In a town Biden won by 19 votes, debate stirs doubts he can win again this year

By John King, CNN

Cedarburg, Wisconsin (CNN) — Lisa Reissmann had to stop watching.

“He didn’t seem as strong as what he has been in the past,” she said of President Joe Biden’s performance last month at the CNN debate. “I was really having a hard time watching it. Because he did seem a little off.”

Her husband, fellow Biden voter Troy Reissmann, hung in to the debate’s end, reaching for the phone during former President Donald Trump’s closing statement.

“Yeah, it was definitely scary,” Troy Reissmann said of Biden’s performance. “The first people that I called were my parents, who are really old. And I said, ‘What did you guys think about that?’ Because I still know where I’m going to vote, where my vote is going to lie. But they don’t. And they were equally as scared.”

The Reissmanns own the Shinery, a moonshine bar in Cedarburg, a small, picturesque city about 30 minutes north of Milwaukee. What were once textile mills are now bars, restaurants, inns and art galleries. Local after local talks about living in a real-life Hallmark movie or a Norman Rockwell painting.

The Reissmanns — civil, affable and politically minded — have a message for the candidate they both supported in 2020.

“Think of the future. Think of our kids and grandkids,” Troy Reissmann said. “Maybe you should step aside only because there’s — the future doesn’t look too bright with the other side taking over. And maybe I’m wrong, and I hope I would be, but you know, it’s scary.”

Lisa Reissmann agreed. “I think it is time. We just need fresh leadership, new leadership. … I like Joe Biden as a person, you know. I think he stands for good things. But I am just not sure he’s there anymore to lead the country.”

The Reissmanns — and Cedarburg — are now part of a CNN project designed to track the 2024 campaign through the eyes and experiences of voters who live in key battlegrounds and are part of critical voting blocs.

Cedarburg, population 12,000, would not have made such a list until recently. It was once reliably Republican. Mitt Romney won 63% of the vote here just a dozen years ago, in 2012. Trump won in 2016, but his share of the vote dropped to 55%. Then Biden eked out a 19-vote win in Cedarburg in 2020 — a combination, locals say, of population shifts and Trump’s suburban struggles with moderate Republicans and GOP-leaning independents.

Gina Cilento fits, though perhaps not perfectly, in the latter group.

“I can’t say right now,” Cilento said when asked her 2024 presidential preference. “I’m undecided.”

Biden’s debate debacle hasn’t automatically translated into more support for Trump, at least in Cedarburg.

Cilento tends to vote Republican and has never voted for a Democrat for president. But she is disgusted with today’s politics and calls herself “leaning more independent or straight up libertarianism.”

“My politics are currently very — a place of being kind of over it,” Cilento said in an interview at her growing Cedarburg pickleball studio. “Every time you go to the polls — this is the best our country can do? … We are one of the greatest countries in the whole entire world and this is what we’re — these are our deliverables? It’s very frustrating. … I just feel overall sadness, and to me the biggest issue is that a house divided cannot stand. And there’s truth to that and I’m seeing our country erode instead of thrive.”

We find dismay and disgust at the presidential choices everywhere we travel. Worries about political polarization — “a house divided” as Cilento put it — were common among Americans who have a history of voting Republican but a hard time voting for Trump because of a tone they find abrasive and antagonistic.

To that end, Cilento said she “would entertain” voting third-party. She cannot imagine voting for Biden and said she was saddened by his debate performance. She said she would at least take a look at a new Democrat if Biden stepped aside.

“I’m in a place where I’m wanting to feel connected,” she said.

Cilento — a former tennis pro turned competitive, touring pickleball player — sees voters of all stripes at her facility. But political conversations there tend to be brief and polite.

“It is really just a place for people to forget what is going on in the real world, and they can focus on just having fun and getting along,” she said.

Cilento was the grand marshal of this year’s Fourth of July parade in Cedarburg, an event — once featured in a Toby Keith music video — that is a source of enormous local pride.

During the parade, which runs for about two hours, the sidewalks are packed with families as marching bands, antique tractors, and floats sponsored by local businesses wind past stone and shingled buildings with rich histories.

“The city itself was really powered by textile mills,” said Melissa Wraalstad, who runs the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts, which is located on a Cedarburg farmstead once owned by German immigrants.

“Mid-20th century into the 1970s, the mills closed. So Cedarburg had to reinvent itself and come up with another idea,” Wraalstad said in an interview. “A lot of other towns faltered (but) Cedarburg was able to reinvent itself as an arts destination and a tourist town.”

Wraalstad noticed another change to Cedarburg in 2020, when, for the first time, the lawn signs were roughly evenly split between the Democratic and Republican candidates. Her favorite? A neighboring house where the husband and wife split the lawn — half Trump; half Biden.

Everyone says there are fewer signs this year. Maybe it is just early. Or maybe it’s a reflection of what Wraalstad heard a lot from museum visitors and friends after the debate.

“People weren’t thrilled with either of them, for the most part,” she said.

And the review of Biden’s debate?

“The same concerns people all over the country have about age,” said Wraalstad, who said she was an independent who could not discuss her personal opinions because of her museum role.

The lack of enthusiasm for both major-party candidates was also evident at a giant post-parade picnic at a local park. There were a modest number of Trump hats and shirts; some, but fewer, signs of Biden branding. Conversations with a half-dozen Democrats were dominated by their worries about Biden’s debate performance and their view it had damaged his chances of winning Wisconsin again. (The president narrowly carried the state in 2020 after Trump won it four years earlier.)

Allen Naparalla tracks the political change here by the dwindling number of eye rolls and complaints about the slogan of his Chiselled Grape Winery right along Cedarburg’s main drag: “Sexy Wines – Taste the Juice.”

Five years ago, he said, when he opened the shop, he had “some issues with people.”
People said things like “‘what is that?’” and “‘that’s disgusting,’” Naparalla said. “Now you are kind of getting on an even keel between conservative and liberal.”

Naparalla moved here to care for his aging mother. His wines are made and bottled in California and sold in a welcoming café where locals mingle with tourists. In a campaign year like this, politics are a frequent topic of conversation.

“I make it a safe environment,” Naparalla said. “Everyone has a right to speak. Everyone has a right to say what they feel.”

He calls himself a fiscal conservative and social liberal, someone who thinks Washington should spend less money but ban assault-style rifles.

“I’m having a horrible, difficult time,” Naparalla said. “It’s just constant fighting and bickering. … It’s the middle class that is not being represented anymore. The actual worker. The small businessman.”

In one breath, he says he is undecided when it comes to the 2024 presidential election. In the next, he says he can’t vote for Trump and doesn’t see a viable third-party option.

Naparalla, too, watched the debate.

“Horrible. I mean it was awful,” Naparalla said. “Watching Biden try to get through his words was just bad. Just bad. Now everyone has a bad day. I get it. But the thing is, this was a time — this was your time to shine, you know?”

Did Biden look capable of serving four and a half more years?

“I don’t, I think that what’s …” said Naparalla — not often at a loss for words — as he stumbled a bit trying to settle on his answer. “Let me put it this way: I’m voting for the party right now.”

This sentiment from Naparalla came up a lot in our Cedarburg conversations: “Before the debate, I thought Biden could still pull it out.”

Now, Naparalla and many certain or likely Biden voters here voice doubts that the president can carry Wisconsin and win reelection. And they fear a Trump return to the White House.

“It’s going to be probably a hairy time for a while,” Naparalla said.

Yet he is not convinced switching candidates is the answer.

“I don’t think so,” he said when asked whether he believed Vice President Kamala Harris is qualified to be president. He spends a lot of time in California and said he does not think Gov. Gavin Newsom should be the nominee, either.

Naparalla understands why some people are calling for Biden to step aside. But he is skeptical.

“Who’s going to do it?” he said. “And it’s so late in the election process that, you know, Trump will be a shoo-in anyway. … I just think it is too late.”

Naparalla was not the only voter we spoke to in Cedarburg to pose this challenge to Biden’s team and top Democrats: “If you’re really concerned about your party, then do something before this. You know what I mean?”

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