Democrats seeking the party’s nomination for governor talk about many of the same goals when it comes to Wisconsin’s health care system: expanding access, reducing costs and ensuring quality.

Some of their proposals to those ends are almost identical. But key details vary. 

“If there’s one thing that’s a certainty, the context will change between now and when one of us takes office and has a Legislature that hopefully is going to work with us,” said Joel Brennan, former secretary of the Department of Administration, at a forum Wednesday conducted by Wisconsin Health News. “That context will change in the next nine to 10 months and we better be ready to change with it too.”

Brennan said his campaign’s health care policy will rest on four principles: broadening access to health care, particularly in rural areas; reducing costs; fostering a pathway to increase the health care workforce; and ensuring that mental health is “a basic part of health care.”

Other candidates have issued more detailed plans.

Former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO Missy Hughes announced a list of 10 proposals Wednesday.

“I’m really wanting to make sure that we’re addressing a very, very complicated problem in every different way,” Hughes said at the Wednesday forum.

Expanding Medicaid

Almost all of the seven major Democratic hopefuls have endorsed expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act — opening up the health insurance plan for low-income Americans to people with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty guideline.  When the ACA was enacted the federal government paid states that accepted expansion 90% of the additional cost.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers made repeated attempts to enact expansion after he took office in 2019, but couldn’t do it without the support of the Republican majority in the state Legislature because of a law passed the month before Evers was sworn in.

Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has made Medicaid expansion the central focus of his health care policy pitch. He has promised to veto the state budget if it doesn’t include Medicaid expansion.

“The fact that so many folks aren’t covered right now is a problem for everybody,” Barnes said at a forum Monday, because health care providers pass the cost of uncompensated care on to other patients or their insurance companies. The Monday forum was conducted by ABC for Health, a nonprofit law firm that assists low-income Wisconsinites trying to navigate health care coverage and medical debt.

Hughes also lists expanding Medicaid — referred to as BadgerCare in Wisconsin — among her 10 proposals. She would connect BadgerCare expansion to the creation of a public option health insurance plan that Wisconsinites could purchase through the ACA marketplace, HealthCare.gov.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley also favors combining expanded Medicaid with a public option for people to buy into the plan. “We already have the BadgerCare infrastructure that is already in place,” Crowley said at the Wednesday forum. “So I think it’s our responsibility to expand the people’s ability to actually pay into a BadgerCare public option.”

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez favors BadgerCare expansion as well as a public option health plan. Rather than combining them, however, she lists them as two of three health care initiatives she would pursue as governor. The third initiative is to institute a stabilization fund program to support struggling rural providers.  

The public option plan, to be sold on the ACA marketplace, “would be able to put downward pressure on costs across Wisconsin and have some price transparency within that,” Rodriguez said at the Monday forum. She pointed to examples in other states, including Colorado, where a public option health plan is also required to reduce its premium costs by 5% each year.

“Secondly, I do think that we should expand Medicaid in the state of Wisconsin,” Rodriguez said, noting Wisconsin is one of just 10 states that have not done so.

Rodriguez also observed that the 2025 “big, beautiful” tax and spending bill enacted by the Republican majority in Congress and signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025, “makes it a little harder” for the state to expand Medicaid.

State Rep. Francesca Hong also included BadgerCare expansion and “a robust public option” health plan in a longer list of priorities during the Monday forum. Along with those, she called for lowering prescription drug costs, acting to “crack down on private insurers,” among other goals.

A Medicaid expansion dissent

An exception on Medicaid expansion is Sen. Kelda Roys. Although she has advocated Medicaid expansion going back to her years in the Assembly a decade ago, she argues now that it’s no longer practical.

An August 28 memo from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services declares that the 2025 tax and spending law includes “several traps making it cost and policy prohibitive for Wisconsin to expand Medicaid.”

