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(The Center Square) – Democrat David Crowley has vowed to increase school spending from the state and will have the legislative backing to do so after Democrats swept the Wisconsin legislature and governorship in Tuesday’s election.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin voters are projected to approve a constitutional amendment to limit the partial veto power of governors.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s outgoing Republican Assembly Speaker says winning the state legislature may be the easy part for Democrats.

The post Let’s Get Down to Business! appeared first on RENEW Wisconsin.

Following Democrats’ resounding victories in Wisconsin Tuesday night, Gov.-elect David Crowley and Democratic legislative leaders spent Wednesday talking about preparing to work for Wisconsinites, though the specifics are still being worked out. 

Crowley said as he begins putting together a transition team and cabinet he wants it to be representative of the entire state, not just Madison and Milwaukee. He emphasized that he is committed to hearing from people with diverse viewpoints across the state as he begins that work. 

“While we witnessed major victories in the state Legislature last night, I am committed to bringing people together from across the political spectrum and all across this state. We’re going to listen to every region … every community. We’re going to make decisions that are based on what’s best for everyone here in the state of Wisconsin, and we are going to measure our success on whether life gets better for all families in this great state.” 

Crowley told reporters on Wednesday afternoon in Milwaukee that affordability and healthcare are his top priorities, but he didn’t provide specifics about the legislation he wants to see on his desk soon after he takes office. 

“You’re asking me about the legislative process. I think it is extremely important that you talk to the legislative leaders,” Crowley said. “I look forward to working with them about what our priorities are going to be. We are less than 24 hours of knowing that we won this race right now. I think all of us are basking in the fact that we won, we have the Democratic trifecta, and we know that the hard work is going to begin today.”

Over the course of the campaign, Democrats and Crowley said that if elected they would address an array of issues including lowering costs, improving education and healthcare accessibility. 

Assembly Democratic Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) told reporters on a call that legislators needed a chance to connect with Crowley and their Senate colleagues while working to build their governing agenda. She said addressing the costs working families face is the first priority. She said some proposals include providing free school meals to all students and addressing housing costs, healthcare and childcare. 

“We do have a big list, and we are going to be ambitious,” Neubauer said. “We recognize this is a huge opportunity. Wisconsin on a new course; we are going to be busy. We’re going to be busy for two years getting all these things done.” 

Neubauer said the Assembly will have several options for addressing healthcare. She said lawmakers will explore a public option as well as regulations on prescription drugs and other costs. She said taking the federal Medicaid expansion is complicated given recent changes made by the Trump administration, including work requirements and changes to the federal funding mechanism. 

“It’s a shame that Wisconsin has not done that up to this point,” she said. “We are going to be working very closely with the administration to figure out the best way to expand access to affordable healthcare for Wisconsinites, even given the Trump administration’s efforts to cut access and raise costs.” 

“We know that Wisconsinites are struggling to afford access to quality healthcare, and that is going to be a key priority for us,” she added.

Senate Democratic Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said in a statement on Wednesday that the Democratic majority was elected to invest in public schools, lower property taxes, stand up for Wisconsin workers and protect freedoms, including the right of women to make their own healthcare decisions.  

“The people of Wisconsin have placed their trust in Senate Democrats, and we’re not going to take it for granted,” Hesselbein said. “We are ready to breathe new life into the ‘Wisconsin Idea’ and ensure that everybody in Wisconsin, no matter your race, gender, who you love, or where you live, has a fair shot at the American dream.”

The depth and breadth of Republicans’ stunning losses in Tuesday’s blue wave are still coming into focus. Unprecedented Democratic wins in red states including Texas, Kansas, South Carolina and possibly Mississippi ushered in a new era. Democrats won big majorities in the House and Senate. They gained control of governorships and legislative chambers across the country, including in Wisconsin. 

Perhaps most dramatic was what didn’t happen. Menacing threats of armed federal agents at the polls melted away as Republicans crumbled. President Donald Trump accepted the results. So did Wisconsin’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany, who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election, but who conceded early and graciously this week.

Fear itself was vanquished on Tuesday. The dread of an authoritarian government poised to crush dissent with coercion and violence yielded to ordinary citizens voting, by the millions, to oust a self-dealing, out-of-touch party led by a malignant narcissist busy enriching himself at the people’s expense.

Just days before the election, voting rights groups in Wisconsin sent a letter to Attorney General Josh Kaul urging him to provide additional guidance to election workers in case federal agents showed up to seize ballots and tamper with election results.

Instead, voting went smoothly and the results, a massive rebuke to President Donald Trump and his party, now stand.

The lesson of the 2026 midterms was that regular people are not powerless in the face of this aggressive, anti-democratic regime. There is still time and hope left for our country. 

That, more than any particular surprise win, was the biggest thrill of the night.

In Wisconsin, Democrats took over both houses of the Legislature and David Crowley celebrated a convincing, historic win as the state’s first Black governor. Jan. 6 rallygoer and MAGA blowhard U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden was shown the door. The 2026 change election also swept away incumbent U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, who lost to Mitchell Berman in the 1st Congressional District. As Erik Gunn and Heather Asiyanbi report, Berman broke Steil’s four-term winning streak and Republican control of the district stretching back more than three decades, through the Paul Ryan era. 

Berman represented the mood of the country’s fed-up electorate. An emergency room nurse dismayed by seeing patients who could not afford health insurance, he took on the smooth-talking, well heeled Steil on his support for Medicaid cuts, tariffs and his record of coddling the very wealthy and corporations, voting in lock-step with President Donald Trump. Corruption and the abandonment of regular working people were the themes of the 1st District race and of the midterms generally. Not, as Republicans hoped, trans people, “woke” politics and a debate about the decorative aesthetics of the Cheesecake Factory.

It turned out people were too fed up to be distracted from their own very real struggles by these culture war topics. Nor were they dissuaded by the massive infusion of cash from billionaires Elon Musk, Dick and Elizabeth Uihlein and Diane Hendricks.

There will be plenty more struggle ahead. But it’s a good time to bask in the glow of the complete rout of fear, hate and division as our inevitable national political atmosphere. 

In Wisconsin, Democrats set an example for what it means to overcome division. Francesca Hong, after narrowly losing the primary on a progressive, democratic socialist platform, worked hard to help elect Crowley — despite the hard feelings among many of her supporters who felt he big-footed her by getting back in the race after dropping out and narrowly winning with Gov. Tony Evers’ endorsement.

Angela Lang, founder and director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, told Isiah Holmes at Crowley’s joyful, raucous victory party that Crowley’s personal history — being evicted along with his parents, who struggled with poverty and addiction when he was a child — and his efforts as Milwaukee county executive to do right by people who have also struggled, moved her.  “I’ve always been nervous. Because sometimes Wisconsin doesn’t always do the right thing. But I always knew it was possible and I’m glad to know that the rest of Wisconsin felt it was possible, too,” she said.

So much is possible if the majority of us unite against the corrosive politics of the Trump era and look out for our shared interests.

