It is 7 0 6.
Nice to have you back here up north on a Monday morning.
It's December 1st and it is a cold one out there after all the snow from the weekend.
Park girls are producing things down in Madison Studio A2 and we're joined by Selena Heller, Up North News reporter out in the Chippewa Valley and.
birthday girl.
Dr. Kristen Lyrely, the birthday is tomorrow.
We're doing it today.
So today's the party.
We'll be joined at 735 by Craig Gilbert, a longtime writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the latest market poll showings and what they might mean for the 2026 midterms.
And at 835, we'll be joined by Dennis Bride.
Dennis is the mayor of Wauwatosa, and he has a book out about his first year in office back in 2020.
It was a little crazy back then, and we'll have this five-year look back when it was his first year as mayor.
And of course, along the way, you can join us at 855-75 Civic, 855-752-4842.
And then, of course, we've got something else new to talk about.
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All right, let's get back to the important parts right now It's Christian's birthday.
Here's our next guest to say hello Dennis McBride the mayor of Wauwatosa.
Hello Dennis.
How are you?
I'm great.
How are you doing?
Happy birthday, Kristen.
We've become members of each other's family, I guess, through all this.
Do you know you share your birthday with Pat's wife?
Tomorrow's a big day.
It's almost as big as Christmas.
shopping day left.
That's right.
about your new book.
Yes, thank you very much.
I just wanted to say hi to Kristen and she does a delightful job with her podcast, as you know.
She sure does.
We'll
later.
right.
We'll talk
Yeah, Pat.
That
Oh my gosh.
You know, it's like, how do I compete with Dr. Kristen Lierly for civic media people on the airways' birthdays?
I mean, it's, you know, it's hard enough getting older.
And now I have to, oh, but no, I just,
wanted to join in and say, very, very happy.
And you're right, December 2nd, every year, you share a birthday with Aaron Rodgers.
For a while, that was actually OK.
But it hasn't.
it's, but no, she does a wonderful job.
And I tell you, I mean, if anybody can get packed quite low as a guest on their show, I mean, that
Happy birthday,
birthday, Dr. Lierly.
I am on the line.
Good morning, everybody,
early birthday to Dr. Kristen Lierly.
Me too.
I'm doing well as quite chilly down here in Kenosha, and I'm feeling a lot of love and sympathy for those who are right now shoveling their driveways.
Yeah.
How did your new snowblower do?
Game day, peak performance.
used it three times this weekend, so yeah.
No problem.
I'm just, I'm just here to say happy birthday and that the best and the best babies are born in December.
I'm just putting it out there.
Yep.
Kristen, I did want to ask you one kind of semi-serious news slash medical question while we've got you here.
So you're not just a birthday girl.
You're not just a sports analyst.
You're also a doctor.
And I want you to interpret, and the audio is a little tough because this was President Donald Trump on Air Force One, but you know,
he got an MRI and again any other president we'd have heard about everything about this and he got asked about it uh let's give a listen to what he said to a reporter or to reporters not to mention not the least of which is his tone with these reporters let's play
it
So
relationship, it's okay with me.
It's perfect.
It's like my phone call.
I got a pitch.
It's absolutely perfect.
So if you want to hear about it, or if you want to release it, you want to have it release.
Newsnation.
Family newsnation.
Newsnation is the word housing, by the way.
But if you want to have it release, I'll release it for you.
It was like they were looking at you.
For what, releasing?
No, no, no.
What part of your body was the MRI looking at?
I have no idea.
It was just an MRI, the part of the body.
It wasn't the brain because I took the cognitive test and I aced that they got a perfect mark, which you would be capable of doing.
Goodbye, everybody,
Anybody who's ever gotten an MRI knows.
You have to fit into that tube.
It is a big deal.
It is very stressful for many people.
If you're getting an MRI, you know why you're getting an MRI.
And if you know that the results are perfect, you know what the results are then, I guess.
So I think it's very concerning that not only does he not know why he was getting an MRI, but he doesn't.
actually know what the results are.
And, you know, as you said, Pat, this is the president of the United States.
This is the leader of the free world.
Any other president before this, there would be so many questions.
There would be so much concern about what happens if, but with Trump, it's just dismissed and people talk about, you know, the news nation quip or this time he didn't call somebody a piggy.
Everything is a distractor from what the real story is, which is his health and his mental health.
from a distance certainly do appear to be declining and we should all be extraordinarily concerned about this.
All right.
Great example.
A guy who was a farmer kicked by a cow.
It's just came to me right now.
Um, kicked by a cow.
Uh, literally that's what my schedule said reason for visit kicked by a cow.
