Software developer Dick Lucas is running for California State Assembly to fix housing and break one-party dominance

Amazing. Bet on yourself. Love it. Awesome, Chris. Well, congratulations. Thanks for coming on. I'm sure we'll have you back. Thanks for having me. We'll see you guys. Good seeing you. We'll talk to you soon. And we have our next guest already here in the waiting room. Uh Dick Lucas. He backgrounds.

Video going viral today. There he is. Wow. Look at that background. How you doing? I'm good. I'm good. How are you guys doing? Looking sharp in the suit. You You look like you changed since the viral video. I I know. I know. Actually, I uh my shirts are uh my shirts are dirty. This one's not.

Um so, this is the same outfit, same pin as well. So, congrats on the uh success of the show. It's been awesome to watch you guys cook. So, thank you for fitting me in today. Appreciate it. Yeah, it's awesome. Uh I saw your name for the first time this morning when you started going viral.

Uh great silhouette on the video. It looked like you're in the Palisades somewhere. where where you just give give us the full history on yourself and and maybe what what inspired you to get involved uh in politics or mud wrestling as we call it. Awesome.

Well, I think it really starts in uh it starts in high school when I got my first computer dig in the dig. com days. That's when I got really into technology um and got really into software and saw this whole boom taking off and like this stuff's really cool.

Um I didn't think computer science I thought that was only for smart people. So, I didn't declare my major for CS until sophomore year of college. Like, it was it was a history minor. I was like, you know, I'm going to just do the CS thing.

It kicked my ass, but but I but I got through it was you can get a bachelor art of arts and computer science if you can believe that. And that's what I got. Um, so I I have a long belief in in in technology and then from there um started, uh, doing software stuff.

I was an Android developer for several years, so I was in the code mines. um started an agency with with a homie uh with Sawyer and now we're um uh yeah, we're cooking on that. And what inspired this really is is I was creating voter guides. I was like, okay, California's obviously run run horribly.

If maybe if I just read all what the candidates are saying and go deep on like, you know, who's running for waterboard, who's running for this, who's running for that. And actually, no one even knows what a state assembly person is. I'm running for state assembly. Most people don't even know what that means.

So, I'm like, "Okay, if I go and like look at these candidates, there's got to be people that are out there that are good. " Um, and I'm going through these campaign websites and they don't even they barely even say what they believe. There's no competition. There's not even debates at these local levels.

And I'm just like, there is a huge opportunity here for someone that is willing to just get themselves in the game, put a couple videos out there, say some common sense stuff, and shake things up. So, uh, that's that was really the inspiration.

Um and uh uh so what tell us what uh tell us what running for state assembly means. What what is the role that you would like? What does that look like? And then what are the what's the process to get there? Okay, so the primary is in June. It's in June of uh June of 26, excuse me, June of this year.

Um and uh excuse me, next year. So there's 80 assembly members, right? In in California. Each state has something different, but it's basically like a mini senate in a mini house of representatives, just like the federal government. So, you have 80 assembly people and you have 40 state senators.

And unlike uh you know, in California there's 80 districts. I'm in the 51st district, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, um Westwood, uh other parts of Hollywood, Beverly Hills, um and each district has uh assemblymen and then each and then there's also state senators as well. So, same thing, federal government.

There's stuff that comes out of the Senate um state senate. other stuff that comes out of the state assembly and uh that's how legislation gets passed. That's how the machine works. And right now what we've seen is it's basically one party state. Now I'm not I think the left has good ideas.

I think the right has good ideas. I think that there's opportunities on both sides. The problem is when you lack competition to system, which is what we have in California, it becomes sick. It becomes ill. I mean, we see this in every single institution or system uh since the dawn of time. You need to compete.

There needs to be pressure on the system or it collapses from within. And that's what we're seeing in California. We're starting to see a a a small shift, I'd say.

But you know what the what really broke the camel's back for me was fires happened and people wouldn't even hear about um the wildfires in the Palisades, the eating fire out where where I grew up.

Um people wouldn't even hear they wouldn't even want to listen if you said, "Yo, maybe we could have done some things better. " Like the San uh Sanz reservoir that went dry in the Palisades was down for eight months. Um I I talked to I talked to a state senator. I went to a meet up with him.

I was like I was like, "Bro, what happened there? " He said, "Well, it's unclear how much that would have actually helped. " It's like, "Dude, if it helped 5%, if it helped 10%, if it helped 15%, like you couldn't even really have a discussion about it.

