Joy Powers: This is Swing State of the Union — a podcast all about Wisconsin and why it’s so important to U.S. politics. I'm Joy Powers.
Sam Woods: And I'm Sam Woods. Thank you so much for joining us. The Nov. 3 election is just weeks away. And in some ways, it’s already here. Early voting is underway, and right now Wisconsinites are deciding who will lead us into our next chapter.
Powers: This season on Swing State of the Union, we’ve been talking about the issues voters are thinking about as they consider whose policies will make Wisconsin a better place to live.
But there’s one big concern underlying all these issues: affordability. According to the Marquette Law School Poll, it’s the number one issue on the minds of voters — by a wide margin. But understanding affordability — and what it means to different people — is complicated.
Woods: In this episode, we’ll revisit some of the Wisconsinites we’ve gotten to know over this season to learn what affordability means to them.
We’ll explore who has power over prices, the emerging technologies that could deepen the affordability crisis and the policies that could help Americans who are struggling to get by.
The politics of affordability
Donald Trump (During speech at Peterbilt Motors factory in Denton, Texas): You know, they always come up with these words, affordability. So the fake news starts using it, because they're partners with the Democrats. And the fake news would say, oh, they say it all the time to me, “What about affordability?” And I'm saying, “What about affordability?”
Powers: Everyone is talking about affordability. And despite President Donald Trump’s claim, the issue isn’t new. So-called “pocketbook” concerns are a perennial topic in elections — especially midterms, as journalist JR Ross explains.
JR Ross: All you see over and over again in polling is that affordability are driving the conversation. And that happens all the time. My experience in politics is, if people feel good about the economy where they're at, then other issues really kind of pop up. But when the economy is the number one issue, it's really about how do you feel about your pocketbook? How are you dealing with your job? Can you afford your way of living, or have you got to cut back?
Powers: In fact, Trump’s last campaign had a heavy focus on affordability.
Ross: Go back two years ago, Donald Trump came to Wisconsin and said, “Joe Biden’s to blame for inflation. If you elect me, costs will go down.” I remember at one rally, he said, “Your utility bill will be cut in half the first year that I'm president, if I'm put back in the White House.” Well, that hasn't happened.
Powers: There are many reasons that prices have gone up, as we’ll explore in this episode. But the numbers are stark.
Ross: Diesel at a record high. The Fed’s increased interest rates. Mortgage rates are up about seven percent. Everything keeps going up. It's created this anxiety among voters who just want a break, right? They want relief.
Powers: Affordability is connected to many of the issues we’ve looked at ahead of this midterm election.
An Eau Claire farmer and single mother faces a difficult season
Woods: Let’s go back to some of the folks we’ve met this season, to hear how rising costs are affecting them.
We’ll start with Pa Thao, a farmer near Eau Claire in western Wisconsin. We spoke with her about the many financial challenges she faces as a small-scale farmer.
Pa Thao: The reality of that is that it's a challenge. Small farms across Wisconsin are hard to maintain. We don't make a lot of money. And we really rely on the direct-to-consumer connections, to sell a lot about produce and a lot about items that we bring from the farm to the community. So like, farmers markets are really important for us.
Woods: Pa’s family depends on these farmers markets to make money. Now, they’ve had to cut back on the number of markets they go to, because the price to get there has skyrocketed.
Thao: Gas is expensive, so we don't travel far for markets. We used to go all the way up to Duluth on Thursdays for markets. We used to go to Bering every Sunday. And so we’ve really dialed down on the number of markets that we go to.
Woods: Pa has five kids. She had hoped to have a summer full of activities for them, but then she lost some of her expected income. That’s because of an abrupt end of the federal program that helped bring her bring her produce to local food banks.
Thao: It's a lot to juggle, right? With a growing family, with kids’ activities. And I kind of feel really bad as a mom this year, because I know that it was going to be a challenging summer for us. And so, I intentionally didn't sign up my kids for a lot of summer activities. Like they each did get to do a camp for, you know, a couple of days, or at least a week — so they have something to like report back on when they go back to school, because I don't want them to be the only kid in the classroom that didn't do anything all summer.
