Here & Now

Noon Wednesday with guest Laurel White

Marisa Wojcik:
Welcome to Noon Wednesday, I’m Marisa Wojcik, a multimedia journalist with Here & Now on Wisconsin Public Television. So we had midterm elections yesterday and the results streamed in early, into the wee hours of the morning this morning. And both Laurel White, who’s joining me here, and myself were covering the Tony Evers Campaign last night and this morning. And Laurel White is a state capitol reporter with Wisconsin Public Radio. Thank you so much for being here.

Laurel White:
Absolutely, thanks for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:
So we’re going to deconstruct some of the main talking points of what happened last night. It wasn’t just about the Governor’s race, but that certainly was important. So the race for Governor and the race for U.S. Senate both were called in very different timelines.

Laurel White:
They were.

Marisa Wojcik:
What happened?

Laurel White:
So what was interesting about this is that the U.S. Senate race and the polling leading up to yesterday was much further apart than the Governor’s race. I mean, we knew that the Governor’s race was going to be tight, and based on polling, we knew that there was about a double digit lead for incumbent senator, Tammy Baldwin. So we knew that they were going to be different races going in, at least if we were trusting the polls, right? So what we really saw was that playing out in a very real way and what that looks like on election night. So what that looked like for us last night was the U.S. Senate race being called essentially before polls were even closed. I mean, people were showing up at the Tammy Baldwin event in Downtown Madison. Just beginning to come through the doors for their election night get together and the race was called. I think Baldwin was speaking within an hour of those doors opening. So, it just kind of goes to show, when there’s a large lead and the results start coming in, and they show, in key areas, that the Senator was performing in ways that were predicted, news organizations felt comfortable making that call early in the night. And it allowed people in Madison to move from that Baldwin event to the Evers event, which, as we know, went much later into the evening.

Marisa Wojcik:
And so, what happened with the results with the Evers event? It kind of felt like it wasn’t going to get called and maybe we were just kind of going to have to go home empty handed without any sort of official result. And then kind of pretty quickly things tumbled down the pike.

Laurel White:
They did. So what was interesting about that was it had been pretty close all evening, sort of a back and forth race. A little more of an Evers’ lead early on in the night. And I’m just talking about two percentage points. Nothing huge, certainly. But, as we got closer to 11:00 p.m., midnight, that’s when it really started going back and forth, and we were looking at, in some cases, just about 200 votes separating the Governor and Evers. So we were kind of, as you said, thinking we’re not going to get a result tonight, everybody’s going to go home, this is going to go into this morning. But then we got word that that city of Milwaukee had about 50,000 outstanding absentee ballots that hadn’t been counted yet. Because the city of Milwaukee, and there are a number of other communities around Wisconsin that do this as well, but they gather all those mailed in and early voting ballots, into one place. They gather them from all around the area, bring them in, and count them in one location. So we found out those hadn’t been counted yet. They were still in transit. There was actually some live coverage, T.V. coverage, of those ballots being transported into an elevator and all those things. When a race is that close, when we are going back and forth with just 100 votes or so, 200 votes, learning that there around about 50,000 outstanding ballots, obviously that could really swing the race. So those ballots were processed, I believe around 1:00 a.m., if my memory serves me correctly.

Marisa Wojcik:
It’s all a little bit of a blur.

Laurel White:
It is a bit of a blur. I know it was after midnight and sometime before 4:00 a.m. And so those were processed and that’s what ended up swinging the race enough to Evers, giving him about a 1.2% advantage over the Governor that the Associated Press was comfortable calling the race and Evers came out and gave his victory speech.

Marisa Wojcik:
And Scott Walker is not used to an election being this close, let alone losing an election.

Laurel White:
Right.

Marisa Wojcik:
Voter turnout certainly was a big thing for both campaigns.

Laurel White:
Mm-hmm, it really was. Turnout was particularly interesting in Dane County and Milwaukee County. Dane Country turnout for Democrats was huge. Really unprecedented numbers. And with a race this tight, that ended up making a huge difference for Evers and for the Governor. The Governor also underperformed in some areas that he’s known to do very well in. Those wow counties that we talk about, Washington, Ozaukee, Waukesha, he still won, of course, and by fairly wide margins, but just not as big of a margin as he had before. So that high democratic turnout in places like Dane County and Milwaukee ended up pushing things towards Evers, because the Governor didn’t have those large margins in his strongholds.

Marisa Wojcik:
And in some ways, other races followed suit. Josh Kaul, who in the Marquette Law School poll, didn’t have the name recognition as Brad Schimel in the Attorney General’s race. He still clenched it and announced his victory this morning. But oppositely, Leah Vukmir also in the poll showed that she was down and that followed suit. Do we know kind of what’s happening there?

