Updated September 11, 2017: The podcast is now live! Click here: http://anythinggoestjforrest.libsyn.com/episode-13-nevada-governor-candidate-jared-fisher to hear the interview in its entirety.
This week, Jared appeared on TJ Lavin and Forrest Griffin’s podcast “Anything Goes” in their recording studio in Las Vegas. Jared, who has known TJ since the 90s, was invited to be a guest on the show after TJ learned of Jared’s run for governor.
Jared and TJ’s friendship spans two decades and began when the two performed in stunt shows at the Mirage and MGM. TJ rode on Jared’s “City Streets” pro-freestyle BMX team, where, as Jared jokingly tells it on the podcast, he “told TJ what to do.”
In the years since then, Jared has proudly watched as TJ’s success in the industry grew and he became a world-champion racer and dirt jumper, competing and medaling in the X Games and Gravity Games, among others, and becoming the host of the MTV reality show The Challenge. While this was Jared’s first time meeting TJ’s podcast co-host, Forrest Griffin, he was greatly impressed by the thoughtful and engaging questions Forrest threw his way. Forrest, a mixed martial artist and a UFC Hall of Famer, didn’t shy away from the tough questions, later revealing that he’d majored in Political Science in college.
Both TJ and Forrest were friendly, well-spoken and humorous hosts! They’re also caring fathers, successful entrepreneurs and all around good people. We encourage you to visit the Anything Goes website and listen to some of their previous podcast episodes. You can also download episodes on Itunes or wherever podcasts are available.
Below is a transcript of the hosts’ nearly hour-long conversation with Jared. We’ll be updating this post with a link to the episode as soon as it’s live. It is scheduled to be up on Monday, September 11.
On why Jared’s running for governor of Nevada and what it was like working with BMX Superstar TJ Lavin
Forrest Griffin: In the studio we’re joined with…I’ll go ahead and call him “Governor”…Jared Fisher. Thanks for joining us. First off, what made you want to run for governor? Why?
Jared Fisher: Thanks for having me. Well, what made me want to run for governor? I’ve got four great kids who live here in Southern Nevada and have grown up here their whole lives. My wife and I—who’s sitting right there—we’re UNLV grads; lived here for 27 years.
Forrest Griffin: Are you from here though?
Jared Fisher: I was not born in Nevada.
Forrest Griffin: (joking): Nobody is.
TJ Lavin: (interrupting and raising his hand): Hey, hey hey, hey, hey, hey! I was born here….(group laughs). …But we are a city of transient people.
Forrest Griffin: (to Jared) Finish that thought…You have four kids and…
Jared Fisher: …So I’ll back up…We’ve been here for 27 years and Heather and I have been married for 25. We started a business called Escape Adventures, which was a UNLV Hotel Marketing Project. We raised our whole family here and have seen the whole state change over the course of our career and our lives. And we felt that we needed to give back to the state what the state has given to us…A lot of people ask me ‘why did you go to governor?’ I took a lot of time looking at the different positions in the state that I could work the best utilizing my own skills and ‘governor’ fit just perfect because it’s a leadership position.
Forrest Griffin: You wanted to be in charge. I appreciate that.
Jared Fisher: (laughs) I truly enjoy leadership positions.
TJ Lavin: As you should be. (Indicating Jared). Because he and I used to ride on a show team together and he was the leader of the show!
Forrest Griffin: There you go.
TJ Lavin: And he took the reigns…
Jared Fisher: TJ always did what I told him to do.
TJ Lavin: Exactly! Exactly what he told me to do…
Jared Fisher: I said ‘backflip’? He backflipped.
TJ Lavin: Boom!
Jared Fisher: I said ‘360 – TJ!’ He 360’d.
(Group laughs).
On making Nevada the ‘Solar State’
TJ Lavin: So check this out…I was talking to Jared the other day…and he convinced me. I don’t have too much Republican in me, but he convinced me that I needed to vote for him no matter what because he wants to change the name from the ‘Silver State’ to the the ‘Solar State’.
Forrest Griffin: Oooh. I like it.
TJ Lavin: And I was like, ‘sold’!
Forrest Griffin: An unofficial thing?
Jared Fisher: It’s unofficial.
TJ Lavin: We don’t have to build a wall…I’m just saying…
Forrest Griffin: It SHOULD be the solar state.
TJ Lavin: It should be the solar state….You know what this guy is? He’s got ethics. And he’s solid.
Forrest Griffin: So tell me…Fiscal policy. Republican?
Jared Fisher: …The Silver State was originated in 1864 and now we’re in what, 2017, right? By the time this race hits the ground full throttle, it’s going to be 2018. I just said ‘Solar State’ because we have an incredibly financial potential for this state. You can take that on a Democrat side or you can take that on a Republican side. For the Republicans? Let’s talk about what kind of money that’s going to bring to the state. For the Democrat side, a little more on the environment side, let’s talk about the positive impacts to the environment…
Forrest Griffin: No, I’m a democrat and I also love money, so…
Jared Fisher: So the ‘Solar State’, yeah it’s unofficial. But it just makes sense. When I moved here in 1990, I couldn’t help but notice that every house in this city did not have solar and that didn’t make sense to me.
TJ Lavin: Which is insane because we have 105 temperature today…more sun than you can ever imagine.
Jared Fisher: We have plenty of sunshine here.
On Social Programs and School Funding
Forrest Griffin: So fiscally, where are you at? As far as the budget…
Jared Fisher: I’m small business-oriented. I’m definitely the…not tax the middle class because the middle class is essentially driving the economy through the entrepreneurs. From my standpoint, when I see taxes go up, then that creates a barrier for me as a business owner to want to be able to expand, because now I have more taxes. So I always feel that if you tax less, the business owners have more money, not necessarily profit, but they have more money to reinvest back in the business, hence hiring more people and growing the economy. Because ultimately, we’re trying to be more productive in what we do…
Forrest Griffin: (joking) So now I get it…you hate social programs. That’s why you’re Republican.
Jared Fisher: (laughs): No, there are great social programs out there.
TJ Lavin: So what social programs are you with?
Jared Fisher: …Let’s face it. There comes a point where you can only give away so much. In other words, if the government is standing there willing to hand out money, you can bet every single person is going to be standing in line to get it. So, I’m not for giving more. I’m for more teaching our children how to work and how to grow, so that we don’t set them into a lifestyle of poverty in the future. So ultimately, that’s what builds a strong America. Because yeah, I’m running for governor of Nevada, but ultimately, I care about the United States of America as a whole. And Nevada can be such a great role model to the rest of these states…through how we produce our energy, to how we run our government, to how we teach our children, to the examples that we set to them to follow in the future.
Forrest Griffin: So increase school funding?
Jared Fisher: No, not necessarily increasing school funding. Not necessarily using the word ‘increase’, actually. Just using smart business sense on how to spend your money. Because you don’t always have to spend more money to get something done. It sometimes just comes down to really good management.
Forrest Griffin: No, I agree. You hear politicians say that argument a lot. And from a macro level—from a 30,000-foot perspective, that sounds pretty reasonable. But…I don’t know…just talking to my daughter’s teachers, what they do want is 200 bucks more for crafts, or to do a bulletin board or to be able to do more stuff. At the end of the day, a lot of it does come down to budgeting.
Jared Fisher: I think we need to be smart about how we spend our money. Let’s face it—look what the government has done to the postal service. Now you have UPS and Fedex that know how to make money, but the postal service— they have a monopoly, yet they still can’t make money? That tells me that the government is not the greatest business manager. So when we talk about spending money in Education, really to me, I think you’ve got to have somebody in office who understands business and who knows how to trim fat, who knows where to put money where it counts the most, where you’re going to get the most bang for your buck. And it’s not always spending more money. But I understand, $200 more crafts? That may actually be the case where it’d be awesome to have that 200 dollars more. I’m not against anything like that. I’m for smart decision making..
And I’m all for getting teachers a higher base salary out of the gate. I think if you can put your teachers first, and you can hire good teachers in the school system, our kids have a lot better chance.
On Heather Fisher, the future ‘First Lady’ of Nevada and Her Plan for the Arts
Jared Fisher: Heather just came to me a day or so ago…and she’s already got a plan laid out for the First Lady. And it’s called SAM and it’s for Sports, Arts and Music.
