Shawn Johnson:
Democrats are getting more aggressive about jumping into primaries. We look at a few examples from Congress to the state Legislature, plus two legal decisions that could affect Wisconsin's political maps for years to come. This is Inside Wisconsin Politics. I'm Shawn Johnson here with my colleagues Zac Schultz, Anya van Wagtendonk, and Rich Kremer in Eau Claire. Hey, everyone.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Hey, Shawn.

Zac Schultz:
Hello.

Rich Kremer:
Hey, Shawn.

Shawn Johnson:
So before we get started with some specific examples here, I want to start with why this kind of caught our attention. And for me, it's because in the very recent past, you had Democrats and liberals very wary about jumping into primaries. What's changed, Zac?

Zac Schultz:
I think the biggest thing that's changed is Democrats see more opportunity to win some of these. Over the past 16 years — basically, the Scott Walker era on when the maps didn't favor Wisconsin and perhaps the political climate didn't favor candidates statewide — there was a concern that a primary just took up too many resources that were limited, mainly money and time, and the threat that if they went negative against each other, it really hurt their opportunity to win statewide. Since Democrats have gotten on a roll and won a lot of these races for governor, AG, state Supreme Court — and they've got better maps — they see more opportunity. And so there's more options for people to get in, because the primary doesn't look quite as devastating.

Shawn Johnson:
You know, for me, as I was thinking about this, I almost feel like it's directly related to whatever the national political situation is at the time. So we are right now in the Trump midterm. Where were we a few years ago? In the Biden midterm, you had Democrats jumping out of a primary for Senate, clearing the way for Mandela Barnes. Where were we in the first Trump midterm in 2018? You had about a dozen Democrats running for governor that year — and on and on and on. I think it's kind of a really simple flow chart. Is it a midterm? Yes. Is your president in the White House? No. Well, in that case, you're probably going to want to jump into a primary and give a chance for your party. Anya, let's jump into one of these specific examples this week. And I want to characterize this as the "Opportunity Knocks" kind of a Democratic primary in the 1st Congressional District, where we have Rep. Bryan Steil, a Republican, is seen as a pretty strong candidate. The district leans Republican. And yet this week we had a Democratic candidate say, hey, it's not too late for me to jump in. Tell us about what happened.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah, there have been several Democrats that have been running for quite a while, but none of them have really been a clear front runner. None of them have raised a significant amount of money. Bryan Steil, by contrast, is a very good campaigner and a very good fundraiser. He has quite a lot in his war chest. And so there had been some rumblings that this alderperson from Milwaukee was going to jump in, and he did. Peter Burgelis — he is currently a sitting member of the Milwaukee council. He does not live in the district. And so him coming out, it's really interesting, because he's essentially saying, I am the person who can get the national money that is required to flip this district. He's trying to make the argument that it is more flippable than Democrats think. It is considered one of Wisconsin's kind of two-ish congressional districts, the safer one for Republicans. But he's saying, if we can get money, we can get in the game.

Shawn Johnson:
Rich, you've been following this district for a while now. Why would Peter Burgelis look at the field here and say, why not me?

Rich Kremer:
Well, exactly what Anya said. So Steil — here's an example of how good of a fundraiser he is. He's currently sitting on more than $5.5 million in his campaign war chest. And during the first three months of the year, he raised more money, excuse me, he spent more money than any Democrat even raised. So maybe Burgelis is thinking, I'll get that Democratic money, et cetera. But to the point, this is an interesting district because on paper it is competitive, but Steil has just been a powerhouse and he's easily defeated every Democrat that has come up against him. So I don't know if this is enough of a Democratic wave year, potentially, that it could make it a little closer. But it seems like Democrats think it's worth a shot.

Shawn Johnson:
Zac, can somebody come in from outside of a district? And he's very prominently outside of a district, too. I mean, he holds elected office outside the district. Can he come in and say, I want to be your congressman?

