Race for 8th Congressional District tests power of reproductive rights versus Trump endorsement

Tony Wied yard signs in Green Bay. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

The race for Wisconsin's open 8th Congressional District seat pits Democrat Kristin Lyerly, an OB-GYN, against Republican Tony Wied, a former gas station owner, and is testing the power of reproductive rights versus the influence of former President Donald Trump.

The 8th CD House seat is open this year after Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher, who was first elected to the seat in 2016 and easily held it throughout his tenure, resigned from Congress in April. Voters on Election Day will see the candidates on ballots twice. A special election was called to happen concurrently with the general election to fill out the rest of the two-year term left open by Gallagher's departure.

The district sits in the northeast part of the state encompassing the city of Green Bay and the rest of surrounding Brown County as well as Marinette, Oconto, Menonominee, Shawano, Waupaca, Outagamie, Calumet counties and part of Winnebago County.

Aaron Weinschenk, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, noted that most analyses of the makeup of the district indicate it leans solidly Republican. The last time a Democrat represented the district was from 2006 through 2010, when Democratic Rep. Steve Kagan held the seat.

"I think that because Democrats have won the seat some people see it as a possibility for Democrats, although I would be pretty surprised if the Democrats win it during this election cycle," Weinschenk told the Examiner in an email.

Lyerly has brought reproductive rights to the center of the race, while Wied seeks to focus more on the economy and immigration

Weinschenk said the issues each candidate is focusing on make sense given that each is talking about subjects where the parties and their respective presidential candidates are perceived as having an advantage. According to September polling from Pew Research Center, Trump holds a 7-point advantage over Harris when it comes to immigration policy. Harris held an 11-point advantage on abortion policy.

"We live in an era where politics is highly nationalized (the correlation between vote share in House elections and presidential elections is incredibly high right now — higher than ever before)," Weinschenk wrote. "National forces seem to matter in lots of different down-ballot races these days (even state supreme court elections)."

Lyerly highlights reproductive health issues, tries to flip district

Even before launching her campaign for Congress, it was no secret Lyerly, an OB-GYN from De Pere, was passionate about reproductive health care.

After the U.S. Supreme Court returned abortion policymaking to individual states with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision in 2022, Lyerly moved her practice to Minnesota. She also joined a court case challenging the 1849 state law that ceased abortion services across Wisconsin for more than a year.

Democrats are hopeful that Lyerly's background and dedication to the issue can help flip the district.

Chair of the Brown County Democratic Party Christy Welch said there is reason to believe the district will flip. Welch is also running in a competitive state legislative race against Republican Benjamin Franklin.

"It's an open seat with a very strong candidate, who is an expert in an issue that is motivating a lot of voters right now in what's sure to be a high turnout election. A lot of people are not happy with Republicans in general," Welch said. "All that together could mean a flip."

Lyerly said in a September interview with the Examiner that reproductive health is top of mind for voters this year, including in the district with a large Catholic population.

"As a doctor who has worked with people in this region, Catholics receive abortion care and use contraception at the same rate as everyone else. They just talk about it differently. You're knocking on doors, and when you open that door and create that space to share that personal story, that's when you really understand how much it means to people. I think it's difficult on a macro level to understand the depth of importance that this issue has in this region. But when you're actually talking with the people, not just young women — dads, young men, old men, old women... people understand," Lyerly said. "The one fundamental thing that everybody wants is freedom, it all comes back to freedom."

A recent poll conducted by University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation found that the majority of Wisconsinites oppose criminalizing abortion. According to the survey, 78% of Wisconsinites — including 57% of Republicans and 93% of Democrats — do not want abortion to be criminalized before fetal viability.

Lyerly spoke about a 70-year-old farm wife in Shawano who gave her a note describing her dislike for abortion and her desire to have eight children. But she was only able to have three due to health complications.

"She understood that pregnancy is hard. Reproductive health is hard and you can't take abortion out of health care," Lyerly said. "What we can do is we can educate, we can support. We can make sure people have access to health care."

If she won the seat, Lyerly said she would "love" to work with Sen. Tammy Baldwin to pass the Women's Health Protection Act, a bill that would create a federal protection for abortion similar to the one established under Roe v. Wade.

During an October debate, Wied avoided staking out a position on what Wisconsin abortion policy should be, and Lyerly seized the moment to highlight the answer as a "cop out." Wied said he supports the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the decision about whether abortion should be restricted should remain up to individual states.

"We all know the person who pulls Tony Wied's strings is proud of taking Roe v. Wade down," Lyerly said, referring to Trump. The former president has bragged about the role he played in helping overturn Roe v. Wade , yet he has also been stepping back from some of that rhetoric as he tries to win over voters. Trump recently said that some state bans are "too tough."

Asked to clarify, Wied refused to say what he thinks Wisconsin's law should be. He also said Lyerly should run for the state Assembly if she wants to work on the issue.

