Rewind: Your Week in Review for June 5

Rewind, your week in review is sponsored by the Wisconsin Realtors Association, bringing Wisconsin communities to life with great homes, businesses, and neighborhoods. The Wisconsin Realtors Association, the voice of real estate. This program is brought to you from the Margaret Farrow Studio. This week on Rewind, your week in review. Candidates for governor have filed their paperwork, who will end up on the ballot? And legislative leaders say there's some chance of another surplus deal. Plus, President Donald Trump is visiting Wisconsin to talk about farmers. All that and more on Rewind Your Week in Review for June 5th. I'm Monty Van Wyckton-Dong. And I'm J.R. Ross. Welcome to rewind. Welcome back. Huge week this week. So we have lots to get through. Obviously, the filing deadline for candidates for this November was on Monday. And so lots that emerged from that. But we're going to really focus on the governor's race. There are 10 candidates, kind of, and you will get into many of the caveats of what this means, but 10 that have kind of emerged. Seven Democrats who have so far successfully kind of gotten. passed the threshold. And then the big question is Kirk Bankstead. He declared a couple of weeks ago, said that he submitted 2,200 signatures. More or less immediately, the Elections Commission came back and said that more than a quarter of them were not valid for various reasons. The signers didn't include their addresses, multiple pages. I think 40 pages didn't have the right election date on them. And so he isn't until Sunday to cure that. But that's kind of the big question is what's going to happen there. So let's just kind of lay the process out. So you have a deadline internal nomination papers. The commission staff will then do a review. The commission staff, as I'm stressing staff, is not the end-all, be all like final word about who's on the ballot. But they do review and say, okay, we're checking these things facially say, okay, you've got this, you've got that, you don't have this. They'll circle problems. So the problems were, for example, on your nomination paper is supposed to say what date you circulated it. Well, that date should match the dates of the signatures. If you write, you circulated April 6th, which is outside of the window in April 15th, that's a problem. You can try and fix it through rehabilitation, which those are due on Sunday. In the meantime, you can also file challenge of nomination papers. Those are due Thursday at 5 p.m. None were filed to Kirk Bankstads, despite multiple problems. So people told me maybe they're so screwed up. They don't think they need to file one because the commission won't put them on. Then, fast forward Tuesday. This is when the commission itself, the commissioners, make the decision who's on the ballot. So nobody's on the ballot just yet. Even if you turn in 4,000 signatures, you're not on just yet. The commissioners don't have to take the commission agency staff recommendations. They can make their own conclusions. So there'll be a memo drawn up. Hopefully Monday afternoon we'll see it, to save us late night reading on Monday, about what these issues are and what they're recommending. the commission then votes. Now here's what it's really interesting. It's split 3-3 between Republicans and Democrats. You have to vote at least 4-2 to put somebody on the ballot. So if you're Kirk Bankstad, right, the Democrats don't want him on the ballot. He is a circus, a sideshow. They don't want him to distract from this debate. Republicans, though, wouldn't mind having Kirk in the ballot because he is a side show. What happens if the commissioner is...

