Longtime TPM Reader JB gives us a rundown on the rather suboptimal gubernatorial situation in Wisconsin …
If I may, a few thoughts on the confusing campaign for Wisconsin governor:
First: Tony Evers (pronounced Eeevers here, incidentally) is personally well liked throughout the state. He is regarded by most Democrats here as the guy who saved Wisconsin from Scott Walker. He is also widely regarded as a poor administrator who missed many opportunities and was often ineffective in getting his message across to the public.
Second: Sara Rodriguez based her candidacy on her knowledge of state government and ability to manage a large organization (she had worked in healthcare administration). That’s why her campaign manager freelancing and her campaign going close to broke drove her out of the race. She had run on having some of Evers’s strengths without his biggest weakness. Live and learn.
Third: Francesca Hong leads polls on the Democratic side entirely through her own effort. No one in the state party is pushing her forward because a socialist junior legislator from Madison is thought an ideal candidate. Hong’s campaign is much better organized than those of the other candidates; it knocks on more doors, puts her in more town halls, is visible in more places in the state than theirs are.
Hong is personally thoughtful and articulate. She’s definitely left-wing; she’s also more nimble than the other candidates with respect to issues that were not big a year ago but are getting big now. Data centers are one such issue; she called for a moratorium last spring, the only candidate to do so. She is also at this moment the only candidate for governor to react publicly to a particularly gruesome police shooting in Madison earlier today.
Fourth: About the David Crowley two-step….Crowley would, I think, be a better governor than he is a candidate. He suffers from having a base in Milwaukee County, where he has to spend most of his time on issues of little interest to the rest of the state. He is further at a disadvantage because he is black, and there is a better-known black candidate (Mandela Barnes) in the race as well.
Crowley is very smart, and has sharp elbows. His signature victory was on something called Act 12, dealing with state aids to municipalities. Long story short: Milwaukee had long been treated unfairly by Republicans in the legislature. Crowley partnered with Evers to negotiate a change in the formula by which cities get funds from the state. The new deal in Act 12 gave Milwaukee a bigger increase in state aids than other Wisconsin cities, because of him. In terms of policy, this is incidentally where Crowley and Hong have their sharpest disagreement.
With all this said….Crowley dropped out several weeks ago because, months into the campaign, few outside of the Milwaukee metro area knew who he was. This is still the case. He would be my choice, but frankly I don’t see how he gets people to know him by August 11 (our absurdly late primary day), Evers endorsement or no.
Fifth: Mandela Barnes entered the race against the advice of many Wisconsin Democrats, who think he blew a winnable race for Senate against Ron Johnson in 2022. Not everyone thinks this criticism is fair, though Barnes did run a cautious campaign against a vulnerable opponent. In any event, Senator and Governor are very different offices. Also, Barnes is known to share Gov. Evers limited talent for administration. His poll numbers are only as high as they are because so many people know his name from his time as Evers’s Lt. Governor. They’ve scarcely budged since the campaign started.
Sixth: Tom Tiffany. In Congress, he has been the Trumpiest of Trumpers, supporting the administration on everything and praising Trump at every opportunity. Otherwise, he has done very little. In the state legislature, he was reviled by friends of the environment for harassing the state DNR at every opportunity. I dread what he would do as governor. On the other hand, he will have as much money as he needs, courtesy of the Ulines and Diana Hendricks, the home-state billionaires who bankroll many Republican candidates and causes. His ads (he is running unopposed for the GOP nomination) have leaned into his rural background, portraying him as a normal person and staying well away from the Trumpist line.
Seventh: The bottom line. Democrats should not be in trouble in this race, but they are. Polls show nearly half even of just the Democratic electorate have no preference; months of campaigning have barely reached most of the people a Democrat will need to win in November. Only Hong’s campaign has gotten any traction at all, and she hasn’t gotten that much. National political discussion will treat this race in terms similar to those used during the race for New York City Mayor and Maine Senate. I hope I have been able to convey a few of the ways these terms don’t match the reality of this campaign.
