THE OPPORTUNITY

For over a decade, Wisconsin’s statewide races have been split 50-50 between the two major parties. But due to an extreme gerrymander, the rightwing secured more than 60 percent of the seats in the Legislature in election after election. Wisconsinites have not had full representation in their state legislature, and Governor Evers’ vetoes have been their only protection from the impacts of the worst policies passed by rightwing lawmakers.

Up until now, The States Project’s work in Wisconsin has been targeted at preventing a supermajority. Most recently, in 2022, we helped protect Gov. Evers’ veto power by just two seats in the State Assembly. In 2024, we will be back in Wisconsin with the goal of shifting the balance of power in the Assembly and flipping enough seats to have a clear path to the majority in the Senate in 2026.

The Stakes

In the 2023 legislative session, Wisconsin’s rightwing majorities pushed unpopular policies that would strip Wisconsinites of their freedoms, including:

• An abortion ban that severely guts personal freedom for 2.9 million Wisconsinites of reproductive age
• Putting nearly 1.2 million kids in harm’s way by loosening child labor laws
• Reversal of a decades-old, widely popular policy that prohibits guns in schools

Breaking the rightwing majority in even one chamber would create a more effective buffer against unpopular, extremist policies and rightwing power grabs, and allow lawmakers committed to improving lives to get to work.

The Landscape

In 2023, voters broke rightwing control of the State Supreme Court, which held that the legislative maps Wisconsin had been using were invalid. The Court ruled that unless the Legislature and Governor could agree on a remedy, a neutral party should draw nonpartisan districts  After months of impasse between Governor Evers and the rightwing majority in the Legislature, new, fairer maps were signed by the Governor earlier this year. 

In 2024, every seat in the Assembly is up for re-election. It won’t be easy, but with these new maps we see a path to flipping the 15 seats we’ll need to shift the balance of power in the Legislature’s lower chamber. In the Senate, half of the seats are up for re-election this year and the other half are up in 2026. We need to begin making progress toward building a new majority in 2024 in order to flip the chamber in 2026.

• In April 2023, The States Project invested in a special election that presented the opportunity to break the Wisconsin Senate supermajority. The stakes were high — in a district that Trump won by five points, the rightwing candidate actually campaigned on the idea that the Senate supermajority could impeach judges, Cabinet Members, or even a Justice from the State Supreme Court. The States Project supported the challenger who ran to protect democracy — and the race came down to 1,296 votes in a race where more than 75,000 were cast. After a closer than expected election, he backtracked on impeaching State Supreme Court Justices, a huge win considering that the rightwing lost their majority in the Wisconsin State Supreme Court.

• Even in 2022, rightwing lawmakers continued attempts to decertify the rightful 2020 Presidential election results, with election deniers running for state legislative seats and lawmakers who would admit that Biden won, including Majority Leader Jim Steineke, deciding to leave public office.
• The States Project and our partners at Vote Save America teamed up to prevent a supermajority in the Wisconsin Assembly.
• The rightwing needed five seats, and they only gained three — we helped to stop them from getting to the supermajority threshold and protected Governor Evers’ veto.

• The States Project’s 2020 electoral work in Wisconsin helped relieve the pressures of an expanding field and enabled the minority in the Assembly to gain their largest number of seats since the gerrymander was enacted after the 2010 Tea Party wave.
• We had two narrow losses, with candidates we supported losing by margins under 6 percent.