Following a campaign in which Wisconsin voters frequently cited concerns about data centers and energy affordability as major issues and Democratic candidates for the Legislature touted plans to restart the state’s land conservation program, Wisconsin Democrats are signaling they’ll use their new control of state government to take action on a number of climate and environmental issues. 

“We are going to deliver bold action for Wisconsinites. We are going to lower costs, support our public schools, protect our rights and freedoms, help working families, ensure safe and welcoming communities, hold big corporations accountable, fight back against federal overreach, ensure a clean environment for future generations, and much more,” Rep. Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) said in a statement after being elected to serve as the next speaker of the Assembly.  

Wisconsin Democrats will take over state government at a time when President Donald Trump’s administration has prioritized extractive industries and rolled back environmental protections. 

There are limits to what officials in one state can do to address a global problem like climate change, but state government’s purview over environmental issues includes regulating pollutants in the state’s air, land and water, purchasing and maintaining public land, overseeing the state’s electric utilities and funding efforts to protect the environment. 

As Democrats prepare to take majority control of the Legislature  in January, advocacy groups are pressing Democratic lawmakers to address their concerns both through standalone legislation and in the next state budget — which will dominate the agenda next summer. 

Clean Wisconsin has released a list of its policy priorities for 2027, which include increasing efforts to keep pollutants such as PFAS, nitrates, lead and phosphorus out of the state’s water; providing farmers with more tools to responsibly manage the land; investing in county-level initiatives; regulating data centers; changing how utility companies plan their energy development and expanding renewable energy.

“We’re really focused on pragmatic work, like a long list of on-the-ground programs that help protect our water systems, our groundwater, drinking water, our surface water, and help protect our climate and our air, and put some meaningful guardrails in place around AI data centers,” Amy Barilleaux, a spokesperson for Clean Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin Examiner. “I think people want to hear, ‘Oh, this big thing and that big thing,’ but it takes like a thousand little things to accomplish that big thing.

Barilleaux said that Gov.-elect David Crowley and whomever he appoints to run the state Department of Natural Resources can have a significant effect on environmental protection in the state simply by working to restore the agency’s muscle to what it was before Republicans slashed its staffing and budget under former Gov. Scott Walker. 

“I think it’s not that the DNR doesn’t recognize some authority, but you have to have people to do the work,” she said. “It’s been very difficult with understaffing at some agencies to really be able to do the work they are in statute being asked to do. So that’s a big one as well. We just need to improve the function of our government.”

Utility regulation 

In the days since their electoral victory, Wisconsin Democrats have signaled that their first priority in January will be addressing the affordability concerns that dominated the debate on the campaign trail. For environmental groups, that has led to a focus on how the state regulates its utility companies. 

In recent months, the Public Service Commission — the agency responsible for utility regulation — has taken some actions to prevent data center developments from increasing electric bills and to slow down requests to raise rates. But, Barilleaux said, the commission has also said in its recent decisions that if it’s going to do more, the Legislature needs to give it some help. 

Clean Wisconsin and a number of other groups are pushing for integrated resource planning. Under current law, the state’s utilities are not required to make long-term plans for where they’ll get the energy required to meet the state’s demand. This means that as hyperscale data centers have begun to pop up around the state, the utilities can do whatever they want to meet that increased demand. So far, that has meant extending the life of or planning to build new plants that rely on fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. 

Moving to integrated resource planning would require that the utilities get their future plans approved by the PSC, which advocates say will encourage them to use energy from sources that are cheaper in the long term, largely solar and wind. 

“Our utilities don’t have to be transparent about what they’re doing, they don’t have to have a big picture where we look at different utilities together for a full statewide energy system in Wisconsin, and that leaves us very vulnerable in this moment, extremely vulnerable as we have these AI data center projects coming in and demanding just intense amounts of energy, historic amounts of energy,” Barilleaux said. “So we’re just sitting here flat-footed with no integrated resource plan. So the Public Service Commission … when it approved the latest two gas plants, it was almost a cry for help, saying, ‘We can’t, we don’t have any authority to do anything about this,’ and that should be alarming to everyone. Even though integrated resource planning does not sound like a super exciting topic, when you see how things are unfolding here in Wisconsin, when you see the Public Service Commission saying we need help from lawmakers right now — we’re expecting lawmakers to take that very seriously.”

PFAS

Barilleaux said that another big priority for Clean Wisconsin is doing more to clean up PFAS contamination in the state’s water. 

Over the last year, the Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers have finally passed legislation to spend $125 million set aside for PFAS mitigation after years of partisan deadlock. The Natural Resources Board recently established a standard for the amount of PFAS allowed to be in the state’s groundwater after years of failed efforts. 

Barilleaux said more money beyond that previous appropriation is needed to address the full scope of the problem statewide and added she’d like to see a total ban on the use of PFAS in the state. 

“We need to take this seriously. We can’t pretend like it’s not happening. We can’t pretend like groundwater standards and surface water standards and drinking water standards are it, because it’s not,” she said. “It is over $100 million a year in health harms that PFAS exposure is causing right here in Wisconsin, and so these are tremendous costs. I think sometimes things get characterized as, you know, cost versus environmental protection, or jobs versus environmental protection, but really, this is people’s health on the line. It is expensive to be sick from pollution and contamination. You know, this is about protecting the health of our communities.” 

Knowles-Nelson

Among the most divisive environmental issues during the last legislative session was the failure to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant Program, which for nearly four decades had allowed the DNR to fund the purchase and maintenance of public land. 

A faction of Republicans in control of the Legislature had become hostile to the program — which had previously enjoyed bipartisan support — over broad objections to government land conservation and more specific complaints about the hit to local property tax revenues that can be caused by state land purchases. 

Multiple compromise bills were proposed, but nothing was able to pass and the program expired this summer. The reauthorization of the program was a campaign issue in some of the legislative races that helped Democrats win majority control. 

Charles Carlin, the director of strategic initiatives at the land conservation nonprofit Gathering Waters, told the Examiner that Democratic control opens up new possibilities for what the program can become, balancing how much money is spent purchasing new public land and how much is spent developing existing public land into both usable space for recreation and wildlife habitat. 

“It feels like everybody is sort of absorbing the ramifications of the elections, what’s possible,” Carlin said. “But I think that certainly one of the things that you know that we are looking at now is it feels like there is a real opportunity here to have a long-term authorization for Knowles Nelson, one that is appropriately funded, and I think the other thing we’re looking at is there’s an opportunity to rebalance the program between development projects and land acquisition.” 

He said it’s helpful not to have to negotiate with people who are hostile to the idea of public land conservation and added that the complaints about dwindling local government revenue on this issue tie in to coming debates about local government funding in general that are likely to play a major role in the work of the new government. 

“Local government revenue is likely to be a hot topic of conversation in the next legislative session on all kinds of issues,” Carlin said. “So public lands is one small one, but shared revenue, school funding, transportation — these are all going to be things that get talked about and considered a lot. But I do want to see a renewed emphasis on DNR soliciting input from local governments on projects that are happening in their jurisdiction and taking those viewpoints and that feedback into account. I also think that if the conversation in the Legislature can be more fact-based and less driven by an anti-conservation ideology, then I think that creates the space for us to have a really solution-focused conversation about how tax and land use policy really impacts local government revenues.”

After months of Democratic anxiety and planning by election officials in case the Trump administration interfered with voters casting their ballots or officials counting them, Tuesday’s election in Wisconsin went off without a hitch. 

The state’s prominent election deniers, including former state Rep. Janel Brandtjen, left Milwaukee’s central count facility on Tuesday long before the city was finished counting as it became clear that Democrats had swept into trifecta control of state government, even before Milwaukee made its final vote tally. The Wisconsin Elections Commission announced Wednesday that the election was held with only minor glitches at the more than 3,600 polling sites across the state. 

“This election is a testament to months of preparation and the professionalism of Wisconsin’s election officials,” Meagan Wolfe, the administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said in a statement. “Election officials stepped up to serve their communities and came together to run a fair, safe, and transparent election. Their hard work was evident every step of the way.”

A Trump administration official told CNN that Tuesday’s results were “too big to rig,” implying that a closer result could have led to 2020-style interference. Ahead of the election, the Trump administration had sued Wisconsin for access to the private information included in the state’s voter registration database. In other states over the past few years, federal agents had seized ballots and arrested people accused of registering to vote as non-citizens. 

Jeff Mandell, general counsel of the voting rights focused firm Law Forward, said that lawyers and advocates spent two years preparing and planning for the threat of election meddling by Trump. 

“I think that it shows how well and thoroughly the pro-democracy community had thought through all of the possibilities and prepared,” he told the Examiner. “You know, some of it might be that we thought of things, and just by thinking about them and talking about them and preparing, we foreclosed the administration doing those things. The other reality is that it looks like the will of the voters was so strong that those kinds of shenanigans were not going to move the needle, and it’s possible that the administration recognized that.” 

Trump has often questioned the results of elections and the fact that his administration did not undertake any “shenanigans” doesn’t mean that the risk of them doing so was zero. 

“The fact that it didn’t happen is something that we should all be celebrating as a democracy matter,” Mandell said. “This is good, but that doesn’t mean that there was no possibility it would happen, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be taking it seriously, and it doesn’t mean that it’s not to the benefit, long-term, for our democracy that we prepared.” 

Ann Jacobs, a Democrat on the elections commission, said that pro-democracy organizations did a good job communicating their plans and discussions and the possible risks while not discouraging turnout. 

“While people talked about the fears that they had about something like that happening, I think there was a lot of thoughtfulness about how to talk to people about it,” Jacobs told the Wisconsin Examiner. “So it didn’t depress turnout. It didn’t convince people not to go vote, and that was a conversation I was having with lots of people at the time, and I think is a good reminder of the importance of being level-headed and keeping in mind that while there are risks of bad things happening, the important part about it is planning and reassurance.” 

Proposed democracy and voting reforms 

With the election now in the rearview mirror and Democrats in Wisconsin preparing for the start of the legislative session in January, among the issues competing for priority attention are reforms to Wisconsin’s democracy and voting system after 15 years of GOP control in which campaign finance laws were eased, restrictions on voting were advanced and the maps were skewed to benefit Republicans. 

In a statement celebrating Democrats winning control of Wisconsin’s government, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said it’s important they use that power to undertake some structural reforms. 

“In the face of grave, ongoing threats to our democracy, now is not the time for Democrats to sit on the sidelines. Voters are demanding that their leaders take bold action to meet the moment, and now is the time to use the power entrusted to elected leaders to level the playing field and protect the voting power of the American people,” Holder said. 

Jacobs said she’s “so excited about the idea of being able to have those discussions with the Legislature,” and that she has a list of “straightforward” proposals for making voting easier. 

First on the list,  she said, is finally passing a bill that would allow election officials to begin processing absentee ballots on the Monday before an election. She also said that she understands a large majority of Democratic voters support some level of voter ID requirements, but that Wisconsin does not have to have the strictest ID law in the nation. To make voting less burdensome, she suggested helping college students get IDs for voting without so much “rigmarole.” Current law requires that student IDs used to vote have a signature, an expiration date and an issuance date, which many do not.

Also on Jacobs’ list are expanding the period for early in-person absentee voting again. Republicans limited it to just two weeks under former Gov. Scott Walker. She added that WEC should be able to provide grants to smaller communities without the manpower or money to pay to hold in-person early voting.

“There’s a lot of things we can do that would make voting better, that isn’t a huge lift, that we could do right away. I would love to see some of these things happen promptly,” she said. 

Mandell named some of the same priorities as Jacobs while also suggesting Democrats could take bolder action to make the state’s democracy stronger. 

“I think there’s a lot of room in this state and a lot of need in this state to strengthen our democracy and make it more robust, and some of that is about addressing limits and constraints that were improperly put on our democracy during the gerrymander period, and some of that is just updating and bringing new thinking and new ideas, and I think there’s room for both of those things,” he said. 

He said Democrats should advance a nonpartisan, independent system for drawing congressional and legislative maps — a proposal that is likely going to put elected Democrats squarely between their voters, who spent years fighting for fair maps against the Republican gerrymander, and the national Democratic party, which has been in a federal tit-for-tat with Republicans on a series of mid-decade redistricting efforts. 

