10-12-2012
Independent write-in
candidate to seek Wisconsin’s 2nd-district congressional seat
Joe
Kopsick, a twenty-five-year-old Madison resident and former political science
major at UW-Madison, is running as an independent write-in candidate for this
November’s election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin’s 2nd
congressional district.
In September
2011, he declared candidacy for the seat, which was left vacant when seven-term
Democratic congresswoman Tammy Baldwin declined to seek re-election and decided
to instead run for the U.S. Senate.
Kopsick - one of
nine candidates to have formally declared intention to run for the office - has
had only three opponents since the two major parties held primaries in
mid-August. They are Democratic State Assemblyman Mark Pocan; 2010 Republican
nominee Chad Lee; and independent write-in candidate Rocky Ison.
As write-in
candidates who did not secure ballot access, Kopsick and Ison have been
excluded from three events open to candidates with ballot access.
The events
included two debates – one which was sponsored by the League of Women Voters,
and the other an upcoming debate sponsored by the Rotary Club of Madison – as
well as the membership meeting of a local businessmen’s organization, which
will feature Pocan and Lee as guest speakers.
On October 7th,
Kopsick - a self-described libertarian-leaning independent - spoke at the steps
of the State Capitol during the 42nd Annual Great Midwest Marijuana
Harvest Festival. He invoked the Interstate Commerce Clause to criticize the
constitutionality of federal drug laws; and criticized candidate Lee’s silence
on the issue, as well as candidate Pocan’s lack of consistency on matters
concerning related personal freedoms.
Kopsick believes
that to free the market is to relieve and moderate suffering, desire, and dissatisfaction;
to support enlightened, rational consent to associations; and to oppose
maliciousness, accidental harm and benefit, information hoarding, the
suppression of values systems, inhibitions on price adjustment, concentration
of influence and power, and non-negligible transaction costs.
Kopsick says
that the need for economic efficiency and social justice calls upon all members
and sectors of society - as a tentative coalition of individuals, businesses, cooperatives, and
communities - to promote the consent of the governed, and freer choice and alternatives in
elections; to bring about an egalitarian funding system for governments through
boycott and social convention; and to reject predatory lending, the manipulation
of currency values and interest rates, and speculation without full possession of assets; in order to guard against the excessive
and undue influence of unnatural monopolies and oligarchies of all varieties;
be they representatives of government, labor, or capital.
Kopsick’s
campaign is active in social-media coordination; the candidate administers the
Facebook group “Joe Kopsick for Congress in 2012”, and runs a YouTube channel
called JoeKopsick4Congress, a blog called The Aquarian Agrarian, and an
official website, which can be viewed at www.wix.com/dontvoteforjoe/2012.
Candidate and Committee Treasurer
Joe Kopsick for Congress
See version 2 at:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2012/10/october-12th-press-release-version-2.html
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