Wisconsin Dems panicking as gubernatorial race 'in chaos'
Sara Rodriguez had a prime opportunity this past Saturday to show voters gathered for a gubernatorial candidate forum in Wisconsin’s rural Northwoods that she was the person who could unite Democrats, thwart a democratic socialist insurgency and deliver the party unified control of state government for the first time in a generation.
Except the lieutenant governor didn’t show up. Her reserved table sat empty, save for a lone campaign sign. She blamed the last-minute cancellation on a family emergency. But a day later, Rodriguez revealed she had just fired her campaign manager for overcounting donations by hundreds of thousands of dollars over multiple months.
After a weeklong scramble to unsuccessfully contain the financial and political damage she dropped out of the race on Friday, declaring in a video that her money issues were an “ongoing distraction” and that she didn’t want it to “become a cloud over an election that Democrats need to win.”
Her downfall has thrown the Democratic primary field into upheaval less than a month from Election Day. “This race is now in chaos,” said Mitchell Stough, a now-former Rodriguez campaign staffer.