WHERE I STAND
Lower Everyday Costs​
The math has to work at your kitchen table.​
Families across District 17 are working harder than ever and still falling behind. Rising housing costs, grocery bills, insurance premiums, and child care are climbing while wages stay flat. Corrine has lived that math as a small business owner and as a mom, and she will bring it with her to Madison.​​ •Deliver tax relief targeted at working families, not blanket cuts that mostly benefit the highest earners. •Bring down the costs that actually move a household budget: housing, child care, health coverage, and insurance. •Strengthen the public services families already pay for, including schools, libraries, roads, and emergency services, so households are not paying twice. •Fight the consolidation and price gouging that raises what rural families pay for groceries, fuel, and utilities.
Affordable Child Care​
Nobody in this race knows this issue the way Corrine does.​
For nearly twenty years, Corrine ran a 5-Star family child care small business out of her home, including caring for children with special needs. In 2020 she co-founded Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), which has grown to more than 2,500 providers, parents, and community members. Its mission is to inform and empower people to engage in the political process. She has testified before the U.S. House Small Business Committee on what rural providers face. •Invest in child care so families can find and afford care and providers can afford to stay open. •Treat child care as the small business sector it is, with real access to capital and startup support for new and existing providers. •Stop the squeeze from large private equity backed chains whose bulk purchasing discounts shut small local providers out of the market. •Raise wages and expand training for early childhood educators so we stop losing them to other industries. •Recognize the economic cost of closures. When a provider closes, parents cut hours or leave work, and employers lose good workers.
Fully Fund Public Schools
When Madison shortchanges our schools, the bill lands on your property taxes.
Corrine served as an elected New Glarus School Board member. If elected, she would be the only member of the Wisconsin State Senate holding a bachelor's degree in education, and she also holds a master's degree in education policy. District 17 leads the state in school referendums, which means our families are already paying for state underfunding on their local tax bill. •Fully fund our public schools so districts are not forced into referendum after referendum. •Fully fund special education services so every student gets the support they deserve. •Treat school funding as property tax relief. Every dollar Madison withholds becomes a local tax increase on homeowners and farmers. •Stop rural school closures and consolidation that hollow out our small towns. •Pay and retain great teachers, support staff, and bus drivers in rural districts.
Protect Land and Water​
The Driftless is worth defending.
Our rivers, trails, farmland, and hunting grounds are why people live here and why visitors come. Protecting them is not a partisan idea in Wisconsin. It is part of who we are. •Reauthorize and protect the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund, our best tool for conserving public lands, waterways, and hunting and fishing access. •Restore funding to the Department of Natural Resources, which has been cut by roughly $1 billion. You cannot protect drinking water with an agency that has been hollowed out. •Guarantee clean drinking water, addressing nitrates, PFAS, and well contamination that hit rural households hardest. •Support a twelve month moratorium on new generative AI data centers so Wisconsin can understand their impact on our water, electric rates, and farmland, and so the state stops overriding local zoning decisions that belong to our communities. •Stand with sportsmen, anglers, and conservation groups who have protected this land for generations.
Support Rural Small Business
Corrine ran one for twenty years. She knows what the paperwork does not show.
She knows the inability to access capital, the struggle to offer the wages and benefits staff deserve, and the higher costs that come from operating at a smaller scale, and how all of it affects a rural small business's ability to thrive. •Expand access to capital, low interest lending, and startup support for rural entrepreneurs. •Grow small businesses in the trades. We do not have enough electricians, plumbers, carpenters, and contractors, which means our older homes cannot be repaired affordably. •Protect our volunteer fire and EMS departments. Small business owners have always been the backbone of those crews. As those businesses disappear, so do the volunteers who answer the call. •Help small employers offer health care and paid leave so they can compete for good workers. •Fund workforce training and apprenticeships that keep young people working and living here. •End the policies that favor out of state corporations over Wisconsin owned Main Street businesses.
Health Care and Paid Leave
No one should choose between a paycheck and caring for family.
In a rural district, health care is not only about coverage. It is about whether care is close enough to reach. Corrine spent twenty years caring for other people's children and running a business where she saw firsthand what workers go without. •Protect rural hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes so families do not have to drive an hour for care or move a parent out of the community. •Lower prescription drug and insurance costs, and hold pharmacy middlemen accountable for what they charge. •Expand mental health and dental access, which too many of our neighbors simply go without. •Win paid family and medical leave so no worker has to choose between a paycheck and a newborn, a sick child, or an aging parent. •Strengthen maternal and children's health, including postpartum coverage, an area where Corrine's early childhood background gives her real expertise. •Help small businesses afford coverage for their employees instead of leaving rural workers behind.
Reproductive Freedom
Personal medical decisions belong to a woman and her doctor, not to politicians.
Corrine is a mom who spent twenty years caring for other people's children, and she has sat with families through the hardest moments of their lives. She trusts the people of this district to make their own decisions about their own bodies, their own families, and their own futures. •Defend reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy, and protect access to the full range of reproductive health care, including clinics, hospitals, and pharmacies. •Protect access to contraception and to IVF and fertility treatment for families trying to have children. •Keep politicians out of the exam room. Medical decisions belong to a patient and her doctor. •Protect patient privacy and the doctors, nurses, and midwives who provide care. •Expand maternal health care in rural counties where too many women live far from an obstetric provider.
Stand Up for Family Farms
Our family farms are small businesses, and they should be treated like it.
Farming in southwest Wisconsin is identity and economy at the same time. The generation that built these farms is retiring, and the next generation cannot afford to buy in. Corrine wants the state to make that transition possible. •Offer low interest loans and active grant programs instead of relying on tax credits, so people who want to get into farming can actually purchase land and equipment. •Help retiring farmers sell to good stewards of the land rather than to large companies that buy up acreage and export the profits. •Protect farmland from being lost to speculative development and industrial projects. •Invest in local processing, meat lockers, dairy, and cooperatives so more of every dollar stays here. •Back conservation practices that pay farmers to protect soil and water rather than penalizing them. •Deliver rural broadband, road funding, and farmer mental health resources that farm families actually use.
Affordable Housing in Every Community
Seniors should be able to stay, and young people should be able to come home.
Housing is the fastest rising line item in most family budgets across this district. Our towns need homes that working people can afford, and our older housing stock needs the trades workforce to keep it livable. •Build more workforce and starter housing so young families and returning graduates can afford to live in the communities they grew up in. •Help seniors stay in their homes and in their towns through property tax relief and home repair and accessibility assistance. •Fund home repair and weatherization, which lowers energy bills and keeps older rural homes safe and standing. •Grow the trades workforce needed to build and repair housing affordably in rural counties. •Support first time homebuyers and protect renters from the price spikes squeezing small town Wisconsin.