Zac Schultz:
Well, running outside the district is not uncommon at all in Wisconsin. You don't need to live in the district. You're only supposed to live there by the time you would take office. So he doesn't even have to set up residence there in order to campaign there even if he does win the nomination. That's not uncommon. It is a matter of winning a primary if you don't live there, because he has to convince the voters in that district that he should be the Democrat to represent them against Steil in the fall. And that is a little bit of a tougher ask. That is him saying, I'm the one that's different from the rest of these that you haven't really coalesced around in the past. And this would represent more of trying to bring in national attention, but it would require a national wave to upset Steil in this district. When you look congressional seats in Wisconsin, the national Dems didn't even invest in the 3rd, which is a much closer district in past races. They didn't come close to investing in the 1st, and so it would require a completely different landscape for national money to really come in from the Democratic Party to say we see the 1st as in play.

Shawn Johnson:
It could be a case of they just want Bryan Steil to spend his money and not have that sitting around for a future election, too.

Zac Schultz:
That makes a big difference.

Shawn Johnson:
Let's move on to another primary. And since I'm naming stuff today, I'm going to call this one the "Opportunity Knocks" — no, we did the "Opportunity Knocks" primary. I need to get my name straight if I'm going to do this. This is the "Don't Tell Me What To Do" primary — an important distinction in Democratic primaries. We've got a couple of examples here today. Let's start with one in the 3rd Congressional District, Rich. I've heard a lot about this district because it's our most competitive congressional district. Derrick Van Orden is the Republican incumbent. I've heard a lot about Rebecca Cooke, the Democratic challenger who has outraised him recently and seems to be getting a lot of attention. There is a primary there — who's running?

Rich Kremer:
So the primary is between Cooke, who's an Eau Claire Democrat raised on a dairy farm in the county, and has done some political consulting work, fundraising work for Democrats in years past, but now she's back. She's really portraying herself as, kind of, of the district, you know, born and bred Wisconsin, et cetera. Republicans are trying to focus the attention on her consulting work, et cetera. The other Democrat is longtime Eau Claire City Council member, former council president until just recently, Emily Berge of Eau Claire. And she's portraying herself as the grassroots choice in this race. National Democrats came in and started sending resources, staff, et cetera back in February to Cooke's campaign, and Berge said, well, that's pretty dirty. She essentially said D.C. shouldn't be deciding who is the Democrat to face Van Orden — it should be the people of Eau Claire. And just anecdotally, when I'm walking through the city, I don't see a lot of Cooke signs. In fact, I don't remember seeing any. But I see a whole bunch of Berge signs. So this being one of the more, if not the most populous areas in the 3rd district, maybe that makes a difference. But in terms of resources, Cooke is way, way, way ahead of Berge in all the fundraising reports that I've seen.

Shawn Johnson:
Zac, do you get the sense that this is a competitive primary here?

Zac Schultz:
It could be. It really depends on how much the primary voters pay attention. And that's always the issue in some of these primaries, is name recognition makes a big deal. That's why the national party comes in and puts resources behind Cooke. It's not necessarily that they like her more, it's they think she has the better chance to win in the fall and get her moving now. It's the old mentality we talked about at the beginning of the show of why didn't Democrats do primaries in the past — it takes resources, it can get ugly, it can get negative, it could hurt the candidate going into the fall. I ran into Berge when she was campaigning with Francesca Hong for governor in La Crosse. They were doing an event at the same bookstore. And it's not a coincidence that while we were talking to them, they were talking about going and seeing them at the next stop. And there is a kind of thematic fit with that campaign of more grassroots, more from the bottom up, and running against party types who tell us who our candidates should be. Parties like to dictate sometimes who the candidate can be so they can focus resources. Sometimes that does run up against a wall, which is why your title for this — "Don't Tell Me What To Do" — does fit, because there are candidates who are going to say no. Let the people decide. People have to pay attention, though.

