How Republicans Screwed Themselves

Brian Schimming speaks at a groundbreaking in 2018 during his time with WHEDA. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

In recent weeks, there was a push by Republicans in Wisconsin to dump their state Chairman Brian Schimming, with members of state GOP executive committee asking him to resign. Schimming now says he has survived this attempt to throw him out.

He is being blamed for the recent victory of a Democratic-backed Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate and for the fact that the Democratic Party has been raising far more campaign money than Republicans. Some of that criticism might be merited, but Schimming faces a political landscape that has changed greatly over the last 20 years, largely due to scorched-earth policies and strategies pushed successfully by Republicans that have more recently come back to haunt them.

Nationally, Republicans and conservatives sought the ability for corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertising independently of candidates or parties, figuring that corporations would bury unions in campaign contributions. And the U.S. Supreme Court obliged in the Citizen’s United decision in 2010. It paved the way for far more campaign spending and the rise of Super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money as long as they don’t coordinate directly with candidates or parties.

In Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker and Republicans passed legislation allowing far bigger campaign contributions, including ending the $10,000 limit on individual contributions to a political party. They were convinced the changes would give them a big advantage in campaigns, and for a while they did. By 2018, three years after the law was passed the state Republican Party raised $17 million, compared to $8 million by the Wisconsin Democratic Party as Urban Milwaukee reported.

But by 2020, as the story noted, the numbers were nearly reversed, with the Democratic Party raising $27 million compared to $16 million for Republicans. And by 2023, the Democratic Party raised $16.14 million, four times more than the $3.95 million raised by the state Republican Party. Yes the Republican candidates got more spending by independent groups than the Democratic candidates, but they had less control over how the money was spent, and TV stations charge much more for ads by these groups, mitigating much of that advantage. GOP leaders went on record lamenting the fundraising success of Democratic Party leader Ben Wikler.

Nationally the pattern was much the same. Democrat Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 both raised more campaign money than their opponent. Republicans benefitted from more independent expenditures, but faced the same limitations on their use.

Independent expenditures by big business groups affiliated with the Republicans helped transform the once quiet Supreme Court elections in states like Wisconsin. It was the 2007 election for the state Supreme Court, won by Annette Ziegler, that was the first to become a big-spending slugfest with attack ads. Total campaign spending was four times higher than any previous election. For years after that conservative Republicans had the edge in spending in these races, and won several in a row.

Republicans also pushed the envelope on bare-knuckled attack ads in these elections, exemplified by with the sleazy, racially charged ad by challenger Michael Gableman against incumbent Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler. The ad falsely charged that Butler got a convicted child molester off on a technicality and that Mitchell went on to commit another crime.

In the years since then these elections have become increasingly negative and partisan, with Democratic candidates signaling their support for abortion, and a Republican candidate like Brad Schimel running as a Donald Trump loyalist. But the net result for Republicans of this was the opposite of what they expected: Democratic-backed candidates have now won four of the last five high court races and by big margins.

Going back at least 20 years Republicans have been pushing for photo ID and other barriers to voting. In Wisconsin Republicans were gleeful about the new photo ID requirement reducing the vote by low-income urban minorities and college students. They were betting that infrequent “low-information” voters tended to be Democrats, while Republicans tended to attract middle and upper income voters. They even pushed successfully for an amendment to enshrine voter ID in the Wisconsin Constitution.

But Trump has meanwhile transformed the Republican Party, turning off many college-educated voters and gaining more of the less frequent voters. Tony Fabrizio, the lead pollster for the Trump campaign, said the new report by Pew Research validated the campaign’s strategic successes. “We talked about getting Blacks and getting Hispanics and low-propensity voters,” he noted in a recent New York Times story. “This Pew report basically says, ‘Yeah, we did it.’”

That helped elect Trump but may also create a long-term problem if it turns out that some of those low-propensity voters are prevented from voting by the hoop-jumping photo ID requirements passed by many states.

The rise of Trump has transformed election turnout: “what we are seeing now is two separate electorates driving election results in America. One electorate is less politically engaged, showing up in high-turnout races to deliver results that are friendlier to Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans. The other electorate is highly educated and engaged, showing up when overall turnout is weaker, and is much friendlier to Democrats,” noted data journalist G. Elliott Morris, in his Strength in Numbers column.

He points to data showing that of the 11-point swing in Wisconsin between the November 2024 presidential election and April Supreme Court race, “about 8 points were from turnout and 3 from actually changing minds.”

All of which suggests Republicans could face a tough election in the 2026 mid-terms.

Again and again the aggressive laws and policies pursued by Republicans have opened the door for Democrats as well. The lame-duck laws passed by Walker and the Republicans in late 2018 after Tony Evers defeated Walker transferred some executive powers from the governor to the Legislature. But it’s entirely possible the Republicans could lose control of the Legislature in 2026 while winning the race for governor. That would hand all the powers given to the Legislature to Democrats.

Or take Gov. Evers’ much-condemned partial veto in 2023 which struck digits and and hyphen in order to turn a temporary school funding increase to one that lasted for 400 years. That was actually a modest change compared to a 2017 partial vote by Gov. Walker, who changed a one-year moratorium on school referendums that raise taxes for energy efficiency projects into a 1,000-year moratorium. You decide which veto is more preposterous.

While the Democrats have done pretty well in adjusting to and imitating Republican strategies, democracy has taken a beating. We now have campaigns underwritten by the rich and candidates increasingly beholden to them. We have election laws meant to discourage people from voting, campaigns that have gotten ever more nasty, and a Wisconsin high court that is far more partisan. We have a Wisconsin Legislature that has grabbed what used to be executive powers and a U.S. president brazenly seizing the powers of Congress. The losers in this ever more-bitter battle are We the People.