Week in Review

Fair season is in full swing. Christian spent Thursday walking the Sheboygan County Fair, and one stop stuck with him: the American Legion booth, where two Army veterans, one Air Force veteran, and one Marine traded stories from their service. The Saturday before that, he was at the Manitowoc County Fair, working through 4-H livestock exhibits, a robotics team, veterans and first responders, and a few local conservation groups. His takeaway from both fairs was the same: every community has people quietly putting in the work to make it better, and fair week is a good reminder of how many of them there are.

Sunday morning was a rare change of pace, watching a soccer match in Appleton with no coaching duties for once. By the afternoon he was back on the doors with the team.

Join Us: Canvass in Fond du Lac County

Tomorrow, the team is canvassing the Fond du Lac County part of SD-9. Location and time are still being finalized. Christian will be out of town at a soccer tournament, but the team will be out knocking either way. If you would like to join, reply to this email and we will get you the details as soon as they are set.

Civic Spotlight: A Longer Look at Sunrise Acres

A couple of weeks ago we told you about Christian's visit to Sunrise Acres, the dairy farm where Dan and Shelly Mullikin talked with him about milk pricing, labor, and succession planning. That conversation landed a little differently this week, after a statewide report showed Wisconsin has dropped below 5,000 dairy farms for the first time.

A short video from that visit is now up, just over a minute long, and it fills in some of what that number alone can't show.

In it, Dan explains that the pricing system dairy farmers work under was built in the 1930s and hasn't kept up (that's what he means by no "make allowance": farmers get paid a flat rate per hundred pounds of milk, close to where it sat back in 1990, and there's more to how that rate gets set than most of us ever have reason to look into). He also points to the beef industry as a preview of where dairy could be headed, and that one has a wrinkle too: a growing number of dairy farms are already breeding into beef genetics as a second revenue stream, which is quietly reshaping both industries at once.

Both of those are bigger conversations than we can do justice to in a newsletter, but they're worth understanding if you want to see past the "5,000 farms" headline.

The part that sticks is the catch-22 he describes: the only way to keep up under a flat price is to produce more, but if every farm does that, the added supply pushes the price down further for everyone. It's the kind of squeeze that can leave a farm looking valuable on paper while making it harder to justify passing on to the next generation.

Christian's response in the video is less about a specific policy and more about posture: bring people together who genuinely want to work in the same direction, because some of the bigger challenges facing rural communities get cheaper and easier to solve when neighbors are talking with each other instead of past each other.

Get Involved: Three Ways to Help

We are standing up two new volunteer teams, plus one ask for anyone with the right spot in their yard:

• Postcard writing. A low-key way to help from your kitchen table. The session date is still being set, but we're timing it so postcards land in mailboxes around September 17, the same week absentee ballots start going out.
• Phone banking. We are building an ongoing phone bank, both scheduled sessions and event-based shifts, to reach voters a doorstep conversation might not.
• Host a sign. If your yard is on a busy road, a corner lot, or anywhere with a lot of daily traffic, a sign there does real work for us. Let us know if that's you.

No experience needed for any of the three. Tell us which fits (or all of them):

Save the Date: Educators' Town Hall

Looking a bit further out: Christian's holding a town hall for educators on Tuesday, September 29, at Jake's Cafe. It's a chance for teachers and school staff across the district to talk directly with him about what they're seeing in the classroom. More details soon, but go ahead and save the date.

Also, Sheboygan County's Day of Caring is Thursday, September 24, the county's largest single-day volunteer event, matching volunteers with service projects at parks, schools, and nonprofits across the community. This isn't a campaign ask, just a community one: Christian's signed up for a morning shift and would love to see some familiar faces there.

Also on the calendar: Flapjacks & Football, Saturday, September 12, morning, at the Sheboygan Falls YMCA, and a Tuesday evening reading of Captain Underpants with Christian on September 15. More on both soon.

Know Before You Vote

Election Day is Tuesday, November 3. If you are voting absentee or by mail, that process starts September 17, when clerks are required to mail ballots. Either way, now is a good time to check that your registration is current: myvote.wi.gov

Coming Next Week: A Personal request from Christian

Next week you'll hear from us again, this time with a direct ask from Christian about supporting the campaign financially. We're not going to pretend that's not a little unusual, two emails in a short stretch. But running as an independent means there's no party covering the cost of signs, printing, and everything else that comes with getting in front of voters. Christian's never been fully at ease asking people for money either, but he'd rather be upfront about that reality than dance around it. So consider this fair warning, from a campaign that would rather ask plainly.

If you'd rather not wait for next week's email, you're welcome to get ahead of it right now:

Sports Corner

We're still collecting responses to our sports survey. How do you usually experience sports? Playing, watching in person or at home, coaching, or mostly there for the kids? Takes ten seconds. We'll share what we're hearing in an upcoming issue.

Thank you again for being part of this effort. Every doorstep, every event, every conversation helps us understand this district a little better.

The Ellis Community Team

Christian Ellis for Wisconsin State Senate, District 9

Paid for by Friends of Christian Ellis
christianellisforwi.com