Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania was stumping for Senator Tammy Baldwin outside a refurbished gas station here in central Wisconsin on Saturday when a heckler drove by shouting, “Trump 2024!”
“I don’t think he’s for us,” Mr. Shapiro told the assembled crowd outside the building, which now serves as the Richland County Democrats’ office. “That’s OK.”
It was at least the third disruption during a short campaign stop that was punctuated by cars and pickup trucks driving by, revving their engines over the Democratic duo and shouting pro-Trump slogans.
The hostile territory was the point. Ms. Baldwin had brought Mr. Shapiro, a Democrat whose talent for appealing to Republicans and independents has become a central part of his brand, to help her as she faces a tough re-election bid in her own battleground state. The two made campaign stops over the weekend here in south-central Wisconsin, in a pair of rural counties that reliably voted for Donald J. Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Despite the deep well of support here for Mr. Trump, Ms. Baldwin won these counties by double digits in 2018, victories that helped her coast to a second term in the U.S. Senate. But this year, Mr. Trump is on the ballot, posing a steeper challenge. To win her re-election race in November against Eric Hovde, a Republican banking executive, Ms. Baldwin will have to replicate the same success — or at least limit a hemorrhaging of support from Trump voters — this time with the former president atop the ticket.
“In my last race, in 2018, about 10 percent of voters walked into the voting booth and voted for Scott Walker for governor and Tammy Baldwin for U.S. Senate,” Ms. Baldwin said, referring to the Republican who led the state but lost his re-election bid that year. “So, yes, there’s a lot of split-ticket voters. I do think that that has diminished. Obviously, there’s a difference between a midterm and a presidential, but I know some Trump-Tammy voters.”
Polling has shown Ms. Baldwin’s lead over Mr. Hovde shrinking in recent weeks, setting up Wisconsin’s as one of the most competitive Senate races in the nation as the two parties vie for control of the chamber. So it made sense for her to enlist Mr. Shapiro, the popular Pennsylvania governor whose national profile has risen since he was on Vice President Kamala Harris’s short list for running mates, to help her appeal to a critical swath of voters in the quiet rolling hills of the state.
As Democrats have faced eroding support from working-class voters in rural areas, the party has begun to lean on messengers like Mr. Shapiro and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, now the vice-presidential nominee, who have proved their ability to appeal to voters in more conservative areas. A handout at the Democratic offices here for volunteers speaking with voters stressed that Mr. Walz is a “lifelong hunter and gun owner” and “believes in Midwest common sense, being a good neighbor and allegiance to the U.S. of America.”
“There’s a handful of states that are likely to determine the outcome of this election,” Mr. Shapiro said, when asked what he was doing on the campaign trail in Wisconsin. “Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan — the three ‘blue wall’ states, so to speak — are critical. And I want to do everything I can to not just get the vote out in Pennsylvania but get the vote out in those states, as well.”
The pair of events in central Wisconsin on Saturday with Ms. Baldwin — including one held inside a barn in Dodgeville, steps away from a yellow cornfield where attendees sipped cider and munched on cubes of cheddar adorned with tiny American flags — were Mr. Shapiro’s first stops as a surrogate outside of his home state.
They are not likely to be his last.
He has already campaigned extensively in rural and working-class counties of Pennsylvania on behalf of the Harris campaign, in patches of the state where he outperformed President Biden in order to win the governorship in 2022. In that race, he put money behind television ads featuring Trump voters who were supporting him.
“Finally, a Democrat I can vote for!” one enthused in a direct-to-camera shot.
“I think it was important that we showed up on their terms,” Mr. Shapiro said of the 2022 contest during an interview over lunch with Ms. Baldwin. He noted that he had campaigned in urban areas and more rural ones, including meeting voters at their local gun club in Butler County, Pa., “which actually doesn’t look a whole lot different in some parts from here in this area.”
“When you actually drill down and listen, even though the communities look really different, folks kind of basically want the same few things,” he continued. “They want good schools and safe communities. They want opportunity — economic opportunity — whether it’s running their small business or being able to have the opportunity to afford your home. And they kind of want their rights and freedoms protected. They want government to be out of their lives. And that is what I hear in rural areas, suburban, urban areas.”
He was talking about voters like Marvin Ford, the kind that Ms. Baldwin will need to win in November.
Mr. Ford, who is self-employed, came to Ms. Baldwin’s rally in Richland Center, where he lives, to hear her message on the economy and immigration. Before the event, he said he was not sure whom he would vote for in November, either for president or senator, but said that he had voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 because he wanted to support someone who would secure the southern border.
He had not voted for Ms. Baldwin previously, he said, but thought she had done “a great job so far,” and was rethinking his support for Mr. Trump because he was concerned about “his ethics.”
“You know, all his investigations, criminal trials,” Mr. Ford said.
In her remarks, Ms. Baldwin did not address immigration, but spoke about her work to include “Buy American provisions” in the Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure bill.
“There’s a company in Kenosha, Wis., that’s doubling from 200 employees to 400 employees to make some of the components we need for our broadband buildup,” she said. “We are seeing those jobs come back. You can stand up to powerful interests and you can win.”
Mr. Ford appeared particularly interested in Mr. Shapiro’s comments, nodding along as the governor praised Ms. Baldwin for running on what he called “common-sense principles; around the idea of getting stuff done; of showing up in communities, not writing certain people off because of maybe how they vote in a national election.”
Afterward, before posing for pictures with both elected officials, he said he remained undecided but was now leaning toward supporting Ms. Baldwin because of her comments about her support for the Affordable Care Act.
For weeks across the state, in speeches that span her positions on preserving reproductive rights, boosting American jobs and Wisconsin’s dairy farms, and supporting gay marriage, Ms. Baldwin has drawn the biggest applause when she speaking about how she pushed for the health care law to allow young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26.
“I’m on Obamacare right now,” Mr. Ford said. “So, you know, I don’t want it to end.”
Still, in counties like these with Mr. Trump at the top of the ticket, Ms. Baldwin has an uphill battle on her hands.
Departing the Democratic office, one voter called out to a member of Ms. Baldwin’s staff: “How does someone get the courage to put a Tammy sign up when you have a neighbor who has, like, 16 Trump signs up?”
Bev Pestel, who leads the Richland Center chapter of Economic Equity Now, which is funded by the Patriotic Millionaires, conceded at the Dodgeville rally that the area was home to “a lot of devoted MAGA folks who are very angry.”
“Our mission,” she said, “is to chip away one voter at a time.”
The post Baldwin, With Shapiro in Tow, Looks For ‘Trump-Tammy Voters’ in Wisconsin appeared first on New York Times.
