A report earlier this week of a couple of measles cases in Southwest Wisconsin has turned into an outbreak, with 13 more confirmed cases and six probable cases of the viral illness, the state health department reported Thursday.

The outbreak, in Iowa and Lafayette counties, highlights the importance of getting vaccinated for measles, considered the safest and most effective way to prevent the spread of the virus, said Dr. Ryan Westergaard, the chief medical officer in the communicable disease bureau of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

The new group of measles patients who have been diagnosed are in Iowa County, Westergaard told reporters at a DHS briefing on the findings. Most of them were not vaccinated for measles, he said.

DHS announced two measles cases Tuesday, one in Iowa County and one in Lafayette County, that were confirmed through tests at the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene. 

Those were the third and fourth measles cases in Wisconsin in 2026, and were not related to the first two this year, which were linked to out-of-state travel.

Subsequent investigation by the local public health departments in the two counties turned up the 13 confirmed and six suspected cases that DHS announced Thursday. None of the current cases have been tied to travel. 

“The rapid emergence of these cases, particularly among people who have not traveled outside of Wisconsin, indicates that there is active local transmission, and it’s very likely that additional cases exist in the community that have not yet been identified or reported to public health,” Westergaard said.

State tracks 23 cases so far

Westergaard said DHS would not release the ages or age range for any of the people with confirmed measles cases in the current outbreak in order to protect their privacy.

The department maintains a state registry for all measles cases that includes age ranges and vaccination status. Thursday evening, that record showed that of the 23 confirmed or suspected cases identified in Wisconsin in 2026, three were in children age 4 or younger, 11 were in children ages 5 to 17, and nine were in adults ages 18 or older.

Westergaard said that it’s likely that there are more people with measles whose cases haven’t been identified and therefore aren’t on the state’s dashboard.

With one exception, the patients identified in 2026 were not vaccinated for the measles virus, according to DHS. One has been hospitalized.

Vaccine is ‘single best tool’ to stop outbreaks

DHS is asking people to verify whether they’ve had the MMR vaccine — the shot that includes protection against measles, mumps and rubella. That information is probably available from a person’s regular health provider, if they have one, or from the Wisconsin immunization registry.

The MMR vaccine is usually given in a two-shot sequence: the first dose when a child is 12 to 15 months old, and the second when the child is 4 to 6 years old.

“Having received two doses of MMR vaccine provides exceptional, long-lasting protection, and this vaccine remains our single best tool to stop this and future outbreaks,” Westergaard said.

For an adult without a record of the shot or who is uncertain about having had it, it is safe to get an additional shot, he said.  

DHS is also asking people to be familiar with measles symptoms. Westergaard said those include a high fever, a red rash that starts at the head and spreads down and covers the whole body, a cough, a runny nose and red or bloodshot eyes.

A person who develops those symptoms, or whose family member experiences them, should call their regular healthcare provider, Westergaard said.

People with the symptoms should call ahead before visiting a clinic, urgent care or the emergency room, he said, so that medical personnel can take precautions to prevent airborne spread of the virus before a patient arrives to protect other patients in the facility’s waiting room.

Easily spread virus

“Measles is known to be one of the most contagious viruses,” Westergaard said, “and we treat every case very seriously, because our goal is to completely stop measles transmission in the community anytime we have a case or a cluster of cases.”

Measles can cause serious health problems, according to DHS — pneumonia, deafness, and brain damage as a result of swelling from the disease.

Local public health agencies in the two counties haven’t identified specific public places where the virus might have spread, Westergaard said.

One of the jobs of local public health departments is to track contagious illnesses such as measles in their communities or counties, he said. DHS supports local agencies as they work to trace who else has been exposed to the virus.

Trump urges shift in childhood vaccine recommendations, calls for splitting up MMR vaccine

When a person who’s been exposed has been identified, they’re monitored for symptoms “to make sure that if any new cases pop up, we can get them isolated right away,” Westergaard said.

While the current outbreak is still small, “it’s a dynamic situation,” he added. With help from DHS, local health departments are tracing the spread of the virus and watching for more people who develop symptoms, “because that would be a sign that it’s getting larger.”

New Trump order ‘contradicts the best available science’

Thursday’s announcement follows an order Monday from President Donald Trump. Wisconsin’s top health official said Thursday that Trump’s order goes against the best scientific recommendations for measles prevention.

Trump’s order calls for separating the MMR vaccine into separate shots for each illness.

“There is no new scientific evidence that justifies changing recommendations that have, and continue to, protect children across the United States,” said Kirsten Johnson, secretary-designee of Wisconsin DHS, in a statement released Thursday.

“The executive order does not square at all with our recommendations on how to prevent measles or other vaccine-preventable diseases,” Westergaard said. “It was not science-based. It actually contradicts the best available science about how to prevent disease and keep kids healthy.”

DHS early this year turned from the Trump administration’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine recommendations after the agency cast aside previous longstanding vaccine guidance.

DHS instead has endorsed the childhood vaccine recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians.  

Westergaard said vaccinations in Wisconsin have fallen below the 95% rate that helps ensure widespread protection from illnesses that vaccines can prevent, and are even below 90%. That has happened for many complex reasons, he said — including misinformation, sometimes spread deliberately.

Wisconsin has so far avoided the “massive outbreaks” of measles that have occurred in states such as Utah, Texas and North Carolina, Westergaard said. Public health officials can contain the illness if they learn early of cases and are able to move quickly to identify and quarantine patients. But that’s more challenging because the state’s vaccination rate is lower than it should be, he said.

In addition to encouraging more vaccination, cooperation with public health measures is “a second layer of defense,” Westergaard said. “Let’s work together as a community, as a team, when an outbreak happens — be willing to share information, be willing to stay home when any symptoms happen, and allow us to identify the extent of an outbreak and to stop it.”

Vote counting to pick a Democrat to run against Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman in Wisconsin’s 6th Congressional District finally reached a conclusion Wednesday, with Brad Smith called the winner by the Associated Press.

With just over 50% of the total number of votes cast in the Democratic primary, Smith had 480 votes more than Amanda Bell’s 49.6%. The AP called the race at 1:40 p.m. Wednesday, more than 17 hours after the polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday. 

Smith lives in the Milwaukee suburb of Mequon and works in software and web design. He owns a consulting business and served in the National Guard.

Bell is a Sheboygan County resident and is a substitute teacher and former U.S. Geological Survey scientist.

Both campaigns focused on policy issues including healthcare, affordability, the environment and human rights, including LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive rights. 

The district covers 11 east central Wisconsin counties. 

The 6th CD has been a GOP stronghold, and Grothman has never had a close election in the dozen years he’s been in the U.S. House. The November election, however, could find Grothman with not just one challenger but as many as four. Two independent candidates as well as a Green Party candidate have been certified for the general election ballot, bypassing Tuesday’s primary.

Redistricting that has made many Wisconsin Assembly and Senate districts more competitive, combined with an unusually large number of retirements at the end of the current legislative session, set the stage for what may be the largest number of primary contests in recent history for seats in the Legislature in both the Republican and Democratic parties.

In what might be the only genuine upset, Milwaukee state Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez lost her seat in Tuesday’s Democratic primary race, the ultimate outcome of the conflict between the Assembly’s Democratic caucus and Ortiz-Velez.

Other internal primary challenges of incumbents in both the Democratic and Republican caucuses fell short.

Wisconsin Senate

SD 1: Republican state Sen. Andre Jacque is retiring from the district, which includes Door and Kewaunee counties. In the four-way Republican primary race to succeed Jacque, Nic Cravillion of New Franken won with 40% of the vote, outpacing the second-place finisher by 15 percentage points. Cravillion worked as the district director for Jacque for the last five years.

No Democrats are running for the seat in the red-leaning district. Mark Becker, a small business owner and former chair of the Brown County Republican Party who parted ways with the GOP after President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, will be on the November ballot as an independent.

SD 11: With Republican incumbent Sen. Steve Nass retiring at the end of this term from the district, which is centered on Walworth County and includes portions of adjacent counties, both Democrats and Republicans held primary elections to select candidates for the open seat.

Republican Ellen Schutt, a former state representative, won the GOP nomination with 44% of the vote against 36% for Sandy Wiedmeyer, Kenosha County Republican Party chair and a Moms for Liberty Activist, and just under 20% for Nick Polce, a U.S. Army veteran.

On the Democratic side, Adam Duda got 58% of the primary vote to defeat Steve Doelder with 41% and win his party’s nomination.

Duda and Schutt will compete in the November general election in the red-leaning district.

SD 17: Boosted by support from the State Senate Democratic Committee, state Rep. Jenna Jacobson won a three-way primary handily with 57% of the vote. Childcare advocate Corrine Hendrickson finished with almost 27% and small business owner Lisa White had 16%.

Jacobson will run against Republican Howard Marklein in November, whose nomination was uncontested. Marklein won reelection with 60% of the vote in 2022, but revised maps have made the district more competitive in partisan terms.

SD 23: Republican Sen. Romaine Quinn, who currently represents SD 25, is running for reelection to the Senate under new maps in the red-leaning SD 23, where the current incumbent, Republican Sen. Jesse James, is retiring at the end of this term. Quinn did not have a primary opponent Tuesday.

In the Democratic primary to challenge Quinn in November, Jeff Foster, a former social worker and dairy farmer, won with 68% of the vote, while Richard Pulcher received 32%.

SD 25: Located in far Northwest Wisconsin, the district includes Superior as well as Ashland, Bayfield, Burnett, Douglas, Iron, Polk, Sawyer and Washburn counties. The district was represented by former Senate Minority Leader Janet Bewley, a Democrat, from 2015 through 2022. Bewley decided to forgo reelection in 2022 after the maps were redrawn to the advantage of Republicans.

The district was further redrawn in the new maps adopted in 2024 by an order of the state Supreme Court. Republican Sen. Romaine Quinn currently represents the district, but the 2024 maps put his home in SD 23, and Quinn is running this year in that district instead, resulting in an open seat.

In the SD-25 Republican primary, Erik Severson, a physician and former Assembly member defeated former state Rep. Angie Sapik 54%-46% on Tuesday.

Severson will run in November against Democrat Charly Ray, who had no primary opposition.

On Wednesday, the State Senate Democratic Committee announced it was adding SD-25 to its list of Republican targets to flip in the November election. 

The committee also said it was adding SD-29 to the list — currently held by Republican incumbent Sen. Cory Tomczyk. Neither Tomczyk nor the Democratic challenger, retired Dr. Gillian Battino, had a primary opponent Tuesday.

