Transcript
How Joe Zepecki Wants To Lead WI Democrats (Hour 1)
The Todd Allbaugh Show · Wed Apr 23, 2025
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Good afternoon, everybody.
I'm Todd Alba, along with our producer and engineer, the outstanding Mr. Zomers on the board.
It is now six past the hour of two o'clock.
on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025.
It is a great day to be Wisconsinite, and it is... Pump Day!
Look at that, Summers.
Not only did I get the time right, the camel made it as well.
he was
he got really
Well, once you get over the hump, everything is down exactly.
Welcome, everybody.
Glad to have you along.
It is from the World Headquarters of Civic Media in downtown Madison, partly sunny skies.
Great to be with you here on a Wednesday, our brand new time slot.
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Maggie will follow us.
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And now we're two to four and Maggie's four to six.
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The other great show, Pete Schwabba or the night light with Pete Schwabba and Conrad, their their great producer.
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What are they, what are they, is it on demand?
Is it the proper way to say it?
I don't
All right.
Tom Hartman comes on now before us, and then from 11 to two.
And then before Tom Hartman is our friend and colleague, J. Matt Nair and Greg Bach with Matt Nair on air.
And then before that, six until nine is the Pat Crichtlow show.
No, it's mornings of Pat Crichtlow.
So Crichtlow is six to nine, then Matt Darron Eyre from nine until 11, Hartman, then us, then Maggie, then Pete.
Indeed, that's-
And
listen, I listened to some of the, we're gonna talk about this a little bit later.
Mark Pocan, congressman Mark Pocan, Democrat from Madison was on the Tom Hartman show today.
So I listened to about an hour and a half of Hartman.
Here's my big takeaway from the Tom Hartman show.
I had no idea that liberals were so much into cryptocurrency.
are a lot of ads for cryptocurrency.
New AI-powered
plan.
You can recite it.
So we're going to talk, we're going to talk about some of the things that we're, uh, that Hartman and, uh, um, Congress from Polkana were discussing a little bit later.
We have a big lineup for you today at hour number two at three 35, Matt Solomon, been a minute since Solomon's been on the show.
He is from cracked.com.
Great publication online.
Matt is going to grade Saturday night live, the iconic NBC show at 50.
He has written a column on this, looking back at the past 50 years of SNL and how the 50th season is holding up.
So Salomon's in at 335 with that.
At 306, what's worse where we ask you the not so important question of the day, but your chance to weigh in today's category, shaving or flossing?
You probably don't do that in the same spot.
I hope not.
Shaving or flossing, we'll talk about that in hour number two.
And then it's 2.35 this hour, so less than a half an hour.
Joe Zipecki is gonna be on the program.
He is founder of Zipecki Communications, longtime Democratic political strategist, communication, marketing guy.
And he is now running for the chairmanship of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
Ben Wickler chose not to run again.
So there's the open election.
Talked to Zipecki, really interested.
Here's a guy that I really respect.
I don't belong to any political party, so I've got no dog in the race, no vote.
But it seems to me as a pecky is the kind of guy that you want in these times, but we'll talk to him and ask him some questions.
But right now, joining us via StreamYard from the nation's capital, you know him, you love him.
If you joined us in our old time slot at noon, Trig Vilsen, native of River Falls, former Republican, like myself.
Now a senior advisor at the Lincoln Project, and here joining us in the mid-afternoon at two o'clock, which is good news for Trigvie because he gets up at about 1.30.
Trigvie Olson, how are you?
Well, I love the fact that those watching on the stream, Trigvie has.
Position the microphone directly in front of his face.
So it kind of looks like that character from the old home improvement show or all
is his head.
Top of his
work so I can get myself centered here.
It's not a very good day.
I'm sorry to hear that, but I appreciate you being here.
I understand they put one of those robotic cameras in our studio a while back, supposed to follow you around.
And we
off.
We basically had to break it because it just didn't work.
So we didn't have to break it.
We just turned off the following.
turned it off the following.