This week, it became suddenly clear that a bad era is coming to an end, and a new era of possibility is dawning. 

WASHINGTON — Winners of more than a dozen congressional and gubernatorial races have broken longstanding barriers of race, gender and sexuality. 

The results set records for the most Black governors and most women governors, and the first Black woman governor, Georgia’s Keisha Lance Bottoms.

Democrats, who flipped the U.S. House and Senate, had more historic firsts, though Rep. Byron Donalds will become the first elected Black Republican governor in the country after winning his race in Florida. 

Nevada and Wisconsin also elected their first Black governors. 

Seventeen women will serve as governor in 2027, breaking the previous record of 14 in 2025, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. 

That includes Democrat Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna who made history in 2021 as the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary. Haaland won her race in New Mexico, making her the first Indigenous woman to be elected governor in the U.S.  

And three Democratic senators-elect will make history once they are sworn in for the 120th Congress in January. 

In New Hampshire, Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas will be the first openly gay elected senator. Michigan elected the first Muslim senator, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, and Minnesota voters made Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan the first Native American woman senator, who could be joined by Alaska Democratic candidate Mary Peltola, an Alaska Native whose Senate race was too close to call Wednesday. 

Another tight Senate race is in Mississippi, where Democratic candidate Scott Colom could become the first Black senator from the state since the Reconstruction era if he defeats GOP incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

Race-based caucuses expand

Tuesday’s historic wins also means growth for certain caucuses aligned with Democrats. 

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus will grow to more than 50 members from 44. Six incoming members of the all-Democratic caucus flipped Republican-held seats in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada and Texas.

The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus will gain at least four new members, growing to the largest size in its history at 22 members, Rep. Grace Meng, chair of the caucus said in a statement.

A House race in Arizona that has not been called would give the caucus 23 members if Democratic candidate Amish Shah wins.

“Last night’s election was a resounding repudiation of President Trump and his failed policies that put the safety, security, and civil rights of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders at risk,” Meng said. 

Record-setting women

Following Tuesday’s election, Democrats will control 28 governorships compared to 20 for Republicans, with two results still unknown. 

Several will be their states’ first elected women governors.

“This was an impressive result for women in American politics, with women setting records and breaking significant barriers around the nation,” the Center for American Women and Politics Director Debbie Walsh said in a statement. “I’m particularly encouraged to see an increase in the number of women governors.” 

In Minnesota, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar will become the state’s first woman governor. 

As part of a Democratic sweep of Texas, the Lone Star State elected its first Latina governor, Gina Hinojosa, who ousted Republican Gov. Greg Abbott seeking his fourth term.

And in Ohio, Dr. Amy Acton will become the Buckeye State’s first woman and first Jewish governor. 

Acton, who served as Ohio’s health director, defeated her Republican challenger Vivek Ramaswamy, who in the closing weeks of the campaign stood by a political ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother calling her daughter a liar. Acton was removed from her mother’s custody after her stepfather was indicted for sexually abusing her as a child.  

Black governors

Five Black governors won their races on Election Day, setting a record for the most Black governors in office at once. 

Bottoms, Georgia’s first Democratic governor since 1998, will be the first Black person and first woman governor of Georgia.  

In Wisconsin, voters elected their first Black governor, David Crowley, a former county executive who billed himself as a centrist Democrat.

And in Nevada, Aaron Ford, a Democrat and the state’s attorney general, ousted Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo. 

Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore easily won his reelection bid. 

WASHINGTON — Democratic leaders in Congress have just a couple months to decide how they want to balance investigations into President Donald Trump and his administration with securing his signature on major bills to address the cost of living, a top concern for voters.

While Democrats gained control of the House and Senate in this year’s midterm elections, the party won’t hold veto-proof margins when the new session of Congress begins in early January. That will require congressional leaders and the president to find compromise on legislation.

Failure to do so would block any bills that could improve the lives of Americans from becoming law and potentially lead to more shutdowns, since Congress must fund the government every year. 

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who will very likely become speaker in January, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, will set the tone for that relationship, though committee chairs will play a significant role as well.

Trump said during an impromptu press conference Wednesday in the construction zone for his White House ballroom that he will “get along, probably, with the Democrats unless they want to be destructive. But I have the power of the veto.”

Trump said he wasn’t concerned about Democrats potentially trying to impeach him for a third time. 

“I think it would destroy the Democrat Party if they did that,” he said. 

‘Trump’s supplicant Senate’

Schumer said earlier in the morning his top priorities will be to address the rising cost of living, to “clean up corruption in government” and act as a check on “Trump’s chaos at home and abroad.”

“This war must end,” he said. “And make no mistake, whenever Trump defies the will of the American people or the law, we will launch investigations, take him to court and entangle him in legislative razor wire. The days of Trump’s supplicant Senate are over.”

Trump said during his press conference that the war in Iran will continue until “whenever” he wants to end it.

Schumer said he’d share more details in the weeks ahead about what the Democratic majority will do come January, but added he hadn’t yet spoken to the president about how the two separate but equal branches of government might work together. 

Democrats, he said, will use must-pass government funding bills to place guardrails on the administration and the war in Iran, though he didn’t say how he’d get the president to sign those bills. 

“We are going to end the war,” he said. “We have some Republicans already who have joined us in ending the war and the founding fathers had the power of the purse as one of the ways of deterring a president who does war without the consent of the American people.”

Schumer sidestepped a question about whether he would try to eliminate the legislative filibuster, which has forced bipartisanship in that chamber for decades. The rule requires at least 60 senators vote to advance a bill before it can move onto final passage.  

“The first thing we’re going to do is reduce people’s costs and work the legislative process so it does,” he said in response to the reporter’s question. 

Schumer also declined to say directly whether Democrats will seek to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a process that would start in the House. 

“Everyone will make their own interpretation of what it meant in terms of Hegseth,” he said, responding to a question about the election results. 

Schumer intends to seek the role of majority leader, according to his office. No Democrats have announced they plan to challenge him, making the race unopposed. 

Medicaid cuts targeted

Jeffries said during an afternoon press conference that Democrats “are ready, willing and able to find bipartisan common ground with the other side of the aisle as long as we can bring about meaningful change on the issues that matter. And that begins with decisively addressing the affordability crisis.”

But he also made clear House Democrats’ to-do list will begin with reversing changes and cuts to Medicaid, the state-federal health program for lower-income people, that Republicans included in their “big, beautiful” bill, as well as restoring the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits that lapsed at the end of last year. 

Jeffries did seem to brush aside the possibility of impeaching Trump or Hegseth, responding to questions by asking if Hegseth was actually still around.

“I haven’t had a single member of the House Democratic Caucus talk to me about impeachment,” he said. “We’ve been relentlessly focused on affordability and on accountability because the House is a separate and co-equal branch of government.”

House Democrats are likely to reverse Republicans’ “hands off” approach to artificial intelligence and data centers with their majority. 

California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu said during the same press conference that it was a “bad decision” for Republicans to “let the AI industry run wild.”

