With former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley in the news running to lead the DNC, we turn to local Democratic National Committee member Robbie Leonard, who joined Nestor on the Maryland Crab Cake Tour at Faidley’s in an effort to educate us on the process of the organization and the massive work ahead after an embarrassing loss in Kamala Harris’ bid for President of the United States of America.
Nestor Aparicio interviews Robbie Leonard, a Democratic National Committee member, about his role and the Democratic Party’s recent election losses. Leonard explains his election process and emphasizes the need for the party to listen to voters and address their concerns. He discusses the upcoming DNC chair election, highlighting candidates like Martin O’Malley and Ken Martin. Leonard stresses the importance of consistent winning in politics and sports, comparing it to the Orioles’ attendance issues. He also mentions his legal practice and his commitment to engaging with voters. The conversation touches on the challenges of winning elections and the need for effective messaging and strategy.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Democratic National Committee, Robbie Leonard, State’s Attorney, election loss, future winning, voter engagement, DNC membership, election strategy, candidate selection, party leadership, voter turnout, economic concerns, messaging issues, election analysis, party reform
SPEAKERS
Robbie Leonard, Nestor Aparicio
8
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive. It is a dark space. It’s afternoon. The sun is setting over West Baltimore. Sun is setting over parks. Fried chicken. Here I am on Paca and Utah. We’re at the new Lexington market. We’re here at fade Lee seafood, one of our favorite places. This is our Christmas Holiday Edition. Make sure you’re taking care of your shipping, and Fave these crab cakes.com for all of our sponsors, get the orders in this week, let them know you’re bringing them. And also our friends at the Maryland lottery getting us out with Raven scratch offs. This week, we’re going to be at a meet cheese on Tuesday. They do not have a crab cake, but I’m taking the crab cake tour there anywhere, because I’m the boss and I’m in charge, and it’s the holidays, and on Wednesday, we’ll be Acosta, and they have more crab cakes, and know what to do with there. We’ll see you in Dundalk. There we are at Faith Lee’s last minute guest. Robbie Leonard ran for State’s Attorney Baltimore County. Got 49% of the vote lost to Scott Ellenberger. We’re not here to talk about the past, though, right, correct? No, we’re here about winning in the future. Well, you are a Democrat. You are an attorney, and I’ll let everybody I got my Democrat tie on. See I came. Look at that. Donkeys on there. No elephants at all here. If at least you ran for office, you’re a part of the machine in the process. And you raised money and did everything I talked about doing and never did. So I have incredible admiration for you. You also came on my show during your campaign wearing a free the bird shirt, legitimate, free the bird shirt. And I don’t know that I’ve ever met you until this moment. Have we ever met before five minutes ago? I don’t think in person. No, I don’t even know a lot about you, other than through the election and what you were doing. I reached you about a personal matter, a legal matter, a couple years ago. I think we chatted or resumed or something. But you put something up last week about being a member. And by the way, Matt Gallagher read this because he was cited to me an hour ago. He’s like, he’s a member of the Democratic voting whatever. And I’m like, I need to learn more about this. My wife is from New Hampshire. The man that introduced me to my wife was a member. He liked to brag that he went when Clinton and Obama to the to the to the city with the big arena and Democratic National Convention, all that you’re one of those people. And I did not know that. And you wrote this sort of, you’re sort of a cervix, your lawyer, your quick witted guy, but it was sort of a, Hey, you want to be a member. You could be a member. Here’s how to do it. And I got intrigued and banged you on it. And Gallagher also was like, you gotta ask him about this. And I’m like, Well, that’s the reason I brought you down here. So explain to our citizenship that maybe, at least by the numbers, a little disgruntled, that that orange cone has more sense than the orange guy. It’s about to become our president, and they’re a little disgruntled, and you are literally, as a member of the Democratic National Committee, a front line member as to what went wrong five weeks ago. And much like Martin O’Malley, who I was with Matt Gallagher earlier, is trying to step forward to say we got to be better than losing elections to criminals. Yeah. So anyway, well,
Robbie Leonard 02:59
you know what? I hate to say this, and I hate to burst any bubbles or disappoint anybody. I don’t know what went wrong yet. I don’t know yet. I’ve got some ideas. I’ve read some stuff. I don’t think anybody really knows. But I see a lot of people who say they know exactly what went wrong. I think a lot of them are saying, well, if you would have listened to me and what I’ve been saying all along, then we would have won. And so there’s a lot of looking back of see you just didn’t listen to me. If you would have, then we would have won. So I don’t really know yet. I want to take my time and try to figure it out. But so a lot of people who just don’t know how really primary elections work, or elections work in general, the Democratic National Committee, the DNC, they get blamed for everything. You know, when there’s a loss, we blame the DNC. I don’t know if the DNC is the one that loses elections or wins elections, but they do play their role. I’m one of 400 some voting members of the Democratic National Committee. I’m that’s small. It is. We only have four in Maryland who are elected Democratic National Committee people. I’m elected by members of local central committee. So there’s a Baltimore County Democratic Central Committee. There’s a Baltimore City democratic Central Committee. They all come together from across the state twice a year for a meeting. Once every four years, they vote for members of the Democratic National Committee. So for me to have one, I reached out to people in Frederick and St Mary’s and Garrett County and ask for their vote members of the Democratic Central Committee. And you vote for members of your local central committee. If you live in Baltimore City, in your primary, when it’s the governor’s
Nestor Aparicio 04:34
race, you see those names. They matter.
