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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, from our Lake WSOTA studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Hey, good morning.
Welcome back.
Nice to have you here up north at 8.06 on this Tuesday morning, June 17th, and still ahead.
Chad Holmes from 989 WXCO is going to be here.
Dan Schaefer will be along at the bottom of the hour.
meteorologist Brittany Merlois here as well but first from the text line responding to Fred in Cottage Grove who says am I too late for the tickets been busy and have not checked my phone yes Fred you are several days too late the Piscani summer text to win contest ran through last Friday but thank you for the immediate paranoia I went
Crazy
Parker.
Quickly looking like, did I miss?
I'm looking over here.
I'm looking to see if other stations' text lines, do they have words that are text in?
So Fred, who needs coffee?
My blood's pumping now.
Thanks to you, buddy.
That's how
this works.
So no, I do not have tickets for you.
Also on the text line, and we're going to hit up Brittany and Chad Holmes with this as well, when I mentioned that it's National Eat Your Vegetables Day.
for Nature Veggies Day, however it was.
We had some comments from, I think Alicia says, oh hey, I get my fresh veggies delivered today.
So is it a veggie subscription that she's got maybe going here?
And so then we got from Luke Mathers, we got corn, because you said corn was a favorite vegetable.
Yeah.
Nope.
People are going to push back, including the handsome and capable Luke Mathers who says corn is a grain.
Vegetables don't exist.
They're an illusion.
All things you think are vegetables are truly something else.
I could go down this rabbit hole for hours, which I was like, yes, by all means.
And then Alicia says, I would contest that vegetables are the umbrella over all the groups of food that are considered vegetables, which is kind of breaks your brain if you think about it
for a bit
here.
But
yeah.
I mean, so that gets into the, is a tomato a fruit?
Is a corn a vegetable?
Is it a grain or whatever?
Brittany, you're, I mean, none of us are master gardeners like Kristen Lyrely.
We should have got her to talk about this instead.
Did we
forget to ask Hans about this?
Hans is a dairy farmer.
His view on vegetable farming is probably going to be a little different.
His credentials are far closer to this than ours, Pat.
milking a cow is now closer to being a vegetable farmer than Chad Holmes running things, calling high school sports.
Mr. Holmes, wouldn't you agree?
Take yourself off mute before you answer that question, though, of course, first.
He's he's gonna think about
it.
I tell you, I am so stupid.
Come on here.
I come on with my mute on because I don't want to be making noise in the background.
And then that's always you talk to me and then I open my mouth and nothing comes out.
Yeah.
Aight, uh...
Now I've got the question.
Do you get into these discussions about whether certain things are a fruit or a vegetable or anything like that?
Well, I mean, I think along that line that you can talk about whether it's fruit, vegetables, and there's so many other areas of life that you actually kind of get into where people kind of disagree, whether or not the parameters fit within, you know, the two guardrails.
I think that, you know, that's kind of a microcosm of a lot of discussions I think we have.
You can maybe even make politically with the guardrail.
So we are getting so
deep.
We're getting so deep.
But what is a vegetable man?
You know, Alicia's point out there.
Brittany, any input on what's
a
fruit?
What's a vegetable?
What's your favorite?
What should be banned?
I could care less what you call it.
But I love all of it.
Fruit, vegetables, I would probably say.
Green peppers.
I'm obsessed weirdly enough with green peppers.
I can just eat them straight.
I can bite into them like an apple.
I'm a weird one, but I love them.
There is one substance on earth that is like kryptonite to me.
And
it is it is green peppers.
If let's say
you let's say you order pizza.
And let's say that it is an otherwise perfect pizza.
I love to get like pepperoni sausage mushroom.
If there is one little bit of green pepper, cause you know, sometimes when they make a pizza, they grab from the ingredients and things spill over.
If there is
one little green pepper on that pizza, I can smell it.
It has this immediate gag reflex and I will not just throw the pizza away.
I will find an incinerator to burn it first.
With the pineapple
smell the green peppers on my fingers because last night on my way home
from work I
bought a frozen pizza along with
with a green pepper and an onion to add it to my
pizza.
I wish I could communicate to our listeners what pets face just in.
I
cut off the green pepper and I put it all over it.
