Wisconsin Governor's Race Now Wide Open; Evers Exit Leaves Field Of Candidates Voters Never Heard Of

WAUKESHA — Wisconsin's race for governor is, for the first time in eight years, missing the one thing that has made it predictable: an incumbent. Gov. Tony Evers announced earlier this month he will not seek a third term, and Tuesday's partisan primary narrowed a crowded field down to two general-election nominees whose names, as of Wednesday morning, a meaningful share of Waukesha County voters still could not reliably produce.

The Waukesha County Clerk's office reported turnout of 24 percent for Tuesday's primary, in line with recent midterm-adjacent cycles, but county Republican and Democratic party volunteers both described an unusual number of voters who arrived undecided in the governor's race and left, by their own account, only slightly less undecided.

An Open Race, Somewhat Literally

Evers, first elected in 2018, had been expected by most local political observers to seek a third term before his announcement two weeks ago that he would not. The decision set off what County Republican Party volunteer coordinator Lisa Ferch, 44, called "the first governor's race in my adult life where I had to actually study a flyer." Ferch said her precinct handed out 210 candidate comparison sheets on primary day, more than triple the 60 it printed for the 2022 cycle, when Evers ran essentially unopposed within his own party.

The Democratic primary field numbered five candidates by filing deadline; the Republican field numbered four. Both parties' primaries were decided by margins under six points, results county election observers described as "genuinely could have gone either way," a phrase Waukesha election clerk David Voss said he could not recall using in a governor's race in his 19 years with the office.

"I know we picked somebody. I was there. I filled in the oval myself, with my own hand, and I still had to look it up on my phone in the parking lot to remember who I'd voted for."

— Councilman Gary Puchalski

Councilman Gary Puchalski, who cast his ballot at Saratoga Elementary Tuesday morning, said he supported the outcome of the primary in principle while acknowledging he was "bewildered, genuinely," about which candidate had actually advanced to November on either side. Puchalski said he had watched election results Tuesday night for 40 minutes before conceding to his wife that he was tracking the wrong race entirely, having confused the gubernatorial tally with a county supervisor contest on the same ballot.

Nine Candidates, Zero Household Names

Political scientists reached by phone described the open field as the most genuinely unpredictable Wisconsin governor's race in over a decade, since neither eventual nominee previously held statewide office. Local reaction was less analytical. At the Waukesha Piggly Wiggly on Sunset Drive, a Wednesday-morning survey of 15 shoppers conducted informally by this reporter found six who could name the winning Republican nominee, four who could name the winning Democratic nominee, and three who, when asked who was running for governor, answered "Evers" before being reminded that he was the one not running.

Bob Krueger, 72, retired city Department of Public Works supervisor and occasional opinion contributor to this paper, said he did not consider the confusion unusual for an open seat. "People know who the governor is because he's the governor," Krueger said. "Nobody knows who somebody running for governor is, because that's the whole job of the campaign, and the campaign hasn't started yet as far as most people in Waukesha are concerned. Give it to October."

The county Democratic Party's Waukesha field office said it had fielded 31 calls since Wednesday from registered voters asking for a written recap of "what exactly happened" in the primary, a volume the office's part-time coordinator, Renata Diaz, 29, called "not unheard of, but definitely more than after 2022, when there was nothing to explain."

What Happens Between Now And November

Both parties' county chapters said they plan voter-education mailers ahead of the general election specifically introducing the nominees, a step neither office said it had needed to take in a governor's race with an incumbent on the ballot. Ferch said the Republican mailer would include headshots "clearly labeled, first and last name, no nicknames," after primary-night feedback that one volunteer had, without irony, referred to the party's own nominee only as "the guy from the debate."

Puchalski said he intended to have both nominees' names memorized well before November, though he noted the same commitment ahead of the 2022 sheriff's race and acknowledged it had not, in that instance, entirely held. Voss's office said absentee ballot requests for the November general were already running slightly ahead of the same point in the last open governor's race, in 2010, which it took as an early sign that voters, whatever they currently knew about the candidates, intended to show up and find out.