Northwest of the liberal stronghold of Madison sits a bellwether county with a complex group of local voters who just voted to send President-elect Donald Trump back to the White House — but also helped reelect Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
Baldwin beat Republican millionaire businessman Eric Hovde by about 1.5 percentage points in Sauk County. Trump beat Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris by about the same margin, so in effect Baldwin outperformed not only her opponent but also her party’s presidential nominee.
Baldwin’s narrow margin of victory in an otherwise red county is a classic representation of the competition lately in Wisconsin elections — and the purple nature of the state, in which Baldwin outperformed Harris in 65 of 72 counties.
Sauk County Republican Chair Jerry Helmer said he thinks not enough Republicans voted down the ballot, based on feedback he heard from poll workers.
“Some of those people (election workers) would run the absentee ballots and you get to look at it when you’re running it, and the thing that I heard a lot was on a lot of the ballots, people just voted for Donald Trump and did not vote down ballot,” Helmer said.
The county election results help to prove his point. Trump received about 900 more votes than Hovde.
Helmer wouldn’t comment on whether Baldwin’s victory could also be attributed to ticket-splitting — in which a voter selects candidates from multiple political parties on the same ballot.
While the county party chairman worked to help Hovde win votes, he said he felt like the Republican’s Senate campaign itself should have gained momentum sooner in the cycle.
“I was surprised at the amount of the older people that didn’t know who he was,” Helmer said of Republican voters who would visit the GOP headquarters in Reedsburg.
As far as Baldwin’s victory, Helmer is not supportive of the senator and wasn’t pleased with her reelection.
“I don’t think Tammy works very hard at all,” he said.
As part of her campaign strategy, Baldwin brought a printed page of legislative accomplishments she has delivered for each Wisconsin county she visited, including Sauk County where the senator secured thousands of dollars in funding for the county through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The county received $438,000 in federal funding to upgrade the Reedsburg Municipal Airport and the Baraboo-Wisconsin Dells Regional Airport and more than $211,000 to repair County Highway H from Reedsburg to the Juneau County line.
As the state Legislature works to address issues with high-speed internet access, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law also allocated $28 million to five Wisconsin counties including Sauk to fund construction and costs to expand connectivity.
“Sauk County is a county that needs to be connected to high-speed internet in many parts of the county,” Baldwin told the Cap Times. “Because without it, it was a real problem for families and businesses to get ahead.”
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin visits with constituents in 2018 at the Blue Spoon in Prairie du Sac in Sauk County.
Construction is also underway on a new community center in Reedsburg that received $220,000 in the federal government’s 2022 spending bill.
“The way I won is the way I’ve always approached the job, which is showing up, listening and delivering,” Baldwin said of her style of campaigning.
The Sauk County Democratic Party did not respond to multiple Cap Times requests for comment on Baldwin’s victory.
Sauk County is not the only area of the state which has shown a pendulum swing between elections. West of Sauk County, Richland County voters elected Trump in 2016 and Baldwin in 2018 — a trend Republicans in the area attributed to her showing up in a region not often visited by Democrats. Baldwin lost Richland County in this year’s election but by a smaller margin than Harris lost to Trump.
At the statewide level, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin attributed Baldwin’s election win to her long game in places like Sauk County.
“Senator Baldwin’s victory in Sauk County reflects years of showing up and working for rural Wisconsin — delivering on key priorities for rural Wisconsin and holding more than 250 events statewide this year alone,” said Joe Oslund, the state Democratic Party’s communications director. “It’s clear ticket-splitting still happens in Sauk and across the state, and our work going forward will be to reach more people in more places and communicate everywhere about how Democrats are fighting for them.”
The senator, who will enter her third term and 13th year in the U.S. Senate, agrees longevity in a state matters.
“You don’t earn people’s trust overnight,” Baldwin said. “I think what we saw on Election Day was the result of years of work, and I did better in rural areas where I have been working hard for many years.”
Baldwin said her victory was due to her campaign having a “72-county strategy, not a two-county or a 10-county strategy.”
The Republican Party of Wisconsin did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Baldwin’s victory in the region.
