 Welcome to this week's show, Legislative Update. I'm Jim Baumgart, Nanette Boulibouche from Elkhart Lake. We're co-hosts together in this program. Thank you for coming. Today we happen to decide that it would be a good idea in 2018 to start discussing some of the candidates who'll be running for governor, Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Congress, and so we've invited an expert. Our favorite, Kel Potter. Kel Potter. Who always, who knows so much. Welcome to the program. This is here. Yeah. Very involved in this. Election coming up. Yep. Yeah, we're already seeing ads. Getting emails. Well, we're starting earlier probably than we've ever seen before. Right. All of us here have been around politics a long time and it used to be that you'd circulate your papers in June and then we had a September primary and then the November election. And people really didn't, they were only organized behind the scenes starting maybe in February or so, but now my gosh, they're organized two years before and start their television ads already in the fall of the year before. Which I don't know if that's a healthy thing. Sometimes you wonder if people just don't get sick of it all. Right, right. I think you might be right. So the governor's race is the big one. Scott Walker has said he will probably run again, I believe you can tell by his appeal. He was just in Sheboygan this past weekend. Well, he's also, his positions, he's also sort of moderating. I mean, the last, his last release was that he's gonna take 200 million into helping subsidize Obamacare premiums. Right. You know, he's more money in education after having cut hundreds of millions. Yes, after cutting. And so I think he's just trying to run to the center. Right. Which is what Ronald Reagan was good at doing. He would run as a very conservative Republican and then he'd run to the center to try to make sure that he's popularity. And his reading story. Well, as interesting as some of the Republicans just hammered it against Obamacare, which turned out eventually to be pretty popular. Right. And tried to cut money here and cut money there. And now they wanna put some money in to cover the cost and then blame it on Obamacare. It's a crazy place we live in where you want people to be covered with insurance. Then you hammer away at a program that's providing it. And then when it gets hurt a little bit because of what you've done, you add some money to it. It doesn't make much sense, does it? Well, I think it did. I like to call it partisan politics gone mad. I mean, because it came out of Obama, nothing was going to be said positive about it. Right, nothing. But yet, you know, 20 million people were helped by this. And it was something that was needed because there were 50 million before this who had no insurance. No insurance. So it was a Republican Romney bill, really, our program. And so it really oughta have been endeared to Republican rather than, so it's chastised, but that shows that partisan politics rules things. And as we record this program, we've got a shutdown in Washington. Yeah, right. Which is, again, partisan politics where no one talks and no one compromises. And we have dysfunction because of it. Yeah, it's not how it used to be. It's interesting that one party has a control of the Congress, the U.S. Senate and the presidency, and then they blame the other party for closing down the government. But we were gonna talk about state politics in this show. So obviously- But we have a candidate that's running. Yeah, and obviously Democrats see an opportunity. We've got quite a few people, men and women of all ages who have stepped in. Tony Evers, who is currently our state school superintendent, Matt Flynn, Bob Harlow, Melo Mitchell, Kelda Roy's a young woman, Paul Soglin, Mayor of Madison, Mike McCabe, sort of an outsider guy, calls himself leader of the blue gene nation, that's it. And Kathleen Vinehout and Dana Wachs, Andy Gronick, Bennis Sheboygan several times. Of these names, any of them interest you? Anybody you wanna like start horse racing now or should we stay away from horse racing? Who interests you? Well, I being a partisan to some extent, I think that someone who's going to be able to win is the way that Democrats ought to look at it. And I think assessing it honestly and trying to put your support behind that person, I'm not trying to cut out people who have interest in public office, but Governor Walker already has $10 million in the bank. And that's probably before the checks from the Koch problem comes on. So he's going to have enough money to make a silk purse out of any salaries that he's done over the last number of years. And so you need somebody who's got name recognition, who's got public affiliations, I guess, and identification. And so there are some there that are better than others. They are known names. There are some people who are, God bless them, would like to run for public office, but maybe they shouldn't have started on the gubernatorial level. They should have started with the legislature or even county board level and got their feet wet and their name known and worked their way up the ladder. So, but I attended the forum that Chaborgan County had and there were 10 candidates there. And there are a number there that didn't belong on that stage because they just didn't, we're not steeped in what they needed to know or handle themselves in order to take on Governor Walker. And so that's my big fear is that I think we're up to 13 candidates now. And you don't have a decision by the voters until August. And so you know with one candidate in the Republican column, Governor Walker, with $10 million at least, that those news ads are gonna paint him as the next saint. And he's gonna be so far ahead by August if all these other candidates are dividing up the pie that I think he's put himself, even though he may have some diminished popularity, he's gonna be something that's very gonna be tough to beat. But there is, for instance, Tony Everett who has run statewide, there is a candidate that- He has name recognition. He has name recognition. But not as a partisan, but as a nonpartisan person. And then you have Bob Harlow, ran for Congress in California and now is running for Governor of Wisconsin. He might be the youngest, it's only five. Yeah, 25 years old. So he's got, I guess it didn't work in California, no gold out there, he's come to Wisconsin. I personally am glad to see at least two women who have said they're gonna run. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a good thing. I hope everything is happening as far as the women's march and so on, really engenders reaction and participation. And because even, I don't think that Donald Trump ought to be president, but there were inordinate number of people who were of the Republican affiliation, women and suburbs who eventually did vote for him. And that man is, to me, not worthy of the office. And so when we get women involved in politics, I hope we've get some people who are running there who are articulating solid issues and turn out voting in the right direction. And if they vote on women's issues, that's fine, because that's surely not what Donald Trump ever wrote. But they don't just vote on women's issues. They vote on economics. They vote on education, healthcare. There is a valid point to be made about pay levels and all the other things and sexual abuse and everything. That has occurred because I think women have been too silent, too long, because of being repressed and all kinds of other factors. But to be articulate in the political sense on those issues is a good thing. Very good. And we're recording this the day after my organization, Forward Sheboygan, held a women's march in downtown Sheboygan. 250 people came. It was awesome. In January, right? In January weather. Well, it was warm, but it was okay. But what we made a point of doing was getting young women speakers of color. So we had an African-American woman from Lakeland University talking about racism. We had three Hispanic high school students who talked about deportations and the DACA bill, which is part of the reason for the government shutdown right now. And they were so articulate and so genuine and heartfelt. All of us there watching these women were moved. And I thought to myself, yes, Nanette, you can be cynical, but when you watch these young people speak, you can't help but feel hope. They have this idealism that is such a wonderful thing to see. And let's keep that alive. Well, I hope that the activities that they're pursuing, all political activities, makes them pragmatic. I was a Bernie supporter. And I saw a number of people at the rally at South High School, I talked to them. Younger people who said, well, if Bernie doesn't make it, I'm not gonna vote. And obviously they didn't. They didn't. And I think that's idealism gone absurd. And it paid off in the sense that 77,000 votes in three states gave Donald Trump the electoral college. And that's all they needed. And I think he can be pretty assured that there were 77,000 Bernie supporters in those three states who probably didn't show up. Yeah, evidently. And it's that idealism that we've had in the past that's also never been, I think, channeled in the right direction. Perhaps, long as we can step in it. In the few minutes we have left, I do wanna make sure that we... We cover the topics we hadn't had. We keep jumping around. No, no, that's okay. Well, elections are important. Yes, they are. I went to Dan Cole who was running for Congress. Again, it's Glenn Grossman. Again? And he was here at our march yesterday. I wanna put in a plug. He did take the time to come, along with Matthew Flynn, one of the gubernatorial governors. And he's related to the former US Senator. Yes, his uncle. And nephew. Right? This was her call. And Cal and I were at a function where he was at and gave a few words. And extremely interesting background has served on. Non-profits. Non-profits have been on the... The bucks. The bucks and the brewers, I think, has been married 25 years and he's articulate. He comes across as very sincere. I marched with him in Port Washington for their fish day parade. And I always watch how people interact with children. Because they're not voting, right? You don't have to be nice to them. But he was. Of course, he knew their parents were watching. But it was a wonderful thing to see. I think he's a genuine, sincere, smart man. Yeah, I think he's a very quality candidate. It's a difficult district because, of course, not only as one of your previous programs was on reapportionment, not only were the state districts drawn by the state legislature in a partisan way, congressional districts were as well. And there have been a number of court cases around the country of how people of color have been excluded and so on in their congressional races. And there's some really, truly gerrymandered districts all over this country. And so this district and representatives, Sensenbrenner's district, have a lot of conservative voters packed into them. Right. Well, and one of the things is that Grossman is considered by a number of groups as being one of the most conservative, I don't know if I want to call it right wing, but different conservative than a strange kind of conservative. It makes a lot of women angry. Maybe that's his appeal with others. So maybe the right candidate and a major turnover might do it, especially the quality of coal. So it's gonna be interesting. Couple of comments before we finish about an election that took place with Patty Schoenacker. Schoenacker? Schoenacker? Schoenacker. Was it Democrat woman who won? Nobody expected her to win. She was a healthcare nurse or healthcare professional? Medical examiner. How did she win? She's a medical examiner. And I think some of the analysis I had read is that a lot of outside money came in on the conservative side and it really was over the top. I mean, they maligned her character to such an extent that people just headed up to their eyeballs and said, this isn't, well, they knew her. They knew she was a real nice person. Yes, and this is not true. And I think it was a backlash to the absurdity and the intensity of the negative ads. And if we go any longer, it'll be. We'll get a record to pull us off. We must end and I want to thank you for coming and please consider the elections that are coming up and some of the candidates we started talking about. We'll do more of that until next week. This has been Legislative Update. Thank you.