By Jeff Mayers
WisPolitics Editor
MADISON, Wis. -- The last time most national media paid much attention to the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary was 1984, when national rules forced a split decision (Gary Hart won the beauty contest, and Walter Mondale won the delegate selection caucuses).
And the last time the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary really mattered was 1976, when Jimmy Carter upset Mo Udall on his way to an improbable march from the Georgia statehouse to the White House. The lasting image is one of a beaming Carter holding up the early edition of the old Milwaukee Sentinel, Truman style. The headline read: ``Carter Upset by Udall.''
Since then, Wisconsin's mostly been a backwater when it came to presidential primaries -- Democratic and Republican. The system became front-loaded, and the races were on their last legs by the time they reached Wisconsin's April primary. Wisconsin, as a swing state, still was pivotal in the general elections. George Bush and Al Gore pandered plenty in 2000 to the Badger State. And Gore won a narrow victory, sustaining the Democratic general election winning streak dating back to 1988. Interest in the Wisconsin primary, however, has plummeted.
But sometimes, good things in politics die hard. And Wisconsin now is highlighted again on the maps of war rooms manned by the staffs and consultants of Democratic presidential hopefuls. A new state law -- authored by a Republican but signed by the first Democratic governor in 16 years -- is moving up the primary to Feb. 17, 2004, and Wisconsin currently is all by itself on that date.
Robert ``Fighting Bob'' La Follette would like the way things are turning back in Wisconsin's favor. The progressive icon who ran for president but never made it pushed hard for an open primary system to wrest control of politics from the party bosses. In 1905, according to the Milwaukee Journal, the Wisconsin Legislature passed ``the nation's first law providing for direct election of all delegates to national party conventions.''
Added Milwaukee Journal writer Patrick Reardon in 1976: ``The stalwarts were vanquished, the bosses were out for good, and the caucus system was dead. Wisconsin took the final major step in 1911, when it followed the lead of Oregon and provided an outright preference vote for president and vice president, in addition to direct election of pledged convention delegates.''
The other La Follette legacy is the open primary, which allows any registered voter to cast a ballot -- no matter which party. Wisconsin doesn't have registration by party, so crossover voting in primaries can be a factor, and is often used as the scapegoat by losing candidates. Crossover voting often is cited as a major reason for George Wallace's strong showings in Wisconsin primaries over the years.
It's also one of the reasons national reporters often have flocked to Wisconsin. The outcome isn't always predictable.
``Of all fifty states of the union,'' Theodore White writes in his classic ``The Making of the President 1960,'' ``Wisconsin is probably that state in which professional politicians most hate to tempt a primary. It was Wisconsin, as a matter of fact, that in 1903 first invented the presidential primary, which so many other states have since copied. And the political philosophy that inspired that revolutionary invention has made and left Wisconsin in political terms an unorganized state, a totally unpredictable state, a state whose primaries have over many quadrennials proved the graveyard of great men's presidential ambitions.''
Hubert H. Humphrey, the liberal favorite from the neighboring state of Minnesota, lost in 1960 to John F. Kennedy and finished third in a field of six major candidates in the 1972 primary, behind George McGovern and Wallace. Wisconsin helped quash Humphrey's presidential ambitions, and she strives to be influential again. The glory days of the Wisconsin primary could be returning.
Here are some highlights of the Wisconsin's Democratic presidential primaries over the years:
--1960: This race is political lore, thanks to White's book, the legends of Camelot and the big names involved. An upcoming biography of former Gov. Gaylord Nelson, written by veteran campaign consultant Bill Christofferson and to be published by the University of Wisconsin Press, gives a behind-the-scenes view of Nelson's precarious fence-straddling. Nelson, up for re-election in November 1960, sensed it didn't do him any good to make Dems mad by endorsing. He tried to discourage a showdown in Wisconsin and opted for neutrality, reports Christofferson, who quotes Nelson saying: ``...They're working hard for someone they really believe in (for president), and that goddamn governor, who they support, is trying to beat their candidate. That's nothing but a loser.'' Nelson's stance helped lead to hard feelings between Nelson and then state party Chair Pat Lucey (later governor), a big Kennedy backer. Nelson turned out to be right. Nelson won re-election in the fall, and the Stevenson-Humphrey wing of the party in and around liberal Madison blamed Lucey for the outcome and voted against him in later primaries for governor, Christofferson reports. Kennedy won with 56 percent of the vote in the first head-to-head with Humphrey, an important win on his way to the White House.
