Wednesday 8/12/26: primary election results, rise of socialism, 'It's All Local', Torchy Timberloss

Support for WUWM Podcasts comes from University School of Milwaukee, fulfilling a values-based mission of developing learners, fostering leaders, and preparing citizens for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. More information at usm.org slash mission. From 89.7, WUWM, Milwaukee's and PR, this is Lake Effect. I'm Joy Powers. Today we'll share a roundup of the primary election results and look at which candidates will be on the ballot in November. Then, Milwaukee has deep roots with socialism. We'll look at how the party evolved into the Democratic Socialists of America today. The modern DSA. Here in Milwaukee, draws on that tradition, draws on the socialist tradition and spirit here in Milwaukee, but it is not the exact same organization. Plus, we'll learn about Torchy Timberloss, Wisconsin's very own fire prevention mascot. Originated in the 1950s, kind of about the same time Smokey Bearer came on the scene, but we'd like to see him kind of evolve and change into representing more of the good fire. All of that is coming up on Lake Effect. This is Lake Effect from 89.7 WUWM, Milwaukee's and PR. I'm Joy Powers and thank you so much for joining us. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley is the Democratic nominee in the Wisconsin gubernatorial election. He pulled off a stunning defeat of frontrunner, state representative Francesca Hong in yesterday's partisan primary election. Democrats split almost evenly for the two candidates. Initial results show Crowley with just about 3,000 more votes than Hong. Now, Crowley will face Republican nominee Tom Tiffany in November. To give us a rundown of what happened in the primary, I'm joined by WUWM editor Emily Files, who leads our Voter Guide Project. Hi, Emily. Hi, Joy. Okay, so the big headline here is the Wisconsin governor's race. It was pretty clear that Tom Tiffany would be the Republican nominee, but the Democratic field was a bit more competitive and a little messy. Tell us about what happened there. Yeah, really big news. Crowley won the Democratic nomination. And he was not considered the frontrunner in this race. That was Francesca Hong. Every poll I saw showed her with a significant lead over Crowley and the other candidates. But those polls also showed a lot of voters were undecided, and it's been a chaotic run-up to the election, so a lot has changed and maybe a lot of voters made up their minds late in the game.

So Crowley was seen here as the more moderate Democrat, and some of his supporters thought he would have a better chance of beating Tiffany in the general election, whereas Hong is a Democratic Socialist, who some see is more radical. But her message also really connected with a lot of voters, as we've seen in races in other states, where Democratic Socialist-Aline candidates have beat more moderate ones. Crowley pushed back on the idea that he's the quote unquote establishment candidate. He held a press conference at the Sherman Phoenix this morning with a unifying message. So let me say this clearly. This election is not about insiders versus outsiders. It's not about the establishment versus progresses. It's about building something bigger than anyone campaign. It's about building a movement, y'all. A movement that reaches every corner of Wisconsin. Can you give us a recap of how the Democratic field has changed in the run-up to the election? Yes, it's changed a lot. So we started out with seven candidates, and it gradually narrowed down to four. Those four were Crowley, Hong, State Senator Calderoy's, and former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan. Crowley had actually dropped out of the race in early July and endorsed former lieutenant governor, Sarah Rodriguez. But then she dropped out after a campaign finance scandal and Crowley got back in with the endorsement of our current governor, Democrat Tony Evers. Then there was another shake-up in late July when former lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes dropped out of the race. My colleague Susan Bence talked to one voter at the polls who didn't want to go on tape but said they voted for Barnes before realizing that he dropped out. That shows how confusing the run-up to this election has been. There was a lot of back and forth with who was in the election, who was not running. Now, as you mentioned, some of our colleagues were out at polling sites yesterday. What did they hear from people? Yeah, so we heard from voters about which candidates and issues were bringing them out to vote. A lot of them mentioned the cost of living. T. Frazier Lewis said that's why she voted for Hong. She thinks Hong can relate to the struggle of working people and like that her campaign wasn't funded by big donors. Everybody is close to being paycheck to paycheck. So if I feel like she, you can relate a lot more with us when you have everyone around you get all of this big money and it's easier for them to vote online. like go out and campaign with and you have to struggle a little, it makes you a little bit closer to the everyday person. Markia Robinson said her top concerns were AI data centers and jobs. She said she looked into both Hong and Crowley and ended up choosing Crowley. Just because I feel like when I was researching more about Francesca, it was kind of giving like out of touch.

