U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said he’s spoken with GOP Senate candidate Eric Hovde in recent days about whether he will concede the race to Sen. Tammy Baldwin or request a recount.
“Those would be confidential conversations,” Johnson said on WISN’s “UpFront,” which is produced in partnership with WisPolitics. “I’m sure he’ll do the right thing, and I totally support any kind of ongoing effort to take a look at what happened, answer any unanswered questions to restore confidence in our election system.”
Unofficial results show Hovde losing to Baldwin 49.4% to 48.5%.
“It was a close election,” Johnson said. “I’m sure it’s a difficult loss for him to take. He wants to make sure all the votes are counted, know all these things have been certified. There are questions that remain unanswered.”
In Washington, Johnson said he’s keeping an “open mind” on whether to back Matt Gaetz, President-elect Trump’s pick to be attorney general.
“I’ve met Matt a couple of times,” Johnson said. “I know he’s got potentially some issues out there. I don’t know what they particularly are. I haven’t seen the (House) ethics report. So he’ll go through the confirmation process, and I’ll keep an open mind.”
Johnson is fully backing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Health and Human Services secretary. Members of the medical community have raised concerns and strongly disputed Kennedy’s claims that childhood vaccines cause autism.
“I think what we need to do is we need to actually take a look at uncorrupted science,” Johnson said. “We need to have the courage to ask what has caused this explosion in autism. What is causing this explosion of chronic illness?”
Ultimately, Johnson said, he is confident Kennedy would receive Senate confirmation.
“I think he welcomes the confirmation hearings,” Johnson said. “And I think he’ll do an extremely good job because it’s hard to refute the truth, and he’ll be laying out many truths.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan says he’s backing Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, to be the next Democratic National Committee chairman.
“I’ve already expressed that interest, and I have a lot of colleagues asking me about him,” Pocan told “UpFront.” “Just this morning, I talked to a member from Michigan who relayed that their governor thinks Ben is one of the best party chairs in the country. I think everyone acknowledges that. That might be a good person to put in charge of the DNC.”
Current chair Jaime Harrison reportedly won’t seek another term. Wikler is one of several Democrats whose name is being floated.
“He’s an organizer, he’s a great fundraiser for the state party, and he’s great at communications,” Pocan said. “If he can hit the trifecta, that’d be great for the Democratic party nationally. We did the best of the seven swing states.”
Pocan, though, said Democrats need to reflect on the major losses in 2024.
“I think what we really learned is we lost a lot of working people,” Pocan said. “When you look at the income brackets, we had people making under $30,000. We actually had high-income earners for the first time, looking at the last four presidential cycles. But we lost working people between $30,000 and $100,000, and I think that’s because we need to talk more about those issues that are at the core of the Democratic Party.
“If we talk about core economic issues, you are talking to the vast majority of voters, and I think all too often, we may not have,” Pocan said. “When you’re trying to appease to different interests, talk to political parties, and then the Republicans did a good job of subterfuge, of putting out subjects that they only brought up and acted like we were, and trying to confuse things. But at the end of the day, the voters voted on their pocketbooks, and we need to get back to talking about common sense working-class economics for people.”
Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, said members will be closely watching oral arguments today before the Wisconsin Supreme Court on the future of Meagan Wolfe, the administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
“Megan has been an outstanding administrator and has the full support of the commission, even going back to 2020, when all this brouhaha began,” Jacobs told “UpFront.” “And what will happen with Meagan? I don’t know. But she has done such good work that I certainly hope she decides to stay with the commission and the court allows her to do that.”
The case stems from a lawsuit the Elections Commission filed with the assistance of Dem AG Josh Kaul seeking to bar GOP lawmakers from removing Wolfe as the agency administrator.
She was originally appointed to a four-year term that expired July 1, 2023. The three GOP appointees on the six-member commission voted to reappoint Wolfe to the post, which sent the nomination to the Republican-controlled state Senate for confirmation.
But the three Dem commissioners abstained from the vote, arguing the body needed at least four members to support an appointment and Wolfe could serve in the job indefinitely.
A key question in the case is whether state law requires the commission to appoint an administrator regardless of whether a vacancy exists.
Jacobs also urged GOP Senate candidate Eric Hovde to decide whether to request a recount.
“It is unusual, and I wish he would make a decision and let people know,” Jacobs told “UpFront.” “A lot of our clerks want to make plans this time of year. They want to go deer hunting. They want to make plans for Thanksgiving with their families, and they really want to know if they need to be planning ahead for a recount. So, if Mr. Hovde is watching this, if you could please let folks know, I know it would be greatly appreciated by our clerks.”
Hovde released a video last week not conceding the race to Baldwin and in part pointing blame at the city of Milwaukee and third party candidates for his loss.
“I was very disappointed by those conspiratorial complaints that Mr. Hovde put out about the election,” Jacobs said. “I don’t know what he is talking about, about the integrity of the ballots. If he’s referring to, like, bamboo ballots, I thought we left that behind in 2020. And certainly with regards to the third party candidates, if they have enough signatures, and they do their paperwork right, they get on the ballot. Mr. Hovde didn’t make any challenge to them, as I recall, at the time. And frankly, if people vote for somebody else, they get to do that. You’re not entitled to people’s votes.”
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