#tom petri

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Tom Petri

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House GOP boasts diversity and new conservatives

House GOP boasts diversity and new conservatives

[fxgallery style="one" size="full" imagealignment="left" last="yes" background="#040404" overlay="black" icon="CD" deactivateicon="yes" caption="Republican Mia Love celebrates with her supporters after winning the race for Utah’s 4th Congressional District during a GOP election night watch party Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014, in Salt Lake City" textalign="left" textcolor="light" linktype="page"…

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Wisconsin Congressional Candidates: An Analysis

U.S. Senate 

Tommy Thompson – Republican

Ugh, Tommy Thompson. The fourth horseman in the Wisconsin GOP Apocalypse (the other three being Reince Priebus, Scott Walker, and, of course, America’s most famous bicep curler, Paul Ryan). This asshole was governor of Wisconsin for most of my life, and he did all right, but ever since then he’s reaaaaaally gone off the deep end and sold his soul to the lunatics in his party. 

Here are some fun things he has said:

In 2008, on whether an employer should be able to fire a person for being gay:  “I think that is left up to the individual business.  I really sincerely believe that that is an issue that business people have got to make their own determination as to whether or not they should be.”

“Who better than me, that’s already finished one of the entitlement programs, to come up with programs that do away with Medicaid and Medicare?"

Also, when he was Secretary of Health and Human Services, he rejected a Nobel laureate for a position on a National Institutes of Health developing nations unit, because he, "signed too many full-page letters in the New York Times critical of President Bush." 

So, uh, that’s Tommy Thompson. Your typical formerly moderate Republican who sold his soul to the Tea Party in order to get ahead. The perfect friend to those other three Wisconsin jerkoffs who have hijacked my home state in order to drive our nation off a cliff.

Tammy Baldwin – Democratic

Tammy, on the other hand, is lovely, and her election history shows it, as she has won every election she’s been in, with more than 60% of the votes. She’s also one of the most prominent openly gay politicians in our country, which is great, and if elected she will become the first openly gay member of the U.S. Senate, which would be mind-blowingly fantastic. And let us not forget that she spearheaded the movement to impeach Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales! How fun is THAT? 

Needless to say, she has my vote, unless these next two candidates can steal it from her. Let’s find out!

Joseph Kexel – Libertarian

This is the first thing you see upon going to what was Joseph Kexel’s campaign page:

If you can’t see that, the VERY FIRST statement is, “This site is no longer the campaign site for Joseph Kexel's bid for Congress. This is now just a personal page for myself, Joseph Kexel.” 

He does have an actual campaign website (kexel2012.com), but that does not show up on Google, so the first thing anyone sees by Joseph Kexel when Googling him is that crazy diatribe above. Anyway, I finally found his bio, which is exactly as long and rambling as you would anticipate. He spends an entire paragraph detailing his struggles as a paperboy when he was twelve, hilariously ending in a MASSIVE falling-out with he and his friend Mark. “We are still friends today, thankfully,” he reassures us. It’s loaded with other gems, such as calling the dot-com bubble the “Dot.com bubble” (which, when pronounced aloud, is the “dot dot com bubble”).

In short: I love Joseph Kexel, but there’s no way he’s getting my vote for Senate. I will vote for him to hang out with me, though.

Nimrod Y.U. Allen, III – I.D.E.A.

Oh good grief. Nimrod? Our two independent Senate candidates are Joseph “Dot.com” Kexel and NIMROD III? What sort of name is that? Is he a computer program?

Actually, he’s an Iraq-Afghanistan US Marine, so we should all watch what we say because he’s totally a badass. He founded the I.D.E.A. party (which is annoying to type, and stands for Independent Democratic Enforcement Alliance), and he actually makes a lot of great points about veterans’ affairs, as you would expect. 

He’s also REALLY into acrostics. Aside from I.D.E.A, his website offers a bounty of acrostics, including: L.E.T.S.E.A.T. (Lifestyle Enhancing Techniques Sustaining Education, Agriculture, and Technology), P.I.E. (Provide funding, Improve legislation, Enhance the quality of life), and F.O.O.D. (Finding Opportunities, Optimizing Development). Clearly, someone was hungry during his strategy planning sessions.

I like some of the things he says, and he comes across far and away more serious than Joseph Kexel, but there is just not enough emphasis on specific policy for me to warrant voting for him, so looks like my vote will stay with T.A.M.M.Y. (Totally Awesome, Making Me say Yes.)

  Representative in Congress, District 6

Tom Petri – Republican

Tom Petri has been in the House representing Wisconsin since 1979. Isn’t that nuts?! He has won 15 straight elections, and he won with more than 62% of the vote 14 times. Anyone challenging him has quite the upstream battle. Plus, he’s a rare breed: a moderate Republican who frequently works with Democrats.

Orrrrrrr that was the old Tom Petri. In recent years, he’s become pretty contradictory and partisan. For example, five years ago he said stockholders should weigh in on corporate executive compensations, and then changed his mind two years later to say it’s none of their business. He voted against drilling for oil, then for it, then against it, then for it, and so on and so on.

A quick look at his voting record over the years shows he's strictly Republican in social respects: he voted against protecting gays and lesbians from job discrimination, and he voted to change the constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. (He also voted to “protect the Pledge of Allegiance,” which I didn’t even realize was under attack, but thank GOD we’ve got someone looking out for it.) When you look at his overall civil rights record, in fact, it’s terrible. He definitely hates gays (he voted to ban gay adoption, and he voted against enforcement against anti-gay hate crimes!!!), earning him a lovely 0% rating from the Human Rights Campaign.

So, no, Tom Petri, you’re absolutely not getting my vote, because you don’t care if I get fired and physically attacked.

Joe Kallas – Democratic

In spite of Petri’s pretty grim voting record, Kallas is still facing a major problem against the Petri steamroller. That said, his biggest advantage is that Petri is an enormous incumbent, and (he’s hoping) people will decide they’re tired of more of the same this year.

A possibly crazy gambit Joe is making is refusing to use PAC money, which resulted in these completely INSANE numbers in the 2010 election, according to opensecrets.org:

Joe Kallas: Raised $6,941

Tom Petri: Raised $737,019

That’s almost 11 THOUSAND per cent more money on hand for Tom Petri. And it looks like the current race will be no different.

On the issues, Joe appears to be your typical congressional Democrat. Nothing too exciting here, but not taking PAC money to avoid being beholden to special-interest groups is a ballsy gambit that I like. Plus, he doesn’t hate gay people, which is a pretty swell thing to have in a politician. So I’m voting for Joe, and I hope a lot of other people do, too, in spite of the massive odds against him.

(Coming in no time at all, my last super-specific Wisconsin ballot analysis, which involves a write-in candidate, which is SO VERY EXCITING!)