 of being behind for all. Responsibility to others. Parenthood memory. Well, welcome to Legislative Update. I'm Renette Blabash, and you just heard the first part of this wonderful speech that our guest today gave four years ago when she ran for state chair, chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. And I happen to be there. I'm going to be honest, I'm not biased. I am biased for this show. I happen to be there and I volunteered for her first campaign for state senate in 2014, and I helped her when she ran for state party chair both times. She happened to win. I'm delighted that Martha could join us today because after four years she's stepping down to move on to other things, and I hope we can talk about that. So we're going to talk about the things you've done, whether you achieved your goals as state party chair, how it transformed you, what were your challenges, what surprised you, and we're also going to spend some time, save some time at the end, to talk about the Milwaukee 2020. This incredible news that the Democratic National Committee is going to have their convention before the presidential primary right here in Wisconsin in Milwaukee an hour away. That's huge, but it's also huge that Martha Lening from Sheboygan has been state party chair. I knew you before even that when you were the director of generations, correct? I was volunteering there and I saw how you dealt with people, so when I heard you were running for state senate I was just thrilled and you were an incredible candidate. And here you are. You have won two elections, you've led the party, now you're stepping down. So tell us about this experience. Has it been a good one? Is it what you expected, what you hoped? Absolutely. You know, I didn't come from politics originally, you know, I had been in business and community development, and the reason I got involved is because like you heard on that clip, I really felt like I owed Wisconsin a lot. My dad had an opportunity to climb out of poverty by getting a good quality public school education on the GI bill, allowing him to become a chemical engineer. And when I saw what was happening in Wisconsin, politics has really changed in the last 20 years. You know, it used to be that we brought people together. Money was not a big part of politics. It was just good common sense values. People of both parties coming together to talk about a problem and solve it. And instead what I saw before I became chair and before I ran for senate was, you know, we were making decisions for that were siphoning money towards, you know, the wealthiest people in our community saying that they would create this opportunity. And I just don't believe that. I believe that opportunity is created when everybody has the chance to get a good education, to start a business, to get good mentorship. And I saw that slipping away. And I really felt Scott Walker was leading it with his lack of investment in education, with making bad fiscal decisions about not fixing our roads, causing us to spend far more money later to fix them, you know, health care, just taking health care opportunity away from people. So I got involved and I'm thrilled with the changes that we've made and the progress we've made. That's terrific. What surprised you? So first, let's tell us briefly what the state party chair does. So the state party is here to build an infrastructure. And frankly, when I came in, because of all the money that is now pouring into politics, it was just difficult for our party to compete, you know, we don't typically have people who write out million dollar checks. Just this last election, you know, the Republican Party has two people that write a one million dollar check to them. Just there you go. And for us, we don't have anybody who writes us even a half a million dollar check, you know, so so it is a much more difficult process for the parties to be equal when one is so well funded and the other isn't. So what our party is here to do is to create an infrastructure to help candidates run for office, to support them in that run, getting them the training that they need to help us create an echo chamber around the state so that people know what democratic leadership offers, what that candidate will do to make their life better and to help them win. And I'm very proud of what we've done because we have built an investment infrastructure, you know, we are we are now a much better funded program. We have 11 people on the ground that are helping us all over the state organize our greatest resource, which are the activists, the people that help us share with their neighbors what our leadership does. And we have a strong team at the state office that is here to help candidates run for office. But we're still working on growing. What excites me the most is seeing the increasing number in our party of minorities and women stepping up and running for office and volunteering for leadership positions. When I ran this last time in 2018, I believe I was one of 4647 women running for state assembly offices throughout the state. That's the largest number ever, far more than the other party in terms of women running for office. We didn't all win though. A couple of us did. Yeah. So that is a good thing. And I hope that trend continues. Absolutely. And I think women are really inspired right now. I think when women are seeing the destruction that has occurred that when we don't invest in our schools, kids lose the opportunity for success. When our colleges are so expensive that kids even with scholarships, they can, they may be able to pay for the tuition, but they can't afford the room and board. So opportunity is dripping away from them, you know, when there are young men and women out there that are excited about the construction trades. And yet they're having difficulty getting the classes in because their family struggling just to make it day to day and they've got to work a job and they don't have time for that studying. There's so many challenges that our citizens are dealing with right now. And it's really important that people get involved and women take action. When they see things happening, they don't like they take action. And it was really unfortunate to see how many of our great candidates for assembly did not win. But that is simply because the the Republicans have rigged the system. I mean, Scott Walker and the other Republicans came together and they drew lines that literally prevent Democrats from winning office from taking the legislature. And it it's factual. I mean, there were 54% of the votes placed in 2018 were for Democratic candidates. Yet we only got 36% of the seats. And if you want to look at it in a different way, if you use the 2009 congressional lines, Tammy Baldwin would have won five out of the eight congressional seats. And you know she won the state with 55%. But using the congressional lines that they've drawn now, she only won three out of the eight. So literally, it's really a frustrating thing in a state where we were all raised with values of fairness and transparency that currently the Republican Party is led by a group of people who feel cheating is okay. Well, let me play the devil's advocate. Right now we're taping this a week after an election that was statewide. Now this was for a judge, and it's supposed to be a nonpartisan position. But we know that conservatives tended to back the other one, our party tended to back the one. And it was very close where we're still hoping that Lisa Neubauer will win. But that was a statewide so you cannot blame that on district boundaries. So if I were conservative, I would say, come on, aren't you just kind of whining here? No, so the issue here is is that it's not to say that elections are not, you know, that they aren't tight. I mean, Wisconsin has been a really purple state. If you go back to Kerry and Gore, I mean, we only won by 11 and 5000 votes. So that's not the issue. The issue is when you're drawing lines that literally say you can get more than half of the vote statewide, but you only barely get a third of the seats. That disparity is what we're pointing out. When you're talking about this spring election, you know, the issue here is that there were some really bad ads that were put out at the very end. Many of the information showed that Lisa Neubauer had strong support. When you have 98% of the judges in the state who endorsed all saying she is the person who's the most qualified. But unfortunately, the Republican Party did make this a very partisan race, and they came in and they said a lot of false things about Judge Neubauer, and it did inspire people out of fear to come out and vote for Brian Hagendorn. But right now, as of right now, almost a week after that election, it is too tight to call. And it is too tight to call because so many great people who were well informed about who the best person is for that race came out and voted. And now we as a Democratic Party, we just have to be sure we grow our activism so that we can share with people that, you know, Judge Neubauer has never made any comments about the immigration of Donald Trump, his reforms, and that we need to be moving forward in a way that gives facts to our voters and that we can dispel any rumors or false information that's given out there. Okay, I don't know how you can say so optimistic. You always are so upbeat. I must admit, I go through periods of cynicism, especially when I look at the lay of the land in Sheboygan County, which we know Tony Evers won well. She did such a great wide statewide, but not here, not here at all. It was very, very one-sided and it has been for a long time. And even if we redraw the boundaries, I'm not sure the 27th district will ever go progressive. So, and what you alluded to earlier about the money, I sometimes think, oh, you just can't battle that. So how do you stay optimistic? I think because you have to really separate the difference between the people who are putting out the false information and telling a story that just doesn't have facts behind it versus the people who we live with in our community. I know a lot of phenomenal Republicans, you know, and they're really good people who care about our communities and really want to have a thriving community. But we, as Democrats, have not had the resources to put our message out there. And so, as we build a stronger party and a stronger infrastructure and we can share that can make a big difference, I'll give you a perfect example. And that is, a lot of people will tell me that, you know, they're concerned about the Democrats handing out things to people who don't deserve it. We don't believe that. We want to be sure that people have a hand up. We don't believe that we should be just giving out resources to anyone who doesn't deserve it. But we also are deeply, deeply concerned about the greed of corporations. So, there was a report that came out when I ran for state Senate that one Walmart Supercenter, just one in the state of Wisconsin, when you add up all the public assistance that the working employees of that store get, it's $900,000 a year of our tax money that go to the working employees of that store. Why? Because Walmart can't take some of their $12 billion in profit and pay them a wage that they can live on. That's just wrong. Why should we as taxpayers be subsidizing Walmart? They should pay their employees a fair wage. And if they did, we would have more money in our communities for the coffee shops and the car washes and all those great things. When we get that message out to the people in our communities, people will look at Democrats in a very, very different way. And I think Tammy Baldwin did that. She had progressive principles that talked about fairness and equality and opportunity. And in a big way, she won with 55% of the vote. And how are we gonna get that message out? In this age, when media is so scattered and such a shadow of what it used to be really, when, years ago, when I was a reporter, we really covered all the campaigns at length. This year, when I was running, the local newspaper said, okay, you've got 200 words to tell us about yourself and send in a picture. And that was