Elon Musk is Trying to Buy a State Supreme Court Election

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain minor errors.

Cayden Mak: [00:00:00] What’s up friends, and welcome to Block and Build a podcast from Convergence Magazine. I’m your host and the publisher of Convergence, Caden Mock. On this show, we are building a roadmap for the movement that’s working to block the impacts of rising authoritarianism while building the strength and resilience of the broad front that we need to win.

This week on the show, we’re taking a look at a critical state supreme court justice election in Wisconsin. That is happening this Tuesday, April 1st. I’m joined shortly by the state director of the Wisconsin Working Families Party, Corrine Rosen, and the director of Vera Action in Sharah to discuss why this.

Off-season state Special election has become such a critical referendum on the influence of Elon Musk and his money on electoral politics, as well as how folks are organizing on the ground to push back. But first, these headlines, the administration’s attacks on dissent on campus continue to escalate.

Marco Rubio [00:01:00] has threatened that they’re going to do this to quote hundreds of people. By this point, you probably have. Seen the clip of Tufts University PhD student Rusa Ozturk being kidnapped on the street in broad daylight by plain enclosed police officers while on her way to break her fast for her Ramadan Iftar.

This happened in Somerville, Massachusetts, which is ironically a town that literally for decades has been a sanctuary city for migrants. She was also moved to a detention center in, guess it, Louisiana. And what did Ozturk do to be targeted in this way? She co-authored an op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper, criticizing the university administration’s response or lack thereof to a student government resolution, asking the university to divest from Israel.

I. There’s a couple of things in this viral clip that I wanna highlight for our listeners, especially because I’ve noticed that very few things bring me more despair than watching ice kidnappings. The first is that the reason that this went [00:02:00] viral is because it did get captured on surveillance footage.

Having this clear footage of law enforcement action helps us better advocate for those who are being targeted. So filming these goons is really important. And the second is there’s that bystander who walks by who just. Carrying a bag of takeout acts like nothing is happening. They don’t turn around or even acknowledge what looks like at first glance, a woman getting basically assaulted on the street by a group of burly guys.

And I get why this is a potentially very scary situation for a bystander, but imagine how much scarier it is for Ozturk. I don’t know that there necessarily would’ve been like a different outcome from this event if the bystander had at least stopped, acknowledged, or even better started filming from their own phone.

But. I think that it highlights that we all can and should be ready to potentially break out of the bystander bubble and look out for our neighbors. The best thing to do is probably to find a cop watch or an ice watch training in your area because the more [00:03:00] prepared that we are, the more useful our response can be In heated moments like these.

Also last week the week of March 17th, Congress was on recess. But apparently on orders from Daddy Trump to hide from their angry constituents, many Republican representatives were nowhere to be found in their home districts. Thousands of constituents did turn out though to make their anger heard.

Thanks in part, to local progressive organizing networks like Indivisible, and our friends at the Working Families Party, who co-organized empty chair town halls in Republican controlled purple districts across the country during the recess. When you’re planning trillions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid threatening seniors access to social security, firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers, and working to eliminate the Department of Education that nearly every working and middle class family depends on for their children.

Of course you wouldn’t Dane to face this when you believe that you are as untouchable as you are. Spineless. 

Sound on Tape: Hundreds of Hoosiers gathered today at the downtown library for an empty chair [00:04:00] town hall meeting organized by the group indivisible, northeast Indiana, empty chair town halls with an empty chair, town hall meeting in Jacksonville, the empty chair town hall, and it was called an empty chair town hall.

Because attendees say Representative Isa refuses to engage with his constituents. You take care of. What are you going to do about it in the short run for the people of Indiana? Are you silent on Trump’s current intimidation of the judiciary? How can you assure me and other retirees that we will continue to receive our social security and our health benefits?

Why? Do you expect us to pay taxes? When you have stripped us of a representative government that stands for us in its constitutional powers? What is the world that you wanna create for young people?

I’m very concerned that we are having an assault on our democracy.

Hi, this is Josh Stro podcast and [00:05:00] multimedia producer for Convergence Magazine. I probably worked on the show you’re listening to right now, and if you’re enjoying it, I hope you’ll consider becoming a subscriber of convergence. What you might not realize is that for every hour or so of convergence content you hear.

