There’s one big reason that Brad Schimel lost on Tuesday.
The blame game will erupt in earnest today, but the Supreme Court election was probably lost in November. It was a “backlash” election, pure and simple, the electoral equivalent of leftists burning a political Tesla. Sweeping change and electoral victory provokes a backlash.
Wisconsin is a burning Tesla today. We just got keyed.
This election doesn’t mean that voters have turned on Trump. It also isn’t really a referendum on him. It’s a statement that liberal voters are enraged at Trump, and it’s a referendum on how Democrats feel about Trump. It was bad timing. We already knew that liberal voters are enraged over Trump’s victory and agenda. This just gave them another way to express it.
For every action, there is a reaction. For every yin, a yang. President Donald Trump’s overwhelming victory in November (it wasn’t that long ago that we were photographing Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson jumping for joy) unleashed volcanic and irrational anger on the left. His flurry of executive orders and Elon Musk’s waste-cutting lit the fire all the more.
Liberals are p*ssed. And p*ssed people vote. Simply put, the left is absolutely unhinged right now. Although it’s strange that they’re so ballistic about saving taxpayers money and kicking illegal immigrants out of the country who commit crimes, they’re jumping-off-a-cliff angry.
Whether it’s a professor accused of flipping over College Republicans’ table in Eau Claire or cyber trucks being viciously keyed all over the country, the left is furious. Anger is a powerful motivator to vote and that’s tough to defeat in a lower-turnout April election when your side has fickle voters who don’t turn out in April because Trump isn’t on the ballot. It really is that simple.
Conservative voters should take a big step back and refrain from burning down their infrastructure and turning on their friends over a one-off reaction election, even one this consequential. Yes, use it to improve processes. Get new ideas, sure. Figure out ways to activate Trump’s single-candidate voters for others. But it wasn’t that long ago that Trump won here. That Johnson won here. That John Leiber won here. That Derrick Van Orden and Bryan Steil won here. There is a formula for conservative success here, and we figured it out just a few months ago.
Trump’s courageous agenda may have cost Wisconsin a court seat and now the right will have to fight tooth and nail to hang on to Congress so it doesn’t get thwarted. But it was never going to be easy to remake the world and country the way Trump is. That doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary. Maybe we just had to pay the price. It’s well worth it. The waste Elon Musk outlined in his Green Bay speech was shocking.
Crawford was a terrible candidate in a lot of ways. She went light on child rapists. She wasn’t likable. She was ideologically extreme. But she could have been a potted plant and still won. She was just a receptacle for liberal anger, like Teslas are (or people wearing MAGA hats in subways).
Kenosha/Racine didn’t deliver for Schimel. This area has been turning red lately, but it went blue again. They’ll go red again with the right candidate and in November. Again, a turnout problem. Other areas were unexpectedly weak as well, including the Fox Valley. The WOW counties didn’t all deliver.
Washington County did a great job with turnout (thanks to its very effective County Executive Josh Schoemann and Clerk Ashley Reichert, as well as the grassroots there.) The Schoemann/Reichert expanded voting hours model should be adopted by every conservative county in the state. Waukesha County underperformed and didn’t do what Brad needed.
A lot of Trump’s voters just won’t come out to vote for anyone but him. That’s the central challenge for conservatives: Activating his voting base for anyone else.
I’m reminded of a logger who was interviewed after the 2018 midterms in western Wisconsin. He had voted for two people in his entire life: Trump and the sheriff, who was his neighbor. He didn’t even vote for Republican Gov. Scott Walker. He didn’t have time, he said. Too busy cutting down lumber in the words. Somehow the message that Trump’s agenda was on the line this time didn’t get people like that to the polls.
In November, people were more angry at immigration and the economy. That election was about issues. The Trump-deranged voters turned out this April, which is always a lower turnout election. In so doing, they also sank the extremely bright and affable Brittany Kinser, whose DPI bid was torpedoed by Schimel’s reverse coattails.
One silver lining: Gov. Tony Evers didn’t have a great night. Two of his appointees to judgeships were rejected in Waukesha County, Jill Underly won without his endorsement, and he was MIA in the Crawford race. Another silver lining: the Voter ID constitutional amendment passed. Wisconsin can be so schizoid. At the same time, it elected a woman who literally filed a lawsuit to overturn Voter ID. And some school referendums went down in flames.
The Schimel loss is reminiscent of the 2018 Wisconsin midterms when a blue turnout wave swamped Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Schimel’s AG re-election bid. That was a reaction election to the first Trump victory.
Angry Democrats saw the midterms as their first big chance to fight back in the wake of Trump’s surprise 2016 victory, and it cost Walker and Schimel their seats. Democrats turned out at presidential levels that year (marijuana referendums helped), and Republicans, satiated by Trump’s surprise victory, turned out at midterm levels.
The Schimel defeat is also reminiscent of Dan Kelly’s big loss for state Supreme Court, when the left unleashed its fury over the overturning of Roe vs. Wade.
Look. We didn’t see the margin of this victory coming. The enthusiasm in our neck of the woods made us think Schimel had a chance. Some prominent people behind the scenes were expressing worry in the days leading up to the election, though. They must have been seeing something in the internal polls. Maybe that’s why Trump didn’t come here.
The left effectively nationalized the race. They want control of Congress, and they didn’t even hide this. To hell with the court’s integrity and citizen confidence in it. It’s just a partisan body now, a cudgel in Democrats’ war against the president. But their nationalizing the race also brought big money in for Schimel.
There will be a lot of infighting. Turning Point and the state GOP will point fingers at each other. People will call for other people’s heads on a pike. Enough.
The truth is that a lot of people worked hard. The truth is that it didn’t work anyway. The truth is that neither “side” accomplished what it wanted to. Maybe start working together?
The confusing and frustrating part is that the money was there this time. Elon Musk ensured that.
The door knockers were there this time. Groups all over the state and from all over the country descended on Wisconsin to help get out the vote. So many people and groups contributed.
Yes, the conservative movement is fractured big time right now, but everyone on that side of the equation was united behind Schimel.
There was also a decent candidate this time. Schimel was a likable guy with name ID and public safety cred. He was a good enough candidate to win it. He wasn’t like the esoteric Kelly, refusing to take the gloves off.
In the end, it turns out that big money and a decent candidate are no antidotes to voter anger or Trump voters who sit home.
That’s it in a nutshell.
The problem is this has enormous consequences.
The liberal majority will likely overreach. That’s what tends to happen with absolute power, and they’re giddy on victory punch and likely to overplay their hands. Then the pendulum will swing back. However, the damage they can and almost certainly will inflict – on control of Congress, on the state of Wisconsin – is going to be incalculable. These are no longer justices. They are politicians in robes. They might be giddy and smiling ear-to-ear, but they won by shamelessly politicizing their court in a way that has shattered citizen confidence, and they just don’t care.
There’s no sugarcoating that.
