You
After a Monday news conference where she fired her campaign manager for messing up the financial
report but still vowed to stay in the race, Democratic primary candidate for governor Sarah
Rodriguez today dropped out. She said the fundraising reporting mess would be too big of a distraction.
Senior political reporter Zach Schultz is here with details on his. Hello Fred. So this has been
almost like a slow motion train wreck. Exactly what happened. It's been back and forth all week.
Last week we were talking about all the momentum she had. The candidates that had dropped out
were endorsing her. I was in touch with the campaign to see where she'd be out in the field this
week. We were going to touch base with all the Democratic candidates and they got back to me and
said well we're still figuring out that schedule. Well by Sunday they'd fired her campaign manager.
By Monday she has a press conference saying I'm in the race but fundraising is a little weaker.
And we talked to the other candidates. They're like what a mess. Your whole authority says you
can run things and you don't have any oversight of your own campaign. Her campaign finance sheets
come and show she's broke and deeply in debt. Then she makes another press conference to say
that she's got all this money and then it quickly says no sorry that was an error as well and now
she's out. So it's been back and forth. People really tried to figure out where is the truth
and when she says it was a distraction she's 100% correct. That may be the most honest thing that's
been said about the campaign all week is this was dominating all of the headlines and would have
if she would have stayed in this race. She was considered a front runner though. Absolutely.
When you're looking at if you look at that Democratic primary in terms of lanes there was
clearly Francesca Hong in the more progressive far left lane she had owned that for quite a while
in this race and it was a question of who could call less more that centrist moderate candidacy
and Sarah Rodriguez was taking that over and now that it's gone it's a question of who takes
advantage of that. Where do those voters go? So now Governor Evers is reportedly talking about
backing an effort to draw David Crowley back into the race. Why what happened there with him?
Well David Crowley dropped out almost a couple of weeks ago saying it was clear he wasn't going
to have a lane. It was assumed he was contesting with Rodriguez saw her momentum and knew he couldn't
get there. Fundraising reports that they just were filed show that he actually has plenty of cash
on hand a lot more than her significantly. If her campaign had been transparent from the beginning
there's a question of whether he would have dropped out because he would have been significantly ahead
of her. There are other centrists that are saying hey bring him back he's the next best person
to take that mantle with Rodriguez out of the race and now it's a question of whether he will do
that and what will that look like? Yeah who else stands to gain? Well Joel Brennan clearly says this
is his moment to shine and people to hear his name for the first time if you're not finally tuned
into this race. Calder Roy's Mandela Barnes they all claim that they can benefit from this.
Francesca Hong to a degree because there there are people that backed that just want a Democrat
who can win and now she may have a more open race all the way to winning this primary if her main
contender from the centrist can see falls apart. So meanwhile Republican candidate Tom Tiffany
not only has gobs of money comparatively but this must be great for the GOP. Oh they absolutely
love this. Anytime you see the other party falling apart on their own missteps then it's good news
for Tom Tiffany because he's had this whole opportunity all summer long to run positive ads
he's got a ton of money in the bank two million cash on hand pretty much all of that coming from
billionaires who have given to the party that are given to him the billionaire loophole that he
came on our air and criticized a few months ago he's now taking advantage of but that's politics
he's definitely in a much better position. I did ask the Democratic candidates this week
can you overcome that after this primary and they said absolutely once we get past
August then we can start contrasting the record that he tries to portray versus his record attached
to Trump. Meanwhile though the Republicans are airing ads talking about Francesca Hong and
what are they doing there. Well technically they are negative ads but they're airing them in
Madison Milwaukee to Francesca Hong's base in attempt to rile them up. We've seen groups play
in Democratic primaries across the country in an effort to boost what they view as a weaker
candidate a more socialist progressive candidate there are lots of statements in Francesca's
Hong background that she owns that do not play well according to centrist or perhaps in a regular
contest in November. Have you ever seen anything like this in your coverage of politics in Wisconsin
over the years. Not like this we've seen campaigns fall apart we've seen campaigns run out of money
and be deep in debt that's not new it's the the discord that it all came out in this back and
forth throughout the week if this had come out in February or March and those statements have
been corrected she probably could have survived and moved on because she still had support this
week just this week talking to people out in the field she won the Ozaki County Democratic
straw poll with Francesca Hong in the audience so the support was still there but it was clear that
she could not change the message away from her oversight of her own campaign to back to one being
about the primary all right well Zach thanks very much for being here my pleasure