Family.
Yeah.
Well, Jessie Eben is
some high ranking person within
Ashley, which is hilarious because
when on.
So on the stuff.
Do you have questions about
Wisconsin government and politics?
If so, you are definitely not alone.
And this week, we're going to answer
a few from our audience about
polarization, social media,
and money.
This is Inside Wisconsin
Politics.
I'm Sean Johnson here with my
colleagues Zach Schultz and Rich
Kramer in Eau Claire.
Hey guys.
So we wanna say upfront that if you
have questions, you should email us
at insidewisconsinpoliticsatwpr.org.
But the questions we're gonna talk
about today didn't just come out of
nowhere. It turns out Anthony
Trugowski, a professor of political
science at the University of
Wisconsin, La Crosse, watches our
show and he watches it
with his students in his legislative
process class.
We talked to Professor Trugowsky
a lot.
He suggested his students could ask
us questions and he helped set that
up.
A couple of the students submitted
their questions by video, including
Riley Bickelhaupt,
who wanted to know about political
polarization.
Hi guys, my name is Riley.
I'm a freshman at the University of
Wisconsin-La Crosse.
I'm studying political science and
Spanish with a minor in legal
studies.
My question for you guys today is
how do you think the ongoing
political polarization in Wisconsin
affects the state's ability to pass
bipartisan legislation?
Zach, I feel like there are layers
to this answer, which is kind of
like the reason we like the
question. So where would you begin
to answer Riley here?
Uh, last semester and
then hope that their time doesn't
run out before summer starts.
This is a huge question.
It's a good question, Riley.
Uh, the first thing that they do is
define is what is bipartisan?
Because technically one Democrat
joins the Republicans, it's a
bipartisan bill, even if all the
rest of them oppose it.
So we can really stretch the
definition.
And Sean, you remember back, you
know, 20 years ago at under Jim Dole
at the end of the year interviews,
we'd talk about like controversy in
the Capitol and say 90% of the
bills we pass are bi-partisan
and those Statistics are true.
Most of those bills are really
minor, some technical adjustments,
some of those really aren't
controversial at all.
So they are overwhelmingly
bipartisan, but the ones that get
our attention, the ones that we
track and we follow, are very
contentious. And yes, political
polarization absolutely factors
into the image that
your audience or their voters at
home will view what
happens if they let something pass.
And that goes through leadership all
the way down.
I can tell you for certain that
Robin Voss as assembly speaker knew
exactly which districts he had
to worry about more vulnerable
members and he would let them vote
against Republican bills because
he knew that they had to show they
were more moderate or more
bipartisan in those areas or bills
that were going to pass,
they got to be co-signers on so that
they could say, I helped pass this
legislation. So there's a lot of
tricks and details into what is
bipartisan.
But absolutely, there's only one
bill that needs to be passed each
legislative session, and that's the
budget. So Sean, my question to you
is, if only Republicans
in the legislature vote for the
budget, all Democrats vote against
it, but Governor Evers signs it,
is it now bipartisan?
I think it is.
Yes. I think that the Democratic
lawmakers in that situation have
the luxury of knowing that their
governor is back there to make the
call that needs to be made.
And if they have issues with it,
they can go to the governor and say,
hey, maybe take this out or
reword this with your your partial
veto governor.
So I think that's an example of a
bipartisan budget.
And I think as you've seen the
Republican margin shrink.
You have seen more democratic votes
on those budgets too, because you
have some of those lawmakers like
you talked about.
Under this new map, you have
lawmakers that are more inclined to
represent a 50-50 district.
And what do you hear from them when
they are campaigning?
We wanna work across the aisle.
That is a go-to message.
Rich, how about you? When it comes
to bipartisanship
and Riley's question,
what stands out to you?
So I think what you both said
is totally accurate.
One of the things that's a couple
things that stick out to me is when
there are these bipartisan bills
that get our attention because they
are major policy
issues, it
seems like the compromise falls
under a couple categories.
It's fear or favor.
