WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:28.640 Some Wisconsin Republicans are in Dallas for the GOP's midterm convention. 00:28.640 --> 00:33.780 Some state away, we talk through the pros and cons of attending a rare event in national 00:33.780 --> 00:37.760 politics along with other campaign developments closer to home. 00:37.760 --> 00:46.080 This is Inside Wisconsin Politics. 00:46.080 --> 00:50.640 I'm Sean Johnson, here with my colleagues Anya Van Wecht and Zach Schultz and Rich Kramer 00:50.640 --> 00:51.640 in Eau Claire. 00:51.640 --> 00:52.640 Hey everyone. 00:52.640 --> 00:53.640 Hello. 00:53.640 --> 00:57.600 So, I have this distinct memory, it was just two years ago. 00:57.600 --> 01:01.080 We were all in Milwaukee, it was the RNC. 01:01.080 --> 01:04.880 You were there, you were there, and you were there Anya. 01:04.880 --> 01:05.880 What's the deal? 01:05.880 --> 01:07.640 National conventions are every four years. 01:07.640 --> 01:13.360 What is this midterm conventions that Republicans are doing right now, and what does it matter? 01:13.360 --> 01:17.440 You know, I had the same question about a week ago, I like to think I'm fairly tuned 01:17.440 --> 01:18.920 into national politics. 01:18.920 --> 01:24.040 It is arguably my job, and I had never heard of a midterm convention, so this is not 01:24.040 --> 01:27.040 comparable to the events that we all went to in 2024. 01:27.040 --> 01:31.240 Those were nominating conventions, they've been held since the 19th century. 01:31.240 --> 01:37.560 This is more of a sort of rally kind of situation that Democrats experimented with in the 70s 01:37.560 --> 01:40.960 and 80s, and then decided they were not a good idea, that they were kind of a waste 01:40.960 --> 01:43.760 of time and money and maybe fractured their party. 01:43.760 --> 01:47.680 But now Republicans are giving it a shot, and so this is the first ever Republican midterm 01:47.680 --> 01:51.800 convention, and it's, you know, going into a midterm election where they feel like the 01:51.800 --> 01:54.480 sort of deck is stacked against them as a party. 01:54.480 --> 01:58.480 They are the majority party at a time that people are pretty unhappy, and so this is 01:58.480 --> 02:03.600 about sort of revving up the base and really kind of focusing on Donald Trump as the continued 02:03.600 --> 02:08.360 kind of standard bearer of the party when he won't be on the ballot in November. 02:08.360 --> 02:13.480 And we're not in Dallas for this one, Rich, but you watched the stream of day one of this 02:13.480 --> 02:18.400 convention, which featured some, you know, one Wisconsin speaker. 02:18.560 --> 02:24.000 Did you see, you know, who's there and give us a kind of a sample of the flavor of what 02:24.000 --> 02:25.000 people heard? 02:25.000 --> 02:26.000 All right. 02:26.000 --> 02:31.760 Well, I'll start with who was there, and at the national level, we had some big names. 02:31.760 --> 02:36.200 Of course, President Donald Trump was the keynote speaker last night. 02:36.200 --> 02:44.600 He's going to be the keynote speaker again on Thursday night, but regardless, he had 02:44.600 --> 02:51.040 his cabinet secretaries there, Scott Besent was there, Mehmet Oz was there, Todd Blanche 02:51.040 --> 03:00.320 was there, and as well as just a host of lawmakers, you know, from Congress, Tom Emmer, 03:00.320 --> 03:04.080 Steve Scalise, et cetera, et cetera, folks in leadership positions. 03:04.080 --> 03:10.360 And the flavor was the Republicans really, first of all, speaker after speaker, went 03:10.360 --> 03:14.200 at length praising President Donald Trump, his accomplishments, et cetera. 03:14.200 --> 03:20.040 They talked a lot about the 2025 Big Beautiful Bill Act, although they were calling it different 03:20.040 --> 03:22.040 things. 03:22.040 --> 03:28.440 And we also just heard a lot about what they thought Democrats are all about. 03:28.440 --> 03:32.520 In general, the speakers were saying that Democrats are crazy and Republicans are the 03:32.520 --> 03:34.280 party of common sense. 