MADISON, Wis. (AP)
— Wisconsin has been the battleground for political proxy wars for
nearly a decade, the backdrop for bruising feuds over labor unions,
executive power, redistricting and President Donald Trump.
Now,
six months before a presidential election, the state is on fire again.
With a divided state government and a polarized electorate, Wisconsin
has emerged as a hotbed of partisan fighting over the coronavirus,
including how to slow its spread, restart the economy, vote during a
pandemic and judge Trump’s leadership.
In
recent weeks, every political twist has been dissected by the parties,
political scientists and the press, all searching for insight into which
way the swing state might be swinging in the virus era.
Democrats had the most significant recent win, a contested statewide Supreme Court race.
It gave them a claim on sense of momentum after making gains in the
2018 midterm elections. But Republicans this past week won a special election for Congress, albeit in a GOP stronghold, and successfully had the governor’s stay-at-home order tossed out by the state Supreme Court.
But
no one is making predictions about Wisconsin in November, other than to
note that the latest fight over the fallout from the coronavirus may be
the most important of them all.
“The
jury’s still out,” said former Gov. Scott Walker, perhaps the figure
most closely associated with Wisconsin’s political turbulence. The
Republican had previously said the economic recovery favored Trump
carrying the state. On Friday, he said the November presidential
election will be a referendum on Trump’s handling of the pandemic.
“One,
how do you feel about your own health and health of your family,”
Walker said. “Two, how do you feel about the health of the economy,
particularly your own job. ... If people are still freaked out, then I
think it’s always tough for any incumbent.”
Taking
their cues from Trump, who has called on states to “liberate” residents
from stay-at-home orders and get back to normal, state Republican
lawmakers challenged Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ order in court. Similar maneuvers have been tried in Michigan and Pennsylvania, the other Rust Belt states that backed Trump in 2016 and handed him the White House.
But only in Wisconsin have Republicans gotten what they wanted,
suddenly taking ownership of the state’s coronavirus response and, with
it, new political risk. While some Wisconsinites rushed out to bars to
celebrate the court’s ruling, many in the state were confused
about the new patchwork of restrictions. Meanwhile, a solid majority of
Wisconsin residents have said they support Evers’ handling of the
crisis, according to a new Marquette University Law School poll.
Democrats were quick to cast the issue as much larger than the previous partisan feuds.
“By
November, a significant fraction of Wisconsinites might be close to
someone who has been hospitalized or even died because of coronavirus,”
Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler said. “And those are,
unlike passing news cycles, the things that can create scars that change
how people view politics in their own lives.”
As
in other states, the virus has moved beyond Wisconsin’s big Democratic
cities. Brown County, home of Green Bay and a number of meat processing
plants, has become Wisconsin’s fastest-growing coronavirus hot spot.
In
2016, Trump easily carried the county. But in last month’s election,
Democrats’ choice for the state Supreme Court, Jill Karofsky, won Brown
County, part of her surprisingly strong showing in an election plagued by long lines at polling places and widespread worries over whether it was safe to be voting at all.
Evers tried at the last minute to postpone the election, but Republicans refused. Again, Wisconsin’s drama was projected on the national stage — and mined for lessons about organizing, mail-in voting and ballot access.
“Republicans
in my district were begging us not to hold an in-person election,” said
state Rep. Robyn Vining, a Democrat whose district spans western
Milwaukee County and GOP-leaning suburbs. “People who said they had
voted Republican their entire lives were furious.”
Whether
Republicans will take out any frustrations on Trump is far from clear.
The Marquette University poll this week found Trump has a 47% approval
rate in Wisconsin, virtually unchanged from March. The poll also
registered the impact of the state’s decade of political battles — an
intense polarization.
“There’s
not much of a middle in Wisconsin, at least as far as Donald Trump is
concerned,” said John Johnson, a research fellow from Marquette
University Law School.
The
state was a hotbed of tea party opposition to Barack Obama’s
administration in 2010, sentiment that helped Walker win office and move
to cut public-sector unions’ bargaining rights. The effort ignited mass
Capitol protests in Madison and prompted a bitter recall election a
year later. Walker beat it back and went on to win reelection in 2014.
His
tenure hit at the heart of Wisconsin’s once-progressive tradition. In
addition to his labor legislation, he enacted deep tax cuts and
prevailed over a challenge to Wisconsin’s legislative redistricting —
leaving the state with districts heavily gerrymandered to favor his
party.
Since
Trump’s narrow 2016 victory in Wisconsin — the first by a Republican
presidential candidate since 1984 — Wisconsin has become home to a
permanent campaign. Democrats began a year-round organizing initiative that led to a comeback with Evers’ narrow defeat of Walker in 2018.
Republicans,
too, have invested in organizing in the state, particularly in hunting
for new voters in the rural counties where Trump made strong gains over
past Republicans candidates.
The
Trump campaign says its staff of 60 turned its attention this week to a
special election for a congressional seat in northern Wisconsin. They
made 2.4 million get-out-the-vote calls in the district — roughly half
of all the voter contacts they’ve made this election cycle in the state.
State Sen. Tom Tiffany won the seat by 14 percentage points. Trump carried the district by 20 percentage points in 2016.
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa, and Burnett from Chicago.
