Best Of Mornings: Phelps, Ingram, Martinez, Shafer (Hour 1)

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Now, from our Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Critello.

Well, hey there, Wisconsin.

Good morning, I'm Pat Critello.

Welcome to this best of edition of Mornings with Pat Critello.

If you're having a good day, let's kick things off.

Let's get right into it.

Talking to State Representative Christian Phelps from Eau Claire recently, he's on the Assembly Education Committee.

though not a lot of education committee work is really getting done there.

But before we get to that, we had spoken to Melissa K from our Wisconsin Rapid Station a few minutes earlier, still a little puzzled by her idea to get a new pet, a new member of the family, a new pigeon, and all of all of the accoutrements associated with pigeon keeping.

And on the text line, Matt from Germantown asks, is she going to use it to send notes to people?

And that that is the challenge.

I think I would lay out for Melissa.

Is this just for a pet companionship or is there going to be something utilitarian?

Are we going to get some value out of this pigeon?

You know, besides a potential very small, you know, dinner at some point of the pigeon.

I

want to make sure this pigeon is worth it.

Send me messages.

She also let us know about the whole pigeon culture, pigeon pants, pigeon mamas, pigeon cages, all the whole thing.

And I knew I

just did not know.

If she, I just picture her back in Wisconsin rapids right now going, I can't, I can't believe they bought all this.

I can't believe pigeon pants.

Who does that?

We did.

We're, we're into it.

Hook line.

We're totally invested.

So, uh, Matt in Germantown, good question.

So again, add it to our list.

Greg, if things talk to Melissa about next week, as we continue on pigeon watch the Melissa K edition

2025.

All right.

Let's turn to our homeroom segment now and talk to state representative Christian Phelps from Eau Claire, a member of the assembly education committee and

Friends of the show will recall joining us quite frequently on behalf of the Wisconsin Public Education Network.

Prior to his election to the assembly, Representative Phelps, how are you?

I'm great.

Good to see you this morning.

Yeah, it's nice to have you here as well.

You know what?

Before we get into the education aspect of it, maybe your ears were burning, but Dan Schaefer was mentioning you and we were talking about his column about races to watch, legislators to watch from now through November of next year in the districts that were close in the presidential race and with new, less gerrymandered maps have led to more competitive races.

And maybe Democrats have a chance to even take the majority in the legislature and

Obviously, you've been noticed right out of the gate, not just for the conditions of the district, but your work ethic and all the knowledge of education that you bring into this race.

So I wanted to get your impression on being listed as one of those, you know, races to watch already, whether, like me, you know, you become a one and done, one term thanks for serving, moving on, or, you know, if folks there think you've got legs and they're going to be around for a little bit, kind of nice to be on a list of people getting a little extra attention, I think.

I guess so.

I mean, we got, we got plenty of attention last year because it was really the first chance mathematically that the 93rd had to flip, uh, in, in, you know, over, over 10 year and 14 years because

of

how gerrymandered it had been.

And so people were already kind of watching and paying attention.

And, um, I had the, uh,

privilege and luxury and exhaustion of having a competitive Democratic primary and then a competitive general election.

So it was a very busy year and it worked out.

And I think our work is not done because, as I'm sure we'll discuss momentarily, we did not quite get the majority.

We've gained 10 seats in one swoop.

That's pretty good, but there's

there's a pretty hard limit on the amount of policy work you can get done when you when you work in the minority party in the legislature and so you know I think next year we will have some agenda items to really go back to the voters with and sell and and I think it's going to it's going to work out even better for us but we have to keep the 93rd

in our control in order to get that majority and actually get some some things done, including investing in public schools, including rural public schools in the 93rd.

So I look forward to talking to everybody about that.

Well, and you have a majority that is much thinner for Republicans and yet is still trying to create that illusion of full and total control.

Rather than seeing, you know, perhaps more bipartisanship than some folks would have expected with more competitive districts, which takes us to the Assembly Education Committee on which you serve.

And certainly I'm sure I framed the question similarly at the start of this session.

And how did you think the Assembly Education Committee work when unfold?

And I'm going to put it in those same terms again, this time around, how much of what you're seeing put in front of you by majority Republicans on the Education Committee is substantive and directly related to improving, you know, education quality in our classrooms versus what I would.

call side shows, but other people just might say, you know, issues that aren't as relevant to the direct education of our kids.

How would your 30,000 foot view of the committee look so far?

Yeah, it's a busy one.

