Charlie Sykes’ radio show ends next Monday. If he’s sad about that, he’s not letting on.

“Is there something I want to say that in the past I would have censored myself?” Sykes says. “Screw it ... let’s make sure you leave nothing on the field. I’ve got to think about that.”

There’s no grand scheme for the final broadcasts, no plans for a dramatic farewell. Sykes is tired, and there’s plenty of work to do once WTMJ’s 50,000-watt signal ceases to carry his mid-morning show to listeners in much of eastern Wisconsin and some in Illinois.

Sykes has become one of the state’s most influential conservative voices over nearly a quarter-century, but in the last year his opposition to Republican president-elect Donald Trump has earned him an audience beyond Wisconsin. His combative interview with Trump during the state’s presidential primary propelled him into multi-year contracts with NBC and MSNBC and attracted national reporters who sought to capture the story of a prominent conservative who refused to support the Republican nominee.

A month before Trump was elected, Sykes announced his plans to leave WTMJ. He said the decision was made more than a year ago, for both personal and professional reasons. Sykes turned 62 this year and his father, Jay Sykes, died at 63. He wants to spend more time writing, traveling and with his family.

If he had any doubts about the move, the political climate of 2016 erased them.

* * *

It’s Monday Dec. 5, and Sykes is having a conversation with an audience he can’t see. Sleek Koss headphones frame his face as he punctuates his points with understated hand gestures. Wearing a striped shirt and khaki pants, he is surrounded by printed copies of articles and opinion pieces that he unstaples and stacks as he reads from them, sharing his thoughts. To his left, a steady stream of feedback shows up on a monitor displaying tweets and emails. To his right are show monitors and a mosaic of TV screens.

It’s a quiet show for a Monday, with no political heavy-hitters as guests. The most spirited debate among callers comes in response to a discussion about millennials and “participation trophies.”

At one point, Sykes asks his audience whether any of them would like to argue the so-called #Pizzagate narrative — a conspiracy theory that posits Hillary Clinton is involved in a child sex trafficking ring — should be taken seriously.

“Thank God, no,” he says when asked whether he’s gotten any calls to argue that point.

Most of the listeners who would make that argument have already abandoned the show, Sykes says.

“Once it was determined I was an apostate — these are the people who said, ‘I’m never listening to you again, because you might actually challenge my preconceived notions, and your job is not to do that,’” he says.

Sykes spends a lot of time these days reflecting on what his job is and, moreso, what his role was in creating and contributing to a political climate he now rails against. Once his radio show ends, he will immediately turn to writing a book titled “How the Right Lost Its Mind,” to be published next year by St. Martin’s Press.

* * *

At first, Sykes brushes off the question of how he became so influential in Wisconsin politics, arguing the results of the 2016 election would suggest he doesn’t have that much influence after all.

But Sykes’ show has served as both a launching pad and megaphone for conservative causes and politicians including Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Ron Johnson and Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, a man whose ego and national presence has led Sykes to consider him his “Frankenstein monster.”

Liberals and conservatives agree on the scope of his influence, but disagree passionately about whether it has had a positive or negative effect on the state.

State Rep. John Jagler, R-Watertown, who first met Sykes about 20 years ago, said he’s always seen him as a sort of “conscience” for Wisconsin conservatives.

“Talk radio will continue to play a significant role in Wisconsin, but it won’t be the same without Charlie Sykes,” said Republican consultant Deb Jordahl. “He is the only talk radio host with a significant and diverse multi-media presence.”

Sykes says he didn’t have a specific goal in mind when he started his show. He was a “print guy” moving to radio and he just wanted to survive.

“I wanted to be able to talk about things I was interested in and enjoy myself,” Sykes says. “Things got more serious later on. But I didn’t set off with any sort of agenda to transform the world.”

Sykes grew up as a Democrat, raised in a liberal household. His father was a journalist, Democratic operative and professor.

“Jay Sykes was a curmudgeon and a gadfly, at times impish, at times irascible,” wrote a group of his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in a faculty resolution honoring him after his death in 1985. “When he insisted that the beat of his drummer was correct and the rest of us were out of step, he was often right.”

The younger Sykes worked as a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal in the late 1970s and early 1980s, then as an editor for Milwaukee Magazine. Bill Lueders, longtime news editor for Madison’s Isthmus and now associate editor of The Progressive, wrote some pieces for Milwaukee Magazine during Sykes’ tenure there. He credits a letter of recommendation from Sykes for helping him land the Isthmus job in 1986.

After leaving print journalism, Sykes served a brief stint as an aide to controversial Milwaukee County Executive Dave Schulz. Soon after, he made his foray into Milwaukee talk radio, occasionally sitting in for Kathleen Dunn on WTMJ and frequently appearing as a guest on WISN host Mark Belling’s show.

