Wisconsin Brewery Owner Angles to Get Trump Booted From State’s Ballot
‘I’LL BE DAMNED’
Kirk Bangstad said he expected the summary rejection he received from the Wisconsin Elections Commission, and is setting his sights on fighting his way to the state Supreme Court.
A petition to block Donald Trump from the Wisconsin primary ballot was summarily dismissed “without consideration” by the Wisconsin Elections Commission—but that won’t stop the local brewery owner who filed it from trying to take it all the way to the top, he said Thursday. The petition filed by Kirk Bangstad, described as the “firebrand” owner of the Minocqua Brewing Co. by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, was rejected out of hand by the commission because it cannot address a complaint against itself, a staff attorney wrote in an email to commissioners. But Bangstad said he’d filed it with the agency deliberately on the advice of other officials engaged in similar battles to bar Trump from state ballots. “At the end of the day, they said, ‘Go by the letter of the law. Let them reject you first and then file in circuit court next,’” Bangstad explained to the Wisconsin State Journal. Like in the dozen other states where challenges to Trump’s position on the ballot are currently pending, Bangstad’s argument hinges on the 3rd Section of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, the so-called insurrection clause.
