Wisconsin Primary

State Sen. Leah Vukmir won Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary in Wisconsin, notching a victory for the state GOP. Vukmir’s win sets up another opportunity for Wisconsin Republicans to take down one of the last remaining high-profile Democrats in the state.

Vukmir led Marine veteran and businessman Kevin Nicholson 54 percent to 40 percent, when The Associated Press called the race with 56 percent of precincts reporting. She will now take on vulnerable incumbent Tammy Baldwin, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.

Wisconsin Democrat Randy Bryce, who rose to fame with a viral web video last year, won the party nomination Tuesday night in the 1st District race to succeed retiring Speaker Paul D. Ryan.

The union ironworker will now have to determine whether his hard-scrabble profile that brought him national recognition and a fundraising boom will help him win what has been a reliable Republican seat — or whether the GOP will adeptly use his legal troubles against him, and energize the conservative base in the southeastern Wisconsin district.

When Randy Bryce came on to the political scene, he became a Democratic fundraising juggernaut. But the Wisconsin Democrat, who is known by his Twitter moniker “Iron Stache,” hasn’t locked down his primary race in the 1st District, despite a national profile and buckets of money being poured into his campaign.

Bryce faces a potentially competitive contest against Janesville school board member Cathy Myers in Tuesday’s primary. 

Sarah Palin's May prediction that Speaker Paul D. Ryan would be "Cantored" proved way off Tuesday. Ryan handily defeated his primary opponent in Wisconsin's 1st congressional district. 

Paul Nehlen’s long-shot bid to oust Ryan was just that — a long shot. The Associated Press called the race in favor of Ryan at about 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, shortly after polls closed in Wisconsin. Ryan won with 85 percent of the vote over Nehlen’s 16 percent.  

Republican vice presidential nominee and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence came out on Wednesday to endorse Speaker Paul D. Ryan in his primary contest, despite Donald Trump's refusal to endorse the Wisconsin Republican a day earlier.   

"I strongly support Paul Ryan, strongly endorse his reelection," Pence said in an interview with Fox News. "I believe we need Paul Ryan in leadership in the Congress of the United States to rebuild our military, to strengthen our economy and to ensure that we have the kind of leadership in this country that will make America great again."  

Paul Nehlen is using Donald Trump's refusal to endorse Paul D. Ryan  as a springboard in his primary battle against the House speaker.  

Gov. Mike Pence on Wednesday came out and endorsed Ryan in his primary election.  

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who is seeking to keep his seat in a tight race this cycle, raised more than $2.1 million in the first quarter of 2016.  

That's an improvement from the $1.6 million he raised in the last quarter of 2015, but still falls short of the nearly $3.4 million that his competitor, former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, raised during the same three-month period this year.  

INDIANAPOLIS — Hours before Bernie Sanders won Wisconsin by double digits Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was kicking off its efforts to win next month’s primary in Indiana.  

Clinton supporters, including Democratic Rep. André Carson — just back from a weekend of campaigning in the Badger State — and a cardboard cut-out of the candidate herself turned up at a northeast Indianapolis strip mall to christen the campaign’s first Indiana office, an empty storefront complete with dressing rooms leftover from its commercial past.  

Updated April 5 at 11:01 p.m. Ted Cruz handily won the Wisconsin GOP primary on Tuesday after the Republican establishment lined up behind him in recent weeks, complicating front-runner Donald Trump's path to the nomination.  

Bernie Sanders continued his recent string of victories over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary in a state that has not backed a Republican for president in more than 30 years.  

For months, Donald Trump has led in polls, eventually piling up enough delegates to become a serious threat to win the Republican nomination in Cleveland in July. But now it appears that the wealthy businessman and reality television star’s candidacy is in jeopardy, the result of months of crude and childish comments, narcissistic behavior and contradictory policy pronouncements — as well as a more concerted effort by adversaries to deny him delegates.

No, Trump’s true believers certainly won’t desert him any more than he deserted Corey Lewandowski. They will continue to see Trump as the political messiah who has a clear-eyed view of the country’s problems and is uniquely prepared to solve them.