So I think of when
the Wisconsin Supreme Court's
liberal majority struck down
Republican-drawn legislative
voting districts as
unconstitutional.
Shortly after, Republicans actually
voted for maps that were drawn
by Governor Tony Evers.
When they were opposed to the
court case, I mean, they were
supposed to these maps all
along, but yet they voted for
the ones from the governor.
Why would they do that?
Well, one of the theories is that
They feared that the Supreme Court
justice's liberal majority might
draw maps that are more
favorable to Democrats than
what they ended up passing from
Evers.
And then when it comes to favor,
I think of a bill that passed and
was signed into law this past
session that started
out as a Republican bill banning
people from
purchasing soda or candy with
federal food assistance.
Democrats hated the bill.
It was amended and
Democrats wanted to
get a lot of new funding
and positions for the Department of
Health Services so that it can
comply with federal changes to
the food assistance program and
avoid putting the entire program at
risk.
Republicans on their own weren't
interested in that, but this bill
morphed into a soda and
candy ban plus $72
million for the Department of health
services. So that's
one of those favor-for-favor
kind of bills.
I think the one thing that I would
like to impart upon people who
feel like you look around the
politics today and it feels
extremely polarized, I think
that yes, some Democrats and
some Republicans legitimately
hate the other party and
in no uncertain terms.
I think the Wisconsin legislature
has a lot of moments though
of actual
bipartisanship.
I think about the local government
funding bill that they passed,
shared revenue we'd call it.
I mean, I cannot believe that they
did that, Republicans and Democrats,
that raised sales taxes in
Milwaukee.
It's something that you never could
have imagined the Republican Party
doing years ago.
But in Evers' second term, it seems
like he's been able to cut
those deals, and particularly since
he got these new maps, he's being
able to, to cut these deals.
And as you alluded to, Zach, Robin
Voss sometimes quotes this too,
95 percent, I think, is the number
he gives of the bills that they
pass in the Wisconsin legislature
are bi-partisan because Yeah,
the legislature passes a lot of
bills that are incremental
and we don't write
about them. We don't talk about them
as much, but they're there.
They do pass a lot of stuff that is
not a knock-down, drag-out
fight.
And I think we saw two milestone
shifts that have occurred over
Governor Evers time in office where
this really came to the head where
Republican legislature had to work
with a Democratic governor.
In the first term, Republicans were
bound determined to give the
governor nothing.
They sent him a budget and said, we
dare you to sign this.
And over and over Democrats could
not get their bills to come to
committee, couldn't get a hearing,
never got to the floor.
In fact, if Democrats wanted to
build a pass, they would go find a
Republican they could work with and
they would have them become the
sponsor. So they had to like, give
the Republican credit in order to
get it somewhere.
And that was in order to make
Governor Evers look bad, to weaken
him for reelection.
But then when he won in 22,
Republicans realized, well, we still
have another four years.
So it doesn't make sense to keep
spiting ourselves.
Let's see if we can get done.
And so there was a change there.
And then the other thing that Rich
pointed out is when the maps
changed, we saw the
electorate change underneath these
politicians. And we saw more people
running to the middle because they
needed to, if they wanted to keep
their majority and keep that seat.
And so we saw more effort to bring
things to the floor.
And the question that kind of gets
back to the heart of what Riley's
been looking at is there's
a federal image of polarization.
There's the theater that comes out
of press releases that we see from
politicians. And then there's the
reality of what it looks like at the
end of the day in the chamber when
they all walk off the floor back
into the assembly parlor where the
cameras aren't.
And we're allowed to get a little
glimpse of them laughing, drinking
coffee together, shaking hands.
It's nowhere near the old days where
they would go drink beer afterwards
at the bars.
But they still do communicate.
A lot of the anger is theater
for their voters or for the
media.
They are actually people, it turns
out, who talk to each other
sometimes, and especially back in
that chamber, as you mentioned.
Riley had kind of a, we'll call it a
part two to that. It's a follow-up
question. This was submitted by
email. Riley asks, how would you
describe the effects of social media
and misinformation on the
political environment in Wisconsin?
