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This is the Tom Hartman program.

Welcome back to our program on the line with us is Julia Rock.

The reporter at levernews.com.

Julia's Twitter handle is J-U-L number one, A-R-O-C-K or at levernews and levernews.com, of course.

And Julia, I have all that right.

Yes, you have all that right, thanks so much for having me on.

Sure, welcome to the program or welcome back to the program.

So I don't think Ted Bud is like a household name, you know, like Ted Cruz,

but he is the Republican candidate for the United States Senate in North Carolina.

And he's got a really interesting past with regard to the banking industry. Tell us about this.

Yeah, so this, to your point, this is a race that's been sort of covered as a boring race,

but it's one of the closest Senate elections between Ted Bud and Cherry Beasley in North Carolina.

And Bud, who has been in the House of Representatives since 2017, has really gone to bat on

the behalf of banks, helping boost a merger that the largest bank merger after the financial

crisis, as well as helping banks bypass state interest rate laws in order to charge consumers

...