Green Bay teacher and father feels inflation impacts
Powers: Green Bay teacher Shane McDonough shares her pain. We met Shane because of his fight to get better funding for Wisconsin schools — a fight inspired by his own children. But like Pa, he’s worried that rising prices are affecting his kids’ ability to thrive.
Shane McDonough: I've got three very hungry teenagers. I'm not talking about just consuming food here — the thirst for knowledge, for experiences. And as a parent, I want to help provide as much opportunity as I can. Everything has gotten more expensive. Everything seems to be exponentially more challenging.
Hunger Task Force CEO weighs in
Powers: Pa and Shane aren’t alone in struggling to afford necessities. At the Hunger Task Force food bank in Milwaukee, CEO Matt King is seeing more and more people coming to them in need.
Matt King: Prices have gone up all around us. And wages that working families are receiving have not been able to keep up with the high cost of living. And so, that's what we're seeing is more and more people coming to seek food assistance — in particular, young families who are feeling the strain, and then also older adults who are on a fixed income. And, meanwhile the cost of everything around them has gone up.
Powers: The Big Beautiful Bill enacted sweeping changes to SNAP, or FoodShare as it’s called in Wisconsin. The bill cut federal funding for the program in half. Since then, according to the Food Research & Action Center, more than 5 million people nationwide have lost their SNAP benefits.
Waupaca mother fears losing SNAP benefits
Woods: And Cindya Gullickson is afraid she could become one of them.
We first met Cindya because of her fight to save the labor and delivery unit at her local hospital. Cindya has both SNAP and BadgerCare, Wisconsin’s version of Medicaid. And it’s a status she refers to as “on state.” While the programs have added stability for her family, the political landscape has put that in jeopardy.
Cindya Gullickson: You never know when the next person in office is gonna start taking things away from you and your family. And that comes with healthcare and food and everything, where it's like, being on state, you never know something's gonna happen. Because I feel so grateful and lucky to be on state, because I get my healthcare covered, and I get a good chunk of my groceries. It doesn't cover everything, but it covers enough that it helps, you know? It helps a lot.
Woods: The Big Beautiful Bill also created stricter eligibility requirements for SNAP and Medicaid. Cindya says these programs were already difficult to access, both for her and her community.
Gullickson: So many of my friends who are working like nine-to-fives and they can't afford food. And they can’t get on SNAP because they're just above the poverty line. That's how I grew up, where my dad worked at the foundry right here in town, a mile that way. And he made just enough money that we couldn't be on state, and we couldn't be on food share. But we were struggling more than I am on food share and on state — because the resources just weren't there, when you're making just enough money, but you're working your life away. Like, he worked so hard and ruined his body at a foundry job to support his family, and we still couldn't afford a lot of the basics.
Undocumented immigrants and the economy
Powers: There are millions of people in the U.S. who pay into these safety net systems, but don’t benefit from them: undocumented immigrants, working and living in our communities.
As federal immigration enforcement has ramped up, many undocumented people have felt pressure to stay hidden or self-deport.
Christine Neumann-Ortiz: Government knows how much people are contributing to our social security system, contributed billions to our Social Security system — which they cannot qualify for unless they're able to adjust their status in the future.
Powers: That’s Christine Neumann-Ortiz. We met her in our episode on immigration.
She heads Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant rights organization based in Milwaukee.
Neumann-Ortiz: Local, state, federal taxes — everything that goes towards money, towards schools, healthcare, roads — immigrants are contributing that. Or even just going out and buying groceries, you pay sales tax when you make your payment, you know? Kids in the school system, immigrants in Wisconsin have been a critical part of keeping rural communities alive. You know, if we want our communities to do better economically, immigrants have always been an important part of making our communities better.
Powers: As migrants have become increasingly fearful of immigration enforcement, many are exiting the workforce.
