That is Swing State of the Union — a podcast all about Wisconsin and why it’s so vital to U.S. politics.
Wisconsin has been influencing nationwide coverage for greater than 100 years. On this podcast, we’ll discover the historical past of Wisconsin politics, what politics appears to be like like within the state at the moment, and what meaning for our future.
This podcast has some bold questions it is making an attempt to reply. Like, why is Wisconsin a swing state? What are the completely different cultural elements that form Wisconsin politics, and what can our politics right here educate us about the remainder of the nation?
To do this, we’ll be a big selection of matters by way of that lens. Like deindustrialization and unionization, polarization — each structural and private, and threats to voter rights in Wisconsin, amongst many different matters.
However this episode is all about why Wisconsin issues — each as a result of it is an election yr, and since Wisconsin has been predating nationwide political traits for over 100 years.
So why does Wisconsin matter? Nicely, the brief reply is — the Electoral Faculty.
Most of us have heard of the Electoral Faculty and have a primary understanding of what it’s: it is the system by way of which we elect our president. So, as a substitute of counting every individual’s vote and declaring a winner primarily based on the candidate that will get essentially the most votes, every state is apportioned various votes primarily based on the variety of U.S. representatives and senators from that state.
Which may really feel unnecessarily difficult and also you would not be alone in feeling that method. But it surely’s vital to recollect — the Electoral Faculty was created by the U.S. Structure and that founding doc is a monument to compromise. The founding fathers held vastly completely different beliefs and have been making an attempt to unite a war-torn nation of individuals.
From the very starting, there was large disagreement on the Electoral Faculty, however what’s possibly most stunning is that it is lasted this lengthy. Greater than two centuries later regardless of challenges to the system, large shifts in inhabitants, and tradition — the Electoral Faculty stays. And a few People marvel why their vote ought to imply much less primarily based on their location? Why ought to a voter in Wyoming have extra voting energy than a voter in California?
The setup additionally implies that conservatives in blue states and liberals in crimson states successfully do not have a voice in our presidential elections.
Which brings us again to Wisconsin, the place elections are routinely determined by a margin of lower than 1%. Though the state has comparatively few Electoral Faculty votes — simply 10 — the vote is so carefully contested that something might occur. And that is not frequent. Of the 50 U.S. States, solely seven are thought of swing states within the 2024 election, and Wisconsin is bound to be one of many closest.
In order that’s the brief reply. Now the lengthy one — Wisconsin issues not simply because it’s an election yr, however as a result of the state has traditionally mirrored and predated nationwide traits. Right here’s 100 years of historical past in 16 minutes.
The yr is 1911. It would nonetheless be one other three years earlier than the beginning of World Warfare I, and Germany and Russia are nonetheless dominated by monarchs. There are solely 46 states within the U.S. as Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona and New Mexico are nonetheless territories, and a 22-year-old Charlie Chaplin is simply getting began in vaudeville.
And in Wisconsin, a brand new thought was being tried for the primary time in America: the state revenue tax.
Beforehand, states primarily raised income by way of both tariffs, a tax on imported or exported items, and excise taxes, a tax on particular gadgets like alcohol, tobacco or sugar. The federal authorities did tax revenue briefly to pay for the Civil Warfare, however the tax was repealed quickly after and future makes an attempt have been dominated unconstitutional. The sixteenth Modification, which allowed the federal authorities to tax revenue, wasn’t ratified till 1913 — two years after Wisconsin had instituted its personal revenue tax.
Ringling Brothers, sure the carnival firm, was amongst those that lobbied in opposition to the tax, threatening to maneuver their headquarters out of their Baraboo, Wisconsin residence due to it.
However enterprise pursuits in Wisconsin didn’t maintain the political energy that they had in different states, as Wisconsin was led by a coalition of progressives and socialists, whose political base was largely made up of farmers and industrial laborers who didn’t maintain a lot sympathy for the enterprise class.
As John Gurda, Milwaukee creator and historian explains, Wisconsin’s Progressive Get together, led by “Fighting Bob” La Follette, was well-liked amongst rural farmers, as they have been seeking to take a stand in opposition to railroad corporations who exploited farmers’ want to move their items to market.
