Hey Matt Rothschild here host to 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.
Let me know as Wisconsin State Senator Keldler Royce welcome to the Wisconsin Ford
Podcast.
I'm so happy to be with you Matt.
Well it's a thrill to have you you know we are having a parade of Democratic candidates
for governor coming through.
I like that better than clown car.
Yeah oh no it's not a problem.
It's a parade.
I'm actually I've been impressed with the quality of the candidates that the Democrats have.
It's a really good bench.
It's a really good field.
You among them there are a lot of qualified candidates here.
You must feel the same way don't you?
Well they're all friends of mine and I think it's great for voters to have choices.
Yeah I'm all about choices.
I'm all about primaries.
The idea of clearing a field in a primary doesn't make sense to me from either a strategic
standpoint or a Democratic small D stand but people need choices.
Well I think especially here the stakes of this election are so incredibly high.
We need to make sure that we have our strongest candidate who is ready and competent to
govern on day one.
What do you consider the stakes at the election?
Well let's just talk about the federal level.
We have an authoritarian in the White House that is ripping our constitution to shreds.
He is weaponizing our federal government against us and by us I mean the American people
as well as the state of Wisconsin.
We are truly under attack in the sense that our most important programs and institutions
are being dismantled.
We need a governor that is going to stand up and fight for Wisconsinites and work to prevent
the harm that he's causing.
Along those lines I just saw an email from you that said one of the reasons your route
wasn't personally to me.
I'm on your email.
Somehow everyone got the email.
One of the reasons you're running for government you said is to defend Wisconsin
from Trump and his lackeys.
If you were governor how would you defend Wisconsin from Trump and his lackeys?
Well I think we can look around the country and see states that have really strong democratic
governors that are standing up and resisting authoritarianism.
I look at JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom obviously they've gotten a lot of press but I also
look at governors like Janet Mills, like Laura Kelly, like Gretchen Whitmer that are each
taking steps in their own state and working together in collaboration to stand up to Trump.
The first thing we have to do is be honest about what is happening.
This is not normal.
This is not normal Republican versus democratic politics.
This is a very scary, serious moment in our country's history and we need Democrats who
can tell the truth about that to the voters.
You know I think people are just kind of sleepwalking, you know, riding on the water to the
waterfall, whatever metaphor you want because every day it just seems there's one more
crazy thing from this crazy guy and if it's just we're watching the Donald Trump crazy
soap opera we get a newer to it and don't recognize just how abnormal it is.
Well exactly.
I mean if you look at corruption alone, just the scale of it is staggering.
We have never ever had corruption on this scale before.
I mean it's the private jet, it's the memes, you know the crypto scams.
You know it is very easy to turn away because it's difficult.
It's painful to watch the news and think about what's happening in this country.
But one reason that I think Democrats are struggling in general with our approval ratings
is because too few of us are willing to stand up and fight and this is a differentiator
in this gubernatorial primary.
I mean obviously I think all of us oppose Trump and are appalled but I'm speaking out
about it consistently because I think it is essential for Democrats to be clear-eyed
and clear-voiced about what is happening.
And if you're a governor you'd have to deal with Trump in several ways obviously.
One is ice, what do you do with ice and Wisconsin if you're governor?
Well you can look at some of the legislation that I've authored to prevent ice from doing
detainments and arrests wearing masks to hide their identity.
Listen law enforcement agencies need to be able to do their jobs but they have to be accountable
to us.
All this right?
They work for us, not the other way around.
I've also authored legislation to prevent our state public safety resources and local
public safety resources from being diverted into doing this kind of violent family separation.
We need our public safety resources and I'm talking about our jails, our law enforcement
officers, our prosecutors.
We need them helping keep Wisconsinites safe from crime, not enforcing the president's
violent regime.
Well what would you tell Sheriff's and several counties in Wisconsin who are hand in glove
with ice right now?
Well actually what you're seeing is local citizens pushing back on the sheriff's department
saying, hey we don't want you to do this and they are withdrawing from their contracts
and their agreements with ice.
I mean I think just happened in Palmyra where local residents are organized and they said
we don't want you collaborating with ice and so they are withdrawing and I think that's
the kind of citizen action that we need.
