For the last six years, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has been run by Ben Wickler.
In that time, as chair of the party, Democrats and Democratic-aligned candidates have won
seven of ten statewide races, including flipping the balance of power on the Wisconsin Supreme
Court.
But in April, after yet another win in a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court race, Wickler
announced he'd be stepping down as chair.
The party will be electing its next chair in less than a month at their upcoming convention
on June 14th and 15th in Wisconsin Dells.
Here to join us today to talk about this transition and so much more is Ben Wickler, the
now outgoing chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
Ben, thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me on.
Thanks for all your great coverage at the Reconvibrillation Area and here at Civic Media.
Well, I appreciate that.
Thank you so much.
So have you had a little bit of time to recombobulate yourself since the announcement a little over
a month ago here?
Let's admit, recombobulation at this point.
Only some mild recombobulating happening.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Well, we've got a lot to get to.
The process has begun.
Yes.
The recombobulation process has begun.
Glad to hear it.
Well, you've certainly earned it after this run as Wisdom's chair.
I will say that today feels like an auspicious day to join you because today, this week Elon Musk
has announced that he's going to stop spending so much money in politics and it's widely reported
that this is because of the blood where he fell on his face in Wisconsin and so that feels
very good to have be looking towards the towards my next chapter knowing that the richest
man in the world is no longer looming over the horizon ready to buy his way through every
political office at every level in America.
Well, that is one of many news items.
I think we can get to today in this conversation.
Let's start there then.
Something in the news, Elon Musk and his role in political campaigns.
On Tuesday, Musk said in an interview that he was going to spend a lot less in future
elections saying, I think I've done enough.
That was his quote.
A report in the New York Times said the race in Wisconsin where he spent about $25 million
back in Brad Schimmel in a losing effort that the Wisconsin race may have been a turning
point and that is public presence in the race backfired.
What was your first reaction seeing that piece of news?
Delight.
Delight and relief and gratitude for the like literally hundreds of thousands of people
who got involved in supporting Susan Crawford.
She had support from 200,000 individual donors, like folks, grassroots donors all across
the country, small, medium and large donors, unions, activists of all kinds, former Republicans,
current Republicans who thought that this was completely out of control.
We had more volunteer shifts completed in the spring election in 2025 than we did in
the midterm elections of 2022, which is something that I never thought that I would be able
to say.
Susan Crawford wound up getting more votes than any Republican candidate for governor
in a November election in Wisconsin.
Pretty wild.
It just blows my mind and that wasn't inevitable.
The Republican strategy was to try to get more votes than Janet Proto say what's
it gotten because she had set a new high watermark and they did.
They did turn out more people than any Supreme Court candidate in the history of Wisconsin
had ever gotten.
It's just that Crawford got so many more than that.
So first of all, you know, I must chose the wrong state to mess with when he decided to
make Wisconsin as the kind of laboratory desk case for the new American oligarchy.
And then secondly, I think it's hard to remember just how scary that moment was in terms of
if Musk had been able to pull this off.
It would have sent a message to everyone everywhere that they had to tow the line, do
whatever he wanted or they would be toast.
And this was explicitly the threat from Trump to Republican senators, for example, that
they had to back his cabinet nominees or Musk would fund a primary challenger.
People decide whether to run for office in the period after a spring election in Wisconsin.
And we were able to show that Musk could be beaten.
And that means there are all these amazing folks who are running for office across the country.
And if Musk had stayed involved, you know, it's now clear we know how to make it backfire.
And him not being involved means that there won't be potentially, you know, tens of billions
of dollars lashing around the American political system to support the worst, most far-right,
completely nihilistic agenda imaginable.
And that is a good thing for democracy as well as for Democrats.
Was there a point in the campaign where it became less about Susan Crawford and Brad
Chimble and more about Elon Musk?
I think that it still was about Susan Crawford in the sense that she was this model of integrity
fighting back because it was, you know, it must definitely made this race about himself.
He also insisted that Chimble make it just about Trump.
So on the one side, our argument was this is, you know, as Susan Crawford said, Elon
Chimble, this is going to carry the water for this guy.
And then the other side, the final stretch of ads, which I'm condensed or my strong supposition
is that when Musk gave this last tranche of several million dollars to the Wisconsin
GOP that they transferred to, to Chimble and put and Musk's pack put out a memo saying
that Chimble's message needed to get Trumpier and then Chimble changed all of his ads
in the final stretch to just being about Trump's endorsement.
I think this was Musk calling the shots to say, you need to just talk about Trump all
the time.
And so like Trump was also very unpopular by that point.
And so they both kind of made it not about Chimble, but about, you know, these, you know,
big hulking Republican living figures.
And Susan Crawford's argument, which was, I thought was so brilliant, was to make this
about Chimble's corruption, to make this about the fact that like she, she was this model
of integrity and she was running against somebody who could be bought and sold.
She had these ads about, you know, about instance after instance where Chimble had been
corrupt.
And I think that gave voters a reason other than sort of ideology or partisanship to reject
Chimble and support Crawford.
But I think without Crawford running the kind of race that she did, I think that you
had to have both sides of the pair of scissors to be able to make this work.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
And, you know, obviously there, there's going to be a certain dynamic of that in this
race when you are, when it's happening just like 70 some days after Donald Trump returns
to office, like a certain, a certain level of that is going to be inevitably draw some
of the focus towards Trump and what's happening and what was happening, obviously was Musk
and Doge.