“Two things will change next term,” he said. “We will hold public hearings on AI. We will pass legislation, reasonable guardrails on AI, and specifically data centers. You see huge pushback from the American people for the out-of-control AI industry.”

Republican leadership battle ahead

Republican leaders will play a role in brokering deals with Democrats, though Senate GOP lawmakers will have more influence than their House counterparts. 

House Democrats will be able to pass most legislation with a simple majority vote. But in the Senate, Democratic leaders will still need to garner some level of bipartisan support to advance bills unless they eliminate the procedural step that requires at least 60 senators to vote to move toward final passage. 

Senate Republican Leader John Thune, R-S.D., plans to run for another term heading up his party in that chamber, though this time as minority leader, according to a spokesperson. 

Thune, first elected to the Senate in 2004, rose through the ranks of Senate GOP leadership before taking over as majority leader this Congress. That gives him two years of experience negotiating floor schedules and amendment debate with Schumer. 

In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., plans to step down from leadership rather than try to stay in the top spot, which will be minority leader for the GOP next year, according to a spokesperson. 

Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, currently the majority leader, and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, are both running for that role. 

An individual familiar with Scalise’s plans told States Newsroom his “number one goal will be to lead the conference back into the majority. He is a proven and tested leader who is ready on day one. He’s spent his career unifying Republicans, and he is prepared for the big legislative and oversight battles ahead. The conference knows him, how he fights, and that he’s a trusted leader.”

Jordan wrote in a letter to his fellow House Republicans that the party “must learn” from the results of this year’s election as it looks forward. 

“I am battle-tested on the oversight front and I know the Democrats’ playbook. I know what it will take to lead our Conference in the minority, to stay unified, and to coordinate and calibrate our response to the Democrats’ tactics,” he wrote.” We need a Leadership team that is active and engaged, forward-thinking and straight-shooting.”

Scalise has been a member of the House since May 2008 and a member of House GOP leadership since 2013, first as whip then as leader. 

Jordan was first sworn in as a member in January 2007. He became chairman of the Judiciary Committee four years ago.

Trump said he planned to “stay out” of that race and that he didn’t ask Johnson to step aside as the leader of House Republicans. 

Those elections are expected in mid-November. Whoever House Republicans elect will set the tone for when to negotiate legislation with Democrats and when to try to block bills from passing that chamber. 

WAUSAU — Wisconsin Republicans started the evening on Tuesday feeling optimistic. 

Attendees at Republican Tom Tiffany’s election night party in Wausau chatted while holding old fashioneds and napkins that declared: “You betcha we’re celebrating!” Tiffany arrived at the party around 7 p.m., taking pictures and shaking hands with attendees.

The celebratory vibe didn’t last long as a blue wave swept across the nation and Wisconsin Tuesday evening. Tiffany was defeated by Gov.-elect David Crowley. Democrats won control of the state Senate and Assembly, ousted Republican incumbent Treasurer John Leiber and defeated Jay Schroeder, the Republican candidate for secretary of state who ran on a promise  to take over elections in Wisconsin. 

Wisconsin Republicans’ inability to buck national trends was foreshadowed a couple of hours before polls closed when Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming told reporters that U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany had run a good campaign, but they were watching turnout. 

“We’re getting different signals around the state about turnout. We’re kind of watching that. I believe big turnout helps Republicans and helps Tom Tiffany,” Schimming said. Republicans have struggled in statewide races during years that President Donald Trump hasn’t been on the ballot as some of his supporters don’t turnout for midterm or spring elections. “I’m conscious of the fact that it’s an off year.” 

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, preliminary turnout was about 56% across the state and there was high turnout in the blue stronghold of Madison, which saw about 79% turnout, and Milwaukee, which saw nearly 71% turnout. 

A little before 10 p.m., Tiffany took the stage to concede Gov.-elect David Crowley, who will serve as Wisconsin’s first Black governor. He told reporters he had called Crowley beforehand and congratulated him. He said the night didn’t turn out as he’d hoped.

“I wanna congratulate David Crowley on his victory. While we have our differences, we both love this great state and I wish him and his family the very best as he prepares to serve as Wisconsin’s next governor.” 

When one attendee tried heckling Crowley, Tiffany shut it down, telling the crowd “We’re gonna be magnanimous.”

Asked what led to the loss, Tiffany did not mention President Donald Trump, instead blaming himself for not delivering the Republican message well enough. He also pointed to the price of gas and other high costs. 

“I mean, it’s clear voters have said, ‘You’re the party in power, and we’re gonna try something different,’” Tiffany said. “Now, there’s going to be a new party in power here, and they’ll have to deliver.” 

Tiffany and Republicans in the state Assembly and Senate tried to distance themselves from the unpopular president throughout their campaigns, but it was a difficult task, as Trump remained a constant in the campaign. As Democrats sought to tie their opponents to Trump, Trump highlighted his endorsement of Tiffany throughout the campaign, including on Election Day when Trump wrote in a post on X that Tiffany has “always been at my side.”

Over the course of the campaign, Trump’s popularity fell significantly across polls conducted by Marquette Law School. In October just ahead of Election Day, 61% of Wisconsinites said they disapproved of the job he was doing. 

Republican Treasurer John Leiber, who lost reelection by 4 points to Democrat Yee Leng Xiong, told WisPolitics that he doesn’t see a “future for the Republican Party with Trump in it.”

Two Republicans who serve in the state Legislature — and will now serve in the minority for the first time in their tenure — also pointed to the national environment. Republicans there will be disempowered for the first time in 16 years. They won just 15 seats in the Senate and 46 seats in the Assembly on Tuesday. 

Rep. Karen Hurd (R-Withee), who won reelection easily to her red district, told the Examiner that Republicans were conscious of how the federal government could affect Republican chances in the state. 

“What happens at the federal level has not just a trickle-down effect, but a flood effect on what’s happening in our state elections, and we knew that,” Hurd said. “We were doing our very best to say, ‘Separate us from the federal… We’re worried about schools and universities and roads. We don’t have anything to do with the war in Iran. We don’t have anything to do with the gas prices or with the price of eggs.” 

“It’s very hard for people to separate that,” she added.

Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) told the Examiner a little bit before Democrats declared victory in the state Senate that it was an “uphill battle going into this” and there were “a lot of national headwinds for Republicans.”  

Republicans will have to work to have an influence on Wisconsin policy from a disempowered position for the first time in over 16 years. 

Felzkowski noted that there are only two Republicans, Rep. Jeff Mursau and Rep. Dan Knodl, who have ever served in the minority.

“No one else has ever served in the minority, so this is a learning curve for all of us,” Felzkowski said. 

Felzkowski said Republicans in the Senate will choose their leadership this week and Assembly Republicans will choose theirs next week. Both leadership positions are open as Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Sen. Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) both decided against running for reelection. Vos wrote in a post on X reacting to the Democratic wins that he knows that over the next two years “Republicans will stand firmly with the taxpayers and job creators who built Wisconsin’s success.” 