Ahead of the election, Wisconsin Democrats’ potential trifecta control of both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office was often brought up in national discussions of states where Democrats could draw new maps to eke out a few more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Mandell noted that Law Forward’s lawsuit against the congressional maps is still pending at the state Supreme Court. He also suggested that the best way to enact a new map-drawing process is through a constitutional amendment, which would have to pass in two legislative sessions before going to voters. That means in order to be enacted by the time the current maps expire in 2030, that process needs to start now. 

“I do understand that there may well be pressure from D.C. and from others that maybe we should be careful to lock Wisconsin in on congressional maps,” Mandell said. “We’ve seen states around the country that have tried to walk away from some of their independent redistricting commitments in response to the White House’s unprecedented effort at mid-decade opportunistic redistricting in red states, and that’s something that’s at least worth considering.” 

 “But,” he added, “fundamentally gerrymandering is bad for voters, and that’s sort of the original sin of gerrymandering. It’s bad for voters. It undermines the value of the right to vote. So I’m not a political campaign consultant, and it’s harder for me to get into the details because I’m not as well steeped in them about the tit-for-tat of state here and state there. But you know we’re in this for voters, and gerrymandering is bad for voters. So I think we should stop gerrymandering.”

On Thursday, Sens. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) expressed a commitment to a fair maps process. 

“​​Having fair maps that make sure that the party that gets the most votes gets control is of the utmost importance to me, and I think to Wisconsinites, because we never want to be in a situation again where right-wing politicians essentially silence the voters and insulate themselves from any political consequence,” Roys told the Examiner. “Because we have seen how devastating that is for Wisconsin: The real harm that has been caused to our public education system, the way it’s caused our property taxes to skyrocket, the harm to farmers and small businesses. You know, it has been really devastating to have a Legislature that felt like it could do whatever it wanted, no matter how extreme and how opposed the majority of Wisconsinites were to what they were doing.”

Spreitzer echoed Mandell’s call for the maps to be handled through the constitutional amendment process and added that he hoped Tuesday’s landslide win for Democrats would discourage more mid-decade redistricting.

“The only way to get ourselves fully out of the equation is to amend the constitution, and the only way to keep a future Legislature of either party from changing it when they happen to find themselves in power after the census is to put it in the constitution,” he told the Examiner. “And we are in a position now where if we initiate a constitutional amendment this session and then hold our majorities in 2028, we could actually get a constitutional amendment on the ballot ahead of the 2030 census, and so that is going to be my goal to figure out how to do that.”

Mandell also said campaign finance reform should be a priority, pointing to the massive amounts of money that flowed into this year’s race for governor and recent campaigns for the state Supreme Court.

“When we have a governor’s race that just shattered all records, it feels like ordinary Wisconsinites are left out of this process, or left out in the sense of influence, but then sort of bear the consequences under the deluge of negative ads and mail that we all experience every election cycle,” he said. “And so I think it would be a good thing for the Legislature to take a really careful look and think about what kinds of campaign finance do we want in this state.”

Spreitzer and Roys said that voting and structural reforms are important, but with campaign promises on affordability to answer to and a state budget that will need to be passed, the timeline is up in the air. 

“Obviously, our first priority as Democrats is to restore faith in democracy by delivering for people on affordability and the economy,” Roys said. “I think that voters delivered a clear rejection of the Trump agenda, both the high costs, but also the corruption and assaults on democracy and authoritarianism. So I feel confident that my colleagues and I are going to be able to deliver for people on affordability and make a tangible difference in people’s lives and pocketbooks, and that’s going to be our very first priority to tackle in January.”

“At the same time,” she added. “I think voters are really hungry for a government that is actually responsive — and, I would say, puts what people need rather than special interests and big corporations first. So pro-democracy reforms are absolutely on the agenda. Everything from getting rid of the Walker and Vos era voter suppression laws, tackling corruption with campaign finance reform and good government measures, things that enhance the ability of people to influence their government, like national popular vote and voting rights measures, and things like fair maps.” 

Roys was the co-author of a 2023 bill that would add Wisconsin to the national popular vote interstate compact, an agreement among a number of states that have pledged to assign their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Since 2006, 19 states have signed on to the agreement, totaling 222 of the 270 Electoral College votes a candidate needs to win the presidency. 

On Tuesday, Democrats took trifecta control of state governments in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada. If all five states vote to join, that pushes the agreement to 283 Electoral College votes. 

Roys said that on Wednesday she posted online asking constituents what they want her to start working on in the new session and “hundreds” of comments and direct messages were pushing for Wisconsin to join the agreement.  

Spreitzer, who has been one of the leading Democrats on voting issues during his time in both the Assembly and Senate, said that he thinks the Legislature can tackle “low-hanging fruit” such as the Monday processing bill early in the session and then return to the broader reforms next fall after the budget is signed.

“The two years goes very quick, and we’re going to have to do a lot,” Spreitzer said. “Obviously, that’s why we’ve been trying to prepare and get bills ready and have caucus conversations on a lot of these topics”

With so many new members, he added, it takes time to get everyone on the same page.  

“But I think if I had to guess,” he said, “some of the easier things that are already fully drafted, like Monday processing, we could probably do in the first 100 days …  and then some of the more complicated, more system change kinds of things probably get more attention in the fall, post budget.”

Wisconsin voters approved two of the three constitutional amendments on the ballot on Tuesday. 

Over the last eight years, the Republican-controlled Legislature has frequently used the state’s constitutional amendment process to circumvent the veto pen of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. Tuesday’s results give the Republicans a nine for 15 record in those efforts. 

Under state law, a proposal to amend the state Constitution must be passed in two consecutive legislative terms and then approved by the voters. 

Anti-equity 

Voters approved an amendment that will prohibit state and local governments from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to any groups based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, public contracting, or public administration. 

Of the three amendments on the ballot, this one passed the most easily, with voters approving the measure with 57% of the vote, as of 12:30 a.m.

The amendment is the product of Republican antagonism against diversity, equity and inclusion policies in recent years. GOP lawmakers have pointed to money spent by county governments on diversity programs as an expense that the amendment will put a stop to. 

Republicans have said government spending decisions should be based on merit instead of membership of a specific group. 

Opponents of the amendment argued that the state and federal constitutions already prohibit discrimination. They’ve also pointed to popular programs across state and local government that could now be considered illegal — including women’s health initiatives and childcare programs such as Head Start — and made the case that the government should be allowed to address disparities such as the high rate of Black maternal mortality in Wisconsin. 

Places of worship 

With a 52% margin, Wisconsin voters narrowly rejected a proposed amendment that would have prohibited the government from shutting down places of worship during a state of emergency. 

The proposal was introduced by Republican lawmakers angry that government orders during the COVID-19 pandemic closed churches across the state. Those closures sparked widespread protests from conservatives in the state. 

Opponents of the amendment had argued the state needs tools to protect public health in the event of an emergency. 

Partial veto 

Voters narrowly approved a constitutional amendment that will limit the governor’s partial veto authority, preventing its use to introduce new taxes or fees. The measure passed with 51% of the vote. 

The amendment was proposed after Gov. Tony Evers used his veto pen to change the 2023-25 biennial budget to allow schools to raise revenue limits by $325 per pupil per year for the next 400 years. Republicans across the state have frequently complained about the “400-year tax,” including Tom Tiffany, who made repealing the veto a major part of his run for governor. 

Governors of both parties have used the partial veto to extend provisions for hundreds of years. Republican Gov. Scott Walker used the power to extend a one-year moratorium on school referendum requests for energy efficiency projects, transforming it into a 1,000-year moratorium.

The partial veto authority of Wisconsin’s governor has been rolled back several times through the courts and the constitutional amendment process during the state’s history. Opponents of the amendment compared it to previous actions by Republican lawmakers to limit the authority of the governor after Evers, a Democrat, took office. 

Democrat Rebecca Cooke has defeated Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, notching a win in one of the Democratic party’s highest priority House districts. 

AP called the race at 11:48 p.m. with 90% of the vote counted. Cooke led Van Orden 52.4% to 45.8%.

Cooke, who lost in the Democratic primary for the seat in 2022 and narrowly lost to Van Orden in 2024, ran as a moderate — staking out a number of positions counter to progressive priorities — but benefited from the support of U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Bernie Sanders as well as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 

Cooke’s seven point victory, at the time the race was called shortly before midnight, was driven by winning large margins in the district’s bigger cities of Eau Claire and La Crosse while keeping Van Orden’s margins small enough in the rest of the largely rural district. 

Cooke won by more than 20 points in both Eau Claire and La Crosse counties while keeping it close enough in the more rural counties — which had driven Trump’s wins in the state after the district voted for former President Barack Obama twice. Under a map in which Van Orden had to run up the score among rural voters, as of 11:45 p.m. on Tuesday evening, he was leading only a single county, Adams, by more than 20 points.

A former political consultant, Cooke has also previously run a non-profit, owned a small business and worked as a waitress. During the campaign, Van Orden had attempted to raise questions about Cooke’s authenticity while tying her to left-wing ideas, frequently referring to her as “commie Cooke.” 

But Van Orden, whose aggressive temperament and frequent scandals had made him a divisive figure among voters in the district, ran on embracing the first two years of President Donald Trump’s second term. He appeared at campaign events with more than a dozen high ranking Trump administration officials while defending his support of Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran, which voters in the district had blamed for increasing costs. 

The district has been hit hard by several of the Trump administration’s most unpopular policies. Hospitals have closed; farmers have struggled to keep up with rising diesel prices and the burden of tariffs and last winter Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities extended into western Wisconsin as far as Eau Claire.

At the only debate of the campaign in October, Cooke argued that she was the only candidate of the two who would actually put “America first.” 

Cooke’s win brings Democratic control back to the district, which voted for Trump three times but was represented by former Democratic Rep. Ron Kind from 1997 to 2023.

Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Wied defeated his Democratic challenger, former Green Bay school board member and U.S. Army veteran Rick Crosson in Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District. AP called the race at 10:01 p.m. with 72% of the vote counted. Wied won by a margin of 55.3% to 44.7% 

The Green Bay area district has been under Republican control since 2011, and this year it received less attention and investment from the national parties than Wisconsin’s more competitive 1st and 3rd CDs.

Two years ago, the seat was open after U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher left Congress. The campaign of Dr. Kristin Lyerly, an OB-GYN and an outspoken proponent of abortion rights, gained significant national attention. Lyerly lost to Wied by 15 points.

Wied, the former owner of gas stations in the Green Bay area, presented himself during his reelection campaign as a good-tempered representative who has worked to improve the lives of people in northeast Wisconsin through his constituent services. He has also been a reliable supporter of  President Donald Trump’s agenda in the House of Representatives. 

Wied acknowledged in an Oct. 22 debate that gas and diesel prices have risen because of the war Trump started in Iran, but said that “decisive action” in Iran was needed. He also defended his vote in favor of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut billions in federal healthcare spending. He argued that the Affordable Care Act is responsible for pushing up medical costs and that he and other Republicans fought to bring federal money to rural hospitals. (The money sent to fund Wisconsin’s rural hospitals, but it’s far less than the shortfall they will face because of  the broader cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.)

As a member of the House Agriculture committee, Wied pointed to his work to get schools serving whole milk again and the passage of a 2026 farm bill by the House of Representatives as actions that he’s taken to help area farmers. 

Crosson accused Wied during the debate of avoiding his constituents by not holding any in-person town halls since he was elected. Wied responded that holding telephone town halls has helped him reach more constituents. He also said that holding town halls in person brings out a “left-wing mob.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that the campaign of Dr. Kristin Lyerly received significant national Democratic support. National Democratic party committees did not, however, put money into Lyerly’s 2024 campaign.

Polls open on Tuesday in Wisconsin’s midterm elections at 7 a.m. and will remain open until 8 p.m. Anyone still in line when polls closed should remain in line and will still be able to vote. 

As of Monday afternoon, 857,764 absentee ballots had been requested and 777,739 of those had been returned. Voters still in possession of their absentee ballot shouldn’t drop it in the mail but should instead bring it in person to their polling place or their municipal clerk’s office. 