“They have been thought of type of these blood suckers, you understand, who have been simply bleeding farmers, particularly, dry. You already know, they tried to get their crops to market and the railroads actually held them up. So there was competitors on the lakeshore as a result of there have been so many ports. However the the monopolies that they had inland, it prices extra to ship grain from, say, Hudson in northwestern Wisconsin down in Milwaukee than it will from Milwaukee to Buffalo. So there was an actual type of an openness to railroad reform. And La Follette simply rode that, you understand, that was actually certainly one of his principal marketing campaign planks,” Gurda defined.
Whereas Progressives have been well-liked in rural areas, it was the Socialists who have been well-liked amongst city industrial labor. Like in lots of main American cities, Milwaukee’s industrial employees organized round poor working circumstances. Milwaukee employees shed blood for these beliefs.
We’ll study extra concerning the Milwaukee Socialists in later episodes.
However the revenue tax was right here to remain, each in Wisconsin and nationally. In 1932, in the course of the Nice Melancholy, Wisconsin Progressives have been the primary within the nation to institute state-funded unemployment insurance coverage. Two yr later, political scientists on the College of Wisconsin developed a plan for state-funded Social Safety.
By 1935, the Social Safety Act made these Wisconsin improvements nationwide legislation, they usually grew to become core pillars of the Democratic Get together’s “New Deal” coalition shaped underneath President Franklin Roosevelt.
Gurda mentioned, “The Socialist platform and quite a lot of it is rhetoric was co-opted by the Democrats. You already know, Social Safety in 1935 that was a socialist thought known as previous age insurance coverage.”
However a few decade later in 1946, political winds had shifted. World Warfare II had simply ended and the Soviet Union and the specter of international communism dominated American politics. In Wisconsin, the Progressive Get together was lifeless, and although the motion had grown out of the Republican Get together many years earlier, Wisconsin’s Socialists and Progressives have been defecting to the Democrats.
In the meantime, the Republican Get together was nominating a firebrand from Appleton, Wisconsin: Joseph McCarthy.
“They should not be known as Democrats, They need to be referred to correctly because the ‘Commiecrat Get together,'” McCarthy mentioned.
McCarthy had been a Democrat till two years earlier than this election, and although initially he was not as vocal about communism, by 1950 he had discovered his political area of interest. His identify grew to become synonymous with anti-communism, as he relentlessly hunted supposed communist brokers within the federal authorities.
His campaign and techniques, now often called “McCarthyism,” drew the ire of his colleagues within the Senate; in addition to U.S. Military Particular Counsel Joseph Welch — who claimed McCarthy recklessly accused members of the Military of being communist brokers, with out ever offering proof of espionage.
“You’ve got achieved sufficient. Have you ever no sense of decency, sir? In the end, have you ever left no sense of peace?,” Welch mentioned.
However McCarthy’s message resonated with Wisconsin voters, and he was reelected in 1952. In his second time period, he continued his rhetoric earlier than being censured in 1954 and dying in workplace three years later.
Within the decade after McCarthy’s demise, Wisconsin would, but once more, form nationwide legislation.
The Nice Migration had made its strategy to Milwaukee, and by 1967 the promise of unionized industrial labor had attracted greater than 80,000 Black folks primarily to Milwaukee’s north aspect.
Milwaukee’s south aspect, populated primarily by Polish immigrants and their households who got here to work within the metropolis’s factories across the flip of the twentieth century, have been brazenly hostile to Black folks and favored the segregated established order.
However as Milwaukee historian Reggie Jackson explains, Milwaukee correct and suburbs surrounding Milwaukee allowed covenants explicitly prohibiting the sale or rental of properties there to anybody who was not white.
“Sixteen of the 18 suburbs inside Milwaukee County used racial covenants for various years. These covenants have been written from the early 1900s by way of the Nineteen Fifties, even 10 years after the Supreme Court docket dominated that they have been unenforceable, folks continued to to put in writing them. They have been very efficient instruments in maintaining cities, cities, villages as white as doable, as a result of that was the aim of them, was to maintain folks of coloration out, they usually have been very, very efficient,” Jackson mentioned.
