Here & Now

Cavalier Johnson's Agenda for Milwaukee

Frederica Freyberg:

After his landslide victory in Tuesday’s election, the new mayor of Milwaukee says priority one is to connect with state legislative leaders. 35-year-old Cavalier Johnson won with 72% of the vote over his challenger, Bob Donovan, who took 28%. Johnson is the first elected Black mayor of Milwaukee and the first millennial to run the city. Mayor Johnson joins us now from Milwaukee and, mayor, thanks very much for being here and congratulations.

Cavalier Johnson:

Thank you so much, Frederica. I’m happy to be here and thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what does it mean to you to be elected Milwaukee’s first Black mayor?

Cavalier Johnson:

So many things. I often reflect about my election night celebration, and one of the first people I spoke to that night was a nine-year-old African-American boy. And now a kid like him, who is growing up in the same sort of depressed, challenged neighborhoods that I grew up in in Milwaukee, now he can see his own reflection in the highest office in the city. I think that’s very powerful and sends a message to people across Milwaukee that no matter where you come from, no matter how much your parents make, no matter the color of your skin or the neighborhood you grow up in, there’s a place for you in Milwaukee, too.

Frederica Freyberg:

Indeed. Just after winning the election, you said your first order of business was to call Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu. Have you reached them yet?

Cavalier Johnson:

Yeah. The first thing I did when I came into office as mayor-elect was to call Robin Vos. Very first call that I made. And he did call me back later in the day. We had a great conversation. We do have a call into Senator LeMahieu as well but I’ve engaged with a number of other Republican legislative leaders as well. So I was serious about having the kind of capital and rebuilding the relationship between Milwaukee and Madison. We can’t move this city forward unless we have an actual and true working relationship, partnership with Madison and I want to build that.

Frederica Freyberg:

Do you feel as though that relationship had been broken?

Cavalier Johnson:

Yeah. I do believe the relationship had been broken. Unfortunately for the past over a decade, that broken relationship has put Milwaukee in a very precarious situation financially and in other aspects as well. It’s why it’s so critically important that we rebuild that relationship because Milwaukee is a value added to the state of Wisconsin. I’m working every single day with Republican leaders to bring the Republican National Convention right here to our state, right here to Milwaukee. But it wouldn’t be coming to Wisconsin, even though our state is the purpliest of purple states, it wouldn’t be coming here if Milwaukee was not here. So this city certainly is a value added and I think it’s high time we work with our partners in the legislature to have them realize that as well.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what specifically do you want from the Republican-led legislature?

Cavalier Johnson:

I want for them to recognize again the value added to the state that Milwaukee brings. I want them to understand that major metropolitan areas in the United States are anchored by cities like Milwaukee and those cities need additional revenues, need additional supports. Milwaukee is different than Marinette. It’s the reason why it’s the only first-class city in the state. Our infrastructure, our services, are stressed beyond the people who live here in the city with visitors and commuters every single day. We need additional revenues to be able to support those services that all those folks both expect and deserve.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you’re looking for more money, more support. Do you feel as though Milwaukee has been maligned by the leadership in Madison?

Cavalier Johnson:

I think there certainly has — had been relationships at play with the former leadership here and the leadership in the legislature and it’s time for those tensions to thaw so that the city and the state can work well together. Look, a strong, prosperous growing Milwaukee is good for the entire state of Wisconsin. I realize that and I think in time, we’ll be able to get to the point where legislative leaders realize that too.

Frederica Freyberg:

I read you want to change gun laws to help stem violence in Milwaukee. How do you want to change gun laws?

Cavalier Johnson:

Well, unfortunately at the local level, we don’t control gun law. We just react to it. In one of the more recent years in Milwaukee, our police department collected more guns per capita off the streets than in New York. That shouldn’t be. But that’s something that’s out of our control. Again, we just respond to it. We stop folks who have gun but there are still so many guns out there. I don’t want for people who are going to cause death, harm and destruction in our neighborhoods, people who shouldn’t have guns in the first place, to get their hands on them as easily as they do. That’s why it’s important again for us to rebuild this relationship with Madison so that we can have gun laws in place that work to make sure that people who shouldn’t have those guns don’t get access to them. So I’m asking for common sense gun reform. This is coming from not somebody who has been just a victim of gun violence myself or in my family, but somebody who also respects the Second Amendment and somebody who enjoys going to ranges and shooting guns, too. We should be able to do this thing in a commonsense way, come to some commonsense solutions here to make sure that we’re allowing people to have access, but also protecting our communities at the same time.

Frederica Freyberg:

A key focus of the campaign was on violent crime in your city. Are more police part of your fix notwithstanding concerns about over-policing of neighbors?

Cavalier Johnson:

I think it’s important to have an adequate number of police. I certainly do. That’s why over the course of the past year I fought to accept a federal grant that had become controversial but I worked behind-the-scenes to work the votes on the common council in order to get it passed. Today there’s a diverse class of police officers, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, men, women, mostly city residents on our streets protecting and serving the citizens of Milwaukee. Put forward funding to make sure we had dollars available to recruit and bring on 200 police officers to replace the roughly similar number that are retiring because they’ve reached 25 years. I want to have an adequate number of police in Milwaukee. But unfortunately, we’re in a position where paying for police is not sustainable for Milwaukee, not with the current revenue structure that we have. So we’re going to need partnership at the state to make sure we can afford to pay for the police that we have. And if we have any additional police officers, afford to be able to pay for those as well.

Frederica Freyberg:

You said upon winning that it is a new day for Milwaukee. How so?

Cavalier Johnson:

It’s a new day in Milwaukee because we’re actually trying to build a new relationship, a working relationship with our partners in the state. We have a goal to make sure that people who live in Milwaukee have access to neighborhoods that are safe across the city, not just in the prosperity neighborhoods and downtown or those that hug upon Lake Michigan. But I want safety in all of our neighborhoods in Milwaukee. I want to make sure that there’s prosperity in the neighborhoods across Milwaukee, too, the neighborhoods that I grew up in. Because I understand based on my life experience that when the least of these in our community have opportunities to have economic prosperity and less financial stress, that they become stable in their own lives, they pass that stability onto their children, so their reactions when they’re in the streets and schools is different. When we get a critical mass of that happening in our neighborhoods, that’s how you get to true public safety. So it’s a new way forward and I’m happy to be the one leading the charge.

Frederica Freyberg:

Cavalier Johnson, thanks so much.

Cavalier Johnson:

Thank you.