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Even as Tammy Baldwin made her victory speech two days after the election, Eric
Hovde demured on conceding.
Zach Schultz joins us now from the Capitol with more on this and a look at legislative
races.
Hey, Zach.
Hello, Fred.
So for his part, Eric Hovde blames a third party candidate on his loss.
What is that about?
Well, I'm sure for most of our viewers, this will be the first time they've heard of Thomas
Leiger.
He really came out of nowhere.
He doesn't have any party.
He didn't really come as attached to running the ads or anything like that.
But his name did appear on the ballot.
And he did receive a significant number of votes for a third party candidate.
And it becomes more significant when you have a trider race.
However, even Brian Schimming, chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said it's
incumbent on their candidate to let voters know who is the real Republican in the race.
And this isn't the first time that third party candidates have played spoiler.
The third party candidates in the presidential race took a significant number of votes.
In 2016, Democrats blamed Jill Stein in the Green Party for taking a significant number
of votes away from Hillary Clinton.
A lot of these cases, it's simply people deciding to raise a protest vote in when they're voting
third party, especially if they don't know who the actual candidate is.
In fact, if Hubby had just ran closer to Trump, then perhaps he would have come out
ahead of Baldwin, but he's blaming it on a third party candidate at this point.
So, meanwhile, new voting maps allowed a switch from the current 22 to 11 Republican majority
in the state Senate to an election pickup of four seats for Democrats narrowing the Republican
majority in that chamber to 18 to 15.
What are the implications of that?
Well, it's pretty big in the Senate.
Republicans had a supermajority, which means they had the ability to constitutionally impeach
people.
We've seen them do that in the past.
They refused to seat any of Governor Evers' appointees and rejected quite a few of them.
So, with that large of a power imbalance in the state, Senate Republicans could do whatever
they wanted with a much more narrow majority, not only did they lose two incumbents, which
is pretty significant.
Dewey Strobel sits on joint finance, and he was a big conservative figurehead in that
party.
And knocking him off is a pretty big accomplishment for Democrats.
And just the implications of them running ahead and against these Republican headwinds
that came everywhere else, these were four swing seats that they won and picked up in
this race.
And in prior years where we've seen a red wave election, so to speak, 2010, 2014, Democrats
downbell are getting crushed.
So, the Democrats are rightfully so, saying they did a really big job of winning these
seats and putting themselves in position to possibly challenge for the majority in the
Senate in 2026.
So, in the Assembly, the current Republican majority is 64 to 35, and Democrats picked
up 10 seats in that chamber, bringing their majority down to 54 to 45.
Now, that's a smaller gain, but still potentially predictive for 2026?
Well, it's significant in a lot of ways.
In the Assembly, Republicans were only two seats short of a supermajority, which meant
in the last session, Democrats had to have every member there, every session day, because
if they shrunk their amount, then that reduced what the Republicans needed to possibly override
some of Governor Evers' vetoes.
That threat is gone in this next session.
And once again, it puts Democrats in position to challenge for the majorities in 26.
And most importantly, we should see shifts in what it means over the next two years of
governing in the state.
I don't think anyone's going to predict that Republicans and Governor Evers are certainly
going to have a great relationship, but every vote that these Republicans take, they're
going to have to think about their vulnerable members and what it might mean back in their
district in the next election.
In years and sessions passed, Robin Voss, for example, the Assembly Speaker, has let some
of his more vulnerable Republicans vote no against some Republican legislation, because
it didn't matter if it passed with 64 or 60 votes, it mattered that it passed.
This time around with only a 54 seat majority, if he can't let that many of these vulnerable
members take really damaging votes, so you might see a shift in what actually comes to
the floor over the next two years.
Meanwhile, we're also just around the corner from a state Supreme Court spring election
on April 1st.
What are the stakes in that race?
Well, every time we have an election in Wisconsin, people say it's the most important election
of your lifetime, and they'll be saying that about this one again.
Right now, the Supreme Court has a four to three liberal majority.
The justice that is retiring is Justice Anne Walsh Bradley.
She is part of that liberal majority, so with her out, it's three, three, whoever wins this,
whether it's conservative candidate or liberal candidate, we'll decide the make up of the
majority for the foreseeable future.
So it actually is quite significant.
Last time around with the Janet Protiseiwis, we saw record national level spending.
We're probably going to see that again.
That's coming up in April, so people who thought the political ads were gone for their television,
you may get a couple months off, but the ads are coming back and they're going to come
back in a big way.
So the current liberal majority court is hearing oral arguments on Monday in the lawsuit over
abortion in Wisconsin.
What will that be deciding?
Well it will be deciding how we handle abortion in Wisconsin.
Currently the 1849 law that handles and regulates abortion in Wisconsin has been put on hold
by a Dane County judge.
So the Supreme Court is reviewing whether that's appropriate, whether abortion laws
that have been passed since 1849 supersede and override that.
And so we're kind of in a row environment as far as what that matters, but they'll also
at the same time be deciding if there is a constitutional right to abortion health care
in Wisconsin.
So they could go either way, and as for what we should expect next Monday, there's going
to be increased security in the Capitol.
We've already been told people will have to pass their medley tactors to get into the
chamber.
They're expecting protesters.
It's also Veterans Day, and we've been told in the middle of oral arguments we can expect
to hear a 21 gun salute for Veterans Day programming.
So there will be a lot going on.
The bigger question, especially tying it back to that election that we were just talking
about, is when this decision might be released.
Does it come down before that April Supreme Court election impacting it that way?
Or will it be released after that election so that we don't know the fate of abortion
rights in Wisconsin leading into that election next year?
All right.
Thanks very much.
A lot of information.
Appreciate it.
Thanks, Fred.