Blue Dog Radio

“When you overperform like that… you do it again.”
Rebecca Cooke came within two points of flipping Wisconsin’s 3rd District in 2024.
Now she’s back.
A waitress, small business owner, and daughter of a dairy farm family, Cooke doesn’t talk about working class life as a message. She’s lived it and loves it.
In this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we sit down with Cooke to talk about the campaign that almost broke through, what she learned from a narrow loss, and why she believes this time is different.
We get into:
growing up on a farm and what it meant to lose it
restaurant shifts while running for Congress
what voters in western Wisconsin are actually worried about
why she thinks Washington keeps missing the point
and what comes next in one of the most competitive districts in the country

The Central Valley has a healthcare problem and Washington keeps sending politicians.
In this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we sit down with Dr. Jasmeet Bains, a practicing family physician, current California State Assemblymember, and Blue Dog candidate for Congress in CA-22. Here we talk about what it looks like to serve a community that’s been overlooked for too long.
Before politics, Bains was treating patients in rural clinics across the Central Valley. People without insurance. Families losing coverage. Communities trying to hold it together while the system fails them.
This isn’t a conversation about healthcare in theory. It’s about what happens when it breaks in real life.
We get into her path from selling cars at her family’s dealership to becoming the only doctor in a rural town, what she’s learned serving in the Assembly, and the vote by Rep. David Valadao that ultimately pushed her to run for Congress.
At one point, she puts it plainly: “This is a life and death problem here.”
This is a different kind of candidate and a different kind of conversation.

Jamie Ager-North Carolina 11
This week on Blue Dog Radio, we sit down with Jamie Ager: fourth generation farmer at Hickory Nut Gap Farm and candidate for Congress in North Carolina’s 11th District.
We spent a week with Jamie in Western North Carolina, walking the hills of Hickory Nut Gap Farm, talking through the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, and digging into what leadership looks like in a place forged by land, legacy, and fierce independence.
In this conversation, Jamie reflects on growing up in Fairview, building a regenerative agriculture business from the ground up, learning how to lead, and why he believes Western North Carolina deserves a representative who shows up. Especially when it’s uncomfortable.
We talk disaster recovery, immigration, small business, environmental stewardship, and the challenge of representing a district that stretches from rural mountain communities to Asheville’s creative core.
It’s a conversation about time, responsibility, and whether a farmer’s long view can bring clarity to a complicated political moment.
Recorded on the farm. A real conversation about what comes next.

Johnny Garcia-Texas 35
In this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we sit down with Johnny Garcia, a deputy sheriff from Bexar County who’s running for Congress in Texas’s 35th District.
Johnny talks about growing up on the west side of San Antonio, the influence of his mother, and working construction and plumbing before entering law enforcement. He shares what he learned managing programs inside the county jail, serving on patrol, and working as a SWAT hostage negotiator. Experiences that shaped how he thinks about public safety, trust, and accountability.
The conversation moves beyond talking points into everyday realities facing working families: groceries, gas, healthcare, housing, and what it means to show up for a community when people feel stretched thin and unheard.
This is a grounded, human conversation about service, responsibility, and what representation can look like when it’s rooted in lived experience rather than ideology.

What does loyalty to a place really mean?
In this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we explore what it looks like when work, community, and identity are rooted in the same soil. 
You’ll hear from Virginia Olsen, a fifth-generation Maine lobsterman, on the meaning of working waterfronts and generational stewardship. From the forests of Washington State, Peter Janicki, a generational logger, shares what it means to balance working forests, family livelihoods, and responsibility to the land. And to close the episode, Congressman Vicente Gonzalez joins us to talk about life, work, and trade in South Texas. He details what border communities actually experience beyond the headlines.
Together, these conversations paint a picture of an America shaped by place and tradition. Where loyalty isn’t forged in nostalgia, but responsibility and love of home.