And that was kind of the dominant story nationally at the time.
And it really dovetailed into what was happening in Wisconsin and you had Elon Musk wearing
a cheesehead and gave us a discount rate of $1 million checks.
Yes.
Right.
You know, Josephine James tweeted, my culture is not your costume.
That's a good one.
That's a good one.
That's a good one.
A good tweet.
There are fewer, fewer of those these days.
I know.
The last, the last good tweet on X, that was a good tweet.
The other thing is that the, the Republican strategy was to nationalize the race all along.
So we, you know, Jennifer, to say what's nationalized her race in 2023, right?
We were borrowing a strategy that you had deployed successfully.
And so they decided that's where they were going to go.
It just happens that the national kind of conversation at that point was people who were trying
to destroy the social security administration and defund the veterans administration and
just think a wrecking ball of chainsaw, I should say, to things that were sacred to people.
And so the idea that that is who Shimmel wanted to line up with and that's who he thought
the courts would be doing the bidding of.
That was anathema to Wisconsin voters, especially the people who were paying attention, which
is the kind of person who votes in the spring election.
Yeah.
Well, and a lot of people were paying attention because a lot of people voted.
Yeah, yeah.
And they were terrified.
Yes.
So in that election, the one for Wisconsin Supreme Court, that was not the only one this,
this year that you have been heavily involved in.
You also ran to be chair of the DNC, the national party earlier this year.
I did.
You did not win that race.
No.
No.
Not the same kind of race.
Very different electorate.
Well, what did you learn from that experience?
So the funny thing that just hit me right after the results were called is that an adage
that I've had about Wisconsin politics and that in fact was part of my argument in that
race played itself out in that race too, which is that you can't show up right before an
election and expect to earn the trust of voters.
You have to build relationships over years.
And in that race, I literally, you know, I launched my campaign two months before election
day and was introducing myself to DNC members that I didn't have relationships with Ken
Martin, who's, you know, friend and some of that worked with us as state party chair.
He'd been the chair of this association of Democratic state chairs, a vice chair of
the DNC for eight years.
So he'd traveled all over the country.
He'd been, you know, knocking on doors with folks in Oklahoma and North Dakota at all these
different places.
This is something that he was probably planning to run for for years and years, not just
the rumors about him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He had it in mind.
But, you know, whether or not this is his strategy, he was definitely building that
framework of trust.
So a lot of, you know, when I had, when friends of mine would call DNC members, they would
hear, we love Ben, we know Ken and that so it was like, you know, I don't take it personally
that they went with some of that they know.
And honestly, like, you know, trust has to be earned in life.
They, I think that it does make a difference for people to know who you are, what you're
about.
My focus has, you know, I've worked to try to support work in other states, but my
focus has been overwhelmingly the state of Wisconsin for the last six years.
And so for me, my kind of sales pitch was what we've done here, we could do across the
country.
And that is fine as far as it goes, but if someone doesn't actually hasn't, you know, been
shoulder to shoulder with me and the trenches with me, then how is it that they would be,
that they would, that they would know what it is I would bring to the table.
So that's, you know, that's my perspective on the DNC race.
I also, I do think that the, the argument that we were making about how to engage I think
is the right one.
And I, and also by the end of the race, your Ken Martin, I had very similar kind of proposals
around you around organizing engagement, communicating on every platform and doing this, doing
this kind of permanent campaign operation that we've built in Wisconsin.
Bringing the Wisconsin permanent campaign, which to me is exhausting, but to you has been
successful and exhausting, but also successful.
Yeah, I mean, it's just what the moment requires.
And the thing is that I think is so often missed in conversations about how, how the politics
play out.
Republicans have built a permanent campaign.
It's just in the form of for profit companies.
So they have, you know, a vast network of highly partisan right wing talk radio networks.
They have Fox News channel.
They have a massive investment in online platforms and, and these, you know, huge influencer
networks.
They have, they've been doing all this work, Leonard Leo, who's the Federalist Society,
or led the Federalist Society, he got a $1.6 billion grant to launch an initiative to
take the Federalist Society model into winning culture.
And, you know, he's funding all this stuff on the, on the right.
And so that exists.
It's just not in the Republican Party.
And for Democrats, essentially, you know, we don't own X because we, we wind up, we have
to raise and spend more money that is official political spending to counter and even larger
communication and, and, you know, kind of push apparatus on the Republican side.
There's a, there's a built-in imbalance in the playing field.
So it means we have to work harder to, to get the same results on our side.
And that's, you know, I'm not, not complaining.
No, I don't like it, but it's something I want to change, but it's the way that it is.
Recognizing that you can't just launch a campaign.
This is not England.
You can't have a, you know, 30-day flash election campaign at the, at the end.
Yeah.
Here, you have to organize and communicate all the time if you want to earn the trust
that can allow you to win elections in the, in the final analysis.
Yeah.
We don't have much of an off season for, for elections in Wisconsin.
Like, just this week, Chris Taylor announcing that she's going to run for Wisconsin Supreme
Court.
Josh Schoeman just announced that he's going to be running for governor.
Like, we have, it's a permanent campaign.
It's a permanent campaign.
I think most closely contested 50-50 swing state in the nation.
So, but I want to ask you about something that you raised, you know, throughout the course
of that, that DNC chair race.
I think it was in an interview on the daily show with John Stewart.
It was talking about the challenging the status quo or the establishment and what's normal.
