Good morning. 
Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 27. Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 4:42 PM for 9h 18m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 66.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School District’s Policy Review Committee meets at 9 AM and the city’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1964, Surgeon General of the United States Dr. Luther Terry, M.D., publishes the landmark report Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States saying that smoking may be hazardous to health, sparking national and worldwide anti-smoking efforts.
Molly Beck reports Ron Johnson’s decision on Senate run sets up an expensive battle to be Wisconsin’s next governor:
With one announcement, Ron Johnson set the course for the highest-profile statewide races this year — securing the Republican field in his re-election bid for U.S. Senate and pushing a top Republican into the governor’s race.
Former U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Nicholson had been waiting for Johnson to announce his 2022 intentions before deciding which statewide race to join. Now, after Johnson’s launch of a re-election campaign, Nicholson is expected in the coming days to enter the GOP primary race to challenge incumbent Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
“After losing 11 of the last 12 statewide elections in Wisconsin, we also need a conservative candidate who can win a general election in 2022. The stakes are too serious to keep playing the same broken record,” Nicholson tweeted Sunday following Johnson’s announcement.
And Madison businessman Eric Hovde, who poured millions into a 2012 unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Monday that he is “seriously considering” joining the Republican primary, which former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch has had largely to herself until now.
Entrances by Hovde and Nicholson, who has the backing of GOP mega-donor Richard Uihlein, could put a race already drawing record-breaking fundraising on pace to be one of the most expensive battles for governor in the country.
“If the GOP primary becomes a three-way race, it will likely quickly become one of the most costly in the country,” said Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center.
“The funding will need to emerge quickly because the primary is only seven months away and two of the prime candidates have not even officially entered the race.”
There wouldn’t be interest in a Republican gubernatorial primary if potential entrants thought former (eight-year) Lt. Gov. Kleefisch was a strong candidate. She’s running as Walker 2.0, but her problem is that Kleefisch 1.0 never really caught on. It was easy in 2021 to spend PAC money and sow school discord when she didn’t have any intra-party challengers. Her 0-4 showing in the Mequon-Thiensville School District recall reveals a lack of both strategy (what issues?) and tactics (how to fight on those issues?). See How Mequon-Thiensville Residents Saved Their Schools. She’ll find it harder to carry on if GOP donors, who’ll be able to spend as much as they’d like, line up behind a primary challenger.