David Michael Miller
I can often make an educated guess on the outcome of a race a month or so before Election Day. Not with certainty, but I usually have a general feeling how things are going to shake out based on polls and enthusiasm. I felt pretty confident about Barack Obama’s chances by October 2008 and 2012. While I held out hope, I didn’t feel so great about Tom Barrett or Mary Burke four weeks out from their respective gubernatorial elections.
Sometimes, you can read the tea leaves even further in advance. That’s why Gov. Jim Doyle decided not to run for a third term. In this very paper, I called the 2016 Senate race in Wisconsin for Russ Feingold nine months ago, and I’m even more confident in that claim now.
But when it comes to the spring elections on April 5, I have no idea what is going to happen.
For starters, it appears that both the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries will be competitive. Wisconsin’s late primary usually means that other states have decided the presidential candidates for us. The latest Marquette University poll shows Donald Trump leading Wisconsin among Republican primary voters, with 30% of support, compared with Sens. Marco Rubio at 20% and Ted Cruz at 19%.
The Super Tuesday primaries showed that Republican voters are following national trends. Trump continues to build on his terrifying lead, while Cruz has won enough states to stay in the race. Despite having won only one state, Rubio’s campaign is already trying to propose the idea of a brokered GOP convention, so he’ll be around for a while too. All three will probably still be in the race by Wisconsin’s primary.
On the Democratic side, the Marquette poll shows Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders virtually tied in Wisconsin. While Clinton’s primary victories on Tuesday may give her a boost in Wisconsin, that is probably only going to move the needle a few points. Sanders still won more states on Tuesday than many expected, and his camp doesn’t appear ready to shut down anytime soon. Besides, Wisconsin’s Democrats are more liberal — not to mention whiter — than many of the Democrats who voted on Super Tuesday, and that will help Bernie in the Badger State.
These competitive primaries will, in turn, drive more voters to the polls and heat up other races.
Take the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. The Marquette poll found Justice Rebecca Bradley and Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg virtually tied, with 30% support from voters. Bradley is going to get more of the dark money that has in recent years bought seats on the high court. But she is deeply tied to Scott Walker — the governor has appointed her to successively higher office three times over the last five years — and Walker is not a super-popular guy right now.
At the local level, our state’s largest metro area has two races that are going to be more competitive than first suspected. Moderate Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele isn’t getting the easy reelection he hoped for in his fight against liberal State Sen. Chris Larsen. On the contrary, Larsen actually beat Abele in the primary election. Meanwhile, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is getting a robust challenge from conservative alder Bob Donovan. I don’t think Donovan is going to win, but the recent rash of crime in Milwaukee has made Barrett more vulnerable than usual.
With all this volatility, it’s a shame that most of our local elections will be sleepy. All three Madison School Board incumbents up for reelection are sailing through without challengers. Only four of 37 Dane County Board seats are being contested. It looks to be a good year to be a challenger, but Dane County residents are missing out on the opportunity to have a real choice when it comes to their representatives.
Local blandness aside, all of these big races around the state could affect one another. Many races in Wisconsin have been decided by razor-thin margins. The last time we had a high-turnout state Supreme Court race was in 2011, when the election became a de facto referendum on Act 10. JoAnne Kloppenburg was also in that race; she lost by only 7,000 votes.
Even a few thousand voters could affect any one of these races. Could Donovan’s Milwaukee mayoral campaign bring out enough conservatives to sway the statewide total in the Supreme Court race? Will Sanders supporters in Milwaukee help boost Larsen over the top? Is Trump seriously going to be the nominee?
Every election is important. But not every election is this weird. It will be an interesting month of politics to watch. It will be an election that even the most apathetic of voters has no excuse to skip out on. Who will come out on top? Ask me on April 6.
Alan Talaga co-writes the Off the Square cartoon with Jon Lyons and blogs at isthmus.com/madland.
