{"id":14564,"date":"2016-11-09T05:20:47","date_gmt":"2016-11-09T05:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=14564"},"modified":"2016-11-09T05:20:47","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T05:20:47","slug":"johnson-upsets-feingold-to-keep-wisconsin-senate-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/johnson-upsets-feingold-to-keep-wisconsin-senate-seat.html","title":{"rendered":"Johnson upsets Feingold to keep Wisconsin Senate seat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Johnson upsets Feingold to keep Wisconsin Senate seat<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Johnson upsets Feingold to keep Wisconsin Senate seat:-<\/strong> GOP Sen. Ron Johnson completed a stunning comeback victory over Democrat Russ Feingold on Tuesday, winning a race that Republicans had seen as a lost cause just weeks ago and dealing a serious blow to Democratic hopes of winning the Senate majority.<\/span><\/p>\n

Johnson had 52 percent to Feingold\u2019s 46 percent when the race was called by three major television networks by 11:20 Eastern time, with 66 percent of precincts reporting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Feingold, a progressive stalwart, held the seat for three terms before losing to Johnson in the Republican wave of 2010 and was considered the favorite in the rematch almost since the day he entered the race. He raised more than $21 million \u2014 more money than any other Senate candidate this cycle \u2014 and led every public poll for nearly a year, sometimes by double digits.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Johnson mounted a late comeback in the fall, after months of insisting the race was closer than it appeared. He led a public poll for the first time in October. Feingold was down to a 1-point lead in the final Marquette Law School Poll, considered the gold standard of polling in the state.<\/span><\/p>\n

Washington Republicans, who had all but given up on Johnson, poured millions in the race. The National Republican Senatorial Committee rushed to book $1 million in TV ads, weeks after cancelling $2 million in ad reservations. Millions more flooded in from Senate Leadership Fund, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Prosperity, the Club for Growth and an cluster of smaller super PACs backing Johnson.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I’m glad the cavalry is coming,” Johnson told POLITICO late last week. “I wish they had shown up over the summer.”<\/span><\/p>\n

National Democrats responded by adding millions of their own. In the end, super PACs and other outside groups spent about $20 million on TV in the last week of the race \u2014 significantly more than they had poured into Wisconsin in the entire campaign before October.<\/span><\/p>\n

Johnson’s victory makes him the first GOP senator since Bob Kasten to win a second term in Wisconsin. (Feingold beat Kasten to his win his own first term in 1992.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Johnson, 61, always faced an uphill battle in Democratic-leaning Wisconsin, which hasn’t back a Republican for president since 1984 and, before his election six years ago, hadn’t sent a GOP senator to Washington in almost as long.<\/span><\/p>\n

Johnson was one of several GOP senators who won election in swing states in the 2010 wave and were forced to defend them this cycle in the more difficult presidential year. But unlike Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Rob Portman of Ohio and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Johnson declined to take moderate stands over the past six years that he could play up on the campaign trail.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, Johnson ran the same way he had the first time: as an outsider. His ads often made it seem like Feingold was running for reelection against him instead of the other way around. In one Johnson radio ad, for instance, the narrator repeatedly attacks “Senator Feingold,” while Johnson refers to himself only as a “candidate for Senate.”<\/span><\/p>\n

But Feingold tried to turn his long rapport with the state’s voters \u2014 who polls showed were still more likely to know his name than Johnson’s \u2014 to his advantage. “I’ve visited all 72 counties, meeting people, listening to what they have to say,” Feingold said in his first TV ad as he dons a Carhartt-style jacket. “And I’m still at it. So if you hear a knock on your door, it might just be me.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Feingold and his allies also excoriated Johnson for backing the “bad trade deals” that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders \u2014 both of whom carried Wisconsin in the primary \u2014 campaigned against. And they attacked him relentlessly for refusing to disavow Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

The seeds of Johnson’s comeback may have come in August, when Johnson changed his campaign team. He started highlighting his work with the Joseph Project, a nonprofit that works to connect poor Milwaukeeans with manufacturing jobs outside the city. And his poll numbers began to move: The percentage of voters who said Johnson cared about people like them climbed from 36 percent to 45 percent in the Marquette poll.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Johnson campaign also worked to dent Feingold’s appeal by driving home the message that his years in Washington had changed him, going after him again and again for breaking the pledge that he wrote on his garage door during his first campaign in 1992, pledging to raise most of his money from Wisconsin donors. Johnson also lambasted Feingold over a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story that found a PAC that Feingold started after leaving office had spent most of its money on fundraising and payments to Feingold and his former staffers.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Johnson said he didn’t intentionally change his strategy. It was just a matter of Feingold, having the cash to “lie about me and distort my record,” Johnson said. “In the fall, we were able to put positive ads up.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2016\/11\/johnson-feingold-wisconsin-senate-race-2016-election-results-231027<\/span><\/p>\n

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