JANESVILLE – On an afternoon in downtown Janesville last week, there were no political appearances — but there was a lot going on, both inside and outside the Rock County Democrats' office on the corner of South Main and East Court streets.
In just an hour at the local Democratic party's office, four residents came in to buy displays of support, walking out with stacks of signs bearing the names of local candidates seeking election in the Nov. 3 midterm. State Sen. Mark Spreitzer, state Rep. Ann Roe, Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate David Crowley and U.S. Congressional candidate Mitchell Berman will see their names newly displayed in county yards.Â
Three field office workers came and went after readying a table full of hundreds of door-hanger pamphlets, stacks organized and bound to clipboards, each bearing a rubber band hanger, and assigned to a neighborhood canvasser who'd make sure the pamphlets reach local residents' front doors.
Several visitors came by, voters who had questions about the GM-JATCO site referendum bound for Janesville ballots on Nov. 3 — a midterm election with state and federal consequence, but also local gravity.
Rock County Democratic party's chair, Jim White, said the area is being watched closely by candidates for both state and federal offices.
White was unsurprised to hear Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany was stopping in Janesville on Saturday at the Rock County Republican Party's headquarters on West Wall Street, just six blocks across the Rock River.Â
A shows Tiffany and his competitor, Democrat and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, are in a tight race for governor, with voters favoring Crowley late last week by a margin of just three percentage points.Â
White said races like the one for Democratic state lawmaker Brienne Brown's seat, the 43rd Assembly District, are "some of the most competitive in the state." Brown runs against Republican challenger Paul McGraw, a veterinarian.
Various polls, including the Marquette Law poll rates that race among battleground contests that could play a role in whether Republicans maintain control ofer both chambers of the state legislature. Brown won her seat with 51.3% of the vote in 2024.
Seats like Brown's span intensely rural parts of Rock, Walworth and Jefferson counties, where bipartisan issues like energy grid expansion, agricultural policy and health care could be huge drivers for voters.
Brown was slated to appear at a private Democratic party fundraiser Saturday night in Edgerton, a northern Rock County city with both rural ties and a connection to more urban Dane County.
Rock County has long been considered a Democratic-leaning county in elections. But some races — including Presidential races in general elections — have seen the Democrat majority vote whittled away over the last two decades.
In 2008, President Barack Obama won Rock County by a 30% margin, but in the last four elections between 2012 and 2024, the margin has steadily slipped, with Presidential candidate Kamala Harris carrying Rock County by just seven percentage points.
As it applies to U.S. Congressional races, that shift in voting matters. It means Rock County has shown more evenly-matched odds in big national elections. Candidates know this.
They also know that general elections in Rock County in recent years has had a particularly high voter turnout for the county's 95,000 registered voters.
In the 2022 midterm, Rock County saw a 70% voter turnout, and in the 2024 Presidential election, the county saw 93% of registered voters turn out, according to Rock County records.
"It's no accident Mitchell Berman has been here (in Rock County and Janesville) a couple of times a week," White said, explaining that the Racine County resident — the Democratic challenger of Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil — has made several campaign stops at labor events in Janesville in the last few weeks.
"Rock County has a lot of voters, but for the electorate to vote for you, people need to meet you," White said.