Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host Sarah Isger joined by Steve Hayes and this week we are talking to Congressman Anthony Gonzales.

He is a representative of Ohio's 16th congressional district. He was elected in 2018 and he's one of the 10 Republicans who broke with their party to vote in favor of the article of impeachment in the house just a couple weeks ago.

Let's dive right in. Congressman, you were one of only 10 votes in favor of impeachment as you were thinking through how to take that vote. Were you thinking of it more as a backward looking vote about specific behavior on the impeachment or what?

Or a forward looking vote on the future of the Republican party, the movement, conservatism. How did you start thinking about which way to vote?

Yeah, so great question. So, you know, for me, all I can do is vote on what's in front of me, like what's what the text of what I'm looking at is and what the vote that day is.

And the way that I kind of processed it was I looked at three different time periods. One from the time that the electoral college met to January 6th at the speech on January 6th and then the immediate aftermath while the Capitol was being stormed.

And when you look at all of those, you know, I think that the period between the electoral college meeting and the certification was was a terrible time. I think with the president was doing with respect to the Georgia Secretary of State, but also state legislatures around the country.

That was awful. I mean, the whole goal of the campaign became to literally overturn an election that the electoral college had basically already decided.

And so that I had a whole mountain of problems with that. I not the call with the Secretary of State. It was a major problem.

And then the speech, I thought the speech itself, frankly, it had sort of mixed language in it. There were elements where he did say, you know, go peacefully, but on top of that, there was, you know, you have to fight. You have to take back your country. There was a line in there about, you know, when you catch people in a fraud, you play by very different rules.

And we know, obviously, what happened in the immediate aftermath. But the thing that really put me over the top was the period of time between sort of when the Capitol was being stormed and ultimately the National Guard showing up and asking myself, you know, what was the president doing during that time.

And speaking to people who were in the White House with him that day to understand sort of mindset and how people were processing what was unfolding.

And what the reality is, you know, the Congress and the Vice President were under attack, were under attack by a mob.

And the president didn't step up, in my opinion, in nearly the right way to call him down to stop it. You know, I think I'd probably be a know if, you know, he had seen all this and immediately said, hey, cut this out. Here comes the National Guard. We're done.

This isn't what I wanted. But instead, you know, we had multiple hours go by. And the first tweet that went out was actually attacking the Vice President while the Capitol was under siege. And so, you know, frankly, the last thing on Earth, I wanted to do because I celebrated a lot of policy wins that the president had over the last four years.

And I think his policies, I said this a million times, I think his policies are spot on for Northeast Ohio, which is where I'm privileged to represent.

But when you look at the totality of the actions, I believed it tipped the scale to impeachable. And it's the last thing on Earth I wanted to do, obviously. But, but I felt like it had to be done.

Steve. You had to know as you contemplated your vote in those days before you made it.

That this would cause you some political problems to be blunt about it. How much did that factor into your thinking and what's been the reaction that you've got both from your constituents and your colleagues?

Well, look, I think that with this job, which I've always said, this is the greatest job I've ever had, the opportunity to represent a community that gave me and my family so much.

We're Cuban immigrants, my father immigrated here in the 60s and welcomed us and allowed us to live this beautiful American life.

The opportunity to represent Ohio 16th district outside of marrying my wife is the greatest honor I've ever had in my life.

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