One of my biggest disappoints over the past ten years happened on Election Tuesday 2016 in Janesville.
That was the day when Rock County and Janesville, including the voting ward of Rep. Paul Ryan, cast more votes for the Koch brothers $100M Wall Street charlatan than for his unfunded grassroots democratic challenger.
Granted, once upon a time Rock County and Janesville used to support and vote for Paul Ryan. But democratic challenger Rob Zerban, much to his credit, and what I thought was a better informed local constituency, turned away from the entrenched incumbent beginning in 2012 and again in 2014. Janesville and Ryan's ward voted for the other guy. Unfortunately, that streak has now ended.
Over the holidays, I've already had some local Ryan apologists tell me that Janesville proved itself in the last general election NOT to be as partisan as I supposedly hoped. But if that "we're not partisans" analysis were true, Janesville democrats would not have voted for a hyper-partisan opposition candidate such as Paul Ryan ...at all.
You see, during Ryan's responses to the press about his support for Donald Trump, he would quickly divert by explaining that his top priority was defending his party's majority in Congress so he can install the Koch authored legislative agenda without delay. Country and district be damned.
So what democrat, even trying to pretend a not-partisan defense for supporting Ryan, would vote for the one candidate hellbent on defeating democrats? That doesn't make sense.
But for this election cycle, there was also some surprising handwriting on the wall when popular democrat Barney Frank arrived in Janesville to "rally" local democrats one week before the election and ...stumped for Paul Ryan. And, nobody said a word after. That's right.
Had I been the director of the local democratic party when Frank made those remarks as reported in the Gazette ...I would have grabbed him by the ear and kicked him out the door with my live feed youtube camera rolling. I would have handed him the address of Wisconsin GOP headquarters and told him to go there. They're always on the look-out for the next Zell Miller.
What a disgrace. I can't even.
And two, since becoming House Speaker, the people of Janesville seem star struck by Paul Ryan and that's really too bad.
I have no idea what local democrats are thinking. Much like the DNC, they lost their way and literally abandoned Ryan's democratic challenger. There is nothing good that will come from yet another term of Paul Ryan.
Here are the numbers:
Click image to make bigly.
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