Bobby Gronert Lacks Enthusiasm and Technique to Win Alderman Election

Despite winning over the hearts of hundreds of women in the two years he’s been a student at UW-Madison, Bobby Gronert lacked the enthusiasm and technique to pull off a win in the race for the District 8 Seat on the Madison City Council. Facing off against fellow Sophomore Ellen Zhang, Gronert received 401 votes, approximately equal to the number of Tinder DMs he sends per week. However, he only walked away with 19.1% of the total vote share, approximately triple his response rate on said Tinder DMs. Zhang swept the race with an astonishing 79.9% of the vote (confused voters writing in Bucky Badger accounted for the remaining 1%) after receiving endorsements from outgoing District 8 Alder MGR Govindarajan, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, and several Democratic organizations on campus.

Speaking to several expert political analysts (political science students who didn’t know either candidate’s name until last week) about the race, a common theme emerged: campaign strategy dictated the race. Rachel Laughtin, a sophomore political science major, told the Misnomer, “One key difference in voters’ minds was how the candidates approached crucial policy issues on the campaign trail. Zhang made a strong push for expanded late-night transportation and diversified housing to tackle several issues Madison is facing. Gronert, on the other hand, leveraged his enthusiasm and technique to fixate on attacking Luke Fickell and the current state of the UW Football program.”

Peter Tinwan, a junior international studies major, echoed these sentiments, saying, “Gronert seemed to try to secure a large base of Greek Life participants by criticizing University leadership for cancelling Lily’s Classic following safety concerns and reports of negligence, and repeatedly hosting campaign rallies at frat parties. While they do make up a large swath of the campus population, most frats and sororities are actually located in District 2, making them unable to vote in his race. His obsession with Luke Fickell was also rather mystifying, as the football season was not a hot-button issue for voters. And say what you will about Fickell, but at least he won the race for his job. I haven’t seen a loss this bad since the Ohio St. game.”

Another key blow to Gronert’s campaign came when the Daily Cardinal published a startling article late Monday night, exposing his “‘overbearing and unintentionally creepy’ messages to women”. Bobby apologized for these messages, saying that he regrets sending them and has since “used his enthusiasm and technique to grow and change as a person,” Anonymous complaints regarding these messages were submitted to the Madison chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, one of Gronert’s primary campaign backers, but the group chose not to publicize the results of its investigation, with organization member Carl Marks stating, “We already take enough heat from people whose only definition of socialism comes from Fox News, so we couldn’t have it out there that one of our leaders gets no play. That’s too much of a blow to our reputation”. Several messages Gronert sent to women were also posted to various social media platforms by their recipients, but YDSA stated they believed “none of it is from any woman themselves.”

It’s sure to be a tough night for Gronert, who was not planning to spend the night alone, as he had hoped to combine his enthusiasm and technique with his new pickup line of “I just got voted Alderman, so I guess that means you have to sleep with me”. But for now, Bobby recedes into the shadows, back to messaging random girls on Snapchat, “horned up as shit”, as one student claims. In an effort to rebuild his voter base for the next public election, Bobby will continue to canvas until the 2026 Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary, where he will inevitably lose again, likely due to his worst nightmare, the general opinion of the public.