Progressive dairy farmer Sarah Lloyd is the kind of candidate the Democrats need to find and support.
The 2018 midterm elections are still a full year and a half away but I’m getting anxious about who will run on the Democratic side.
I’m not talking about the governor’s race. Unlike some other progressives, I’m not super-concerned about the lack of gubernatorial candidates at this time. Rep. Dana Wachs (D-Eau Claire) and Sen. Kathleen Vinehout (D-Alma) are both looking at making a run; frankly, both excite me more than did Tom Barrett or Mary Burke. I’d still like to see some other candidates make a run for the office — say, Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) — but I’ll save that for a future piece.
I’m focusing now on the rest of the races — congressional house seats and those in the state Senate and Assembly. Many of these races will get overshadowed by the races for governor and U.S. senator, but these other races are still incredibly important.
This midterm is the Democrats’ best shot to pick up seats in all three bodies since President Obama’s first election a full decade ago. At the 100-day mark, President Trump is holding onto a 39 percent approval rating. Historically, as much as precedent still holds in the modern era, presidential approval ratings tend to drop between day 100 and the midterms.
Republican Congressmen Sean Duffy and Mike Gallagher, both big supporters of Trump, enjoy somewhat gerrymandered districts but neither has enough of a firewall to ensure reelection in the shadow of a president with an approval rating at or below 35 percent.
If Democrats are to take advantage of a midterm wave, however, they are going to need good candidates to run against the Duffys and Gallaghers of the state. Elections are largely based on national sentiment, with results often determined more by the goings-on in Washington, D.C., than the main streets of Wisconsin. But local candidates still matter; a good candidate can take advantage of the national mood and ride it to victory. Similarly, a bad candidate can lose even if the political tides are in their favor.
I’ll admit that it is going to be hard to convince good candidates to run on the Democratic side after a string of humbling election losses. Experienced, well-liked Democrats lost in 2016, including Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson, who ran for Congress, and Winnebago County Executive Mark Harris, who ran for state Senate. They were both solid, local candidates driven down by a presidential campaign that didn’t deem Wisconsin worthy of a visit.
The demoralization has gotten so bad that there wasn’t even a liberal or progressive candidate for the most recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Now, victory was by no means certain, but it is shocking that no one ran for an office with a 10-year term.
When there are Democrats who want to run, too often these candidates are relatively new to their districts. Pat Bomhack was a lawyer who had only lived in the district for three years when he mounted a lackluster campaign for state Senate, throwing away one of the only competitive state Senate races in 2014.
You need candidates who have roots in the district, particularly when the candidate is a lawyer. It makes it way too easy for the opposition to paint the candidate as a carpetbagger coming in from some fancy law school who is going to tell locals how to live their lives. When lawyers decide to run for office, they should follow the example of Dana Wachs. Wachs is a lawyer but he was born and raised in Eau Claire, raised his kids there, practiced law in the Eau Claire community for decades and served on the Eau Claire City Council — all before running successfully for the Wisconsin Assembly.
The Legislature already has plenty of lawyers. What Democrats really need are more Sarah Lloyds.
Sarah Lloyd is a progressive dairy farmer who ran against Rep. Glenn Grothman in the 6th Congressional District in 2016. Lloyd has experience with small-scale agriculture — her family runs a dairy farm — as well as with larger-scale operations through her work with the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative and the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. She was a good candidate who ran a good race against a bloviating bigot. Unfortunately, 2016 was a year when running as a bloviating bigot was an asset.
But Sarah Lloyd was the right candidate with the right background; she just ran in the wrong election. Lloyd’s experience should serve as a model for other candidates, people whose backgrounds represent their districts and provide a perspective that isn’t currently being heard in the capitol buildings of Madison and D.C.
Democrats should be out recruiting and encouraging folks from across the state, people with deep community ties and unique experience. Find the next Kathleen Vinehout, Dana Wachs and Sarah Lloyd, and Democrats will start building a slate of candidates ready to start turning the tide next November.
Alan Talaga co-writes the Off the Square cartoon with Jon Lyons and blogs at Madland.
