The Democratic candidates for Governor make their closing pitches to voters.
What are they saying?
And how is the race shaping up with less than two weeks ago?
This is inside Wisconsin politics.
I'm Sean Johnson here with my colleagues, Anya Van Wechtendong, Zach Schultz, and Rich Kramer and Eau Claire.
Hey everyone.
Hello.
So we're going to get into how each of these candidates is presenting themselves here in just a moment.
But before we do that, I wonder if each of you would take a quick stab at summing up this race as we know it right now with less than two weeks ago.
Zach, you first.
I would say remarkable consistency at the top and the bottom and a lot of churn in the middle.
There we go.
Okay.
Anya, how about you?
You know, I feel like we spent so many months kind of waiting for something to happen in this race.
And then everything happened all at once.
And now the deck is kind of completely shuffled.
So Topsy Turvy might be the word I would use.
Topsy Turvy.
I like it.
How about you, Rich?
Locked in question mark.
It looks like we've got the candidates that will stay in the race until the end of the primary campaign season.
I'm not sure though.
All right.
I'm going to answer the question too, I suppose.
I think at this point, we have to say the primary is kind of Francesca Hong's to lose.
There's still a lot of undecided voters and they're still looking for somebody to send them a message.
But she has consistently led in polling and seemingly driven the discussion in this campaign.
So let's look at what the candidates are saying and how they're presenting themselves in these closing days.
And for help with this, we're going to use clips from their debate this week.
Let's start with Madison Representative Francesca Hong.
She's a Democratic Socialist, which is sort of defined as campaign.
She was asked about her views.
Let's give a listen to what she had to say.
What Democratic socialism is, is a form of government that puts working-class people first, that puts work first.
The policies that we have been working on, permanent affordability, has broad bipartisan support in every corner of the state.
Anya, you profiled Francesca Hong for Wisconsin Public Radio.
How is she presenting her brand of politics to primary voters and to potential critics out there?
I mean, so she's been running pretty consistent with who she was in the assembly, again, as a member of the Democratic Socialist Caucus in there.
And that's been sort of the name of the game for her campaign as well.
You know, all of the Democrats are relatively aligned on sort of the big picture issues, and then she tends to take it a little bit further into, again, that sort of DSA lane.
But it's been interesting as she's been kind of consistently at the front.
It's not that the message has changed so much, but she is starting to kind of nuance some of those views.
So, you know, in the past, for example, one of the really, really big things that has dogged her campaign is that during 2020 she called to defund the police and looking towards an eventual sort of abolition of the police.
And all reporters have been asking her about these comments for months and months, and she's always given a kind of more nuanced take on her view of public safety,
but I think she's had to be really kind of mindful about that as she has become a clear front-runner because Republicans are going to make an attack ad, if not 20, out of those types of comments.
Yeah, is she also kind of pivoting toward the general when it comes to tax policy because she was asked about that at the debate?
I mean, you have to kind of wonder, right? So, on the trail again, she has, I think some of the most specific sort of policy platforms of any of the candidates, which has been kind of interesting.
She has these kind of platforms put on her website, and so in terms of like raising taxes, it has looked like she has wanted to greatly increase taxes on the wealthiest earners in Wisconsin.
At the debate, she hedged and presented a much lower number, but of course tax the rich is a major kind of attractive talking point that she has had for her base.
People have really responded to that, but perhaps moderate voters or wealthier voters or more Republican voters would not.
Yeah, the ads might run the same whether or not you're talking about the bill she sponsored in the assembly, which was around 17.7% for the top income earners versus 8.65.
But that is a pretty stark difference in terms of the amount of dollars we're talking about, which would be around $9 million in its first year of increased taxes.
Zach, we said last week we were just kind of wait for the facts to play out in an event that happened that all the candidates reacted to, this Madison police shooting.
I think it's fair to say a week later, Francesca Hong's reaction was the loudest in most detention getting. She went to a Madison city street, called it an execution.
What's she saying now?
Well, she was asked directly at the debate, would she make those same statements as governor?
And her response was, no, she says the governor has a larger megaphone or speaker, and so indicating that she thought it wouldn't be responsible as governor to make those.
Interesting that a lot of people are said you should campaign the way you were governed.
So I don't know why she thought it would be okay as a candidate to make those statements, but not three months from now if she becomes governor elect to make the same statements in the same type of scenario.
This is something that rolls right into what we're just talking about, that defund the police background that comes with her candidacy and others in the Democratic Socialist Party.
And Republicans are absolutely already using against her. They're prepared at every step along the way.
I think maybe what's surprising in this campaign is none of the other Democrats that are running against her have tried to use that against her if they were serious about trying to make a move on her polling position.
So let's move to one of those Democrats, Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes.
He was considered a front-runner to start this race because of his statewide name recognition as Lieutenant Governor and a candidate for Senate in 2022.
