Americans are sick and tired of the blatant corruption, graft, and uncertainty imposed by the Trump administration over the past year. From increasing healthcare costs to ICE terrorizing communities on the street, it is simply untenable to live in America as it exists now.
Joe Kerr wants to fix that — it’s why he’s running for the U.S. House of Representative in California’s 40th Congressional district. Kerr joins Jen to discuss his leadership as a firefighter, protecting the interests of working class families in Congress, putting reforms on ICE, and more!
To learn more about Kerr’s campaign, click here.
Joe Kerr is running for election to the U.S. House to represent California’s 40th Congressional District. He is on the ballot in the primary on June 2, 2026. Joe Kerr is a second-generation firefighter who served as a Fire Captain with the Orange County Fire Authority for 34 years. As a labor leader, Joe helped get over 200 bills and initiatives passed and signed into law by five CA governors and 2 U.S. presidents.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. I am delighted to welcome Joe Kerr. Who is Joe Kerr? Joe Kerr is a lifelong firefighter, but he is also running for Congress in the redistricted Congressional 40th District of California. Welcome, Joe, it’s great to meet you.
Joe Kerr
It’s a pleasure, Jen. Thank you so much for having me.
Jen Rubin
So you have two Republican incumbents of a sort in the race. Tell us about them and why you think you’d be a better choice.
Joe Kerr
I appreciate it. Well, under Prop 50, we had redistricting in the state of California. There’s, you know, 6 districts that are going to be in play here. Ken Calvert’s been in Congress for 33 years, has decided to abandon his old district near Palm Springs to run against Young Kim in the Orange and Riverside area. And she’s been in office for a while. Both of them are hardcore Trump supporters.
Right now, they’re actually trying to out-Trump each other. To see who’s more Trumpy. And they now have two MAGA incumbents running against each other in the primary. Now, the fun thing about that is they will expend all their money in the primary, which will give us a fair fighting chance in November. It’s just a matter of getting through a crowded primary field to get on to November.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Why did you decide to run in the race rather than continue your career in firefighting? I think most people think firefighting is a great job.
Joe Kerr
I would tell you, firefighting is a lot more safer than politics, to be honest. In a house fire, you can only die one death. In politics, it’s every day. Because I don’t want to stand on the sidelines. I want to give people hope. Right now, we have a constitutional emergency, I believe. We’re in a crisis. Firefighters, first responders, they’re problem solvers. They deal with a citizens’ worst emergency in their entire lives in a 40-minute sound bite, and they try to save them, cut them out of the car, bring them out of the burning building, help them with a heart attack, get them breathing again, and then get cleaned up and get ready for the next emergency and the next emergency.
And as a pragmatic problem solver, the best place I can be where I can help America and our constitutional republic is being in the United States Congress. And I’ve been going back to D.C. since the 1990s, representing first responders in the United States and California on a whole host of issues, so I’m very familiar. With how to get things done back there.
Jen Rubin
And you have, you’ve been a part of many legislative efforts. Tell us a little bit about those and what you’ve done for the California firefighters, police, first responders.
Joe Kerr
Well, I’ll tell you the truth, Jen. When I started, you know, I was a fire captain, and the county of Orange went bankrupt back in the 90s, and a week later, I was the union president. We had mass layoffs, all of our paramedics were going to be fired, laid off, privatized, our pensions were stolen from us, and I didn’t know what to do. I must have been asleep during civics class. I picked up the phone and called, you know, 202-555-1212 and asked to speak to the White House. I wanted to speak to a guy who lived there. I was too embarrassed to say president. I wasn’t familiar with legislation and political action. And I didn’t talk to the president. I talked to intern after intern. They got younger and younger. I was thinking they should have gotten older and older. And 18 months later, the president, Bill Clinton, signed a bill to protect all public employees from ever having their pensions stolen to pay off for a bankruptcy debt.
