This is like an HBO series!!!
So, I’ve been pondering the battle of heavyweights in this 7th Congressional District GOP primary race ever since I took a closer look at candidate Jessi Ebben’s campaign finance reports. This race, for Tom Tiffany’s Up North congressional seat, is fascinating. It became even more fascinating when the 7th CD caucus, comprised of 20-plus county GOP parties, DECLINED to endorse anyone at a March 14 endorsement event, which they banned the media from attending (no worries, I got running updates from five people anyway).
They didn’t endorse Michael Alfonso, Sean Duffy’s Trump-endorsed son-in-law, who probably had the most to lose; they didn’t endorse Ebben, funded by mega donors on the right; or Kevin Hermening, the former Iran hostage turned businessman; or Paul Wassgren, the scion of Ashland cheesemakers and a corporate lawyer; or Niina Baum, the dog musher with the anti-Trump X account. The crowd was able to hear from a host of other GOP candidates as well, including Tiffany, AG candidate Eric Toney, and more. But it was the 7th congressional district endorsement, or lack thereof as it turns out, that garnered the most interest, amid days of maneuvering by each candidate.
No endorsement. What gives? Who are all these people?
Here is the tale of the tape.
🚨 In corner one, you have Jessi Ebben, an Ashley Furniture government affairs employee and once Walker recall petition signer (in fairness, years ago when she was in college), who is being financed by, drumroll please… Diane Hendricks, Liz Uihlein, Club for Growth. Eric Hovde, and Eric O’Keefe, among others. Those are major heavyweights in the conservative world, like the biggest, and they have DEEP pockets. And they’re not picking the Secretary of Transportation’s Trump-endorsed son-in-law. Why?
Jessi Ebben is affable and friendly, in her 30s, rural in demeanor, but she left a trail of embittered Republicans down south when she took a primary against former Navy SEAL Derrick Van Orden to the bitter end, forcing him to spend money he could have used in the 3rd CD general election. There is no love lost. She’s fairly new to the district, moving onto her husband’s family’s generational farm.
🚨In corner two, you have Kevin Hermening, who was the youngest hostage in Iran, held in a Tehran embassy for 444 days before coming home to fame in the 1970s. He lost a couple races early on when he wasn’t very old and then spent 40 years up north, building a successful financial business, running the Marathon County GOP, becoming president of a school board, and raising kids. Compounding the emotion in this story, he recently tragically lost his wife, the love of his life, when she died suddenly of a health ailment. At 66, he decides to take one last shot at higher office, and he’s ready to spend his own fortune to do it and has the time.
Everyone thinks the Alfonso people were hoping that Trump’s endorsement of Alfonso would keep Hermening out of it, but he’s a stubborn old Marine (well, not that old) who isn’t going to bow out for the frankly unaccomplished 26yo because he’s the son-in-law of a cabinet secretary now living (Duffy) in a New Jersey mansion paid for with a lobbying career, in part. I mean, c’mon. The guy survived being an Iranian hostage. He’s not going to be pushed out of this. And so he’s in it, and because his populous base (Marathon County) is Alfonso’s base, and it’s now divided, this becomes a battle royale.
🚨And, of course, in the next corner of the boxing ring, you have Alfonso, the earnest, nice, and handsome son-in-law of one of the most powerful men in America, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation and his dazzling national television star wife. Together, they have raised a picture-perfect family with a zillion kids, and now they seem to be literally all in to get the kid Sean’s old congressional seat (really everyone here just wanted one of them to run for governor). The problem is that they’re calling so many markers in and pulling so many political levers from Chez Duffy in New Jersey, and doing it so transparently, that it’s starting to turn off the grassroots, you know those guys back home who are hardy northern Wisconsin iconoclasts in flannel shirts and with dairy farms who brave the winters and have a healthy skepticism, which Trump tapped into, against elites.
This is an important point. And maybe a central miscalculation of Duffy Inc. Indeed, the writing may have been on the wall, as some of the grassroots were defecting from Duffy train, or just not fully ever climbing on, leading Alfonso supporters to push against an endorsement vote by the 7th congressional district. And, narrowly, that’s exactly what happened. No endorsement.
