A sister and I visited a college friend of my sister’s in a little town just west of Racine, Wisc. July 13-14. That’s in Paul Ryan’s 1st WI U.S. House District. This college friend is a registered GOP voter and active in local politics. She and her family have lived there all of their lives. Father owned a Chrysler dealership since the 1930s; family members own 5 dealerships of various brands today. She’s 78 years old. Has voted for Ryan for the past 18 years. She moderates Town Hall debates, local issue discussions that he and other local candidates hold every two years. Asked her if she knew Ryan personally – ever have lunch with him on those days he comes for discussions, Town Hall debates? Nope. Let’s him have his privacy. She said a big moment (tongue-in-cheek) was when she could tell him in a debate, “Your time is up!” and he has to relinquish the floor to his Dem opponent. (He can see the orange flag indicating 30 seconds remain. Then the red flag saying time is up.) Her biggest “problem” is to make sure questioners during the Q&A period after the debates get roughly equal time; keep questioners from filibustering with their own monologues. When both parties complain they weren’t treated fairly during the Q&A, she figures she did okay. She said she knows most of the Q&A questioners, so knows what their hobby horses are before they get the microphone usually.

She showed me a big full page ad run by businessman Paul Nehlen saying Paul Ryan was betraying Wisconsin & U.S. workers with his Open Borders policies and support of the TPP. (I forget the details of the ad. Should have asked for a copy.) She didn’t care much about those issues, I gathered. One of her sons was a top executive of a now farm implement subsidiary of Fiat-Chrysler. She said he complained about having to fly to Italy for meetings with the Fiat top management. The Italians were hopelessly disorganized; he’d ask them for a list of topics they wanted covered for his N. American operations, and they’d say, “We haven’t made one up yet. Just show up and answer questions we come up with.” (There are huge #’s of topics that a top exec could be asked about. A little advance warning allows him to pull together a cogent picture of those issues. He was stuck with taking along a complete file of info and hoping he could access it ad hoc.)

He also hated all of the hassles with air travel these days with the terrorist threats adding extra scrutiny to passengers. (I thought about bringing up our corporate tax laws that have encouraged the moving of our international businesses overseas to escape our 35% top marginal tax rates, “tax inversions” and all that arcane stuff. If Obama had agreed to sensible corporate tax laws, some of our companies would not have sold themselves to overseas companies.) Of course, Fiat was the “rescuer” of our bankrupt Detroit automaker. (Hey, this is all too complicated to discuss accurately in a quickie post. Oh, well.)

What does this contribute to thinking about Paul Ryan and his rigid commitment to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and their desire for cheap labor? How many Latinos work in Ryan’s 1st WI District? Probably not too many – yet.