Party control is up for grabs in 15 state legislative chambers across the country as Republicans are increasingly on the defensive this midterm election cycle, a new analysis found. 

The nonpartisan newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics released its final analysis of state legislative races ahead of November. Senior Columnist Louis Jacobson changed projections for 10 chambers — all shifting in favor of Democrats.

“In many states, Democrats are looking forward to a favorable year driven by a reaction to President Donald Trump and his policies,” he wrote.

Of the 15 competitive chambers this cycle, nine are currently controlled by Republicans and three are controlled by Democrats. Both of Alaska’s legislative chambers are controlled by bipartisan coalitions and the Minnesota state House is split evenly. 

Jacobson said Democrats may make inroads even in states not considered competitive. In 15 chambers expected to remain in Republican control, for example, he said Democrats could chip away at majorities or break GOP supermajorities — when a party has enough votes to override a veto. Those chambers include the Georgia state Senate, the Indiana state House, the Kansas state House and both chambers in Florida, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

In addition to winning control of the U.S. Congress, Democrats are looking to flip hundreds of state legislative seats this November following years of Republican dominance in statehouses. In addition to controlling a majority of governor’s offices, the GOP has held a majority of state legislative seats and chambers since 2010.

This year’s state legislative races are the third most competitive since 2010, according to Ballotpedia. The nonpartisan political encyclopedia measures competitiveness as the extent of choice available to voters: “More open seats, more contested primaries, and more races where both major parties field candidates mean more meaningful decisions on the ballot.”

Voters across 46 states will vote on 6,137 state legislative races next month. Of those races, 4,052 seats — 66% — are contested by both major parties. Ballotpedia found that 1,156 incumbents faced contested primaries this cycle — higher than its 16-year average.

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

Billionaire Diane Hendricks recently contributed millions to help Republicans in their efforts to defend their legislative majorities, which are in jeopardy for the first time in more than 16 years.

Hendricks and the billionaire couple Elizabeth and Richard Uihlein have flooded Wisconsin’s midterm elections with money this year. According to a recent WisPolitics analysis, the three billionaires have given more than $73 million to Republican committees and candidates in 2026. 

Individuals in the state of Wisconsin can only give $1,000 each to state Assembly candidates and $2,000 to individual candidates for state Senate. However, there is no limit on the amount donors can give to party committees, meaning an unlimited amount of money can be sent to and spent on behalf of candidates through the parties. 

Hendricks’ contributions are part of an effort to help Republicans maintain control of both houses of the state Legislature, which they have held since 2011. They currently hold a 54-seat majority in the 99-seat state Assembly and a 17-seat majority in the 33-seat state Senate. Democratic lawmakers are looking to hold all of their current seats and pick up five additional seats in the Assembly and at least two seats in the Senate. 

Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) told the Examiner in August that the billionaires have been strong supporters of Senate Republicans and “despite the criticism leveled against those individuals, what never gets a light shined onto it is the money that comes in from states like Illinois, New York, California, billionaires and multi-and mega-millionaires from the liberal elite who have flooded Democrat coffers for years.”

But the WisPolitics analysis found there was no comparable donor to the Democratic committees or campaigns in 2026 and no one donor has contributed as much over the past 17 years as each of the three GOP billionaires have donated in 2026 alone.

The Republican Assembly Campaign Committee reported raising $6.17 million from July 1 through Sept. 23. The majority of the funds — $5.5 million — were contributed by Hendricks.

The committee reported spending $9.5 million and having $11.16 million in the bank at the end of the fundraising period. It also provided $4.87 million in in-kind contributions to candidates across the state. 

The Assembly Democratic Campaign committee reported raising $6.01 million during the same time period and spending about $3 million. The committee reported having $5 million on hand at the end of the fundraising period. Top Democratic contributors were Wendy Munger, who contributed $1 million and Lynde Uihlein, a family member of the Republican donors, who provided $250,000.

In many races, Republican candidates are not receiving large cash donations to their campaigns, but are receiving in-kind contributions of mailing, TV and online advertising. 

