Voters were fed up with the political establishment and looking for a change. They wanted an outsider, someone whose name they hadn’t heard a million times before, someone not entrenched in the Washington bureaucracy. Their call was answered by a wealthy businessman whose frustration with the government matched their own, who had never before held elected office, who wasn’t part of the problem.

The year was 2010 and an Oshkosh plastics manufacturer named Ron Johnson delivered an unexpected blow to a name synonymous with Wisconsin politics, defeating Russ Feingold by five points and replacing him in the U.S. Senate.

Six years later, many of the same attitudes and frustrations have contributed to the rise of Donald Trump within the Republican Party. The billionaire businessman is in an ugly battle with a name synonymous with American politics: Democratic former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Back in the Badger State, Johnson and Feingold will meet on the ballot again as the Democrat angles to become the third former senator since 1956 to return to the seat he once held.

For an incumbent, Johnson has struggled, not once taking the lead in the state’s most reliable public polling. But he’s also managed to tighten up the scorecard in the final weeks, while the presidential contest has proven the 2016 electoral climate is nothing if not unpredictable.

‘He’s a Republican’

Ron Johnson pulled his silver minivan into the driveway of Steve and Sally Miller’s dairy farm on a gray Friday morning in late September. He stepped out, clad in jeans and a striped dress shirt, and warmly greeted the extended family assembled in front of the Millers’ home.

After a few moments of chatting about the history of the farm, Johnson retrieved a bright-red Wisconsin pullover from the van. It was one of the first finger-numbingly brisk days of autumn and the sky couldn’t seem to make up its mind whether to rain, settling instead on a constant mist.

Tucked among the rolling hills of La Crosse County, the Millers’ farm grows a cash crop of corn and soybeans and is home to 60 dairy cows. A friend active in the county Republican party had asked Steve and Sally a few days before if they’d be interested in hosting the senator, and they obliged.

“He’s a Republican,” Sally said with a grin when asked what she liked about the senator. “And most of all, he’s going to go to bat for the farmers.”

Steve gave a small smile when asked what Johnson has done that he supported.

“Well,” he said, pausing to laugh. “To be honest with you, I really don’t know a lot about Sen. Johnson … All I’ve ever heard is good things about him. One person was saying he’s accomplished more in his term in office than what Mr. Feingold ever did, you know, in all the time that he was there.”

Steve Miller is not unlike other Wisconsinites in his knowledge of Johnson’s career. On average over the last three months, 28 percent of voters told the Marquette University Law School poll they didn’t know enough about the senator to have an opinion about him — despite his incumbency and role as chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security — compared to 21 percent for Feingold. The most recent poll, released last week, showed Johnson shrinking that number to 20 percent.

Still, Johnson’s perspective lines up with what the Millers said they’re looking for in a senator.

Regulations, particularly governing the agriculture industry, have grown out of control, they said. They’re looking for someone who will rein them in. Steve Miller is also concerned about trade and cracking down on illegal immigration.

“If we can keep some of the immigrants out of here and try and put some of our local people to work, I think at the end of the day a lot of these people will feel a lot better about themselves, too,” he said.

They’d like to see markets opened up so they can start exporting more of their products, the Millers said.

They’re feeling the squeeze from large-scale dairy operations, which they said affect their bottom line but also have a more negative impact on the environment than small operations like theirs.

“It’s tough,” Sally said. “Because right now the prices are so low and our investments are so high that it’s been a tough year.”

Steve said he doesn’t believe in asking for government subsidies, but that doesn’t mean lawmakers don’t play a role in enacting policies that will help the industry. Politics plays a much larger role in agriculture now than it did years ago, he said.

And in turn, agriculture plays its own role in politics. Johnson accepted endorsements that day from the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, Dairy Business Association, Wisconsin Cattlemen’s Association and Wisconsin Pork Association.

The primary driving forces behind their endorsements were trade agreements, environmental regulations and immigration: pro-Trans-Pacific Partnership, anti-Waters of the U.S. Rule and generally encouraging some sort of guest worker program.

A.V. Roth of the Wisconsin Pork Association said the Obama administration’s Waters of the U.S. Rule could “affect farmers’ right to best utilize their land.”

Johnson said Feingold paved the way to what he considers government overreach with his Clean Water Restoration Act for Waters of the U.S., which seeks to define which bodies of water fall under the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers and are covered by the Clean Water Rule.

On immigration, Johnson said, “the number one component of my border security bill would be a functioning guest worker program, so farmers … actually have a legal system to get the workers to milk the cows, to pick the vegetables, to clean our hotels. That’s something we have to do. That’s extremely important.”

