WILL president ‘a bit angry’ about cartoon depicting him as executioner

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Rick Esenberg, president and general counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said he was initially “a bit angry” after seeing a political cartoon depicting him as an executioner with several nooses. The Cap Times, a Madison newspaper, published the cartoon this week in response to WILL’s lawsuit against the Wisconsin Elections Committee.

The lawsuit calls for the removal of as many as 209,000 names from the state’s voter-registration rolls. An appeals court put it on hold on Tuesday.

The cartoon has been taken down from the Cap Times’ website, but WILL’s director of communications, Collin Roth, tweeted a photo of it on Wednesday. Both Esenberg and the Cap Times’ opinion editor, Jessie Opoien, spoke about the cartoon on the 620WTMJ radio show on Thursday morning.

“My initial reaction was to get a bit angry about it, but if you do what I do, this type of thing comes with the territory,” Esenberg said.

Esenberg said comparing the voter rolls lawsuit to lynching threatens to exacerbate an already polarized political situation.

“You can be ignorant and nasty if you want to, but you don’t have to be,” Esenberg said.

Opoien agreed, saying it’s a reminder to her to “be more thoughtful in advance.”

“This really does renew my commitment to trying to bridge that disconnect a little bit,” Opoien said. Follow @WLJReporter