Tammy Baldwin fights to maintain appeal in rural Wisconsin amid Democratic slide
REEDSBURG, Wis. â In rural Wisconsin, dairy farmer Randy Roecker is at a breaking point â and he blames it partly on President Joe Biden, so is planning to vote for Donald Trump for a third time this November.
âFarmers are hurting like you wouldnât believe, and I myself, I am to the point of throwing up my hands and saying Iâm done,â said Roecker, who owns and operates Roeckerâs Rolling Acres in Loganville and cited inflation as straining his business for the last two years.
But while he’s planning to vote on booting the Democratic president, Roecker’s also planning to vote to keep his Democratic senator, Tammy Baldwin.
âI support her all the way. I mean, no question,â Roecker said. âAnd everybody I know â the farmers â everybody says that sheâs great for Wisconsin agriculture.â
Baldwin is bracing for a tough re-election race against likely Republican nominee Eric Hovde, a multimillionaire and bank owner who loaned $8 million of his own money to his campaign in the first quarter of the year, according to FEC filings. But she has the advantage of incumbency, and has used it to often outperform other statewide Democrats in rural counties, even as the party as a whole has lost significant ground in rural America in recent decades.
Baldwin is already pouring more effort into rural campaigning this year as she prepares for the challenge of sharing the ballot with one of the forces driving GOP margins in rural areas sky-high. Unlike her first two races for the Senate, in 2012 and 2018, Donald Trump will be running this November, too.
âIn Wisconsin, in rural America, I think a lot of people vote straight-ticket, either Republican or Democrat,â said Roecker, who sits on the board of directors for the National Dairy Board, Foremost Farms USA and Dairy Management Inc. âAnd, you know, like I said, I donât know how many people go down through there like I do and check her separate.â
Roecker said he didnât know much about Baldwinâs Republican opponent, but Hovdeâs campaign said it plans to work across the state to tell voters that Baldwin is a ârubber stamp for the Biden administration.â A new Marquette University Law School poll out Wednesday showed Baldwin running a single point ahead of Biden among likely voters and 3 points ahead of the president among registered voters. The likely voter results showed Baldwin and Hovde tied, while she had a small lead among registered voters.
âWhen Tammy Baldwinâs in Washington … sheâs voting like a Washington Democrat,â said Ben Voelkel, senior adviser for the Hovde campaign. âAnd sheâs not, you know, the same person that goes around and campaigns and shows up, you know, every fifth year to campaign.â
Wisconsin Democratsâ rural campaign push
Late last month, Baldwin sat around a kitchen table with Roecker and others from the Farmer Angel Network for a 90-minute discussion about farmersâ mental health. The event was part of the senatorâs âDairylandâ tour through 19 counties, none of them among Wisconsinâs five most populated counties.
âI think that there has been a real opportunity for me to be a champion for issues that I might not hear about if I only was going to the population centers of the state,â Baldwin told reporters at a stop at the New Glarus Brewing Co.Â
The âDairylandâ tour is one example of a concerted effort by Wisconsin Democrats to court the rural voters who have increasingly rejected the party over the last few elections â as Wisconsin will again play a huge role in determining which party wins the White House and controls Congress. Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, calls rural voters âessential to the Biden coalitionâ in 2024.Â
âThereâs no path to victory without organizing in rural Wisconsin and across the country, as well as suburbs, cities and small towns and big towns,â he said. âIn a state like Wisconsin, where four of the last six presidential elections came down to 1 percentage point, you canât write anyone off or take anyone for granted.â  Â
Wisconsin GOP Chair Brian Schimming calls the Democratsâ efforts in rural Wisconsin a âfoolâs errandâ and says the Republican Party plans to focus on the economy as a âconstant reminder of the failure of the [Biden] administrationâ when making its case to rural Wisconsin voters.Â
âYou donât talk your way out of that,â Schimming said, speaking about the current economic situation. âI mean, you can talk till youâre blue in the face, but when people leave your talk or turn off your television ad or put down their smartphone, and then pull into a convenience store and pay, you know, a dollar and a quarter more than theyâre paying for gas four years ago, they get it.âÂ
Democrats have an uphill battle in the stateâs rural areas, as their statewide victories have increasingly relied on wider margins in the stateâs most densely populated metro areas.Â
âThey have lost huge swaths of the rural/outstate vote in this state, and they are not going to get them back by running Tammy Baldwin around. Theyâre just not,â Schimming said. âAnd itâs a problem endemic for the whole party out there.â
Changing coalitions
When Baldwin won a second Senate term in 2018, the âblue waveâ midterm during Trumpâs presidency, she increased her statewide margin by over 5 points, but she won seven fewer counties than in 2012, though she got larger margins in heavily populated counties.Â
âLook, in a state like Wisconsin, a 50/50 battleground state, it is â you donât have to win every county,â Baldwin said at the campaign stop in New Glarus. âBut it is really critical that we get folks out to vote, we have the discussions and up the turnout in every community that you can.âÂ
Similarly, in 2022, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers slightly increased his margin of victory from four years before but won fewer of the state’s 72 counties. Democrats also narrowly lost Wisconsinâs rural 3rd Congressional District after longtime Democratic Rep. Ron Kind retired, with the seat going to Republican Derrick Van Orden by just under 4 points. Republicans have also controlled both the 7th and 8th districts in northern Wisconsin since the 2012 election.
âMy county voted for Obama twice. And it was after the second Obama election that it started to shift,â said Peggy Fullmer, chair of the Democratic Party in Marquette County, about an hour north of Madison. âYou know, then all of a sudden, itâs been really red ever since.â
Democratic organizers in rural areas are feeling the pressure.
âItâs like pulling henâs teeth to get votes for Democrats in our areas,â said Linda Wilkins, chair of the neighboring Green Lake County Democratic Party.Â
âEvery Democratic vote makes a difference, and we get a few more each time in these extremely difficult red areas,â Wilkins said of the work of Democratic organizers in rural Wisconsin. âAnd without our votes, they wouldnât win either.âÂ
But Wilkins thinks itâs time for the Biden campaign to visit rural Wisconsin. âThey need to go and visit them and not just go to Milwaukee and Madison,â she said. Biden made trips to Milwaukee and Madison in recent weeks, but he visited Superior in January. First lady Jill Biden visited the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsinâs reservation last October.Â
Joni Anderson, vice-chair of the Adams County Democratic Party and a coordinator of Democratic efforts across several rural counties, said she wishes the state party would give more support to candidates who run in rural areas.Â
Wikler said the state party will soon announce its largest-ever investment in state legislative races.Â
âThis is something that Iâve been really listening to â the feedback from rural county parties and rural Democrats,â Wikler said. âWe want to make sure that when somebodyâs the Democratic nominee, wherever they live in Wisconsin, they have the backing of our state party.”
For farmers like Roecker, showing up means a lot, but itâs not everything.
âThey just canât show up at the farm and do a photo op, you know what I mean?â he said, adding that farmers feel like elected officials âdonât care whatâs going on out hereâ as long as thereâs food in the grocery store.Â
âItâs a shame when farmers are on food stamps themselves and they produce food for 155 other people. And thatâs how broken the system is here,â Roecker said.