00:00
My father had left at a young age and I wanted to know from him
00:03
is like, why did I never hear him speaking Spanish?
00:05
And he would tell me that in East Texas in the late fifties and
00:09
sixties and seventies was not a really friendly place to immigrants
00:13
or to black or brown people.
00:14
So they tried to be as white as they could be.
00:22
My name is Chuck Rocha.
00:24
I'm a Mexican and I grew up in East Texas and I am a political
00:31
Let's go back to your, your childhood.
00:34
What are some of your earliest childhood memories?
00:37
You know, I was really blessed growing up uh with two different
00:41
families, my mother's family and my father's family.
00:43
Um I like to tell the story that I had a white grandmother who
00:47
was my mother's mother and I had a Mexican grandmother, Carmen
00:50
Rocha, who was my father's grandmother and they both had certain
00:54
They both made the best food.
00:56
My white grandmother who was the Southern Bale who grew her
01:00
own vegetables, processed her own meat, made her own sausage
01:03
canned her own vegetables, probably made the best fried
01:07
chicken of any fried chicken you would ever eat in your life
01:09
Cast iron skillet Crisco.
01:11
She would kill the chickens herself, like really amazing
01:15
And then my, my, my grandmother Rocha Carmen Rocha, I can never
01:20
remember ever walking into her house and my nose burning just
01:25
And I realized as I got older that it's because she had one of
01:28
those and she would grind the peppers every morning and she
01:32
would hot sauce every day.
01:34
She would make flour tortillas every day.
01:37
And my memory of her as a little boy is her standing at the stove
01:41
in her apron, usually holding one of her grandchildren on
01:44
the phone, talking to one of her sisters or one of her kids while
01:48
making tortillas hot plate.
01:50
It was like an assembly line.
01:51
She was doing all while watching babies on the phone and taking
01:54
care of everything my grandmother wrote.
01:56
She had 15 Children.
01:57
My father was one of 15.
01:59
You had the fried chicken on one side.
02:01
You had the Mexican food on the other.
02:04
How did you identify growing up as a kid?
02:06
Well, the first thing you identify with food like that is that
02:09
I weighed £310 when I graduated high school and I was an Allstate
02:13
offensive lineman in East Texas.
02:15
So I was a big old boy because I was raised on a farm and my grandfather
02:19
would put me to work and my grandfather, my white grandfather
02:22
he probably weighed 100 and £35 sopping wet.
02:24
So I did a lot of the lifting around the house.
02:27
Uh, growing up and growing up on that farm and, you know, early
02:31
in life, I didn't really know what to self identify as my father
02:34
left when I was five years old.
02:36
And uh my mother didn't remarry for a long, long time.
02:39
And so my grandfather and her two brothers served as my father
02:43
Keep in mind my mother was just 15.
02:45
So I was this boy being raised by these other boys with a young
02:48
set of grandparents on a working farm in East Texas.
02:50
We lived in a trailer house just off to the side of the main house
02:53
and that's where I was raised and no one really ever spoke of
02:57
my father's heritage or his culture or him being Mexican or
03:00
Mexican American about anywhere his family had come from
03:03
I discovered all this later in life when not identifying as
03:08
anything other than just a redneck in East Texas.
03:10
Like all of my friends, not based off of my skin color, but my
03:13
father got me a job in a factory when I was 19, I had, at that point
03:18
carried on a long tradition of babies having babies and had
03:20
my own son at 19 and asked my father, could he help me get a job
03:25
Because I needed health care.
03:27
I needed health care because I'd taken full custody of this
03:29
boy that I had just had with this woman.
03:31
And me and my father reconnected in that meal and really became
03:35
And I would ask him stories about his parents and my grandparents
03:38
his parents who were um Agapita Agapito, uh Pete Rocha and
03:43
and Carmen, obviously, my grandmother and their story of
03:46
how they came here from Guanajuato.
03:48
And he, I remember he, Pete's father's name was, I don't remember
03:53
my great grandmother's name.
03:54
And you know, I just remember my grandfather Rocha being a
03:58
And I remember he had these big big rocha hands, like all the
04:01
boys have these big rocha hands, right?
04:04
Um And, and that was some of the things I remember, but it was
04:07
it was interesting that I discovered that later in life like
04:10
until I was 18 or 19 because I was hungry to know more because
04:14
I, all of my friends were white or they were the white or black
04:17
I was the only one that was brown, right?
04:19
And, and I couldn't speak Spanish that well because my father
04:22
had left at a young age.
04:23
And the stories I remember and I wanted to know from him is like
04:27
why did I never hear him speaking Spanish?
04:29
And he would tell me that in East Texas growing up in East Texas
04:34
that it was very important for my grandmother and my grandfather
04:36
for them to assimilate him.
04:38
And his 15 brothers and sisters almost for their own safety
04:42
East Texas in the late fifties and sixties and seventies was
04:45
not a really friendly place to immigrants or to black or brown
04:49
So they tried to be as white as they could be.
04:52
One of the craziest stories that I remember hearing was at
04:54
my grandmother's funeral.
04:56
This would put me about 18 or 19.
04:58
I just got the job in the factory and my grandmother passed
05:00
away grandma, my grandmother, Rocha.
05:02
And I remember my uncles always talking about my grandmother's
05:06
family and they called them the Macs.
05:09
And I couldn't, for the life of me ever figure out my grandmother
05:12
was the most Mexican person I'd ever known in my entire life
05:17
I told you the stories about the tortillas and the hot sauce
05:20
Like if there's a stereotypical Mexican grandmother, it
05:24
But they always referred to her family as the Mac.
