Inside Wisconsin Politics

How much will endorsements matter in Wisconsin's 2026 races?

Shawn Johnson:
Do endorsements matter? This week we look at a few examples, including in heated primaries for the 7th Congressional District and the governor’s office, plus the latest Republican Party drama following the Supreme Court blowout. This is Inside Wisconsin Politics. I’m Shawn Johnson, here with my colleagues Anya van Wagtendonk and Rich Kremer in Eau Claire. Hey, gang.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Hey, Shawn.

Shawn Johnson:

Hey, If you haven’t been following these primaries yet, and you’ll be forgiven it’s April but the races for the 7th Congressional District, especially on the Republican side, and the Democratic primary for governor are pretty dramatic. Let’s start with the 7th, though, Rich, because another reason we want to follow these is that they involve endorsements that seem like they could define the race. Tell us about what happened up in the 7th, where you got kind of the biggest endorsement of all.

Rich Kremer:
Yeah, truly. President Donald Trump, way back in January, endorsed one of the candidates running for that seat, Michael Alfonso. Of course, Michael Alfonso is the son-in-law of U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who also had that congressional seat before. So it definitely created a stir within the GOP primary, and I’m sure you’ll be hearing a little bit about that endorsement in the general.

Shawn Johnson:
And the reason we have an open race up there, Anya, is because the current officeholder, Tom Tiffany, is running for governor. We’re going to get to that race in a bit. But first of all, with Tom Tiffany, as he transitioned to the governor’s race, he also got that Trump endorsement. How has that played out in his race there?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah, I mean, if people go all the way back in time to 2025, there were briefly three Republican candidates for governor alongside Tom Tiffany. One dropped out after some negative reporting about some of the stuff he’d been following on social media that was Bill Berrien. But then Josh Schoemann, Washington County executive, stayed in the race until the morning after Tom Tiffany got the Trump endorsement and he dropped out. And so it was a little bit of this nod to the fact that in a Republican primary, a nod from Trump can really be a sort of kingmaking move, at least in the primary. But then it can also lead to all kinds of stuff in the general.

Shawn Johnson:
It was really a cause and effect situation there, right? Endorsement one day, he drops out the next. That has not been the case in the 7th, though, Rich. I mean, I think that is the general playbook, is that Trump endorses and people sort of assume that in a Republican primary that seals it. That is not what’s happening there, and you kind of saw it firsthand last night at a candidate forum in Mercer. Tell us about that.

Rich Kremer:
Yeah. So, this forum was hosted by the Iron County Republican Party. It was in a former gymnasium of a very old school, and it happened on the first 80-degree day that Mercer saw this year. So it was a nice event, but the theme was, if I might summarize the candidates and some of the people I talked to in the audience we support President Trump, but that doesn’t mean we have to vote for who he tells us to. So a lot of people up there, and this was actually the first time that I saw candidates Republican candidates Kevin Hermening and Jessi Ebben go negative against [Michael] Alfonso. They were criticizing Alfonso, who is 26 years old, for not having very much experience in politics or local government, et cetera., and they were portraying themselves as the better choice. But there was also discussion about, you know, does Alfonso or Duffy feel like this congressional seat is something that he’s entitled to? So it was really interesting. People up there tiptoeing the line of still supporting the president, who did very well in this district, which leans pretty Republican, but they just don’t, there’s this independent streak where they don’t like the idea of being told what to do.

Shawn Johnson:
And I got to ask you about what they did on the stage there, too, because they had assigned seats for all the candidates, including Michael Alfonso.

Rich Kremer:
Yeah. And in fact, the only seat that had a sign on it was Michael Alfonso’s. So you had three of the Republican candidates on the stage that’s Niina Baum, Jessi Ebben and Kevin Hermening, and then there was an empty chair with Michael Alfonso’s name on a piece of paper taped to it. And even during the debate, Kevin Hermening stretched his arm out and kind of put it on the chair, had a big smile. His campaign person took a picture that made it on social media pretty quickly. So there was that. But even before the debate, one of the interesting things that kind of got me interested in going up there was this Republican Party their Facebook page was essentially goading or kind of making a little bit of fun of Alfonso’s campaign for not responding. The GOP chair up there told me that people he knows with the Michael Alfonso campaign told him that the Trump-endorsed candidate doesn’t need to debate, and people in the audience say, they told me that’s just not the case. Like, this is important. You’ve got to get out in this district and meet people one by one, and that’s what it takes to win.

