Inside Wisconsin Politics

Another major shake up in the Democratic primary for governor as Mandela Barnes drops out.

How does this change the race, and what are the remaining candidates saying as they make their closing pitches to voters?

This is inside Wisconsin politics.

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

Hey, everyone.

Hello.

So Hey, everyone.

Hello.

So this Democratic primary for governor couldn't get any Wilder.

Let's see.

Let's go through the candidates here.

David Crowley drops out.

Sarah Rodriguez drops out.

David Crowley drops back in.

We now have Mandela Barnes dropping out of the race.

Some pretty big names there.

Anya what happened?

I mean, I will give a little behind the scenes intrigue for our viewers.

We taped a whole different show right before this talking about the debate.

And we will get into that later.

And we got the news in our earpieces that Mandela Barnes had dropped out, so he released a video on social media and interestingly, you know, doesn't endorse another candidate, looked pretty dejected and essentially said, we all can tell the writing is on the wall of who the nominee is going to be.

I assume he is alluding to Francesca Hong, who is just carrying all these polls.

And he said, you know, the number one thing to do is to beat Tom Tiffany.

So it was not a ringing endorsement.

It did not seem like an impassioned sort of choice to to step down, but certainly some some breaking news.

You know, we're less than two weeks out from primary day.

Yeah.

We got to tell you, we're recording this on a Thursday afternoon.

So by the time you watch it or hear it, you may know more about this story than we do right at this moment.

We can tell you right now from the Journal Sentinel, the decisions by the Barnes camp, they said, came amid reporting into allegations that Barnes was taking advantage of his role in the party to have sexual encounters with young adult women.

We also read from Politico.

The announcement comes as Democratic officials in the state brace for damaging media reports.

So, I mean, Zac, there are different circumstances under which a candidate can drop out.

It can be received in different ways.

How would you characterize this one?

Well, this is different from past episodes, including the flip side of this, when Ben Mandela Barnes took advantage of this in 2022 in his Senate run Senate run, when the other opponents in that primary dropped out and they dropped out gracefully, saying the only way at that time for them to win the nomination would be to go negative and hurt the party.

And they decided not to do that.

And they were rewarded for that as being team players down the road.

Sarah Godlewski was seen examples of this.

Almost two decades ago, Scott Walker was going to run for governor in 2006, party officials said, hey, why don't you clear the field for Mark green?

He did.

And then he was the nominee in 2010 when party officials remembered he was graceful about that.

So on one hand, it could be seen as Mandela Barnes seeing the writing on the wall.

He wasn't going to win.

But he has a future in Democratic politics in Wisconsin.

That would be the normal way to look at this as saying, well, there's lots of future races he could run for.

But then when you combine this with the reporting that we're hearing in the rumors that have been running around circles for quite a while now, it doesn't have that same tone to it.

So this looks more of getting ahead of the damaging news that could be dropping less.

Graham Platner in the East Coast Senate race and more of.

Just keep your head down and get out of the way so it becomes less of a distraction.

And he's forced to bow out disgracefully as opposed to bowing out on his own terms.

Yeah.

You know, you alluded to there.

But in his message, he did not say Francesca Hong name.

He didn't say, I'm dropping out because she's the frontrunner, and that's good.

He didn't say, I'm dropping out.

And I support a challenger because he's kind of had some fights with them recently.

Rich, you reported on Mandela Barnes this campaign, and in 2022, he entered this race and presented himself as the frontrunner.

And it seemed like that sort of slowly, slowly slipped away during this campaign.

And now this quite a shocking arc to his story this year.

In terms of name recognition, he did enter the race with more than any of the other candidates, including Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany.

And that was because of the 2022 Senate loss to Ron Johnson.

It was a close race, but and there was a lot of advertising.

So his name got around.

But that race really hurt him also, beyond whatever is going to be reported or is being reported at this moment about any improprieties.

He he was damaged from that Senate loss to Ron Johnson among Democrats.

Even before he jumped into the race for governor, there was an op ed that had former Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton, a Democrat that is very involved in the party, said that he shouldn't get in the race, that he's a proven he's proven that he he can't win statewide, etc.

So there was that.

And then we started seeing in the earlier days of this, you know, gubernatorial primary among the Democrats where people were dropping out.

They weren't endorsing Barnes like they did in 2022.

So that was a signal.

Then Governor Evers endorsed someone besides Barnes, who, you know, Barnes and Evers served together, for years.

So that was a sign.

And now here we are.

It's really been just a, a really interesting ride for Barnes.

So his departure kind of leaves the race in some ways where it was, where there seems to be this growing consensus out there that this is Francesca Hong race to lose.

She is a democratic socialist, which is sort of defined this campaign.

She was asked about her views at this week's debate.

Let's give a listen to what she had to say.