But on the other side, so there's this horrible threat from the federal government.
The other piece of it is we are at a moment of unbelievable opportunity here at the state
level and you and I have known each other for about 30 years maybe a long time and for
most of those years Republicans have absolutely dominated that state capital and they have
used it to defund our public schools to starve our local governments of resources that they
need and to pursue a radical right wing agenda on social issues and restricting our rights
everything from voting to reproductive freedom.
Now we're actually poised to have a democratic state senate and an assembly that's going to be
close enough either way that we can get things done and this is another differentiator in this race.
I have experienced not just delivering good democratic legislation but actually getting things
passed into law in these challenging but a fill of opportunity legislative environment like
we're going to have in 2027.
It is going to be a very different world in 2027 and we need a governor who is ready to go
who knows exactly what she wants to do who knows the state budget and the state agencies in depth
and doesn't need to wait for a poll or a briefing book to decide what the right thing to do is
because let me tell you Matt that window of opportunity is going to be brief.
I want to ask you what you want to do on day one but I want to stick with Trump for just one
second and that is if your governor you're also going to have to deal with Trump in the National
Guard. I mean he could say he's going to nationalize the Wisconsin National Guard or send the Wisconsin
National Guard to you know Portland or Charlotte or wherever how would you respond to that?
Well I would use every single tool at my disposal to prevent that from happening
and I think we can see this is where governors need to band together and it was great to see some
democratic governors writing a letter to the National Governors Association and saying if you
don't speak out about this we're going to quit this organization because we have to stand up for
state sovereignty and states rights and if we're not doing that all together setting a side
partisanship then what is the point of this organization? And I think this is a time for Democrats
to be smart and strategic and to be willing to use our power. It is very frustrating to see
Democrats who have power failing to use it especially at this moment of crisis for our country.
All right well back to day one I interrupted the flow. No no that's not true. I don't like doing
so your governor, you're in day one the Democrats have the state senate. It's very close in
the state assembly. What's top of the agenda? For me it's really about raising wages, lowering costs
and delivering more freedom for Wisconsinites. So on day one I want to raise our minimum wage.
It is outrageous that we are still at 725 an hour. I mean I think that's what it was when I was
in college or just graduated. It is appalling. There is nowhere in the state where even $15
an hour is a living wage for a single person in the state. So we have got to raise wages and
that also means restoring collective bargaining rights. It's not just the minimum wage right?
It's making sure that child care workers and home health workers and folks in the service industry
have the rights that they need and restoring them for public employees too. What would the wage
level be minimum wage? Well I want to see a path towards $20 an hour because even if we had
passed $15 an hour minimum wage back in the mid teens, 2013, 2015. We would already be well
over $20 an hour now and if you look at the gains in the last 40 years, our productivity has
skyrocketed. American workers are working hard and all of those gains are going at the very
very top. That's wrong. I think we have to have a stronger living wage and the power of units
to counterbalance the power that corporations exercise over our economy and over our democracy.
You mentioned lowering costs and affordability. What do you have in mind there?
Well I really think we see the high prices at the grocery store every day but I really think
about the big ticket items. Housing, health care, child care, utilities and on every one of these,
the state has levers, policy levers that we can pull to help alleviate those costs. I'm a small
business owner for 13 years. I've owned a tech-enabled real estate brokerage that makes it
easier and more affordable for Wisconsinites to buy in sell houses. We've saved Wisconsinites
nearly $2 million over my time in business in fees. I'm really proud of that but I know that
we have to build more housing so we need more public investment in a more diverse housing stock,
not just single-family homes but duplexes and co-ops and co-housing and looking at
accessory dwelling units, all different kinds of ways to solve the housing crisis.
On child care, I want to see much more public investment in child care. It makes no sense to me
that we guarantee K-12 education but in the first five years, the state offers almost no money
and it's the most important years in a child's life. I also want to open up the state health
insurance and the state pension plans to anybody. These are novel public option plans. Why don't you
explain that in something too? As a state employee, I enjoy the same benefits that every other
state worker and many local government workers do too. I can participate in the Wisconsin
retirement system which is one of the very best managed low-cost pension programs in the country
and I also get health insurance. I can choose from a plan that meets the needs of my big family.