The law requires Medicaid participants to prove they’re eligible every six months instead of annually as now — which advocates argue will lead more qualified recipients to be kicked out of the program. In addition, a $1.3 billion boost that Wisconsin would get for expanding Medicaid will end Dec. 31.

Expansion “is not feasible given the changes that the Trump administration has made right now,” Roys said Wednesday.

Instead, she has proposed allowing the general public to buy into the state health insurance plan that covers state employees. Wisconsin employers could buy into the plan to cover their workers, or individual Wisconsin residents could buy into it as an alternative to other private health insurance plans.

“We can lower costs, reduce uncompensated care, expand access to coverage, especially for small businesses,” Roys said.

Brennan has also proposed opening the state plan to the public, because it has broad participation as well as higher reimbursement rates for health providers, he said Wednesday. 

But he added that he thinks details on the public option should wait until the next governor takes office, so that experts in the state as well as from other states that have instituted a public option “can be part of that conversation.”

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Madison West High School brought Democratic candidates seeking the governor’s office to town halls last week where they answered questions from students. 

While Jackson Thomas and Clark Schrager, members of the school’s civics club, will not be old enough to vote in the upcoming election, they said students started hosting events with candidates a few years ago, seeking to give young people a voice and a way to participate in the electoral process. In 2024, West students hosted U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin for a town hall during her reelection bid. 

Thomas said not all of their peers, especially freshmen and sophomores, are necessarily paying attention to politics unless they are already interested in it, but they hope the events can bring more awareness. Many seniors heard from the candidates, Schrager said, and some will be 18 and eligible to vote in the August primary and in the November general elections.

“There’s a lot of passion in our school about issues,” Schrager said. “I think if you ask people if they cared about politics, they may say, no, but if you ask them if they cared about education or health care or gun reform, any of those issues, they would say yes. It’s kind of a generational thing for us that there’s a lot of disillusionment with the system as it is, but there’s not a movement away from participating in the political process. There are still people that care about a lot of the issues and want their voices to be heard.”

The students asked the candidates about some of the key issues that the next governor will shape, including affordability, the state’s stewardship program, health care accessibility, abortion, and funding for K-12 schools and the University of Wisconsin system.

Thomas, who is a member of March For Our Lives, said gun violence is among the issues he cares most about, and he hopes to see candidates take a stand on it and propose solutions. 

“It’s unfortunately an issue that I have to think about every day when I go to school,” Thomas said. “That’s something that’s normalized because many people feel it, but it’s a really terrifying thing to have to think about.” He said it’s an issue he wants to see elected officials “not just take a stand on, but put legislation towards changing.” 

Schrager said many students are also thinking about democracy and freedom. 

The students also asked candidates to name one thing that they agreed with Republicans on. 

“Digging into issues has kind of always been something that’s been taught to me, and I think seeing both sides is something really important to me,” said Schrager, whose parents are both journalists. “There’s been a lot of polarization that I think has moved us away from real policies that actually help everybody, and there’s been a lot of focus on hate and bigotry that I think drive us away from making actual changes that could help people.”

The race to succeed Gov. Tony Evers, who opted not to run for a third term, has become crowded on the Democratic side. Candidates who participated in the forums included Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), former Wisconsin Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey. 

Schrager said something that gave him hope is “the fact that all these candidates came here and they seem genuinely curious about what students had to say.”

Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for governor, was not one of the participants last week, but the students said they hope to host him in the future. 

“We’re really committed to getting everybody’s viewpoint on all sides,” Schrager said. “We know Madison is a blue bubble. We know West High School is part of that blue bubble, but there are a lot of students here who will vote for him in the fall and will vote along Republican lines and they deserve to have their voices heard as well and hear somebody who aligns with them,” Schrager said. 

Thomas said he thinks that is especially important when they are “trying to bridge the gap between political polarization.”

Schrager agreed, adding that there are “students who will be voting for Democrats who will still fully benefit from hearing the other side.”

