“I think what we’ve seen over the past four days is a lack of answers to the biggest challenges our country faces. We have an unsecured border, we have higher costs, we have a foreign policy that continues to not lead from strength. And what we did not hear over the course of four days in Chicago was answers to how we’re going to address those challenges,” U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil said. “Hope and joy does not secure the US Mexico border. Hope and joy does not bring down prices.”

Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Brian Schimming called the DNC a “Hollywood show” to divert the attention of voters away from the damage Biden and Harris have done during the past four years.

“Kamala Harris cannot possibly take credit for her own work with Biden in the last three and a half years, because if she does, she’ll lose the election,” Schimming said. “They switched out the candidate, but the fundamentals of this race really have not changed. Kamala Harris will be a continuation, if not worse, than what’s happened under Joe Biden. And she’s been part of it, and she cannot escape that.” 

During the convention, Harris made references to creating jobs and lowering housing and drug costs but gave few details, instead focusing primarily on Project 2025 and other claims about former President Donald Trump that her opponent has denied.

“Vice President Harris made statements as if she is not currently in the White House,” Steil said. “What we saw in four days in Chicago [was] a whitewash of what’s happened over the past three and a half years, and an attempt to distract the American people from the challenges that we’re facing.”

Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler holds a much rosier view of what another Harris administration would look like.

“Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are fighting for our freedoms – the freedom to make our own reproductive health care choices, to the freedom to love who we love, to the freedom to support a family and retire with dignity,” he said in a statement. 

But U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany urged voters to reflect on the current administration’s record, and its consistent policy failures regarding all the issues that he said Trump handled well during his presidency.

“All people have to do is look at the contrast. We had the cost of living under control four to five years ago. We had a border that was largely secure, and we had a strong foreign policy, a strong America. Our adversaries were not kicking sand in our face like they are doing now,” Tiffany said in the press call, pointing out how the Russia-Ukraine war and Israel-Gaza war both began and continue under the Biden-Harris administration. “If you want to go back to the days of low inflation, of a strong foreign policy and a border that’s secure, then you’re going to vote Republican, and you’re gonna vote for Donald Trump in November.”