Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says he hopes former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman is disbarred “so he’s never allowed to practice law in Wisconsin again.”
Vos hired Gableman to review the 2020 election. Later, he fired him. The Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation recently filed a complaint accusing Gableman of numerous ethical violations during his review.
“As I look at what the Office of Lawyer Regulation is saying happened, it’s an embarrassment for anybody who practices law,” Vos told WISN’s “UpFront,” which is produced in partnership with WisPolitics. “So I certainly hope Michael Gableman loses his law license. I hope he goes back to work at Home Depot where he was working prior to working for us.”
Under state rules, those who are disbarred can seek reinstatement after five years.
Vos also said he is confident Republicans will control the Assembly “for the rest of the decade” despite new maps. And he’s promising the GOP will introduce a tax cut bill, in part targeting retirement income, using the state’s now projected $4 billion surplus.
“We’re not going to spend that money on growing the size of government, because we already gave pretty large increases to make sure we kept up with inflation in the last budget,” Vos said, adding he was unsure if the language would be exactly the same as a previous bill Dem Gov. Tony Evers vetoed. “We have to talk about it with our members. I think the language that we had was pretty good. It was very progressive, the fact that it wasn’t open-ended; it was capped. I think that is something that we will certainly would look at, but again, I want to talk about it with my colleagues. We have a new state Senate. We have a lot of people to talk to.”
Vos is already drawing numerous red lines on budget requests coming from state agencies, including education and the Universities of Wisconsin.
“We’re not going to give $1 billion to the university. I can tell you that’s probably not going to happen,” Vos said. “I think it’s unlikely that we’re going to give Superintendent Underly’s request for this massive increase in education spending when we just gave the largest increase in a generation like 18 months ago. So that is nothing but a political document from her.”
Vos also floated the idea of requiring state employees to return to the office “at least three or four days a week” as part of the final state budget.
“We still have far too many employees that are working from home,” Vos said. “We had that audit that came out over the summer. I think it was some employees hadn’t been in the office in months and months. That’s really an embarrassment. So number one, we need to make sure people are actually doing their job.
“I would love to be able to say people have to be back in the office at least three or four days a week,” Vos added. “I think we need to look at how state government functions. And one of the reasons that we have not had the services we want to deliver is because a lot of employees aren’t working or they’re working only from home and not doing it very well with little supervision. So I would love for us to be able to say if we’re going to be giving more money to agencies, we need to make sure we’re actually performing.”
Vos, who is the longest-serving Assembly speaker, said he anticipates seeking reelection in 2026.
“That’s my plan,” he said. “I mean, we’ll have to see what happens. It’s far too early. I mean, holy cow, 2024 was a pretty hard year for Robin Vos — two recalls, a primary, an independent whack job running against me in the fall. It was not an easy time, but hopefully, most of that is behind me.”
Democratic strategist Jennifer Holdsworth, who ran Pete Buttigieg’s 2017 bid for DNC chair, says the potential for Ben Wikler to enter the race could bring a new generation of leadership to the party.
“I think that Ben is a very exciting candidate, because one of the things that the Democratic Party has struggled with over the last eight years is maybe moving into a new type of leadership,” Holdsworth said. “And Ben might be one of the people who’s able to provide that.”
Wikler, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, is seriously considering a bid for Democratic National Committee chair.
“What I like to tell people is that this is a cross between a presidential election and a student council race,” Holdsworth said. “There’s about 400-plus voters that are voting on who is going to lead the party.
“I think you’re seeing a cry for change,” Holdsworth added. “This is an organization that is ripe for change, and I think you’re going to see a lot of candidates bringing new ideas to the table, rather than just what it has been used for in the past.”
The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will meet on Dec. 12, and the committee is expected to outline the process for electing a chair at the start of the year.
“As much as some reports have indicated that Trump has some kind of mandate because this was a blowout, the truth is, it wasn’t,” Holdsworth said. “This came down to barely over 1% difference. Same thing in most of the House and Senate races. So, I think going in a completely different direction and blowing up everything that we have done over the last four years may not be called for. I think what it’s going to take is a party leader who is willing to make some of the tough decisions that people don’t want to make, have some of the hard conversations that Democrats aren’t really interested in having right now and show that leadership that might be lacking over the last four years in terms of how we talk to voters.”
The national group “No Labels” is set to unveil a new set of lawmakers in Washington pledging to work across the aisle during the new Trump administration.
“We’re going to have several House and Senate members from both parties who are very much willing after this contentious election to put their hand up and say, look, I’m willing to put the election behind me,” “No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy told “UpFront.”
“We’ve got plenty of support in Wisconsin. We’ve got plenty of people from Michigan, Pennsylvania, elsewhere, the other swing states. I think the thing that, when we step back and look at where we’re headed as a country, the real danger is that after this election we sort into these dividing camps where there’s these people on the right who just want to rubber stamp everything Trump wants to do. There will be people on the left who just want to resist everything that Trump wants to do, and that is not what people voted for in this election.”
Clancy said the group, which once floated the idea of running a third-party independent candidate, is returning to its roots focusing on Congress and bipartisanship.
“If we want to get a lot of things done, they’re just going to have to,” Clancy said. “They still need to get 60 votes in the Senate, and No Labels is going to try to be coalescing those leaders on both sides that are interesting and interested in trying to get things done.”
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