Transcript
Trumpism With Trump Is A Non-Starter (Hour 3)
Mornings with Pat Kreitlow · Tue May 20, 2025
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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Kratlow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Kratlow.
Well, good morning.
It is 8.06.
Nice to have you here up north on this Tuesday morning, May 20th, that feels like a Monday for some of us who are on vacation and are getting back into the swing of things.
But nice to have you along.
Greg is back in an hour Sam Davison is on the board with us right now And it's brought a friend because as the saying goes when when one Dom closes another one opens and That's what we have happening here with a new producer by the name of Dom But first we got to say hi to Sam Sam.
Good morning to you.
Hello Pat Glad to have you back.
Thank you.
It's it's good to be back not so much for the listeners who are going God this guy needs some sleep, but
Maybe Goofy Pat after a transatlantic flight.
Flight isn't the craziest thing we've had on our radio station here.
And so you're doing a little training in.
You've got somebody right there at your
right hand side.
Yeah, I'll be gone in less than two weeks, which is crazy to think about.
I
know we talked about that right before my trip that you're going to be looking to pursue a teaching career.
Yeah, that's right.
We'll see if I can wrangle the kids or not, but this fall I'm going to be a substitute teacher.
This fall already?
Yeah, and then student teaching next spring and hopefully a year from this fall being an actual real full-fledged teacher.
We'll see about social studies and civics, right?
That's right.
That's right.
That's awesome.
All right.
And so tell us more about the person that could never replace you unless they do a better job.
Well, I think he should.
Tell us a little bit about himself.
This is Dom Lee here.
I'll introduce
myself.
Does Dom speak in the third person all the time?
Yeah, solo history.
I am from Frankfurt, Illinois.
So I'm about three and a half hours
two and a half hours away from here.
And then, you know, I just recently graduated three days ago at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, Go Titans.
Oh, yeah, okay.
Wow, this is a true rags to a fewer rags story so far.
yeah.
Well, I mean, I would say riches, but you chose radio.
here you are, but you know, with a little hard work and, you know, 40 years later, you too could be taking trips to Portugal and counting the days to retirement.
But for now, you're young, you're hungry, quite literally hungry and uncomfortable,
willing to learn.
And that's the part we like best.
And again, you can tell, Dom, quick learner, sucking up is a very important part of getting ahead in
radio.
Exactly.
I've been
doing everything.
Ask the people that we're bringing on here right now, the talented and wonderful meteorologist, Brittany Merleau, and a personal hero to me, Chad Holmes.
It's these kinds of compliments that this radio station and this business is built off of, because Lord knows it's not built off the paychecks.
It's just the fun and the respect around here.
Brittany, how are you?
I'm doing pretty good.
I'm excited to have Dom on board.
I'm also from Illinois, so that's pretty cool.
Okay,
well enough of that Chad, you're not from Illinois by any chance, are you?
Nope.
I have been Wisconsin through and through.
Okay.
I'm sorry, Brittany, you were saying something before you lost me with the Illinois comment.
It's okay.
It's okay.
I traded Illinois as well.
So I don't blame that reaction one bit.
I love Wisconsin.
That's
why I've
been here the past 10 years.
Now again, I won't tell the whole story again, but there's, there's a reason why this boy born and raised in the Twin Cities, you know, married a nice farm girl from Wisconsin and has never looked back.
You know, I grew up with a Minnesota Vikings team that lost.
you know, 14 Super Bowls in the 1970s, which is a pretty big thing to do over a 10 year period, but it certainly felt that way.
And yeah, I'm not turning back Wisconsin through and through Brittany, just like you just like Chad is all the way to his roots.
That is exactly right.
Okay.
But that includes, you know, the weather, which isn't, it isn't the picture postcard stuff I had in the Portugal these past 10 days, but we'll, we'll certainly have to endure it to get on to the next.
the next batch of good days.
But first, Brittany, this, whatever, however you want to describe this.
You know, I was using a big blob of rain earlier.
Yes.
Yeah.
right?
