All right.
We're ready.
We're ready.
All right.
Well, Senate Majority Leader, let me hear your thanks for your time today.
Give me your perspective on the last year, starting with the budget, that was the big
bill of the year.
How do you think that everything's unfolded for you?
Yeah, I think we got a lot of good things done this last year in 2023.
I shared revenue bill for local levels of government, school funding, school choice
expansion, a budget that could have been better if the governor went to issue a couple of
vetoes.
But then this fall, passing, keeping the boroughs around for another 20 years, and a lot of good
bills done.
Do you think it would surprise some of your voters or constituents that you needed to
go to the Democrats to pass some of those bills along the way, or is that just the way
the building works sometimes?
That's just the way it worked this time, I guess.
When we did the Bucks, Pfizer Forum, it was my first session, and that was done with
Democrat votes, and it was important that we've known a NBA championship since that
arena was built.
So, you know, it's, I mean, if it's good for Wisconsin, whether it's done by just Republicans
or both Republicans and Democrats, it's important to get it done.
A year ago, there was a lot of talk about a reset with the governor.
There have been some good moments with the governor.
We just talked about there have been some other moments where the sentence rejected some
of his appointments, there have been some other controversies.
How do you feel your relationship is with the administration right now?
Well, since the budget, we haven't communicated a whole lot, unfortunately, but I guess worked
somewhat with the governor's office on the borough's bill to make sure that he was comfortable
with it, and obviously he really wanted to get it done as well.
But it's just unfortunate that he keeps vetoing tax cuts when we have such a large surplus
that we're sitting on taxpayer money when we could be giving it back to them.
Speaking of the tax cuts that's been passed and vetoed twice now, you have been able to
work with the governor on other issues.
Is there any room to sit down at the table and find compromise on what he might be willing
to sign?
Well, I don't know, I mean, if it's some wish list of his, like, things that don't
make sense, it's not worth doing a tax cut, but, you know, he was for reducing that tax
bracket in the prep before he ran for re-election and used that as part of his re-election tactics.
But now, apparently, that's a wealthy tax cut, which starts at 24,000 when he filed individually
that tax rate, and 36,000 married filing jointly.
So it's really unfortunate that he sort of flipped his idea of that being a good way
to reduce taxes in the state of Wisconsin.
When you look ahead to the next year, what bills are a priority for you?
Yeah, I think there's two bills that hopefully we can get done yet, first is the right of
first refusal to allow Wisconsin companies the right to build new transmission lines
first.
We keep that work done here in Wisconsin, it's going to save ratepayers' money, and so hopefully
we can get that done.
And there's an electric vehicle charging bill that was just introduced.
I think that bill will be vital to expand charging stations around the state of Wisconsin
as there are more and more electric vehicles.
In terms of election bills, are there any bills out there that you think the governor
will sign specifically some of the early counting bills that have been proposed in the past?
There was a time when I actually authored that bill a couple of sessions ago, but I'm not
sure that bill's at in the Senate right now.
I don't know if it will move or not, but it's important to make sure that some of the bigger
cities actually get their votes counted on time.
One of the other big things that happened this year obviously was the Supreme Court
election and a shift in the balance and the power there.
How much does that weigh on your caucus when it comes to either the bills that you're proposing
or obviously looking ahead to possible new maps next year?
Yeah, I think there's a lot of concern in our caucus and amongst myself that everything
that we've done over for me for eight years, and for other people who've been around even
longer for the last decade, 12 years, all of the reforms that we passed could be undone
by, depending on how activist this court actually becomes.
It's early on, but you can tell the first thing that they did was challenge our maps.
That she was sworn into office, so it's really unfortunate that it seems like with the governor's
lawsuit trying to suing us, our joint committees, that we have two branches of government trying
to box out the legislative branch right now, and we are a co-equal branch of government
and we're going to keep operating like that and look forward to getting good bills done.
Is it most realistic to think you're going to have to run in all 33 districts next year
that the entire Senate will be up?
Are you going to wait and see on that?
That would be a pretty drastic move by the Supreme Court to actually do that.
I think even Justice Protezet, which mentioned that it'd be very rare to undo election results,
essentially, is what they're doing.
Undoing the will of half the state in electing their Senate two years to a four-year term
and undoing that two years later, or a year later, to run two years later.
I think we have the legal arguments behind our side and if the court does weigh in against
our maps and makes us all run again, we're going to take that appeal to the U.S. Supreme
Court and hopefully get relief.
You have a veto-proof majority in the Senate, but you haven't been able to use that in terms
of impeachment.
There's been threats and talks of impeachment.
Would you like to see the ability to bring an impeachment all the way to the floor, whether
it's for Meghan Wolf or Justice Protezet-Witz or anyone else?
