God bless everyone. Welcome back to the Loopcast. Today I'm joined by two very special men. I'm going to introduce them really quick.

Brian, if you want to give a quick pitch to the viewers.

Brian Birch, president, co-founder of Catholic Vote with my co-founder, Josh Mercer.

Josh Mercer. That's right, editor of the loop and the third most important person on the Loopcast.

We miss you, Erica.

Take me back to the beginning.

What was the original vision for Catholic vote?

Why'd you guys start it?

The truth is, both of us were working at Domino's Farms in Ann Arbor.

Tom Monaghan, some of the listeners may know, sold Domino's Pizza,

takes that money, starts the Ave Maria Foundation,

and decides, I'm going to, as he said, try to get to heaven and take as many people as I can

with me. Great vision, you know, jokingly said, I could have bought a yacht, I could have bought

multiple yachts, instead decides to start all these Catholic ministries. And Josh was working for the entity called the Ave Maria List, which was started by Tom to engage politically.

They spent money that Tom chose to spend in politics.

I was working for a group called the Thomas More Law Center, which was, as we called the, the Catholic answer to the ACLU, which is this public interest law firm.

We would engage in litigation, represent people pro bono to try to advance, you know, various

issues.

And as a result of some fights with the town of Ann Arbor, Tom decides I'm going to go build

not just a university, not in Ann Arbor, I'm going to go to Tom decides I'm going to go build not just a university, not in

Ann Arbor, I'm going to go to Florida, I'm going to build a town, Ave Maria, Florida.

That was pretty disruptive at the time for all of the people up in Ann Arbor, because there

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