Jennifer Pierotti Lim (left) and Meghan Milloy of Republican Women for Hillary play a round of “Internet Comments: Real or Fake?” on an episode of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.
At the end of September, Jennifer Pierotti Lim traveled to Wisconsin from her home in Washington, D.C., hoping to connect with like-minded voters: Republicans supporting Hillary Clinton for president.
Lim, a lifelong Republican who has spent much of her life promoting conservative causes, is co-founder of the volunteer group Republican Women for Hillary. The organization formed about five months ago when a group of conservative political activists, unimpressed with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, defected from their party and began to rally behind Clinton. Lim says there’s a “constant stream” of women contacting and joining the group each day as the election grows nearer.
“We chose [the name] Republican Women for Hillary very specifically, because we knew women would have the hardest time coming out and feeling like they could endorse someone other than who their party would choose,” says Lim, who works as director of health policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Being a woman in the Republican Party is much different from being a woman in the Democratic Party.”
Adds Lim: “And of course, the parties view women’s issues very differently.”
The organization has in recent weeks focused on voter outreach in battleground states, expanding efforts in places like Florida, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Virginia, Georgia and Utah. While in Wisconsin, Lim spent two days meeting with voters and making radio appearances in Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay and “deep red” parts of Brown County. She encountered plenty of fellow conservative Clinton backers here in the state, but she found that political discourse in Wisconsin is “unique” compared to other places she’s visited. In some parts of the country, she’s seen former Republicans running field offices for the Clinton campaign. But when Isthmus asked to speak with Republican Women for Hillary members from Wisconsin, none were willing to go on record. Lim says that’s not surprising.
“People in Wisconsin in general are very private about politics,” Lim says. “There are Republican women in Wisconsin voting for Hillary, but they don’t feel like they can be public about it.”
Is it a symptom of the notoriously polite (but sometimes passive-aggressive) Midwestern culture? Maybe, says Lim. But she’s also noticed that Republican Clinton supporters who live in states where it’s legal to openly carry a firearm — Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, in particular — are less likely to speak out publicly about their political beliefs. Republican Women for Hillary members regularly get death threats and are subject to near-constant online harassment.
“I worry about our ladies in open-carry states,” Lim says.
The most recent Marquette University Law School poll, conducted Oct. 6-9, shows Clinton leading Trump 44 to 37 percent among likely Wisconsin voters. The poll happened to coincide with the Oct. 8 publication of a Washington Post story that brought to light a recording of disturbing, lewd comments about women that Trump made in 2005 on the set of Access Hollywood. “The publication appears to have caused a significant shift in Wisconsin voters’ attitudes, across several different demographics,” poll director Charles Franklin said when the poll was released.
Still, Trump’s support from the state’s Republican base has remained strong, with an average of 76 percent of Republicans surveyed over the three-day period reporting they planned to vote for the GOP nominee. So is Wisconsin shaping up to be a battleground state on Nov. 8?
The Trump campaign began spending on advertisements in Wisconsin media markets just a few weeks ago, with Kantar Media’s political ad tracker showing a $600,000 buy on Oct. 12. Since then, Trump’s campaign and the conservative super PAC Reform America Fund have aired about 2,400 ads in the state. Clinton and her allies have aired none, and Wisconsin remains one of the few states in the nation where there are more pro-Trump ads than there are pro-Clinton ads on the airwaves.
“[Clinton] is not on the air much here because she doesn’t have to be,” says Mike Wagner, a UW-Madison professor of journalism and political science. “She’s winning without airing ads.”
If that’s true, why would Trump bother with Wisconsin at all? The campaign’s focus on the state could be a nod to Wisconsin’s deep ties to the Republican Party — it’s home to Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus and House Speaker Paul Ryan, it’s a place where state-level Republican candidates have been wildly successful in recent years and it has a reputation as a swing state in presidential elections. So Trump’s advertising advantage in Wisconsin is not so much strategic as it is symbolic.
“It’s not that Trump has decided to throw all his eggs in one basket,” Wagner says. “It’s that Clinton doesn’t see Wisconsin as competitive.”
Does Trump have any path to victory in Wisconsin? Not likely, according to Brandon Scholz, a longtime Republican strategist from Madison.
“The race is over,” Scholz says. “Trump really hasn’t done much to endear himself to Republicans, especially Republican leadership. I think the fact is that many of Wisconsin’s Republican officials are supporting Trump because of the party — I don’t believe it’s out of any love for Donald Trump.”
Adds Scholz: “And I don’t think that Trump really cares.”
Trump’s Access Hollywood comments set off a feud with House Speaker Paul Ryan, who promptly uninvited Trump to a rally in Elkhorn and has since stopped defending his party’s nominee, saying he will instead focus on preserving the GOP majority in Congress. But Trump’s problems with Wisconsin Republicans began months ago. Before the primary, the state’s establishment conservative leaders mounted a spirited #NeverTrump resistance, fueled by right-wing radio host Charlie Sykes, an ardent anti-Trump voice with considerable influence over the reliably Republican territory of Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties.
That area — populated by white, college-educated conservatives — has proved to be stubbornly unreceptive to Trump’s message. His campaign recently canceled an event in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis and instead has focused on areas like Green Bay (where polls show he has an 18-point lead). That market, along with the north and northwestern parts of the state where he is also polling well, will help Trump remain competitive, but “he needs southeast Wisconsin more than he needs anything else,” Scholz says.
Madison-based Democratic pollster Paul Maslin agrees that Trump failed to connect with Wisconsin’s key Republican voting bloc and erred in picking fights with the state’s top GOP officials. There was talk early on of Trump’s appeal to white, working-class voters who might otherwise vote Democrat, but Maslin says that support never materialized. He predicts a Clinton victory, projecting a margin similar to Barack Obama’s 2012 win over Mitt Romney.
Says Maslin: “Any way you slice it, Trump did everything wrong in Wisconsin.”
