CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. - The chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party gave supporters a routine call last week to get out the vote and help deliver a "landslide victory" for the GOP ticket in the tight gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races.
Then Paul Farrow waited a beat and delivered the punchline: "In Wisconsin, that's one and a half percent."
Farrow was warming up several dozen Republican supporters in a parking lot rally for U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, who faces a challenge from Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes in his bid for a third term. Their race couldn't be closer, and neither could the other top-tier match, between first-term Democratic governor Tony Evers and GOP challenger Tim Michels, a businessman who touts his endorsement from former President Donald Trump.
Like Minnesota, Wisconsin is almost evenly divided politically, routinely has high voter turnout and will decide Tuesday on its governor. But Minnesota's two senators aren't on the ballot this fall, and the Barnes-Johnson race is pivotal to which party controls the U.S. Senate.
The final pre-election poll from Marquette Law School last Wednesday declared both the Wisconsin governor's race and Senate race a dead heat.
Law professor and poll director Charles Franklin said the partisan divide is more entrenched in Wisconsin with fewer undecided voters, so statewide candidates are in a "game of inches."
The Wisconsin contests are vastly more expensive. The governor's race hit a record $114 million, some $20 million more than four years ago, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. AdImpact, which tracks spending, estimates Wisconsin's U.S. Senate race will approach $160 million.
These numbers dwarf the estimated $30 million spent through late October on the Minnesota contest between DFL Gov. Tim Walz and GOP challenger Scott Jensen, according to finance reports.
Both Barnes and Johnson were on statewide tours last week in shiny, modern buses, much different from the late Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone's rickety, repurposed green school bus.
In Minnesota, candidates temper their messages as Election Day approaches to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters turned off by sharp partisanship. But in Wisconsin, the candidates served up scorching messages on class, crime and race.
At the Brewing Projekt in Eau Claire on a sunny afternoon last week, Barnes greeted more than 100 supporters and accused Johnson of supporting the gun lobby over children, pharmaceutical companies over patients and tax relief for big donors over working-class constituents.
"He's a person who has doubled his own wealth but is hell-bent on making everybody else's life worse," Barnes said.
If elected, Barnes, 35 and a Milwaukee native, would be Wisconsin's first Black U.S. senator. He's been lieutenant governor under Evers since 2019 and served as a state legislator before that.
The Democrat has received support from the highest levels of his party. Former President Barack Obama stopped in Milwaukee late last month and delivered a fiery stump speech for Barnes.
Last Thursday, at the event with Farrow just off main street in Chippewa Falls, Johnson reacted to that Obama speech. "What struck me is how angry he was. He's just viscerally angry. Why is he so angry?" The left, Johnson said, "dislikes this country."
Johnson, who is 67, white and grew up in Edina, repurposed a quote by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., saying most Wisconsinites judge others by the "content of their character," not skin color. He tore into Barnes for comparing "racism down South with racism in Wisconsin."
And he accused Barnes of wanting to "defund the police," a false claim that has been made in numerous ads attacking the challenger.
Johnson talked about inflation, high gas prices and saving the country by fighting the "highly biased" media that "amplify the lies" of his opponents. He questioned why Barnes would want to represent "a bunch of folks" that he "considers institutionalized racists."
Supporters at the respective events were reliably committed.
Marv Kelm, 87 and a retired school janitor, drove from Bloomer to meet Johnson, a "Trump for President Make America Greater 2020" baseball cap on his head. He doesn't like what he called Biden's "student loan giveaway."
He's backing Johnson already but wanted to know where he goes to church. "If he's Lutheran, I'm probably going to like him even more," Kelm said. Johnson is a member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.
Cathy Van Gorden, who is 58 and also from Bloomer, said she was a fence-riding voter until the past four years when she discovered alternatives to the "fake news" provided by traditional outlets. Van Gorden doesn't think the government was honest about when and where COVID-19 began nor did she believe shuttering businesses was legal. But she credits Johnson for "listening to the truckers" who rallied to end COVID-19 mandates.
At the Barnes event, Jackie Tollefson, a 71-year-old retired teacher, said she's a "single-issue voter" this year. "If people do not support women's rights, they are not getting my vote," she said.
"Ditto," responded her sister, Lisa Vanleur, 68, a retired banker.
When Barnes stepped off the bus, one of the first to shake his hand was 25-year-old Justin Nelson, a John Deere salesman from Prairie Farm, an hour north.
Nelson said he supports Barnes because of his support for "preserving democracy," LGBTQ and women's rights as well as addressing climate change. Nelson lives in a deep red county. "You don't talk politics with your friends or your customers," he explained.
Swing state politics
Minnesota hasn't gone for a Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon in 1972. But Wisconsin has been among the swingiest states.
In the most recent national election, Democrat Joe Biden carried Wisconsin over former President Donald Trump, a Republican, by just 20,600 votes.
Four years earlier, Trump carried Wisconsin over former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by a slightly wider margin.
Former President Barack Obama won by more robust margins, but former Vice President Al Gore carried the state by less than 6,000 votes over former President George W. Bush in 2000. The late Republican President Ronald Reagan carried Wisconsin in both 1980 and 1984.
But poll director Franklin points to 2010 as the fork in the road for Minnesota and Wisconsin. That's the year GOP gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer, now Minnesota's Sixth District congressman, lost the governor's race to DFLer Mark Dayton by just 9,000 votes.
In Minnesota, the government was divided, with a DFL governor and Republicans in control of the Legislature. But in Wisconsin, GOP Gov. Scott Walker was elected with Republican majorities in both legislative chambers.
Republicans weakened the unions and created favorable legislative and congressional districts that make it "almost impossible" for Democrats to topple their majorities, Franklin said. So that means statewide races are Democrats' best chance to balance Republican might.
In contrast, when Republican Tommy Thompson was governor from 1987 to 2001, Democrats controlled at least one chamber of the Legislature for most of his tenure, Franklin said.
Those years of divided government reflected ticket-splitting where individual voters would support candidates from different parties. "Those days are long gone," Franklin said.
