Wisconsin primaries that went off the rails
This isn’t the first time things have gotten weird
The 2020 Wisconsin presidential primary has been one of the most unusual in the state’s history. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, there have been no big campaign rallies or door-to-door politicking; instead, with the need for social distancing at its most crucial, we’re voting by mail — and by drive-through.
But Wisconsin has had unusual presidential primaries before — from the beginning, in fact.
Presidential primaries were created to give voters more direct control over picking candidates. In Wisconsin, the spring elections every four years also gave voters some unexpected moments.
1912: What Fighting Bob wrought
In 1912, the first year presidential preference primaries were held, just 13 states had them. Although Wisconsin was leader in the movement, the Badger State wasn’t the first; North Dakota and New York sneaked in ahead, holding their primaries in March. Wisconsin’s inaugural presidential primary election was held April 2 — it’s been the first Tuesday in April pretty much ever since — and Republicans picked Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette, the progressive Wisconsin senator who, not coincidentally, had launched the state’s election effort in the first place. But La Follette, who had also won the vote in North Dakota, never won another primary that year. Theodore Roosevelt won nine of the 13 primaries that year, but GOP incumbent William Howard Taft, who won only two, received the Republican nomination.
1940: A comedian ‘wins’ Wisconsin
In 1940, Gracie Allen, who played the ditsy, non-sequitur-cracking companion (and real-life wife) of comedian George Burns, announced on radio’s “Burns and Allen Show” that she was running for president as a candidate for the “Surprise Party.”
The day after the 1940 Wisconsin Primary — Democrat incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt and Republican Thomas Dewey won easily — the Milwaukee Sentinel buried a small story on the bottom of its front page with the headline, “Gracie for President; 63 Voters So Ballot.” It turned out that in Campbellsport in Fond du Lac County, 63 people wrote in Allen for president.
A week later, on the radio, Allen claimed victory.
“What do you think about how I upset them at the Wisconsin primaries last week?” Allen asked Burns on their program. “If you saw the front page of the Milwaukee Sentinel, you know it was a landslide for me.”
George: “A landslide for you?” Gracie: “I got 63 votes!” George: “63 votes, out of millions of voters in Wisconsin?”
Gracie: “Oh, that was in only one copy of the paper. And that paper has a circulation of 187,000. 187,000 times 63 … just imagine me getting 63 votes in Wisconsin and I wasn’t even there?”
1960: The ready-for-prime-time primary
The Democratic primary held in Wisconsin in 1960 pitted Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey, the dogged campaigner from the neighboring state of Minnesota, against Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy, who easily defeated Humphrey in the first primary that year in
New Hampshire. Although Kennedy led in several early polls, Humphrey was expected to make a strong showing. Instead, JFK beat HHH, cementing his status as Democratic front-runner.
The Wisconsin primary also was the first to be followed by a squad of cameramen — some from the big television networks, others from a crew of filmmakers shooting a documentary on the election. The movie that resulted, 1960’s “Primary,” is one of the first important cinema-vérité documentaries, made up solely of the type of on-the-scene footage that’s now standard in documentaries (and a lot of reality TV).
1964: Wisconsin makes George Wallace a national candidate
In 1963, when he was inaugurated as governor of Alabama, George Wallace declared that he was for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” To show that his whitesupremacist/states-rights position wasn’t just a Deep South thing, Wallace in 1964 announced he was running for the Democratic nomination for president against incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson.
And the first place Wallace ran outside the South was Wisconsin, where he drew hundreds of supporters — and hundreds of protesters, some attempting to mock Wallace by arriving in blackface. Per past practice, Johnson wasn’t formally running in the primary race, but when it looked like Wallace was gaining traction, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, John Reynolds, joined the race as a stand-in for LBJ. Reynolds won, but Wallace collected 260,000 votes — 30% of all Democratic votes cast in the state, drawing heavily from white ethnic neighborhoods in Milwaukee, and showing his message had an appeal north of the Mason-Dixon line.
He ran again in 1968, as a third-party candidate, and in 1972 and 1976. In 1972, Wallace was on the campaign trail when he was paralyzed after being shot in an assassination attempt by Milwaukee native Arthur Bremer.
