Editor’s note: This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets.
Three Democratic candidates tried to convince voters that they were the best shot to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Wied in the 8th Congressional District.
To a crowd of about 50 on Aug. 3 at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Christie Theatre, the candidates tried to differentiate themselves to voters heading into the Aug. 11 primary election. The winner will go against Wied in the Nov. 3 general election, vying to represent nearly 737,000 people across 11 counties in northeastern Wisconsin.
On substance, their positions often aligned, on issues such as the environment, culture and the rights of Indigenous tribes, but they deviated some on public education and health care.
They were most divergent on style and their read of the Democratic Party.
Rick Crosson, a former Green Bay School Board member, doubled down on his tactic of growing the Democratic Party’s appeal as an insider, saying there was “absolutely nothing wrong with being a Democrat” or being an insider to “fix any and all issues that we may be dealing with.” He said his political icon was the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights leader from Georgia.
Katrina deVille, a musician who has campaigned on being a political outsider and democratic socialist, said, “We don’t even have a left party in this country anymore” and “we have to vote for something different.” Her political icons are New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Mark Scheffler, a former wealth adviser who’s billed himself as a progressive independent, said Democrats “need to expand the base to include open-minded independents and even open-minded conservatives that are abandoning the Trump administration.” He considered former Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as his most esteemed political figure.
Here’s what the candidates said during the forum.
On winning a historically red district
Winning was top of mind for Scheffler and Crosson, so much so that Scheffler said it was the best word to describe his campaign.
The district has not elected a Democratic representative since 2008, when Rep. Steve Kagen won the seat before losing in 2010 to Republican Reid Ribble.
Scheffler said his strategy to winning was targeting those who have felt neglected by the Democratic Party. He pointed to voters in rural communities, whom he said the Democratic Party hasn’t done enough to connect with, and people in business, whom he said the Democratic Party hasn’t been welcoming enough of.
Crosson argued he had built a broad coalition that could win across the political spectrum and that he had “attached myself with every group you can name.” He said he’d gotten a neighbor of Wied’s to put up a Crosson yard sign and that a Republican former state treasurer had told Crosson that he’d nudged his Democratic wife to vote for him.
And asked what made her the best candidate, deVille positioned herself as a foil to Republicans and “the biggest eff-you that people can send to the federal government” being a transgender woman.
“Any time I’ve had to deal with a Republican politician, they crash out,” deVille said. “The minute I walk in the room, they can’t even look at me, and they just crash out, and it’s fantastic.”
She touted hosting town halls at gun ranges and her position as a Second Amendment advocate.
On breaking with the Democratic Party
Asked if there was a specific policy on which he would break from the Democratic Party when voting in Congress, Crosson said, “If I had anything to offer our party at this point in time, it is: We need to have a conversation about who we are, and do we have bias that’s running through our party that needs to be addressed and have the honest dialogue about what inclusiveness means?”
For deVille, it was gun rights. She argued that more gun laws would only deter law-abiding citizens and that more enforcement and focus on mental health care rather than legislation were needed.
For Scheffler, it was gerrymandering. He criticized both Republican and Democratic efforts to draw favorable district boundaries and said that “partisanship should never come at the price of an individual’s right to vote.”
On what they would do in Congress
The candidates aligned on much of their stances on abortion and transgender rights. They all said they would:
- Vote to codify the right to an abortion in federal law.
- Support equal opportunity and access for transgender people.
- Not take money from political action committees.
- Support a tax on billionaires.
- Support increasing funding to Social Security by raising the cap on payroll taxes.
- Support free four-year public college tuition.
- Support a universal, federally funded child care program.
- Support banning drilling leases on public land.
- Support increasing the size of the Supreme Court.
- Decriminalizing marijuana.
- Banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks.
Crosson said he would back the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would create a more stringent process for states and institutions to make changes that could affect voting rights.
He argued the size of the military needed to be reevaluated as it currently “is not based on a strategy or a vision,” he said.
Crosson said that health care was a universal human right and that there was enough money to expand Medicaid, but did not go so far as deVille or Scheffler to say he supported a universal health care system.
Only deVille said she would oppose introducing term limits on members of Congress.
DeVille also said that she supported abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and that she would introduce articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on her first day in Congress. She argued that the United States needed to be more open to free trade with the rest of the world.
She said she would support the CEO Act, a bill that would tax company heads for making at least 50 times what their company’s average worker makes.
She also said she would introduce legislation to “ban voucher schools.”
Scheffler said he would eliminate the Internal Revenue Service as part of his proposed policy to revamp the tax code with a singular sales tax. He argued that Republicans would be on board, that it was a progressive tax and that libertarians would be supportive with the need to file annual taxes being gone.
He also promoted his idea for the Great Lakes region to become the world’s largest market for biomass. Under the plan, farmers would be paid $400 an acre to grow “fibrous pulp” that would be sent to the region’s paper manufacturers, Scheffler said. He framed it as a sustainable method to reduce the area’s dependency on foreign-grown sources for the local paper industry and as a policy that would protect against tariffs.
Jesse Lin is a reporter covering the community of Green Bay and its surroundings, as well as politics in northeastern Wisconsin. He also writes a weekly column answering reader questions about Green Bay. Contact and send him questions at 920-834-4250 or jlin@usatodayco.com.
