An Ellison Bay Stop for Ribble’s Run

At a small farm in Ellison Bay Saturday, I had the chance to meet Republican congressional candidate Reid Ribble at a small gathering hosted by his former competitor, Marc Savard. I can’t say that I got the full measure of the man in an hour and a half, but I came away with some basic impressions of Ribble in advance of his Sept. 14 primary battle with Terry McCormick and Roger Roth.

Ribble shared his back-story with the dozen or so folks who circled him off the home’s front stoop. The Appleton East High School graduate has run a successful roofing company for three decades and was inspired to run for office by his son, who prodded him to do something about the economic policy he so often complained about. When he turned from bio to policy, like most candidates he avoided specifics. He spoke of a plan to cut spending by 5 percent per year, but when asked where those cuts would come from, he pointed only to the general idea of cutting waste, every candidate’s go-to line.

Ribble spoke of shoring up Social Security, but admitted he didn’t have a specific idea for how to do so, only that it needs serious study with all options on the table, including raising the retirement age. Ribble followed the boilerplate candidate script, the same one used by the man he hopes to unseat, incumbent Democrat Steve Kagen.

But Ribble stuck out in one regard. Though some in the gathering tried to get him to lay blame on President Barack Obama and the democrats, Ribble steered clear, even in front of his own party’s choir. He paints the problems of deficits and spending with a bipartisan brush. “Every president, republican or democrat, has expanded the power of the office and the scope of federal government,” he said. That includes, he pointed out, Conservative hero Ronald Reagen, while Bill Clinton actually cut the number of federal employees in his eight years in office.

Ribble comes off as a man genuinely concerned with the state of the country, especially the economy. Like Senate candidate Ron Johnson, he’s running on his business expertise in a year when the economy is issue 1, 2, 3 and 4. He doesn’t sound like a man coached by his party or one likely to fit comfortably slinging arrows on a FOX News set.

One can’t help but wonder what will happen should he win the primary Sept. 14. In the last six years of covering candidates, I’ve heard a lot of them give lip service to the idea of working across party lines, of putting the sound bites and slogans aside. But then they hit the stretch run of the campaign, and they so easily slide into the tracks of the national machines, finding those catch-phrases and wedge issues that garner strong (if often uninformed) reactions.

Maybe Ribble has the strength to avoid what his predecessor, John Gard (who endorsed Ribble Monday), seemed to revel in. Maybe we could see him sit down with Steve Kagen in a forum and articulate real ideas and flesh out plans within the context of the world that most of us live in (that world that bears so little resemblance to the hard lines of the right or the left).

Even on a postcard-worthy sun-drenched Saturday on the farm, that hope seemed far-fetched.