The NPR Politics Podcast - Race And Crime: Republicans Try To Shore Up Suburban Support

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

Democrats see Wisconsin as their best chance to unseat an incumbent Republican senator. But Sen. Ron Johnson has managed to close the gap with Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes by linking him to rising crime in ads aimed at suburban voters.This episode: political reporter Deepa Shivaram, political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, and WUWM reporter Chuck Quirmbach.Learn more about upcoming live shows of The NPR Politics Podcast at nprpresents.org.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Asma Khalid from the NPR Politics Podcast, and Atlanta, we want you to come see us live. Join me, Mara Liason, Susan Davis, Tamara Keith, Miles Parks, and Georgia Public Broadcasting's Stephen Fowler as we do our show live at the Buckhead Theater, Thursday, October 20th at 8 p.m. You can find more information about tickets, including student ones, at nprpresents.org. Thanks to our partners, Georgia Public Broadcasting, WABE, and WCLK Jazz. We hope to see you there.

Hi, this is Maren Miller from Indianapolis, Indiana. Right now, I am reading on my back porch, enjoying the cool weather with my two cats, Salmon and Shrimp. This podcast was recorded at 1.06 p.m. on October 4th, 2022. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but the boys will still be stalking the birds in our backyard. Here's the show. Oh, what good cat names. I like it.

Salmon and shrimp. Fish cats. I love it. The inner species. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover politics. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I also cover politics. And Chuck Kornbach of member station WUWM in Wisconsin is here as well. Hey, Chuck. Hello. And today on the show, we're going to be talking

about Wisconsin, as you might have guessed. Republican Senator Ron Johnson is trying to keep his seat in a tight race against Democrat Mandela Barnes. Chuck, I want to start with you. Tell me a little bit about these candidates. Senator Johnson, the Republican incumbent, 67 years old. He's been a two-termer, now trying for a third term, although he said five or six years ago that he wasn't going to try for a third term. Here he is trying again. He faces Democrat Mandela Barnes, who is Wisconsin's current lieutenant governor. Barnes is 35, a former state representative. Democrats coalesced behind Barnes in June and July, very suddenly ahead of the August primary.

So it's Barnes versus Johnson. And Danielle, you're off of a reporting trip from Wisconsin and crime has become a central issue in this race. How so? Yes, I did just get back from Wisconsin days ago. And how crime has become a central issue, I mean, there's a couple ways of looking at this, right? Anytime an issue becomes a big deal, you can ask, to what degree is this a voter concern? And to what degree are candidates really amplifying and whipping up that concern? And to some degree, both are happening in Wisconsin, from what I saw. Because in Wisconsin, yes, voters are concerned about crime.

In Milwaukee, for example, the murder rate this year notably has gone up. And this is something you see on the local news that voters of their own volition will mention. But it is also true that there is a calculated GOP strategy, not just in Wisconsin, but nationwide, that to use and amplify concerns about crime in this year's election. And Republicans very much perceive that they have the upper hand on crime against Democrats, not just in Wisconsin, but other places as well. And Ron Johnson is no different. He has been putting up ads about this and his supporters have as well. Here is a clip from the National Republican Senatorial Committee for Johnson against Barnes. He wrote the bill, said courts could not rely on the nature, number or gravity of crimes to keep someone behind bars, releasing dangerous criminals Ron Johnson is hitting Mandela Barnes on is that Mandela Barnes supports ending cash bail. The idea, as Barnes talks about it, is that cash bail allows richer defendants to sort of buy their freedom, whereas poorer defendants cannot. One very notable thing about that ad is that the ad ends with a photo of Mandela Barnes, who is black, pictured alongside members of the squad, who are notably all women of color. And it calls him dangerous and different. This has also led to criticism from Barnes supporters that,

hey, as with many other attacks on crime in the past, this one is racialized. Yeah, that's interesting. And when we talk about these political arguments being made, who are Republicans targeting here? How are these messages being received from those voters and also from Barnes supporters, as you were saying? Yeah. So to start on that, I talked to Craig Gilbert, who is a columnist at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He was a longtime journalist. He is now a fellow at Marquette University. And he told me that these arguments are very much aimed at suburban voters? Republicans are vulnerable with suburban voters, certainly on the abortion issue and certainly in the Trump era. There's been a lot of erosion in Wisconsin in the Republican

vote in the big suburban belt outside Milwaukee. And so crime, I think Republicans see crime as a way to kind of counter that trend and shore up their vote in the suburbs because many of those voters are, you know, reading a lot of also to try to talk to suburban voters about concerns about crime. And those attacks, which were about low income housing in the suburbs, were also seen as classist and racist. But attacks on crime, especially from Republicans, have also, you know, they're decades old. They it is there is a long history of Republicans painting Democrats as soft on crime and saying, hey, we are the party that is tough on crime. And they still perceive that they have the advantage on that. There's another ad that tries to link Mandela Barnes to Darrell Brooks, the black man who's accused of killing six people in the Waukesha parade incident and injuring dozens of others. Barnes and Brooks have nothing to do with each other other than Brooks was free on a low bail issue in Milwaukee County Court, but the Republicans are suggesting

that Barnes and Brooks are somehow linked. Both are African American. You also asked about how Barnes's supporters are responding. I covered a Johnson roundtable in Milwaukee, supposedly about crime, where outside dozens of members of the service employees international union held a rally criticizing the pro-Johnson ads, either from Johnson or other Republicans. There was another Democrat rally as well. So they're trying to push back on these Johnson ads. Johnson says for his ads, he's just stating facts. Right. And I wanted to ask both of you as well. I mean, how are how are voters perceiving these messages? Do you feel like Republicans arguments here are working and are they reaching suburban voters? There's certainly some headway. Barnes was five to seven points ahead in a Marquette poll, in Marquette University poll in

early August or mid-August. Then Barnes lost a lot of that lead, and Johnson has gone ahead by a slight amount in the most recent Marquette University poll. So something's working for Johnson's forces, whether it's the crime issue or suggesting that Barnes is not experienced enough for Washington. Right. Yeah. And from what I saw, I was at a an event called Fall Fest, which is a big coming together of Republicans. It was in Racine. It was just south of Milwaukee. And it was a sort of cattle call for local Republican candidates and statewide candidates to come up and make their pitch. Now, this is more the Republican base than your average undecided voter. But most of the candidates got up and one after one talked about crime. Like, this is very central to their message.

