The Scoop with Tanya Flanagan

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a KU NB studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Tanya Flanagan 0:19
Good morning, and thank you for joining me for the scoop with Tonya Flanagan, I'm so happy you decided to wake up and start your day with me here on the scoop, where we talk about life, joy, funny moments, trending topics and so much more. We promise to keep you in the know and find out what you know. So let's get started. You

Tanya, hello Las Vegas. Hello Nevada, and welcome to another edition of the scoop with me. Your host, Tonya Flanagan, as always, I'm delighted to be here with you to have a great conversation hopefully inspire you and leave you with some things to think about. I have as my guest for this edition of the show, Assembly Member Max e Carter, the second who represents District 12, which is a portion in Southern Nevada, down in Clark County. As you know, we are in the midst of the 83rd session of the Nevada legislature, and we are in the home stretch. It is Sunday, and we have two more days left, and Max and I had the opportunity to get together and talk. So Max, welcome to the show. Thank

Max Carter 1:30
you very much. Tonya, I appreciate you inviting me on. Well, thank you for

Tanya Flanagan 1:34
making some time. I know how hectic it is to come on and to have time. Thank you for your service, to the state and to the constituents, to the community, tell us a little bit about yourself. A lot of people may not know you. And I love this having these segments, these Nevada legislative sessions, segments on the show, because it gives the listeners a chance to get to know representatives in a way that they don't in a different way from how they get to know us on the campaign trail. So tell us a little bit about who you are and how you came to be in this space where you come from. Oh, you know,

Max Carter 2:11
I was going to start off by saying ditto, because you're doing all of the same stuff that I'm doing, and ditto is ledge talk for Yes, same thing. But no, no, I grew I grew up on the east side of Las Vegas, Stewart in the eastern area, the older section of Vegas where my grandparents had moved into from California in 1942 and grew up downtown and, you know, built a good life. Was married young, and I didn't leave the east side of Las Vegas at a time when, you know, so many of my peers were moving to the outskirts of town. My wife and I wanted to raise our sons. I've got three sons. We naively, back then called it, this is the late 80s, saying that we wanted to raise our sons in the real world. And I realize now what we meant by that was we wanted to raise our sons in in a multicultural environment, which that's exactly what the east side of Las Vegas is and and I'm a product of the east side. I was a union electrician. I was a union stage hand. I worked backstage at an ice show. I worked backstage at the at Jubilee, at the MGM. And then, you know, my claim to fame as an electrician is is, I'm the guy who put the beam on top of the Luxor pyramid. And where else but Vegas, can a construction worker brag about things like that, you know? And so what I'm kind of explaining is, I a whole, a hometown boy that didn't abandon home, stayed down on the east side because I love the community and that had my whole life planned out. I raised three amazing sons, one who's an assistant principal in Vegas, and another one who's a history teacher, and then my youngest is in the army, a Sergeant First Class in the army, and I'd look at that as my wife and I's biggest accomplishment is raised three sons that are productive, that have good families, and on their living independently, to where I help them because I want to, not because I have to. And some of your listeners may know, but they all three of them, and this is thing, I choked myself up talking about it, their aces, score, adverse childhood experiences score, are all zero, which, as I talk. It that my wife and I broke the chain of, you know, from growing up in an abusive household and raising sons that didn't experience the same stuff that I did growing up. They experienced the good stuff. And, you know, get to that point in my life when think we got it all planned out, and Karen, that was my wife, we were going to be the best grandma and grandpas that ever were. I've got four granddaughters and one grandson, and unfortunately, on Super Bowl Sunday, 2017 it was the most joyous time in a long time for for my wife and I both happy, laughing, and in the blink of an eye, she was gone. She fell from her horse and was gone in the blink of an eye. And she was a strong woman. She was the the core of of my life, and the only person that I feel that ever truly saw me could see more of me than I saw in myself. And that leads into kind of what, what brought me to the legislature is that I had major struggles and still do with mental health, grief, depression, found out later on, complex PTSD and the road back, so to speak, has been one where this, you know, electrician, overweight, Older electrician, discovered yoga after my wife died, and that led to me, you know, understanding more and more about somatic therapy with mental health, and becoming more and more involved in it. I ended up, actually, I'm a registered yoga teacher. Went through a 200 hour training program with a bunch of bendy young women who now all, I think, look at me as Uncle Max, and it was an amazing experience taught in an addiction facility for two years. That's where it kind of opened my eyes that trauma doesn't really have any boundaries. Meaning by that, I mean that that traumas, trauma there doesn't it's not it's not grief, trauma, it's not alcoholism, trauma, trauma is just trauma. The people that I was working with there, they were experiencing the same thing I was with profound grief and PTSD and you know, because when you get to the point where you choose to go into recovery, that your self esteem is gone, and that was where I was. My life was just gone and trying to find purpose again. And I found it through volunteering in the mental health world, volunteering with food banks and stuff, I ended up having to retire early. I was luckily, I was able to retire at 55 because of a good union pension. And then I found an organization, trauma intervention program that I've been volunteering with since 2019 that helped me again, see that people in pain need to be heard, not fixed, heard and listened to. And that kind of steps into me run for office a good friend of mine, Senator Chris Brooks, had got a hold of me and explained to me about how that I wasn't just a quote, unquote dumb electrician, that our legislature the way it's structured, as a citizens, legislature needs diversity and also needs life experience, that life experience is a huge commodity as a legislator. And I've, I've lived a lot of different things, and now I find myself here, the guy that was unofficially voted most likely to go to prison in high school at Las Vegas High School downtown, because people just didn't know me. And it was a, you know, straight D student labeled lazy because, because I was one of those that could ace every single test, but I didn't do my homework because it didn't make no sense, if I can ace the test, why do I got to do this homework? And I see now, and this is going off, off topic a little bit, but I see now that I'm so grateful that our school system is finally recognizing that not every kid thinks alike, and that I wasn't lazy. It's, you know, getting to be diagnosed at with ADHD. At 57 years old is kind of different, but then realizing that, oh, that was what all of that was about when I was it's just, I'm very glad that this generation isn't as stigmatized or misdiagnosed as my generation was. And I think so much there No.

