Here & Now

Race for Governor: Matt Flynn

Frederica Freyberg:

A closer look now at the governor’s race and our continuing series of interviews with democrats running in the primary. Tonight, we speak to Matt Flynn. Flynn is an attorney in Milwaukee. He is a U.S. Navy veteran and former chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Matt Flynn joins us now. Thanks very much for doing so.

Matt Flynn:

Good to be here. Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

So two of your compatriots have dropped out of this race as of today. What will you do?

Matt Flynn:

Im in it for the long haul, and I think we’re in pretty good shape. The Marquette Franklin Poll that just came out shows me in second place. I’m tied with two others in the rounding, but in the raw data, we actually are in second place, and I think we’re doing very well.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet those numbers in the Marquette Poll, what is it, 7% of the vote you garner, and 77% of those polled don’t know who you are.

Matt Flynn:

Their name recognition polls. The good news is that they know me a lot better than all the others except maybe for Tony Evers, but we have a ways to go. But with seven weeks to go, which is where it is right now, our advertising campaign on television is about to start, and Im working hard, getting around the state and we’re picking up a lot of support.

Frederica Freyberg:

Among all the other candidates, albeit two fewer, why do you think you should be the progressive voice for Wisconsin?

Matt Flynn:

Well, there’s a couple of things. I was the chair of this party. And I know the state and I know the government well. I’m a Navy veteran. I’m the only veteran in the race and getting good veteran support around the state. And I differ from them on a number of issues. One of them is Foxconn. I think it’s a crocked deal that I will stop with litigation. None of the others say they will stop it. Tony Evers says he’ll make them put solar panels on and the others complain about it. I will stop it because it’s going to strangle our budget for 15 years.

Frederica Freyberg:

On what basis can you beat Scott Walker?

Matt Flynn:

Well, right now in that poll that we saw, Scott Walker leads me but Im within the margin of error. He leads me 46-42, and I come to it with much less name recognition than he does. There’s a hunger to replace Scott Walker in this state, there really is, and I think out of all the candidates, I was a lawyer for a long time, practicing complex litigation with a lot of the same issues that it will take to stop the Foxconn deal. If Im on the stage with him, it’s going to be a different kind of debate than it was the last couple of times. So I think every indication is we can beat him.

Frederica Freyberg:

On the economy, one of the things you want to do is reverse Act 10. How does that help the economy?

Matt Flynn:

The way it helps the economy is several fold. Teachers have been demoralized, they really have. Act 10 was a taunting document. If you read the actual act, they did it to basically insult and demoralize teachers, and they’ve reduced their wages. Now, there are certain things that you could do outside of an Act 10. I will repeal Act 10. I will not compromise on it. It’s going to be totally repealed. I think teachers’ wages have to go up. Now how to pay for that in an issue such as should they contribute to their pension, healthcare, my view is if they’re going to contribute to their pension and healthcare, they should be paid a wage that permits them to do that. So my wife is a speech pathologist in the Germantown Public Schools for over 30 years and I saw the devastation it did, so I will repeal Act 10.

Frederica Freyberg:

You also want to invest, you say, in roads and infrastructure. How would you pay for it?

Matt Flynn:

Re-indexing the gas tax. I think it was a big mistake 10, 13 years ago to stop doing that. Right now our transportation budget is 20% debt service. In other words, paying interest on what we’ve already borrowed and it’s going up. We can’t have that. So we’re going to pay as we go and we’re going to repair our roads. And Im also– there are 13 east-west roads from Highway 2 down to Highway 14. Many of them, only Highway 29 is really four-lane. I want to make them all four lane and as soon as we can do that, it’s going to revitalize rural and western — northern Wisconsin as well.

Frederica Freyberg:

On educate, you call for free two-year public college or university tuition for every in-state student. How do you do that?

Matt Flynn:

At in-state institutions, not outside. The reason is very simple. My proposal is not K-12, it’s PreK-14. I’ll put more into early education, early childhood, but for the first two years, there are a lot of kids in the state when they turn 18 think they can’t afford college or trade school, they go off to Duluth, Minneapolis. They go to Chicago. We’re losing a lot of good people. If we get rid of Foxconn, if we take that billion dollars in Medicaid supplements Walker turned down, if we take the $800 million in train money he turned down, if we get rid of the manufacturers’ credit and exemption, which is very unproductive and it’s cost us about a billion dollars, we can easily do it. And other states have done it.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you just touched on the Medicaid money. What else would you do for healthcare in Wisconsin?

Matt Flynn:

Well, long-range, I think federally we’re going to have to have Medicare cover everybody from birth to death. And it’s the cheapest way to do it. 70% of the people in this country already get some sort of government-related Medicaid, Medicare, military, so forth. But what I would do in the short run, because I can’t mandate that, even though Medicare is a real cost cutter, I would open up BadgerCare. In addition to getting the billion dollars back, open up BadgerCare to anybody who doesn’t have health insurance and wants to buy into it for a premium unless they’re indigent.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile, Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act is being chipped away at and more efforts are underway to do away with it. If you became governor, you can declare that you want all of these things but how do you kind of reverse what has been happening to the Affordable Care Act?

Matt Flynn:

Well, we have a President Donald Trump who in my view is vandalizing our healthcare system and betraying us to the Russians quite frankly but in the short run, what I would do with healthcare with him, the Affordable Care Act to me is a bridge between an old system and what I hope is Medicare for everybody. So we have to open the exchanges. We have to have more options and I will fully fund everything that’s in my power to fund.

Frederica Freyberg:

Matt Flynn, thanks very much.

Matt Flynn:

Good to be here. Thank you.