America’s Dairyland confirmed a law of political nature.
Ron Johnson won, but Badger State Republicans blew a chance to do much of anything else.
B riefly surveying the mixed election results in Wisconsin can cause one’s eyebrow to pitch upward querulously. In the major statewide races, Democratic governor Tony Evers won alongside an ideological opponent, Republican senator Ron Johnson. But Tony Evers’s and Ron Johnson’s victories are not astonishing after closer review. Instead, they’re the logical outcomes of running established players with robust and well-built election machines. In an age of breakneck electoral vacillation, Wisconsin confirmed a law of political nature: It’s better to be the incumbent.
Wisconsinites favored incumbents in every statewide race: from the governor down to the secretary of state. The only seat flipped was the third congressional, wherein a Dem moderate prudently retired in a rightward-shifting district and was replaced by a Republican. The victor, Derrick Van Orden, is a Trumpy former Navy SEAL who won by four points over lifelong agriculture bureaucrat Brad Pfaff.
The results in Wisconsin, a polarized state with deep-blue blotches on a red map — a microcosm of the broader United States — look as if the state collectively said, “Eh, we’ll give you all another go-around and see how you do when things are sort of normal.” The Left got its lockdowns and wokeness; the Right got the Dobbs decision and January 6 hijinks. A draw.
What Wisconsin’s results do not reflect is an election season in need of more advertising, whatever some might say. Reporting in the postelection days relied on interviewing strategists and asking them how losing campaigns had failed: Shockingly, the strategists thought spending more money would resolve the problem. How can one not laugh at the brazen self-interest?
Alexander Shur reported for Madison.com:
Democrats fault Barnes’ relative lack of funding during crucial moments of the race, like in September when pro-Johnson groups aired ad after ad that painted Barnes as soft on crime and accused him of wanting to cut police budgets.
“I think when you look at those critical couple of weeks in September where he was so badly outspent, it almost seems like the left kind of let its guard down for a minute, and that’s when the Uihlein and Hendricks PAC came in,” said Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki in reference to Wisconsin Truth PAC, which put tens of millions of dollars behind Johnson.
As someone who sat at many a bar and watched patrons ignore the televisions that ran only, and I mean only, political ads between Jeopardy and ESPN highlights, the problem wasn’t inadequate ad spending. The incessant Gitmo-grade agitprop contributed to voter exhaustion, which works in favor of the incumbents. The wisdom becomes, “If both are horrible, lousy rotters, then the schmuck I know is better than the schmuck I don’t.” Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to get the results one would have had were none of the money spent in the first place.
Disgust and shock at the obscene spending by campaigns was the most common utterance at the bar. This profligacy was almost always received with collective head-shaking and looking out the window or at the bar ceiling with arms crossed in silent but brooding Protestant judgment — though this motion was possibly also as an opportunity to think about how many fishing boats one could buy with $100 million.
It’s worth noting that Johnson eked out a win over current lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes by a point. At the same time, Evers rolled to victory with a three-point drubbing of the charmless Tim Michels (three points in Dairyland is a lot). We can infer from the races’ similar vote totals that there was a significant number of split ballots, with some Johnson voters preferring the comfortable status quo of a Dem governor and a profoundly red state legislature that effectively cancel one another out. Michels had to pitch the Wisconsin public on the benefit of single-party rule and a series of laws on crime, abortion, and schools. Evers, meanwhile, offered a state government that does and says nothing of consequence for four years. Seen this way, splitting one’s vote for Johnson and Evers was arguably the most small-government option available. How’s that for a provocative take?
Reviewing my Election Night prognostication, I was off by four points. I wrote in the Corner that Tuesday evening before the results began to roll in:
Having covered this race almost exclusively for the past month, attending a half dozen events for each campaign, I think Johnson takes it by four points, plus or minus one. Mandela Barnes had an event last night that was so underattended and ended so lamely that I have a hard time believing he’ll unseat an incumbent in what appears to be a red wave.
People I talked with had stronger reactions to Tim Michels — the gubernatorial candidate running against Governor Evers, so that race will be tighter — I reckon Michels wins it within a point.
What I did suss out in my coverage, however, was that there would be a three- to four-point split between Johnson’s and Michels’s point totals. The Senate race was treated as a separate entity by voters, with the statewide seats receiving about the same splits. Arguably the strongest Republican on the ticket was Amy Loudenbeck, who looked to remove 30-year secretary of state Doug La Follette. She came within three-tenths of a percentage point, by far the closest of any R, but still lost and was a point and a half behind Johnson.
The Wisconsin GOP had an opportunity to control every aspect of Wisconsin’s government: the court, the legislature, and the executive. But GOP primary voters chose the gruff construction executive Tim Michels over a much more agreeable candidate in Rebecca Kleefisch — a successful Walker-administration lieutenant governor and archetypal Midwestern mom.
Note: Republicans, if you want to win suburban women, a competent conservative politician who just so happens to be a suburban woman may be a swell choice. Between Rebecca and Amy, they could have been the St. Joseph’s Casserole Conservatives, but no, that’d make too much sense. Better to have an off-putting “stop the steal” suit, apparently. Milwaukee didn’t show up for this election, while Dane County, populated by upwardly mobile women, had a 23,000-vote shift toward Democrats compared with 2018 — an already lousy year for Wisconsin Republicans.
To be successful, Wisconsin Republicans need to overcome their fear of the cities. Mewling about ballot boxes in Milwaukee and those crazy college students in Madison will not do. When GOP campaigns went to Milwaukee these past months, they pointed at debris and crime, saying, “Look what the Democrats have wrought.” Residents know these things and are intimately familiar with crime’s devastating effects; it’s part of why they stayed home. To his credit, Ron Johnson co-founded the Joseph Project, a program established to help those in Milwaukee find fulfilling employment — more investment and concern; less sniggering, please.
Democrats’ lost votes do not auto-transfer to Republicans. Do some work, talk with groups such as the Hmong Americans who are leery of politics post-Doyle, or prepare for a thrashing entirely of your own making. Either party in Wisconsin can win if it’d only stop placating its most obstreperous partisans.