Yesterday, I wrote this diary about a progressive political activist by the name of Sara Johann, who has formed a Facebook group in which she announced that she intends to run for public office in Wisconsin in 2014.
What I didn't notice at the time that I wrote that diary was that Johann had announced a couple of days ago that she is considering whether or not to form an exploratory committee to consider whether or not to run for Governor of Wisconsin:
I am so sick and tired of the destruction Walker and his Regime are doing to our state that I am thinking of forming an exploratory committee to look into running for Wisconsin Governor to give these people an ongoing challenge, at least until other candidates surface! Enough is enough!
As was pointed out to me,
Johann has run for public office once before, for a seat in the Wisconsin State Senate in the 8th Senate District of Wisconsin back in 2000, losing to Republican incumbent Alberta Darling. More recently, Johann was the organizer of an unsuccessful attempt to convince Peter Barca, the leader of the Democrats in the Wisconsin State Assembly, to run for governor in the 2012 recall attempt against Walker.
Given that she's not held elected office before and doesn't have much of a profile, Johann would appear to be a minor candidate for a gubernatorial race. However, if there was an opportunity for a minor candidate to pull off an upset, the 2014 race for Governor of Wisconsin would be it. Not since the 1990 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota, in which a college professor by the name of Paul Wellstone defeated incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Rudy Boschwitz, has there been a greater opportunity for a seemingly minor Democratic candidate to unseat a sitting Republican holding statewide office. While Scott Walker has a 51% approval rating according to a recent Marquette University poll, Wisconsin is 44th in the nation in job creation, 45th in the nation in wage growth, and dead-last in the nation in short-term job creation under Walker. Most big-name Wisconsin Democrats seem to be scared to run against Walker because of his high approval rating, however, Wisconsin's economy is lagging behind the rest of the country, so Walker is much more vulnerable than his approval rating would suggest.
The thought of Sara Johann unseating Scott Walker is more likely than one would think.