Forrest Griffin: Oh, it’s catchy!
TJ Lavin: I love it. I love it!
Jared Fisher: In a nutshell, it’s basically going to give opportunities to kids who don’t have that available, so to speak, so who are performing well enough in school where they can take advantage of some scholarships…because let’s face it, a lot of kids may not be able to get to a sports program or get to some type of an art program or be be able to take music lessons, and these types of things help grow children’s lives…from the beginning. You play the keyboards TJ, right?
TJ Lavin: Yes, sir.
Jared Fisher: And how has that been in your life? Has that been a great asset?
TJ Lavin: If I didn’t have music, I don’t know what I would have done. I love music. It’s so important. I think the program SAM would be awesome. And I have a dog named Sam, and he could actually be the poster boy for that, so now you have a German Shepherd who’s just the sweetest dog in the world…
(Group laughs).
On Raising a ‘Solid Family’
TJ Lavin: So you have a pretty damn solid family, brother. I can’t even tell you how proud of you I am for that…What are some of the rules in the Fisher Household? How do you do it? How do you have such a solid family?
Forrest Griffin: He doesn’t have a TV…that’s the first thing.
Jared Fisher: We don’t have cable or anything like that. Well I’ll tell you one thing…We have a firm belief in God. We all go to Church on Sundays. I would say that’s the backbone of our family.
On Helping the Rural Communities in Nevada
Read more about the towns and communities Jared visited on his Listening Tour.
Forrest Griffin: What are you going to do for the rest of the state? How are you going to help the more rural communities?
Jared Fisher: I did tour around the state on May 1st. I got on my mountain bike and I rode 1,400 miles around the state. I rode through every community between here and Elko and all around the state to Pyramid Lake down to Sparks, Carson City, down to Hawthorne, all the way down to Pahrump and back to Vegas…So I visited these communities and I talked to people in their front yards and in their back yards. I talked to people out in their hay fields. I talked to people on the sides of the roads—People were pulling over and asking us questions, we were asking them questions. I talked to people in their businesses…there was a lot of interaction with these people.
Forrest Griffin: What was the gist you got?
Jared Fisher: Basically the people in the Rurals—they feel like they’ve been forgotten. They feel like Las Vegas gets all the hype and then it comes to Reno. And they’re right.
Forrest Griffin: Reno and Carson City gets a little bit because you have the medical school and the seat of government…
Jared Fisher: So what to do about the Rural’s and how to include the Rural’s…Well first off, we had a meeting with a real nice gentleman who has a law firm in Northern and Southern Nevada and he expressed a concern about having access to better roadways between here and Reno so you can access these communities better than a two-lane road all the way to Reno…We’re not even really connected.
Forrest Griffin: That’s a garbage drive, too. We all hate that drive.
TJ Lavin: Yeah, I did it on the bus!
Jared Fisher: So how about reconnecting these communities with passing lanes so that people can get to these communities better? Here’s the other thing…A lot of my career has been focused on working with the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. I spent 25 years doing that, all around the Southwestern United States. So I have a good feel for how the Federal Lands work in Nevada. Well, one of the things that I’d really like to do is get communities more involved with their public lands, since the Federal government is running those, why not get these communities incorporating trail systems, more outdoor activities…Using those resources that are Federal to their benefit.
Read more about Jared Fisher’s recent visit to an Amargosa Valley Town Hall Meeting.
A Great Endorsement! Thank you.
TJ Lavin: I love this guy. What do you think? Does he got our vote or what? Is this the new governor?
Forrest Griffin: He’s got our vote. He’s got our vote.
TJ Lavin: This is our new governor. He’s our new governor!
After the podcast had wrapped for the evening, Jared and TJ played a little basketball in the studio’s indoor court downstairs.
We’d like to thank TJ, Forrest and their production for having us on their show. It was a lot of fun and we hope to be able to do it again sometime soon.
About Fisher for Nevada: FisherforNevada.com is the official website of the Fisher for Nevada Governor campaign. Jared Fisher is running on a platform that includes a focus on the 3 E’s: Economy, Education and Energy. His mission? Building a Healthy Nevada. Follow the campaign on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for daily updates.
Related Posts:
