On the Wisconsin Gubernatorial Election

As all are aware, on August 11, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley eked out – truly, eked out – a primary election victory over WI State Assemblywomen Francesca Hong for the Democratic Wisconsin Gubernatorial nomination and will now face Republican WI Gubernatorial Nominee U.S. WI Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Trump disciple and 2020 election denier, this November.  A few impressions emerge.

The most important first:  by a margin of less than 4,000 out of over 625,000 votes cast, there remains at least a realistic chance that Wisconsinites could elect a Governor this November who will preserve a free and fair 2028 presidential election (as well as protect Wisconsinites from the regressive excesses which MAGA state legislators will otherwise seek to foist upon them).  Ms. Hong may well be a wonderful, well-meaning person, but she would have been a terrible general election candidate. That said, Mr. Crowley is still an African American from the city in a state that has never had a Black Governor and contains a lot of upstate voters who rarely see African Americans, distrust city folk generally, and resent what they see as Milwaukee and Madison’s usurpation of the state’s services and attention.  Mr. Crowley’s campaign is an uphill battle.  Even so, given President Donald Trump’s deep unpopularity and MAGA adversaries’ rabid enthusiasm, there seems a real possibility.   You take the chance you get.

Polling data is of little value, at least in Wisconsin.  2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton obviously lost the state to President Donald Trump after leading Mr. Trump in all state polls right up to the 2016 election day. Former President Joe Biden was reportedly so far ahead of Mr. Trump in Wisconsin in the final days of the 2020 campaign that the Trump Campaign suspended efforts in the state.  Mr. Biden won by such a narrow margin that I assume that the Trump forces deeply, deeply rued abandoning the state when they did.  For the last month, polling indicated that Ms. Hong was the sure-fire winner of the Democrats’ Gubernatorial nomination.  Perhaps, lulled by the polls, some of her supporters stayed home on election day, feeling their votes weren’t needed – as contrasted with the attitudes of those who voted for Mr. Crowley, who were well aware that if he had any chance, every vote was going to be needed.

I have seen an early poll indicating that Mr. Crowley holds a 2-point lead over Mr. Tiffany.  If you believe that, I can give you the number of two guys in Brooklyn ready to sell you a bridge.  I am hoping that all candidates opposing Mr. Trump and MAGAism will discount all polls from now to election day, at least insofar as they presume to project candidates’ relative support.  All MAGA opponents need to run scared.  Every vote needs to be turned out in every race.  Taking a Blue Wave for granted invites further Red Terror.

It’s clear that the MAGAs are as shocked as everybody else that Ms. Hong didn’t win the primary.  Over the next few weeks, the Tiffany Team – poised to run, eager to run, against Ms. Hong – will be flailing a bit for a strategy against Mr. Crowley.  However, I will venture – just a feeling – that the national MAGA establishment is feeling the need to reset a bit as well.  My favorite treadmill at my gym is right in front of a screen that displays Fox News.  Usually, I ignore it – at my age, I can’t let my blood pressure get too high 😉—but on the day after the election, I watched as Fox covered the Wisconsin results.  At first, inexplicably to me, the outlet spent several minutes on Ms. Hong – who had lost, and was not going to be Wisconsin Democrats’ Gubernatorial nominee – and perhaps 20 seconds on Mr. Crowley, the winner.  It’s like they couldn’t yet get over the fact that they weren’t going to have Ms. Hong to demonize.  It struck me then that although Ms. Hong was only running for statewide rather than national office, she made such an easy mark – such a softer target than U.S. NY Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or even Democratic MI U.S. Senate Nominee Abdul El-Sayed, all superb political athletes – that national MAGAs were planning to make her the poster child of their national Communist, anti-Woke Scare Campaign.  Poof.

That said, even if national MAGAs are indeed now pausing for just a bit as they reassess, they will – as they did after Vice President Kamala Harris succeeded President Joe Biden as the Democrats’ 2024 presidential nominee – figure it out, and reset.  In a recent note, I observed that Mr. Trump’s political power has always relied on stoking hate; even without Ms. Hong as a foil, it takes little prescience to venture that the MAGA national message from now to election day will primarily seek to sow hate’s companion, fear – of Socialists, of Communists, of Muslims, of them, of the other — within the gullible quarters of the electorate.  They have no choice; they have no objective achievements to run on.

