WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:20.720 Do endorsements matter? 00:20.720 --> 00:24.840 This week we look at a few examples including in heated primaries for the 7th congressional 00:24.840 --> 00:27.120 district and the governor's office. 00:27.120 --> 00:32.200 Plus, the latest Republican party drama following the Supreme Court blowout. 00:32.200 --> 00:36.120 This is Inside Wisconsin Politics. 00:36.120 --> 00:40.840 I'm Sean Johnson, here with my colleagues Anya Ben-Wagtendank and Rich Kramer in Eau Claire. 00:40.840 --> 00:41.840 Hey gang. 00:41.840 --> 00:43.480 Hey Sean. 00:43.480 --> 00:47.960 So part of the reason we wanted to talk about these races is that they are interesting, 00:47.960 --> 00:48.960 okay? 00:48.960 --> 00:52.680 If you haven't been following these primaries yet and you'll be forgiven, it's April. 00:52.680 --> 00:57.240 But the races for the 7th congressional district, especially on the Republican side and the 00:57.240 --> 01:00.920 Democratic primary for governor, are pretty dramatic. 01:00.920 --> 01:04.880 Let's start with the 7th though, Rich, because another reason we want to follow these is 01:04.880 --> 01:10.440 that they involve endorsements that seem like they could define the race. 01:10.440 --> 01:14.120 Tell us about what happened up in the 7th where you got kind of the biggest endorsement 01:14.120 --> 01:15.640 of all. 01:15.640 --> 01:18.840 Yeah, truly. 01:18.840 --> 01:26.000 Donald Trump way back in January endorsed one of the candidates running for that seat. 01:26.000 --> 01:31.680 Michael Alfonso, of course, Michael Alfonso is the son-in-law of US transportation secretary 01:31.680 --> 01:37.400 Sean Duffy who also had that congressional seat before. 01:37.400 --> 01:42.000 So it definitely created a stir within the GOP primary and I'm sure you'll be hearing 01:42.000 --> 01:45.760 a little bit about that endorsement in the general. 01:45.760 --> 01:52.560 And the reason we have an open race up there, Anya, is because the current office holder, 01:52.560 --> 01:55.040 Tom Tiffany, is running for governor. 01:55.040 --> 01:56.360 We're going to get to that race in a bit. 01:56.360 --> 02:00.040 But first of all, with Tom Tiffany, as he transitioned to the governor's race, he also 02:00.040 --> 02:03.200 got that Trump endorsement. 02:03.200 --> 02:05.320 How has that played out in his race there? 02:05.320 --> 02:11.240 Yeah, I mean, if people go all the way back in time to 2025, there were briefly three Republican 02:11.240 --> 02:14.600 candidates for governor alongside Tom Tiffany. 02:14.600 --> 02:18.240 One dropped out after some negative reporting about some of the stuff he'd been following 02:18.240 --> 02:19.240 on social media. 02:19.240 --> 02:20.240 That was Bill Baryon. 02:20.240 --> 02:25.400 But then Josh Sherman, Washington County executive, stayed in the race until the morning after 02:25.400 --> 02:28.520 Tom Tiffany got the Trump endorsement and he dropped out. 02:28.520 --> 02:33.720 And so it was a little bit of this nod to the fact that in a Republican primary, a nod 02:33.720 --> 02:38.640 from Trump can really be a sort of king-making move, at least in the primary, but then it 02:38.680 --> 02:41.720 can also lead to all kinds of stuff in the general. 02:41.720 --> 02:45.620 It was a really cause-effect situation there, right? 02:45.620 --> 02:48.560 Endorsement one day, he drops out the next. 02:48.560 --> 02:50.960 That has not been the case in the seventh, though, Rich. 02:50.960 --> 02:56.760 I mean, I think that is the general playbook, is that Trump endorses and people sort of 02:56.760 --> 03:01.080 assume that in a Republican primary that seals it. 03:01.080 --> 03:02.720 That is not what's happening there. 03:02.720 --> 03:07.520 And you kind of saw it firsthand last night at a candidate forum in Mercer. 03:07.520 --> 03:09.120 Tell us about that. 03:09.120 --> 03:15.280 Yeah, so this forum was hosted by the Iron County Republican Party. 