What democratic socialism is, is a form of government that puts working class people first.

That puts work first.

The policies that we have been working on, permanent affordability, has broad bipartisan support in every corner of the state.

Ana you've covered her campaign.

You profiled her for Wisconsin Public Radio.

How is she presenting her brand of politics to primary voters and also potentially critics as this primary closes out?

Yeah, I think she's been really consistent, not just throughout this campaign, but throughout her political career.

She was a member of the Democratic Socialist Caucus in the Assembly.

She's running as a democratic socialist on the Democratic ticket.

And so you've seen that a lot in her policy positions.

I think a little bit what we saw on the debate stage was her trying to nuance some of that, perhaps for a more general election, again, as she is this kind of runaway favorite at the moment.

I saw some criticism actually from national DSA members on social media who were saying essentially, oh, she's not socialist enough, but I think she understands that there is going to be a pretty ready made line of attack from Republicans based on some of her past statements based on calling for defunding the police, based on aligning with certain, you know, sort of far left, more like agitated sort of online figures that that gives them easy things to kind of clip, which can really kind of be hard to oppose from a more kind of nuanced position.

And so I think we saw her on the debate stage, kind of trying out some of these more, bitable, clippable ways of approaching her politics.

Yeah.

Part of the question that led to that answer there was, hey, the Democratic Socialists of America stand for getting rid of prisons, getting rid of the Senate.

Are you with them?

And she said she didn't agree with them on everything.

But I do kind of sense from her a pivot toward the general election in terms of the way that she's answering these questions.

You know, on, I don't know, you name it, tax policy on defund the police.

You know, what stood out to you?

She's definitely nuancing those positions because in, in politics, if you're explaining, you're losing that that phrase has been around for a long time.

So she's trying to explain to general election voters that she's not that kind of socialist.

She's a democratic socialist because Republicans are comparing her to Venezuela.

I mean, that's that's Tom Tiffany's line of attack that I heard on Tuesday night during the debate.

I was covering one of his events, and he's saying, well, if you want to know about socialism, you just have to look at Venezuela when they're eating the animals and they're eating their shirts and there's nothing available for anybody.

And that's what's coming to Wisconsin.

If you look at Francesca Hong, that's what you're going to hear from them.

So her trying to go more in the lines of the old Milwaukee Socialists, like the sewer socialists, they were called of like, let's work on infrastructure and public schools and the public good, the public welfare.

She's trying to get ahead of some of those attacks and explain that's where her socialist policies lie less in the international communist socialist stuff that we hear from the countries that fall apart, that claim to be socialist.

And rich.

You covered the debate she was asked about.

I mean, everybody there on that debate stage was saying, let's tax millionaires to pay for stuff in state government.

She got a little more specific than others, and yet it seemed like potentially an incomplete answer based on her record.

Yeah.

That's right.

Her her website has all kinds of very specific numbers.

And also she's been in the assembly for some time now, and she's taken a lot of votes.

She's introduced a lot of legislation.

So on the debate stage, essentially she was saying, well, for millionaires, it'd be a 1% tax increase to something like 8.6% versus, you know, whatever it is now.

So she said that, but right away online Democrats even were saying, well, you know, actually she's got a plan to, create a new tax bracket and set it at 17 point something percent.

Which is true.

That was part of a plan she put out in, in the legislature.

So she, she talked really generally about it.

And, so then others had to go and dig up what she said in the past.

Yeah.

We did mention last week that we were going to wait for another story to develop this police shooting in Madison.

And you've heard all the candidates for governor come out and say, you know, we need to have a swift investigation of that.

Zac, I think it's fair to say that Francesca Hong response to the shooting was certainly the most attention getting.

She went out to the site of the shooting with a bullhorn and called it an execution.

What is she saying now?

And, you know, why did she use that word in her words?

Well, she was asked during the debate, would you use would you make the same statement as governor?

And her answer was no, because the governor has a bigger, bigger megaphone and essentially alluding that wouldn't be appropriate for the governor to make that statement.

What's interesting is you're supposed to campaign how you would govern.

And she did make that statement as a candidate only a few weeks away from a primary.

And the video of her doing it, the crowd is clearly trying to goad her into using the word murder.

And she at that moment takes a pause and then says, execution.

So she was even calibrating what she was saying in that moment.

This wasn't as much of an off the cuff statement as you might think.

When you cover her in speeches.

She is very measured in her in her thought and her speech.

She pauses before she answers a question she's thinking about.

It's not just letting the words fly like we see on social media sometimes with some politicians, and then worry about retracting it later.

So for her to use that word was a deliberate, intentional thing.

And then to say, well, I wouldn't, as governor does, call into question like, what is the line, then why use it now in this case and not?

And we know it will be used against her.

Tom Tiffany is already talking about that.

