Donald Trump’s brazen, norm-shattering, and often illegal rise to the highest office of the United States led many to believe that candidate quality had become a relic of the past. After all, Donald Trump weathered countless sexual assault allegations and criminal indictments without any real political consequences.
Contents:
Candidate Quality Hurt Republicans in 2022
Are Democrats Fumbling A Key Governor Seat?
What the Data Says About Wisconsin’s Election
Democrats’ Winning Recipe
Candidate Quality Hurt Republicans in 2022
So in the past years, many primary voters (mostly those in Republican primaries) looked past scandals and issues of candidate quality when nominating candidates for governor’s or Senate races. Republican voters usually followed Trump’s endorsement calls and did not think of any overwhelming electoral consequences since the President didn’t suffer any either.
They were wrong. Many dubious candidates nominated by Republicans underperformed horribly in key races. The 2022 Senate race in Georgia serves as a good example. It was a Biden midterm that ended up favoring Republicans by about 2.5% nationally. That’s seven points redder than 2020, when Raphael Warnock narrowly won the special election for Georgia’s Senate seat. Since it was only a special election, he had to face re-election again in 2022 and win the voters’ trust for a full term. Republicans nominated Herschel Walker, a former football player, to unseat him. Herschel Walker went on to become entrenched in scandals and poor public performances. At one point, former Senator Lindsey Graham had been tasked with sitting by Walker’s side in Interviews to avoid more trouble. Voters ended up punishing Walker’s poor candidate quality, and he narrowly lost to Warnock in a year where Republicans carried the state’s congressional ballot by almost 5 points.
In the same year, Republican voters also nominated Trump-ally Doug Mastriano to run for Pennsylvania’s open Governor’s seat. Mastriano was a known conspiracy theorist and believer of Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen. He lost what could have been a close race for a swing state governorship to Democrat Josh Shapiro. Shapiro’s stunning 15-point victory quickly put the 2028 hopeful on the map. It also was a hint that, in statewide races, candidate quality still matters much more than partisan polarization.
So why am I writing about this? Because this time around, Democrats are looking at a strong midterm election. Yet, some of their primary contests are dominated by discussions about electability. While electability has always been an issue in every primary election, the discussion feels different this time around. That is because usually, Democrats were astoundingly good at nominating electable candidates while their Republicans fumbled the ball quite a few times, as the examples above showed. In Wisconsin, however, the electability debates are taking place on the Democratic side.
Are Democrats Fumbling A Key Governor’s race?
Tony Evers’ 2018 upset victory moved mountains for Democrats. During his eight-year tenure, Evers was most notably able to redraw the state legislature maps that had been brutally gerrymandered by Republicans to lock Democrats out of power forever. With Evers’ new maps, Democrats might be able to retake the state legislature for the first time since. Once again, nominating an electable, center-left candidate paid off for the party. But there are still battles to be fought. Evers is retiring, and a new Republican governor could undo these improvements to democracy. Given that they might finally retake the Wisconsin legislature, it would be a horror story for Democrats should they lose the governor’s seat in a blue wave year.
Naturally, the race for the democratic nomination attracted much attention, but it slowly turned into quite the mess. For a long time it looked like Mandela Barnes, the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin’s Senate seat in 2022 (he narrowly lost to the unpopular incumbent Republican Ron Johnson in a red environment), would take the nomination. Then, Francesca Hong rose in the polls. Hong is a progressive DSA (Democratic socialists of America) member. Her DSA affiliation, along with past remarks about abolishing the police, raised alarm bells in the Democratic Party. Would Wisconsin’s swing electorate elect a candidate that is widely seen as too progressive or even radical? As it became clear that Barnes’ chances were fading, David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, re-entered the race last month with a fresh endorsement from Governor Evers. But as it turns out, the Democratic primary electorate has little faith in Evers’ endorsement: In head-to-head polls, Crowley trails Hong by about 20 points.
If no miracle occurs, Democrats will nominate a DSA progressive in a state Donald Trump won in 2024. Of course, many of Hong’s policies are popular with voters, like a moratorium on data centers. But it remains to be seen if a candidate similar to Zoran Mamdani can win in Wisconsin. In the end, it will boil down to one question: Will the blue wave be big enough to carry Hong across the line, or will Wisconsin’s electorate prove to be off-limits for Mamdani-like progressives?
Why do I assume that Hong will have a hard time? That has two reasons. The first is that Republicans have managed to nominate a scandal-free candidate. While their presumed nominee, Tom Tiffany, is a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, he has managed to stay out of any conspiracy trouble.
That brings me to the 2nd reason Hong will have a hard time: Different standards. A Republican candidate who doesn’t believe in conspiracy theories is almost automatically seen as a moderate and acceptable choice by a good share of the electorate. On the other side, a Democrat who once tweeted something critical of the police force is portrayed as unelectable for decades to come. (According to data, Democrats in Congress are morde moderate than Republicans)
Hong has, of course, long since retreated from earlier calls to defund the police (a majority of Wisconsin voters want to increase police funding), but it remains to be seen whether voters are willing to accept one misstep.