'Wow Moment' As Wisconsin And Georgia Special Elections Shock Republicans
Chris Taylor
On Tuesday night, April 7, the top news story was U.S. President Donald Trump agreeing to a two-week ceasefire with Iran after having threatened that "a whole civilization will die tonight" if the regime in Tehran didn't agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The ceasefire, in the United States, overshadowed another news story: elections in Georgia and Wisconsin. And like previous 2026 elections, the result gave Democrats more reason for optimism ahead of the midterms.
Liberal Judge Chris Taylor won a state supreme court race in Wisconsin, defeating GOP-backed Judge Maria S. Lazar by roughly 20 percent. Although the race was technically nonpartisan, Taylor was backed by Democrats and enjoyed a landslide victory.
In a Georgia special election for the U.S. House of Representatives seat once held by former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Trump-endorsed Republican Clay Fuller won by 15 percent. That district is so deep red, however, that Democrat Shawn Harris' 15 percent was an improvement for his party there.
Politico's Andrew Howard stressed that April 7 was a great night for Democrats. On X, Howard posted, "New: Democrats just had one of their best election nights since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Again. On Wisconsin and Georgia."
Former GOP strategist Brandon Scholz, who left the Republican Party in 2021, told Politico, "It's a wow moment in Wisconsin politics. Republicans ought to be sitting down tonight and going, 'OK, we just screwed up another race. What are we going to do in November?'"
A current GOP strategist, interviewed by Politico on condition of anonymity, said of Lazar's 20 percent loss and the Wisconsin GOP, "Everyone involved should be doxxed, tarred and feathered and run out of Wisconsin politics. The electorate is so different now. GOP voters don't show up for spring (elections) like they used to."
CJ Warnke of the House Majority PAC — a Democratic super-PAC associated with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) — told Politico, "Election after election continues to show what we have been saying over the last year and a half. Americans are fed up with broken promises on no new wars and lower prices on Day 1 from Trump and Republicans."
In a listicle published on April 8, the New York Times' Reid J. Epstein offers three takeaways on the Tuesday-night election results: (1) "a big shift in Georgia," (2) "Democrats romp again in a Wisconsin (Supreme) Court election," and (3) "a blue wave lands in crucial Waukesha County," Wisconsin."
Wisconsin is among the swing states that Trump lost in 2020 but won in 2016 and 2024. And Epstein emphasizes that April 7 was a very bad night for Republicans in that key swing state.
"Judge Taylor's 20-point triumph reshaped Wisconsin's election night map," Epstein explains. "All across the state, counties that had voted for Mr. Trump by wide margins turned blue on Tuesday. Perhaps most worrisome for Republicans was the erosion of their votes in Waukesha County, for generations the party's largest source of votes and a place where, as recently as 2012, Mitt Romney won 67 percent of the vote…. Democrats have been organizing in the county for years, hoping to flip some key seats in the (Wisconsin) State Legislature there this fall in their effort to win control of the State Assembly and Senate for the first time since 2010. And in the mayoral race in the City of Waukesha, Alicia Halvensleben, a Democrat on the city's Common Council, defeated State Representative Scott Allen, a Republican, giving Democrats a triumph in the longtime GOP stronghold."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet
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