Wisconsin Assembly

AD 8: Following allegations of a violent threat and conflict with the Legislature’s Democratic leadership, state Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez, left the Democratic caucus last year, although she continued to generally vote with the Assembly Democrats on most bills. 

Back in her Milwaukee district, Ismael Luna mounted a primary challenge and got support from unions and the Assembly Democratic leaders. Luna, a women’s homeless shelter case manager and former intern for Sen. Tammy Baldwin, won early Tuesday night with 70% of the vote.

Luna will face Republican Angel Sanchez in the November election in the deep blue district.

AD 9: Milwaukee first-term state Rep. Priscilla Prado easily survived a primary challenge from Milwaukee School Board member Mimi Reza. Prado got 70% of the vote. She will face Republican Samuel Guerro in November.

AD 12: Milwaukee, first-term state Rep. Russell Goodwin overcame a primary challenge, getting 54% of the vote to Jordan Roman’s 46%. Roman, a community consultant, was endorsed by the LGBTQ+ advocacy group FAIR Wisconsin’s PAC after Goodwin broke with Assembly Democrats to vote for a bill barring transgender girls from sports teams matching their gender identity.

Goodwin will have no Republican opposition in the November election.

AD 13: Amy Zimmerman won with 51% Tuesday against David Sanchez, who garnered  just under 49% of the vote, in the Democratic primary election for the seat in the western part of Milwaukee County. The seat was vacated by Democratic state Rep. Robyn Vining, who is running for the state Senate. The AP called the race Wednesday afternoon at 1:25 p.m.

In November, Zimmerman will face Republican Mike Morgan, whose nomination was not contested.

AD 19: State Rep. Ryan Clancy got 54% of the vote in the Milwaukee County district, surviving a challenge by small business owner Bridget Maniaci, who finished with 45%. Clancy will face Republican Yasmine B. Outlaw in November.

AD 21: Daniel Bukiewicz, the mayor of Oak Creek and president of the Milwaukee Building & Construction Trades Council, won the Democratic primary easily with almost 57% of the vote to 43% for David Liners. The district, which represents Oak Creek and a portion of the city of Milwaukee around the Mitchell International Airport, could help determine control of the state Assembly.

The seat is open following the retirement of Rep. Jessie Rodriguez (R-Oak Creek), who was first elected to the Assembly in 2013.

In November, Bukiewicz will face Republican Dylan Pfaffenbach, who had no primary opposition.

AD 26: John Belanger, a former Sheboygan alderman, won the Republican primary with more than 63% of the vote, far ahead of James Brotz, with 23%, and Tyler Schneekloth, with almost 14%.

Belanger, who is running for the Assembly after having lost his reelection bid to the Sheboygan city council, will challenge first-term state Rep. Joe Sheehan, a Democrat, in November.

AD 33: In the Racine County district represented by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who is retiring this year, Steve Wicklund, an electrical contractor and Union Grove village president, won the Republican primary with 54%, defeating Walworth County Board Chair Rick Stacey, who received 45%.

Maria Bisabarros, the co-owner of a meat processing company, won the Democratic primary with just under 62% of the vote against retired teacher Rick Bailey, who received 38%.

Wicklund and Bisabarros will compete in November for the seat in the Republican-leaning district.

AD 37: Beaver Dam Republican State Rep. Mark Born, the Assembly co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee, easily overcame a Republican primary challenge from Steve Rydzewski, who has been organizing against data center construction in Beaver Dam. Born won more than 65% of the primary vote to Rydzewski’s 34%.

Born will face LaToya Bates, co-chair of the Dodge County Democratic Party, in November, in a rematch of the 2024 race Born won with more than 68% of the vote.

AD 50: Bill Oemichen, president of the New Glarus school board, won a three-way primary with 50% of the votes, a lead of almost 20 points over his nearest rival. Josh Mittness received 30% of the vote and Bryna Caves just under 19%, in a race that the AP called late Wednesday morning.

Oemichen will face Republican Jon Aleckson, who was unopposed in the Republican primary, in the November election for the seat, which Democratic state Rep. Jenna Jacobson gave up to run for state Senate in the 17th SD.

AD 56: Hortonville coffee shop owner Grace Abitz won with just under 59% of the vote in the Democratic primary against Shawna Riley, a forklift operator, who finished with 41%.

Abitz will run in November against Anthony Phillips, a doctor and former state Senate candidate, for the seat being vacated with the retirement of Republican Rep. Dave Murphy.

AD 57: The impending retirement of Republican state Rep. Kevin Petersen created an open seat in this central Wisconsin district. Kevin Krentz, a local dairy farmer and former president of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, won the Republican four-way primary with more than 55% of the vote.

Bill Lorge, a former Assembly member seeking to return to the Capitol, finished a distant third with just under 10%.

Krentz will run against Joey Marschall, a Waushara County Democrat who had no opposition to his nomination.

AD 58: The retirement of Republican state Rep. Rick Gundrum produced an open seat in this suburban and rural district north of Milwaukee.

Bernie Newman, a landscaper and president of Common Sense Citizens of Washington County, won nearly 60% of the Republican primary vote Tuesday, while Washington County Board supervisor Chris Bossert got 40%.

Newman will face Democrat Dennis Degenhardt of West Bend, a baseball historian and retired credit union executive, in November.

AD 61: The Greendale and Hales Corners district in Milwaukee County is represented by Republican Rep. Bob Donovan, who is running for a third term in November.

Ben Brist, an army veteran endorsed by the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), pulled ahead to win with 44% in a three-way Democratic primary against yoga instructor Lawanda Chambers, who got almost 38%, and pharmacist Brian Bock, who won 18%. The AP called the race for Brist at 1:33 a.m. Wednesday morning.

AD 74: Republican state Rep. Chanz Green, first elected in 2022, easily overcame a primary challenge, winning 63% to just under 37% for Scott Harbridge, a retired law enforcement officer. The election was a rematch between the two Republicans.

In November, Green will face Democrat Paul Johnson, also a retired law enforcement officer as well as a member of the Spooner Area School Board and the Washburn County Board.

AD 76: Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford won a five-way Democratic primary with 29% of the vote, a 2-point margin over the second-place finisher, Juliana Bennet. AP called the race shortly after noon on Wednesday. The district has been represented since 2021 by Democratic state Rep. Francesca Hong, who decided to forgo reelection and run for governor.

If elected, Martinez-Rutherford would be the first openly transgender person to serve in the state Legislature. She won the endorsement of two Madison-area state lawmakers along with Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and Madison Common Council President Sabrina Madison.

Martinez-Rutherford will run against Nina Chat in November, whose bid for the Republican candidate nomination was uncontested.

AD 92: Jeremiah Fredrickson, a former teacher and owner of a fish farm, won the Democratic primary against Mel Marin in the Northwest Wisconsin district represented by Republican state Rep. Clint Moses.

Fredrickson will go up against Moses in the November election.

Rick Crosson, a retired U.S. Army officer and former Green Bay school board member, won the Democratic Party nomination Tuesday to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Weid in Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District.

Counting ballots for the Democratic primary in the district stretched past midnight. At 12:08 a.m. Wednesday, the Associated Press called the race for Crosson. With 99% of ballots counted, Crosson had 35% of the vote. 

Former public school teacher turned financial manager Mark Scheffler of Appleton finished a close second, with 33% of the vote, and Katrina deVille, a bandleader and musician whose campaign highlighted that she is transgender and a democratic socialist, finished third with just under 32%.

The 8th CD covers Brown, Calumet, Door, Kewaunee, Marinette, Menominee, Oconto, Outagamie, and Waupaca counties and parts of Winnebago County.

Scheffler was endorsed by former U.S. Rep. Steve Kagan, who was the last Democrat to represent the district after he was elected in 2006 and served two terms.

Crosson garnered endorsements from a number of sitting office holders in the state Assembly and in local governments around the district, along with Dr. Kristin Lyerly, a high-profile 8th CD activist who lost to Weid in 2024.

Scheffler outraised his two Democratic opponents with $136,755 in receipts as of July 22. He was helped by a $15,000 personal donation along with a $25,000 loan he made to his campaign.

Crossan raised $75,430 as of that date — 60% of what Scheffler reported — and deVille raised $22,219, according to FEC data.

The 8th District has been viewed as a safe GOP seat this election cycle. Weid won by a 20-point margin in 2024, when it was an open seat and despite Lyerly’s campaign messaging that focused heavily on abortion rights and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling less than two years earlier that threw out a nationwide right to abortion.

Yee Leng Xiong, a Marathon County school board treasurer and county board member, will face Republican State Treasurer John Leiber in November in the only race for a statewide office held by a member of the Republican party.

With 90% of ballots counted, Xiong had 57% of the votes cast in the Democratic primary for the office Tuesday. Dylan Ray Helmenstein, of Black Earth in western Dane County, had just under 43%. The Associated Press called the race for Xiong at 9:18 p.m.

Xiong is the treasurer of the DC Everest School District board in Marathon County and a member of the Marathon County Board. He is the former executive director of the Hmong American Center.

Xiong was endorsed by Sen. Tammy Baldwin and several other Wisconsin Democrats, including former Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton and state Reps. Christine Sinicki, Jodi Emerson, Lori Palmeri, Andrew Hysell, Tara Johnson and Brienne Brown. 

Helmenstein is a former Medicaid health care rate analyst in the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and a member of several local boards and commissions in Black Earth, including the village board and the Wisconsin Heights School District board.

The Legislature has moved much of the state treasurer’s duties to other agencies that are under the control of the governor. In 2018, voters rejected an amendment that would have removed the office as an elected position under the Wisconsin Constitution.

The state treasurer is the state’s chief financial officer and signs state checks. The officeholder is a statutory member of the Public Employee Trust Fund, which oversees the state’s public pension and benefit programs, and serves on the state Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, along with the secretary of state and the attorney general. 

The commissioners manage revenues from the sale of state-owned timber. The board distributes the proceeds to the Common School Fund, which purchases books and media for public school libraries and funds certain public works projects.

Leiber was the only statewide Republican candidate to win in the 2022 November election, when Gov. Tony Evers and other Democratic state office holders won reelection.

A self-described “authentic MAGA activist” who vows to bring election administration under control of the secretary of state won the Republican nomination for the office Tuesday.

