HOW DID KOHL GET A FREE RIDE?

With Thompson Out, Party Lacks Senate Contender

If you go to the Web site of the Republican Party of Wisconsin and
click on "Election Candidates 2006," you'll get a list of candidates
backed by the party in races from governor to the Assembly's 75th District.

What you won't find is any mention of the U.S. Senate
race.

"Our attention now is fully on the governor's race," said Rick Wiley,
executive director of the party. "It's unfortunate that Herb Kohl is
going to get, for all intents and purposes, a free pass on this one."

Yes, there will be a Republican candidate on the November ballot.
There also will be a Green Party candidate and an independent. And
there's even a Democratic primary, with Ben Masel, a well-known
Madison marijuana activist, challenging Kohl in September.

But, for all practical purposes, Kohl won re-election when the
mainstream Republican Party failed to come up with a strong candidate
to run against him.

In that lies a story of Kohl's advantages of wealth, 18 years in
office and favorable standing in opinion polls, all of which clearly
discouraged some potential opponents.

But it is also a story of Republican leaders - starting with Sen.
Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, who heads the National Republican
Senatorial Committee - banking heavily on a long shot that they appear
to have thought was their only real chance to win the election. That
long shot was that former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, who had often said
he did not want to be a senator, would change his mind and run against
Kohl.

According to some who were involved, the Thompson idea eclipsed work
on recruiting or launching the campaigns of other candidates during
the crucial period when such work could have been done.

By the time Thompson pulled the plug on the idea in late June, it was
too late for anything but a Hail Mary pass to a clearly lesser figure,
state Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend). Grothman decided at the last
moment not to catch the pass.

Isn't it, like, kind of embarrassing for a major party not to be able
to come up with a candidate it backs for a major office?

Isn't there some Republican out there who wanted to be a senator or
perhaps just to build up some experience and contacts for a future
race? Someone other than Robert Gerald Lorge, who will be the
Republican candidate, whom party leaders repeatedly dismissed, who has
limited resources, who got 4.3% of the Republican vote when he ran in
a Senate primary in 2004, who has views on issues that are to the
right of the Republican mainstream and who is the target of an
allegation of sexual misconduct that became publicized in recent days?

"It's not from lack of trying, that's all I can say," said Mary
Buestrin, a Republican National Committee member from Mequon. "It's
one of those things that happen."

Or don't happen.

"There is not a whole lot to say," Terry Kohler, also a Republican
National Committee member, wrote in an e-mail. "Herb Kohl will spend
what he needs to, to stay in office, thereby precluding a challenge by
any front line potential candidates. His negatives outside of the
'right-to-life' issue are, at most, very mild. He stays well under the
radar most of the time, thereby giving hardly anything as a reason to
diss him, except to argue he is 'ineffective.' Not a winning issue,
apparently." Recruitment efforts fail

Republican Party leaders talked for months like that issue of
effectiveness was going to be a winner. But in reality, they were
always in a position of trying to recruit someone rather than having
major candidates come forward on their own.

As Wiley recounts it, a lot of work was being done to persuade Tim
Michels to run. Young, photogenic and with a compelling personal story
of business success and military service, Michels got 44% of the vote
in losing to Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold in 2004.

This time, Wiley said, polls showed Michels could do well. Efforts to
persuade him included phone calls from current Republican senators
from other states - but apparently not promises of major financial
help.

Wiley said things took a different turn in February, when Dole said
the party should focus on talking Thompson into running.

Thompson was much more interested in running for governor again and,
by his own description, came close to saying yes to that idea.

But while Thompson's interest in a Senate race was, at best, more
muted, the idea of him as the candidate was appealing to Republican
leaders.

One big reason was that he was the only person who feasibly could turn
the race into a real contest, one that could bring a victory of
national significance to Republicans who are concerned about
maintaining a majority in the Senate after this year. In polls through
the spring, Thompson held a slight lead on Kohl.

GOP leaders took Dole's cue and worked on the Thompson possibility,
Wiley said. That put Michels on the sidelines for months. By the time
Thompson said no, Michels said no also, noting that he couldn't put
together a successful campaign in the remaining time.

In the end, only Lorge filed as a Republican candidate. A 46-year-old
lawyer from a political family and a resident of Bear Creek, a small
town in Outagamie County, Lorge described himself in a mid-June
interview as "probably the most pro-life candidate in America" and
said that as a senator, he would not give in to special interests such
as "slave trade nations like Communist China."

Lorge did not return calls.

WisPolitics, an Internet news service, reported last week that a civil
lawsuit filed in December in Dane County Circuit Court accused Lorge
of molesting a female relative 20 years ago, when she was 3 years old.
In a press release, Lorge called the accusations false and vicious.
Not all dismiss Lorge

Lorge does have backers within the party. Don Taylor, chairman of the
Waukesha County Republican Party, called him "an honorable,
hard-working, common sense man who would represent us very well in
Washington."

And Lorge is actively campaigning across the state, though he is
expected to have limited, if any, ability to buy television
advertising.

There also are others on the Senate ballot this fall:

. Rae Vogeler, 50, from Oregon in Dane County, the Green Party
candidate who describes herself as "a working mother, a community
activist and a peace organizer."

. Masel, organizer in recent years of "Weedstock," a marijuana
celebration, who has run in other elections as a Republican or a
Libertarian. His presence on the ballot means there will be a
Democratic primary on Sept. 12.

. Ben Glatzel, 44, a construction manager for the Milwaukee Water
Works who has never run for office and is on the ballot as an
independent who opposes abortion and same-sex marriage.

Where does that leave Kohl?

Somewhere in his sixth round of statewide television advertising, with
more than $2 million already spent on his campaign, with polls that
show him far ahead of Lorge and with more than 60% of respondents
saying they have a favorable opinion of him. That was the highest
rating among the politicians included in a recent survey by the
Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

Kohl campaign manager Phil Walzak said the lack of a major opponent
shows that Kohl is in touch with what Wisconsinites want and that
people think "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Walzak argued that it's more than just Kohl's wealth and willingness
to spend heavily in self-funding his campaigns. He said candidates
across the U.S. had run campaigns in the past in which they spent huge
amounts of personal money and lost, so there is more to Kohl's
political strength than his willingness to self-fund his campaigns in
huge amounts.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee provides millions of
dollars to campaigns. If Thompson had run, it presumably would have
directed large amounts to Wisconsin.

"You look at the different races, you size up the political landscape,
you size up who's going to be vulnerable in terms of incumbents and
where you have opportunities . . . and you make those funding
decisions," said the committee's press secretary, Brian Nick.

Nick said that so far, no money had been committed to Wisconsin. There
is no indication that that is likely to change.