Krupp wins right to challenge Ryan in 1st District

Late results give Marge Krupp of Pleasant Prairie the victory in the Democrats' 1st Congressional District race, winning the right to oppose Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan in November.

We've updated these results through Tuesday evening. The county totals come from the various county clerks, and the overall total from WTMJ. The state won't canvass the partial totals and officially declare a winner until Sept. 20. The county totals below don't equal WTMJ's totals because precincts in Milwaukee County and Waukesha County haven't yet posted their results online.

WTMJ reports 100% of the votes tallied:

Marge Krupp 5,832
Paulette Garin 5,015
Mike Hebert 4,315
John Mogk 655

Racine County reports:

Mike Hebert 941
Paulette Garin 1,259
John Mogk 133
Marge Krupp 1,492

Complete Racine County results -- all parties, precincts and local races -- are here. The summary is here.

Rock County reports:

Paulette Garin 606
John Mogk 51
Marge Krupp 686
Mike Hebert 238

Kenosha County reports:

Mike Hebert 2,289
Marge Krupp 2,126
Paulette Garin 2,191
John Mogk 287

Walworth County reports:

Marge Krupp 329
Mike Hebert 197
Paulette Garin 262
John Mogk 25

And then there were three: Mogk drops out

John Mogk, the last candidate to enter the Democrats' once-crowded 1st District Congressional race, is now the second to withdraw. His announcement was a surprise, since he had been an active campaigner here in Racine; he worked the crowds during the July 4 parade and was doing so again a couple of Saturdays ago during the MicroCar show on Monument Square.

The winner of the now three-candidate primary on Sept. 9 gets to take on established Republican incumbent Paul Ryan, and his $1.8 million or so campaign warchest. At first, it appeared there would be five candidates, but perennial hopeful (and loser) Jeff Thomas, although having insisted he would run, did not submit the signatures or file papers necessary to get on the ballot when the filing period closed on July 8. With Mogk's withdrawal, the Democrats must choose among first-timers Paulette Garin and Marge Krupp, and 2006's second-place finisher Mike Hebert.

Mogk, who only announced his entrance into the race on June 8, posted the following announcement on his website:

I, John Mogk, a candidate for U.S. Congress representing the 1st Congressional District, am announcing today my decision to withdraw from the Democratic primary scheduled for September 9. I entered the race in late May of this year at the urging of many supporters, and am proud of the campaign we've run, bringing up important issues like the environment, renewable energies, and creating jobs in Southeast Wisconsin.

From the beginning of the campaign, we held to my message that the election was bigger than any one candidate. It has been a long standing goal of the Democratic Party in the 1st CD to defeat Paul Ryan in the November election, and I will not stand in the way of achieving that. For the good of the Party I feel this is the time to step aside. The election was never about me, but about making a positive change for the people.

I do plan to stay involved with the local and presidential races, and the reasons I entered the race still need to be addressed. This district is facing the growing problems of a failing health care system, lost jobs, and a national debt that will drown the country, and deeply impact Southeast Wisconsin. Paul Ryan continues to be part of the problem and offers no solutions for the people, just sweeter deals for his special interests in Washington. I will continue working to help Sen. Barack Obama be elected President, and will fully support the Democratic nominee of the 1st district against Rep. Ryan.

I thank you all for your support, and urge every single one of you to stay active in the local, state, and national races this Fall. This is too important an election to dismiss. We all need to come together to ensure a better, brighter future for everyone.

John Mogk

More about Mogk HERE and HERE.

Mogk serves up wine and politics

Congressional candidate as sommelier

John Mogk was keeping two conversational threads going last night.

One revolved around the four wines he was pouring at the Sommelier Wine Shop in Kenosha. "It's got a crisp taste, a little pucker on the tongue, some sweetness," he said, of one of the four bottles in front of him. The wines came from Trento, Italy, and Bad Wildungen, Germany -- the places his mother's, and father's families came from.

(Hey, as a political fund-raiser, meet-n-greet topic, it sure beat a stiff in a suit delivering a speech!)

The other conversation had more political substance: what he would do if elected to Congress in the 1st Congressional District in November.

Mogk is the latest Democrat seeking the opportunity to oppose Republican Paul Ryan, who has held the Congressional seat for 10 years. Ryan has incumbency, a huge war chest and a string of five easy victories behind him.

Despite all that, Democrats are eager to take him on in this presidential election year, a year in which all the recent Wisconsin polls show Democrat Barack Obama with a substantial lead over Republican John McCain. Marge Krupp announced her candidacy last June; Paulette Garin in January. By February, there were four: Dr. Jeffrey Thomas, Ryan's victim in each of the past four elections, is running yet again; and so is the man Thomas edged out in the 2006 Democratic primary, Mike Hebert.

And since earlier this month there are five: Call John Mogk Johnny-come-lately or accept his analysis that "there's still not a front-runner" among the earlier-announced candidates. "I started talking to people and getting encouraged to run. I'm really not being a spoiler. I think I've caught up with the other candidates already, in terms of people who are approaching me. Now, if we can just catch up on the money side."

Krupp has said she expects the race against Ryan to cost $2 million. Mogk thinks it will be about $750,000. Garin was somewhere in the high six figures. The other two Democratic wannabees -- Thomas and Hebert -- are famous for spending ... um, nothing. (They've never been elected, either.)

Mogk, 41, who was Kenosha Field Organizer for Kerry/Edwards in 2004, says he decided to run this year because "you never know what's going to happen tomorrow. You can say 'I won't run' because of Dr. Thomas, you can say 'I won't run' because Ryan has won before. Well, he's never had a challenge. And yet, he's not bringing more jobs into the district, there are things we could do with environmental issues..."

