Dan Shafer joins to talk about his most recent piece on The Recombobulation Area talking about how gerrymandered Wisconsin is and how we have a chance to do something about it next week on April 4th.
Then we talk to Oshkosh Mayoral candidate Aaron Wosckowski about his candidacy and how we can get more GenZ folks to run for office.
Guests: Dan Shafer, Aaron Wosckowski
Check out this episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts!
Dan Shafer from the Recombobulation Area is back and we break down his most recent article about just how gerrymandered Wisconsin is.
It’s extra topical since he starts with the very popular policies of universal background checks and red flag laws:
“In the first year of Tony Evers’ first term as governor, he called a special session of the Wisconsin State Legislature. It was fall, and the state budget had been signed months prior, but many of the Democratic governor’s priorities had remained unaddressed or were otherwise removed from the budget by Republicans in the Senate and Assembly.
Among those were bills on gun violence prevention. Both of the proposed bills — expanding background checks and introducing a “red flag” law — polled with the type of majority support that’s relatively unheard of in a purple, polarized state like Wisconsin. The August 2019 edition of the Marquette University Law School Poll showed that both such proposals were supported by 80% of Wisconsin voters. Even among Republicans, each measure had at least 70% support. Gun owners, too, supported the proposals in overwhelming margins.
You would think bills with that kind of support would sail through the legislature to be signed by the governor in a show of bipartisanship and cooperation and coming together to get things done. But that’s not what happened.
Instead, the Republicans running the state legislature took a radical approach to the special session: They refused to engage with it entirely.
Leadership gaveled in to the session and then gaveled out seconds later, ending it with no debate. This happened several more times during Evers’ first term, including on other issues with majority support like expanding Medicaid and repealing the state’s outdated and unclear abortion ban from the year 1849.
How could the state legislature afford to act this way and cater to the extreme fringe of the party on issue after issue, without facing public blowback? How could a purple state like Wisconsin end up with some of the most conservative policies in the nation?
The answer lies in the maps.”
Read the whole thing here: Wisconsin is the most gerrymandered state in the country. The race for Wisconsin Supreme Court could change that.
And subscribe to The Recombobulation Area – support local media!
Oshkosh Mayoral Candidate Aaron Wojciechowski joins us to talk about his current campaign and his now fairly long tenure as an elected official considering he started when he was 19. He is a prime example of why we should support more young people investing in local politics.
Credit to UpNorthNews’ Newsletter for this little piece of trivia:
Question:
What usual method was used to compare political candidates in the late 1880s?
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Answer:
Phrenology, aka analysis of their skulls.
The practice was used throughout the 1800s, including during the 1884 election between Grover Cleveland and James Blaine.
Despite his skull being labeled “subpar” compared to his challenger [see the article from “The New York Extra” below], Cleveland won the electoral college and the popular vote to become the first Democratic president in 28 years.
