Inside Wisconsin Politics

Democrats are getting more aggressive about jumping into primaries.

We look at a few examples from Congress to the state legislature, plus two legal decisions that could affect Wisconsin's political maps for years to come.

This is inside Wisconsin politics.

I'm Shawn Johnson here with my colleague Zac Schultz my colleague Zac Schultz Anya van Wagtendonk and Rich Kremer in Eau Claire.

Hey, everyone.

>> Hello.

>> Hey, Shawn.

>> So before we get started with some specific examples here, I want to start with why this kind of caught our attention.

And for me, it's because in the very recent past, you had Democrats and liberals very wary about jumping into primaries.

What's changed Zac?

>> I think the biggest thing that's changed is Democrats see more opportunity to win some of these over the past 16 years.

Basically, 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 in 1 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.

was thinking about this, I almost feel like it's directly related to whatever the national political situation is at the time.

So we are right now in the Trump midterm.

Where were we?

A few years ago in the Biden midterm, you had Democrats jumping out of a primary for Senate, clearing the way for Mandela Barnes.

Where were we in the first Trump midterm in 2018?

You had about a dozen Democrats running for governor that year.

And on and on and on.

I think it's kind of a really simple flow chart.

Is it a midterm?

Yes.

Is your president in the white House?

No.

Well, in that case, you're probably going to want to jump into a primary and and give a chance for your party.

Let's jump into one of these specific examples this week.

And, you know, I want to characterize this as the opportunity knocks kind of a Democratic primary in the first congressional District, where we have Representative Bryan Steil, a Republican, is seen as a pretty strong candidate.

The district leans Republican.

And yet this week we had a Democratic candidate say, hey, it's not too late for me to jump in.

Tell us about what happened.

been several Democrats that have been running for quite a while, but none of them have really been a clear front runner.

None of them have raised a significant amount of money.

Bryan Steil, by contrast, is a very good campaigner and a very good fundraiser.

He has quite a lot in his war chest.

And so there had been some rumblings that this older person from Milwaukee was going to jump in.

And he did.

Peter Burgess, he is currently a sitting member of the Milwaukee Council.

He does not live in the district.

And so him coming out, it's really interesting because he's essentially saying, I am the person who can get the national money that is required to flip this district.

He's trying to make the argument that it is more flippable than Democrats think.

It is considered a of Wisconsin's kind of two ish congressional districts, the safer one for Republicans.

But he's saying, if we can get money, we can get in the game.

>> Rich, you've been following this district for a while now.

Why would Peter Berg Ellis look at the field here and say, you know, why not me?

>> Well, exactly what Anna said.

So, Steil, here's an example of how good of a fundraiser he is.

He's currently sitting on more than $5.5 million in his campaign war chest.

And during the first three months of the year, he raised more money than any I mean, excuse me, he spent more money than any Democrat even raised.

So maybe jealous is thinking I'll get that Democratic money, etc.

But to the point that this is this is an interesting district because on paper it it is competitive.

But Steil has just been a powerhouse and he's easily defeated every Democrat that has come up against him.

So I don't know if this is enough of a Democratic wave year, potentially, that it could make it a little closer.

But it seems like Democrats think it's worth a shot.

>> Zac, can somebody come in from outside the district?

And I'm very prominently outside of a district, too.

I mean, he holds elected office outside the district.

Can he come in and say, I want to be your congressman?

>> Well, running outside the district is not uncommon at all in Wisconsin.

You don't need to live in the district.

You're only supposed to live there by the time you take office.

So he doesn't even have to set up residence there in order to campaign there.

Even if he does win the nomination, that's not uncommon.

It is a matter of winning a primary if you don't live there, because he has to convince the voters in that district that he should be the Democrat to represent them against Steil in the fall.

And that is a little bit of a tougher ask.

That is him saying, I'm the one that's different from the rest of these that you haven't really coalesced around in the past.

