Hey, I'm Matt Rothschild and welcome to this episode of the Wisconsin Ford Podcast on the Civic Media Radio Network and at CivicMedia.us.
Today I'm delighted to have on the podcast someone I've known for many years.
The former lieutenant governor of Wisconsin and current candidate for governor, Mandela Barnes. Welcome to the Wisconsin Ford Podcast and I see you again.
Hey, always good to see you. Thanks so much for having me.
Oh, it's my pleasure. It's a real honor to have you on the show. Let's just start out with the most obvious, you know, why are you running for governor?
Well, I'm running because we find ourselves at a critical moment in this state, in this country.
Times have gotten more difficult for folks regardless of where you live.
And we need real leadership, people who are going to step up to the plate, especially in this challenge and moment.
And having the president that we have, who is making things worse day by day in almost every aspect of our life.
This requires real leadership and a bold vision not to just not just stand up to Donald Trump, but to provide real solutions.
Now my experience in the legislature, my experience with lieutenant governor has prepared me for this moment.
I'm ready to get to work right away to lower costs for individuals and not just saying that like is, you know, in broad terms, I mean in very specific terms.
I've been very adamant about the need for us to expand badger care as a significant first step on day one, because it makes no sense that was constant as one of 10 states has yet to expand our Medicaid program.
This will open up the pool for folks to be able to get the coverage they need and ultimately lower costs for everybody else.
You mentioned Trump off the bat. I mean, how do you stand up to Trump and what do you make of what's going on in Minnesota?
So standing up to Trump requires a couple of things. One is a legal strategy, but two, it definitely requires a person who is going to be willing to say no and not just govern in a way that sort of circumvents the president's wrath.
We got to do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing.
Too many people have been harmed by his policies. Too many people are living in fear in this country. Too many people have been dealt a bad hand, have been losing their jobs, have had to have had to deal with a very uncertain economy because the primary concern for the president has been himself has been his family.
He is gained over a billion dollars in additional wealth in one year alone as president.
While people have been laid off, we've seen a point in time where there were more job seekers and job openings in this country. And it's the unfortunate reality.
The president who has put himself consistently above the American people. And so here in Wisconsin, in any state, we need a governor who's going to stand up and say enough is enough, who is going to demand more from the White House and actually convey that message in a real way.
So if ICE invades Wisconsin, like it's invaded Minnesota, what would you do? Would you tell the state police and the capital police and the local sheriffs to intervene and stand between ICE and the people of Wisconsin?
Let me tell you what's going on. If you look at the reports, you see what's going on in city streets, the chaos, the confusion, the fact that Renega was killed.
And most people would have unfortunately been able to predict that would have happened a long time ago.
We have seen U.S. citizens, law-biting U.S. citizens, people who have committed no crime, be entertained simply because of the way they look or the language they speak.
In the event that ICE were the president or Christy Known, who have been absolutely out of control, who have been leading a rogue agency into communities to instill chaos, because we're beyond the issue of immigration enforcement.
Most people in this state and this country would agree that a person that's committed a violent crime if they're here illegally, then of course, yeah, that person should be deported, but we are so far beyond that.
We've had instances where they have gone into churches, they've gone into hospitals, schools, all sorts of sacred spaces, and disrupted people's lives, appended people's lives.
And so if they aren't to make the decision, Donald Trump and if Christy Known are to make the decision to send ICE here, then we need to have a coordinated response with our law enforcement agencies.
Because I've seen enough police officers, sheriffs, and press conferences around the country who have talked about at length how ICE is making their jobs more difficult.
You got police departments and Minneapolis where they have done hard work since 2020 to repair relationships between law enforcement and communities.
And ICE has come in and essentially appended all the hard work that's been taken place.
And what we're experiencing is a community, a populace that feels less safe with ICE president and their communities, because there's no accountability.
We have to ensure that they have a warrant if they are here. They are not able to be mass and that protective spaces remain protective spaces.
So as governor, I imagine there'd be a legal strategy too. You could take them to court or have your attorney general take them to court too, right?
And so that's why I say we have to have this multi-pronged approach. You have to have the legal basis, the legal standing.
And if I am governor, we are going to empower the Department of Justice, the attorney general's office, to take every necessary step to keep Wisconsin safe.
There's not a one thing you can do with this sort of overreach by the Trump administration.
You have to be able to have a broad base approach that sort of responds to the administration the way that they have asserted themselves.
They try to overwhelm. They try to flood the zone, overwhelm the system so that people can't respond appropriately.
