He steps to the mic with a boom-ping-ping wisdom sharper than a beast fear sting words like fireflies that light the night he turns the dark in the blazing bright
the truth takes wing and walkies voice let the city sing
Highly anticipated guests joining me in studio at 11 a.m.
Democratic candidate for governor of the state of Wisconsin, Joe Brennan is gonna be here.
Gonna have a little chit chat with him, see what's on his mind.
Gonna ask him about his glide path to the nomination.
He probably thinks he has one because he has not dropped out of the race.
Speaking of the race for governor, it is currently here.
Because 80,000 votes have already been cast and so I think that there's going to be some some inconsistencies in the vote totals.
Let me tell you why Some people are on what is called a permanent absentee ballot list They receive their ballots by mail no matter what that list has always existed But it got a little bit more robust during the elections that we had
while we were in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic so people can put their names on a list so automatically when the ballots are printed you will receive your ballot in the mail and you'll receive your ballot in the mail long ahead of the election and even a month probably before early voting starts speaking of early voting there are going to be at minimum six sites in the city of Milwaukee that will allow you to cash store a ballot prior to the Tuesday
August 11th primary.
I'm gonna give you those sites Later on in the program so you know where to go if you want to cast your ballot early good old shirt was gonna vote on election day That's what I think I'm gonna do assuming that I'm not incapacitated or dead.
I want to be all up in it You know what I mean?
I want to be in the thick of it.
I want to be at my polling location I want to see what it looks like what it smells like I want to see if it's busy if the lines are long if the lines are short
If the Democratic Socialists are going to be protesting, you know, us establishment Democrats.
I have some things to say about them because I'm.
I'm fielding a lot of questions about Francesca.
Why the hell are you all asking me about her?
I don't know why I'm not the expert on her.
I do know this much.
She's a very hot commodity.
So she has this thing called earned media.
Earned media is.
Television appearances and interviews and podcasts that you do.
That you don't have to pay for access to the media that the media itself grants you because there is some kind of fascination and I did like a little bit of Like averaging and adding up of some of the numbers.
It's all unscientific, but she probably has received double in earned media Then she actually has in her campaign account.
I think she's probably somewhere near a half a million
400 something thousand dollars, but the number of interviews that she has done and appearances that she has made and podcast that she has appeared on hell even here with good karma brands even though we're not good karma brands she was She's done a number of appearances with different hosts and shows over at TMJ.
So that earned media actually helps Further the reach of her campaign and she doesn't have to pay for it
She doesn't have to hire a male vendor, male MAIL to do direct mail to voters.
She doesn't have to hire a whole bunch of people knocking on doors, even though she has.
Her getting all this earned media I think has elevated her status in the campaign.
And it also gives this like fantastic whimsical.
you know, um, mold and error to the campaign because there's a whole bunch of promises.
And if you take all of the places in the spaces in which people are very uncomfortable and very unhappy economically or politically, because, you know, the establishment sucks.
Her campaign sounds really appealing.
And I think it sounds appealing to people that don't really follow the grinding, slow nature of what policy creation actually is.
But if you're just a.
a surface follower or have a real minimum bare minimum understanding of policy and politics.
She sounds like a fantastic candidate, but also you got to keep something in mind.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not the only one that shares this sentiment.
You guys hear it every single damn day.
People's understanding of politics and elections and what elected officials even do is is scarce.
People just they don't know.
And we assume because someone is running for office.
with a campaign platform that they are going to be able to do all of those things.
They are not.
If they're a legislator, they need cooperation and support from other legislators, including legislators from the opposite party.
If you're an executive, whether it be a mayor, whether it be a county executive, or you are running for governor of the state of Wisconsin, you can only do what is enshrined in your power via the Constitution.
or you can only be as productive as your legislature wants you to be.
Because we seem to think that if this person gets elected, all of these things are going to come true.
So when I was a teenager, I wanted a Corvette.
I wanted a Porsche 911.
I wanted to come home from school and then just hang out with my friends.
I had a whole bunch of plans for myself, but my legislature, my parents.
didn't necessarily cooperate and agree.
I made all sorts of plans.
I wanted to go to the mall and I want to go to my girlfriend's house for a little high school nookie.
You guys remember high school nookie?
It was better back then, wasn't it?
I think it was better.
The nookie was sweeter in the 90s.
But I couldn't do all those things.
I needed cooperation and permission from a legislature.
So I want a level set in that regard.
Another issue that I'm gonna bring up because I always bring it up is very important and I also want us to have Like a baseline of what we're most focused on what we should be most focused on in this campaign if I look at where Milwaukee is lagging our education levels of The racial plurality of people in this city is really low Black children are not doing very well and it's it's kind of an oxymoron right so we have
an ill-prepared workforce or it's not as prepared as I think it should be to handle whatever this technologically sophisticated economy is going to be 2030 and beyond because it's not my It's not my economy anymore.
It's not my world anymore.
In fact However many years I have left ladies and gentlemen And if you were close to me in age not imagine many of you that listen to this program are the majority of our life is going to be spent in retirement
Yes, we still will be active participants as consumers and yes We still will be voters and a part of the economy but for the most part our Contributions are that of retirees and I want to make sure that in our collective sunset years We have a workforce that we adequately prepared with our tax dollars with our institutions of public or charter or private education
so that the young people can take advantage of whatever these professional opportunities are going to be.
And quite honestly, we don't even know what they are going to be, but having young people that are prepared because we are investing in them essentially so they can take care of us.
And at the same time, we are asking for more jobs and jobs to come back from overseas.
It's really hard to do that, especially in a town like Milwaukee, where the overall baseline levels of education for black children in particular are so, so.
low how we educate young people Has got to be a central core focus because it also is one of the guarantees of what states are supposed to do States are supposed to enumerate all the other things that are not in the US Constitution States administer elections and states Educate their public that is what states do now you can throw in a couple of other things for good measure, but for the most part
I mean, we have a state department of transportation to make sure that we have the highways and the byways and the roads and the bridges and all of the things, but even a good portion of that is federally funded.
So states are relatively limited in their scope of what they actually execute.
Everything else comes from the federal government, but educating our young people is extremely important.
I just want folks to know that this this fatigue that seems to be trending.
The fatigue has crept crept its way into other spheres of public life There is no motivation To educate the people who are causing the fatigue and that's probably a terrible thing for me to say it's probably some people would say it's a very racist thing It can be all of those things, but it's also a reality.
I Got a story here got a couple of them actually and I'm gonna explain
The way in which we should be looking at racial segregation now in the 21st century compared to how we looked at it hitherto It was geographic segregation.
This is where the blacks live.
This is where the whites live The segregation is different now.
So in one of the stories that I have and I got a bunch of them Wisconsin ranks in the top five For public education not crazy top five.
It's like it's doing really really good
But then at the same time I have a story here where Three teenagers were shot and so when I get into the details of it because I want everyone to have a Profound understanding of this because you're paying for all of it and they're gonna ask you for more money You're probably gonna say yes, and you're gonna be paying for more of it Here's what we are doing in the state of Wisconsin for better or for worse whether you like it or not We are making sure and maintaining the parts of the state
that are still overwhelmingly racially homogeneous perform well at the expense of minority students and minority taxpayers, right?
So if you look at the city of Milwaukee, the number of people that live here that pay property taxes, the number of people that work here that pay income taxes, the number of people that are consumers in Milwaukee that pay sales taxes.
a disproportionate amount of that money that goes into the state budget does in fact come from Milwaukee and the economic engine that it is.
But far too much of our money is going to educate children who are already doing very, very well.
I'll break it down on a local level for you.
And Aisha Carr said this when she was on my show a couple of years ago before she got herself into trouble by trying to recall her colleagues, which that wasn't the smartest move, but God bless her.
We love Aisha Carr.
She was against the referendum as a school board member at the time she was like you guys this referendum is bad Don't vote for this because the schools and NPS that are performing well like those banner schools those flagship schools They're gonna get the majority of the referendum money, but the way they pitch it to us politically
The lowest performing schools are the ones that are going to get the money.
That's what we think.
We think, oh, NPS needs more money because these low performing schools with a lot of poor children in them and, you know, the academic scores are really, really low.
Oh, if we say yes to the referendum, these low performing schools are going to get the money.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is the trick.
You have to have low performing schools in order to convince the public they need to open up their wallets.
And then when the public says, yes, we want the poor performing schools to do better because we want these children to have a future.
We want to build a workforce for the city of Milwaukee, et cetera, et cetera.
And we open up for a while as we vote yes on a referendum.
And the majority of the money goes to the schools that don't need it, don't require it, because they're already overperforming.
And what this does is it takes those children and those students who are in those overperforming schools, and it puts them light years ahead.
So they're going to have first opportunity at college admissions.
They're going to have first opportunity at high paying jobs, et cetera, et cetera.
That's the segregation.
Black children's futures are being mortgaged for the salvation of white children because we got to keep in mind this part.
I know it's kind of hard to conceptualize that I sometimes have a problem with it, but I got to live in reality.
I can't live in this fantasy world that a democratic socialist is going to come in here and fix all of our goddamn problems.
Remember a democratic socialist or not even there were sewer socialists are very different and stuff people saying that Milwaukee used to have socialist mayors and Comparing those people and that modality of socialism to democratic socialism is almost the exact same as people saying oh the Democrats are the party of slavery Yes, they used to be but they have been redefined for the 20th and 21st century.
Does that make sense to you?
It's a misnomer and we're taking advantage of people that don't know very much detail about politics
The sewer socialists use tax dollars to build a damn sewer system in Milwaukee so we could flush the goddamn toilet We're still using tax dollars to flush the toilet So sewer socialism is still here what you need to know about Socialists whether it be those from back then or those right now They participated in the segregation of Milwaukee.
They laid the foundation for it socialism does not It's not a replacement for racism
racism and socialism are going to work hand in hand unless you're in like a European country like Norway then you can be as democratic socialist as you want to because that's a whole bunch of white people with blonde hair doing things and taking care of and making free college and free hospitals for other white people with blonde hair.
but the fact that we have race and racial diversity means that democratic socialism will never operate the way that it does in these European countries that we pedestalize.
That's number one.
Number two, I'm black.
I don't want to pedestalize anything from Europe.
That is where white supremacy came from.
That is where the slave trade came from.
I don't want their economic and political modality here.
It's simply not going to work, but the promises sound good.
I'm feeling a little under the weather today, but I'm still gonna kick this shows ass.
I got Joe Brennan coming in at 11 o'clock I've been talking Joe bring it up a lot now.
He I've been talking him up He might maybe look like a whole fool.
Now.
Let me be clear.
I ain't endorsing nobody Sure one ain't it.
I don't think I am But also nobody has asked me and plus my endorsement might hurt So I think I've laid the foundation for where the show is gonna go today should be a doozy if I can get through it
The Democrats are calling for new ballots to be sent out.
So I'm gonna take a break, come back.
I'm gonna dive into that because 80,000 people have already voted.
Since those 80,000 people have already voted, these are the permanent absentee voter lists.
Some of you are on it because during COVID, you can put your name on this list where no matter what, no matter where you are,
No matter what year it is, they're just going to mail you your ballot and you can return it via mail.
You don't have to worry about a polling location.
You don't have to worry about election day.
It's actually very convenient and it made a lot of sense during the COVID years.
But some of you have just preferred to vote that way in perpetuity and that's totally fine.
80,000 people have already voted.
Here's what the problem is.
Of those 80,000 people that have already voted, some of them voted for Missy Hughes.
She dropped out.
Not many voted for Missy Hughes, but somebody probably did.
She dropped out.
Some of them absolutely voted for the Sarah Rodriguez.
She also dropped out some of them voted for David Crowley He dropped out but then he dropped back in and they may want to change their vote because there are some people I promise you of that 80,000 that don't like the inconsistency of being in the race getting out of the race and getting back in the race and they also may not like the fact that Tony Evers is trying to put his thumb on the scale for David Crowley So if you're one of those people
Technically this is what I think I think you should be able to get another ballot because you voted under pretenses that became false You know how many votes Sarah Rodriguez probably has now you got to keep this in mind those votes that she has by people that voted early already of the 80,000 people
That means that these people cannot vote for David Crowley.
They cannot vote for Francesca Hong.
They cannot vote for Kelda.
No one's voting for Kelda anyway.
I don't even think Kelda's going to vote for Kelda.
I would bet you $50,000 when Kelda goes and votes, she's going to vote for Francesca.
Kelda's going to be like, oh, if you can't beat them, join them.
I hope that I can get a position in Francesca Hong's administration.
I'm going to take a break.
Come back.
Gonna rock and roll a little bit.
What did y'all do yesterday Xavier?
Did you play a recorded show?
I was tuned out yesterday Jack.
What
do you play a recorded show for them a Friday show?
No, I didn't want you to have an aneurysm.
I wouldn't have heard it Wouldn't know somebody probably would have texted me.
Yeah, they would have sent it to you.
Did you hear what Xavier said in the Hughes views
I'd
Yeah, be converting everyone to a Francesca Hong supporter.
Are you familiar with
them.
Well, most of the people that are getting elected under that banner are people of color.
Okay,
And their voters are probably dumb and their voters are probably thinking that these quote unquote people of color Democrat.
At first, we don't use people of color.
You're black or use something else.
You're black or you're an other.
But they're just some of them are just they're mean.
Like the comments that I get on my YouTube page.
Oh, if you haven't subscribed to my YouTube channel, what are you waiting for?
Hughes views 414 and so I'll post shorts and I'll have my videos whatever and if people disagree With my political sentiments which is rooted in who I am as a person my personal experience all that right?
Then they attack me as a person.
They don't attack the argument like oh sure when you're a stupid head
You suck, Sherwin.
Attack the argument and that some of y'all are just so miserably insufferable when the world doesn't agree with you.
It's really, really hard to find allyship amongst those people.
Let's pause that, take a break, come back.
Let's regroup.
After the break, the truth with Sherwin
Hughes will be right back.
You are listening to the truth with Sherwin Hughes on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the
truth.com
So if
you already voted you might want to change your mind, but you know what though when you think about it So you're on the permanent Absentee list and this is where it gets a little tricky.
I think some Democrats listen mark my words listen to me now
And of course, this is going to be on a podcast and this show is going to exist forever.
Sometimes I'm OK with my shows existing forever, because I was like, oh, that show is good.
And sometimes I say stuff that
I don't want
Some Democrats, depending upon what the results of the election, the primary election, general election is a whole nother ballgame.
That's a whole nother strategy.
That's go time against Tom Tiffany who I think lives with his mother.
I Think he calls his mother mommy.
He's one of those kinds But some some Democrats That aren't successful in this primary are gonna scream not voter fraud, but they're gonna question The integrity of the election I want you to listen though Donald Trump has laid a false and faulty foundation
that we need to have a healthy level of suspicion in our elections.
Now, we all know that our elections are scrutinized.
I believe that they are fair.
I believe that there's a number of processes that makes it really, really difficult to cheat, to manipulate the numbers.
You can still do it.
I just think that it's really tough to do, and you have to be some kind of mathematical, technological genius to be able to get away with it.
It can be done, but it's extremely rare.
I would argue that if there is some inaccuracies in our votes, it's not enough to change the results of an election.
But one of the the evil genius parts of what the Trump MAGA theme has done to America, it just makes us question things that we never otherwise.
Ever thought about any weird that when Barack Obama got elected and reelected they never said anything about cheating and voted for like there was some small rumblings But it was worse when Joe Biden got elected.
I found that odd because if you want to To tell America that a system is unfair there's cheating going on wouldn't it be the election of a black president and one of the historically most racist and segregated countries on the planet like I found that weird like that would have been a time to get
More people suspicious of elections because of black dude.
Well black dude with a terrible name When I first heard his name, I was like, oh sir, that is not presidential.
You need a stage name You can't be Barack Hussein Obama.
That's that's so Muslim and black So it's so African all the stuff America hates But they didn't really talk about election from now they do talk about it
Whether it exists or not everybody's a little bit more suspicious and if 80,000 Democrats have already voted 80 I should say 80,000 people and that could impact The Democratic primary because I don't know what the hell is voting early for Tom Tiffany.
There's no point So I think the majority of that 80,000 votes that have been cast Have been probably for the majority of those votes have been cast for
the Democratic candidates because that's where all the action is at.
And some of those candidates may have dropped out of the race or because the race has changed directions so many times on the Democratic side, some of these folks may regret their choice or their vote is locked up.
Well, let's say a Sarah Rodriguez and Sarah Rodriguez has dropped out of the race.
And so I think depends on what the results are going to be.
I think that you're going to have candidates are going to say this election is not fair.
because 80,000 plus people already voted for a candidate or candidates that dropped out of the race and they were not able to get a new ballot issued.
