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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake WSOTA studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Good morning again.
It is 806.
Nice to have you back here up north on this Monday morning, September 15th.
Parker Olson producing us down in Madison's Studio A2.
We've got Jocasta Zamorrepa coming up.
She's a member of Milwaukee Common Council, a former state legislator, and now a candidate for Wisconsin's Secretary of State.
the announcement or the the visit I should say comes on the day of an announcement by state senator Kelda Roy's that she is getting into the governor's race so she will be joining Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley on the Democratic side.
all competing for the nomination in August of next year to run for Wisconsin Governor.
Okay, while we're in Madison, let's head down the hallway to Studio A1 where we find John and Gordy from our Madison Station WMDX there.
Emmy award-winning John and Gordy, or at least I mean...
You don't know you don't know that they're not because they were given at me still like so many different things I've never heard of before That why wouldn't John and Gordy win an Emmy too for some channel that I've never watched before Way to sell you guys.
How are you?
Well,
thanks.
Yeah, I agree.
You know, we're waiting for that notice in the mail from the Emmys.
One of these days, we'll get it.
Well, we're up for the best of Madison and Madison Magazine, just like the Milwaukee Magazine.
We're here in Madison.
We're up for the best of Madison.
Best radio team.
I have a feeling that we're going to win, Pat.
I'm just going to... Don't jinx us.
I'm going to feel good about it now.
But me, I'll talk
about it later.
didn't you keep your acceptance speech to 45 seconds or less?
Right.
That's right.
That was the challenge last night.
Yeah,
me.
So that was an unusual little ploy.
And it helped him make it through the program.
Well, and I also think, yeah, it was a it was a nice device or crutch, depending on your point of view tab.
And let's let's face it, the Boys and Girls Club made well more than $100,000 by the time.
I mean, you can't buy that kind of advertising.
And it was
a
good idea.
It was a good
move overall.
Now, Sherry and I did watch it.
We did get through many categories saying never saw it.
never heard of it.
I don't want to watch that.
Oh, there's one I've heard of.
And then of course, that one didn't win.
So I guess we're just uncultured slobs.
I don't know.
But
the thing that bothers me is that Apple TV has all these award winning shows.
And who has Apple TV anyway?
Yeah,
like all these others that okay, you're going to pay this much for the Hulu.
Yeah, this much for Apple TV and this much for Netflix.
And crime.
And I love that.
they're now they're all talking about well let's make it easier to let's bundle some of these so you can just pay one bill yeah it was called cable
Yeah,
we warned everybody, you know, if you want to separate all this stuff out and pay individually, you're going to pay a whole hell of a lot more.
Were we right?
I mentioned during the six a.m.
hour, and I want to bring it up again that there was this one moment, though, that was especially telling when they honored the Golden Girls on their 40th anniversary.
And there were some folks, Reba McIntyre and others who came out and sang the theme song.
Thank you for being a friend by Andrew Gold.
And you could see everybody in the crowd was mouthing the words, because everybody knows the words, people were moving to the music.
And I'll give Sherry Carter for saying it first.
She's like, see, that's what TV used to do.
We all know the words to that because we all saw it because we'd all come together and watch the same few programs.
I defy you to come up with anything even close to that from nowadays when people would go, Oh, yeah, I know, I know that theme or I know that show.
It just doesn't
TV doesn't do that for us anymore.
It defy it fragments us as much as possible.
Yes.
Well, not
only that, but they don't they don't do those kind of little theme show songs at the beginning of shows anymore.
Yeah, just
start the show, you
know, without those
were really nice because because it kind of set you up for what
the
show is about.
You
know, yes, exactly.
Now I mean, with
There's limited exceptions.
Tony catches one on YouTube.
Hey, Game of Thrones brought us all together.
Yeah, kind of.
But again, not everybody had HBO.
You know, not everybody was watching it.
And frankly, the theme while compelling was also really depressing.
Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
Oh, yeah.
Let's get happy and watch a dragon roast somebody.
That's that's some good family viewing right there.
I think Penguin brought everybody together, though.
Penguin.
Where was that on?
I saw that.
I'm like, who's got a show called Penguin now?
Well, I don't know.
I think that was on max.
The thing is, it's a very dark.
No, it's not going to bring people together necessarily.
And as somebody who grew up on the Adam West, you know, Bert Ward version, the campy TV one.
