WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:25.760 The Democratic primary for governor starts to get negative, and one candidate turns to 00:25.760 --> 00:28.280 national live streams to raise money. 00:28.280 --> 00:29.980 Not everyone's happy about it. 00:29.980 --> 00:36.620 This is Inside Wisconsin Politics. 00:36.620 --> 00:41.100 I'm Sean Johnson here with Anya Van Wechtendank and Rich Kramer in Eau Claire. 00:41.100 --> 00:42.100 Hey, gang. 00:42.100 --> 00:43.100 Hey, Sean. 00:43.100 --> 00:46.020 So, I want to start this discussion with a simple question. 00:46.020 --> 00:50.340 I think a lot of people probably associate political campaigns with negative attacks. 00:50.340 --> 00:51.940 Candidates run for office. 00:51.940 --> 00:53.100 They attack their opponents. 00:53.100 --> 00:59.860 So, Anya, I'm wondering, why is it noteworthy that here in the middle of summer, we have 00:59.860 --> 01:02.260 overt negative attacks in this Democratic primary? 01:02.260 --> 01:06.940 Yeah, you know, I think for the last couple weeks, months, there have been some snipes, 01:06.940 --> 01:11.060 what I might call sort of a Midwestern-nice approach to trying to get negative. 01:11.060 --> 01:15.260 This is the first week that we got, you know, a press release from a candidate explicitly 01:15.260 --> 01:18.060 saying, my opponent has done something bad. 01:18.060 --> 01:22.420 I am going to do something great, and that was Mandela Barnes calling out Sarah Rodriguez, 01:22.420 --> 01:26.140 a former lieutenant governor calling out a current lieutenant governor over donations 01:26.140 --> 01:28.660 that she received while she was in the assembly. 01:28.660 --> 01:33.460 And essentially trying to suggest that she is viable, that he is not, so making an issue 01:33.460 --> 01:35.300 of this in a much more explicit way. 01:35.300 --> 01:39.260 So, a little bit of a shot across the bow, six weeks out from the midterm, to really 01:39.260 --> 01:42.420 kind of start to make these more explicit points. 01:42.420 --> 01:49.020 Rich, I think this kind of pales by comparison from attacks you would see in national politics 01:49.020 --> 01:53.020 right now for sure and in past Wisconsin campaigns. 01:53.020 --> 01:56.340 Have you seen anything like this yet this summer? 01:57.340 --> 02:03.660 Not really, I mean, as Anya mentioned, these have been pretty mild, and I guess if we're 02:03.660 --> 02:10.780 thinking about, you know, boneless buffalo wings, these would be the ranch and the blue 02:10.780 --> 02:14.020 cheese type of attacks that we've seen thus far. 02:14.020 --> 02:19.100 We're starting to get into the actual, you know, Frank's red-hot kind of territory, 02:19.100 --> 02:23.100 but even still, it's pretty tame. 02:23.540 --> 02:28.940 What I was thinking about is the earlier veiled criticisms that we heard, like, during the 02:28.940 --> 02:35.500 democratic convention or something, most people aren't really tuned in to this race yet. 02:35.500 --> 02:42.020 That is your regular voter, but the people that might be getting these communications 02:42.020 --> 02:48.780 from the candidates could be, you know, fellow politicians looking to endorse one of the six 02:48.820 --> 02:55.940 candidates in the race could also be messaging out to money groups or donors. 02:55.940 --> 03:01.380 I mean, that's speculation, but really, unless you're really tuned in, you wouldn't be able 03:01.380 --> 03:06.620 to connect the dots between some of the attacks we've seen until this moment between the candidates 03:06.620 --> 03:11.420 when they're talking about electability or first-time politician, et cetera. 03:11.420 --> 03:15.780 You'd really have to do some homework to find out, and now it's a little more blatant. 03:15.820 --> 03:21.540 Right, so you would have to know, like, a convention, for example, when Kaldoroy says, 03:21.540 --> 03:25.220 we can't have anybody without experience stepping in here at this time. 03:25.220 --> 03:30.140 She's, you know, we kind of know who she's referring to, but she's not saying it. 03:30.140 --> 03:34.340 Francesco Hong saying, you know, voters can detect BS. 03:34.340 --> 03:37.580 I don't know, I suppose she could be saying that about everybody but her. 03:37.580 --> 03:41.780 But this is, like, a candidate against another candidate. 