Why I'm Running and What I Stand for

Bangstad lays out key policy positions in 70 minute podcast

Minocqua Brewing Company

May 7

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Hi folks,

In last night’s Up North Podcast, I gave all our contributors the night off and spent 70 minutes going through:

What led me to decide to run for Governor of Wisconsin.
Why the other Democrats in the field have failed to meet the moment by not discussing how they'd protect Wisconsinites from their own federal government.
My main policy priorities as Governor.
How people can help on the campaign.

If you can’t listen to the whole podcast, here are a few of the most important clips. Here’s the clip of me explaining that I decided to run for governor after being visited by the Secret Service and FBI for posting satire on Facebook.

In the second segment, I talked about each Democratic candidate currently running and why I didn’t think they were meeting them moment in Wisconsin and America. I started with a blanket statement about the Corporate Democratic wing of our party, which I believe includes everyone running except Francesca Hong and Kelda Roys, and also includes our current governor Tony Evers, Attorney General Josh Kaul, and Senator Tammy Baldwin. Here’s the clip (apologies for the graph that nobody could read—we didn’t know it was too small for prime time until we saw it on the screen):

Next, I talked about how some of the far-far left progressives in Wisconsin have become a bit like MAGA in their tribalism, and how a number of folks in that tribe immediately came out against me because I’m a white male. I reminded our audience that Wisconsin is 86% white, and half of that crowd, around 2.5 million, are male. It’s gonna be hard to win a governor’s race if your base continually bashes one of the largest demographics of voters in the state.

Next, I spoke at length about the main reason I’m running, and that’s because nobody on the campaign trail is talking about the plan we absolutely have to have to protect our elections this coming November. If I don’t win this primary, I’ll still be at peace because I made sure that this topic entered the debate and made Wisconsinites more aware of the dangers surrounding our elections on the horizon. Here’s the clip of my actual “PLAN,” which I’ve borrowed from my friend, retired army colonel George Mason, who leads the Wisconsin Committee of Safety.

Next, I’ve already been criticized just three days after announcing my candidacy for not having a policy platform. To those folks, I would ask you to read the weekly essays I’ve written over the last five years here and here. I guarantee you that I’ve laid out more policy positions in those weekly essays than any of my competitors.

Last night, however, I did layout some of my most important priorities if elected. here they are:

Save public educations in Wisconsin—here’s a clip:

Put Wisconsinites federal tax dollars in escrow until Trump releases all the funds we’re owed: including disaster relief, federal programs like Head Start that were cut without Congressional approval, and grants to the University of Wisconsin.
Fix income in equality in Wisconsin by passing a law that forces company executives to only make 20x more than their lowest paid employees, instead of 334x, which is the standard among fortune 500 companies. This policy has shown to vastly reduce unemployment in the Basque region of Spain. Here’s the clip.
Regulate media by forming a private/public partnership with journalism graduate schools to “accredit” media companies. If they can’t pass accreditation because they lie too much, put a label on their stories saying that their misinformation harms the public discourse, just like we put labels on cigarettes to warn consumers that they’ll give you cancer.
Criminal Justice Reform
1. Every judge, DA, and correctional office must to spend 24 hours in solitary confinement as part of their training, so they understand what their actions do to people.
2. Police officers cannot be paid more than schoolteachers–because arguably schoolteachers do more to stop kids from committing crime.
3. Every corrections office must have the same level of education that a public education teacher has to do their jobs–if a teacher is forced to take grad classes to get paid more, so must correction and police officers.
Finally, here’s a clip that has QR codes to Download/Sign my nomination forms and Donate to the campaign. We need to turn in 2000 signatures by June 1 and need all the help we can get.