Over the past few weeks, Biden has added new lines focused on Johnson. “And then along comes Ron Johnson of Wisconsin,” he’ll say, often prompting boos from the crowd. “God love him.”
He points to Johnson’s calls for repealing the Affordable Care Act and his proposal that federal programs must be reauthorized annually. “He thinks waiting five years — every five years is too long to wait. Not a joke. These are actually in writing, okay?” Biden said. “He wants to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every single year in every budget.”
Johnson quickly took issue with that characterization. “Democrats may have broken a record for the number of lies told about me in one day,” Johnson wrote on Twitter following Biden’s remarks. “I want to save Social Security, Medicare and Veterans benefits. The greatest threat to these programs is the massive, out-of-control deficit spending enacted by Biden and Dems in Congress.”
You may have noticed that the polls in Wisconsin have tightened quite a bit:
Now I could dissect everyone of these polls and tell you what the issue is. Like the AARP poll had a bigger focus and larger sample on voters over the age of 55 and predominantly from rural, white areas of Wisconsin. But that would take up too much time. But here’s why it’s tightened:
On Sept. 2, the National Republican Senatorial Committee began airing a $1.2 million advertisement online and television attack ad against Mandela Barnes, the Democratic for Senate candidate in Wisconsin, with powerful footage that was likely painful for many people in the state: a car plowing into a crowd gathered for a Christmas parade in Waukesha last winter. Six people died and 62 were injured.
The ad’s exploitation of the tragedy was in service of attacking Barnes for his stance on eliminating cash bail for certain crimes — falsely. And the slow-motion images of the suspect in the case, Darrell Brooks, who is Black, in an ad attacking Barnes, who is also Black, outraged some Democrats who likened the spot to George H.W. Bush’s infamous Willie Horton ad in 1988.
“They are taking a horrific tragedy and incident, they want to tie things together and say that’s Mandela Barnes, and that is his campaign to create these racist ideas in the minds of voters,” said Zachary Mueller, the political director at America’s Voice, a pro-immigration advocacy group.
The ad heavily implies that Brooks could not have committed the parade massacre if he wasn’t bailed out of jail for a previous crime ― and attacks Barnes’ cash bail plan, which he sponsored in 2016 when he was a state legislator.
But there are several factual issues with that line of attack.
Brooks was arrested weeks prior to the incident for hitting his girlfriend with the same vehicle he allegedly used in the parade attack during a domestic dispute. He was charged with a second-degree felony, recklessly endangering safety, and other related charges. Two days before the Christmas parade attack, Brooks was released after posting $1,000 bail.
For one, Barnes’ cash bail plan was never enacted in the state and had no impact on the bail a judge set for Brooks ― although Barnes supports ending cash bail nationally. The district attorney overseeing the case later admitted $1,000 was too low; local news outlets have reported that the DA’s office didn’t have full access to Brook’s file and due to heavy caseloads asked for $1,000 bail without having seen it.
Moreover, the 2016 bill Barnes sponsored would require a judge to hold a perpetrator in jail if they found clear evidence that the defendant would cause more harm to the community. On Barnes’ page, the campaign site asserts there was evidence that Brooks would have still been a danger to the community after he was legally barred from contacting his mother before the Christmas attack and the incident with his girlfriend, and therefore should not have been eligible to avoid cash bail.
Here’s some more context:
In an ad featuring urban graffiti and pairing Barnes with two other lawmakers of color — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) — the National Republican Senatorial Committee says Barnes is a “defund-the-police Democrat.” (Barnes does not support defunding the police.)
A separate ad from the NRSC says Barnes would join “the socialist Squad” — a reference to a small group of progressive and left-wing House Democrats that includes Ocasio-Cortez, Omar and other lawmakers of color.
Another ad, from a super PAC funded by two GOP megadonors, seems to suggest that Barnes was present at a crime scene.