05:27
Oh, I would ask my uncle uh who was I with?
05:30
I was with my Uncle Manny sitting in the queue, he worked in
05:32
the factory with me.
05:34
And I asked Uncle Molly, who is that?
05:35
He goes, that's one of the Mac.
05:37
And I was like, well, who was that?
05:38
Oh, that's another one of the Mac.
05:39
And I finally looked at him and I was like, uncle, somebody's
05:43
got to tell me what's the deal with Mac R?
05:46
And he said your grandmother's father grew up on a farm in East
05:49
Texas early, early on.
05:51
And that the last name of the man who owned the farm was Macree
06:00
And my grandmother's given last name for her family was Ruiz
06:07
And my grandmother's father asked the landowner if he could
06:11
change his name to be more American like his name.
06:14
So they literally went to the courthouse and changed his last
06:17
name to be spelled MC Capital Ruiz.
06:22
So when they would go and his Children would go and apply for
06:25
jobs, they would think it was mcree, the white name so they
06:29
And that's how racist it was in East Texas at the time.
06:31
And what families would go to go through to assimilate in East
06:35
Texas, you made a point which uh in the book um that these families
06:40
that went through all of this in order to, you know, change
06:45
their names, try to assimilate very rapidly.
06:49
Uh were not any less Mexican or any less prideful of where they
06:55
And those families that, that, that didn't speak to that a
07:00
I think the reason that these families, my father's family
07:03
the Ramirez is there were only like two or three Mexican families
07:06
in Tyler, Texas, you know, in the sixties and late fifties
07:10
there wasn't a lot of folks, a lot of Latinos around and I think
07:13
that they assimilated in a way that was best for their families
07:18
I don't think they were running away from who they were.
07:20
My grandmother didn't stop making tortillas every day.
07:23
My grandmother didn't stop using a, every day.
07:26
My grandmother had 15 Children.
07:28
Like you couldn't go to my grandmother's house and place your
07:31
hand on the wall and not touch a picture of a grandchild because
07:35
you can imagine how many grandchildren she had and great grandchildren
07:39
She had never worked a regular job, a paying job in her life
07:43
because she spent her entire life raising babies for 15 years
07:47
and then the grand babies.
07:48
But because all of her kids and this is something else interesting
07:52
that actually I didn't even put in the book.
07:53
But almost every one of her kids married an Anglo now, I don't
07:58
think that they were doing that because they were trying to
08:01
I think they did that because that was all that was around.
08:03
So they were doing what all their friends were doing, which
08:06
was finding a beautiful man or a beautiful woman that they
08:08
would fall in love with and they would start raising a family
08:11
The one thing I will say is that the family and, and all of these
08:14
mixed race babies are probably some of the prettiest people
08:17
Minus my big old, ugly ass like they need, there needs to be
08:21
a lot of, of assimilating going on in America because I think
08:23
the mixing of the cultures is a beautiful thing and I never
08:27
heard anything from any of my uncles or any of my aunts or my
08:31
grandparents about like talking about race.
08:34
Like you can't see a white person or you can't, you need to be
08:37
more Mexican like that just wasn't spoken of.
08:39
It was just them trying to actually lead an American life,
08:42
trying to achieve the American dream and do the things that
08:46
they had to do for their family.
08:48
Like my grandmother lived in a small two bedroom house and
08:51
like was a very, very Catholic woman.
08:53
Like the all the things that are stereotypical Mexican.
08:56
But everyone in that family, all 15 of those kids all went on
09:00
to be great successes in her eyes, in our eyes.
09:03
Like they all had regular jobs they all provided for their
09:06
They all were some kind of a middle income family like they
09:09
all did really well because they worked hard.
09:12
My, my grandpa Pete had worked I, that's the story of my uncle
09:18
I keep referring to my Uncle Monty because he was like my closest
09:22
thing to my father as a father to me.
09:23
Besides my father, we worked in the same department in that
09:26
factory where I got that job.
09:28
And I asked him one time, I said, why did Grandpa Pete?
09:33
And that's what we called Pete was why did he set up shop of the
09:36
family in Maybank, Texas and May Bank is 20 miles outside of
09:42
And he said, well, that's where they were building the train
09:45
track when he had enough money to buy the land.
09:48
And I said, what does that even mean?
09:50
He said, well, he was working on the railroad, your grandmother
09:54
was living with her family and when he had enough money in his
09:57
pocket that he had saved from working on the railroad, that's
10:00
where they were, were building the railroad track when they
10:02
came across this piece of land that he could buy.
10:04
So he quit his job and bought the piece of land.
10:08
And that's how the roaches got to East Texas.
10:12
So a long line of blue collar, hardworking people on both sides
10:18
Yeah, there's a long line of people on our family who have just
10:22
figured out how to make it work, but in a good way, right?
10:24
A football coach told me one time that there's no such thing
10:29
It's skill met by opportunity.
10:31
And I think about that a lot when it comes to my grandfather
10:33
like all of the rocha men, all the rocha women are all very
10:38
Uh And I think that's the backbone of my personal success.
10:41
Uh But I also think it's the success that all of, of those folks
10:44
had, right in that, that, that, that set of grandparents,
10:47
Carmen and Pete really were a great example for their Children
10:51
uh who will all have went on to do amazing things.
10:56
Did that experience?
10:57
Did, did, did, did that sort of narrative that played out for
11:02
you growing up on both sides of the family?
