Do endorsements matter?
This week we look at a few examples including in heated primaries for the 7th congressional
district and the governor's office.
Plus, the latest Republican party drama following the Supreme Court blowout.
This is Inside Wisconsin Politics.
I'm Sean Johnson, here with my colleagues Anya Ben-Wagtendank and Rich Kramer in Eau Claire.
Hey gang.
Hey Sean.
So part of the reason we wanted to talk about these races is that they are interesting,
okay?
If you haven't been following these primaries yet and you'll be forgiven, it's April.
But the races for the 7th congressional district, especially on the Republican side and the
Democratic primary for governor, are pretty dramatic.
Let's start with the 7th though, Rich, because another reason we want to follow these is
that they involve endorsements that seem like they could define the race.
Tell us about what happened up in the 7th where you got kind of the biggest endorsement
of all.
Yeah, truly.
Donald Trump way back in January endorsed one of the candidates running for that seat.
Michael Alfonso, of course, Michael Alfonso is the son-in-law of US transportation secretary
Sean Duffy who also had that congressional seat before.
So it definitely created a stir within the GOP primary and I'm sure you'll be hearing
a little bit about that endorsement in the general.
And the reason we have an open race up there, Anya, is because the current office holder,
Tom Tiffany, is running for governor.
We're going to get to that race in a bit.
But first of all, with Tom Tiffany, as he transitioned to the governor's race, he also
got that Trump endorsement.
How has that played out in his race there?
Yeah, I mean, if people go all the way back in time to 2025, there were briefly three Republican
candidates for governor alongside Tom Tiffany.
One dropped out after some negative reporting about some of the stuff he'd been following
on social media.
That was Bill Baryon.
But then Josh Sherman, Washington County executive, stayed in the race until the morning after
Tom Tiffany got the Trump endorsement and he dropped out.
And so it was a little bit of this nod to the fact that in a Republican primary, a nod
from Trump can really be a sort of king-making move, at least in the primary, but then it
can also lead to all kinds of stuff in the general.
It was a really cause-effect situation there, right?
Endorsement one day, he drops out the next.
That has not been the case in the seventh, though, Rich.
I mean, I think that is the general playbook, is that Trump endorses and people sort of
assume that in a Republican primary that seals it.
That is not what's happening there.
And you kind of saw it firsthand last night at a candidate forum in Mercer.
Tell us about that.
Yeah, so this forum was hosted by the Iron County Republican Party.
It was in a former gymnasium of a very old school and it happened on the first 80-degree
day that Mercer saw this year.
So it was a nice event, but the theme was, if I might summarize the candidates and some
of the people I talked to in the audience, we support President Trump, but that doesn't
mean we have to vote for who he tells us to.
So a lot of people up there, and this was actually the first time that I saw candidates,
Republican candidates, Kevin Hermanning and Jesse Eben go negative against Alfonso.
They were criticizing Alfonso, who is 26-year-old, 26-years-old, for not having very much experience
in politics or local government, et cetera.
And they were portraying themselves as the better choice.
But there was discussion about, does Alfonso or Duffy feel like this congressional seat
is something that he's entitled to?
So it was really interesting.
People up there tiptoeing the line of still supporting the president, who did very well
in this district, which leans pretty Republican, but they just don't, there's this independent
streak where they don't like the idea of being told what to do.
And I got to ask you about what they did on the stage there, too, because they had assigned
seats for all the candidates, including Michael Alfonso.
Yeah, in fact, the only seat that had a sign on it was Michael Alfonso.
So he had the three of the Republican candidates were on the stage.
That's Nina Baum, Jesse Eben, and Kevin Hermanning.
And then there was an empty chair with Michael Alfonso's name on a piece of paper taped to
it.
And even during the debate, Kevin Hermanning stretched his arm out and kind of put it on
the chair, had a big smile, his campaign person took a picture that made it up, made it on
social media pretty quickly.
So there was that, but even before the debate, one of the interesting things that kind of
got me interested in going up there was this Republican party, their Facebook page was
essentially goading or kind of making a little bit of fun of Alfonso's campaign for not responding.
The GOP chair up there told me that people he knows with the Michael Alfonso campaign
told him that the Trump endorsed candidate doesn't need to debate.
And people in the audience say that they told me that's just not the case, like this
is important.
You've got to get out in this district and meet people one by one.
And that's, that's what it takes to win.
So you have the candidates who are in that race saying, you can't tell us what to do.
We're still running up here on yet, although one of the candidates who Rich has done some
reporting on did drop out this week.
Tell us about that Paul Waskering left the race.
Yeah, so Paul Waskering is a successful business person.
He had a largely self-funded campaign.
And so him dropping out is kind of the first big dropout of the race.
