Crashing and burning

Democrats run up big numbers in the cities of Milwaukee and Madison (which is home to both the state government and flagship branch of the university). Republicans do well in the state’s rural areas, but, more than that, they rely on their total domination in the suburbs of Milwaukee—the “WOW Counties” of Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington. In other major northern cities, once-heavily white and Republican-leaning suburbs have in recent years grown more racially diverse and politically purple, if not outright blue—think of Montgomery County outside Philadelphia, Cook County outside of Chicago, or Fairfax County outside of Washington. But not metro Milwaukee. There, partly because of a fluke of history, the suburbs have remained monolithically white, in a sort of demographic time warp, and have if anything grown even more reliably Republican.

These suburbs are Walker’s base. Yes, he’s worked hard to win over what swing voters still exist in the state by spending a lot of time in the only real contested area that remains, the Fox River region that includes Green Bay, Oshkosh, and Appleton. But he has won three times (in 2010, the attempted recall in June of 2012, and his re-election last fall) by getting gobsmacking vote tallies in the WOW counties, where some communities break for him at margins above 75 percent and at turnout levels that are among the very highest in the country. (Milwaukee and Madison also turn out at very high numbers for Democrats, relative to cities in other states, but more so in presidential years—a big reason why Walker won three times in his blue-leaning state is that he never had to run on a presidential ballot.)

And Walker’s base in the WOW counties hasn’t just delivered him three election victories. It has encouraged a certain political cast of mind. As a young state legislator representing an inner-suburban district (one that has since grown more Democratic, unlike the WOW counties), Walker occasionally worked across the aisle. But as he rose in the ranks, eventually getting elected executive of Milwaukee County (which includes both the city and its inner suburbs), Walker began playing more and more to the WOW base. Initially, this took the form of his frequent appearances on the local conservative talk-radio shows, which draw loyal audiences in the WOW counties, hold significant sway over Republican politicians in the state, and are characterized by a constant stream of anti-city of Milwaukee rhetoric, some of it racially charged. Even after being elected governor, Walker has kept his close ties to the talk-radio shows, which can be counted on to come to his defense in tough spots or have him on the air whenever he wants to get his message out.

 

Put simply, Walker has risen to power in Wisconsin in something of a conservative bubble, where there is more emphasis on doctrinal consistency and energizing the base than on engaging the opposition. So it should not be surprising that Walker would punt on a question about evolution, as he did recently in England, or that he would see no need to distance himself from Giuliani’s comment, unlike other 2016 aspirants from another swing state, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio. In Walker’s world, it matters more not to be seen as squishy than to worry about saying something that could ruffle liberal feathers. Heck, ruffling liberal feathers is what wins in the WOW counties and on the shows they listen to. “If he says something stupid … he can run to the outlets and they’ll take care of it,” Christopher Terry, a former employee of one of the talk shows told me last year. “He could eat a child on television and [Milwaukee talk radio] would go on about how it benefits children.”