WI-SEN 2022 Megathread: Who stole my cheese?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Kind would be an A+ recruit. Godlewski a B recruit (nothing against her other than nobody cares about the state treasurer, and as a result low name recognition). She did win statewide, so there’s that.

Nelson is a C- recruit I’d say, everybody else is a D or F.

When I say poor recruit, it’s nothing personal to them, and maybe they could win, but if a radiologist from Marshfield and a Bucks executive are your best recruit, I’m skeptical. But hey, maybe they are charismatic and people really like them and they win

I don’t know as much about some of these folks (and I’m sure you know more than I do), but I get the sense that if nothing else, Alex Lasry is pretty well connected politically and seems to have some real institutional support from the Milwaukee Democratic establishment that was lined up before he even got in the race.  

This does make me wonder if he’s got better political chops than his resume might suggest, although I suppose he could also just be a major WI Democratic donor who is calling in favors.  I imagine we’ll find out sooner rather than later.

I do agree that Kind would probably be our best recruit.  That said, Wisconsin seems to be very much a turnout state at this point, so candidate quality is less important here - at least to a point - than it is in a state like Pennsylvania.

Btw, how would you grade Mandela Barnes as a potential Senate recruit?  

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Kind would be an A+ recruit. Godlewski a B recruit (nothing against her other than nobody cares about the state treasurer, and as a result low name recognition). She did win statewide, so there’s that.

Nelson is a C- recruit I’d say, everybody else is a D or F.

When I say poor recruit, it’s nothing personal to them, and maybe they could win, but if a radiologist from Marshfield and a Bucks executive are your best recruit, I’m skeptical. But hey, maybe they are charismatic and people really like them and they win

I don’t know as much about some of these folks (and I’m sure you know more than I do), but I get the sense that if nothing else, Alex Lasry is pretty well connected politically and seems to have some real institutional support from the Milwaukee Democratic establishment that was lined up before he even got in the race. 

This does make me wonder if he’s got better political chops than his resume might suggest, although I suppose he could also just be a major WI Democratic donor who is calling in favors.  I imagine we’ll find out sooner rather than later.

I do agree that Kind would probably be our best recruit.  That said, Wisconsin seems to be very much a turnout state at this point, so candidate quality is less important here - at least to a point - than it is in a state like Pennsylvania.

Btw, how would you grade Mandela Barnes as a potential Senate recruit? 

Regarding Lasry, I follow WI politics pretty closely and I haven’t heard of him ever. Maybe he is a connected donor or something that I haven’t seen.

Barnes I think would be a bad recruit, because WOW. After the Jacob Blake shooting, he got on TV with some statement that police are just killers and have a vendetta against black people. I have a feeling that WOW and the Fox Valley would be really turned off by some of his comments, as well as a scandal of continuously unpaid property taxes on his condos in Milwaukee. I don’t think it would play really well in the Fox Valley or WOW, and it’s super easy to run against the city of Milwaukee or Madison in this state. Kind isn’t a “radical Madison liberal” (scary voice in the attack ad) and I don’t think the socialism label would stick to him. I think he would play pretty well in WOW (probably mid to high 30s) and decent in the Fox Valley. He would also have the advantage of padding the margins in the Driftless a bit.

In that case, Barnes is definitely not the guy we should run here.  Hopefully Kind decides to run!

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

This is an odd race to read about on Atlas in that folks here seem to always overestimate or underestimate its competitiveness.  Most folks seem to either feel Johnson has probably killed his chances with his antics or that this race probably won't be all that competitive.  While I have it at Tilt R atm, I haven't really seen much evidence that a decent recruit (to say nothing of an A-lister like Kind) wouldn't be able to potentially make this highly competitive.

Ultimately, Wisconsin statewide elections tend to come down to base turnout and the national environment more than anything.  Honestly, we really don't know what 2022 is gonna look like yet.  It could be anything from a good - albeit not wave-tier - year for the Dems (especially if the bill containing reforms to the redistricting process gets passed in time, which would mean a whole new ballgame re: the House) to a another Republican midterm wave (albeit almost certainly not anywhere near as bad as 2010 or the 2014 Senate wave).  

I get that this site by nature is going to have a lot of predictions well in advance of any given major election, but we really have no idea what 2022 is going to look like and to the extent that we do, Democrats have been doing pretty well so far.  

It's really early and the stimulus was always gonna be the easiest fight, but both the election reform package and the infrastructure bill are broadly popular to the point Republicans have struggled to even find a coherent line of attack re: the latter and for the former have reportedly concluded it'd only backfire to try to turn the public against the election reform bills (as opposed to just trying to quietly lobby Manchin to oppose it).  If Republicans are looking for an Obamacare-style (initially) unpopular policy to run against, they clearly haven't found it yet.

A lot could change very quickly, but I think there is some "fighting yesterday's war" going on in some of the assumptions that seem baked into a lot of people's 2020 analysis (a somewhat less common example is the assumption that Republican base turnout will drop Georgia runoff-style without Trump on the ballot and while that's possible, I don't see why so many red avatars are taking it as a given).

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

What makes Barnes such a bad candidate?

Kind would be an A+ recruit. Godlewski a B recruit (nothing against her other than nobody cares about the state treasurer, and as a result low name recognition). She did win statewide, so there’s that.

Nelson is a C- recruit I’d say, everybody else is a D or F.