03:41.780 --> 03:47.660 So I guess I'm wondering, what does it say about Mandela Barnes and Sarah Rodriguez right 03:47.660 --> 03:51.860 now that the attack is coming from Mandela Barnes against Sarah Rodriguez? 03:51.860 --> 03:53.940 And by the way, she responded in kind. 03:53.940 --> 03:54.700 Absolutely, right. 03:54.700 --> 03:56.500 It was kind of a forceful exchange of words. 03:56.500 --> 04:00.420 So then her response was essentially, you were in for Senate and lost. 04:00.420 --> 04:02.460 I ran for Lieutenant Governor and won. 04:02.740 --> 04:04.700 And so, again, them fighting words. 04:04.700 --> 04:06.860 That's a little bit not quite Midwest nice. 04:07.060 --> 04:08.580 So I think it tells us a couple of things. 04:08.620 --> 04:13.300 One, it says that Sarah Rodriguez is considered to be a serious contender, right? 04:13.300 --> 04:17.060 You don't need to take down somebody who has nowhere to come down from. 04:17.580 --> 04:21.340 Another thing is that Mandela Barnes is really trying to make utility rates a kind 04:21.340 --> 04:22.460 of central platform. 04:22.660 --> 04:26.980 And so using this particular thing, donations around utility rates is also a way 04:26.980 --> 04:28.420 to kind of draw attention to himself. 04:28.660 --> 04:32.340 And then I think the third thing is, you know, voters are pretty checked out, 04:32.340 --> 04:35.020 even though, again, we are less than six weeks away from the primary. 04:35.020 --> 04:37.420 Absentee ballots have already started being sent out. 04:38.140 --> 04:42.340 But there's like a way that these candidates need to be drawing contrast 04:42.340 --> 04:47.660 between themselves in a crowded race where there's not super strong distinctions, right? 04:47.660 --> 04:50.900 On the sort of the major issues, they're relatively unified. 04:51.460 --> 04:54.820 And so this is also a way of like distinguishing in terms of lane. 04:54.820 --> 04:58.460 So he didn't go after, for example, Francesca Hong, who is a little bit more 04:58.460 --> 05:00.860 on his wing of the Democratic Party. 05:00.980 --> 05:02.940 He went after somebody who's a little bit more moderate. 05:02.940 --> 05:06.700 And so it's a way of, I think, again, trying to draw starker distinctions 05:06.860 --> 05:10.620 between lanes in this race, not just between individual candidates. 05:10.620 --> 05:13.420 Yeah, I'm still trying to make sense of the lanes in this race. 05:13.420 --> 05:17.260 I mean, I kind of have a sense of it, but I wonder if they are feeling it out, too. 05:17.260 --> 05:21.340 And that is kind of the way I read it, too, is that Mandela Barnes probably feels 05:21.340 --> 05:25.860 like I'm not going to win over the Francesca Hong supporters, necessarily. 05:25.860 --> 05:29.580 But those Rodriguez supporters, they might be my people. 05:29.580 --> 05:32.660 One in a crowded primary, you're fighting over the same voters. 05:32.660 --> 05:34.100 You're fighting over Democrats, right? 05:34.100 --> 05:38.420 And so you also, it's the kind of thing where a few thousand votes can be the difference 05:38.420 --> 05:39.380 between winning and not. 05:39.380 --> 05:42.860 It's more competitive in certain ways than a general and to like the contours 05:42.860 --> 05:46.140 of what competition looks like in the primary is also going to look different. 05:46.540 --> 05:46.940 Rich. 05:48.860 --> 05:53.420 And this kind of reminds me of something I heard from the campaign strategist back 05:53.420 --> 05:54.300 in 2022. 05:54.300 --> 05:57.820 This was the Senate race between Mandela Barnes and Ron Johnson. 05:58.180 --> 06:02.460 Ron Johnson's polling numbers, you know, approval ratings weren't super high. 06:02.500 --> 06:06.060 And this this person who was a Republican campaign consultant said 06:07.260 --> 06:09.820 Johnson doesn't need to improve his numbers. 06:09.820 --> 06:13.540 He just needs to hurt and bring down the numbers of Barnes. 06:13.540 --> 06:17.100 So in a primary like this, that might be part of the calculus. 06:17.100 --> 06:22.140 Like if someone seems to be, whether it be from internal polling or whatever, 06:23.180 --> 06:27.260 getting some ground and your campaign doesn't like that, try to knock them down a bit. 06:28.300 --> 06:32.300 So I guess wonder if this is kind of uncorking the bottle. 