Liz Canada 0:11

You're listening to New Hampshire Has Issues, and I am your host, Liz Canada. Every day this week, there's a new mini sode with a candidate running for the first congressional district here in New Hampshire. I have a lot more detail about these conversations in the primary prep episode, in case maybe you missed it or if you need some reminders. Quick overview though. For each of these mini sodes, there are two rules. Rule number one, the candidate gets three minutes to answer each question. And I chose three minutes because that's typically how much time I get when I go to the state house and testify in a public hearing to make my entire case. So the candidates get three minutes. The second rule is that there's no negative talk about other candidates running for this seat. Again, more information in the primary prep episode. New Hampshire has issues, does not make endorsements. Neither do I. But I do support getting the information you need to make the best decision for yourself so that you also can vote on Tuesday, September 8th in the New Hampshire state primary. In the episode description, I have information about checking your voter registration, finding your polling location, looking at a sample ballot that you will have at the primary, and finding your city or town clerk's information in case you need to contact them. If you would like to support New Hampshire Has Issues Podcast, please visit patreon.com/slash nh has issues, and you can become a supporter for as little as $5 a month. Thank you so much for listening. And now on to the episode with Christian Urrutia. Welcome

Welcome to the show, Christian Urrutia

Liz Canada 1:50

to the show, Christian Urrutia running for the first congressional district here in New Hampshire. Thanks for coming on, New Hampshire Has Issues.

Christian Urrutia 1:58

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's a real pleasure.

Liz Canada 2:01

I'm so glad that you are here and able to talk to me today because I've had some folks ask who's running for this seat. And so I wanted to have as many of you all on as possible. So thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

Christian Urrutia 2:14

Yeah, well, thank you.

Liz Canada 2:16

I know that I sent the rules in advance, but just a quick recap. Going to have three minutes to answer each of the questions. I may have a follow-up, but when I go to the State House, I get three minutes to make my entire case about whatever I'm talking about. So trying to stay by those same rules.

Christian Urrutia 2:33

Well, I'm I'm pretty succinct. So I think th three minutes sounds like a lot of time.

Liz Canada 2:38

Okay. All right. Let's see how I do. There you go. Let's see how I do.

Best pitch: why should someone vote for you in the primary?

Liz Canada 2:43

So you're running for Congress.

Christian Urrutia 2:45

Yes.

Liz Canada 2:46

You want to represent the people of the first congressional district of New Hampshire. So give me your best pitch. Why should somebody vote for you on Tuesday, September 8th for the primary?

Christian Urrutia 2:59

Yeah. So let me just start off. Let's take stock of where we are as a country right now. One, we have Donald Trump and a number of cronies, in my opinion, at the highest levels of government. And the harm that they've caused to the United States, to us, to our communities, some of it is being measured in days, some of it's going to be measured in years, some of it's going to be measured in decades. And the principal thing we need to do as a Democratic Party is stand up to Trump. And I've been unequivocal from the beginning of this campaign as to the importance that that is to my campaign, my philosophy. I'm squarely in the camp of impeachment is on the table. I support impeachment. The crimes against the American people, the crimes against our constitution, the corruption are as clear as day. There's no ambiguity here. We need to actually stand up to Trump. And if people send me to Congress, they're going to get that exactly. Then we got like these enduring problems in our country: heath care, childcare, infrastructure, housing, wages, costs. Like I can go on for a while, right? We need bold, transformative change. FDR style view of we need to really work on how this economy works, right? They let's just think about FDR, obviously, a lot of investment. Social Security came to being like basic things that we now are like, it's a given and such a positive. We need to do the same. That means Medicare for all. That means universal childcare. That means an actual progressive taxation system that taxes the billionaire class. That means actually raising the minimum wage so that it's a dynamic living wage. And we're not doing this where every decade we hope there's the political will in place to actually raise the minimum wage, give people a fair shake in this country, free community colleges, access to trade schools without crushing debt, reduction of how much people need to mortgage their futures to go to school. And like all these things that I lay out are actually informed by my life experience, Liz. You know, I literally took down war criminals when I worked in my private practice and I had a human rights practice. I've taken on really big fights defending our service members as a public defender in the military. I'm a first-generation American, first of my family born in the United States. I've seen the immigrant experience firsthand, and I'm aghast as to what I see from ICE and from this administration. So look, people, what they're going to get from me is someone that's a fighter, but I'm a fighter because it's been informed by my life experiences and happy to unpack that further, but I want to stay below your threshold, below the three minutes.