Neumann-Ortiz: We know that immigrants make our economy stronger. Here in Wisconsin, 80% of the dairy workers are undocumented. That's a critical part of our workforce. And that essential workforce is in other industries as well. So ,if we want to lower housing costs, why are we going after construction workers? Why are we going after dairy workers?
Data centers and rising costs
Woods: One of the biggest issues this election season is data centers. Part of why so many Wisconsinites are speaking out against them is fear over rising utility costs and taxes.
That was clear at a Sheboygan Plan Commission meeting where a data center moratorium was up for consideration.
Meeting Attendee 1: I know my electric bill is going to come up.
Meeting Attendee 2: They must assume the full cost of all the electricity that they use and make their own facilities.
Meeting Attendee 3: All of our taxes are going to be raised again.
Woods: Whether we’re talking about data centers, farms, education, immigration or healthcare, affordability always comes up. But why does life seem so expensive for so many Americans right now?
Wisconsin wages lag behind inflation
Powers: While conversations about affordability tend to focus on rising costs, there’s another culprit that isn’t mentioned as much: wages.
Laura Dresser: One in three families are struggling to hit just that basic list of expenses with the jobs they have in this state.
Powers: That’s Laura Dresser. She’s the associate director of the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dresser has been compiling the jobs report for the organization for 30 years. She describes it as her "oldest child" that just won’t go away.
Dresser: Yeah, it’s never gonna move out of my house, it feels like. I don’t know.
Powers: Over the past three decades, she’s seen ups and downs in the job market. And right now, she sees storm clouds on the horizon.
Dresser: In terms of the negative signs, the most significant one really is the rate of job growth. This is true nationally, where it's ground to a halt, but still is positive, but also in the state of Wisconsin — where we remain below November 2024 levels of employment. We were generating jobs steadily across that pandemic recovery. Really strong job growth across that period. That has basically ground to a halt.
Woods: Although unemployment has remained relatively low in Wisconsin, there are some exceptions. Black Wisconsinites had a steeper increase in unemployment last year, which Dresser says is an early indication of what’s to come for all Wisconsinites.
And when job growth stagnates, she says that gives employees less power in the workplace.
Dresser: The unemployment rate really matters for people who aren't working, right? Because it's about how hard to get in the job it is. But it really matters for people who are working, because they know how long the line at the door is, more or less. Right? So if you want to bargain for better wages, or better hours, or time off to go see your kid play soccer, when the unemployment rate is lower, workers have that power, a little bit more power.
Woods: This shift in power in the workplace comes at a time of historic inequality between the haves and have-nots.
Powers: According to the Economic Policy Institute, worker pay hasn’t kept up with inflation since the 1970s. Incomes for the top 1 percent have risen almost five times faster than the bottom 90 percent.
Dresser says that’s a key issue.
Dresser: When we focus on the question of prices and the unaffordability of living, we tend to come up with solutions that are focused on lowering the prices in some way, or otherwise dealing with the price side of things. And one of the things that makes the price unaffordable is low wages. When wages don't keep up with inflation, like this year looks like it might be, or like in 2022, that's the structural struggle is that the first question is: what are you paid?
Powers: And the federal safety net has been degraded. Medicaid, SNAP and even healthcare subsidies were created to help people lift themselves out of poverty, while meeting their basic needs.
Woods: Making these programs harder to access means workers are having to put more of their money toward necessities, leaving less money for everything else.
Dresser: The ways that we support lower-wage workers — food supports, Medicaid — those budgets are shrinking. Even the way that the Obamacare marketplaces have become so much more expensive, that's for workers at every level. There's just a lot of expenses coming at folks that are actually the product of federal policy, even as they're struggling to make ends meet.
A decline in public investment
Woods: Andre Perry, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says this erosion of investment in the public is a policy choice that didn’t start with the Trump Administration, but has accelerated during his time in office.
Andre Perry: We're talking about wage stagnation. We're also talking about higher prices in key areas, like tuition and childcare. So this is a long-term issue.
