Iron Vs Steil

For over a decade it's been hard to find anyone "credible" (or at least "establishment") to run against Paul Ryan. For 4 cycles, Pelosi and her team laughed hysterically as the Ryan family orthopedist, Jeffrey Thomas, was the official candidate of the Democratic party against Ryan. Isn't that cute? It wasn't 'til Rob Zerban ran against him in 2012 that Ryan had a real opponent, albeit still one Pelosi's DCCC gang refused to support in any meaningful way. This cycle, a union activist, ironworker, single dad and veteran, Randy "IronStache" Bryce, went after Ryan with a vengeance-- and drove him out of the race, while the DCCC and Pelosi looked on from the sidelines with mouths agape. "How did he do that," asked Ben Ray Lujan, the latest in a series of inept and untalented DCCC chairman Pelosi had appointed. "Can we bottle that?"

Now that Ryan has run off with his tail between his legs, there are suddenly candidates crawling out from under the floorboards. What's left of the Kenosha Mafia, wants to back Peter Barca, the slimy conservative Democrat who held the seat for a few sad months in the early 90s when the district's popular congressman, Les Aspin, was appointed Secretary of Defense by Bill Clinton. More recently, Barca teamed up with Scott Walker and Ryan to burden Wisconsin with the expensive con job known as Foxconn.

But on the Republican side of the ledger, they have to find a candidate so that neither neo-Nazi Paul Nehlen nor another anti-Ryan crackpot, Nick Polce, walkers off with the nomination. Kenosha County Supervisor Jeff Wamboldt jumped right in. Ryan seems to have pushed Bryan Steil, his former driver-- who went to law school and came out a corporate lawyer-- into the race and the establishment has decreed he's now the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. He declared on Sunday and tried branding himself "a problem solver." He's from a prominent Janesville Republican political family and feels he's entitled to the job. (His grandpa was appointed first chairman of the Wisconsin Lottery Board by then-Governor Tommy Thompson.)

Randy Bryce welcomed him to the campaign with a statement reminding that media that it was "hard to think of anyone less in touch with the struggles facing working families than a third-generation corporate attorney from a politically-connected family. A former Ryan staffer and a current Walker appointee, Bryan Steil is part of the institutional Republican swamp that believes we should give tax breaks to the wealthy and pay for it by attacking working people's retirements and healthcare. Reports show that while Steil was the Associate General Counsel for Regal Beloit the company closed a Midwest factory, laid off more than 300 people and moved their jobs to Mexico." They included this report from NBC- 3 KYTV:

"A large Springfield manufacturer will soon be closing its doors. The Regal Beloit plant on east Sunshine has an emptier parking lot than in the past, and it will soon be vacant. 'They have let folks go out in segments, in groups, of people coming out. There will be another group coming out this Friday, tomorrow,' says Cynthia Collins, Missouri Career Center business service representative. When Regal Beloit announced the closing about a year and a half ago, there were about 330 employees. Right now, we believe, from corporate management and an employee, that there are about 100 left. The plant, which makes electric motors, has been in Springfield for decades. 'We've seen employees that had been there for 44 years. I mean Regal was GE before Regal, so you had folks that started on at GE and within 8 or 9 years ago, Regal bought GE, and those employees continued on,' said Collins. The Missouri Career Center says Regal Beloit employees qualify for retraining assistance through the Trade Act, because some of the jobs are leaving the country, going to Mexico." [12/18/14]