And one of the things that you said is that what's normal is not necessarily okay.
And I think you kind of insinuated that the Democrats need to be doing a better job
recognizing this.
Yes.
This is a point I tend to agree with.
This is a core conviction for me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is not normal.
And what's normal is not okay.
So, how can Democrats thread the needle then?
How can they, in this Trump 2.0 era, both challenge the status quo, challenge the establishment
and uphold some of the basic norms and principles and guardrails of governing that we need in
a functioning democracy?
So I think part of it is that the key thing is to constantly come back to voters' lives
as opposed to talking about norms and institutions.
But the ultimate thing is ensuring that folks who are working hard every day can actually
come home and live in a house that they, you know, or apartment, they'll place them
out of the living room.
They can afford to keep a roof over their head.
They can buy medicine.
They can let their kids join a sports team even though they have to buy the uniforms.
Like the basic aspirations of working people across Wisconsin, across the country, you just
have to keep that in the center of the frame.
And when Republicans attack, you know, a hundred different things and each of them is incredibly
important, you should fight to defend them.
But they're not necessarily the center of the message that you want to communicate.
And in fact, essentially, if you're fighting to defend democracy, but democracy is, people
feel like democracy is not working for them, then it feels like you're not fighting for
them.
I, in 2022, I used to say, to save democracy, talk about roads, fix the damn roads.
That's it.
Governor Evers ran on fixing the damn roads.
And in fact, has been the bulwark, his veto pen has been one of the most important collections
of Adams in the world and the defensive democracy in this state.
But the reason why folks support him is that they really feel like, you know, he cares about
what's going on in their communities.
He was, I've re-treated a post, reposted a post by him this morning about how he's actually
out filling potholes and like that, that, that, that constantly bringing it back to things
that people can touch and see and feel and that are real, I think it's critical.
And then you have to have the policies to back it up.
You actually have to deliver.
There was a debate in the democratic kind of, you know, online ecosystem about the, you
deliverism that you, you win support by actually delivering on things.
But it turns out that if you pass a law and it doesn't actually turn into a thing that
happens, then the deliverism kind of falls apart because people in, you know, like the,
the famous kind of Tennessee Valley Authority Royal Electrification Program that people
have voted for FDR and they voted for Democrats for decades because you have to return the
lights on.
That depends not just on passing the federal legislation, it depends on people's lights
actually turning on.
And that's, so you have to run, you know, all the way through.
It's a much, much harder thing to do than it is to break government and then run against
government, which is their Republican strategy.
But my, my core belief is like there are, there are people who, you know, for lots of
different reasons, have come to see how sacred, how incredibly precious and fragile democracy
can be.
And we need to get everyone who shares that conviction together.
And then all together, we need to recognize that when we go out and talk to voters who
feel like the system's already broken, who feel that the, that democracy is rigged, that
clearly is not making difference in their lives, we're not trying to convince them that
the system's actually fine.
Right.
We're trying, we're showing them that we're going to use this system to actually fight
to make the kind of difference that they need in their lives.
And if we can do that, that is how we can earn people's trust.
And then we can kind of deliver those changes together so that people remember who was
on their side when things went wrong.
Yeah, I feel like there's almost a divide in the Democratic party.
There's a variety of divides in the Democratic party, the ideological, whatever.
You don't say.
Right.
Yeah, I know.
Three Democrats, five opinions.
Right.
But I think there's almost this divide between action and inaction that I see in the
Democratic party right now is just like, like that deliver is something like you talked
about.
There are so many things that the Biden administration passed that oftentimes I agreed with very much,
but like it's going to the process of it getting to actually you seeing it in people's
lives takes forever.
It takes so long.
Trump is currently touting things that happen under Biden.
There's this, there's this, there are 11 car plans being built in the United States.
He was like talking about incredible.
This is all those were announced by President Biden, thanks to Biden initiatives.
The initiative to make sure folks can get access to federally funded federal research is
now coming into reality.
This was a huge push by the Biden administration that they did and that's now now actually moving
forward.
It's in some ways, the ability of politics is, you know, it's like in George Washington,
you're, was it George Washington or was it Hamilton making upwards for George Washington,
but planting seeds of trees whose shade you'll never see.
Like, I know the quote.
Yes.
I know who said it.
Yes.
It's a beautiful, great thing.
You know, political terms, you got to, you got to get that tree up fast because if people
aren't feeling a shade, they're not going to know who planted it.
Right.
And it's not going to have a political consequence for anyone, except maybe your successor.
It's sort of like Trump with the, the Obama economy that he was so proud of, which was
a straight line continuation of Obama until Trump presided over a massive crash.
Right.
And then, and I guess at the same time, it's just, you know, and this was a point made
by Green Bay Mayor, Eric Gennrich in the Reconvobulation Area in a piece he wrote for
us a couple months ago about just like how long it would take like to fix a bridge in
their town.
Yeah.
And just like how long these things take.
And I think, you know, there was a, we started to see it towards the end of Biden's presidency
in around Milwaukee.
Those billboards are signs up around, you know, street construction say, hey, brought to
you by the bipartisan infrastructure law.
Like that didn't really start happening until three years after it passed and stuff like
that too.
Sure.
So it's just like it takes a while to get things moving the way they should.
But I think that's one of the things I think the Democratic Party needs to do more in
the years ahead is just focus on action and results, not getting bogged down on ideology.
I just completely agree, emphatically agree.
And there's, there are precedents for this.
