By Steve Welcenbach
Very few elected leaders remain true to their core promises to the people they serve. Most of these leaders succumb to the power of the swamp, the allure of establishment perks, a longing for membership in the “cool kids” club, and the group think begins.
One elected leader, Janel Brandtjen (R- Menomonee Falls), defied the swamp and followed a pathway of integrity and true service, truly a Representative without Rival.
No other State Representative comes close to Janel’s voting record on preserving innocent Life, school choice, crime, your second amendment rights or strengthening Wisconsin’s families. Wisconsinites can always count on her to stand up and shout out the truth about any issue regardless of the incoming fallout from Leftist politicians, the fake news media or even members of her own party. The political courage Janel routinely displays needs to be replicated throughout our Wisconsin governmental system.
On Monday, January 5, 2015, a Waukesha County supervisor named Janel Brandtjen swore an oath to become a member of the Wisconsin State legislature. Ever since that moment, State Representative Janel Brandtjen took on the Madison establishment. And she’s winning.
Killing 2015 Assembly bill 1 that put the school choice program at the mercy of DPI became Janel’s first target. Sadly, “republican leadership” including Robin Vos and Dan Knodl offered that bill for consideration.
In June of 2017 Brandtjen demanded that Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn resign after numerous tragedies which resulted from his “no chase policy” that enabled carjackers to speed away unchallenged. The policy encouraged carjacking and sent a soft on crime message to the criminal element. Janel took on tough questions in talk radio interviews and didn’t shy away when the leftist media lambasted her efforts. Chief Flynn resigned on Jan 8, 2018.
Janel repeatedly called upon former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and other city leaders to rein in the criminals so personal safety, economic growth and prosperity could be reestablished in Milwaukee. No other Wisconsin Legislator joined in her plea including Robin Vos and Dan Knodl.
Since Gov. Scott Walker took office in 2011, the Wisconsin State biennial budget of $63 billion morphed to $90 billion, almost a 50% increase. With Republican majorities controlling both houses of the legislature, one might expect the “less government, less spending, less taxes” Republican Party platform to protect the Wisconsin citizen from this spending balloon. Apparently very few republicans honor their word. In fact, Janel Brandtjen remains the only returning republican legislator in the assembly to have Voted NO on multiple budgets. In Janel’s 2017 press release, she details her reasons for not supporting the 2017-2019 budget. Every dollar government spends need to be scrutinized to ensure the appropriateness and necessity of each expenditure. That philosophy needs to spread throughout Madison!
In the 2019 budget disaster, Brandtjen and only two other representatives voted no on a budget that increased spending by $8 billion. Representatives Ramthun and Gundrum joined her in voting no to the outrageous spending package. Robin Vos and Dan Knodl voted for that spending debacle.
Protecting the unborn remains Janel Brandtjen’s top legislative priority. Her unrivaled leadership on Pro-Life legislative initiatives earned her endorsements from all pro-life advocacy groups as well as being named Pro-Life Wisconsin’s Legislator of the year.
Going back to 2015, Robin Vos and his leadership team, including then assistant majority leader Dan Knodl squashed a bill (AB 305) that would outlaw planned parenthood and other abortion providers from selling the body parts of murdered babies to the UW system. The Pro-Life duo of Jacque and Brandtjen introduced the bill. After the big money rolled in (Vos needs millions to protect his sycophants) Vos quickly killed the bill and cashed the checks.
Who would oppose such a bill? Go to https://lobbying.wi.gov/What/BillInformation/2015REG/Information/12213 to see the list of big money donors that have an interest in aborted baby body parts.
*Note: When the bill came out in August of 2015, Knodl did not sponsor the bill, only after the public hearing did he sign on, but then the republican team killed it. For the money.
In March of 2018, in response to the Parkland school shooting in Florida, Governor Scott Walker called a special session of the legislature to address school safety. That package authorized funding for school safety initiatives including “bullying.” Republican leadership, which included Robin Vos and Dan Knodl, worked with retiring State Representative Lee Nerison to amend the bill to expand background checks from just handguns to all guns. These backroom deals typical of Republican leadership aim to sneak unpopular and unconstitutional items past the general public. Any and all changes to statute that affect our 2nd amendment rights need to be properly vetted and debated in full view, allowing the public to have input during the hearing process. Only Representatives Jacque, Allen, and Brandtjen asked unanimous consent to be recorded as voting “No” on the bill.
Note: Whenever Republican leadership (Vos and company) want to pass a bill without taking responsibility for it, they use a voice vote to hide personal voting records. That didn’t work for Janel Brandtjen, Scott Allen and Andre Jacque who insisted their vote be recorded.
Election integrity cannot be separated from a Constitutional Republic. If each citizen’s vote cannot be guaranteed to be properly counted, leaders will be installed instead of elected. Have you noticed? On November 6, 2020, two days after a presidential election day which displayed irregularities previously unseen, the Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos announced his directive for the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections to review the administration of Wisconsin’s presidential election especially to “concerns surfacing about mail-in ballot dumps and voter fraud.”
“Wisconsin citizens deserve to know their vote counted,” Vos said in a statement.
Vos cited the committee’s investigatory powers under state law to enact the directive. As more evidence of election fraud accumulated, Vos brought Assembly Resolution AR–15 to the floor in March, where the entire republican caucus directed the committee to fully investigate the 2020 election. But as Vos’s role in the drop box fiasco and multiple illegal actions by the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) surfaced, Vos began to stonewall these efforts. By the autumn of 2022 he called the Chair of the Campaigns and Elections Committee and his own appointed special Counsel, Michael Gableman, conspiracy theorists. Below is a small sampling of what the committee found.
• 17,271 ballots were illegally harvested during the city of Madison’s “democracy in the park”
• 48,455 ballots were cast by people who had declared themselves “indefinitely confined” after the clerks for Milwaukee and Dane counties illegally encouraged them to do so.
• 92,000 vulnerable seniors were denied the legal protections that statutorily required “special voting deputies” provide.
• 139,000 ballots were illegally harvested in Robin Vos’s drop boxes.
The democrat Mayor of the city Green Bay installed a democrat operative from Brooklyn, New York to run Green Bay’s election, over the objection of the city clerk. Both the clerk and the deputy clerk resigned.
To this day not one of the bad actors involved in these illegal activities has been brought to justice. As a matter of fact, they haven’t even been questioned. Robin Vos won’t allow it.
Representative Brandtjen procured through open records requests thousand of emails from Milwaukee, Racine, Madison, Green Bay and Kenosha that document the unacceptable roles outside groups played in the 2020 election. She also possesses thousands of documents from the 21 hearings she held over the course the past legislative session. Visit https://legis.wisconsin.gov/assembly/22/brandtjen for all the election documents.
Janel Brandtjen displayed over the past 2 years to all Wisconsinites her commitment to securing the integrity of every citizen’s vote so we can truly elect our leaders in our constitutional government. Her political courage should light a fire under all Wisconsin voters to keep Janel in our legislature and demand other representatives to imitate her example.
Janel Brandtjen currently represents the 22nd Wisconsin Assembly District. She will be on the February 21st ballot in the Republican Party primary to replace Alberta Darling in the 8th Wisconsin Senate district.