Gubernatorial Candidate Arnie Enz, Nurses Fulfilling Industry Needs By Learning Spanish

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• Arnie Enz Establishes Wisconsin Party In Run For Governor

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  What encouraged Arnie Enz to run for Wisconsin governor are the myths in the stories people tell themselves — that if you work hard, you get ahead, or that your kids will have it better than you did.

  “Our system’s not really working and our stories aren’t working, and we have to do something different if we really want to address them,” Enz, a business IT analyst, told WPR’s “The Morning Show” host John Munson.

  Enz is running against Libertarian Phil Anderson, Democrat Tony Evers, independent Maggie Turnbull, Green Party candidate Michael White and Republican incumbent Gov. Scott Walker in the Tuesday, Nov. 6 election for governor.

  This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

  John Munson: What is the Wisconsin Party?

  Arnie Enz: It’s my own invention. I put the Wisconsin Party on the form because I think we have to have more than just a two-party system. There are the Libertarians, the Greens and the Constitutionalists within Wisconsin. But I think that we can have another one as well — one that represents all the people that don’t vote, because in the last five midterm elections, fewer than 50 percent of the people who are eligible to vote actually participate. And most people feel disempowered and disenfranchised by our systems so they don’t participate.

  Voting for one of the two parties is just going to get more of the same. If you’re happy with that, vote for Scott Walker or Tony Evers and do it with a good conscience. If you’re not happy with the system and the way things work today, you have to start behavior differently. And that includes voting for a third party.

  JM: Let’s take a look at your top issues, one of which is to take back our government. What do you mean by that?

  AE: Right now, our government really doesn’t represent us, for the most part. It represents special interest groups and big money and lobbyists. Everybody has examples of it. It’s the dark money. It’s the money in our election cycle. It’s the money with the lobbyists. And if you have that money and you spend it in our electoral system or in our legislative system, your voice is heard, but the voice of the common person is lost.

  We have to change our system and we have to get that money out of politics. We have to get the corruption out of government. If we reform our government, then we can work on the really hard things in our society, which are things like climate change and the like. We can transform ourselves to address fundamental problems that don’t really talk about.

  JM: What do you see as solutions to repairing and investing in Wisconsin’s transportation system?

  AE: I’ve always been taught, and I try to lead my life, where I pay for things out of my current budget; so if we have transportation issues, we really should look at the most direct way — even though it’s a regressive tax — to do a gas tax increase, that’s a start.

  There are other things you can do with a general fund to pull money out. But we have to pay for the things that we use today. I’m a big believer that we have to take care of the infrastructure and we have to pay for it out of our current revenue streams.

  Since we’re talking about infrastructure, we really have to also think about where we want to invest for the long-term. We have an economy and infrastructure that’s based upon a transportation grid that uses a lot of energy. If we’re really going to deal with things like climate change down the line, we have to cut the way that we use petrol gasses and oils that we use that result in too much carbon dioxide. If we’re going to think about dealing with that problem, we should also look at how we should do transportation differently, how we should think about urban planning differently, how we should look to find different ways to pay for that infrastructure as well.

  The model that we are using is going to be evolving over the next 20 to 40 years. And when you talk about infrastructure, that’s a 30- to 50-year time horizon — we should start talking about that now.

  JM: If elected, what would you change given the current state of the health care system in Wisconsin?

  First of all, I’d look to take the federal money to expand access for Wisconsin families that don’t have access to health coverage right now.

  I think our health care is fundamentally broken and what I’d like to do is talk about it in a larger context, in that we really should look at stuff like single-payer within the state of Wisconsin, even if the federal government’s not going to do it. Instead of working at the edges around its access to health insurance, we should go and deal with it head-on and look at major structural overhauls to our health care system.

• Candidate Interview For Governor: Arnie Enz

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  In this installment of our series of interviews with Wisconsin candidates for governor, we speak with Arnie Enz, the Wisconsin Party candidate. He is running against Libertarian Phil Anderson, Democrat Tony Evers, Independent Maggie Turnbull, Green Party candidate Michael J. White and Republican Incumbent Scott Walker.

• Student Nurses Fill a Healthcare Need

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  Hispanic immigrants account for a large percentage of Wisconsin’s farmworkers. Access and affordability of healthcare remains a barrier for that demographic. We talk about the UW-Eau Claire School of Nursing program that eases that burden for the farmworker while providing valuable experiences for the students.