Hello world, welcome to WFHR's rapid support for this Friday, November 7th, 2025.
Have your host, James J. Mailov here.
Want to send a big thank you to our friends at Crocket Sceptic, sponsoring the time, giving
us a chance to talk to some of our favorite locals.
Like our good friend Scott Krug joining us right now with Wisconsin State Assembly District
72 representatives, Scott, how you doing?
I am good.
It's been such a busy fall.
I think it's the first time we've connected since the end of summer, so I mean, it's
nice to be back on again and have it some conversation.
It really is.
It was really great to know that you were on the schedule, that we were going to get
to catch up and everything more on that in a moment and stuff, but we always understand
the day job comes first, Scott.
The day job comes first.
Yeah, that's a good point.
But I want to get into the bipartisan election package that you've been working so hard
on.
There's also the Solar Facility Project that you and Senator Teston have been working
on.
I want to talk about those.
It's been a little while, so we haven't gotten to catch up on how the listening sessions
went.
So I want to do a little catching up with you.
But before we get to some of that, Scott, you know, like a lot of you out there, I used
to babysit my little brother and sister, and they were notorious for pointing the finger
at each other.
Neither one of them was ever guilty of anything.
Neither one of them ever did anything wrong.
It was always the other one.
And at a certain point, Scott, I just started sending him to the room.
I wouldn't have even, I wouldn't even ask which one did what wrong.
I just sent him to the room.
You know where I'm going with this.
We've been talking long enough.
You know exactly where I'm going with this.
Scott, when you are talking to your constituents because you are one of those guys that we appreciate
that you go door to door, you are talking people face to face.
You are not, you don't shy away from these things.
When you're talking to people, how are you answering that frustration that so many of
your constituents, so many Americans are feeling right now, where it doesn't matter if you
have an R or a D in front of your name, we're all sick and tired of the whining and the
pointing the finger at each other and in the shutdown.
Yeah.
I mean, I can't tell you how many phone calls and emails we get about federal government
dysfunction here at the state level, right?
And as much as I'd like to honestly say, it's not my job, not my problem, it is, right?
Because my constituents are the ones that have to suffer because Washington cannot get
there.
You know what together, right?
Yeah.
So I've got to be able to go back to these people and say, okay, here's what has happened
this week.
Here's what's planning to be happening in the next week, you know, and you see all the
court cases flying back and forth between Donald Trump and the courts and the Senate taking
votes and both parties saying, well, I did this and they won't do that and it's just, it's
my numbing and it's just stupid, right?
And it has played out here in Madison, even this week too.
We have two hearings on election bills this week and a Republican bringing the election
bill in front of the committee that I sit on still and I told her, this is a bad idea.
And you would not believe how big the world blows up when one Republican tells another
Republican something's a bad idea.
We all just have to start being a lot more honest with each other and a lot more honest
with our constituents.
And I think the problem in DC now with the shutdown is, yes, the Republicans keep saying
we voted for the Clean Resolution, the House has passed it, the Senate has voted on at
13 times and yes, Ron Johnson has voted for that and Tammy Baldwin didn't vote for this,
but there's another way to go about it.
It's not just to put a Clean Resolution in front of a group of people that are just never
going to support it, there's a way to try to find out how to get people to yes.
And that is the biggest problem in politics right now is that everybody is stuck on no.
That is the default setting for most politicians, whether it's state or federal right now,
they're just set on no.
Nobody wants to work hard enough to get the other person to a yes.
And that is the most frustrating thing that I deal with here in Madison every week.
Right now, as we're talking, it is a Friday and I'm sitting at the state Capitol when
usually legislators are here Tuesday Wednesday Thursday.
Most of us are gone Monday and Friday, but I'm here.
I am ready to work.
I'm ready to help people get to a yes on the things they don't like right now or to be
here and have them come figure out how to get me to a yes.
We don't have enough conversation.
We all just want clicks.
We all want likes.
We all want to be in the media, and it just drives common sense people nuts to the point
where you even saw this week where a more moderate member of the Democrat caucus in the U.S.
House just said, you know what, I'm sure I could keep winning this seat, but I'm just
I'm done.
Like, I can't deal with this anymore.
So all this is doing is chasing good people out of positions throughout government and
making it worse.
So it's really hard for the good common sense people to want to stick around when they see
all of this, you know, hellacious behavior toward each other.
So it is sickening.
It's gross.
I don't pull punches with my constituents.
I tell them the call both sides equally as much.
Like, I wish I could cast a vote for the U.S. Senate and say, all right, we've made
a deal.
The government is back open.
And thankfully, I think today you might see that actually.