It's just going to be moving and I mean it's already spreading from Eau Claire into Madison all the way to Milwaukee now and it's going to just keep lifting north.
So some moderate rainfall, heavy at times especially south and some thunderstorms are expected too.
So don't be shocked if you hear some rumbles of thunder.
None of these are expected to be severe but of heavier downpours kind of mixed in there too.
Plus this is a huge system.
It's got some feisty winds with it.
We're seeing
around 40 to 50 miles per hour throughout the afternoon today.
This is putting wind chills on top of our already cooler temperatures that are about 20 degrees below average.
So we're going to be sitting in the mid 40s to mid 50s today and those wind chills are going to make us really feel about 30 degrees.
to 45 degrees.
So it's kind of crisp out there.
You're going to need to bundle up and you're going to need to stay dry.
Grab that umbrella because the rain isn't quitting today.
We are looking at a good one to two inches, especially for areas south from La Crosse to Sheboygan and south up north, probably about a half an inch or so.
So some flooding concerns could sneak up on us from localized area urban flooding to those rivers rising in the next few days.
Ooh, something to watch out for, including in the Greater Tigerton area where Rob reminds us on YouTube, born and raised in Tigerton, Wisconsin.
And it's, and it don't get me wrong, it's good to be proud of your roots.
I've just been spending a lot of the show talking about getting out of your zip code now and then and seeing more of the world, whether you're settling down in a new place like you did and I did and Dom is doing or just getting the traveling in.
It's, it's such an important part of life.
I agree with you.
It's a huge world, and it's cool to meet all the different people and see all the different things going on.
But yeah, Wisconsin's the best.
There, see?
Unabashedly so.
Thank you, Brittany.
Appreciate it very much.
Chad, again, you've got the roots here, but, you know, you've been around mostly at softball fields and hockey rinks and things like that, but you've been around.
I lived in California for about a year and a half.
That's the only time I've been outside of Wisconsin.
Lived right in Hollywood, which was kind of fun if you walk out the out the door you look to the left you can see the Hollywood sign Yeah, yeah, but I had a couple of my best friends from high school lived out there and then back about 25 years ago one one was moving to another place and
One other was looking for another roommate and I was sort of restless at the time and said, why don't you come out here for a while and see what you can make of it.
And I went out there and I got a lot of debt and then I came back.
That does happen.
I
don't regret it.
I don't regret it.
It was an interesting time and it is good to take a chance once in a while.
Yeah, exactly.
I wanted to take our final five, six minutes here together during your regular visit with us to talk a bit about you being much more public on a recent Facebook post and on the radio as well to remind those of us men of a certain age, not the young whipper snappers back at our control center there in Madison, but of a certain age that there are there are health care concerns that
are so easy for us all to take for granted, but we do so at great personal risk.
And I really want to salute you for going, hey, let's not be putting off that colonoscopy any longer.
I
wasn't going to say anything, actually.
And it's like the last two days.
And normally I have stuff on on the socials because with the radio and the high school sports, I try to keep very active and promote things and they let people know what's going on.
But
Sunday and then yesterday really wasn't I didn't have anything on because yesterday afternoon I went to to Have the colonoscopy and the thing about it the reason I why the reason that I kind of I said something is too pronged number one I had waited too long I'm 54 years old now and and I should have had this done previously in number two.
I was amazed on how
Easy it went and again, maybe I was lucky.
I mean because I know I hear stories about the prep work, which is not fun But on Sunday, I did my prep work.
It was nothing terrible and then yesterday I went to to the the hospital and Sat there for an hour waiting waiting to to get in there and I'm you know a little nervous because I had not gone through this before But boy, it was just a snap of the finger.
I mean, it's amazing what?
medicine is done.
And it's another reason why we need to continue to fund medical research to make things, I think, easier and to get further along where people won't have to worry about doing.
anything, let alone a colonoscopy or any other kind of testing to stay ahead of the curve.