He talked about that at Tuesday's debate.
There's not a single person on this stage who's united all shades of blue of the Democratic Party as I have before.
Now, that race in 2022, it was the closest US Senate race in the state in over 100 years.
It was the closest challenge to any incumbent across the entire country, no incumbent in law statewide.
Rich, you profiled Mandela Barnes for WPR. He's definitely presenting that Senate run as a positive, but I think undeniably it's a vulnerability for him with some voters.
What are your impressions with how he's been navigating that and how voters view it?
Well, since I've been, since I talked to him for the profile, he's really hit on that, essentially saying none of the other Democrats in the race have faced the kind of headwinds.
And, you know, a US Senate campaign where you're getting attacked, tens of millions of dollars, those are some real headwinds.
So that's been his argument, but we've seen that other Democrats aren't really buying it.
There was an effort to keep him from joining the race way back when.
And we also saw a great big snub, you know, the Governor Evers who didn't make any endorsements chose not to endorse Barnes.
So he's been kind of making a pivot lately saying, well, I'm the anti, I'm not the establishment candidate.
I'm the anti-establishment candidate.
So that's interesting in context of what went down in 2022 where, you know, there were arguments from the Republicans that the establishment helped him get a clear path to the Democratic nomination there.
So otherwise his messaging has been pretty similar.
He talks a lot about people playing by the rules, working hard, not being able to get by, whereas the wealthy just keep on prospering.
That continues in his current campaign.
Do you see any difference between the way he's presenting himself now in terms of that messaging and his platform compared to, you know, when you talk to him on a dairy farm in June?
Not really. Not really. No, he's really good at staying on message.
And, you know, we all tend to remember that because we hear the same thing over and over again.
So he's been real disciplined.
But I wonder, John, what does that look like compared to Mandel Barnes from 2012 or 2012, excuse me?
Yeah, I mean, I think Mandel Barnes is kind of in a catch-22 of his own making here.
Like he rose to prominence as a Democrat and got the base to love him.
And I don't use that word within exaggeration.
He was very popular at every Democratic event where he was a guest.
And that was what made him a candidate in 2022.
That's how he got there.
He is now a very on-message candidate who is running kind of as a safe front-runner.
And the trick for him in this campaign is that he's got someone else kind of filling the Mandel Barnes role to his left that has energized the base.
And, you know, you haven't seen him waver from that front-runner kind of position or that general election candidate.
But it seems like, you know, he may need to pull out some stops here in the closing weeks.
Part of the reason for that is that the field was reshuffled, as you mentioned, Anya.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley left the race on July 8th.
Rejoin the race on July 18th with Governor Tony Evers endorsement.
His critics, mostly the Mandel Barnes campaign lately, have called him the establishment candidate.
David Crowley had already made a response for that at the debate.
I was never born into the establishment.
I was actually born into struggle.
I grew up in the 5-3-2-6 zip code where I had to work extremely hard for everything that I have.
And so I'm not here to protect the establishment.
I'm here to deliver real results for Wisconsinites all over our state.
Anya, I don't know if David Crowley gets back in this race if he didn't have Governor Tony Evers sitting there ready to endorse him.
How has that been kind of a double-edged sword for him?
Yeah, I mean, obviously, Governor Tony Evers is consistently one of the most popular, not the most popular politician in the state.
You know, grain of salt, nobody loves politicians.
But so that's a helpful kind of endorsement to have.
But of course, that energy that is going around Francesca Hong, it's not just, I think, because of her platform,
but also because of this idea of being sort of an outsider having a more unusual background.
And so having the Evers endorsement does make Crowley kind of seem more mainstream or pull him into that more traditional lane.
At a time that I think some voters are really looking for people who want to kind of blow up some of these institutions rather than kind of going along with them.
And so it shows that he has the backing of this really popular politician, but it maybe also shows that he would be more of the same.
Zach, if he is kind of being put out here as the alternative to Francesca Hong and that is kind of how he launched or relaunched his campaign,
why did we not see him go after her or attack her during the debate?
He's still playing it safe.
Like every one of these politicians understands when you go negative that harms you long term within the party, he's still a young man.
This isn't his last chance at statewide politics.
He will be the county executive after this if he does not win and become the nominee.
So there's still a chance we've seen that throughout history of Scott Walker in 2006, gracefully bowing out of a primary and then being rewarded with the clear path to the nomination in 2010.
We've seen it with other candidates along the way where it is an insider's game in the sense that the people in the party in power will remember who played nice and who did not.
And we've seen other candidates that have not played nice in the past and have not received any of the support despite what on paper looks like a strong resume in these kind of races.