There are often wartime mobilizations, but sometimes they're not.
I mean, the COVID mobilization was incredibly fast, right?
And there are also instances, you know, state by state by state where some piece of infrastructure
goes wrong and the state moves quickly and effectively and is able to, to address it.
It's just that, like, if that can happen as exceptions to the rule, why are we not changing
the rules to make that the rule, like, like, let's really dig into this.
And there's all kinds of, you know, we can prop up a safety net during COVID, we can do
it any other time.
Right.
This is, I mean, this is the thing, like, it's so, for so long, it was easy to be cynical
about nothing can ever change.
How can we ever make progress or political systems broken?
Then COVID hit and we mobilized trillions of dollars and, and then, you know, between COVID
and then the Biden administration, we did cut child poverty in half.
Right.
Then we just decided to let it go back up.
And when I say we, almost every Democrat was like, let's keep not having, you know, millions
of children going to bed hungry.
Like, let's, let's not do that, unfortunately, not quite enough.
Not quite enough.
And that, that to me, it's, it is so jarring how much change was possible in what a rapid
space of time when we just decided to do it.
And that, I think that is the kind of footing that we need to get on for so many things that
drive people so furious in their everyday lives.
It doesn't have to be this way.
We can create that change.
We just did it.
We just have to, we just have to get it together to keep doing that.
And I think if we can do that, we're in an era of just profound instability politically.
The, the amount of the presidency changing hands, of Congress changing hands in both
chambers.
There was only a couple of times in American history that have had this kind of ping pong
back and forth.
Right.
And that happens when there's not, when there's the sense that like, this isn't working
so swing voters essentially are like, maybe they can fix it.
Nope, maybe they can fix it.
Nope.
Maybe they can fix it.
Nope.
And I think if we want to have enduring majorities for Democrats or just for, for clean
effective, you know, honest government, what we need to do is fix it.
We need to make genuine, big change that people can see and feel in their lives.
And people are going to be like, yep, this is what I want.
And I don't want to elect the people who are saying we should go backwards.
Yep.
And now we're going to see some of that now that the Biden administration implemented during
the second Trump term, which is something.
It's something.
Yeah.
At the same time, Trump is already doing like so mangling so much that I think that I don't
think we're going to be in a world where just Trump is coasting on Biden's accomplishments.
He is actively, you know, he's grabbed Elon Musk's chains on.
He's using it to attack the global economy.
So for, you know, for worse, but I think there's going to be plenty for Democrats to run
on other than saying actually Trump is taking credit for Democratic accomplishments.
We can, we can point out how he's made things worse in people's lives and how he'll change
that.
Yeah.
Well, we could talk about national news all day here, but let's talk about something
a little bit closer to home.
So in this, this race for to, to be your successor, I guess, in the, in the race for Wisdom's
Chair, which, as I mentioned, less than a month away now at the State Party convention
in Wisconsin, Dell's in June, I'll be there looking forward to it.
But you made an endorsement in that race for Wisdom's Chair.
You endorsed Devon Remaker, who has been part of the State Party for quite some time,
was part of the Harris Walls campaign in Wisconsin last year.
Why did you endorse Devon Remaker?
So we're a few weeks out from the convention about three weeks and change right now.
And as it drew closer, you know, watching, watching the race, we've got three great candidates.
It just struck me that I know Devon would be, will be a great chair.
I have worked hand in glove with him.
Some of what drove me to run for chair in the first place was stuff that Devon had helped
to, to build and run at the party.
I have seen him look around corners.
I've seen him like build, he built the campaign to fend justice to stop the impeachment
of Janet Proto-Sewitz.
He built the people versus must campaign plan, worked with the Crawford campaign, worked
with the party, our allies and partners, and put us on offense.
And I feel like it would be a disservice to this party that I have invested so much
of my own life and work and that I believe in so dearly.
And to the state, if I didn't just share what I know, which, you know, and I don't know
the other, I know the other candidates, I don't know them nearly as well.
I've seen firsthand that Devon is, is stand out extraordinary leader in this work.
And what we've built is at the state party, something that I'm, I'm really proud of and
is very unusual.
It is unlike any other state party in the country.
And Devon uniquely in the race, he not only has helped build it.
He knows exactly how it functions.
He knows what the, you know, what the challenges to overcome are.
It's really good at de-escalating conflicts and finding win-win solutions.
One of the things that I, that I'm most proud of at Wistem's is that we're the only state
in the country where for two presidential elections, the presidential campaign has come
along.
And it has said, your organizing operation here in your state, this will be our field
campaign in your state.
In every other state, they set up a separate coordinated campaign.
This is not to say there aren't tensions and, you know, disagreements where the headquarters
says not on this door, not that door, and folks on the ground are like, you know, wish
we could actually, there aren't some Democrats in that town or whatever.
But the fundamental thing of not just yanking the tablecloth off and resetting the table
and then having that whole apparatus collapse, the second the campaign is over and then
having to start from scratch, the only, in a few other states, there are your organizing
programs that operate on the side, but there's still a presidential that comes in and then
disappears.
But here, we have one continuous program with our county parties and other neighborhood
teams all across the state.
And that both has taken, you know, fundraising has taken the dedication of tons and tons
of volunteers.
It's also taken extremely nuanced and careful political work to build the buy-in from
every candidate, every level from the national party, from our allies and partners.
And Devon has really led and driven that work.
