“My name is Eric Finch. I’m an attorney living in Madison. Since moving to Wisconsin a few years ago, I’ve fallen in love with this great state. My wife and I hope to start a family here. But there’s one thing I can’t stand about Wisconsin: our awful republican government. While GOP officials claim to be conservative, they have absolutely betrayed the voters of our state. This isn’t even a left-versus-right issue. It’s an issue of our governor and legislature being terrible with money and failing to understand the Constitution. That’s why I am entering the contest for chairperson of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. The people of Wisconsin deserve a champion that will stand up to these cronies.
Our Governor calls himself fiscally conservative and yet he can’t even pay the interest on our state’s loans. He’s just kicking the can down the road, burdening future generations. It’s disgraceful. I personally wouldn’t trust him with my checkbook, and yet I have to pay my taxes to him. I’m sick of it. Our government should be wise and prudent with our tax dollars. Instead, under GOP control, it has blown money on poorly designed road construction and handed out our tax dollars to Walker’s rich friends through WEDC. As someone that has run businesses, I know that sometimes you have to spend money to make money. For example, by putting a little extra money into education, we know that our state could save massively on other costs over the long-term, from social services to incarceration. We need to get back on a path toward fiscal sanity.
I’d like to see common sense prevail. Things like being able to drink water straight from the tap. I’ve lived all across this country and it was never an issue. But since moving here, I’ve learned more about water filters than I’d ever wanted to know, thanks the GOP lawmakers screwing up basic water quality shortly after gaining power in 2010. Wisconsin has become far too similar to Flint, Michigan. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of environmental issues: As I’ve travelled rural areas of the state, even very conservative hunters and fishing enthusiasts are concerned about Walker’s poor administration of the DNR, and what sort of hunting and fishing legacy will be left for their kids.
It isn’t just our governor and state legislature that we need to fix. We need representation in congress that will stand up to our historically unpopular president, not show the spinelessness of Sean Duffy and Paul Ryan. We need more people like Tammy Baldwin, who has been a courageous fighter for our civil rights. There’s no one I’d rather have represent me in the United States Senate than the first openly gay member of our highest law-making body. She’s exactly who we need to stand up to the hateful ideology of Mike Pence. We need representation in the house that, like Tammy, will actually stand for the ideal that every American should be free to live their life as they choose.
Speaking of our freedom as Americans, one of the biggest reasons that I’m running for this position is the failure of the democratic establishment insiders in our state, for more than half a decade, to take action to address what Scott Walker and the rest of his GOP buddies actually did by passing Act 10: they took away our constitutional rights granted by First Amendment. We all know our constitutional rights to free speech, press, and religion. But the First Amendment also protects two other important rights: the right to peaceably assemble and the right to petition our government for grievances. Unions of public employees exist to exercise these two important constitutional rights. For Scott Walker to limit and take away these rights violates the very spirit of the Constitution. It’s downright un-American. Perhaps Walker wanted to avoid the work of actually negotiating with public unions on our behalf so that he could travel the country, running for higher office. Whatever his excuse, he’s shirked his duty and ignored the founding ideals of our country. For that, we need to rise up and show these republican officials what America is all about. As chairperson of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, I’ll lead the charge in fighting for your freedom and the integrity of our democracy.”
