MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Republicans will host their state convention in La Crosse this weekend under the theme "Red to the Roots" as the party prepares for a busy 2024, with a presidential primary debate this fall and a national nominating convention next summer both coming to Milwaukee.
Republican Party of Wisconsin Chairman Brian Schimming said the weekend will focus on laying the groundwork for the 2024 election cycle, especially with so much attention on the Badger State from the national party.
“I always say Wisconsin is not one of 50 states. We’re one of five, and that is certainly the case in this cycle,” Schimming explained. “We probably will be one of four, five, six states that decide the presidency.”
Though there is no election to gear up for this November, Schimming still wants to make the most of the weekend with one big goal in mind.
“Unity, number one, to make sure that everybody is on the same team and that we are all pulling the same direction,” Schimming said. “I’ve seen a lot of unity as I’ve traveled around the state. I’ve literally spoken in dozens of counties in the last several months, so the unity has been good. We really see that, which is important for a political party when you’ve got a big primary coming, which it appears that we do.”
A crowded primary field of presidential candidates is a positive, according to Schimming, who said the party can use choice to their advantage, unlike Democrats, who he feels are stuck with incumbents.
While incumbents proved vital for Democrats in the last two statewide elections, with the reelection of Gov. Tony Evers and Milwaukee Co. Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court, Schimming said he isn’t chalking the results up to a loss.
“The two incumbents, the Democrat incumbent governor, the Democrat incumbent attorney general, both won, but otherwise we ran the table,” Schimming said. “I mean Ron Johnson was the number one target of Democrats in the country, and they missed. They spent $100 million on him, and they missed. We elected a Republican state treasurer, we picked up two seats here in the Assembly, a seat in the Senate, [and] we picked up a congressional seat, which helped make the majority in Washington, so I think it’s a little bit of a myth that we did badly in 2022.”
Even so, Schimming said he believes there are still lessons to learn, and one of them is changing the way Republicans think about early voting.
“We can’t keep going into Election Day 200,000 votes down and make it up in 13 hours, and so I’m going to be talking in my speech to the convention about [the] early vote and making sure that we do everything that we can as a party to get center-right voters, not just Republicans or even conservatives, but center-right voters in Wisconsin to show up and vote,” Schimming added.
Democrats who held their state convention last weekend in Green Bay have, on the other hand, put a lot of attention on reelecting Sen. Tammy Baldwin in 2024.
“The biggest story from the Republican convention this weekend will be the thing that didn’t happen: the Wisconsin GOP, dominated by MAGA extremism and divided against itself, still has yet to dredge up a single candidate willing to take on Senator Tammy Baldwin,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler said in a statement. “Months after Dan Kelly’s campaign went down in flames, it’s clear Wisconsin Republicans still have no answers for addressing the anti-abortion extremism that has rendered them toxic with voters.”