U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (Photo: Bob Hague)
Voters will head to the polls next week to decide who will win the GOP nomination in the U.S. Senate race. U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) says he knows who he plans to vote for. However, the first term Republican says he will not be publicly endorsing any of the candidates until at least the day after the primary.
Johnson says he wants to make sure he can be “100 percent behind the winner” heading into the general election, which could be difficult if his endorsed candidate does not win the nomination.
Next Tuesday’s GOP primary comes down to former Governor Tommy Thompson, former Congressman Mark Neumann, hedge fund manager Eric Hovde, and Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald. Johnson says he believes all four of the candidates stand a good chance against Democrat Tammy Baldwin, who faces no opposition in the primary next Tuesday.
Johnson says November will be a “watershed election” about our personal freedoms and the economic model the country will pursue over the next four years.
Speaking at a wispolitics.com even in Madison Tuesday, Johnson admits he had hoped the primary would focus more on those key economic issues and how the candidates plan to address them. Instead, the last several weeks of the campaign have focused on negative attacks, which is likely to worsen in the final week.
Johnson says it’s hard for a candidate to come out of this type of primary without some damage to their reputation. However, he argues that it actually can help to battle test the eventual winner, and allow them to get the issue out in the public early and answer for their record before heading into the general election.
AUDIO: Andrew Beckett reports (1:08)