Full interview: Rep. Janelle Bynum discusses run for Oregon House speaker [10:01-15:08]

It's to my daughters, it's to young women, young black women, even older black women. The message to me is, if you don't try, you never know what the pitfalls are. And I'm okay with failure. I'm okay with that. But as I try, as I try to climb and reach and go higher, if I never step out, I never know what the pitfalls are. I never educated the people who are looking up to me as to what the process is. There are no mentors for me in this. There are very few allies. I have great staff. But people of color do not have, it's not like Chicago or, or maybe in the South, where you have a deep bench of leaders that will reach back and help people. It's not like that here. My parents were school teachers. I'm an engineer. Like, there's no playbook for me. So unless I try, unless I test the system, this is where my engineering part comes in, unless I test the system to stress and to failure, I never know what I need to do the next time. Failure is what. Failure is part of like vulnerability and courage and growing. And by no means do I think I have failed. There are systems that have failed in this whole process. But I think ultimately it has illuminated a lot of what. A lot of what the system is doing to produce its leaders. And it allows people to say, yeah, we should probably change that. For those who are, well, back up nationally, it's interesting. There's a lot of talk about division within the democratic party and infighting the democratic party. And the mechanics of that aren't necessarily mirrored here. Let's talk about sort of far left progress. And reaction by party leaders. But looking at this, I'm wondering for people in Oregon who were really glad to see the supermajority maintained. And now they look and they say, OK, here's an example of division within the democratic party in Oregon. And to feasibly be elected speaker of the house, they're wondering if you have to work with Republicans and they're wondering if. Because of that, Republicans are going to obviously ask for something in return. And they're thinking, well, that feels like a bit of a crack in the supermajority. And they're worried. And also asking what, you know, should those who are not happy that the supermajority was maintained should take away from this. Or with those who are happy, what should they take away from seeing this? And like we said, this normally isn't public period. This process isn't public. But now here it is. And it's an example of division. What should they take away from that? So close after the election when they when they saw this majority again was, was held in place. Yeah, I think this actually excites me and invigorates me that we can have a public debate and speech is allowed and we can differ. And we can bring a different perspective like that to me. And the fact that you and I are having this conversation and people are interested in how their government works, that to me is the win. In terms of division within parties, whenever you get a large group of people, you start to see the lines between between ideologies, even within a group, start to emerge. So that I think is a natural consequence of just large groups, like I've been married to my husband for 22 years. And he and I don't see eye to eye on whether the kids should have an iPhone or an Android. That is that is a big argument in our house. Right. So so it's not surprising to me that you see different ideologies popping up. In terms of working across party lines, I as a general rule, don't submit legislation for consideration if it doesn't have if I don't have a partner across the aisle. That's just how I work. And I don't make any apologies about that. I think in terms of the politics of it, I think Democrats can do a better job of walking the talk in terms of elevating black voices and black women honoring us for the work that we do.