And so we've gotten plenty of content in the first four or four and a half months here, and it is not substantive.

That's my observation.

The, you know, the luxury of being a new person in the legislature is that I can kind of walk around the Capitol with a flashlight and go into nooks and crannies and say, on behalf of the people of Wisconsin, why doesn't anything good ever happen around here?

Like what's going on?

And a big part of it is just the agenda setting.

So there are proposals introduced that would be substantive, that would help make it easier for kids to learn and teachers to teach in Wisconsin and here in the 93rd.

And then what happens is that the majority decides what moves forward and what doesn't.

So for example, on the Education Committee, we have nine Republicans and four Democrats, which does not reflect the nearly 50-50 legislature.

So, un-Jerrymandered maps, Jerrymandered the committees to maintain your control.

And so it was always kind of an open question, is there going to be more bipartisanship with the...

closer assembly makeup or are they going to kind of behave exactly the same way as they did when they had that manufactured one party rule.

So far they're doing the latter.

And so on that committee we've gotten we've gotten several full days of bills to hear and then debate and then release and then they make it to the floor.

Those bills have been about things like whether we call our test standards basic or developing.

That took many, many hours of taxpayer funded time.

We

decided whether teachers should be allowed to use students pronouns.

We have discussed whether cursive should be mandatory.

But proposals to do things like invest in school lunches for all and make them and reimburse school districts so that families can spend less on groceries and every single child can be fed at school.

That was proposed in January has not even been given a hearing yet.

So the agenda setting

by the majority party is one of the main reasons that so little good stuff gets done in the Capitol.

If I could shine a light on that for the community, it's not great news, but it is true.

And I would take it a step further and seize on what you said there about some good bills like school lunches for all kids, not even getting a hearing.

And so when we talk about a group that still is maintaining the illusion of all encompassing power, it's one that looks at a bill like that.

And they could say, well, let's give this thing a hearing right away.

We don't want to pass it.

We think kids getting school lunches is welfare or whatever their position is.

But the fact that they won't even give a bill like that a hearing kind of gives away the game in terms of where they want to keep 100% of their focus, which appears to be on all of these.

culture war issues and things like that.

As you've looked through the budget process, as you looked at what Governor Evers proposed for education, what you would like to see versus what the Republicans have done in the Joint Finance Committee, have you been encouraged by anything that you've seen there so far as the budget starts to become put together by Republicans?

I'm so glad you asked that, Pat, because it is a perfectly fair question and I wish I had a better answer.

it's perfectly logical to say, you know, maybe a lot of the, a lot of the important public education issues belong in the budget.

So maybe we don't need to talk about standalone bills until after the budget process is over.

So the governor proposed the budget bill.

And then Wisconsinites were invited to four public hearings at the committee, the joint finance committee to voice where they stand on that budget bill that the governor had proposed.

He had proposed doubling the state's commitment to special ed funding, which is

way, way, way below where it needs to be right now and even further below what they fund private schools at.

He proposed increases to per pupil aid.

He proposed things like the Healthy Meals Healthy Kids program, teacher apprenticeship and grow your own programs to address the teacher shortage.

and peer-to-peer suicide prevention grants in schools, really important stuff that got overwhelming support at those public hearings before the Joint Finance Committee.

Everything I just listed was taken out all at once by the Republicans on that committee after hearing from Wisconsinites in their first executive session on the budget where they removed 612 items from the governor's budget bill.

At this rate the bill that they give us as the legislature out of that committee to vote on the biennial state budget Will not look anything like the budget that the governor proposed and on education issues It zeroed out almost every popular proposal that Wisconsinites overwhelmingly said that they actually wanted to see in there

Which actually presents both a an opportunity and a challenge for

Democrats who can either shrug their shoulders and, you know, the voters just get the impression of, well, what are you going to do?

You know, they throw it out.

That's what they do.

They're in the majority as opposed to now they're on record saying these are good ideas and we don't like them.

And so, you know, we Democrats are going to say to those Republicans, these are good ideas and so forth and so on.

So, I mean, you've got even in the setback of having these things thrown out, it seems like you have a messaging opportunity going forward.

Yeah, I think it's really bold for the Republican members of the Joint Finance Committee to do this again.

They've done it to the last few budgets, Governor Evers put forward, but at that time they had manufactured a two-thirds majority in the legislature.

But now they have colleagues like me and many others, 23 new Democrats in the Assembly alone.

who represent competitive districts.