The Associated Press called the secretary of state primary election for Jay Schroeder at 8:42 p.m. With 90% of the ballots counted by 10:30 p.m., Schroeder had 47% of the votes — far outpacing the candidate endorsed by the Republican Party.

Schroeder declared himself to be an “authentic MAGA activist” and a “MAGA aligned candidate on election integrity.” He focused his campaign message heavily on election administration, including eliminating the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission.

The Democratic candidate for the post is JoCasta Zamarripa, a second-term Milwaukee alder and former five-term member of the state Assembly. Zamarripa was unopposed in the Democratic primary for secretary of state.

A Green Party candidate, Pete Karas, is also seeking the office and did not have a contested primary election Tuesday.

The secretary of state’s duties have been narrowed over the last several decades, but the office remains an elected position under the Wisconsin Constitution and cannot be eliminated without a constitutional amendment.

The remaining duties of the office include haveing responsibility for the official state seal and validating the certificate of Wisconsin’s electoral votes in presidential elections. But the office is otherwise unrelated to election administration.

The secretary of state also sits on the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, which distributes revenues from timber sales on former federal land that now belongs to the state, donating proceeds to public school libraries and making loans to public projects.

Schroeder’s campaign has focused on moving Wisconsin elections from the bipartisan elections commission, established in 2016 by the Republican majority in the Legislature, to place them under the control of the secretary of state’s office. That would require the passage of new legislation.

Schroeder has run for the office previously. He was the Republican nominee in 2018, losing to incumbent Democrat Doug La Follette, and ran for the party’s nomination in 2022, coming in second to Amy Loudenbeck in the primary, who lost to La Follette that November.

At a 2022 Republican rally, Schroeder told a crowd that he would not have signed “a sheet of paper for the election,” apparently a reference to the certification of electoral votes in the 2020 Wisconsin presidential election, Bill Lueders reported in a commentary for the Wisconsin Examiner.

On his website Schroeder calls the elections commission “corrupt” and “a disaster.”

Nathan Pollnow, a beef farmer endorsed by the state Republican Party, came in a distant second in the primary, with just under 26% of the vote.

Pollnow ran on a platform of promoting government transparency, vowing to create a publicly accessible guide to laws, administrative rules and other actions of government.

Two other Republicans finished in the low double-digits: Cindy Werner, with 14% of the vote and Brayden Myer with just under 13%.

The 2026 election will be the first in more than 40 years without an incumbent running for reelection. The incumbent, Democrat Sarah Godlewski, opted to run instead for lieutenant governor. Godlewski also had no primary opposition Tuesday.

Godlewski was appointed in 2023 after La Follette, a long-time incumbent, resigned only a few months after winning reelection in November 2022.

U.S. Rep Tom Tiffany easily defeated challenger Andy Manske in the GOP primary for governor. The AP called the race at 8:21p.m. With 45% of the ballots counted, Tiffany was leading 92.4% to Manske’s 3.8%.

Tiffany’s victory was a foregone conclusion. He was endorsed by the Republican Party after President Donald Trump endorsed Tiffany and two other GOP hopefuls who had launched campaigns dropped out.

Manske, a 27-year-old medical service technician from suburban Milwaukee, has said he entered the race to ensure GOP voters had a choice. On his website he said he was campaigning “to challenge a political system that’s stopped working for everyday Wisconsinites and to fight for a state that works for all of us.”
Tiffany’s running mate will be David Varnam, who defeated Will Martin, a former staffer in the administrations of Tommy Thompson and Scott Walker during their terms as governor, in a surprise upset. Martin had been endorsed by the state party.

David Varnam was mayor of Lancaster, Wisconsin, from 2016 to 2022 and previously a Common Council member. He has worked as a congressional aide and as a policy analyst for the Christian organization Focus on the Family. He ran in the 2022 Republican primary for lieutenant governor, finishing seventh.

Varnam defeated Martin 54.1% to 45.5%, with 69% of the vote counted. AP called the race at 9:36 p.m.

With both Martin and Tiffany having the Republican Party’s endorsement, the two campaigned together. Tiffany was a guest on the weekly radio show Martin hosts on Milwaukee radio station WNOV, and the two appeared jointly during the summer in community parades.

Ahead of Election Day, Democratic candidates had been discussing uniting following the primary to defeat Tiffany.

Democrats, including Lt. Gov. candidate Sara Godlewski, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, plan to meet for a unity breakfast Wednesday morning in the Madison area, seeking to move past the divisiveness of the  primary with less than three months until the general election.

Mitchell Berman, an emergency room nurse, won handily Tuesday in a three-way primary of active Democrats seeking to take on Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District.

“I never imagined running for Congress, but I saw a culture of corruption in Washington that protects corporate special interests and insiders instead of solving problems, and knew I had to do something about it,” Berman said in a statement after the race was called. “Tonight proves that when working people stand up, we can make a difference.” 

A little more than an hour after the polls closed,  Berman ran away with the contest. The Associated Press called the race at 9:02 p.m. By the time 99% of the ballots were counted early Wednesday, Berman’s lead grew to 44% of the vote.

Milwaukee Alder Peter Burgelis garnered just under 22% of the vote despite dropping out more than two weeks ago. Burgelis, who lives outside the 1st District, threw his support to Berman after his first campaign finance report came in with receipts that were less than 10% of Berman’s.

Lorenzo Santos, a former Racine County emergency services director, was in third place, with just over 20% of the vote.  Miguel Aranda, a Whitewater school board member and an administrator at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, had just under 14%.

Berman emerged as the best-funded Democrat in the primary, with more than  25 times as much money raised by July 22, as Santos and Aranda put together, according to Federal Election Commission data. Berman was endorsed by the United Auto Workers union and by several the Democratic state lawmakers whose Assembly districts are in the 1st CD.

The outcome sets up Berman to take on Steil in the Nov. 3 general election. While the seat has been safely in Republican hands for 30 years, the 1st CD is among a list of districts that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted this fall.

In a statement, DCCC chair Suzan DelBene said Steil “is a creature of Washington with a rolodex of special interests and insider allies” and who “backed every Trump price hike now hurting Wisconsin families in order to give a handout to his wealthy donors.”

This report has been updated with near-final vote totals.

Crowley and Evers in final sprint

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and Gov. Tony Evers met with volunteers at Crowley’s campaign headquarters in Madison on Monday to thank them for their support.

Crowley and Evers have been racing cross the state over the last week to try to boost Crowley’s profile and win enough support to overtake state Rep. Francesca Hong, who has been leading the field in recent polls. 

Evers told reporters that people are “jazzed as hell” for Crowley. He had stayed out of the primary until July when the campaign of Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez collapsed. Crowley, at the time had suspended his campaign, but he was encouraged by Evers and others to get back into the race with Evers’ endorsement. 

Asked if he regretted waiting to endorse, Evers said he might have done it slightly earlier.

“No. Well, I wish I — yes and no,” Evers said. “It came to a point, and that point was really important…. Maybe in the return, I might have done it a week or two earlier, but this is kind of fun.”

Evers has said in recent days that he doesn’t think Hong can defeat likely Republican nominee U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany. He told reporters Monday that he would campaign for Hong if she wins, saying the “alternative is not good.”

Crowley told reporters that he feels optimistic going into Tuesday. 

“This primary has been chaotic. It’s been messy, but so is our democracy, and at the end of the day, it’s about making sure that all of our voters across this state or wherever they are that they have great options,” Crowley said. “We’re going to continue to focus on the affordability crisis, making things more affordable for families across this state, but also that I’m the only one that’s going to be ready on day one. We have seen a lot of incredible momentum in the past few weeks.”

One of Crowley’s supporters is Lester Pines, a 76-year-old retired attorney who spent much of his career fighting for progressive causes including against former Gov. Scott Walker. Pines said he was “moderately optimistic” going into Tuesday. He and Kaleem Caire, the co-founder of One City Schools, hosted a meet-and-greet event for Crowley early in the campaign.

“I was very impressed with David’s story of his life and with the fact that he’s the Milwaukee county executive and understands what it takes to actually run a large unit of government, and he’s a great communicator,” Pines said, adding that his actions have been “consistent with the positions that I have had, and my friends have had for decades.” 

Pines said Crowley is the right person to go up against “Tom Trump Tiffany,” though he said that he’ll be 100% in for Hong if she becomes the nominee. 

“I’m more than willing to support her if she’s the nominee. The problem is that she has littered herself with a number of very negative things that are going to become what the campaign is about despite how hard she’s going to try to stick to the issues, and that is what worries me,” Pines said. 

Hong rallies canvassers

About two hours later, just a few miles further east in Madison, Hong greeted her supporters before they got started with a canvassing effort at her campaign office in the Willy Street neighborhood. Hong has been leading in polls since early in the primary, and her lead has grown significantly since March of this year.

Hong told her supporters that “now it’s time to level up.”

“It’s not just about winning tomorrow, but it’s about uniting our coalition. It’s about bringing in new builders. It’s about making sure everyone in Wisconsin sees themselves in our vision for a better Wisconsin for everyone,” Hong said. 

Many Democrats, including Evers, have expressed doubts about Hong’s ability to win the general election as a democratic socialist with a history of making controversial social media posts in a swing state that voted for President Donald Trump twice. 

“We’ve been winning in the polls. We’ve been winning over voters because we’re the campaign that actually listens to what they want and what they care about, and we’re going up against a Republican, who will never care about Wisconsinites, who will sell out our natural resources to the highest bidder. Tom Tiffany is an election denier and a traitor. He supports a national abortion ban. A vote for Tiffany is a vote for Trump, not for the people,” Hong told her supporters, adding that the campaign is about the people and “not just my opponents, not about the rhetoric and certainly not about the tweets.” 

Answering questions from reporters, Hong said she looks forward to building unity after the primary and that she is “very confident that we’ll be able to show folks that Democrats are coming together to make sure that Democrats win down and up the ballot this November.”

Throughout her campaign, Hong has held over 320 events and leveraged thousands of volunteers to build support. She said she knew she’d have to “out hustle” the other candidates as the “wildcard” in the race. 

Even the day before Election Day, a handful of new canvassers were given a quick training and instructed to keep things positive when talking about other Democratic candidates and speaking to voters who like Hong “but they’re worried about her electability.” 

One volunteer said they supported Hong because she doesn’t take corporate PAC money, adding, “there’s only one other candidate who does that and she has no motion,” a reference to state Sen. Kelda Roys. Another volunteer mentioned Hong’s position on AI data centers — she supports a one-year moratorium, while other candidates have said they want to impose new regulations. 

