Let's Take Wisconsin in 2022 /// Progressive Senate Candidate TOM NELSON

Progressive 2022 Senate Congressional Candidate Tom Nelson comes on the show to talk about his run for Congress.

(from Episode 1336)

Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson is a 5th-generation Wisconsinite and preacher’s kid, raised amid our rich farms and bustling factories in the Fox Valley, forged by our great public schools and unions, and molded by the fire of our progressive values.

Called to public service by his family’s faith and inspired by prairie populists like “Fighting” Bob La Follette, Paul Wellstone and Bill Proxmire, Tom ran for the Wisconsin Legislature in 2004, defying political headwinds that year and becoming the only Democrat to upset a Republican incumbent after knocking on over 22,000 doors. He was re-elected in 2006 and 2008 with over 60% of the vote. In his third term, he served as Assembly Majority Leader, where he led from the frontlines on Wisconsin’s historic budget, healthcare and labor fights in 2009-2010.

As executive of one of the state’s most-populous counties since 2011, he’s made it one of the nation’s best-managed. His county has an Aaa bond rating, a declining tax rate and fully funded public services. Now, after winning six times in a Trump county and succeeding in a longshot fight to save a century-old paper mill there, Tom is running a grassroots campaign for the U.S. Senate. Two-thirds of current U.S. Senators are millionaires. Tom would be among the lonely one-third who are not. Instead, he’s marching alongside a new, reinvigorated labor movement that’s standing up for workers and bringing the fight to the very corporate special interests who’ve closed our mills, bankrupted our farms and threatened the economic security of our beloved Dairyland.

He stocked shelves at Piggly Wiggly and bussed tables at a local supper club while in high school, where he was named to Boys State and graduated as valedictorian in 1994. Originally drawn to a career in the sciences, Tom changed course when he watched Russ Feingold’s grassroots, come-from-behind win in 1992 against a better-funded field of Democrats to unseat a Republican incumbent. Tom went on to Carleton College, attracted to the legacy built there by another of his heroes, Sen. Paul Wellstone. He later earned a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton University.

Tom’s first campaign, for the Wisconsin Assembly in 2004 in his Fox Valley hometown, was considered by everyone to be a longshot, but he didn’t back down and he didn’t quit. He knocked on 22,000 doors and was the only Democrat that year to beat a Republican incumbent.

His time in the legislature was marked by the economic hardship and pain caused by the housing bubble, stock market speculation and the Great Recession that sent working families reeling. Tom stood up to protect healthcare, education and infrastructure priorities targeted by a Republican onslaught. He was instrumental in preserving the SeniorCare program to lower prescription drug costs. Outraged by the payday lending industry exploiting vulnerable communities, he helped lead a coalition to pass legislation providing stricter oversight, despite an onslaught of lobbyists. As majority leader, he fought to shepherd a Wisconsin version of the Green New Deal (the Clean Energy Jobs Act) that could have created 16,000 jobs, but the State Senate did not support the bill.

Among his proudest achievements was helping to win the fight to preserve a century-old paper mill that was being auctioned off for scrap. He joined the United Steelworkers (USW) in the fight, prevailing in court and beating the big banks that wanted to shut the mill down, saving 300 jobs in the process. The mill victory is the subject of Tom’s acclaimed book One Day Stronger: How One Union Local Saved a Mill and Changed an Industry – And What it Means for American Manufacturing.

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Video edited (and thumbnail) by invisible ninja

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