Reading Time: 6 minutes

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Wisconsin election officials are divided over how to handle the possibility of unarmed federal immigration or law enforcement agents arriving at polling places this November and asking to observe voting.

The disagreement centers on a passage in new Wisconsin Elections Commission guidance intended to help local election officials navigate encounters with law enforcement at the polls. Among other instructions, the guidance says that agents from ICE, the FBI and other federal agencies who want to observe voting must follow the same rules as other election observers.

But officials in Dane County, home to Madison and one of Wisconsin’s most Democratic strongholds, warn that the language could lead poll workers to admit federal agents in violation of federal law. Federal law bans U.S. officials from sending troops or armed agents to the polls except under extremely limited circumstances, and a different law bans voter intimidation.

In an Oct. 15 email to the commission, the county’s attorney argued that the guidance could be read as permitting armed ICE agents to observe voting, despite federal restrictions.

Dane County officials have spent months preparing for the possibility of federal interference in the election. The commission, meanwhile, approved its guidance less than three weeks before Election Day, after receiving what it said were hundreds of questions from local clerks seeking clarity about federal law enforcement at the polls.

Clerks and attorneys interviewed by Votebeat were divided over whether the guidance provides the clarity they need. Some praised it as helpful and others said it came too late or warned that its language could lead election inspectors to misunderstand the limits of federal law.

On page three, the guidance instructs election officials to contact their clerks and the commission if federal agents arrive to observe voting. If federal officials are present “just to observe, they still have to check in like regular observers and are subject to the observer rule,” it states. The guidance does not, at that point, distinguish between armed and unarmed federal agents.

It then discusses circumstances in which armed, uniformed local officers might observe voting.

Only two pages later does the commission explain the federal law restricting armed personnel in federal service from polling places.

The structure of the advice, Dane County attorney David Gault told Votebeat, “creates the implication it’s OK for ICE to be there and observe, and I just don’t think that’s the case.”

“If they’re armed, it’s clearly prohibited,” he said. “If they’re unarmed but still in some kind of a uniform designating them as a federal agent, I think the law is still pretty clear they’re not supposed to be there.”

Dane County officials object to commission guidance

Election officials across Wisconsin have been preparing for months for the possibility of federal law enforcement at the polls, but the concern is particularly acute in the state’s largest, heavily Democratic counties. In Dane County, the state’s second-largest, officials say listening to the commission’s guidance could complicate their efforts to keep federal agents from interfering with voting.

The guidance lays out steps for election officials to take when federal agents appear. Chief inspectors are instructed to immediately notify their municipal clerk, who must then contact the county clerk and commission staff. Agents carrying out legitimate law enforcement duties, rather than observing voting, are treated differently. In those cases, election officials are told to request identification and any warrants, document the encounter and ask officers to conduct their business outside the voting area when possible.

The commission also tells election inspectors they can remove observers if they have a reasonable basis to believe they are, or are about to, intimidate or disrupt voters. In its instructions addressing local law enforcement officers who insist on observing while armed and in uniform, the guidance leaves inspectors to determine whether their presence crosses that line.

Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell took issue in particular with the statement that if federal agents wish to observe, they can check in like regular observers.

“It’s inaccurate,” said McDonell, a Democrat. “It’s confusing. It doesn’t reflect what the law is.”

If a back-office ICE employee who’s unarmed wants to observe, that might be fine, McDonell said. “But that’s not how I think anyone would read that,” he said, saying clerks may assume the sentence is referring to armed federal agents.

Sharing McDonell’s concerns, Gault, the Dane County in-house attorney, sent an email to Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe on Oct. 15, the same day the commission finalized the guidance.

Gault said that while armed ICE agents are clearly banned from the polls under federal law, a separate federal law bars a person acting under the color of law from intimidating voters. Gault argued that it would ban even an unarmed but uniformed ICE agent from observing at the polls.

“There is no legitimate reason for ICE to be at a polling place,” he told Wolfe. “Everyone there is presumptively a U.S. citizen. I don’t think WEC’s guidance should imply that an ICE agent can be a legitimate observer.”

Commission attorney supervisor Angela O’Brien Sharpe disagreed, saying federal law doesn’t address every situation that may bring federal agents to the polls. “If federal law enforcement wishes to observe an election, then they are permitted to do so,” she said, adding that they would be subject to Wisconsin observer rules.

She emphasized that the guidance does not authorize armed federal observers and was intended to help poll workers “manage how to respond to varying situations like these” including deciding whether an officer’s presence constitutes intimidation or a disturbance.

Gault was unsatisfied, calling the guidance “confusing at best.”

“If asked, this office will advise election officials and law enforcement in Dane County that armed federal agents should not be at a polling place under any circumstances,” he wrote. “If they are there legitimately to vote they should at a minimum be unarmed.”

Local attorneys can offer advice to city and county election offices that contradicts the commission’s, Sharpe said.

Little precedent for federal agents observing elections

Federal election monitors from the Justice Department have observed voting for decades, but the prospect of ICE or FBI agents arriving at polling places specifically to monitor voting presents a largely untested legal question.

Justin Levitt, an election law specialist at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who worked in the White House under President Joe Biden on voting rights issues, said the commission’s guidance is “legit and accurate,” adding that it’s “straight down the middle of providing lawful advice without picking a fight.”

“I understand why Dane County wants a different emphasis,” Levitt said. “I don’t think that means they were right and the state was wrong. I think that just means they’ve got different interests here.”

He said the commission and Dane County agree more than they disagree: They both agree that armed agents are banned at the polls and that chief inspectors can kick out anyone intimidating voters.

Had the commission gone further and said ICE was banned from the polls entirely, he said, “That would actually be getting Wisconsin in trouble because you cannot single out federal officials for special treatment.”

Sterling Knoche, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School-based State Democracy Research Initiative, similarly said the guidance provides clerks with good instructions for minimizing disruptions at the polling place while instructing them to consult the people who could seek a court injunction if necessary.

Knoche said the commission may not have had a sound legal basis to categorically prohibit unarmed federal agents in uniform from observing. Whether their presence is lawful would depend on their conduct and the circumstances, he said.

In Milwaukee on Monday, Wolfe drew a similar distinction. She said that federal and state law prohibits armed federal agents from showing up at the polls, but said the legality of unarmed agents observing is less clear. In that case, she said, chief inspectors and poll workers must determine whether their presence intimidates or disturbs voters.

How clerks are preparing to apply the guidance

Local officials offered differing assessments of how useful the guidance would be, even as some agreed that federal agents in uniform could intimidate voters.

Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican, said the guidance was “fine.” She said county clerks have been coordinating with their local sheriffs, who would be their first call if federal agents do show up at the polls. If she were an inspector, she said, she would not allow federal law enforcement agents to register as observers if they’re in uniform, even if they were unarmed.

“We would be on a very strong legal footing to say, ‘You standing there in your FBI vest is intimidating to voters, and so we’re not going to allow that,’” she said.

In an interview, Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis told Votebeat that the guidance was quite helpful and would be instructive in the unlikely situation that federal agents show up at a city polling place.

“We have to make a decision about what to do fairly quickly,” he said, “so any time we can get guidance like this from an authority, it helps us do that.”

Green County Clerk Arianna Voegeli, a Democrat, said the commission’s guidance came late but was consistent with the guidance that she already had given to local election officials. She agreed that the mere presence of federal officers in uniform could constitute voter intimidation, though she said it’s a legal gray area if they’re unarmed.

“I’m not too concerned about issues here in Green County, just because we’re a smaller county,” she said, though she’s discussed the issue with law enforcement and feels prepared. Larger counties, she said, have likely developed their own plans already.

McDonell, the Dane County clerk, said this guidance might add to the confusion for some clerks instead of taking away from it.

“It would have been better if they hadn’t sent this out,” he said. “It’s at minimum badly worded.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Can unarmed ICE agents watch voting? In Wisconsin that depends on who you ask is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The city of Appleton is expected to lose more than $300,000 in state aid in its upcoming budget after missing a summer deadline to file audit paperwork with the state.

The post Appleton expected to lose $310K in state aid after missing audit deadline appeared first on WPR.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway announced Friday that she will not run for a third term in office, canceling her reelection bid citing threats to herself, city council members, staff and her family

Rhodes-Conway had initially announced her reelection campaign in July 2026. She was first elected in 2019 and won reelection in 2023 by an 11-point margin. In her statement, she said that she was “confident that voters would judge my record favorably and grant me another term,” but that the “price of serving has become too high.” 

“This was not an easy decision, but it is the right decision for me and my family, our personal safety, mental health and wellbeing,” Rhodes-Conway said. 

Over the summer, Rhodes-Conway and the city faced significant criticism following the killing of 38-year-old Corey Ruiz at the hands of a Madison police officer. A protest encampment on the east side of Madison, near the site of the shooting, was eventually cleared by the city, triggering more controversy. 

This week, the interim independent police monitor who had been investigating the Ruiz shooting was fired in a 14-6 vote by the city’s common council. Local activists, who testified against the firing, protested the council’s vote and shouted “shame” as council members were escorted out of the building by police.

Aeiramique Glass, the independent monitor, had drawn criticism for getting into an altercation with police officers while they worked to clear the protest encampment at the site of the Corey Ruiz shooting. A dispute also emerged within city government over her authority to subpoena materials related to the incident from the police department and the Wisconsin Department of Justice. 

Rhodes-Conway did not directly mention the issue in her statement. 

“Madison has long been home to impassioned and spirited debate. But it is not hyperbole to say local democracy is at risk, not just from MAGA and right-wing extremists in the federal and state governments, but from a toxic political culture that is transcending partisanship and ideology,” Rhodes-Conway said. 

Rhodes-Conway said she wants people to take a “hard look at our local political ecosystem” during the remainder of her term. She said over her time in office she has seen “the balance has shifted from productive discussion to increasingly vitriolic, personal attacks from people who seem not to care about actually understanding and debating an issue.”

“How can any leader govern responsibly when personal attacks and baseless conspiracies carry more weight than facts? How can any mayor be effective when a difference of opinion is cast as unforgivable betrayal that justifies threats of violence?” Rhodes-Conway said. “When I ran for mayor, I expected to make sacrifices – but I did not expect the level of threats to myself, Council members, my staff, and my family. I did not expect our civic discourse to deteriorate so severely. And I did not expect the levels of implicit and explicit sexism to which I have been subjected to from the very beginning of my first campaign.”

Dane County Executive Melissa Agard thanked Rhodes-Conway for her service and said in a statement that she was troubled by the role threats and harassment played in Rhodes-Conway’s decision.

“No one who steps forward to serve their community should have to fear for their safety or the safety of their loved ones. We must do better to ensure that public service remains something people can pursue without intimidation,” Agard said. 

The mayor’s departure creates an open race for the leader of Wisconsin’s capital city. Eight candidates had already announced they would challenge Rhodes-Conway. They include One City Schools founder Kaleem Caire, former Madison Common Council President Syed Abbas, Brian Benford, April Kigeya, Marcus Robert Johnson, Natalia Hacerola and Larry Williams. 

“We need leaders who are more interested in making the government function well than in performing for social media,” Rhodes-Conway said in the statement announcing her departure.  “We need leaders who want to continuously improve, but won’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need leaders who are able to listen to and balance a wide range of voices. Above all, we need leaders who put the needs of Madison before their popularity or political futures, and we need to elect leaders who understand the job they are running for.”

Rhodes-Conway said she is proud that during her time in office she has been able to steer the city though the COVID-19 pandemic, dealt with lawmakers who wanted to take “away our funding and powers,” helped build new housing and invest in new infrastructure as well as launch the city’s new bus rapid transit system.

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.”

Reading Time: 4 minutes

As the two candidates for the Wisconsin governor race faced off on television Wednesday night, Democrat David Crowley and Republican Tom Tiffany criticized each other’s records and laid out their governing priorities.

We’ve already recapped key takeaways. Here, we use data to examine how the candidates spent their time, which topics drew the most attention and how they criticized each other.

School funding dominated the debate

Each candidate spent over four minutes explaining his take on school funding, including positions on private school vouchers, making it the debate’s most covered topic. Taxes ranked second, with candidates covering several issues: income taxes, state budget surpluses and property taxes.

The two candidates spent roughly the same amount of time on most topics. One notable exception came when Tiffany spent three minutes and 37 seconds — two minutes more than Crowley — explaining why he voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election results.

“One of the reasons that I did that is Zuckerbucks,” Tiffany said. “If you remember, Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook billionaire, he put $15 million into Wisconsin, and so he was trying to privatize our elections via electioneering. The people of the state of Wisconsin rejected that a few years later.”

“Zuckerbucks” refers to grants funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, that helped local election officials run elections during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wisconsin voters approved a constitutional amendment banning private funding for election administration in April 2024, after Republicans argued the grants disproportionately benefited Democratic strongholds. 

Crowley spent more time attacking Tiffany

Although Tiffany spoke for about 200 seconds longer overall,  he spent much of that time explaining and defending his own positions.

Crowley, by contrast, took a more aggressive approach, spending about four minutes more than Tiffany in directly criticizing his opponent. 

