Early taste of politics

Ryan. “Voters know him and believe in what he stands for. I am confident they will continue to support him in 2018.”

Myers, 55, is not going away anytime soon. Born and raised in Iowa, she handed out flyers as a 10year-old to help father Dick Myers, a former Iowa legislator, county supervisor and mayor of Coralville, next door to Iowa City.

“We talked public service every night at the dinner table,” she said.

The oldest of four kids, Myers worked at her dad’s truck stop along I-80, waiting tables, running the cash register, cleaning the restrooms and picking up trash.

She remembers being in her family’s basement rec room before the 1976 Iowa Democratic Caucus, listening to a relatively unknown Georgia politician and peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter make his case for the presidency.

And in 1980, just 17, she won a spot as an alternate delegate from Iowa at the Democratic National Convention.

She has been in the region since 1994, when she moved to northern Illinois. She came to Janesville in 2009 and was elected to the School Board in 2013 and re-elected three years later. She’s currently vice president of the board.

She’s managing to campaign while teaching parttime in Rockton, Ill.

Myers decided to run against Ryan after the election of President Donald Trump in 2016 and the incoming administration’s rightward tilt on issues like education, health care and climate change.

“I think health care is a basic human right,” she said. “No matter your ZIP code or your station in life, you should be able to go to a doctor if you are sick or go for preventative care.”

She’s for “green” jobs, educational investment and the impeachment of Trump.

Overshadowed by the Bryce campaign, Myers said she is intent on getting her message out.

“I love primaries,” she said. “I think primaries make candidates stronger. The frustration with this primary is decisions seemed to have been made before the process really got started. What that does is create a certain amount of cynicism in voters.”

“I have no problem with Mr. Bryce and his campaign and his willingness to serve,” she said. “But let’s have an honest-to-goodness real primary with real competition and real ideas. Otherwise, we’re just faking it. And you’re doing like Ryan lite, Republican-lite, anointing somebody instead of allowing the process to work.”

Bryce isn’t taking the bait. He said there’s plenty of time for debates and claims the Democratic field isn’t set even though at this stage, it’s unlikely anyone else will get in. The primary is in August.

Politically active in union

Politically active within Iron Workers Local 8, Bryce was on the radar of Democrats looking for someone to take on Ryan. The party was shocked after Trump took Wisconsin on his way to the White House.

“He put on a hard hat and he paid attention to them,” he said. “Working people want someone to pay attention to them, just to acknowledge that we’re there.”

In May, Bryce met at a Starbucks in Oak Creek with Milwaukee County Board Supervisor Marina Dimitrijevic, who also leads the Wisconsin Working Families Party. At first, the conversation revolved around Cory Mason’s bid to run for mayor of Racine.

“As I was getting up, she was like, ‘We’re also looking for someone to run for Congress, would you be interested?’ “Bryce said. He was. A party that struggled to connect with the working class in 2016 was ready to put up an ironworker in 2018. Working on bridges, parking structures and highways is a lot more physically demanding than running for office, Bryce said.

“Ironwork at the end of the day, you know you’ve had a really good day when you’re physically exhausted,” he said. “And this, you know you’ve had a good day when you’re mentally exhausted.”

Bryce can speak from experience about health care. He survived testicular cancer. His mother has multiple sclerosis and his father, who has Alzheimer’s disease, is in assisted living.

Bryce is for a singlepayer health care system, a $15 minimum wage and comprehensive immigration reform.

He also said he favors Trump’s impeachment.

“Congress can determine what’s an impeachable offense and he has shown to be unstable,” Bryce said. “You don’t know what you’re getting from time to time, you can look at his Twitter feed. I mean, threatening a nuclear war, threatening fire and fury, that’s not somebody I trust with the nuclear codes.”

But he is still raw as a candidate. During a July 5 interview on CNN, he was asked what the Trump administration should do about a North Korea missile launch and gave a rambling answer in which he said he didn’t have specifics, adding, “We’re going to take a trip later this month to Washington. D.C., to get better educated on the issues, and I hope to have more information then.”