Republican Ron Johnson has defeated Democrat Mandela Barnes to win a third term as a senator from Wisconsin, NBC News projects. Democrats had targeted Johnson as a vulnerable incumbent to topple in their bid to maintain control of the Senate, but Johnson has yet again prevailed over a progressive competitor in the purple state.
Johnson is a wealthy former plastics magnate who came to power in the tea party wave in 2010. He has evolved into a fervent MAGA lawmaker who has said mouthwash can kill Covid, Jan. 6 wasn’t that big a deal and climate change is “bulls—.”
Johnson’s devotion to Donald Trump went beyond questioning the 2020 election results; his aides tried to deliver letters from fake electors to then-Vice President Mike Pence in a bid to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. (Pence’s staff refused to accept them.)
Johnson is redder than his state, but he has vanquished progressive candidates — the late Sen. Russ Feingold, a progressive lion, twice, and now Barnes. Barnes, 35, the lieutenant governor, came up in the progressive Working Families Party in Wisconsin, positioning himself effectively as the progressive standard-bearer in the Democratic primary and as a champion of policies like Medicare for All and the “green new deal.”
Barnes’ lead in the polls evaporated in late September after Johnson hammered him with a negative ad campaign focused on criminal justice. He never got it back. Johnson — who once promised to serve only two terms in the Senate — will now act as a stalwart defender of hard-right policy and MAGA-style politics for six more years in Washington.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Politico, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter by clicking the link at the top of this bio. 
