>> The following program is a PBS Wisconsin Original
production. >> We shall see. Down. We
shall sit down. >> Protesters take over the
streets. >> We have the power, not
that badge. >> And demand answers from
officials. After a Madison police officer shot and
killed a man during an arrest.
I'm Frederica Freyberg tonight on "Here& Now"
reaction over the police shooting of Cory Ruiz. The
latest on the race for governor with Marquette Law
School pollster Charles Franklin. Clarity for
absentee voters who cast their ballot. But their
candidate dropped out. And an agency that helped
provide people with shelter in ten counties went under.
What happens now? It's "Here& Now" for July 24th.
[MUSIC] >> Funding for Here and Now
is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and
Friends of PBS Wisconsin. >> A Madison police officer
shot and killed a man as four officers attempted to
arrest him this week on Madison's near East Side.
Cell phone video of the altercation quickly went
viral. The community response was swift,
demanding answers and action. Reporter and
videographer Marissa Wojcik has more. But first, a
warning to viewers. This video contains sounds of
gunfire. >> Who died today? Who was
murdered today? >> Lori.
>> We want the officer's name tonight and we want
him arrested. >> Protesters swelled the
main traffic artery leading to the state capitol
Wednesday. Soon after, police shot and killed Cory
Ruiz during an arrest. >> We all witnessed on
social media last night. A human being take the life
of another human being. We were all there.
>> Outrage over what online footage showed led
community members to disrupt a city press
conference and an event at the Capitol.
>> A lot of these places don't even care and what is
going on is wrong. But yet y'all sit here with stale
faces. >> Police say officers
responded to a call of a man checking parked
vehicles after he attempted to flee. A physical
altercation ensued. One officer attempted to use a
Taser, which failed. Police say Ruiz injured an officer
with a knife before that officer opened fire.
>> When you see someone shot on camera and the
shooting happens within a matter of, you know, one,
two, three seconds, that is angering and it's
horrifying and it's heartbreaking.
>> I want to be clear. It does not matter who you are
or what your past is, you should not lose your life
as a result of an encounter with law enforcement. That
should not happen. >> City officials responded
to calls for accountability Thursday.
>> My first thought is when the officer is walking away,
why isn't he walking away in cuffs? That's my first
thought. on George Floyd's neck, and
we don't want to hear it today. That's the.
>> It's really understandable that people
want answers right now. I want them to. But the
honest truth is that good investigations take time.
We have to let the investigation play out.
>> This is an open and active homicide
investigation. Right now. >> The investigation is
being led by the Wisconsin Department of Justice
Division of Criminal Investigation.
>> They are hunting us. They are hunting us.
>> I think everyone in this room can feel the thinness
of trust in this city right now, right? I can feel it.
It did not start yesterday. And it's not abstract. It's
the direct result, I think, of what our community has
gone through and we have watched repeat. The
shooting happened a block and a half from where Tony
Robinson was shot and killed by a Madison police
officer in 2015. It happened near the same
corner where Paul Heenan was shot and killed by a
police officer in Madison in 2012. So three fatal
encounters with police department within roughly
14 years, on the same handful of blocks.
>> This is not new to Madison.
>> This is the third death of a Black man on Willy
Street. This is not new. That's why when we say no
justice, we mean no peace. >> There is not enough
de-escalation. There are poor training methods, and
then there is a tendency to go to the most lethal form
of subduing somebody as possible. When you pull out
a gun, someone is going to die. And we've seen it
happen time and time again, and we need that to change.
Now. >> Many in the community
are calling for all officers to wear body
cameras. >> As you know, we don't
have a broad deployment of body worn cameras in
Madison, and I understand that this fact does create
another challenge to repairing trust in our
community. department isn't already
deploying them. >> So the community
advocated against implementation of body worn
cameras for some years. And then more importantly, more
recently, the community took a different turn and
supported body worn cameras. In the time that I've been
on the council, the support for body worn cameras has
increased and they'll be funded. I'm confident that
they'll be. >> Funded.
