Johnny O: Arriving amidst the madness and lack of collaboration of a chaos Congress

Finding care and compassion and the center of politics on Capitol Hill seems hard to imagine these days for most American citizens. Congressman Johnny Olszewski joins Nestor at the new Costas Inn in Timonium on the Maryland Crab Cake Tour for a lengthy discussion about his new responsibilities and job in Washington, D.C. representing the 2nd District in Baltimore.

Congressman Johnny Olszewski discussed his new role in Washington, emphasizing the importance of bipartisanship and collaboration. He highlighted his efforts to pass bipartisan legislation, including a port security bill and a workforce bill. Olszewski criticized the recent “big, ugly bill” for its partisan nature and its impact on deficits and social programs. He also addressed the challenges of immigration and the role of ICE, advocating for a more compassionate approach. Olszewski shared his personal journey, from teaching to politics, and stressed the need for care and compassion in governance.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Congressman Johnny Olszewski, Baltimore County, Maryland lottery, Costas Timonium, bipartisanship, immigration reform, public safety, port security, fiscal issues, American dream, compassion, political division, Heritage fair, community engagement, local government.

SPEAKERS

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Nestor Aparicio, Johnny Olszewski

Nestor Aparicio  00:00

Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are home in a new home. We we say, Towson, Baltimore. This is Timonium. We’re out here at the racetrack. It’s all brought to you by friends at the Maryland lottery. I have the Back to the Future scratch offs. I’ve been giving these out. I hope somebody at the bar wins. We had a beautiful conversation with Pete, with Christine about the new location. Don’t come out here looking for crabs, or they’ll give you crab cakes. You got to go to Dundalk down where this guy resides, and where my homeland is and where I last saw him. It was like a scene out of like a Bogart movie or something. It was like 10 o’clock at night. My kid and I and my daughter in law are in Costas and Dundalk. And I looked down, it was almost like you were in a trench coat or so. It was cold out. You’re there. You look again, shaved in a couple days. You were with your dad. I was rinsing all the crab goo off my hands. It was just us. And I looked and I’m like, Congressman, Oh, Johnny, Baltimore County. I don’t want to call you. I call you Johnny. Oh, that’s right, but Congressman chefs, key that I feel like I can’t call you. Congressman Oh, that’s not formal enough for you. Congressman Johnny, I was fine, all right. Congressman Johnny, always here, of Dundalk, of sparrows, point of wherever. And saw you and your dad that night. You looked a little believe you were having dad time. And it was crazy, because I’m there with my kid.

Johnny Olszewski  01:21

So I had just finished. It was like 10, so it was a long day of district events. My father was there having dinner with friends, but I hadn’t seen him in a while, so I was trying to make a good son. No, I met him there. He had been there. I was stopping by on my way home, so it looked like you were having family time to be a good member of Congress and a good son, family, guy, son, dad, husband, yes. All right, before I let you filibuster, but it is good to be in Timonium here at the other the new casas, here at the another great institution, the Maryland

Nestor Aparicio  01:52

just walked in here for the very first time. This place first first impressions, and then we’ll get the politics.

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Johnny Olszewski  01:57

First impressions is that this is going to be a place that is rocking for ravens games that are away, maybe even home games. Just like, well, there’s amount of space, dude I see, like this space just filled with purple and black and the place going crazy when we not

Nestor Aparicio  02:11

an Oriole playoff game this year. Probably not. You’re not quitting. Are you not unpopular? Take I’m not quitting. Nine games under 500 there’s seven on trying to take you seriously here with government,

Johnny Olszewski  02:22

seven games under 500 if we are, go ahead, but look it up. We’ll see who’s close. I bet you. I’m closer. If we can get with the sports week, if we can get to like, four games out, four games under 540

Nestor Aparicio  02:37

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and 49 that’s nine. Okay.

