PRO L O G U E

Pr

H illary Clinton was confident about winning Wisconsin.

op

Throughout the lead-​up to the 2016 election, she had never

er

trailed Donald Trump in a single poll, and Wisconsin had not

ty

gone for a Republican presidential candidate since 1984, when

Ronald Reagan swept every state except Minnesota. Her confi-
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dence was reflected by not going there—​even once—​during the

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campaign. Pundits echoed Clinton’s surety. “Wisconsin looks

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like a blue wall there for Hillary Clinton?” a Milwaukee news

anchor asked NBC’s Chuck Todd three days before the vote. “It
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does,” Todd replied. Or as Rachel Maddow said a few months

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earlier on MSNBC: “The Republican Party really, really, really

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wants Wisconsin to be a swing state—​not true.” She went on:

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“Even as Republican presidential candidates lose there year after

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year after year—​I mean even Michael Dukakis won Wisconsin,

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right?—​Republicans still have kept their hopes alive that Wiscon-

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sin could be theirs.” If you looked at recent presidential elections,

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there was little reason to doubt the end result. In 2008, Barack
Obama trounced John McCain in Wisconsin by fourteen points;
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four years later, he beat Mitt Romney comfortably by seven.

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 t h e fa l l o f w i s c o n s i n

Some of Clinton’s supporters were planning to gather on

election night at a Marriott in Middleton, a Madison suburb,
for a joint victory party with the Democratic Senate candidate
Russ Feingold. Feingold had held one of the state’s Senate
seats for three terms before losing in 2010 to the Republican
Ron Johnson, a wealthy political novice, in a shocking upset.
In 2016, Feingold was heavily favored to win the rematch. His
race tightened the week before the election, but he still led in
every poll save one.
Feingold’s campaign had asked Chris Taylor, a Democratic
assemblywoman from Madison, to help with his press that
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evening. Taylor was not confident of the outcome. She had can-
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vassed for Democrats in rural Iowa County the summer before

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the election and remembered the indifference, and sometimes

ty

hostility, she was greeted with. A few people slammed the

door in her face. “These should have been easy doors for us:
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A lot of them were Democrats,” she said. “It was worrisome.”

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Early on Election Day, Taylor, who was also on the ballot,

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took her two boys, Sam and Ben, to a busy intersection on

Madison’s Near East Side. The three of them wore “Chris Tay-
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lor for Assembly” T-​shirts and held signs, waving at the cars
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honking their support. It was a clear and bright autumn day

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with a brisk wind blowing off Lake Monona a block away. Doz-
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ens of people had shown up to join Taylor and her kids. Some-
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one brought doughnuts and hot chocolate for the volunteers,

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and the gathering turned festive. Taylor, though nervous,

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believed Clinton would pull it out.

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In the afternoon, Taylor drove to the hotel for her press

shift. Around seven, an hour before the polls closed, Fein-
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gold’s staff began receiving unsettling reports of low turnout

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 PRO L O G U E

in Milwaukee, a Democratic stronghold. By nine o’clock, Fein-

gold’s prospects looked grim, and Clinton’s chances in Florida
and Pennsylvania were slipping away. “People were looking
to me for reassurance,” Taylor said. “They came up to me, cry-
ing: ‘Oh my God, Chris. What are we going to do?’ ” Outwardly,
Taylor maintained her calm, but she too started to worry that
Clinton would lose Wisconsin.
Taylor tried to comfort people, telling them not to give up
hope, that returns from heavily Democratic Dane County,
which includes Madison, were still coming in. But the state’s
rural areas, including some of the towns and villages Taylor
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had canvassed, delivered strongly for Trump. Soon Taylor

op

began panicking. Around ten, Feingold emerged into a large

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ballroom ashen-​faced and visibly shaken. “Something is hap-

ty

pening in this country tonight,” he told his supporters in a

brief concession speech. “I don’t understand it completely. I
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don’t think anybody does.” People in the room started break-

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ing down, crying.

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Taylor left after Feingold’s speech. She could no longer face

the press. “I had been spinning Feingold was going to win,”
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she said. “I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I ran to my

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car and called my husband. He and I just cried on the phone

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together.” Taylor drove home and watched the returns in her

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living room. She saw Trump win Pennsylvania and Republi-

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cans make gains in both houses of the Wisconsin State Legis-

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lature. Democrats held on to a mere thirty-​five of ninety-​nine

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state assembly seats; in 2009, after Obama’s election, they had

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fifty-​two.
Around one in the morning, Taylor straggled to bed know-
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ing Trump would win Wisconsin. A half hour later, the net-

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 t h e fa l l o f w i s c o n s i n

works called it, awarding Trump Wisconsin’s ten electoral

college votes, which pushed him past the 270-​vote threshold
needed to win the White House. Wisconsin had just made
Donald Trump president. “Wisconsin! Wisconsin. Wisconsin
was barely in play!” Megyn Kelly said on Fox News. On CNN,
Jake Tapper called the result “stunning.”
Before she fell asleep, Taylor recalled a meeting she had
with Democratic colleagues in the assembly months before
the election. One of them assured Taylor that with Trump on
the ticket, it would be a wave year for the state’s Democrats. “I
remember thinking to myself: ‘You idiot! Republicans have a
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network, they have an infrastructure.’ We don’t. We might pick

op

up a seat or two here and there, but until we have an infra-

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structure as strong as theirs, we’re going to lose,” she said.