They themselves represent competitive districts, many of them who didn't before.

And, you know, in my case, I represent a lot of rural residents of Western Wisconsin who don't have a private school around.

They're not interested in spending their taxpayer funds on private education.

Their public schools have had to go to referendum just to stay open.

In many cases the public school district is the largest employer in these communities and they have a representative who's going to tell them the truth about what's happening in the capital and why their public schools are struggling.

Republicans haven't really had to face that in recent sessions so it's awfully bold and dangerous politically for their future to continue to take out popular and much needed proposals from the budget.

without further consideration after hearing from people, because now they have colleagues who are going to hold them accountable for it.

And frankly, nobody has asked me or anybody else to sit back and use only a fraction of our power here.

I think if there's one thing that's clear after the 2024 election and 2025 state of politics at local, state, and federal levels, people want their elected officials to use as much power as they can muster to fight for them.

I'm a first term member.

I'm not on the Joint Finance Committee.

I'm not the governor.

There's a limit to how much power I have, but whatever I have, and however many loud microphones I can find to sort of speak the truth into, I'm going to use it because that's what people are asking us to do.

Well, that's what we appreciate having you here on our homeroom segment and, you know, throughout the course of your work to help people understand.

It's not just what's in the final budget bill, but all of this, you know, if you want to call it sausage making, that's fine.

But it is important to know that there were some good, healthy ingredients that were set to go into the sausage and we're getting a whole lot of filler and garbage instead.

State Representative Christian Phelps is a member of the Assembly Education Committee and is a first term democratic state rep for Montclair Christian.

Good to talk to you as always.

Hope you have a great day.

Yeah, great to talk to you, too.

Thanks for

inviting me.

You bet.

Take care.

Hey, Maura's coming right up.

But first, thanks for spending some time here as part of your mornings, powered by UpNorth News.

We'll have more from Chip Will Falls in just a bit here on the Civic Media Radio Network.

I'm Pat Kratlow.

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One of the features of our new lineup change here at Civic Media is that we get to spend more time visiting with folks like Earl Ingram who's going to continue to do reports, interviews and projects for our stations in southeast Wisconsin, Chad Holmes who's doing things out of Wausau, you got James Kelly reporting out of the Chippewa Valley and more and we get to visit with them sporadically throughout the week.

We spoke recently with Earl Ingram about one of his first big interview projects he's going to be sharing with listeners.

Earl, how you doing?

Doing fine.

How are you?

I'm great.

It's so nice to have you here and finding out the kinds of folks that you've been talking to and the stories that you've been covering and I

wanted to find out more about this series of conversations that you're going to be having with Dr. Howard Fuller for folks not from the Milwaukee area.

He was the former superintendent and one of the driving forces behind the original voucher program, which Earl, I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say the original school voucher program was very, very different from what

the voucher programs have become all across the state, right?

Well,

the original voucher program was created by state representative Annette Polly Williams, Dr. Howard Fuller and her assistant Larry Hallwell during the time that Governor Tommy Thompson was governor.

And it was created because then state representative Annette Polly Williams and long term state representative Annette Polly Williams.

thought that it was important that poor black children had an equal opportunity at education.

And so she sat down with, again, Dr. Howard Fuller and Larry Harwell, and they created an opportunity for their parochial schools, some of them, to take on black children who didn't have the economic wherewithal to

joined the parochial schools to pay for the tuition.

And then Governor, Governor Tommy Thompson thought it was a laudable exercise and that's what they did.

They created vouchers.

It was created solely in the city of Milwaukee.

Then President George Bush, the first and Scott Walker and others.

looked at it and thought it was something that they could push across the entire nation and started pushing it across the state of Wisconsin.

And then eventually across the nation became very popular.

And as we see today, it's mushroomed and certainly causes havoc to public schools all across the state and all across

the nation.

Do you get the impression from talking to Dr. Fuller?

I mean, does that lead to any sense of regret either in the creation of it originally or that there should have been some mechanism somewhere along the way that would prevent it from metastasizing the way that it has become just a cancer on Wisconsin public education statewide today?

Well, Dr. Fuller will clearly state that what has happened to the vision that they had

It's not what they envisioned.

When you look at the fact that there used to be a time when if you wanted to send your child to a private school, then you did that out of your own pocket.

And today, the way things are situated, whether or not you can afford to send your child to a private school, if you can.

