Thomas DeVillers
Early Tuesday night at Plan B, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin was optimistic about Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning. But she asked a reporter to note the time of her comment, because “Wisconsin is always a nail-biter.”
Madison political consultant Heather Colburn’s support for Hillary Clinton began long before the secretary of state’s first presidential run in 2008. It hasn’t always been a popular position, but Colburn says Clinton has “done nothing but make [her] proud” over the years.
“I get a lot of blowback when I say in public that I support Hillary,” Colburn said early Tuesday evening at an election night watch party at Plan B. The event, which Colburn organized, was billed as a “Walking on Broken Glass” party to celebrate Clinton’s shattering the “highest and hardest glass ceiling.”
Colburn wanted to throw the party not only to honor Clinton’s history-making run as the first woman to serve as the presidential nominee for a major party, but to provide a space for unabashed Clinton supporters to share in the joy and excitement of the moment. Throughout the campaign season, Clinton has been dogged by her high unfavorability ratings, the persistent email scandal and the intangible sin of being “unlikable.” But for Colburn and many others (as evidenced in the Pantsuit Nation group), Clinton has remained a feminist icon and a pragmatic progressive worthy of enthusiastic, unreserved support.
“My only regret [during the campaign season] was that I didn’t savor it,” Colburn says. “I’m going to savor it now.”
That optimism faded as the night wore on. By midnight, Clinton supporters sat glued to television and phone screens, watching in disbelief as Republican Donald Trump appeared poised to win the presidency. There were still four states too close to call — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Hampshire — but the mood was grim. The party to celebrate a historic win had turned into a wake for a historic candidacy.
“I’m devastated,” Rachel Falk, 20, told Isthmus. “I’ve never been this disappointed.”
Falk, a UW-Madison student, and her roommate, Emma Romell, left the party with the election still up in the air. Romell, a 20-year-old UW-Madison student, said that even if Clinton lost she was proud to have backed her for president. “It’s still a milestone. All of history happens slowly.”
Fox News called Wisconsin for Trump at 10:30 p.m., and at about 1:30 a.m., the Associated Press did the same, immediately casting a projection that Trump would win the state’s 10 electoral votes — and the presidency.
Trump’s victory, both in Wisconsin and nationally, shocked many voters and political strategists. Polling showed Clinton with strong leads going into the election, but Trump’s campaign had faith that his “silent majority” supporters would come through at the polls. They were right.
“This is bizarre,” Republican strategist Brandon Scholz said in a phone interview Tuesday night. “It’s going to take a long time to sort through all this.”
Earlier in the night, Republicans at election watch parties across Madison were quietly confident about Trump’s chances, as well as the prospect of Republicans winning down-ballot races. Democrats and media outlets had hypothesized that Trump’s countless gaffes, ill-conceived tweetstorms and sexual assault allegations could result in voters rejecting the presidential candidate as well as the Republicans on the ballot who pledged to support him. But conservatives swept the election, maintaining majorities in both the House and Senate.
“This has been a long 16 months, but there’s a lot of enthusiasm,” said Robert Relph of the Republican Party of Dane County, at a watch party at the Concourse Hotel. “[Republicans] are going to come home and vote where their heart is.”
UW-Madison’s College Republicans gathered at Brickhouse BBQ to watch election results come in over chicken wings and beer. Michael Falk, a 26-year-old law student, described the campaign season as “very demoralizing overall,” but he was enthused by the potential for down-ballot Republican success. An undecided presidential voter until “very recently,” Falk says he “held his nose” as he voted for Trump.
“I think Trump will work with a Republican-controlled Congress,” Falk said. “I think he will do good, conservative things with Paul Ryan.”
During the campaign, pollsters and pundits believed that Trump’s core supporters were white, working-class citizens who were hit hard by the loss of America’s manufacturing industry and frustrated with the policies of President Barack Obama. But exit polling shows that white, wealthy voters — including women and college graduates — were key to Trump’s victory.
At Plan B, the mostly white crowd worried what a Trump presidency — which has been endorsed widely by white nationalist groups, including Ku Klux Klan leaders — would mean for people of color. For 25-year-old Katherine Garcia, a graduate student at UW-Madison of black and Puerto Rican heritage, the election results were simply terrifying.
“I’m scared. I feel like I’m not safe in this country anymore; I feel like my friends aren’t safe,” she said shortly before the election was called. “We can’t deny the racism, sexism and xenophobia anymore.”
