The political paradox of Ron Johnson | Government | captimes.com

PLYMOUTH — It’s the opening day of the Sheboygan County Fair, and Ron Johnson would like to walk around and introduce himself. That’s if he can make it past the county Republican Party’s “Lincoln Log Cabin” booth, where supporters swarm him for photos, handshakes and conversation.

In between signing “Trump 2024” baseball caps and yard signs for his own campaign, Wisconsin’s senior senator poses with families, crouches to shake hands with children and chats with supporters. A man working the Lions Club’s grilled cheese and roasted corn stand leaves his post long enough to tell Johnson to “make sure you get Hunter (Biden).” Another group says Washington is getting “worse and worse … getting scary” with Democrats’ tenuous grasp on political power.

“We can win if the truth gets out,” Johnson tells them.

People Johnson meets “just have a sense of loss and losing,” he tells the Cap Times.

“There’s so many things being pushed that make no sense. It wasn’t like that in 2010. We had problems, but now people just have a sense that things are coming apart.”

This has been part of the senator’s refrain for the last year and a half, and it’s also integral to the paradox of Ron Johnson.

His supporters value his candor, yet don’t begrudge him the decision to seek a third term after pledging his second would be his last. He holds a visceral disdain for Washington, but he’s engaged in an all-out brawl to maintain his role representing Wisconsin in the nation’s capital.

He decries division but runs headfirst into controversy, declaring that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol wasn’t an insurrection, advising people to gargle mouthwash to kill COVID-19 and suggesting funding for Social Security and Medicare should be up for renewal every year. And even as a two-term incumbent, he’s running for the Senate as a bit of an underdog.

Johnson isn’t just campaigning against his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. He’s running against the left, the news media (groups he often lumps together) and everyone who’s underestimated him since he entered the political arena in 2010.

Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race is one of just four in the country rated as a “toss-up” by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, and it’s the only one held by a Republican. Control of the 50-50 chamber is on the line. Republicans could seize the majority, but only if they can flip Democratic seats while holding onto vulnerable GOP seats like Johnson’s.

“Ron Johnson is … the little engine that could, sometimes,” said Jessica Taylor, the Senate analyst for the Cook Political Report. “He’s been counted out before, and I think he kind of seems to thrive on that.”

Hours before the fair, Johnson is seated at a high-top table with a reporter at Fudgienuckles, a bar and grill in the village of Glenbeulah featuring a taxidermy menagerie on its walls. He’s ready to get to the point, dismissing much of the usual small talk.

“The nation’s just become way more divided,” he says when asked what’s changed since he first ran for office in 2010 amid a wave of anti-establishment sentiment embodied by the Tea Party movement. “I hate the division. It’s exhausting.”

He rattles off a “list of horribles” he attributes to Democratic governance: “the open borders, the 40-year-high inflation, record gas prices, rising crime, indoctrination of our kids, lack of baby formula.”

Asked what goes into fixing the division, Johnson deadpans, “Can we get rid of the left?”

“No, I’m dead serious,” he says. “We are the party that says ‘live and let live.’ … The left’s not willing to do that. They want to make sure that everybody sees the world the way they see it. … It is the left that continues to … exacerbate the divide. They’re the ones who love the wedge issues.”

Johnson tends to bring up his own controversies before he’s asked about them.

Early in conversation, he acknowledges he’s been accused of wanting to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block after saying the funding for those programs should be considered as discretionary spending (which requires annual congressional approval) rather than mandatory. He vehemently disagrees with this characterization.

“What I’m saying is we’ve got to look at this (federal spending) in order to save these programs,” Johnson says. “Since 2010 I’ve been saying I want to save these programs. … When you have somebody like me who fervently wants to prevent the bankruptcy of this nation, the mortgaging of our kids’ future … you see what happens. You get lied about and you get distorted.”

When the crowd at the fair dissipates, Johnson’s first stop is to greet the Plymouth police officers stationed there.

He then strolls the grounds, greeting all who cross his path and requesting their support. Most people shake his outstretched hand, and the few who don’t offer no critique or commentary. This is Wisconsin, after all.

It’s friendly territory for Johnson. Former President Donald Trump won Sheboygan County by about 9,500 votes in 2016 and about 10,500 votes in 2020. Johnson won the county by about 12,700 votes in 2016 — and, throughout the state, outperformed Trump by more than 74,000 votes.