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Cayden Mak: And now to Wisconsin. On this [00:06:00] coming Tuesday, April 1st, Wisconsin is holding a special election to fill a state Supreme Court seat that is being vacated by retiring Justice Ann Walsh Bradley.

In the past two months, it has rapidly become one of the most expensive state races in history with candidates and outside groups, having spent over $80 million at this point on candidates Susan Crawford and Brad Shimmel. While the race is officially nonpartisan on paper, the investments and stakes have been anything but joining me today to learn more about this race stakes, its candidates, its big spenders, and how movement organizing is involved.

State Director of Wisconsin Working Families Party, Corinne Rosen. Corinne, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me, Caden. And also the director of Vera Action Insha. Raman is joining me as well. Insha, thank you for making the time. Thanks for having 

Insha Rahman: us. 

Cayden Mak: Let’s also, because we have a national audience for the pod.

Let’s get a little into the background of this race. How do state Supreme Court races in Wisconsin work, and what are the issues that [00:07:00] the state Supreme Court Justices deal with on a regular basis? Let’s start with you, Corin. 

Corinne Rosen: Yeah, so just the background of the race, and I’ll actually go back to 2023.

We actually had a Supreme Court race in 2023 where we took back. And now we have a liberal court here in Wisconsin. And we’ve got a retiring justice this year. And so that seat is up. And there’s a lot of things like at stake on the ballot. If we win and it Susan Crawford gets elected we, are gonna think c things move in the right directions in terms of redistricting, in terms of workers’ rights in terms of access to abortion care. If we don’t like, those things are all on the ballot and they’re probably gonna move in the court’s gonna move in the other direction and so will those decisions.

And so there’s a lot of real long-term decisions that affect real people in Wisconsin. And the Wisconsin Supreme Court is gonna be deciding those. 

Cayden Mak: Yeah, I re I remember that race that what seemed to be the crux of it was [00:08:00] about these extremely gerrymandered maps that gave like single party control over the state legislature in Wisconsin.

And that’s like a big I don’t know, it’s just it seems like one of those things that’s has huge ripple effects for everybody in the state. 

Corinne Rosen: Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. And also when we when we won that seat back the gerrymandered maps, which some people have called the worst in the country up until that point which kept basically Wisconsin red even though we’re really a per purple state, for the last 10 years.

And we won back both, got rid of gerrymandered districts. We also won back the right to use drop boxes, which people use for absentee ballot voting. And so that was a really big deal. 

Cayden Mak: Yeah. And in intro, why is, did Vera action get involved in this particular race? 

Insha Rahman: So we’ve been working in Wisconsin since 2022.

And lemme just say what Vera action is. We’re the advocacy and political partner of the Vera Institute of Justice. Vera is a [00:09:00] national nonprofit. It’s been around for 60 plus years and our work is to end mass incarceration, fight for immigrants rights, and. Help build safe, thriving communities. We got involved because we know you can pass really good policy on criminal justice reform, but if the politics of crime make it so that those policies don’t stand or they’re really hard to keep in place, we don’t win.

We don’t make progress. We don’t move forward. And as I said, we actually started working in Wisconsin back in 2022. ’cause as Vera action as the C four, we got involved in. Races, congressional races, local races where crime was the dominant wedge issue being wielded in that election. And back in 2022 in Wisconsin, it was the us Senate race between Ron Johnson, Mandela Barnes.

We could talk a little bit more in a minute about the very particular dynamics around crime as a wedge issue in that race. But then it didn’t go away in 20 22, 20 23, Corinne mentioned the Supreme Court race. Then Judge [00:10:00] Janet Perowitz, who won was being attacked for being quote unquote soft on crime.

And that’s the same dynamic that we are seeing here right now between Brad Shimel, who is a Republican former prosecutor, Susan Crawford, a Democrat, also a former prosecutor, even though a sitting Supreme Court justice actually. Works on lots of things. Crime and public safety is a very small sort of portion of their overall portfolio.

Crime is a dominant issue on the election, trail and on the campaign trail. That’s why we got involved to help candidates counter, I. Tough on crime rhetoric and inoculate against those attacks and actually turn the debate to what voters want, which is we all want safety, we all want accountability, we all want justice.

Sure. 

Cayden Mak: Yeah. I find the tough on like emergence of the tough on crime thing right now to be very interesting. I live in Oakland and so much of our local politics right now are being shaped by that too. And I think that a lot of communities across the country are having this experience and I don’t.

