Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Lafayette County Democratic volunteer irene kendall. Shapiro campaigned in rural Wisconsin for Sen. Tammy Baldwin's reelection Saturday. | Wisconsin Examiner photo

Two-term U.S Sen. Tammy Baldwin got a boost Saturday from a fellow Democrat, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, in her tight reelection race against Republican challenger Eric Hovde. The incumbent senator from Wisconsin and the governor — who attracted national media attention when he was recently considered as a possible vice presidential candidate — toured rural Richland and Lafayette counties, meeting with farmers and small town residents in sparsely populated areas of the state. In both counties, most voters chose former President Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections. But they also voted for Baldwin by more than 10-point margins in 2018. 

The night before embarking on the rural Wisconsin tour, Baldwin spoke from the same stage as Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to a cheering crowd of 10,000 people who packed the Dane County Coliseum, a frequent venue for rock concerts in deep-blue Madison.

Since both population growth and voter turnout are sky-high in Dane County, Democrats are focusing heavily on the area as key to winning elections in this closely-divided swing state. But Baldwin, like Shapiro, who made inroads with rural voters in Pennsylvania, makes a point of campaigning in rural and suburban areas that lean Republican. 

Appealing to voters in areas where other Democrats don’t often show up is a big part of both politicians’ formula for success. In their joint, rural campaign stops in Wisconsin they modeled an approach to politics that refuses to take the urban-rural political divide for granted, and that reconnects with voters the rest of their party has often overlooked. That approach dovetails with the Harris campaign’s effort to appeal to disaffected Republicans and to present the Democratic party as a “big tent.”

Lafayette is among the most rural counties in Wisconsin, and one of only two counties in the state that doesn’t have a traffic light, according to U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat, who represents the area in Congress. Voters there chose Trump by 9 percentage points in 2016 and by 13.7 points in 2020 — but Baldwin won the county by 10.6 points in 2018. 

“It really does feel like home,” Shapiro told the Examiner, standing outside a big, red barn at the Iowa and Lafayette County Democrats’ picnic. “There’s a sensibility, and there’s a desire from the people I’ve met to just have elected officials work together to get stuff done,” he said.

Getting stuff done — Shapiro’s trademark phrase — was the theme of his speech endorsing Baldwin’s 2024 reelection bid. He touted her work to bring agriculture innovation grants as well as her work on rural broadband and expanding health care access.

In her own speech at the county picnic, Baldwin also focused on specific accomplishments. She told a story about meeting with executives of a handful of medical device companies and “shaming” them into agreeing to set a cap of $35 per month on the price of inhalers, after hearing from constituents who were struggling to pay hundreds of dollars per month to treat their asthma. 

While Shapiro and Baldwin described themselves as pragmatists, they also espoused progressive values, denouncing Republican “extremism” and threats to democracy and vowing to work to claw back abortion rights after the demise of Roe v. Wade. 

Baldwin warned that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which held that there is no fundamental constitutional right to privacy, poses a threat to other precedents besides Roe, including protections for access to contraception as well as interracial and same-sex marriage. She described the skepticism she encountered from journalists who did not believe she would be able to get enough Republican votes to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages. 

“I said, ‘Just you watch,’ ” she told the audience of rural Democrats, adding she was sure at least 10 of her Republican colleagues had a loved one who would be hurt if same-sex marriage was overturned. In the end she found 12 Republicans to join all 50 Democrats in the Senate to pass the bill.

Baldwin added that she is proud to be the lead author of the Women’s Health Protection Act, “which would restore Roe, make it a part of our national laws, and tell states like Wisconsin and Texas and Florida and Idaho that you can’t pass a whole bunch of laws at the state level that interfere with those rights and freedoms.”

“I don’t have 60 votes yet, but I do have a plan,” she told her rural constituents. “That plan involves all of you working super hard to get me reelected to the United States Senate.”

Democrats are working harder than ever in Lafayette County, said Democratic Party Chair Nancy Fisker, who added that the group has doubled its membership in the last year and a half after opening a new office, with help from the state party. The chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Ben Wikler, also gave an impassioned speech at the picnic. A prolific fundraiser, he has helped to open new Democratic Party offices all over the state.

Still, county residents are often afraid to put up yard signs or otherwise publicly identify themselves as Democrats, Fisker said. “We have to be aware of it, and we have to not push our agenda at people who don’t want to hear it,” she said. “We don’t just take a bunch of Democrats to a restaurant in Darlington to have a meeting unless we talk to the owner first, or they’ll throw us out on our ear. It’s serious.”

This year, after pushing for a long time, county volunteers are putting up more yard signs. And, after opening the new party office, “We started to have some successes,” Fisker said. Lafayette County voted for liberal state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose victory over conservative former Justice Dan Kelly changed the ideological balance on the court. Most voters in the county also rejected a pair of constitutional amendments drafted by the Republican-controlled Legislature that would have taken away the governor’s power to give out federal emergency relief funds. Fisker attributes both results to her group’s stepped-up voter education effort.

Fisker said she meets a lot of split-ticket voters. “I have a couple of friends who just said, ‘Oh, well, you know, I’m going to vote for Baldwin, but I don’t know about that Harris person. So then there’s lots of conversations, and it’s your neighbors.”

“We care about reproductive rights. We care about the environment. We care about ensuring that our rights are not taken away. But you have to come to us in the way that we want to engage with you,” said Lafayette County Democrat irene kendall (she spells her name in all lower-case letters), who helped organize the event. She credited Baldwin and Pocan with coming to the area frequently and listening to people. “They understand what happens in the rural communities, because they’re out there, right? And so we know we matter to them. So showing up is a huge part of it, I think.” She has relatives, she said, who split their tickets, voting Republican in most races, but making and exception for Baldwin.

Steve Pickett, now retired, described himself as the first Democratic county clerk elected in Lafayette County since Reconstruction. He agreed that Democrats could do a lot better just by showing up.

“In rural Wisconsin, probably more so than in the cities, people want to know who the candidate is,” he said. “It’s hard for people to say, ‘Well, yeah I want to vote for someone I don’t even know.’”

The working theory for a long time has been that you have to be a Republican to win in Lafayette County, he said. Now that’s starting to change. “You can be a Democrat and win, but you have to work at it,” he added.

“It isn’t that it’s so Republican,” he said of the area. “It’s that we haven’t given people a reason to vote for the Democrats.” Baldwin and Pocan “gave you reasons” in their speeches, he added.

“We have to get the party to understand,” Pickett said, “that these are the races that are going to make them, as opposed to spending money in the really safe districts.”

Shapiro and Baldwin both seem to understand that point — and not just on the state level.

Shapiro told the rural Democrats in Wisconsin the same thing he said he tells voters in Pennsylvania: Because of the way national elections are structured, as swing state voters they have enormous power.  “You’ve got the power to shape the future,” he said, “not just of this state, but of this entire country.”