I've got five kids and step-cat kids but if I were single, I could choose a single plan.
I can choose a high-use plan or a lower-use plan and my premium is based on that. Now,
this is only for public employees right now. Knowing that badger care expansion is off the table
because of the big ugly bill, we've got to take immediate steps to make sure that our population
can get affordable health insurance and get coverage so that we don't see the collapse of healthcare,
particularly in rural areas as hospitals and clinics keep closing with more uninsured people.
I think the fastest and best way to do that is by making the state health insurance program
open to anybody. So you as an individual, Matt, or somebody who's thinking about leaving their job
but they're not eligible for a Medicare yet or a small business owner like me,
or even a union or a large business that's tired of their double-digit private health insurance
increases could buy in and these are competitive plans. We have one of the most competitive health
insurance marketplaces in the country in Wisconsin. Let's take advantage of that strength
and the great benefits that state employees have enjoyed and make it available to everyone.
Talk about the pension, public option, and pension if I've never been a state employee,
unfortunately, I don't have a great pension in the nonprofit sector for 40 years.
Yeah, I mean, and I started my career in the nonprofit sector, so I feel that.
We were wise to get into the state, but if I had some money to invest, I could invest in the
public pension rather than going to some private investment company or doing it by myself.
That's exactly right. So basically, you would be able to designate a portion of your income.
You could buy in. My vision is it's a one page on a website. You input your information.
But the state should know how much money you make because you pay taxes and it tells you here's
how much you put in towards your contribution and at the employer level, an employer could do this
on behalf of their employees as well. And if you put in this much money, depending on your years
of participation and the salary rate that you're at, you will get a payout that is basically the
same that state employees would get. And it is based on the salary that you earn and your
contributions to the system and your years of service in the system. And, you know, very,
very good actuaries who are great at math, do that sort of backend calculation. But the idea is
that retirement security has become so fleeting. People, I'm 46 and people my age pretty much feel
like we're on our own for retirement. And people younger than me just feel like there's no hope,
right? They don't even think social security is going to be there for them. So we have got to help
people make it easy and seamless to save for retirement and have it not just be based on a 401k
or whatever you're putting aside every month, but really make it something easy that as a small
business, I love to offer that benefit to potential employees. And the Wisconsin pension fund is
famous for handling investments prudently and truly and getting good. And part of that is because
politics is not in that Wisconsin retirement system. You talked a little bit earlier about
governors, Democratic governors banding together. One area they could band together as opposed to,
you know, fight in addition to fighting the National Guard stuff that Trump is doing is combating
RFK Jr. And actually coming up with good joint public health advisories, for instance, because
of the disaster of RFK Jr. People are getting bad advice on, you know, all sorts of immunizations.
Right. And the data and advice is disappearing from government websites.
Yeah. And I'm not sure maybe the State Department of Health can do it, but I'm sure with
California and Illinois and other State Departments of Health joining together, they could advise
citizens with a lot more data. And it's not just information, Matt. It's also using our
buying power together, right, to make sure that we can deliver prescription drugs and immunizations
and other necessary health care supplies to our residents at the lowest possible cost. You know,
Wisconsin, we're a mid-sized state, but banding together with other states in the absence of
the federal government is going to be more important than ever to help lower costs.
On the health care issue, you've been an advocate for reproductive health, your whole professional
career, talk about that issue. Yes. So after law school, I became the executive director
of a statewide reproductive rights advocacy organization. And I traveled around Wisconsin.
This was in my 20s. I went on Fox News. I went on Christian Radio to talk about abortion.
And it very much informs my political philosophy today that you can disagree with people
and still try to find common ground. And I was able in that role to help pass the very first
pro-choice legislation in Wisconsin in three decades. And I did it through an anti-choice
Republican controlled assembly. And I didn't do it alone by any means. We built a broad coalition
of stakeholders. We were able to get a few Republicans on board. And we were able to successfully
pressure them to pass this important bill, the Compassionate Care for Rape Victims Act.
And it was a huge win because, you know, for decades, we had really just seen
reproductive rights being chipped away at. And we hadn't had any proactive victories.
If your governor, would you urge a little legislature to get rid of that 1849 or 1847 law,
whatever it is? Absolutely. I think it was a crime that Democrats when they had control of
the governorship and the legislature back in 2009, not to just wipe that off the books.
