General Discussion

https://www.hopculture.com/minocqua-brewing-company-kirk-bangstad-super-pac/



Kirk Bangstad owns a brewery; he also owns a Super PAC. How many brewery owners can make that statement? Founder of Minocqua Brewing Company in Minocqua, WI, Bangstad wants change – social change, political change, and an end to what he calls “The Trump world we’re living in, where the lines of what is okay have been blurred and there’s a lot of ugliness going around.”

And in the two years Bangstad has been politicized, he has learned to fight the Right with the same tools they employ. Hence, the Super PAC, which Bangstad started in January 2021 after being forced to close his brewpub. “I call it dark money for good,” says Bangstad, who to date has raised nearly half a million dollars to support local progressive causes.



It has been a rollercoaster journey into politics for Bangstad. He has run for the Wisconsin State Assembly, sued the entire Wisconsin school board, used his Super PAC to sue two Wisconsin congressmen and a state senator, and found himself sued by local paper the Lakewood Times. He has attracted equal amounts of ire and admiration from right and left wing activists respectively around the U.S. and beyond, been featured in national media, and had to call the FBI after receiving a hate-speech-filled death threat.

But along the way he has also learned he has a secret weapon. Something he had been perfecting long before politics. Bangstad has the power of beer behind him. In fact, it’s the business of beer, rebuilding, growing, and eventually closing Minocqua Brewing (and switching to contract brew), that sparked Bangstad’s transition from apolitical brewpub owner to a bastion of Northern Wisconsin’s social conscience.

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