Inside Wisconsin Politics

Wisconsin Democrats make their cases in primary for governor

Shawn Johnson:
Democrats running for governor have less than two months to stand out in a crowded field. How’d they do that at the state party convention? And we run through developments and lawsuits involving voter rolls, legislative maps and false electors. 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 I think it’s fair to say that this primary campaign is not going to be won or lost based on what happened in the room at the state party convention over the weekend. But you did have all seven candidates there. They were under the same set of rules, speaking to the same group of Democratic activists. What was it like?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah. You know, I say this with all due respect normal people do not attend state party conventions, right? These are like the most die-hard Democrats, the most die-hard Republicans who go to that convention. And so these are the people who are like the most energized about their party and are going to be the ones to hopefully bring in their fellow, but like less excited Democrats. And so I think that was kind of the vibe of the speeches that you were getting from the gubernatorial candidates, which is that they were trying to appeal to this base, right? The most kind of committed Democrats possible, and also make the case not only that they should stand out in this seven-person primary going into August, but that they are also most sort of best positioned to beat Tom Tiffany in November. And so those are kind of two different arguments that you need to be making the one that makes you most appealing to Democrats, and then the one that makes you most appealing to kind of your average Wisconsinite. A lot of kind of threading of that needle while also trying to get excitement. So it was definitely a little bit of a dance going on. But that I think was kind of the overarching theme.

Shawn Johnson:
What common threads stood out to you? I mean, like, what was a theme that stood out in all the speeches, or at least most of them?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
The Tom Tiffany theme and also by extension, Donald Trump, right? A lot of trying to tie the two of those together. But then affordability was kind of the word of the day. The theme of the convention was “Reclaiming the American Dream.” And each of the candidates talked in either broader or more specific terms, sort of depending on the candidate, about what they would do to basically put more money in people’s pockets, lower prices and make things more affordable in Wisconsin.

Shawn Johnson:
Rich and I were not at this convention, although we had a chance to listen to these speeches later. What stood out to you?

Rich Kremer:
Well, Anya already mentioned it. There was a lot of talk about Donald Trump and the chaos in Washington from his administration. That’s according to these Democratic candidates. And it’s pretty obvious why they would focus on the president and his you know, his popularity rating is pretty low in polling. So it seems like they’re hoping that Trump will be a liability for Tom Tiffany as they move forward in this campaign. And also there’s only one Republican in the race. So they’re able to focus their attacks on one person. Meanwhile, you know, Tom Tiffany doesn’t have to worry about trying to stand out among Republican competitors in a primary. So that’s what stuck out. But there was some other things that stood out in terms of like the closest thing to criticizing other Democrats seemed to come from State Senator Kelda Roys, and she basically said the party cannot afford to pick a nominee that would put a Democratic trifecta that is the State Senate, State Assembly and the governor’s office in jeopardy. So no names were named, but people might be able to infer who, or how many people she might have been talking about. And of course, there were a number of like pretty bold promises from some of these candidates as well.

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah. That criticism did jump out to me. There was another one I think you could argue from Francesca Hong saying that when you go out on the campaign trail, people can detect BS. We’re not going to say the word because family show here, guys. But she was essentially, without naming names, saying “the other candidates aren’t as authentic as me” as the way that I heard it. I’ll tell you one other thing that kind of stood out to me, at least upon first review of the speeches I want to think these felt like general election speeches a little bit. I mean, this is a primary where they’re almost going to have to some of them are going to have to get negative if they want to climb the ladder and be the party’s candidate. And, you know, even the criticisms we just mentioned, Rich, weren’t exactly super negative. And the messages I could absolutely imagine them in a general election campaign against Tom Tiffany. But they are, Anya they’re trying to win this Democratic primary among a smaller group of voters right now.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Right. But it is this balancing act where, as Rich said, right, they are going for a trifecta. And that was another big theme of the weekend, is this idea that Democrats really think that they could take over all three chambers of government. And so they need to try to distinguish themselves. And most of them don’t have that kind of, you know, statewide visibility. So they are still trying to get just like baseline name recognition, which is important for a primary, but then also not do anything to harm other Democrats because, you know, if you have sort of a 1 in 7 chance and I know that’s not exactly how statistics work, but something like that and so you don’t move forward, you don’t want to have weakened your party. You don’t want to be giving Tom Tiffany sort of free fodder for your opponents. And so I think that we will see a little bit more maybe of those veiled attacks, but in a way that’s more aimed at sort of holding themselves up rather than necessarily going negative at this point. Because Tom Tiffany, as Rich mentioned, is sort of in a field by himself. He technically has an opponent, but more or less he’s the presumptive nominee. And so he’s not going to get weakened in a primary. So they need to be very careful themselves.

Shawn Johnson:
It can work against you in a primary, particularly a Democratic primary, to go negative, where you have voters who have kind of that same idea that like, look, the goal is November. Stop fighting and show us how you’re different. Rich, anything that jumped out at you there in what Anya was just mentioning?