And what we have to do is respond in kind.
Unfortunately, it's from more of a defensive posture, but that's all we have.
And back to state issues, you mentioned Medicaid expansion. And you vowed if you're governor to veto any budget that doesn't have Medicaid expansion in it, talk about why that's so important.
Well, it's so important because again, we're one of 10 states that has yet to expand our Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act. It's pretty embarrassing at this point.
And so by opening the doors, by taking the Medicaid expansion, we get our own money back in Wisconsin from the federal government.
This is our money. I want to be very clear. This is our money that we deserve to get back.
And I can tell you as well, if we have the Medicaid expansion, this will help lower costs for everybody else.
For anybody else who's buying private insurance on the market, simply because without that additional coverage, the risk pool in Wisconsin is that much more broad.
We have to shrink that risk pool, also campaigned in 2018 and even talked about this as a state representative that we need to open the doors to create a public option for Badger Care.
People should be able to buy in. There are a lot of income and eligible folks like accepting the expansion would take us from 100% to 133% of poverty.
150% of poverty is not a lot of money. 200% of poverty is not a lot of money.
So for folks who are going to have to make that difficult decision, like so many people I've already talked to just this time around, just in the last six weeks or so.
I met with a farmer, Incadot, who got his, a letter informing him that his health insurance premium was going to go from about $275 to over $1,600.
He said that he ripped up that letter and he is going to go without health insurance if he has to pay that much.
I met with a woman in Green Bay who had a slip and a fall, something that could happen to anybody, any one of us, an accident, and she was not covered.
She would have been, if we had accepted the Badger Care expansion, she would have fallen into the income guidelines.
But what happened is she racked up bill after bill after bill that turned into debt, not being able to pay that debt meant that she could no longer afford to stay in the home she was living in.
The whole life turned upside down because of an accident, something that can literally happen to anybody in any single day that should not be the reality here in Wisconsin.
We have to show some leadership, we have to, in this stock, all as much as I'll say we need to be bold, this is an even bold.
This is the simple thing that we should be doing. It's the right thing for us to do as a state.
So it would be essentially Badger Care for all or people who wanted to get in.
Look, I do believe that people should be able to buy into Badger Care.
I guess some other ideas that are floating around as well in terms of health care expansion.
I mean, nobody should be forced into debt. Nobody should be put out of a house and home simply because of an accident.
You know, was governor Evers wrong, not to veto the current budget because it didn't include Medicaid expansion or a lot of advocates were also for public schools.
And he should have vetoed the budget because there wasn't more for K through 12.
Yeah, so when we came in office in 2019, this was obviously a big part of what we want to see happen.
But this campaign is more than just about me getting elected governor. This campaign is about bringing a majority in the state Senate and a majority in the state assembly, hoping and working to have a legislature that looks much different than this one.
We're talking about a common sense majority in the legislature that is going to act.
And so we're looking at potentially a totally different set of circumstances than the governor had.
So given that optimistic possibility that Democrats have both chambers of the legislature and the chair governor, what would be your top couple priorities coming in?
Well, again, can't be said enough. We have to bribe health care to folks.
But in addition to that, we have to ensure that the wealthy are paying their fair share with the close those loopholes.
So I saw in that panel recently that you were very outspoken on that and had and came to that answer right away when a couple of the other candidates, I won't mention any names, just dodge the question, whether you're going to tax the wealth thing.
Very outspoken on that and the thing is it's not a it's not a new issue for me. It's not a campaign issue.
This is another common sense issue. And so making sure that the wealthy are paying their fair share reforming the manufacturing act, cultural tax credit to provide relief to our family farmers and our small business owners and also some middle class tax relief.
Before we find out public schools is a priority of mine. I'm a proud public school graduate.
I think about the opportunity for me to have this conversation with you today would not be possible if it were not for public schools and equipping me for a moment like this.
And I mean, I always have conversations about people and demagogue walkie public schools.
You know, it's one of the most malign school districts or entities for that matter.
But I can tell you right now, the school I attended was a challenged school, a lot of significant setbacks.
A lot of my friends, you know, didn't graduate high school had a lot of friends who didn't pursue post secondary education.
And I can tell you because of that, it wasn't the brick and mortar of that school building that determined the outcome.
It was the fact that so many people didn't have access just to basic necessities in their upbringing.
We have a significant homeless population and walkie public schools.
We have students who have food insecurity issues, health, mental and physical that go unaddressed.
And if we have students who are living these very, very, very difficult lives through no fault of their own.
