every day.
Speaker 1:It's a military invasion every single day every day, and not only that.
Speaker 3:You're talking about people, in many cases, that have extremely fundamental differences with what this country was built on. Right, okay, whether I'm all for whatever religion you want to believe in, but there is many of these come from a religion that doesn't like Americans, or Christianity, or Jewish people, or Israel, and so I. When you saw Antifa and BLM, those people are mostly paid actors. They're working off of ideas, not core beliefs. So if I were to go to an Antifa guy and say, hey, would you put this vest on and walk into that mall and blow yourself up? No, I'm not going to do that, right, right, but when it's a fundamental core belief that you've been raised on, that, there's a value. When somebody comes to you and says, hey, will you do this for Allah or for whoever, there's people who are ready to do it because they're being promised things, it's a religious belief, it's a fundamental belief. So I'm concerned about the that we're at a place now where you have people that aren't protesting like the for Palestine, pro Hamas path.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it just blows my mind.
Speaker 3:And these are. These are protests that are being done because people have a fundamental core belief in something different than what America stands for. Yeah, and that's dangerous. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So you have that piece, and then the secondary piece is if I were to say to you as a military guy, what would you determine damage to be if I inflicted damage upon you know a country or a unit you know you would, you would take it as casualties or loss of equipment or any of those things. Every year, the leading cause of death right now in America it has become between the ages of 18 and 45 has become fentanyl poison, to the tune of over 100,000 Americans dying every year from fentanyl poisonings that China is placing in the leading cause of death.
Speaker 3:The leading cause of death in America right now is fentanyl poisonings Wow. And we're allowing fentanyl to come in at unprecedented rates and it's coming from China, being placed in the hands of the cartels. The hardtails are bringing it into America. Americans are consuming it and a lot of these people die not by taking a fentanyl pill. They take an Adderall that had fentanyl, they take a Xanax that had fentanyl, they take marijuana, they smoke marijuana that had fentanyl, they snort cocaine that had fentanyl or they straight up take fentanyl pills, and so that's become the leading cause of death.
Speaker 3:What did we do after 9-11? We went to war for 20 years over 9-11 and not to diminish any single death of 9-11, but it was less than 4,000 people. We are losing 100,000 Americans women, children, husbands, wives every year. They're not even military deaths, they are civilians. And yet we don't see the threat that is right in front of our faith, that is landed in our laps, that is affecting American lives every day Wow, how can you tell me that that is not the greatest national security threat, when it has become the leading cause of death in America? Not to mention the potential threats that we face now because of the devil we led in the back door man that's definitely scary Talk about the human trafficking piece.
Speaker 3:Well, that's the other thing, too is people say, well, this is I don't I always hear this term well, it's humanitarian to have an open border. And I always say, how, what do you? What? In what world do you live in that you think open borders humanitarian? Let me tell you what happens when you have an open border. It encourages people to come here. The cartel doesn't let anybody come across without you paying them or them having some role in you coming across.
Speaker 1:So the cartel controls the border.
Speaker 3:The cartels control the borders We've given out control to the cartel.
Speaker 3:They've definitely to have control on the Mexico side, yeah, and in many cases, sadly, they have a lot of control on the on the America side of it. And so what happens is is, now you're taking people some of them bad actors, some of them good and those people want to come here and they think they can come to America and get a better life, and they see on TV that we're just letting everybody in, and so they come here. But now the cartels are involved and the cartels will push them across the desert. We do rescue missions all the time in the desert and they're just letting them on your. They leave people for dead in the desert. They rape the women. Eight to 10 women, they estimate, are being raped when they come across. We had one woman we caught and she had a baggy full of pills and we said well, what are these pills? She had like 50 pills and she said well, when I was going to cross the border I knew I'd be raped multiple times. These are morning after pills. Wow.
