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Announcer:
The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production. You’re watching “Here & Now” 2024 election coverage.

Frederica Freyberg:
Deadlines loom as parties rush to submit their proposed voting maps to the Wisconsin Supreme Court and a state medical marijuana proposal ushers in a new legislative season.
I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” we hear the latest on expected remedial voting maps and how to get them in place in time for the 2024 elections. Plus, predictions for the upcoming election season with our political panelists, Bill McCoshen and Scot Ross. A report on solutions for surviving in today’s dairy farming industry and remembering Herb Kohl. It’s “Here & Now” for January 12.

Announcer:
Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered both parties in the legislative districts case submit their own remedial maps by today, along with evidence to back why theirs comports with the opinion ruled on by the court last month. The liberal side which brought the case before the court called it a ‘fantastic decision,’ while the side defending the state’s GOP-drawn maps called the case ‘pre-decided.’ The state’s high court ruled Wisconsin’s legislative maps are unconstitutional because half of all districts are not contiguous, having islands of territory nestled inside an adjacent district. In a motion to reconsider, the parties backing the Republican-drawn maps said the accelerated timeline needed to have new remedial maps in place, “failed to give the Legislature a reasonable opportunity to redistrict and apply the court’s newfound contiguity rules and leaves insufficient time before the 2024 election deadlines commence.” They also accuse the court of being “largely quiet on respondent’s arguments” and not giving them “a full and fair opportunity to litigate this case” or “be heard on proposed remedies.” Mark Gaber, attorney for the Campaign Legal Center, the leading group bringing this lawsuit, pushes back on these arguments.

Mark Gaber:
States all across the country have these annexations the same way that Wisconsin does and they don’t have any problem having districts that are fully contiguous. The Wisconsin Supreme Court is not ordering a quicker schedule than what we see in the normal redistricting case. This is just the way they all are and certainly the parties are all having the opportunity to brief issues and have argument and submit maps. There’s a process with independent experts and so it’s really a robust process that the court puts in place. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has done is adhered to the letter of the law and said that when it imposes a plan, a new map, it’s going to be done in a way that does not put a thumb on the scale in favor of certain Wisconsinites over other Wisconsinites.

Frederica Freyberg:
The Wisconsin Supreme Court just rejected the motion for reconsideration. For more on the process moving forward, we turn to Barry Burden, professor of political science at UW-Madison and director of the Elections Research Center. Thanks very much for being here.

Barry Burden:
Glad to be with you.

Frederica Freyberg:
So, as we’ve mentioned, the deadline for submitting new maps was today. There are the Legislature’s maps and the governor’s maps. What happens now?

Barry Burden:
Well, parties will have submitted the maps and then those parties can offer responses to the maps from the other side over the next week, so those reply briefs will come in in the next seven days and then essentially all of that material gets handed to the two consultants that the court decided would evaluate the material and they have until February 1 to do their work.

Frederica Freyberg:
So at what point would the governor, for example, have an opportunity to veto the Legislature’s maps?

Barry Burden:
Yeah, that’s a little unclear to me. The parties in the case may submit proposals today, but it seems very unlikely that there would be a full legislative process. So I think we’ll just have to wait and see what gets submitted. My guess is that the executive branch and the legislative branch will have different ideas and will submit maps essentially separately without bothering with much of a legislative process.

Frederica Freyberg:
And yet this is on a major fast track.

Barry Burden:
It is moving very quickly. The decision came down on December 22nd just before the Christmas weekend. The court hopes and the Wisconsin Elections Commission hopes to have everything done by mid-March so that maps are in place before the August primaries later in the summer. So it is moving at a good clip.

Frederica Freyberg:
Is it expected, in your minds, that the court’s consultants will actually draw these voting maps from scratch in the end here?

Barry Burden:
I think that’s likely, but there is a lot of ambiguity in the court’s order. It said that the consultants should evaluate the maps that are proposed by the parties in terms of whether they meet all of the traditional criteria plus the additional criteria of having no partisan impact. But the court has not defined what they mean by that. I think the consultants have some good concepts to rely on from work they’ve done in other states and academic work on measuring the bias in maps, but they will have to come up with standards essentially to evaluate whether those criteria are met. It seems unlikely that any one map would meet all of the criteria in a clear black and white way and so the consultants will probably be led to produce some kind of maps of their own.

Frederica Freyberg:
So as to the criteria, what will the maps have to look like for the court’s approval here?