And if we want to keep Wisconsin, the Wisconsin model of your around permanent campaign going,
I just know that Devon can carry that forward.
And he can also take it to new heights.
He has a bunch of ideas that we have not been able to put into effect that he's talking
about on the campaign that I think are great.
So I don't want to end the election and be like, why didn't I just say what I knew?
And I decided to come out and post it online and everyone has their vote.
This is an election.
There are delegates to the state convention.
But I do think everyone who has information and ideas and opinions should say them.
That's how democracy's work.
I certainly have a point of view myself.
Yeah.
Okay.
But I will ask, you said at the outset that you were going to remain neutral in this race.
What changed?
I've changed my mind.
I think fundamentally, when I said it at the outset, like there were a whole bunch of
candidates.
There are a whole bunch of different people running.
People were in.
People were out.
I didn't know where it was going to land.
And I didn't feel like I knew then, you know, how I was going to feel.
So I, you know, if I could go back, would I say I made and decided to endorse later?
Yes.
Yeah.
Definitely wish that I'd done that.
And I didn't anticipate it.
You know, I've talked to, you know, former chairs in various places, some of whom said
at the outset that they weren't going to endorse and then regretted it by the end that
they hadn't said something.
And like, I just didn't want to be that person.
I felt like, you know, the only time when you can affect an election is before the election.
And I definitely didn't want to not be transparent.
I didn't want to like be, you know, advocating for someone while saying I was neutral.
So either I was going to stick to, to being neutral and then, you know, not have actually,
you know, done up and chaired, but I knew or I'd have to change my mind.
And that's what I wound up doing.
So you just wanted to, I guess, be on the record in a certain sense of, of just saying like,
hey, this is what I actually believe and I'm just going to come forward and say it instead
of, you know, because this is kind of the approach that the Democratic Party takes, like
when there's a primary or something like that too, right?
So like, we're not going to endorse in a primary.
And so, and wait to support whichever candidate the voters choose from that primary, right?
Is there a different dynamic with this versus that type of thing?
I think it's very different because in this case, the, I mean, parties do endorse candidates
all the time in races.
You know what I mean?
In this case, like the election is run.
We have elections commissions chosen by the whole administrative committee, the staff.
I've really impressed on the staff.
I'm doing this in my personal capacity.
Their job is to support all the candidates equally.
They all have the, you know, the same information, the same tools.
And like when people are running for office, they try to get the former and current office
holders to endorse them.
And like that is, it's just a, I think it's a lot of how these things play out and people
are, you know, people ask me a lot about who I supported and I have like, been really
careful to not, like, you know, not saying it.
That's just one of feeling weird.
I also think that the, one of the dynamics is, you know, Devon as a candidate has been
running and talking about his experience, the work he's done at the party.
But it's not clear to voters in the race, like how much role did Devon actually play,
given that I was chair.
And I don't want to be like carrying around credit for stuff that Devon actually drove
as the, as the executive director, he's my longest serving executive director at the
party.
A lot of times if you're running and you work for someone, you kind of carry all the
baggage of things people didn't like, but get none of the credit for things that people
did.
And I, like, I, you know, I don't like that dynamic either.
So I feel like it's, yeah, I feel like it's the right thing to, to be able to talk about
specific things that, that Devon drove and there are so many of them in a way that might
not sound credible otherwise.
I think for the other candidates, it's very clear.
No one thinks that I was the power behind the scenes at Zipeket Communications or in
the third congressional district, you know, congressional district party.
And, you know, Joan William have done lots of great stuff that they talk about.
But for Devon, I think that there's a, there's always a, going to be a question for folks
of like, how much is this stuff that Devon's talking about came from Ben or came from Devon?
And the answer is Devon has done vastly more than he's ever gotten public credit for.
And he's, you know, running for chair, and I think if he's in that position, people
are going to be able to see the kind of offense that he mounts, the kind of relentlessness,
the mission focus, like all these, all these qualities that I've, that have made me trust
Devon and looked at him to take on major, major roles at every step of my time as chair.
So, so what you're looking for here is to quote one of my favorite campaign lines from
the HBO show VEEP, Continuity with Change, is that the, is that what you're going for
here?
The Continuity with Change.
That's really funny.
I think the, the specific thing, one of the specific things that I think Devon really
brings is this constant commitment to innovation.
And so, I want to continue the innovation, which I guess is a, a version of that, but
yes.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, I, I do think, if you think that the Democratic Party Wisconsin
is so fundamentally broken that it needs to be burned down and somebody else needs to
be built in its place, Devon's probably not your candidate.
If you think that we're, this is a party that is like broken records and done extraordinary
things and you want someone who's been intimately involved in doing that and can take things
to the next level, then I would argue Devon is your candidate.
So let's talk a little bit about the actual mechanics of the race.
Yes.
This chair race will feature ranked choice voting utilized for the first time.
How do you think that might impact the race and what are your thoughts on ranked choice
voting more broadly?
I, I think it's fascinating.
I think it's been like great for democracy in places like Maine and Alaska where, where
you've seen that play out like TORLEE.
One of the good things about ranked choice voting is that it encourages a level of civility
because if someone is not your supporter, you still have an incentive to try to earn their,
you know, their second place support.
One of the poisonous dynamics in American politics is that on the Republican side,
the strategy is generally, turn out our base voters, try to persuade some other voters,
and then suppress everybody else.
But with ranked choice voting, you don't want to suppress everybody else.
You want to, you know, bring them over.