Now, taxpayers are saddled with paying for even those who economically don't need the support.

because of the way it's been gerry-rigged now, vouchers or, you know, school choice does not have an impact on, you know, whether or not you are a person who has low income or upper income, we're gonna pay all taxpayers, pay for it all.

Sorry, had myself on mute there.

Yes, they most certainly do.

So obviously we will be talking to State Representative Christian Phelps in our next half hour about what's happening on the Assembly Education Committee, but the work for educating students goes on.

And so you're also talking to Dr. Fuller about his continued work to help improve reading skills, learning to read amongst Milwaukee school kids.

Is that right?

Well, Dr. Fuller, it's not only about Milwaukee school kids.

The work that he's working on is to address.

He thinks that one of the reasons why children, not just in the city of Milwaukee, but across the state and across the nation, reading scores have dropped precipitously.

And so this is not something that is solely about Milwaukee children.

It is national.

And so he believes that teachers don't know how to teach reading anymore.

And so he's pushing this new initiative that he's created that will improve the reading scores of children all over this nation.

So

that will be a focus of what Earl Ingram is talking to Dr. Fuller about.

And you said this is going to roll out over a couple of different parts of conversations that you're going to

be having.

Well, that actually is going to start.

I'm going to begin the interview process with him on June 3rd.

I've done several others.

I think really a lot of more and worthy interviews with people prior to this.

So we're going to be rolling things out shortly.

I mean, I am so looking forward to this, to having the ability to do more of this long form reporting and visits because there are so many stories that need to be told.

There are lessons that need to be learned that, you know, you and the folks that you're talking to are in such a position to make and we can't get to that from the pinball machine that is the daily news cycle.

So I'm glad to get to visit with you about these upcoming conversations with Dr. Fuller, Earl.

appreciate that update.

Thank you so much.

Thank you as well.

All right.

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Still ahead, we'll talk to somebody who knows firsthand the real-life experiences of people who need SNAP and Medicaid and all of the other vital services when times get tough.

The services that Republicans in Congress have just recently voted to gut.

More coming up in a bit here on the Civic Media Radio Network.

As Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress try to make massive cuts to safety net programs in order to give the wealthiest people and companies more tax breaks, they're doing so under the phony cover of attacking so-called waste, fraud, and abuse.

Now, that's not to say there isn't some level of misuse in any program.

Same could be said in your workplace.

But that doesn't mean you fire a chunk of the workforce in order to give the CEO a bigger paycheck.

But the truth is that a lot of Americans are hurting for a variety of reasons.

And instead of providing more jobs or more job training or opportunities for education or help with childcare or health care costs, the response from Trump and Republicans to all these financially struggling families is, well, too bad.

Our friends need the money.

We talked to someone who helps process SNAP and Medicaid eligibility for struggling families in Wisconsin.

He traveled to Washington this week to give members of the state's congressional delegation an insider's view of how these massive cuts would impact real people in our state.

My name is Opdale Martinez.

My job is I'm a SNAP and Medicaid eligibility specialist.

The official title is Economic Support Specialist and I do that in Dane County, Wisconsin.

At what point do you have your first point of contact with somebody and then tell me how the process is supposed to work?

There are four ways you can apply.

You can apply the pay-per-form app.

You can apply over the phone.

You can apply on the online website that they have, or come into a local agency and apply in person.

When you apply, we ask for verification of income, depending on if there's an immigration status.

So if they're not a US citizen, we ask to verify immigration status.

Once we verify the income for SNAP, we look at utilities and expenses.

After going through all that and dumping through all those hoops, every case is always different.

After all that though, we go ahead and review their income.

If they're under or above or above or below the income limits, if they're below, they would be eligible and we would be able to get them set up for the SNAP benefits, for Medicaid and items like that.

And if they don't qualify, we give them resources to the local areas where they could look for alternative care, free clinics, go to the marketplace, the Affordable Care Act, and just give them a couple other options that way.

How is it conveyed to people when they first come to you that this this is temporary relief designed to help get you through a tough time and that this is not something that would necessarily be a permanent state?

I mean, it may be for say Medicaid disability and things like that, but especially SNAP or for people who are newly unemployed.

Is that how is that conveyed that this is, you know, in a perfect world meant to be a temporary bridge to better

times.

You know when it comes to the to snap and Medicaid it really comes to a point where you know you have people who from all backgrounds are applying right you can see people who just lost their jobs applying you can see people who may have not have applied in years and are re-applying after five six seven years since they last received the benefit

It really depends on the situation people are going through.

