It was foggy enough that I probably wouldn't have had to close my eyes, but I did anyway.
So my wife and I live right now, and I sleep hard.
Okay.
And we're also on the front door.
So I have a really interesting answer.
I can tell you're good.
And how are we doing right now?
So I served for three years as the Secretary of Viewways.
And my colleague there, who ran the DNR at that time, was Preston Cole, who had served on the board.
And there were lots of ways in which the legislature can slow and stop things there.
But how are we doing?
You're not doing well.
The parks are under fire.
They are there.
There's a lot of damage.
I don't need that.
To get started.
Fingers, warnings, etc.
There's a lot of youth.
And part of it is maybe salary.
Yeah.
Which, I mean, I know salaries aren't the thing.
So you're with the friends.
Like, I mean, so that burden falls on you.
No, it's not.
We have a lot of friends.
Not at this level.
Not enough.
It's $10.
It's really important.
It's important.
Yeah.
State's really important.
It's important.
It's not important.
Outhouse.
It's really important.
You can use a different grade for it.
But some people might.
Okay.
So we've got lots of amazing questions.
Okay.
All right.
Hello.
Attention.
Here we go.
Between the newsfeed and the weather, I feel more like we're in the wild dark yonder than the
wild blue yonder today.
But I've worked with a lot of amazing people over my four decades of being a Wisconsin lawyer.
And I've either worked with or know four of the leading candidates for the democratic
ticket for governor in the state.
And I'm pleased to say that right at the very top of the list of my most esteemed, enjoyed,
liked colleagues is Joel Brennan.
Most talented, a moral backbone, a great leader, cares about the entire state, not just the
urban areas, cares about areas like this.
And I've got a great sense of Joel from working with the Department of Administration, which
I think a lot of people, if 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 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 the one thing, 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 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, and so I've known Jim about as long as Mike has been doing Berkibiners, which
is I think 39 years, right?
But you've 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.
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 that
likes you.
So thank you for coming over today.
And as Mike said, I'm a candidate for governor and I'm just going to start with one factor
that I think we can all agree on and that we don't live in normal times.
We don't live in normal times nationally in the state of Wisconsin and Iowa County and
Monroe Point.
Like these are not days that we all know and that we recognize.
When I go around the state and I spend 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.
So the question is not whether these are heavy times and whether there are things that are
a great concern.
The question is what are we going to do about it?
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.
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 ten siblings, I'm the tenth of eleven kids, but my parents
taught us some fairly basic lessons.
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, Audrey and I have tried to teach to our young
adult children.
We have two children who are 18 and 20 years old.
For 25 years, what I've done is try to solve problems in the work that I've done generally
in executive positions in the nonprofit sector, in government, working with businesses around
our states.
That's what I have been over the course of 25 years.
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.
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.
And 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.
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 100 years to take Wisconsin and actually have it emerge
stronger from COVID than where we went in.
And so 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.
And it's easy to break things in government.
It's easy to take things and make and do away with them.
It's easy to divide people.
It's easy to break things that we know in 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's 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 could 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 in the first that, you know, no matter where you go around the 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, you know, 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 Badger Care in Wisconsin, we have not done that.
We spent about $2.5 billion 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 $2.5 billion of our own money to cover people in Wisconsin.
With the 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 $2.5 billion 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 health care, you know, Washington is probably not coming to help us in many ways in the next year.
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, you know, 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 bare 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 OBGYN.
Now there's like 27.
Some of those are counties that you are familiar with.
And this is the state of affairs that we are leaving things in for health care in our state.
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, you know, health care is a huge issue.
Another issue, and I was just talking to somebody who helps build homes here and works on them.
Housing is an issue no matter where you go.
And young families especially are facing a crisis in Wisconsin and elsewhere around the country.
In 2020, the average age for a first time home buyer 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 for your education system, just what it means to the fabric of the society that we want to have.
But we have put that out of reach.
And so, you know, 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 multifamily homes.
They've jacked up rents so that 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 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 in 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 make sense for who and where we are in 2026.