Robbie Leonard 04:36
8They matter. They mean nothing to you when you vote. Look, I’m honest. I’m gonna tell you the truth. Look, we have no idea what we’re voting for. When we vote for Central Committee, they’re not they’re not knocking on your door asking for your vote. They’re not sending you mailers. I have
Nestor Aparicio 04:49
that with the judges and the clerks and all that. I see names and I’m like, I don’t know anything. Yeah, and not to mention the propositions and the ballot, A, B, C, D, E, you know, you. It is it? Citizenship is a full time gig that we’re not taking. Well, full time
Robbie Leonard 05:05
well, Central Committee members in each county, they’re the ones that when a delegate steps down for various reasons, whether they’re going to jail or just moving out of state, or maybe they get appointed to some job. Central Committee members are the ones that vote to fill those legislative vacancies. So the people that you’re overlooking on your ballot saying, I don’t know who any of these people are, let me just check a few boxes. Those are the people that we’re trusting that’s in our Maryland Constitution, that their job is to fill legislative vacancies. So in addition to doing that, they vote for the officers of the state party, and they vote for Democratic National Committee members, which I’m one of
Nestor Aparicio 05:41
Democratic National Committee member. How did you sign up? When did you decide you this was a goal of yours to be on it, because you shared information. And I am. I’m very ignorant to this. Robbie, so I you know like and I know my audience is ignorant to this, because I pay attention to a lot more than some people my audience do, and I’m a little befuddled by it. And again, I admitted I had a friend that was doing this in New Hampshire. I mean, you say blame the DNC. I’m a Democrat, right? I’m a card holding and based on what I’ve seen from Republicans in my adulthood, in this century, going back to Bob Ehrlich, courting me, getting my vote, getting me to endorse him on the radio, and anyone that’s endorsing Trump, I have a real I don’t any problem with Republicans. I voted for Republicans many times in my life, but the Democratic National Committee. Look when I think of Hillary Clinton, and I think of Kamala Harris, and I think of the losses to this racist lying, criminal like when I think of all of that Trump represents, I think that the Democrats have put bad candidates up, candidates that not bad by my estimation, I voted for for Hillary Clinton, but bad in Pennsylvania, the places you need to win the strategy part and what happened with Biden this time around being, I don’t want to be mean, I mean, Joe Biden did a lot of things. I voted for. I’m a Joe Biden guy, but he’s like a walking cadaver, yeah, and everybody saw that. And the people that aren’t like me that were going to vote against Trump, no matter what, it opened the door to make the Democrats look like liars, like they were hiding something, because they were, they were hiding the senility of the leader of the free world, and still are. He’s the president right now, and I’m not convinced he could come in here and have a conversation with me. And I’m not convinced of that. I don’t know that to be true, but I’ve seen too much in elderly people, and when people lose it, they lose it. I The Democrats, as I look at it, the morning I woke up and I said, Can they make Gavin Newsom to Canada? Because I think he can win. I just want I’m not anti Kamala. I’m like, we you need to win, because we’re going to live with this the next four years. And it sucks. It sucks thinking about it. And that’s why I’m bringing you over to say, All right, if we can ever get an election back and get our country back, and I think there’s some questions about that, you’re the legal guy, but I’m gravely concerned, and that’s why I want to learn more. Because maybe instead of running for mayor, I should be doing what you’re doing if you really want to enact change. And that was your point. It’s like, Hey, I’m here trying to change things, but I’m one guy footing my own bill. I’m a lawyer in Towson, run around trying to save lives, and you’re always bragging about cases you win, trying to help real people like me that have been aggrieved. But like, this seems like a really sticky might be something I don’t want to be involved in, even though I need to be involved in. Does that make sense? Yes.