If advising Mr. Crowley, I would strongly recommend that he spend the vast majority of his time between now and Labor Day in Wisconsin’s Republican strongholds, before the Tiffany Team has time to figure out a strategy and begin smearing him.  He did much better among Democrats than Ms. Hong in Wisconsin’s rural districts – no surprise – but the main purpose of forays would be to soften before they set in potentially adverse emotions of those voters disappointed with Mr. Trump but inclined to vote Republican.  Mr. Crowley is reasonable in manner; I suspect that MAGAs are painfully aware that due to the way they have demonized Ms. Hong in ads over the last couple of months as being “too extreme for Wisconsin,” they themselves have created a conceptual contrast for Mr. Crowley.  I’ve seen a clip in which even U.S. WI Sen. Ron Johnson observed after the election that Democrats had chosen “the more moderate candidate.”  In that same clip, Mr. Johnson — who, in the rare moments he is candid, can interpret vote totals pretty accurately – noted the significant discrepancy between the Democratic and Republican primary turnouts, and observed that if Republicans were going to fare well this November, Mr. Trump was going to have to inspire his Wisconsin supporters to get to the polls.  My guess:  with no U.S. Senate seat at issue in Wisconsin this November, Mr. Trump will pay little attention to the state unless he feels he can salvage a purple House District or two; the irony is that his presence could be as much a detriment as assistance to these Republicans’ campaigns.

I’ve seen reports of national progressives who are yapping at progressive icon U.S. VT Sen. Bernie Sanders for not endorsing Ms. Hong, feeling that Mr. Sanders’ endorsement would have brought her the few thousand additional votes needed for victory.  Mr. Sanders has responded that he has limited resources, and can’t endorse everyone.  I would have to agree with the irate progressives that such was a makeweight response; I think the true answer is that that Mr. Sanders is a practical politician, understands that Wisconsin is one of the electoral battlegrounds where American democracy is going to be saved or lost, and recognizes that what will actually help the American people is winning elections.  What I don’t understand about these national progressives’ outrage is this:  if Mr. Crowley wins, he will be the first African American Governor of Wisconsin, and I have seen it reported that he will be the first African American Governor of a Midwest state.  What could objectively be more progressive than that?

The stakes in Wisconsin this November couldn’t be higher.  I have watched Mr. Tiffany’s ads, and they’re good.  They make him look like everybody’s honest, well-meaning Wisconsin Grandpa (he will turn 69 late this year).  He’s not.  In 2020, as a member of Congress Mr. Tiffany was one of only two Wisconsin Republicans who voted to decertify Mr. Biden’s victories in Pennsylvania (which Mr. Biden won by 80,000 votes) and Arizona (whose The Republican Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives declared that Mr. Biden had won).  He signed on to a Republican Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate Mr. Biden’s victory.  I have seen it reported that he has stated that he would have voted to decertify Mr. Biden’s victory in Wisconsin if he had had the opportunity to do so (notwithstanding the fact that even former MAGA WI Gov. Scott Walker intimated in a tweet after the election that no recount would unseat Mr. Biden’s victory).  Mr. Tiffany is either just dumb or undemocratic – and sadly, I consider it more likely that he is the latter than the former.  He owes his nomination to Mr. Trump’s endorsement, which in turn was almost certainly provided due to his seditious willingness to overturn the results of the 2020 election.  One can only assume that if he is narrowly defeated by Mr. Crowley this November, he’ll seek to challenge the results with no regard for the competence and the integrity of the election officials and workers of all political stripes who will work hard – and with a tad more trepidation, due to the scurrilous lies about our electoral processes spread by Mr. Trump over the last decade – to accurately administer Wisconsin elections; that he will unscrupulously seek to baselessly smear some of the most civic-minded citizens he wishes to lead as Wisconsin Governor.  While one can take some comfort that Mr. Crowley’s candidacy will have a fair chance through election day since Mr. Evers will still be Governor and, if he wins, will have a fair hearing to any challenges Mr. Tiffany thereafter mounts due to the liberal bent of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the further damage that Mr. Tiffany and the MAGAs seem likely to seek to sow amongst their gullible followers cannot be overstated.

We’ll end where we started:  that Mr. Crowley’s victory on August 11 seemingly gives Democrats at least a fighting chance to retain the Wisconsin governorship this November.  While he can be confident of my vote, since I see his candidacy as a bulwark against MAGA anti-democratic excesses (subject to the caveat that he not hereafter be shown to have character flaws of a kind and degree akin to those that have caused former Maine Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner to withdraw his candidacy), I would also offer from what little I’ve seen so far, I like him.  I think that if elected, he’ll make a good Governor, be able to finesse the challenges of leading a state as closely and toxically divided as Wisconsin.  That said:  he’s still a black guy from the city, and a lot of voters still cast their ballots based upon stereotypes and biases.  It’s up to those who believe in democracy – obviously not only in Wisconsin, but nationally – to do whatever we can, legally and peacefully, to ensure and safeguard what we were given 250 years ago.

We’ll see what happens.