Rich, I know there's not a lot of daylight between some of these candidates when it comes to the issues, but in this debate, I wonder if David Carly kind of made a play for the most mainstream Democrat because they were all asked,
would you support that the budget surplus bill that Governor Tony Evers negotiated with Republicans?
And, you know, what did David Carly say compared to the others?
Well, he said if it was passed on a bipartisan basis, he would sign it.
And none of the other candidates said that.
They all talked about the potential deficit down the road that was mentioned by the legislative fiscal bureau.
They also talked a lot about Robin Voss, Assembly Speaker Robin Voss, a Republican saying, well, he's not a negotiating and good faith kind of guy.
So, Carly stood out on that topic.
All right.
Let's turn to Madison, Senator Kaldor Royce.
She's pretty consistently presenting herself as the most experienced candidate in the race.
Here's how she did it during the debate.
That kind of experience is absolutely essential.
And voters need to think about not just who can beat Tom Tiffany, although that is important.
Not just who can deliver a Democratic legislature, although that is vitally important.
But who can actually do the job on day one?
Zach, I feel like if you were going to grade these candidates in terms of how they sort of broke down policy in the debate,
or just in general, Kaldor might come out on top.
She likes to talk about herself as a details person.
Do details matter to voters?
In these moments?
No.
I think voters are going on in motion a lot of the time.
Who is the candidate that speaks to me?
And they're often not looking at the most experienced policy wonk.
That's why we've seen a lot of politicians in a day's politics that really have no experience,
and they prove it once they get in office at all different levels, federal and state.
But there's all sorts of different things that happen, including breaking news right at the moment, Sean.
Yeah, we just heard in our ears that Mandela Barnes has dropped out of the race.
So how about that right in the middle of a show kind of reshuffles the deck a bit there?
That churn in the middle.
You know, we joke a lot about something like that happening, but who boy was not necessarily expecting that?
Yeah, so in a race that has been wild for the last few weeks, another major development here right toward the end.
So, well, the question then, Sean, becomes does that help Crowley?
If they were the two that had the legitimate chance and they were splitting that vote against Hong,
does this give Crowley an outside chance?
Even though we won't have any more big polling numbers to come out before the race,
this has to send some questions into Francesca Hong's campaign and to some others of like,
will this matter?
Can enough people unite behind Crowley as the non-socialist in this race?
I think it has to help David Crowley.
They were pretty obviously competing for second place at this point.
Mandela Barnes and David Crowley, two Milwaukee candidates, two black men in the race,
the two candidates who are not Francesca Hong who have like meaningful votes behind them.
So you talked about leaving a race and kind of like trying to leave a good impression for the future.
This would be one way to do it if you're Mandela Barnes and maybe want to do something like,
I don't know, run for Congress in the future.
Well, it's the flip side of what happened in 2022.
It was around this same time where the rest of the field left the race for him.
He's returning the favor, understanding I don't have a path without going extremely negative.
It's time for me to step aside.
And yes, he is one that understand this will pay dividends down the road for himself
and how the party views him.
We should talk about one of the other candidates remaining Joel Brennan in the race.
And here's how Joel Brennan presented himself at the debate when he was asked if a vote for him is a wasted vote.
I don't think primary voters have been paying much attention until the last two weeks
and all the upheaval that you have seen.
This is what I find when I am going out around the state is that, you know,
and this has been verified by polls that was done here by my alma mater at Marquette
because about half the people at this point haven't made a decision.
34% undecided in the latest Marquette poll.
So it's getting smaller than a number of undecided voters.
One thing that I learned about Joel Brennan when I was editing a profile of him written by our colleague Corrine Hess
is that he is kind of the Tom Barrett candidate in this race.
And more ways than one, Tom Barrett lives in the same neighborhood.
And also Joel Brennan ran his campaign in 2002, ran his campaigns for Congress
and the legislature worked on his campaigns for Congress and the legislature.
And he's presenting a kind of similar kind of politics here.
So as the candidates sort of carve out their lanes, if you feel sort of familiar with Joel Brennan,
it could be why.
They're very good friends and speak very highly on one another.
Just a closing question here.
And I feel like it's changed a lot knowing that Mandela Barnes out of the race.
But what could change this race that would present somebody with a chance to beat Francesca Hong
is Barnes dropping out enough to do it on you?
I mean, the really big question for me has been is another person going to drop out,
especially with the court decision this week that says that people can't spoil their ballots
if they're preferred candidate or if the candidate they've already voted for drops out.
And so Barnes has answered that question.
I know whether any of these major changes that could still happen could have an effect on Hong
because, again, the question is sort of where do his voters then split?
But some proportion of them are going to go to Hong.
Some proportion of them are going to go to a more mainstream Democrat.
So it kind of remains to be seen what effect this has.
All right.
It's all the time we have for today. Thanks for joining us.
This has been Inside Wisconsin Politics.
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Thank you.