Hey, Matt Rothschild here, host of the Wisconsin Ford Podcast all across the Civic Media
Radio Network and at civicmedia.us.
For the next several episodes of the Wisconsin Ford Podcast, I'm going to be interviewing
Democratic candidates for governor.
Just me now is candidate Missy Hughes, who headed up the Wisconsin Economic Development
Corporation in Governor Evers's Cabinet.
Before that, she was an executive at Organic Valley for 17 years.
Missy Hughes, welcome to the Wisconsin Ford Podcast.
Thanks so much for having me.
Oh, it's great to finally meet you and to have you right here on the podcast.
You know, I've hired people in the past, I know you've hired people probably and I always
have started my interview questions out with the most obvious question.
Why do you want this job?
So, why do you want to be governor?
Well, it's fair to say this is the strangest job interview I've ever done.
I've never run for office before, but I decided to throw my hat in the ring for governor
because I feel right now my experience of working in the dairy and manufacturing industry
of Wisconsin, of working for six years for governor Evers doing economic development gives
me the skill set that we need at this time to build our economy to help Wisconsinites
be able to make ends meet and to really be able to think about how do we move
Wisconsin forward?
Well, it's a big jump, never having run for office before to decide to run for governor.
What made you make that decision or take that lead because it seems imposing to me?
Well, right now, I feel like so many of my neighbors, of my friends, are really frankly
disgusted with what's happening in politics.
They have heartburn anytime you talk about what's happening in Washington and they just
really want to disengage.
I have the energy for it.
I'm excited to dive in, I'm excited to work hard and roll my sleeves up and try to do
everything I can to help Wisconsin.
And so when many people are stepping back, I wanted to step in and say, let me try and
help solve some of the problems we're facing.
You know, I went to your website, so the video you put out, you say, I'm not a politician,
that's the point.
Explain that a little bit.
Well, you know, what I see in politics today is one upmanship, is gamesmanship, a lot
of competition rather than a lot of cooperation.
And I think as a politician, you really build those muscles to fight.
You really say, you know, what can I win?
How can I put the other side down?
For myself coming from working for farmers, coming from working for a cooperative and doing
economic development, I want to find solutions.
And I don't find that politicians these days are necessarily driven towards solutions.
They're driven towards the fight.
And that's why I think it's really important to point out that I am not a politician, I've
never run for office, I'm a business person, I'm a mom.
And that combination means I got to find my way through and find solutions.
Find solutions, finding cooperation in this year of politics with my Donald Trump and
I'll polarize things have been actually in Wisconsin with Scott Walker and I'll polarize
things got there in 2010.
It's kind of a tall task.
It feels like a tall task, but I'll tell you when I talk to community leaders all
over around all around the state, just something that I did as secretary, I traveled all around
the state talking with community leaders about what they wanted to do in their communities
to make their communities better.
People are ready to roll up their sleeves and work with whoever shows up.
If you show up with 10 volunteers, I don't care what color shirt you're wearing.
I want you to on the team and I want you to help me make my community better.
And so while it seems like things are very divisive at the local, at the neighborhood
and community level, people are really wanting to work together because they can
control what they can control and they can solve what they can solve.
You know, there's this big argument within the Democratic Party right now.
Do we just try to get the base out and do a kind of base forward campaign or we continue
to try to talk to the independence into vanishing moderate Republicans that they should come
around and vote Democratic.
Where are you on that?
You know, I just want to talk to Wisconsinites.
They're the ones who ultimately are going to vote both in August and our primary and
then next November in our general election.
I want to make sure that they understand that my goal is to make their lives easier.
When they're struggling to make ends meet when they can't pay for child care or make
their mortgage payment, that's the stress that I want to come in and solve for Wisconsinites.
And, you know, like I said, I don't necessarily care what shirt you're wearing, whether it's
red or blue.
But I know that most people in Wisconsin are wearing Wisconsin colors and want Wisconsin
to win.
How do you solve that stress problem, that economic stress problem?
You mentioned, you know, pay the mortgage or pay the rent and child cares through the
roof, health insurance through the roof, car insurance is through the roof.
How do you make life more affordable for Wisconsinites?
What I want to do is create a mainstream economy.
And when I say that, I'm talking about creating opportunity right in your community.
You should have access to good jobs.
You should have jobs that pay good wages and help you sustain your family.
But you also need access to affordable childcare because if your child's not in a safe place,
you can't get to work.
You need access to affordable elder care with our demographics.
So many of us are caring for our parents.
We need to be able to take care of them and your own self, your own health care.
You also need education, right, where you can live and access it.
And that means being able to either upskill yourself or making sure that our kids have
access to excellent public schools.