You got to have your boots on the ground to really understand what the community needs. And I felt like that was something that David Crowley was a little bit more familiar with. So that's why I chose that side. We also talked to Carolyn Alexander. She and her husband were voting at the Center Street Library. Carolyn voted for Crowley. And her biggest concern has to do with cuts to federal health care programs. We've been hurt a lot, you know, because I get, like, Medicare and extra help through Medicaid. And now it's like they're cutting a lot of our home health. And I think this is so important for us to get out and vote. Carolyn also mentioned that Governor Tony Evers' endorsement of Crowley made a big difference for her. It does seem like the voters for Hong and Crowley really had a lot of the same concerns. Healthcare, data centers, cost of living. Now, Emily, Crowley's victory, it wasn't announced until the wee hours of the morning. One reason, aside from it being such a close race, was an issue with Milwaukee absentee ballots. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, so in Wisconsin, you can't start processing absentee ballots until election day. And Milwaukee, as the biggest city in the state, has a lot of absentee ballots to count. And sometimes those are the final batch of votes we're waiting on to see what happens in a super close race like the one between Crowley and Hong. So last night, Milwaukee election officials say there was a human error which caused a delay in reporting the results of about 28,000 absentee ballots. That error was reported around midnight by Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutierrez. Gutierrez explained that five of the nine flash drives with election results only contained audit logs of the ballots cast and not the actual results. So the Election Commission then had to return to the central vote counting facility and re-download the results. And as I mentioned, Gutierrez said it was a human error. I think a lot of us were watching things play out last night. WUWM had reporters at the watch parties for Crowley and Hong. What did they hear from supporters and candidates? And how did this delay impact things? Well, at Crowley's watch party, I'm not sure if it was because it took so long for the race to be called, but Crowley didn't actually deliver a victory speech. Instead, he held a press conference earlier this morning, which we heard a bit of earlier. And yes, supporters of Crowley and Hong had a long night waiting for the race to be called. Francesca Hong did address her supporters before the results were finalized. We have built something that will change. politics forever. The work we have done will be remembered forever. I know we don't have the final results right now, but what I do know is that we are ready to keep fighting.

WUWM spoke with one of Crowley's supporters at his watch party, D.D. Davis of Milwaukee. She was there with her 14-year-old son. My 14-year-old son and hear him say, he's a man of color. He grew up here just like me, and one of the roughest things more black men to grow up in. that Milwaukee is the only known work when it comes to African women. And so just to see the excitement in my funds, yeah, that gave me another kind of host. This is Lake Effect. I'm Joy Powers, and I'm speaking right now with WUWM editor, Emily Files, about the Wisconsin primary election results. So Crowley is the Democratic nominee for governor. We've mentioned Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee. Tell us a bit about him. Yeah, so he did have a challenger, Andy Manske, but Tiffany easily won the nomination with 95% of the vote. Right now, Tiffany represents most of northern and western Wisconsin in Congress. He's been endorsed by Trump, and Tiffany supports many of Trump's policies from tariffs to immigration. He voted against certifying the 2020 election results when Trump falsely claimed that he won the election. And at his election night watch party, Tiffany thanked his family and supporters and was looking ahead to the general election. This isn't a typical election about red versus blue. This is an election about the very soul of the state of Wisconsin. It's about what kind of Wisconsin we're going to leave the next generation. Do we pass on a Wisconsin built on freedom? Freedom and opportunity? Or do we accept the future where government gets bigger? No. Taxes keep rising. No. And opportunity becomes harder to find. So now it's going to be a contest between Tiffany and David Crowley in November. And Tiffany has had much more time to consolidate support and raise money. All right, so we know who is going to be in this race for governor. What else should we know about candidates in other races who are moving on from the primary? Yeah, so governor is not the only statewide office on the ballot. For lieutenant governor, Republican David Varnum won a competitive primary. He'll join Tiffany on the ballot. And Sarah Godluski will join Crowley on the Democratic ticket. Secretary of State also had a competitive Republican primary. Jay Schroeder is the winner. He'll face Democrat Jocasta Zamoripa. For state treasurer, Democrat Yi Lang Zhang beat his opponent and will face Republican incumbent John Lieber. For U.S. Congress, there's one primary in our coverage area that's too close to call at this time, the Democratic primary for District 6. It includes Ozaki County and several other counties to the north and west. Brad Smith and Amanda Bell are neck and neck there. Whoever wins will face incumbent Republican Glenn Groffman in November.