Do you think that there are many people who are a part of this shutdown that we're
anxiously looking at their website wherever they go to collect the data, wherever they
go to see their their budget or something and see if they had their their their focus.
Their benefits this morning that they part of the part of the issue that's happening
here is something that is we're seeing more and more in society already.
This divide between the haves and the have-nots.
And when you have people representing people and they can't relate to them, that's that's
dangerous.
That's incredibly difficult to deal with.
And I don't know a single person that is a part of this shutdown that is experiencing
anything to do with this shutdown.
You know, you know what I'm saying here, they're not suffering like we are.
And if they're not suffering, what is the incentive for them to do their job?
We all know the easy it's easy to leave the blinders on and with that Scott, for somebody
like me and many people that I'm talking to and I don't know what you're hearing when
you're talking to constituents, but the ones that I'm talking to almost on a daily basis
now, it's getting more and more to the point of, well, you know what, get rid of them all.
Let's bring in a whole new batch.
Let's give rid of them all from the president on down.
As far as when the next election cycle comes up, you're going to see some aftermath from
this.
You're going to see some fallout from this one.
You're going to see some people losing their jobs that shouldn't have had them in the
first place because if you're a politician, you got one job, got one job.
You answer to your constituents.
That's it.
The idea of a politician's opinion, mattering is, is, is only getting bigger and bigger
where it's about them and not us.
You're right, there's no apologizing that I could do it enough for what Washington portrays
onto everybody, it's not much different in Madison, but there are a lot of differences
between the two levels where we have a lot more conversation between the parties here.
We do it on the biggest, the big issues, one of my closest confidants and I think we both
use each other just as much, I guess we call it a parasitic relationship, but I have
that with my Rinky member in the Elections Committee.
We talk about everything.
First of all, we talk about who we are, each of the people, the things that we're going
through, shared experiences we have, enough people start doing that and that's what we're
trying to model here in Madison, at least, is maybe it's not the policy that we should
be trying to figure out, maybe it's the modeling, decent behavior towards each other, that
we've got to figure out first.
The sentiments are there, the feelings are there, the anger is there, it's not anything
that anybody in the central or western or northern Wisconsin is able to ignore because
we live it just as much.
I've got five adult kids who go through the same struggles that I went through when I was
in their 20s and it hurts to watch them have to go through it, so I try to help them
avoid it as much as I can, but yeah, I wish if I had that magic wand, things would
sure be a heck of a lot different.
Well, one thing that I think can also be dangerous at these times is we have a tendency to lump
everything together and I am doing that in my own frustration sometimes as well.
I don't want to say that everybody involved in politics is negative and we need to get
rid of all of them.
We're very fortunate in this area, we've got a very good representation.
Scott and I may not see eye to eye and everything politically, but I back him, I appreciate
you with the work that you do that boots on the ground and that staying local, that staying
listening to your constituents.
I think in many ways, as long as you've been doing this, Scott, we still don't know exactly
where you land politically because I feel like you more times than not if not every time
are going with what your constituents feel.
Yeah, I go through those same headaches here and I've said it maybe too publicly, sometimes
that it gets some people on the right pretty ticked off, but I've said it the entire time
I'm here, like I don't care if I get my head kicked in by both sides, it doesn't matter
to me.
And I've used this analogy with YouTube before, it's like I've been married twice and
six kids, I've used to get my head kicked in, there's nothing here that a politician is
going to say, it's going to hurt me, but I'm going to do what's right when it's right,
how it's right, and if they don't like it, then they don't have to vote for it here, but
if I can come back home and say, hey, this is all the things that I've done, if you want
to keep sending me back great, if you don't want to send me back, that's great too, if
there's somebody else that you think would do better, bring them forward, let's have
that debate and open the conversation, and at some point, I have to figure out how
to step aside, and I need people to be encouraged to want to be able to do the things that we
do here in Madison, but that is getting tougher and tougher too, to help people understand
that it's not all just getting your brains bashed in when you go to Walmart, so be it in
your community and having people yell at you, those are things that we're people too,
so when I get back in the community, it makes it easier for me to be able to go do my shopping,
go hanging out socially with people, if I've actually done my job here, it's a lot easier.
Even when you're frustrated, even when things are tough, you can still have some class
and treat each other with respect, and even when you don't agree with a politician, treating
each other with respect goes so far, especially when kids are watching, kids are paying attention,
if we want them to grow up to be good people, good citizens, even politicians themselves,
we have to be able to walk both sides of this, we have to be able to do both, and speaking
of doing both in both sides, a bipartisan comprehensive election package has been, you've
been working on with some of your colleagues, changes for the election observers, expanded
rural access to early voting, this is, if it wasn't for the shutdown and some of these
things, this would probably be the big topic with election season right around the corner
next year and everything's got, this is something you've been working really hard on, how
has that been going and where are things now?