03:34.280 --> 03:37.800 I heard one speaker called Democrats evil. 03:37.800 --> 03:43.480 And that sort of thing, we heard a lot of culture war issues, transgender issues came up 03:43.480 --> 03:44.480 quite a bit. 03:44.480 --> 03:49.520 A lot of talk about Democrats loving open border policies, et cetera. 03:49.520 --> 03:56.080 And also a lot of talk about democratic socialism and kind of a mix of that with straight up 03:56.080 --> 04:02.400 accusations of communism within the democratic reigns from Republicans. 04:02.400 --> 04:07.880 And Derek Van Orden, the Republican Congressman from Wisconsin's third congressional district 04:07.880 --> 04:09.160 was there. 04:09.160 --> 04:16.080 And among the speakers, here's a little sample of what he told Republican activists. 04:16.080 --> 04:22.880 You deserve high quality, readily available, and actually affordable health care. 04:22.880 --> 04:28.440 You know who else knows this? 04:28.440 --> 04:35.160 Our great president, Donald J. Trump. 04:35.160 --> 04:40.920 So Zack, Derek Van Orden represents one of the swingiest districts in the country where 04:40.920 --> 04:47.360 a ton of money is going to be spent, has already been sent trying to flip that seat. 04:47.360 --> 04:53.280 Why is he delivering this message on health care and Donald Trump at this convention just 04:53.280 --> 04:55.400 a couple months away from the election? 04:55.400 --> 05:00.440 Well, clearly he is so closely attached to Donald Trump and running for Congress as a 05:00.440 --> 05:06.000 federal position, he has no room to separate himself from there and make this about the 05:06.000 --> 05:07.000 Wisconsin race. 05:07.000 --> 05:11.080 Like we've seen with Congressman Tom Tiffany who's running for governor and did not attend 05:11.080 --> 05:15.560 this event because he wants the focus to be on his race for governor, not his connections 05:15.560 --> 05:16.560 to Donald Trump. 05:16.560 --> 05:20.640 Derek Van Orden either doesn't have that luxury or is not interested in playing that 05:20.640 --> 05:24.280 game no matter what, he's going to be associated with the president. 05:24.280 --> 05:29.280 So for good or bad, he's got to tie himself even closer to that and hope events like this 05:29.280 --> 05:33.160 boost the president's turnout in his district, which would allow him to go along. 05:33.160 --> 05:37.360 Remember, he's run behind Trump in these elections in 24. 05:37.360 --> 05:38.400 Trump got more votes than he did. 05:38.400 --> 05:41.760 He barely won whilst Trump won his district by a larger margin. 05:41.760 --> 05:44.840 As for health care, that is one of the issues that he's trying to run on there because it's 05:44.840 --> 05:47.160 very important to the people in there. 05:47.160 --> 05:50.600 A lot of people lost health care in that congressional district. 05:50.600 --> 05:53.200 We've seen hospitals close in that area. 05:53.200 --> 05:57.800 Van Orden wants to take credit for federal legislation that brought in additional funds. 05:57.800 --> 06:01.040 There was some rejiggering through the state budget, if you remember, Governor Evers at 06:01.040 --> 06:04.440 the last minute trying to get a bill through that would authorize a higher reimbursement 06:04.440 --> 06:05.440 rate for providers here. 06:05.440 --> 06:07.920 It would try and capture more of those federal funds. 06:07.920 --> 06:09.560 Van Orden tried to take credit for that. 06:09.560 --> 06:13.400 He's running in that Democrat saying, well, you're the one who ruined Medicare for a 06:13.400 --> 06:16.600 lot of Medicaid for a lot of people in this district while they're suffering from it in 06:16.600 --> 06:17.600 the first place. 06:17.600 --> 06:22.560 So he views that as his issue to run on and his connection to Trump to boost that turnout 06:22.560 --> 06:24.720 in that district, which is why he needs to be there. 06:24.800 --> 06:30.000 Yeah, I mean, Rich, it seems like there's a couple of ways you could go with President 06:30.000 --> 06:31.000 Donald Trump. 06:31.000 --> 06:33.800 If you're a candidate, you know, Derek Van Orden has chosen this path. 06:33.800 --> 06:38.760 It kind of reminds me of Senator Ron Johnson, his last re-election, where he just embraced 06:38.760 --> 06:46.240 the president completely and even heard the president last night tell delegates, activists, 06:46.240 --> 06:47.880 hey, pretend I'm on the ballot. 