Shawn Johnson:
Alright, we've got another "Don't Tell Me What to Do" primary, Anya. This is in one of the state Senate districts that we're watching that could determine control of the Wisconsin state Senate this year — The 17th state Senate district. Howard Marklein is the Republican incumbent, and the Democratic Party had been sending strong signals that they knew who they wanted to run for a while now. And yet there's a candidate who says, I want to run too. Tell us about it.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah. So Jenna Jacobson, who currently serves in the Assembly, has been sort of the anointed Democratic choice to run against Howard Marklein for this district, which also has been redrawn in a way that could be more favorable for Democrats. So Marklein is sort of on his heels in that way. But then yesterday we got the announcement that Corrine Hendrickson — who, if you have written an article or read an article about child care advocacy in the last three years, you have heard that name. She has been at the Capitol. She was a small business owner — a daycare owner in New Glarus. That was very much her issue. And now she's running for office. So a political newcomer, somebody with this kind of particular set of policy expectations and preferences, challenging a fellow Democrat. And so that caught our attention for that reason, that it's a competitive district. It's not safe for Democrats. So here's somebody coming in and saying, I want to throw my hat in, and I want to advocate for my specific approach to politics.

Shawn Johnson:
I do feel like we have this debate about primaries pretty much every single primary, about whether it's going to help or hurt the candidates. I think they are making a bet this year that they can afford to have those debates and the argument for it helping them is that they are going to kind of dominate the news cycle for a little while in August and get more attention than candidates that don't have a primary. OK, one primary that is really big this year in our world — the Democratic primary for governor — we're not going to talk about it today, but if you had to name that one, anybody got any takers here?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
The "Why Not" primary — I think everyone and their mother is running for governor these days.

Shawn Johnson:
We've got at least seven candidates running. Rich, you've got any labels for it?

Rich Kremer:
Anya stole mine.

Shawn Johnson:
I want to add a small amendment to yours. The "Why Not Me?" primary — actually, what I had thought about, so maybe you stole both of ours. It is kind of one of those years where you see a race that's kind of there for the taking. Why not jump in?

Zac Schultz:
So Shawn, let's flip this on its head for you, because part of the idea behind having primaries in the past — or not having them — was fear of wasting resources. But the other end of it was you can battle-test, and whoever comes through a primary is a better candidate for the general election. So what's your take on a wide open primary like this? How can it help Democrats if there are battling this many people there?

Shawn Johnson:
I think there are plenty of examples in the recent past, particularly among Republicans, where you come out of a battle-tested primary and you are wounded, and it did not help them very much in the general election. I think in 2018, Tony Evers came out of a battle-tested primary and was a little bit out of money. So there is a risk to it, but it does also get attention — I guess is the thing that it does for sure.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
I think another piece of this too is that it's very easy to kind of present a unified front as a party when you're in the minority, because it doesn't really matter, right? You don't have power. And so we might know that kind of behind the scenes, the further left Democrats and the more centrist Democrats don't get along or disagree, but they all come forward and kind of vote in alignment. And so now what we're seeing, because there's a little bit more of a sense that perhaps they could actually win things and gain power, there's also, I think, a little bit of a fight for what will the Democratic Party in Wisconsin look like, vote like. Will they be further left? Will it be more of a Hong kind of situation? Will they be more moderate, more kind of aligned with national Democrats? And so I think we're seeing that fight play out, or tension play out in a lot of these primaries.

Shawn Johnson:
We have a bunch of court news to get to here today, including another endorsement. Technically not a Democratic primary, but you have a couple candidates running for the 2027 Supreme Court race already. Anya, how did this happen? We just had a court race.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
We sure did. So two weeks after, I think, the court race was resolved, Lyndsey Brunette threw in her hat. And she is a former prosecutor, much like three of the current sitting liberals. And then a couple days ago, Pedro Colón, who is a Milwaukee-area judge, threw his hat in. He is also a liberal judge, but he comes from a lawmaking background. And so we're seeing two types of judicial candidates — one who more closely mirrors the Susan Crawford-Janet Protasiewicz kind of model of the last couple of years, a Democrat but with a law and order background, and then one who more closely mirrors Chris Taylor with the lawmaker-advocacy background. Which again, I think shows that there's a little bit of wanting to push-pull for what kind of liberal judge do we want, because liberals have the court no matter what. They think they probably have the election in the bag, and so, again, in what direction will the liberal justice land?