To be brutally honest, like I usually am here, is it's tough, right?
When you've got tighter majority than you've had in previous sessions, you've got to
thread the needle a little bit more, so it takes a little extra skill set to get some
of these big things done.
So I think the main focus I've got right now on election bills is not just getting them
onto the floor and getting them onto the governor's desk, but really analyzing exactly what
they mean and what they do.
For example, the in-person absentee voting hours is probably my number one priority, where
you can see communities across the state who have over 100 some hours in the two weeks
before election day opening up their community halls and village and city halls to people
to come vote early, but a much, or if not all, of rural Wisconsin, especially where I
am in Adams, Juneau and parts of Wood County, there are none, right?
So it's not just saying, OK, we want you municipal clerk in a very small town in Adams County
to do as many hours as Milwaukee does, because that's not realistic, so we do data-driven
analysis to say, hey, if you have a population base or a voter base of less than 100 voters,
we want you to do five or 10 hours and two weeks.
If you have the next year, we want you to do 10 to 15 hours.
So if you're a regular average size town city or village, we do want you to do the 20
hours and two weeks.
Just so everybody in the state of Wisconsin has the same access to voting.
Those are the things the governor has told us when he's vetoed other bills in the legislature
on elections that he does not like any bill that he perceives is limiting voting access.
Point taken.
I agree.
So this is the one where we can say, OK, even in rural areas, governor Evers, we're probably
more likely than not, you'll have more Republican voters coming to vote early.
I know that you're a man of your word to say, OK, you want to expand access for everybody
in the state of Wisconsin.
Let's find one place we can agree on that everybody should have the same access to in-person
absentee voting.
Let's figure that out.
So I think that's the one that we're actually going to get across the finish line where
everybody in the state will have the same access, maybe not the same amount of hours, but
the same access to make our elections more uniform across the state of Wisconsin.
When it comes to other work that you think needs to be done on this, where were your
focus go after that?
Yeah.
And the number two priority I've talked about a long time as we hear all this conjecture
about non-citizen voting, right?
So I have said from 2023 onwards that I just want the ability for the legislature to
be able to obtain data from the government agencies just to help us prove that it's not
a problem or if God forbid, it may be a problem that I actually have some data and analysis
and can actually prove it is or isn't.
So another bill that we did with AB 595, which actually requires the legislative audit bureau
to have communications with the Department of Corrections, Department of Health Services,
Department of Transportation on driver's license data, on death data, on felon eligibility
to vote data and just finally gather all the data compared to the statewide voter list
and just make sure.
Let's make sure that there is nobody on our voter list that shouldn't be.
And I know my clerks do a hell of a job.
Municipal clerks and county clerks have developed a great relationship with the entirety
of them across state of Wisconsin, but there's still 25% of our population that's just not
sure.
So I see my job as just trying to make sure as many people in the state of Wisconsin feel
as confident as we can get, so if it takes some more data matching, some more technology
in this process just to make sure we're all doing what we're supposed to do and we all
know what the answers are, then we're happy to do that.
So that's AB 595 and then AB 312, I think the two biggest priorities, just to finally
put the rest all the conjecture on all of these things that get thrown into the election
space.
Because like I said, I think elections are proxy for what we do for democracy in the state
of Wisconsin kind of all starts there.
So we can model good behavior, if we can model good public policy, we can actually get
to the point where people have faith and confidence in both sides of the aisle that they
feel they can connect with their legislators and that actually things actually end up
getting done.
So I think just this program I've put into my head these last three years driving towards
that.
It isn't just election bills, it's about decency, common sense and giving the middle and
right and left to both sides who are the 60% of our population who don't hardcore identify
with the political party a place to go with their concerns.
We're speaking with Representative Scott Krug right now.
In Scott, we had Senator Tessin in last week or earlier this week with the on the job
series last week.
It was fun.
I thought that, that was pretty cool.
We had a blast, man.
I've talked to him, worked with him for so many years, did not realize he's basically
somebody we went to high school with, you know, it's fun.
It's such a great series that he's doing and it really does do so many of the things
that I think he wanted to with that series and really showing not only being in people's
level learning different jobs of his constituents but also being on the same level as his constituents
and that goes so far as you know, I'm sure.
It does.
And Pat and I talk about this all the time, like before I was 25 years old, I think I
had 27 different jobs, right?
I mean, it is great to see everybody out there getting the experience that they can.
