Timing, Trump and turning down the volume: How low-key Tony Evers defeated Scott Walker

Patrick Marley , Molly Beck | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON - It wasn't 100,000 protesters on the Wisconsin State Capitol steps or an unprecedented recall election that took out Gov. Scott Walker.

It was a 67-year-old former elementary school principal from Plymouth who indulges in Egg McMuffins and games of euchre.

Six years after Walker became the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election and four years after he secured a second term, state schools Superintendent Tony Evers narrowly defeated him this month by focusing on kitchen-table issues — education, roads and health care.

Both sides saw early warning signs for Walker because of his brief presidential run and the Democratic response to President Donald Trump and Republican control of Congress.

Walker made his name nationally by going to war with unions in 2011, prompting massive protests and the recall effort. By 2018, he was tacking to the middle on health care and education, which made him look like "the incredible shrinking governor," said Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki.

"The longer Scott Walker was governor, the smaller he got," he said.

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Before his run for president, Walker's election successes in a fiercely polarized state were in large part due to his popularity among voters who identified as independents. But polling during the 2018 race showed that support had fallen apart for Walker.

"There’s no single variable — running for a third term is tough," said Collin Roth, policy analyst and director of public engagement for the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. "His bread and butter was always winning independents and after the presidential run he was always underwater with independents."

Supreme Court race: A warning sign for Walker

An early sign of trouble for Walker emerged in April when liberal-leaning judge Rebecca Dallet decisively defeated a conservative for a 10-year term on the state Supreme Court.

"If Dane County can turn out 81 percent for somebody who is not, and has never been, on the ballot before in a nonpartisan race ... I thought to myself, this smells trouble for the governor and Republicans," said former GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson.

Thompson said throughout 2018 he heard "disquieting things — that the base was unsettled and people in the suburbs were voting against Trump and possibly Walker."

RELATED: Liberal Supreme Court victory boosted by fired-up Democratic base, Dane County landslide

Walker himself knew what Dallet's win meant for how difficult his path to re-election would be, using that April election as evidence in warning Republicans of a potential blue wave that could take him out.

And on Nov. 6, voting in Dane and Milwaukee counties indeed exploded and put Walker under.

"From the start, the Walker campaign prepared for a challenging year given the headwinds often facing the party that controls the White House," said Walker campaign adviser Brian Reisinger, who added that despite Walker winning more votes than in 2014, it wasn't enough to combat national and local groups working against Walker.

Nearly 2.7 million people voted in Wisconsin — easily the most ever in a midterm election.

Early voting — which was greatly expanded after a federal judge lifted limits on the practice in 2016 — also contributed to Evers' win. Nearly 566,000 people voted early, well above the 374,000 who voted early in 2014.

Voting in Madison and Milwaukee was supported by a 28 percent increase in turnout from the 2014 election on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and a 43 percent increase on UW-Milwaukee's campus. NextGen America, a liberal group that spent $2.8 million in Wisconsin to boost Democratic turnout among millennials, reported between 75 percent and 80 percent of the vote share on the campuses went to Evers.

Brandon Scholz, a longtime Republican strategist, said Evers benefited from an environment that would have given an advantage to any Democrat.

"He was at the right place at the right time when voter sentiment wasn't as strong for Walker’s third-term bid," he said.

Walker was taken out in the same environment that delivered him his first election as governor. In 2010, Walker and Republicans were swept into office during a year of fierce backlash against Democratic President Barack Obama.

Walker portrayed as out of touch

During the campaign, Democrats portrayed Walker as being beholden to his donors and more interested in his own political future than the citizens of the state. That theme was used by Walker’s past opponents, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and former state Commerce Secretary Mary Burke, but this time it resonated with voters, Democrats argued.

“It worked this time because (Walker) had made it plain as day,” said Zepecki, who advised Burke on her campaign and worked on independent efforts to help Evers.

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Evers — the state schools superintendent since 2009 — didn’t come across as politically ambitious, as Walker did, Zepecki and other Democrats said.

“People want the volume turned down on our politics, especially the middle voters. Tony Evers is an embodiment of that," Zepecki said.

Evers isn’t polished, but he maintained discipline throughout the campaign by focusing on the issues that he saw as most important.

“Authenticity matters,” said Maggie Gau, who was Evers’ campaign manager and will serve as his chief of staff when he is sworn in as governor in January. “As long as we were talking about schools, health care and roads and not picking fights, we were going to let Tony be Tony.”

Amanda Brink, a Democratic strategist who ran Evers’ 2017 campaign for schools superintendent, said Evers’ easygoing, nice-guy approach came through during the campaign.