>> And we're not going to wait for a final report
from DC, I to begin the work of examining our
policies, our training and response. We're going to do
that now. >> We'll be here every
night until we get justice for the family.
>> There's a collective anger, there's a collective
pain there, and there's a collective loss.
>> Is name. >> For me.
>> Say his name. >> Reporting from Madison.
I'm Marissa Wojcik for Here and Now.
>> While the State Department of Justice will
investigate the shooting, the Dane County D.A. will
make any charging decisions. The Madison office of the
Independent Police Monitor will also investigate.
Turning to election news in the topsy turvy Democratic
primary for governor, some insights from this week's
Marquette Law School poll. Even though it was in the
field before Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez
dropped out, and Milwaukee County Executive David
Crowley got back into the race. Poll director Charles
Franklin is here with more. And thanks for being here.
>> Thanks for having me. >> So even in the midst of
this upheaval, what are your takeaways from your
latest poll? >> I think the biggest
thing is that even with Rodriguez in the race, in
our poll, Francesca Hong was still in first place.
That's the fourth poll in a row that she's led. Mandela
Barnes was in second place. Also the third poll that
he's been in second place since he got in the race.
And of course, we didn't have David Crowley because
he was not a candidate at that moment. The other
thing that's really important is that 45% of
Democratic primary voters said they hadn't decided
who they would vote for. So even before the turmoil of
changing candidates, still, almost half of the
Democratic electorate said they hadn't settled on who
they would support. >> So Hong's supporters are
really strong supporters. >> They are quite strong.
They're a little more likely to say they're
absolutely certain that that's who they're going to
vote for. And when we ask for second choices, she
doesn't get that many second choices, which
suggests in one sense, that her supporters are already
behind her. But it also suggests that folks that
are looking at candidates other than her are not as
likely to come to her if their first choice goes
away. >> If two thirds of
Democratic voters say winning in November is
extremely important, as according to your poll. How
does Tony Evers endorsement of David Crowley factor
into that? >> Thus, the importance of
winning in November was uniform. No matter which
candidate you were supporting, all of them
gave that high rating to say it was extremely
important. But Evers is remarkably popular among
Democrats. He has an 89% job approval with Democrats
right now. The question is whether his endorsements
and activity in the campaign moves people on
that decision, as opposed to they like the job he's
doing as governor. But maybe they're not going to
be influenced by his recommendations that we
really don't know at this point.
>> So the Rodriguez Lane was moderate Democrat who
picks up most of her vote. >> When we asked second
choices of people that supported her about an
equal number, went to Mandela Barnes and went in,
went to Joel Brennan smaller percentage, a good
bit smaller, went to Hong and a small percentage went
to Kelda. >> Roys so you described
the undecideds at 45%. Would voters sit this one
out and not vote because of all of this confusion?
>> It's possible we do still see a high professed
intention to vote. It certainly won't be the
level of a midterm election because primaries are much
smaller than that. But I think the Democratic
coalition is pretty well mobilized. The issue is,
does this turmoil in the list of candidates take
some people who were in that undecided category and
make them just throw up their hands and say, I'm
not going to bother or and this is, I think, a real
possibility. It's focusing attention on a race that
had been pretty low key up until now. And so it may
have the effect of actually energizing Democratic
voters, but we're also seeing a significant split
across, especially Hong Barnes and Crowley,
potentially Crowley supporters, about how does
that split the vote, and does it coalesce around one
candidate, or does it just splinter the vote evenly?
>> So even with Hong continuing to lead among
Dems, your numbers show Barnes leads Tiffany while
the rest of the field does not.