I remember my days calling, you know, calling I talky games at UWSP and working in radio.
Like, I mean, those are, those are memories that you keep with you when you have these
different experiences.
You remember the people you met, the places you were, the stories they had.
You could put it all into your perspective when it comes to legislating them.
So it's great to see him at, you know, at a concrete company one week at the radio station
the next week and at a social service agency the week after us.
I mean, the guy is doing a great job as, you know, broadening his breadth of knowledge
and his focus on the community and thankfully for us, I think he's focused a lot of his
attention on Wisconsin Rampage and it's made a great partnership to have a state senator
working with their state rep to finally find some things that work for Wisconsin Rampage.
Well said and speaking of to that point, you and Senator Tesson participated in a press conference
introducing legislation allowing for construction and operation of community solar facilities
here in Wisconsin.
There was some other conversations that came up after that and we let Senator Tesson on
it or not let him, but we're bringing that up with him because he wanted to, I don't
like saying clear the air, but for lack of a better way to put it, you wanted to do that
with it.
I wanted to give you the same chance.
Yeah, I mean, you know, as we see the expansion of the need to, you know, produce more energy
in the state of Wisconsin, solar is always going to be part of that portfolio, whether
people like solar or not, it's going to be part of our communities, especially in rural
Wisconsin, where we have space, we have land, we have people that have not needed it as
much as they did before, i.e. paper companies who don't produce timber anymore, so we
are the hotspot, but that doesn't mean that there should not be some local controls,
some local decision making when it comes to fighting these individual projects.
I think community solar is a good balance because we probably don't see the political
will in Madison to tackle that on large-scale utility projects, but we also said, you
know what, if the large-scale utilities are going to be able to do whatever they want,
however they want, why shouldn't the community solar program exist
as well, with some local control, for us to say, hey, if Walmart wants to put up five
megawatts of panels on top of their roof, why don't we let them?
Why is that a problem for the large-scale utility companies, when we let a farmer who
uses a corner field at his 40 that he can't irrigate, for extra things similar to a five-megawatt
project of solar of his own, that he can put energy onto the grid.
So the goal with community solar is to put more energy on the grid, open up access
for everybody else to do what the large utilities do, and still give local control to local
units of government to say, okay, I think that's a good idea too.
We can get our constituents on board.
Everybody knows what the project is.
There's no more hurt feelings.
It's not even about solar.
It's about fairness.
When it comes to the testifying you did this past week for the Committee on Transportation,
you address the support of Assembly Bill 425.
I wanted to talk about that a little bit because I think, you know, and this hits
to your other wheelhouse, Scott, there are two things that we, because of all these
other conversations, I don't think we've been able to put a lot of focus in that really
need it.
We need more homes.
We need more houses.
You know this from your other industry.
We have a lack of inventory when it comes to that.
And transportation in this state, those are two really important topics that I don't
know that we're spending enough time on.
Assembly Bill 425 looks like it does some of that.
So 424 and 425 kind of play together on how mobile homes and manufactured homes being
such a big segment of housing, and especially Adams, Jordan, and Wood County.
We need to pay some attention on how these are regulated, how they're used, what the rights
of renters are, how we can control costs a little bit, but also how we can move these
things on our roads, right?
So we worked really good with the Department of Transportation to adopt some policies that
they think make some sense for licensing vehicles that can haul these across their highways.
And then on the backside of it, in 424, just regulating all of these parks that I have
all throughout Adams and Juneau County in particular, just to make sure that everybody
knows what their rights are in case something goes haywire, right?
There's always a circumstance where somebody can't maybe get their rent this week or a little
behind.
We want everybody to know what their rights are as tenants.
If they're not on a lease, we want them to know what their rights are as an occupant
or if they have rights as an occupant.
And on the other side, we want to make sure that the landlords feel that they can continue
investing in communities that allow other housing options because when we drive landlords
away, either in single-family housing or manufactured home parks, and we lose options, rents, and
mortgages get to be bigger costs, and we lose supply, and we make the problem worse.
So we're trying to figure out the best way to not necessarily throw government at every
aspect of these decisions, but to make sure that the ground rules are there that everybody
knows we're not moving the goalposts every time something comes up.
So yeah, housing bills are a huge section of the work that we're doing again this session
too.
So I think we've got seven or eight different housing bills are working on, on top of
the campaigns and election stuff, on top of all the other common sense things we're doing,
on top of that, trying to stop stupid stuff from happening too.
I mean, you know, sometimes I tell my, you know, I tell people that I'm like, when I
work at the jail in Wood County, I always call myself the goalie.
