Wisconsin is not that MAGA. That’s one top-line takeaway from the latest Marquette University Law School poll, released this week, which shows 56% of Wisconsin voters disapprove of the job President Donald Trump is doing — his worst approval rating so far during his two terms in office. Violent immigration raids, a dangerous and ill-conceived war in the Middle East, high gas prices, ruinous trade wars, devastating health care cuts and economic uncertainty are clearly eating away Wisconsin voters’ enthusiasm for Trump, whom they elected by a narrow margin in 2024. That’s not great news for fervent Trump ally U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who won Trump’s endorsement in his campaign for governor.
It might also have something to do with the exodus of Republican leaders from the Legislature, with both Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu announcing their retirements, along with a growing crowd of other departing Republicans, some of whom represent newly competitive districts.
Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Devin Remiker has been gleefully proclaiming that all those Republican retirements foreshadow a Democratic sweep of state races in November.
But while Tiffany will almost certainly be the Republican candidate for governor, on the Democratic side, we don’t know who will emerge from a seven-way primary race.
Which Democrat has the best shot at beating Tiffany was the main question on the minds of a handful of Democrats who gathered at a coffee shop in downtown Madison Tuesday evening to listen to a pitch from Joel Brennan, Gov. Tony Evers’ affable former secretary of the Department of Administration. Brennan, the only white, male candidate in the Democratic field, seems like the safe bet to many of the people who came out to hear him — more “electable” than the rest of the field of progressive women and people of color, as several attendees sheepishly told me. That assessment is entirely subjective at this point. The leading Democrat in the last three Marquette polls is Madison-based state Rep. Francesca Hong, a socialist, who is the top choice of 14% of Democratic primary voters, followed by former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes at 11%. All the other candidates are in the single digits, including Brennan, who only pulls down 2%. A large majority of voters — 65% — say they have not yet decided on a candidate.
There’s no simple formula for “electability” in Wisconsin, a state where a majority of voters helped elect former President Barack Obama twice, then twice chose Trump. Wisconsinites also enthusiastically embraced Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, when he won 69 of 72 counties. U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin has proven it’s possible for a progressive lesbian from Madison to win in conservative, rural areas of the state, by listening and working hard on the issues that matter to her constituents. A successful, independent populist campaign by a candidate who is not a centrist or an establishment type is definitely possible in Wisconsin.
But it’s easy to see Brennan appealing to a broad cross-section of voters in the state. He seems like a decent guy with a folksy, well-meaning aura not unlike two-term Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. Like Evers, he talks a lot about reaching across the aisle and getting things done for the people of Wisconsin, regardless of the national political circus. He also warns that Democrats in the Legislature have been out of power so long they haven’t used the “muscles” one needs to engage in the work of compromise and deal-making that will inevitably be necessary to govern a closely divided state.
Under Wisconsin’s new, fair voting maps, Republicans can no longer act like they are the undisputed rulers of a one-party state. But Democrats, even if they win majorities in both houses of the Legislature, are likely going to have to manage narrow margins and make some efforts at bipartisanship. It’s also possible that we will continue to have a divided government.
Many Democrats have been disappointed in the compromises Evers made with legislative Republicans. Maybe he could have driven a harder bargain on budget deals that allowed the state surplus to balloon while schools were starved of resources and property taxpayers picked up more and more of the tab. Maybe we could have done more to expand health care than the belated, one-year postpartum Medicaid deal that allowed us to finally get in line with 48 other states. Maybe we could have adequately funded our state’s SNAP program and avoided ruinous federal penalties for high error rates without tying that money to a ban on candy and soda that stigmatizes poor people and micromanages small pleasures but doesn’t actually improve people’s health.
On the other hand, dealing with the obstructionist, power-grabbing Republican majority was a thorny problem Evers dealt with essentially by himself. His most significant contribution is probably the passage of new, fair maps, which are suddenly changing that dynamic. Republicans are showing signs of dropping their obstructionist habits as they face newly competitive elections even as their national leader’s popularity craters. But even on fair maps, legislative Democrats didn’t close ranks behind Evers. After the state Supreme Court forced Republicans to abandon their gerrymander, their willingness to vote for the maps Evers endorsed made many legislative Democrats suspicious. Most of them didn’t vote for the new un-gerrymandered reality.
If Democrats win, that new reality will involve a new kind of struggle for both parties — moving from fighting tooth and nail with the other side to trying to move the state forward.