And you have a family of five where both mom and dad are working full time and still can't afford their groceries.

And if they have insurance to their job, the cost of that insurance to have for their kids is too high for them where they can't afford it.

And so Medicaid kind of fills in that gap where they can get the Medicaid for their children.

despite them working both full time.

But it's to a point where, you know, if it becomes unaffordable, if they can't afford food after working full time or health care, you know, is it really temporary or, you know, it comes up to kind of a point where they have to kind of rely on that.

Well, especially yes for the children and for their health.

So.

this whole notion that we're hearing the need for all these cuts because there's waste from all these folks who are otherwise employable.

It seems to me that that really misses how unstable families are economically around, you know, around Wisconsin and around the country.

And I wonder if you

share that sense of economic instability that a lot of families are experiencing.

You know, it's kind of interesting to hear those phrases, you know, because I try to look at it kind of based on my experience, you know, I've helped.

So I've been doing this job for a year.

And before that, I would work at a hospital to help people apply for Medicaid.

I was at a company.

It wasn't through the state or the county or anything.

And I would see people in many different situations where they don't have insurance or they just lost their insurance.

And they have to pay, let's just say, around about $20,000 for appendix, for ER visit.

It comes to a point where when you're in the hospital, you're recovering and things like that, and you can't work, you're not able to work because everyone's body recovers differently.

If you can't work for X amount of weeks or months, depending on your situation on paper, yeah, maybe it looks like you can work, but in reality you can't because of your health, because of this, because of that.

So that's what I try to focus on the most when I hear those words abroad and being able to work.

It's just like it's an individual basis.

You know, it's really just the need people have at some point.

There was a phrase that I used a lot when I was campaigning that there are just so many people in Wisconsin who are one illness, one accident or one layoff away from poverty.

And it has always appeared to me that there is a certain group of folks in the country and in the state that don't want to believe that that many families really are that close, that one accident, one injury, one illness, one layoff would make that big a difference.

Do you see that on a regular basis?

I would say yes.

I mean, I can say, you know, a couple of weeks ago, I've gotten calls from

a young person who had some savings and they waited until the last minute to apply for SNAP benefits.

There's people who didn't expect to lose their jobs over the winter and all of a sudden they got their last paycheck, they got paid good money and all of a sudden they don't have

insurance.

They don't have food security anymore for the next month and the following month because who knows how long it takes for them to get their job.

And so, you know, and kind of adding on to what you were saying, Pat, you know, not just that, I think in reality, we're just two or three paychecks away from having to make decisions of, do we decide to pay for food or do we decide to take our children to the doctor?

Do we decide to buy this necessity for our transportation or do we decide, you know, to buy dinner for tonight?

So, you know, kind of adding on to that, you know,

It really doesn't take that long for us to find ourselves in a situation where we would need to apply for these

programs.

eligibility specialist.

And again, I say this as somebody who grew up on what you would call food stamps with a single mom back in the day there.

So when you hear that there's this potential for billions, maybe even a couple hundred billion dollars in cuts to SNAP and other nutritional assistance programs,

I mean, such a big number, I don't think registers at the human level with a lot of people.

If that were to really happen, what would be the human toll do you think around where you live and around Wisconsin and the country?

Where to begin on that?

I mean, just looking at SNAP specifically, the max for one, a single household, right?

One person in the home is $292 a month, right?

So a little bit less than 300.

and that's in a perfect world where you can get the max.

So going off that and looking at the income, looking at your expenses, you qualify for the max allotment, having these cuts for people who are already receiving the benefit or kind of taking it a step further where you have people who never thought themselves as needing that benefit, now having that door closed to them, you're taking away food security for those people, you're taking away

health insurance security, and with that, they go from a state of surviving to just barely surviving or even lower than that.

There are people who don't qualify for that.

The minimum we can give is 23.

So if you qualify for SNAP benefits, but the only amount, after jumping all those hoops, you only qualify for $23, what can that get you at that point?

Having those cuts would...

basically make millions of Americans vulnerable to food insecurity through having lack of health insurance and thinking about what that impact could have on going through Wisconsin, right?

The impact of those people who rely on that benefit for their children, their children are not going to be able to get checkups.

They're not going to be able to get food.

They're not going to be able to go to the doctor.

You have cases where they have a serious illness and have to go to the ER.

The parents are going to be stuck with that medical bill.

So the impacts just even thinking about it locally kind of, you know, are scary to even think about.