And one reason why, and I knew better, and I posted that I had read multiple biographies of Vince Lombardi, and the man died because he refused to have...
colonoscopy that he was not going to get tested here you know and I think you know but obviously over the 60 years things have changed and I think it's a lot easier but man I went in there they gave me they knocked me out it was amazing how quickly it happened and then they and I came back 30 minutes later back in the room and it's like oh
It
is after effects nothing.
I mean, it's just really really simple and I just think what was I worried about
exactly right?
I was gonna say it was on par with a Wisdom tooth where they knock out but when you wake up from that I mean your mouth is sore and everything else but for this no nothing nothing like that and it's so valuable and I'm glad you invoked the Lombardi name because that's still
carries some weight here in Wisconsin.
For everybody else, they think about, you know, Katie Kirk became a real champion of men's health screening after her first husband passed away at far too young an age from colon cancer.
And it still happens too much colon cancer, prostate cancer, things like that.
And it was this whole pushback from men of, Oh, I don't need to go see a doctor rub some dirt on it, blah, blah, blah.
But
it has say you know what what Katie Kirk did and frankly Vince Lombardi's example you know the the wrong example but still the example has saved innumerable lives across Wisconsin as people will hear from that they'll hear from you and they'll go you know I really do need to get that done because you don't want something like that you know sneaking up and taking you away far too young.
And that's one of the diseases where if you wait until you get symptoms, it's too late.
It's one of those you do have to catch early to give yourself a much better opportunity to be treated and to live a long life.
And again, after it happened, I thought, man, I mean, it just was so simple.
It was really so simple.
And they found one polyp and they're testing it, but they said that it's really
Nothing to be worried about, you know, and but at the same time, you know, if there's something at least it's caught early and then you go take those next steps So again, I was just amazed and I'm amazed by modern medicine.
I mean, yeah, yeah, just amazing that you know, what they're able to do and
for us to not take advantage when you do have this opportunity to stay healthy for a much longer period of time and, and again, find something early.
And then it's a lot easier in the treatment.
We find it earlier as well.
So I just wanted to say that, hey, if you've been worried, and I was, I mean, I pushed it off way too long.
I mean, that's, that's the bottom line here too.
I mean, I should have been tested at least five years ago.
I mean, there's this craziness that I haven't been.
So I hope people do.
maybe mostly if they think about it a second time and do it.
I mean, again, it was really, really simple.
Yeah.
Don't put it off any longer folks.
Chad Holmes, thank you for sharing.
I know that's, it's, it's, you know, personal stories.
Some of us love doing that.
Others, it's, it's a little tougher for, and I appreciate it very much, Chad.
We'll talk to you again real soon here.
Welcome back.
Thank you very much.
Coming up tomorrow on the program, State Representative Christian Phelps and State Democratic Party Chair Devon Remaker will talk to all the State Party Democratic Chair candidates yet before the week is out here on mornings across the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Krightlo.
You're listening to Civic Media.
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So I mentioned a bit ago that tomorrow we will have Devin Remacher on one of the candidates for state party chair.
And we will actually have all three of the candidates for state party chair joining us before the week is out Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Tomorrow will be Devin Remacher.
On Thursday will be Joe Zipecki.
And on Friday, William Garcia from La Crosse County.
The candidates for state party chair as Democrats across Wisconsin get set to convene in Wisconsin Dells in the middle of June.
to pick the person who will succeed, Ben Wickler, as running the party.
That's one of the topics we may hit Dan Schaefer about coming up in less than, well, just over 10 minutes from now, I should say, here across the Civic Media Radio Network.
And Dan Schaefer will also be talking about his newest column at the Reconbobulation Area, headlined
23 Wisconsin state legislators to watch for in the 2025-26 session as the state budget continues to be shaped and processed.
And we might also ask him about some new awards because I like how he scribbles out here at the top.
It says the Reconmodulation Area is a 13-time Milwaukee Press Club award-winning opinion column and he's got 13 scratched out and 19 put in.
because they've racked up even more hardware, both Dan and Angela Lang, on behalf of the recombobulation area.
So we'll be talking to Dan all about that coming up in just a bit.
So Devin Remiger tomorrow, State Representative Christian Phelps tomorrow, our regular visit with...