The AI portion.
in this remote.
shipped it without
shipped it without batteries.
That would be why the remote control wasn't working.
How
dare they?
How dare
they?
God, I'm becoming like kids.
Anyway, I was just going to announce I'm formally here in my role as the owner of the Green Bay Packers.
Well, I was going to say we
usually, for people listening to our old time slot, usually we would wait until the last two, three, four minutes of our hour together to talk about the Packers or something sports related.
TrigV is an owner of the Green Bay Packers.
But here now, here now, why don't we just start out with the Packers proper because the big draft
kicks off tomorrow in, uh, in Green Bay round one.
Very excited about this.
Our sports reporter, Mike Clemens is going to be, uh, giving reports from up in Green Bay.
But as a Green Bay owner, Trigby, what are your thoughts about the draft?
Well, there's part of me that would like to see him trade the pitch just because there's going to be all those people that are showing up there.
But, um,
microphone's a little, I don't know, muted or something.
I don't know.
Oh, it's my
can wait until the dog.
figure that out.
We'll worry about that in about five minutes because our breaks now are at 20 after.
So, well, don't worry.
OK, I got
I got it.
There, now it's on the
But it's set to my headphones.
You had all this new technology.
Yes, it's all this.
I told you, I'm having a bad day technology-wise.
I hope the Green Bay Packers have a better day on the draft.
How is that for a pivot?
Right.
I kind of hope they take the receiver.
I think he's from Arizona.
But to be honest, I don't have an informed opinion on the draft.
And I think most of these people talking about the draft are just trying to make money off it.
Yeah.
It seems like if you look at history and my former boss, Scott Kluge, was always fond of saying, Todd, if you want to, if you want to know about someone's future performance, look at their past performance, I found that to be true.
Goodie is not someone who's really he's not.
I don't think he's ever traded away the first two or three rounds to to move up.
He's always taken a player in around one, two and three.
He seems a fairly conservative guy.
And I just I don't think he's going to make a big splash just because it happens to be in Green Bay.
I think he's going to stick with his strategy.
That's just my take.
right
like he's just Yeah, I don't know and he certainly fleece those fancy New Yorkers on the air And those and those city slickers out in Las Vegas on the Devante Adams trade
No, yeah, here's to you.
Here's to UW lacrosse.
We may not have to ask what's cooking at lacrosse because They're clearly cooking up good NFL GM's.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely true We had Joseph Pecky at the bottom of the hour trig v really looking forward to this discussion with him learn a little bit more about him about his vision for the Wisconsin Democratic Party in his campaign to be the new chair after Ben Wickler has decided not to run for another term so I want to talk about
some of the national things before we get to is Becky at the bottom of the hour.
Want to get your take on a couple of things, Trig V. And for those that don't know, Trig V spent a lot of time in DC working for guys like John McCain and also Mitch McConnell and others has worked on presidential campaigns.
And for those that might not know when this time slot, the only person that I know who has been banned from Russia personally by Vladimir Putin for his work against autocracies and for democracy in Eastern Europe.
I want to get your take on this, Trig V, on this whole Pete Hegseth thing going on, the signal gate stuff, because now there's been a new signal gate on a personal phone.
And again, he doesn't Hegseth or the Trump folks don't deny any of this stuff, that he's talking about military operations on a non non secured personal phone.
So far, Trump is is standing with him, but.
Finally, now we have Republican Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska and the House of Representatives was on Jake Tapper's show on CNN.
Let's play a little bit of that.
This is Congress from Bacon on Jake Tapper.
Well, I wouldn't tolerate it.
I would hold them accountable and I'd fire them.
You can't put classified information and I guarantee it if you're talking about
when you're launching aircraft to attack Yemen, and you do that two hours before the missions, that is classified.
That's operational details that you want to protect.
And it was just wrong to put that on an unclassified application and to send it to people who are not cleared or in the need to know.
We would fire a second lieutenant for doing this.
And so as a military guy, this is not a Republican view or a Democrat view.