For this analysis, we classified a statement as an attack when a candidate criticized his opponent or made him the subject of a statement. 

Crowley spent the longest time criticizing Tiffany’s positions on taxation, school funding and border control. 

“We’re talking about somebody who actually supported the elimination of the United States Department of Education. We’re talking about someone who, when he served as a senator, voted for one of the largest cuts to our UW systems as well as K-12 through education,” Crowley said. “I went to Milwaukee Public Schools. My daughters go to public schools, and I know that they need an increase in funding from the state of Wisconsin because of the fact that we have been dealing with decades of cuts ever since he was in the Legislature.”

Tiffany spent the most time criticizing Crowley when discussing how Crowley would appeal to those who voted for democratic socialist Francesca Hong in the Democratic primary.

“What he said about a week or two before the primaries, he said there was very little difference between he and Francesca Hong,” Tiffany said. “In fact, one of the only things he could think of is that he was supportive of data centers.” 

The candidates spent similar amounts of time criticizing one another’s records on data centers — less than a minute each.The candidates spent roughly 50 seconds apiece criticizing their opponents’ record on data centers.

Crowley accused Tiffany of supporting tax breaks for data center operators. (Tiffany voted for President Donald Trump’s tax and spending package that included broad tax breaks benefiting data center developers along with many other businesses, but lawmakers did not specifically vote on a data center tax break.)  

Tiffany countered by criticizing Crowley’s past support for subsidies and calling Crowley’s proposal to power data centers with wind and solar energy unrealistic.

Word clouds show how the candidates framed their attacks

After we removed verbal fillers and words used to address the other candidate, the word cloud of attacks shows that Tiffany used the word “taxes” the most often when criticizing Crowley. This reflected Tiffany’s argument that Crowley’s policies would increase tax burdens on Wisconsinites.

“Taxes have went up every single year that David Crowley has been county executive,” Tiffany said. “You know what he’s going to do as governor.”

Crowley most often used the word “work” when attacking Tiffany, repeatedly questioning Tiffany’s track record in following Trump’s decisions and whether Tiffany would represent Wisconsinites if elected.

“Congressman Tom Tiffany, it doesn’t sound like you want to work for the small guys,” Crowley said after Tiffany said he was open to raising income limits on private school vouchers. “It sounds like you want to work for those who have the money and have the means to continue to pay their way. This is what this election is about.”

The pattern was less pronounced in the word cloud analyzing defensive statements. Tiffany most often said the word “Wisconsin” while Crowley’s most frequently used word was again “work.”

How we analyzed the debate

Wisconsin Watch transcribed the gubernatorial debate audio through Parakeet MLX, an automatic speech recognition model, then used the artificial intelligence tool Pyannote to assign each line in the transcript to a speaker. Automated transcription and speaker recognition can produce errors, which may affect the results. 

We manually reviewed the transcript to correct as many speaker-identification errors as possible. We also tagged each line spoken by the candidates by topic and tone. We categorized a line as “aggressive” if a candidate referred to his opponent as the subject of a sentence or otherwise clearly criticized him. We categorized all other statements as “defensive.”

We calculated speech duration using the transcript’s start and end time stamps.

The SpaCy tokenization algorithm we used to generate the word cloud misidentified “taxes” as “taxis,” so we manually corrected that error. 

Brittany Caroloni contributed reporting. 

By the numbers: How Crowley and Tiffany used their debate time is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A record number of women are running for state legislative seats this November, more than two-thirds of whom are Democrats. 

Across the 46 states with legislative seats on the ballot, a total of 3,824 women are running — up from 2022’s previous record of 3,621 women candidates, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Women make up 35.5% of all state legislative candidates this cycle.

Currently, women hold about one-third of state legislative seats across the country — a record level of representation but nowhere near parity. 

While some election cycles have seen spikes in the numbers of women running, the long-term trend has been defined by incremental progress, said Debbie Walsh, director of the research center.

“It is a step towards change, but it’s not going to happen in any one cycle,” she said. “Our system is set up in many ways for this kind of slow, steady progress.”

And she noted that Republicans still lag significantly. Of the women nominated this cycle, 68% are Democrats. Currently, about 64% of the women in state legislatures are Democrats.

“If the goal is for there to be gender equity in these legislatures, it’s not going to happen by only electing Democratic women. The Republican Party has to do more,” she said. “For women to be exercising political power, they need to be there on both sides of the aisle.” 

No major gains projected for count of women in Congress after midterms

Across the political spectrum, research shows lower levels of political ambition among women. Women tend to underestimate their own qualifications, are more averse to competition and receive less recruitment and encouragement to run for office. Many women work full-time and are primary caregivers — adding more complexity in the majority of states with part-time legislatures. 

But Republicans face unique challenges: Experts say playing political defense this year, a lack of organizational support for GOP women and a rejection of identity-politics has hampered efforts to recruit conservative women. 

Still, the number of women serving in legislatures has increased nearly 40% over the past decade, according to government relations firm MultiState. But representation varies wildly: Women hold more than half of seats in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, but fewer than 15% of seats in West Virginia, South Carolina and Mississippi.

In many ways, this cycle resembles the 2018 elections — when a wave of women ran for state and federal offices during President Donald Trump’s first midterm election. Like that year, the political climate again has soured for Republicans, who could lose control of Congress and hundreds of state legislative seats. 

‘Women are just really sick and tired’

Midterm elections typically favor the party that doesn’t control the White House. And the current focus on affordability offers an extra boost for women candidates, said Republican pollster and consultant Amanda Iovino. 

Polling has shown men tend to think of the economy in terms of income — wages, jobs growth and investment performance, she said. Women, though, have long framed discussions in terms of costs focusing on household budgets and grocery expenses.

“When cost of living is the top issue, and not the economy more broadly, it’s going to favor the people who instinctively talk to the cost side of the equation,” she said. “Of course, you can teach male candidates how to talk that way. I think it just comes a little bit more naturally to the women candidates.”

Former teacher Stefanie Bord, who is running for the Texas state House, said women are able to speak to those issues more credibly than many other politicians.

“Women are sort of like on the front lines of managing their homes and their families, and like the regular everyday life that needs to get done,” she said. “And they see firsthand the problems that happen because of laws that are passed without women involved.”

A Democrat, Bord found her way into politics after volunteering with the gun control group Moms Demand Action. 

She said women have become even more interested in running for office since the Supreme Court’s 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade that had guaranteed the federal right to abortion. 

“I think women are just really sick and tired,” she said, “especially in Texas, where you know my two daughters have less rights than I had.”

Bord is running in a predominantly conservative district in the Houston area. She faces Stan Stanart, the previous Harris County Clerk who enjoys support from GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. 

