THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 | POLITICO | 15They hate Donald Trump’s
tweets. They worry about his tem-
perament. They’re still uncomfort-
able with the name-calling.
But many voters in Milwaukee’s
Republican suburbs like his court
appointments. And they approve
of his stewardship of the economy.
How those suburban voters
square those feelings is likely to
determine the president’s fate in
Wisconsin, according to inter-
views with more than two dozen
organizers, operatives and party
leaders from both sides in a state
that proved crucial to Trump’s up-
set victory in 2016.
Few expect the three key coun-
ties that surround the state’s largest
city to vote Democratic next year.
But they say the level of enthusiasm
for Trump in Wisconsin’s so-called
WOW counties — Waukesha, Oza-
ukee and Washington — matters a
great deal in a state where three of
the past five presidential elections
were decided by less than 1 percent.
In the state’s political equation,
they serve as a conservative coun-
terweight to the big Democratic
margins traditionally delivered
by Milwaukee and Madison. Unless
that suburban GOP engine deliv-
ers its own blowout win for Trump
next year, it will be difficult for him
to capture the state a second time.
“For the president to win Wis-
consin again, he’s not going to have
the free ride he had last time. He’s
not going to have Hillary Clinton
sitting on her hands,” said Brandon
Scholz, former executive director
of the Wisconsin Republican Party.
“He’s going to have a completely
engaged opposition party on the
ground.”
Clinton famously never made it
to Wisconsin, where her failure to
campaign is widely believed to have
cost her a state that had not voted
Republican for president since 1984
— less than 23,000 votes ultimately
decided the contest.
Democrats are determined not to
make that tactical mistake again.
The national party pointedly placed
its nominating convention next
summer in Milwaukee — where a 19
percent drop in African American
turnout doomed Clinton’s chances
in 2016.
Locally, the party is attempting
to expand on Clinton’s anemic per-
formance in the WOW counties by
tapping into a vein of anti-Trump
sentiment that they say is palpable.
Democrats have had teams on the
ground organizing for months in
the suburbs.
“I know if we get 40 percent we
almost guarantee a Democrat a vic-
tory statewide,” Waukesha County
Democratic Party Chair Matt Lowe
said. “We’re seeing so many volun-
teers every day that I don’t think
40 percent is a total pipe dream.”
The Democratic optimism is in
part fueled by Trump’s under-
whelming 2016 performance in the
WOW counties, where he lagged
behind Mitt Romney’s 2012 pace.
Republicans there haven’t entirely
warmed to the president since then.
“It isn’t that the Republican Par-
ty is withering away in the WOW
counties, it was that they weren’t
particularly thrilled with Trump
and they showed it by not voting
for him,” said Charles Franklin, di-
rector of the Marquette Law School
poll. “Trump still struggles to get
more than 40 percent approval,
even in the WOW counties. It really
is an open question about whether
Republicans have come back to him
here.”
Democratic hopes are also col-
ored by last year’s toppling of GOP
Gov. Scott Walker and a Democratic
sweep of every statewide office — a
humbling defeat for what was once
one of the strongest state parties in
the country.
The debacle was emblematic of
the political havoc unleashed bythe Trump era, which hastened the
end of the one-time Wisconsin GOP
power triumvirate of Walker, for-
mer House Speaker Paul Ryan and
former Republican National Com-
mittee Chairman Reince Priebus.
Other pillars of the old guard
have also seen fit to leave the
scene: Suburban Milwaukee Rep.
Jim Sensenbrenner, the second-
longest-serving congressman in the
nation and an early Trump skeptic,
announced in early September he
would not run for reelection. At the
local level, activists and county
chairs, including in Waukesha
County, have also stepped aside.
Aaron Perry, a Waukesha al-
derman, said he grew so tired of
Trump and accompanying GOP
policies that in June he switched his
party affiliation from Republican
to Democrat.
“There comes a point where ev-
erybody has their own threshold of
how much they can take,” Perry
said. “We’re getting to the point
now where there’s no way he’s
gaining supporters. The only way
for Trump to go is down.”