Johnny Olszewski  02:40

I watched the last two. They won three in a row, six games on the wall card. Then, is that what? People listen this. Are not going to care, okay, if we are four or five games out of the wild card, come all star. Don’t be a buyer. Don’t be foolish. Come on. I’m not saying I’m buying. I’m just saying I

Nestor Aparicio  02:56

voted for you. I trusted you with government. Come on, man. Johnny always here. Pictures get healthy. Seriously. To this is like, this is places

Johnny Olszewski  03:05

awesome. It is. It is a very large open space. But my understanding is that people have been responding. Both people who are from the southeast, are coming out here, check it out. And then also some new folks. What

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Nestor Aparicio  03:16

year are you born? 1982 You are my son’s age. Weird, really weird. But the Costa says 71 I was alive. When do you remember the first time you were in Costas with your dad or whatever? Maybe you’re like, six

Johnny Olszewski  03:29

year old boy. Feel like I’ve been growing up never, not, never, not known. Like that was Squires. I don’t really know I was. Just

Nestor Aparicio  03:37

got a Shirley Temple. And, yeah, it was 1970 Yeah, three, whatever you know. So to walk into a different cost is, for the first time five minutes ago. It’s a little bit of a, I think, anybody that comes out of the first time, they’re gonna be like, Oh, wow, look at this. This is, it’s one giant, big. It

Johnny Olszewski  03:55

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feels familiar enough, with the wall being the same as the dining room, you’ve got a bar, but like, it’s sort of like the cost is, it’s sort of the Dundalk one, like just merged into one. You get the bar and the dining room all in one. All right, well, I’m gonna

Nestor Aparicio  04:07

make sure you get good food out here. What’s the job? And like, easing into the job, I’ve been talking to your wonderful sister, Jamie, who I’ve known since Dutch and all of that. And it must be nice not just to smooch up to your sister, who’s helped everything out, but having people around, you know the work of Congress? Yeah, in that you studied it. You went to school for it. I taught social studies. You did all that ran the county, but once you get down there, I just look at it, it’s a very different kind of job. Yeah,

Johnny Olszewski  04:34

incredible honor, having started my career teaching young people about just how important and fragile our democracy is, and now to be at the, you know, the halls of power where the biggest decisions are made in the United States Congress, is incredibly humbling and rewarding for me, I am lucky. I’ve got an incredible team, including Jamie. She was Dutch as comms director. She’s agreed to stay on his mind, which I appreciate about a third of our team. She knew you needed to help. Well, about a third of the team are returning Dutch alum. A third are folks who came with me from Baltimore County who are now serving in our congressional office. And the third are predominantly new Hill staffers that have been on the Hill have experience, but are also helping us get acclimated to the new environment. And it is, it is a new environment.

Nestor Aparicio  05:21

What did Dutch tell you about the gig? I mean, you’ve known him. He’s a mentor to you in many ways, but like when you really sat down and you won, and you knew you were gonna win, and you knew this life was changed, let alone what’s going on with Cathy in the county, which I went through that with Julian last week I went that through is he, I’m trying to get everybody on but what you thought the job was going to be and what Dutch warned you about.

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Johnny Olszewski  05:42

Dutch has been great. He’s been a friend and a mentor for a long time, and he’s been so consistent and just talking about how relationships matter. And he’s been someone who’s always lamented the decline of bipartisanship, and unfortunately, I’m catching the tail end of that when I think it’s at its worst. I came into the job as someone who led a county with four Democrats and three Republicans on the county council, and everything we did now, everything was bipartisan. We tackled police reform, gun safety, we’ve tackled some of the hardest issues, open space, school funding. I mean, you name it, we’ve done it, and the county is better and stronger because of the way that we tackled the work, openness, town halls, you get to Congress, and it’s so much partisan bickering, and there’s so much performance. People are almost rewarded for being extreme and for, you know, saying provocative things. And as someone who worked in local government, but before going there, it is just so frustrating. But Dutch warned me, I will, I will say that, well, you