Why would you push for no endorsement if you thought you had it? It’s a dent in the crown of a Trump-endorsed, highly financed candidate, but this ain’t a coronation, as the GOP chair in Alfonso’s own home county of Sawyer stressed to Wisconsin Right Now, railing against the transportation lobby donation trail (Alfonso’s living in Sean and Rachel’s Hayward house, by the way, which also doesn’t play well). In truth, no one really knew who would win that one… if they had taken the vote. Some charismatic candidates can run above the grassroots county party system, of course, or even against them, but that’s far less likely here, with a low-turnout primary looming where the grassroots will matter more. And there’s just the factor of momentum and narrative. However, as even the GOP chair pointed out, Trump’s endorsement is GOLD, so it’s still anyone’s game.
Because, despite his lumberjack history, the Duffys are now that. Elites. Alfonso has a thin podcasting producer resume that keeps shifting (how long did he work construction again, and how could he do so for six years and 10 hours a day while getting that math degree from UW-Madison?) etc.
Standing also in his corner, swinging away even harder than he is, is his beautiful but a bit over-her-skis wife, a doppelgänger for her charismatic mom, who thinks a national X following will play in Cadott and Bayfield. Warring with conservative media doesn’t quite have the same cachet as warring with CNN, but she’s slinging insults with the best of them, and they’re not completely landing. Who is running again? Evita or Mike? She would have been a better candidate, frankly, because she’s actually done something (started a news site, written some great Federalist articles that she now says he helped with)…she’s got talent.
She seems to be grafting HER resume onto his…just run as you are. He’s also been unserved by a couple of young guys who also think calling people with bigger audiences names on social media will win a primary because, gasp, if you dare to ask the youngest candidate a tough question or two, you simply hate conservative youth and don’t want them involved in GOP politics!!! How dare you! But being an influencer and insulting anyone above 40 is probably just a dumb political strategy that may not move as many votes as they think, especially in an aging district Up North. But everyone wants to be Benny Johnson. Or Tucker. Or something. Okay, maybe not Tucker these days. And nothing wrong with those guys at all. But what does that have to do with Hayward?
Wisconsin’s congressional delegation swoops into the rescue with endorsements for the Crown Prince of Duffylandia, and Mike Johnson does too, except for, curiously, Glenn Grothman (and Tiffany, but as a gubernatorial candidate, he should stay the hell out of this sh*tshow primary for his old district.) Meanwhile, Trump dual-endorsed Tiffany at the same time as Alfonso (maybe intentional strategy there), which probably didn’t help Tiffany statewide, if you believe the internal polls that show that, statewide, the more MAGA a candidate is, the harder time they have defeating a far-left candidate, whereas regular Republicans win. Don’t blame me. I’m not the one polled. But I’ve heard that from multiple Republicans who saw the polling.
Dad-in-law isn’t hiding his support, he’s all in, flying to Wausau for fundraisers, showing up at the caucus vote, showing up on invites for fundraisers helmed by lobbyists, and funneling $1 million from his own campaign account to fund a shadowy PAC housed in a little Alabama office to deluge northern Wisconsin with direct mail painting the kid as a grizzled working class fighting construction worker who will take on those swampy interests in DC… like presumably the transportation lobby interests (airline, roadbuilders, etc) who are tossing Alfonso cash. He’s also got conservative mega donor Dick Uihlein helping fund his PAC. Man, can you imagine if Uihlein and Hendricks ever banded together for the same candidate? Got all that? In fairness, Alfonso appears to be working hard, which he repeatedly points out in slightly cheesy X videos in which he’s usually driving on some snow-covered northern road while his wife smiles into the window-positioned camera.
🚨In the other corner (yes, we are not done yet), stands Paul Wassgren, the Oxford-educated, Ashland-born former corporate lawyer who has lived in a lot of places that are anathema to conservatives… like LA… and lived there recently. He spent summers in Ashland growing up and never lost the pull back. He’s the conservative scion of grandparents who ran a beloved cheese factory near Ashland, he brought the Ashland County Republican Party back to life, and every single person (even one of the candidates) gushes about his brilliance.