Johnson — navigating the 85-degree late summer heat in a loose-fitting dress shirt and khakis — soon meets a group of middle-aged men. One sports a Milwaukee Brewers shirt; another wears a “Let’s Go Brandon” t-shirt. The third has a “coexist” shirt, which catches the senator’s eye. The original “coexist” image is a design featuring symbols representing a variety of religions, and has come to be associated with liberal ideologies. The senator wonders if he’s meeting a politically diverse group of friends, as they gather for a photo.

That’s not the case, it turns out. The letters on this “coexist” shirt are composed of a variety of weapons, including a grenade, knives and guns.

Johnson continues down the path, chatting with fairgoers and vendors. Where most candidates would direct people to their primary campaign website, Johnson encourages people he meets to visit wisfacts.com — another of his campaign sites that hosts memos prefaced with “Get The Facts” and “For The Record,” many written by the senator himself, with his takes on hot-button election issues.

“Don’t believe the lies, the character assassination,” he tells some well-wishers.

Early on in the senator’s stroll, two 12-year-old boys hover off to the side as he shakes hands. A campaign staffer notices them and asks if they want a photo. They do, and as they wait, they share that they’re not particularly interested in politics, but one of them watches the news with his family. They both recognize Johnson, though — from his ads on YouTube.

According to the media tracking firm AdImpact, Johnson and Republican groups supporting him have spent more than $93.6 million on advertising in the race. That’s compared to more than $105 million in Democratic spending, though more than $19 million of that was spent by Barnes’ primary challengers.

Not long after his photo with the 12-year-olds, Johnson encounters a group of older teenage boys who request a photo with him. They’re not old enough to vote, so the senator focuses the conversation on something else — urging them to stay away from drugs.

It could be an awkward moment. No young person wants to be lectured by an adult about substance use — but Johnson’s pleas are earnest. The senator shared in 2016 that he lost a nephew to an opioid overdose.

That’s how he and Lauri Badura forged a bond that continues to this day. Badura, whose son Archie died of an accidental opioid overdose in 2014, met Johnson at a 2016 field hearing at Waukesha County Technical College for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. She founded the organization Saving Others for Archie (SOFA) in hopes of preventing similar tragedies.

After she shared her story, Badura said, both she and Johnson had tears in their eyes. They spoke after the hearing about the family members they’d lost.

“I don’t think people see that softer side of who Ron is as a person. You know, he’s kind, and he is compassionate, he’s trustworthy, and he’s loyal,” Badura said.

Since meeting Badura, Johnson has introduced the Stopping Overdoses of Fentanyl Analogues (SOFA) Act three times. The legislation would allow the Drug Enforcement Administration to classify more than a dozen fentanyl analogs (variations) as Schedule I, a classification given to drugs with no medical use and a high risk for abuse.

Johnson’s proposed legislation would not only give Schedule I status to known fentanyl variations, it would permit the DEA to classify new analogs as they are created and discovered, allowing for speedier criminal prosecution. A similar bill was signed into law in Wisconsin in 2017.

Jason Church met Johnson in a similarly vulnerable space. A 2012 IED blast resulted in the amputation below the knee of both of the Army veteran’s legs — along with 21 surgeries, recovery and adaptation to his new prosthetics.

Church, who grew up in Menomonie, met Johnson while he was recovering at Walter Reed. He eventually worked for the senator in Washington, and as a regional director for his office in Wisconsin. His first impression of him, he said, was that he “generally gets to the point.”

“I’ve seen him honestly put a lot of effort, time, energy and quite frankly heart into what he does. I’ve seen him at nights late at the Capitol going over things, I’ve seen him burning the midnight oil trying to understand a problem from all perspectives before he makes a decision,” Church said. “He’s someone who isn’t just in it for the political pomp … I think he views it as an opportunity to perform a duty for the country.”

Johnson’s campaign has sought to acquaint voters with a more personal side of the senator, running ads narrated by his brother, Dean, and his daughter, Carey.

Just 11% of Wisconsin voters don’t have an opinion on the senator, according to a September Marquette University Law School poll — and while 39% view him favorably, 47% have an unfavorable opinion.

The ads feature photos of Johnson, his family and his work throughout his life.

Johnson’s parents instilled in their children the value of hard work, Dean Johnson said in an interview with the Cap Times. As kids, Dean and Ron caught and sold nightcrawlers, and made balls of soap from the scraps their mother brought home from her job at a company in Minnetonka, Minnesota. Johnson’s first official job was at a Walgreens grill at age 15.