When Alabama governor and segregationist chief George Wallace visited the south aspect of Milwaukee in his 1964 marketing campaign for president, he obtained a heat welcome.
“And I need to say to you right here that I’m very grateful to you and there’ll all the time be a heat place in my coronary heart for the folks of Milwaukee and of Wisconsin. And as I mentioned the opposite evening, if I ever needed to go away Alabama, I will come to the state of Wisconsin,” Wallace mentioned.
However for 200 nights, anti-segregationists led by Milwaukee’s NAACP Youth Council marched throughout the town, together with the sixteenth Road Viaduct often called Milwaukee’s Mason-Dixon line, to protest segregation, regardless of the slurs, threats and violence that awaited them.
Among the many marchers was Vel Phillips, the primary Black alderperson and the primary girl alderperson in Milwaukee. She stored the strain on the in any other case all white, all male Frequent Council to go laws to outlaw racial discrimination in housing.
“No one is free till all people is free, and we intend to march, all of us, till we get simply among the primary freedoms which are ours,” Phillips mentioned.
Phillips first proposed a good housing invoice in Milwaukee in 1962 — she was the one vote in assist. Three years later, Wisconsin would signal its personal, watered-down model of a good housing invoice, that excluded the vast majority of the housing inventory in Milwaukee. In 1968 the federal Truthful Housing Act was handed in Congress, which mirrored Phillips’ preliminary proposal.
A newscast from that point: “The Civil Rights Act of 1968 included within the measure was a landmark open housing invoice, which, when totally efficient, would forbid discrimination in roughly 80% of all housing supplied for hire or on the market in america.
“Truthful housing for all, all human beings who dwell on this nation, is now part of the American lifestyle,” President Lyndon B. Johnson mentioned.
However whereas President Johnson and the Milwaukee marchers hailed the Truthful Housing Act for the victory it was, financial forces would quickly undermine its lasting materials impression.
Milwaukee, like industrial cities throughout Wisconsin and the nation, would quickly really feel the results of a altering economic system. Beginning within the Nineteen Seventies, deindustrialization, or the method of transitioning out of an industrial economic system, struck on the coronary heart of Milwaukee. Good-paying jobs that supported a Black center class throughout the metropolis left or have been eradicated altogether. On the identical time, many center class white Milwaukeeans moved to the suburbs, taking their tax {dollars} with them.
This left a metropolis that was hardly recognizable by the Nineteen Nineties. Reggie Jackson grew up in Milwaukee within the Nineteen Seventies and early ’80s, earlier than graduating highschool and becoming a member of the Navy. When he returned to the town a decade later within the early ’90s, he might hardly imagine what had occurred to his hometown.
“The Black median household revenue in 1970 was the seventh highest for Blacks wherever within the nation, and Black folks making equal about $50,000 in at the moment’s cash for household median revenue versus what the actual median revenue is at the moment is about $30,000 for a Black household — an enormous drop off within the situation of Blacks. And that is primarily due to the the nice household supporting wage jobs and manufacturing that introduced Black folks to Milwaukee have primarily disappeared and been changed by service sector jobs,” Jackson defined.
He continues, “So while you have a look at the expansion of jobs in Milwaukee, there’s been an enormous progress in low paying service sector jobs which have in lots of respects taken the place of family-supporting-wage manufacturing jobs that introduced, you understand, many individuals’s dad and mom and grandparents to Milwaukee from the Nineteen Forties by way of the Nineteen Seventies and early ’80s.”
We’ll return to the results of deindustrialization in Wisconsin in a later episode. However one thing else had additionally modified: the discourse.
Within the Nineteen Nineties, Wisconsin’s and the nation’s political winds had shifted again to the suitable. Conservative speak radio emerged as a dominating rhetorical pressure, personified by folks like Rush Limbaugh.