Voters who aren’t registered or need to update their registration can do so at the polls on Tuesday but will need a proof-of-residence document with their current address on it to do so. The state Department of Motor Vehicles announced it would extend its hours until 6 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday so voters can obtain a free photo ID if they need one. 

To get an ID, Wisconsin residents need a document such as a birth certificate to prove their identity and a document such as a bill or lease to prove their residency. 

The results in Tuesday’s elections will likely not be known for hours after the polls close — mostly because of the hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots, which clerks aren’t allowed to begin processing and counting until the polls open. 

In most municipalities, absentee ballots are opened and put through the voting machines at the same polling place that voters would have cast their ballot if doing so in person. But in a few dozen communities, including the state’s largest city of Milwaukee, absentee ballots are processed and counted at one central count location. 

This process means that reports of vote totals early in the evening Tuesday may not signify the eventual winner and that Milwaukee’s large amount of votes is unlikely to be reported until late. 

Information about what’s on the ballot and where to vote can be found at MyVote.WI.gov

Thousands of Brewer fans packed into downtown Milwaukee and the city’s Summerfest grounds Friday to celebrate the Milwaukee Brewers winning the first World Series in franchise history. 

As the buses and cars drove past carrying the team, its staff and local dignitaries — including Gov. Tony Evers, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, the Democratic nominee for governor — roars echoed through the streets celebrating the end of more than a half century of waiting for a championship team. 

Parents lifted kids on shoulders and fans stood on every possible elevated surface, including Milwaukee Police Department vehicles, to get a glimpse of the world champion Brewers — who defeated the Tampa Bay Rays in game five of the series on Wednesday. 

On Milwaukee’s Summerfest grounds, the official team rally celebrating the win was held at the American Family Insurance Amphitheater while fans packed in to watch the video of the celebration at every stage in the sprawling festival venue. 

Fans hang from a parking garage to see the Milwaukee Brewers World Series parade. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Fans climb on cars to see the Brewers parade go by. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Brewers team bus through the legs of a young fan. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Fans watch the Brewers World Series parade. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Fans watch the Brewers championship parade from a parking garage. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Milwaukee celebrates the Brewers World Series victory (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Fans in a 3rd Ward apartment building watch the Brewers championship parade pass by. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Fans watch the Brewers championship parade. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Fans in a 3rd Ward apartment watch the Brewers championship parade. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Fans watch the Brewers championship rally at Summerfest grounds. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Fans line up for Miller High Life after the Brewers championship parade. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Office in Milwaukee serves fans downtown for the Brewers championship parade. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

While players and coaches spoke from the stage, they repeatedly credited the fan support for carrying them through the playoffs. 

“We couldn’t have done it without these people,” Brewers Manager Pat Murphy said from the rally stage.

Days before the midterm elections, after a campaign season in which Wisconsin’s 50-50 political divide has been laid bare, Brewer fans celebrated the common ground the team offered the state. But politics was not entirely absent from the celebration. While the parade moved through the city, a plane trailed a banner noting that “David Crowley helped keep the Brewers in Milwaukee.” 

“It means everything, the whole state,” Milwaukee resident Mario Williams told the Wisconsin Examiner, adding that the celebration was for fans in “La Crosse, Wausau and Marinette.” 

“We get a bad rep,” he said of Milwaukee. “We’re a great city, multi-cultural, it’s not just all violence.” Thomas Carson, a graduate of Milwaukee’s Casimir Pulaski High School, said that Friday’s celebration was a “spontaneous combustion” of energy in the city. 

“I’ve been waiting on this day,” he said. 

Laura Toburen, who drove down from the city of Greenwood in Clark County to see the parade with her Milwaukee resident daughter and grandkids, said that after 57 years of waiting she was happy to celebrate the team and its city. 

“I love it, to feel it together and just enjoy,” Toburen said.

The Milwaukee Brewers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 in game five of the World Series Wednesday evening at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, clinching the first World Series title in Brewers history.

Wisconsinites enthusiastically cheered for the team at watch parties, including at American Family Field, which packed in a sold out crowd of 31,000 fans three nights in a row. Big crowds also watched the game in the Deer District outside of Fiserv Forum in downtown Milwaukee, at Tropicana Field in Tampa, and in bars and livingrooms all over Wisconsin.

“Thank you. That’s it,” Jacob Misiorowski, the Brewers starting pitcher, said when asked about what the win would mean for Wisconsin and Milwaukee in an interview on Fox Sports after the game. “They’ve been nothing but support for us this whole year and years prior,” he said of the fans, tearing up as he spoke.

“I think about the state of Wisconsin, they pushed us through for sure,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. 

The Brewers lost just twice in the playoffs and along the way swept the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers, who boast the highest payroll in Major League Baseball.

The Brewers won the first three games in the series, but lost in the fourth game on Tuesday in Tampa after blowing a 12th inning lead.

On Thursday during the fifth game, the Brewers came back strong, keeping a lead on the Rays during the whole game and only allowing the team to squeak in one score during the ninth inning.

The team, and its huge win, represents a point of unity in a state sometimes riven by political divisions and a 50-50 partisan split. The World Series provided a respite from politics , especially with less than a week to go before the midterm elections.

The Brewers have been based in Wisconsin’s largest city, but the MLB’s smallest market, since 1970, when they moved to Milwaukee from Seattle. The team last appeared in the World Series over 40 years ago in 1982 where they faced the St. Louis Cardinals and lost in seven games.

A Marquette Law School poll released Wednesday found that 77% of Wisconsinites are supporters of the Brewers with 49% identifying as fans and 28% identifying as casual supporters. Only 1% said they actively root against the team. The Brewers had the second largest professional sports fanbase in the state, behind the Green Bay Packers.

Fans were happy to soak up the statewide joy the team could offer including during the watch parties at American Family Field. 

Sarah Coleman, a Brookfield native who now lives in Milwaukee, said the Brewers’ underdog story was part of the team’s appeal. 

“It says a lot that a small market team swept the highest paid team in Major League Baseball,” she said. “It’s cool to talk about the underdog.” 

“It’s nice to enjoy something so positive,” Christal Glynn-Skipini said. 

Gov. Tony Evers, a lifelong Brewers fan, reacted to the win in a post on X, writing in all caps, “JAZZED AS HELL IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT”.

The candidates for governor also celebrated the Brewers (the team at times has played a role in the race). 

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, the Democratic candidate running in the open race for governor, reacted to the win online: “FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, THE MILWAUKEE BREWERS ARE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!!!” 

Crowley and members of his party have pointed to his role in negotiating the stadium deal that kept the team in Milwaukee through 2050. Republican state Rep. Rob Brooks recently told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Crowley was “big part” and “true partner” in getting the deal done.

Supporters of the deal, including Evers, said the state and local government investment was important because of the economic activity that the Brewers bring to the state. According to the Milwaukee Business Journal, the Brewers’ World Series appearance was estimated to generate between $10 million to $12 million in economic impact per home game. 

Republican candidate and U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said in a post that “Ueck is smiling down on us tonight,” referring to the late Bob Uecker, who was the legendary Hall of Fame radio broadcaster for the team. 

“What a moment for Wisconsin,” Tiffany said. “GO BREWERS!” 

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said in a post that “this special team represented what this city is all about and the entire state of Wisconsin is proud of them.” 

“Congratulations guys — you deserve every bit of this victory,” Johnson said.

The Milwaukee Brewers came tantalizingly close to winning their first World Series title in franchise history Tuesday evening before the Tampa Bay Rays’ Ben Williamson hit a walk-off single to score the winning run in the bottom of the 12th inning, giving the Rays a 4-3 victory. 

A Cooper Pratt home run in the top of the 12th inning had the team just three outs away from the championship but a throwing error with zero outs in the top of the inning sparked a rally for the Rays, who for the first time in the series were able to string together a series of hits. Brewers pitcher Shane Drohan, who had previously pitched just one inning in the playoffs, gave up the game tying and winning runs. 

At American Family Field in Milwaukee a sold out watch party was standing, clapping, cheering and groaning along with the game as if it were happening on the field in front of them and not on the massive screen in center field. 

The game ended around 11:30, with kids out far past their bedtime and lifelong fans on the edge of their seats to watch their hearts get ripped out. 

Watching from the third deck was Chrystal Glynn-Skipini who drove down from Neenah to watch the game in the atmosphere with her niece and great nephew. 

“Why not, how awesome to be with all the other fans,” she said, double crossing her fingers that the team would close out the sweep Tuesday. 

Game five of the series is Wednesday at 7 p.m. 

On Monday evening, dozens of Republican voters, clad in a mix of GOP red and Brewer navy blue, crowded into Whiskey Run Distillery in New Glarus to hear from U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor. 

At the event, part of the campaign’s 55 city “common sense” bus tour of the state in the last week of the election, Tiffany’s final argument to the electorate largely reiterated the case he’s made for himself over the past year — that, if elected, Democratic candidate David Crowley will raise taxes and fees, make Wisconsin less safe and let transgender youth play sports, while Tiffany in contrast will protect Wisconsinites’ values. 

“My commitment to all of you is that I’m going to make sure your children and your grandchildren are going to be able to achieve their dreams right here in Wisconsin,” Tiffany said. “It’s gonna be Wisconsin’s nightmare, though, if we get David Crowley, isn’t it? … He’s gonna raise your property taxes. He’s going to raise your sales taxes, and he’s going to bring us a new one. He is going to have tolling come to Wisconsin. You want toll booths in Wisconsin? Every paycheck, every purchase, every time you drive, he wants to take more money out of your pockets.”

Two years ago, Vice President Kamala Harris won the village of New Glarus with 67% of the vote and Green County with 50.1% of the vote. Now, Democrats across the country are optimistic that a blue wave generated by opposition to the historically unpopular President Donald Trump will help them win state and federal races even in red areas. At the event on Monday, Tiffany said his campaign was going to compete in blue areas such as New Glarus and nearby Dane County, a Democratic stronghold in which Republicans have often argued they need to pick off about 30% of the vote in order to compete statewide. 

“When we announced a year ago, I said we are going to compete in Dane County and all the counties surrounding, including right here in Green County,” Tiffany said. “We are competing. We’re going to win on Nov. 3.” 

Across the state and country, voters have cited concerns about the economy — largely due to rising prices caused by Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran — as their top issue in this year’s midterm elections. As he has throughout his campaign, including when he accepted the Republican nomination for governor at the GOP convention in May, Tiffany said his opposition to transgender rights would be a key part of his agenda. 

“This is the common sense tour, right? So we should probably do a little bit of that,” he said. “We’ll do a little bit of that. Girls and only girls are going to play girls’ sports. Yes, we’re going to make sure that that happens. If you hadn’t heard in the last budget, they wanted to call mothers ‘inseminated persons.’ I don’t know who in the world thought that up. We’re going to call mothers mothers in the state budget. And I don’t care what flags you fly above your business, your home, above your boat, my brother flies a Tiffany for governor flag above his combine. I don’t care what flags you fly above all those things, but above the state Capitol, we’re going to fly the two flags that tie this state and country together: the flag, the seal of the great state of Wisconsin and Old Glory are going to be the two flags that we fly.” 

Last year, Republicans in Wisconsin and across the country complained when Gov. Tony Evers’ budget proposal used the term “inseminated persons” in provisions related to in vitro fertilization, which he argued made clear that the law applied to same-sex couples. Evers has also flown an LGBTQ pride flag over the Capitol in each year of his administration, which Republicans have often criticized.

As early voting kicked off last week, Tiffany proposed instituting a bill of rights for parents and teachers, which includes requiring parental permission for students who want to change their names and pronouns at school and banning transgender students from bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity.

At the event Monday was New Glarus resident Dave Staats, who moved to Wisconsin from Nashville eight years ago and is hoping to live in the state for the first time under a Republican governor. Staats said he doesn’t trust the polls, which have shown Crowley in the lead, but believes it’s going to be a close election.

Staats said that he “would’ve voted for [Tiffany] no matter what” in this election. 

“I know who Tom Tiffany is,” he said. 

