Most stadium beer vendors don’t run for governor. But Ryan Strnad is.
Ryan Strnad lives in Mukwonago. He’s got a dad bod, a scruffy beard and three jobs, working as a beer vendor at Milwaukee Brewers games while also putting in hours at a factory and a dry-cleaning business.
Oh, and he’s running to be the next governor of Wisconsin.
I set up my interview with Strnad over the phone, no campaign team to go through or elaborate planning, just a call and a date. He met me on the UW–Madison campus outside of Memorial Library. Dressed in a button-up shirt with the top two buttons open and his grizzly chest hair poking out, he had just come from an interview with a local radio station and seemed excited by the world of media chaos that he was throwing himself into. There was no trace of any kind of political decorum in his manner.
What is this guy doing running for governor?
Strnad, who’s never served in a political role, has turned heads as an unusual candidate in the race for governor since announcing his decision to run on Aug. 20. Though he’s a long shot, his pursuit of the highest office in the state reveals his sincere belief in the fabled American democracy that so many have begun to doubt.
Strnad — pronounced “Ster-nad” — grew up in Milwaukee with his parents and two younger brothers.
“Ryan was a very good influence on his younger brothers,” said his father, Gary Strnad. “He did a lot for them and looked out for them.”
According to his father, he was a good student and loved playing baseball, which eventually led to him taking a job as a beer vendor at Brewers games, where he’s worked for more than 25 years.
Strnad, now 54, got into organizing when he put together a political action committee for beer vendors at the stadium called Drinks in Seats. Doing that work inspired him to begin fighting for the working-class cause, he told me.
“I’m a one-of-us candidate,” Strnad said. “Which means I’m a hardworking person every day.”
This is not Strnad’s first time running for office. He ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for the state Assembly in 2000. Now, he’s running as a Democrat, which he said is mostly due to the party’s support for unions.
In reality, though, his positions don’t really line up with any party. They’re as unpredictable as Wisconsin weather and seem to be often shaped by the people around him; after a recent conversation with a “breakfast friend,” he was persuaded against banning guns, he told a reporter from WMTV 15 News.
But some see his honest uncertainty and openness to change his views as an admirable trait, a callback to a time when politicians seemed more down to earth.
William Anderson, who became friends with Strnad through Drinks in Seats, said he pushes back on people at work who give Strnad a hard time about his run for governor.
“You see a lot of people complain about politics on social media and stuff but don’t do anything about it,” Anderson said. “At least he’s doing something.”
Strnad and the people close to him are under no impression that he is a frontrunner in this race, but they have a kind of irrepressible faith in the unpredictability of life. His dad referenced the Miracle Mets, who surprised baseball fans with a World Series win in 1969, and the U.S. hockey team’s gold medal in the 1980 Olympics, repeating the phrase: “You just never know.”
Anderson pointed to President Abraham Lincoln’s everyman upbringing.
“It’s not every day you get to know a politician this close,” Anderson said. “These days, these politicians are kind of hard to get to know and trust.”
Strnad is politically unpolished, has no experience in government and is completely outside of his comfort zone. But if you look close enough, the fading dream of American democracy is glimmering at the center of his whole aspiration. He is what every politician pretends to be, a completely unremarkable guy with nothing to hide and nothing to gain except creating positive change.
“He outworks the competition,” his dad said when asked why people should vote for his son.
Anderson hopes his friend can challenge the status quo: “I just tell him, ‘Stir the pot, man.’”