I think it's an American view.
that we protect our security, we protect our service men or women, because those details, if they would have got out early to the Houthis, I could have endangered our airmen.
And I guarantee you, Russia and China are all over the Secretary of Defense's cell phone, and they got hundreds of people focused on his phone and what he's putting on that, because he is like the top priority target for their signals collection.
So I just, what I want to see from the Secretary,
is to just be honest, admit you did wrong, take responsibility, and apologize, because that lets us know that you understand that was wrong.
When he does not admit to it and tries to obfuscate, that further lowers his credibility on this.
He's got to come clean and be honest.
And just take, take responsibility.
That's Congressman Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska and Jake Tapper showing CNN calling for Hank Seth to resign or be fired, trivia about a minute and a half left here before the first break.
What's your take on this?
He was sizzling.
All right.
Bacon was sizzling.
Yes, he is.
Although, as it comes to that, he's in a marginal district and it's the university in Nebraska district, so it's Omaha.
He has not really been a profile in courage.
He barely won last time, like he's a little bit, but he's a credible guy.
I mean, it's great that he's speaking out.
I think he's speaking the truth and I think he speaks from a place of caring.
The truth of the matter is, you look at Hegzeth and how he's been responding to this, everything is, I'm very disappointed in the leaker.
We have to find the leaker.
I don't know who's leaking this.
And the irony is the leaker is him.
Right.
Exactly.
He can look in the mirror and find the guy who is leaking.
Right.
So I just think, you know, there's.
Yeah, just because he's on TV, these people were on TV doesn't make you smile.
But by
the way, he redid the green room in the defense department, now has a makeup chair and a makeup stylist for his Fox News hits.
That's real.
Back with Tricky Olsen after this, it's a town of all show on the Civic Media Radio Network at our new time.
Same host, come on
back.
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That's right, you join join somers and I for a nooner now you can join us for some afternoon tonight every every afternoon now from two until four our new time slot if you normally tune in and say Where the heck did Maggie Dawn show go have no fear?
She's just going back a couple of hours.
She'll be here at four o'clock now now in drive time from four until six the great Maggie Dawn show every afternoon followed by the great Pete Schwabba in nightlight every evening from six until eight
But the one thing that stays the same, thank goodness our friend Trig V. Olsen, ongoing contributor native of River Falls, Wisconsin, senior advisor.
Now at the Lincoln Project, like myself, a former Republican joins us on Wednesdays to talk about a little politics, but also some some packers from time to time and and also what makes Wisconsin.
Great.
Jeff Perry, our ongoing contributor on Facebook says, Todd, is it daylight saving time today?
What's going on?
No, no, Jeff.
It's just a time change.
We're in daylight saving time, but we're still changing showtimes.
Trigby gonna have Joe Zipecky on at the bottom of the hour after our news update Zipecky of course longtime Democratic political strategist great marketing guy founder of Zipecky communications.
He is running for The chairmanship of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin now that Ben Wickler is choosing not to run So I want to get to a couple of national issues before Joe comes on the bottom of the hour You know two or three minutes here on each one of these
First of all, and I think for some people are going to say, what's the big deal here?
And yesterday, Bill Owens, the longtime executive producer of the Sunday Evening News program, 60 Minutes on CBS, resigned essentially under pressure.
And there was a big meeting of CBS folks in 60 Minutes, including Leslie Stahl and Scott Pelley and Anderson Cooper and others.
in which he and he also put out a memo to his colleagues at CBS and essentially said look with the world today and whether it's Sherry Redstone the now owner yet of CBS Paramount or this new merger they're trying to do that and and of course CBS is signaling they're going to settle with Trump like ABC did for essentially no reason they didn't do anything wrong
But now this guy, Bill Owens, who ran CBS or 60 Minutes, is saying, I can't.
I don't feel I can do my job like I always have done because of pressure at the top.
Is this anything, Trig V, you've dealt with autocracies.
We've seen this in other places where the media starts getting intimidated.
Should we make something out of this or is this nothing?
