It was foggy enough that I
probably wouldn't have had to close
my eyes, but I did anyway.
My wife and I live right along
the I-State line.
And we're also on the front line.
So I have a real interest in
DNR.
And how are we doing with it?
How are we doing right now?
So I served for three years
as the secretary of the UA.
And my colleague there who
ran the DNR at that time was Preston
Cole, who had served on the board.
There are lots of ways in which the
legislature can.
But how are we doing, like, you
know, when you had... You're not
doing well. Okay, all right.
Uh, they are,
they're, it's going to be a lot of
money to, to get staff,
rangers, wardens,
et cetera. There's a lot movement
there.
I think part of it is maybe
salaries.
And, uh, which, I mean, I,
I know salaries aren't the...
So you're with the friends,
like, I mean, that burden falls
on you to raise money.
We have
a lot of friends.
Not at this level.
Not at the same level.
$30,000 to build the worst-case
scenario.
That's right.
We just really needed to have some
friends that could take care of
me. You could use a different.
Right in our house.
You could use a different name
for it, but I bet some people might.
So I'm going to introduce Joel later
on. You can come back later.
Okay.
Okay, all right.
Attention.
Attention. Attention.
Attention.
Between the news feed and
the weather, I feel more like we're
in the wild dark yonder than the
wild blue yonder today.
I've worked with a lot of amazing
people over my four decades
of being a Wisconsin lawyer.
I've either worked with or
know four of the leading candidates
for the Democratic ticket for
governor in the state.
Pleased to say that right at the
very top of the list of my most
esteemed,
enjoyed, liked colleagues is
Joel Brennan.
Most talented,
moral backbone, a great leader,
cares about the entire state,
not just the urban areas,
cares about areas like this,
and I got a great sense of Joel
from working with the Department of
Administration, which I think a lot
of people, maybe he'll talk to it.
I never appreciated how
that's really the center part of
our state governments where all the
tax money flows through.
Joel is responsible for doing the
biennial budget of almost $112
billion.
It's a lot of responsibility,
but I hope and think that
as you get to know Joel starting
today, you'll agree with me, he's
the best qualified and the best
candidate, so please join me
in welcoming who
I hope and think will be the next
Democratic governor of Wisconsin.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you!
Thank you very much, Mike.
And I'm going to talk a little bit
about myself.
Not necessarily the subject I'd like
to talk about all that much, but I'm
also here to listen and
to respond to questions
from you. But I hope one
of the things you'll take away from
me is that relationships really
matter and
the fact that I got the chance to
work with Mike for a couple of years
in Madison after a
distinguished career that he has
had.
As a lawyer, and the work
that he did, which I can talk more
about, that relationship means
something to me. I also want you to
know, some of you may get a chance
to get introduced to
my staff who are here
today. Sarah Abel, who's our
campaign manager, is right here.
Sarah just came on board in
the last several days.
And so Sarah and I haven't known
each other that long, but the person
who's driving me today is
Jim Wilkinson over here
in the corner, and.
Jim was my high school baseball
coach a few years ago.
And Jim probably, and so I've known
Jim about as long as
Mike has been doing Birkebeiners,
which is I think 39 years,
right, that you have done that.
And if you want to talk to Jim about
my athletic prowess and my athletic
career, he will tell you that the
only thing that kept me from being
just a major league baseball player
was the fact that I couldn't hit.
And, you know, so he probably
remembers both of the hits that I
got in high school.
And I just, but the fact that
I was, yesterday I
needed somebody to spend part
of a day with me and that I could
reach back to somebody who I've
known for 40 years and who has
helped to bring people
together over the course of that
time and had a distinguished career
in education.
I hope that said something about me,
but it says a hell of a lot about
somebody like Jim. So thank you for
coming. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And as Mike said,
I'm a candidate for governor, and
I'm just going to start with one
fact that I think we can all agree
on, and that we don't live in
normal times.
We don't in normal time nationally
in the state of Wisconsin, in Iowa
County, in Mineral Point.
These are not days that
we all know and that
we recognize.
When I go around the state and I've
spent lots of time traveling over
the couple of months that I've been
in this campaign, people are
anxious. They're angry.
They're concerned about what's going
on with their neighbors and what's
happening in their communities, the
threats that are being done,
government being weaponized against
communities, against citizens.
It's just not something that I
think that we know and
that we think is
who we should be and the chaotic
times that we live in.
And so the question is
not whether these are heavy
times and whether there are things
that are of great concern.
The question is, what are we going
to do about?
And I would say that for
some people, they get angry
and they look for revenge.
They get angry and they want to get
even. I'm somebody who I am
angry about the situation that's
happening federally.
I'm angry about some of the stuff
that happens locally here in our
state of Wisconsin, the state we
love. But when I get angry, I want
to do something about it.
I don't want to get even.
I want to roll up my sleeves and get
something done. And that's lessons
that I learned growing up in
a family that's been in Wisconsin
for five generations.
My parents taught me and my 10
siblings. I'm the 10th of 11 kids,
but my parents taught us some fairly
basic lessons.
You know, show up.
Invest in your community,
solve problems. When you see
injustice, do something about it.
Those are the kind of lessons that
my wife Audra and I have tried to
teach to our young adult children.
We have two children who are 18 and
20 years old.
And for 25 years, what I've
done is try to solve problems
in the work that I have done,
generally in executive positions,
in the non-profit sector, in
government.
Working with businesses around
our state. So that's what I have
been over the course of 25 years.
And in 2018,
when Tony Evers was elected
governor, you remember those times.
We came out of eight years of Scott
Walker and people in the legislature
who I think were not standing up for
Wisconsin values.
And there were lots of things that
we had to and we were forced to
try to fix in state government.
I was honored that Governor Evers
asked me to be his top appointed
cabinet official as the Secretary of
the Department of Administration.
He offered me that job in
2018 and starting in January
2019.
We rolled up our sleeves and we got
to work.
Over the course of the first year
or two in office, we were able to
fix some of that fiscal challenge
and the fiscal mess that Scott
Walker had left behind.
We created the largest budget
surplus to that point of about $4
billion.
We took a rainy day fund,
appropriate to talk about a
rainy-day fund on a day like today.
But we took the state's rainy- day
fund that had about $200 million
in it, and we grew it to almost $2
billion. And so we did
some of those things. We created
stability around the state.
We stood up to extremists.
And We were able during
the course of COVID, the worst
economic and public
health crisis that we had in a
hundred years, to take Wisconsin
and actually have it emerge stronger
from COVID than where we went in.
And so, you know, I'm proud
of the work that we did there.
And there are lessons that we
learned then, and I think that
apply to today, especially in
the era that we live of Donald
Trump.
It's easy to break things in
government. It's easier to take
things and make and do away with
them. It's easily to divide people.
