OPINION: Tim Michels and one-party rule
Dan Shafer says, “With a catastrophic gaffe like this, Michels gave away the game about what his campaign is really about: Power.”
FILE – Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels, left, speaks as former President Donald Trump, right, listens at a rally Aug. 5, 2022, in Waukesha, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File)
At a campaign rally earlier this year with former president Donald Trump, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels said “election integrity” is his top priority.
The term “election integrity” has been the right’s catch-all for its post-2020 election grievances, which in Wisconsin has included a host of conspiracy-fueled mania. It includes a sham “investigation” that lasted 14 months, cost more than $1 million and found nothing, repeated attempts to “decertify” the results (which is not a thing), and a regular churn of Republicans’ insulting election-denying madness that’s turned the state’s politics into a daily Jan. 6 in miniature. We’re at the point now where the top election official in the city of Milwaukee — the place that’s often the target of Republicans’ misguided attacks on legitimate votes — was being harassed and threatened so often that she had an assigned FBI agent to forward information to, and is now bracing for a tense Election Day, to say the least.
Michels has appeared on the surface to be less of a true believer when it comes to this “election integrity”; some have suggested it was perhaps what he had to do to get Trump’s endorsement in a competitive primary against former lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch. The New York Times even reported on Michels caving to Trump’s demands to get the endorsement. He went full-blown truther from there through his victory in the primary.
But among other Republican gubernatorial candidates running in high-profile races in swing states, he hasn’t seemed to be quite on the same level of the likes of Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano or Arizona’s Kari Lake, even though he has refused to accept the results of the upcoming election. During the general election, Michels hasn’t mentioned the issue nearly as much as he did during the primary.
But with comments made this week on the campaign trail, he has perhaps positioned himself as more dangerous than any other potential governor in the nation when it comes to upholding free and fair elections, casting serious doubt on whether or not he would uphold the popular vote in this state in 2024 and beyond. Here’s what he said:
“Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor.”
It’s all happening right out in the open. This is a five-alarm fire for democracy in Wisconsin.
Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s also written for The Daily Beast, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He’s won 13 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
Digging in further, the context in which he made these comments was at a campaign event in Jefferson County, where he was speaking about his attempts to win over voters in Milwaukee — he mischaracterized the growing Harambee neighborhood as the city’s most dangerous — but that makes his larger goal of entrenched one-party rule no less problematic. With a catastrophic gaffe like this, Michels gave away the game about what his campaign is really about: Power. Republicans in the state have also taken great measures to make it as difficult as possible for Democrats to govern, even when they win — as they have in 10 of the last 11 statewide elections. In recent years, they’ve done everything from stripping powers from the governor during the lame-duck session before Gov. Tony Evers took office, to gaveling in and out of special sessions without debate, to remaining on appointed boards far past the end of terms, to denying a public hearing to more than 98% of bills introduced by Democrats in the last session. The right’s “election integrity” nonsense and all the talk for years about “voter fraud” has never been about making voting more secure, or anything to do with transparency or fairness or fraud. It has been about Republicans winning and consolidating power at all costs — even the cost of tossing aside the foundational infrastructure of representative government in Wisconsin. Tim Michels stands as a genuine threat to democracy in Wisconsin, and democracy in Wisconsin is not exactly in a healthy place, as it is. The state has dropped to 47th in a ranking of the easiest states to vote in, the biggest drop of any state. Through the state’s ultra-gerrymandered maps, Republicans have a real chance to gain a two-thirds supermajority in the state legislature — in this 50-50 state where both top-of-the-ticket races are genuine toss-ups — which would give them the power to override a governor’s veto. This would have huge ramifications for governing in Wisconsin, and questions over presidential election certification in 2024 loom especially large. Evers, the incumbent Democrat, has proved essential to protecting democracy in the state, vetoing nearly 20 bills that would overhaul how elections are administered in Wisconsin and limit legal voting. Michels has pledged to revisit and sign bills Evers vetoed. At a campaign rally in Milwaukee on last Saturday, former President Barack Obama had this to say about Evers: “Don’t let the glasses and the necktie fool you, because Tony is tough. He’s single-handedly keeping Republicans from driving the car off the road. He might be democracy’s best hope in Wisconsin.”GOP #WIGov nominee Tim @MichelsForGov said the quiet part out loud: “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor.”
Democracy is on the line in Wisconsin. Michels must be stopped. pic.twitter.com/hIYyCNEADH — American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) October 31, 2022
The importance of re-electing Evers to protect democracy in the state is paramount because he is standing in the way of Republicans dramatically altering election administration in a state that once stood as a beacon of good governance. A quick look back: Wisconsin used to have something called the “Government Accountability Board,” which was ostensibly nonpartisan and created through a bipartisan compromise, to oversee elections. After they investigated Scott Walker in the early 2010s, Republicans got rid of that and replaced it with the “Wisconsin Elections Commission” (WEC), which is bipartisan, and has board seats that Republicans and Democrats appoint equally. That happened in 2015, during Walker’s second full term, where Republicans had trifecta control of state government. Now, many Republicans are upset with the WEC over 2020, and many have pushed to “abolish” the office. It’s not really clear where Michels stands on the bipartisan elections commission. He has a lot of plans that are pretty fuzzy, and PolitiFact gave him a “full flop” on his position on the WEC. Unlike other states, Wisconsin’s elections are not overseen by a partisan secretary of state. But that’s another component of what Republicans are trying to do this fall. In addition to winning back the governorship and pushing for a supermajority, top Republican Amy Loudenbeck left her seat in the legislature to run for secretary of state, an office that currently has next-to-no power. The prevailing thought in the state is that she is running to open the door for Republicans to push control of state elections into that office, but that would only happen if she were to win against incumbent Democrat Doug La Follette, who has served as Secretary of State since 1983. Michels poses a unique danger to democracy in Wisconsin not only because he holds extreme views on voting rights and democracy — which he certainly does — but because Republicans have put the infrastructure in place to achieve their goal of implementing one-party rule. Pundits have suggested that this election is not about protecting and upholding democracy, that it’s about the economy or crime or abortion. Maybe they’re right. But how are we, as a state and as a nation, going to go about addressing these issues without a functioning democracy? How will the will of the people be heard if their voices are denied a say in the process? These are the foundations of our system of government, and they are being challenged in increasingly problematic ways. A victory for Tim Michels in this gubernatorial election would bring about a dangerous new era for democracy in a state that’s already on the brink. Voters in Wisconsin cannot let that happen.pic.twitter.com/VQ5EESbprI https://t.co/jPaBUlpEYo
— Dan Shafer (@DanRShafer) October 30, 2022
Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s also written for The Daily Beast, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He’s won 13 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
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