Tanya Flanagan 10:24
It's what I love about these segments, is that it gives listeners and voters and just citizens people an opportunity, like I said, to get to know their elected representatives through a different lens and to see them differently than what you think you're learning, because a mailer has come home in your mailbox and it touches on this hot button issue. Because we think that's a hot button issue that should matter to you, because the poll has said so. This is just a conversation where people get a glimpse of who, Assemblyman, Assembly Member Max Carter is in a different way, and you get to find out just how human and how real the person is, this particular person who's taken time to come up to Carson City for 120 days and leave behind their normal Everyday responsibilities in Clark County in Las Vegas, to come to Carson City, to serve in the legislature, and get to find out who this person is and what life experiences has have brought you to where you are and made you who you are, and cause you to be passionate about the causes that you're pushing back and supporting stressing the importance of and you've touched on mental health, you've touched on education, you've touched on unions and solid workforce and work environments. So these are things that through you talking so passionately and vividly about who you are in your life. You've touched on family, you've touched on culture and community by talking about how much you embrace East Las Vegas and how much you love it and what it symbolizes and that that was so important to you coming into the space so your rambling has shared with us so much of who you are and why you are, who you are, what I'd love to also touch on, if you care, to share with us some of the legislative work that you're doing in this particular session, and how it ties into your areas of passion. You know, as you brought up those you support it that fits right

