Here & Now

Sen. Mark Spreitzer on the Republican Redistricting Proposal

Frederica Freyberg:

On the other side of the aisle, Democratic Senator Mark Spreitzer calls it disingenuous for Republicans to propose the plan after years of fighting non-partisan redistricting. He joins us from Beloit. Senator, thanks for being here.

Mark Spreitzer:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So is it not disingenuous for Democrats to now oppose this after calling for non-partisan redistricting over the years yourselves?

Mark Spreitzer:

No. We still support non-partisan redistricting. In fact, non-partisan redistricting was the very first bill that I authored as a state representative in 2015 and I still support it, but there’s some critical differences between what I’ve supported and the bill that Robin Vos is proposing and also the bill we’ve supported was never intended to fix an underlying Republican gerrymander. It was intended for the every decade redraw of maps after the census and the bill that is in front of us right now doesn’t do anything to actually guarantee we get rid of the Republican gerrymander that we’re currently stuck with because if there were to be a stalemate in the drawing new maps, we would just default to the map we have right now. After the census, you go to court because you have to redraw the maps. Right now, we have a gerrymander that we need to make sure we get rid of and this bill doesn’t do that.

Frederica Freyberg:

Would you be at all in favor of any bill that would be coming out of the Assembly right now that dealt with some of these issues as this bill does?

Mark Spreitzer:

I don’t think this is a serious effort by Republicans. I don’t think Robin Vos woke up Tuesday morning and decided that after more than a decade, he suddenly supports getting rid of gerrymandering. I think this is a ploy to try to keep his current gerrymander. But if we were looking at something serious, it would have to start by making sure that the current map cannot be used in any future elections, that the odd numbered senators like myself would have to run on the new map in 2024 and not wait until 2026, and you have to have some sort of guarantee that you actually have like a three-fourths supermajority that would be enacting any maps that deviate from what LRB proposes on those first two attempts and simply requiring bipartisanship, that could be one legislator who either decides to switch parties or one Democrat decides to defect because they want a safe district. That’s not what voters want. Voters don’t want individual legislators drawing districts and voting for maps that will benefit them. They want fair maps that are non-partisan and that aren’t drawn by politicians, and this bill doesn’t give us that.

Frederica Freyberg:

Do you think Democrats could get to yes if, for example, that provision of the three-quarters approval of members would be required to pass them?

Mark Spreitzer:

You’d need the three-quarters, but as I said, you’d also need a guarantee that the current map be thrown out and that the entire Senate would have to run next year, and I don’t think that’s something Republicans are going to be willing to do because I think they just want to keep their gerrymandered maps.

Frederica Freyberg:

So then, possibly a rhetorical question, how likely is it that the governor would sign this?

Mark Spreitzer:

I don’t think the governor will sign this. I don’t think Democrats are going to support this because I don’t think this is real. I think this is an attempt to distract from Robin Vos’s impeachment threats against Janet Protasiewicz which essentially amount to extortion because he’s trying to influence her action in a case that he’s actually a party to through the legislature, and I think also that it’s an attempt to delay the lawsuit that is actually seeking to throw out the current gerrymander, get fair maps in place for next year, and set a standard constitutionally against partisan gerrymandering. So I hope that lawsuit proceeds as quickly as possible. Anything that tries to distract from that or delay it is a mistake and is not going to lead to fair maps.

Frederica Freyberg:

So Speaker Vos says that he remains convinced that the reason Republicans win elections is not because of the district maps, but because he says they have a better message, better candidates and a better organization. What’s your response to that?

Mark Spreitzer:

That’s simply not true, when you look at where Governor Evers won districts, where Tammy Baldwin has won districts, where Janet Protasiewicz has won districts, you know, even in landslides like Tammy Baldwin has won, that would have barely gotten to a majority of legislative seats and Tony Evers won about the same number of districts as Democrats did while winning statewide, so there’s a clear disconnect between the legislative district map and how Democrats perform in statewide elections. The fact that we’ve been winning most of the statewide elections for years now means that our ideas are popular and it’s the legislative district maps that are keeping us from getting anywhere near a majority in the state legislature.

Frederica Freyberg:

What do you make of reports that Speaker Vos is seeking consult from former justices on what it kind of takes to impeach a justice?

Mark Spreitzer:

Well, clearly, Speaker Vos is trying to stack the deck with conservative former justices that he thinks will tell him what he wants to hear. We certainly need to know who those three justices are besides David Prosser, who has said he is part of that group, and David Prosser is somebody who has taken Republican donations back when he was on the court and didn’t recuse himself. He’s somebody who donated to Janet Protasiewicz’s opponents so certainly if he were being honest here, he would say she doesn’t need to recuse and there are no grounds for impeachment, but the fact that he just supported her opponent in April, I certainly don’t know if that’s going to influence what advice he gives Robin Vos.

Frederica Freyberg:

We only have about a half a minute left. What’s your comment on the Senate vote to fire elections chief Meagan Wolfe?

Mark Spreitzer:

The Senate vote on Meagan Wolfe has no legal force as Josh Kaul, the attorney general is arguing in court right now. Meagan Wolfe is still the administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission and she will be as long as the bipartisan commission wants her there.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Senator Mark Spreitzer, thanks very much.

Mark Spreitzer:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Next week, we begin presenting stories from our Wisconsin in Black and White broadcast special coming in October. For a sneak peek, visit our website at PBSwisconsin.org and then click on the news tab.