In the Trump era, Waukesha County remains as crucial as ever for Republicans

In 2011, after liberals believed they had won the State Supreme Court seat held by incumbent conservative David Prosser, a pile of unreported votes showed up in Waukesha County. These votes from the heavily Republican area pushed Prosser ahead of challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg for good, leading then-Slate reporter Dave Weigel to deem the suburban county “crucial Waukesha County.”

Weigel’s tongue-in-cheek joke gained traction on social media, where it is still used to mock the fleeting fascination election observers have with little-known areas of the states they are covering. In 2016, The New Yorker ran a cartoon of Russian strategists speaking their foreign tongue, then punctuating their political speech with the words “Waukesha County.” Weigel called seeing the cartoon “the best day of my life.”

The only way the joke works, however, is if you see heavily-populated Waukesha County as Business Insider magazine sees it — as an “obscure” county in the middle of farm country.  But if recent elections have illuminated one thing about the county, it is this:

Waukesha County is pretty darn crucial.

For one, Waukesha and other neighboring counties that ring Milwaukee County are the power base of Republican votes in the state. This is obviously well-known — just see any number of articles written by Journal Sentinel reporter Craig Gilbert over the past decade to see how influential the conservative areas in southeast Wisconsin are to statewide results. Essentially, the conservative suburban Milwaukee counties cancel out heavily liberal Dane County, leaving state contests a battle between Milwaukee and the rest of Wisconsin.

But everyone already knows that. Instead, Waukesha County’s true value is embedded in how meaningfully it affects Republican politics. While the GOP nationally has seen its rank-and-file fall head-over-heels for Donald Trump, Waukesha County has remained resistant to the president’s charms. It is a power center of Republicanism that remains skeptical of Trumpism and its practitioners.

This skepticism was evident when Trump himself ran for president in 2016. On primary night in April of 2016, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas nearly tripled Trump’s vote in Waukesha County, 61% to 22%. In the November general election, Trump did win 60% of the vote in the heavily-Republican county — but compare that to the more traditionally conservative Sen. Ron Johnson, who on the same night earned 68% of the Waukesha County vote against former Sen. Russ Feingold. In terms of raw votes, Trump garnered about 19,000 fewer votes in Waukesha County than did Johnson.

That distaste for Trump carried over into last Tuesday night’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, when “establishment” conservative State Sen. Leah Vukmir dominated the more Trump-aligned Kevin Nicholson in Waukesha County by a margin of 67% to 30%. As Gilbert has pointed out, Vukmir ran up her lead the southeast corner of the state, winning only 15 counties to Nicholson’s 57 — but her margins in the most populous Republican strongholds in Wisconsin carried her to an easy victory. (Nicholson actually lives in Waukesha County, and yet still got hammered in his own backyard.)

There are plenty of reasons why voters in the “WOW” counties (Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington) have stuck with pre-Trump conservatism. Until recently, talk radio played a large part in explaining conservative theory and principles, so those ideals may be more embedded in suburban Milwaukee voters. (Some notable conservative radio hosts have sold out their ideals for listenership, fully embracing Trumpism and all its vagaries.)

Other suburban conservatives remember the wars fought during the protests against Scott Walker’s union reforms and grew closer during the battles. It’s an impenetrable community of right-wingers forged under the pressure of a recall election, and it takes someone with similar conservative credentials to join the club.

Whatever the reason, Waukesha County remains a national blueprint for Republicans looking to get back to some sense of normalcy. It has been crucial in helping Wisconsin do so by rejecting the new brand of “conservatism,” and in November, it will be equally as crucial in helping Republicans retain the governorship and keep their majority in the U.S. Senate.

Christian Schneider is a Journal Sentinel columnist and blogger. Email christian.schneider@jrn.com. Twitter: @Schneider_CM