The following program is a PBS Wisconsin Original
production. >> She filed inaccurate and
incomplete campaign finance reports.
>> Democratic primary candidate for governor
Sarah Rodriguez drops out Falke.
>> Fusion is the energy of the future, and Wisconsin
is where fusion research becomes reality.
>> And a significant step forward for energy
technology. I'm Frederica Freyberg
tonight on "Here& Now", a leading Democratic
candidate for governor drops out after a stunning
week of missteps. We report on the crowded Republican
primary for the seventh Congressional District in
northern Wisconsin, as well as why Democrats running
there want the job. And we talk with the CEO of an
emerging energy company about why and how they're
bringing nuclear fusion to Wisconsin. It's "Here& Now"
for Friday, July 17th. [MUSIC]
>> Funding for "Here& Now" is provided by the Focus
Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.
>> After a Monday news conference where she fired
her campaign manager for messing up the financial
reports but still vowed to stay in the race,
Democratic primary candidate for governor
Sarah Rodriguez, today dropped out. She said the
fundraising reporting mess would be too big of a
distraction. Senior political reporter Zac
Schultz is here with details on. Hi, Zac.
>> Hello, Fred. >> So this has been almost
like a slow motion train wreck. Exactly what
happened. >> It's been a back and
forth all week. Last week we were talking about all
the momentum she had. The candidates that had dropped
out were endorsing her. I was in touch with the
campaign to see where she be out in the field this
week. We were going to touch base with all the
Democratic candidates, and said, well, we're still
figuring out that schedule. Well, by Sunday, they'd
fired her campaign manager. By Monday, she has a press
conference saying, I'm in the race, but fundraising
is a little weaker. We talked to the other
candidates. They're like, authority. It says you can
run things and you don't have any oversight of your
own campaign. Her campaign finance sheets come and
show she's broke and deeply in debt. Then she makes
another press conference to say that she's got all this
money and then quickly says, nope, sorry, that was an
error as well. And now she's out. So it's been
back and forth, people really trying to figure out
where is the truth. And when she says it was a
distraction, she's 100% most honest thing that's
been said about the campaign all week, is this
was dominating all the headlines and would have if
she would have stayed in this race.
>> She was considered a frontrunner, though.
>> Absolutely. When you were looking at if you
looked at that Democratic primary in terms of lanes,
there was clearly Francesca Hong in the more
progressive far left lane. She had owned that for
quite a while in this race, and it was a question of
who could coalesce more of that centrist moderate
candidacy. And Sara Rodriguez was taking that
over. And now that it's gone, it's a question of
who takes advantage of that. Where do those voters go?
>> So now Governor Evers is reportedly talking about
backing an effort to draw David Crowley back into the
race. Why? What happened there with him?
>> Well, David Crowley dropped out almost a couple
of weeks ago, saying it was clear he wasn't going to
have a lane it was assumed he was contesting with
Rodriguez saw her momentum and knew he couldn't get
their fundraising reports that they just were filed
so that he actually has plenty of cash on hand, a
lot more than her. Significantly, if her
transparent from the beginning, there's a
question of whether he would have dropped out
because he would have been significantly ahead of her.
There are other centrists that are saying, hey, bring
him back. He's the next best person to take that
mantle with Rodriguez out of the race. And now it's a
question of whether he will do that and what will that
look like? >> Yeah. Who else stands to
gain? >> Well, Joel Brennan
clearly says this is his moment to shine and people
to hear his name for the first time. If you're not
finely tuned into this race. Kelda Roys Mandela Barnes.
They all claim that they can benefit from this
Francesca Hong to a degree, because there there were
people that backed that just want a Democrat who
can win. And now she may have a more open race all
the way to winning this primary. If her main
contender from the centrist candidacy falls apart.
>> So meanwhile, Republican candidate Tom Tiffany not
only has gobs of money comparatively, but this
must be great for the GOP. >> Oh, they absolutely love
this. Any time you see the other party falling apart
on their own mistakes missteps, then it's good
news for Tom Tiffany, because he's had this whole
opportunity all summer long to run positive ads. He's
got a ton of money in the bank, 2 million cash on
hand, pretty much all of that coming from
billionaires who have given to the party that have
given to him the billionaire loophole that
he came on our air and criticized a few months ago
he's now taking advantage of. But that's politics.
