Rep. Elijah Behnke is running for his fourth term in the Wisconsin Assembly, facing a challenge from Shirley Hinze.
Behnke, a Republican who is moving into a home in the Town of Angelica after two years in the Town of Chase, is looking for a second two-year term representing the 6th Assembly District, which includes most of Shawano County, all of Menominee County, and segments of Oconto, Waupaca and Outagamie counties.
Hinze, a Democrat and Shawano resident, had previously challenged Behnke for the seat on the assembly two years ago.
NEW Media sent questionnaires to Behnke and Hinze to ascertain their stances on topics affecting people in the state of Wisconsin. Their responses to two of the questions follow. The remaining questions will be published in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 3 election. Answers to previous questions can be found at www.newmedia-wi.com.
For years, we’ve seen little progress, either by the legislature vetoing the governor’s agenda or the governor vetoing legislative bills. With a new governor and potential changes in legislative leadership, give examples of bills from across the aisle you would support.
Hinze: Fact: Republicans have controlled the Wisconsin Legislature for the last 15 years. What has the voting public received in return? Higher taxes, loss of funding into essential agencies. Those are things I’d never vote for, which is what they most often bring to the floor. People want change; that’s a message to Republicans to work across the aisle. Stop the blame games. They’re a waste of time, accomplish nothing and frankly are an insult to people’s intelligence. I want to expand BadgerCare and lower costs for working families.
Behnke: I don’t like the amount of chemicals used in conventional farming, so Democrats put out the Let’s Protect Our Pollinators Bill, and I sponsored and put my name on them. They never go anywhere because Republican leadership hasn’t picked up these organic practices to farming. I would ban glyphosate if I was the dictator, but for now, I compromised and joined the Democrats.
Also, we have a government agency that oversees banking, and there’s large fees for banks to do certain things. Me and Alex Jores, a Democrat out of Milwaukee, we had bipartisan legislation to give every student a slice of the billions for college.
Lastly, Salt Wise, I did a bipartisan bill to try not oversalting for winter road conditions, and if you apply the right amount of salt through a state agency, you can prevent slips and falls, and big insurance loved it, but trial lawyers hated it, so it got killed on the governor’s desk.
Wisconsin farmers, which make up a good chunk of the 6th Assembly District, are feeling the financial pinch, both with increased cost of producing food and the fuel needed to operate farm machinery. What can you do to help those who keep everyone fed?
Behnke: We can have a temporary moratorium on the state gas tax. We’ve reduced agricultural taxes significantly over the years — for farm land, it’s just $200. I’m not saying that’s not something you couldn’t dwindle down more, but it’s pretty inexpensive compared to normal property taxes.
Hinze: The mantra “Just give us two more years” hasn’t worked to our farming communities’ advantage, from my perspective. I can work on expanding existing exemptions for farmers that could provide some relief, lower restrictions that make it harder to go into organic farming and I will vote to provide some of the state surplus to help them lower operating costs, but that will not be sustainable. This whole situation really angers me. Our farm community built Wisconsin, and because of the actions of one man, they’ve been reduced into groveling for monies to survive.
