EDITED to change "Supporter" to "Donor" in title. Details on that donor are below the fold.
Jonathan Steitz, a Chicago lawyer who specializes in international trade deals, defeated Fred Ekornaas in the recently completed Republican primary for Wisconsin Senate District 22. Steitz will face incumbent Democrat Robert Wirch in a recall election scheduled for August 16th.
Very little is known about Steitz's background or his motives for running for the Senate, and he hasn't been generous with information about himself, his business interests, or his ties to the community he hopes to represent. He is a relative newcomer to Wisconsin and according to property records, he and his wife do not own the Pleasant Prairie house where Steitz and his family reside. They do, however, own a duplex in what appears to be an older, working class neighborhood in Kenosha.
Steitz works for a large, international law firm in Chicago and commutes from Wisconsin. He and his family resided in England when Steitz worked at the firm's London office before their recent move to Wisconsin.
He was a member of the Federalist Society at Northwestern University's business school, and his campaign seems to be trying to steer public opinion about Steitz in that direction and away from any Tea Party or Religious Right connections that might scare off some independent voters in the 22nd District.
Looking at his campaign donation reports makes it clear, though, that his support is not generally from Republican moderates, libertarians, or Federalist Society types. One donation comes from a very sad individual who seems to be the Tea Party nightmare that most Republicans running for office are quick to shun, and much of his support comes from people associated with Religious Right causes.
Many of Steitz's contributors are affiliated with a Christian church that serves three communities in the Racine/Kenosha area. That isn't surprising, considering that Steitz and his family seem to be very devoted to his religion. It's not clear that Steitz is a member of that church, but their clergy have faith in Steitz and have donated money to his campaign. The church is affiliated with One Church Ministries, and here is what they believe.
Some of the church's services are held in a Christian book store, whose owner also donated to Steitz.
None of this is unusual or alarming, nor is the fact that Steitz does not say much about his religious beliefs. Most politicians don't talk in great detail about their faith, nor should they, in my opinion. It is valuable, however, for a voter to know who supports a candidate, whether it be a church leader, a union leader, or a corporate CEO. It is a fact that Steitz has the monetary support of a number of anti-abortion, anti-gay, fundamentalist Christians in and outside of his district.
Steitz also has accepted money from one man who I believe should be offered a refund. I will not name that individual in this diary, because my intention is only to show that Steitz's campaign has attracted at least one person who could politely be described as outside the mainstream. The donor writes a blog attached to one of the local newspapers in District 22, and he has a racist and sexist view of society, to say the least. Here is a sample of some rants from the self-described "angry white male":
Getting pregnant is clearly a deliberate action. Getting pregnant is not something that just hapens to some people.. Getting pregnant is something that hapens to a woman after she decides that she WANTS to get pregnant.
Yet our society continues to pay welfare to mothers that have conciously decided to have a baby, wether they can support it or not. And All people pay for materinty insurance as if it is a health issue like something that they have no control over.
It is the sicial duty of EVERY person to learn to use firearms and posses one for their own protection and others around them that are not able to protect themselves.
Any people that are decendents of Americasn slaves, would not be alive today if their ancestors would not been have rescued from certian death by the people that bought them and then sold them in America.
Further more the continued deneial of the compasionate act of giving those people a second chance for life, and the condeming of their benifactors, and the fact that they deneigh that many Americans died for them to even end slavery in this country, is the reason that many white people are to say the least, not impressed with the gratitude expressed to them by blacks.
White men created America. It is a country that people from virtually EVERY country on the plannet want to come to! The reason so many people hate America is because they are jeallous.
I did not use my spell checker to mock you.
This man obviously has some problems, but it says something that a person with these views finds Jonathan Steitz worthy of a donation. This individual had a choice of Republicans, remember, and he supported Steitz.
Finally, looking at the list of Steitz's donors and tracking other donations they have made reveals a consistent pattern of support for various right-wing organizations, including the Heritage Foundation, The Fund for American Studies, and the Campaign for Working Families. This is how the CWF is described on its web site:
CWF is a non-partisan political action committee (PAC) dedicated to electing pro-family, pro-life and pro-free enterprise candidates to public offices....CWF has used its resources to raise public awareness of partial-birth abortion through extensive media campaigns and distributed two million pieces of literature through our voter education program.
In addition to providing direct financial support to conservative candidates, CWF also provides crucial support to pro-family ballot initiatives, including the successful Defense of Marriage initiatives in Alaska, California, Nebraska, Nevada, and Hawaii, as well as, a parental notification initiative Colorado.
He's not the moderate, former small-business owner with an independent streak as portrayed on his campaign web site. If I were a voter in the 22nd District, I would assume that Illinois lawyer Jonathan Steitz gets the support of the extreme right wing for a reason.
What is bothersome is not that he has that support, it's that his apparent strategy is to ride through the campaign with his true identity concealed. If he would manage to defeat Wirch, which is very unlikely, he would not be representative of the people in the 22nd District. He would, however, make a great foot-soldier in the FitzWalkerstan army.