Welcome to Braving Politics Podcast! This is our first episode where we share with you our vision for this podcast. To start off, let me introduce myself. I’m Emily Bergeson, a candidate with the United Utah Party, running for State Senate District 7 here in Utah. I’ve had to say that a lot over the last few months and I’m still getting used to it. Luckily I’m only running a state race, and not a federal race. That makes it a little less intimidating, but there are times I still feel way out of my league. Still, there are several reasons why I decided to run. The most important reason is that it gives me an opportunity to be doing things like this podcast. My hope is to make politics more inviting so that more of us get involved. And speaking of that, I’m running a campaign alongside three other fantastic candidates from the United Utah Party. They are also running for the legislature here in Utah, like I am, but for the Utah House of Representatives instead of the State Senate. Kate Walters running for House District 56. She can be found online at waltersfor56.org. There’s Catherine Eslinger running for House District 59. Learn more about her at catherine4house 59.com. And there’s Christine Heath running for House District 60. Go to christine4utah.com.

The four of us are Braving Politics Together. We come from different backgrounds, have different interests and talents — just like you. The great thing about that is we can all learn from each other, find common ground, and improve politics. It helps to take the time to understand each other and appreciate our diverse backgrounds. It also takes someone having faith in us that we have something worth contributing. I can’t tell you how often I hear people say they don’t know anything about politics and then within a few minutes, they express some amazing ideas about how to make things better. Hopefully we can build a little more faith in ourselves and each other.

Most of the time we assume people who are really good at politics have always been really good at politics and we’re the only ones struggling. That’s not true. We all struggle with some things. We all quickly master other things. Politics has so many layers and aspects to it, it’s impossible for any one person to get it right or understand it perfectly all the time. I would say that is particularly true with politics these days. Politics is becoming even more complex and we are seeing some amazing as well as disturbing things take place.

I believe we each hold a piece of the puzzle, a way through to help us understand it all better. No matter how little you think you understand politics, no matter how much you try to avoid it, you have something meaningful to contribute.

I’ll use myself as an example. Most of my adult life I had little to no interest in voting. I largely believed it didn’t really matter whether or not I voted. On top of that, I almost never watched the news. I found it depressing and discouraging. I didn’t know the names of any of my local representatives. I tried once to have a political discussion with someone and failed miserably. I let politics lay dormant, convinced that politics just wasn’t for me.

Then some things happened in my personal life, and in our nation that finally woke me up from my political slumber. It wasn’t pleasant. Like wiping slime from my lips, this sleeping beauty opened her eyes to a very unattractive political prince.

Granted, the government doesn’t exactly make it all that attractive. Continuing with the fairytale theme, the government is like an ugly frog and you’re not quite sure if it’s worth finding out if the frog is a prince. It can be really hard to figure out what’s going on, let alone what things mean. Since being awakened,I’ve learned that I don’t have to do it all myself. And guess what. This isn’t a fairytale I’m stuck in. Instead, it’s many stories with many heroes, including you. We all have things we’re bravely doing. We’re making a difference in our own way.

It is our hope at Braving Politics Together that we can all indeed work together, be brave together as we figure out politics. We’ll be exploring a variety of themes and issues that will be foundational for helping us make informed decisions that will help fix the problems we’re currently facing. It’s not going to be easy. At times it won’t be pretty. It is going to take all of us being brave together.