Rich, let's go to you first in this
one.
How are social media
and misinformation affecting
everything in Wisconsin,
but especially our politics?
Well, in a big way, I mean, the
immediate example that comes to mind
is President Donald Trump's,
you know, false claims about
the 2020 election being
stolen from him through massive
fraud in states like Wisconsin.
So he began tweeting
about that and
has kept it up essentially ever
since. So one of those
tweets was a direct threat to
Assembly Speaker Robin Voss where
he said, look,
decertify the election.
Or else someone's
going to run a primary against you.
And that ended up happening.
Voss said that it's impossible to
decertify the election.
Eventually, there was a recall
effort.
And the challenger to Voss
was endorsed by President Donald
Trump and almost won.
I mean, Voss's
victory was less than 300
votes.
So that would have had a really big
impact on
the business of the assembly and
the legislature as a whole.
So that's one concrete example.
But there's all sorts of
others. You know, I also, I spend a
lot of time on social
media, ex-Twitter, whatever you want
to call it. You got the question
first for a reason, buddy.
Yeah, so I mean,
it's not real life
compared to people you meet on
the street or, you know.
But also, it bleeds into it.
One example is,
you know, these young conservatives
turning point, they're very,
very focused on social media.
That's how they get the message out
about candidates.
That's they get their gentle
threats against lawmakers or party
officials that aren't doing
what they think they should do.
So it does bleed over into real
life, but also there's an aspect of
it being Totally online
and in its own universe
We had another question from Anthony
Tragowski's class.
This one came from Kylie Scanador,
a junior studying political science
and criminal justice.
She asks, do you think more
ideologically extreme candidates
hurt their party in a state like
Wisconsin, or do
these candidates help their party
win? Zach, will we get an
answer to this one once and for all
this November?
Yes and no,
and the reason for that is once
somebody wins, they are the
definition of their party and
certainly for governor.
At one point in time, Tom Tiffany
was one of the more right
leaning, more, you could label him
an extreme, he was one the early
ones to cozy up to Donald Trump and
the MAGA movement.
He was on the far right
of the Republican congressional
delegation and certainly Republicans
within the state. Now he is
likely the front-runner to be the
Republican nominee for governor, and
if he wins, he will be the face of
the Republican party.
And so that shift that occurs
means it's no longer about
what is extremism, because the
voters will vote for whoever they
think favors them,
and politicians redefine their own
image all the time.
We saw another Democrat enter
the field for governor Kirk
Bankstead, who has a
pretty tawdry history with Democrats
themselves, starting Managua and
lawsuits, and I think He was
arrested and.
He's on the outs with a lot of these
candidates, and he decided recently
he was going to run for governor,
enter the field, and he did not get
the same cordial welcome that
the other Democrats did when they
announced last year.
And he would definitely be
considered on the left and a little
more of an extreme candidate by most
people's views of what is a
centrist, moderate, or even a
far-left Democrat today.
That doesn't mean Republicans won't
try and use it against the whole
field the same way that Democrats
are going to use Donald Trump and
his connections to Tom Tiffany
against him.
But it will be, how will the
candidate that emerges be able to
redefine themselves as the face of
the Democratic party or the
Republican party?
And he announced for governor
shortly after he was visited by
federal agents,
after promising, among other things,
to offer free beer when
Donald Trump dies.
This was after the most recent
assassination attempt, so.
A perfect example of what Rich is
talking about in social media being
a little bit of a toxic place and
going right back to Riley's first
question about political
polarization, it occurs in social
and it does bleed over into
the real world.
To me, I think this question really
kind of boils down to the
word extreme, which is always in
the eye of the beholder.
Like you mentioned, once somebody
wins, they become normal,
you just become accustomed to that.
But I think in 2016,
a lot of Democrats, a lotta
Republicans certainly considered
Donald Trump to be on the
extreme end of things.
It worked for him, it continues to
work for him. And when he's
not on the ballot now, Republicans
suffer because
That's what his voters are looking
for.