8Robbie Leonard 08:34
And look, you started off this segment by saying you’re one of these establishment guys. I’m kind of in it. I’m kind of in the inside because I’m on the DNC, but I’m not really an establishment guy. Look, if you want to be on the DNC, do what I did. I ran. I didn’t. No one asked me to. No one said, it’s your turn. Why did you think
Nestor Aparicio 08:51
it was a good idea, though, because you’ve studied law and you understand these things. You’re clearly a very political you ran for office. You almost damn one. Yeah. I mean, like, you’re a different cat, which is why we need different cats like this. I mean, like what we have right now is not working. Well,
Robbie Leonard 09:04
I’ll just tell you my thought process in 2016 after Hillary lost. I was the chair of the Baltimore County Democratic Party at that time, and I just put my name in there, and I ran and I got the Baltimore County Central Committee members, they voted for me. I was the chair after Hillary lost, I got a million emails, text messages, messages everywhere from just random people who Googled, you know, local Democratic Party, they found my name and they said, you know, how’s going on here. The Democrats should have done this. You should have done that. Okay? And I said, Hey, our next local Democratic Party meeting is this day. Come on out. Tell the party what you think. Our room was completely packed, standing room only parking lot like I had to tell people the tow trucks here you can Where are you having this? They meet at 301 Allegheny Avenue in Towson. This is the Baltimore County one. So I opened the floor, I let everybody talk, and then I said, guys, Hillary Clinton wouldn’t know me if. I walked into a room, it ain’t me. I’m not the reason she’s losing or doing this. This is the thing. These are the things we did. Now, what have you guys done? You know, the things that you say you should have done this, you should have Do you ever think about you taking part? Do you think about you knocking on a door or posting online or talking to your family member, and why you think Democrats should win, and what Democrats do better, we all have to do our part. That’s my mentality. And so everything that I’ve done within the Democratic Party, it’s not because a governor has told me to or a congressman had said so, it’s because I want to do it. And I put my foot in the damn door, and I reach out to the people. When I find out what who you’re supposed to contact, I call him up and I say, look, the machine might want this person, but this is why I want to run. Please support me. So when I found out that the Democratic National Committee is a voted on thing, I found out who I need to talk to. I ran against. Was this back then, I think I ran against Glenn Middleton, okay, okay. He was on the DNC for decades. He was like the head of AFSCME. He recently passed away. He was a great guy, great family. And so I ran against him. I ended up getting more votes. And you know, it was because I’ve reached out to people, and I called them and I said, here’s why I want to be a Democratic National Committee person. And they supported me. So in the next one in a few years, if you want to run, put your name in there. Reach out to me. My name is Robbie Leonard. Reach out to me, or any way you want to find me on Facebook, email me and talk to me about how to do
Nestor Aparicio 11:30
8it. Robbie Leonard is here. We’re at fadelies. So you put out a status last week about this. What is it? Where’s the next meeting? What? What? What? What does your next four years or two years look like? And, and I should probably ask you, on the spot, you’re gonna try to run again yourself here locally, and because you came very close to winning an election. So on a personal level, you’re involved in this, but it takes up a lot of your time to be involved in this, right? I mean, I just hearing you talk about what you’ve done since 2016 to have this role, knowing what you do in real world, being a lawyer and taking your time left to Towson courthouse, to come here in the rain a minute ago, but the notion that the next four years what your pathway is going to be as this person from the DNC here in Maryland and Baltimore County, what does that look like for you? Are you holding a meeting where we can all come and be Howard Beale and be as mad as hell, and not gonna I mean, I just wonder what the Democrats are doing right now to caucus to say, what did we do wrong? How many Robbie Leonard, 400 of you out there saying we could have been better than this. We should have had an emergency meeting after Biden put Kamala up and said, No, no, no, we need to have a lot Democrats really poorly strategize this. I mean,
Robbie Leonard 12:44
well, here’s how we could do it. We could do it as I don’t post on Facebook and say, Hey, we’re voting for the chair of the National Democratic Party on February 1 in Prince George’s County, where Martin O’Malley is a part of that. He finally comes running to be chair. Got it. So just to give you a few of the candidates that have reached out to me, who are publicly and Ken Martin is currently one of the vice chairs of the DNC. He’s the chair of the Minnesota Democratic Party. You have Ben wickler, who’s the Chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. He was formerly the head of move on, which is like a progressive advocacy group you have, there’s a local guy from Maryland. He ran for states, no, no. He ran for United States Senate this past year against Angela, also Brooks and David turn he was in the primary. Finished ninth at a 10th place. I wish I remember, but that’s a mean case. He’s gonna run for it. So a lot of people are running. We’re voting February 1 for that. So that’s that’s coming up national chair, not a Maryland that’s the DNC chair. So, but it just happens to be here. It happens to be here because we’re so close to DC. Okay, so that’s what’s happening next. And the way that we could do this is, I don’t have to advertise that to everybody. I could just go vote for whoever I want. And folks like you, Nestor who starts saying, I don’t even know about this stuff, no one would ever know that this is happening, that we’re voting, that this is the process. I want to hear from people. You know, that’s why you’re educating
Nestor Aparicio 14:11
me in this moment. Because you put something goofy on Facebook and said, Hey, you want to be a part of it. You have to pay your own way. I mean, you did there would, you know, there were some things where I’m like, Well, why do you do this? Why are you doing I guess, because you’re a concerned
Robbie Leonard 14:24
