OSHKOSH, Wisconsin — It’s just after 7:30 p.m. on a breezeless, sweltering August evening along Lake Winnebago. Sen. Ron Johnson has just returned home from Madison after spending the day at Epic listening to the healthcare software company express concerns about a Health and Human Services process that could impact their business.
Johnson points to the swarming dangers of sitting outside at dusk for the interview. “The mosquitoes,” he warns.
So, we settle in on the sunporch instead, which has a colorful toy box full of original Fisher Price Little People sets piled on top of each other, including the classic farm and school house, treasures he and his wife held onto from their own children’s lives in anticipation of grandchildren.
“The grandchildren live just up the road,” he says with a broad smile.
For the next 84 minutes and 3 seconds, the unlikely politician, turned unlikely state party leader, discusses with the Washington Examiner everything from his relationship with President Trump (it’s very good), the big upset this past spring in the state Supreme Court race (the conservative won), trade, the critical importance of immigration reform, and the state of conservatism in the state where the modern populist conservative movement got its start in 2009.
On trade, one of the issues where he and the president part ways, he has found something he didn’t anticipate after doing scores of roundtables with farmers and manufacturers in his home state: endurance.
“I’ve been really surprised at how patient people have been. People who are really getting harmed by retaliation, loss of markets, losing money, delaying capital expenditures. All those type of things. But almost invariably, at the very tail end, they go, ‘But, I really do support what the president is trying to do,’” Johnson explains.
“People realize we got a real problem with China. Our trading partners have taken advantage of our generosity, and collectively we’re saying, ‘We’ve had enough of it.’ It’s unfortunate it’s a lot of pain. There is no winning a trade war. Nobody wins. Others lose more than some.”
As Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs chair, Johnson is fully engaged on immigration. “I’ve lost track. We’re probably getting closer to 40 different hearings, round tables, in the four and a half years I’ve been doing this,” he said of the chairmanship he took over right after the 2014 surge at the border.
That year, President Barack Obama called the surge a humanitarian crisis.
Johnson has been to the holding stations, facilities that were never built to accommodate the kind of flow of people the country has seen over the past year. The conditions are crowded, diseases such as chickenpox, scabies, and flu are present, and the smell isn’t pleasant.
“You would not want to sleep there. You wouldn’t want to spend more than 15 minutes there,” he says.
Conversely, he says we need solutions, not to make agencies like Border Patrol or ICE the enemy. “Anybody that wants to complain about this, I’ll just ask you a simple question: ‘How would you handle 4,652 people a day with the same basic resources you had when Jeh Johnson said more than a thousand a day was a really bad day?'” he said of the Obama Homeland Security chief’s assessment.
In June, Johnson and eight other senators, a total of six Republican and three Democrats, sent a letter to the president pushing for a new program called “Operation Safe Return.”
Johnson said that under the program, within three days of entry, Border Patrol agents would conduct a detailed and fair interview with migrant families.
Those families who do not express fear of persecution in their home countries would be placed in expedited removal proceedings. Those who do express fear and pass the interview process are allowed to continue to seek asylum.
“I appreciated the three Democrats because now on a bipartisan basis, we’re signaling the human traffickers that we’ve begun the process to stop you from exploiting our system,” he said of Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and Doug Jones of Alabama.
Johnson said after all of the attention paid to the holding centers, you don’t hear Democrats saying the border crossing is a manufactured crisis anymore.
“I look at Operation Safe Return as just a baby first step of the solution. You gather information, you define the problem, you do a root cause analysis, then you establish an achievable goal. And to me, the achievable goal is to reduce that flow,” he said. “Part of the problem we have in Washington, D.C., is we lack a problem-solving skill set,” he said.
On Trump, he is blunt.
“I personally like the guy. I tell people, he’s engaging. He’s gracious. He’s very funny. That’s what liberals do not get at all. Those rallies are a policy-related comedy act. He’s a very smart man. He’s a very smart man,” he says.
In 2016 Trump, Wisconsin shocked the national press and Hillary Clinton’s campaign by giving their electoral votes to a Republican for the first time in a generation. Johnson argues Trump can win again.
“Wisconsin is absolutely in play. I think his greatest risk is the follow-up on the trade war. I was just in the White House yesterday making that point to his economic team. I’ve been critical. It’s my responsibility,” he said of policy concerns.
On campaign structural concerns, Johnson, always the businessman, has an idea with a plan and a chart.
“I’m trying to convince the Trump campaign to help us create this grassroots juggernaut, structure this thing so we have full-time field offices, with full-time professionals. Their job is basically to help, not dictate to, not come in there arrogantly, but to help support the county chairs and the grassroots,” he explains.
“And the other key goal should be to run Republican on every line on the ballot. Out of 38 Democrat assembly seats, 30 ran unopposed. Well that’s about 40,000 to 50,000 votes. Even if you only get 20%, that’s 8000 votes times 30. You just leave that on the field,” he said.
“I keep calling it trickle-up elections,” he says.
It didn’t take too much reflection on his part, he says, to realize last November he was the last GOP man standing statewide after Scott Walker lost his bid for a third term as governor.
“You realize you got a responsibility. First phone call I think I made was to every county chair, then to Reince [Priebus]. Started talking about what he did after 2012, and he was more than happy to engage. Some reassessment. We started doing that right away,” he said.
Priebus is the former Republican National Committee chairman and Trump White House chief of staff.
Johnson didn’t have much time. The state Supreme Court race was just a few months away, and the national press was about to descend and declare the conservative movement dead in the Badger State.
“We had to energize the grassroots, in particularly on the state supreme court race, everybody had completely written [Brian] Hagedorn off. He had no money and was under attack.”
Hagedorn prevailed on sheer grassroots fuel. He, his family, and Johnson were everywhere asking voters politely for their vote.
“All the viscious attacks, juxtaposed against this really good person with a beautiful family, and a beautiful story, and that pissed people off. This is why Trump won to a great extent. Because conservatives know the press doesn’t treat us fairly, and it energizes us,” he said.
For now, his big push when he returns to Washington after the recess is twofold. “My push when I get back is going to be on the Prevent Government Shutdown Act and the implementation of Operation Safe Return. Those are my two primary initiatives right now.”
