Inside Wisconsin Politics

How socialism is affecting Wisconsin's Democratic primaries

Shawn Johnson:
Democratic socialists pick up three big victories in this week’s New York City primaries. Could that momentum carry all the way to Wisconsin? And the field of Democrats running for governor here finally shrinks. What is the signal about the race? This is Inside Wisconsin Politics. I’m Shawn Johnson here with Anya van Wagtendonk and Rich Kremer in Eau Claire. Hey, gang.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Hey, Shawn.

Shawn Johnson:
So our show this week needs a little bit of setup. We are, of course, focused on primaries in Wisconsin, but we are looking for clues this week from primaries that happened in New York. So, Anya, what did happen there?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah, there were a number of congressional primaries, including three candidates who received the backing of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, himself a socialist. Two of those candidates also received endorsements from the Democratic Socialists of America, which is a group that he’s also affiliated with. And all three of those candidates won in one case, kicking out an incumbent. Some of them were, you know, political outsiders. So this was really, in some ways, an upset and a little bit of a validation for Mamdani this kind of “further left” mayor for the power that he shows in this significant blue area. And so a lot of people, as you say, are kind of looking at that as a tea leaves for what that says about the Democratic primary right now and what voters want in their blue candidates.

Shawn Johnson:
And I think that you would see states or people in any state where Democrats have a plausible shot at winning, asking these same questions. So why are we asking it here, though, or what’s kind of our thread where it feels like, hey, this could really be significant this year, right?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
There are many differences between New York City and the state of Wisconsin, but one of the things that there is kind of commonality here is that we have this crowded Democratic race for governor, as we’ve mentioned, and one candidate from there, Francesca Hong, is sort of in that same vein as Mamdani. She identifies as a socialist, as a democratic socialist. She’s part of that caucus in the legislature. And so when we kind of look at who is going to stand out among this field of now six Democratic candidates, we wonder kind of to what extent these victories for these further left candidates means that Fran Hong will stand out among Democrats. And then what does that mean in a more general election, where, again, a Wisconsin general election is very different than a New York City primary election?

Shawn Johnson:
So we’re going to get back to the primary for governor here in just a minute. But, Rich, this was a congressional primary in New York congressional primaries, rather. I wonder how we’re seeing this play out, if at all, in Democratic primaries here in Wisconsin. For Congress, you are covering one in the third Congressional District in western Wisconsin. You just covered a forum there where there is a Democratic primary. Do you see any parallels there or is it a different ballgame?

Rich Kremer:
It feels like a different ballgame. I mean, for one, there aren’t any DSA candidates in the race for the third Congressional District. But, you know, there are some similarities in one way. So we’ve got two candidates and one seems to be trying to portray herself as the more progressive of the two, and one is trying to or is acting like she’s the more moderate candidate. So these two people are Emily Berge. She’s the former City Council president of Eau Claire, has been on the City Council for a long time. She’s the one that during the forum that was last week in Platteville was offering up some more of what you would expect progressive candidates to say. For example, Berge called for Medicare for all, which is universal health care, essentially. And she said that she would she vowed to impeach President Donald Trump if she were elected or support the impeachment. The other candidate is Rebecca Cooke, who has this is her third run, essentially, for the third Congressional District. And she was more reserved in answering those questions. For example, on Medicare for all, she said she’d love to sign up for all of these aspirational goals, but she said that it’s more likely that if Democrats win the House majority back, they would go more towards expanding tax credits for the Affordable Care Act that were passed by Democrats during the earlier years of the COVID-19 pandemic. She said that would be the immediate first step. And on impeachment, she said the devil is in the details of what that resolution would look like. So those were two of the differences that I noticed right away. And then another difference that predates the debate by many months: the House Democrats national campaign arm essentially endorsed Rebecca Cooke months ago, and they’ve offered her support, they’ve offered her staff training, etc. And Berge has since said, and said during the forum that it shouldn’t be national Democrats picking who represents the people of the third district, it should be voters themselves. So that’s one way that it stood out from what happened in New York. But there’s still kind of two candidates trying to pick their lanes, and it feels like one is going more of the progressive lane, and the other is trying to go a little bit more moderate.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
I think that push-pull between national Democrats and these more kind of “we know our community, we are kind of of the progressive wing” was also on display in New York, right. A number of the candidates who were defeated were backed by these national Democratic groups that Rich was just talking about. And so again, while we’re trying to see how are Democrats feeling, how are they kind of leaning going into what they are hoping broadly to be a wave election like, who are they putting their money behind as the people who can deliver that? And so in New York, part of the answer was people whose policies do fall a little bit to the left. It’ll be really interesting to see in the governor’s race and in some of these competitive congressional races here in Wisconsin. What do Wisconsin Democrats who do they put their money behind?