03:15.280 --> 03:21.440 It was in a former gymnasium of a very old school and it happened on the first 80-degree 03:21.440 --> 03:24.000 day that Mercer saw this year. 03:24.000 --> 03:31.000 So it was a nice event, but the theme was, if I might summarize the candidates and some 03:31.000 --> 03:36.360 of the people I talked to in the audience, we support President Trump, but that doesn't 03:36.360 --> 03:39.560 mean we have to vote for who he tells us to. 03:39.560 --> 03:48.440 So a lot of people up there, and this was actually the first time that I saw candidates, 03:48.440 --> 03:54.480 Republican candidates, Kevin Hermanning and Jesse Eben go negative against Alfonso. 03:54.480 --> 04:01.840 They were criticizing Alfonso, who is 26-year-old, 26-years-old, for not having very much experience 04:01.840 --> 04:04.280 in politics or local government, et cetera. 04:04.280 --> 04:08.960 And they were portraying themselves as the better choice. 04:08.960 --> 04:17.800 But there was discussion about, does Alfonso or Duffy feel like this congressional seat 04:17.800 --> 04:21.080 is something that he's entitled to? 04:21.080 --> 04:23.680 So it was really interesting. 04:23.680 --> 04:28.120 People up there tiptoeing the line of still supporting the president, who did very well 04:28.120 --> 04:35.160 in this district, which leans pretty Republican, but they just don't, there's this independent 04:35.160 --> 04:39.000 streak where they don't like the idea of being told what to do. 04:39.000 --> 04:44.160 And I got to ask you about what they did on the stage there, too, because they had assigned 04:44.160 --> 04:49.600 seats for all the candidates, including Michael Alfonso. 04:49.600 --> 04:57.160 Yeah, in fact, the only seat that had a sign on it was Michael Alfonso. 04:57.160 --> 05:00.880 So he had the three of the Republican candidates were on the stage. 05:00.880 --> 05:04.280 That's Nina Baum, Jesse Eben, and Kevin Hermanning. 05:04.280 --> 05:10.280 And then there was an empty chair with Michael Alfonso's name on a piece of paper taped to 05:10.280 --> 05:11.280 it. 05:11.280 --> 05:18.760 And even during the debate, Kevin Hermanning stretched his arm out and kind of put it on 05:18.760 --> 05:24.800 the chair, had a big smile, his campaign person took a picture that made it up, made it on 05:24.800 --> 05:26.920 social media pretty quickly. 05:26.920 --> 05:31.560 So there was that, but even before the debate, one of the interesting things that kind of 05:31.560 --> 05:37.840 got me interested in going up there was this Republican party, their Facebook page was 05:37.840 --> 05:45.640 essentially goading or kind of making a little bit of fun of Alfonso's campaign for not responding. 05:45.640 --> 05:50.320 The GOP chair up there told me that people he knows with the Michael Alfonso campaign 05:50.320 --> 05:54.280 told him that the Trump endorsed candidate doesn't need to debate. 05:54.280 --> 05:59.960 And people in the audience say that they told me that's just not the case, like this 05:59.960 --> 06:00.960 is important. 06:00.960 --> 06:05.320 You've got to get out in this district and meet people one by one. 06:05.320 --> 06:08.000 And that's, that's what it takes to win. 06:08.000 --> 06:12.960 So you have the candidates who are in that race saying, you can't tell us what to do. 06:12.960 --> 06:17.520 We're still running up here on yet, although one of the candidates who Rich has done some 06:17.520 --> 06:21.240 reporting on did drop out this week. 06:21.240 --> 06:23.520 Tell us about that Paul Waskering left the race. 06:23.520 --> 06:26.320 Yeah, so Paul Waskering is a successful business person. 06:26.320 --> 06:29.040 He had a largely self-funded campaign. 06:29.040 --> 06:33.240 And so him dropping out is kind of the first big dropout of the race. 06:33.240 --> 06:36.040 And that's one of the things we kind of looked to going into a primary, especially in these 06:36.040 --> 06:39.360 crowded fields is when will people start dropping out. 06:39.360 --> 06:40.720 So this is kind of the first one. 06:40.720 --> 06:44.760 He had raised quite a bit of money from himself, as I mentioned, but very little in terms of 06:44.760 --> 06:46.440 independent donors. 