One of the ways that these guys take control is by bullying the media and getting them to bend to their will through lawsuits or whatever means.
It really is true, the best way to confront an autocrat or a bully is to stand up to the autocrat or the bully and that's not what they're doing.
And you've literally written a book or your process, I think, writing a book on this, but
about this.
It's the seven rules of dealing with autocrats, right?
So, I mean, there's seven rules dealing with autocrats.
The one that's relevant here is always speak truth to power.
And that's what CBS and 60 Minutes were doing.
And in fact, the entire lawsuit was based on a lie.
It was that they had somehow edited their interview with Kamala Harris.
And that wasn't...
the case and, you know, I mean, Trump's trying to shut them down.
They're venerable.
And I'm sure in Donald Trump's mind, you know, 60 Minutes is the preeminent news, which it kind of is preeminent television news program of, you know, long format stories and he's bullied them.
And if he
Right exactly speaking of papers Milwaukee Journal sent no great paper here in the state of Wisconsin story by Eva Wendt today Entitled what to know about recent immigration arrest in the Milwaukee County Courthouse again about three minutes here before our break
large 30,000 view here now.
A third person has been arrested by ICE in Wisconsin, the first two at the Milwaukee County Courthouse, this one in Ozaki County Courthouse.
These folks are going because they're trying to do it the quote unquote right way.
They're trying to get their papers in order to become citizens, at least permanent residents, and ICE is staking out these courthouses now and arresting people right here in Wisconsin.
To me, Trigvie, this all comes back.
Our other colleagues here at Civic Media have talked about this.
It's due process.
And if folks aren't given due process, and they're guaranteed this in the Constitution, if that isn't upheld and adhered to, then none of us are really safe, regardless of whether we're American citizens or not, speak to this again in about a minute and a half here, talking about what you've seen in other countries.
Well, I mean the reality is, you know, they want people to live in fear in what better way than the president can order that you pick up a bunch of people on the street and send them to a gulag and El Salvador and then when the Supreme Court rules nine zip against you you say, oh, but we don't have a way to get them back, right?
Like listen, Trump tweeted the other day or true social or whatever you do on there.
that he doesn't have time for everybody to have a court hearing.
Well, what a crock.
I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer was one of the most reprehensible people to ever transverse the planet.
He got due process.
He got a trial.
It's an imperfect system, but it's a lot better than the alternative of some guy in politics being able to decide who gets picked up and who doesn't.
I'm glad you brought up this this truth social thing you tweeted out about, well, we don't have time for everybody get a trial.
He clearly does not understand the immigration or the legal system.
There's someone who handled immigration affairs for a former congressman in Wisconsin.
What you're talking about here is going before an immigration court and having basically a hearing where the judge says, hey, are you here legally illegally?
You don't have an actual jury trial for every single one of these cases.
It's just not how it works.
And so it's just a bold face lie to gin people up and it's disingenuous at best.
Always genu-
anyone is Joseph Peckie.
He is a candidate from the Democratic Party Chair in Wisconsin.
Come back and have a conversation with he and Trigby and myself.
Stay tuned.
News, weather, sports update.
We're back after this on the Civic Media Ready Network.
Artie he joins us via stream yard.
Mr. Joe is a pecky with Trigby Olson for the senior advisor at Lincoln Project joining from Arlington Joe.
Thanks so much for being on and What's what's it like now that you're an official candidate for chair?
I've worked with a lot of candidates and I was right it is different when it is your name that's going to be on a ballot I don't know if Triggy's had the
The pleasure, but it's a little different, but it's a lot of fun.
I'm getting around the state, talking to people all across Wisconsin, all across the Democratic coalition.
To me, that is the only way to build a viable pro-democracy resistance against the Trump administration and a Democratic party that is built to win elections next year and build power going forward for working families, for people who want to get the American dream for themselves.
and the response has been overwhelming.
We rolled out 20 public endorsers on day one.
We've added another.
more than half dozen in the week since.
I haven't even been at it for a full week.
Tomorrow will be one week in the race, so it's going great.
