(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
What happened in Wisconsin on November 8, 2022 [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2022-11-30
First: Governor Tony Evers’s historic triumph over self-funding Trumpist Tim Michels.
In the blue wave year of 2018, Gov Evers defeated incumbent Scott Walker by a hold-your-breath margin of just 1.1%.
This year, the campaign faced enormous headwinds:
Biden’s approval ratings in Wisconsin ranged from 36%-45%
Wisconsin hadn’t elected a Democratic gov during a Democratic presidency in six decades
Trump and his allies were obsessed with Wisconsin’s governor’s race as a key pathway back to the White House in 2024.
Nonetheless: Gov Evers and Lt. Gov.-elect Sara Rodriguez won by 3.4%, tripling Evers’s 2018 margin—while soaring above public polls that indicated he was a slight underdog in a nearly-tied race.
Gov Evers increased his vote count in 38 out of Wisconsin’s 72 counties and increased his margin of victory in 16 counties. Most notably, he performed better in the most populous areas of the state: Dane County (Madison), Milwaukee County and suburbs, and Northeast Wisconsin.
Overall, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted, Gov Evers “won the 10-county Milwaukee media market for the first time in a governor’s race in 40 years.”
Evers was the top vote earner in Wisconsin in 2022, drawing 21,269 more votes than Ron Johnson, who drew the second-highest number of votes. Michels came in fourth, after Mandela Barnes.
Gov Evers’s victory reflected the strengths of his record as governor and candidate; a superbly executed campaign strategy, and a Democratic party field operation that generated 7.2 million voter contact attempts—70% above the GOP’s self-reported 4.2 million:
x The hardest working team = Team WisGOP‼️
This cycle, our staff of 150+ made well over 4.2 MILLION voter contacts. pic.twitter.com/cKVQUkTESg — Wisconsin GOP (@wisgop) November 9, 2022
The campaign’s sustained, intensive communication effort included more than 2000 highly localized ads with county- and region-specific content featuring, for example, local small business owners talking about how Gov Evers’s support helped them create jobs.
Evers’s reelection campaign, led by Cassi Fenili, is a model worthy of study and emulation. It was fundamentally grounded in the people of Wisconsin, the Governor’s record, and his values. The theme: doing the right thing. Read more.
Lt. Governor-elect Sara Rodriguez was a critical asset to the campaign. She flipped a red district in 2020 (in Waukesha County!)—which was then gerrymandered out of reach. So she ran statewide instead, and helped power Evers’s win.
Meanwhile, the nimble Evers team drove Michels’s campaign into major public stumbles. Michels’s operation has since been publicly panned by GOP operatives.
Backing the campaign was Governor Evers’s tremendous fundraising prowess. In the general election, the campaign and its allies spent $56.9 million on paid media.
Compare Evers’s fundraising numbers to $30.4 million spent by Michels and his allies—who invested nearly $19 million from his personal fortune, as well as major contributions to the WisGOP by his siblings.
Overall, Wisconsin’s governor’s race was both the most expensive in the country and the most expensive in state history. To everyone who chipped in any amount, large or small, you helped defeat a self-funded Big Lie extremist. Huge thanks.
Next: Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes’s near-defeat of incumbent, billionaire-backed Ron Johnson.
So painful to lose this. And at the same time, Mandela Barnes ran a remarkable campaign—soaring above expectations and lifting up Democrats everywhere.
x NEW THIS AM: With 100% in, Sen. Ron Johnson is leading Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes by 27, 374. pic.twitter.com/hVdts1YAzr — Jason Calvi (@JasonCalvi) November 9, 2022
It is hard to beat a two-term incumbent. In fact, no Democrat has done it in the last seven election cycles. The last D to beat a 2-term incumbent R was Jon Tester in 2006—which was a blue wave year.
Mandela Barnes’s 1%-margin loss to incumbent Ron Johnson—in a year where every single incumbent senator running for re-election in the U.S. appears poised to retain their seats—represents the closest U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin since 1914.
Mandela Barnes dramatically outperformed his public polling average. On Election Day, FiveThirtyEight projected that Barnes would lose by 3.4%. Instead, he fell short by just 1%—the narrowest Democratic loss of the year.