In the Racine, Kenosha Walworth area, Mitchell Berman won the Democratic primary for District 1. He'll face GOP incumbent Brian Stile. Democratic incumbent Gwen Moore will face Republican Tim Rogers in District 4. And for state assembly and Senate races, there are a lot of them. You can find the results on our website and we'll be updating our voter guide with the winning candidates. Very nice. Now, remind us of the stakes of the November election. So with Governor Ivers not seeking re-election, it's the first race for governor without an incumbent in quite a while. And not only is the governorship up for grabs, but both chambers of the state legislature. So both parties, Republican and Democrat, are hoping for a trifecta of power in the governor's office, Senate and Assembly. That would allow them to enact legislation on their priorities, whether it's property tax reforms, school funding, environmental protections, housing, name it. And then, of course, control of Congress is up for grabs. If Democrats gain control of the House and add to their number of seats, there could be more of a check to the second Trump administration. And if Republicans retain control, they could make it easier for the Trump administration to continue carrying out its agenda. And all of that will be decided in the November 3rd midterm election. WUWM will be covering it, including in our online voter guide, which Emily oversees. Thank you so much, Emily, for being here to talk about the elections. Thanks, Joy. And thanks to WUWM reporters Susan Bents, Taryn Jerome Powell, Catherine Kokel, Mayan Silver, Akiraquin, and Eddie Morales for their help with this reporting. Stay tuned for another season of WUWM's podcast, Swing State of the Union. We'll be covering the important issues this midterm season and talk about who has power in Wisconsin. Find it wherever you like to listen.

Francesca Hong's primary election loss to more centrist candidate David Crowley is just the latest example of the left versus center ideology playing out in the Democratic Party. Hong is a Democratic socialist, and Milwaukee has a long history with socialism, electing the first socialist to Congress in the early 20th century. Milwaukee's had three socialist mayors who transformed the city, ending with Frank P. Zeidler in 1960. And while the party has evolved over time, there are many similarities in the issues people are facing today that were the catalyst for the rise of socialism in Milwaukee. To look at the evolution of socialism, I'm joined by John Dissinger, a local high school teacher and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. How did we get from Frank P. Zeidler to the DSA today? Sure. That's a really good question. So. Frank Ziedler, you know, leaves office in 1960. He chooses not to run again. The socialist party in the United States at this point is pretty much defunct as a major political force. You know, you have little bits and pieces here and there. We're in a small college town here and there. You might have someone on a city council or to local offices, but as a major political force, it's dormant. It undergoes a further split a little bit later on, in part under a famous socialist Michael Harrington, who writes a series of very notable reports to the federal government about poverty in the United States in the 1960s, 1970s. That goes a long way towards shaping, for example, Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society programs. But you see a further split within the Socialist Party into the Socialist Party of the United States of America, or Spusa. And then what at first is called the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, and then that later becomes the DSA, the Democratic Socialist of America, which is not a political party. It is a socialist political organization. So the DNA of the DSA does go back to that original socialist party. And if you trace it, you know, all the way back through various incarnations, you can trace it all the way back to the old, old, old guard socialist party of people like Emil Seidel and Eugene Debs. But it is the product of a number of divisions within the socialist movement over a long period of time. So the modern DSA... here in Milwaukee draws on that tradition, draws on the socialist tradition and spirit here in Milwaukee, but it is not the exact same organization. It is not the same party because, again, DSA is not a political party. When you look at the work that the DSA is doing today and you think about it in the context of both the people's party and the socialist party, the sewer socialists, What do you see as some of the real strong similarities between these and some of the ways that they really differ? So there are a lot of really strong similarities. One of them is that one of the major campaigns of the DSA right now is what's called the Power to the People campaign, which is an effort to municipalize wee energies. This was a constant fight and a constant goal of the sewer socialists and they never got there. Dan Hone.

