Inside Wisconsin Politics

Ask Inside Wisconsin Politics: Polarization, ideology, money

Shawn Johnson:
Do you have questions about Wisconsin government and politics? If so, you are definitely not alone. And this week we’re going to answer a few from our audience about polarization, social media and money. This is Inside Wisconsin Politics. I’m Shawn Johnson, here with my colleague Zac Schultz, and Rich Kremer in Eau Claire. Hey, guys.

Zac Schultz:
Hello.

Rich Kremer:
Hey, Shawn.

Shawn Johnson:
So we want to say up front that if you have questions, you should email us at [email protected]. But the questions we’re going to talk about today didn’t just come out of nowhere. It turns out Anthony Chergosky, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, watches our show, and he watches it with his students in his legislative process class. We talk to Professor Chergosky a lot. He suggested his students could ask us questions, and he helped set that up. A couple of the students submitted their questions by video, including Riley Bickelhaupt, who wanted to know about political polarization.

Riley Bickelhaupt:
Hi guys. My name is Riley. I’m a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. I’m studying political science and Spanish, with a minor in legal studies. My question for you guys today is, how do you think the ongoing political polarization in Wisconsin affects the state’s ability to pass bipartisan legislation?

Shawn Johnson:
Zac, I feel like there are layers to this answer, which is kind of the reason we like the question. So where would you begin to answer Riley here?

Zac Schultz:
Last semester, and then hope their time doesn’t run out before summer starts. This is a huge question. It’s a good question, Riley. The first thing you have to do is define is what is bipartisan. Because technically, one Democrat joins the Republicans, it’s a bipartisan bill, even if all the rest of them oppose it. So it can really stretch the definition. And Shawn, you remember back, you know, 20 years ago under Jim Doyle, at the end of the year interviews, we’d talk about, like, controversy in the Capitol. He’d say, 90% of the bills we pass are bipartisan, and those statistics are true. Most of those bills are really minor some technical adjustments, some of those really aren’t controversial at all. So they are overwhelmingly bipartisan. But the ones that get our attention, the ones that we track and we follow, are very contentious. And yes, political polarization absolutely factors into the image that your audience, or their voters at home, will view what happens if they let something pass. And that goes through leadership all the way down. I can tell you for certain that Robin Vos, as Assembly Speaker, knew exactly which districts he had to worry about more vulnerable members, and he would let them vote against Republican bills, because he knew that they had to show they were more moderate or more bipartisan in those areas. Or bills that were going to pass, they got to be cosigners on, so that they could say, I helped pass this legislation. So there’s a lot of tricks and details into what is bipartisan. But absolutely, there’s only one bill that needs to be passed each legislative session, and that’s the budget. So, Shawn, my question to you is, if only Republicans in the Legislature vote for the budget, all Democrats vote against it, but Gov. Evers signs it is it now bipartisan?

Shawn Johnson:
I think it is, yes. I think that the Democratic lawmakers in that situation have the luxury of knowing that their governor is back there to make the call that needs to be made. And if they have issues with it, they can go to the governor and say, hey, maybe take this out, or reword this with your partial veto, governor. So I think that’s an example of a bipartisan budget. And I think, as you’ve seen the Republican margins shrink, you have seen more Democratic votes on those budgets, too, because you have some of those lawmakers like you talked about under this new map you have lawmakers that are more inclined to represent a 50-50 district. And what do you hear from them when they are campaigning? We want to work across the aisle. That is a go-to message. Rich, how about you? When it comes to bipartisanship and Riley’s question, what stands out to you?

Rich Kremer:
So, I think what you’ve both said is totally accurate. One of the things, a couple things that stick out to me is when there are these bipartisan bills that get our attention because they are major policy issues, it seems like the compromise falls under a couple categories. It’s fear or favor. So I think of, when the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority struck down Republican-drawn legislative voting districts as unconstitutional, shortly after Republicans actually voted for maps that were drawn by Gov. Tony Evers when they were opposed to the court case. I mean, they were opposed to these maps all along, but yet they voted for the ones from the governor. Why would they do that? Well, one of the theories is that they feared that the Supreme Court justices’ liberal majority might draw maps that are more favorable to Democrats than what they ended up passing from Evers. And then when it comes to favor, I think of a bill that passed and was signed into law this past session that started out as a Republican bill banning people getting, people from purchasing soda or candy with federal food assistance. Democrats hated the bill, but it was amended, and Democrats wanted to get a lot of new funding and positions for the Department of Health Services so that it can comply with federal changes to the food assistance program and avoid putting the entire program at risk. Republicans on their own weren’t interested in that, but this bill morphed into a soda and candy ban, plus $72 million for the Department of Health Services. So that’s one of those favor-for-favor kind of bills.

