- Democratic US Senate candidate, Sarah Godlewski.
Thank you for joining us.
- Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
- So you're currently the Wisconsin State Teasurer.
Why do you wanna be a US Senator?
- I never thought that I would be
standing here as a state treasurer let alone
as a US Senate candidate.
But when I was looking around Wisconsin this past year,
I was seeing we were number one in firm bankruptcies
for three years in a row,
I was watching our democracy be attacked
and at the same time,
families were struggling to pay their bills
while corporations were making record profits.
And what was Ron Johnson doing about any of this?
Not a dang thing.
I just couldn't sit on the sidelines
and had to get in this race because it's clear
working families in Wisconsin needs a voice
at that US Senate table.
Someone who's gonna fight for whether it's
the cost of childcare or lowering the price of gas
or making sure we have affordable senior care
or taking care of the environment.
And those things are not happening with Ron Johnson
and I wanna change that.
- If elected, what would your legislative priorities be?
- We need to look at the economy.
You know, we're one of the worst states
when it comes to personal income growth,
we need to make sure that families
are able to pay their bills, own homes,
make sure that they can afford childcare and senior care.
And I think there's a lot that the Senate can do
because we've seen these companies profit
but yet no one's holding them accountable
to lowering the price of prescription drugs.
And the other thing I think that's incredibly important
is we're a freshwater state.
We care about our environment.
I mean, we are the state of the Earth Day.
Senator Gaylord Nelson started that holiday here
and yet we are seeing PFAS, these forever chemicals
that are poisoning our lakes and our rivers.
You know, only 20% of our state runs on green energy,
the rest runs on brown energy.
And as a leading state for manufacturing,
we have real opportunities to create jobs and actually lead
when it comes to the clean economy.
- Inflation has reached a 40 year high.
What action should federal lawmakers take on inflation?
- For starters, I think something that we need to do
is suspend the gas tax, the federal gas tax,
to give some relief for working families at the pump.
But we also need to be holding
these fossil fuel companies accountable
because they're making record breaking profits.
And at the same time,
fossil fuel companies are getting these
tax subsidies of billions of dollars.
It's ridiculous, but I think we can't stop there.
You know, the other big thing is
we've gotta lower the price of prescription drugs.
We're one of the only modernized countries
that can't negotiate drug prices.
So we as taxpayers pay for it on the front end
to develop these drugs but then on the back end,
we let pharmaceutical companies price gouge us.
That's not right to, you know, as the only working mom
in this US Senate campaign,
I will tell you we need to lower the price
and make childcare more affordable
because 54% of our state is in a childcare desert.
And if we don't have a place to send our kids,
this is a real struggle
to actually be able to participate in the economy.
- There have been a number of major mass shootings
and an uptick in other gun deaths as well.
How should the US Senate address gun violence?
- We need to do more
when it comes to common sense gun safety legislation.
80% of Wisconsin wants common sense gun safety legislation.
Where do we start with common sense gun safety legislation?
Well, for starters, we need better background checks
to make sure that
who's actually getting access to these guns
because domestic abusers are getting guns
and that's a problem.
And the final thing is
we don't need weapons of war in our community.
You know, I come from a family of hunters.
And as my dad says, if you need an AR-15 to go hunting,
go back to target practice.
And so these are just to me common sense ideas
and common sense solutions.
- The Supreme Court has overruled Roe versus Wade.
What should the US Senate do on the matter of abortion?
- Well, for starters,
the US Senate should be prioritizing this
and quite frankly they should have been prioritizing it
a long time ago.
I think what I have been very frustrated about
as the only woman in this US Senate campaign is how
the Senate has had 50 years to make Roe v. Wade
the law of the land.
And now with this recent overturning
of this important piece of legislation,
we have seen that now women in our state
are being sent back to 1849.
And we now have fewer rights
than we had just a few weeks ago.
We should ensure that every woman has the ability
to make her own reproductive freedom choices
because that's what this is about.
This is about reproductive freedom.
And the fact that that's been taken away
is going to affect millions of lives in our state.
- How would you reassure Wisconsin voters to have confidence
in the election system?
- A few things that we need to start doing for example
is stopping the attack on voting rights,
making voter registration automatic.
We need to expand hours
and make it easier for folks to vote, not harder.
The other thing we need to do
is we need to end partisan gerrymandering.
I don't think politicians should be picking their voters.
And that's what's happening right now in Wisconsin.
The other thing is we need to get dark money
out of our state when it comes to politics
as we've seen millions of dollars pouring in.
And finally, when it comes to how we conduct our elections,
I think we need to have national standards
in how we're auditing our elections and reviewing them
so we can ensure these Gable men investigations
do not become the new status quo moving forward.
- Ron Johnson has been elected to this seat twice.
Why are you the candidate who can beat him in November?
- I am the only candidate in this race
that has run and won two successful statewide campaigns.
The first campaign I ran
was to save the state treasurer's office,
led that constitutional amendment
where we took 62% of the vote.
And then when I ran in 2018 for state treasurer,
I was a political nobody from Eau Claire.
I had never run before.
And everybody told me there was no way I could win,
but in 2018 I actually flipped more Trump counties
and took more of the vote chair than the governor,
Lieutenant governor and attorney general.
And so look, we know winning is not gonna be easy,
but it takes a 72-county candidate to win.
I'm able to really represent values across our state,
able to listen and talk to everybody and build trust
and demonstrate this record of accomplishment.
And so just like I've done my entire life,
supporting our state and serving for the public good,
that's exactly what I wanna do.
And why I wanna serve in the US Senate for Wisconsin.
- Sarah Godlewski, thank you again for joining us.
- Thanks for having me.