11:04
Did that have anything to do with what you ultimately decided
11:07
to pursue as a career, you know, growing up, how I grew up had
11:11
a big influence over what I ended up end up doing at the very
11:15
end, which was doing politics and advocacy work.
11:18
Uh I don't know if it made me a better consultant, but it definitely
11:22
gave me a different vision, right?
11:24
And I still had that same determination as the rest of my family
11:28
I talk about this in the book because it's something that I'm
11:30
very um ashamed of is too harsh a word.
11:33
But I'm self conscious of is that I never went to college.
11:37
Uh And I work in the most powerful rooms in Washington DC.
11:40
I just finished helping run a presidential campaign.
11:42
I've been to the White House, I've been in the oval office.
11:44
I've got to do things that I would never dream.
11:46
And I've never been to college a day in my life.
11:49
But what I know is what, what we're talking about here with
11:52
the family and growing up in East Texas and growing up watching
11:55
my grandmother, watching both of my grandmothers.
11:58
My white grandmother was named Evelyn Bussell.
12:01
She worked in a factory where they made air conditioners for
12:04
25 years until she retired and she was an inspector.
12:06
I remember all of these stories.
12:08
She would go to work at seven in the morning.
12:09
She got off at three in the afternoon.
12:10
My mother was normally working two jobs.
12:13
So when we get off the school bus, it was about the time my grandmother
12:16
would get home the first shift at the factory and we would go
12:19
lay in her living room and watch TV and eat cereal and watch
12:22
whatever programming was on in the evening.
12:24
My entire childhood was being raised by that grandmother
12:27
watching her hard work watching my papa's hard work.
12:30
My white grandfather, Charlie Bussell and then having this
12:33
great role model on the roaches side is definitely the way
12:38
And what makes me different.
12:39
I think when you think about the lens of consulting or having
12:43
to relate with an electorate, I've lived that life like I was
12:48
It, there's nothing against men or women who get to go to Harvard
12:51
and Yale and whose mom and daddy has trust funds for them, good
12:53
And some of them are amazing people, but they didn't live the
12:56
experience that I lived.
12:57
And that gives me a unique lens into the fabric of America that
13:02
makes me so much better at messaging for my candidates are
13:04
my nonprofits that I'm working for because I've lived that
13:08
I know what it's like for my mother who in the book I talk about
13:11
this, my mother would take me to an all day swim class at the
13:15
Did I know she was dropping me and my sister off there to learn
13:18
how to swim, but also it was free day care.
13:21
Uh Those things come to me later in life and I was like, oh, that
13:25
makes much more sense.
13:26
Me and my sister never went without, we never went without
13:30
We always had at least one pair of the best blue jeans that everybody
13:33
else was wearing for all you kids in the eighties.
13:35
Those Joor ashes were hot.
13:36
We all had one pair of Nikes and you better take care of them
13:40
because your mama would whoop your butt if you tore them up
13:42
because we only had one good pair.
13:44
So you learn to appreciate things differently.
13:46
Again, being a high powered political consultant in Washington
13:50
That's not the story that you hear many consultants talk about
13:53
when you're talking to your candidate about how you represent
13:56
and talk to people who feel like they have no representation
13:59
who feel like they don't have a voice in their government
14:01
who feels like their government only adheres to that 1% or
14:04
People are so aligned with that every single day and probably
14:08
have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder about it.
14:10
As well because I feel like I have to get up a little bit earlier
14:13
work a little bit longer because it's harder for me to break
14:17
in to some of those rooms and some of those campaigns.
14:20
And that's why I actually created my firm to give an opportunity
14:23
to those kind of kids who come to this town who are looking for
14:25
those opportunities, knowing the Hispanic market the way
14:31
you do, once you came to DC, you started doing this work.
14:36
What surprised you about that disconnect?
14:40
What they thought they knew about the market that they really
14:44
didn't when I arrived in DC.
14:47
What surprised me the most is how these white establishment
14:50
consultants didn't even understand our community at the
14:54
And when I explain this, when I'm teaching classes and I'm
14:56
talking to young activists, I talk about, my name is Charles
15:00
Rocha on my driver's license.
15:02
My 30 year old son is named Charles Rocha as well on his driver's
15:06
Now on the voter file, me, both of us on the voter file are both
15:11
Charles Roach and we're both Latino voters.
15:14
Mine DC, him and Pennsylvania.
15:18
He's got two kids, my amazing young grandkids, uh Rowan and
15:23
But let's talk about how we consume information every day
15:26
When I come home from work, I'll have some dinner.
15:29
I'll sit in a big chair.
15:30
I'll fix me a glass of iced tea or a bourbon all depending on
15:33
what my day was like.
15:34
I'll turn on a 72 inch plasma TV and I'll watch baseball while
15:39
I'm looking at Facebook.
15:41
I'm probably doing a little work and that's how the rest of
15:44
And I'm served ads on that Facebook.
15:46
I'm served ads during that baseball game and when I get up in
15:49
the morning I start getting, and I'm consuming information
15:53
Well, my son doesn't even own a TV.
15:56
My son doesn't know the first thing about major league baseball
15:59
and we're still considered Latino on the voter file.
16:02
And these consultants, if they chose to talk to Latino communities
16:05
at all, would talk to us in the same way by running a badly translated
16:10
English TV commercial on Univision and thinking that they
16:13
have checked the Latino box and have run a Latino communication
16:16
program where me or my son, either one ain't watching Univision
16:19
We're not watching Telemundo, right?
16:21
We're not watching Tele in the middle of the day either, right
16:23
But the consultants had such a lack of understanding of our
16:27
They, I actually thought that was how you reach out to Latinos
16:30
That and maybe putting 20 or 30 Latinos in a Latino neighborhood
16:35
the last two weeks to have everybody knock on the door to remind
16:38
them, get out to vote.