deadlocked 3-3 on Kirk's nomination papers. The Wisconsin Elections Commission, deadlocking? It's never happened before. Then he's not on the ballot. So then you have to go to court and get filed a lawsuit, get a surgery to put you on, everything else. And that's way far in advance. But would Kirk want to spend the money for a lawyer to do this and file a lawsuit? So something to watch. But there are multiple problems. He's got to try and fix them. He actually put a post on Facebook Thursday night saying, hey. I can't find these nine circulators. Can you guys help me track them down? Not so they usually see the campaign. But they can file affidavits say, yes, I missably wrote April 6th. I meant May 6th on my nomination paper. It should be okay. So we'll see that memo says on Monday what they say about Kirk and the affidavits, but that says after you're back on. in the hopper to be on the ballot. That's right. Again, the caveat's that nobody's quite there yet. Then two Republicans, obviously Tom Tiffany and Manski are in the hopper as well. But then, you know, lieutenant governor, secretary of the state, treasurer, all of these offices, the state legislature, Congress. And so you mentioned the challenge route. Lots of challenges, this time around especially around these legislative races. You counted 19, which I think is among the largest. Now, a couple of those 19 apply to the same race, so more like 17-ish races affected. Two, I want to mention. One, Sylviez, remember a Democrat from Milwaukee. She's a Democrat in name, but not in caucus. She left the caucus because she had this falling out above all this stuff with Hispanic Heritage Month, and then her colleagues said she threatened to shoot them essentially, what she said was a poor choice of words, but was it real, that whole long story. The Assembly Democrat campaign committee's executive director has filed a challenge her nomination papers. There's a little bit of dem drama there, right? Two, I'll Russell Goodwin, who's a freshman lawmaker from Milwaukee. His primary opponent has filed a challenge to his nomination papers. Now I talked to Russell who told me this is all about Ryan Clancy, who is a member of the Democratic Caucus, but also a Democratic Socialist. He's been recruiting candidates to run in various races. He told me that he had nothing to do with the challenge of Russell's papers, but yes, he's backing the primary opponent of Russell because Russell voted for the transgender athletes bill that Republicans put forward. Russell also broke with the caucus. Most of the caucus voted for the surplus package. So Clancy called Russell a Republican and Democrat has closed. So it should be a fun day on Tuesday to watch this go down and the debate about who should be the ballot. come November. Yeah, if I had to predict, I would say a lot of our show next week is going to be focused on what comes out of that meeting on Tuesday. And should kind of go a little bit granular onto one of the gubernatorial candidates, Representative Francesca Hong of Madison, obviously a leading contender in the Democratic race. She had a story that came out this week, which is that she had been sued over credit card debts, about $30,000 worth of debts unpaid to Capital One Bank. They took her to court, and according to her campaign, she has paid

those debts. She put out a video where she essentially said, I am not ashamed of having accrued debt over the course of trying to build my business. She owned Morris Rahman here in Madison until 2024. And then essentially tied it into her politics. She's also a member of the Socialist Caucus to say that this is what working people kind of face. And so how big of a deal do you think something like this is for her specifically given where she is kind of in the race on that far left wing of things? In making my calls this week, My impression was with the voters she's targeting the primary, it's probably not a big deal because they feel the same economic pressures that she says she went through with this. But with the electorate at large, probably not great. And the bigger issue might be when she said in a... some podcast type thing that she visited a world without prisons. Now, that may be a wonderful thing to aspire to, but that does not play well in a November electorate, right? Can you imagine the ads they're going to run? If she's the nominee, Republicans would, about pick your divot offender X, Y, and Z. She wants this person on the street, not behind bars. Now, Hong's point was... that aspirationally, she'd rather invest in local governments and mental health services, all the things that would avoid the things that lead people to crime sometimes. The pushback I heard this week a little bit was Jeffrey Dahmer didn't commit his crimes because he was socially or economically depressed, right? There was other stuff going on. For Hong, though, this is the first real scrutiny we've seen of her campaign. It's a sign she's really a top contender for the primary, and you have to look at the nomination papers. They are not the end-all, be-all. But when you turn in 4,000, which is the maximum the commission will look at, it tells me you have an infrastructure. You have an actual campaign. We have volunteers who are coordinated, are going out and getting senators. They're enthusiastic about your campaign. They want to get you on the ballot. They're there for you. Now, it's a big jump from 4,000 to the number you'll need to win the primary. But it's an early test of organization. And some others, you kind of go, well, you turned in 2,300 Mandela Barnes. That's okay. I really trying that hard to show like how organized you are. Yeah, so Hong is really fascinating. I don't know that she's the frontrunner, as Republicans want to make her out to be, definitely a frontrunner and definitely has a path to nomination, especially with seven people, maybe eight whatever happened to Kirk, in the field. The question is for the non... kind of like Hong Mandela Barnes wing of the primary, how do you get there? Sarah Rodriguez, Missy Hughes, David Crowley, Joel Brennan, I know, Kelroy's obviously running too. She's kind of more on that progressive wing too, but my point is Missy, Joel, David, and Sarah all will tell you there's a path to win the nomination. That path gets better if one of the other three drops out. But why would they drop out right now? They've all got kind of the same... starting point. It's worth noting, though, there's a group out there running ads for Rodriguez up to about $600,000 on TV, the digital and cable, I think, so far. The one backing Crowley is about $15,000. The ceremony is good, but is that all there is? Because she touted like $4,000-plus million in backing in a memo back in the fall. If this is all there is, that's not going to happen. But if this is the down payment, maybe you're going to see...

