Why I’M RUNNING

I grew up in Somerset, Wisconsin. My dad drove a truck. My mom was a secretary. We weren’t rich, but the deal was simple and everybody understood it: work hard, play it straight, and you can build a good life here.

My parents held up their end, and the country mostly held up its end. That deal put me on the offensive line at Camp Randall, put me through law school, and gave me the life I have now: work I care about, a family I love, and a place I never want to leave.

I’m running because that deal is breaking. And it isn’t breaking by accident.

Playing offensive line teaches you two things. First, games are won by unglamorous work nobody cheers for. Second, none of that work matters if the game isn’t called straight.

Most people can accept losing a fair fight. What eats at people, and I hear it at doors in Delafield, Oconomowoc, Hartford, Sussex, and across this district, is the feeling that the whistle only blows one way. That the people writing the rules are also playing in the game.

I’ve spent my career as an attorney reading rules for a living: contracts, statutes, and the fine print that decides who carries the risk and who collects the reward.

Here’s what that work taught me: the rules are not neutral, and they are not laws of nature. Somebody writes them. Right now, too many rules are written so working people and small businesses absorb the risk while the best-connected collect the reward.

That’s not just a market outcome. That’s a drafting choice.

And what was drafted can be redrafted.

I’m not running to guarantee anyone an outcome. Nobody owes you a win, and I wouldn’t trust a politician who promised one.

What every person in this district is owed is a real chance, and if it doesn’t work out, another one. The chance to turn full-time work into a home, a family, and a retirement. The chance to start over after a layoff or a business that didn’t make it, without being ruined for having tried.

Your effort and your choices should decide how your life goes. The rules should never decide it for you before you take the field.

That’s the job as I see it.

A state senator is not supposed to be a team captain for one side. He is supposed to be a referee: enforce the rules evenly, on everyone, including the powerful, especially the powerful.

Show up. Answer for your votes. Tell people the truth. And when there is overwhelming agreement among the people you represent, you owe them your vote or you owe them a clear explanation, delivered in person, not silence.

You may not agree with me on everything. In this district, plenty of good people won’t. I’ll knock on their doors anyway, because listening to people who disagree with you is most of this job.

But if you believe hard work should pay, that the rules should apply to everyone, and that your senator should live here, show up here, and answer here, then we already agree on the things that matter most.

That’s why I’m running.

— Mike