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Wisconsin is not that MAGA. That’s one top-line takeaway from the latest Marquette University Law School poll, released this week, which shows 56% of Wisconsin voters disapprove of the job President Donald Trump is doing — his worst approval rating so far during his two terms in office. Violent immigration raids, a dangerous and ill-conceived war in the Middle East, high gas prices, ruinous trade wars, devastating health care cuts and economic uncertainty are clearly eating away Wisconsin voters’ enthusiasm for Trump, whom they elected by a narrow margin in 2024. That’s not great news for fervent Trump ally U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who won Trump’s endorsement in his campaign for governor.

It might also have something to do with the exodus of Republican leaders from the Legislature, with both Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu announcing their retirements, along with a growing crowd of other departing Republicans, some of whom represent newly competitive districts. 

Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Devin Remiker has been gleefully proclaiming that all those Republican retirements foreshadow a Democratic sweep of state races in November.

But while Tiffany will almost certainly be the Republican candidate for governor, on the Democratic side, we don’t know who will emerge from a seven-way primary race.

Which Democrat has the best shot at beating Tiffany was the main question on the minds of a handful of Democrats who gathered at a coffee shop in downtown Madison Tuesday evening to listen to a pitch from Joel Brennan, Gov. Tony Evers’ affable former secretary of the Department of Administration. Brennan, the only white, male candidate in the Democratic field, seems like the safe bet to many of the people who came out to hear him — more “electable” than the rest of the field of progressive women and people of color, as several attendees sheepishly told me. That assessment is entirely subjective at this point. The leading Democrat in the last three Marquette polls is Madison-based state Rep. Francesca Hong, a socialist, who is the top choice of 14% of Democratic primary voters, followed by former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes at 11%. All the other candidates are in the single digits, including Brennan, who only pulls down 2%. A large majority of voters — 65% — say they have not yet decided on a candidate. 

There’s no simple formula for “electability” in Wisconsin, a state where a majority of voters helped elect former President Barack Obama twice, then twice chose Trump. Wisconsinites also enthusiastically embraced Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, when he won 69 of 72 counties. U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin has proven it’s possible for a progressive lesbian from Madison to win in conservative, rural areas of the state, by listening and working hard on the issues that matter to her constituents. A successful, independent populist campaign by a candidate who is not a centrist or an establishment type is definitely possible in Wisconsin.

But it’s easy to see Brennan appealing to a broad cross-section of voters in the state. He seems like a decent guy with a folksy, well-meaning aura not unlike two-term Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. Like Evers, he talks a lot about reaching across the aisle and getting things done for the people of Wisconsin, regardless of the national political circus. He also warns that Democrats in the Legislature have been out of power so long they haven’t used the “muscles” one needs to engage in the work of compromise and deal-making that will inevitably be necessary to govern a closely divided state.

Under Wisconsin’s new, fair voting maps, Republicans can no longer act like they are the undisputed rulers of a one-party state. But Democrats, even if they win majorities in both houses of the Legislature, are likely going to have to manage narrow margins and make some efforts at bipartisanship. It’s also possible that we will continue to have a divided government. 

Many Democrats have been disappointed in the compromises Evers made with legislative Republicans. Maybe he could have driven a harder bargain on budget deals that allowed the state surplus to balloon while schools were starved of resources and property taxpayers picked up more and more of the tab. Maybe we could have done more to expand health care than the belated, one-year postpartum Medicaid deal that allowed us to finally get in line with 48 other states. Maybe we could have adequately funded our state’s SNAP program and avoided ruinous federal penalties for high error rates without tying that money to a ban on candy and soda that stigmatizes poor people and micromanages small pleasures but doesn’t actually improve people’s health.

On the other hand, dealing with the obstructionist, power-grabbing Republican majority was a thorny problem Evers dealt with essentially by himself. His most significant contribution is probably the passage of new, fair maps, which are suddenly changing that dynamic. Republicans are showing signs of dropping their obstructionist habits as they face newly competitive elections even as their national leader’s popularity craters. But even on fair maps, legislative Democrats didn’t close ranks behind Evers. After the state Supreme Court forced Republicans to abandon their gerrymander, their willingness to vote for the maps Evers endorsed made many legislative Democrats suspicious. Most of them didn’t vote for the new un-gerrymandered reality.