It is incredibly, it is almost impossible to expect them to be able to excel at the same level as their counterparts who have everything they need.
So they were blaming the students and blaming the public schools for the social problems that they as the students didn't create and that the public schools didn't create.
And the other part about that too is if our schools don't have equitable funding, because if a school in one part of the state gets, we'll say, few thousand dollars of school in another part of the state gets a few thousand dollars.
The challenges in one school or one school district are much different.
And we have to take all that into account.
We have to address the needs of all of our students at a root level.
What is their experience before they set foot in the school building?
What is their experience when they leave that school building at the end of the day?
And ensuring that all of our children are as close to equal footing as possible is a primary goal line.
And what about the voucher program? What would you do with that?
What all comes down to accountability?
Parents want to know that their children are being educated.
They want to know that the school that they are sending their children to is providing proper education.
Unfortunately, there is a system of inequality that has been created because some schools get to do whatever they want to do with very little with any oversight.
And if you are a school that provides education with any level of public funding, you have to have public accountability and public scrutiny.
That means providing by open meetings law.
This means a certain standard in curriculum.
A private school is a private school, fair enough to do whatever you want to do.
But if you are receiving public money, if you receive public dollars, you have to abide by a certain set of standards.
And that's not too much to ask for.
The bad actors will be removed from point of view.
If I were to be operating a voucher school, I would want the system.
I want people to know that my school is doing the right thing.
I hope that any operator, any person who is in that system, would want to have their school operate at a level that provides accountability.
But as I said, bad actors will be weeded out once we have more accountability and strict set of standards.
But you are on a close down the whole program.
Well, I think it's at this point where we have almost 50% students in Milwaukee.
We have to be realistic about that.
Also school buildings that no longer exist or have been sold to other operators.
If you were to shut down a system overnight, then that would leave a lot of students without a place to learn.
So I just want to be very realistic about that.
I talk about accountability first because accountability will weed out bad actors and allow us to get more money back into our public schools.
Back to affordability.
You talked about healthcare.
We've talked about public education.
Child care.
Child care is a real problem for people.
It's a problem for parents because it's so expensive and it's hard to find child care.
It's a problem for the child care owners and the child care workers aren't getting a living wage.
What do we do about this child care crisis?
One of my first stops during the campaign was at a child care provider in Milwaukee.
I sat down with the teachers, sat down with the operators and also parents and some wild stories.
There's some folks who staff those child care centers simply out of passion for caring for our children.
They're not doing it to get rich.
And they do it because they care about our next generation that deeply.
With that being said, our operators would love to pay higher wages because it's almost impossible to retain early child care providers and staff in those facilities.
They would like to pay higher wages.
They cannot pay higher wages without raising costs on parents.
And continuing to raise costs on parents was simply put them out of business because parents wouldn't be able to afford it.
And I've been very adamant as well about ensuring that we have universal child care in the state of Wisconsin.
Because that is the only way that we can ensure that our facilities can stay open,
that our parents can be able to get a placement because with the shortage and providers, parents are always able to get a placement.
Other side of that coin, some placements do exist in places where parents can't afford to send their children.
The way we close that gap, the way we address that mismatch is by universal child care.
And how would you pay for that?
Well, as I say all the time, we have money in this state.
We have a priorities mismatch too often.
If we can incentivize professional sports teams, if we can incentivize large corporations, the least we can do is provide funding and support for our young people.
I'll talk about the minimum wage. Minimum wage in Wisconsin is a poultry $7.25, which comes to about $14,000 in change a year.
No one can really live on that.
What do you think the minimum wage should be in Wisconsin?
There are 18 or 19 states that as of January 1st saw at least some increase in their minimum wage.
And these are states that have already moved on. Some of it is due to past legislation that saw a ladder for increase in wages.
I remember in 2013, 2014, we were fighting for $15 in a union.
People were getting arrested. People were walking out of work sites.
People were walking out of McDonald's. I remember being there.
$15 and people thought we were crazy. And the other thing people said was, well, if you pay people $15 an hour, prices are just going to go up.
This is going to lead to inflation.
We're experiencing some of the worst inflation ever on record.
And people's wages have not even come close to keeping up with the rate of inflation.
So for sure, easily $15 minimum wage.
And the time for that was almost 10 years ago.
And I'm willing to work to ensure that if we even do get, that we get to a $15 minimum wage.
Because it's sort of hard to put a number on it.
Some people will say, you know, kept up with inflation at the onset of minimum wage.
We'd be like $25 an hour right now.
