Wisconsin’s two candidates for U.S. Senate debated one final time Tuesday night. It took place on WISN-TV in Milwaukee. Republican incumbent Ron Johnson and Democratic challenger Russ Feingold spelled out how they differ.
From the outset, the two candidates made it clear that they would spend a lot of time trying to tie each other to their party’s presidential candidate.
While incumbent Ron Johnson blasted Secretary Hillary Clinton over her private e-mail server, former Senator and challenger Russ Feingold said that Trump is not qualified to be president.
The two candidates debated for 90 minutes on everything from campaign finance reform, to national security to the vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Johnson made it clear that he stands behind not holding a confirmation hearing for President Obama’s recommendation to fill the seat left vacant following the death of Justice Scalia. Johnson says one of the reasons this presidential election is so important is because of the Supreme Court.
“I’ll only vote to confirm judges, not liberal activists, not super legislators that don’t have the fidelity, the integrity to the written law and the written constitution. People like Scalia. And the fact of the matter is, this is why this election is for all the marbles. This is for the presidency, this is for the Supreme Court, this is for Wisconsinites second amendment right to keep and bear arms. To be able to protect their family in their own homes,” Johnson says.
Johnson says that the second amendment right is under assault.
Feingold says Johnson and the others refusing to hold a hearing are not doing their jobs.
“What he’s pretending is that somehow it’s about the next election. But the constitution doesn’t create a three year term for the president, it’s a four year term. He has now broken the all-time record with his colleagues of not having a vote for a Supreme Court nominee,” Johnson says.
It’s been estimated that the next president could be charged with filling up to three Supreme Court seats.
When it came to the topic of immigration, Feingold pushed for comprehensive reform.
“Senator Johnson has used the excuse of only dealing with that problem. You know what, that’s bad for the families. I was just up in Green Bay the other day and a group of Latino’s that I met with talked about how scary it is to try to go to work at some of the companies there because they can’t get a driver’s license. It’s very bad for them, but you know who else it’s bad for, our business climate,” Feingold says.
Feingold says businesses depend upon immigrant labor and failing to pass immigration reform only makes things harder.
For his part, Johnson said that before they could talk about comprehensive immigration reform, the border needs to be secured.
“You need better fencing. Now I don’t think you need a 1700 mile wall, but you can use technology, you probably need more boots on the ground, but what we need is a commitment by the commander in chief, by the president, and we haven’t had that on a bipartisan basis. We have to commit ourselves, and Mike, we have to secure our borders, not only to fix the immigration problem, but public health and safety,” Johnson says.
Johnson says a more secure border would lead to less heroin entering the country.
“I understand what an enormous challenge this is. You know, all of our work on figuring out why our border is so porous. It has to do with our insatiable demand for drugs. And the fact that we let all this heroin coming in dramatically decrease the price of heroin,” Johnson says.
While Feingold agrees that border security is important, he says that heroin addiction has more to do with the use of prescription drugs,” Feingold says.
“We have to make sure that we prevent it. That means making sure that there’s resources to get intervention when kids are still in high school. We have to also make sure that these big companies that have been pushing these painkillers have a little accountability, they have a responsibility here too,” Feingold says.
The race between the two candidates is expected to remain tight. Recent polls show Feingold’s lead is diminishing.
