Here & Now

Matt Flynn On Run For Governor, UW Funding

Zac Schultz:

Now to election news and our continuing series of interviews with announced candidates for governor. Tonight we introduce you to Democrat Matt Flynn. He’s a retired lawyer and former Chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. He joins us now from Milwaukee. Thanks for your time today.

Matt Flynn:

Good to be here, Zac.

Zac Schultz:

What sets you apart from the other Democrats in this increasingly crowded primary?

Matt Flynn:

Well, there are a number of things, Zac. I was the chair of this party for four years, for two terms, retired our debt. We elected a Democratic governor. We elected a democratic majority in the legislature. I’m a Navy veteran. A little by way of background, my wife Mary and I have been married 41 years. She’s from Monroe. She was a speech pathologist in the Germantown schools for a long time. We lived in Milwaukee. And I've been not only involved in the issues in this case, but actually organizing the Democratic Party and being the chair, and I'm really excited about this race.

Zac Schultz:

Now, you just announced your candidacy and then sent out an email saying, “You were honored to be considered a threat by Scott Walker and the Republicans.” They’re criticizing you for your time as a lawyer defending the Catholic Church and the archdiocese of Milwaukee against victims of sexual abuse by priests. How do you respond to those attacks?

Matt Flynn:

Zac, when I first learned of those attacks — our firm has represented the archdiocese and the Episcopal diocese and other religious groups for more than 50 years. But when I first heard of it, I was pained more than I can tell you. We were brought in to clean it up. I’m proud to have represented the archdiocese. It’s a good organization that does a lot of good and most of the priests I've ever met are very fine people who work for no money really and they do very good work. A handful of them did terrible things and they deserve to be punished. But the truth is that since I represented the archdiocese, there’s been no recurrence of the transfer of problem priests. There’s been no recurrence of that kind of conduct. I can’t go back in time to the ’60s and ’70s and change the terrible things that happen, but we could clean it up and I was part of the team that cleaned it up.

Zac Schultz:

As for the bigger issues in this campaign, what's the most important thing Wisconsin needs to do for the education system?

Matt Flynn:

Well, there are two things. One is we have got to strongly and unequivocally support public schools. This administration, first of all, has cut by almost a billion dollars. Then at election time, it puts a little money in and says they’re education people. They really aren’t. We’ve got to stop spending public school money on for-profit schools. We’ve got to put money into public schools. The University of Wisconsin, my dad was on the faculty of UW-M for 34 years. They’ve attacked the University of Wisconsin. Scott Walker has called the professors, who had the no confidence vote last year, whiners and self-serving. And that’s wrong. The governor should stand up for the University of Wisconsin, fully fund it, restore statutory tenure and stick to the mission statement. Above all, fund it. I would be a strong advocate for the University of Wisconsin.

Zac Schultz:

Now, I’ve seen that you are opposed to the Foxconn deal that Governor Walker negotiated. Would you try and scrap that deal or renegotiate it? And how do we grow good-paying jobs here?

Matt Flynn:

Well, that’s a multiple question. Let me start with Foxconn. I think that he got taken to the cleaners. He’s not competent to do a $3 billion deal and neither is his administration. That should have been done by private negotiators. $3 billion off the top is $200 million a year for 15 years and it comes before schools. It comes before health care, roads, everything else. So I said it should be renegotiated. We shouldn’t pay $3 billion. It’s ridiculous. And exempt the Chinese company from our water laws. That’s absolutely ridiculous. When I'm governor, we will abide by contractual commitments, but I'm going to scrutinize very carefully what they’ve done and what they’ve said. If it comes to pass that those Chinese–people in the company have said things that aren’t so, or that they’ve defrauded us, then I will respond.

Zac Schultz:

All right. Assuming Obamacare still exists by 2019 when you would take office, would you push the legislature and accept the federal Medicaid expansion?

Matt Flynn:

Right. One of the most contemptible things Walker did was turn down that Medicaid money. And he turned down hundreds of millions of dollars. More than 80,000 people were thrown off that could have been covered. Some people are going to die. They’re not going statins. They’re not going to get blood pressure medication. He does not care. He doesn’t care about people. He looks at them as pawns on a chessboard. I’d be out there lobbying for all the Medicaid money we can get. I think it was just wrong what the Republicans did.

Zac Schultz:

Very quickly, do you support an increase in the gas tax for transportation projects?

Matt Flynn:

I don’t support tolls. I think we’re going to have to look at reindexing, which was abandoned back in about 2005. Their idea about roads is neglect and debt. Our debt service is up to about 20% of the transportation budget. So it’s going to have to be a look, a holistic look at all of the budget, not just at the gas tax and then shouldn’t go up the way it has in the past. But we’re going to have to pay for the roads somehow. I will work hard to do that. We’re not going to borrow the way he did.

Zac Schultz:

Matt Flynn of Milwaukee, thanks for your time.

Matt Flynn:

Thank you. Good to be here.