The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.

Wisconsin is blessed to have one of the best GOP state chairs in the nation. His name is Brian Schimming, and his feats are many. He travels all over Wisconsin to meet and energize the grassroots. He rubs elbows with local activists and top GOP leaders like Senator Ron Johnson. He bridges the gap and gives us hope our voices will be heard. The three previous state chairs were not doing this. Brian does hundreds of news interviews worth millions of dollars of free media. This also wasn’t being done prior to December 2022 when he was hired. Brian helped President Trump win Wisconsin in 2024 when RPW (Republican Party of Wisconsin) fused the state party apparatus with the Trump campaign. Trump narrowly won by 0.9% and every vote was needed.

Brian Schimming was hired because Governor Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul both got reelected. Something needed to be done. Brian was rehired in December 2024 by unanimous vote to finish the job.

But now a contingent of malcontents, as reported by Politico, wants him gone. The timing is perfect because left-leaning Politico wants Tom Tiffany to lose in November. Changing horses in midstream is a bad idea.

The root of the beef is that Judge Maria Lazar lost the Supreme Court race by 20%. Let’s examine why conservatives are often losing elections.

A. External factors especially the Iran War:  No GOP candidate in Wisconsin is likely to win a statewide race while the Strait of Hormuz is blockaded. In Georgia last Tuesday, the same night as our Wisconsin election, the GOP underperformed by 25%.

B. Issues: Abortion is a vote-killer for the GOP. President Trump and Senator Ron Johnson both figured out how to handle abortion with outside-the-box proposals. It is up to the candidates and their campaign consultants to figure out how to handle abortion. Not Brian Schimming!

C. Issues: Marijuana is another vote-killer. More voters agree with the democrat stance on marijuana than with Republicans. A too-strict approach undermines the general idea that conservatives want less government.

D. Too much emphasis on crime: Wisconsin is a low-crime state, and in the few places where there is a lot of crime, almost everyone there votes democrat.

E. Too much emphasis on transgender people:  After hearing endless discussion about transgender people on conservative talk radio, they never tell how many transgender people in Wisconsin are actually playing on the girls team.

F. Too much emphasis on the rule-of-law argument: There are so many laws that no one knows what they all are.

G. Poor performance by many elected Republicans: Assembly Leader Robin Vos does just enough to keep the majority of GOP voters off his back, but not much to inspire conservative leaning voters to get out and vote in other elections. There are very few bills introduced in the state legislature that reduce the size and scope of government.

H. Not fulfilling campaign promises:  A good example of this is President Trump not following through on the Epstein files, and handing the issue to the Democrats’ advantage. Almost everyone in the Epstein files is a Democrat. This is an unforced error which undermines morale.

I. Republicans have been retiring left and right in Wisconsin and all over the country:  Over 35 GOP members of Congress have retired. Too many to count GOP state legislators have retired. Justice Annette Ziegler announced she isn’t running for re-election to the Supreme Court next year. This instills doubt in the minds of the voters.

J. President Trump didn’t endorse Judge Lazar: This explains why a lot of Trump voters didn’t vote for Lazar in a nonpartisan election.

K. Too many mail-in ballots and drop boxes: These election abuses should have been reigned in when we had the chance. Excessive mail-in voting and widespread drop boxes favor corruption and undermine voter ID laws.

It is not the state chair’s job to tell candidates what their stance should be on the issues or how to react to current events. The state chair’s job is to help the candidates when they ask for it.

I would like to comment on some poor suggestions bandied about in conservative circles. A big one is that spring elections should be moved to the fall. Then your ballot would be three pages long. Supposedly conservatives don’t vote in spring elections. This was proven false when the statewide referendum to require voter ID passed in spring 2025 with 63% of the vote.

Another weak argument proffered is that Judge Maria Lazar was a bad candidate. But Judge Lazar sits on the Court of Appeals and is about the best candidate you can possibly get. We were told after Dan Kelly and Brad Schimel lost that we needed a woman candidate. That argument has been forgotten by the malcontents.

Finally, let me address the fund-raising issue. It is sometimes claimed by the malcontents that Brian Schimming doesn’t raise enough money. Well, the RPW raised enough to give Brad Schimel $9 million in the spring 2025 election. The reality is that less money was raised for the 2026 spring election because the donors didn’t think Lazar would win. She entered the race late, after all-star Justice Rebecca Bradley suddenly retired last September.

The RPW can hire ten more fundraisers and pay them on commission if not enough money is raised, I say to the malcontents. 

It should also be noted that RPW isn’t raising from people in the Epstein files, unlike the Democrats. 

We hope Tom Tiffany will win the governorship in November. He will have a lot of help from Brian Schimming, RPW, and most of the county parties. To win, Tiffany must come up with some outside-the-box moves like President Trump and Senator Johnson have already done.

PS – The root problem of our predicament is judicial elections. In a republic, judges are supposed to be nominated by the executive and confirmed by the Senate. The progressives introduced judicial elections to Wisconsin over 100 years ago. This eventually turned the judiciary into a frequent circus and encourages lawfare and trampling of the rights of minorities.

Rolf Lindgren is the Pints & Politics Director of the Republican Party of Dane County.