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Thanks for watching, our extended edition of Coffee with the candidates. We're here with North Dakota governor and Republican presidential candidate Doug Berham. Thanks for joining us. Great to be here. We're also here with *** panel of undecided Republicans from Mahaska County. You all have some questions for Governor Berham Marianne. We're going to start with you. You have *** question about faith. Yeah, it appears you have not stated your relief, your religious beliefs, at least I have not found that you have. Would you be willing to share with us what those are and how will that impact your position on abortion? No. Well, happy to share my faith journey. I grew up in this small town, North Dakota uh 300 people. Uh and we had uh two churches. One was Lutheran, one was Methodist. Our family uh was my grandfather, was born in Wales, uh had immigrated to the United States with my great grandfather. After my great grandmother had passed away, he came over as *** widower with kids, uh ended up in North Dakota. Uh And so we were our family uh was part of that Methodist church and that was something you know, I was part of our whole life growing up, I was president of the Youth Methodist Youth Fellowship, all of my buddies, you know, that were there and that's the faith that, uh sustained me. Uh, you know, when my dad passed away when I was *** freshman in high school and it's that what sustained me when I lost my older brother, there was three of us kids and he, he passed away in 2010 and when my mom passed away in 2005. So it's been *** key part of, of uh of all I've done whether it's building companies or leading the state. You, you have to have ***, you know, we all, we all understand that there's uh *** higher everyone. I think that is successful in this world knows that there's higher powers out there that are, that are beyond, beyond the imagination capability of what we have. I mean, the universe that we have is expansive and huge and it, it helps uh at least for me, I mean, two of the things that I carry with me every day as part of leadership is, is uh humility and, and gratitude because those are two things that I think we have to be humble in the face of uh this amazing universe we're in and we have to have gratitude for the abundance that's around us and that, that affects uh every everything that we do. But I'm also uh driven by curiosity. And I think, and I'm also driven by an understanding that we shouldn't be judging others. And so I've always been curious and open minded about people that might have faith beliefs that are different than mine, whether it's here in America around the world. When you, when you build *** company and you have people that are working for you in 100 and 32 countries. Not only do you see people that are, that you have, you have different faiths and different beliefs. Uh But you also see people that are growing up in the context of countries where they had people that didn't have the right to vote, they didn't have the right to assemble them right to free speech. I mean, when you're *** young kid building *** global company and you get to see all of that around the globe, you can understand America doesn't have to be perfect, to be exceptional. This is an exceptional country. It's worth fighting for as, as, as you know, with your family. Uh But it, it is uh it, it's important and your question about abortion. Uh I've been *** pro-life governor of *** pro-life state and have signed *** lot of pro-life legislation, but I've got it from day one that I announced that my position has not changed. Uh Because I'm *** belief in the believe in the 10th amendment and the we people fought for 50 years to, to have Roe V. Wade overturned. So I support the Dobbs decision returning it back to the States and that's where it should stay. And so I had said to people, I would not sign ***, *** federal abortion ban. I mean, the chance of *** federal abortion ban ever getting the president is really slim, but I wouldn't sign one and it has nothing to do with abortion. It has to do with the 10th amendment that says the states created the federal government, they gave the federal, they, that they empowered the federal government with *** limited set of powers. And *** lot of people are confused in this country. The states created the federal government, not the other way around. And then that 28 word 10th amendment says and those things that are not specifically delegated to the United States are reserved to the States or comma to the people. And that's where these decisions should be made with decisions that are so important have to be made closer to the people. And when we're in *** cold war with China proxy war with Russia proxy war with Iran and the president is in charge of national security and which includes border security. And our current president isn't doing that. He's not protecting our economy because he's not protecting the US dollar as *** reserve currency of the world. These are things that affect every single American, every single day. And as president, I would focus on those limited roles doing well and return the rest of the power to the States. We are going to get *** little bit later. But first I want to go to Pope. She has *** question for you about health care. So health care costs, as you know, continue to rise and they're impacting everybody in the United States. What specific policies and strategies do you propose to address this ongoing issue? And how do you plan to make that affordable, accessible, um, just accessible health care for all