seven figures spent on her between now and August 11th, that would help her a great deal. Right, so maybe that's sort of a slow and steady approach, as opposed to somebody like Hong who has a great deal of enthusiasm around her from her supporters and also a great deal of enthusiasm from the people who don't support her, right? I am not getting sort of angry Republican press releases about things that Joel Brennan is saying, but I get quite a lot of those about Fran, and so coming from sort of both sides, something to watch for sure. We are also kind of starting to hear rumblings that maybe there is a chance that another Another surplus deal could come to the table. Again, I feel like this is the week of a million caveats. Devin Lemayhew came out and said that he is ready to bring that exact deal, the one that already failed, back to the floor if two senators will, quote, get behind the 80% of Wisconsinites who support this compromise. Patrick Tustin is pushing for another vote. What are you hearing kind of behind the scenes? If Tony Evers wants to whip votes and if Demlemy wants to whip votes, then maybe. But I don't get the impression, devil him he's going to whip votes, or that Evers knows a path to whip them among Senate Democrats, or that bridge is even open. So what I mean by that is, the governor we've talked before is not a creature of legislature. He is a guy who came with education establishment. He has not shown a deaf touch in lobbying lawmakers on either side of the aisle to go his direction, other than being the governor and using the bully pulpit. So he beats up the Republicans. They're wrong. The poll show that I'm right. They should vote the way I want them to vote. Hasn't worked very well. With the budget last year, he did engage Senate Democrats because they knew they didn't have the Republican votes to pass a budget by themselves. Senate Dems got some things they wanted. Budget passed. The governor didn't engage Senate Democrats ahead of this being put in the floor of the Senate. Well, to the last minute, really. What did engage him early in the negotiation process? Not even voted for it. So is he going to go like roll up the sleeves, get a staff of all call all 15? What do you need? Can I change anything? If he whips votes that way, maybe. Devin Lemmy has three members who voted know in the Senate well. Is he going to go call Steve Noss and say, hey, do you want some changes? Or Rob Hutton or Chris Cappina? I asked Cappin's office, have Devin reached out? The response I got was basically this is like beating a dead horse. So I don't think Capp's going to flip his vote. So, but yeah, look, these guys try to keep hope alive. Also, I heard from the Republicans saying, Senate Republicans, why give Democrats a lifeline politically when they can use against Jeff Smith in the 31st Senate district this fall and say, hey. Jeff voted against giving you money, like Jeff's a bad person for doing that. Or Robin Vining in the Open Fifth Center District, she voted against the Assembly. Hey, she voted, those are campaign ads. So there's also people like Van Wongard who said flat out after it failed, I am not coming back. So I don't, so I'm having flash weeks to dumb and dumber when I was in college and see that movie. So you say there might be a chance. It's that level of chance right now that they're going to get this thing done, I think, before they get the fault. Barring. Evers or Donahubing votes. I won't read too much into the title of that movie. As we are recording, Donald Trump is on his way to Wisconsin. People watching this may have already seen that event, but we're previewing it as a Friday morning. So he's heading to Chippewa County. He is coming to talk about farms and farming. But this is sort of in the context of some...