When the Federal Communications Commission revoked its Fairness Doctrine in 1987, stations pursued the profitable conservative talk model pioneered by Rush Limbaugh and packed the airwaves with hosts like Belling and Sykes.

In 1992, Sykes was given his own show on WISN. The next year, he took over Dunn’s time slot on WTMJ.

Sykes compares his transition from liberalism to conservatism to his more recent experience rejecting the politics of Donald Trump.

“There is a sense of liberation that I feel, like I’m not on a team. There’s no team,” Sykes says. “I’m not in the tribe, so I will tell you what I think about any given issue. So to that extent, I’m willing to be open-minded about these issues.”

* * *

Sykes’ critics dispute that his rejection of Trump has opened his mind, arguing his period of self-reflection is too little, too late.

“Do you think that because you got your act together, or supposedly got your act together in the eleventh hour, that you’re about to change the direction of all of the years of venom that you’ve spewed about people? Really? That makes no logical sense,” says Sheila Cochran, chief operating officer of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council. “If you couldn’t hear the voices of people screaming and saying things or you couldn’t even allow them to be heard on that radio station, seriously — you carved out all of the voices that you didn’t want to hear.”

Cochran says it was well known in Milwaukee that callers with opposing views frequently didn’t make it on the air during Sykes’ show.

Scot Ross, executive director of the liberal group One Wisconsin Now, says Sykes has “degraded our public discourse” by denying opposing viewpoints an opportunity to respond to his attacks.

“Charlie Sykes has attacked my organization and me personally for 10 years and has explicitly refused repeated requests to have us on the air to respond,” Ross says. “And he has stoked a climate in which fake news thrives by questioning the veracity and motives of the press on a daily basis.”

Sykes doesn’t disagree. He acknowledges he grew more “militant” after the tumultuous statewide battle over Walker’s 2011 Act 10 legislation, which effectively eliminated collective bargaining for most public employees and pitted the left against the right in a way not seen before in Wisconsin. Sykes admits he stopped making room for more diverse voices on his show after that, “and that contributed to this amazing divide.”

“On the other hand, I didn’t make the divide,” he quickly adds. “What’s happened in Wisconsin, things are so incredibly polarized. So did I encourage the polarization? Did I ride the wave of the polarization? I don’t know.”

Sykes also acknowledges the “tremendous role” of talk radio in paving the way for “fake news” — the morass of propaganda, conspiracy theories and outright lies circulating rapidly on social media that, in the case of #Pizzagate, inspired a man to fire shots at a Washington D.C. pizza place he believed was hiding sexually abused children.

Sykes argues the rise of talk radio was, in large part, a response to conservatives feeling abandoned and underserved by traditional publications.

But that frustration led to years of attacks not just on particular stories, but individual reporters, editors and media organizations. The institution of journalism has been undercut and Sykes’ listeners simply don’t trust what they cast as “the media” anymore.

“I would have argued with you even two years ago that talk radio made people smarter and more savvy, more engaged consumers of news. I would have argued that,” he says. “And now it’s like, OK, but we contributed to this alternative reality silo where people have their own facts and a lot of it is completely untrue.

“This demonization has become so vicious and so dangerous. You criticize the media for bias and then you realize it’s totally delegitimized. So, I started the fire. Am I responsible for the prairie fire?”

* * *

His detractors would answer that with a resounding “yes.”

Cochran says she occasionally listened to Sykes’ show, but stopped years ago when she decided there was no value in it.

“I don’t listen to hate. I’ve tried to not listen to hate for many years,” Cochran says. “There’s a difference in understanding what the opposition to your opinion or views might be — these aren’t opposing views, this is misinformation.”

Although Sykes is quick to draw distinctions between his show and others, like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, Cochran says she sees no difference among conservative hosts in Wisconsin or throughout the country.

“They all sing from the same hymnal,” she says. “So I, quite frankly, can’t sort Charlie Sykes out from the rest of them. As far as I’m concerned he’s just like the whole crew of ‘journalists,’ or whatever we’re calling white supremacy radio these days.”

The primary objection to the “new Charlie Sykes” is his contention that he wasn’t fully aware of the racist elements of the right wing.

“I just think part of the shock was to realize the conservative movement was not what I thought it was, and that many of our allies were not who I thought they were,” Sykes says. “So I’m going through the process now of asking, OK, what did I miss? What did I not know? What did I know but decided to ignore? What did I get wrong?”

Sykes says he got sucked in, over the years, to the idea that he should have no enemies on the right — opting not to call out things he now openly derides, like the myth that President Barack Obama is secretly a Kenyan-born Muslim.

“How the hell did this happen to us?” he asks. “Was this a hijacking or was this a logical continuation of things we were doing?”

