Good morning.

Valentine’s Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 25, and snow likely this evening. Sunrise is 6:53 and sunset is 5:25, for 10 hours, 33 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1876,  Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray.

Robert Yoon writes of the spring primary in AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Wisconsin’s spring primary between incumbent Jill Underly and challengers Brittany Kinser and Jeff Wright:

Kinser leads the field in campaign fundraising thanks to a flurry of contributions in January from big-dollar Republican donors. She had raised $316,000 through Feb. 3, compared with $123,000 for Wright and $121,000 for Underly. 

In 2021, Underly narrowly topped the seven-candidate primary field with 27% of the vote. Six candidates were aligned with Democrats, but none emerged as the clear alternative to Underly among Democratic voters. That helped the sole Republican-backed candidate that year, Deborah Kerr, to nab the second spot on the general election ballot with 26% of the vote. Underly went on to win the general election that year with 58% of the vote in a one-on-one contest with Kerr.

This year, three candidates are competing for two spots, and the primary has become several contests stuffed into a single race: one between Underly and Wright among Democratic-leaning voters, another with Kinser trying to consolidate enough support among Republican-leaning voters to outperform one or both of her rivals, and another with all three candidates competing for independent and crossover voters to tip the scales in their favor.

With only two candidates this year to potentially split the support of Democratic-leaning voters, Kinser would likely need to far outperform Kerr’s 26% in the 2021 primary to earn a spot on the April ballot, assuming a competitive contest between Underly and Wright.

See Robert Yoon, AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Wisconsin’s spring primary, Associated Press, February 14, 2025.

If the split between Democratic-leaning voters and Republican-leaning voters in this race is like 2021, then, yes, Kinser would likely need to outperform Kerr’s 2021 vote share.

It would be surprising, however, if the balance between ideologies is like that of 2021. At least, it would be surprising to me. If the conservative¹ candidate cannot place comfortably in one of the two spots in this race, then conservatives wasted a campaign on a weak candidate or weak messaging. This environment, Spring 2025, is as much of a high-water level as the conservative populists in Wisconsin may ever have.

I’d guess Kinser will exceed 26 percent easily, and find herself in the Spring General Election against Underly.

We’ll know Tuesday night, and likely early Tuesday night.

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1. Conservative as an ideology in American is now synonymous with conservative populist. There are still a few different individual conservatives, but there is only one ideological movement: populism. ↩︎

Happy Valentine’s Day:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 15. Sunrise is 6:54 and sunset is 5:24, for 10 hours, 30 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Involvement and Cable TV Commission meets at 5 PM.

On this day in 1960, with the success of a nuclear test codenamed “Gerboise Bleue,” France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons.

Brittany Kinser is far ahead in fundraising:

Wauwatosa education consultant Brittany Kinser has signficantly outraised both of her Democratic opponents, according to the latest campaign finance reports. Her half-million dollar haul ($508,000) so far this year is nearly four times as much as state Superintendent Jill Underly raised ($132,000) and about 13 times as much as Sauk Prairie School District Superintendent Jeff Wright ($38,000).

Kinser calls herself a moderate but is backed by conservatives for her pro-school choice positions. Underly, the incumbent, is backed by the Democratic Party, though Wright has chipped away at some of her base. ….

Both state parties are pumping their preferred candidate’s campaigns with cash at an unprecedented level for a state superintendent election at this stage of the race, shattering any assumption about it being a nonpartisan election.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin contributed $200,000 to Kinser’s campaign so far, nearly 10 times the amount it gave in the entire 2021 race. The state Democratic Party gave Underly about $106,000 this month. The party gave her about $208,000 in the entire 2021 race. Wright has neither party’s financial support.

And there’s still a month and a half to go before the April 1 election.

Kinser has more than doubled the superintendent fundraising record set by then-Superintendent Tony Evers in 2017 for this stage of the race. In Gov. Evers’ entire 2017 superintendent race, he raised about $517,000. Kinser has raised nearly the same amount in just the first month of this race.

See Kelly Meyerhofer, In Wisconsin school superintendent race, one candidate is far ahead in fundraising, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 13, 2025.

Inflation increased in January, posing obstacle for tariff plans: