Wisconsin Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes is falling behind in recent polls in his race against incumbent Senator Ron Johnson. Twitter is not Barnes’ friend. Old tweets are coming back to bite Barnes and it’s not pretty. One tweet in particular is the subject of a new ad released by Johnson’s campaign zeroes in on a tweet posted after House Minority Whip Steve Scalise was gunned down on a baseball field during a Congressional Baseball Game practice. Scalise almost died.

Barnes was apparently angered that Scalise’s support of the Second Amendment is still strong, even after he almost died when a Bernie bro shot up the baseball field. The shooter specifically said he was looking for Republicans. Barnes callously tweeted that Scalise “took one for the team.”

Taking one for the team. I question how people vote against self interest but this is next level. He literally almost died on this hill. https://t.co/Xx8ZQXuvzM

— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) October 4, 2017

This kind of cruel political partisanship is ripe for campaign ads. Team Johnson used that tweet to point out that Barnes is soft on crime and prefers to coddle criminals.

The rise in crime across the country is on the top of the list of voter concerns in the midterm elections. Johnson has been campaigning as a pro-law and order candidate. Democrats are really hoping to flip the seat but in the last eight polls conducted over the past month, Johnson leads in six of them, ties in one, and Barnes is up by one point in another. Right now, it’s looking good for Johnson.

We keep hearing about political violence, especially threats coming from the far-right, from Democrats. Everyone from Joe Biden to local candidates are trying to scare voters into believing Republican candidate are semi-fascists or MAGA Republicans out to destroy democracy. Scalise pointed out that it is candidates like Barnes who are “disgraceful.”

As for Scalise, he was anxious to jump into the Senate battle on behalf of Johnson as he took part in a pair of radio interviews in the Badger State on Monday. When shown the tweet last week, the Louisiana lawmaker told Punchbowl News the remark was “disgraceful.”

“It says a lot more about his lack of character to be in essence condoning political violence,” he added.

Barnes has not apologized to Scalise now that this tweet has re-surfaced. Instead, he makes it all about himself. Classic Democrat move.

“This is a very personal topic for me as someone who has experienced the pain of losing friends and loved ones to gun violence. My comments came from a place of frustration with politicians like Ron Johnson who see gun violence happen everyday and turn their backs on solutions that would keep people safe,” Barnes said.

See, the only solution to runaway crime and ‘gun violence’ is gun confiscation and stricter gun control laws. If more laws was the answer, Chicago would be the safest city in the country. Gun laws restrict law-abiding citizens, not criminals. The left pretends to not understand that. It’s a control issue for them. I guarantee Barnes’ security detail is armed.

Barnes isn’t a fan of the Second Amendment.

I really could not care less about a 2nd Amendment "right". Bear arms all you wish, but you should pay for your mishandling.

— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) July 14, 2013

He said Trump was a Russian spy.

Donald Trump is a Russian spy. Believe me.

— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) February 14, 2017

And George Washington? Well, he wasn’t so great.

Yeah. I mean, if slave owning is your thing, have at it! https://t.co/TLWCW0OSw5

— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) December 12, 2019

He wanted to overhaul society using the COVID pandemic, as all Democrats wanted to do. That’s what all the shutdowns and mandates were about. First they had to get control of the population.

We should drastically reimagine society, our communities, and what quality of life actually means in a moment like this.

— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) March 24, 2020

Barnes doesn’t sound like a team player, which is a skill often needed in the Senate. He’s not exactly supportive of police, either.

In recent years, Barnes has ripped two moderate Democratic senators with whom he would have to serve if elected, even suggesting Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia was a “missing vertebrae” in the Senate Democrats’ spine.

In addition, Barnes, who is vying to be the state’s first Black senator, has opined on police and community unrest, two subjects for which he has been criticized during the election.

During the 2014 Ferguson protests, which erupted after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, Barnes acknowledged his struggle to call for peace there. As for police, he tweeted that “not all police” are corrupt or racist.

“BUT, if I gave you a bowl of skittles and told you three were poison…” he tweeted in response in 2016 to a post about the number of people killed by police in the U.S. A day earlier, Trump made the exact same Skittles analogy regarding Syrian refugees.

Recently, Barnes received the endorsement of a radically anti-police, anti-ICE group, the Color of Change. The group calls for “defunding and disbanding law enforcement, as well as abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).” Mostly, it’s all about skin color.

On its website, Color of Change PAC celebrated Barnes’ experience as a former field organizer and state representative, as well as the current lieutenant governor of the state, while calling for voters to make him the first Black senator from Wisconsin.

The group touts itself as the “nation’s largest online racial justice organization,” and has engaged in sharp rhetoric aimed at law enforcement, as well as policing policies and institutions it claims are “racist.”

Last year, Color of Change praised the Minneapolis City Council’s decision to hold a vote on whether to disband the city’s police department. In a statement of support, the group called policing “a violent institution that must end.” The vote, however, ultimately failed.

The police are a violent institution but not actual criminals? Sure, go with that.

Structural racism creates conditions for fatal police violence. Confronting this cycle of violence requires we dismantle & reimagine the policies and institutions that maintain America’s fascist racial hierarchy – that starts with the police. #InvestInUshttps://t.co/UbnwuOcGyA

— ColorOfChange (@ColorOfChange) April 30, 2021

I don’t think that message is going to fly with the voters of Wisconsin this year. The more they find out about Barnes, look for Johnson’s numbers to increase.