Rich Kremer:
Well, I wanted to kind of go back to when she mentioned the, you know, the slights and the electability and all that stuff. One of the candidates, you know, early on even before he announced Mandela Barnes, former lieutenant governor, former state representative, he during his speech let me go back. Before he got in the race, some Democrats were publicly saying, well, he lost in 2022, you know, we don’t need that again. But during his speech, he brought that up and he said, well, that’s why I’m more experienced. I’ve been through this came within one percentage point of Ron Johnson in 2022. That’s why I have the experience. That and the other resume stuff that he’s got. So I just wanted to mention.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
A lot of conversation about electability, which again, I think speaks to trying to signal that they could beat Tom Tiffany in the fall. And so you had, for example, Francesca Hong pointed to the fact that she’s, if not the most far-left candidate, certainly among them. And the fact that some people have brought that up as a liability against her as passionate as her supporters are, her opponents are sort of equally passionate. And she talked about, well, the legacy of Wisconsin progressives who were elected. So rather than that being a liability for me, that actually makes me more electable because people are excited about someone who doesn’t bring BS. And David Crowley as well. He pointed to the fact that there has never been a Black candidate who has won statewide office, and he says that everywhere he goes, people ask him, can a Black man become governor in Wisconsin? And he said, well, I can, for the following reasons. And so he named that sort of elephant in the room as a way of also drawing attention to his record. And so, again, just kind of the way that the candidates are trying to distinguish themselves, not just on their own terms, but also for what they can deliver in November.

Shawn Johnson:
And there was a straw poll at this convention, Anya. And I feel like, you know, it’s kind of fun to talk about, but we should say a thousand grains of salt here for this poll, because this is not a scientific poll. The margin of error would be look, I’m not qualified to calculate it very high.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Charles Franklin would have a lot to say about this one.

Shawn Johnson:
He’d probably pay a lot of attention to straw polls, would be my guess. But you had all these Democrats in the room, and if they wanted to, they could go to the booth run by WisPolitics, which does these at all the conventions. And you could vote for your candidate of choice among the primary field. And how did that resolve?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Yeah. Really interesting. Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez came out first. And again, if Francesca Hong is sort of further to the left, she’s a little bit further to the center. But then Francesca Hong was number two. And so you kind of have a little bit of the poles of what the party is presenting right now one who might be doing better in a primary race, again, given just sort of the excitement that’s around her, that’s Fran Hong, and then one who perhaps could appeal to a broader audience, that is Sara Rodriguez, who comes from more of a business background. She was a health care executive and a nurse. She won she flipped a Republican seat when she ran for the Assembly in the Waukesha suburbs. And so you have these two different models, and it kind of looked like Democrats a little bit split among them.

Shawn Johnson:
So I want to throw some caution at the straw poll. I was just looking back at the 2018 straw poll, when you had even more candidates running for governor, kind of depending on when you counted them. You probably are aware of this by now or have heard it or seen it recently. But that year, Kelda Roys won the straw poll. She went on to finish third in the primary, a distant third, but she won it overwhelmingly at the convention. Do you happen to know where Tony Evers placed in that straw poll? This is the beginning of our quiz section here, guys. So Tony Evers placed third. He had 91 votes compared to Kelda Roys’ 184. That year, right behind him were Andy and Dana Wachs. They have something in common they both dropped out of the race by the end of June that year. So the convention was on June 2nd, I think, and they were dropped out by the 21st and 22nd. So.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Right. So again, appealing to quote-unquote normal people versus appealing to the most kind of revved-up Democrats who follow every kind of twist and turn so it doesn’t necessarily translate to what a general voter or general audience is interested in.

Shawn Johnson:
Sure. And there’s also a certain amount of campaigning you can do in the room at these things. You can say, hey, get over to that desk that’s run by WisPolitics, and I think you should really vote for us.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Bring your people.

Shawn Johnson:
Absolutely. And I’m sure some of that went on at this convention. So, I did want to play a little game with you two since we have you here would that be OK?

Rich Kremer:
All right. Sure. Ready?

Shawn Johnson:
You have no choice, right? We’re recording a live show here. So I was just looking back through these speeches and through the benefit of being able to look at the transcript and the number of times that certain words were mentioned in these things, you can see kind of who hit themes really hard. So the first one I looked for was Trump who said Trump the most. Anybody want to hazard a guess? Rich, you go first.

Rich Kremer:
I’m gonna say Rodriguez.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
I think it might have been Joel Brennan.

Shawn Johnson:
All right, all right, Rich, you win, buddy. Sara Rodriguez and Mandela Barnes were right mentioned him six times. Joel Brennan after them. And then everybody mentioned Trump at least once. But Rodriguez and Barnes kind of hitting to my ear similar themes in those messages too. Like they sounded like maybe they were running a little bit of a November campaign or a safer message in their speeches. OK, how about Tiffany? And to be clear, nobody mentioned the Truman Capote book that was adapted into a movie and later, you know, celebrated in a song. Who mentioned Tiffany Tom Tiffany the most?

