Failed Senate Candidate Mandela Barnes Launches Wisconsin Gubernatorial Bid Over Objections From Fellow Democrats, State’s Oldest Black Newspaper

Failed Wisconsin Senate candidate Mandela Barnes (D.) announced a bid for governor even though he faces pushback from prominent Wisconsin Democrats and the state’s oldest black newspaper.

Barnes, the state’s former lieutenant governor, joins a crowded Democratic primary and “is not expected to clear the primary field,” as happened in his 2022 Senate primary, Politico reported Tuesday. His once-promising 2022 Senate campaign against incumbent Republican Ron Johnson left many state Democrats bitter after he underperformed Democratic governor Tony Evers.

In October, the Democratic-leaning editorial board of the state’s longest-running black newspaper blasted Barnes for considering a gubernatorial run. “That Senate seat was ours to win,” the editors of the Milwaukee Courier wrote. Barnes “had the national support. He had the resources. He had the attention. And still—he came up short.”

Other prominent Wisconsin Democrats are expressing disapproval of Barnes’s bid, according to the New York Times. “He proved to us beyond a shadow of a doubt that he can’t run hard enough and give us a winning campaign on a statewide basis,” Barbara Lawton, another former lieutenant governor, told the Times.

Even Barnes allies have noticed the backlash, with progressive Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer telling the Times he was “genuinely surprised” that only 21 percent of his X followers support Barnes’s gubernatorial run.

And Quentin James, who runs a PAC supporting black Democrats, told the Times ahead of Barnes’s announcement that the candidate “will have to explain his 2022 performance should he undertake a 2026 bid.”

Barnes in his announcement video said he would “reject the Washington way and get things done the Wisconsin way.” The Courier disagreed.

“Who’s asking for Mandela to run again?” the editorial went on. “It’s not the people here in Milwaukee. It’s national Democratic donors and operatives in Washington and New York trying to rerun the same experiment. They should not assume that Mandela Barnes has a lock on Black Milwaukee. Because he doesn’t.”

Barnes’s 2022 loss was a blow to Democrats, who spent tens of millions of dollars trying to oust Johnson and felt hopeful after polls that summer found the then-lieutenant governor leading. Wisconsin voters soured on Barnes, however, after reports broke of his long history of controversy.

In a speech to a U.N. conference, for example, Barnes said the United States needs to “stymie capitalism the way it is in America,” arguing that a free-market economy has caused climate change and set the country on a “path to destruction,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. He also praised Iranian theocratic dictator Ali Khamenei for supporting Black Lives Matter, exalted anti-Semitic preacher Jeremiah Wright as “brilliant” following a speech in which Wright accused Israel of genocide, and told voters that people who support “God, country, and guns” are espousing the same “dangerous” rhetoric as ISIS terrorists.

Besides Barnes, six Democrats are already vying to replace Evers, who is not seeking a third term. One poll has shown that 81 percent of Democrats are unsure whom to support, according to Politico. On the Republican side, Rep. Tom Tiffany and Washington County executive Josh Schoemann have entered their party’s primary.

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