He and Alfonso are everywhere, it seems, appearing at events, toiling away, and every single person who has heard him speak says, damn, that Wassgren is smart. Plus, he is sort of the perfect age for Congress as he is 49, in between Hermening’s twilight years and Alfonso’s inexperience. Plus, he’s super rich, and that’s important because he will need to self-fund, and he appears to be willing to throw $2.6 million into this race. He could be a sleeper candidate. But could Hermening and Wassgren divide the self-funded, slightly older businessman vote?
🚨 Somewhere in the ring stands Niina Baum, a Reagan-loving dog sledder or musher, with the perfect northern Wisconsin bio (she even started a non-profit for young professionals!), but she has a weird X account where she called Trump an “idiot” (yeah, that’s not gonna play in a GOP primary.) She also made a pro-abortion post and won’t comment about accusations that she posted a graphic indicating support for an anti-ICE rally. She’s probably not a Republican. Maybe not a Democrat. Who knows?
So, yeah, moving on.
On the issues, they seem to align, except for Baum’s X rants, and Alfonso adopting a curious position FOR Davis-Bacon and a federal prevailing wage, which can be anathema to conservatives… whereas the others are firmly against it.
Understanding the District
They are competing in a northern swath of the state that is older than the rest of the state, in an August primary with low turnout and a GOP primary electorate that averages age 60. It’s also Trump country now, but before it was Tiffany and Duffy country, it was Democrat Dave Obey Country. For decades, the wily Obey (a former lobbyist and once Joe-McCarthy Republican who was born in Oklahoma but raised in Wausau, by the way) presided over a solid Democrat fiefdom. The current district runs from Ashland to Wausau to Hudson and Ladysmith. But the folks there were probably always conservative; they just needed more media sources and Donald Trump to see that. They send their kids to the military, love their cops, have a dairy farmer work ethic, and wave at you when you pass them on lonely country roads… even if they don’t know you. It’s that kind of place.
The folks there value humility and abhor pretension. They wear sweatshirts out to a nice dinner and, hell, it’s too cold to wear heels. That’s not completely true, of course, it’s an exaggeration, but I’m from there (my mom still owns a now non-working former sheep farm there), and it’s a place where the people are uncommonly nice, and there are really no elites and hierarchies, except for those who excel on a high school basketball court. They value a humble nature.
Most people in this race have lived somewhere else. Alfonso in Florida and Madison (working for Bongino and going to college.) Wassgren in LA (and a bunch of other places). Hermening in Oak Creek and Okinawa (should we count Iran?). Ebben in Minnesota and Westfield. But, heck, that’s true of a lot of people who live in northern Wisconsin. Either they fled there from the cities, in retirement, for a more peaceful life above the stress line, or they were born or raised there and then returned because of the siren call of the North Woods life (or an open congressional seat.)
Or both.
And I haven’t even gotten to the Democrats yet, including the guy that some people are worried could have a fighting chance if Republicans really mess this up… because he’s fairly well known, and the other guy who is funded by a radical illegal immigration group. There’s also little media up there, as a lot of it’s in the Minnesota media market (maybe that helps, as who would want to be Minnesota right now). There are little weekly newspapers but with a few exceptions (ahem, Lakeland Times) they don’t really get too deep into this stuff.
Yes, it’s fascinating. It’s also unfortunately fascinating because many wish those millions were going to help Van Orden or Bryan Steil instead. The 7th CD is a super red district, that Tiffany won by 27 points (he was a dam tender and ran a campground, perfect bio for that seat), so the GOP primary winner probably gets the prize. Meanwhile, Van Orden and Steil are fighting to keep control of Congress, and, thus, the future of the Free World. And, although some wish Wassgren and Hermening would funnel their personal fortunes into PACs to help them, it would appear that the cabinet secretary probably has a greater obligation to divert his million to save Trump’s agenda.
The End. For now.
Table of Contents