"I'm running for the United States House of Representatives. Our job is to present spending bills and oversee the agencies at the federal level. I am not for continuing to add more power to the federal government... This is a state issue. It will continue to be a state issue," Wied said.

Chair of the Door County Republican Party Stephanie Soucek said she doubts the issue will be enough to "move the needle" in the district this year, though she said that Democrats' messaging about Wied's views on the issue have included "hyperbolic, unfair accusations." For example, she said the claims that Republicans are going to ban fertility treatments and contraception aren't where most Republicans are.

"There are some people out there that are very single-issue voters," Soucek said. "I think there's enough stuff going on that is affecting people's lives every day, so they're seeing things and experiencing things that I think will override... the abortion issue. It's just a matter of getting the message out there, and pushing back against some of those claims."

Republicans focus on immigration, economy and Trump

From meeting the Republican former president at an April rally in Green Bay to propose his candidacy to clinching a public endorsement to coincide with his decision to run, to leaning heavily on being the only "Trump-endorsed" candidate in the primary, Wied has made former President Donald Trump central to his campaign.

Wied won a three-way primary in August against a current and a former state lawmaker to secure the Republican nomination. Wied's campaign did not respond to an interview request from the Examiner.

Trump's influence on Wied's campaign has been prominent as the political newcomer has focused on the economy and immigration as two of his top priorities throughout his campaign.

While Lyerly has focused heavily on reproductive health issues, Wied has highlighted the U.S.-Mexico border. He has said that immigration policy was better under Trump, and that he would support finishing Trump's border wall. He said he also supports reimplementing the "Remain in Mexico" policy, which requires migrants seeking asylum to remain in Mexico until their U.S. immigration court date

"I believe in legal immigration, but right now we have to close this border," Wied said during the debate. "This administration, right now... is a tragedy."

When it comes to the economy, Wied has said that he supports lowering taxes, including for businesses and wants to Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which Democrats have complained unfairly benefited the rich. He has also said that government spending has led to inflation and he wants to work to decrease it.

"Inflation is really a tax and it's a tax that affects the poor and the middle class," Wied said.

When it comes to the congressional race, Soucek said Wied has been doing a good job articulating the Republican message on those two issues.

The county party, Soucek said, has been working to deliver a win for the Republican candidates up and down the ballot, including Wied and Trump, by knocking doors and making phone calls. She said that she thinks Wied has been focusing a little less on his Trump endorsement in the general election campaign.

"I think he felt it was going to be helpful to him in the primary. He definitely supports President Trump, but I think that was a strategy he felt would be beneficial to him... Obviously it seemed to work. Now, I think his approach has been, 'We're going to talk about all these issues that are impacting everyday Wisconsinites,' and really, you know, broaden his message more," Soucek said.

When it comes to the presidential election, she said that she also recognizes the responsibility that comes with Door County serving as a "bellwether" in the presidential election. The county has voted for the winning presidential candidate in every election since 1996.

"There's just two very different paths and different views on America and where we should be going, and so for Republicans there are many different issues that we feel like if we don't win .... it's going to be hard to reverse... Look at illegal immigration and just over 10 million people and maybe more that have come across the border," Soucek said.

Soucek said she is feeling "pretty good" about Wied keeping the seat in Republican hands. She noted that Republican candidates down ballot tend to outperform the top of the ticket, including when Gallagher won in the district.

"I'm not going to take anything for granted. We don't want to assume anything, so we're going to all continue to work hard for all of our candidates, but in our area, I do feel fairly confident that we'll be able to get him across the finish line," Soucek said.

Lyerly, however, is banking that Wied's alignment with Trump won't connect with voters in the district.

"My opponent is an extremist. He is not someone who is independent, and in fact, if you look at his yard signs, they don't even lead with his name," Lyerly told the Examiner. Some of Wied's yard feature his Trump endorsement above his name. "That is not what the people of this region want. They want a moderate."

In recent weeks, Lyerly has sought to emphasize that she is an "independent thinker."

In a recent campaign ad , Lyerly led with her support for reproductive health care access and Wied's openness to allowing states to decide to implement bans, and then said she would also work to "secure our border," ban price gouging and protect Second Amendment rights.

Lyerly has said the bipartisan border security bill, which failed to advance out of the Senate after Trump urged Republicans to kill it, would have started to solve some of the problems with immigration as it would have funded 1,500 new personnel in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and created a more efficient path to citizenship for some. She has said she would work in Congress to help stop fentanyl from coming into the country. During the debate, Wied said the bipartisan immigration bill "didn't go far enough."

When it comes to addressing the economy, Lyerly has said she supports expanding the child tax credit, lowering taxes on the middle class and raising taxes for more wealthy Americans.

"It's easy to pigeonhole me, as an OB-GYN doctor, as someone who only cares about reproductive rights, but that couldn't be further from the truth," Lyerly said.