citizen. I’m a concerned citizen, and I don’t want to just bitch about it. I want to do something about it. And I want to hear from people. I want to be responsive to my fellow Democrats who want to have a say in it, and, like, use me as your way in. There, because there you have four Maryland representatives. I’m one of them now, in all fairness to my counterparts who are from Maryland, I believe all of them are supporting Martin O’Malley out of the gate. So as soon as he announced his candidacy for chair, they’re going to be endorsing him, supporting him. They’ve already put their name in there. So
8Nestor Aparicio 14:58
would his strength be just relationships? To the fact that he ran for president unsuccessfully, but, but, but ran a state for eight years. Knows a lot of people. They’re pretty bring certainly some some oomph to it and, and I don’t think there’s any question Wes Moore is going to be in that mix of humans that this party is going to try to put up against? You know, I don’t know what Trump’s going to be. I do know. I know what he’s going to try to be. It’s going to try to be tyrannical, throw off the systems of government. We’re going to we’re going to eat our own inside of government here the next
Robbie Leonard 15:32
four years. And the way that I’m looking at is I want to be completely open minded. I don’t want to go with a candidate just because he’s from Maryland right away, I might vote for Martin O’Malley, I don’t know yet. I want to hear what people have to say about it, so I’m being open. I want to talk to every candidate for chair. I want to go to the forums and the debates and listen to what they have to say, and then make my choice based on the feedback that I get and who gives the best. Imagine making a choice based on information I know fashion way now. Martin’s pitch is he was the DGA, the Democratic Governors Association chair for three years. So he was going across the country helping raise money. He’s done this work. He’s done this work. He’s built the relationships across the country from, you know, he talks about like West Virginia and Kentucky had Democratic governors, and maybe we can have folks in rural areas and red states vote for Democrats for President if he was the head of the DNC, right? So that’s really his pitch. But you know, the the other folks are talking about how, you know, we need to change our approach to messaging, maybe not the message itself, but going on shows like Baltimore, positive, you know, instead of just being on CNN or whatever, are there positive I never met
Nestor Aparicio 16:42
Angela Ulster Brooks and Larry Hogan wanted nothing to do with the show. So I am finding this show candidates that want to hand me the questions. They don’t want to come on the show, and nor do athletes, right? So we’re getting to this point where everything has to be a performance act. I mean, everything about Trump is a performance act, right? So I think the public has gone sort of K fave. I said it’s like wrestling. It’s like, mean genes, a real interviewer, not an employee of the house. We got to
Robbie Leonard 17:11
8go everywhere and and I’ll tell you, Look, a lot of my friends, personally, have left Twitter after the election. I’ve lost, I’ve lost over 400 500 followers on Twitter since the election, and a lot of them are my friends. I’ve seen Democrats who are in office in Maryland, who are in the House of Delegates. They post on Facebook saying, I’ve deleted my Twitter. Find me on blue sky. Well, guess what? There are still people on Twitter who are voting, who are voting, yeah. So let’s listen to them. Let’s talk to them. Keep your message out, wherever you are. And I want to vote for a chair who has that mentality of, we’re not going to silo ourselves and just talk to our echo chamber, but we have to listen to everybody, and we have to talk to everybody. Have these conversations. Once
Nestor Aparicio 17:54
you lose an election, that’s where it becomes you didn’t do a good enough job, right? You should be soul searching in the same way. When I say, as my free the birds is my little segue. You got 10,000 empty seats for a playoff game. You got soul searching to do? Yeah, it’s not my problem. It’s your problem. And I’m just the guy holding the mirror up, holding the light in the mirror, and saying, there’s the problem. What’s the solution? Right? Right? So I just
Robbie Leonard 18:17
want to, I just want to hear from people. I’m just that kind of person that I when I’ve run for office before, you know me and my team, we’d make a point to go out and knock on people’s doors, and we’d say we’re going to meet them where they are, like, literally, because too many people look I’m a dad, I’m a rec Council coach. That’s what I do, right? Like, I spend my evenings making sure my kids are doing their homework, they are having their dinner and taking their bath and going to sports practice. Right? I might not have time to be Googling and finding out the websites for every candidate running for office, but if one of them knocked on my front door and says, Hey, I know you’re about to be in the middle of dinner, but can I talk to you for 30 seconds about why I’m running in here, about what are the conversations you’re going to have with your wife at the dinner table. Tell me about what’s important to you. We need to be engaged in conversations, not just saying we know everything we’re going to shout from the rooftop. What’s right? But listen to people I’m all about just being in part of those conversations. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 19:13
we’re in a different place, because we’re such a blue state, and I have red friends. Obviously, to me, when I go to talk to them. It doesn’t make any sense, like, when I start talking them. The last election was fixed and Trump won the last delay. I’m like, I I don’t even read you your word, yeah. And this was the scariest thing for me, and I haven’t processed a lot of Trump the last month, because there’s nothing to process there. I mean, it’s like, whatever it is, it’s a threat, it’s a lie. It comes with all of that. But I saw one little clip last week where somebody had Trump on, and they said something to him, like, will you acknowledge that you lost the 2020 election? And he said, That’s your opinion. That’s the new way of saying you. Um, I know more than you, even though we’ve all seen that’s your opinion. Chad steals opinion that I’m not a real journalist. It’s his opinion. Yeah, you know, like we have lost the ability to find that common ground on information and facts and, you know, Russian social media, all of that over the last eight years, I’m just blown away by like there are people say, some men you just can’t reach. There are people in my life that just will never do anything that’s not feel to do this guy. And it’s amazing, these really strong willed people, and I talked to Dan Rogers about this last week, people who would tell you that the worst thing in the world for them would be to have somebody get over on them or bullshit them, you know, just flat out. And then I they, I see this, I see this fealty to this guy, and I’m like, it’s the damnedest thing in my lifetime. And over the next four weeks, I’m having a really hard time processing these next four years and the lawlessness that has been endorsed and now, after January 6, it’s just all gone away. The history books are gone away. It’s amazing before