16:39
Don't forget the elections tomorrow, but has spent no time
16:42
talking to our community for the last two years.
16:44
But show up at the last minute.
16:45
So, you know, during the Bernie campaign, I talk about this
16:47
a lot in the book about how you should do this differently.
16:50
We did it differently and it paid off in Spades.
16:53
Bernie was receptive to your ideas from, from the jump.
16:58
I think Bernie was open to my ideas because we had lived through
17:02
2016 and in 2016, when I was with the campaign as well, we realized
17:08
that Latinos really moved to his messaging, but we learned
17:11
too late to really capitalize and do it in the right way.
17:15
And what I mean by that is Bernie.
17:19
Bernie didn't catch fire till the very end of that campaign
17:21
And we started raising millions of dollars, but not till December
17:25
right before the Iowa caucuses.
17:26
So we're trying to literally fly the airplane while we're
17:29
building the airplane and made lots of mistakes.
17:31
But there's one thing that stood out to me is that there was
17:34
this undertow of support with Latinos that we had spent a ton
17:39
We had spent a bunch of money talking to and they still were
17:41
showing up in bigger numbers than other demographics.
17:44
So when we started the 2020 campaign and I had a much elevated
17:47
job in 2020 I said, let's start where we left off with Latinos
17:52
in 2016 and make them the backbone of our operation.
17:55
So they were open to that.
17:57
But what really helped me is when we first started doing our
18:00
initial set of polls, just like I had imagined Latinos after
18:04
hearing Bernie sanders' message in polling and focus group
18:07
move twice as much towards him than white voters or black voters
18:11
So I had the data on my side and I had the trust of Bernie and Jeff
18:15
Weaver, Bernie, the candidate Jeff Weaver, the other senior
18:18
And then after we brought him on to be the campaign manager
18:21
who said, oh, the data backs up what Chuck is saying, Chuck
18:24
is an expert on, on doing this.
18:26
And literally, my clients were all the Latino organizations
18:29
who do this full time.
18:31
So it was that cultural competency that I brought with a, with
18:35
the understanding that the candidate and the senior advisor
18:37
saw the importance of the demographic and then the trust for
18:40
them to give me millions of dollars and the authority to see
18:44
And so by the end, we had 206 Latino staffers, we spent tens
18:48
of millions of dollars in Spanish advertising in places like
18:52
Iowa and Nevada and California and Texas and really turned
18:56
the political establishment on its head with the way that
18:59
we had pulled this off.
19:00
What did you come out of that campaign?
19:03
Knowing about the Hispanic voter, the, the Hispanic consumer
19:08
that you didn't know going in?
19:10
I learned a lot of lessons coming out of that election that
19:13
I didn't really know until we'd spent this money.
19:15
I thought I knew, but it hadn't been tested, right.
19:18
So, getting Latinos to caucus is hard because caucusing is
19:22
different than voting when you go to somebody and say, well
19:25
you go caucus, that's not just going and voting and walking
19:27
When you gotta go in a room, you gotta raise your hand, you gotta
19:31
It's very intimidating.
19:33
The average Latino primary voters is 10 years younger than
19:36
the average white voter just based off of pure demographics
19:39
We're about 27 as the Latino age for a voter and it's 38 for a
19:44
So you're talking to a younger demographic who's not truly
19:47
comfortable and who don't want to go into a room and really
19:51
hasn't been motivated.
19:52
But the main thing they haven't been done is talk to, I'll use
19:56
this example of what I learned the first time we ran a poll in
20:02
Joe Biden was beating us by five points with Latinos by election
20:09
Seven months later, we would win 73% of the Latino vote and
20:14
we kicked everybody's butt in a long like there was nobody
20:18
And the point I'm making there is I didn't really believe I
20:21
could move that many Latinos in six months to make that big
20:26
of a difference in an election.
20:28
Uh And I proved that it could, it was possible, but it had never
20:32
And I used a lot of jujitsu that I talk about in the book of Little
20:35
things here and little things there that were really different
20:37
But the bottom line was start early, spend lots of money, hire
20:41
people from the community that looked like the community
20:44
and do a culturally competent campaign with Latino staff
20:47
Latino consultants that is delivered at the door by Latinos
20:52
He, he hit a snag in Florida, particularly with Cubans.
20:59
Where did he go wrong?
21:01
I think that there's one thing that you've got to know about
21:03
Bernie Sanders and that you have to take the good with the bad
21:07
And what I mean by that is that he feels very, very strongly
21:11
about representation for people and regular everyday people
21:15
And when he started making the comments about Castro in Florida
21:19
obviously, that's not something that Chuck Roach is running
21:21
to him going, we should hurry up and go talk about how great
21:23
Castro is or how his government had given free education to
21:27
That is not the case.
21:28
But what you saw is a very heartfelt moment from Bernie who
21:32
in his heart with every time he's talked to me, he's talked
21:35
about Castro being a dictator and being bad person and the
21:40
horrible things that the Castro government did to its people
21:43
He's told me all these things, but he would also because he
21:45
just could not recognize that there were some minor things
21:49
that were done that were probably good, like educating farmers
21:53
and this and that and the little pieces of it because he just
21:56
believed that there was not totality of everything was bad
21:58
or everything was good and to do it over again, I would have
22:01
just had him keep that to himself.
22:03
So you should just know that that's where him, me and the advisors
22:06
were and every day that that would come up, I'd be like, can
22:09
we quit talking about Cuba?