Nestor Aparicio  06:46

wouldn’t have been running county government if you acted like that. You wouldn’t have got voted on the you wouldn’t have been respected by police or fire, like any of the really important parts of the tentacles of government. You can’t behave like a fool. Well, I can’t do that on the radio. Somebody accused me. I got rough with somebody over and I got rough on a text came up to me and said, you say things to stir things up. And I’m like, listen to my show. If that’s all I did, I wouldn’t be here that very long. I feel the same way, but like these people are getting voted on, yeah, that crazy lady down in Georgia. Like, I can’t imagine you’re in the same role as her. And I’m thinking, when you go to shake her hand, yeah, I’m thinking they won’t even shake your hand there. Like, when the on the other side of the team, that’s how bad it is. Now, you know,

Johnny Olszewski  07:35

some people won’t, but I’ve made an intentional decision that I literally across the aisle. So there’s a horseshoe where we sit, where Democrats tend to sit on one side, Republicans tend to sit on the other. And I’ll, more often than not, I’ll walk across and just check in with people who are part of my freshman class, or people that I’ve met on my committee, to just say, Hey, how was your weekend? How your family, how are your kids? How was your Fourth of July? I think Dutch had it right about just how fundamental relationships are, and how this place has gotten away from that. It’s become about, how do I score political points? How do I fundraise? How do I go viral? How do I get on Fox or MSNBC, or whatever the case may be,

Nestor Aparicio  08:10

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and how do I win the hardest wing of my party to win primary and primary?

Johnny Olszewski  08:17

Yeah, and then you have these, they’re very anything that’s cut up in a way that are intentionally meant to elect either extremely conservative Republicans or extremely liberal Democrats, and the primaries become the election. I’m lucky enough that I have a district where it is overwhelmingly democratic. I think most reasonable Democrats can and should and will win the way the seat is currently drawn, but I’m so lucky that I have a district that is willing to let me continue to be that voice of moderation and reason and partnership. And look, I’m a Democrat. I may make no apologies about that. More often than not,

Nestor Aparicio  08:57

can you be moderate on in your job

Johnny Olszewski  09:00

fiscal issues, I’ve already passed two pieces of bipartisan legislation, so I’m starting on the small stuff. So we’ve passed the port security bill. So like public safety is something where Democrats and Republicans should be able to work together, and we passed a port bill that’s going to have the United States look at alternatives to investment. So China is buying up ports. They’re buying up port infrastructure materials. When we bought those new cranes for the 50 foot birth of the Port of Baltimore, it was a Chinese owned company that is the largest manufacturer of cranes in the country, in the world. Sorry, we’re in the world. So we bought from them. The Port of Baltimore bought from

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Nestor Aparicio  09:34

cranes. When I go to Vegas to see 30 cranes in the sky, they’re probably Chinese. They’re probably Chinese, okay,

Johnny Olszewski  09:39

but those cranes that came to Baltimore had spy equipment on them. The FBI found spy equipment on cranes that were sold to Baltimore, placed by a Chinese owned, state owned company. So but we can accept that that threat is real and do something about it together. Or we can. Make it partisan, and so we were able to make that bipartisan. The chairman, Roger Williams of my small business committee, so I’m on Foreign Affairs and small business, we passed a workforce bill that makes graduates of workforce programs have more access to operate just, just small things like that. And I’m just a believer that if we can agree to be collaborative on these smaller, smaller, quote, unquote, smaller things that we can we can get to a point where, as we talk about the big, ugly bill, as I call it, that we could be more bipartisan on issues of taxation and spending.

Nestor Aparicio  10:30

Johnny always here we’re at Costas and Timonium. First time I’m trying to get my civics and my Schoolhouse Rock together. Here It’s first time I’ve had you on for I haven’t had Dutch on in a couple years either Dutch was really into cyber, you know, at a period of time, and I saw him give lectures 1520, years ago, the Chinese threat and the Russian threat and the internet itself and what AI is. And I’m using this summer to get AI to literally this week, this down week, Luke said Luke’s and wild would eat Max pizza, and the Orioles are in last place. So I’m literally a eyeing a little bit. Those

Johnny Olszewski  11:06

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are six games out of the wild card there. I can admit I was wrong on how far