Barnes dramatically improved upon Russ Feingold’s 2016 margins all over the place—the WOW counties (the deep-red Milwaukee suburbs of Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington) and in Milwaukee County (70.2% vs 65.2%) and Dane County (77.3% vs 73.2%).
In fact, Mandela’s single biggest margin improvement came in Ozaukee County, once the reddest county in Wisconsin, where he earned 8 points more support than Feingold (42% vs 33.8%).
In the Senate race, Johnson and his allies had a marked financial advantage. Although Barnes outraised Johnson in direct campaign donations, which are limited to $2900 per election per donor, Johnson was backed by massively larger independent expenditures.
Specifically, pro-Johnson groups spent at least $76.5 million, versus $50 million for pro-Barnes groups. The biggest pro-Johnson group was Wisconsin Truth PAC, the largest single-candidate Super PAC in the country.
The Wisconsin Truth PAC is largely funded by Dick and Liz Uihlein and Diane Hendricks—the Wisconsin GOP mega-donors who famously reaped an estimated $500 million in tax deductions thanks to a measure personally authored by Ron Johnson in Trump’s 2017 tax bill.
Republican Senate ads far outnumbered Democratic ads in September, driven in part by Chris LaCivita, known for his work on “swiftboating” John Kerry in 2004—a fusillade of ads, widely considered to be racist, that came just as Barnes came out of the primary.
During this period, GOP ads outnumbered Barnes ads by three to one. Public polling in Barnes’s race slipped—but rose to a statistical tie after Barnes and allies reached near parity in spending and ads in mid to late October and early November.
With late resources, Barnes went on offense and polling rose—even as other Democrats nationally declined in the polls. The data suggest that his counterpunch worked, and his message moved voters. The key challenge was the lack of resources and air cover in the critical month of September.
Moreover, by forcing national Republicans to spend heavily in Wisconsin, Barnes helped make Democratic Senate wins possible in other states—helping ensure an overall Democratic Senate majority.
It’s wrenching to fall just short—but Mandela surged in the final weeks, and did better than experts thought possible. He did better than any other Democrat challenging a Republican incumbent this year. And he helped lift up other Democrats all over Wisconsin.
Meanwhile: Democrats in the state legislature blocked the GOP’s quest for supermajorities in both chambers. Governor Evers’s veto pen is intact.
Against overwhelming odds, the path to democracy in Wisconsin survived.
In 2022, with an assist from Republicans on the U.S. and Wisconsin Supreme Courts, Republicans in Wisconsin adopted the single most effective partisan gerrymander in the nation—an advance even on the post-2010 maps, which were once again the nation’s most gerrymandered.
Republicans aimed for 2/3 supermajorities in both legislative chambers, which would have given them the power to override Evers vetoes—letting them rewrite election oversight and certification rules prior to 2024’s presidential election.
Analysts gave Republicans coin-flip odds of achieving supermajorities:
x .@CNalysis has updated projections for Wisconsin state legislative seats. Almost all projections favor Republicans.
They are now giving Republicans a 49% chance of gaining a supermajority in the State Assembly.
https://t.co/EL6GUpqQnv — Dan Shafer (@DanRShafer) October 26, 2022
In the Senate, Democratic caucus co-chair Senator Melissa Agard worked closely with WisDems and Senator Jeff Smith to win his rural district by 678 votes. Democrats only lost a single district which, after gerrymandering, had shifted Republican by 14 points.
This would have given the GOP a 22-11 supermajority—but then Republican senator Alberta Darling in SD-05 announced her retirement, effective December 1. So when the new Senate is sworn in, it’ll be 21-11. If we win the special election this spring, it’ll be 21-12.
Because of those 678 votes in Jeff Smith’s district—and because state Senate Dems worked so hard in so many other districts statewide—the GOP won’t have a state Senate supermajority for at least the first several months of next year.
(If you want to help WisDems fight and win that state Senate race this spring… chip in and become a monthly donor!)
In the Assembly, Democratic Leader Greta Neubauer and her team, in partnership with WisDems, ran a highly targeted and effective program to dominate communications across digital channels, cable and broadcast TV, radio, mail, and field activity in 11 key Assembly districts.
