Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D-WI) will face off in their second and final Wisconsin Senate debate, where the candidates will likely spar over crime, abortion, and Jan. 6.
With the election less than a month away, Johnson has pulled ahead in the most recent polls but struggled for months against his challenger. The Thursday debate will begin at 7 p.m. EST and last one hour.
There has not yet been a survey clearly indicating whether the candidates’ first debate last Friday moved the needle in polling.
MIDTERMS 2022: LIVE UPDATES FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL AHEAD OF CRUCIAL ELECTION
Barnes has struggled to shake a “defund the police” label Republicans are eager to associate him with.
Barnes and Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI), who is also locked in a tight race to keep his seat, have faced Republican attacks for their response to the riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man, by police in August 2020. The riots left businesses burned and looted and two people dead.
The Johnson campaign has also slammed Barnes over a December 2021 incident in which a man with a criminal past who was released because of bail reform drove a car into a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing six.
In turn, Barnes has targeted Johnson over texts with one of former President Donald Trump’s lawyers who was involved in the plot to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. The Barnes campaign launched a multimillion-dollar ad blitz Thursday that accuses Johnson of “subverting democracy.”
The debate will occur hours after the final Jan. 6 hearing on the Capitol riot Thursday afternoon, and some Democrats have pushed for the midterm elections to be a referendum on the attack. Although Johnson says he condemned the Capitol riot, he recently said it was “not what an armed insurrection would look like.”
Johnson’s positions on abortion and Social Security have also been targeted.
Barnes’s campaign announced that it raised over $20 million during the third quarter of 2022. The campaign said it was a sign of “grassroots support” across the state.
Johnson’s campaign has not yet released its numbers but said in a statement: “All the out-of-state liberal money in the world can’t change the fact Mandela Barnes supports the Defund the Police and Abolish ICE movements, wants to cut the prison population in half, and backs the same Biden economic policies that have led to 40-year high inflation and record gas prices.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
A poll released Wednesday from Marquette University Law found that Johnson is ahead of Barnes by 6 percentage points. In August, Johnson was behind by 6 points. Republicans need a net gain of one seat to gain a majority in the Senate next year.
