Tammy Baldwin looks to maintain edge over top of the ticket in battleground Wisconsin

(CNN) — When Kamala Harris held her first campaign rally as the presumptive Democratic nominee last week, one of the most vulnerable senators in the country was on hand to welcome her.

Tammy Baldwin, the two-term Wisconsin Democrat, didn’t attend President Joe Biden’s post-debate rally in the state earlier this month. But her appearance with Harris signaled the new excitement Democrats are feeling from their base.

That enthusiasm will be key to helping the party defend one of the so-called blue wall states, where Biden won by half a point in 2020 and where Baldwin needs to win if Democrats are to have any shot at retaining their narrow Senate majority.

But a reshaped presidential contest won’t change the calculus for Democrats in the most competitive Senate races – many of them in states former President Donald Trump won or narrowly lost in 2020. Baldwin isn’t nearly as endangered as her Democratic colleagues in Montana and Ohio, states Trump twice won big. But she will likely need to rely on some percentage of ticket-splitters to win, which even she has acknowledged may be harder than during her 2018 reelection race given the polarization of today’s politics.

“We are the battleground state,” Baldwin told the friendly crowd in Milwaukee on Tuesday before Harris took the stage.

Baldwin had spent the two days before Biden ended his reelection bid meeting with older Democrats in southwest Wisconsin, recording the “Pod Save America” podcast in Madison and shaking hands with voters at a fish festival in a conservative suburban county north of Milwaukee – a reflection of her need to both harness the base and reach beyond it.

Like many Democratic incumbents this year, Baldwin was already polling better than Biden. Even if Harris improves the overall landscape for Democrats at the top of the ticket – which it is too early to say – Baldwin’s challenge will be to keep up her advantage as her Republican opponent, Eric Hovde, becomes better known. The senator and her allies have painted Hovde as a wealthy bank CEO and frequently knock him for his ties to California.

“We have a Green County. We have a Brown County. We do not have an Orange County, Wisconsin,” she says on the stump, citing Hovde previously being named one of the most influential people in the Southern California county. But Hovde, who Republicans believe is a more formidable challenger than Baldwin’s 2018 opponent, has millions of his own money to spend.

Brandon Scholz, a former executive director of the state Republican Party, doesn’t see Baldwin’s numbers changing much just because Harris is running.

“I think Republicans have underestimated Baldwin over the years,” he said Friday when asked about her ability to overperform the top of the ticket. “She has a very liberal voting record in Washington, no question about it. But she also spends time in Wisconsin and has some Wisconsin-centric legislation that she has pushed.”

But he cautioned that it’s still early in the campaign; voters aren’t tuned in yet; and Baldwin has been running much longer than Hovde, who entered the race in February.

“It’s gonna take him time to close that gap,” he said. “And he’s got 100 days to do it.”

Character contrasts versus national politics

Spectators at last weekend’s Port Fish Days parade in Port Washington along Lake Michigan sprawled over the curb to watch the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies; a trampoline act; and a stream of shiny Corvettes and firetrucks. Whether they wanted to be or not, voters who said “Tammy sucks” were sandwiched next to those who wanted to see her run for president.

“Is Hovde that guy who’s from California?” asked 59-year-old Cheryl, who didn’t want to give her full name.

“He’s from Wisconsin,” yelled another woman sitting a few chairs away.

Baldwin’s strategy has relied on defining Hovde before he defines himself. Besides going after his California connections (he’s the CEO of Sunwest Bank and owns a home in Laguna Beach), her campaign is also attacking him on the air for a string of controversial comments – including saying that most nursing home patients aren’t in a condition to vote.

Hovde, who’s also CEO of a prominent Madison-based development company bearing his name, has so far poured $13 million of his money into his Senate campaign – his second after an unsuccessful bid in 2012. He’s responded to Baldwin’s ads with his own spots laying out his Wisconsin roots.