It is an accident, right? I think it [00:11:00] is. There’s some very clear sort of narrative through lines here, and I’m excited to get into that with you all. But I think one of the things that also makes this race interesting is the amount of money that is being poured into it. And I think that one of the people who’s pouring a ton of money into that, this is Elon Musk, corinne, I’m curious to hear from you about how the attention from Musk and the sort of like national the national political environment is shaping this race and how it, does it feel like this is a referendum on Doge and Musk and Trump’s project? 

Corinne Rosen: Yeah, it absolutely does feel like it’s a referendum on those things.

And with Elon Musk coming in, I think at this point, the us or. The Wisconsin Supreme Court race, they think that we’ll spend over a hundred million dollars. It’s now the most expensive race in US history for that seat. And Elon Musk himself has put in over $22.5 million into the race.

And yeah, they’re coming in, they’re spending money. They’re trying to buy the Supreme Court [00:12:00] race. Also Elon Musk has a court case that will be come before the Supreme Court. And so literally trying to buy a decision with Brad Shimel, and we’ve tried to make that clear to the public that this is he’s bought and sold and paid for, and that he’s not the person that’s gonna represent them.

And but yes, it definitely having that much money in the race, it’s concerning, it again, up against all these smaller grassroots groups that are just fighting to basically talk to people at the doors and make sure that our message gets through. But we have really at WFP focused on I.

Being serious about safety, the serious on safety messaging. It seems to be cutting through. We’re having direct conversations with voters both on the phone and at their doors. And we’re, we’ve we’ve partnered with Vera Action who has been a great partner. And they think about this messaging all day long.

And so we’ve found the things that we do great in terms of doing the direct. Voter [00:13:00] contact and then partnering with groups that are bringing up the newest messaging and putting together an action plan around that. And so that’s what we’ve done. We’re hoping that cuts through and it’s working.

And, but yes, it definitely, Elon Musk throwing all that money into the race is it’s. Absurd. He’s also given a million dollars out to one person in Green Bay, which is gonna be a very important area for this election. And he plans to give out $2 million more two checks, I believe, in the form of a million dollars to two different people before Sunday.

So he’s literally trying to buy this race. And he’s also offering people to a hundred dollars a piece to sign a petition saying that they won’t vote for activist judges, but essentially he’s offering them a hundred dollars to vote. And then also offering people a hundred dollars to refer somebody to do that.

So they’re using their money to stay in the media. 

Cayden Mak: Yeah, no, I feel like that’s, that kind of tactic is going to get headlines on a local news station. Like it’s very, whether the money [00:14:00] comes through or not. Like just announcing it is the kind of thing that I’ve, I feel you might see on like your local TV news station.

Corinne Rosen: Yeah, I literally, right before we started this, I had a neighbor that sent me a text with this headline that I’m supposed to a million dollars more. And do you know how many times I’ve ever talked to her about politics? Through text or something. Never in my life. And she knows what I do.

Yeah. Talk about things in person, but we’ve never talked about it. And she’s sending me texts to let me know that’s going on. So 

Cayden Mak: that’s pretty wild. Yeah. Thinking about this level of spending that is happening, I imagine like Wisconsin voters are being inundated with things like mailers and TV ads and all this other, this sort of like traditional media as well.

But what are the kinds of things that. People’s organizations and people’s movements can be doing to fight back against this kind of inundation that’s clearly happening, like viral inundation really. [00:15:00] Yeah, 

Insha Rahman: I can actually talk a little bit about how this message is coming together, both the sort of soft on crime attacks and then watching the Working Families party and a number of other organizers and advocates in Wisconsin fight back and fight back really effectively.

Kay. You said something about living Oakland and how you’re seeing this crime narrative grow everywhere, and it feels like it’s on purpose. It’s on purpose. We at Vera action have been following the money on this, specifically around crime as a line of attack. And what we’ve seen is in 2020 when defund and the protests and the uprisings, the summer of George Floyd’s murder, we saw the GOP spend in that presidential election cycle about a hundred million on soft on crime attacks, defund, all of that. We saw that in 2022, a midterm cycle, that number more than doubled to 250 million spent by Republicans attacking Democrats for being quote unquote soft on crime. Just in 2024, the presidential [00:16:00] cycle that quadrupled over a billion dollars was spent by the GOP across the country attacking Democrats for being soft on crime.

