Wisconsin Campaign Strategy Centers on Local Races and Election Administration

0:00 Speaker 1 Going to Wisconsin, we have Senator Ron Johnson with us. And to get an update of what is going on in Wisconsin, which is a swing state. And give us the pulse of what’s going on in your state, Senator Johnson.

0:17 Speaker 2 Well, the great news is the weather is beautiful. I love this time of year. It’s getting cool and crisp. The leaves are starting to turn. So Wisconsin is just beautiful in September, October here. So that’s the good news.

0:31 I think the other good news is, you know, I think the Marquette poll looks pretty encouraging. It’s going to be a tight race. They always are tight. It doesn’t, you know, right now the Democrats are edging us out, but it’s all within probably the margin of error, certainly from striking distance, and you can never trust these polls.

0:48 So I know Republicans here in Wisconsin are working their tail off. Tom Tiffany is the top of the ticket for governor. I’m going around the state and helping support the our assembly candidates and senate candidates. Something that we learned after Scott Walker’s heartbreaking loss in 2018, during that election, 30 assembly Democrats ran unopposed. And we just don’t let

1:14 that happen anymore. So we field candidates for just about every state assembly and state senate seat. And the reason that works, John, is I call it trickle-up elections. sometimes these local candidates, they’ll bring out their, I always say, second, fifth, and 15th cousin to vote for them. People wouldn’t necessarily ordinarily come out to vote. They’re just not that engaged.

1:36 But they’ll be engaged if they really know somebody personally. So it just helps to top the ticket as well. So we’ve been encouraging that. It’s had some success. But, you know, Wisconsin is a really close state and probably be a nail-biter coming election night.

1:52 Speaker 1 Give us the pulse. How do you feel? Do you feel that there’s any election fraud going on in Wisconsin, or do you think Wisconsin has things under control?

2:06 Speaker 2 It’s just so impossible to tell, John. We’ve never uncovered massive fraud. I mean, we unfortunately have the central county, Milwaukee, which just always looks suspicious that they don’t run it well. So rather than absentee ballots being counted in each individual precinct, that day where it’s a manageable number, no, they gather them all up and they bring them to a central

2:28 counting station in Milwaukee that’s reasonably transparent except for the room they bring them in when I was there. And they always seem to screw it up. They lose a couple of thumb drives. Again, you couldn’t run an election more poorly, right? You know, we had obviously some real irregularities in the 2020 election. But listen, we have, Republicans

2:51 have recruited poll workers and folks to really keep an eye on the system. And, you know, most Wisconsinites are pretty upstanding people, and most of these precincts are run just by normal people. So, you know, I’ve never in my elections, you know, thought there was any kind of massive fraud. Of course, I’ve always won. The problem with

3:14 fraud is it’s very difficult to catch. And once the election is over, it’s certified. Nobody really wants to go back and investigate. So the biggest problem we have in Wisconsin is our voter rolls. We have over 7 million people on our voter rolls and only about 3.5 million people eligible to vote. And the Wisconsin Election Commission refuses

3:36 to clean that up. And that’s the biggest problem I have. It creates an environment for election fraud.

3:43 Speaker 1 That is horrible. And, you know, I’ve seen that happen in so many states. And somehow we have to clean that up. And every American that goes to vote has to feel confident that their vote is going to count.

3:58 And I agree 100 percent on that one. Anything else you want to tell the American people on a Sunday morning?

4:05 Speaker 2 Well, I’ll just reinforce that, you know, since 2016 when Hillary Clinton said that was an illegitimate election. And then four years later, we had 2020, which was a mess. The other half of America is now thinking that’s a legitimate election. So the goal on a bipartisan basis should be to restore confidence in our election system. So no

4:26 matter who wins, who loses, we all view this as a legitimate result. And we don’t think that our legitimate vote has been stolen. or offset by the illegitimate ones. That ought to be a bipartisan goal. The problem is Democrats will not support any election integrity measures. They don’t want to restore that conscience. They want to make sure

4:47 that they can cheat. And so it’s really incredibly frustrating. But they will keep plugging away at it. And the solution to it, of course, is to make sure that you get out to the polls and defeat Democrats. That would be the solution. Don’t get discouraged. Go vote.

5:05 Speaker 1 The Democratic Socialists took control or taken control of the Democratic Party. We have to repel them. I urge all my common sense Democratic friends to vote Republican so we can get rid of the Socialist Democrats. Senator Ron Johnson, thank you for coming on this Sunday morning and God bless America, and God is on our side, so let’s

5:31 hope we clean up what’s going on in our country. Thank you so much.

5:37 Speaker 2 God bless you. Have a great day.