- I'm Frederica Freyberg.
Tonight, a special edition of Here and Now .
A gaze into the political crystal ball
for 2018 with our political panelists
Bill McCoshen and Scot Ross.
The dynamic duo will make predictions
for the governor's race, then forecast
the 2018 U.S. Senate race as well as
take a look ahead to campaign party strategies.
It's Here and Now for December 29.
- Funding for Here and Now
is provided in part by
Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- First up tonight, forecasting the 2018
race for governor, a race where incumbent
Scott Walker will face third party opponents
as well as the winner of a crowded
Democratic primary, the Democratic primary
that promises to get even more crowded
in the new year.
- Rebecca and I are asking for four more years
to serve as your governor and lieutenant governor
to move Wisconsin forward.
(cheering)
- Frederica: With that announcement, the race is on.
- Four more years, four more years to keep
moving this state forward and looking ahead.
We want a state where everyone shares,
everyone shares in our economic prosperity,
whether you live in a big city or a small town.
- [Frederica] And the incumbent figures to power through.
- Scott Walker had a near-death experience
as a result of his run for president.
- [Frederica] UW Milwaukee political scientist
Mordecai Lee says the bottom dropped out
for Scott Walker at that time,
his polling in the mid-30s.
- Today I believe that I am being called
to lead by helping to clear the field
in this race so that a positive conservative message
can rise to the top of the field.
With this in mind, I will suspend my campaign.
- [Frederica] But he's back, his numbers
in a position to win.
Lee calls him a political EvereadyŽ battery.
- I think we should recognize
that the way he clawed his way back
to political viability is an indication
of his political skills, so notwithstanding
all the criticisms that Democrats
will make of him, one has to respect
what an adaptable and fleet-footed politician he is.
- [Frederica] And there's no shortage of Democrats jumping on board.
At least 15 so far.
Walker says they're all the same.
Not so, say the candidates we've interviewed
when asked what sets them apart from each other,
starting with Tony Evers, who has won three
statewide races for superintendent of public schools.
- [Tony] The last time I won with 70 percent
of the vote, I won 70 of 72 counties.
- [Andy] Someone who's helped companies solve problems
and access billions of dollars every year
so they could grow and create jobs.
It's a very different skill set.
- [Mike] They all have at least one thing in common;
they seem very, very comfortable operating
within the political system as it currently functions.
And I'm not.
- [Dana] I think being an advocate for the middle class,
I think I'm best suited to take our case
into that building and make sure that the middle class
is being heard.
- [Kathleen] I had come to politics later in my career.
I worked in healthcare, I spent ten years
as a university professor.
- [Matt] I was the chair of this party for four years,
for two terms, retired our debt.
We elected a Democratic governor.
We elected a Democratic majority legislature.
- [Bob] We all have a vision for a prosperous Wisconsin,
and as governor I will lead
our state forward towards that vision.
- [Mahlon] I've been a firefighter
for 20 years, giving back to my community.
As firefighters we lead, we don't divide,
we unite each other, we have one common goal
and that is to help others.
- The Republicans have spent all their time
doing what's right for the wealthy
and for giving handouts to corporations,
and it's time that we bring politics
back to the grassroots, to the people,
and that's what we're gonna start for,
is we're be out there talking about those issues,
and we already are.
Our candidates are doing exactly that.
- I think the confidence that we derive
is from the strength of our candidate
and from the strength of our message.
You know, we're very confident in the fact
that Governor Walker, when he has the chance
to lay out his reforms and lay out
his message for the voters, it's a compelling message
when you get to talk about how the state
has come back from where we were in 2010
and what his plan is to keep us moving forward.
So that, I think, we're very confident in.
- [Frederica] Mordecai Lee says after his first term,
shock and awe, campaign watchers should expect
a continued play to the middle from Scott Walker.
- I think his last budget
was the least ideological budget
in the sense of, yeah, he refused to increase
the gas tax and it was a sop to the ideological
purists, I'll never increase taxes,
but on the other hand, the main feature
of that budget was that he increased funding
for public education, which is a very popular
thing to do.
