Far-right versus center-right candidates in Republican Senate primaries

Senate Chambers in the Wisconsin State Capitol. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

Two Republican primaries will take place for the Wisconsin state Senate this month with the winners slated to face Democrats, who are seeking to flip the seats.

‘Right-center’ v. ‘Radical’ Republicans compete for open Fox Valley seat

Anthony Phillips, a Fox Valley cancer physician, and Blong Yang, an Appleton restaurant owner, will face each other on Aug. 13 for the Republican nomination in the 18th Senate district, which includes Oshkosh and Appleton. It’s a district Democrats are seeking to gain as it has a slight Democratic lean since the maps were redrawn. The winner of the primary will face Kristin Alfheim, a Democratic member of the Appleton Common Council, in November.

The candidates made their case for how they would retain the seat for Republicans during a debate hosted last week by the Outagamie County and Winnebago County Republican parties. Each candidate described how he would take on Alfheim on a variety of issues including abortion.

Phillips said during the debate Republicans face two main challenges in winning the seat this year: Alfheim and the shape of the maps. He said the latter factor will be the greater challenge.

“How do we overcome [the maps] challenge?” Phillips said. “It’s going to involve a big grassroots effort from the parties… My message is we have to unify no matter who wins the primary. We’ve got to come together and work together.”

Phillips said the goal of retaining the district is what pushed him to run for the seat. He told the Examiner in an email that he feels like he has the resume to “keep the 18th district in the hands of a conservative.” The 18th Senate District under the old maps was represented by Republican Sen. Dan Feyen. 

Phillips described himself as more “right-center” at the debate and said that that is the type of candidate needed for Republicans to retain the seat. He said in an email that his priorities in the Legislature would include keeping law enforcement funded, income and property taxes low, bolstering parental oversight of education and ensuring families have access to health care.

“Republicans need to win. We’ve got to stop losing elections,” Phillips said, noting that Republicans have lost the governorship, open seats in the state Supreme Court and the attorney general’s office. “How do we win? … I am more right-center. I’m not going to apologize for that. That’s how we win this particular race for the conservatives. That’s how we don’t let Kristen Alfheim be a vote to get rid of Act 10, to raise your property taxes… We have to win this race and it’s not going to be won on the extreme right.”

Yang took a more combative tone at the debate, saying he would attack Democrats on certain issues and he would look to “fight” and “not to get along in Madison.” He described himself as part of the ”radical direction” the Republican party has been taking. He said his business being shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic is part of the reason he is running for the Legislature. 

Yang said that he believes that there are Democrats and independents who appreciate his conservative ideas on family values, economics and schools, and that he would seek to appeal to those voters if he moves on to the general election. He painted a rigid view of family, which he described as “a mother, a father and children, in a perfect world,” and said that view of family could “solve a lot of the problems that we have in society today.” 

“Family is important,” Yang said. “[Alfheim’s] idea of family is very different than ours. Mine is a mother and a father, and the traditional family in the sense that we all, most of us in this room, understand what our family is. Hers is not. It’s a blended family.” 

Alfheim, who is part of the LGBTQ+ community, responded to the comments in a statement to the Examiner.

“In my professional career, I’ve never been judged by what my family looks like but rather by my performance and how I’ve taken care of the people who relied on me. No person’s capabilities or potential should be judged by the family picture that hangs on their wall,” Alfheim said. “There’s a reason these hateful comments were expressed in a forum with limited public viewing. He knows they are wrong and are not shared by the majority of Fox Valley.”

Yang said he wouldn’t be afraid to fight with Alfheim about values that he stands for.

“They don’t want their children to be taught that a boy can be a girl and a girl can be a boy,” Yang said. “I’m not afraid of that. My weakness and my strength is my mouth. I’m going to make [Alfheim] defend her position — defend why you want to teach kids that junk in grade school.”

Alfheim said Yang was “peddling another Republican talking point designed to undermine faith in our public schools and at the expense of our kids.” She said we should “should be uplifting public schools, the hard work of our dedicated educators, and the successes of our students not demonizing them.”

Yang, who is Hmong, also said he would use race and accusations of racism to make his case in the general campaign. 

“Here’s my strategy with Kristin Alfheim,” Yang said. “Big billboard that says, ‘Vote for the brown guy or the white lady.’ I’m not kidding to a point, but, you know, that’s what it’s going to be.”

Phillips said that Alfheim would “turn us into Minnesota where they had a surplus, the Legislature flipped to the left.” Wisconsin currently has about a $3 billion budget surplus. Phillips said in an email that he would like to see the money returned to the people of Wisconsin.

However, Phillips also hit on cultural issues that have become an increasing focus for Republicans.

“[Alfheim] is a proponent of more DEI, more pronouns, instead of math and science, [and] this crazy notion, she’s got to normalize this crazy notion of biological males playing girls’ sports,” Phillips said.

The candidates also addressed the issue of abortion, which Democrats across the state are betting could help drive voters to the polls in November. 

Phillips said he believes life begins at conception and abortion is a “tragedy.” He said he likes the position that Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson has taken on the issue. 

“[Johnson] goes around and says, you know, let’s let the voters have a say, let’s let voters decide, and I think that would be reasonable to have some form of referendum that the voters have a say,” Phillips said. “I’m pro-life. I want it to be extremely rare.”