Yeah, I didn't mind when the first couple of Batman movies were a little bit darker.
It's like,
You know, it's a crime series.
It's a comic book thing.
But I mean, now it's gone to this place where it's just unwatchable unless you really get into really dark stuff.
And, you know, that's that's definitely not my cup of tea.
But
well, it was it was a really good series, though, very, very odd and strange.
And the villain in it
won an Emmy last night.
She did such a fantastic job.
I can't recall her name.
But she did such a great job.
And to see her out on the stage exuberant, even that shout that yell that she gave for winning the award was just so much fun.
I mean, she really truly enjoys getting into the acting.
did did did she swear to because it felt like every other again, the thing that made it tough to watch on a broadcast network was everybody felt the need to, you know, drop an audio warden and there'd be that seven second delay, you
know, and then you
start to hear the show again.
And I think maybe that makes them feel good.
But it really try to think of your audience, you know, we can't do you.
Well, see, I have a thing here on this show.
And what we'd like to do is say the s word on this program, we'd like to say it more often.
It's in almost every clip now.
Everybody's talking about it.
Everybody gets to say it on network news and it's in these network clips that I'm trying to play on the show.
I think, you know, someday we'll get to that point just like L, you know, just like damn made it.
But do we have to?
You know, I mean, is that is it inevitable that we go?
We have to.
We have to.
I'm sorry.
I mean, I just worried that maybe that's a little too much exposure to Catherine down there.
You know, the station manager, maybe warped your view of language.
Yeah, maybe.
Although I like like I said before, nothing, nothing taught me to swear like TV and radio behind the scenes.
You know, partially in the headset.
There
you go.
That's right.
I learned words from my first TV director when I was operating the camera.
And I mean, you wish it could be as family friendly as damn it, quite low.
Why are you doing that?
It's like, no, no, no.
No, it was far beyond that.
It's almost a magical experience, really.
I mean, we do swear off the air, but for some reason, when that microphone is open, we don't do it.
I don't know.
It's magic.
I mean, you have to.
It's like working at the lumberyard and knowing not to put your hand in the saw.
You know, it's just it just comes.
Okay, you know, I like that.
There you go.
So I mentioned a couple of times it was just a gorgeous weather weekend and we hit the fall festival in downtown Eau Claire over the weekend.
Were you guys at any particular events or was it a good, you know, kind of housework
weekend?
at a big event in Milwaukee, I went to see Ringo Starr.
Oh, Ringo
Starr.
And his all-star band.
And
John actually purchased a...
A Ringo star t-shirt for me.
Oh, look at
that.
A piece in love.
A piece symbol on there.
And there's Ringo.
He's loving Ringo.
Oh, I like it.
See, isn't that incredible?
It's just wonderful.
What a great experience seeing Ringo do all the songs that he actually sang with the Beatles.
Nice.
Thank God they
made him a
singer in some of the songs, you
know?
That t-shirt actually cost you $100 because I feel like concert t-shirts are getting outrageous now.
Well, it was $40.
Really?
You spent that much.
This is the
first time he's ever given me anything in 40
years.
Well, Gordy has given me things, but it's because he's just cleaning house.
I gave you a banjo.
I
picked it up for 25 bucks at a garage sale.
Wait, do one of you want to play a banjo?
I used to play banjo.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What
was the inspiration Steve Martin or Kermit the frog or somebody else
five string banjo More like Steve Martin, maybe
This
was actually a guitar banjo.
But
it's
exactly like a banjo.
I mean, it plays like a banjo looks like
a
banjo, but it's actually got six strings and tuned like a guitar
like a guitar.
Yeah.
So interesting.
Okay.
Did did did you either last night or other things like the like the Oscars?
Do you watch any of the red carpet coverage and look at the the outfits and try
a little I saw a little bit of that.
My wife and loves watching
that stuff.
Oh, yeah.
Some people really do and
I mean, if we happen to be a couple of minutes early to the broadcast, we'll put on a little bit of it.
And I just remember turning to Sherry and going, I can't pull that off as Walter Goggins came in.
Is it white lotus that he's on or one of the other?
He's got the slicked back hair.
Some weird
thing.
Just he was dressed in white, white slacks, white shirt, white coat.
And the shirt, of course, was open to the navel.
and he had the gold chains on.
I mean, it was as 70s as it gets.