8Robbie Leonard 21:13
the election. Look, I was consuming whether it’s CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, NPR, you know, morning, day and night. Now I do not, because I don’t want to admit that Donald Trump’s president, right? And if I turn on at night time Rachel Maddow or whoever, and they’re talking about Trump’s cabinet picks and all that, then I have to remember that he won. I’m one of those millions of people who’s contributing to the ratings decline these network shows, because I don’t even want, I mean the
Nestor Aparicio 21:42
Cabinet picks for anybody that voted for this disgrace, just watching people who want to destroy the government, destroy immigration, talking about openly deporting one out of every three people I see walking through the streets and thinking, somehow this is going to have a happy ending for the price of their blueberries. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn’t add up to me. The racism I i understand it because I grew up in Dundalk and I I grew up in Archie Bunker’s Dundalk, as I say. But I can’t see that that would run your life in the way that it has the last eight years. I’m I’m I’m dejected about this, and I know most sane people like I talked to, we are in denial. I’m in denial. You sound like you’re really in denial. I really am. No and I don’t know what’s going to happen next month when things really start changing for leadership, because we’ve had grown ups running the place, mainly, even though Biden, I can’t say that about him, but I feel like from a citizen to a DNC guy, the notion that we ran around with Joe Biden, the fact that they just didn’t declare him whatever, like Kamala run the place and figure out whether she could win or not, this was just really it was given away. The country was given away
Robbie Leonard 22:58
to Trump. And I’ll give you my perspective on the DNC and Biden, which is, you know, I was first elected in 2020, during COVID, the pandemic. So I was elected through a Zoom meeting where I’m looking at a computer and people cast their votes and, you know, I was in my bedroom. I probably wasn’t even dressed right. You know, when I’m happy to have Wi Fi, yeah. And so then I’m elected. Our first couple years, almost of meetings were zoom, right? So like, I’m like, I’m on the DNC, but I’ve never even met anybody. I don’t go anywhere. I wasn’t feeling like I was doing anything. But then we started meeting in person. But the first two years look when Joe Biden won in 2020 and he said he was going to be a bridge the next generation and pass the torch, I truly thought he was going to be a one term president, and so at the DNC, I’m waiting for those conversations to start on. All right, what’s the next primary look like? Has
Nestor Aparicio 23:58
8Gavin Newsom look? Has walls look as a candidate, you know, what can we put up that’s going to win? Not look, he’s Donald Trump. He’s a criminal who would vote for him. Yeah, I feel that way. But I have landed my plane in Nebraska, yeah, I have landed my plane in Florida. I, you know, I have Republicans in my life who are addicted to Fox News, yeah, and treat it as though it’s factual, let alone not biased or whatever you would say, stilted, tilted, yeah, we just lost it. Yeah, we, you know, like we’ve lost the ability to discern what an insurrection looks like. Yeah, like, literally.
Robbie Leonard 24:38
So, I mean, after 2022, the midterms. I think we all realized that Biden was going to run again. You know, he kept saying he was going to run again. I think he felt pretty good that the Democrats did well in 2022 and you know, I was kind of disappointed that the DNC just never had the conversation on opening it up to somebody else. And, you know, person, if he
Nestor Aparicio 24:58
died at all. I mean, you know. I keep thinking like, what was plan B? Didn’t have a plan B, right? Plan B was he went out and lost everything in the middle of a debate. That was disgraceful. Yeah, it was a disgraceful American debate. I mean, Trump is a disgrace about to become one. And it’s really a poor reflection upon what the best we can do as a country, the best we can do as a society and as a leader in the free
Robbie Leonard 25:21
world. And I wasn’t out there, you know, demanding Biden to drop out after that debate, I was texting all my friends, like, are you guys watching this? Well,
8Nestor Aparicio 25:29
see, Wes Moore, and this is where the case favor this. This is where the Democratic National Party, if I were to stand in front of them, like, You people are running this thing the way Chad steals running the ravens, where you think there can be no criticism. There’ll be no criticism. If anybody criticizes, we’re gonna shoot him in the head and throw him out. We’re gonna we’re gonna say they’re out of their minds. And there’s this part where the Democratic National Committee started believing its own ish, yeah. And I think believe that the Republicans are just crazy, and there’s no way that they’re that many people that are gonna endorse Trump after this that creating an insurrection in the middle of the Capitol would be offensive enough to make sure that he couldn’t win Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, or any swing state that you know he could win these places where the Bible and the gun still sort of run things, but really underestimated everything outside of an urban zone in this country, and what the messaging of those people are getting, many of them who don’t have Wi Fi, by the way, look
Robbie Leonard 26:28
at the convention. I brought a friend with me, and at the Democratic National Convention when Kamala accepted the nomination, and so he was sitting in some seats, I was sitting over here with the Maryland delegation, we were texting, and a lot of the speeches were about January 6. You know, you might have a whole night where everyone’s talking about January 6, then you’d have a whole day talking about COVID. Remember how crazy Donald Trump was in COVID and, unfortunately, Nestor, what Democrats think are the most important issues are, remember this from three years ago and four years ago, that was terrible, and the Republicans were talking about, look at today,
Nestor Aparicio 27:09
the price of eggs, right?
