Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin.
AP Photo/Morry Gash
Over the past week, a slew of Democratic rivals to Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes ended their Senate bids.
Barnes now looks to be the favorite to win the party’s primary on August 9.
However, Sen. Ron Johnson is running for a third-term and has strong support among the GOP base.
For years, Wisconsin Democrats have sought to regain the Senate seat that they lost in the 2010 midterm elections.
After Ron Johnson defeated the well-regarded Sen. Russ Feingold in 2010 and again in a 2016 rematch, Democrats saw the conservative businessman become a nationally-recognized lawmaker who remained popular among the GOP base.
But in 2018, Democrats romped on the statewide level, with Tony Evers defeating star Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Tammy Baldwin easily winning reelection to a second term after watching Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in the state two years earlier.
And the party built on that success. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin — one of five states in the country that flipped from red to blue.
In the lead-up to 2022, all eyes again were on Wisconsin, with Democrats from Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes and state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski to Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson and Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry jumping into the race to take on Johnson in the general election.
But with the Democratic primary on August 9, virtually every top-tier candidate has left the race over the past two weeks — save for Barnes. The latter is now the hands-on favorite to win the nomination and serve as the party’s nominee against Johnson in one of the most consequential Senate races in the country this year.
With the Senate evenly divided between the parties, Democrats see Wisconsin as one of their top pickup opportunities — with Biden having carried the state in 2020 and the party energized to defeat Johnson.
But Johnson has been counted out in the past and remains popular among the party’s grass-roots supporters, who came out in force for Trump in 2020. While the former president fell short in the state by roughly 20,000 votes in the presidential election, he vastly outperformed many of the public polls that year.
And Republicans also feel confident about Johnson’s chances — buoyed by the senator’s previous wins, Biden’s middling approval ratings, and a national political environment that is poised to favor Republicans in November.