Don Behm

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The two candidates in the Aug. 9 Democratic partisan primary election for Wisconsin's 6th Congressional District seat are both rivals and friends. Sarah Lloyd and W. Michael Slattery walked together, with Russ Feingold, in 4th of July parades in Oshkosh and Omro.

Lloyd, of Wisconsin Dells, and Slattery, of Maribel, know each other through their involvement in the Wisconsin Farmers Union and Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative. They also crossed paths while campaigning at June Dairy Month breakfasts in the district.

Both Lloyd and Slattery work on family farms. Strengthening local and agricultural economies is at the core of their respective campaigns.

The candidate who receives the most votes in the primary will move on to challenge incumbent U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Glenbeulah) for a seat in Congress in the Nov. 8 general election. Independent Jeff Dahlke of Mequon also is running.

The 6th District sprawls across east central Wisconsin from Sheboygan to Wisconsin Dells.

Lloyd, 44, separates herself from Slattery by telling voters only she has experience in public office. She served two terms on the Columbia County board of supervisors from 2004 to 2007.

As a supervisor on health and human services and nursing home committees, she gained an understanding of how federal Medicare and state Medicaid programs impact the lives of urban and rural people, Lloyd said.

Slattery, 70, said his varied experience in international trade and finance before turning to farming in 1999 makes him a more qualified candidate to represent the district in Congress.

He worked for 12 years, from 1982 to 1993, in a loan office of Japan's largest bank inside the World Trade Center in New York City. He subsequently worked for six years for a large U.S. finance company in Tokyo.

The two friendly rivals criticize Grothman for contributing to a Republican strategy of obstructing action in Congress on Democratic proposals. As a consequence, Congress has not taken action to beef up the Social Security Trust Fund or Medicare, they said.

"The public is not satisfied with this stalemate in Congress," Lloyd said.

Slattery describes Grothman as a career politician who moved to Congress after 23 years in the state Legislature.

"Career politicians are divorced from the needs of citizens," he said.

Lloyd works with her husband, Nels Nelson, on his family's 400-cow dairy farm in Columbia County. She also works for the Wisconsin Farmers Union and the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative to help farmers build their businesses and gain access to better markets.

She served on the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board from 2008 to 2014.

In 2013, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack appointed Lloyd to a three-year term on the National Dairy Board, where she represents Wisconsin dairy farmers.

Why should urban residents vote for her?

"We're all in this together," Lloyd said. "We need to build an economy that has good jobs with wages that support working families so they can pay good prices for farm products."

"We can do this by investing in education and technical training so workers have the skills they need for jobs."

And Congress can do more to aid local economies by investing federal dollars in roads, bridges and renewable energy, Lloyd said.

Slattery shares that goal. He also wants Congress to help modernize water and sewer systems.

Slattery and his wife, Nancy, grow corn, soybeans, winter wheat and alfalfa on the Manitowoc County farm they have owned since 1999. They also raise Holstein steers, lambs and chickens.

If elected to Congress, his international finance experience would give him a unique set of credentials to weigh in on trade deals and treaties, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, Slattery said.

"These agreements are always negotiated primarily in the interests both of U.S. global companies and their foreign operations," he said.

He believes free-trade agreements have resulted in job losses here.