I think what we're gonna be seeing
this time around is a governor running
for re-election as a moderate Republican,
as opposed to as an ideological Tea Party Republican.
(applause)
- His agenda doesn't work.
He was big and bold and he made all kinds of promises.
The job creation that he claimed he
was gonna make, he still hasn't delivered
on that and it's seven years later.
- [Frederica] Though not making it a centerpiece
of his campaign, Walker did sign the $3 billion dollar deal
on a potential 13,000 jobs with Foxconn,
something Democrats call a reckless giveaway.
Aside from the issues, Lee says personality
plays a role.
- What the Democrats need is somebody who's good
on their feet, who's good verbally, and who's got
the discipline to only say what should be said
and not start improvising or saying things
on an ad hoc basis.
- Collectively the biggest flaw all of them
have is that they're gonna have to find some way
to actually articulate a reason that people
should vote for them.
- [Frederica] Articulating messages on both sides
will be aided by a change in Wisconsin law
that now means candidates of all stripes
can coordinate with independent spending groups,
and Mordecai Lee says with, quote, "Money being
"the mother's milk of politics," this change
will open up the floodgates.
- This is so revolutionary in terms
of its impact on Wisconsin politics.
I think we're gonna see the first
hundred million dollar campaign in Wisconsin.
We're gonna see wall-to-wall TV advertising,
we're gonna experience things we've never
experienced before.
- So what can voters look for in this expansive
list of challengers and the well-heeled incumbent?
For that we turn to our 2018 political
special panel, Republican lobbyist Bill McCoshen
and Democratic activist Scot Ross.
And thank you guys for being here.
So Bill, first to you:
In keeping with what Mordecai Lee left us with,
I guess we brace ourselves
for this kind of wall-to-wall advertising,
but do you suspect that will be negative advertising?
Or will the incumbent, Scott Walker,
kind of go kinder, gentler in keeping
with his moderating tone and
leave it to the outside groups to do the dirty work?
- Depends on the time period.
I think the governor's campaign will lay the case
for why he should be re-elected
between now and the Democratic primary in August,
and after the primary, if he needs to draw a contrast
with whomever comes out of that,
I don't think he'll be bashful about doing that.
He's got a history of campaigning to win.
You can say a lot of things about Scott Walker.
This guy's a proven winner, whether it's winning
three times in Milwaukee County,
heavily Democrat Milwaukee County for county executive,
or winning in 2010 or winning --
he's the only governor in the country to survive a recall.
I mean, this guy wins.
- And so how does anybody who is challenging him
go up against that?
- Elections are snapshots in time.
And where will the electorate be when it comes to
November 2018, that's a big question.
Scott Walker's had the benefit of two of his
gubernatorial runs in 2010 and 2014,
those were both wave elections for Republicans.
Now Scott Walker does have a lot of tools at his disposal.
He will have how much money he wants.
It's as simple as that.
He has unity amongst the Republican party.
They think he's doing a good job.
The problem is that he still is in the mid-40s.
On election day, he's been able to come across
the finish line ahead, but we'll have to see,
is the enthusiasm on the Democrat side?
If the enthusiasm is actually on the Democrat side,
it could be a long night for Scott Walker.
- What do you guys think about these projections
of a hundred million dollar election?
- I think total between the gubernatorial and the U.S. Senate,
it will be in excess of a hundred million.
- People are saying for the governor's race.
- I don't know if there'll be that much
just in the governor's race because I don't know
that national Democrats view Walker
as being that vulnerable yet, maybe they will
at some point in time, but combined those two
races will easily spend more than a hundred million.
- Yeah, I think the Democratic side will have enough to compete.
You don't have to have the most amount of money to win,
but you have to have enough to compete
all around the state in every single media market.
I think we saw in 2016 when you don't compete statewide
in every media market with television advertising,
you sometimes don't win those elections. - Right.
- Scot, what do you think the unprecedented number
of Democrats who want to be governor
says about whether there is a clear frontrunner?
- I don't think that there is a clear frontrunner.
Not with that many candidates.