Wow, that's fantastic.
You know, you've been on a lot of programs across civic media.
We were talking before we went on the air.
I don't think you've ever been on our show proper, although you were on a panel with Trigby and some other folks about a year and a half ago down in Milwaukee.
What the heck's the matter with Todd?
Number one, not having you on sooner, but I'm glad you're here today.
For those that might not know who you are, we're a statewide audience.
across 11 different stations all across the state.
Tell folks a little bit about Joseph Peckie, where you grew up, a little bit about your history so far, and how you got into leadership or wanting to be a leadership in the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
Yeah, born and raised in southeast Wisconsin, graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I got the political bug early.
My parents instilled in me very early on that those who have much
much, you know, must give back.
And we were very fortunate and privileged.
My dad worked in county government for 20 years.
My mother is an attorney who was sort of on that first wave of a lot of women lawyers and has been a leader in that space, founded things like women's judges night in Milwaukee.
And so I had the bug early.
I spent the summer before my freshman year of high school volunteering on a congressional campaign.
And then it was off and running.
I've worked on three presidential campaigns.
worked in the Obama administration at the US Small Business Administration, moved back home to Wisconsin in late 2011 and in 2016 founded Zipecki Communications to really work on issues I care about and I'm passionate about whether that's funding public schools, protecting healthcare improvements and reforms that have been made, working with Building Trades Union members to ensure that they build our clean energy future.
I never thought we'd be in this space, but the last few years have had to do a lot of work in the democracy space, trying to lift up the January 6th Select Committee hearings and making sure that people know that the threats to our democracy are very real.
And along the way, I've tried to do some good, tried to give back.
I'm a volunteer football coach at the high school I played at.
in the 1900s is how the kids like to say it.
And that stings pretty badly these days, but they're not wrong.
That's hilarious.
I'm going to bring him in in a second.
But before I do, one more kind of general quote unquote campaign question here.
As a former Republican, I don't belong to any party now.
I've been a big admirer.
I think I could speak for trivia as well.
We both have a Ben Wickler and the job that he has done to build the Democratic Party.
Look, I just personally believe that there's only one major party left that truly supports democracy, and that's the Democratic Party.
So that's why I support them, but I'm not a hard-carrying member.
I don't want to call it weird, but to people outside of politics, this is not an election for the general electorate.
This is a very insider thing to Democrats.
You're going to meet here at a couple of months for this election for chair.
But speaking to those folks, what would you do to build on Chairman Wickler's successes and how might a Zappecki chairmanship be different and building
I
think for the purposes of this show, it's better than I don't.
I don't
Fair enough.
I've got some work left to do there.
Listen, Ben Wickler has been an extraordinary chair and has really reimagined what the Democratic Party of Wisconsin can be.
And so I think of this as three main roles that the chair plays and that the party plays.
The first is fundraising.
DPW, WisDEMS, however you refer to it, is a financial institution that raises money to support professional campaigns up and down the ballot.
On that dial, we have to do what's been working.
We have to continue to shine a spotlight on Wisconsin.
I believe that money follows message.
And when we communicate what's at stake, what the opportunities are, and how we're going to organize to push back and win, the resources will be there.
When it comes to the infrastructure of the Democratic Party,
the county parties, the issue-based caucuses, the college Democrats and those chapters.
There are things that we can do to fine-tune and build on what Ben has built.
Not all is well with the Democratic Party.
If it was, we wouldn't have lost to Donald Trump two out of the last three times.
And so...
I'm hearing from a lot of county leaders.
There are things that can be improved.
We have to lower barriers to entry for people who want to be part of the fight back.
And that's what we're going to do.
And then third, when it comes to how the Democratic Party communicates its message, we have been a disaster and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.
burn it down and build it back up.
That starts from my perspective with empowering more local messengers to carry the story.
We no longer live in a world where, hey, these are your three talking points, go speak them at someone works.
Everybody needs to tell their own story about why they are motivated at this time in our history.
So that's the quick one, two, three.