Americans. Well, there's, we're sort of coming off of the 10th amendment. I mean, the two things that the federal government has at least in the last 25 years is kind of convinced people their job, their job is to subsidize higher ed with the $1.6 trillion of student debt and then they're going to subsidize health care like somehow it went from, oh, that, that's what the government does is health care. I mean, we fought about Obamacare for 15 years and it's ***, *** non actuary sound meaning non financially stable insurance program that only about 20 million Americans use and, and people, that's the one word people know it doesn't even cover, it doesn't even cover 10% of our nation. And it's, and it's not working and the promise of that was, oh, it's going to lower the cost. And then what is the federal government done? I talked about red tape earlier. They came in when Obama came in and they said we're going to mandate that all hospitals and clinics start using electronic health care record software from certain companies. I mean, this is one of the biggest political payoffs that's never been reported there. There's been *** trillion dollars spent on implementing electronic healthcare records across our medical system nationwide since about 2009 when this legislation began. First, it was *** subsidy and then it was *** penalty. You did not get paid, you do not get paid your full Medicare Medicaid payments. If you hadn't achieved meaning *** definition of meaningful use of about 55 different companies, software that were sort of hand picked off that list. We spent *** trillion dollars on it. And then at the end of that decade, doctors were seeing fewer patients per day in any industry. If you want costs to go down, you have to increase productivity. And now we're in *** bigger bind because now we've got most of the doctors and nurses in this country are baby boomers. They're retiring. At the same time, this baby boomer bulge is getting older. So we have more people that require care and less providers. And we had *** federally mandated archaic old it system that lowered the productivity instead of increase it. So the first thing I would do as president is say, if anybody comes to me with *** proposal about health care, it's not about we need more money. It's like no, we need more productivity. Is this does this idea actually allow doctors to see more patients per day or less per day? Because that's you see more per day, then your price per visit can go down. It is so we've not approached this with *** common sense business approach. And the federal government now is involvement is so deep in health care. It's driven the cost through the roof. The one industry from 2000 to 2023 that's grown faster than inflation every single year. Whether inflation was low, inflation is high, the one that's risen faster than that health care, which is the industry, the federal government's most involved with health care. Any of you. If you go to buy *** car or even *** used car, you can go to the thing and see *** sticker in the window and go. This is the price of the car. You wanna get knee surgery. Good luck trying to find out what that costs. Good, good luck trying to find out what any procedure costs. We have no transparency in pricing. No one, no one can shop, people get locked into certain providers. They can't go. And so we have to actually create markets. There's some new things that are happening. There's *** nationwide effort by *** group of physicians for reform that are trying to actually create *** competitive market based system outside of this federal system. There are some new ideas like that, that could actually start creating competition, which could improve, improve health care. And we, and it's not about inputs. It's not about, we need to spend more money. The Americans, we spend 20% of ***, of *** over $20 trillion annual economy, $4 trillion you spend on health care and we don't have the best outcomes. This is not an input problem. It's not about, we need to spend more money. It's like we need to figure out how that money is being spent and how that money and how and what the incentives are. And some of this includes cutting programs that are, that are trading these inequities and stopping, stopping stuff. So I that's my approach. We cannot fix this by writing more checks. Thank you. Our next question is going to be from Lauren. He is the question on immigration. So going back to immigration, it's not *** secret that uh the Biden administration has allowed over 8 million illegal immigrants into the country, not counting the God of ways. If you become president, how are you going to solve this problem? First of all, it's got to be number one on the list is we've got to, we got to close the border. You can't have national security if you don't have secure borders. And, and I've been down to the border more times than Biden has more time than Harris has. And I'll be down there in my first two weeks. It took Biden, took Biden two years to get down there. But your number 8 million is the correct number. That's more than two Iowa. I mean, think about, think about Iowa having zero people the day Biden is inaugurated and then think about filling it up in 18 months and then filling it up again in the last 18 months to 8 million people. And you got to feed them, they got to, you know, transportation housing. I mean, unbelievable the cost, you know, that that's come with that. But having been to the border and I've been down there just recently, we've had deployments from North Dakota National Guard down there helping to secure the border. Uh but also flying