speaks at length about how he wanted to get the utility under the control of the city in Milwaukee, that he wanted electricity under the control of the city. It never quite happens. There's many efforts to do it. He just never quite gets over the line. There's many different court cases that kind of hang him up. He's not able to get full support in a referendum to make it happen. It just doesn't quite get there. That's still an effort that the Democratic Socialists of America are making today. You know, we have seen rates on rate pairs in Wisconsin rise dramatically over the last few years. There is a lot of discontent with WE Energy's prioritization of data center service over improving service for rate pairs. And it is the point of view of the DSA that a solution for this problem would be municipalization. which is completely legal under Wisconsin state statute. Municipalities have the authority with a vote of the city council and a referendum to municipalize a public utility. And so that's one campaign where there's a very strong connection between the sewer socialist then and now. I would say ideologically, of course, there's still a lot of, you know, a lot of follow-through. DSA is a very ideologically diverse organization. So some people in DSA are... Social Democratic, some are more stridently, you might see more stridently Marxist socialist. It's a big tent organization. But there is still this really strong commitment to workers' rights, workers' welfare, and workers' power within the movement here in Milwaukee. And I think that has sometimes forgotten about the sewer socialist. You know, there's this famous picture of Dan Hohn on the cover of Time magazine about, you know, supposedly the best mayor in America. And it says underneath he gives all the credit to Karl Marx. And that was often taken as being sort of tongue in cheek. And to an extent it was, but to an extent it wasn't. I mean, the sewer socialists were socialists for a reason. There's a reason that they... ran and governed as socialist and not just as progressive Democrats because they essentially took the radical and Marxist analysis of capitalism and a capitalist society very, very seriously. And the efforts they made were to improve the lives of working people, but it was also to pursue this idea of a cooperative socialist economy. And that is still a vision that animates DSA today. We in DSA today are... I would say realistic that that isn't a horizon that's going to come tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or next year, but it is one that still animates us as a desirable future, one in which the exploitation and problems of capitalism can be overcome through the action of a unified and organized working class. So those are some of, I think, the strong similarities. There are differences as well. One of them is that the sewer socialists... were, and there's no point sugar-coding this, a pretty much exclusively male and overwhelmingly white male political organization. They were a movement of their time, and it was dominated very much by, you know, white men. That is something the DSA today makes a real effort to be much more...

diverse both in our leadership and in our focus in which we take very seriously the realities of standing up for and standing with a diverse multiracial working class and not merely resigning women as Dan Hohn sometimes did refer to them as the housewife vote. Certainly not the way the DSA thinks about questions of women workers today. So that's one key difference there. Although there's a lot of overlap, I would say, in wanting to create a clean, environmentally healthy city, the DSA takes a more, perhaps you would say, global or climate-oriented approach to its environmentalism. So the DSA has much more of a concern about things like... You know, obviously we want to lower rates through municipalization of Wii energies, but we want to do that in a way that does not pump ever more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere whenever possible. DSA wants to see lower prices for grocery bills in... in the city, as did the sewer socialist and their attempts to set up like municipal distribution of food. And today that might be something like city-owned grocery stores. That's an issue that DSA has been really sort of banging the drum on with the expansion of food deserts and parts of Milwaukee as more and more grocery stores closed down. So there are meaningful differences, but the DNA of sewer socialism is still very strong in the socialist movement here in Milwaukee. It is something that... Even as we recognize the shortcomings of the sewer socialist era, it is something that we take as an inspiration because after all, you cannot change the world. You cannot make this a better city without taking power, without having the authority to make those changes. This will be my... Final question for you. But as you look at the kinds of social conditions that lead to the rise of the people's party that propel the socialists ultimately into power, and you look at the social conditions that we currently have here in Milwaukee and perhaps the United States more generally, where do you see the connections? Where do you see the overlap? I think there's a lot of parallels. So the socialist rose out of what is sometimes called the Gilded Age, where the United States was seeing enormous wealth inequality, more and more of the nation's wealth, congregating in the private fortunes of men like Rockefeller and Carnegie and Morgan. So too today. We see more and more wealth being accumulated in the private fortunes of people like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. Wealth inequality is at its highest point in terms of percentage of wealth held by the very top fraction of a percent in this country. It's at its highest point since the Gilded Age. That's one parallel. Another parallel that I think is very real is the feeling of precarity for a lot of working Milwaukeeans. Many working Milwaukeeans feel that their bills are getting higher.

And they're right to feel that way. They are getting higher while their wages aren't keeping up with inflation. So that feeling of being squeezed, being pinched, that I think is a similarity as well. There's some important differences, though. Also, one of those is that the way we work is very different. from the era of the sewer socialist. You know, the sewer socialist rose in a time when thousands of people worked in a single gigantic industrial plant, right? Like, you know, and so in a way, it's easier to organize people when you can set up a table outside the factory gate and say, read the leader, vote for the socialist ticket, come see Dan Hone speak at this date at this time, and you could expect to reach thousands of people all at the same time. It's harder to do today. Some people would say, well, you have social media now, but I would argue that that actually makes things much more fragmented, not less. I think it's much harder to reach a lot of people. And it's harder to get people to see themselves as part of a united working class with interests in common when so many more people work from home or they work as contractors or they work in highly individualized environments. Maybe if you're just... you know, driving for DoorDash or out in an Amazon delivery van all day, you don't have that sort of feeling of proximal solidarity that you have if you're working on a single manufacturing plant. Finally, there's the very real difference of the fact that the American Union movement is at a really low ebb right now. There's some green shoots, and I think you see that. There have been very successful organizing drives here and there in the city, particularly in service and educational initiatives. But there's no sugarcoat in it. Organized labor is at one of its weakest points in American history, and so you don't have that kind of backbone. of an organized, motivated, institutional working class to back up a political effort the way you had with the sewer socialist era, particularly in the Hohn and Zeidler eras. So there are some real parallels in terms of the social conditions, and there are some real differences that in many ways make the work of municipal socialism harder in 2026 compared to in 1926. Yeah. Well, John, thank you so much for chatting with me. It was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

