Bice: Donald Trump, minus 120,000 Wisconsin GOP votes, becomes Tuesday's biggest loser

We like to complain about them.

Our politicians are screwing this up or wasting money on that.

But when push comes to shove, we continue to keep the exact same people in power.

Look at the Milwaukee Common Council and Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors. Every single incumbent who ran for re-election was victorious. For those with real competition — and some of them didn't even have that — they generally cruised to victory. Two supervisors, Peter Burgelis and Liz Sumner, even got promotions, Burgelis to the Common Council and Sumner to county comptroller.

For many, the only reason anybody had a late night was that the Milwaukee County website crashed before all the results were in.

Neither Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson nor Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley broke a sweat while winning four more years. The same could be said for a host of other local incumbents.

That doesn't mean we can't keep complaining about our local officials. It's just that we need to remember that we played a big hand in putting them where they are.

But incumbents weren't the only one who came out on top Tuesday. Here is your unofficial list of winners and losers from the spring general election.

Loser: Donald Trump

Tuesday should have been a very good day for the former Republican president. He got to lead a rally in Green Bay and then send his audience off to the polls to vote for him.

And Trump did win. In fact, his race was called before 0.25% of the vote was in statewide.

But Wisconsin Republicans still aren't completely sold on Trump. How do we know?

Because more than 120,000 Republicans in the state went to the polls on Tuesday and voted for someone other than Trump — even though all of his GOP opponents have dropped out. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley pulled in more than 75,000 votes, or nearly 13% of the total.

Bottom line: Trump has some work to do if he is going to win Wisconsin this fall.

More: Trump's Wisconsin rally exemplifies GOP's mixed messaging on absentee voting

Winner: Robin Vos

Despite all the criticism he takes, Vos, the Assembly speaker, helped get two Republican-backed proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot and saw them through to victory.

One Republican insider noted that Vos helped push through "two election integrity referendums that address the thing his haters say he refused to address." He got a helping hand from the conservative MacIver Institute and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which combined to spend more than $100,000 on the proposals.

An attempted recall of Vos failed last month.

But not all conservatives were impressed with the margin of victory. The amendments prohibit clerks from using private grants to administer elections and add that only appointed election officials can perform tasks to conduct elections.

"Considering they had almost no organized opposition and dealt with keeping scary money out of politics, while the proponents made a big push to get them passed, and Republicans couldn't get more than 54% & 58%?" asked commentator James Wigderson on X. "Despite the heavy GOP effort and the fear mongering, that's it?"

In the end, the amendments, particularly the second one, could lead to one more winner: Wisconsin attorneys willing to hash out the exact meaning of the broadly worded proposals in state court.

Loser: Dale Kooyenga

Kooyenga, the former state senator who now heads the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, went all-in in opposing the $252 million referendum for Milwaukee Public Schools.

Records show MMAC, the city's business lobby, dropped more than $400,000 on media and Madison-based consulting firm Platform Communications to try to block the measure. The referendum proposal passed by a narrow 1,720 votes, despite the rather inept campaign by MPS officials.

A Democratic strategist said he didn't understand why Kooyenga hired Platform, a firmed headed by former GOP operative Keith Gilkes, to win a contest in heavily Democratic Milwaukee County. Platform appeared more effective in helping MacIver and WILL on the two constitutional amendments, the strategist said.

But a source close to MMAC noted that the last MPS referendum passed easily and the business group at least made this one a close contest. "They were fighting uphill big time," said the source.

Here are a few other winners and losers:

Loser: Josh Zepnick — The message should be getting through to Zepnick, an ex-lawmaker who lost his seat after being being accused of sexual misconduct. Zepnick was beaten by Burgelis on Tuesday for an Milwaukee aldermanic post. To borrow a line from actress Sally Field, the voters don't like you, Josh; right now, they really don't like you.

Winner: Scott Walker — Opponents of Kenosha mayoral candidate Dave Bogdala did all they could to tie him to Walker, the former Republican governor, even sending out a massive mailer placing Bogdala on Team Walker. But Bogdala still defeated his opponent, Lydia Spottswood, a former Kenosha alderwoman, with 53% of the vote.

Loser: Milwaukee County's website — Look, folks, we've got to do better than this. The county has made major upgrades in its election website in recent years. But the entire site can't go down while the votes are being counted. It makes it look like Milwaukee officials aren't quite ready for prime time this fall.

Winner: State Republican Party — The state GOP got involved in a number of local races, despite its anemic fundraising totals, and helped pull off the upset of the night by knocking off liberal Wausau Mayor Katie Rosenberg. Behind the scenes, interestingly, top Democrats are blaming Rosenberg for her defeat.

Loser: Tearman Spencer — Boy, Tearman, we're going to miss you as city attorney. You were one of a kind.

Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 313-6684 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on X at @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin election's biggest loser: Trump, who lost 120K GOP votes