It's to, you know, break
things that we know and institutions
that we have long embraced.
Much harder to get things to
work better and to get government to
actually work for people.
But that's the governor's job.
You know, that's what the job is all
about and that's who I have been
over the course of those 25 years.
And frankly, that why I'm running.
And I think Wisconsin deserves and
needs a government in these
dangerous and dark times.
Who knows how to get things done,
who knows that we have
opportunities.
You're in a legislative district
that for many years wasn't one
that anybody could say was very
competitive. We have opportunities
to do things here with the
legislature. One of the great
legacies that Governor Evers has
left us is fair maps
where you get to decide who's
going to represent you as opposed to
politicians drawing maps to decide
who they want to represent them.
And I think that's a positive
of where we have gotten in
Wisconsin. And there are very
specific things that a
governor can do that
have an impact on your lives.
And I want to talk about some.
And the first, no matter where you
go around this state and wherever
you are in your community, it's
about how do we afford the things
that we need to be able to put on
our kitchen table?
And health care is among the
biggest of those.
Over the course of the last 12
years, while Other states, 40
other states have expanded Medicaid,
expanded what we call BadgerCare in
Wisconsin.
We have not done that.
We spent about two and a half
billion dollars of our tax
money to cover our own citizens that
otherwise we could have gotten from
the federal government.
As we were still, you know, having
people all around us, as we were
helping cover people in Iowa and
Illinois and Minnesota,
we were spending two and half
billion of our own money to
covered people in Wisconsin with a
legislative with the fair maps that
have been created with a few more
allies in the legislature and
with a governor who knows how
to navigate that process,
that's one of the first things that
we can do. That two and a half
billion dollars would go a long way
towards other reforms and other
things that we need to invest in,
but that time is done.
We need to be able to move forward.
In addition on the
issue of healthcare, you know,
Washington is probably not coming to
help us in many ways in the
next few years.
That's an understatement of the day.
But if Washington's not going to do
things like, you know, when it comes
to prescription drugs, we can
do things here as a state.
We can cap the cost of insulin
for families.
There's no reason why parents
ought to go to bed every night
thinking whether they're going to
go. Buy the prescriptions that their
kids need, or put groceries on the
table. And that's what we have
put people in.
In this part of the state and in
others, there are health care
deserts. There are expectant
mothers who have to drive
hours for their prenatal
care or to deliver their baby.
I was with my sister who was
driving me last week.
She's an obstetrician who's
delivered about 12,000 babies.
Most of them in Illinois and a lot
of them are bear fans, so please
don't hold that against her.
But we were talking as she
and I drove from Green Bay across
the state to La Crosse.
When I started in state government.
There were 20 counties that didn't
have a practicing OB-GYN.
Now there's like 27.
And some of those are counties that
you are familiar with.
And this is the state of affairs
that we are leaving things in for
healthcare in our state.
And so we need to invest both in the
pipeline of people to take
those jobs. We also need to make
sure that we are doing right by
those providers and ensuring that
people who need that care can get it
in Wisconsin.
So health care is a huge issue.
Another issue, and I was just
talking to somebody who helps build
homes here and works them,
housing is an issue no matter where
you go. And young families,
especially, are facing a
crisis in that.
In Wisconsin and elsewhere around
the country, in 2020,
the average age for a first time
homebuyer was 33
years old.
Last year, it was 40 years
old. So in the course of five years,
we have taken a generation
and made it much harder for them to
own homes.
And you all know, because you live
here, you know what that means for
stability in communities, what it
means to your education system, just
what it mean to the fabric of
the society that we want to have.
But we have put that out of reach.
And so in many places around
the state, part of the problem is
that Wall Street firms have come in
and they've bought up, whether it's
single family homes or multi-family
homes, Steve.
Jacked up rent so that it makes it
harder. It helps their bottom line,
but it makes it harder and harder
for people in our communities to
be able to access housing.
The other aspect of this is,
in large part, it's a supply problem
too. We are underbuilt in Wisconsin
by about 70,000 homes,
70, 000 kind of entry-level homes,
and we need to make sure that.
We can invest in ensuring
that Wisconsin builders make it
as easy as possible to build with
the cooperation and the coordination
that happens at the local level
because a lot of those are local
decisions, but that we also give
young Wisconsin families and people
who want to be homeowners tools that
they have, whether it's home buyer
assistance programs or counseling
or down payment assistance.
There are programs that we had
at the Department of Administration
that Mike and I worked at that are
spending a couple of million dollars
that could have huge impact with.
Just an increase in those things.
So there's ways that we can continue
to move our communities forward by
increasing the supply of housing in
thoughtful ways.
But if we want to be the state that
we want and need to be,
we also need to invest in public
education. We need to have the best
schools. And I know there are people
here who have worked in the
school district and who have
committed their lives to it.
And I served for 11
years as the CEO of
Discovery World, which is the
largest science museum in the
state. And I got the chance over
that to see thousands of kids have
their eyes open to what their future
might look like.
STEM education or in
careers related to that.
And so the problem is not the
promise of those kids.
The problem is we have politicians
who, for 30 years,
have neglected a formula that
really doesn't make any sense.
It was built in the mid-1990s.
And it doesn't makes sense for who
and where we are in 2026.
And so you may have seen
that just in the last week, a
series, a set of parents.
School districts, educators
filed suit up in Eau
Claire to try to get this declared
unconstitutional and you know
It's for the courts to decide and it
may take a couple of years for them
to do that But the remedy for this
is to have a governor and a
legislature with the courage and the
backbone to say We need to put kids
first give Teachers
what they need in their classroom
and stop forcing local communities
to go to referendum Just to
keep the lights on like that's the
situation that we have been in in
Wisconsin for the last several
years. And again, no matter what
they say about whether it's
unconstitutional, it's
unconscionable that this is what we
afford and this is we abide for
our schools.
And that's something that the
legislature and the governor have
the power to change moving forward
and immediately.
Last issue, and I want to
welcome your questions, but you
can't now be
who we are and where we are and not
think about what's going on at the
federal level right now.
And lots of you are working
on democracy and
protecting democracy, and I
don't take Donald Trump seriously,
I mean, I take him very seriously,
but I don't know that we can trust
him at his word on a lot of things,
but when he talks about uh...
Doing things like nationalizing
elections when when steve bannon
says that they're going to surround
polling places with ice
we better take that absolutely
dead serious and those are things
that we we absolutely
need to do now i don't know about
you but there's one day in
my life that i truly thought that my
vote was at risk and maybe that our
republic was at rest you know that
it was January 6,
2021. I know you all agree
with me on that.
So the idea that they are somehow
protecting our votes is,
you know, beneath who we are, and
they are protecting the votes of the
people who they want to vote, not
for who the rest of us are and
what democracy has meant over the
last 250 years.