John Dysinger is a local high school teacher and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. You can learn more about the city's socialist history with our series, The Milwaukee Socialists. Find it at wwm.com. A Wisconsin mascot has come out of retirement to help protect the state's natural areas. We'll meet Torchy Timberloss in about 15 minutes. But first, Glendale Mayor Brian Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joins us to talk about his new book that explores how politicians can reconnect with the communities they're meant to represent. That's coming up on Lake Effect on 89.7 WUWM, Milwaukee's and PR. You're listening to Lake Effect on 89.7 WUWM. I'm Joy Powers. With the primary election behind us, we're now entering the general election season. We can expect to see a flurry of ads from both Republicans and Democrats trying to court prospective voters. But a new book by Glendale Mayor Brian Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argues that both parties have become disconnected from the communities they hope to represent. His book called It's All Local explores how independent political candidates have attempted to redirect politics in favor of what voters need and how political leaders of all stripes can incorporate a bottom-up approach to their priorities. Mayor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joins me in studio. Brian, thank you so much for being here. The book covers the kind of divide that we're seeing between the national political parties and the communities that they're really hoping to represent. How would you describe what that looks like? So both of our political parties have been taken over by a top-down approach to how they market themselves instead of actually running. what used to be traditional political organizing on the ground where you build communities of interest and as communities of interest have shared values. We've gone to, well, I can talk to the Democratic side because that's the one I'm the most familiar with. On the Democratic side, we have these high-price consultants who try to put together a branding for the party. They do some poll testing of it. They'll focus group it somewhere in northern Virginia. And then they ship it out across the rest of the country. And that messaging falls flat. You know, what a group of people in northern Virginia might. think is great. People in rural Nebraska, it doesn't resonate. People in inner city Detroit doesn't resonate. And the Republican Party likewise has a top-down approach. And theirs comes through their Fox News, Newsmax, right-wing podcast medium where they have the same talking points. And it's always about making you afraid of somebody or some group. And so you have these two parties, neither of which seem to know how to talk to people on the ground in a way that's about building something, edifying something, creating community, galvanizing power. It's either sterile bland messaging that doesn't resonate with people or...

fearmonger messaging that makes people afraid of their neighbors. Now, I'll be honest, when you talk about this kind of divide, it's something that I think we sometimes look as a modern phenomenon, that this is something that happened over the last 20 or 30 years. But even if you go back to the turn of the century, not the most recent turn of the century, but the last one into the 20th century, we're really looking at a landscape where, again, politicians are kind of disconnected. from the communities that they're hoping to represent. Now, of course, the turn of the 20th century wasn't necessarily a great time to be a Democrat or a Republican here in the state of Wisconsin. One of the things your book really talks about is how you view this moment as a time for independent candidates to rise, which is what we saw in the 20th century as well. What do you think it is about this moment that has made the ground kind of fertile for independent candidates? We were ruled by elites, you know, at the turn of the last century, you know, we're talking 125 years ago. We were ruled by elites. And if you notice in Wisconsin, we had a very populist movement. You had socialists running Milwaukee and you had progressives running the rest of the state. And Democrats and Republicans didn't have a whole lot of power here, right? It was basically either progressives or socialists. But there was a disconnect of the major parties because they were the elites in Milwaukee. Washington and they were out of touch with what was going on here in the heartland. Our parties were built, the modern parties were built in the middle of the 20th century, basically by on the ground organizing. You know, you had, say, the Flint Sit Down Strike that had to use as one of the examples in my book, where the UAW was building a union by people galvanizing in a workplace. You had the Montgomery bus boycott, where you had people meeting in church basements and deciding how they were going to get people to work because nobody of color was going to get on the bus that was segregated. And so we had people talking to one another and building community and building. movement. And that's what then became our modern parties, except now, once again, we've moved to this point of we've turned the Democratic Party into a marketing campaign that's not unlike trying to sell cars or shoes or something, and a Republican Party that's a fear-mongering campaign. And so it's really opened the door to a lot of independents. You have four independent candidates right now making real headway and the races for U.S. Senate. In Idaho, in Nebraska, North Dakota. And in Montana, they're building independent campaigns where they're not aligned with either party. And people are going, yeah, I like what you have to say. Because it doesn't sound right wing. It doesn't sound left wing. It just sounds like it makes sense. And they're building their campaigns on the ground with real people who are talking to one another and building local messaging. That isn't national messaging.