1964: This is the first time George Wallace's influence was felt in Wisconsin. Democratic Gov. John Reynolds ran as a favorite-son stand in for President Lyndon Johnson, but Wallace got a big chunk of the vote (in second place with more than 260,000 votes to Reynolds' 500,000-plus). This was an embarrassment to the party and to LBJ. A New York Times report from Atlanta called Wallace's surprisingly strong showing ``a decided setback for civil rights advocates'' and ``a challenge to President Johnson's popularity.'' Upon returning to Montgomery, Wallace told a cheering crowd, ``I want you to start eating Wisconsin cheese. ... The liberal politicians in both parties and Washington had their eyeteeth shaken.'' Republicans conceded a big crossover vote probably helped Wallace, but Democrats maintained the results still represented a victory over bigotry.
1968: After antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy got 40 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire presidential primary, seriously embarrassing Johnson. Then Robert Kennedy entered the race. The April 2 Wisconsin primary was next, and the outlook was bleak for the president, according to Christofferson's pending biography of Gaylord Nelson. A Democratic National Committee memo to the White House had warned in December that Wisconsin was “a state fraught with problems for the administration. We are faced with limited pro-Johnson loyalties in a land where (the) Kennedys made great friendships and where the Vice President (Humphrey)’s friends of 1960 seem to be in good numbers anti-Vietnam in 1967,” the memo warned. “It is a state where our message has not been told. The facts and our side of Vietnam have just not penetrated.” A Wisconsin poll a week before the primary indicated Johnson was likely to get less than half the vote. A national Gallup Poll showed only a 36 per cent job approval rating for Johnson and 26 per cent approval for his handling of Vietnam. Then on March 31, 1968, Johnson stunned the nation with an announcement that he would not seek re-election. It came after a speech in which he announced a halt to air raids and naval shelling of North Vietnam and invited Hanoi to negotiate a settlement. Thirty-six hours later, the polls opened in Wisconsin, with McCarthy and Richard Nixon the only active candidates on the ballot. That ended predictions of a record turnout and a huge Republican crossover vote against Johnson. Voters gave McCarthy 56.2 per cent of the vote to Johnson’s 34.6. Write-ins gave Kennedy 6.3 percent.
1972: Wisconsin's primary proved to be a turning point for many campaigns. McGovern's victory, as the New York Times' R.W. Apple reported, established the South Dakota senator ``as a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.'' Both McGovern and second-place Wallace exceeded expectations, and McGovern went on to get the nomination before getting crushed by President Nixon's re-election campaign. Ed Muskie, once the frontrunner, received a near-fatal blow with a fourth-place finish. Humphrey was denied in Wisconsin yet again and his campaign flagged. New York Mayor John Lindsay dropped out after his loss. And Sen. Henry Jackson kept slogging along for a little while. Lucey, now governor, was neutral like Nelson had been in '60.
1976: See a full reprise from Christofferson, who covered this post-Watergate primary as a reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal.
1984: The DNC sought to crack down on open primaries, so Wisconsin set up a beauty contest followed by caucuses to pick delegates. Gary Hart won the beauty contest over Walter Mondale, 46 percent to 43 percent. Jesse Jackscon followed with 10 percent. That was on an early April Tuesday. Then on Saturday, Mondale won the caucuses by a 2-to-1 margin. Hart finished second and Jackson finished third.
--WisPolitics Intern John Link provided some research for this article.
