Tony Castañeda’s run to represent downtown Madison in the Wisconsin State Assembly isn’t his first foray into politics.
In the early 1980s, the Wisconsin Labor-Farm Party was trying to get a candidate for governor on the ballot. To do that, they’d need a certain number of votes in local races, and decided to run candidates for every office in Dane County. To help out, Castañeda ran for Coroner.
His slogan?
“Some of my best friends are dead.”
He recalls getting nearly 10,000 votes.
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Since then, he hasn’t been in politics directly, but has been in the trenches working with vulnerable populations. He’s worked at the Dane County Job Center; done youth programming and counseling; worked with Housing Initiatives, helping chronically homeless people get into stable housing; worked with organizations like the YWCA and Urban League of Greater Madison. He’s been a prominent musician, a cofounder of Olmeca, Madison’s first Latin jazz band. And he’s hosted Thursday Buzz on WORT for 33 years. As a student, he worked for equality for Central American students, supported Iranian students during the 1979 hostage crisis, and advocated for Chicano and Native American students.
So why run for office now?
“Why not? Everybody else can,” he said in an interview for the 365 Amplified podcast. ”And I’m looking at some of these other people that are in the state legislature, and I’m like, well, I can do better than that guy.”
Castañeda jumped into the Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s 76th Assembly District last month.
His primary issue is support for immigrants. His campaign buttons say “Tony Sí, ICE No.”
“I’m Chicano, I’m Mexican American. My grandparents immigrated here from Mexico, looking for a better life like everybody else,” he said. “We were all immigrants, unless you’re Native American, and people got to realize that. And everybody’s family, Europeans, everybody came here for the same reason. Being an immigrant is not illegal. Searching for a better life is not illegal.”
Affordable housing is another top priority. He noted that he plays a lot of downtown establishments with his bands.
“Everybody likes to come downtown and eat our food and go to our (shows) and have our fine drinks and go listen to some great Latin jazz music or what have you. And we can’t afford to live here. Where are we going to move?” he said.
Another important issue, he said, noting that his priorities come in no particular order, is school funding.
“We’ve got to fully fund them like we used to,” he said. “Wisconsin, back in the day, our public school system was one of the best. Our teachers, while they might not have been paid the best as everybody else, they had a great benefits package and a pension and guaranteed things. These are all things that have been slowly stripped away by both Democrats and Republicans.”
He also said he hopes to engage younger voters – and people who typically don’t vote.
“When 50% of the people don’t vote, the Republicans and the Democrats were both fighting for the 50% that do, and especially the Democrats were ignoring the 50% that don’t, which is mostly working class, poor people, people of color, people that feel like neither party is answering their needs,” he said.
He added that he feels some responsibility for the current state of affairs.
“As a Boomer, we are responsible for Donald Trump,” he said. “Through bad political decisions, through not working and concentrating on that 50% of the people that don’t vote, not addressing working class needs and poor people’s needs and people of color’s needs.”
Castañeda said the Democratic Labor-Farm Party, where he got activated in the 1980s, occupied the same space to the left of the mainstream Democratic party that the Democratic Socialists of America occupies today. Francesca Hong, the incumbent in the 76th who is now running for governor, and several of the other candidates in the primary identify as DSA members. Castañeda said the mainstream Democratic party still ignores the left wing at its own peril.
“They’ve alienated not only leftists. They’ve alienated the working class and their original base,” he said of the party that he thinks panders too much to the center. “A lot of people (feel) there’s no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. In a lot of ways, they are right. And I know that a lot of establishment Democrats hate when we say that.”
Still, he hopes the Democratic Party can take control of the Assembly this year – a possibility many pundits believe is possible or even likely, given new legislative maps and a midterm election during the term of an unpopular Republican president.
That’s why Castañeda said he hopes to help other Democratic Assembly candidates across the state if he wins the primary.
“Nothing that I say, nothing that any of the other four candidates say about their progressive agenda, what they want to do, none of that will matter if we don’t take the Assembly,” he said.
Castañeda is best known around Madison as a musician, most recently as frontman of the Tony Castañeda Latin Jazz Sextet, and said he’ll bring an artist’s mindset to the Assembly.
“I’m creative. I’m an artist, right? And I think I have creative solutions, and that’s what we need right now,” he said. “I’m not gonna use a cliche of thinking outside the box. I’ve never seen the box.”
The Democratic primary will take place August 11. Also running are legislative staffer Isaia Ben-Ami, Madison Alder Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford, former Alder Juliana Bennett and journalist Zoe Sullivan.
