"Bewley was elected in the year of the national tea party revolt, the anti-government movement with racial overtones that formed in reaction to then-President Barack Obama and his agenda for universal health care. The movement generated a powerful backlash that cost Democrats in Washington 63 seats and their House majority.

In Wisconsin, Republican Scott Walker, who had been Milwaukee County executive, was elected as governor. Republican businessman Ron Johnson defeated three-term Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold. Republicans also gained a majority in both chambers of the Wisconsin legislature.

With Walker in the governor’s mansion, Republicans used their control of government in Madison to pass a law known as “Act 10,” which sharply restricted collective bargaining rights for public employee unions. The measure generated massive protests in the state and reverberated throughout the country as the chaotic demonstrations at the Capitol turned Madison into the epicenter of a national debate.

Wisconsin politics have not been the same since.

For the past decade the state has been an incubator for the kind of tribal politics and deep divisions that characterize civic life in Washington and much of the rest of the nation. While Wisconsin has been closely divided for a long time — four of the last six presidential elections were decided by less than a percentage point — the widening gulf between the two parties exposed in 2011 foreshadowed the extent to which American politics would come to focus more on the extremes rather than the middle of the political spectrum.

This has made Wisconsin not a purple state, as many people suggest, but two states in one — the first comprising a few heavily populated blue enclaves and the second a red sea of rural, small-town and suburban geography that surrounds those blue pockets.

It helps to explain why the state is simultaneously represented by Johnson, a staunch supporter of former president Donald Trump who has supported inquiries suggesting they were significant election irregularities in 2020 and spread debunked theories about coronavirus treatments, and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay person to serve in the Senate and one of the chamber’s more liberal Democrats.

And it reveals why Wisconsin is now once again a focal point as its two political tribes gear up for consequential races in 2022 for governor and U.S. Senate, campaigns that will no doubt position the state to play a decisive role once again in the next presidential contest.

Adding to the intensity is the ongoing specter of Trump, whose narrow win here in 2016 helped seal his shocking electoral college victory and who continues to falsely allege that election fraud is to blame for his narrow defeat last November. Walker contends that, because it was Trump who won in 2016, and not just any Republican nominee, Democratic worries about Wisconsin were magnified and national attention on the state increased.

“You add Donald Trump to the mix, it’s like pouring jet fuel on that angst from the left,” he said.

But in many ways, Walker, though of an entirely different personality, was the precursor to Trump, as his 2010 election victory marked a turning point for the state. Walker’s forceful, unyielding approach did more than change policy. Its lasting effects are seen by his critics as representing a fundamental departure in the state’s politics, upending the governing customs that had existed under previous administrations."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/08/wisconsin-polarization-democrats-republicans/