Cody Heller of the Dairy Business Association praised Johnson for that stance. He said dairy farmers lose sleep over concerns about illegal labor.

“He’s … focusing on getting a plan that actually works for us that’s legal, that’s within the realm of the law, that keeps our country safe,” Heller said.

While most people at the event said they want to see the senator come out in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Johnson still declined to take a clear position on the deal, instead stating repeatedly that he is for “free and fair trade” and adding that he would be “happy to have a President Trump negotiate a better deal.” He reiterated as he has throughout his campaign that he is giving “thoughtful” consideration to the agreement, while Feingold gave a “knee-jerk” reaction in opposing it.

“The more doors we can open, the more trade barriers we can take down to get our products out, the happier agriculture is,” said Joe Bragger of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation.

Bragger said it’s Johnson’s stance on trade, the Waters of the U.S. rule and delisting wolves as an endangered species that have earned him the Farm Bureau’s support. Johnson has “gone out of his way” to acknowledge the concerns of the agriculture industry, Bragger said.

And Feingold?

“It seems like we all start (small) and then drift away, and then we forget,” Bragger said. “I’ve got to remind myself as Farm Bureau director, I’m so glad that every day I go back home and farm. Every day I’m still involved at the county level in Farm Bureau, because that means I still have my feet in it. You get pulled away long enough, you’ve lost reality … and I think (Johnson) is not that far removed that he’s still not one of us. I think that’s important.”

Johnson’s campaign has sought to paint Feingold as a career politician — a Washington insider who cares more about returning to the seat than serving constituents — who has abandoned the principles that once defined him.

“My background over the 34 years when he was a career politician, most of that 34 years I was involved in the private sector building a good Wisconsin manufacturing company, producing Wisconsin jobs, and then in the very short period of time that I’ve been your United States senator, I’ve used that same kind of outsider perspective — and trust me, it’s a completely different perspective,” Johnson said. “I’m the only manufacturer in the United States Senate.”

On the campaign trail, Johnson has taken to urging supporters and journalists to ask Feingold what he accomplished during his tenure in public office. Asked about his own legislative accomplishments, Johnson touted the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015, an effort to protect government agencies from hackers, and a bill that made it easier to hire military veterans as Customs and Border Protection officers.

“I’ve actually gotten real results. Again, he’s got the one high-profile failure, campaign finance reform. I’ve got dozens — I guess low-profile — dozens of low-profile successes,” Johnson said.

‘The real deal’

“I like career politicians,” said Mary Ellen Schmelzer, of Wausau, as she and her husband Bill waited for Feingold to arrive for an event with senior citizens at Yawkey Park in downtown Wausau. “That’s a heck of a job.”

“Hey, you know what?” Bill interjected. “I’ve got a career doctor.”

“Come on,” Mary Ellen continued, “let’s not put down people because they make a career of service.”

The supporters who would soon stand behind Feingold for a news conference on seniors’ issues spoke of him in near reverence. The Schmelzers said they’ve “always” voted for him, calling him the “real deal.”

The “career politician” label is a positive one, said Bob Coleman, of Weston. The alternative, he said, is a “manufacturer moonlighting as a senator.”

A few minutes later, a dark blue minivan pulled up next to the park. From the back emerged Feingold and his wife, Christine Ferdinand, whom he later pointed out to the crowd as a recent retiree.

The sun shone through the turning leaves of the trees that served as a green-and-gold backdrop for the news conference on a warm but crisp early October afternoon. Feingold, grinning and waving while sporting a plaid shirt with gray slacks and a navy sport coat, joined the line of supporters backing his stances on Social Security, Medicare and prescription drug prices.

Feingold has made seniors’ issues an area of focus in his campaign, along with student loan debt, trade, paid family leave and wage equality. He frequently portrays Johnson as out-of-touch and beholden to corporate interests over the needs of Wisconsinites.

The former senator looked on with a smile as Jon “Bowser” Bauman, of the band Sha Na Na, hammed for the small group and the two TV cameras, flexing and making faces before he praised the former senator for his positions on issues that affect seniors.

Bauman, a co-founder of the political action committee Senior Votes Count, was there along with Max Richtman of the National Committee to Protect Social Security and Medicare to endorse Feingold.

Bauman said the race could be the second-most important one in the country in 2016, calling Feingold “one of the greatest champions on senior issues Congress has ever seen.” Johnson, he said, has been “particularly dreadful” in that area.