“Conservatives will offer constructive alternatives, demand accountability, and make sure voters can see the difference between growing government and growing opportunity,” he said. “The next two years will test our resolve. They will also clarify the choice ahead.”

Both Felzkowski and Hurd said they look forward to working with Crowley in office. Felzkowski said she would work well with Crowley, noting they worked together on Act 12, a 2023 law that overhauled local government funding and allowed Milwaukee County to raise its sales tax. The law became a point of attack for Republicans during the campaign as they alleged Crowley would raise taxes as governor. 

However, Felzkowski also said that if Republicans had held control of the Legislature, they would have been able to keep Crowley in check. A Democratic-led Legislature, she said, will mean “the brakes are off.”

“We are gonna go so far left. Crowley himself came right out and said, when he beat Francesca Hong, my platform’s not much different to hers, and she’s a Democrat socialist so we’ll see what happens,” Felzkowski said. “I think it’s a sad day for Wisconsin.”

Democrats seized more power over state governments than the party has had in years after the party swept races up and down the ballot in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Republicans have held a majority of state legislatures and governorships since 2010. But that reign appears over as Democrats swept a majority of governorships and state legislative chambers.

Tracking from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee on Wednesday showed the party had flipped 12 chambers so far, winning the most chambers since 2008 and putting Democrats in control of more than half the nation’s state legislative chambers.

“With this sweep, Democrats have achieved their best performance since the Watergate scandal,” the committee, which works to elect Democrats at the state level, said in a news release Wednesday.

Unofficial results show Democrats will control the Arizona legislature for the first time in 60 years. Building off a historic sweep of statewide races, Democrats are poised to take control of the Texas House for the first time in over 20 years. In North Carolina, Democrats flipped several House seats held by influential, veteran Republicans to give the party control of the lower chamber for the first time since 2010.

“We have the power to make this state better,” state Rep. Robert Reives, who was introduced as the next House speaker, said Tuesday night.

Many legislative races had yet to be called by midday Wednesday. But the National Conference of State Legislatures said current results showed Democrats would secure new trifectas – control of both chambers and the governor’s office – in Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Democrats also broke Republican trifectas in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Texas.

Additionally, Democratic wins crushed GOP supermajorities in several states. In Florida, the loss of the Republican supermajority takes away the party’s power to override rules regarding procedure and debate and override the governor’s veto.

Democratic gains also ended supermajorities in the Indiana state House, the Kansas House, both of Missouri’s legislative chambers, the Ohio House, and the South Carolina House.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Republican State Leadership Committee, which works to elect Republicans at the state level, cited an “historically difficult political environment” facing the party.

“Democrats made state legislative races a national priority, pouring unprecedented resources into these contests because they understand the power state legislatures hold in shaping policy and building the pipeline for the next generation of leaders,” President Edith Jorge-Tuñón said in the statement. “In many key battleground states, the national political environment and the impact of top-of-the-ticket races significantly affected our candidates’ ability to defy historical trends.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

Ahead of the midterms, Democrats wargamed dozens of scenarios looking at how President Donald Trump might try to undermine the election, everything from seizing voting machines to falsely declaring a foreign attack.

But when the blue tsunami arrived Tuesday night, Trump seemed to let it wash right over him.

In a series of late-night interviews, the president said he would accept the results. He acknowledged that Democrats had performed well as they retook the House and Senate. And while he refused responsibility for Republicans’ newfound misfortune, he also spoke of cutting deals with Democrats.

“Yes, I’ll accept them,” Trump said on Fox News when asked about the results. He added a short time later, “Congratulations to the Democrats, they did a good job.”

The comments marked a stunning departure for a mercurial president with a long history of alleging elections were stolen in response to unfavorable results. 

They also stood out because this year’s midterms were his first election while in office since 2020, when he led a campaign to overturn his loss that helped spur the mob that sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“My first thought was, ‘Well, I’m glad that’s on tape,’” Pamela Smith, president and CEO of the election security nonprofit Verified Voting, said in an interview.

Fears of federal interference

Election officials spent months planning for the possibility of federal election interference on Election Day. After the FBI seized ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, in January, state and local leaders across the country weighed how they would respond if the Trump administration tried to take their ballots or voting equipment. 

They mapped out what poll workers would do if federal agents showed up at the polls. Some states even passed new limits on federal law enforcement and military servicemembers at the polls, even though federal law already prohibits armed personnel at election sites.

“There have been so many different kinds of threats and it’s just been so far to get to this day, far too hard for the election officials,” Smith said Wednesday.

None of those extreme scenarios came to pass on Election Day. Instead, Democrats won resounding victories up and down the ballot.

As of midday Wednesday, Democrats had secured 54 Senate seats, according to The Associated Press. Democrats had also won at least 228 seats in the House, well above the 218 necessary to control the chamber. 

The not-close race for control of Congress and a high voter turnout “made it impossible to challenge these results,” David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, told reporters.

Trump blamed the loss on his absence from the ballot, even though he had exhorted Americans to vote as if he were on the ballot. Vice President JD Vance blamed the war with Iran. 

“The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026,” Vance wrote on social media.

Both men sought to explain Republicans’ deep losses — not claim that they didn’t happen. 

Ballot fight consumed officials

But despite Trump’s pledge to accept the results, voting rights advocates said the Trump administration very much attempted to interfere ahead of Election Day and influence how states ran their elections.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued California over the ballots of 20,000 suspected noncitizens and Alaska over alleged voter confusion in the U.S. Senate race. 

California election officials had warned the Justice Department’s demand would have thrown the election into chaos and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the request Monday. Meanwhile, a federal judge tossed the Alaska lawsuit on Sunday.

Justice Department lawyers raised the possibility that election officials could be prosecuted if they counted the ballots of noncitizens or if they failed to follow federal recordkeeping laws. They issued subpoenas to election workers in Los Angeles County, demanding records that suggest prosecutors are examining whether election officials were “aiding and abetting” noncitizen voters.

The DOJ also sued dozens of states for unredacted copies of their voter rolls containing sensitive personal data. Federal judges have rejected those lawsuits in at least 27 decisions so far, and the Trump administration has won none of its cases.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran election-related field operations that federal judges found could intimidate voters. The department also launched a powerful computer program to identify possible noncitizen voters, but Democrats and election experts said its results were unreliable and prone to falsely flagging U.S. citizens.

More broadly, Trump urged GOP state lawmakers across the country to redraw their congressional maps to be more favorable to Republicans — a process that accelerated after the Supreme Court weakened limits on racial gerrymandering. But in Alabama, North Carolina, Texas and elsewhere, the new maps did little to shield GOP candidates.

Earlier this year, Trump also pushed the U.S. Postal Service to impose restrictions on mail ballots, a move blocked by the Supreme Court. And he unsuccessfully demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, which would have immediately imposed stringent rules requiring voters to prove their citizenship, leaving states with no time to prepare.

“Despite unprecedented executive branch efforts to interfere in election administration, state and local officials responsible for running our elections have continued to do their jobs and uphold the process,” Michael McNulty, senior policy director at Issue One, a group focused on protecting American democracy, said in a statement.