Shawn Johnson:
I think the one thing that I would like to impart upon people who feel like you look around the politics today and it feels extremely polarized, I think that, yes, some Democrats and some Republicans legitimately hate the other party, and in no uncertain terms, I think the Wisconsin Legislature has a lot of moments, though, of actual bipartisanship. I think about the local government funding bill that they passed shared revenue, we’d call it. I mean, I cannot believe that they did that, Republicans and Democrats that raised sales taxes in Milwaukee. That’s something that you never could have imagined the Republican Party doing years ago. But in Evers’ second term, it seems like he’s been able to cut those deals. And particularly since he got these new maps, he’s been able to cut those deals. And as you alluded to, Zac, Robin Vos sometimes quotes this too 95%, I think, is the number he gives, of the bills that they pass in the Wisconsin Legislature are bipartisan, because, yeah, the Legislature passes a lot of bills that are incremental, and we don’t write about them. We don’t talk about them as much, but they’re there. They do pass a lot of stuff that is not a knock-down, drag-out fight.

Zac Schultz:
And I think we saw two milestone shifts that have occurred over Gov. Evers’ time in office, where this really came to a head, where the Republican Legislature had to work with the Democratic governor. In the first term, Republicans were bound and determined to give the governor nothing. They sent him a budget and said we dare you to sign this. And over and over, Democrats could not get their bills to come to committee, couldn’t get a hearing, never got to the floor. In fact, if Democrats wanted a bill to pass, they would go find a Republican they could work with, and they would have them become the sponsor. So they had to, like, give the Republican credit in order to get it somewhere. And that was in order to make Gov. Evers look bad, to weaken him for reelection. But then when he won in 2022, Republicans realized, well, we still have another four years, so it doesn’t make sense to keep spiting ourselves. Let’s see what we can get done, and so there was a change there. And then the other thing that Rich pointed out is when the maps changed, we saw the electorate change underneath these politicians, and we saw more people running to the middle because they needed to if they wanted to keep their majority and keep that seat. And so we saw more effort to bring things to the floor. And the question that kind of gets back to the heart of what Riley’s been looking at is there’s a federal image of polarization. There’s the theater that comes out of press releases that we see from politicians. And then there’s the reality of what it looks like at the end of the day in the chamber, when they all walk off the floor back into the Assembly parlor where the cameras aren’t, and we’re allowed to get a little glimpse of them laughing, drinking coffee together, shaking hands. It’s nowhere near the old days where they would go drink beer afterwards at the bars, but they still do communicate. A lot of the anger is theater for their voters or for the media.

Shawn Johnson:
There is. They are actually people, it turns out, who talk to each other sometimes, especially back in that chamber as you mentioned. Riley had kind of a, we’ll call it a part two to that. It’s a follow-up question. This was submitted by email. Riley asks, how would you describe the effects of social media and misinformation on the political environment in Wisconsin? Rich, let’s go to you first on this one. How are social media and misinformation affecting everything in Wisconsin, but especially our politics?

Rich Kremer:
In a big way. I mean, the immediate example that comes to mind is President Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election being stolen from him through massive fraud in states like Wisconsin. So he began tweeting about that and has kept it up essentially ever since. So one of those tweets was a direct threat to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, where he said, look, decertify the election or else, you know, someone’s going to run a primary against you. And that ended up happening. Vos said that it’s impossible to decertify the election. Eventually, there was a recall effort, and the challenger to Vos was endorsed by President Donald Trump and almost won. Vos’ victory was less than 300 votes. So that would have had a really big impact on just the business of the Assembly and the Legislature as a whole. So that’s one concrete example, but there’s all sorts of others. I spent a lot of time on social media: X, Twitter, whatever you want to call it.

Shawn Johnson:

You got the question first for a reason, buddy.

Rich Kremer:
Yeah, so it’s not real life compared to people you meet on the street, but also it bleeds into it. And one example is these young conservatives Turning Point they’re very, very focused on social media. That’s how they get the message out about candidates. That’s how they get their gentle threats against lawmakers or party officials that aren’t doing what they think they should do. So it does bleed over into real life, but also there’s an aspect of it being totally online and in its own universe.

Shawn Johnson:
We had another question from Anthony Chergosky’s class. This one came from Kiley Skenandore, a junior studying political science and criminal justice. She asks, do you think more ideologically extreme candidates hurt their party in a state like Wisconsin, or do these candidates help their party win? Zac, will we get an answer to this one once and for all this November?

Zac Schultz:
Yes and no and the reason for that is once somebody wins, they are the definition of their party, and certainly for governor. At one point in time, Tom Tiffany was one of the more right-leaning, more, you could label him extreme. He was one of the early ones to cozy up to Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. He was on the far right of the Republican congressional delegation and certainly Republicans within the state. Now, he is likely the frontrunner to be the Republican nominee for governor, and if he wins, he will be the face of the Republican Party. And so that shift that occurs means it’s no longer about what is extremism, because the voters will vote for whoever they think, you know, favors them. And politicians redefine their own image all the time. We saw another Democrat enter the field for governor Kirk Bangstad who has a pretty tawdry history with Democrats themselves, starting in Minocqua and lawsuits. And I think he was arrested, and he’s on the outs with a lot of these candidates, and he decided recently he was going to run for governor, enter the field. He did not get the same cordial welcome that the other Democrats did when they announced last year, and he would definitely be considered on the left and a little more of an extreme candidate by most people’s views of what is a centrist, moderate, or even a far-left Democrat today. That doesn’t mean Republicans won’t try and use it against the whole field, the same way that Democrats are going to use Donald Trump and his connections to Tom Tiffany against him. But it will be, how will the candidate that emerges be able to redefine themselves as the face of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?