really significantly low poll numbers. His overall approval at 38%, even lower for how he's handling the economy, how he's handling inflation and the cost of living. And there is some split now among Republicans in their support for him. Still very sort of die-hard support from the MAGA crowd, but increasingly, Republicans who don't kind of, who aren't right or die for him in the same way, are starting to pull away from him a little bit. So what do you make of this visit and what it means for Derek von Orden, for Tom Tiffany, for the Republicans who have really... align themselves with Trump up until this point. They need him, but they also need to keep in arms linked sometimes. So first part is, look, Derrick Van Orden underperform Trump in 2024, the only GOP incumbent house allegation to do that. He needs every MAGIS supporter he can to turn out in November. Looking at the environment, those guys are unhappy about gas prices, diesel. a war in Iran, like, is it a war, is it not? Is it over? I'm not sure. But these things that are promised to happen are not happening. Prices going down, not just not going up as much, but going down. That's not happening. Now, Gasted drop with four bucks a gallon this week in Madison, so maybe it's on a better trajectory for them. So you need the MAGA folks, but the swing voters aren't real happy. So how do you navigate that? That's a challenge. But if you get motivated enough, Maybe it helps. So we also have no choice. Donald Trump is the Republican Party. You look at his record in primaries. He is driving the train. You need him to get his supporters enthusiastic. Tom Tiffany needs his congressional district in the third turnout for him this fall. They need Donald Trump. But will Donald Trump be a weight on them come November with these other voters? You know, they might have went over. You know, I've covered enough Trump events to know that just because he says the theme of a visit is about XYZ, let's say farmers, that he might not necessarily stay super on topic. But I'm also really interested in that message specifically to farms and two agricultural parts of the state because that was obviously a huge part of his. base in 2024, we were seeing also declining numbers among farmers. And so what is he going to do in order to kind of shore up their support, not just for him and his agenda, but also for candidates in the area, whether they stay home or continue to come out in force for Republicans. So that'll be really interesting to pay attention to. A couple of things out of the Supreme Court this week. There was... A hearing yesterday, they took testimony about the possibility of changing recusal rules. I feel like we've talked about this forever because obviously there have just been significant, these huge, huge dollar figures around Supreme Court campaigns. I was reading into the history of this. I did not realize that 2007, 2008 was seen as like this astronomical period of court spending. And of course, the last couple of years have just blown that out of the water. And so they're kind of... talking about, again, Caviads, talking about considering studying whether they should change these recusal rules. Let's take a look at some of the testimony that took place yesterday. The petition is described as something, you know, quote-unquote toughening recusal. So who are you thinking should recuse that isn't recusing and under what circumstances? For example, SEIU, they spent...

According to public records, $140,000 campaigning against me. I sat on the case. They gave $400,000 plus to the Chief Justice, she said on the case. Is that problematic? None of us, no, neither of us seem to think it was under those circumstances. Who should have recused when, under what circumstances? What problem are we actually trying to resolve? The problem we are trying to resolve in part. is the public perception that the court can be for sale. It isn't a universal perception, but it is a broad-based perception. And part of the problem is there is very little discussion by this court when they choose not to recuse. So, end result, they voted five to two to send this to a committee to study later. But what were sort of the arguments? What do you think could come from this? Well, we have recuse the rules now, and nobody's recusing, really. So how is this going to change? And then, two, there's an interesting argument that if you're trying to target campaign donations, are you chilling the free speech of the illegals in the legal community who might go before the Supreme Court? That's a good question. And two, how you'd navigate the whole, like, ad thing? So there's express advocacy, vote for, vote against, oppose support, those magic words. issue advocacy. So if I do an issue ad about a justice, which is really about the campaign, but not using the magic words, do I get caught up in this rule? It's really going to be kind of a challenge to figure out something. But yeah, there's, I mean, look, this year's race wasn't that expensive. Still blew the 08 race away away, race away. $150 million in 2025, 65 in 2023. Like when the stakes are high, like there's money there. That's only like anything we've seen before. And yes, when people for the court, they go, am I getting a fair shake because they vote in a block? Quite off, is that because of the influences or because of ideological preferences? You know, that's up to them to say, but it's definitely a factor in the perspective of the court, the view of the court that they are, the hot-dollar race is a very partisan anymore. The jerseys are on, not just a black robe anymore, the Supreme Court. Yeah, one of the arguments I thought was really interesting. You know, obviously we pay attention when there's an Elon Musk or J.B. Pritzker or U-Line or, you know, one of these kind of... huge donor figures that come forward, but they also talked yesterday about just simply attorneys who get involved in these cases and where they would kind of fall in line there. And that's one of these kind of wonky details that I think not everyone knows, which is that it's really only a handful of attorneys who kind of go up before the court again and again. And so what does that mean for their influence? So just one of these kind of nerdy, wonky things that could have. significant, you know, repercussions. Also, last week shortly after Scott and I taped, actually not that shortly after, it was a bit of a Friday afternoon news dump. There was a decision in this redistricting case, not about redistricting, but that the Supreme Court is going to hear the non-competitive gerrymander case that the three-judge panel said that they did not have the authority to take up. Really kind of scathing decision.