Big, lots of green peppers on that pizza.
I was an extremely picky eater as a child.
I have come leaps and bounds in all the things that I eat now that I didn't eat as a kid.
But man, there is something about green peppers.
I don't know what, but ugh.
I don't know
if I can come on the show anymore.
You and Brittany just want to do green pepper talk.
There you go.
Okay.
Head over to North Hudson where they do pepper fest, you know, every summer.
Speaking of master gardener, Kristen Lyrely, I did send a note asking how they were doing because I know there was a tornado warning up where she was in the hibbing area and she texted back saying we're all good here.
We did have to pull a bunch of patients into the hallway.
until the tornado warning passed, but I don't think there's severe damage near me.
They're just not used to tornado warnings up north the way that we are.
They're pretty rare in Northern Minnesota, which is ironic, since Judy Garland was born up there.
Yes, she was.
Before
that whole tornado thing took her away to the land of Oz.
Isn't that
ironic?
Yeah, but it got really, some of these cells were super strong, Brittany, and we got more showers and thunderstorms in the future here.
Yeah, so it was pretty scary night last night up in Minnesota.
And of course that tornado watch extended into portions of northwest Wisconsin where one storm did stay strong and that storm.
Earlier in Minnesota produced a tornado.
So it's a good thing that it weakened as it moved into Wisconsin.
And like Kristen said, yeah, they're not used to these strong storms that far north.
I mean, they get thunderstorms, but usually they don't pack a tornado.
So that was a rare evening.
Now today we're calm this morning.
Nothing's really going on.
We've got a few clouds hanging on up north.
Temperatures in the 60s.
There's sunshine down south.
temperatures in the seventies and today we are going to warm things up.
It is still sticky kind of muggy out there.
Highs will reach 80 degrees up north near 90 down south and down south.
You're in a risk for some marginal thunderstorms today, probably starting around four or five or so this evening, kind of ending around nine.
And a few of those could have some gusty winds and some hail with that.
Now, this is of course into the Madison, Milwaukee area this evening up north.
We're going to stay mainly dry.
And then tomorrow, another big low pressure system targets the entire state.
And it's going to move in probably by the afternoon, right around noon or so.
And it's going to turn widespread as we go into the evening.
Pretty heavy rainfall is expected in places southern half of the state where we could see one to two inches of rainfall.
which of course puts us in a risk for an excessive rain which causes flooding.
So keep an eye out for that.
So a wet night tonight south and all day looking at some rain statewide tomorrow.
All right, keeping you out for that local forecast then.
Brittany, thank you so much.
I'm going to go
talk to Chad some more about green peppers if you don't mind.
So
give it to him.
Yeah.
All right, sounds good.
We'll talk to you a little bit later on.
First, again, our reminder as usual, you can sign up for our up north news daily newsletters up north news wi.com.
And if you can't catch this show live and want to listen by podcast head over to Spotify, and be a subscriber or Apple wherever you get your podcasts.
But we'd love to have you a Spotify subscriber as well.
So so Chad has been covering things around Wausau, which have
included far less sports than it used to be as the sports season finally winds down.
I was joking with Jimmy Koska yesterday about how, you know, you guys, this is like your, the closest thing you get to a break where you could, you know, hibernate for a while before you have to start covering high school football again.
Or does it not feel like that yet?
Oh, this is, I mean,
Unfortunately fight or fortunately whatever you want to say in terms of I have a pattern in my life.
This circle that goes around whether it's a week a month or a year and this is the time where you do kind of take that step back because between the winter and the spring it gets very.
busy and hectic and a lot of running around and it's actually nice to be able to go home and cut my green pepper and have a meal at the normal time and not have to wait till nine or 10 o'clock after getting home from doing a ball game or something like that to to enjoy a meal.
And then I wanted to ask as well because you do sometimes head over to play a little poker in some of these tournaments.
Is this the time of year where you might be contemplating that again?
Uh, in about three weeks, I will be heading to Vegas.
And in fact, this year I am crossing off a bucket list item.
I have, I've always gone out there, but I've never played the main event, which is the big one, the big, the number one tournament, the world championship event.
And I'm going to do that this year.
