What do you want to hear from Wisconsin candidates ahead of the midterm election?

Tell us about the issues impacting your life

A sign that says "VOTING ENTRANCE"
Voters walk to an early voting location Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020, at Waukesha City Hall. Angela Major/WPR

You can forgive Americans for fearing their government of the people, by the people, for the people could soon perish from the Earth.

As the Jan. 6 hearings have made clear, our democracy is more fragile than many of us realized, though Americans have been violently divided before and managed to heal.

Fresh off celebrating our nation’s independence, it’s a good time to recommit ourselves to a new birth of freedom, again borrowing President Abraham Lincoln’s words.

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It starts with something as simple as listening to each other, understanding the issues we care about the most and coming together to address them. These are simple truths we’ve strayed from. As Wisconsin heads into the fall 2022 campaign, we’re launching a project designed to take a grass-roots approach, to go directly to the people in charge of the government.

Here’s what we’d like to know: What do you want the candidates to be talking about as they compete for your votes?

Campaigns for office have never been high-browed affairs, but the flood of dollars to candidates and advocacy groups guarantees that until Nov. 8, the airwaves will be littered with attack ads, political stunts and countless commercials asking us to “call” our politicians and demand something.

How does that simplistic rhetoric square with what’s actually worrying people in Wisconsin?

When the La Follette School of Public Affairs surveyed Wisconsin residents last fall, researchers found people in the state have far more complicated — and frankly, far more important — issues on their minds, things like climate change, health care, race relations and water quality, precisely the issues that don’t often get covered extensively in political campaigns or can easily be reduced to bumper sticker slogans.

Too often campaign coverage eschews substance, dividing what was once the United States into red states, blue states and purple states. E Pluribus Unum replaced by feudal tribes locked in endless trench warfare.

Ironically, that theme is most prevalent at times when Americans choose their government and send representatives to Madison and Washington to work with others on solving problems.
Over the next four months, our “Wisconsin Main Street Agenda” project will report on what we’re learning from residents and explain what we know about the mood of the electorate based on that massive survey of Wisconsin residents by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center.

The project is a partnership of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Ideas Lab, the LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin Public Radio.

As part of the project, we’ll recruit a group of Wisconsin residents to have deeper conversations about the issues they say are most important to them as the critical mid-term elections approach.

We plan to host two free public events this fall focused on the issues you identify.

We believe it is important to protect democratic institutions. We can help do that by listening carefully to the residents of our state, learning what concerns them and giving voice to their concerns.

The Wisconsin Main Street Agenda aims to get beyond the sound bites and bitter partisan fights, and get to the heart of the matter: What do the people who have to live with the decisions of public servants actually care about?

Tell us. We’re listening.

James N. Fitzhenry is executive editor for the USA TODAY NETWORK-Central Wisconsin. Email: jamesfitzhen@oshkosh.gannett.com. David D. Haynes is editor of the Ideas Lab. Email: david.haynes@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DavidDHaynes.

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