I do believe that if you want to request a new ballot, you should be able to do so and the Democratic Party is actually out ahead of this because they know what this can mean for the race.
There might be some votes.
Follow me on this.
They may have...
been a Sarah Rodriguez person because she technically is the heir apparent.
She's the woman.
There was a belief that she could mobilize white college educated suburban voters.
Whatever whatever.
Okay.
She screws up her money.
Right campaign finance stuff got screwed up.
She drops out of the race.
There are some people.
I don't know how many that went from Sarah Rodriguez to now they want to be with Francesca or Kelda.
But their vote is still cast for Sarah Rodriguez.
And if you're that person, you're very
upset.
From Madison, Wisconsin, a chaotic Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor that has seen numerous candidates drop out and reenter the race has threatened to leave thousands of voters who have already returned their ballots with worthless votes for the state's top office.
That possibility prompted the state's Democratic Party yesterday.
to make a plea to the state elections commission urging it to allow voters who already cast an absentee ballot to vote again.
Now, hold on.
Now, think about what this is.
And so the election commission can actually do this.
They say, you know what?
You guys voted for Sarah Rodriguez.
You voted for Missy Hughes.
They dropped out of the race.
Here's a new ballot.
The Republicans are going to call that voter fraud because they're not going to explain the the thorough details of what actually transpired during the Republican and Democratic primary.
They're going to say, Wisconsin voters got to vote twice.
I'm going to pause there.
Come back.
I want to flush out the details of this proposal, which I think is a good idea because if you voted for someone.
That then dropped out of the race your voters now locked up with someone who was technically not even a candidate anymore And that is not fair.
That's not fair to the voters also think there needs to be some kind of a law I don't know how the hell we do it But once a certain day passes once those ballots get mailed out your ass can't drop off the race you in it Bennett You in it.
I know you you want to drop you can if your name is on the ballot you gots to stay in it to win it
What rhymes would win it and in it?
The town of Gwyneth, Georgia.
You got to be in it to win it like Gwyneth.
That's not fair.
Don't vote for somebody that person drops out the rest.
You know what?
I was thinking about this.
I was thinking about a lot of stuff.
I'm sick, everybody.
How do you get a cold in the summer?
This is messing up my thotting abilities.
You can't thot when you're under the weather.
Wash your hands.
I wash the hell out of my hands all the time.
Sleeping under the fan.
Oh I have a fan.
Oh, that's probably why but my house is my windows are I need to replace my windows 13,000 dollars to replace my windows.
I'll suffer but either my house is 17,000 degrees or it's minus 45 below zero.
It's either hot hot hot or cold cold cold.
It's very confusing for me.
Try to get the hook up through Dr. Ken.
do
window?
One of his old sponsors was like the window place.
that.
And I
I seen her at a Bucks game.
She ain't giving your boy no discount on no window.
In fact, Pella windows would probably be even more expensive, however I digress.
You made me.
Oh, this is what I was gonna say.
The last person to enter the race.
Well, I thought was Joel Brennan because he got in December 11th.
He was the last person to get it now technically the last person to get into the race for governor is David Crowley David Crowley been in the race for a week not even a week four days because he dropped out and he got back in so he's the most recent entry to the Alright, I'm gonna take a break come back Continue trotting along trying to get folks to understand what's really going on the truth with sure when he was to be right back
Don't touch that dial the truth with Sherwin Hughes will be right back on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth calm You are listening to the truth with Sherwin Hughes on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth calm
Trying to catch up with the YouTube chat I want to address an obvious question that's easier to answer in a YouTube chat But I do want to get back to the fact that 80,000 people Have already voted in the Wisconsin August 11th primary and some of those people voted for a candidate who has dropped out of the race Some of those 80,000 people voted for a candidate
That was in the race dropped out and then got back in and maybe some of those 80,000 people changed their minds altogether Because when they returned their ballots via mail a lot of different things transpired in the race And I think that those folks should in fact because that's not fair So the voters not fair for someone that voted for Sarah Rodriguez believing that she was either the best candidate or the heir apparent
She had the best chance of beating Tom Tiffany and there's some people that thought that But then you voted for her on that premise and then she dropped out of the race now your vote is not going to count Toward another candidate who might actually have a better opportunity at beating Tom Tiffany so guru wants to know Man y'all type fast.
Well, it's also a lot of people in here, too Where is it right here it is
Guru says, and why did our Milwaukee Police Association endorse Tom Tiffany while Milwaukee Sheriff Deputy Union endorsed a Republican Lieutenant Governor very strange for a blue city?
No, it's not.
Here's something you absolutely have to understand about police unions and sheriff's unions and deputy unions.
They are exceptionally Republican.
They are exceptionally Republican.
I cannot recall the last time the.
MPA the Milwaukee police union endorsed a democratic candidate.
I don't even think it was in this century Okay, you know back in the day when we had a residency requirement where you if you wanted to work for municipal government You wanted to work for the city You had to live in the city because we want you to live in the city in which you are collecting your paycheck because your paycheck is coming from tax dollars and also if you're a cop if you're a firefighter
We want you to be familiar with the people the places the schools and the institutions of The city that has hired you right well the residency rule Was essentially rescinded by Scott Walker as a gift To the police and firefighters who were still disproportionately Caucasian that do not want to live in the city because they've been fatigued
And also the only two unions that were spared from Act 10 Were the police and firefighters union Act 10 signed by Scott Walker somewhere around February January of 2011 gutted public sector unions But not the police union they've been left intact and the firefighter unions as well because they are conservative So don't think because the quote-unquote city is blue That our police unions this should give people a bigger perspective.
You know many cops or Republicans Statistically if you get pulled over by a cop
You're getting pulled over by someone who absolutely supports Donald Trump.
You know how many cops were in January 6th?
Have you guys seen that thin blue line, that flag, it's an American flag, it's all black and it's got the blue line on it?
That's symbolic of being very conservative Donald Trump supporter, blue lives matter.
The whole blue lives matter crowd, ladies and gentlemen, is very conservative.
Blue lives matter is not liberal or progressive.
It's not even establishment Democrat.
I'm starting to think that
They're using establishment as a slur and I defended establishment because there are some things in this society that have to have a foundation to them.
They have to be established.
I like establishment stuff.
I like when I go to the doctor, let's see.
Let's say I need a new elbow.
I need I need to I mess my elbow up and I got to get an elbow transplant.
OK, I don't want to go to high.
I'm a non establishment doctor.
We're just going to
We're gonna have you chew on some twigs and sticks to numb the pain in your elbow and I'm gonna use a butter knife and Some chicken salad to replace your elbow.
No, I want an established doctor established in science and academic This whole thing with the look I get it.
I get it.
I know what they're doing But the establishment is not working.
It's corporatists, you know, big money is ruling everything the oligarchs are screwing up the world I I totally understand it.
Trust me.
I do it makes me very angry to the rich people aren't paying their taxes
What else?
They're exploiting people.
They're not raising wages.
You'll have CEOs that make what 900 times the average worker.
People can't afford their health insurance because it's too expensive.
Our health insurance companies are oftentimes for profit agencies that don't want people to stay healthy and be healthy.
They're just trying to rip us off.
Trust me, I know all of that.
But to want to take down the establishment.
It's a great thing, but there's only one way to do it and this is why I have a problem because the only way you can take down the quote-unquote establishment Is to have a goddamn revolution, but they're not gonna do that.
We're not prepared for revolution.
We're too fat We're out of shape We're not prepared.
We're not survivalist.
We can't live off the grid
Everything that we get that we need to maintain our lives everything from our food our water our electricity our internet our logistics our supply chain is this the establishment it is the oligarchs they provide us everything we are so attached to their teeth that we can't detach and I get you don't like the establishment but if you're not going to have an absolute rebellion revolution then you got to stop complaining about the establishment because it sounds like you're gonna do something about it but you can't
And voting is not revolutionary.
It can be one of many tools in a toolbox for social change, but that's not going to do it.
He's got to keep in mind the quote unquote, the older guards and the rich people in the establishment, they vote to and they can have heavy influence on elections.
But I just I want folks to know that I get it if you're anti establishment, because I can prove many different ways how the establishment doesn't work for people.
In fact, the best example that I could give without being a democratic socialist, which I'm not, is I would say the establishment of the United States is fundamentally and foundationally and structurally racist.
It's not always yelling in words at black people.
It's, oh, here's where you went to school.
Here is what you learned.
What you learned is not compatible with the world of work, success, and progress.
You went to a school that was majority black.
We funneled resources out of your school and put them into a white school so you were going to be at some disadvantage academically when you come out of high school.
That right there, that's establishment.
The foundation of this country based on slavery, the slave trade, and the money that was made.
Whether it be insuring slave ships, whether it be newspapers and big media that made money advertising slave auctions.
That is establishment, too.
And no, I don't like that establishment.
But the problem is the anti-establishment people look at racism as a footnote.
So even if we went to a full social democracy or democratic socialist country, which some people think would be the best way, racism is still going to exist.
If Francesca Hong and others are saying, oh, we need to fully fund MPS and we need to get rid of choice schools and charter schools, which is.
Absolutely insane and should be a non starter for anybody because even if the options for black children are limited you still can't take them away You can't do that.
You just you can't do you can disagree with them politically and you can voice your disagreement But if it's settled law and established in the state of Wisconsin that some families that don't make a lot of money They can't afford tuition should still be able to get their children educated at a school that has tuition as a racial barrier They should still be able to do that and you can argue you don't want public dollars
going to private education, I'll be right there with you like you know what to some extent you're right.
So then what we're going to do is we'll just fund the private schools less and let them raise the additional money that they need for their quote unquote religious education.
We can have a very sophisticated political debate on that without trying to take that option away from black children who can't read.
And so what the Democratic Socialists are because they are they're devoted to fully funding public education.
But here's what you need to know about quote unquote fully funding public education.
in schools that are overperforming, whose student body happens to be overwhelmingly Caucasian, fully funding public schools gives those schools that already have the lead, whose children, those kids, already have a head start, they're already more academically prepared.
Some of those kids are coming out of high school and NPS with a semester's worth of college credits, and in the same district, you got some kids that can't even write their name on a piece of paper.
So when they talk about fully funding public education, it's not giving money to the black kids.
You have to have a segment of poverty everywhere in society so we can point to the fact that we need more money.
You need poverty in cities and in town so you can write grants to the federal government.
Can you please give us more money?
Because look at these poor people over here.
The cops have done it for years.
If you can establish that there is a drug problem in your city, you can write to the DEA and get a grant to fight drugs.
to fight the drug problem.
And what those police departments will do is they'll buy like military equipment with it.
So you have to have poverty and you have to have low performance.
This is establishment stuff, too.
But ain't nobody talking about that.
You have to have poor, dumb, illiterate black kids to say hi, everybody.
Hi, liberals.
Hi, progressive.
Look at these poor blacks.
Look at their shoes are on the wrong foot.
Their t-shirts are.
dirty and tattered they look like little baby slaves can you please vote yes on the referendum so we can get this poor black baby a new t-shirt and everybody says oh my god yes the poor black baby and then a referendum passes and then somebody runs into that poor black baby again the shoes are still on the wrong foot their t-shirt is still dirty and torn and they're like wait a minute
What about the referendum money that we voted on so this baby could have the shoes on the right foot and so they could get a new teacher Oh, no, no, we gave that referendum money to Rufus King so that they can have a brass band perform at the goddamn Rose Bowl But no, we're gonna need another referendum because look at the black baby now the black baby doesn't have shoes on at all Can you please give us another referendum and we say yes and what happened is they'll get more and more and more and more money But the performance is getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse
Because the kids that are overperforming in those schools are getting even more money than they need or ask for That's the problem and democratic socialism doesn't answer that by saying let's just fully fund public schools fully fund children try that out one time Take a break come back Keep chatting Read some text and messages if we have any do you guys even text a 3 3 2 1 2 1 0 1 7 anymore?
I know I don't check it very often.
I should check it more often.
A 3 3 2 1 2 1 0 1 7 if you want to text in some stuff.
We also have a YouTube poll.
We asked you guys if you voted early already and next to none of you did 98% of you have not already voted early absentee.
OK, maybe that's a good thing.
The truth with Sherwin Hughes will be right back.
Don't touch that dial.
The truth with Sherwin Hughes will be right back.
on 1017 The Truth, The Truth App, and 1017TheTruth.com.
This is The Truth with Sherwin Hughes on 1017 The Truth, The Truth App, and 1017TheTruth.com.
A chaotic Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor that has seen numerous candidates drop out and re-enter the race has threatened to leave thousands of voters who have already returned their ballots with worthless votes for the state's top office.
That possibility prompted the state Democratic Party yesterday.
To make a plea to the state elections Commission urging it to allow voters who already cast an absentee ballot to be able to vote again More than 80,000 ballots have already been returned The request is all but certain to result in a lawsuit With the primary just three weeks away.
So now the Democrats are likely to sue the state elections Commission
to require them to send ballots to individuals, the 80,000 individuals that have already voted.
This is tricky because technically, so this has happened before.
And so whenever you have the rare instances of quote unquote voter fraud, you just got to remember in the center of Wisconsin, we can't make a single mistake when it comes to our elections and when it comes to casting ballots, we can't make a single mistake.
So here's what oftentimes happens, right?
So people may not know the rules and they put themselves on the permanent male, absentee, boutless male MAIL during COVID.
Anytime you could do it.
And it usually was people that were, it was seniors or people that travel a lot or expatriates.
So if you're going to be out of the country for an extended period of time and you know, you're going to be out of the country.
During an election you put yourself on that permanent absentee ballot list and they'll mail your ballots to wherever you are You're in Spain in the Portugal.
Maybe you're in France.
Maybe in one of those weird World Cup countries.
Thank God soccer is over Who won Brazil China?
Who won the World Cup Florida
Spain
Yeah, they beat the racist country of Argentina
Yeah.
Oh, no.
Oh, yeah.
I know you're looking to the history of Argentina is pretty interesting.
Actually,
of like but most of the people that live over there now are technically European Spanish because they I don't make a lot
get
Oh Hispanics are people of color.
No, they're not the Western European races.
There was the worst ones were the Dutch and the Portuguese.
They used to just eat black people.
They don't get enough bad credit throughout history.
Portugal with ladybitty country.
They screwed Brazil over.
But no that I get it the Argentinians but nobody likes black people and we get our feelings hurt because you know what's crazy Black people will tell you the kind of black people that they don't like for whatever reason But then when somebody else says They don't like that same kind of black person for the exact same reason How you can't say that I mean I get it only we can talk about our people
There's white people I don't like.
There's some white people I think are fantastic.
There's some white people I'd go sailing with, you know what I mean?
There's some white people that if I went sailing with them, I wouldn't come back.
You should have just seen how they treated I Show Speed.
I don't know who that is.
He's a popular black streamer.
They were throwing beer at him, all kinds of stuff, calling him M Word.
Yeah, for no reason.
Oh, yeah, exactly.
in good faith nor conscious.
Cause soccer fans are just, they're not human.
I don't know what the fascination is with a sport where you can't use your hands.
That's insane to me.
Soccer is a sport that children play before they figure out what big boy and big girl sport they're gonna play.
And all they do is just run and kick the ball.
Soccer is real football starts in about 50 days.
So everybody relax.
Oh, I got good news for you Xavier.
What's that?
You know Milwaukee is seeing a lot of strip club closures And I'm happy to report that if you were a VIP member or a VIP Card holder at either the airport lounge, which is also closed.
It's gonna be torn down actually or on the border
You can take your VIP membership card to Silk Exotic and trade it in for a lifetime VIP membership to Silk Exotic.
That's right, Xavier, they did that for you.
Somebody was listening to my show that day and they're like, you know what?
Anyone who was ever a VIP member, why you would be a VIP member at the airport?
I got kicked out of there, by the way, one night.
Long story, long story.
What were you doing there?
Doing some grabbing.
I could see getting kicked out for that.
But I was there for a friend's birthday and I didn't really want to go because it's way out the way.
And then it just turned into a thing.
And then one of the dancers got lippy with me.
So I got lippy back.
But I won the argument and the bouncer was like, you can't talk to her like that.
I'm like, sir, she can't talk to me like that.
And he's like, I think you need to leave.
I said, I think you need to get a college diploma.
And then it just turned into, you know what I mean?
It was the thing.
So, uh, yeah, if you're a VIP card holder at any of those other establishments that have closed, silk will allow you to trade that in for a VIP membership at silk exotic.
So that's courtesy of what really me, I put that plan together because I want people to be able to see the midnight ballerinas because they're only paying their way through college.
I would
The Truth with Sherwin Hughes returns after this on 1017 The Truth, the Truth app, and 1017thetruth.com.