So I'm flying out there and, uh, the fourth of July falls on a Friday.
So it's nice to have that little extra day that I'm taking each of the following week.
And I'm flying out there and on the 4th of July, I will be sitting in for the main event of the World Series of Poker.
So I've been putting away for it for a couple of years and I've decided I'm going to splurge a little bit for once.
That's awesome.
Well, congratulations.
Good luck.
It's going to be a lot of fun here.
It's going to be hopefully a lot of fun.
I don't want to make sure I don't get, you know, sit down and then get busted in 10 minutes or something like that.
But
well, you know, it's like, it's like all those reality shows, you know, where somebody's like the one who gets cut in the very first show.
And you really don't want that to be you.
But it does
happen.
And if I win it, then you have to get somebody else to fill this spot.
Oh, absolutely.
Oh my goodness.
And guess what?
You'll be their first guest.
But as you're leaving for whatever island you're going to go live on, you know?
I'll
be the next Creightlow who went off to an island for a while, right?
That's
exactly.
Trust me.
I can recommend.
Yes.
So getting to some sports that are decidedly not high school.
but I wanted your impression because I mean, I am, I am firmly in the Shohei Otani fan club.
And so last night, 21 months after Tommy John elbow surgery, he was back on the pitcher's mound and did give up a pair of two strike hits, didn't give up one run, but he also hurled one of his fastballs at 100.2 miles an hour in his return to the mound.
And then after retiring a batter for the third out, Otani did not go to the dugout.
Instead, he put on his batting gloves and other equipment and walked over to the on-deck circle to lead off the bottom of the first inning.
This guy, Chad, I don't even, I don't have to say anything else.
This guy.
I
know.
I mean, it truly is.
We are seeing a guy that is Babe Ruth.
I mean, for those folks a hundred years ago,
I mean, Babe Ruth started as a pitcher and then became a pitcher hitter and then they decided, well, we're not going to pitch him anymore.
Well, Tony is a little bit different in that he wants to be that two-way guy.
He wants to be that pitcher.
I saw an article this the other day saying, well, you know, why bother with this pitching?
You know, it's like he is such an incredible hitter, but this is an amazing thing that we're seeing.
I mean, they said, I mean, he's 100 mile per hour pitchers.
I mean, there's a reason why these arms are blowing out.
They don't,
they don't
piece themselves anymore.
And I just think that that's partly the team's fault because they don't, it's not the, well, after six innings, I'm too tired to go out there.
It's because they go out a hundred percent.
There's no, no, uh, uh, thinking, thinking man's game in terms of the mound.
But, but for Otani, I mean, just an amazing, amazing story.
And it just.
I don't think people really appreciate it, to be honest with you.
I don't
either, which is why I bring it up in segments like this, because, again, here's a guy that's been recovering from surgery for pitching, and yet he's still hitting.
He's batting 290.
His 25 home runs leads the National League.
Along with 41 RBIs already.
The guy's just a phenom.
So when he took the pitching mound last night for the Dodgers, I just wanted to call attention to it and allow us a few minutes to ooh and ah about that.
Chad will be talking much more local sports, local news on his local updates on 98.9 WXCO.
And of course on the Civic Media app as well.
And he visits with us on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
We'll talk to you again real soon.
You too, Pat.
All right, Chad.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate it again.
989 WXCO on the Civic Media app.
Some of you will get a local update.
The rest will be back here for a bit.
And in 15 minutes, Dan Schaefer from the Heart of America is up north, live from Lake Wissota.
Thanks for making this the place to spend part of your mornings.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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Let's do a little follow up now on a story we talked about last week and that would be wake boats, the ones that are specially modified for wakes that you can basically surf behind.
They make a lot of noise.
They can cause a lot of damage.
There are local communities that are seeking to ban them.
There are some people that are taking those bans to court trying to overturn them.
We were talking about Burnett County last week, but also we see a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from a few days back that supervisors in the town of Manitowish Water
past an ordinance earlier this month.
on wake-enhanced boating in its jurisdiction.
This story by Paul A. Smith in the Journal Sentinel.
The rule would prohibit artificial wake enhancement activities on nine of their lakes that are more than 50 acres in size within the town's borders, including seven lakes on the Manitouish chain, a northern Wisconsin destination very popular for boating and fishing.
