Democrats see him as vulnerable, pointing to inciting comments on the coronavirus, 2020 election, racial justice protests, and more, and are keen to take another shot at him. Republicans see Johnson as a battle-tested incumbent who has twice proven his spirit in a key swing state.
If Johnson runs, whichever side is right about him would have a leg up in Wisconsin’s hyper-competitive Senate race, where a victory could be key to controlling the entire upper chamber, which is currently split 50-50.
“I think you will find almost every Republican in Wisconsin and outside of Wisconsin wanting Ron Johnson to run because of what's at stake, and that's the majority of the Senate for Republicans,” said Brandon Scholz, a GOP operative in the state. “If he doesn't run, that makes it more difficult.
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“Ron Johnson is what you get when QAnon and the Tea Party have a baby. And I hope that he does run. His candidacy makes the race far more competitive for Democrats,” Wisconsin Democratic consultant Ben Nuckels added. “If Republicans want to see him run, I'll agree with them on that.”
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Johnson first came to the spotlight in 2010 when he ran as a political outsider and was left for dead by the GOP before disturbing then-Sen. Russ Feingold (D), a giant in Wisconsin politics who served three terms in the Senate. Johnson was similarly written off in a 2016 rematch with Feingold, only to win a second term by 3 points.
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Along the way, Johnson established a reputation as a relentless conservative with a knack for making scientific claims with which few specialists would agree, including in 2010 when he said sunspots were more likely to add to climate change than human behavior.
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Lately, Johnson promoted in early December the discredited theory that “mouthwash has been proven to kill the coronavirus.” In remarks to Fox News last week, he asked: “what’s the point” of vaccines if fully vaccinated people can still contract COVID-19, though the shots’ chief goal is curbing hospitalizations and deaths — which they overwhelmingly do.
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He was also a staunch advocate of an audit of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin, though he conceded in secretly recorded audio that there was no foul play. Johnson in March also praised rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 as people who “love this country,” though he said he would have been upset if “those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters.”
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