Rich Kremer:
Gosh, I’m just stuck on that dad joke now.

Shawn Johnson:
I’m proud of that one.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
You know.

Shawn Johnson:
That song, by the way, is in my head all the time. And I hated it when it came out. But the beauty of nostalgia.

Rich Kremer:
I’m gonna vote Roys for this.

Shawn Johnson:
There you go. There you go.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
We got you. Kelda Roys. How about you? Who mentioned Tiffany the most?

Rich Kremer:
Missy Hughes.

Shawn Johnson:
All right. Good guesses, everybody. Sara Rodriguez was tops in Tiffany mentions, followed by Joel Brennan, Mandela Barnes and Kelda Roys mentioned once. David Crowley, Missy Hughes and Francesca Hong didn’t even mention Tom Tiffany. It’s kind of interesting it’s the kind of thing you assume that you heard a bunch of people say, and then you go back and look and realize, well, they didn’t actually mention it. Whoever wins this primary, though, will mention him a lot in TV ads between now and November. OK, how about this? We’ve got a Democratic governor right now, and a lot of these people have worked with or for this Democratic governor. Who do you think might have mentioned Evers a few times? Rich, what do you think?

Rich Kremer:
I would say it’d have to be someone that worked within the administration or alongside him. So that narrows it down to four people, I would say. Brennan.

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah. OK. Anya.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
I think it was also Brennan. He also made a point of saying “fix the darn roads.” And so he seemed to be really tying himself yeah, yeah to Evers.

Shawn Johnson:
It was Mandela Barnes Tony Evers’ former lieutenant governor followed by Joel Brennan, his former secretary, followed by Sara Rodriguez, his current lieutenant governor, and Missy Hughes, his former WEAC CEO. No mention of Tony Evers by Francesca Hong, Kelda Roys or David Crowley.

Anya van Wagtendonk:
So no big surprise.

Shawn Johnson:
Tony was back there taking notes like, I see you, I see you. OK, one more, one more, I promise. And this is a little different. You got a chance at this convention to differentiate yourself. One way is you can just tell these delegates I’m different. Who said “only candidate” as in I’m the only candidate?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
Oh, I know this one. The only candidate who proposes a moratorium on data centers.

Shawn Johnson:
And free childcare. And you are correct, Anya. She mentioned it four times. This was interesting to me. Rich, Kelda Roys was there she mentioned it a couple times. Her message was, I’m the only candidate who’s been a legislator. I got bills that was basically what she was saying. And then David Crowley: the only candidate who has executive experience. And nobody else used that turn of phrase. Big grain of salt for that one too, which is very unscientific, but I find it fun to run through that stuff.

Rich Kremer:
But you probably made a spreadsheet.

Shawn Johnson:
You’re darn right. Yeah, I made it a lot easier for me to list those things real quick. So we want to move on real quick to some legal developments this week a few small legal developments in big cases. Rich, first, let’s start with there was this decision by the state Supreme Court to hear an appeal in a redistricting case, a congressional redistricting case. Is this a big deal or an incremental step?

Rich Kremer:
It’s pretty incremental. So these are about the congressional maps. There are two of these appeals of these cases challenging the congressional map as gerrymandered for various reasons, various types of gerrymandering. And it sounds exciting that it’s made it to the Supreme Court, but all they’re doing in both situations is they will be deciding whether or not these three-judge panels they appointed were correct in how they dismissed these challenges. And those panels essentially said they dismissed them because they don’t have the authority to overturn the maps, which were put in place by the Supreme Court. And a lower court cannot overrule a higher court like that. So what I’ve been told is that that probably means these will go back through the court system, back to the lower courts, and work their way up. But the Supreme Court justices will have to decide whether or not these gerrymandering claims can even move forward. So that’s a big question. But in short, it likely doesn’t mean there’s going to be any new map before the 2026 election. There’s just not enough time.

Shawn Johnson:
OK. And lightning round here you had a case you covered on voter rolls. What happened there?

Rich Kremer:
So the federal government, the Department of Justice, wants to get unredacted voter registration information from Wisconsin. And that includes, you know, driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers the last four digits. The Elections Commission hasn’t provided that; they’ve given a different list that’s publicly available. But essentially the case was dismissed last month in federal court. It’s being appealed the DOJ is appealing it to the Seventh Circuit. But again, it will take a while. And there’s been other examples of this around the nation where the DOJ has been losing these cases.

Shawn Johnson:
One of those we’ll have to keep an eye on. And then Anya, the false electors case in Wisconsin what happened there?

Anya van Wagtendonk:
They pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of felony forgery, including Wisconsin’s own Jim Troupis. He’s also trying to get the case moved out of Dane County Circuit Court. And so that case continues to unfold.

Shawn Johnson:
All right. Thank you both for keeping an eye on those. That’s all the time we have for today. Thanks for joining us. Our colleague Zac Schultz will be back in a few weeks. This has been Inside Wisconsin Politics. Be sure to follow us on PBS Wisconsin.org, WPR.org, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.