The Democratic primary for governor starts to get negative, and one candidate turns to
national live streams to raise money.
Not everyone's happy about it.
This is Inside Wisconsin Politics.
I'm Sean Johnson here with Anya Van Wechtendank and Rich Kramer in Eau Claire.
Hey, gang.
Hey, Sean.
So, I want to start this discussion with a simple question.
I think a lot of people probably associate political campaigns with negative attacks.
Candidates run for office.
They attack their opponents.
So, Anya, I'm wondering, why is it noteworthy that here in the middle of summer, we have
overt negative attacks in this Democratic primary?
Yeah, you know, I think for the last couple weeks, months, there have been some snipes,
what I might call sort of a Midwestern-nice approach to trying to get negative.
This is the first week that we got, you know, a press release from a candidate explicitly
saying, my opponent has done something bad.
I am going to do something great, and that was Mandela Barnes calling out Sarah Rodriguez,
a former lieutenant governor calling out a current lieutenant governor over donations
that she received while she was in the assembly.
And essentially trying to suggest that she is viable, that he is not, so making an issue
of this in a much more explicit way.
So, a little bit of a shot across the bow, six weeks out from the midterm, to really
kind of start to make these more explicit points.
Rich, I think this kind of pales by comparison from attacks you would see in national politics
right now for sure and in past Wisconsin campaigns.
Have you seen anything like this yet this summer?
Not really, I mean, as Anya mentioned, these have been pretty mild, and I guess if we're
thinking about, you know, boneless buffalo wings, these would be the ranch and the blue
cheese type of attacks that we've seen thus far.
We're starting to get into the actual, you know, Frank's red-hot kind of territory,
but even still, it's pretty tame.
What I was thinking about is the earlier veiled criticisms that we heard, like, during the
democratic convention or something, most people aren't really tuned in to this race yet.
That is your regular voter, but the people that might be getting these communications
from the candidates could be, you know, fellow politicians looking to endorse one of the six
candidates in the race could also be messaging out to money groups or donors.
I mean, that's speculation, but really, unless you're really tuned in, you wouldn't be able
to connect the dots between some of the attacks we've seen until this moment between the candidates
when they're talking about electability or first-time politician, et cetera.
You'd really have to do some homework to find out, and now it's a little more blatant.
Right, so you would have to know, like, a convention, for example, when Kaldoroy says,
we can't have anybody without experience stepping in here at this time.
She's, you know, we kind of know who she's referring to, but she's not saying it.
Francesco Hong saying, you know, voters can detect BS.
I don't know, I suppose she could be saying that about everybody but her.
But this is, like, a candidate against another candidate.
So I guess I'm wondering, what does it say about Mandela Barnes and Sarah Rodriguez right
now that the attack is coming from Mandela Barnes against Sarah Rodriguez?
And by the way, she responded in kind.
Absolutely, right.
It was kind of a forceful exchange of words.
So then her response was essentially, you were in for Senate and lost.
I ran for Lieutenant Governor and won.
And so, again, them fighting words.
That's a little bit not quite Midwest nice.
So I think it tells us a couple of things.
One, it says that Sarah Rodriguez is considered to be a serious contender, right?
You don't need to take down somebody who has nowhere to come down from.
Another thing is that Mandela Barnes is really trying to make utility rates a kind
of central platform.
And so using this particular thing, donations around utility rates is also a way
to kind of draw attention to himself.
And then I think the third thing is, you know, voters are pretty checked out,
even though, again, we are less than six weeks away from the primary.
Absentee ballots have already started being sent out.
But there's like a way that these candidates need to be drawing contrast
between themselves in a crowded race where there's not super strong distinctions, right?
On the sort of the major issues, they're relatively unified.
And so this is also a way of like distinguishing in terms of lane.
So he didn't go after, for example, Francesca Hong, who is a little bit more
on his wing of the Democratic Party.
He went after somebody who's a little bit more moderate.
And so it's a way of, I think, again, trying to draw starker distinctions
between lanes in this race, not just between individual candidates.
Yeah, I'm still trying to make sense of the lanes in this race.
I mean, I kind of have a sense of it, but I wonder if they are feeling it out, too.
And that is kind of the way I read it, too, is that Mandela Barnes probably feels
like I'm not going to win over the Francesca Hong supporters, necessarily.
But those Rodriguez supporters, they might be my people.
One in a crowded primary, you're fighting over the same voters.
You're fighting over Democrats, right?
And so you also, it's the kind of thing where a few thousand votes can be the difference
between winning and not.
It's more competitive in certain ways than a general and to like the contours
of what competition looks like in the primary is also going to look different.
Rich.
And this kind of reminds me of something I heard from the campaign strategist back
in 2022.
This was the Senate race between Mandela Barnes and Ron Johnson.
Ron Johnson's polling numbers, you know, approval ratings weren't super high.
And this this person who was a Republican campaign consultant said
Johnson doesn't need to improve his numbers.
He just needs to hurt and bring down the numbers of Barnes.
So in a primary like this, that might be part of the calculus.
Like if someone seems to be, whether it be from internal polling or whatever,
getting some ground and your campaign doesn't like that, try to knock them down a bit.
