RightWisconsin Editor James Wigderson was on the Jay Weber show on WISN-AM Wednesday morning with a quick analysis of the announcement by House Speaker Paul Ryan that he will not be running for re-election. The interview was conducted before Ryan made it official at a press conference.
Wigderson and Weber speculate on whether state Rep. Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) might take another stab at running for Congress. They also discuss whether the Hollywood money will still continue to flow to Randy Bryce now that Ryan’s gone. And, is the 1st congressional district in Wisconsin still winnable?
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Weber: What is your first thought of Paul Ryan no longer being in Congress and leaving in such a high profile manner?
Wigderson: Well, my first thought is, where is all the money going to go? Because he has quite a war chest still built up that he’s going to be doling out to various campaigns. They just issued a press release the other day about the dollars he’s given to other campaigns as Speaker of the House.
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Weber: This sends a signal, rightly or wrongly, that he was scared away. I think the rhetorical win alone for Democrats here is huge. They’re going to be able to claim a scalp. They’re going to be able to claim we ran Paul Ryan out of office.
Wigderson: Well, definitely. And remember, he’s got Randy Bryce down there who is a well-funded, Hollywood-funded challenger right now. It puts Republicans a little bit, now, trying to play catch up in that district. They’re going to have to recruit a strong candidate to try to win that district.
It’s still a winnable district. Judge Screnock did win that district in the Supreme Court race. It’s still a winnable district, but they’re going to have to find somebody strong. I have a hunch there’s going to be calls placed to Robin Vos to see if he wants to run. It would be a replay of an Assembly Speaker running for Congress. We went through this once before and it didn’t work out so well.
(Note: Jay corrected himself later in the show. Aspin left to become the Defense Secretary for Clinton which created the vacancy that Peter Barca filled.)
