Back in 2021, I interviewed Darius Mayfield who was running as a conservative Republican for Congress in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, at the time. 

DM: My name is Darius Mayfield.

RS: Okay and what’s your political party affiliation?

DM: I am a Republican, a conservative Republican, and I am running for Congress in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District.

RS: Okay. And why are you running for Congress?

DM: Few reasons, man. I mean, I’m running for Congress because I think. Right now, the energy is right. The energy is high and it’s the right thing to do. You know, I often tell a story that when I was a little kid with my mother, probably back in 3rd, 4th, 5th grade, we used to come home every day from school and she used to ask me every day, me and my sister, my little sister, what we wanted to be when we grew up. And my answer every time was president of the United States. Not that I believe I’m going to be president of the United States, but, you know, I think I just had a even a little bit of political inclination back then. And most importantly, because over the last four or five years, watching the way our public officials have acted towards their constituents, whether they they’re in their party or not, and this is people on the right, the left and the middle, how comfortably they felt to talk so disparagingly down to their constituents, whether it’s Hillary Clinton, you know, saying what she said, Joe Biden calling people Neanderthals or. You know, whatever the case is, and there’s other examples, it was just something that I felt was very unbecoming of elected officials in this country, especially ones that put off this aura, as they should be treated with such respect and we should hold them in such high regard. So they hear them speaking the way they did and acting the way they have towards the constituents. Again, whether they agreed with them or not, whether they’re in the same party or not, was just something that didn’t sit right with me. And after having a couple of conversations, having a couple of friends that ran for office, I just felt like it was the right time to actually throw my hat in and give this thing a shot.

RS: So like you mentioned, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton talking down to people, but because I noticed you are a Republican on your Twitter, don’t you? Don’t you think that former President Donald Trump is also talked down to his constituents?

DM: Listen, absolutely. In some cases I will say this, I don’t know if you know of the gentleman Kwame Brown that’s been on the Internet lately. He’s all the rave right now and he’s really speaking out against a lot of things that are going on right now, especially from an independent, conservative standpoint and. You know one thing that he constantly said because he came out after some people said some disparaging things against him have as they’ve been doing for the last 20 years, and he came back and finally said something 20 years later the next day. All these people that he, he, he reacted to and said something back to basically just the means. His whole character started talking about his family, his kids. He’s had to get security at his home. They turned off his phone, a lot of different things. And they tried to sway the narrative and tried to change people’s public opinion to make it seem as though he was just attacking all these people. The one thing he consistently said, which is so true, is I’m just responding to people. I’m just responding to people. I’m responding to what they said to me. I think in a lot of cases of President Trump, it was a lot of the same thing. Now, listen, I won’t sit here and defend every single thing, he said. I often tell people they call me like the black Trump. But one of the differences is there’s obviously not going to be certain outbursts on platforms like social media and Facebook. Like he may have been that I will ever do. In fact, I’ve actually made a commitment to stay quite cordial, quite classy through this whole process. No matter how nasty my opponent and their team chooses to get. I don’t know if they will. And so I’m not accusing you of doing that because they haven’t thus far. But if for some reason they do, I will stay classy and stay as much above the phrase I possibly can. And one thing I like to tell people is at the end of the day, while our politicians, which they’re all doing right now. Continue to find ways to continue to separate and divide us. I will continue to find ways to keep bringing us all together.

RS: Okay. So you you running for Congress in New Jersey, What what exactly are you going to try to do to like help the state of New Jersey? Like what what would you do?

DM: Well, my platform is very simple. I’m running on a platform of Unity in the aspect that I’m looking and asking for the votes of. All the people in New Jersey, because at the end of the day, A2 party system is not democracy, no matter how they try to slice it up to you. So I want the votes of Democrats, I want the votes of independence, I want the votes of conservatives. Except the end of the day, as my model says, it’s not black, not white American. We are all Americans at the end of the day. And there’s a lot of issues out there that we all agree on. But because our politicians have a so divided and so stagnant, a lot of times people didn’t realize that. So my platforms are a platform of unity. A platform of term limits, a platform of school choice and also a platform of criminal justice reform. One of the biggest platforms that I think will have the biggest impact on a state like New Jersey. And you know, a lot of the people that I’m looking to help is school choice. At the end of the day, I don’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat, if you poll people, the majority of both party believe in school choice. The only people that don’t seem to believe in that nowadays are Democrats and not the people. Not the people within the Democratic Party, not the constituents within the Democratic Party, but the Democratic leaders especially. And this is an issue when we see violence in places like Chicago, which is out of hand right now, just last week and this week in that past 70 people shot. This is the first time I’ve ever seen the media classify those shootings as mass shootings. They actually were forced to go in there and say 4 mass shootings took place in the city of Chicago. When you look at New York, crime is up seventy 8090%. Now when you look at Portland, crime is up 800%. Now in that city since just last year. Things that you’re not seeing and talking about in the public for me, especially in these urban inner city neighborhoods, specifically in my district, places like Trenton which has a 3% proficiency rate. In math now, I know you’re a young man that goes to college, so you know, you’re very smart gentleman. Obviously you’ve had certain opportunities, but a lot of people in these positions don’t have those opportunities. And though the biggest reason they don’t because they don’t have access to a quality education. So for me, school choice, opening up those schools, putting pressure on the public school boards to make sure they either do their jobs or they lose their funding and parents can take their kids and put them in schools that will afford them the opportunity and the education that they actually deserve by doing that. Because we lost so many generations after generation after generation after generation after generation. We’re losing right now. We’re done. This is the America First model. This is the toughness and the can do attitude that somebody like President Trump brought to this country, regardless of people recognize that or not, we’re done. We’ve lost generation after generation.