What I will say is that the advantage that Scott Walker
has in being an incumbent where he can go
anywhere around the state and hold a press conference,
not an interview, but he can hold a press conference
and get wonderful coverage,
you now have, what,
15 Democrats who are traveling around the state doing that,
so all these areas of the state of Wisconsin
where, you know, there's not a lot of Democratic members
of the state legislature
to articulate the problems with the Walker agenda.
You're having these candidates who can go around and do that,
and a lot of this, you know, earned media
is something you can do every single day
from now until the election.
- So you feel like there'll be trickle-down
to legislative races in that way?
- Well, I would be the last person to ever say
trickle-down in terms of being a positive thing.
I would say that synergy and having people
talking about the issues is really, really
important to organize people.
- To both of you, who could've been or would've been
a clear frontrunner where you didn't have to have this
entire body of primary people?
- I think an outsider, a self-funder, you know,
with business background would have been
the Democrats' best hope, but I think
there's probably three of them that have a path
to get through this primary.
I agree with Scot; I don't know
that there's a particular person that's in the lead
at this point in time.
I mean, with 12 or 15 people in the race,
you can win the primary with 15 percent.
Tony Evers probably has a shot to get through this primary,
Dana Wachs probably has a shot to get through this primary,
and I would say that Mahlon Mitchell does too
with the union support.
- You think?
- What I think is that I've written enough
primary election night concession speeches
that in a 15-person race
I'm not gonna necessarily predict,
but I do think that what the difference is,
what the Democrats will have coming out of this
is their all talking about essentially
the same things when it comes to the visions
that they see the direction Wisconsin needs to go,
so there is going to be that sort of current going.
- We only have about a half a minute left
in this segment where we're talking about
the governor's race, but what do you think
the Wisconsin voter wants to see
in their next governor and in state government?
- They want to see results.
And that's why Walker has the distinct advantage in this.
Promises made, promises kept.
He's got a long list of 'em,
the state's movin' in the right direction.
- They are tired of the division
and he is the poster child for division in politics currently
in Wisconsin.
- All right, we move along
from the race for governor to a closer look
at the 2018 U.S. Senate election.
Incumbent Tammy Baldwin faces, among other
challengers, state senator Leah Vukmir.
It's a race that is sure to be,
in the words of UW Milwaukee political scientist
Mordecai Lee, "a Donnybrook."
- I think this is gonna be the knock-down,
drag-out fight we've never, experienced in Wisconsin.
It's gonna be unbelievable.
It's gonna be negative, it's gonna be expensive,
it's gonna be hard to remember these are
two individuals.
You know, Tammy Baldwin was never thought of
as a strong politician when she was willing
to give up her seat in Congress, in Madison,
and run for statewide office.
There had never been somebody who had declared
their sexual preference, who was not heterosexual
who had won a statewide election,
and so it was assumed that she was the underdog
against Tommy Thompson, who everybody knew,
who appealed to the middle, and yet she pulled off
a brilliant victory with one ad,
the ad that said "He's not for you anymore."
In other words, Tommy Thompson is not the person
you voted for.
So I think it's important not to underrate her political
skills, because she really showed her chops
in that first election.
But because this is an off-year election that skews Republican,
I think she's got an uphill battle.
But nonetheless, both sides are mobilized.
We're already seeing TV ads and hearing radio ads,
so I think this is going to be the Donnybrook
of all political fights we've ever seen in Wisconsin.
- So, Scot, do you think it's gonna be "the Donnybrook
"of all political fights in Wisconsin?"
- Yeah, I think both the primary and the general
are gonna be incredibly competitive.
I think Tammy has advantage in the general,
which is fund-raising.
She's got amazing fundraising prowess.
The base of Wisconsin's Democratic electorate
absolutely loves her, and she ain't responsible
for any of the garbage that's going on
in Congress currently whereas things like that tax break,
you know, that just passed
that is so wildly unpopular,
both of the Republican candidates
for senate have embraced it fully.
It is a big fight.
You've got Dick Uihlein versus Diane Hendricks,
and which billionaire will prevail, right?
- You think so, too?
- Yeah, it's hard to imagine any race
being more dramatic than the recall in 2012 for governor,
but this one's gonna be close.
It will be 50, 60, 70 million dollars
in mostly out-of-state money comin' in here.