Wisconsin GOP leaders recog-
nize the threat caused by the subur-
ban unrest. After working to mend
party rifts, they are confident the
leftward tack of the Democratic
field will be enough to unite sub-
urban Republicans behind the
president.
“It’s still a work in progress,” said
Waukesha County Executive Paul
Farrow, a longtime Republican.
“But I think the world of the Never
Trumpers and the Trump support-
ers are realizing they probably have
more in common than they have inthe past. There’s going to be some
angst, there’s going to be doubts.
But I always tell people: ‘never say
never,’ because you never know
what the future is going to hold.”
GOP strategist Brian Fahey said
he’s already seeing “less snip-
ing” on the ground. And, he says,
Republicans who might recoil at
Trump’s Twitter habits are now
slowly becoming persuaded to hold
their noses in favor of his position
on abortion, guns, immigration and
court appointments.
“They don’t like the Twitter,
they’re nervous about the tariffs
but they’re scared witless about
Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sand-
ers or Pete Buttigieg,” said Fahey,
himself a former Never Trumper.
“Nothing rallies a diverse group of
people like a common opponent.”
The Trump campaign, which
says it has invested heavily in
staffing in Wisconsin and in its
data program, contends internal
tracking data in the WOW coun-
ties shows a healthy level of sup-
port. According to the campaign,
Trump’s net favorability on the
economy was at plus 17.8 in Ozau-
kee County, plus 22.9 in Washing-
ton and plus 34.9 in Waukesha.
Local Republicans contend
they’re seeing signs of growing
Trump enthusiasm at county fairs
and bigger crowds at local organiz-
ing events.
“I hear less and less people com-
plaining about the tweets. People
want Trump yard signs now. Ev-
erybody is trying to get their hands
on anything Trump and you’re sold
out before your day is over,” said
Kathy Kiernan, chairman of the5th Congressional District GOP. “I
believe that the president has truly
won a lot of these people over.”
Animating these Republican vot-
ers is the fear that Democrats will
take the state and country even
further to the left.
“I think people are afraid of so-
cialism. In my circle of friends,
they know what a socialist coun-
try looks like and they don’t want
it,” Kiernan said. “That’s one thing
about President Trump, this man
truly loves this country and there’s
no doubt about that he loves this
country.”
But the heightened level of Dem-
ocratic enthusiasm across the state
means that every suburban GOP
skeptic that Trump fails to convert
is another vote that his campaign is
likely going to have to squeeze out
of rural Wisconsin — and it’s not
entirely clear how much more he
can run up the score there.
While Trump won 63 percent of
the state’s rural vote in 2016, that
support could shift if an economic
downturn hits an already precari-
ously perched agricultural sector
growing impatient with his trade
war.
Brian Reisinger, a GOP strate-
gist and longtime Walker adviser,
predicted Trump would easily carry
rural Wisconsin, saying it’s been an
area of Republican strength in the
state for several of the most recent
election cycles.
“Farmers and others are sup-
porting what the president is do-
ing with getting tough with China,”
Reisinger said. “They trust the
president to stick it to China the
way nobody has in the past.”BY NATASHA KORECKI
Why it will be hard for Trump to win Wisconsin again
Milwaukee’s
Republican suburbs
have never really
warmed up to him
SARA BURNETT/AP
The political havoc unleashed by the Trump era hastened the end of the one-time Wisconsin GOP power triumvirate of Gov. Scott Walker, former House
Speaker Paul Ryan and former RNC Chair Reince Priebus. “The only way for Trump to go is down,” said Aaron Perry, an alderman in Waukesha.“For the president to
win Wisconsin again,
he’s not going to have
the free ride he hadlast time. He’s not
going to have Hillary
Clinton sitting on her
hands. He’s going tohave a completely
engaged opposition
party on the ground.”
— Brandon Scholz
Former executive director of the
Wisconsin Republican Party