It's the latest in a statewide trend.
toward control of wake enhanced boating.
The rules typically prohibit the artificial enhancements, but not the use of wake boats themselves Including Manitowish waters some 54 Wisconsin communities have now passed similar ordinances According to Richard Phillips of the Last Wilderness Alliance a nonprofit that helps towns to establish the rules But as we mentioned there's also been folks that have been taking these communities to court to try to stop the bans
and we discussed last week whether this is something where the state legislature could be a help or a hindrance in terms of either setting a statewide standard one way or the other or they could be a hindrance by being completely permissive to wake voting statewide despite what communities want and by not allowing communities if they want to have stronger requirements.
and stronger restrictions.
And that would track if that's what the legislature ultimately did, because as I've mentioned before, the folks running the legislature now took power 14 years ago, promising to be the party of local control.
And they've turned out not to be, they're the party of control.
And they have been trying to control local units of government wherever possible if they go in a direction that they feel is not far right enough for them.
There had been a meeting last month according to the Journal Sentinel story that was set up by Tomahawk Republican Senator Mary Falskowski, the Senate president, but it apparently did not produce an agreement.
among the various Republican legislators and lobbyists for the voting industry and a group that was formed to advocate for wake surfing restrictions.
So again, according to Paul Smith story, no wake enhanced voting bill has been introduced in this particular legislative session yet, which is not to say it can't still happen either as its own piece of legislation or it could happen in the budget.
And I know what you're saying is, wait a minute, I heard that they took all of Governor Evers' policy ideas out of the budget bill.
They do that every year, where they take policy out of the budget.
Claiming a budget should just be a fiscal document.
And then they can sprinkle back in whatever they want in there.
Because fiscal matters and policy matters are quite often intertwined.
And so it's a convenient reason to say, well, we're not going to do what the governor wants, but we may still do what we want to do.
And if that's the case, it won't be a big surprise.
We spoke earlier about Congressman Derek Van Orden and his online rants, which have become just way past offensive and moved on to embarrassing.
Well, along with...
trying to slash Medicaid and other things to help send money over to tax cuts for billionaires.
The Congressman has found another use for money and that's to create a new military medal.
And that medal is all about service on the border with Mexico.
He has introduced the Border Operations Service Medal Act to honor U.S.
service members and federal personnel who have defended the southern border
under President Trump's 2025 National Emergency Declaration.
The bill directs the Secretary of Defense to create and issue a Border Operations Service Medal to recognize military and National Guard personnel who served in designated border operations beginning January 1st, 2025.
The medal will be authorized for wear in accordance with uniform regulations and recorded in the recipient's official service record.
Now, let me be very clear about how I'm responding to this.
Without any knock whatsoever on the military and without any knock on anybody who would serve in that area and earn that kind of a medal.
When I say about the entire program, give me a break.
We have a Border Patrol and we have a Border Patrol that could have been enhanced long ago before
bringing politics into moving the military to our border with Mexico.
All you would have had to do is have a bipartisan agreement to increase funding for the Border Patrol, increase funding for enhanced surveillance techniques, the likes of which were proposed by people like Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin, but instead by
I would contend hiding behind our brave military and using them for partisan purposes.
We have folks who have signed up to defend our country and to serve knowing very well it may be overseas, to instead be put down at the border, taken away from their families and other roles that they could be playing, because it's easier for Republicans in Congress and in the White House right now to use our military as a prop.
Witness last Saturday's parade.
rather than be more respectful toward our military and use it in the ways that it was intended.
There's still time to do this.
I mean, Congress still hasn't passed a budget yet.
They could, again, come back to that bipartisan agreement to enhance border security, have a border patrol, which too could be worthy of service that deserves medals without having to do something like this, which simply enhances the myth that this is a military operation when what this truly is.
is a political failure from the right wing that controls our Congress and the White House today.
We'll talk to Dan Schaefer from the Reconpopulation Area about the State Democratic Convention.
Coming up next, I'm Pat Crightlow on the Civic Media Radio Network, and you're up north.
Dan Schaefer coming along in just a moment here.