06:32.300 --> 06:35.300 So to speak, you know, like, is this going to be the new norm? 06:35.300 --> 06:41.220 Now that a fight started, is it okay for Democrats to say, well, you know, I didn't 06:41.220 --> 06:46.540 start it, but but I got to finish it now or they or they see sort of the urgency 06:46.620 --> 06:51.220 of the primary coming up and if they want to stand out, do they have to attack? 06:51.220 --> 06:53.260 Is there any signs that that's happening? 06:53.540 --> 06:57.460 Well, it's a little bit of a calculation because, you know, on the one hand, 06:57.460 --> 07:00.460 negative attacks can get you more attention. 07:00.460 --> 07:03.700 If you're like kind of sassy on social media that tends to resonate a little bit 07:03.700 --> 07:08.140 more, but at the same time, you don't want to weaken fellow Democrats terribly 07:08.140 --> 07:11.580 because ultimately they're going to go up against presumably Tom Tiffany in 07:11.580 --> 07:15.980 November for what is going to be a close race, like a general election in 07:15.980 --> 07:17.540 Wisconsin is always going to be close. 07:17.540 --> 07:20.500 And so you want to kind of weaken your opponents enough that you can get 07:20.500 --> 07:24.540 across the finish line, but not so much that you kind of leave your entire party 07:24.740 --> 07:29.540 susceptible to potentially Tom Tiffany picking up what you've already said and 07:29.540 --> 07:30.380 running with it. 07:31.740 --> 07:37.620 Rich, what do you say? Yeah, it's it's I agree 100% and I mean, no matter who 07:37.620 --> 07:42.540 the Democratic candidate is, it would be surprising if the entirety of the 07:42.540 --> 07:46.820 party doesn't try to rally around them because this race is pretty critical 07:46.820 --> 07:51.060 for them as they're they're hoping, you know, the best case scenario would be a 07:51.060 --> 07:55.060 trifecta where they win the state assembly state Senate and keep the 07:55.100 --> 08:00.460 governorships. So maybe that's also why the attacks have been kind of mild. 08:00.460 --> 08:07.220 But whoever it is, that bad blood will likely magically disappear at least 08:07.220 --> 08:10.180 publicly after the August primary. 08:10.820 --> 08:16.540 So Anya, there was a story that you covered this week involving Francesco 08:16.540 --> 08:18.300 Hong's fundraising strategy here. 08:18.300 --> 08:21.940 It was at the end of the fundraising period, by the way, where she went on a 08:21.940 --> 08:25.500 couple of national livestreams to raise money. 08:26.140 --> 08:28.380 Tell us about who she talked to and why is that significant? 08:28.420 --> 08:32.580 Yeah, so she went on to on Monday, one was Mike from PA, who's sort of a 08:32.580 --> 08:36.660 progressive streamer aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America. 08:36.820 --> 08:38.260 He has a pretty big following. 08:38.260 --> 08:42.380 And then she went on with Hassan Piker, who's arguably one of the biggest 08:42.380 --> 08:44.180 political streamers online. 08:44.580 --> 08:49.140 And he's become something of a kingmaker or perhaps attempted kingmaker on the 08:49.140 --> 08:50.660 left of American politics. 08:50.660 --> 08:56.340 And he's appeared with a number of DSA aligned or sort of leftist politicians. 08:56.580 --> 08:57.900 And so she went on with him. 08:57.900 --> 08:59.540 It was about an hour and a half appearance. 08:59.740 --> 09:02.740 It was sort of fun and chatty. 09:02.740 --> 09:06.740 They talked about politics, but they also ate Korean food and they talked about 09:06.740 --> 09:10.820 merchandise and they talked about whether they should erect a statue of Scott Walker 09:10.820 --> 09:14.300 for people to walk around and slap when they have big feelings. 09:14.500 --> 09:17.940 So it was this really, you know, it's a very different kind of appearance than 09:17.940 --> 09:22.020 might occur sort of here on PBS Wisconsin or WPR. 09:22.860 --> 09:27.180 But that was this kind of approach to, according to Francesca Hong, meeting 09:27.180 --> 09:30.340 different types of voters, more disaffected voters, the type of people who keep 09:30.340 --> 09:31.380 these streams going. 09:31.620 --> 09:35.780 Again, perhaps very different voters than our our our our our audience. 