Howard Schultz makes pitch to conservative voters

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has been weighing a presidential run for months now, and while he has yet to officially announce his candidacy, he hasn’t been shy about his centrist platform.

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Speaking to KTTH’s Jason Rantz on Friday, Schultz talked about the divide between Democrats and Republicans, and how it’s halting progress on key issues, most notably concerning immigration.

“Here’s the truth: Republicans and Democrats would rather have (immigration) as a political weapon that each one of them has, so that neither side can get a political victory,” he told Rantz.

For Schultz, there are a handful of common sense solutions to immigration that could very well solve the problem. The barrier to those solutions, though, is getting both sides in the room to agree with each other.

“If you got people in a room who are not steeped in the ideology in the extreme of both parties, and you just said ‘let’s do the right thing’ — let’s enforce borders, give ICE the tools they need, a pathway to citizenship, and provide legal immigration — we could solve this problem literally in less than an hour.”

As for making his run at the White House official, Schultz stopped short of confirming or denying anything, noting that an announcement deadline he previously set was still in place.

Meanwhile, he’s been traveling almost daily as he explores the possibility of a presidential bid.

“I know I said publicly eight weeks ago I’d make a decision at the end of spring/early-summer — I’m committed to that,” he noted. “I’m learning a lot from what I’m experiencing. I’ve basically been in a different city almost every other day in the last eight weeks, I feel like I’m in a good position to make the right decision, and I’ll stick by that.”

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