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All right, good morning, everyone.
Happy Wednesday.
I'm sure many of you are tired after a long,
but not quite as long night as many of us were hoping
or were expecting.
I'm Matt Fisher, Communications Director
for the Public and Party of Wisconsin
and it's my privilege to welcome you all here
for this press call today to discuss the results
of the last night's election
with Wisconsin GOP Chairman Brian Schimming.
At the end of his remarks and discussions,
there will be time for a Q&A portion
and you will be able to submit questions
using the Q&A feature at the bottom of their screen.
Again, before we begin, this call is on the record
and you may record it.
You may record it, ignore the disclaimer button
at the beginning when you guys logged on.
This is on the record and we will provide recording
to any who have any issues at the recording this call.
And with that, I'll hand it over to you Chairman Schimming.
Good morning everyone and thanks for being with us.
A great night last night for President-elect Trump
and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance
and frankly for the Wisconsin Republican Party.
We're at a point now after two very, very long years
where we became one of at least two and maybe three bricks
in the supposed Midwestern blue wall
and Wisconsin led the way on that.
As many of you know, Wisconsin is the probably
that was the most competitive of the seven swing states
and we won a great victory last night
for President Trump and Vice President-elect Vance.
It was done a couple of ways.
A great volunteer network across the state,
across our 72 counties,
works with coalition groups, terrific staff
that we have at the State Party, fantastic.
Field staff that we have an excellent election integrity
operation.
It's really been the culmination of two years
of very, very hard work.
As I told all of you last year,
we were gonna put together the best organization possible
as we came into this presidential election
in Wisconsin knowing full well
that Wisconsin was gonna be competitive.
There was no doubt about it.
But we achieved a lot of our goals.
We were the first state in the country
to adopt the early vote initiative put forth by the RNC
and I think that paid off last night.
I hate to think of where we've been.
Had we not taken the early vote issue seriously.
It's something I champion personally,
literally from the first hour.
I was chairman of the State Party.
So that was important building out a field organization
of volunteers and staff that was really
just enormously efficient and widespread.
I mean, we have thousands and thousands of volunteers
statewide who stepped up to help the president
in the various counties of the ticket,
in the various counties,
but also an election integrity issues.
We had one of the best election integrity units
in the whole country with multiple paid staff.
Of course, a number of volunteers,
thousands of volunteers there.
So I think one of the things that we may have learned
from last night is celebrity visits don't win elections.
I have news for the other side.
Celebrity visits don't win elections.
Auto-state money doesn't always win elections.
They've been spending months on the other side
bragging about their wonderful state organization
and getting all this outside money poured in here.
They lost last night.
In fact, Wisconsin is the state that put Donald Trump
over 270 electoral votes last night.
So for all of their braggadocious talk
about their vaunted field operation,
the truth of the matter is they lost last night.
Not only did they lose and while they were shifting,
we reelected all of our Republican members of Congress
and had a very, very close race for US Senate
that's not finally declared yet,
but it's obviously a very, very close race.
And the Republicans still control the Wisconsin State Senate
and the Wisconsin State Assembly going into a cycle
where we'll have a gubernatorial election next.
There'll be enormous focus on the gubernatorial election
and the AG's election in two years.
So I feel great about last night
as do Republicans from around the country.
I have been deluge with messages
from other states around the country who were watching.
Everyone was watching what was going on
in Wisconsin last night.
So we had a lot of emphasis on early vote.
We had a lot of emphasis on field organization,
enormous emphasis on election integrity.
We reopened our North side office in Milwaukee
and the African American neighborhood
on the North side of Milwaukee.
We opened our Hispanic office and staffed it, both offices,
but staffed the Hispanic neighborhood office
down on the South side.
Those are efforts that will continue.
As I look at going forward,
we're heading into a cycle
where we have obviously a critical Supreme Court race
in April that will decide to control the court
between liberals and conservatives.
And I was thinking about that already on the stage last night.
I'm not spending my time thinking about the inaugural
or about any of that.
Right now I'm thinking forward,
literally from the first minute forward
on the Supreme Court race in April.
And of course, the partisan race is gubernatorial race,
AG, and legislative race is two years from now.