Highly anticipated, highly publicized.
Joe Brennan, candidate for governor of Wisconsin, running in the very crowded and unorthodox Democratic primary first.
Joe, welcome to the program.
I think this is the first time that we have spoken on one on one seven.
The truth, correct?
Yeah, we got a quarter century worth of history.
So when you decided to enter the race, somewhere's around December 11, 2025, you were at the time the last person to join what was already a crowded primary.
Can you take us through what you believe your glide path was in December?
Francesca was in, Kelda was in, Mandela was in, David was in.
You decided to jump in.
What did you see that maybe other candidates and other people did not?
relatively popular figure in politics in the state of Wisconsin.
You held the Secretary of Department of Administration position, which is probably one of the most significant cabinet level positions in government.
And for all intents and purposes, you did a really, really good job in that position.
Do you believe that you're working in the Eras Administration while those successes were mounting can be utilized?
to your credibility as a candidate, if Tony Evers remains popular and you were the DOA secretary, do you think that some of that will transfer to you and aid in your popularity as a candidate?
You know, what I think is that it certainly gave me credibility from the start and the work that I did as DOA secretary, especially during COVID because a lot of that was
on the ground with local elected officials, whether they be county executive, village board president, mayors.
It was, how are things going on the ground?
How can we help?
And what resources can we bring to make sure that you're getting stuff done?
And to be honest, Sherwin, it was some of the least partisan work that I have ever done.
It was more pragmatic.
We just lost, and I know a number of people here at the station were friends with Paul Farrow, who's the county executive in Waukesha County.
Paul and I became better friends during that time because it was not about ideology.
It was about how do we actually demonstrate that we can make government effective?
What can we do to get...
things out to people who are in need.
At that point, it was masks.
It was PPE.
It was, you know, what's happening on the ground.
And those were the very pragmatic things.
And you have to do that during times of crisis, like what we lived in during COVID.
And these are anything but normal times and the dysfunction and the chaos that we live in and what Donald Trump is wrought on America.
But the same thing applies now.
We've got to be in a position where we're getting stuff done, instead of just being consumed with getting even and
That's who I have been throughout the course of my career and my life.
That's, you know, I think that is what what I bring to this race that is distinctive from other people.
And it's a 20 year career of having been in executive leadership.
And that's different than being Lieutenant Governor, where you don't manage a whole bunch of people.
It's different than being in the legislature.
Like those are things that are different from the field.
And I think a distinction that I bring from anybody else in the
You have a new add out.
We played it on this program a little while ago and you essentially are giving your opinions on Your opponents one is a democratic socialist one has lost statewide before One technically is the newest entrant into the race for governor as of last Saturday and that's David Crowley You've been taking some heat because oh Joe you're going after the going after the people of color, but isn't
Isn't being in a primary supposed to be a competition, but didn't you also take some heat for something that you said?
I'm gonna paraphrase a little bit you said at some point in some podcast that you didn't think that was constant was ready for a non male Person of color governor.
Can you clarify
Sure.
Sure.
Happy to clarify one one the commercial I put out I mean, I think the things you said are facts that the what I laid out was facts proud socialist
Somebody who lost in 2022, somebody who was out of the race just a few days ago.
Those are not things to be questioned.
And yes, primaries are about making sure that we get everybody has a chance to weigh in on who the candidates are, what their backgrounds are.
I've also, and I hope we'll talk about this, I've been as transparent as anybody.
I paid somebody to do opposition research into myself.
100 pages and I put it out online and I think that makes me probably the most transparent candidate running for governor in Wisconsin and maybe the only person willing to do that who's running for governor all around the country because people deserve that level of transparency.
Getting into the comment or what was said months ago, somebody asked me, I think the question was being a white guy, being the only white male in the race, is that a positive, is it a negative, is it something we shouldn't be talking about?
And you know, what I should have said is there are capable, qualified candidates running.
Every one of us has a chance to win and govern in the state of Wisconsin.
Wisconsin has elected Vell Phillips, who was my, you know, former neighbor in the 1970s.
We've elected Tammy Baldwin, Barack Obama.
So Wisconsin has shown that we will do, we will give anybody a chance.
Like, that's what I should have answered, you know.
And I'm a big fan of the musical Hamilton.
One time, Aaron Burr advises Hamilton to talk less.
But it took me like four minutes to answer that question.
And what I should have said was that.
The words that I used at the end of that were, we're not there yet.
And that's what people took is to say, well, we're not there in being able to elect anybody but a white guy.
I mean, here's what I would tell you.
Over the last couple of months, we have seen the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in the South.
We have seen people having the representation taken away.
I would still affirm that as a country, we're not there yet in terms of who we want to be and what we want to be.
That's why I have been in the positions that I have been over the course of my career.
That's why I have fought for everybody.
That's why I was the first person when Donald Trump said he was going to come to try to affect the elections in Wisconsin.
I was the first one to stay.
We got to stand up and protect democracy.
We got to make sure we're protecting the right to vote early to vote by mail.
People who work at the ballot box like that's who I want to be.
And I think we need allies that look like me that look like you.
We need everybody in the community, everybody in the state to stand up to do that.
And that's what that's why I'm in this race.
That's why I want to be governor.
That's that's who I would be as governor.
I know you've been we've all be good.
You could ask any one of these candidates.
We've been doing it over the last year and it is.
I'll be in superior tomorrow.
I was in Bayfield.
a couple of weeks ago and I drove back home on a Saturday night from Bayfield to my home here in the city of Milwaukee.
I think it took about six and a half hours.
I think Bayfield is, by the way, one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen on earth.
But I think I did see a sign that said five miles to the end of the earth.
Like I was very close, very close to there.
But it is a big, beautiful state.
And we have spent a lot of time and we have traveled it forwards and backwards.
And that's something that I respect every person in this race who has put themselves out there.
and how hard they have worked to do.
There's a forum tomorrow in Superior.
There was one last night in Sock Prairie.
We did another one in Madison a couple of days ago.
We have continued to do this.
People are doing it on their own.
We're doing these together.
This is what primaries should be about.
And I'll tell you, one of the things that's changed in the chaos and the dysfunction of the last week that's kind of seen in this primary and in campaigns and in the democratic process is people are finally paying attention.
For a long time, we were doing all this.
We were rolling that stone a pill and it didn't feel like people were paying attention.
And now people are starting to lock in.
There's early voting that has started.
People are going to start doing the early vote in person.
And I think this is a case where lots of people were waiting for things to happen in the race and they now have.
And that plays to my advantage because my challenge from day one has been not that people don't believe that I have the qualifications, capabilities to do the job.
The job that I had as the secretary of administration
Top-appointed job in the cabinet, really the job is to help the governor run the executive branch, build the state budget, do all the procurement, human resources across the administration, across the enterprise.
have the connections to local government getting four and a half billion dollars of resources out from COVID money.
Like all of those things were things that I did.
My challenge has never been that I have the capability to do the job.
My job, my challenge is that just not as well known as other candidates in the race.
And now if this is why people start to pay attention because somebody's campaign imploded because somebody was out and then they came back in, you know, when there are people who are trying to tell you how to decide, I think people now are starting to figure out that
One, there's a very important race on August 11th.
The most important thing is to win in November because the problems that we have around health care, around education, around housing, around child care, we're not going to be able to solve those unless we win a general election, unless we beat Tom Tiffany and Donald Trump.
And I will still maintain, and I will say this until I'm blue in the face, but that I think I am the candidate who's best equipped to win the primary, to win the general election, to govern on day one.
And that's based on who I have been throughout my career.
It's based on comparing who I have been throughout my career against the other candidates.
And so it's inevitable at some point that people make a comparison about this candidate versus that.
What have they said?
What have they done?
What are the things that are their liabilities?
That's going to be part of the conversation.
We are currently living in probably the most anti-affirmative action, anti-DEI political and social climate that I've ever seen.
Things were a little bit different during the era of George Floyd when there were marches and protests in Black Lives Matter.
It seems like we have done a complete 180 from that.
And I got to be very realistic in this anti-affirmative action, anti-DEI climate.
The state of Wisconsin is 80 percent white, 20 percent of the people in the state are not white.
So you being the only white guy in this race, it does make an awful lot of sense demographically.
But here's where I'm at with this.
Do you have commitments to...
affirmative action and diversity.
Will you have a diverse cabinet?
Will you surround yourself with people who have connections to communities that you may not be very familiar with?
That's number one.
Number two, can you be Tom Tiffany?
And I would say, look at who I have been throughout the course of my career.
You know, when we had COVID relief money and it was going out to.
local communities, to small businesses, to family farms, to people who couldn't keep a roof over their head.
I was working there with every possible ally around the state of Wisconsin.
We also did, and it was driven in large part by people here in Milwaukee, we did diverse business assistant grants to the tune of about $75 million.
We put money into the community development financial institutions, the CDFIs, tried to get money to local chambers all around the state.
All of that was an effort to try to make sure that
that, yes, we were responding to COVID, but we were also making sure that over the course of the coming years that it wasn't just about the immediate response.
What could we do that's going to have long-term impact in the city where I live, in the Milwaukee community?
Those are the things that I have tried to do in the course of my career.
In addition to that, part of the responsibility that I had
in state government was around supplier diversity at the Department of Administration.
And, you know, this is a program that... Which
And it's a program that's been around for 40 years, and it doesn't have enough teeth in it.
And there's only been about four times that the state has met even the levels of what we try to do.
You know, twice.
Two of those were the years that I was at the Department of Administration.
I'd like to think that those are the types of things.
And that wasn't just me.
That was Governor Evers setting a tone.
It was the other people who...
who are working on that diligently.
It was the people who coordinate and cooperate with us to do that.
But that is demonstrated impact of who I have been.
And it has been an honor for me.
I was at, there was a forum in Madison a couple of weeks ago.
It was actually the day before that David dropped out.
And that was the, I think the last forum he did before he went out and then he came back in.
But at that event, I had a couple of people who I had hired.
It was around issues of diversity.
It was in Madison.
It was at the hub.
If you haven't seen it, it's a great spot in Madison that they have created with the Urban League.
And there was a lot of energy there.
But I had two employees of mine who had worked with me, who were there, and who are working with the Urban League.
And to have people like that, who I had hired at DOA, one has gone on and is now working in the private sector.
Having their support, having them come up to me, somebody stopped me on the street the other day while I was in Madison and say, hey, I knew you were going to be around.
I just wanted to come by and tell you how much I'm looking forward to voting for you because of who you were as my boss.
And I would like to think that that's a good reflection of who you are.
So will I surround myself with people like, I have never done anything but that, and that's who I have been.
The group that I work with at the Creative Milwaukee Committee is a strong, diverse group.
We have, I'm building, we have built leaders there that look like Milwaukee, and that's who we should be.
That's who I have been throughout the course of my career, and that's what I would do.
Second question.
Second question, can I beat Tom Tiff?
Yes
We're going to take a break.
I'm going to come back more with Joe Brennan.
I'm going to ask you about education because several of the candidates in the race are vowing to if not on day one.
to eliminate an educational option for a lot of parents right here in the city of Milwaukee, but then there's something else that is that needs to be discussed in this race and I haven't heard enough of it from other candidates.
Joel, your success if you become governor is only going to be as productive as the legislature you can bring with you.
Don't answer it now.
I want you to give details on the other side.
Can you bring other Democrats into the majority and the assembly and the Senate, especially in areas that may have voted for Donald Trump in the past?
More with Joel Brennan, Wisconsin Democratic candidate for governor.
You are listening to The Truth with Sherwin Hughes.
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be right back.
You are listening to the truth with Sherwin Hughes on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth comm
He's a candidate for governor and there's a lot of other candidates for governor as well But he happens to be the one I'm talking to at the moment Joel you need to have
a democratic legislature in order to maximize, I guess, your policy ideas.
Do you believe that you can pull other Democrats running across the state?
Really, every assembly district is competitive.
It looks like the Democrats have a good chance of getting a majority in the Senate.
All this bodes well for you, but we need somebody at the top of the ticket that can get...
What maybe we're Trump voters or Republican voters, moderate voters to vote for those legislators.
Can you get a Democratic majority in the Wisconsin State Legislature?
That's the fact that I have worked in government.
I've worked in business.
I've worked in the nonprofit sector.
You know, you don't go raise money in the nonprofit sector.
and make it all be about ideology.
You saw the work that I did at Discovery World.
The biggest donor to the expansion we did at Discovery World was Roy Ryman.
Roy has now passed away, but he was very generous.
But I can guarantee you that Roy and I, we canceled each other out in every election since I was 18.
But he cared about kids, he cared about STEM education, cares about Milwaukee kids, and he and his wife Bobby contributed about $7 million, $8 million to the expansion that we did at Discovery World that serves our entire community.
So can I be somebody who appeals to that?
When I was the secretary nominee...
The State Senate had to approve me and I was approved by 33 to nothing vote.
Now that shouldn't be a big deal.
A governor should have the ability to appoint people who are capable, qualified, but in, you know, in the last eight years, there have been like 25 appointees for Governor Evers who have been pushed out.
It happened four times in the 40 years before that.
And so, you know, I'd like to think all of that is a reflection of the fact that I can do it.
The fact that, again, you probably have seen your Republican friends in mind saying the candidate who is mostly
I'd like to see more of my democratic friends agree with that, but that's an indication of the fact that I could actually bring people down ballot along, and I have the ability to, because of the work that I have done, because I've been a pragmatic leader and demonstrated effect, that's the thing that I can bring that I think sets me apart from some other candidates, and it makes it less about ideology when you get to the general election, and more about pragmatism, and more about who is
actually capable of dealing with the problems we have with health care with education with housing with child care like who is going to be the candidate who can do that.
And I will stand toe to toe with Tom Tiffany on that issue and any other issue.
I mean, I got I think there are things we had to do at the state capital budget that you know And and how do you make that the job that I had in state government was how do you actually make the executive branch work?
We need to have a strong legislature We haven't had the ability to have a legislative majority in almost 20 years for the Democrats We were frozen out starting in 2010 by Scott Walker and they've gerrymandered these districts so that we have had almost no chance and now we've got fair maps
and the ability to have a legislature that can come along.
But the main thing that I have done is I have been somebody who's been responsible for making things work inside the executive branch.
I think that is as important as anything because, yes, we want the legislature to be along with us, but we better be in a position to squeeze as much as we can out of the executive branch.
a parental choice program, which is an option for many families in the city of Milwaukee.
I don't know if you've seen the statistics, but they are abysmal for African American children, and I think that personally, if parents have options, including wanting to send their children to schools in which other educators may send their schools, I believe that that legal, that legitimate, that constitutional option should continue to exist.
You're familiar with the troubles that we have in education and also hampers the future of Wisconsin's workforce if we don't have a well educated Group of folks coming out of high school and beyond your thoughts on the parental choice program and do you want to end it on day one like several of your Opponents want to do
well the answer that for the question do I want to end do I want to end it on day one the answer is no
You know, so one, let me tell you this.
My wife and I have lived in the city for the last 25 years.
We have two kids.
They're now both in college.
Our two kids went to the Milwaukee Public Schools for a total of like 22 years, from K3 through 8th grade.
And then we paid for them to go to private high schools.
So we've run the gamut in the experience.
And let me tell you about our personal connection to school choice in Milwaukee.
You know, my wife and I have been involved in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program for more than 20 years.
Eric is my little brother, and Shanika is Audra's little sister.
And so we've been doing that.
Shanika is now a parent, and her daughter is 14.
And her daughter went to Milwaukee College Prep.
And through a charter school, and then she got a voucher to go to Wisconsin Lutheran High School.
I think this will be her sophomore year.
She's now 14.
They actually lived with us for a few months after she was born, because Shanika wasn't in a relationship that was very healthy for her.
So these are people who we have been involved with over the course of their lifetimes.
And I'll tell you, you know...
Killani goes to Wisconsin Lutheran because she can get a voucher.
Otherwise, they live way out on the northwest side.
Maybe she'd be going to Vincent.
This is a real thing.
We need to make sure that Vincent, that we are increasing the outcomes, making better outcomes at Vincent, but are we in a position where we're going to tell somebody that they can't send their kid who has an opportunity to thrive at Wisconsin-Lucin?
Like, that's not something that I want to be able to take away, that I'm in any position to take away from families in Milwaukee.
And so, you know, there are distinctions that I make about the school choice, the voucher program in Milwaukee versus the rest of the state.
To be honest, it's a conversation piece.
much more outside Milwaukee now than it is inside Milwaukee.
There's levels of transparency.
The city of Green Bay puts on its property tax bill, here's how much money is going to the voucher program.
I think that that'd be good to do statewide.
I think that there are levels of accountability that can be increased.