“Nobody has a beef with Tony,” Brink said.

Unlike during Walker’s past runs, the issues on voters’ minds were ones that played well for Democrats.

Evers was a teacher, principal, local school superintendent and state education official before he became state schools superintendent. A cancer survivor, Evers was able to tell a personal story when talking about his support for covering people with pre-existing conditions. And he used a split among Republicans on transportation to emphasize his desire to find a bipartisan solution to fixing the state’s roads and bridges.

There’s a cliché that says timing is everything in politics and, in many ways, Evers got lucky.

“I think most of it was a right-time, right-place dynamic,” said Paul Maslin, a Democratic pollster.

RELATED: GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos threatens to take power away from Tony Evers before January

Maslin credited Evers for striking the right tone throughout the race. He said Evers came across as Mr. Rogers and “a Wisconsin kind of guy,” but also wasn’t afraid to respond aggressively to attacks when needed.

Republicans point to national environment

But Republicans say Walker's loss was more reflective of the national environment and less about Walker — after all, Walker had survived three votes before 2018.

"(Democrats) didn't turn out in those numbers in previous times Walker's been on the ballot," Roth said.

If Walker's bid for a third term had been successful, he would have been the only Wisconsin governor other than Thompson to be elected to a four-year term three times.

Thompson said his recipe for securing a third term included firing up his Republican base early and spending the last year of the term to win over independents and Democrats.

"It was something that no other candidate really tried to do," Thompson said. "That’s what needed to be done but nobody listened and followed my lead on that."

Overall, Republicans agreed Trump was a big reason for Walker's defeat.

"I didn't have the national animosity or the national political overhang that Walker had," Thompson said.

In a recent memo analyzing the election results, Republican Party of Wisconsin Executive Director Mark Morgan acknowledged the Democratic base was energized.

"Republicans faced substantial headwinds as is typical when a single party controls all levers of power in Washington, and history was against us," he wrote.

GOP 'crosswise' on health care

Roth said despite having a good story to tell about the state's economy, Republicans struggled to find their footing as health care became a central issue to the race.

He said the party got "crosswise" on the issue of health care, by standing by their longstanding message of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, but now also saying they wanted to preserve part of it.

"Republicans have had a hard time with this issue," Roth said. "They were trying to have it both ways."

The issue of education gave Evers an advantage, by nature of his day job as state schools chief and also because Democrats are more likely to support increased funding for schools than Republicans.

Roth said Walker's record $649 million in new funding for schools seemed to get lost by the time the general election came around.

Voters likely were left with the impression that Republicans probably can't outspend Democrats on schools, Roth said.

"Those are two things they were on defense on — health care and education, and those were salient issues," Roth said.

Evers had to break through huge primary field

Evers got in the race in August 2017 after being encouraged to do so by former U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl and Chuck Pruitt, a director of A.B. Data Group and a former University of Wisconsin System regent.

It was four months after Evers won a third term as schools superintendent. At that point, two other Democrats were already in the race and within months there would be eight.

“I remember a little before Thanksgiving of last year, I was concerned that this primary field was going to be kind of a mess and reflect poorly on the party,” said Mike Tate, a former chairman of the state Democratic Party.

But the primary stayed largely peaceful and Walker and his allies were unable to bombard the airwaves with early ads defining Walker’s opponent because they didn’t know who it would be.

“It turned out that giant primary was the best thing that ever happened to us,” Tate said.

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After the primary, A Stronger Wisconsin, a new group formed by the Democratic Governors Association, immediately began running ads to attack Walker and combat TV spots being run against Evers.

A Stronger Wisconsin pumped $14 million into the race. In all, Evers and his allies spent about $20 million in TV and radio ads, compared to about $35 million on Walker's side, according to a tally by Democrats.

In the weeks following the primary, Republicans firebombed Evers with ads — many of them graphic — about Evers not revoking the teaching license of a Middleton teacher who had viewed pornographic material at school. They followed them with spots that contended Evers would release dangerous prisoners.

Internal polling showed the attacks weren’t hurting Evers, according to Democrats.

“It didn’t stick because some stuff can’t be believed because it’s not believable,” Tate said.

That contrasted with ads for Evers that depicted his career as an educator, Tate said.

“It was believable because it’s true versus being believable because it’s slick,” he said.

Evers won by a little over 1 percent and will have to work with Republicans who hold commanding majorities in the Legislature. That leaves little margin for error for both sides, said Maslin, the Democratic pollster.

“I don’t think either side should be particularly cocky right now,” he said.