Election preview: Steil seeks fourth term while Barca looks to pull off upset

 

SOUTH MILWAUKEE, Wis. (CBS 58) -- Inside the Milwaukee County Democrats' south shore office, some of the most prominent signs are for Peter Barca, who is seeking to unseat Rep. Bryan Steil in the race for Wisconsin's First Congressional District.

The district covers the far southeast corner of Wisconsin, including Kenosha and Racine, stretching west to Janesville in the south central part of the state. The district reaches up into Milwaukee's southern suburbs, including Franklin and the south shore communities of Oak Creek, South Milwaukee, Cudahy and St. Francis.

Barca, who most recently served as the secretary for the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, also served in Congress from 1993-95 before going into the state Legislature. In a campaign season where, once again, voters describe the economy as their biggest issue, Barca said his refusal to support to support tax cuts for the wealthiest people is a key distinction between he and Steil.

"If you do these huge tax breaks for the top 1%, that only balloons the deficit," Barca said. "My opponent has voted to do that."

Barca was referring to the 2017 tax cuts signed into law by former President Donald Trump. Mr. Trump's economic proposals for a second administration have drawn scrutiny from economists. In June, a group of 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists signed a letter stating their belief Mr. Trump's economic proposals would worsen inflation.

While they were also skeptical about the benefits of the plan Vice President Kamala Harris put forth, they did not find her plan would trigger inflation.

In an interview, Steil dismissed the letter and said if he were re-elected, he would push an economic plan with three pillars.

"I would disagree with [the economists'] analysis. You can get an economist to give you almost any data point you'd like," Steil said. "I think the pro-growth policies we need to put in place are controlling spending, addressing regulation and a national energy policy."

Regarding trade policy, Barca said he believed the current agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico put American manufacturers at a disadvantage. He was hesitant to criticize the Biden-Harris administration when asked if he believed they should have sought to reopen the North American trade deal during the past four years.

"Could they have renegotiated that- the Mexican, Canadian trade deal? That I don't know the details," Barca said. "I don't know if the timeline was set that they had to wait longer."

Steil said he was supportive of Mr. Trump's proposal to place additional tariffs on goods imported into the U.S., which was one of the reasons cited by economists for believing his plan will worsen inflation.

"Tariffs are a tool to actually force other countries to abide by their trade treaty obligations," Steil said.

On immigration:

Another stark difference between the candidates is their views on how Congress should revamp the country's legal immigration system. Barca said he supported a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who have a clean criminal record.

"For people to have a path to citizenship, first of all, they should not have committed any crimes," Barca said. "Secondly, they should have to go through a very rigorous process, and they should have for the costs they should have incurred if they had come here legally."

Steil said Congress should not address legal immigration until it first takes care of the southern border, including resuming construction of a border wall.

"I think we have to secure the U.S.-Mexico border," he said. "Individuals that have committed and have been convicted of committing a crime should be removed from the country if they entered the country illegally."

New data this month from U.S. Customs and Border Protection found migrant encounters along the southern border fell to their lowest number since August 2020. The number of encounters has sharply fallen since the Biden administration took executive action in June to further secure the border.

Steil said it was a good start, but there was much more the federal government should be doing.

"In some ways [the Biden administration] recognized their errors but not fully," Steil said. "We should still end abuse of the parole system, stop catch-and-release, reinstate stay-in-Mexico and restart border wall construction immediately."

The Republican National Committee's official platform calls for the biggest deportation operation in U.S. history. Critics have questioned how that would affect various sectors, including agriculture. A UW-Madison report estimates undocumented immigrants make up 70% of the state's dairy farm labor.

Barca said he supported providing more resources to keep an eye on those working in the U.S. without legal status.

"People that are here illegally, we need to make sure we're tracking them," he said. "And to find out exactly where they are and what they're doing."

Abortion a tricky topic for Republicans

Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending federal protections for abortion, Democrats have campaigned on the issue.

Mr. Trump has changed his stance on the issue, going from hailing the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade to suggesting some states were going too far with their subsequent abortion bans.

In 2021, Steil cosponsored a bill that would've made it a federal crime to perform an abortion after 20 weeks. Steil now says he would not support a federal abortion ban bill. When asked if that means Steil now would oppose a bill he once cosponsored, he said the Dobbs decision meant the issue no longer had to be addressed by Congress.

"I think the decision by Dobbs, moving this to a state decision, is appropriate," Steil said. "The underlying Supreme Court jurisdiction on this has shifted dramatically. So, the underlying law with which we review this has shifted. I do agree with the Supreme Court decision in the context of moving this decision to the state."

Steil did not directly answer a follow-up question about whether he would then support a binding referendum on abortion in Wisconsin, where voters could decide whether the state's current 20-week ban would remain on the books.

"I'll put that in the hands of our state Assembly and state Senate," he said. "I think it's appropriate for the state of Wisconsin and voters to have that conversation with their state representatives."

In the spirit of bipartisanship...

Barca said one of his goals if elected would be to rate in the top 10 of the Lugar Center's Bipartisan Index. The scoring system ranks lawmakers in Congress based on how often members cosponsor a bill introduced by the opposite party and whether the official's own bills draw cosponsors from across the aisle.

"My opponent's in certainly the bottom half, if not the bottom third," Barca said. "And I'll be in the top 10. That would be my goal because that's exactly what we need, to work together to improve things."

Steil did rank in the bottom half of the index's 2023 House scoring, ranking 260th. Among Wisconsin's delegation, Steil ranked fifth among the state's eight members.

Here's how Wisconsin's House members ranked in 2023 (out of 436):

33. Mike Gallagher (R)

138. Derrick Van Orden (R)

215. Glenn Grothman (R)

256. Mark Pocan (D)

260. Bryan Steil (R)

354. Gwen Moore (D)

367. Scott Fitzgerald (R)

379. Tom Tiffany (R)

No election objection

Following the 2020 election, two members of Wisconsin's House delegation objected to certifying the electoral votes in other swing states. Steil did not join Reps. Fitzgerald and Tiffany in their objections, and he said he did have any reason to object to any state's votes following this election.

"My record speaks for itself on this. I've been concerned with Democrats and Republicans who have made these types of claims in the past," Steil said. "I don't see a reason that we would need to object because I believe we can have an opportunity for a secure election."