The largest recipient of vouchers statewide is a virtual school now, or largely a virtual school.
That's different than I think the people who are going to some of the schools that you and I know are pretty
reducing really great results in Milwaukee.
And the results aren't great everywhere.
We need to hold everybody to account.
The other thing about the statewide program is that...
Data will tell you that most of the kids who are getting a voucher to go to those schools, their parents were paying for them to go to a private school before they ever had a voucher.
That's different than the bedrock of how the school choice program was created here in Milwaukee.
So, again, I make a distinction, and I will tell you, this is not a black and white issue on education.
It's one where there is lots of gray area, and we need to make sure we are managing in those gray areas, because ultimately, this is about outcomes.
We talked about the difference between outcomes for fourth graders in Milwaukee for white kids versus black kids is the worst in the country.
It's not much better as you go up.
There are all kinds of ways where we should just say that the outcomes here are not ones that we are going to live with.
In the recovery from COVID.
There were 38 states that measured how they were doing in the recovery on math.
Wisconsin finished 33rd, 35 states in terms of how we were covering on reading.
Wisconsin finished 30th.
If we think that those are tolerable results, if we think that the system we have now is good enough, then, you know, I don't know what state you're living in.
And so I'm not going to be somebody.
I want to make sure that we are doing right by the kids who are in the public school system here.
We should redo the school funding formula.
It's been flawed since it was introduced 33 years ago.
But to come in and say, on day
one, we're going to yank out kids from the schools that they've been in and schools that we know are demonstrating value.
Now, you know, here's one thing I would tell you, I'm for accountability.
I think the people who don't want accountability are the people who are running lousy schools, whether they're whether they're public schools, whether they're private schools, whether they're chartered schools, like we need to be in a position where people are held to account for results.
And we're saying that we are not going to any more just withstand results that are not tolerable for us, not acceptable in Milwaukee or anywhere else around
Speaking with Joe Brennan Democratic candidate for governor and a crowded primary then they got a little less crowded Then last Saturday got a little bit more crowded.
I'm gonna take a break when we come back I want to ask you about what seems like a shift of the at least the Democratic primary electorate to the left.
There's a very anti establishment theme that seems to be permeating through the Wisconsin political universe.
I want to talk to you about that
But then also general elections are a lot different than primaries.
If the Democratic primary voter has decidedly shifted to the left to get as far away from Donald Trump and his policies as possible, what does that mean for a general election where I believe that the majority of people who will show up to vote are not that far left?
They are much more centrist and moderate.
Joe Brennan is my in studio guest.
Don't go anywhere.
We'll both be right back.
The truth with Sherwin Hughes returns after this on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth comm This is the truth with Sherwin Hughes on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth comm
He's a candidate for governor running as a Democrat
Joel, do you think that the Wisconsin electorate, I mean, general election voters, not primary voters, have they shifted to the left is Wisconsin a deep blue ultra liberal progressive state?
I mean, let's look at the Fox Valley.
Let's look at Warsaw.
Let's look at, you know, Woodruff and Monaco and Iron County.
Let's look at Western Wisconsin, some of the rural areas.
Do you think that the whole state has shifted far enough to the left that they would vote for a democratic socialist?
Or do you think general election voters are going to be much more practical and pragmatic about electing a policymaker that can get stuff done?
Your thoughts?
Pragmatic, but they're also with Wisconsin voters are mavericks too now You know the spring elections while it's a different election the spring elections give us some idea of where people are in Wisconsin and there were Counties that went blue for the first time in a generation for Chris Taylor So there's opportunity out there and I and I've been talking to farmers who have just gotten absolutely their hats handed to them by Donald Trump every input costs going up, you know
feed seed, transportation, fertilizer, all of them have voted
And now they're saying to us, Okay, Democrats, you know, now we're giving you a chance, we will give you an opportunity to listen and to help us.
And, and again, in Wisconsin, we have an example in Tammy Baldwin, if somebody who has absolutely been that and been there and done that, she goes to those places, she has demonstrated that she can be effective, like
That is a model for us to follow.
But here's the other thing that you see is that Democrats are seen in statewide polling.
They're trusted less than the Republicans are here.
And part of that is around too much ideology, too much people thinking that we're too focused only on social issues and not on kitchen table issues.
I think those are the things that we need to make sure we're getting away from.
Because part of the reasons why Democrats poll so low in the state of Wisconsin is that Democrats hate other Democrats.
like there's a there's a food fight going on inside the party and it has been for a while and so again we're where general election voters are and this is what I have heard time and again in every place I have gone around the state.
They want to get stuff done.
They know that things are bad when it comes to education.
They know that we are pitting property taxpayers against kids in this endless cycle of referendums that are going on all around the state.
They know that health care costs are blowing people out of the water, that the people are having a challenge staying in their homes, and they're saying, OK, tell us how you can practically fix it.
Don't promise us everything and then not deliver, because I think that's part of what our challenge is.
If we are just so angry that we're going to over
promise and under deliver, this is going to be a very short time for the Democrats to be in the majority.
What I'd like to do is, you know, 2010 was probably the most consequential election of my lifetime in Wisconsin.
Scott Walker won gerrymandered maps, Act 10, all the stuff we've lived with over the last 15 years, a disinvestment lack of focus in places like Milwaukee.
I'd like to say.
2026 is when we close the book on that.
And for the next 15 years, we usher in a Wisconsin that closer to the one that some of us knew when we were growing up.
Now there are still problems for us to fix that haven't been fixed in 50 years, but we're only going to get to those if we can actually be the Wisconsin that I think we have been in the past with our progressive values, with investments in the right way and pragmatically trying to get stuff done.
If you look at poll numbers, Joel, you're not up there.
You're not in double digits.
David Crowley is not in double digits.
How much stock do you put in polls when still, even at this very late hour, the most popular candidate is undecided.
So number one, how much stock do you put in polls?
Number two, can you convince the undecideds to support Joel Brennan in a primary and general election?
Well, one, as long as the largest segment is undecided, I think that is a good harbinger for somebody like me.
for whom the problem has been not being well enough known.
Because when people get to know who I am, then they become supporters.
If time and again in this race, as I have walked into rooms where there were really undecided voters, whether it was in a forum or whether it was just a presentation, I'm walking out with 60, 70% of those people being for me.
So that is something that is valuable for me.
The fact that we have undecideds this many, undecideds this late, I think people have just started to pay attention in this race.
All of the stuff that's happening
happened in the last week, the Sarah Rodriguez and the campaign finance issues that she had.
All of the other tumult that's happened in the last week, I think that has gotten people's antenna up.
It's gotten them watching what's going on in the race.
It's having them thinking about what's going to happen in a general election, who's the best general election candidate.
And I will continue to make the argument that because of the level of transparency I have had about who I have been over the course of my career, because of the fact that I have
executive experience going back 20 years leadership experience about getting stuff done and delivering results.
I am the best candidate to move on to that general election.
And so, you know, Wisconsin has a history of taking candidates from the back of the pack and elevating them to the front and then that candidate going on and winning in a general election.
I worked on a campaign.
You might have been working on the same same campaign in 1992 for Tom Barrett and Russ Feingold came out of having had less than 10% of the
of the polling data a month before the election and ultimately winning the primary with like 70% of the vote and winning a general election that year where, you know, coming from, almost coming from nowhere.
So is there precedent in Wisconsin?
Is there opportunity for me?
I say absolutely there is.
As you travel around the state, I think you're pretty well versed on what the major issues are because Wisconsin issues are also national issues as well.
health care costs, affordability, inflation, gas prices, etc.
But as you're traveling around the state and talking to different groups of people, is there something that you heard that you never thought of or never accounted for or something that maybe has slipped under the radar that a lot of voters are discussing that you may not have thought about?
Well, you know, it's different in different places, but people, it's around affordability, but it's also about responsibility, the issue about what people care about related to Wisconsin's environment.
Like I have had opportunities in every part of the state, urban areas and rural areas.
You know, in lots of the areas people are mad about the potential, they're angry at government about the potential of data centers and what they're going to do to scar the landscape.
We had a, you know, you had a conversation here in Milwaukee even.
At the old capital court about this and you know like that happens in urban areas it happens in rural areas But but I think people feel still that there is a fundamental connection between us and the land and there's an opportunity We have had this false choice between can we you know have?
Good things and maintain a good environment or can we have economic development?
You know and people in Milwaukee here have seen Disinvestment have seen you know some of the the worst outcomes when it comes to health being directly
related to the fact that we've disinvested in communities and neighborhoods around Milwaukee and let those be scarred for the long term.
Those are things that I think people, no matter where you are around the state, believe that we have a connection and we have a responsibility and we can do something about it.
I think that there are ways that we can start to bring that back.
And I want to do that.
I want to be in a position where we are creating jobs in the green economy in Milwaukee and in Wisconsin.
We have an opportunity and an obligation.
to rebuild and make our energy grid more efficient.
There's opportunities to do that.
There's weatherization that happens in communities here in Milwaukee that there are jobs that are associated with doing this that are also going to be about how do we make sure that we have a Wisconsin that we want for the time being.
I think I just saw yesterday that July here has been the driest since the Dust Bowl since 1936.
This is what we're living in right now.
that there's no climate change happening and when you get thousand year floods and this kind of stuff happening within a
I wanna ask you about how you, if you become a governor.
How do you sell Wisconsin to industry leaders?
How do you encourage them to come to Wisconsin and hire our people and see Wisconsin the future of jobs of business and industries won't ask you about that but also I was I'm watching the television because I sometimes watch the TV and There's an ad that's in very heavy rotation.
It's in one of these third-party groups that's very closely aligned with both Trump and Tom Tiffany.
It's a restoration pack
Commercial and I'm starting to see it several times a day and they name Mandela Barnes and they name sir Rodriguez of course is in that commercial and Francesca Hong is in that commercial, but they also pit those individuals with Bernie Sanders and AOC and I found it interesting that you were not mentioned in that commercial because what I think the right wants to do is put these Democratic Socialists in one box and they can't put you in that box and I have heard
from many a Republican.
Sure, when we're sure glad that people aren't really talking much about that, Joe Brennan, because we are afraid of him.
It reminds me a lot of the 1996 reelection campaign of Bill Clinton, where the Republicans could not use anything against Bill Clinton because his campaign was so incredibly inclusive politically that the Republicans did not have much fire to throw at him.
So take break.
Come back.
going to ask you about, of course Milwaukee being the economic engine, but then how do you convince other businesses, companies to come to Wisconsin to find a comfortable home here and really develop our state economically because you know that we need jobs.
The truth with Sherwin Hughes featuring an interview with Joel Brennan, candidate for governor.
We'll be right back.
The truth with Sherwin Hughes returns after this on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth comm This is the truth with Sherwin Hughes on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth comm
Sell Wisconsin and all of our great people on our assets and our resources to convince, you know Milwaukee's economic engine, you know that Freshwater Sciences, we've got great institutions of higher education go Panthers proud UW-Milwaukee graduate here How do you convince other people to see the value in Wisconsin to bring jobs opportunities and employment to the state?
Yeah, well, you know, I think I do what we do best and what we should be doing, which is grow our own, you know, with the first year that I spent with Governor Evers as Secretary of Administration, I spend most time almost every day trying to figure out there is anything there with the Foxconn deal.
Like you remember that it was the eighth wonder of the world that Donald Trump and Scott Walker had said, you know, this is what's going to happen 20 million square feet is going to just
come at like a spaceship and land in Racine County and 13,000 jobs and very quickly we found out that you know for the three billion dollars we had promised them they were much better at putting out press releases than they were ever going to be at producing flat screen flat screen TVs.
We brought we brought that down from three billion dollars to about 80 million and I think they're you know they may have been continuing to if because if they grow like any other company they should have the ability to get something but but
What they have gotten is much less and much closer to what every other company has gotten.
So instead of that being the strategy that we're going to somehow go out and believe me, I want to be a salesperson for Wisconsin.
I think that that would be the most fun part of the job is trying to open markets, trying to make sure we got $4 billion that we send out in agriculture every year.
Can we do something to increase that by 25%?
What can we be doing out of the universities, the technical schools?
creating opportunity there.
That's the kind of thing that I would want to make sure we're doing.
And I know it's not a Milwaukee story, but it's one that we should all appreciate and understand.
The Oscar Mayer plant in Madison used to have 4,000 people working there, and the Oscar Mayer wiener mobile, creating that.
Now it's going to be the next home potentially for nuclear fusion that comes out of the UW, where...
imagine its first life was feeding people physically, the next life could be around what are we doing in this technology to create jobs, to try to do things around medical research and all those.
States and communities are living and breathing so that's the kind of stuff that I absolutely want to do and I still live here in this community and and I am going to retire I'm gonna stay in this community and so if I can be anything it's gonna be somebody who wants to grow that it goes back to the conversation we had around education and how do we make Milwaukee a real use that engine use the engine of opportunity it starts in early childhood that then you know you have to have a robust and a great K-12 system and
get kids into either right into the workforce or getting into the UW, the technical schools, and actually going out and building the future.
Growing that, making sure that that infrastructure is in place, that's as good as we can do even as we're trying to get people from outside Wisconsin to come here.
But growing our own is something that I feel is so much more important than believing or praying that another Foxconn is going to come and land here in southeastern Wisconsin.
In a perfect world, you're elected governor, you've got a democratic legislate legislature and they say, Governor Brennan, you can do whatever you want with a surplus.
I don't even know what the surplus is down to.
I know it's been dwindling.
If you had the ultimate wish list of things that you would invest in with our surplus, that you help build and create.
Where would you prioritize at least some of those resources?
So I'll tell you where the first hundred million dollars of it would start and I agree We need to be cautious of it because this is we live in a Donald Trump economy It was supposed to be two point four million dollars as of next June 30th Like I think we should be very cautious about that but no matter what we're gonna have a hundred million dollars It should go automatically right into early childhood education around the state of Wisconsin Wisconsin was one of the last states to invest in early childhood as of June 30th
the money that we have been spending, the paltry amount we've been spending on early childhood is going away.
And so there are 25% of childcare providers who say they may close around Wisconsin in the next six months to a year.
Every every one of those daycares is going to have waiting lists the people who are paying for it their costs are going up There's a more than a billion dollars and Milwaukee sees this too more than a billion dollars of productivity that sits on the sidelines every year mainly from women because they can't find accessible affordable or quality daycare and so one of the first things I will make sure that as an emergency come day one of My administration that we are doing that but but we also need a long
term fixed for that it can't just be that we're limping along from one crisis to the next this is a situation my kids went to neighborhood house I ended up you know first I was a parent then I was on the board then I was the chair of the board at neighborhood house like I've been engaged in this for 20 years and I've watched how we have what should be the springboard to having kids do well in school we are using we are treating as an afterthought those are the kind of things we absolutely have to do will have impact in Milwaukee but only have impact statewide where 70% of kids live in a child
care desert around the state.
I'm going to hold you to this a part of that surplus or whatever is left be invested here in Milwaukee as the economic engine of the state in small business development and opportunities for minority owned businesses so that they can build capacity in a very anti DEI anti supplier diversity climate is that something you
So my initial thought was I am certain that I was the first candidate to lay out five questions that she needed to answer, you know, because these are the idea that you would mismanage $600,000 or a million dollars and then be expected to be handed the keys to put together a $110 billion budget.
I think that's something that lots of people would have very suspicious of.
You know, when she decided to drop out, I sent her a note.
I appreciate everybody who's in this race.
I appreciate what this means to her family.
I don't wish ill on her.
I hope that she is doing well, and I hope that she, you know, that she serves honorably the rest of her term as Lieutenant Governor, as she has done over the course of the last year.
And that she does well from there.
Like, we are friends.
The people who are in this race together, we are all friends.
We'll be friends afterwards.
We will unite to make sure we beat Tom Tiffany and that
We can be the Wisconsin we want to be no matter what.
I'm not a hell yes I'm mad you know and and you know what what I was I was the same as every other Democrat and most other voters in the state of Wisconsin and every other candidate who thought he was never going to endorse anybody in this race because that's what he had said over the better part of the last year and I caught up with him when he was on a plane to Africa when he was telling me he was going to say governor I didn't know you were going to do this and since you are since I know you are endorse me because I'm the one who's got 20 years of demonstrated leadership experience I'm the one who's been there to solve problems I was there
alongside you to make sure Wisconsin navigated its way out of COVID.
You know, I must not have been, I must not have convinced him, but the good thing is the people who are listening here, voters in Wisconsin, they still get to decide.
It's not somebody else putting the thumb on the scale that does this.
It's individuals still making their decision.
More people are paying attention today, and I still have the strongest argument about being the best candidate to be Tom Tiffany and the best candidate to hit the ground running on day one and be the kind of governor Wisconsin can be proud of.