Tammy Baldwin's a top ten target
by the Republican National Senatorial Committee.
She's not number one, but she is in the top ten.
She did beat my former boss, Tommy Thompson,
largely because western Wisconsin
was really strong for her,
but remember, that's Trump country now.
That's changed a lot.
We've had three-- it doesn't happen often--
but we've had three incumbents
ousted in the state of Wisconsin: Gaylord Nelson
in 1980, Bob Kasten in 1992, Russ Feingold in 2010,
so it has happened in off-year elections,
so don't rule out the possibility
that a Republican could win the seat.
- One thing about western Wisconsin is that
it wasn't competed for by Democrats.
Ron Kind didn't have a race, so there was no message saying,
"Hey, what's going on in Washington D.C.
under Barack Obama's-- actually success?"
There wasn't any TV went it came to,
you know, the Clinton campaign.
There was no TV with Sean Duffy,
so that didn't exist in this.
I think the big thing here is,
how are the Republicans going to come together
after this primary, which is going to nasty
because the way Leah Vukmir wins
is she starts putting up ads saying Kevin Nicholson
is a Democrat, here's him speaking at the DNC,
and I don't know how you outspend to win that.
- There's no question Leah is the favorite
in that race.
She's got a record, and Scot thinks it's an accomplishment
for Tammy Baldwin, I think it's a negative
that she's not part of the mess in D.C.
She doesn't have a record of accomplishment
in her six years there, and Leah Vukmir does,
and I think that will be the greatest contrast
in the fall election is a lady that gets stuff done
and one that doesn't get much done.
- Well Republican candidates are using her opposition,
as we've discussed, to the new tax cuts against her,
but I read this from Tommy Thompson with interest,
saying that people where he's from in Juno County,
he says, quote, "A business tax cut from 39 percent
"to 22 percent doesn't mean jack to them."
How true is that?
- Well, I think it's true right now.
I think the Republicans have done a horrible job
of selling this thing.
The good news of Republicans is folks
should start to see these tax breaks
on their February, you know, checks, so that's --
by the time the election rolls around in November,
they will have ten months of tax cuts
that Tammy Baldwin's gonna have to defend
voting no against, and the Republican, again,
I think it will be Vukmir, will be able
to be on the attack.
- You can't wait to be able to get in on this.
- Yes, Dick Uihlein and Diane Hendricks,
the billionaire Republicans, will get their tax breaks,
that's for sure.
My real interest is what happened this week,
which was that the Club for Growth came out
against attacking Leah Vukmir, and do you know
what they attacked her for?
Voting for 87 million dollars in tax increases
because she supported Scott Walker's budget in 2011.
- This is the club for un-growth.
They supported Mark Neumann against Scott Walker in 2010,
they supported Eric Hovde against Tommy Thompson,
and now they're supporting a former Democrat,
Kevin Nicholson, against Leah Vukmir.
They have no relevance in the state of Wisconsin.
- [Frederica] Wow, well, you're hear from them.
- More than likely; that's okay.
- Well, I can see that this race is already
getting people fired up, namely you guys.
- This is our opportunity to--
I think it's Democrats' opportunity to be able to talk
about the bad stuff that's going on,
to connect folks to what's going on with Trump
at the federal level, and you know, again,
with Tammy, she's got one of the premiere
pieces of the Affordable Care Act puzzle,
which is allowing people under 26
to stay on their parents' healthcare.
It is wildly unpopular what the Republicans
are doing with the Affordable Care Act.
- Having been on the other side of Tammy with Tommy in 2012,
I will say that she's really smart, she works very hard,
and she'll have a ton of money,
and for Democrats, the good news for them is,
she brings out the base, no question about that.
- All right, well, stay with us because
we're going into our next segment.
We asked our panelists to come with their choice
of a topic to watch for 2018.
Bill McCoshen asked, "Can the GOP maintain a, quote,
"Red Wall" in order to keep the governorship,
attorney general, and majorities in both
houses of the legislature?
So that's what you wanna ask.
- So the question is, can we maintain
majorities in both houses, large majorities,
and the governorship, the attorney general
while there could potentially be a wave
against Republicans nationally?
