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Again in her clowning years, Karen DeSanto received a name from the king of Morocco.
“We hung up on him,” she stated. “We thought it was certainly one of our mates pranking us.”
It was really staff of the consulate, however the king wished them. DeSanto and her then-husband have been each skilled clowns with the Ringling Brothers, they usually additionally carried out as a duo.
Someway, King Hassan II had heard concerning the DeSantos, and he flew them in on his non-public jet to carry out for his granddaughter’s birthday at his palace within the capital metropolis of Rabat.
His royal majesty, sitting on his throne in the midst of a room, beloved their efficiency. The little lady? Not a lot.
“She hated it,” DeSanto stated with a chuckle. “That was our first and solely celebration.”
Clowning has taken DeSanto throughout the nation and the world, from probably the most opulent areas of Carnegie Corridor to a lot humbler locations — she has used a pig barn to vary into costume earlier than performing in a rural area — and now, to the Wisconsin State Capitol.
A longtime Baraboo native, she was elected to the state Meeting in 2024 after heading the Boys & Ladies Membership of West Central Wisconsin for greater than a decade.
But it surely’s been a protracted journey on the circus practice — each actually and figuratively — to get right here.
Operating away with the circus
Born in Sacramento, DeSanto, now 61, stated she dreamed of seeing the world. Her father took her to see the circus each summer season, and younger Karen would go every single day it was on the town, a lot that the clowns acknowledged her and even roped her into the act, pulling her out of the group to carry out gags with them.
Her father was an enormous a part of her life, she stated, and he or she was his caregiver when he received sick in his early 60s. Whereas sitting within the ready room throughout certainly one of his appointments, DeSanto got here throughout an advert for clown school in {a magazine}. She tore it out and shoved it right into a pocket. After her father died a couple of months later, when she was 27, she discovered herself “itching to do one thing completely different” along with her life, so she auditioned.
“I’m an enormous believer in saying sure,” she stated. “The world simply opened as much as me after that.”
After commencement, DeSanto received one of many few contracts provided to a feminine clown by the Ringling Brothers.
She lived and traveled on the circus practice, the place her quarters have been subsequent to the elephant automobile. The pleasant beasts would attain their trunks to her window to seize bananas from her hand. One of many elephants she rode throughout performances was additionally named Karen, and he or she reunited along with her pleasant steed years later on the zoo the place it had retired. DeSanto swears the a lot bigger Karen remembered her.
She married one other clown after assembly her husband below the Large Prime. They toured the big-city circuit, visiting locations like New York and Los Angeles, in addition to the rodeo route, which took them to smaller cities, together with Waco, Texas, and Erie, Pennsylvania.
One in every of her first brushes with politics got here in 1995, when DeSanto and her comrades carried out for then-Speaker of the Home Newt Gingrich, future presidential candidate and then-Senate Majority Chief Bob Dole and different politicians within the car parking zone of the U.S. Capitol. Gingrich had requested the Ringling Brothers, already on the town for a couple of nights, to carry out exterior the halls of Congress to have fun the corporate’s a hundred and twenty fifth anniversary. The entertainers executed the well-known elephant lengthy mount, the place the huge animals line up, place their hooves on the pachyderm in entrance and pose.
“I’ve nice tales of kings and queens and all in betweens,” DeSanto stated. “You title it, we’ve performed it.”
The Boys and Ladies Membership
Ultimately, the DeSantos purchased a house close to the Ringling Brothers headquarters in Baraboo, the place they labored because the resident clowns for the Circus World Museum, and raised their daughter Emily, now 27.
In 2012, DeSanto left the circus to work for the Boys & Ladies Golf equipment of West-Central Wisconsin, most of it as CEO.
In her time there, she led the revamp of the financially failing group, which included golf equipment in Baraboo and Tomah, placing it on firmer floor, she stated. DeSanto additionally oversaw the growth of recent golf equipment in Reedsburg and Portage.
She and her employees made the group self-sustaining by tapping into mothers and dads, native companies and philanthropic organizations just like the United Means, she stated. They linked with their elected officers, like state Rep. Dave Considine, a Democrat from Baraboo, and pursued state and federal grants to assist fund their after-school applications for rural children.
“I’m simply going to toot the horn that our golf equipment have been the agricultural footprint for the nation,” she stated. “However don’t get me improper, it was all the time a wrestle.”
She retired in 2024 from the Boys and Ladies Membership, however one other attention-grabbing problem arose for the versatile performer. And DeSanto discovered herself saying “sure” as soon as once more.
The Wisconsin Meeting
After Considine introduced he wouldn’t search reelection in 2024, he went about recruiting a number of Democratic candidates so his constituents might have choices, he stated.
DeSanto, with whom Considine had labored to safe some grant funding, was certainly one of his picks.
“She’s actually good in entrance of individuals. She is aware of folks very well,” he stated of DeSanto. “I believe she is also a very robust fighter for particular person rights. It was all about preventing for folks to have the precise to achieve success and pleased.”
Having labored at her present golf equipment and helped to launch the brand new ones, DeSanto stated she received to know the district and the individuals who stay and work there.
She noticed how essential establishments like faculties and the well being care system have been to the well-being of rural communities and knew she could possibly be an advocate.
“I felt I had the chops, I felt I had the expertise, I felt I knew my communities fairly effectively,” she stated. “That’s why I threw my hat within the ring.”
And in an period the place cash is so rampant in politics, her fundraising background couldn’t damage both.
A 3-candidate race emerged within the major, and a few voices, largely on-line, tried to “weaponize” her background towards her, DeSanto stated, suggesting a clown didn’t belong within the Wisconsin Legislature.
Considine had ready her for that.
“One of many first issues I stated was ‘Karen, don’t run from it.’ Embrace it and run on it,” he stated. “And he or she did and I believe she ran a very good race.”
The circus is sort of well-liked within the district, DeSanto stated, noting that the Ringling Brothers had grown up in Baraboo and made it their house base of their internationally famend group.
The criticisms backfired. She cruised to victory, successful greater than 53% of the vote within the major, a better share than the opposite two candidates mixed. DeSanto gained the final election with greater than 54% of the vote towards a Republican challenger. The district had turn out to be extra pleasant to Democrats in the newest spherical of redistricting.
About half a 12 months into her 2-year time period, during which her occasion is within the minority and thus unable to do a lot with out GOP help, DeSanto has been a sponsor on a pair payments, together with ones that would supply free, wholesome college meals, decrease pharmaceuticals and develop the homestead tax credit score, however Republicans trying to lower spending stripped these from the funds.
She forged certainly one of her first contentious “no” votes final month on the state funds negotiated by legislative Republicans within the majority, Gov. Tony Evers and state Senate Democrats, saying it didn’t do sufficient on points essential to her district, like inexpensive housing growth, broadband entry and public college funding.
Requested what she’s hoping to perform in her first time period, DeSanto stated, “I actually am concentrating on listening, and absorbing what this Legislature is, and the way the state Capitol works.”
“Individuals say the Legislature is a circus, and I say ‘no, it’s not,’” she stated with a chuckle. “The circus begins and ends on time. The folks there are gifted and sort and pleasant.”
One other one she hears is that “authorities is a bunch of clowns,” an assertion with which she vehemently disagrees.
“Clowns are extremely educated people, they usually can do absolutely anything,” DeSanto stated. “And so they take their craft very significantly. And so they deliver pleasure and happiness.”
This text first appeared on The Badger Challenge and is republished right here below a Inventive Commons license.
The Badger Challenge is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.