You are listening to the truth with Sherwin Hughes on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth.com
She's a proud socialist he lost statewide before a couple weeks ago He dropped out Madison insiders want you to think these are the only choices you have for governor, but they'll all lose to Republicans in November You get to decide who's the Democrat who can win?
I'm Joel Brennan.
I'm running for governor to lower costs
to expand BadgerCare, to build 100,000 new homes and to fight back against Donald Trump.
I will win in November and I'll never quit on Wisconsin.
Oh, there's Joel still talking.
Our two of the truth with Sherwin Hughes.
So that's Joel Brennan's latest ad.
Some people call it controversial, gotten some messages.
From people that they don't like that in his ad he called out the quote people of color Francesca was not really calling out Francesca Hong.
He didn't lie about her.
He said she's a Democratic socialist Told the truth about Mandela and Ella did lose statewide.
I don't believe that he can win a Big election.
In fact, I got to be honest about this and when I'm honest
And it hurts black people's feelings.
And when somebody else is honest and telling the truth, especially when a white person is honest and telling the truth, we got to stop saying almost cuss.
We got to stop saying that's racist.
You can actually tell the truth about black people and have it not be racist, because sometimes it's just the truth.
But what we do is because we don't want anybody to ever say anything negative about us or point to any negative aspects of black people and black culture.
It's a defense mechanism.
We shut people down by saying, oh, you can't say that that's racist.
No, no, no, no.
Don't talk about.
the black kids can't read that's that's racist yeah but what if they really can't read yeah but just don't say it and so what happens is when there's a real incident of actual provable racism we're crying wolf all the time because everything that somebody may say even if it's true about somebody black we call it race it's gotta stop doing that you know what i mean like ladies if an unattractive man approaches you in public he didn't sexually assault you you just try to say hi to you
Because we don't want you to lose credibility when you are legitimately sexually assaulted.
Everybody's traumatized.
Everything is trauma.
Oh, I didn't like what happened.
I was stuck in traffic.
That's traumatized.
You know what trauma is?
Going to Vietnam and losing a limb.
That's not everything is trauma now.
They didn't have my favorite matcha.
I don't even know what matcha is.
They didn't have it.
I'm traumatized.
I couldn't start my day with a frappe, frappuccino, pappuccino.
I'm traumatized.
Everything is blown out of proportion.
African-American candidates having won statewide and big elections in Wisconsin.
Is that the truth or is that is that me being racist?
Mandela didn't win in 22, Kamala Harris didn't win in 2024.
I don't like the trajectory that we are on.
I also don't believe that a small share of people and a small share of voters, even though African-Americans make up sizable influence, we're still in somebody else's colony, y'all.
We are.
This is not our state.
Now it's somewhat our city kind of But in the grand scheme of things 79% of the people that live in the state of wisconsin are Caucasian folks and we think that a black here's what troubles me We may want a black governor For the history-making aspect of it and this is where we have to just be honest with ourselves If we get a black governor, they're gonna be working for white people
Way more than they're gonna be working for us because a governor has to govern and execute the law passed by the legislature over 72 counties like 60 of those 72 counties we barely even exist and to think that a governor of the entire state of Wisconsin 5.8 million people 1850 cities and towns 72 counties different regions southeast central
Northeast, Northwest, that that black governor is going to do a whole bunch of stuff for black people is insane and wholly unrealistic.
I would rather have a white person who can tie their political future because these elections are decided in the margins.
And I want the African-American vote, however we can mobilize it, to be the margin as to why one candidate wins versus another.
Therefore, if they want to get reelected.
Then their political future is tied to what they do for us.
That's very different because white people have a way in negotiating with one another They black people can't do We can't a black governor goes into a legislators office They're gonna shut down everything immediately just because they came because they see the racial dynamic White person goes in that same Republicans office.
They can talk about fishing for an hour first soften each other up
We got to be able to play the game better because we are living in somebody else's colony.
We're not the majority of the voters.
Now, when we do vote in a robust number, that can give the advantage to a Democrat.
I got to be objective here because I see our community literally shooting each other to death and suffering.
We need somebody that's going to negotiate on our behalf.
And I'm not saying that David Crowley can't do it as governor, but I know he can do it a hell of a lot better as county executive.
Now, if David Crowley wins, fantastic.
Let's roll with it.
I'm all in.
But I'm looking at.
the track record of black candidates in big elections also think that's why there has been little traction to mobilize the African-American voter in this election cycle compared to others especially in presidential election cycles which might be a little unfair because presidential campaigns have millions and millions and millions of dollars they can spend millions and millions of dollars to mobilize a percentage of voters like two percent they'll spend 25 million dollars to mobilize this two percent of voters
because we believe that the last presidential election in 2024 was going to be close.
It was not close.
Kamala Harris lost that election.
She lost it.
There wasn't even really an argument against it.
She lost all the battleground stage.
She lost the electoral college and she lost the popular vote.
And there was a whole hell of a lot of resources that were put into the African-American community.
And we can do the autopsy six waves from Sunday.
I just know that statewide,
Black candidates have not fared well in Wisconsin at least going back to the year 2022 Because Donald Trump is a much bigger threat now than he ever has been a person They can beat the Republican endorsed candidate in Wisconsin is the basket in which our eggs should lie.
What is the point?
of making history with a black candidate, I mean for history's sake, but then we elect them, they gotta represent white people.
And they're not adequately able to push back against what Trump is trying to do, and also don't necessarily trust who some of our, not just in this race, but just in races writ large, I don't trust who some of our black candidates surround themselves with.
They surround themselves with the same kind of white folks that know that this candidate is gonna ultimately represent them, their family, their people, and their community.
More than it's going to represent black people because a lot of these candidates, especially the successful ones, their consultants and their campaign managers and their political directors and their fundraisers are not even black people.
But we seem to think that their authenticity of their blackness is untouched.
No, it's about who you surround yourself with.
And I just, I don't see it.
And it's terribly disappointing.
Hell, I can tell you, look at Mandela's peanut butter and jelly commercial.
Who do you think you think a bunch of black consultants have Mandela making peanut butter sandwiches?
No.
And so we also have to think that we would be represented like a damn peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Now, shout out to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Now, they're not at the top of my list.
But I remember one day a couple of weeks ago, your your boy was hungry and Zach brought me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and it was delicious because he had the right ratio of jelly to peanut butter.
You got if you don't get the ratio right.
mess up the whole sandwich.
I mean, if you just have a tinge too much jelly, you mess up the whole sandwich or if you have too much peanut butter, you gotta be careful with peanut butter because peanut butter, the flavor is robust.
You know what I mean?
You gotta you gotta balance it out.
You need some acidity in that jelly.
You know what I mean?
It's a science.
It's an establishment sandwich.
But I don't know if I want
Considering the condition that our community is in when I say the condition of our community our kids can't read and if you can't read and you're academically disconnected How are you gonna get money?
What are you gonna do for a living?
You know what?
I'm confused by can y'all please help me.
I need help I'm still a little sick.
I'm gonna try to finish out the week, but if I ain't here tomorrow I'm fighting the day Jack Where do black people get our money from because we have money
But we don't have any wealth.
What's happened?
We have income We have money.
What are we doing?
with it because we buy expensive things It's weird because since we started outsourcing Our like the consumer goods that we buy I bet everything that I'm wearing right now was made in the China.
I bet it was Luxury goods are cheap
Now, they didn't used to be luxury goods used to be very expensive like back in the day.
I mean, back in the day, a twenty seven inch TV.
Could be a thousand dollars.
I just went to the Walmart and Brown there with my mother on Sunday because she needed a new TV in the kitchen.
She has a teeth.
She's like watching the food network while she cooks.
She's a peculiar woman.
I love her.
She got a Digitally connected smart TV for $68 a flat screen I had me thinking like oh, maybe I should shop at Walmart and then I came back to my senses that Walmart in Brown Deer is a dreadful dreadful place What's
wrong
with it you name it Here's what I don't like so we couldn't we were looking for the small TVs and in the electronics department
There is a gaggle of blacks.
A gaggle of employees.
A cadre, if you will.
A collection.
What's another term?
A herd?
No, that's not nice.
But it was like five or six blacks and they had on their Walmart smocks.
They were behind the counter.
Some were in front of the counter and they're just talking amongst themselves and they're gossiping.
And here I am just standing there.
I'm the only customer that's in the electronics department.
Me and my mother.
I don't even know where my mother is at this point.
She's somewhere lost.
She's a small little lady.
So if she walks into an aisle, you lose her forever.
So I don't know where my mother is.
She's somewhere lost.
And I'm just standing there and they're just and they would look at me and then we just go back to their conversation.
And eventually I had to say excuse me.
But then when I say excuse me, now all of a sudden I'm rude.
I had asked a fellow.
Of course, it was the oldest one in the group because everybody else was 19 Excuse me sir, where the the smaller flat screen television dude just pointed Over there It's insane that Walmart or something else but back to my original question like where what are we doing with our money I Sometimes you know, you know how I make my decisions now and maybe cuz I didn't think I would be
This excited to see a retirement on the horizon I'm not afraid of it.
I love it.
I think I might join AARP My house is almost paid for it.
You understand when I got my mortgage and I saw the dollar month that I owed that bank I was like, I'm not gonna live to pay this off now We we flirting with pay off now, baby But here's how I make my decisions on whether I'm gonna go out hang out socially or go do anything in the city
I look at how much money I'm going to spend and if it's going to cost too much, I don't go.
I stay home and enjoy my mortgage or I find a little project to do around the house.
What are we doing with our money as black people?
We just.
We buy so much stuff.
And have no assets whatsoever.
It's insane because we are consumers, but we're not putting any of this money away and it's it's awful and also.
It means that people don't have to respect us because you don't really respect the consumer because the consumer is someone that you market to and you convince them out of their money.
You tell them you'll look better, you'll be better, you'll be more attractive, you'll be taller, you'll have a bigger wee wee if you use your money to buy these products.
And it's sad.
My biggest thing with dating nowadays, right, I'll be honest with you, I can take her to leave it.
Whoever the woman is, and she's probably very nice, I know very many nice women.
that I would I enjoy spending time with but if I don't want to spend any money I'm not going out with her now there's a handful that I know they may pay or they may split it with me which is very very nice but I have to go into my outing with the woman even if she asked me to hang I sure what you doing this evening I don't know I'm chilling what you got for me
Oh, you want to go here?
This little group is playing a little live music, a little patio, a little rooftop.
You want to get these little couple little drinks, have a little chit chat, want to talk about the radio show, talk about the politics.
I'm like, oh, let me think about it.
Let me get back to you now.
And I got to figure I carry the one plus three because my account, the way it's set up.
Do I want to spend $200?
Because that's what it's going to cost.
I can have a good time finding me a good show on Netflix.
Spending no damn $200.
So I'm much more conscious.
About what I do with my money and I'm not at the age and I used to be I used to oh, yeah, I got paid today Let's go out to the club dummy.
What an idiot how much money I wasted out in the streets Bottle service you're a new fool and shout out to people in the old night clubs to do bottle service But if you do a bottle service you get a bottle you get a section and all you do is stand there is and pose for pictures It's like a bunch of zombies
You go home at the end of the night you just spent three four hundred dollars.
What do you have to show for insane to me?
Oh If I could go back if I could talk to my like 28 29 year old self I Would tell him to stay home more spend smarter Put more away
So then by the time you get 40 when life really begins because anything before 40 you just you don't quite know at 40 you got a glide path like you get it at 40 before 40 you don't know and for those of you that are under 40 you'll find out at 50 like that's you won't cruise control now you're descending
You was reaching cruising altitude you reached your 36,000 feet at the age roughly 40 But then that so you're a cruising altitude for about 10 years from 40 to 50 But then at 50, it's you know, you can tell when you on a flight and you start descending You can just tell That's what it is.
I wish I would have told my younger self that money is not It's not the goal
It's the means to an end of the life that you read about.
The you dreamed about.
Your success belongs to you through the decisions that you make when you think your decisions have no consequences.
Oh, I was a fool in the street.
Hey, fellas, what are we doing tonight?
I was a damn ringleader.
I'm probably responsible for why some of my friends is broke hanging out with me.
We had a good time and I wouldn't straight those times for for anything, but I'm just I'm so curious as to Like what we as black people actually do with our money I see the amount of money that we spend if I go to a fancy restaurant It's usually because it's an occasion like I just don't go to a fancy restaurants just for dinner.
It's a it's a thing I'm celebrating something as a big deal or whatever the number of us that I see in Those rest I mean expensive restaurant.
This is brother that came into Mo's last time I was there
Pants sagging athletic jersey all sorts of jewelry and made the entire restaurant smell like marijuana and dude was a big spender because they put him in the big Spender table Moe's has big spender seat.
This is where Vince Petrano sits and I hate to admit It's where I sit too And I was like who was this brother in the big spender seat and made the whole restaurant smell like weed I'm like sir you need a 401k buddy or an IRA of some sort
I just wish that we had more of an emphasis on teaching us and making it culturally relevant because I don't think that anything is going to get through to our youth unless it's in hip hop.
You put it in hip hop.
If they made math in hip hop, like do your math, take a bath, know how to read, don't make somebody bleed.
And then the kids will be like, I am going to study this evening because my favorite hip hop artist told me to.
And a governor is not going to fix that.
I'm gonna take a break come back.
I'm just over here ranting who's the way somebody calling me cheap?
I'll be there and Then if I need a new roof for my house I'll have the money for it because that's what I'm worried about And also I'm prone to just falling out and having medical emergencies You know what I mean?
Like I need to have some deductible money
Rainy Damon, I'll be cheap and that here's the other thing.
I'm gonna say this I'm always saying here's
the other thing.
I got a lot of
I'm done.
I'm all let me spend a whole bunch of money to impress her idiot Now you got to spend that amount of money and more forever I wear a diamond stud
in my left ear and I realized if I ever got engaged I'd have to buy a woman an engagement ring with a bigger diamond than the one that I wear which I really wouldn't want to do because I want to be the diamond king, you know what I'm saying?
It's just, it's insane.
I just can't, I
can't do it.
I
It's not even to get laid because you know how much money you need to get laid?
None.
The only thing you just need is a girl that thinks you're attractive.
Thank you Xavier.
He holding up to zero.
You don't need a penny, but then it's the ones that we spend all the money on They end up giving us nothing.
She wants a second date.
All right You know what I'm saying and not that I want sex to be transactional, but damn All right, let's take a break.
I gotta get out of here change the subject.
Joe Brennan might be listening.
What am I getting myself into?
This is real talk Where we have real opinions and if you don't like my opinions, you need better opinions
The truth with Sherwin Hughes
will be right back.
So 80,000 people have already voted in the primary for governor and some of those people voted for candidates who have dropped out of the race.
The Wisconsin State Democratic Party is filing a suit or they're filing a complaint, which ultimately is going to end up in the state Supreme Court.
I'm just wondering when it ends up in the state Supreme Court.
If you already voted and the candidate you voted for has dropped out of the race and you want to vote for someone who you believe can actually win and potentially be Tom Tiffany, I'm talking from the Democratic side.
Should you be able to get another ballot?
So there are some cases in which.
where people do receive a ballot and then they can receive another one.
Here's a problem.
If you're one of those 80,000 people, you might decide
and you already
Okay.
Let's say you voted for Sarah Rodriguez and you're like, oh, that was a bad choice.
I wish I could vote for somebody else.
Some of those people that have already voted are going to vote early or go vote on election day and that's going to get flagged as election fraud.
That actually happens.
A lot of folks don't know how the process actually works and they believe that if they
They can say like, oh, well, I got my ballot like two months ago and the candidate I voted for dropped out.
So I'm going to go in person.
Now, what should happen is when you get to the polling location, it should be noted that you've already received a ballot.
And I think that there is a way.
Can you cancel and spoil about?
I think there's a way that you can do that, but it's tricky and it may require some things.
If we have incidences of voter fraud, it's usually something like that.
But because you don't know the law and some people think like, oh, I voted, you know, in June for Sarah Rodriguez, she dropped out.
I'm going to go and vote, you know, when early voting starts on Tuesday, July 28th, or I'm going to vote on August 11th.
No big deal.
That's going to get flagged as voter fraud.
And then the Trump administration is going to say, see, we told you they're cheating in Wisconsin.
So we've got to be very, very, very, very, very careful.
Here's what you need to know to vote on the August primary election in Milwaukee with less than a month until the partisan primary election on August 11.