Laurel White:
Well, it’s really fascinating and a lot of people were talking about this before the election, and I think it’s something we’ll really look at really closely in the weeks to come, is how different the U.S. Senate, and the Governor’s race, and the State Attorney General’s races were, in terms of party support. So we clearly had people who voted for Tammy Baldwin and Scott Walker on the same ticket. And I am personally very curious at looking at who those votes are and what the issues are that caused them to have a split-ticket vote like that. I think that’s pretty fascinating. But clearly, that’s what happened with Baldwin winning by, I believe, this morning, it was an 11-point margin, I think is what it’s at right now, as tallies are finalized. From, at least, the Associated Press count. The official state canvas isn’t over yet, and I know we will talk about that later. But the Baldwin victory certainly was a lot larger than the Evers victory or the Kaul victory. And that is something that people have been really interested in because it’s clear that that U.S. Senate race on the top of the ticket didn’t spur support for lower sort of those down ballot races. So Baldwin didn’t sort of slide people in on her coat tails, Evers, Kaul, et cetera, as some people thought she might. So that’s pretty fascinating.

Marisa Wojcik:
Yeah. Last night, they were playing Aretha Franklin’s R-E-S-P-E-C-T, but all I could think was R-E-C-O-U-N-T.

Laurel White:
Indeed.

Marisa Wojcik:
Is there enough for a recount? And there’s something else that has to come before a recount, right?

Laurel White:
Right, so the recount question is particularly timely, because the state of Wisconsin actually just revamped its recount laws. So in response to the 2016 presidential recount, Republicans actually pushed a change that limits the people who can request a recount in the state of Wisconsin. You might remember the 2016 presidential recount and a lot of Republicans opposed that, saying it was a waste of taxpayer dollars, and they wanted to do things to make sure that, I believe the word they used was frivolous, frivolous recounts couldn’t happen in the future. So this new state law that was signed by Governor Walker doesn’t allow a second place finisher to request a recount unless they lose by less than 1% of the vote. So as of right now, the AP results that we have, have Evers winning with 1.2% of the vote. So, we still have the state canvas to go. That’s the official process where the ballots are reviewed. Everything is processed and submitted officially. And that takes a couple weeks. It can take until, I believe, the end of November for all of that to be done. I’m not sure if they’ll try to expedite that or if they can, in this case. But once that is certified, then we will have the official percentage, and then we’ll see whether we’re in that window, and the Walker campaign could request a recount.

Marisa Wojcik:
And is a canvas different from an audit?

Laurel White:
It is different. So, a canvas is… I mean, they are kind of similar, in terms of reviewing things that we’ve already seen, et cetera. But this is an official process, it’s mandatory. It’s part of Wisconsin’s election protocol, as it stands, and I think most people, when they think of an audit, they think of maybe a little bit more of an involuntary thing, something that’s brought out in unique circumstances or in special cases. And this is something that they do for every election.

Marisa Wojcik:
And it’s interesting ’cause Friday, Governor Walker called for potentially having the National Guard IT Security Team being brought in, just in case there was any sort of rampant fraud or any sort of election security issues. Do we see any sort of signs that it’s going to be necessary to look at the elections from that standpoint?

Laurel White:
I haven’t heard anything about any concerns about hacking or other sort of security measures. There has been some discussion folks might have heard a little bit about some damaged ballots that the Walker campaign raised some concern last night. The city of Milwaukee put out a press release today talking a little bit more about that. Apparently, there were about 2,000 ballots, those absentee ballots, that were damaged in the process of putting them into a bag to be transported, I think, to that central counting location. So, they got some adhesive on them and they had to be recreated. The process of that recreation, according to this release from Milwaukee, happens fairly regularly. Ballots get damaged and things. So they have a process where it’s two election workers, oversight from members of each party and the public, as election workers take the damaged ballot and recreate it onto a new ballot to make sure that it can be fed and the votes are tallied as they were intended to be tallied. But the Walker administration just wants to take a look at those damaged ballots and recreation, make sure everything with those 2,000 ballots was handled appropriately and everything’s on the up and up.

Marisa Wojcik:
Very interesting, and we’ll see how closely it aligns with previous recounts and how much is new, uncharted territory with what we’re entering into. So Democrats were hoping to clench the Senate.

Laurel White:
Mm-hmm.

Marisa Wojcik:
They would’ve need to flip two seats, but they actually lost one. And it was somewhat expected that the Republicans would maintain majority of the Assembly. With a Democratic governor, how does that relationship usually play out? There’s no longer a trifecta of Republican control across the board. What can Tony Evers, after he has promised a lot of things on the campaign trail, what can he reasonably actually move on? And then what powers does he have?

Laurel White:
Right, so this is an interesting situation and certainly one that Wisconsin has seen before, where the Governor is one party and both chambers of the state legislature are another. It certainly presents more complications for passing legislation than Walker and the GOP-controlled legislature have had in recent years. Because, of course, you have to have someone that introduces legislation, it has to pass both houses, it has to get to the Governor, and get his signature. So presumably, you could have a GOP-backed bill pass both houses, get to the Governor’s office, and be vetoed. And that’s the end of the road. For the most part, the legislature can override the Governor’s veto, with a certain percentage of votes. So it’s a different ball game now than you’ve been experiencing before. We have, kind of, more of these technical processes, the veto, the veto override, that we’re going to be seeing potentially a little bit more. I know Evers, on the campaign trail, talked about bipartisan solutions to things like road funding, so maybe we’ll see some more coalitions being built. A rosy outlook, maybe for some, considering politics and the current state of politics. But that’s something that I think he has expressed interest in doing and the leaders in the Assembly and Senate have said that as well. It’ll definitely be a different ball game from here on out for Evers, and we’ll have to see how often he wields that Veto pen.

