The Other McCain

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UPDATE: Liberal Wins in Wisconsin After GOP Wins Two Florida Special Elections

Posted on | April 1, 2025 | 15 Comments

Susan Crawford (left), Brad Schimel (right)

UPDATE 9:55 p.m. ET: It’s over in Wisconsin.

So basically we burned tens of millions of dollars for nothing.

*** PREVIOUSLY ***

Something like $100 million has been spent on the Wisconsin Supreme Court special election between liberal Susan Crawford and conservative Brad Schimel, making it the most expensive judicial election in American history. Officially, this is a “non-partisan” election, but we know who is who. We await results there, while in Florida, Democrats dumped millions of dollars into two long-shot candidates trying to score upsets in deep-red districts and failed in both:

The Republican candidates have prevailed in a pair of special congressional elections in Florida Tuesday, NBC News projects, giving Republicans some more breathing room as they navigate a narrow House majority.
NBC News projects that Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis has won the race in the 1st District to replace former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, while Republican state Sen. Randy Fine won the 6th District race to replace former GOP Rep. Michael Waltz, who is now Trump’s national security adviser.
Fine was leading Democrat Josh Weil 54%-46% when the NBC News Decision Desk called the race with 73% of the expected vote in. In three counties where nearly all of the expected vote is in, Fine was faring around 10 points worse than former GOP Rep. Michael Waltz in November, who resigned from the seat to serve as Trump’s national security adviser.
Patronis defeated Democrat Gay Valimont, a former activist with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America who lost to Gaetz in November.
The 6th District race was giving some Republicans heartburn, with Weil vastly outraising Fine and Fine slow to launch TV ads. President Donald Trump carried the district, which includes Daytona Beach, by 30 points in November, but outside Republican groups hit the airwaves in the final days as the race appeared to be competitive. . . .
Valimont significantly outraised Patronis, which he acknowledged created “a lot of anxiety” in his race.
But the fundraising gap was even wider in the slightly-less-Republican 6th District, which drove Republican concerns about Fine’s prospects.
Weil, a public school teacher who had raised more than $10 million as of March 31 according to recent fundraising reports, had leveraged his strong fundraising to launch attacks against Fine on potential GOP-led cuts to entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicaid, in a district where nearly 30% of the population is over the age of 65.

There was never any realistic prospect that Democrats could win either of these seats, but they hyped up their base and unloaded vast sums of campaign cash given by liberal donors who, as always, have more money than sense. So they’ve gotten their hearts broken again, and now we wait for results from Wisconsin, which should be very close.

UPDATE 9:15 p.m. ET: Polls just closed in Wisconsin and we should start getting results soon there. Meanwhile, I checked the Florida results and, in the 6th District, with 99% of the vote counted, Randy Fine won by 14 points, 56.7% to Josh Weil’s 42.7%. In the 1st District, with 98% of the vote counted, Jimmy Patronis won by a margin of nearly 15 points, 57% to 42.2.% for Gay Vallimont. So, after all that media hype — the backlash against Trump! — it was a walkover in both districts.

Meanwhile, Smitty asks the obvious question:

UPDATE 9:30 p.m. ET: With 15% of the vote counted in Wisconsin, liberal Susan Crawford leads by about 35,000 votes, with 54.8% to Brad Schimel’s 45.2%.

UPDATE 9:50 p.m. ET: The vote-counting is actually going pretty rapidly in Wisconsin, and it’s not looking good for our guy Brad Schimel. With 38% of the vote counted, Crawford leads by a margin of about 140,000 votes, with 57.8% to Schimel’s 42.2%.



 

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Category: Election, Florida, Wisconsin

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