All of that happens when you can pay your bills, when you have businesses that are expanding
that are coming to your community and when they're creating good jobs.
So it's really about that financial stability and the infrastructure to support you in your
community.
You mentioned wages.
Are you for lifting the minimum wage and if so, to what level?
You know, what I would say for lifting the minimum wage, it is desperately low in Wisconsin
right now.
We're $8 at this point and the market is at $15 or $16 an hour.
Let's move minimum wage up to the market.
I don't think that government necessarily should be above where the market is, but certainly,
you know, no one is hiring at this point and retaining those workers for less than $15
an hour.
So it makes sense to say that's what you need to provide in order to be a business, doing
business here in Wisconsin, receiving the benefits of being here in Wisconsin, do your
part by paying that $15 an hour.
And child care, how would you make child care more affordable?
You mentioned that.
Well, right now, child care is really viewed as a public, I'm sorry, a private sector
business.
And so every child care provider is stuck in the situation of trying to pay for their
employees and their employees' benefits and at the same time, recognizing that their
parents are really stretched to be able to afford that child care.
We need to treat child care as a public good, which means everybody needs to come to
the table, which is both the child care provider, the parents and industry and government.
We need to have everybody there saying in order for Wisconsin to succeed, we need to have
everyone having skin in the game and providing access to affordable, quality child care for
those families during that time that they need it.
And that might require government funding, right?
Yes, it will require government funding, but it also needs employers to be at the table.
Quick trip out in my neck of the woods is building a child care right now for its employees,
recognizing that in order to keep its employees, it needs to make sure that there's accessible
child care.
We see businesses all around the state doing that.
That's not the only solution, but it's really innovative.
And we need to look for those innovative solutions to help fill the gap.
Right now we have child care deserts all around the state.
It is, I think we have one in two child care children don't have access to good child
care.
And so we need to make sure that we're filling in those deserts first and then providing
more options to parents all around the state.
Because it's really high.
The price of child care for parents is incredible and the stress that that's causing to young
families and really what it's doing is pulling women out of the workforce, women are staying
home to take care of their children because it's a choice between how much do I make
a month and what's our mortgage payment or what's our rent payment and it just becomes
untenable when it's so expensive, you just stay home and take care of your kids.
Yeah, if you're just making a tiny bit more by work and once you subtract the child care
you might as well stay home with your kid, I think that's the equation they're playing
with.
So schools, you mentioned schools, higher ed is one issue, there are all these cutbacks
on the two year college system within the University of Wisconsin system, where are
you on that?
Well, the university system, let's talk about the university system.
It is such an incredible gem for this state.
And as I talk to companies who are interested in expanding in Wisconsin or coming to Wisconsin,
the number one selling point I have is our university system and the graduates coming
out of there.
If you talk to any of our business leaders in Wisconsin, they're here because of Wisconsin's
incredible workers and often those are university graduates who know how to solve problems, their
team players and they stay here in Wisconsin.
So we need to think about the university as an incredible economic engine for the state
and we need to invest in it with that in mind.
By disinvesting in the university, we are not only hurting an investment we've made
for the last, you know, number of decades, but we're also hurting our future because
companies are looking and saying, well, if you're not going to invest in your workforce,
we're not going to.
We're going to go someplace else that is.
When we talk about our public schools, obviously we are in a very, very complicated situation
in Wisconsin with vouchers and public schools and all that is happening around school funding.
Communities are being divided again and again over referendums and how those are being
voted on.
So we need to take a step back and think about school funding and do that in a way that
really keeps in mind the primary principle, which is that every student should have access
to excellent public schools within their community right where they live.
Once we have that as an agreement, we can also start to talk about how do we hold our
schools accountable?
One of the things that I'm really seeing a threat of agreement around is this idea that
we need to hold our voucher schools accountable.
They're receiving public funds.
Right now there's really no transparency into that and there's no standard set for what
they're doing with those dollars.
That is a place where, you know, whether you are a pro voucher or a pro public school,
there is agreement.
There has to be accountability.
Do you think the state has done too much for the voucher schools so far and the voucher
schools have drained our public education resources?
I think that we haven't held true to something that I believe is a longstanding Wisconsin tradition
that we have excellent public schools.
If you look back at funding, we used to be number one in the Midwest per pupil for
funding and we're now falling to number 12 out of the number seven out of the 12 states
that we look at when we consider the Midwest.
So we're losing there and so we need to get back to a fundamental agreement that we
must have excellent public schools in order to succeed in order to be leaders in our country.
And so we have to get that funding back and that's I think a starting point and then
we can start to build from there.