And that's one of the things we kind of looked to going into a primary, especially in these
crowded fields is when will people start dropping out.
So this is kind of the first one.
He had raised quite a bit of money from himself, as I mentioned, but very little in terms of
independent donors.
And then by contrast, you have Alfonso, who has received quite a bit of money from this
kind of DC connected past studies on one thing that when Rich covered the empty chair,
Alfonso was posting at the same time on Facebook photos of him with Republican Congress people
in DC.
So he has these big connections.
And so I think it was a little bit of a signal that even people with deep pockets are not
necessarily feeling up to the challenge.
He also said that he didn't want to, Waskering said that he didn't want to kind of contribute
to a bloody primary that that could only empower Democrats.
So I think we're going to see a little bit of that, you know, bowing out in order to
maintain the good of the party.
Rich?
Yeah, if I could just chime in on that.
So the other thing is that, you know, there's this political action committee that has been
raising money.
It's based in Alabama.
It's brand new.
And it's been getting some of that money, a million dollars from Sean Duffy's former
congressional campaign.
And so they've essentially been doing a lot of ads, a lot of work for Alfonso, therefore
he hasn't had to spend as much of the money that he's actually raised.
And with regard to Waskering, what you noticed, Sean, on that last finance report that we
looked at when I was reporting on it, there was some interesting loan information.
You want to talk about that?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, well, I think the thing that got his attention for Paul Waskering when he jumped
into the race was, as you mentioned, an ability to sell funds.
So he loaned himself a million bucks there to start out.
He had repaid a lot of that in the last report.
So I think it is a situation where you put the money in there to send a message.
He decided it was now well received and took the money back and got on out of there.
Rich, I guess one thing we got to ask here, this is a very Republican district.
And so we are talking about this Republican primary.
But is this a situation where because of this infighting, you know, uneasiness among
Republicans up there, is this door open for Democrats?
I've heard that it is, and I've heard that it isn't.
So this is a district that has tended to be more and more Republican since, say, 2010.
We have to also remember that former Democratic Congressman Dave Obey represented the seventh
for many, many years.
But of course, with the Tea Party wave, Sharam Daffia got in, and it stayed Republican
since.
Of course, the map also changed, but just what I've been told by Joe Hendrick, who's kind
of like the maps and elections data guru for the Republicans, is that it is Republican.
It would be an uphill battle for any Democrat, but it's not impossible.
And he said, if the GOP picks the wrong candidate in the primary and it's a wave year,
which he said it seems to be looking like it might be, it's possible for this to flip
back to Democratic hands.
Whether that happens or not, Hendrick said it's unlikely, but it's not off the table.
So let's turn to the Democratic primary for governor here, where we have seven candidates
running, and it is at this stage not getting a ton of attention statewide.
I mean, we did just have a Supreme Court race that ate up some of that.
There's a little national news right now that has people's attention, but in that race,
it feels like you could be talking about endorsements every week in a way about how that
might affect the race.
What's one that caught our eye this week?
Yeah.
I mean, so there have been all of these kind of smaller or more local endorsements that
have been coming through, so local firefighters, unions, or this kind of thing.
But then this week was the first, at least that I've noticed, sort of national figure
to back a candidate.
So Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, back to Francesca Hong, who is a Democratic representative
from Madison.
She aligns with the Democratic socialist sort of platform.
And so she's one of the further left candidates, obviously getting the backing of a further
left member of Congress.
And this really caught our attention for sort of a double-edged reason, right, that can
really signal where Hong stands here in Wisconsin, but of course Ilhan Omar has plenty
of people who don't care for her in the Republican and sort of conservative side of things.
And so looking towards a general election, I'm curious what it will mean to have some
of these more divisive endorsements.
But right now, it's also really interesting for a big national figure with a lot of media
attention, social media attention, to be throwing her weight behind a candidate in the Wisconsin
governor's election.
Yeah.
For me, I think if you're a voter out there who's barely paying attention to these races
at this point and you have this overwhelming list of choices and for any, essentially,
they're probably looking for clues on if they want to go for a very liberal candidate.
This is a way of sending that message that Representative Hong is that candidate.
You don't earn an endorsement like that without being a candidate like that.
So it is a way to send a little hue kind of early going.
Right.
There's not a lot of differentiation on policy issues or some differentiation on sort of
the specifics of things.
But basically, every Democratic candidate supports abortion rights, you know, expanding
Medicaid.
Like there are all of these kind of signals there.
And so an endorsement can offer a more specific kind of endorsement, I'm sorry, a signal
around values and also again, invite some of the media attention that can come with that.
So it's one thing to say, oh, I have the support of this local union in my community.
And what does that say about my support for workers rights?
It's another thing if, you know, Mom Donnie comes in and backs you right, a sort of nationally
famous figure where people have already kind of done the work to understand who that person
is.
