The Resistance has no down-time. We have a chance to keep up the #BlueWave momentum and flip a WI State Senate seat in another special election coming up on January 16th.
Senate District 10, which is partially suburbs of Minneapolis-St Paul (district map), opened up when incumbent GOP Senator Sheila Harsdorf stepped down to run Walker’s Dept of Agriculture, Trade, & Consumer Protection. Importantly, the winner of the special election will serve the remainder of Harsdorf’s term, which runs through 2020. A win here will put the State Senate at 19 R’s to 14 D’s… That puts control of the upper chamber within striking distance if we can flip 3 of the 11 GOP-held seats that are up in November 2018.
St Croix County Medical Examiner Patty Schachtner won the 3-way Democratic primary on December 19th. She has strong name-recognition in the most populous part of the district, and has served on her local school board and town board. Drawing on her experience working with people who have just lost loved ones, her campaign has so far emphasized expanding healthcare access in western WI, with a particular focus on mental health and substance abuse.
She’ll be facing off against GOP Assembly Rep Adam Jarchow, who is more or less a “Freedom Caucus” wannabe. He’s been behind almost every recent attack on Wisconsin’s environment (including this insane proposal to encourage wolf poaching), and loves attacking local control in the name of “property rights” and “freedom.”
Jarchow is also known for occasionally bucking Scott Walker for not being reactionary enough. Like when he voted against the Foxconn giveaway, not because handing $3 Billion to a company with a dubious record might be a bad idea, but because he was upset that we were merely exempting Foxconn from environmental regulations rather than repealing them outright.
It’s ALL about Turnout…
This district has leaned Republican for a long time, but throw out the Cook PVI on this one.
It’s going to be cold and miserable on January 16th, and this is the only race on the ballot. It’s all gonna come down to TURNOUT. This isn’t a normal election, and there are more than enough Democrats in this district to win a weird low-turnout race.
For a reference point in a much more “normal” election in April 2017, only 17,819 voters showed up out of a population of roughly 175,000… and Tony Evers, the Democrat running for State Superintendent of Schools, got 67% of the vote here.
The race will be ridiculously short (in part so that it could be scheduled while students at UW-Stout and UW-River Falls are home on break…nice), so do what you can and do it fast…
Need more motivation?
This is the Republican candidate Adam Jarchow: