The Right now, Defined podcast is taking a deep dive into the most important themes of the 2024 election by the lens of seven battleground states. We’ve heard so removed from voters in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, and this week we flip to Wisconsin, the place rural voters might make the distinction.
With lower than a month till Election Day, Wisconsin Democrats are pouring time and power into elements of the state they routinely lose by double digits within the hope of reaching the agricultural voters who went solidly for Donald Trump within the final two presidential elections. All indicators point out that these voters will achieve this once more, however that hasn’t stopped Democrats from campaigning fiercely in rural districts to claw again as many citizens as they’ll.
In line with Rob Mentzer, the agricultural communities reporter for Wisconsin Public Radio, Democrats are clear-eyed about the truth that they virtually actually gained’t win in rural elements of Wisconsin. By narrowing the margins, although, they hope to “lose by much less” — and thus win statewide.
If that tactic succeeds, it will be an enormous deal. Although Wisconsin was lengthy a progressive stronghold, a wave of Republican assist within the early 2000s reworked it from a part of Democrats’ Midwestern “blue wall” right into a battleground state typically determined by razor-thin margins.
In 2020, Biden gained the state by simply over half a share level, thanks largely to excessive turnout in Madison, Milwaukee, and different cities. If Harris and incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who’s up for reelection, could make features with rural voters this time, it will increase their path to victory within the state.
Right now, Defined host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Mentzer about what he’s listening to from rural voters in north-central Wisconsin as Democrats make a play for his or her assist.
Beneath is an excerpt of their dialog, edited for size and readability. There’s rather more within the full podcast, so hearken to Right now, Defined wherever you get your podcasts, together with Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.
Can we simply speak actually rapidly about what Wisconsin appeared like, I don’t know, earlier than Donald Trump? It was a progressive place, proper?
Wisconsin has a very lengthy historical past of progressive politics. From the flip of the twentieth century, it was truly one of many birthplaces of the progressive motion. Robert La Follette was a populist governor, later US senator. He was beloved by the state’s farmers, by rural areas. And you may draw a straight line from that progressive motion in Wisconsin to loads of the New Deal laws and into trendy progressivism, for certain.
And what modified? Is it so simple as Donald Trump or is there extra to that story?
I believe that it goes again a bit bit additional than that. So in 2010, there was an enormous wave election for Republicans. And one of many Republicans elected that yr was Scott Walker, who turned Wisconsin’s governor. Some individuals will recall the very first thing he did in workplace was to introduce a invoice that primarily eliminated collective bargaining rights from most public unions — lecturers, authorities employees. And there was an enormous backlash to this. There have been weeks of protests within the state capital. However Republicans gained that battle. After which, as a result of 2010 was a redistricting yr, they used their trifecta energy to entrench these majorities within the legislature. Walker survived a recall election in 2012. He gained reelection in 2014. And that will get us to the Trump period in 2016.
Hillary Clinton famously didn’t go to Wisconsin throughout the 2016 marketing campaign. And he or she didn’t win Wisconsin on election evening in 2016.
Now, the explanations for which might be sophisticated. However I believe that manufacturing actually is an enormous a part of it. It’s one of many absolute pillars of Wisconsin’s financial system. There are loads of rural communities the place a paper mill or a window and door producer, a Harley Davidson plant, are the largest employers. They supply probably the most jobs. And there was an actual and a long-term decline in that share of producing jobs in Wisconsin that you would be able to hint way back to the Seventies all the way in which into the 2010s.
Some individuals completely blamed NAFTA for that or different free-trade agreements. These have been issues that President Invoice Clinton had signed into regulation, was an advocate for, and Hillary Clinton was related to, whereas Trump was vocally towards.
Additionally, within the 2010s, we noticed loads of consolidation of dairy farms, loads of closures of smaller farms. And I believe that these issues have been a part of the change in rural areas that voters reacted to.
Is that how Biden flips it again in 2020? As a result of he’s bought that Obama affiliation and he doesn’t have that NAFTA affiliation?
The election in 2020 appeared quite a bit just like the election in 2016 in Wisconsin. The agricultural vote got here out for Trump in enormous numbers. Larger than 2016. The one factor is that the vote in Madison and in different Democratic strongholds was a bit greater. Democrats gained floor within the suburbs in Wisconsin in 2020, and it put Biden excessive by about 20,000 votes in Wisconsin, which was sufficient, however which was lower than 1 p.c. However the type of rural base of Trump voters, they completely turned out.
Okay. So let’s speak about the place that leaves us this yr, in 2024, in only a few weeks now. It sounded such as you have been saying you’d anticipate Wisconsin to go for Trump once more out of your vista, is that proper?
Nicely, I’d actually anticipate that the a part of the state that I stay in to go for Trump once more. There’s no query about that, I don’t suppose. It’s price saying that Democrats this yr have put some huge cash and sources and volunteer time into rural Wisconsin.
And what are Democrats doing to type of shift the narrative in rural communities in Wisconsin, Rob? What are they doing to mobilize Democrats and to make new Democrats in these communities the place you’ve been hanging out?
Democrats have opened one thing like 50 area places of work across the state, together with greater than 30 in counties that Trump gained in 2020. They’re out knocking on doorways and doing junk mail and all the opposite type of marketing campaign outreach ways, together with much more in-person work than was the case 4 years in the past.
We’ve additionally seen how Kamala Harris is making an attempt to succeed in out to Republican voters straight. This month, she campaigned with Liz Cheney, a former member of Home Republican management. They did that occasion in Ripon, Wisconsin, which is the place the Republican Celebration was born within the nineteenth century. And it was explicitly understood as a solution to attain out to voters who think about themselves Republican however could also be open to voting for Harris.
After which there’s Harris’s vice presidential selection. Tim Walz talks about having rural roots, rising up on a farm in Nebraska. And he simply type of comes off as a rural man. I handed on a freeway in central Wisconsin a kind of big yard indicators that stated “Harris 2024,” and somebody had spray-painted “Tim Walz for VP” beneath it, I suppose as a solution to emphasize he’s additionally a part of the ticket. And I do hear from individuals in rural areas in Wisconsin who really feel like they join with Tim Walz, a hunter. He wears a camo cap and [he’s a] small-town soccer coach.
After which one different issue this yr is that for the primary time in additional than a decade, Wisconsin has new voting maps that truly do give Democrats an opportunity of taking again a majority in no less than one home of the state legislature. I believe that for certain has introduced some new consideration and extra power to Democratic organizing on the native degree.
So do you suppose it might work? Do you suppose Democrats might win again rural voters in Wisconsin?
Nicely, they may win again some of the agricultural voters, perhaps. The Democrats I talked to, their purpose is to lose by much less in these rural areas. So a kind of, Jim Davis, stated that they’re not even remotely pondering that they’re going to recover from 50 p.c in Taylor County. And so if they’ll get to 35 p.c in areas the place perhaps they’re fortunate to scrape 25 p.c, that may actually make a distinction in a state as shut as Wisconsin.
