David Michael Miller
U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan has easily sailed to re-election time and time again in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District. The man who works to kill entitlements feels entitled to his seat in Congress. In 2018, things will be different. Ryan will face a greater challenge than he has faced in over a decade.
First and most importantly, Paul Ryan will finally face a serious Democratic challenger in Randy Bryce. Compared to years of weak, also-ran Democratic candidates, Bryce comes in strong. Bryce is a longtime Kenosha resident, a veteran, a proud union ironworker, a single parent and a cancer survivor. He’s running a grassroots campaign but it’s one that has already attracted experienced campaign staff and has received coverage from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Additionally, Bryce’s Twitter handle is @ironstache. I can’t decide if that name is brilliant, overly silly or brilliantly silly, but it makes me chuckle.
Next, 2018 is shaping up to be a very, very good year for Democrats. In 2016, Trump won the 1st District by 10 percentage points. But, despite getting a piece of Waukesha County in the last round of redistricting, the district isn’t rock-solidly conservative. In 2012, Romney won only with a narrow 5 points. That was with Ryan on the ticket as the vice presidential candidate.
Meanwhile, Democrats have been outperforming in special elections across the country in 2017. FiveThirtyEight took the results of 2017 state legislative special elections and compared them to the results of the last two presidential elections and found that that Democrats have improved their margins in the same districts by an average of 14 percentage points. If that holds true for 2018, it’s enough to put Bryce — and a whole lot of other Democrats — in the running.
National trends aside, Ryan isn’t a generic member of the House. He’s currently the most powerful and prominent member of Congress. For years, Ryan has managed to remain popular at home — thanks, in part, to a glowing press that anointed him as the GOP’s super-serious policy wonk. As speaker, pushing unpopular legislation under an unpopular Republican president, Ryan is in the spotlight in a way he has never been before. A survey conducted last month in the 1st District by Public Policy Polling finds 51% of voters disapprove of Ryan’s job performance.
The combination of a good Democratic challenger, national voting trends and the increased exposure of the speakership add up to spell trouble for Ryan. Bryce doesn’t even need a lot of financial support from the national Democratic Party to get his campaign started. Bryce will be able to raise money by focusing on small, online donations.
Take the example of David Yankovich. Yankovich is the other Democratic challenger to Paul Ryan. Yankovich is a political activist from Ohio who very recently moved to Wisconsin with the express purpose of challenging Ryan. As a carpetbagger with more ties to Dayton than Delavan, he has absolutely no chance of winning. Despite his campaign’s hopeless nature, Yankovich has collected more than $23,000 in online donations.
That’s a drop in the bucket compared to what it will take to battle the sitting speaker. But it shows how eager people are to unseat Ryan. They are willing to throw a Subaru’s worth toward a candidate with no chance. If Bryce can show that he’s a viable candidate, he’ll be able to raise small funds from a nationwide coalition of those who see Ryan as a spineless lackey willing to put our democracy in peril in order to slash the social safety net.
While Bryce’s candidacy doesn’t have to cost Democrats much, it could end up costing the Republicans a lot. Ryan is an incredibly effective fundraiser for his party. That’s largely because he hasn’t had to worry about campaigning in his own district. If Bryce can get close to Ryan in the polls, it forces Ryan to spend time in the 1st District shoring up support. Every time Ryan has to attend a pancake breakfast in Elkhorn or a rally in Beloit, it hurts Republican efforts to hold on to their House majority.
Similarly, firing up Democratic voters in the 1st to come out against Ryan could reverberate throughout the state. The vast majority of new voters who come out to support Bryce will vote for Governor Walker’s challenger and to re-elect U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. As we’ve seen time and again in Wisconsin, a handful of voters can make a seismic impact on election results.
Bryce could lose his race and still change the course of American politics. If Bryce wins, it will represent a shift away from Ryan’s brand of cruel austerity. Either way, it is a challenge that is long overdue.
Alan Talaga co-writes the Off the Square cartoon with Jon Lyons and blogs at Madland.
