In Kenosha, Wisconsin, where riots reportedly caused $50 million of damage with at least 40 businesses destroyed and 100 damaged after the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, the town just elected its first-ever GOP executive.
Samantha Kerkman, a state representative of the 61st Assembly District who is a member of the Republican Party, received 51.32% of the vote; her Democratic opponent Rebecca Matoska-Mentink garnered 48.5% of the vote.
Kerkman told WisPolitics that the biggest issue contributing to her victory was “public safety, wanting to feel safe in our county,” adding voters approved of her decades in Madison. “I think the residents are very in tune to that, someone who knows how to pick up the phone and call when you need a grant or something and making our county better.”
Kerkman also stated, “I think it was the experience that I bring from Madison. I have been working with the county executive for years on issues that impact the county.” During her campaign Kerkman stated that she had a “reputation of being eagle-eyed in saving money for Wisconsin taxpayers. … I (have) a critical understanding of the relationship between county and state government, as well as the ability, experience and vision to guide Kenosha in the years ahead as county executive.”
“In her position as county executive, Kerkman will also appoint and supervise county department heads and appoint non-elected members to all of the county’s boards and commissions,” KATV noted.
Red tsunami is coming! https://t.co/AcLNLaZIJ2
— Mercedes Schlapp (@mercedesschlapp) April 6, 2022
Another indication of the possible red wave coming: “Former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, a Republican candidate for governor, endorsed 48 school board candidates. Of those, 34 won including eight incumbents, based on preliminary results,” Fox News noted.
Last November, former New York Times reporter Nellie Bowles admitted that the Times withheld a story she wrote about the true effects of the Black Lives Matter riots in Kenosha.
As The Daily Wire’s Ashe Short reported:
Buried in her column and only vaguely alluded to in the subhead, Bowles explained that the Times sent her to Kenosha last summer during the riots to basically confirm the “mainstream liberal argument” that “burning down businesses for racial justice was both good and healthy” because it “allowed for the expression of righteous rage, and the businesses all had insurance to rebuild.”
But when she arrived in Kenosha and began speaking to the locals, she learned this was not the case.
“The part of Kenosha that people burned in the riots was the poor, multi-racial commercial district, full of small, underinsured cell phone shops and car lots. It was very sad to see and to hear from people who had suffered. Beyond the financial loss, small storefronts are quite meaningful to their owners and communities, which continuously baffles the Zoom-class,” Bowles wrote.
So, she filed a story in August that reflected what she discovered – but that story wouldn’t get published until after the 2020 election. Bowles accepts the notion that the piece could have simply been bad, but a few weeks after she sent it in, she said an editor essentially told her: “The Times wouldn’t be able to run my Kenosha insurance debacle piece until after the 2020 election, so sorry.” …
“If you lived in those neighborhoods on fire, you were not supposed to get an extinguisher. The proper response — the only acceptable response — was to see the brick and mortar torn down, to watch the fires burn and to say: thank you,” she concluded.