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What Wisconsin voters are focused on in a swing county that’s backed the presidential winner for years
Ahead of the Nov. 5 election, Wisconsin resident Emma Cox feels like all eyes are on her home county — where voters in past years backed Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and then Joe Biden.
Door County, home to around 30,000 people, has a streak of backing the winning candidate in every presidential election for decades. One of a handful of competitive counties in the state, Door County could offer a clue into the eventual outcome as Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump vie for Wisconsin’s crucial 10 electoral votes.
“All eyes are on Wisconsin, all eyes have been on Door County,” Cox said. “And it feels like there’s pressure for us to deliver.”
What makes Door County, Wisconsin, unique
Seven swing states, home to 513 counties, hold the key to next month’s election. Door County, located on a peninsula wedged between Lake Michigan and Green Bay, is the only one of those counties where voters have selected the winning candidate in each election this century.
In 2020, President Biden carried the county by just 292 votes, the tightest margin in any Wisconsin county. Yet even as the Trump and Harris campaigns crisscross the state, neither candidate has made a stop in Door County.
Republican Joel Kitchens, who represents the county in the State Assembly, said Door tends to pick the winner in every statewide election.
60 Minutes
“I think a lot of it is that we are such a cross section of the state,” he said. “We have a lot of people that came from the cities and from the suburbs and retired. We have a strong agricultural community. We have heavy manufacturing.”
The county is 92% White, but diverse politically. In the rural south, signs of support for Trump dominate the landscape.
What voters in Door County are focused on
Cox, who runs a boutique in the Door County tourist town of Sister Bay, is focused on reproductive rights and their role in the election. Despite political differences, she said people in the county get along.
“You don’t want to alienate your neighbors,” Cox said. “You don’t want to alienate your fellow business owners. You all come together.”
Further south in the county, Austin Vandertie, a sixth-generation dairy farmer, is focused on inflation.
“You know, inflation affects the cost of my feed, my fuel, my seed, my fertilizer, everything that it takes for me to grow a crop and feed it to my cows to get a good product,” Vandertie said.
The 25-year-old south Door County resident plans to vote for Trump, with many of his neighbors leaning the same way.
Further north in the county, cows and deer blinds give way to artists and rainbow flags.
In Sturgeon Bay, the county seat, sensibilities vary from one yard to the next with signs for both Trump and Harris.
60 Minutes
John and Annette Vincent, now retired, moved to Sturgeon Bay from Chicago.
“We are very purple,” Annette said. “That is our impression from moving up here, is that we are very, very purple.”
How the poll and party workers see Door County
Wisconsin was decided by less than 1% in the last two elections, even though around 80% of the state’s counties were decided by a double-digit margin.
Charles Franklin is the director of the Marquette Law School Poll, widely considered Wisconsin’s best. His most recent poll has Harris up 4%, but he acknowledges that there were major issues with polling in 2016 and 2020.
Most polls in those years, including ones by CBS News, fell short in accounting for Trump’s voters. The Marquette Law School’s polling during the midterm elections closely mirrored the final results but had greater discrepancies during the presidential elections.
“The people that Trump mobilizes to vote really do turn out for him. But they seem to drop out of the electorate in the midterm,” Franklin said.
Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Brian Schimming is working to identify those hidden Trump voters, determined to get them to the polls on Nov. 5.
“Well, I spoke at President Trump’s rally the other day, and I said to the folks there, ‘Look, there are hundreds of thousands of people in this state who think like us, they act like us, they live like us, they believe like us, but they don’t vote.’ And I truly believe that,” Schimming said.
For the Democrats, the strategy entails running up the numbers in Milwaukee and Dane County, home to Madison — the state capitol and the University of Wisconsin. Biden won more than 75% of the vote there in 2020. Democrats are also trying to stanch the bleeding in rural swaths that have swung heavily towards Trump.
The state’s vote is pivotal, State Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said.
“Wisconsin was the state that tipped the Electoral College for Donald Trump in 2016,” Wikler said. “There is every possibility that Wisconsin could tip the presidential election again in 2024.”
Wikler took a look at Door County data and found that the race was almost perfectly tied there.
“Whoever wins in Door County is probably the next president of the United States,” he said.
The search for the mystery swing voter
While the county has swung back and forth between voting for Democrats and Republicans, 60 Minutes wanted to find out if there was anyone in the county who’d followed the same path, voting for the winning candidate for six elections in a row.
The search began with a bulletin broadcast by the local radio station. It continued at a restaurant, famous for goats that graze the grass roof, where correspondent Jon Wertheim asked patrons if they knew anyone who’d voted for the winning candidate six elections in a row, but he was out of luck.
Next stop was the local watering hole, where Wertheim found trucker Joe Conlon.
60 Minutes
He came close, voting for five of the last six winners. Conlon, who thinks he’ll be voting for Trump this year, also voted for him in the last two elections.