09:36.460 --> 09:40.820 But at the same time, Hassan Piker has said numerous very controversial things 09:40.820 --> 09:45.980 in the past, things about Israel in particular that has offended some Jewish 09:46.020 --> 09:48.620 communities. And so there's also been a response. 09:48.620 --> 09:52.660 She ended the day having raised about $92,000 from those two different streams. 09:52.780 --> 09:56.100 Hassan Piker has said now he's going to come out to Wisconsin and campaign with 09:56.100 --> 10:00.100 her. But at the same time, there's been this kind of pushback from fellow Democrats 10:00.100 --> 10:04.340 and others saying, why would you appear with somebody who has said XYZ in the past? 10:05.420 --> 10:10.300 And and so like you did see some attack there from David Crowley kind of like 10:10.300 --> 10:13.580 saying, you should just you shouldn't go on here, right? 10:13.580 --> 10:14.380 I mean, essentially. 10:14.420 --> 10:16.860 Yeah, he said those comments are beyond the pale. 10:16.860 --> 10:19.260 And you know, I should perhaps specify what they were. 10:19.260 --> 10:21.900 So he said, for example, 911 was deserved. 10:21.900 --> 10:26.100 And he says that he was referring to this idea that America's foreign policy 10:26.100 --> 10:27.340 actions have consequences. 10:27.580 --> 10:32.940 And then again, a number of his comments about Israel and Zionism has has sort of 10:32.940 --> 10:36.540 been seen as conflating Jewish Americans, Zionists, this kind of thing. 10:37.100 --> 10:41.500 And so I spoke with, for example, Ann Jacobs, who's the co-chair of the Jewish 10:41.540 --> 10:46.180 caucus of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, who was really kind of appalled by the 10:46.180 --> 10:51.060 fact that Francesca Hong would go alongside this person and said that, you 10:51.060 --> 10:54.820 know, should Hong receive the nomination in November, she feels like she's going 10:54.820 --> 10:59.620 to have a lot of work to do to bring Jewish Democrats kind of into the ballot 10:59.620 --> 11:02.460 box to make sure that a Democrat can still win. 11:03.180 --> 11:05.860 And again, you know, I reached out to the Hong campaign for comment and they 11:05.860 --> 11:08.980 said, essentially, we are willing to meet with just about anyone to share our 11:08.980 --> 11:12.580 vision if we don't go on these types of platforms that creates a vacuum that, 11:12.580 --> 11:14.740 you know, conservative messaging can instead go to. 11:14.940 --> 11:17.420 So they are trying to create this sort of big tent. 11:17.900 --> 11:21.620 Some of the concern from other Democrats is who all should be in the big tent. 11:21.940 --> 11:23.500 And how much did she raise in a day? 11:23.580 --> 11:27.700 $92,000, $57,000 from Hasanpaker or from that stream. 11:27.860 --> 11:32.300 And, you know, for somebody who's watched those streams, they kind of know what to 11:32.300 --> 11:37.020 expect for somebody who doesn't, it's a little busy on those streams, is it not? 11:37.300 --> 11:41.020 Yeah, as a, you know, a public radio girly, I will say, it was a little bit 11:41.020 --> 11:42.780 stimulating to have that kind of thing going. 11:42.780 --> 11:46.260 But I think people who are younger than me, like this is how they are getting a 11:46.260 --> 11:48.340 lot of their, their news and information. 11:48.340 --> 11:51.220 And again, in this kind of funny, cheeky way. 11:51.460 --> 11:51.860 All right. 11:51.900 --> 11:52.660 What do you think, Chad? 11:52.700 --> 11:53.060 I don't know. 11:53.620 --> 11:54.220 Is that how it's done? 11:54.220 --> 11:54.860 All right, fam. 11:54.900 --> 11:56.380 Rich, Rich Kramer. 11:56.380 --> 11:58.780 Uh, what are Republicans saying about this, uh, 11:58.780 --> 12:00.460 appearance there by Francesca Hong? 12:02.220 --> 12:03.260 They're saying a lot. 12:03.260 --> 12:07.940 They're, uh, they're framing it as, you know, this is the entire 12:07.940 --> 12:11.660 Democratic Party lurching to the left towards these, what they call 12:11.660 --> 12:13.580 dangerous ideas and comments. 