Though it’s an uphill battle, she said the district could flip this cycle. 

Her campaign is being supported by The First Ask, a political action committee working to elect pro-choice Democratic women to statehouses across the country. That group supports first-time candidates by investing early in campaign organization and staffing support.

Executive Director Caroline Welles said she wants to help build lasting political infrastructure to identify and support a pipeline of women running for office every cycle — not just spikes during times of political upheaval. 

She pointed to Nevada, which made history in 2018 by becoming the first state to elect women to a majority of legislative seats. Women have maintained a majority since, now holding about 62% of seats.

“What we’re hoping to do is make this something like a Nevada where women keep winning,” she said. 

She said women are more likely to get legislation passed, compromise with opponents and focus policymaking that benefits families. While her organization is solely focused on the left, she said she welcomes more Republican women running for legislatures, too.

“I wouldn’t see it as a loss if a large number of Republican women were encouraged to run, encouraged to to take up leadership roles. I would see that ultimately as a good thing because I do think they prioritize better legislation than their male counterparts.”

Republicans say they are investing in recruiting women.

In 2021, the Republican State Leadership Committee, which works to elect conservatives to state legislatures, redoubled a longstanding effort to recruit and train women candidates. This year, its Right Leaders Network included a class of 67 women running for legislatures in a dozen states.

Officials with that organization were unavailable for an interview.

Iovino, the Republican pollster, said this year’s tough political climate has likely hampered Republican recruitment efforts.

“If they’re sitting here defending a supermajority, then they’re not necessarily going out and recruiting a new batch of women and minority and veteran candidates,” she said. 

But she believes Republican organizations will redouble efforts to recruit women in upcoming election cycles. 

In 2020, a record number of Republican women ran for Congress and 2022 set a record for Republican women serving in state legislatures.

“I look back to our trends in 2020 and 2022, and look forward to that next batch of women, especially in state legislatures and kind of refilling that pipeline,” Iovino said. 

What women bring to public office

This year, women in Georgia are more politically engaged than during Trump’s first term, said Melita Easters, executive director of Georgia WIN List, a political action committee working to elect pro-choice women to the legislature.

A record 127 women are running for legislative seats in Georgia. The organization has endorsed 76 of those candidates. Plenty of those races are considered long shots, but Easters said getting women onto the legislative ballot can be an accomplishment in its own right — especially in the South, where representation lags other parts of the country. 

“When you have a woman who is running against a Republican incumbent for the first time in a decade, and that Republican hasn’t had a Democrat run against him in more than 10 years, then she attracts some attention,” Easter said. “She attracts some voters who had given up on having a candidate they could vote for, and so that rising tide lifts the rest of the ticket, too.”

Aside from increasing levels of representation, Easters said women bring a different perspective to politics. While many men run to gain power or financial advantage, she pointed to research showing women tend to run with more altruistic motivations focused on public service.

“Women bring a different skill set to holding public office, a skill set that is more collaborative,” she said. “And last but not least, women have generations of experience in cleaning up men’s messes, and the current political landscape is a very messy place.”

Research consistently shows lower political ambition among women. Experts say that means many women only launch a campaign after being specifically recruited.

“It took three asks for me to raise my hand and say, ‘Okay, I’ll do it,’” said Democrat Michelle Schreiner, who is running for the Georgia House. “I had, frankly, some terms and conditions and that is really needing support early and often.”

Schreiner, a psychologist and researcher, is challenging Republican Rep. Sharon Cooper, who has represented suburban Atlanta in the state House for 29 years. Cooper did not respond to Stateline requests for comment.

To run was “a sobering decision,” Schreiner said. It has meant working on her birthday, missing her daughter’s soccer games and her son’s baseball games.

“It has a real impact on families,” she said. “My decision to run is not merely to challenge the incumbent. My decision to run is fundamentally an act of gratitude and appreciation for my community, and saying I’m willing to step up to do the work if you’re wanting a choice.”

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

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.”

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Early voting has started, and Election Day will be here before you know it.  

The Northeast Wisconsin News Lab (NEW News Lab) reported and published 10 issues-focused stories since early September. 

Each member newsroom – Appleton Post-Crescent, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Green Bay Press Times, Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Watch – picked a topic readers said they cared a lot about but felt underinformed on. Then, we ran with them. 

Find links to all the stories here: 

The economy (WPR)

• Affordability is a top issue for Wisconsin voters. Here’s where governor candidates stand
• Wisconsin governor candidates offer opposing plans to address rising health care costs
• Housing costs have risen sharply in northeast Wisconsin over the last decade

Health care (Wisconsin Watch)

• Federal immigration policy may be worsening Wisconsin’s caregiver shortage, leaders say
• Despite bipartisan support, 988 Crisis Lifeline faces funding shortage
• Some states started Medicaid work requirements early. What can Wisconsin learn?

Education (Appleton Post-Crescent)

• Wisconsin schools face funding squeeze as voters pick Legislature

Public safety (Green Bay Press-Gazette)

• Judges warn that underfunded courts are falling behind

The environment (Green Bay Press Times)

• Concerned Wisconsinites push candidates on PFAS regulations
• Voters, scientists say candidates should dig into environmental issues

But that’s not all. 

We also sent questionnaires to the candidates. 

You can find their responses on their candidate profile pages in Wisconsin Watch’s interactive voter guide. 

Click the candidate’s name on the race page and scroll down to “NEW News Lab general election questions” to read their responses: 

• 6th Congressional District
• 8th Congressional District
• 1st Senate District
• 19th Senate District
• Assembly District 1
• Assembly District 2
• Assembly District 4
• Assembly District 6
• Assembly District 52
• Assembly District 53
• Assembly District 54
• Assembly District 55
• Assembly District 56
• Assembly District 88
• Assembly District 89
• Assembly District 90

Several candidates did not reply to the NEW News Lab’s election questionnaires, but I found debate coverage or questionnaires through other news outlets: 

• Answers from incumbent Rep. Glenn Grothman and independent Elizabeth Fitzgibbon are included in this Q&A for the 6th Congressional District from the Oshkosh Northwestern. 
• Mark Becker, an independent who is running against Republican Nic Cravillion in state Senate District 1, replied to the Peninsula Pulse’s candidate Q&A, as did Cravillion. 
• Senate District 19 incumbent Rachael Cabral-Guevara replied to a Q&A from the Oshkosh Northwestern, as did her opponent Emily Tseffos. 
• Coverage from the Green Bay Press-Gazette of the 2nd Assembly District debate between incumbent Shae Sortwell and challenger Alicia Saunders. 
• Incumbent Rep. Elijah Behnke of the 6th Assembly District answered questions from the Shawano Leader, as did challenger Shirley Hinze. 
• Tim Paterson, who is challenging incumbent Rep. Lori Palmeri in the 54th Assembly District, replied to the Oshkosh Northwestern’s candidate Q&A, as did Palmeri. 

