The Wisconsin Politics Group Chat podcast features Dr. Kristin Lyerly, Pat Kreitlow (The View from UpNorth) of UpNorthNews, Kate Duffy of Motherhood for Good, and Dan Shafer of The Recombobulation Area.
Find all of these episodes on The Recombobulation Area’s podcast feed (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, here on Substack).
The Aug. 11 partisan primary is now in our rear view mirror, David Crowley won by a less than 1% margin over Francesca Hong, and your friends at the Wisconsin Politics Group Chat are here to make sense of all of the results and much more.
This week’s episode featured Pat Kreitlow of UpNorthNews, Kate Duffy of Motherhood for Good, and Dan Shafer of The Recombobulation Area.
Dr. Kristin Lyerly was unable to join this week, but you can hear many of her thoughts on the results from our extended, unhinged Election Night livestream that stretched into the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
This episode aired live on Pat Kreitlow’s UpNorth YouTube Channel on Thursday, Aug. 13, at 9 a.m.
For a beat-by-beat breakdown, check out our topics and timestamps below:
00:00:00: Intro, housekeeping, old Up North News Newsletter & Question of the Week
00:04:32: Kate Duffy joins from the Iowa State Fair
00:05:43: Show Kickoff — “I’m Getting Too Old For This Shit”
00:06:18: Recapping the Epic Election-Night Livestream and David Crowley’s remarkable victory
00:07:00: Post-Primary & the Unity Breakfast-Turned-Brunch
00:20:43: Crediting Tony Evers’ all-in Endorsement of Crowley
00:23:13: John Johnson’s Milwaukee County vote map & the “Yard Sign” Theory
00:26:08: Crowley’s Challenge Beyond Milwaukee — Northwestern Wisconsin
00:27:09: Deep Dive: Act 12 & the Shared Revenue Overhaul, and messaging to counter Tiffany’s attacks
00:31:39: Selling Crowley’s record without losing “Normies”
00:32:21: Data Centers — Local Control vs. Governor’s Role
00:33:27: Crowley’s Personal Story: Growing Up in Poverty
00:35:03: Door-Knocking Tales — “Communist” accusations in rural communities
00:37:10: Winning over Hong Supporters on data centers and “establishment” politics
00:38:35: The Voucher Schools Debate
00:43:10: Crowley the “consensus builder” vs. Evers’ legislative style
00:44:30: Tom Tiffany’s Trump dodge — “The Orange Elephant in the Room” —and his weak healthcare “transparency” messaging
00:47:53: 7th District: Michael Alfonso, the Sean Duffy son-in-law
00:51:12 3rd District: Van Orden vs. Rebecca Cooke II
00:52:14: Will supporters of candidates who lost in the primary stay home in November?
00:54:57: The Giannis Analogy — “No Failure, Only Steps to Success”
00:56:43: Tammy Baldwin’s “Never Mistake Progress for Victory”
00:58:46: Closing Roundup: Van Orden’s AI Slop, Election Denialism, No Break Ahead
01:00:56: Kreitlow’s Music History Segment, sign-off and show plugs
Watch this and every episode of the “Wisconsin Politics Group Chat” on The Recombobulation Area’s YouTube Channel here:
You can find every episode of the “Wisconsin Politics Group Chat” on The Recombobulation Area’s podcast feed, available on Spotify (embedded below), Apple Podcasts (available here), and right here on Substack.
Revisit our unhinged, three-hour Election Night livestream here:
In case you’ve missed a previous episode of the Wisconsin Politics Group Chat, you can find them all here.
Dan Shafer is an independent journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. He worked with Civic Media from 2024 to 2026. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
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Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.