Woods: Perry is one of the authors of "The States of Affordability," a series of reports on the economic realities facing people throughout the U.S. He says the state of affordability is directly related to the choices politicians have made on how they’re investing our tax dollars.
Perry: Over the years, we've sort of moved from direct investments into people and direct investments into corporations and speculation, for instance. We see tax breaks. We see incentives for business growth. What we don't see is tuition subsidies. What we don't see are healthcare benefits, a single-payer system.
Policies that could address the affordability crisis
Woods: Perry points to different policies that could help working families, like publicly-funded childcare, healthcare or college.
Powers: While none of these would completely solve the issue of affordability, they could be a part of the incremental changes needed to help everyday people.
Perry: We can make dents in all of this. Nearly 38 million households could make ends meet if wages increased by $10 an hour. Plus, an additional 10 million households would make ends meat if costs decreased by $500 a month. So we know that this is an issue that can have remedies, that there can be relief — particularly on the income side. If families earn more money, they'll be able to afford basic necessities.
Powers: These financial stresses on families can feel overwhelming and isolating. But Laura Dresser wants people to know: they’re not alone.
Dresser: I hope that folks understand that the struggles to make ends meet are broadly shared.
Powers: We’ll explore some policy solutions to affordability after the break. But first, we’ll look at an emerging trend in pricing that’s allowing companies to make more money than ever before.
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Rising costs: Iran, tariffs and greedflation
Woods: There are a lot of reasons why prices have been rising nationwide, as economist Lindsay Owens will tell you.
Lindsay Owens: The war in Iran is certainly one of the biggest. The pressure that it is putting on energy prices, not just showing up at the pump, but rippling throughout the whole economy. The cost of transportation to get goods to market, to get groceries in the grocery store.
Woods: And of course, there are Trump’s tariffs.
Owens: The cost of imports is up, and companies pass that right along to consumers. There are some supply chain issues that can put upward pressure on prices as well.
Woods: But those aren’t the only reasons. There’s also corporate greed.
Owens: A lot of these macroeconomic conditions provide a sort of cover or fog of crisis that companies then exploit, right? You think it's the war in Iran, not a company reaching further and further into your wallet.
Woods: Despite companies claiming hardship from the tariff regime, corporate profits are at an all-time high. Today, they represent nearly 15% of the nation’s GDP — the highest share on record since 1947.
Surveillance pricing
Powers: Corporate greed is nothing new, but there are new technologies that allow companies to exploit people at scale, personalizing prices to find exactly how much you’re willing to pay at that very moment.
Owens: Children's museums charging you more for admission on a rainy day, when you're trying to shelter from the storm, like I am as a toddler mom. Expedia charging you more for a hotel room if you log on from a wealthy neighborhood. Walmart patenting a new technology for smart carts that raise the price of mayonnaise once they see that you've bought tuna. All of these sort of ways in which new technologies are supercharging. An age-old impulse, which is to overcharge you, or nickel and dime you.
Powers: That’s called “surveillance pricing,” and it’s one of the subjects of Owens’ new book, Gouged: The End of a Fair Price — and What That Means for Your Wallet.
She says that in some ways, we’re returning to an earlier time before the price tag, when people would haggle for goods: individual prices for each person.
Owens: It was the Quakers who said haggling felt unfair to them. They thought the Puritans were greedy with their haggling. They wanted everyone to have an equal price at the checkout line. They implemented a fixed price. The price tag offers transparency. It facilitates competition. It was also equitable. You and I saw the same price tag. We paid the same amount for the same items.
Woods: Today, pricing has become a highly-engineered science that calculates a buyer’s financial pain points.
There are a variety of tools companies can use, but the goal is always the same: making the most money possible.
