State and national Dem Party leaders today touted their infrastructure heading into the fall election, boasting they’ve opened 200 offices across battleground states while describing the GOP and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump as in “chaos.”
State Dem Chair Ben Wikler accused Republicans of “negligence” toward Wisconsin, telling reporters ahead of the state convention opening that the GOP was trying to parachute in the last couple of months to win over state voters.
By comparison, he said there are 47 state party offices in 43 counties with 100 coordinated campaign workers and another 15 state party staffers organizing in the state. He said the state party for the first time in 20 years put the headquarters of its coordinated campaign in Milwaukee to underscore Dems’ commitment to the voters in the most diverse city in the state.
He mocked the RNC for closing a Hispanic outreach office in Milwaukee. It’s now an ice cream shop.
“Wisconsin Republicans showing up for national convention and then maybe bothering to hire some staffers at the last second is just not going to cut it,” he said.
DNC Chair Jaime Harrison added the national party has 200 coordinated campaign offices in battleground states, including the 47 in Wisconsin.
And Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker mocked the GOP as the “felonious Trump Party” that is “hellbent on attacking American values.” Pritzker said the choice between President Joe Biden and Trump was stark and insisted that polls were starting to move in swing states as voters realize the work Biden has done.
Polls of Wisconsin voters have regularly shown Biden and Trump neck-and-neck.
“Our president has done so much the last four years, it’s almost hard to remind people of all the great things,” Pritzker said.
Milwaukee County GOP Chair Hilario Deleon shrugged off the Dem boasts about an infrastructure advantage, saying while the other side has better resources, it doesn’t have “the passion for their candidate.”
Deleon and other GOP activists stood across the street from the convention hall with banners that included a fake check from Pritzker, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Dem megadonor George Soros with a memo line that read “Turn Wisconsin into Liberal Illinois.”
All three have been significant donors to the state Dem Party, including nearly $4.3 million from Pritzker since 2020. They also held a banner with a fake $100 bill featuring Jeffrey Epstein’s picture. Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, gave the Dem Party $2 million in January alone. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Hoffman visited Epstein’s private island on at least one occasion in 2014. Hoffman told the paper it “gnaws at” him that his association with Epstein “helped his reputation, and thus delayed justice for his survivors.”
Deleon said while the Hispanic outreach center closed, he never stopped reaching out to communities in Milwaukee that haven’t typically been targeted by Republicans.
“We don’t want them to Illinois Wisconsin,” he said.
