Milwaukee, Wisconsin
CNN
–
Angela Lang is about to send a door knock for her canvas team. But first, the moment when we outline the interests:
“Fair Maps, Abortions, Voting Rights” is Lang’s list. “If Republicans and conservatives gain control of the court, that’s because it’s Elon Musk, and that’s the Trump agenda through line.”
On paper, in the April 1 election, Susan Crawford will fight Brad Schemmel for a vacancy at the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Liberal Justice Anne Walsh Bradley is retired and the election will determine the balance of the court’s ideology. Crawford is currently a judge for Dane County Circuit Court and is a former prosecutor and lawyer for past Democratic governors. Schimel was a judge of the Waukesha County Circuit Court and was the state’s GOP Attorney General from 2015 to 2019.
Court competition is a reminder that Wisconsin is not a 50-50 state in the presidential election. Close contests of Supreme Court seats have been common in recent years, with liberals fighting on this to maintain a 4-3 edge in the courts they won in 2023.
President Donald Trump’s approval of Simel over the weekend will only raise the national interests of the contest.
They are even bigger for organizations like Lang and Black leaders who organize for the community, of which Lang is the executive director. She preached a version of the argument five months ago that “I can’t afford to lose,” but Trump won Wisconsin on his way to the swing state sweep and the White House. Now, November’s bruises are still soft, and she faces another enormous organisation and turnout challenge.
“There’s always a pointing after the election,” Lang said in an interview. “This will be the first true local test to see if there are any lessons learned.”
Trump has increased the total votes and vote share in Milwaukee in November, including primarily black neighborhoods run by the Bullock. Lang’s way of doing things is one of the key points of post-election debate.
The Pro Trump Group was not as visible or active as a block when it came to door knocks and community meetings. But Trump increased his share of black votes and with the help of masks and others, he used digital tools to reach and activate voters.
In this Supreme Court election, Musk poured nearly $7 million into conservative groups in the state who are trying to reflect 2024’s strategy to mobilize Trump’s voters. It includes digital targeting and traditional canvas manipulation. The super PAC masks that have been supported in the past also spend a lot of money on TV advertising. There is no need to disclose the donor.
Lang has heard criticism that old-fashioned door knocking is no longer that effective or necessary. However, she dismisses it as uninformed.
“We’re definitely going to add a few of our digital stuff,” Lang said. But “I always have more pulses in the community than overpaid consultants who don’t even come from our state and don’t even step into our community, listening to the teams who knock all day every day.”
We live in major states and visited Lang several times last year as all of our map projects tracking the 2024 campaign through the eyes and experience of Americans, part of a key voting block. Lang was well aware that Trump ran stronger in her community, especially in the last few weeks, especially among black men.
“People didn’t feel that Democrats were addressing the needs and issues of the average voter,” Lang said. “People wanted to try something different.”
Now, despite the enormous interests in the Supreme Court competition, Lang and the rest of Progressives have told us that turnout remains a huge concern.
“There’s a lot of voter fatigue,” Lang said. “People don’t want to talk about politics right now. They feel they’re completely checked out.”
That voter fatigue is just one of the complicated challenges for Democrats. There is tension between grassroots activists and consultants about what went wrong in 2024 and how to fix it. Both how to prioritize your question list and how to communicate it more effectively. As to whether they can or should masks be elected.
There is also rage among Democratic leaders for not showing more fights and not achieving more success as President Trump moves at a frenzied pace.
“We need to hold our position,” said Josh Clemons, a Democrat consultant. “Then the Senate Democrat cave and absolutely people are frustrated. I have no doubt about that. … It’s very difficult to ask people to give everything when they don’t see real progress.”
Clemons frequently posts Tiktok about his interests in court elections. He first admitted, at first glance, that he might not see the part.
“I’m not a camera guy,” Clemons said in an interview at Madison’s home. “I didn’t want to be a digital influencer.”
But he posted a Tiktok complaining about how Republicans painted Wisconsin’s legislative maps a few years ago. “It exploded,” he said. “And I did something else a few days later, and it exploded even harder.”
