MADISON, Wis. — The midterm elections this November were a test on many fronts — it was both the first election of the Biden presidency and the first election since former President Donald Trump left office — and those elements put Democrats to the test over whether they could withstand the anticipated good year for Republicans.
As it turned out, Democrats in Wisconsin held a significant amount of ground. Gov. Tony Evers won reelection to keep his seat, faring better in 2022 against Trump-backed Republican candidate Tim Michels than he did against then-incumbent Gov. Scott Walker in 2018.
To that end, Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said the influence of Trump is waning in Wisconsin.
“It’s way down from where it was,” Vos said. “I would say it was at the peak in our primary back in August and September, where of course you had the president endorsing people in our primaries.”
Vos himself faced a primary opponent, Adam Steen, who received Trump’s backing — largely due to Trump arguing Vos did not do enough to investigate the 2020 election. The speaker won that primary, but only by a few hundred votes.
“That took a little bit of air out of his sails,” Vos said of Trump. “He continued on through the general election and we now see that many of the people that he chose nationwide were unsuccessful.”
Part of the equation could have been the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade earlier in the summer as well. Evers attributes his win to other issues as well, though.
“What we’ve done for public schools, what we’ve done during the pandemic, what we’ve accomplished — fixing roads, broadband,” Evers said, “I think people feel good about what’s happened in the last four years and that’s what I attributed it to.”
Democrats did not win unilaterally, however, and Evers will still have to work with the Republican-controlled Legislature.
“We are a purple state, we’re going to fight over issues,” he said. “We’re going to be angry, we’re going to be happy.”
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“There are things that I know that Republicans want to accomplish that I want to accomplish like more shared revenue, more money for schools, fixing our roads, broadband,” the governor added. “And so we will continue to work hard to make sure we get as many wins to the people of Wisconsin.”
This comes on the heels of meetings Evers had with legislative Republicans, including Vos last week — who called the meeting a good first step.
“My goal is to make sure that we, again, hit that refresh button and try to have a discussion of finding areas that we can actually find some consensus on as opposed to spending all of our time arguing,” Vos said in an interview prior to the meeting.
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