President Donald Trump returns to
Wisconsin.
Candidates file nomination papers
for governor.
And the Wisconsin Supreme Court will
hear an appeal of a redistricting,
sorry about that.
President Donald Trump returns to
Wisconsin, candidates file
nomination papers for governor,
and the Wisconsin Supreme Court will
hear an appeal of a redistricting
case after all.
Let's talk about a busy week of
campaign news.
This is Inside Wisconsin Politics.
I'm Sean Johnson, along with my
colleagues, Rich Kramer in Eau
Claire, and Zach Schultz and
Anya Van Wackenthoek here in
Madison. Hey everyone.
Hey. Hello.
So Zach, as we record this
program right now, we just know that
President Trump is coming to
Wisconsin.
It's a big deal any time the
president comes to your state, but
it seems to be an especially
big deal now.
What's different about this visit
here in this point in 2026?
Well, this is campaign visit.
I mean, in the past, you could look
at the president's visit, it's more
about himself.
This time, you can kind of look at
it in terms of what does it mean for
the fall, or in one particular race
in northern Wisconsin that Rich
will, I'm sure, be talking about,
what it means for that primary in
August.
But specifically, we're looking at
which Republicans show up with them.
Now, we expect them all to be there,
all the big names, but if you look
back in history, more on the
Democratic side, there is a history
of some candidates not only
not sure if they want to sit next to
an unpopular president in a midterm
election. In 2010, President Obama
came to Madison.
There was a big question of whether
Russ Feingold was going to appear on
the stage. In the end, he did, but
all the weeks leading up to it, his
campaign wasn't sure.
He might be in Africa.
He had some other things going on.
And that was really a political
question of does he want to be seen
with him? And he ended up losing
that race. That was the Tea Party
wave before it was.
Just two years ago, President Biden
visited Madison off that disastrous
debate performance.
Tammy Baldwin.
Was elsewhere. She didn't come to
Madison to be with the president.
That's about campaign optics.
We should game out some of these
names who might or might not be
there in just a minute,
but Rich, you are the
closest to where the president will
be. You're in Eau Claire.
He's gonna be in Chippewa County.
What's the significance of where
he's gonna speak and potentially
what he's going to talk about?
So Chippo account.
County kind of serves as
a twofer for the president
and for Republicans.
So it is
essentially a county that
has two congressional districts.
To the north side of it, we're
talking about the seventh
congressional district.
That is the seat that Tom Tiffany,
Congressman Tom Tiffany is
vacating as he runs as a governor
for Wisconsin.
And then to the south of that line,
it's the third congressional
district and that this Republican.
Derek Van Orden and and
he's in the middle of a pretty
competitive re-election
campaign and it's just
one of a small handful of
Seats that are considered toss-ups.
I mean we're talking across the
entire nation and he is running
against someone who came pretty
close in 2024 Rebecca cook
she was within three percentage
points in a
year that that President Trump
won the the state so
it's a different dynamic now.
He needs all the help he can
yet and the White House is
responding in kind and it
seems like the message from the
White house has been we're going to
talk about
farmers. We're going to talk about
agriculture in these
settings in this district.
Anya, what can we make of that?
I mean, we're talking about sort of
the steep odds that the
ruling party, the Republican party
is facing right now.
Obviously, the president right now
has some of his lowest approval
ratings throughout his time in
office. But farmers in particular
have really helped deliver him
victories. I believe in his last
election, he won the vast,
vast majority of sort of farm
dependent counties in the country.
And yet a lot of his policies,
tariff policies in particular, have
really been with some of the pain
that farmers have been feeling.
Tariffs that have caused, you know,
weakened overseas markets for
corn and soy, and then
increased prices on steel and
aluminum. So we have seen changes
in his policies in ways that are,
I think, aimed really directly at
trying to appeal to these farmers.
Earlier this week, he signed an
executive order to lower some
tariffs on agricultural equipment in
particular, and so now he's coming
to Wisconsin to talk directly
to farmers and kind of try
to make sure that that part of his
base is secure.
