Wisconsin Senate candidate Mandela Barnes claimed at a Working Families Party assembly in 2021 that rural Wisconsin voters are “asking” for the implementation of the socialist Green New Deal.
“We have to be bold. I’ve gotten a question before. And it’s like, ‘well, how do you sell the Green New Deal’ in the rural parts of Wisconsin?’ Let me tell you, people in rural parts of [Wisconsin] are asking for it.” Barnes claimed in a video unearthed by the Republican National Committee’s research team.
“The idea of a ‘Green New Deal’ is a necessity for us at this moment,” he doubled down.
“We have to transition our economy,” Mandela Barnes said in 2019. “That’s why you see people talking about a ‘Green New Deal’ everywhere you go because that is the way forward.”
“The Green New Deal is the path to get us there, but we have to think so much deeper and so much broader,” Barnes claimed.
Barnes, who serves as the Democrat lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, is campaigning against Republican Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in a state that barely went blue in 2020 by less than a point.
It is not the first time Barnes has made radical statements about environmentalism. “The Green New Deal is the path to get us there, but we have to think so much deeper and so much broader,” Barnes said in January at a Wisconsin U.S. Senate forum.
“We have a real opportunity in front of us to get this done,” he added.
Barnes’ comments on the Green New Deal are connected with the claim that urgent action must be deployed to end global warming associated with racism.
“In order to address this crisis and the environmental injustices associated with it, we must take urgent action, and we must ensure those actions are equitable and inclusive—anything less will continue the long pattern of environmental racism we have witnessed in this country,” Barnes stated.
Barnes has also criticized national parks as a part of the systemically racist fabric of America because the “parks are on land that was indigenous.” He claimed:
It’s important to create more welcoming spaces because things haven’t always felt welcome. And that’s historical, just that perspective, given the fact that national parks weren’t made for the enjoyment of people who weren’t white. National parks are on land that was indigenous.
In addition, Barnes has used the theory of global warming to push for “equitable and inclusive” measures to end the “long pattern of environmental racism we have witnessed in this country.”
Barnes is losing to Johnson in the polls by six points, despite outspending Johnson by $8 million, according to third-quarter Senate fundraising totals.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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