He added that his vote isn’t driven by any specific issues, but that he’s frustrated with the state of the country’s politics and the polarization that makes it difficult to talk with people on the other side. 

“There’s never any big issues, it’s all about the general principles,” he said. “It used to be easy to talk to someone on the other side, now you’re not going to the same place.” 

Robin Stroebel, another New Glarus resident, said she attended Monday’s event because she hadn’t seen Tiffany in person yet and likes to do that before an election. Stroebel said her main issues in the election are the repeal of Evers’ veto allowing schools to raise revenue limits by $325 per pupil per year for the next 400 years, continuing to support charter schools, public safety and election security. 

“I think [Tiffany] is logical, honest and calm,” she said. “He’s getting everywhere, talking to everyone he can.” 

Stroebel added that she believes Tiffany’s campaign is speaking to his grassroots supporters while being competitive where it needs to be. She said she was optimistic that appearing so close to Dane County is a sign he can win enough support there. 

“He’s run a fantastic campaign,” she said.

A complaint has been filed with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission against U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden over his use of artificial intelligence to generate images of his Democratic opponent Rebecca Cooke that were posted to his and his campaign’s online accounts. 

Ahead of the Oct. 20 debate between the two candidates, a Van Orden campaign account posted an advertisement for the event that included what Cooke’s campaign says is a computer generated deepfake image of her. 

Van Orden has spent much of the campaign cycle posting AI photos and videos to social media. Late last month, Cooke’s campaign sent a cease and desist letter to Van Orden seeking to stop him from posting fake material about Cooke, including a video in which she is made to look as if she’s saying she’s running to “take advantage of as much corruption as possible, and give every illegal immigrant free healthcare.”

After the debate advertisement was posted, Eau Claire resident Cassandra Butzler filed a complaint against Van Orden with the state ethics commission, alleging he has broken a 2024 law which requires that any political ad that contains AI must be clearly labeled as such. So far, Van Orden’s posts have not been subject to the law because they don’t qualify as advertisements. 

“Derrick Van Orden continues to spend his time posting AI-generated deepfakes instead of offering real solutions for the working families of our district,” Cooke said in a media release. “He has now gone so far as to violate Wisconsin’s ethics rules, but voters won’t be fooled, Van Orden has never put his constituents first, and he never will.”

Van Orden has previously dismissed the complaints about his AI use as a stunt. Grace Kim, his spokesperson, similarly told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that the ethics complaint is a “cheap publicity stunt.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Wied and his Democratic challenger, former Green Bay school board member and U.S. Army veteran Rick Crosson, met Thursday afternoon for a debate as the two compete for the Green Bay area’s 8th Congressional District seat. 

The 8th CD has been under Republican control since 2011 and this year the district is getting less attention and investment than the races for the 1st and 3rd Districts, which are seen as more competitive. Two years ago, the seat was open after Rep. Mike Gallagher’s departure from Congress and Democrats put significant resources into the campaign of Dr. Kristin Lyerly — who lost her race to Wied by 15 points. 

With Democrats gaining momentum in Republican-dominated districts across the country, surprises could be coming on Nov. 3, but Crosson’s challenge is still seen as a longshot. 

In the debate on Thursday Crosson sought to cast himself as a problem solver and Wied as someone who isn’t up for the job and who has “acquiesced” to the “erratic whims of the current occupant of the White House” while avoiding accountability to his constituents and using the position to personally enrich himself. 

Wied, the former owner of gas stations in the Green Bay area, worked to present himself as a good-tempered representative who has worked to improve the lives of people in northeast Wisconsin through his constituent services, while defending many of President Donald Trump’s actions that he has supported. 

Hosted by WFRV’s Tom Zalaski and Stacy Engebretson, the debate focused on the economy, the political environment, agricultural consolidation, data centers, healthcare, election integrity and the war in Iran. 

Economy

On the economy, Wied acknowledged that gas and diesel prices have risen because Trump started the war in Iran, but said that “decisive action” in Iran is what was needed. 

“Gas and diesel prices are too high, and we know that that comes from the president’s actions, and he took decisive action with a threat that we have in Iran,” Wied said. The threat posed by Iran is “something that every president has dealt with my entire lifetime, and through his intelligence briefings, he felt that there was an immediate threat with a nuclear weapon, and he took decisive action,” Weid said of Trump.  

“I think as soon as this conflict is over, and it has moved from kinetic warfare over to economic warfare, we’ll see those prices come down,” he added. “During the Biden administration, prices were extremely high as well. Gas and diesel prices were very high during the administration.”

When pressed about his votes to continue the war in Iran, Wied said he wouldn’t support a vote by Congress to end the war, calling it a “symbolic gesture.” 

Crosson responded that the people who create a mess don’t then get credit for cleaning it up. 

“You caused the instability. Congress acquiesced to the president, to the whims of the president, in kicking off this illegal and unwarranted war,” Crosson said. “This is one where you can’t blame sleepy Joe Biden for this situation and circumstance. We’ve got to end this war.” 

Polarization

The two men were also asked about the level of political polarization and tension in the country as voters are inundated with negative campaign advertising. 

Crosson said that if elected, he’d focus on “affordability, accountability and quantifiable results.” He argued that Wied, who hasn’t held any in-person town halls during his nearly two years in office, has ducked his responsibility to face his constituents. Wied argued that the telephone town halls he’s held help him reach more people across the district. 

“To me, a tele-town hall already communicates the message that there is a reluctance and there’s a fear of standing in front of people,” Crosson said. “Look, I’ve stood before heads of state, four-star military commanders, ambassadors, 3,000 irate, agitated truck drivers. I know what it means to be held accountable in person. There is nothing that substitutes an in-person exchange of information of concern. And yes, they can get spirited, but we should be leaning into that. That’s the nature of this role. If we don’t have the intestinal fortitude to go into that sort of thing, then we shouldn’t be in this role.” 

Wied said he’s met with more than 300 groups from the district, done news interviews and sends out a weekly email newsletter. He also said that holding town halls in person brings out a “left-wing mob.” 

“I’ve met with over 300 groups here just this year alone. The thing with an in-person town hall is you have this left-wing mob. You have people that work at the Brown County Democrat Party that threatened to kill me,” Wied said, referencing an incident last year in which an unpaid volunteer from the county Democratic party was investigated for making threatening phone calls to Wied’s D.C. office. “They come into these and they scream and they holler and they agitate, and you can’t even get a question. I have no problem meeting with people, and I do. I’ve met with, again, over 300 different groups in this area. I am in the community every single day. I’m the last one to leave to get to D.C. I’m the first one to come home, and we get in the car and we go to all 11 counties every single week. And I will answer any question from anyone.” 

Agriculture

Northeast Wisconsin is home to some of the state’s largest factory farms. As consolidation has pushed farmers to expand their operations while squeezing out smaller family farms, neither candidate offered many specifics on how Congress can help reverse that trend. 

Wied, who sits on the House Agriculture committee, pointed to his work to get schools serving whole milk again and the passage of a 2026 farm bill by the House of Representatives as actions that he’s taken to help area farmers. A full farm bill has not been enacted since the 2018 version of the law expired in 2023. 

“I’ll continue to meet with all of our farmers of all sizes and continue to do everything I can to help them succeed,” Wied said. “What I’m seeing, though, is a very big interest in the next generation to get into farming. There’s issues for sure, but I’m right there to help them, and I will continue to be an advocate and fight for them in Washington.” 

Crosson pointed to the tariffs that the Trump administration has imposed on imports from Canada and other major trade partners. He said he’d spoken with an area dairy farmer who can no longer afford to buy Canadian dairy cattle. 

“Congress has the responsibility for the imposition of tariffs, and if there is an imbalance of trade, then we look at it rationally,” Crosson said. “We don’t do it irrationally at the whims of the occupant of the White House. Here again is one of the things that Congress again has acquiesced in its mission and responsibility to be that watchdog, that check and balance on the excesses of the presidency, that’s one of the things that we have to do to get ourselves back in place.” 

Data centers

As local opposition to data centers has roiled campaigns across the country, the candidates both advocated for local control over the massive developments. 

Wied qualified his statement, adding  that the U.S. has to keep up in the race to develop artificial intelligence and data center deals can be beneficial to communities. 

“Well, I think this is an emerging technology that we need to be the leader in the world in, and there are other countries like China that are really growing in the artificial intelligence, or super intelligence as it’s now being called,” he said, referencing the term that Trump decreed should be used to describe the technology at a White House event late last month. “Some areas around the country are negotiating very good deals. You’re seeing data centers go in and teachers being rewarded with higher pay. There can be a deal, but it cannot be without the approval of the people here locally.” 

Wied went on to blame Gov. Tony Evers for forcing communities to construct “big solar farms.” 

Crosson said he doesn’t trust the big tech companies building the data centers to have the interests of communities at heart. 

“There has to be some level of state and federal laws, policies, procedures that protect our local communities,” he said. “We definitely have to have local control. We need to have the people involved in the decision-making process along the way.” 

Healthcare

Republicans across the country are running for reelection after voting to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut billions in federal healthcare spending. Wied argued that the Affordable Care Act is responsible for pushing up medical costs and that he and other Republicans fought to bring federal money to rural hospitals. 

Some money did get sent to fund Wisconsin’s rural hospitals, but it’s far less than the shortfall they will face because of  the broader cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. 

“Ultimately, we need to have a system where people can go directly to the doctor and not have to deal with these insurance companies,” Wied said. “As it relates to Medicaid, we had some of the most transformational reform, but here’s what it did: It basically says that you have to work if you are able-bodied and you do not have a dependent. The Affordable Care Act put people on the sidelines. If you’re a 29-year-old gamer sitting in mom’s basement, you’re going to have to work 20 hours a week, volunteer, or be going to school. That was significant savings, but what it’s going to do is put people onto payrolls and get them off the couch and actually to work.” 

Crosson noted that the OBBBA is set to kick millions of Americans off their health insurance and argued that healthcare should be a human right. 

“They keep saying that what was called Obamacare was not something that they wanted,” Crosson said. “They tried multiple times to nullify it, but there still hasn’t been anything that replaces this. I start with the premise that healthcare should be a fundamental human right, unequivocally. Once we do that, that’s the vision. We backward plan to where we are, and we move towards that objective. There’s enough dollars to do this. Everybody stops the conversation by saying how we’re going to afford it. There’s money there. We just have to have the national will to do that.” 

Election Integrity

Green Bay has been a hotbed of election conspiracy theories since the 2020 presidential election. When asked about trust in elections, Wied said that people have sincere concerns about the validity of the country’s elections — pointing to grant money Green Bay received from a Mark Zuckerberg-aligned non-profit to help fund the added cost of administering an election during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

He said that Congress should have passed the Save America Act, which would have instituted a strict national voter ID requirement, because states such as Illinois and Minnesota don’t require a photo ID to vote and therefore they  allow undocumented immigrants to cast ballots. 

It is illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, and there’s no evidence that it happens in significant numbers. 

“One of the biggest issues that I hear as I continue to travel around all of our great 11 counties here in northeastern Wisconsin is that people are concerned with election integrity,” Wied said. “That’s why I proposed and we passed in the House the Save America Act. What that says is, look, you have to be a citizen and show ID in order to vote in federal elections. We have elections all across our country with states like Minnesota and Illinois that don’t do that. They don’t require you to show an ID or be a citizen, and that’s not OK. We need to ensure the integrity in our elections.”

Crosson said the federal government should have no say in how Wisconsin’s elections are run and that fearmongering about these issues only discourages people from voting. 

“This is a state requirement, a state responsibility, and we don’t need federal intervention that has the effect of disenfranchising voters,” Crosson said. “This is about making people afraid to come to vote because they know that we outnumber the crazy.” 

‘Communism’ and stock trading

Toward the end of the debate, the two candidates were allowed to ask each other one question. 

Crosson asked Wied about the large number of trades he’s made while in office. Wied’s net worth has increased by more than $3 million since he was elected and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel previously reported that Wied has bought and sold stock in a number of companies that have business before the committees on which he serves. Wied has said all of these trades were made by his independent financial adviser. 

