I'm sitting here recording alone in a hotel room in Wilmington, Delaware.

This is what counts for a Democratic convention this year.

I was one of about just 30 reporters and photographers allowed into an otherwise empty room in Joe

Biden's hometown to see first Kamala Harris and then Biden deliver their speeches.

It was a weird experience.

It included three days of COVID tests, temperature checks, and then

sitting in a room made out like an abandoned model of the convention floor, complete with the

signs for the states, but without any of the people. Conventions are usually when members of a party come together and tell the country what they're all about.

Well, since the coming together part is gone, we just have the telling what they're all about part.

So with Democrats wrapping up

their argument and the Republicans getting set to begin theirs, I wanted to talk with

someone making a different argument. Chad Mays wouldn't fit in at the Democratic Convention or the Republican Convention.

He's the former Republican leader of the California State Assembly, former because first the

Republican Party kicked him out as its leader, and then he took himself out of the Republican Party.

But unlike many Republicans who have felt disassociated with the National Party under Donald Trump, he decided to keep running anyway.

And he's trying to hold on to a seat.

Running is an independent.

And so far, he's done surprisingly well.

California has an unusual top two primary system, and Mays edged out both the Republican and the Democrat from the most votes.

Now he faces the Republican again in November in a district that went for Trump in 2016.

But beyond holding on to his assembly seat, May's hopes his race is a test case

for the country. He thinks there's hope for politics that isn't tied to one of the two parties,

...