He's definitely in a much better position. I did ask
the Democratic candidates this week, can you overcome
that after this primary? And they said, absolutely.
Once we get past August, then we can start
contrasting the record that he tries to portray versus
his record attached to Trump.
>> Meanwhile, the Republicans are airing ads
talking about Francesca Hong. And what are they
doing there? >> Well, they're
technically they are negative ads, but they're
airing them in Madison, Milwaukee, 2 Francesca Hong
base in an attempt to rile them up. We've seen groups
play in Democratic primaries across the
country in an effort to boost what they view as a
weaker candidate, a more socialist, progressive
candidate. There are lots of statements in Francesca
Hong background that she owns that do not play well
according to centrist, or perhaps in a regular
contest in November. >> Have you ever seen
anything like this in your coverage of politics in
Wisconsin over the years? >> Not like this. We've
seen campaigns fall apart. We've seen campaigns run
out of money and be deep in debt. That's not new. It's
the the discord that it all came out and this back and
forth throughout the week. If this had come out in
February or March and those statements have been
corrected, she probably moved on because she still
had support this week. Just this week, talking to
people out in the field, she won the Ozaukee County
Democratic straw poll with Francesca Hong in the
audience. So the support was still there, but it was
clear that she could not change the message away
from her oversight of her own campaign to back to one
being about the primary. >> All right. Well, Zac,
thanks very much for being here.
>> As one measure of viability, campaign
fundraising reports for the primary candidates,
including those still in the race, were released
this week. Republican candidate for governor Tom
Tiffany, raised $8.7 million in the first six
months of the year, 6.2 million of that from the
state Republican Party, according to reports.
Democrat Mandela Barnes raised around $841,000 in
the same time period. Francesca Hong raised
Brennan raised over $665,000 and Kelda Roys
raised more than 527,000. Aside from the race for
governor, the state's eight seats in the U.S. House of
Representatives are also up for election this year. One
of those races for the deeply red seventh district
in far northern Wisconsin has attracted many
candidates in the primary election. Here and now.
Reporter Steven Potter has this story.
>> There's a lot of motivation to elect people
in the seventh district that will be Make America
Great Again. Republicans. >> The Great North Woods of
Wisconsin is known for many things vast forests,
abundant farmland, and some of the best lakes and
rivers that the state has to offer. It's also known
as a very thinly populated region, but there is
something that's become far more crowded than usual.
That's the ballot for the upcoming Republican primary
for Congress. In all, there are five candidates on the
ballot for the seventh Congressional District
Republican primary election, which takes place on August
11th. The candidates include a financial planner,
an accountant, a public relations executive, a
marketing specialist, and a homebuilder. They're all
after the seat being vacated by current U.S.
House representative Tom Tiffany, who's running as
the Republican candidate for governor. While they're
all Republicans, each of these congressional
candidates has different reasons for why voters
should choose them. Kevin Hermening, the financial
planner from Wausau, was one of the Marines taken
hostage for more than a year during the Iranian
hostage crisis back in 1979. He's one of the better
known candidates in this race.
business owner, a school board member, a community
volunteer. So there are a lot of reasons why that I'm
the best qualified to represent the voters here.
>> Another well-known candidate is accountant
Michael Alfonso, who lives in Hayward. He's the son in
law of U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary
Shawn Duffy, who held the same congressional seat
that Alfonso is running for now.
>> I'm just, you know, an average kid from northern
Wisconsin. I grew up in land o lakes. I bring the
energy of a 26 year old. I'm at every single county
in the in the district. I'm, you know, representing
every voter. >> Then there's public
relations executive and Stanley resident Jesse
Ebben, who has farming roots in the district.
>> I am a Christian conservative, a Trump
Republican, a proud seventh generation wisconsinite who
is committed to getting the government off our back,
out of our way of life so that we can flourish and
prosper right here in rural Wisconsin.
Rhinelander resident Niina Baum, who owns a marketing
agency and was born and raised in the Northwoods.
>> I grew up in the district in Price County on
a dairy farm, a small farm with about 25 milking cows.
And there were a lot of small farms in my community
when I grew up. And they all disappeared.
>> And finally, there's Don Rajala, a native and
current resident of superior. He works in home
construction I. >> This is my fourth time
running for Congress. I did it in 2010, 2014, 2016. I
have this time and all this energy Steil. I'm 58 years
old, but I just know I can get out there and represent
people. Congressional District
stands out for a few reasons. First is its size.