There is still time to make a plan to vote quote based on overall year to year trends and encouraging voters to either use drop boxes or in person absentee voting We expect Turn out to exceed partisan primary turnout from past elections said Paula Gutierrez Executive Director of the Milwaukee Election Commission in an email She said that in the 2024 partisan primary just over 7,000 Milwaukee voters
Use early voting and nearly 1,300 voters dropped off their ballots at early voting sensors Here's what you need to know to register to vote request and submit an absentee ballot or find a voting location in Milwaukee before I do that Let me check our YouTube poll because I wanted to see those of you that listen to or participate in this program
How many of you had voted early and only about 3% of you have, which is probably accurate because the number of people on the permanent mail in absentee ballot list is very, very small.
Even though these YouTube comments are not at all what I'm talking about, I feel compelled to read them.
No, we're OK, Xavier.
Mr. Marty says, Professor Hughes, you need a woman on a fixed income.
Good God all mighty and who does that come with public housing?
I can see if they still made government cheese because they made some of the best grilled cheese sandwiches But they don't give government cheese out anymore, I don't want a person on a fixed income But then he said something about Here it is Marty says 200 to $300 on a date professor Hughes is cheap ha ha ha No, it's not
Because if I put that money in an IRA It would double in seven years If I spend that money on a woman, it's gone forever But then there was one more comment.
Oh, here we go Mr. Mahdi has all the dating advice We love you professor.
He was nothing wrong with letting the woman pay at all.
No, there is of course not
Women should pay for days Let me give you an example.
It's gonna be logical.
So women are gonna disagree My time is more valuable than hers if I make more money Hold on.
Let me explain it.
Don't get all mad yet.
Don't react to most I know the ladies are collectively screaming or turning my radio so I'll fall together If a man makes more money than a woman per hour per year
Per month per paycheck.
Okay, just hold on listen Then isn't his time more valuable because his time makes more money.
So if she wants to go out with him She needs to purchase his time from him because his time is more valuable because in his eight hours of work His eight hours might collect more income than hers.
So his time is more valuable.
I Know that made sense to you now
Replay it back to you.
So now hold on though.
If the woman makes more money.
Then her time technically has more value because per hour per week per biweekly paycheck per month per year, she's making more money, meaning her time is more valuable than his because she makes more dollars per hour.
He then needs to pay if he's going to go out with her.
Because if I make the money Shouldn't the person with the smaller amount of resources to contribute to the relationship have to prove why they're worthy of being with someone that makes more money This is just regular objective logic if you're broke You better be really good in a whole bunch of other areas and shouldn't you have to audition if you want a rich fella
Nobody's auditioning anyway.
It's the men with the money that are auditioning for little brokeies.
Oh You're my boyfriend now.
Can you pay for my life?
Can you help pay for my kids?
Can you pay my rent?
No, but ma'am, I'm the prize.
Mmm You are but I'm broke.
So now that you're now you're my boyfriend.
You owe me your money.
No, thank you ma'am
It's
All right, where are we at?
What is this here?
What is this?
Here we go.
Registering to vote.
You love how I transition like that?
No smoothness whatsoever.
You should register to date somebody.
Give your credit score.
Your credit score is under 700.
What do we even have to talk about?
What are we discussing?
You know what I mean?
Not interest rates.
Registration is needed if you are a new voter.
have moved since the last election or have not voted in the past four years.
Wednesday, August 22nd.
Today is the last day to register to vote online or by mail before the election.
Visit myvote.wi.gov, myvote.wi.gov, myvote.wi.gov, and just look around and click on stuff.
To register online, myvote.wi.gov, residents must have.
a valid Wisconsin driver's license or Wisconsin state ID and have current name and address information filled, filed with the Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles.
Another option is to mail a voter registration form along with a copy of proof of residence documents to the Milwaukee Election Commission 200 East Wells Room 501.
Letters must be postmarked at least 20 days before the election or it's too late for that.
Milwaukee Public Library branches can assist voters with completing the registration process during regular hours until the end of business today, July 22.
That's a Wednesday.
Residents can register to vote in person at early voting centers beginning two weeks before the August 11 election until 5 p.m.
Friday, August 7.
They can also register at their polling places on the election day.
Voters can request an absentee ballot online mail an absentee ballot request the Milwaukee Election Commission or email absentee ballot at Milwaukee dot gov absentee ballot at Milwaukee dot gov absentee ballot at Milwaukee dot Gov until 5 p.m.
Thursday August 6 If you plan to request a mail-in ballot is recommended to do so as soon as possible to ensure your ballot arrives in time to complete it for the August primary
Requests must include a copy of the requester's photo ID, full name, voting, mailing address if they are different and which elections they plan to vote in by mail.
Drop boxes for absentee ballots are available at the Milwaukee Public Library branches and the Zeidler Municipal Building 830 North Market Street until 6 p.m.
August 11.
Voters also may drop off absentee ballots to the early voting centers during working hours.
Absentee ballots will be accepted at a voter's polling place or central count 1901 South Knickinick Avenue until 8 p.m.
August 11th.
If you have to return a ballot in the mail, the Milwaukee Election Commission recommends sending it as soon as possible.
Early voting or in person absentee voting starts Tuesday, July 28th at six locations in Milwaukee.
Some locations are open until Friday, August 7 and some locations are open until Sunday, August 9.
I'm gonna pause there, come back.
Now I know I went through all this information fast.
That's why you can go to the YouTube and you can replay all of this if you need to write down any of the information.
You go to youtube.com or open up your YouTube app from your smartphone or other mobile device.
One, two, search 1017 in the truth.
Three, hit subscribe.
Four, hit play or replay.
You can listen to it again.
The truth with Sherwin
Hughes will be right back.
This is a statement on Joe Brennan.
I don't like Joe.
I'm mad at him.
That's all right.
I'm going to read the statement.
Quote as governor.
So this is from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin's Black Caucus.
All right.
Here we go.
Ready?
Let's go.
As governor, it will be your responsibility to understand the impact your actions have on Wisconsinites and learn from them.
It's extremely disappointing that Joel Brennan released an ad saying none of the candidates of color running for governor could win in November.
Following previous comments in May on the issue,
We hope the feedback he's receiving will readjust campaign messaging to undo this harm and Demonstrate that any Wisconsinite regardless of background can be elected governor of our state Signed the Democratic Party of Wisconsin black caucus executive board So I think that that's I think it's fair on both on both accounts and so if I
You know how many times I've said somebody black can't win statewide, but if a white person says it it's a problem But that's the double standard.
I get it The last time black people were on the ballot in all 72 counties in the state of Wisconsin going back to last four years they in fact Did not win I don't know what happens during campaigns where people get wrapped up in fantasy where we get so
So engaged by our own desires for history and our own desires for change without revolution We see a candidate of color and then I don't think the Francesca Hong can win because her politics are not understood by many If you don't understand some of these politics you typically would be afraid of them David Crowley is the other person that Joe Brennan mentioned
David Crowley was in the race, dropped out of the race and got back in the race.
There's a level of inconsistency there that it just doesn't look good.
But we as black people, we give him latitude to change his mind.
It's all right.
And then Mandela disappointed us in 2022.
And if Joel Brennan said, I'm gonna ask him when he gets here.
He said, Wisconsin's not ready for a woman governor or, I think he said non-white or person of color governor.
Hasn't history shown that and are we more fascinated with our intrigued by Getting a historical win or we more interested in creating budgets that help Not taking away educational options for black children pushing back against The Trump administration lowering costs lowering prescription drug costs lowering housing costs
Lowering the cost of gas and food are we are we concerned about that or we just want somebody brown to be elected governor because I learned a lot from Obama and you might get somebody brown and Lo and behold they do a good job the backlash that you get from electing somebody brown will take away all of the good that the brown did I Know how this country is working.
I know how it operates.
We live in the moment.
Yay
Barack Obama got elected and yeah, he got reelected and then came Trump twice to undo all of it.
All of it.
The social progress, the academic progress.
I just got the federal government is not.
Where is this?
Oh, I hope I email it to myself.
Where is it?
They're going to stop requiring companies.
To collect demographic data on hiring who I hope I here it is So we're not even gonna know when companies are racially discriminating and this is all Because of Trump and I would argue that Donald Trump got elected and reelected as they backlash to a couple of things or broken Republican Party and a success of Barack Obama like how do we forget that do we think that America all of a sudden is gonna be
different.
This country has been remarkably similar since its founding.
U.S.
Civil Rights Agency moves to end demographic data collection after 60 years.
From the Associated Press to New York, how many women hold executive level positions atop U.S.
companies?
What is the actual racial and ethnic breakdown of those roles?
What is the gender and racial breakdown of the lowest paid roles in those companies?
The Trump administration is making it harder for the public to know moving to toss aside a 60 year old requirement for tens of thousands of private sector employers to submit workforce demographic reports each year to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
That is the agency responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination laws in the workplace, meaning they're not going to be able to enforce anti-discrimination laws if they don't have racial demographic information that Donald Trump is trying to take away.
You understand what's going on here?
The backlash to getting that bit of history that makes us so damn proud comes with consequences that stifle our progress and puts us back in the pre-civil rights era.
And I don't know if that's worth it.
I illustrated to you all what my strategy is, but I can't move through people's emotions.
That's okay to be emotional.
At the end of the day, your emotions are not going to get policy created so people will stop murdering each other in our goddamn city.
Electing somebody black.
It's not the answer to your problems Look at your common council of the 15 members eight or black Got a black police chief black sheriff Who else black black chairwoman of the county board black legislators in the Senate in the Assembly it's not the answer isn't I Need somebody this is me personally you can disagree.
I would expect you to
I need somebody that can negotiate with white people where race is not going to get in the way of negotiation.
That's what I need.
If I was to hire a lobbyist, I want to hire the best lobbyist so that my corporate agenda could get realized.
I don't want to hire a lobbyist that checks a whole bunch of boxes.
I'm not going to hire a they, them, transgender, disabled, military, veteran, Jewish, first generation, college, student, wheelchair bound.
Well, give me some more minority I can throw in there.
I say Jewish.
That's a good one throw in there even though, you know Subject for debate Jewish Palestinian I don't I'm not trying to I want the lobbyist to be able to lobby on my behalf instead of being distracted by all those other demographic checkboxes We did that with Kamala Kamala checked them all she was Jamaican and Indian single mama
married to a white dude I don't know what box that check but check went to a HBCU and it looked beautiful on paper But she didn't win the election and look where we're at Losing the ability to collect demographic data and then losing the ability to sue companies that racially discriminate because Donald Trump got reelected So the backlash that we get and it's a calculated risk it is
Haven't seen you know what I need to see as far as the skill goes can a black person Negotiate with Republicans and win Chevy did not that's why our sales tax is in the city Milwaukee went up 2% He lost and so I got to keep that in mind if Chevy ever wants to hop wants to run for higher office and he does
Can you go into the lion's den and come out unscathed?
Can you come out of the lion's den with with a lion pelt on your back?
Can you skin the line?
Are you gonna get eaten up?
That's what I need Not just gonna send somebody into the lion's den just for them to get chewed up.
I need you to come back with lion's skulls And if you can't come back with lion's skulls, then I came I'm not gonna elect you and put you in a position to where you're gonna get chewed up because guess what then the rest of us are gonna get eaten too
If I send you Francesca to the lion's den I said Francesca.
Let's say we sent her to the lion's den She'd probably come out with giraffes, but she wouldn't even come out
at Sherwin I went into the lion's den and I came out with a gaggle of parakeets.
The truth with Sherwin Hughes returns after this on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth comm You are listening to the truth with Sherwin Hughes on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth comm
I
I want a negotiator, a proven one.
I want the best negotiator on behalf of a set of political interests.
And sometimes you have to be very strategic.
about the demographic profile of who you select to be a negotiator.
And I want this negotiator's future to be tied to how well they perform on behalf of the special interest group that hired them to do the negotiating.
Does that make sense?
This is transactional, this is business, this is policy.
This is continuing to deliver resources to the black community like I saw Tony Evers do for eight years I want a continuation of that.
I don't need experimental stuff I don't need stuff that let's try it and see if it works because if it fails black people are going to die There's no time for experimentation.
Let's go with something tried and true even if it's not your your first choice sometimes
You can't marry your dream person.
You just got to marry who you got You do you don't have you came married who's a Who y'all want who's the Idris Elba?
I think women want to marry you ain't gonna get Idris Elba better settle for Xavier You can dream about Idris Elba, but Xavier's be a good good man hard-working man Want to negotiate it and I don't want
Whatever the demographic profile of my negotiator to be a distraction from getting the work done Too many black folks and political power have Attributed their political power to how much they can do for white folks that has been Mandela's entire trajectory of his political career He chose a totally different side.
In fact, you know what they told Mandela to do run against Lee and a tailor you can beat her
Lena's too big too loud too vocal too black her constituent services are too good You got people from all over the state.
They used to call Lena Taylor's office so that she could help them and how do I know I used to work in her office and the calls were annoying ma'am You live in Walkershaw call your legislator, but I don't want to Lena's just so good You had people in walkershaw County asking for Lena Taylor yard sign was she was running for mayor of Milwaukee I Mean that was like hell.
I'll do it.
I'll run against me.
You know embarrassing that was for him
Bunch of white progressives in Shorewood told him to run against, at the time, one of the more successful black legislators in the Wisconsin State Senate, and he got MOLLYWOP.
That told me from that point forward that Mandela's under bad advisement Okay, you didn't believe it that time when he was told by white folks to run against the black woman So then he runs for the US Senate gets elected lieutenant governor quits that job runs against Ron Johnson Makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the commercial and he loses that election.
What more do you need to see?
He's not somebody who's gonna negotiate on our behalf.
He's gonna negotiate
with them first against our best interests, because that's who he owes his political career to.
And I thought y'all would know that by now.
He shouldn't even be in this race.
Mandela would be a boss if he was like, you know what, I ain't gonna run, but here's what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna throw my support behind someone who I think could be the best steward for the people that I never want to represent in the first place.
That'd be cold blooded right there.
He said, ah, yeah, I couldn't win in 2022.
I made a bad decision.
Why do we give so much latitude for black elected officials to make bad decisions?
Black folks cannot be in a position to make mistakes.
I mean, we make them.
But I don't want one that's going to make mistakes in the damn campaign because how do you think they're going to legislate?
I just have a high standard for black people.
I got a high standard for a lot of stuff.
And I come to find out that I might be the only one.
I want the Cadillac version of everything.
Ain't that right?
Exactly.
I want the Cadillac.
I want the Cadillac version of you.
You know what
I used to
I don't tell you that because I just, I stopped saying it, but they would ask me every morning.
Savannah used to ask me this.
Ricky would ask.
Carrie didn't care, but sometimes she'd ask.
Because I don't...
I don't do a radio show like most people do so typically.
So I get here about seven something in the morning.
My show goes on at nine.
Typically what would happen is my producer would be in the room with me at seven o'clock, and we would work side by side, segment by segment, story by story, article by article, in how my radio show was gonna go.
But I don't do that, because I find the producers getting
my
We tried it with Ricky, but he just, I was like, Ricky, go home.
Just leave me alone.
But they would ask me, Sherwin, what do you need from me today?
Because if I'm not requiring them to be in the show preparation room with me for two hours before my show, they would say, well, Sherwin, what do you need from me?
And I would just say, I need you to be a very best.
That's it.
Give me your best.
Every single day, because the people that we speak to, they deserve our best.
And if your best is you just being well rested,
If your best is you doing whatever it is that you need to do before the show, then I want you to do whatever that is so that you can deliver your best.
And that is a standard that I hold in very high esteem.
And so when I see things that represent us that are of low or poor quality because black people don't need anything else associated with who we are with low quality, I call it out.
But here's the problem.
Low quality is easy and it's lazy.
It does not require you to self-reflect It doesn't require you to critical thing But those are all of the things that I hold black people to because I expect us to live up to the Legacy of who we were not what they created us to be in this goddamn country and I take heed for that Holding black people to a higher standard sure when you can't do that, you know that black people need a hand out and a hand up
No, we don't.
We need to have confidence in ourselves that we can be the absolute best there is and I only want the best and I try to be the best.
Do I fall short?
Yes, but I'm trying every single day.
And I have such a standard and it makes me seem foreign sometimes to my own people.
You know how many text messages I've gotten from disgruntled black people just today, just this morning?
Because they don't want me to have Joel Brennan on the show.
I don't know what's black people's problem is.
Be mad at David Crawley for playing with everybody.
Be mad at me.
Sure, when here's another article, I'm I'm kidding, Drake.
Drake's Bentley sent me a bunch of articles and screenshots and everybody.
Y'all chill.
I got this.
Don't worry about it.
Oh, it's almost that time.
I'm assuming that Joel is nearby.
Do we know if he's here or not?
Well, he got four minutes to get in the studio because I'm going hot at 11 o'clock.
The truth with Sherwin Hughes will be back for hour
three.