Charlie Sykes was there as this motion passed off in Wisconsin, internet hosting his personal conservative present on Milwaukee-area station WTMJ. Sykes believes the recognition of his present in Wisconsin, and the recognition of the speak radio format nationally, was resulting from conservatives feeling neglected of the nationwide dialog.
“Once I began speak radio was actually not a serious pressure. The Equity Doctrine had been repealed within the late Nineteen Eighties and AM radio was kind of like an deserted strip mall. No one was doing something there. And so when folks like Rush Limbaugh and others got here in, I do not assume anyone might have fairly seen what the trajectory was going to be. And I began in 1992-1993 and turning on the radio and listening to, you understand, conservative concepts taken significantly was like was like pouring water into parched earth as a result of that they had not been getting this,” Sykes mentioned.
Because the ’90s turned to the 2000s, and the 2010s, Sykes says he grew involved with the impact his medium was having on political discourse.
Sykes mentioned, “We had been so profitable in criticizing the bias of the mainstream media that we had succeeded in destroying the credibility of all the fact-based media, and it grew to become unimaginable to penetrate that and in consequence many conservatives had misplaced their immunity to unhealthy info. So, and I believe that you simply noticed this taking place in Wisconsin maybe earlier than, you understand, the remainder of the nation. The opposite pivot level in fact was, you understand, the the combat over Act 10, the place I believe the strains have been drawn way more intensely than they ever had been earlier than. I imply if you wish to have a look at an actual inflection level, it’s a must to return to 2010 and 2011, you understand, publish Tea Get together when in reality, you understand, quite a lot of the divisions that we have seen nationally have been vividly on show in Wisconsin and I used to be actually a part of that.”
As Sykes alludes to, he additionally succeeded in placing Wisconsin Republicans on the map once more.
In 2011, a century after Wisconsin’s Progressive and Socialist coalition made it the primary state to institute an revenue tax, Reince Priebus, a Wisconsin Republican, was chairman of the Republican Nationwide Committee.
Paul Ryan, a Republican U.S. consultant from Janesville, was a rising political star quickly to be tapped because the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2012.
And Gov. Scott Walker, a Wisconsin Republican, was within the nationwide highlight after passing Act 10, a landmark invoice that Walker claimed would minimize prices by banning public sector unions from collectively bargaining on something aside from wage will increase on the price of inflation. Fireplace and police unions could be the one exception to this ban.
In 100 years, Wisconsin had gone from passing a progressive revenue tax to slashing state budgets all whereas setting nationwide traits in Social Safety, anti-communist rhetoric, Civil Rights and mass media communication.
And issues have accelerated over the previous twenty years, as JR Ross has witnessed. Ross is a journalist and the editor of WisPolitics.com. He’s additionally an everyday contributor to WUWM.
Ross joins us now for an in-depth have a look at how politics has modified throughout his time protecting it within the state.
Pleasure Powers: How have you ever seen issues change over the past 24 years of protecting politics in Wisconsin?
JR Ross: Nicely, there are two issues. One is identical as what we have seen nationally — there’s been a realignment in Wisconsin similar to in every single place else, the place you’ve got seen the Democratic Get together get, you understand, higher and higher in city areas and enhancements suburban areas, whereas rural areas have gotten redder and suburban ones must be a powerful maintain for Republicans have gotten a bit weaker, which is, you understand, not distinctive to Wisconsin.
What has been distinctive is that we have been the attention of the storm for 13, 14 strong years. Now, I imply, we had large elections earlier than once I first received right here, you understand, 2008 Barack Obama successful the state main in February of that yr by an enormous quantity, that was a an enormous occasion, you understand, Obama successful large in ’08. That was large 2010, although type of started the ramping up of issues. So that you had Scott Walker successful the race for governor, Republicans sweeping each homes of Legislature, after which it started the race to courtroom and the race to partisanship. So within the race to partisanship, I imply Republicans drew new maps for the Legislature that helped them have majorities for the final 13 years, we have seen how that is performed out after which the courtroom, as Democrats stored shedding legislatively, they stored going to courtroom and placing issues on the market. And so it has been a relentless churn now for 13 years just about in Wisconsin, which is exclusive.
