Tommy Washbush / Freepik
A purple car driving down the middle lane of a road.
Boring wins.
That’s what Tony Evers said on the night he defeated Republican Tim Michels to win a second term as governor. And the Evers Rule still applies.
Democrats are more likely than not to retain the governor’s office, even with Evers’ announcement that he won’t seek a third term. But they can’t do it with just anybody.
Wisconsin is a purple state and so a hard-left candidate just won’t cut it. Evers beat Scott Walker and then won a second term relatively easily precisely because he did not have an edgy image. He came off as decidedly moderate in temperament and so there was a sort of implied moderation in his policies. We could argue about whether or not he was truly a moderate (I don’t think he was), but because he was balanced against a Republican Legislature, ideology seldom really came into play. Mostly what Evers was able to do was say “no” to Republican extremist policies. He was never confronted with having to sign unpopular liberal legislation.
The Democrats are not so much a party as a collection of interest groups. The teachers union, other unions, the trial lawyers, LGBTQ activists, abortion rights activists, Black church leaders, environmentalists, etc. To be fair, until recently, the Republicans weren’t much different. Their candidates needed to pledge fealty to the NRA, anti-abortion activists, anti-tax organizations, Evangelical Christians and others. But they’ve streamlined. Now, pledging unquestioning loyalty to Donald Trump covers all those bases.
Democratic candidates still need to go through their checklist of groups, each of which is only interested in their narrow set of issues. And to make matters worse, interest groups tend to be dominated by those who feel most strongly about that particular cause. So they want to hear candidates take the most extreme positions on their issues — positions that usually don’t square up well with the voting public at large. So, before you know it, you’re Kamala Harris trying to explain (or avoid explaining) why you support taxpayer-funded sex change operations for prisoners.
Given that environment, a crowded Democratic primary could be a good or a bad thing. It could be bad because the candidate that might emerge could be the one who stitches together a critical mass of the liberal groups by taking the most extreme positions. That candidate would then face a tough fight in the general election even while 2026 should be a good year for the party out of the White House. (Or maybe it won’t be. More on that later.)
But, on the other hand, Evers himself navigated that gauntlet back in 2018 and came out of it all right. That was in part due to the fact that, after eight years of Scott Walker, Democrats just wanted to win and Evers looked to be the most electable of the eight candidates in the primary. He wasn’t exciting, but he looked like the best bet.
We’ll have to wait to see if Democrats are in the same kind of practical mood now, eight years later. But there are three things that give me cause for concern.
The first is that, if anything, the most liberal activists have taken an even stronger hold over the party. The reelection of Trump and the overturning of Roe v. Wade has further energized the activist base.
My second concern is that eight years of a Democratic governor who could only play defense may have put more Democrats in the mood for someone who promises to get active on a liberal agenda, whether it’s popular or not. That would be fueled by the notion that Democrats have a chance to take back one or both houses of the Legislature, which is possible, though still a long shot, even after fair maps were put in place.
And finally, Democrats may misinterpret the results of the last two state Supreme Court races where liberals won by hefty margins. The trouble with reading too much into those is that these were at least nominally nonpartisan races. Candidates didn’t have to fight the dreaded Democrat label. A Wall Street Journal poll that came out just within the past week found that 63% of voters had a negative view of the party, the worst rating since they started asking the question 35 years ago.
But wait, it gets worse. On almost every issue that actually moves voters, they prefer the Republicans — even while disagreeing with Trump. So, for example, on the big issue of the cost of living, voters disagree with Trump’s handling of it by a net 11%. But they prefer Congressional Republicans’ handling of inflation over Democrats by a net 10%. In other words, this is a warning sign that Democrats’ hope for a big comeback in the mid-terms may not be panning out. Voters don’t like Trump, but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to turn to Democrats.
In addition, those court races were both centered on abortion, an issue where Democrats enjoy a strong advantage. With that issue now decided by the court, it’s pretty much off the table, allowing Republican gubernatorial candidates to focus on other social issues on which the Democrats carry unpopular views.
But there is one way in which a crowded primary could work to produce a more electable general election candidate. If there was just one candidate who would carve out a moderate image, like Bill Clinton did in 1992, that might be enough to win the nomination over a half dozen others who play to the interest groups. That would mean standing up to the left in some dramatic fashion. In 1992 Clinton did it by criticising Sister Souljah, a Black hip-hop artist who had made some intemperate comments about race.
Candidates can easily find some opportunity to break loudly with the left, but moderates still lack infrastructure. Clinton was part of a whole movement, called the Democratic Leadership Council, designed to pull his party toward the center after three consecutive overwhelming losses in presidential elections by standard issue liberals. He had helped build the broader platform for his own candidacy.
I don’t see any similar moderate infrastructure in the party today. Sure, there are plenty of centrist think tanks, like Third Way, but I’m talking about fundraising and ground games — the nuts and bolts of getting elected. What makes all of those narrow interest groups powerful is that their support comes with money, volunteers and communication to their membership.
America is basically a center-right country and Wisconsin is a center-right state. So an unapologetic, hard-right candidate like Ron Johnson can win a statewide race three times, but his liberal counterpart, Tammy Baldwin, needs to run as a low-key moderate to win in the same state. Baldwin and Evers — both plenty liberal if you actually look at their records — have low-key, non-threatening personalities and mostly try to avoid unpopular hot button issues. In fact, in 2022, Evers ran 50,000 votes ahead of Mandela Barnes, who was challenging Johnson on the same ballot. Evers had his boring image while Barnes tried to run away from a much more progressive background. Evers won, Barnes lost.
We’ll have to see if any Democrat tries to fill the moderate lane. That would take some courage because you’d have to stand up to at least a few of the liberal interest groups that dominate the party. But it’s also the best chance to replace Evers with another Democrat in 2026.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