Please note that we sent the questionnaire to all three candidates running for Assembly District 5 and none responded. 

And I have to plug the excellent reporting from our state team on races for Wisconsin attorney general, Wisconsin secretary of state and treasurer and the three constitutional amendment questions on the ballot. 

Take a look, share with friends and family and make sure to vote on Nov. 3!

Catch up on northeast Wisconsin election issues ahead of Nov. 3 is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Marinette resident Andi Rich occasionally shows her anger over how elected officials don’t always seem to grasp the significance of PFAS-contaminated groundwater.

For years, Rich has kept up with the latest PFAS research and advocated for clean water in northeast Wisconsin. 

“It is a complicated issue, but it’s frustrating that the people who were put in charge to figure it out … are failing to even understand the issue well enough to know how to do anything about it,” said Rich, a former candidate for the state Assembly.

Perfluoroalkyl- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or so-called “forever chemicals,” have been linked to health issues, such as certain types of cancer, liver damage, thyroid issues and developmental effects or delays in children. The chemicals are used in a variety of manufactured goods, such as firefighting foam, nonstick coatings, textiles, carpeting and personal care products. 

Sign up for Northeast News, our free email newsletter focused on northeast Wisconsin.

In Marinette County, PFAS thought to stem from Johnson Controls’ and its subsidiary Tyco Fire Products’ Marinette Fire Training Facility have contaminated groundwater used for drinking water.

This election season, candidates in state and national races on both sides of the political aisle are confronting voters’ growing concerns about the quality of their drinking water – in part because people like Rich have kept the heat on.

Widespread contamination

Throughout Wisconsin, PFAS contaminations have caught the attention of elected officials who say clean, safe drinking water is a critically important issue. A Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources study found 71% of 450 shallow, private potable-water wells sampled in 2022 contained at least one detectable PFAS. However, the authors note that “low percentages of samples” surpassed state (1% of samples) or federal (4% of samples) health limits for PFAS.

All of the state candidates who responded to the Northeast Wisconsin News Lab’s general election questionnaire in September said PFAS is a serious issue in Wisconsin. 

Bipartisan support for PFAS-free drinking water motivated state Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Gillett, to rewrite PFAS legislation in 2024 and 2025 to garner Democrats’ support. Assembly Rep. Jeff Mursau, R-Crivitz, co-authored the 2025 bill. 

Gov. Tony Evers signed into law two new PFAS statutes in April. The measures, which aim to hold polluters accountable, created a state PFAS trust fund with about $133 million in grants for PFAS remediation. 

However, observers say it’s just the beginning of what’s needed.

Rich and other local clean water activists continue to push for state groundwater limits for PFAS and ways to prevent contamination, such as banning products containing the substances.

Marinette County’s contaminated area has expanded as biosolids containing PFAS were spread on lands, with the forever chemicals seeping into groundwater, Rich said. The contamination migrated with the groundwater’s flow into new areas, including into waterways that feed into the bay of Green Bay. 

The DNR verified that the contaminated area has expanded, and agency experts discussed the size of the Expanded Site Investigation Area in Marinette County during a July listening session. 

“The groundwater impacted by PFAS is extensive in this area and actions available to clean up PFAS will take a long time to achieve results,” said Alyssa Sellwood, DNR project manager for remediation and redevelopment.

While progress has occurred, including construction of new deep wells on private properties in a limited area, complaints about the new wells also are flowing as residents say water quality is an issue. The new wells are over 500 feet deep, Sellwood said. 

“The water from that depth in this area can be very hard and contain naturally occurring contaminants like radium and strontium, which require treatment to lower the concentrations to levels that are safe to drink,” she said.

Piping in Lake Michigan water

The threat of PFAS making its way into other communities in northeast Wisconsin has encouraged some to connect to larger water systems. Officials in the city of Green Bay and Central Brown County Water Authority are selling their treated water, pulled from Lake Michigan, to nearby communities that have been using deep wells.

Making the move to a new system is costly, as residents of Pulaski learned. The village of Pulaski Board agreed to purchase its drinking water from the city of Green Bay, after years of relying on deep wells that produced water heavy in iron and other minerals, said Board Chair Keith Chambers. Water rates in the village could rise by as much as 230%, according to the village’s website.

In need of more water capacity, the board considered constructing two new deep wells and adding treatment facilities to two other wells to filter PFAS and other contaminants. Doing so would have been expensive and without a guarantee of high-quality water, Chambers said. Sediment from the minerals turned the water tan, and people complained about it, he said. 

“We did not have any PFAS, but that can change in a heartbeat. Some could start leaching in. The DNR might change their threshold limits, or the EPA. You could have perfectly good water one day and the next day, they’re telling you it’s bad,” Chambers said.

The board opted to purchase water from the city of Green Bay, pulled out of Lake Michigan near Kewaunee and piped to Pulaski. The major construction project took longer than expected.

“We had two buildings we had to build and 6.5 miles of 20-inch pipe that we put in the ground,” Chambers said. “Right after COVID, prices were going through the roof; supplies weren’t available.”

The result is a substantial water rate increase. While the quarterly bill for 10,000 gallons was about $151, it is expected to rise to about $351, Chambers said. Ratepayers are footing most of the project’s cost, he said.

“Now there are a lot of people who are angry that we didn’t put it to a referendum,” he said. “I’m a big man, so it’s hard to tar and feather me, but if they could, they would.” 

The estimated cost of constructing a new deep well was $20 million, he said, while the Green Bay water project ended up just north of $16 million. Grants from the DNR and city of Green Bay helped offset some of the cost. 

In Wisconsin, the Natural Resources Board passed PFAS limits for community drinking water at the same level as the federal limits passed in April 2024. The board is expected to take up groundwater standards for PFAS in the near future, with a proposal to impose the same limits used for community drinking water.

What candidates say

Several candidates who responded to the NEW News Lab’s general election survey suggested phasing out use of the substances where feasible. Furthermore, they said funding is only one aspect of the issue that affects many Wisconsin communities. 

“We need continued testing, help for communities facing contamination they didn’t cause and stronger prevention. I support holding responsible companies accountable for remediation costs while using state and federal resources when a responsible party can’t be identified,” said Emily Tseffos, a Democrat running to represent state Senate District 19.

Rep. Joel Kitchens, a Republican incumbent running for reelection in Assembly District 1, said the federal government should set PFAS limits for emerging PFAS varieties. 