And so you may have seen that just in the last week, a set of parents, school districts, educators filed suit up in Eau Claire to try to get this declared unconstitutional.
And 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.
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 what 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 as his word on a lot of things.
But when he talks about doing things like nationalizing elections, 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 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 risk.
You know what that date 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 and the last 250 years in the democracy.
So this is, I think, who we have to be.
So, you know, I guess I close and I'd be welcome to take your questions, but, you know, there are, and Mike said, he knows lots of the candidates who are running.
All of you may know some of the other candidates 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, you know, 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 what 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 going to move forward in ensuring that we can bring down costs for people who need that, if 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.
Nice.
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.
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 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 them.
If you're going into a community that's got to Ben Franklin, I stopped in to Ben Franklin, and I know that I got in a little bit of on the ground view of what's going on, 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 going on or ask me questions.
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, I know, 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 what 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 undecided, 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?
There are a couple of things.
Somebody asked me about money in 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 11.
It would have been my mother's 97th birthday, so I thought that was fitting, but between December 11, and there was a report that had to be filed as of December 31.
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 have been in the race for three months.
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 in Stoughton, Thursday in Wasah.
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, and I would hope to think that part of the reason why I can make progress on that are people like Mike.
Because, you know, you are here, hopefully because 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.
Don't forget me.
Yes, they both do.
But, like, 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.
Now, 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 a 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-sized 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.
Yeah, and that's a good example of the way things were done in the Walker administration.
And when we hired Mike 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, you know, 20 million square feet.
We're just going to like magically fall into Racine County, and 13,000 people were going to magically be employed there.
And like it just, 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.
And 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 wasn't just that we could take big huge companies and give them a little bit more to make them just a little bit bigger.
You know, 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 bit bigger.
And that doesn't help for what you have out here on your main street.
It doesn't help for most places around the state of Wisconsin.
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, yep, 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 charge.
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 know, 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's fairness about how we deploy these around the state.
And it can't just be in the urban centers.
It can't just be places and companies that you know.
The fact that I got to hear from Desiree across the street.
Like, 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.
But that's still who we are, and that's who I think we want to be.
We need to invest in those places.
And I think you as taxpayers, you as people who believe in your communities,
like, this is who we should be.
Yeah.
So, speaking of the walkie.
You moved, didn't you?
Yes.
You moved from there to here, okay?
I am with it.
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, the Twin Cities.
And we never got that because of our lovely new governor, Walker, who wouldn't take any federal money.
Yep.
And then built the gazillion highways in Milwaukee that didn't help us at all.
And we are still not connected very easily to Milwaukee, to Chicago, to the Twin Cities.
Yep.
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 re-establish some high-speed.
I agree.
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.
And I think what we need is there needs to be a multimodal approach to whatever we do in infrastructure.
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.
So if that stands for 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 other connections between Milwaukee, Madison, La Crosse, 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, 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 in bakery like this,
an experience I had in the 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, too, 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 married couples and families around the state who have, because of 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 better be prepared 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 that big bill took out about almost a trillion dollars of Medicaid spending over the next 10 years,
that's not Washington on its way to health.
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,
realize heavily on property owners and property taxes.
As I mount 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 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 Houston, which is in Dodge County.
And I was there because there was a public meeting on Monday because Houston spurred 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.
In a community of 1,100 people, there were 200 people at this meeting in the gym at the high school,
because there are 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 this.
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,
that if it goes the same way as has happened in Houston spurred over the last several years, will fail.
Again, like 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? I mentioned there is a lawsuit that's been filed by teachers,
unions, by administrators, by parents in Eau Claire.
And it's a whole bunch of districts that have gotten to the point of just this being not tolerable anymore
to declare the funding formula unconstitutional.
But the funding formula I swear to you is a snapshot that was taken in 1993.
