Here & Now

Vos discusses election investigations, 2022 priorities

Frederica Freyberg:

The mindset of many Trump supporters that indeed he won the election because of election fraud in places like Wisconsin, roils Democrats as falsely undermining faith in elections and as an attack on democracy. Those include Governor Tony Evers who, in an interview with Zac Schultz, criticized Republicans for continuing investigations into the 2020 election, calling it a clown show.

Tony Evers:

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you’re going to take essentially lies and try to make them into truth, of course there’s going to be people that are going to be saying, you know, is this system broken or not? So I’m disappointed that the leadership and the Republican Party has decided to take this tactic because it’s self-fulfilling. I mean for them to say as well people don’t trust the system, that’s because you told them that. You’ve told them that with no data. You’ve told them that with, frankly lies. And so it’s a clown show, frankly, that needs to end. We have a good system. It’s secure and we will — I will make sure that we’ll do whatever we can to make sure that people of Wisconsin can feel comfortable that the system works and frankly, encourage people to vote instead of discouraging people to vote.

Zac Schultz:

Democrats across the country are accusing Republicans of attacking democracy itself. Do you think Republicans in Wisconsin are attacking the democratic process?

Tony Evers:

Of course they are. Voting is the most pure and important part of a democracy, whether it’s Wisconsin or the country. And if people are out there spewing lies and mistruths and fulfilling their own prophecy that things aren’t right, that is an attack on democracy.

Frederica Freyberg:

For his reaction, Republican Speaker Robin Vos sat down with senior political reporter Zac Schultz. He started by asking the speaker his response to the governor’s clown show claims.

Robin Vos:

I think Governor Tony Evers is obviously in campaign mode. He’s focused on more hyperbole than fact. We know clearly a majority of Wisconsinites, according to some older polling but I’ll still believe it’s true, a majority of Republicans and a huge number of independents believe there were problems with the 2020 election. I have said over and over that Joe Biden is the president. The Electoral College has spoken. This is not about somehow overturning the election or ruining democracy but it is about making sure we have faith in the results, whoever wins, whoever loses. And I think we clearly know, now we’ve had the Legislative Audit Bureau. We’ve had an investigation by W.I.L.L. and the final investigation being done by Justice Gableman. All are going to show we had issues. The first two clearly did. I’m certain the last one will as well. So for Governor Evers to imply somehow the well-respected, nonpartisan audit bureau was attacking democracy and on a witch hunt, that’s not even accurate, much less it’s just a bold-faced lie. So I think we need to look and say, “Let’s focus on the facts, not on hyperbole.” We know there were problems. We know that there were things that should have been done differently. I think history is going to judge that things were not done correctly in 2020 and all we can do is try to make it better. And that’s what we’re attempting to do.

Zac Schultz:

With the Gableman investigation, there have been some process errors, some errors that seem like they shouldn’t be happening with an investigation this well-funded, this well purposed. We’ve had criticism from both Republicans, obviously Democrats, in the end, do you think that you’re going to convince the public with the results of that investigation?

Robin Vos:

Well, there’s been an awful lot of money spent by liberals to try to discredit the investigation. You’re right, not everything goes perfect. We have people who are humans. They’re doing their very best but I think when you have groups coming in and attacking from the very beginning. Once again, going after the Legislative Audit Bureau, which has been a well-respected institution in the State Capitol as any, to somehow try to discredit them, it’s no surprise they’re going to continue that all the way until the end. We now know that there have been lawsuits filed. People have tried to say the Legislature doesn’t have the right to issue subpoenas. Of course we do. It’s been a power we’ve had since statehood. These basic ideas, which are being argued in court, if you would have told me the very fundamental idea that we didn’t have the right to issue subpoenas would be in court, I would have thought you were crazy. But we are now seeing national groups coming in very well-funded on the liberal side trying to upset what has been the standard in Wisconsin. Unfortunately it’s taken longer than it should have. I thought we’d be done by the end of the year but they have thrown up every possible road block they could to try to stop what should be a simple, easy, well understood idea which is, at the end, let’s see what was done right, what was done wrong and then try to make sure that things that were done wrong are corrected.