Sam Woods: Yeah. You talked about Wisconsin type of changing into the attention of the nationwide storm within the final 13 or 14 years, and I didn’t dwell in Wisconsin on the time, however from an out of doors perspective, it actually did appear that the 2010 gubernatorial election was a turning level in Wisconsin politics. How did this election form the present state of Wisconsin politics and kick off these 13, 14 years of that eye of that storm?
Ross: Nicely, wave years and each decade election yr — 2000, 2010, 2020 — these are unhealthy for the occasion shedding them since you get to attract the maps. Now in Wisconsin, historically we find yourself within the courts for our maps to be drawn, so oftentimes there wasn’t a wave, you understand, prefer it was a break up determination and the courts drew the maps. However in 2010, it had been a number of many years since a celebration received to attract the map and once they did that, it is a confluence of things. One, years and years in the past while you draw a map, you’d depend on information that was type of on paper. And I am not saying like paper and pencil train, however you did not have the instruments you have got at the moment and even again in 2011 to attract a map. The expertise has gotten so good you may slice and cube voters in ways in which they might have imagined years in the past to maximise partisan output now, and I do know there are people who find themselves outraged by the entire redistricting course of who really feel it is gerrymandered, etcetera.
I’ll inform you from my conversations within the Capitol through the years that redistricting is essentially the most partisan factor you are able to do within the Capitol that’s authorized. You’ll be able to’t increase cash whilst you’re sitting in your Capitol workplace. You’ll be able to’t ship political emails, however you may draw a map that may put your occasion in a extremely good place to win come the remainder of the last decade. And Republicans had that shot, they usually took benefit of it. And to be frank, if Democrats had gained in 2010, they might have drawn a map that was of their profit as properly. That they had all three levers of energy, they might have achieved it.
In truth, you may criticize Democrats for going again to 2009, that they had all three — the governor’s workplace, the Meeting and the Senate, they did not put in place a nonpartisan redistricting course of. They thought, ‘Hey, we’re coming off this large election with Barack Obama, we will be in fine condition for some time,’ after which issues type of turned. There was a backlash in opposition to Obamacare, the Tea Get together motion type of got here up, and issues modified. And Republicans took energy, after which it set the stage for all this stuff, I imply Act 10 was an enormous, defining second in Wisconsin’s political historical past, after which every little thing type of flowed from there.
You noticed the nationwide curiosity in Wisconsin ramp up. You noticed the affect of cash take off after which different issues have type of occurred over that point interval which have amplified issues. We’re simply, I all the time see if it occurs in Washington, it looks as if work its method right down to Wisconsin ultimately and different states. So the actually intense partisanship in Washington, DC, it is labored its method right here. Individuals who make extra noise, get extra consideration and may increase extra small greenback nations. All the pieces that’s taking place nationally is going on in Wisconsin and exacerbating these partisan riffs.
Powers: Partisanship is an enormous a part of this dialog, and one of many issues that we’re inside this podcast is each how state politics influences federal politics. However then, as you mentioned, how federal politics and rhetoric impression what’s taking place within the state. I would wish to take it to right here, and also you talked a bit bit about this, however the priorities of the Republican Get together right here in Wisconsin, what have these been over the past twenty years? And actually the final decade?
Ross: At one level, you understand, Republicans have been making an attempt to go for incremental change, you understand, I imply, Tommy Thompson actually attention-grabbing determine in Wisconsin politics, longest serving governor Wisconsin historical past, served 14 years. Within the early years of the Walker administrations, I would hear from Republicans like, ‘Man, that is far more aggressive than Tommy was,’ as a result of Tommy was coping with, at occasions, a break up Legislature. Folks type of seen Wisconsin as possibly rather less partisan. The strains weren’t as sharp, however as soon as Republicans type of went by way of that battle of Act 10, it felt just like the strains have been hardened. Like, ‘OK, we did this large big, daring factor, which angered lots of people, and we survived.’