Robbie Leonard 27:10
8I hate to say that, but the guy who cuts my hair has been cutting my hair for 30 some years. He’s like Robbie. I don’t care how, how many times Donald Trump cheats on his wife. I don’t care that Bill Clinton got a blow job in the White House. I care about how the economy is doing and how I’m doing right. He probably doesn’t care about January 6 anymore. He’s over it. He doesn’t care about the lies, the lies. He doesn’t care about that stuff. He just cares about, you know, when I go to work every day, am I going to be able to pay my I care
Nestor Aparicio 27:40
that the person in the White House is a decent human being and an honest person, because I’ve worked in too many environments and been in too many environments where nefarious figures I’ve seen it with the baseball team, right? Nefarious figure owned the team. Everyone below him had a level of malfeasance, corruption, incompetence, fealty, all the things that don’t get anything done, that don’t get any
Robbie Leonard 28:06
Nestor. I’m talking to these people here now the other side, they don’t care. They don’t care. I’m not telling you to not care about those things. They don’t, but they don’t, and that’s where you have to connect an issue that we have to, we have to figure out, okay, we want to win elections and then do good things, right? We want to win elections and then do good things, but we have to know now that the other side doesn’t care. So we can, you know, put on a January 6 committee to try to remind people, but that’s not what they care about today. So, you know, hey, let’s pick a Democrat who’s got honor and values. They’re an actual human being. But also, well,
Nestor Aparicio 28:50
Kamala did that. I didn’t think Kamala was a horrible candidate in any way. Turns out she was. She didn’t win. You don’t win. You’re a horrible candidate. She didn’t win. Girls weren’t a horrible team last year. They didn’t win, right? So that makes them not good enough, right? I mean, that’s, that’s where you are. This it is about winning and losing in the end, and we’re gonna find that out on January, whenever the whole day he’s gonna go down there and lie about the crowd and but the lack of embrace for him, I just found it unbelievable how toxic he was to educated people in a general across and still it didn’t, didn’t come close to happening. I mean, but
8Robbie Leonard 29:26
there, so there are people all right? So we lost by an extremely small margin, right? It feels like we got blown out. You know, when look, I fell asleep at like nine o’clock on election night, I had an edible, went to bed, and then I woke up at 1130 and another one, and was shocked. I mean, kind of shocked, but same, you know, I was ready for anything to happen. After 2016 I was ready for anything
Nestor Aparicio 29:48
to happen. I’ve been shocked both times, because I’ve watched the first time around. I watched a lot of the eight rallies. I watched the blood in her eyes and just these horribly offensive things. Did on the campaign trail in 16. I’m talking about 16 now and then the way he ran the country, and then this latest tour in September and October, that was
Robbie Leonard 30:10
vile. It was vile. Look. Take the hate rally in Madison Square Garden. And he was supposed to have changed after the attempted assassination. He was supposed to have a reflection on life and be a good person. And that’s what everyone on the media was saying, like, Oh, we’re going to see a better Donald Trump and and it was terrible, but it was such a close election, and maybe we’re never going to reach the people who are completely insane. You know, there are people right now who think Luigi, Luigi Mangione was going to testify against Nancy Pelosi as a whistleblower. And so the FBI is getting hit,
Nestor Aparicio 30:44
8and it happened in Hillary Clinton. It’s a thing in the basement. And yeah, we’re never, we’re never going
Robbie Leonard 30:48
to get those people, but the people that are walking up and down the street right outside of here on packet Street, who might have voted in 2016 might have voted in 2020 and they’re like, You know what? My life doesn’t change either way. I’m not going to vote for either one. I will never vote for Donald Trump, but I don’t feel like going to vote. That’s who we need to get, and that’s what I think it looks like. You know, how many less the 40%
Nestor Aparicio 31:10
of the population that’s registered that doesn’t vote?