When we talk about third parties, they have had some success here in the past in Wisconsin. Progressives and socialists both did make big wins here in Wisconsin, but I'll say if you really look at those elections, they're winning on slim margins. Some of these elections are only decided by a couple percentage points. And these are local elections that we're talking about. Today, third parties face an even bigger uphill battle. How do you view politicians like a Zohran Mamdani who are, yes, Democrats, but also inside of that movement? Democratic Socialists pushing for other messaging that might not necessarily align with the National Party. So Zohran Mamdani's campaign is actually one that I highlighted in the book. I have eight case studies, different local elected officials from around the country. Most of them I did interviews with. I was not privileged enough to get an interview with Mr. Zohran Mamdani. But I did have some connections with some folks on his campaign and was able to get some information from some of them. He built a campaign by talking to voters on the street. He started with a social media campaign of what do you think government should do? What do you want from New York? What should New York look like? He was asking these questions at subway stations. He didn't have a campaign. He didn't have a platform yet. He was talking to people to find out what they wanted. And then from what he heard from these hundreds and hundreds of people that he interviewed, he built a platform. And that platform then was what he ran on. And it's what people told him they wanted. So he didn't go to the Democratic Party and say, hey, what should my platform be? You know, what are we running on this year? You know, what do the consultants say? He actually talked to real people. And the other case studies that I focus on in the book also bring up other individuals who built their campaigns in the same way. We were talking about the independents. We do have two independents in the U.S. Senate right now, Bernie Sanders and Angus King, both from New England. who aren't Democrats, aren't Republicans, right? They may caucus with the Democrats in the Senate, but they're independent candidates. And I think that we're really at a point where we're seeing more and more of that rise to the surface, certainly across the Midwest. You know, we've got the two right now that are currently in office in New England, but the other four running are basically from, you know, the northern part of the country here. This is Lake Effect. I'm Joy Powers, and I'm speaking right now with Glendale Mayor Brian Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about his new book. Now, a big part of this book is really about... what can be done to bridge this divide, to get people more civically engaged. What do you view beyond, you know, conversations with people asking them what they want, what else do you view as part of what's necessary to reinvigorate communities and get them more involved in the political process? Yeah, so the last couple of chapters of the book, because I lay out sort of a history here of like how we got to where we are. And the last few chapters of the book are really kind of a workbook, right?

or how you might build community conversations, how you might be able to start talking with your neighbors again. We've gotten to the point where based on the yard signs that are in people's yards during election season, we know which neighbors we won't talk to and which neighbors we will talk to. The problem is we actually have a lot more in common than we realize. And we need to start breaking down those barriers. So in the book, I lay out how a community organization, for example, could bring people together from all different walks of life and create a series of community conversations where neighbors start talking about what they want to see in their communities, what they think should be different, and building their own political agenda. And then you go to your elected officials and say, we don't care what you say, what your party says, we're your constituents, and this is what we want you to do. And so teaching people how to actually... advocate for themselves, how to create community agendas. I think that's what's largely missing. And in order to facilitate that happening, I have pulled together a group of experts and we're putting together right now the It's All Local Foundation. And the foundation will actually provide small stipends to community organizations that want to run these kind of conversations. We'll provide them with training, provide them with some funding to be able to, you know, hire a facilitator or rent space and then help guide them through that process. Because we need to start rebuilding our communities again and not relying on the national parties to try and build community for us. Now, of course, you are a mayor yourself. What have you been doing to engage the community in a more holistic way? It's interesting. When I first ran for mayor, I was on the school board and I had a series of house parties where I talked to people throughout the city of Glendale and I asked them what they wanted to see differently. We're done differently in the city. And so that actually, I built my campaign, you know, four terms ago, on that same type of principle of asking people, what do you want to see? And then I built a platform around that. And then I had all of these people who. wanted to support me and help me because they'd been a part of the conversation. We actually built community. Now, it helped that I had small kids at the time or younger kids at the time. They were in elementary to early high school. It was our age range. So I was familiar with people at the elementary school, the middle school, and the high school. I knew a lot of folks at the time. And so I did have a lot of people to tap into to help. But a big part of it, though, was that I was open to not going in and saying, here's what I know, here's what I want to do. You should vote for me. But it was, okay, well, let's figure out what we want as a community. I'm willing to step into the role of mayor and help facilitate or make those things happen. And, you know, it's helped me to win re-election three different times. I was opposed in the last election by somebody who actually ran a real campaign, knocked doors, put out yard signs, and I still won 80-20 in that campaign because my neighbors, you know, throughout the city, they know me, they know who I am, and they know that, you know, my doors open and I listen.