06:46.440 --> 06:50.880 And then by contrast, you have Alfonso, who has received quite a bit of money from this 06:50.880 --> 06:57.560 kind of DC connected past studies on one thing that when Rich covered the empty chair, 06:57.560 --> 07:02.360 Alfonso was posting at the same time on Facebook photos of him with Republican Congress people 07:02.360 --> 07:03.360 in DC. 07:03.360 --> 07:05.160 So he has these big connections. 07:05.160 --> 07:09.800 And so I think it was a little bit of a signal that even people with deep pockets are not 07:09.800 --> 07:12.320 necessarily feeling up to the challenge. 07:12.320 --> 07:15.840 He also said that he didn't want to, Waskering said that he didn't want to kind of contribute 07:15.840 --> 07:19.080 to a bloody primary that that could only empower Democrats. 07:19.080 --> 07:22.800 So I think we're going to see a little bit of that, you know, bowing out in order to 07:22.800 --> 07:24.880 maintain the good of the party. 07:24.880 --> 07:25.880 Rich? 07:25.880 --> 07:31.040 Yeah, if I could just chime in on that. 07:31.040 --> 07:36.520 So the other thing is that, you know, there's this political action committee that has been 07:36.520 --> 07:37.800 raising money. 07:37.800 --> 07:38.960 It's based in Alabama. 07:38.960 --> 07:40.840 It's brand new. 07:40.840 --> 07:44.440 And it's been getting some of that money, a million dollars from Sean Duffy's former 07:44.440 --> 07:46.320 congressional campaign. 07:46.320 --> 07:51.240 And so they've essentially been doing a lot of ads, a lot of work for Alfonso, therefore 07:51.240 --> 07:55.400 he hasn't had to spend as much of the money that he's actually raised. 07:55.400 --> 08:01.520 And with regard to Waskering, what you noticed, Sean, on that last finance report that we 08:01.520 --> 08:06.920 looked at when I was reporting on it, there was some interesting loan information. 08:06.920 --> 08:07.920 You want to talk about that? 08:07.920 --> 08:08.920 Oh, yeah. 08:08.920 --> 08:12.960 I mean, well, I think the thing that got his attention for Paul Waskering when he jumped 08:12.960 --> 08:16.640 into the race was, as you mentioned, an ability to sell funds. 08:16.640 --> 08:20.120 So he loaned himself a million bucks there to start out. 08:20.120 --> 08:23.840 He had repaid a lot of that in the last report. 08:23.840 --> 08:28.840 So I think it is a situation where you put the money in there to send a message. 08:28.840 --> 08:34.760 He decided it was now well received and took the money back and got on out of there. 08:34.760 --> 08:39.120 Rich, I guess one thing we got to ask here, this is a very Republican district. 08:39.120 --> 08:41.840 And so we are talking about this Republican primary. 08:41.840 --> 08:48.120 But is this a situation where because of this infighting, you know, uneasiness among 08:48.120 --> 08:54.000 Republicans up there, is this door open for Democrats? 08:54.000 --> 08:56.760 I've heard that it is, and I've heard that it isn't. 08:56.760 --> 09:04.320 So this is a district that has tended to be more and more Republican since, say, 2010. 09:04.320 --> 09:10.480 We have to also remember that former Democratic Congressman Dave Obey represented the seventh 09:10.560 --> 09:12.760 for many, many years. 09:12.760 --> 09:19.440 But of course, with the Tea Party wave, Sharam Daffia got in, and it stayed Republican 09:19.440 --> 09:20.440 since. 09:20.440 --> 09:24.480 Of course, the map also changed, but just what I've been told by Joe Hendrick, who's kind 09:24.480 --> 09:34.120 of like the maps and elections data guru for the Republicans, is that it is Republican. 09:34.120 --> 09:39.840 It would be an uphill battle for any Democrat, but it's not impossible. 09:39.840 --> 09:44.800 And he said, if the GOP picks the wrong candidate in the primary and it's a wave year, 09:44.800 --> 09:50.440 which he said it seems to be looking like it might be, it's possible for this to flip 09:50.440 --> 09:53.880 back to Democratic hands. 