When I say poor recruit, it’s nothing personal to them, and maybe they could win, but if a radiologist from Marshfield and a Bucks executive are your best recruit, I’m skeptical. But hey, maybe they are charismatic and people really like them and they win

I don’t know as much about some of these folks (and I’m sure you know more than I do), but I get the sense that if nothing else, Alex Lasry is pretty well connected politically and seems to have some real institutional support from the Milwaukee Democratic establishment that was lined up before he even got in the race. 

This does make me wonder if he’s got better political chops than his resume might suggest, although I suppose he could also just be a major WI Democratic donor who is calling in favors.  I imagine we’ll find out sooner rather than later.

I do agree that Kind would probably be our best recruit.  That said, Wisconsin seems to be very much a turnout state at this point, so candidate quality is less important here - at least to a point - than it is in a state like Pennsylvania.

Btw, how would you grade Mandela Barnes as a potential Senate recruit? 

Regarding Lasry, I follow WI politics pretty closely and I haven’t heard of him ever. Maybe he is a connected donor or something that I haven’t seen.

Barnes I think would be a bad recruit, because WOW. After the Jacob Blake shooting, he got on TV with some statement that police are just killers and have a vendetta against black people. I have a feeling that WOW and the Fox Valley would be really turned off by some of his comments, as well as a scandal of continuously unpaid property taxes on his condos in Milwaukee. I don’t think it would play really well in the Fox Valley or WOW, and it’s super easy to run against the city of Milwaukee or Madison in this state. Kind isn’t a “radical Madison liberal” (scary voice in the attack ad) and I don’t think the socialism label would stick to him. I think he would play pretty well in WOW (probably mid to high 30s) and decent in the Fox Valley. He would also have the advantage of padding the margins in the Driftless a bit.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

As is almost always the case in WI, the national environment will tell the tale (although I maintain Barnes is a weak enough candidate that he’d underperform by a few points even in a good year).  That really tells you all you need to know about who will win.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

As is almost always the case in WI, the national environment will tell the tale (although I maintain Barnes is a weak enough candidate that he’d underperform by a few points even in a good year).  That really tells you all you need to know about who will win.

Why do you think Mandela is a weak candidate?

As others have explained elsewhere, he’s a pretty divisive figure in Milwaukee AA political circles, he is a terrible fit for both the old WI-3 area and the suburban areas in which we need to keep making inroads (not b/c he’s AA, but b/c he’s said some stuff that will play really badly in those areas), and he’s (IIRC) had a bunch of personal scandals regarding stuff like unpaid taxes and the like.  

He’s arguably our weakest major candidate in a competitive Senate race of the cycle so far.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I really don’t buy that Gallagher would outperform Johnson in this race solely because he’s (ostensibly) more 'moderate' — the guy is not tested statewide, seems way too polished in a state that loves its "authentic" elected officials, and has no real distinguishable brand. Johnson's ability to turn every issue (even inflation, deficits, etc.) into a culture-war clash has a record of selling well even in WOW and the Green Bay area (can we dispel with this notion that this kind of messaging only works in rural areas? many posters seem to be unaware of how Johnson actually ran in 2010 and in which parts of the state he really crushed Feingold), and there’s obviously no doubt that he can supercharge rural/small-town turnout for the GOP. Democrats are also somewhat likely to make several strategic mistakes running against him in particular, like recycling the anti-Trump/insurrectionist playbook (did not work for McAuliffe) or running a gazillion ads painting Johnson as an "extremist" or "radical Republican" (something every voter already knows) while doing nothing to dismantle his perceived "authenticity" (same mistake Republicans make when they run against "socialist" Baldwin).

Either way, Republicans aren’t losing this race in a Republican wave environment. Likely R with Johnson or Gallagher.

That logic is just what was plausible for Bill Nelson in 2018 too. I mean it WAS a Dem environment supposedly

I highly doubt Barnes or Nelson will be quite so tactically haphazard like Feingold was [moreso in 2010].

What did Feingold do that was tactically haphazard? (I'm legit asking, hadn't heard that before.)

I believe he refused to run a negative ad in 2010, for one thing.

To be fair, he’d won several upset victories by doing his own thing even though it flew in the face of conventional wisdom about how to run a winning campaign; Feingold had more reason than most to think he might’ve found some sort of secret sauce.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

What's going wrong with Barnes's campaign? Does he have baggage or skeletons in his closet?

Yes and lots of it.  Some WI posters were warning about him before Barnes even entered the race IIRC, so his issues weren’t even unforeseeable.  Barnes was always a highly divisive figure in the Milwaukee AA community due to Democratic factional battles Re: local politics, had some tax scandals, a history of really dumb/soundbite-friendly comments attacking police, etc.  Barnes has also run a weaker than expected campaign imo.  He’s still in it b/c turnout is always the key in WI, but I think he lags behind the ticket enough that Johnson narrowly wins. 

For what it’s worth, I don’t think Kind would’ve done much better (might’ve actually done worse despite doing much better in the Driftless region).  He has a really ugly pay-to-play/extortion corruption skeleton in his closet that his Republican opponents never really went after him on in the past.  Even if the allegations were false - far from certain - it would’ve likely been enough to sink him and I think it’s why he never ran for statewide office.

Note: When I say “narrowly,” I mean by 1-5 points rather than by a razor-thin margin.