Liz Canada 5:32

You're doing great. You're doing great so far. I mean, I want you to tell me a little bit more, though, about you. You gave me a little bit about like uh your past experiences. Um just like why you? I I imagine that the other candidates also feel pretty strongly about Trump. I imagine that they care about these policies, but like what makes you think about the Trevor Burrus, well, there's some real differences.

Christian Urrutia 5:56

I mean, I I I want to get I want to answer your principal question, but I just want to be frank. There's some real difference. And that's okay. Like, look, I think everyone in this race is a good person. Like, I genuinely do. That doesn't mean there aren't some real differences. All right. Like I'm a Medicare for All candidate. I've supported impeachment of the president. Like it's different offerings, different things, right? That's okay. I the on iCE, we have different views too. I'm for dismantling ICE. So like there are actually some different distinctions. But to get to like the question, like, well, who's Christian?

Liz Canada 6:27

Yeah.

Christian Urrutia 6:27

You know, I started off I'm first generation American, first of my family born in the United States. Um, English is my second language. You know, I we grew up, I grew up at first in Miami, first four years of my life or so. And then we moved up to New Hampshire and I had to learn English. Took ESL classes, English second language classes, the only student in my library street school elementary school to do that. Ended up getting, you know, getting a shot to go to college and went to law school, took out a quarter million dollars of debt to pay for my education, and then I went off and served first as the prosecutor's office here in the Hillsborough County Attorney's Office, and then uh went into private practice, uh, had a human rights practice, joined the military in my mid-30s. And just to give you a sense of like how much of a fish out of water I was, Liz, um I joined the military. I was older than everyone in my basic training class. I was older than my drill sergeants, and I never shot a gun in my life.

Liz Canada 7:21

Wow.

Christian Urrutia 7:22

Um but I think just public service and service to our country and our community doesn't have to be the military, but is so important. We all have an obligation and a duty to do that. And then in the last administration, I was uh appointed by President Biden to the Pentagon in the office of the Secretary of Defense, and I worked, you know, primarily on international humanitarian legal issues and questions of the Geneva Convention and some other really complicated issues as well. And happy to unpack that. But like, you know, I think ultimately it's a it's a breadth of experience. And but the most important thing to remember is uh I had the really good uh fortune to to marry my wife, uh, who runs uh a small business, um, the one woman shop, and she's she's really remarkable.

Liz Canada 8:01

All right, that's helpful to get a little bit more about uh you personally, professionally, background, and so forth. So thank you for that. Yeah.

What is THE issue you want to tackle if you’re elected?

Liz Canada 8:09

All right, so you talked about some of the issues and policies earlier, but I'll ask the question anyway. Sure. You know, this podcast is called New Hampshire Has Issues. So if you're elected to Congress, what is the issue you are ready to tackle?

Christian Urrutia 8:25

Yeah. Medicare for all. Healthcare. And you know, this is uh and I'm gonna, you know, we got a little bit of time, I'm gonna tell you exactly why to me it's so important. So about I guess now four coming up on four years ago, um I had a stroke. I lost my ability to speak and write movement movement in the right part of my body. You know, obviously it's come back, right? Um and my wife and I went through all the hardship and challenges that come with getting sick like that, like really getting sick like that, where you don't actually know what the outcomes are gonna be. But also the questions you ask yourself from the financial perspective, like can we actually afford this in the long run? What if I need a lot more care and I ended up having to have a kind of, you know, a procedure in my heart to close a hole that seemed to have caused it. And I just don't think anyone in this country, the richest country in the world, with all these remarkable resources we have and the abilities we have, should have to ask themselves that second question. And people in this country are getting sicker because they can't afford preventative care. They're dying when they shouldn't be dying because they can't afford good health care. The pharmaceutical industry is making a ton of money. Insurance companies are making a ton of money. And I just there's nothing that just pisses me off more, frankly, because I don't think people are getting a fair shake. Medicare for all, universal health care is the best way to do it. And to anyone that says we can't do it, all of our peer countries have figured it out. We definitely can do it in America.

Liz Canada 9:55

Aaron Ross Powell Okay. So my follow-up to that is how are you gonna do it? People have been proposing this for a while and talking about it. Like you go to Congress, how are you going to make that happen?