Impeachment's a serious thing.
I don't think it should be done lightly.
Someone has to do something probably illegal in order to do that.
Just doing it to Protezet, which is simply overturning an election that was just held.
She recues herself even though she said our maps are rigged during the campaign, but she
hasn't made any decisions yet.
Just last week, the Senate minority leader announced that she was going to be giving
up her seat and is no longer in her leadership position.
What does that say about the Democrats' prospects for gaining seats in the Senate that their
leader doesn't want to stick around through next year and possibly see if they gain a
majority or even more seats?
Well, I think she's running for Dane County Executive, which that's where she wants her
career to be.
I worked well with Senator Eggard, tried to work with her and did work with her.
I worked well with Buelly when she was my minority later, and I look forward to working
with Senator Hesselbein in her new role.
I think it's just good for the Senate to have that collegiality, not that we're going
to agree on things all the time, but just give them their voice and be able to just communicate
with them to make sure the Senate runs well.
The Senate rejected a number of appointments made by Governor Evers, and there's some of
those reappointments that are going to come back before the body.
Do you anticipate holding votes on them next year?
Well, it depends what the new appointees, what their views are in certain things.
We had members of the DNR Board who flat out told the committee that they weren't going
to follow state law.
You can't have committee members of committees and boards that are going to refuse to follow
state law.
It's that simple.
So, it seems like a lot of the appointments have become more and more partisan from this
governor, so we'll do our job in the Senate and take a good look at appointees and decide
if they can do the job that they've been appointed to do.
One of the big things for Republicans next year is the convention coming to Milwaukee.
What do you think that impact would be for the rest of the state all the way in the fall?
You know, I think it would have been great if we had the DNC convention here in 2020 just
to highlight Milwaukee and the great state that we are.
So, you know, it'll be exciting to have all the cameras on the city of Milwaukee and highlight
the good state of Wisconsin.
But as far as an electoral boost, do you think that can change minds in Milwaukee, the suburbs
or anywhere else in the state?
Well, I'm not sure if that will happen.
You know, it's going to be up to whoever the nominee is to do that.
You know, we'll be working hard at the grassroots level in the Senate.
I think we've been very successful finding in this last session we had a lot of open
seats that were close and we found good candidates and who connected with their districts.
And that's how we, you know, picked up a seat and got to a two-thirds majority.
So that will be my job to help find good qualified candidates if we have new maps or
if some of our members decide not to run again.
But, you know, I think a lot, if things, you know, just that even Senate districts are
up, I think a lot of those senators will probably run again, but we'll see.
Do you hope that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee?
I'll let the voters decide on that.
I'm a big fan of Nikki Haley.
I think she'd be a nice contrast to President Biden.
But that's for the voters to decide.
In terms of your candidates for next fall, do you hope to have a top-flight US Senate
candidate take on Tammy Baldwin?
That'd be great.
Do you have any insight as to who that might be?
I have no idea who it's going to be.
Have you heard any rumblings from anyone, any members of your caucus, about possibly
looking since there haven't been any other big names coming?
I have not heard of anybody from our caucus considering that.
Another election topic is the WEC and Meghan Wolf.
Do you think that there will be controversy if she is still running the WEC through next
fall, no matter the results of the election?
You know, if Wisconsin seems to always be a pretty close statewide race, and when Trump
won the first time, the Democrats were screaming that the elections were not held properly
and in 2020 the opposite happened.
And you know, I think there's not a lot of confidence in Meghan Wolf right now.
And the most important thing about elections is making sure it's easy to vote, but hard
to cheat, to making sure that your vote counts.
But the second most thing is building up the public's confidence in elections.
Because people don't believe that the election is honest and accurate and no, nothing going
on wrong, then they might lose faith in the electoral process.
And that's not good for a republic.
What is the end game with Meghan Wolf?
Do you expect her to be reappointed officially to actually have a nomination come before the
Senate or how does this end?
That's what the law says.
They have to reappoint, but what isn't doing their duty and appointing whether it doesn't
have to be her, but her term is done every four years, they have to reappoint.
So we feel good about our lawsuit in that case as well, but we'll see what happens,
but it's their duty.
They're ignoring the legislative authority right now.
How will you define success for 2024, a year from now, what will success look like?
Well, hopefully we come back with as many of our 22 seats as possible and we have a
lot of good senators who are up for reelection, so hopefully we can get them across the finish
line.
Anything else you'd like to add?
No.
All right.
Senate Majority Leader, thanks for your time today.
Thank you.
All right.
We are good.
Thanks for being patient.
No problem.
Appreciate it.
Enjoy.