The family often discussed politics at the dinner table, Dean Johnson said, noting that they grew up in the era of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. Family continues to be core to Johnson’s existence, he added.

And Johnson’s blunt demeanor is nothing new: “He’s not one to say something just to make you feel better,” Dean said. “He’ll tell you what he thinks and he fights for what he thinks has to be done.”

“Sometimes people will accuse him of, you know, you called it (being) a lightning rod. Some people will say ‘conspiracy theories.’ I wish they realized he wouldn’t be talking about something if he didn’t feel it was exactly the truth,” Dean said.

Ron Johnson says there’s no doubt his positions are misinterpreted or inaccurately portrayed more than those of most politicians.

Why?

“Because the media wants me gone. People who live in Washington want me gone. They don’t like the fact that I expose their corruption. They hate me, OK, they want me gone,” Johnson tells the Cap Times. “So if you ever wonder why good people don’t run for government, take a look at the last few years.”

Democrats have lobbed a variety of attacks at Johnson, hitting him for his opposition to abortion access, comments made throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and his reaction to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“It’s Sen. Johnson’s behavior and actions and words that have soured the electorate on him,” said Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki. “Wisconsin doesn’t take kindly to people who say one thing and do another when it comes to, ‘I’m going to stick by a term limit pledge. I’m only in for two terms,’ and then breaks that pledge.”

Zepecki believes the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the precedent establishing a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, will motivate voters, and that it is a vulnerability for Johnson.

According to an August Marquette poll, 65% of Wisconsin voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Johnson has said he believes voters should decide via referendum what, if any, restrictions there should be on abortion. There is currently no mechanism to do so under Wisconsin law, and Republican legislators recently rejected an effort by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to create such a process. Johnson also opposed the proposal, calling it a political move.

In a recent memo published on his “WisFacts” website, Johnson said he would oppose imposing penalties on mothers and will continue to support exceptions in the case of rape, incest or the life of the mother. The senator also said he “fully” supports in vitro fertilization and contraception, and would “never” vote to prevent a woman from receiving life-saving care in the case of a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, or to prevent a woman from crossing state lines to access medical treatment, “including an abortion procedure.”

But Democrats note Johnson praised the court’s decision to overturn Roe, supported multiple proposals to restrict abortion access at the national level, including a “personhood” bill declaring that life begins at fertilization, and point to his statement that if a person doesn’t like their state’s abortion laws, they “can move.” Barnes has gone all in on the issue, holding “Ron Against Roe” events throughout the state.

“The overturning of Roe may turn out to be as seminal a moment in American politics as the impeachment of Bill Clinton, or 9/11,” Zepecki said. “And what do those two things have in common? Midterms where the historical trend was bucked.”

Zepecki acknowledged it won’t be clear whether that’s the case until after Election Day. Recent statewide polling has found that abortion policy ranks sixth among the issues most important to voters — trailing concerns like inflation and crime, which put Democrats on defense.

The partisan breakdown on voters’ most significant election issues in last month’s Marquette poll showed stark differences in priorities. Republicans’ top five issues were inflation, an accurate vote count, taxes, crime and illegal immigration. For Democrats, they were gun violence, abortion policy, climate change, public schools and crime.

And there’s a reason “it all comes down to turnout” is a political cliche: it’s true.

“There’s two things we always know about competitive statewide races in Wisconsin: they’re going to be very close and the effort to ensure you get out your vote is going to be very important,” said GOP strategist Mark Graul, who worked as former President George W. Bush’s Wisconsin director in 2004. “It feels like this one is going to be a slug ‘em out right to the end, and whoever has the best apparatus in place to get their voters out is going to win.”

Political strategists attribute the evaporation of Barnes’ post-primary lead to Johnson and his allies’ messaging on crime and inflation.

The Johnson campaign has criticized Barnes for having introduced a bill in the state Legislature that would have ended cash bail, his support for reducing prison populations and endorsements from groups that support the “defund the police” and “abolish ICE” movements.

The attacks come as violent crime is on the rise throughout the country, Wisconsin included. But Barnes’ supporters have also accused Johnson’s allies of invoking racist dog whistles, pointing to a mailer that uses a filter to darken Barnes’ complexion, a TV ad that labels Barnes (who is Black) and members of “The Squad” as “different” and “dangerous,” and another TV ad that depicts a crime scene framed with a red circle next to Barnes’ name.

None of the ads called into question came from the Johnson campaign, and the senator has dismissed the criticism as an effort to play “the race card” and distract from Democrats’ record.

