I am native Wisconsinite — born and raised. I am 36 years old and a late-bloomer law/graduate student. I was raised in a small town in Northeast Wisconsin — Marinette. I have lived in Green Bay since I was 19. I have witnessed the transformation of my state from one of good government and a pragmatic concern for others to a state divided by engineered political division and hatred. I credit most of this to Scott Walker, who daily finds new ways to redefine his role as the worst governor in American history.
I am also a lifelong Democrat, raised by caring and loving moderate Republican grandparents. I say moderate because my grandparents believed in progressive taxation and collective bargaining rights (even more remarkable considering that my grandparents were small business owners). Positions which are as foreign to the modern GOP as an alien spacecraft landing on top of the Supreme Court.
I knew of Paul Ryan’s true nature as a groveling, ultra-conservative asswipe long before he began his meteoric ascent through the national GOP ranks. I chuckled when some of my friends tried to cast him as a Republican in the Wisconsin tradition — in other words, a Dreyfuss/Thompson big government Republican. He is no more a traditional Wisconsin Republican than is Scott Walker or Ron Johnson — all arch-conservative Republicans who genuflect daily to America’s billionaires.
My native Northeast Wisconsin is a blue-collar, largely pro-union stronghold. Somewhat conservative on social issues and very white, but also quite liberal on economic issues (progressive taxation, collective bargaining, and welfare). Our area swung the 1960 election in favor of John Kennedy and elected a liberal Democrat Congressman (a Nobertine Catholic priest) in the 1970s. Even our Republican congressmen have been moderates up until Marc Green arrived on the scene in 1999. Our region regularly voted Democratic in presidential elections and for many of our state’s Democratic U.S. Senators (Russ Feingold, Herb Kohl, William Proxmire, and Gaylord Nelson). Our current state senator, Dave Hanson, is a strongly pro-labor Democrat.
Most stunningly, our region elected a Democrat to Congress (Steve Kagen) for two terms during the great Democratic revival of 2006-2010. And Kagen wasn’t just a Democrat — he was a liberal Democrat who championed a public option in the Affordable Care Act, reviving the ban on television advertising of prescription drugs, and the Employee Free Choice Act. And he was popular; his career was a causality of the Tea Party wave of 2010.
Our region is one that really liked Bernie Sanders and responds strongly to economically progressive political candidates. Our current Congressman, Mike Gallagher (a highly conservative Republican), is very vulnerable to a progressive Democrat running on economic issues. The main point of this exposition is that Northeast Wisconsin is actually a Democratic district waiting for the right Congressional candidate.
Paul Ryan is an embarrassment to the State of Wisconsin and completely out of Wisconsin’s political mainstream. The only reason a politician like him has been able to survive this long is because he represents the state’s most conservative district (Waukesha; R +20) and subsequent redistricting has made his district even safer.