James Kelly, as well as Melissa Kay and Melissa Baldoff.
We'll hear from Sherida Booker, our social media manager as well.
In sports, the Milwaukee Brewers were victorious over the Baltimore Orioles yesterday.
Five to four, William Contreras went four for four and broke the tie with a two-out single in the eighth inning as the Brewers went on to hand the Orioles their seventh consecutive loss.
The action against Baltimore at American
Family Field continues tonight.
Coverage will begin at 6.05 on stations in Richland Center, Oshkosh, Racine Kenosha Park Falls, and Hayward.
And then there will be a day game on Thursday before, or I'm sorry, tomorrow rather, Wednesday, before the Brewers start another road trip.
This one will take them out to Pittsburgh.
We've had a theme this week about travel and also coming back home to Wisconsin or making Wisconsin your home To which there's one comment from Northern Light webcasting on YouTube that says Pat travel is wonderful But not as wonderful as sleeping in your own bed when you get home Amen to that.
I slept like a baby last night not just because of the long day of travel
but being back in my own bed and there there are some hotels there's one hotel chain that we frequent in part because they've really put a priority on comfortable beds comfortable pillows linens and all that but traveling around europe and the places where we were in portugal
Those are the times where, again, the scenery is great.
The food is nice.
The people are wonderful.
The views are lovely.
We were in the Doro Valley, the home of, you know, Port Wine, where all the grapes are stomped in some cases and processed into various ports that we tried.
All great stuff, but...
Yeah, being back home, absolutely is, is nothing like it.
Tony writes on YouTube from Ohio originally, and I love Wisconsin so much more.
Alicia writes, born in Texas and raised in the Fox Valley.
And let's see, what else do we have here?
More about colonoscopies here.
Alicia says.
A friend of mine had a colonoscopy at 30 because his dad passed from cancer in his 30s.
And Cassandra also talking about the prep work and having it done again, as she writes, more people are being diagnosed with colon cancer in their 30s.
And the thing about that, having that colonoscopy done, whether it's in your 30s or for a lot of people turning 50 is the benchmark.
at least you set a bench line.
It's not that they're necessarily going to find something the first time through, but there is this baseline set.
Maybe they find a polyp, maybe they don't, maybe everything is clean, is a whistle, and you can go, you know, several more years before your next test.
But you have to have that baseline set up first so that your doctors are looking and saying, this has changed from that time.
You know, this is different.
This is worse.
This is something that we need to continue to monitor.
And so I cannot again stress enough the importance of getting these things done, getting these checkups.
And it's not something that's necessarily easy for Chad or anybody else to talk about.
And let's face it, the part of the
the buzz about, you know, Katie Couric, you know, having a colonoscopy done on live TV back when she did shortly after her husband passed away.
You know, it wasn't just because her husband had passed away, but because it was, it was not the kind of thing people want to talk about because of the delicate nature of how a colonoscopy is performed.
But we need to confront those things.
We need to confront health care issues.
We talked about this with mental health as well, that we need to be able to talk about that, especially in this mental health awareness month and not attach a stigma that, oh, we don't talk about these things.
We should talk about anything that gets people off their butt, no pun intended, and gets into the doctor's office and sharing histories or sharing feelings or sharing records as the case may be so that, again, we get the care that we need.
And then that gets us into coverage and I'm not even gonna take a lot of time on the coverage here because what have I been saying all morning?
Having been in Europe, I'm coming back with that perspective of here are the things that we're still missing out on.
And one of those things is healthcare coverage for everybody.
And yes, you'll talk about waiting periods or you'll talk about taxation, but when you talk about quality of life and you talk about outcomes, you have to be asking yourself,
Why is this still a thing after 40 plus years that we're talking about trying to get health care access to everybody in this country and not just demonizing the poor or demigree demonizing migrants or whatever the case may be.
Let's get this done.
Stop being sidetracked by silly distractions in political commercials and support the people who want to support us through health care coverage for everybody.