Max Carter 12:39
in. You know, because you brought up so many things. It's like campaigning and hot button issues. I knocked over 3500 doors in the in the general election this last time. And very rarely did. Did people want to talk about the hot button issues? People wanted to talk heart to heart. And I think that that's what we need more of is Heart to Heart, truly listening to each other. But when on the legislative front, you're you're so right, you know, I look at my board and I'm working at trying to take and raise the cap on the Health Reimbursement Accounts that can be accumulated for state workers or state workers. You know that that used to be that, you know, that was a that was a greatest job in the world, because you were going to have good benefits at the end of the you know, when you go into retirement. And sadly, that's been eroded, and we need to start looking at treating our state and local and public workers better. The pay rates have gotten so low. So I'm working on that. I'm also working from my district, because I'm a the edge of town on making it smoother and easier for junk vehicles to be removed from the neighborhoods we get a lot of I've even seen full size, big boats dumped off the trailers on the side of the road up there, and motor homes and everything else. That was one of those things that I started because my county commissioner took and asked me about we talked about it, and lo and behold, it's a problem all over this state. My my co sponsor in the Senate is Dr Robin Titus from from the sparks area, from up north, up here, more rural, but her communities have the same problem with junk being dumped. And working with Heather Golding, again, from the Reno area, it's just the problems are the same everywhere, you know. And then I come to again, back to teachers aids. Who knew that teachers aides only earned three quarters of the pension credits that the teacher they were working in the same room with got? We've got a bill to correct them. At to make it to where to where they're getting the same, the same level, okay, it may be a little bit different monetary level, but the same, the same quality of benefits that working right beside, you know, and I'm trying to do something about medical debt. Medical debt is a huge problem. Nationwide, Nobody chooses to take on medical debt, but it's gotten to where it's treated the same as regular consumer debt, to where they report it to credit agencies destroy your credit, which now if you don't go credit. You can't hardly even rent a house, let alone, you know, buy a house and all for stuff that nobody chooses, like I say, Nobody chooses to have an emergency appendectomy, Nobody chooses to get cancer. And if you're lucky enough to survive cancer, you should not lose everything you own. That's just not right. So that one, in fact, we just voted it out late last week, and hopefully it'll, it'll get through the Senate, you know, and a lot of things like that. I had a constituent taken, actually, she went to the governor. Peggy met the governor at the VA home in Boulder City. Her mother had been a victim of elder abuse in assisted living facilities, and we passed a bill two years ago that allowed you to have a private camera, put in your loved ones sleeping area in their bedroom in skilled nursing facilities. Well, skilled nursing facilities are narrowly defined in Nevada. Who knew? So now we're working on going from where Chandra summers Armstrong got it last time to where. Now we're getting it to where. In fact, it's headed the governor's desk right now, a bill allowing you to have a camera put in assisted living facilities, like elder care, like memory care, and also going out to supported living arrangements like Betty's village that is doing so much creating so much independence for the disabled community. We're just trying to bring some security to it. Those are the types of things that I want to work on. I say I don't have a single self serving bill. The closest you could call that is, I'm a very big advocate for psychedelic therapy in in the psychiatric world, I'm not talking about recreational world. I'm talking about the promise that psychedelics, psilocybin mushrooms, Ibogaine, which is a root from South Africa, and there's several others the promise. And it's actually more than a promise, now that it's it is massively effective on treatment resistant depression, and for our veterans, who we've got a 22 suicide a day, national catastrophe going on. It's shown that it that that type of therapy cannot only treat the depression and the anxiety that comes along with PTSD, but you know the traditional SSRIs antidepressants, that phenomenon of feeling flat, and I've experienced that, and I can tell you that I had been actually diagnosed as, at one point, as passively suicidal, because and I see now that it was that lack, that flatness, psychedelic therapy has the ability to take and treat the Depression, treat the anxiety, but also restore and give insights for a reason to keep living rather than feeling flat, to where one bad thing and you know, with our gun culture, it's all too easy to make a bad day permanent, and that's what I see happens in our veterans community. So that's why I'm a champion for psychedelic therapy. My bill, AB 378 is still alive. We'll see. I'm not sure if we're going to get their budget constraints and stuff, but we have to do something. We can't keep letting people hurt all day long, and that's what I think about. It's easy to take in advocate for veterans. It's easy to advocate for first responders. I see my role is advocating for all of us, others who don't fit into those those categories. Categories that it's popular to help talking about people that have been trafficked, people that have suffered addiction, people that grew up in abusive households, survivors of sexual assault. Think of all of the people that are that we walk past every day, that are in pain inside, that there's potential treatment that could help reduce that pain, and if we can do something to help that Isn't it worth doing. So that's kind of an overview of what I'm working on. I try to keep it to where it's focused on what my community wants, what my community needs, and we all need, we all need a little bit of peace in our lives. So

