Shawano County campground owner proudly rejects governor's orders in pandemic, as sheriff questions right response

GRESHAM - It might be arguable whether Ann Retzlaff of Annie’s Campground is in fact defying Gov. Tony Evers’ safer-at-home order.

But just to make the picture a little clearer: If she is, she doesn’t really care.

“To the best of my knowledge, campgrounds are ‘essential,’ but even if (Evers) said we had to be closed, I’d be open,” Retzlaff said. “I can’t stand that he’s wrecking the state.

“We need to get people back to work,” she said. “It’s not careless, heartless. It’s realistic. There is no reason to be closed. If you’re high risk, or afraid of your own shadow, stay home. I don’t want to be forced to stay inside.”

It’s a bit early in the season, but Annie’s Campground, which Retzlaff has owned and operated in Shawano County for almost a dozen years, is open for business. While many small, family-owned businesses remain closed under government orders as an effort to curb the ravages of COVID-19, Annie’s is proudly open and ready to serve any customer who, like Retzlaff herself, is sick of what they see as government overreach, sick of staying at home, and ready to spring back to a normal, pre-coronavirus kind of existence.

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Retzlaff is part of a growing opposition — growing in noise if not number — to a one-size-fits-all, statewide order that aims to stem the spread of the coronavirus, but which opponents say is unnecessary, unauthorized and un-American.

“He is not my governor,” Retzlaff says of Evers on her Facebook page. “He is a Communist and needs to be removed from office.

“The governor cannot tell me I cannot make a living, cannot tell me I have to stay in the house. It is completely my constitutional right.”

Technically, a campground is an “essential business” under state definition and therefore legally allowed to be open. But Retzlaff’s operation has been hosting weekend shindigs featuring live music, apparently to attract campers into the onsite brew-pub and restaurant, where Retzlaff has been doling out prepared food and the brew-pub’s own hemp-infused beer.

The rules specifically allow campgrounds, but they also spell out that campers must not be permitted — much less encouraged — to gather in a common area, where social distancing becomes impossible.

In speaking with the media, Retzlaff coyly skirts around the question: Sure, there’s food and drink available for carryout; she’s busy in the kitchen preparing food, so how is she supposed to know if people are consuming it before they get it outdoors? Yes, the live music is indoors, to give people something to listen to while they’re picking up their order. Certainly, if anyone’s lingering to enjoy the music, that’s kind of up to them, but the bar has plenty of room for social distancing, and plenty of ventilation, so people aren’t breathing each other’s air.

“I have a really big bar. People are safe,” Retzlaff said impatiently.

She said she’s not sure how many people attended the party or how many wound up being inside at the same time.

“Not everybody came in at the same time,” she said. “A lot of times, they’d come in, grab a drink, go out, come back in. … I had three cabins rented, maybe four overnight sites. I don’t know how many seasonals came. Quite a few came to open their campers.

“The only person who showed up with a mask was a reporter from the Shawano Leader. Everybody thinks it’s ridiculous.”

A former medic in the Army, Retzlaff is not insensitive to the idea the coronavirus is dangerous, even deadly, or that it spreads rapidly. But she comes from a political persuasion that fills her with disdain for government decrees and for the mainstream media, and she thinks the numbers of infections and deaths being reported are hugely exaggerated. The Madison-Milwaukee areas may be inundated, but Shawano County has plenty of empty hospital beds and hardly any coronavirus patients, she said.

Shawano County health authorities reported eight confirmed cases of the virus in the county as of Monday, and their message for residents has not changed:

"It is now more important than ever to STAY HOME as much as possible," the county's Public Health Department posted on its website. "Please do your part to support the community and the health care system. Thank you to all those that are taking this seriously, complying with recommendations and orders, and staying home."

Retzlaff, however, believes "there’s no reason for anybody north of a line between Madison and Milwaukee to have been shut down at all.” In fairness, she made her comments before the Green Bay meatpacking industry experienced a spike in cases and before Brown County — which borders Shawano County — grew to have Wisconsin's highest infection rate per capita.

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Conspiracy theories feed the resistance

Retzlaff is a believer, a follower of QAnon, a conspiracy theory that started out pushing the “pizzagate” rumors of 2016 and continues to fine-tune its apocalyptic vision.

As a hater of the mainstream media, Retzlaff gets a lot of her information instead from sources like Prager University, a nonprofit non-university that produces and presents YouTube lectures on economic and philosophic topics but with an unabashed conservative bent.

On her Facebook page, she posts views of people like Dr. Rashid Buttar, a North Carolina physician who, aside from finding himself sometimes at odds with his state’s medical board over some of his alternative medicine recommendations, has made a name for himself as sort of the anti-Fauci.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, an immunologist and one of the lead members of the Trump administration’s White House coronavirus task force, is arguably the nation’s most vocal promoter of social distancing. But to Buttar and some of his followers, Fauci is lead orchestrator of a conspiracy to use fears over the virus as a way to strip people of their rights.

The coronavirus started in China and it was all part of a man-made scheme, which is why China didn’t close its own borders when the virus first surfaced, Retzlaff said.

“China’s plan is to destroy the world economy, and so far, it’s done a pretty good job,” she said.

That doesn’t mean the virus isn’t real. She gets that. But “there are always going to be viruses around,” she said. “People get sick all the time. What are you going to do? At what point are you going to say enough is enough?

“People are going to die. When we’re born, that starts the death cycle. We’re not made to live forever. Live the best you can.”

Her customers know that, and at least the ones attending her weekend parties agree with her viewpoint.