Shawn Johnson:
What do we call this one? The "We're Going To Win This One Anyway, Let's Do What We Want"? No, maybe I should let this one go if we don't have a good name. It's got to be on a bumper sticker. Rich, you talked to Pedro Colón about why he was getting into the race. And these introductory interviews are usually pretty boring — they don't say too much. I feel like Pedro Colón told you some stuff.

Rich Kremer:
Yeah, he did. I asked, you know, what differentiates you from Judge Brunette? And he said, unfortunately it's experience. She doesn't have the substantive experience that he does, which includes the decade or so in the Legislature and his years on the bench and the state appeals court in Milwaukee. So that surprised me. I was not expecting him right out of the gate to take a little swipe at his competitor. And the Brunette campaign sent me a statement saying as much as, well, they said look, a number of justices have had the same amount of experience as Judge Brunette and have been elected to the state's highest court. So there's that. And they also said it's interesting that during his announcement, he attacked Judge Brunette.

Shawn Johnson:
And already a little...

Rich Kremer:
A little bit of fireworks.

Shawn Johnson:
...and endorsements too. As you reported, Anya, Justice-elect Chris Taylor has endorsed Pedro Colón.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Immediately.

Shawn Johnson:
Immediately. And then we also have an endorsement from Congressman Mark Pocan endorsing Pedro Colón. Mark Pocan and Pedro Colón were, like, budget buddies on the Joint Finance Committee in 2005. I can tell you that they spent a lot of time together writing, arguing against that Republican budget that year. So you get to know each other. In politics, relationships can be a big deal sometimes.

Zac Schultz:
Well, what's interesting about this race is we've got two on the liberal side that are in. I heard both those names on election night. I had someone in the campaign tell me Judge Brunette's going to announce, just watch your inbox, that'll be coming out. That was on election night. Judge Colón was at the election party. I interviewed him and talked to him and he was doing the "oh, we'll have to wait and see." But his name had been floated for prior campaigns. So if we're looking for labels, this is — it used to be a "Wait Your Turn, One At A Time" — I think there are liberal candidates realizing I might have to wait a long time to wait my turn. Why wait? Just get in there.

Shawn Johnson:
Seven justices, 10-year terms — if you want to do it, better get in. Zac, we had a couple decisions this week — court decisions on redistricting. One in state court, which I'll summarize a little bit too quickly here to say that a three-judge panel basically said we are not going to deal with the congressional map this year. Another big decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which court watchers have said is going to gut the Voting Rights Act. What could that mean for Wisconsin?

Zac Schultz:
Well, they're kind of tailed together a little bit. This is the second three-judge panel that has thrown out challenges to our congressional lines. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has repeatedly said we don't want to handle this right now. The United States Supreme Court decision that went after the Voting Rights Act has to do with minority-majority districts, of which the 4th Congressional — Gwen Moore's district in Wisconsin — is one of those. So if lines are going to get redrawn, if the courts are going to look at this, that could mean some of those lines getting shifted in the future, and the way that they're drawn, without having to protect as much of that minority-majority district in Milwaukee. So there's a lot of implications, one of which is, will this new makeup of the Wisconsin Supreme Court now take a look at these lines again, especially with new judgment from the United States Supreme Court?

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah, and it seems like nationally, I've seen a lot about how this could be a benefit to Republicans in southern states. I think in Wisconsin it's an open question about which party would benefit. It does feel like it is potentially detrimental, though, to minority representation nationwide. That's all the time we have for today. Thanks for joining us. This has been Inside Wisconsin Politics. Be sure to follow us on pbswisconsin.org, wpr.org, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.