Speaker 3:How did our moral compass get so broken that we put politics in front of people? But now you have the left saying oh, that's humanitarian. How's that humanitarian? Children are being raped, children are being used as pawns, children are being taken from families. On the other side, right now, you have children showing up giving addresses saying this is where my family's, at my mom's, at my aunt's, at Whatever, by the tune of thousands, tens of thousands, which, by the way, the government admits they don't know. We're 85,000. If that's what they're admitting. To just think about what the number really is, because we're averaging about 150,000 unaccompanied minors a year right now, and many of them are giving the same address. And so a lot of these people are being trafficked. These kids are being trafficked, the women are being trafficked, the men are being extorted. So I want somebody to tell me where the humanitarian piece is in that.
Speaker 3:Not to mention, we are creating a powerful army in the United States. We're creating a powerful army in the cartel. They have gone from making 500 million a year to $13 billion a year. They can afford all of the arms they could. They could go to war. Mexico's not strong. I don't think Mexico, the government, is strong enough to go against the cartels. I don't think you could eradicate the cartels unless America is involved with it, which is why I think you have to declare them terrorists, so that our military can work with Mexico's military to eradicate these cartels. They're killing human beings, they're they're vile, they. They cut people to pieces, they shoot each other. I mean the amount of death and destruction that they are causing it, even amongst themselves, on the other side of the border, just miles from our border. I mean it's every day. They're out there fighting and killing each other.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's no honor among thieves, so no, they're yeah.
Speaker 3:And so I mean the problems in this country are huge. And one more step further, about the children and the trafficking. And there's, do you know what CSAM is?
Speaker 1:I've heard the acronym, but I'm not sure what it stands for.
Speaker 3:So CSAM is child sexual abuse material. So this would be a picture of a child naked or a picture of a video of a child being raped. Okay, so in 2014, america had a Nick McNational Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They report they had 4 million reports of CSAM child sexual abuse material. That's what came to them. So things that you're seeing online, you know 4 million in 2014.
Speaker 3:Last year was 32 million, or at least 2022 was 32 million images 100% increase in less than 10 years, in eight years, of child sexual abuse material. And yet our government's policies, our liberal left, is encouraging these open borders and we are putting at risk not just American lives. We're putting at risk innocent lives of people that wanted to come here to America under the guise that they thought they could come here, but were abused by the cartels or found themselves in the sex trade here in America. Many of those juveniles are working hard labor in businesses here in America. I mean it's just the atrocities that are happening because of the southern border. It is, it is a, it's the greatest threat and it is the, I think really is un-American. It's probably one of the most un-American things we're doing right now.
Speaker 1:That's heartbreaking. Let's turn to corner. You're running for Senate. Why did you decide to make that change?
Speaker 3:I've been asked this question a lot of times and people say, well, why did you want to run for Senate? And I said, well, hold on, I didn't want to. Yeah, I was coming through the election last year or 2022 and I would show up to events and people would say, hey, sheriff, you got to run for Senate next time around. We need to get you. And I mean, at this time the election hadn't happened yet. So people were saying we got to get you in there. I almost didn't want to go to the end of the events because they kept asking me. So I told my wife I was like look, we got to come up with a list of reasons why not to do this, why this isn't a good idea. But in that process, we started feeling very compelled to do it. And then, as we started, and then December, you know, december hit. We were getting pretty close, and then December hit and we lost our kids. Yeah, and I didn't want to run for Sheriff, I didn't want to run for Senate, I didn't want to do anything, I didn't want to get out of bed, yeah.
Speaker 3:But about two, three weeks later, right after the funeral, I remember what it was that somebody said. Somebody said something to me and it was just like bam, and I felt more compelled then than I had before. To me it was just very clear like this is what I need you to do, and I've always been a believer. You got to follow the gear got. You got to follow what you believe in, what you feel compelled to do, and that's what's my wife and I have made it to where we're at now because we're not afraid to follow those, those intuitions, those impressions, which I think is God, you know, saying hey, look, I need you to do this, yeah.
