A blown opportunity for strategic voting for the Republicans?

Let's go back to the Lieutenant Governor race. Mahlon Mitchell was running against one fake/placeholder candidate (Isaac Weix) and one essentially unknown (Ira Robins). There was no Republican on the other line -- The Democrats (perhaps foolishly) did not run a fake/placeholder candidate. This was the perfect opportunity for the Republicans to vote strategically and knock out Mitchell. Look at the totals. The entire LG race vote is only a little over a hundred thousand votes more than Walker received. Many of Walker's 626,000 voters clearly ignored the LG race. Only 362,000 people voted against Mitchell. If the Walker's supporters went out to vote en masse (as they are allowed to do in Wisconsin's open primary system) for one of the opponents (presumably Weix), they might have been able to win that race. I have not seen that many examples of strategic voting (i.e. voting for a weaker opponent) actually working, but here might have been an easier pickup than usual.