WI-1: Paul Ryan is toxic, and Republican insiders know it
Take a look at the last part of this POLITICO article:
The best proof of how competitive Ryan’s district and the state may be is this: a Romney-Ryan ticket makes his district a pickup opportunity for Democrats.
“It gives them a great chance at [his] seat,” worried a top GOP aide.
Republican insiders are dramatically understating how vulnerable Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI-1) is in his home district. A diarist for the progressive website DailyKos who lives in Wisconsin but in a different congressional district said this about Paul Ryan’s vulnerability a few days ago:
Ryan has another problem most people aren’t aware of. He’s mainly gotten elected and re-elected because he’s been considered to be a shiny faced, nice young man with a pleasant personality. With his issuance of the Ryan Plan to Poverty (snark definitely mine), he’s been unmasked as yet another extremist politician.
His very first public meeting in his district went viral when he was booed and asked rather politically embarrassing questions about his Medicare Coupon program. He responded by reassuring the senior citizens present that they would continue to receive their traditional benefits. That led to an exchange where seniors told him, to his face, that they were not simply interested in their own benefits, but those of their children and grandchildren.
Of course, Ryan completely lied about the event – even saying that his economic plan had incredible support, but since then it’s become more difficult to get into his public meetings. He places them in private facilities and requires invitation issued by his office to be allowed in.
He may be in a lot more trouble in his district than he thinks and Rob Zerban is a good candidate. (spelling errors corrected by me)
Oh, and if you need another reason to believe that Paul Ryan is in serious trouble in his own congressional district, Lori Compas, a wedding photographer and progressive political activist who unsuccessfully tried to recall Republican Wisconsin State Senator Scott Fitzgerald earlier this year, has endorsed Rob Zerban, Paul Ryan’s Democratic opponent, despite the fact that Compas doesn’t even live in WI-1.
WI-1 is Republican-leaning but not overwhelmingly so. Prior to 1994, WI-1 was held by Democrats: Les Aspin resigned the seat less than a month into his 12th term in 1993 in order to take the Defense Secretary post under President Bill Clinton, and Peter Barca won the special election to fill out the remainder of Aspin’s 12th term 3 1/2 months later. Barca was defeated by Republican Mark Neumann in the 1994 WI-1 general election, and Neumann served two terms before retiring to run in a U.S. Senate election against Democrat Russ Feingold in which Neumann narrowly lost, and fellow Republican Paul Ryan won the open-seat election in 1998 and has held the seat since.
Paul Ryan has been unmasked as an extreme austerity hawk who wants to turn Medicare into a voucher program, and Wisconsin Democrats sense a major pickup opportunity in WI-1, even if Paul Ryan isn’t picked as Mitt Romney’s running mate.