And Devon, I'm proud to say this is not the practice of my Democrats, but I would rather
have a system where everyone is incentivized to not be so far out of bounds that a huge group
of voters is trying to drive you out of politics altogether.
In this race, so when I was running for chair, we, there was ranked choice voting.
This was a policy that was pioneered by my predecessor, Martha Lanning, who also launched
her, or your own organizing program, which inspired me to run for chair myself.
Ranked choice voting was in place in, I think, a couple of the congressional district elections
that, when I, when I was running for chair, and there were three candidates for a while,
and then one dropped out, so it wound up just being two.
But I think in this race, it means that, that for everyone who's running for chair,
they have an incentive to talk to everyone, every, every delegate.
And I think that that has the positive impact of, of meaning that everyone gets the benefit
of everyone's ideas, you know, that there's a, an argument that every candidate can
make to everybody else.
And, you know, the downside is it's more complicated.
And so I think for people wrapping their mind around what it means, that, you know, someone
might be absolutely supporting another candidate, but you're still getting asked to for your
second place vote, or what have you.
And then when the votes are tallied, you know, there's going to be like a little, if
no one wins with more than 50% of people's first choice, they'll be an explanatory process
to play out how it all means.
So, you know, we'll find out how it plays out.
But I have enormous confidence in the team, and it's all paper ballots, and, you know,
it's going to be very, kind of transparent process in terms of how the, how the process
is conducted.
And for folks listening who are not deeply involved in the Democratic Party of Wisconsin,
which, how could that possibly be the case?
Wisconsin, unlike a lot of states, we have a, a pretty broadly participatory system for
choosing chairs, vice chairs, treasurer, secretary, the statewide party offices, all
sorts of DNC members.
Anyone until, so today is the 21st recording this, anyone until the 24th of May can ask
their county chair to make them a delegate to the state convention.
That's at 5 p.m. on the 24th.
That's when the, the delegate lists closes.
There are, as of the last count in the middle of the holiday weekend, right?
I mean, is what it is.
Yeah, yeah.
The, the last count, there were like more than 1,000 people that signed up to be delegates.
So, you know, so there's a question of how many of the delegates actually show up for
the convention.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a bunch of roots to it.
At this point, the root is through your, your county chair.
When I was elected, there, I think, there were 1,200 voters.
And they come to the state party convention June 14th, 15th in the Wisconsin delts.
It is a water park.
So it's a great opportunity over Father's Day weekend to bring your kids to a place with
a lot of, a lot of water slides.
And then there's, you have to be a member of the Democratic Party by the end of this month,
paid up member.
And one of the reforms instituted under my chair ship is that it's paid what you can.
So you could pay the, you could pay $25.
We have a veterans and students and seniors rate of $10 or if all that is too much, you
could pay it all and become a party member.
And then you come to convention and you cast your vote and you've just chosen the head
of the, I would argue, might be a state party in the country.
And it's pretty cool.
It is, I think for all the, the sense that people who are a couple of steps further from
politics have that, that parties are an insider operation about it at a dot, it's actually
strikingly open door that people can get involved.
They can make change.
There've been lots of highly contested chairs races all the way down to county levels.
If you want to make change at the party, you can get involved in an advocate for it,
make that change.
A few other things I want to get to.
We're going to have to get to them a little bit more quickly given the time here.
So Joseph Packey is among those running for state party chair.
He's picked up a number of endorsements.
And in his first statement about the race, he said something in the press release.
I really found interesting.
He said, and I'll quote here, every conversation I've had about the future of our party gets
back to the same place, Democrats have got to do better when it comes to how we communicate
our message.
We need more effective communicators, period.
What's your response to that statement?
I mean, I'm fat at agreement.
I think we need more communicators, period.
I also think there's a distinction between how people, how I feel about sometimes about
the kind of national kind of blob of like, what is the, what is Democrats versus how
I feel about how we do here in Wisconsin.
Yeah.
I don't, I've not heard anyone say that our messaging was often the spring supreme court
election.
Like, that was a, that was a purely Wisconsin driven operation.
That's the finale extraordinary campaign manager, Susan Crawford and, you know, the party
and our allies, we drove a message that was crystal clear and it totally resonated.
It worked.
Everyone knew those, knew the messages, right.
And, and we won really big.
It's like how people say they hate Congress, but like their Congressperson or something.
Yeah, exactly.
And it, well, I will say that lots of other states and lots of other places across the
country, you hear from people that they also don't like how it's going where they are.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I, I feel like we've pretty good record here.
Like, I think it's pretty strong.
Exceptions that and times when people are frustrated.
But I, I think that there's a lot of strength to build on here.
I do not think this is a dismantle it and, and put something else back together.
I think this is building additional muscles where we need them and there's, there's lots
of those places.
We can always get better.
But I do think that there's a lot that, that folks across the country, honestly, can,
can learn from from the way that Wisconsin Democrats communicate, which is very much to
bring it to the lives of voters, to go to where the voters are, not to, not to hactor
them or judge them or try to, you know, make them feel like they were wrong and they
need to do better are fundamentally.
It's about very recognizing that no matter your politics, that all of us need a, a good,
you know, school for our kids and roads that we can actually drive on and a job, ideally
a well-paid union job.
And then prices that we can actually afford so we can get by and then our personal freedoms
and rights, you know, respected by the government, not trampled.
Those are things that are incredibly broadly supported views.