And so, you, know, if Donald Trump
wants to come after Wisconsin
rights, Wisconsin resources,
Wisconsin voters, he's going to have
to come through me and all of you.
And I know we're going to
courageously stand up for those
things. I have...
Over the course of the last several
weeks, put out a plan that I
think are five or six steps that
we can take to protect our
democracy, to ensure that people who
are working in local elections have
the right resources that they need,
reforms that allow them to
get a chance to do some things
before the elections start.
And if necessary, like we did in
2020, bring out our National
Guard members who are our neighbors
and friends not in uniform but
to sit side by side with our
local citizens to
make sure that we have the free fair
elections that we know have been the
hallmark of Iowa County of
Wisconsin for the last
200 years here the
last 250 years in the democracy so
so this is I think who we
have to be.
So I guess I'd close
and I'd be welcome to take your
questions.
But there are,
and Mike said, he knows lots of the
candidates who are running.
All of you may know some of the
other candidates who are running.
You're not going to hear me say a
bad word about those candidates.
They're all good people, all people
that I have worked with.
But what I would tell you is that
if you're looking for someone who I
think listens to people around the
state, who has managed significant
budgets, who has been in tough
negotiations, stood up to
extremists. And who actually rolls
up his sleeve to get stuff done,
that is who I am.
And that's what I've done over the
course of 25 years, and I think
that's you deserve.
In the next governor and that's who
I would like to be.
Now, elections are always about
decisions, whether you're going to
move forward, whether we're gonna
move forward in ensuring
that we can bring down costs for
people who need that, and we can
improve our education system, if we
can stand up for our democracy
when we know that it's at risk, or
we slide backwards into more chaos,
more division, and really
a republic that we know and
we think is at risk.
But I'm still somebody who's an
optimist. I love.
Our state of Wisconsin.
I love the people who are here.
I believe in them.
I think that our strongest and best
days of us are ahead of us, but we
better be willing to fight for that.
And that's who I am.
That's why I'm running for governor.
It'd be the honor of my life to be
your governor and I would
welcome the chance and the
opportunity to do that.
He's got the hat on.
So I say on Wisconsin.
Thank you. Good night. Good night!
And so I'm happy to
take questions if people have
them here. If they're really hard
questions, that's why Mike is here.
Here's one. You're a lawyer.
You're lawyer. This is me.
But again, if you have stuff on your
mind or stuff I didn't talk to or
even just things that are the
case. I got here.
I don't often get places early,
but I got here a little early
today.
So Desiree, who's had her.
Shop across the street for 34
years or something like that.
I got to sit and chat
with her for a bit.
If you're going into a community
that's got a Ben Franklin, I stopped
in the Ben Franklin and I know
that. So I got a little
bit of on the ground view of
what's going, but that's part of why
I'm here and what I
can get from you as I'm going
elsewhere. So please either share
what's gone on or ask me questions.
Yeah.
So this isn't so much a policy
question as part of a campaign
question.
So what is your plan
for closing the recognition gap
that was on
the TV a few days ago about
what even state Democrats know
about the current candidates?
And I don't put a lot of
emphasis on those early polls, but
you must be aware of them.
So what is your plan?
Yeah, and just a little bit about
that poll.
And again, I'm not going to speak
about the rest of the candidates.
But I would tell you that if I
changed my name to undecided,
I'd be winning this thing going
away. Because 65% of the people
had said that they were undecide.
And I only got a few percentage
points in the poll.
But the leaders were at like 10
and 11. So the bottom line for the
statewide poll, very credible, is
that almost nobody has made up their
mind about this, and it's a wide
open race. And so what do I do
about that? Like, there are a couple
of things. You know, one, somebody
asked me about money and politics,
and if I could squeeze money out of
this and just have it be about going
around and talking to people around
the state, I would do that.
Unfortunately, we have to make sure
that we have resources to do this,
and one of the areas which I think I
established credibility for myself
and my campaign is.
I declared for governor on
December 11th.
It would have been my mother's 97th
birthday, so I thought that was
fitting. But between December 11th
and there was a report that had to
be filed as of December 31st.
So there are other candidates that
have been in the race for three
months, I had three weeks.
And in those three weeks, I was able
to raise about a little less than
$600,000, which put me
right about at the same with these
other candidates who had been in the
race four three months.
And so that was one area to
demonstrate that the relationships
that I have had and cultivated over
a 35 year career.
Can be translated into resources
immediately, and I think that put me
on a par with some of the other
candidates. What we have to do, like
I continue every day, my campaign
manager is over in the corner,
I'm raising money and she has me on
the phone every day.
We're doing events all around the
state. Last week, as an example,
I spent Monday in Green Bay,
Tuesday in La Crosse.
Wednesday in Madison, Fitchburg,
and Stoughton.
Thursday in Wausau.
You know, tomorrow I'll be in
Sheboygan and in Rock County.
I am spending my time going
all around.
Making sure that we have those
resources but that and I would hope
to think that part of what I the
reason why I can make progress on
that are people like Mike because
you know you are here hopefully
because you're you're interested
you're engaged you have had
opportunities to talk to other
candidates as well and you're deeply
engaged in your community But I
have credibility because Mike says,
I'm a decent guy, and because he
says that you should.
Or Susan. Yeah, and Susan, too.
Hey, don't forget me.
Yeah, they both do.
But that credibility,
and I have had the ability to
connect with some
of the people who are supporting me
are people who have been very
close to Herb Cole,
to Jim Doyle, to Tony Evers,
people who have helped build what
the Democratic Party has been over
the last 25 years.
No. We need to build a new party,
but it's a great foundation to build
on and I have credibility from
some of those relationships and I
think that gives me some opportunity
moving forward.
So for the last four years,
my job has been, after I
left the Evers administration, I run
a civic organization in
southeastern Wisconsin called the
Greater Milwaukee Committee.
And so it's all about relationships
and bringing people together to work
on issues related to...
Public education, public
safety, infrastructure,
all of those things.
I took a leave of absence from that
role, and this is what I'm doing
exclusively.
I am going every day
out to talk to people and to hear
from people all around the state.
It's the only way that I know how,
and so it's a mix of those
resources, it's mix of a message,
but it's also ensuring that I
get a chance to listen to what
people are saying out in those
places as well.
Other questions?
When I first started at state
government, my task was to help
right-size this huge,
crazy project called Foxconn.
And my biggest ally in the whole
administration was this man.
And the vision was to take $3
billion of state-funded
infrastructure and drive it
into small projects scattered around
the state.
And why don't you – I know people
here care deeply about kind of
rural economic development and –
Yeah, and that's a good example of
the way things were done in the
Walker administration.
And when we hired Mike, people
may think that Governor Evers
walking in thought Foxconn
was this thing that he absolutely
didn't believe in and wanted to
get rid of.
