Wisconsin Rep. Bryan Steil | Screenshot via C-SPAN
Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil won a fourth term Tuesday night in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, defeating Democrat Peter Barca’s attempt to recapture the seat Barca lost three decades ago.
Steil’s victory kept the 1st District seat in GOP hands for another term after three decades of Republican control that began when Barca himself lost reelection in a 1994 Republican wave that flipped the U.S. House that year.
With 76% of the votes counted, Steil cleared 55% of the vote to Barca’s 42%, according to unofficial election results. The Associated Press called the race at 11:07 p.m.
Steil’s campaign emphasized the inflation sparked by supply chain clogs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Republican’s messaging attributed inflation solely to the legislative agenda of President Joe Biden — sweeping bills for pandemic relief, infrastructure repair, high-tech industrial policy and more.
The Democratic campaign focused heavily on Steil’s votes against those measures, including his ‘no’ vote on the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The legislation included provisions to address climate change as well as provisions to rein in prescription drug costs for Medicare patients.
The message, however, proved inadequate in countering Steil’s advantages, both incumbency and a campaign war chest that was nearly three times the size of Barca’s.
Steil also in the last year has focused on immigration, picking up on a Republican theme that blamed the Democrats for a surge in migrants at the southern border of the U.S.
Barca countered by hammering Steil and the congressional Republicans generally for not taking up an immigration bill that the White House had negotiated with a small group of conservative Republican senators. The bill foundered after former President Donald Trump called in GOP lawmakers to kill it and preserve immigration as an issue in his presidential campaign.
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