Purple Political Breakdown

Libertarian Don Kissick is on the Ohio governor ballot alongside Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat Dr. Amy Acton, and in this Ohio Edition interview he makes his case directly. Kissick, who lives in Ottawa in Putnam County, explains how a 2009 layoff from the Honda assembly line during the recession turned a former conservative into a Libertarian, and why he says his campaign rests on three...

Ohio's 1st Congressional District is one of the most watched House races in the country, and with Election Day on November 3, I sat down with Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Cincinnati) to hear his case for a third term against Republican Eric Conroy. Landsman walks through his background as a former teacher, the Cincinnati Preschool Promise ballot measure he led, and his five years on Cincinnati City Counc...

Trump has spent years calling mail-in voting a fraud machine. This week he told voters in Alaska, Minnesota, Nebraska and Virginia: if you have a mail-in ballot, return it immediately. We start there, twelve days before the midterms. In Nuanced News: DOJ's new $25 million Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program pays tipsters $10,000 to $30,000 once charges are filed, before any conviction. Trump pit...

Ohio's two biggest races are close heading into Election Day on Tuesday, November 3. In this solo episode of Purple Political Breakdown, Ohio Edition, Radell Lewis is back from a short break to walk through current polling in the Ohio U.S. Senate race, the Ohio governor race, and all 15 Ohio congressional districts, then breaks down five Ohio issues that landed this week. THE OHIO SENATE SPECIAL E...

I'm back after a few weeks off, and the show has a new format: less script, more conversation with the live chat. I start with where I've been. A bad faith debate in Vegas sent me back to the books on political philosophy, and I share where I landed on liberalism, equal starting points, and the role government plays in helping people become the best version of themselves. In Nuanced News, I break...

Dr. Diana Sorrentino, a social psychologist, author, and educator who has worked with transgender and gender diverse people and their families for 36 years, joins me to break down misconceptions about trans identity. Dr. Sorrentino lays out her case that gender identity forms before birth, explains how she helps parents move from rejection to support, and walks through the screening she says comes...

Jerrad Christian, the Democratic nominee in Ohio's 12th Congressional District, returns to Purple Political Breakdown: Ohio Edition for a general election follow-up as he challenges Republican Rep. Troy Balderson this November. Jerrad won the May primary and now faces a district he describes as running from some of Ohio's wealthiest suburbs to some of its poorest Appalachian counties. We cover whe...

The Supreme Court just blocked Trump's mail ballot rule for the midterms. Meanwhile, Trump is promising a $5,000 "Trump Dividend" only if Republicans keep Congress, and an end to the Iran war "right after" the midterms, while diesel hits a record. His own Speaker says the checks need Congress, and the cost tops $1.2 trillion. Also: Trump's 28,700 stock trades, the Kennedy Center standoff, DOGE's $...

Adam Terrell, author and director of The Joshua House, a halfway house ministry in Latah County, Idaho, joins the show to argue that prison is the wrong default punishment for non-violent crime. Adam says incarceration delays restitution to victims while taxpayers pay the bill, and he walks through the court-referred model his ministry runs: housing, employer connections, accountability reporting,...

Jim Jordan has represented Ohio's 4th District since 2006. He hasn't held a public town hall since 2017. This week I sat down with Joshua Kolasinski, the Democrat running against him, for a full hour on what he'd actually do in Washington and how he plans to reach voters in a district that isn't close. We got into a total stock trading ban for members of Congress and their spouses, term limits, un...

Crispin Gravatt is the Communications Director for the Todd Achilles for Idaho campaign. Achilles is running as an independent for the U.S. Senate against three term Republican incumbent Jim Risch. The Democratic candidate has since exited, leaving a head to head race. Todd was on the road, so Gravatt joined in his place. Gravatt argues most Idahoans sit in the independent middle and vote the pers...

Sam Cebula, organizing director for Digital Ground Game, joins the show to explain the organization's roots in 2020's Georgia Senate runoffs, its scale up to seven canvassing houses and 330,000 plus doors knocked in 2024, and why the group, founded in 2025, is targeting Ohio's 9th and Michigan's 7th for the 2026 midterms. Sam also discusses how the org manages relationships with political content...

