The Senate Race in Wisconsin May Tell Us a Lot About 2024

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Mandela Barnes needed a knock-out blow in his race for Senate in Wisconsin. Instead, the Democrat wobbled off stage Thursday after trading sucker-punches with the man he wants to replace, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson.

To wit, when asked in the closing moments of the debate to identify something each candidate admires about the other, Johnson cited Barnes’ working-class roots before landing one last Trumpian barb: “He had a good upbringing. I guess what puzzles me about that is, with that upbringing, why has he turned against America?”

Barnes was, of course, little better. In an earlier gibe that sought to undercut Johnson’s own private-sector success—including with his wife’s family businesses—Barnes asserted that “Sen. Johnson is taking a whole lot of credit for his business-in-law.”

Savage, both. But neither was a moment that would reset the trajectory of a race that once had Democrats optimistic about finding their groove in the Midwest and Republicans worried about a state that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 by 0.7 points and Joe Biden in 2020 by 0.6 points. The race signals, in miniature, a preview of what styles may be workable as both parties are looking at a buffet of approaches to sway voters in swing states. If you’re a Trumpist Republican, there might be reason to celebrate. If you’re a progressive, you might be hoping to pour more cash into a campaign that hasn’t shied from the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. And if you’re a win-with-what-works Democrat, you might be looking eastward to Pennsylvania and, perhaps, Ohio.

Barnes, Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor, a rising star in Democratic circles and an avowed progressive, has seen his polling slump after a strong summer. His fundraising reports have lagged far behind Johnson, who has raised two-and-a-half times what Barnes has. Even with $30 million in outside money for Barnes, Democrats still trail Johnson’s cavalry by about half.

That’s not to say Johnson has widened his still-fragile lead through an uplifting campaign. Over a relatively few short years, Johnson has evolved from a Chamber of Commerce-style Republican who was a favorite of the Koch political machine to a Trumpist who questions vaccines and denies climate change. He has leaned into Trump’s Big Lie in a major way. He has downplayed the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, suggested sanctions against Russia for meddling in U.S. elections are way too aggressive, and said the FBI is rife with corruption. If Republicans take control of the Senate after this fall’s elections, he would likely helm one of the Hill probes into first son Hunter Biden.

For a moment this summer, when it looked like Johnson might be in real trouble, he softened his edges a bit and missed a Trump rally outside of Milwaukee. At least for a fleeting moment, Democrats’ success in Washington on infrastructure threatened incumbent Republicans who stood in lockstep against it. Johnson’s first ad was a let-me-introduce-myself biography, not a typical move from someone who has served the state for 12 years already. There were whiffs of the Johnson of 2016, who said he would skip the Republican convention that nominated Trump, only to reverse course at the last minute.

That phase passed, of course. Johnson, 67, and his allies have run a barrage of negative ads, most of them focused on crime while campaigning against only the second Black candidate to win statewide office in Wisconsin history. Painting Democratic candidates as weak-on-crime is hardly a new playbook—the most notorious attack ad in American politics was 1988’s racially-explosive “Willie Horton” ad from George H.W. Bush—but one that is working particularly well this year in places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

In the Wisconsin iteration, pro-Johnson ads call Barnes “a dangerous Democrat” who would end cash bail, sending back onto the streets criminal suspects like the man who plowed a car through a Christmas parade in Waukesha. They’ve also openly painted Barnes as a grifter who has never held a real job in his 35 years.

Over the summer, the Dobbs decision animated female volunteers in droves, particularly in Wisconsin, where an 1849 ban on abortion went back into effect after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. Barnes ran a Ron Against Roe bus tour and his Moms For Mandela program remains a force. But abortion rights alone may be insufficient to counter the drumbeat of bad economic news or headwinds that are, at best, unpredictable. Senior Democrats have instead been urging candidates to return to a tried-and-true message: warning that the GOP would come for seniors’ Social Security checks. In Wisconsin, that monthly mail load includes 1.3 million retirees.

Johnson is ripe for the attack ad; he proposed making the decades-old program subject to regular renewal by Congress, part of his rhetoric that Washington needs to cut its spending. Johnson, who has likened Social Security to a Ponzi scheme, refuses to revise his assertion that it’s too big of a program to go on without action from lawmakers. But it hasn’t had the same resonance—or amplification—that the Republicans’ crime messaging enjoys.

“We are driving the message. We aren’t leaving it to anyone else,” Barnes told me in August, professing indifference to the national mood or polling. The main thesis: Johnson and the style of politics he represents is bad for Wisconsin.

On its own, the Wisconsin race is an interesting study of campaign strategies and the tactics used to execute them. But taken more broadly, it’s an effective microcosm of both political parties’ abilities to win. Democrats essentially ceded the field to a progressive star. In Wisconsin, that can work, until it doesn’t; just ask former Sen. Russ Feingold, who was unseated by Johnson in 2010, and lost a rematch in 2016.

Across the aisle, Republicans stuck with a Trump ally in the face of a challenger. David Schroeder, who criticized the modern GOP as “a cult of personality,” got 16% in the primary. Wisconsin Republicans apparently like Johnson’s evolution from deficit hawk to a figure who can’t seem to stop obsessing over Hillary Clinton’s email practices. The results in a state that is about as consistently and statistically close as they come could tell us a lot about how the battleground will shape up for the next White House race—and what messaging works.

During Thursday night’s final scheduled debate, Barnes counterpunched perfectly against the constant drumbeat that Democrats are corrupt and hate the police. At one point, Barnes had heard enough about poor morale among law enforcement. “No police officers in this country are more dispirited than the ones that were present at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6.” A solid jab, especially just hours after the House committee investigating that day held its ninth public hearing, but not the game-changer Barnes needed at his last big chance to challenge Johnson directly.

Meanwhile, Johnson freely flew his conspiracy flag, suggesting at one point that Biden had nefarious motives for ending an anti-Chinese espionage program that civil rights groups said was tantamount to racial profiling. “Why did President Biden cancel that?” Johnson said. “I have no idea. Could it be because he’s compromised because of his son’s business dealings with China? It might just be the case.” All that was missing was Trump’s favorite way to bring up an unverified nugget from MAGA Twitter, Many people are saying.

If the polls are to be believed, that Trumpist approach is working well enough with swing voters that Johnson may survive. And that’s why strategists on both sides are talking so much about Wisconsin.

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