Rob Zerban For Congress

U.S. Representative Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, has held his seat in the 1st Congressional District since 1998, against several would-be challengers who he defeated handily. As chair of the House Budget Committee, his name is known nationally. But a new opponent is emerging for the 2012 elections, riding on fallout from Ryan’s unpopular budget proposalthat would end Medicare and Social Security as we know it, and the general sense of populism stirred up by the protests and recalls that started last spring.

Meet Rob Zerban, a 42-year-old Kenosha County supervisor and former small business owner. After selling his businesses in 2008 to “retire” into full-time volunteering for the League of Conservation Voters he had originally looked at running against Ryan in 2010, but decided “the time wasn’t right.” But his wife, Cornelia, is a teacher and the couple participated actively in last year’s protests. And after a request from Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Mike Tate that he consider trying again, he kicked off his campaign officially last summer, bolstered by polls that suggested Ryan had been weakened by public opposition to his budget.

“My wife said, ‘Take a look around at what’s happening to our state. This is what happens when you don’t have good people running for the right reasons,’” Zerban said.

Zerban’s campaign got a big boost in December, after he hosted an “ask me anything” question and answer session, or AMA, on Reddit, where users had launched a campaign to pressure Paul Ryan to take a stance on the controversial anti-piracy bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act. Zerban’s straightforward answers to questions about his stances and ease with community in-jokes made him extremely popular and in the following days the office was flooded with hundreds of new volunteers and donations. Following the AMA, campaign manager Lisa Tanner said website traffic more than quadrupled for several days with 16,000 hits on the highest day and 92 percent of them from first-time visitors. Since then, she said, the campaign site has drawn about 4,000 hits a day about twice the average before the Reddit influx. In addition, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has identified Zerban's as an "emerging race" in its 2012 Red to Blue campaign.

It’s early yet for campaigning: the primary isn’t even until August, though so far he is the only challenger. Zerban’s website still doesn’t have details about his positions (though you can read about them on the Reddit Q&A). But thanks to the unexpected surge of attention Zerban’s campaign has fast-tracked somewhat, and even on the Martin Luther King holiday Monday all five of his full-time staffers were at the office. Tanner says the plan is to begin the field campaign of phone calls and house parties in May or June, depending somewhat on the timing of the state recall elections.

In brief, his positions are progressive: he’s against SOPA, and his web site participated in Wednesday’s blackout; he supports the move to amend the Citizens United decision to outlaw corporate money in political campaigns and furthermore wants only public funding for all campaigns; he wants to see term limits for all members of Congress, and an affordable health care option for all Americans.

He also raised about $15,000 from more than 600 new donors in that same time. In 2011, the campaign raised over $500,000, which finance director Tyler Norkus said is more than the total for all of Ryan’s previous challengers combined. They have a base of 6,300 donors already. And he’s picking up steam: in the last quarter of 2011 alone, Zerban raised more than $220,000. His campaign has received donations from more than 6,300 individuals already, PACs such as Russ Feingold’s Progressives United ($5,000), and union groups like AFCSME.

That money is still small compared to the more than $4.2 million Ryan already has on hand for the race before fundraising has begun in earnest. And Zerban, a man with comparatively minimal political experience, is only just starting to get his name known. But Zerban and his campaign are confident that they have plenty of strengths.

For one, there’s his background as a small business owner. Zerban, a classically-trained chef, ran a catering business and a contract food service with 45 total employees for about eight years. He said he gave his employees the best possible health insurance, even though that made it his second-largest business expense, and has plenty to say about what should be done to fix healthcare so that small business owners can get back to creating jobs.

“If you use common sense and regulate these things and have the ability to negotiate for price...you can make it work out, you can make it work for everybody and not just big companies,” Zerban says. And, he says, the people of Wisconsin are well aware of that now following a spring of protesting and all the recall organizing since. “The activism that’s in the state now -- they’re angry, they want change, they want common sense, and they want someone who’s gonna be there advocating for them against corporations,” he said.

He’s counting on his own personal appeal to populist ideals to push him higher in the polls and plans to continue speaking as candidly -- he said his wife jokes that he can’t even keep secrets -- to the public as he did to the Reddit community. As much as possible, he personally answers e-mails sent through his website and hopes to continue to do so even after he eventually hires a communications staff. He’s tied to the recalls as well, having helped with Mary Lazich’s campaign over the summer. More recently, his campaign helped pay for the Kenosha headquarters for the Walker recall.

One way or another, he says, “common sense” could solve most problems with Congress right now, and considers his past, growing up poor and dependent on “government cheese and free school lunches,” an endangered version of the American Dream. “I was only able to get an education because I qualified for Pell Grants and Stafford Loans,” he said. “I know why these programs are so important to so many individuals.”

There’s another angle Zerban points out: In 2010, relative unknown Ron Johnson defeated Russ Feingold, a high-profile political veteran, thanks in part to a strong anti-incumbency sentiment among conservative and moderate voters.

“Russ Feingold was a dedicated public servant who lost his seat to an unknown,” Zerban says. “And Russ Feingold never proposed ending Medicare and Medicaid…or privatizing social security.”

Furthermore, Zerban says, Ryan is not just any Republican. “He’s the one driving this crazy narrative in DC...that we have to take away from the poor, and give the rich more.”

“He is widely perceived as being out of touch,” Zerban said. “I’ve talked to Republicans who say, ‘I’ve known him his whole life, I’ve voted for him in every election, and I can’t support him anymore.’”

“There comes a point when (money) doesn’t help you anymore,” Zerban continued. “You can only spend so much money, buy so much airtime.” Instead, he said, he’ll focus on something past Ryan opponents haven’t succeeded at: coordinated, intensive voter contact, with every single voter they can reach from both parties.

“Those doors will be knocked, almost everyone will get a phone call, they will get invited to house parties,” Tanner said. “When you’re in a tough race, that voter contact is what makes the difference.”

Now that Paul Ryan has come out against SOPA--something Zerban’s campaign considers a “flip-flop” given that Ryan raised nearly $300,000 from pro-SOPA donors--Zerban concedes that he won’t necessarily see as much active support from the Reddit community in the future. In an International Business Times article, a Reddit moderator is quoted as emphasizing the community’s nonpartisan interest: Reddit wants to stop SOPA, and is interested in defeating Paul Ryan only as long as it ensures the freedom of the internet. But Zerban said he has hopes that he can continue to work with communities like Reddit on other nationally-relevant issues.

Finally, the district itself is considered a moderate swing district, even after this year’s redistricting put more of it in conservative Waukesha County and less of it in Rock County. Kenosha, Racine, and Janesville, which suffered the loss of its GM plant in 2008, all veer Democratic, and in 2008 Obama won with 51 percent of the vote. In 2004, George Bush narrowly carried the district with 53 percent. Democrats held Paul Ryan’s Congressional seat for much of 1971 - 1995. In other words, there are only so many Republican voters to start with, and Zerban thinks he can win over enough of them to matter.

“Paul Ryan has turned on the people,” Zerban said. “You turn on the people, the people will turn on you. You can have all the money in the world but if you don’t have the votes, you’re not gonna get reelected.

“I wouldn’t be in this race if I didn’t think I could win it. I have built my career and my businesses on the ability to form good teams and good strategies.

“He’s never seen an opponent like this before.”