You know, Matt, I couldn't agree more. I was there. I advocated for that. I discussed this
heatedly with my colleagues. And they, you know, they said, well, number one, we don't have the
votes. Remember, at that time, there were many anti-choice Democrats. And they, and number two,
they said it's not a priority for us because Roe v. Wade is the law of the land.
Oh, it'll never happen. Well, you know, I think it was hard for a lot of people who weren't in
the movement or weren't following the Supreme Court closely to imagine that that could happen.
But I, I warned as early as I think 2004 that if Roe were overturned, abortion would be illegal.
And in fact, even in 2018, I was politically affected as false for saying that. And, you know,
it's one of those areas where I hate to have been proven right. But it's not just the 1849
ban. It's, we also have other abortion vans and many other restrictions that interfere with
people's ability to get reproductive health care. That all needs to get off the books. And
that's another differentiator for me in this democratic field. You know, there was a lot of
naivete, I think, even among progressive pundits before the dobs decision, just saying, well,
this is just a political gambit. They're just doing the anti-abortion stuff to get their base out.
They'll never overturn Roe v. Wade and law and bold. There you go. They overturned it.
Absolutely. I mean, I think you have to take seriously what political leaders say that they're
going to do. And to just treat it as a joke, especially when people's fundamental human rights
are at stake, is a huge mistake. And now they're talking the far right about getting rid of contraception.
Absolutely. And they've been talking about it for years. They're trying to regulate contraception
as if it's abortion. I saw in another email that you wrote, not just to me personally, but to everyone
on your email list, that a year from now Wisconsin is going to be celebrating our first, first woman
governor. How important is that to you and are you just playing the odds because four of the five
leading candidates at women? No, I think, you know, it's long overdue. People say, well,
can a woman get elected governor? And I say absolutely. Look at our Supreme Court, right?
Six out of seven are women. Look at Senator Tammy Baldwin, the most popular politician in the
state. But I think what's more important is having a governor who is able to use this little
shred of hope that we have this window of opportunity to make real durable change for Wisconsin.
And so the most important thing is having a governor who is able to do that. And one who comes
from the legislature, because when you look at in, you know, in our adult lives, who the most
consequential governors were, it was Scott Walker. And it was Tommy Thompson to Archer Grin,
because I think we don't agree with what they did, but they knew the legislature. They were from
the legislature. Then they were able to put their agenda into the law so that it had real
durability and a legacy. If we want to change things, we need a governor who knows the legislature
intimately. And I have by far the most legislative experience in this field. And I know how to
change the tide and help us reclaim our mantle of forward. What do you make of Michelle Obama's
recent comment that the country's not ready for a female president? I totally disagree with that.
I think I'm never going to be in the position of saying, oh, so and so could never get elected.
I just, I just don't think that's true. I mean, Trump should never be elected, right? He is
profoundly unqualified. And yet he was elected president twice. And nearly, you know, could have
been elected in 2020. And I remember people saying, well, we'll never have a black president in
your lifetime or my lifetime. Right. You know, and I hear, I hear from Madison Liberals,
oh, you're going to be painted as a Madison liberal. Can you win? And I'm like, well, again,
look at our track record. Who do we elect statewide? Jim Doyle, Tony Evers, Tammy Baldwin,
Russ Pinegold, all Madison Liberals. It's, you know, that's who we elect statewide as Democrats.
What do you make of the Democratic Party intro mural debate about should we get out the base?
Or should we try to bring others along independence, moderate Republicans?
I'm a big 10 Democrat. I think in a state like Wisconsin, you have got to be willing to talk to
everybody, campaign for every vote in every area of the state, not just the areas that are
comfortably blue. And although I represent Dame County in the Senate, when I was in the assembly,
I had a pretty blue collar district. It was kind of a microcosm of the state. It had urban,
rural, and suburban areas in it. And I have focused over the last 20 plus years in building democratic
power throughout the state, because I know that if we want to be able to get people health care
and fund our public schools and bring that voucher program to a responsible end, we need to win
in these areas. And that means finding candidates that fit their districts, it means supporting them.
