Q&A: Sen. Raphael Warnock, keynote speaker at the WisDems 2025 convention
Moments before he took the stage, the Senator from Georgia sat down to talk with The Recombobulation Area.
The Recombobulation Area is a thirteen-time NINETEEN-TIME Milwaukee Press Club award-winning opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. The Recombobulation Area is now part of Civic Media.
At the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s annual convention, delegates assembled are voting on who will be the party’s next chair. But before that happens on Day 2 of the convention, Day 1 was highlighted by a series of speeches by Wisconsin politicians and party leaders, like Gov. Tony Evers, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, outgoing Chair Ben Wikler, Congressman Mark Pocan, Congresswoman Gwen Moore, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski, Attorney General Josh Kaul, and more.
But the highlight speech that served as the evening’s keynote came from Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock. Warnock gave a rousing speech that touched on his own personal history, his path to becoming a U.S. Senator, and the ongoing fight against President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” He discussed the importance of programs like Head Start or pell grants that helped people like him get ahead, criticized the “failed experiment” of trickle-down economics, and told a story about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., meeting with President Lyndon Johnson, as part of the effort to pass the Civil Rights Act, with a reminder that “it’s about not the people in power, it’s about the power in the people.”
Also on Saturday, Warnock spoke at the “No Kings” rally in Madison, and you can find coverage — including full audio of the speech — here, from Civic Media’s Chali Pittman.
Moments before he took the convention stage, Sen. Warnock sat down with The Recombobulation Area for an interview discussing the events of the day and week, the message he’d be delivering in his keynote speech, working with Tammy Baldwin in the U.S. Senate, how Wisconsin’s Spring Election gave the nation hope, and more.
Dan Shafer: First, if you could reflect at all on some of the events of the day with what happened in Minnesota, and I understand you also gave some remarks at the “No Kings” protest in Madison.
Sen. Raphael Warnock: It's good to be here in Wisconsin. It's a tragic day in our country. My phone began to beep earlier this morning as I was headed here, as my colleagues were the first two to inform each other on a text thread about the tragic events in Minnesota.
We have political arguments in our country, rambunctious and fierce debates, not to encourage political violence, but to avoid it. And so all of us have to condemn this violence in a full-throated way. I'm saddened by the loss of life, I pray for these families.
But I'm also struck by what happened (the other day) as I was leaving the Capitol, and we received the news on Thursday when we received the news that my colleague, Sen. Alex Padilla, was rough-housed, thrown to the ground, handcuffed, for literally doing his job — asking questions. And to be treated that way by the Trump administration is a sign that our democracy is in a crisis.
And so, it's important for us to come together tonight. These meetings have happened for years, but these are no ordinary times, and I hope to speak to that tonight.
Sen. Warnock: “The “big ugly bill” represents the largest transfer of wealth from the bottom half of the country to the top that we've ever seen.”
So, you're here as the keynote speaker for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin's Convention. What's the message that you're going to be delivering to the convention this evening?
Well, we are in a fierce debate in the Congress right now. The “big ugly bill” represents the largest transfer of wealth from the bottom half of the country to the top that we've ever seen. And I'm very concerned about my constituents in Georgia. I'm concerned about rural towns, in particular, that count on SNAP — not only the people who need it, but these small grocery stores, the local economies that count on this response to food insecurity. We see several towns here in Wisconsin, one county I read about as (where there are as) many as 50% of the people on SNAP. So, how are those people going to eat? And why are we taking the food out of the mouths and hungry children to get billionaires a tax cut? I think not only is that the wrong thing to do, is not a very smart thing to do. It’s bad for families, it’s bad for our economy.
Wisconsin, like Georgia, has yet to expand Medicaid, and we're seeing the devastating impact of that on our state. We've got half a million people who are in the Medicaid gap in Georgia. If Georgia would expand Medicaid, those people — mainly the working poor — could get health care. And instead of giving these working people healthcare, Georgia has these work reporting requirements, which this bill hopes then to replicate throughout the whole country. Well, let me tell you how that's working in Georgia. We got a half a billion people in the gap, as I said. The governor, instead of expanding Medicaid or encouraging the legislature to do so, set up his so-called pathways to coverage plan — he ought to call it roadblocks to coverage. Because two years into the program and counting, they've got a whopping 7,000 people to enroll. Why? Because all this does is create red tape.
