Jon Ralston
speaker
269 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 19 Jan
Jon Ralston’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And I can't say enough, by the way, Rachel, and I think I get at this in the book a bit, how many great people he put around him.
And especially, especially, he really elevated females in his orbit to positions of great influence
whether it was his chief of staff, Susan McHugh, who was incredibly influential in his life, or Rebecca Lamb, who constructed that democratic machine.
And he had a lot of other women around him.
He loved strong women, and he elevated them.
And by the way, I think they had an influence on him in moderating some of his positions because he came from a Mormon background.
and was naturally a conservative guy.
And he evolved, flip-flopped, changed, matured, whatever is the proper verb, over the years, partly because of some of those people in his life.
I was stunned when I came across this document in the archive.
It was a speech that was faxed by his primary speechwriter to Reid early in the morning before Reid voted.
And I said, oh, this is interesting.
This is his speech against Clarence Thomas.
And I'm reading this and my jaw dropped because, as you pointed out, it's this very eloquent defense of Clarence Thomas.
And I said, oh, my God, he was going to vote for Clarence Thomas.
Speaking of strong women, there was no greater influence in Reid's life than Landra Reid.
And that story is a true love story, Rachel.
They were married when they were teenagers, married for 62 years.
She was one of the things I discovered that I didn't know as closely as I covered him.
She was in a lot of strategic meetings with his staff and especially during campaigns.
She had tremendous influence on him.
Showing 101–120 of 269 · page 6 of 14
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