PREVIEW: Wisconsin Democratic State Convention

LA CROSSE, Wis. (WBAY) - Wisconsin Democrats are holding their state convention this weekend in La Crosse. It comes about a month after state Republicans convened in Middleton.

Jason Zimmerman covered the Republican gathering and will be in La Cross this weekend to cover the Democrats. In an interview earlier this week, Jason talked with Action 2 News at 4:30 anchor about what to expect.

Chris: You were at the Republican convention a couple of weeks ago. Why won’t we see the same type of drama this weekend?

Jason: Well, Chris, basically, Democrats do not endorse, and that was the focus of a lot of drama at the Republican Convention. You might remember Rebecca Kleefisch went for that endorsement. The other candidates asked for no endorsement eventually won out.

Democrats do not endorse. They want to let the voters make that decision when the primary rolls around in August. The big reason typically for the endorsement is party funding. The candidate that gets endorsed typically gets a lot of advertising on their behalf, and that’s the reason behind it for the Republicans again. Democrats, they have a different strategy in place.

All right, so the Democrats go into this weekend coming off the latest Marquette University law school poll -- we talked about it on Wednesday -- basically shows that Mandela Barnes and Alex Lasry a two-horse race, 25 to 21 points. But for the first time, the poll ran hypothetical races against incumbent Senator Ron Johnson. And three of the top four wind up beating Johnson in that hypothetical polling. Lasry was the only one who did not, but he was within the margin of error there. So how do you think that’s going to play at the convention this weekend?

Yeah it’s somewhat surprising. In fact, I mean, Lasry, has a way to go with convincing Democrat voters that he is the real deal. I’ve talked to a few behind the scenes, and I think the big thing that some people might have against Lasry is his money in out-of-state ties. Some Democrats feel he’s too close to Ron Johnson in similarities as a candidate.

It’s hard for a lot of working-class Democrats, possibly minorities, in Milwaukee or to say Hey, I’m going to trust this guy and get excited about his candidacy the way I would for Mandela Barnes or one of the other candidates that’s running.

I think that’s the real knock against Lasry. He’s going to have to show at the convention that he is different than Ron Johnson. When it comes to that big money, he’s spending a ton of money as well on the airwaves across the state. He’s not out there meeting with people the way some of the other candidates have been doing and making those personal connections. This convention will really be one of his first opportunities to do that this weekend.

So going back to the poll, though, Jason, if it shows that the Democrats are in good shape if 3 of the 4 are beating him, Senator Johnson, in these hypothetical things, are there other reasons that the Dems feel that Senator Johnson is vulnerable?

Let’s look at his favorability rating compared to his unfavorability if you remember six years ago, that poll shows that he was above water. More people looked at him favorable than they did disliking him. Now, this time around, he has reversed at almost by the same margin, about 8 or 9 points being that he is below that margin.

And that is typically a dangerous sign for anybody that’s trying to seek that third term. It’s never easy to seek a third term in office, especially percentage. These are six-year terms. People are now going to have to like him over an 18 year or 24, or 18 year span here, and so it’s going to be a tough sell, but again, he’s counting on this, what’s going to be a good year for Republicans and this red wave, that’ll potentially push him through and make up for that margin.

It was interesting too, you know, in that same poll a lot of people said, Hey, we don’t like the direction of the state. Biden is extremely unpopular right now. They will vote against president but yet they’re willing to vote against Johnson.

And if you look at the independents, that’s going to be a key in this. Mandela Barnes was the only one to win independents in that poll against Johnson, and Johnson winning independents against all three of those other top candidates.

Alright another hypothetical race of the governor race Democrats did very well. It was Governor Evers against all four Republican candidates. Only Rebecca Kleefisch finished close enough, within the margin of error. She was four points back. Is this another thing they’re going to trumpet this weekend? Another reason for them to feel very confident come November?

Well, I’m talking to the governor’s people. I think that the big message they’re going to have is, one, abortion rights at this convention, but also that he’s a roadblock to a lot of the plans that the Republicans have.

They control the state Legislature and basically the governor saying, Hey, if you elect one of these Republicans to replace me, they’re going to go full throttle on all their initiatives again.

Republicans are saying, you know, the governor wouldn’t be as popular as he is right now, if he wasn’t taking credit for some of the tax cuts that they actually wrote and put into the budget, among other things.

So basically we’ve had two years of gridlock in Madison and both are kind of pointing the finger at each other as a reason to keep this going, or at least to put their candidate in office, so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple of months.

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