Happy Mother’s Day everyone,
I told you I was going to take a break from writing these weekly essays, but of course the leaked Supreme Court draft accelerated a whirlwind of activity at the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC, so I’m back to report on what’s going on.
Before we get to that, I’d like to express loving gratitude to my mother and all mothers, but especially to those who raised sons. I wish certain sons who grew up to become the politicians now passing laws to exert control over women’s bodies would have listened their mothers more.
The harbinger of Roe v. Wade’s demise knocked me off balance last week. I knew it was coming eventually, but I didn’t expect the news of its arrival to make me so viscerally angry.
Last December, after public hearings indicated that the Supreme Court’s right-wing justices would go back on their words to respect 50 years of judicial precedence, I decided to develop a hard seltzer called “Choice” to bring attention to what would happen to Wisconsin women if Roe was overturned.
I wanted everyone shopping for booze to know that without Roe, there was a 172- year-old law banning abortions that would go into effect in Wisconsin, and that it was time to WAKE UP and DO SOMETHING about it.
We partnered with Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin to help us tell that story, and pledged to donate a portion of the proceeds of “Choice” Hard Seltzer and associated merchandise to them.
But all of that work to spread awareness and donate money still didn’t prepare me for the raw anger of injustice I felt last week when it became clear that the worst-case scenario was becoming a reality.
Yet again, this anger of injustice that keeps coming back—the unnecessary death from Covid denial, the “Big Lie” that caused an insurrection, the partisan judges handing down insanely gerrymandered maps—drives me to double down on efforts to help right these wrongs.
So although we’re going to continue to donate money to reproductive rights groups, we know that’s not enough. We believe the only WAY OUT OF ALL OF THIS is to bring down the house of cards that is the modern-day Republican Party—a rudderless group of sycophants that can’t win a national majority but has found every possible way keep power through lies, cheating, and misinformation.
But how do you demolish a party that has gerrymandered Northern Wisconsin’s voting districts for the next decade to ensure Republican victories?
Well, one way is to find a Republican who isn’t part of the Trump Cult and is willing to run against the “Big Lie"--and support the hell out of him!
And that’s what we’ve done with David “Ty” Kunelius who is an honest man running for Congress in Wisconsin’s 7th District in the Republican primary against insurrectionist Congressman Tom Tiffany.
Ty is a friend of the Minocqua Brewing Company. We know him and can vouch for him. While we may not agree with all of his policy beliefs, we know he’s a good Wisconsinite and a good American.
He’s lived in Northern Wisconsin (currently Arbor Vitae) most of his life and has been an educator focused on special education and teacher training for over 25 years. He’s got 4 kids and is an avid water-skier and hockey player.
We’re willing to risk drawing the ire of our progressive friends across the country because we refuse to blind ourselves to the reality that a Democrat can’t win in this district. We also refuse to sit on our hands when the current Republican in this district has committed treason against his country by repeating the “big lie” and being one of the proverbial “drivers of the getaway car” in the almost-successful heist of a presidential election.
So I’m going to stick to my month-long promise of not asking you to donate to the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC in this email, but I would like you to take a look at Ty Kunelius' website and learn more about him. If you would like to support him financially, his donation page is here.
We believe our federal lawsuit, to which so many of you have contributed, will eventually succeed in removing U.S. Senator Ron Johnson and Congressmen Tom Tiffany/ Scott Fitzgerald from the ballots this November.
If that happens, we can go to bed at night knowing that even though a Democrat most likely can’t win in our home district, Wisconsin’s 7th, we’ll have done our part to replace a traitor with an honest man.
Thanks for reading and for your continued support. Together we can do our best to right the wrongs that have lead our state and country so astray—One Beer At a Time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC