Rebecca Cooke and Eric Hovde emerged as the winners after Tuesday’s partisan primary on Aug. 13.
Cooke cemented her Democratic spot against Republican incumbent Derrick Van Orden. The two will vie for the U.S. House of Representative spot for the Third Congressional District on Nov. 5.
Cooke took 50% of the votes in the state, followed by Katrina Shankland’s 41.2%. Eric Wilson pulled in only 8.8%.
Hovde’s race for the Republican U.S. Senate ticket was a little more lopsided. Rejani Raveendran took home 6.3% of the votes, with Charles Barman at 7.4%, leaving Hovde with the lion’s share of 86.3%. Hovde will face Tammy Baldwin, the Democratic incumbent in November.
STATE REFERENDUM
Both state referendum questions garnered a solid ‘no’ response from Wisconsin voters.
Each state constitutional ammendment proposal tallied up over 100,000 ‘no’ votes over the yesses; 58% no to 42% yes.
Locally, the referendum questions were also upended by ‘no’ but by only 300 votes.
The referenda aimed to reduce the governor’s power in spending federal money, which would have made it more difficult to spend funds in emergencies.
LOCAL VOTER TURNOUT
In Monroe County, 7,404 voters of the 23,608 registered showed up to the partisan primary on Tuesday. This calculates to a 31.36% turnout.
“We’re sitting at around 24% right now, and estimates are between 21 and 25%,” said Village of Cashton clerk Tammy Bekkum 20 minutes before the 8 p.m. deadline. “So we’re doing ok.”
In the end, the Village of Cashton concluded the evening with 27.68% turnout, or 147 out of 531 voters.
Township of Jefferson nearly tipped into triple digits with 99 voters out of 339 registered (29.2%).
The Portland township recorded 154 of 493 (31.24%), while Melvina exceeded the county average with a turnout of 36.73%. Melvina has 49 voters in the books, and 18 of those completed a ballot.
The August partisan primary served as a warm-up for the next election, which is Tuesday, Nov. 5. A new President of the United States will be decided.