In Pennsylvania, the senate campaign of celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz has aired an ad featuring a gravel-voiced narrator declaring, “John Fetterman wants to release convicted murderers from prison.” The ad then shows an image of Fetterman alongside a parade of criminals, as the narrator recites grisly details of what they’ve done.
Democrats are confident that both men can fend off the attacks using a combination of their records and personal charisma. Victories in the two states would make it nearly impossible for the GOP to win control of the 50-50 Senate.
“I think what you see are candidates that are really talking to a majority of people in their state — not some sort of fringe, not just some small demographic,” said Natalia Salgado, the director of federal affairs for the Working Families Party, a progressive group.
“This idea of going after these folks by attributing a label to them, as if they are somehow fringe and off the deep end, is really the sort of worst case of political projection from MAGA Republicans that I’ve ever seen,” she continued, referring to former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Barnes and Fetterman are far from the only Democrats facing a barrage of crime ads. In the week of Sept. 10-17, a full 48% of the GOP’s digital advertising in battleground states dealt with the topic, according to data compiled by Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC . Just 36% dealt with the economy.
Guy Cecil, the chair of Priorities USA, said the Republican shift comes after evidence that focusing on the economy wasn’t working for the party — forcing it to return to a tired-and-trusted strategy.
“This is not a new approach for the Republican Party,” Cecil said. “It happens every single election: race-baiting, fearmongering, divisive tactics.”
It says a lot that Republicans can’t stay on message when it comes to inflation so they have to resort to crime. But Democratic groups aren’t letting Johnson own this argument:
Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund is pouring $1 million into new television ads urging Wisconsin voters to oust Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), accusing him of enabling rising crime and gun violence, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: The attack on Johnson is one of the most prominent examples of Democrats flipping the script against Republicans on the issue of crime — which has become a potent GOP attack in the final stretch of the midterms — by tying it to gun safety.
What we're watching: "Mass shootings, school shootings and violent crime are on the rise, and Ron Johnson is making things worse," a narrator says in the new 30-second ad, which is slated to appear in the Madison and Milwaukee media markets.
- "He abandoned law enforcement, voting against funding the police, preventing local departments from hiring more officers, but supported flooding our streets with guns."
- The new ad buy from Everytown — the gun safety group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — marks the first time the group has spent in a U.S. Senate race this cycle, with more to follow.
- It comes on top of the approximately $2 million the group has already spent during the midterm campaign.
Neither is Barnes:
After weeks of television ad attacks from U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson charging he is “dangerously liberal on crime,” Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, on Monday called into question the GOP senator’s own record on crime.
Speaking to reporters after an event with senior voters in Madison, Barnes contended “Ron Johnson has done nothing to keep our communities safe.”
“When he had a chance to promote and support public safety, he voted against the American Rescue Plan,” Barnes said, adding that funds received from that multitrillion dollar COVID-19 relief bill — passed by Democrats last year — allowed Gov. Tony Evers to invest over $100 million into community safety and violence prevention programs as well as to support law enforcement agencies.
The lieutenant governor wasn’t finished, saying Johnson “could not care less about public safety.”
“If he did, he wouldn't have supported an insurrection that left 140 officers injured,” Barnes said, noting Johnson’s involvement to try and deliver a slate of false electors to Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021.
Finally, Barnes said, “people's lives are literally at risk, and Ron Johnson is only going to play politics and do the work to serve himself and his wealthy donors — $215 million in tax breaks to two donors while he voted against funding that will make our community safer. That's who he is.”
By the way, here’s something I want to point out from the Fox News poll:
Preservation of American democracy (24%), inflation (20%), and abortion (16%) are the most important issues to voters in the Senate race.
Voters prioritizing inflation prefer Johnson by a wide margin, while Barnes is the pick among abortion voters and those focusing on protecting U.S. democracy.
On abortion, while more voters are angry (46%) than happy (30%) about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, those happy (91%) with that decision are a touch more likely to say they’re certain to vote this year than those who are angry about it (87%).