— Baylor Spears

Roys sees path forward down to the wire

State Sen. Kelda Roys campaigned through the weekend, with stops scheduled in De Pere and Green Bay on Friday, Ojibwa and Hudson on Saturday, Eau Claire and Mauston on Sunday and online events Sunday afternoon and evening.

On Monday she began her day at the Wisconsin State Fair, followed by a brew pub meet-and-greet in Wauwatosa, a town hall event in Whitewater and wrapping up with a rally at a Madison restaurant two blocks from the Capitol.

“There is such a hunger for change,” Roys told the group of about 90 who gathered under a tent in the back yard of Naples 15. “People are furious about what this Republican authoritarian regime is doing to our country, and they want a leader who is willing to stand up and fight for it. And people are ready to finally put the nail in the coffin of the Walker years.”

Surrounded by enthusiastic supporters, although polls have put her behind Hong and Crowley, Roys said she saw  signs that she takes as a message not to count her out.

“Even now this weekend, as I traveled around and I said, ‘Who’s undecided?’, a good chunk of people still raise their hands,” she said. “We know that when folks see all the candidates side by side, when they hear us, when they have the opportunity to actually clue in and pay attention, they do gravitate towards me and my progressive policies.”

She mentioned a poll after the one Democratic gubernatorial debate that showed her gaining support from swing voters.

“I am just overwhelmed by the outpouring of support that I have received all over the state, and I have to tell you, it has accelerated wildly in the last several weeks since the debate,” Roys said.

After her pep talk, which lasted a little more than 15 minutes, Roys spent another half-hour taking questions and comments from the crowd.

Bryna Caves, who is running in the Democratic primary for the 50th Assembly District that includes Green County, told Roys that she had originally supported Hong’s campaign.

But hearing Roys at a rally Caves held in February to launch her own campaign, “it was really obvious to me that Kelda had equally as progressive values as Fran but was wildly more qualified. She had way more experience. Her policies were much more thought out, and I just was much more in touch with her in person,” Caves said.“I flipped because it was obvious to me that she is — If we really want to achieve the goals that we want, like universal healthcare, childcare, if we want to make these things actually happen, the one that’s going to be able to get it done with no drama is Kelda.”

— Erik Gunn

Brennan looks forward to next phase

Joel Brennan met with a small group of supporters in a quiet and scenic Mequon neighborhood on Monday. Brennan aimed to canvas the area, filled with huge houses, scenic nature views, and quiet courts, and cul de sacs to gain support ahead of the Tuesday Democratic primary election. 

Pointing to his experience serving as Secretary of Administration under Gov. Tony Evers, as well as in the private sector and running the state’s largest science museum, Discovery World, Brennan told reporters that he’s a prime candidate. Brennan said that the more he talks to voters, the more he hears people express frustration “with the government doing nothing, and government standing in place when we have real problems to address around healthcare, around childcare, or education.” Brennan added, “I’m somebody who’s always been about getting things done.” 

Brennan said he’s looking forward to what comes after the election Tuesday. “The field will change, the conversation will change after tomorrow,” he said. Despite all the twists and turns during the primary race, Brennan said voters remain focused on how to improve their lives, and how candidates can help them achieve that. 

Looking back at whether he has any regrets in his campaign, Brennan said that the disappearance of local media in small towns was a challenge. “I’m the son of two journalists,” said Brennan, “the world has changed. But I think we’re worse off if we don’t get local eyes, and local coverage, and local conversation about what’s going on. If there was something that I wish I had more of in this campaign, it’s sitting across the table from a grizzled local media veteran talking about local issues, forcing me to know more about that community, forcing me to answer for the issues in that community. And we don’t have that.” Brennan said that he believes “that we’d be a better-informed electorate if we had more of a chance to have those local conversations.”

Asked what he thinks will be the key to beating Republican Tom Tiffany in the race for governor, Brennan went after Tiffany’s ads. “Everybody has seen commercials to this point of Tom Tiffany looking over his shoulder and looking at his mother,” said Brennan. “I think the fall campaign’s going to have to be Tom Tiffany looking over his shoulder and seeing Donald Trump. Because he has spent more time with Donald Trump than his mother is my guess, and he’s been more closely aligned with him in his voting record than almost anybody else in America, and he has to answer to that.” 

Brennan said that Democrats also need to “offer up a positive vision” including how to help farmers and how to open up educational opportunities, “stop pitting property tax payers against kids,” and how to ensure healthcare is more affordable for people. “We better be offering up an alternative and a vision that solves problems for people and gives them a pathway to understanding that things are going to be better and things are going to be different if we get elected,” he said.

— Isiah Holmes

The race among Democrats to pick a candidate to run in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District for 2026 grew to a record crowd.

The district stretches from Lake Michigan to South Central Wisconsin,  anchored by Racine, Kenosha, Beloit and Janesville. It has been in Republican hands for 32 years — 20 years represented by Paul Ryan, and since 2018 by U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, a former Ryan aide and corporate lawyer.

Democrats have gone in virtually every direction in the last three decades in their efforts to recapture the seat — once reliably blue from the 1970s until 1994. For most of the races against Ryan, Democrats only rarely received more than one-third of the vote. Since Steil took over, the margins have been narrower, but still solidly in favor of the GOP.

Forecasts from national oddsmakers have so far kept it in the GOP column in 2026. The Cook Political Report rates the seat as “Likely Republican” — but hasn’t updated that assessment since February 2025.

Steil has amassed a sizable financial advantage, with nearly $5.5 million raised since January 2025 through the middle of July, the most recent Federal Election Commission data show.

Messages tie Steil to Trump

Despite those odds, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee listed Wisconsin’s 1st CD along with the 3rd CD among the group’s first targets to pick up this year.

Even before that announcement, the current cycle drew a record number of prospective Democratic candidates, with nine people over the last year and a half announcing their intention to run.

Three dropped out before the district’s Democratic convention in April, and two more failed to file nomination papers in June. That left four who filed enough signatures to make it to the ballot for the primary on Tuesday.

Since then, one — Milwaukee alder Peter Burgelis — has dropped out, although he remains on the ballot. Burgelis lives outside the district and was the last to enter, basing his candidacy on the premise that he would be able to raise more money than any of the others in the contest.

He abandoned his campaign after his fundraising report filed July 15 showed him far behind Mitchell Berman, the top fundraiser, and he urged his other 1st CD rivals to join him in backing Berman.

The three remaining Democrats — Berman, Miguel Aranda and Lorenzo Santos — have similar messages. All have focused on President Donald Trump, whose plummeting popularity has increased hopes that Democrats can regain a majority in the U.S. House in November.

They cite affordability, rising costs for healthcare, tariffs that have driven up consumer costs and dampened farm exports, and the attacks on immigrants and immigration enforcement that have led to confrontations and civilian deaths across the country.

All three portray Steil as out of touch with district residents despite his past success at the ballot box, and as a lawmaker who has enabled Trump’s agenda rather than standing up to him. Each argues that they can motivate broad support to score an upset in November.

At the same time, each has a distinctive biography and set of emphases in their campaigns.

Working class message

Of the Democrats on the ballot, Mitchell Berman, a rural Racine County nurse, has been in the race the longest. Berman declared his candidacy a year ago, on Aug. 12, 2025, and since then has garnered a number of endorsements, including from the United Auto Workers, which has a long heritage in the district. Democrats in the state Legislature from Kenosha, Milwaukee, Beloit and Janesville have also signed on to his campaign.

Of the Democrats, he has been the most successful fundraiser, with more than $700,000 in receipts as of this week, according to the FEC. The resources have enabled his campaign to staff up, printing yard signs and flyers and producing merch.

Berman centers his campaign argument on his working class identity, growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm and the first person in his family to gain a college degree.

“A lot of the issues that we’re facing today are not Republican issues, they’re not Democratic issues. They are working class and middle class issues,” Berman told voters at a UAW hall in Janesville this week.

“We’re up against people who have no idea what it’s like for you and me to struggle through this economy that they’ve created while they’re sitting in Washington and enriching themselves,” he said.

Berman points to having to still pull emergency room shifts that have forced him to skip some joint candidate forums, such as one held in Kenosha in July.

“I’m a working class candidate, like in the true meaning of working class candidate — I’ve still got to work to pay the bills,” Berman said in an interview.

Healthcare is one of Berman’s chief talking points. Until he entered the race, he worked for the Veterans Administration health system, leaving only because the Hatch Act bars federal employees from political involvement. He says he decided to run because of Trump administration cuts to the VA during the DOGE  operation led by Elon Musk in the first half of 2025.

His immediate healthcare priorities would be to restore enhanced subsidies for  insurance policies purchased through the ACA marketplace and to reverse cuts to Medicaid that were part of the massive 2025 tax-cut and spending law. He said he also wants to see an ACA public option — a federal insurance plan that people could purchase through the marketplace.

Emergency services and military experience

Lorenzo Santos, the former Racine County emergency services manager, is the most recent of the three to have entered the primary race. An East Coast native, Santos served in the U.S. Navy, then took a job as an industrial sales manager. His territory included Wisconsin, and he settled in the state, then moved into the emergency services role after getting a degree in Homeland Security. He gave up the Racine County job in April after entering the congressional primary.

Santos previously ran in the 1st District primary in 2024, but left the field along with other Democratic hopefuls after former state Department of Revenue Secretary Peter Barca entered the race.

Barca was the last Democrat to hold the 1st District seat, losing it to a Republican after one term in the 1994 election that flipped the U.S. House from a Democratic majority to a Republican one.

Santos bases his pitch on his experience in both private and public sector positions as well as his military service.

“I understand the national implications. I understand the international implications. I understand the economic implications of what this administration is doing right now,” Santos told the audience during the July 17 Kenosha forum, organized by the activist group Hands Off Kenosha. In his closing, he said, “I’m ready to take the fight.”

Santos has taken positions that have a slightly harder edge than some of his rivals — Medicare for All to address healthcare, vociferously condemning the U.S. war with Iran and categorically rejecting data center development projects.

“I’ve heard overwhelmingly that our communities are opposed to them and not enough of our elected officials are standing with them on this issue,” Santos said in an interview.

Santos contrasted Berman’s healthcare positions with his own support for Medicare for All — which he called “the first bill that I think we should be putting into legislation” at the Kenosha forum.

Berman responds that it will be faster to implement the policies he has focused on such as the public option and restoring ACA subsidies and reversing Medicaid cuts.

