Gov. Tony Evers says if the Republican-controlled Legislature passes the maps he submitted to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, he’ll sign them into law.
“As you know, the first thing is they have to pass them,” Evers said on WISN’s “UpFront,” which is produced in partnership with WisPolitics. “And I have great doubts that that could happen. But if my maps are approved by the Legislature, of course, I’d sign them.”
The guv also weighed in on the state of Wisconsin’s prisons, specifically Waupun and Green Bay Correctional Institution, adding his most recent prison visit happened “within the last month, three weeks.”
“Are things difficult?” Evers said. “Yes. But I can tell you as an observer of this process, having hired more people and, you know, thanks to the Legislature for allowing us to increase the pay by almost double, we’re having the largest classes of correctional officers we’ve ever had before.”
Waupun and Green Bay have been plagued with issues including overcrowding, a shortage of correctional officers and outcry from families surrounding conditions inside the prisons.
Evers said he has confidence in Department of Corrections Secretary Kevin Carr.
“Absolutely,” Evers said. “He works hard, and it’s a really, really difficult job, but he’s doing the good work.”
The governor also dismissed calls by village of Allouez President Jim Rafter to close Green Bay’s prison and build a new facility. Late last year, Rafter told “UpFront” the prison was a “powder keg waiting to blow,” adding, “I would not want to be a state leader and have that on my hands.”
“Of course not, I wouldn’t either,” Evers responded. “But at the same time, I have visited Green Bay, and I have to put it in this context. Is everything perfect there? Absolutely not. Are people doing the best they can out of the circumstances? Absolutely, yes.”
“It took us years to get kids out of, and they’re still not there, out of up north and bringing them to Milwaukee and other places,” Evers said, referring to Lincoln Hills. “Once that’s empty, that is going to be a facility that we can use. So it’s premature to talk about, let’s close this place down and find a place for a thousand men that have committed crimes someplace in the state. We need to do it thoughtfully.”
Evers also pushed back at Dem U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, a presidential candidate who the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered to appear on Wisconsin’s presidential primary ballot alongside President Joe Biden. Last week on “UpFront,” Phillips criticized the governor for calling his ballot push ‘ridiculous.’
“Oh my goodness,” Evers said in response. “He had a month to collect signatures. How many did he collect? Zero. Come on. So he decided not to take the traditional way of actually getting people to support him, we’ll go to the Supreme Court instead. I’m glad he’s on it. I don’t really care one way or the other. He’s not going to win.”
Evers said the state is currently working with some of its largest cities should an influx of migrants arrive like has happened in other major cities across the country.
“We’re working with people in all our cities of any size to be prepared for that so that we can take care of people, people are safe, people in the community are safe, everybody is safe,” Evers said. “Finding places for them to live, all that stuff so that we can be part of the process, so, yes, we’re working on it. I think we have to count on our federal partners to do some really smart things, like pass a law that they just didn’t pass. But at the end of the day, they will do something and that will help us in that circumstance. But I know it’s something that is possible. And so we have preparations with especially our largest cities to do something.”
The guv also weighed in on several bills lawmakers are attempting to pass before the end of the session.
*Evers said he’s taking under advisement a proposal that would implement ranked-choice voting for congressional races in Wisconsin and opposes a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban the practice.
*Evers said he’d “go through” the GOP’s proposed $2.1 billion tax plan but wouldn’t commit to supporting or vetoing.
*Evers said he would veto a bill that would require the UW Board of Regents to provide first-year students with absentee ballot applications from their home states.
*Evers said he supports legislation that includes $7 million in matching funds for Wisconsin’s federal tech hub designation, saying, “I hope I’ll be in a position to support that.”
*Evers said he would veto a GOP bill that would hold students back if they miss more than 30 days of school in a school year.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, told “UpFront” he wants Mitch McConnell out as Senate minority leader after GOP senators quickly killed the bipartisan border deal.
“I’ve certainly laid out to my colleagues that there is one person that walked us through this box canyon, and took an issue that the vast majority of Americans agree with us on and set us up to be either inaccurately, I mean, wrongly, but set us up to be blamed for the open border,” Johnson said. “I mean this is absurd. This is President Biden and his Democratic colleagues in Congress that want an open border. They caused this problem. Republicans shouldn’t be blamed, but that was a box canyon that McConnell led us in.”
Johnson said he’d vote no on the stand-alone bill that would provide billions in aid for Ukraine and Israel without any border security provisions.
“If I saw a clear strategy on how we’re going to bring this war to an end, I’ve been saying this for over a year, and listen, I support the freedom-loving people of Ukraine,” Johnson said. “Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. But the fact of the matter is he’s not going to lose this war.”
Johnson also defended U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Allouez, after he was one of three House Republicans who voted against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Gallagher announced Saturday he won’t seek reelection in November.
“I like Mike and I think Mike is a person of real integrity,” Johnson said. “I know he probably struggled with that vote. It was not an easy vote for him to take, and I think people ought to factor that in as well. Again, disagree with him, not the way I would have voted, but I respect his position on that.”
Johnson said if the House eventually does impeach Mayorkas, he would vote to convict in the Senate.
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