WI-Gov: On Tuesday, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers defeated Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin president Mahlon Mitchell 42-16 to win the crowded Democratic primary to take on GOP Gov. Scott Walker.
Walker is facing his toughest race yet, but he and his allies start out with a massive financial advantage over Evers. They're making full use of it already: The state Republican Party announced Tuesday evening that they'd launched a $500,000 TV and digital ad buy arguing that Evers had failed to protect students in the classroom. Their spot claims that Evers knew that a teacher had viewed pornographic material at school and had made "sexual remarks about the bodies of middle school girls," but says Evers "sided with the union and refused to revoke the teacher’s license."
Republicans have long telegraphed that they planned to use this story to undermine Evers if he won the primary and even tested out a similar radio spot against him in October. Of course, it’s bogus: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel explains that Evers was hamstrung because, at the time of the incident, state law only allowed for a teacher’s license to be suspended over conduct that endangered "the health, safety, welfare or education" of a student.
In response to this case, Evers worked with Walker and the GOP-led legislature to toughen the law to allow suspensions for using school equipment to view pornography. Of course, Team Red will do whatever they can to portray Evers as reckless and weak before he can respond. For his part, Walker has spent months running positive ads, and he went up with a new one right after the primary.
Polling, meanwhile, has been pretty light here. A July survey from Marist gave Evers a huge 54-41 lead, which seemed too good to be true. By contrast, a Marquette poll from June had Walker ahead 48-44, while a PPP poll for Evers himself from May gave him a 49-45 lead on Walker. However, Walker himself told his supporters just days before the primary that he might start out trailing in the polls, so he might also be seeing numbers showing him in bad shape (or he could just be trying to scare donors into action).
In any case, even if Evers is ahead, his challenge will be to withstand the GOP's money onslaught until he can refill his campaign coffers or outside groups can come to his aid. For now, Daily Kos Elections rates this race as Lean Republican.