Speaker 3:And so we said, okay, let's do it. And so it wasn't something we set out to do. We had a very different plan in mind as to what we were wanted to do, but there's an old Danish saying, and it says whoever has the ability has the responsibility. And no matter where I went, the four core issues that I kept running into here in the country, here in Arizona or in other states, was border, and that was proven. Look at the Iowans the other day, and I said the number one issue for them in Iowa was the border.
Speaker 1:It's the heart of the country, so if they're worried about the border, border economy, crime and national security.
Speaker 3:Those are the four issues that people talk about. Hardly ever talk about anything else. Those four issues. I know. Education and voting and all these things are other issues as well, but those are the four issues they talk about.
Speaker 3:How can I, as a man and then as a guy who spends my career running into buildings you know, running towards danger, not against how can I, in good conscious, knowings that I have more ability in these areas than any of the other candidates or most people that would have run? I run in a large agency with a budget of 60 to $100 million with over 600 employees. I know what it means to balance a budget, stay within budget. I've been a business owner. I know what it is to fight the border and I know it on an intimate level and have the resources and the friendships and the connections that would take to help fix this.
Speaker 3:I know what it is to fight crime. I've been a crime fighter for two decades and nearly two decades and I've always reduced crime in our county. Year after year, we've reduced our crime index in Panao County. How can I, knowing that I have the ability, to not run into the building and try to save what I can. And so my wife and I are patriots and we just said screw it, let's do it, let's try to save our country. And look, I can't control the outcome. All I can do is control my attitude and my work output, and so that's what we're focused on.
Speaker 1:I'm curious how do you think, being a US senator, you'll be able to impact at a higher level than you can as a sheriff?
Speaker 3:So, as a sheriff, what you can do is you can keep the wolves from coming into your herd. Wolf tries to sneak in, you can stop them, but at some point somebody has to hunt those wolves or they're gonna keep procreating and sooner or later you're gonna have more wolves than you can protect your sheep from. And I see we're on that path. The government is getting too big, they're taking more freedoms, taxes are increasing, and those are things I can't solve as a sheriff. I can fight to keep them out, but I can't fix them. And we can't as Americans, we can't keep treating the symptoms. We have to go fix the problem. And so I realized there's only so much I can do from that level. And so to take these fights to try to solve some of these issues, these issues have to be fought in Washington DC.
Speaker 1:Got it so on a macro scale, being a sheriff is being downstream You're pulling people out of the water but being a US senator, you're going upstream and you're keeping them from throwing people into the water.
Speaker 3:Exactly, that's a great analogy. Am I have to steal that one from you? You got it. I have to steal that from you. It's kind of from my book.
Speaker 1:We use it in a different area, but, as you were talking, and that's what it is, and somebody.
Speaker 3:We cannot continue to let the wolves procreate. And they're out there and every day they take more and more sheep.
Speaker 1:Got it Okay, all right. So let's wrap things up here. What concerns you? Well, I think you probably just answered that, but what concerns you most about where a country is headed?
Speaker 3:Well, we're headed towards socialism and communism and look, this is planned. Anybody out there thinks that this is incompetence or ignorance. It's not. And people say, well, who's doing it? Well, if you haven't watched, there's a really big push on a global level Globalism, the world economic forum. Go listen to the things they're saying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's the only thing standing in their way is America. America is the last place where freedom abounds. If you lose it here, there is no other place to find it. Ronald Reagan used to say it in the 80s. He said if you lose freedom, there's no place else to go find it, and whatever freedoms exist in those other countries will be seriously diminished once America falls. So America is the Alamo of freedom. So my concern is the continual push of socialism, which, by the way, socialism is communism without the violence, and when you pass social, the end goal is communism. And so you need we've got to take the country back towards where it was designed to be, which is giving people freedom, let people live their lives, let them make the decisions they're gonna make, because that's what we were built on, and I'm concerned that we're heading towards that.
