In just a few days, Republican delegates from around the country will descend on Wisconsin for the party’s national convention. They’re expected to formally nominate former President Donald Trump.
But Republicans will have to do more than that to win this swing state, where presidential elections have been decided by a sliver of the electorate. “Wisconsin has had 12 races in the last 24 years that have been decided by less than 30,000 votes,” says Wisconsin GOP chair Brian Schimming. “And that's in a state of less than 6 million people. So, we have a long history of really close races.”
Geography meets Math
“The state has remained so strongly competitive,” says Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School poll. “Because Republican growth in the rural areas has somewhat offset the weakening of Republicans in the suburban areas. And Democrats have gained a little bit of an advantage in their core areas because they're driving up their majorities in the cities of Milwaukee and Madison, and also some of the college towns around the state.”
Part of the GOP’s strategy this election involves countering Democratic outreach in cities. As part of “Operation Connecting Milwaukee,” 23-year-old Milwaukee County GOP chair Hilario Deleon is using door knocking and tabling at community events to dig up people who may lean conservative but don’t vote often. He’s also trying to connect with independents, libertarians and “disaffected liberals.”
At a Cinco de Mayo event in Milwaukee, celebrating Mexico’s victory in the Battle of Puebla in 1862, Deleon stood at a table draped in red, with a Trump sign leaning against it, front and center. For him, it’s a perfect place to engage people about politics.
“How you doin’ folks? How ya doin?” Deleon calls out to a few people walking by. But the passerby tend to stay away. “What's wrong? Let's have a conversation,” Deleon beckons. “No?”
Deleon does chat with several voters who pledge their support to Trump or grab a yard sign. But it’s not easy. In 2020, around 70% of Milwaukee’s vote went to Joe Biden. Despite that, Deleon thinks outreach like this can make inroads for Trump.
“For a long time Republicans have kind of left [Milwaukee] alone and thought it's a lost cause. Well, now they're starting to wake up and realize that if you lose by less than cities like Milwaukee, you can take the rest of the state because the rest of the state will carry for President Trump.”
His efforts garnered the support of a national conservative advocacy organization called Turning Point Action. Deleon says Turning Point gave the Milwaukee County GOP $12,000 “for our continued friendship and investment into building grassroots outreach efforts for our County Party.”
NPR reports that Turning Point Action “rose out of concerns about free speech on college campuses, [and] has grown into an unapologetically pro-Trump machine.” It has dedicated millions of dollars to ground-game efforts in Wisconsin, says Bill McCoshen, a Wisconsin Republican strategist. It’s working the state, along with the Trump campaign and state Republican party, and other outside groups like Americans for Prosperity and Moms for Liberty.
Bill McCoshen hopes these entities are focused on the counties that he says really move the needle. “There’s about 10 counties that represent about 50% of the vote statewide,” McCoshen says. “That's where they ought to concentrate the majority of their resources.”
Suburbs are the swingiest
While rural areas may again reliably carry for former President Trump, Republicans are also focusing on slippage in places like the conservative-leaning Milwaukee suburbs. Pollster Franklin says some voters there turned away from Trump in 2020, and have also been alienated from the conservative platform on issues like abortion.
Alex Leykin is the chair of the Ozaukee County GOP. It’s a suburban county of Milwaukee that leans Republican but has seen an erosion of support for Republicans in recent elections.
“The county used to be about 60% Republican,” says Leykin. “In the latest elections, we've been closer to 53%.And, so, all we need to do to win the state of Wisconsin is get that to about 57%. If we can make that small change in Ozaukee, we win Wisconsin.”
When Biden met Trump for the first presidential debate of the season in late June, Ozaukee Republicans held a watch party. With a lemon and soda water in hand, John Richmond, a retired financial advisor, says he’s a door knocking volunteer for the county party.
He explains they’re using data to find people who don't vote often and let them know how important it is to vote. “And rather than get into kind of argumentative situations, my approach to this is just, let's give each candidate a report card. And you can start with Afghanistan, and then work through the Chinese balloon. And you can go on from policies … southern border, for sure.”
In Wisconsin, as elsewhere, Republicans have been focusing on immigration and the economy,” says Republican strategist McCoshen. “Clearly, the border is one of the top three issues on all national polls. I think that's a significant advantage for Trump over Biden. The economy is also one of the top two issues. Again, I think that's an advantage for Trump over Biden. So, the issue matrix is shaping up in his favor.”
In the latest NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll on the presidential race, Trump was seen as stronger on those issues than Biden.
Republicans are also wielding the Second Amendment to win votes, says Cheryl Rebholz. She’s on the executive board of the Ozaukee County GOP and opened the first indoor shooting range in the county, which she calls “female and family-friendly.” She says she’s volunteered to set up voter registrations at her gun range, “because we have the data that a lot of Second Amendment gun owners do not vote in the state of Wisconsin,” she says.
Chasing, protecting, banking, swamping, an emphasis on early voting and election observing
And then there’s the issue of getting voters to vote early. Leykin is using a Turning Point method called “Chase the Vote.” Conservatives aim to contact voters who have already received mail-in ballots to get them to mark their ballots and vote.
