CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – In purple states like Wisconsin, are elections decided by turnout or by candidates who can appeal to moderates and independents?
For my fellow Republicans, this is not a rhetorical question. There’s a right and a wrong answer. If you answered it’s a about turnout, the ‘you’re wrong’ buzzer just sounded. Democrats have mastered the voter turnout game. Early voting, absentee voting, dropoxes, democracy in the park. One party is running circles around the other in getting its voters to participate. When the polls open on Election Day, the GOP candidate is already trailing by hundreds of thousands of votes. Republicans will be at a huge disadvantage if that’s what the playing field looks like.
The problem is that too often Republicans pick candidates with little or no appeal to moderate voters – the kinds who swing an election in a state that’s almost evenly divided. In the state supreme court race earlier this month, Dan Kelly is a conservative law geek and was easily painted as such by his opponents. He’d lost by 100,000 votes in an earlier supreme court election. His appeal to moderates: zero. He lost even worse in a race where abortion was the key issue. Jennifer Dorrow, who Kelly defeated in the GOP primary, was a much more appealing candidate to moderate women. Republicans didn’t learn their lesson from the Governor’s race, where Rebecca Kleefisch, who had perfect conservative credentials, was defeated by Tim Michels, a candidate who spent a lot of time at his out-of-state homes in New York and Connecticut.
As Republican losses pile up – trust me on this. Candidates matter. Candidates who can’t pull some moderate swing votes cannot win in Wisconsin. And for good measure, Presidential candidate Donald Trump has a large group of ardent supporters who will support only him. But Trump’s appeal to moderates in zero. And so are the candidates that he endorses. Put those candidates on the ballot in the general election, and I’ll vote for them. After all, I’m a conservative. But moderates won’t. And they’ll lose.
Chris Conley
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