In Wisconsin Senate race, ‘career politician’ Leah Vukmir seeks a promotion

Awaiting our transportation in the wind-whipped lot outside Miller Park, a shuttle bus that had seen better days braked slowly and opened its doors. “Leah!” the driver called. He turned out to be the owner of a local bar whom she had known for years.

When we walked into Saz’s, a Milwaukee fixture, packed for opening day, Vukmir, a state senator, found friends fast. Within a minute, she was perched at the edge of an old wooden table, beer in hand, catching up with her “over-the-fence” neighbor of thirty years. Saz himself joined the conversation before long, insisting we enjoy an order of his mozzarella marinara sticks, the secret recipe of which Vukmir would later reveal with pride as we headed out of the city in her Toyota Camry. (Saz wraps the cheese in an egg roll of sorts.)

For Vukmir, Easter Monday started with a 9:00 a.m. roundtable with school choice stakeholders, the stop at Saz’s where we caught a shuttle bus to Miller Park, a chilly campaign tailgate, the full Brewers’ home opener, then time spent greeting volunteers and making phone calls at a local Republican Party headquarters. Even by Wisconsin standards, the day was cold, a reminder that her Aug. 14 primary against Kevin Nicholson is still a long ways away.

Nicholson (she calls him “Kevin” like they’re neighbors competing for a slot on the parish council) is a Marine veteran who served two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, earned masters degrees from Harvard and Dartmouth, and then went to work as a business consultant, also located out of southeastern Wisconsin, albeit further west of Milwaukee, where the suburbs melt into small towns and farmland. Though he once served as president of the College Democrats of America, Nicholson converted to conservatism in the decade after he graduated, and speaks compellingly about witnessing firsthand the Democratic Party’s deficiencies. In a telling Trump-era maneuver, he likes to juxtapose his “outsider” status with Vukmir’s long work in Madison. Citing her political career, Nicholson’s campaign throws the label “establishment” at Vukmir, who has spent years in state government.

Vukmir finds this charge “frustrating,” insisting that in politics and in lawmaking, “experience does matter.” At one October town hall in Manitowoc, Vukmir said of Nicholson, “Maybe he could run for state Assembly, state Senate, and develop that. Ronald Reagan spent 20 years in the conservative movement before he ran for governor.”

This line earned Vukmir some blowback. “Only a career politician,” Nicholson’s spokesman retorted, “would dream of saying that a Marine veteran and businessman needs more qualifications before running for the U.S. Senate.”

The label fits. Vukmir has spent the past 16 years of her career as an elected official. In this era of barn-burning, anti-establishment populism, “career politician” can sound like a slur to much of the Republican base. Though on this frigid Opening Day in and around Milwaukee, every familiar face, every cold handshake, every bratwurst, every endorsing friend, and every fried mozzarella stick demonstrated what it looks like to be a career politician outside Washington.

A mom-with-a-cause

Vukmir doesn’t see her years in Republican politics as entrenching her in some establishment cabal. Instead, she says, it’s given her the ability “to look at a policy issue and know the right and wrong way of trying to get it through.”

“Experience isn’t a bad thing in my perspective,” Vukmir said, “especially if you have a track record of staying true to your beliefs.”

Besides, Vukmir maintains, the GOP “establishment” in Wisconsin works hand in glove with the grassroots.

During a roundtable held at St. Marcus Lutheran School in Milwaukee, Vukmir reflected on her decades-long “odyssey” from concerned parent to state assemblywoman to state senator, to candidate for U.S. Senate. “I was concerned about how they were teaching reading in my daughter’s classroom, and that was when I started questioning the role of government in my life,” she recalled, speaking to a handful of state-based advocates for school choice programs, seated around a circle of tiny desks in a classroom with unlit twinkle lights hanging from the ceiling.

Her toil as a “mom-with-a-cause” eventually opened up a path for Vukmir to run for Governor Scott Walker’s old seat in the state Assembly. That job led to her for a seat in the state Senate, where she’s fought for Walker’s agenda since the historic protests against Act 10 back in 2011.

“Wistfully, it’s hard for me to leave this role having done so much of this here in Wisconsin,” Vukmir told the roundtable participants, almost all of whom she had greeted with a hug. (She knows everyone, and she hugs everyone.)