Speaker 3:Saul Alinsky's rules for radicals. They're following all of the things that he would say. If you look at China and Russia, they don't even have to step foot on our country by way of the fentanyl, which is basically like the opium wars of 200 years ago, 200 plus years ago. They're basically destroying America without even stepping foot in here. And look at Russia Russia invaded Ukraine and now we're sending billions of dollars that we don't have to Ukraine. If you don't think that Russia's like this is great. I mean, russia is weakening us financially. They're dividing us as a country as to whether you support or don't support Anybody who reads any military tactical books Sun Tzu's Art of War, saul Alinsky's rules for radicals. While I do not suggest that that is a good book to read, it is good to understand what the enemy is and ultimately, this is a battle of good and evil.
Speaker 3:And I'm concerned because I feel like people keep pushing more towards evil as opposed to good. However, I still think there are more good people out there. There's a scripture in 2 Kings 616, and it said, and he answered fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And I can assure you there are still more people out there that believe in goodness, that believe in freedom. But we've gotta mobilize and we've gotta do things like run for office and fight for our country and be vocal and send letters to your elected officials and don't let them impede anymore on your freedoms, your second amendment or any of your other constitutional rights.
Speaker 3:And then what gives you the most hope for our country looking for, what gives me the hope is this is still the greatest country in the world. You kind of hit on it earlier. If this wasn't, why are more than 250,000 last month, 302,000 people showing up to our borders every month? Because this is still the greatest country in the world. Nowhere else can you come from the streets of a country in Africa and, in one generation, be a millionaire or a billionaire. There is no other country you can do that or to have a family, or to have your own religious beliefs. I mean, there is no other country like that.
Speaker 3:So I'm optimistic. And I'm also optimistic because I know enough about history, about throughout the different military engagements we've been in. But really, when you go all the way back to the founding fathers, just the American spirit of wanting to have freedom and a right to believe in what we wanna believe in and most people believe in God and in Jesus Christ those are things that drive this country still. And I'm optimistic because I know that those things still exist and abound here and I think that sometimes you don't realize what you have until you're about ready to lose it, and I think a lot of Americans are realizing, hey, we got a pretty good thing here. It may not be perfect, but it's pretty darn good and we gotta fight for it. So I'm optimistic about the American spirit and the rising of true warriors in this country that are saying enough's enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, as the saying goes, all it takes for evil triumph is for good people to do nothing. And.
Speaker 1:I think we're in the position that we're in because a lot of good people have done nothing for decades and I'm grateful for people like you and others that are leaving the comforts of their businesses and business is challenging, but it's a sacrifice. It should be, and for way too many politicians it actually isn't a sacrifice. It's kind of their way to a fortune through dirty connections and things like that. But for good people like you it is a sacrifice. So if people wanna learn more about you, sheriff, how can they get more info? Follow you, just help us out.
Speaker 3:Please come to sherifflamb for senatecom or sherifflambcom If you live in Arizona. Please sign my petition online. If you haven't, that's with first step, getting us on the ballot. We're gonna be on the ballot. I wanna make sure I got plenty of signatures. Number two is you can donate. The Democrats are out raising Republicans everywhere. They are fundraising machines. It's sad you kind of goes back to what you said. I just did a video last night where I said I believe in term limits. I believe that I'm tired of seeing the same people there over and over and over again and they're driving our country in the ground, yet we still send them back. So I believe in term limits. I believe in campaign finance reform. I think it's inappropriate that we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get seats that pay $174,000 a year.
Speaker 1:It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3:The only sense it makes is the fact that our country is broken by rich people putting in an office who they want. And then the third thing is if you wanna do insider trading, then get into the private sector, get out of the public sector. You should not be getting rich off of your service in public sector. I mean, look, you can write a book and a few things and increase your wealth little chunks, but for people to go in and become multi-millionaires is unacceptable. So if you believe in those things, you can sign my petition and then you can donate to my campaign, because it does take money to do these campaigns. I can tell you we're very fiscally responsible with what people give us, because we know it's hard earned money. And then if you wanna volunteer, you can come on and volunteer there too. So shareflanfordsenatecom.
