October 29, 2020 at 1:11 p.m.
For the 34th, Swearingen is the only responsible choice
For the 34th, Swearingen is the only responsible choice
Mr. Swearingen and his campaign, though, have taken the high road and stuck to issues, laying out a conservative agenda in which he addresses the real needs of real people, including broadband access and more help for our rural schools. Mr. Swearingen has a passion for liberty, too, and has taken strong stands against Gov. Tony Evers's dictatorial rule down in Madison.
Perhaps the biggest mark he has made, as Mr. Swearingen himself says, is that of strong constituent service. He works hard to take care of the needs of the residents of his district, often working in partnerships with various community groups to secure such things as broadband access grants and more.
What Rep. Swearingen does not do is introduce a lot of legislation, a fact that he wears as a badge of honor. We think it is a badge of honor, too.
Indeed, we often hear mainstream media pundits and liberals - including Kirk Bangstad, Mr. Swearingen's Democratic opponent - talk about do-nothing legislatures, as if that were a bad thing. But in an age of overregulation and nanny-state government, in an age when government is stripping our civil liberties from us liberty by liberty, we hardly need an activist Legislature passing ever more laws.
The more laws government passes, the more control government has over our lives and our liberty.
So kudos to Mr. Swearingen, who prefers to focus his work where it truly counts, among average citizens, helping them with their individual needs, empowering them and helping them to build the kind of infrastructure people need to prosper, to thrive, and to control their own destinies.
Not least, Mr. Swearingen is a man of high character who treats people decently. He has conducted his campaigns with dignity. He never refuses to debate or interview, so his constituents can stay fully informed, but he is also respectful of disagreement.
His quiet work for constituents, his refusal to play the big government game, his respect for individual beliefs and decision making - all these make him the embodiment of the citizen legislator envisioned by the Founders.
All of which brings us to Mr. Bangstad, who is the exact opposite of Mr. Swearingen. Quite frankly - and there is just no other way to say it - Mr. Bangstad is an embarrassment to the Northwoods, and he is a stain upon the Democratic Party. His very presence on their ballot is likely to set them back for years.
In the movie "Dark Knight," Michael Caine utters the famous lines: "(S)some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."
Now the Caine character was referring to a criminal character, which we don't think Mr. Bangstad is. But his personality is similar to that description. He has nothing positive to offer, he can't be reasoned with. He simply wants to watch the Northwoods burn, and his slash-and-burn campaign has been doing a good job of doing it.
The truth is, Mr. Bangstad has no respect for people. He trades not in substance and issues but in disparagement, defamation, and insult. He pounds his boots on the backs of the vulnerable and taunts them with the sewage he calls his social media posts.
He does not respect his potential constituents; he mocks and demeans them instead. He hurls insults at upstanding members of the community who have donated and contributed much more to our communities than Mr. Bangstad could ever hope to, though building up rather than tearing down communities is apparently not what Mr. Bangstad seeks to do.
All these traits, which saturate what he calls a campaign, speak of an arrogant elitist who cares not one whit about the Northwoods. Not least, that arrogance further underscores that laws and rules don't apply to him, only to us.
As he has recently demonstrated, Mr. Bangstad denounced law enforcement for not enforcing a mask ordinance that many people think is unconstitutional, but brazenly defied the county's sign ordinance when he decided it was unconstitutional.
That it may be is not relevant. What is relevant is Mr. Bangstad screamed to the rafters in his defiance, raising money to pay fines and calling out the injustice of those who might prosecute him, all the while denouncing police for not citing those defying the mask mandate, though they had equal constitutional concerns.
Prosecute thee, but not me.
Mr. Bangstad also showed his lack of respect for law when he posted an article that we believe infringed our copyright protections. He removed it after being told by our attorney it was illegal, but it's hard to believe a man running for public office wouldn't have even basic knowledge of copyright laws. A representative should have such an education.
There's so much more, but we only have so much space.
For instance, Mr. Bangstad refused to interview with this newspaper for the election, but we weren't the only media he boycotted, having refused to debate Mr. Swearingen in a WXPR forum. This is startling in that WXPR is a public radio station and many of their audience likely tilts more to the left than the audiences of other media.
