Steve you just came back from a 1800s. Bus tour. Youre conducting another one. Where did you go and what did you learn . Secretary perdue the first tour was in wisconsin. We opened the fair together, but also used the opportunity for listening sessions for farm groups there, from organics to dairy production to specialty crops. It was a good listening session. What we want to do is get out into the hinterlands of where food is produced and where the impediments are. As you know, the president signed an executive order creating an Interagency Task or, toforce, so we were looking doing our duties in the rural prosperity aspect of the task force. We went from wisconsin, had a great meeting with the president in his barn with many of his neighbors and friends. Then, we moved on to minnesota and did a similar type of thing and met frankly speaker ryan , was with us in wisconsin. We had a meeting with supply people. They typically know what is on their mind. We went over to iowa, and down into indiana and finished in indianapolis. It was a great tour, had great relationships, met at the Technical College about rural prosperity, and how Rural America needs Broadband Access for many reasons. Precision agriculture and health, education, and the socialization of the young people on farms. Steve i saw some of the news clippings. You took a lot of selfies. [laughter] secretary perdue we did. We did. Young people. We go to the livestock shows at fairs and they are all displaying their animals as a great tradition. It is great competition, teaching them about responsibility of life. I dont think there is a better way than growing up on a farm to understand that if you dont feed the animals, they dont get said, and all of those responsibilities that farm kids learn. We had a great time with them and being around them. We also met with other farmers and try to understand the next generation. We know the Farming Community is aging, and we need to bring in the next generation of farmers. There are bright young kids out there at our universities. The financial barriers are quite high. Usda provides some Rural Development loans for entry into that and helps them get into farming. Steve let me get back to this department. How much influence, or maybe a better way to ask this is what role does this department play day to day for the farmers . Steve it works with congress to create a farm bill that will be up in 2018. Congress relies on the usda to give them counsel and data and information. Information also creates the world supply and demand report that industry, businesses, corporations, and farmers and ranchers to lie on for their production decisions, and marketing decisions. It is a big information network. Day to day, research is also a component. Agricultural research services, we interact with universities to develop basic research, the applied research, and through the extension, the delivery of that research to the field. Farmers are great innovators. They are doing a magnificent job in production. Steve a lot of corporations owned these farms. How does that affect your job and the agricultural business . Secretary perdue when you think about corporations owning farms, primarily what you are looking for our agreements that farmers have decided to make their farms an llc. Limited liability corporation. Many of the corporate farms you hear about our farm families grown to the size to create new organizations for their farm family. They may have two or three kids, and it allows them to have a piece of the corporations technically there. It is farm families primarily. Most of american agriculture is based on families. Steve lets talk about you. Your real name is george. How did you get sonny . Secretary perdue i am the third. Rvin george urba purdue, iii. From a small town called bonaire, georgia. My father was george, and my grandfather was irvin. My father said he looks like sonny to me. I tried to change it in the air that is who i force and go by am. The legal name, but i never got comfortable with george purdue. Steve why the air force . Secretary perdue vietnam was boiling at that point in time. I was a patriot and believed that i should i saw my other peers going off to vietnam, and i believed i should do my duty in that way as well. I went to the school and wanted to do my patriotic duty, so i signed up for an Early Commission program. The deal was once i signed on that line, i belonged to the air force. They would do their best to let me finish school. I graduated in 1971 and had an obligation to serve at that time. Steve you played football. How good were you . Secretary perdue i was on the team. I was one of those Young Athletes who thought i was pretty good, and went to a differently Different League where i met some worldclass athletes. Lets say i was not a starter necessarily, but did have the benefit of being on the team and meeting interesting people. We had two allpro players on the field. Jake scott when on to play with miami. Billy payne of the Augustine National and the atlanta olympics was a teammate as well. We developed relationships there early on after this day. Steve what did the sport teach you about life . Secretary perdue it taught me that life is a team sport and you gain the respect and honor of your teammates by contributing in an unselfish kind of way. It is the benefit of family and here at the usda when you treat people as a team and a family, each one of us knowing our responsibilities, we could not all be quarterbacks or running backs or wide receivers, but each of us if we did our jobs and contributed to the benefit of the team, i think that is a life skill and a gift. Steve how did you meet your wife, mary . Secretary perdue i met her at the university of georgia on a blind date. I was a second year veterinary student. It was my fourth year in college, and she was a freshman from atlanta. Mary had been born in new orleans. G for manyorked for two years and they moved to atlanta when she was a freshman in high school, and she came to the university of georgia. I had a friend. They moved into marys dorm, and it