I've at the risk of sounding whatever,
the same my first rodeo.
And I had hoped as I came into this job
as state chairman that I'd bring two things,
a sense of experience that I've had
from being around this for decades
and also putting the right team together
at the state party to lead us forward.
And we did that.
And I'm proud of our effort.
I'm proud of my staff.
I'm proud of all our volunteers,
thousands of thousands of volunteers across the state.
There were a lot of people who didn't think we could do this.
As I mentioned before,
we are statistically the most competitive
of the seven swing states.
And that blue brick and that blue wall
is now red in Wisconsin.
And so I'm just pleased that we're where we are right now.
And I'm happy to take any questions that you might have.
Thank you, Chairman Shimming.
We will now open up the floor for questions.
I'll give you all some time to submit them
and then we'll begin here in a few seconds.
You can submit them in the Q&A portion
at the bottom of the chat.
You submit them there and I will write them off to the chairman.
All right, our first question comes from Jack Kelly.
The first question is, Republicans will return in January
with much narrower majorities
in both the assembly and state Senate.
What do you make of the legislative results
and how do you think it'll impact
the upcoming legislative session?
Hard to say.
I'll leave that for legislators
to decide the legislative leadership to decide.
But the majority leadership in the legislature
is Republican in both houses.
So I've been through three reapportionments now
where you had fairly dramatic map changes,
but the Democrats spent the last couple of weeks
breaking about how they might be able to take over
the state assembly and they didn't.
And frankly, I don't think now that you have a new
set of incumbent legislators and you have maps set,
that is gonna be burdened for the Democrats
because they spend weeks and months talking up,
trying to take over at least the assembly anyway,
and they didn't frankly come close to doing it,
including losing some of the key races,
the key close races.
So again, more talk from the other side,
but majorities matter in the assembly and the state Senate.
I've worked in both of those houses
and I've worked for three different Republican governors.
Majorities matter in the legislature
and the Democrats don't have either of them.
So for all the noise making, they have,
and oh, we picked up some seats here and there.
The truth of the matter is,
they had their one moment when they had a huge turnout
to take over this year and they failed in both houses.
I'm gonna move on to our next topic.
There are a couple of questions here concerning
the U.S. Senate race here.
There were two, one from Emily Fanon of CBS 58
and from Brooklyn and race concerning the recount question here.
According to the AP,
according to the AP, the Wisconsin Senate race
is close enough for a recount.
Do you think Eric Hubby will ask for one?
Emily asked, would you like to see a recount
in the U.S. Senate race?
Eric Hubby has yet to declare to feed.
Yeah, but then I've,
part of my experience has been working statewide recounts
including President Trump.
Four years ago for David Prosser
on his last successful reelection
to the Supreme Court several years back.
We'll spend some time with the Humpty campaign
with our staff, our election integrity staff
and others looking at that issue
and see it is a very, very close race.
There's no doubt about that.
And so we'll take a look at that issue
but I just don't have anything definitive to say now.
I think we'll get a better idea in the next few days
and also when the canvas is done.
Generally you kind of wait for the canvas
and see what the actual result is
based on the reporting awards across the state.
So we're gonna gather some information
about the four, I think, any decisions.
Braden obviously be talking to Eric Hubby.
Awesome.
Now another two question, one topic thing.
Brian Caron of Fox 11 and Richard Kramer
have also raised the question of third party candidates
in the center race.
Richard's question is Eric Hubby has mentioned Democrats
putting a plant in the Senate race.
What do you make of that claim regarding legal
and furthermore, Brian Caron also asked,
the Humpty campaign is accusing Democrats
of siphoning votes with fraudulent candidates.
What course of actions the Republicans have moving forward
in that election?
I think really the biggest thing you can do
is to make very, very clear
who the Republican candidate is.
And for candidates to kind of call out these situations.
I mean, I think about 53,000 votes were pulled off either
for what amounted to a fake candidate
under a fake party name from what I can see.
And then another candidate as well.
So you had people voting for Donald Trump
and people voting for some of those candidates as well.
And I agree with Eric Hubby.
I think that that hurt him.
I would note that in the case of Senator Robert F. Kennedy,
in the case of the presidential race,
Robert F. Kennedy came and made a very, very clear
multiple times when he visited Wisconsin,
including last week in Milwaukee and up in Rice Lake
that people should not vote for him.