And
I
thought that's a bold move in 2025.
But, you know, he could pull it off.
There was Jenna Ortega, who was basically, basically she rated her grandma's jewelry box.
And instead of wearing an actual top, she was just wearing in chains all of these
like brooches and and and other jewels and things.
I kept
waiting for some strange movement of some sort,
you know,
accident.
Yeah, you wouldn't want to start a dance contest with her.
And the strange thing is she plays a young girl like a teenager.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And to see her as an adult, I mean, she's in her 20s, early 20s.
You know, it's it's just strange.
It almost seems
Uh, wrong.
Wrong.
Maybe what you're
looking for there.
Yeah.
But that's, you know, I know people play roles that are either much younger or much older than them.
You know, remember the first time what's it called the Wilford Brimley challenge or whatever when an actor is actually older than they were when Wilford Brimley.
portrayed the old guy in cocoon, you
know?
Yes.
Or you look at Carol O'Connor when he played Archie Bunker.
He was like 44 years old or something like that, you know, or 40, 48, but not in his 60s, the way that you would look.
And that goes both ways with people like friends, you know, no group of people in their mid 30s is going to be living like that.
But they're basically portraying people in their mid 20s.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, that
was a crazy show.
Yeah,
love that.
It kind of makes you wonder what they think of all of us when we're on TV.
But first off, they think that I'm like, six, five, well, you're a TV anchor, you must be six feet tall.
No, no, just sit
in the chair.
And how many times you guys must get Oh, you don't look like you sound at all on the radio.
That's
right.
People use their imaginations.
They enjoy imagining us as very attractive young men.
Don't they?
We want to posture that, so we're turning the camera off right now on Johnny.
And we've only got about a minute left till break.
So was there a principal primary topic from the show today that people are talking about in the Madison area?
Well, it's still Charlie Kirk.
That's what we do here on the program.
Yep.
No, we did.
We did a lot of that.
And I I lost track now.
Somebody just put up a number of how many times Derek van Orden has tweeted about about it threatening funds or hurling insults or whatever.
I mean, it is that it's hundreds.
It's something else.
He
really is
out there.
It really is.
By the way, he says we're in a civil war from now on.
So
there you go.
That's Derek Van Orden.
That's what you want from a member of Congress there.
We're talking to John and Gordy, WMDX and Madison, part of the Civic Media Radio Network.
And then coming up in our next half hour, we'll be talking to Joe Castez Amaripa, who is a candidate for Wisconsin Secretary of State.
Brewer's were losers to the Cardinals yesterday, three to two, but they still took two out of three off today.
And they begin a series at home against the Los Angeles Angels tomorrow night.
Live from the heart of America is up north.
Thanks for making this the place to
to spend part of your Mondays.
I'm Pat
Critello.
This is Civic Media Radio Network.
You can sign up for what we do at UpNorth News by signing up for our daily newsletter.
Head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com to get all the latest.
We talked earlier about the Prime Rib Trail, something that was created to help you find all the restaurants that
make primary, but priority on their menu across Wisconsin.
It's also voter registration day tomorrow.
So a little reminder that this week you can go check your voter registration status and make sure that you're on the rolls, you know, kind of beat the rush before all of next year's busyness with the elections that are going on.
And a story in there on how to apply for FEMA flood relief.
Again, head to UpNorthNewsWI.com for that.
And in our weekend newsletter,
We're talking to John and Gordy from WMDX in Madison.
And guys, I got to tell you that in the weekend newsletter, I accidentally broke our readers.
I gave them a multiple choice question.
And I said, I pointed out that Ron Johnson, once again, last week on September 11th, spreading the false conspiracy theory that there must have been explosives in the basement of Building 7.
What else would explain how it came down?
And I said,
The question was this, if you could get Ron Johnson to stop talking forever about one conspiracy, which would it be?
would it be 2016, where he claims that Ukraine was actually the one that was meddling in the election and not Russia, or 2020, where he was very nearly a mule for the fake elector's ballots from Wisconsin, or the World Trade Center conspiracy, or the COVID conspiracy that there's some conspiracy that keeps us from knowing the truth about ivermectin.
And I
did not put an all of the above in there.
And that was, I mean, the message you're flooding, like, I can't pick one from this
guy.
You can't, you can't pick one.
That's how he spends his time.
It's unbelievable.