Speaker 1:What's the smallest donation you want?
Speaker 3:Look, I'll take a dollar, I'll take whatever. I mean you can donate up to $6,600 per person, so $13,200 per couple. I'll take all those too. But look, every single dollar matters. You know, we've done some things where I've done some gun giveaways and we've done like. When we gave away a 1911, it was $9.11. And it raised us. It was one of the best performing gun giveaways I did because people can afford $9.11. I was on my way here and went about a couple of diastodias and something else and it cost me $9. So $9 is not a lot but it helps the campaign a bunch because it's one of those deals where I have. Strength is in numbers. If we, the people, stand together and everybody gives five bucks, you know, if 100,000 people give five bucks, I got a million dollars now and that matters Compound effect.
Speaker 1:It's the compound effect. What happens to Pinal County if you get elected?
Speaker 3:That was one of the hardest things, because I wouldn't have done it if I couldn't have found a good guide to replace me. So please, if you get a chance, if you live in Pinal County, support Ross Teeple Teeple for the people, te, t-e-e, p-l-e. We spent a couple months looking at you know who would be good for this? And finally we said, hey, ross Teeple's the guy. And so I went to him and said, hey, would you be willing to run for sheriff if I ran for Senate? Went home, talked to his wife, came back, said I'm in and I'll tell you, the guy's been working hard. He's a constitutional guy, believes in the Second Amendment.
Speaker 3:I understands what it means to treat employees right and treat the taxpayer right and protect their rights, and so I'm optimistic as to what he's gonna be able to do with the sheriff's office after you know when he takes over in my place, so you can donate to him too. I think his is teepleforsheriffcom, so, but it's good.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the Constitution and just kind of final sidebar here, when I, you know, I joined the Marine Corps and I don't think during any of my Marine Corps training did we read the Constitution and then went through the police academy in the state of Oregon and never touched the Constitution. And the oath of office is you know, I will uphold and defend you know, the laws of the Constitution and the state, or you know, basically all of the oaths of office are something along those lines and I realized that many because I don't think our schools are doing a good job of teaching the Constitution and many, if not most, of our military and law enforcement they've never read the Constitution, which is a travesty. But here you are, you're swearing an oath of office to defend something that you've never read, which is impossible to do. So it's very easy If you don't know what you're defending and your boss tells you to do something, then okay.
Speaker 1:You're just gonna take them out their word, but I think that's something that we need to change.
Speaker 3:When we, when our guys, graduate from the academy or from the detention academy, we give them obviously they get their badge and we give them an envelope, and in that envelope is a copy of the Constitution and we tell them read this Constitution, because when you come to work for me, I expect you to be a peacekeeper, but I expect you to keep people's constitutional rights. That's the most important thing. Do what's right. I don't care if it ends up being something saying, hey, the state law says this or that, but you were doing what was right in protecting people's constitutional rights. I can live with that and we can deal with that. So, yeah, for us. I agree, I don't think they focus enough and I'm actually trying to work on getting a constitutional scholar that's gonna come in and do a whole thing from all my employees that are out there dealing with people and potentially being in a position where they could violate some of these constitutional rights or protect them, and so I wanna make sure that my guys understand the depth of the Constitution.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Well, Sheriff, thank you so much for your time. We went way longer than expected. I hope it didn't keep you from anything important.
Speaker 3:I got a couple of interviews, but I don't think we've passed that time yet. Awesome.
Speaker 1:Well again, thank you so much. I wish you the best. I really appreciate the sacrifice you're making to serve our country.
Speaker 3:I appreciate it. Thank you, brother. God bless. God bless you too, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Uncommon Freedom show. We believe freedom isn't man's invention. It was created by God. If you are enjoying the show, please give us a five-star review on the platform we're listening to us on, Then subscribe and share with friends and family that you think will enjoy the show. You can connect with us at beckandkevcom for more resources to learn biblical principles, essential disciplines and the winning habits that help once-average people lead the life they want instead of accepting the life they were given.