We have a lot of candidates who run for office who don't really get to break through that way. And I believe it's because our communities aren't organized really to be able to support them and help them get there. And so I'd like to see more candidates run who run with this kind of a model of I'm here to represent these people and not these people voted for me. So I'm going to. because they like my message, right? It needs to be the other way around. The message needs to come from the people. And then the person representing them needs to be their spokesperson and who's going to help make that agenda happen. All right. Well, Mayor Robert F. Kennedy Jr., thank you so much for joining us here on Lake Effect and sharing a bit about your work. Yeah, thanks for having me. Brian Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the mayor of Glendale, Wisconsin, and author of the new book, It's All Local, Saving Democracy from the Ground Up. Still to come, we'll tell you about Wisconsin's fire prevention mascot and learn what the DNR hopes it'll teach people about conservation. That's next on Lake Effect. On 89.7, WUWM. Milwaukee's and PR.

This is Lake Effect on 89.7 WUWM. I'm Joy Powers. We all know about Smokey Bear, the iconic mascot for wildfire prevention. But do you know about Torchy Timberloss? He's Wisconsin's very own fire mascot, who recently came out of retirement. Torchy is a devilish-looking flame that dates back to the 1950s. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources says Torchie's image has evolved over the years. Nowadays, he's focused on spreading the message that not all fires are bad. Catherine Cooley is a wildfire prevention specialist, and Michelle Whitaker is a prescribed fire specialist with a Wisconsin DNR. They join Lake Effects Excrit Nunez to share Torchy's story and the benefits of prescribed fires. I got to start off by saying, I am absolutely obsessed with Torchy. Catherine, can you describe what Torchy looks like and introduce him to our listeners? Well, on behalf of the entire fire program, we are all obsessed with Torchy as well. So thanks for the interest. Yeah, so Torchy, Timberloss. He's... Kind of iconic and very unique to Wisconsin. He kind of originated in the 1950s, kind of about the same time Smokey Bear came on the scene. Corchee himself is kind of a little cartoony flame, and that's kind of how he's looked. He has a little bit more friendly look in the 70s and 80s. And like I said, we're trying to bring him back, but obviously with everything, there's evolution, and he's making some changes. So can you walk me through the evolution of Torchie's story? What was his original message or purpose? And how has that changed over the years? So he was originated by Harry Allman. He was a draftsman for the Forest Protection headquarters in Tomahawk. So back in the day, though, Torchie was he was not one of the good guys. He was kind of the anti-smoky, if you will, at the time, a little. evil, devilish-looking creature that was a medist. You know, fire was bad. And at the time, you know, it made sense because post-World War II era, the timber industry was booming. And, you know, a lot of our forces were fighting wars and we're not fighting fires at the time. So fire prevention was was critically important to save the timber industry. But, you know, he made appearances here in Wisconsin and in publications. cartoons, posters, coloring books. And by 1958, the concept kind of ran its course. And Portchie Timberloss kind of disappeared from some printed material at the time. But he also made a comeback in 1978 with Earl Meyer. He was an area forest ranger. Then later became the fire prevention law enforcement specialist for the state. And now we have the current version, which you are seeing.

a little bit more today, kind of still lingering on as stickers or an old poster stacked in ranger stations across the state. Yeah, and you walked me through a bit of his evolution. What does Torchy represent today? Great question. So, you know, again, his original name was Torchy Timberloss. And. We'd like to kind of see the timber loss reference kind of go to the wayside. You know, Smokey did a great job. You know, he over the years, he really, he's iconic, almost too good of a job in some respects because it did kind of deter some of the good fire on the landscape over the last several decades. So, and Torchie's kind of the same. So, you know, again, just more unique to Wisconsin. But so we'd like to see him kind of evolve and change into representing more of the good fire. So you bring up an interesting point about Torchy's message. Michelle, I was wondering if you could tell me more about what good fire is or prescribed fires and why they're beneficial. Prescribed fire is typically designed by a planned application of fire within a set perimeter for a specific reason. It removes that dead vegetation. It provides a free layer of fertilizer because that ash is nothing but deconstructed nutrients for animals, but it's also all of those elements back in the ground to those root systems, whereas before they were just trapped in dead vegetation. So what this does is it not only provides better nesting, foraging, and young raising habitat for wildlife, but it also helps promote these ecological services to humans. There's also a history of this practice in Wisconsin, right? Yeah. So Catherine did mention there was another evolution of Torchy back in the 1970s. And around this time, the science of fire ecology was just emerging. We were beginning to discover that nuance in between the damage of wildfires and what we see as positive effects from the vegetation. So over time, we've also delved into the fire history of the Great Lakes region. And we're also acknowledging the fact that Wisconsin's fire history is really unique. It's not naturally fire based. Our First Nation tribes that existed, you know, for thousands of years in Wisconsin were using fire as a land management tool. They would use it to promote. blueberry growth in forests because that was a huge winter staple crop for them. They would use it for attracting wildlife for hunting. And so they are really the curators of the land that we see today. And so we had to really reconcile with the fact that, you know, all of this emerging science, all of this tree ring research history that has showed us how often these fires occurred, we have to contend with that.

