MILWAUKEE—Leah Vukmir is a member of the Wisconsin State Senate. She would like to become a member of the United States Senate. In pursuit of that, she's running against incumbent Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin. The two of them had their first debate on Monday night at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In that debate, Leah Vukmir wanted the voters to know two things: a) she's a nurse, and "nurses are problem solvers," and b) she wants that wall.

I mean, she really wants that wall. WE NEED THAT WALL! Her parents, you know, are Greek immigrants, and they went through a process and, because of that, WE NEED THAT WALL!

I watched them go through that process, and they were excited to become American so, first and foremost, I've always said, we must build that wall. Once that wall is built, and once we have that guarantee of border security, then we can go through a process. Because it is a privilege and it is a process to grant that citizenship. It's not fair to all of those who'd come before.

And I want people to think about the wall from another perspective. We think about building the wall only from people trying to come across the border, illegal immigrants. But that wall is also important from the perspective of human trafficking, drug trafficking, MS-13 gang members...

(Drink!)

Baldwin and Vukmir at the debate AP

...This is the open border philosophy that Senator Baldwin embraces. I don't embrace that, and that is why the wall is so important. The wall is also important from a public health perspective. And I look at it as a nurse from a public health perspective. People are coming over the border and we have no control over the public health. I remember the days when people had to stop at Ellis Island and they were quarantined. These are the many reasons why the wall must be built first and why I support that, first and foremost...The wall is assurance. The wall has to be built first...

To which, Senator Baldwin replied,

I do think it's important that we take a comprehensive approach, rather than piece by piece. The idea of a bill that includes stronger border security, a path to citizenship for DREAMers, that stops the the odious practice of snatching babies from their mothers is really important. What I would suggest, on the wall, is that we should use the smartest border security possible, and many people say that is not a wall, but smart technology, but the president seems just to want a wall.

And so it went. Vukmir ran through the entire Trumpian syllabus, right down to the customary sneering at a weird moment when she talked about Baldwin's friends in "the Hamptons," while Baldwin was positively mild. The format allowed for very little interchange between the two candidates, and it was Vukmir primarily who tried to force that issue, particularly when she talked about late-term abortions in a manner that was somewhere between graphic and a Roger Corman movie, dismembership and brain-sucking included.

“Tammy Baldwin would rip that life out of the mother just like that and snuff that life out. It’s wrong, it’s wrong.”

Vukmir Mark Hoffman AP

The difference in surface intensity was startling, but, as it turns out, that was a fairly shallow measure. As the debate wore on, Baldwin's dogged, if low-key, insistence on the issues absorbed Vukmir's obvious intensity. What was curious was that, except for two conspicuous exchanges, which we'll get to in a minute, Vukmir's 16 years of service in the state legislature barely came up. Vukmir's career is inextricably bound up with that of Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin.

She succeeded Walker in the assembly when Walker was elected Milwaukee County Executive. In 2009, she was elected to the state senate, so she was already there when Walker was elected a year later, and she was a vital part of the legislative engine that propelled Walker's abandonment of Wisconsin's progressive history. She was a staunch supporter of both Act 10, the law that crushed collective bargaining among the state's public employees—and that occasioned the mass protests in Madison and the unsuccessful recall attempt in 2011—and of Walker's subsequent success in making Wisconsin a right-to-work state.

Baldwin Scott Bauer/AP/REX/Shutterstock

The two times that Vukmir's long career in state government came up involved a Vukmir vote against oral chemotherapy, and, most notably, when Vukmir was asked about labor rights in the president*'s new trade agreements. On the second of these, Vukmir's indomitable snark completely failed her.

Ms. Vukmir, one of the provisions in this agreement is designed to make it easier for Mexican workers to form and join labor unions. As a state senator, you voted for Act 10, which restricted collective bargaining rights, and you supported right-to-work. When you look at the president's trade bill, does that square with your thoughts for American workers.

And the reply was about...something...

I'm excited about what the president is trying to do...The Art of the Deal, he wrote that book...He believes in free trade, as do I, but he believes in fair trade...

Something, something, Mexico, Canada, EU, something...

And now this block of countries has the ability to apply the pressure and negotiate against the real bad actor in this, which is China. China has been eating our lunch...I'm going to trust him. I have to look at the specifics of the bill, but I believe we are headed in absolutely the right direction.

Labor unions, what are those?

Vukmir Scott Bauer/AP/REX/Shutterstock

Coming into the debate, Baldwin held a solid lead over Vukmir, who had to survive an expensive and bitter primary campaign against Kevin Nicholson, a former Democrat who ran as an outsider. The Senate campaign, as is practically every race here in the 2018 cycle, is a proxy fight for what Walker and his legislature have wrought in the state over the past eight years.

On Monday, Walker held a corporate pep rally in Madison, at which he touted his economic program, including the manufacturing and agricultural tax break that have been criticized as little more than corporate welfare. He also pitched (again) for drug-testing all recipients of public assistance, one of his more recent hobbyhorses that Walker claims would be a way for the unemployed to "get ready" for the transition to the private sector, where they'll all be drug tested anyway. The event was sponsored by the Bradley Foundation, which has poured tens of millions of dollars into The Walker Experiment over the past decade. That experiment is the one and only issue in Wisconsin politics this month. It was strange that it came up so infrequently on Monday night. Some people seem so proud of it.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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