“There will undoubtedly be more contaminants that are currently unknown to us that will emerge, and I hope that the federal government will take a stronger role in addressing them. We are not adequately equipped at the state level to determine safe levels,” he said.

To fully address the problem will take more than the PFAS trust fund, Rich said. She’s still waiting for Wisconsin to set PFAS limits for groundwater.

“Everybody wants to point fingers and say somebody else should do it,” she said. “Maybe it’s time for our local representatives to actually try to do something about it.”

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of five news outlets.

Concerned Wisconsinites push candidates on PFAS regulations is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Democratic 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.”

Reading Time: 6 minutes

With less than two weeks until Election Day and early voting already underway, Wisconsin’s gubernatorial candidates met for the only televised debate. Both attacked their opponent’s biggest weaknesses and provided further insight into how they would govern. 

Democrat David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, and Republican Tom Tiffany, who represents the 7th Congressional District in northern Wisconsin, are competing in the first open race for governor since 2010 after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers did not seek a third term. 

In a midterm year when the national environment favors Democrats, Marquette University Law School polling has shown a close contest between Crowley and Tiffany. The most recent poll in late September showed Crowley leading within the margin of error 49% to 46% among likely voters with about 5% still undecided. The next Marquette poll is scheduled for release Oct. 28. 

The debate, held at the law school Wednesday with only news media in attendance, arrived on Wisconsin’s second day of in-person early voting. More than 55,000 people cast their ballots on the first day, up from more than 33,000 at the same time ahead of the last gubernatorial race in 2022, according to data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

Here are some key takeaways from Wednesday night’s debate. 

Crowley was on the attack

Crowley used any opening in the debate to criticize Tiffany for his votes in Congress in support of President Donald Trump and the millions in campaign funding Tiffany received from GOP megadonors. 

Early in the debate, Crowley pointed to Tiffany’s votes against ending U.S. military involvement in the Iran war and blocking the president’s tariffs to suggest the congressman doesn’t care about lowering costs for Wisconsinites.

“We don’t need what is happening in Washington, D.C., coming into the state of Wisconsin,” Crowley said. “It is very clear that he is working for Donald Trump and the billionaires who are funding his campaign.”

Campaign finance reports from July through September show Tiffany’s largest donor was the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which received nearly 95% of its $29 million in donations from billionaires Diane Hendricks, the founder of ABC Supply Co., and Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, who founded the Uline shipping supplies company. The next campaign finance report deadline, which will show the candidates’ financial position ahead of Election Day, is Monday. 

Tiffany, who was endorsed by Trump earlier this year, attempted to separate himself from the president, who is unpopular in Wisconsin ahead of Election Day. The September Marquette poll found just 38% of registered voters approve of Trump’s job in his second term. 

“While my opponent, you can see early on in the debate, is consistently focused on being against Donald Trump, I’m for Wisconsin,” Tiffany said. 

More insight on how Crowley, Tiffany would govern

The moderators from WISN-TV in Milwaukee pressed Crowley and Tiffany for more details on the campaign promises they’ve made while traveling the state over the last year. 

Tiffany has called for returning Wisconsin’s $3 billion surplus to taxpayers. During the debate, Tiffany explained that he would do that through “long-term” reductions in property and income taxes. In remarks after the debate, Tiffany added he would not support one-time rebates, which were part of the failed bipartisan surplus deal Evers and Republican legislative leaders negotiated earlier this year. Tiffany opposed that plan.

“The one thing that I don’t want to do is just one-time rebates,” Tiffany said after the debate. “I want it to be long-term, lasting tax relief, so people in Wisconsin can plan, so they can plan their futures.” 

Tiffany said he opposes raising transportation user fees, instituting tolls or indexing the gas tax to inflation. Crowley said he would be open to new user fees and that the state should be open to tolling to fund transportation projects, but he also opposed indexing the gas tax, which was discontinued in 2006.

Crowley reiterated his position from the primary that he would not eliminate the Milwaukee school voucher program and said he would keep the statewide program in place.

“I will work with the Legislature,” Crowley said. “But as of this moment, we are not in a position to push all of these children towards any of our public schools.”

Asked if he would sign a bill to eliminate income limits on school vouchers, Tiffany said he would have to take a look at it if elected.

“I would be willing to raise those income limits,” Tiffany said. “But I would sit down and take a look at where we should move them at this time.”

Crowley noted the voucher program was originally intended to help low-income Milwaukee students, but the statewide program has allowed families who could already afford to send their children to private school to receive a taxpayer subsidy.

Crowley explains data center policy shifts 

On data centers, Tiffany pointed out that Crowley in the past week changed his position on the state’s sales tax exemption for data centers, which is worth some $2 billion. 

“Why would some of the wealthiest companies in the world need subsidies from the taxpayers of Wisconsin?” said Tiffany, who has campaigned on repealing data center tax breaks.

Crowley now says he would sign legislation, proposed by Republicans, to repeal the sales tax exemption. Previously he said he would review the exemption. 

Candidates stick to their positions on abortion

Tiffany said he would not sign a “fetal heartbeat bill,” which would ban abortions once a heartbeat is detected, if it reaches his desk. Tiffany voted for Wisconsin’s current abortion ban after 20 weeks when he was in the Legislature and he said he would maintain that “middle ground” in the abortion debate.

Crowley did not directly answer whether he would sign a bill that legalized abortion with no gestational limits and said he did not believe such a bill would reach his desk if he is elected. He has proposed a constitutional amendment, which would need the support of the Legislature, that would protect the right to an abortion.

“These are discussions that need to be made between a doctor and a patient,” Crowley said. “When you think about any type of abortion past the 20 week, it’s usually dealing with extreme circumstances.”

Fact-checking the debate

Both candidates repeated claims that Wisconsin Watch has found to be inaccurate.

Tiffany claimed during the debate that Crowley “wants to remove half of the prison inmates here in Wisconsin.” Crowley has voiced support for cutting Wisconsin’s prison population in half over time using a variety of means, such as legalizing marijuana and funding jail diversion programs.

Crowley claimed Tiffany “provided the tax breaks to the big tech companies who are steamrolling our communities today with these data centers.” The tax cuts were part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill and applied to a multitude of companies across sectors. They were not specifically for tech companies or data centers, as Crowley had previously claimed.