And it means sometimes having some compromise on issues that might be important, but that's how
you get things done. And you've been traveling around the state. I know in one thing you've been
drawing attention to is the assault on the two year UW campuses that the head of the
university system has been engaging in. What do we need to do to defend those campuses that are
under fire? Well, we need to fund the University of Wisconsin. We need to commit to the idea that
every single Wisconsin kid who works hard and wants to should have the doors of public higher
education open to them. And wealth of your family should not be a barrier or consideration. We
shouldn't be rationing people's education, or for instance, their health care based on their
family's wealth. I mentioned before I'm the parent and step parent of five kids. And the reason
that I grew up in Wisconsin, my parents settled in rural Taylor County when I was a little outside
of Medford, North of Highway 29. They did so because they said Wisconsin is the education state.
It's a state where we as a middle class family that's, you know, doing fine, but doesn't have a
lot of extra money. Our kids can have a great life. I had a pet goat growing up. And, you know,
we, I did. I had a great life. And then we moved down to Madison. I was able to graduate from
Madison East High School, go to our great University of Wisconsin Law School. I worry that kids
in Wisconsin do not have those same opportunities because we have year after year underfunded and
slashed funding to our public schools, both K-12 and higher ed. We've got to reverse that trend.
Yeah, it's a crying shame with the affordability of the UW system right now.
But you mentioned K-12. Let's talk about that a little bit. Public education was starved to death
under Scott Walker. The budgets that Governor Evers signed didn't do a great deal to get us back
on track. You were actually in favor of the governor vetoing the latest budget because I believe it
didn't give enough to public education. Well, I'm, it's not my place to say what the governor should
do, but I certainly voted against all of these budgets because they are fundamentally Republican
budgets. And I cannot in good conscience vote for a budget that fails to give our kids even an
inflationary increase. And for 15 years, that means kids that are now graduating from college
since they were in kindergarten have not had an inflationary increase in their schools. We are
asking teachers to do more and more with fewer resources. And listen, I am not a person that
believes money is the only thing our schools need, right? They need high standards. They need
support. We need to do much more to support kids that are coming in with additional needs, whether
it's high poverty, whether it's instability at or trauma, whether it's English as a second
language, right? Special, special education. There's a lot of things that we need to do to help
our schools be successful. And we need to hold them to high standards. But yet can't do any of it
without money, Matt. And at the end of the day, it is our state's most important responsibility
to educate our kids. Yeah, and we've been falling behind on it. You said something controversial
a little bit ago. I know you differ from some of the other candidates for governor on this,
on the voucher, you know, school secondary school system that we have this parallel
parochial, but funded with public money system. Yeah, it's a zero accountability vacuum that just
takes our schools tax dollars and gives them to unaccountable private institutions.
I mean, I never understood why it was legal any way or why the Wisconsin Supreme Court,
you know, decade, couple decades ago, so it was constitutional. Because conservatives dominated
that court. Yeah, because it seems like a violation separation of church and state on its face.
Right. But it's been going on since Tommy Thompson. So how would you bring it to an end?
Well, I think I don't think that this is actually controversial, because this is an issue that I
hear about in every single community that I am, whether it's Lady Smith, you know, up in
Northwest Wisconsin, whether it's, you know, last night talking to the Price County Dems,
whether it's in the Milwaukee suburbs, talking to these wealthier communities, people do not
want their tax dollars, especially taking it out of their local public schools and going
into these private systems. So the way that you do it is, I think first you look at where the
statewide expansion has occurred. The vast majority of those students who are receiving vouchers
were already in private school. Their parents were paying the cost because they want their kids
in private school, either because they want to have a religious education or that's what they decided.
And when the expansion happened, the state started picking up the tab. So I think you can just say,
you know, we're giving you notice that we're going to discontinue this expanded voucher program.
And if you want to, you know, you're obviously welcome to continue paying for your kid to be in
private school, but the state's not going to be paying for that anymore. So there'd be some sunset
period. Right. So there will be a sunset period, so families can plan. And then when you look
at Milwaukee and Racine, those are trickier because those have been in place for much, much longer.