And so then they can apply it to the candidates here.
Rich?
We can't hear you, Rich.
So Anya, I guess a question that I have when it comes to endorsements like this on the
Democratic side, is there an equivalent to the Donald Trump endorsement where if this
person comes in, you know, it's kind of all over in a primary.
I mean, put simply, no, Trump is really the standard bearer for the Republican party and
has been for a decade.
Democrats just don't have that equivalent person, in part because, you know, you do have some
of this division between more centrist Democrats and more left-wing Democrats.
And so again, somebody like Ilhan Omar is going to really appeal to people who are kind of
already in the Francesca Hong camp would not necessarily appeal to more sort of moderate
or business-minded Democrats.
And then there are people like Kamala Harris or somebody similar who might appeal more
to those kind of centrist folks.
But there's not really a uniting figure in the same way that Donald Trump is.
You could imagine if, let's say, former President Obama were to jump in with an endorsement
in that primary, which seems unlikely, but you never know, that might turn some heads.
I think one difference is that President Trump has sort of gone after people who don't fall
in line in a way that I don't know that President Obama would or could, Trump rags
about it, frankly.
I mean, he is not afraid to enforce his endorsements.
And so I don't know that you have something like that on the Democratic side.
Well, and you also don't have Tony Evers laying in on who would be a good sort of recipient
of the torch that he wants to pass.
In fact, I have asked him several times if he's going to endorse and he shoots that question
down every time.
So it looks like he's really not playing favorites.
And so that's, again, another lack of a signal, right?
If there's nobody to kind of carry for the specific Evers legacy, then who is the person
who can do what he did, which is win pretty narrowly against a Republican?
Yeah.
I want to just reinforce that that is a perfectly reasonable question, and you should keep asking
it.
And I think in a different year and different circumstances, he'd have somebody.
But in this race, he doesn't want to go there for whatever reason.
So I guess it is an open question that we can ask every single campaign.
But I don't care.
I want to ask it again.
Do endorsements matter?
Do they matter for voters?
To me, I think the answer is absolutely yes, given the circumstances.
One I would think that where you see it definitely matter is in our upcoming court race.
I don't know if you've paid attention to this one yet.
I mean, I know you have.
You've written about it.
You did not have candidates endorse, you did not have the liberal justices endorse in
that race yet.
So in the 2024 Supreme Court race, you had the four sitting liberal justices endorse Susan
Crawford early on.
In 2025, you had them endorse Chris Taylor.
You've had a candidate jump into the race, this race already, Anya, that you've written
about Lindsey Burnett.
She did not immediately get that endorsement.
And so now you have maybe Judge Pedro Colone in Milwaukee could be running.
So the lack of endorsement may be spawning a little liberal primary on that side.
Yeah, again, and especially with the courts, right, there can be a little bit of that king
making approach again.
So I think it is when you have a crowded feel that the endorsements really matter.
But we live in also such polarized times that going into a general election, there are going
to be very few surprising endorsements.
So the people that I've talked to about the politics of endorsements have said, surprising
endorsements really matter, less surprising ones matter less because, of course, democratic
royalty is going to back Democrats and Republican royalty is going to back Republicans in general.
Before we wrap up here, I feel like we got to talk about the aftermath of the 2026 Supreme
Court race, though, in just about a minute here.
There was some talk that the state party chair, Brian Schimming, could lose his job
over that race.
Some people wanted him out.
What's the update on that?
He's still in.
The party webpage still shows him as chairman.
They had an executive committee.
So that's the group of people that could have fired him and they apparently did not.
But the twist is people I talked to that are on the committee said, we can't tell you
what happened there because we signed non-disclosure agreements.
Those agreements were put in effect in December.
And just for context, after the 2025 loss that Republicans had, that was the Schimmel
and Susan Crawford race, there were calls for Brian Schimming to be fired or resigned.
So kind of the same thing.
And shortly after that, the executive committee passed some new rules to kind of clamp down
on people complaining publicly about GOP party leadership.
So this is, Schimming is still in place and there's a new rule where you have to sign
a NDA.
So this powerful executive committee for the party makes decisions like this.
And you know, you talked to one of the members and he didn't really tell you about what went
on, but he said, check the website.
Yes, check the website.
That's right.
And there's Brian Schimming's name as chair.
Well, we'll continue to follow that one in all these endorsements.
They'll do it for this week.
It's all the time we have.
Our colleague Zach Sheltz will be back next week.
Thanks for joining us.
This has been Inside Wisconsin Politics.
Be sure to follow us on PBSWISCONSI.org, WPR.org, YouTube, or wherever you get your
podcasts.
They've been wrestling with it, man, for days.
Sorry, I had a banger answer and you guys can't use it.
You had other banger.
Did you deliver?