“Being an emergency room nurse, I’m very pragmatic,” Berman said in an interview. “When someone comes into the hospital emergency room and they’re hemorrhaging, the first thing that we need to do is stop the hemorrhaging. And I think that right now is ensuring that people can afford to go to the doctor.”

On data centers, Berman told a questioner at the Janesville UAW hall that he wants to see regulatory guardrails, assurances that “they’re paying their own way” rather than saddling the public with costs for the energy they use, and that they don’t contribute to air or water pollution. “And also, I think communities ought to have a say on whether they come in or not,” he said.

University administrator and school board member

Miguel Aranda, a University of Wisconsin-Whitewater administrator, the third candidate, is frank about the shoestring campaign he’s running.

“There’s no consultants involved at this point,” he said at the Kenosha forum. “It’s almost a one- or two-man team doing all of this.”

 Aranda, who entered the race a few weeks after Berman, was born in the U.S. to parents who emigrated from Mexico.

He points out that he’s the only candidate in the primary who speaks fluent Spanish. That could give him an advantage, he has said, with the district’s growing Hispanic population.

“One of many reasons I put my name in was to really start cracking into that populace that usually doesn’t vote for primaries,” Aranda said in an interview.

A Whitewater school board member, Aranda has emphasized education as well as immigration reform in his campaign.

He is circumspect on some issues. Asked during the Kenosha forum how he would propose to fix the country’s healthcare problems, Aranda replied, “I don’t want to give people the false promise that that’s in the past if I were to win.”

Aranda said he supports Medicare for All, but also sees the pathway there as a complicated one that would include addressing public education funding and immigration reform.

Like Berman, Aranda is running while also holding down another job — which has made the effort tiring, he admitted in an interview.

“I tell people I’m going to go all the way to August, and after that we’ll see what happens,” Aranda told the Kenosha audience. “But you know, if I can’t fly, I’m gonna keep running. If I can’t run, I’m gonna keep walking, and if I can’t walk, I’m gonna keep crawling, and that’s what I want all of you to do.”

The federal government announced a proposed federal rule Thursday that rewrites or eliminates many regulations for Head Start early education programs nationwide.

The Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services said the proposed change would provide more flexibility and help expand Head Start enrollment.

Wisconsin providers and childcare experts, however, say the proposed rule would roll back standards for classroom quality, teacher qualifications and health services.

The new rule would end supports for children with disabilities and children who speak languages other than English, as well as requirements that Head Start providers work closely with the families of children enrolled in the early education program, advocates say.

“The term ‘flexibility’ is being used to make it sound friendly,” said Jen Bailey, executive director of Reach Dane, which operates Head Start programs in 13 locations in Dane County and Green County. “We all like flexibility in our work.”

Bailey, who is president of the Wisconsin Head Start Association, spoke in an interview earlier this week, before the notice of proposed rulemaking was posted Thursday.

Bailey said existing rules already give Head Start programs flexibility to operate. “We’re designed to meet the needs of our local communities and kids and families,” she said. “I see this as a means to not fund the program, because if you eliminate many of the standards, then you can justify the flat funding we’ve been under the last couple of years. Flat funding is really a funding cut.”

Providers have been bracing for the rule change for several months following published reports from the Associated Press and other news outlets about early drafts of the document.

Trump administration threatens to gut Head Start rules

“Headstart, like childcare, is not just about making sure children are physically safe from dramatic harm,” said Jennie Mauer, executive director for the Wisconsin Head Start Association, which represents 39 Head Start programs across the state. “It’s really about nurturing their growth and development, so they come to the K-3 to 12 system prepared and ready to participate.”

About 12,000 children in Wisconsin are enrolled in Head Start, Mauer said this week.

School readiness for children in poverty

Head Start was launched in 1965 to help children from low-income families become ready for school and currently serves about 670,000 children in the U.S., according to a new report from the Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University.

The report, a response to concerns about the program’s future that have been circulating since President Donald Trump took office, analyzes the potential impact of changes along the lines of those the federal government announced Thursday.

“Decades of research have found that children who attend Head Start show improved language, literacy, and social emotional outcomes after program participation and even improved rates of educational attainment and some intergenerational effects,” the ASU report states.

The report attributes those gains to national standards that Head Start has established for local providers to follow, drawn up to ensure higher quality early education,

Quality is important for all children in early education, the ASU report states, but “it is especially important to children who may have higher needs, such as children living in poverty, children with disabilities, children experiencing homelessness, and children involved in the child welfare system — the very children Head Start prioritizes in its services and those who demonstrate the most benefit from these services.”

Some of the performance standards that the proposed new rule eliminates were updated in 2016 and 2024.  

In some instances, the rule would replace Head Start standards with the standards set by childcare regulators in the Head Start provider’s state.

For example, the new rule eliminates a Head Start standard for the ratio between the number of children and the number of childcare teachers, deferring instead to the ratios prescribed in state regulations.

The current rule requires one adult caregiver or teacher for every four infants in a Head Start center. That aligns with Wisconsin state regulations and those of 34 other states and the District of Columbia, according to the ASU report.

But 15 states’ current regulations allow for more infants, and changing the Head Start standard would mean increasing the number of infants per adult in those states.

Head Start also requires one teacher for four 2-year-old children. Only three states also require that ratio, according to the ASU report. In 47 states — including Wisconsin — and D.C., local rules allow for a larger number of 2-year-olds.

“Changing the staff-to-child ratios is dangerous and a health and safety hazard,” said Bailey of Reach Dane. “We enroll many children with disabilities such as autism that need a lot of support to keep them safe.”

Because children growing up in poverty face additional adversities that require greater support, “It would be categorically unsafe to shift to different ratios in the name of flexibility,” Bailey said. “Children will be harmed.

Ending duplication — or lowering standards?

The notice of the proposed new rule states that the agency is eliminating a number of provisions in the current standards because they’re already specified in the federal law that governs the Head Start program.

For example, the new rule eliminates requirements in the current standards for Head Start programs to evaluate children’s health, help families navigate the healthcare system, help pregnant women get access to healthcare and insurance, teach children about brushing their teeth and provide mental health supports for children and families.

“Head Start programs remain responsible for ensuring the provision of health, mental health, and related services per the Act and must also continue to comply with applicable state and local requirements,” the notice states.

Mauer said the standards are supposed to help local programs carry out the federal law’s requirements, however.

“I think it leaves a large set of unanswered questions about what some of the components mean if there’s no explanation of how to implement them,” Mauer said. “There’s a lot of missing detail.”

The Administration for Children and Families said in its announcement Thursday that the new rule “restores flexibility to programs to meet local needs, reduces regulatory burden and administrative costs, and aims to increase available slots and services for families. It is projected to preserve or expand as many as 236,000 Head Start slots nationwide and save $2.2 billion .”

Mauer said that the proposal to serve some 200,000 more children nationwide “leaves a big unanswered question of how do they intend to get there.”

While the rule appears to give Head Start programs permission to continue to offer the comprehensive services that are outlined in the current standards, there’s no new money being allocated for Head Start, Mauer said.

“The math doesn’t math to me,” Mauer said. “It demonstrates to me a fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to operate a classroom with small children.”

The federal proposal announced Thursday drew protests from a range of Head Start advocates and supporters. Some linked it to the Trump administrations’ past actions that delayed Head Start funding, closed federal offices that served local Head Start programs and at one point proposed zeroing out Head Start funding in the next budget year. The program was subsequently added back in.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, drawn up prior to Trump’s election in 2024 as a proposed blueprint for the next president, called for eliminating the program.

The new proposal amounts to “undoing the safeguards that have helped make Head Start one of the nation’s most effective public investments in young children and families,” the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association said in a statement.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) condemned the proposal, saying it “puts kids’ wellbeing and safety on the line and is all part of the President’s plan to shut down Head Start entirely, and it’s shameful.”

After a 125-mile trip on his powered wheelchair, Carl Schulze rolled up just before noon Thursday to the Wisconsin Capitol.

The resident of Fox Crossing, near Neenah, made the journey to make a point: How Medicaid has helped him and thousands of other Wisconsin residents with disabilities — and how that help is being threatened in Washington, D.C.

A fall from a porch 19 years ago broke Schulze’s neck. He survived, but the accident left him unable to use his arms or legs.

Medicaid coverage for home care makes it possible for Schulze to hire aides who help him with virtually every activity of daily living. But with cuts to Medicaid totaling more than $900 million in 10 years because of the tax cut and spending law that President Donald Trump signed in July 2025, he worries that it may be harder to maintain his coverage, or pay the healthcare workers who support him.

And another initiative from the administration has angered — and worried — Schulze as well.

Since 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Olmstead ruling has been interpreted to say that people with disabilities have a fundamental right to get their care at home or in the community instead of having to live in a nursing home or other institution. In June, however, the Trump administration U.S. Department of Justice issued a legal memo rejecting that long-held assumption.

“Apparently, it’s not a violation of my civil rights to put me in an institution against my will,” Schulze said to a bank of TV microphones on the sidewalk in front of the state Capitol. “The federal government is openly telling states, there will be no consequences if they defund the very services that keep disabled people living at home. They have effectively given states a green light to warehouse us again.”

As federal protections fade, disabled Americans fear a return to institutions

The looming Medicaid cuts could give states, which administer the health insurance program and cover some of its costs, “no choice but to cut programs,” Schulze said. “And when they decide on what’s cut, the programs that serve people with disabilities will be first up on the chopping block. That means people like me may soon be forced to choose between our physical health and even the rest of our life in the future.”

Other federal initiatives are cutting federal grants that “no longer align with the administration’s priorities,” Schulze said. “For Wisconsin, this means even more uncertainty and deeper potential cuts to independent living support.”

Schulze didn’t take his wheelchair ride alone. Starting in mid-July, he began the trip from his apartment in Fox Crossing, driving the chair until the battery needed charging, with drivers accompanying him in his van. With each successive day, they drove him and the chair to the point where he stopped previously and continued the trip. Along the way he recorded videos for social media.

Care in the community is first and foremost a human right, said Jenny Price, executive director of the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities, in an interview. But it’s also more economical than putting someone in an institution, she observed.

“When you look at these [home care] services on their own, they appear very expensive,” Price said. “What kind of gets lost when people look at that big dollar amount is what that dollar amount could be if it were provided in an institutional setting.”

The cuts’ impact doesn’t end with people who require Medicaid for their healthcare.

