But according to WTMJ-TV4 out of Milwaukee, “In 2022, Milwaukee County had 510,015 registered voters and 350,905 ballots cast. In 2018, the county had 501,143 registered voters and 397,189 ballots cast, according to Christensen. So while the county had 9,000 more registered voters — it had about 46,000 fewer votes.”

What’s up with that? Even though Milwaukee County was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, 46,000 more people voted then than in 2022 even though former President Barack Obama came out and gave a rousing speech and Mandela would be the first African American Senator? What more incentive do you need?

And so I turned to Wendell Harris, a national NAACP board member and Wisconsin NAACP Council president for answers. He was blunt.

“To be absolutely honest with you, I have to look at my own community, Black American community,” Harris said. “We let Mandela Barnes down. He’s a young man who has spent most of his adult life in politics, working and fighting for our people on the state level as lieutenant governor. And this is where we are. We get to the place where he was very well positioned to become a U.S. Senator. And the people of Wisconsin, my people, African American people, primarily in the Milwaukee area, did not get out to vote in the numbers that we’ve done in the past, in the same numbers as 2020, two years ago, numbers in which we could have gotten Mandela over. He could have become our U.S. Senator for the state of Wisconsin.”

Harris mentioned the damage to Mandela’s campaign that a Black radio host did to Mandela’s campaign in a way that she could avoid any responsibility.

“One in particular that has really been a thorn in my side for a year, close to a year, was when a Black radio host, a woman, on a regular basis, would tell her audience when the discussion came up about Mandela becoming a U.S. Senator that she said, ‘I am not going to vote for him, but I’m not telling you not to,’” Harris said. “I’ve had radio shows. I’ve been in all forms of entertainment. I’ve had the influence. The platform is about influencing people and what they think and what they do. From my experience, being in the position to exercise some influence over people who support me, who will take for granted, outside people will take for granted people that they support themselves and just follow them. There is no way that this woman would follow up and say, ‘I’m not telling you who to vote for.’ Well you know as a reporter that if I think a person is not worthy of my vote and you being a reporter that they trust, there is a chance that they may follow your lead.”

It also app[ears that there was the crab barrel effect where when one carb gets to the top of the barrel, the other crabs pull them back down into the mix.

“The question came up about not paying your dues,” Harris said. “That is so ridiculous, I don’t even want to address that one when people say that because it is part of this, but it is so ridiculous for us to even think on any level that Mandela Barnes has not paid his dues. He’s been a fighter for our people. It is unfortunate that in my community, many of us have what some say is self-hate relative to slavery. All of that can be true. And it’s just another one of those hurdles we have to get over in our community for us to carry each other on to the Promised Land. It’s about having the freedoms in life that other people have under the Constitution. It’s our responsibility. It’s not going to happen unless we all fight together.”

While it would be an easy out to blame Johnson’s racist dog-whistle ads for the reason that Mandela didn’t win, Harris would not disempower the Black community by accepting that reason.

“The fact is that I certainly didn’t appreciate those ads,” Harris said. “But that’s politics. Mandela Barnes even running for office, that kind of stuff is expected. There are no laws against what they did. If you look at some of the ads that were put out against Tony Evers or Josh Kaul, those were dog-whistle ads too. They weren’t Black, but they were dog-whistle ads accusing people of being someone other than who they are. So they were lying across the board. And so I can’t give that any credence. We have to fight and so that is a fight that we have to fight. I cannot give my people a way out because we did not go to the polls because white folks and probably some of their Black supporters put out some ads demonizing Mandela Barnes because he is a Black man. That can’t be anyone’s excuse for me. I don’t give them that kind of power.”

Hopefully the time to elect an African American to the UJ.S. Senate will come again soon. But for now, it is an opportunity lost, an opportunity that we let slip through our hands.