So I just can't wait for that.
Um, horrible infection on his leg that he had actually.
Kept under wraps for two weeks and it was now a necrotizing deep tissue Infection needed surgery like right now.
I gotta go milk my calves and it's too expensive So what do we do?
We set him up with outpatient IV antibiotic infusions for six weeks and he kept his leg and that's kind of the Push and pull we try to do out here in you know rural areas where I don't have a surgeon right?
But it was in the end, you know the fear of losing what?
kind of relatively small and declining income he had from farming.
And the hospital bill is that he couldn't predict, you know, thousands, maybe an ICU stay, which is three to $5,000 a day.
That's what kept him from getting the care he needed when he needed it.
Vividly remember being up all night on the phone trying to transfer this poor, sick little old man to a tertiary referral center for something that he
could have gotten at a regional hospital 30 minutes away, but they closed.
So now I've got to send them to Rochester.
I've got to send them to La Crosse.
I've got to send them to Minneapolis.
We're routinely sending people to Marshfield, the city of Marshfield, three hours away, you know, at four in the morning.
Negatively impacts everything.
And
Look for it at UpNorthNewsWI.com, UpNorth NewsWI, if you're searching on social media.
Live from Lake Osota, I'm Pat Quitelow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Remember our text to win word this hour?
Chill, CHI, LL.
Text it in and you could win.
It is December 1st, 2025.
It's a Monday morning.
Selena Heller is here from Up North News.
Dr. Kristen Lyrely, the early birthday girl, collecting some birthday love as well here today.
But in her doctor capacity, just heard that bite we played from a rural doctor speaking at an event here in Western Wisconsin about, you know, just to, again, just this could happen to any farmer.
It could actually happen to anybody.
In this case, it was a farm incident.
But these injuries that used to be seen rather quickly, easily in Eau Claire, but then you had hospitals close, you have other hospitals and clinics closing, you know, all around Wisconsin.
That story that we just played, Kristen, was not atypical.
And it takes the Lena to bring it to this point so that we can all hear that.
these are all of our conversations.
Whether we're talking about a farm injury or a missed screening that ends up with a cancer diagnosis or something else that we just plain can't afford.
And so we're trying to make decisions about how do we pay for this?
How do we take time off from work?
Who's going to help me care for my family if I experience an illness like this?
These are all of our stories.
And how are we going to get
to that care that we need when the hospital just closed and now we have to not just travel, but travel and stay in an unfamiliar place.
Our healthcare system is failing us in such a foundational way.
I am hopeful that voices like Selena's and opportunities like this.
will help our legislators understand that we have to do better?
Yeah, he got emotional because he said these are my patients and you know I care about them and I can't help but you know kind of feel for them and and it's he just said you know They don't want to be on the hook for that big bill that they know that they're gonna have so he just thinks about them all of the time and they're kind of exacerbating conditions and so this is This is the doctor from Dunn County
You know I care about people are valuable and
I care too much to not say anything.
Emotionally.
If people have fallen through the cracks and more people will, due to choices made, choices have been made.
So, you know, the care that you want, you want to be able to call your doctor, call your clinic, get the care you need when you need it, that's the kind of life that we all want.
That's not in line with where things are headed.
And they are a group of individuals that just get together for just different causes, this one being Medicaid and kind of working to that, just they say, you know, or a group of regular people.
So just recently, that group also went to county board meetings, and I'll be reporting on that too.
They went to different county board meetings and said, you know,
a lot of these things are going to be impacting the county level.
the county boards need to realize these things.
And, you know, whether it be mental health, where sheriff's departments are going to have to take more time to respond to calls and bring patients farther, things like that.
So they're just kind of going around and making people aware of the impacts that county level is going to be feeling.
It's a system when you go to the doctor to have a health condition diagnosed and treated, there's only so much we can do.
It's a fraction of all the other
stuff that has to happen.
And all that other stuff, as Pat McBride taught me, the social determinants of health are making sure that you have access to good healthy food and clean air and a place to live and somebody to help take care of your kids.
All of that other stuff is what your community provides.
And that's why this is so much bigger than just a visit to your doctor's office.
these events that they're doing to raise public awareness at the local level, at the local government level as well.
On Facebook from Dawn, even a dental appointment can be an hour to an hour and a half from you when you have little access to transportation and get rides from others who have to work.
Access to care is important.
for good health.
And
Uh let's and uh also from Robin Tigerton.
We'll get to another health note here.
Good morning from Tigerton.
Cloudy two degrees right now in Tigerton.
Tigerton had five inches of snow.
