Steven Potter:
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, Sarah Godlewski. Thank you for joining us.

Sarah Godlewski:
Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Steven Potter:
So you're currently the Wisconsin state treasurer. Why do you want to be a U.S. senator?

Sarah Godlewski:
I never thought that I would be standing here as a state treasurer let alone as a U.S. Senate candidate. But when I was looking around Wisconsin this past year, I was seeing we were number one in firm bankruptcies for three years in a row, I was watching our democracy be attacked and at the same time, families were struggling to pay their bills while corporations were making record profits. And what was Ron Johnson doing about any of this? Not a dang thing. I just couldn't sit on the sidelines and had to get in this race because it's clear working families in Wisconsin needs a voice at that U.S. Senate table. Someone who's going to fight for whether it's the cost of childcare or lowering the price of gas or making sure we have affordable senior care or taking care of the environment. And those things are not happening with Ron Johnson and I want to change that.

Steven Potter:
If elected, what would your legislative priorities be?

Sarah Godlewski:
We need to look at the economy. You know, we're one of the worst states when it comes to personal income growth, we need to make sure that families are able to pay their bills, own homes, make sure that they can afford childcare and senior care. And I think there's a lot that the Senate can do because we've seen these companies profit but yet no one's holding them accountable to lowering the price of prescription drugs. And the other thing I think that's incredibly important is we're a freshwater state. We care about our environment. I mean, we are the state of the Earth Day. Senator Gaylord Nelson started that holiday here and yet we are seeing PFAS, these forever chemicals that are poisoning our lakes and our rivers. You know, only 20% of our state runs on green energy, the rest runs on brown energy. And as a leading state for manufacturing, we have real opportunities to create jobs and actually lead when it comes to the clean economy.

Steven Potter:
Inflation has reached a 40-year high. What action should federal lawmakers take on inflation?

Sarah Godlewski:
For starters, I think something that we need to do is suspend the gas tax, the federal gas tax, to give some relief for working families at the pump. But we also need to be holding these fossil fuel companies accountable because they're making record breaking profits. And at the same time, fossil fuel companies are getting these tax subsidies of billions of dollars. It's ridiculous, but I think we can't stop there. You know, the other big thing is we've got to lower the price of prescription drugs. We're one of the only modernized countries that can't negotiate drug prices. So we as taxpayers pay for it on the front end to develop these drugs but then on the back end, we let pharmaceutical companies price gouge us. That's not right to, you know, as the only working mom in this U.S. Senate campaign, I will tell you we need to lower the price and make childcare more affordable because 54% of our state is in a childcare desert. And if we don't have a place to send our kids, this is a real struggle to actually be able to participate in the economy.

Steven Potter:
There have been a number of major mass shootings and an uptick in other gun deaths as well. How should the U.S. Senate address gun violence?

Sarah Godlewski:
We need to do more when it comes to common sense gun safety legislation. 80% of Wisconsin wants common sense gun safety legislation. Where do we start with common sense gun safety legislation? Well, for starters, we need better background checks to make sure that who's actually getting access to these guns because domestic abusers are getting guns and that's a problem. And the final thing is we don't need weapons of war in our community. You know, I come from a family of hunters. And as my dad says, if you need an AR-15 to go hunting, go back to target practice. And so these are just to me common sense ideas and common-sense solutions.

Steven Potter:
The Supreme Court has overruled Roe versus Wade. What should the U.S. Senate do on the matter of abortion?

Sarah Godlewski:
Well, for starters, the U.S. Senate should be prioritizing this and quite frankly they should have been prioritizing it a long time ago. I think what I have been very frustrated about as the only woman in this U.S. Senate campaign is how the Senate has had 50 years to make Roe v. Wade the law of the land. And now with this recent overturning of this important piece of legislation, we have seen that now women in our state are being sent back to 1849. And we now have fewer rights than we had just a few weeks ago. We should ensure that every woman has the ability to make her own reproductive freedom choices because that's what this is about. This is about reproductive freedom. And the fact that that's been taken away is going to affect millions of lives in our state.

Steven Potter:
How would you reassure Wisconsin voters to have confidence in the election system?

Sarah Godlewski:
A few things that we need to start doing for example is stopping the attack on voting rights, making voter registration automatic. We need to expand hours and make it easier for folks to vote, not harder. The other thing we need to do is we need to end partisan gerrymandering. I don't think politicians should be picking their voters. And that's what's happening right now in Wisconsin. The other thing is we need to get dark money out of our state when it comes to politics as we've seen millions of dollars pouring in. And finally, when it comes to how we conduct our elections, I think we need to have national standards in how we're auditing our elections and reviewing them so we can ensure these Gableman investigations do not become the new status quo moving forward.

Steven Potter:
Ron Johnson has been elected to this seat twice. Why are you the candidate who can beat him in November?

Sarah Godlewski:
I am the only candidate in this race that has run and won two successful statewide campaigns. The first campaign I ran was to save the state treasurer's office, led that constitutional amendment where we took 62% of the vote. And then when I ran in 2018 for state treasurer, I was a political nobody from Eau Claire. I had never run before. And everybody told me there was no way I could win, but in 2018 I actually flipped more Trump counties and took more of the vote chair than the governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. And so look, we know winning is not going to be easy, but it takes a 72-county candidate to win. I'm able to really represent values across our state, able to listen and talk to everybody and build trust and demonstrate this record of accomplishment. And so just like I've done my entire life, supporting our state and serving for the public good, that's exactly what I want to do. And why I want to serve in the U.S. Senate for Wisconsin.

Steven Potter:
Sarah Godlewski, thank you again for joining us.

Sarah Godlewski:
Thanks for having me.