Republican setbacks in Wisconsin and Georgia fuel anxiety ahead of midterms
Republicans are publicly recalibrating their expectations after Democrats posted election wins in Wisconsin and Georgia that party strategists described as an early indicator of broader momentum going into the November midterms. In interviews following Tuesday’s results, Republican leaders acknowledged that the party’s performance offered less room for complacency than it has in past election cycles.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor in Wisconsin, offered one of the most blunt assessments of the political moment, saying, “We got our butts kicked.” Tiffany tied his view to Democratic victories in Wisconsin—including a state Supreme Court campaign and a mayoral race in Waukesha, a conservative suburb outside Milwaukee—and also to what he described as an unexpectedly close Georgia result.
The Georgia contest involved a special election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress after she resigned from the House in January following a falling out with Donald Trump. In that race, Republican Clay Fuller won, but Democrats and some Republicans pointed to the margin as a sign that the seat was not performing as strongly as it had in earlier cycles.
Jared Leopold, a Democratic consultant whose clients include Keisha Lance Bottoms, said Democrats were outpacing expectations across a wide range of geographic and political categories. He said, “In rural, urban, red, blue, Democrats have overperformed everywhere,” and characterized that pattern as a warning sign for the direction of the November elections.
Some Republicans tried to minimize the immediate implications, arguing that special elections do not necessarily determine outcomes later in the year. Stephen Lawson, a Georgia strategist, said, “the sky is not falling,” and also said Republicans are behind where they have been in the past, adding that the party needed to “look at these results carefully.”
Democratic strategists cited additional examples that they said fit the same pattern of expanding Democratic gains. They pointed to Democratic victories in other state contests, including a Texas state Senate district and a state House seat in a Florida district that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, as well as ground gained Tuesday in the Greene replacement election.
In Georgia, the shift was underscored by how the district’s political baseline appeared to change compared with prior cycles. Greene previously won the seat by 29 percentage points, and Trump carried the district by almost 37 percentage points, but this time Fuller’s win came with a gap Republicans and Democrats described as narrower than in the past. Josh McKoon, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, posted on social media that Fuller “CRUSHED” his opponent in a race that “wasn’t close.”
Democrats also framed Wisconsin’s judicial outcome as a sign of enthusiasm heading into fall. Democrats increased their majority in the state Supreme Court elections Tuesday with a 20-percentage-point blowout victory, according to the coverage, and the party also reported gains in red, blue and purple counties compared with another judicial race last year, which was also won by the liberal candidate.
Wisconsin political leaders said the results also matter because the state has an open governor’s race this year, with Democrats hoping to take control of the state Legislature and to oust Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden. Mandela Barnes, a Democratic former lieutenant governor running for governor, said it was time to “put this thing in overdrive,” while Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said Republicans were facing dissatisfaction that could extend beyond election-day outcomes.
Crowley said voters were “really upset with the Republican Party and their brand right now,” while also warning that it would not automatically translate into a full transfer of support to Democrats. He said Democrats would still need to focus on issues and talk to voters’ values, rather than rely on broad disaffection alone.
In Wisconsin’s Waukesha mayoral race, Democrats gained despite the county’s Republican lean. Democrat Alicia Halvensleben, president of the city’s Common Council, defeated Republican Scott Allen, one of the most conservative members of the state Assembly, and Halvensleben said she heard Trump discussed “a lot” during campaigning while believing the outcome also depended on local issues and on how the state legislature addressed them.
Halvensleben said, “There’s so much uncertainty at the national level,” and added that she believed the uncertainty was “causing people a lot of anxiety, all the way down to the local level.” For Republicans, the challenge is interpreting those kinds of local results alongside what comes next in statewide contests and the broader midterm landscape.
On the Republican side, Tiffany sought to reinforce caution about reading Tuesday’s results too deterministically. He said “every election is unique” and said he was not changing his campaign, while emphasizing the party’s need to make a clear case about how it would “help everyday Wisconsinites.”
In Georgia, Democrats said the special election result was still worth treating as a concrete signal. Democratic strategist Meredith Brasher said the narrower margin for Fuller was “a red alarm for Republicans,” while noting that Democrats plan for the possibility of challenging Fuller again in November.