How Crime Became the Central Issue of the Wisconsin Senate Race—and the Midterms
For all the talk about the economy, 2022 is really a referendum on chaos and disorder
That’s me on board the Ronmobile, chatting with Sen. Ron Johnson about the issue at the center of his campaign for reelection:
Senator Ron Johnson sits across from me on board the Ronmobile, explaining why his opponent is to blame for all the crime in Wisconsin. “I can’t tell you how dispiriting the whole defund-the-police movement is,” he says, leaning both forearms on the fold-down Formica table at the front of his dark-green campaign RV. “The revolving door in our criminal-justice system. Police risk their lives to apprehend a criminal, and then district attorneys just let them out. Why are we doing this?”
In my new piece for TIME, I spent some time in Milwaukee, one of my favorite cities, reporting on the role crime is playing in the midterms. Johnson is the most unpopular incumbent on the ballot this year, but he’s currently polling ahead thanks to the liberal criminal-justice stances staked out by his opponent, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. In fact, for all the discussion about the economy being at the top of voters’ minds, both parties have put more emphasis on this issue than any other:
Across the U.S., crime has become the defining theme of the midterm elections. It’s the top subject of campaign ads: Republicans have spent $100 million on crime-focused ads against Democratic candidates nationally, $20 million more than they’ve spent on ads about inflation, and Democrats have poured nearly as much into their own ads on the topic. The accusation that liberal policies have allowed crime to get out of hand has hobbled Democratic candidates from Pennsylvania to Nevada and made elections competitive in surprising places like Oregon and New York state. A Gallup poll released last week found 56% of Americans believe crime is increasing in their area, a five-decade high. For all the talk about economic angst driving this year’s Democratic backlash, 2022 is really a referendum on this: the chaos and disorder people see around them; the fear and lack of control they feel as a result; and who or what they hold responsible. It’s a brutal irony: two-and-a-half years after anger at police brutality spurred worldwide protests and galvanized a bipartisan movement to liberalize the criminal-justice system, the near-term legacy is a return to law-and-order, tough-on-crime politics.
Part of the dynamic, I found, is Democrats’ inability or unwillingness to stand up to their liberal base on this issue, and their tendency to argue with voters’ anxieties rather than addressing them:
These assertions are hotly contested by liberals and criminal-justice experts. They insist that rising crime is more perception than reality, and that its causes can’t be traced to “soft on crime” policies or progressive prosecutors. But it is undeniably true that the political ground has shifted. The last decade has seen a widespread liberalization of criminal-justice laws, accelerated by the racial-justice protests of 2020. Biden, who authored the 1994 crime bill, was forced to apologize for it during the 2020 primary, and these days when he speaks about crime he mostly talks about gun control. Aiming to rebut the “defund” accusation, House Democrats in September passed a measure to give $60 million to local police departments, an initiative that was nearly derailed by progressives’ objections. Unable or unwilling to reject the demands of an activist base animated by a deeply felt sense of injustice, liberals have broadly embraced policies and rhetoric that are skeptical of policing and incarceration as solutions to crime and disorder. Now they have no good answers for an electorate clamoring for protection and safety.
In addition to Ron Johnson and Mandela Barnes, I spent time with advocates for and against increased police funding, as well as Milwaukee’s new mayor, Cavalier Johnson (pictured below), who has a remarkable story: one of his brothers runs a jail in which another of his brothers is a prisoner. Johnson notes the irony of Republicans’ current tactics:
To Johnson, the wall-to-wall GOP ads are a cynical ploy to use racially tinged fear to scare suburban and rural residents and pit them against the big, bad city. It’s particularly rich, he says, coming from a Republican Party that’s just committed to hold its 2024 nominating convention in Milwaukee. “Republicans at nine o’clock in the morning say, ‘Milwaukee is a terrible hellscape, and if you go into the city limits, your head’s going to get blown off,’” says Johnson, who worked with Ron Johnson and other Republicans to land the convention, to some liberal criticism. “And then at three o’clock they say, ‘We’re so lucky and fortunate to be coming to this great city where we’re going to nominate our nominee for President of the United States!’”