Alongside Assembly Democrats, we provided support to other incumbents and challengers on the ballot. This effort resulted in Democratic victories in 8 of the 11 key races—enough to give Assembly Democrats 35 out of 99 seats, a two-seat buffer.
Ultimately, the Assembly Democrats held off Robin Vos and the GOP from a supermajority in the Assembly by just 2,499 votes. The New York Times podcast The Daily described the win as “a crucial achievement for Democrats.”
Working closely with the legislative caucuses, WisDems was able to raise over $4.5 million for state legislative campaigns. This, plus nearly $1 million raised by candidates, and $2.5 million raised by legislative caucuses gave Democrats a significant spending advantage over the GOP.
Because Gov Evers won reelection and the GOP fell short of supermajorities in the Legislature, Gov Evers’s veto pen is secure, and the GOP will not have the power to rig or overturn the 2024 presidential election.
HUGE.
There were other terrific victories as well.
Our great Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul won re-election over challenger Eric Toney, more than doubling his margin of victory to 1.4% and drawing 1,333,030 votes.
In a year when racist messaging about crime dominated Republican messaging, Attorney General races were especially hard-fought. But Attorney General Kaul’s leadership on public safety, democracy, and reproductive freedom carried the day.
Meanwhile, In Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, insurrectionist Derrick Van Orden defeated State Senator Brad Pfaff by 3.6% after outspending him by nearly 4:1. This hurt. Brad ran a great race, but the national investments were highly imbalanced.
To Ann Roe in the 1st Congressional District, Dick Ausman in the 7th, Mike Van Someren in the 5th, and Julie Hancock for her write-in in the 8th—thanks for all of your prodigious work. You helped drive statewide wins. It mattered.
In the State Treasurer’s race, Republican John Leiber edged Democrat Aaron Richardson by 40,000 votes. Meanwhile, Democratic Secretary of State Doug La Follette edged out Republican Amy Loudenbeck by 7,660 votes. Our 43-year incumbent will serve another four years!
Every statewide race in Wisconsin came down to a sub-100k vote margin.
And Democrats won most of them.
Ask any political scientist: this wasn’t supposed to happen here, where midterms nearly always swing hard against the president’s party.
There are many reasons why Dems overperformed here.
Republicans ripped away a basic freedom—the power to make decisions over one’s own body—and threatened more. The GOP’s open hostility to democracy galvanized a counterreaction. Our candidates lived their values—Wisconsin’s values.
And our side worked HARD. The vast work by candidate campaigns, WisDems, and independent groups—including communications efforts, grassroots organizations, and labor—in all communities, across race, ethnicity, gender, and generation touched millions of voters.
The dozens of organizations, labor and grassroots leaders, and other allies and partners who made a decision to take on nearly unprecedented challenges and prioritize Wisconsin during this midterm election have earned a debt of gratitude from the people of Wisconsin.
If you’re still reading this, chances are you helped.
So let me say: amidst all of this work, a critical and undersung factor made everything possible: You.
You, and tens of thousands of other folks, volunteered, donated, recruited candidates for local office, knocked doors, called phones, baked banana bread for your local Democratic office, went to meetings, jumped on Zooms, and always, always, kept the faith.
We never stopped organizing. We never stopped reaching out. We never stopped working to communicate our values and our vision for the state. Our candidates had our back, and we had theirs.
Thank you. A million bajillion times—thank you.
Politics, like pickleball, is a life sport. There’s always a next election—and in Wisconsin, ours is a big one: in 125 days, we have a chance to end the GOP’s domination of our state Supreme Court.
Join us as a monthly donor now to help us flip the court.
This race will shape voting rights, decisions on election subversion, legislative district lines, and so much more—and will likely have a larger effect on the 2024 presidential race than any other contest in the country in 2023. Work on this race has already begun.
The stakes are, once again, impossibly high. Somehow, they always are.
So right now, before our month-end deadline, start a $23 monthly investment in the WisDems. Our goal is to welcome 50 new monthly donors by midnight tonight!
Your monthly support—no matter the amount—will go directly toward funding the fight to flip the balance of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. We’ll be able to make early investments in everything from our organizing staff to messaging strategy and our digital ads.
Thanks for all of your help and partnership along the way.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2022/11/30/2139204/-What-happened-in-Wisconsin-on-November-8-2022
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