But Zach, as you mentioned, he is
not coming for himself.
He's not saying vote for me.
He is coming to
a county that straddles a couple
districts, including, as Rich
mentioned, our most competitive in
Wisconsin.
He's also coming at a time where, if
you just look at the latest national
poll from Marquette University,
he has 19%
of voters approve of how he's
handling gas prices.
22% on the
cost of living, the economy is
around 30%.
His overall rating is at a record
low, 38, with
disapproval creeping up.
Is that good for
someone like Derek Van Orden?
It doesn't help, but I think
that the difference between these
Republican candidates specifically
and past examples like Tammy
Baldwin or Russ Feingold is
the Republicans need this
area and they need Trump's voters to
come out.
When he is not on the ballot,
Republicans across the state
struggle to get turnout, especially
in western and northern Wisconsin.
That is the MAGA base of this state
in the seventh and the third.
And without those voters, they could
really struggle in the fall.
So they actually need to.
Attach themselves even closer to
Donald Trump at this point, even if
it looks like, politically speaking,
it may not be the smartest move
because of his terrible numbers
on a lot of things.
And I'd like to meet the 19% of
people who think gas prices are good
right now, unless they are all
biking or not driving themselves.
There's really no one I've ever had
talked to in a while that says gas
prices are doing great.
You wonder if they're kind of like,
you know, biting their lip a little
bit when they say that they're happy
with that. Rich,
what do you make of this visit here?
Well, I wanted to go back and
mention the 7th Congressional
District. I failed to mention that.
Well, so this is the seat that Tom
Tiffany's giving up to run for
governor. But there's a big
Republican primary going on right
now up there.
And Michael Alfonso is
who is Sean Duffy,
U.S. Transportation Secretary, Sean
Duffey's son-in-law has already been
endorsed by President Donald Trump.
Um, so.
Some of the Republicans, other
Republicans in that race are trying
to use Alfonso's connections
against him.
So I guess Trump coming
to here, if Alfonzo shows
up, which I would expect he would,
you get the president talking about
this person that a lot of people in
Northern Wisconsin might not know
about yet.
And also takes a little bit of the
wind out of the sails of the
Republican challengers that haven't
dropped out yet.
After that endorsement came
way back in January.
Yeah, so let's talk about a few of
the people who might or might not be
at this event.
And depending on when you watch or
listen to this show, you're going to
know whether we got these answers
right. So cut us some slack if we
get anything wrong, OK?
Michael Alfonso, you mentioned, it's
in the 7th District.
He is kind of the Trump
candidate. That's his thing.
So I think in that conservative
district, I would be very
shocked if he was not there to cheer
on the president.
I think we've been talking about this
seem to be hinting at, we expect
Derek Van Orden to be there, you
know, a very strong Trump
supporter going for that Trump
voter who might stay home.
How about Tom Tiffany,
the Republican candidate for
governor running in 50-50 Wisconsin?
Anyone want to take a stab at that?
Think he's got to be there.
I don't know why he wouldn't.
It's next to his district.
He's already tied himself to Trump
over and over and he,
like Van Orden, needs that turnout
in northern Wisconsin that Trump can
deliver, that really no one else
can. So it would
be really odd considering his
past moves on election denials and
all the other stuff where he's this
closely related to Trump,
including just voting to, in
Congress, not end the
war in Iran, supporting
Trump again in that area in a very
un- political fashion in
terms of like popularity.
So I would be surprised if he wasn't
there.
Any dissenters there?
We think that Tiffany's probably
gonna be there.
I assume so, I mean,
getting the endorsement, I think,
was like a really big deal for the
Tiffany campaign, right?
It made him sort of the heir
apparent to the Republican
path to the governorship.
But he has been trying to thread
this needle a little bit.
And you know, as Democrats try to
really closely tie him to Trump,
to say that he is, yes, he's
aligned with those politics and some
of those value systems, but he is
not sort of in lockstep with Trump.
And he doesn't always vote with him
100% of the time, he made a sort of
point of that.
At this appearance that he made in
Madison a week or two ago.