While Zepecki called the race a “jump ball,” GOP strategists said the ball is in Barnes’ court to shift the focus of the campaign.

“Voters, they’ve already had two opportunities to vote for Ron Johnson. They’ve gone through two other campaigns with him. So unless you can develop a new message or narrative about Ron Johnson, simply rehashing what has been said about him in the course of the last 12 years isn’t going to be enough,” said Keith Gilkes, a Republican strategist who ran former Gov. Scott Walker’s first campaign in 2010.

Barnes had a great summer, Graul said — thanks in large part to the fact that his primary opponents refrained from attacking him, and his closest challengers withdrew from the race and endorsed him before the primary. At the same time, he said, that deprived Barnes of the chance to “get his sea legs” and of the attention that would have come with a primary victory had his opponents stayed in the race.

“(Because of) how late the primary was, Barnes didn’t have a lot of time to define himself, even though he is the lieutenant governor,” Taylor of the Cook Political Report said. “There are clearly things that (Barnes) has said in the past that … the Republicans were ready and anxious to attack him on.”

In the month following the primary, Barnes’ favorability dropped from 37% to 31%, while his unfavorability rose from 22% to 32% — and 34% of voters didn’t have an opinion on him.

Recent national reports have showcased concerns among Democrats with the trajectory of the race, lamenting that the narrative has become so focused on crime rather than efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Zepecki dismisses the hand-wringing.

“Democrats love nothing more than to fret seven or eight weeks before an election,” he said.

While Republicans portray Barnes as “different” in a dangerous way, the Democrat’s campaign is presenting him “as something different in a refreshing way,” Zepecki said, referencing ads that feature the lieutenant governor buying groceries from a small Madison market and making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Barnes’ campaign has hammered his “everyman” message, reminding voters of his upbringing as the son of a public school teacher and a third-shift autoworker. He’s running to give Wisconsinites a shot at the American dream, his campaign says, and to hold Johnson accountable.

“Ron Johnson has spent the last 12 years selling out working people and fighting to strip women of their rights,” said Barnes spokesperson Maddy McDaniel in a statement. “He needs to be held accountable for his record of supporting eight national abortion bans, including a ban that made no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. Ron Johnson is callous, dangerous and too out-of-touch to represent Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate.”

In addition to his “Ron Against Roe” tour, which has included stops in Green Bay, Racine, Madison, Eau Claire, Milwaukee and Janesville, Barnes’ campaign is targeting voters on streaming services including YouTube, Hulu and Roku through a multimillion dollar paid digital media campaign.

Among national opportunities for Democrats to flip a red seat, Wisconsin remains second to Pennsylvania, Taylor said. North Carolina “could be inching up,” followed by Ohio.

“Democrats, they have plenty to hit (Johnson) on, but I’m just not sure how relevant a lot of it is this year,” Taylor said. “If you want to point to his comments on Jan. 6 or COVID things, I think the more salient issues are abortion and entitlements. But the crime issue is clearly hurting Barnes as well.”

“An incumbent with Johnson’s numbers — approval and favorability — (in theory) should not be reelected — but this feels like an election where a lot of that conventional wisdom and historical precedent could go out the window,” Taylor said.

Johnson says he wants voters to “know the truth” about him.

“I tell people the truth. Now, sometimes they’re truths people don’t want to hear,” he says. “I fully understand what it’s like to come from very humble beginnings. I worked my tail off. I always have, and I continue to.”

Gilkes said that’s why Democrats tend to underestimate Johnson.

“They don’t understand what the Wisconsin voters do appreciate about Ron Johnson — and that is his honesty, his directness. You may not agree with him, but you clearly understand and know where he stands. And he’s not afraid to give his opinion,” Gilkes said. “I’ve always felt there’s a strain of thinking in the broader electorate here in Wisconsin with voters that what they want … is someone that’s going to not be a senator that’s complicit with the way they’re doing business in D.C. They want somebody to upset the apple cart.”

Back in Plymouth, as Johnson makes his way toward the fair exit, a man in a “Let’s Go Brandon” shirt asks him why he puts up with the frustrations of federal government. Johnson once again shares his concern with the direction of the country, the national debt and the state of politics.

“I’m glad you stuck it out,” the man says. “We’ve got to keep you in there.”

When fairgoers tell him they’re supporting him, Johnson doesn’t just thank them — he underscores what every candidate in this purple state knows: “I need you to help me get more votes.”