22:10
There are so many other things that we could talk about this
22:12
little island in the ocean with this dictator, right?
22:15
Let's talk about all the other things.
22:16
But the reporters that was Catnip and especially in South
22:21
And especially with this Cuban community uh in Florida, was
22:24
that an issue of him being brutally honest and not being willing
22:28
to sort of reposition this to be more palatable to the Cuban
22:36
market was at him again since my voice isn't heard here.
22:39
Was that him saying?
22:40
This is the way I feel about this and not everything coming
22:43
out of that island has been horrible.
22:46
And if you don't like it too bad, the one thing you get for Bernie
22:49
Sanders all the time is the truth, like whether you like it
22:51
or you don't like it, like he's always gonna tell you exactly
22:54
how he feels and that's just how he feels like he really believes
22:59
that, that not everything in Cuba has been bad.
23:01
He would tell you that he thinks 95% of it is.
23:03
And he would openly tell you that Castro and his brother is
23:06
a dictatorship, right?
23:08
And that it's a bad place in what they've done to people is horrible
23:11
But he, you're not going to get him to flinch when it comes to
23:14
not saying that some of the little things that they may have
23:16
done were good and that's just who he is.
23:18
Like, he believes that he believes it to be true, but he's not
23:22
going to bend because the media don't like it.
23:24
And that's good for a consultant.
23:26
99% of the time, I could imagine.
23:33
Yeah, that was just such a storm in Florida when that whole
23:37
Uh This is how I feel about Cuban primary voters and about all
23:41
Anybody who's done 10 seconds worth of work in South Florida
23:44
understands the demographics down there, especially if
23:46
you're Latino and if you're competing in a Democratic primary
23:49
the thing that we went up with, with the Castro.
23:51
Sure it raised all kinds of holy hell with the Cuban community
23:54
but in a democratic primary, it doesn't kill you.
23:57
And we even got half of all the Cuban support in the primary
24:01
because the Cubans that are voting in a Democratic primary
24:05
Don't think that what he said?
24:07
And all the Cubans who think that Bernie Sanders is the devil
24:10
himself are saying it are voting in the Republican primary
24:13
and it's a bigger issue in the general election spot.
24:17
What drew you to, to Bernie Iii I my takeaway from the book was
24:24
that you have an enormous amount of respect for him.
24:28
Um bring that to life for me.
24:33
What is it about him?
24:33
That that is, that makes him a man to be admired.
24:38
You know, there's certain things about Bernie Sanders that
24:40
drew me to him as a candidate or drew me to him as a person.
24:44
Um I've always aligned with the values of the part of our party
24:49
that really stand up for regular people coming out of the labor
24:53
movement starting as a factory worker was a big part of who
24:57
People ask me a lot of times what's the one issue that got you
25:01
And they expect for me to say immigration or talk about health
25:04
And I say it was a North American free trade agreement.
25:07
It's trade policy is why I got involved and they like gay.
25:10
Like what's what in the?
25:12
And I tell him about that factory where me and my daddy worked
25:15
Because what I didn't tell you is that five of his brothers
25:18
worked there and a bunch of my cousins worked there and it was
25:21
the best job in East Texas between Dallas, Texas and Shreveport
25:26
Uh and they closed that factory and moved those jobs to China
25:29
some probably 20 years ago now.
25:32
But after I've left the factory and went to work for the union
25:34
full time, um 1500 men lost their job, including my father
25:38
his uncles, many of my cousins and all the kids I grew up with
25:41
It was the best job ever.
25:42
Cadillac health care benefits.
25:44
You could raise a family.
25:45
It's the old school job where your dad leaves in the morning
25:48
with a lunch kit and he comes home and everybody's got insurance
25:50
You can take a summer vacation, blah, blah, blah.
25:52
The company took all of that and just, you know, threw it all
25:55
away and it's just something that sat with me wrong my entire
25:58
Well, Bernie Sanders had always stood up for those people
26:01
Bernie Sanders had always been a Stallworth labor representative
26:04
and always stood up for the little person and talked about
26:06
the importance of that.
26:07
So I'd always, and I talk about in the book meeting him for the
26:10
first time when I'm up here doing citizen lobbying against
26:13
fast tracking these trade agreements because I was a poster
26:15
child of these trade agreements at that point.
26:17
But what was unique that I didn't know what that was unique
26:20
is that I'm this big old brown man from Texas who sounds like
26:24
an old white man when I speak.
26:25
And I had a really unique voice because I aligned with Latinos
26:30
But you could not redneck me.
26:32
Like I knew everything about all these redneck congressmen
26:35
who represent rural areas and they wanna talk about tractors
26:37
and farms and all of that.
26:38
Like I could beat him to death with that.
26:40
Like I, I grew up there but you don't expect that coming out
26:44
of a brown man's face.
26:46
You know, when he's talking about having a tractor and understanding
26:48
what rural America is like because I grew up there, right?
26:51
So that's one of the things that drew me to Bernie.
26:53
And I make a lot of, of comparisons in the book between Bernie
26:58
Sanders and my grandfather uh Charlie Bussell, the old white
27:02
man who was there in my life all my life growing up who really
27:05
served as my father in my early years, who was just tougher
27:09
And when I talk about Papa, it makes me think about burnt rubber
27:12
No, it makes me think about burnt leather and old spice.
