A special election in November, timed with the general election, will determine who will occupy Mike Gallagher’s vacated eighth-congressional-district seat in Wisconsin from November onward. Republican voters in Wisconsin decided on Green Bay gas-station entrepreneur Tony Wied in the special election’s August 13 primary, opting for him over state legislators Roger Roth and André Jacque. Wied, having cleared the field by just under six points after receiving Donald Trump’s blessing, will have his work cut out for him as he faces Democratic candidate Kristin Lyerly, an ob-gyn practicing in Northern Minnesota with past Planned Parenthood affiliations. Lyerly agreed to an interview with National Review.
Kristin Lyerly joined the Zoom call from her office in Minnesota. Wearing scrubs and on call during the length of our interview — delayed a day after the successful delivery of a baby boy had compelled a rescheduling — the Democratic contender for the eighth is an attractive, obviously intelligent blonde woman in her fifties, the mother of four boys. . . . She’s also unbothered to confirm that she has practiced abortions, and has done so in Wisconsin until Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court and a latent Wisconsin law kicked in that forbade the practice.
Herein is the crux of Lyerly’s candidacy: She is one of the purest tests for abortion’s salience as a congressional-race issue in the whole of the United States. With the seat no longer held by an incumbent and a GOP ticket that is nominally pro-life, Lyerly’s failure or success will indicate whether single-issue candidates running on abortion can pull even deeply conservative districts leftward. While it’s unlikely given Gallagher’s more than 20-point victories in the past, the Fox Cities are expanding at pace and purple enough to make one wonder.
Please forgive the block quotes. I thought it best to provide as much of Lyerly’s answers as possible, especially given our differences of opinion. Read her in her own words, and I’ll check the answers at the end as well as provide some takeaways from the interview that may not come through from the text alone.
I asked about the state of the race and what, if anything, Lyerly could take from Gallagher’s success in the district and in Congress:
What I hear people in the district, say — and these are average Wisconsinites, not political insiders — I hear people say that they respected Mike Gallagher, that they felt that he spoke for them, that he was a young veteran with a family who was responsive when they had questions or concerns. And I think that was the general consensus.
Thoughts on the J. D. Vance pick?
J. D. Vance is young, he’s shiny. He’s great on camera. Personally, as someone who came from a difficult background myself, I look at J. D. Vance and see someone who has turned his back on his people. I think he’s a hypocrite. I think when you look at his record and some of the things that he has said, within the past decade, and I recognize that, you know, people can change. But this is a man who has done a complete 180. And from my perspective, it appears to be for his own personal benefit, not for the people that he serves.
What of Biden’s stepping aside for Kamala to run?
I think it was a wise choice and a selfless choice. When you look at President Biden’s record, and his history of leadership, it’s quite consequential. And I’m sure it was excruciating for him to step down. I was an early supporter of Vice President Harris, when she initially ran back in 2020. I think she has everything that it takes. And on on an issue level, for me as an ob-gyn doctor who’s very concerned with reproductive rights and health care in general. She has really spearheaded that efforts for the Biden-Harris campaign. So for me, I see her as being an excellent candidate, and I very much look forward to supporting her.
What does the term “reproductive rights” mean to you? There seem to be about 1,000 euphemisms and loaded terms around abortion.
Reproductive rights, you hit the nail on the head, is a loaded term. . . . Reproductive rights does include abortion, but it also includes miscarriages. It includes complicated pregnancies, it includes IVF, and other infertility treatments. It includes so much more than the conversation we’re having at this very superficial level. And that’s what we’re starting to see in the public is people are starting to actually step up and share their stories and help people recognize how limiting our access to make our own personal health-care decision is quite literally tearing families apart and killing us.
Lyerly then wanted to clarify her party’s stance on abortion relative to pro-life criticisms:
When you hear the talking point that Democrats want abortion all the way up until the time of birth, and sometimes after, that is just, frankly, not true. It is absolutely not true. So please don’t believe that talking point because that is just a talking point. What Democrats want is for people to be able to make their own personal individualized health-care decisions. And I think you illustrated that when you acknowledge that we don’t know what week the compromise would be at — would it be eight weeks, ten weeks, 15 weeks, 20 weeks? Where is the appropriate cutoff that any one individual is comfortable with? And how do you then accommodate for people with different sets of religious beliefs? For example, people of the Jewish faith don’t believe that a fetus is a baby until it’s taken its first breath. That is a sacred religious belief. When I take care of a Jewish person, it’s not the same as when I take care of someone of the Christian faith. And as someone who grew up Catholic, it’s not my job obligation or, frankly, ability to, to impose my faith and my values on my patients.