Feingold said he believes Social Security should be preserved and protected as a public program, while Johnson has indicated a willingness to consider privatizing it. He also voiced his support for maintaining Medicare as a public program, and said Congress should pass a law to allow the United States to negotiate lower drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry.

For Coleman, the most important issues when considering a candidate to support have always been “jobs and integrity in government.”

“Both of which are woefully in trouble right at the moment, especially when you consider the nincompoop who’s running for president,” he said before pausing to ask forgiveness for calling Trump a “nincompoop.”

“I have others but, having spent three years in the Navy, I have acquired a picturesque vocabulary. And I could use a good many of those expressions on the Republican Party at this moment,” he said.

Coleman likened Feingold to William Proxmire, who represented Wisconsin in the Senate from 1957 to 1989. The main concern for both Proxmire and Feingold, Coleman said, was the people of Wisconsin and the United States.

Both Proxmire and Feingold had reputations as liberal Democrats who occassionally bucked the party line.

“Our current Senate is dominated by people whose concern is themselves. There are more than 70 millionaires in the United States Senate,” Coleman said. “How can a majority of millionaires really care about a World War II veteran on a pension? They don’t have any idea what it would be like. Now, I was a teacher for 48 years. And I had a real concern about government, even though I was an English teacher. I have six kids and 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, and I am concerned about the shape of the world for them.”

Johnson’s net worth is estimated at a minimum of $13.4 million, while Feingold’s is estimated between $328,000 and $795,000.

Coleman was especially critical of Johnson’s opposition to holding hearings to consider President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, accusing him of not doing his job as a senator.

Mary Ellen Schmelzer credited Feingold’s votes against the Patriot Act and the Iraq War as the main reasons for her longtime support.

“I think he’s honest, and I think he wants to get all kinds of graft out of politics, and that’s important to me. I want our democracy to be healthy,” she said.

Her husband, Bill, lauded Feingold’s support for “constitutional principles of liberty and justice for all, emphasis on all.” They are put off by Johnson’s approach to corporate regulations, which they said is too lax.

“I like Hillary (Clinton)’s thing of ‘we’re all in this together,’” Mary Ellen said.

Coleman, when asked about specific accomplishments from Feingold’s time in the Senate, said six years ago is a long time to remember at his age. But he indicated his support was more about an attitude and approach to the job than a specific policy item.

“He just simply cared about us in Wisconsin,” he said. “You could talk to him.”

Feingold quickly dismissed Johnson’s suggestions that he has nothing to show from his years as a senator aside from the now-gutted McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation. The Middleton Democrat said Johnson would know about his accomplishments if he had traveled throughout the state and listened to people.

“If he’d gotten around the state and gotten to western Wisconsin, he’d find out that the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, which was a very difficult issue for some 30 years, was resolved in a tremendously positive way. It’s a beautiful natural reserve at this point because of my efforts as well as others,” Feingold said. “You go up to northern Wisconsin, where he rarely goes, up to the top of the state, we now have a beautiful national lakeshore, the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. We made sure that was permanent.”

Feingold continued: he authored the bill that created Wisconsin’s nationally recognized Alzheimer’s program while in the State Senate, worked with Democratic former Sen. Herb Kohl to protect the state’s SeniorCare prescription program and was the first lawmaker to initiate national legislation on racial profiling — although it was never passed.

And his greatest accomplishment, he said, was playing a “critical role” along with other lawmakers in erasing the national deficit when Bill Clinton was president.

“And by the way, I could go on for a long time, but the point here is that’s just a political trick,” Feingold said. “Sen. Johnson is using this because he’s a politician who’s in trouble. He’s saying this in order to try to prevent people from being able to actually think about the future, which is what counts.”

Feingold said Johnson never “rolls up his sleeves” and accomplishes things on a bipartisan basis.

“So I don’t throw around this silly language about other people not accomplishing anything, but if he had even bothered to listen to the people of Wisconsin, he’d know very well that we’ve done much together, and we’re going to do a lot more together,” he said.

‘The same set of alternatives’

For political observers watching the race, round two isn’t all that different from the first time Johnson and Feingold faced off.

“It’s very close, like it was for most of the time six years ago,” said Mike Wagner, University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor of political science and journalism.

UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden agreed that 2016 looks “an awful lot” like 2010.

“The candidates have starkly different positions on the big issues of the day, especially the Affordable Care Act, but also taxes, trade, and the environment,” Burden said. “Johnson continues to criticize Feingold as a career politician and Feingold continues to criticize Johnson's personal finances. Voters this year are essentially facing the same set of alternatives they were presented with six years ago.”

But there are some major differences in the external factors and political landscape affecting the the race. Johnson’s 2010 victory came in a midterm election with a Democratic president in office, on the heels of the Great Recession. Obama is on his way out now, leaving a slowly improving economy behind.

Johnson’s re-election effort stands in the shadow of a volatile presidential election that has defied conventional wisdom with every zig and zag.

“In other states with a competitive Senate race, Republicans have been running ahead of Trump. Wisconsin has been an outlier most of this year because Johnson's standing has been parallel to Trump's,” Burden said. “However, in recent days there's been some daylight between the two Republicans. This separation is probably due to Johnson’s new ad campaigns that have helped to better define him and Feingold, but it also reflects general distaste with Trump's recent comments and actions that have set him apart from everyone else in politics.”

Johnson’s campaign has sought to tie Feingold to Clinton throughout the race in an effort to capitalize on her relative unpopularity and her second-place finish in the state’s Democratic presidential primary, painting them both as members of the political elite. Much of Johnson’s campaign advertising this fall has attempted to unveil his “softer side,” highlighting his involvement with a faith-based employment program and his work to help a family adopt a child from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Meanwhile, Johnson stands apart from most other vulnerable Republican senators with his continued support for Trump in the wake of a string of allegations of sexual misconduct stemming from a 2005 recording of the candidate bragging about sexually predatory behavior.

“I’m just a little manufacturer from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, just a citizen legislator. So I’m not a political pundit,” Johnson said in September, before the sexual assault allegations surfaced. “I think certainly the history of this election is, nobody can predict. We are in uncharted water right now. So, I’ve got my own race to run, I’ve got my own record. Prior to ever becoming involved in elected office, and in a very short period of time, a record of real results here.”

For Republican leaders in Wisconsin trying to motivate voters without discussing Trump, the Senate race has given them a contest on which to focus their efforts.

“It’s one of those where every vote is going to count,” Gov. Scott Walker told the conservative crowd at the 1st Congressional District Republican Party of Wisconsin Fall Fest earlier this month. Trump, who was bumped from the event after the 2005 recording surfaced, wasn’t mentioned as Walker told the party faithful there “couldn’t be a more important race than Ron Johnson’s race for Senate.”

Both candidates appear to go out of their way to avoid referring to themselves as “senator,” instead eagerly pinning the title to their opponent. Wagner said that’s “a little peculiar,” but it’s clear “both candidates are reading the anti-elitism in the Wisconsin electorate.”

Feingold acknowledged the similarities in the anti-government sentiments in both the 2010 and 2016 elections, but said that concern is rooted in middle-income and working families who aren’t “getting a fair deal.”

“Every six years, if you pay attention to what’s happening in the world, you never get exactly the same feelings. The difference this time is that six years ago, everybody was kind of in a bad situation because of the economic collapse that was not caused by Barack Obama, but more by (President George W.) Bush and his policies,” Feingold said. “But now we have this discrepancy, where people at the top are doing really well. Sen. Johnson’s buddies that he always votes with are doing great … What’s happening though is that people who work hard every day aren’t getting a fair deal. Their wages are stagnant, they see their jobs being shipped overseas, and people have figured out what’s going on, which is some people are really doing well, and Sen. Johnson helps them every time. The rest of us aren’t doing so great. That needs to change.”

While the presidential contest has shifted more heavily in Clinton’s favor among Wisconsin voters, Johnson has chipped away at Feingold’s lead, now a two-point advantage among likely voters.

Part of that could be linked to Republican voters who, while unenthusiastic about or opposed to Trump, have decided they will still show up on Election Day to support Republican candidates down the ticket, Wagner said. Johnson has also run effective advertising, he said.

But at the same time, Feingold has had some success “reintroducing himself … as approachable ‘Russ’ who is in touch with the concerns of regular Wisconsinites,” Burden said.

“Johnson is most effective when he portrays himself as a common sense business man,” he said. “Feingold gets the upper hand when highlighting Johnson’s unpopular positions such as the minimum wage and climate change.”

At this point, any small factor — debates, get-out-the-vote efforts or campaign ads — could be the one to propel a candidate to victory, Wagner said.

Burden said the outcome will likely boil down to two factors: how closely the Senate race is linked to the presidential campaign and which candidate voters believe is more in touch with everyday Wisconsinites.

“It’s a close race, so most things that they can do aren’t likely to matter much,” Wagner said. “But in a close race, anything could be the difference.”

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