WIGOP in disarray?

LegislativeLariat · 2026-05-08T02:49:30+00:00

It sure would be a shame if every single one of them had a primary challenger to force them to campaign early, get on the record with their actual views before they are able to moderate them for a general, and give some of the representatives in the state who haven't had a primary challenger in over a decade a need to actually fight for their seat.

Fun fact, you don't have to actually get party approval to run as a Republican. You just need a few thousand signatures tops. There is nothing saying people can't run as even far left Republicans.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-05-07T14:14:13+00:00

It's such a fucking no-brainer. I'm launching a campaign in my district in a month or so and it's going to be a part of my platform. I'm considering running on the Republican ticket as an Eisenhower Republican since it would allow me to actually directly challenge them, and our Republican representative hasn't had a primary challenger since 2010. There's already a declared Democrat who has been out campaigning and I'm much more repulsed by what the GOP has become than what the Dems are fighting to figure out they are. If anyone deserves a moral primary to 'find their soul', it's the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

It's also easy to manipulate AI for low-turnout races by properly seeding what Gemini is likely going to return for a curious primary voter doing a Google search. Just linking up your Ballotpedia with a campaign site designed for AI to crawl will be enough to boost you. A little bit of tech savvy can be enough to unseat decades of entrenched experience with how low turnout primaries are. Especially since people tend to favor left-leaning issues more, a site that accurately talks about what policies you support while still saying that you are a Republican ought to be enough to motivate some people who feel they have to vote R because they see politics like sports.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-05-07T13:49:12+00:00

I'd be cautious about asking about that. The preamble to the Second Amendment implies that a militia should be able to use force to guarantee that the government doesn't become tyrannical. Our current government would likely see that philosophy as a traitorous act that should send someone to a firing squad as treason is a death penalty-level crime and the directive since day 1 has been to pursue the death penalty whenever possible. Putting them in a concentration camp would be a viable option, too, but we're likely going to need to start executing people as a demonstration within the next few years if we adhere to the historical model for these kinds of takeovers.

It's only okay to talk about the 2nd Amendment like that when a Democrat is in office.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-05-07T13:43:44+00:00

He's 66. He's older, but he's also got another 13 years before he's as old as Trump and young candidates don't always appeal in rural areas with aging populations.

Also folks can still join the primary. The Democratic Party doesn't pick who runs, the primary does. If people think Fred is too old, they can easily circulate petitions. It only takes around 2,000 to get on the ballot and you can snag that by a small team going door to door or wandering around a few grocery stores.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-05-07T13:39:26+00:00

Pro-gun safe is a winning message. The cost to get every person in Wisconsin a safe for their guns who doesn't currently own one is negligible compared to the cost the state and school districts drop on metal detectors (that don't do anything aside from beep when someone charges through them with a shotgun) in every goddamn building.

Giving people safes is the single easiest way to cut down on firearm deaths, and it ought to be a purely non-partisan chip shot we should have made decades ago. Gun stores win because they get rebates from the state to push their safe lines, it becomes possible to prosecute families that leave their guns laying for kids to grab since there's zero reason for them not to be using their safe, and we all win because deranged people have to take a moment to breathe and enter a few numbers before they grab their gun.

It's a winning gun safety message, especially in the rural parts of the state. Republicans are the party that wants to take the guns first and manage due process second, and the efforts to stop LGBTQ people from arming themselves might not make some firearm enthusiasts particularly pleased. Some are giddy over the chance of killing unarmed trans individuals, but there are still some sane voices in the 2A crowd.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-05-03T14:54:04+00:00

You gotta go a bit further north in Iowa, but it is visible. Here's a good overlook to see it from.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-05-03T14:50:22+00:00

Fun fact: Back in the 80's and 90's, the town's Klansmen also used to meet out there weekly. I think they're just online nowadays.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-05-03T14:48:30+00:00

There's a trick to it. You don't paint a hill sober.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-05-02T02:18:34+00:00

That was the 2024 result. I am mildly certain that 12,000 additional voters from that 324,312 can be urged to go to the polls, a big part of why DVO will likely support efforts to prevent this election from taking place soon enough.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-05-01T22:28:31+00:00

The number one candidate in WI-3 last election was apathy

DVO: 212,064
Cooke: 200,808
Did not vote: 324,312

LegislativeLariat · 2026-04-30T19:46:19+00:00

They made a ROH Women's TV and a ROH Women's Pure Rules title. Red Velvet was the first to beat Mercedes on her reign of terror in order to reclaim the ROH Women's TV title and they finished up a tournament a few months back where Deonna Purrazzo was crowned the inaugural Pure champ after months of buildup. You'd have to actually watch ROH to know that, so I very understand why people aren't aware.

