Commentary: Candidates for local office may ignore community issues to highlight national culture wars

When Republican Kyle Woodman ran for a city council seat in 2019 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, he campaigned on local issues and finished last. This year he's trying again, but with a different strategy: he's ignoring local issues and mostly hitting talking points about national political stances.

"Woodman is part of a mostly conservative group of candidates for local office across the state who are forgoing the hyper-local issues that city council and school boards largely deal with — instead aligning themselves with controversial culture war topics and making appearances with some of the state’s most divisive conservative personalities," Henry Redman writes for the Wisconsin Examiner. "This trend, the nationalization of state and local politics, has been occurring across the country as state parties have become more homogenous and local news has been overshadowed by national cable news and social media." Read more here.