To be honest, there was so
little known about it that he,
like lots of us, wanted to know
actually what was happening with it.
And so one of my main jobs, the
job that he gave me, one of the many
that I got in the first year of the
administration was find out if
there's any there there.
And what we found out was that they
were much better at producing press
releases than they were ever going
to be at producing flat-screen
televisions.
And that this was something that was
supposed to be.
20 million square feet were just
going to magically fall
into Racine County.
And 13,000 people were going to
magically be employed there.
And there was no
attachment to reality.
And so Mike was very instrumental,
along with others, of navigating our
way out of the obligations
that the state had had there.
We were not popular amongst
some of those people on the other
side. When I talk about how
we negotiate or what we have to do
as tough negotiators, They had what
they thought was an ironclad
commitment and we needed to tell
them that that wasn't something, if
they couldn't live up to that, we
needed to make sure that we did
things differently.
And so, you know, I also sat
on the Wisconsin Economic
Development Corporation Board and
to its credit.
And my colleague, Missy Hughes, is
another candidate.
We tried to make sure that
that was not an
organization in economic development
in Wisconsin.
It wasn't just that we could take
big, huge companies and give them a
little bit more to make them just a
little bigger.
Now, that was really what had been
developed over the Walker
administration was, let's see if we
can give tools so that the really
big employers can be a little big
bigger. And that doesn't help.
For what you have out here on
your main street. It doesn't have to
help for most places around the
state of Wisconsin. And so we moved
some of those resources
around and I think we are better
prepared to do that.
But there's one other area that I
would say that we really
demonstrated that you can
do that with public resources.
And that was during COVID.
We were responsible during COVID for
about four and a half billion
dollars of federal support coming
to the state of Wisconsin and most
of that came through.
The Department of Administration.
We led the nation in getting that
out to small businesses, to family
farms, to people who were having
trouble keeping a roof over their
head. And that was not an
ideological exercise, and that
wasn't a place where we said it had
to go to the urban areas or
rural areas. There were people
hurting, and we needed to make sure
that we were able to meet their
immediate needs, and that's what we
did. And I'll tell you, if I get to
be the nominee here, and
there's a general election, I
guarantee you that I will be
criticized for what we did during
COVID of getting those dollars out.
Because somebody will say, you
didn't keep the right paperwork, or
you didn't do this in triplicate.
And you know what I'll say is like.
I wanted to get those money into the
hands of Wisconsin residents as
quickly as possible.
If you want to blame me for that,
guilty as charged.
Like, you know, you do what you
want. But that's what we have to do
when we're in times of crisis, but
that's also who we need to be when
it's not a crisis.
And so, you now, we have tools at
our disposal.
Some of those tools have not been
utilized to the extent that they
need to.
We need to make sure that there's
certainty when it comes to
how we deploy these.
We need to make sure that there is.
Fairness about how we deploy these
around the state.
And it can't just be in the urban
centers. It can't be just places and
companies that you know.
The fact that I got to hear from
Desiree across the street, that's
still where people talk to each
other. And I hope you would all
agree, she said, she's not a gossip.
She knows more than most anybody in
the community, but she ain't
telling.
That's still who we are, and
that's who I think we want to
be. We need to invest in those
places. And you know, I think.
You as taxpayers, you as
people who believe in your
communities, like this is who we
should be.
So speaking of the water...
You moved, didn't you?
Yes. You moved from there to here.
The Walker administration,
and still recovering from that,
we had the president, whose name was
Barack Obama, who made
a contract for
who helped us in Wisconsin to
create high speed rail between
Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison,
between cities.
And we never got that because of
our lovely new governor Walker,
who wouldn't take any federal money,
and then built a gazillion highways
in Milwaukee that
It didn't help us at all.
And we are still not connected
very easily to Milwaukee,
to Chicago, to the Twin Cities.
Is there anything, I know it's not
one of the top priority questions
right now since we're recovering
from all the pain inflicted
by the federal government right now,
but it seems like it would be
a great thing to reestablish
some high speed.
I agree, and that
may have been the first step in
the Scott Walker for President
campaign because there were people
in Florida and California who were
thrilled that Wisconsin didn't spend
that money on that high-speed
rail, and he did us
a disservice.
I think what we need is,
there needs to be a multimodal
approach to whatever
we do in infrastructure.
You know, there's been,
over the course of the last several
years. I would say that the
Department of Transportation under
Tony Evers, and these were
colleagues of mine, has been more
transparent,
more inviting of community input
than what we have had in the past.
But it doesn't mean it's perfect.
We still are.
Very much more focused
on highways than we are
on any kind of transit.
Whether it's in local communities,
large or small,
there are formulas that the state
uses that we have really underfunded
for many years.
And we penalize people for
driving more fuel-efficient cars,
because the main way that we pay
for our transportation is on
gas taxes. And so if you're— That
stands to reason if you're using
less gas, then we have to penalize
you. We have to charge you more.
That's not, I think, the
kind of incentives that we should
have.
And I believe it's
now been, what, 15 years since
Tom Friedman wrote the
book about the world is flat, maybe
longer than that.
And the fact that we still
can't get enough out of the
connection between Milwaukee,
Madison, across the Twin Cities.
When other areas around
the globe are looking at themselves
as one central region, we lose
because of that.
And so the investments we
make there and who we
can be are something I'd like to
make a priority of, but I have to
tell you, that is a
little bit, the first issue that
people bring up right now is can
they afford their housing, they're
paying too much for medical care,
there are some who can't
have insurance. And I'll give you
because we're.
Now, in a coffee shop and
bakery like this, an experience I
had in a conversation with two
people who worked in a bakery just a
week or so ago.
One's 24 years old, one's
30 years old and you may know where
this is going.
The 24-year-old, I asked them both
about health care, the 24- year-old
said, I'm okay because I'm still on
my parents' health insurance,
thanks to Tammy Baldwin and what she
did during the Affordable Care
Act. The 30-year-old...
He's generally healthy, but he's
rolling the dice, and he can't
afford to have health insurance
right now. This is what we
are now condemning young people
to, is like hoping that they're
going to stay healthy, changing some
of their life activities because
they don't have the ability
to gain health insurance.
And it's not just young people.
There are... You know,
married couples and families around
the state who have, because of what
the mean-spirited and ill-thought
things that happened at the end of
the last year, where things have
just mushroomed in terms
of cost of health care.
And this is who we are.
And we better be prepared to do
that. And we'd better be prepare in
whatever way we can to do
those things as a state, as opposed
to waiting on the federal government
to help us. Because I just don't
think that you're going to see them
as a great partner. The fact that,
you know, that big bill took out
about almost a trillion dollars
of Medicaid spending over the next
ten years, that's not Washington
on its way to help.
That's Washington hurting
Wisconsin families, and we better
be prepared to do whatever we can to
stand up against that.