Shawn Johnson:
So you have the candidates who are in that race saying, you can’t tell us what to do, we’re still running up here. Anya, although one of the candidates, which you’ve done some reporting on, did drop out this week. Tell us about that. Paul Wassgren left the race.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah, so Paul Wassgren is a successful businessperson. He had a largely self-funded campaign, and so him dropping out is kind of the first big dropout of the race. And that’s one of the things we kind of look to going into a primary, especially in these crowded fields, is when will people start dropping out. So this is kind of the first one. He had raised quite a bit of money from himself, as I mentioned, but very little in terms of independent donors. And then by contrast, you have Alfonso, who has received quite a bit of money from these kind of D.C.-connected paths that he’s on one thing that when Rich covered the empty chair, Alfonso was posting at the same time on Facebook photos of him with Republican congresspeople in D.C. So he has these big connections, and so I think it was a little bit of a signal that even people with deep pockets are not necessarily feeling up to the challenge. He also said that he didn’t want to, Wassgren said he didn’t want to contribute to a bloody primary, that that could only empower Democrats. And so I think we’re going to see a little bit of that, you know, bowing out in order to maintain the good of the party.

Shawn Johnson:
Rich?

Rich Kremer:
Yeah. If I could just chime in on that. So the other thing is that there’s this political action committee that has been raising money. It’s based in Alabama, it’s brand new, and it’s been getting some of that money $1 million from Sean Duffy’s former congressional campaign. And so they’ve essentially been doing a lot of ads, a lot of work for Alfonso. Therefore, he hasn’t had to spend as much of the money that he’s actually raised. And with regard to Wassgren, what you noticed, Shawn, on that last finance report that we looked at when I was reporting on it, there was some interesting loan information. You want to talk about that?

Shawn Johnson:
Oh, yeah. I mean, I think the thing that got his attention for Paul Wassgren when he jumped into the race was, as you mentioned, an ability to self-fund. So he loaned himself a million bucks there to start out. He had repaid a lot of that in the last report, so I think it’s a situation where you put the money in there to send a message. He decided it was not well-received and took the money back and got on out of there. Rich, I guess one thing we got to ask here this is a very Republican district, and so we are talking about this Republican primary. But is this a situation where, because of this infighting, uneasiness among Republicans up there, is this a door open for Democrats?

Rich Kremer:
I’ve heard that it is, and I’ve heard that it isn’t. So this is a district that has tended to be more and more Republican since, say, 2010. We have to also remember that former Democratic Congressman Dave Obey represented the 7th for many, many years. But of course, with the tea party wave, Sean Duffy got in and it stayed Republican since. Of course, the map also changed. But just, what I’ve been told by Joe Hendrick who’s kind of like the maps and elections data guru for the Republicans is that it is Republican, it would be an uphill battle for any Democrat, but it’s not impossible. And he said if the GOP picks the wrong candidate in the primary and it’s a wave year, which he said it seems to be looking like it might be, it’s possible for this to flip back to Democratic hands. Whether that happens or not, Hendrick said it’s unlikely, but it’s not off the table.

Shawn Johnson:
So let’s turn to the Democratic primary for governor here, where we have seven candidates running and it is at this stage not getting a ton of attention statewide. I mean, we did just have a Supreme Court race that ate up some of that. There’s a little national news right now that has people’s attention. But Anya, in that race, it feels like you could be talking about endorsements every week, in a way, about how that might affect the race. What’s one that caught our eye this week?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah. I mean, so there have been all of these kind of smaller or more local endorsements that have been coming through, so local firefighters unions or this kind of thing. So this week was the first, at least that I’ve noticed, sort of national figure to back a candidate. So Ilhan Omar of Minnesota backed Francesca Hong, who is a Democratic representative from Madison. She aligns with the democratic socialists sort of platform, and so she’s one of the further left candidates, obviously getting the backing of a further left member of Congress. And this really caught our attention for sort of a double-edged reason, right, that that can really signal where Hong stands here in Wisconsin. But of course, Ilhan Omar has plenty of people who don’t care for her in the Republican and sort of conservative side of things. And so looking towards the general election, I’m curious what it’ll mean to have some of these more divisive endorsements. But right now, it’s also really interesting for a big national figure with a lot of media attention, social media attention, to be throwing her weight behind a candidate in the Wisconsin governor’s election.

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah, to me, I think if you’re a voter out there who’s barely paying attention to these races at this point, and you have this overwhelming list of choices in front of you, essentially they’re probably looking for clues. If they want to go for a very liberal candidate, this is a way of sending that message, that Rep. Hong is that candidate. You don’t earn an endorsement like that without being a candidate like that. So it is a way to send a little cue kind of early going.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Right there’s not a lot of differentiation on policy issues. There’s some differentiation on sort of the specifics of things. But basically every Democratic candidate supports abortion rights, supports expanding Medicaid, like there are all of these kind of signals there. And so an endorsement can offer a more specific kind of endorsement, I’m sorry, a signal around values, and also, again, invite some of the media attention that can come with that. So it’s one thing to say, “Oh, I have the support of this local union in my community, and what does that say about my support for workers’ rights?” It’s another thing if, you know, Mamdani comes in and backs you, right, a sort of nationally famous figure where people have already kind of done the work to understand who that person is, and so then they can apply it to the candidates here.