09:53.880 --> 10:00.080 Whether that happens or not, Hendrick said it's unlikely, but it's not off the table. 10:00.080 --> 10:05.360 So let's turn to the Democratic primary for governor here, where we have seven candidates 10:05.360 --> 10:10.400 running, and it is at this stage not getting a ton of attention statewide. 10:10.400 --> 10:13.440 I mean, we did just have a Supreme Court race that ate up some of that. 10:13.440 --> 10:19.320 There's a little national news right now that has people's attention, but in that race, 10:19.320 --> 10:23.920 it feels like you could be talking about endorsements every week in a way about how that 10:23.920 --> 10:25.920 might affect the race. 10:25.920 --> 10:27.720 What's one that caught our eye this week? 10:27.720 --> 10:28.720 Yeah. 10:28.720 --> 10:31.840 I mean, so there have been all of these kind of smaller or more local endorsements that 10:31.840 --> 10:36.120 have been coming through, so local firefighters, unions, or this kind of thing. 10:36.120 --> 10:40.080 But then this week was the first, at least that I've noticed, sort of national figure 10:40.080 --> 10:41.600 to back a candidate. 10:41.600 --> 10:47.320 So Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, back to Francesca Hong, who is a Democratic representative 10:47.320 --> 10:48.320 from Madison. 10:48.320 --> 10:51.200 She aligns with the Democratic socialist sort of platform. 10:51.200 --> 10:55.560 And so she's one of the further left candidates, obviously getting the backing of a further 10:55.560 --> 10:57.240 left member of Congress. 10:57.240 --> 11:01.360 And this really caught our attention for sort of a double-edged reason, right, that can 11:01.360 --> 11:06.880 really signal where Hong stands here in Wisconsin, but of course Ilhan Omar has plenty 11:06.880 --> 11:12.000 of people who don't care for her in the Republican and sort of conservative side of things. 11:12.000 --> 11:15.920 And so looking towards a general election, I'm curious what it will mean to have some 11:15.920 --> 11:18.120 of these more divisive endorsements. 11:18.120 --> 11:23.120 But right now, it's also really interesting for a big national figure with a lot of media 11:23.120 --> 11:27.720 attention, social media attention, to be throwing her weight behind a candidate in the Wisconsin 11:27.720 --> 11:28.720 governor's election. 11:28.720 --> 11:29.720 Yeah. 11:29.720 --> 11:34.360 For me, I think if you're a voter out there who's barely paying attention to these races 11:34.360 --> 11:41.520 at this point and you have this overwhelming list of choices and for any, essentially, 11:41.520 --> 11:46.240 they're probably looking for clues on if they want to go for a very liberal candidate. 11:46.240 --> 11:50.680 This is a way of sending that message that Representative Hong is that candidate. 11:50.680 --> 11:54.640 You don't earn an endorsement like that without being a candidate like that. 11:54.640 --> 11:57.960 So it is a way to send a little hue kind of early going. 11:57.960 --> 11:58.960 Right. 11:58.960 --> 12:02.680 There's not a lot of differentiation on policy issues or some differentiation on sort of 12:02.680 --> 12:03.920 the specifics of things. 12:03.920 --> 12:08.200 But basically, every Democratic candidate supports abortion rights, you know, expanding 12:08.200 --> 12:09.200 Medicaid. 12:09.200 --> 12:11.040 Like there are all of these kind of signals there. 12:11.040 --> 12:16.920 And so an endorsement can offer a more specific kind of endorsement, I'm sorry, a signal 12:16.920 --> 12:21.360 around values and also again, invite some of the media attention that can come with that. 12:21.360 --> 12:25.440 So it's one thing to say, oh, I have the support of this local union in my community. 12:25.440 --> 12:27.640 And what does that say about my support for workers rights? 