Like, this guy's getting out of jail, this guy's getting out of jail.
My job is, I just really don't come back, I kind of take that skill set on here in Madison
to say, okay, I'm the goalie, like, I'm not going to let bad things happen either.
There's a lot of review and other legislation just to make sure that, you know, we don't
do the stupid stuff that we don't need to do too.
And just a couple more things I had for you, Scott, I know, busy, you are really appreciate
the time before, you know, we, as you mentioned earlier, we haven't gotten a chance to talk
in a while.
A while back, you were doing some listening sessions, I believe, those wrapped up.
How did that go?
How did you enjoy that?
Yeah.
I mean, I always like doing the listening sessions.
We don't get to do as many as we did pre-COVID, I mean, it's still harder to get people to
turn out post-COVID to some of these things yet, but they are starting to come back.
So we do get to have more one-on-one conversations with smaller crowds.
We get to dig into, you know, the other, you know, other layers of the Union that aren't
just necessarily the big things where people can feel comfortable to come talk about a
more personalized story or a need that they have.
So just being able to be there to hear those stories, to bring them back here to see if
we can affect some change.
I mean, those things matter, you know, and I've been getting a lot more people actually
coming to the office too lately.
I mean, with the addition of general county to my district and the proximity of getting
them, the interstate and coming from Boston or in the theater or camp Douglas to Madison,
I actually see more in-person visits to the office too about different things.
And that's getting to be more and more of a regular thing that people feel more comfortable
about doing again is coming to talk to their legislators, whether it's back home in a
listening session or coming to the office in Madison because the door is always open
here.
I tell people all the time, just because I sit in this office doesn't make it mine.
Come hang out here if you want.
This is your office.
Like I'm just sitting here most of the days of the week doing stuff, but you know, I think
people need to understand that this is their building and these are the things we want
them to do is tell us what we should be doing before we do it.
It's encouraging to hear and great to hear and speaking of people stopping by, that's
where I wanted to wrap up.
You had a constituent Samantha Gray stop by your office last week.
She was part of a juvenile justice advocates group.
Can you tell us about that group a little bit and how that experience went?
Yeah.
I was excited to have somebody come and to not be nervous and just be able to approach
me and need talk to her, just those two people hanging out and talking about issues that
she's seen in the community.
I mean, it's just awesome, right?
So we always encourage that and we try to get a picture together just to say, hey, come
on.
Somebody else come and do it.
I think that helps a little bit, but her group is really interested in trying to write
sides of the juvenile justice system and try to figure out a way that we don't incarcerate
juveniles as adults as much that we can give them a chance to grow mentally and physically.
As a juvenile, but still in a correction setting where they can get programming and the
thought and concern and counseling and get back on track instead of just throwing away
people and blocking them up forever.
So I mean, it has been an issue that's been very deep for me for a long time, like you
said, having served in the juvenile county sheriff's department, working at the Wood County
Jays, the discharge planner, playing the drug court, I mean, I used to see those things
more and more and it's nice to still having some exposure to it, but to see the same
people going through the same thing all the time, I mean, you know that there's more
that we can do for them individually instead of just lump sum just throwing away and blocking
them up.
Right on.
And I always appreciate that perspective, Scott, and I always appreciate the time, man.
So he's good talking with you.
We'll catch up next month a little bit more.
We'll have some time to talk a little sports before wrap up as well.
Well, just to leave you with one final thing is I hate to lock Andrew with staggers.
Get that out there.
You are not allowed on that one.
I think you got that actually that might be a great campaign slogan.
It might just actually be the perfect clay bane slogan, am I?
It was.
So I did.
Okay, real quick.
I'll tell you real quick story.
It called the called bingo for rissa the other night at the writers.
They always go out and do a bingo nice for them every so often and we got to the big end
of end game of the big blackout game big prize at the end and halfway through the game.
I said, Hey, by the way, are there any LA Dodger fans here?
Nobody raised their hand.
They said, good, because I wasn't going to let you in the last game if you were.
That's what serious it is.
So that's awesome.
That's fantastic.
Scott, if people have follow up questions, they'd like to reach out to you how what's the
best way to do that?
Yeah.
I mean, text or phone call or even a Facebook message, the number is 715-323-3293 may not
get a return phone call right away, but if you shoot me a message either on social media
somewhere or a text, at least I see it right away.
I guess that is a very busy time of year right now until probably just right after Thanksgiving.
So doing our best to stay as caught up as we can appreciate the time Scott safe travels
out there.
We'll talk again real soon.
Yeah, but then take care.
You too.
And all of you joining us again for another edition of WFHR's Rapids Report.
