Less than a month away from the Democratic Party Primary on Aug. 11, four counties held a gubernatorial forum at the Belmont Convention Center this past Saturday.
The forum, organized through the collective efforts of Democrats in Crawford, Grant, Iowa and Lafayette counties, hosted former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, Representative Francesca Hong (D-District 76), former Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Administration Joel Brennan and State Senator Kelda Roys (D-District 26), all of whom are vying to challenge Republican candidate Tom Tiffany in November. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who dropped out of the race in early July but returned last week following Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez’s departure from the race, was not in attendance.
“We have such an incredible slate of candidates — any one of them could defeat Tom Tiffany,” said William Garcia, chair of the 3rd Congressional District Democrats of Wisconsin.
Current Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez was originally announced as one of the participants; however, she suspended her campaign the day before the event.
The forum was organized around four blind questions. Each candidate received one question to answer as well as a seven-minute introduction and a five-minute closing statement. The questions addressed crucial issues impacting the state, including school funding.
Hong said that she wants to fully fund public schools and work to “responsibly end the voucher program and make sure we’re not pitting our communities against one and another through the cycle of endless referenda.”
Roys agreed with fully funding the public school system and ending the voucher program, adding that she wanted to change the funding formula for public schools because it “disadvantages our high-needs communities.”
“We are pitting property owners against public schools in community after community,” said Brennan. He promised to end the current school funding model and move toward “something that puts kids first,” including special education and English language learners.
Brennan advocated for transparency in how money is allocated through the vouchers. He pointed to a district in the Green Bay area that informs the residents how much of their money goes toward the schools who utilize the program.
Roys said she’s in favor of eliminating artificial intelligence (A.I.) from schools, increasing protections for people from algorithmic software, and getting rid of one-to-one Chromebooks for Kindergartners to 8th grade. “Our kids need to be learning how to talk to each other and write a paragraph, not learning how to make a PowerPoint and find A.I. images.”
Brennan also added post-secondary education to the mix, saying Wisconsin has traded innovation for cost savings.
“We have decided to demonize public school teachers, demonize universities [and] under-invest in technical schools in Wisconsin. This is who we’ve become and what we have the opportunity to change,” he said.
Healthcare for Wisconsinites, particularly in rural parts of the state, is another hot-button issue the candidates commented on during the forum.
Roys said that access to high-quality healthcare should not be dependent on a person’s job or financial situation. She claimed to have a different solution than her opponents.
“My plan is Trump proof; it doesn’t require funding or permission from the feds. It takes what’s working about Wisconsin’s healthcare system, which is the healthcare I and [Hong] enjoy as State employees, and opens that up to let anyone buy in,” she said.
Barnes supported Roys’ plan; however, he said there needs to be a public option to drive down costs and increase competition in the market. He called the expansion of BadgerCare a “responsible first step” to keep residents covered.
Brennan said fixing healthcare will require more than expanding BadgerCare. “One of the first things we’re going to do when I’m governor is cover every kid up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level.”
Brennan claimed as many as seven percent of Wisconsin children don’t have health insurance. “That’s the state we live in now.”
Barnes advocated for medical cost transparency and the expansion of Medicaid.
“The Big Ugly Bill has made it very difficult for Medicaid expansion for states that haven’t done it, but we have a responsibility to do it here in Wisconsin,” he said.
He added that the closure of rural healthcare facilities has had a drastic effect on Wisconsinites in those areas and has made the state less attractive for people to relocate.
“A couple of things people are looking at where they’re going to move [are] the quality of the school and also access to healthcare,” he said. “There has been a healthcare crisis in rural parts of the state for longer than I’ve been in the legislature.”
Hong echoed the need for substantial changes to the current system, saying, “It’s not enough to extend BadgerCare and have that public option; we must invest in rural healthcare initiatives but also take on corporations and mega hospitals that are continuing to raise healthcare costs.”
She said the governor of Wisconsin had to be willing to take on private equity that is “closing hospitals and buying up homes in our community and making it unaffordable to live.”
Tax plans and cutting corporate tax breaks became a major talking point during the forum.
Hong referenced legislation she introduced to increase the tax rate for earners making over $1 million by 17 percent and increase the rate an additional 0.9 percent for those making $1 billion or more. She pushed for a “fair tax bracket” over a flat tax that “ensures that those who haven’t been paying their fair share finally do.”
She added that it was important to ensure taxes generated in Wisconsin go back to the communities to fund public services. “We are living in a rigged system where corporations and billionaires profit off the work we do in our communities when the money should be staying in our communities.”
Roys highlighted her position on the State Senate’s Joint Finance Committee as crucial experience for addressing the tax system.
“That experience is important because the governor’s first job — besides assembling a team — is to write a state budget, and I know where the Republicans have been hiding our money in the corporate tax breaks and corporate tax cuts to multi-millionaires and billionaires,” she said.
She argued for raising the minimum wage to between $15 and $20 an hour and restoring public- and private-section bargaining rights as part of her economic plans if she were elected.
“I think you’ll find that many of the candidates in this primary share values that Wisconsinites carry, but we have to be willing to take on corporate control and power — be unafraid to regulate in order to build permanent affordability across our state,” said Hong.
The intent to excise corporate tax loops includes targeting the benefits given to data center projects.
“Right now, the data centers built across the state are exempt after 2023 from paying sales and use tax. It is costing our state $2 billion. That is money we need back in our state by removing that exemption and making sure those funds go into infrastructure that we need,” said Hong. She claimed to be the only candidate in the race who supports a moratorium on the construction of new data centers.
Roys blamed Republican legislators for choosing to give the tax breaks but also said there “is a lot of disinformation about data centers.”
“I know some people want a full-on ban or a moratorium on data centers,” she said. “There’s a data center in downtown Madison that powers the operations of our 9-1-1 centers, so we’re going to have to have some data centers, but what we will not have is data centers or anyone else polluting our state, exploiting our workers and natural resources and not paying their fair share.”
Roys claimed her plans would stop the development of unregulated data center projects. She said Wisconsin could use executive authority through agencies like the Department of Natural Resources and the Public Service Commission to enforce existing regulations to protect consumers and the environment.
“We can also immediately pass the strong regulation bill that has 49 Democrat representative co-authors,” she said. “That bill has protections for our workers so that any jobs go to Wisconsin-based union workers. It has protections for our environment, especially our water.”
Roys said putting local municipalities in a better bargaining position through shared revenue is another important component to dealing with data center developers. “If people have to make decisions about closing pools or libraries or not being able to pave or plow the roads, of course they’re in a desperate position... we should be negotiating from a position of strength.”
Each of the candidates encouraged voters to investigate their platforms further via their individual websites at mandelabarnes.com, brennanforwi.com, keldaroys.com and francescahong.com.
