Iron Man
New York progressives come out to meet Randy Bryce, “the guy who will beat Paul Ryan.”
It was standing room only last night at downtown’s Von Bar for a $50 per person fundraiser for a visitor from Wisconsin. An ironworker with a pre-ironic mustache — he’s @IronStache on Twitter — has already been endorsed by the Working Families Party to take on House Speaker Paul Ryan in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District. With fifteen months to go until the midterms, the assembled New Yorkers enthusiastically greeted the opportunity to bring six months of resistance organizing to electoral politics.
The candidate is a perfect foil for “Wall Street Paul” — as Wisconsin critics have dubbed Speaker Ryan — who faced union protests during his visit to a Massachusetts factory last week. Bryce is an active member of Ironworkers Local 8, an Army veteran, a Bernie supporter, a cancer survivor, and an advocate of single-payer healthcare.
“If your not aware of what’s happening in Wisconsin, it’s horrible as far as working people issues go,” he told the crowd, packed in tight in the bar’s basement event space. “I’ve been just so happy to have the opportunity to get in their face, to get in the Republicans’ face, these people that are trying to get us down until we all have dirt floors in our house. And literally I’m convinced that’s what they want.”
But Bryce’s program is not just anti-Trump or anti-Ryan, as pundits so often accuse the so-called “resistance” of being.
“This isn’t me just doing this to get rid of him,” he said. “What we’re going to do, we’re going to make sure that every job has $15 an hour, every job is going to pay the minimum wage. And we’re also going to turn the tables because this is an historic time going on right now where they’re taking away healthcare in order to benefit the richest people, who already have everything. Every possible thing they could possibly want, they have. We’re going to make them pay their fair share, and we’re going to make sure that everybody has healthcare. Medicare for all.”
Bill Lipton, New York State director of the Working Families Party, contrasted Bryce’s clear message with the newly unveiled DNC slogan, “A Better Deal,” suggesting that Bryce is, instead, “the real deal.” New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, meanwhile, welcomed Bryce to the “center of the resistance” and pledged that New York would become “an export state,” exporting support for progressive, grassroots candidates across the country.
There’s a long way to go. With more than a year to go before the election, Bryce is already drawing fire from the Republican establishment. “The state Republican party came out swinging at me, calling me a ‘liberal agitator’,” he said as he concluded his remarks to cheers. “That’s not a cut. That’s a badge of honor. That might get tattooed someplace on my body.”
To learn more and to donate to Bryce’s campaign, visit his website.
