On Tuesday, WCPT’s Joan Esposito spoke to Dr. Kristin Lyerly, an OB/GYN physician and candidate for Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District, which covers northeastern Wisconsin, including Green Bay and Appleton. Lyerly is seeking to become the first Democrat to represent the district since 2011, and only the eighth Democrat in history to do so.
Following an unsuccessful run for the Wisconsin Assembly in 2020, Lyerly announced her candidacy for the U.S. House seat when the incumbent in the district, four-term Republican Mike Gallagher, retired in April. She says her main legislative priorities are access to quality, affordable health care, strengthening the economy, protecting reproductive rights and investment in rural communities. Earlier this month, the Lyerly campaign announced that it had raised over $1.1 million in the 3rd quarter, with contributions from over 26,000 individual donors.
“This massive haul is the strongest quarter raised by any candidate, from either party, who has run in the 8th District, ever,” according to a campaign press release.
Lyerly spoke to WCPT just as Heartland Signal was breaking a story about her Republican opponent, Tony Wied, a former gas station chain owner who touts himself as a “Trump-endorsed outsider.”
Below is the full transcript of the interview.
Joan Esposito: We are very pleased to welcome Kristin Lyerly, who is on the ballot in Wisconsin, candidate for the 8th Congressional District there.
Kristin, how have you been?
Dr. Kristin Lyerly: So good. It’s almost crazy to think that things could be going so well in the swingiest district of the swingiest state during the most consequential election of our lifetime, but I’m having a blast. And we are knocking doors in rural parts of the district, and what we’re hearing from people is that they are ready for change. I’m inspired.
Joan Esposito: Yeah. And correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t your opponent Republican Tony — I don’t know if you say his name “Weed” or “Wide.”
Dr. Kristin Lyerly: Yes, my opponent is Republican Tony Wied. He is a newcomer to politics. He decided to get into public service when this congressional seat opened up, while I’ve had a long, long history of public service as an OB/GYN doctor and an advocate and someone who has fought for community building and ensuring that we have what we need in our communities to be strong and to live healthy lives.
Joan Esposito: And, you know, I don’t know if anybody’s mentioned this to you, but on the home page of our Heartland Signal, which is our digital arm, our lead article is “Wisconsin GOP congressional candidate who ‘never really asked anyone for help’ had $342,000 PPP loan forgiven.” That sounds like a lot of help to me. I wonder how he forgot to mention that, Kristin.
Dr. Kristin Lyerly: Well, I think he was talking about his poor fundraising numbers and why it was so hard for him to fundraise, because he has a hard time asking for help. But, yeah, I think that that was some convenient amnesia for him to forget about that giant PPP loan that allowed him to stay in business throughout the pandemic, and then was conveniently forgiven. You know, this is a guy who banks his entire campaign on his small-business prowess but clearly doesn’t have the credentials to back it up.
Joan Esposito: Well, in an election that a lot of people say is going to be driven by the issue of female autonomy, you know, the right of a woman to actually make her own medical decisions without the government being involved, it would seem a great time to be an OB/GYN and be running for office, somebody that people can trust with that issue.
Dr. Kristin Lyerly: Yeah, it is a great time. And like I said, I’m having a blast as an OB/GYN doctor who’s been doing advocacy work for over two decades, taking it to the next level and actually running for office in a time when abortion is the number one thing on the ballot for so many people. And it’s not just young women of reproductive age. It’s young men. It’s older women. The number of postmenopausal women that I talk to who are fired up about this, and this is their primary issue, is absolutely incredible. And then, just today, I had a conversation with an older man, and he brought it up. And, you know, they understand that this isn’t just about reproductive rights. This is about health care in general and the fundamental failure of our ability, in the wealthiest country on Earth, to provide our citizens with accessible, affordable health care.
Joan Esposito: I’m not familiar with the borders of the 8th Congressional District in Wisconsin. What geographic area is that, Kristin?
Dr. Kristin Lyerly: We are up in northeastern Wisconsin. So Green Bay is the biggest city up here. And as I commonly say, we are not red, and we are not blue. We are green and gold up here.
Joan Esposito: (Laughs.)