Such a waste of time for a senator.
I know.
Well, here, I got a
waste of time for it.
I found the number.
The latest number of Derek Van Orden tweets related to the Charlie Kirk murder last week is around 550.
Wow.
550.
tweets.
And most of those are reposts where he gets the post by somebody else, their reaction, he doesn't like their reaction.
So he puts it up there and either says, we need to get this person fired, or we need to cut federal funding, or he calls them words that we can't say on the radio, this from a sitting member of Congress.
I've not
looked at that.
And guys, I, you know, you, you talk to people all the time as do I. We talked to people who are, you know, range from center left to center right and in that middle part of the spectrum is nothing but a feeling like, look, violence is never the right answer.
Retribution is never the right alternative.
Let's look for peaceful ways to go forward.
And then you got people like Terry Van Orden, Donald Trump and others that I would
I guess I'm not really going out on a limb to say that's not being helpful right now.
No,
and that most people most people you talk to would would not fit in that category.
Well, I have to admit, I was trolling the right in the last two days.
I was just answering their crazy accusations, you know, that Democrats are the murder party.
Oh, yeah.
And, you know, I was responding to all of that.
I was trying to at least sound
You know credible in some way shape or form about using profanities and without accusations Trying to get at the heart of their argument which they have a hard time getting to Without calling people names and calling, you know, we're the murder party,
right?
This just gets to the whole notion of freedom of speech and that was as you know from the Madison campus being right there That's always a hotbed of you know, what is cancel culture versus?
maybe let's not invite somebody who's going to be delivering, you know, a message of hate or what have you.
But it sure seems like a case of, well, there's freedom of speech for Charlie Kirk, but not necessarily freedom of speech about Charlie Kirk.
Yes, that's different.
Yeah.
Yeah, we were talking with former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin this morning on the air about just that thing about, you know, we're polarized, but he believes firmly in the freedom of speech.
and that we should go ahead and be able to say these kind of things both sides.
But as I mentioned to him, there's also an echo chamber on the right, where they don't get the blowback, they don't get the criticism, and they don't expect to get the criticism.
And when they do, they call us names for doing it.
Yeah, there's a
lot of name calling it.
And look, I get that this is this is very upsetting for people who were his supporters or who agree with him.
But
the tone of the reactions has been, shall we say, indicative of the times that we live in.
Well, let's end on a much lighter note.
We talked about the brewers winning two out of three from the Cardinals.
But then, thank goodness, we've always got the Cubs.
And you were mentioning Anthony Rizzo, you know,
When you don't have your baseball glove with you, your skills just aren't what they ought to be,
right?
Yeah, he was out in left field at Wrigley Field with Eddie Vedder and Cindy Crawford, and he was there to retire as a cub, basically,
for
the weekend.
And they were honoring him, and a ball came out to the left field, and he almost caught it.
It was in his hands.
One
hand.
Just like John Peterson
a couple of weeks ago.
And it bounced off his hand just like it happened to me when we went out to see the Brewers and the Cubs.
Wow.
This is a replay and I can be now compared to Anthony Rizzo.
It's amazing, you know.
Yeah.
So
much alike.
Oh, yeah.
I would have drawn the comparisons to Rizzo from the Muppet show before I would have gone with Anthony Rizzo.
But I understand.
I
mean, I have caught a foul ball.
But I've also nearly had my fingers dislocated from the t-shirt gun.
You know shooting those
things
up and then they come down and they didn't catch it quite right hit the top of the fingers and I mean
When they say they put on your little ticket or whatever that you have to take responsibility for anything that gets flung into the audience.
They're not kidding.
And that in Anthony Rizzle's case might include a little public humiliation.
You never know what's going to come up next.
Yeah, that's john and gordy weekdays from six to eight on our civic media station, Madison, WMDX guys, it's always fun.
Thank you so much for kicking the week off.
Thank you, Pat.
Yeah, thank you.
Have a great start to your week.
When we come back, we're going to be talking to Joe Castezema Rippa.
She's on the Milwaukee
Common Council, a former state legislator and now a candidate for Wisconsin's Secretary of State.
I'm Pat Critello.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Nice to have you back on this Monday morning, September 15, 835 is the time right now.
Up North News is a separate entity from civic media, though we're like best buds, we're like peanut butter and jelly weekday mornings from six until nine.
