WI-SEN 2022 Megathread: Who stole my cheese?

[redjohn]

Ron Kind would be a comparatively strong candidate in the driftless area obviously, but in reality the driftless area only matters on the margins. Races are decided based on a Democrat's ability to turn out both Madison+Milwaukee, and to keep margins decently low in WOW. Kind would struggle to boost turnout in Dane+Milwaukee, which would be his downfall in a statewide race. He'd lose to Johnson by a good amount.

Baldwin winning statewide by 11 and simultaneously losing Adams county by 3 is a microcosm of the unfortunate irrelevancy of rural areas to Democratic margins. In her 2012 race she won Adams by 8 while only winning by 6 statewide. So she doubled her margin and still these areas fell through. Rural areas are just going to trend further right, even a candidate like Kind won't be able to win areas that have historically been extremely favorable to Democrats. I don't see any point in going for a candidate who might temporarily stop the bleeding and come up really short in the urban areas key to us winning.

Pocan would've actually been a decent candidate. Barnes is obviously the best statewide candidate besides Baldwin going forward, though. He's extremely popular in both Madison+Milwaukee, which is the recipe to winning statewide. But with the national environment so unfavorable to Dems in 2022 (barring some unforeseen national crisis), he should probably wait it out to run for Senate in 2028. Baldwin will almost certainly seek another term which probably rules out 2024. There's no point in Barnes running for Governor, which is a completely useless position in this state when Rs control the legislature.

[redjohn]

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/14/politics/sarah-godlewski-senate-run-ron-johnson/index.html

Wisconsin Treasurer Sarah Godlewski launches Senate campaign as Ron Johnson freezes GOP field

She seemed likeable in her announcement video. And she outran Evers in 2018 by 2 points.

She outran Evers by 2 points because neither candidate in that race had any name recognition and liberals had a huge partisan advantage, not because of any statewide affection for her. Lots of voters on both sides left the state treasurer race blank. There was also a Constitution Party candidate who took over 2% of the vote.

Anyways, remains to be seen whether she stands any chance against Johnson. It's an uphill battle, but November 2022 is a ways away and who knows what potential scandals could shake up the race. Any partisan advantage that was there in 2018 that carried Democrats just over the finish line in most WI races will evaporate next year.

[redjohn]

Midterms curse is going to make this seat difficult to flip for either Barnes or Godlewski. Both are good candidates, Barnes seems to have more obvious baggage but Godlewski is relatively unknown in the state and could be extremely damaged by any GOP-run propaganda. Look at what happened to Feingold, a previously respected and former U.S. Senator, in the last weeks of the 2016 campaign.

These candidates are both excellent individuals (and some of the other candidates are quite good on a local level as well), but they aren't candidates who have the special quality to win against Johnson in a midterm.

[redjohn]

Midterms curse is going to make this seat difficult to flip for either Barnes or Godlewski. Both are good candidates, Barnes seems to have more obvious baggage but Godlewski is relatively unknown in the state and could be extremely damaged by any GOP-run propaganda. Look at what happened to Feingold, a previously respected and former U.S. Senator, in the last weeks of the 2016 campaign.

These candidates are both excellent individuals (and some of the other candidates are quite good on a local level as well), but they aren't candidates who have the special quality to win against Johnson in a midterm.

Everything you say is correct, but I wonder if RJ has shot himself in the foot with his comments since last year.

I'm unfortunately much more pessimistic on the future for Dems we have in WI. Dane's growth is promising, and Milwaukee continuing to trend D is nice, but I'm worried that the entire strategy hinges on suburban trends that may or may not be able to make up for Dems losing support in nearly all of the western part of the state. It doesn't really feel like winning when a Democrat just barely wins with only seven counties, which seems to be where things are headed.

Barnes lying about his college degree is something unexpected to me that will certainly hurt his prospects, despite how seemingly unimportant the issue is. If Godlewski is the nominee, there seems to be another potential scandal of her campaign misleading people about her having a master's degree. Also the fact that she lived in DC right up until moving back to WI to run for treasurer: that alone could be a campaign-ender in the general.

[redjohn]

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.

Completely disagree. Victory in Wisconsin for Democrats hinges on Milwaukee now that they've cratered in support in vast swaths of rural communities. Dane county turns out no matter what just by virtue of it being the most highly-educated and politically active county in the state; Milwaukee is more of a wild card that determines whether Dems win statewide in close-ish races. I find it very hard to believe that Sarah Godlewski would perform better enough in rural WI to offset the votes she would lose by not being an inspiring candidate to most people in Milwaukee, black/white/Hispanic. Barnes is a popular candidate in both Dane county and Milwaukee, and would do a better job running up margins than any other no-name candidate in the running would. He's doomed because of the cycle he's running in, not because of his own quality.

Lest we forget what has happened in cycles where Milwaukee county turnout has dropped. Barnes being at the top (ish) of the ticket helps both himself and Evers more than any other candidate because it boosts Milwaukee turnout. If this were Trump's second term, he'd have a good shot at ousting Johnson. He's probably going to be the nominee for a race in a state that voted ~4 points to the right of the nation though, under a President who isn't very popular. Herb Kohl would struggle in this environment as a Democrat.

[redjohn]

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.

Completely disagree. Victory in Wisconsin for Democrats hinges on Milwaukee now that they've cratered in support in vast swaths of rural communities.

Milwaukee turnout is certainly important, but margins do matter. Democrats can't get completely killed in WOW, BOW or the rural areas.

They matter, but any of the Democrats running are going to get killed in rural areas. Without any recent evidence, I suspect the Democratic floor in WOW is rising and expect less fluctuation there especially given turnout is usually strong in those counties. No matter what, Johnson is going to run up huge margins in most areas of the state outside of SE WI and Dane county, which is the race. Best bet for Dems is to try to shore up Milwaukee turnout and not alienate rural areas too much. But again, they're going to get killed in rural areas and probably can't make that up even if Dane+Milwaukee swung left with high turnout.

[redjohn]

How fun would it be if Marquette threw in a Barnes +2 poll tomorrow and send Twitter into a frenzy on all ends.

Well, this didn't happen. I'm moving WI-Sen to safe R (from likely R for most of the year). The Republican machine is out in full force this year, taking advantage of Biden's poor job performance and the usual midterms backlash against the incumbent party. There's no chance Barnes walks away with this race. My main question at this point is how different the map looks from 2016. Here are my predicted county flips from 2016 (all D to R), from most likely to least likely:

- Richland (Safe R)
- Lafayette (Safe R)
- Vernon (Safe R)
- Columbia (Likely R)
- Sauk (Likely R)
- Portage (Likely R)
- Green (Lean R)

[redjohn]

Tonight, Wisconsin will again elect this vile politician for another 6-year term. He got lucky in 2016, but it's a shame that this clown has been fortunate enough to otherwise compete in Democratic midterms. He deserves nothing more than a resounding defeat. On the bright (?) side, he won't receive the margins that incumbent Democrats are capable of in GOP midterms (see Baldwin's 2018 landslide), but the Milwaukee suburbs just aren't there yet and I expect Johnson to massively over-perform in rural areas compared to his 2016 win. The main story here is that it's a Democratic midterm with a President underwater in approvals, and defeating this incumbent GOP Senator was extremely unlikely from the start with those fundamentals in mind.