The current state of the Wisconsin battleground (badgerground? 🦡)

August 14, 2024 4:23 PM

Wisconsin's primary election on Tuesday, August 13th was the first held under the new legislative maps that provide fairer competition where 'the party that wins the most votes will win the most seats.' While the nature of primary elections makes it difficult to assess the impact this will have on a general election, there may be clues to what Wisconsin voters are looking for come November.

The primary election had record turnout, and in a win for Democrats voters rejected two Republican-authored proposals that would have changed the Wisconsin constitution to limit the governor's ability to spend federal money in a crisis or disaster. Despite confusing and misleading language, 58% of voters voted against what has been called a "power grab by the GOP majority in the legislature."

The Republican primaries provide a mixed view of conservative voter priorities in the state. Tony Wied, whose campaign leaned heavily on his endorsement from Trump, won a three-way primary with 43% of the vote. He will be facing Kristin Lyerly, an OB-GYN who helped restore abortion rights in the state after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. She is working to flip a district that has been red for more than a decade.

But two of the states most prominent election deniers were handily ousted in their primaries by more moderate candidates, including a former legislator who authored a resolution that attempted to overturn the 2020 election. Both have clashed with Republican speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly Robin Vos, who has withstood multiple attempts to recall him after he refused to decertify Biden's win in the state.

On the Democratic side, self-described socialist incumbent and critic of Biden's handling of the war on Gaza Ryan Clancy easily kept his seat despite opposition from within the party over his divisive political style and alienation of Black leadership in Milwaukee.

Harris and Walz are planning a rally in downtown Milwaukee next week. Harris currently leads Trump 48%-43% in Wisconsin.

posted by brook horse (10 comments total)

We had to play hunt-the-write-ins (not hunt-the-wumpus, we don't hunt wumpi) at the end of the day, so I got home a bit late from working the polls. News of the two "no" amendment votes was waiting for me when I did, though, so that was actually pretty nice.

(The way it works is, write-ins get tallied by hand in each ward after closing. The efficient way to handle it is to spread all the ballots out on a couple of tables and have all the election officials look for ballots with write-ins. Positive side effect, the ballots end up neatly stacked for bagging.)
posted by humbug at 4:58 PM on August 14 [11 favorites]

This is great news and this is a TERRIFIC post - all the clear summaries, all the helpful links!

I am always excited to see the words "record turnout."

Thank you so much for this, brook horse!
posted by kristi at 5:07 PM on August 14 [18 favorites]

Bring the Cheese!!!
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:39 PM on August 14

My young end of 30-something niece was just telling us that Walz has a lot of cred among young people and a large social media following. I was surprised to hear it, but happy. I think Harris/Walz was the best way to go.
posted by SoberHighland at 6:10 PM on August 14 [3 favorites]

Always lovely to see republicans told to get fucked by the democratic process they oppose.
posted by Artw at 6:30 PM on August 14 [15 favorites]

felt good to vote for clancy, and to vote down these stupid ballot amendments. living in milwaukee is so strange, it sometimes feels like the presidential election is decided here and nowhere else, we get so much damn campaigning, door knocking, polling, rallies and endless tv ads. here’s hoping the good people of wisconsin will do the right thing
posted by dis_integration at 6:31 PM on August 14 [7 favorites]

I don't live in Wisconsin, but I drove in today to take my daughter to the House on the Rock. This was a drive through rural southwestern Wisconsin, and I saw "No to Constitutional Amendments" signs all over the place whenever I drove through a small town.
posted by TrialByMedia at 6:59 PM on August 14 [4 favorites]

The lopsided “no” votes on the two referenda in WI-3, location of a recent enormous Harris|Walz rally, suggest possible tough times ahead for notorious drunk unrepentant asshole and insurrectionist Congressman Derrick VanOrden, which is most excellent.
posted by carmicha at 9:18 PM on August 14 [9 favorites]

Fuck 'em up Bucky.
posted by Sphinx at 9:24 PM on August 14 [2 favorites]

Jay Kuo has some great background over at The Status Kuo (sorry, Substack) - Wisconsin Shows the Way:

Local Democrats, led by party chair and hero of democracy Ben Wikler, organized and laid out a plan to take back their state and hold fair elections once again.

First, voters replaced the Republican governor Scott Walker with a Democratic one, Tony Evers, in 2018 and stopped supermajorities from forming by a hair. Republicans in the state legislature responded by promptly moving to strip Gov. Evers of as much power as they could.

Then a previously held conservative seat came open on the state Supreme Court, which had been narrowly split 4-3 against the liberals. Democrats rallied around a progressive replacement, Justice Janet Protasciewitz, who won her election against her extremist opponent by a whopping 11 points in 2023, marking the end of 15 years of Republican control of the state’s highest court.

That allowed a legal challenge to the state’s heavily gerrymandered state districts to proceed, with the result that far fairer maps, drawn up by Governor Evers, went into place in February of this year and were used for the first time in Tuesday’s primary. The maps were graded “A” for fairness by the head of the nonpartisan Princeton Gerrymandering Project.

The result? A high turn out primary with extremist GOP incumbents and election deniers losing their seats.

He ends on a very hopeful note:

All 99 seats of the Wisconsin Assembly and half of the Senate seats are up in November. Wisconsin voters will have a chance to have their ballots count fairly for the first time in a general election in over 12 years. And as neighboring Michigan showed, when you fix the maps, you can fix democracy.

posted by kristi at 12:10 PM on August 15 [8 favorites]