Hi Friends,
I’m not going to write a lot today because I’m trying to catch up after a hectic week that concluded with an entire Saturday of slinging beers (and drinking a few) at the Madison Beer and Cheese Fest.
So without further ado, here are the two big announcements today:
First, we raised enough money to put up 2 more billboards supporting Judge Janet Protasiewicz for the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in Madison and Milwaukee that will go up tomorrow. This means we’ll have 3 total (our first one was in Green Bay) in the largest progressive population centers in Wisconsin throughout the February 21st primary.
As you may recall from my missives over the last two weeks, raising awareness for this upcoming primary is extremely important because it is NOT GIVEN that a progressive Supreme Court Judge will make it through a 4-way primary with two right-wing conservative candidates in an election that has historically low voter turnout.
And of course, if we can elect a progressive Supreme Court judge on February 21st and again on April 4th, it will change the balance of the court and allow us to potentially end Republican gerrymandering and reverse Wisconsin’s 173-year-old abortion ban.
Our goal was to put signs up in most of the progressive cities in Wisconsin, and we’ll still do that if we can raise the money. But we’re hoping to raise at least enough money to put up 1-2 more signs in the next few weeks, and that would take approximately another $10K. Depending on billboard pricing (which changes weekly), we think we’d put the next two in Stevens Point and Eau Claire. These are northern cities that have still held onto progressive majorities in spite of rampant gerrymandering. If you’d like to help get a few more signs up, please donate here.
Here’s the second big thing that we came out with last week.
My birthday in on February 2nd, which coincidentally is a perfect time to round up volunteers willing to help get the vote out for our two progressive judicial candidates.
So I figured…Why not throw a joint birthday/volunteer recruitment party in downtown Madison, home to the largest number of progressives in the state?
My thought is that if we can help BOTH progressive judicial candidates recruit enough people to volunteer to call their neighbors and get them out to vote in Dane County, the sheer number of progressive votes will propel at least one of these candidates to the general election on April 4th.
Now it is true that I’ve publicly endorsed Judge Janet Protasiewicz because I’ve been convinced that she’s more likely to win statewide than Everett Mitchell, the other progressive candidate, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recruit as many volunteers as possible for both candidates to wake progressives up in February and remind them to get to the polls.
Here are the details for the party. Go here to get a free ticket. Once in, you’ll get free beer from the Minocqua Brewing Company and live music from Tony Castañeda’s Latin Jazz Band. And as a final sweetener, we will have a drawing at the end of the night, and the winner of the drawing will receive a $500 donation from the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC to their favorite charity/non-profit.
All I ask is that before people come to the party, they sign up to volunteer with either Judge Janet’s campaign here, or Judge Mitchell’s campaign here, and show us a screenshot proving they volunteered.*
So that’s it for today. Help us get a few more billboards up for Judge Janet, and go get your tickets to come to my birthday party/GOTV recruitment party on February 2nd.
Thanks for reading, thank's for sticking with us, and thanks for working hard on this Supreme Court election. Together, we can strengthen Wisconsin's Democracy and get Wisconsin women their reproductive rights back--one beer, billboard, and birthday party at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
*Disclaimer: Because we’re a progressive Super PAC and the MAGA world would love to sue us for anything they can think of, we’ve been told to cover ourselves with this disclaimer: We aren't "forcing" anyone to show us proof that they volunteered to work for a progressive judge campaign to get into this party, we’re just highly encouraging folks to do that. This party is also NOT AFFILIATED NOR is it ENDORSED by either progressive judge's campaign.