06:47.880 --> 06:49.720 What's going on there? 06:50.600 --> 06:56.400 Well, we've heard from Republicans election after election where they don't do as well 06:56.400 --> 07:02.240 as they'd like that, well, there's just this big group of voters that President Donald 07:02.240 --> 07:08.520 Trump was able to get to the polls in 2016 and 2024 that others just haven't been able 07:08.520 --> 07:09.720 to reach. 07:09.720 --> 07:14.040 So there's essentially speaking to those individuals. 07:14.040 --> 07:21.640 And if President Trump says, think of the ballot like I'm on it because the last years 07:21.640 --> 07:28.760 of my second term are on the line here, the hope is that those voters will understand 07:28.760 --> 07:34.080 that and will play the part and go out and vote for the various Republicans fighting 07:34.080 --> 07:39.320 to keep the House and the Senate in Republican control. 07:39.320 --> 07:40.320 So that works. 07:40.320 --> 07:41.320 We'll see. 07:41.320 --> 07:45.640 It hasn't in the past, but who knows? 07:45.640 --> 07:49.480 And you know, as it pertains to healthcare, we should mention that after Van Orden's 07:49.480 --> 07:53.280 speech, Rich, you reported Democrats were pretty quick to attack and say, hey, this 07:53.280 --> 07:57.520 is the guy that cut healthcare through the Big Beautiful Bill Act with all these new 07:57.520 --> 07:59.960 restrictions on Medicaid enrollment. 07:59.960 --> 08:06.480 Anya, I wonder, we've talked on this program before about, you know, what happens when 08:06.480 --> 08:12.880 Republicans don't, I guess, sufficiently adore the president for lack of a better 08:12.880 --> 08:13.880 term. 08:13.880 --> 08:19.600 Tom Tiffany's not there in that room with Derek Van Orden and is not at the convention. 08:19.600 --> 08:26.720 Does he face any potential risks by not being there and being overtly supportive? 08:26.720 --> 08:31.160 Well, you know, he didn't say I'm not going because I wanted to separate myself from the 08:31.160 --> 08:32.160 president. 08:32.160 --> 08:34.240 He said that he has campaign events here in Wisconsin. 08:34.240 --> 08:39.360 And he is not at all the only kind of vulnerable Republican or Republican from a swing state 08:39.360 --> 08:41.040 to not attend. 08:41.040 --> 08:46.360 And for different reasons, again, some of them cited family events or other obligations. 08:46.360 --> 08:47.600 Some of them cited the costs. 08:47.600 --> 08:50.600 This is also a major kind of fundraising event. 08:50.600 --> 08:54.320 And so attending costs, tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of 08:54.320 --> 08:59.120 dollars, if you're running for sort of a smaller congressional seat or something, maybe that's 08:59.120 --> 09:01.240 not, you know, a financial calculus there. 09:01.240 --> 09:05.680 So we don't exactly know what Tom Tiffany's kind of calculus is, except that we know that 09:05.680 --> 09:08.120 he's running statewide in Wisconsin. 09:08.120 --> 09:12.080 There is the kind of guaranteed Trump base no matter what. 09:12.080 --> 09:16.160 But nationally, Trump's poll numbers are not good among the sort of moderate and more 09:16.160 --> 09:20.400 independent voters that any statewide candidate in Wisconsin needs to win. 09:20.400 --> 09:24.120 And so maybe this is kind of an easy way to put a little bit of separation. 09:24.120 --> 09:27.760 They're not have something as clippable as what Derek Van Orden had. 09:27.760 --> 09:31.160 That is just, you know, when they're when they're making attack ads, it's very easy 09:31.160 --> 09:33.560 to kind of try to unite those two figures. 09:33.560 --> 09:37.280 And so he's not kind of handing anything over quite so easily. 09:37.280 --> 09:43.520 Zach, you just talked to Tom Tiffany and you touched on this convention, I believe. 09:43.520 --> 09:46.000 What's his general take on why he's not there? 09:46.000 --> 09:49.560 And you know, what's he talking about right now? 09:49.560 --> 09:52.760 His main reason is he says he's got a very busy schedule and he does. 09:52.760 --> 09:54.400 He's doing a lot of campaign events. 