With fed-up voters, a compelling story to tell, Crosson hopes to spring upset in CD8

Rick Crosson has extended many invitations to Tony Wied to attend one of his town halls, something that might at first glance seem to be nothing more than a pretty shrewd political flex.

Wied, after all, hasn’t held an in-person town hall of his own since he was elected to Congress from District 8 nearly 23 months ago, making his no-shows easy to exploit.

Yet those who know Crosson, Wied’s challenger in the Nov. 3 election, will tell you it has less to do with stagecraft than with his earnest desire to hash out the many issues vexing the district, the state and the country. Crosson is a retired Army Lt. Colonel. As such, he’s not up for posturing just to score political points. He’s looking for answers, he insists.

“You’ve got the affordability issue,” Crosson says. “And underneath that there’s a whole laundry list of things that are just pricing people out of existence. The cost of food, cost of groceries, cost of education. We're in another forever-war with no end in sight. We’ve got gas prices through the roof. Diesel prices are $6.60 a gallon and going up. We've depleted our strategic oil reserves. I can keep going with the list.

“So we keep a seat open for (Wied) at our town halls.”

Wied, like so many other Republican Congressional representatives around the country, has been holding only virtual meetings over the phone. Constituents complain the questions he receives are filtered. 

For those few Republicans bold enough to hold town halls, voters are having none of it. They are showing up to express their strong concerns about high prices, the war in Iran and the GOP’s signature piece of legislation, President Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill.” While HR 1 offers some middle-class tax cuts, it confers nearly $3.5 trillion of the estimated $5 trillion in cuts to the top 30 percentile of earners. It cut nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid, added an estimated $2 trillion to the national debt over the next decade and is projected to throw nearly 11 million people off their insurance.

Then, too, the President is recording record-low approval numbers and Wied has pretty much been in lockstep with him the entire way, supporting HR 1, the war and Trump’s unpopular tariff wars. And while the President has added $2.5 billion to his personal wealth over the first 19 months of his second term, no Republican, including Wied, has ever spoken out against it.

‘I’m a better candidate than Wied’

When Crosson was approached to run for a Congressional seat no Democrat has won since 2008, he called upon both his 20-year military history, where he reached the rank of Army Lt. Colonel, and his post-military life in logistics working for a trucking company. That is to say, he made his decision working methodically backwards from a potential yes to determine if it was feasible.

“I decided to run in August of last year, because I knew it was going to take a whole year of getting out and becoming known to this entire district, knowing that I would have limited funds, but knowing that I had to be my own currency by getting out and meeting with people,” he says. “I was a total unknown, other than parts of Brown County where I was on the school board.”

Crosson endured a competitive but respectful primary against two Democratic opponents and won by less than 2,000 votes over the second-place candidate out of 70,000 votes cast. He says the experience was invaluable in that it allowed Democrats to hash out issues that are top of mind in the district and to generate that all-important name recognition.

“It made me a better candidate,” he insists. “It challenged me to appropriately address the issues. It challenged me to not take anything for granted. It made me consider the reality of not being in my own little confidence bubble. I had to present myself as a viable option without actually having to refute (Wied’s) message. I had to convince people of my message and it prepared me for what I'm doing now, which is convincing the entire voting populace that I am a better candidate than Tony Wied.”

Seeking achievable goals

While Tony Wied has begun talking about the affordability crisis plaguing Americans – and which is driving the growing dissatisfaction with the Trump administration – he has expressed mostly unconditional support for the policies that most economists agree are responsible for it. Wied calls Trump’s actions in Iran “peace through strength” and has been an enthusiastic supporter of his tariff wars that have roiled the world economy. 

Crosson says that while it is important to call out Wied for his failure to speak out against policies hurting working class Americans, he wants to focus more on achievable goals to remedy them.

“So then the question is, okay, Rick, what are you going to do about it?” he asks. “Well, step one, Congress has to reassert its responsibility and authority as a check and balance against the excesses of the executive branch and the judicial branch. We have to undo so much policy. We got to put an end to this war. We've got to establish some economic stability, and we've got to put some honorable people back into our government.

"That's why I'm getting into this thing. I don't see myself as being corruptible. I’ve got more time behind me than I do in front of me, so I want to make the best of the time that we have to make this country a better place. That's my motivation.”

Crosson points specifically to the ways in which federal agencies have been undermined by the administration, with firings without cause of agency leaders and career civil servants in departments ranging from civil service, labor relations, the Federal Trade Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Election Assistance Commission. The Supreme Court has since upheld challenges to the executive branch’s power to meddle in what were once considered to be independent agencies. Crosson sees those actions as some of the most harmful the administration and Congress have taken. As a result, he says it is a misnomer to call this a ‘do-nothing Congress.’ They’re doing something, he says. It’s just that it’s all in the interest of big-dollar donors.

“They've suspended so many policies that have been put in place that now Congress has to go back and reverse those policy dismissals,” he argues. “And these are even more insidious than executive orders because the next president can come in and undo an executive order, but these things have been made into law that basically says that whatever policy that an independent agency has put in place has been made null and void or doesn't have enforceability. 

“This is what this Congress has been voting on, and if you follow the money trail, you'll see where these things are originating from: big corporations, mining organizations, oil companies. They have been rolling back policies that are in the way of these corporations moving forward. But now only Congress can undo those things. So this is all the more reason for me to get in there and reverse this stuff.”