Barry Burden:
Well, they will meet the criteria that the maps have met in the past. For example, having equal populations in each district complying with the federal Voting Rights Act to ensure the voting rights of racial and ethnic minorities, trying not to split counties and municipalities unnecessarily. This time around, it will also have to make sure there aren’t any separated pieces of territory. All the districts need to be contiguous in a kind of literal fashion on the map and then this additional criteria they’ve added of no partisan impact, meaning the map looks sort of neutral or the way an uninterested party would have produced the maps. So my guess is the districts will look somewhat different from the ones we have today. They will certainly shake up where incumbents end up because that’s not part of the consideration for the mapmakers.

Frederica Freyberg:
So thrown out was this requirement of ‘least change’ from the last go-around.

Barry Burden:
Yeah. That was a major statement in the court’s opinion that they didn’t want to essentially reaffirm the existing biases in the map and they demanded that the maps be drawn from scratch in a way that is politically neutral, so not advantaging one side or the other and adopting a ‘least change’ approach they viewed as essentially locking in existing biases in favor of Republicans.

Frederica Freyberg:
What is the expectation that the remedial voting maps will, in fact, be in place in time for this year’s elections?

Barry Burden:
I think it can happen. This is a new process for the state Supreme Court. They’ve not produced maps in this way before. It’s an accelerated time schedule so it needs to be done essentially within the month of February to have everything in place in early March. I think it’s very possible for consultants to do that. I think it’s a question of how fast the court can operate when it evaluates the maps it ends up getting from consultants but given the technology and the familiarity with all of the interested parties here, I think maps can come together pretty quickly.

Frederica Freyberg:
In the end, how might remedial maps change the political landscape in Wisconsin?

Barry Burden:
I think the number one effect will be shaking up incumbents. Districts today are drawn with incumbents in mind. They are players in the process in the state Legislature so they have their own interest in mind. There are some parts of the state where incumbents’ home addresses are very close to one another and yet the districts have been drawn to ensure that they’re in different districts. So we should expect lots of places where incumbents get thrown in together into the same districts or are forced to make hard decisions. I think that impact will be bigger than the partisan impact which will surely advantage Democrats, but not probably put both chambers immediately up for grabs for both parties.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Barry Burden, thanks very much for your expertise.

Barry Burden:
Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:
And then there were two candidates left to go up against Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary, as Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis debated this week and Trump held his own town hall. For some 2024 election season predictions, we turn to our political panel, Republican Bill McCoshen and Democrat Scot Ross. Thanks for being here, both.

Scot Ross:
Great to be here.

Bill McCoshen:
Thank you for having us.

Frederica Freyberg:
Bill, I’m going to start with you and ask about Donald Trump. He continues to dominate. What is that allure on the part of Donald Trump even as he faces so many criminal charges?

Bill McCoshen:
Honestly, I think the criminal charges have helped him with his own base. Over the course of 2023, he got stronger, not weaker. Twelve months ago, Ron DeSantis was within striking distance of him and today, Trump is up by 20 or 30 points, depending on the poll you’re looking at. So what I’m looking for on Monday night, Fred, is expectations. So Trump is up on the Des Moines Register poll by over 20 points. He released his own poll this week that has him up by 30. I’m not sure I would have done that if I were him because if he comes in less than that, he doesn’t meet expectations. DeSantis has to win Iowa to exceed expectations. Coming in a close second is okay, but it’s tough to figure out the chess board for him, what his next move is after that. For Haley to get momentum out of Iowa, if she beats DeSantis and takes second, all of a sudden, she’s got momentum into a state that she might potentially win, which is New Hampshire.

Frederica Freyberg:
Scot, what do you think Donald Trump’s allure is?

Scot Ross:
I think he is an unstoppable force inside of the Republican Party. Every poll he’s been up. At least in the state of Wisconsin amongst Republican voters for the last — I don’t know, since last September, he’s up 50% over all the challengers and so I think — what it is, you know he is holding the party hostage. They have, for the most part, readily accepted that. Stockholm syndrome. That can win him a primary, but it ain’t going to win him in November because Democrats and independents have rejected him time and time again, particularly in the battleground state of Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:
Do you think, Bill, that Donald Trump will carry Wisconsin in the primary?

Bill McCoshen:
It’s hard to say. He didn’t win the primary here in ’16. Ted Cruz did. He did win the general here in ’16 but then he lost here in ’20. I don’t know that he’s done enough in the suburban areas to bring suburban women back to his coalition. There’s work to be done. Part of that effort might be who he picks as his running mate if he’s ultimately the nominee. If it’s still a competitive race when it gets to Wisconsin, my money would be on his opponent.

