Former Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., loves to deliver lectures about “civility,” but he doesn’t appear to care much for the concept himself.
In mid-March, Feingold spoke to the Rotary Club of Milwaukee and was asked about civility in Congress. Feingold responded by explaining that civility begins at a young age, suggesting kids today are learning incivility from television.
“How people think and develop a view about how they should conduct themselves as adults begins at a young age. So I think it’s fair to say I always tried to be civil. I will be civil,” Feingold said. “And I think we should encourage others to do that as well.”
Back in 2011, Feingold told graduates of Lawrence University that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s state budget was “harmful to our state” and blamed it for delivering blows to the state’s bipartisanship and civility.
“The last few months have been devastating to that,” Feingold said. “We’ll fix it, but it’s going to take time. The rift is very deep, but we need to fix it.”
But in 2015, Feingold apparently took a different approach to civility, by calling his Senate opponent Ron Johnson an “SOB.” During the Winnebago County Democratic Party’s Corn Roast event in late 2015, Chairwoman Marcia Steele recounted a story of Feingold telling her he wanted to beat Johnson in the election.
“And then he just said, ‘You know Marcia, I really need to beat that — and I swear to god, he said to me — that SOB in his own backyard,” Steele told a crowd.
After Steele’s remarks, a former communications advisor for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Max Croes, stood up and told the audience: “That story that was just told, that’s true.”
So much for civility, right?
In an email to the Washington Examiner, Steele now claims that those were her words and not Feingold’s, even though she specifically told the crowd “… I swear to god, he said to me — that SOB …” Her claim is even odder since Croes said afterward that the story was “true.”
Still, Steele is now saying she merely got “carried away” at the picnic. She has so far not responded to an Examiner inquiry as to why she claimed Feingold was the one who said “SOB.” This post will be updated if and when she responds.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