Jason Glozier, the co-chair of the Survival Coalition of Wisconsin Disability Organizations, is the executive director of the Wisconsin Coalition of Independent Living Centers, a network of agencies around the state that offer information resources, navigation assistance and advocacy for people with disabilities who want to remain in the community.

“Almost 50% of unpaid caregivers are providing as much or more care hours than a half-time job,” Glozier said, citing a survey that the Survival Coalition conducted last year. “And 31% of caregivers are providing care more than 60 hours per week. Under any sort of labor laws, that wouldn’t be fair treatment. It shouldn’t be fair to expect our families to provide that care unpaid.”

“Family members have been providing enormous amounts of uncompensated care, for decades in some cases, to keep people in their home,” Tami Jackson, a policy analyst for the Board for People with Developmental Disabilities and  the other Survival Coalition co-chair, told reporters. “Even small cuts to the number of hours [of healthcare coverage] that somebody like Carl and many others get can mean the difference between being in their home and being locked away in a nursing facility where you don’t have the freedom to decide what your hours are, when you eat, who you can see, whether or not you can commute to a job, and a thousand other daily things that most of us are not thinking about right now.”

A multifaith group focused on the environment is calling on whoever sits in the governor’s office in 2027 to commit Wisconsin to a clean energy future.

“More than 100 faith leaders from across the state have signed an open letter to the next governor declaring that the climate crisis is a spiritual crisis, and our next governor must lead us to a just transition to 100% renewable energy,” said Laura Lane, the Wisconsin outreach director for Faith In Place, at a Tuesday morning press conference outside the state Capitol.

“Clean energy is the solution for lowering energy bills, having cleaner air and water, and enjoying a livable planet,” Lane said. “All Wisconsinites deserve the dignity of a life where the basic conditions of health and joy can be met. And the next governor must lead us to that future.”

Faith In Place is made up of individuals as well as houses of worship in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, organizing to improve environmental conditions in the Upper Midwest. Lane said it was founded 27 years ago and has helped spawn “green teams” dedicated to environmental issues in religious congregations in all three states.

“Although God created everything good, we have not been good in America to the beautiful creation,” said Rev. Teresa Thomas-Boyd, a faith partnership consultant for the Walnut Way Conservation Corp. in Milwaukee.

“We need to have cleaner energy and not only to reduce the cost of energy for Wisconsin, but also to mitigate the natural disasters that we experience each year,” Thomas-Boyd said. “So I urge the future governor of Wisconsin to move us to be good stewards.”

Rev. Kelly Asbrooth-Jackson, a Madison Unitarian Universalist minister, said Wisconsin is behind both Illinois and Minnesota in the transition to renewable energy.

“The need for an environment friendly to human beings and the need for each of us to make ends meet have been pitted against each other for a very long time now,” Asprooth-Jackson said. “It is time for us to let go of that story because it has kept us from practicing the values common to so many of our religions, including my own — to care for the precious gift of this planet that has been entrusted to us and to care for our neighbors with whom we share it.”

The effects of climate change have been most recently experienced in severe weather events, including historic flooding and destructive tornados in Wisconsin, as well as wildfires in Canada that sent smoke hundreds of miles, including to the Wisconsin skies.

“We were breathing the smoke with our most dangerous air quality ever recorded,” said Rev. Nick Uptall, a Lutheran pastor. “And we know that it’s getting worse.”

Climate change threatens the future of a longstanding tradition for the young people in his church, Uptall said — an annual canoe trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on the border of Minnesota and Canada. Worse, however, it has harmed people as well as animals and plants, “which my faith understands to be our siblings in God’s creation,” he said.

“Jesus called us to love our neighbors as ourselves,” Uptall said. The state’s next governor must “lead Wisconsin to a better future, turning us from the waste and destruction of dirty energy and instead caring for God’s creation.”

The harms from climate change “fall disproportionately on those who have the least resources,” said Rabbi Abby Phelps of Milwaukee. “Ending our reliance on fossil fuels is a practical necessity and it is also a religious obligation.”

“The Earth becomes ours to use only after we bless it,” Phelps said, citing an interpretation of scripture by rabbinical commentators. “To take without blessing is theft. To take with blessing is partnership.”

Committing to renewable, clean energy honors that spirit, she added: “What better way could there be to bring blessing into this world than by harnessing its power in a way that protects the Earth and its inhabitants?”

A bipartisan committee of Wisconsin legislators has signed off on a $250,000 funding deal for WisconsinEye, the livestream service that covers the state Legislature.

The Joint Committee on Legislative Organization approved the funds, to be paid out $50,000 per month starting Aug. 1, on a 9-1 vote, the nonpartisan Legislative Council announced Tuesday. The committee is made up of six Republican and four Democratic leaders of both the Senate and the Assembly.

Sen. Dan Feyen (R-Fond du Lac), the assistant Senate majority leader, cast the only vote against the proposal.

The funding is to support WisconsinEye so it can provide livestream coverage of floor sessions in the Legislature as well as public hearings and votes held by Senate and Assembly committees, as it continues to seek long-term funding to operate.

WisEye President Jon Henkes welcomed the vote Tuesday, saying that it provided “a strong statement of support” in both chambers “for unfettered citizen access to state government proceedings,” with both Republicans and Democrats signing on.

“They’ve put action to their words that transparency is essential to our democracy, and we are extremely grateful,” Henkes said in a statement.

Henkes said the sum was sufficient for WisconsinEye to maintain operations through December, including its coverage of events in the 2026 election campaign as well as coverage of the Legislature’s joint study committees, which are discussing a variety of topics with future policy implications.

The vote also provides “an existing foundation of ongoing support” that will be important to charitable donors and WisEye program sponsors, according to the WisconsinEye statement.

The streaming service is counting on the new Legislature that takes office in January 2027 to reach a bipartisan agreement for future partial funding for the service.

WisconsinEye launched as an independent nonprofit in 2007 to livestream and archive government meetings and legislative sessions. The service has operated on donations and runs independently from the state Legislature.

WisconsinEye’s management announced in November 2025 that it needed additional revenue to support the service’s $900,000 annual budget after donations fell behind in the last couple of years.  The service went dark for nearly two months at the end of December, resuming in February.

Two separate proposals to fund the service passed earlier this year, one in the Assembly and the other in the Senate, but neither one got a vote in the opposite chamber.

Wisconsin lawmakers are voting this week to fund WisconsinEye through the end of 2026 with $250,000.

The funding would support the service, which provides livestream coverage of floor sessions in the Legislature as well as public hearings and votes held by Senate and Assembly committees, as it continues to seek long-term funding to operate.

Members of the Joint Committee on Legislative Organization received paper ballots Monday to vote on a proposal to send WisconsinEye $50,000 per month starting in August and ending in December. The cost would be split between the Assembly and the Senate.

The ballots are due at 5 p.m. Tuesday. Funding would come from appropriations in the budget to carry out the functions of each chamber, including expenses for legislative documents, according to the Wisconsin Legislative Council, a nonpartisan service agency for the Legislature.

WisEye CEO Jon Henkes could not be reached for comment Monday on the potential impact of the funding if it is approved as expected.

WisconsinEye launched as an independent nonprofit in 2007 to livestream and archive government meetings and legislative sessions. The service has operated on donations and runs independently from the state Legislature.

WisconsinEye’s management announced in November 2025 that it needed additional revenue to support the service’s $900,000 annual budget after donations fell behind in the last couple of years.

Henkes told the Wisconsin Examiner at the time that contributions haven’t kept up with expenses since the COVID-19 pandemic. WisEye temporarily halted coverage Dec. 15, 2025. It resumed coverage Feb. 2, 2026, after the Joint Committee on Legislative Organization authorized $50,000 to cover the service for that month.

Two separate proposals to fund the service passed earlier this year, one in the Assembly and the other in the Senate, but neither one got a vote in the opposite chamber.

WisEye launched a GoFundMe campaign in January with a goal of raising $250,000. In a July 15 fundraising email, WisEye said it had raised nearly half of that goal and needed $130,000 “to maintain operations for the next few months.”

UPDATE: This story has been updated to include reactions. 

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez is suspending her campaign for governor after a week of trying to navigate the fallout of a financial disaster. 

“As we have continued to dig into our financial reports, it has become clear that there are issues that would be an ongoing distraction —  not just for this campaign, but for the primary and for Wisconsin,” Rodriguez said in a statement and a video posted to X. “This race is too important to Wisconsin to let that happen.” 

Rodriguez’s troubles emerged when she announced she fired her campaign manager, Kara Spencer, on Sunday due to “serious mismanagement and inaccuracies in campaign finance filings she prepared.” Rodriguez’s January finance reports showed hundreds of duplicate contributions, and during a Monday press conference, Rodriguez said she had hundreds of thousands of dollars less than she expected, but was determined to push ahead, calling it a “bump in the road.”

While she sought to continue on, additional mistakes arose when she submitted her campaign finance reports Wednesday. Her initial report showed she had less than $35,000 in the bank and over $150,000 in debts to sort through. 

However, her campaign put out a statement saying that she had raised $219,000 since July 1 and would be launching a new campaign ad. Her campaign also said that it was still “actively working to ensure our financial records are accurate and complete.” 

The initial report showed a payment to WI Federation of Republican Women, which was a mistake that was fixed in the amended report. However, the amended report also dramatically increased the tally of her campaign dollars to show she ended the period with $643,206. 

The campaign later said that report was a mistake, and the campaign did end the period with only $34,991 in cash-on-hand after all. 

Rodriguez in her statement on suspending the campaign said that she “cannot in good conscience allow these questions to become a cloud over an election that Democrats need to win.”

“I am deeply hurt and betrayed by what happened,” Rodriguez said. “As I said on Monday, part of being a leader is taking swift action, doing the right thing, and being as honest as possible when there’s a problem.” 

“This was never just about any one race or any one candidate,” Rodriguez continued. “This is about protecting Wisconsin from a legislature hell-bent on putting corporations over schools and insurance companies over patients. It’s about showing the rest of the country that we can win here, govern here, and fight for the middle class — and that Wisconsin will lead the way.”

Her exit from the race is the third in recent weeks, narrowing the field to four candidates: former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, state Rep. Francesca Hong, state Sen. Kelda Roys and Joel Brennan, former head of the Department of Administration.

There are just 25 days until Wisconsin’s primary election.

Rodriguez’s campaign appeared to be growing momentum ahead of the financial scandal partially due to the endorsements of her former Democratic opponents, Missy Hughes, the former CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. Crowley dropped out last Wednesday and endorsed Rodriguez on Thursday, around the same time that Rodriguez said she realized something was amiss with her financials. 