Frederica Freyberg:
Scot, do you feel as though younger dems are disenchanted with Joe Biden?

Scot Ross:
Absolutely not because they know what’s happened as a result of Trump and the Republicans having charge of government. Abortion rights are gone. There’s an attack over and over again on LGBTQ people. President Biden is the only president who has tried to really do something about student loan debt. They also appreciate the fact that they have access to healthcare as a result of Joe Biden. So, no, I don’t think there’s any sort of — I don’t think — the alternative is so far worse and I think that students are smart enough to know that and I think in particular we’re going to see that, for instance, in the third c.d. where they’ve got six four-year UW campuses, a bunch of two-year campuses. I think that’s going to be the thing that takes not only Derrick Van Orden down, but also Donald Trump.

Frederica Freyberg:
Where do you think, Bill, young voters stand between Donald Trump and Joe Biden?

Bill McCoshen:
I think the war in Israel is dividing them, right? You’ve got a lot of pro-Palestinian voters who would normally be in the Democratic coalition who are showing up at Tammy Baldwin events. They’re showing up at other Democratic senators’ events and they’re showing up at Joe Biden events. That’s going to be problematic for him. I’m not sure there will be as much energy with young voters in November of this year as there has been in at least last November’s election. We’ll see, but they’re disenfranchised with where this administration is heading, which could be good news for Republicans if we have the right message to attract them.

Frederica Freyberg:
Scot, is Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin unbeatable?

Scot Ross:
Wow. Well, she has been so far, that’s for sure, and there isn’t a real challenger to her yet. It’s because of her record. It’s her record of accomplishments, bipartisan agreements on things like, you know, manufacturing, buy in America. She is a leader on reproductive freedoms, which is going to be huge for her in a Senate race, especially when she’s paired against possibly the most antichoice candidate that we’ll ever see if we get Hovde or David Clark. But again, I think Republicans are the ones who are in disarray here because they don’t have anybody to go up against a sitting senator.

Frederica Freyberg:
Do you think that Tammy Baldwin is formidable, Bill?

Bill McCoshen:
No question she’s formidable. She’s tough. Anyone who thinks otherwise on our side isn’t looking at her electoral history. She works hard, she does phenomenal on constituent services. Where I think her greatest — I think she has two vulnerabilities. Number one is Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. Can she run ahead of Joe Biden if she needs to? Maybe. Ron Johnson did run ahead of Trump here in ’16, but it’s pretty rare for a U.S. Senate candidate to run ahead of the top of their ticket. She may need to do that in order to win. Secondly, I think the border is a real issue for Democrats writ large. If they don’t solve that between now and October, for example, I think that’s going to be a strong vulnerability for her.

Frederica Freyberg:
What about that issue of immigration?

Scot Ross:
I think that it is a red herring that’s designed to divide people, white people against people of color. It’s something the Republicans have done for decades and decades. While I do definitely agree with what Bill said, Senator Baldwin has been at the top of the ticket before. She won by 11 points in 2018 and Governor Evers had won by just one point, so I think she has an entire possibility of being the lead of the ticket. The problem is that — sorry, the thing we have to do is remember what happened in 2016. Hillary Clinton’s campaign gave up in Wisconsin. They gave up on Michigan. They did a half-hearted job in Pennsylvania. That ain’t ever going to happen again. Democrats are going to have the resources and I think it will be a good Democratic victory in November.

Frederica Freyberg:
So I want to —

Bill McCoshen:
Well, the thing to remember is only one statewide incumbent in America lost in 2022, the governor of Nevada so beating a statewide incumbent, regardless of party, is very difficult.

Frederica Freyberg:
So Bill, I want to talk about the recall effort against Assembly Speaker Robin Vos launched this week ostensibly for his opposition of Donald Trump and failing to impeach Meagan Wolfe. What does this say about the schism in the Republican Party in the state?

Bill McCoshen:
I think it’s a small faction in the 63rd Assembly district who disliked the speaker for one reason or another. It’s destructive. Anyone who is watching this program that lives in that district should not sign those recall papers. Republicans shouldn’t be fighting Republicans. They should have their aim focused at Democrats. They’re going to be running on new maps this fall. There’s a presidential race. There’ll be competitive congressional races. We don’t need to be wasting resources fighting our own team before then.

