Trump reverses Democratic leads in Wisconsin: Campaign update

President Donald Trump is narrowly leading in head-to-head matchups against top Democratic candidates in Wisconsin, according to a Marquette University Law School poll released Wednesday.

Trump’s lead is 3 percentage points over both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, 5 points over Elizabeth Warren, and 8 points over Pete Buttigieg. Last month, Biden, Sanders, and Warren all had small leads over Trump in the same poll.

Those poll results reflect what poll director Charles Franklin said were “consistent, if sometimes modest, shifts in public opinion away from support of impeachment and toward supporting Trump in next year’s presidential election.”

Marquette’s November poll shows that 40% of Wisconsin registered voters think Trump should be impeached and removed from office – down 4 points from the October poll.

The Marquette poll was conducted Nov. 13-17, before this week’s congressional testimony in the impeachment inquiry. The margin of error is 4.1 percentage points.

Buttigieg Releases McKinsey-Era Tax Returns (2:17 p.m.)

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday released two additional years of tax returns showing his income during the years he worked for management consultant firm McKinsey & Company.

Buttigieg, 37, earned $80,397 in 2007 and $122,680 in 2008 while working at McKinsey, according to the returns. The South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s income has only once exceeded $150,000 in the last 12 years. He had previously released a decade of returns dating to 2009.

Buttigieg has distanced himself from his consulting days during the campaign as Democrats have criticized large corporations for paying too little in taxes and underpaying workers at the expense of highly paid executives. He left the private sector in 2010 and has served in government roles since 2010.

“As someone who worked in the private sector, I understand it is important to be as transparent as possible about how much money I made during that time,” Buttigieg said in a statement.

His income puts him among the least wealthy of the Democrats who’ve released their returns as they run for president in the 2020 election. Laura Davison

Wayne Messam Drops Out of Presidential Race (1:17 p.m.)

Wayne Messam, the mayor of Miramar, Florida, who mounted a long-shot bid for the presidency, said Wednesday he is suspending his campaign.

“I jumped in an already crowded field of capable candidates to change the direction of this nation caused by the dysfunction of Washington and the poor leadership of the current presidency,” Messam wrote in a post on Medium. “I knew the odds were a steep hill to climb but I have always fought for what is right and will continue to break barriers never broken.

Messam, a former professional football player and the son of Jamaican immigrants, announced his run in March, vowing to focus on focus on relieving student debt and saying that a Washington outsider is needed to fix a ”broken” federal government that has failed to address climate change and the cost of prescription drugs.

His campaign failed to catch on. He consistently polled at less than 1% and didn’t meet the criteria to participate in any of the Democratic debates. – Max Berley

Warren Wants Banks to Do Climate Stress Tests’ (11:04 a.m.)

A bill backed by Senator Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic presidential candidates would require big banks to conduct periodic “stress tests” to make sure they have the capital to withstand the future impacts of climate change.

The legislation introduced Wednesday comes amid growing concern about the economic impact of global warming – rising temperatures, sea-level rise, water shortages and more frequent extreme weather patterns. A report by a UN climate change panel warned of $54 trillion in damages to the global economy by 2100 – even if the world limits average global temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Warren, along with presidential candidates Senators Michael Bennet, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris, signed onto a bill, the Climate Change Financial Risk Act of 2019, introduced by Senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii. The legislation would direct the Federal Reserve to conduct biennial climate stress tests requiring financial institutions with more than $250 billion in total consolidated assets to formulate a plan showing how they would evolve capital planning practices to limit the financial impacts of future climate risks.

“While our federal regulators are legally obligated to manage and reduce risks in the financial system, they have been ignoring the growing financial risks of climate change,” Schatz said. – Ari Natter

Coming Up

Ten candidates have qualified for the fifth Democratic debate on Wednesday in Atlanta: Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, Cory Booker and Tom Steyer.

– With assistance from Max Berley, Ari Natter and Laura Davison.