And then we got involved with 5 governors, 2 presidents, 200 bipartisan bills were signed, and we did that with a lot of unions, public safety folks, protecting firefighters who were killed in the line of duty from cardiac events, doing staffing studies nationally, and for the first responders with FEMA and Urban Search and Rescue that go to 9-11 and go to Katrina. After Katrina, they were no longer properly funded because of the Great Recession. So we went to… we had to learn about appropriations, and how we get funding for all 28 national teams, from New York to California, and we had great success, but it was always broad coalitions. It wasn’t just me alone, and it was a lot of people throughout the country making sure your first responders were properly funded.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Many people in Congress are millionaires or billionaires, and they haven’t worked for a living in a long time, or they’re lawyers. What do you think your perspective, as someone who’s been a firefighter, someone who’s not independently wealthy, can bring to the U.S. Congress that really isn’t present right now?
Joe Kerr
I’m a second-generation firefighter. My brothers were military, Marines, Navy SEALs, firefighters, police officers. My mom was a reverend. We come from a working-class family. I had my name on my shirt my entire career. What we bring is the perspective of working families. If you can take care of working families, then you can take care of everybody in the community, in the economy. Working families spend money in the district. You protect their healthcare, you protect their wages, you protect their pension, and you take the burden off of society and so forth.
There’s less than 4% of the 435 members of Congress have any union background. And when it comes to unions and collective bargaining, unions are on the front lines of protecting civil rights. 40-hour work week, the 8-hour day. Protecting immigration status, protecting citizen rights, and so forth. As goes organized labor, so goes democracy, and I believe that. So as a working families representative for years, I just want to bring some common sense to you as Congress.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. What is the biggest issue that you hear from voters, as you travel around the district, the president seems to think affordability is a hoax. But a lot of people seem concerned about prices, and now gas prices, I know, in California are through the roof. Is that what most people are concerned with?
Joe Kerr
Yeah, I was in the district yesterday, in the Riverside County portion, talking to a lot of folks. One was a former military veteran, female veteran, fully disabled from the United States Navy. Another was a teacher from Compton, and a grandma, and they have two things. They have two things that are very, very important to them. One is the cost of living emergency. It’s very important. Gas is $6 a gallon. in California. And it’s a crisis right now. Gas, groceries, housing, and healthcare. It’s not sustainable. 18- to 35-year-olds can’t buy a house, and my 22-year-old son says, Dad, will I ever be able to afford a house? And what about healthcare in the future? So the cost of living emergency in California is at a crisis level.
The other issue, and both folks wanted to talk to… all the folks that I talked to yesterday wanted to talk for a long time about the constitutional emergency we’re under right now. and democracy being under attack, and to start having the Congress push back against the President of the United States and anybody that doesn’t follow constitution or statutory law. And they’re tired of the United States Congress abdicating their authority to the White House. There needs to be a sense of balance and give and take, whether it’s war, or budget, or tariffs. or healthcare funding, they want the craziness to end, and on one hand, they say, I don’t even know why I want to vote, and on the other hand, they say, I wish voting was tomorrow, because I… they need hope. Everybody here needs hope, and they know that now, after talking to them.
When we get through this election, we will take back the House. We will be able to push back, we will be able to get some semblance of normalcy, but we’re gonna have to get through the election, and people can’t stand on the sidelines. If you want to hope, you gotta vote.
Jen Rubin
Exactly. One of the other things that I hear a lot from voters is just the outright corruption, whether it’s cryptocurrency donations or Jared Kushner getting investments from sheikhs and princes while he negotiates the Iran deal. No one begrudges anyone from getting rich, but getting rich at the expense of others or on the public payroll is a different manner. How concerned are you that just the quality of our government has been corrupted under this president, and that we’re now operating, more like a mob than a government?
