Michels, Johnson Are Threats to Democracy

The policy differences between the candidates in the race for governor and U.S. Senator in Wisconsin are pretty stark. But there is one issue that transcends Republican versus Democrat or conservative versus Republican. Do the candidates support democratic elections?

The idea that you would even need to ask this question tells us we have arrived at a perilous state in America. We still have many Republicans who oppose attacks on our elections; indeed, all of the testimony provided to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was by patriotic Republicans appalled by the actions taken by fellow GOP members, led by Donald Trump, to overturn a legal election.

But alas, there are Republicans running at the top of the ticket in Wisconsin, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson and businessman and gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels, who have repeatedly made it clear they want to undermine free and fair elections.

Johnson has vociferously denied that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election and has defended and even praised the January 6 insurrection, a shocking attack on Congress and violent attempt to overthrow a legal election which resulted in five deaths and countess injuries to police officers. He was also involved in a scheme to certify fake electors to overthrow the 2020 election. He has called for disbanding the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, has amplified unfounded claims of election fraud and has attacked how Milwaukee officials conduct elections. falsely claiming they were late in submitting results.

Finally, he has declined to accept the results of the November election should he lose.

In short, Johnson has repeatedly taken actions and made statements that undermine democratic elections. He is exactly the kind of demagogue that the founding fathers worried about in creating our constitutional system.

Michels ran and lost for U.S. Senator in 2004, and graciously accepted the results, as did candidates of both parties back in those innocent times. But in the age of Trump, many Republicans are embracing the Big Lie of supposedly fixed elections and Michals has embraced and echoed this ugly trend.

Michels has cast doubt on the 2020 election results. “Here in Wisconsin, was the election rigged? Was the election fixed? I’ve seen the movies,” Michels said at a GOP candidate forum. “I’ve seen 2000 Mules, Rigged, all that stuff. Certainly there was fraud.”

Michels has also said he is open to overturning the 2020 result, which would be illegal, as Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has repeatedly explained, not to mention that any such action would be more than two years after the fact. Michels initially would not commit to accepting the outcome of Tuesday’s election or certifying the 2024 election regardless of who won. He later said he would.

His messages undermining legal elections recently culminated in his promise that if he’s elected, the Republican Party “will never lose another election,” a shocking declaration for perhaps the most closely divided state in the nation, yet one that has voted Democratic in six of the eight presidential elections.

How can Michels make the this guarantee? He has called for disbanding the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which has three Republican and three Democratic members, and replacing it with a new state board appointed by representative of the state’s congressional districts, which are gerrymandered with Republicans holding five of eight districts. This will hand power over elections to one political party for at least the next decade, as the New York Times reported.

Lifelong conservative Republican James Wigderson, who served as columnist and editor for Right Wisconsin, did an op ed for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noting that his political views were far more closely aligned with those of Michels and Johnson than with Democrats Tony Evers and Mandela Barnes, except for one issue: preserving our democratic system of elections.

“I am under no illusions that I have any policy positions in common with Barnes or Evers,” Wigderson wrote. “But even more dear to me, and more important to the country, is protecting the Constitution. On this, Sen. Ron Johnson and Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels cannot be trusted.”

Written like a true patriot.