" And I said, "Okay, this is the the system itself is is is completely sick where where we had a whole bunch of stuff burned down. Our mayor in Los Angeles was gone on a trip. We had fire hydrants go dry and and people even in my network, people didn't even want to talk about it.

So, I guess the only way to talk about you got to run. Yeah. No, I love it. Taking action. We We covered the fires. We John and I are both here in LA. Uniquely, John lives in Pasadena. I live in Malibu. We both had to uh get out of town for a while. Uh I missed a show. John was covering one day.

It was really the only show I met missed this year. Um but yeah, but the the um my reaction to the fire is it seemed like uh there was a lot of excitement around clearing PCH because that was the thing that was most obviously uh reminder of the the competency of the government.

And so uh but that's only a very small percentage of of the of what the over overall response should should look like. I'm curious, do you know who your real competition is, uh this year? Yes, I do. Yeah. Dem a Democrat. He's been in the machine for several years.

And that's the other thing looking at these people what they've done. A lot of these people with have this audience. If you are considering running, you should run for office.

You should look at who your local person is and you should run because not you too, all your listeners, but you too as well because you look at their website, you look at their CV, you look what they've done. A lot of these guys are community organizers. I still don't know what that means.

And also people they're lawyers or they're people that haven't built anything or created any jobs. So it's like this all my smartest friends, no one even thinks and I'm sure it's same with you guys. No one even thinks about going into politics.

So it's like if if you if all the people that are smart or driven in your network aren't going in to politics, who is going into politics? And well, we see players basically. Yeah. No, that makes sense. What's at the top of the stack in terms of lowhanging fruit? You get in, what do you want to push on?

What do you want to change? What are the most exciting or like tractable problems that you think you could you I think the biggest thing that is resonating right now is uh the cost of housing.

Um you know there's the phrase that the economy is stupid and obviously we need to work on that too but housing in California is 100% the national average. Same with our uh same with our gas prices. Um our gas utility prices, gasoline is the highest in the country um as you know.

Uh which is not a which is is not uh partially due to the market but also due to just massive taxes that the government has voted to apply to every gallon at the for gasoline. Yeah. So you drive across the border, it's it's not like a supply demand thing as much as it is or a top eight oil producing state.

it had the highest in the highest gas price in the country. Doesn't make any sense. There's obviously there's also some good things there. We want clean gas.

So, California puts a lot of, you know, restrictions on refiner refiners on, you know, they want to pay for the top quality clean gas so we don't have we don't have uh, you know, smoky valleys and it doesn't look horrible like it did in the 60s. So, I get all that, but it's completely out of whack.

So, the other but housing, we need to we need to make we need to make it easier to build. Um uh they did just pass the Dems did just pass something and I tried to understand it.

You can go read the you know leg you can read these bills and like they they talked about it as a big win but it's it's it's difficult to even understand what's going on like in terms of what they got done you know they're making it easier to build now recently as of like July 3rd near um transit areas and you go read the bill and it's like 30 pages of is like is this making easier?

Why isn't it just say like you can build here? If you own the land, you can build here. Like, this is it's completely out of whack. So, um, we have a supply problem here. We need to just make it a whole lot easier to build. And, you know, there's people talking about freezing the rents.

We can do better than the funny thing is is the people that lie to you will say, "Oh, we're going to freeze the rents for everyone. " That's not even that good. We can do better than freeze the rents. We can actually lower if you add supply. We've seen this in Austin. We've seen this in other cities.

And my view is there's 50 different experiments going on everywhere in our country. Every state, you just look at what works. Where are prices coming down? Where are businesses going? and you just fall. Yeah. So, it's like we have the tools right here. I I I don't I'm not the smartest guy in the world.

I know that I have a lot of respect for people in technology because I think they're epic. I think they're smart. I think they they raise a standard of living for everyone. And I'm not going to in, you know, invent the next nuclear reactor, whatever. So, I'm looking at this.

I'm like, this is an opportunity that I can actually, you know, I'm smart enough. And it's like, we have 50 experiments. Let's follow what works and let's just do it. How can people support you? How do people like who who are your constituents? who will actually be voting for you.

It's It doesn't sound like it's just everyone. And you cover Are you going to be covering the Gundo or is that out of range? No, it's out of reach. It's out of reach, unfortunately. Um it' be it'd be an odd to represent those guys, but um dicklucas. com. Uh my biggest following is on X. Damn, you got me sweating, boys.