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, there is a push to get Crowley to re-enter the race, and two Democratic sources told the newspaper that Gov. Tony Evers is “very seriously considering” backing that effort. Late Friday, Crowley released a statement from “Democratic candidate for governor David Crowley” calling a press conference in Milwaukee at which he will make an announcement at 11 a.m. Saturday.

Evers has so far stayed out of the race. When the two-term governor announced his retirement, however, he left open the door for endorsing in the primary saying “never say never” and “if there’s somebody who really needs support, and I want them to win, I might get in.”

Hughes also called on Crowley to get back into the race in a post on X.

While some Democrats sought to pull Crowley back into the race, candidates still in the race highlighted their campaigns  and hoped to pull supporters over to their campaign. 

Brennan, the only other current or former member of Evers’ administration still in the governor’s race, was the first to issue a statement Friday.

“I deeply respect Lieutenant Governor Rodriguez and the ideas and energy she brought to this race,” said Brennan. “This is no doubt disappointing for her and people who supported her campaign, and I am committed to joining her in the fight to protect the Wisconsin we love.”

Brennan has been among the most vocal critics of how the Rodriguez campaign had managed its finance and compliance operation. He emphasized when he submitted his own report this week that her difficulties had weakened her as a candidate in the general election against the likely Republican nominee, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany.

“While a lot has changed in the Democratic primary, one thing has not: we need a governor who can win and who will fight for Wisconsin to get things done,” said Brennan, adding that he was “the candidate who will get big things done.”  

Sen. Kelda Roys followed shortly after with a call Friday “to unite the party so that we can defeat Tom Tiffany and deliver a Democratic trifecta.”

Both Brennan and Roys have finished further back in polls on the race to date. Until this week Rodriguez, Barnes and Hong have been the top candidates in polling.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming said in a statement that Democrats are “in full meltdown mode.” 

“With zero clear candidate and lackluster fundraising, any hope Democrats had has turned into a dumpster fire,” Schimming said. “As Democrats fight among themselves in primaries and scramble for resources, Republicans are organized, well-funded, and laser-focused on victory in November.”

A Milwaukee alder who had proclaimed that  he would bring major fundraising power to the Democratic primary field in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District this week dropped his bid.

Peter Burgelis signaled in a statement Wednesday he would back emergency room nurse Mitchell Berman, whose fundraising report showed he had raised more than 10 times as much money.

The 1st CD has been in Republican hands since 1994 and the current incumbent, U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, has been judged likely having a safe reelection in the current midterms; Cook Political Report currently rates it as “Likely Republican.” Nevertheless, this year’s Democratic primary for the seat drew an unusually large field of potential challengers, with seven different residents of the district declaring their intention to run at one point or another.

Berman, a Racine County resident, entered the Democratic primary for the 1st CD in August and has been garnering support since then, including a United Auto Workers union endorsement.

Burgelis, although he lives outside the district, became the eighth person to enter the race when he declared his intention to run in April. (By then, at least three of the Democratic hopefuls had dropped out or abandoned the race.)

Burgelis told the Wisconsin Examiner at the time that he got into the race because it needed a candidate who could “raise money on a national level and attract national attention,” and that he believed none of the other contestants, including Berman, would be able to take on Steil, who has more than $5.5 million to draw on.

Four candidates — Berman, Burgelis, Lorenzo Santos and Miguel Aranda — filed enough signatures with the Wisconsin Elections Commission to gain ballot access in the 1st CD primary.

Berman raised $653,922 from July 1, 2025 through June 30 of this year, according to Federal Election Commission data updated Wednesday.

Burgelis, starting in April 2026, raised $54,562 through June 30, FEC data show.

On Wednesday, Burgelis announced he was suspending his campaign and was doing so “with the understanding that defeating Bryan Steil must be the Democratic Party’s top priority.”

In a press release he said that he has reached out to Berman to offer assistance as the campaign moves forward.

After disclosing a  crisis in her campaign for governor this week, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez remains committed to staying in the contest for the Democratic nomination, a spokesperson for her campaign said Wednesday.

The Rodriguez campaign has lined up a public relations and crisis communications firm, Pod3Strategies, whose CEO, Christina Freundlich, has been fielding calls from reporters this week and spoke briefly with the Wisconsin Examiner Wednesday.

Rodriguez met with residents of the Madison YWCA on Tuesday, outlining her campaign’s policy positions and answering questions. The campaign was working to file its next round of campaign finance reports by the Wednesday midnight deadline, Freundlich said.

Meanwhile, Citizen Action of Wisconsin announced its endorsement of state Rep. Francesca Hong Wednesday in the governor’s race. The grassroots advocacy organization cited Hong’s positions on data centers, healthcare and hospital costs, utility costs and a minimum wage increase.

“In our intensive grassroots endorsement process Citizen Action leaders concluded that Francesca Hong is the best candidate to meet the moment by restoring a vibrant popular democracy that acts in the interest of average Wisconsinites, not the corporate monopolies that dominate state government,” said Robert Kraig, the organization’s executive director.

Wednesday was also the deadline for campaign finance reports for state offices. Reports covering fundraising and spending from January through June were due by 12 midnight.

A massive shortfall in the Rodriguez campaign along with inaccuracies in the reports that the campaign filed in January rocked the Democratic primary contest this week days before the Wednesday deadline. Rodriguez fired her campaign manager, Kara Spencer, on Sunday and at a press conference Monday said she would continue her campaign while working to rectify the errors that had been committed.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Wednesday that Spencer had a history of financial problems prior to being named to her campaign job.

Rodriguez said Monday that the campaign’s financial problems surfaced for her when a statewide ad did not start to run on TV a week ago Tuesday. The campaign had put out a press release announcing it was making a $1 million ad buy. 

A review of the campaign’s last finance report filed in January showed numerous duplicate transactions. Rodriguez said Monday that her report this week would show about $200,000 in cash on hand and that she has raised nearly $1 million over the course of the campaign.

On Wednesday, another rival of Rodriguez for the Democratic nomination, former Wisconsin Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan, held a news conference about his campaign finance report and flagged the document’s top line — $665,000 raised from Jan. 1 to June 30. Brennan said he’s raised $1.22 million since entering the race in December.  

Brennan spoke outside the office building in downtown Madison that houses the Wisconsin Ethics Commission, which collects the finance reports.

Brennan described his campaign’s infrastructure, with a fundraising team and with reports compiled with the assistance of a compliance firm, a lawyer, the campaign manager and the campaign treasurer.

“It goes through all of those layers before it gets submitted here to the state of Wisconsin. That’s what responsible management is like in a campaign,” Brennan said. “That’s what we do in government.”

In an account published Wednesday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that an unnamed Rodriguez campaign official was asked whether the campaign treasurer had signed off on the January finance report or had raised questions about the $1 million ad buy.

According to the newspaper, the official said the treasurer “is a figurehead and volunteer role and was not involved in day to day finance operations.”

Brennan mentioned that description and, drawing a contrast, introduced his own campaign treasurer, Janet Piraino. He described her as a trusted individual whom he had known for decades. But he also emphasized that it was up to the campaign to establish “the infrastructure around [its financial reports] to ensure that what they are doing is going to be accurate, is going to be right, is going to reflect the will of the donors and the will of the people of Wisconsin.”

He said that the first money raised in his campaign was spent to establish that infrastructure and ensure the professionals responsible for fundraising and reporting were paid.

Asked directly whether Rodriguez should drop out of the race, Brennan demurred.

“That’s for Sara to decide. That’s for her and her family and the people around her,” he said.

But he argued the missteps in the Rodriguez campaign would be used against her in the general election if she is nominated as the Democratic candidate, and would interfere with campaign messaging around issues including healthcare costs, public education and other topics.

“If you can’t demonstrate competence when it comes to running your campaign, that shouldn’t give people a lot of confidence in your ability to manage the hugely complex areas around state government,” Brennan said.

Another candidate for the Democratic nomination, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes declined Tuesday to say Rodriguez should quit the race.

Barnes spoke to reporters after a campaign event critiquing the role of money in politics. He was asked if the Rodriguez campaign’s financial errors were “disqualifying” and how voters should assess them in evaluating her candidacy.

“I think that is up to her campaign to figure out,” Barnes said. “It’s up to voters to decide if that campaign will ultimately be the strongest or not, if they’re able to communicate that or not. But that’s a decision that should be left up to them.”

Also running in the Democratic primary is state Sen. Kelda Roys, who held an event focused on healthcare in Milwaukee Wednesday.

Joel Brennan was taking a break from his shift at a Sheboygan County Dairy Breakfast on a sunny Saturday morning in June. Outside the sprawling barn where he’d  been handing out sausages to hungry customers, he met up with Rosemary Verheyen.

A Wisconsin native who moved back to the state after spending most of her career in California, Verheyen, 66, had looked up Brennan’s campaign for governor on Facebook — part of a personal project to meet all the candidates before casting her ballot.

She sent Brennan a direct message asking for a chance to meet him in person. She got a reply the same day and learned about his upcoming dairy breakfast gig.

Verheyen and Brennan talked for 10 or 15 minutes. Brennan asked her about the younger generation in her extended family and what concerns were on her mind. The talk turned to housing, and Verheyen explained she owns a mobile home but has to rent the lot where she keeps it.

“My rent goes up by more than my Social Security does every year,” she said. In California, she explained, state law caps how much rental mobile home lots can increase their rental costs annually — but not in Wisconsin.

At the end of their conversation, she took a selfie with Brennan.

“You should keep after me when I get elected,” he told her with a smile. “I will!” Verheyen replied cheerfully.

Recalling their conversation a few weeks later, Verheyen told the Examiner that Brennan had impressed her right away. “He looked me right in the eye when he said ‘hello,’” she said. “So that right there made me feel like, oh, my gosh, he actually can see me. Because if I can’t be seen, how can I be helped, right?”

An outlier in the race

Joel Brennan is counting on moments — and impressions — like that one as he pursues the Democratic Party nomination in the 2026 election for governor. Among the five remaining hopefuls in the field, he’s something of an outlier — the only one who is not either a current or former elected official.

Brennan, 56, served as Department of Administration secretary for the first three years of Gov. Tony Evers’ eight-year tenure, then left to become executive director of the Greater Milwaukee Committee. He’s currently taking an unpaid leave from the civic group made up of business and nonprofit leaders.

