Former Republican state lawmaker Michelle Litjens says she thinks GOP Gov. Scott Walker is on his way to a third term after changing his message mid-campaign.
Meanwhile, Capital Times associate editor John Nichols says Dem Tony Evers has run a successful campaign and has to keep “doing what he’s doing.”
“(Walker) has gone to a message that ‘Tony Evers is going to raise your taxes’ and I think that is what’s going to help him over the finish line,” Litjens said Sunday on “UpFront with Mike Gousha,” produced in partnership with WisPolitics.com.
“Evers has gotten himself into a good position,” Nichols countered. “He has a real chance here.”
Litjens said Republicans are seeing “the Kavanaugh effect” and voters are tired of the “mob mentality.”
“I think the Democrats are going to be punished for that this fall,” she said.
Nichols said he thought GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s recent comment on Social Security and Medicare were helpful to Democrats and that social welfare programs are “going to be the final issues” of the 2018 campaign.
Also on the program, Angela Lang, executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, explained the group’s silent canvass program. She said several Milwaukee-area Democratic politicians have taken part in it.
Lang said candidates going along on the silent canvass are prohibited from handing out literature, taking pictures or wearing campaign-branded clothing. She said they also are not introduced as candidates at the doors. Politicians have to listen to the voters during the canvass, she said.
Lang said the program developed because candidates and parties want to “parachute in” during the final weeks of a campaign and be “incredibly transactional with their relationship with communities of color, specifically the black community.”
The silent canvass program, she said, forces candidates to “earn our votes” by “spending some time listening to the stories of the community the way we do” and seeing first-hand eviction notices or make-shift memorials for people who were shot to death.
See more from the show:
https://www.wisn.com/upfront