And you can catch what we're doing at Up North News over at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
Up North News is part of Courier Newsroom, which has state based outlets around the country, podcasts, newsletters.
One I'd like to tell you about is done by Melissa Ryan, it's called
control alt-right delete, a weekly newsletter devoted to covering the rise of far-right extremism, white nationalism, disinformation, and online toxicity.
Needless to say, she's following up on the Charlie Kirk killing and what the reaction says about America.
Good stuff to be reading.
Head over to couriernewsroom.com for that newsletter.
and much more.
We are getting into talking about the candidates for the 2026 election for all kinds of posts.
It all started with Tony Evers saying that he's not going to run for a third term as governor.
And so this morning, State Senator Keldor Roy has announced she's running for governor.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crawley is running for governor.
Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez is going to be running for governor.
So who's going to run for lieutenant governor?
Well, Secretary of State
Sarah Gottluske has announced that she's going to be running for Lieutenant Governor.
So who's going to be running for Secretary of State?
All right, I got your candidate right here, Jocasta Zamorrepo, former legislator, and now a Milwaukee Common Council member joins us from the Milwaukee area.
Jocasta, nice to see you again.
How are you?
Good morning, Pat Craig.
Well, thanks for the invitation today.
My pleasure.
Nice to have you here.
We're going to get into the Secretary of State's office and why you're running for it and all of that in just a sec.
But for folks who have not heard from you previously, we'd love to hear all about you.
Give us a little bit about your own story that took you to where you are today.
Of course.
Well, I was first.
elected back in 2010 when I won a seat in the state assembly and so I served for nearly a decade, just about a decade in the state assembly representing the near south side of the city of Milwaukee.
I was honored to be the first Latina woman elected to the state legislature following and Pedro Colón's footsteps, our first Latino.
to ever serve in the state legislature.
And from there, after serving 10 years, decided to make the jump to local government.
And I ran in 2020 successfully for the Milwaukee Common Council, again, as a history maker, being the first Latinaian, first openly LGBTQ plus member of the Milwaukee Common Council.
And now I'm ready to go for it and run statewide in hopes that Wisconsinites will have me and I'd like me to be our next Secretary of State.
Can you talk a bit about both your time on the Common Council in Milwaukee and as a legislator, the kinds of things that were high priority issues and or accomplishments for you?
Absolutely.
Well, you know, I came in in 2011, like it or not, it was a bittersweet time for us.
We came in.
If you recall, Pat Crightlow, that was kind of what we referenced as the bloodbath for the Dems.
Scott Walker came in and they swept in, had a majority in both houses, the assembly and the state senate.
And so they promptly came down with the budget repair bill and Act 10.
And we saw those historic protests by labor, by teachers, by Wisconsinites from across the state come down to our state capital and protest.
um taking away the collective bargaining rights of worker public workers uh and so that's what I came into in 2010 and it's funny I don't know if I'm a I'm it's it's an interesting I hate to say I'm a bad luck charm but that was 2010
when
I was elected coming in in 2011 in 2020 I was elected to the common council in the height of the pandemic
which was a very nightmarish time for a candidate.
As you can imagine, we had to come off the doors.
And you know, Pat, that in local elections, smaller elections, knocking on doors, door canvassing as the lifeblood of a successful campaign, I had to come off the doors in the middle of my campaign and got elected again at the height of the pandemic when everything was virtual.
And it was pretty traumatic, both my initial inauguration in 2011 as a state legislator and again,
my initial swearing in as an alder in 2020.
It's an interesting narrative.
Yes, you deserve a normal cycle.
I
think you've
got that coming for you.
What kinds of things do you especially like working on as a legislator and a common council member?
You know, in the legislature, I was seen as the go-to for immigration policy, for pro-immigration policy.
I was honored to work with my own Democratic colleagues.
And believe it or not, there was a time
that there were Republicans who were wanting to see things like comprehensive immigration reform, things like driver's licenses from documented Wisconsinites.
We know that there are many workers in our state that want to get to work safely, to and from work, get their children to and from school safely.
And so these were really, I was seen as kind of the point person on immigration reform, but I also did some things that folks don't even realize a lot of small business.
policy like working on our alcohol policy in this state.
I'm the one who helped pass a bipartisan bill to allow local distillers to be able to sample their products.
Just a teeny, you know, one ounce, a half an ounce sample at grocers and retailers.