So this is not a trend that’s going away. There’s a lot of money being pumped in. To move this message and what we found from the research that we’ve done, so we at Vera Action, we don’t endorse candidates. We’re not doing the incredible work on the ground, but we are here with the research and the messaging strategy and the political strategy.

And how do you manage specifically the issue around crime, and what a wedge it becomes in election cycles. Here’s what we found is voters are concerned about crime. Both valid concerns and then the sort of fear-mongering that we have seen go on overdrive in recent years and. The GOP has historically had an advantage.

They have more trust with voters on this issue, but it’s only because they’re talking about it. It’s not because voters agree with their policies. It’s such an important distinction. And so what we’ve been doing for the past couple of years, as [00:17:00] Corinne knows well, is saying, Hey, Democrats, the left own this issue, do not seed ground.

Because when that tough on cry message is countered with a. We are serious about safety. We stand for safety, accountability, and justice. In fact, safety, accountability and justice wins each and every time. But as I said, in the 2024 cycle, the GOP spent over a billion. On soft on crime attacks and tough on crime rhetoric.

Democrats in response spent about 300 million, and when they responded, they actually reinforced the GOP message by saying, I too am tough on crime. I too are gonna crack down on the border. And the problem with Democrats in the left basically sounding. Like your opposition is, it reinforces their brand.

It doesn’t create a brand for you. So what we’ve been trying to do is say, don’t see ground on this critical kitchen table issue to people. And there is a winning messaging and political strategy, which is about being serious and safety, accountability and justice. And so in this race, we are [00:18:00] watching Brad Schmo literally be a cartoon character, tough on crime prosecutor.

Like I wanna just read two sentences from his website, which is literally. From opening the border to releasing criminals on our streets, rogue judges across the nation are putting their radical agenda above the law. Brad Schell will take back the Wisconsin Supreme Court and end the madness for Brad Schell being tough on crime.

It’s not just a campaign slogan, it’s a calling. It’s like comical, right? Yeah, it sounds like 

Cayden Mak: a comic book character. Straight 

Insha Rahman: up like funny. And then, so Susan Crawford, what does she say her language is? So about safety, accountability, and justice. She says, we know how important it’s to protect the basic rights and freedoms of Wisconsinites.

She has a deep understanding of our justice system knows how important it has. It is to have Supreme Court justices who understand how to keep communities safe, who are fair and impartial. There’s the accountability bit. Who will reject efforts to politicize the Constitution to undermine our most basic rights.

There’s justice, like it’s just right there. And what we have seen. [00:19:00] In the rare instances where we watch Democrats not just back down, not just be on the opposition’s narrative turf, but own their lane of safety, accountability, and justice, and that head to head Democrats will win. So this is a really interesting race.

What happens on Tuesday? It’s a referendum on is it about tough on crime or safety and justice? And Corin and others have done an incredible job of getting that serious about safety message out. And I feel hopeful actually in the early poll results show. I think we’re on the right side here. 

Cayden Mak: That is optimistic and we love to hear it.

Yeah, fingers crossed. What does the ground game look like taking this messaging to people? What has that look, what has that been looking like and what have been hearing like from voters that you’ve been talking to? Corin? 

Corinne Rosen: Yeah, so definitely the message has been connecting with voters. We have trained all of our canvasers.

We do a very extensive training on. We have both paid canvassers and we have volunteer canvassers. And we do a deep training even with the people that are like, Hey, I’ve been doing [00:20:00] this for 10 years. We’re like, great, and we’ve, we’re gonna train you for one hour on this messaging. So people really understand what we’re doing, they understand why we’re doing it and those people are connecting at the doors.

And then they’re also trained to move on if somebody is not moving with them on the message. And so we’ve been. Using that and making sure that we’re having those one-on-one conversations with folks at the doors when we’re doing the canvassing. We’ve also been doing a bunch of events just showing up at different events that Brad Chimal is at letting people know.

His record on his accountability, right? 6,000 rape kits, that he lets sit on a shelf for two years. And when we’re running our social media ads people are constantly piping into the social media on Facebook or Instagram, what have you saying, Susan Crawford did this and Brad Shimel is the guy that’s tough on crime and we don’t argue with them on whether he’s tough on crime or not.