it. No interviews, nothing. I was just, whoa. So there's no, no information. And I know we depend on door to door and I get that. It's a lot of walking, a lot of energy, a lot of time. But it's like, I feel like I'm just scratching the side of an elephant and there's this huge elephant that, I don't know. It's a changing world. I mean, it is, you know, my mom, Edward R. Murrow was her, you know, like this was her icon that you just listened to him, Walter Cronkite when I was a kid. And there's just so many places to get news from now and so many that are unreliable. And there's, it's hard to know which is true and which is not true. And people are really struggling with that. I will tell you that I believe that the way we move forward is we keep working on getting the best information we can out there. But we really need to ensure that our activists, the people in the community have the facts. Because the bottom line is, are you gonna relieve the mailer that comes in the mailer or the person on the TV or the person that you know has done good work in your community and cares about your community and has been active in making good choices for you? Their opinion will mean more to you than the flyer that comes in the mail. And that's why it's so important to us that we're building this activism around the state so that we can ensure we get out the best information. Where are you stepping down now? You know, this is a job. I tell people it's like a relay. You know, if you're in a, you know, four lap relay here and you're the first person you don't say that you'll do the second, the third and the fourth. You give it everything you got in that first lap. And I have, you know, we have dramatically grown the party. When I came on board, we had seven people. We have 24 people on board now. And this is during, there is no off year anymore. We are building every year. The capacity of our organizing team is amazing and they're doing great things empowering our grassroots. And it's now time for me to hand that baton to the next person who can work on our communications and our echo chamber and technology and bringing their talents and skills to the table. I think a good leader knows when the time is for them to hand that baton and my time is now so that I can go on and use my talents and skills in a different way and have the next person stepping up to take us to the next level. Were you the first woman chair of the state? No, I wasn't. And I'm proud to say that I wasn't because it just shows how progressive we are. That's right. Yeah, I wonder how the other part. We have two men running so far that I know of. Yes. Is there time for someone else to step in? Yeah, actually, I think there's three now that have announced interest. So, and yes, there is still time to run, but we have some really good candidates and I have no doubt that we'll be in good hands. And that will be chosen at the state party convention in June. So anybody who wants to have a say in the leadership of the party should go to that convention. You can find out at your local Democratic office. Absolutely. So what happens for Martha now? What are you going to do? Oh, I have several things that I'm looking at, really trying to take some of the work that I did here in building infrastructure and empowering us to do more with less. That's the challenge. As I said earlier, the Republican party has people who will just throw money at things. Millions of dollars easily come to them. And on our side that it isn't that easy. And so how do you ensure that every dollar that you're using is being used to its best potential and you're getting the most out of it? And we did that in 2018. We did it just an amazing job. So that still doesn't tell me what you're going to do. I'm going to be involved in politics. I'm going to be involved in some way in politics and most likely in fundraising and connecting and infrastructure building. But I haven't made a final decision yet. Yeah, the fundraising was incredible. I got to drive you while you did your phone calls and that was a very good lesson, learning for me to watch you do your work. So I want to also talk about the Democratic National Committee choosing Milwaukee out of many other cities. And we were one of the final three, I think our competitors were Houston, Miami. And ultimately the DNC led by Juan Perez, is that his name? Tom Perez. Tom Perez, chose Milwaukee. And there was a big rollout. We have some photos that we hope Scott can share during the airing of this. It's this huge. So tell us what, are we going to fill the effects here in Sheboygan? Absolutely. I mean, this is a huge event. It is, there will be tens of thousands of people that will be coming to the Milwaukee area. There will be millions of people who will be focused on what's happening there. There will be political leaders from our party at all different levels coming here to Wisconsin. So it is a great opportunity for us to highlight the Midwest, for us to highlight the working class. There's been a lot of big cities that have had a convention like this, but bringing it to Milwaukee and letting people see that, it's our big city in Wisconsin, but it's not the size of city like Houston or Miami. It's a working class community where you can drive from the North side to the South side in 20 minutes. And we were really proud of that city and it's gonna be a great opportunity for us to show it to the nation and bring a lot of people here for tourism. Yeah, it is awesome. This is in, what is it, July 2020, August? Yep, nope, it's yep. And it's in July and it's going to be, it's right during some of the best weather. Everybody's gonna be praying that we get no rain, wonderful weather. But people are going to be staying all around the area. And I know when I was in Philadelphia in 2016, my family came in and we went and visited parts of Pennsylvania. This will be a time where people will take a trip in here and why not go up and check out the golf courses up here in the Sheboygan area and the great restaurants and go on up to Minakwa and see what the North of Woods is like