Shawn Johnson:
I guess the thing that strikes me is that the thing that’s missing in Wisconsin is that you don’t have a massively powerful endorsement, it seems, as they did in New York from Mayor Mamdani, who came in and said, “this is what it means to be a Democrat right now. This is my slate,” essentially. “These are my people.” It seems to have worked. Is there anything like that in, let’s say, the third Congressional District for Emily Berge? Is there somebody like that coming in and saying, “this is the progressive choice”?

Rich Kremer:
Not that I know of, not that I know of. Meanwhile, Cooke has gotten all kinds of endorsements from sitting members of Congress, the Senate, etc. and also the backing of the national party and a whole number of third party groups as well. So I’m not aware of any big endorsements. Actually, the endorsements that Berge has been promoting have been from essentially local government, city council, county board, school boards, etc.

Shawn Johnson:
So I guess I’m wondering if, you know, that person who could move the field like that even exists in Wisconsin for Wisconsin Democrats. I mean, the state party is staying out of this race, the race for governor. You know, they have massive financial resources and could tip the field potentially if they wanted to. They’re definitely not going there. We have a Democratic governor who has some power. He’s not being vocal with his endorsements. Is there is this power vacuum sort of leaving us up in the air about what’s going to happen?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
I think we can kind of understand this a little bit in the context of Republicans, because there is such a clear leader of the party in President Donald Trump. And so Democrats don’t quite have that for many reasons, including that they don’t hold these majorities in Washington. They don’t hold the White House. But I think also, this really is a little bit of like an existential, exploratory time for Democrats, both here in Wisconsin, where they are facing, you know, the best odds that they’ve had in a long time of getting some real legislative power. But then nationally, seeing you know, there were other primaries that took place on Tuesday as well outside of New York, where more moderate Democrats won. One issue that was really prevalent in a lot of these races was Israel and the war in Gaza, and how that is playing out, how that’s kind of dividing up the Democratic Party. We’ve seen that a little bit in like Milwaukee politics, where that’s played a real issue. I don’t know to what extent that will be important statewide. And so that could be one place where Wisconsin’s politics obviously, of course, our naturally very 50-50 purple stance could look really different than some of these places where Democrats feel a little bit safer. Like, we know we’re going to get one of our guys in. So let’s try to really move the needle on what that looks like.

Shawn Johnson:
So I got to say, as somebody who’s covered Wisconsin politics for a while now, it’s still a little bit jarring to me to see people just self-identify as democratic socialists, for example. I think five years ago I wasn’t seeing that. But I remember Anya, one of the first stories you did when you came to Wisconsin Public Radio, was about this socialist caucus in the Wisconsin legislature, where, you know, for years it was Republicans who were calling Democrats socialists, and they were like, “no, no, no, no, no, no, we’re not. We’re just we’re Democrats.” And now Democrats are saying, “yeah, we are. That’s who we represent. That’s our values.”

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah. And like you say, I was I think truly a week into my time here in 2023, it was a new legislative session. And these two Assembly members from Milwaukee, they, you know, they caucus with the Democrats, but they identify as part of a socialist caucus. That caucus has grown. I’m going to get the number wrong, but it’s something like 7 or 8 people. And so it’s not small. And you’re right that there are especially Republican members who will sometimes be so outraged at this idea that there are people who are identifying as socialists. But then you also, you know, when I go again to a Francesca Hong rally, that’s something that people see as a reason that they support her. And so it is one of those things that, yeah, the term can either be an insult or it can be an endorsement, depending on who’s leveling it.

Shawn Johnson:
Her basic message seems to be, “these are dire times. We need a new kind of politics.” Rich, I do think that Republicans have a different take when it comes to this stuff, though, as they as you’ve seen them react to the results in New York City and what’s going on here in Wisconsin how do they feel about it?

Rich Kremer:
Well, based on what I’ve seen from, I guess, some of the talking heads on social media, I could sum it up as this: all Democrats are socialists. That’s what Republicans are trying to pitch right now to voters. Obviously, we know that there are all kinds of degrees to being a Republican, you know conservative, liberal, etc. I mean, just a million different stripes out there. But Republicans are excited about Hong maybe being the nominee in Wisconsin because they think that that will give them the best shot at making sure that Tom Tiffany wins. And in fact, they have been point to this one poll that came out weeks and weeks ago, maybe longer, that showed head-to-head matchups with all of the Democratic candidates at the time, there were the seven major candidates and literally the only one in the poll that Tiffany wouldn’t have lost to (again, it’s all theoretical, and only represents what people who took the survey felt on that day) was Francesca Hong. So not only are they literally talking about that they hope this is the nominee, also some Republicans are saying “hey, why don’t you go out and meddle in that primary? Vote for Hong.” Cross over because the other primaries on the GOP side aren’t as big of a deal. I literally saw a post last night that “the race for governor is the whole game. Republicans: cross over. Vote for Hong.That will make it easier for Tiffany in the general.” Politics sometimes when you’re attacking opponents, you like to paint with a broad brush, so they’re seeing this rise up of some of these democratic socialist candidates around America and they’re saying “Look. This is Democrats in disarray. This is proof that the party has moved to the left.”