>> That's right. When we asked the general election
question, Barnes is the strongest Democrat, leading
Tiffany by four percentage points, whereas Hong trails
Tiffany by three points. When we shift it to likely
voters, the people who say they're certain they'll
vote in the fall, Barnes lead goes up to five and
Hong then ties Tiffany. So I think my take away from
this is that there is a little bit of a
differentiation between the candidates, but it's a
fairly close race, whether it's Barnes or Hong or any
of the other Democrats that we asked about. So guess
what? It looks like another probably close election in
Wisconsin. >> Yeah. Does the shakeup
at the top of the ticket inform the legislative
races? >> And maybe we asked about
who would you vote for for the legislature. And
Democrats had a small lead there about a four point
lead. But that's about just general voting. We don't
ask about individual races there. I do think that for
Democrats chances in the fall, they certainly would
benefit from a strong gubernatorial candidate and
a winning Democratic campaign, because that
support at the governor's level can trickle down to
the legislative races. I think it's way too early to
have any sense about whether whoever the nominee
is will emerge as a very strong candidate or not.
>> So meanwhile, you're in the field again with a new
poll to share with us next Wednesday.
>> Things keep changing, so you have to keep doing new
polls. This poll that will come out next Wednesday is
only about Democratic primary voters and only
about them. And we'll certainly ask about
opinions of Crowley vote again in the primary. And
also Governor Evers endorsement, and whether
people think that makes them more or less likely to
support David Crowley. We will also be
re-interviewing the people we've interviewed this past
week. So we'll be able to see whether those undecided
folks last week have moved any further towards
decision making this week. The only drawback to this
is it's a fairly short period of time, so we'll
still have two more weeks to Election Day when this
poll is finished. >> Wow. Well, thank you for
your work. >> Thank you.
>> For more insights on the twists and turns we look to
this week's Inside Wisconsin Politics. In this
excerpt, we hear from our own Zac Schultz and PFAS
Shawn Johnson. >> Of the Democrats in the
race right now, not including David Crowley
only Mandela Barnes defeats Tom Tiffany in a head to
head matchup by a 44 to 40% split among registered
voters. Tiffany leads Francesca Hong 43 to 40%,
so a plus four for Mandela Barnes, minus three for
Francesca Hong Zac. I mean, I think it kind of begs the
question, why did the establishment not rally
around Mandela Barnes? >> One of the distinctions
is Barnes came in with the most name recognition of
everyone due to his 2022 US Senate run, his close loss
to Ron Johnson. And it was always a question because
he also had the highest negatives that came with
that hangover from that election. And he started
running this race as the front runner. He introduced
himself as saying, I'm the one to take on Tom Tiffany.
He did the thing where he ignores the rest of the
field and kind of pretends they weren't there. And
then partway through this election, I think he or his
campaign realized, oh no, Francesca Hong is there. I
do have to take her seriously. So we kind of
had to shift his tone to talking about his
competitors, where I think at first he was running the
2022 U.S. Senate primary, where all of his
competitors dropped out at the end, and he basically
had the field to himself. That didn't happen. So it
is a question of, did the rest of the field say
you've had your chance and you couldn't make your case?
Now we're going to go with someone else, or is it
simply that they think her negatives are too high,
despite the head to head matchup? Looking good.
>> Why are so many people not sure about this? What
we thought was going to be a very high profile race
for governor. >> Because those 48% make
up a lot of people who don't watch this podcast,
so they are not as informed. There are a lot of people
who don't pay attention to politics until the very end
there. We just got the first campaign flier in my
mailbox this morning. They're starting to come.
Those people will follow along. Another thing that
happens in primaries pretty regularly is people wait to
see if there is a frontrunner. They don't
like to waste their vote on someone who will not win,
or they're going to say, well, I like this person,
but they're in fourth place and they're not polling
very high. Why would I throw it behind them? Who
is my next favorite? Which is another good thing that
the Marquette poll does is they do. Who is your next
favorite in line? Another thing to look at is Tom.
Tiffany is unopposed in the Republican primary. There's
still 30% undecided there. >> Now they're.
>> Finding they're going to vote for the Republican.
But I think you can take that 30%, put it over and
compare it to the 48% for the Democrats and go, okay,
there's just a lot of people that either aren't
tuned in yet, or they're waiting to the last minute
to figure out who is actually the frontrunner.