Another candidate, by the way.
I want to make sure that when I
come, we have great
candidates running.
Thank you so much.
I have about 10 questions for you,
but I'm going to spare everybody in
the room.
The public education model, how
we fund it in the state of
Wisconsin, relies heavily
on property owners and property
taxes.
As I'm out talking to folks and
they see the downward spiral
of their public schools, I
have been reassuring them there are
other ways that we could fund
to our public schools in the
state of Wisconsin.
The voucher program seems to be
a sore spot with regard to the
people who even know about it.
Most taxpayers don't even realize
that the money on their real estate
tax bill doesn't necessarily stay
in their district.
In a nutshell, you're
the governor.
How would you address the way
the state of Wisconsin funds its
public education system?
Yeah, and just as a precursor,
let me tell you, I didn't tell you
exactly everywhere I had been this
week because I was in Hustusford,
which is in Dodge County.
And I was there because there was a
public meeting on Monday
because Hustasford, the
school district, run a deficit in
the last five years, has a negative
fund balance, has borrowed already
a million dollars from the state
trust, wants to borrow up to
four million dollars more.
And the... This, in a community of
1100 people, there were 200 people
at this meeting in the gym at the
high school because their two
most viable options are to
consolidate with another district
around or to dissolve.
They'd be the first Wisconsin school
district in the last 35 years
to actually dissolve.
Now the state has something to say
about that. They can decide to do
this, but the state ultimately has
to grant them the ability to do it.
Like, this is, and I didn't
mention, there's a referendum on the
ballot for about three and a half
million dollars over the next two
years.
Goes the same way as has happened
in Houston for over the last several
years will fail again like
they they have not been able to pass
that and so this is what we are
laying out for people so what
would I do as governor that the I
mentioned there is a I'm a
lawsuit that's been filed by
teachers by teachers
unions by
administrators by parents in
Eau Claire and it's a whole bunch of
districts that have gotten the point
of just this being not tolerable
anymore to declare the funding
formula unconstitutional.
But the funding form I swear
to you is a snapshot
that was taken in
1993.
Anybody a fan of the Jurassic Park
movies?
I think the first Jurassic Park
movie was made in 1993, they've
made like seven more since then.
But we are still, that may
be laughable but what is a
criminal is that we still are
using that formula.
And that formula was a snapshot, not
of what every kid was worth or what
you're doing, it's what you had
spent the year before.
And they locked in that, and over
the course of the last 30 plus years
have tried to kind of somehow bail
that together to be relevant
and coherent for 2026.
And it's not.
And so, you know, if this lawsuit is
successful, the two remedies, just
as happened in the case
related to the
legislative maps, The two remedies
would be... That they appoint a
special master who says, here's what
you've got to do.
Or the legislature and the governor
got up, do what's courageous.
And they make the decision that.
We're going to put kids at the
center. This is the rest of what we
need to do. If somebody is an
English language learner, if they
have an IEP, if there are other
special needs, this is the formula.
And other states have done this.
We simply haven't had the courage to
do that over the last 30
years, and it's past time for
us to do it. And that's why I say,
if you're in the legislature
alongside me, if we can turn this
district, if we could do a
few more like that, there will
be both the values and
the people there who can take
on these tough issues that I think
have been ignored and you know and I
have two kids they're no longer in
the school system, they're off in
college now.
But they're the products of the
Milwaukee Public Schools, of the
work that they did in a private
school in high school.
And they're going to be successful
because of what they have done and
what they learned in school.
I'm here with somebody who taught me
40 years ago in school,
like we need to be investing
in kids and creating that kind of
a level of relationship and a path
forward for them.
And we're not going to get there
under what we've got now.
And so there are ways.
And you mentioned the voucher
program.
There's dangers that lurks
ahead with that, that in
the next year, if we do
nothing, the cap is lifted on
the statewide voucher program.
There's much less accountability,
almost no accountability in some
cases for the voucher schools
versus the public schools
in our state.
The largest recipient of
voucher funding in the state of
Wisconsin is really almost now
a virtual school.
And they found a loophole to
get $40 million of
tax money that goes into this.
And like even people I know who are
supporters of that program.
They don't believe that this is a
way that we can educate our kids.
So we need to do things that are
viable, that are, you know, that we
could get through the legislature,
but that are ensuring that we're
protecting the future for kids who
go to public schools in Wisconsin.
With data centers expanding
across Wisconsin and
people,
citizens scrambling for information
on the transparency of these
transactions,
can you, one.
Offer an opinion on
what role the state government
or the PSC should
have in the regulation of
data centers and two,
can you offer instruction
or directions for citizens
who want that
transparency and who
might want to organize against
this sort of construction of these
facilities.
And you'll remind me if I don't
get both questions, you'll remind me
of the second.
But the one about the state
government's responsibility,
what happened was data
centers have exploded nationally in
the last few years.
And Wisconsin, a couple years ago,
passed a tax credit, which is almost
like the table stakes.
If you're a state that wanted to get
into the data center game, this is
the one thing you had to do.
And there's economic
opportunity, and I don't fault them
for doing that. But what they didn't
do is put any other guardrails
around what that looks like.
And so what I have said is that
if I'm elected governor,
we would pause the data-center
construction for at
least the few months that it takes
for us to deal with it.
Because this is an issue that's on
the mind of every citizen around
the state. And. And what we need to
do is we need to say to the
companies that are building these,
one, if there's a red line,
it's that no taxpayer is going to
pay for the construction, the
operation, the long-term maintenance
of these, that there are
environmental and sustainability
standards that need to be met, that
there are requirements that have to
be met at the local community, and
that locals need to have their
voice in this. So like.
We need to set that bar and
make sure that it's a predictable
thing no matter where you are like
that's the state's responsibility
and and our Responsibility is
not because the
companies that want to do this they
have a premium on speed They said
get it done as quickly as possible
They're spending billions of dollars
and you know and that's what's at
risk And so they want us to do it
very quickly any of you who have
worked in local or state government
Sometimes we can be a little more
methodical about things and
intentional and that's a good thing
and you know It is not we want to be
responsive, but we can't do
things that are irresponsible And so
the state laying out what those
guidelines are very clearly and
ensuring that there is a the
opportunity And and the good news is
there is work that's happened in the
state legislature where I think
there there can be Some
path forward about what that looks
like but the state Legislature you
know, and our friend Howard Mikeline
have generally gone home for the
next nine months and they're going
to do nothing. So we can tell you
that nothing's going to happen
between now and the end of the year.
And but, you know with a change in
legislature and where we're going,
we have the opportunity to
do stuff immediately after
the election and in January next
year. Your second the second part of
your question was about what
can citizens do.
I think you're seeing it.
Like you know you said there's a an
event this Sunday.