And so he wants to kind of show that
he, yes, he's in line with those
values, but also he will put
Wisconsin first.
And so how does he thread that
needle at the visit?
Again, maybe our viewers will
already know and we'll be waiting to
see. Right, Rich.
I'm sorry I stepped on what
Anya was saying, but I
have seen some folks online
point out, well, Tiffany has
taken some small little stances
against the war,
saying it needs to be wrapped up
soon, et cetera.
So they're arguing, well,
that's him putting a little bit of
daylight between himself and the
president. But as we know,
he has been pretty much in
lockstep.
For a long time so I
do expect him there but
there's a part of me that that is
very contrarian and wants to push
back just because you all say he's
going to be there but um so
if he's not maybe it would be
because he's trying to
appeal to the general election
audience all right well now
that I got the three of you on the
record in it. And I didn't take a
position. I think we should move on
to the next topic, the
candidate filing dead nine in the
race for governor.
You had candidates for
governor, attorney general,
Congress, assembly, Senate, you name
it, filing their nomination papers
in Madison ahead of
this week's deadline.
Nothing is final yet,
Anya, but which
you should explain to us.
But we knew going in.
There's a big field of people who
said they were gonna run for
governor.
What is sort of the lay of the land?
Yeah. So, you know, a million
caveats about the various steps
of review that they will go through
with the elections commission.
But as of right now,
eight Democrats have filed their
papers to Republicans.
And so that's a field of 10.
Tom Tiffany sort of being
the, again, the kind of
obvious front runner on the
Republican side, less of an obvious
front-runner on the Democratic side.
And then the big open question going
into the filing deadline was whether
Kirk Bankstad, the owner of Managua
Brewing Company, this kind of uh,
liberal activist and perhaps social
media provocateur, we might say,
uh, whether he was going to get his
papers in on time.
He declared his candidacy just a
few weeks ago.
He got his signatures in.
Uh, it seems that about a
quarter of them, if not more, are
not valid.
So they didn't contain either the
right of voter information for the
signers, um, and then about 40 pages
of them didn't have the right date
of the election. So he has until
Sunday to cure those That
is a tall order that involves filing
affidavits. He can't just like go
out and get 500 new signatures.
So that's the big question.
And then the elections commission
will kind of vote and see whether
everyone else qualifies.
So as of right now, it seems that
there are seven qualified Democrats,
two qualified Republicans, and
then the Kirk Bankside question.
And it's a big question not only for
Kirk Bankstead, it seems,
but I mean, we're talking about what
kind of a primary this is going to
be because let's say you're
a candidate who wants to occupy
that left flank of a seven
candidate Democratic primary like
Francesca Hong.
Kirk Bank said comes in and is
attacking you from the left
saying you're not left enough.
He could pull away a few votes
and it could make all the difference
in a primary this big Zach.
It's possible, I mean, we are
talking about a primary, if we get
seven candidates going all the way
to August, that, you
know, it's not unreasonable think
that high 20 percentage might
be the winner if things get
split pretty evenly.
It really depends on whether those
last three or four candidates at the
bottom of the barrel are
pulling 2% or if they're pulling 5%
or 6% because those can add up
to a big enough chunk of the
electorate that they can swing
an election towards the top when
there may not be anyone that's
really run away with it so far.
Bangstead is not something that most
of the Democrats are taking
seriously. They look at him as more
of an online troll.
Provocateur is a good, polite word.
They don't always use polite words
when they're talking about him.
Republicans love having him in the
conversation because he's just more
ammunition for them to throw at
Democrats.
Democrats would like him out of the
conversation for that very reason.
So I guess I assumed when
we were looking at this race, way
back in, I don't know, January,
maybe last year even, that
by June, when it comes time to file
signatures, maybe that hurdle
right there would thin the field a
bit and it basically did not.
Do you all think that
this field will be smaller
before people vote in August, that
you'll have some candidates say,
look, I know I'm on the ballot, but
I'm dropping out of this race and
I'm throwing my support behind
someone else?
Rich, you want to take a stab at
this one?