Doing his homework

To bone up on the sometimes boring but critical intricacies and arcana embedded in the policies that most impact people’s lives, Crosson has been traveling around the district, talking to voters and stakeholders who have the expertise and understand the impacts of Congressional action.  One Appleton Alder was particularly impressed with Crosson’s eagerness to learn how municipalities are handling a couple of hot topics when she ran into him following a City Plan Commission meeting at Appleton City Hall recently.

“He told me he was there because of his interest in two items on the agenda – a proposed moratorium on data centers in Appleton and the zoning code changes being proposed to make it easier to create affordable housing in our community,” recalls Alder Denise Fenton. “He is campaigning all over the district basically 24/7 and yet took the time to find out what local governments are doing about two of the most important issues we face. The incumbent appears at the ribbon-cuttings and tours in friendly locations, but I can say with almost 100% certainty that he doesn’t attend local government committee meetings.”

His town halls cover most of the district, from Sevastopol in Door County to conservative Greenville to the Menominee Reservation. Crosson says he wants to get out to more remote areas in the district where voters’ voices have long been ignored. Crosson says voters tell him they’ve never had politicians visit them before. 

Reaching conservative, rural voters is the only way Crosson figures he can win in a district that both Wied and Trump carried by around 16 points in 2024. He recalls one very conservative voter at the Brown County Fair asking why she should believe he is the person to put things right.

“I took that as a message that says she's frustrated with what's going on, but she's looking for a viable alternative and an option,” he says. “And the fact that she reached out to me after my one conversation with her tells me that there are a lot of folks in her camp who are looking for another option. I’ve got to stay out here and meet with these people. That's why we're doing all these town halls all over the place. This is the way that we do it: by talking. Come to one of my town halls and bring your friends with you. Bring your like-minded friends with you, and let's have the conversation.”

Proud pop

Crosson, who is Black, avoids the race issue when it comes to the election, not because he doesn’t think it could be a factor – he pointedly refers to what he calls the “dog-whistle” ads Republicans are running against David Crowley –, but because there’s not much he feels he can do about it. He knows who he is, he says, and isn’t going to change that to accommodate anyone. 

“I'll always be myself,” he insists. “I can’t be any other person but me. Anytime someone asks me that question, it's less about what I'm doing and more about what concerns and/or biases reside within the asker of the question. And to that, I say, if you are harboring any concerns about that, that’s something that person needs to address within themselves.”

The topic of racism in America cannot be divorced from the more general matter of decency after a decade of vulgarity infesting our politics and civil discourse. People, Crosson asserts, are starved for a return to honorable leaders. His 20 years in the military as an Army Aviator and Lt. Colonel have helped form his own sense of honor, he says, not to mention his know-how for how to go about getting things done. It’s the essence of leadership, he says. Is this objective right? he will ask. Is it justifiable? Is it honorable? Can it stand the light of day?

Crosson’s greatest pride, he says, is the three kids he raised – his son, a four-time combat veteran; a daughter who works for a philanthropic organization in Washington State; and another daughter who is an accomplished singer and whose voice he describes as “Whitney Houston-level.” The campaign arranged for that daughter, Jasmine, to make a surprise appearance at one of Crosson’s town halls recently. 

“It was a total surprise,” he says. “When I saw her, I let out a yell I’ve never done before.”

Though an introvert, Jasmine spoke at the event, telling those assembled that her father was exactly the man they saw before them, no different whether he’s alone or speaking to voters.

“When she got done, there were tears in that room,” Crosson recalls. “I’m so proud of all three of them. They are all three contributing members of society. This is the proud pop talking, but they're very much ahead of their peer group in the way that they think about problem-solving and mission accomplishment. 

“I’m most happy that they've told me that they didn't have to look outside of their own home to find a role model.”

‘That’s his reality …’

The winds are blowing both for and against Crosson’s political aspirations. He’s running in a distinctly conservative district with a distinct money disadvantage. But he’s running in a year of historic dissatisfaction with the party in power, and he’s running as something voters claim they are seeking: an authentic and decent candidate who cares about the folks who have long been ignored. 

The two camps are in discussions about a debate that would seem to favor the challenger, who is devoid of political baggage, against an incumbent lugging around plenty of it. It seems unlikely Wied will ultimately agree to a debate given his reluctance so far to meet with voters. Crosson clearly seems eager for an opportunity to go head to head with Wied. Either way, he says, he will be out in communities across District 8, eager to hear from voters and to discuss ideas about how to make people’s lives better, especially when it comes to the affordability crisis.

He is, in other words, not worrying about things he has no control over, especially when it comes to what Wied decides to do.  

“That's his reality, and he's actually become a victim of that mentality,” Crosson says of Wied’s seeming reluctance to discuss the issues. “If he thinks that he's going to buy his way into this office without a genuine message, without consistency, without the intestinal fortitude to stand in front of people live and be held accountable, if he truly believes that he's going, he's riding a Trump wave, that wave is flattening out.

“But he's still on it because that's all he has, and he knows that that's all he has. I'm not frustrated by that. If anything, it provides an opportunity for us to get our message out there.”

With fed-up voters, a compelling story to tell, Crosson hopes to spring upset in CD8 © 2026 by Kelly Fenton is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0