helicopter missions from San Diego to the Gulf Coast in Lakota helicopters tonight trying to stop these transnational criminal organizations. And this is the most under reported story in America of, of the open border. We, it gets talked about in discussions like this, but you could tune on the news today and there's probably not *** story about it. 263,000 people came across in October known that's the largest, you know, October ever on record. So they're still pouring in. The President's got four levers, diplomatic, informational, military and economic. I would pull all of those levers and I'd start with, with the, with the law enforcement themselves, our border patrol, meeting with the senior leaders down there at the border patrol. They're feeling like the police are in our big blue cities. They're basically being defunded. We have thousands of positions open that aren't being filled. You have these multi generational law enforcement families that grew up and live on the border. They care about this and they say we have closed the border before this is not, this is not hard. Give us the leadership, give us the authority, give us the resources. They don't have the resources to do their job. And yet we're spending in one location that I was at, they were spending 20 million *** month on *** soft sided facility. *** K *** tents to, to process, it takes *** lot of manpower to process 8 million people into our country and most of it's paperwork, it's not computer work. So why would you go into law enforcement if you're not on the border, you're doing paperwork. You know, who's out on the border, North Dakota National Guard. You know how many apprehensions we had? We had, we had only *** group of 100 and 20 people in the sector. They weren't working 24 hours *** day. They're working in shifts. So if you're working in three shifts, think there's 45 people out there at *** time in one little sector in the 1st 30 days, 30,000 apprehensions 1000 *** day for our little group, the rest other people that were uncovered areas just walking into the country. So and then it's, they're coming from everybody on the, the, the watch list, the terrorist watch list. It, it's not Latin America. I mean, yes, 7.5 million people have fled the corrupt government of Venezuela and many of them have come here. But over 100 countries in that segment that I was on the border. Syria, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China, Russia. I mean, the chance that there is *** Hamas terrorist cell in the United States that's come in the last two years is *** high probability. We can end up with another 911 type event because of that open border. And then you throw in the drug problem with you. You know, we've lost the equivalent of five Vietnam's of over to overdose deaths since Joe Biden took office five. I mean, 270,000 people have died. 70% of those are fentaNYL poisonings. I won't call them overdoses because it might be the first time. They, they take something that they don't, it's not supposed to be lethal and they died because of it. And, and so that is ***, you know, that is the thing, we're taking mass casualties and we're under an invasion. I mean, that's what's happening. So part of it is, yes. Again, use all those diplomacy, information, military economic sanctions, close the border and our border patrol can get it done. Then when you get it done, then you could actually have *** conversation about what is the smart thing to do about going forward from there because there's, we're not doing, we have legal, legal immigration of people that, uh, it may have been trying for seven years to get into this country legally and they're backed up on *** bunch of paperwork and, and they're feeling, hey, we're trying to follow the rules to get into your country. We can't get in and then everybody else just gets to walk in. I mean, so the unfairness of that system is, is unbelievable as well. Canada's picked off over *** million high skilled workers that came to the US on student visas, their student visas ran out, we were trying to send them home and Canada said, pay us *** fee to come there. So we're subsidizing illegal immigration and Canada is getting paid to have high skilled workers leave the US and go to Canada. So we're, we're, it's like we're doing it wrong on every end of this thing has, has to be, has to be fixed at *** time when we have 10 million jobs open in America. Uh Our next question is going to come from Mary Ann. She's *** question uh related to the fact that Iowa recently passed *** law that bans transgender girls from playing girls sports. Uh North Dakota has some similar laws and she has *** question about that type of legislation. Some states have started banning the biological males from playing in female sports, does this need to be addressed at the federal level? Well, th this is, again, uh, something that I would say we citing the 10th amendment in North Dakota, we've protected women's sports. And I think that's just common sense. Uh, and, but it's not, not something at the federal level that I, I don't know if the federal level needs to decide that or not. I mean, the federal, you know, each state gets to decide, you know, how old you can, when you drink, how old you can't even smoke, how old you are when you get *** tattoo. Uh, these are things that, you know, high school athletic associations and state legislators can wrestle with, but it's not something I'd be tackling it as, as president as *** priority. Uh, because, uh, you know, we have 50 platforms of innovation. Uh, we know that people, you know, are mobile in our, in our country