Well.
I would, you know,
you would expect that the
field would shrink a little bit, but
also this is an open seat.
So it's kind of a different ball
game.
And you know why not keep going.
We've got candidates that in polling
have been hovering around
1%, you know
single digits essentially, and
they're still in it.
And I can't help but think of
2022. It was a US Senate race
against ron johnson
and you had the
majority, you had the
Democratic candidates all
drop out all
at once and endorse Mandela
Barnes, who is now running for
governor.
But I really don't expect
to see anything like that this go
round. I could be wrong, but
it just seems like the cost
benefit analysis
that they're reviewing
these Democratic candidates.
Uh... Is leading them to stay in
it
And by contrast, in 2018,
the last time that there was a big
open Democratic primary for
governor, it was an even more
crowded field. I think there were
two dropouts and it was still a
larger field than it currently is.
And Evers emerged from that,
Governor Tony Evers, with a decent
chunk of, but not a majority of
the votes. He didn't have more than
50%.
And so we could be seeing
sort of a similar dynamic throughout
the summer.
One of the big questions, of course,
is who can maintain the money that
it takes to kind of get through to
August? But especially if you see
yourself as kind of standing out
from the pack of like occupying a
lane to yourself, why not kind of
keep running in that way to your
point, will there be then when
people do start dropping out?
And I do think we're gonna see some
before the primaries, but there's
going to be some trading, like
there's gonna be backdoor
discussions, I know everyone hates
talking about how those happen in
politics, to trade my
support for you.
And so that'll be really interesting
to see who wants to kind
of give it up this time.
In exchange for something else down
the line.
The two things to look at ahead of
those are, one, staffing.
If we see, because we get the
emails, the press releases, we know
who their campaign staffers are.
I would never expect the general
public to have an idea of who these
people are. But if we see changes
in staffing, then that means they
don't have the money to pay them or
those people are moving on to a new
race or a new position.
It really doesn't cost much to run
for governor.
In Wisconsin, it's gas money, which
I know is more than has been in past
years. But it's still, it is not
that difficult. And it's not even
that difficult to get 2,000
signatures, quite honestly.
We have lots of.
Candidates, you just go out and
knock doors and anyone will sign
something and put in front of them.
The other thing to look at is,
is there a reason that consolidation
might actually keep someone else
from doing something in a race?
And if they actually have enough
support to throw behind someone else
and kind of make that move or
bargain for them, they almost have
enough leverage to like say,
I can deliver my voters or my
name comes with enough people to
make it worth this effort.
The one thing I'd add to everything
that you all have said is that I
think the 22 experience could
discourage some people
to drop out.
What I mean is that the idea in 2022
is we're all going to get behind
this one candidate.
Everybody put aside your political
ambitions and back Mandela Barnes.
It didn't work out for Mandela
Barns, you know.
And so those candidates who dropped
out maybe look at that and say,
hey, why not me?
So, they could be having a similar
calculation this time around.
Real quick, before we wrap up, and
we'd give more time to this if this
was a bigger decision, but we have
to address this Wisconsin Supreme
Court decision briefly, Rich.
They dealt with this redistricting
case on the congressional map.
Was it a momentous decision or
incremental?
You know, you tell me.
It was not momentous.
People might get excited when they
see, oh, they're taking up this
redistricting appeal.
But really what they were addressing
is whether or not a three-judge
panel that they appointed made
the right decision in dismissing
this lawsuit.
What's interesting about this
lawsuit is it's not
arguing that the
congressional map is a partisan
gerrymander.
It's saying, No, this is an
anti-competitive gerrymander.
So a different kind of
nuanced approach, but ultimately
they want new maps.
So this doesn't mean that
they're going to be issuing any
decisions anytime soon.
It would be shocking if
anything came before
the elections this year.
Yeah, never, never say never in
politics, but it does not feel like
at this moment, the kind of
redistricting moves you're seeing in
other states around the country
right now.
That's all the time we have for
today. Thanks for joining us.
This has been Inside Wisconsin
Politics.
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