It looks like Reid Ribble is going to be the guy facing Steve Kagen in the 8th Congressional District. The endorsement he received from John Gard was not so much a great asset as it was a sign that the Ribble campaign had received the blessing of the GOP establishment, which recognizes the roofer as a competent campaigner and fundraiser.
In contrast, the Terri McCormick campaign is in shambles. The most recent finance report says she has $1,600 on hand. That's about $75,000 behind Ribble and $60,000 less than Roth. (It's also about a grand worse than 2nd Congressional District candidate Peter Theron) The word on the street is the campaign spent recklessly on meaningless items, including $2,000 for a band to play on a float at a parade.
McCormick's campaign was supposed to represent a libertarian movement within the Republican Party. D.C. libertarians "found" her as a candidate and promised financial backing. Idealistic young Ron Paul fans migrated to Northeast Wisconsin to work for what they believed was a continuation of the Ron Paul revolution.
There was only one problem: The candidate was not a libertarian herself. In fact, much of the rhetoric on her website, likely written by staffers, included ideas that rarely surfaced on the stump and was sometimes even flatly contradicted. For instance, although she did not match Roth's call to withdraw from Afghanistan at a debate, instead siding with Ribble, who said the government should continue to fund troops there.
The most recent McCormick TV ad is bizarre. While she emphasizes the need for smaller government, the theme of the ad is "level playing field." She never explains what exactly that means. Nevertheless, the content does not differ much from Roger Roth's recent ad, in which he takes a page out of Scott Walker and Scott Brown's campaign books and shows off his 1993 truck (five years older than Walker's Saturn!).
I will note, however, that the content of Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila's endorsement of Roth was quite different from other political ads I've seen so far. "I personally called Kagen, and unfortunately, I just feel like they don't really listen," says the Packers all-time sacks leader.