Kerem Yücel/Minnesota Public Radio via AP
Vice President Kamala Harris is welcomed by running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz at a campaign rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, August 7, 2024.
The Wisconsin delegate breakfast has been a major destination for party leaders at the Democratic National Convention this week. It’s no mystery why Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick Tim Walz made it a priority to head over to the breakfast as one of his first stops on Monday morning. Along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, Wisconsin is one of the blue-wall states that Democrats need to scale to keep the White House. There were addresses today from two former vice-presidential contenders: Andy Beshear, Kentucky’s governor, and Mark Kelly, Arizona’s junior senator.
The MC for the breakfasts is Ben Wikler, the state party chair who’s made a national name for himself rebuilding the organizing infrastructure in a state that looked to be leaning further to the right. Those efforts are credited with helping elect Gov. Tony Evers twice. One of the key challenges for Evers has been the Republican-controlled legislature, which is heavily gerrymandered in their favor, and has been the source of much political turmoil.
Recently, Wisconsin Democrats have scored a few political wins, including electing a liberal justice to the state supreme court and defeating a Republican-backed ballot initiative that would have curtailed the governor’s ability to use federal funds for sinister stuff like disaster relief.
In many ways, Evers has been forced to play defense against Republican efforts to undermine Medicare funding in the state or abortion access. During his speech at the breakfast yesterday, he also highlighted a few of his administration’s signature policies to deal with PFAS (“forever chemicals”) and to secure new funding for struggling rural hospitals.
Wisconsin is a state known for its long-running, populist independent streak on economic policy—and the politicians stopping by at the breakfast certainly tailored their remarks accordingly. Unions are heavily present in the Wisconsin delegation, too.
Beshear talked about the Democrats revitalizing manufacturing in states like Kentucky. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson discussed public-school funding and housing affordability, and even Maryland Gov. Wes Moore peppered his remarks with lines about child tax credits and child poverty.
Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski managed to name-check the scourge of private equity takeovers, the shuttering of numerous paper mills around the state, and the multibillion-dollar subsidy for a Foxconn LCD manufacturing plant, an economic-development boondoggle brokered by Republicans.
Wisconsin’s presidential stakes were generally the talking point for the speakers, but a close second was Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s tough race to keep her seat, which Democrats need to hold onto in order to maintain control of the Senate. Baldwin faces Republican Eric Hovde, a wealthy businessman who hasn’t held political office before and runs most of his real estate businesses from California.
The other topic on everyone’s minds at these breakfasts is a handful of congressional seats that Democrats are looking to flip blue. Those seats are definitely more politically challenging than, for example, retaking four New York swing districts lost in 2022, but Wisconsin Democrats still believe that the path to the House could just as well run through Wisconsin.
The closest race is in the Third Congressional District, which the Cook Political Report has listed as “lean Republican.” It’s Democrat Ron Kind’s old district, which fell into Republican hands when he retired before the 2022 midterms. Republican Derrick Van Orden lost to Kind by only three points in 2020 and then won the seat in a close race against Wisconsin state Sen. Brad Pfaff.
This year, Rebecca Cooke is taking on Van Orden after winning the contested Democratic primary. Cooke grew up on a sixth-generation Wisconsin dairy farm and is currently a small-business owner and waitress. She has a uniquely Wisconsin profile of identifying both as a Blue Dog Democrat, who are traditionally more moderate, while also running on a populist economic platform. In her first campaign ad, she stresses her roots in the state and advocates for cracking down on price-gouging by large corporations at the grocery store and at the gas pump. Looking straight into the camera, Cooke declares, “We need a real voice to take on monopolies that have robbed us of our farming heritage and decimated our rural economies.”
There are a few reasons why Cooke has a chance to flip the seat. For one, Josefine Jaynes, who serves as chair of the Third Congressional District Democrats, told me that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee didn’t fully invest in Wisconsin in the 2022 midterm races, and instead focused their resources elsewhere—that didn’t turn out so well for them. But after Wisconsin racked up some recent wins, most importantly with Janet Protasiewicz securing a seat on the state supreme court, the national party sees more upside in the state this election year.
Another factor is that the area covered by Wisconsin’s Third District has a heavy university presence—Democrats relied on students when Kind held the seat. Because of the COVID-19 school shutdowns, not as many students were registered to vote in the district and Democrats still struggled in 2022 to regain their footing with young college student voters. This time around, Wisconsin Democrats say they’ve put more resources into re-energizing those voters, which could be the key to victory in such a tight race.
The other contested House races, in the eyes of Democrats at least, are former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s old district as well as the seat vacated by Rep. Mike Gallagher’s departure from the House in April. Those are pretty deeply red areas of the state, but the party’s newfound energy courtesy of the Harris-Walz ticket could drive higher turnout than expected in down-ballot races.
