Berman attributes rising district costs to tariffs and Steil’s record

Mitchell Berman, an emergency room nurse who has worked in healthcare for more than 20 years, is seeking to flip a battleground Wisconsin House seat in November’s midterm elections, framing his campaign around his working-class background and his experience delivering care in emergency rooms — part of a broader Democratic effort to field union and working-class candidates in districts where voters are weary of the higher cost of living.

Berman is running as a Democrat in a swing district that polling shows is leaning Republican. It is the same seat that former House Speaker Paul Ryan represented from 2015 until he left office in 2019, when he was replaced by Bryan Steil, a corporate attorney and former Ryan aide. Berman has framed his pitch as a contrast between his decades in healthcare and what he characterizes as Steil’s disconnect from constituents dealing with rising costs tied to White House policy.

“Being a nurse working in the emergency room, we don’t have the luxury of standing around and not delivering for our patients. We have to make sure that we are addressing concerns in the immediate, making sure that when our patients come in, they leave the emergency department in better condition than they arrive,” Berman said. “That is not happening for folks here in our district.”

Berman, who spoke alongside Rep. Mark Pocan at the Racine County Democratic Party headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin, on 21 August, said his union membership would inform how he approaches legislation.

“Coming from a working-class background, understanding what folks are going through [and] having walked a mile in my neighbor’s shoes gives me the ability to look at legislation from the perspective of having some empathy and understanding for what people are dealing with,” Berman said.

He recalled the impact of Act 10, the measure signed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker that stripped collective bargaining rights from most public-sector workers in the state, and said his own union membership showed how workers have had to fight for fair pay and benefits.

“Just seeing the benefits packages, seeing the work-life balance that was afforded to us because of that union was just incredible,” Berman said, adding that workers getting a seat at the table is “the only way they’re going to be able to have a voice when it comes to making sure they get treated fairly.”

In Wisconsin and across the midwest, manufacturing has contracted as offshoring and trade policies have cut into the industry. Manufacturing jobs in the state declined from 560,000 in 2001 to 460,000 in 2025, with healthcare jobs surpassing manufacturing in the state for the first time. From January 2025 to January 2026, Wisconsin lost 9,500 manufacturing jobs.

Tariffs have cost Wisconsin 3,910 jobs and are adding $1,095 a year to households in the state, according to a July 2026 report by the Midwest Economic Policy Institute and the University of Illinois Project for Middle Class Renewal. Trump has continued to push widespread tariffs, claiming they would bring U.S. factories “roaring back.” Berman said he is not opposed to targeted tariffs, but said the current tariffs have created “an atmosphere and an economy that makes it difficult for manufacturing jobs to survive.”

“Right now people in the district feel betrayed by Bryan Steil because he had made promises to bring costs down, but things have only gotten worse here for people, and I think that’s because of policy positions he’s championed, allowed and abdicated to Donald Trump,” Berman said. “People are starting to recognize that a lot of the woes that they are feeling, when it comes to looking at their bank account at the end of the month, are because of poor decisions made by my opponent.”

Steil’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.