12:27.640 --> 12:33.800 It's another thing if, you know, Mom Donnie comes in and backs you right, a sort of nationally 12:33.800 --> 12:37.960 famous figure where people have already kind of done the work to understand who that person 12:37.960 --> 12:38.960 is. 12:38.960 --> 12:41.800 And so then they can apply it to the candidates here. 12:41.800 --> 12:42.800 Rich? 12:42.800 --> 12:58.560 We can't hear you, Rich. 12:58.560 --> 13:03.360 So Anya, I guess a question that I have when it comes to endorsements like this on the 13:03.360 --> 13:09.320 Democratic side, is there an equivalent to the Donald Trump endorsement where if this 13:09.320 --> 13:13.400 person comes in, you know, it's kind of all over in a primary. 13:13.400 --> 13:17.800 I mean, put simply, no, Trump is really the standard bearer for the Republican party and 13:17.800 --> 13:19.600 has been for a decade. 13:19.600 --> 13:23.280 Democrats just don't have that equivalent person, in part because, you know, you do have some 13:23.280 --> 13:27.400 of this division between more centrist Democrats and more left-wing Democrats. 13:27.400 --> 13:32.040 And so again, somebody like Ilhan Omar is going to really appeal to people who are kind of 13:32.040 --> 13:37.520 already in the Francesca Hong camp would not necessarily appeal to more sort of moderate 13:37.520 --> 13:39.880 or business-minded Democrats. 13:39.880 --> 13:43.360 And then there are people like Kamala Harris or somebody similar who might appeal more 13:43.360 --> 13:45.360 to those kind of centrist folks. 13:45.360 --> 13:49.640 But there's not really a uniting figure in the same way that Donald Trump is. 13:49.640 --> 13:54.040 You could imagine if, let's say, former President Obama were to jump in with an endorsement 13:54.040 --> 13:58.040 in that primary, which seems unlikely, but you never know, that might turn some heads. 13:58.040 --> 14:04.200 I think one difference is that President Trump has sort of gone after people who don't fall 14:04.200 --> 14:10.080 in line in a way that I don't know that President Obama would or could, Trump rags 14:10.080 --> 14:11.080 about it, frankly. 14:11.080 --> 14:15.160 I mean, he is not afraid to enforce his endorsements. 14:15.160 --> 14:17.760 And so I don't know that you have something like that on the Democratic side. 14:17.760 --> 14:23.680 Well, and you also don't have Tony Evers laying in on who would be a good sort of recipient 14:23.680 --> 14:25.080 of the torch that he wants to pass. 14:25.080 --> 14:29.920 In fact, I have asked him several times if he's going to endorse and he shoots that question 14:29.920 --> 14:30.920 down every time. 14:30.920 --> 14:33.240 So it looks like he's really not playing favorites. 14:33.240 --> 14:36.200 And so that's, again, another lack of a signal, right? 14:36.200 --> 14:41.040 If there's nobody to kind of carry for the specific Evers legacy, then who is the person 14:41.040 --> 14:44.560 who can do what he did, which is win pretty narrowly against a Republican? 14:44.560 --> 14:45.560 Yeah. 14:45.560 --> 14:50.120 I want to just reinforce that that is a perfectly reasonable question, and you should keep asking 14:50.120 --> 14:51.120 it. 14:51.120 --> 14:54.080 And I think in a different year and different circumstances, he'd have somebody. 14:54.080 --> 14:58.600 But in this race, he doesn't want to go there for whatever reason. 14:58.680 --> 15:03.200 So I guess it is an open question that we can ask every single campaign. 15:03.200 --> 15:04.200 But I don't care. 15:04.200 --> 15:05.200 I want to ask it again. 15:05.200 --> 15:06.720 Do endorsements matter? 15:06.720 --> 15:10.040 Do they matter for voters? 15:10.040 --> 15:16.920 To me, I think the answer is absolutely yes, given the circumstances. 15:16.920 --> 15:21.160 One I would think that where you see it definitely matter is in our upcoming court race. 15:21.160 --> 15:23.440 I don't know if you've paid attention to this one yet. 15:23.440 --> 15:24.440 I mean, I know you have. 15:24.440 --> 15:25.520 You've written about it. 15:26.160 --> 15:32.480 You did not have candidates endorse, you did not have the liberal justices endorse in 15:32.480 --> 15:33.480 that race yet. 15:33.480 --> 15:38.760 So in the 2024 Supreme Court race, you had the four sitting liberal justices endorse Susan 15:38.760 --> 15:40.000 Crawford early on. 15:40.000 --> 15:43.880 In 2025, you had them endorse Chris Taylor. 