Marisa Wojcik:
Based on the Evers’ and democratic supporters that you’ve spoke with last night, was there an understanding of kind of tempering that enthusiasm? There were people dancing on the floor and maybe not quite thinking that far ahead.

Laurel White:
Right, I don’t think people were thinking that far ahead. I was doing a live check in with WPR and WPT’s live coverage last night, and I said I felt like the Evers victory party was very much living in the moment.

Marisa Wojcik:
Yeah.

Laurel White:
And not necessarily thinking about the GOP-controlled legislature, and the challenges that that might afford the Evers administration down the road. I think, for Democrats, Scott Walker has been kind of a force that they haven’t been able to defeat. He’s been an incredibly successful campaigner. Of course, I don’t need to remind everyone, of surviving the recall. He’s never been defeated by a Democrat before. A long political career, a great fundraiser. And so I think that was a really important victory in Democrats’ eyes, kind of a symbolic victory. I think maybe the high of that was part of the celebration last night and kind of the reality of some of the political obstacles in the future were just out of folks’ minds last night.

Marisa Wojcik:
I couldn’t help but notice though, the room that we were in, huge screen of CNN, live results streaming in, and Wisconsin was definitely, repeatedly coming back to, and looking at the map of Wisconsin, it was very stark how much red there is, and in certain areas, it just still seems pretty divided. It’ll be interesting to see to what degree can supporters and parties come together and to what degree. will things kind of keep sliding further and further apart?

Laurel White:
It is really fascinating to look at how that’s going to play out moving forward, because this is certainly not a divisive… It’s a divisive election, not a decisive win for Evers. I mean, when we’re talking about 30,000 votes out of 2.6 million cast. There are a lot of very disappointed Wisconsinites today. How that state moves forward, acknowledging their concerns, and the things that caused them to vote for the losing ticket, to make sure that everyone’s represented in the Capitol. It is potentially for some pretty powerful gridlock and some pretty intense debates. We’re pretty used to those in Wisconsin, though. I think things are certainly going to remain interesting here.

Marisa Wojcik:
What are you kind of keeping your eye on moving forward? I think a lot of people have redistricting on their minds.

Laurel White:
Mm-hmm.

Marisa Wojcik:
What to you, kind of, stands out as some takeaways and some forward thinking ideas?

Laurel White:
Mm-hmm, I think redistricting is huge. And I think that that’s something that really should be mentioned when we talk about the power of the Governor. With the new maps that are being drawn, after the 2020 census, the Governor would have veto power over those maps, under the current system. And Evers has said that he won’t sign a map or approve a map, that he believes to be unfair or biased towards one party or the other. That is going to be, certainly, something to look at moving forward. I think other things, really in the immediate future, is the potential for a special session, or an extraordinary session of the state legislature. This is something that’s been talked about for the potential Foxconn style incentive package for Kimberly clark. Lawmakers have talked about coming back before the new legislatures’ inaugurated in January to do that. They might choose to do so because of the change in the Governor’s office. Obviously, they’re still going to have control of both chambers of the legislatures, but not the Governor’s office. So maybe lawmakers might come in and make some of those changes. That’s something to keep an eye on. Legislative ears have also talked about maybe taking up some additional bills that aren’t related to Kimberly Clark, so that could keep–

Marisa Wojcik:
Within that session?

Laurel White:
Within that session, exactly. Which wasn’t necessarily something that had been on the table before this. That’s kind of a new development. That could be happening in just the next couple of months. Eight weeks or so. And then we’ll have the inauguration and the Governor’s budget proposal in January. Kick off the budget cycle.

Marisa Wojcik:
It’ll all come pretty quickly.

Laurel White:
It will.

Marisa Wojcik:
Well, thank you so much. I was really impressed with your coverage, WPR’s coverage, WPT, WPR collaboration, and most importantly, when my phone was about to die last night, Laurel lent me her iPhone charger, which I wouldn’t have made it until 2:30 in the morning without that. I think I was at 7%, so thank you.

Laurel White:
You’re very welcome. Always travel with extra chargers.

Marisa Wojcik:
Yes, lesson learned For more from WPR, we should say you guys a awesome politics podcast, and they’re going to be live from the Gathering Place Brewery in Milwaukee tomorrow, at what time?

Laurel White:
I believe it’s 8:00 p.m. tomorrow. You can go to WPR.org to get more information and buy tickets. I believe tickets are $5, but it comes with a free beer.

Marisa Wojcik:
And it’s a truly awesome podcast. If you are a politics junkie or not, there’s really, really solid information there. So definitely check that out. For more from Here & Now on Wisconsin Public Television, visit WPT.org, and thank you so much for joining us on Noon Wednesday.