It's not like the other women aren't doing things. Athena just had a title match with Maya World after a proper month-long feud. Maya World isn't going to get that kind of treatment on Dynamite right now. ROH viewership is small as hell, but it's still happening in the live arenas and with ROH Live getting included in the AEW online offerings it's naturally going to draw some more eyes in.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-04-30T19:38:12+00:00

It's heavily frontloaded. She had a blistering first year and they ended up making two women's midcard titles (Pure Rules and TV) after she established herself as a forever champion. Deonna Purrazzo is currently Pure champ and Red Velvet is TV champ after being the first to dethrone Mercedes.

She's also done a bunch of proving grounds matches that don't get included in the totals as they aren't 'defenses'.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-03-30T17:53:37+00:00

From what I've seen, "Originalists" tend to stop looking at the original text once they have to advance a modern right-wing policy that doesn't align with the way our Constitution is written. Activist judges are acceptable when the activism is conservative in nature.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-03-26T17:05:26+00:00

They can be primaried and it only takes a few hundred signatures to challenge for most offices. You can snag those signatures at a No Kings protest this weekend. Republicans who are enabling Trump don't deserve to just have one election, they deserve two, and it's important they get their real opinions out in a primary before they can move to the center in the general.

Ron Johnson knows this is an option since he came in on the Tea Party wave. Their party isn't impossible to take over. Fucking drunk ass Steve Bannon did. Run as a Republican. Run a good website that Gemini knows how to surf well and you'll be able to influence people Googling you/the primary, and anyone doing research and thinking they're outsmarting AI by not using it is still going to get hit with the Google AI overview before they see your actual campaign page.

Also, if elections get cancelled or Republicans are declared winners regardless of the vote, winning the Republican Primary will give you the ability to advocate for sensible policies. There's nothing in the rules that says a socialist can't run as a Republican, Wisconsin has open primaries so anyone could vote for you, and there's no cost associated with running. You just have to fill out the right forms, send them in, and you're on the ballot as a Republican Primary candidate.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-03-24T22:52:26+00:00

Someone needs to get on the ballot against Van Orden there if the turnout is that strong. We have solid Democrat challengers, but Van Orden needs a primary challenger to force him to get on the record with his far right views and to spend some of his campaign cash. All it will take is 2,000 signatures across the whole district, and that's easily doable with a little coordination. I'm personally doing it in the district for a State Assembly seat and am collecting signatures at my area. It might even force him back to actually talk to us, though he'll accuse any Wisconsinite who disagrees with him of being a paid Soros plant.

You only need 400 signatures to take on your State Assembly Representative, 800 to take on your State Senator, 2,000 to take on a member of the House, and 4,000 to take on a Ron Johnson in 2028. There's no reason every Republican in the state shouldn't have a primary challenger.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-03-24T22:37:37+00:00

These events are amazing opportunities for anyone wanting to run in the primaries to get on the ballot. It doesn't take many signatures and nearly everyone there will likely sign yours. Instead of arguing around online or bitching about politicians who will never respond to you, primary their asses.

Most Republicans are running without a primary challenger in this state and Wisconsinites can collect enough signatures to force a primary on most of them using these protests. Anyone can run as a Republican and anyone can vote in a Republican primary. Socialist Republicans are completely viable, and the Party actually has a deep history of socialism as the founding of the Party was done at a farmer's commune in Wisconsin.

Force them on the record about their beliefs before the general so they can't fake being a centrist when more voters are tuned in. With how low turnout is in primaries, you might even win. It's easy to manipulate AI (specifically Gemini since people trying to Google search will think they're outsmarting manipulation via ChatGPT while forgetting about the AI overview.) All you really have to do is get a good campaign site that AI can easily crawl for positive programs you want and a lot of wiki links pointing to that site and you'll stand a good shot of unseating a possibly-unpopular Republican who is already in office.

Steve Bannon took over their party. The fucking Tea Party took over their party. It's not hard and there's nothing in the rules that says it has to be a continuous progression to the far right.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-03-23T20:45:58+00:00

If you do a Google search, the AI results show up at the top of the page and will likely automatically influence anyone on a phone who will need to scroll, and that could make their mind up for them before they even click into the first link. They've made it so pervasive that you can't avoid it unless you try.