You know, 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, you know, 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 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 the 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, like 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, you know, if you're in the legislature alongside me,
if we can turn this district, if we can 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 are 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, you know, there are ways, and you mentioned like the voucher program,
there's dangers that lurks ahead with that, that, you know, in the next year, if we do nothing,
the cap is lifted on the statewide voucher program. There is, you know, 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, like, 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 can get through the legislature,
but that are ensuring that we're protecting the future for kids who go to public schools in Wisconsin.
Thank you.
Yeah.
With data centers expanding across Wisconsin, and people's 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?
Yep.
And you remind me, if I don't get both questions, you remind me of the second, but the one about the state government's responsibility,
you know, what happened was, and data centers have exploded nationally in the last few years,
and Wisconsin, a couple of 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, you know, 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, you know, what I have said is that if I'm elected governor,
we would pause the data center construction for at least a 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 what we need to do is we need to say to the companies that are building these,
one, you know, 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 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 the opportunity.
And the good news is there is work that's happened in the state legislature
where I think there can be some path forward about what that looks like.
But the state legislature, you know, and our friend Howard Markline,
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,
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.
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 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.
You know, 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 that they have awakened an activism in people is to our benefit
and continuing to do that and, and again, and the government's response,
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, you know, 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 out of gaming county.
Recently, they're deforest in Dane County.
And there are places that will embrace this and there are places where, you know,
the argument about the real estate support and some of the jobs that, like,
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, a fellow alumnus.
And if you know him, he's a comedian who does the manage to walk a minute,
but he's also been very involved in data centers.
He's coming for this event here.
Like, you know, 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 that there is reason, there's opportunity for citizen voice in all of this.
I've never held statewide elective office.
I've never held any office before.
I still think that we're a citizen legislature.
We're a citizen government.
And we ought to be people who still have opportunity to have agency in that.
And I'd like to think that that's who I would be as governor.
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.
They asked it.
It's kind of a follow-up to that.
You were talking about the idea of the governor putting some kind of a 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 guy.
He can be approached to do that, to put that so that you can simply carry it on.
There is a possibility to that.
And I think that if I know anything about the governor, and I admire him,
and I got the chance to work with him, and I think he is, if you know him, or if you don't,
who he conveys himself to be personally is who he is.
Above reproach when it comes to ethics and integrity.
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 I'm so excited.
I love it.
Anybody else?
But I think he has the ability to do that.
He has not expressed at this point any interest in doing that.
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.
I also think there's a possibility for everybody in this room to send him a postcard.
I sent a lot of postcards.
I sent him a postcard to 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?
And that he listens.
I'd like to think he listens.
Now, here's what I told him that I was thinking about doing this.
And as you know, like there are eight viable Democrats who are running, and a number of
us worked with him, a couple of were lieutenant governors to him, so he knows us all.
You know, what he said about it is, oh yeah, this will be fun.
This will be fun for me to watch.
Fun for him.
Like, let's fun for the rest of us.
Oh, no.
Oh, 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, like, 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 South West, for those who are
doing that work, for allowing me to reign 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.
One more question.
Okay.
So thank you for all your comments.
I'm a retired person.
So health care and education, which, to me, are very, very extremely important.
And I have more of a comment than this question.
I think that the Democratic Party, as a whole, has really shot ourselves in the court
by hammering the word abortion.
I think there are many people that do not understand 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, you know, 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 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 health care.
It's a decision between a woman and her doctor.
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.
I am going to, from the day from now until the time that I am done with public service,
believe those things, and I will work towards that with the legislature.
And, you know, so, you know, those are important issues to people.
It sometimes are issues that people decide just on one way or the other.
And I believe that, you know, I respect people's ability to have a 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,
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 to 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?
Wait, Sarah's got a question.
If people want to know more about the campaign or get involved, go to BrennanforWI.com.
There's also a Facebook and that stuff.
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 that's all great, but if there's a sleet that I have, and when we're going to stick around and have individual conversations here too,
the only way I know how to do this is by taking the 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 then grab some myself and have conversation with people for a little longer.
Thank you.
You saved me.
No matter what.
Would you mind if I have a photograph?
No, please.
Please.
Yes.
Hey, I'm Joel.
I'm Joel.
I'm Jerry.
I'm
Jerry.
I'm Jerry.
I think we're really excited to have a lot of people on campus and how many students and actors
and so many people.
Anyways, we have a lot of work to do.
We have a lot of work to do.
We should be able to make investments like that.
There is money at the federal level to do it.
I think efforts for us to do things on Broadway.
We have a lot of work to do.
You're a busy person here.
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 to those days,
but I also, I know every grandparent who says,
they love having those kids around.
They love all store hanging back,
and you don't have that.
Yeah, and now, yeah, I don't have that.
I don't have that.
My daughter and mom, I don't have that.
I don't know when they do it.
I don't know when they do it,
but we're ready to go home and try to sleep.
How are we going to do it a second?
I don't know.
I'm just thinking, I'm just thinking.
Do you find that well-spring?
Yes.
And so it's a different sound.
I want to put more time on that.
And how is that going?
No, I don't like, so there's a state party here
that will send it to them, which I've done.
No, made their feet up.
Yes.
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, I mean, can't put their,
I would feel that's a little,
in a good way in advance,
sometimes seems a little bit,
putting the cart before the horse, but.
And it's, it's a little bit more.
But I'll tell you, I mean,
you know this, and it's, again,
selfishly, the more that people are going up,
voting in a Democratic primary,
better for Democrats and better for all of this,
like, let's get people engaged.
And it's just so different.
You know, like, we've said the people we are.
I agree, I agree.
I agree, but it's just,
I agree, I agree, I agree, I agree, I agree, I agree, I agree,
, I agree, I agree, I agree, I agree, I agree, I agree.
And that's, that's fair?
I agree, I agree.
I agree.
That's fair.
I agree.
It's, that's fair.
It's fair.
It's fair, it's fair.
I agree.
It's fair, it's fair.
Thank you, thanks for coming today.
And we're gonna 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, you know, coming down.
All right, so I gotta roll in.
All right, a couple quick follow-ups to what I was hearing
and I just wanna clarify if I heard it right.
So one of the things I heard you talk about
was the 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
call them up for it?
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 1,800 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 COVID.
And so it's having people who are not in uniform,
but as civilians doing work in their own communities.
And so there is precedent for it.
Yeah, but I wanna make sure that you understand.
Nobody's in uniform.
These are people who are in, you know,
there are 10,000 guard men and women in our state
who are doing work in their own communities.
This seems to be like a big deal.
And maybe they're just waving at me.
I don't know, maybe they're...
Is it parade?
They brought out a parade for me.
They must be going to state.
Some?
Did they hear that this is not the real governor
and just, you know, they get confused here?
There they go.
Just look, oh, they're on their way to state,
as my guess, from basketball or something, right?
That's what that is.
Yeah.
All right.
That's what that was.
I thought that was all for me.
That was an escort for them.
I wanna get some clarification on the data center.
Yeah.
You're talking about putting a pause
and you have to 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.
And I think that this is all making sure
that there is a rational and thoughtful approach.
And when I say a pause,
it's also not something that I'm looking to do
for time immemorial.
I think that 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 is the 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 crossover?
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 race.
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 Shagwegan 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 really starting to pay attention.
But resources matter.
And there haven't been the level of resources
that are 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 of 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 as 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 to be an early test run
or get out the vote activity right now
so that going into the fall,
if the people are still activated,
engage the 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 an 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% of the way 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 on the air
and start running a bunch of ads right now.
How do you walk that line to keep them excited,
but let them know, like you're out of the ordinary
for the energy you are.
Yeah, and as much as anything,
I want to talk to engaged people now,
and I want to talk to 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,
that's valuable for me, it's valuable
for what's going on statewide.
And as much as anything, I'm still introducing myself.
As I said, if I changed my name to undecided,
I'd have this going away,
because 65% of the people haven't done that.
But for me, I'm 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,
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, good to do.
You look great, you look terrific,
I hope that as we see each other additionally
on the campaign that we're in our civilian lives.