And this would represent more of trying to bring in national attention, but it would require a national wave to upset Steil in this district.

When you look at district congressional national Dems didn't even invest into the third, which is a much closer district.

In past races, they didn't come close to investing in the first, and so it would require a completely different landscape for national money to really come in from the Democratic Party to say we see the first as in play.

>> It could be a case of they just want Bryan Steil to spend his money and not have that sitting around for a future election, too.

>> That makes a big difference.

>> Let's move on to another primary.

And since I'm naming stuff today, I'm going to call this one the Opportunity Knocks.

No, we we did the Opportunity knocks primary.

I need to get my name straight.

If I'm going to do this.

This is the don't tell me what to do primary.

An important distinction in Democratic primaries.

We've got a couple of examples here today.

Let's start with one in the third 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.

>> 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 Berg of Eau Claire.

And she 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 Berg 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 Berg signs.

So this being one of the more, if not the most populous areas in the third district, maybe that makes a difference.

But in terms of resources, Cooke is way, way, way ahead of Berg.

In all the fundraising reports that I've seen.

>> Zac, do you get the sense that this is, you know, a competitive primary here?

>> 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 Berg 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 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.

another.

Don't tell me what to do.

Primary Ana.

This is in one of the state Senate districts that we're watching that could Wisconsin state Senate this year.

The 17th state Senate district.

Howard Marklein is the Republican incumbent, and the Democratic Party had been sending strong signals that they knew who they wanted to run for a while now.

And yet there's a candidate who says, I want to run to tell us about it.

>> Yeah.

So Jenna Jacobson, who currently serves in the Assembly, has been sort of the anointed Democratic Howard Marklein for this district, which also has been redrawn in a way that could be more favorable for Democrats.

So Marklein sort of on his heels in that way.

But then yesterday we got the announcement that Corrin Hendrickson, who if you have written an article or read an article about child care advocacy in the last three years, you have heard that name.

She has been at the Capitol.

She was a small business owner, a daycare owner in New Glarus.

That was very much her issue.

And now she's running for office.

So a political newcomer, somebody with this kind of particular set of policy expectations and preferences challenging a fellow Democrat.

And so that is a caught our attention for that reason, that it's a competitive district.

It's not safe for Democrats.

So here's somebody coming in and saying, I want to throw my hat in, and I want to advocate for my specific approach to politics.

>> And, you know, I do feel like we have this debate about primaries pretty much every single primary about whether it's going to help or hurt the candidates.

I think they are making a bet this year that they can afford to have those debates.

And the argument for it helping them is that they are going to kind of dominate the news cycle for a little while in August and get more attention than candidates that don't have a primary.

Okay.

One primary that is really big this year in our world, the Democratic primary for governor, we're not going to talk about today, but if you had to name that one, anybody got any takers here?

>> The why not primary?

I think everyone and their mother is running for governor in the state.

>> So we've got at least seven candidates running any labels for it?

>> Ana stole mine.

>> I want to add.

I want to a small amendment to yours.

The why not me?

You know, primaries, actually, what I had thought about.

So maybe you stole both of ours.

It is kind of one of those years where you see a race that's kind of there for the taking.

Why not jump in?

>> So Shawn, let's flip this on its head for you, because part of the idea behind having primaries in the past or not having them was fear of wasting resources.

But the other end of it was you can battle, test, and whoever comes through a primary is a better candidate for the general election.

So what's your take on a wide open primary like this?

How can it help Democrats if there are battling this many people there?

>> 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.

>> 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 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.

news to get to here today, including another technically not a Democratic primary, but you have a couple candidates running for the 2027 Supreme Court race already.

Anya, how did this happen?

We just had a court race.

>> We sure did.

So two weeks after, I think the the court race was resolved, Lindsay Brunet threw in her hat.

And she is a former prosecutor, much like three of the current sitting liberals.

And then a couple days ago, Pedro Colon, who is a Milwaukee area judge, threw his hat.

And he is also a liberal judge, but he comes from a law making background.