And they're, the message is that Democrats convey over and over that we, you know, we want
the state to work for everybody, not just for, for a handful of people at the top.
And usually when people are complaining about Democrats messaging, they're complaining
that Democrats talk about other stuff all the time.
And I don't think you have to, you know, abandon your values in order to bring the
conversation back to things that the vast majority of Wisconsinites agree with and Republicans
are trying to actively dismantle.
So I do think that the fact that so many people feel like Democrats are communicating bad
things suggests that there's clearly a problem, right?
And if you look at national polling that disapproval for the national party, even Democrats,
excuse me, voters in Wisconsin are approval for the national party.
Is it an all-time low right now?
But that is not to say that the stuff that we're doing is the wrong stuff.
I think that there's a, you know, I think if people take exception with the way that
we've poured our energy into communicating here, I'd love to hear it because we're going
to get as good as possible.
But I think there's a lot to build on, a lot of strength to build on.
And to me, a lot of the work has the last piece of what Joe communicated.
We need more great communicators to be in more places at more times because when people
hear what Democrats are fundamentally about, the idea that we should be a country that works
for working families, that everyone's their personal freedom and dignity should be respected,
that is stuff that most people want to give a big thumbs up to.
Do you think there's part of that communications issue that is also a credibility issue?
You know, obviously the book about Joe Biden's health has been in the news.
I don't want to talk about the book, but I want to talk about like the credibility aspect
because I think that in a lot of ways, you know, in my opinion, really damage the credibility
of the Democratic Party.
Do you think that steps need to be taken with regards to Biden's decline in office
as health, what have you, as a credibility question?
Here's what I'd say.
Right now, there's a federal budget debate over whether to execute the biggest transfer
of money from the port of the rich, and I need to fact check this, but I saw it on
mind today in the history of federal policy.
This is trillions of dollars that would be cut from Medicaid, from healthcare, for, you
know, often for, you know, working families and for families of modest means, and then
transferred in the form of massive tax cuts for the ultra wealthy.
When you ask people what they don't like about Democrats, the biggest thing fundamentally
is the feeling of like Democrats aren't fighting for me, and people don't see Democrats
fighting for them.
And the way that we change that is by making crystal clear, like in the biggest, loudest,
most effective ways that we can, that we are against cutting taxes for the rich paid
for by everybody else, that we are for making sure everyone can see a doctor when they
get sick, that everyone can join a union and have a job that actually supports their family,
that we are for making this economy not rigged for those at the top, but instead supporting
everyone so that the people who are, you know, working hard, people who have aspirations
of building their own business, that they can actually make that happen.
And that fight, the more we are pouring ourselves into that fight, that, to me, that is how
we, we rebuild support for Democrats.
And I, the, you know, there's, you know, there's a million things that you could go back
and you could say that you want to change, but the fundamental thing that people evaluate
candidates and parties on really is how will this affect my life?
And that's where Democrats need to make it unignorable that both Republicans are trying
to make their lives worse and that Democrats are going to fight to make their lives better
and that when they get the power to do it, they actually will.
So the thing about Joe Biden's health is that Republicans are taking away your health
care and taking away and redistributing funds to the wealthiest in the, in the nation.
Uh, let me go to this way when you go to 2024's election.
Do you think that it would have made a bigger difference if Kamala Harris had publicly
attacked Joe Biden or do you think it would have made a bigger difference if Kamala Harris
had more deeply convinced people that she was going to fight for their economic well-being
in a way and that Donald Trump was going to hurt it?
I think of those two options, the latter, but I do also think she needed to distance herself
from Joe Biden.
Yeah.
I don't think that she did not.
I think that would possibly do.
I think that absolutely would help.
But if I had to choose one, I would do the second one and she had a hundred seven days
and like every time you open your mouth and public when you're a presidential candidate,
you're choosing between everything you could talk about.
So like the, when you look at the analyses after the election, we lost the most among
the people who said they were most affected by inflation and prices.
If you look at polls of young people, you could pose of people who didn't vote and then
voted for Trump, people who voted for Biden and then voted for Trump in 2024, the economic
that fundamental economic divide was by far the biggest thing.
Yeah.
But like vastly bigger than everything else.
And the whole Trump campaign message was essentially, you know, the infamous anti-transad,
the Trumpaharis cares about, they then, Trump cares about you.
That was both an anti-transad, but it was also an economic ad saying that you wanted
to spend your money on something other than your economic while being.
And the cutting through that by landing vividly on the fact that Trump was trying to rip
money away from regular folks and give it to his multi-billionaire buddies is something
that can change the balance of the election.
And I think the really critical question of like, how do we, how do we break through
with that message?
How do we make sure that message is seen by people who are tuning out of TV and aren't
connected to politics in general?
How do we build the credibility to show that we're not just saying this?
We actually mean it.
I think that that is often through actions, not through words.
And so much of communication, fundamentally, it is not, you know, it's visuals as well
as language, but even beyond that, it is, it is being seen doing things and taking action
that is unmistakable.
And sometimes it means pissing off the right people, which I think Elon Musk is a good example
for it first to piss off.
That, to me, is the, the central thing for how Democrats rebuild trust that the, I think
Trump has demonstrated to us over and over and over that there's a lot of norms, there's
a lot of process stuff that can make people, you know, in the Brookings Institution freak
out.
But for, for voters who would rather never think about politics, the stuff that's actually
going to affect their lives and their kids is the thing that, that, that swings them
the most.