Highly anticipated, highly publicized.
Joe Brennan, candidate for governor of Wisconsin, running in the very crowded and unorthodox Democratic primary first.
Joe, welcome to the program.
I think this is the first time that we have spoken on one on one seven.
The truth, correct?
Yeah, we got a quarter century worth of history.
So when you decided to enter the race, somewhere's around December 11, 2025, you were at the time the last person to join what was already a crowded primary.
Can you take us through what you believe your glide path was in December?
Francesca was in, Kelda was in, Mandela was in, David was in.
You decided to jump in.
What did you see that maybe other candidates and other people did not?
relatively popular figure in politics in the state of Wisconsin.
You held the Secretary of Department of Administration position, which is probably one of the most significant cabinet level positions in government.
And for all intents and purposes, you did a really, really good job in that position.
Do you believe that you're working in the Eras Administration while those successes were mounting can be utilized?
to your credibility as a candidate, if Tony Evers remains popular and you were the DOA secretary, do you think that some of that will transfer to you and aid in your popularity as a candidate?
You know, what I think is that it certainly gave me credibility from the start and the work that I did as DOA secretary, especially during COVID because a lot of that was
on the ground with local elected officials, whether they be county executive, village board president, mayors.
It was, how are things going on the ground?
How can we help?
And what resources can we bring to make sure that you're getting stuff done?
And to be honest, Sherwin, it was some of the least partisan work that I have ever done.
It was more pragmatic.
We just lost, and I know a number of people here at the station were friends with Paul Farrow, who's the county executive in Waukesha County.
Paul and I became better friends during that time because it was not about ideology.
It was about how do we actually demonstrate that we can make government effective?
What can we do to get...
things out to people who are in need.
At that point, it was masks.
It was PPE.
It was, you know, what's happening on the ground.
And those were the very pragmatic things.
And you have to do that during times of crisis, like what we lived in during COVID.
And these are anything but normal times and the dysfunction and the chaos that we live in and what Donald Trump is wrought on America.
But the same thing applies now.
We've got to be in a position where we're getting stuff done, instead of just being consumed with getting even and
That's who I have been throughout the course of my career and my life.
That's, you know, I think that is what what I bring to this race that is distinctive from other people.
And it's a 20 year career of having been in executive leadership.
And that's different than being Lieutenant Governor, where you don't manage a whole bunch of people.
It's different than being in the legislature.
Like those are things that are different from the field.
And I think a distinction that I bring from anybody else in the
You have a new add out.
We played it on this program a little while ago and you essentially are giving your opinions on Your opponents one is a democratic socialist one has lost statewide before One technically is the newest entrant into the race for governor as of last Saturday and that's David Crowley You've been taking some heat because oh Joe you're going after the going after the people of color, but isn't
Isn't being in a primary supposed to be a competition, but didn't you also take some heat for something that you said?
I'm gonna paraphrase a little bit you said at some point in some podcast that you didn't think that was constant was ready for a non male Person of color governor.
Can you clarify
Sure.
Sure.
Happy to clarify one one the commercial I put out I mean, I think the things you said are facts that the what I laid out was facts proud socialist
Somebody who lost in 2022, somebody who was out of the race just a few days ago.
Those are not things to be questioned.
And yes, primaries are about making sure that we get everybody has a chance to weigh in on who the candidates are, what their backgrounds are.
I've also, and I hope we'll talk about this, I've been as transparent as anybody.
I paid somebody to do opposition research into myself.
100 pages and I put it out online and I think that makes me probably the most transparent candidate running for governor in Wisconsin and maybe the only person willing to do that who's running for governor all around the country because people deserve that level of transparency.
Getting into the comment or what was said months ago, somebody asked me, I think the question was being a white guy, being the only white male in the race, is that a positive, is it a negative, is it something we shouldn't be talking about?
And you know, what I should have said is there are capable, qualified candidates running.
Every one of us has a chance to win and govern in the state of Wisconsin.
Wisconsin has elected Vell Phillips, who was my, you know, former neighbor in the 1970s.
We've elected Tammy Baldwin, Barack Obama.
So Wisconsin has shown that we will do, we will give anybody a chance.
Like, that's what I should have answered, you know.
And I'm a big fan of the musical Hamilton.
One time, Aaron Burr advises Hamilton to talk less.
But it took me like four minutes to answer that question.
And what I should have said was that.
The words that I used at the end of that were, we're not there yet.
And that's what people took is to say, well, we're not there in being able to elect anybody but a white guy.
I mean, here's what I would tell you.
Over the last couple of months, we have seen the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in the South.
We have seen people having the representation taken away.
I would still affirm that as a country, we're not there yet in terms of who we want to be and what we want to be.
That's why I have been in the positions that I have been over the course of my career.
That's why I have fought for everybody.
That's why I was the first person when Donald Trump said he was going to come to try to affect the elections in Wisconsin.
I was the first one to stay.
We got to stand up and protect democracy.
We got to make sure we're protecting the right to vote early to vote by mail.
People who work at the ballot box like that's who I want to be.
And I think we need allies that look like me that look like you.
We need everybody in the community, everybody in the state to stand up to do that.
And that's what that's why I'm in this race.
That's why I want to be governor.
That's that's who I would be as governor.
I know you've been we've all be good.
You could ask any one of these candidates.
We've been doing it over the last year and it is.
I'll be in superior tomorrow.
I was in Bayfield.
a couple of weeks ago and I drove back home on a Saturday night from Bayfield to my home here in the city of Milwaukee.
I think it took about six and a half hours.
I think Bayfield is, by the way, one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen on earth.
But I think I did see a sign that said five miles to the end of the earth.
Like I was very close, very close to there.
But it is a big, beautiful state.
And we have spent a lot of time and we have traveled it forwards and backwards.
And that's something that I respect every person in this race who has put themselves out there.
and how hard they have worked to do.
There's a forum tomorrow in Superior.
There was one last night in Sock Prairie.
We did another one in Madison a couple of days ago.
We have continued to do this.
People are doing it on their own.
We're doing these together.
This is what primaries should be about.
And I'll tell you, one of the things that's changed in the chaos and the dysfunction of the last week that's kind of seen in this primary and in campaigns and in the democratic process is people are finally paying attention.
For a long time, we were doing all this.
We were rolling that stone a pill and it didn't feel like people were paying attention.
And now people are starting to lock in.
There's early voting that has started.
People are going to start doing the early vote in person.
And I think this is a case where lots of people were waiting for things to happen in the race and they now have.
And that plays to my advantage because my challenge from day one has been not that people don't believe that I have the qualifications, capabilities to do the job.
The job that I had as the secretary of administration
Top-appointed job in the cabinet, really the job is to help the governor run the executive branch, build the state budget, do all the procurement, human resources across the administration, across the enterprise.
have the connections to local government getting four and a half billion dollars of resources out from COVID money.
Like all of those things were things that I did.
My challenge has never been that I have the capability to do the job.
My job, my challenge is that just not as well known as other candidates in the race.
And now if this is why people start to pay attention because somebody's campaign imploded because somebody was out and then they came back in, you know, when there are people who are trying to tell you how to decide, I think people now are starting to figure out that
One, there's a very important race on August 11th.
The most important thing is to win in November because the problems that we have around health care, around education, around housing, around child care, we're not going to be able to solve those unless we win a general election, unless we beat Tom Tiffany and Donald Trump.
And I will still maintain, and I will say this until I'm blue in the face, but that I think I am the candidate who's best equipped to win the primary, to win the general election, to govern on day one.
And that's based on who I have been throughout my career.
It's based on comparing who I have been throughout my career against the other candidates.
And so it's inevitable at some point that people make a comparison about this candidate versus that.
What have they said?
What have they done?
What are the things that are their liabilities?
That's going to be part of the conversation.
We are currently living in probably the most anti-affirmative action, anti-DEI political and social climate that I've ever seen.
Things were a little bit different during the era of George Floyd when there were marches and protests in Black Lives Matter.
It seems like we have done a complete 180 from that.
And I got to be very realistic in this anti-affirmative action, anti-DEI climate.
The state of Wisconsin is 80 percent white, 20 percent of the people in the state are not white.
So you being the only white guy in this race, it does make an awful lot of sense demographically.
But here's where I'm at with this.
Do you have commitments to...
affirmative action and diversity.
Will you have a diverse cabinet?
Will you surround yourself with people who have connections to communities that you may not be very familiar with?
That's number one.
Number two, can you be Tom Tiffany?
And I would say, look at who I have been throughout the course of my career.
You know, when we had COVID relief money and it was going out to.
local communities, to small businesses, to family farms, to people who couldn't keep a roof over their head.
I was working there with every possible ally around the state of Wisconsin.
We also did, and it was driven in large part by people here in Milwaukee, we did diverse business assistant grants to the tune of about $75 million.
We put money into the community development financial institutions, the CDFIs, tried to get money to local chambers all around the state.
All of that was an effort to try to make sure that
that, yes, we were responding to COVID, but we were also making sure that over the course of the coming years that it wasn't just about the immediate response.
What could we do that's going to have long-term impact in the city where I live, in the Milwaukee community?
Those are the things that I have tried to do in the course of my career.
In addition to that, part of the responsibility that I had
in state government was around supplier diversity at the Department of Administration.
And, you know, this is a program that... Which
And it's a program that's been around for 40 years, and it doesn't have enough teeth in it.
And there's only been about four times that the state has met even the levels of what we try to do.
You know, twice.
Two of those were the years that I was at the Department of Administration.
I'd like to think that those are the types of things.
And that wasn't just me.
That was Governor Evers setting a tone.
It was the other people who...
who are working on that diligently.
It was the people who coordinate and cooperate with us to do that.
But that is demonstrated impact of who I have been.
And it has been an honor for me.
I was at, there was a forum in Madison a couple of weeks ago.
It was actually the day before that David dropped out.
And that was the, I think the last forum he did before he went out and then he came back in.
But at that event, I had a couple of people who I had hired.
It was around issues of diversity.
It was in Madison.
It was at the hub.
If you haven't seen it, it's a great spot in Madison that they have created with the Urban League.
And there was a lot of energy there.
But I had two employees of mine who had worked with me, who were there, and who are working with the Urban League.
And to have people like that, who I had hired at DOA, one has gone on and is now working in the private sector.
Having their support, having them come up to me, somebody stopped me on the street the other day while I was in Madison and say, hey, I knew you were going to be around.
I just wanted to come by and tell you how much I'm looking forward to voting for you because of who you were as my boss.
And I would like to think that that's a good reflection of who you are.
So will I surround myself with people like, I have never done anything but that, and that's who I have been.
The group that I work with at the Creative Milwaukee Committee is a strong, diverse group.
We have, I'm building, we have built leaders there that look like Milwaukee, and that's who we should be.
That's who I have been throughout the course of my career, and that's what I would do.
Second question.
Second question, can I beat Tom Tiff?
Yes
We're going to take a break.
I'm going to come back more with Joe Brennan.
I'm going to ask you about education because several of the candidates in the race are vowing to if not on day one.
to eliminate an educational option for a lot of parents right here in the city of Milwaukee, but then there's something else that is that needs to be discussed in this race and I haven't heard enough of it from other candidates.
Joel, your success if you become governor is only going to be as productive as the legislature you can bring with you.
Don't answer it now.
I want you to give details on the other side.
Can you bring other Democrats into the majority and the assembly and the Senate, especially in areas that may have voted for Donald Trump in the past?
More with Joel Brennan, Wisconsin Democratic candidate for governor.
You are listening to The Truth with Sherwin Hughes.
Don't go anywhere.
I'll
be right back.
You are listening to the truth with Sherwin Hughes on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth comm
He's a candidate for governor and there's a lot of other candidates for governor as well But he happens to be the one I'm talking to at the moment Joel you need to have
a democratic legislature in order to maximize, I guess, your policy ideas.
Do you believe that you can pull other Democrats running across the state?
Really, every assembly district is competitive.
It looks like the Democrats have a good chance of getting a majority in the Senate.
All this bodes well for you, but we need somebody at the top of the ticket that can get...
What maybe we're Trump voters or Republican voters, moderate voters to vote for those legislators.
Can you get a Democratic majority in the Wisconsin State Legislature?
That's the fact that I have worked in government.
I've worked in business.
I've worked in the nonprofit sector.
You know, you don't go raise money in the nonprofit sector.
and make it all be about ideology.
You saw the work that I did at Discovery World.
The biggest donor to the expansion we did at Discovery World was Roy Ryman.
Roy has now passed away, but he was very generous.
But I can guarantee you that Roy and I, we canceled each other out in every election since I was 18.
But he cared about kids, he cared about STEM education, cares about Milwaukee kids, and he and his wife Bobby contributed about $7 million, $8 million to the expansion that we did at Discovery World that serves our entire community.
So can I be somebody who appeals to that?
When I was the secretary nominee...
The State Senate had to approve me and I was approved by 33 to nothing vote.
Now that shouldn't be a big deal.
A governor should have the ability to appoint people who are capable, qualified, but in, you know, in the last eight years, there have been like 25 appointees for Governor Evers who have been pushed out.
It happened four times in the 40 years before that.
And so, you know, I'd like to think all of that is a reflection of the fact that I can do it.
The fact that, again, you probably have seen your Republican friends in mind saying the candidate who is mostly
I'd like to see more of my democratic friends agree with that, but that's an indication of the fact that I could actually bring people down ballot along, and I have the ability to, because of the work that I have done, because I've been a pragmatic leader and demonstrated effect, that's the thing that I can bring that I think sets me apart from some other candidates, and it makes it less about ideology when you get to the general election, and more about pragmatism, and more about who is
actually capable of dealing with the problems we have with health care with education with housing with child care like who is going to be the candidate who can do that.
And I will stand toe to toe with Tom Tiffany on that issue and any other issue.
I mean, I got I think there are things we had to do at the state capital budget that you know And and how do you make that the job that I had in state government was how do you actually make the executive branch work?
We need to have a strong legislature We haven't had the ability to have a legislative majority in almost 20 years for the Democrats We were frozen out starting in 2010 by Scott Walker and they've gerrymandered these districts so that we have had almost no chance and now we've got fair maps
and the ability to have a legislature that can come along.
But the main thing that I have done is I have been somebody who's been responsible for making things work inside the executive branch.
I think that is as important as anything because, yes, we want the legislature to be along with us, but we better be in a position to squeeze as much as we can out of the executive branch.
a parental choice program, which is an option for many families in the city of Milwaukee.
I don't know if you've seen the statistics, but they are abysmal for African American children, and I think that personally, if parents have options, including wanting to send their children to schools in which other educators may send their schools, I believe that that legal, that legitimate, that constitutional option should continue to exist.
You're familiar with the troubles that we have in education and also hampers the future of Wisconsin's workforce if we don't have a well educated Group of folks coming out of high school and beyond your thoughts on the parental choice program and do you want to end it on day one like several of your Opponents want to do
well the answer that for the question do I want to end do I want to end it on day one the answer is no
You know, so one, let me tell you this.
My wife and I have lived in the city for the last 25 years.
We have two kids.
They're now both in college.
Our two kids went to the Milwaukee Public Schools for a total of like 22 years, from K3 through 8th grade.
And then we paid for them to go to private high schools.
So we've run the gamut in the experience.
And let me tell you about our personal connection to school choice in Milwaukee.
You know, my wife and I have been involved in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program for more than 20 years.
Eric is my little brother, and Shanika is Audra's little sister.
And so we've been doing that.
Shanika is now a parent, and her daughter is 14.
And her daughter went to Milwaukee College Prep.
And through a charter school, and then she got a voucher to go to Wisconsin Lutheran High School.
I think this will be her sophomore year.
She's now 14.
They actually lived with us for a few months after she was born, because Shanika wasn't in a relationship that was very healthy for her.
So these are people who we have been involved with over the course of their lifetimes.
And I'll tell you, you know...
Killani goes to Wisconsin Lutheran because she can get a voucher.
Otherwise, they live way out on the northwest side.
Maybe she'd be going to Vincent.
This is a real thing.
We need to make sure that Vincent, that we are increasing the outcomes, making better outcomes at Vincent, but are we in a position where we're going to tell somebody that they can't send their kid who has an opportunity to thrive at Wisconsin-Lucin?
Like, that's not something that I want to be able to take away, that I'm in any position to take away from families in Milwaukee.
And so, you know, there are distinctions that I make about the school choice, the voucher program in Milwaukee versus the rest of the state.
To be honest, it's a conversation piece.
much more outside Milwaukee now than it is inside Milwaukee.
There's levels of transparency.
The city of Green Bay puts on its property tax bill, here's how much money is going to the voucher program.
I think that that'd be good to do statewide.
I think that there are levels of accountability that can be increased.
