In a new interview with the Wisconsin State Journal, Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes outlined his vision for the governor’s race and his focus on lowering costs for Wisconsin families, including his Day One plans to expand BadgerCare and stand up to Donald Trump.
Wisconsin State Journal: In bid for governor, Mandela Barnes not taking ‘a single vote for granted’
[Mitchell Schmidt, 1/2/26]
- Barnes said he’s not taking any name recognition he’s built over the years for granted. Instead, the Milwaukee native is leaning on his experience in the state’s executive office and Legislature, as well as his personal life, in his bid to become Wisconsin’s youngest and first Black governor.
- In an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal, Barnes said he’s focused on the needs of Wisconsinites, particularly those related to cost-of-living challenges he tied to Republican President Donald Trump’s administration.
- One issue front and center in Barnes’ mind is the impact of Trump’s economic policies, including sweeping, and often changing, tariffs, which he said have led to layoffs “running rampant right now across the country.”
- It’s a personal issue for Barnes. In 2009, while employed by the Milwaukee Area Workforce Investment Board, now known as Employ Milwaukee, Barnes saw his hours cut due as a cost-savings measure. The following year he was laid off and had to take a job as a bartender.
- “I lived it,” Barnes said. “That’s an experience that I carry with me. I know exactly what it’s like, and people shouldn’t have to feel that feeling.”
- Barnes said next year’s race “means so much for people who continue to struggle, people who are trying to get by, and people who have had a similar experience as I’ve had in my life, or even worse.”
- Barnes took direct aim at U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Minocqua, the presumptive GOP nominee for governor. Tiffany, he said, will have to answer for “the complete and utter chaos that has been this Trump administration.”
- “It’s probably a hard one for him to answer, because he’s fighting to try to get Donald Trump’s endorsement right now,” Barnes said.
- If elected, Barnes said, one of his top goals as governor will be to push to have Wisconsin join the list of 41 other states that have expanded Medicaid eligibility to include individuals earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level. Evers and his Democratic colleagues have repeatedly demanded expansion to BadgerCare, the state’s main Medicaid program, but the issue has been rejected by Republicans.
- Barnes said Evers has been “swimming upstream for almost eight years now,” in reference to the governor’s repeated clashes with the Republican-controlled Legislature.
- “His willingness, his desire to seek compromise is not much different than my own,” he said. “But after eight years, we can’t keep denying people the care and the coverage that they deserve.”
- In order to achieve that goal, Barnes promised to veto any state budget that does not include the provision.
- “It’s not about picking fights just for the sake of picking fights, but it is about being bold and saying that I’m not signing a state budget that doesn’t include BadgerCare expansion,” Barnes said. “It’s about being bold and saying that we are going to lower costs in housing, we’re going to lower costs in health care, we’re going to lower costs with utility bills, and we’re going to fully fund our public schools.”
- Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich, who has endorsed Barnes in his gubernatorial run, joined the state Assembly in 2013, the same year as Barnes. Genrich said the former lieutenant governor’s budget pledge has “set down clear markers” that “tell people exactly where you stand and what you’re willing to do for them.”