I worked Saturday night and a good crunch of Sunday plowing snow.
I was so tired.
I slept from
6.45 p.m.
to 7.15 a.m.
He was so tired.
When we come back, we're going to talk to Craig Gilbert about the midterms and what polling is telling us are the real headwinds for Republicans.
Live from the lake, I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
7.35 is the time right now on this Monday morning, December 1st.
Nice to have you here.
Again, the grown-up gift list text-to-win contest is back on.
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Craig Gilbert has been
writing about politics and everything that goes along with it from Washington DC and elsewhere for 35 years 25 of them with the Journal Sentinels Washington Bureau.
He's now a fellow at the Marquette University Law School's Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education.
He had an article in the Journal Sentinel a few days back about what a national Marquette poll shows about
what could happen to the Republicans in the midterm in 2026.
But we have other races in 2026 to talk about as well.
A state Supreme Court race in April and of course a governor's race in November of next year.
And Craig Gilbert joins us now.
Craig, good morning.
How are you?
I'm great.
It's nice to be with you.
Thank you so much So let's start with the the article that you'd written for the journal Sentinel about the national poll and I know most folks are familiar with the Marquette poll of Wisconsin voters, but they do national polling as well and look Donald Trump has been able to essentially defy gravity in so many ways in politics, but what I know is
from the midterms and special elections in his first term.
And in this term as well, Craig is that he can't defy the gravity of public opinion polling when it reaches a certain point, at least how it affects all of the other Republicans around him.
Does that bear out in the latest Marquette National poll as well?
Yeah, I would say there's a lot of red flags for Republicans in all the national polling not just the Marquette poll but in in our poll You know just a few highlights You know, he's down in the low 40s and approval rating on the issues that people really care about which is the economy and cost of living He's down below that in fact on inflation.
He's in the 20s among voters his approval rating You know Democrats
seem more energized, Democratic voters and Republican voters, the intensity of Republican support for the president is kind of declining, and among independents, and these are the most independent voters, the true independents, he's in the 20s, which is a really bad place to be.
The classic trap for parties in power in midterms is
You know, you get swing voters swing back against you and then you kind of lose the turnout war with the party out of power.
And so those two things are possibilities.
They're real prospects that Republicans face next fall.
It's still almost a year away.
Craig Gilbert's our guest here.
And, you know, again, it's not Donald Trump who's on the ballot, but he saw the midterm losses in his first term.
And so it would it would seem to me the lesson for Republicans whose names are on the ballot in 2026 might be to put at least a little separation, a little daylight, show a little independent streak between you and the president.
But that is really not.
An advisable Republican campaign strategy if you want to avoid something like a primary, is it?
Yeah, and again, that's another kind of trap that Republicans face.
I mean, you're starting to see
a few glimmers of that sort of distancing in Washington.
There are a few issues where you're starting to hear at least a handful of Republicans distance themselves from the president or at least take positions in contrast to the president.
I don't know how much more of that we're going to see for the reason you said, which is that if you get too independent,
And to defiant, then you get the full weight of Donald Trump against you potentially in a primary.
But, you know, just to expand the view a little bit on the midterms, I mean, it's not just the polling that's kind of a red flag.
It's also just history.
I mean, history suggests that.
almost always the party in power loses ground in the midterm.
So that's what you would expect to happen.
And also all these off your elections we've had, including starting with the big court election in Wisconsin in April, which normally you wouldn't see as a significant barometer, but we had 50% turnout in that election.
The election became more nationalized than any court election we've ever seen.
So in that sense, I think it's just as big a barometer.
um as the new jersey and the virginia elections were in november where democrats wanted democratic states but they won by bigger margins than you would have expected
We're talking to Craig Gilbert about what's happening or what could happen in the 2026 election cycle.
And we'll also be talking about voter turnout shortly with Maria Haskins from the Wisconsin native vote as well.
I mean, there are so many different groups that are focused more than ever on turnout in these races.
And so you mentioned the state Supreme Court race, Craig.
And, you know, while this time around, control of the court is not necessarily up for grabs.
But I think
we've really established a culture in Wisconsin of people understanding that you can't just wave off the April elections and especially state Supreme Court elections.
I can be wrong, of course, but I feel like Wisconsin voters might be as plugged into state Supreme Court races as almost anyplace else.
Well, I think that's undeniably true.
I mean, again, going back to
Last April, which was a crazy race.
I mean, you had Elon Musk spending all this money.
You had the conservative candidate for the court ending his advertising campaign with Donald Trump.
Obviously, you had Democrats running against Donald Trump in this race.
But again, 50% turnout.
I mean, that's a good turnout for governor in a lot of American states.