I know in the last budget discussion, there is a lot on happiness on the democratic side.
That the budget did not provide more funding for public schools.
If you'd been governor, would you have vetoed that whole budget as some of those advocates
were asking governor Evers to do?
Oh, I'm not going to play back seat driver for governor Evers.
You know, having been in his cabinet for three budgets, I know how difficult that process
is, especially when you have a Republican legislature that takes your proposals and throws
them in the bin as soon as they come in the door.
So I am not going to play, you know, a back seat driver to that.
But what I will say is that I think Wisconsinites are frustrated that there's a $4 billion surplus
in Madison and that the Republicans have refused to invest that back.
When you pay your taxes as a Wisconsinite, I believe that you say I want these dollars
circulating in our economy.
I want them getting used, not sitting in a bank account in Madison.
And I think that that's where the real frustration comes around the budget process, again and
again and again, the Republicans have refused to take our dollars and invest them back in
the state.
Well, a question about the surplus, then.
I mean, Robin Voss would say, which is give the surplus or half the surplus back to the
taxpayers, they're the one who paid in.
What's your reaction to that?
I didn't pay that money so that it would then get paid back to me in tiny little increments.
I paid that money so it would be improving our schools, improving our roads, investing
in our universities.
That is not the bargain that I made with Robin Voss.
The bargain I made was invest those dollars smartly across the state.
That's what I'm here for as a Wisconsin taxpayer and it frustrates me that it then becomes,
well, we'll just pay that back to you after we've held on to it for a few years.
You served in Governor Evers' cabinet for several years.
He's at the end of his administration.
Do you have a reflection on Governor Evers, the governor or Governor Evers, the man?
Governor Evers is an incredible role model for me.
He led with his values and continues to lead with his values every day, every time I
traveled with him, every cabinet meeting, I knew where he stood when it came to his values
and trying to navigate an incredibly difficult situation first with the pandemic, then with
the Trump administration and always with the Republican legislature.
But he did that with dignity, he did it with honesty and it was always so impressive
to me that I was able to work so closely with a man like Governor Evers.
You know, I've never interviewed him.
So I don't know.
I just knew him from afar and the thing that struck me was, here is a guy who was just
so authentic.
I mean, he never pretended to be anything.
He wasn't and you talk about not being a politician, though he was a politician.
He didn't act like a typical politician and actually didn't have typical politician
skills in the debate sector.
It wasn't a great public speaker.
It wasn't a great debater.
How are you going to prepare for a debate?
I don't know if you were you in debates class or club in high school or college, you're
going to have to do some debates yourself.
Well, I am actually a lawyer by training.
So that probably helps a little bit.
And you know, when you when you do mock trials and things like that and and moot court,
you get questions thrown at you and it's actually super fun.
I was just talking with another lawyer about that that you catch the question and you
try to do the best that you can with it.
So I feel that I can hold my own.
You know, I certainly have a lot of issues that are working across the state that I need
to continue to learn about.
I was very focused on building the economy.
I continue to be focused on that.
And so I look forward to learning about, you know, some other issues, but having sat in
the governor's cabinet for six years, I feel like I do have a good working knowledge of
the things that are happening in Wisconsin.
No, let's talk a little bit about Trump and what you do as governor with Trump there.
Because for instance, he's trying to nationalize the National Guard in some states.
What if he said, if you're governor, you know, I'm taking the Wisconsin National Guard
and sending them to Portland, Oregon, or wanted the National Guard to come out in Milwaukee
or Madison and you don't want that to happen, how would you play that?
You know, what infuriates me about this National Guard conversation is I know many people who
serve in the National Guard.
They do that with the intention of being ready to help Americans when there's a challenge,
when there's a problem, when there's an emergency or a natural disaster.
And so to be used as a political pawn is so disrespectful of the service that these
folks have offered.
And you know, when we think about keeping our economy going steady, these are leaders
in our businesses.
These are small business owners and leaders in our larger businesses.
These are people who every day are helping to keep Wisconsin's economy strong and moving
forward.
And by disrupting their lives and by disrupting their families, you're adding instability
and stress to their lives.
And I just think the overall effort is so disrespectful of what these folks have dedicated
themselves to to help take care of their neighbors and us here in Wisconsin.
So you'd, what would your response be when you're taking the court or what would you
try to do there?
I, whatever tools I had available, most likely going to court, unfortunately, that's where
we find ourselves.
I always say nothing good happens in court.
As a lawyer, I still believe that, but I would certainly fight at every corner to keep
Wisconsinites from getting pulled out of their families as political pawns.
Yeah.
Well, what do you, what's your view of, of ICE in Wisconsin?
