Jarrod Anderson is Hiding Something
The primary is a few days away, and the Milwaukee Beagle team has been struggling to keep up with developments and sort through complexities. The story of the District 19 race is too complicated for a single article, so we’re dropping two on it at once, this one and another about Ryan Clancy’s campaign.
Unfortunately, we cannot talk honestly about this race without discussing the Israel/Palestine conflict. Other journalists have tried, letting Clancy focus on his policy achievements, and letting his challenger, Jarrod Anderson dishonestly avoid the entire tropic. I’ll get into that, but first, I want to very explicitly state that everyone involved in Milwaukee Beagle has deep love and respect for our Jewish neighbors. We respect people of all faiths. We agree that the acts of violence against Jews in Israel on October 7 were horrific. We do not condone those actions, or support Hamas as an organization. We refuse all ethnic violence. The trouble is that, while there surely are members of Hamas who would like to commit genocide against Jews, the state of Israel is currently, actively committing genocide against Palestinians. As taxpayers and US citizens, we are compelled by our government to materially support and assist with that genocide, and with Israel’s practices of apartheid long before October 7.
The local political actors involved in forcing us to support genocide must be exposed and stopped. They will surely call me, and this article, antisemitic. I am an antifascist. I have been involved in no-platforming holocaust deniers and have put my body on the line standing against neo-nazis and with Jewish people. The same impulse that motivates me to fight antisemitic nazis now moves me to write articles against pro-genocide Zionists. I know that they do not represent or speak for all Jewish people and I will not allow them to claim they do. Okay, now we can talk honestly about the district 19 race.
The story of Jarrod Anderson’s candidacy starts in mid-October 2023, when Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Ann Jacobs vowed to recruit someone to run against Ryan Clancy. It might seem strange for an elections commissioner to take such a strong public stance on a race she’s involved in overseeing, but the WEC is down with the January 6 fake electors, so integrity is clearly not their priority.
Eventually, she found Jarrod Anderson, a politically inexperienced insurance lawyer, to run against Clancy. Both Jacobs and Anderson deny that she recruited him, but they are both bad at honesty. You can read her social media posts where her islamophobic motivation—punishing Clancy for caring about Palestinian people—is clear. She openly posted about seeking an opponent for Clancy and planned to host Anderson’s campaign kick off (the first of many events he canceled). There is a clear line between her statements and his candidacy.
What is Jarrod’s motivation?
I have found that Jarrod Anderson shares Ann Jacobs’ islamophobic motivation, but he lies about it. He has told journalists that he has “no opinion” on the conflict, and that his “campaign has nothing to do with foreign affairs”. These statements are revealing. Having no opinion on the mass displacement and bombing of people, or the systematic starvation of children after decades of apartheid is, at its very best, incredibly callous and frankly, disqualifying. But, Anderson’s actual position is even worse. Back in May, he went on a civic media show to talk about why he got into the race, and (at 30:44) revealed the truth of his motivation for running, “I really wanted to see someone doing responsible advocacy for my community.” When asked to clarify who he thought was being “left out of representation” he said, “I’ve been disappointed with the current incumbent spending time at the UWM encampment where the Palestinian protest is occurring… to hold office hours from behind the lines of a protest when a lot of your district is Jewish, it doesn’t make sense to me. That makes sure that most of your constituency feels silenced when they want to speak to you the most” [emphasis added].
When his guard was down, Anderson told the truth. He is running to serve the pro-genocide Zionist part of district 19’s constituency, to treat them as the majority, even though they are not. His statements reveal a disregard for Muslim and anti-war residents, including non-zionist Jews. It seems like he cannot recognize their existence. Anderson’s most enthusiastic backers are also genocide deniers, like County Supervisor Sheldon Wasserman and Alderperson Jonathan Brostoff. More detail on Brostoff in this article.
Meanwhile, Ryan Clancy’s position is balanced. He has condemned Hamas and has been calling on both sides to make peace for decades. Simply put, Ryan Clancy is like most Wisconsin Democrats, he supports an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The reason Ann Jacobs has singled Clancy out is that he means what he says enough to actually attend protests, introduce ceasefire resolutions, and use what leverage he has against the establishment wing of the Democratic Party to act on those beliefs.
What is Jarrod’s experience?
When I say that Jarrod Anderson is “politically inexperienced”, I mean he doesn’t vote. As we detailed previously, he moved to Wisconsin three and a half years ago and did not vote in any of the key races. When confronted on this, Jarrod Anderson tells even more lies.