First off, a reminder, earlier in the show, I was about to promote my Facebook page, which for the longest time was called Pat Crightlow Up North, because I'm still here at Up North News, founding editor of Up North News.
We started Up North News Radio, but then we made that show change to Mornings with Pat Crightlow.
So I changed the name of the page.
to Mornings with Pat Krightlo.
But I realized the website name still said Pat Krightlo up north and so I can proudly announce that I fixed this all by myself and that the the new URL is up so if you go to facebook.com slash Mornings with Pat Krightlo.
you'll find the page there, my professional journalistic political page, wherever you want to call it, where I also stream the show, though it'd be better if you listened on one of the Civic Media radio stations or Civic Media Facebook, Civic Media YouTube, Up North News Facebook, Up North News YouTube, but it's on this page as well if you care to follow along there.
And even if you can't spell Crightlow, K-R-E-I-T-L-O-W, you'd be able to find it.
Search long enough and it's there.
You can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, at Pat Crightlow as well.
So fresh new shiny URL for the Facebook page.
From the text line, Jim in Brookfield, Hi Pat.
Is it only a green pepper dislike?
Do you eat red, orange and yellow?
They add a lot to a stir fry and taste great, though I agree green peppers not so much.
It's an excellent question, Jim.
Yes, I have had red, orange and yellow peppers.
I don't
seek them out.
But if they're in something that's served, you know, I do eat them.
They're still not my favorites.
I mean, they're okay.
I think any peppers, jalapeno, otherwise, they really enhance a food, but I'm not crazy about them by themselves.
But there is just something about green peppers.
And I can't explain it.
I'm just saying it's there.
And clearly, that's why Chad Holmes and Brittany Merleau are never going to invite me to dinner.
And if they do, I know exactly what they'll be serving.
Here's a young man who eats all of his fruits and veggies on this National Eat Your Veggies Day, Dan Schaefer, political editor for Civic Media and founder of the Recombobulation Area.
Mr. Schaefer, how are
you?
I'm doing well, Mr. Critello.
Thank you so much for having me on.
Always wonderful to join you here on Mornings with Pat Critello.
And glad to hear about the new Facebook page and all of that.
Good stuff.
Look at you being all tech-savvy.
Yes, and a picky vegetable eater as well.
So are you a picky eater growing up, or are you one of those that you eat anything and everything?
A little bit more of a picky eater growing up, but not so much now, though.
OK, yeah.
See, we can be adults.
I'll have some green peppers on pizza, maybe, if you do like peppers and onions and mushrooms kind of thing.
Yeah, absolutely.
So you were in the Dells at the State Democratic Convention over
the weekend,
which I would have done if I didn't have that previous commitment to Canada, not realizing that in visiting friends there, I was going to spend an extra day against my will.
But that was the airline's fault, not anybody had immigration, customs enforcement, anything like that.
So while I was in Canada, you were in the Dells, they elected a new chair, I'm sure they talked all about next year.
And I imagine that
One can go to the recombobulation area in the very near future and get some of your takeaways from the convention.
Yeah, I had a couple stories that I posted over the weekend while I was there.
I had an opportunity to interview the keynote speaker for the event, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock.
So go check that one out at the recombobulation area.
And then I wrote a story about the chair vote.
on Sunday with Devon Remaker coming out ahead over Joseph Hecke and William Garcia.
It did go to a second round in the Rank Choice vote there, which I thought was pretty interesting.
But so you can read that there.
And I'm also writing kind of longer what Reconpopulation Era readers will be accustomed to reading after big events that I cover.
You know, 10 takeaways is typically what I will do there.
And I'm finishing that up.
now.
And, you know, it was my number one takeaway on the list as I'm going through it here is it was really the Ben Wickler show.
It was, you know, Ben Wickler celebrating his the end of his run, his six years as chair of the state Democratic Party.
He took the stage.
I lost count of how many different times that he took the stage over the course of the week.
Obviously some ceremonial duties, bringing it in and out, but he also delivered
a 17 minute speech of his own really powerful one.
He also joined Senator Tammy Baldwin during her prime time address to kind of have a conversation between the two of them instead of just hearing the Senator speak.
And, you know, so much of what was talked about was, you know, just the last six years of his leadership.
and what that has meant to transform the party.
And I think in so many ways, if we look from 2010 to 2018 in Wisconsin politics, we can characterize that as the Walker era, perhaps 2019 to 2025 could be characterized as the Wichler era.
Oh, I think that's entirely fair.
And that is not a knock on Tammy Baldwin or Mark Buchan or Gwen Moore or anybody else.
But I mean, it is a pace that he set.
It is, you know, a fundraising era of productivity that will probably be unmatched in state Democratic Party history.
And look, I know at a convention, folks are naturally upbeat.
even Democrats.
Sometimes they do form circular firing squads and things like that, which is why I asked this question.
Yes, they celebrated Ben Wickler.
Did you feel like the delegates were in a healthy place going forward?
Or did you get a sense that there was a lot of, you know, woe is me, Ben Wickler is going, the party is going to lose momentum and things like that?
Yeah, I think there's still a lot of optimism, I think, you know, just from throughout the weekend.
I think, you know, even though there was a lot of competition between, especially between the top two candidates, Remaker and Zipecki in the race, I think most people like both of the candidates and just had to decide which of the two candidates they'd like more.
But I also think, you know, it's just, yes, it's...
Wicklers are big shoes to fill and as I grabbed a quote from the Wisdoms treasurer I don't know how many other people other people were taking note of this that particular speech In the convention, but treasurer Randy Udell who is also a state representative He said that the party operated at an unprecedented scale in 2024 Raising nearly 70 million dollars saying this performance exceeded that of any state party across the country so that is
quite the legacy to leave with the party and some big shoes to fill.
But I think overall, the mood, I think the spring election results have absolutely reinvigorated the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
I do wonder what this convention would have been like had that election not happened.
Had it been, you know, just
coming off of the loss against Donald Trump last fall.
If that was the main topic that people were thinking about, but I think with the spring election, any mention of Susan Crawford, any mention of defeating Elon Musk got just raucous applause in the building.
So I think that those results from April certainly had an impact nationally, but obviously had a clear impact on the state of mind from Wisconsin Democrats.
that's that's for sure.
We're talking to Dan Schaefer from the Reconpopulation area and Civic Media's political editor from Tony up in national on YouTube.
I think the next era could be Representative Mark Bocan really liking what he's doing recently.
Bernie Sanders even mentioned him as someone to watch.
That wouldn't surprise me and I think part of part of that.
uh, I'm not, I'm not giving Derek Van Orden credit here, but could be the Van Orden effect where, where Mark Buchan felt like, well, somebody's got to stand up to this guy or he's just going to bully his way through and truly be Wisconsin's next Joseph McCarthy.
So, but it's not just Van Orden.
Mark Buchan has been increasingly vocal about what the progressive caucus among House Democrats should be, should want and what they stand for.
Yeah, he's been, you know, I think his profile is certainly rising in a number of ways.
He's had some high profile moments questioning members of the Trump administration.
And yes, he was there at the convention this weekend.
He delivered a speech to he talked about, you know, Derek dealing with Derek van Orden and how he
Mark Pokan of the second district has held more town halls in the third district than Derek Van Orden has this year.
So he's really making an effort there to really put...
Put Mr. Van Orden on notice, and boy, doesn't he need it.
You and I know that well.
Oh, do we ever?
So you wrote this column last week asking if Governor Tony Evers should run for a third term.
At any point, were any food products thrown at you during the convention, or people just coming up to you just to boo?
Anything
like
that?
How were you received in
the Dels's weekend?
There was a lot of feedback about that column.
I will say that a lot of a lot of the conversations that I had Were off the record, so I'm not gonna share any of the details with that But I do think there there were a lot of people who I would say are more receptive to it than what you might see publicly right now I'll just say that But you know didn't didn't have any any problems with the food and the drinks and that didn't wake up with any arrows in my back You know or anything like that, you know, it's it's one thing that
to write a column like this, calling for a very well-liked Democrat to step aside and not seek another term right before the convention.
But people can disagree without being disagreeable.
I think there are a lot of issues that are fake both sides.
a conversation.
I think this is an actual both sides conversation.
I think there, this is one that, you know, I think there can be a case to be made that Evers is the right person to run again.
And obviously I made the case that he'd be better off passing the torch.
And so, you know, Evers did not give any indication on what he's going to do in his roughly, he had a fairly short speech about between 10 and 15 minute speech.
that he delivered at the convention.
You know, obviously he had a presence there.
He had an ice cream hospitality suite going during the afternoon of the convention, very on brand for the governor.
But there was really no indication of whether or not he would be running, even though the theme of the convention overall was the road to 2026.
So I think clearly it's going to be a big question going forward.
The party had some decisions to make this weekend.
You know, this was kind of a definitely
I had people talking, this column did, but any takes on it.
you know, might be forthcoming in the weeks ahead.
Who knows, though?
It was a very it's a very earnest question and some very earnest emails have come in.
We made it our question of the week in our Sunday morning newsletter should Governor Evers run for a third term.
Folks can respond to it themselves by sending us an email radio at up north news wi.com.
And I won't I read through some of them yesterday and I will through the course of the week again.
But I just wanted to second that note that this is this is something that people feel
I won't say strongly.
It's probably something they weren't thinking much about until recently.
But they have some very genuine feelings about whether he should or should not run for another term and for folks saying, well, is this going to have an impact on next year's race?
I would point out that the election is still just under a year and a half away.
This convention weekend will be a distant memory by that point.
That's true and you know the governor has said that he's going to make this decision after the budget process is over
There's some things we could talk about when it comes to the budget process.
Oh, but wait.
But wait,
there's the
budget process.
We started the program this morning with that social media post from Chris Kappenga from Waukesha County saying, well, if I got a vote for what joint finance my fellow Republicans are giving me, well, maybe I just would rather not have a budget at all.
I think, to a degree, that's actually telegraphing what Republicans might want to do.
And I'm giving you all of 30 seconds to tell me if you think it's a real possibility or not that Republicans would just not send the governor a budget.
I think it's interesting.
We also saw how the Scott Walker boosted that comment from Chris Kappenga on his social media feed as well.
So that's interesting.
We've heard before that
They might need democratic votes in the state senate to pass a budget.
Maybe they just don't even pass a budget at all.
It's it's very possible.
Yeah,
exactly.
We're talking to Dan Schaefer from the Reconpopulation Area and political editor for Civic Media.
A local update is coming up for some of you.
For those of you hanging here, we'll have some final news and notes from our visit with Dan Schaefer.
And then tomorrow, we've got Melissa Baldoff.
We'll talk about the climate.
Melissa Kaye, James Kelly, Earl Ingram, Todd Alba.
And remember, you can follow my team at Up North News all day long through our newsletters, social media, website at UpNorthNewsWI.com and
of course, right here.
Mornings on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Ritalo.
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.
Remember, we've got Brewer's Cubs beginning this evening, pregame at 6.30 on several civic media stations.
And so of course, head over to civicmedia.us to learn more.
Dan Schaffer is with us from the Reconpopulation area.
And we may not have enough time to get into bucks and brewers and everything, but Brewer's Cubs, I mean, you can't, you won't not watch that this week.
This is going to be a big
series.
And am I remembering that's in Milwaukee for that series too, right?
Is that right?
Or is it on the
road?
Nope, this is on the road.
Oh, it is on the road.
Okay, so you know, I live not too far from the stadium and on the west side of Milwaukee.
So you can always tell when it's a Cubs weekend, and they just come take over half of the
town.
Yes, I know.
It's a nuisance, a necessary nuisance that we have to put up with for brewers and cubs.
But anyway, let's get back to some of what Dan's covering over at the Reconpopulation area.
And we were talking about the convention before.
And obviously, one of the
challenges that they talk about is what we, we call messaging, which is simply, you know, how are you talking to the people?
Are you talking to the people like a real person?
Or, or are you not connecting with them?
And obviously, there was a lot of talk about that after Donald Trump won back the White House.
So how would you, how would you characterize the chatter about messaging to the public?
Yeah, I think that became, you know, a pretty key topic among those who were running for chair.
Joe Zappecki had no stranger to the listeners here on Mornings with Pat Critello.
You know, he's a regular voice for Democrats on the airwaves and one of the things that he talked about.
in his campaign for chair.
