Hello and welcome to another episode of Good Skews. I'm Matt Hildreth.

Today I'm sitting down with Joe Sudbay, host of State of the States on Sirius XM.

Joe has spent many years focused on state and local politics. And right now, that's where the

action is. Democrats have been flipping Republican seats all over the country, but because the

national media is laser focused on D.C. and national politics, that story is largely flying

under the radar. Joe and I are going to be talking more about these local elections and what it

means and why it matters heading into 2026.

All right, Joe Sudbey, thanks for joining us today. Joe, you've been busy on your show, State of the

States. Do you want to just give folks a little bit of a

context for the show that you host on Sirius XM? Sure. So since 2017, I've had a show called

State of the States. It's a weekly show. And my focus is on what's happening in the state,

state legislatures, state legislative races. I've long been

of the opinion that that's where the action is. And, you know, I live in D.C. and I've been in D.C. for many

years. But I started my career working in Maine, and I spent a lot of time in the Maine legislature.

And then I came to D.C. and I worked on state legislative work at an organization called

Handgun Control. And it really made me realize how little people inside the Beltway pay

attention to what's happening in state legislatures and state legislative races. There was an ugly election in

1994. 2010 was a bloodbath in the state legislative elections. It was the second year of the

Obama administration. And it was pretty rough. And one of the things that happened in those elections, 2010, was those state legislatures

did the redistricting.

And they know how to, Republicans took control.

They know how to do gerrymandering better than anyone.

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