As House Speaker Paul Ryan’s primary race has begun to heat up, Ryan has announced two local media appearances in his home state of Wisconsin over the course of the next two days.
Ryan is being challenged by Wisconsin businessman Paul Nehlen, whose campaign centers upon the idea that Ryan “betrayed” Wisconsin voters by pushing open borders immigration policies and the fast tracking of President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement.
In a Saturday media alert, Ryan’s office announced that “House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) will appear on two Wisconsin radio stations in the coming days—WBEL’s The Daly Show on Sunday, June 26 at 9:00 a.m. ET/8:00 a.m. CT and WGTD’s The Morning Show with Greg Berg on Monday, June 27 at 9:10 a.m. ET/8:10 a.m. CT.”
The announcement and the interviews follow Nehlen’s launch of a new billboard campaign that takes aim at Ryan’s two-decade long history of pushing for open borders immigration policies.
Exit-polling data suggest that Wisconsin GOP voters overwhelmingly oppose Ryan’s position on trade and immigration.
April 2016 exit polls show that seven out of ten Wisconsin GOP voters support proposals to temporarily pause Muslim migration. Paul Ryan has repeatedly ruled out making cuts to Muslim migration and has even pushed legislation that expands Muslim migration.
While Ryan has pushed to expand historic rates of migration into the United States, 92% of the GOP electorate — and 83% of the American electorate as a whole — disagree with this agenda and would like to see immigration levels frozen or reduced, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
Similarly on trade, exit polls data show that a mere one in three Wisconsin Republicans side with Ryan’s trade vision. A majority of Wisconsin GOP primary voters (54%) said that foreign trade deals take away U.S. jobs.
Ryan has been one of Congress’s most aggressive champions of ideological “free trade.” Ryan worked as President Obama’s “partner” in pushing to fast-track Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which he hailed as a “historic” agreement.