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Bryn Biemeck

 

Mount Pleasant resident Bryn Biemeck is making her first run for office by challenging Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Burlington, as a Republican in the 63rd Assembly District. She knows she’s in a challenging position.

“(Vos) has never been challenged in a primary, and any Democratic candidates these last few years have not done well,” she said. “I want other people to know they can feel part of the democratic process and that anyone can run, can have access and express their view.”

Biemeck has lived in the district for about five years after living in Milwaukee. There has been a lot written recently about her views on Wisconson seceding from the union and Common Core, but Biemeck wanted to be clear about where she stands on those issues as well as education in general.

Secession

“We already have 10th Amendment rights,” she stated. “What voting on it means is that we are reasserting and restating that states have supremacy over their laws, not the federal government.”

Biemeck noted that other states have also voted on secession for the same reasons, and they remain part of the Union.

Common Core

Biemeck doesn’t believe the Common Core standards are high enough and won’t produce the well-rounded students the jobs of the future will require.

“Common Core doesn’t prepare students for a STEM career,” she said. “Common Core teaches at a low level but expects kids to understand at a high level.”

When asked about business owners who write op-ed pieces supporting Common Core, she said that business owners aren’t interested in training the next CEO, they’re only interested in training the next generation of workers who will make the company money.

“Common Core holds people down and takes control away from parents and teachers,” she added. “People at the national level don’t know what Wisconsin needs. Our parents and our teachers do, and they should have the right to do what works here.”

Education

Overall, Biemeck believes education is “grossly underfunded” in Wisconsin. While she supports voucher schools, she doesn’t see them as the answer to the issues plaguing public schools.

“It’s wonderful that students have the opportunity to go to a voucher school, but that is not a solution to the problem,” she said. “Voucher schools are like putting your finger in a dam. Improving all our schools is the solution.”

Biemeck grew up on the north side of Milwaukee and attended Wisconsin Lutheran High School, which her mother, a public school teacher, worked hard to provide, she added. She said growing up, Biemeck saw her mother – an art teacher – split her time between a number of schools as budgets tightened and art was shuffled to the bottom of list.

“Mom bought art supplies out of her own money because there wasn’t money in the budget even for the students who only got art once a month,” Biemeck remembered. “We need to look hard at how money is allocated and stop rewarding the ‘good’ schools with more money while ‘bad’ schools just get worse. How does that help anyone?”

She thinks if anyone should understand how important education is then Vos should.

“As a business owner, he should know this,” Biemeck continued. “Does he want to hire workers with a good education, creative ideas and who are articulate or someone who lacks basic math skills and lacks creativity?”

She has just begun gathering the 200 to 400 signatures she’ll need to get her name on the ballot for the August primary, but she wants residents in the 63rd to know that she fully supports a bottom up form of small government.

“People should be making the decisions, no matter the level of government, and too often our politicians get that mixed up,” she said. “I think Robin does not act in the best interests of his constituents and just marches the party line instead of bucking the system. Residents deserve a true conservative who will stand up for conservatives.”