27:15
Like if you combine those two smells, that's my father, my
27:19
I remember watching him shave and him put the oil in his hair
27:22
and him throwing the face wash in his face after he shaved and
27:26
me just watching it as a little boy, he taught me how to be a man
27:29
And he taught me what hard work was like and he taught me what
27:32
values was like and that's why I'm not giving Bernie Sanders
27:35
I really do think of Bernie Sanders in that way.
27:37
Like when Bernie Sanders talks, you listen, he's always going
27:40
to be a man of his values and talk about exactly the way he thinks
27:44
And for a man who's as old as Bernie, I talk about my grandfather
27:49
always being able to outwork me, even though I was 6 ft tall
27:52
weighed £300 was just meaner than Hale, stronger than an
27:56
My papa could still outwork me every day.
27:59
Well, Bernie Sanders, if you're out on the road with Bernie
28:01
Sanders, you can't keep up with Bernie Sanders like it's just
28:04
one of those things.
28:04
So that drew me to Bernie is the way he looked at issues.
28:08
The biggest thing with Bernie Sanders is me is that he took
28:11
a chance on me and treated me with respect.
28:14
And there's a piece in the book where I talk about prior to him
28:17
getting in the race in 2015, I had actually applied to work
28:21
for Hillary Clinton because she was going to be the only one
28:23
who actually ran and I was gonna be her Latino consultant.
28:26
So I give her team all of my Spanish TV and radio and mail and
28:31
they, I talk about this in the book.
28:33
They invited me over to a big pitch at the media firm and I walked
28:36
into this big grand meeting room is very intimidating.
28:40
I was surrounded by 20 different staffers and I have to show
28:43
them all my products.
28:44
And I was just nervous, more nervous than a long tailed cat
28:48
in a rocking chair factory.
28:49
Like I was just uptight and thinking back on that, um it was
28:55
it was a great experience for me to see how the pitch is supposed
28:57
to be done in, in, in a, in a setting that's supposed to be made
29:00
to intimidate me later on.
29:02
I would find out a month later that, um, they wouldn't hire
29:06
me because I couldn't pass the vetting and I didn't understand
29:09
But I talk about this in the book.
29:10
I had made a mistake with the steel workers and I have a non violent
29:15
It was over a $500 mistake that I made on my expenses.
29:18
But this is a lesson to all of you young people when you have
29:20
a corporate credit card, do not put gas in your personal vehicle
29:24
Now, that don't sound like a big deal.
29:25
But if you work for a union that that's a big deal and you can
29:29
get in trouble and I got in trouble and I had to own up to that
29:31
mistake and I did and I paid for it.
29:33
I had to pay a fine.
29:34
I had to be on probation.
29:35
I was treated like a criminal like it was very, very hard for
29:39
It was embarrassing for me.
29:40
It was embarrassing to my family and I had to live through this
29:43
But I didn't realize at the time, I thought that was the worst
29:47
thing that has ever happened to me and that ever could happen
29:49
to me when actually it was probably the best thing that ever
29:51
happened to me because it taught me a lesson.
29:54
It taught me to own it.
29:55
But it also taught me to work hard to rebuild, to get back to
29:59
And when I had that same conversation with Bernie Sanders
30:01
and Jeff Weaver, three months later, when they were gonna
30:03
hire me and I was like, I'm gonna get this out of the way right
30:07
Gentlemen, you should know that this thing is on the internet
30:09
I do have a criminal record.
30:10
If somebody wanted to do a Google search, you know, somebody
30:13
could come after you for having a felon on your campaign.
30:16
And I remember Jeff kind of giggling and I was like that, not
30:20
it's supposed to be funny.
30:21
He's like, Chuck, he's like, he's like, we knew about this
30:23
the first time we ever talked to you.
30:25
He was like, if it would have been an issue, I'd have brought
30:27
I'm like, well, what's, what, how are we gonna handle that
30:30
If I actually do it?
30:30
He goes handle what he and I was like, does Bernie know this
30:34
And he said sure Bernie knows he goes.
30:35
Bernie said, how long are you supposed to pay for a crime that
30:38
you've already paid for?
30:40
How long are you supposed to be punished?
30:42
And it was, at that point, I really thought I found a politician
30:45
who lived his values because politicians talk about criminal
30:48
justice reform and diversity and helping people make it,
30:51
who are on hard times.
30:53
But I had had one politician after another go, you know, Chuck
30:55
we really like to work with you but you know, we don't want
30:57
to take a press hit over something that had happened in your
31:00
past because you have a criminal record and these are democrats
31:04
These are liberal democrats who are supposed to be all about
31:06
redemption and criminal justice reform.
31:08
But Bernie Sanders was the first one or the biggest one who
31:11
had said, oh no, no, we want you to work here like that's over
31:15
like you've paid your price.
31:16
You don't have to pay for that anymore.
31:17
You don't have to be embarrassed the rest of your life because
31:19
you made that mistake.
31:20
We welcome you here.
31:22
And so that was the biggest turning point.
31:24
People are like, Chuck, why did you go back to work for Bernie
31:29
You know, you could have worked for Kamala Harris, you could
31:31
have worked for Cory Booker.
31:32
You could have worked for Joe Biden.
31:33
You, I could have had my pick of who I wanted to work for.
31:36
And I was like, I'll always be loyal to Bernie after what he
31:39
Like he was there for me when I needed him the most and I'll always
31:43
And I talk about that in the book.
31:45
You can't forget that.
31:47
As a man, you can't forget that.
31:50
What did that tell you about Bernie as a man?
31:52
Forget about as a politician.
31:53
What did that teach you about him as a man?
31:56
But what kind of insight into his character did that give you
32:00
when Bernie took a chance on me?