Phillips said in an email that he thinks a referendum would “demonstrate that the majority of Wisconsin people favor some level of restrictions on abortion” and he would want to “reach consensus with other legislative colleagues on the exact wording of such a referendum.” 

Yang said he would make people “defend their position — defend why you want to kill a child, defend why you want abortion at any time from birth to life.”

Ramthun challenges Feyen in SD 20

Voters in the 20th Senate district, which includes parts of Washington County, northern Ozaukee County, southern Sheboygan County, eastern Fond du Lac County and eastern Dodge County, will also see a Republican primary for the Senate on their ballots this month.

Tim Ramthun, a former state representative known for his attempts to decertify Wisconsin’s 2020 election results and rescind the state’s 10 electoral college votes for President Joe Biden, and who ran an unsuccessful campaign in the 2022 GOP gubernatorial primary, is challenging Sen. Dan Feyen (R-Fond du Lac), who was drawn into the district under the state’s new maps. The district leans about 69% Republican, and the winner of the partisan primary will face Democrat Michael Rapp in November.

Ramthun said his desire to continue to serve is part of what pushed him to run. He noted that as he was trying to figure out what shape that service would take, he was asked to run for the 6th Congressional District, and some suggested he challenge U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Ultimately, he said he wanted to stay in Wisconsin.

“My own house is not in order. My passion is for Wisconsin. My love is for Wisconsin. I’ve got unfinished business in Wisconsin,” Ramthun said.

Ramthun said some of his top priorities should he return to the Legislature would be “medical freedom, election integrity, taxation, public education [and] drug and opioid abuse.” 

“Those are issues that are still getting kicked down the road. They’re not really being addressed directly and aggressively,” Ramthun said.

When it comes to elections, Ramthun took issue with absentee ballot drop boxes, saying that they are “nowhere in statute.” In a ruling last month, the Wisconsin State Supreme Court said that absentee ballot drop boxes are allowed in the state, a decision that reversed an earlier decision by the former conservative majority on the court.

“A state Legislature creates the law, the governor signs the law, the laws run our state and our Constitution, and nowhere do we have drop boxes in there,” Ramthun said. “Yet you have people who feel that we need to have them and claim that we should, and then they legislate from the bench to say that we must, and that’s not right either, so we have to resolve the issues of our elections processes, to make them trustworthy, to make them fair and to make them legal.”

Ramthun also spoke at length about his goal of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the state Legislature.

“Are these people just doing bills for optics, to make it look like you’re doing something, when ultimately nothing’s getting done? That’s an inefficiency to me,” Ramthun said. “If we get together as a body and we say, here’s our priority list, here’s what we need to focus on to make it better and we collectively do it as a team of people, we won’t have 2,343 bills written next session.”

During his time in the Legislature, Ramthun came into conflict with Republican leadership, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, over his attempts to push for decertifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 win in Wisconsin.

Feyen, who has served as the Senate assistant majority leader since 2019, is running for his third term in the Senate, and has the endorsement of U.S. Reps. Glenn Grothman and Scott Fitzgerald as well as state Senate Majority Leaders Devin LeMahieu and state Reps. Jerry O’Connor, Robert Brooks and Rick Gundrum. (Meanwhile, Ramthun has the endorsement of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.)

Tim Lakin, Feyen’s campaign manager, said in an email that Feyen wouldn’t be available for an interview because he is “knocking on doors with constituents every moment that he has for the next two weeks,” but asked the Examiner to send questions that would be answered over email.

The Examiner sent a list of questions that touched on a variety of issues including how Feyen would work with Democrats if the Legislature is more evenly divided, how he would want to see the Legislature handle the state’s ongoing budget surplus, clarification on his position about abortion and which “election integrity” policies he would want to see the Legislature take up. However, after receiving the questions, Lakin said the campaign was “going to pass.” He did not respond to a question about why the campaign was declining to answer questions.

Feyen’s campaign website provides some insight into some of his goals. 

The website states that he wants to help Wisconsinites keep more of their money, noting that the personal property tax was eliminated in the recent legislative session. In the recent session, Feyen cosponsored legislation that would take Wisconsin to a flat state income tax. The website also states that Feyen wants to “clarify that ONLY citizens can vote in elections.” Noncitizen voting is already a felony under federal law. 

In the most recent legislative session, Feyen was the lead Senate author of legislation that dedicated about $500 million in public money to renovations and maintenance of American Family Field, where the Milwaukee Brewers play. 

The race has taken a contentious turn with Feyen’s campaign alleging this week in a press release that Ramthun’s campaign was calling for violence against the sitting state senator. It came after Ramthun shared a Facebook post that included a photo of Feyen with multiple circles around him. A campaign volunteer posted the photo with a caption that stated “pictured in this post is one of the RINO’s I have in my bullseye.” 

“In a time when Democrat Joe Biden said that Americans should put a bullseye on Donald Trump and days later an assassin tried to take his life, this type of statement is downright wrong and dangerous. It shows the poor judgment of Timothy Ramthun and people should want him nowhere near the Wisconsin State Senate,” Lakin said. 

Ramthun told the Examiner that there was “nothing intentional there related to harm,” and the post has been taken down. He said he wished that Feyen had reached out to him before a statement went out.

“We did rectify the problem, and [my campaign volunteer] is not a violent person. I’m not a violent person,” Ramthun said. “It’s an overreach by my competitor for reasons that we are competing for the same seat that he seems incredibly desperate.”