That’s in line with the Wisconsin GOP’s Bank Your Vote (now rebranded as Swamp the Vote) effort, says Brian Schimming, the GOP party chair. “So every single time I go out and talk or do media interviews,” Schimming says, “I talk about early vote, I talk about Republicans not waiting to be 100,000 votes down on election day and try to make it up in 13 hours.”
“I don't have to match the Democrats vote-for-vote on early vote,” Schimming says. He says Republicans just need to do incrementally better on early voting, so they can focus their resources on new and persuadable voters “and Joe Biden loses the election.”
Leykin, the GOP party chair in Ozaukee County, says he’s occasionally seeing hiccups in the plan to get core Republican voters to vote early. He notes, for some, it’s become a reticence to vote at all. “There’s a small sliver of the base voters that has a hesitancy to vote because they believe that the cheating has overcome their vote,” Leykin says. “So why bother going to vote? So, it's a small number of people.”
Former President Donald Trump has consistently spread false messages about voting, like that he won the Wisconsin 2020 presidential race, and that elections are "rigged" in ways that make it easy to illegally vote. This is not the case.
Leykin says aside from those reticent voters, “There's a certain number of voters who are not political, but they're conservative and will vote Republican if they were to get involved.” Leykin says the GOP is approaching both types of voters.
While Wisconsin Republicans are pushing early absentee voting and mail-in voting, the national party’s platform calls for “same day voting.”
RNC chairman Michael Whatley described that part of the GOP platform as “aspirational.”
“What we want to do right now for this election cycle is work within the laws in all 50 states, and make sure that we deliver a resounding vote for President Trump.”
RNC co-chair Lara Trump says Republicans are “playing the hand we’re dealt,” and looking for 100,000 poll watchers around the country and 5,000 in Wisconsin alone.
“[Voting is] not just a day anymore, we can get back to that day,” Trump says, but notes that the law in Wisconsin right now is an 'election season.' “So, come [the] first day of early voting, which is September 19 here in the state of Wisconsin, we want people in place, we want poll watchers, we want poll workers, we want legal experts on the ground, so we're not waiting days, weeks or months later to address a problem.”
Whatley and Lara Trump were in town for a “Protect the Vote” gathering in Waukesha after which RNC staff conducted an election observer training for those who attended.
Republicans also take issue with the recent decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to expand access to absentee ballot drop boxes ahead of the November election. When asked why the GOP thinks it’s more risky to drop off an absentee ballot in one of the boxes, rather than mailing it in, when there are seals to prevent tampering as well as a chain of custody, Schimming responds. “Our attitude on drop boxes is that it offers another opportunity for potential mischief. And that's why we will be observing drop boxes where we can.”
Here and here you can find information on voting absentee in Wisconsin and in the city of Milwaukee.
A place for Trump campaign donations
The Trump campaign and the RNC recently received tens of millions of dollars in donations after Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in the New York hush money case. Whatley says any money that comes to Wisconsin will be for one of two goals.
“We are going to get out the vote and we're going to protect the ballot,” he says. “Every single dollar that we raise is going to be spent on those two critical core missions.”
One obstacle for both parties when it comes to getting out the vote, says Schimming, is that Wisconsin actually is one of the toughest states in the country to get voter data. “Number one, we don't have party registration,” says Schimming. “But we also stopped about 15, 20 years ago having people pick up either a Republican or Democrat primary ballot.”
“So when I talk to state chairs around the country,” says Schimming, “they're all kind of shaking their heads going ‘how do you do that anyway?’ Because there are a lot of states that have party ID. So, it costs a lot more money, you have to invest more in data. And so as I say, whether we're doing it or the coalition groups are doing it, getting to certain [voting groups] is a very, very high priority for us.”
Beyond data, McCoshen, the GOP strategist, notes that Democrats have been ahead in fundraising in the state—in part because of a 2015 change in campaign finance laws drafted by a Republican legislature and signed by a Republican governor. It allows unlimited contributions to state parties that are then recycled and given directly to candidates or to build field offices.
“[Republicans] have been trying for some time and haven't been able to find the right fundraiser to expose that loophole and do what Democrats have done now for several cycles,” says McCoshen. “I'll give credit to Ben Winkler [chair of the Wisconsin Democrats, who has] been extraordinary at raising money. Most of it comes from out of state, a large portion comes from California, some from New York, some from Massachusetts, but it's millions of dollars … so they've mastered that loophole in Wisconsin election law, Republicans have yet to do that.”
McCoshen says Republicans hope a significant amount of the Trump campaign’s influx in donations ends up in Wisconsin. “To build those field staff, to open those offices across the state, to complement what's already going on with Turning Point or Americans for Prosperity, who have boots on the ground,” he says.
McCoshen says both of those organizations have dozens and dozens of paid people on the ground today in Wisconsin. “But we're going to need more, we're going to need those Trump resources to come here to help us on the ground to make sure that not only are we IDing our voters but getting them to the polls.”