The largest recipient of vouchers statewide is a virtual school now, or largely a virtual school.
That's different than I think the people who are going to some of the schools that you and I know are pretty
reducing really great results in Milwaukee.
And the results aren't great everywhere.
We need to hold everybody to account.
The other thing about the statewide program is that...
Data will tell you that most of the kids who are getting a voucher to go to those schools, their parents were paying for them to go to a private school before they ever had a voucher.
That's different than the bedrock of how the school choice program was created here in Milwaukee.
So, again, I make a distinction, and I will tell you, this is not a black and white issue on education.
It's one where there is lots of gray area, and we need to make sure we are managing in those gray areas, because ultimately, this is about outcomes.
We talked about the difference between outcomes for fourth graders in Milwaukee for white kids versus black kids is the worst in the country.
It's not much better as you go up.
There are all kinds of ways where we should just say that the outcomes here are not ones that we are going to live with.
In the recovery from COVID.
There were 38 states that measured how they were doing in the recovery on math.
Wisconsin finished 33rd, 35 states in terms of how we were covering on reading.
Wisconsin finished 30th.
If we think that those are tolerable results, if we think that the system we have now is good enough, then, you know, I don't know what state you're living in.
And so I'm not going to be somebody.
I want to make sure that we are doing right by the kids who are in the public school system here.
We should redo the school funding formula.
It's been flawed since it was introduced 33 years ago.
But to come in and say, on day
one, we're going to yank out kids from the schools that they've been in and schools that we know are demonstrating value.
Now, you know, here's one thing I would tell you, I'm for accountability.
I think the people who don't want accountability are the people who are running lousy schools, whether they're whether they're public schools, whether they're private schools, whether they're chartered schools, like we need to be in a position where people are held to account for results.
And we're saying that we are not going to any more just withstand results that are not tolerable for us, not acceptable in Milwaukee or anywhere else around
Speaking with Joe Brennan Democratic candidate for governor and a crowded primary then they got a little less crowded Then last Saturday got a little bit more crowded.
I'm gonna take a break when we come back I want to ask you about what seems like a shift of the at least the Democratic primary electorate to the left.
There's a very anti establishment theme that seems to be permeating through the Wisconsin political universe.
I want to talk to you about that
But then also general elections are a lot different than primaries.
If the Democratic primary voter has decidedly shifted to the left to get as far away from Donald Trump and his policies as possible, what does that mean for a general election where I believe that the majority of people who will show up to vote are not that far left?
They are much more centrist and moderate.
Joe Brennan is my in studio guest.
Don't go anywhere.
We'll both be right back.
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He's a candidate for governor running as a Democrat
Joel, do you think that the Wisconsin electorate, I mean, general election voters, not primary voters, have they shifted to the left is Wisconsin a deep blue ultra liberal progressive state?
I mean, let's look at the Fox Valley.
Let's look at Warsaw.
Let's look at, you know, Woodruff and Monaco and Iron County.
Let's look at Western Wisconsin, some of the rural areas.
Do you think that the whole state has shifted far enough to the left that they would vote for a democratic socialist?
Or do you think general election voters are going to be much more practical and pragmatic about electing a policymaker that can get stuff done?
Your thoughts?
Pragmatic, but they're also with Wisconsin voters are mavericks too now You know the spring elections while it's a different election the spring elections give us some idea of where people are in Wisconsin and there were Counties that went blue for the first time in a generation for Chris Taylor So there's opportunity out there and I and I've been talking to farmers who have just gotten absolutely their hats handed to them by Donald Trump every input costs going up, you know
feed seed, transportation, fertilizer, all of them have voted
And now they're saying to us, Okay, Democrats, you know, now we're giving you a chance, we will give you an opportunity to listen and to help us.
And, and again, in Wisconsin, we have an example in Tammy Baldwin, if somebody who has absolutely been that and been there and done that, she goes to those places, she has demonstrated that she can be effective, like
That is a model for us to follow.
But here's the other thing that you see is that Democrats are seen in statewide polling.
They're trusted less than the Republicans are here.
And part of that is around too much ideology, too much people thinking that we're too focused only on social issues and not on kitchen table issues.
I think those are the things that we need to make sure we're getting away from.
Because part of the reasons why Democrats poll so low in the state of Wisconsin is that Democrats hate other Democrats.
like there's a there's a food fight going on inside the party and it has been for a while and so again we're where general election voters are and this is what I have heard time and again in every place I have gone around the state.
They want to get stuff done.
They know that things are bad when it comes to education.
They know that we are pitting property taxpayers against kids in this endless cycle of referendums that are going on all around the state.
They know that health care costs are blowing people out of the water, that the people are having a challenge staying in their homes, and they're saying, OK, tell us how you can practically fix it.
Don't promise us everything and then not deliver, because I think that's part of what our challenge is.
If we are just so angry that we're going to over
promise and under deliver, this is going to be a very short time for the Democrats to be in the majority.
What I'd like to do is, you know, 2010 was probably the most consequential election of my lifetime in Wisconsin.
Scott Walker won gerrymandered maps, Act 10, all the stuff we've lived with over the last 15 years, a disinvestment lack of focus in places like Milwaukee.
I'd like to say.
2026 is when we close the book on that.
And for the next 15 years, we usher in a Wisconsin that closer to the one that some of us knew when we were growing up.
Now there are still problems for us to fix that haven't been fixed in 50 years, but we're only going to get to those if we can actually be the Wisconsin that I think we have been in the past with our progressive values, with investments in the right way and pragmatically trying to get stuff done.
If you look at poll numbers, Joel, you're not up there.
You're not in double digits.
David Crowley is not in double digits.
How much stock do you put in polls when still, even at this very late hour, the most popular candidate is undecided.
So number one, how much stock do you put in polls?
Number two, can you convince the undecideds to support Joel Brennan in a primary and general election?
Well, one, as long as the largest segment is undecided, I think that is a good harbinger for somebody like me.
for whom the problem has been not being well enough known.
Because when people get to know who I am, then they become supporters.
If time and again in this race, as I have walked into rooms where there were really undecided voters, whether it was in a forum or whether it was just a presentation, I'm walking out with 60, 70% of those people being for me.
So that is something that is valuable for me.
The fact that we have undecideds this many, undecideds this late, I think people have just started to pay attention in this race.
All of the stuff that's happening
happened in the last week, the Sarah Rodriguez and the campaign finance issues that she had.
All of the other tumult that's happened in the last week, I think that has gotten people's antenna up.
It's gotten them watching what's going on in the race.
It's having them thinking about what's going to happen in a general election, who's the best general election candidate.
And I will continue to make the argument that because of the level of transparency I have had about who I have been over the course of my career, because of the fact that I have
executive experience going back 20 years leadership experience about getting stuff done and delivering results.
I am the best candidate to move on to that general election.
And so, you know, Wisconsin has a history of taking candidates from the back of the pack and elevating them to the front and then that candidate going on and winning in a general election.
I worked on a campaign.
You might have been working on the same same campaign in 1992 for Tom Barrett and Russ Feingold came out of having had less than 10% of the
of the polling data a month before the election and ultimately winning the primary with like 70% of the vote and winning a general election that year where, you know, coming from, almost coming from nowhere.
So is there precedent in Wisconsin?
Is there opportunity for me?
I say absolutely there is.
As you travel around the state, I think you're pretty well versed on what the major issues are because Wisconsin issues are also national issues as well.
health care costs, affordability, inflation, gas prices, etc.
But as you're traveling around the state and talking to different groups of people, is there something that you heard that you never thought of or never accounted for or something that maybe has slipped under the radar that a lot of voters are discussing that you may not have thought about?
Well, you know, it's different in different places, but people, it's around affordability, but it's also about responsibility, the issue about what people care about related to Wisconsin's environment.
Like I have had opportunities in every part of the state, urban areas and rural areas.
You know, in lots of the areas people are mad about the potential, they're angry at government about the potential of data centers and what they're going to do to scar the landscape.
We had a, you know, you had a conversation here in Milwaukee even.
At the old capital court about this and you know like that happens in urban areas it happens in rural areas But but I think people feel still that there is a fundamental connection between us and the land and there's an opportunity We have had this false choice between can we you know have?
Good things and maintain a good environment or can we have economic development?
You know and people in Milwaukee here have seen Disinvestment have seen you know some of the the worst outcomes when it comes to health being directly
related to the fact that we've disinvested in communities and neighborhoods around Milwaukee and let those be scarred for the long term.
Those are things that I think people, no matter where you are around the state, believe that we have a connection and we have a responsibility and we can do something about it.
I think that there are ways that we can start to bring that back.
And I want to do that.
I want to be in a position where we are creating jobs in the green economy in Milwaukee and in Wisconsin.
We have an opportunity and an obligation.
to rebuild and make our energy grid more efficient.
There's opportunities to do that.
There's weatherization that happens in communities here in Milwaukee that there are jobs that are associated with doing this that are also going to be about how do we make sure that we have a Wisconsin that we want for the time being.
I think I just saw yesterday that July here has been the driest since the Dust Bowl since 1936.
This is what we're living in right now.
that there's no climate change happening and when you get thousand year floods and this kind of stuff happening within a
I wanna ask you about how you, if you become a governor.
How do you sell Wisconsin to industry leaders?
How do you encourage them to come to Wisconsin and hire our people and see Wisconsin the future of jobs of business and industries won't ask you about that but also I was I'm watching the television because I sometimes watch the TV and There's an ad that's in very heavy rotation.
It's in one of these third-party groups that's very closely aligned with both Trump and Tom Tiffany.
It's a restoration pack
Commercial and I'm starting to see it several times a day and they name Mandela Barnes and they name sir Rodriguez of course is in that commercial and Francesca Hong is in that commercial, but they also pit those individuals with Bernie Sanders and AOC and I found it interesting that you were not mentioned in that commercial because what I think the right wants to do is put these Democratic Socialists in one box and they can't put you in that box and I have heard
from many a Republican.
Sure, when we're sure glad that people aren't really talking much about that, Joe Brennan, because we are afraid of him.
It reminds me a lot of the 1996 reelection campaign of Bill Clinton, where the Republicans could not use anything against Bill Clinton because his campaign was so incredibly inclusive politically that the Republicans did not have much fire to throw at him.
So take break.
Come back.
going to ask you about, of course Milwaukee being the economic engine, but then how do you convince other businesses, companies to come to Wisconsin to find a comfortable home here and really develop our state economically because you know that we need jobs.
The truth with Sherwin Hughes featuring an interview with Joel Brennan, candidate for governor.
We'll be right back.
The truth with Sherwin Hughes returns after this on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth comm This is the truth with Sherwin Hughes on 1017 the truth the truth app and 1017 the truth comm
Sell Wisconsin and all of our great people on our assets and our resources to convince, you know Milwaukee's economic engine, you know that Freshwater Sciences, we've got great institutions of higher education go Panthers proud UW-Milwaukee graduate here How do you convince other people to see the value in Wisconsin to bring jobs opportunities and employment to the state?
Yeah, well, you know, I think I do what we do best and what we should be doing, which is grow our own, you know, with the first year that I spent with Governor Evers as Secretary of Administration, I spend most time almost every day trying to figure out there is anything there with the Foxconn deal.
Like you remember that it was the eighth wonder of the world that Donald Trump and Scott Walker had said, you know, this is what's going to happen 20 million square feet is going to just
come at like a spaceship and land in Racine County and 13,000 jobs and very quickly we found out that you know for the three billion dollars we had promised them they were much better at putting out press releases than they were ever going to be at producing flat screen flat screen TVs.
We brought we brought that down from three billion dollars to about 80 million and I think they're you know they may have been continuing to if because if they grow like any other company they should have the ability to get something but but
What they have gotten is much less and much closer to what every other company has gotten.
So instead of that being the strategy that we're going to somehow go out and believe me, I want to be a salesperson for Wisconsin.
I think that that would be the most fun part of the job is trying to open markets, trying to make sure we got $4 billion that we send out in agriculture every year.
Can we do something to increase that by 25%?
What can we be doing out of the universities, the technical schools?
creating opportunity there.
That's the kind of thing that I would want to make sure we're doing.
And I know it's not a Milwaukee story, but it's one that we should all appreciate and understand.
The Oscar Mayer plant in Madison used to have 4,000 people working there, and the Oscar Mayer wiener mobile, creating that.
Now it's going to be the next home potentially for nuclear fusion that comes out of the UW, where...
imagine its first life was feeding people physically, the next life could be around what are we doing in this technology to create jobs, to try to do things around medical research and all those.
States and communities are living and breathing so that's the kind of stuff that I absolutely want to do and I still live here in this community and and I am going to retire I'm gonna stay in this community and so if I can be anything it's gonna be somebody who wants to grow that it goes back to the conversation we had around education and how do we make Milwaukee a real use that engine use the engine of opportunity it starts in early childhood that then you know you have to have a robust and a great K-12 system and
get kids into either right into the workforce or getting into the UW, the technical schools, and actually going out and building the future.
Growing that, making sure that that infrastructure is in place, that's as good as we can do even as we're trying to get people from outside Wisconsin to come here.
But growing our own is something that I feel is so much more important than believing or praying that another Foxconn is going to come and land here in southeastern Wisconsin.
In a perfect world, you're elected governor, you've got a democratic legislate legislature and they say, Governor Brennan, you can do whatever you want with a surplus.
I don't even know what the surplus is down to.
I know it's been dwindling.
If you had the ultimate wish list of things that you would invest in with our surplus, that you help build and create.
Where would you prioritize at least some of those resources?
So I'll tell you where the first hundred million dollars of it would start and I agree We need to be cautious of it because this is we live in a Donald Trump economy It was supposed to be two point four million dollars as of next June 30th Like I think we should be very cautious about that but no matter what we're gonna have a hundred million dollars It should go automatically right into early childhood education around the state of Wisconsin Wisconsin was one of the last states to invest in early childhood as of June 30th
the money that we have been spending, the paltry amount we've been spending on early childhood is going away.
And so there are 25% of childcare providers who say they may close around Wisconsin in the next six months to a year.
Every every one of those daycares is going to have waiting lists the people who are paying for it their costs are going up There's a more than a billion dollars and Milwaukee sees this too more than a billion dollars of productivity that sits on the sidelines every year mainly from women because they can't find accessible affordable or quality daycare and so one of the first things I will make sure that as an emergency come day one of My administration that we are doing that but but we also need a long
term fixed for that it can't just be that we're limping along from one crisis to the next this is a situation my kids went to neighborhood house I ended up you know first I was a parent then I was on the board then I was the chair of the board at neighborhood house like I've been engaged in this for 20 years and I've watched how we have what should be the springboard to having kids do well in school we are using we are treating as an afterthought those are the kind of things we absolutely have to do will have impact in Milwaukee but only have impact statewide where 70% of kids live in a child
care desert around the state.
I'm going to hold you to this a part of that surplus or whatever is left be invested here in Milwaukee as the economic engine of the state in small business development and opportunities for minority owned businesses so that they can build capacity in a very anti DEI anti supplier diversity climate is that something you
So my initial thought was I am certain that I was the first candidate to lay out five questions that she needed to answer, you know, because these are the idea that you would mismanage $600,000 or a million dollars and then be expected to be handed the keys to put together a $110 billion budget.
I think that's something that lots of people would have very suspicious of.
You know, when she decided to drop out, I sent her a note.
I appreciate everybody who's in this race.
I appreciate what this means to her family.
I don't wish ill on her.
I hope that she is doing well, and I hope that she, you know, that she serves honorably the rest of her term as Lieutenant Governor, as she has done over the course of the last year.
And that she does well from there.
Like, we are friends.
The people who are in this race together, we are all friends.
We'll be friends afterwards.
We will unite to make sure we beat Tom Tiffany and that
We can be the Wisconsin we want to be no matter what.
I'm not a hell yes I'm mad you know and and you know what what I was I was the same as every other Democrat and most other voters in the state of Wisconsin and every other candidate who thought he was never going to endorse anybody in this race because that's what he had said over the better part of the last year and I caught up with him when he was on a plane to Africa when he was telling me he was going to say governor I didn't know you were going to do this and since you are since I know you are endorse me because I'm the one who's got 20 years of demonstrated leadership experience I'm the one who's been there to solve problems I was there
alongside you to make sure Wisconsin navigated its way out of COVID.
You know, I must not have been, I must not have convinced him, but the good thing is the people who are listening here, voters in Wisconsin, they still get to decide.
It's not somebody else putting the thumb on the scale that does this.
It's individuals still making their decision.
More people are paying attention today, and I still have the strongest argument about being the best candidate to be Tom Tiffany and the best candidate to hit the ground running on day one and be the kind of governor Wisconsin can be proud of.