We just. State the facts of that. Like he lets 6,000, rape kits sit on a shelf for two years [00:21:00] untested. And that’s not a way to give justice to survivors. And so it’s been interesting seeing that kind of has brought up some interesting discussion. And the number of people that are also just pushing out the message.

So I’m interested in how many of those people are. They’re just on their own, pushing that message out and how many are actually connected with some sort of campaign. But that’s definitely the case. And then also when we’re doing the phone banking, we’re giving the same message on phone banking the serious on safety messaging.

And it just, it works because we’re doing it in all the places. And our, all of our lit two reflects, reflects the same messaging. 

Cayden Mak: Yeah. That’s great. I think also I’m curious about the way that maybe this is also part of, I wanna, I also wanna look at this like the, some of the larger forces at work here, both the sort of like, why this race matters to people outside of Wisconsin.

Yeah. Because I know why it does. But I would love you, I would love you to talk a little bit about that as well, both from [00:22:00] a like. How this might impact our larger politics. It’s not just a referendum on Musk, but it’s as goes Wisconsin, so goes the country in a lot of ways. 

Corinne Rosen: Oh yeah, absolutely.

And especially in in this case we’ve got two congressional districts that are, that could be redistricted. And we know that if they’re redistricted fairly, we have a very good chance of winning those two seats. And if they’re not we, they, if they gerrymandered the districts, again, we’re gonna be in a lot of trouble.

But yeah, definitely as goes Wisconsin goes the rest of the country and in all different areas, we’ve seen that with Act 10 when they really push back on workers’ rights. And that was done through the Supreme Court and we will that decision will come before the courts again this year. And that, once that happened in Wisconsin, it happened in other areas. The same thing is once we can push back in Wisconsin, we can push back in, in other areas of the state or other areas of the country. Yeah. And all eyes are on Wisconsin right now because Elon Musk is nonstop in the news with dodge and [00:23:00] accountability and we need everybody to see that it’s not.

If they win this race with the amount of money that they’ve put into it it’s gonna be defeating for other areas in the country. So we’re really doing our best with all of our organizations making sure that we have all the resources that we can and that we’re partnering with. Both ex experts in the field and even, we have some groups that got money in the last few weeks to do pack to talk basically about Susan Crawford at the doors.

And they didn’t have kind of the time to make the lit to do, get their training set up to do that work. They’ve folded right into our campaign and that’s what, having real partnership looks like is. Somebody comes and they say, Hey, we wanna do this. And we figure out a way, we figured out a way with working Families Party Wisconsin, to help them out.

So to support those campaigns. Yeah. 

Insha Rahman: And Caden, can I ask can I just add one more reason why I think this is so important nationally? So in 2024, Democrats settled on this line of attack against Trump, that he’s a convicted [00:24:00] felon. They said it time and time again. And it was the ad hoon attack, much as like being soft on crime is basically an ad ho attack.

And what we saw is. From our research, it did not work. It didn’t land for a couple of reasons. One is most voters, unfortunately in this country, they have a stereotype in their head of who a convicted felon is, and that old white billionaire is not that stereotype. And so it’s like Teflon. It just pings off of him.

It doesn’t land it also seems like 

Cayden Mak: that would also bring up a bunch of this complex of like racist ideas too. Yeah. 

Insha Rahman: Absolutely. And for the 20 million Americans, most of whom are black men, Latino men who do have a felony conviction, it’s really alienating to be like, oh, that’s what you think of us.

And we found from our research, like literally it showed in the results that calling him a convicted felon didn’t work. But when you go after his actions. He doesn’t care about the law. He puts [00:25:00] himself above others. And that is the really smart strategy that we’re watching on this series about safety messaging.

That Corinne and others are doing in Wisconsin. They’re not attacking, Brad Sch will be like, wanna know who’s really soft on crime. They don’t say that. They’re like, let’s talk about safety, accountability, and justice button by letting rape kits. Rot on a shelf for two years, that’s not delivering safety to victims.

It’s not delivering accountability, it’s not delivering justice. It’s just so much smarter to go after actions. ’cause then voters are like, oh, you’re not just another politician talking politician talk. You’re actually talking to me about values and principles that matter to me. So I think there’s a real opportunity here to see.