Shawn Johnson:
And he announced for governor shortly after he was visited by federal agents after promising, among other things, to offer free beer when Donald Trump dies. This was after the most recent assassination attempt, so

Zac Schultz:
A perfect example of what Rich is talking about in social media being a little bit of a toxic place, and going right back to Riley’s first question about political polarization. It occurs in social media, and it does bleed over into the real world.

Shawn Johnson:
To me, I think this question really kind of boils down to the word “extreme,” which is always in the eye of the beholder. You know, like you mentioned, once somebody wins, they’ve become normal. You just become accustomed to that. But I think in 2016, a lot of Democrats, a lot of Republicans, certainly considered Donald Trump to be on the extreme end of things. It worked for him, you know, it continues to work for him. And when he’s not on the ballot now, Republicans suffer, because that’s what his voters are looking for. So there’s an example where even in a 50-50 state like Wisconsin, where you imagine somebody kind of wanting to aim for that middle, the more extreme candidate sometimes is the one who carries the day. Rich, real quick on this one.

Rich Kremer:
Yeah. I wanted to point to Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden. He’s said a lot of inflammatory things. He’s on social media a lot thousands and thousands of tweets probably and Democrats call him extreme. But he’s won reelection and some conservatives in the third Congressional District like that. They like that about him, they like that about Trump. They feel that that means they’re authentic and that they’re not listening to the consultant class in crafting their messaging.

Shawn Johnson:
All right. I think we need to move on. We’re going to shift gears a bit with our last question this week, which comes to us on video. It’s about political spending.

Alex Thiessen:
Hi, I’m Alex Thiessen. I’m studying political science and public administration at UW-La Crosse. My question today is, with concerns about campaign spending in recent Wisconsin state Supreme Court elections, how would stricter recusal rules change judicial elections? When new rules reduce direct campaign contributions to candidates, or would they shift spending towards outside groups such as PACs, or political action committees?

Shawn Johnson:
So recusal the idea that when you’ve got a stake in the case and you’re a judge, you step out of that case. Rich, this is not something that’s just a theoretical question. Supreme Court justices might consider it soon, right?

Rich Kremer:
That’s right. There’s a rule petition proposal before the Supreme Court brought by a group of retired judges. And essentially, it would mandate that justices recuse themselves if there are reasonable concerns about donations they got during their campaigns affecting cases. Essentially, if those donations come from parties to the case, lawyers, what have you. But the twist is, it’s still up to the individual judge or justice themselves to decide whether or not to recuse. And this rule proposal doesn’t include any set dollar limits. That was attempted in a 2017 rule proposal that was rejected by the Supreme Court’s former conservative majority. But now we’ve got a liberal majority, and they’ve been more open to the idea of some sort of change. But in a lot of ways, this current rule would be very similar to what exists right now on the books.

Shawn Johnson:
Zac, for somebody out there that’s just kind of wondering, like why don’t justices just adopt a strong recusal rule, put a set dollar amount on it, and say, “I’m out, if we get above that”?

Zac Schultz:
There are so many reasons why that does not work. The first is simply inflation. I mean, a reasonable number that we all could have agreed on 10 years ago would be pennies today, when you’re talking about $50 and $100 million races which is not this one, but the last two. And the other one is we now have a loophole in place for fundraising for these judicial candidates that did not exist 20 years ago. It was actually passed by Scott Walker and the Republicans. But it allows anyone to give as much money as they want to the political party, who can then donate that money as much as they want to the candidate. And the reason why giving money to the candidate is better than an outside PAC which is part of the question is the candidate gets a better ad rate, so they can buy more TV ads, more online ads for their dollar. So it’s much more effective for them to keep doing it that way. And finding what is the actual number, especially if it gets funneled through a party, is a really difficult question to ask. And it brings up the idea of what if a group tried to donate to their opposing person in the hopes of spiking them off a future case

Shawn Johnson:
That’s what the justices say who are skeptical of this like, we can’t do that, they’ll play games.

Zac Schultz:
Yeah. So it really is a thorny question. There’s not a simple answer. And unfortunately, well, it comes down to the integrity of the justice. And that’s where historically it always rested.

Shawn Johnson:
Do we see a lot of recusals on this though?

Zac Schultz:
Once in a great while, but not on funding.

Shawn Johnson:
All right. That’s all the time we have for today. But we would love to hear from you. If you have questions for a future show, just email us at [email protected]. Give us your first and last name, and let us know what you want to know about Wisconsin politics and government. Thanks for joining us. This has been Inside Wisconsin Politics. Our colleague Anya van Wagtendonk will be back in a couple of weeks. Be sure to follow us on pbswisconsin.org, wpr.org, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.