was one of those you have to meet him, you have to meet her kind of deals. We both succumbed to her pestering. Fortunately, we had a blind date and never looked back. Steve who was the first to know you would be married . Secretary perdue the first to know we were going to be married . Steve did you know first or did she know first . Secretary perdue im not sure. We had an open dating relationship because i wanted to make sure she had a college experience, and i did not try to holder too tightly together. I think we both fell in love to one another as it evolves. We dated for almost four years. I wanted to graduate from school, have a job, fulfill my active duty obligations. It was getting a masters in therapy. Eir pay i guess you could say it was love at first sight on her part particularly. Four children and 13 grandchildren. We have been blessed with a large family. I tell people, i had no idea i was marrying such a prolific ran mother. Two granddaughters are heading off to college, the youngest is three. We have a great span of grandchildren along the way. Steve what is it like to see your oldest grandchildren go to college . Secretary perdue we are anxious for them, but same time excited. The modern technology of facetime allows us to check in and keep close tabs on them. We give them grandparent advice from time to time. They seem to respect it. They are great girls, and we are so blessed with all 14 grandchildren and our children, as well. We have a large extended emily, and that is ultimately what life is all about. Steve you have been governor. You are now the agricultural secretary. What is a more difficult job, an executive job or serving on the Planning Board . Secretary perdue my first job was planning and zoning, and i was asked to serve on that by commissioners who were the guiding authorities of the county who said, you dont have political ambitions, do you . I said, i dont. And i really did not. And he said, in this job, you wont need any. We were a transitioning county, historically and traditionally agrarian that was rapidly commercializing, and it was a great listening session. It taught me how to listen to people with their passions of their personal property rights, and also the community good, and how these clash sometimes. You could not write enough black and white ordinances or laws. You needed people with heart to listen and adjudicate the differences. It was a great ground to go on to become state senator and listen to people as a representative of the government, and even as governor, and even today from a business perspective, listening to our customers to the state senator and governor, those listening skills that were honed ther at the planning and zoning commissione in georgia. Steve do you look at communities that have done a good job or conversely a poor job . Secretary perdue absolutely. We got a firsthand look at as governor of georgia as we looked at development throughout the state. Atlanta is a huge metropolitan area, about half the population of georgia, and we have a lot of other counties that were not as prosperous. We were trying to do our best to share the Economic Prosperity across georgia, so we got a firsthand look at where local leadership really played a huge part in how those communities performed. We get the same opportunity here at the usda with our Rural Development program, which is a big adjunct helping Rural Communities across this country with water issues, with help facility issuance, farmer loans and community loans. It all stems from the leadership, the local leadership, and people having ideas and visions about how they \can unselfishly better their communities. Steve you were also a foster parent. Why . Secretary perdue mary and i, particularly mary, had a real heart for young children. Our children were essentially growing up. We still had a couple at home, but we wanted to give act. Give back. I think our faith proclaims us as prolife people, we believe life is precious, and we believed it was our responsibility for those parents who wanted to maybe adopt their children, have their children adopted, that we should be a pathway to do that. We were foster parents for newborns awaiting adoption, and obviously most of that would fall upon mary. She is a baby whisperer of the best degree, and a delightful mother and nurturer of particularly smaller children. She did all the work, and i got to claim the credit. Steve so you are used to 3 00 a. M. Feedings . Secretary perdue mary is used to 3 00 a. M. Feedings. [laughter] steve you went on to be governor of georgia. Why did you decide to run . Secretary perdue i tell people when i was born in 1946, they stamped democrat on your birth certificate. I made a political decision that i called truth in advertising in 1998 to change parties and became a republican at that point in time, believing in limited government and lesser government was better, and more of a republican form. Platform. Years that way. We had a redistricting effort and essentially changed my district to 150 miles long and five miles wide. It was a signal certainly to me and other people not to do what i did by changing parties. I was pro temp in the senate as the senate as a democrat and changed additions and was sort of exiled, a modern exile kind of way. The university of georgia football taught me a lot. It was a seminal moment. It taught me a lot about how people view you moving from a position of power to a back insurer again back bencher again. That taught me a lot as well. Attitudesw peoples changed and how you were treated differently by people and that taught me a lot, as well. But then i saw that georgia needed to change. I thought we were headed in the wrong direction. I came to all of our congressional members who were republicans and said, please come back and run. None of them accepted the challenge. Our callings in the General Assembly wrote a note saying we colleagues in the General Assembly wrote a note saying we would like you to run. And so i did in 2002. And was elected in november 2002. Steve you defeated a democrat. One of the issues you