Why run at all? You’re obviously busy. The seat, historically, hasn’t been competitive. What made you say, “I have to do this”?
Because my patients are not getting the health care that they need and deserve. My patients can’t live their lives, they can’t afford the things they need to be able to live meaningful lives. And this is not a Republican or a Democratic issue. This is something that is happening to everyone across northeastern Wisconsin. It is not my greatest ambition to serve in public office; it is my greatest ambition to be effective as I help people. And in this day and age, where reproductive rights are at the center of what people are talking about here in the United States, and we live in Wisconsin, in our eighth congressional district, Luther, that we love. In this place, we have the opportunity to allow people to use their voices in a way that they haven’t been able to, for over a decade. . . .
Wisconsinites don’t generally identify as Democrats and Republicans, not in the eighth congressional district. We identify not red or blue but as green and gold, we are neighbors, we talk about the Packers, we talk about what our kids are doing in high school, sports, and all of that. When you can have a real conversation with someone in this region, you can help them understand that there is much more common ground than what is currently dividing us.
Lyerly’s most significant misrepresentations concern Democrats’ support for abortion and Jewish views on life. Using terms such as “Democrats want” to describe pro-life falsehoods about abortion, Lyerly sidestepped the reality of what exactly “Democrats will permit.” Very few Democrats outside the “shout your abortion” crowd want abortions, per se. But they’re more than willing to allow those abortions to happen and even functionally subsidize them. Lyerly was a plaintiff in a post-Dobbs suit that attempted to invalidate Wisconsin’s protections for the unborn.
As for Jewish views of abortion, I should take a moment to note that religious views do not obviate the illegality of homicide in any other context.
Furthermore, Judaism is a fundamentally pro-life religion that shifted human civilization toward the humane. The writings of its great thinkers produced sufficiently authoritative interpretations of the texts that a Jewish organization filed an amicus brief in Dobbs, writing: “Judaism considers abortion to be murder. One of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars in the history of Judaism, rabbi, legal authority, physician and philosopher Moses ben Maimon, referred to as Maimonides, declared in his compilation of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah: ‘The definition of murder according to the Noahide Laws includes a person ‘who kills even one unborn in the womb of its mother,’ and adds that such a person is liable for the death penalty.’”
The exception to the rule is in instances of breech births, a rare occurrence, when the life of the mother is threatened (a provision already accounted for by pro-life laws). As Ben Shapiro has noted, “there is NO Judaic source that even suggests such a thing. At best, rabbinic sources offer singular dispensations [for abortion] against a pro-life backdrop.”
Kristin Lyerly is pleasant to speak with and affects a chummy demeanor that no doubt wins over some undecided voters. She has the bedside manner — the compassionate tones and language — that one would expect from a doctor who deals with the extremes of human experience. She’s also an abortion maximalist who prioritizes the desires of her patients over the lives of the unborn. She presents well, is a cagey communicator, and is running against a weak opponent. Moreover, Wisconsin Democrats have been resurgent in state politics, winning the state supreme court, securing redistricting, and defeating referenda that would have empowered the conservative majority in the legislature.
Her opponent, Tony Wied, has thus far opted against an interview. What I know of him is from his primary debate. He is, according to his self-presentation, petulant and slow-witted and, being conventionally handsome, at his best when looking at the camera and smiling toothily without saying anything. He won the Republican nod with a first-past-the-post plurality victory (to be fair, it’s likely that Wied would have won a runoff given André Jacque’s supporters would more closely align with Wied than Roth) that confirms the continuation of a fractured Wisconsin GOP.
For those watching House races and tallying probabilities of a Republican House, don’t be surprised if, on the evening of November 5, there is some national coverage of Wisconsin’s eighth-congressional-district race — and if it’s much closer than expected. Lyerly will enjoy out-of-state financial support and positive press, and she’s a magnetic enough candidate to make the most of those resources. Safe seats are a happy fiction until a candidate proves otherwise. Abortion maximalism does not represent Wisconsin’s eighth, but a mismanaged Republican effort could result in such an outcome for two years or more.