So there's an example where even
in a 50-50 state like Wisconsin,
where you imagine somebody kind of
wanting to aim for that middle,
the more extreme candidate sometimes
is the one who carries the day.
Rich, real quick on this one.
Yeah, I wanted to point to, you
know, we've got Republican
Congressman Derek Van Orden.
He's said a lot of inflammatory
things. He's on social media a
lot, thousands and thousands of
tweets probably.
And Democrats call him extreme,
but he's won reelection.
And some conservatives in the
third congressional district like
that. They like that about him.
They like about Trump.
They feel that that means they're
authentic and that they're not
listening to the consultant class
in crafting their messaging.
All right, I think we need to move
on. We're gonna shift gears a bit
with our last question this week,
which comes to us on video.
It's about political spending.
I'm Alex Thiessen.
I'm studying political science and
public administration at UW-La
Crosse.
My question today is,
with concerns about campaign
spending in recent Wisconsin State
Supreme Court elections, how
would stricter recuse rules change
judicial elections?
Would new rules reduce direct
campaign contributions to
candidates?
Or would they shift spending
towards outside groups such as PACs
or political action committees?
So recusal, the idea
that when you've got a stake in
the case and you're a judge, you
step out of that case.
Rich, this is not something that's
just a theoretical question.
Supreme Court justices might
consider it soon, right?
That's right, there's a rule
petition proposal before the Supreme
Court brought by a group of
retired judges.
And essentially, it would mandate
that justices recuse themselves
if there are reasonable
concerns about donations
they got during their campaigns
affecting cases,
essentially if those donations come
from parties to the
case, lawyers, what have you.
But the The twist is
that it's still up to the individual
judge or justice themselves to
decide whether or not to recuse.
And this rule proposal doesn't
include any set dollar limits.
That was attempted in a 2017
rule proposal that was rejected by
the Supreme Court's former
conservative majority.
But now we've got a liberal majority
and they've been more open to the
idea of some sort of change.
In a lot of ways this current rule
would be very similar to what exists
right now on the books
Zach, for somebody out there that's
just kind of wondering, like, why
don't justices just adopt a
strong recusal rule, put a set
dollar amount on it, and say,
I'm out if we get above that.
There are so many reasons why that
does not work. The first is simply
inflation I mean a reasonable
number that we all could have agreed
on 10 years ago would be pennies
today when you're talking about 50
and 100 million dollar races Which
is not this one But the last two and
the other one is we now have a
loophole in place for fundraising
for these judicial Candidates that
did not exist 20 years ago It
was actually passed by Scott Walker
and the Republicans But it allows
anyone to give as much money as they
want to the political party who
can then donate that money as
much they want to the candidate.
And the reason why giving money to
the candidate is better than an
outside pack, which is part of the
question, is the candidate gets a
better ad rate, so they can buy
more TV ads, more online
ads for their dollar.
So it's much more effective for them
to keep doing it that way.
And finding what is the actual
number, especially if it gets
funneled through a party, is a
really difficult question to ask.
And it brings up the idea of what a
group trying donate to their
opposite opposing person in the
hopes of spiking them off a future
case.
That's what the justices say who are
skeptical this like we can't do
that. They'll play games.
Yeah, so it really is a thorny
question, there's not a simple
answer, and unfortunately, well,
it comes down to the integrity of
the justice, and that's where
historically it always rested.
Do we see a lot of recusals on this
though?
Once in a great while, but not on
funding.
That's all the time we have for
today, but we would love to hear
from you if you have questions for a
future show.
Just email us at
insidewisconsinpoliticsatwpr.org.
Give us your first and last name and
let us know what you wanna know
about Wisconsin politics and
government.
Thanks for joining us.
This has been Inside Wisconsin
Politics. Our colleague Anya Van
Wagtendonck will be back in a couple
weeks.
Be sure to follow us on
pbswisconsin.org, wpr.or,
YouTube.
Or wherever you get your podcasts.