They should vote for President Trump
that he had endorsed President Trump.
And I think in this case,
you had some minor party candidates
or candidates with their own self-interest
that ran in that race.
And so as a result, President Trump has one less vote
that he can have in his corner in the US Senate.
So if somebody thinks the conservative movement
is going forward,
because we have one less Senate seat,
they're sadly mistaken.
Our next question comes from Zach Schultz.
Political analysts are saying there was a uniform shift
to the right across the nation
that helped sweep Trump to victory.
Does that broad brush approach diminish
the work your team did on the ground when Wisconsin?
No, I don't think so at all.
Frankly, our team in Wisconsin was so good.
We didn't spend our time trying to go,
wow, it sure seems a little more conservative
around the country.
We didn't spend any time on that topic.
We spent our time in the grassroots,
pounding on doors, talking to people.
I've emphasized not only early vote,
but also actually going out
and talking to voters at their doors
and talking to them about our record
versus the Democrats record.
I think that's what made the difference.
If there was some benefit from something going on nationally
as state chairman, I'm more than happy to accept
to whatever benefit that we got out of that.
But really, this got done
because volunteers and staff across this state
went out and taught to over a million and a half voters,
actually over two million voters and got it done.
I think the Democrats remember a year ago,
all these naval gazing stories about the Republicans and OG,
how are they going to do under Donald Trump again
now that he's come back?
I think that people ought to be asking themselves questions
about where they're heading
or the state Democratic Party and the national Democrats.
They're the ones with the crisis right now.
I'm going to remind everybody on this call.
When we finished our national convention in July,
here in Milwaukee, within 24 hours,
they had pushed Joe Biden out of the presidency,
not just the nominee,
but essentially out as president of the United States
and installed a nominee on their side
who had never received a vote anywhere
in any race for president, in any state or in any caucus.
So if somebody needs to do some self-examination
about where their party is heading
and where their movement is heading,
it's the Democratic Party
because they have some serious problems right now.
And to your point,
the breadth of President Trump's victory around the country,
we earned it here in Wisconsin,
but if I was the Democrats in some of the other states
and including Wisconsin,
they better do some thinking about where they,
because they have lost working people in this country.
And I think as we do further examination
of the election results from all over the state,
you will see that and you'll see it overwhelmingly.
The Democratic Party in this country
is in a lot of trouble.
It started last night.
Our next question comes from Michelle Schmidt.
Thanks for the time.
Can you talk a bit about what you saw
on a county-by-county basis?
Where did Trump and Republicans overperform?
Dane County turnout seemed lower than in 2020.
Any takeaways there?
Yeah, that's, we'll spend the next couple of days
looking at county-by-county results.
I will say though, that I thought the victory,
President Trump's victory in Wisconsin last night
was a broader victory in terms of clear across the state.
You know, you don't just see that in the color maps,
but you see it in some of the results
in various communities.
We're gonna spend some time with that,
not only because we wanna just look at what just happened,
but frankly, we wanna plot the course forward.
We have a lot of races coming up in the next two years.
So that's, we're gonna spend time.
You know, I wouldn't remind people too.
In 2022, obviously we ended up with a Democrat governor,
but that was after a really nasty Republican primary.
The AG's race, we had a very tough Republican primary.
The Democrats did in the Supreme Court race
that following April, what they did last night
to Eric Avdi, and they essentially supported a third,
you know, a third party candidate
who was posing as some kind of Republican.
So I would encourage people on this call
to look at that issue about how the Democrats to win
have to come in and pose as something they're not
in some of these races.
They put $2.5 million in the Supreme Court race
going after a conservative candidate
and promoting another one.
And that's not a reflection on the individual candidates
in that race.
But I think some of the folks on this call
ought to spend some time looking at that issue
because to win in Wisconsin,
they seem to be more interested
in trying to distract voters into something that's not
rather than talk to voters about something that is.
Our next question comes from Erin McGorney.
This touch is on something you were mentioning earlier,
Brian, with the upcoming year.
The question is, what is the Wisconsin Republican Party's plan
for the Supreme Court election in April,
given the turnout and spending from Democrats
in the last election that shifted the majority on the bench?