09:54.400 --> 09:56.400 He's doing a lot of press conferences. 09:56.400 --> 10:02.520 But it's not in his interest right now to be in Texas when he should be in Wisconsin. 10:02.520 --> 10:06.760 And it strikes me as looking back to 2024, speaking of the Democratic convention that 10:06.760 --> 10:11.200 year, Tammy Baldwin was up for reelection and she spent almost the entire convention barn 10:11.200 --> 10:13.760 storming Wisconsin instead of being down in Chicago. 10:13.760 --> 10:16.800 She showed up for a day to do her due diligence. 10:16.800 --> 10:20.600 But part of her mentality was I need to be where people see me that will be voting for 10:20.600 --> 10:22.760 me not to be down in a convention hall. 10:22.760 --> 10:26.840 Tom Tiffany taking that same approach doesn't mean he's pushing the president off at arms 10:26.840 --> 10:28.400 lengthened by any stretch. 10:28.400 --> 10:33.560 However, I will say throughout our entire very long conversation yesterday, I asked many 10:33.560 --> 10:37.200 questions about Donald Trump and policies and implications. 10:37.200 --> 10:41.000 He only used Donald Trump's name twice the entire time. 10:41.000 --> 10:45.280 And that was only referencing how Democrats are trying to connect him to Donald Trump. 10:45.280 --> 10:49.720 Every other time he talked about the administration or the president at most, otherwise he brought 10:49.720 --> 10:52.240 it back to Wisconsin at every single point. 10:52.240 --> 10:57.600 He knows that traditional Republicans who support Donald Trump will vote for him. 10:57.600 --> 11:02.080 He also knows there are a lot of former Republicans or moderate Republicans or independents that 11:02.080 --> 11:06.320 don't like the president right now that may vote for him if they don't think of him too 11:06.320 --> 11:08.000 closely with the president. 11:08.000 --> 11:11.720 And so he is trying to walk that line between winning those votes and keeping a little bit 11:11.720 --> 11:17.600 of distance, but not angering some of that MAGA base that is very prickly and very sensitive 11:17.600 --> 11:20.960 about showing enough fidelity to the president by being there. 11:20.960 --> 11:24.160 Most of those people will vote for him anyway, so he doesn't have to worry as much about 11:24.160 --> 11:29.560 protecting that flank because he has very legitimate serious MAGA credentials when it comes to being 11:29.560 --> 11:34.080 aligned with Donald Trump, even if he stripped most of those from his website and his campaign 11:34.080 --> 11:35.560 for governor. 11:35.560 --> 11:39.880 And I think it's safe to say that the view of our governor's race that most people are 11:39.880 --> 11:47.000 going to see is not through this midterm convention, maybe not through very interesting discussions 11:47.080 --> 11:52.200 about data centers and flock cameras, but on these TV ads that are going to become more 11:52.200 --> 11:57.600 and more prevalent in Wisconsin, these little 30-second snippets that take everything out 11:57.600 --> 12:05.600 of context, rich, what does the race for governor look like from that perspective? 12:05.600 --> 12:09.880 Somebody who's watching this thing on their phone or on their TV and just getting these 12:09.880 --> 12:15.480 little samples, what is the debate about right now? 12:15.480 --> 12:22.760 Well, the latest ad I saw from David Crowley basically talked about affordability, about 12:22.760 --> 12:28.400 his plan to respond to housing costs, utility costs, et cetera. 12:28.400 --> 12:32.600 He doesn't go into great details, which is not uncommon with these types of short ads, 12:32.600 --> 12:36.640 but essentially it's what you would expect from years past. 12:36.640 --> 12:42.000 It's him with his family sitting down talking about cost being too high and how he has plans 12:42.000 --> 12:43.320 to solve it. 12:43.840 --> 12:49.960 From Tom Tiffany, we've seen him kind of go down the road of the whole tough on crime 12:49.960 --> 12:55.800 Republican and Democrats being weak on crime lane. 12:55.800 --> 13:02.800 One of his most recent ads focuses on a Milwaukee County policy where inmates in the jails were 13:02.800 --> 13:10.680 given access to iPads, and there was reporting recently that some of those inmates were reaching 13:10.680 --> 13:14.680 out and bothering or harassing or threatening witnesses. 