Clashing closing statements

Each candidate had a minute to give a closing statement. Crowley highlighted the contrast between himself and Tiffany, while Tiffany recounted his recent emergency plane landing experience. Here’s each candidate’s entire statement:

Crowley: “I’m running to be your governor because Wisconsin families are working harder than ever and still falling behind. And I get it. I grew up in a working-class family, and I’m raising three amazing daughters. Congressman Tom Tiffany, he doesn’t get it. He went to Washington and he sold Wisconsin out. He went to go work for Donald Trump and the billionaires bankrolling him. They got tax breaks. You got higher bills. They got tariffs. You got higher prices. They got their endless war. You got record high gas prices. This election is about who your governor works for. If Congressman Tom Tiffany becomes our governor, he’s going to work for them, not for you, just like he did in Washington, voting with Donald Trump 100% of the time. But me, I’ll work for you. I’ll lower your costs. I’ll expand health care. I’ll make sure we can improve our schools and bring people together to get it done. That’s why I’m asking for your vote. Thank you, and go Brewers.”

Tiffany: “It was a month ago that a plane that I was in had to make an emergency landing on Lake Wausau and run up to the airport. And as the pilot and I exited that plane, he dialed 911. From the time that call hit dispatch in downtown Wausau to the boat picking us up in the middle of Lake Wausau was 16 minutes. Only 16 minutes. I remember hearing after we made the call that you could hear the sirens and then you could see the lights, but it only took them 16 minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, I saw the best of Wisconsin that night. As your next governor, I’m going to make sure you see the best of Wisconsin. I hope to earn your vote to lead this state.”

David Crowley, Tom Tiffany clash on taxes, abortion and private school vouchers in Wisconsin governor debate  is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Greenfield resident Nereida Loma planned to vote by mail in November, as she usually does. But the ballot she said she requested never arrived, and city officials had no record of her application.

Rather than risk missing her chance to vote, Loma went to City Hall in the Milwaukee suburb on Tuesday to cast an in-person absentee ballot.

“When you put it in the mail, you don’t know if it’s going to count — if it’s going to come or not,” said Loma, who said she plans to vote in-person from now on.

Loma is among the thousands of Wisconsin voters reconsidering how they cast their ballots amid widely reported issues with the U.S. Postal Service and a continued shift away from mail voting after a pandemic-era peak.

Ahead of the November election, Wisconsin voters have requested about 20% fewer mail ballots than at this point in 2022, and those who have received them are returning them at a slower rate. Election clerks and experts say the trend could reflect concerns about mail delivery, or voters choosing to participate in person despite requesting a ballot.

Several of those voters were at the polls on Tuesday, Wisconsin’s first day of early voting. In Greenfield, Philip Zimmer said that he’s typically an early in-person absentee voter because it’s the easiest option for him. He doesn’t consider mail voting a viable option because of the growing politicization of what was once a standard way to cast a ballot.

“With all this Trump stuff and everything,” he said, “I don’t even bother.”

In New Berlin, a voter who identified herself only as Barb said she typically votes early and not by mail because you “never know if it’s gonna get here.”

In Milwaukee, voter Shan Nelson-Rowe said he has always preferred in-person absentee voting. It’s simpler than mail voting and quicker than voting on Election Day, he said. Plus, he doesn’t trust the Postal Service. He’s noticed others growing wary of it too: His neighbor, who usually mails back his ballot, plans to use a drop box this year because he no longer trusts the mail to deliver it, Nelson-Rowe said.

USPS did not return a request for comment sent Tuesday.

Clerks respond to trend away from mail voting

Clerks are seeing fewer ballot requests and adjusting their advice to voters as concerns about postal delays grow.

Inside the New Berlin City Hall, Clerk Rubina Medina told Votebeat her office is receiving just 25 to 30 mail ballot requests a day, down from 75 to 100 in past elections.

Meanwhile, in-person absentee voting appears to be holding steady. Voters lined up at City Hall on Tuesday morning, and Medina said turnout on the first day of early voting was about as busy as usual.

“The voters are saying they don’t trust the mail,” she said. “We hear that often.”

She said the distrust in the Postal Service is often unwarranted and driven by the media, but that she also does recognize that mail is slower than it used to be.

“We used to advertise a mail-it-back Monday, the week prior to Election Day,” she said. “We now advertise that two weeks prior.”

Election officials across the state have been offering similar advice for months, but the numbers show voters are turning their ballots in more slowly than they have in the past.

As of Tuesday, two weeks before the election, voters had returned 51.5% of the ballots they’ve been sent, down from 55.5% at the same time in 2022. The slowdown is widespread: In 63 of the state’s 72 counties, voters have returned a smaller share of their ballots than they had at this point four years ago.

Across the state, absentee voting is also down so far compared with the November midterm election in 2022. By this time in 2022, voters had returned nearly 259,000 ballots, 26% higher than the current returns of 191,000. The number of sent-out ballots has dropped about 20%, from 466,000 to 372,000.

Clerks and experts respond to what the numbers show

Much of the drop-off in traditional absentee voting can be credited to the passage of time since the pandemic. More voters are simply comfortable voting in person, UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said. But, he said, trust in the U.S. Postal Service has dropped dramatically too. An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that only 58% of Americans are confident about timely election mail delivery, compared with 71% two years ago.

“Voters are looking for ways to get around the Postal Service,” Burden said. “That can mean waiting until in-person voting opens up in one form or another, or getting a ballot by mail but finding another way to get it back to their clerk’s office.”

To a lesser extent, absentee voting has also gone down because more voters have exited Wisconsin’s list of voters who automatically received absentee ballots on a permanent basis and because a series of high-profile errors around the state involving absentee ballots may have deterred some voters from voting absentee, Burden said.

Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican, agreed voters are now motivated to bypass the mail. She expects many voters who have requested a mailed ballot will ultimately leave it blank and instead vote in-person on Election Day.

Sheboygan County Clerk Jon Dolson, also a Republican, agreed. And Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutiérrez said more and more voters over the last few elections have been dropping off their ballots on Election Day citing similar concerns. She said Milwaukee anticipates that voters “are more comfortable” dropping their ballots off themselves.

Green County Clerk Arianna Voegeli, a Democrat, said she believes part of the drop-off in the share of returned ballots may be due to mail delays.

Some clerks are experiencing that slowdown firsthand: Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, a Democrat, said his son studying in Ireland requested a mail ballot in September. It was sent in late September, he said, and his son still hasn’t received it.

Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said she doesn’t know exactly what’s behind the lower ballot-return rate, but said she has heard a lot of concern from voters about mail delays.

“We’re just trying to get the message out that if people still have a by-mail absentee ballot and they want to return it by mail, they need to do so as soon as possible, she said. ”We really do recommend that if you’re returning your ballot by mail, that you do so at least two weeks in advance of the election.”

That was Oct. 20.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

In Wisconsin, voters cast early in-person ballots as distrust in the mail grows is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District incumbent U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville) and his Democratic party challenger, Mitchell Berman, parried for an hour Tuesday in their only face-to-face encounter scheduled before the Nov. 3 election.

