Wisconsin
Kamala Harris leads Trump in the critical swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, new poll says
Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign is less than a month old but the latest New York Times/Siena College polls already show her leading former President Donald Trump in the critical battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Before President Joe Biden left the presidential race in July, he held a small advantage over Trump in an earlier Times/Siena survey of Wisconsin, but trailed the former president in Michigan and Pennsylvania. That worried Democratic leaders at the time. Biden’s standing in those states had deteriorated and threatened not only his reelection bid but that of down-ballot candidates too.
Harris, however, is now in a much stronger position in the trio of must-win states. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Harris now leads Trump by four-point margins each (50% to 46%) among likely voters.
In the latest polling, Harris showed strong results among the groups she’ll need to win over to defeat Trump in the November general election.
Across the three states, Harris held a 20-point lead over Trump (58% to 38%) with women and a 15-point advantage with voters aged 18 to 29 (56% to 41%). Harris led among suburban voters by a 10-point margin (53% to 43%), and she even retained much of Biden’s strength with seniors, leading among the latter group by 13 points (55% to 42%) across the three states.
The latest survey is significant because both Harris’s and Trump’s campaign strategies are rooted in appealing to voters in these battleground states.
Pennsylvania is the biggest electoral prize of the group, with 19 electoral votes. Many Democrats wanted Harris to tap the state’s popular governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate. But earlier this week, she opted for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former congressman who, for 12 years, represented a conservative-leaning district but has compiled a progressive record as the state’s governor.
Democrats believe Walz will still be an asset to Harris in Pennsylvania but also add support in the Midwestern battlegrounds of Michigan (15 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes).
For Trump, the July selection of Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate was supposed to be a nod to his conservative base in a contest that, at the time, was moving increasingly in his favor.
But Harris’ entrance into the presidential race completely reset the dynamics. Vance has so far struggled to appeal to the suburban swing voters who were once on the fence but who now appear to see a viable alternative in the vice president.
Harris is poised to enter the Democratic National Convention on August 19 as the slight favorite in many of the closest swing states. Should Harris receive an added polling bump after the convention, it would surely put even more pressure on Trump to reorient his campaign in advance of the September 10 debate between the two candidates.
Reaction to Shawn Eichorst as potentially the next Wisconsin AD
On the Terrace View podcast, John Steppe and Mark Stewart give initial thoughts on reported connection between Shawn Eichorst and open UW AD job.
MADISON – Shawn Eichorst will start as Wisconsin’s athletic director with a higher annual salary than his predecessor.
Eichorst will make an annual salary of $1.6 million along with built-in annual increases and incentives, a university spokesman told the Journal Sentinel.
That is above Chris McIntosh’s $1.5 million annual salary for the 2025-26 academic year. (That consisted of $1 million from the university and $500,000 from the UW Foundation.) McIntosh’s salary was set to increase by $50,000 for each year of his contract, which would have gone through June 30, 2029.
It also is well above Marcus Sedberry’s $875,000 annual salary for the nearly three months when he was interim AD. Sedberry’s salary is set to return to $334,805 “plus any intervening pay adjustments,” according to the offer letter from April.
An open records request from the Journal Sentinel for Eichorst’s contract, which will include more details about the increases and incentives, is pending.
Eichorst previously served as the deputy AD and chief operating officer at Texas for the last eight years. He also was Miami’s AD in 2011-12 and Nebraska’s AD from 2012-17. Before Miami, the Lone Rock native spent five years working with the Badgers under Barry Alvarez.
A 9-year-old child died Tuesday evening after drowning in a western Wisconsin water park.
The Polk County Sheriff’s Office says first responders were called to the Campfire Cove Aqua Park in Rural Balsam Lake, Wisconsin, around 8:15 p.m.
Though they attempted lifesaving measures, the child died at the scene.
The incident is under investigation, the sheriff’s office says.
A missing Wisconsin teen was found safe after mysteriously vanishing from home four years ago as her family had believed she was “lured away.”
Joniah Walker, 19, was safely discovered on May 25, the Milwaukee Police Department told WISN on Tuesday.
Police officials didn’t disclose where Walker was found or provide any further information on the case, including whether the teen was with someone else.
Walker, then 15, had disappeared from her Milwaukee home on June 23, 2022.
Walker’s mother, Tanesha Howard, said she last saw her daughter lying in bed when she left for work the morning of her disappearance, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
“Joniah was lying in bed because she had just finished school. I went in to give her a hug before leaving for work,” Howard told the organization.
The mother and daughter duo had talked on the phone several times throughout the day before Walker “suddenly stopped responding.”
Walker was supposed to meet her father to apply for a summer work permit but failed to arrive at the designated time.
“He called me and said that Joniah wasn’t picking up her phone,” Howard said. “That is when I immediately knew something was wrong. I left work right away.”
A nearby ring camera captured Walker leaving the apartment complex at around 2:30 p.m. in the Brewer’s Hill neighborhood, a mile-and-a-half north of Downtown Milwaukee.
Video footage showed the teen carrying a large green backpack.
It was the last known sighting of Walker until she was reportedly found last month.
Howard believed her daughter had met someone online after she deleted her digital footprint and never returned.
“Somebody stole her…that was my first instinct,” Howard said. “But when I saw that she left with a big backpack that I had never seen, that’s when I knew. I was like, someone lured her away.”
The protective mother issued multiple pleas for her daughter to come home, begging Walker to “call me,” WISN reported in July 2022.
“She is my youngest daughter, so I always call her by ‘baby girl’ because that is exactly who she is, my baby girl,” she said. “She is what I would describe as a perfect daughter. She is angelic, soft spoken and very intelligent.”
Walker was one of the faces of a legislative push by Wisconsin State Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison) seeking to pass a bill to create a Missing and Murdered African American Women and Girls Task Force, according to Fox6 Now.
Stubbs says she believed Walker was still alive, telling Howard to hold out hope for her daughter’s return.
“I believed Joniah was still living, and I said that to her – I don’t believe Joniah is dead, it’s only a matter of time,” Stubbs told the outlet.
“I think right now, the family needs their privacy,” Stubbs added. “I know there are so many questions, but I think as time goes by when they are ready to tell their story, they will tell it.”
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