Nestor Aparicio  11:13

back next month and issues here, but the notion that the country so divided. You go down there, and this bill, which really is everybody’s nightmare on our side of the fence from last year, in regard to all of it, just all of it, the fact that Stephanie man’s mother’s running education, and Dan Bongino is running guns and and Christy noem is putting people like me in cages and the President saying they’re going to eat us like alligators. I don’t know who would find this to be appealing, but this guy got voted on, and every day you’re putting out fires that just aren’t they’re self inflicted wounds to our nation in so many ways we talk about foreign committee. I mean, I cannot imagine I sat at a bar stool in Toronto Opening Day weekend and just heard Canadians just rail about how screwed up America is everybody else in the world. I don’t want to do his new laughing at us, but they’re questioning what’s going on over here.

Johnny Olszewski  12:23

America has been the leader of the free world for the last 30 plus years. Our standing is absolutely being questioned by our allies and our adversaries alike. Can we trust America? Yeah, we trust people are openly asking that. Well, our allies are asking that question, and our adversaries are telling the world that you can’t trust America. And as we pull back from food investments and education investments and military investments around the world, you better believe that China is stepping in to fill that void. You better believe that Russia is stepping in to fill that void, and

Nestor Aparicio  12:56

Saudi Arabia is looking to buy it, whatever it is or whatever it is, whether it’s a Golf Tour or whatever it is,

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Johnny Olszewski  13:00

right? Yeah, and so, I mean, I just think that look, are there efficiencies to be had? Sure, like I led efficiency efforts in Baltimore County, we saved 10s of millions of dollars by looking at things with a really refined, deep dive into our operations. We partnered with our employees to figure out where we were, where we were doing things wrong and how we could be better, the chainsaw that’s been taken to the federal government and the disregard with which programs are just being slashed and gutted, the effects won’t be fully felt and realized for years to come. But rest assured, our country will be less safe and less secure as a result of our work, internationally and domestically. And so, you know, there are parts I mentioned that the quote, unquote, big, beautiful bill. It was big in terms of how it ballooned the deficit. It was not beautiful in terms of some of its impact. There are provisions that I support. And so I’ll be the first one to say, like, no tax on tips here for it, people restaurants like this work hard, but guess what? It’s only the first $25,000 of tips and you have to itemize. How many restaurant workers do you think itemize? So it’s there’s some nuance even to the things that I support. But I support lowering taxation on Social Security. I support ending tax on overtime. Those are things that would have passed overwhelmingly, in a bipartisan fashion, if they were put on the floor as a standalone measure, but they weren’t, because those were the things that were popular. And so we said, well, if you don’t, if you don’t pass this bill, you’re not for those other things, which is not true. But then you also load it up with the largest cut to health care in American history, $300 billion of cuts to food supports across this country through SNAP reductions, the largest wealth transfer in our country’s history, taking money from the middle class and giving it to billionaires in the ultra ultra wealthy, and

Nestor Aparicio  14:52

while we’re funding a modern Gestapo to put people like me in cages, I’m very displeased. Yes, I thought I was white the first 30 years of my life. I grew up in Archie Bunker’s Dundalk. I didn’t identify, identified as Hispanic, but like, I’m not white. I mean, there’s clear clearly, and my brothers aren’t. And one of my brothers is born in Venezuela and lives here and has a family here, and his kids are in college.

Johnny Olszewski  15:17

And the fear mongering that has even people who are American citizens, or people who

Nestor Aparicio  15:22

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talking about my father being born of Venezuelan throwing me out because of that, right? That that’s, yeah,

Johnny Olszewski  15:29

well, I mean, the President’s also said that we’re gonna turn to citizens next. And so, like, it’s sort of like, where to where does all this end? I think we have to be very mindful of what,

Nestor Aparicio  15:41

what size country. I mean, I this is where I asked my congressman, like a real what is ice and where the hell did it come from, and what? Who’s their boss? Where are the ID badges? Where

Johnny Olszewski  15:55

ice is. Ice is a federal law enforcement agency under Homeland Security. So they are, it’s immigration, Customs Enforcement. Their job is supposed to be more than just immigration, right? So they’re supposed to help mom.

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Nestor Aparicio  16:08

They’ve always been there. It’s just, it’s a term now the last eight months, because it’s been well associated with doing so,

Johnny Olszewski  16:16

yeah, and I think that most Americans would agree that if you are a violent criminal who’s not here legally, you should be deported. But I also think most of America would say we shouldn’t be rounding up people who have been who are either American citizens or maybe who aren’t here with legal status, but who have, like given their entire lives in restaurants or on the Eastern Shore picking crabs or picking food on farms, the jobs that nobody wants, paying into programs, paying into taxes when they CANNOT collect Social Security or actually benefit from Medicaid. There’s a lot of like, fear mongering about, you know, well, it comes undocumented immigrants.

Nestor Aparicio  16:53

So I beat you up for a while during COVID about getting my elementary school. Remember, we had fun with that on the air. Yeah, we’re getting the school open. And I was there the day we opened it. I think it was at 21 if I’m

Johnny Olszewski  17:04

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not mistaken, and we were and we were actually on the front end of opening schools and restaurants in Baltimore,

Nestor Aparicio  17:09

but we all had masks on outside that day. Kids had masks on. Kids came out and sang the song. I cried. I went in my school. It’s all incredible. And I looked around and like a lot of the kids look like me. And I talked to the principal, lovely lady, she’s still there, and I said to her, how many children you know? My son lives in my childhood home. My son lives in that neighborhood with a Hispanic last name. We were the only Hispanics in the neighborhood us in the Flores in the 70s and 80s. They were from Columbia, and I wasn’t a family. I was a adopted Hispanic kid, but there were no other Hispanic people in our neighborhood. No one spoke Spanish in my neighborhood. No one it was the number she gave me in 2021 was 58% 58% Hispanic. I went back last year. We had our 100th anniversary of Colgate Elementary, and we had you and Kevin and Jim Smith put money together and built a new school, and it’s helped property value in the neighborhood. It’s done all of that. I went this time, and there weren’t a lot of people at the festival that day, and I looked around and everybody who was there was Hispanic. And I asked the police officer who actually played on the blast years ago who was a police officer assigned to the district, and they told me the number is now 72% 72% of the people that went to my elementary school in East Baltimore County are Hispanic. And I ask how many of their parents speak English, and they said, zero. And my son and I the night we saw you at Costas, about five, six weeks ago, my son said something to me after the second Orange Crush, and he said, always after this, I said to me last summer that he and his wife went to Amsterdam. They did the Anne Frank tour you ever done that I have not, ah, a little more most powerful two hours of my life to be in that in that house, and be trapped in that house, because they trap you in the house, and they shut the lights off, and there you are. Have at it. You’re hiding from the Nazis, right? And you’re in the same house, and it’s the size of my house in Dundalk, size of a little row house in Dundalk. And I said to my son, said to me, he’s like dad and his wife said this too. It’s like Anne Frank in our neighborhood, everybody pulls the shades down because they’re afraid of the Boogeyman. They’re afraid of ice. They’re afraid that their boss is getting pulled up to out them, because my son speaks to these people in the neighborhood. This is, this is in my childhood home. This is my hometown. This is the elementary school that you built and we built. And these

Johnny Olszewski  19:51

are people church and who are whose kids are playing in our little leagues and who are serving us in restaurants. And. And cleaning our It

Nestor Aparicio  20:01

upsets me to tears. Johnny, it does it really. It eats at me.

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Johnny Olszewski  20:06

What’s missing in our politics and in our engagement in general is just compassion, like it is just care, and compassion for other people is a lost command commodity. And oh, yeah, and our politics brings out the worst of it, and it targets and it amplifies the worst in people, and people cheer it and they champion it, and that is why, like I was saying earlier, I am grateful that I have a district that gives me the grace and the space to go in and try to call that out in a way that these are our neighbors, stirs the conversation. I better, better. Yeah, better. Yeah, that people who are, who are church goers, people who are like me, Christians to say, this is a Christian. What? What would Jesus do? Like to the most basic level, like, let’s we don’t have to get into

Nestor Aparicio  20:59

what a good person do? What would a good person do? But it’s about welcome. What did your

Johnny Olszewski  21:04

mother teaching the stranger, visiting him in jail, feeding the hungry clo you know, like taking tending to the sick, that is what we’re called to do as people and as and as Christians, right? And so, but that that sense of care and compassion for each other has been lost, and so we can disagree about what the process is for this is a nation who was built, I mean, on immigrants, cost us in would not exist, but for the

Nestor Aparicio  21:30

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accent. That’s why I never did the show, because he had a funny accent, and he thought people would judge that he literally, Mr. Costas never did my show because of his accent. Christine and I were just talking about it, what she came but, but one he was

Johnny Olszewski  21:42

cognizant of, one of the kindest and most generous and successful

Nestor Aparicio  21:47

nobody should have ever made him feel like less of an American because of that. That’s

Johnny Olszewski  21:51

terrible. He worked his tail. That’s terrible thing, the American dream. By the way,

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Nestor Aparicio  21:56

you got your American flag hat on. I want to give you this because you’ve been to a couple heritage fairs and in your day, by the way, it was good. We had good weather,

Speaker 1  22:03

the weather, the bands. I hope this year was successful. We don’t have to worry

Nestor Aparicio  22:07

about it. I know you know about that. So I was over there on Friday, Friday night,

Johnny Olszewski  22:11

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put the largest grant in place from the county in its history, before I left, to try to help keep it solvent for one more year. Because you’re 50, would have been a tough year to say goodbye to the heritage. Well, I hope that 50 ones ready. One should be roaring. That’s right, I’m

Nestor Aparicio  22:23

hoping. But I was over there Friday when they dedicated. I know you’ve been there for all that, at seven o’clock when they come up, and Johnny Ray’s up there and fogels and everybody’s doing their thing, right? And they chatted me out, and I I smiled, and they shouted at the people, and they did all this stuff. And then they brought on the Mahoney brothers, and the Mahoney brothers started their act. I thought they were just Beatles, by the way, the Mahoney brothers really, really good. They did some Beach Boys. Did some Chicago. But they opened and the dude had a Neil Diamond, you know, red satin. Use Neil Diamond, BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM Bucha Fauci. We we’ve been traveling far, you know?

23:05

So we’re gonna put

Nestor Aparicio  23:06

you on stage, sure. So they’re doing this, and I’m there and I’m free. Only want to be free. They come into America. So I’m sitting there, and there’s people dancing, and I’m looking around, and everybody’s got a maga hat on right? I’m looking around stunned dog, and I’m thinking to myself, are you listening to the words of this song? It’s what this song is about. I started to cry. I got upset. And like, I get upset about this a lot. I got upset five minutes with you. But like, I’m thinking to myself, what what did that represent for my father, for my grandfather from Italy, for Mr. Costas, as we sit in here with his kids. This is an insane, racist, awful thing that I never thought you would be in DC fighting. You know what? I mean? Like, we fought all our lives against this. How is the last 10 years? How is this and are you? Do you have any hope for our audience going down there, that this is a temporary that we’re gonna have a heritage fair with a bunch of Hispanic people 10 years from now, and they’re gonna be welcome to bring a Puerto Rican flag in if they want and celebrate, because Puerto Rico’s America

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Johnny Olszewski  24:16

do there? There was a Hispanic group that performed last year at the Heritage fair, good. Let’s get to next year. Organizers, I think, have done a good job of recognizing that our community is changing. When I stood

Nestor Aparicio  24:30

in a heritage fair, everybody’s speaking Spanish, and yeah, it’s beautiful, and

Johnny Olszewski  24:33

yet we’re still the same, right? And so like, we want to make sure that the ways in which we let the generations before build their version of the American dream, we should be asking ourselves, How do we help those here now build the version of the American dream and continue that? And it shouldn’t be through division. It should be through machetes. You’re a real American, I was gonna say like kid, a kid with a long last name that ends in s, k, i. Is that no one can pronounce so much so that, like we just went with Johnny O I mean, is now a member of the United States Congress. I’m only a couple of generations removed. I’m sure that my great, great grandparents, when they came over from Poland, could not speak English very well, if at all.