As the state's largest congressional district, it
stretches across 20 counties and almost
19,000mi'!S of northern and central Wisconsin. The
economy here is anchored on agriculture, forestry,
manufacturing and tourism. Politically, however, the
area has seen significant change over the last couple
of decades, driven largely by redistricting. The
seventh Congressional District is now the most
reliably Republican stronghold in the state.
>> They're very Republican. >> Jacque Weissenburger is
the vice chairwoman of the Rusk County Republicans.
>> People here really appreciate the values of
hard work, having individual freedoms, being
able to live their lives as they see fit.
>> She says. This race for the seventh Congressional
District of Wisconsin has national consequences.
>> There's a very big risk at midterms that the House
will turn blue, and I think that it's this particular
race itself in the seventh district will be it'll be
somewhat of a barrier against that happening.
>> While it's certainly possible that the seventh
district could elect a Democrat, and there are
three of them on the primary ballot, election
experts say that's fairly unlikely. In the 2024
election, voters of the seventh district chose both
Republican Tom Tiffany for U.S. representative and
Donald Trump for president by a 20 point winning
margin. The candidates have been working hard to get
voters attention and letting them know that they
understand the issues that are important to them,
according to recent polling, Michael Alfonso is leading
the pack, and Alfonso does have the endorsement of
President Trump. >> We've seen kind of this
mortgaging of the middle America, the manufacturing
jobs, so that we can benefit the coastal elites.
I don't like that. When we talk about rising costs,
maybe the tariffs contribute to that. But
President Trump understands that this is a short term
plan. We're going to be working to bring back the
jobs we lost overseas, right back here to northern
Wisconsin. And then we can start removing the tariffs.
>> Number two in the polls is Kevin Hermening, who has
given $1 million of his own money to his campaign.
>> When people decide to call central and northern
Wisconsin their home, they're saying to the rest
of the state, we'd like you to be involved, but we
don't need you to control our lives. And so it's a
big reason that I love living up here because of
the individuality and the the willingness of people
to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
>> Jesse Evans says her priorities center on land,
wolves and jobs. >> A lot of the issues here
are a battle of our way of life. So it's everything
we're seeing right now, with solar panels and
windmills being targeted to be put on our farmland and
the fight that we have to see our rural save, our
rural landscape, our family farms from bad energy, bad
energy policy. There's really a big battle to
de-list the gray wolf. We need to make sure that that
hunt can be localized right here in our state. And I
work in manufacturing, so making sure that we have
good manufacturing jobs, that the government isn't
the barrier for keeping those manufacturing jobs,
keeping the manufacturers here in the rural
communities. >> For Niina Baum, who's
biking around the seventh district to meet voters,
she worries about the country's financial future
and wants regulation changes.
>> Social Security Trust Fund has been projected to
be insolvent in a few years, and if nothing's done about
it, it's automatic cuts of about 23%. That is going to
have a huge. If that happens, that's going to
have a huge negative impact on our Northwoods economy.
I'd like to see more zoning deregulation, making it
easier, more attainable for people to actually build
homes and more cost effective. And not all of
these barriers, like minimum square footage
requirements or outdated zoning regulation.
>> Don Raihala Halah wants to make sure local
residents maintain local control.
>> I'm a big believer in referendums and referendums.
Stop data centers dead in their tracks. If. If a city.
Let's choose Wausau or Superior. If the citizens
want to get together and put out a referendum and
stop it, it stops right there because the state has
given the power to local municipalities to do that.
>> Just like names on the ballot, there's no shortage
of issues in this race. >> Health insurance.
>> Costs of housing. >> Loss of a job.
>> Or with Iran. >> These tariffs.
>> Immigration. >> Drug pricing.
>> On manufacturing and on agriculture.
>> Tough for small farms. >> Epstein files.
>> But there's one topic that's on the top of mind
for all voters. The increased cost of
everything. Republicans running for the seventh
Congressional District are careful about how they
discuss the economy and inflation, and what can be
done to bring down costs, Jessi Ebben says it's all
about energy. >> Well, the cost of energy
is really the baseline that starts a lot of the
inflation. So the best thing we can do is have
good energy policy to really start this. And that
doesn't mean solar or wind. >> Michael Alfonso blames
problems within government programs.