So this is going to be this, of course,
the seat that's up is Ann Walsh,
Justice Bradley seat, Ann Walsh Bradley's seat, A-liberal.
It is a seat that should a conservative
happen to win that seat.
It'll flip control of the court
to a more conservative viewpoint.
No doubt about it.
I can tell you, as in past Supreme Court races,
those are, I know our people,
I hear it all the time,
as almost everybody on the skull knows,
I'm on the road a fair bet,
and I'm talking to local Republicans and local groups
all the time.
And I think there's enormous interest
in making sure the Supreme Court doesn't stay liberal
for effectively the next three years.
So I know for, and I know Judge Schimmel
and other folks may be looking at the court race,
but we are in an excellent position right now
as the State Republican Party
to assist a candidate for Supreme Court
and help them win.
We have updated lists and data
and our local organizations, as you can imagine,
are pretty excited today about President Trump's win
last night.
So I know that I'll be having some of those discussions
as well, but among the other things I'll be focused on
we'll be looking at that Supreme Court race,
but also local races in the spring.
We funded, we put about half a million dollars in last year
in our fourth year of our local government initiative
and helping local candidates win and did so.
We had several significant victories across the state.
So between the Supreme Court race, local races as well
and getting ready for the governor's race
and the AG's race in 2024,
where the Democrats are gonna have to decide
whether they're gonna be stuck with Tony Evers again
and Josh Cowell, I'll be interested.
They have a lot of introspection to do on the other side.
And I have a lot of available candidates
for a lot of offices.
So we're definitely pretty assertive around here
and that's the way we're gonna stay.
We'll get to our final two questions here.
This one coming from Richard Kramer.
Should the legislature reconsider
and pass the Monday count bill or something akin to it
or something like that, excuse me?
Yeah, that's up to the legislature to decide.
I know there were a number of Republicans
who had some concerns about it,
but also a number of Republicans who thought,
you know, there might be some use to that.
There was nothing that I saw last night that made me go,
oh, we have to have the Monday count bill
to help these elections run more efficiently.
Now, that's something we'll take a look at
and I think legislators will listen to from around the state
but there was nothing particular in what I saw last night
that would make me say the legislature look,
you gotta get moving on this thing.
Awesome, then our final question will come
from Brooklyn Andres.
You mentioned many things that contributed
to their Republican party win last night,
but would you say the early vote
is the biggest reason you were so successful?
Well, it certainly was a major issue, at least in my mind.
It's why I championed the things since the first day
I was chairman and that was, as I often say, look,
Republicans can't keep going into election day,
100 or 200,000 votes down and expect to make it up
in 13 hours.
I think, frankly, the party needed to cross that bridge
and deal with the reality of early vote
and the importance of early vote in Wisconsin.
And we did that, it was interesting,
I was saying to someone yesterday,
the first six months or so when I was on the road,
talking about this to Republican groups across the state,
it took a little doing, to be honest,
to get that discussion and talking openly about it,
but then we were on to a full on campaign
and getting people to early vote.
Those are issues that will be examining
as we go forward here,
but I think it was an important factor
in that win last night because the more Republicans
who voted early in the presidential race,
the more resources it freed up for us to focus on voters
who could be persuaded or independent voters
for folks who haven't voted before
and at least anecdotally from what I've seen from last night,
that ended up being a very wise decision
on our part and it allowed us to get to independent voters,
others who hadn't voted before.
So I think it was a factor, certainly a key factor
in the win by President Trump in Wisconsin last night.
So I'm excited that the bet that we kind of made
two years ago paid off and it paid off frankly
on a trip to the Electoral College.
All righty, that should conclude today's Q and A
and today's press call.
Thank you so much for joining us everyone.
Again, if you have any issues with the recording
of today's call, feel free to reach out to me at my email.
That's M as in Matthew, M Fisher at WISGOP.org
or you can, it's the name email number
should be in the media advisory.
So feel free to reach out and thank you again
for everyone for joining us.
I hope you all can get catch up on some sleep tonight
or over the course of the next few days
and have a good rest of your day.
Thank you so much.
Thanks everyone.
Recording stopped.