Esquire columnist Charles Pierce wrote in August that for Sykes to be questioning who his “allies” were makes him “either a charlatan or a fool, and my money's on the former.” Sykes “knew damn well who his ‘allies’ were,” Pierce wrote.

Cochran agrees, arguing Sykes could only turn a blind eye to something he was “very aware of.”

“He has literally put the ‘bully’ in ‘bully pulpit,’ attacking poor people, minorities and even referring to the First Lady of the United States of America as ‘Mooch,’” says OWN’s Ross.

Sykes and his website, Right Wisconsin, have indeed referred to Michelle Obama as “Mooch.” That came after Rush Limbaugh dubbed her “Mooch-elle” while accusing her of “uppity-ism,” a term with racist implications.

Sykes also once famously played a clip from a 2011 video called “It’s Free, Swipe Yo EBT,” by a woman named Chapter Jackson. The video featured a black woman named “Kewanda” surrounded by children (credited in the video as “Kewanda’s baby’s by different daddy’s”) boasting about buying liquor, candy and clothing with food stamps, chanting the refrain, “All you have to do is f—k, and nine months later you’re getting the big bucks.”

Does he regret that?

“Yeah. Those two things — by the way, the Michelle thing, I think I probably did that once,” he says. “It’s certainly without class, there’s no question about it. You go back — that contributed absolutely nothing to the dialogue in any way whatsoever. The EBT thing, yeah, that would certainly be one.”

But he also rejects the suggestion that those moments, or any others on his show, amounted to dog-whistle racism.

“That’s not necessarily a defense, it’s just when someone says ‘well, that video is racist,’ I actually saw it as something that had something to do with some of the things I had written about in (the 2012 book) ‘A Nation of Moochers,’” he says. “But I can see how — and the problem is, you’re accused of dog-whistles for everything, so at a certain point it’s like, no, this is just your attempt to shut conservatives up.”

Sykes argues liberals have launched meritless accusations of racism at conservatives for too long, so when Trump and the so-called “alt-right” rose to prominence, the criticism didn’t stick.

“I can only call it for what I see,” Cochran says. “Because you failed to recognize it in you or because you failed to acknowledge it, and now you want to, now that it’s sitting there and it’s actually had the scab ripped off it and it’s blatant — he has to live with that. I don’t.”

* * *

Much of what liberals abhor about Sykes is what has earned him plaudits from the right. Conservative talk radio has given Wisconsin Republicans an opportunity to present their message to voters, free of filters imposed by reporters or editorial boards. Long before Walker was a governor and a presidential contender, he was an up-and-coming state representative who frequently appeared on Sykes’ show.

Just as inextricable as the link between talk radio and the rise of Trumpism is its tie to Wisconsin’s “Republican revolution” — six years of near-uninterrupted GOP control of state government, along with the rise of prominent national figures like former Republican National Committee chairman and now Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus and House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Sykes’ microphone was crucial for Republican lawmakers during Act 10, Jagler says.

The Watertown Republican first met Sykes as a reporter and news host on WTMJ, where he hosted the slot before Sykes’ broadcast.

“He can be intimidating,” Jagler says. “So the first few years, I was scared to death of him.”

Their relationship grew closer when Jagler worked as communications director for then-Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald. He and Sykes had lengthy conversations several times a week to discuss Act 10, Jagler says. For Republican lawmakers driving to Madison from southeastern Wisconsin, the show offered the support for the controversial legislation they didn’t receive at the Capitol.

More recent legislative moves, like the passage of a right-to-work bill and the partial repeal of the state’s prevailing wage laws, may not have happened without a push from Sykes’ show, Jagler says.

Lueders also notes Sykes’ defense of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, which Republicans targeted in the 2013-15 state budget. Lueders worked for WCIJ for four years.

“He wrote a piece in strong support of the Center, against this attack that was brought by the Legislature, not by the governor — in fact, it was Gov. Walker who vetoed it from the bill after lots of people, including Sykes, got up in arms about it,” Lueders says.

When Jagler won his first Assembly election in 2012, he received two congratulatory phone calls: one from Walker, the second from Sykes. Sykes followed up with a text message, warning him: “Now you’re fair game.”

“And it was a joke, but it wasn’t a joke at all,” Jagler says. “He let me know that just because we’ve been friends, if I do something that he perceives as not good or not conservative … he’s going to call me out on it. I’m not protected. I always thought that was funny.”

Jordahl credits Sykes’ long-term influence with “an unparalleled ability to break down complex issues for his listeners” and a knack for eliminating the ability for elected officials to hide behind political spin.

People who don’t share Sykes’ views tend to perceive him as “this terrible monster,” Jagler says. But to those who know him, “he’s a warm guy.”