12:13.620 --> 12:17.740 Um, so they've, they've been very critical of Hong. 12:18.100 --> 12:23.300 But again, they're conflating this to, uh, to try to say that all 12:23.300 --> 12:28.420 Democrats are essentially Hasanpaker fans and they support everything that he's 12:28.420 --> 12:33.100 ever said, uh, which is obviously an exaggeration, but that seems to be the 12:33.100 --> 12:36.460 way you do it in politics when you're trying to bring down the other side. 12:37.060 --> 12:41.500 And we'll get a sense in the middle of July, July 15th, are when fundraising 12:41.500 --> 12:43.780 reports are due for the first half of this year. 12:43.780 --> 12:47.860 So you'll see not only that fundraising, but everybody else is fundraising up 12:47.860 --> 12:51.620 through that point and, you know, you'll get a real sense of who's got 12:51.620 --> 12:54.860 formidable campaign right before the campaign wraps up. 12:54.860 --> 12:59.380 Essentially we're going to be, uh, in a very compressed primary campaign here. 12:59.860 --> 13:04.060 Rich Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor is, uh, had the 13:04.060 --> 13:08.020 benefit of not having a real contested primary on his side. 13:08.540 --> 13:12.540 And he's getting a correspondence now from the president of the United 13:12.540 --> 13:14.260 States about disaster declaration. 13:14.260 --> 13:15.860 Um, what happened there? 13:17.620 --> 13:18.820 It was really interesting. 13:18.820 --> 13:23.900 So, um, President Donald Trump used his, uh, his personal social media 13:23.900 --> 13:29.820 site, Truth Social, um, to announce that Wisconsin has been approved for around 13:29.820 --> 13:33.860 22 and a half million dollars in disaster relief aid. 13:34.220 --> 13:39.020 Uh, this is tied to the storms that we saw earlier this year, the big time 13:39.020 --> 13:43.380 flooding, other kinds of damage that really hit local governments pretty hard. 13:43.700 --> 13:48.860 So he made this announcement, which is not unusual, but he didn't mention 13:48.860 --> 13:49.940 governor Ebers once. 13:49.940 --> 13:54.780 In fact, he said that the first call that he made was to Tom Tiffany, who he 13:54.780 --> 13:58.500 also mentioned, I endorsed and he kind of re upped that. 13:58.940 --> 14:03.460 Uh, Trump also essentially applauded every Republican in the congressional 14:03.460 --> 14:09.020 delegation and didn't mention a single Democrat from Wisconsin, even though, uh, 14:09.020 --> 14:13.900 governor Tony Evers and, um, people like Tammy Baldwin and the rest of the 14:13.900 --> 14:17.740 delegation sent letters in May asking for this assistance. 14:17.740 --> 14:19.780 They were asking for 27 million dollars. 14:20.180 --> 14:25.140 So, um, it almost seemed like the president was treating Tiffany, like he's 14:25.140 --> 14:29.460 already the governor and that T that Evers is already kind of an afterthought. 14:29.860 --> 14:33.180 So that was, that was pretty interesting to see and that the Evers 14:33.180 --> 14:35.860 administration essentially doesn't know the detail, at least when you talk to 14:35.860 --> 14:37.900 them, they didn't know the details of the funding. 14:38.100 --> 14:43.300 You reached out to the White House press office and had a series of questions 14:43.300 --> 14:46.420 for them about the details and they had a very brief response to you. 14:48.060 --> 14:48.540 That's right. 14:48.540 --> 14:52.020 I wanted to, I asked, you know, when might this money becoming? 14:52.020 --> 14:55.580 What type of aid because there's aid from the, from FEMA that goes to 14:55.580 --> 14:57.980 businesses or governments or individuals? 14:58.380 --> 15:02.620 I said, so those were the questions I asked and they just said, we refer you 15:02.620 --> 15:05.740 to the truth, which means to the president's post. 15:05.820 --> 15:08.940 Um, so they didn't have any additional information. 15:09.140 --> 15:09.580 All right. 15:09.980 --> 15:13.020 So we had two very big Supreme Court decisions, U.S. 15:13.020 --> 15:17.100 Supreme Court's decisions this week, which were national news, but I think it's 15:17.100 --> 15:21.540 fair to say there are some Wisconsin angles in there versus this, this 15:21.540 --> 15:26.740 birthright citizenship decision, Rich, I think this was widely expected that the 15:26.740 --> 15:30.860 court would rule against President Trump's executive order and say that, you 15:30.860 --> 15:33.500 know, birthright citizenship is protected by the U.S. 15:33.500 --> 15:37.580 Constitution, but there are Republicans and I mean, noteworthy 15:37.580 --> 15:40.820 Republicans in Wisconsin who are saying, we got to do something about this. 15:42.380 --> 15:46.460 Yeah, to, to, to borrow Anya's term, big feelings. 