ty

“Few people in the country are aware of the mightiness of

their network, but he should have known.”
of
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donald trump’s victory m

 ay have shocked the Clinton
campaign and media pundits, but the result merely heralded
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the final stage of Wisconsin’s dramatic transformation from

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a pioneering beacon of progressive, democratic politics to the

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embodiment of that legacy’s national unraveling. Powerful

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conservative donors and organizations across the country had

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Wisconsin in their sights years before the 2016 presidential

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election, helping Governor Scott Walker and his allies system-

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atically change the state’s political culture.

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Wisconsin’s history made it an especially attractive and

important target. In the early twentieth century, native icons
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like the populist senator and governor Robert La Follette, who

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 PRO L O G U E

was known as Fighting Bob, and movements like Milwaukee’s

pragmatic “sewer socialism” forged a progressive tradition
that withstood the most calamitous events of the twentieth
century. La Follette instituted numerous reforms—​direct pri-
maries, a ban on corporate donations to political candidates,
civil-​service protections—​to encourage citizen participation
in government and help establish Wisconsin as a bastion of
democratic ideals. “Democracy is a life, and involves continual
struggle,” he wrote in his autobiography. “It is only as those
of every generation who love democracy resist with all their
might encroachments of its enemies that the ideals of repre-
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sentative government can even be nearly approximated.”

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Throughout the twentieth century, Wisconsin led the coun-

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try in devising pioneering legislation that aided the vast major-

ty

ity of its citizens. In 1911, the state legislature established the

nation’s first workers’ compensation program, a progressive
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state income tax, and more stringent child-​labor laws. The

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following year, President Theodore Roosevelt described Wis-

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consin as a “laboratory for wise, experimental legislation aim-

ing to secure the social and political betterment of the people
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as a whole.” The state’s progressive spirit continued for gen-

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erations, influencing the entire country: Wisconsin created

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the first unemployment-​insurance program, and it was the

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first state to recognize collective bargaining rights for pub-

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lic employees. Indeed, much of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New

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Deal, including the Social Security Act, was drafted by Wis-

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consinites loyal to the Wisconsin Idea, an ethos that placed

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a moral obligation on the University of Wisconsin to serve

the citizens of the state. More broadly, the Wisconsin Idea
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encouraged legislation, informed by the expertise of the uni-

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 t h e fa l l o f w i s c o n s i n

versity’s faculty, aimed at creating a more equitable society.

Its humanistic reach extended to Great Society programs like
Medicare, designed by another Wisconsinite under its sway
decades later. More than any other state, Wisconsin embod-
ied Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’s hope that states
might become “laboratories of democracy.”

the fall of wisconsin is the story of how the state went
from a widely admired “laboratory of democracy” to a testing
ground for national conservatives bent on remaking Ameri-
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can politics. It traces the ways Wisconsin’s century-​old pro-

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gressive legacy has been dismantled in virtually every area:

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labor rights, environmental protection, voting rights, govern-

ty

ment transparency. Those efforts have been wildly successful,

culminating in Wisconsin’s startling deliverance of the White
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House to Donald Trump.

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By the time Speaker of the House Paul Ryan declared he

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would be returning home to Janesville rather than running

for reelection, Wisconsin had seen one of the largest declines
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of the middle class of any state in the country. Its poverty rate
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had climbed to a thirty-​year high; the state’s roads were the

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second worst in the country; the University of Wisconsin–​

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Madison had fallen, for the first time, out of the rankings of
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the country’s top five research schools. A study estimated that

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11 percent of the state’s population was deterred from voting

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in the 2016 presidential election by Wisconsin’s new voter ID

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law, one of the strictest in the nation.

How could this have happened?
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To tell this story, I’ve relied on citizens who bore the brunt of

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 PRO L O G U E

the assault on long-​cherished ideals and policies. They chose

to fight back—​and continue to do so in the face of enormous
odds, a testament to their perseverance and a shared convic-
tion that they might one day reclaim Wisconsin’s progressive
heritage.
But The Fall of Wisconsin is also a story about the direction
of America as a whole. It explores whether the state’s demo-
cratic ideals can persist in an era of increasing division and
inequality. Wisconsin, after all, once had what any pragmatic
citizen might admire, even covet: clean air and water, trans-
parent government, good public schools, a world-​class state
Pr

university, and a strong tradition of supporting labor rights

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for its workers. Precisely because of those attributes, the state

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became a target for national conservatives. As Scott Walker

ty

boasted in his memoir, if he could change Wisconsin, he and

his allies could “do it anywhere.”
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In the end, this is a story that addresses a concern central to

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every American: If conservatives cannot tolerate a state that

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offers what Wisconsin once did, what kind of future is there

for the American citizen?
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or
to
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&
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om
pa
ny

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