If you are a socialist running for the Democratic nomination for president and have received more than six million individual contributions totalling more than $100m, but you won’t say if you’ll use any of that money to help Democratic nominees for the House or the the Senate, it’s possible that the place to call your two million donors “the future of the Democratic party” is not the Founders Day gala of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. There, the cheap seats go

for $150 and the platinum sponsorship (a table for 10 with six VIP tickets) will run you $12,000.

Even if, like Bernie Sanders on Saturday night, you’re playing more to the television cameras in the back of the room and the general admission seats on house right than the audience directly in front of you, making such statements will still leave a huge expanse of silent ballroom between you and those cameras.

The latest polls may give Sanders a comfortable lead over former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in the Badger State, but Saturday night’s gala – filled with union members and party stalwarts – was definitely Clinton territory, even just judging by the number of standing ovations and the amount of sustained applause for the candidates’ speeches. (The fact that the first speaker was local congresswoman Gwendolyn Moore, who has endorsed Clinton, and Minnesota senator Al Franken, also a Clinton endorser, batted clean-up, was perhaps another clue.)

But this is Wisconsin: politeness is a way of life, and so the audience stood and applauded Sanders as he took and left the stage. His speech, first touching on his standard themes of income inequality, college affordability and campaign finance reform, earned him smatterings of applause. But it wasn’t until he attacked the current governor, Scott Walker – “think of all the things Scott Walker does, and I will do exactly the opposite” – that the room really came to life.

And here in Wisconsin, where Walker’s voter ID law could block 300,000 people from the polls on Tuesday, Sanders’ statement that even when he lost races in Vermont he wasn’t tempted to bar voters from the polls hit just the right note.

“If you don’t have the guts to participate in a free and fair election, get out of politics and get another job,” he said, to cheers.

There weren’t very many other local touches – a Clinton specialty – to Sanders’ speech, though he did touch on reproductive rights, climate change, science-based politics, paid family leave, early childhood education, universal health insurance, Barack Obama’s US supreme court nominee and the need to defeat Donald Trump in the general election. For the last, he received a standing ovation.

And though the audience stood and applauded the end of his speech, the “Bernie!” chants were limited to the general admission seats, where people continued to stand throughout his exit music – David Bowie’s Starman – to catch a glimpse of their favorite and share stickers with each other.

For Clinton, the cheers started during the video that introduced her and continued as she took the stage and promised that “help is on the way” for organized labor in a state where Walker’s 2011 legislation to restrict the ability of public sector unions to collectively bargain and end the automatic membership of employees caused a two-thirds drop in the number of members.

“We believe that when a governor attacks nurses, police and firefighters, it doesn’t make him a leader, it makes him a bully,” she said.

Clinton’s promise to support down-ticket candidates in the state – “always have, always will” – earned cheers, but it was her statement that “I don’t think the president gets the credit his deserves” on Wall Street reform that got many in the crowd on their feet.

Interestingly, though, for a heavily union crowd, it wasn’t Clinton’s efforts to highlight her opposition to various trade deals that earned her the affection of the audience – though one lone Sanders supporter cheered when she noted that her opponent opposed every trade deal no matter what. It was her statement that good trade deals could help Wisconsin’s exports, which have gone up 50% in the last 10 years, according to date from the Department of Commerce.

Hillary Clinton lashes out: ‘I’m sick of Sanders campaign’s lies’. Guardian

And the hometown crowd erupted when she went after Wisconsin supreme court candidate Rebecca Bradley over a 10-year-old column in which she declared that birth control was “morally abhorrent” and pharmacists who filled prescriptions for it were “a party to murder”.

“There is no place on any supreme court …” Clinton began. She had to stop as the ballroom got to its feet and cheered.

Like Sanders, she ended her speech with why she feels she is the better candidate.

“I think we need a nominee who’s been tested and vetted,” she said. “For 25 years, they’ve thrown everything they have at me, but I’m still standing!”

And after another reminder that she was “the only candidate in this race that’s pledged to raise money” for down-ticket races, she left people to their drinks and their selfies. She left the stage to the strains of Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off. If the polls are any indication, she may well have to do that later this week.