make that true. >> Reporting from Madison.
I'm Zac Schultz for Here and Now.
>> On this week's Inside Wisconsin Politics, we hear
Zac Schultz, along with Wypr political reporter
Shawn Johnson, rich Kremer and Anya van Wagtendonk dig
into why there are so many Democratic primary
candidates in the midterm elections, what party
support for a particular candidate does or doesn't
say about the campaigns and examples of such races.
Seizing grassroots efforts, won for governor and won
for the third Congressional District.
>> In the very recent past, you had Democrats and
liberals very wary about jumping into primaries.
What's changed? Zac? >> I think the biggest
thing that's changed is the Democrats see more
opportunity to win some of these over the past 16
years, basically in the Scott Walker era. On when
the maps didn't favor Wisconsin and perhaps the
political climate didn't favor candidates statewide,
there was a concern that a primary just took up too
many resources that were limited, mainly money and
time, and the threat that if they went negative
against each other, it really hurt their
opportunity to win statewide. Since Democrats
have gotten on a roll in 1 a lot of these races for
governor, AG, state Supreme Court, and they've got
better maps, they see more opportunity. And so there's
more options for people to get in, because the primary
doesn't look quite as devastating.
>> Since I'm naming stuff today, this is the don't
tell me what to do primary, an important distinction in
Democratic primaries. We've got a couple examples here
today. Let's start with one in the third Congressional
District. Rich, I've heard a lot about this district
because it's our most competitive congressional
district. Derrick Van Orden is the Republican incumbent.
I've heard a lot about Rebecca Cooke, the
Democratic challenger who has outraised him recently
and seems to be getting a lot of attention. There is
a primary there who's running.
>> So the primary is between Cooke, who's an Eau
Claire Democrat raised on a dairy farm in the county
and, you know, has done some political consulting
work, fundraising work for Democrats in years past.
But now she's Bakke. She's really portraying herself
as kind of of the district, you know, born and bred
Wisconsin, etc. Republicans are trying to, you know,
focus the attention on her consulting work, etc. The
other Democrat is longtime Eau Claire City Council
member, former council president, until just
recently, Emily Berge of Eau Claire. And she she's
portraying herself as the grassroots choice in this
race. And national Democrats came in and
started sending resources, staff, etc. back in
February to Cooke's campaign. And Berge said,
well, that's pretty dirty. You know, she essentially
said D.C. shouldn't be deciding who is the
Democrat to face Van Orden. It should be the people of
Eau Claire. And just anecdotally, when I'm
walking through the city, I don't see a lot of Cooke
signs. In fact, I don't remember seeing any. But I
see a whole bunch of Berge signs. So this being one of
the more, if not the most populous areas in the third
district, maybe that makes a difference. But in terms
of resources, Cooke is way, way, way ahead of Berge in
all the fundraising reports that I've seen.
>> Zac, do you get the sense that this is, you
know, a competitive primary here?
>> It could be it really depends on how much the
primary voters pay attention. And that's
always the issue in some of these primaries is name
recognition makes a big deal. That's why the
National Party comes in and puts resources behind Cooke.
It's not necessarily that they like her more. It's
they think she has the better chance to win in the
fall and get her moving. Now. It's the old mentality
we talked about at the beginning of the show of
why didn't Democrats do primaries in the past? It
takes resources, it can get ugly, it can get negative.
It could hurt the candidate. Going into the fall. I ran
into Berge when she was campaigning with Francesca
Hong for governor in La Crosse. They were doing an
event at the same bookstore. And it's not a coincidence
that while we were talking to them, they were talking
about going and seeing them at the next stop. And there
there is a kind of thematic fit with that campaign of
more grassroots, more from the bottom up and running
against party types who tell us who our candidates
should be. Parties like to dictate sometimes who the
candidate can be so they can focus resources.
Sometimes that does run up against a wall, which is
why your title for this Don't Tell Me What to Do,
does fit, because there are candidates who are going to
say no. Let the people decide. People have to pay
attention, though. there are plenty of
examples in the recent past, particularly among
Republicans, where you come out of a battle tested
primary and you are wounded. And it did not help them
very much in the general election. I think in 2018,
Tony Evers came out of a battle tested primary and
was a little bit out of money. So there is a risk
to it, but it does also get attention, I guess is the
thing that it does for sure. >> I think another piece of
this too, is that it's very easy to kind of present a
unified front as a party when you're in the minority,
because it doesn't really matter, right? You don't
have power. And so we might know that kind of behind
the scenes, the further left Democrats and the more
centrist Democrats don't then they all come forward
and kind of vote in alignment. And so now what
we're seeing, because there's a little bit more
of a sense that perhaps they could actually win
things and gain power. There's also, I think, a
little bit of a fight for what will the Democratic
Party in Wisconsin look like, vote like, will they
be further left? Will it be more of a Hong kind of