ICYMI: “A Decade Under Stroebel and State Republicans’ Leadership has Resulted in Wisconsin’s Shrinking Workforce, Uncertainty About Reproductive Health Care Freedoms, and the Rising Costs for Wisconsinites”
MADISON, Wis. — Today, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on the stark contrast between Jodi Habush Sinykin and Duey Stroebel on the issues that matter most to Wisconsinites in Senate District 8—including reproductive freedoms, school funding, and rising costs.
Duey Stroebel has spent over a decade playing political games in the Legislature and attacking everything from retirement security to reproductive health care access, proving time and again that he isn’t fighting for Wisconsinites and their families. Meanwhile, Jodi Habush Sinykin is committed to securing reproductive freedoms for women across the Badger State, investing in public education, and lowering taxes for seniors and middle class families.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Here’s Where Senate District 8 Candidates Stroebel and Habush Sinykin Stand on the Issues
By: Claudia Levens
- With all of their disagreements on the issues, both candidates also agree that Wisconsin’s future hinges on this election, maybe even this race.
- Stroebel blamed the federal deficit and federal policies for rising costs. In contrast, he said the last decade of Republican-dominated policymaking in Madison has brought “smart, fiscally responsible decisions.”
- [Jodi Habush Sinykin’s] pitch to voters is that a decade under Stroebel and state Republicans’ leadership has resulted in Wisconsin’s shrinking workforce, uncertainty about reproductive health care freedoms, and the rising costs for Wisconsinites.
- Particularly, she blames state Republicans, including Stroebel, who have approved the lowest percentage of funding for universities since they have had majorities in the state legislature, which, to Sinykin, is why Wisconsin ranks 43rd among states in funding of public, four-year universities and why six out of 13 branch campuses will be closed at the end of the school year due to declining enrollment.
- One of Habush Sinykin’s strategies for addressing rising costs centers around better leveraging the state budget to invest in education, health care, Wisconsin’s workforce and law enforcement to take pressure off local municipalities and school districts that have resorted to record numbers of referendums and tax increases to remain operational in recent years.
- In addition to rising costs, Habush Sinykin said she also hears voters consistently express concerns about access to women’s reproductive and health care freedoms, an issue heavily featured in her platform, according to her campaign website.
- She said concerns about reproductive freedoms aren’t “just a concern of women but of men, too ― husbands, fathers and siblings who have watched the women in their lives go through miscarriages and problem pregnancies.”
- If elected, Habush Sinykin said she hopes to codify protections for reproductive health care freedoms into state law.
- Meanwhile, Stroebel maintains that he is pro-life but said he supported a statewide referendum on abortion access in the last legislative session.
- However, Sinykin said Stroebel has had plenty of opportunities to support a referendum on abortion ― or even IVF protections ― during Evers’ special sessions on abortion, though she also feels that reproductive freedoms are too personal, private and fundamental to be left up to a public vote.
- Habush Sinykin and her campaign point to Stroebel’s co-authoring of a proposed constitutional amendment in 2019 and his support for Wisconsin’s 1849 law banning abortion, which all 22 Republican members of the state Senate, including Stroebel, voted against repealing.
- Both the proposed amendment and the 1849 law contained language that defined conception as the start of life, which Habush Sinykin argues is not compatible with IVF and contraception and is how Alabama found itself with a state-wide freeze on IVF procedures earlier this year.
- Stroebel is also endorsed by Wisconsin Right to Life, which also believes life starts at “fertilization” and largely avoids mention of contraception and IVF, according to the organization’s website.
- Habush Sinykin has publicly criticized Stroebel and the Joint Finance Committee, of which Stroebel is vice chair, for obstructing millions of already-approved investments by the state legislature over disagreements on implementation.
- In particular, she’s criticized Stroebel and the JFC for refusing to release almost $50 million approved by both chambers in 2023 to implement new literacy curricula in Wisconsin schools, $125 million to address Wisconsin’s PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” problem also approved by both chambers in 2023.
- The $50 million for schools is frozen with the committee in retaliation against Evers’ decision to veto other parts of the bill pertaining to the process for distributing the money, which the Dane County Circuit Court ruled was lawful after Republicans mounted legal challenges.
- Meanwhile, that money remains frozen well into the school year during which the new literacy curricula is supposed to be implemented.
- Habush Sinykin also pointed out Stroebel’s lack of support for the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust’s attempt to preserve the area now known as the Cedar Gorge Clay Bluffs Nature Area after the funding was frozen in the Joint Finance Committee, which almost killed the project.
- In a 2022 interview with the Ozaukee Press, Stroebel had supported a private buyer’s desire to purchase the land even as he continued to receive money (around $3,000 since 2021) from Federal Conservation Reserve Program funds intended for farmers, which Stroebel failed to report, according to reporting from the Heartland Signal. Evers eventually circumvented the Joint Finance Committee with American Rescue Plan Act funds.
- “Senator Stroebel is trying to reinvent himself suddenly, from this far right obstructionist legislator in Madison to this middle of the road bipartisan champion. His actual voting history does not reflect that,” she said. “People are looking for legislators who can work together and across the aisle to move Wisconsin forward.”
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