WI Collapse Elevates Governor’s Race to Top Target
Our travels over the last few days have been reminders of how quickly fortunes can change in politics.
Just weeks after our internal polling showed Sara Rodriguez as the clear general election frontrunner, the Sara Rodriguez campaign website now simply asks whether you are the owner of the abandoned site.
You will notice a few changes to our websites. As Wisconsin takes center stage following the collapse of the former gubernatorial frontrunner, Wisconsin-focused updates like this one will continue to appear at www.wisconsinffc.com. National news from our other state teams, coordinated through our southern headquarters, is now being moved to be featured at www.freedomandfamilyaction.com.
WI Collapse
The Shocking Collapse in Wisconsin
As mentioned above, both our internal polling and public polling showed every gubernatorial candidate running within the margin of error in the general election, except Democrat Sara Rodriguez had the largest lead and by a margin that looked tough to overcome in our polling..
As Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor, Rodriguez was elected as part of the Evers-Rodriguez ticket that received 1.3 million votes in 2022 in one of the nation’s most expensive and closely contested governor’s races. On election night, it was the second-closest of the country’s 26 gubernatorial races, but Rodriguez was in the best of all spots since the nasty ads were directed at the Gubernatorial candidates so she got the benefits but not the negative hits.
Then suddenly it all changed as the Wisconsin Gubernatorial race became the prime national focus overnight. A Rodriguez planned $1 million television advertising buy reportedly never aired because invoices could not be paid after donor records were allegedly entered multiple times. If an organization could not accurately account for the roughly $200,000 it had available, it clearly could not transition into a Governor’s office capable of overseeing $55,000,000,000 in taxpayer money every year..
Executive Director Kelly Herrell, President John Pudner, and our friend, pastor and singer-songwriter Gene Schmidt will be among conservative leaders gathering between Milwaukee and Madison this weekend. The news led to a National Faith and Freedom commitment to developing and producing candidate comparison pieces like the 29,000,000 Trump vs Harris pieces distributed in Wisconsin and other battleground states that all went conservative in 2024. This will not be produced and available until after Wisconsin Democrats select their nominee in the Tuesday, August 11 primary to face Republican Tom Tiffany.
Other National News from Freedom and Family Action
Just weeks after a public poll showed John Wahl trailing by five points with one week to go in Alabama’s Lt. Governor primary—and being dramatically outspent—he celebrated a double-digit victory at his wedding alongside his campaign manager, who masterminded the win.
And 10 years after Scottie Nell Hughes challenged Ana Navarro’s confidence just 12 days before the 2016 election, when many believed Donald Trump would struggle to reach even 200 electoral votes, much less win more than 300, we appreciated Hughes interviewing John Pudner on national television.
AL Wedding
The Freedom and Family Action team in the South is focused first on the Tennessee primaries on Thursday, August 6, followed by the Florida primaries on Tuesday, August 18, before shifting attention to the general elections in Texas and Alabama.
Before that, however, it was time to celebrate one of the nation’s most remarkable rising stars who we would say has had the best month of any guy in America.
The Wedding in Alabama
Mount Zion Baptist Church became the setting for an unforgettable political victory lap as Republican Lt. Governor nominee John Wahl married his campaign manager, Brittany Montgomery, just weeks after public polling showed them trailing by five points.
To come back and win by 14 points—as featured on www.freedomandfamilyaction.com—and then celebrate that victory by marrying the campaign manager who helped engineer it made for an extraordinary gathering. We are nominating John Wahl as one of the nation’s rising political stars.
Months before we planned any involvement in the race, I asked Brittany what I should tell pastors and other social conservatives about why John would make the best lieutenant governor. Her answer was simple: “Look up what he has done to keep inappropriate materials out of libraries to protect children.”
After sharing that message for several weeks, but then seeing him 5 points behind in the final week, we decided to go beyond spreading word of mouth and put money into digital advertising and door literature as one of the first Freedom and Family Action-endorsed candidates, as reported in our previous newsletter.
National TV Interview
It was a pleasure for John Pudner to be interviewed on America First by Scottie Nell Hughes, whose spirited CNN debate with Ana Navarro in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign remains memorable to many political observers.
In that debate you can see Hughes pick Navarro apart as Navarro lashes out about Trump’s “game” being almost over 12 days before the question was if Trump could get to 200 electoral votes – much less the 300+ he received to win. Hughes consistent responses and pointing out that Navarro taking pride in simply voting for her mother for President did not offer any solution and steady delivery while being interrupted was consistent with her many appearances on CNN as a pro-Trump presenter.
You can watch Hughes’ 2016 CNN debate here:
https://www.facebook.com/cnnpolitics/videos/in-a-heated-debate-with-donald-j-trump-supporter-scottie-nell-hughes-cnn-politic/1329598090415354/
In this week’s interview, Hughes interviewed Pudner to discuss congressional term limits alongside a guest from Common Cause. During the discussion, Pudner explained why he supports congressional term limits while arguing that members of Congress should be permitted to serve up to 12 years rather than the six-year limit currently advocated by U.S. Term Limits. Hughes interview with Pudner will be posted here:
https://www.rt.com/shows/america-first/
Finally in the coming days please look for our 40th piece in NewsMax, where we explore the shocking fact that Americans now fear politics hurting their personal lives more than residents of any other country in the World. The cradle of the 1st Amendment now lives in fear about talking about politics, which we find when canvassing doors.