If Democrats win, that new reality will involve a new kind of struggle for both parties — moving from fighting tooth and nail with the other side to trying to move the state forward.

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Francesca Hong, a candidate for governor in Wisconsin, has not won the Democratic primary – because the election hasn’t happened yet.

A viral post on X claims Hong “just won” the Democratic primary for governor. But Wisconsin’s primary to narrow down candidates for governor and other partisan offices isn’t until Aug. 11, 2026. The general election is Nov. 3.

In other words, Wisconsin voters won’t see Hong on the ballot until late summer.

A Marquette University Law School poll – published the same day as the misleading post – found 11% of Wisconsin voters said they plan to vote for Hong in the primary, compared to 10% for Mandela Barnes. A majority of voters, 65%, were undecided.

Polls do not determine election outcomes, and there is no guarantee that Hong will maintain that lead over the next six months.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin doesn't vote Nov. 4, but here are the 2026 election dates
• Wisconsin Elections Commission: Upcoming Events
• Marquette University Law School: New Marquette Law School Poll finds large majorities of Wisconsin voters undecided on candidates for state Supreme Court, governor

Did Francesca Hong win the Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A group of Democratic state lawmakers on Thursday announced a proposal to put a moratorium on data center construction in Wisconsin as communities across the state grapple with local resistance to the development of hyperscale AI data centers. 

Debates around data centers have become increasingly tense in recent months as residents of communities including Mount Pleasant, Mount Horeb, Beaver Dam, Port Washington and Janesville have rallied opposition to  the approval of data centers by local officials. 

While officials in these communities are often tempted by the promise of increased property tax revenue from the facilities, residents have raised objections to their local representatives ceding local land to multibillion-dollar tech companies, the massive amounts of energy and water needed to operate the large data centers and the related effects on local utility rates and the environment to produce all the power.

Several pieces of legislation to regulate data center construction have already been proposed in the Legislature. In January, Assembly Republicans passed a bill that would establish some regulations, but Democrats said it didn’t do enough to prevent electricity costs from being passed on to regular consumers and included a provision that would stymie renewable energy development in the state. 

With just days left before the Legislature ends its work for the session next week, a group of Democratic lawmakers rolled out a proposal that would pause data center construction until “all of the questions that you have, that you have been asking your local mayors, you have been asking your local legislators, you have been asking these data centers, that all of those are actually answered,” Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said at a press conference Thursday afternoon with local data center activists. 

The bill defines a data center as “a facility having a primary purpose of storing, managing, and processing digital data and that has at least 5,000 servers, occupies at least 10,000 square feet, or has an electricity demand of at least 100 megawatts.”

The bill wouldn’t allow the construction of any data centers in the state until the state establishes a data center planning authority; prohibits energy and water costs from being shifted to residential utility customers; creates a “land and community funding mechanism”; eliminates state and local financial subsidies for data centers; mandates public reporting of data center energy and water use; creates data center-specific pollution regulations; requires that 100% of the energy produced for data centers be renewable; requires that data center construction projects pay prevailing or collectively bargained wages; restores planning authority to the Public Service Commission; prohibits non-disclosure agreements between data centers and government entities and creates an enforcement and penalty structure for data centers that violate regulations. 

“The intent is not to permanently prohibit data centers, but to ensure that any future development is responsible, transparent, and does not impose additional financial burdens on Wisconsin households,” a co-sponsorship memo on the proposal states. “Wisconsinites should not be asked to shoulder higher utility costs while large new energy users operate without clear rules, accountability, or public oversight. This bill provides the Legislature with the time and authority necessary to establish a fair and comprehensive framework that protects ratepayers, workers, and local communities before large-scale data centers are allowed to move forward.”