Dr. Kristin Lyerly: We don’t pretend to be Democrats or Republicans. We’re a really independent group of voters. And we stretch all the way from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, just to the south of Appleton, from the tip of Door County to the middle of the state, in the Wittenberg area. We are a large district with some fairly populous areas but also a lot of rural areas that have been underrepresented. Folks who live there have felt left behind for a long, long time, and for the first time in a very long time we’ve got candidates on a state level — because remember, Wisconsin was grossly gerrymandered for over a decade. Now, we’ve got candidates running in these districts when we haven’t had candidates in a long time. They’re doing the work, they’re knocking on the doors, they’re having the conversations, and just that alone increases voter turnout by an average of 2%. So we are all doing the work because we want to bring it home for our own constituents, but we want to bring it home for Tammy Baldwin. She has to win that Senate seat back. And we absolutely have to bring it home for the vice president.
Joan Esposito: Yes. You know, a lot of Republicans running at the state or local level, some of them are – if trying to distance themselves from the unpopularity of Donald Trump, or at least, you know, not make a big deal out of it, but your opponent is– I believe he’s endorsed by Donald Trump and quite publicly a big supporter. How is that playing in the 8th District area?
Dr. Kristin Lyerly: He’s so endorsed by Donald Trump that it actually says “Trump-endorsed” on the top of his yard sign before it even says his own name. I’ve never seen a candidate take second billing on their own yard sign. So this was the thing that got him through the primary, but he’s trying to back away from it tenderly now that we’re at general election time.
Joan Esposito: Oh, yes, trying to be more middle of the road now.
Dr. Kristin Lyerly: Right. He’s taken the “Trump-endorsed” off of his signs, but still, his messaging does include, depending on who he’s talking to, it does include a fair amount of Donald Trump’s rhetoric and a lot of references to what we know they have planned in Project 2025. But another thing that we’re seeing up here in the 8th Congressional District is this split between the very MAGA Trump folks and the regular people who vote Republican traditionally. Those folks are tired of it. They don’t want to be associated with all of that ugliness and this doubling down like we saw the other night at Madison Square Garden. Those are the people that we’re having conversations with now who are planning to vote for Democrats because they know that this is a time when we can get rid of all of this disgusting behavior that has become commonplace and bring it back to community.
Joan Esposito: Yeah. It’s really an incredibly divisive, divided race, not only at the national level but also at the state level. And I was– one thing that you may not be able to weigh in on: I was reading about counting ballots and the article that I read said that while Michigan had streamlined their process for counting mail-in ballots, Wisconsin still had not, and that the idea that that election workers weren’t even allowed to open the envelopes till Election Day will oftentimes really slow down the count. When do you think you’ll have results in Wisconsin?
Dr. Kristin Lyerly: And Wisconsin’s always close, so it would be helpful to have that information in advance. (Laughs.) And, you know, Wisconsin is one of the hardest states to vote in, and our legislature over the last decade has been so difficult to work with that they’ve actually made it harder to vote, harder to count ballots; just the whole process has been much more difficult than it needs to be. I think that now that we’ve got our new maps and we’ve got this inspirational group of candidates that are running, we’re going to be able to right things in Wisconsin. It’s going to take us a couple cycles, because we need another cycle to get the Senate fixed. But I think we’re going to flip the Assembly this year, and I think we’re going to flip the Senate in two years. We are not taking our foot off the gas. We’re giving it everything we’ve got because we know we have to.
Joan Esposito: Yeah. You know, I know that when Tony Evers was first elected, the Republican legislature passed some measures to try to strip him of some of the power that normally was in the governor’s office. Do you think Democratic legislators would be able to restore that power to Tony Evers?
Dr. Kristin Lyerly: That was just a harbinger of things to come with that legislature. It has been one attack after another on the governor’s office. Governor Evers is a good man who understands the people of Wisconsin and is just trying to get things done, but this legislature is doing things like holding money back from offering PFAS relief to these families in my district. We’ve got the third-most contaminated PFAS site up in Marinette. There are families up there who are drinking bottled water. They’re in terrible shape and they need this relief, but our legislature is refusing to allow them to use this money that’s been set aside. And that’s just one example of how hostile they’ve been.
What I’m hearing now from the candidates who are running is that they are working to collaborate with each other, and they want the government to function again. That is so important. And another thing that they are really focusing on is Act 10. This was something that Scott Walker had passed early in his administration; that was a union-busting move. We want to restore the right to collectively bargain and ensure that union folks are able to be well represented and strong again, just the same way that they used to be over a decade ago here in Wisconsin.
Joan Esposito: Well, I wish you nothing but the best. We will be keeping an eye on Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District.
Dr. Kristin Lyerly, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Kristin Lyerly: Thank you so much for having me, and don’t hesitate to go to kristinforwisconsin.com for more information.
