What To Ask The Candidate Knocking On Your Door

Vote here sign. File photo by Jeramey Jannene.

They want your vote, so candidates for the state Senate and Assembly may be knocking on your door over the next three weeks. If they do, you may want to ask them one or two of these questions.

Question: About 45% of all public school students statewide tested below standards for their grades on English Language Arts and math. Is the answer more state aid for public schools?

Context: Democratic Gov. Tony Evers insists that public schools, and especially their special education and mental health programs, are underfunded. Republicans have increased state aid for those programs, but have also significantly increased state support for private schools.

Question: State government expects to close its books in mid-2025 with an available surplus of $3.4 billion. Should that surplus be spent and, if so, how?

Context: Evers has vetoed several income tax cuts of Republicans who have controlled the Legislature. Evers said those tax cuts offered too little help for middle-class residents. While they disagreed, the state surplus built up. Elected officials must decide how much of it to spend or save as a hedge against future economic downturns,

Question: Do you support legalizing medical marijuana? Should the recreational use of marijuana also be legalized?

Context: Polls repeatedly show overwhelming support for legalizing medical marijuana. But Republican legislators can’t agree on a plan that Evers, who also wants recreational marijuana legalized and taxed, would sign into law.

Question: Do you agree with Republican legislators holding up $125 million to clean up contamination by PFAs – so-called “forever chemicals” – who argue that no one who buys property, and then learns of its PFAs contamination, should have to pay to clean up contamination they did not cause?

Context: Republican legislators say they thought they had a compromise on how to spend the $125 million, but the governor and the state Department of Natural Resources say anyone who owns PFA-contaminated property should help pay for its cleanup.

Question: To control property taxes, there are limits on what local governments and schools can spend. Those limits are causing more local governments to hold referendums asking to raise property taxes. Should spending limits on local governments and schools be loosened?

Context: The combination of inflation and losing federal Covid aid has local governments and schools more squeezed than ever and threatening to cut services, if local referendums on Nov. 5 ballots don’t pass. Capitol leaders must debate whether to give local governments and schools new authority to boost spending, or let the current pass/fail system of local referendums continue.

Question: Should State Elections Administrator Meagan Wolfe be dismissed because of past controversies over how elections are administered and how votes are counted?

Context: Local clerks who run elections and the three Democrats and three Republicans on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which oversees elections, support Wolfe. State Senate Republicans tried to fire her, but a Dane County judge blocked it. MAGA Republicans continue to blame her for problems that judges and a state audit didn’t find. Could anyone who has Wolfe’s job please everyone?

Question: Evers and Democratic Atty. Gen. Josh Kaul have called for a “red flag” law allowing judges to order those found to be dangerous to themselves or others to surrender their guns. Could you support a “red flag” law?

Context: With 50 school shootings in the nation this year, there is growing emphasis on limiting gun access. Some states, including Illinois, have “red flag” or “extreme risk” laws. Wisconsin’s Republican legislators have refused to consider that change, but should it – or something else – be debated next year?

Question: Should the closing of two-year Universities of Wisconsin System campuses continue because of declining enrollments?

Context: Seven two-year UW system campuses will be closed by mid-2025, hurting regional economies. The UW System gets $2.4 billion in state aid in the current two-year budget, and Evers wants that increased by $800 million by mid-2027. It’s unclear whether that would stop campus closings.

Question: Would reforming the state prison system, which has seen inmate deaths and the worst staffing shortages at the oldest prisons in Waupun and Green Bay, be a priority for you, if you are elected?

Context: Evers says no new Brown County prison will be built without criminal justice system reforms that Republicans haven’t considered. But should Waupun inmate deaths, and criminal negligence charges filed against prison staffers, break that impasse next year?

Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com