and we're seeing right now that, that, you know, red states are winning, people are leaving blue states and moving to red states. And I think that's *** good economic indicator of what policies are country like. We've got, you know, we're not, what's gonna fly in, you know, in North Dakota is not going to fly in New York, but that's ok. Then they lose congressman. Right? And people are leaving, leaving those states and going to Red States. Well, I guess my, my additional question is when you get to the federal level in sport, then BF CAA, then how do they regulate, who comes to play in those sports? Yeah. Well, the NCAA is *** non non governmental organization and it's, you know, overseeing that and I, I think that's, uh, you know, they're gonna have to, they have to sort that out because, uh, but again, this is *** thing where the federal government, you say, hey, this is, uh, there's so many issues, you know, I, I say, decide them at the NCAA level, decide them at the local school board level, decide them at the local library. But I mean, I believe in local control on these issues and I know that people have been successfully taken incidents and then they nationalize it. It's great for getting out the votes, getting for people activated on social media. But it is when we're compared to like what we were just talking about the 8 million people, you know, that have come into our country illegally. That's *** federal issue, national security. That's *** federal issue. You got *** handful of two or three or four athletes, you know, that are, you know, that are, that are in the news all the time, but it's the same story. Somebody, somebody else has got to fix that. I mean, I as somebody's run *** global company, I delegate that say get that fixed, you know, you guys in your state figured out NCAA figure it out, but it's *** President's got *** limited number of things. They gotta focus on the big ones and the big ones are these ones that affect literally all of our, the 8 million people who have come in are affecting the 340 million people that are here every single day that's affecting everybody. And you have the next question about addiction. I did some research on your website and came across some of your viewpoints um specifically on addiction as *** root cause of many societal issues like crime, homelessness and mental health challenges. That's very thought provoking. To me. You mentioned restructuring reimbursement systems for mental health care and involving the private sector in addressing substance abuse disorders. Could you elaborate on your vision for this overhaul and how this plan or how you plan to integrate private sector, parti participation to combat addiction problems? Great question. Uh And thank you. Uh addiction, of course, is uh addiction and behavioral health. We have *** crisis in our whole country. There's over 32 million Americans that are suffering with the disease of addiction. It's *** disease, it's *** brain disease that's well understood. Now, it's not *** moral failing. I mean, maybe someone makes *** bad choice but there are people are can be more predisposed or less predisposed uh biologically to uh being susceptible and it's not just genetics, it can be early childhood trauma, it can be *** number of *** number of factors. It can be concussions in from high school sports that affect your brain that could, you know, sets of twins, one, twins play sports has *** bunch of concussion and one doesn't, this one ends up addicted. I mean, now we understand, you know how that can affect, you know, through, through brain science, but it affects, uh, there's 15 million kids in America that are living in *** home where one of the adults has the disease of addiction. And the kid may not be young maybe, but they're suffering trauma, which then could, you know, lead to more, you know, it could be economic insecurity could be, you know, whether it's drug deals, violence, all the things that could be happening associated with that. Then we've got this generational problem and then you say about criminal justice. So I started asking with our, when I became governor. Well, how many people in the men's prison have *** substance abuse disorder? 80%. I was interviewing judges, I've appointed more judges than any other governor in history in North Dakota. And I asked them how, what percentage of your job on the work you've done as *** prosecutor, *** defender, *** judge advocate in the court system in North Dakota relates to, to, to the disease of addiction. They all like 80% I've never had anybody answer less than 80% in the women's. So 80% of the men's in our men's prison have substitutes or 100% of the women in the women's correctional system have *** substance abuse disorder. They were, and most of them were victims before the, they were abused sexually or violently before they became, before they became users, before they became addicted. So, if you take *** look at our nation and what we spend on criminal justice, I mean, law enforcement and jails and court system and you said, wow, 80% of that is related to addiction, wouldn't we say let's go upstream and stop that problem as opposed to building more jails on this end, which is what we've been doing. I mean, the war on drugs started in the 19 eighties. Guess what? Drugs won. I mean, drugs one, we built out all this stuff and then, and then we're like, we, we passed *** bunch of rules and said, oh, we can't have, we don't want to have institutions for, for, for people that have, you know, mental health issues and the co occurrence of mental health and addiction is super high