You might be surprised to find out that German-American is the most common ancestry in the United States, at least according to the Census Bureau; 13.9 percent of Americans claim German ancestry, compared with 10.0 for Irish ancestry and 7.4 percent for English ancestry. (One theory is that many people who do have primarily English ancestry are from families that have been in the U.S. for so long that there’s no remaining sense of distinct roots, and some of them may end up claiming "American" ancestry instead.)
But German ancestry is, despite how common it is, a fairly regionally-specific ancestry; there’s very little of it in the South, and while it’s more common in the Northeast, it’s by far most heavily concentrated in the Midwest, especially the Upper Midwest: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas. The largest flow of German immigrants in the 19th century was to the rapidly-growing cities of the Midwest like Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Omaha, and St. Louis. While these cities have lost much of their initial German identity thanks to subsequent waves of immigration and mostly ordinary domestic migration, German ancestry is still predominant in the rural areas of the Midwest where there hasn’t been much subsequent population growth. So grab a brat and a beer, and let’s take a closer look at where German ancestry is most common.
The district with the highest percentage of German ancestry is Wisconsin's 6th Congressional District, where 49.2 percent of residents claim German ancestry. It’s followed closely by the more suburban Wisconsin’s 5th district (centered on crucial Waukesha County), and others in the top 10 include the more rural WI-03 and WI-07, MN-07, IA-01, and the at-large seats in the Dakotas. In fact, you have to head all the way down to the 20th most German district to find one that isn’t in the Upper Midwest (which is Pennsylvania’s 4th district).
The 6th is anchored by cities in the Fox Valley, Oshkosh and Fond du Lac, middle-brow cities with a manufacturing-based economy facing Lake Winnebago; it also includes Sheboygan and Manitowoc, similar blue-collar towns on the shore of Lake Michigan. Redistricting in 2012 took out the somewhat bigger (and politically swingy) city of Appleton (giving it to the 8th to its north) and, in exchange, picking up Ozaukee County, a dark-red suburban county to the north of Milwaukee; this shored up the 6th a bit in the Republican direction.
Despite Wisconsin’s fairly recent (and possibly temporary) shift in the GOP direction, the original German political tradition in Wisconsin was socialism, though the tendency toward socialism was more concentrated in Milwaukee than the outlying parts of the state. Milwaukee elected three different Socialist mayors in the early 20th century, with the most recent, Frank Zeidler, serving from 1948 to 1960. Their brand of socialism wasn’t of the revolutionary variety, though; it was sometimes called “sewer socialism” because of its focus on public works and infrastructure, as well as good-government reform.
That urban socialism didn’t gravitate up to the 6th, however; the 6th has been the Fox Valley area district for over 100 years, and in that last century, it's been primarily a Republican district. The only periods where it was represented by a Democrat in the 20th century were in the 1910s and the 1930s, and then a brief two-year period in 1965 and 1966 with a Dem who was swept in along with LBJ’s 1964 landslide. Following that brief blip, it was held by only two GOP Representatives for a 50-year period: William Steiger, who served for more than a decade but then died of a heart attack at a surprisingly young age, and then Tom Petri, a low-profile, sort-of-moderate GOPer who held the seat from 1979 until his retirement ahead of the 2014 election.
Petri was replaced by Glenn Grothman (which apparently is German for “gross man”). Grothman, in fact, gave a big nudge to Petri to get out of the way, beginning a primary run against him from the right, at which point the elderly Petri promptly retired. Grothman was a long-time member of the Wisconsin legislature, more of a social conservative than an anti-tax nihilist.
Map of German-American population density, 1872
Grothman has long had a knack for jaw-dropping quotes, though his notorious and ongoing crusade against Kwanzaa yielded such gems as “Almost no black people today care about Kwanzaa — just white left-wingers who try to shove this down black people’s throats in an effort to divide Americans.” Unsurprisingly, he’s also not a big fan of Martin Luther King Day, about which he thinks “Let's be honest, giving government employees off has nothing to do with honoring Martin Luther King Day and it's just about giving state employees another day off.”
A more genial and conventional Republican than Grothman might be able to hold down the 6th uneventfully for many more years like his predecessors, given that the district is pretty red at the presidential level: it went 46 for Obama and 53 for Romney in 2012, and that spread got even wider in 2016, with 39 for Clinton and 56 for Trump. Nevertheless, between his gift for self-inflicted verbal wounds, the prospect of a 2018 wave election, and a decent Democratic challenger for next year, Grothman may actually face a competitive race next year. He’s facing Dan Kohl, a nephew of former U.S. Senator (and department store owner and Milwaukee Bucks owner) Herb Kohl, who’s been fundraising well on his own and may be able to tap into family money beyond that.
“The Most District” is an ongoing series devoted to highlighting congressional district superlatives around the nation. Click here for all posts in this series.