He boycotted the forum because he didn't like the way they covered his campaign and he let loose a childish torrent when someone asked him about it on Facebook.
Here is how he chided WXPR: "WXPR was extremely lazy in the way they covered this Assembly race. We sent them press releases about speeches I was doing that were really important to this area all summer and they never showed up to cover them. I told them that if they really wanted to be a real media outlet and care about politics they actually had to show up before they (sic) were two weeks left in the election. I have an issue with WXPR because they need to decide what they wanna be. If they want to be an all-volunteer organization that is like a college radio station, then be that. That is essentially what they are now. But if you really wanna be public radio, like what most public radio stations are, then you're half-assing it in every way ...."
So if you disagree with Mr. Bangstad or don't give him the effusive coverage he thinks he deserves, he won't interview with you or engage in debate. He's boycotting at least three outlets already, and where does that leave voters wanting to know he would do as a state representative.
But it's not just the media Mr. Bangstad has tried to bully .How about his neighbors and the entire community?
Don't take our words that he's a bully. He admits it himself. In an Oct. 25 email, Mr. Bangstad, perhaps realizing the election was drawing near, decided to apologize for "the schoolyard bully mentality" that had "unfortunately entered my own rhetoric."
He said he regretted calling those questioning the mask mandate in the state "dumb" and for calling others "boneheaded." He admitted that "it's definitely a personality defect that I lost my temper and resorted to name calling."
Is this really the kind of person we want representing us in Madison? Not only would he be an embarrassment, he would do us harm, even if Democrats were to control the Assembly. If he will go after WXPR, he'll go after reasonable Democrats in Madison, all to the detriment of the Northwoods.
What all this points to is a profound lack of empathy in a seriously flawed candidate, a man who has shown in his words he really doesn't care about the most vulnerable of our population, the poor and the disabled.
For example, Bangstad had been raising money by selling T-shirts to pay off fines for his sign violation, but after Oneida County said it wouldn't fine him, he announced he would use the money to build a progressive force in the Northwoods.
Great, but one person on Facebook had an idea: "I agree with what you're doing with most of the money but why not take some of it and adopt 10 families 5 for Thanksgiving and 5 for Christmas and make sure they have a great dinner on their table."
It didn't sound great to Mr. Bangstad, at least not for him and the money he raised: "(W)e think that's a great idea, maybe you could do that. We're going to focus on changing our community for the better for the next 20 years by electing progressives who will bring this county out of the 1970s and hopefully create a better economy where less people are hungry in the winter time."
In the meantime, let them eat cake.
While Rob Swearingen is actively helping his constituents today, right now, when they are in need, Kirk Bangstad would let them starve so he can advance a partisan agenda that might help somebody 20 years down the road.
It's the opposite of constituent service, and it's the opposite of truly progressive politics.
Finally, and this by itself should disqualify Kirk Bangstad from holding office, there is the offensive language he used in a Facebook post when he received a letter from Oneida County zoning that his Biden sign was in violation. In the letter, Bangstad incorrectly blamed the letter on what he called " a group of Republican County Board Supervisors."
He then goes on to describe the, as "bungling right-wing dotard county board supervisors."
Now "dotard" is a disparaging word for an elderly person with declining mental faculties or with an intellectual disability. It is every bit as offensive as another word that it resembles, which was previously used to describe mostly younger people and individuals with special needs and intellectual disabilities and which was weaponized as a slur to attack people by calling them that name.
It has since been declared vulgar and offensive and removed from statutes.
But if someone in your family is a senior who is or is becoming mentally disabled, do you want your representative to be someone who is comfortable using an offensive slur to descibe seniors? Indeed, do we want someone who is comfortable with such language in general getting to vote on issues related to anyone with special needs or intellectual disabilities?
No, but this is the type of person who is on the Democratic ballot. Enough said.
On Tuesday, make sure the Northwoods stays untainted by such toxic politics. The Democratic Party should listen and do the same.
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