Dan Schaeffer is going to help me talk about recent election results in Europe about how Trumpism isn't going so well in other countries that don't have a Trump here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Back now at 835 on this Tuesday morning, May 20th, today show a testimony to discombobulation as somebody returns back from 10 days overseas.
Thankfully, to get me back into the groove of Wisconsin and political news, we have Dan Schaefer of the Recombobulation Area, Civic Media Political Editor, and what is it?
Does it 19-time award winner now from the Milwaukee Press Club?
You got it, 19 time award winner.
We had a good night last week at the Milwaukee Press Club Awards dinner.
Well, congratulations to you and also to Angela Lange if I'm not mistaken, picking up another piece of hardware.
Yeah, and she won the gold award, too.
She beat me in the category we were both in for best single editorial.
I'm so excited for Angela.
Your co-host or your guest host for much of last
week.
Absolute rock star, and I am so thankful for her and Matthew Rothschild and everybody who helped fill in last week for that.
And yeah, congrats to you on all the awards.
That's wonderful to see.
And we'll get to your column here about state legislators to watch for as
the state budget rolls on.
And because of the vacation that I just finished in Europe, we're going to talk about elections overseas in just a minute as well.
But you bring to us some news already on this Tuesday morning about a couple of different races, people looking ahead to 2026 already.
We've talked about the congressional candidates in the third congressional district, for example, but there are other races that folks are looking at as well.
Other races as well.
We don't have that much time between campaigns here in Wisconsin.
Do we never but announced this morning via press release judge
Chris Taylor, a Wisconsin Court of Appeals judge and longtime former Wisconsin State Representative.
Chris Taylor announced that she is running for Wisconsin Supreme Court in the 2026 spring election.
So as we all talked about in the, you know, the run up to the spring election this year, that one kicks off a run of five consecutive years where there will be a race for Wisconsin Supreme Court.
on the ballot in the spring election in Wisconsin.
Rebecca Bradley is her 10-year term is up, so it will be a contested race to see if she formally announces that she will run again.
I think she has signaled that she wants to.
And then now we have the announcement today that, again, Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor running for Wisconsin Supreme
Court.
Look, if this is what the race turns out to be, and of course, there's no guarantee, there's plenty of time.
there could be a primary and everything else.
But Rebecca Bradley, who is the prototype, the prototypical Wisconsin conservative, as far as I'm concerned, it always feels like she's auditioning for something on Fox News or something through her writings, through her speeches.
There is no
Shortage of information pointing out just how extreme she is on the right.
She will try to do the same thing to judge Chris Taylor Judge Taylor she I served with her in the legislature gonna try to paint her as your classic Dane County liberal But I'll tell you something between what what Bradley's record looks like versus what Chris Taylor can bring to the race I mean it is gonna be a a a mega battle I don't want to over promote it, but I don't think that's impossible to but
Boy, if it's Rebecca Bradley, Chris Taylor in my mind, that's the person you want going up against her.
Other people might disagree, but that's my two cents.
Yeah, that would be quite a campaign.
And like you said, Rebecca Bradley, I think it's fair to say that she's probably the.
Clearly the most far-right member of the current makeup of the court, you know of the the three conservatives who were there, you know Brian Hagedore and certainly has been kind of the most moderate of the three been a swing vote in a number of occasions since since he won in 2019 Annette Ziegler now former Chief Justice Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley Probably the two most far to the right and I would you like you said Bradley, you know, she's always seems like she's talking
like you said, auditioning for Fox News or she has some really wild phrases and points that she'll make in various descents and decisions and whatnot.
So yeah, we just ended the election season for a Wisconsin Supreme Court race in Wisconsin just a few weeks ago.
And here we are looking at another announcement in the inbox from the press release.
So here we go.
We can't really take too many plays off.
here in Wisconsin.
No, why do you think I took the trip when I did?
I had to get out before the next batch of races, which by the way, the inbox doesn't just have that from Judge Chris Taylor for Supreme Court, but now we've got Randy Bryce jumping in as well.
Yeah, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporting this morning that Democrat Randy Bryce is running for Congress once again.
He lost in 2018 when he ran against
Was it against Paul Ryan at the time?
I think it was.
