Why Is Ron Johnson Still Competitive Despite, You Know, Everything?

Of all the political quandaries and questions of the 2022 midterms, one burns especially bright: How is it that Senator Ron Johnson, the two-term Republican from Wisconsin, remains a remotely viable candidate for re-election?

The Trump era has given us so many … let’s say, colorful … characters. But Mr. Johnson may be the senator who most fully embodies the detached-from-reality elements of MAGA-world — the guy most likely to spend his spare time fashioning tinfoil hats while cruising QAnon message boards. His irrational and irresponsible conspiracy mongering about matters such as the Covid vaccine, the integrity of the 2020 election and who was really behind the Jan. 6 riots (“agents provocateurs”? antifa? The FBI? Nancy Pelosi?) unsettled even some of his Republican colleagues.

Mr. Johnson has gotten so out there that his brand is suffering with the voters back home. His favorability numbers have been largely underwater for the past couple of years. A June survey from the Marquette Law School Poll showed 46 percent of Wisconsin voters with an “unfavorable” view of him versus 37 percent with a “favorable” one. (Sixteen percent responded either “Don’t know” or “Haven’t heard enough.”) He is considered perhaps the most vulnerable Republican incumbent on the midterm ballot, a tempting target for Democrats scrambling to keep control of the Senate.

But Mr. Johnson is not easy pickings, and the reasons are revealing about today’s political climate — especially, how voters in a battleground state with serious economic issues and other concerns (like a pre-Civil War abortion ban still on the books) may yet again wind up hitched to a guy who spends an awful lot of time on embarrassing distractions.

For all of Mr. Johnson’s weird behavior, the June poll from Marquette showed him neck and neck with various Democratic candidates, including Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is expected to win his party’s nomination in Tuesday’s Senate primary.

The national political winds favor Republican candidates, and Wisconsin’s closely divided electorate has moved slightly toward the G.O.P. over the past several years, driven by a rightward shift in white, noncollege-educated men. More specifically, while Mr. Johnson isn’t known for his political savvy, he has a proven ability to claw his way back to victory after being left for dead by his party.

Winning Wisconsin is crucial in this cycle’s cage match over which party will control the Senate. That reality is enough for many in the Republican Party to hold their noses and vote for him, despite his loonier ravings.

At the same time, plenty of Wisconsin Republicans share at least some of his MAGA beliefs. In the Marquette poll from June, 65 percent of the state’s Republican voters said they were either “not too confident” or “not at all confident” in the 2020 results. For those who buy the line that Democrats are election-stealers on track to destroy America, Mr. Johnson’s more antidemocratic notions — like pushing the Republican-controlled state Legislature to assume oversight of federal elections — may sound perfectly reasonable. He may go off the rails at times, but at least he is a fighter.

As for the state’s independents, moderates and Republican “leaners,” it bears noting that, come campaign time, Mr. Johnson doesn’t pitch himself as a wild-eyed extremist. If anything, he works to soften his rough edges, presenting himself as a Republican that even a moderate could love.

This happened in his 2016 race, which wound up being a rematch with former Senator Russ Feingold, whom Mr. Johnson unseated in 2010. For most of the campaign, Mr. Johnson trailed Mr. Feingold — in money and polling — and the national G.O.P. abandoned him to expected defeat. That fall, his campaign retooled and began running positive ads aimed at humanizing the senator, highlighting his work with orphans from Congo and his ties to the Joseph Project, a faith-based initiative connecting poor urban residents with manufacturing jobs. His favorability numbers began rising, along with the number of voters who said he cared about people like them.

Already in this cycle, Team Johnson has rolled out ads about the Joseph Project. And, for all of Mr. Johnson’s inherent MAGAness, his paid media has been that of a more conventional Republican, hitting Democrats on inflation and public safety. Keeping the race focused on these policy areas — while steering clear of more exotic issues — is considered his key to victory.

Of course, Ron being Ron, he cannot help but mouth off in ways that seem tailored to give a campaign manager a nervous tic. This isn’t new. In his 2010 run (the one where he suggested that climate change is caused by sunspots), his unpredictable verbal stylings were an enduring source of anxiety. His team basically put him on media lockdown for the closing two weeks of the race.

And it’s not just the daffy conspiracy stuff. Witness his podcast appearance on Tuesday, in which he said that Social Security and Medicare should be subject to regular review by Congress. At times, it can feel as if the senator gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror and asks: What can I say today that will get me tossed out of office?

Mr. Johnson’s defenders insist that these gaffes are, if not exactly part of the senator’s charm, at least in line with his image as a truth-teller — and that, in any event, the opposition is terrible at exploiting the blunders. Democrats always think they are going to sink the senator with one of his impolitic utterances, a person close to the Johnson campaign told me. But this Johnson ally points out that there have been so many statements and controversies over the years and very few of them really sink in or stick with people.

Translation: Plenty of Wisconsin voters came to terms with Mr. Johnson’s brand of crazy years ago.

Of course, there are degrees of outrageousness, and it may be that Mr. Johnson has finally crossed a line with his Covid-themed rantings, including spreading anti-vaccine misinformation and hawking unsubstantiated treatments. (Listerine anyone?) One interesting change in Marquette’s polling: In 2016, significantly more voters still said they didn’t know enough about him or didn’t have a clear opinion of him to give a “favorable” or an “unfavorable” rating. In the closing weeks of the race, his unfavorables stayed pretty steady, but he managed to move a fair number of voters from the “don’t know” column to the “favorable” column, said Charles Franklin, the poll’s director. But this time, Mr. Franklin noted, the senator’s brand is more established — and not in a good way. More people are familiar with him, “and the people getting to know him seem to be forming overwhelmingly unfavorable opinions.”

Wisconsin Democrats are desperate for a win here. For them, what matters most in Tuesday’s primary is electability — who has the best shot at ousting Mr. Johnson. It is telling that the presumptive choice turned out to be the lieutenant governor, Mr. Barnes, who is the most flamboyant progressive of the bunch. (In recent weeks, Mr. Barnes’s top competitors withdrew from the race, essentially clearing the field for him.) With him, Democrats have made a clear choice in the ongoing political debate over whether it is more productive to mobilize one’s base or to court the political middle.

Mr. Barnes is seen as a rising star: young, Black, energetic, inspirational, with a working-class background and experience as a community organizer. His campaign site notes that he was “born in Milwaukee in one of the most impoverished and incarcerated ZIP codes in the state.” This stands in stark contrast with Mr. Johnson, a rich former plastics mogul who heavily funded his first Senate run by himself.

Of the Democratic pack, the lieutenant governor is seen as having the best potential to juice turnout in blue enclaves such as Milwaukee and Madison. He is also seen as the easiest for Republicans to define as a radical leftist. He has expressed support for defunding the police and praised the lefty Squad in the House. There is a photo of him holding up an “ABOLISH ICE” T-shirt. There is video from an event in July at which he called America’s founding “awful.” Last November, during a virtual forum for Senate candidates, he observed that America is the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth “because of forced labor on stolen land.”

Once the primaries are done, the Republicans’ attack on Mr. Barnes is expected to be swift and brutal.

In strategic terms, the race may essentially boil down to the question of whether Mr. Johnson can moderate his MAGA-crazy brand more successfully than Mr. Barnes can moderate his ultra-woke one.

But the bigger, more existential question for Wisconsin voters remains: Do they want to spend another six years being repped by a conspiracy-peddling, vaccine-trashing, climate change-mocking, election-doubting, Social-Security-and-Medicare-threatening MAGA mad dog?

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