Charlie Sykes
American talk radio host
Charles Jay Sykes (born November 11, 1954) is an American political commentator who was editor-in-chief of the website The Bulwark. From 1993 to 2016, Sykes hosted a conservative talk show on WTMJ in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was also the editor of Right Wisconsin which was co-owned with WTMJ's then-parent company E. W. Scripps. Sykes is a frequent commentator on MS NOW (formerly MSNBC).
Early life and education
Charles Jay Sykes was born in Seattle, Washington and grew up in New York and Fox Point, Wisconsin. He is the son of Katherine "Kay" Border and Jay G. Sykes, a lawyer who later worked as a journalist for several small newspapers in New York before joining the Milwaukee Sentinel in 1962. Jay Sykes later became a lecturer in journalism at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, a board member of the American Civil Liberties Union Wisconsin chapter, and ran for Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin unsuccessfully against Martin J. Schreiber in the 1970 Democratic primary.
After graduating from Nicolet High School, Sykes enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where in 1975 he graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in English. While at Milwaukee, Sykes was a member of the Young Democrats of America, and following a nonreligious upbringing he converted to Roman Catholicism at age 18. In 1974, using the slogan "A Different Kind of Democrat" due to his opposition to abortion, Sykes challenged Republican incumbent Jim Sensenbrenner for Wisconsin State Assembly and lost.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charlie Sykes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.