Two-term U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin received a boost Saturday from fellow Democrat Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro in her tight re-election race against Republican challenger Eric Hovde. The incumbent Wisconsin senator and governor — who drew national media attention when he was recently considered a possible vice presidential candidate — toured rural Richland and Lafayette counties, meeting with farmers and residents of tiny towns in sparsely populated areas of the state.
Both counties had majorities of voters who chose former President Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections. But they also voted for Baldwin in 2018 by more than 10 percentage points.
The evening before he embarked on a tour of rural Wisconsin, Baldwin spoke on the same stage as Democratic candidate Kamala Harris to a cheering crowd of 10,000 that packed the Dane County Coliseum, a popular rock concert venue in deep blue Madison.
Because both population growth and voter turnout is very high in Dane County, Democrats are focusing on the area as a key to winning elections in this closely divided swing state. But Baldwin, like Shapiro, who won the support of rural voters in Pennsylvania, has made it a point to campaign in rural and suburban areas that lean Republican.
Reaching out to voters in areas where other Democrats rarely go is an vital part of the two politicians’ formula for success. During their joint, rural campaign stops in Wisconsin, they showcased an approach to politics that refuses to take the urban-rural political divide for granted and that reconnects with voters often overlooked by the rest of their party. That approach dovetails with Harris’ campaign efforts to an appeal to dissatisfied Republicans and portray the Democratic Party as a “big tent.”
Lafayette is one of the most rural counties in Wisconsin and one of two counties in the state that does not have traffic lights, according to U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat who represents the area in Congress. Voters chose Trump by 9 percentage points in 2016 and 13.7 points in 2020 — but Baldwin won the county by 10.6 points in 2018.
“I really feel at home,” Shapiro told the Examiner, standing in front of a huge red barn at the Iowa and Lafayette County Democrats’ picnic. “There’s a sensitivity and a desire on the part of the people I’ve met for elected officials to just work together to get something done,” he said.
Getting things done — Shapiro’s signature phrase — was the theme of his 2024 endorsement speech for Baldwin. He praised her work to make subsidies for innovation in agriculture and her work on rural broadband and expanding access to health care.
In her speech at the county picnic, Baldwin also focused on specific accomplishments, telling a story about meeting with executives from several medical device companies and “shaming” them into agreeing to set a $35-a-month cap on the price of inhalers after hearing from constituents who were struggling to pay hundreds of dollars a month for asthma treatment.
While Shapiro and Baldwin described themselves as pragmatists, they also espoused progressive values, denouncing Republican “extremism” and threats to democracy and vowing to work to restore abortion rights after the fall of Roe v. Wade.
Baldwin warned that the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, which ruled that there is no fundamental constitutional right to privacy, threatens other precedents besides Roe, including protections for access to contraception as well as interracial and interracial marriage. She described the skepticism she faced from journalists who did not believe she could get enough Republican votes to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriage.
“I said, ‘Just watch,’” she told the rural Democratic audience, adding that she was certain at least 10 of her Republican colleagues had a loved one who would be affected if same-sex marriage were invalidated. Ultimately, she found 12 Republicans who joined all 50 Senate Democrats to pass the bill.
Baldwin added that she was proud to be the lead author of the Women’s Health Protection Act, “which would restore Roe, make it part of our national law and tell states like Wisconsin and Texas and Florida and Idaho that they can’t pass a whole bunch of laws at the state level that interfere with those rights and freedoms.”
“I don’t have 60 votes yet, but I have a plan,” she told her rural voters. “That plan is for all of you to work very hard to get me re-elected to the United States Senate.”
Democrats are working harder than ever in Lafayette County, said Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy Fisker, who said the group has doubled its membership in the past year and a half after opening a modern office with the lend a hand of the state party. Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler also gave an impassioned speech at the picnic. a prolific fundraiserhelped open modern offices of the Democratic Party throughout the state.
Still, county residents are often afraid to put up signs in their yards or publicly identify as Democrats, Fisker said. “We have to be aware of that, and we can’t impose our agenda on people who don’t want to hear it,” she said. “We don’t just take a bunch of Democrats to a restaurant in Darlington to meet unless we talk to the owner first, or they’ll throw us out. That’s a serious matter.”
This year, after a long period of pressure, county volunteers are putting up more yard signs. And with the opening of a modern party office, “we’re starting to have some success,” Fisker said. Lafayette County voted for liberal state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose victory over conservative former Justice Dan Kelly shifted the ideological balance on the court. Majorities of county voters also rejected a pair of constitutional amendments by the Republican-controlled Legislature that would have stripped the governor of his authority to allocate federal bailout funds. Fisker attributes both results to her group’s increased voter education efforts.
Fisker said she has encountered a lot of split voters. “I have a couple of friends who have just said, ‘Oh, you know, I’ll vote for Baldwin, but I don’t know anything about this Harris.’ So there’s a lot of conversation, and these are your neighbors.”
“We care about reproductive rights. We care about the environment. We care about making sure our rights are not taken away from us. But you have to come to us in the way that we want to engage with you,” said Irene Kendall (she writes her last name in lowercase letters), a Lafayette County Democrat who helped organize the event. She credited Baldwin and Pocan with coming to the area often and listening to people.
“They understand what’s going on in rural communities because they’re there, right? And so we know we’re important to them. So I think showing up is a huge part of that.” She has relatives, she said, who split their tickets, voting Republican in most races but making an exception for Baldwin.
Steve Pickett, now retired, described himself as the first Democratic county official elected in Lafayette County since Reconstruction. He agreed that Democrats could do a lot better by just showing up.
“In rural Wisconsin, probably more than in the cities, people want to know who the candidate is,” he said. “It’s hard for people to say, ‘Oh yeah, I want to vote for someone I don’t even know.’”
The long-held theory was that you had to be a Republican to win Lafayette County, he said. Now that’s starting to change. “You can be a Democrat and win, but you have to work at it,” he added.
“It’s not that it’s so Republican,” he said of the area. “We just haven’t given people a reason to vote Democratic.” Baldwin and Pocan “gave you reasons” in their speeches, he added.
“We need to make the party understand,” Pickett said, “that these are the races that will decide their fate, not spending money in really safe districts.”
Both Shapiro and Baldwin seem to understand this — and not just at the state level.
Shapiro told rural Democrats in Wisconsin the same thing he said he was telling voters in Pennsylvania: Because of the way national elections are set up, as voters in swing states, they have enormous power. “You have the power to shape the future,” he said, “not just of this state but of the country.”
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