By Milwaukee Courier Staff
Alex Lasry
As Wisconsin continues to bask in the glow of the Milwaukee Bucks first NBA Championship in 50 years, Alex Lasry, senior vice president for the Milwaukee Bucks, sat down with Milwaukee Courier staff to talk about how the Bucks have inspired him to run for the U.S. Senate.
Economic growth and development in the state are at the heart of everything Lasry has done with the Bucks and what he is proposing to do as Wisconsin’s next senator. But Lasry also credits the Bucks players for inspiring him to run.
Lasry led the team’s effort to help local residents find union jobs constructing the new Bucks arena and thousands of jobs inside the arena once it opened. His focus has always been on helping Wisconsin residents, and he made that clear over the past year amid the racial justice movement.
The Bucks were playing in last year’s NBA Playoffs in August 2020 when Jacob Blake was shot by police in Kenosha. The Bucks players took an unprecedented stand and boycotted their playoff game against the Orlando Magic. The players called on the Wisconsin Legislature to reconvene and “take up meaningful measures to address issues of police accountability, brutality and criminal justice reform.”
“Our players said, ‘This happened in our backyard and this needs to stop,’” Lasry said. “This was an incredibly powerful moment that resonated around the world. People remember a sports team leading on racial and social justice. We were proud that we were the first ownership group in the NBA to march with our players and say, ‘We demand change and we demand justice.’”
Why is Lasry running for the U.S. Senate now?
“This is a really important moment in our history and in our country,” Lasry said. “One of the reasons I wanted to run is that as we have been seeing with the pandemic, the government can do a lot of good, and it can have a meaningful impact on people’s lives. Even by his own admission, our current Sen. Ron Johnson, has failed the people of Wisconsin by not getting anything meaningful done. If it was up to Johnson, there would have been no COVID relief, no ObamaCare, and nothing to help improve the lives of every-day Wisconsinites.“
“The people of Wisconsin want good jobs, want opportunities for our kids and want to make sure that if they put in an honest day’s work, that they can support their families,” Lasry continued. “That’s something everyone wants, and people feel like that opportunity is not always there. That’s where we need to make sure we have a government that is helping everyone get ahead.”
Lasry believes his background of working in the Obama White House and his work with Bucks gives him a unique perspective that can help Wisconsinites.
“The way we’re going to connect with voters is by talking about bringing good union jobs and investments in the next generation of manufacturing jobs back to Wisconsin,” Lasry said. “We need to make sure that Sen. Tammy Baldwin has a partner in Washington that is fighting to ensure that electric car battery manufacturing, wind turbine manufacturing, and other green manufacturing jobs are coming to Wisconsin.”
“It often feels like Wisconsin’s number one export is our people,” Lasry continued. “Wisconsin only grew at about half the rate of the national average in the last decade, and we need to change that. We need to make sure that the jobs and opportunities exist for our residents to stay and to attract even more people to come here. Doing things like winning an NBA Championship sure help put Milwaukee on the map, but we need to do more to capitalize on these opportunities. That’s what I want to do for Wisconsin in the Senate.”
“Milwaukee is where I’m going to raise my family,” he said.
Lasry and his wife, Lauren, are expecting their first child within the month.
“My daughter is going to be born here, and we’re going to raise her here. I want her to grow up and say, ‘Milwaukee is my home’.”