In Assembly District 85, Rep. Pat Snyder (R-Weston) reported raising $31,870. His Democratic opponent, John Kroll, reported raising $84,294. However, Snyder outpaced Kroll in in-kind contributions receiving $642,899 from the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee and the Republican Party of Wisconsin. Kroll received $271,317 in in-kind contributions, which were contributed by the candidate, the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

In Assembly District 88, Rep. Benjamin Franklin reported raising $20,030. His Democratic opponent, Brandy Tollefson, reported raising $53,650. However, Franklin received $675,043 in in-kind contributions, while Tollefson received less than half of that amount — $307,172 — in in-kind contributions. Franklin spent $39,411 and Tollefson spent $93,277.

The Committee to Elect a Republican Senate reported raising $2.28 million. Hendricks contributed $1.75 million of that. The committee reported spending $2.6 million and having $4.96 million on-hand at the end of the period.

The State Senate Democratic Committee reported raising $1.24 million and spending $2.03 million. It had $1.3 million in the bank at the end of the report. The top donations were $500,000 from Sarah O’Neill of New York and $225,000 from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. 

In the four most closely watched state Senate races, the contributions of the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate are playing a large role in the GOP campaigns, including through cash donations and in-kind contributions. 

In Senate District 21, Republican candidate Jim Croft reported raising $1.1 million, but only raised $15,000 from individual donors; the majority of the $1.1 million was contributed by the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate. He spent a little more than $1 million.

Democratic candidate Trevor Jung reported raising $816,707 and spending $1.05 million. About $725,000 of his total came from the State Senate Democratic Committee.

In Senate District 5, Rep. Robyn Vining (D-Wauwatosa) raised $79,321, more than Republican candidate Mike Roberts, who raised $34,092. Roberts received more in-kind contributions than Vining, however, totaling more than $145,000 from the Republican Party of Wisconsin and the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate. 

Will Karcz, spokesperson for the State Senate Democratic Committee, said in a statement that “Wisconsin voters have shown us that their votes cannot be bought by the billionaire donors Republicans rely on to prop up their failing candidates.”

According to a July analysis of past races by Marquette Law School fellow John Johnson, money does matter in these races, but “it’s clear that money doesn’t ‘buy elections’ in any crude way. Candidates routinely win after being outspent by their opponent — a fact not limited to the Wisconsin legislature.” 

Johnson wrote, “the hypothesis is that in districts where the Democrat accounts for more of the spending, that Democrat will do better relative to the performance of the Democratic candidate for governor or president in that district.”

More important than the relative amount of money each candidate has, according to Johnson, is the name at the top of the ticket in any given election.

Both the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Wisconsin Senate have said of their efforts to win control of the chamber that their candidates are staying focused on issues close to home. However, this week the focus of the race for the 17th Senate District turned to a country 6,000 miles away: China.

The race in Wisconsin’s 17th Senate District, a key district that will help determine control of the body, pits Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), the incumbent in the race, against Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon), a two-term state representative. Marklein was first elected to the seat in 2014 after serving two terms in the Assembly and has served for the last two sessions as the co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee, which drafts the state budget.

The subject of China entered the race when the Jacobson campaign began running an ad last week that claimed Marklein had “invested thousands of dollars in Chinese corporations” while voting against a “measure that would have made Wisconsin buy more American made products.” The ad displays an image of Marklein’s face beside the Chinese flag. 

“While Marklein was making money off of his Chinese investments, he was stealing money from American workers like me,” a man dressed as a construction worker says in the ad. “Someone who sold us out like that should never be in the state Senate.” 

The ad led to Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), head of the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate, to call a press conference to defend Marklein Tuesday. Testin called the ad “deceptive” and a “sick smear campaign.”

Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center, told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email that it’s “quite unusual for China or another other foreign country to be much of an issue in a campaign for a state legislative seat.” 

Burden said the “focus on China in the 17th district is a kind of proxy for other issues,” including concerns about politicians “enriching themselves unethically because of investments” as well as worries about the construction of new data centers that some Wisconsinites see as drain on resources and harmful to the environment in addition to being related to U.S. AI developers’ competition with China. 

The ad, however, is seeking to tie some of Marklein’s prior reported investments to his lack of support for a Democratic bill in 2013 that would have required state and local contracts to give preference to materials manufactured in the United States.

Wisconsin public officials and candidates are required to file a Statement of Economic Interests under state law to disclose financial relationships and prevent conflicts of interest. 

According to his 2022 statement of economic interest, Marklein had over $50,000 in a WisdomTree Emerging Markets Fund as well as between $5,000 and $50,000 in investments in the JPMorgan Emerging Markets Fund. According to Sofi, investing in emerging market funds means owning shares in companies from India, Brazil, South Africa and China with the latter representing a large portion of many emerging market index funds.

Marklein’s most recent statement of economic interest included no emerging market funds.

In his press conference defending Marklein, Testin appeared to think the ad was related to investments made through the Wisconsin Retirement System, saying Jacobson, and every state employee, has similar investments. (The Wisconsin Retirement System is not prohibited from making investments in businesses in China, though Republicans have proposed barring the State of Wisconsin Investment Board from doing so in the past.)

Testin said Jacobson was “trying to be tough on foreign adversaries now that it might be politically beneficial for her.” 

“The truth is that Jacobson could have spent months standing up to our nation’s adversaries like China, but when she had the opportunity to support meaningful legislation that would protect Wisconsin from foreign influence, she voted no,” Testin said, referring to bills that would have restricted business with China. 

Testin proposed and Marklein co-authored a bill that would have barred Wisconsin agencies from contracting with certain foreign businesses, including China. Two other bills would have prohibited China from buying Wisconsin land and prohibited the University of Wisconsin system from providing study abroad and research there.

“Jacobson has no backbone, only a slick eye for political gain. She’s quick to point a finger at people like Sen. Marklein when it benefits her, but when she has the chance to help Wisconsin, she’s only interested when there could be gains for her,” Testin said. 

Jacobson voted against the two bills that passed the Assembly. Both were vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers. The issue has also come up in the race for governor, with Republican candidate Tom Tiffany saying he would have signed at least one of those bills as governor.

Burden said connecting politicians to China could “tarnish” their reputations. According to a Nov. 2025 Marquette Law School Poll, 65% of Americans held an unfavorable view of China and its leader, President Xi Jinping, while 19% said they had a favorable view of China. 

Burden said of Jacobson’s ad that “a connection to Marklein’s potential support for Chinese businesses and government is a way for her to point out to voters without a strong partisan preference why he should be defeated.”

Will Karcz, a spokesperson for the State Senate Democratic Committee, said in a statement to the Examiner that the ad was meant to provide voters in the 17th with “the truth of Howard Marklein’s personal foreign investment history.”

“Howard has repeatedly voted against protecting Wisconsin manufacturing while cashing in on tens of thousands of dollars he invested in Chinese-owned corporations,” Karcz said. “He got rich on the backs of Wisconsin workers. Jenna Jacobson is running to make Wisconsin stronger while Howard has spent the last 10 years putting his bottom line ahead of his constituents.” 

Whether the message resonates with voters is unclear. 

Todd Allbaugh, a former Republican who grew up in Richland Center and formerly worked for Sen. Dale Schulz, told the Examiner in an interview that he was confused when he saw the ad about a week ago. He lives in Madison, but still has family in the district. 

“I’ve seen this ad now probably somewhere around 20-ish times. It was baffling,” Allbaugh said. He said he didn’t understand what it was trying to get at until he looked it up using Claude, the AI assistant developed by Anthropic. “If you have to go to Claude to figure it out, it probably isn’t a really effective ad.”

Allbaugh acknowledged that Marklein has some advantages in the race given his status as an incumbent. Marklein won his 2022 race with 60% of the vote, though the district has changed considerably under the new maps. It now represents Iowa, Lafayette, Green, Crawford and Grant counties as well as parts of Dane County. 

“I know the 17th Senate District pretty much like the back of my hand because it’s home,” Allbaugh said. “With the newly drawn maps it’s certainly become more competitive for Democrats, probably the most competitive in a very long time.” 

Allbaugh said that he thinks Marklein is “scared for his political life,” as he is suddenly running in a competitive district and that can be seen in his campaign. One of Marklein’s recent ads positioned him as a bipartisan “bridge builder” and as “your man in the middle” and highlighted tax cuts that have been made while he’s been in office as well as some investments that have been made into local EMS and into the Lone Rock Bridge, which opened this year after two years of construction. 