And you had this kind of turnout in a nonpartisan judicial race in the spring.
That's really mind boggling.
So that tells me what you said just now is absolutely true, which is that people are turning out for these races because they become so partisanized and so politicized.
They're starting to turn out for these races.
almost at the level they would turn out in a midterm fall partisan race.
And so it's going to be interesting.
I don't think we're going to get a 50% turnout in the next Supreme Court election because we're not going to have the same, probably not the same level of spending, the control of the courts not at stake, but it's a big deal because obviously it's a it's a conservative seat that's up.
So if the Liberal candidate
If the pattern continues and there's another liberal victory in the court, that means that Republicans won't have an opportunity to take back the court for several years.
And so the long-term consequences are pretty huge.
talking to Craig Gilbert, political analyst with Marquette University's Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education, longtime Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer.
And then so let's wrap with the big one for 2026 here in Wisconsin, the race for governor.
How likely is it that the field of Democratic candidates is going to grow in the very near future?
Well, it sounds like there's a real chance Mandela Barnes gets in the race.
Again, I think
That's an interesting move and it'll be very interesting to see how Democrats, Democratic activists and Democratic voters responded that because he would instantly become the best known candidate in the Democratic field, but he's in this interesting position of having lost a big statewide race.
in his bid to unseat Ron Johnson for the U.S.
Senate in 2022.
And, you know, there's two ways to interpret his performance in that race.
And one is not so flattering, and one is a little more forgiving.
And the more forgiving one is that he almost beat an incumbent senator, which
Nobody did in that cycle, no Democrats.
And the not so flattering one is that he lost a winnable race.
Ron Johnson was a truly vulnerable incumbent who had persistently negative poll ratings.
And Democrats sort of missed an opportunity to feed him in that race.
Democratic primary voters are going to be really, really interesting to watch next year.
I mean, I'm fascinated by what's going to happen because it's always interesting to see how much in a primary.
voters in a given party are assessing electability, which is a very subjective thing, and how much they're just responding to whether the candidates energize them, their message, and they're responding to who the candidate is and what the candidate is saying.
Again, this is a very winnable race for Democrats.
I mean, we're coming off eight years of a Democratic governor, but also divided government through that entire time.
Again, a Republican president, you would normally expect the party out of power to have a real advantage running for governor in that scenario.
And almost all the time, the party out of power wins those races for governor, which in this case,
would be the Democrats.
So it's a very winnable race for Democrats.
But the question is, is their candidate up to the task?
Craig Gilbert as a must read in the Journal Sentinel has been for decades and we really appreciate your analysis on this.
We're going to talk to a group that's organizing some of these voters even as we speak.
Craig, I hope we can catch up throughout the cycle.
Thanks again for joining us.
Absolutely, at any time.
Good morning.
How are you?
I'm well.
You know, I think that there's going to be more people who are going to be out expressing themselves just because when we had the spring 2025 elections, we had a huge voter turnout that happened during then.
So I think this upcoming election, I think that more people are feeling a bit more passionate about the things that they care about.
And I think that they'll make it to the polls this year.
Sure.
Well, on a nonpartisan standpoint and bringing some of those issues up, I think that we have done a lot of work on things like the right to no campaign, which was making sure that Wisconsin residents have access to clean drinking water.
So we've done a lot of work on that.
We've done some work on the opioids issue.
We know that opioids affect
all communities in Wisconsin.
And while we don't have a campaign going on that, we do have some petitions that are going around where we are asking people to sign so that we can make sure that we have equitable access to those resources.
And then recently over in Menominee, there was a Supreme Court election.
Maybe it wasn't Supreme Court, but it had to do with the Legend Lake issue that's going on, some tribal sovereignty.
So those are some issues that people are really taking a look at right now.
She's our guest.
She is a Wisconsin native vote regional tribal organizer and with Wisconsin conservation voters.
And we are talking about the the lay of the land here for the 2026 campaign.
Again, a reminder as we go to break here that our keyword is
in the grown-up gift list text-to-win contest.
You only have about 10 more minutes to get on your Civic Media app, text us the word chill, and then your next chance to play will be during the 9 a.m.
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Live from Chippewa Falls, I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Jimmy Koska is standing by Civic Media Sports Director to talk about a busy holiday weekend in sports.
We will get to that first before we get back to our guest, Maria Haskins, a reminder that you've got about six more minutes to text in the word chill.
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Maria Haskins is here.
joining us and we are talking from Wisconsin Conservation Voters and she's a Wisconsin native vote regional tribal organizer.
Maria, can you tell us a bit?