I'm fired up. Um uh yeah, dick. com. Stoked on that. Um uh yeah, I'm not taking any money right now. We're just going to see what noise we can make. The people that will vote for me are the people, like I said, in my district. And I don't I think very few of those people have seen this viral video.

So I want to do two things. I want to get the word out with you guys and with technology people and the people in my network. And the second thing is ground game. I got to knock on doors. I got to I got to talk to people.

Now that I have a website, my video up, I'm going to just go door to door and be like, "Yo, let's let's talk. Let's I I actually want to hear what what people obviously what's their biggest concern? " Um when you say knock on doors, do you mean literally knock on doors? Yes. Yes.

Door knocking is very effective in these local races. You just have to you just have to do it. Like um yeah. How many how many Yeah. Do you have to you have to quantify how many doors it is? Break it down, I guess.

But you do have a longund there's a thou I think my district's 490,000 people something like that or eligible voters. Something like that. Couple hundred thousand. You do you know Yeah. I mean you got what 300 a day. Okay. You can you can through a bunch of those.

I mean it's huge and I'm going to be working while I'm doing this. So it's like I'm going to do and I have a kid coming in November. So I'm like let's just see what kind of noise we can make. Um and uh yeah, I'm excited to uh to start knocking on doors and let's just see what we can do.

Technology is the only technology is the only way you get more for less. There is nothing else. Yeah, you can make processes better, but fundamentally that's the only thing that where you get more for less. It's the only thing that raises a standard of living for everyone.

So I don't know why people have such an aversion to it. I'm just trying to be like this isn't left or right. Let's just let's implement things that make our life better and make everyone more rich and prosperous. I love it. I love it. Yeah.

California, despite uh you know shooting oursel in the foot over and over and over for decades, it's still amazing place to live. So uh let's just you know uh stop shooting oursel in the foot. Get some common sense. I think we can I think we can have a bigger economy than China.

I mean straight up we can be let's go second. Everyone Newsome fourth. We're top four. We're top five. And yeah, we are not because of you. I think we can. Let's just let's do this. It's possible. Let's do it. Uh have you met Gavin Newsome? You got to get on the phone. No, I have I have not. I have not.

You got to reach out to him. get him get on his podcast cuz he's had all sorts of people. So probably I know. I don't think I'm big time enough for him yet. But I think now that I've done this, I'll send you I'll send him this link and he'll say, "Okay, I I know it. I know what Jordan and John are doing. " Okay. Yeah.

Come on. It's time. Well, thank you for doing this. It is truly a sacrifice. It is uh it is going to be an absolute slog, but it's worth doing. And uh somebody's got to step up and do it, and it can start in your district. And uh we'll have to have you back on as as the campaign gets closer. Appreciate it.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you gentlemen so much for having me on. Really, really do appreciate it. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon. Good luck. Bye. Uh, what a sign. What a sign of respect joining with a suit with the flag. I mean, he he checked both boxes. Lot lot of people bring the suit.

They don't bring the flag. Yeah. And uh he should get a a California flag up there, too. That that'd be great. Yeah, the bear. We love the California flag. Uh, what else we got? We got some time.

So, uh, Michael Truel, the founder of Cursor, uh, released a very cinematic kind of like a podcast conversation with Patrick Collison, the founder of Stripe, and it's very cool for a few reasons, but it has the aesthetics of the Johnny IV Sam Alman video. So, you just immediately assumed?

Immediately, I was like, "Oh, there's a deal. They're acquiring Cursor. " And I don't, that's not the news. I don't even think there's a rumor, but there's something about when you film two CEOs walking into a coffee shop with cinema cameras. I just permanently think acquisition now thanks to Sam Alman.

Um, but I didn't get a chance to listen to this whole thing. I'm definitely going to. It's going to be it's like a full hour, 45 minutes or something. Uh, seems very cool. I love these kind of conversations and I and I think this is like an interesting untapped media product where it's not cursor starting a podcast.

It's just a one-off really cool thing between two CEOs and and they're Yeah. They're not making a commitment of putting out a video like this once a week. No, it's just like, you know, a couple times a month. They're Yeah. They're just like both technical CEOs.

And so you look at the list of topics, it's like uh writing your first startup in small talk, lisp, chat bots, uh Brett Victor and Dynamic Land, Coinbase's a codebase's big bang moment in MongoDB rewriting Stripe. How do you, Patrick Collison, use AI?

