Wisconsin Primary: Trump-Backed Sociopath Defeats Pence-Backed Sociopath!

This some real batshit shit right here.

At long last, we have a conclusion to the race to the bottom that was Wisconsin's 2022 Republican gubernatorial primary: The Trump-backed sociopath has defeated the Pence-backed sociopath.

There was no good possible result to this race, so it is what it is. Both candidates have abhorrent views and neither should be allowed to run a McDonald's, much less a state.

To illustrate this fact, the last week saw Donald Trump and Mike Pence drop in to support different candidates. Pence's pick was Rebecca Kleefisch, former lieutenant governor under Scott Walker. Trump's guy was Tim Michels, some random rich dude who has never held public office and spent millions of dollars of his own money on his campaign.

In the end, Trumpism won the primary. Unofficial totals show Michels winning 47 percent of the GOP primary vote and Kleefisch with 42 percent. A third candidate, state Rep. Tim Rathmun, came in at six percent. His sole campaign issue had been his strong desire to illegally decertify the 2020 election.

Now, with both Trump and establishment Republican support, Michels will take on Democratic Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers in November in an election that could not be more important for the people of Wisconsin (right, and the country).

Trump v. Pence, Wisconsin style

(it comes with a side of beer and cheese curds)

Before we get too far, here's the thing: Kleefisch and Michels's actual policy proposals are mostly equally terrible. Both support things like state control of the female reproductive system, voter suppression, abolishing the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, and doing everything they can to create single-party Republican rule.

For months, Rebecca Kleefisch was the easy frontrunner for the Republican nod. She declared last fall, has GOP cred from working with that asshole Scott Walker, and had the support of the state party. However, despite her extremist positions, Kleefisch just wasn't crazy enough for MAGA Republicans. That's where Tim Michels stepped in.

One of the main points of contention between Kleefisch and Michels was who hates democracy the most. Since 2020, Wisconsin Republicans have been at odds over just how much they should embrace things like failed coups and attempts to overturn elections. Kleefisch's ideas about how to subvert democracy simply weren't good enough for Trump, who jumped in to support Michels.

Apparently Trump also has his panties in a bunch over Kleefisch because he was unhappy with ... wait for it ... who her daughter took to homecoming ... three years ago.

Yes, seriously. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel   reported, 

In a private meeting with construction executive Tim Michels in April, Trump complained about a 2019 tweet by Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch in which she posted a picture of her daughter with the son of Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn.

The tweet showed the two teenagers dressed up in formal wear and headed to a high school homecoming event. A political ally then retweeted the post, suggesting it was the beginning of a "Hagedorn-Kleefisch political dynasty in Wisconsin."

Hagedorn, who ran as a conservative, has been criticized heavily by Republicans after being a swing vote in high-profile decisions involving pandemic-related restrictions and Trump's efforts to overturn Wisconsin's last presidential election. In response, Trump attacked the Wisconsin jurist on Twitter in late 2020.

"Trump was aware of these tweets" with the photo of Kleefisch and Hagedorn's children, said a source who was in the room during the Michels meeting. "And it bothered him."

To Kleefisch, however, supporting fascism is more important than things like a former president personally attacking her child. Tuesday night, she got in line and urged her supporters to get behind Michels in November.

But wait, there's more!

Trump's meddling in Wisconsin wasn't just about state-level races. At his rally for Michels last week, Trump not only attacked Kleefisch as "the handpicked candidate of a failed establishment," he also took care to attack other state Republicans he feels are insufficiently supportive of his anti-democracy movement.

Who gives enough fealty to Dear Deposed Leader Don has become a heated issue in the Wisconsin GOP. A number of Republicans in the Legislature who refused to support Trump's Big Lie retired rather than seek reelection. And even some of the worst of the worst have been attacked by Trump and his cult fanatics for not hating democracy quite enough.