You can read the game plan for yourself at jozapeki.com.
Yeah, I mean Joe I was really excited when Todd called me earlier today and said you were coming on and I was I had actually been on a conference call earlier in the day where where I found out that you were running talk a little bit about
How Democrats particularly north of highway 29 do better, you know when you start going north of highway 29 up into Tiffany's district even over to where I'm from in st.
Croix County, which kind of right on highway 29 Democrats have struggled How do you reach out to those people because you know really Tammy Baldwin ended up winning because she ran just enough better than Donald Trump
than Harris in those counties.
Talk a little bit about that.
When we seed so much of the...
playing field to Republicans to define Democrats, and we don't meet them there.
It's not the fault of voters north of Highway 29 that they think that all Democrats care about are bathroom bills and trans athletes.
We are going to fight to protect the civil rights of everyone in this country, but at the heart of the Democratic Party,
is that pathway to the middle class.
If you want to work hard and play by the rules, you need to be able to get ahead.
And over the last 30 years, what we've seen is that big corporations are fixing the game against working people.
Oh, you want to work?
Great.
We'll give you 29 hours a week.
Wait, why 29?
I want to work full time.
Well, if you work 30, we got to give you health care.
These big corporations are out of control and squeezing every nickel they can out of us.
And it's made it harder and harder for young people, especially, but also people in rural
communities to feel like there is a path forward.
You know, when the three of us graduated high school, we all probably had pretty high confidence.
Whether we went to a two or four year school, into a trade, into the military, by the time we were 40.
We could afford a house, maybe have the start of a little nest egg for retirement.
When I talk to the 20 year old in my house, she looks at me like I'm from another planet, that that was the reality, not 25, 30 years ago.
That's what the heart of the Democratic Party is, is working for working people.
And we have shied away from that.
There is nothing about fighting for working class people that Democrats should be embarrassed about.
Say it with your chest.
We are here to fight for working families, period.
I'm here talking with Joseph Pecky, chair, or wants to be chair, candidate for chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party of Wisconsin, and also our ongoing contributor and friend, Trig V. Olson, former Republican like myself and senior advisor at the Lincoln Project.
Joe, talk a little bit about that.
I had a conversation, I tried to be succinct here.
I had a conversation with a friend of mine, known a long time, mid to late 30s guy from Southwest Wisconsin, has voted Democrat as far as Democratic as long as I know, have known him, and we got into this discussion.
And you're not here, you're not running for DNC chair.
I think it was a mistake for national Democrats to pass on Ben Wickler, but that's another bottle of wine.
But this guy, David Hogg, who is now the vice chair of the Democratic Party, comes out here last week and says he's going to spend $20 million from his personal pack to challenge sitting Democrats in safe districts who are either too old, in his opinion, or who don't vote progressive enough and take them out to swing the party.
younger and more liberal.
I mean, I'm not asking you to defend that, but just from Wisconsin, I find it hard to believe that Wisconsin Democrats think that Congressman Gwendolyn Moore should step aside because she's 74.
I just don't get the strategy there.
It's how much.
passion and fight you have left in you.
I was actually with Congresswoman Moore this morning.
We held a roundtable discussion with a half dozen of her constituents who are going to be impacted by the Republican plan to slash Medicaid.
This is going to have a cascading economic impact.
Apart from the morality question of cutting off disabled adults who are living independently, you name it.
Gwen Moore has the fight.
If you have the fight, fight with us in our coalition.
If your time has passed and you've lost your fastball, yeah, it's probably time to exit stage left.
I saw Senator Durbin announced today that he would be stepping aside.
Dick Durbin has been a great Democrat for a very long time, and there is nothing wrong with passing the torch to a new generation of leaders.
That's what Joe Biden said he was going to do back in 2020.
And I think if he had.
lived up to that in more ways a little sooner.
We may not be in such a five alarm crisis when it comes to protecting everything that makes America actually great as opposed to what Maga Republicans want you to believe.