Some legal wrangling continues

Trump’s admission of defeat may not fully end his administration’s pressure campaign over elections.

Late on Election Day, the Justice Department secured a rare court victory when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a decision by a three-judge panel removing limitations on the Trump administration threatening election workers with prosecution. 

The decision came after a federal judge in California last week issued an order prohibiting the DOJ from threatening election officials with criminal charges if they didn’t comply with demands related to setting aside the ballots of alleged noncitizen voters.

“We will conduct our criminal investigations without fear or favor,” Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, wrote on social media Tuesday.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to require California to set aside the ballots of 20,000 suspected noncitizens also remains unresolved. Even though the Supreme Court declined an emergency request by the DOJ, a federal judge has scheduled a hearing on Nov. 13 to examine the list that could include witness testimony.

The consequences of any ruling now aren’t clear. California’s ballots are currently being counted, meaning it would be effectively impossible now to identify whether a ballot came from a suspected noncitizen. The hearing will take place several weeks before election officials must certify results, however.

The hearing could reveal new information about how the Trump administration developed the list. The DOJ has said Homeland Security compiled it based on a public copy of California’s voter roll that was checked against government records and data from the Lexis Nexis research service. 

California election officials have said they’ve found evidence that U.S. citizens are on the list, and in a court hearing on Monday, a Justice Department attorney acknowledged it has a “high error rate.”

Jonathan Miller, chief program officer of Public Rights Project, which represents Los Angeles County in the lawsuit, in a statement framed the dispute in simple terms.

“State and local officials run our elections — and the federal government cannot interfere,” Miller said.

The fingerpointing is coming from inside the house.

Vice President JD Vance said in a lengthy social media post Wednesday that Republicans’ shellacking in the midterm elections the night before was mainly due to the administration’s war in Iran.

Though Vance sought to soften the blow to President Donald Trump by ascribing the same opinion to the president, the post was an unusual public distancing by a sitting vice president and marked a significant first step in a post-Trump Republican political landscape that Vance will likely seek to lead.

“The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” Vance wrote. “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest.

“But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”

Vance served as a U.S. Marine in Iraq and later heavily criticized that Middle East war, calling it “an unforced disaster,” in a 2023 social media post.

‘Largely true’

Speaking to reporters Wednesday afternoon, Trump said Vance’s view was mostly correct.

“I think it’s largely true because it drove the gasoline up a little bit short term,” he said when asked about Vance’s post. “Probably it’s true. But at the same time, if I had to do it again, I’d have to do it again because long term, it’s the only answer. You can’t let Iran have a nuclear” weapon.

“I know how he feels about it,” he said later. “I thought it was fine.”

He repeated that he’d expected the war to have a negative effect on the midterms, but that it was worth pursuing.

Trump launched military operations in Iran in February, despite no apparent active threat from the Islamic republic. He promised the conflict would soon end, but when polls closed Tuesday night, it was still active and Iran maintained a block of the critical shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz that has squeezed the global supply of oil.

2028 message?

Vance is seen as a frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2028, but Tuesday’s drubbing, in which Republicans lost Senate seats and governorships in states Trump and Vance carried by double digits in 2024 and ceded a large House majority to Democrats, could demonstrate a need to distance himself from Trump to stand a chance in the general election. 

In his post, Vance noted that Republicans’ problem on Tuesday was not turnout, but that many voters who supported the Republican ticket in 2024 flipped to Democrats this year.

He said those voters identified four issues that drove their switch: end the war, focus on the cost of living, “Put America First” and change the United States’ “relationship to Israel.”

“Our voters showed up,” he wrote. “And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats.”

Vance also predicted calls would come for significant changes to immigration policy after some analysts said that an aggressive — sometimes deadly — enforcement campaign led to backlash among some Trump 2024 voters.

Vance rejected any major overhaul, while again signaling some daylight between himself and Trump on the administration’s signature issue.

“Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty,” he said. “I’m open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.”

In local elections across the country, Americans voted overwhelmingly to restrict the buildout of data centers in their communities.

Late Tuesday evening, 33 ballot measures to restrict data centers were passed by voters or were leading in ongoing vote counts, according to the tracking website Data Centers on the Ballot. Roughly a dozen similar measures were on the ballot in communities where vote totals had not yet been announced.

The measures included outright prohibitions, temporary moratoriums, limitations on energy use, mandating voter approval before construction and advisory measures urging local officials to restrict data centers.

Only one measure, in North Dakota, resulted in a victory for voters who supported the construction of data centers.

The national backlash to data centers has become a major political issue. Residents in Republican and Democratic cities alike have pushed back on tech companies’ plans to aggressively build data centers to power their artificial intelligence platforms. Local and national activists have raised concerns about energy costs, pollution, water use, noise and conversion of farmland and other open spaces.

According to an NBC exit poll, 56% of voters said AI and data centers played a “crucial or major factor” in their vote for Congress.

In some communities, including 21 municipalities in Ohio, residents turned to local ballot measures or referendums in an effort to block the construction of proposed data centers. In nearly every result so far, voters overwhelmingly backed new restrictions or declined to approve measures that affirmed the buildout of such facilities.

Conserve Ohio, a campaign seeking to block data center development, worked with leaders in many of those communities to help draft ballot language.

“It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, people coming together across communities, putting partisan differences aside and uniting (to oppose data centers),” Nick Owens, an attorney with the group, told Stateline last month.

A poll published by UMass Amherst earlier this year found that only 11% of Americans would support the construction of an AI data center in their community.

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org

Democrats have won the majority of governor’s offices for the first time in 16 years after the GOP racked up major losses across the country.

Democrats flipped governorships in Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Texas and defended competitive races in Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin, according to unofficial results from The Associated Press and Decision Desk HQ.

As of 10 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, Democrats were set to hold 28 governor’s offices compared with Republicans’ 20. Races in Alaska and Kansas have not yet been called.

In a historic night, voters elected a record number of four Black governors, including the first Black woman and first Black Republican ever elected governor.

Midterms are always tough for the party that holds the White House, but high prices and growing disapproval of President Donald Trump delivered even stronger than expected results for Democrats Tuesday.

“It’s a blue wave that was bigger than anyone had expected, and it’s having consequences across the country, including here in Texas,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston. “Overall, Donald Trump has single-handedly turned many red states blue — or at least purple.”

By late Tuesday, Democrats had won races for attorney general and lieutenant governor for the first time in decades and flipped the Texas House.

“One of the real questions will be what do Democrats do with this power, and will they be able to retain it,” he said. “This has effectively opened a door for Democrats across the country.”

Gubernatorial races proved historic for both Democrats and Republicans on Tuesday with the election of the nation’s first Black woman governor and the first Black Republican governor.

But the Democratic party made major gains coast to coast, particularly in reliably conservative states, that could reshape state policy for years to come.

In Iowa, the election of Democrat Rob Sand ends more than a decade of Republican control of the legislature and the governor’s office.