They're attacking the because the street where the shooting took place is still shut down by protesters saying that Madison needs to get control of the streets and that as governor, he would obviously have that street open by now.

So they're going to use this against her as a candidate, assuming that she wins this primary.

And the question is, how does she continue explaining those statements election voters?

Let's talk about David Crowley, Milwaukee County's executive who got back in this race as the Francesca Hong alternative.

And I got to think that Mandela Barnes departure from this race potentially changes the calculus for him.

You know, Rich, what were we hearing from, you know, David Crowley as it relates to Francesca Hong up to this point in the race?

And, you know, has it been catching on?

Is there is there a sign that this theory that Crowley supporters had is actually working?

Well, yeah, the, the claim that we've heard from David Crowley and some of the other Democratic candidates is that the Republican Governors Association is essentially trying to get hang elected, during the primary so that it would be easier for Tom Tiffany to defeat her.

So that was the line going into it.

I will say one thing about those, those ads that you mentioned, the Republican ads, I think they are kind of doing their, their serving two goals right now for Republicans.

They're kind of getting bang for their buck in a couple of ways.

I do think there's a pretty strong case to be made that they were there to prop up.

Francesca Hong, they're saying that she's a very liberal candidate in these liberal media markets, but I think now Republicans do view her as the general election candidate in the way that they're talking about her.

So they are kind of getting a head start on these attacks in some way.

Ana, David Crowley, and Mandela Barnes were kind of going at it in as their candidacies progressed in this race, as Mandela Barnes kind of felt like David Crowley had blocked his path.

Now that Mandela Barnes is out of the way, is there a boost coming for Crowley?

Yeah.

I mean, you know, it is possible that, among other concerns, Mandela Barnes felt snubbed by the fact that Governor Tony Evers backed Crowley and not him.

He was his lieutenant governor.

And so we saw barbs, I mean, like almost schoolyard barbs on social media, primarily coming from, Barnes towards Crowley.

But then Crowley would sort of respond in kind.

So really like a really kind of, it felt like bad blood between them.

One of the arguments that the Barnes camp has been making as other candidates have dropped out is we will absorb those votes.

And so now part of the question is, where will these remaining sort of Barnes votes go?

Will they go further left towards Hong?

Will they go further towards the center, towards Crowley?

And of course, I haven't checked the numbers recently, but as of last week, 100,000 absentee ballots had already been turned in.

I imagine that number is much higher now.

So there's also the question of like of the remaining voters who haven't cast their ballots.

Some of them are undecided.

But those who were leaning towards Barnes now were are they going to go, especially if, you know, these allegations start to come out and it becomes an even more chaotic news cycle that distracts from the actual sort of meat of the campaign, Rich, you know, real quick on that law, on those ballots, there was a lawsuit filed to try to get them counted.

A judge ruled on that this week.

What does that mean for those absentee ballots?

Well, yeah, the judge, dismissed or denied to issue an injunction, essentially blocking the Wisconsin Elections Commission guidance, saying that you cannot, if you have sent in your absentee ballot, you cannot ask for it to be spoiled and get a new one.

So essentially what that means is that people who have already cast ballots for, you know, Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez Mandela Barnes, Missy Hughes, they're essentially out of luck, at this point.

So unless that changes, unless this is rushed through an appeal process up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court makes a ruling before August 11th, it kind of seems like those votes will be counted, but they won't go anywhere.

Zac, we had a couple polls out this week.

They both showed Francesca Hong with at least a 20 point lead.

You know, one of them showed Mandela Barnes Marquette showed Mandela, Barnes and second David Crowley down at about 7%.

But in the Marquette poll, we're looking at a third of voters still undecided.

Now, Mandela Barnes is out of the race.

You got all those undecided voters.

David Crowley is still there.

Could this race shake up and change in the closing days?

Well, every time we say no, we're proven wrong.

It does get shaken up by larger events than what we probably could have predicted on this show.

But the question is, is there enough room for anyone to gain enough ground to catch the lead that Francesca Hong looks like she has?

Just talking about those absentee ballots that have been cast, they're not getting counted back.

The question will be, once this race is all over, will the margin of votes that Mandela Barnes and Rodriguez received add up to the amount that the second place person took?

Or will they have made a difference in some spoiling manner?

That will be interesting math to see, but by then we'll have a winner.

to have a a massive comeback here by one of these candidates coming back to, I guess, edge out Francesca Hong at the end, or else we're going to have the most interesting governor's race in the country this November between a democratic socialist and somebody that Democrats will paint as an election denier in Tom Tiffany.

So get ready for a lot of money and ads to come to your state of Wisconsin, which we are very used to.

That's all the time we have for today.

Thanks for joining us.

This has been inside Wisconsin politics.

Be sure to follow us on PBS Wisconsin.

Org WPR.org, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.