Time is a flat circle and all that.
I don't remember exactly what it is.
But Bryce making another run in the first congressional district he would be going up against.
Brian Stile, who has frankly overperformed in a couple election cycles in a row to be re-elected in the first congressional district in the southern and southeast parts of the state.
Yeah.
Coming back to the Supreme Court race here, Tony writes if Rebecca Bradley talks crazy enough, there might not be a race Trump might put her on the US Supreme Court.
I mean, you just never know.
And we, I mean, already I'm looking at my inbox and it's filling up with people like, well, from a better Wisconsin together, formerly one Wisconsin now has a refresher on all of the the greatest hits from Rebecca Bradley over the years.
I'm sure we will spend more time on that tomorrow as well.
So we're already talking about elections for next year across Wisconsin.
But I did want to take advantage of
having been traveling this past, you know, week and a half to talk about elections elsewhere because there were elections in Poland and Romania, which again, nobody's supposed to know that, but I bring it up because much like Canada a few weeks back, there was this feeling like, well, Trump has won, so Trumpism is on the rise.
right-of-center candidates had been winning around the world in the year leading up to 2024.
But it seems that ever since Trump got back into office and reminded us who he is, that since that time
the people who have tried to bring Trumpism to their countries, but their name isn't Donald Trump, it hasn't worked out so well for them.
The far right party is trying to be ascendant in Portugal, where I just was, but they're still mired in third place.
And I mentioned the other countries before that.
So it seems, Dan, like
leading up to last November, we thought, well, the far right is just on the march everywhere, but it just seems like people just need to be reminded of Donald Trump actually in the Oval Office to cure people of that notion.
I guess so.
It's very interesting to see all over the world, I think, every Western democracy, there was some level of backlash election that happened in the post-pandemic years there.
And now the people are reminded of what Donald Trump is and what he does and how he operates in governing.
He has been successful in two campaigns, painting himself as the outsider, but once he's actually on the inside,
things don't actually seem to go so well over and over again maybe those problems you know we just saw the story over the weekend he had finally admitted
uh that people pay the tariffs and not just other countries uh and and so you know it's just uh the the rhetoric never matches the reality and then you know a certain level of I think us political science dorks will call it thermostatic public opinion uh snaps things back to the to the center in certain ways too
well it it always seems like as well that at some point
uh
the far right over reaches and it's always tough to tell where it is with Elon Musk.
Things were working well till he basically tried to brag about buying a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat.
For George W. Bush, it was finally talking about privatizing social security.
And people said, no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to stand for that.
And now people are watching these Trump budget cuts and saying, wait a minute, this isn't the business reformer that we thought that we were getting.
And this is just a guy who's for all the billionaires.
And I'm not saying it's necessarily going to happen to Trump next year, but history tells us that that's probably where we should be looking toward as people go, this guy isn't what he promised.
Yeah, it's a it's such an interesting dynamic over and over again, you know that we see that we see with Trump and Trumpism
well, let's let's talk then a bit about Breaking up breaking up the the two-party system that we have here in many ways we have in that you have a Republican Party that has been taken over at least for the moment
by the far right, by Trump and Trumpism and moderate Republicans have felt pushed out.
Over on the left side of things, you've got what you would call the Bernie AOC wing of the party.
They are extremely disenchanted, what you would either call moderate Democrats or the consultant class or however it's been denigrated in that way, shape or form, but we still have just the two parties.
Meanwhile,
where I was last week in Portugal they had national elections but they had their third national elections in four years because they've got about 10 different parties and no single party can get a majority to control the government and so you've got to form these little coalitions and Dan I find it fascinating not that one is right and one is wrong just this whole notion of
people will not necessarily give you a clear mandate on election day.
I mean, Wisconsin is like ground zero for that given, you know, how 50-50 we are.
Yeah, all of our elections seem to be, you know, at least on the presidential level, decided by less than 1%, five of the last seven presidential elections decided by less than 1%.
It would be so fascinating though, wouldn't it, to have
a multi-party democracy in the United States to see what exactly you know that would look like you'd have kind of like
you know, the America first party
the Trump party on the far right.
