Welcome everyone to Midday magazine for this Friday, April 5th, 2024.
Have your host James J. Mailov here at 330. We're welcome in our friends from
Rams. They have their fact program. They're going to talk about where the youth led
movement to help educate peers about the impact of tobacco and nicotine. We'll
have a couple of Isabelle's, a Reese with us along with their advisor, Gretchen.
Looking forward to that. Right now joining us on the studio hotline. We have our
good friend Wisconsin State Assembly Representative Scott Krug with us. Scott, how
you doing? I'm doing great. How are you today? I'm doing good. Doing good, man.
Appreciate the time as always Scott. We will try to make the time for some
brewer talk to wrap things up, but I want to start off. Yeah, when they start as
good as they do, then we do have to make time. We do, right? Yeah. Yeah. If they
hadn't been playing so good, maybe maybe we just, you know, fill the times
some other way, but we will get we will wrap up there. I do want to it's an
election week. Of course, we just wrapped up an election this week here in our
area, wanted to talk with you about that. Well, what were some of your takeaways
from this week's election results? So I am, I am an election nerd, right? I am
self prescribed. I'm glad I ended up with the committee this session because one
of the things I love the most throughout the year is going through election
results after an election or watching the results come in. I just, for some
reason, it's always triggered my brain like it's a Christmas-like event. So I, I
love data. I love numbers. So I wanted to crunch a little bit of the numbers
today. My biggest, my biggest takeaway, right, is turnout. And, you know, I did a
little video on X or Twitter or whatever people want to call it. I was over at
the Y Tuesday afternoon about 1 o'clock or so and came out and it was snowing
like all, you know what, right? So I did a video saying, hey, there's a reason
Wisconsin does early voting for two weeks before an election, right? Because I
knew from 1 o'clock until 8 o'clock that night that turnout was going to be
much slower because of the weather. You know, people getting home from work or
getting picking up kids up from school and yeah, fighting through the weather on
the bad roads already thinking like, okay, I already got all the stuff I got to
get home and do. So I really want to take more time out and go vote. I'm
guessing the answer for a lot of people that day was probably, eh, maybe I should
have done it earlier, but I'm just not going to do it now. So equates that's what
happened in a couple of races in Adams County for the Board of Supervisors. So the
City of Adams had a contested race for County Board. A young guy, Austin Eggers
Dorf and a guy who was coming back to the board after being off and from, say,
12, 30 to 8 o'clock, any voters that were dissuaded were probably the ones that
determined that race because it ended up being a two-vote race, 88 to 86 that
the incumbent had lost. You go a little further south in the Adams County and we
had a County Board race decided by one vote. So, you know, my biggest takeaway
this week, besides the constitutional amendments, which I had been working on for
four years, my biggest takeaway is that people have to start making their plan
for November to vote early. So you don't have to worry about last minute things
that come up whether, you know, Grandma fell down and you have to go to the
time to what she's dealing with or the roads that got slippery or the kids that
got sick or whatever it might be on the election day because life happened. But
you risk running into what happened in some of these local races whether
they're decided by a vote or two. And if you're in response, they've been there.
Is that what your outcome would have wanted it to be? I mean, some people have to
think about those things a little bit more. It's like a couple of November and
I'm not, you know, I'm not casting anybody for not voting. If there was bad
or things like that, I'm just saying. If you want your voice to count, you got to
get out and do it. But there are a lot of other takeaways. I think the other
thing I think was a little disappointing was turn out overall. You know, I
have been talking Trent over here at Wood County yet, but just crunchy numbers on
my own. It looks like we're about 37 to 38 percent turn out for spring
election that had presidential candidates on the ballot. Not that they were
contested presidential primary, technically, but we've done better in past
spring elections. So I'm guessing whether it had a bigger impact than I thought,
which just kind of drives home the first point even more. Right. To that point,
Seth, I'm sorry, Scott, I just was working with Seth. And I had something on my
mind that I really wanted to touch on. For those that don't know, Scott has a
political background with a school for this, knows his stuff, knows the history of
this. And with that in mind, Scott, do you think that voting is going to change
going forward as far as that goes, you know, making early votes that used to
not be as big of a thing. But I mean, this past week, this wet, the weather showed
us. Nobody had, you know, I'm not going to be able to go out and vote because of
the weather. It's been nice to pass couple of months for the most part. Then all
the sudden, Mother Nature decides to just throw us a curveball. And we get this
crazy weather. Some people you're right, especially some of our senior
population, we're not able to get out there and vote because it wasn't safe for
them. So do you think that they're we're going to see more and more early voting
going forward because of things like this? And this is a big point of
discussion I've had with folks in my party, right? Because typically, if you
look historically, Republican voters had been the ones who had owned early
voting, the absentee voters were typically the snow bird Republican voter who
was in between Wisconsin and Florida, Wisconsin and Arizona. And that was
probably the reason we ended up coming up with it in the original creation of
early voting or absentee voting in Wisconsin was to help the snow birds. We
new leaned one way or another helped them vote. So over the years, the other
side, the Democrat voters or the less right side voters have learned to use
that to their advantage. And I think in this day and age, where you see, you
know, things, I call it, we live in like an American Idol Society, right? Call
now, vote now, yeah, tech your favorites. And I've said to my party from
the beginning is, if you really want to open up elections, and because you
think you have the best ideas and the best candidates and the best messaging,
why not open it up as best as you can? Open up early voting as much as you can
embrace early voting as much as we used to instead of saying that it's the
devil's poison, you know, like some might say, or that is, you know, the
when you request a ballot by absentee that you're you're committing a fraud
or something, I don't know what wing of the party had taken over that
messaging the last while I do, but I'm not going to. But you know, it's just,
it's just, it's weird to me that the group of people who invented early voting
in the Wisconsin have gotten away from it. So I'm just saying, why not embrace
as much as humanly possible? It's here to stay. There's, there's no way
it's ever going to go away. Let's embrace it and use it as much as
humanly possibly can to take pressure off of poll workers on election day to
give people more free time to be observers on election day. You know, all
these things that people are worried about, we could accomplish all these
goals if more people voted early and freed up their time to be available on
election day to take people to the polls or go observe or volunteer in their
communities. So I mean, if people would just step back from some of the
rhetoric sometimes and just see what the advantages are to get in your vote
and get in accounted, understanding its safe and secure with their clerk, and
then move on to be an advocate for whatever side you want to be until and on
election day. They were all in a much better place because everybody got the
equal opportunity. You know, we, we, we have a lot of things we got to adjust
when it comes to equal access for rural communities to be able to early vote
like some of the bigger communities get to. For example, there's dozens and
dozens of early voting polling places in Madison, Milwaukee, but you can't
really count on it being a thing in the town of Adams. Right. So we've got
a balance that out a little bit. I think that is a very valuable tool for
everybody to use. Yeah, outside of changing a tire, I make this joke on
the morning show all the time, outside of changing a tire, everything
evolved. Scott, you know, we, we haven't really changed that. We're still
changing tires the same way we did in the 30s or 20s or whatever, but
everything seems to evolve. It only makes sense that voting and politics in
general would evolve. Yeah, it is. I mean, that is, that is the next iteration,
like I say, when you live in an instant gratification society, when
everybody wants their votes to be counted and reported by 90 clock on
election night, well, the only way we're going to do that is like we tried
this session is to get a bill put in place that allows clerks to start
processing absentee ballots before the election day. I mean, so as much as we
want our elections to be faster, we have to also understand we got to keep
the security and we got to keep the process and we got to keep standards
and so faster doesn't always mean better. So we've had to start earlier. So
when when you take all of these things and put them into we try to fit them into
the same box and help somebody understand the evolution of voting and
processing votes and counting votes in Wisconsin, we are probably the
42nd out of 50 states to finally get to this evolution that I think we're at
right now. One last thing I did want to mention about the
elections. My daughter is my oldest daughter is a poll worker, a election poll
worker over at point and talking to her, having the Sheriff's Department in
this week, by all things, we could tell up and down the state things were
pretty calm. Thank everybody treated each other pretty well. It seemed like
that in whether that is unfortunate or not, that is noteworthy nowadays that
hey, went through an election, things seem went pretty smoothly. Yeah, I think
so there were a couple of reports from UW-Madison campus who are a couple of
polling places had to stay open until about 930 because there was some entities
telling people that no, this isn't a polling place type of stuff, but that was
a it was a one off. It was smooth pretty much everywhere. Took a little longer than
some folks like for results in Milwaukee again, but it is what it is down there.
We've got so many things going on, but 95% success. And as long as we're talking
about elections, like I believe it was last month or earlier, the last month you
had another public hearing meeting in campaigns and elections. And I wanted
to touch on that a little bit with you. Boy, I got to remember we had so many. Yeah,
I imagine. It was about to testify about or again, testify four or against AB 1037.
Getting into the differences of what we have and politically and some of that.
Yeah, I know when you're one of the things that is frustrating this time of
year is that we've had so many bills thrown onto the calendar. Sometimes you
forget that you were dealing with this one or another one or whatever one's coming up.
But now that we're out of session, anything that was pending is dead, right?
The rest problem at the base is trying to figure out if it didn't get done.
Why shouldn't it still be a discussion? So what we did with this one is 1037
spring out of a court decision, right? So for the last 31 statewide elections,
the Wisconsin Election Commission had a definition of what an address was for a voter.
