Announcer:
The following program is part of our “Here & Now” 2018 election coverage.

Frederica Freyberg:
I’m Frederica Freyberg of Here & Now.

Shawn Johnson:
I’m Shawn Johnson of Wisconsin Public Radio.

Frederica Freyberg:
Welcome to a special edition of “Here & Now.”

Shawn Johnson:
For the next half hour, we’ll focus on the race for governor.

Frederica Freyberg:
The issues and the candidates’ positions along with analysis.

Shawn Johnson:
As we make our way to the polls in just 11 days.

Frederica Freyberg:
It’s “Here & Now for October 26.

Announcer:
Funding for “Here & Now” is provided in part by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.

Donald Trump:
Finally, let me introduce a true Wisconsin patriot. Somebody that I have really gotten to know. He’s a fighter, and he’s become a great friend of mine. One of the most capable people in all of government. Governor Scott Walker.

[cheers]

Barack Obama:
If you elect Tony Evers as your next governor, he’s going to do something your current governor refuses to do; he’s going to expand Medicaid to cover 176,000 more Wisconsinites.

[cheers]

Frederica Freyberg:
A marquee week for the top contenders running for governor in Wisconsin.

Shawn Johnson:
President Trump keynotes a Scott Walker rally in Mosinee.

Frederica Freyberg:
And Tony Evers gets out the vote in Milwaukee with Bernie Sanders on Monday and today with former president Barack Obama.

Shawn Johnson:
We’ll dig into some of the top issues in a moment, but first Evers and Walker will not be the only names on the ballot on November 6th.

Frederica Freyberg:
Fitchburg resident Phillip Anderson is the Libertarian candidate. Michael White of Mindoro is running on the Green Party ticket.

Shawn Johnson:
There’s an independent candidate from Madison, Maggie Turnbull, and the Wisconsin Party candidate Arnie Enz from Appleton.

Frederica Freyberg:
Libertarian candidate Phil Anderson will join us for an interview next Friday night.
Issue areas up for discussion tonight include education, jobs, health care and transportation. Tony Evers joined us for a one-on-one interview earlier. We will share excerpts as we move along. Scott Walker declined our request for an interview. That’s why you’ll be hearing his comments as taken from the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association debate. We’re joined by WPR Capitol reporter Laurel White for analysis and insight. Laurel, thanks very much for being here.

Laurel White:
Absolutely.

Frederica Freyberg:
But first, we begin tonight’s special with a spotlight on education. Specifically the challenge to create equity with minority achievement. Solutions to this stubborn problem elude leaders from both the major parties.
The fact remains, African American student performance in Wisconsin falls far behind that of white students. And that academic achievement gap especially in the state’s urban districts goes back decades. Now in the election year that has both candidates staking a claim on being the education governor, sparring over the issue is front and center.

Teacher:
The brain connects all to the nerves in the nervous system throughout the brain.

Frederica Freyberg:
Students in this advanced high school class in Milwaukee excel academically.

Teacher:
Biggest one that we found out is the frontal lobe.

Frederica Freyberg:
But their success is not the norm in the district. In fact, the latest statewide tests for elementary and middle schoolers show that whereas 46% of white students are not proficient in math, 86% of black students are not. Put a different way, just 11.5% of black students tested proficient in math. The same holds true in English. 85% of black students tested were not proficient, compared to about 49% of white students. The gaps are wider in Milwaukee. One of the urban districts that drives achievement gaps in Wisconsin. A district that has led the nation in such academic disparities. Republican Scott Walker squarely blames his democratic challenger, superintendent of public schools, Tony Evers. Tweeting in the midst of this race for governor, “after calling the effort to close Wisconsin’s achievement gap a priority and promising significant improvement, Tony Evers has failed to make notable progress in his nine plus years in office.”
Governor Walker blames you as superintendent of public instruction for Wisconsin’s worst in the nation achievement gaps between black and white students. Why shouldn’t he blame you?

Tony Evers:
Well because he has done nothing. My budgets consistently, over time, have put money in the budget for things that are really important, such as students with disabilities. Achievement gap in Wisconsin is about a number of issues where kids need an extra lift and he has consistently not funded those projects. Whether it’s students with disabilities, English learners, kids in poverty. Those things have been in my budget since the day I’ve been state superintendent. He’s ignored it. He’s essentially he’s the typical politician again pointing fingers when the fingers should be pointed at him.

Frederica Freyberg:
Asked about this issue in their first debate a week ago, Walker invoked his latest schools budget, which increased per pupil spending by $400 over two years.

Scott Walker:
But I think more than anything, it’s not just about funding. Because for example, Milwaukee, they outpace by almost 40% the amount of funding versus the average school district in the state. It’s about making sure those resources are targeted.

Frederica Freyberg:
Walker’s 2017-19 budget adds $636 million in new spending for schools, including $5 million in new money for Milwaukee public schools and districts that receive the lowest grade on school report cards.

Scott Walker:
As we decrease state spending, we also increase flexibility.

Frederica Freyberg:
His first state budget as governor cut $782 million from school funding. For his part, Evers’ school budget request for the next biennium, includes nearly $16 million targeted to five urban districts. Funding toward things like 3-year-old kindergarten, expanded summer school and enhanced salaries for highly-trained teachers. But what really moves the needle on narrowing the achievement gap? Researchers like Eric Grodsky at UW-Madison are in the midst of a four-year, $5+ million grant to try to figure that out, finally.

Eric Grodsky:
So you’re asking why haven’t we fixed it.

Frederica Freyberg:
It’s complicated, he says.

Eric Grodsky:
Schools are asked to do a ton of different things. They’re also, you know, they’re asked to sort of be social workers. They’re asked to make sure kids have adequate food. They’re asked to make sure that the behavioral norms in a school are conducive to learning. None of these are unreasonable but they all are taxing.

Frederica Freyberg:
Grodsky says research is increasingly pointing to the importance of early learning, before children even get to kindergarten.

Eric Grodsky:
Our research has found, consistent with national studies actually, that a lot of the inequality you see in say, eighth grade achievement test scores, you can see in kindergarten scores on literacy skills or on mathematic readiness.

Frederica Freyberg:
For its part, the Milwaukee School District says it has this year embarked on a new plan that focuses on at teaching at grade level, but helping students who’ve fallen behind by focusing on the needs of individual students.

Jeremiah Holiday:
For example, a student who may be at an eighth grade level, and there may be an achievement gap where the student may be functioning at a sixth grade level, our plan is that you know what, our focus is our teachers are going to teach at the eighth grade level and then they’re going to begin to differentiate ?????

from there to get our students where they need to be.

Frederica Freyberg:
Dr. Jeremiah Holiday says the district will laser in on reading, writing, and math, and has freed up $11 million from the administration office to go directly to the classrooms. From educators to researchers to politicians, the mission is clear. Narrow, then erase the gaps.

Eric Grodsky:
It’s on us. We have to work together to get this done. The consequences are really severe if we don’t.

Frederica Freyberg:
Consequences like achievement gaps in higher education, skills gaps and generational poverty. Again, Laurel and Shawn, this issue is something that these two “education governors” are going at each other over.

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah, and I mean, in the context of this campaign, the reason is because you have Tony Evers who brings to this race his resume, running the state’s education system. It’s Scott Walker has been bringing this up, who brought it up initially in an effort to try to undercut Evers’ resume there.

Frederica Freyberg:
And yet Tony Evers’ budget does talk about things to do towards this issue.

Laurel White:
It does. So, he’s talked about a number of issues specifically in his budget. His budget has a large increase in spending. And one of the places that he is increasing most markedly is for mental health care for students. And this is something that people have really focused on in terms of tightening that achievement gap is really providing mental health services and things like trauma-informed care.

Frederica Freyberg:
And trauma-informed care is also something that the governor is looking closely at, because of course, his wife, the first lady, is very involved in those efforts.

Laurel White:
Absolutely. That’s sort of her key issue. So, we’ve seen a lot of talk about that.

Shawn Johnson:
And this has all been part of the greater school funding debate, as part of this race. Let’s hear what the candidates have to say about paying for schools while keeping taxes in check.

Tony Evers:
Scott Walker in his first budget took hundreds of millions of dollars out of the, out of our K-12 system, and we have never recovered from that. And so we have extraordinary needs. I hear about it all across the state. And frankly people in Wisconsin know it too. Scott Walker can claim he’s a low tax guy, but over a million people in the state of Wisconsin have voted to increase taxes on themselves for their public schools because the state is not doing their fair share.

Scott Walker:
Tommy Thompson showed us years ago you can fund two-thirds and still lower the property tax burden on the hard-working people of the state. We did it in the last budget, with historic actual dollar investments in the schools, still lowering property taxes and we’re going to do it again going forward. That’s important. Both of my kids, Matt and Alex, are here. They both went to public schools in Wauwatosa. My nieces are going to public schools today. I want every child to have access to great education but I also want to make sure, particularly for our seniors, that we don’t see the kind of property tax increases of 27% in the decade before we took office.