Owens: We have dynamic pricing, pricing that changes in a nanosecond on electronic shelf labels and grocery stores. We have surveillance pricing or personalized pricing. This is the nefarious practice of spying on you to overcharge you, two things Americans really hate. How does this work? Companies collect data on you, a breadcrumb trail of your purchase history, what you put in your shopping cart, what you click on, even what you hover over, maybe the geography that you're logging in from, where you are. Are you near the store? Maybe you're more likely to make a purchase. Let's raise the price. You've already taken the trouble of driving here. We've probably got you. All of those types of personal information, then deployed in the service of setting a price.
Woods: The result? People are being bilked — not based on the real costs associated with goods, but based on how much a company or algorithm thinks they’ll pay.
Algorithmic price-fixing
Woods: Then, there’s price-fixing — essentially, coordinating with other companies in your industry to keep prices artificially high.
Owens: How would you do price fixing before new technologies? You would gather up all of your competitors, and you would get in a room, and you would come up with your new price, and you would lock arms and promise to charge it. And you would figure out a way to enforce it and punish defectors. These days, you can accomplish those types of pricing alignments in actual markets that are quite diffuse, through algorithms. Algorithms really cut down on the coordination costs.
Woods: Price-fixing is illegal, but enforcement is spotty.
Powers: Take the example of RealPage, a real-estate technology company that was helping landlords align their prices. The coordination led to rent hikes in cities throughout the nation. RealPage encouraged landlords to list ever-higher prices, while discouraging or preventing them from lowering prices.
The Department of Justice under the Biden Administration opened a case against RealPage. But when the Trump Administration took over, it settled the case without any financial penalties.
This issue comes at a time when there is little competition in the marketplace to begin with — as consolidation has led to fewer companies holding the reigns of our economy.
Owens: In the last couple of decades, 75% of industries in our economy have gotten more concentrated and less competitive. This is a major problem for our economy, but it is a particularly acute problem during the cost of living crisis, because of course, more competition helps keep prices competitive and in check.
Powers: Algorithmic price-fixing further degrades that check on high prices.
Owens says she’s concerned about what the future may hold for Americans if nothing is done to curb this problem.
Owens: It's really coming for every line item in the household budget. We see companies like Instacart running experiments on millions of Americans while they shop for groceries, testing the outer limits of what they can charge us for every single item in our grocery basket. We see company like RealPage creating price optimization and revenue management algorithms that they can use to help landlords coalesce around higher prices for rents. We see in the travel industry for your vacation, surveillance pricing being used in airlines and hotels.
Woods: So to recap: prices are climbing higher and higher. While there are some concrete reasons for that, like the war in Iran and tariffs, corporations are also exploiting people through algorithmic pricing. The federal government has been eroding public safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP, while wages are failing to keep up with inflation. Average Americans like Pa Thao, Shane McDonagh, and Cindya Gullickson are just trying to get by and make a better future for their kids.
And Donald Trump is accusing Democrats of making up the word “affordability.”
Woods: So who has the power to change this? Who has power to address the affordability crisis?
Powers: Affordability is a complex issue — and the solutions are equally complex.
When it comes to algorithmic pricing, there are different levels of government that have the power to stop or regulate it.
Owens: There is a really burgeoning and flourishing policy environment right now at the state level. We have seen dozens of new pieces of regulation this year to rein in algorithmic pricing and surveillance pricing.
There have been laws passed in New Jersey, in Connecticut, in Maryland and most recently in Seattle. There is legislation sitting on the governor's desk in New York. Colorado actually passed a very strong legislation, and unfortunately the governor vetoed it there. But there is a lot of movement on this at the state and local level, and I think that's really promising.
Efforts to address the affordability crisis in Wisconsin
Powers: Here in Wisconsin, Democrats in the legislature have introduced at least two bills addressing surveillance pricing. But neither have garnered the necessary support from Republicans. Wisconsinites will be voting for their representatives in the Legislature this November.
Owens says this type of regulation has also stalled at the federal level.
Owens: For now, most of the legislation at the federal level is partisan. It's introduced by Democrats in the House and the Senate who don't control either chamber. So it just doesn't have a lot of opportunity to move.
