GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – Representative Mike Gallagher was in Green Bay on Friday helping distribute water at the Salvation Army on a hot afternoon.
Friday’s weather wasn’t the only hot topic, as Congressman Gallagher spent significant time touching on next November’s election, the frustrations of the never-ending election cycle, and the controversy of President Trump’s recent tweets.
He says both at the state and national level, most politicians are already caught up in election frenzy.
“I think it seems to get worse and worse every cycle,” says Gallagher.
For him, it’s especially tough to wrap his head around re-election conversation, considering how little time has passed since the previous election.
“I’m six months into my second term, we’ve basically just started the second term,” he explains. “And we’re already in an election cycle.”
Because of that, Gallagher claims he’s doing little to campaign at this point.
Rather, he’d argue that his work every day is a form of campaigning.
“I naively believe that if you do your job, if you focus on representing people from Northeast Wisconsin, then that will also translate into political success,” he explains.
When asked if President Trump’s actions in Washington will impact his re-election odds, Gallagher claimed that most people can distinguish the individual politician from the overall party or president.
“We’re lucky here in that this is a common-sense area,” he says. “I think most people don’t expect you to agree with them one-hundred-percent.”
To that point, he says he’s getting supportive feedback already.
“I hear a lot of people that come up to me and they say, ‘listen, I don’t agree with you on x, y, z, but I really appreciate the fact that you haven’t engaged in negative advertising and things like that,’” says Gallagher. “I appreciate your willingness to work across the aisle.”
One concern to Gallagher is how much time remains between now and next November’s election.
According to him, it’s pretty standard for politicians to start campaigning this early in the process.
“But if that campaign becomes like a tribal blood feud between both sides, how are you going to create any trust in order to pass an infrastructure package,” says Gallagher. “Continue to fund the military.”
But if politicians are campaigning instead of serving, then there’s a problem.
“I think people are going to use the election as an excuse to not actually do their job and get stuff done,” he says.
Additionally, it can create momentum to keep pushing things off into the future.
“There’s going to be this argument that emerges that says, ‘well let’s just wait until 2020 and then we’ll tackle health care,’” says Gallagher. “Let’s wait until 2020 and then we’ll do commonsense immigration reforms.”
Gallagher has recently been the subject of both scorn and praise for seemingly bucking party lines and voicing criticism of President Trump’s recent tweets.
Those tweets seemed to spark a crowd at a recent rally to chant “send her back” in reference to Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
“I’m not calling anybody racist,” says Gallagher. “But I am saying that was over the line, it was wrong, it was offensive.”
Gallagher made it a point to emphasize that he’s disappointed with the rhetoric, but that it doesn’t make the President a racist.
“I think anytime you call someone a racist, you’re kind of escalating past a level that you can’t really return from,” he explains.
In his mind, there should be a middle ground where politicians can criticize the President in some regards, while not having to gravitate to the two extremes.
“We can agree that what Trump tweeted was wrong, but then the other side sort of escalates to a higher level and then, again, it just drives everyone further and further apart,” he says.