And this really opened the door for so many of our local distillers to be able to compete with their national counterparts.
We're talking to Joe Castro, Samaripa, she's a candidate for Wisconsin Secretary of State.
Why Secretary of State?
What made you want to run for this statewide position in 2026?
Well,
honestly, Pat, I'll tell you, I was looking at LG, Lieutenant Governor.
I thought that I'd make a really excellent lieutenant governor.
I was looking at that position seriously knowing that Tony may bow out.
And so when he did, I thought I would make a play for a lieutenant governor.
But upon hearing about Sarah Godluschi's.
intentions to run for LG.
I think that she is an amazing candidate.
I think she's been great as our treasurer, as our Secretary of State, having already tried to run off our statewide seat.
And so I decided to go ahead and re-examine.
I thought, well, you know, I would
be honored to be her successor.
She's done some great work as our Secretary of State, and I'd love to succeed both she and Douglas Follett and continue to serve in this office as a Democrat.
And we need that right now more than ever.
Yes, and here's why.
It's really, yes, there are duties that come with Secretary of State, and prior to that, Sarah Gailewski served as state treasurer.
But there's just also a lot to be said for winning and holding the office.
We know that Republicans in the legislature took away a lot of duties from both positions.
We're talking about eliminating state treasurer.
But when it gets to Secretary of State, while they have watered down the duties so much,
They're also, they've indicated they are more than ready.
If they were to win the governor's race and hold the legislature, they would turn that Secretary of State's office into, you know, an election overseer that would be, let's just say, not exactly unbiased, correct?
And so there's a lot of importance to holding that office so that, frankly, it can't be abused.
Exactly, Pat.
This is one of the reasons why more than a secretary of state position, the Democrats have to retain this.
We know what they've done already in this election denying nonsense.
We know that there was some hullabaloo over Supreme Court justice protease edges as oath of office.
The Secretary of State maintains the oaths of office.
And so we need to make sure we have a Democrat that's not in that office that is not gonna, you know, have any shenanigans going on.
We have to make sure to keep it out of Republican hands at every cost.
Yeah, for folks who would say, well, wait a minute, we have the Wisconsin elections commission for that.
Well, the whole reason we have a Wisconsin elections commission is that when Republicans took control of the legislature, they got rid of the government accountability board.
which was acting on a much higher level with retired judges who were fair arbiters.
They created this Wisconsin Elections Commission, which is designed to have a three to three deadlock.
They created something with three Republican members, three Democratic members.
And so sometimes it worked quite well, but sometimes there's deadlock and there's nothing that says, like I said earlier, they couldn't then replace the Wisconsin Elections Commission with a single
Republican Secretary of State and do goodness knows what to election administration, which you hear about first hand, Jocasta, because it seems like every election cycle, you get the old Milwaukee's numbers are coming in late.
There must be something suspicious going on in Milwaukee when, you know, the real story is nothing like that.
Absolutely.
And I've been, of course, as you can imagine, I'm an old war horse.
I've been through many election cycles.
I have seen
The Republicans that come out to Milwaukee and try to harass and intimidate voters as they try to go to their polling location.
So I can only imagine what a nightmare it would be for us if a Republican were to get their hands on the Secretary of State office.
So I'm hoping to get out there and meet Wisconsinites from every corner of the state and earn their support next year in August for the primary and November for the general.
That's right, Joe Castezema, who is running for Wisconsin Secretary of State.
And as always, we tend to find candidates when they're on the road here and there.
You're on the road, but you're in the hometown because you've got Hispanic Heritage Month kicking off.
And we did explain earlier in the show.
why Hispanic Heritage Month begins on September 15th in the middle of the month.
And it's because so many countries in Central America declared their independence on this day.
Can you talk just a bit more about Hispanic Heritage Month and the importance of marking it as you're doing today?
Yes.
Yes, we are.
Thank you, Pat, for that.
We are kicking off this past weekend.
We kicked off Hispanic Heritage Month.
We know that I am Mexican-American.
Mexico celebrates its Independence Day.
I believe it was yesterday.
And so you'll see a lot of festivities going on.
But as you said, it's Independence Day for many Latin American countries.
And so it's important that we continue to celebrate our Latino.
community here in Wisconsin.
We are the fastest growing population in the great state of Wisconsin.