Frederica Freyberg:
So schools and taxes. What’s new here is that Scott Walker is saying the state will get back to funding two-thirds for education. What does that mean?

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah, that’s — you hear that thrown out a lot. Two-thirds, being the state would pick up two-thirds of the cost of public education in Wisconsin. Local property taxpayers pick up the rest, basically. This is something that was a benchmark established under Tommy Thompson. It went away in law under Governor Jim Doyle, although Doyle still tried to hit it as a goal on a couple budgets. It’s not something that Walker has hit in his tenure, but he says now that he wants to hit that in his next budget if he’s re-elected.

Frederica Freyberg:
And it’s something also that Tony Evers has said he would do.

Shawn Johnson:
Evers has said it consistently, going back to earlier in this campaign and during his tenure as state superintendent. So he’s had that goal for a while. For Scott Walker it’s been relatively recent.

Frederica Freyberg:
The other thing that Tony Evers was saying just there was that people have voted to raise taxes on themselves to fund their schools and what he’s talking about are these referenda in local voting districts where people say, “No, we need more money to do this or that for their schools.”

Laurel White:
That’s right. That’s something that Evers has talked about a lot actually. He mentioned it in his state of the state address last year. And he calls these the “Scott Walker taxes.” Things like raising the referendums for school spending. He’s also talked about road spending. So he says the governor claims to be a low taxes guy but sort of inadvertently people are paying more for these things and that they’re willing to pay more for education, actually.

Frederica Freyberg:
But in terms of the education governor mantle, Tony Evers’ budget, his requested budget going forward would increase the amount of funding going toward K-12.

Laurel White:
That’s right. It would be a pretty substantial increase, actually. He proposed a $1.4 billion budget in his budget proposal for this year. The governor hasn’t released his official proposal yet. That’s something he would do in January if he’s re-elected. So we can’t make an apples to apples comparison, but comparing it to the budget we have in place right now, it’s a pretty big increase.

Shawn Johnson:
From schools to jobs, let’s switch gears now and hear from the candidates’ on their plans to grow Wisconsin’s economy.

Scott Walker:
We’ve got big things as part of our plan to keep Wisconsin working for generations to come. Like helping working families, many of whom when they first have children find it challenging to get back into the work force, so we’re providing a childcare tax credit to make it a little bit easier to afford childcare if either spouse wants to get back in the work force. We’re doing more things for people seeking public assistance, to get them employability training, and for those who might potentially be suffering from addiction, get them the health care and the rehabilitation they need to get back up on their feet again. We can find a job for everyone in the state but it doesn’t happen if you’re going to raise taxes like Tony Evers is talking about.

Tony Evers:
First of all, we need to make sure that we invest in Wisconsin companies. That’s — that is absolutely critical. Clearly the Foxconn issue has been a high profile issue in the state. I’m sure every one of your viewers that are watching this program would suggest that they could have cut a better deal than Scott Walker did for Foxconn. We have to stop the Hail Mary passes. We have to invest in those young start-ups that are real important in the state. That not only keeps them in the state, but it also gives other young people hope that the state can play a positive role in helping them become productive workers and part of the Wisconsin society instead of moving out of state.

Frederica Freyberg:
One thing that comes to mind about jobs and the economy is that Wisconsin’s economy right now is humming along. Unemployment at about 3%. And so it makes you wonder how this race is so tight at this point with the economy, which is usually a major issue, the number one issue, is so good.

Shawn Johnson:
It’s just a reminder that you just don’t know what ever election’s going to be about going into it. Any governor would love to run with 3% unemployment rate or thereabouts, but this is, by all indications, a close race and seems like there may be other things at play in this one.

Frederica Freyberg:
Tony Evers, as we just saw, referenced Foxconn. But you were noting that that didn’t come up in their first debate.

Shawn Johnson:
Not one mention of Foxconn in that debate for all the talk that we have given it, seems like the biggest thing maybe that happened certainly in the last few years of the governor’s administration. And it didn’t come up in the debate. And you haven’t seen it in a big way in the ad war either between Tony Evers and Scott Walker.

Frederica Freyberg:
What do we make of that?

Laurel White:
I think what we make of that is neither party thinks that it’s going to be a good issue for them, necessarily. It’s not something that’s going to benefit them if they bring it up. It’s kind of a tricky issue. Walker has run positive ads about Foxconn. Especially early on in the race saying it had a statewide impact and things like that. But it’s certainly something that there are pros and cons on, and the state is pretty divided. So I think they want to stay away from it.