In Ohio, Democrat Dr. Amy Acton’s win marks the first time in 20 years that Ohio voters have selected a Democrat to lead the Buckeye State.

Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms will become Georgia’s first Democratic governor since 2002 and the nation’s first Black woman governor.

While governors were on ballots in 36 states, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter had only identified a dozen races for governor as competitive. Those included: Alaska, Georgia, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Texas and Wisconsin.

Republicans have controlled a majority of state governments since 2010. Before Tuesday’s election, Republicans boasted a 26-24 gubernatorial advantage over Democrats. But the GOP’s state legislative advantage was even stronger, with Republicans controlling 28 state legislatures and Democrats controlling 18 with divided control of chambers in three states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

By Wednesday morning, Democrats had notched major legislative wins. Democrats broke the GOP supermajority in Florida, flipped control of the Wisconsin state Assembly and Senate, and flipped the North Carolina state House.

In Pennsylvania, Democrats won the GOP-held state Senate, seizing  a trifecta – control of the governor’s office and both chambers of the legislature – in Harrisburg.

“Tonight’s earth-shattering victory is undeniable proof that voters are fed up with the MAGA agenda,” Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a news release.

In Arizona, Democrats declared victory in a yearslong effort to win control of the legislature, proclaiming that Republicans would be in the minority at the state Capitol for the first time in 60 years.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

WASHINGTON — Voting ended Tuesday in this year’s midterm elections, leaving officials and volunteers counting tens of millions of ballots to determine which U.S. House and Senate candidates will take the oath of office in January.

The post-election process includes numerous steps and varying deadlines for when ballots have to be certified, since each state has different laws governing not only what happens on Election Day but what happens afterward.

Once local and state election officials wrap up their work, the process moves to Congress, which has its own rules and procedures. The Constitution also gives the House and Senate final say over whether to seat someone.

Here’s a look at what’s next and where issues could arise, aside from lawsuits that may be filed or already in progress.

When will there be official results? 

Counting ballots and certifying the results takes at least a week in most states, often longer.

Kyle Yoder, research director at The Center for Election Innovation & Research, said that is exactly the type of deliberative process voters should want and expect. He also cautioned the results news organizations report in the hours and sometimes days after Nov. 3 aren’t final totals. 

“Results aren’t official until every ballot has been counted by every eligible voter,” he said. “That process takes time, and when you sit back and think about it, you want it to take time because what we want is for that count to be correct, for it to be accurate, for it to be complete.”

Yoder added that the “biggest point of confusion that we run into when we’re talking to voters about all this is they think the results they’re seeing on their TV on election night are the final results.” 

The Associated Press, which many news organizations look to for race calls, explains how its experts decide when to announce a winner and when to wait for more ballots to be counted. The Election Law Program, a collaborative effort between William & Mary Law School and the National Center for State Courts, has timelines for the various state deadlines. 

How long can states take to recount ballots?

After election officials certify the first count of ballots, especially close races can head into a recount. Some state laws require it automatically if the margin of victory is under a certain percentage. In other circumstances, specific people can request a recount, typically the runner-up, though some state laws allow voters or even political parties to request another count. 

“In many states, election recounts, legal challenges to the results, etcetera, can only begin once results have been certified,” Yoder said. “So it is in the interest of politicians who may be saber-rattling to allow certification to happen, so that they can begin those recounts, legal challenges.”

States have various deadlines for how long those recounts can last. But they can drag on amid lawsuits and Congress has the authority in some cases to conduct its own recount. 

Who decides which candidate wins an election and can the official decide not to send a certificate of election to Congress?

James Alcorn, senior director of the Election Law Program at the William & Mary Law School, said “it depends” on the state law, but that statewide races are typically certified by a secretary of state or a state board of elections.

“For an office that is not statewide, that may be certified at a local level, and in some states, congressional races are going to be similar,” he said.

There are very few modern examples of a local or state election official not sending a certificate of election before the new Congress convenes in early January. And those were due to ongoing lawsuits. 

New York Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney wasn’t sworn in until February 2021, more than three months after the election, amid a lawsuit over the outcome. The election was ultimately resolved when a state Supreme Court justice ordered election officials to certify the race and her opponent decided not to appeal the decision.  

Following an especially contentious election in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District in 2018, the state board of elections decided not to certify either candidate as the winner and called for a special election. That seat had no representative in the U.S. House from early January until September. 

It took nearly eight months following the 2008 election for Democratic Sen. Al Franken to join the upper chamber of Congress amid a legal fight over the vote tally that ended at the Minnesota Supreme Court. 

What happens once a state sends the certificate of election to the House or Senate?

The House Clerk uses the certificates to compile the list of members-elect that is used on the first day of the new Congress to determine who can vote for Speaker. Once that first step is complete, members normally take their oaths and move on to other matters. 

Certificates of election must be sent to the Secretary of the Senate before newly elected or reelected members can take their oath in early January. 

“After the opening prayer and recitation of the pledge, the vice president of the United States, who serves as the president of the Senate, announces the receipt of certificates,” according to a post from the Senate Historical Office. “Following established tradition, senators-elect are then escorted down the center aisle of the Senate Chamber to the presiding officer’s desk.”

Only newly elected or reelected senators, about one-third of the chamber, are sworn in since it’s what’s known as a “continuing body.” That’s a very different set of rules than in the House, where every lawmaker typically takes the oath on the first day. 

Can either chamber of Congress refuse to seat someone with a certificate of election? 

Yes. The Constitution grants each chamber of Congress the power to be the “Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members.”

The Federal Contested Elections Act, a 1960s law, gives the House Administration Committee the ability to investigate the results of certain elections and make a recommendation to the full chamber about which candidate to seat. The law, which doesn’t apply to the Senate, gives the committee the authority to accept the certified results from election officials or conduct its own recount. Any recommendation would need to be approved or rejected by a majority vote on the House floor. 

Complaints have been filed under the FCEA several times during the past few decades, including after the 2020 election, when Iowa Democratic candidate Rita Hart asked the House to decide whether Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks won the race. The panel investigated for months before Hart withdrew the complaint in April 2021.

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service says that “FCEA contests rarely change election results, as doing so typically requires the House to overturn a state-certified election result.”

There is a separate process on the first day of a new Congress that allows any member-elect to object to another member-elect taking the oath. 

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy tried this unsuccessfully in January 2021. It was rejected following a 371-2 vote of members-elect who had yet to take their oaths. Roy voted in favor of the resolution, which directed the speaker “to administer the oath of office to all Representatives-elect.”

The Senate also holds the ability to look into and ultimately decide the winner of a contested election, likely through the Rules and Administration Committee. 

The chamber’s official website on disputed elections notes that “a senator with the proper credentials against whom a challenge had been filed would be seated ‘without prejudice.’”

“Under this arrangement, if a committee investigation later determined that for some reason the individual was not entitled to a seat, he could be ‘excluded’ from the Senate by a simple majority vote, as opposed to having to be expelled, which required a two-thirds majority,” the webpage continues. 

