Jodi Habush Sinykin has experienced the recent shift in enthusiasm among Democratic voters firsthand. These days, when she’s out knocking on doors in the Wisconsin district where she is challenging an incumbent Republican state senator, she can feel a newfound sense of “opportunity, and movement, and energy,” she told me one Sunday afternoon in late August.

The trick is figuring out how to wield it: directing that excitement for the newly minted Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and channeling it to the key races for downballot Democratic candidates across the state. After President Joe Biden announced he would not run for reelection, Democrats are no longer bogged down with the impending sense of dread they felt so palpably in those weeks after the president’s discombobulated debate performance—that the presidential election was all but certain to swing to former President Donald Trump. But if there is a rising tide in Democratic voter support for Harris, candidates for congressional and state races want to catch it at its flood in the hopes that it brings in votes for them as well.

“I must say that even before that shift—even before Biden stepped back for Harris—that I was very careful to focus folks’ attention on the importance for Wisconsin,” Habush Sinykin told me, chatting between knocking on doors in a neighborhood of Whitefish Bay, a suburb north of Milwaukee. It was among the hottest days of the summer, the temperature climbing into the high eighties with the promise of an even warmer week to come.

After a few unsuccessful tries—this house empty, another with a sign barring any soliciting—a woman answered the door to Habush Sinykin’s knock. Her small dog bounded down the front steps, barking happily.

“I just wanted to share with you that my priorities are very much women’s freedom to make their own life and health decisions,” Habush Sinykin began, holding a stack of fliers she had printed that highlighted the policy differences between herself and her Republican opponent, incumbent state Senator Duey Stroebel. She had gauged correctly: When Habush Sinykin then asked what the woman’s top issues were, reproductive rights was the first one listed. Certain of the woman’s interest, it was time to ensure that she was interested in voting in all of the elections that she could in November.

“If you would please get the word out to your friends and neighbors and everyone how important it is to vote down the ballot,” Habush Sinykin urged the woman as she handed over the flier, which outlined her positions on reproductive care, education, conservation and the economy. “It can’t just be one and done at the top [of the ticket].”

This is not Habush Sinykin’s first rodeo. She narrowly lost a special election for an open state Senate seat in 2023, under a previous version of the district that leaned more Republicans. She is now challenging Stroebel in a newly-redrawn state senate District 8, which encompasses some of the suburbs of Milwaukee, including portions of the competitive “WOW” counties—Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington—which are slowly trending towards Democrats. The district was redrafted to be more evenly divided along ideological lines in the most recent round of redistricting, with a 53 percent Republican lean, making the race among the most competitive state senate contests in the state.

Whitefish Bay is a well-to-do suburb north of Milwaukee, a village that grew, in part, out of a resort owned by beer barons; it has a median household income of roughly $142,000 and a population that is nearly 90 percent white. The village is liberal-leaning, as could be gathered by the occasional anti-Trump signs impaled in these lawns. There was some evidence of active support for Democrats as well: In the afternoon, a man driving in a white SUV pulled along the sidewalk and leapt from his car to take a picture with Habush Sinykin, excitedly telling her that she needed “to beat that horrible man,” referring to Stroebel.

Canvassing can be sweaty work; the dappled shade on sidewalks along the tree-lined streets did not typically extend to front doors. Despite any comfort provided by her blue tie-dye t-shirt, Habush Sinykin was wearing jeans in weather better suited to shorts, and beginning to feel the heat. She knocked on another door with four quick raps, to the tune of “shave and a haircut.” The elderly woman who answered noted that “somebody came the other day.”

“But, it was for the presidency,” the woman added quickly, once........

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