The evidence is overwhelming – Wisconsin’s Lt. Governor is wholly unqualified to run for United States Senate. However, Democrats – in their infinite wisdom, cleared the deck of all other candidates to pave the way for self-described socialist Mandela Barnes. In anointing Mandela Barnes as their candidate to run against Senator Ron Johnson, the Dems have plainly revealed that they choose symbolism over substance, affirmative action over qualifications, inflammatory rhetoric and radical policies over Wisconsin values and principles.
Why have Wisconsin Dems picked a founding member and self-described “long-time leader” of the state’s chapter of the Working Families Party, a national left-wing organization responsible for supporting and mainstreaming the most radical ideas and politicians in America to represent them? The Working Families Party was the primary force behind former bar maven/Socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s horrifying rise to power in 2018, a major driver of the “Defund the Police” movement in 2020, and has promoted the abolition of both the Electoral College and Senate filibuster and packing of the Supreme Court for partisan advantage. Nothing to see here.
This “Party” is one of the farthest left political parties in the country and Barnes has been with it since its beginnings here in Wisconsin.
“I was a member of the Working Families Party before I ran for lieutenant governor, because the Working Families Party is committed to building the America that we all want to see,” Barnes said while delivering the official Working Families Party response to President Trump’s State of the Union Address in 2019.
Why hasn’t the media pressed him on his views which are in no way representative of Wisconsin’s citizens?
Barnes doesn’t tell the truth about his own qualifications. He lied about earning a college degree – and magically, after being installed as Wisconsin’s Lt. Governor in 2018, his degree from Alabama A&M University appeared 12 years after he originally claimed he received it. In his statement to the press, he said that his “incomplete” degree was a result of a “minor technical issue” and an “internal error.” Who buys that? Perhaps he was waiting for Joe Biden to offer him a buyout on his student loans? Does Mandela Barnes have to pay back loans?
This pattern of irresponsible and dishonest behavior extends to delinquent traffic fines and unpaid taxes. Is this fitting of a United States Senator?
And then there are the defund the police tweets: “Defund the police only dreams of being as radical as a Donald Trump pardon,” Barnes stated – and in September 2020, called for the dismantling of the entire system of law enforcement following the decision by a grand jury in Kentucky not to charge officers in the death of Breonna Taylor.
“You can feel how you want about to calls to reform, defund, or abolish but the question is, how can a system that allows this to happen continue to be upheld?” he asked.
Defunding the police was a major component of the Working Families Party’s platform even before the death of George Floyd, and Barnes has been in lockstep with his radical party for years.
“Do you agree that police budgets should be maybe completely done away with or defunded?” he was asked in a PBS Wisconsin interview shortly after Floyd’s death.
“Not completely done away with,” Barnes answered, [but] we need to invest more in neighborhood services and programming for our residents, for our communities on the front end. Where will that money come from? Well, it can come from over-bloated police departments.”
Similarly, as the Working Families Party has repeatedly called for the abolishment of the nation’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Barnes has been a quiet but still staunch supporter of the so-called “Abolish ICE” movement.
When a member of the Democratic Socialists of America tweeted at him a picture of a red “Abolish ICE” t-shirt, Barnes responded on July 4th, 2018, with “I really need that.”
A few days later, he was pictured smiling and holding up his Abolish ICE shirt.
Barnes has been in lockstep with the Working Families Party’s position on bail reform. As a state representative in 2016, he sponsored a bill that would end cash bail in Wisconsin. That died in committee, but Barnes was undeterred. If elected to the Senate, one of his top aides says, he will push to end cash bail nationally.
“The lieutenant governor believes we should decide who is imprisoned before their trial begins based on how much of a risk they pose to the community, not on how much money they have,” Barnes aide Maddy McDaniel told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The bottom line is money shouldn’t have anything to do with public safety.”
Those comments came just three months after a man free on bail rammed his car into the Waukesha Christmas Parade, killing six people and injuring more than 50 others.
The Working Families Party of Wisconsin that Barnes helped found doesn’t just want to defund the police, but also to “defund the 1% and give the public ownership stakes in all corporations receiving bailouts.”
This is straight-up socialism and Barnes openly supports it. During his run for lieutenant governor in 2018, Wisconsin’s Working Families Party gave $27,652 to his campaign; this violated campaign finance laws, which cap donations from political action committees at $26,000. Nothing to see here. The rules don’t apply to Mandela Barnes.
The Kenosha riots should have ended after one night, but they didn’t because Tony Evers and Mandela Barnes made incendiary statements before they had all of the facts. They incited rioters and refused to provide the type of manpower to quell the rioting. Instead, they compounded their incitement by refusing to accept former President Trump’s offer to immediately send National Guard troops to end the rioting. They refused to protect Kenosha when strong leadership was needed.
These are not the values of Wisconsin citizens.
As U.S. Senator Ron Johnson stated in a recent campaign ad, “Voting for Mandela Barnes is like hiring an arsonist to put out a fire. Please don’t.”
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