On our morning show today, we're joined by Ben Gruber, who is running for Assembly in District 51.
Good to see you, Ben.
Thanks for coming in.
Good morning.
Thanks for having me.
Let's talk a little bit about yourself.
Give us a little of your background, if you would.
Yeah, you betcha.
Born and raised in the town of Arena, moved back to the house I grew up in in 2019, graduated from River Valley in 2001.
You know one of the first things I did after I graduated there was join the local fire and EMS as a volunteer and I did that for a while and then I actually made a career out of it So I was a firefighter paramedic Worked in a couple different places around the state Actually had the opportunity to do some pretty cool stuff to work work as a flight medic a bit and Worked as a tactical paramedic on a SWAT team when I lived up in central, Wisconsin for a while and
2019 took the opportunity to take a full-time job as a conservation warden stationed out of Governor Dodge State Park and made the move home and bought the house that I grew up in.
How's that going in the great outdoors these days?
Yeah, it's great.
You know, this is a time of year that those of us that live in this part of the country are, you know, usually pretty fond of frosty mornings and leaves changing colors.
And yeah, so, you know, really grateful to just have that opportunity.
Judging by your background, you know, what you did before with EMS and everything, I'm sure you're concerned for a rural EMS and trying to keep them properly funded into the right track, right?
Yeah, absolutely a topic that
you know we've been talking about for a long time those of us in the business this is not uh this is not a new problem but it is a right now problem and you know I know folks here in Richland Center are actively going through conversations about what that looks like moving forward and we know there's places in Iowa and Grant County regularly where we're struggling to get crews to staff or ambulances and that's not a unique problem locally
you know, historically, we were able to cover it with volunteers.
But historically, we had a different economy in rural Wisconsin.
We had small family farms all over and we had younger families.
And it's absolutely a topic that we have to have to do a lot of work on to figure out how we're going to do that moving forward.
But it is really important, especially as we face more and more, you know, clinic or hospital closures or the loss of specialties.
For a long time, I did critical care transports.
So I know what it's like to somebody who's going through a high-risk pregnancy to have to be transported in the back of an ambulance hours away to get to the care that we need.
And if we lose one more hospital here in Southwest Wisconsin or one more OB center, that's a reality that we're going to have to face.
And to try and do that with struggling ambulance services is even more difficult.
So there's a lot of challenges to address here.
What would you like to see or propose for a situation like that for expanding EMS and rural health care and things like that?
Yeah, I think the first thing I think we need to really address is the lack of shared revenue, you know for a long time We've we've really neglected our rural communities through both public school funding and shared revenue and it's taken the community's ability to control its own destiny away and EMS is not a
considered a required service by the state of Wisconsin, like fire and EMSR.
So that's a that's something we can look to address.
But I think the biggest thing that we can do for starters is restore shared revenue.
You know, the state requires its local municipalities, the counties and the townships to do a lot of the state's duties, health services, plowing.
just plowing state highways.
You know, that's handled by our local municipalities.
And the state has been awful stingy with its shared revenue for a long time.
And it's put our communities in a really hard spot where they can't raise revenue without net new construction.
And you know, we see my community over by arena actually put a dollar general in a few years ago.
And you know, it's likely those places are going to put local small businesses out of business down the road.
But our villages and our townships are left with no choice other than to say yes to a dollar general because it allows them to take in a few more dollars in net new construction.
And that's what puts the gas and the tanks to keep the roads plowed.
So our state legislatures put our local communities in a tough spot and it's a lot to navigate.
In terms of where you live, you're in the River Valley School District, and so you're well aware of the struggles of schools out here in rural Wisconsin.
Maybe you could talk to that a little bit.
Yeah, you know, I went to a marine elementary school.
I always figured that my kids would go there too, and when we talked about, just a minute ago, about volunteering on the ambulance, when I volunteered there back in 2002, 2003, some of the people that I went on the most calls with was my first grade teacher from that school, and our school nurse.
And the guy who drove my kids bus just a few years ago, used to drive the ambulance when I was on it.
So...