That brings us to Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly. Vos is exactly who you think he is. His politics make it more than clear that he hates women, labor unions, working class people, immigrants, people of color, and every Wisconsin city with a Black population. After the 2020 election, Vos even agreed with Trump's verifiably false contentions about voter fraud. But that simply wasn't enough for Trump, who got it in his head that Wisconsin should "decertify" its electoral votes — something that all serious legal experts have said, again and again, is both impossible and illegal. When Vos refused to endorse breaking the law in a futile attempt to overturn democracy, he became Trump's enemy.

Terrified of Trump, Vos created a $680,000 slush fund for MAGA extremist and former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman to "audit" the 2020 election. This "audit" has consisted mostly of Gableman paying himself $11k per month to violate state open records laws and do things like fly to My Pillow and Mar-a-Lago conspiracy conferences.

As Dane County Judge Valerie Bailey-Rhin put it , “We have absolutely found out from this case there was absolutely no evidence of election fraud.” Rather, taxpayers have been paying Gableman an exorbitant salary “to sit in the New Berlin library to learn about election law because he knows nothing about election law.”

Vos's failure of the Trump loyalty test wasn't just a problem for Trump; it was also apparently not enough for Gableman, who joined Trump at last week's rally to rant about none other than Robin Vos. Vos, one of the most powerful politicians in the state, was expected to cruise to reelection. But after Trump got involved, it turned into a real race.

Vos's opponent, Adam Steen, was virtually unknown and based his entire campaign on Vos not being quite Trumpy enough. It got weird, with Steen and a handful of supporters celebrating the day before the election by creating Robin Vos effigies to sling into a field with a giant slingshot .

“Hours before polls open, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ primary challenger Adam Steen is hosting a “toss Vos” event in rural Racine County. Steen is endorsed by former President Trump. Vos has continually said the results of the 2020 election cannot be decertified.”

— Matt Smith (@Matt Smith) 1659993513 

Gableman, presumably unhappy with the $11k/month salary Vos had hooked him up with, joined in.

In the end, Vos narrowly defeated Steen, with 5,084 votes to Steen's 4,824.

And, umm, we'll see how things go for Gableman's Vos-funded escapades from here. After his win, Vos called Gableman "an embarrassment to the state of Wisconsin" and indicated he would be convening the GOP legislative caucus to talk about whether he should keep receiving an absurd taxpayer-paid salary to scream about conspiracy theories.

So ... yeah

Wisconsin could not be more important this November. The race getting the most national attention is Ron Johnson's US Senate seat, which is understandable since Johnson is a barely sentient lump of curdled milk. But all of the statewide races are just as important.

Wisconsin is a purple state, but thanks to extreme gerrymandering, the legislature is bright red, and will be for the foreseeable future. Thanks to this gerrymandering, the real race in many state Senate and Assembly districts is in the Republican primary. (In 2018, Democrats won 53 percent of the statewide vote for State Assembly but won just 36 percent of the seats — and the gerrymandering has only gotten worse since then.) This results in an extremist legislature that doesn't even have to pretend to care about the will of the people they govern.

For example, nearly 70 percent of Wisconsinites support abortion rights — but when Governor Evers called the Legislature into special session to address our 1849 abortion ban, the Legislature refused to even hold hearings on adding exceptions for rape or the health of the mother.

And people with female reproductive systems won't be the only ones at risk if Michels wins in November. Like Ruth Conniff writes for the Wisconsin Examiner ,

If Michels manages to defeat Gov. Tony Evers, he could sign Republican bills remaking Wisconsin’s election laws and empowering the Legislature to override the will of the people. There will be no check on extremism, and, given Trump’s show of strength in the primary, politicians who know better might feel more pressure to go along.

If Evers wins, there will still be a stopgap. And Trump’s mounting legal troubles may also diminish his power and the urge of Republican establishment types to keep feeding conspiracy theories.

The Wisconsin Legislature is already one of the most extremist in the country. If Evers doesn't win and preserve his veto power, this state is fucked.

You know what that means ...

 Giphy 

[ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / More Journal Sentinel / WI Examiner / More Examiner ]

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