But I'm just fascinated by this as an outsider who's not part of the Democratic Party, because in my opinion, I mean, Trigby and I have talked about this before as four Republicans, they're just better at keeping people in line.
I mean, I don't envy the head of the Democratic Party because to me, it's like herding cats, right?
And so I'm just fascinated.
outsider.
How do Democrats moving forward appease the David Hogs and the AOCs that people say, look, we're tired.
We're ticked off.
We don't want to wait anymore.
We don't care about the institutions.
We want these reforms now.
How do you keep their votes, which will be seen by some people as far left?
And then kind of the more traditional Democrats, while I was talking to this guy from Southwest Wisconsin, his 30s, a Democrat, he said,
This is a great example of why we are going to see a third party emerge because both parties are too far left and right.
How do you as the future chairman of the Democrats keep a third party from emerging and say, no, no, no, we as the Wisconsin Democratic Party, we are
I don't think we can be a pro-democracy movement if we shy away from democracy.
Everybody has a right to run.
And if they want to run against incumbents, go for it.
We know that's an uphill battle, but there's nothing wrong with.
more democracy being the answer to the challenges our democracy faces.
My approach is always, you gotta have a big table.
You gotta have room in our coalition now more than ever.
For folks who think, yeah, we should raise the minimum wage and it should go up to $10.10 tomorrow.
And there are also people on the left who say it should go to $25 tomorrow.
We have to be a coalition that's big enough to keep everybody on sides, win back power.
And if we wanna have those fights and we land at 15, 17, 20,
That's the hard work of governing.
But for now, what the Trump administration is doing is focusing our attention and focusing the mind on, you know what, whether you think it's 10, 10 or 25, you think working people need a raise.
And let's focus on that part of it moving forward.
We can sort some of that out after we win back power and save our country.
Trig me one minute, less than one minute.
Quick question, quick answer
Trig me anything?
No, I mean, I just think, Joe, the answers you're giving about economics, and I say this, take it for what it's worth from a guy who used to work for McConnell, so I don't know how much credibility I have with people who are working to elect you.
But the truth of the matter is you're spot on.
I saw Mark Cuban had a tweet not long ago where it showed, Wisconsin has more at risk from the tariffs than any other state.
10% of the jobs in Wisconsin are at risk, 73% of the people.
who are at risk voted for Donald Trump.
Like, there's a huge opportunity, but they did it for a reason, and then they did it because Republicans come along and say, as you said, it's about bathrooms and athletes
and whatnot.
Wisconsin canvassing from superior to Racine.
Joseph Peckie is running for the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party.
With that music in his headphones, he's gonna be...
24 hours a day, seven days a week getting it done.
He is a guest right now along with Trigvie Olson, our ongoing contributor for a Republican like myself.
Now I've seen your advisor at the Lincoln Project.
Joe, I still appreciate you coming on here and having this open, honest discussion.
We don't have enough people having these types of discussions, so I really appreciate this.
Looking at the job of state chair, you've got
The legislature now with fairer maps seems to be within reach, especially on the assembly side.
Maybe the state Senate side could have a gubernatorial race.
Democrats don't know yet whether Governor Tony Evers is going to run.
for reelection.
And there may or may not be new congressional maps, but you have, you know, I'm going to say a MAGA extremist like Derek Van Orton in the third district.
You almost got knocked off by Rebecca Cook last time.
As you look at the landscape, Joseph Pecky, as a potential future chairman, what do you see as your
Well, job number one is next spring.
And that's an advantage that we have in Wisconsin.
It helps keep the national spotlight on the state.
It helps us raise the resources to invest in that year round organizing that is so central to the wins that we've had.
So ahead of next spring, we need to be innovating county by county, neighborhood by neighborhood to figure out what works.
There are going to be places in our party where they want to, we call it turning the van upside down.
where you stop talking to regular voters who are three out of four or four out of four past performance and elections.
Let's knock some doors where it's zero out of four or
one
Let's have conversations.
Maybe now is the time when people are both seeing and feeling what's happening from the Trump administration.
They see their 401k.
