Is the Wisconsin Republican Party in Trouble?
February 12th, 2024
On Saturday, one of the Republican Party’s rising stars, Mike Gallagher, decided to not run for re-election. Only in his fourth term, Gallagher was already seen as a candidate for future leadership, gaining the chairmanship of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. This announcement came out of the blue, only days after he drew the wrath of the MAGA Republicans for voting against the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It failed by a single vote.
With a little over $4M in the bank, I highly doubt that we’ve seen the last of him. He passed on a Senate run against Tammy Baldwin earlier this year as well as a gubernatorial bid in 2022. He would be a formidable adversary should he opt to run for governor in 2026 or Senate in 2028 (assuming Ron Johnson retires). Nonetheless, Democrats see this as a district to challenge the GOP in, despite not fielding a candidate in 2022.
Photo credit: WPR
There are now only two statewide elected Republicans in Wisconsin: the highly polarizing and Trump acolyte Senator Ron Johnson and the State Treasurer John Leiber, who won by about a point and a half in 2022. Considering the Republican domination in statewide offices in 2018, owning all of them except Tammy Baldwin’s Senate and Doug LaFollette’s Secretary of State office, this has been a very fast decline.
The Wisconsin Republican Party seems to be experiencing the chaos and fundraising woes of other state parties. While the Wisconsin Republican Party is not in the same near-bankruptcy status as others, they only have a million dollars in the bank. The Wisconsin Democratic Party has double that.
Photo credit: The New Republic
Recent polling hasn’t done much to give Wisconsin Republicans much hope, either. In speaking with Dr. Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law Poll, he stated, “Legislative approval fell 6 points to 34% while disapproval rose 1 point to 58%. That is the lowest approval for the legislature since 2019.”
Governor Evers’s approval rating dropped to 51% in the poll but so did his disapproval rate (46%), where Speaker Robin Vos’s approval rating dropped to a staggering 17%. While 57% say the state is on the wrong track, it was 62% in November.
To answer the question, yes, the Wisconsin Republican Party is in trouble. It does not have its historic cash advantage at this point, the cracks between MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans are starting to show, and their leaders are disapproved of. This does not mean that they are out of the fight in the slightest. Wisconsin Democrats need to gear up in a major way to flip the Assembly and a couple of Congressional Districts. All in all, I’d rather be the Wisconsin Democrats.