Welcome to Trail Mix, a fun but nutritious snack for your election news diet. See something interesting on the trail? Email me at jake.lahut@thedailybeast.com.
This week, we take a look at the consequential yet under-publicized Wisconsin Supreme Court results as a pulse check for a key Electoral College state in 2024. Plus, some strong marks for Nikki Haley, more bad news for Ron DeSantis, and all of my willpower not to make obscure hockey references ahead of the Frozen Four.
Cheeseheads Spinning
ADVERTISEMENT
Wisconsin isn’t normally known for seismic political activity. The Badger State is far more likely to be on the cutting edge of brats than abortion politics. But one state Supreme Court race sent shockwaves through the political consultant and field organizing worlds on Tuesday.
The court’s conservative majority flipped for the first time in 15 years, and it was the clearest sign since the 2022 midterms that abortion is still a potent issue for driving Democratic turnout.
“They didn’t listen to the 2022 midterm metrics,” a seasoned GOP strategist told The Daily Beast. “You need women and independents or centrists to win, and they are running away from the Republican Party in droves on a two-fold note.”
Abortion, the strategist said, remains the GOP’s Achilles’ heel among moderates and independents, particularly among women.
“And, they don’t like Trump’s craziness,” the presidential campaign veteran added. “You can take them apart or lump them together, but we keep alienating any effort to try and grow the consumer base.”
While the election is an important political indicator, on a practical level, Democrats are also elated at the possibility of the Badger State’s new court majority striking down some of the most gerrymandered state legislature maps in the country.
“Not only is it critical to defend Democratic Governor Tony Evers’ veto in both chambers—but if the new balance on the supreme court strikes down the state’s rigged GOP maps, it could put the full legislature back in play,” Heather Williams, the interim president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee told The Daily Beast. “This week’s victory was a consequential first step in ending the GOP’s undemocratic stranglehold on Wisconsin.”
It’s clear that abortion was a major factor in the election, but Democratic operatives also credited an improving organizing infrastructure across the state.
“It continues to show that Republicans have vulnerabilities in the suburbs, and of course on the issue of abortion, what a galvanizing issue that is for voters,” a national Democratic strategist told The Daily Beast.
With Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) coming up for re-election in 2024 after her target-rich Republican colleague Ron Johnson secured his own in 2022, Democrats are still making sure not to get ahead of themselves.
“We have no doubt that Wisconsin will still be a battleground and we will take nothing for granted in that state,” the Democratic strategist said, “so we’ll do everything we can to make sure Tammy Baldwin is in a strong position.”
Another Democratic operative said the Wisconsin race “really puts an exclamation point on the fact that Democratic donors are paying more attention to state-level races and realizing they’re just as important as federal ones.”
On the Republican side, the view is not nearly as optimistic.
“We’re not gonna be able to turn it red for 2024, but I don’t think that anyone is listening,” the seasoned GOP strategist said. “All the oxygen is about Trump and his litigation problems. And if you’re not on that bandwagon, you get pushed out too. So it’s a real problem.”
Nikki’s Big Haul
Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley reported an impressive fundraising haul of $11 million in the first six weeks of her presidential campaign, or, as her home state newspaper The Post and Courier put it, “an average sum of $250,000 every day since the former South Carolina governor entered the 2024 White House race.”
Haley has also been reportedly rankling former Vice President Mike Pence’s yet-to-be official presidential campaign. Some in Pence’s orbit have grown frustrated that Haley is taking too much of the spotlight in the “lane” of former Trump administration officials promising a return to normalcy in the GOP.
But it’s unclear how much that’ll really matter.
“It’s like giving a shit about who wins the NIT tournament,” Jeff Timmer, the former executive director of the Michigan GOP and an adviser to the Lincoln Project, told Politico for a story on the Penceworld agita over Haley. “Everybody is watching the NCAA Tournament… They’re all watching the heavyweight matchup between Trump and DeSantis.”
New Hampshire Republicans on the invisible primary house party circuit told The Daily Beast for this edition of Trail Mix that Haley has earned plaudits for executing her campaign launch “the right way.”
“We had great work with Nikki Haley’s team,” a New Hampshire event organizer told The Daily Beast.
Republican New Hampshire state Rep. Doug Thomas of Londonderry, who was Haley's driver for her first trip to the Granite State, said he hasn't been able to catch any of her events since she officially entered the race, but he hears the hype is growing.
"She's got the experience and she's putting in the time," Thomas said, adding that Haley has earned increasingly positive reviews upon her return to the state.
Once the state budget is wrapped up in Concord, Thomas said he hopes to catch the former UN ambassador the next time she travels to the state.
While Haley hasn’t been making a splash in national news and has largely steered clear of criticizing her former boss following his indictment, she’s steadily gaining the respect of early state power brokers who are waiting to see which Trump alternative they should throw their weight behind.
Polling station
It appears that Trump is indeed getting a post-indictment bump. Ever since he predicted he would be indicted, the former president’s support among Republicans has been surging.
As that trendline continues, so too does Trump’s success coming at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ expense, with the once co-frontrunner now facing his largest deficit behind Trump to date in a Yahoo News/YouGov poll—with Trump at 47 percent among likely GOP primary voters and DeSantis at 39 percent—the first to come out after the indictment.
From Harry Crane’s Desk (ad buys): More bad news for DeSantis
The Florida governor can’t catch a break lately.
With his approval numbers already dipping among GOP voters from the earned media dents DeSantis has picked up since starting his book tour, now the Make America Great Again PAC is dropping $1.5 million in TV ads against DeSantis highlighting his past positions on Medicare, Social Security, and raising the retirement age.
They’ve already been airing on Fox News, where viewers may find out for the first time that DeSantis not only supported former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plans to privatize Social Security and Medicare, but that he went even further than the budget hawk in supporting a more drastic Republican Study Committee budget proposal aiming to balance the federal budget in just four years, rather than in the decade Ryan had proposed.
“There’s a reason why changing these massively popular programs is regarded as one of the ‘third rails’ of American politics,” Insider’s Brent D. Griffiths wrote in an analysis of DeSantis’ past positions subsequently cited in the MAGA PAC ad.
Three is the magic number (of post-indictment endorsements)
In a Thursday scoop from ABC’s Rachel Scott, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) came out as the third member of Congress to endorse Trump following his indictment in Manhattan, joining the 39 House Republicans who have already endorsed him for 2024. Sen. Cindy Hyde Smith (R-MS) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) were the other two this week.
Campaign Lit:
The long game
Ron DeSantis’ delegate strategy looks an awful lot like Joe Biden’s from 2020, with NBC News’ Henry J. Gomez and Matt Dixon reporting that the Florida governor plans to shore up support in delegate-rich states with a lighter touch in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Skimming off the top
Our own senior politics reporter Roger Sollenberger dove into how Herschel Walker’s wife went from discouraging his Senate bid to profiting from it, despite the fact that, as one former adviser told The Daily Beast, “she had no idea about what the fuck she was doing.”
The “undercard primary”
More from Politico’s Adam Wren and Natalie Allison on “some staff feistiness” between the Pence and Haley operations.
Somber stacks?
Democrats have been trying to be careful with their messaging around Trump's indictment and arrest, except for all of the ones also trying to fundraise off it, The Daily Beast’s Sam Brodey and Ursula Perano report.