On that line of attack, how do you go after Trump? How do you go after Elon Musk? How do you go after these bad actors, but not with ad hominem attacks that we know just don’t land. 

Cayden Mak: Yeah, no, that, that feels really rich too because of the like ways that this framing [00:26:00] around. Accountability and safety then also opens the door to being like, what does keep us safe?

That there’s a, there’s another door to step through after this one that is com like complexifying problematizing the prison industrial complex as like the solution, right? That I think is very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. You also mentioned earlier the Mandela Barnes Senate race, and I’d love to get into that a little bit more because it seems like it happened and then the national media moved on from it really quickly.

But I’m curious how y’all’s experience in that election cycle has informed the way that you are approaching this moment and this issue. 

Insha Rahman: Yeah. I can start on the crime piece and then Corinne, I would love for you to talk just more broadly ’cause that is a race that left many of us just.

Brokenhearted and learning a lot of lessons for the future. So crime became the wedge issue and the soft on crime defund attacks became the line of attacks against Mandela Barnes, when, polls in August, September showed him up. Yeah, [00:27:00] by significant margin against Ron Johnson. And then that’s when the money came in and you saw national money pouring in for Johnson’s campaign and the attacks were relentless that Mandela Barnes wants to defund the police, he wants to abolish ice.

He’s a soft on crime, dangerously liberal and. So on, so far forth, you just saw it relentlessly and literally in just a few months, from September to November, the GOP spent 14 million on ads across the state calling Mandela Soft on crime. The problem was that there wasn’t enough money mobilizing in those final few months for Barnes’s campaign to actually own, no, we’re about safety, accountability, and justice.

Here’s what safety looks like. And so you saw for one thing, Mandela Barnes lost by one percentage point. It was such a close race, but when you pull out the AP vote, cast exit surveys of what voters actually took to the ballot box. About 9% of Wisconsin voters said [00:28:00] crime was my top voting issue. And for those voters, Mandela Barnes, lost by double digits.

The contrast in 2022, humor me for a second. ’cause there’s a lesson here. Was. At the same time, there was a US Senate race happening in Pennsylvania. John Fetterman against ADE crime was the line of attack as well. Calling John Fetterman dangerously liberal soft on crime. He did marshal a lot of money to say, no, I’m about safety, accountability, and justice.

We all know he won, but if he actually, again, look at the same exit surveys of the 11% of Pennsylvania voters who said, crime is my top voting issue. 51 to 49, they voted for John Fetterman over Madada. So that’s the power of having a safety and justice message, and that’s the power of being able to actually get it out for voters to hear it.

Because we have seen concretely, it shapes how voters vote on an issue that matters so much to them. 

Cayden Mak: It’s fascinating. 

Corinne Rosen: Yeah, and I think one thing that I saw in that race is, again, like the [00:29:00] media all the ads came out against Mandela and there wasn’t really the response and, Mandela’s a young African American man running in the state of Wisconsin and, it was clear that the money came was coming in to the.

Democratic national committee, and it wasn’t coming into Wisconsin to help defend, to help him win that seed. And he really needed that. The other thing I’ll say is that on the doors, and I know the feedback that we are getting was crime. When we talk about crime, we lose I’m from the city of Milwaukee.

Crime is a real issue here. And I was like, how can we not, how can we pretend like it doesn’t exist like that is. That’s in, in absolutely insane to me. And yet the feedback we were getting from folks at the time was, let’s not talk about this. Let’s talk about other things. These are the other things we went on.

And that that messaging, it didn’t work. And I love that, we’ve been connected with Vera action and been able to really understand that it’s not just. Not talking about something, it’s talking about being the serious on safety and talking about it in the right way that [00:30:00] connects with voters.

At the, in 2022, I actually worked with Power to the polls. I was hired to start that organization. And and our only mission was really to help Mandela Barnes get elected, we were, fighting hard for that. But then again, like the safety issue on the doors was not there. And so I’m proud that like this election cycle we’re able to get out there and talk to folks about the issues that matter to them, and also connect this messaging with the Supreme Court race.

And also remind people that, the Supreme Court is not gonna, be looking at criminal cases. That’s like a big thing. Like people have no idea. And so when you say they’re not gonna be looking at criminal cases. ’cause people say she, this person let, is gonna let people out.

