The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel caught northern WI State Assembly candidate David Armstrong showing his love for David Duke and the confederate flag and generally being a gobsmackingly racist a-hole...
Armstrong, a Republican running for the state Assembly, posted a series of highly questionable tweets in the weeks after the [Charleston Emanuel A.M.E.] church shooting.
On July 10, 2015, Armstrong tweeted out a video on "slavery's dirtiest secrets exposed" featuring former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. In it, Duke makes the dubious claim that Blacks are more likely than whites to have ancestors who owned slaves in antebellum America, thereby undercutting, he said, the argument for reparations and "discrimination against whites."
Armstrong ended his tweet on the video by asking, "Apologies are due to who by whom?"
Around the same time, the Rice Lake business leader posted three tweets pushing back on efforts to remove the Confederate flag from public places. In one from July 25, 2015, he linked to a story on a congressional vote to ban the Confederate flag at federal cemeteries.
"Life Long GOPer Thinking Twice And No More Money to GOP," Armstrong said in his tweet on the story.
Armstrong, who is running in the 75th district in the northwest part of the state (roughly midway between Eau Claire and Superior) was already outed by the Associated Press as a QAnon cultist, and he didn't really bother to deny it:
Armstrong told The Associated Press that he finds core aspects of the conspiracy credible, but not all of it.
"I don’t know if we’ll ever know the answer to that, nor can we prove it,” he said. "That’s the biggest thing with QAnon is you can’t prove any of it."
Rock-solid reasoning there. Exactly the kind of person you want in a position of responsibility. /s
Enough about Armstrong. There’s a really compelling Democratic candidate running in this district: John Ellenson (website, donate).
John Ellenson is a former captain of the University of Wisconsin basketball team and a currently works as a school guidance counselor. He's not a household name in state politics, but in this district everybody knows the Ellenson family. There's an Ellenson teaching at each of the 3 largest school districts in the area, and his son Henry made it to the NBA in 2016. That was some seriously big news for this little corner of northern Wisconsin.
Owing to his day job, John Ellenson is intimately familiar the challenges facing working families and their children in the district and his main campaign message is simple: Families need a strong foundation to reach their potential and be successful. To lay that foundation, Wisconsin needs to invest in affordable healthcare (expand medicaid with a state-level public option), affordable housing, good jobs (not scams like Foxconn), great schools, and broadband access.
I know you're probably thinking, "But this is a rural district in gerrymandered Wisconsin, the racist Republican will probably win anyway." I get that. But there are 2 other things about this district you should know:
- The Republican incumbent isn’t running for re-election, so this is an open seat.
- Back in 2012, in this same district (same map and everything), Republican incumbent Roger Rivard lost re-election after he was caught saying "Some girls rape easy." So, at least in this district, there is a level of basic human decency below which even Republican voters will pull their support.
So let's see if we can make history repeat itself! Please chip in whatever you can to help John Ellenson for WI Assembly.
P.S., according to his website, Armstrong is on a whole bunch of local boards including the Rice Lake Chamber of Commerce and Rice Lake Tourism Commission (slogan: "You'll love our friendly nature!"). If you're so inclined, maybe let them know how having a racist QAnon nutjob in a leadership position factors into your opinion of their area as a potential tourist destination.