As an Evers cabinet member Brennan was very much in the background. That’s a political disadvantage when it comes to name recognition, a baseline asset for anyone running for office.

“That’s my biggest challenge, simply that I am not well known enough,” Brennan says. To overcome that, he adds, “It’s shoe leather and trying to organize around the state.”

Although he entered the race in early December, months after most of the other Democratic hopefuls, a campaign finance report filed in mid-January showed that he had already raised more than $500,000. He decided to spend money on early advertising to introduce himself to the public.

“I got in the race late, but I was able to get general parity with the rest of the field, who had three months to raise money, and I had just a couple weeks,” Brennan says. “That is a demonstration, I think, of some of the support that I had, and the network that I’ve got around the state, and I’m leaning into that.”

When he tells people he meets at campaign events and meet-and-greet sessions why he’s running and “the path that I want to lay forward for Wisconsin,” Brennan says, he gets a positive reception. “I think that truly undecided minds — I win more of them than I don’t.”

Policy laundry list

Brennan’s  policy positions  overlap those of most of his rivals. His campaign website issues section has at least as many provisions and goes into at least as much detail as any of the others. It includes break-out sections on healthcare, housing and  democracy, as well as proposals addressing property taxes, education, the environment and other topics.

The website includes general assurances about “How we pay for it,” pointing out that some of his proposals will save taxpayers money, advocating for closing tax loopholes, requiring community benefit agreements for data centers and assessing the sources of pollution for the cost of cleanup.  

Although they may differ on some details, he and the four other Democrats in the race have all called for restoring public employees’ collective bargaining rights, repealing other laws passed during former Gov. Scott Walker’s two terms that weakened labor unions, and passing budgets that increase funding for public schools and reduce school districts’ dependence on property taxes.

Brennan endorses a paid medical and family leave program funded through employer and employee contributions, a free school lunch program, and measures reducing childcare costs for families while bolstering childcare providers’ resources.

He has publicly criticized the Trump administration on tariffs, healthcare cuts, other federal program cuts and abuses by federal immigration officers. Yet Brennan’s approach is less pugilistic than that of some of the other Democrats. “Joel doesn’t wake up looking for a fight,” his website states. “There’s a difference between fighting and getting something done. Joel intends to do both.”

Emphasizing experience, competence

For all his policy specifics, Brennan rests the case for his candidacy on a three-decade-plus history of executive jobs in government and nonprofits — both for the experience he has gained and the connections he has forged.

“I grew up in a large family, and relationships were absolutely central to that, and they’ve been central to every part of my career,” Brennan says.

Brennan was born in the Milwaukee suburbs, the second youngest of 11 children. He grew up there and in the city and graduated from Marquette University, where he majored in English literature and political science. Brennan interned for a Massachusetts member of Congress one summer, and served on the staff of U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett before working in public affairs at Miller Brewing Co. and then at the Greater Milwaukee Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Brennan has also been a behind-the-scenes political insider. He managed two Barrett campaigns — for governor in 2002 (Barrett lost the primary) and mayor in 2004. After Barrett won that race, Brennan worked in the Milwaukee redevelopment authority during Barrett’s first three years as mayor.

Before joining the Evers administration, Brennan was CEO at Discovery World, a Milwaukee museum and education center for science and technology.

In his campaign trips around Wisconsin, Brennan has earned “some credibility because of the company I keep,” he says. “Those people who have been supportive and been part of my career — I’ve got to demonstrate to them that I can do the job, and they want to kick the tires on me, but those are opportunities that I’ve gotten because of some of the relationships that I’ve developed and I’ve cultivated over the course of my career, in the course of my life.”

When Barrett ran for governor in 2010 against Scott Walker, then the Milwaukee County executive, Brennan was drafted to play Walker in debate rehearsals. He repeated that role with Barrett in the 2012 recall election and again for Mary Burke, the Democratic candidate who challenged Walker for reelection in 2014.

The Democrats nominated Evers to run against Walker, seeking a third term, in 2018, and Brennan was asked if he’d do a repeat performance as the Republican governor.

“I said, ‘Great, I’ll be happy to do it again, but we’ve lost the last three times I’ve done this,’” he recalls. Despite his demurrals, “they wanted me to do it again,” he says. “My job was to toughen him up for the debate prep with Scott.” When Evers won the election, he says, “I was thrilled.”

Brennan says he didn’t actively seek a job in the new administration, but he had several connections with the Evers transition team and was soon tapped to lead DOA.

“Really the job is to help the governor run the executive branch,” Brennan says. The Department of Administration helps the governor’s office put together the state budget proposal, serves as the human resources department for the state’s 35,000 employees and manages Wisconsin’s real estate — the Capitol, the executive residence in Maple Bluff and the state’s office buildings. It’s also the face of state government in its interactions with local municipalities and negotiates compacts with the tribes located in Wisconsin.

Making appeals to the undecided

After the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, the department was responsible for managing more than $4 billion in federal relief funds, first in the 2020 CARES Act in the last year of the Trump administration and then in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act that President Joe Biden signed about two months after taking office.

Brennan has been emphasizing those experiences when he meets voters.

“I can tell you that most every room that I go into, if there are undecided people in them, or if there are people who don’t know who I am, they walk away thinking, One, ‘Here’s somebody who’s got a history of accomplishment, and who, over the course of two decades, has almost exclusively executive experience, more executive experience than anybody else in the race,’” Brennan says.

“‘Two, he’s demonstrated that he can do the job, he knows state government, he knows the context around Madison, he’s got passion,’” he continues. “I think everybody who sees me walks away with that, and you know, more often than not, I believe I’m walking away with more of those people for me than for somebody else.”

Translating those small-group connections into a message that will reach a lot of voters is a challenge, he acknowledges. “I can’t do that in groups of 25 and 50 forever,” Brennan says. “I’ve got to find a way to speak to a larger audience.”

Brennan has looked for other ways to garner attention.

An early campaign ad featuring his teenage children pokes fun at him for telling “Dad jokes.” 

Brennan was one of a handful of politicians who volunteered to serve at the Sheboygan County Dairy Breakfast. (The presumptive Republican nominee, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, did as well — handing out slices of ham at a table right behind Brennan.)

Recently, as his Democratic  rivals began issuing  negative statements about each other, Brennan’s campaign released a 99-page opposition research report on himself. Perhaps its harshest bullet points were public statements that criticized his opposition as Greater Milwaukee Committee CEO to a Milwaukee Public School referendum that narrowly passed in 2024.

“My life has pretty much been an open book — and here are 99 pages of data that demonstrate it,” Brennan said in a written statement accompanying the oppo research report. “I might even be the only gubernatorial candidate in the country willing to take this step — but more should. And voters would be better off if we did.”

The report didn’t refer to an April Urban Milwaukee column by Editor Bruce Murphy, which cited an anonymous source who said Brennan’s campaign had been pitched to donors as a safe “white centrist.” Brennan flatly denies the characterization.

“I am somebody who has demonstrated throughout my career that I’m about trying to give opportunity to everybody, and there’s nothing I have to do to respond to that, except to say I never said that,” Brennan says. “I don’t control what somebody says outside about me, and it’s offensive to me that anybody else would do that, and if they had the guts, they’d identify who they are.”

When Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley dropped out of the Democratic primary and joined former candidate Missy Hughes in endorsing Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Brennan expressed his admiration for Crowley but reaffirmed his commitment to stay in the race.

“David Crowley made the campaign for Governor – and the eventual Democratic nominee – stronger and better through his work. I am honored to still be able to call myself a constituent and friend,” Brennan wrote on Facebook.

In answer to a question from the Examiner, his campaign manager replied, “We respect David Crowley and wish him well. Joel is focused on making his case to Wisconsin voters between now and August 11.”

A new environment?

Brennan says he admires his old boss, Evers, for integrity, “his commitment to kids” — and for the role the governor played in drawing new legislative maps.

When Evers took office, “he didn’t have many conversations with legislative leaders in the first two years,” Brennan says.

He doesn’t blame the governor for that. The art of maintaining personal relationships among lawmakers, including across party lines, “has been lost in Wisconsin,” Brennan says, “and I lay that at the feet, to be honest, of Scott Walker and the Republicans in 2010, where they took over, they gerrymandered things so that they could protect their majority, and they legislated in a way that was about vengeance.”

Referring to the new, more politically balanced voting maps Evers signed into law, Brennan told Verheyen during their chat at the dairy breakfast, “This is a very different environment. That’s Tony Evers’ great gift to us.”

Unlike some of his rivals who seem to be counting on a Democratic sweep in legislative races this year in order to accomplish their goals, Brennan emphasizes his ability to work across the aisle.

He says he believes that  Democrats could win both houses of the state Legislature this year. “But even without that — or even with that — there will be only a one- or two-seat majority,” he says. “So it’s going to require a level of cooperation and conversation that just didn’t exist in the early years of the Evers administration.”

He argues that he can best navigate the change in temperature that he believes will be essential in the next term, whether Democrats achieve trifecta control  or the November election produces divided government.

“All I can tell you is, on my phone right now there are probably 10 Republican legislators whose cell phone numbers I have,” he says. Meanwhile, the current crop of Democratic lawmakers includes many first-term members who took office after he left state government. That can make it possible to shed some old baggage, he suggests.

“I’m going to be accessible to the Republicans, but also, absolutely, to those Democrats,” Brennan says. “In the course of the way we’re going to have to govern over the next eight years, I want to make sure that people have a personal relationship with me. And I think that also enables us to not make this the kind of blood sport that we oftentimes see.”

Brennan contends he can “stand up passionately around the issues that I care about and the progressive Wisconsin values that are absolutely ingrained in me” yet still be able to work cooperatively with Republicans.

“But if this election is just about how do we get back at the other side, how do we rub somebody’s nose in it? How are we just about vengeance? How are we just about grievance? Then I don’t think that’s worthy of who we are as Wisconsinites, and that’s not who I’ve been over the course of my career,” Brennan says.

“I am absolutely going to defend democracy, I’m going to defend people’s rights, I’m going to make sure we’re promoting our Wisconsin values, but at the end of the day, I think people need to know … they want to see that we’re in a position to get something done,” he says. “We’re poised to be able to do that in Wisconsin, and I think I’ve got the personality, the temperament, the background and the vision to do that.”

Editor’s note: The Examiner is running periodic profiles of the contenders in the Aug. 11, 2026 gubernatorial primary as well as the candidates in the general election Nov. 3.