Scott Walker, they tried to recall him. He not solely gained, he gained by a much bigger margin than what he gained the 2010 race by and have become a nationwide determine, that additionally gave him entry to a nationwide fundraising community. It modified issues. They started extra aggressive. I imply, they stored successful, in a part of the maps they drew. Proper to work. In order that they did Act 10 for public workers, impacting them in 2011. 2014, they got here again off these wins and ‘Hey, we’re going proper to work. ‘And that occurred within the 2015 session, they handed that invoice. Once more, no backlash.
If you do not have to fret about actually shedding a basic election or management, you may get extra aggressive and type of embolden them to to go and see what all they may do. And, you understand, large issues for Republicans for years Slicing taxes. We went from, once I first received right here in 2000, you understand, we have been all the time prime 5, prime 10 no less than, when it comes to the state native tax burden. Now we’re within the mid 20s, low 20s. Conversely, we have been all the time prime 5, prime 10 for training funding. We’re now in that 20ish vary, 22ish vary for training funding.
In order that they’ve modified issues in Wisconsin considerably and also you’re seeing type of Democrats, in any case these years, of this sort of like taking it on the chin, they now really feel like, ‘Hey, we have a brand new map, we have now an opportunity to exit and alter issues,’ that the tide has modified for them. The query is, can they get the suitable setting to benefit from these new strains and actually make a dent within the Republican majorities?
Woods: Nicely, on that subject of the Democratic Get together and and type of their their objectives, how would you describe the priorities of the Democratic Get together in Wisconsin over the past twenty years as all this was taking place on the Republican aspect?
Ross: To cease the change. I imply they needed to type of preserve issues the way in which they have been. They did not need to see Act 10 carried out. They did not need to see a 20 week ban on abortion carried out or proper to work or any of this stuff. They needed more cash into training. So they have been combating a shedding battle for a very long time. However then Gov. Evers received elected. That gave them a backstop to try to stem the tide of issues that for eight years, Republicans mainly had free vary for what they needed to do. Evers modified that. He, by the way in which, not too long ago issued his 188th veto of his 5 plus years in workplace. That is essentially the most in state historical past by any governor. He is the champ. That is an illustration of the type of push again to a Republican Legislature having a Democratic governor. Now the query is, can Democrats go from enjoying protection on a regular basis to being extra on offense?
That was JR Ross of WisPolitics.com, and that basically brings us to the place we are actually.
So once we ask “why does Wisconsin matter in presidential elections?” After all it’s partly as a result of state’s 10 electoral votes.
However as Phillip Rocco, a political scientist at Marquette College says, Wisconsin issues, not simply in election years, however as a result of what occurs in Wisconsin so usually goes nationwide.
“If we’re making an attempt to grasp why Wisconsin is a swing state or a state that’s seen as politically vital, I believe that there’s something to the concept that Wisconsin, by various political actors throughout the political spectrum, has been seen as a proving floor for brand new concepts in American political life. And it is arduous to grasp Wisconsin is a battleground state should you do not perceive what the battle is admittedly about,” Rocco mentioned.
Revenue tax. Unemployment insurance coverage. Social Safety. Anti-communism. Desegregated housing. Decentralized political media. All of them have Wisconsin roots.
Within the subsequent 9 episodes of Swing State of the Union, we’ll study why Wisconsin is a swing state, by way of the lens of state politics.
We’ll cowl Act 10 and its place within the bigger context of deindustrialization and union politics. We’ll cowl claims of election fraud, political polarization, cash in politics, the Republican Nationwide Conference that is coming to Milwaukee and way more, taking place proper right here in Wisconsin.
However subsequent week, we study the politics between Wisconsin and its largest metropolis and the way state and metropolis budgets work together and the urban-rural divide.
“I discover it unlucky that there are actually robust cultural divides between city and rural communities. Notably city and rural poor communities, there tends to be only a actual type of political and, maybe even, cultural rift,” Dimitri Topitzes mentioned.
Milwaukee vs. Wisconsin — on the subsequent episode of Swing State of the Union.
Swing State of the Union is produced by WUWM, Milwaukee NPR part of the NPR Podcast Community. Please subscribe to the Swing State of the Union podcast wherever you wish to pay attention.