An armed man forced his way through a crowd toward Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor, while she spoke at the Mahoning County Democratic Party tent at the Canfield Fair on Sunday, September 6, 2026. Multiple people were knocked down. Patrick Havas, 38, of Canfield, was taken into custody and booked at the Mahoning County Jail on charges of disorderly conduct and two counts of...

Ohio's Democratic nominee for governor won't debate. Ohio's Republican nominee has accepted two invitations. Neither has ever held elected office, and right now the plan is for you to pick one without ever seeing them answer a hard question in the same room. This week: Issue 3 explained in plain English, including the part the official ballot language gets wrong. The Ohio Supreme Court orders Tren...

On Monday the Supreme Court let the President keep building a 400 million dollar ballroom on the White House grounds. It did not rule that the ballroom is legal. It ruled that the people who sued could not prove they were injured enough to be allowed through the door, and Chief Justice John Roberts dissented and called the project likely unlawful. Nobody has ruled on that question. Nobody may ever...

Todd Sloan is a defense attorney from Auburn, New York and an independent candidate for Congress in NY-24, a heavily Republican seat held by Rep. Claudia Tenney. He calls himself a fundamental constitutionalist, and his slogan is Kickstart Congress: affordability, integrity, and loyalty to the district. Sloan argues Congress has spent decades handing its Article I authority to the executive branch...

Ohio's two biggest races are both inside the margin of error, and this week the money, the ads, and the courts all moved at once. A Pennsylvania financier has now put at least $30 million behind Vivek Ramaswamy through a federal super PAC, which is more than Amy Acton has reported raising for her entire campaign. Financial disclosures show Sen. Jon Husted's wife held Intel stock while he worked to...

Everybody in power announced something this week. Almost nobody showed the paperwork. Trump promised an economic D-Day against Iran, then his Treasury Secretary stood at a podium and declined to pull the trigger, saying out loud that he did not want to blow up the global financial system. Trump announced a beef deal to bring your grocery bill down, but there is no executive order, no named supplie...

Iowa's 1st Congressional District was decided by fewer than 800 votes last cycle, and this year it is headed for a third straight rematch between the same two major-party candidates. Michael Bridgford thinks that fatigue is exactly the opening for something different. A seventh-generation farm kid turned small business owner and financial adviser from the Quad Cities, Bridgford is running as an in...

A leaked memo from the campaign arm of Senate Republicans says data centers are "the anchor hanging around Jon Husted's neck." That is not opposition research. That is the National Republican Senatorial Committee, in writing, to artificial intelligence companies. This week, Ohio politics ran through one issue: data centers, and who pays for them. Host Radell Lewis breaks down the leaked NRSC memo,...

Trump posted a map of the Strait of Hormuz labeled "New US Territory" while the 60-day negotiating window with Iran expired with no talks scheduled. A preservation trust told the Supreme Court the White House is racing to pour concrete on a $400 million ballroom before a judge can stop it. Court filings in Minnesota describe federal agents recording meetings in churches and union halls. And Disney...

Two hours. One subject. Every documented corruption and abuse of power question about the Trump administration, in order, with the receipts attached and the counterargument stated out loud every single time. John Yoo wrote the torture memos. He is, by a wide margin, the most expansive thinker on presidential power in modern American life. And he looked at a US military strike that killed two unarm...

Ohio has an open race for Secretary of State for the first time since 2018, and almost nobody is watching it. Republican Treasurer Robert Sprague faces Democratic state Rep. Allison Russo, with Libertarian Tom Pruss also on the November 3 ballot. This episode breaks down what the office actually controls, where both candidates stand, and the Issue 3 disagreement that split the Democratic ticket in...

Four institutions told this administration no. Four times, the answer was to find another door. This week on Purple Political Breakdown: the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche, Trump's former criminal defense attorney, as Attorney General by a vote of 50 to 49 at 4:31 in the morning on a Saturday. Bill Cassidy stood on the Senate floor, said the nominee had exempted the President from IRS audits and wa...

Why does the House of Representatives still have 435 seats when the country's population has roughly tripled since that number was set? I sat down with Matt Beat, better known online as Mr. Beat, to break down one of the least discussed reform ideas in American politics. Matt is a former social studies teacher turned YouTuber with over 1.4 million subscribers, and he has become one of the loudest...