And I think that's where Democrats need to put their, their biggest thinking caps on
about how do you, not thinking caps, action gloves, they did, they put on their car
hearts and actually get out there and get to work.
Okay.
So, the question about, you know, just what the next wisdom's chair could focus on.
So, from my perspective in the media, one thing I always take note of is when there
are people working on campaigns, particularly in the communication side who are not from
Wisconsin.
Yes.
You can always tell.
You can always tell when somebody's not from Wisconsin and they're working on a campaign.
It's oftentimes somebody from the coast who comes here to be part of the campaign and
then we'll move on when the ballots are counted.
And it's not that someone here is doing a bad job necessarily, but sometimes it's people
who maybe don't get Wisconsin the way I think people from here do.
So as in that role as party chair, to what extent, you know, obviously to a certain extent
you're going to want to hire the best people, right?
Yes.
But to what extent do you have to navigate the finding the right balance between bringing
in talent to people from outside the state and hiring people and developing talent here
in Wisconsin?
So the way that you square the circle is through talent development over time.
It's through literal training programs.
It's through having lots of internships and paying your interns.
It's through working to make sure that folks are placed that are able to find jobs and
next jobs.
Inevitably, you know, there's some amount of shrinking down campaign stuff after like
a presidential race and then expanding again for the next race, but making sure that folks
are able to just stay in the state and find ways to do it.
It's also making the jobs sustainable.
So paying a competitive salary, we actually pay for health insurance at the Democratic Party
Wisconsin.
We have a 401K match stuff that, you know, does not exist in a lot of different places.
And that allows you to make this a long-term, you know, path for people to pursue.
And over time, our staff has become more of a Wisconsin.
When I came in, you know, I did hire more folks who were from other places and had a lot
of amazing experience and did a ton of stuff to contribute and build their operation.
If you look now, it is mostly, is it entirely, it's overwhelmingly maybe entirely folks
that are either, you know, grew up here and now work here, have spent their whole lives
here or have worked here for multiple cycles and have very deep connections and understanding
about Wisconsin.
And that's something that I'm really proud of and it kind of takes that work in that long-term
view because, well, we have a new finance director at our state party.
She's from Wisconsin.
She then worked across the country.
She was John Testor's finance director in his Senate race, one of the most expensive
Senate races in the country.
And then she just came home and, you know, she's joined her team, which I'm thrilled about.
And that, you want to be a place where people, a destination where people want to work, where
it's not just a kind of way station to check the box and go somewhere else.
And you want to have fresh ideas and fresh blood.
And so I do think that there's a value to balancing, combining both of those things.
When there's a pool of potential folks, there's a lot of history that may be helpful and
maybe not for particular candidates, especially folks in state, but that's also for folks
not from Wisconsin, because often, you know, if someone's applying for somewhere else,
there's a reason why they're not working in that place.
But I think having a really serious attitude towards finding amazing people and viewing
understand, you know, intimate knowledge of Wisconsin and belief in Wisconsin is one
of the core things that makes you effective at the job, I think is really critical.
And often in campaigns, they scale up so quickly and then dispand so, so quickly that there's
not actually a lot of careful vetting and quality control.
Wisconsin political operatives in our campaigns, people like Cassie Finnelli, who ran Susan
Crawford's campaign and Tony Evers' campaign, senior advisor to the Wisconsin Party now,
you know, we have people who have made long-term tenures who have deep relationships with
intimate knowledge of this work.
And that allows us to both hire, attract, retain amazing folks who do really world-class
work at an institution that in kind of normal American politics is not the kind of place
that the most extraordinary operatives want to spend their time in.
State parties, in most states, it's five or fewer staff in Wisconsin.
We haven't had less than 50 staff since I, since I staffed up in the fall of 2019.
And it means that there's actually capacity to do stuff.
It's not just plans on the shelf somewhere we're actually going out and making change
to make a difference in the state.
We don't get everything right, but we keep learning from everything, we get wrong and
try to get better and better.
And to me, that's the goal.
And that's what I want to see continue at the party.
Okay.
We've got a wrap up here.
But I got one more question for you.
What's next for you?
I had several people tell me they thought that at some point you might be interested in
running for state-wide office, whether that's Governor 2026, Senate 2028, something beyond
that.
What's on your mind?
We have, we have a great governor and I hope that he's running because I've every
confidence that he'll win.
You want him to run again?
I think Tony Uvers has been extraordinarily effective.
And the other thing is he's had in every budget a set of things that I dearly want to
be in Wisconsin policy, that Republicans have ripped out of the budget and thrown to the
side.
And so the idea of winning a trifecta in 2026 and actually passing these things into
law is something that I relish with every fiber of my being.
I could imagine running for office one day at the moment, I'm working on a book proposal
to try to write down some of the ideas we've talked about about the things that the country
can learn from how we do politics here and things that I think we need to do to fight, especially
for folks that are trying to figure out how they can be part of all this.
So much of my time has been thinking about if we have this precious resource of people's
time, or maybe a few bucks that someone can donate, how can we stretch that to the absolute
limit?
And I want to try to get that out into the world in a different way.
So that's my next project and spending some time with my kids.
I'm shopper and field trip tomorrow.
There you go.
It's on Jackson Elementary School and that is the kind of thing that I've had to say
no to for six long years.
So I'm excited to say yes.
Well, take some time to recombobulate and spend some time with your family.
Ben Wickler always enjoy the conversation.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks so much.