Who do I trust to be the candidate for my my
favorite party? >> You can hear the full
episode of Inside Wisconsin Politics wherever you get
your podcasts. A state Democratic Party backed
lawsuit seeks to block the Wisconsin Elections
Commission guidance that says voters who have
returned their absentee ballots cannot request a
new ballot if the candidate they voted for drops out.
Candidates like Sarah Rodriguez and Missy Hughes,
the elections commission ruled that only a ballot
that a voter made a mistake on or is damaged and that
they still have in their possession, can be spoiled
and returned for a new one. But that guidance comes
after a series of court cases that seem confusing.
We turn to Bryna Godar, attorney with the State
Democracy Research Initiative at the
University of Wisconsin Law School, and thanks for
being here. >> So I want to just back
up a little bit to set those court cases up. It
was a 2022 lawsuit where a Waukesha County judge ruled
that the elections commission had to rescind
its guidance, allowing for the spoiling of ballots. A
state appeals court eventually repealed that
ruling. So why don't previous rules allowing
casting a new absentee ballot up to three times
for any reason prevail under the appeals court
repeal of that ban? >> It's because the appeals
court ruling was not actually on the merits. So
they overruled the lower court on this technical
procedural issue and didn't reach the merits of what
the Wisconsin statute actually requires or allows.
And so that means it's still somewhat ambiguous.
And so the Wisconsin Elections Commission is
free to interpret the statute how it thinks is
appropriate. And there are questions of why it
switched from its prior interpretation, which is
what was challenged in 2022 to what they issued this
month. But essentially, we don't have a court ruling
providing certainty on what these statutes mean.
>> How unusual is this circumstance with two
candidates dropping out and one reentering, with
absentee voting already underway, with like 90,000
ballots already cast. >> It is something that has
come up before where candidates leave the race
during this period after absentee ballots go out.
And that is part of why proponents of ballot
spoiling think that it should be allowed at this
stage is because there are folks who have cast their
absentee ballots, and their candidate might no longer
be in the race. >> What about elections
Commission guidance to clerks being so close to
the August 11th primary? >> That is another issue
that the plaintiffs challenging this change are
arguing and pointing to is that voters who return
their ballots before that guidance thought that they
could potentially then change their ballots after
the fact if something developed in the campaigns
and at least one voter in the case is saying that he
would have held off on submitting his absentee
ballot had he known that he couldn't change it at a
later date. >> How could the lawsuit on
behalf of these three Democratic voters against
that newer guidance upend the election?
>> It could potentially change how clerks are
having to handle absentee ballots in the lead up to
the election. So it depends on how quickly a court acts
in providing some definitive guidance on this
issue. >> Would it end up then
running its course all the way up to the state Supreme
Court? Potentially, potentially.
where the courts would try to act in an expedited
manner, and if it did get appealed to the state
Supreme Court, they would try to have it act in an
expedited way. quite expedited.
see in something with this short of a timeline, the
lower court ruling is the one that stands.
>> So what do you make of the merits of the Democrats
lawsuit? different claims that are
being brought. One is statutory and a couple are
constitutional. And the statutory issue is really
reviving the issue that was litigated in the case that
we talked about at the beginning of what do
Wisconsin statutes actually allow? And they pretty
clearly allow voters to get a replacement ballot if
they mess up before returning it to clerks.
There's a lot less certainty on whether the
statute allows you to do that. If you want to change
your ballot after you've already returned it, and we
still don't have a clear issue or a clear ruling on
that issue, the constitutional issues are
then raising voting rights claims and equal protection
claims, and arguing that if you can't change your
ballot after a candidate drops out or you realize
later that you've made a mistake, that means that
you're not having the opportunity to vote for the
candidate of your choice, which is a really important
part of the right to vote. And then the equal
protection raises these issues related to the
timing of the wet guidance, and some voters potentially
having the opportunity to spoil their ballots before
that, but not those who cast their ballots later.
>> So what do you make of the merits of the wet
guidance. >> So that guidance is
rooted in a circuit court's ruling on this issue in
2022? So even though that circuit court ruling no
longer stands as having the force of law, there was a
court that did decide that Wisconsin statutes don't
allow for this. And so WECA is looking to that,
presumably in issuing this guidance to be in line with
that court case. >> Pretty complicated.