Shawn Johnson:
So Anya, I guess a question that I have when it comes to endorsements like this on the Democratic side is there an equivalent to the Donald Trump endorsement, where if this person comes in, it’s kind of all over in a primary?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
I mean, put simply, no. Trump is really the standard bearer for the Republican Party and has been for a decade. Democrats just don’t have that equivalent person, in part because you do have some of this division between more centrist Democrats and more left-wing Democrats. And so, again, somebody like Ilhan Omar is going to really appeal to people who are kind of already in the Francesca Hong camp would not necessarily appeal to more sort of moderate or business-minded Democrats. And then there are people, Kamala Harris or somebody similar, who might appeal more to those kind of centrist folks. But there’s not really a uniting figure in the same way that Donald Trump is.

Shawn Johnson:
You could imagine if, let’s say, former President Obama were to jump in with an endorsement in that primary which seems unlikely, but you never know that might turn some heads. I think one difference is that President Trump has sort of gone after people who don’t fall in line in a way that I don’t know that President Obama would or could. Trump brags about it, frankly. I mean, he is not afraid to enforce his endorsements, and so I don’t know that you have something like that on the Democratic side.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Well, and you also don’t have Tony Evers weighing in on who would be a good sort of recipient of the torch that he wants to pass.

Shawn Johnson:

Right.

Anya van Wagtendonk:

And in fact, I have asked him several times if he’s going to endorse, and he shoots that question down every time. So it looks like he’s really not playing favorites. And so that’s again another lack of a signal, right? If there’s nobody to kind of carry forward the specific Evers legacy, then who is the person who can do what he did, which is win pretty narrowly against a Republican?

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah. I want to just reinforce that that is a perfectly reasonable question and you should keep asking it. And I think in a different year, in different circumstances, he’d have somebody. But in this race, he doesn’t want to go there for whatever reason. So I guess it is an open question that we could ask every single campaign. But I don’t care I want to ask it again. Do endorsements matter? Do they matter for voters? To me, I think the answer is absolutely yes, given the circumstances. One, I think that where you see it definitely mattering is in our upcoming court race. I don’t know if you’ve paid attention to this one yet. I mean, I know you have, you’ve written about it. But you did not have candidates endorse, you did not have the liberal justices endorse in that race yet. So in the 2024 Supreme Court race, you had the four sitting liberal justices endorse Susan Crawford early on. In 2025, you had them endorse Chris Taylor. You’ve had a candidate jump into this race already, Anya, that you’ve written about Lyndsey Brunette. She did not immediately get that endorsement, and so now you have, maybe, Judge Pedro Coln in Milwaukee could be running. So the lack of endorsement may be spawning a little liberal primary on that side.

Anya van Wagtendonk:

Yeah. Again, and especially with the courts, right, there can be a little bit of that kingmaking approach again. So I think it is when you have a crowded field that the endorsements really matter. But we live in also such polarized times that going into a general election, there are going to be very few surprising endorsements. So the people that I’ve talked to about the politics of endorsements have said surprising endorsements really matter. Less surprising ones matter less because, of course, Democratic royalty is going to back Democrats and Republican royalty is going to back Republicans in general.

Shawn Johnson:

Rich, before we wrap up here, I feel like we got to talk about the kind of aftermath of the 2026 Supreme Court race, though, in just about a minute here. There was some talk that the state party chair, Brian Schimming, could lose his job over that race. Some people wanted him out. What’s the update on that?

Rich Kremer:

He’s still in. The party web page still shows him as chairman. They had an executive committee so that’s the group of people that could have fired him and they apparently did not. But the twist is, people I talked to that are on the committee said, we can’t tell you what happened there because we signed non-disclosure agreements. Those agreements were put in effect in December. And just for context, after the 2025 loss that Republicans had, that was the [Brad] Schimel and Susan Crawford race, there were calls for Brian Schimming to be fired or to resign. So kind of the same thing. And shortly after that, the executive committee passed some new rules to kind of clamp down on people complaining publicly about GOP party leadership. So, this is, Schimming is still in place, and there’s a new rule where you have to sign an NDA.

Shawn Johnson:

So this powerful executive committee for the party makes decisions like this. And you talk to one of the members and he didn’t really tell you about what went on, but he said, check the website.

Rich Kremer:

Yeah, check the website that’s right.

Shawn Johnson:

And there’s Brian Schimming’s name as chair. Well, we’ll continue to follow that one and all these endorsements. That’ll do it for this week. That’s all the time we have. Our colleague Zac Schultz will be back next week. 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.