Joe Kerr
We need to have oversight. People tell me, Ken Calvert’s been in Congress for 33 years, and he’s now worth $20 million. Now, how did he do that? And people tell me, we believe he used appropriations money to help, you know, with real estate and so forth. But we need to make sure there’s no insider trading with the folks in the United States Congress. We need to have term limits, we need to have guardrails. You know, my friends and neighbors in the neighborhood are getting stuff like this from Young Kim. And instead of saying, you know, I just got off the phone with somebody helping them with Medicare Part B on Form 44, they didn’t know because they lost a lot of their income, and they’re still getting exorbitant fees on Medicare. Instead of young Kim putting out mailers saying, hey. Let me help veterans. Let me help Medicaid recipients. Let me help Affordable Care Act subsidies. Let me help Medicare.
What she’s putting out is, I vote 100% with Trump. And if you look on the back, it’s paid for by us. It’s paid for by the United States taxpayer, which is a violation of the franking privilege. These folks need to be held accountable, and we need oversight on everybody on both sides of the aisle. And right now, you’re right, there’s a lot of corruption going on, and people are sick and tired of it.
Jen Rubin
There are a lot of people in your district, obviously, who voted for President Trump, but they may be disillusioned. They may not have voted for what they’re getting. What do you hear from independents, from Republicans, who may have been Trump voters, but now they’re concerned about the way things are going?
Joe Kerr
You know what, I talk to a lot of folks, they’re pretty much common sense, too, and I’ve gotten all the union endorsements. I’m very proud to have the California Labor Federation, Inland Empire Building Trades, Orange County Labor Fed, teachers, and so forth, and firefighters. And a lot of… some of those folks did vote for President Trump, and now they’re realizing, if you’re in the building trades. You’re driving further and further to work. And I know we’re gonna have a change in the economy when you have an iron worker, instead of driving a half hour from his home, or an hour from his home, he’s now driving to Arizona. Or he’s driving to Central California. And I asked the leaders of the unions, I go, you’re members that voted for Trump? Because I had, when I was union president, I had a lot of members of Republican. And he said, well, they’re a lot quieter now, because they realize that the infrastructure money that kept a lot of folks employed was from Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and the Build Back Better dollars. And the money that used to go to the infrastructure for the roads, the highways, the freeways, clean water, I was on the governor’s water control board, all that money is starting to dry up, and now some of these folks are worried about their jobs. So we used to tell people, vote your pocketbook.
For union members, it’s wages, hours, conditions of employment, and for fairness, and so forth. But they’re also pragmatic, they’re also realists, they get to vote for who they want, but they realize they made a mistake. And frankly, I think the messaging from the Democratic Party last go-around on the economy wasn’t spot on. I think we’re all over the the map, and I knocked on a woman’s door, I’ll just be real brief. She was a single mom in the city of Orange, and she said, Joe, all your issues on climate and LGBTQ, on pro-choice, they’re all very important. But unless and until I can put food on the table, and a roof over my two kids. then it doesn’t matter. And my mom used to say, charity begins at home. If you can’t take care of your own family, then you can’t afford to take care of anyone else. And that’s what people are feeling right now, especially. those who voted for Trump in the last election. And they’re very pragmatic about it.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Donald Trump, has tried to discontinue all kinds of green, renewable energy. He’s tried to ban the windmills, which he doesn’t like. He doesn’t understand how the green energy market really operates. So China has soared ahead of us. And of course, that makes us more dependent upon fossil fuels. California has always had a very diverse economic and energy portfolio. What’s your view in terms of, energy? What does California need? What should be our energy policy going forward?
Joe Kerr
Well, when we move to those other fields, I’m 100% in support of clean tech and green tech. And I think, actually, Southern California, Riverside, and Orange counties are really poised to move into those areas and help with manufacturing and distribution and so forth. I love California’s policies on that, as far as cap and trade and so forth. I just don’t want to see any jobs lost. As we move to clean tech and green tech, and I think we can do that, I think we need to do that, and I think Trump is way off base as far as ignoring those two fields.