“There’s another side to him that I think he never really let out because of the nature of the show that he did, but he is an extremely loyal friend,” Jagler says. “It’s hard to become his friend. It’s hard to get down, to get him to that point, but once you are, he’s a loyal friend.”

Jordahl, whose home was searched as part of a John Doe investigation into Walker and his conservative allies, conveyed the same feelings.

“Before the John Doe raid on our home — and the homes of others — became public, Charlie called to see if I’d heard any rumors about a secret investigation. The pain and fear was so raw, I teared up, and all I could say was, ‘Pray for me, Charlie,’” Jordahl says. “Charlie didn’t press me for more information. He promised to pray for me and told me he would always have my back. And he has.”

Asked to describe Sykes in one word, Jordahl chooses “generous.”

“Despite his incredibly busy schedule, Charlie has lent his time and talent to help dozens of charitable causes from the Honor Flight to helping orphans, and he always makes time for friends and associates seeking advice and guidance,” she says.

* * *

Sykes’ email inbox is full of booking requests for national TV appearances. Between that and a two-month turnaround on his book, he’ll be plenty busy after his final show. Any plans he had for relaxation have been scrapped, at least for the short-term. But at least he won’t be “strapped to the mast” the way he has been for the last few years, he says.

He’s looking forward to snow blowing his own driveway. He’s planning to get a second German Shepherd and he has hopes of logging 1,500 miles on his bike.

He would also like to spend some time visiting his grandchildren in France, although even then, he admits, it might be hard to stay away from Twitter, where he has over 37,000 followers and is an active participant.

His appearances on MSNBC have resulted in a strange phenomenon, where the majority of negative feedback he receives is now from conservatives who disapprove of his objections to Trump.

In a Nov. 16 email sent to a long list of politicians and media outlets, Republican activist and Wisconsin Conservative Digest publisher Bob Dohnal referred to Sykes and other “Never Trump” conservatives as “Judas goats” and “Benedict Arnolds.”

“Let them swing slowly, slowly in the wind,” Dohnal wrote. “Do not be scared of these clowns, call them, kick them in the knees or other places. They cannot use their radio shows to persecute, you the FCC and their owners do not like that and they do not like lawsuits. These clowns should not set the agenda for the Conservatives.”

In many ways, Sykes feels “excommunicated” from a tribe that valued party over country, he says.

“I really enjoy going on MSNBC,” he says. “You can’t criticize the media for ignoring conservatives and then attack conservatives for going on the media. I’ve enjoyed that a lot, to actually talk with intelligent people who I know I fundamentally disagree with.”

Lueders says he enjoys watching Sykes on MSNBC.

“He’s always articulate and thoughtful,” Lueders says. “I think he makes conservatives look good and I think he makes Wisconsin look good. What’s not to like?”

For Sykes’ critics, the answer is “plenty.”

Cochran argues Sykes’ stand against Trump is less principled than it is opportunistic. She says she expects him to use his newfound national attention as a stepping stone to something bigger.

“For those of us that have lived through this insanity before, and have lived with it all of our lives, I can honestly say that as a black woman, especially one (working) in labor, what the country is about to go through, I’ve been going through all my life,” Cochran says. “And I think that most black people would say that, that there’s nothing new there. I’m just glad that white people are now recognizing it for what it is and actually are pushing back and fighting about it.”

Sykes thinks the division and polarization — wrought in part by conservative talk radio — will only get worse in the near future because the people who bet on division have been empowered by the results of the November election.

“Charlie Sykes is certainly not the first person to wash his hands of some disaster he created and then turn around and blame everyone else. But he is culpable for much of what he now decries, and he has refused to own up to his role in it,” Ross says. “Nothing has changed other than he apparently now thinks that some Republicans are wrong, the Democrats are still wrong and he’s the only one who’s right.”

Sykes rejects the suggestion that his dissent from the Republican Party comes from a place of self-interest.

“The reality is, this was a soul-crushing slog this year … I haven’t changed. I haven’t changed my position. It’s like, ‘everyone else has moved on, what’s wrong with you? You must have some deep plot,’” Sykes says. “No, trust me, I made a lot more money on this radio show than on anything else I’m going to do. I’m going to be dropping many tax brackets. I guess at a certain point, part of the advantage of my age and the decision to go is I don’t have to put up with the bullshit anymore.”

In a 2000 Milwaukee Magazine profile of Sykes, Lueders referred to him as a “contrarian.”

He says the description still fits.

“That actually fits his current role very aptly,” Lueders says. “The entire conservative movement had this, ‘I’m going to hold my nose and vote for Trump’ attitude — and he says, ‘why?’ From very early in this process, he’s been a consistent and principled voice of opposition against the consensus of his party, which is, ‘Trump’s our guy.’”

Whatever comes next for Sykes will be predicated on the insistence that the beat coming from his drum was correct.

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