And a lot of those students, their families were not, you know, would not otherwise have them
in private school. I'm very much of the belief that you have to do this in a way that is responsible
for the kids, because what is most important is not disrupting their education. So I do not think
you can pull kids out of the schools where they are. Those programs, I think we have to say, okay,
we're going to continue allowing students to be in the school of their choice and pay those
vouchers until they are complete. So you'd have a longer runway. So it's a longer runway, but we're
going to not have new enrollees in the program and we're not going to be allowing the expansion.
It's basically what we have now, we're going to let that continue until those students have completed
their education. And we're going to expand the capacity over time of the public school so that they
can deliver high quality education to the students who are coming up. And that's what we should have
been doing all along. Can we shift gears to a criminal justice reform? Sure. What needs to be done
there? Boy, this is an issue I've been really passionate about since being a law student and
finding out that we incarcerate the highest percentage of our black citizens of any state in the
nation. We have the worst racial disparities. Kind of astonishing. It's astonishing and it is,
it is shameful. And you know, when I was in law school, I had the opportunity to work on the
Wisconsin Innocence Project. And in that role, I went to visit our prisons. I saw how we were
spending our money to essentially we're paying $50,000 a year in our per prisoner to turn
warehouse people at best and at worst to turn them into better criminals because we don't have
the kind of programming and support and staffing that we would need to make our correctional
institutions actually places of rehabilitation and hope. And we are really focused on punitive
measures when people get out rather than helping people reconnect to and succeed in reintegration.
So we need a cultural shift. We need a shift in how we spend our money. And we simply incarcerate
too many people. There are absolutely people that need to be behind bars. They need to be segregated
from society for public safety. But nowhere near two or three times as many people as Minnesota.
I just don't think Wisconsin's are two to three times worse than Minnesota's. And we're not
getting any additional public safety for the billions of dollars that we're spending.
What about reenfranchising former prisoners? A lot of states, I think you will know,
for instance, once you're outside the prison gates and back in your community, you can vote.
Whereas here in Wisconsin, if you're on paper, on probation or extended supervision,
you can't vote sometimes for five, 10, 15 years. Yeah, I mean, I met a woman who had a
fraud conviction. I think it was a bounce check. And for 20 years, you can't vote.
Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. Right. I mean, listen, this is not a Republican or democratic idea.
Plenty of red states reenfranchise people after they're when you're trying to reintegrate
so many into the community. You want to say that you're actually a part of this community,
and you have a stake in it. And voting is one signal that we can give to people that, yes,
you have a stake in this community. What about a couple of issues I've worked on a lot of
last 10 years, the first being gerrymandering? What's the solution to gerrymandering?
Well, ultimately, and I've been on this train for a long time back back to my days as a common
cause board member, like 15 years ago, you know, we have to have some kind of independent
nonpartisan redistricting. I think we have to set forth reasonable criteria, obviously compact
districts. We want communities and geographic areas to be kept together. But we also have to have
majority and concordance, which is a fancy way of saying the party that gets the most votes
should be the party that controls the legislative body at the end of it. And so if Democrats get,
you know, 52% of the popular vote in 2027, I think we'll actually get more than that. We should
have 52% of the seats in the legislature. And I think that's where some of the nonpartisan
redistricting programs in other states have failed is that you can have nonpartisan redistricting
that yet still does not allow voters to meaningfully decide who has control of the legislative.
And who should draw the lines? Is it an independent commission? How would you set that up?
Yeah, I think there are several good models and good options to do that. An independent commission
is one, you can have judicial review, you can have legislative review. But ultimately,
what you don't want is a situation where politicians are drawing their own lines,
they're picking their voters rather than the other way around. And you have, you know,
this horrible gerrymandering that we've lived under in Wisconsin for 15 years and that we're seeing
nationwide. That said, we are in a moment of real constitutional crisis where we are fighting
an authoritarian Republican regime that is attempting to permanently hold themselves
uncheckable, unaccountable to voters. And I do not think that it's wise for Democrats to
unilaterally be disarming in that fight. So you think Goen or Newsom did the right thing there?
I think he did and he did it the right way too. He went to the voters and said, hey,
you know, none of us wanted this fight. But if the Republicans do this, can we retaliate
to hopefully deter them and say, come back from the brink here? And, you know, here in Wisconsin,
our congressional maps are still gerrymandered because our Supreme Court has not yet taken up
the really important constitutional questions here. There is no reason that with eight
members of the US House, we should have two Democrats and six Republicans. It should be four,
four. That's obvious. We're the swingest swing state.
