Matt Salmon

We're here with Steve Voeller, Vice President of Government and Community Relations at the University of Arizona.

Steve's work in government relations and politics spans more than two decades across Arizona and Washington, D.C., including being a chief of staff for Senator Jeff Flake and Congressman Matt Salmon.

Steve, thanks so much for joining the show.

No, thanks for having me.

So can you walk me through what the, you know, the first 60 days after somebody wins their seat, whether they're, you know, brand new in office or in an incumbent, what are those first two months look like for them?

So I was able to set up two congressional offices, one in the House with Congressman Jeff Flake, and then when he got elected to the Senate.

And I was actually part of a new office in the House when Matt Salmon got elected in 1994.

I joined as a legislative correspondent there.

But he gets involved now with kratom.

He recruited a guy named Matt Salmon, who was a member of the U.S. Congress from Arizona.

Matt went and used his influence to get 51 signatures from other members of Congress to tell the DEA to back off.

"This is not Schedule 1.

And all of a sudden, right around the two th- the 2020 election, the Democrats said, "Hey, this could work for us."

Well, I mean, you look at it as this was passed in the early '90s, you know, um, back when Matt Salmon was still in the leg and all that other stuff.

Pa- passed in the early '90s, I don't know, it seems like it has worked out pretty well for Republicans since then.

They've controlled, uh, both chambers of the legislature since the, you know, Democrats briefly controlled the Senate in the-

The last four years that he was there, he was the Senate President, which of course is a leadership role that we'll talk more about.

And then he went on to win Matt Salmon's seat in Congress in 2016.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to introduce myself to this chamber.

My name is Andy Biggs.

I represent Arizona's 5th Congressional District.

I hope to pick up where my good friend And my predecessor, former Congressman Matt Salmon, left off.

He's left me big shoes to fill.

But I'm blessed to be able to counsel with him, and I'm honored to follow his example.

Not everyone involved in the Freedom Caucus, though, wanted to leave their kind of small government, congressional control, executive branch oversight identity behind, their kind of watchdog reputation.

Matt Salmon is another founder, a former congressman from Arizona.

I think they morphed from being the entity that really was about, uh, getting back to regular order to becoming the, the chief cheering squad for Trump.

And I, I couldn't be more disappointed.

They spend a lot, lot, all of which is not exactly [laughs] economically conservative.

So that, I, I think that that is really so much the crux of what we're talking about here, is how much Trump is a, quote-unquote, conservative, and how much the people in the Freedom Caucus want to be that as well, versus following Trump.

Yeah, I mean, and Eric, I mean, that makes me wonder what Matt Salmon is saying when he says regular order.

I mean, is it what, um, Danielle's describing here, like, more, like, back to the, the basics on the economic side?