Posted on 11/09/22
| News Source: The Hill
Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.), who was the Democrats’ biggest Republican target in the Senate, was projected to defeat Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D) and win reelection to a third term.
NBC News and CNN both called the race for Johnson.
Johnson and allied outside groups spent the last several months of the race defining Barnes as soft on crime in a barrage of attack ads, which some Democratic critics say were intended to sow racial divisions and play on the fears of suburban voters.
Johnson and Republican allied groups repeatedly hit Barnes for supporting the end of cash bail, which they linked to the 2021 Waukesha Christmas parade attack in which a 39-year-old man who had been released from custody on $1,000 bail after being accused of domestic violence crashed his SUV through a crowd, killing six people and injuring dozens more.
The race culminated in a fiery debate in Madison last month where Barnes accused Johnson of caring more about taking care of wealthy donors than helping working-class Wisconsinites and Johnson jabbed back by pointing to the more than $600,000 in taxpayer money spent on Barnes’s security detail.
The debate reflected the nasty tone of the campaign.