And so now more than ever, especially because so many Latino and immigrant families are under attack, in particular by the federal government under President Trump.
It's really important that we lift up these folks.
We want to make sure that Latinos are part of the fabric of the great state of Wisconsin, just like our German and Polish neighbors before us.
We too are immigrants who came to this great state and want to add to its culture and value and economics.
And so I'm eager to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with Latinos, with Wisconsinites across the board.
Well, and also making sure that you minimize the degree of intimidation, because we've seen that in Milwaukee too.
We've seen billboards and other messages talking all about voter fraud and making people almost afraid to go vote.
And so having you on the ballot and as an active candidate seems to me like that.
That can play a real positive role in encouraging voter turnout and voter registration.
Absolutely.
And of course, I want to represent all Wisconsinites here in the great city of Wisconsin.
But as a history maker, as somebody who was the first Latino woman and a couple of governmental bodies, I do see the value of having that diversity on the ticket.
I want to galvanize our Latino electorate.
I want them, I want to get them voting.
If they have the right to vote, I want them to vote in every election.
And of course, as a Democrat, I want them to vote Democrat.
We have seen over the last few election cycles that we are hemorrhaging some Latino voters to the conservative side.
And I just can't have that.
It's one of the reasons that I was inspired to run statewide in hopes of being that voice for, again, the fastest growing population in the great state of Wisconsin, our Hispanic community.
And now you hear how it is that she came to be 10 years in the legislature and all these years on the Common Council and now a candidate for Wisconsin Secretary of State, Jocasta Samaripa.
So good to talk to you as always.
Safe travels to you and thank you for spending some time with us this morning.
Thank you, Pat Critello.
All right, have a great day.
Good to see you.
When we come back, a somewhat familiar
face and voice, a globe trotter, a traveler.
So you might remember Jane McNair is her name.
And we'll catch up with her kind of where in the world is Jane McNair.
It turns out it might actually be back in a radio studio.
So we'll talk about her travels when we come back.
Tomorrow, we're going to have Dan Schaefer, Cam Stevenson, and Dan Hagen from Newswatch 12 and Rhinelander.
So join us tomorrow morning as well.
I'm Pat Gritlow.
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.
Now, along with all the usual sites, the Civic Media website, Civic Media Facebook page, Civic Media YouTube page, where you can watch us do the show.
You can also do that at the Up North News Facebook page, the Up North News YouTube page.
But then if you want more and more place to surf to and get updates on things.
This show has a Facebook page.
Just head over to facebook.com and look for mornings with Pat Crichtlow and you'll find we run the video feed there as well and other things of interest like when Keldor Roy's announced her run for governor early this morning and other news and notes throughout the course of the day.
I'd love to have you following me on social media.
Somebody that I used to follow, I can follow her again because she's back, Jane McNair.
American tourist is back here in the States now after going to one of her favorite places, which is also my new favorite place, and that would be Portugal.
Jane, how are you?
Welcome back.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Hold on.
That was my button, not your button.
Jane, welcome back.
Thank you so much.
It is always reassuring when my key card still works.
Because you know, you show up after a couple weeks and it's like, well, we'll give it a try.
Maybe you know, yes, and it still works.
So well, which was
just a joke before this administration.
And now you've got 1000 people who show up to work in their key card doesn't work.
And it's like, you're fired.
It's it's just not the it's not a joke anymore.
But of course, you are welcomed with open arms.
I know you haven't been back that long.
But could you
You go ahead and give Greg Bakker a grade right now if you had the report card for filling in for you for these
past
couple of
weeks.
I
would give him an A.
with their
listening.
Okay, I'm sorry, you can tell me the real great later.
That's totally understandable.
From what I understand, Craig and Calvin did a great job and Angela language here along with our regulars like you and Todd Alba and also Jim Santel, of course.
So no, I have no I knew the show would be in good hands.
I knew I could trust great.
Oh, and that is very kind.
But I also know you and I are at an age now we're like
I don't care.
I'm going anyway.
Burn it
down.
I wasn't going to not go.
That's true.
That's exactly it.
And again, I made my first trip to Portugal this year and absolutely just fell in love.
And it's a place you've been to like, like the friends of ours who introduced us to Portugal, you've been you are already a fan.
Yes, this was our third or fourth time in Portugal.
We spent a lot of time on the southern coast.
It's called the Algarve.
