The federal Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed a De Pere alderperson. Why?
Peeling back the layers behind city council member Kelly Ruh’s road to casting false electoral votes and involvement in 2020 election lawsuits
De Pere alderperson Kelly Ruh was subpoenaed by a committee of Congress members selected to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Ruh is one of 14 individuals subpoenaed to testify by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. Others subpoenaed include former Republican Party of Wisconsin chairperson Andrew Hitt, and other Republican officials from Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada.
Alders generally vote on zoning laws, municipal budgets, and, in recent times, have gotten heated over mask mandates and COVID-19-related qualms. So, what does a De Pere city council member have to do with the attack that led to the death of five people, the second impeachment of then-President Donald Trump, hundreds of arrests, and four Capitol Police officers’ suicides?
Ruh was among a group of 10 Wisconsin Republicans who met in the state capitol on Dec. 14, 2020 to submit erroneous paperwork and falsely claim to be electoral voters. At the same time, Wisconsin’s electoral college met and submitted Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes for President Joe Biden.
In addition, 15 Wisconsin state legislators, including Assemlyperson Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers) and Sen. André Jacque (R-DePere), signed a letter addressed to Former Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 5, 2021, a day before the deadly U.S. capitol attack. They asked Pence to not certify the election results, a demand those who stormed the capitol building would echo on Jan. 6.
Despite debunked claims of a stolen election and ongoing legal battles and denial by Trump and other elected officials across the country, Biden won Wisconsin by 20,000 votes in November 2020. The Wisconsin Elections Commission referred a minuscule 27 people, of over 3 million votes cast, for prosecution for illegal voter activity in the 2020 general election.
Then-Republican Party of Wisconsin chairperson Hitt said in a statement on Dec. 14, 2020: “While President Trump’s campaign continues to pursue legal options for Wisconsin, Republican electors met today in accordance with statutory guidelines to preserve our role in the electoral process with the final outcome still pending in the courts.”
After receiving his own subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee, Hilt told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he “absolutely will cooperate with the committee's request to provide information.”
Ruh, who has not made a public statement since the committee subpoenaed her, did not respond to a request for comment from The NEWcomer.
Ruh's role in De Pere
Ruh was elected to her position in April 2020. She won 67%, or 931, of the votes over her opponent, Matt Gruetzmacher. While campaigning for alderperson, Ruh said she would focus on infrastructure, keeping taxes low, providing support for youth and families, as well as downtown revitalization and economic development in the nonpartisan position.
In a Feb. 10, 2020 Green Bay Press-Gazette candidate questionnaire, Ruh said the hottest topic district residents faced was the long-awaited Southern Bridge project. She echoed a similar sentiment in a Press Times questionnaire during the 2020 spring election.
Ruh has decades of experience in accounting for nonprofit organizations and publicly traded corporations. She currently works as a controller for a regional vehicle wheel distribution company. In 2014, she was selected as a recipient of a “Future 15” young professional business member by the Greater Green Bay Chamber of Commerce.
Before and during her term as alder, Ruh has had a public relationship and role with regional GOP organizations. She currently serves as the chairperson for Wisconsin’s Eighth Congressional District GOP. She is a former vice president of the Brown County GOP and currently a member of the organization’s “Candidate Recruitment and Training Initiative,” a program the party runs to train and recruit potential local candidates for a variety of nonpartisan and partisan positions.
She also served as an original member of the advisory board for the 1848 Project, an initiative created by former Wisconsin Lt. Governor and current gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Kleefisch that aims to develop conservative, educational agendas in schools across the state.
Ruh has been involved in largely partisan activities during her time in office. Ruh, alongside the conservative organization Wisconsin Voter Alliance, Brown County Republican Party Chairman James Fitzgerald, and others, are listed as petitioners in numerous court cases associated with the 2020 election results.
In October 2020, the Ruh and the other petitioners tried to block private grant funding to five Wisconsin cities—Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha—from the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) to support COVID-19 logistics during the 2020 election. A federal judge ruled against them. After the November 2020 election, Ruh and company petitioned to have thousands of ballots overturned.