Christian Urrutia 10:08

Aaron Powell Well, everything builds on itself, right? Like so you're you're right, people have been talking about there's been a building and a growing consensus in this country that we need a universal heath care system, right? When Bernie Sanders first really started talking about this, people were talking about it before 2016, don't get me wrong. But when Bernie first started talking about this in 2016, it was seen as like, wow, that's a really kind of like far-left issue. It really isn't anymore. You go out and you start you ask people, a vast majority of the Democratic Party agrees with it. When I mean the Democratic Party, I mean the actual voters, not the elected officials, okay? A majority of independents, 30% or so of Republicans. Because the thing is, everyone's seeing how broken our heath care system is and how awful the outcomes are. So I start off a emerged consensus. You're starting to see that at the electoral level. I think there's a real sense, okay, like the Affordable Care Act was good, but it has some problems. It's been diluted by the Supreme Court, by one decision primarily that they made, and by certainly decisions that this administration is making right now. So there is a growing consensus. And this is the thing. Medicare right now, it works pretty well. It's not perfect. Some things we got to change for sure. Works pretty well. The idea of you know incrementally extending that Medicare coverage to a lot of Americans, I think is the clearest way to make this work. I think there's consensus. Is it gonna be a tough fight? Sure, unquestionably. And I I brought up FDR before the 1930s. It's pretty tough fights there. You know, and like a lot of the conversation we're having about the Supreme Court now, they had them in the 1930s too, because the Supreme Court was uh in the 1930s, was killing off a lot of the programs that FDR wanted to put in place. He wanted to pack the court, right? So we're like, we're reliving a lot of the things that we've dealt with in our US history, unique circumstances, but a lot of the questions are not that unique.

What do you wish people knew about you as a person?

Liz Canada 12:06

I promised you a uh sort of non-political question as our big finale here. What do you wish people knew about you that just doesn't come across maybe in campaign ads or websites or social media? What would surprise someone to know about you as a person, as a human being?

Christian Urrutia 12:28

Yeah. So look, I I think there's a lot of like to me, uh the campaigns are like, you know, you're talking about the issues and you're talking about where people are now in their life. But the question is really like, what's the experience that's led to this? And you know, I brought it up before. I certainly have talked about it, but you know, to give like how formative and defining it is, being, you know, the child of immigrants in America, especially be the first one in your family born here, and having to learn English a second language, and you're being in a low density state as a Latino and having to think about these kind of like dual lives you live, where like I talk Spanish at home and I had my grandmothers living with me, and they spoke no English. And then living a very kind of quintessential New Hampshire life outside of that house, that duality has this huge impact on how you see the world and how you think about, well, what does it mean to be an American? And what does it mean to be part of our community? And what does it mean for those folks that, you know, are going through similar experiences in their own way? What does that look like for them and the decisions we make? And to me, it's an incredibly formative element. And the one thing that like I think about a lot, Liz, and I and there people have like told me like, you know, this is like actually semi-common for a lot of folks is and I don't want to call it a guilt because it's definitely not a guilt, but this sense of like, you know, I got pretty lucky. Like I got pretty lucky. Like I know the odds. Like when I was reading in third grade, because English was my second language, I was well below the third grade standards. That's the cutoff. If you're below the third grade standards in reading and comprehension, you're in for a rough ride later on, in terms of your ability to go off and do these things that are language intensive, et cetera, and comprehension intensive. Everything worked out eventually for me. But with that, there's also a sense like it easily could not have, and some of its luck and some of its hard work and a bunch of things. And to think that there's a lot of other Americans similarly positioned to me with their own challenges. It doesn't have to be the immigrant challenge. But that are not getting a fair shake. There's a real sense of like, wow, like that weighs upon you. And it's like, how can we do better as a country? Because we certainly can just need to have the political will to do it.

Liz Canada 14:50

Christian, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, talking to me today. And

NH Primary Reminders

Liz Canada 14:58

let's remind listeners, the primary, state primary is Tuesday, September 8th. Correct. Links are in the episode description, the show notes, so you can check your voter registration. You can see where your polling location is. Uh, details are all there. And of course, we want everyone to vote in November as well. But first we've got that state primary. And Christian is running for CD1. And Christian, thank you so much again for being here and good luck out there.

Christian Urrutia 15:27

Yeah, Liz, thank you. It's a real it's a real pleasure. So thanks for having me.