Is that area the southern coast of Portugal?
But we did travel to one of your favorite spots.
We were in Porto.
I believe it's the second largest city in Portugal after Lisbon.
And another one of those great old historic
cobblestone hillies and my husband drives.
We always rent a car.
I have so much respect for him, especially in driving in a city like Porto, where the GPS sends you down roads that you are not quite sure.
Are we really supposed to be here?
Because if I open the car window, I can touch this building.
Oh,
I feel like I can touch it without opening the window.
And my husband can touch the other side of the buildings.
And there's still people walking.
And so, yeah, that always makes me a little anxious.
But my husband does a great, great job.
Yeah, the same goes for Nazare, which is just south of there.
Oh, great.
Oh, but these streets are, yeah, they were not designed for automobiles.
No.
And yet, yeah, your GPS will send you down there and go, Oh, you just had down the street, not a street.
I mean, technically, it is you see the cars.
Yes.
But it is it is a character builder in terms of driving.
But again, just
gorgeous because Portugal's tourism economy is still relatively new.
They weren't a democracy until 50 years ago.
Right.
And so, you know, there are still people discovering Portugal and we are already just itching to go back there.
So I'm glad you got a chance to go see it again.
Did you get out to the Doro Valley where they have all those terraced vineyards and where
all
the port wine grapes come from?
We did not.
We did not tour the Doro Valley.
Again, we just kind of knocked around Porto for a day.
day and stayed at a very nice hotel, but it was about five and a half hours from where we were based.
So we just spent a fair amount of time on the road that day and kind of took our time, which is the nice thing.
When, when you're on holiday, we all would look at each other.
It's like, well, we're not late for anything.
No, no, no, no.
We can take, this can take as long or as little time as we'd like.
And
the castles.
I mean, every time you turn around, there's another medieval castle
that's there, you know, that hasn't been
reduced to rubble yet.
Yeah, we love old rocks.
My husband and I are big old architecture fans.
And the people are so lovely.
And the food is fantastic.
Oh,
the food.
Oh, my goodness.
Because I
mean, you're on the sea.
you
know, to begin
with.
So so much seafood, but just everything,
everything, everything.
And the the freshness of the vegetables and the tomatoes and just all of those things.
I don't know, it's probably part of the little magical envelope you're in when you travel and you're you're a tourist somewhere that everything tastes remarkable.
But there is something about their produce, I think that's just pretty special.
There is.
Without a doubt.
So I'm glad you had a great time.
And then you've got some of our our regulars.
It's like
food for guests.
You've got the comfort food of Dr. Lirely and Shaly Pittman coming in today on the show.
Yep.
Shaly Pittman is going to join us after the 9 30 news.
We have a new name in the governor's race.
So we're going to kick that around a little bit.
Dr. Kristen Lirely will be here measles of course cases.
Yay.
Continuing to grow in Wisconsin.
And what does that mean for the rest of us?
Yeah,
I mean,
how is this still a thing?
I know.
I
know
that that gets asked someplace else, but yes.
Right.
And then we're going to lighten things up.
We always do for the last half an hour of the show.
So we're going to do audio sorbet where Greg and Calvin are going to bring me up to speed on things they think I missed.
And then we'll wrap it up.
It should be a good one.
And then we'll wrap it up with this shouldn't be a thing today.
It is the see a later alligator edition.
So stay tuned for
that.
So much.
And then like you said, you'll be talking about Kelda Roy's jumping in the governor's race.
Maggie Dawn later today will have Ryan Stern add another.
candidate for governor who's running as well and I'm pretty confident there's going to be more announcements in the coming days here.
things are just starting to ramp up.
Jane, Matt and Eric, catch your weekdays from nine to 11.
And she's back.
That's all you can see.
And she's here on time.
She's not like, not on vacation time anymore.
No, back
on back on
real time.
Back to the real time.
All right.
Thank you, Jane.
Have a wonderful day.
All right.
And thanks to all of you for being part of things today.
Again, tomorrow on the program will be our typical Tuesday where we talked to Dan Schaefer from the Recon Bobulation Area and Cam Stevenson from Courier Newsroom in Washington, DC.
North News is part of Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy news network.
Find them at couriernewsroom.com.
And to find us, head up to northnewswi.com.
Have a great Monday.
We'll see you Tuesday morning at 6
a.m.
Brighton, Europe.
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