in addition to, you know, the messaging that we've been putting forth all this time. And so the environmental impacts, as Catherine said, you know, both Torchy and Smokey did a really good job and perhaps to the point where we became very knee-jerk about fire totally. And so because of that, you know, especially in our forested areas in Wisconsin, we're seeing oak and pine, which are very fire-dependent species. In the 80 to 100 years that we've been promoting full fire suppression, we are now missing whole generations of trees from that entire era. And so that was one of the main drivers with removing the timber loss side of it, because we do know that prescribed fire is incredibly crucial for maintaining healthy forests and keeping invasive species out and promoting regeneration of those key tree species that we all depend on. So it was just very important that we took out that aspect of it to promote good fire in the forest. But at the same time, you know, we can't just open the Bill Gates and set out running to set everything on fire. You know, there are obviously the reasons for us being safe are still there. And so I think. Torchy has found a wonderful new niche nowadays that we're happy to promote where he is all about burn safety. So it is all about good fire, but we have to be strategic, we have to be planning it properly, and we have to be safe when we conduct it. Thank you so much for touching on that history and that really interesting research. I'm Lake Effects ex-Crant Nunez speaking with Catherine Cooley and Michelle Weteca from the Wisconsin DNR about the department's revamped fire mascot named Torchy. Now that we've talked about the good kind of fires, I want to talk about the bad kind, wildfires. Catherine, can you give me a general overview of what factors cause wildfires in the first place? Absolutely. So the peak of Wisconsin's fire season is in the spring. So shortly after the snow cover disappears, prior to vegetation, greeting up is really that critical time period. That's when we see the majority of our fire starts. 98% of these fires are caused by people. And these are unplanned human cause fires. 60% of these are caused by debris burning. So, you know, folks are outside. And when they have the opportunity to enjoy some beautiful weather and clean up around their yards, they're choosing to burn those materials. So obviously, it's important to consider alternatives to burning that debris. Or if you do choose to burn debris to get proper permits, check the fire danger, and follow the rules on the permit. So a lot of these fires can be prevented. So just to clarify. Is the Wisconsin DNR predicting a high fire danger this year? Yeah, so this year, believe it or not, is actually a more traditional fire season. So we're coming off of two years of kind of some droughty light precipitation winter. So kind of like a snow, you know, a more traditional season kind of starts in the south and moves to the north as snow cover disappears. And this is a better example of that.

But yeah, so we're kind of on par for average fire numbers for this year. Before we wrap up, I want to bring it and tie it back to Torchy. Will we start seeing more of Torchy throughout the state? Well, if I have anything to do with it, absolutely. I just love Torchy. And I, you know, it's one of those things where, and I'll speak to some experience about going on fires outside of Wisconsin. You know, one of the things that a lot of firefighters do is they exchange hats and pins and stickers and patches and things like that. And we just don't have that icon anymore. And we do. We provide a lot of out-of-state mobilization to support other agencies. And it's kind of like our little badge of honor, I think. And I think it would be neat to be able to kind of bring some of that back. But the move to broadening Torchie's message. I think is going to be really beneficial to everybody in the fire management program. Well, I really appreciate you both sharing that history and that badge of honor. But yeah, Catherine and Michelle, thank you both so much for sharing such great information and telling me more about Torchy. Thanks for having us. Yeah, it was super fun. Thank you. Catherine Cooley is a wildfire prevention specialist, and Michelle Whitaker is a prescribed fire specialist with the Wisconsin DNR. They spoke with Lake Effect's excret Nunez. You can hear more of this conversation at WUWM.com. And that wraps up today's show. I'm Joy Powers. If you missed any of Lake Effect this week, you can find all of our conversations at WUWM.com. If you'd like to take the show on the go, you can download the Lake Effect podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks so much for joining us today on listener-supported 89.7 WUWM, Milwaukee's and PR.