And I don't think New Jersey and Virginia
are very good signals of what could happen here,
but there does, there are some seeds planted
out there that it looks like it'll
be a decent year for Democrats in 2018.
And some of that is historic.
It's baked into the cake.
Over the course of time, 93 percent of elections
in off years, the party in charge of the White House
has lost seats in the Congress,
and 73 percent of the times
they've lost seats in the Senate.
So it's inevitable that Republicans
are likely to lose some seats.
Does one house flip or the other?
Hard to say at this point, but Democrats
have a lot to be encouraged about.
For Wisconsin Republicans, I think they have
to continue to send their message,
sell their message of results, getting things done.
Time after time after time that's been proven
to be a successful formula for Scott Walker,
it's proven to be a successful formula
for Republicans on the ground either
for the state senate or the state assembly.
They get stuff done and voters respond to that.
- Scot, do you think that Republicans
can maintain what Bill calls a Red Wall?
- I think the Republicans have done a lot
to try and maintain that Red Wall.
I think there's been a lot of rigging
when it comes to voting rights, when it comes to redistricting,
when it comes to some of the policies
they have enacted in terms of ethics and such.
What I think, though, is Wisconsin,
we haven't had a wave election in an off year since 2006
and in 2006, Jim Doyle won huge.
The state assembly picked up seven or eight seats,
the state senate was flipping all from Republican
to Democratic, so in a wave election year,
you know, anything can happen.
- Is this as much about kind of what might have happened
in other states and Democrats feeling positive,
or does it come down to the individual candidates?
- It has a lot to do with it.
I mean, at the end of the day,
if there are any Republicans at risk
in Wisconsin in 2018, the most at risk
would be the congressional delegation.
They did get the tax thing done.
It does have a piece of the Obamacare repeal.
They got rid of the individual mandate,
but they have to continue to put their foot
on the gas and get things done in 2018
if they want to solidify their position for re-election.
- I was gonna say, how do the--
here's the question, how do Republicans
decouple themselves from Donald Trump,
who's incredibly unpopular?
They can't do that, I mean Scott Walker
has embraced him, Leah Vukmir's embraced him,
Kevin Nicholson's embraced him,
the stage legis aren't gonna suddenly come
out and say he's terrible,
and as on Friday we saw a CNN poll that said
really to Congress that generic Democrat
is up 18 points to the Republicans.
Those are historic numbers.
Now, that's where we're at right now.
Can things change? I don't know.
Donald Trump's not going to suddenly become more tolerable,
he's not going to become less animated on Twitter,
and so how do they overcome that?
- Do you feel like any of the really low
favorability numbers for Donald Trump
translate all the way down to legislative races?
- It does, yeah, history has shown that
if the president's approval numbers,
whether it's Obama or Bush or the previous Bush,
are low heading into a midterm election,
they lose a lot of seats.
- What about Scott Walker?
I mean, what an interesting place he's in.
First he very much opposed Donald Trump,
as we saw when he made his speech dropping out,
then he's supportive; where is he now?
- I think he and Paul Ryan have been able
to find the sweet spot.
They don't respond to everything the president does.
They don't defend every Tweet he puts out.
They don't defend every statement he makes.
Everything he does that's provocative,
they sort of walk the other way,
and I think that's a smart strategy on their part.
- [Frederica] What do you think?
- I think that once there's more scrutiny
on the day-to-day operations of the campaigns
that they're going to have a problem with it
because they're just not really getting
asked about it all the time,
but every time Donald Trump does something bad
once we're firmly in 2018 campaign season,
Scott Walker whether he wants to or not
is going to have to respond to it,
and if he doesn't respond to it,
the Republican Party, because there are reporters
all across the state that are gonna demand answers.
- Where he can be most helpful, actually,
is on the fundraising side, whether it's for
Leah Vukmir if I'm right about that Senate primary
or Scott Walker, he can come and raise five million
dollars in one lunch.
- [Frederica] All right, Scot Ross's topic to watch
also comes in the form of a question.
"Will Democrats finally embrace an economic agenda
"that addresses the needs of the nation's
"120 million post-Boomers?"
You are really on this topic.