At a local Rotary Club, a woman thought she might have voted for the winning candidate in all six elections, before realizing she hadn’t.
After scouring Door County, 60 Minutes came up empty in its search for that singular voter. Still, one thing was made clear during the search: in the swingiest part of Wisconsin, family and community come before politics, and everyone will be invited to Thanksgiving, regardless of their political affiliations.
“We’re a little different in Wisconsin, I guess. We got that Midwest nice going on,” Vandertie said.
Tommy Edman and Will Smith homered to send Shohei Ohtani into the World Series for the first time, and the Los Angeles Dodgers eliminated the New York Mets with a 10-5 victory in Game 6 of the NL Championship Series on Sunday night.
The Dodgers clinched their record 25th NL pennant and first at home since 1988, when they beat the Mets in seven games. They moved on to their 22nd World Series — 13th in Los Angeles — and first since 2020, when they beat Tampa Bay during the pandemic-delayed season.
Next up for Ohtani and Co. is Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees, who are back in the World Series for the 41st time and first in 15 years. Game 1 is Friday at Dodger Stadium, pitting Judge (58) and Ohtani (54) — MLB’s top home-run hitters this season.
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It’ll be the 12th time the storied franchises meet in the World Series and the first in 43 years. The Yankees have beaten the Dodgers eight times, while the Dodgers’ two championships against the Bronx Bombers came in 1981 and 1955.
Ohtani, playing his first season with the Dodgers after agreeing to a record-breaking contract in free agency, had two hits and scored two runs in Game 6. He hit .364 with two homers and six RBIs in the NLCS.
Not bad for his first postseason after spending six years with the Los Angeles Angels, who never had a winning record or reached the playoffs during his tenure.
Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen struck out Brandon Nimmo, Mark Vientos and Pete Alonso swinging in the eighth in his first two-inning outing since the 2021 NLCS.
The Dodgers briefly trailed 1-0 before cleanup hitter Edman came up big.
He drove in the Dodgers’ first four runs and his 11 RBIs in the NLCS tied a franchise record set by Corey Seager in 2020 against Atlanta. Edman joined the Dodgers at the July trade deadline from St. Louis.
The Dodgers eliminated the Mets on their second try in the series. They outscored New York 40-26 in the six games. None of the games were close, with the Dodgers earning two shutouts.
The Mets came within two wins of reaching the World Series after a 22-33 start.
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NEW YORK — The New York Liberty finally have a WNBA championship after beating the Minnesota Lynx 67-62 in overtime of a decisive Game 5 on Sunday night.
Jonquel Jones scored 17 points to lead New York, which was one of the original franchises in the league. The Liberty made the WNBA Finals five times before, losing each one, including last season. This time they wouldn’t be denied, although it took an extra five minutes.
The win gave the city of New York its first basketball title since 1973 when the Knicks won the NBA championship.
With stars Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu struggling on offense, other players stepped up. Leonie Fiebich started off OT with a 3-pointer, and then Nyara Sabally had a steal for a layup to make it 65-60 and bring the sellout crowd to a frenzied state.
Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images
Minnesota didn’t score in OT until Kayla McBride hit two free throws with 1:51 left. The Lynx missed all six of their field goal attempts in overtime. After Ionescu missed a shot with 21 seconds left, her 18th miss on 19 shot attempts, the Lynx had one last chance, but Bridget Carleton missed a 3-pointer with 16 seconds left.
Stewart, who missed a free throw with 0.8 seconds left in Game 1, hit two free throws with 10.1 seconds left to seal the victory.
As the final seconds ticked off the clock the players hugged and streamers fell from the rafters.
Napheesa Collier scored 22 points to lead Minnesota before fouling out with 13 seconds left in OT.
The Lynx were trying for a record fifth WNBA title, breaking a tie with the Seattle Storm and Houston Comets. Minnesota won four titles from 2011-17 behind the core group of Lindsay Whalen, Seimone Augustus, Rebekkah Brunson, Sylvia Fowles and Maya Moore. That was the team’s last appearance in the WNBA Finals until this year.
This is the first time since 2019 that the WNBA Finals have gone the distance. Since the league switched to a best-of-five format in 2005, seven other series have gone to a Game 5 and the home team has won five of those contests, including in 2019.
This series has been a fitting conclusion to a record-breaking season for the league. All five games came down to the last few possessions and have included two overtime games and a last-second shot, which have led to record ratings.
The first three games each had over a million viewers on average, with the audience growing for each contest. They also have had huge crowds in attendance.
Liberty fan Spike Lee was courtside over an hour before tipoff chatting with the media while wearing his Ionescu jersey. Once Ionescu finished warming up pregame, the pair had a brief exchange and hugged. Lee was part of a sellout crowd of 18,090 that helped this series set both the overall attendance record for a WNBA Finals as well as the average attendance mark.