32:01
And despite all the things in my past, still hired me to be a
32:04
senior advisor and helped run the day to day.
32:06
Like he gave me more responsibility than that.
32:08
I interviewed every staffer.
32:10
I opened up the office, I went and found the buildings.
32:12
I, I hired all the senior staff with Jeff Weaver, like I had
32:16
ultimate power until we brought the manager on.
32:18
And then I reported to the manager who I love, who was the perfect
32:21
choice to be the manager.
32:22
I tell a funny story in the book about how Jeff Weaver and Bernie
32:27
mainly Jeff had come to me and said, because I'd been looking
32:29
for a manager and he was like, have you ever considered doing
32:33
And I was like, and I tell this long thing about how I didn't
32:37
take the job and I made the right choice not to take the job.
32:40
But fast was the perfect person for the job because you need
32:43
somebody with a cool head who can put up with all of this stuff
32:46
And after watching fast do it for like two months, I was like
32:49
they would have fired me immediately because I would have
32:51
I know that that's what would have happened.
32:54
But Bernie Sanders as a man after Bernie took a chance on me
32:59
and stood by my side and had my back, I got to know a lot more about
33:05
Uh because I got to go to Burlington and, and go to his home,
33:08
I got to eat dinner with him and his wife at their home sometimes
33:12
and we would have senior meetings.
33:14
Uh And the thing that I realized that I learned about Bernie
33:18
is that we all think of him as superhuman and something that's
33:21
a caricature, but he's just a man.
33:25
And the thing I love about that is that he's a grandfather.
33:28
And if you ever really want to get to Bernie and the only two
33:32
times I ever saw Bernie Sanders cry was in reference to kids
33:36
because that's how strongly he feels about his grandchildren
33:39
and about Children in general about wanting to help Children
33:43
Um The first time was in the early on in this campaign when a
33:49
young dreamer girl got up and cried about her experiences
33:52
as a dreamer and about her family and about them being deported
33:55
maybe and the scared and her feeling scared and he broke down
33:58
on stage, you could see him, right?
33:59
Get upset and, and a tear.
34:02
People don't think about Bernie that way.
34:03
And the second time was during an interview, I talk about this
34:07
The second time I saw him get upset was when we were doing the
34:10
interview with Anna Lia Maia who was the national political
34:15
And the last question in the interview was about why do you
34:19
want to beat Donald Trump so bad?
34:21
And she talked about her two little Children and Anna Lia who
34:24
is Colombian and Dominican uh is married to an African American
34:30
So she has these two little fuzzy headed beautiful Children
34:34
these two little boys with these big little Afros and they're
34:37
just the most beautiful little boys I've ever seen short of
34:40
And she talks about the fear of them growing up in a Donald Trump
34:44
She talks about the fear of them growing up in a society that's
34:48
not scared anymore to be openly racist.
34:50
And it upset her, it upset him.
34:52
They had this moment in the meeting.
34:55
And I remember getting up and I wrote this in the book, I remember
34:57
getting up and looking at Jeff Weaver and I was like, does this
35:01
happen all the time?
35:02
He was like, no, this just never happened.
35:05
And I was like, I assume she's gonna get the job and he goes,
35:07
oh, yeah, I think she's gonna be just fine.
35:09
So that was a funny part of the book about the first time I had
35:12
been in a meeting like that with Bernie when he did that.
35:14
But that's who Bernie is.
35:15
To me as a man is the caricature that's steadfast on all the
35:19
Medicare for all funny talking all the things that he does
35:23
But also at his heart, he's, he's a grandfather and he's just
35:26
just, and he gets just as emotional as the rest of us.
35:29
When we talk about our grandkids, talk to me about the process
35:33
of writing this book.
35:35
The process of writing this book was, was different uh, than
35:40
anything I had ever done.
35:42
My, my girlfriend Ebony, who is my right hand on many things
35:47
I call her my conscious because she leads me the right way.
35:50
Lots of times she makes fun because I'm not a prolific reader
35:54
of books because my eyesight is so bad.
35:57
So now II I, the reading that I do is normally polls, focus groups
36:01
and things about work.
36:02
I don't have time for novels.
36:04
I don't have time for nonfiction.
36:06
And if you want me to have an escape, we need to go get on the water
36:10
in Miami or down in Amara and put me on the front of a boat, that's
36:13
where I like to be away from things.
36:15
So she had taught me out of calling my book, I never read a book
36:20
So I thought that may not be the best title.
36:23
Um And the reason that the experience was really different
36:28
for me was I wanted a way to give people an insight into the campaign
36:35
There's really two reasons.
36:36
One is I wanted to have an open source record of what we did with
36:39
the most historical Latino outreach operation in the history
36:43
of American politics.
36:44
And I don't say that lightly.
36:47
It was my entire team.
36:48
206 Latinos did that, but I wanted no one to ever look at me or
36:53
any Latino again and say, you know, Chuck Latinos just don't
36:57
really vote, they don't vote at the same level, they just don't
37:00
They're just, you know, they're just not there yet.
37:02
And if somebody else is sleeping GT to me, I'm gonna probably
37:04
punch them in their nose if they call us the sleeping giant
37:08
I wanted to prove that there that we were a giant that we're
37:11
no longer sleeping, that we're just walking right down the
37:14
middle of Fifth Avenue and we're ready to take on Donald Trump
37:17
and I had one chance to do that and we did it and we did it in the
37:20
most historical of ways.
37:22
So I wanted to dictate and put that down into an open source
37:25
where everybody could do what I did.
37:26
My friends would say Chuck, you could have marketed that you
37:29
could have made a billion dollars.
