Jill Underly (left) and Brittany Kinser.
Incumbent Jill Underly, left, will face Brittany Kinser on April 1.
Incumbent state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly won a narrow victory in Tuesday’s primary. Don’t expect another close race in April, but that doesn’t mean there’s no intrigue here.
Underly edged out Brittany Kinser, 37% to 35%. Sauk Prairie Superintendent Jeff Wright finished third with about 27%. He was eliminated in the three-way primary where the top two vote-getters advance to the general election.
Underly is in a good position to keep her job in April because both she and Wright were Democrats in this nominally nonpartisan race. So, the lion’s share of his votes are likely to go to her. In addition, I expect the liberal, Democratic-backed candidate, Susan Crawford, will likely pull out more voters than the conservative Brad Schimel in the hotly contested Supreme Court race, also on the April ballot. That’s because Democrats, frustrated by Donald Trump, will be burning to do something. And the first thing they can do after November will be to vote for Crawford to maintain the liberals’ majority on the court. And while they’re at it, they’ll vote for the liberal Underly as well.
Kinser describes herself as a “blue dog,” which is to say moderate or conservative, Democrat. But she has been an advocate for private school vouchers and so is seen by many as the more conservative choice. The state Republican Party gave her $200,000. Voters who show up to vote for Schimel are likely to cast a ballot for her.
What’s intriguing is that Underly isn’t entirely popular, even among Democratic- leaning groups.
The Democratic Party officially backed Underly in the primary, while the state teachers union, WEAC, stayed out of it. In fact, WEAC’s political action committee recommended supporting Wright, but the union leadership didn’t confirm the endorsement. Now they will almost certainly join the Democrats in getting behind Underly.
The Association of Wisconsin School Administrators supported Wright. It’s not clear what they’ll do now.
The Wisconsin Examiner reported some behind-the-scenes unhappiness with Underly’s management within DPI. One person who went on the record said that managers at DPI feel unsupported and that direction from the top is chaotic. I have also heard directly from a DPI employee who made the same criticisms but won’t go on the record for fear of reprisal.
That issue of communication also played a role in the controversy over Underly’s move to change the way test scores are structured. It’s complicated, but the bottom line is that under DPI’s new formula more students end up scoring as proficient at grade level than would have been the case under the old system. It also makes it virtually impossible to compare scores with previous years.
But in addition to the substantive questions about the change, Underly came in for criticism in how it was rolled out. Even fellow Democrat and former DPI chief Gov. Tony Evers was caught off guard. He said he would not have made that change, a rare public disagreement among top level Democratic officeholders. Both Kinser and Wright said they’d reverse Underly’s decision.
Underly has also come in for criticism for proposing that all of the state’s $4 billion surplus be used to support public schools. Even Evers didn’t embrace that idea and Republicans mocked it. It underscored one of Wright’s criticisms — that she doesn’t know how to deal with legislative Republicans. Look for Kinser to take up that argument as well.
It’s also interesting that Wright did not immediately endorse or even congratulate Underly in his concession statement on Tuesday night.
All this raises some intriguing questions. Will Republicans and conservative groups invest in Kinser when the Supreme Court race is more important to them and Kinser looks like a longshot? Will they see some symbiotic relationship between the two and so try to link the campaigns in some way? Will they see weakness in Underly given WEAC’s apparent reticence to support her and the school administrators backing an opponent in the primary? And, given the Trump administration’s emphasis on eliminating DEI, will he get involved in the race directly or through campaign contributions (we might call them “retribution contributions”) funded by Elon Musk?
This could be an interesting race. There's substance here. The candidates could talk about vouchers, of course. But they could also address how to measure student achievement, how to deal with a teacher shortage, how to reform the way we pay for schools, and how to work with a Democratic governor and a Republican majority in the Legislature.
In contrast, this Supreme Court race is looking to be every bit as personal, ugly and misleading as the last one. The candidates and their supporting groups are set to spend something like the gross national product of Argentina on TV ads describing how the other candidate wants to release murderers with express instructions to kill you in your sleep.
I suppose if I were Underly I’d avoid engaging with Kinser and count on those Jeff Wright primary voters merging with the Susan Crawford general election voters to carry me to victory.
But I hope she doesn’t do that. I hope she engages with Kinser even at the risk of giving her a bigger stage. Underly is an educator and a good, substantive race would educate the public on issues that are crucial to the state’s future.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
