For more than twenty years, Democratic Congressman Ron Kind has held the seat in Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District. He previously announced that he would be retiring after this term (perhaps sensing the writing on the wall), opening up a fight to seat his replacement. The Democrats quickly settled on state senator Brad Pfaff, while the Republicans put forward retired Navy SEAL Derrick Van Orden, who received the endorsement of Donald Trump. With only a couple of weeks to go, Pfaff appears to be confused as to how he has wound up trailing in the polls after holding a small but consistent lead over the summer. This confusion may stem from the fact that he seemed confident that he had a surefire attack against Van Orden. You see, Van Orden was at the January 6 riot in Washington… sort of. But shockingly, the voters don’t appear to see this as their number one priority given the conditions around the country today. Who could have guessed? (Associated Press)
Derrick Van Orden was among the thousands of people who went to Washington for the “Stop the Steal” rally headlined by then-President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021. Afterward, Van Orden was photographed on or near the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, where rioters violently breached the building in one of American democracy’s darkest days.
Now Van Orden, a Donald Trump-endorsed retired Navy SEAL who says he took no part in the riot and did not set foot on the Capitol grounds, appears poised to win the U.S. House seat held since 1997 by retiring Democratic Rep. Ron Kind. Voters in the southwestern Wisconsin district say they are more concerned about daily economic issues than what happened on Jan. 6.
We should probably address Van Orden’s “participation” in the January 6 riot up front. The media came up with a photo of him “on or near” the Capitol grounds on January 6. The candidate fully admits to having attended the Trump rally at the White House that day and being among the crowd that headed over to the Capitol afterward. But he didn’t go past the line of Capitol Hill Police (who were still just waving people through in the beginning) and he didn’t breach the building. There’s nothing illegal about that, and if there was a shred of evidence that he had done so, you can rest assured that Biden’s Justice Department would have long since sent a team of armed FBI agents to his house before dawn to drag him outside in his underwear.
But in the current toxic political climate, simply being near Washington, D.C. on January 6th should have been enough to convict him in the court of public opinion, right? Why aren’t the voters of Wisconsin-3 lining up shoulder-to-shoulder to derail this obvious “threat to our democracy?”
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Well, in the opinion of some of the voters the Associated Press spoke to, there are simply bigger fish to fry at the moment. One likely independent voter, 60-year-old Rosemary Hermanson, said that she was “just worried about feeding myself and making sure I’ve got gas to get to my cancer treatments.” That puts a bit of perspective on things, doesn’t it?
49-year-old Beth Hammond from Taylor, Wisconsin cited similar concerns. She listed the economy and gun rights as her key motivating factors. She said of the January 6 riots, “It wasn’t a good thing. But it’s not what’s at the heart of peoples’ lives now.”
For his part, Pfaff still seems to be stuck in neutral, believing that Van Orden’s attendance at the rally is “the No. 1 issue.” He was recently quoted as saying, “Jan. 6 opened up the window into his soul. And what we saw there, is we saw something that is unfortunately very dark.”
What Pfaff doesn’t seem to realize, along with most of the MSM, is that people are keenly aware of the variety of crises currently engulfing the nation and the world. They know what they are paying at the gas pump and the grocery store, assuming they can find what they’re looking for on the shelves. They see the spiraling crime trends tearing apart population centers large and small on the nightly news. They hear the President talking about “Armageddon” and see the ongoing nuclear saber-rattling. And the flood of illegal immigrants caused by Biden’s border crisis is already far too big to ignore.
These people seem to be voting based on policy far more than personalities or party affiliation. And that’s really not such a bad thing, is it?
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