There's an event on
Tuesday. Like, there are,
this is in lots of ways,
you know, what's going on with the
data centers, what the Trump
administration has done with
relation to ICE and how they've
awakened people to be active
in their communities.
I think that's good for democracy.
Now, the fact that part of it is
that we're under threat is not
great. We should all be able to
embrace those things.
But the fact they have awakened
an activism in people is
to our benefit and continuing
to do that.
And, again,
the state government's
responsibility on this and other
issues is that we not tie
the hands of local government, that
we don't allow there to be the
NDAs, that things are all
but cooked before you get any
knowledge of it. I think making sure
that there is a process in place
where there is active local voice
and where it's not wanted or
warranted at the local community, it
doesn't happen there. That happened
in Caledonia.
It happened in Greenleaf
in Outagamie County.
Recently, they're deforested in
Dane County.
And there are places that will
embrace this, and there are place
where the argument about
the real estate support and some of
the jobs that that is
compelling for local communities,
but where it's not, then they ought
to move on to somewhere else.
And I think that that's entirely
appropriate. That's the way the
contract and the partnership between
state and local government ought to
work. But again, like I would say,
I admire the
work that has gone on.
I think...
Jim taught at my high school.
I think Charlie Barron is a fellow
classmate, fellow alumnus.
And if you know him, he's a comedian
who does the Manitowoc minute.
But he's also been very involved in
data centers. He's coming for this
event here.
The fact that there are people like
that who can help express the
environmental concerns around these,
I think that's valuable.
And I just think there is reason.
There's opportunity for citizen
voice in all of this.
I've never held statewide elected
office, I've never held any office
before. I still think that we're
a citizen legislature,
we're citizen government,
and we ought to be people who still
have opportunity to have agency
in that and and I'd like to think
that that's who I would be as
governor and and and but the fact
that you're doing it already and
organizing at the local level is to
your credit and that's how we
established this place 250 years ago
so We better keep doing that
or it's all at risk.
Yes, but it's kind of
a follow-up to that.
You were talking about the idea of
the governor putting
some kind of process that
they would pause
the building for.
And I'm thinking that November,
and consequently January, when you'd
be sworn in, is almost too late.
So is there a possibility that
Governor Evers can be
approached? He's a lame duck, maybe.
Can be approached to do that,
to put that so that you can simply
carry it on.
There is a possibility of that and I
think that you know if I know
anything about the governor and I
Admire him because I and I got the
chance to work with him And I think
he is if you know him,
you know Or or if you don't like who
he conveys himself to be personally
is who he is, you, know
Above reproach when it comes to
ethics and integrity.
I and i think there's already
have been some of those efforts
around him.
He doesn't seem to be, and
again, I will volunteer to you.
I don't know exactly what the method
would be to put that pause in
place, but he has not, and you
can come get water here too.
I'm in the middle, you know.
Are you sure? Yes, absolutely.
This is embarrassing,
but you're so kind.
I love it.
Anybody else?
Anybody else.
Else.
But I think he has
the ability to do that.
He has not expressed at this point
any interest in doing
that, you know, and
I would encourage him to
take a long look at what's going on
in places around the state, and my
guess is anybody who has audience
with him is bringing that up to him
where they can.
I also think there's a possibility
for everybody in this room to
send him a postcard.
I send a lot of postcards.
Send him a postcard and say, you
know what?
This guy had a great idea.
Joel had this really good idea.
What do you think?
Can you get a go?
He listens.
I'd like to think he likes it.
Now, here's what I, when I told
him that I was thinking about doing
this, and as you know, there
are eight viable Democrats
who are running, and a number of us
worked with him, a couple were
lieutenant governors to him, so he
knows us all.
What he said about it is, oh
yeah, this'll be fun.
That's all for now.
Thank you.
This will be fun for me to watch.
Fun for him, like less fun for
the rest of us.
Although this is fun.
It's fun to talk to you.
And I think he's had the opportunity
over the course of a 50-year
career in public service to
do lots of this.
But it is, and I should have started
by this, too.
And Mike may be about ready to give
me the hook here. But I wanted to
say how valuable it
is and how much I thank you for.
Taking the time to, you know,
have conversation with me for what
you do with Indivisible
Southwest, for those who are
doing that work, for allowing me
to rain on the knitting
party for a few
minutes, but like that is what
democracy is all about and it only
works when, you know, people
participate in it and all of you
do that in your own community and it
means something around the state but
it also means something to us.
Who are out here trying and vying
to be elected leaders, so thank
you for that.
I think we have one more question
here, I know Joel wanted to talk
individually with you.
So thank you for all your comments.
I am a retired nurse.
So health care and education, which
to me are very,
very, are extremely important.
And I have more of a comment than
a question.
I think that the Democratic Party
as a whole
has really shot ourselves
in the foot by hammering
the word abortion.
I think there are many people
that do not
that a miscarriage is
an abortion and
oftentimes, sadly,
requires medical care
for a woman's
health.
And I just want
your views on
abortion rights, and
I think it is unconscionable
what is happening with our
transgender persons
in this state.
And it makes me
lose sleep in addition
to this war that has been
started all over.
Yeah, one on
the issue of abortion and
women's health.
And I think that the situation that
I talked about, that we used to have
20 states that
didn't have a practicing OB-GYN,
and that's only grown.
Part of that is about the
overall. Bye.
View and what the legislature here
has done related to abortion and
the Dobbs case at the national
level. So again, I would tell you,
I believe abortion is an
important part of women's
healthcare. It's a decision between
a woman and her doctor.
There are. With changes
in the legislature there may be
ways that we can continue to improve
on maternal health in lots
of ways whether it's through
telehealth or some of the
prescription efforts and waiting
periods so like I am going
to from the
day from now until the time that
I am done with public service
believe those things and and I
will work towards that with the
legislature and you know so you
know those are important
issues to people it sometimes
are that people decide
just on one way or the
other and I believe that you know
people I respect people's ability to
have difference of opinion on those
things but that's where I stand.
When it comes to
issues around the way that
LGBTQ plus people
are treated in our state, Like,
I have...
In my own family,
in my community, I
know the richness and the talent
that is in every
kid and every person, especially
with young people.
And I will do everything in
my power to ensure that
people can be who they are,
where they are and that the
government has no say in that.
And I think that that's just who
we should be as human beings and
respect people's rights to be who
they are because there is a richness
about each one of us and
it takes some of us longer to find
it and we all ought to continue
to search but it ought to be about
who I am and what I contribute
and the fact that we have people
who want to stifle that or who
want persecute people for being who
they are.
Not the democracy, not the America
that I want to
be in and I'll do everything I can
to change that.
Very good.
Is that it, Mike?
Oh, wait, Sarah's got a question.
