Just over a week after “the biggest comeback in political history,” many of us are still riding high on feelings of elation and hope after Republicans took back the White House, the Senate, and have officially held on to the majority in the House of Representatives.
President Trump has been given a clear mandate after overwhelmingly winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote.
And after seeing Trump’s cabinet picks so far, it looks like real change within our government will happen. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as the heads of the Department of Government Efficiency? Tom Homan as the border czar? RFK Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services? This is NOT business as usual. I’m under no illusions that this will be easy, especially with a narrow majority in the House. Democrats won’t just sit back without trying to obstruct President Trump and his agenda. But if the goal is to “drain the swamp” and bring serious reform to our government agencies, we’re off to a good start.
Let’s hope we can ask ourselves at some point if we’re tired of winning yet!
On the other side, Democrats are in total disarray, dumbfounded by what just happened as they point fingers within their own party and wrongly blame the American people for allegedly being sexist and racist for not voting for Kamala Harris. Many Democrats simply don’t seem capable of recognizing that their failed policies and elitist attitude are the problem!
How did we end up winning as much as we did? To start, enough of the American people were awakened after four years of disastrous results under Democrat policies. Calling Trump Hitler or a fascist didn’t work. Claiming “this is the best economy ever” as Kamala Harris promised to make things better didn’t resonate with people struggling. It’s almost as if things needed to happen this way–things deteriorating so much that no amount of gaslighting or fear-mongering was able to work on the majority of the American people.
Trump also had a great team in place running his campaign. The most amazing coalition of people came together for Republicans. From unexpected allies like RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, and Elon Musk, to third-party groups investing heavily in swing states (Americans for Prosperity, Faith and Freedom Coalition, Turning Point, Elon Musk’s America PAC, among others), to the Republican Party itself having a stellar team and plan in place, everyone pulled it off together.
In Wisconsin, I can’t emphasize enough how much the RNC, RPW, county parties, and the Trump campaign working together made a difference. The overall results in Wisconsin were positive. We maintained 6 of the 8 congressional seats, kept the majority in the assembly and senate with 54 seats and 18 seats respectively, despite new blatantly gerrymandered maps. We won the “only citizens vote” referendum with 70.5% of the vote, and won the presidential election for only the second time since 1984. We also flipped a DA seat in Kenosha. We’ve all seen in recent years how important it is to have good DA’s in office. It looks like we unfortunately came up just short in the US Senate race, the closest we’ve come to defeating Tammy Baldwin. Hovde made it competitive and started closing the gap in a race that was originally lean Democrat and made it a toss-up. At this time, his campaign is still weighing their options as they review the election results.
With regards to the blueprint to win in 2024, as a district leader, I remember sitting in state party meetings in 2023 as we discussed the plan to focus on early voting, election integrity, and turning out enough low and mid-propensity voters who already aligned with us on the issues. Along those lines, new RPW chairman Brian Schimming was the first state party chairman in the country to push for early voting at the beginning of 2023 when it wasn’t widely supported yet. It took some time to convince people on our side, but eventually enough people bought into the idea and it was part of what helped us win in Wisconsin and across the country.
When it came to executing the plan, a robust operation on the ground was needed. Between the RNC and RPW, there were 130 full and part-time staff and interns in Wisconsin, plus 21 direct canvassers hired by RPW. The staff was working tirelessly around the clock to get it done. County parties and RPW worked closely with the Trump campaign and the RNC to train “Trump Force 47” captains to knock on doors, make phone calls, and be poll observers. So many amazing volunteers got involved in the process out of concern for their country.
Nearly every county improved in their Republican margins. We saw urban improvement for both Trump and Hovde. The team in Wisconsin made over 1 million voter contacts, specifically 627,000 doors knocked and 390,000 calls made. Over 32,000 hand-written postcards were sent, and over 200,000 yard signs were distributed. There was a heightened focus on outreach to those in the Hispanic and black communities by opening 2 minority outreach offices in Milwaukee, doing radio ads, newspaper ads, texts, and mailers targeting those communities.
We focused on reaching young men, sportsmen, RFK Jr. supporters, and those turned off by transgender/woke policies. We also had an incredible election integrity team on the ground. At the end of 2023, the state party worked with the county parties to submit an unprecedented number of poll workers (over 5,500) to help facilitate elections in municipalities across Wisconsin. To compare, in 2020, the Republican Party submitted around 1000 poll workers.
There was a robust effort to train thousands of poll observers this election cycle with eyes on the ground across the state, making sure to focus on areas known to have issues. We had an army of lawyers on hand if problems arose. The election integrity team worked closely with municipal clerks to make sure laws were being followed and our poll workers were being used.
There is no doubt in my mind that our focus on election integrity helped us win in Wisconsin. We obviously cannot rest on our laurels, and we have more work to do to convert support for Trump into support for all Republicans— out of the seven swing states, only one Republican won their senate seat (in Pennsylvania). But we can take the wins from this election cycle and look for ways to build off of those successes moving forward. We should enjoy the fruits of our labor and celebrate these historic wins across the board—then it’s back to work. Next up, the incredibly important Wisconsin Supreme Court race, plus the DPI race and local elections next April. We can’t afford to take our foot off the gas. They say “teamwork makes the dream work.” It was truly a team effort this past election cycle.
And lately, I feel like I’m dreaming about all of the good things happening so far…