Speaking of preservation of Democracy:
But what if Johnson ends up losing anyway? What if the two-term incumbent’s record catches up with him and Wisconsin voters decide to make a change? Will Johnson concede? The Wisconsin State Journal reported over the weekend:
To the Democrats at the top of the ticket this November, the answer is simple: Win or lose, Gov. Tony Evers and U.S. Senate candidate Mandela Barnes say, they will accept the results. But for their Republican opponents — Tim Michels and Ron Johnson — the question is more fraught, with neither willing to say unconditionally whether he would agree to the outcome once the results are certified.
Asked if the senator would concede in the event of a defeat, a campaign spokesperson for Johnson said, “It is certainly his hope that he can.”
That’s not much of an answer. As Republican antipathy toward democracy intensifies, a senator should be able to do more than just hope that he can accept election results.
And Democrats in Wisconsin have been hitting the campaign trail hard:
Watertown is a city of almost 24,000 about halfway between Milwaukee and Madison, far enough south in the state to still get fuzzy signals from Chicago radio stations, but far enough north that the leaves had already started turning—or so it seemed on this gray morning. The two counties it straddles—Jefferson and Dodge—went for Trump last cycle by 15 points and 31 points, respectively. It’s the kind of place where you might see, say, a FUCK JOE BIDEN flag flying over a house on the same block as a school. But there are still Democrats and independents here, and if canvassers could get a few more of them registered, convince a few more why voting isn’t a waste of time, and perhaps persuade a few undecideds or even sympathetic conservatives to go blue this cycle, the hours of sometimes fruitless walking would be worth it.
The idea wasn’t to give a sales pitch for the Democratic candidates; it was to get personal on the issues, and through conversation show how Democrats might be able to help. It wasn’t exactly campaigning at its most efficient, perhaps. But this “relational” approach was perhaps more effective—and certainly more earnest, an antidote of sorts to the cynicism and disillusionment that has been running through the country’s political bloodstream of late.
Present that morning were about a dozen volunteers, as well as two local candidates for office. One was Maureen McCarville, a National Guard veteran and former police commissioner now running for assembly in District 37, which 26-year-old Republican William Penterman has represented since winning a special election over the summer. The area had been red for a long time, she told me, but if there was ever a year to flip it, “This is going to be it,” in part because of Dobbs. The other candidate was Mike Van Someren, a 37-year-old attorney who played football at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and still has the build of an offensive lineman. He was heavily bearded and flannel-clad, with sandy hair sticking out the back of a faded Badgers hat. Raised in a blue-collar household in northwest Wisconsin, Van Someren was the first in his family to go to college and is now running as a “common sense guy” for Congress in the state’s fifth district, which covers several of Milwaukee’s deeply conservative northern suburbs and is currently represented by Republican Scott Fitzgerald, one of 147 GOP lawmakers who voted to overturn the 2020 election results. “I think we need somebody with Wisconsin values,” Van Someren told the gathered Democrats. “I want to see our government live up to what we espouse.”
Those present were frustrated by what their government leaders had been up to, especially that Saturday. The state Republican Party had recently released a printed mailer in which Barnes’s photo appeared to be darkened; volunteer Colleen Schulz, who has lived in the county for decades, had read about the mailer that morning in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and was eager to translate her anger into action. “It’s just disgusting,” she said of the mailer. A senior adviser to Johnson called the accusation of racism “absurd.”
Health and Democracy are on the ballot next year and we need to keep Wisconsin Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Mandela Barnes (D. WI) and his fellow Wisconsin Democrats campaigns:
Wisconsin Democratic Party
Minocqua Brewing Company SuperPAC
Tony Evers for Governor
Mandela Barnes for U.S. Senate
Brad Pfaff for Congress
Josh Kaul for Attorney General
Doug La Follete for Secretary of State
Aaron Richardson for Treasurer