37:30
You could have done this.
37:31
I don't care about the money.
37:32
I wanted our community to have a voice.
37:34
That's why I did this work.
37:35
That's why I do this work.
37:37
So being able to write down how we did it when we did it.
37:40
What was the challenges I had to overcome to get it done?
37:43
All that's in the book, state by state budget, by budget.
37:46
So now no one can ever worry about how to do it.
37:48
But that's the second half of the book.
37:51
The first half of the book is my true journey to Bernie.
37:54
And I needed people to know that my mother was 15.
37:58
I needed them to know that I had to go back and forth between
38:01
a white family and a brown family in my childhood.
38:04
I needed them to know that there was a reason my Spanish ain't
38:06
as good as it should be.
38:07
I needed them to know that I live with my own insecurities and
38:11
And that as an old man now, I can say that it's ok to be insecure
38:14
and how I yearn to please men.
38:17
And I, because my dad wasn't around and, and I realized that
38:19
as I got older, that you, that I, I wanted to please Jeff Weaver
38:25
I wanted to please Bernie Sanders.
38:26
I wanted to please the president of the union, Leo Gerard.
38:30
When I was at the steel workers, I wanted to please John Nash
38:33
When I was at the local union, there were these big men in my
38:36
life that I looked up to that I learned to please.
38:39
So I get up early and I'd work late and I want them to think I was
38:44
And that led to my journey to Bernie to say I went through all
38:48
these things, I went through the experience of having a criminal
38:52
I went through rebuilding my life.
38:54
I went through the experience of raising a son by myself.
38:56
And all of these things are the stories of the majority of young
39:00
black and brown girls and boys in America, the majority of
39:04
young black and brown kids don't go to college and they don't
39:07
have an uncle or an aunt or a grandfather who can get them a job
39:11
They have the same obstacles that I had and I needed them to
39:14
know if they could read my book.
39:16
And it would just be one of many game plans that they could use
39:19
to try to succeed in a world that treats us a little bit different
39:23
either because of the way we look, the color of our skin, the
39:26
way that we talk or where we come from.
39:28
And that shouldn't define us.
39:29
And I've proven that it don't define me and I need them to read
39:32
this book to show that it doesn't define them.
39:35
Looking back over your life as you've had to do and putting
39:39
this, this wonderful book together.
39:41
Um What would you say you're the proudest of?
39:45
There's lots of things in my life that I'm really proud of and
39:47
I get to do work with politicians.
39:49
I get to do work with nonprofits.
39:51
I get to speak for immigrants.
39:53
I get to do all this cool work.
39:54
But at the end of the day, it's work and you get to feel good about
39:59
But it's your family that you really have to be the proudest
40:01
of like, you know, my son who is 30 now has two four-year old
40:09
grandkids, my grandkids his kids and I'm probably the most
40:13
proud of him, right?
40:13
Because I was not the best father.
40:16
And I openly admit I was not the best father.
40:18
Uh I was on the road organizing and I talk about how Chuck Rocha
40:23
I didn't raise my son, my grandmother and my mother and my sister
40:26
and the whole family raised my son with me because I was on the
40:28
road organizing, right?
40:29
So I never showed this boy how to be the right kind of father
40:33
I tried to give him advice.
40:35
I probably uh wasn't home as much as I should be and to watch
40:40
the father that he's turned into now, that's what I'm definitely
40:45
And I think everything else is just secondary.
40:48
I think that I've been to the White House, I've got to run a presidential
40:51
campaign, but none of those experiences will make me as proud
40:56
And what he's done with two boys that he's now having to raise
40:59
Now, let's be clear, it helps that he has a grandfather who
41:02
hasn't done that bad in business, who can help out from time
41:05
to time like, but what the honest truth of that is is I had a grandmother
41:09
who did the same thing for me, right?
41:11
So if I listed the things in my life that I'm most proud of, I'm
41:15
most proud of my son and him raising these two boys.
41:18
The second thing I'm proud of is 100 young brown and black kids
41:23
who've come through my firm in 10.5 years.
41:25
I've created a consulting firm that's half incubator and
41:28
half consulting firm.
41:29
That means if you come to this town and you're brown or black
41:32
you come from no means and you're looking for your first job
41:35
everybody in this town will tell you you should go have coffee
41:39
I'll give everybody 30 minutes.
41:41
If you're from Texas, you get an hour and if you will come and
41:43
sit with me, I will talk to you about getting a job.
41:47
And if I have an open computer in our office, I will automatically
41:50
give you a job, pay you $500 a week, pay for your bus fare or your
41:55
So you can get to work and you can find some place to sleep on
41:59
I won't call you an intern.
42:01
I won't call you a fellow and I'll call you an associate.
42:04
And if you can do that for six months, you can get a job anywhere
42:07
And I've done that 100 times now.
42:09
Not everybody in my firm makes $500 a week.
42:11
I'm just talking about a paid internship that I'm calling
42:15
Uh So that's the second thing I'm most proud of is if we don't
42:18
create space for other people, it does no good for us to become
42:22
You have to create the space so that other people can follow
42:25
in your footsteps, right?
42:26
206 Latinos on the Bernie Sanders campaign.
42:29
I did the same thing like I'd done running the firm.
42:31
So the second thing that I'm most, most proud of are those 100
42:34
young kids who came through my firm, who many of them now own
42:37
their own consulting firm.
42:38
And then the third thing would be the Bernie Sanders campaign
42:41
and the Latino outreach program.
42:42
So we finally could prove something beyond a shadow of a doubt
Series