Shawn Johnson:
Risky, maybe.

Laurel White:
Yeah, risky.

Frederica Freyberg:
How do we think Walker’s former CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation coming out opposed to him plays in these final days?

Shawn Johnson:
I don’t know. I mean, it does — because he is the fourth cabinet secretary, former Walker cabinet secretary who has criticized the governor. It does create — for Democrats, that’s a good narrative. People who worked for Scott Walker don’t like him. Three of those cabinet secretaries have said that they oppose the governor in this election. They’ll support Tony Evers. Walker said, “Hey, it shows that I have a diversity of opinions within my cabinet” and he’s ok with that.

Frederica Freyberg:
So I guess we have to leave that issue there. From jobs to health care, specifically, what the candidates are saying about providing insurance coverage to those with pre-existing conditions.

Scott Walker:
We can protect people with pre-existing conditions in the state without protecting the failure that is Obamacare. Look, my wife who’s here tonight is a type 1 diabetic. My mom who’s sitting right next to her is a cancer survivor. My brother has a heart condition. Like a lot of you at home watching, when we talk about covering pre-existing conditions for our families, it’s very personal. In Wisconsin, everyone living with pre-existing conditions is covered right now and as long as I’m governor, it will always be covered in the state of Wisconsin.

Tony Evers:
We have a governor saying, Oh, my gosh. I’m concerned about making sure that pre-existing conditions don’t prevent people from getting good health care. And that’s important to me. I’m a cancer survivor. So I get that issue. He’s making that claim at the same time, he’s in federal court with a bunch of other Republican governors saying, “My gosh. We have to get rid of this whole thing. So, I have asked him, point blank, if you believe in making sure that pre-existing conditions aren’t an issue, drop that lawsuit. That’s what you should be doing.” And it’s been very — the response has been crickets, frankly. We have heard nothing from him on that.

Frederica Freyberg:
So, this issue rises to the top. People are talking about it a lot in this race and in, of course, the U.S. Senate race. Tony Evers there is referring to a lawsuit that Wisconsin has taken the lead on to repeal the Affordable Care Act which includes, of course, the provisions for pre-existing conditions. So, therein is that vexing question, if you want to cover pre-existing conditions, why is the state of Wisconsin suing to overturn Obamacare?

Shawn Johnson:
And that set this back and forth up between Walker and Evers, and really the reason that they’re talking about it so much, or Democrats are talking about it so much is that the Affordable Care Act polls well now and the coverage for pre-existing conditions polls especially well. That is their best issue in this race. So they are highlighting efforts, Republican efforts to get rid of that law. The governor’s talking about a state law that he supports. Or a state bill that he supports that would protect pre-existing conditions in Wisconsin. However, that would not be exactly apples to apples, because it would allow for a lifetime cap on insurance coverage. So, like a million dollars could be a cap for a cancer patient who could run out of that pretty quickly.

Frederica Freyberg:
And Laurel, there was a measure that was in the legislature.

Laurel White:
That’s right. That’s the bill that Shawn was talking about. And I think what’s really interesting here is that both of the candidates on, you know, the face level, say I support pre-existing conditions or coverage for them.
But what’s different there is the governor supports the state-backed plan that includes things like high risk pools, and has that lifetime limit for patients. Where Tony Evers supports the ACA, a type of pre-existing condition coverage which is looped in with all of these other health care policies. So, they both support it but it’s actually quite different.

Frederica Freyberg:
Yes, because experts have told us that the state version or fix to the coverage of these conditions is not nearly clearly as robust as what’s in current federal law under the ACA.

Shawn Johnson:
Right.
The next issue has plenty of fuel on the campaign trail, transportation funding.

Scott Walker:
In the last budget, we gave them the largest increase in 20 years for local governments to maintain their roads and their bridges. We’re doing the same for our state highways. And you did mention, you’re right. There is a contrast. Tony said the day after the primary right here in Madison, everything’s on the table. He was asked, “Does that include a dollar a gallon gas tax increase?” He said, “Everything’s on the table.” Now in a minute, he’ll say it’s ridiculous. It’s a lie. Any number of other things out there but in the end, he’s not telling us what it is.