Now, he takes an average of once a day in his basement office, while others post on forest trails near his home. “My whole message is that we are together,” he said. “There’s no campaign to save us.”
On Wisconsin’s latest visit, we stopped by the Milwaukee Democrats monthly meeting. There, the discussion was primarily about the urgency of the courts. However, one member provided a resolution urging the group to invest in a new organising office in the city’s black and Latino section, where Trump improved his vote share in 2024.
Clemons has no issues with more visibility and brick and mortar party offices. But he says Democrats and Progressives need to think and act on a much more grand scale.
“Republicans have built a massive media infrastructure that allows Democrats to send messages in ways that they cannot compete,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if your message is good or not.
Clemons watches the 2024 replay in the final week of the Crawford Simel race. Masks puts it into millions of advertising and turnout efforts.
“Wisconsin has a real chance to show that money can’t buy elections on April 1st,” he said in an interview. It reflects one of his Tiktok themes. “The world’s wealthiest people cannot choose and choose who should serve in our government at any level.”
Democrats musk even more issues than Trump himself.
“We now live in the world of Elon Musk,” Clemons said. “We’re working hard to make sure we don’t live in Elon Musk’s Wisconsin.”
Kate Duffy, like Klemons, calls the accidental path to Instagram her path. She founded a group called Motherhood for Good for Good in 2022 and now regularly posts on issues that are essential to busy mothers like her.
“I’m trying to create content that can be digested between Bath and bedtime,” Duffy said in an interview at her home in the suburbs of Milwaukee. “A simple video that someone can watch in a few minutes will really work.”
One Duffy Staple is a 60-second explanation of important issues and themes. She extends her posts with maps and graphics. But she is also leaning against longer posts. For her, this is an important lesson from her 2024 experience trying to help Kamala Harris.
“My biggest point is to listen to my gut more,” Duffy said. “We can do longer videos. We can explain things more. We can add more nuance. People are craving that.”
A message from a campaign consultant discouraged her from doing more of it last year.
“(i) What I was hearing was, ‘These are messages. They need to be quick and simple. They need to hit this.’ Looking back, I realize that it was probably something that escaped as injustice and didn’t really resonate with so many people. ”
Another takeaway: I’ll talk more about the economy and cost of living.
“There are a lot of women who make decisions to buy and are in charge of budgets in every household, and that’s certainly a place where we can do better,” Duffy said.
The Democratic consultant focused on abortion rights and women’s rights, she said. “That’s basic,” Duffy said. “I always believe it, but I can’t discount the actual struggle of someone who feels like putting food on the table for their kids. That’s the daily trauma they’re dealing with.
Barbershops were the daily town halls long before the internet, long before new media, social media and big data.
Eric Jones makes mistakes at Exodus Hair Studio in Milwaukee once a week, about trim and politics, about Bucks and the brewers, local economy, everything under the sun.
Jones repeatedly said last year that he was part of all of our map projects, some due to the talk of Exodus, that Trump had been running stronger among black men than in 2016 and 2020.
He is once again worried about Musk’s money later in the campaign.
“Political campaigns are essentially information warfare,” Jones said. “And war requires budgets. Men with the largest budget tend to win.”
And he once again worries about the black vote.
“I asked quite a few people,” Jones told us in an interview with Exodus. “It’s bad that you don’t know the candidate.”
Jones has been a trusted barometer of his community throughout 2024.
Jones hears the buyer’s regrets among Latino friends who have moved to Trump, and now regrets it because of the repression of those whose administration is undocumented.
“They regret it now — now,” Jones said. “But his policies have yet to reach the black community.” Many Jones’ friends, for example, believe that when Trump critics complain about setting up loyalists in the FBI and the Department of Justice, they can cut the federal government significantly and yawn.
“It doesn’t resonate with them,” Jones said. “Let him do something that affects every day.”
So far, Jones said he rarely sees Democrats as convinced they’ve learned the 2024 lesson. It worries him in the context of the Supreme Court election.
“But that’s a bit unfair,” Jones quickly adds. “It’s just because it happened to them. I don’t know if anyone can learn the lesson right away. … The midterm would be a better opportunity to see it.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