So I guess wonder if this is kind of uncorking the bottle.
So to speak, you know, like, is this going to be the new norm?
Now that a fight started, is it okay for Democrats to say, well, you know, I didn't
start it, but but I got to finish it now or they or they see sort of the urgency
of the primary coming up and if they want to stand out, do they have to attack?
Is there any signs that that's happening?
Well, it's a little bit of a calculation because, you know, on the one hand,
negative attacks can get you more attention.
If you're like kind of sassy on social media that tends to resonate a little bit
more, but at the same time, you don't want to weaken fellow Democrats terribly
because ultimately they're going to go up against presumably Tom Tiffany in
November for what is going to be a close race, like a general election in
Wisconsin is always going to be close.
And so you want to kind of weaken your opponents enough that you can get
across the finish line, but not so much that you kind of leave your entire party
susceptible to potentially Tom Tiffany picking up what you've already said and
running with it.
Rich, what do you say? Yeah, it's it's I agree 100% and I mean, no matter who
the Democratic candidate is, it would be surprising if the entirety of the
party doesn't try to rally around them because this race is pretty critical
for them as they're they're hoping, you know, the best case scenario would be a
trifecta where they win the state assembly state Senate and keep the
governorships. So maybe that's also why the attacks have been kind of mild.
But whoever it is, that bad blood will likely magically disappear at least
publicly after the August primary.
So Anya, there was a story that you covered this week involving Francesco
Hong's fundraising strategy here.
It was at the end of the fundraising period, by the way, where she went on a
couple of national livestreams to raise money.
Tell us about who she talked to and why is that significant?
Yeah, so she went on to on Monday, one was Mike from PA, who's sort of a
progressive streamer aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America.
He has a pretty big following.
And then she went on with Hassan Piker, who's arguably one of the biggest
political streamers online.
And he's become something of a kingmaker or perhaps attempted kingmaker on the
left of American politics.
And he's appeared with a number of DSA aligned or sort of leftist politicians.
And so she went on with him.
It was about an hour and a half appearance.
It was sort of fun and chatty.
They talked about politics, but they also ate Korean food and they talked about
merchandise and they talked about whether they should erect a statue of Scott Walker
for people to walk around and slap when they have big feelings.
So it was this really, you know, it's a very different kind of appearance than
might occur sort of here on PBS Wisconsin or WPR.
But that was this kind of approach to, according to Francesca Hong, meeting
different types of voters, more disaffected voters, the type of people who keep
these streams going.
Again, perhaps very different voters than our our our our our audience.
But at the same time, Hassan Piker has said numerous very controversial things
in the past, things about Israel in particular that has offended some Jewish
communities. And so there's also been a response.
She ended the day having raised about $92,000 from those two different streams.
Hassan Piker has said now he's going to come out to Wisconsin and campaign with
her. But at the same time, there's been this kind of pushback from fellow Democrats
and others saying, why would you appear with somebody who has said XYZ in the past?
And and so like you did see some attack there from David Crowley kind of like
saying, you should just you shouldn't go on here, right?
I mean, essentially.
Yeah, he said those comments are beyond the pale.
And you know, I should perhaps specify what they were.
So he said, for example, 911 was deserved.
And he says that he was referring to this idea that America's foreign policy
actions have consequences.
And then again, a number of his comments about Israel and Zionism has has sort of
been seen as conflating Jewish Americans, Zionists, this kind of thing.
And so I spoke with, for example, Ann Jacobs, who's the co-chair of the Jewish
caucus of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, who was really kind of appalled by the
fact that Francesca Hong would go alongside this person and said that, you
know, should Hong receive the nomination in November, she feels like she's going
to have a lot of work to do to bring Jewish Democrats kind of into the ballot
box to make sure that a Democrat can still win.
And again, you know, I reached out to the Hong campaign for comment and they
said, essentially, we are willing to meet with just about anyone to share our
vision if we don't go on these types of platforms that creates a vacuum that,
you know, conservative messaging can instead go to.
So they are trying to create this sort of big tent.
Some of the concern from other Democrats is who all should be in the big tent.
And how much did she raise in a day?
$92,000, $57,000 from Hasanpaker or from that stream.
And, you know, for somebody who's watched those streams, they kind of know what to
expect for somebody who doesn't, it's a little busy on those streams, is it not?
Yeah, as a, you know, a public radio girly, I will say, it was a little bit
stimulating to have that kind of thing going.
But I think people who are younger than me, like this is how they are getting a
lot of their, their news and information.
And again, in this kind of funny, cheeky way.
All right.
What do you think, Chad?
I don't know.
Is that how it's done?
All right, fam.
Rich, Rich Kramer.
Uh, what are Republicans saying about this, uh,
appearance there by Francesca Hong?
They're saying a lot.
They're, uh, they're framing it as, you know, this is the entire
Democratic Party lurching to the left towards these, what they call
dangerous ideas and comments.
Um, so they've, they've been very critical of Hong.
But again, they're conflating this to, uh, to try to say that all
Democrats are essentially Hasanpaker fans and they support everything that he's
ever said, uh, which is obviously an exaggeration, but that seems to be the
way you do it in politics when you're trying to bring down the other side.