Wied said that the stock purchases happened because he and his wife had some savings to invest after selling their business. Then he pivoted to attacking prominent Democrats. 

“We sold our business in 2022, and we had some savings. We hired a financial advisor. My wife nor I have ever asked them to buy or sell anything, nor would we,” he said. “But let’s be real. I think the real issue is people don’t trust Congress. You have people like Ilhan Omar that all of a sudden made $30 million out of nowhere. You have career politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden that are worth millions, and they’ve never had a real job. That’s why we need to have term limits. We cannot allow people to enrich themselves in Congress.”

Wied highlighted Crosson’s campaign appearances with “known Communist” Francesca Hong, the state representative and former Democratic candidate for governor, and asked if Crosson wants to abolish the police. 

Crosson said he “comes at everything from a law and order perspective” and noted his military career included postings in Europe during the Cold War and working with the Mexican government to prevent drug trafficking over the country’s southern border. 

“Whether or not Francesca Hong is a ‘communist’ is something that you and her would have to talk about,” Crosson said. “I fought communism in my 20 years of service. I fought against totalitarianism.” 

“Of course, I’m for law and order,” he continued. “This is more exploitative conversation to inflame the folks who are inclined to not dig deeper into the facts. So of course I’m for law and order. Who isn’t? But what I don’t want to see happen are people taking advantage of their power and authority and imposing that on our population. That’s not law and order. That’s terrorism, and I’m going to fight that hard.”

Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany met at Marquette University Wednesday evening for the only scheduled debate in Wisconsin’s race for governor. 

Throughout the hourlong debate, hosted by WISN and moderated by Matt Smith and Gerron Jordan, Crowley worked to paint Tiffany as a yes-man for his billionaire donors and President Donald Trump, while Tiffany worked to cast Crowley as an extreme liberal focused only on raising taxes and distracted by his dislike of Trump. 

As Democrats hope that Trump’s record-low unpopularity can create a wave of support for them in races up and down the ticket across the country, polling has shown that Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race remains close, with Crowley so far maintaining a slight lead. 

If Crowley wins, he’d be the first Black man to be elected governor of Wisconsin and will represent an extension of Gov. Tony Evers’ eight years in office — especially if Democrats are able to fulfill their ambition to win majority control of both chambers of the Legislature for the first time in more than 15 years. 

A Tiffany victory would represent a return to the Gov. Scott Walker era of politics in the state, focused on deregulation and tax cuts and would mean Republicans gain control of a key swing state ahead of the 2028 presidential election. 

Taxes and the economy

The debate opened with an extended discussion about the economy, taxes and the state budget as affordability has become one of the main issues of concern to voters in this year’s midterm elections. 

Tiffany has built his campaign on the promise of massive tax cuts. He’s said he’ll cut property and income taxes while maintaining funding for government services. Since the early days of his campaign, Tiffany has argued that he can deliver massive tax cuts without significant cuts. 

“We are going to have sufficient money in this budget to be able to fund the things that are important to Wisconsinites: education, transportation, and infrastructure, healthcare, we’re going to have money there, and here’s why,” he said. “When you look at the last budget that was passed a year ago, it went up $15 billion, went from $99 billion to $114 billion, a 15% increase, the largest increase ever in a state budget. There is plenty of money in Madison to be able to provide more shared revenue, to give increased aid to our schools, there is enough money in Madison to be able to backfill those things that we need to.” 

The most recent state budget, passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Evers, cut $1.3 billion in taxes while increasing funding for the University of Wisconsin system, childcare providers and special education. 

During a conversation about transportation funding, Crowley questioned how Tiffany will pay for his tax plans. 

“Congressman Tom Tiffany doesn’t have any plans,” Crowley said. “Congressman Tiffany literally just said that he would cut billionaire taxes to 0%. And how we’re going to fund transportation? He has no clue. How are you going to get the revenues when you continuously cut the amount of revenues coming into government? This is the reason why cities, towns, villages, and our school districts all across the state are struggling today, and that’s because he doesn’t work for the people. He’s working for the billionaires. He’s going to do anything and everything that they tell him to do because that’s who he’s been in the pockets of.”

Throughout the campaign, Tiffany has criticized Crowley for rising property taxes in Milwaukee County and the increase in the county sales tax included in a bipartisan 2023 deal to inject more money into local government budgets. 

The total property tax levy collected by Milwaukee County each year has increased, but the property tax rate actually paid by individual homeowners has increased less than the rate of inflation. The sales tax increase was included in the shared revenue bill passed by Republicans and has been seen as a policy move that helped stave off massive cuts to county services. 

Crowley said his record on taxes has been misrepresented by the Tiffany campaign and added that he wants to increase taxes on the state’s wealthiest people, take a holistic look at the total tax picture to find where people can get relief and better work with local governments. 

He also argued that Tiffany’s tax plans will only benefit his wealthy donors. Tiffany’s campaign has been largely funded by three billionaires, Beloit resident Diane Hendricks and Illinois residents Richard and Liz Uihlein. 

“He wants to do exactly what they did in Washington D.C.,” Crowley said. “They literally gave $80 billion in tax breaks to billionaires throughout the entire country on the backs of hardworking Wisconsinites who are losing their healthcare — 270,000 folks. Look, we cannot afford Congressman Tiffany as the next governor if we’re literally going to be balancing tax breaks for billionaires on the backs of hardworking Wisconsin family members. What we need to be focusing on is how do we make sure that we can get them access to better-paying jobs? How we can actually make sure that they can actually afford food on the table?.”

Billionaires and Donald Trump

Crowley repeatedly returned to the refrain that Tiffany will only serve the interests of Trump and his billionaire donors. 

“So while my opponent, you can see early on in the debate, is consistently focused on being against Donald Trump, I’m for Wisconsin,” Tiffany countered. “And rather than creating a bunch more programs that are going to end up taxing the people of Wisconsin more, I want to put more money in the taxpayers’ pockets.” 

Later in the evening, Tiffany said that Crowley is “ranting constantly” about billionaires.

“Have I ever said we’re going to cut taxes to zero? I have not,” he said. “He’s misrepresenting our positions, and he’s over there ranting constantly about billionaires. We need a governor that’s going to be focused on people here in Wisconsin to do what’s best for Wisconsin. Not worrying about others, not announcing what you are against, but telling people what you’re for.” 

Education

On education, Tiffany said he wants to provide more funding for public education while raising standards and accountability for struggling districts. He also said he would consider raising income limits on Wisconsin’s statewide private school voucher program through which families receive a tuition subsidy from the state government. 

“I just think people should have whatever choice that they make,” Tiffany said. “We made the choice of public schools, regardless of income. And if a child is trapped in a failing school, they should be able to choose the school that they want to go to.” 

Crowley responded by arguing that this position is the one held by the wealthy supporters of the voucher program. 

“This is a prime example of exactly who the congressman works for,” Crowley said. “I mean, when this program was started, it was to make sure that low-income students all across the state of Wisconsin got access to some type of option. At the end, and what ended up happening, they kept lifting the cap. And what they do next, they lifted the income limits. Those who were actually paying for private education then started utilizing public dollars to pay for their child’s education. I mean, Congressman Tom Tiffany, it doesn’t sound like you want to work for the small guys. Sounds like you want to work for those who have the money and have the means to continue to pay their way.”

Data centers

This year, public opposition to data centers has played a large role in campaigns across the country. In this race, both candidates have sent mixed signals on the issue while trying to cast the other as the pro-data center choice. 

Tiffany pointed to comments Crowley has made in which he celebrated the potential financial benefits data centers could have for local government budgets. As he’s said on the campaign trail, he tied his opposition to data centers with his opposition to solar and wind power developments and said he supports local control over development and would get rid of the sales tax exemptions for data centers currently in state law. 

“I’ve been against these subsidies,” Tiffany said. “Why would the wealthiest, some of the wealthiest companies in the world need subsidies from the taxpayers of Wisconsin? I’m opposed to them.” 

Crowley pointed to the $80 billion in tax breaks for data center developers Tiffany voted for in the One Big Beautiful Bill that was passed by Republicans last summer and said he’s going to do whatever he can to support local decisions around data centers. 

“We need to make sure we’re protecting our environment, protecting our land, protecting our farmland, protecting our waterways,” Crowley said. “But communities need to have a seat because if they don’t want a data center, they shouldn’t be forced to have a data center. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about that. I’ve always sided with communities and the people when it comes down to data centers, Congressman Tom Tiffany, he’s done something different. I mean, he provided the tax breaks to the big tech companies who are steamrolling our communities today with these data centers.” 

In 2017, when Republicans in the Legislature, then-Gov. Walker and Trump were working to attract Foxconn to Wisconsin to build a manufacturing plant in Mount Pleasant, Tiffany voted in committee and the full Senate in favor of the $3 billion tax break the state gave the company. After Foxconn’s plans failed to fully materialize, Microsoft took over the site, where it is now building a data center campus. 

Elections

A chunk of the debate focused on questions about Tiffany’s vote to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, abortion and the tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — three areas in which Democrats have sought to tie Tiffany as closely as possible with Trump and the right flank of the Republican party. 

When asked why, after he voted to overturn the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania and Arizona, he said he would also have voted to overturn Wisconsin’s 2020 election of Biden, potentially nullifying the votes of hundreds of thousands of people, Tiffany said he did so because he had concerns about “Zuckerbucks” — the moniker Republicans gave to grant money given to municipal governments through a charity run by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to help them pay for the increased costs of administering an election during a pandemic. 

He also said he had concerns about the Madison city clerk posting online that voters concerned about going to the polls because of COVID-19 could use the state’s indefinitely confined voter provision. That comment was made in March 2020 ahead of the state’s April election that year and the state Supreme Court quickly issued an order blocking that guidance, so it had no bearing on how people voted seven months later. 

“Because of what happened there, when there was money coming in privately that should not have been, and the voters said that that should not be that way,” Tiffany said. “I mean, I can give you one other example of what happened there. There was the Dane County Clerk who declared that people who are indefinitely confined, they could just declare themselves to be indefinitely confined during the election. That clerk did not have the authority to do that. That requires an action by the state Senate and the governor to change that law. So there are a couple things like that that I thought should be addressed.”

Tiffany later said he would consider getting rid of the Wisconsin Elections Commission and changing how the state manages its elections. Tiffany and legislative Republicans voted to break up the state’s previous election agency, the Government Accountability Board, after it investigated allegations of campaign finance violations by Walker. 

“I think we need to sit down and have that discussion about do we make changes to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. I mean, I’m one of the people that voted for it a decade ago,” he said. “We thought that we hit on the answer to be able to have an effective body, but we need to make sure that there’s accountability by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, and they’re carrying out their job.” 

He continued, saying “there should be a simple principle in regards to our elections. It should be easy to vote and hard to cheat. We need to make sure that the Wisconsin Elections Commission is going to carry out that mandate for the voters of Wisconsin, because they’ve proven over the last number of years they want election integrity. Voters have voted consistently for election integrity.”

Crowley said that Tiffany’s election comments show he’ll sell out Wisconsinites for Trump, including in 2028 when the next governor will be responsible for certifying the results of the presidential race. 

Abortion

In this race, abortion has not been one of the campaign’s main issues, but Tiffany has a history of anti-abortion actions in the state Legislature and in Congress and has been endorsed by anti-abortion groups. He said that in the Legislature he voted for the state’s current ban on abortions after 20 weeks and that’s where he would continue to draw the line. 

“When I talked to my constituents, they said, ‘We want you to find a middle ground on this. We want you to compromise,’ and that’s exactly what we did,” he said. “I stand by that vote of a decade ago, and I will uphold it as the governor of Wisconsin.”

Crowley pointed out that while in Congress, Tiffany supported a bill that would have enacted a total federal abortion ban with no exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother. 

Tiffany said his position on the issue has “been consistent ever since I announced for governor,” while trying to cast Crowley as a pro-abortion extremist who would allow abortions for the full duration of a pregnancy. Crowley said that abortions after 20 weeks are nearly always serious situations that involve life-threatening medical questions and the decision should be made between a patient and her doctor. 

