Reading Time: 5 minutes

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.

Democratic candidate Yee Leng Xiong was elected the next Wisconsin state treasurer Tuesday, edging out Republican incumbent John Leiber. 

With 98% of the votes counted, AP called the race at 12:40 a.m. Wednesday.  Xiong led with just under 52% of the vote to just over 48% for Leiber.

Leiber had been the only Republican to win statewide office, other than Sen. Ron Johnson, in Wisconsin’s 2022 election.

The state treasurer is a relatively low-visibility office, but is included in the Wisconsin Constitution. An amendment that would have eliminated the office failed in 2018.

Besides signing state checks (technically done by machine), the primary duty of the treasurer is serving with the secretary of state and the attorney general on the state Board of Commissioners of Public Lands.

In his reelection campaign, Leiber emphasized focusing on the job of treasurer as it was outlined in the state constitution and statutes. He prided himself on not expanding the duties of the office and instead simply focusing on the job of treasurer as it was outlined in the state constitution and statutes.

Xiong campaigned saying he would seek to act as a watchdog over state finances, serving as “an independent voice for taxpayers and to make sure Wisconsin’s money is managed responsibly, transparently, and in the public interest.”

He cited his experience as a member of the Marathon County Board as well as a local school board treasurer. 

A Wausau native and the son of Hmong refugees from Southeast Asia, Xiong is the first person of Hmong descent to hold statewide office in Wisconsin. 

The 2026 race for Wisconsin state treasurer is a contest between two visions for the office — a Republican incumbent who has centered his case on doing the job without “growing government,” and a Democratic challenger who believes the position could take a higher profile.

The campaign website for Republican incumbent John Leiber, who is seeking reelection, says that in his first term he “hasn’t added programs or built a bigger office,” but instead stuck to the list of duties assigned to the state treasurer.

Democratic challenger Yee Leng Xiong is a Marathon County Board member and treasurer of the DC Everest School Board in Weston, Wisconsin, southeast of Wausau. His campaign website says he intends to “act as an independent watchdog for Wisconsin taxpayers” advocating “transparent management and investment of public funds.”

The state treasurer’s office is among those identified in the Wisconsin Constitution. “The office was first imagined by the state’s founders as a check on the government’s financial decisions and a steward of its public lands,” the treasurer’s office website states.  

Over the years lawmakers have transferred or eliminated many of its duties, including cash and debt management, the state’s 529 education savings plan and the state local government investment pool. 

In 2018, however, Wisconsin voters rejected an amendment that would have eliminated the elected office from the constitution.

After that vote, Sarah Godlewski, who had led the campaign against the amendment, ran for state treasurer in 2018 and won, stating the agency should be a fiscal watchdog. In office, Godlewski took on public-facing roles, including working with county treasurers and promoting retirement security programs.

Godlewski didn’t seek a second term, instead joining three other Democrats seeking the party nomination to run for U.S. Senate in 2022. In early 2023 Gov. Tony Evers appointed her as Wisconsin Secretary of State when the incumbent, Doug La Follette, resigned shortly after taking office for his 12th consecutive term. Godlewski is now the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor. 

The state treasurer’s remaining official duties include signing state checks (technically done by machine) and serving with the secretary of state and the attorney general on the state Board of Commissioners of Public Lands.

The board manages 75,000 acres of former federal land now held in trust for Wisconsin schools and also manages four trust funds. The largest, the Common School Fund, makes annual donations to school library systems. Over the last four years the Common School Fund has grown to about $1.6 billion, and the annual payments to libraries from the fund have grown each year, reaching $73.5 million in 2025-26.

Republican John Leiber

When John Leiber ran in 2022 against a Democrat who campaigned on continuing Godlewski’s approach, Leiber emphasized instead focusing on the job of treasurer as it was outlined in the state constitution and statutes. Other than Sen. Ron Johnson, Leiber was the only Republican that year to win a statewide office in Wisconsin.

Leiber has been a state legislative aide and has worked in the state Department of Revenue in the tax division. On the job since 2023, he has emphasized maintaining a lean office and focusing on his role on the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands. 

“This is the only dedicated funding for school libraries statewide and my top priority is to ensure the fund continues to thrive in the future,” Leiber said when he announced his reelection campaign a year ago.

Leiber’s campaign website states that in office, he “has not built a bureaucracy or invented new programs. He has administered the constitutional duties of the office, advocated for fiscal restraint with the Legislature, and focused on the assets he is charged to oversee.”

Democrat Yee Leng Xiong

Yee Leng Xiong has built a resume that includes election to multiple levels of state government as well as experience in running a nonprofit and membership on a state financial literacy council appointed by Gov. Tony Evers.

Xiong is a Wausau native whose parents were Hmong refugees from Southeast Asia. If elected he would be the first Hmong official elected to a Wisconsin statewide office.

Xiong says he can act as an independent watchdog over state finances.

“As Treasurer, you don’t answer to the Governor or the Legislature — you answer directly to the people,” Xiong said in January when he announced his candidacy. “I’m running to be an independent voice for taxpayers and to make sure Wisconsin’s money is managed responsibly, transparently, and in the public interest.”

On his campaign website, Xiong says that he has “experience managing budgets at every level of government” and is committed to “transparency and accountability.”

He also says he can bring his school board experience to bear in the decisions by the public lands board because he “understands firsthand how trust fund decisions impact local schools and students.”

A Wisconsin Democratic Party lawsuit is part of a broader response to the Trump administration’s use of taxpayer funds to pay for partisan ads, a lawyer whose organization is handling the case told reporters Monday.

“It is important to pursue multiple angles of attack and ensure that there is a clear court order” to block the administration’s action, said Norm Eisen, a co-founder and board member of Democracy Defenders Action, during an online news conference Monday afternoon.

Democracy Defenders Action and the law firm Hecker Fink are representing the Democratic Party of Wisconsin in a lawsuit filed Friday. The ads, aired on broadcast, cable and streaming platforms, were labeled as paid for by the U.S. government but promoted the actions of the Trump administration and criticized opponents of President Donald Trump, the lawsuit charged.

“Using that taxpayer money to pay for political ads is illegal, unconstitutional, and just wrong,” Eisen said Monday. Other ads “actually were recycled Trump campaign ads simply relabeled ‘paid for by the United States government.’”

Despite Trump administration claims that the payment for the ads was being shifted from the federal government to a Trump-supporting super PAC, Devin Remiker, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said he saw some of the government-funded ads as recently as Sunday’s Green Bay Packers football game.

“It is very clear that we cannot take this administration or Republicans at their word and we have to hold them accountable through the courts,” Remiker said.

The Wisconsin Democrats’ lawsuit is one of three that have been filed against the ad campaign. The political watchdog group Common Cause and the Democratic National Committee filed suits last week demanding that the taxpayer-funded ads stop. A New York federal judge issued an order Sunday blocking the ads.

Eisen said a hearing to seek another temporary restraining order against the ads is scheduled this week in Washington, in the Democratic National Committee’s lawsuit, and that the Wisconsin plaintiffs would join that effort.

He said the state party’s lawsuit reflected the fact that elections are not merely national, but are administered at the state and local level as well. “We felt it was very important even though other litigation was going on to have a state party that was speaking out, to have a state candidate that was speaking out,” Eisen said. “Ours is the only case involving a state party and a state candidate.”

Along with the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, the Democratic candidate for state treasurer in November, Yee Leng Xiong, is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit. He joined the lawsuit “to hold the Trump administration accountable for using your taxpayer dollars for ads promoting himself,” Xiong said. “Our tax dollars should serve the people, not promote a politician.”