>> Yes. >> All right. Bryna Godar,
thank you for spelling it out for us.
>> Thank you. >> Over one night this week,
Wisconsin volunteers fanned out to find the number of
people experiencing homelessness in what's
called a point in time count. There are some 5000
people without shelter in the state, and now ten
counties in northeast Wisconsin are scrambling to
find places for people to stay after a nonprofit
provider of homeless services abruptly closed
due to bankruptcy, an organization called the
Balance of State Continuum of Care, which covers 69
counties in Wisconsin, is rushing in to respond,
along with state agencies and other programs. Balance
of State homeless systems Manager Ryan Graham joins
us now. And Ryan, thanks very much for being here.
>> Thank you for having me. >> So how many people
served by the bankrupt provider of services are at
risk of homelessness in those ten counties?
>> Well, you know, I think there was 134 households
that were served in the homeless housing programs
that we were we were able to maintain housing for.
But there's a significant amount of homeless folks
still in that community that are in need of housing.
And, you know, that lack of services and that closing
the closing of that agency really creates a gap in
institutional knowledge. It creates a gap in process
and systems and all the things that were
established there, you know, in looking for resources
and reestablishing that is going to take a
considerable amount of effort.
>> Just, just stepping back at at the whole picture is
the number of people in Wisconsin experiencing
homelessness on the rise? >> I would say yes. You
know, we just did our point in time count Wednesday. We
are in the process of our post count, meaning we are
still up for a week after our point in time count,
and we are still looking to engage and identify those
folks who are connecting with services. And that
week prior to the council, we can include those folks.
And so that the data is not out yet. But you know, we
haven't fixed the housing problem. We haven't fixed
the lack of services problem. So and
affordability of living just in general has not
gotten any better. So yeah, I do expect the housing
problem to increase, not decrease.
>> Because how important is that kind of point in time
count toward understanding the needs out there?
>> It's very important. You know, it's really our only
data point that includes folks that are we are
engaging with that are sleeping on outside. So
unsheltered or places not meant for habitation, folks
that are sheltered, engaged with housing programs, but
also our DV population. And so while we obviously do
not locate everybody who's experiencing homelessness
in that night or the week prior, we're really
comfortable saying it's at minimum, this is what our
homeless problem is, and it's a good place to see,
see trends, right? Because of the structure and the
way that's been set up consistently for years.
It's a really good data point to look at trends and
how homelessness is and how we're responding to
homelessness in Wisconsin. >> Is there enough state,
federal and other funding to cover resources needed
for this work? >> Not even remotely. We
are really working hard to do as much as we can with
pennies of what we need to do the work, and that takes
a collaborative effort. So we work hard in all of our
counties, you know, really to, to build that
collaboration and work together to try and problem
solve and figure out solutions for people
experiencing homelessness. >> As to federal funding,
that point in time, count, I understand, is used to
apply for federal grants for housing services. What
kind of uncertainty in that federal funding is there
right now? >> Yeah, I mean, I think
there's a significant amount of uncertainty. You
know, I think, you know, looking at the federal Coch
program through HUD, you know, they're looking at
making significant changes away from permanent
supportive housing programs that we know to be
effective and moving more towards transitional, non
permanent supportive housing, permanent
supportive housing or permanent housing efforts.
You know, so I think that's a significant change
without protecting the folks that were already
housed in these programs. And so there's a
significant shift that is going to provide, I think,
a lot of housing insecurity for folks who have who were
previously homeless now are securely housed. And we
don't know what that's going to look like here
moving forward. So there's a lot of uncertainty that
way. Graham, thanks very much.
>> Yeah. Happy to. >> For more on this and
other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our
website at PBS wisconsin.org and then
click on the news tab. That's our program for
tonight. I'm Frederica Freyberg.
>> Funding for "Here& Now" is provided by the Focus
Fund for Journalism and friends of PBS Wisconsin.