If people want to know more about
the campaign or get involved go to
Brennan4WI.com
There's also a
Facebook My kids
tell me what to do on
Instagram and X and they watch
and they tell me when we've done
something there and and that's all
great, but like
If there's a plea that I
have and we're gonna stick around
and have individual conversations
here, too But but like the only
way I know how to do this is
by taking relationships that I have
invested in over the course of the
last 55 years, in some ways I'm
55 years old, but 30 years
or 35 years in a professional
life. And then having those
kind of extend in
concentric circles out from there.
Having Susan and Mike do this today
is a part of that.
To the extent you know other people
or you want to get involved or you
know people who live other parts of
the state and you want to share
those with us, I welcome that.
It's the only way ultimately where
you build the kind of movement that
it takes to win in this.
And so again, I want to say thank
you for letting me be here.
I'm going to get out of the way of
the water and grab
some myself and have conversation
with people for a little longer.
Thank you, Joel. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
You saved me.
No matter what.
What do you think you're doing?
No, please, please.
Yes.
Hey, I'm Joel.
Joel. Jerry Allen.
Jerry, how are you?
I have a question for you.
Thank you.
Oh, they're
already happening.
Steven's Point,
Whitewater, we've seen had gone
through that.
Steven's point, Whitewater, you've seen, have gone to the referendum in
the last 10 years, paper
firefighter. You mean the red flag?
No. That's not an extravagant thing.
You're making a lot of reasons.
I don't know. I think too.
We
where I left, but there was a
little movement and I just shared a
little bit of stuff.
But people thought that that got
passed.
I don't know if that's true, but
I'm sure it's true for women's
roles. And I'm not saying it's
false.
I didn't mean to make a red cap
with a tassel.
That was a sign of...
I would love to get my hair
done.
Do I have to get another one?
Well, I have
one.
Anything different.
I don't know
if I want to, because it might get
like different size,
but
it's not
that. I'm like,
yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, we have all money.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
I have to tell you, this
is part of what's exciting to me is
I think this having very
thin margins is where policy
gets stuck.
Like, you know, people can stand in
the way and have key to play,
but I just think that's
what's exciting now is you're
forcing people
to do stuff in that middle
space.
Some people want to be on the
80-20s.
I'd like to be the 49s.
And drag people across,
that's, I think, who we should be.
And you had the chance to do stuff
in where...
...To make a
decision...
...And that's the way we have to do
it. So, if you're still going
to stick around on the county board,
if I win this, my guess is you're
going to be in my year and he's got
my number.
Thank you very much.
Yeah.
She's a film artist.
Yeah. I can see her work.
I think she's just amazing.
Very secure.
You're shaking his hand?
Yeah. Yeah.
So what they're doing is they don't
know what to do.
They just say that.
That's important to know.
You want to make sure they know
that. Exactly.
That's it. That's important to know. You want to make sure they know
that.
Yeah, I mean, the red yard is
something that's sold out in clouds
here.
Thank you.
Enjoy.
I like that.
I'd love to have a way to do this
with Michael and I'd love to get a
chance to work with him.
All right, thank you.
I might be an athlete, because this
is my first time.
Oh, yeah, well, Michael and Michael can
do it. Yeah, she's doing fine.
OK, if you want to take some hands
and say, I'm a driving school
guy, I'm going to do it for
you. Absolutely.
You got a hand?
I'm the driving school driver.
You're the driving driver.
I'll be the driving teacher.
I work as a
teacher for a teaching in
the medical school. I don't know
where to start, but I
get your questions.
We're asking for an interview, and
we wanted to get out.
So I'm kind of injured.
It really helped.
Yeah. Well, yeah.
Well, we could put the same thing up
there. We could go somewhere else.
So, you know, it's just the quality
of that sound.
It's the power of the track.
It's a very old building.
And one of the problems with this
is that we like the guys
Thank you.
I'm going to have to get some of
this.
Sure. Sure. We're going to end our
conversation.
And then
this is kind
of an opportunity
to come in and look
at the next one.
So, to get all that work
done, we're going to have to do it
in a different way, which I
think opens up a whole bunch of
different things.
It's like, the things that we
care about and the things
we care to do, I
think those are the right values for
us to have. I think there's ways
that we can do things differently. I
think I'd
better speak.
Otherwise, it's new.
Thanks for coming together.
Thank you very much.
This is a good guy.
He's also the top fisherman in the
world.
And he works really hard.
And he's a medicine.
Yeah. He's a skill.
Yeah. Thank you.
So again,
rather than a specific policy,
there are many ideas that we can
make much more progress on
than he was able to make.
His job was to stand in the way
of lots of bad stuff, and he did
it in a great or successfully
right.
But I think that there's, you know,
I didn't, Mike was saying that,
like I talk to him sometimes, and
his phone works.
There's still problems
here, you know,
with that kind of, like, we should
be able to make investments like
that, and there's money
at the federal level to do it.
You know, there's, I think, efforts
for us to do things on Broadway,
and we just have had to decipher
it.
You just go around and tell them
all, what are you doing now?
Oh, alright, alright.
I can see from here how great you
are.
I do a lot of the honors of
the Grand Dome, and
wow, you got my name.
I am really glad.
I'm Lisa's assistant, and I'm really
glad I got to be here.
You are not on the radar,
and I
talked to Sarah about that too,
she's as fast as possible, and found
out you are set up for the College
Dome in Platteville.
Hooray. I'm going to go to the bar
so I can see what
they've been doing.
Great, great.
All I can do is kind of keep
after this.
I've only been at it for,
I guess, it's almost three months
now. It's almost 90 days.
But every day that comes off the
calendar, it's another one that gets
closer.
I'm trying to get out of here right
now. It's great, it's great.
I'm going to take the rest of
Wednesday and get out here and do
what I can do.
Yeah. So much.
I'm very glad to be here.
Trying to find efficient ways.
So what's your background?
I'm an
Army veteran.
I got done with my time and
did the mom thing.
I have
two special needs kids, raised four,
and now I've adopted my
six-year-old autistic age
degree.
And so I'm doing that.
A lot of different things about
coordination.
I think I'm a little better now.
So the old adage, if you want
something, you don't give it to a
busy person, you're that.
And I mean having a
grandson that you're now
raising.
I look forward to that day.
My kids are 18 and 20, I think we
still got a little time.
And I will look forward those days,
but I also know every
grandparent who says they
love having those kids around, they
love also handing it back, and you
don't have that.
Yeah, and now, yeah, I don't have
that, and my daughter-in-law
is in danger.
I know it worries you, but by the
time you heard I know what they did
with ours, you were ready to go home
and sleep. How were you doing?
I said, I dunno, I'm just making
friends.
You find that wellspring.
So it's a different quality
that I want to put more
time into.
And how is that going?
No, I don't, like,
so there's a, the state
party, the Senate,
which have done, you know,
made their fiat.
And I. Really?