and there's Madison, go to the concert on the square or check out the farmers market. There's going to be a lot of traveling that goes on which will bring great economic opportunities for Wisconsin and there also will be an opportunity to just show what Midwestern living is like, to present that to the rest of the nation because some people have never been in the Midwest and so it's a great opportunity to show that. I know that's shocking is it? Some people come here to Wisconsin and they're like, wow, there's like not very many buildings. I'm like, it's farmland, but I'll take you to Milwaukee. There's a lot of buildings. So it is shocking and I've traveled to places that I've never been before and been surprised going, oh my gosh. So this is our opportunity to show people the Midwest and just how beautiful it is and show how our democratic values and principles are right here in Wisconsin. And what impact will that have on the presidential election? We lost. Well, Wisconsin did not vote for, did not contribute to the 2016 presidential candidate winning and that was a blow. Absolutely. I will tell you that I fully believe that Wisconsin would have been a blue state had we as Democrats talked more about what we were going to offer, what we would do to make people's lives better. People did not know that Hillary Clinton made a commitment to invest so much in infrastructure more than any president since FDR, it would have created 60,000 jobs right here in Wisconsin. It's those kinds of bites, sound bites that never got to the voter. So having the national convention here, clearly if we have the national convention here, people are going to be hearing what democratic leadership will offer them, which is exciting, but it will also give us an opportunity to correct that wrong and be sure that never again will we be not sharing what our leadership offers. In 2018, we did a great job at talking about education and roads and healthcare and it made the difference and we swept all of our constitutional statewide races first time any parties done that since 1982. We plan to do it again in 2020. Don't you think we would have helped if Hillary had bothered to visit the state after the primary or if Bernie had won the nomination? Because a lot of, you know, when he came, he packed South High School, you and I were both there. I just watched that speech again because it was like five, four years since then and I was struck by all these Sheboygan people cheering so loudly for Bernie. I think it's just really important that whatever political leader comes, they have to show up. They have to be there. They have to tell people what they're gonna do to make their lives better. We can't just be against something. We have to be for something. We have to show that our leadership will make a difference in those people's lives. And I think that's the part. If you ask me what I'll leave here with, it's the memories of the people I met with. The mother who was worried about how her child will survive because they had a medical condition and were worried about pre-existing conditions being eliminated and how that would affect her life. Or the senior who had worked their whole life and now has non-potable water in their house, which they had invested their retirement in. That house was their savings. And now how do you sell a house that has non-potable water because our government has decided to remove protections that ensured that we weren't polluting our water. What about chronic wasting disease? People all over our state rely on venison to put food in their freezers and now chronic wasting disease because we were ignoring deer farms. And there's just, you hear these stories and you feel like people have really let down the people of Wisconsin too much. And it's time for politicians to show up and address these issues. We haven't even talked about our new governor. And I guess I would consider that one of your achievements, you helped elect him. So we have this governor who is talking about all those things and does want to address public education, the environment, climate change, women's health, all health. But we still have this Republican majority in the legislature that tried very hard to limit his powers. And we will see how that plays out in court. So how, what gives you optimism that he's gonna make the kind of change that you and I wanna see? Because Tony Evers has the values that are Wisconsin values. He is not playing partisan politics. He is sitting down and talking to people about what are we going to do to make Wisconsinites lives better. And the things that he's bringing to the table are good things. And the Republicans, if they refuse, if they continue to, this lame duck, trying to strip a man of the power that the voters gave him, those are things Wisconsinites don't wanna see. And I believe in Tony Evers, he has great values and he's going to be one of the best governors we've had. And he's not running for president. He's the voter to Wisconsin, which is great. Well, Martha Lanning, thank you so much for joining this. It's gone too fast. There's so much more I wish I could ask you. If people want to get involved in Milwaukee 2020, there is a website, I believe, they're still looking for staff, still looking for volunteers, still looking for vendors. If you wanna provide services, rooms, or food or whatever for that whole week-long convention, that's gonna be really exciting. What else can you tell people about if they wanna get involved in the Democratic Party? What can they do? So Milwaukee2020.com is where you can sign up to volunteer or if you're interested in getting involved in some way. And then you can go on wisdoms.org, our website. You can find out about your local county party and get involved because our Democratic Party is as strong as we are. We need more good Democrats to come in and help us make it stronger. All right, thank you, Martha. Thank you, viewers, for watching. Whatever you do, get involved. Don't be complacent about politics. We're talking about your future. This is Nanette Boulevage. Thanks for joining us.