You have decided to go to Washington and talk to members of the Wisconsin Congressional delegation about this that included Senator Baldwin's office and meeting with Congressman Mark Polkhan.

So let's start with them.

Do you feel like Congressman Polkhan gets it when it comes to the dangers of that level of cuts?

So when we met with Mark Pokan, you know, it was, and I think of it like kind of like, you know, being kind of just learning even in a deeper level how government works.

But when I met with him, you know, as soon as we started talking, I shared my story.

you know, and likewise goes with Senator Baldwin's office, you know, they were both on board that these cuts should not be made.

They were both saying, no, we shouldn't be seeing, we shouldn't be having these cuts in general.

And that kind of reinforced, you know, my, I would say,

Trust or I guess, you know, kind of confirmed, you know, the thoughts that Wisconsin has as a whole, I guess you could say, you know, I don't speak for everybody, but just hearing that from our representatives, from our congressmen, you know, it really, it really shows to me like, at least they, they're listening to what, what, what their citizens are saying, what their people are saying.

I understand that you tried to reach out to Congressman Derek Van Orden as well.

Have you heard anything back yet about potentially informing him or a staffer about.

your your view on how bad these cuts could affect people?

We did reach out and attempt to schedule a meeting but we haven't heard anything back.

We have heard from the congressman though that he quite angrily denies that any

cuts made in the House Agriculture Committee to nutritional supplement programs would hurt regular folks.

He has repeatedly framed it as going after waste fraud, bureaucracy, abuse, things like that.

I ask you as somebody who, admittedly, you've been at this for, like you said, a year or so, but do you look at this and say, my gosh, there is so much waste fraud and abuse

under SNAP benefits that I totally see how Congress can find a couple hundred billion dollars to cut or do you not see such a massive level of waste fraud and abuse?

You know whenever I think of the words and I hear those words coming from people forward and saying oh waste fraud abuse in these programs you know it really comes to a point where

with the overall economic impact of just not having these programs, right?

If this were a program that was being abused, that was being taken advantage of.

you know, my thinking is, how would cuts better this program?

Because in reality, the purpose of these programs are clear.

You know, you have the overall economic impact that we discussed earlier of people having to make that decision of, you know, can they afford to go out to eat?

Can they afford to pay for a repair in their car?

Right?

You know, it always happens at the worst times.

You know, can they afford to do XYZ thing?

Or do they have to make a decision to go to the doctor?

You know, there's times where, you know, when people say, oh, there's waste, fraud and abuse,

When in reality, it's just people looking for help.

And that's what I see the most is people looking for help, looking for that assistance that they would need.

And so when they say that, you know, it doesn't come to mind because in reality, it's just people looking for help in these difficult times.

Zab, we appreciate that very much.

Thank you for spending some time with us.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure to be here, Pat.

Zeb Martinez of Dane County, working with AFSCME and urging others to contact their members of Congress to oppose cuts to struggling families.

I'm Pat Crightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

You're listening to Civic Media.

Find the latest news, information and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.

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As you know when the

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And if you at 830, we sometimes go a little long and tape a little bit extra and are able to share it with you at 630 the next morning.

That is the case with Dan Schaefer, the political editor at Civic Media, and of course, the creator of the Reconbobulation Area, which is now, what is it, a 19-time Milwaukee Press Club.

award-winning news site and along with all of his other work Dan continues to write columns for his area and for civic media.

The most recent of which is a new column about the state legislators to keep an eye on for the rest of this session in lieu of what are going to be some big elections next year.

I know every election's big.

These are going to be big elections next year.

Could flip control of the state legislature.

So I asked Dan a little bit more about the focus of this new column.

We have a real chance at accountability now that we have new maps.

And so these are the, 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.

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 Devin 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

And 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 looked 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 legislature.

joint finance committee voting 600 plus items out of Tony Evers budget and critical things like childcare and healthcare 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, you know, this is the,

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 in the budget.

And as so many different bills make their way through the legislature, and to keep an eye on what's going to happen 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.

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 a reelection 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 this is a seat that Kamala Harris won by six points in the Western suburbs and 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 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, not a deep bench for the Republicans.

We actually had a piece on Josh Shulman at the recombobulation area that we published yesterday from a guest contributor named Jordan Morales, taking a look at some of his, 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 Shulman on that record is trying to run for governor.

That's Dan Shaffer.

I'm Pat Crightlow.

This is

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