Long-time activist recaps the Wisconsin Democratic primary

Presenter: In a wild Democratic primary for governor of Wisconsin, a little-known Democratic Socialist nearly won. We asked for a recap from a long-time activist with the Democratic Party of Vilas County, Elisa Farmilant:

Elisa Farmilant: It was a crazy primary season. Everybody had strong opinions. Everybody loved their own candidate, and there were like six or seven of them.

I would have been happy with any of the Democratic candidates, but the first one to drop out was Missy Hughes, and that was quite a while back. 

Then Dave Crowley dropped out because it seemed that Sara Rodriguez was the frontrunner and that she was clearly leading everyone. And so Dave Crowley dropped out and endorsed her.

And then a couple days later, she ended up finding out that she didn’t have the money that she thought she had, and she ended up firing her campaign manager and she had to drop out of the race. They had just announced like a $1 million ad buy. And then she found out she only had, like, less than $300,000, and there was a lot of criticism. 

She was saying, ‘I didn’t know.’ And people were saying, ‘You should have definitely had a better eye on your own campaign. How are you going to manage a state when you can’t manage your own campaign?’

So she had to drop out, and a week later, Dave Crowley re-entered the race because he figured now he had a chance. And the governor, Tony Evers, originally said he was not going to endorse anyone because he had close ties to a lot of the people that were running. And when Dave Crowley came back into the race, he endorsed him.

So a lot of people were upset. And of course, Francesca Hong up until that point was the front-runner, a huge amount of grassroots support. People were very, very excited about her. I just googled it and Francesca had over 7,000 passionate statewide volunteers, approximately 3,000 active core organizers and canvassers. She was really, really doing well.

It would be so different than anything that ever happened before. But so many people say, yeah, but we’re ready for it. We’re ready for something different.

And when Crowley came back into the race and Gov. Evers endorsed him, people were really upset because it seemed like the same old thing of the establishment Democrats pushing their candidate instead of the more left-leaning candidates that for some reason, they’re always afraid of them and trying to push them out. And Crowley just surged ahead.

I think she was 22 points ahead and Crowley just surged ahead. And he ended up winning. And it was very divisive. Just the last couple of days I’ve been reading a lot of comments on Facebook and Hong’s supporters are upset. They think it’s like, you know, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton all over again.

But of course, there are many, many people who are saying, no matter what, we cannot have Tom Tiffany as our governor because he voted to end Medicare subsidies. He’s always in favor of corporations and mining over the environment. He has a terrible environmental record, and we just really do not want him as our governor.

And so a lot of people are saying, for the last two weeks, that no matter who the nominee is, we are going to back them, we’re going to work for them, and we’re going to do everything we can to get them elected.

And Dave Crowley came to our headquarters and talked to our people, and he was fantastic. I mean, very bright. I mean, just looks you right in the eye. Very calm demeanor but upbeat. He’s got a clear vision. He was a Milwaukee County executive, so he has a lot of administrative experience. He understands how to run things. He has ideas about how to make the state better. And I mean, I very much liked him.

Presenter: Elisa Farmilant of the Democratic Party of Vilas County, Wisconsin. The headquarters is on Highway 51 in Woodruff, just across from the Culver’s.

Elisa Farmilant: I have a building right on Highway 51 that has two storefronts and one side is Democratic headquarters. The other side is my art studio.

I have a big sign in front of my building that says Good Vibes. And we just put up four signs, two facing one way and two facing the other way, that are right on Highway 51.

At this point, as a county party, we’re really trying to look at: How do you distill the message down, to what’s the most important message we can put out, you know, when you have space for basically four signs. What’s the message? What do you want people to know?

And one of my ideas was to say ‘MAGA policies cut Medicare subsidies,’ and then have another sign that says, ‘Check your Medicare costs for next year after Oct. 15.’ After Oct. 15, you can go online and check and see how much your Medicare supplement is going to cost you next year. And, you know, be floored when you see how much it’s going to go up.

Presenter: Northern Wisconsin is predominantly red. In 2024, Trump won Vilas County by 23 points.

Elisa Farmilant: We’re still very heavily gerrymandered here. We have more Democrats voting, but more Republicans in power. I believe it was when Scott Walker was governor that they gerrymandered our state so heavily. We had a senator, Jim Holperin, he was a state senator who served many terms. And after they gerrymandered the map, he said, ‘I’m not running anymore. You can’t win.’

Vilas County has a reservation, you know: Lac du Flambeau, where my mom is from. And they cut it out and put it with a district that’s north of us, because that was already a Democratic voting district. So they gerrymandered Lac du Flambeau out of Vilas County.

And then they corrected the maps a few years ago and put the reservation back into Vilas County. And that was when Elon Musk tried to buy the judge here. He spent vast amounts of money trying to promote the conservative judge and overwhelmingly, the progressive judge won over him, even though he spent vast amounts of money here. Susan Crawford defeated (Brad) Schimel with 55% of the vote. She was able (to some degree) to correct the gerrymandering of the voting districts.

As far as the rest of the state goes, we’re still very heavily gerrymandered here. And yeah, two years ago, the last election when we had Assembly and state Senate, our three candidates, they all got just around 30% of the vote. it’s like all the Democrats voted for them and it was around 30%.  

We’ve had some excellent candidates, and especially 34th Assembly. They knock doors. They really, really are personal and they get out and they meet people and they talk to people. When you open your door and the actual candidate is standing there, people got very excited about that.

And our canvassers here are saying that they can’t get to as many doors as they would like or as they’re used to, because everybody’s keeping them talking at the door for so long. They’re spending 15 minutes at each door talking to people, and it’s exciting.

And, you know, people are happy about it, but it’s a change and it shows where people are. There’s just so much volatility now in politics. And people really want to talk. You know, they want to give their opinion and just talk about how crazy things are.

Presenter: With the backstory on the Democratic primaries, that is longtime activist Elisa Farmilant from Vilas County, Wisconsin. The signs outside the county headquarters say: ‘Families are struggling. Gas. War. Housing. Groceries. Childcare. Healthcare.’

Images of David Crowley and Francesca Hong campaigning in Vilas County courtesy Elisa Farmilant.