Ryan Clancy is Under Attack

Written By Old Dan

We are days out from the Wisconsin State legislature primary on August 13. We will be covering many of Milwaukee’s primary races, and Old Dan thought, why not take on the most contentious one?

Assembly District 19 runs from the East Side and Riverwest into Bay View. It is one of only four primaries statewide where an incumbent Democrat (Ryan Clancy) is being challenged. Its on track to be the most expensive Democratic primary, and one with many prominent Democrat leaders breaking party ranks to endorse a challenger. 

Since his election to the county board in 2020, Ryan Clancy has been the most outspoken progressive politician in Wisconsin. 

In county office, he led on: 

In the state assembly, he: 

Outside of his time in office, Clancy:

Suffice to say, Ryan Clancy has the credentials. 

And thus, the establishment is coming for him. First, genocide deniers recruited someone to run against him. Once Clancy had an opponent, the local Democrat machine seized the opportunity to pile on. Faux progressives like Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Alderperson Jonathan Brostoff, and County Board Supervisors Sheldon Wasserman, Jack Eckblad, Shawn Rolland, and Marceilia Nicholson endorsed the opponent and got a local hack journalist to write a shallow attack ad for them. These elected leaders might pander to working peoples’ needs, but they do so while shoveling money into law enforcement coffers, selling off our public goods to private partners, and letting people die in jail. They spend public money on private interests, including their own. They conspired with Republicans to host the RNC, saddle Milwaukee with a regressive sales tax, and lock in perpetual funding for a system of racial caste.

Nicholson particularly loves to weaponize identity against Clancy–implying that he is racist because he won’t sit quiet while she hurts Milwaukeeans. Meanwhile, Clancy has earned the endorsements of actual progressives of color, including Black Leaders Organizing for Community, the Wisconsin Muslim Civic Alliance, and the most progressive Black, Asian, and Latinx politicians: Francesca Hong, Supreme Moore Omokunde, Darrin Madison, Juan Miguel Martinez, and Caroline Gómez-Tom. It is almost like people of color are not a monolith, but rather an ideologically diverse group, some of whom are working for the rich and powerful, while others work for regular people.

How its going

Clancy’s opponent has raised most of his money from large donors outside the district, and hired a mercenary consulting firm to run his campaign. According to the campaign finance reports, 12 of the 21 maxed out ($1000) donations against Clancy came from Glendale, Bayside, Mequon, Fox Point, and Whitefish Bay, areas not in district 19. The Milwaukee Autonomous Tenant’s Union tracked the donors and found a who’s-who of wealthy landlords and corporate lawyers. Even with all that money, the candidate had to give himself a $5,500 loan to make his fundraising total exceed Clancy’s abundance of small dollar donations. This summary of the finance information, shows that Clancy had more than three times as many donors, but a lesser total amount. 

The campaign against Clancy spent $12,228 of their money hiring Nation Consulting. A secretive, big-money firm that often works with corporate-backed, business-friendly politicians or issues. Their clients include WeEnergies, the Bucks stadium boondoggle, even some Republicans and arch conservatives like the Koch brothers. Their approach to this campaign seems to be relentless dishonest attacks, avoiding substantial policy positions, and saturation marketing to the wealthiest parts of the district. The most common attacks are that Clancy is mean and not a real Democrat. 

I addressed the “not a real Democrat” thing at length in another article, so I’ll address the more childish insults here. Clancy isn’t mean. He’s effective. Everything he did at the county required working and negotiating with fellow supervisors. Most of the time, it required a fight. This is how politics works. Interests collide, representatives disagree, negotiations happen, leverage gets used, pressure mounts, and decisions are made. Both Clancy’s current opponent and his replacement at the county–who used the same playbook to defeat Ron Jansen, Clancy’s preferred successor–claim to believe in the same things Clancy does, but they will absolutely not fight for them. What these shallow white boys feel in their hearts does not matter if they won’t do what it takes to make anything happen for the people of Milwaukee. I can’t tell if they’re lying about what they believe in, or if they’re just too naive to understand what politics involves. Probably both. 

In contrast, Ryan’s activist background informs his approach. Sometimes, he shoots for maximal goals in order to win the best possible compromise, like when he drafted a ceasefire resolution at the county which passed with softened language against opponents who didn’t want Gaza spoken of at all. Other times, he has to use shame and pressure. During his first term at the county board, Clancy introduced 18 budget amendments redirecting money from the sheriff’s office to human needs. After killing the first few, his opponents asked him to withdraw the rest, so they wouldn’t have to cast all these votes against things their constituents wanted. Clancy refused, making the people who’d just spent the summer of 2020 pretending to care about police violence actively and publicly reveal their true desire to fund more of it. Before the next budget cycle, Clancy tried education. He set up an abolitionist book club for county board supervisors with Devin Anderson from African American Roundtable. Then he introduced nearly twice as many budget amendments, again redirecting money from law enforcement to human needs. This time, the shame worked, and the board passed $2.4 million worth of the amendments, funding parks, improving county worker benefits, and re-opening pools. Clancy was determined to do more.

What is coming?

For the most part, voters of district 19 are too smart and too engaged for Nation Consulting’s superficial approach. Their campaign has had to cancel multiple fundraiser events, either because the venue learned what’s up, or because they couldn’t get anyone who hadn’t already maxed out their donation to come. The campaign against Clancy was floundering in the shallow water of vague promises and large donations from a small group. Then, their candidate got caught lying about the fact that he doesn’t even vote. 

It was beginning to look like maybe Ryan could go back to his plan of helping win the assembly by promoting other Democrat candidates. Until Jonathan Brostoff got involved. Brostoff held district 19 for 7 years before stepping down to take a seat on the common council in 2023.  He is trusted in the district and thought of as a reliable progressive. Unfortunately, Brostoff is also a pro-genocide Zionist. Back in 2023, he hand-picked Ryan Clancy to replace him, saying Clancy is “a huge asset to the human race’ and a role model for public servants”. Now, Brostoff has endorsed Clancy’s opponent and is out pounding pavement almost every day, using his reputation to flip voters against Clancy. Only one thing really changed between then and now: Israel started its campaign to exterminate and displace the people of Gaza, and Clancy opposed them.

So, we’re not sure what will happen next. Clancy’s campaign is running hard, sending large groups of volunteers to canvas and putting out a stream of content debunking attacks and focusing on policy while more people learn about his opponent’s unfamiliarity with a ballot. At the same time, Brostoff seems undeterred. He has pinned his reputation on this shallow, dishonest, non-voter. I guess that’s the only way to punish his former friend for standing against the genocide he supports. New finance reports also show more money coming into both campaigns, and we’re seeing expensive mailers for his opponent paid for by dark money groups. The establishment is taking their best shot at Milwaukee’s activist, working class, and criminalized community by trying to knock Clancy out of office. Let’s not let that happen.  

When Ryan Clancy is under attack, what do we do?

Stand up, fight back:

Donate to Ryan here.

Contact his campaign to volunteer here.

Old Dan
Previous

Jarrod Anderson is Hiding Something
Next

Campaign Spotlight: Assembly District 9