I think that would encompass, you know, it's pretty significant chunk of the electorate.
And you could go kind of like the never Trumpers that don't have a political home now.
And then, like you said, and, you know, you go to the left, the moderate Democrats center left, and, and, you know, kind of the more progressive wing of the party, it would be so interesting to have.
uh an election like that uh here in the United States but I was
working just got the two parties.
I was working really hard to try to figure out the differences in these these parties in in Portugal and you know because there's multiple center right parties versus center left and the the one that I said is is in third place right now but ascendant that one is just all about being anti immigration whereas there are center right parties
that are pro-immigration.
They understand the issue that you need immigration for this economy.
You need immigration reform.
On the left side, you had parties that just wanted to talk about climate issues, for example, whereas others were embracing what some would call the far left, you know, that all health care is free and everything.
It just goes to show there are many ways that you could, you know, slice this onion, but we've just decided chop it in half and you're on team red or team blue.
And it's no wonder people feel so disenchanted with the state of politics.
days.
Yeah, I think, you know, I think in part that is why, you know, Trump has been successful in kind of like, you know,
not really boxing himself into some of the norms of the traditional Republican Party that I think a lot of people didn't particularly like.
Now, is he governing like that traditional Republican that people don't particularly like?
Well, sure, he is, but he campaigned as, you know, as something different, a change agent, maybe not, you know, at least in rhetoric, not as extreme as some other on social conservative issues, things like that.
But, you know, trying to, you know,
Thread that needle, I think, was at least in a campaign tactic sense.
I think the Trump campaign was successful in that.
Before we go to break, can you give me the 30-second version or less of the current column on state legislators to watch for?
Some of we have a real chance at accountability now that we have new maps.
And so these are the legislators in the most closely contested districts.
These are the ones that are most vulnerable to having the voters boot them out of office next year.
The next two months are probably the most important next two months that we have in the two year cycle in state government.
So these decisions that are made now are going to be really important.
So take a look at this list and see if your legislator is on it.
competitive elections.
It's crazy to think we have them back in Wisconsin.
We're talking to Dan Schaefer.
I'm Pat Quitelow and we're live from Lake Wissota on the Civic Media Radio Network.
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Continuing on with Dan Schaeffer here at eight minutes before nine o'clock on this Tuesday morning, May 20th.
You can subscribe to what Dan does over at the ReconbobulationArea.News and of course through CivicMedia.us where he serves as political editor as well.
So let's get into the new column that you posted over at the area about 23 Wisconsin legislators to watch for in this 2025-26 budget session.
And before the break, we talked about them being
in competitive districts was that your your only or main criteria for writing these up or is it more was there something in there about I don't know either leadership qualities or them being you know new and up-and-comers to watch things like that
yeah the main
the main kind of data point that was the source of this list was how close each election was.
So I think, you know, we all know that we're going to be paying attention to, you know, folks like Robin Voss and the assembly speaker, the Devon Lemahue, the majority leader in the Senate, and, you know, certain other legislative leaders who are, you know, key on certain committees.
But I think as, you know,
As we look ahead to 2026, which I guess we are doing just to a certain extent today with some of these announcements with Chris Taylor with Randy Bryce Also, you know, just kind of an eye on 2026 because especially for the state Senate there are only only half of the state Senate has been on the ballot under new maps And so there are three Republican state senators
serving in districts that were won by Kamala Harris last year.
Howard Markline, Rob Hutton, and Van Wangard.
So those three, you know, if Democrats were to win those three districts, and again, those are districts won by Kamala Harris just last fall, then they would be able to flip the state Senate.
And that would really change a whole lot about our politics.
So I think it is important for us to watch what's happening.
with those three senators in particular, but also, you know, the rest of the list here of the 23.
I've got both Democrats and Republicans on here that are in a closely competitive district.
And particularly on the Democratic side, as I look through, you know, the assembly representatives who won some of these closer races last year, a lot of them are in their first term.
You know, right?
You don't know exactly how things are going to play out in a legislator's first term.
So I think, you know, for those who maybe I was on the edge of including in the list, if it was their first time term, I put them on the list because you never know what type of approach somebody might bring to the office.
And so I think this is just a reminder to people that we have an avenue for accountability.
If, you know, a lot of people were really upset.
about the Republican-controlled state legislatures, Joint Finance Committee, voting 600-plus items out of Tony Evers' budget on critical things like childcare and health care, education up and down the list.
And so I think a lot of people are upset about that and wondering what they can do to hold certain legislators accountable.
Well, I think this is the...
first or you know the list of legislators who are in those most closely competitive districts who will have to defend the votes that they make now and in the next two months on them in in the budget and as you know so many different bills make their way through the legislature you know and to keep an eye on what's going to happen in in the years ahead because
we as the voters can bring actual accountability in ways we could not when we were stuck under the gerrymander.
Well, you've got rookies and veterans over here in the Chippewa Valley, for example.
You have Jody Emerson, who's a Democrat from Eau Claire, but her district is no longer just the city of Eau Claire, so it's not as safe as it used to be.
You have Christian Phelps from Eau Claire, a brand new
Democrat who could be a real up and comer, but only if he can defend his seat in 2026.
And then you have state Senator Jeff Smith, who has a lot of experience in the Capitol, but in a district that is notoriously.
purple and where he I feel like he's really mastered and I know he's a friend of mine as I say this but he's really mastered the retail politics of it but it's a district that still very much could go depending on you know external factors out of Jeff Smith's control so just in that one area alone you can see how competitive districts have made it by as we've always been saying not a lock that Democrats get an advantage but more so than under gerrymandered maps.
Yeah, and Smith is a really interesting case too, you know he won re-election in 2022 and in 2024 Kamala Harris won the one the seat but only by two points, right?
So this is a this is a quote, you know if voters don't like what the Democrats are doing in the in the process Here's an opportunity for accountability there as well And so, you know, and I think just the list more broadly really highlights a lot of what are
so often the swing areas of the state.
You have your neck of the woods in the Chippewa Valley and the Eau Claire area is always going to be part of that.
Western Wisconsin, there are many districts in Western Wisconsin on this list, La Crosse area.
Fox Valley always emerges as a really important swing region.
The Milwaukee area suburbs, there are a number of districts there.
Again, I mentioned Rob Hutton before.
I think his might be the most interesting.
for next year on the map because, you know, this is a seat that Kamala Harris won by six points in the Western suburbs in a rapidly shifting part of the area.
And I've noticed that Hutton has posted a couple of photos on his social media feeds with Tony Evers.
So, you know, would that be happening if he was in a deep red safe district?
I don't know.
No, no chance.
Very quickly, state Republicans had their convention, including the West politics straw poll.
What did you glean from that?
Fascinating straw poll.
I thought, you know, the fact that Josh Showman and Tom Tiffany were the kind of the top two vote getters on there.
Boy, that is not a deep bench for the Republicans.
We actually had a piece on Josh Showman at the Reconpopulation Area that we published yesterday from a guest contributor named Jordan Morales taking a look at some of his record in
you know, in 2022, not being able to get a police funding referendum passed in one of the reddest counties in Wisconsin.
And now Josh Schoeman on that record is trying to run for governor.
That's right.
Subscribe to Dan's newsletter.
Hit the the recombobulation area dot news for more and read a lot at civicmedia.us as well as Civic Media's political editor Dan Schaefer.
Thanks very much.
Nice to get connected and recombobulated again.
I appreciate it.
Great to recombobulate with you as always, Mr. Kreitler.
That'll be well.
All right.
Thank you, Dan.
Talk to you a little later tomorrow.
Christian Phelps, who we mentioned, Devin Remacher, candidate for state party chair.
Will join us.
My thanks to today's guests, including Dan Schaefer, Dan Hagen, Chad Holmes, Hans Breitenmoser, and you for being here today.
I'm Pat Kreitler, founding editor of UpNorth News, the Wisconsin Home for Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy news network.
We'll see you tomorrow morning.
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