- Hi, I'm Tricia Zunker, Democratic candidate
for Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District.
A lot of people ask me why I'm running for this seat.
And the truth is I have no choice.
I believe I have a duty and an obligation to use my voice
in a way that can make a positive difference
for Wisconsinites.
I think about what my relatives went through
and their hard work and sacrifice.
And it wasn't for me to just sit on the sidelines
and care about myself.
I come from humble beginnings, but there were opportunities
that presented themselves in my life and I seized on them,
and I know what a difference it's made for me.
And I believe that is one of the roles of a representative
is to ensure opportunity for your constituents.
I grew up in a strong union household.
I'm a member of Ho-Chunk Nation.
I am a first-generation college graduate,
and then I went to law school.
And I use that law degree to serve the Ho-Chunk Nation
as Associate Justice on the Ho-Chunk Nation Supreme Court.
I'm also school board president for the Wausau School District
and solo parent to an amazing nine-year-old son.
I started running for this seat
because there were so many things that we need to address.
And we need leaders that are gonna get to work.
I'm hardworking and effective,
and I am committed to working across the aisle
to achieve bipartisan solutions
that make life better for everyone
here in Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District.
When I first started running, a number of issues
were paramount and still remain critical.
But now we are also in this pandemic.
It's inexcusable that we are eight months into this pandemic
and we have 200,000 lives lost.
That's 200,000 grieving families.
There isn't enough PPE for our essential workers.
We need to ensure enough testing.
We know how important testing is
to getting this pandemic under control.
We need to make sure that our essential workers
have hazard pay.
And that people who have lost their jobs
have extended unemployment benefits.
And we need to ensure there's funding
for our small and midsize family farms
that are suffering during this pandemic
and to make sure our small businesses
have protections to stay afloat.
I think this pandemic has also highlighted
a number of really critical issues
here in Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District.
We have a caretaker crisis and we saw this
when we went to mandated virtual learning in the spring,
and a lot of districts that are doing that now.
And this is something actually I saw when I was getting out
in the district too before the pandemic hit,
but we have pockets throughout the district,
where there just aren't enough caretakers.
And I think that really comes down to valuing our caretakers
for the critical work that they do.
Taking care of our children, our elderly,
our disabled loved ones.
We need to value them for that critical work
with a living wage and benefits.
When people have a living wage and that reliable job,
they'll stay in that job, and that will help eliminate
this caretaker crisis that we have here in this district.
Another thing that this pandemic has really magnified
is the need for treating rural broadband
like the utility that it is.
There are too many households in this district
that don't have access to high-speed working internet
and that means they are being deprived of opportunity,
whether that is the ability to do their schoolwork,
to grade their papers, to conduct their business,
or just have access to the news
and everything that we have access to online.
We need to treat broadband like the utility that it is,
and this is something that I am prioritizing in Congress,
to make sure everybody has access to it.
Another thing magnified by this pandemic is healthcare.
The healthcare crisis,
the need to ensure affordable accessible healthcare
and that people with preexisting conditions stay protected.
If somebody has Coronavirus and they recover from it,
they're going to be deemed to have a preexisting condition,
and that's just not fair.
And another thing magnified by this pandemic
is how we need to address decision making
and address solving problems,
by listening to experts, listening to science,
looking at data as a source of decision making.
We see how we need to do that by addressing
the climate emergency with the urgency it requires
and how we need leaders who are going to do that
to address this pandemic.
Finally, I just wanna point out that this is a historic race.
I will be the first Native American
to represent Wisconsin in Congress.
And I will be the first woman ever
to represent this district.
I don't ask anyone to vote for me because I'm a woman.
I ask you to vote for me
because I'm a hard-working qualified woman,
who's gonna work hard for everybody here
to get the job done.
But women's issues are human issues
and it is high time our women and our girls
see themselves reflected in Congressional leadership.
Our boys need to see it, too.
Thank you.