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After a Monday news conference where she fired her campaign manager for messing up the financial

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report but still vowed to stay in the race, Democratic primary candidate for governor Sarah

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Rodriguez today dropped out. She said the fundraising reporting mess would be too big of a distraction.

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Senior political reporter Zach Schultz is here with details on his. Hello Fred. So this has been

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almost like a slow motion train wreck. Exactly what happened. It's been back and forth all week.

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Last week we were talking about all the momentum she had. The candidates that had dropped out

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were endorsing her. I was in touch with the campaign to see where she'd be out in the field this

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week. We were going to touch base with all the Democratic candidates and they got back to me and

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said well we're still figuring out that schedule. Well by Sunday they'd fired her campaign manager.

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By Monday she has a press conference saying I'm in the race but fundraising is a little weaker.

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And we talked to the other candidates. They're like what a mess. Your whole authority says you

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can run things and you don't have any oversight of your own campaign. Her campaign finance sheets

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come and show she's broke and deeply in debt. Then she makes another press conference to say

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that she's got all this money and then it quickly says no sorry that was an error as well and now

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she's out. So it's been back and forth. People really tried to figure out where is the truth

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and when she says it was a distraction she's 100% correct. That may be the most honest thing that's

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been said about the campaign all week is this was dominating all of the headlines and would have

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if she would have stayed in this race. She was considered a front runner though. Absolutely.

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When you're looking at if you look at that Democratic primary in terms of lanes there was

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clearly Francesca Hong in the more progressive far left lane she had owned that for quite a while

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in this race and it was a question of who could call less more that centrist moderate candidacy

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and Sarah Rodriguez was taking that over and now that it's gone it's a question of who takes

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advantage of that. Where do those voters go? So now Governor Evers is reportedly talking about

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backing an effort to draw David Crowley back into the race. Why what happened there with him?

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Well David Crowley dropped out almost a couple of weeks ago saying it was clear he wasn't going

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to have a lane. It was assumed he was contesting with Rodriguez saw her momentum and knew he couldn't

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get there. Fundraising reports that they just were filed show that he actually has plenty of cash

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on hand a lot more than her significantly. If her campaign had been transparent from the beginning

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there's a question of whether he would have dropped out because he would have been significantly ahead

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of her. There are other centrists that are saying hey bring him back he's the next best person

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to take that mantle with Rodriguez out of the race and now it's a question of whether he will do

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that and what will that look like? Yeah who else stands to gain? Well Joel Brennan clearly says this

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is his moment to shine and people to hear his name for the first time if you're not finally tuned

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into this race. Calder Roy's Mandela Barnes they all claim that they can benefit from this.

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Francesca Hong to a degree because there there are people that backed that just want a Democrat

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who can win and now she may have a more open race all the way to winning this primary if her main

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contender from the centrist can see falls apart. So meanwhile Republican candidate Tom Tiffany

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not only has gobs of money comparatively but this must be great for the GOP. Oh they absolutely

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love this. Anytime you see the other party falling apart on their own missteps then it's good news

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for Tom Tiffany because he's had this whole opportunity all summer long to run positive ads

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he's got a ton of money in the bank two million cash on hand pretty much all of that coming from

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billionaires who have given to the party that are given to him the billionaire loophole that he

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came on our air and criticized a few months ago he's now taking advantage of but that's politics

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he's definitely in a much better position. I did ask the Democratic candidates this week

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can you overcome that after this primary and they said absolutely once we get past

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August then we can start contrasting the record that he tries to portray versus his record attached

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to Trump. Meanwhile though the Republicans are airing ads talking about Francesca Hong and

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what are they doing there. Well technically they are negative ads but they're airing them in

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Madison Milwaukee to Francesca Hong's base in attempt to rile them up. We've seen groups play

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in Democratic primaries across the country in an effort to boost what they view as a weaker

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candidate a more socialist progressive candidate there are lots of statements in Francesca's

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Hong background that she owns that do not play well according to centrist or perhaps in a regular

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contest in November. Have you ever seen anything like this in your coverage of politics in Wisconsin

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over the years. Not like this we've seen campaigns fall apart we've seen campaigns run out of money

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and be deep in debt that's not new it's the the discord that it all came out in this back and

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forth throughout the week if this had come out in February or March and those statements have

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been corrected she probably could have survived and moved on because she still had support this

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week just this week talking to people out in the field she won the Ozaki County Democratic

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straw poll with Francesca Hong in the audience so the support was still there but it was clear that

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she could not change the message away from her oversight of her own campaign to back to one being

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about the primary all right well Zach thanks very much for being here my pleasure