Anyone who thinks bringing up Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s sexuality will help a Republican defeat her in 2018 is sorely mistaken, said Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis.
Pocan, who replaced Baldwin when she vacated her Madison-based House seat to successfully run for the Senate in 2012, said the Dairy State doesn’t care that Baldwin was the first openly lesbian House member and now senator.
“If they think that’s a path to victory, they’re going to lose,” said Pocan, who is also gay. “For their base it helps … but I don’t think that’s a winning general election strategy,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Groups purportedly trying to recruit Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke to take Baldwin on have sent email solicitations calling her a “leftist lesbian” and “pervert.”
Restore American Freedom and Liberty, a conservative political action committee, claims Baldwin wants to “require children starting at age 5 to learn about gay sex! She is disgusting, and it is vital that Sheriff David Clarke defeats her!”
In a campaign email, Baldwin said the “anti-LGBT Super PAC was calling me names to incite the far-right fringes of the Republican Party.”
Pocan said if they succeed in enticing Clarke into the race he “would be the Christmas gift they’ve always asked for to run because he’s a train wreck.”
Reminding people that Baldwin is a lesbian is pointless, Pocan said. “I think everyone kinda knows that back home … 15-20 years ago in Wisconsin it might have been more of a factor, but it’s not.”
The Wisconsin Democratic Party is calling on Clarke to distance himself from Restore American Freedom and Liberty and similar groups.
“Once again, an out-of-state special interest group is spewing attacks in Wisconsin’s Senate race,” party spokeswoman Gillian Drummond told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “We demand that Sheriff Clarke and other potential Republican candidates denounce the false, divisive attacks on Tammy.”
Pocan warned mainstream Republicans against making any subtle or veiled references to her sexuality in their criticism of the first-term senator.
“I think they’re trying to say it,” he said, referring to news releases that reference “Wisconsin values” and the like, “but it’s not going to have any landing punches,” he said. “If anything it’s more for their base. But I don’t think you run against Tammy going after who she is because … she’s a really thoughtful, compassionate, articulate, effective person, and those messages are not going to supersede what she’s been doing in the state.”
Wisconsin Republicans note that they regularly accused former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of being out of sync with “Wisconsin values,” and too liberal.
In taking a pass on challenging Baldwin in 2018, GOP Rep. Sean Duffy made similar comments, but Wisconsin Republicans dismiss the notion he meant anything more by it, noting that such rhetoric is commonly used against all Wisconsin Democrats who hail from Madison and Milwaukee.
“Baldwin will be beat,” Duffy said, “because her radically liberal Madison record and ideas are out of synch with Wisconsin.”