I think his first public statements about that campaign for chair was how Democrats have got to do better when it comes to communicating and having better, more effective communicators.
I absolutely agree with Zopecki on that point.
You know, I think you've had Devon Remaker on your show.
I think a couple other civic media shows have had him on there.
So it's not like he's a stranger to making a media appearance.
But I think of the two candidates, Zopecki, that was
clearly a strong point in Zipecki's column, the media approach.
And one thing that I heard kind of over the course of this chair race or whatever is that, you know, the fact that Sarah Godluschi
is going to be the first vice chair.
She ran for that role and was unopposed and elected to be the next first vice chair.
Felicia Martin has been in that role for the last six years for the full duration of Ben Wickler's time there.
But I do wonder if Sarah Godluschi is going to take a more public facing role with the party given some of the fact that she's been a candidate and has a little bit more of a media background than Remicor.
I do wonder if that's going to be a dynamic ahead of us.
for, you know, that aspect of kind of this next chapter for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin as well.
Well, I think that it, she now has reason to, whereas simply as Secretary of State, you know, she did, although you run as a Democrat, was probably looking to be above some of the
partisanship that's out there.
And now as an officer in the Democratic Party, I would not be a bit surprised to have her, you know, be more vocal on a lot of these issues.
Over the period of the convention, of course, is when we learned about the tragedy in Minnesota, the shootings, the killings, the the the woundings and the arrest of the assailant as well.
And I, I can't even imagine what
That was like being at the convention and listening to people talk about the the era that we live in these days.
Yeah, it certainly brought us a different kind of tone to the convention overall.
And there was, as soon as I got there, it was after the news broke in the morning and made it my way over to the resort in Wisconsin Dells.
There was already a pretty substantial security presence at the hotel and throughout the convention, and so that had ramped up.
And I think we've learned, even just in the last 24 hours here, that many Wisconsin Democrats had their names on this...
this manifesto or whatever they're calling it from this Minnesota assassin.
Tammy Baldwin's office confirmed with me yesterday that she was on the list.
I think Gwen Moore has talked about this publicly.
Kelda Roy's, who was also there, talked about this publicly.
And so it certainly had people a little bit shook and with good reason.
And they were still looking for this individual at the time.
Another reminder of the frightening political moment that we're living in and and the You know the real Real threats and fears that the people in elected office are facing in this day and age
Well, they are and obviously the the broader topic has been political violence and political rhetoric What I've heard less about because it didn't fit the the definition of a mass shooting, but this is this is still another
instance of how the easy availability of guns especially you know semi-automatic weapons some of the same kind of weapons that are used in mass shootings were a part of this and I think again we're gonna we're gonna hear thoughts and prayers from folks but I I sure would like that discussion to center on where these guns came from and whether there are ways to make them less available to whoever wants to do this again and sadly
there is somebody that's going to see this and go, oh, maybe that's what I want to do next.
Yeah, it's, you know, I think I was watching the Daily Show last night, John Stewart talked about this a little bit and talked about how Republicans message about immigration is just any one, you know, any one person who comes across the border and commits an act of violence is too much.
But, you know, we're never going to have that same type of conversation when it comes to gun violence.
in this country, which is frustrating.
But I think it was great to see so many of the people who maybe were directly part of that list, maybe just had their friends on it, whatever it might be.
soldiering on throughout the weekend and, you know, keeping the head held high and keeping the eyes forward on, you know, looking to the future and continuing kind of like the larger theme of the convention and all of that.
Correct.
The work, the world goes on.
Involved surge there, that's for sure.
That's right.
The work goes on.
Dan Schaefer from the Reconpopulation Area, read his stuff over at Civic Media as well.
Thank you, Dan.
Have a great day.
Thanks so much, Papi.
Well,
All right, thank you.
Coming up next will be Matinair on air along with Jane Matinair.
Greg Bach, my thanks to today's guest, Dan Schaefer, Chad Holmes, Lou Ann Byrd, Hans Breitenmoser, Dan Hagen, and of course, Brittany Merleau and Parker Olsen and to all of you for being here this morning.
I'm Pat Critello from Up North News, home of Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy newsroom.
Enjoy your day.
We'll see you at 6 a.m.
tomorrow here up north.
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