Democrats charting a political comeback Party leaders absorb lessons from defeat
In the wake of a disastrous election for Wisconsin Democrats, Dane County Executive Joe Parisi said he has been thinking long and hard about what went wrong. And he keeps coming back to this: His family’s bluecollar roots and the long-ago conversations he had with his father about politics.
“I asked my dad, why are we Democrats? And he said Democrats are for the little guy and Republicans are for the fat cats,” Parisi said. Parisi and other Democrats are concerned that message isn’t getting through to voters.
“Sometimes I fear in the manner we approach, as Democrats, our campaigns and interacting with people, we’ve lost touch with the core of who we are,” he said.
Across the state, Democrats are trying to come to grips with their defeat and chart a comeback.
When Donald Trump became the first Republican presidential nominee since Ronald Reagan in 1984 to win Wisconsin, he didn’t just crack the Democrats’ vaunted blue wall
— he smashed it.
Powered by white working-class voters who abandoned Democrats in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Iowa, Trump won Wisconsin by some 22,000 votes over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The win may have been narrow, but Trump’s triumph completed what amounts to an eight-year Republican take down of the state Democratic Party.
In 2008, Wisconsin Democrats were riding high, holding the governor’s office, the Legislature, two U.S. Senate seats and five of the state’s
eight congressional seats.
Since then, Democrats have been wiped out at the statehouse, losing their legislative majorities and three straight governor’s races to Scott Walker, including the 2012 recall.
In the past eight years, state Democrats have lost two seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, one in the U.S. Senate, five in the state Senate and 17 in the state Assembly.
Aside from Secretary of State Doug La Follette, who was stripped of most of his limited powers and banished by Republicans to a shared office in the basement of the state Capitol, the only statewide Democratic officeholder is U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
And when she faces the
voters in 2018, Baldwin will be a top GOP target.
The rural vote
Democrats are trying to absorb lessons from their latest defeat.
State Democratic Party Chairwoman Martha Laning said voters, especially in the state’s rural areas, connected with Trump.
“He was exhibiting anger: ‘I can fix all this,’ ” she said. By comparison, Laning said even though Clinton had better plans for the working class, her slogan of “Stronger Together” did not resonate with voters.
“We have to do a better job of really listening to the people out in the rural areas of Wisconsin,” she said.
Those voters turned on Democrats. Among the Democratic electoral casualties were incumbents Sen. Julie Lassa of Stevens Point and Rep. Chris Danou of Trempealeau.
Democrat Mandy Wright of Wausau had high hopes that she could regain an Assembly seat she lost by fewer than 100 votes in 2014. This time, in a race for the open seat, Wright lost by nearly 2,000 votes to Republican Patrick Snyder.
“We just got caught in the wave like everyone else,” she said. “We just didn’t see it coming.”
“How sustainable is
this Trump wave? That’s a really big question,” Wright added. “I also think we as Democrats need to find our voters and make sure they vote. There are so many people who agree with our policies who don’t actually vote.
We need to recruit them and keep them engaged.”
While Democrats suffered outstate, they also were hurt by a drop off in voters in Milwaukee County and a steeper plunge among AfricanAmerican voters in the city of Milwaukee.
“People have to have a reason to come out and vote,” said state Rep. Mandela Barnes (D-Milwaukee), who will leave the Assembly in January.
Barnes said the party has to “put two pieces of the puzzle together” to reach white workingclass voters and black inner city voters.
Changes at the top
Some changes are already taking place. Kory Kozloski announced recently that he was planning to step down as executive director of the state Democratic Party.
Laning moved quickly to replace him with Jason Sidener, an official with AFSCME Council 32 in Madison.
The move links the party more directly to organized labor, which has suffered its own severe losses in Wisconsin in recent years.
U.S. Rep. Ron Kind of La Crosse said Democrats need to dig in to find out why their voters didn’t go to the polls.
“I think Democrats
need to get back to good old-fashioned shoe leather, start showing up and listening, especially in the parts of the state being left behind in this economic recovery,” Kind said.
Democrats have been stymied ever since Republicans drew new legislative and congressional boundaries in 2011 that favored the GOP.
Last month, a panel of three federal judges ruled the lines were unconstitutional. The state plans to appeal.
Democrats, though, are hopeful that the outcome will go their way, enabling them to chip away at their minority status in 2018. A change would help Democrats recruit more candidates if they see there is a fighting chance, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said.
“Eight years ago, they were writing the obituaries on the Republican Party,” Barrett said. “It’s one thing to write the obituaries it’s another thing to publish. A lot can change in a short period of time.”
Democratic pollster Paul Maslin, who is based in Madison, said as the party rebuilds here and elsewhere it should look to the template created by independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose populist agenda nearly upended Clinton in the primaries.
“We have to have a clear economic message,” Maslin said. “We have to brand, not just Walker and his Legislature as more pro corporate and pro wealthy, but we have to get the upper hand on education and not simply get into a battle over unions.
The bottom line: We
have to be the ones offering a credible sense of hope for people’s future, and we haven’t done that.”
Democrats are quickly turning their attention to the 2018 races, where they’ll try to defend Baldwin’s seat and make a run for the governor. It’s unclear if Walker will run for a third term.
But if he doesn’t, the Republicans have a deep bench of potential candidates.
Democrats could have a big field, but there is not a single candidate who jumps out.
Among those who are believed to be mulling runs are Parisi, who said he’s focused on his spring re-election bid as Dane County executive; state Rep. Dana Wachs of Eau Claire; former state Sen. Tim Cullen of Janesville; state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout of Alma; and Jefferson County District Attorney Susan Happ.
Sidener, the party’s new executive director, and his wife, political consultant Katie Belanger, are very close to Happ, who ran unsuccessfully for attorney general two years ago.
Wachs, meanwhile, has hired former Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate and Rebecca Cooke, a fundraiser. And Cullen has been meeting with activists in the Milwaukee area to discuss a possible bid, insiders said last week.
Happ, re-elected in November to a third, fouryear term as DA, said Democrats need to reconnect with voters.
“What we saw this last cycle is that everywhere in Wisconsin folks are saying, ‘What about me?’ People are worried about the quality of their kids’ education, paying for college, paying their mortgage,” Happ said. “Too many folks are working hard and they’re still struggling to pay the bills. The party is going to have to look at ways to connect with those voters and try to address and respond to their concerns.”