Our Wisconsin Revolution endorsed 19 candidates in advance of the August primary election and 15 of them advanced to the November general election.
Let us tell you about one of them. Samba Baldeh handily won a tough four-way Democratic primary in the 48th assembly district. This immigrant from the Gambia in West Africa was up against a field of candidates with strong establishment ties, but it was the progressive championing Medicaid expansion, criminal justice reform and increased support for public education who won the race. Because the 48th is a strongly Democratic district, Samba is expected to win the seat in November and stands to become the first Muslim member of Wisconsin's legislature and the first black man to represent Dane County in the state assembly.
Speaking of firsts, Wisconsin has a long history of blazing trails but has more or less lost that impulse in recent years. OWR director Mike McCabe's August 14 radio commentary throws out a few ideas in hopes of getting the state's creative juices flowing again. One of the ways Mike says Wisconsin should break new ground is to become the first state in the nation to pilot a basic income guarantee program. That was the subject of a blog post that got picked up by The Progressive Media Project and distributed nationally as an op-ed to newspapers through the Tribune News Service. So far 17 newspapers in 13 states have published it, including the daily newspaper in Decatur, Illinois as well as papers in New York, Texas, California, Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Alabama, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Washington.
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