“Petitioners ask this Court to do what no court in our nation has ever done before: invalidate all votes cast in a state for a national election,” Attorneys for the Wisconsin State Conference NAACP and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law wrote in a Nov. 27, 2020 state Supreme Court Filing responding to Ruh and company’s post-election lawsuit. “That they do so at all should give one pause. That they do so on the basis of claims that they were aware of long before the election and based on spurious, unsubstantiated, and inadmissible ‘evidence’ is inexcusable.”
Ruh’s district voted for Biden over Trump in the November 2020 election by a tight margin. District two includes De Pere voting wards 6,7,8 and 9. Wisconsin election data shows 1,400 votes were cast for Biden in wards 6-8, over a close 1,310 votes for Trump. Voting ward 18 used to be inside the second district before updated maps passed at the city level in 2021, and 2020 Wisconsin election data reflects this past district line by combining results for Ward 9, which is still inside of Ruh’s district, and Ward 18, now outside of Ruh’s district. Voters in this particular segment cast 851 total votes, with 422 for Biden and 413 for Trump.
De Pere has eight alders and four districts, with two alders per district. Ruh is currently one of two alders who represent De Pere’s second aldermanic district, the other being De Pere City Council President and former Democratic State Senator candidate Jonathon Hansen. De Pere alders are paid roughly $7,000 a year.
District 2 largely encompasses the southeast side of the city, including areas surrounding the East River, the Fox River Trail, and bordered by the villages of Ledgeview of Rockland. Ruh is up for reelection this spring. De Pere resident and election inspector Pamela Gantz is challenging her seat.
The saga continues
Legal battles and false claims about a stolen Fall 2020 election have permeated news cycles and courtrooms in northeast Wisconsin and across the state. Just a day before Ruh and her cohort met in the state capitol in December 2020, the state Supreme Court dismissed a challenge—on a split vote—to throw out votes in heavily Democratic Dane and Milwaukee Counties.
Green Bay has been embroiled in election integrity battles the entire time.
In March 2021, a far-right-funded blog, Wisconsin Spotlight, released an “election report” aimed at Mayor Eric Genrich, claiming Genrich and city staff allowed outside infiltrators into the vote count process. This stemmed from the acceptance of $1.6 million in grant funding, all unanimously approved by the Green Bay city council, from the CTCL in 2020 to support election staff and logistics for COVID-safe voting. Soon after, Senator Roger Roth (R-Appleton) and Assemblyperson Sortwell called on Genrich to resign.
Genrich has remained in the crosshairs of former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who leads a foggy, taxpayer-funded task force that reports to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. Genrich, alongside the mayors of Madison and Milwaukee, were subpoenaed by Gableman to provide testimony behind closed doors about the 2020 election. More recently, Genrich’s legal representation fired back and has requested Gableman take out full-page newspaper advertisements in local and regional papers to issue a correction of his false claims about Genrich.
More than a year later, the fallout from Jan. 6 continues across the country and state. Six Wisconsinites have been charged for illegally entering the capitol building at the now infamous Jan. 6 capitol rally. The basis for this attack on the country’s capital was coordinated around Trump's “Stop the Steal” rally. The attack ultimately failed to stop Congress from confirming Biden's victory, but its reverberations have spread into inquiries of state and local elections officials.
In a recent statement released by the Jan. 6 committee, committee chairperson and Mississippi Congressman Bennie G. Thompson (D) said, “the Select Committee is seeking information about attempts in multiple states to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including the planning and coordination of efforts to send false slates of electors to the National Archives. We believe the individuals we have subpoenaed today have information about how these so-called alternate electors met and who was behind that scheme.”
The subpoena sent to Ruh does not ask for information regarding her political affiliation before and during the 2020 election. Thompson’s letter to Ruh said the committee is “seeking information about your role and participation in the purported slate of electors casting votes for Donald Trump and, to the extent relevant, your role in the events of January 6, 2021.”
To comply with the subpoena, Ruh is required to provide requested materials and records to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol by Feb. 11. She is scheduled to testify on Feb. 28.
Correction as of Feb. 2, 2022, at 3:12 pm CST: a previous version of this article referred to outdated aldermanic district maps to define De Pere’s second aldermanic district and voting wards. This has been corrected.
Note: this article references an upcoming local election.
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