Secret America LIVE - Episode 75 - Interview w/ Eric Burlison - The Truth is out [25:43-30:44]

And I mean, this is in the primary. In a primary, and it totally eclipses the amount of money that I can raise. And really that whole system is, you know, it's all, it's all done in such a way to give power to the people in leadership. Because they can go and ask for these huge checks to go into these super packs. And here I am being capped at 20, I think it was 2,800 bucks that I could ask from an individual. How in the world am I going to raise $3 million, $2,800 bucks at a time, right? Most, most, like most individuals are not willing to do that. But, but that's the situation, that's the reality of the situation that we live in is that I, I busted my tail to raise nearly a million dollars in my first primary and I outraged my opponent. Now, he threw in a bunch of money in his, that he, like he took out a loan and he and spent, I think, close to $7, maybe $607,000 in a loan in addition to the money that he raised. So I was outspent by him and I was outspent on the, on the pack side, but, but, you know, at the end of the day, the voters saw right through it and we won. And the moment that you win, then that's when the, that's when the courting starts, right? Everybody that was against you before or was on the sidelines is now calling you saying congratulations. I knew you're going to win. I was with you all along. And then the first thing that they'll start saying is, you know, what, what's your, what path would you like to go down, what committees are important to you? Or, you know, what would you like to be, what committees you want to be on? And of course, it's always couched. Well, you know that there are, you know, there's A committees, B committees and C committees. And the A committees raise more money than the B committees, B committees raise more money than C committees. And, and you have a heart that, you know, unless you're really close to leadership, and if you're, and this is where the conversation happens, they say, if you play your cards right, and you work hard, the leadership likes you, then you'll make, you can make your way to an A committee. And if you don't, then you'll be relegated to the B or the C or the B committees. But is it all about raising money? Yes, it's both. So his internet's a little off right now. It's just lagging, but we can still hear you. It is both, like, so I literally was. It's all that my, in the steering committee, which is mostly led by the speaker, and that kind of group, they, they discussed that I was, you know, that the whip team couldn't always, you know, I wasn't always going with leadership. So that was one check against me. I was, you know, I publicly stood up against leadership in the press, and called, you know, when, when, when you do stupid things, and you're violating, you know, the constitution, when you're, when you do things that really violate basic norms, and you know, then, then I'm not going to keep quiet. If somebody asked me, I'm going to be honest, I'm going to say, no, this is a stupid bill. And honestly, Eric, have you, I'm sorry, I think you're cutting out. And you, the third thing is money, the third thing is money. So if you raise enough, if you want to be on certain committees, you have, they literally will give you a menu of how much money you need to raise to be on, you know, X, Y, or Z committee. And, or what you're expected to, to, to give to be on those committees. So you got to raise the money and give it to the party. You've got to vote the way leadership wants you to vote. And then you, and then you also can't, can't talk that you have to like, you know, stay in your seat and be quiet, basically. So the one thing I wanted to ask you, has, has anybody and, and you don't have to name names, but has anybody threatened you to get you to vote a certain way or threatened you said, you know, you need to stay in your lane or anything like that. Um, I've had threats before, from, from people outside, I've, I've had kind of failed threats from people within, within the party. Yeah. So, usually it's in the heat of the moments.