Wis. Dems Running for Senate

The five candidates running for Wisconsin's Democratic nomination to unseat Senator Ron Johnson met in what, for lack of a better word, was a debate in Milwaukee on Sunday night. Just about all of the questions by Moderators Charles Benson and Shannon Sims were in the form of "How has issue X directly affected you, and what, specifically, are you going to do about it? You have 120 seconds."

With barely any difference between one candidate and the next on any issue, most of their time was spent attacking Senator Johnson. There were very few attacks on each other; the rules allowed any candidate mentioned by name by another candidate 60 seconds to respond, so they wisely refrained from thereby giving someone else the last word.

We've seen a lot of the candidates in the foreground of my sketch: from left to right, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, Milwaukee Bucks executive Vice President Alex Lasry, and Wisconsin Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, both on TV and in social media. 

When Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson's ad touting his rural roots aired after the debate, it was the first time I'd seen anything from him. (So I added the hat he wore in the commercial to the drawing.) He was the only one to talk about the Green New Deal by name; his repeated talking point was that he got himself elected County Exec in a solidly Republican county.

For the fifth candidate, Steven Olikara, founder of "The Millennial Action Project," the debate was an opportunity for him to finally reach beyond his Tik Tok followers. Instead of talking about how Issue X had directly affected him and what specifically he wanted to do about it — even when Issue X was abortion rights — he quickly pivoted to getting money out of politics.

There is no daylight between the front-runners on the issue of a woman's right to bodily autonomy; the difference has been how quickly they responded to Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Godlewski had a TV ad of her on the Supreme Court steps the very next day after the court's decision was announced. Lasry soon followed with an ad of him in a kitchen with his wife, who works at a Planned Parenthood clinic, and their toddler daughter. Barnes has recently begun airing an ad featuring his mother talking about her decision to end a pregnancy.

An aside here: I saw an ad on TV last week from a candidate for office touting her commitment to protect women's reproductive rights. I had never heard of her, and it turned out that she is running to succeed Godlewski as State Treasurer.

I'm kind of wondering what role our State Treasurer has in restoring abortion rights (an 1849 ban has supposedly gone back into effect here), but you can bet it will add one more reason why state Republicans want to get rid of the office.

The Republican candidates for Governor meet for one of these televised debates next week, and it promises to be a more lively affair. There will be fewer people on stage, for one thing. And the two leading candidates, former newscaster turned former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, and Trump-endorsed construction executive Tim Michels, have been brutally attacking each other in their television ads for weeks.