should say, a dissent from Justice Rebecca Bradley. And astonishingly, activist court will once again revisit precedent. It doesn't like in order to do the bidding of its political masters. Justice Rebecca Dalit then filed a concurrent just to address that directly and say, we're just taking up the case. We are not prejudging in any way. So what should we expect? So they're not going to decide the maps with this appeal. What they're going to do, they're being asked to do is. The people who are challenged on maps want them to send this case back to a three-judge panel and actually have an actual trial. So remember, there's all about 2000 on the law Republicans authored that would set up this process that if there's a challenge to a map, the Supreme Court shall appoint a three-judge panel. That panel shall hear the whole thing, and then it goes up to Supreme Court on appeal. The issue is that the Supreme Court under the old conservative majority in 2022 basically said you can't have a partisan jury made a claim. sorted out in state courts, which reflects the stance of the U.S. Supreme Court. There's new sheriff in town, and so they're hoping, the one's challenging, the U.S. State Supreme Court, now a four three-level majority, which is going to be five, two, will say, actually, you can talk about competitiveness and parties of gerrymandering in a challenge of a map. And so it's okay, a three-judge panel, to take testimony, have a trial, reach your conclusions, send it back to us. There'll be appeal, we assume. Then they'll come back to us, then what final say. The bottom line is this. There's going to be a new map in Wisconsin, one of two ways in the next two years. People tell me, or bet. One, Dem's Win a trifecta, Assembly, Senate, Governor's Office. There'll be a new map, because you can redraw a map if you haven't had one authored by the legislature mid-decade. I know it'll be like the end of that decade, but the map in place was court-drawn. Ergo, there's a chance to draw one. Whether it's this case, a new lawsuit, at some point there will be a vehicle for the state Supreme Court. People argue that they will draw a new map, whether it's because it's anti-competitive, because of the part. There'll be one. That's the prediction. Now, again, people hate to predict what courts will do, but there's this vibe going on legal circles of there's be a new map somehow in Wisconsin after 2026. Certainly not this November, we should say. down the road. Kind of quickly, there was also a really significant environmental settlement. From what I understand, it is the largest settlement that the state has ever argued for entirely itself. Wisconsin Department of Justice sued Tyco fire products in Marinette County over PFAS contamination, and they came to a $10 million settlement. There are a couple different pieces to it. Tyco has to invest $10 million into Wisconsin's PFAS Trust Fund. They have to provide clean water to residents facing PFAS pollution of private wells for 20 years. Sampling shows that 236 of 776, so like a third of wells tested by this company in that area, have PFAS levels above state health advisory levels. They have to establish cleanup goals and work to restore the environment in that area, and they have to continue monitoring and reporting on groundwater and surface water quality in the area. So an environmental settlement, but obviously with huge political implications. Yeah, and interesting, both the governor and Josh Kahl are touting this thing. Call, obviously, is running for election this fall, the governor is not. So if we're called, it's something to kind of talk the environmental community, hey, he's still working on these things. Yeah, so that'll be interesting to kind of see also how it is implemented. And then it's been, you know, obviously the trust fund. There was quite a lot of work to get to the place of building that trust fund. And so to see also the Republican responses from folks in the affected communities.