When we see public schools close like Arena, it doesn't just mean a really long bus ride.
And it does mean long bus rides.
We see kids today that are well over an hour in areas of Bear Valley, Lone Rock, Arena, where these elementary schools have closed.
And that in turn has really affected our ability to staff our ambulances.
So these problems are not isolated.
But public school funding is one of the top priorities for me because I recognize
how these small rural schools really impact and anchor our communities.
It is the jobs that people have that allow them to do things like volunteer for EMS.
It is what keeps our kids in our community.
It is what brings young families into our community.
And for a long time, we've seen the public school funding, especially in rural Wisconsin,
just really dwindle and be neglected and then when you add in the money that's leaving our public schools and going to private voucher schools across the state it's just been incredibly detrimental and what it leads to is constant referenda where we're asked to raise our own property taxes just to keep the lights on at our schools.
And that doesn't even factor in.
The teachers who are out buying classroom supplies out of their own pockets.
We're asking for Christmas drives for people to buy notebooks for kids who can't afford it and tissues for the classrooms.
I just really believe that we can do better.
The state isn't broke.
The state has a $3 billion surplus.
There's $2 billion that we are giving in tax breaks to Microsoft and Meta to build data centers.
And there's 1.8 billion in the last budget cycle that left our public schools to go to private voucher schools.
Now, I went to River Valley and I maybe could have paid better attention to math.
But if we round up, that gets us to just shy as $7 billion that really I think should be in our communities working for us so that we can keep the lights on at our public schools.
We can have somebody to show up when we call 911.
We can have clean water to drink and decent streets to drive on.
And we can do it.
without constantly being asked to raise our property taxes to do so.
We've talked a lot on this program about the current funding for schools.
You know, it's a per pupil thing.
Have you thought about that and maybe a change that you'd like to see in that regard?
Yeah, there's I think there's a I think there's two things we have to do I think we have to do a short-term fix to keep the lights on and then I think we have to explore a long-term Complete rebuild of the school funding formula.
I think in the short term We need to see the private voucher money come back to our public schools We need to see an increase in per pupil aid and then we need to see the state really uphold its special education obligations
and then I think absolutely we need to bring people who really understand what schools need especially rural schools to the table and we need to talk about is it per pupil aid or is is there a different or better way to do it and boy when we look at all the referendums that are going to be on the ballot you know coming up in this fall in this spring and over the last decade there has to be a better way to do this.
When you step up, put your hat on the ring, you obviously have to have thick skin, you know?
I mean, why did you choose to do this?
Because it would have been easy to stay on the sidelines.
Yeah, it's never been an ambition.
I've never sat and said, I think I want to run for office or I want to be a legislator or a politician.
But in my role as a first responder, I have a really unique privilege, whether it's a fire, EMS or law enforcement, I get to go
to people's homes when they're least expecting it.
You know, when they're having the worst day of their life or an emergency.
And what I get to see is I see our neighbors struggling.
I see people that we wouldn't otherwise think are struggling, whose refrigerators are empty, who are taking second and third jobs, and their kids are raising themselves at home because they're out picking up overtime or a night shift at QuickTrip just to keep food on the table and gas in the tank.
I've seen a community like Arena where I'm from.
I've seen what happens when our school closes.
Listen here, I told you about my experience in EMS.
In 2024, I was out working in my role as a game warden and I heard a call for a woman who stopped breathing.
It was just a half a mile away and I was there in like 37 seconds.
And then for over 20 minutes, a village of Arena police officer and I did CPR while we waited for an ambulance from the next county over.
because ours didn't have volunteers that night.
Not the fault of our volunteers, it's constant neglect of our communities that's led to this.
Three months later, that village of Arena Police Officer and I were presented with a life-saving award at the Village Board meeting.
And that was the very night where our village had to choose to close its police department, probably forever, just to be able to figure out how to pay for essential services to plow the roads and keep the water running.
They were choose to choose between public safety and the rest of it.
And those are the impacts that I look and I see and I go, we can do better.
So those are the things that made me say, hey, you know, this isn't something I've aspired to do, but it's time to step up and put my hat in the ring and see if I can help.
be a leader to do better things for our Southwest Wisconsin communities.
Some of the advertising they've called you greedy.
Why are they doing that?
Yeah, I don't know.
I think when you've been in the legislature for 10 years and you don't feel like your record is enough to run on, you have to attack the other person.
I've been a union leader and they've talked about a lawsuit that I'm part of several times We're trying to restore collective bargaining rights for public sector workers You know act 10 happened back in 2010 and it was billed as a cost-saving measure for communities And was supposed to save our schools and what we've seen is our schools are still closing Our communities are still broke and our property taxes continue to go up
So they have used my efforts as a uni leader to restore those collective bargaining rights to try and attack and call me greedy.
But I think what it really reflects on is my opponent doesn't have a record that he's proud of and he's going to choose to attack me instead.
What about the 765 lines?
I'm sure you've been approached with that when you've been out campaigning.
I have.
And the first thing I'll say is it does not touch my district.
The district I'm running in, it is not in my district.
But in reality, it affects all of us in this state.
And I am adamantly opposed to development projects that do not benefit our communities and only cost our communities.
So whether it's a power transmission line or wind turbine or a data center, I think we need to have meaningful local input and control over these decisions.
And they have to absolutely have to benefit our communities more than they cost.
We cannot
continue to have rural Wisconsin be a dumping grounds for projects that benefit billionaires from different states and different countries while our communities are closing schools and can't afford new fire trucks.
I've talked to some other candidates about the fact that you know everything that's going on and needs to be changed the next two years could be two of the most important years you know and basically in the state's history you feel like you're getting into it you want to get into it at the right time here I'm sure don't you.
Yeah, you know we live in swing districts in a swing state and for a long time I think we've been hearing that every election is the election of our lifetime and You know what that does mean is that for everybody listening your vote matters an awful lot, you know, there are people in states where The the election outcome is almost predetermined based on their population But that's not the case for us here and what it means is that our vote matters a lot
And it means that we are inundated with political ads in our mailboxes and our radios and our TVs And I can assure you that with 14 and a half days left.
Nobody is as ready as I am for that to be over But the best thing that you can do is to do your research and that's why it's really important for me to get out and talk to people You know my campaign has knocked 25,000 doors in our district.
I personally have knocked 5,000
And I've done almost 50 public events from town halls to meet and greets all across this district.
So that's where I feel it's really important for us to just get out and talk directly to people.
If you elected your first day, what would you like to get to work on right away?
Day one priorities from your fixing public school funding and working to restore shared revenue so our communities can prosper.
And to get anything done, you've got to work with the other side.
What are some steps that you think about that you're going to have to do to try to get along with everybody?
Yeah, that's always a question that comes up.
And here's what I'll tell you.
I was a pretty strong Republican voter for a good chunk of my life.
I'm running as a Democrat today.
I don't identify as a Democrat.
I don't identify as a Republican or an Independent.
It's just important to recognize that we need to work for our communities and I don't care about a partisan political label if I could if I could rewrite the partisan landscape I would tell you I'm a Dale Schultz Republican But that doesn't exist anymore, and we just have this Hyper partisan polarized environment where you know who's suffering the most.
It's not the party out of power It's our communities and that has to change and I'm excited for
uh, you know, we've got new maps, fair maps where elections are competitive and that's going to force people to just come to, come to the aisle and get things done.
Uh, and that's the most important thing.
Anything you'd like to add, Ben?
Happy to be back in Richmond center.
You know, uh, back in high school, I used to show up for the high school rodeo road bulls and buckin horses right here at state finals rodeo.
So, uh, you know, it just.
I've been a public servant my whole life, one form or another.
And I just see this as another form of public service.
And I'm really grateful for the opportunity.
And despite the negative political ads, I've had the opportunity to meet a lot of great people.
So I'm glad I did it.
Thanks for coming in today.
You betcha.
Thank you.
Ben Gruber running for District 51 assembly here and in our WRC listening area on today's morning show.