Frederica Freyberg:
Scot, 30 seconds left. What do you make of the Vos recall effort?

Scot Ross:
I think — I can’t believe that the Republican Party would reject a thrice married real estate guy who is in court all the time. So it’s shocking to me. It’s terrible for democracy. Vos hasn’t done anything that’s recallable and the challenge will be swatted away like Bill says. But, again, division on the Republican side.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. We leave it there. Thanks very much, Bill McCoshen, Scot Ross.

Bill McCoshen:
Thank you.

Scot Ross:
Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:
In agriculture news, a small but growing number of Wisconsin dairy farmers are embracing robotic milkers amid difficulties maintaining a workforce, ongoing market swings and uncertainties over an updated Farm Bill. “Here & Now” reporter Aditi Debnath has more on what this technology means for the future of Wisconsin dairy farms.

Tina Hinchley:
It has been life changing ever since.

Aditi Debnath:
This December marked five years since the Hinchley family moved their herd of nearly 300 cows to a new barn with robotic milking machines.

Tina Hinchley:
So it’s been life changing because being able to go in and just check on what cows we need to focus on and not have to focus on every single cow has been so beneficial to my physical health, but also my mental health.

Aditi Debnath:
In addition to a few part-time student employees, the Hinchleys have just one full-time staffer since automating processes like milking and feeding.

Tina Hinchley:
Typically, we end up with high school or college students because we are close enough to Madison, but there has been times when it’s been difficult. Hopefully, she’s going to be an amazing milk girl.

Aditi Debnath:
No longer tied to milking cows herself twice a day herself, Hinchley says both she and her cows are happier with the robotic milkers operating 24 hours a day.

Chuck Nicholson:
It’s not necessarily something you would have to do in order to stay in the dairy business.

Aditi Debnath:
UW-Madison professor of animal and dairy sciences, Chuck Nicholson, says only about 8% of Wisconsin’s dairy farmers have implemented the new technology. Typically family farms that want to save on labor costs.

Chuck Nicholson:
The labor shortage is definitely a key motivating factor.

Aditi Debnath:
The high-tech collars fitted to each cow send about 130 different data points about each animal directly to Hinchey’s smart phone.

Chuck Nicholson:
There are other benefits that farms get from adopting these robotic milking systems. They can include better milk production, more milk per cow, better animal health, improved milk quality.

Aditi Debnath:
While many Wisconsin farmers are considering the impact AI may have on their dairy production, Nicholson says 75% of Wisconsin farmers said they have not and will not implement robotics on their farm.

John Rosenow:
When we built this, I told the people that were designing it and stuff that I don’t want any moving parts. You’re always here this time of year. You know that?

Aditi Debnath:
John Rosenow manages a 600-cow herd in Buffalo County.

John Rosenow:
It’s our kitchen window. I put it there because before when we were hiring local people, I needed to see the parking lot. So who didn’t show up and if somebody didn’t show up, I had to go down and cover for him.

Aditi Debnath:
He struggled to find reliable labor before hiring his first immigrant employee nearly 25 years ago.

John Rosenow:
Since we’ve hired Mexicans, I never have to do that anymore. I could live in town, because they always come on time and they’re here on time.

Aditi Debnath:
Rosenow founded the nonprofit organization Puentes which bridges the gap between farmers and their immigrant employees by sending them both to meet the employees’ families in Mexico. He says he’s never considered robotics because of his commitment to his human resources.

John Rosenow:
I like seeing — in Mexico, the different homes and stuff that they’ve built and they’ve educated their children. They’re getting healthcare, things that they weren’t able to get before. When I look at both sides, the business side and the humanitarian side, it leans real strongly to the human side of it.

Aditi Debnath:
Rosenow says the salesmen that have pitched him their technology are clever. They capitalize on old farmers he says and convince them that they’re out of touch.

John Rosenow:
A lot of times I’ve — when this first started, I would feel bad. Am I an old fuddy duddy? You question yourself.

Aditi Debnath:
Rosenow’s herd would require about eight automated milkers at about a half million dollars apiece as well as a new barn. He says modern farm equipment also requires more expensive and specialized labor to do the repairs.

John Rosenow:
Doesn’t matter if it’s new or old or whatever. It’s going to break.

Aditi Debnath:
And with the volatile nature of the dairy economy, he says old equipment that you can fix is better than new equipment you can’t, like this front-end loader.

John Rosenow:
It only cost us $25,000 40 years ago and if we bought one similar to that now, I’d be looking at $200,000 and then we wouldn’t be able to fix it. We’d have to have the dealer fix it.

Aditi Debnath:
Nicholson says that for the past nine months in particular, all dairy farmers have been losing money.

Chuck Nicholson:
The circumstances we’re in are really unusual right now.

Aditi Debnath:
That’s because for the first time in more than 20 years, the USDA is hearing proposals to amend the system that determines how milk is priced. Nicholson says the system, called the Federal Milk Marketing Orders, doesn’t have a mechanism to adapt to economic or technological changes over time.

Chuck Nicholson:
There is a lengthy and sometimes excruciating process to make that happen.

Aditi Debnath:
On Wisconsin farms, however, producers can’t afford to follow the lengthy discussions taking place in Washington.

Tina Hinchley:
We don’t know what we’re going to get. We have no idea with commodities that we are producing, we’re in a global scale. We don’t know what’s going on with China until it happens. We don’t know how much Brazil is producing. All of that affects our bottom line.

Aditi Debnath:
And so whether by machine or by hand, Wisconsin farmers press on milking their herds. For “Here & Now,” I’m Aditi Debnath.

Frederica Freyberg:
Today, people packed the Fiserv Forum arena in Milwaukee to celebrate the life and contributions of former U.S. Senator and philanthropist Herb Kohl who passed away two days after Christmas. Special projects journalist Murv Seymour has our report.

Man:
He lived a life we all admired.

Murv Seymour:
Since his passing, the flag at the state Capitol and other government buildings across the state fly at half-staff in memory of Herb Kohl.

Dan Kohl:
The Bucks suggested honoring Herb with a statue outside the arena. My uncle declined saying I’m just not a statue kind of guy.

Murv Seymour:
From inside the arena he helped fund, and near the street that shares his name, his memorial service.

Bud Selig:
Saying good-bye to Herb after more than 80 years of saying hello and so many more welcoming and positive words was really difficult.

Murv Seymour:
It’s fitting the tribute for Kohl is open to all of Milwaukee and Wisconsin, the city where he grew up and the state he served. People proudly remember the four-time U.S. Senator with the legendary slogan, “Nobody’s Senator but yours.” Following his father’s footsteps in the 1970s, Kohl and his brother led the booming growth of Kohl’s grocery stores which began in Milwaukee, spread throughout Wisconsin and grew into a brand of over 1,100 department stores in every state but Hawaii.

News anchor:
Join us for this edition of Wisconsin Week.

Murv Seymour:
Herb Kohl has been a familiar face here on PBS Wisconsin’s political programming.

News anchor:
Tonight, we’ll interview Senate candidates Herb Kohl and Susan Engeleiter.

Herb Kohl:
Government is too important to be left exclusively to career politicians.

Murv Seymour:
Never married and with no kids, the former leader of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin never lost an election, never took contributions from political committees or special interest groups.

Herb Kohl:
I spent my entire life helping to enhance the economy of Wisconsin.

Murv Seymour:
One of his biggest interests, buying and saving the Milwaukee Bucks in 1985, for at the time, an unheard of $18 million. He sold the team in 2014 for $550 million, donating $100 million of it toward building a new arena to help once again keep the team from ever leaving his hometown.

Teacher:
You did it without the tens and ones.

Murv Seymour:
Herb Kohl’s spirit to give lives on. His time, his efforts, his millions toward funding hundreds of teachers, students, and various after-school programs at places like the Boys and Girls Club. He put his foot down and forced more funding for enforcement to fight drug traffickers and juvenile justice. He led bipartisan support forcing safety locks to be sold with guns. He helped lower the price of prescription drugs and passed laws for better background checks at nursing homes to better protect seniors. In Washington, he proudly fought for farmers, especially Wisconsin farmers.

Herb Kohl:
Having safety nets that go to producers so that when times really get bad, through no fault of their own, they’re not all forced to go under.

Murv Seymour:
At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, his alma mater, Kohl’s $25 million donation helped build the $76 million Kohl Center. Seen here at the university’s La Follette School of Public Affairs which he funded with the largest donation ever, Herb Kohl smiles doing what he might have loved doing most: giving. Reporting for “Here & Now,” I’m Murv Seymour.

Frederica Freyberg:
Herb Kohl was 88.
For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website at PBSwisconsin.org and then click on the news tab. That’s our program for tonight. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a good weekend.

Announcer:
Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.