Here & Now

Inside Wisconsin Politics: Many Democratic Primaries in 2026

Frederica Freyberg:
On this week’s “Inside Wisconsin Politics,” we hear Zac Schultz, along with WPR political reporter Shawn Johnson, Rich Kremer and Anya van Wagtendonk dig into why there are so many Democratic primary candidates in the midterm elections. What party support for a particular candidate does or doesn’t say about the campaigns and examples of such races seizing grassroots efforts: one for governor and one for the 3rd Congressional District.

Shawn Johnson:
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 the Democrats see more opportunity to win some of these. Over the past 16 years, basically in 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:
Since I’m naming stuff today, this is the “don’t tell me what to do” primary, an important distinction in Democratic primaries. We’ve got a couple 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, you know, 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, etc. Republicans are trying to, you know, focus the attention on her consulting work, etc. 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. And national Democrats came in and started sending resources, staff, etc. back in February to Cooke’s campaign. And Berge said, “Well, that’s pretty dirty.” You know, 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, you know, 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:
I think that, you know, 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 then 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 kind of play out or tension play out in a lot of these primaries.