Are you not feeling the love?
- Well, I'm simply saying that for the last
25 years, the economic message that's germinated
out of Washington D.C. for Democrats is Social
Security, Medicare, my employer-provided pension
is under assault, all critically important issues,
but for those of us under the age of 50,
and I'll still thankfully there, it doesn't do
anything related to my day-to-day life.
We as post-Boomers have a totally different
economic situation than our parents
or our grandparents had, and the economic
message of Democrats has not reflected that.
Need to have a very positive agenda,
especially when you're talking about Scott Walker,
'cause you're not gonna beat Scott Walker
by just saying he's gonna make Wisconsin worse.
You're gonna beat Scott Walker by saying
you'll make Wisconsin better.
- Don't the politicians appeal to voters
of a certain age, though, because they vote?
- Say you're talking about Generation X.
You're talking about 40 million voters
between the ages of about 51, 52 and 35.
This is a huge voting block that are not kids anymore,
I mean, I don't consider myself a child anymore.
I care about childcare.
I care about family medical leave.
I care about how am I going to-- my retirement is on my own.
All those types of issues,
student loan debt, you know that's literally probably
the biggest economic issue for post-Boomers
because there's 1.4 trillion dollars worth of it.
85 percent of it is held by people under the age of 50.
- Now Bill, Scott Walker is talking jobs
and training ads at millennials to come
back to Wisconsin.
Is that appealing in the way that Scot is talking
about Democrats ought to be?
- I think it's very appealing.
I mean, the economic statistics,
people vote their pocket books first,
and we've had that conversation here
on this program in the past.
That's in Walker's favor, whether it's more
people working than ever before,
the lowest unemployment rate in 17 years,
or bringing in new company after new company.
Those are things that resonate with people.
They see that good, positive energy
come into the state of Wisconsin and now,
as you just pointed out, he's advertising
to bring people back.
If you have any interest in finding real strong,
meaningful employment, come to that state of Wisconsin.
That's a new message for the state of Wisconsin,
and I think that's gonna be to his benefit.
- What do you think of that message
of trying to lure people back here?
- I think that when you give 4 1/2 billion dollars
to a Taiwanese billionaire to provide jobs
for people to cross the Illinois border,
it's not the cornerstone of an election victory.
Scott Walker does have an advantage in terms
of his age, currently.
You know, where he's at a lot of the leaders
in the Republican side are Gen Xers, that's for sure,
but if you think about history, the last 100 years
the ages of non-incumbent Democrats elected
president are 52, 51, 47, 46, and 43,
which means 2020's best thing for the Democrats
would be somebody between 1977 and 1968 born.
We have that.
- Do you see any of the Democratic candidates
embracing younger voters or their issues?
- Oh, absolutely.
Yes, no matter their age, they're all talking
about those important issues, student loan debt.
- We'll agree on that, right?
- There are some of them who are seasoned.
But there are also ones that are younger
than I am, so I think that's where
they are talking about a lot of those
critically important issues.
Can they stay disciplined?
I mean, that's the thing with Scott Walker.
In 2010 when he ran, if you copied
everything that Scott Walker had on his website
for issues, it's a page and a quarter long.
You just have to be message-disciplined.
Figure out the things that make
your base voters go out and vote,
and then talk to them about it.
- Very briefly, the universal issues that every
demographic cares about?
- Jobs is number one, without question,
and Walker's got the distinct advantage on that
going forward, and I don't know how a Democrat,
regardless of who comes through the primary,
can draw that contrast with him on economic issues.
- People all across Wisconsin who don't have jobs
are gonna have a problem with that.
I think that it's quality of life.
Are you working one job that gets you to pay
for the bills for your family,
and currently in Walker's economy, that's not the case.
He's been in charge for seven years.
If you're unhappy about anything, it's his fault,
and he's gonna pay the price for that.
- We leave it there.
Scot Ross, Bill McCoshen, thanks very much
and have a great new year.
- [Both] You too.
- Next week we continue our interviews with candidates
running for state supreme court.
Judge Rebecca Dallet will join us.
I'm Frederica Freyberg.
Have a safe and happy new year.
? ?
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