Woods: Many Republicans oppose limits on algorithmic pricing, although there is no uniform position in the party. But most bills on the issue have been authored by Democrats.
Raising the minimum wage in Wisconsin
Woods: Another way to address affordability is to increase pay. Laura Dresser from the High Road Strategy Center says Wisconsin could start by raising the minimum wage.
Dresser: The state minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Of our neighboring states, only Iowa is the same. In fact, the tip credit is even higher in Iowa, so you could say that Wisconsin, among the neighboring states, has the lowest wage floor. Illinois is at $15. Michigan and Minnesota are well over $10. That's a policy that affects a lot of workers at the bottom of the labor market.
Investing in housing, higher ed and healthcare
Woods: The State of Wisconsin could also start investing more in its people, as Andre Perry from the Brookings Institute suggests.
Perry: Without question, housing is the largest ticket item for many. But for many, they will easily say, “Oh, child care is out of control.” They'll say, “Tuition, you want us the compete in a global economy and go to a college. Well, where are my options there?” And so there are big ticket items, and we've got to solve for. Now, housing is going to be difficult, but if we can increase that supply and provide more opportunities for affordable housing and ownership, yes, we will improve those conditions.
If we create policy that will give families a publicly subsidized option to go to college, yes, then we won't have to take out these loans. If we can get to a healthcare system that allows for a single-payer system, where people have an option there. Then people won't put more and more of their discretionary income into healthcare. So there are real policy solutions out there, but it will take people at the local level demanding change.
Powers: Some of these solutions seem worlds away from our reality in the U.S. But many of them have worked in other countries.
Tiffany vs. Crowley on the affordability crisis
Powers: So how does this relate to what’s on Wisconsinites’ ballots this November?
In the race for governor, both candidates have run on this idea of affordability — but their definitions and solutions are very different.
Republican Tom Tiffany is campaigning on an eight-point affordability plan, and most of the points focus on taxes. Among other things, Tiffany wants to lower property taxes, create a new tax cut for families, remove taxes on tips and prevent new sales taxes.
Woods: On the flipside, Democrat David Crowley is campaigning on direct investments to communities and families. Crowley wants to build more affordable housing, expand access to Medicaid, create state-subsidized childcare and raise the minimum wage.
These are two very different visions for Wisconsin’s future. Wisconsin voters have the power to decide which one they want to see.
Perry: The power rests in the voters, but it's important that they know what those legislatures as well as the governors can do to reduce costs and increase incomes.
Powers: And that’s what this season has been all about: giving voters the tools they need to understand what they’re voting for.
A shift in responsibility
This season, we’ve explored many of the issues that voters will be thinking about as they head to the polls. We’ve shed some light on who has the power to address them, what they’re proposing and what’s possible.
Woods: But what’s also become clear is that the burden of finding solutions for the problems that plague our communities is often falling to local officials and regular people, like Pa Thao, Shane McDonouga and Cindya Gullickson — instead of politicians.
Powers: Local governments are deciding whether to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to data centers when big tech comes calling.
Woods: Farmers are figuring out how to get by, as federal funding stalls.
Powers: School districts and school boards are going directly to taxpayers, asking for more money to keep the lights on.
Woods: Immigrant support groups are trying to find ways to help migrants, as pathways to citizenship continue to disappear.
Powers: Individual people are fighting to keep their access to healthcare.
Woods: And as Americans struggle to make ends meet, our politicians are often failing to meet the moment and protect communities before it’s too late.
Takeaways from this season of ‘Swing State'
Powers: So Sam, what are your big takeaways this season?
Woods: I think, first and foremost, I want to talk about the people we met along the way. You know, your Pas, your Shanes, your Cyndias, your Hasnahs, your Daniels and your Sarahs. We met a lot of helpers. And we met a lot of people who are either following a higher calling, or are mission-driven in some way. You know, whether that’s Sarah and Daniel trying to preserve what they love about Sheboygan and showing up to a city council meeting to make that known. Whether that is Pa Thao, raising five kids while holding on to a way of life that was passed down to her. Whether that's Shane McDonough, who's suing the state, saying that the state funding, school funding formula is unconstitutional. And then of course, Cindya and Hasnah, who may have been more kind of thrown into helping. But they are helping nonetheless.