For some reason or another 18 county court decided to throw out that definition
of what an address is on an absentee ballot, right? So literally two days after the court
decided to take that up, we decided, hey, as the committee with oversight on elections,
the legislatures were these decisions belong, we need to address this legislative legal
threat of bill that actually reinstate the Wisconsin Election Commission's definition of what
the heck an address is. I mean, that's the weird thing about how contentious sometimes things
can be down there is that we have to argue about what an address is because the courts get a
bugger or ear that somehow what's worked for the last 31 elections doesn't work moving forward.
So we got the bill through the assembly and through the committee and onto the assembly floor,
but it just didn't go anywhere else. So now we're we're hemmed in by what the courts want to
define as an address on an absentee ballot application for some reason. So is what is and I think one
of the things the big takeaway for elections going into the spring and summer and fall is that
just because my committee's out of session and we're not bringing bills forward does not mean we're
giving up our oversight capabilities of all things related to elections in the state of Wisconsin.
If there's there is a problem somewhere or a report that a clerk has got an issue that isn't
statutorily being done right. We're going to call that individual and I have a discussion like,
okay, this is what we're supposed to be doing. Why do you think it's different or if a court reacts
to something while we're out of session. For example, the probably going to reinstitute drop boxes
through the Supreme Court sometime during the summer. Well, we're going to have to have a
discussion about that in our committee as the oversight agency for for elections. So we're
not stopping our work in the campaigns and elections committee just because sessions over.
I think the people of Wisconsin want us to be there reacting to everything that's happening
before the election and also after the election. We're going to have hearings across the state
to talk about how the whole process shook out. How it worked, where it didn't work, what we need to
do to be different. But even we have to be a sounding board for people who don't feel like they
have a voice and that's what we're going to do. Post election is, hey, if you had a problem,
come tell us about it. Maybe we can help fix it. Scott, I want to get into what Zuckerbucks are.
Can we explain what that is to the audience? Yeah, so there's a few groups around the country,
nonprofits and private entities who like to supplement local money for elections. And one of them
happened to be CTCL, the group that was funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, obviously Zuckerberg
or Facebook guy. So what happened in some communities in the state of Wisconsin took some of the money
from CTCL and used it for upgrades for election equipment and some of the things that was supposed
to be used for. Some ended up taking money and allowing staff from CTCL coming over to help
minister their elections. The most prominent example of that was in Green Bay where the clerk
was basically pushed aside in favor of this consultant who was kind of calling a shout at that point
with the help of the mayor's office. I, you know, nobody can say for sure if anything, the
fairies had happened, it just looked wonky and weird. So what we did in reaction to that is we
brought some bills forward to say, hey, let's not do this. We can publicly fund their elections. We
don't need private dollars for it. Wrote those bills, gone through the assembly and sent out a
governor vetoed them. We decided this was important enough that we had to take another shot at it.
So what we did is we amended our state constitution to say, hey, you know, all elections that are
public, which all of our elections are, have to use public funds only. It can only be run by
campaign staff who are appointed by the community that they're able to appoint. So you can't have
private consultants and private money into our elections. So for a constitutional amendment to pass,
gotta go through two sessions of the legislature. So we did this last session and now we did
again this session in the campaign's elections committee in the assembly and the senate.
I got it through very little debate actually in the chamber when we heard it in the state assembly.
I think we passed them both in 10 minutes on the floor even though, you know, some of my
democratic colleagues didn't like them. They've been yelling scream about them, but they didn't
vote for me there unfortunately, which is, it is what it is. I'm not worried about that part.
But this is the way that I think when there's disagreement between the assembly,
the senate and the governor's office, that there's disagreement. We've gotta go to the people and
get their voice. So as it's made its way to the ballot this week, he saw a 55-45 resolution on
question one, which was the money side of it. And then strangely enough, it was 60 to 40 statewide,
the band, the staff side of it. So it really did send a message to everybody in Wisconsin that,
hey, you know, we don't want private money, but I think the message of voters sent to us is, hey,
you gotta send more public money then. Right? Yeah. I think one thing too that voters have
unanimously for many, many years said is that they don't want their politicians to be bought.
