Leadership Quote by Ron Kind

A politician doesn’t praise “career and technical college” systems by accident. Ron Kind’s line reads like hometown boosterism, but the real work happens in what it refuses to argue about. It’s a values statement disguised as a civic compliment: dignity for practical training, respect for “the folks back home,” and a subtle rebuke to the prestige economy that treats four-year degrees as the only respectable ladder.

The phrasing is tellingly frictionless. “Very proud” is emotional without being vulnerable; it signals allegiance, not autobiography. “Back home” shrinks policy into community, letting Kind speak as a representative rather than a partisan. And “system” matters: he’s not celebrating a single campus or a feel-good program, he’s validating an infrastructure of workforce development - public investment that can be framed as economic pragmatism instead of ideology.

Contextually, this kind of sentence usually lives inside a broader pitch: manufacturing competitiveness, closing “skills gaps,” keeping young people in-state, or justifying funding in a budget fight. It’s also a safe bridge across cultural divides. Career and technical education polls well with voters who are tired of culture-war abstractions and want a politics of tangible outcomes: jobs, paychecks, apprenticeships, local employers staffed.

Subtext: Wisconsin isn’t asking for charity; it’s offering a model. Kind is positioning the state as competent, self-respecting, and productive - and positioning himself as the kind of Democrat who can talk about labor without sounding like he’s talking down.