Tony Evers:
That is ridiculous. I’ve never said that. The governor knows I’ve not said that. He’s responding because people across the state — he’s diverting himself from the issues that he’s created. There’s a reason why our roads are in such poor condition related to other states. There’s a reason why 21% is going to debt service. Because he has not led on this issue. He has lied about many of these issues, where he’s promised one thing and then another. A couple weeks ago he said to the people in Appleton, we are going to expand highway 41, I think within a week he was saying, “Oh, my gosh. We’re not going to do that anymore.” This is not a political issue. This is about a safety issue for the state of Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:
So, $1 a gallon gas tax, Tony Evers continues to say that’s ridiculous. But where did it come from?

Laurel White:
So it came from the day after the primary in Madison, he was asked would you raise the gas tax? He said, “I would consider any number of options for transportation funding.” A reporter asked him, trying to get more specifics on amounts, “Well, what about a dollar a gallon gas tax increase?” and Evers said, “Everything’s on the table.” Reiterating what he’d been saying about it.

Frederica Freyberg:
Has he ever given a different number?

Laurel White:
He hasn’t given a different number. And he has said — he spoke about it after his state of education address, he called that dollar a gallon unrealistic, ridiculous. He said that’s never going to happen. Then reporters said, Well, how much?” And he said, “I don’t know. I would need to talk with lawmakers about it.”

Frederica Freyberg:
How bad are Wisconsin roads, really, because in the debate Scott Walker was like, “They’re not that bad.”

Shawn Johnson:
There’s a couple ways you can look at it. You can look at public opinion surveys from Marquette University, for example. 64% of respondents said that roads are fair or poor. Governor Walker referenced, he pointed at that poll. He said, “Well, only 30% said they’re poor,” but that’s still 30% saying they’re poor. Another way to look at it that’s a little more detached from a public opinion survey and how you slice and dice that, the Legislative Audit Bureau. Nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau looked at a highway index basically and that’s not going to sway based on what you see in a TV ad or anything like that. And by that measure, they have, you know, empirically gotten worse between 2010 and 2015. So, yeah, the road quality is getting worse. There’s other measures out there that say that highways are downgrading a little bit.

Frederica Freyberg:
Meanwhile, the transportation fund does have its issues and Wisconsin needs more money for building highways and roads and maintaining them.

Shawn Johnson:
And there’s different ways you can address that. You can borrow more, but the state has kind of hit a level of borrowing where, you know, budgetarily speaking, it’s a little bit in trouble. It’s doubled under the Walker Administration almost. It’s about $0.21 of every dollar of transportation revenue goes toward paying off old debt. The governor has recently emphasized that he’s going to not approve every southeast Wisconsin mega highway project. There was a big expansion of I-94 west of Milwaukee that was a priority of the business community down there. It was slated to be expanded. And the plug was pulled on that one. So, there are different ways to deal with it. That’s one approach that the governor has taken.

Frederica Freyberg:
We’ve got 11 days left until this important midterm election. What do we think is going to happen in the next 11 days in this race for governor?

Laurel White:
It’s hard to say, of course. I think it’s going to be really interesting to see the reaction to the presidential visits that happened this week. President Trump on Wednesday. President Obama today, and how that sort of stokes enthusiasm, maybe energizes the base of both of these parties. I think that’s something that we’ve heard parties are really looking to do in the final days.

Shawn Johnson:
I’ll say just generally the unknown. We don’t know what new issue the candidates are going to inject into this debate. I mean, Tony Evers very recently started talking about proposing a 10% income tax cut for people who earn less than $100,000 or families who earn up to $150,000. That’s kind of a big deal if that were to happen. Governor Walker’s talking about two-thirds funding. He’s now cutting an ad that’s attacking Evers on immigration. Evers is going after Walker on his farm policy. Walker is doing the same. So a lot of stuff that we haven’t thought about yet is probably what’s going to happen in the next couple weeks.

Frederica Freyberg:
We’ll be seeing it wall to wall on the airwaves and our computers and in flyers in our mailboxes as well.

Shawn Johnson:
Absolutely.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Laurel and Shawn, thanks very much.

Laurel White:
Absolutely.

Shawn Johnson:
Thanks.

Frederica Freyberg:
That wraps up “Here & Now” for tonight. Thanks again to Shawn Johnson and Laurel White, on loan to us from Wisconsin Public Radio. Next week, Libertarian candidate for governor Phil Anderson will be here. And Zac Schultz reports on tight races for state senate seats. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a great weekend.

Announcer:
Funding for “Here & Now,” provided in part by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
For more information on “Here & Now’s” 2018 election coverage, go to WisconsinVote.org.