On Thursday, a few dozen people gathered outside the state Capitol to protest against data center construction before meeting in a hearing room for a news conference and panel discussion. Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), one of the several Democrats running in the primary for governor, said at the press conference that the data center proposals have galvanized anti-corporate views in communities of all political stripes. 

“This is about community power and returning community control to folks all across the state,” Hong said. “I am so incredibly grateful because I have not seen this type of bipartisan opposition to corporate control. I have not seen this type of bipartisan support for ensuring that we protect our natural resources. Our natural resources are not for sale. Our health is not for sale. Our shared future depends on all of us fighting right now to ensure that we are holding AI data centers accountable.”

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Wisconsin lawmakers are set to advance a bill that would create a “demonstration” charter school designation and boost state aid for that school by more than 50%.

During the Jan. 28 public hearing, Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia) and Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Appleton) said the bill would help create a mechanism in the state to try out innovative teaching methods and export them across the state.

“Right now, we are reinventing the wheel in isolation rather than sharing the blueprint for success,” Wittke said. “A teaching hospital receives higher funding to train research and innovate. Similarly, a demonstration school would be a K-12 education lab.” 

Independent charter schools are different from traditional charter schools. They are not authorized by a public school district and do not answer to a public school board, but instead are authorized by one of a number of designated authorizers, including the Universities of Wisconsin’s Office of Educational Opportunity (OEO).

AB 818 would allow the Office of Educational Opportunity to designate a school that meets a certain set of criteria as a “demonstration” charter school. For a school to receive the designation, it would need to participate in a longitudinal study; provide professional development opportunities; share the best practices from its educational model to other schools and maintain partnerships with community organizations. 

The school would receive an additional $6,863 per pupil — a 55% increase from its current funding. The bill is scheduled for a vote in the Assembly Colleges and Universities committee Tuesday.

Wittke said that any school authorized through the Office of Educational Opportunity could apply once the program is set up. 

“Once this bill would get signed into law, they would have to make an application to be designated as this. Any other charter school that is under the OEO presence could make an application to do the same. There could be others that want to be chartered under OEO for the purpose of doing this. We would love to see that,” Wittke said. “This is an idea that was brought in front of me, so we looked at this framework. It wasn’t to preclude anyone, but this is what I believe is a step in the right direction so that others can follow, and we can start moving the needle up so that our children will realize opportunities that are in front of us.”

The UW Office of Educational Opportunity currently authorizes nine schools, though there is one that is seeking to serve as a model for what the bill proposes.

One City Schools, a Madison area independent charter school, operates One City Elementary and One City Preparatory Academy. The two schools serve kindergarten through 8th grade, in Monona. It also operates One City Preschool, which serves ages 2 through 4-year-old kindergarten, on Madison’s south side.

Kaleem Caire, One City Schools’ founder and CEO, told lawmakers that the organization is trying to serve students who have not been served by traditional schools, as well as to act  as an incubator for innovation. But One City Schools is always in need of money to continue operating.

“If any of you have money that you don’t like, you can send it to One City Schools,” Caire quipped, adding, “Yes, we are always at risk of closing our doors” because of the needs of students. 

He said the student population of One City Schools is 94% students of color, about 70% students in poverty and 17% special needs.

“We are the least funded public school,” he said.

The school has struggled with sustainable growth in the past. In 2023, the school sent 51 ninth- and tenth-graders back to Madison Metropolitan School District after one semester due to teacher shortages, pausing its high school aspirations for several years.

At the time, Caire said the school would reopen its high school in 2025, but as of last year, those plans have been delayed until 2026-27 due to its eighth grade enrollment numbers, facility readiness and funding uncertainties.

Caire said the independent charter school currently serves about 400 students and its preschool serves about 80. Practices that he said set the schools apart from traditional schools include providing breakfast and lunch to students each day and its partnership with Project Read AI, an artificial intelligence program meant to help teach literacy.

The bill has support of one Democratic lawmaker: Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), whose district includes the schools.

