WI-01: Speaker Paul Ryan has never had a close race in his two decades in office, but this year, one Democratic candidate is raising far more cash than any of Ryan’s previous foes ever have. Ironworker Randy Bryce, who has unsuccessfully run for the state legislature twice before, pulled in an enormous $1 million from donors during the third quarter of 2017, more money than any non-incumbent in a House race anywhere in the country this cycle. Bryce was able to do this by taking full advantage of the opportunities he created for himself: Since bursting on to the national scene with a poignant launch video that instantly went viral, he’s parlayed his heightened profile into a successful fundraising operation that’s made the most of Ryan’s status as a top GOP villain.
But Bryce is not the only Democrat running against Ryan, though he’s the only one to catch fire. While Bryce was busy hauling in seven figures, Cathy Myers, a Janesville School Board member, managed to take in just $54,000. Ryan, however, is the last politician in America who will need to worry about being outspent. Not only is he a prodigious fundraiser for his party (a key reason why he’s speaker now), he also makes sure to take care of himself: At the end of September, he held a commanding $10.4 million to $1 million cash-on-hand edge over Bryce. Still, though, Bryce will have plenty of money to get his message out on TV if he’s the Democratic nominee.
But as we often see with first-time congressional candidates, Bryce just showed us that he’s capable of wounding himself. Over the weekend, Bryce tweeted a picture tweeted a picture of Ivanka Trump with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau captioned, "Don’t worry @jaredkushner regardless of what might go down - she’ll be okay. #MuellerTime." It’s hard to know what exactly Bryce meant by this—Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale said it sounded like Bryce was “suggest[ing] Ivanka will hook up with Trudeau, or something, if her husband gets arrested”)—but whatever he had in mind, the reaction was sharply negative.
Myers, who also flagged that Bryce had referred to Trump as a “succubus” on Twitter last year, called on her opponent to delete his tweets, but remarkably, Bryce has not yet done so. Given his newfound celebrity and considerable war-chest, Bryce is very likely to beat Myers in the Democrat primary, but despite the speaker’s deep national unpopularity, Bryce will still face long odds in the general election. Ryan’s district moved to the right last year, going from a 52-47 win for Mitt Romney in 2012 to a 53-42 victory for Donald Trump, so it will take everything going right and then some for Bryce to beat the incumbent. That means Bryce can’t afford to make any mistakes, so he should take Myers’ advice, apologize, and go back to whaling on Paul Ryan.