Removed from shying from his contrarian repute, Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Jonson is leaning into controversy as he runs for his third time period.

Johnson has referred to as for the top of assured cash for Medicare and Social Safety, two fashionable packages that American politicians often steer clear from. He’s trafficked in conspiracy theories concerning the 2020 election and dabbled in pseudoscience across the coronavirus.

His Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, has gone in a safer path, cultivating a picture as a nonthreatening defender of the center class with TV advertisements exhibiting him hitting baseballs, delivering pizzas to youngsters and searching for groceries.

Their race is one in every of a handful across the nation that would determine management of the Senate subsequent 12 months, and the one one with an incumbent Republican in search of reelection in a state carried by President Joe Biden. It’s additionally shaping up because the type of razor-close end that’s turn out to be frequent in Wisconsin, the place Donald Trump carried the state by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016 after which misplaced to Biden by about the identical margin two years in the past.

Polls counsel {that a} Barnes edge in midsummer, possible propelled by his emergence as key Democratic rivals dropped out proper earlier than the state’s major election, has evaporated below a barrage of assault advertisements from Johnson and his allies. A Marquette College Legislation College ballot in mid-September had the race inside the margin of error, with Barnes’ unfavorable scores rising by 10 share factors from a month earlier.

“Ron Johnson isn’t doing something to try to transfer his favorables up,” stated Alex Lasry, a Milwaukee Bucks government who was Barnes’ first most important rival to depart the race and throw assist to Barnes. “I feel Ron Johnson’s marketing campaign is aware of the voters don’t like him. What Johnson’s making an attempt to do is drag everybody into the mud.”

Keith Gilkes, a GOP strategist who ran former Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s first marketing campaign, stated Johnson is just defining Barnes and transferring independents into his personal camp.

“Now the stress is again on Barnes,” Gilkes stated. “How is he going to reply?”

Barnes, 35, and Johnson, 67, couldn’t be extra totally different.

Johnson, a former plastics producer, is a millionaire a number of instances over. Barnes, the state’s lieutenant governor and probably the state’s first Black senator, has championed his modest upbringing in Milwaukee because the youngster of a public college instructor and a United Auto Employees member.

Barnes’ messaging has tracked with that background, with discuss of returning manufacturing to the state, defending union jobs and serving to small farmers — a play for rural voters who’ve slipped away from Democrats lately.

He has typically struggled financially as an grownup, too — one thing he sought to show to his benefit when attacked for paying his property taxes late. In one in every of his latest TV advertisements, Barnes says: “There have been instances I used to be getting by on peanut butter sandwiches. And that’s why I assist a tax reduce for the center class.”

Johnson and his allies have accused him of talking in platitudes reasonably than intimately about his plans, avoiding unscripted moments in entrance of reporters and hiding from voters.

When Barnes agreed to a single televised debate subsequent month, Johnson — who had supplied to do two extra — pounced: “I can’t pressure the opposite man out of hiding.” Barnes later agreed to a second debate.

Lots of the assaults towards Barnes from Johnson and Republicans have centered on violent crime and public security, points that polls present are issues for voters this 12 months. When Barnes needed to take away the endorsement of two legislation enforcement officers from his web site — the marketing campaign stated one was a clerical error, and the opposite one reportedly wasn’t conscious his title could be made public — Johnson capitalized by releasing endorsements from a majority of Wisconsin sheriffs, together with Democrats.

Barnes’ backers have stated that advertisements attacking him on crime, together with one from the Nationwide Republican Senatorial Committee citing his assist for ending money bail and calling him “harmful,” are racist. The spot options footage of a automotive plowing by a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, final 12 months together with photographs of the Black man charged with killing six individuals and injuring dozens of others.

Barnes has talked about transferring funding away from police departments to social service businesses, however he says he doesn’t assist defunding police. He rolled out a brand new advert final week that featured a retired Racine police sergeant declaring his belief in Barnes. And his marketing campaign has highlighted appearances across the state to argue that he’s operating an “open and accessible” marketing campaign.

When he’s not attacking Barnes, Johnson is speaking about points that politicians going through an election sometimes keep away from.

He has repeatedly referred to as for eradicating assured funding for Medicare and Social Safety, saying it’s the one solution to hold them viable. These feedback caught Biden’s consideration, with the president repeatedly referred to as Johnson out by title for wanting “to place Social Safety and Medicare on the chopping block yearly.”

Johnson has additionally embraced conspiracy theories concerning the 2020 election, despite the fact that Biden’s win has been upheld by quite a few courts, withstood partisan and unbiased investigations and weathered partial recounts in Wisconsin.

Johnson additionally dismissed issues about local weather change, stated that he would have been extra fearful in the course of the Jan. 6, 2021, riots if the U.S. Capitol invaders had been Black Lives Matter protesters, and advocated for unproven and untested various remedies for COVID-19, saying mouthwash could possibly be one solution to battle the virus.

“Ron Johnson has by no means been a barrel of of sunshine, proper?” stated Mark Graul, a Republican strategist who ran Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush’s 2004 state marketing campaign. “Him taking positions that aren’t precisely polling by the roof is what makes him Ron Johnson. … He’s not out right here eager to be liked.”

Wisconsin’s shut races sometimes activate whether or not Democratic turnout within the city facilities of Milwaukee and Madison counter Republican strengths in rural areas and the Milwaukee suburbs. It additionally issues which candidate can higher faucet into the problems most essential to independents, stated Scott Spector, who ran Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s profitable 2018 marketing campaign.

That features abortion — maybe the one space the place Johnson is exhibiting warning given polls exhibiting a robust majority again it being authorized. Johnson just lately stated that questions on Wisconsin’s abortion ban must be determined by a statewide vote, however when Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed a means to try this, Johnson balked.

Gilkes, the Republican strategist, stated Barnes must “rise to the second” within the marketing campaign’s last weeks and pivot from defending himself to being extra aggressive in taking up Johnson.

“He wants to repair the messaging, get centered and get on the market extra to in the end achieve success,” Gilkes stated. “That move goes towards Mandela. He’s being overwhelmed by it proper now.”