The different side trying to claim credit, I think, is always really interesting. That brings us to the Stock Report and rising this week in a literal sense is UW tuition. So we're going to go up 2%. So fourth year in a row that they voted to raise tuition after a decade-long freeze. So they'll be surprised our politics that factor in this a little bit. Part of it is the governor's race. So Tom Tiffany came out and said that he opposed this, that if he's elected, he'll try and freeze tuition now. If you are with the university, you're going to say, hey, we went through a decade-long freeze. We weren't able to convince you guys lawmakers, give us lots of money to compensate for that freeze. We are behind. We've got all these things that are going on. We were forced to raise tuition because of the neglect in their minds for a decade. Republicans will tell you they were kind of happy that it was under the Evers watch that the freeze went away because their hands were clean. Basically, they knew you couldn't freeze it forever. But they didn't want to be the ones who lifted it until, like, Evers said, okay, we'll take it away, but now it's the Evers Regents who are raising the tuition. For Tiffany, you're making it pitch to younger voters of, I will try and help you. I don't want to, like, say that no young voters like Republicans write or anything, but you can look at polls, and even though they went for Trump a little bit in 24, they're not there for Trump in 26. If you're a Republican, you need a pitch. And this fits in the affordability pitch from Tom and Tiffany of, you know, utility prices are too high, tax is too high, 400-year property tax increases coming off because of Evers and now you got a college affordability one. It's a decent message for them. How do Democrats message this thing be interesting? What's their response going to be about tuition going forward? But people will tell you that during the freeze, parents liked it because it saved them money on tuition when they get the U.S. system. And very fair. Next this week is Harry Waite. This is one of these election integrity activists who requested absentee ballots on behalf of Robin Voss and the mayor of Racine, Corey Mason, and he was convicted of felony election fraud and was sentenced this week. He faced up to, I believe, seven years in prison. What did he get? Deprobation. Not bad for a felon. Now look. You know, Harry Waite's part of this crowd that has raised a number of claims, to put it nicely about the 2020 election that maybe aren't true or based in reality. But there's this kind of cult of celebrity around him that he's fighting a good fight against election fraud. And there is, you know, an issue with my vote that you can go request his ballot. Now, the commission will tell you there are checks that if he had sent these ballots in, if he'd filled them out, sent him in, they would have found them. Okay? You know, I don't know how we're assuring that is for some people, but they say they're checks. He got convicted of this felony. He kind of went to the judge and was like, you're going to be nice to me or not? Like he wasn't really very conciliatory. He said he would do it again in a heartbeat. I think he told others don't do it because I got like $130,000 or legal bills. Otherwise, show no remorse whatsoever. Now, I have not been convicted of a felony in my lifetime. If I am, I might show remorse and be nice to the judge before I am sentenced. He went the other direction and got three years probation. And talk to some people in the legal community to look. He's a nonviolent offender. First time offense, this was a political act in nature, which he says he's a whistleblower, so that all factored into what came out of it.

Mitchell Berman, Berglis, George Santos, the other guys, they're really a threat to Brian Stile right now. Yeah, no, I think that there's a reason why Donald Trump is going to be in western Wisconsin today and not southeastern. But we will have lots to talk about from that visit and many other things next week. Until then, I am on Even Wyton Dogg. And I'm J.R. Ross. See you next week. This program was brought to you from the Margaret Farrow Studio. Rewind, your week in review is sponsored by the Wisconsin Realtors Association, bringing Wisconsin communities to life with great homes, businesses, and neighborhoods. The Wisconsin Realtors Association, the voice of real estate.