Crowley has argued on the campaign trail for an amendment to the state Constitution enshrining the right to have an abortion and he also said he didn’t believe the Legislature would pass a bill lifting all restrictions on abortion. 

In their closing statements, both candidates reiterated the arguments they’d been making all night. 

Crowley again argued that Wisconsinites can’t trust Tiffany to choose regular citizens over billionaires and Trump. Tiffany discussed the plane crash he was in while campaigning earlier this summer and the “best of Wisconsin” he saw from first responders — saying he wanted everyone in the state to see that, too. 

The Wisconsin Examiner previously reported that the pilot of that plane was a frequent Republican donor and an election denier who associates with some of the state’s most prominent election conspiracy theorists. On Wednesday, MeidasTouch reported that Tiffany’s campaign spent $70,000 on private flights in the past two months. 

After the debate, Republicans said that Tiffany “laid out his vision.” 

“Tom Tiffany laid out a vision to lower taxes and put Wisconsin families first, while David Crowley could not defend his failed record in Milwaukee County,” Republican Governors Association spokesperson Kollin Crompton said. “Crowley’s higher taxes and soft-on-crime policies are a warning, not a blueprint for Wisconsin. Tiffany knows Wisconsin, understands its people, and is running to put them first.”

Democrats and Crowley claimed a debate victory. 

“There was only one governor on stage tonight, and it wasn’t the guy who went to Washington to vote with Donald Trump 100% of the time,” Crowley campaign manager Garren Randolph said. “Congressman Tom Tiffany spent an hour offering Wisconsinites excuse after excuse for the role he played in jacking up costs on families across the state. Gas prices, healthcare premiums, and utility bills are all up because of Congressman Tom Tiffany’s loyalty to Donald Trump over the people of Wisconsin. On the other side of the stage, David Crowley showed Wisconsinites a leader who will actually work for them if elected governor. David laid out how he’ll lower taxes for working families instead of billionaires and lower the cost of gas, groceries, housing, and healthcare.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden and his Democratic opponent Rebecca Cooke met Tuesday at Chippewa Valley Technical College in Eau Claire for a debate in which Van Orden continued his ardent defense of President Donald Trump and Cooke worked to establish her moderate bonafides. 

The debate Tuesday morning was the first that Van Orden has appeared in since he first ran for Congress, losing in 2020 against former U.S. Rep. Ron Kind. In his two successful campaigns since then against state Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) in 2022 and Cooke in 2024, he refused to participate in any debates. 

The two candidates met two weeks before the election on the day that early voting opens across the state. Democrats are hoping the president’s record low approval ratings and voters’ concerns about the direction of the economy and war in Iran will spur a sweep in competitive districts across the country. On Tuesday morning, the election forecaster Sabato’s Crystal Ball changed its rating of the race from a toss-up to leaning Democratic. 

Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District stretches across the Driftless Region from the state’s southwest corner up to Eau Claire, with an extension into central Wisconsin and Stevens Point. One of the most closely contested districts in the country, the seat has frequently been a top target for both parties. 

Millions of dollars in spending have flooded into the area from both campaigns and outside groups in a race that observers have seen get increasingly negative — with Democrats attacking Van Orden’s often aggressive temperament and vociferous support of Trump while Republicans take jabs at Cooke’s authenticity and history of work as a political consultant for Democratic groups. 

During the hourlong debate hosted by the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce and WEAU 13 News, Van Orden defended his votes to pass Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, sustain his trade wars on countries around the world, send masked federal immigration agents into communities across Wisconsin and continue his war in Iran. He also repeatedly plugged a website created by his campaign that accuses Cooke of being a “commie” who supports defunding the police, giving sex change surgeries to transgender youth and letting undocumented immigrants vote. 

Cooke argued that Van Orden’s support of Trump has hurt working class people, farmers and families across the district while at the same time trying to establish that she disagrees with her party’s left wing. During the debate, she said that she’s actually the candidate in the race who is “putting America first and that we’re investing in our communities, putting Wisconsin first.” Van Orden responded that he’d get her a MAGA hat.  

Cooke also said she doesn’t support sanctuary cities, banning assault rifles, estate taxes or forgiving student loan debt. 

“I think that voters on the trail feel like this administration has been a disaster, and that their policies have made their lives harder and not easier,” Cooke said in a post-debate news conference. “I’m hearing from a lot of working families and retirees who are just really hanging on by a thread.” 

Moderated by WEAU’s John Frank and Kim Leadholm, the debate covered  the economy, government spending, immigration, healthcare, housing, childcare, energy, higher education, infrastructure and foreign policy. 

Economy

On the economy, Van Orden argued that the struggles people are currently facing began during the Biden administration. He named several home staples that are cheaper now than under Joe Biden. He also touted the tax cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as offering support to working people. 

“I’m so glad you said that out loud. You would have voted against what you called the One Big Beautiful Bill. That’s the Working Families Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” he told Cooke. “This is the largest tax cut in the history of our country, and Rebecca Cook is now again officially on record saying that she would not vote for it.”

Polling shows that the law is broadly unpopular, with a July survey from Politico finding that about one in three Americans believe it has hurt their personal finances. 

Cooke countered by saying that the only permanent tax cuts in the bill are the ones that went to the wealthiest Americans while the provisions that Van Orden touted, most notably cutting taxes on tips and overtime, expire after two years. She also argued that the war in Iran and Trump’s tariffs have done nothing but squeeze people in the 3rd CD. 

“I’m focused on an America-first agenda and making sure that we’re putting more resources back into the pockets of American taxpayers,” she said. “I want to make sure that you can afford your healthcare. I want to make sure that our public schools are not having to vote on a referendum every year, and I want to make sure that you can go to the grocery store, to the gas pump, pay your rent or mortgage and have a little left over.” 

Immigration

In January, when federal agents flooded into Minnesota’s Twin Cities as part of Operation Metro Surge, immigration enforcement actions also stretched into Wisconsin, going as far as Eau Claire and affecting the manufacturing plants and dairy farms in the 3rd CD that rely on immigrant labor. 

Van Orden brought up a 2024 incident in which a 26-year-old Venezuelan man attacked a woman and her teenaged child in Prairie du Chien — saying Cooke has refused to condemn violence by immigrants — while touting the endorsements he’s received from law enforcement organizations in the state. 

He also touted his proposed legislation through which currently undocumented farm workers will obtain legal status by going back to their home country, paying a fine and waiting in line to be given a visa — a policy proposal that some farmers see as unworkable. 

“Rebecca Cooke is saying that she wants these secure borders. There was up to 200,000 illegal aliens entering into the country every single month under Joe Biden’s presidency, and she said nothing,” Van Orden said. “Rebecca is right. Cows aren’t going to stop milking because of foreign immigration policy. A hog’s not going to stop growing because of foreign immigration policy. So as opposed to saying one thing and doing another, I’ve actually been working on this within the three years that I’ve been in Congress.”

Cooke said she supported some of the visa reforms that Van Orden has been working on while also arguing for a pathway to citizenship for the district’s immigrant workers, which she said hasn’t been achieved because both parties have used immigration as a political wedge. 

“It’s very, very important that we make sure that our border remains secure, right? And I want to make sure that our communities remain safe places to live and work and play, but I also want to recognize what a big part immigrant labor is to our workforce here in west central Wisconsin,” she said. “You look at the contributions from the manufacturing sector to our dairy farmers, and I think that we’ve got to have a clear pathway to citizenship and one that puts people that are playing by the rules that don’t have criminal backgrounds on that track. And I think for too long people have been playing partisan politics when it comes to immigration and playing partisan football. And we’ve got to focus on getting something done.”

Healthcare

On healthcare, Van Orden blamed rising costs on Democrats’ 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act and took credit for protecting local healthcare providers by working to get hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding into the state. 

“Those programs exist for a reason. They’re critically important,” he said. “I’ve done everything I can to fully fund them into the future, so that babies don’t have to worry about whether they’re getting pre-natal care or whether we’re delivering the babies. Or if we’re breaking arms, we can afford to get a cast.”

But that funding, Cooke pointed out, is a “backfill” that amounts to only a “drop in the bucket” when compared to the billions that will be lost because of the cuts to Medicaid included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

“I think everybody knows about the hospital closures here in the Chippewa Valley, and that was out of Derrick Van Orden’s watch,” she said. “We saw Sacred Heart close. We saw St. Joe’s and Chippewa Falls close. We’ve seen labor and delivery close in neighboring Menomonie. This was during his term as a congressman, and then you look at the vote that he took for the One Big Beautiful Bill, they cut healthcare for millions of Americans.” 

Tariffs and Iran 

Two of the Trump administration’s most unpopular policies have been the president’s tariffs and the war in Iran. Van Orden backed both on Tuesday. 

He argued that in Trump’s trade wars with Canada, Mexico, the European Union and China, those other countries are “not the good guy,” that the tariffs are helping the district’s farmers and that they’re an important tool for fair trade. 

“Tariffs are a tool to make sure that we have fair trade throughout the United States, and Canada is not the good guy of the story. China is not the good guy of the story. Mexico is not the good guy in the story. The European Union is not the good guy in the story. What you’re about to hear is a candidate for federal office take Canada, Mexico, China and the European Union over Wisconsin farmers,” Van Orden said. “So, do I like tariffs for everything? Absolutely not. But they’re a tool.” 

Cooke said the tariffs are unpopular for a reason and that the district’s farmers don’t want “handouts” from the federal government to make up for the harms of federal policymaking. 

“I grew up on a dairy farm, like two miles down the road from here. I have lived a lot of failed policies from many different administrations,” she said. “People that have put partisanship or D.C. politics over the livelihoods of farmers across the state and across this country, and these tariffs, I’ve talked to people all across the 3rd Congressional District, at dairy breakfasts, county fairs, I’ve convened roundtables to talk to farmers explicitly about tariffs. Nobody likes them, right?” 

On Iran, Van Orden mentioned his military record as a former U.S. Navy SEAL while arguing the United States had to fight the “radical Muslim world” and prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“So if people can rape, murder, torture, hold us economically hostage, and Rebecca Cooke is unwilling to fight that conflict, then I’d say that it’s disqualifying to be a member of Congress because we have to make decisions we don’t want to make, oftentimes,” he said. “And this is one: Do I want to be in a war with Iran right now? No, I don’t want to be in a war with anybody right now. Is it making it exponentially harder for Republicans to hold the House and the Senate? Yes, it is. But we have to think about our children and grandchildren. We’ve been fighting the war that the radical Muslim world has declared on us for 50 years, and I don’t want my grandchildren fighting the same war that I do. I think it’s time for this to stop. We must finish this.” 

Cooke said American foreign policy should lead with diplomacy — a tactic that Van Orden said amounted to a “strongly worded email” to Iran — while standing up to bullies around the world but that Congress should be more focused on the everyday needs of Americans right now.  

“We’ve seen so much spending — billions of taxpayer dollars go overseas when they could be invested in things here to put Wisconsin first, to put our communities first,” she said. “We’re looking at hospital closures here. We’re looking at our public schools flailing. We’re looking at so many difficult things for our Main Street businesses to be able to keep their doors open. So I’d like to end the war in Iran, which no one voted for. Even if they voted for Derrick Van Orden or for President Trump, they voted for no more foreign forever wars.” 

Energy

With energy prices rising across the country, both candidates said they opposed the controversial proposed transmission line that will cross through the region and attempted to tag the other with support for data centers. 

But Van Orden denounced the “war on fossil fuels” that he says Democrats have been waging while Cooke called for an “all of the above” energy strategy. 

Van Orden said Wisconsin should get its power from natural gas, “clean burning coal” and nuclear power. 

“It’s going to get 20 degrees below zero in the state of Wisconsin. Whether or not you want to have a windmill or a solar panel, we have to have base load power, nuclear, cleaner coal, gas,” he said. “That’s what we need to turn to. We need to stick with it. And then guess what? When it’s locally generated, you don’t need these monstrosities that they’re going to wreck the driftless with. It’s physics.” 

Cooke accused Van Orden of being “in the pocket of big tech” because of financial support from people including Elon Musk while saying she supported building renewables and maintaining other energy sources like nuclear. 