It’s no, that’s not what they’re gonna be working on. So really focusing on the facts and moving people and pivoting. On issues and letting them know, like they are gonna decide about your healthcare. Do you know anybody that’s ever had an abortion? A lot of people think they don’t, but the reality is in our country, everybody has and yeah, everybody knows [00:31:00] somebody that has had one.

Whether it’s a friend or a family member, DNCs are very common with Miss. Miscarriage. And people, if you say, do you know somebody that has a DNC, there’s a lot of people that say yes. They don’t understand. That’s often an abortion. And and then workers’ rights, right? Like people don’t understand this is gonna go to the Supreme Court and it’s gonna affect your life.

Yeah. 

Cayden Mak: Yeah, tho those all seem really big. It does, seems like when people hear the word court, they think of criminal court because of the like mass media representation of like the police procedural or whatever that it’s oh, courts deal with crime and criminality, but our courts deal with so much more than that.

To the workers’ rights piece? I do. I like, it does occur to me that there’s also perhaps a connection between all of these like attacks on federal workers and the Doge thing, and then it just seems like a, such a, I don’t know, it’s like the current most aggressive manifestation of the anti-union.

Like trend in US politics [00:32:00] that I feel like was also just I mean I was a member of a graduate student union in the early 20 teens, so I very much remember Scott Walker’s attacks on our union siblings in other state in in Wisconsin. But yeah I’m curious if people are connecting that, those dots too around like attacks on.

Workers’ rights and like what that conversation has been like around this race. 

Corinne Rosen: Yeah, I think people are connecting the dots. I think that it is difficult. Less people, again, you can’t go with the same message that used to work. That this is just an attack against unions. A lot of people have never, ever been in a union.

They don’t even know what that means. They’ve never been part of a union in Wisconsin now. And though we. Talk about workers’ rights, and we do talk about it being attack on unions and workers. It’s, we have to make sure that we’re reaching everybody and we’re not just reaching a small pool of people.

And everybody that, most people that have worked or know somebody that’s worked in a hostile work environment. They know what it’s like not to be able to push [00:33:00] back, whether it’s on pay or on benefits. Maybe your benefits just get changed overnight on you, and they go from good benefits to not good benefits, and you’re also paying more for those.

People understand what that means. And so it’s, I think it, that’s part of our job is always helping people, helping talk about things in a way that connects with people and so that they can understand it. 

Cayden Mak: Great. Are there less, I guess one of the last things I’m thinking about as we wrap up is what, first of all, what are ways that listeners can pitch into this fight, even if they’re not in Wisconsin?

I know that, there are some folks who are watching us live on Friday and then this is gonna hit people’s podcast feeds on Monday. So time is tight. But I’m sure that the next five days are probably gonna be the most intense. 

Corinne Rosen: Yeah, so we have phone banking on Monday night. And I think that we’ll probably be adding a phone banking shift on Tuesday too.

These are really important because it’s, again, it’s the, that last minute that we’re having the voter [00:34:00] contact with folks. And a lot of people, even though the race is, just days away. There are a lot of people that still, they don’t know that there’s a Supreme Court race or they don’t know what the race is about.

A lot of folks that we’ve talked to at the doors, they they maybe know there’s a race. They’re like, yeah, I like to vote, but I don’t even understand what the Supreme Court does. So yeah, so these last minute conversations, we’re still looking for people, so I’ll make sure that you get that information.

Caden awesome. Where people can volunteer and help out with phone banking. And then we’re also, we’re still collecting funding actually. We’re pushing all the way till the end with both our paid canvas and our volunteer canvas. And yeah, so those are. Two ways to help out and also if people are in within driving distance or if they wanna yeah, if they’re, I guess if they wanna fly, but if they’re within driving distance of Wisconsin, they can actually show up on election day and be plugged right into our volunteer program.

We’ve got a great partnership this year with seed the vote. Seed, the vote is a pack, and they [00:35:00] usually work on only federal races. But last year during the last election cycle for the presidential WFP, we had our biggest year ever. We knocked over 300,000 doors. 60,000 of those were volunteer.

And many of those were through our partnership with Seed the Vote. And so they have actually come to Wisconsin for the Supreme Court race. It’s the first time they’re trying it out for a non-federal race. And so we’d love to plug people into that so that you can participate and help us win.