As we left St. Marcus for Saz’s — making a Monday morning trip from church to bar that would feel jarring anywhere other than Milwaukee — Vukmir talked shop in the backseat of her Camry. She’s a staunch advocate of federalism, a passion that drew her to the American Legislative Exchange Council, where she now serves on the board of directors. As Vukmir detailed her work over the course of four terms in the state Assembly and two in the Senate, she effortlessly exhibited an expert knowledge with the nuances of lawmaking in the statehouse.

Her mastery of Madison, Vukmir’s argument goes, will pay off in Washington. Her detractors would argue it will pay off, but more for the establishment than Wisconsin voters.

Backslapping and Brats

When we got to Saz’s, Vukmir made quick work of the crowd, zigging and zagging to a back bar where a group of familiar men, including her “over-the-fence” neighbor and Saz, were nursing Miller Lites. When one man joked with Vukmir about graduating from Marquette University later than her, Vukmir caught him by asking what year in school he was when the Golden Eagles (then the “Golden Warriors”) won the NCAA championship. It was 1977 — and they were the same age.

Before we left to grab the shuttle bus, one of the men proposed a toast. “To the Brewers and Leah,” he declared. “In no particular order!”

This natural propensity for backslapping and barb-trading with the guys has probably been helpful to Vukmir in Madison, where she proudly says she has friends on both sides of the aisle. Importantly, as a woman who can hang with the boys, she contends she’s ideally positioned to run against the incumbent, Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin.

As we stepped off the bus, Vukmir started explaining to me how she “neutralizes” Baldwin’s talk about being a woman (“Republican women rarely play the victim card — we don’t have to, we’re confident, we’re sure of ourselves”), but was interrupted by a stadium security staffer pointing us in the direction of Governor Scott Walker, who was tailgating nearby.

The friendship between Walker and Vukmir is real and instantly evident. In the stadium parking lot, the two talked like old pals. His wife, Tonette, has endorsed Vukmir’s candidacy, and the Walkers’ son, Alex, is her deputy political director. The governor has pledged to remain neutral in the GOP primary. “It’s kinda neat,” Walker told me, “because I go around the state myself and I hear people say, ‘I love working with Alex, Alex is on top of this or that.’” As we shook hands, the governor joked, “I would take off my gloves, but it’s cold, and I have a brat in my hand.” Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” blared from tinny speakers in the background, even louder than the wind.

Nurse Leah

Vukmir is still a “mom-with-a-cause.” As she passed a bag of Gardetto’s (a Wisconsin-born snack mix) up and down the aisle, conversation meandered from the stresses of wedding planning to her affinity for electronic dance music to, of course, her cause of the moment, defeating Baldwin in November.

When a lively (and buzzed) pair of friends sitting behind us found out Vukmir was running to go up against Baldwin, one of them scoffed, “I know who I’m voting for!” It wasn’t Baldwin, and both men left after the Brewers’ defeat wearing “I Heart Leah” stickers on their chests.

Baldwin’s favorability rating, according to a March poll, is underwater with voters and moving in the wrong direction. Vukmir told me her sense of widespread dissatisfaction with the incumbent, cemented during a period last year in which she traveled the state to gauge her chances, nudged her into the race.

Though the demands of campaign life have meant mostly giving up her nursing job for now, Vukmir still considers herself a “citizen legislator.” Earlier in the day, at St. Marcus, Vukmir touted her career in healthcare, arguing the work of a nurse parallels the work of a politician. Or at least the work of a good politician. “Nurses,” said Vukmir, “first and foremost always listen.”

At one point in the day, she slipped up, accidentally referring to the constituents of Wisconsin’s 5th Senate District as “her patients.” But the mistake went unnoticed.

Somewhere around the second inning, we got back to talking about women in politics. Vukmir is an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, but doesn’t want to dwell on gender too much. “I don’t normally get into the whole ‘what’s it like to be a woman legislator versus a male legislator’ … do they ever ask the guys that question?”

If she’s able to defeat Nicholson, Vukmir says she would “relish” the opportunity to go up against Baldwin. “She’s clearly out of touch with Wisconsin” and “doesn’t represent our values,” Vukmir told me, contending that “the state is definitely becoming more red.”

