Mandela Barnes Is Making History With His Senate Run

     Last month, I wrote commentary urging Mandela Barnes to run for U.S. Senate. I knew that both history and the modern political scene demand he do so. Warren G. Harding was the lieutenant governor of Ohio before becoming a U.S. senator and then the 29th president of the United States. His VP, Calvin Coolidge, was a former lieutenant governor of Massachusetts who became president when Harding died two years into his term. The Senate is, undoubtedly, the more powerful body in our bicameral legislature. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were both U.S. senators (and both have now served as vice president). If Democrats want to keep the Senate and the House in the 2022 midterms, they need to endorse younger, progressive candidates in key swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania; this is a belief Mandela Barnes himself has espoused. John Fetterman is currently the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania who earned a reputation for staring down the GOP-controlled legislature and appealing to blue collar voters with no-nonsense talk on things like Donald Trump, marijuana, and LGBTQ rights. Mandela Barnes comes from the same circumstances, and Fetterman is currently leading in the Pennsylvania race, albeit narrowly. Mandela Barnes is also simply the most natural selection in the Democratic primary. He is the highest-ranking African American in Wisconsin history and is a much more recognizable face than Outagamie County executive and 2016 U.S. House candidate Tom Nelson or Bucks fortune beneficiary Alex Lasry. In anticipation of his entering the race, the forecast for the 2022 U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin was changed from "leans Republican" to "toss-up."

     Mandela Barnes is a rising political star, and he would add to Wisconsin's history of making history with its congressional delegation. Barnes was just 26 when he was elected to the Wisconsin Assembly; he served from 2013 to 2017, ran unsuccessfully for the Wisconsin Senate in 2016, and became Wisconsin's second-most-powerful politician in the 2018 gubernatorial election. A state that sent Tammy Baldwin and Mark Pocan to Congress would benefit from even more diversity of character, and, if elected, he would be the first black senator from Wisconsin and among the youngest senators ever elected in the state.

     Ron Johnson, who entered the Senate in 2010 questioning why rape victims should be able to sue and may end it on bizarre conspiracy theories about coronavirus and the January 6th insurrection and obstruction of Juneteenth and COVID legislation, is a plastic manufacturer so transparent and hated in his home state and even his home town of Oshkosh that the most famous political expression is FRJ (F Ron Johnson). Why not send his polar opposite to Congress?