Robbie Leonard 31:12
Yeah, and so, you know, the Republican conspiracists will say this, that proves that that 2020 was stolen, because how come all those Democrats didn’t vote in 2024 and I would say, well, one mail in voting was helpful in 2020 but also, maybe there are some Democrats who feel like, you know, the economy is not working for me. I’ve been promised a lot of things that I don’t think happened. And what’s the point? So we got to listen to the people, find out, you know, what would drive them to go vote? How have Democrats failed you in the past? Have we over promised and under delivered? And can we get out there and deliver if we get back into office? And that’s that’s what I’m all about. I’m all about, if we win, are we going to do something about it? Like I thought waltz was a great Vice President pick. I did too, you know, and he always talked about that they had like, a one vote majority in Minnesota, and they went ahead and did everything that they wanted to do as Democrats. And he said, You know, when you win, you got to do good things. And I think in Virginia, when Democrats were in control, in Virginia, after 2017 they did great things. So I think that’s what people are looking for, is if we vote for Democrats, because they’re telling us that the Republicans are terrible and Democrats are great, do we feel like they’re coming through? So we got to just do that. We got to
8Nestor Aparicio 32:31
deliver. All right, once your next Democratic National Committee, it’s the vote on the O’Malley candidacy and that world of who will be the leader over the next
Robbie Leonard 32:41
four years? Yeah. So very important. Our meetings we have twice a year. The next one is when we’re going to vote. The actual vote is February 1, but the meeting starts january 30. So we’ll be down there at the National Harbor, at the gaylord national resort. I’ll be there for the black crows, january 30. January 31 we have meetings, you know, throughout the day. Maybe I’ll gamble a little bit at night, and then we’ll wake up in February. 1 we’re gonna vote for the next chair of the Democratic Party. And so, you know, let me know who I should vote for. Candidate, call me. How do people find you? You can find me on Facebook. You can, you know, you can email me. You can look up Leonard and mcleg Law Group and find out my contact information. What kind of law do you do? I do everything if you need a trial lawyer. I do criminal defense. I do personal injury I represent people in adult guardianships office of administrative hearings. I do all kinds of weird shit. Okay, just basic law. You know, people call me, they say I’ve called 30 attorneys, and they say they can’t help me. I’m like, What’s your problem? All right, I’ll figure it
Nestor Aparicio 33:41
out. Find a guy. All right, Robby Leonard is here. It is the first time we’ve met, actually, in person. He’s been on the show before. I’m assuming you’ve discarded your free the bird shirt. Or is it a family heirloom? I
Robbie Leonard 33:52
8still have it. We have free birds. I keep T shirts until my wife throws them away. All right, I’m a man hailing shirt
Nestor Aparicio 33:57
from 1993 my wife that, she’s like, I’ll make it into a quilt. I got to get rid of it. It’s got holes everywhere. It’s holy on the Orioles, because I know you’re an Orio fan, I’ll just throw this out, because I’m not going to go deep into this, because we, you know, I do Orioles all day, someone got their Birdland membership thing, and they were pissed off. And because the algorithm finds me, it’s out on Facebook that I have a disgruntled Orio fan. So I did a screenshot of it, then I started reading the comments underneath. And someone said, like, the meanest thing I think you could say to Rubenstein, which is, it’s almost like the Angelos has never left. And I’m like,
Robbie Leonard 34:30
Oh, yeah. And I have a Birdland membership, and where are you on it? So I renewed my Birdland membership, and so if you’re if you’re looking for it, people think I’m like an ambassador at the stadium, because I always tell people like strangers, because I show them like my thing, you scan it and you get a discount. I would get like, 25% of almost everything, beer, food, merch, every both raved about it was great. Now I don’t think alcohol is going to be on it next year. Oh, okay. I think they’ve taken. Yeah, okay. All right, so that’s a big deal for me. All right, I like to have a couple beers at the game, but it still works on maybe merchant food and your tickets. So I you like open a bank account. Essentially, you give them, give them money. I give them. I think 1200 bucks. This time last year was 600 I upped it, and then I can then use that pot when I buy any tickets, any game I won, any seats I want. It’s not like a season ticket where I’m, you know, right? Predetermined. You have 13 Sundays, right? Yeah. So flexibility a man like you need. I need that. I like the day games. I like to leave, you know, and not go to work and do that, you know, and work for myself. But that
Nestor Aparicio 35:35
is an amazing thing that they just say, give me 1200 bucks, and you give it to him. It’s like, I use it later and be like, I’m gonna come down Ocean City. I’ll give you 1200 but I’ll figure out when I’m coming, you know, when I’m gonna
8Robbie Leonard 35:44
use and I can bring as many people, you know, as I want, I think, within reason. So I like that. You know, I might have one guy come with me, or three guys come with me, but they they have scaled back the perks and the benefits, which pisses people off, but always, you know,
Nestor Aparicio 36:01
my issue for them, not at 100,000 feet, accountability. What’s the strategy? Just basic journalism, citizen questions that haven’t been answered here in 30 years. Right? Like so it would be a precedent. It would be a change if they held a press conference and invited somebody like me and said, Here’s what we’re gonna do. Let me show you on the big board what we’re gonna do. I haven’t felt anything like that. I met Rubenstein six weeks ago. The one thing I’m sure is he doesn’t know anything about baseball. He just doesn’t. And somebody said to me, that’s a good thing. And I’m like, is it? Is it? I don’t think that’s a good thing. Well,
Robbie Leonard 36:34
look, I think that if they wanted to show you this second, they would just get gunner Henderson in a room and sign him, or get Adley rushman room and say they
Nestor Aparicio 36:41
8can’t, though, because of the agents on them and rushman, they wouldn’t want to do right now, but not being in on one so to not being in on these guys, where they’re going to be with burns, where they’re going to tap out, where they’re going to say, like Angelo’s, we were in on Mark to share sure you were. You called his agent once and said, all from 100 million, you got 400 and being in on it and success, but then really the big picture of what they want it to be. How are you getting those 10,000 seats up? The same question you’re asking.