The post later adds that the Senate historically has not intervened “where legal action in the federal or state courts was appropriate, and it seldom took very seriously the claims of a contestant who had failed to follow these avenues of redress. 

“Similarly, when a losing candidate demanded a recount of ballots, the Senate preferred to become involved only if the state law made no provision for such a recount. Still, in some cases the Senate felt impelled to act, and the sealed ballot boxes were shipped to Washington where staff members, carefully observed by representatives of both candidates, scrutinized the ballots and election records for possible irregularities.”

Voters across the country administered a sharp reprimand to President Donald Trump and Republicans who hold majorities in Congress, with Democrats gaining comfortable majorities in the Senate and the House.

Several U.S. Senate and House races remained uncalled by The Associated Press as Election Day ended on the East Coast. But by Wednesday morning, Democrats had notched 54 Senate seats to control that chamber and 228 House seats, clearing the thresholds needed to win majorities in each chamber as the party swept virtually all of the races that were expected to be competitive.

Those wins included Senate contests in states Trump won by double digits just two years ago, some of which had not elected Democrats in decades: Iowa, Kansas, South Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

Democrats also won a seat left open by retiring Republican Thom Tillis in North Carolina, bringing their total of Senate pickups to five, with leads in a handful of other states. And they retained their seat in Minnesota, electing Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan to the Senate.

By the early hours of Wednesday, they’d netted 25 new House seats, putting them on track to start next Congress with a majority that will give House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, whom Democrats are expected to make speaker, some room to maneuver. The AP had not yet made a call by midnight that Democrats had control of the House.

Democrats also flipped four governorships, in Georgia, Texas, Ohio and Iowa.

Republicans had not flipped any Democratic-held governorships, U.S. House or Senate seats by midnight, according to race calls by AP.

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Tuesday was a surprising, historic Election Day across the nation, though in Wisconsin it culminated a Democratic effort that progressed through fits and starts ever since Gov. Scott Walker smashed the power of public sector unions in 2011.

Here’s what we learned in Wisconsin:

The Walker Republican era of Wisconsin government is over.

As Brittany Carloni reports today, Democrats have waited 16 years for this moment.

A national Democratic tsunami helped Democrats flip eight Assembly seats and three Senate seats, giving them 53-46 Assembly and 18-15 Senate majorities.

A rising tide of opposition to President Donald Trump’s tumultuous second term clearly lifted all ships. Democrats flipped a legislative district between Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls that Trump won by 7 percentage points just two years ago. The Republican phalanx that retiring Assembly Speaker Robin Vos held together through the end of the Walker era and eight years of split government under Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has crumbled.

When the tea party movement swept Walker and Republicans into power in 2010, they controlled 60 Assembly seats and 19 Senate seats. They used that mandate to try to create a permanent Republican majority in the state, passing Act 10 to cripple public sector unions, enacting strict voter ID to make it harder for students and low-income people to vote and drawing some of the most gerrymandered legislative districts in the nation.

They passed conservative priorities, including a 20-week abortion ban, right-to-work, concealed carry of firearms, expansion of private school vouchers statewide, major tax cuts particularly for farmers and manufacturers and pro-business deregulatory measures. They even put the brakes on a Milwaukee-to-Madison rail line.

But Wisconsin is a purple state, and the great pendulum of purple state politics has now swung back to Democratic control. What Democrats do with that power will keep our reporters busy for years to come.

Voters want equality, but maybe not through shortcuts.

Voters more than doubled the number of elected Black governors in U.S. history, electing David Crowley in Wisconsin, Byron Donalds in Florida, Aaron Ford in Nevada and, in Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms, the first Black female governor in U.S. history.

Wisconsin now has elected its first Latino- and Hmong-American candidates statewide in Secretary of State-elect JoCasta Zamarripa and Treasurer-elect Yee Leng Xiong, who also becomes the first Hmong American elected to statewide office in U.S. history.

But voters also passed by a nearly 13-point margin a constitutional amendment that will prevent the state from giving scholarships to and designing government programs for specific minority groups and women, commonly referred to as diversity, equity and inclusion programs, or DEI. This was one of the few bright spots Tuesday for Republicans, who put three constitutional amendments on the ballot in the hopes of driving GOP turnout and circumventing Evers’ veto pen.

Opponents of the anti-DEI amendment, like the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, say the amendment was confusing. It asked voters to “prohibit governmental entities in the state from discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, public contracting, or public administration?”

Who would be against prohibiting discrimination?

But Democrats have long argued that minority groups have continued to disproportionately face barriers because of the country’s dark history of institutionalized racial discrimination. Wisconsin is home to some of the biggest racial disparities in the country in terms of health, wealth and incarceration.

Like in 2008 when they voted for Barack Obama for president by large margins, Wisconsin voters affirmed they want to turn the page on racism. But, assuming voters knew what they were voting on, they may not be willing to prioritize equity in order to achieve racial equality.

The Republican redistricting argument was proven (again) to be false.

Democrats in all likelihood should have taken control of the Legislature in 2018 — if the state’s political maps had been drawn fairly in 2011.

Instead Republicans used their majority to draw maps in secret and tweaked them so that they could withstand a Democratic wave election like the one in 2018 when Evers defeated Walker and Democrats won all statewide offices. But Republicans maintained near super majorities in the Legislature at the time. Republicans then argued that they retained the Legislature because Democrats packed themselves into cities while Republican voters were spread out in rural and suburban areas.

But Democrats rallied to elect a liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which tossed out the gerrymandered maps, leading to the current maps that aren’t so wave-proof. In 2024, as Trump won statewide, Democrats flipped 14 legislative seats, setting up this year’s fait accompli.

History could repeat itself. If Democrats win the presidency in 2028 and pass unpopular legislation or give Republicans enough firepower to forge a Tea Party Movement Part II, Republicans could sweep back into power in 2030 just in time for the next round of actual decennial redistricting.

Bonus note: The midterm Republican gerrymandering exercise in states like Texas, Florida and North Carolina proved to be a giant dummymander. Bipartisan redistricting reform’s day may have finally come — unless Democrats haven’t learned a thing.

Billionaires don’t control the government. The people do.

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany’s entire gubernatorial campaign was almost entirely fueled by three billionaires — the same ones who engineered the conservative takeover of the Wisconsin Supreme Court 20 years ago and the Republican wave of 2010 (remember the video of Diane Hendricks and Walker discussing his plan to “divide and conquer” Wisconsin with right-to-work legislation and Act 10?).

Elon Musk spent roughly a half-billion-with-a-B dollars on these midterm elections nationwide. Although, for the world’s first trillionaire, that’s like someone with a net worth of $100,000 spending $100 on this election. (Do the math. It’s crazy.)

But as Wisconsin showed in 2025, when the state shattered the national record for spending on a state Supreme Court election, including Musk’s legally dubious voter giveaway, money can’t buy you happiness or a guaranteed win on Election Day.

Four things we learned from Tuesday’s Democratic tsunami in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Tuesday’s Democratic sweep of statewide offices included three notable firsts: Wisconsin’s first Black governor and first Latino and Hmong statewide elected officials.