When she opens her bar and restaurant, people with health concerns stay away, as they should, Retzlaff said.

“I didn’t force anybody to be there,” she said. “One couple I know, they have high-risk health problems, and they said they want to be out here, but that they’ve got to wait until it’s all over. I understand that. I totally respect their decisions.

“But it was a good time for people to get out and break free, to go out and hang out with other people.”

Where are the police?

So you might be asking yourself, where are the cops in all this? Why aren’t they shutting her down?

Don’t hold your breath. But the reasons behind that aren’t as simple as Retzlaff and some others might think.

They see Shawano County Sheriff Adam Bieber as an ally, a like-minded protester who is digging in his heels and refusing to succumb to any governmental fear-mongering power-grab, and who is refusing to enforce the law because he agrees with Retzlaff.

That’s simply not the case, Bieber insists.

“I think people are drawing that conclusion, but it’s far from the truth,” he said. “I have been one of the biggest promoters of the governor’s orders in the county. Using social media, I promoted wearing masks before it was cool. I believe the governor’s orders are important, that social distancing is important, staying 6 feet away and washing your hands and wearing masks is important.”

Bieber just believes Evers’ safer-at-home order goes too far, that a blanket statewide order is unfair to places like Shawano County that have few COVID-19 cases.

Unlike Retzlaff and others, the sheriff believes Evers has the authority to issue such an order and that it was smart to try to “flatten the curve,” but that some aspects of the state's rule were unconstitutional. Bieber won’t enforce those.

“I don’t think you can tell people how to exercise their religion, whether it’s dangerous or not,” he said. “That’s in the First Amendment. I will not go into a church and count people or go in with a measuring stick to make sure everyone is 6 feet apart.”

Bieber himself doesn’t think it’s wise for people to gather in churches these days, but he thinks the governor has no business ordering pews to remain empty.

He also thinks the governor should start letting local health authorities decide which businesses can reopen. They're in a better position than Evers to see that safety measures are being imposed, Bieber said.

“I just want him to think about why we are sending everybody to Walmart when we have lots of small businesses that can do everything he asks and more safely,” the sheriff said. “Why can Walmart sell shoes, when one of our ma-and-pa shoe stores has to be closed?”

Those are the reasons Bieber wrote a letter to Evers — and published it on his own Facebook page. That letter, which Retzlaff copied to her Facebook page, garnered praise from her friends and supporters, who expressed a wish that Bieber was their sheriff or that he would run for governor, which makes Bieber laugh.

“They think I’m throwing my middle finger up at the governor, and I’m not,” he said.

Campground falls in 'gray area' of state order

OK, so why isn’t he enforcing the law against Retzlaff and her campground?

“It’s a gray area,” he said.

For better or worse, campgrounds are “essential,” so she has the right to be open, and she has a lot of acreage, so maintaining social distance isn’t really an issue, Bieber said.

Her weekend events may be in violation, but even that isn’t as easy as it seems, he said. Under Evers’ rule, taverns and restaurants can provide takeout, with no consumption on premises, which means on the property inside or outside. But a campground isn’t like a tavern parking lot; if someone takes a beer outside, they’re technically still on the premises, but that’s also where they are living, so it isn’t clear whether the rule applies, Bieber said.

The live music is a concern. Retzlaff advertised it on her website as a live band, but it turned out to be a solo performer, so it wasn’t as if musicians were gathered shoulder-to-shoulder in violation of the social distancing decree, Bieber said.

A deputy was sent to check it out last weekend and saw no violations, the sheriff said.

The whole safer-at-home order, while arguably a good idea for health reasons, is a bit of an awkward thing for police anyway, as it seems to fall somewhere between actual law and a strong recommendation, Bieber and other police officials say.

A bad look for police

“We’re not really arresting people,” Bieber said. “We’re not going to lock someone up and handcuff them. We’re documenting it.”

He spoke of a recent case that made the national news, about police confronting a man playing catch with his daughter in a public park.

“It’s a bad look for us,” Bieber said. “You can document what you see and advise the person they need to stop. In extreme cases, we could send up charges, and you could spend 30 days in jail or be fined $250, but I know our DA is hesitant to press gray areas.”

That’s the way Brown County Sheriff Todd Delain views it, too. Deputies are instructed to treat violations as opportunities for education, Delain said.

“What we usually do is make contact, advise them of the order, educate them about what the issues are … and then move on,” Delain said. “Our experience has been that it’s been very, very successful. We haven’t had to do more than that with anyone really.”

Out of 178 complaints since Evers’ order went into effect, Green Bay police have referred only two cases to the district attorney’s office, and those involved people who were just blatantly uncooperative and wouldn’t listen, Chief Andrew Smith said.

“One of them was a bar that was opened illegally, that had multiple patrons and were just serving them as if nothing was wrong,” he said.

The other case involved an owner claimed incorrectly that his business was essential under the order.

“We always are trying to get voluntary compliance,” Smith said

Police must also be sensitive to people reporting each other out of spite, Bieber said.

The people calling in with the complaint at Annie’s are not eyewitnesses.

“They just want us to investigate,” he said. “And if they’re unwilling to testify, I really think that’s harassment.

“Annie is in an area where people dislike her anyway, her views, her business …. She has a lot of people that dislike her.”

Retzlaff just dislikes them back.

“I was out by the campfire a week and a half ago, and there were cars driving by very slowly,” she said. “I got some negative pushback because I’m open, but there was no reason to be shut. I’m deemed essential, so pound sand. Mind your own business and leave me alone.”

Contact Paul Srubas at (920) 265-3087 or psrubas@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @PGpaulsrubas.