Tanya Flanagan 20:46
absolutely, um, so much you touched on there, and it's remarkable, but it speaks to me because it speaks to like you said, yes, there are some issues that we deal with on a daily basis that are glaring and they're obvious, like veterans issues and things like that, but they're very easy to to or to get connected and to connect to. But you talk about senior elder abuse, elder care, housing affordability, accessibility, medical support, not in the obvious realm of healthcare access, but in the realm of what happens after you've been provided the care that may that was a surprising need because you had an emergency surgery, and now you have this debt suicide prevention, alternative therapies in The space of psychedelics, and I've had that conversation with the proponents who are supporting it, and it's a really interesting conversation that you're engaged in when you talk about alternative treatments to address mental health and looking at things outside, kind of outside the box, outside the norm, to address it from A more creative space that makes sense, and there's so many people out there, like you mentioned, suffering from different things, that it's not we all have a different walk in life. And even though it's not touching your life, it's touching someone else's life. And that's part of the good work. I think that goes on here at the legislature, because people often ask me, before I came up, well, what do you want to accomplish? And my answer was, often it's not what I want to accomplish. Sometimes it just comes down to, what do you someone like you need me to do? Because my walk isn't your walk, and your struggle isn't my struggle. And I may not be experiencing the hardship that someone else who lives two blocks from me or around the corner from me is experiencing as a family, but because I understand what you're going through, I may be able to see where there's a need to affect this with a piece of legislation that will begin to peel back the layers of the the onion to make a difference. And I think that's part of what you're talking about. And I'm thankful that you're shedding a light on the process of how things come to be. And you mentioned, mentioned some Shonda summers Armstrong, who was a former Assembly Member for District Six, who's currently now the representative for Las Vegas on the city council for Ward five. And so it's just really huge how people evolve and the connections are made, and the work starts, and then you pick up sort of the baton, and you continue that work, because you see another piece of work that needs to be done. I think the work that I'm doing in the space of food insecurity is another example that the former senator, Pat Spearman did a lot of legwork to get a lot of legislation and space in place, and now there's an opportunity through AB 405 to continue that work, to identify statewide how we can create a more connected network to help deal with food insecurity as families struggle with prices and accessibility to quality food and to healthy food. So I just want to thank you for touching on how we're all connected, and we continue to do that work, but the passions that have brought you into this space to look at skilled nursing homes and make them a safer place for everyday families to feel more secure that their loved ones are somewhere and there's a sense of accountability to work On the psychotherapy as it helps to address the issues that PTSD and just the overlap, while it's not for you, it's indirectly, something that you've gone through so you can relate to it for other people. And I think that's huge, and making the sacrifice to be the one to stand up and say these issues matter for these families. So I say thank you for standing up and saying these issues matter for these families, not just in district 12, but statewide. So thank you, Assemblyman, Carter, for the work that you're doing

Max Carter 24:51
now it's my turn to take and package up what you just said, and I boil it down to I'm sitting there thinking as you were talking about. That, that the key things were citizens, legislature, everybody out there is qualified to run for office. But when, if we talk about, if you ask me, what the most important asset you need is you need empathy, and you have to like people. You have to like your fellow man, and you have to have empathy and the ability to listen and really hear, not just go, yeah, yeah, yeah, listen to what's going on. And that's what I think makes a good representative up here. I don't care if my name is tied to any success. In fact, I'm starting to understand now that sometimes it's the bills that don't have your name on it that are the best. I've got two, two committee bills that I'm that I've been working on for a year and a half that are going to take and make real changes, both with teachers aides and school bus drivers and with the construction Labor Workforce under the labor commissioner. Now, will I know I did it? Yeah, there'll be a few people, but you look in the record, it's going to say those were a Government Affairs Committee bill or a growth and Infrastructure Committee bill. We get to do good works just because they're good, not because we're going to get kudos and pat it on the back for it, no.

Tanya Flanagan 26:24
And it's the hard questions that you ask. I mean, sometimes it's sitting on a committee, because we hear hundreds of bills, and it's the hard questions, and you made the mention of real life experiences that Senator Chris Brooks said, Hey, you're the ideal person, because you will bring to the table real life experience. And it's that real life experience that allows you to find the nugget in the mixture that the ingredient that needs to be pulled out and put in under the spotlight so that more questions can be asked about this detail that maybe isn't being thought about, but shouldn't be left out. It says, because we're getting down to our last minute and a half on the show today. So I want to make sure I thank you for being here and give you a chance to share any social media or any information on how to reach out and contact you, for anyone who might want to stay connected and learn more and follow the good work that Assembly Member Max Carter is doing on behalf of district 12, and really the entire state of Nevada. So is there anything you want to share on how people can stay in touch? Harder

Max Carter 27:27
for Nevada, the number 4c, A, R, T, E, R, the number 4n, V, that's my website. That's also on all of my social media tags. And so that's that's how you find me. Or you can go to try yoga with Max all spelled out on Instagram, and look at my see a see a slightly large, older electrician teaching yoga classes. But you know, the one last thing I'd like to say is, the one thing that I try to live this by is the words of Ram Das, love everyone, serve people and remember unity. That's the path to God. That's my sincere belief, and that's what I try to do every day. Well,

Tanya Flanagan 28:15
thank you for giving me some time to spend with you here this morning on the show to get to know you better. We're down to the last few seconds. Thank you for sharing everything about your wife, your life, your children. Godspeed to you in that namaste and the words of yoga. Folks, have a great week. Stay healthy, stay safe, stay connected. Bye for now, I want to thank you for tuning in to the scoop with me. Tonya Flanagan, and I want to invite you to get social with me. I'm on Facebook and Twitter. My name is my handle, T, a n, y, A F, l, a n, a G, A N. You can also find me on Instagram at Tonya Almaty Flanagan, and if you have a thought, an opinion or a suggestion, don't hesitate to shoot me an email to tonya.flanagan@unlv.edu Thanks again for joining in stay safe and have a great week. You.