13:14.680 --> 13:21.040 So the ad is essentially saying, look at what David Crowley signed off on, don't let them 13:21.040 --> 13:24.680 do this for the entire state. 13:24.680 --> 13:29.160 You know, Zach, one area where we would have gotten more context in the not too distant 13:29.160 --> 13:34.040 past was through a series of debates between the candidates. 13:34.040 --> 13:36.360 We're only going to get one this year. 13:36.360 --> 13:42.960 It turns out the WBA debate, the Broadcasters Association debate that we would have broadcast 13:42.960 --> 13:46.800 in half for years is canceled. 13:46.800 --> 13:48.440 So why so few debates? 13:48.440 --> 13:49.680 What happened this year? 13:49.680 --> 13:53.240 Well, David Crowley's campaign says he agreed to that second debate. 13:53.240 --> 13:54.560 He said he would have agreed to more. 13:54.560 --> 13:58.040 They're already doing, they're still doing one debate on October 21st, but this one would 13:58.040 --> 13:59.920 have been earlier in the month. 13:59.920 --> 14:02.960 It was Tom Tiffany who said he only needed to do one debate. 14:02.960 --> 14:06.120 And when I asked him about it, he said, well, this has been a policy of his. 14:06.120 --> 14:07.320 And he's been running for Congress. 14:07.320 --> 14:10.880 He said one debate is more than enough to cover all these issues. 14:10.880 --> 14:12.720 And it's not a new trend. 14:12.720 --> 14:18.320 This has been going on for a decade or longer where a lot of these candidates really don't 14:18.320 --> 14:19.640 need the exposure. 14:19.640 --> 14:25.480 They have so many ways to contact their voters, either through social media, through mailers, 14:25.480 --> 14:31.120 through ads that they don't need the free media that they used to rely on 10, 20, 30 14:31.120 --> 14:34.600 years ago back when it was easier for us to hold a debate. 14:34.640 --> 14:39.560 Television used to do one for every cycle and it was pretty common to get them to come 14:39.560 --> 14:40.560 in. 14:40.560 --> 14:43.320 It was just figuring out the dates and everyone would say, yeah, I can't wait to be in there. 14:43.320 --> 14:48.280 And we stopped offering because we just couldn't get anyone to say yes to agree at the same 14:48.280 --> 14:49.560 spot at the same time. 14:49.560 --> 14:51.080 So this is not new. 14:51.080 --> 14:52.200 It's a relic of the past. 14:52.200 --> 14:56.280 And there's the old cycle of who's ever behind in the polls wants to do more debates. 14:56.280 --> 14:57.840 I don't know if that even applies anymore. 14:57.840 --> 15:02.840 I think it has more to do with how you limit your exposure and doing one debate says I'm 15:02.840 --> 15:08.280 willing to do it, doing any more after that is, that's just a risk that something could 15:08.280 --> 15:10.960 go catastrophically wrong. 15:10.960 --> 15:15.120 So the new normal perhaps from here on out, I guess there could be a time when we're talking 15:15.120 --> 15:17.480 about zero debates, but this year it sounds like one. 15:17.480 --> 15:20.280 Yeah, well, when's the last time we had multiple gubernatorial debates? 15:20.280 --> 15:21.480 I don't remember. 15:21.480 --> 15:26.240 And Rich, when's the last time you had a debate between the candidates for the third congressional 15:26.240 --> 15:28.720 district, Darren Van Orden and Rebecca Cook? 15:29.720 --> 15:34.040 Boy, I don't think that they did it last time. 15:34.040 --> 15:39.640 Yeah, I think the last debate that Orden was involved with had was with Ron Kine back in 15:39.640 --> 15:40.640 2020. 15:40.640 --> 15:41.640 Okay. 15:41.640 --> 15:42.640 Yeah. 15:42.640 --> 15:47.360 So before we wrap up here, we should touch on a couple legal developments and cases that 15:47.360 --> 15:51.560 you've been reporting on on, first, let's talk about this lawsuit that was filed today 15:51.560 --> 15:56.480 by Planned Parenthood, challenging some abortion restrictions in Wisconsin. 