Stubbs urged lawmakers to support the bill, calling the school a “pioneer in providing innovative, high quality education and wrap-around support services to some of Dane County’s and Wisconsin’s most vulnerable scholars.” She said the bill will “ensure that an operator with an innovative learning model is able to continue improving the educational outcome of hundreds of scholars in our community every year.” 

Stubbs said the additional funding would come from the existing charter school payment appropriation.

“Why do we need to spend more if you’re really successful?” Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Hortonville) asked Caire, who said that the organization currently must raise about $5 million annually to meet the needs of its students.

According to written testimony provided by One City Schools, the organization’s long-term sustainability goal will rely on increased state funding, including by nearly doubling its student base and boosting state aid overall. 

“Their goal is to reach 900 students, which they consider a funding tipping point where they’ll receive more predictable public funding and substantially reduce their need for private support,” the testimony stated. It also identified a plan for achieving financial sustainability including securing multi-year funding, growing enrollment, achieving “economies of scale” and increasing state aid.

Rep. Jerry O’Connor (R-Fond Du Lac) said he didn’t think the funding in the bill would provide a “phenomenal advantage” to the schools, but would instead give them, as independent charter schools, “equal funding.” 

“These are poor lives and kids and people, so I don’t have a problem with the funding,” O’Connor said. “I like the fact that the rules are in place. There’s accountability. There are consequences.”

Democratic lawmakers expressed caution and concerns about the bill, saying they weren’t sure how it would help schools and students more broadly. 

“It feels like you all are doing some amazing things at One City and I appreciate that. I think most schools would like to have the holistic approach that you are aiming for, but money is always the issue,” Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire), a member of the committee, said during the hearing. 

Emerson noted that Democratic lawmakers have proposed legislation that would allow for free school meals at all public and voucher schools in the state. “That’s what I’d like to see our body advocating for more than picking winners and losers, and to be honest, sir, I feel like that’s what this bill is right now.”

Caire told lawmakers that there aren’t other schools that have volunteered to serve as a “demonstration” school for the state.

“That is why we’re coming here to you,” Caire said. “How many public schools in Wisconsin do you know of are germinating this level of opportunity for kids intentionally to scale across the country at an affordable price?… What we’re asking the state for is the average per-pupil revenue that the average public school system gets from the state of Wisconsin.”

The Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), the state’s largest teachers union, opposes the bill, saying it would further drain resources from traditional public schools. 

“This bill hands a single, unaccountable charter operator a funding windfall that educators in every comer of this state can only dream of for their own students,” WEAC said in written testimony. 

The union said the bill comes as public schools continue to face difficulties, and as state funding has not kept pace with inflation.

In the most recent state budget cycle, Wisconsin’s traditional public schools did not receive any increase in its state per-pupil aid. The budget did provide additional funding for special education, but the available funds are not expected to meet the percentage promised by lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers. School districts are instead turning to property tax increases to raise additional funds.

“Public school educators experience the consequences of state budget choices every day in crowded classrooms, growing student mental health needs, outdated materials, and painful cuts to electives that once kept kids engaged in school,” WEAC’s statement said. “AB 818 does nothing to address those real and urgent problems. Instead, it carves out a special lane for one favored type of charter operator and invites others to line up for the same bonus, further draining resources from the vast majority of students who attend public schools that are transparent, democratically governed, and open to all.” 

Democratic lawmakers on the Assembly Education Committee, including Reps. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire), Angelina Cruz (D-Racine) and Joe Sheehan (D-Sheboygan), submitted testimony opposing the bill. They said they had concerns the legislation would divert resources from public schools and continue a pattern of “linking education privatization to segregation.” 

“Policies that funnel public money toward select private and charter operators have repeatedly exacerbated segregation and disparities along lines of race, socioeconomic background, disability status, and more, leaving public schools with fewer resources to meet all students’ needs despite our constitutional obligation to help them do so,” the lawmakers stated. “AB 818 promises to continue that legacy.” 

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