“I believe in mixing renewables while keeping our grid reliable. I also support advancements in small modular nuclear, which weans us away from our reliance on fossil fuels,” she said. 

Higher Education 

Colleges and universities across Wisconsin have been financially struggling due to decreasing enrollment, rising costs and federal cuts to both student aid and grants for universities. In the 3rd Congressional District, the University of Wisconsin campus in Richland Center closed in 2024. 

Cooke said she wants to better support the area’s students and higher education institutions through better grant programs for students in traditional colleges and the trades. 

“I was able to go to college with the help of Pell grants. I think that we need to have more federal funding to be invested into Pell grants, so more low-income and middle-income young people have the opportunity to go into whatever school they’d like to,” she said. “I also believe strongly in work-study programs, and also thinking about how that builds pipelines into our workforce within our communities.”

Van Orden said that his “trade happened to be war” and argued that government support should go to education in the trades or STEM programs. He also proposed that federal student loans should be offered interest free. 

“These lights are not on because someone has a degree in 13th century French poetry, they’re not,” he said, indicating the lighting on the debate stage. “They’re on because someone did get a STEM degree, then they got a master’s degree in electrical engineering. They wrote those plans and handed them to someone that went to trade school. That’s why the plumbing works. That’s why the road is flat. That’s why this glass is in place. That’s why we’re not freezing right now because we have heat here, which is an HVAC tech. So we have to invest money in younger people because that is an actual investment in the United States of America.”

In the debate room, the dozens of invited attendees — mostly the invited guests of the campaigns and local leaders — strictly followed the rules against vocal responses to the candidate’s remarks and after it ended, both candidates claimed victory. 

With Election Day two weeks away, voting has already begun. Locations for voting early absentee and in-person on Nov. 3 can by found at MyVote.WI.gov

As Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul and Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney face off again this year in a rematch of their 2022 race, the issues shaping the campaigns are different than they were four years ago. 

Kaul, a Democrat, is running for his third term as attorney general after two years in which he joined other state attorneys general in suing the administration of President Donald Trump more than 70 times. Those lawsuits have included challenges to Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship, restrict healthcare access for transgender youth, freeze federal funding and make last-minute changes to federal voting rules. 

“Unfortunately we’re in a place where protecting the freedoms of Wisconsinites, in significant part, means standing up to the federal government,” Kaul told the Cap Times.

In comments on the campaign trail, Kaul has said standing up to overreach from the White House is one of the most important roles he can fill at the moment. 

“We have consistently fought back, and we have won case after case, and what that has meant is that those funds either are not illegally conditioned or they’re not frozen or ultimately cut,” Kaul said of Trump administration changes to federally funded programs. “Instead they can come to our communities and support critical programs in Wisconsin.”

Toney has argued that Kaul has been distracted from his job as top lawyer for the state by federal fights with the president and accuses Kaul of being too partisan for constantly challenging Trump. 

“Unfortunately, what we’ve seen from the attorney general is it depends on who is in the White House, who’s in the governor’s office when he makes those types of decisions,” about joining federal lawsuits, Toney said when the two debated on WISN’s UpFront earlier this month.

Toney has pointed out that when Kaul first came into office, he was critical of former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel’s lawsuits against the Obama administration. 

“He campaigned against all of the political lawsuits when he first ran, and now that’s effectively what he’s running his entire campaign on is those lawsuits where he’s putting politics over public safety,” Toney said.

But in an election cycle in which Trump’s record low popularity is threatening to kneecap Republican chances, Kaul has countered by saying Toney wouldn’t do anything to protect Wisconsinites from Trump’s actions. 

During the debate, Toney was pressed on what, if any, lawsuits he would have joined. Toney said he would have signed on to a lawsuit against West Virginia’s ban on transgender girls playing sports. 

“One of the federal lawsuits I would have joined was out of West Virginia to protect women and girls sports that the attorney general failed to stand up and protect,” Toney said.

Kaul said Toney was “ducking saying if he’ll stand up to Donald Trump.”

In 2022, the two men ran shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and abortion was a major issue. Kaul had brought a lawsuit seeking to overturn the state’s 1849 abortion ban. In the years since, the Wisconsin Supreme Court sided with Kaul in that lawsuit, restoring abortion access for Wisconsinites. Toney argued in the 2022 race that Kaul’s lawsuit was a “stunt” but has said he wouldn’t try to change the state’s abortion policy if elected. 

Toney has previously said he supports the state’s current 20-week limit on abortions and tied the issue to Republican efforts to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender people and limit the ability of trans kids to play sports. In an interview with Wisconsin Watch, he tied his beliefs on abortion to a fight over trans locker room access in the New Richmond school district that has become a frequent GOP campaign reference this year. 

“We have five-month, or 20-week, protections in the law right now,” Toney said. “I’m not advocating for any changes to that, and if there is going to be any change, that needs to be something that’s voted on by the people and not decided on by politicians in Madison. We know how difficult this decision can be for women and girls and their families, and we need to make sure here in Wisconsin that we’re creating a supportive environment for women and girls that I hope life may be the choice that they decide to make. And that support has to extend beyond that as well and making sure that we’re protecting women and girls’ private spaces, bathrooms, locker rooms and sports. And we’ve seen the attorney general has failed to stand up in New Richmond, Wisconsin, where we’ve seen the school district allowing biological boys in the girls bathrooms.”

The 2022 race was also much closer to the racial justice protests of 2020, the pandemic-era increase in crime rates and the subsequent backlash against proposals to reassess police authority. Toney is running with the support of county sheriffs and police unions from across the state, but with crime at its lowest level in more than a decade, and the George Floyd protests six years in the past, the issue is not as much of a flashpoint statewide. 

This year, Toney has criticized Kaul for an increase in homicides since he first took office in 2019.  

“If we want to talk about crime data we’re seeing under this attorney general’s watch since he’s taken over, homicides are up over 30% in Wisconsin. We’ve seen on his watch record drug deaths,” Toney said.

Meanwhile, Kaul has blamed Toney for a recent increase in violent crime in Fond du Lac County. 

“We’ve been making important progress on crime statewide,” Kaul said. “Crime overall is at its lowest number in decades, and violent crime is the lowest number since 2011, but we also have more work to do.

Under the Trump administration, the White House has often focused heavily on allegations of election fraud and aggressively stepping up immigration enforcement — including in Wisconsin where the federal government has sought to obtain the private information of Wisconsin voters and Immigration and Customs Enforcement has made record numbers of arrests. 

Toney has previously supported both efforts. 

In an interview with Wisconsin Watch, he said the state needs to do more to root out non-citizens who are registered to vote — an issue that Republicans have repeatedly raised without much evidence. 

“We need to have a similar process that reviews noncitizens that could be on our voter rolls,” he said. “We have people that are lawfully in the country that are noncitizens, whether it’s for work or school, that may get a driver’s license or an ID card, and we don’t know what that problem could be because there’s no process in place to review it. And that’s where I’d like to see a similar process that we use for felons for that noncitizen process, just to make sure that people have confidence in those results. And if somebody is doing that, that they’re being prosecuted.” 

He has also testified before Congress to argue for stepped up immigration enforcement. 

Toney has focused on delays in testing at the state’s crime laboratories, which the attorney general is responsible for managing. Crime lab backlogs have often been a major issue in Wisconsin’s attorney general races. Kaul was first elected in 2018 after a controversy over a backlog of untested sexual assault kits. 

Toney has pointed to data that shows it’s taking longer for the state labs to test DNA evidence and blamed Kaul for the slowdown, saying he’s “passing the buck” on his responsibilities. 

Kaul has blamed the Republican-led Legislature for failing to provide proper funding to fully staff the labs. In the 2023-25 state budget, Kaul requested 16 additional crime lab positions while the final budget granted him three. In the most recent budget signed into law last summer, Kaul requested 19 additional crime lab staffers and received none.

Throughout the year, the criminal justice issue drawing the most public attention has been the increased scrutiny of law enforcement’s use of Flock license plate reading cameras. The AI-powered cameras are able to track the movement of people and vehicles through communities, drawing complaints that their use is an invasion of privacy and a violation of people’s rights. 

Both Kaul and Toney have said the cameras can be useful, but that there need to be guardrails on their use. 

“It’s clear that we need more action from the Legislature and the governor’s office, and until then local municipalities are the ones that are having to make these decisions with local sheriffs and chiefs that are having to maintain that public trust,” Toney said, pointing to a homicide case he’s working on in which the cameras were used to identify a suspect. 

Kaul said the cameras have been helpful in finding missing persons, but the technology should not be misused. 

“I want to make sure there’s a limit on the disclosure of data, so it’s being limited by law enforcement. I don’t want to see this going to private entities. And then there should be regular auditing in place and punishments if folks are misusing the technology,” Kaul said.

Every four years, the race for attorney general is largely overshadowed by the race for governor. In most cycles, the party that wins the governor’s race also wins the attorney general’s race. 

The last time the two races diverged was in 2006 when Wisconsin elected Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle and Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen. 

In 2022, Toney performed better than Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels, earning about 30,000 more votes, but still losing narrowly. 

“I’m running my own race from when I got into this back in October of 2025,” Toney told PBS Wisconsin. “I talked about the forensic testing failures, the fentanyl epidemic and how partisan our attorney general has become. I mean, we have driven home issues that affect people in all 72 counties. And that’s what I’ve been focused on, is what our Department of Justice can do to help protect everybody in Wisconsin by putting public safety over politics.”

Kaul acknowledges he’s been elected by thin margins in two nail-biter elections, but is confident his record will be enough to carry him to victory again. 

“The results tend to be fairly close, but in Wisconsin we have a lot of close elections, and so sometimes those small differences can make a big difference in the outcome,” Kaul told PBS. “But I’m running based on my record and my time as AG, and the focus can be different. My top priority as attorney general has been public safety, and we’ve made significant progress on really important public safety issues.”

In-person absentee voting for Wisconsin’s elections begins on Tuesday, with hours and locations varying by municipality. 

Elections officials have said ahead of the midterms that they expect early voting to be especially popular this year as concerns mount about the speed and reliability of sending absentee ballots through the U.S. postal system. 

Data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission shows that as of Monday morning, 364,888 absentee ballots have already been requested and 173,164 of those have been returned. Those numbers lag the 2022 election when 438,673 absentee ballots had been requested and 195,287 had been returned by the same point. 

WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe said the early numbers suggest a surge in popularity for early voting. 

“Although voter behaviors are difficult to forecast, the data so far indicates that local clerks should prepare for higher turnout during in-person absentee voting,” Wolfe said in a Monday news release.

About 2.6 million people voted in Wisconsin in the 2022 midterm elections. Officials expect turnout to be similar to that total this year. 

State election officials have recommended that absentee voters should mail their ballots at least two weeks before the election to give a large enough buffer to ensure they are received by Election Day. With the clock ticking before polls open on Nov. 3, voters can also return their absentee ballots directly to local clerks’ offices or, in municipalities that use them, into ballot drop boxes. 

“If you’re planning to mail your ballot back, you should do so as soon as possible,” Wolfe said. “Your ballot must arrive by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted.”

The in-person absentee voting process involves a voter requesting an absentee ballot, completing the ballot and returning it to the clerk all in one stop. Voters will need to provide a voting-eligible photo ID to receive their ballots. 

In-person absentee voting runs through Nov. 1. Local hours and early voting sites can be found at MyVote.WI.gov.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and a group of environmental organizations announced a settlement agreement Monday that would require stricter environmental impact assessments of future data center developments and initiate a statewide review of how data centers use the state’s resources. 

In June, the Sierra Club and Midwest Environmental Advocates sued the DNR in Ozaukee County court, arguing that the agency approved the permits for Vantage’s massive data center currently under construction in Port Washington without conducting a proper environmental impact statement. 

“AI data centers are massive, thirsty, energy hogs and have popped up all over Wisconsin,” Elizabeth Ward, director of the Wisconsin chapter of the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “They could completely change our landscape and use unprecedented amounts of water and energy. Wisconsinites and our regulators need to understand the impacts and opportunities to reduce harm before allowing data centers to move forward. Wisconsinites deserve an informed, transparent process for decisions that could shape their communities and environment for decades.