When it comes to Republican primary voters, Vukmir says she hears most about immigration, healthcare, and pro-life issues — but one topic comes up more than the others. “Building the wall is, hands down, first and foremost on people’s minds,” according to Vukmir. “These are all Trump voters,” she said. “What did Trump campaign on? Building the wall.”

“They look at it from a perspective of security, they look at it from a perspective of also controlling drugs, and so they want to know where I stand, do I support the president,” she explained, answering, “Absolutely.”

“I’m the daughter of Greek immigrants,” Vukmir emphasizes. “I lived the American dream, and my father was so proud to be an American. I watched my aunts and uncles as they came to this country, and helped them study for their naturalization and citizenship tests. My cousins, I helped them learn English.”

“They came here the legal way, they went through a process, and we’re a nation of laws, and we have to respect those laws; otherwise, what’s the point of having laws?” she asked. “Why even bother going to Washington if laws don’t mean anything?”

Waukesha County GOP

By 6 p.m., Vukmir had settled into the headquarters of the Republican Party of Waukesha County, rallying a modest get-out-the-vote effort on the eve of that fateful state Supreme Court race on April 3 that went so wrong for the GOP. If it seemed like she knew a lot of people at Saz’s and Miller Park (and it really did), Vukmir appeared to know most of the small crowd gathered in Waukesha, hoping to boost Judge Michael Screnock’s odds of winning an open seat on the high court. When the governor’s mother, Pat Walker, showed up with a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies — legendary among Wisconsin’s grassroots activists — Vukmir greeted her with a hug as warm as her baked goods (which, by the way, were fresh).

As the smattering of high school students and concerned locals gathered to hear from Vukmir, she admitted that a text message received earlier in the day from a friend wondering who to cast their ballot for left her “a little nervous” about what voters would decide on Tuesday.

“This is an important night,” she said.

Standing in front of the two dozen volunteers, Vukmir was in her element. “I see a lot of familiar faces in this room, people who have worked campaigns,” she smiled. “It’s great to have Mrs. Walker here; thank you for bringing your cookies. Valerie is around the corner — she’s still on the phone — she’s our hardcore volunteer on the phones, you young people can learn a lot from watching her.”

For a state controlled by Republicans at every level of government, Vukmir recognized the stakes were unusually high that night.

“The 10th Senate district was a wakeup call,” she said, referring to a special election Republicans lost in January, “and the Left is hoping that they’re going to take back, ride that momentum. We can’t let that happen. We need to get people out and about,” she warned.

“It seems hard to believe that you’re going to make phone calls the night before an election, and it’s going to make a difference,” said Vukmir, “but it does.” (It wasn’t enough. The next day, Michael Screnock, the conservative candidate, lost by a stunning 11-point margin.)

Vukmir speaks fondly, almost tenderly, about her work at the state level. Chatting about the race back at Miller Park, she was sure to acknowledge the reality of almost any election, let alone one where various power brokers have pitted themselves on either side of a competitive primary. “I really have enjoyed it,” she said. “There’s no guarantee, so I’m making the most of it and trying to have fun.”

Nestled comfortably into the Waukesha County GOP headquarters, asking Valerie about her double-phone method of calling voters, salivating over Mrs. Walker’s familiar chocolate chip cookies, Vukmir’s easy passion for local politics sent me flipping through my notebook to find a quote I asterisked earlier in the day.

“Wistfully,” she had said at the school choice roundtable, when hopes for a Brewers win were still alive, “it’s hard for me to leave this role having done so much of this here in Wisconsin.”

Almost two decades worth of cookies and roundtables and campaign tailgates comes with almost two decades of votes on legislation and meetings with interest groups and brokered deals with other lawmakers. In that sense, Vukmir is both experienced and established.

Her penchant for small-time politics, for knowing every name, for knowing who has the best cookies and who calls voters on two phones at once, makes her the quintessential local politician. But Nicholson’s campaign looks more like a statewide campaign of national importance: He’s raised twice as much as her, and spent four times as much. He’s been endorsed by heavyweights like National Security Adviser John Bolton and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. The Marine veteran raised more than $1 million in the first quarter of 2018. Vukmir raised “nearly” $600,000.

A career in politics teaches you many things, Vukmir will point out. Now, she’s hoping that in earning that all experience — in establishing herself, so to speak — she’s also earned a promotion.