Emily Tseffos puts it all on the line against an opponent who's counting on a letter by her name

I’ve attended five League of Women Voters candidate forums over the past several weeks. Some of the things I’ve witnessed are hard to fathom, harder yet to stomach.

Within the context of our political times, it is all right on brand, of course: snarky, mocking, whiny, outrageous, often hysterical and untruthful.

In the case of the forum featuring Rep. Lee Snodgrass and challenger Reive Pullen, you can toss cowardly into that mix. Pullen was given an opportunity to at last apologize for his doxxing of Snodgrass after he revealed her address weeks earlier during one of his “Freak Out Friday” Facebook posts, wherein Pullen scours the Internet to find what he deems embarrassing past posts from his opponent. 

But the best Pullen could do was allude to the doxxing in the abstract. He went all passive voice in acknowledging it ever happened at all. 

A night later, Dr. Rev. Michael Goodwin took on incumbent Ron Tusler in another LWV forum at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship  and, though Tusler mostly looked bored, he at least responded to the questions. It was immediately after the forum that the ugliness began. In a Facebook post, Tusler, taking a page from a Righteous Gemstones script, lauded his own superior brand of Christianity, while mocking the venue as a “rainbow church” and his opponent, a 15-year pastor at Memorial Presbyterian, as a “rainbow pastor.” He also carped that the questions were unfair. 

On Thursday, Rep. Shae Sortwell took to social media right after his forum with challenger Alicia Saunders and prattled about Saunders’ so-called commitment to the “trans agenda,” including “men” invading girls’ sports and taking away scholarships. Our state and country face serious issues, even as Sortwell remains unserious about them.

Yet there is something worse than a craven response: Mistakes were made (Pullen about the doxxing); or an arrogant response: My faith is better than yours (Tusler); or a hysterical response: Trans agendas! 

And that’s no response at all. Or in the case of incumbent State Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, multiple no responses.

Her Senate District 19 challenger, Emily Tseffos, has spent the past six months wearing out tires and shoes traversing the entire district, knocking nearly every day on (mostly Republican) doors, listening to voters’ concerns, answering their questions, trying to make connections, and engaging in good old-fashioned representative democracy. When she’s not doing those things, she’s posting heartfelt, vulnerable messages on social media, talking about issues, talking about her personal journey and how that lived experience has informed her values. 

For having the courage to do that – to approach the district in open, good faith – she has borne the brunt of some very nasty men, clearly threatened by – and bent on attacking – a smart woman. She has remained steadfast and gracious in the face of it. She has won over people who, while they might not vote for her, recognize what she represents in our bare-knuckles politics: grace and hope. She has held town halls. She has attended community events. She spent more than a week organizing tornado relief, just as she organized relief for last spring’s flooding up north. She has embedded herself in the community.

And she has repeatedly invited Cabral-Guevara to hold a candidate forum so that voters might make a better-informed decision on Nov. 3.

To that, the incumbent has said, well, nothing. Not even the decency of a response. Just as she ignored the League of Women Voters when they sent out their candidate questionnaires. Just as she ignored the Post-Crescent when they did the same. Her suggestion that a League of Women Voters forum or questionnaire is biased is absurd on its face. The forum format involves straight-up questions about pressing issues (the budget surplus, redistricting, public education vs. vouchers, etc.) that each candidate has the same time and opportunity to respond to. The questionnaire is no different. The forum is presented unedited on the LWV website. Likewise, the questionnaires are posted unedited on the League’s site.

Why is Cabral-Guevara so unwilling to engage? Is it because she’s in a district so favorable to the Republican candidate that she’s willing to let that R after her name do all the work for her? Is it contempt for the voters? Is it fear? Or arrogance?

Sadly, in a deep red district, avoidance will likely be a winning strategy, unless enough voters choose the candidate who is actually working to earn their votes.

Whatever the results, one of the candidates will emerge knowing she led with her heart and, indeed, her body (It’s one tough district to canvass). She’ll have made connections with her fellow citizens, and she will have taken on the cynicism of our politics today and won – just by engaging with it. 

“It’s this love of neighbor that places Emily Tseffos in the company of the Canaanite woman,” said a pastor one recent Sunday morning at First English Lutheran in Appleton. “I’m never going to tell you how to vote. You have to vote your values, and you have to vote what’s between you and God. I lift up Emily’s name this morning because I admire how she steps across the line in this way.”

He went on to quote Tseffos: “Talk to the person at the end of the quarter-mile driveway whose worldview is opposite yours. We need to get back to talking to one another.”

When it’s over, Emily Tseffos will have put a stitch or two in the torn fabric of our society one voter at a time. She will have softened hearts hardened by so much cynicism and civic discord over the past decade.

None of that may get her closer to Madison. But it will get us all a little closer to healing.