The goal seems to be to kick people off of health care. These work reporting requirements do not incentivize work. The folks that need to be covered by the Medicaid expansion are largely the working poor. This is a scam to kick people off of healthcare to go after so-called “waste, fraud and abuse,” so that Donald Trump can pay off his donors who he said, many of you are, quote, "rich as hell,” and give me elected, and I'll pay you a solid. So that's what's going on at the moment.
So, Wisconsin and Georgia are obviously in very different parts of the country, but what they share in common is they are both swing states. So what can Wisconsin and Georgia Democrats learn from each other?
Well, I won a few elections. I have five in less than three years. And I'll tell you that one of the things I did was I ran throughout the whole state. I didn't assume that if a district was red, I shouldn't go there. I spent a lot of time in rural communities, red and blue, throughout my state. And I'll tell you, I went to a lot of these small towns. and they were surprised that I was there, not because I was a Democrat., they were surprised that anybody running for the Senate would come to their little town. And after I won, I returned to some of those towns. And they were surprised that I was there — and I was surprised that they were surprised because I meant it when I said that I intended to be a Senator for all the people.
We've got to run, we got to talk to all the people. We got to talk to working class people, many of them who are going to be hard-hit by these cuts in the clean energy tax credits — the largest investment in clean energy ever in human history. I can tell you in Georgia, most of those jobs that are being created —- we've got some 44,000 jobs that we think will be created as a result of those investments, so far, $20 billion dollars of investments, some 51 projects — most of them are in red districts, often in communities where there's a lower percentage of high school graduates than the national average of the state average. And my Republican colleagues have got to decide, are they going to fight for their own constituents? The constituents in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district, is she going to fight for them? Or is she going to carry the MAGA banner? That's the question before her. Wisconsin faces a similar question.
Sen. Warnock: “I have joy because I get to be in the fight. I could be at home wringing my hands…The fact that I get to be in the fight makes it worth it to me. Even in these dark times, I put up with politics because every now and then you get to do something amazing.”
So right before I walked over here, Sen. Tammy Baldwin was speaking on the convention stage, is there perhaps a story of working with Sen. Baldwin that you could share?
Well, she and I talked a lot, because like I said, we both are in non-expansion states, and we enjoy talking to each other. I'll tell you a story that she told earlier today, and even though it just happened last week, I'd forgotten about our conversation last week. We were on the floor in the Senate. And she said, "Raphael, what’s giving you joy?” In a moment like this, with all that we're going through, times are dark, all this violence, all this division. And I said to her, “I have joy because I get to be in the fight.” I could be at home wringing my hands. But for somebody like me, who really cares — I've spent all my life trying to push our country closer towards its ideals — it comes from a heart of deep gratitude, because I'm a poor kid from public housing who sits in the Senate. The fact that I get to be in the fight makes it worth it to me.
Even in these dark times, I put up with politics because every now and then you get to do something amazing. Like my bill which capped the cost of insulin to $35; that changes somebody’s life. And so, I enjoy working with your Senator. And we have a lot of things in common, and we're both trying to get our states to expand Medicaid.
Sen. Warnock: “The power that's in the people is stronger than the people who are in power.”
A lot of speakers today have talked about the Spring Election in Wisconsin and defeating the candidate backed by Elon Musk. What type of significance did that election have on a national scale?
Look, people were feeling pretty dejected after what happened in November, and I think it gave people hope. And it reminded us that while we do need to address the issue of money in our politics, the people's voices are stronger. Wisconsin is not for sale, and our democracy is not for sale. The power that's in the people is stronger than the people who are in power, and I think that message was set loud and clear and gave people hope and courage to stay up so we can repeat that time and time again.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he became the Political Editor of Civic Media. He’s also written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 23 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
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