Nestor Aparicio  25:18

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Somebody on my Facebook page, some cultist on my page said something about speaking the language that people came here, they had to that major real American to speak the language. I’m thinking, Do you know how many mamacitas and old Polish women and old Italian women I met in the 70s when I was a boy who were in the basement, literally from the old country and never learned to let didn’t make them unwelcome in America any more than Costas to antiphiles was not welcome in this country. It’s that’s the part that I don’t understand. The mindset that this could be effective politically in in corners of our country. Couldn’t be effective in Baltimore County, right? I mean,

Johnny Olszewski  26:00

there are, look, there are pockets of Baltimore County that believe that, and that’s why I think, but

Nestor Aparicio  26:07

in a general sense, we are really integrated,

Johnny Olszewski  26:10

for sure, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, are. We’re very welcoming. We’re very into

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Nestor Aparicio  26:16

races, functional man, sure, well,

Johnny Olszewski  26:18

but even with ice, so I did not support deputizing Baltimore County Police, for example, that’s neither Kevin, right, correct, right. But we did work with ice, especially before this administration, when they said, Look, if we have like, gang act folks that we’re trying to like, sure, I was like, we will give you as much notification like we can’t keep people without a judicial court order, but we will work with you to give you as much notice as possible so that you if you really want to get them and really get a go after and get right. But again, I think it’s all about like finding that common ground where 80 or more percent of the public will agree somewhere between here and here, we’ve lost that. What did it what we hear in our politics now is the 5% and the 5% screaming at each other, and everybody in the middle gets left behind. But you weren’t

Nestor Aparicio  27:11

unelectable. You got elected with it, yeah, I mean, and supported for your work in the county and all that. So was it like you? You’re I was like, my version moderate. I don’t know what makes you moderate. You know what I mean, like you describe yourself as someone moderate, but fiscal issues and bridges and port security and crime, those you can be moderate on those issues, but where? But I just care

Johnny Olszewski  27:34

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about people. We also set up the first office of Immigrant Affairs in Baltimore County. We also passed police reform after George Floyd, we also passed gun safety legislation about gun shop security, and we did it with Republican supporting the legislation too. Those are

Nestor Aparicio  27:49

not liberal concepts. Those are it’s, it’s all human concepts.

Johnny Olszewski  27:52

Well, that’s the thing. Is that, like it’s when you want to paint someone with a brush, you can, but if you just care about people, and you have that care for others. It changes the conversation. It changes the dynamic where it’s less about like, Are you a conservative or Republican? Are you a Democrat or it’s like, do you care about me? Will you engage in the conversation about hard issues, and can we try to work together to finding a solution? And that’s what’s wrong with our politics today.

Nestor Aparicio  28:16

Johnny O’s here, I’m gonna let him eat a couple of his chicken wings. His first meal at the new cost of since ammonium said so many in Dundalk, you don’t remember how many he’s had, it’s all brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery at back to future. I’m gonna let you filibuster a little bit more about the big, ugly bill, and let’s go through piece by piece how this is screwing up Baltimore County, Maryland, your district, the country and all that. All right. Give me a chance to think about that. Do we do enough? Local we good. I think we’re good. All right. Johnny O’s here. He is our congressman. Happy to have him. We’re out here Costas and Timonium doing it special, because he has to go to DC on Thursday. But I’m back on Thursday. I had big shot, Steve rouse coming by on Thursday. Yeah, I only listened to him 10,000 times. I haven’t had Steve rouse on the show. So he’s gonna be coming on a Thursday here at Costas and a guy named Schuler that apparently was in the Johnny, oh political tree, oh yeah, oh yeah. He wants to call the filibuster as we should

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Johnny Olszewski  29:09

have him. He’s, he’s a great banister, sure. Relationalist. Let’s, I will listen to that episode. Well, he

Nestor Aparicio  29:15

says, No one listens when he does my show, but everybody hears back from Warren Costas. Stay with us. We’re with Johnny. Oh, you.