And when we look at some of the things that are going on with this, it reminds me as well of
the information, the news we have gotten in the last year or so about Judge Thomas and our
Supreme Court and how, how much people have been kind of people, especially some people
they're dismayed, they're not even paying attention to these things anymore. And when it comes to
the Zuckerbucks or that information or any of these things that we keep coming back to people,
they're not angry anymore, Scott. They're disinterested. It's even worse. I'd rather them be
angry, at least they care. Right now we're getting more and more people and we just saw the numbers
from this week of the election, where after we just got done having a couple of elections with
record numbers and everything, now they're going down again. And it's not a coincidence that we've
had more and more of this dismay kind of out there. The last thing we need is any other kind of
things to muck this up and give people more and more things to question. Yeah, right. And I think
the results again, even here in Wood County, when you look even at the presidential race, even though
I know it was decided, people still voted in it. When you look at the top of the ticket on both sides,
where Donald Trump only got 82% of Republican votes in the primary this week in Wood County,
Joe Biden only got 83% of the Democrat votes in the primary in Wood County this week. So there's
18% of you in the Republican party who don't like their candidate. There's 17% of the Democrat
party who don't like their candidate. I'm guessing the people that didn't come out to vote just
didn't come out to vote because it's Trump or Biden, respectively at the ticket. Yeah, I mean,
couldn't agree more. Yeah. Right. Why would they want to rehash something they didn't want to even
deal with last election? And now we're hemmed into this situation where we've got these two choices
we're going to have to make. So voter empathy is going to be the biggest problem going into November
for any number of reasons besides all the things we've already talked about. And it's just
it's frustrating because of all of the 270 million people in this country. These are the two we
could find. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've been I've been barking about this on the
morning show quite a bit better. I hear you. I hear you. We're the greatest. I'm saying this
and I admit I'm biased. We're the greatest country in the world. And if you don't agree with
that, we're certainly the symbol of democracy to the whole world. This is what we're putting out
there. This this is what we're showing to the rest of the world. And the world's laughing at us
with it too. Like it's it's it's even dictatorships have better options in some ways. Like there
there's got to be a better way to do this. And I would love to have more time with you to dive into
this sometime Scott. We should do that sometime about why does sports get this right in politician
and politics don't shouldn't there have been whether it is Trump or Biden should they have had
people younger people kind of lining up getting ready to take over these jobs when I don't know
they hit their 80s. Yeah, you're right. You're dead right. But here's what you have to look at
the the electorate and the status of what our electorate is in our country right now is is 65 to
70% of the individuals are the same age as our presidential candidates are right now, right?
So there is there's something to be said for them understanding that those are the people they
relate to the best and I understand that we have a primary process for it to be vetted out that
way and for those votes to count that way I get I'm not I'm not crapping on anybody's choices
I'm just saying that as a 40 something looking at a candidate even on my spectrum of the political
side of the aisle looking at a candidate like Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis was more appealing to me
right because first of all I can relate to them because I look like that. Yeah. So I mean we're
starting to see this this revolution in our political process where the next generation is starting to
take some of those more prominent roles and you're going to see it over the next 10 years at 40-50
somethings are going to start replacing 80 you know 70 80 90 somethings it's just going to take
a little bit more time because you know we're on the edge of the end of the boomer age for
elections and we still value every single voter in the state of Wisconsin and across the country
but I'm just saying that hopefully they help us make that revolution a little bit quicker just
to help us understand that we've got to look to the future and not hang on to the past.
Scott the brewers are back in action tonight hosting Seattle got Freddie Peralta on the mound.
How good is it feeling with this young team? You know I got to think with whether you're a green
bay fan or I mean a packer fan or a brewer fan coming into this year you didn't know what you had
maybe a rebuild see what happens then you see the turnout and like kind of pretty pretty impressed
with these franchises and what you're getting out of the product you're getting.
Yeah I mean there's a cool there's a cool little trend happening at the baseball now that's kind
of taking over like football where you've got the youth happening across both sports and it's a
lot cheaper for the for the talent to play and you know people panic when you get rid of your big
name stars like Corbin Burns and things like that but you I guess saying elections all the time
once it burns down on the ground the green grows underneath right I mean so you're starting to see
that with the brewers even too that you've got all of these young talents and there's so many of them
that they just can't find playing time for them. The only issue I got with the brewers right now is
they're a little heavy on their bullpen or any of the first six games of the year and yeah
starters got to pick it up a little bit and give them some more innings but otherwise the offense
is exciting finally I think when I was I was at the Y like I said Tuesday I'm watching the brewers
opener on the treadmill couldn't hear it obviously but seeing Ricky Weeks run out of the dugout
and getting the reaction he got from the crowd as a coach it was pretty cool to see too so yeah.
I'm curious to know by this time next year how many kids or pets are going to name
to be named Jackson yeah that kids exciting that kids exciting that they got some really nice talent
on that team it's been a fun season already we're not even in the first couple weeks of this so
it's going to be a fun year baseball and we will talk some more baseball next month when you join
us again Scott always appreciate the time if people have follow questions want to talk to you about
other things how can they reach you yeah it's easy the cell phone's always on it's a seven one five
three two three three two nine three call or text me anytime and like I said just because a lot
of sessions is not me we're not working we have to have a whole show about what that means to
get all that kind of stuff like why aren't you working anymore why am because folks are going to
call about you know their eligibility for this program or that program or something happened in
their life that they need some government help with so that's what we do on the rest of the year
the phones always on so give me a call always look forward to the times god thanks so much for joining
us you have a good week stay safe travels out there we'll talk soon awesome thanks to care
we'll have more midday magazine coming up for you right here on wfhr locally grown radio