His first story, told during an endorsement interview, was that he was worried about COVID. Obviously, the rest of us managed to vote during those years, so it’s a terrible excuse, but it is also a lie. We did some digging, and found many pictures of him at social events during the years in question, unmasked, and seemingly unconcerned about the virus. Weeks later, when asked by the Journal Sentinel, Anderson changed his story. There, he claimed that he did vote, but that the elections commission records must be wrong. The reporter contacted the WEC (maybe even Ann Jacobs herself) to confirm the election records: Jarrod Anderson did not vote.
where are Jarrod’s loyalties?
During the campaign, Anderson’s team has constantly and relentlessly attacked Ryan Clancy. His attacks are either broad, misinforming simplifications of complex policies, or high school level gossip. Most are unworthy of my words or your time. I examine some in my article about the Clancy campaign, but there is one I want to look into more closely here: the accusation that Ryan Clancy is not a loyal Democrat.
First, Anderson’s team attacked Clancy for not endorsing Joe Biden while Biden bear-hugged a genocide zealot. Then, after most Democrats, including even party leadership joined Clancy’s hesitation about Biden, the attack shifted to badgering him for waiting to endorse Kamala Harris, which he did on Friday August 2nd. At the same time, Anderson’s team are making all they can of a few local leaders breaking with their party to endorse him rather than the incumbent in the race.
There are a few things to unpack here. First, these examples show a fundamental difference between Ryan Clancy and Jarrod Anderson’s approach to politics. For Anderson, politics is like a popularity contest. He goes along with the crowd, says what people want to hear (whether it’s true or not), and piles on those who don’t toe the line. Ryan Clancy on the other hand, comes to politics from activism, where leverage and issues are most important. Clancy doesn’t seek endorsement from people on the wrong side of the issues, and he doesn’t give his endorsement to people who haven’t earned it by demonstrating a commitment to Democratic values and voters. The elected officials who endorsed Anderson without even vetting his voting record could probably take a lesson here.
Second, Ryan was on the right side with these endorsements. The local leaders who chose Anderson call themselves progressive Democrats, but they have led on heavily funding police, privatizing public services, welcoming fascist Republicans, and selling the city on regressive and Republican-led policies. They do a lot of work for the Republican Party and it’s privatizing, business-elite-serving, white supremacist, authoritarian values. They are primarily loyal to the Democratic Party as a label or a political machine, not to the party’s ideas or the people the party claims to represent. As far as Harris goes, it seems Clancy caved to this pressure too soon. Israel is instigating a regional war, and the US bear hug continues with warships backing that war up, and evacuations of US citizens from Lebanon. The destruction and death from a war between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanon, or maybe even Iran, will be devastating. Securing a loyalty oath from every Democrat takes away leverage they could use to deter that violence. Ann Jacobs had a hand in this push. She and her friends not only went hard on social media against Clancy, but she also talked to public radio about quickly endorsing Harris. I don’t doubt that she pushed every Democrat she could to harass Clancy behind the scenes. Taking away leverage and silencing dissent within the party, especially around the genocide in Gaza seems like her real motivation. When Wisconsin Democrats think critically or have open discussions, they often denounce this genocide that Ann Jacobs supports. Every Democrat in Wisconsin who left Clancy standing alone with his concerns about islamophobia, genocide, and the rest of Harris’ still non-existent platform should be ashamed of themselves. When warmongers start throwing their weight around in the party, it takes more than one voice to stand up to them.
The third thing to unpack is Anderson’s position. Amid all this noise about Clancy’s loyalty, no one has publicly examined Anderson on the same grounds. Let’s try that now: loyal Democrats vote, and Anderson doesn’t. Well, that was easy.
But maybe… is there more? Oh, yes, there is. Internet sleuths in the Bay View Town Hall facebook group have found some interesting things in Jarrod Anderson’s social media history. During the 2016 presidential election, Anderson made posts at events with deeply conservative forced-birth Republicans John Hoeven and Doug Burgum. That’s curious, especially considering that there is also no mention of LGBTQ people in his supposedly progressive platform, or his public statements, even during pride month. He either didn’t seek or didn’t win endorsement from many local organizations defending all the people of marginalized identities that Republicans love to attack. Anderson also made posts criticizing Hillary Clinton during the 2016 race. Now, it is true that most loyal Democrats did want Clinton to be better in 2016, but we didn’t do it while hanging out with Republicans. Is this enough to make you wonder where his 2016 vote went? Did Jarrod Anderson back Trump?
Maybe. We’ll never know, because he’s sure to lie about it if asked.