15:43.880 --> 15:47.680 You've had a candidate jump into the race, this race already, Anya, that you've written 15:47.680 --> 15:51.120 about Lindsey Burnett. 15:51.120 --> 15:53.400 She did not immediately get that endorsement. 15:53.400 --> 15:57.840 And so now you have maybe Judge Pedro Colone in Milwaukee could be running. 15:57.840 --> 16:03.040 So the lack of endorsement may be spawning a little liberal primary on that side. 16:03.040 --> 16:07.240 Yeah, again, and especially with the courts, right, there can be a little bit of that king 16:07.240 --> 16:08.840 making approach again. 16:08.840 --> 16:12.960 So I think it is when you have a crowded feel that the endorsements really matter. 16:12.960 --> 16:18.320 But we live in also such polarized times that going into a general election, there are going 16:18.320 --> 16:20.240 to be very few surprising endorsements. 16:20.240 --> 16:25.320 So the people that I've talked to about the politics of endorsements have said, surprising 16:25.320 --> 16:30.880 endorsements really matter, less surprising ones matter less because, of course, democratic 16:30.880 --> 16:37.160 royalty is going to back Democrats and Republican royalty is going to back Republicans in general. 16:37.160 --> 16:42.360 Before we wrap up here, I feel like we got to talk about the aftermath of the 2026 Supreme 16:42.360 --> 16:46.840 Court race, though, in just about a minute here. 16:46.840 --> 16:51.760 There was some talk that the state party chair, Brian Schimming, could lose his job 16:51.760 --> 16:52.760 over that race. 16:52.760 --> 16:55.040 Some people wanted him out. 16:55.040 --> 16:58.200 What's the update on that? 16:58.200 --> 17:00.000 He's still in. 17:00.000 --> 17:03.000 The party webpage still shows him as chairman. 17:03.000 --> 17:04.640 They had an executive committee. 17:04.640 --> 17:10.280 So that's the group of people that could have fired him and they apparently did not. 17:10.280 --> 17:15.280 But the twist is people I talked to that are on the committee said, we can't tell you 17:15.280 --> 17:19.800 what happened there because we signed non-disclosure agreements. 17:19.800 --> 17:24.800 Those agreements were put in effect in December. 17:24.800 --> 17:31.120 And just for context, after the 2025 loss that Republicans had, that was the Schimmel 17:31.120 --> 17:38.680 and Susan Crawford race, there were calls for Brian Schimming to be fired or resigned. 17:38.680 --> 17:40.840 So kind of the same thing. 17:40.840 --> 17:48.240 And shortly after that, the executive committee passed some new rules to kind of clamp down 17:48.240 --> 17:52.240 on people complaining publicly about GOP party leadership. 17:52.240 --> 17:58.440 So this is, Schimming is still in place and there's a new rule where you have to sign 17:58.440 --> 17:59.440 a NDA. 17:59.440 --> 18:04.840 So this powerful executive committee for the party makes decisions like this. 18:04.840 --> 18:08.800 And you know, you talked to one of the members and he didn't really tell you about what went 18:08.800 --> 18:11.920 on, but he said, check the website. 18:11.920 --> 18:14.760 Yes, check the website. 18:14.760 --> 18:15.760 That's right. 18:15.760 --> 18:17.560 And there's Brian Schimming's name as chair. 18:17.560 --> 18:21.760 Well, we'll continue to follow that one in all these endorsements. 18:21.760 --> 18:23.680 They'll do it for this week. 18:23.680 --> 18:25.680 It's all the time we have. 18:25.680 --> 18:27.960 Our colleague Zach Sheltz will be back next week. 18:27.960 --> 18:29.280 Thanks for joining us. 18:29.280 --> 18:31.680 This has been Inside Wisconsin Politics. 18:31.680 --> 18:37.200 Be sure to follow us on PBSWISCONSI.org, WPR.org, YouTube, or wherever you get your 18:37.200 --> 18:37.960 podcasts. 18:38.800 --> 19:04.320 They've been wrestling with it, man, for days. 19:05.320 --> 19:12.880 Sorry, I had a banger answer and you guys can't use it. 19:12.880 --> 19:13.880 You had other banger. 19:13.880 --> 19:14.240 Did you deliver?