I know there's several, share of several counties that are cooperating with ICE, with
these raids that we see.
What would you tell those sheriffs?
Well, what I would say is in my hometown out in Western Wisconsin, we had a rumor come
through the town that ICE was coming.
And I know several restaurants that shut down their operations, several farms that took
measures to protect their workers, the disruption that came just from that rumor was outrageous.
And so just, you know, disheartening.
The idea that we are allowing, in any part of the country, people to jump out of vans
and grab people off of the street is bananas.
And so, you know, again, we have to think about how are we, what are we doing every day
that helps improve Wisconsinites lives?
And what's happening with ICE right now is certainly not one of those things.
It's, first of all, very disruptive to the immigrants who are being attacked by ICE.
It's very disruptive to the businesses who want to employ those folks, to their families,
to the schools where children are who are seeing this happen.
It is all just, again, a political pawn to invoke fear and stress and put people back on
their heels.
It's got to be ruinous for the dairy industry, too, isn't it?
The dairy industry is, you know, so struggling already.
Right now, milk is at some of the lowest prices.
The farmers in my part of the state, farmers had to sow under their soybeans because there
was no place to put them and they've lost money that way.
And the dairy industry, 80% of the dairy industry works with immigrants as their farm workers.
And so, you know, they are continuing to make sure that their workers are protected, that
they know their rights, that they're able to help their workers understand their rights.
And again, it's a disruption that we don't need to have.
And that is really impacting people's lives.
It's kind of crazy.
The way Trump has turned our politics so toxic, how, what's your response to what Donald
Trump has been doing?
Well, I think that the, the goal of what's happening with the federal government right
now is to instill fear and stress, again and again and again.
Every day, they're waking up saying, how can I stress people out more?
I mean, it must be intentional that way because they are having such success at dividing
us and making it so all we can think about is kind of this fight or flight.
How can I make ends meet?
How can I have Thanksgiving dinner in a week?
How can I pay for these things?
And by doing that, when you put people in that survivalist mode, they stop working together.
They stop thinking about how can I do something for my community?
How can I even help my neighbor?
Really, we're getting to the point where it feels like, can you go talk to your neighbors?
Can you help them?
No, I, you know, I can't afford that or I can't do that.
And that is so core to Wisconsin's values of helping each other and helping, you know,
your neighbor in a time of stress.
And now we can't even do that because of what's happening in the federal government.
And so as I approach things, it is how do you relieve that stress?
How do you make things not so hard for Wisconsinites every day?
You've got to roll up your sleeves right away and have impact.
But I can show from my career both working for organic valley and for Wisconsin is creating
jobs, having impact, getting projects done in all 72 counties.
And this is what we need for the next governor.
And you show I've worked a lot on over the last 10 years when I was over at the Wisconsin
Democracy Campaign with Jerry Mandering.
What's your view to solve the problem of partisan Jerry Mandering?
Well, you know, I think that we have to get back to the civics and the understanding
of how our democracy works and understanding that everyone should have a meaningful vote.
And Jerry Mandering is a precise effort to avoid everybody having a meaningful vote.
And so as we look in Wisconsin, Governor Evers did a tremendous job of navigating through
that and finding fair maps.
And we've seen the reset that is already happening in Wisconsin.
Once again, Wisconsin can be a thought leader in demonstrating this is how you get it done.
This is how you move through this and have a fair map where everyone has the opportunity
to vote.
We still have some work to do on our congressional districts.
And that'll be, you know, the next phase of our conversation around Jerry Mandering.
What's happening in the rest of the country, you can see, I think, that people are starting
to back away from the Texas move and say, okay, maybe that's not what, you know, that
feels like a nuclear option.
Maybe we shouldn't be doing that right now.
I understand Indiana has backed away from that effort.
And I think people are starting to realize that that is not what we represent.
Do you think Governor Newsom was right to push Jerry Mandering in California?
I think Governor Newsom did a good job of fighting fire with fire to say, okay, if you're
going to do that, we're going to do this.
And by putting up that stand, that's why I think around the rest of the country, we're
seeing people say, okay, this is not the fight we want to have.
Let's back down from that.
I saw Governor Evers say, don't even ask me, that's too hard a question because he spent
so many years fighting Jerry Mandering, he can't support Jerry Mandering in California.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a commendium.
And again, this is, you know, where the federal government is pushing us is to these
places where, you know, we either have to punch back or give in.
And that's just not where I want to be as a politician.
I want to find ways to work together to build a muscle around cooperation and to find
ways that we can move forward together because then it's not so easy to rip things apart
into the future.
If you have a coalition of people in the middle working together and working on things,
you get away from this zigzag that we see, you know, where one day something's on, one
day something off.
And, you know, with Trump, it's even worse with tariffs and things like that.
But generally, you know, when you see you go from administration to administration and
things get, you know, black one day and white the next day and red one day and blue the
next day, it's just, it's very disruptive to our lives.
Another issue that's important to me anyway is money and politics ever since citizens
United and even before that, you're a lawyer and all the presidents go back to the 19th
century.
Corporations are people.
Money is speech.
We just have, you know, people like Elon Musk throwing $200 million to try to elect
this person or that person.
How do we get at that problem?
You know, when I was growing up, we had the McCain fine gold compromises and things like
that.
And we have gotten so far away from the issues around, you know, buying elections and things
like that.
We have gone very, very far to the land where things are not working at all.
And I will say, you know, having spent now just eight weeks inside politics running as
a candidate, I can start to really understand and appreciate this challenge of
needing to fundraise, needing to get your name out and, you know, needing to have the
resources to be able to do that, but also at the same time how it is, you know, too important
to have enough money to be able to do these things.
And I think that there are models that we're seeing in other countries that we could start
to think about if we could ever get to the table and have those conversations.
But it feels like those, those very reasonable compromise, how do we do this best conversations
are so far from us right now?
Well, what does it feel like being a, now being a politician?
Because some politicians say, you know, basically I'm a glorified telemarketer.
I'm on the phone five, six hours a day begging people for money.
Well, you know, it is, it is a question of finding those resources so that I can share
with people my vision for Wisconsin.
And it's definitely a challenge.
But it's also amazing because you get a chance to talk to people and ask them to invest
in your campaign to ask them to be a part of what you see as the future of Wisconsin.
And when someone says, you know, what, I will donate $50 to your campaign, it's pretty
incredible, especially knowing how disenchanted people are right now, knowing that, you know,
somehow I have broken through and had that conversation and convinced somebody like, okay, I
think she might, she might be somebody I can agree with.
And I think that piece of it is where I try and find the happiness and beauty, shall we
say?
It's like knocking on doors.
You're running against several other Democrats in the primary who are elected officials
already.
What lane do you see yourself in, you know, on that debate stage, for instance?
Well, I really represent someone from the private sector.
I spent 17 years working in our dairy industry, which is a $55 billion industry in Wisconsin.
Agriculture in general is over $100 billion.
I also am intimately aware of our manufacturing industry and really understand that.
I worked very closely with tourism while I was Secretary of Economic Development.
So my experience from a business perspective and from an economic development perspective
and also being the only person from outside of Madison or Milwaukee gives me a really
unique profile for Wisconsinites to consider.
Is there anything I haven't asked you that you wanted me to ask or anything you wanted
to say?
Did you ever been able to say it?
I guess I would just say that, you know, touching again, we started out talking about a
little bit about the driftless and living on the west side of the state.
Having had the opportunity to live in rural Wisconsin, I actually grew up right outside
of New York City.
So I'm a city girl living in rural Wisconsin and it's incredible to have raised my family
there.
We live outside of town.
We've got 70 sheep and two donkeys.
And when I'm able to drive up my driveway and see the beauty of Wisconsin,
it reminds me how much I want this state to succeed.
And my neighbors are so supportive of my efforts and they think I'm a little crazy,
but they are supportive of my willingness to jump in.
And so it's just it's an incredible state that we live in and I'm so proud to even be sitting
here having this conversation with you about potentially leading it.
How'd you come from New York to Wisconsin?
Oh, it's a long and circuitous route.
But mostly I came because my husband worked for organic Valley and organic
Valley chose to also bring me on to help our farmers and to keep them on their
farms.
So it was it was a moment when we came to visit and trips said, Tripp is my
husband.
He said, what do you think?
And I said, I love it.
Let's go.
Here we come.
And how long ago is that?
That was 23 years ago.
Oh, great.
And if someone's interested in supporting your campaign, how can they do that?
They can go to missyforgovernor.com and find out more information.
I would love helping to share this podcast and tell people to listen.
I would love financial support.
Of course, as we discussed and just helping me get out the word would be great.
Well, thanks so much for being my guest on the Wisconsin Ford podcast and good luck
on the campaign trail.
Thank you again.
Well, that's going to have to be it for this episode of the Wisconsin Ford podcast on the
Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Matt Rothschild.
I want to thank you for listening.
I also want to thank my engineer and producer Dom Lee, who's always great to work with.
And I want to thank Sage Wilde of Civic Media for giving me this platform.
I'll be back in just a day or two with another Democratic candidate for governor.
So stay tuned for that.