There's a couple of moments that really stand out, and they come from Hasnah and Cindya —when we asked them to recount some really traumatic moments in their lives, and they're laughing through it. They are laughing through it. And I think the people we met along the way are examples of Wisconsinites that want to help, feel a little overwhelmed, but are going to continue helping and are gonna continue finding a way to find some kind of power to bring the world that they envision to reality.
So what are your takeaways?
Powers: I think, going through this season, it became really clear just how much people are burdened. As you said, a lot of the people we spoke with are really trying to make their communities better. They're trying to make the things in their lives better. But at the same time, the issues they're facing are really complicated. As we got to in this piece, it's not just education funding that's impacting Shane. It's the economy. It's not just the single program that was ended that impacts Pa Thao's life. It's all of the other things around it that make her life a little bit more difficult.
And when you see all of these people really grappling with kind of the weight of the world, it's this reminder of, you know, we used to have more help. There used to be more help. And we're entering a landscape in which the federal government, especially, is pulling out of a lot of these systems that have really been holding up different parts of our community, different parts of our of our world. And as we've seen the federal government moving out — and even the state government, in some cases — that weight, this responsibility is being pushed further and further down.
But, in a lot of ways, it's this kind of illusion of power, because at any moment, the federal government can come in and does come in sometimes to say, “Well, no, no no. You can't do it that way. We don't want you to regulate things that way.” So it's an interesting moment to be living in, in which we both see these larger systems, these larger powers, pulling out of our communities, but also forcing themselves back in. It's this larger conversation that can make people feel powerless, which is kind of what this season has been all about: who has power? When you look at the world right now and the issues that we've talked about in this season, who do you view as having power?
Woods: Oof. Well, I'll start again with the people we met along the way and the problems that they're trying to solve, so to speak. So, you know, we can name our Pa Thaos, and our Cindya Gullicksons, and our Hasnah Hussins, and Shane McDonoughs, and everyone else in between. And we've talked about that they have a feeling of responsibility, but are kind of running into the limits of their power in different ways.
But the problems they're facing are harder to define. Like, who's the one on the other side? Is it the federal government? Is it the state government? Is it someone trying to build a data center — your Metas, your Microsoft? Is it, you know, the healthcare industry at large? But their power is very real. When answering who has power in Wisconsin, it seems to be very dependent on issue and time and place. And it seems kind of in flux and undefinable right now.
Powers: Yeah. You know, one of the things that I think I learned from this season is that a lot of this power, at least the power of the average Wisconsinite, is at the ballot box. And I know that sometimes that can feel a little dismissive or disempowering, but this is what elections are for. Elections are meant to find the people who can fix things, who can make our world a better place — whatever that means for the person who's voting. And so, really, the people who have power are the average Wisconsinites who go to the ballot box and figure out who is best to lead our state. And it doesn't have to stop there. It's not as though an election is the end-all, and now things will be better. That's often just kind of the starting place. But especially right now, I think it's one of the most powerful tools that we have at our disposal.
Woods: Yeah, I was just gonna say it's a tool in the toolbox. It's not the only thing you have to get the job done, but it is there. And it'd be silly not to use it.
Powers: Well, this has been Swing State of the Union.
Thank you for listening to Swing State of the Union, a podcast from WUWM, Milwaukee's NPR — a part of the NPR Network. I’m Joy Powers.
Woods: And I’m Sam Woods. Swing State of the Union is edited by Becky Mortensen and Emily Files ,with digital support from Michelle Maternowski, Cherita Booker and Graham Thomas. Erin Bagatta designed our logo and episode art.
Remember: election day is Nov. 3.
