Wisconsin Republicans really wanted to avoid a contentious Senate primary this year. They failed.
Operatives believe the bloody intra-party battle of 2012 contributed mightily to Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s win over popular former Gov. Tommy Thompson. Voters are headed to the polls on Tuesday, six years to the day after Thompson’s primary win.
This time around, only two candidates are duking it out for the Republican nomination to take on Baldwin: state Sen. Leah Vukmir and businessman Kevin Nicholson. Nicholson has more money, but Vukmir has the endorsement of the state party, which she secured easily back in May, earning access to the entire Wisconsin GOP infrastructure. The party’s stamp of approval seems to have helped Vukmir close the gap in polling over the summer, but the race looks tight either way. You can read my profile on Vukmir here, and my interviews with Nicholson here, here, and here.
From Reince Preibus to House Speaker Paul Ryan to Wisconsin’s first lady Tonette Walker, Vukmir has endorsements from a host of prominent Wisconsin Republicans. She’s long been an ally of Gov. Scott Walker, and campaigns hard on the work she did during the Act 10 protests of 2011.
Nicholson, on the other hand, is a decorated Marine veteran with an Ivy League business degree and career in corporate consulting. He’s also the former head of the College Democrats of America.
And that’s where the race has gotten heated: Vukmir’s camp has called Nicholson’s conservative credentials into question. In response, he’s compared himself to other former Democrats, like Ronald Reagan and President Trump, speaking candidly about what drove him away from the party and nudged him rightward, including his service overseas. He capitalized on the #WalkAway movement that sprung up on social media this summer, using it as an opportunity to tell more of his story, and to further address his parents’ headline-grabbing campaign contributions to Baldwin.
Nicholson has worked hard to cast Vukmir as a member of the “establishment.” Vukmir contends that Wisconsin’s GOP establishment works hand-in-glove with its grassroots army, the same people who’ve flipped the state’s branches of government red in under a decade and boosted Walker’s conservative agenda.
Thus, both candidates’ major line of attack against the other is personal, which has made for a tense race, to say the least. But it’s also made for an interesting Trump-era exploration of how GOP voters in a state that preferred Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in the primary, but now overwhelmingly approve of Trump, are responding to a battle that involves a former Democrat-turned businessman, and a Walker ally being cast as the “establishment.”
Both candidates have pledged to support whomever wins on Tuesday. If it’s Nicholson, the state party will have a bitter pill to swallow, and the transition will be bumpy. It won’t be easy for Team Vukmir, and ultimately the state GOP, to pretend they didn’t call his conservatism into question. It’ll also be an interesting test of that connection between the state party and the “grassroots,” given that the party chose Vukmir in convention by 70 percent in May.
If Vukmir wins, she’ll need to deal with the anti-establishment sentiments Nicholson stirred up against her— an especially potent line of attack in the Trump era. Earlier this month, Vukmir and Nicholson accused one another of not being sufficiently supportive of Trump during the primaries. That could be another hurdle for the nominee; Nicholson donated to Sen. Marco Rubio’s, R-Fla., campaign, and a tape surfaced of Vukmir saying Trump was “offensive to everyone.”
Baldwin is one of ten Democrats defending a Senate seat in a state Trump won, though in Wisconsin he prevailed by less than one percentage point. Though the primary may not have been as cordial as Republicans had hoped, the battle for Baldwin’s seat will be an expensive and hotly contested one no matter who wins on Tuesday.