15:46.460 --> 15:49.020 There were big feelings from some Republicans in Wisconsin. 15:49.340 --> 15:52.820 Congressman Derrick Van Orden basically said that the Constitution's 15:52.820 --> 15:58.900 14th Amendment was aimed at guaranteeing citizenship to freed slaves and not for 15:58.900 --> 16:00.300 children of illegal immigrants. 16:00.300 --> 16:04.620 He said the ruling undermines the integrity of American citizenship and 16:04.620 --> 16:09.740 that Congress has to do something about it with it being declared unconstitutional, 16:09.740 --> 16:10.900 at least the executive order. 16:10.900 --> 16:13.780 It's kind of unclear what that would look like. 16:14.140 --> 16:18.860 Congressman Tony Weed, another Republican, said that, you know, this 16:18.860 --> 16:22.180 amendment wasn't intended for what it's being used for today. 16:22.180 --> 16:27.460 There's all this talk of birth tourism, where the idea is that people that are 16:27.460 --> 16:30.220 pregnant, you know, women that are pregnant from other countries come here, 16:30.220 --> 16:35.260 have a baby strictly so that they can get that child citizenship automatically. 16:36.220 --> 16:40.980 One of the more, I guess, aggressive comments came from 7th Congressional 16:41.620 --> 16:44.460 District Republican candidate Michael Alfonso. 16:44.460 --> 16:46.700 He's the son-in-law of Sean Duffy, the U.S. 16:46.700 --> 16:48.060 Transportation Secretary. 16:48.900 --> 16:53.220 He talked about how his newborn baby can trace her ancestry, quote, 16:53.220 --> 16:59.300 back to before the Revolutionary War and that the ruling essentially is telling 16:59.300 --> 17:04.580 people that children like his are not equally as American to, quote, 17:04.580 --> 17:07.140 Chinese spies, anchor babies. 17:07.500 --> 17:12.220 So a lot of, a lot of thoughts coming from some on the right. 17:13.060 --> 17:16.700 And Anya, there was this other Supreme Court decision involving national 17:16.700 --> 17:19.900 parties and how much they can raise and spend. 17:20.260 --> 17:22.380 You said it would export the Wisconsin model. 17:22.380 --> 17:23.100 What do you mean? 17:23.260 --> 17:27.140 Well, so here in Wisconsin, since about 2015, we have had a rule in the 17:27.140 --> 17:31.340 book that says that our state political parties can raise and spend as much money 17:31.340 --> 17:33.380 as they want in political races. 17:33.500 --> 17:36.940 You've actually reported on the fact that this was a Republican law that in 17:36.940 --> 17:40.580 recent years, Democrats have made very good use of, in particular, in our 17:41.220 --> 17:43.380 enormous Supreme Court races, right? 17:43.380 --> 17:48.140 Democrats, for example, for the election of Janet Protasseo, it spent $10 million 17:48.140 --> 17:50.940 on that campaign and that sort of unleashed these flagates. 17:51.140 --> 17:55.700 Well, now as of this Supreme Court decision, this will be the case at the 17:55.700 --> 17:56.980 national level, at the federal level. 17:56.980 --> 18:01.460 So the national political parties are in CC, DLCC, these kinds of organizations. 18:01.660 --> 18:06.500 They can spend as much as they want on these races in coordination with 18:06.700 --> 18:07.420 campaigns. 18:07.420 --> 18:11.900 And so essentially it's doing away with a major cap on campaign finance 18:11.900 --> 18:17.060 regulations that, you know, people I've spoken to have said, as in Wisconsin, 18:17.060 --> 18:18.860 so now we'll go on the nation. 18:18.900 --> 18:19.220 Yeah. 18:19.220 --> 18:22.020 And I know the Wisconsin law, everybody thought for sure, this is going to help 18:22.020 --> 18:25.060 Republicans that ended up being helpful to Democrats here. 18:25.060 --> 18:28.700 We'll see what happens with this change at the national level and open the 18:28.700 --> 18:32.060 floodgates for us to have record breaking expensive elections. 18:32.060 --> 18:33.900 It seems like every year it certainly did. 18:34.500 --> 18:35.900 That's all the time we have for today. 18:35.940 --> 18:36.900 Thanks for joining us. 18:36.900 --> 18:39.180 Our colleagues, Zach Schultz, will be back next week. 18:39.620 --> 18:41.740 This has been Inside Wisconsin Politics. 18:41.780 --> 18:47.100 Be sure to follow us on pbswisconsin.org, wpr.org YouTube or wherever you get your 18:47.100 --> 18:47.900 podcasts.