As narrow defeats go, there have been slimmer ones, but the 5,708-vote margin by which President Bush lost Wisconsin four years ago remains an obsession with the state’s Republican faithful.
“Five thousand seven hundred and eight,” repeated Scott Walker, 36, an alternate delegate from the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa. “Not that anyone is counting.”
Oh, how they are counting!
The Badger State’s delegates to the Republican National Convention are more maniacal than another fanatical species behind the Cheddar Curtain–the indomitable Packer fans.
The delegates are actually hoping that the Green Bay Packers lose–lose!–to the Washington Redskins the weekend before Election Day because, soothsayers claim, a Redskins victory immediately before polling signals a Republican presidential victory, while a Redskins defeat foretells a Democratic win.
“Go Redskins!” shouted a Wisconsin delegate or two at a Thursday morning pep rally.
And Republican leaders are courting and sweet-talking these delegates with equal enthusiasm, given Wisconsin’s status as a key swing state.
Ending a series of 7:30 a.m. visits to delegations from battleground states, the White House’s ultimate strategist, Karl Rove, opened his pep talk Thursday with Wisconsin delegates by noting how his father was from Milwaukee, his grandparents lived in Pewaukee and his grandmother died in Oconomowoc.
Those wonderfully named Wisconsin cities were a mouthful. And Rove avoided any malapropisms.
“I can actually pronounce some of the names,” Rove told the crowd. “If we can win Wisconsin, it’s going to be a fabulous state for Republican growth.”
Even awkward references to cheeseheads were being tolerated Thursday when Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, tried to connect with the 40 delegates and 37 alternates at a breakfast buffet.
“Good morning, Wisconsin,” Allen exclaimed. “I don’t know why they don’t have cheese here.”
True, there was some hissing from the crowd. But most played along.
“We like cheese in our grits,” Allen explained.
An activist’s personal stake
This year, the Wisconsin delegates are preparing an intensive grass-roots campaign from the North Woods to the Mississippi River to the Milwaukee suburbs, led partly by the likes of supermom Linda Hansen.
A longtime resident of Prairie du Chien on the Mississippi, the fortysomething Hansen is a mother of six who home-schools her children and is training for next month’s Chicago Marathon. Her husband is a computer technician.
She also has a personal stake in the Bush agenda: Her son Caleb, 21, is a Marine reservist who was just activated for Iraq duty, she said.
Her marching orders from the party are considerable: She’s being asked to help end the GOP’s failure to win a presidential election in Wisconsin since 1984.
She’ll get some help from Bush, who visited her hometown in May and has visited the state five times so far this year. Bush will demonstrate Wisconsin’s strategic importance again by visiting its fairgrounds in West Allis, a Milwaukee suburb, on Friday, just 16 hours after formally accepting the party’s re-nomination.
`Republican values’ seen
The GOP is relying on the abundant energies of volunteers with deep community roots such as Hansen, who has lived for more than 19 years on the state’s western edge, where the state GOP thinks Democrats are vulnerable.
Hansen is credited by state party leaders with establishing the party’s first offices in Crawford County in 2002 and resurrecting a moribund local leadership.
Even though most voters in her county voted Democratic in the 2000 presidential election, “more people in my county hold Republican values than Democratic values,” Hansen said. “A lot of them are pro-life. They don’t want to pay higher taxes. They want a good education for their kids.”
To expand Republican ranks in Wisconsin, the GOP will need more success stories like Walker, the alternate delegate, who in 2002 became the first Republican to be elected Milwaukee County executive.
Walker says he’s targeting the Reagan Democrats in his county, as well as Latinos and African-Americans in the city.
“I took 42 percent of the black vote,” said Walker, who is white.
Black Democrat defects
One African-American delegate from Milwaukee, Hattie Daniels-Rush, who is in her 50s, was a steady Democratic go-to person three years ago, routinely turning out people for party rallies whenever asked. Joining her was her brother, Bishop Sedgwick Daniels, pastor of the largest black church in Milwaukee, Holy Redeemer Institutional, part of the Church of God in Christ denomination.
Daniels-Rush became a Republican because, she said, the Democrats were taking the African-American vote for granted. She also liked the Republican message of self-improvement and empowerment, along with advocacy of taxpayer-financed vouchers to help pay for private-school tuition..
“I decided I couldn’t be silent any more,” Daniels-Rush said.
Back in Wisconsin, Democratic leaders are game for the November showdown.
“This is going to be a race that’s going to be very close, but I disagree with them on how it’s going to go,” said Linda Honold, state Democratic chairwoman.
State Republican Chairman Rick Graber put the challenge for the GOP this way: “When you lose by 5,708 votes as we did in Wisconsin, you learn some lessons. We’re going to have the most comprehensive grass-roots effort ever in Wisconsin.”