What about money and politics? What's the answer there? Because I know in 2015, I was there
a late one night in November when the Walker administration, the Republican legislature, you were
there, totally ripped apart any sensible limits on donations, what the super rich could give or
what corporations could give for that matter. Yeah, I mean, I think that the ocean of money and
politics and the way that billionaires and big corporations have, you know, not just broken
our economy, but broken our politics is a big reason why people feel so frustrated and disappointed.
And one of the reasonable responses is, well, I'm going to check out. I'm not going to engage
because it's so disheartening. We have got to get ways for more ordinary people to run for office,
to be engaged in a public office. I've been a long supporter of public financing for campaigns,
because I think you want to make it possible for ordinary people, you know, like me and, you know,
a nonprofit person who was working in the reproductive rights movement. I was able to win my first
assembly race by knocking on 20,252 doors. And I raised a little money from, you know, family,
from friends, from other folks who cared about public education, the issues I was talking about.
But I was able to functionally be a normal person that didn't have a lot of money and was able
to get elected office. That has really changed. It's going to be different now running for government.
It certainly is. I mean, I don't have any billionaires back in me. And ever since I called for Elon Musk
to be arrested for violating our election library laws, I don't get much engagement on Twitter,
either. So, you know, I do. I need support from ordinary people. But, you know, for a long time,
I have fought for to get money out of our judicial elections first, because I think that's where
there really is broad agreement. We cannot have our courts being bought and paid for. And we had one
session. In 2009, we passed the impartial justice act. We had one judicial election for Supreme Court
that was under that. And then Republicans immediately repealed it. So I am reintroducing that bill
with new, you know, more reasonable contribution limits, because it has to be a voluntary system to
be constituted. Is there anything else you'd like to add that I haven't asked you about?
Wow. Well, you know, I'm very, very passionate about early childhood education. I think we need to
do a lot more to support parents who and to make it possible for people to have kids. You know,
I'm obviously strongly in support of reproductive rights. And we talk a lot about abortion and
contraception. But I've also sponsored a bill to require IVF to be covered by insurance so that
people who are struggling with fertility can still build their families, even if they're not wealthy.
And I think it's tragic when people want to have a kid, or they want to have, you know, two kids,
but they can't afford it because of the cost of childcare. And so we have got to make it possible
for people to live the life that they want in Wisconsin. Or IVF costs a ridiculous amount.
Ridiculous amount. I mean, I would say like there was one year where my husband and I had two kids
in college, fortunately at the University of Minnesota. So we had reciprocity and we had a baby
in daycare. And we paid more for one baby in daycare than we did for two kids in college.
Yeah, I'm the daycare. Yeah. It's hard for daycare facilities to stay open and to find work. And
it's terribly hard for parents to afford sending their kids to daycare. Absolutely. And you know,
you can't outsource this. You can't have AI doing it, right? You need human beings to take care
of our youngest Wisconsinites. And what's the answer then on the daycare issue? Well, we have to
have public support. And you know, look at what we've done with K-12. There's no reason why
our early childhood educators should be making $13 an hour. And that's the average wage in
Wisconsin. You're making more quick trip. You're making more culverts. Let's, you know, if we allow
them to participate in the state health insurance program and the state pension program,
if we raise wages and if we put public money in the way that we have with child care accounts,
that is going to keep the doors open. And that's going to keep early childhood educators,
80% of whom don't work in the field anymore in the classroom where we need them.
If someone's listening to this and they want to support your campaign, what do they do?
Go to KELDAROIS.com. I'm the only KELDA in the race like Zelda with the K.
And that's Royce, our OIS. That's right. I'm the only one that had a pet goat growing up.
And I'm the only one with experience in the Senate and Assembly, the only one with experience
on the Joint Finance Committee. I know exactly what I want to do on day one. And I will do everything
in my power as governor to make sure that we put the state back on the right track.
Well, thanks so much for being my guest on the Wisconsin Ford podcast. It's great to see you again.
Nice to see you too Matt. Thank you. Good luck on the trail. Thanks.
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.
