Care Worker Candidates

I couldn’t help but notice that this election cycle Wisconsin is seeing an abundance of great candidates who come from a background in healthcare, social service, or community service. Here’s a quick, and likely incomplete, run-down. 

Ismael Luna works at a shelter for people experiencing homelessness. He was previously vice chair of RISE Drug Free MKE. He is running in Assembly District 8 against fake Democrat Sylvia Ortiz-Velez. 

Lawanda Chambers is a mental health professional and founder of an outpatient mental health and substance use clinic providing community care (LIFE Wellness and Counseling Services). She’s running for Assembly in District 61 against Bob Dononvan, one of the most racist and belligerent of Wisconsin’s many racist and belligerent Republicans. 

Corrine Hendrickson is a former childcare worker and co-founder of WECAN. She’s running for State Senate in District 17 against finance ghoul Howard Marklein, and also against the Democratic Party establishment elites. If Hendrickson wins, she’ll be the only State Senator with an education degree. 

Mitchell Berman is a nurse who worked in emergency rooms and at Veteran’s Administration. He is running for Congress in CD1 against Bryan Steil, a Trump sycophant who is afraid to hold in-person town halls after being booed and chased out of them by angry constituents. 

Mike Thurow is a firefighter, who formerly worked at Healthcare for the Homeless. He is running for Congress in CD6. Glenn Grothman, the CD6 incumbent is a career politician with a long history of bigotry and pushing corporate handouts that enrich Wisconsin’s business elites while defunding everything working people need to survive. 

Amy Donahue is a genetic counselor and medical librarian, and a founding member of the Milwaukee Chapter of Healthcare Workers for Palestine. He is running for Congress in District 4 against a Democratic incumbent (Gwen Moore) who won’t sign on to Medicare for All and won’t stop sending arms to Israel. Bizarrely, Moore still gets invited to speak at progressive events despite her unwillingness to restrict funds for bombing hospitals and shooting children with drones.

Emily Berge is a Licensed Professional Counselor, who “focuses on supporting individuals through anxiety, grief and loss, life transitions, and challenging family dynamics.” Berge is running for Congressional District 3 against clownish internet troll Derrick Van Orden and the corporate- and establishment-backed Democrat (Rebecca Cooke) who failed to defeat him more than once. 

David Liners is a former pastor and director of WISDOM, an organization that serves currently and formerly incarcerated people. He took over running in Assembly District 21 when Jessica Seawright, a social worker and disability rights advocate, was pressured into dropping out by the Democratic establishment. 

Ryan Clancy is not a care professional, but he has long volunteered for the Red Cross, deploying for a few weeks at a time once or twice a year to provide disaster relief. He is running for re-election in Assembly District 19, where Bridget Maniaci, a pro-businessgenocide apologist is challenging him. Maniaci keeps bringing up Jonathan Brostoff’s tragic death by suicide, a subtle reference to the opportunistic ziofascist accusations that Clancy was somehow responsible for it.  

Jordan Roman is a community organizer and advocate. He has organized mentors for young people at the Boys & Girls club and the Milwaukee Urban League Young Professionals. He is running for Assembly District 12 against conservative and “remarkably ineffective” Democratic incumbent Russel Goodwin.

Why not Sara Rodriguez?

Gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez talks a lot about her healthcare background on the campaign trail. I didn’t include her on my list for a few reasons. First, mine is a list of great candidates and Rodriguez does not meet that standard. Her main pitch is about Waukesha Republicans liking her. She voted with Republicans to benefit her utility company donors and is shady about PAC money generally. Just recently, she cancelled on the Wisconsin Muslim Civic Association’s Governor’s forum to avoid being asked about the genocide in Palestine. I see each of these things disqualifying her for the Democratic nomination on their own. All three together is a trifecta of impending disappointment. 

Second, it’s been more than 20 years since Rodriguez’s days as an ER nurse. I’m sure she had indelible experiences there, which no doubt informed her perspective and deepened her care for others. Unfortunately, those experiences don’t seem to have given her a systemic understanding of what’s wrong with the US healthcare system, because, after working as a nurse, she worked for a series of corporate health insurance and medical providers, including 3 years at Aurora as vice president of Population Health / Integrated Care Management. During those years (2017-2020), Aurora merged with Advocate, one of the largest hospital mergers in our region. Citizen Action of Wisconsin (CAW) has identified mergers as a major cause of the healthcare crisis. 

Roriguez’s responsibilities in Population Health and Integrated Care Management specifically include identifying health needs and targeting interventions to ensure that at-risk populations get treatment they need. The mergers and closures that occurred during or after Rodriguez’s tenure in this position led to lawsuits over fraud, anti-competitive practices, and exploding costs, depriving many patients of needed care. I’m not able to determine what role Rodriguez had in these consequences, but at minimum, she failed to prevent them.

In short, Rodriguez did not enter politics as an ER nurse. She entered politics as a corporate vice president and consultant. It looks like that’s the position that informed her voting. She did not sponsor the BadgerCare Public Option Bill CAW was championing while she was in office, though she claims to support it now as a governor candidate. She gives us little reason to trust her.

Why are care workers going into government?

There’s something inspiring and admirable about the high likelihood of Wisconsin electing our first homeless shelter worker in the assembly, or our first social worker. Though, Greta Neubauer effectively closed the window on the social worker possibility when she helped pressure Seawright out of the race. 

A legislature of care professionals, true public servants, and experts in actually meeting human needs would be in some ways inspiring, but at the same time, it’s kinda fucked up, to be honest. These are people who devoted their careers to helping the most vulnerable in our society. Many have extensive training and experience, but they are leaving that work to go debate and negotiate with rooms full of opportunistic cynics, slimy grifters, and selfish pricks in Madison. 

Care workers are not leaving their professions to run for office because those professions are overstaffed and not needing them. They are going into politics to fix politics and make care work viable for more providers. Democratic ineffectiveness in the face of Republican cruelty has left care-based careers overburdened, underpaid, and undervalued. Our political system is so broken, stupid, and toxic, so driven by scooping resources toward the already wealthy, that it has thrown our larger society into crisis and made care jobs difficult to unsustainable. Wisconsin has so heavily defunded everything but police, prison, and corporate partnerships that little else functions anymore. The people closer to the problem have realized that they can’t sustain trying to help every harmed and neglected individual, they need to get at the source and end the harm and neglect. That means changing who holds office in our government.