But I also recognize, when it comes to climatic extremes and climate change. All those areas are very important, but unless and until we control our wildfire problem. We’re never going to be able to control climate change. 18% of CO2 greenhouse gases is from wildfire. UC San Diego studies tell us that 100,000-acre wildfire is equivalent in CO2 greenhouse gases to 7 million cars running continuously for a year. We’ll get 40 of those fires in California in a bad year. Canada will get 400 of those fires. They’ll burn thousand-year-old. Boreal forests. 40 million acres that have been there containing CO2 for millennium, and then it’s gone, and it’s in the atmosphere… it’ll be in the atmosphere for the next 100 years. So I believe in cleantech and green tech, and I want to push those spaces for solar and wind. But I also believe that we have to contain these wildfires. People are losing their homes, and I’ll be honest with you, Jen, one of the top three issues in this district is fire insurance. I just talked to somebody who’s paying $2,000 a month for fire insurance for their home. How do you afford that?
Jen Rubin
That is wild. And Donald Trump, by the way, just, now wants to decommission the Forest Service, so, those folks are gonna be, unemployed as well. California has a very vibrant economy, and much of that economy has been affected by Donald Trump’s raids on hardworking immigrants, frankly. Whether it’s agriculture, whether it’s construction, as you know. And he said he was going to get rid of the worst of the worst. He’s actually going after the workforce that is the glue that holds a lot of California industries together. What’s your concern? What’s your view in terms of immigration, border safety? What should we be doing, and what shouldn’t we be doing?
Joe Kerr
Well, I’ve got extended family members that live in Mexico that visit, and they’re scared to death when they visit, and they keep their passport and their visa, and they try to never leave the house. I have close friends, that have been trying for 7 years to get to an immigration judge. 7 years. We need to expand the courts, and we need to expand the judges. And it’s a hypocrisy, because first-generation Americans and immigrants pick our groceries, they take care of our services, they’re some of the most hard-working people on the planet. We need to get back to reform. I don’t want to see folks in masks terrorizing folks. They shouldn’t be in roving bands. They shouldn’t be masked. They should have their name tag on. They should follow the law. It should be proper warrants, not administrative warrants, but proper court warrants and so forth, but we need to have reform. These folks are being terrorized. Some are being hurt.
I saw a video of an 80-year-old man A Mexican-American in Los Angeles, thrown to the ground by ice, where he had to go to the emergency center, the trauma center. This isn’t America. This isn’t us. We’re better than this. We need to follow a law. And by the way, if you’re in this country. quote-unquote, illegally, it’s a misdemeanor. It’s a misdemeanor. The vast majority of these people, you know this, Jen, they’re not criminals. They’re hard workers. They pick the fruit, they mow the lawn, they serve the tables, they’re here for the American dream, just like my grandparents came here, and other people’s parents and grandparents came here. We need to follow the law, and they are entitled to constitutional protections under the Constitution. So, we’re working with a lot of people to make sure that happens, and again, a lot of unions are stepping up. To make sure that immigrants, immigrant rights, first-generation Americans, their rights are protected under the law.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Joe, if people want to learn more about you, about the campaign, about the issues, where do they go?
Joe Kerr
Go to JoeKerrforcongress.com, joeerforcongress.com, and if you want to volunteer, if you want to contribute, if you want to have a conversation with me, I’d love to. We do that all day, every day. This is one of the most vital races in the country, and we could flip this seat, we could take back the House, and we could protect democracy. And I appreciate you, Jen, and all your team.
Jen Rubin
Thank you. And folks, this is right. This is one of those critical districts. If Democrats can take this, it’s that much closer to winning the House. And by the way, they need to win by a good margin, because Donald Trump is going to be up to all kinds of shenanigans in November. Joe, it was an absolute pleasure meeting you. We’re going to be following the race. Best of luck in the primary, and we’ll, hopefully see you in the general election, too. Take care.
Joe Kerr
Jen, thank you so much. Thank you to you and your team. I appreciate you very much.
Jen Rubin
Bye-bye.