They may not have thought about voting last November.
But now they're going, oh, my God, what is this?
I'm going to have to work another three or four years before I retire.
Let's have those conversations.
Let's build for next spring because, frankly, we protected democracy in Wisconsin by electing Susan Crawford and ensured a progressive majority that will honor the will of the people and elections.
And that majority is only insured.
through the spring of 2028.
So I would rather pick up another seat, get to a 5-2 split on the state court, and then have greater confidence that there will not be shenanigans or big lie 3.0 when it comes to the 2028 presidential election.
So it starts next spring.
And then when you look at the fall, we've got to do it all.
More is more.
Like this is not a time to say, well, we're going to put all our eggs in this basket.
Tony Evers has been a stalwart defender of policies that would have made Wisconsin, Alabama.
Sorry, Alabama, but we don't want to be you, right?
And we have this path to flipping control of the legislature for the first time in a generation, right?
It's been since.
2008 was the last time that Democrats had a majority.
That path is there and it provides another opportunity for us to raise resources from the types of groups that are only interested in flipping chambers.
Ben's done a fantastic job and there were doors that were close to him and Democrats in Wisconsin because we weren't close enough to flipping chambers.
We can walk and chew gum and win elections all at the same time.
So whether it's recruiting candidates to stand for election in all 132 districts, whether it's insurance.
that Tony either Evers or some other Democratic candidate for governor have what they need.
We have to do it all.
We don't have the luxury of picking and choosing because building power in 2026 is so important.
We have to flip.
the Congress.
We have to take back the Senate.
And I think given the economic anxiety that people are feeling, there's nothing that's out of reach for Democrats.
We need to flood the zone with candidates who fit their district and can win.
And we will provide the the the people power that can get folks over the top in districts that even three or four years ago, people never would have thought a Democrat could be competitive in.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's I think that's spot on.
I think
You know, the other thing is, and I think Ben did a really good job of this.
You know, he was going to the Eau Claire's.
He was reaching out to those nontraditional people and you're exactly right.
Conversation is so essential.
Um, because, you know, the
And I mean, if you think about, you know, one thing that that I pointed out, which is kind of national, but it relates to Wisconsin.
Five Senate races, okay?
All in states that Harris lost.
Jackie Rosen, Gallego, Tammy Baldwin, and Slotkin all spoke directly to the camera and said, this trans ads that they're running against me, it's not true, you know who I am.
The one who didn't, Casey lost.
Harris didn't do it, she lost.
You gotta have some trust in the people.
And you got to tell the story and that's yeah, that's what I mean when I say that we're leaving the playing field Uncontested right?
I mean there are more billionaires in Donald Trump's cabinet
then there are division one trans athletes in the entire United States.
This is a distraction so that they hope that you don't notice they're fixing the economy for Elon Musk and billionaire special interests while the rest of us are getting nickel and dime to every every turn.
And it just has to stop.
And the only way it's going to stop is when people show up and show out.
I like to say if you have a government that's of the billionaires and by the billionaires, it's only ever going to be for the billionaires.
If we have a government that is by and for the people, it is possible to
to have an economy that works for everyone.
That's what we need to, the message we need to take to voters, not just tomorrow, not just next year, but moving forward for years to come to build an enduring pro-democracy coalition.
Trigby is always fond of saying that Democrats are great at writing policy.
Republicans are great at writing narrative.
It would seem to me having a guy who is a communication and marketing specialist like Joseph Pecky would be a great person to have in charge of writing a democratic narrative, but that's just me as outsider.
JosephPeki, we appreciate you coming on.
So very much.
Good luck in your bid to be the Democratic Party Chair of Wisconsin.
We'll stay in touch.
Thanks for being here, my friend.
Thanks, guys.
Be well.
Yep, you as well.
JosephPeki,
Good luck.
Trig V, we got, well, 30 seconds left.
Any final
Well, you want to stay around for what's worse?
I
It's gonna stay around for what's worse.
That's fantastic.
Great tease.
We appreciate that.
Come on back.
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