I don't know.
I don't know what you're talking
about. Yeah.
And I just don't like as you
can probably imagine.
I'm looking around at everything
else And so I don't see that
but I also like if somebody did
that in my race like Put
there I would feel
That's a little and to do it
way in advance Sometimes
seems a little bit put in the cart
before the horse
But I'll tell you, I mean, you know
this, and again,
selfishly, the more that
people are going out and voting in a
Democratic primary, better for
Democrats and better for all of us.
Like, let's get people engaged.
And it is so different right
now, you know, like we've said
to people, we are afraid of
the women candidates right now
for Senate Senate seats and
free elections.
I think Lisa has been
very grounded.
Thank you very much.
Child care immediately.
They always have an interest in K-12
education, but now in
lots of places they understand the
connection not only to K- 12, but to
the workforce that the
lack of viable child care has
on everybody. And everyone.
In Wisconsin is nice to meet you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, thanks for coming today
and we're going to see more of each
other coming up.
So, I'm so stoked for Sunday
with the data center.
I don't know what I'm doing on
Sunday, I might be...
Oh, come on down.
Come on down!
Alright, a couple quick follow-ups
to what I was hearing and I just
want to clarify if I heard it right.
So one of the things I heard you
talk about was National Guard
potentially out of uniform at
polling locations.
How would that work and what would
their purpose be?
Would you need an official
declaration to call them up?
So this is what happened in 2020.
I think what has to happen is you
have to exhaust every option locally
and make sure that you know just as
we do in for 1800
units of government and all around
the state, do whatever you can to
get locals, the people who
work year in and year out, But
when there are times where
there are...
Extraneous circumstances whether
there be you know more people
coming in to vote or not enough
people this is what the governor did
in 2020 during the covid challenge
and so it's it's having people
who are not
in uniform but as civilians doing
work in their own communities and
and so there is precedent for it
Yeah, but I want to make sure that
you understand nobody's in uniform.
These are people who are in
communities. There are 10,000 women
in our state who
are doing work in their own
communities.
This seems to be like
a big deal.
Maybe they're just waving at me.
I don't know, maybe they're in a
parade.
They brought out a parade for me.
They must be going to state.
Did they hear that this was not the
real governor and just say, you
know, that they get confused here?
There we go.
Oh, they're on their way to state,
is my guess, for basketball or
something, right?
Yeah, he's wrestling with that.
All right, so that's
what that was. I thought that was
all for me.
That was an escort for them.
Um, and I want to get some
clarification on the data center.
Yeah, you're talking about putting a
pause and a follow up question.
What authority would the
governor have outside of working
with the legislature?
You know, I think that's something
to be explored.
You know somebody asked a follow-up
question about what the authority
that the governor has right now.
I think this is all making
sure that there is a rational
and thoughtful approach.
And when I say applause, it's also
not something that I'm looking to do
for time immemorial.
I think there are ways that
we can very quickly in
the first weeks of the next session
address these things, address the
environmental concerns, address the
concerns that taxpayers have.
Ensure that there's a level of
accountability and responsibility
that gets pushed down to the local
level to ensure that there are the
conversations that are happening
there and I think that's who
we need to be and that's the way the
state needs to be a leader on this
issue.
So one of the other things that
we're looking at is kind of the
overlap in this time period between
the candidates getting out there but
also the Supreme Court race going
on. Are you seeing questions pop
up? Are they seeing crossovers?
I mean, are these kind of working in
tandem at the same time?
Well, I think so.
I think it's been interesting and,
you know, that the level of
engagement in this Supreme Court
race has been so much less than
there has been, because the stakes
are not as high.
You know, the majority is not at
risk. But everybody who's
engaged in electoral politics
now is very invested in the
Supreme Court. You know I have gone
to a number of Chris Taylor events.
My wife was at one in my
stead earlier this week.
I'll be at one in Sheboygan
tomorrow. So there is a.
Level of intensity around
those that is building and since
the election is less than five weeks
away I think people are are really
starting to pay attention, but the
resources matter and there haven't
been the level of resources spent on
this campaign For the Supreme
Court as there have been in the last
several and so I think you just get
that level You know the level
engagement from voters is
a little bit less as well But you
know people will make up their mind
in the next few weeks, and I think
we somebody who's
a supporter of Chris Taylor, I'm
gonna be encouraging people just
like we did. We put our sign up in
the window just this week,
and so I wanna make sure that people
are engaged in that race as well.
Is there a benefit to having maybe
an early test run or get out
the vote activity right now so
that going into the fall the people
are still activated engaged like
carrying over the enthusiasm from
one race to another?
I would think that it's always a
good idea that we make sure
that we're, you know, ensuring
that there is that level of
engagement and organization.
But I also will tell you, and you
probably see this, I see it wherever
I go, we have a highly engaged
electorate. There are Democrats who
are thirsty for somebody
who can stand up to Donald Trump,
but also who has a vision of where
things are going and ultimately
wants to roll up their sleeves and
get something done.
That's what I'm trying to
demonstrate to people as I'm out
talking to them. But clearly,
this is a...
Engaged electorate people who
want to make sure that we are doing
the right level of organizing to
be ready for this fall.
So another question that came up
had to do with the awareness of,
like, 65% unaware of the candidates.
People aren't really fully locked in
to have an opinion yet.
They may have heard some names, but
nowhere near deciding a choice.
What kind of line do you walk when
you have a crowd like this that is
engaged? They have made up their
minds, or they're actively doing so,
but trying to say, just be patient,
doesn't make sense for me to go up
in the air and start running a bunch
of ads right now.
How do you work that line to keep
them excited, but let them know,
like you're out of the ordinary for
the energy you already have?
Yeah, and as much as anything,
I want to talk to engaged people
now and I want to talk too engaged
people as it gets closer to the
election. So it's a gift to have a
group of 30 or 35 people
who are this engaged, who have
the level
of information that they have about
important issues, the depth
that they have.
Like that's valuable for me, it's
valuable for what's going on
statewide.
Like, as much as anything,
I'm still introducing myself.
You know, as I said, if I changed my
name to undecided, I'd have this,
you know, going away because 65%
of the people haven't done that.
But for me, I am not going to spend
a lot of time doing anything except
trying to demonstrate to people I've
got a career of executive
experience, I had the highest
appointed official,
or the highest-appointed cabinet
position in the Evers
administration, and that I have
demonstrated that I'm somebody who
wants to problem solve.
In addition to standing up to what's
going on and what's wrong at the
federal level, I think we need to
make sure that we are showcasing
that there's a vision for where we
want to go.
And when I have an audience to do
that, that's what I'm going to try
to do.
Anything else you want to add?
I don't think so.
All right.
You look great.
You look terrific.
I hope that as we see each other
additionally on the campaign that
we're in our
Civilian, by the way.