A Republican state senator says former Justice Michael Gableman’s investigation into the 2020 election should end and declares many Republicans agree with her.
“I’ve got numerous communications from my Republican colleagues both in the Assembly and the Senate, thanking me for my bravery and stepping up to say, you know, we need to draw this to a close, we need to focus on important legislation that we want to move forward, we need to focus on the 2022 election,” state Sen. Kathy Bernier, R-Chippewa Falls, said in an interview aired Sunday on “UpFront,” produced in partnership with WisPolitics.com.
“I haven’t angered all Republicans. There’s many Republicans that agree we need to move on,” the former clerk said.
Bernier said her office received more than 700 calls in a single day after she decided to speak out. She described many of the messages as “vitriol.”
She also said she had talked to Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who hired Gableman for the investigation, and said Vos “indicated a little displeasure.” But she declined to elaborate.
Bernier, who is a former Chippewa County clerk, said there is “misinformation” being spread among Republicans over the election.
“Looking at the end result, the end result is what? To decertify the election? To randomly pull out ballots around the state?” Bernier said. “The point is we’re not going to repeal the current, the presidential election. Let’s move on and look forward to 2022 to get our Republican candidates elected.”
Also on the program, Department of Workforce Development Secretary Amy Pechacek said the Evers administration is thrilled with the November jobless rate of 3 percent — which tied a previous low set in November 2018.
But she said there remains “a ton of work to be done” to address the worker shortage.
“We are, like every other state in the country, facing a worker quantity challenge,” she said. “Every industry is seeing, across the country, a global race for talent at this point.”
She said the early retirement of baby boomers, and a lack of migration from other states and immigration from other countries, has exacerbated the problem.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has announced $100 million for workforce innovation grants. Pechacek said DWD would be concentrating on four groups to move into the workforce — people coming out of the corrections system; people with disabilities; veterans; and people who have some skills gaps, including youth.
See more from the program here.