1968: Paul Newman for president
In some presidential elections, there are candidates who really bring out the star power. In 1968, that was Eugene McCarthy, a Minnesota senator who challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson. Fueled by McCarthy’s stand against the Vietnam War, his campaign attracted some of Hollywood’s best and brightest stars — some of whom came to Wisconsin to rally voters.
The main attraction was actor Paul Newman, who made a dozen stops around the state speaking on behalf of McCarthy and drawing huge crowds wherever he went.
Not that the voters were confused about why they were there: “What do you like about McCarthy?” a Milwaukee Journal reporter asked a woman at a Newman appearance on Mitchell Street.
“Paul Newman,” she answered “as she pretended to sink to her knees.”
McCarthy handily won in Wisconsin, though it had as much to do with Johnson announcing days before the primary vote that he was not seeking reelection, and that McCarthy’s other rivals (Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey) were not on the ballot in the state.
1976: In a mean year, Carter’s ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’ moment
During many of the Wisconsin primaries over the past few decades, the races largely have already been decided elsewhere (thanks a lot, Super Tuesday). But in 1976, the Democratic frontrunner, Jimmy Carter, really needed a win to firm up his grip on the nomination. And his biggest remaining rival, Morris Udall, had made an all-out push to win Wisconsin to put the brakes on the Carter bandwagon.
The 1976 Democratic primary in Wisconsin had more than its share of ugliness. While campaigning in Wisconsin, Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a Democrat from Washington, was spit on at the Madison airport by a protester who targeted the presidential wannabe because Jackson had been considered a “hawk” on the Vietnam War. At a campaign stop in Madison, George Wallace, who in 1972 was shot and paralyzed by Milwaukee gunman Arthur Bremer, was met by a group of about a dozen wheelchairpushing hecklers, some of whom were wearing masks with Bremer’s face.
For Carter, it looked like things might get ugly, too. The race was so close that the Milwaukee Sentinel reported in its first edition that Udall had won, only to change its tune in later editions when the final count pushed Wisconsin back into the win column for the future president.
The day after the primary, someone gave Carter a copy of the Sentinel’s early front page, and Carter held it up for photographers — just as Harry Truman had done with the Chicago Tribune’s 1948 election headline “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
1992: The ‘comeback kid’ hangs on
The race for the Democratic nomination for president in 1992 was a slugfest, until it wasn’t. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who had declared himself “the comeback kid” after winning in New Hampshire two months before, was leading on points by the time the candidates got to Wisconsin in April. But it wasn’t pretty: While one of his toughest rivals, Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, had suspended his campaign, California Gov. Jerry Brown was still in there swinging, coming off a string of victories elsewhere.
Polls before the April 7 vote predicted a close contest, and it was: Clinton collected 37% of the vote in Wisconsin, while Brown had 34%. Tsongas, who had stopped actively campaigning in the state weeks earlier, ended up with nearly 22% of the vote. Clinton also beat Brown in the New York primary that same day (so did Tsongas), and the onetwo punch was enough. Brown, who had won five previous primaries in 1992, never won another, and a battered Clinton won the nomination.
2016: ‘We have a choice, a real choice’
Going into the 2016 Wisconsin primaries, both parties’ front-runners were looking to close the deal in the Badger State. It didn’t happen that way.
Hillary Clinton lost to Bernie Sanders, who got 57% of the Democratic votes. The Donald Trump juggernaut was slowed, if briefly, by Ted Cruz, who, buoyed by support from Gov. Scott Walker, won with 48% of the vote to Trump’s 35%. “Tonight is a turning point; it is a rallying cry,” Cruz told a crowd at American Serb Memorial Hall in his victory speech. “Wisconsin has lit a candle guiding the way forward.”
Not so much. After Cruz won the next two primaries, Trump swept the rest of the way, with Cruz dropping out in May. Sanders continued to have strong showings into June, before conceding the race to Clinton just before the convention. For the first time since 1964, Wisconsin primary voters didn’t pick the eventual nominee for either party.