Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 5:21 and sunset is 8:23 for 15 hours 2 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Board of Zoning Appeals meets at 5 PM and the Ethics Board at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 2002, the last steel girder is removed from the original World Trade Center site. Cleanup duties officially end with closing ceremonies at Ground Zero.
So, here’s a literal title for the literal-minded among us: voters are never undecided.1 Poll respondents may be undecided (‘no opinion,’ ‘don’t know’) but those who have voted are by definition those who have made a choice at the ballot box. Wisconsin ballots allow for a write-in candidate, and one can skip casting a vote in a particular race, but our ballots do not have an option for still unsure.
By contrast, in polling, respondents often have the choice to say that they are undecided. Many Wisconsin Democrats answer questions about their preference for governor that way — most now say they are undecided.
That uncertainty is about to fade:
The push comes at a time when many voters are looking to disconnect from politics, said Anthony Chergosky, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
“One of the defining features of this campaign in the Democratic Party, so far, has been the general lack of awareness among voters of the candidates, and of — in many situations — just the existence of the campaign itself,” Chergosky said.
The seven major candidates on the Democratic side — and a few others considered much longer shots — all occupy a small sliver of voter attention. The vast majority of likely Democratic voters are undecided, according to recent polling. Only two rank in double digits among Democrats who’ve said they’ve made up their mind about who to support in the primary.
So for candidates like Crowley and Rodriguez — viable, but with lower name recognition — a spending boost from a political action committee could make a big difference, said Chergosky.
“The outside money is really important in a crowded field like this, because it’s going to take resources to stand out with so many competitors,” he said.
Outside groups can spend lots of money on a candidate without being subject to the same disclosure laws as the campaigns themselves. That provides a powerful money boost while small donations to campaigns may be trickling in, and are capped by state law. It also lets wealthier individuals throw their weight behind a given candidate without being directly tied to them.
See Anya van Wagtendonk, Ad spending starts in crowded Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor, Wisconsin Public Radio, May 28, 2026.
Money buys campaign ads, campaign ads persuade, and the persuaded become voters.
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- While not voting (either by not casting a ballot or by skipping a particular race on the ballot) is a choice, it’s not a choice of voting, or of a member of the electorate as a voter. This takes the discussion into abstruse territory, while the post’s main point still stands: Wisconsin Democrats will shift from indecision to decision soon. Further consideration of the nuances would require an Old Fashioned (brandy sweet always, and only after 5 PM). ↩︎
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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and Outcome-Driven Argumentation.
Psyche Spacecraft Prepares for Mars Flyby: