June 10, 2015 MILWAUKEE—Few state party chairs have ever had a tenure like Mike Tate. The man who led Wisconsin Democrats for the past six years watched his party lose to Scott Walker in three elections, including a recall of their own making. He watched a liberal icon, then-Sen. Russ Feingold, lose to a tea-party-backed Republican, Ron Johnson. And most consequentially of all, he watched the Walker-led GOP break the traditional backbone of the Democratic Party—unions—in a set of once-unthinkable legislative actions. There have been successes during the past years, too, as Tate pointed out during his farewell address to...