>> So inflation it's a scary one. It's caused by
government overspending. I think the easiest thing to
cut from the federal government is fraud, waste
and abuse. So much fraud in our system, so many people
making money off of American taxpayers,
scamming them. If we want to shrink the spending, the
easiest place to do it is get rid of the cheats.
>> Kevin Hermening also blames the federal
government. But differently. >> The government has a
spending problem. Government should not be
borrowing for its ongoing costs of operation. When
you do that, you run into, in our case, a $40 trillion
debt. And so the government needs to understand that
these are dollars that are intended for our
communities. These are dollars that are best spent
by the people who live here, who earn them. And that
could play a big role in bringing down inflation.
>> Niina Baum says pricing problems start with the
white House. >> Something that we've
been seeing happen a lot more with the current and
past administrations, is that a lot more has been
passed through executive order, and I think that
creates a lot of volatility, which affects the
affordability and the economy.
sure what can be done about inflation, but residents
need to do what they can for themselves.
>> If you're going to build a home, be your own
contractor, be your own general, you you're going
to save 15% right off the bat. It's going to take a
couple of phone calls and maybe a weekend here or
there, but be your own contractor.
race. These candidates will be splitting the Northwoods
Republican electorate, and voters here are spread far
and wide across the rural district. That means that
it may come down to just a few percent or even a few
hundred votes, and each campaign has many miles to
cover. Between now and August 11th. Reporting from
Hayward. I'm Steven Potter for Here and Now.
>> Three Democratic candidates are also running
in the seventh Congressional District
primary. Former state Representative Fred Clark,
attorney Ginger Murray and IT company owner Chris
Armstrong appeared at a debate this week. Among the
questions in such a solidly red district, why do they
think a Democrat has a chance to win the election?
Murray started by noting recent Liberal wins in the
state Supreme Court. >> Most notably, Susan
Crawford pushed this district over the 50% mark
and showed that counties that haven't voted blue in
the longest time voted blue for her. They are looking
for a progressive candidate. They are tired of the
corruption that is happening in Washington,
D.C. they want people who are listening and showing
up, talking to the folks here, and who will stand
for justice as a lawyer. That's been my entire
career defending the Constitution. I studied it,
I defend it. It is time to get back to the rule of law,
and that is what I do best. I believe that the voters
in this district are absolutely looking for
someone to take the reins. >> I think what people are
looking for is just normal people that are going to
get up there and advocate for them and really hold
this administration accountable and start, you
know, advocating for policies that are really
going to make a difference in people's lives. What
I've heard across the district, not just in
Richmond, is it's not just Democrats, but it's also
independents and Republicans that are really
sick of the status quo. You know, they're really
frustrated with this administration being, you
know, corrupt and criminal, not being held accountable,
not following the Constitution. And I think
we just need, you know, a fresh perspective, you know,
new people to represent us here in the seventh
district. >> This election is more
about character than it is about party on the right,
over to farm technology days in the wagon. Today I
ended up speaking with a farmer for about five
minutes who told me, are you a Democrat? And I said,
yes, I am. I'm a proud Democrat. He said, well, I
haven't voted for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter.
I don't know if I'm going to vote for you, but we
ended up talking for another four minutes about
his dairy herd, about his knee replacements, and
about what life is like managing a small farm. And
it's exactly the commitment that I want to bring to
everybody in the seventh Congressional District, the
representation that works >> Canadian and Minnesota
wildfires resulted in the Wisconsin DNR issuing air
quality advisories across the state this week, some
of which could be extended into the weekend or even
beyond in northern parts of Wisconsin and all the way
to Milwaukee. The Azari has reached high into the most
severe category of hazardous, meaning the
outside air is unhealthy for anyone, as electricity
use tips up between staying indoors with air
conditioning due to smoky air and heat. The issue of
energy and where to get it is a hot topic here and
around the country, and this week it was announced
that a massive nuclear fusion research center is
coming to Wisconsin. Realta Fusion, a company spun out
from research done at UW-Madison, will build a
200 zero zero zero square foot research and
development facility at the long vacant Oscar Mayer
plant on the north side of Madison. The move means the
company will be headquartered there, and
the workforce is expected to increase from 50
employees to 600, along with $60 million from
private investors. The state of Wisconsin gave
nearly $40 million in tax exemptions, with the City
of Madison kicking in nearly 3 million in
financing. Realtor CEO Kieran Furlong joins us now
to explain the project. And thanks for being here.
