Photo via tammybaldwin.com
Tammy Baldwin
Tammy Baldwin
Running for reelection in one of the crucial battleground states that could decide the presidential election, Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin has been a national leader in fighting former President Trump’s criminal assault on American democracy throughout his presidency and ever since.
In a closely divided state in which most elections statewide are rarely won by more than a few percentage points, Baldwin soundly defeated four-time elected Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson in 2012 by six points and defeated a lesser-known state legislator six years later by eleven.
Here’s what may surprise anyone around the country who only knows Baldwin was the first openly gay U.S. senator ever to win election. One of the reasons for Baldwin’s big election victories is she attracts far more support from small towns and rural areas of the state than many other Democrats do.
Remarkable Strengths
That’s right. Rural Wisconsin voters, the most devoted, ruby red, extreme rightwing Republicans who are most likely to believe Trump’s endless stream of lies accusing Democrats of vote fraud and every other crime he’s ever committed, are twice as likely to vote for Baldwin than for other state Democrats.
I’ll explain that in a minute, but Baldwin’s remarkable political strengths are clearly valuable assets this year in reaching otherwise unreachable voters with the unified campaign messages of Baldwin and Biden or any other Democratic presidential nominee about the terrifying consequences of Trump being allowed to carry out his explicit threats to overthrow democracy and the criminal justice system that has convicted him of 34 felonies.
The party debate over whether it will be President Biden or someone else needs to end quickly so Democrats can unite behind the most crucial campaign in their history to prevent Trump from carrying out his explicit threats to destroy democracy.
The other reason Baldwin and democracy have a political advantage in the state is the only other double-digit Wisconsin election victories in recent decades other than Baldwin’s in 2018 were the elections of three progressive state Supreme Court justices in 2018, 2020 and 2023 defeating rightwing candidates to throw out a corrupt Trumped-up Republican court majority. Call me a cockeyed optimist, but that sure looks like a positive political trend favoring Democrats.
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Former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Washington political reporter Craig Gilbert, now an analyst for Marquette University Law School’s statewide polling operation, documented what has made Baldwin such a dominant political force.
Baldwin may not ever win a majority of rural voters, but she greatly reduces the opposition vote for Democrats in the most Republican areas of the state. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, an extreme rightwing election denier and Putin propagandist, defeated Democratic opponents in rural Wisconsin by 23 percentage points in 2010 and 25 points in 2016. Two years after each election, Baldwin’s losing margin was half that in those same rural areas—11 points in 2012 and 12 points in 2018.
Helping Farms, Small Businesses
That’s because Baldwin supports farming communities with rational economic policies helping small businesses and family farms rather than inflaming racial and religious bigotry like Trump and Johnson do. Patriotic small-town conservatives aren’t nearly as eager to blow up American democracy as Trump thinks. They like Fourth of July parades.
Baldwin already was leading a national movement to end Trump’s destruction of America’s legal system after his Supreme Court appointees abolished religious freedom by allowing politicians to impose their own religious beliefs about abortion on women living in each state.
Now restoring the constitutional rights of women to make their own decisions about their own bodies and lives that existed for a half-century will be the major issue in every national election until democracy returns.
But destruction of women’s rights aren’t the only rightwing policies creating serious problems in both rural and urban communities. Trump’s racist pledge to deport millions of immigrants would devastate Wisconsin’s dairy industry desperate for immigrant labor to replace all their departing farm kids.
After routing one of the most popular Republican governors in recent history in her first race, Baldwin has attracted far weaker challengers. Her latest is Eric Hovde, a multimillionaire banker with no other political qualifications who originally moved to Madison to spend millions to run against her in 2012. He was just another primary also-ran. Now Hovde’s back in town to try again.
Mr. California
Despite maintaining a state residence since, Hovde’s mostly lived in his $7 million mansion in Laguna Beach, Cal., overlooking the Pacific Ocean. He was named one of the most influential people in Orange County for three years running.
Hovde scrambled to catch up with all of Michael Gableman’s fraudulent election claims in Wisconsin by resurrecting one of the most absurd, that corrupt nursing home residents stole the 2020 election for Biden. “Almost nobody in a nursing home is at a point to vote,” Hovde said.
The elderly now join the long list of Americans Republicans want to prevent from voting. Trump would prefer simply to abolish democracy. After his multiple felony conviction, Trump denounced America’s legal system as rigged against him.
No argument there from Biden and Baldwin. That’s the way the American legal system is supposed to work in a democracy when you commit multiple felonies.