But the fact is given the fact that, or the fact is that given we haven't increased minimum wage,
if we were at $15 and we were to tie that to inflation, we'd be in a much better place.
And I think that's something more people, even those who are hesitant to increase minimum wage, would agree with.
Let's just talk about the campaign a little bit.
If you don't mind, there are a lot of other good candidates.
What separates you from them? Why would listeners listen to this podcast say, yeah, I want Mandela Barnes above somebody else?
I can tell you there are a lot of folks have respect for everybody who's running a lot of friends in the race in fact.
But it is the experience that sets me apart.
There's not a person running right now who has the governing experience that I have.
Right alongside Governor Evers those first four years, it was very clear and apparent my involvement in the administration.
I was traveling into every single county and these weren't just stops at a coffee shop.
These were stops to promote our agenda.
These were stops to sell our state budget to folks.
And unfortunately, some of these stops were storm damage tours.
Some of these stops were post pandemic ensuring that we would be able to provide real relief for communities that have been struggling.
Wisconsin had one of the most significant, one of the most incredible rebounds from the pandemic relative to other countries or excuse me relative to other states.
And it's because we showed up, it's because we took the time to listen.
I've been deeply involved in both of the budget cycles when I was lieutenant governor as well.
Having an opportunity to provide some input most importantly have an opportunity to learn as I sat alongside the governor and we sought to recover this state from all the damage of the previous administration.
There's not a person running who has had that who's had that governing experience.
You must know that there's some lingering resentment toward you over your loss to Ron Johnson.
What do you say to those Wisconsinites, those Democrats who are harboring such things?
Well, I'll tell you, it was the closest race in the state.
It was the closest challenge to an incumbent in the entire country.
And I've been written off before and look, I had a conversation with Barack Obama the day after that race and he talked about his loss and his race for Congress.
And he also talked about the organizing work that he did after that.
And that's exactly what I did. I got back into organizing.
I did the hard work raising money for candidates all across his state.
Raising money for programs all across the state to increase voter participation.
Because of that work, Milwaukee had the highest voter turnout with the 50 largest cities in the entire country.
Also showing up in communities all across the state with an organization I started called Ford together Wisconsin that provided real relief with a revolving loan program.
And this revolving loan program was forgivable.
At zero cost to homeowners, we provide a support for them to get an energy assessment and weatherization work.
For those folks who got no weatherization work is going to come in real handy this weekend as it has many other weekends.
And I'm incredibly proud of the work I've been able to do to travel across Wisconsin to talk about what the emphasis of this campaign is going to be.
And I'm proud of the organizing work that has happened. And I can tell you think about 26,000 votes for a whole lot.
That is one point. And for those 26,000 votes, we are going to show up with the organizing work that has already been done.
And we're going to bring long and additional 100,000 votes.
That is, this is the type of campaign we are going to run.
We're going to ensure that Wisconsin is not just kept in democratic hands.
We're going to ensure that that Wisconsin will lead with a bold vision and a bold agenda.
Any final words for our listeners?
No, I appreciate you having me. It's always a good time to chat.
And this, you know, it has to be repeated goes without saying is going to be the most important election of our lifetime is going to determine how Wisconsin stands up to the rise of authoritarianism going to determine what Wisconsin will be not just for the next four years, but for the next generation.
Because this isn't a four-year agenda I plan to implement.
I want to implement an agenda that sees Wisconsin as the best place to live work and raise a family as folks across this country, particularly young people.
Because of the decline in opportunities, because of stagnant wages, because of the fact that there are so many factors working against them.
I want to see America as a place that is providing ample opportunity for them.
I am going to ensure that there is a place of opportunity for young people in Wisconsin.
Well, we'll have to end it there, Mandela Barnes. Thanks so much for your time and for being my guest on the Wisconsin Ford podcast and good luck on the campaign trail.
For sure more than happy to be here. You take care.
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 and I want to thank Mandela Barnes again for being my guest today.
I also want to thank my engineer and producer, Dom Lee, who's always so great to work with.
And I want to thank Sage Wilde of Civic Media for giving me this platform.
But most all, I want to thank you for listening. If you're a regular listener, you know that I've now interviewed all the major Democrat candidates except Joel Brennan.
And I'm trying to get him on soon, so watch for that.
And if you've missed any of my other candidate interviews, you can find them at civicmedia.us under the Wisconsin Ford podcast.
My next guest, if it's not Joel Brennan, will be Bianca Shaw, the new executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin.
You won't want to miss that one.