It is hard to overstate how central this has become. And, you know, the crowd very much, very much took that to heart, really cheered for the messages about crime. And likewise, I also went to a Mandela Barnes rally. And one thing that I really came away with is that it's not that Democratic voters do not care about crime, are not worried about crime. They very much are, just as Republican voters are. But the two sides do tend to see the issue a bit differently. When I asked one woman, is crime a big deal to you? She said, yes. Here's Jen Whitten. I talked to her outside of Mandela Barnes rally. I would say for me personally, it's the safety of my children to make sure that their schools are safe, to make sure that we're not putting more guns into the school, which I know a lot of politicians think like that would be a good idea to have teachers armed. I want to make sure that like something like that doesn't happen again.

So that really motivated me to get behind Mandela. Now often, when we as political reporters, when we read polls, et cetera, et cetera, gun control and crime are sometimes put into two separate categories, but that is not how everybody sees it. And I did talk to a couple of voters who said, yes, when I think of crime, I think of gun control. I'm very worried about guns.

Therefore, I support Mandela Barnes. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a second. And we're back with more on the races in Wisconsin. I want to ask both of you, what are other issues that voters are focused on in Wisconsin? We talked about crime, a little bit about gun control, like Danielle mentioned. But what else are you hearing? Well, abortion, of course, is a very big issue and very big on the Democratic side, as you may guess. Wisconsin, as I know we've talked about on this podcast in the past, after Roe was overturned,

had a law that originally was passed in the 1800s go into effect, an abortion ban from that era. It has been updated since then, but it's a very restrictive abortion ban. So that's in effect in Wisconsin and has a lot of voters who support abortion rights very worried, very amped up to vote. Aside from that, inflation is one that I definitely heard about from people as well. And here is a voter named Rich Strom who I talked about. I asked him what he liked about Ron Johnson, and this is the first thing he said. He's been sounding the alarm on inflation with all this spending that was coming. He's been arguing against these big spending bills. And even when Republicans were passing, he was warning that this spending is going to be leading to inflation. And here we are, you know, inflation at over 8%.

Now, to be absolutely clear here, the COVID era spending bills are certainly not the entire story on inflation. They are not the only thing that has caused the inflation that we have seen in the country, not by any stretch. But in this way, Rich Strome and a lot of other Republican voters fit neatly into the template that we talk about quite a bit. Republican voters are very amped up about inflation. That is a message that has worked well on them. Now, also, whether or not senators, governors, et cetera, can really effectively tame inflation is a totally different story, because, of course, they don't have a lot of power over it. But it is a big issue this season. In the Democratic side, Wisconsin's Governor Tony Evers up for election

has released an inflation fighting plan. He says it would involve more tax cuts for Wisconsinites after the election and other strategies that he says can save Wisconsin money. But the Democrats do not control the state legislature here, and so he's having trouble getting anything through the state capitol. And Danielle, we should talk about how this race fits in with the larger battle for the Senate here. This race has gotten a little less attention than places like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, but it's the closest thing Democrats have to a pickup opportunity in a place that isn't an open seat. Can you tell me more about that? Right. Yeah. This is a close race, as Chuck mentioned earlier. And according to, for example, the Cook Political Report, Ron Johnson is,

it's fair to say, the Senate's most endangered Republican incumbent. This race is a toss up. And look, polls do show that he's unpopular. He has negative favorables. The question is whether Mandela Barnes can overcome that, because in a poll as of mid-September, a poll from Marquette, about one in four voters said they didn't know enough about Barnes to formulate an opinion on him. So he has some ground to make up there. Within the context of the Senate, yeah, the balance of the Senate is, as we have talked about many times on this podcast, is set up. It is going to be very, very close and we don't know how it's going to turn out. And a lot of voters know that when I go out and talk to voters often in these states, Democratic voters, for example, will say, I know that this state, that the Senate seat here could determine whether or not there's a national abortion ban.

So many voters here, also Ohio, other close places that I've been, voters are aware of this, and that is really firing up some of them. Chuck, I wanted to turn to you again. There are other races in Wisconsin that we're also focused on. Walk me through some of these other races that you're keeping an eye on. The governor's race, as I mentioned, Tony Evers, the Democratic one-term incumbent who beat Scott Walker in 2018, being challenged by Tim Michaels, a wealthy business person, crime an issue there, certainly, as well as spending and inflation. And finally, the Wisconsin Secretary of State race, Doug La Follette, the Democrat who's been in office for most of the last 50 years, is being challenged by Amy Laudenbeck, a Republican state representative. The issue there is what would Laudenbeck do if she takes over the Secretary of State's role in terms of trying to gain more power over Wisconsin elections. Right now, there's a Wisconsin Election Commission that's pretty well politically balanced.

Would Laudenbeck and other Republicans try to have the Secretary of State take over that task? And what would that mean for voters? All right, we're going to leave it there for today. Chuck Kornbach of WUWM, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover politics. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I also cover politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.