Gov.-elect David Crowley, Secretary of State-elect JoCasta Zamarripa and Treasurer-elect Yee Leng Xiong, all Democrats, formed the most racially diverse party slate — alongside Lt. Gov.-elect Sarah Godlewski — in Wisconsin history. The trio occasionally acknowledged that detail on the campaign trail, but it didn’t feature front and center in their messaging this year.

Wisconsin has had some of the largest racial disparities in the nation in infant mortality, income, education outcomes and incarceration rates. More than a quarter of Black Wisconsinites lived below the poverty line in 2024 — a higher rate than in all but three states and Washington, D.C.; Latino and Asian Wisconsinites also experienced higher poverty rates than their white counterparts and the national average for Latino and Asian Americans, respectively.  

The gap between the share of Black and white Wisconsin students who graduate high school on schedule was the highest in the country between 2019 and 2024. Black children born in Wisconsin die in their infancy at roughly three times the rate of white children — a pattern public health experts say doesn’t map neatly to family income. Black Wisconsinites are roughly a third as likely as white Wisconsinites to own their homes, though gaps vary by city; and Black Wisconsinites’ incarceration rate was roughly 12 times higher than that of white Wisconsinites in 2022, a gap surpassed only in Vermont. 

In his victory speech in Milwaukee, Crowley alluded to the challenges the state’s Black residents have long faced.

“Because of you, a boy who grew up facing eviction will soon take residence in the governor’s residence,” Crowley said. “Tonight Wisconsin made history, and being your next governor is humbling in its own right. I don’t take any of this lightly. And I know exactly the shoulders that I stand on.”

Crowley became Milwaukee County’s first elected Black executive in 2020, though former Milwaukee Common Council President Marvin Pratt served in the role on an interim basis in 2011.. At  least one in five Milwaukee County residents have identified as Black since the 2000 census. That share rose to roughly one in four residents as of the 2024 American Community Survey, compared to roughly 6% of Wisconsin’s overall population.

Crowley attended Bay View High School with Cavalier Johnson, whom Milwaukee voters chose as their city’s first Black mayor in 2022.

Wisconsin’s first Black state lawmaker, Progressive Republican Lucian Palmer, likewise represented Milwaukee; he served in the Assembly for a single term from 1907 to 1909. Former Secretary of State Vel Phillips became Wisconsin’s first Black statewide elected official in 1978.

Witnessing history at the Crowley event wasn’t lost on Kenya Perry, 38, an east side Milwaukee resident.

“I think it’ll be great, not just for us minorities, but for everyone, because he not only represents us, but he’s representing everybody,” Perry said. “It doesn’t matter what color you are, what’s your background, what ethnicity or your religion or anything like that. He wants to come in and represent all people, not just one party.”

Zamarripa is also a lifelong Milwaukeean. She, too, is no stranger to firsts; Zamarripa became Wisconsin’s first Latina state lawmaker in 2010 and the first Latina member of Milwaukee’s Common Council in 2020. Roughly 20% of Milwaukee residents identified as Hispanic as of 2024, compared to about 8% of all Wisconsinites.

She told Wisconsin Watch on Monday that her race for secretary of state was also an opportunity to build out Latino voter outreach infrastructure.

“We’re the fastest-growing constituency in the great state of Wisconsin,” she said, not only in Milwaukee, but in manufacturing and agricultural hubs across the state. “Wherever there are midterm Latino voters, we mailed them a bilingual piece of mail,” she said, alongside partnerships with Spanish-language radio stations and ad buys in southeast Wisconsin and the Green Bay area. Roughly the same share of Kenosha and Racine County residents identified as Latino in 2024 — about 16% — as did 1 in 10 Brown County residents.

Zamarripa hopes Wisconsin Democrats will be able to “replicate” her campaign’s Latino voter outreach efforts, or perhaps even devote resources to recruiting Latino candidates for local and statewide offices. Among the communities on her mind: Arcadia in western Wisconsin’s Trempealeau County, the state’s only majority-Latino city as of 2024.

Voters in majority Latino precincts on Milwaukee’s South Side veered right in 2024, including 44-year-old Nextaly Rodriguez. He voted in his first-ever gubernatorial election at the Kosciusko Community Center polling site on Tuesday, choosing Crowley over Republican Tom Tiffany. “Just trying something new,” he said in Spanish. 

Jesus Mancilla made it to the community center less than a half-hour before polls closed. The 18-year-old spotted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on his block during a wave of immigration arrests in and around Milwaukee in June; his older brother convinced him to vote for his immigrant parents’ sake. He wasn’t the only first-time Latino voter at the polling site. “I saw a couple of my friends leave (just now),” he said. Mancilla hasn’t sorted out his political identity yet, but he chose Crowley in the governor’s race. 

Xiong is both Wisconsin’s and the nation’s first Hmong statewide elected officer. He hails from Marathon County, home to Wisconsin’s second-largest Hmong community. Roughly 1 in 10 Wausau residents identified as Hmong in 2024, more than in any other Wisconsin city.

Tens of thousands of Hmong refugees, including Xiong’s parents, settled in Wisconsin in the wake of the Vietnam War; last year marked the 50th anniversary of the first Hmong families’ arrival in the state. Hmong Wisconsinites now comprise sizable constituencies not only in Wausau, but also in Milwaukee, Sheboygan, Madison, Eau Claire and the Fox Valley. 

The Hmong written language is still relatively young, so Xiong leaned into person-to-person outreach, producing a series of Hmong-language get-out-the-vote videos, hosting bilingual campaign events and making phone calls to Hmong-speaking voters. 

Xiong isn’t sure his voter outreach efforts are easily replicable. “It comes with relationships,” he said, and cementing those relationships for future election cycles will require Democrats to maintain a presence in Wisconsin’s Hmong communities. 

When the dust of Tuesday’s blowout settles, he expects Hmong voters, and Asian voters more broadly, to have played pivotal roles in flipping the Wausau-based 85th Assembly District — a seat for which he ran two years ago, losing by four points — and seats in greater Green Bay and Menasha. 

As owner Sa Sor Lee opened the doors of Mortchee’s Carryout & Catering in Wausau on a windy Wednesday morning, she carried the joy and pride she had felt the night before at Yee Leng Xiong’s election party. Attendees watched Xiong’s vote total climb throughout the evening before the Associated Press called the race for him shortly after midnight.

Lee has known Xiong since he was 17 and mentored him through the H.M.O.N.G. Youth Program in Wausau, which stands for Helping Make Our Next Generation. She has watched him run for the local school board, the Marathon County Board and, ultimately, state treasurer. She also frequently contributed food to his campaigns.

Lee said Xiong’s victory means a lot to the Hmong community. “It means we can do a lot more than we think we can.”

“I’m so excited,” Lee added. “It’s not just him, but I think I felt like I am winning this election.”

Wisconsin Watch reporters Tom Kertscher and Brittany Carloni contributed to this report.

History made: Wisconsin elects first Black governor and first Latino and Hmong statewide officers is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.