The night before Wisconsin votes, it is worth remembering who the Journal Sentinel labels as ‘election deniers’ and the narrative they’re trying to craft.
On October 22, Journal Sentinel reporter Jessie Opoien published a story based on a list from Assembly Democrats naming nine Republican candidates for their election-integrity “stances.” Her opening set the frame: Democrats are “raising alarms about a slate of Republican candidates who have taken stances including suggesting mail-in ballots contribute to voter fraud.” The next day, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin promoted the article as “new reporting from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.” Democrats created the list, the paper reported it, and the party cited the paper.
Look at what put Republicans on the list. Doubts about mail-in ballots. A post calling drop boxes “pseudo-voting.” Calling the House January 6 committee “criminal.” Sharing a stage with Scott Presler. Wanting to curb absentee voting after the Green Bay clerk’s office mailed duplicate absentee ballots twice, a mess that ended with the clerk resigning. Opoien even noted that resignation in her own story.
So the Republican gets a questionnaire about drop boxes, and his opponent gets billed alongside the most famous non-conceder in America. Where is the questionnaire asking Bukiewicz whether Abrams won Georgia?
Some of the candidates on the list said the opposite of what the label suggests. David Daniels told the paper that Wisconsin elections are “fair & secure” and that the evidence “overwhelmingly” points to no widespread fraud. Rep. Dan Knodl told the paper back in 2023, “there is no denial of the election. President Biden is the president.” Rep. Clint Moses never said 2020 was stolen. His offense was writing that “we can all agree that we need an election that is fair, secure, and according to the laws of Wisconsin.”
That is a very wide net. Asking how ballots are handled, the same thing Racine poll workers did before they were pushed out, now gets you filed in the same story as people who said worse. A reader skimming the headline can’t tell the difference. That is the problem.
If doubting an election is disqualifying, the Journal Sentinel keeps walking past a much bigger story.
Stacey Abrams lost the 2018 Georgia governor’s race to Brian Kemp by about 55,000 votes. On November 16, 2018, she told supporters, “this is not a speech of concession,” and “As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede.” The next spring she called it “what I believe was a stolen election.” When her group took Georgia to court, an Obama-appointed federal judge ruled against every remaining claim.
On October 29, Wisconsin Democrats brought Abrams to Oak Creek as the special guest at a union rally featuring David Crowley, Josh Kaul and Dan Bukiewicz. Bukiewicz is running against Dylan Pfaffenbach, one of the Republicans on the Democrats’ list. So the Republican gets a questionnaire about drop boxes, and his opponent gets billed alongside the most famous non-conceder in America. Where is the questionnaire asking Bukiewicz whether Abrams won Georgia?
Hillary Clinton told CBS in 2019 that Donald Trump “knows he’s an illegitimate president.” Before Trump was even sworn in, Rep. John Lewis said he did not see Trump “as a legitimate president.”
On January 6, 2017, House Democrats stood up one after another to object to Trump’s electoral votes. Rep. Jim McGovern claimed Alabama’s electors “were not lawfully certified.” Rep. Barbara Lee cited “Russian interference.” Rep. Jamie Raskin objected to Florida. Joe Biden, presiding, gaveled them down and finally told Rep. Pramila Jayapal, “It is over.” Raskin later sat on the House January 6 committee, the same committee a Republican now gets flagged for criticizing.
That wasn’t new either. In 2001, members of the Congressional Black Caucus tried to block Florida’s electoral votes for George W. Bush. In 2005, Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones forced a vote to challenge Ohio’s electors after Bush carried the state by more than 118,000 votes. Even John Kerry said his own legal teams found nothing that would change the outcome.
Then came Russia collusion, the longest campaign to delegitimize a presidential election in modern American history. The Steele dossier was funded through the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and the Federal Election Commission fined both for misreporting the spending. After two years, Robert Mueller’s investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.” John Durham concluded the FBI never should have launched its full investigation at all.
Wisconsin Democrats played along too. Mandela Barnes, who ran in this year’s Democratic primary for governor, tweeted “The election was, rigged?” the day after Trump won in 2016.
None of that made Opoien’s story. She found room for a paragraph on Trump’s 2020 claims and another on Michael Gableman’s review. She found no room for a single Democrat who refused to accept a loss.
Republicans aren’t asking for a pass. If a candidate says something false about an election, report it. But a newspaper that treats an old post about drop boxes as an alarm, while the party that challenged 2000, 2004, and 2016 and still celebrates Abrams campaigns in Oak Creek, is not covering election denial. It’s framing Republicans as the only side that does it.
Wisconsin votes tomorrow. If Democrats come up short, we will find out fast whether the Journal Sentinel still thinks refusing to accept an election result is news.
