You want gimmicks? Randy’s campaign staff is unionized!

Pitting mainstream Democrats against Paul Ryan in Wisconsin’s first congressional district hasn’t worked out so now our acquaintances are casting Hollywood stereotypes in a desperate bid to topple the Speaker.

Say Hello to Randy Bryce, the guy in the hardhat and the 1970s porn ′stache.

Randy’s candidacy is an unexpected consequence of Donald Trump’s victory in Wisconsin’s First Congressional District and in blue collars states like Wisconsin with his appeal to the Deplorables, a segment that continues to confound the party of Hillary, Franken, Weinstein & Wiener.

Bryce comes straight out of central casting, complete with built-in laugh track.

His cause has been adopted like so many Third World cleft-palated orphans by such Left Coasters as Chelsea Handler, Whoopie Goldberg, Samantha Bee, and Sarah Silverman — foul-mouthed, all. Not exactly G-rated family entertainers but give them a pass, they’re liberal, progressive, and socialist and they hate Trump and Republicans, which is what counts.

Struggling young writer Christian Schneider reports in the The Weekly Standard that Handler was scheduled to attend a January 31 $25-per-head public fundraiser for Bryce at the Majestic Theater “in liberal Madison, well outside the district for which he is running.”

But after Handler posted a profane tweet attacking Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sexuality, the event was quietly canceled and converted to a $500-per-person event at the private home of a Madison-area tech executive.

Another of Handler’s projects was Al Franken. (The emcee at the Majestic was to have been Mark Pocan, who, doubling down on his bid to become the least effective member of the House, invited Bryce to be his guest at the State of the Union address.)

On strike, shut it down

The reason for the Majestic Theater cancellation was never reported in The Capital Times, strangely enough. Speaking of that non-union publication, its associate editor, our comrade John Nichols, has entered the Rapture over the discovery that Bryce has unionized HIS CAMPAIGN STAFF!

That’s right. The Bryce campaign is represented by the Campaign Workers Guild, “a new national [labor] union that organizes non-management campaign staff,” Nichols reports for The Nation.

“We met with the unit and negotiated our first collectively bargained contract on a political campaign,” recalls Meg Reilly, a national student organizer for the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, who serves as vice president of the guild.

Which raises the delightful prospect that the Campaign Workers Guild Local #001 could go on strike, say, during a televised debate, live and in color. Refuse to distribute his literature. Picket polling places. Randy Bryce, Unfair!

This is a guy who got rolled 62-38% by the Republican Van Wangaard, in the 2014 Senate race in Racine area. Wangaard voted FOR Act 10 in 2011. (Bryce lost twice before, in a Democrat(ic) primary in 2012 and a county board seat before that.)

More and more, the Democrats’ fealty to organized labor is romancing a sinking stone. The share of American workers in unions was 10.7% last year, half that of 1983. Ask black mothers in Racine who take advantage of school vouchers how they regard the anti-choice teachers union.

Blaska’s Bottom Line — Bryce is getting all this attention not because of his bona fides but because he is challenging the Speaker of the House.

Platinum Subscriber Bonus Coverage:

• Bryce was also cited in a New York Times report that noted he had purchased more than 1,000 fake Twitter followers in 2015.
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Bice found that in 2015, the state had placed a lien on Bryce’s property for failing to pay child support for the 11-year-old son he featured prominently in his first video spot. “All it took for Randy Bryce to make good on a couple of old debts was a run for Congress.”
• And take a gander at Randy’s randy tweets!