May 14, 2020 at 8:05 p.m.
Tiffany strolls to victory in 7th district congressional race
Little evidence of a coming Blue Wave emerged on Tuesday
Tiffany strolls to victory in 7th district congressional race
With all precincts reporting, Tiffany captured 109,190 votes to Zunker's 81,718, or 57 percent of the vote to 43 percent. Zunker managed to win three generally Democratic counties - Bayfield, Ashland, and Douglas - but Tiffany swept the rest of the sprawling district.
Tiffany prevailed in Oneida County 56-44 percent, and in Vilas County by 61-39 percent. He also swept Zunker's home Marathon County, 59-41 percent.
In a Facebook victory appearance, Tiffany thanked his supporters and family.
"Throughout this campaign, one thing was made resoundingly clear: the people of our district want a strong, experienced voice who will take some Northwoods common sense to Washington D.C.," Tiffany said. "Someone who will work with President Trump to get our families safely through these rough times and back to prosperity. That has always been my promise to you and I am ready to hit the ground running on day one."
Zunker also thanked workers and supporters and made a statement via Facebook.
"This wasn't the result we hoped for, but I'm proud of the campaign we ran," Zunker said. "I ran on affordable health care, help for our small businesses and family farmers, and protecting our environment, and that message resonated with people throughout northern Wisconsin. Despite a global pandemic and the lack of universal mail-in voting, we showed what can be done, and we laid the groundwork for this seat to turn blue in November."
Zunker has said she is running in the November election, when Tiffany must again face voters.
A blue-wave indicator, or just the opposite?
The 7th congressional district race was one of two special elections in the nation Tuesday that pundits were watching for hints as to what might be coming in November. In addition to the 7th district race, an open seat in California was being contested after the resignation last year of scandal-scarred Democrat Katie Bell.
The California race was in a district north of Los Angeles that has shifted in recent years from very conservative to evenly divided. Democrats hoped for a comfortable win that would build on Bell's victory in 2018 and cement the district in the Democratic Party column.
They also believed a comfortable victory rather than a narrow win would signal a coming Blue Wave in November that would result in Joe Biden's election as president and propel the Democrats to a Senate majority.
In Wisconsin, Tiffany's victory was never really in doubt; it was the margin that was important. Sean Duffy routinely won the district with more than 60 percent of the vote, and Donald Trump carried it by 20 points in 2016.
Democrats said anything less for Tiffany would portend trouble for the GOP in November.
Tiffany achieved neither threshold with his 57-43 percent victory, attaining a winning margin of between 5 and 6 percent below that of Trump, and Democrats immediately proclaimed they saw the Blue Wave in those results.
"Trump went all in for Tiffany and got egg on his face," the state Democratic Party said in a statement. "For Trump to win, red areas have to get redder to balance out blue areas getting bluer - but tonight, thanks to the terrific campaign run by Tricia Zunker and the organizing work of thousands of volunteers, Wisconsin's reddest congressional district swung dramatically towards Democrats."
Republicans should be deeply nervous, Ben Wikler, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, said.
Perhaps, but there are other explanations that run counter to that narrative.
For one thing, Tiffany's performance was not as soft as Democrats would like to think. His margin did not reach that of Duffy's or Trump's, but it far surpassed conservative Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly's six-point district margin over liberal Jill Karofsky in the April election.
That kind of margin for Tiffany would have indeed made Republicans deeply nervous.
Then, too, as a first-time contender across a mammoth geographic district rather than just in his senate district, Tiffany likely did not have the same name recognition district wide as did Trump or Duffy, the latter having represented the district since 2010. At least a small portion of Tiffany's softer performance could be attributed to a lack of familiarity.
In addition, Democrats have had a tendency in recent Wisconsin elections to over-perform in special elections, only to see reality return in regular elections.
For instance, in state Senate District 1 in 2018, Democrat Caleb Frostman defeated state Rep. Andre Jacque in a special election for the normally Republican Senate seat, winning by fewer than a thousand votes but leading Democrats to proclaim the election as a sea change.
That November, however, in the regular general election, Jacque bounced Frostman by a 55-45 percent margin, returning the seat to the GOP fold. If the same pattern holds true, Tiffany could easily exceed 60 percent in a rematch in November.
That number could be enhanced in a November contest in which Donald Trump will actually be on the ballot, energizing his base to turn out.
Still, elections must be analyzed in context, and the Democratic analysis could be right if the same softer patterns and results are seen in other elections.
That leads back to the other election Tuesday in which Democrats were hoping for evidence of a Blue Wave. It did not happen.
Rather than the Democrat winning comfortably in the California race, the Republican was winning comfortably. With 85 percent of precincts reporting, Republican Mike Garcia had 80,337 votes, or 56 percent of the vote, to Democrat Christy Smith's 62,998 votes, or 44 percent.
If Garcia holds his lead, it would be the first congressional seat the Republicans have claimed from Democrats in California in 22 years.
But the election isn't over. Garcia declined to claim victory and Democrats were predicting a win after "every vote is counted." That is eerily reminiscent of 2018, when some California Republicans scored comfortable margins on Election Day, only to lose days later when all the votes came in.
In California, ballots postmarked by Election Day will be counted if they are received by the following Friday. In 2018, Roll Call reported, Democrats in California added between 6 and 10 points to their margins as late votes were counted after Election Day.
But a 12-point margin would be hard for Democrats to overcome. If they don't, it would be an extraordinarily huge victory for the GOP in California.
If anything, the best news for Republicans Tuesday is that the worst news did not materialize in either race, meaning neither Trump nor the GOP are in particularly bad position heading into the summer and fall, despite the popularity of pandemic lockdown policies that Democrats have championed, especially among older voters that skew Republican.
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