And we'll get a sense in the middle of July, July 15th, are when fundraising
reports are due for the first half of this year.
So you'll see not only that fundraising, but everybody else is fundraising up
through that point and, you know, you'll get a real sense of who's got
formidable campaign right before the campaign wraps up.
Essentially we're going to be, uh, in a very compressed primary campaign here.
Rich Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor is, uh, had the
benefit of not having a real contested primary on his side.
And he's getting a correspondence now from the president of the United
States about disaster declaration.
Um, what happened there?
It was really interesting.
So, um, President Donald Trump used his, uh, his personal social media
site, Truth Social, um, to announce that Wisconsin has been approved for around
22 and a half million dollars in disaster relief aid.
Uh, this is tied to the storms that we saw earlier this year, the big time
flooding, other kinds of damage that really hit local governments pretty hard.
So he made this announcement, which is not unusual, but he didn't mention
governor Ebers once.
In fact, he said that the first call that he made was to Tom Tiffany, who he
also mentioned, I endorsed and he kind of re upped that.
Uh, Trump also essentially applauded every Republican in the congressional
delegation and didn't mention a single Democrat from Wisconsin, even though, uh,
governor Tony Evers and, um, people like Tammy Baldwin and the rest of the
delegation sent letters in May asking for this assistance.
They were asking for 27 million dollars.
So, um, it almost seemed like the president was treating Tiffany, like he's
already the governor and that T that Evers is already kind of an afterthought.
So that was, that was pretty interesting to see and that the Evers
administration essentially doesn't know the detail, at least when you talk to
them, they didn't know the details of the funding.
You reached out to the White House press office and had a series of questions
for them about the details and they had a very brief response to you.
That's right.
I wanted to, I asked, you know, when might this money becoming?
What type of aid because there's aid from the, from FEMA that goes to
businesses or governments or individuals?
I said, so those were the questions I asked and they just said, we refer you
to the truth, which means to the president's post.
Um, so they didn't have any additional information.
All right.
So we had two very big Supreme Court decisions, U.S.
Supreme Court's decisions this week, which were national news, but I think it's
fair to say there are some Wisconsin angles in there versus this, this
birthright citizenship decision, Rich, I think this was widely expected that the
court would rule against President Trump's executive order and say that, you
know, birthright citizenship is protected by the U.S.
Constitution, but there are Republicans and I mean, noteworthy
Republicans in Wisconsin who are saying, we got to do something about this.
Yeah, to, to, to borrow Anya's term, big feelings.
There were big feelings from some Republicans in Wisconsin.
Congressman Derrick Van Orden basically said that the Constitution's
14th Amendment was aimed at guaranteeing citizenship to freed slaves and not for
children of illegal immigrants.
He said the ruling undermines the integrity of American citizenship and
that Congress has to do something about it with it being declared unconstitutional,
at least the executive order.
It's kind of unclear what that would look like.
Congressman Tony Weed, another Republican, said that, you know, this
amendment wasn't intended for what it's being used for today.
There's all this talk of birth tourism, where the idea is that people that are
pregnant, you know, women that are pregnant from other countries come here,
have a baby strictly so that they can get that child citizenship automatically.
One of the more, I guess, aggressive comments came from 7th Congressional
District Republican candidate Michael Alfonso.
He's the son-in-law of Sean Duffy, the U.S.
Transportation Secretary.
He talked about how his newborn baby can trace her ancestry, quote,
back to before the Revolutionary War and that the ruling essentially is telling
people that children like his are not equally as American to, quote,
Chinese spies, anchor babies.
So a lot of, a lot of thoughts coming from some on the right.
And Anya, there was this other Supreme Court decision involving national
parties and how much they can raise and spend.
You said it would export the Wisconsin model.
What do you mean?
Well, so here in Wisconsin, since about 2015, we have had a rule in the
book that says that our state political parties can raise and spend as much money
as they want in political races.
You've actually reported on the fact that this was a Republican law that in
recent years, Democrats have made very good use of, in particular, in our
enormous Supreme Court races, right?
Democrats, for example, for the election of Janet Protasseo, it spent $10 million
on that campaign and that sort of unleashed these flagates.
Well, now as of this Supreme Court decision, this will be the case at the
national level, at the federal level.
So the national political parties are in CC, DLCC, these kinds of organizations.
They can spend as much as they want on these races in coordination with
campaigns.
And so essentially it's doing away with a major cap on campaign finance
regulations that, you know, people I've spoken to have said, as in Wisconsin,
so now we'll go on the nation.
Yeah.
And I know the Wisconsin law, everybody thought for sure, this is going to help
Republicans that ended up being helpful to Democrats here.
We'll see what happens with this change at the national level and open the
floodgates for us to have record breaking expensive elections.
It seems like every year it certainly did.
That's all the time we have for today.
Thanks for joining us.
Our colleagues, Zach Schultz, will be back next week.
This has been Inside Wisconsin Politics.
Be sure to follow us on pbswisconsin.org, wpr.org YouTube or wherever you get your
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