Democrats flip traditionally conservative Wisconsin senate seat, kicking off 2018 election season
By David Weigel
Washington Post |
The 2018 election season kicked off Tuesday with an upset in rural Wisconsin, with Democrats flipping a state Senate seat that had been held by Republicans since the start of the century.
With every precinct counted in the race for Wisconsin's 10th Senate district, Democrat Patty Schachtner was the clear victor over Republican Adam Jarchow, a member of the state assembly. Schachtner, a medical examiner in St. Croix County, won by 9 points - a massive swing in a district that former senator Sheila Harsdorf, a Republican, won in 2016 with 63.2 percent of the vote.
It wasn't enough, even in a district that Barack Obama lost by 6 points in 2012 and Hillary Clinton lost by 17 to Trump.
"People sent a message tonight we don't want to be negative anymore," she said. "Change it up. I ran a positive campaign. ... My message has always been be kind, be considerate and we need to help people when they're down."
The result in the 10th, which Harsdorf won in 2000 and held easily for years, gave Wisconsin Democrats their first pickup on Republican turf since 2011. In 2010, the party lost control of the governor's office and both houses of the legislature; the next year, Democrats rode a brief backlash to Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wis., and picked up two Senate seats in recall elections.
A Republican-friendly gerrymander wiped out those gains, and in 2014 and 2016, Republicans capitalized on Democrats' rural fade and Donald Trump's coattails to grow their majorities.
But last year, after Harsdorf left for a job in Walker's administration, both parties saw the 10th district as potentially competitive. Americans for Prosperity spent $50,000 to boost Jarchow, while the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and Greater Wisconsin Political Independent Expenditure Fund spent nearly as much on advertisements for Schachtner. U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., one of 10 Democrats up for reelection this year in a state won by Trump, recorded a get-out-the-vote video for Schachtner.
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Schachtner's victory doesn't change the balance of power in the Wisconsin Senate. Republicans will go into the fall campaign season with an 18-14 majority and one vacancy.
The Democrat's upset win was the 34th pickup for the party of the 2018 cycle. Republicans have flipped four seats from blue to red - two in the Republican-trending Deep South, one in New Jersey, and one in Massachusetts.
But on average, even in races that went against them, Democrats have improved on their margins from the 2016 rout. In other Tuesday elections, Democrat Dennis Degenhardt won 43 percent of the vote in Wisconsin's 58th state assembly district; in 2016, Hillary Clinton won just 28 percent of the vote there, and no Democrat contested the seat. In Iowa's sixth House district, Democrat Rita DeJong won 44 percent of the vote; in 2016, the party's nominee won just 35 percent. In South Carolina's 99th district, Democrat Cindy Boatwright lost with 43 percent of the vote; the party had not run a candidate for the seat in this decade.
Associated Press contributed
Tammy Baldwin
Sheila Harsdorf