We talked about some of the the issues that are setting things up for 2026.
What are you doing in terms of planning some events that can help inform and motivate people for the 2026 elections?
Yeah, so we're going to be doing canvassing this year.
So typically, we do canvassing every year.
So we're always building teams of people within communities to go knock on doors, to educate people about voting, see if they need to register to vote.
We're also going to be planning our spring dinners.
So we call those our food for thought dinners.
We have one in Milwaukee, one in Menominee, and then one will be hosted further north in Wisconsin.
I think this one coming up may be in Lactoflambo or Lakuta Ray.
And during that time, we have a guest from the Native American Rights Fund, Alison Nesswood.
She's a senior staff attorney who works with Native American Rights Fund, and she helps us educate people in the community about the importance
of, you know, voting in the Supreme Court and just some of those examples that we typically give people are, you know, the Supreme Court is, you know, responsible for, you know, voting district maps and COVID-19 emergency orders and, you know, different environmental protections.
And so typically when people are finding those things out like, oh, wow, you know, that's, that's really important because I care about, you know, these things over here in this region that will typically drive people to the polls.
And then in our 2026 plans, we have a lot
that we're trying to do to have some youth involvement.
So, you know, co-hosting or partnering with different youth groups on different things where we can educate those who are emerging to become voters.
So, you know, sometimes that might be working with the schools, you know, things like that so we can capture people as soon as they're turning 18 so they can make it to the poll.
And there's so many
reasons why people could be motivated for conservation voters, not the least of which is, as you said, private well owners have a right to know what's in their water and whether your legislature is working for or against that.
So Maria, I hope you'll come back and join us again.
We'll talk more in depth about issues like that and more, but you can learn more at conservationvoters.org.
Maria Haskins, thank you again for your time today.
Miigwech, have a good day.
All right, let's bring in Jimmy Koska, Civic Media Sports Director.
What a crazy busy Thanksgiving weekend here, starting with the Packers.
I mean, it went all the way through.
Parker's already spent a lot of time bemoaning Whitewater's loss in football, but you spent a lot of time watching D3 football, didn't you?
Yeah, I got to broadcast Platteville's game in their victory I should add as the WIC went three and one in the second round of the NCAA tournament a lot of snow games I think we had a foot of snow in Platteville So it was fun a little cold but fun to be able to broadcast a legit snow game in the middle of a winter storm.
That was that was blast
They get them in the final game of the regular season.
That's one of those, you looked at the schedule going into this part of the year and you're thinking, wow, the Bears, the Lions, the Bears twice, the Lions, the Vikings, Broncos, the Ravens, you're thinking, wow, this is going to be a tough stretch, but that's one game.
It's still a rivalry division game, but with the things that they have going on at quarterback, that could be an issue.
Do you think though that everything sets up extremely well for the Packers because they control their own destiny in terms of the NFC North?
They played the Bears twice in the next three weeks and then includes the Sunday game that was flexed to a later start time.
The Bears are currently the number one seed in the NFC.
So there's a lot at stake coming up on Sunday.
It's no longer a noon game.
325, so coverage will begin at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon.
Speaking of snow globe games, you had the Badgers losing in Minnesota 17-7, and I noted earlier how at one point the Badgers had a 14 game winning streak over the Gophers in football.
They've now lost five of the last eight and finishing four and eight
this year, they've missed a second straight bowl season after making 22 in a row.
And it's the most number of losses since they went 1 and 10 back in 1990.
These are not the glory days of Badger football.
Football, sports, whatever.
I mean, you go up, you go down.
Badgers are certainly on the down right now.
And I think the biggest disappointment in addition to losing the rivalry game is that had they won, they had a very slim chance of maybe sneaking into a bowl game at five and seven.
So there was a little hope that they could get that extra, you know, month of practice or whatever.
But it's over.
Badgers are focused now on trying to retain some of, I think they're 14 commits for next year.
So that is where things lie with the Badgers.
They host Northwestern on Wednesday night.
The women's basketball team hosts Michigan State on Sunday.
The men's hockey team is at Notre Dame this coming weekend.
The women's hockey team travels to Ohio State on Friday.
The Badger women's volleyball team, they learned in their selection show yesterday.
They are a three seed in the NCAA tournament.
So they will host first and second round matches.
They will be playing Eastern Illinois on Thursday night.
And then finally,
while the Bucks got back on track, beating Brooklyn on Saturday.
They're in Washington tonight to face the Wizards.
Yanis top 21,000 points in his career.
The 42nd player ever to score that many and the sixth youngest ever to hit that mark.
Showing closing, Jimmy Yanis, he's still good.
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