15:56.480 --> 15:59.800 What are they looking at there and what's the new approach they're taking? 15:59.800 --> 16:06.400 Yeah, so this is kind of the new lawsuit kind of following the really major settlement 16:06.400 --> 16:09.520 of the law of abortion in Wisconsin. 16:09.520 --> 16:14.080 So people might remember Roe Falls trigger laws going to place in the States, including 16:14.080 --> 16:15.080 one in Wisconsin. 16:15.080 --> 16:18.960 And so for many years, we're kind of watching that go through to determine the legality 16:18.960 --> 16:20.480 of abortion in Wisconsin. 16:20.480 --> 16:22.000 That was resolved last year. 16:22.000 --> 16:26.880 And so now there's all of these kind of lesser restrictions in place on abortion access. 16:26.880 --> 16:31.480 And there has been some hinting that abortion advocates were going to file some sort of 16:31.480 --> 16:34.320 challenge to one or some of them. 16:34.320 --> 16:39.440 And so this lawsuit today was challenging a 24-hour waiting period and a requirement 16:39.440 --> 16:44.160 that a physician has to preside over the administration of abortion. 16:44.160 --> 16:47.860 What's kind of notable about this is that this is the first week of this new Supreme 16:47.860 --> 16:51.780 Court's term, which is a five to two liberal majority. 16:51.780 --> 16:56.980 Two justices have pretty close previous relationships with Planned Parenthood. 16:56.980 --> 17:01.620 And so this is going to be kind of the first test of how far some of these activists, I 17:01.620 --> 17:05.620 think, can go in the courts to expand abortion access in Wisconsin. 17:05.620 --> 17:06.620 Okay. 17:06.620 --> 17:12.940 And then another case that you've all reported on in some form is this challenge to mail-in 17:12.940 --> 17:14.900 voting restrictions. 17:14.900 --> 17:17.580 Rich, what's going on there? 17:17.580 --> 17:21.340 And what is going on with absentee voting in Wisconsin? 17:21.340 --> 17:22.340 Okay. 17:22.340 --> 17:25.100 So, absentee voting is underway. 17:25.100 --> 17:28.780 Ballots have gone out and are going out. 17:28.780 --> 17:36.460 The Trump administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to pause a federal judge's order 17:36.460 --> 17:43.220 that is blocking the U.S. Postal Service's plan to essentially not send ballots by mail 17:43.220 --> 17:47.820 to people who aren't on these lists that the federal government approves. 17:47.820 --> 17:49.860 So who knows what will happen with that? 17:49.860 --> 17:54.180 But absentee voting is underway in Wisconsin right now. 17:54.180 --> 17:58.580 And Zach, sometimes, you know, of course, we can't control what the U.S. Supreme Court's 17:58.580 --> 17:59.580 going to do. 17:59.580 --> 18:04.380 But sometimes states that don't want the court to intervene will make a point of saying voting 18:04.380 --> 18:06.260 is happening now is not the time. 18:06.260 --> 18:07.260 Yeah. 18:07.260 --> 18:08.740 There are a lot of states where ballots have gone out. 18:08.740 --> 18:11.860 Ballots have already come back and there's a lot of clerks trying to figure out if this 18:11.860 --> 18:16.100 actually goes forward, how they will work around the chaos because it will be chaos. 18:16.100 --> 18:17.100 It would be. 18:17.100 --> 18:18.100 That's a certainty. 18:18.100 --> 18:21.700 It's how does it go around and how many people actually lose their ability to vote through 18:21.700 --> 18:23.380 the mail because of it. 18:23.380 --> 18:24.540 All right. 18:24.540 --> 18:28.940 Before we go, we wanted to let you know that WPR is making an interactive guide to the 18:28.940 --> 18:34.260 candidates and we want to know what questions do you want them to answer as they compete 18:34.260 --> 18:35.660 for your vote? 18:35.660 --> 18:40.860 Let us know in the comments or at wpr.org slash elections. 18:40.860 --> 18:42.220 That's all the time we have for today. 18:42.220 --> 18:44.660 This has been Inside Wisconsin Politics. 18:44.660 --> 18:50.780 Be sure to follow us on pbswisconsin.org wpr.org YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.