Robbie Leonard 37:07
Gary Sanchez ain’t selling any tickets this year, correct? Tyler O’Neill, you have to look him. Look, I had to look him up. You know, I see he’s had a couple good seasons with St Louis before, and, you know, he had two seasons where he had 30 home runs or more. But like, all right, he’s a year younger than Santander injury pro, you know, but you know, is that gonna sell tickets? Is that gonna excite people? No. So you know
Nestor Aparicio 37:28
what will excite people? I think the thing that would excite people is knowing that we have competent people in charge, and that there is a vision. Show me build it, and they’ll come right. Show me the vision that has been thing. I said the Rubenstein. And I said, this, this guy, there’s been a lot of trauma here. There’s been a lot of trauma here, business trauma, local trauma, racial trauma, city trauma. They were involved in all the Freddie Gray. They were, you know, the brand itself, let alone the fact that they’re the little engine. They’re never going to be able to compete financially with the Yankees. So, you know that going in. So then what’s the plan? It’s gonna give me, give
Robbie Leonard 38:03
me a plan. Take a long time of consistent winning. Look, we’re not Tampa, right? Tampa could win and make the play consistent.
8Nestor Aparicio 38:12
Winning that that takes money. Now, what comes first the month? The issue is, are we small market? Are we mid market? And when Rubenstein stood in front of everybody, but the Phillies went to Well, the way the industry really works is we usually spend what we bring in, well, that won’t be good enough here, right? That won’t be good enough
Robbie Leonard 38:28
here. Look, I love looking at the attendance figures, and we’re moving up, right? We’re moving in the right direction. People hated the playoffs the last two years. You know, two years ago, I didn’t even go to a playoff game in this past season. I got to go. I made sure I got to the first one, because I kind of had this feeling they were going to be swept out of it, which they were. But, you know, we just got to be consistently winning. You know, everybody said I’m not going to Baltimore because of crime, but I think it’s really They. They want to see a good baseball team. They’ll go see the Ravens. They
Nestor Aparicio 38:58
have no problem coming out with Garth Brooks is here, Bill Jones, it’s
Robbie Leonard 39:01
8not a problem. They’ll come. Yeah, they’re gonna see winning baseball. So I think the stadium will be packed that we have a consistently winning team. But if we wait too long, and gunner leaves, and you know, these guys, what’s the leave, then we’re in a perpetual cycle of just, you know, high draft picks and then watching them go somewhere, you’re saying
Nestor Aparicio 39:22
to the community, come out and give us all the money, and then we’ll go get gunner. No, no,
Robbie Leonard 39:27
no, they have to find a way to lock some guys in early. So I love Santander. I probably would like to see him come back. Looks like that’s not going to happen. Better figure out the pitching. You know, they’re not going to bring back Cedric Mullins, you know, after this, after this season. So like, who are the Who are we keeping? You know, who are we willing to? Well,
Nestor Aparicio 39:48
this is about holiday in rutschman becoming, you know, real blue chip players, about Westbrook continuing, Anderson, but the pitching, for me, it’s the pitching, and that’s what the off season is about. And that’s really job. One. Michael ice to spend money on pitching that they don’t have right now. Hey,
8Robbie Leonard 40:04
I want to see Bautista in that closing role again. You know, healthy. I need him healthy three
Nestor Aparicio 40:10
outs in spring training first. Let’s do that first. Let’s do it. Let’s see Robbie Leonard, attorney to the stars in Baltimore County, also a Democratic National Committee member, and trying to Schoolhouse Rock. A dumb kid from Dundalk on a non legal I went to UB. I didn’t go to law school, corporate
Robbie Leonard 40:27
communication. That’s where I went to law school. They turn out some good folks out there says,
Nestor Aparicio 40:32
Angelo, I am Nestor. We’re down here at Fain. This is all brought to you by friends at the Maryland lottery. Scrap cake tour. Signing off from fade Lee, signing up for a meet you on Tuesday will be a cost us on Wednesday. Big, thanks to Damian. Big thanks to Matt Gallagher for stopping by and my partner, Ruffin Bell from over COVID State University, we are the flagship for compensate. So I hope you hear some games around here, and for being our guest here today, Robbie Leonard will get two crab cakes to go. Curtis from our friends of faith french fry. Get the cucumber slaw. Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t fall asleep on the cucumber salad. I should say, make sure you get that word families. We’re signing off. We’re Baltimore positive.com. Stay with us. You.
