#wi-03

Republicans on Capitol Hill are afraid of their constituents. So they are not holding town hall meetings in order to avoid the people who sent them to Washington.

Democrats are organizing empty chair gatherings in GOP districts and states where voters can publicly complain to their missing reps and senators who are symbolized by an empty chair in front.

Ali Velshi spoke with Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski who organized an empty chair town hall in WI-03 – a swing district currently represented by MAGA extremist Derrick Van Orden.

No swing state is as swingy as Wisconsin. And this year it has been swinging strongly against MAGA Republicans. 😄

In an April election, Republicans lost control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Even cry-baby Nazi trillionaire Elon Musk's massive contributions to the GOP there could not suppress a big spike in Democratic support.

And after 10 months of the Trump maladministration, the Wisconsin Democratic Party is clobbering the Wisconsin GOP in both fundraising and campaign spending.

The state Democratic Party’s fundraising haul for federal elections was more than four times larger than the state GOP’s last month, and the gap between what the two parties spent was even wider. The latest figures show Democrats were able to maintain their ongoing fundraising advantage over Republicans even as the party has transitioned to new leadership. Federal Election Commission reports covering the month of October show the Democratic Party of Wisconsin raised around $707,460 for its federal account. Of that, $200,000 came by way of a transfer from the party’s state account. Meanwhile, the Republican Party of Wisconsin reported raising $167,359 for federal election efforts during the same period, with $83,030 coming from its state account. 

This is more than just bragging rights. Wisconsin has two swing US House seats currently held by Republicans. WI-03 is currently held by the odious Derrick Van Orden and WI-01 is held by the slightly less odious Bryan Steil.

WI-03 is in the southwest and west of the state with a spur into the middle of the state to cover Portage County.

WI-01 straddles the Illinois border in the southeast.

^^^ Not sure why mapmakers included a chunk of Lake Michigan; it's not like there is a fleet of offshore houseboats.

Congressman Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin is a MAGA Republican who has a habit of disrespecting teens.

‘Jackasses,’ ‘little s‑‑‑‑’: GOP congressman curses out teenage Senate pages 

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) is in hot water after he cursed out a group of teenage Senate pages in the Capitol rotunda early Thursday morning.

According to a transcript written by a page minutes after the incident and obtained by The Hill, Van Orden called the pages “jackasses” and “pieces of s‑‑‑,” and told them he didn’t “give a f‑‑‑ who you are.”

The pages are a group of 16- and 17-year-olds who assist Senate operations, and when the Senate works late — as it did Wednesday night on National Defense Authorization Act amendments — pages generally rest nearby in the rotunda.

“Wake the f‑‑‑ up you little s‑‑‑‑. … What the f‑‑‑ are you all doing? Get the f‑‑‑ out of here. You are defiling the space you [pieces of s‑‑‑],” Van Orden said, according to the account provided by the page.

“Who the f‑‑‑ are you?” Van Orden asked, to which one person said they were Senate pages. “I don’t give a f‑‑‑ who you are, get out.”

“You jackasses, get out,” he added.

The incident, which occurred just after midnight, outraged members of the upper chamber, with one calling the string of remarks “horrible.”

[ ... ]

Van Orden did not dispute the exchange and defended his actions when asked by The Hill.

“The history of the United States Capitol Rotunda, that during the Civil War it was used as a field hospital and countless Union soldiers died on that floor, and they died because they were fighting the Civil War to end slavery. And I think that place should be treated with a tremendous amount of respect for the dead,” he said.

Van Ordrn’s defense was pathetic and hypocritical when you look into the company he keeps.

GOP Candidate Bankrolled Jan. 6 Riot Trip With Campaign Cash

Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL and small-time actor, has previously acknowledged attending the Jan. 6 rally, but has repeatedly claimed he never entered the Capitol grounds. However, social media posts from the riot suggest that isn’t true.

A Facebook image from Jan. 6 shows Van Orden standing on a wall on the Capitol grounds that was inside a restricted area. (The Daily Beast recreated the photo on Friday and confirmed that Van Orden would have had to cross police barricades to reach that area.)

Yep, Van Orden was one of the terrorists who assaulted the US Capitol on 06 January 2021. He yelled at teen Senate pages for taking pictures of the rotunda while lying down – apparently a tradition for pages. But did Van Orden yell at his terrorist buddies who smeared their own shit on the Capitol?

MAGA mob rioters smeared their own feces throughout the Capitol and 'tracked brown footprints' in several hallways during violent siege

But wait, there’s more!

Back in his home district, Van Orden yelled at a teen library assistant for a Pride Month display at the public library.

Congressional candidate Derrick Van Orden confronted teen library staffer over Gay Pride display

A staffer at a southwestern Wisconsin library says a Republican congressional candidate threatened her over a gay pride display. 

Kerrigan Trautsch, a page at the Prairie du Chien Memorial Library, told the La Crosse Tribune that Derrick Van Orden came into the library on June 17 and complained loudly about a display of fiction and nonfiction books about homosexuality in the children’s section. The display was part of the library’s efforts to recognize Pride Month. 

Trautsch, who was 17 at the time, describes herself as an advocate for the LGBTQ community. She said Van Orden was angry, and that he said the books offended him and that taxpayers shouldn’t have to see them.

[ ... ]

“He was full-on shouting at this point and he kept aggressively shoving the books around,” she said.

Van Orden ended up checking out every book from the display except one a library patron was already reading, she said. She went home and told her parents that she didn’t feel safe at work anymore.

He’s obviously a homophobe in addition to being a pal of poop smearing insurrectionists.

Van Orden is a first-class asshole. He fits in well in a GOP caucus which includes Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, George Santos, and Lauren Boebert.

Many high profile House GOP assholes like MJT come from super safe districts. But that isn’t the case with Van Orden.

In 2022 Democratic Gov. Tony Evers carried Van Orden’s WI-03. And Van Orden himself won by only 3.8% of the vote last year.

The right sort of Democrat with a good campaign could send Van Orden back to MAGAland where he can smear the walls with poop like his friends on January 6th.

Here’s WI-03.

Though it’s gerrymandered, WI-03 does contain four branches of the University of Wisconsin system. So Florida students trying to escape Ron DeSantis’s takeover of that state’s universities can find refuge at a U of W campus in Wi-03 while helping to make House Republicans a minority again.