A report this summer by the state Public Service Commission found that the Port Washington data center and data centers being built by Microsoft in Mount Pleasant and Meta in Beaver Dam are set to be responsible for a 40% increase in statewide energy demand over the next six years. 

As part of the settlement agreement in the lawsuit, the DNR will conduct full environmental impact statements of individual data center proposals moving forward and complete a statewide strategic analysis of how data centers consume resources. 

State law and the DNR’s administrative rules allow the agency to conduct such an analysis when conflicts arise over resource demands for a  “complicated or complex issue; an issue that is new to the state; an issue or policy that will likely lead to future department actions that will require an environmental impact statement; issues for which there is a high potential for legislation or new department policy and the planning and development of controversial resource-oriented projects.”

“What started as a lawsuit over the environmental review of one data center has become an opportunity to address the data center issue on a much bigger scale,” MEA attorney Michael Greif said. “Looking at these impacts holistically is important because the impacts of data centers are statewide. State regulators will now have to examine the cumulative impacts of data center development across Wisconsin.”

Wisconsin will become one of a few states assessing the statewide impacts of data centers on their resources. In July, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order that initiated a similar analysis and last December, the Maryland Legislature enacted a law that requires a number of state agencies to study “the likely environmental, energy, and economic impacts of data center development.”

Mitchell Berman and Rebecca Cooke, the two Democrats running to unseat incumbent Republican Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden in two of the most closely watched congressional races in the country, outraised their opponents in the most recent filing period. 

Both Democrats also received more individual and small dollar donations than Steil and Van Orden, who are more reliant on wealthy donors and the aid of GOP-aligned PACs. The latest campaign finance reports show that all four candidates will be funded enough for the final push to Election Day in both hotly contested races. 

In the 1st Congressional District, Berman is running closer than expected to Steil. He narrowly outraised Steil between July 23 and Sept. 30. 

Still, Steil spent four times as much money during the period and retains a massive cash-on-hand advantage.

Berman raised $897,321, with almost all of that coming from individual donations. He spent $710,725 during the reporting period and finished September with $338,069 in the bank. In the middle of the reporting period, Berman was added to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of target races — bringing national infrastructure and support to the campaign. 

Steil raised $783,582 during the period, including $215,637 from individuals, $268,500 from PACs and other committees, and $204,908 in transfers. He spent more than $2.9 million and had $4.2 million in the bank at the end of September. 

Steil’s fundraising has recently drawn scrutiny, with the Milwaukee Courier reporting on donations he’s received from industry groups shortly before taking votes related to their business interests. 

“Southeast Wisconsin is tired of politicians like Bryan Steil who get rich in office while working families pay more for everything,” Berman said in a statement about the finance reports. “Steil stood with Trump on tariffs, health care cuts, and a war that’s driving up prices, while handing billions in tax breaks to data center developers and his billionaire donors who are funding his campaign. No amount of dark money can cover up that record. I’m proud to have a campaign powered by the people of Southeast Wisconsin – not a dime of corporate PAC money – and in Congress, they’re the only ones I’ll answer to.”

In the 3rd Congressional District, Cooke has long been outraising Van Orden, but after a closer than expected Democratic primary election, her cash-on-hand advantage was depleted. For the cycle, she’s raised $12 million compared to Van Orden’s $9.3 million — a feat for a candidate who doesn’t have the fundraising advantage of incumbency. 

During the most recent reporting period, Cooke more than doubled Van Orden’s fundraising, bringing in $3.4 million, with $883,128 of that money coming from donations of less than $200. She spent about $4.3 million and ended September with $901,408 in the bank. 

Van Orden raised $1.2 million during the period, with $312,312 coming from donations of less than $200. He spent $3.8 million during the period and finished September with $2.1 million in cash and reported debts of $271,170.

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, the Republican incumbent running for reelection in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, one of the most hotly contested House races in the country, has decided his best chance is to dance with the one who brought him — President Donald Trump. 

“Derrick, this guy he fights like hell. He’s in a little bit of a community that tends to be on slightly, a little bit more than we wanted, left, but he loves them all, and he’s very popular, and he’s going to win by a lot,” Trump said of Van Orden at a June rally in Chippewa Falls. “You’re doing well. I understand you’re really doing well. So, thank you and he’s a real fighter … we’ve been friends right from the beginning.” 

Trump’s approval ratings have hit all-time lows in Wisconsin recently, a potential problem for Van Orden, whose seat is one of the Democratic Party’s top targets for flipping this year. The two-term Republican is running for the second time against Democrat Rebecca Cooke, who two years ago lost to Van Orden by only 2.7 points, in a district where Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris by 7.4 points. 

Between the two campaigns and outside groups, the increasingly heated race is nearing $30 million in spending on mostly negative ads. Van Orden’s ads have alliteratively accused Cooke of being “corrupt” and “communist” while calling her authenticity into question — largely over charges that she’s highlighted her work as a waitress while downplaying her previous work for Democratic political campaigns and interest groups. 

“I think the campaign has gotten intensely negative, with authenticity being a core theme,” Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, said. “I’m seeing authenticity come up on both sides, where Congressman Van Orden and his allies are going after the persona or biography of Rebecca Cooke, particularly her waitressing, has become kind of a flashpoint in this campaign. And for Congressman Van Orden, Democrats are going after him as kind of saying that he’s part of the problem in Washington, and that’s a tried and true strategy for unseating an incumbent, to portray them as part of the problem.”

Congress, Chergosky continued, “has rock bottom approval ratings as an institution, so incumbents are often targeted due to their membership in an unpopular institution. Chergosky expects the attack ads will blanket the airwaves up to Election Day, he said. “I think that this is going to continue to be a very negative campaign.” 

Across the country, a number of vulnerable Republicans have sought to find areas to distance themselves from an unpopular president. Even in Wisconsin, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany — despite a voting record that has been in near perfect lockstep with the Trump administration — has tried to put some breathing room between himself and Trump. 

But Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL, has gone the other way, continuing to vocally support the Trump administration, the war in Iran, Trump’s tariffs, his steering of the economy and the administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown. 

In September, Van Orden was the only member of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation to speak at Trump’s midterm convention in Texas. 

Throughout the year, the 3rd CD has hosted a parade of high-profile administration officials and top-ranking Republicans. 

Van Orden has appeared in his western Wisconsin district with Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services Administrator Mehmet Oz and House Speaker Mike Johnson. 

“We are defending, right now, the foundational truths, and I’ve got to have warriors in the room to do it,” Johnson said at a rally in Sparta earlier this month. “There is no stronger warrior than Derrick Van Orden.” 

In recent weeks, Van Orden has made online posts suggesting he would volunteer to join the firing squad in the planned execution of Nidal Hasan, the man convicted of a mass shooting at Fort Hood, accusing Cooke of supporting the “chemical and physical castration of children and men in woman’s locker rooms” and alleging that she wants to bring “Somali fraud” to Wisconsin. 

He’s also posted a number of AI-generated videos of Cooke and other Democratic Party of Wisconsin officials, a tactic that drew a cease and desist letter from the Cooke campaign. Van Orden called the letter a “publicity stunt.” 

A spokesperson for Van Orden did not respond to a request for comment, but in an interview with Channel 3000, Van Orden strongly endorsed Trump’s ongoing war in Iran and argued that the high price of gas and diesel is not only because of the war causing shocks to global oil markets but also due to Democrats “chasing the green new scam” and U.S. oil companies “profiteering.” 

“Is this politically convenient right now? Absolutely not,” Van Orden said in the interview, in which he also referenced the “radical Muslim mullahs” who led the Iranian revolution in the 1970s. “Would it be much easier for Republicans to maintain the House and the Senate if we weren’t involved in this conflict in Iran? Yes. I would be a fool not to acknowledge that. But at some point, we have to deal with this issue that’s been going on for a half a century.”

Chergosky said that Van Orden “doubling down on Trumpism” might be a valid strategy in a district that’s voted for Trump three times. 

The problem, he said, is that those Trump voters haven’t always been reliable when Trump isn’t on the ballot. 

“I think Republicans in this district are making a play to turn out the pro-Trump base, and it’s a base that has delivered for Trump three times, but with any midterm election, we’re going to see a significant drop-off in voter turnout,” Chergosky said. “So a lot of times these midterms come down to the question of, among the voters who voted in the presidential election, which of them stay home this time around? In other words, who drops out of the electorate compared to the presidential election? And so I think the concern for Republicans is that a lot of these pro-Trump, low-propensity voters are going to drop out of the electorate, and I can see them trying to avoid that certainly through Congressman Van Orden’s strategy.” 

But the 3rd CD is also a district that for decades was represented by Ron Kind, a moderate Democrat. Van Orden, with his divisive and confrontational style, has been elected twice deploying a different approach to politics; still, joining forces with some of the most controversial members of Trump’s cabinet could alienate voters. 

At an agricultural roundtable hosted by the Cooke campaign last week, voters complained about the anti-vaccine “conspiracy theories” espoused by figures such as Kennedy resulting in measles outbreaks in the area. At a town hall hosted by the Wisconsin Farmers Union in Gays Mills, attendees lamented the treatment of immigrant workers at the district’s farms and manufacturing plants. 

“Derrick Van Orden has not delivered a successful farm bill out of this Congress,” Cooke said last week. “I don’t think that he’s really done very much at all to support our family farms or people in agriculture across this district.”

In the Channel 3000 interview, Van Orden made the case that he’s been a serious legislator, listing the three committees he sits on.

While in Congress, he voted in favor of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut billions from federal healthcare programs and has hurt the bottom line of rural hospitals in the 3rd CD. After voting for the law, Van Orden has touted his work to provide millions of dollars to rural hospitals in Wisconsin. But that funding provides only $200 million after the OBBBA cut $7 billion in federal healthcare funds meant for the state, an analysis by KFF found last year

From his position on the House Agriculture committee, Van Orden has suggested expanding the H2-A visa program to help the district’s dairy farms get more immigrant labor. But the H2-A program only applies to seasonal farm workers, not the year round workers needed on a dairy farm. Van Orden has also proposed the creation of a new system in which currently undocumented workers return to their home country and pay $2,500 to get in line and wait to be approved for a new visa. 

“They should expect me to work doggedly, like I have been doing. I’ve been an incredibly effective legislator,” he said.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted Thursday to send a memo to clerks across the state with guidance for what they should do if local, state or federal law enforcement shows up at polling places. 

WEC discussed the guidance as fears have risen across the country that President Donald Trump could send armed federal agents to polling places in an effort to intimidate voters. 

The agency’s administrator, Meagan Wolfe, said at the commission’s Thursday morning meeting that “we don’t expect anything unusual at the polls on Election Day.” 

“We expect voters to have the same experience that they’ve had at previous elections, and so by no means are we looking to make anybody feel panicked or anything about this,” Wolfe said. “But clerks are asking very directly for this type of information because they are getting hundreds of emails from voters and from groups asking, ‘Do you have a plan if these sorts of things were to happen?’ And so I see this just like any other contingency planning that we do to assist our clerks.” 

The memo to be sent to clerks notes that unless law enforcement officials are conducting a legitimate law enforcement activity or casting their own ballots, they generally shouldn’t be at the polls. If they are, the memo states, officers are subject to the same rules as any other election observer. Armed federal agents and the military are not allowed at polling places. 

The guidance says that if agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security or the FBI show up at the polls, poll workers should immediately notify the municipal and county clerks and WEC staff. 

The commissioners noted that in many communities across the state, local law enforcement regularly checks in with election staff to make sure there aren’t any problems. Commissioner Ann Jacobs said it’s preferable if that’s done by plainclothes officers, because that’s less intimidating than a uniformed officer with a gun and bulletproof vest on. 

Republican Commissioner Robert Spindell said he was worried the guidance would depress turnout. 

“It seems to me that the Democrats are worried about federal agents showing up at some of these polling places, and you know, obviously, to instruct the clerks what to do if they do,” he said. “But I think this guidance is only going to scare away some people from the polls when they, when this law enforcement guidance hits the news. I think it will, and I personally think this guidance is unnecessary, as we have not seemed to have needed this for the last 201 years.”