In Allbaugh’s opinion, Jacobson’s campaign should focus on local issues that Marklein has had some say over. He noted the closure of the UW-Platteville Richland Center campus and the UW-Platteville Baraboo Sauk County campus that have happened while Marklein has chaired the Joint Finance Committee as well as the struggle that public schools in the district have had. 

“I think she’s a super strong candidate. She’s affable. She is enormously more likable and connects to people better than Howard Marklein, and I would if I were advising them, which I’m not, I would lean into that,” Allbaugh said. “Be authentic instead of listening to consultants with boilerplate things that they’re using in the other races. It doesn’t seem like a smart use of money when there are so many more easily understood issues that are particular to the 17th Senate District.”

Jacobson’s economic statement of interest from 2022 and 2024 does not list any emerging market funds.

Her 2024 statement lists an investment in the American Funds The New Economy Fund. According to the Capital Group website, it is mainly invested in the U.S. though it has a mix of investments abroad. About 15% of the fund is in Asia, including China.

WASHINGTON — With the U.S. Senate set to hold a procedural vote in the coming days on a sweeping bill to overhaul college sports, dueling press conferences Monday underscored the fierce debate over how to tackle the biggest issues plaguing that landscape. 

Supporters of a bipartisan measure to set national standards for college athletes’ compensation, including the bill’s lead sponsor, GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, argued it would “protect,” “save” and “preserve” college sports. 

However, opponents of the bill, including Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, blasted the measure over concerns that it “essentially ensconces a system of exploitation,” and would provide “an unprecedented antitrust exemption to an industry that is violating the law every single day.” 

Name, image and likeness battle

The college sports world continues to grapple with the fallout from the NCAA’s 2021 guidelines that allowed student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness, or NIL, as well as a patchwork of state NIL laws and gender inequity in NIL deals, among other major issues. 

Earlier this year, Cruz and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state — the top members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee — introduced the bill, with Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware as original cosponsors. 

Cruz likened the college sports landscape to the “Wild West,” saying the bill is designed to “bring order to the chaos” and “put simple common sense rules in place so that college sports remain strong and vibrant for decades to come,” during a press conference he hosted outside the U.S. Capitol alongside Cantwell, Senate colleagues, student athletes and coaches. 

Cruz called for “a big bipartisan vote on the floor of the Senate, and with that momentum to go to the House and have it go to the president’s desk.” 

President Donald Trump has thrown strong support behind what he dubs a “great” bill. 

Patchwork of state laws

The Senate could take a procedural vote on the bipartisan measure as early as this week, where it would need at least 60 senators to advance.

The latest version of the bill would create a national NIL standard that preempts the patchwork of state laws, provide certain antitrust protections to the NCAA, establish a five-year eligibility timeline for athletes and bar professional athletes from competing in college athletics. 

The measure is notably neutral on the classification of athletes as employees.

Meanwhile, Sen. Chris Murphy blasted the measure, saying: “What this bill does at its core is to protect a system of exploitation,” during a virtual press conference earlier Monday with college athletes, professional athlete unions and advocates. The event was hosted by the AFL-CIO. 

“This bill protects the billions of dollars that coaches and sports industry executives are making over the suppression of compensation for some of the most highly valued athletes in the world,” Murphy added. 

NAACP critical of bill

Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, also blasted the Senate bill Monday, saying “what makes this bill so inadequate, and in many ways offensive, is the overture as if it’s going to do something special for historically Black colleges and universities,” during the AFL-CIO’s press conference.

“HBCUs, they deserve direct federal investment, not a political trade-off,” Johnson said.

The NAACP in May urged pushback against GOP-led redistricting efforts in Southern states via college sports, including a boycott of public universities by athletes and supporters.

The Congressional Black Caucus, which rallied behind that call in May, has also opposed the legislation, saying in August the bill “falls short of providing Black athletes with the rights, representation, economic opportunities, and meaningful safeguards they deserve, while also failing to adequately recognize the interests of Black coaches, Black agents, HBCUs, and other professionals whose futures will be shaped by this legislation.”