Can a Hillary loyalist win a gubernatorial race in Bernie country?

Businesswoman and former state legislator Kelda Helen Roys considers Wisconsin gubernatorial bid

I’m probably going to shock everyone who is familiar with my political views, but I’m open to endorsing Kelda Helen Roys if she were to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for the office of Governor of Wisconsin (if I endorse a candidate in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race, it would occur after my home state of Illinois holds its gubernatorial primaries). Kelda is a real estate tech businesswoman, a former member of the Wisconsin State Assembly, and a former executive director of the Wisconsin chapter of the reproductive rights organization NARAL.

As reported by Jessie Opoien (last name pronounced oh-POY-en) of the Madison, Wisconsin-based The Cap Times, Kelda is “very seriously” considering running for Wisconsin’s highest office:

Former state Rep. Kelda Helen Roys is thinking “very seriously” about running for governor in 2018, she told the Capital Times on Friday.

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“What we need to do is articulate a positive vision for the future of our state and bring energy and excitement to voters in the Democratic Party, not in the Democratic Party, independents that feel like they have been left out of the discussion, and people who aren’t that engaged in politics because they haven’t really had a reason to be. Those are the elements that are going to make us successful,” Roys said in an interview Friday.

In regards to what I think of Kelda’s chances of winning the Democratic primary if she were to run, even though Kelda was probably the single most dedicated Hillary Clinton supporter in the entire state of Wisconsin in 2016, I think she can win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in one of Bernie Sanders’s strongest states in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries for a number of reasons:

• Kelda is a major proponent of replacing the Electoral College system with a national popular vote for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States.
• Kelda represented parts of very progressive Dane County as a state legislator for four years in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, so she has prior experience with representing very progressive voters.
• The group of voters that have been the core base of support for the resistance movement against Donald Trump have been very liberal voters who voted for Clinton over Sanders in the 2016 primaries, which is a demographic of voters that Kelda would probably receive quite a bit of support from.

In regards to what I think of Kelda’s chances of winning the general election if she were to run for governor and win the Democratic nomination, even though it would completely defy conventional wisdom in Wisconsin going into the 2018 campaign, I think that Kelda could win the governorship in Wisconsin. Kelda herself gave a preview of what her general election campaign against Republican Governor Scott Walker would look like, if she were to run for governor and win the Democratic nomination:

Republicans, Roys said, have had seven years in the majority “to make their case” and have failed to articulate a strong strategy for economic growth. They have also failed to meaningfully address education funding, climate change, health care, child care and family leave policies, she said.

Conventional wisdom in Wisconsin has been that Democrats absolutely need a center-left agro-populist type politician who does not come from Milwaukee County or Dane County in order to defeat Scott Walker. I disagree with that. In my opinion, Democrats need someone who can completely discredit the Republicans in the minds of Wisconsin voters to be the Democratic nominee against Scott Walker. I think that there’s more than one person in Wisconsin who can do that, and Kelda is one of them.