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Adam Benedetto

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Adam Benedetto
Elections and appointments
Last election
August 9, 2022
Education
Bachelor's
University of Wisconsin, River Falls, 1999
Personal
Birthplace
Madison, WI
Religion
Unitarian Universalist
Profession
Business owner
Contact

Adam Benedetto (Republican Party) ran for election to the U.S. Senate to represent Wisconsin. He did not appear on the ballot for the Republican primary on August 9, 2022.

Benedetto completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. Click here to read the survey answers.

Elections

2022

See also: United States Senate election in Wisconsin, 2022

General election

General election for U.S. Senate Wisconsin

Incumbent Ronald Harold Johnson defeated Mandela Barnes, Adam Nicholas Paul, and Scott Aubart in the general election for U.S. Senate Wisconsin on November 8, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Ronald Harold Johnson
Ronald Harold Johnson (R)
 
50.4
 
1,337,185
Image of Mandela Barnes
Mandela Barnes (D) Candidate Connection
 
49.4
 
1,310,467
Adam Nicholas Paul (Logic Party) (Write-in)
 
0.0
 
67
Scott Aubart (American Independent Party) (Write-in) Candidate Connection
 
0.0
 
0
 Other/Write-in votes
 
0.2
 
4,758

Total votes: 2,652,477
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for U.S. Senate Wisconsin

The following candidates ran in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate Wisconsin on August 9, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Mandela Barnes
Mandela Barnes Candidate Connection
 
77.8
 
390,279
Image of Alex Lasry
Alex Lasry (Unofficially withdrew) Candidate Connection
 
8.9
 
44,609
Image of Sarah Godlewski
Sarah Godlewski (Unofficially withdrew) Candidate Connection
 
8.1
 
40,555
Image of Tom Nelson
Tom Nelson (Unofficially withdrew) Candidate Connection
 
2.2
 
10,995
Image of Steven Olikara
Steven Olikara Candidate Connection
 
1.1
 
5,619
Image of Darrell Williams
Darrell Williams
 
0.7
 
3,646
Image of Kou Lee
Kou Lee Candidate Connection
 
0.7
 
3,434
Image of Peter Peckarsky
Peter Peckarsky
 
0.5
 
2,446
 Other/Write-in votes
 
0.0
 
177

Total votes: 501,760
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Republican primary election

Republican primary for U.S. Senate Wisconsin

Incumbent Ronald Harold Johnson defeated David Schroeder in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate Wisconsin on August 9, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Ronald Harold Johnson
Ronald Harold Johnson
 
83.6
 
563,871
Image of David Schroeder
David Schroeder
 
16.3
 
109,917
 Other/Write-in votes
 
0.1
 
693

Total votes: 674,481
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Campaign themes

2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Candidate Connection

Adam Benedetto completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Benedetto's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

I have been active in politics for decades but I never have felt comfortable identifying with a political party. For many years I worked with the Green Party because I felt both Democrats and the Republicans were taking too much corporate money to be acting with the public's interest in mind.

I have entered the Republican primary because Sen. Johnson has been a dangerously irresponsible Senator. He has intentionally lied to the American public in ways that have directly cost people their lives. 11,867 Wisconsinites have died from Covid 19 so far, which Ron Johnson says a little bit of mouthwash can cure. This is but one example of his shameful leadership. It is critical we remove him from office before he does more harm.

As for my background: I ran for Sheriff of Dane County in 2002 as a Green Party Candidate and received 32,000 votes. I managed Restaurant Magnus in Madison and was the General Manager of Joseph Leonard for Happy Cooking Hospitality. In 2016 I opened my own bicycle tourism company called Loudest Yeller Bicycle Tours. I’m married and have a 2 year old daughter with another one on the way due July 4th.

I intend to win this primary.

