- 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 Eveready 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.