"I'm here to represent the people of the 1st District. Not the oil companies, not the party."

It's the people of the district who should set a Congressman's agenda, says Mogk (the "g" is silent). He ticks off issues in the order people mention them to him:

1. Universal health care.
2. Energy and gas prices
3. The economy and jobs.
4. Education.

"Everyone's going to pay $500 more a year for food," he says, just because of the extra costs in transportation and packaging. "And in Janesville, 2,400 people will be out of work" because GM's reliance on big cars has run into those high gas prices too.

Interestingly, Mogk says Iraq hardly comes up in discussions with potential voters. "I would like to see us get out as soon as possible, while protecting the troops," he says. But he also thinks the Iraqi people "want us to stay and help them create Democracy."

Most surprisingly (to me, anyway), Mogk says he agrees with Ryan's lone stand against earmarks. "If everybody in Congress keeps saying yes, we're going to be playing the same game. Eventually, the people will get behind me on this, even if I'm the only one."

Mogk says he has collected about 1,500 signatures; candidates need 1,000 "nominators' signatures" to get on the Democratic Primary ballot, and are permitted to submit up to 2,000. They usually opt for the larger number because anyone who signs more than one candidate's petitions is disqualified if there is a challenge. Deadline for submission is July 8.

More on Mogk HERE. His website is HERE.

More on Krupp and Garin HERE.

More on Thomas and Hebert HERE.

The first four appeared at the 1st District's annual convention in February. Read about it HERE.

Here are the four wines John Mogk was serving

Mogk joins Democratic field to oppose Ryan

And then there were five!

John Mogk of Kenosha has announced his entrance in the Democratic primary in Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District, for the right to oppose Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican incumbent. He joins Paulette Garin, Marge Krupp, Jeff Thomas and Mike Hebert. Democrats began collecting signatures on June 1; the necessary papers to gain inclusion in the September primary must be filed by July 8.

Currently active in the Kenosha County Democratic Party, Mogk started in 1994 as a member of the Racine County Democrats, serving as a local party officer and a brief stint as a vice-chair of the 1st CD.

He served as a volunteer in Racine on the 1996 Clinton/Gore campaign, and actively supported the special election that moved Kim Plache from the State Assembly to the State Senate.

In 2004 Mogk worked as the Kenosha Field Organizer for the Kerry/Edwards campaign. About his prior campaign work Mogk said, “My favorite memory is the incredible work by hundreds of dedicated volunteers that helped John Kerry win Kenosha County and the 1st CD.”

Mogk said he is running because Congress has been out of control and out of touch for too long. “Representatives in Congress are supposed to represent the interests of the people in their district, not the special interests as they do now.”


He said, “People in the 1st CD are paying record prices for gas, while the oil companies make record profits and continue receiving our tax dollars in subsidies. Whose interest is being served? Where is the common sense in that?”

A personal peeve of Mogk’s is the fight for affordable and available health care for everyone: “The health care system is killing this country,” he said, “costs are rising double the rate of inflation and people are being left with nothing.”

Mogk feels some of the proposals offering tax credits would help those working or who already have insurance, but they do not go far enough. He says the problem needs to be attacked on a number of fronts including insurance and medical costs, industry greed, duplication of work, and insurance companies who deny and limit care.

“700,000 declared bankruptcy last year over a health care crisis. About 500,000 of them had insurance when the crisis began. Common sense should tell us the system is not working. It will take bigger measures to handle this crisis,” he said.

Discussing the war in Iraq, Mogk’s focus is the troops. He believes lack of budget oversight and no-bid contracts are still leaving the troops without necessary equipment such as body armor and fortified vehicles. He says billions of tax dollars have been lost and mismanaged through privatizing the war. “World War II gave us the Marshal Plan. The war in Iraq has given us the Halliburton Plan. And the results have been deadly.”

Mogk believes more needs to be done to protect the troops, and fulfill the requests of generals, not the fanciful ideas of the Administration who lost America’s respect around the world. “If the 1st CD makes the right change in Congress this election, we won’t need another 5 years before the mission really is accomplished.”

Other issues Mogk discusses are improving education, the student loan crisis, alternative energies and jobs for Wisconsin, the pettiness in Congress, eliminating government waste, and the housing crisis. Mogk says the common theme through many of these issues is a lack of common sense approach.

“If you do the right thing for the right reasons, the solutions will benefit everyone. Perhaps if GM had done the right thing and looked beyond one fiscal quarter at a time, 2,400 residents of the 1st CD would not be losing their jobs.”

Mogk feels the 1st CD and Wisconsin are losing out in the development of alternative energies. “There is not a single solution. Common sense should tell us what works in the southwest might not work in the midwest.”

“But we have to do more now. Oil is a finite resource. We got lazy after the last oil crisis and are still unprepared. The 1st CD and Wisconsin are great places to develop and test ideas such as the fusion project at UW-Madison, and the KRM that could have been running already, saving residents from $4 gas.”

Mogk says that as a Representative in Congress he would pursue these ideas for the environment and jobs. “Southeast Wisconsin has the best workers, top universities, great communities with sun and wind. Bringing the research, testing and development to our backyard will have long-term economic, education, and health impacts for a better quality of life for all of us. Common sense says it’s the right thing to do. Why hasn’t Paul Ryan done it?”

Mogk has a B.A. in Business Administration. He worked at Carthage College in Kenosha in the student affairs and development departments. Currently he is call center manager at Lake Forest College.