Shawn Johnson:
I wish we had more polling right now in this race. You look back at the most recent public poll, and it’s like in March in terms of Marquette polls, for example. I have a feeling, though, that you might have a lot of people saying, “I haven’t heard enough about the candidates and I haven’t made up my mind. It’s June, leave me alone.” But let’s talk about the field. We had a seven-candidate Democratic primary this week shrink to a six-candidate primary. Can we still use the word crowded when we’re talking about that? It’s big anyway for a primary field.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Pretty crowded, I would say.

Shawn Johnson:
Missy Hughes dropped out, the former CEO of the state’s economic development agency she immediately endorsed Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez. This is just an open question. How big a deal was this?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Well, we’ve been talking for weeks about are we going to see any dropouts before August. And so this was the first one. It was definitely a bit of breaking news. And I think one of the things that we’ve been talking about so much is this idea of lanes and how these candidates can kind of stand out and make themselves seem, you know, picking me would be different than picking anyone else. And so I think in her statement, and then in an interview she gave after, Missy Hughes kind of spoke about the ways that Democrats are going to hurt each other if they are taking up space that could be taken up by somebody else. So she said she hopes to see other people drop out. And so I think that is a little bit of a nod to the fact that they need that wall. Democrats are trying to figure out who they are trying to be, what they’re trying to represent, and how do I beat Tom Tiffany or other people who are picked by Donald Trump? What does that look like for the Democrats? And so I think this was a signal that one person at least made that calculus of what was good for the party, and then how to kind of throw her power and her weight behind that.

Rich Kremer:
Well, I would say that it’s not that big of a deal. It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to me, because Hughes wasn’t polling very high. Running for office, even a primary, it’s very expensive. So I have no idea why she decided to step down or out of the race. But the endorsement is something. But again, there’s still six people in the race. And I’ll just say that Hughes dropping out she was essentially a pro-business kind of Democrat. Talked a lot about how, you know, if you improve the economy, you can improve people’s lives with these other programs, et cetera. But the Republicans have said, well, look, if more proof they’re pushing the moderates out. So it’s all a word game, I guess. But big picture, I’m not sure it makes a huge deal.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah. She’s the kind of candidate who you could imagine in a Democratic year. Like we could be headed toward in, the Trump midterm if she was the general election candidate, you could imagine someone like Missy Hughes winning and becoming governor. But in a Democratic primary, pitching that business message, especially at this moment in time, it seemed like a hard sell. She also did kind of go for that moderate lane a little bit there a month or so ago, when she was the only one who came out really in support of that failed surplus deal that was negotiated by Tony Evers and Robin Vos, among other Republicans in the Legislature.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
The other thing that made her unique is that she comes from western Wisconsin.

Shawn Johnson:
That’s right, she’s the only one, right?

Anya van Wagtendonk:

That used to be a sort of bastion of Democratic politics that has moved very far away from that. Every other candidate is Milwaukee or Madison. And so it’s also, I think, a little bit of a signifier that she was not able to make much of a splash, even with that more rural, farmer-focused western Wisconsin background. That, again, as we look at where the party is going, it seems to be going towards the major bases of Milwaukee County, Dane County.

Shawn Johnson:
OK, another open question here, I guess. Is there any connection, do you think, to the Francesca Hong story that we’ve been talking about and Missy Hughes endorsing someone like Sarah Rodriguez is she making a bet that, look, this candidate’s politics kind of aligns with mine. We got to unite and stop the candidates from the left.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
I mean, I don’t know what’s in her heart and I would never guess. But again, from this idea of not wanting to kind of crowd out people who are similar to you, who have similar politics, who you think could do a good and effective job in making those politics a reality. If you have one quite popular candidate who is Francesca Hong again, polling shows her towards the top and then you have a number of people kind of further towards the center, all fighting amongst themselves, right? Missy Hughes voters and Fran Hong voters were probably never going to nobody’s vacillating between those two candidates. And so that’s maybe a way of trying to bring some more strength into the not-democratic socialist wing of the Democratic Party, going into what’s expected to just be an incredibly tight general election.

Shawn Johnson:
She did say something in her press conference where she endorsed Sarah Rodriguez she can’t come out and say “I’m kind of the moderate candidate. I support her.” But she said, we don’t need we got a lot of good things going on in this state. We don’t need to tear it all down. So that to me is a signal that she supports the kind of politics which is similar to what we’ve got already in Wisconsin, including the Evers administration, which she and Sarah Rodriguez have served under.

Shawn Johnson:
That’s all the time we have for today. Thanks for joining us. Our colleague Zac Schultz will be back in a couple of weeks. This has been Inside Wisconsin Politics. Be sure to follow us on PBSWisconsin.org, WPR.org, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.