On April 14, seven major Democratic candidates running for Wisconsin governor turned out for an online forum held by Citizen Action of Wisconsin.
Citizen Action is a 42-year-old state organizing group that campaigns for health care and more recently, climate change and racial justice.
Questions for the candidates ranged from the affordability crisis to pausing new construction on AI data centers. Here are some takeaways from the candidates' responses.
Candidate answers have been edited for length and clarity.
If elected, how would your approach to governing differ from your predecessor Tony Evers?
Former lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes: I know that we can all agree that the president has failed to make anything better for anyone who’s not himself. He’s added an extra billion and a half dollars to his personal wealth in one year alone in the presidency. But if you aren’t him, if you aren’t in his immediate family, his inner circle or one of his wealthy donors chances are you too have been left behind. And that’s what’s at stake right now.
State Representative Francesca Hong: The moment that we are in right now is a movement moment and movements require a coalition builder…The crisis of working class people’s lives require policies that will move at scale and speed, universal policies like universal childcare, fully-funding our public schools, ensuring that there is paid leave for all and fair, cheaper accessible health care.
What specifically will you propose to make quality health care affordable and accessible?
Former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes: My health care plan, that I introduced last week, is focused on three things: cost, access and quality. When it comes to cost…there are so many different impacts whether it's just money not being able to be spent back into our economy or whether it is folks withholding themselves from getting care. My plan proposes a public option that would expand Badger Care and make it available for any Wisconsinite to buy in and also make sure that we have support for lower-income folks so they can also access healthcare.
State Senator Kelda Roys: Of all my good friends on this panel, I’m the only one who’s expanded access to health care. I was the vice chair of the committee on health in 2009, the very last time we expanded Badger Care coverage in this state to 80,000 previously uninsured Wisconsinites…It is important that we be honest with you, the voters, because of the changes in the federal budget bill that [expanded Badger Care] is off the table for Wisconsin. My plan does not rely on a permission slip from the Trump administration. It opens up the state health insurance plan, the very same plan I enjoy as a senator to anyone to buy in.
If elected, will you rapidly develop and implement a concrete and accountable bill to meet the global greenhouse reduction targets?
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley: I would require annual emissions reporting and carbon scoring on every major project we’re going to be doing in this state. Because if we’re going to be spending our taxpayer dollars, we should also understand what the impact will be on our environment and what those long-term savings could be. But I would also launch a Green New Deal for public schools making sure that we retrofit buildings, lower utility costs, and we have to look at how we can put more renewable energy on rooftops all across our state.
Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez: We’ve got to do more for [green] infrastructure in the state. It’s not just for our future generations, but we also have a very large outdoor tourism economy in the state and if we want to be able to protect and grow that. We have to make sure our water is clean, that if you’re going to fish in our lakes, if you’re going to fish in our streams and rivers that you can actually eat the fish that you’re catching. These are the kinds of things we’re going to need to be focused on as governor and looking at that larger plan to make sure that we’re carbon neutral as the state. And we’re going to need leadership at the state level because clearly we’re not going to see it at the federal level.
Do you support raising the Wisconsin minimum wage to $20 an hour, automatically indexing it to inflation annually and removing state preemption on local minimum wages, which are higher than the state floor?
Former secretary of the state Department of Administration Joel Brennan: Even if we were to increase the minimum wage to $15 to $20 an hour…the people who are working in childcare now are making $14 to $16 an hour. By the end of June, the resources that have been propping up the childcare system here are going to go away and we’re going to have a full-blown crisis there. Even if we were doing that [paying a higher minimum wage,] there’s a whole sector in our work force that we’re failing them and they’re supposed to be doing some of the most important things we can. So yes, we need to make sure we’re working on this and we need to make it sustainable for the long term.
Barnes: The biggest criticism we got when we were protesting for $15 an hour for a union...is they said it would increase inflation. Inflation has happened and costs have driven up exponentially while people are still being paid the same amount of money… Wages not keeping up with inflation — that also is tied to the declining union membership because of attacks on union membership launched by bad-faith Republican politicians. So yes, we have to increase wages and restore collective bargaining rights for public and private sector employees.
Do you support pausing data centers building until comprehensive guardrails can be established…both for building data centers and their long-term operation?
Crowley: If we say no, especially without a framework, my biggest fear is these projects moving somewhere next door – moving to Michigan, Illinois or Minnesota – who would have fewer protections, fewer regulations and it’s still going to affect our air and our water because it doesn’t stop at the border. But if we do make this decision that we’re at least open to these data centers, we need a framework and quite honestly we need to set the strongest standards in the entire country. We need to make sure that every data center in Wisconsin will be required to be run on 100% renewable energy and make sure that they pay the full cost of any infrastructure upgrades, that they use union labor, that they meet strict environmental standards at the same time because we have to protect our environment.
Hong: Yes, I support a pause [on AI data centers.] We right now…do not have the enforcements that we need on polluters to hold them accountable. We need time to be able to implement the regulations and to protect our natural resources and that is going to take time and legislation…No NDAs, ensuring that ratepayers are not going to be seeing an increase in their utility bills. We’ve also introduced a 2% rate cap bill, where we would ensure that ratepayers do not pay more than 2% of their monthly salary.
You can watch the full candidate forum on Citizen Action's Facebook page here.