But like many GOP challengers this year trying to catch up to Trump’s poll numbers, Hovde is also trying to nationalize the race. After running an ad pressuring Baldwin to say where she stood on Biden after his disastrous debate performance (she never publicly called for the president to bow out of the race), he has pivoted to trying to tie her to the administration, specifically Harris, on inflation and the border. “We deserve better than leaders who bob along while America crumbles,” the narrator in one Hovde ad says over footage of the vice president laughing, with a Baldwin bobblehead featuring throughout the spot.

It remains to be seen how that will play out. The Hovde campaign did not make him available to reporters in the state last weekend and did not respond to CNN’s subsequent inquiries about the race.

At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee earlier this month, the chair of the Senate GOP campaign arm said Hovde had closed the gap in his race more than any of their other Senate recruits, specifically touting his ability to get on TV early because of self-funding. Still, a Fox News poll released Friday showed Baldwin leading Hovde 54% to 43% among registered Wisconsin voters, while there was no clear leader in the presidential race.

The elusive split-ticket voters

At least several attendees at the parade in Port Washington – which falls in one of the three GOP-leaning “WOW” counties (Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington) in the Milwaukee area – said they were voting for Trump because they were Republicans, but hadn’t made up their minds about the Senate race yet.

That kind of indecision creates an imperative for Hovde to consolidate the GOP base – and an opportunity for Baldwin to peel off some of those voters.

Working her way down the refreshment line at the Port Fish Days festival after the parade, Baldwin didn’t skip a beat when she got to Patrick Barnett, who was wearing a Trump polo shirt. He got a handshake and friendly conversation.

“I like her, and she has done a lot of good things,” said Barnett, 65, of nearby Mequon. “But her party has done too much to outweigh that.”

Reached by phone on Friday, Barnett said that the process by which Harris ascended to the top of the ticket only confirmed his distaste for the Democratic Party.

He recalled voting for Baldwin at least once before and praised her for helping pass bipartisan legislation. “And honestly not voting for her after that wasn’t really on her – it was more, like I say, to do with the party,” he added.

But this year, he’s taken issue with the tone of some of Baldwin’s ads going after Hovde’s past statements – including one that features a farmer saying, “Eric Hovde, what the hell is wrong with this guy?”

A loyal base gets even more excited

Some 170 miles west of Port Washington, close to the Iowa border, the chatter at the Grant County Democratic picnic gave way to chants of “Tammy, Tammy, Tammy” as soon as the senator walked into the room on July 19, two days before Biden dropped out of the race.

Baldwin’s supporters in Platteville – a city that backed Biden but lies in a county that pivoted from Barack Obama to Trump – were fired up, even if there was hesitation about whether Biden could win Wisconsin.

“I give him a 50-50 shot,” said 72-year-old Tom Caywood, who didn’t want Biden to step aside. (“Don’t the voters have some say in this?” he asked.) But reached by phone a week later, Caywood said Biden did the right thing — even if he doesn’t like the pressure he thinks the party put on him.

And he likes Harris. “She’s very familiar with the role, strong woman, and she’s got a legal background,” he said of the former California attorney general. He likes what she could mean for Baldwin and other down-ballot Democrats too: “Chances are, if they’re going to vote for her for president, they’ll probably just vote straight ticket.”

Tracey Roberts said she wanted Biden to make his own decision, but that the presidential race was too close for comfort. “I’m very pleased,” the 66-year-old Platteville resident said by phone a week later, after Biden’s exit from the race. “I think it’ll really change the enthusiasm level – among the people I know, it’s so much higher.”

Local parties are feeling it, too.

“The amount of enthusiasm I have seen is unprecedented,” said William Garcia, the Democratic Party chair for Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, which includes Grant County and is one of just two US House seats seen as competitive in the state. “I’ve had dozens of people contacting us to volunteer. I’ve had people donating money to the local party without us even asking.”

Garcia, who also chairs the La Crosse County Democratic Party, said he sees that excitement flowing both ways on the Democratic ballot.

“Baldwin does not need presidential coattails to win here in Wisconsin,” he said Friday.

“But I think that a lot of people who were going to support Baldwin – those kind of undecided swing voters who were definitely going to support Baldwin but weren’t yet decided about the top of the ticket – I think they’re far more likely to go for Harris now.”

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