  • Biden won the 2020 election. The Republican Party needs new leaders and a new platform. There is no place in our modern American society, for a political party that denies science, embraces sexism, racism and lies—and has no platform other than a servile relationship with an aspiring authoritarian.
  • Ron Johnson is unfit for office. When he says January 6th wasn't a violent insurrection, when he suggests you should fight covid with mouthwash instead of vaccines, when he intentionally lies and gaslights the public -- he shows he is not fit for office.
  • Since the Citizen's United Decision America has lost its democracy. Money pollutes every aspect of our government. Dark corporate money floods in through special interest groups. Russian money pours in through the National Rifle Association... Regular people can't afford to run. Eventually corporate money consolidates into Authoritarian power. We must stop that now.
I'm very passionate about democracy and the people of Wisconsin.

American Democracy needs to be protected and improved upon. No one wants to run for office anymore. If they do, they have to pander to big money interests or incredibly gerrymandered districts and so we get the most craven of politicians. Corporate power puts people last and profits first. Eventually Corporate power morphs into Authoritarian Control. You have strong men like Trump rise up make us question all of our institutions -- our health officials, our election officials, our neighbors, our friends-- he even divides us from our family. When violence comes our democracy falls. January 6th was no accident.

I happen to like and trust Wisconsinites. I believe more things bind us than divide us and I believe that we need to peacefully find common ground in our differences.

We should all be concerned with the consolidation of wealth in our country. When twelve American's control more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the country something has to change. The rural poor and the urban poor are both struggling. Everyone is struggling. $34,000 is the average income for Wisconsin people and that's not enough money for people to pay their medical bills, buy a house and pay back student debt. It's impossible to do it. We need to tax the ultra-wealthy and invest in farms, students, local businesses, and regular people.

My hero is "Fighting Bob" LaFollette. He demanded reform, smashed monopolies and demanded direct democracy at every turn. "The will of the people shall be the Law of the Land" was his slogan and it is still painted on the ceiling of the Governor's room in the Wisconsin Capitol. He would throw a fit if he saw how the State Republicans have gerrymandered Wisconsin so that the minority always wins and always rules. He would revoke the corporate charter of Facebook in light of the misinformation they have spread and the way they have trampled on democracies here and abroad. Fighting Bob would have wept in disbelief watching the insurrection on January 6th and had each person in the crowd that day charged with Treason. On these fronts, I'm sure he never would have backed down.
Honesty and compassion.

It's easy to forget how good you have it when you're rich, or even, middle class. I'm inspired by people who continually think of those who aren't well off, or, who aren't seeing the even hand of justice. It took me a long time to understand the quote by Eugene Debs where he says, “While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

The government is supposed to take that perspective at all times.

If more politicians thought of government the way that Debs did we wouldn't have a society where corporations profit off the sick with obscene health care costs. We wouldn't have corporations profiting off of incarcerated people. We wouldn't have corporations making billions in profits while their workers live on food stamps. We wouldn't have insurance companies profiting off of every conceivable fear they can invent. We wouldn't have driven our cars to a climate crisis that is an existential threat to all life on the planet. All of those things are immoral and yet they comprise the basis of our economy.

The first historical event that truly touched me was Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, I was only 14 but seeing a student who was brave enough to stand in front of a line of tanks was stunning. I told my mom we had to do something and so we organized a candle light vigil in honor of those fighting for democracy in China. We floated milk jugs with candles in them down the Wisconsin River at night and sang "We shall over come in peace". It was very moving.
Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal. It's short and it focuses on a love of learning and books. It also deals with censorship. At a time when books are being burned in America it would be a good book to revisit.


I also recommend revisiting the Richard Brautigan book "The Abortion: A Historical Romance of 1966". It is a funny and romantic read that makes a strong case for giving women access to safe and legal abortions.
My daughter is two and has a number of Disney songs that she's constantly getting stuck in my head. "A dream is a wish your heart makes" is the latest.
The challenge we face is to preserve our democracy and stop our slide into Authoritarianism. Trump wants to be King. He does not believe in majority rule. He does not believe in "one person = one vote". He does not believe in democracy. He is trying to make us question the fairness of our elections so that he can take power with a minority of the votes. On January 6th he showed he would use violence to overthrow the government. It will be a challenge for us to continue to trust each other for the next three years and beyond 2024. If some rule of law is not enforced, soon, I'm afraid this American Experiment in Democracy will come to a crashing halt.

