My name is Randy Bryce. I’m a union ironworker, progressive activist, and military veteran who’s running against Paul Ryan for Congress.
Look around this country and you see the same things I see: an inadequate health care system, a quickly rising cost of living, and millionaires and billionaires taking more and more while working people earn less and less. The monopoly-driven economy is taking advantage of us by benefiting fat cats who want to take away our health care so they can get a tax break. These bankers, hedge fund managers, and private equity executives could care less about our well being. For them, all they want are their profits to grow, no matter who suffers or dies at their expense.
I’m running for Congress because I believe that’s wrong. Congress should prioritize the interests of ordinary Americans, not the 1%. What I’m saying isn’t anything controversial. These are issues that concern the vast majority of Americans and the solutions-- like single payer healthcare, a $15 minimum wage, and real campaign finance reform, to name just a few-- aren’t controversial either.
So why then don’t we see change?
Throughout government-- yes, both parties-- millionaires and billionaires are in control. Donald Trump inherited a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars. My opponent, the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, has a personal net worth of millions, and in 2014, for the first time, more than half of our elected officials in DC, members of both parties, were millionaires.
In Congress today, working people aren’t at the table, we’re on the menu.
When these out of touch elitists are asked to decide whether we should provide healthcare to every American or whether to give themselves a tax cut, they know their answer. When working people are asked to decide, we know ours. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. We look out for each other because we know what it feels like to be left out. We know what it feels like to make sure food is on our kid’s table. We know what it feels like to be a real, hard-working American.
Paul Ryan has a personal fortune worth millions of dollars and an army of wealthy donors like David and Charles Koch, Robert Mercer, and Sheldon Adelson. I haven’t had the opportunity to meet these crooks, and frankly, I don’t want to. Rather, I want to make them pay for the destruction they are causing me, my family, and our greater community of working men and women looking to do right by our loved ones and our communities.
Right now, we’re fundraising for our grassroots organizing program. Your contribution helps us hire full time staff to train volunteers, knock every door in the district, and have the hundreds of thousands of conversations with concerned Wisconsinites we need to win this race against Paul Ryan. Please, if you can, donate to our campaign.
Our campaign is based on a simple idea. That when all of us stand up, together, and fight, we win. And we are going to win.
I can’t stress enough that the problems we are facing today aren’t Republican-caused problems alone. For too long the Democratic Party has used code words to trick us progressives into supporting them. That’s got to end because our lives are on the line.
When we say we are against corrupt trade deals, we must mean it. When we say we are for Medicare for All, we must mean it and pledge to sign on to Rep. John Conyers’s bill when elected. The days of third way triangulation need to be behind us because our lives-- and our childrens’ lives-- depend on it.
This fight, for single payer healthcare, to create an inclusive economy, and to protect the interests of working people, is going to be difficult. Powerful, wealthy interests will challenge our movement at every turn for fear they lose power in America, but together, we are going to win.
I’m grateful to be fighting by your side.
-Randy
P.s. if you’d like to follow my campaign, you can do so on Facebook and Twitter.