>> Thank you very much for having me.
dogs to futuristic generation of energy, what
is the promise of nuclear fusion energy in this
increasingly kind of electricity hungry world?
>> Yeah. I mean, I think fusion really is the future
for humanity, right? It's the source of energy that
we need if we're going to provide enough food, water,
materials, mobility for 10 billion people, we need
fusion. We're not going to dig or drill our way out of
this. And, you know, we can build all the renewables
plants we we can manage, but we're still going to
need more energy. And fusion holds that promise.
>> Well, give us kind of the nuclear fusion for
dummies description. >> Sure. Yeah. So fusion is
another form of nuclear energy as it involves
reactions with the nuclei of atoms. But it's the
opposite process from what most people will think of
when they think of conventional nuclear
fission. That's where you take a large, heavy atom,
like a uranium atom, and split it. With fusion, we
take very small light atoms and fuze them together,
basically smooshing them together, and we take
different flavors of hydrogen, push those
together, and form helium, the same stuff that you
would find in party balloons. But when we do
that, you get a small amount of the energy. Our
small amount of the mass gets converted into a
massive amount of energy. >> So I read that
researchers have been trying since the 1930s to
generate electricity through nuclear fusion,
described as the same process that powers the sun.
Why is it so hard? >> Correct. So it was first
postulated back in the early 20s by researchers
looking at what powers the sun. And so fusion is what
powers the sun and all the other stars in the universe.
So in many ways, it's the it's the energy that we
have in the universe. The sun has the advantage of
massive, massive scale. So it's just so large and its
density gets us to the conditions that you can
have fusion occur. So infusion, we have something
that's known as the, you know, you basically need
something called the triple product. We basically need
to get those elements. We want to fuze together hot
enough, dense enough for long enough. We don't have
the advantage of the sun's density. So we need to get
them very, very hot, hotter than the center of the sun.
And that itself is quite challenging.
>> Do you feel as though your scientists have
cracked the code to generating electricity
through fusion? >> We're on the way there.
And in fact, just recently we announced an experiment
we did where we demonstrated we could pull
electricity directly from the plasma that we're
operating in the WHAM machine at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison. So plasma is the fourth state
of matter. So you think, you know, ice, water, steam.
And the next step up would be plasma. So we need to
get a plasma. We can hold that in a magnetic cage
essentially, because we temperatures much hotter
steel vessel, for example. But we're making great
progress with it. There's still some work to do, and
that's why we'll be doing our R&D in this new
facility. it with all this money and
the retrofit involved? >> So I think the first
thing is we're not trying to defy any laws of physics.
So I've got great I'm a great believer in the
ingenuity of humans. We will find a way forward.
There's an old joke about fusion that folks will say,
oh, it's 20 years in the future and always will be.
That kind of ignores the effort that's needed to get
there. And now we're making the effort so there's more
investment coming into fusion. We've got more
people working on the problem. I'm 100% convinced
humanity will solve fusion. The question is when.
>> What do you think about when?
>> So we're targeting the 2030s. So you know, early
to mid 2030s is when we intend to have a first
commercial operation based on our technology.
>> Does this project put Wisconsin on the map for
fusion in a major way? And why Wisconsin?
>> Yeah, I think so. In terms of putting it on the
map. And that's really been kind of one of our
intentions from the start. So the University of
Wisconsin-Madison is already one of the top
institutions for research in this field of plasma
physics and fusion. The state is a, you know, very
well placed from a manufacturing standpoint,
the ability to, you know, do precision and advanced
manufacturing fusion industry is essentially
bringing those two things together. We've got the
scientific research to show, well, here's the kind of
machine we need to build, and then we need to know
how to build those and demonstrate that we can do
that cost effectively. I think Wisconsin is very
well placed to do that. That was one of the factors
in deciding to set up our R&D facility and corporate
headquarters here. And I think Wisconsin absolutely
will be one of the main hubs for fusion in the 21st
century. >> All right. Well, we
appreciate you being here. Kieran Furlong. Thanks.
>> Thank you very much. >> For more on this and
other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our
website at PBS Wisconsin Education and then click on
the news tab. That's our program for tonight. I'm
Frederica Freyberg. Have a good weekend.
>> Funding for "Here& Now" is provided by the Focus
Fund for Journalism and
friends of PBS Wisconsin.