Uh, changes to GDP to uh slashtotal factor uh productivity unexpected beneficiaries of AI.

So, they're just having like the conversation that they probably have when they just hang out and get dinner together, but they're just recording it with cinema cameras and great audio in a coffee shop and then just putting it on the internet. And I think this is a very interesting new me new form of like going direct.

It's like it really helps me understand who Patrick is and who Michael is. And it's and it's in this like they're both insiders. They can just have the conversation they want to have. Feel like this is great for both of them for recruiting. I don't know.

I was just like I I haven't watched the full thing, but it just felt like a cool new modality of like content in the startup world. So, um, aside from the confusion about potential acquisition announcement, it it it seemed it seemed really really cool. Uh, and and I was excited to see it go out.

So, go give it a watch if you're uh if you're looking to uh to spend 45 minutes hanging out with two uh absolute uh absolute amazing CEOs talking about uh AI and uh coding. In other news, uh Andrea Horowit's managing partner Scott Capor has been traded to the US Office of Personal Management. No, of course not.

Obviously, um this I'm sure had been in the works for a while. Uh he was announced I think it was announced I think he passed uh confirmation or something but very good news for Scott. Congratulations. Um going into the government is not very sexy. It's not high status. Yep.

Uh but uh like Dick just said, it's uh important for people to step up and make sacrifices to serve their city, county, state, country, etc. Yeah, we applaud him. Uh the AI war has opened a new front on Wall Street. We've talked to a number of founders that are building AI tools for Wall Street.

And today anthropic giant AI giant anthropic announced the launch of Claude for financial services. Finance is a natural fit for AI given the reams of structured data says Nick. Uh the industry processes the big platforms are focusing more and more on fintech products.

Enthropic already signed Bridgewwater and S&P Global is here for Enthropic. Uh and we saw earlier that Devon got hired at Goldman Sachs. You love to see that. City. Was it city? Both and Goldman both. And yes. So, uh so, uh Kaplan uh the president of Cognition, I believe that's his title.

Uh he said like this was the news that we were hoping to launch on Monday. We had this all queued up that we did this big deal with city. We're very excited about this, but uh no one saw it because we uh were, you know, acquiring the current thing and and that became the story. Uh but that was very exciting.

So um all the big AI companies are figuring out how they can plug in to the big Wall Street companies and there's some more there's going to be some big uh launches uh and announcements this week from uh some of these labs and we will be covering them as soon as uh they're ready to share more. Yeah.

Uh uh TBPN was in the ringer this morning uh talking about bakes talking about uh the uh AI trade wars and tying them into sports which we know nothing about, but uh it was cool to see uh Katie break that down.

And then in other news, uh Shane Copelan uh over at Poly Market says, "Eight months ago on election night, we were on top of the world after Poly Market called the election. Eight days later, the FBI broke down my door at 6 am and took all of my computers and phones, looking for anything that could imply foul play.

While traumatic, it etched the story of Poly Market's accuracy and the ensuing resistance into the history of American politics. And today, I'm happy to announce that this chapter of the story is over. After cooperating and engaging, we've been cleared of any wrongdoing. Justice prevailed. God bless America.

And of course, Poly Market Probe ended by Department of Justice and win for crypto bets under Trump. So, congratulations. Uh, very cool for Shane. Um, I think we were live recording when uh the news broke that he had been raided, but we it was we were not live yet. Like, we weren't actually live.

So, we were recording and we got off the show and we looked and we were like, "Wow, that's insane. " Well, I have one last post. Do you have anything else you want to go through, Jordy, or can I close it out?

Uh, a councilman has been charged with petty theft after allegedly removing a Palunteer advertisement from the baggage claim area at Freiedman Memorial Airport. Uh, Trip Hutchinson pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he will face up to one year in county jail and a thousand fine.

Wait, so did he take this because he wanted it for his garage? Game worn. It's a game worn out of home ad. And he must be an out ofome ad fan. It must be a huge Palunteer fan. And uh I think it's a I think it's probably a just a honest mistake.

Um but uh I I I think all these great out of home ads, they should find a resting place with they should be auctioned off and you should be able to get them in them on our walls. So if you run a great out of home ad put it up in the airport, you're you're you're taking it down. Send it to us.

Throw it up here in the Ultra Dome. In the Ultradome. And we will see you tomorrow in the Ultra Dome. I cannot wait at 11 a. m. Pacific sharp. Five stars on Apple podcast and Spotify. And thank you for watching today. Talk to you soon.