Dylan Brogan
As best a former high school principal can manage, Tony Evers strutted into his victory party Tuesday night with a hint of swagger. He was wearing a dark suit and tie that made his white hair pop. With the backing of 41 percent of Wisconsin Democrats, he was ready for the real fight: unseating two-term Republican Gov. Scott Walker.
Right on time to go live on the 10 p.m. news, Evers came out swinging at Walker by likening him to a disease.
“Folks, Walker has been here for eight years and the problems aren’t going away,” Evers, the state schools superintendent, told supporters at the Park Hotel in downtown Madison. “I am a cancer survivor and have been cancer-free for 10 years. I beat cancer and I will beat Scott Walker.”
Evers’ victory in the eight-way Democratic gubernatorial contest was total. He was ahead in the polls throughout the entire campaign and on Tuesday, Evers won 67 of 72 counties and 41 percent of the statewide vote total.
Firefighter union head Mahlon Mitchell denied Evers a win in vote-heavy Milwaukee County, but finished a distant second statewide, 25 points behind.
Former state Rep. Kelda Roys of Madison did better than polls predicted, coming in third with nearly 13 percent of the vote. But even in Dane County, where she racked up her highest vote totals, Evers won all but a handful of the voting precincts.
State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, who came in fourth with 8 percent of the vote, carried the western counties of Buffalo, Jackson, Pepin and Pierce. Even so, Evers lost only by 403 votes, if combining the vote totals of those four sparsely populated areas.
The only doubt cast on Evers’ frontrunner status in the race was a large percentage of Democratic voters who remained undecided right until the election. Madison Mayor Paul Soglin — who placed 7th in the race behind activist Mike McCabe and former Democratic Party Chair Matt Flynn — declined to offer any advice to Evers heading into the general.
“He built on his lead. He’s the one who captured most of the undecided voters,” Soglin said. “He knows what he’s doing.”
Madison’s veteran mayor hinted throughout 2017 that he was considering a run for governor and touted a poll showing he could beat Walker if he became the nominee. Soglin said Tuesday that he now realizes that when he jumped into the race in January, it was already too late.
“I wish I would have announced early. That was my big problem,” says Soglin, who said in July that he would not be running for another term as mayor. “I was so far behind from the very beginning.”
More Democrats voted in the primary than Republicans, despite a competitive U.S. Senate race on the GOP side. Walker easily defeated his largely unknown challenger, Robert Meyer, with 92 percent of the vote. But the total number of Democrats voting in the primary exceeded the Republican turnout by more than 80,000.
Both Evers and Walker will be touring the state in next few days. The governor delivered his playbook to supporters in Waukesha County Tuesday night.
“We’re going to travel the state of Wisconsin laying out — very specifically — our plan of action for the next four years,” Walker told the crowd of loyalists. “It’s simple: Keep Wisconsin working for generations to come. Are you ready to help us implement that plan?”
Walker heads into the general election with a mountain of cash. The governor had $4.9 million in the bank as of July 30; Evers had a puny $158,000.
Before Evers joined supporters in Madison, former Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton cut to the chase.
“Some people have been a little slow, saying they would wait past the primary. He needs a big infusion of cash right now. This is our reality,” Lawton warned Democrats at Evers’ party. “You’re going to find hungry-looking people carrying baskets to allow you to make a donation to Tony Evers…. Do it tonight.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison) — who also was in attendance at the shindig — says three issues will win Evers the race: Foxconn, roads and education.
“Foxconn is the gift they’ve given us. It’s a $4.5 billion in-kind donation to the Evers campaign,” says Pocan. “Lack of funding for roads. Everybody knows that, every day they drive. And lack of funding for schools, which nobody is more equipped to talk about than Tony Evers. Maybe you throw in healthcare, and Scott Walker will need to go get a private-sector job.”
Pocan praised the eight Democrats who ran in the primary for “not running negative attack ads” against each other. In the final days of the campaign, Flynn did question whether Evers would be aggressive enough to “eviscerate” Walker. At an Aug. 8 debate hosted by Isthmus, WORT 89.9 FM and The Progressive magazine, Flynn warned: “If you ask an open question to a liar — to Scott Walker — he’ll have you for lunch.”
However, Pocan believes “you can be nice and beat Scott Walker.”
“Part of being from Wisconsin is being nice. He won handily in a primary being Tony Evers. He doesn’t need to change,” Pocan said. “There will be plenty of us who aren’t so nice saying what needs to be said.”
Walker has won his last three elections, including an unprecedented recall in 2012. When asked what his campaign will do that previous Democrats who challenged Walker haven’t, Evers said he won’t be “putting Scott Walker in box and telling everyone he’s a horrible man.”
“We are going to hold him accountable for what he’s done wrong. But this race is going to be about compassion. It’s going to be about kindness. It’s going to be about the issues that [voters] think are important,” Evers said before being rushed away by campaign staffers. “That’s what’s going to be different this time. We know it’s time for a change.”