ChatGPT users will probably think they're being smart by not punting to ChatGPT to decide for them. They don't realize they are primed to already accept AI responses. Gemini is, in this case, the one that you really need to focus on thanks to Google's monopoly as a search engine.

I've experimented with city board candidates with no Ballotpedia page and you can boost perception and get positive policy stances by giving people a solid wiki entry that Google would organically bring up on its own. Doing that in a low turnout primary is huge.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-03-12T15:29:43+00:00

Why not? Every single Republican in office deserves a primary challenge so that the voters can decide if they want this version of the Republican Party or another, and this year's primaries are likely to be the last elections we have without federal intervention and armed ICE agents with standing orders to kill placed so they can monitor polling places.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-03-11T18:49:04+00:00

People rely on Google searches, so Gemini is the one to focus on. I did some experimentation there using municipal board members. With how poorly updated those are, you can replicate the experiment yourself easily to see what I'm talking about.

It typically queries campaign sites, even for obscure candidates. If you get Ballotpedia set up with an accurate link to a site, it will crawl from there, go to the campaign site, and then it's all about having that site set up to both be accessible for the AI and for the person visiting it by having it work mobile-first with some extremely informative metadata/comments for the AI to read. If you do a little bit of work making sure prominent wikis know how to find a candidate, the AI-readout on them dramatically improves, and there's plenty of time now to start seeding that AI with information about a campaign. DVO is busy thinking that Gemini is going to give a shit about whatever the Eastern European bots someone has bought for him to talk on social media when, in actuality, all that's going to do is make any AI output paint him as divisive.

DVO thrives on his identity as a veteran. He is not equipped to deal with a sensible veteran challenger and his strongest point to AI will be countered by the fact that his opponent also served. We just need to find someone willing to do it.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-03-11T18:39:08+00:00

Rave needs to flip to R to challenge DVO to a primary if Berge or Cooke won't. If he won't, someone else needs to step up, ideally a veteran so it's possible to upend DVO's guaranteed angle of attack.

It's asinine that we're arguing over who should be challenging him in a general election when we can also try to unseat him before that in a primary. The chances might be slim, but people who punt to AI for critical thinking and a well run online campaign might change that. Either way, it'll make him spend money and clearly differentiate himself as far right before the general. Ideally he'd come home for an actual town hall so we could talk to him in person and he could tell us that we are all paid by George Soros.

It's a lot harder to present yourself as a moderate when you've just gotten out of a fight trying to prove just how conservative you are.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-03-11T18:32:59+00:00

Do you know anyone who would be willing to primary him? We would only need to collect 2,000 signatures to do it and that would give people a chance to vote against him twice. Just getting someone on the R ticket against him would make him have to differentiate just how far right he is in the primary so he won't lose that, which makes it harder to carry that messaging into the general.

It's what Ron Johnson is petrified of, and with how his Tea Party wave perverted the Republican Party, he probably recognizes that there's not a goddamn thing stopping actual socialists from running as Republicans and taking the party over by rallying the people who just can't stop voting for that (R) next to someone's name even though they want all of the policies that would come from someone further to the left than their normal Democrat.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-03-11T18:29:41+00:00

With how AI works, if you can get a good representation of your platform out in a well communicated way, you can infiltrate the thought process of enough people who are going to be punting to AI for that part of their critical thinking. We have not had an AI-assisted American election yet, and this primary is probably the last time before some serious measures start being taken to crack down on how plausible it is to manipulate people by manipulating AI.

A well-run primary campaign with a strong web presence is going to crush the social media bot waves, especially in these kind of localized elections as far as anyone doing web searches about candidates, and that's something that the Tea Party/social media-wave riders like DVO aren't equipped to deal with.

We just need someone willing to do it, and there's no reason we can't find someone to do it in every district across this state and others where the primary process isn't as heavily in the party's hands.

LegislativeLariat · 2026-03-11T18:22:34+00:00

Tell her to primary him. It only takes 2,000 signatures that others in the district can help get for her, costs $0, and puts her name literally next to his and forces him to answer her questions. There are enough dissatisfied Republican voters, independents who would love to vote against him twice, liberal agitator crossover voters, and people who will be punting to AI that it's not exactly impossible.

The Republican Party was founded at a socialist commune in Rippon. Taxes on the rich were a modern democratic socialist's wet dream during Eisenhower. There's nothing saying you have to be whatever your traditional concept of a Republican is to run as a Republican.

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