Zac Schultz:

You have said that Joe Biden is legitimately the president but there are a number of members of your caucus and the public that don’t believe that. They say they aren’t convinced. It’s been shown they have been lied to both by Republicans and by operatives and by con men and other people trying to make a buck on them. So at what point is it up to legislators to make more of a say. To say that no, this is legitimate. We are looking at minor process issues in Wisconsin’s elections as opposed to overthrowing it which some of your own members have introduced bills that would change some of the outcomes of future elections.

Robin Vos:

Well, number one, I don’t think there were minor process issues. Let’s start with that. We have a single member who has said we should decertify the election. So let’s not cast a wide net that there are a lot of people who are out there saying we should overturn the election because there’s one. I certainly don’t speak for every single Republican in the state nor in the state Legislature but I do know the vast majority of the people I speak with understand that this is focused on the future. It’s not focused on the past. Do I believe that we should allow out of state billionaires to come in and co-mingle private dollars and public funds to only turn out people in certain zip codes of a certain demographic because they tend to vote one way? I think that’s wrong. It would be wrong if we did it from the Koch saying we’re only going to go into lily white areas of Waukesha to try to make sure we turn out the most Republicans to vote. Just like it would be wrong if we said we’re going to only go into minority areas in the city of Milwaukee because they tend to vote Democrat and only put our efforts there. That’s what happened in 2020. People should be outraged that we used public resources mixed with private dollars to really, in essence, try to run an election. This wasn’t done where you buy commercials or you hire people to go door to door. That’s campaigning. That’s what democracy is about. But the idea we’re going to use public resources in a way that influences the election, that should be something that we are all outraged by and the fact that Democrats aren’t outraged is really disappointing to me because I promise you, if somehow Republicans did that, with billionaire dollars to try to influence the process by having people literally work the polling place, paid for by these partisan groups, I think they would be outraged. And they should be this way, too.

Zac Schultz:

We’ve only got a few months of this session left. Do you think the legislature still has a role to play in addressing the pandemic at this point?

Robin Vos:

I think the biggest part of what we’re doing is to make sure we focus on the priorities that we can control. We now see Governor Evers saying it’s the federal government who should fix it and Joe Biden saying it’s state government who should fix it. I think unfortunately we see at the national and the state level, we have a lot of finger pointing going around. The most important thing is I’m vaccinated. I hope the vast majority of people who are watching this choose to be vaccinated. They shouldn’t be mandated. We don’t need vaccine passports. We don’t need a requirement to go to a restaurant or any of those things. I think that’s out of line with what I think most Americans want to accept. But should we focus on the idea of keeping each other safe and trying to be vaccinated. Yeah, that’s a common sense thing we can all focus on.

Zac Schultz:

Obviously last summer the governor signed a Republican-authored state budget and he’s been out campaigning and promoting some of the items in that budget and I’ve seen a lot of negative reaction from Republicans, almost angry the governor is taking credit for a budget he did sign. Why is that?

Robin Vos:

I think the most important thing for people to remember is that Governor Evers proposed a massive expansion of welfare, almost a 10% spending increase, over a billion dollars of new taxes. All — then he was frustrated when we took all those things out of the budget. We passed one without a single iota of input from Governor Evers until the very end where all he did was sign it with a pen. So yes, he deserves credit for the ten seconds it took to sign it but for the ability to craft it and put it all together, that’s a Republican budget. I think if Governor Evers is going around the state giving credit to Republicans for the budget that he spent ten seconds signing, we’d be less frustrated but once again, he’s a politician. He can say whatever he wants whether it’s true or not. And that’s what we’re seeing right now.

Zac Schultz:

Speaker Vos, thanks for your time

Robin Vos:

Thanks very much. Take care.