among homelessness. It's almost 100%. If you're homeless, you've got an addiction and you've got *** mental health issue. So these are health problems and we can't just keep jailing people. But then we, we said, oh, we're gonna get rid of the large institutions and we have to go to small 16 bed or smaller, which could have been *** fine thing. But when we didn't, we didn't pick it up, we end up with this expanding homeless problem across our country and homelessness among veterans is *** problem. So, so with all of that. But then for, for every family, many families is personal. The first lady in North Dakota has been courageous. She suffered for the disease of addiction for 2.5 decades. And then she found recovery after an eight year battle with relapsing, got into recovery and then didn't want to talk about it. Because what if people find out about, you know, my past? What if they find about my DUI, I mean, she had an MB ***, she had *** career. You sure you're living in shame. You're living in the shadows when we were the accidental governor and first lady of North Dakota. I mean, accidental because we were such *** long shot. Uh, you know, we weren't even supposed to win. We weren't supposed to, you know, and then we came out of nowhere and ended up, you know, winning by 40 points. But so she was first lady said, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get this off my shoulders. And so she's been courageously sharing her story about her struggle and her recovery. Now, she's been in recovery for 21 years now. She's on the National Board of Trustees of Hazel and Betty Ford. Now she's bringing awareness to how, whether it's tribal populations or others where we've got high propensity, uh, of, of rates of addiction. You know, what do we need to do as *** country to, to try to, to solve that. So it is eliminating the shame and stigma will help more people get care. We can normalize the conversation that will help people do that. But we've got stigma in health care. If you've got the, you know, the cancer wing, it's got somebody's name on from the, you know, the some family donor that, that gave *** bunch of money. You got the orthopedic wing, you got, you know, all the sports medicine and the athletes that wanna be part of that. And then if you want to try to get addiction services, it's in the basement across town or it doesn't exist because of still the shame and the stigma and people and, and, and so we've got to, we've got to normalize it. We've got to fund it. I, we've met when she shares her story, when we're campaigning. Every stop, someone comes up and says, yeah, hey, I was able to get my shoulder repaired and I only had to pay *** small copay, but I've got *** daughter that's got mental health issues and she's suicidal and they're charging me three grand *** month and I can't get it. My insurance won't cover it. I mean, the, the, the inequities around how we treat mental health reimbursements, how we treat versus physical health are all over the map. So there's *** whole series of things, but the way you start this is actually helping people understand how it's all related, crime, homelessness, high cost of criminal justice, all of this leads back to the disease of addiction. And then, and then we, and if you say I'm gonna stop somebody from using by taking everything that's *** misdemeanor and make it into *** felony. It doesn't, doesn't change it just, I mean, you know, in *** state like North Dakota, we got 50% more things that are felonies than we had 25 years ago. And guess what? It hasn't changed *** thing. But what has changed? The one thing we have, we created *** program called peer support specialists where we take people with lived experience, including felons, give them *** job. If they're in recovery, then they act as *** counselor to five or six other people that are coming out of the criminal justice system. We have reduced recidivism by having, we have 1000. Now peer support specialists who have *** job, their job is to help other people find it, they find *** place to live, find it, get *** driver's license, uh get *** job. Those, those are the three core social determinants of health. If somebody can get *** job, get *** driver's license and find *** place to live. And by the way, if you're *** felon, we can discriminate whether you can live there or not, we can discriminate on whether we hire you or not. So when people say they've served their time in our system. It's *** life sentence if you're *** felon in this country because you come out and we can legally discriminate against you guess where they end up, they end up back in some flop house using and they end up back in our system. And in North Dakota we're, we're one of the most efficient California, it's over $100,000 per year per person in North Dakota. If you're in the correction system, it's about $45,000. But we should be able to give them *** college education and ***, you know, or *** career. We've now moved, we've moved, we've moved CD L simulators, you know, commercial driver's license simulators into our jail system. So they can do all that training when they're still there. C ad cam training when they come out. Let's give them *** skill. So those peer support specialists actually get paid more if their clients achieve those determinants. So it's *** market based system governor. I do have to stop you there. I'm sorry, we are all out of time, but we appreciate you being here and we appreciate our panelists joining us as well and to those at home watching. Thank you so much for joining us for coffee with the candidates. Have *** great day.