And so we're seeing two types of judicial candidates, one who more closely mirrors the Susan Crawford, Janet Protasiewicz kind of model of the last couple of years, a Democrat, but with a law and order background, and then one who more closely mirrors Chris Taylor with the lawmaker advocacy background, which again, I think shows that there's a little bit of this wanting to push pull for what kind of liberal judge do we want?

Because liberals have the court, no matter what they think, that they probably have the election in the bag.

And so, again, in what direction will the liberal justice land?

>> What what do we call this one?

The we?

We're going to win this one anyway.

Let's do what we want.

No, maybe I should let this one go.

If we don't have a good name, it's got to be on a bumper sticker.

Rich, you talked to Pedro Colon about why he was getting into the race.

And, you know, these introductory interviews are usually pretty boring.

They don't say too much.

I feel like Pedro Colon told you some stuff.

>> Yeah.

He did.

I asked, you know, what differentiates you from Judge Brunet?

And he said, unfortunately, it's experience.

She doesn't have the substance substantive experience that he does, which includes the decade or so in the legislature and his years on the bench and the state appeals court in Milwaukee.

So that surprised me.

I was not expecting him right out of the gate to take a little swipe at his competitor.

And the Brunet campaign sent me a statement saying, as much as well.

They said, look, a number of justices have had the same amount of experience as Judge Brunet and have been elected to the state's highest court.

So there's that.

And they also said it's interesting that on his during his announcement, he attacked Judge Brunet.

>> So already a.

>> Little.

And and endorsements too, as you reported on you, justice elect Chris Taylor has endorsed Pedro Colon.

>> Immediately, immediately.

>> And then we also have an endorsement from Congressman Mark Pocan endorsing Pedro Colon.

Mark Pocan and Pedro Colon were like budget buddies on the Joint Finance Committee in 2005.

I can tell you that they spent a lot of time together writing, you know, arguing against that Republican budget that year.

So you get to know each other in politics, relationships can be a big deal sometimes.

>> Well, what's interesting about this race is we've got two on the Liberal side that are in.

I heard both those names on election night.

I had someone in a campaign tell me, Judge Brunette's going to announce, just watch your inbox.

That'll be coming out.

That was on election night.

Judge Cologne was at the election party.

I interviewed him and talked to him and he was doing the oh, we'll have to wait and see.

But his name had been floated for prior campaigns.

So if we're looking for labels, this is.

It used to be a wait your turn one at a time.

I think there are liberal candidates realizing I might have to wait a long time to wait my turn.

Why wait?

Just get in there.

>> Seven justices, ten year terms.

If you want to do it, better get in.

Zac.

We had a couple decisions this week.

Court decisions on redistricting, one in state court, which I'll summarize a little bit too quickly here to say that three judge panel basically said we are not going to deal with the congressional map this year.

Another big decision by the U.S.

Supreme Court, which, you know, court watchers have said is going to gut the Voting Rights Act.

What could that mean for Wisconsin?

>> Well, they're kind of tailed together a little bit.

This is the second three judge panel that has thrown out challenges to our congressional lines.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has repeatedly said, we don't want to handle this right now.

The United States Supreme Court decision that went after the Voting Rights Act has to do with minority majority districts, of which the fourth Congressional Gwen Moore district in Wisconsin is one of those.

So if lines are going to get redrawn, if the courts are going to look at this, that could mean some of those lines getting shifted in the future and the way that they're drawn, without having to protect as much of that minority and majority district in Milwaukee.

So there's a lot of implications, one of which is will this new makeup of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Now take a look at these lines again, especially with new judgment from the United States Supreme Court.

>> Yeah.

And it seems like nationally, I've seen a lot about how this could be a benefit to Republicans in southern states.

I think in Wisconsin, it's an open question about which party would benefit.

Does feel like it is potentially detrimental, though, to minority representation nationwide.

That's all the time we have for today.

Thanks for joining us.

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