Meet Cathy Myers, the Wisconsin Woman Seeking to Flip Paul Ryan’s House Seat
Congressional candidate Cathy Myers knows that her home state of Wisconsin is responsible for a slew of voting rights abuses and that elections integrity has suffered under current Republican Governor Scott Walker and Representative Paul Ryan, whose seat Myers is aiming to flip.
The topic of Wisconsin’s systematic assault on voting rights came up during our exclusive interview, where Myers joined me and my co-host Dan Fusselman for a lively discussion. The suppression of 200,000 African American votes, for instance, may well have swayed the outcome of the 2016 American presidential election, an election that left millions of Americans with broken hearts and lots of questions.
Myers, like millions of Americans, was among the broken-hearted. She cites to the election as being the impetus for her decision to run for Congress, with Donald Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education as being the straw that broke the camel’s back. For a part-time teacher and school board member from the small town of Janesville, Wisconsin, seeing the Trump Administration engage in an “all-out” assault on some of our democracy’s most sacred institutions was enough. She needed to do something.
As many now know, House Speaker Paul Ryan has opted not to run for re-election in the upcoming midterms. While to some, his proffered explanation of wanting to spend more time with his family may hold muster, it would be naive to suggest a young politician in the prime of his career, third in line for the presidency, and primed to become a real leader within his own party isn’t jumping ship to save his own hide. With the #MeToo movement, Women’s March, and now the #MarchforourLives kids entering into the discourse, it would appear that Republicans can ONLY maintain seats because of unfair legislative advantage caused by redistricting and suppressing the vote.
“The future is female,” Myers said regarding the recent national insurgency of activism. She notes the Women’s March, which directly coincided with Donald Trump’s inauguration, and feels it has been gaining momentum towards a “blue wave” in this November’s midterm elections. Myers, who lives in Janesville (the same town as Speaker Ryan), is now seeking to be his successor. Having a progressive female who champions medicare-for-all would be a massive statement, a cherry on top of a blue wave meant to set right the ship of state following the abomination of the 2016 presidential election.
(For the record, picked her Jerk of the Week: Aaron Schlossberg, the New York-based lawyer whose racist rant in a Manhattan eatery spurred a viral video).