ran on was redesigning the state flag. We are seeing so much with confederate symbols, certainly in recent weeks in the south. Georgias state flag was changed to have the stars and bars on it, which was recognized as a confederate battle flag. There was a lot of controversy as georgia was changing and modernizing, with people coming in. Many people felt it was not really reflecting who georgia was. A predecessor had changed the flight through a legislative process that many of us did not feel was inclusive. I had faith in the georgian people, and they would have bought into the vision. A great symbol and signal to the United States that georgia was different and agreed by public referendum to do that. I agreed to a public referendum for people to vote on the change. They voted for a historical flag that was there for many years from its early history, and it flies today over georgia. I think people are happy to leave that behind us. It reflects who georgia is. Steve what are your thoughts about confederate symbols, whether it is a flight, the the flag, the statue of robert r. Lee, or a confederate soldier . Secretary perdue i think it is difficult today to erase history, whether that segment of our history is regrettable in many ways. I think it is very difficult to what we see happening, certainly the incident in charlottesville and durham, north carolina, trying to sterilize history to a point that i think is not helpful. I think these relationships we need to have, just like georgia thinking about the future, not the past. We are who we are. Georgia has come a long way from that period in time. We need to recognize those and move forward together. One instance of that is as the first republican georgian governor since reconstruction, i managed a 20 billion budget. At one time, over 60 of that budget was administered i african americans. Not many people would think about that from the first republican governor, but we had qualified people in most positions of agencies, and the University System to the department of corrections, health and human services. I First Executive counselor was an africanamerican man run atlanta went to be president of auburn university, and is now a state Supreme Court justice in georgia. That was a modern georgia. While we cannot sterilize the past, i think we need to move over and think of the future on how we can live and work together. Steve based on that and as someone who grew up in the south, why are we seeing more of this today . Secretary perdue i think some of it is globally political. I think some of it is the lack of acceptance. We have a president , and i think some people are using those racial inflammatory signals and symbols to again attacked the legitimacy of the trump presidency. Steve let me ask about what you do here day today. Beyond managing the department, what is your day like . Secretary perdue i am an early riser. It takes 20 to 30 minutes getting in, and i will catch up on emails. Most people get in around 7 30, 8 00, and we will begin daily meetings. There are a lot of requests, a lot of constituents out there. It is broad, wide, deep, vast. What we are doing right now is dealing with budget issues. We are not even into 18 2018 yet, and we are having to construct the 2019 budget. Looking at the transformation of how to best serve the American People through the u. S. Department of agriculture, what should be the alignment. We announced reforms for different sections and Mission Areas to better accomplish the tasks we are called to do. Steve but part of what you are dealing with is the president s 4. 7 billion budget cuts for the department. Where will that be impacted . Secretary perdue again, congress will work on this budget. We will see what it has to say. When i ask voters if they are willing to hang their heads and shake it. Farmers have always done what it took to do that, and that is what we will do at the usda. We dont know if that is what it will amount to people in congress. They plan on backpedaling that. But just like as governor of georgia, we will do what congress as the appropriators give us to do with, and we will do that to the best of our ability. Good experience in georgia, governing from the 2003 to the 2011 time period. The General Assembly had less money than the year before. We did what ever it took. It was a great time to see the circle servants of georgia and all those agencies rise to the occasion and do more with less, and we do not believe the people of georgia suffered much in that period of time, although we had less money. Going to 16 billion in that time period. I do not believe it will be a severe year, but we will take supply in the most appropriate ways and get the job done. That is what armors do, that is that is what farmers do, that is what agriculturalists do. Steve in georgia you restricted the flow of Illegal Immigrants into the state. How did you do that . Secretary perdue i think there was frustration on the state level in that we believed immigration is a federal issue, and it was not being help with on the federal level. Many states felt like there were immigrants coming in, a legal immigrants coming into the state. Many people felt like they were taking benefits from health care and education that were not being appropriately accounted or compensated for. There was legislation, fairly reasonable legislation while i was governor there, to make sure we dealt with those issues. It was dealt with right merrily out of frustration that we could get no help out of washington. Steve you also put into place a voter id law. Some people say it discriminates. Secretary perdue i have never understood that argument. There was no intention or idea about Voter Suppression or keeping people from voting. We provided free ids for those people who would request them. Essentially, today if you get on an airplane or go to any public building, there is some type of identification required. I believe that the conversation about using these as a Voter Suppression is a false narrative. We have come to suspect we have to expect we have to identify who we are i