I'm running in large part because I want to do my part to try to preserve this union-- for all of its flaws. I fear once we slip into distrust and chaos it will be impossible to rebuild our democratic institutions on such a massive scale and America will either fall to a dictator or splinter into a series of fragmented states competing for power. Maybe there will be a dictator and then a series of civil wars. That has happened all too often in the history of the world. I don't want my kids to see anything like that.

Term limits are necessary. Ron Johnson pledged to leave after two terms and now he's running for a third. Donald Trump has said he wants to be President for the rest of his life.

I think term limits are necessary and should be mandatory. I think there should also be age limits on people in office. People over 70 have no business running the country.
When I decided to run people said, you have excellent ideas but what makes you a credible candidate? It's an interesting question. My opponent, Ron Johnson washed dishes in business school. He graduated. Immediately after graduation he was made VP in his brother-in-law's business. From there he moved into the Senate. What experience did he have? He sold plastic . What did he know about helping people with the tools of government? What concept of democratic practices did he learn in business school or selling plastics? His qualification was that he was Rich. Rich people tend to think that because they have money their opinions mean more than other peoples. But that's not the case. I'm proud I'm not a person whose obscene wealth is my only qualification for office.

It is beneficial for senators to have previous experience in government but too often our senators are from select class of the wealthy. When Russ Feingold entered the Senate he was one of the poorest with only $83,000 to his name. It's no surprise to me he wrote the McCain/Feingold Bill that sought to limit the influence of money on politics. When I see Ron Johnson is one of the wealthiest Senators and notice that he's doubled his wealth in the past 12 years working as a US Senator, I wonder how he did that. I'm not saying he did illegal things but one has to wonder if the 100 Senators are an inside trading organization, or, if rich people just help each other in legal ways that volley wealth and power back and forth?

I have lived a large life. I lived in Bulgaria in 1993, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I lived in socialist France and I've lived in Communist (hyper-capitalist) China. I have worked in local third parties and been in meetings of the Homeless Youth Caucus of the Green Party. Most importantly I've read a lot. Ron Johnson is notably ignorant in regards to what it means to live in a healthy democracy.
What's the difference between Russian Oligarchs and Senator Ron Johnson?

The Russian Oligarchs know Putin is in charge and they're scared to death of him, where as, when Ron Johnson gets invited to the Kremlin he's the first to sit on the photocopy machine.
I met Antonin Scalia in Madison, Wisconsin, about a week after the Supreme Court decided Bush v Gore in 2000. He was speaking to a group of white males that fancied themselves as the newest members of the Federalist Society. The young white males hung on his every word as he laid out different arguments for cases that he decided on the court -- I remember him saying, "You know, sometimes you know something just because its right or wrong. All of those arguments fall aside and you say, 'What would my mother say about this?' and then you decided the case on that." At the time I was preparing for the LSAT with the hopes of going to law school and here a Supreme Court Justice was negating all of the logic tests, all of the legalese and talking about making law on gut decisions.

Antonin Scalia was born in 1936 and so his mother was probably born around 1910. The Voting Rights Act didn't pass until 1965 so who knows what his mother thought about black people having the right to vote. Who knows what she thought about anything. I guess, to answer the question, I'd look for a judicial nominees ability to see fairness both now and in the future. Some people are visionaries when it comes to fairness which is a difficult thing to judge.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

See also


External links

Footnotes


Senators
Representatives
District 1
District 2
District 3
District 4
District 5
District 6
District 7
District 8
Tony Wied (R)
Republican Party (7)
Democratic Party (3)