And also just. See what that partnership looks like. 

Cayden Mak: Huge. 

Insha Rahman: Yeah. I can’t underscore enough how much money, even small amounts of money, make a huge difference for ads in the last few days and digital ads on tv, radio people, I. Don’t tune in until the very, very end. And when Really fascinating finding from our research is it’s the late deciders who actually are most open to a message of we can do safety, accountability, and justice, which I just found fascinating.

It’s huh? Yeah. It’s the folks who are [00:36:00] truly independent, moderate, I don’t know which way I’m gonna vote. They are most open to this, and in fact, most influenced by a message that sounds distinct and different from what they have heard before. 

Cayden Mak: That makes actually a certain amount of sense to me also, that especially if you’re doing this sort of like civic education too, that’s like this is what this court does that those people might be like, oh, like you make a good point about what the role of this court could be.

Anything else you want our listeners to know about this race? Anything else that’s been on your mind that you’re Yeah. Interested to get out to a movement audience? 

Insha Rahman: If I can just pitch in, not necessarily about this race, but using this race as an example. Yeah. We’re sitting on a ton of good research and messaging and we are working on mayoral races across the country.

This year I’m in New York City, crime is the dominant issue of debate. We’re seeing it in lots of other places where there are mayoral races. The gubernatorial race in Virginia. This is gonna be the wedge issue. If history is any predictor of what will. What will happen this [00:37:00] year and likewise for the 2026 election cycle, like we’ve just seen this issue come up time and time again.

So please reach out to us if folks are working on local races, on issue advocacy and want some advice, guidance, research on the messaging and how to own safety and justice, we’re here for it. 

Cayden Mak: That’s fantastic. We might have to have you back on and we’re planning an episode about New York City. City elections.

’cause like it’s an interesting one. 

Insha Rahman: Fascinating one. Yeah. Would love to talk more about that. 

Corinne Rosen: Yeah. And I just like love to pitch, working Families Party. We’re a political party and we wanna be folks political home. And so join the Working Families Party. And also always, we’re always looking for donations.

We weren’t able to start our race and really doing door-to-door canvassing and direct voter contact until about February this year because of the amount of resources that we have. So having that funding early lets us talk to voters and we are using methodology to get out the right message, working with the people that [00:38:00] really know these things.

And we’re the ones that can give people the message in person rather than through the TV screen. 

Cayden Mak: Yeah. Great. Thank you so much Corinne Insha for joining us today. Telling us a little bit more about this race and how you all are fighting back in a really meaningful way against some like pretty spurious like far right fear mongering.

Insha Rahman: Yeah. Thanks so much for having us. Thanks for having this conversation. Yeah, this has been great. I. 

Cayden Mak: Awesome. So I realized recently that I consume a lot, and a lot of media and not just about the news, also fiction, media commentary, video games, you name it. And that stuff really informs the way that we program this show and the commentary that we provide.

So I thought it’d be fun to start sharing some of the things that I’m reading or watching, or listening to, so you can check it out as well. This week, I just wanna share that last week, Natalie Wynn, who you might know as contra points on YouTube, finally released [00:39:00] a new video. It’s a deep dive into conspiratorial thinking, not necessarily like the content of conspiracies themselves, although she talks about some of them as like case studies.

But really the kind of thought process and the cultural impact of conspiracists in American society and politics. It’s really well researched. It’s funny and I think you’ll really appreciate it. If you haven’t watched for three hour, basically doctoral thesis on the Twilight Saga. I recommend that too.

It’s a little lighter. Very interesting. This stuff is free on YouTube and in my opinion, this is what the internet should be for. So I hope you check it out and enjoy that video. My thanks again to Corin Rosen from the Working Families Party of Wisconsin for joining me today. We’ll drop links in the show notes on how you can get involved in the campaign in these final days and learn more about various research.

This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for radical insights. I’m Caden Mock. Our producer is Josh Stro. Kim David designed our cover art and does our production. Assistance. If you have something to [00:40:00] say, you can also always drop me a line. Send me an email that we’ll consider running on an upcoming mailbag episode at [email protected].

And finally, if you would like to support the work that we do at Convergence, bringing our movements together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment, you can become a [email protected] slash donate. Even a few bucks a month goes a long way to making sure our independent small team can continue to build a map for our movements.

I hope this 

helps.