KFI AM 640. You're listening to the John Cobalt podcast on the IHeart Radio app.

You can hear us every day from one until four, then after four o'clock. We had a lot of stuff today.

If you missed the show up till now, you've got to go to the IHeart app. Listen to the John Cobelt on demand podcast.

And I'll tell you later this hour what we had on the show because you'll want to listen on the podcast to what you missed out on.

State Senator Marie Alvarado Gill is coming on with us in just seconds here.

She's done something that rarely happened.

She switched parties. She was a Democrat. She's representing district number four, which is way up in northern California, largely a rural area. And she was elected as a Democrat just two years ago. And then this week, she switched to being a Republican. And the Democratic Party is now

retaliating against her. We're going to talk about it now. Marie Alvarado Gil. Let's get her on.

Welcome.

Hey, John. How are you?

I am hanging in there, smiling and, you know, just breathing this wonderful air.

What's your background before you ran to be a state senator two years ago?

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, born and raised here in California, have seen myself as a lifelong

Californian, and I was in the charter school movement, opening charter schools and underserved communities

so that we can provide a public education model for all kids and lift up the middle class.

Why did you run for office as Democrat and then switch in less than two years.

Talk about this journey you went on.

Yeah, yeah, it's been a journey.

So I've been a Democrat most of my life and I've voted for Democratic candidates and Democratic policies.

The reality is that the Democratic Party of today, I don't recognize.

It's not the Democratic Party that I signed up for decades ago. And, you know, in the famous

words of Ronald Reagan, I did not leave the party. The party left me. But here we are decades

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