The debate took place in the studio of Janesville radio station WCLO and was moderated by Tim Bremel, who hosts the station’s daily morning talk program.

Steil is a corporate lawyer who has represented the 1st District since 2019. Berman is an emergency room nurse who won the Democratic nomination in August. The two took contrasting approaches during the hourlong exchange.

Berman has focused his campaign on rising costs, including for healthcare, and Tuesday he returned several times to the 2025 massive tax and spending bill — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — that Steil voted for. The Republican-authored legislation cut taxes for the wealthy while cutting funding for Medicaid and other safety-net programs over the next decade.

“Our healthcare has been gutted and has become unaffordable, and we’re seeing politicians in Washington enriching themselves and working at the behest of their corporate donors and special interests,” Berman said in his opening remarks. “That’s why I got into this race, and we need to change and make Washington work for working people again.”

Steil defended his vote and said he has been working “to clean up Washington.” He accused Berman, and Democrats in general, of lying about the 2025 bill’s impact and also appeared to accuse Berman of positions that the challenger never took.

Bremel’s first question cited a poll that put inflation and the cost of living at the top of voters’ concerns. He asked the candidates to identify “one specific federal policy you would prioritize to improve household finances for the residents of the First District.”

Berman called for repealing “blanket tariffs” levied by the Trump administration. “We know that tariffs are a tax on the American people, and everyone knows we’re paying more for everything at the store right now because of that,” Berman said. Steil “has voted to continue these blanket tariffs eight times, and that, to me, I think is unconscionable.”

When it was his turn, Steil praised the Trump administration’s embrace of fossil fuels to “unleash American energy.”

Steil highlighted provisions in the 2025 tax law that cut taxes on overtime pay and tips, a new $6,000 tax deduction for people 65 or older, and another measure that makes changes to the federal child tax credit, expanding it for some families.

“My opponent opposes that tax relief,” Steil said of Berman in a follow-up comment. Berman took exception to that charge.

“Those components of tax relief that my opponent just talked about, I don’t oppose,” Berman said. He asked Steil, however, why those four provisions “for regular working class people” are set to expire after 2028 while the bill’s “tax relief for billionaires was made permanent.”

Steil ignored the direct question. “We just have a firm disagreement,” he told Bremel. “I’m working to reduce taxes for people here in South Central and Southeastern Wisconsin,” he added, and reiterated Berman’s opposition to the 2025 bill without answering the question Berman had posed.

Healthcare costs

Bremel’s next question, focusing on public concerns about healthcare costs, asked the two for their first priority in making “changes to the federal healthcare system,” including how it would be paid for.

Steil again defended his vote on the 2025 bill, accusing Berman of putting out “false information” about the Medicaid provisions. The Republican congressman said the bill “results in an increase in $1 billion in federal money coming to the state of Wisconsin for Medicaid.”

The $1 billion refers to additional Medicaid matching funds to the state under a provision in the 2025-27 Wisconsin budget. That boost resulted from a deal reached between Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican leaders in the state Legislature. State lawmakers and the governor rushed the budget to be signed before the federal provision took effect, which would have cut Wisconsin off from the additional money without the state budget change.

Berman didn’t address that issue, but countered that in contrast to the $1 billion Steil touted, the federal bill cut “a trillion dollars from Medicaid over the next 10 years.” He also cited projections that 270,000 Wisconsinites could lose insurance coverage after the expiration of enhanced subsidies to lower the cost of Affordable Care Act marketplace health policies.

“I know what that looks like when people are showing up to the hospital underinsured and uninsured, and that cost gets shifted to folks who have insurance,” Berman said.

Steil said the bill’s Medicaid work requirements on “able-bodied, childless adults of working age” would strengthen the program. He also credited the federal bill for “removing illegal immigrants from receiving free taxpayer-funded healthcare.

According to the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University, undocumented immigrants and many immigrants with legal status were already prevented from getting Medicaid coverage.

“This legislation creates red tape, which makes it more difficult for people who qualify for those benefits to obtain them, and so they lose their benefits,” Berman responded.

Berman said nothing about Medicaid and immigrants, but Steil replied, “My opponent is arguing to use your taxpayer dollars for illegal aliens. That was very clear right there.”

Replied Berman, “I don’t believe that’s what I said.”

Campaign finance

In response to another question, about campaign finance and congressional ethics, Berman cited his endorsement by the campaign finance reform group End Citizens United.

“We are a grassroots-funded campaign, and we don’t take any corporate PAC money,” Berman said.

Steil contended that Berman’s claim was a lie because an ad in which the Democrat said he doesn’t take corporate PAC money was paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “What do they take? Corporate PAC money,” Steil charged.

“If you look at my FEC reports, there is no corporate PAC money,” Berman said, referring to his campaign’s filings with the Federal Election Commission.

Steil’s most recent filings show his campaign has $1.6 million in corporate PAC donations, 31% of the $5.3 million he raised in 2025-26, according to Open Secrets, an independent group that tracks money in politics analyzing FEC data.

On Social Security and Medicare, Steil said the programs should be protected by “rooting out wasteful spending.”

Berman responded by observing that Steil had voted against 2022 legislation authorizing Medicare to negotiate prices on select drugs with pharmaceutical companies, and that the Trump administration had cut jobs from the Social Security Administration, making it more difficult for people to navigate the system.

“Our current administration pardoned multiple people who committed egregious Medicaid and Medicare fraud,” Berman added, “and I was wondering if my opponent would denounce that.”

In response, Steil referred to “significant, record-breaking arrests and convictions in Milwaukee County” relating to Medicaid fraud, but added that “there’s a lot more work to do to root out the waste, fraud, abuse in these federal programs.”

On immigration, Berman called for “transparency and accountability” in the federal agencies responsible for immigration enforcement, “making sure these organizations are following the law and getting the most heinous criminals off of our streets and focused on those folks.”

Steil said immigration policies should be linked to “workforce needs” in the U.S. “I don’t support amnesty,” said Steil. “It sounds like my opponent does.”

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

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Wisconsin’s general election is Nov. 3, with voters deciding who will be the state’s next governor and attorney general, as well as picking candidates for the state Legislature in several other races. Voters also will decide on three proposed amendments to the state constitution. 

When voting in person, residents throughout the state must present an acceptable form of photo ID, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Wisconsin law allows eligible residents to obtain a state-issued ID for voting free of charge.

Despite there being no cost, the process can still present other challenges, said Peg Schrader, president of the League of Women Voters of Milwaukee County.

“The practical barriers include missing supporting documents, the cost and effort of replacing them, transportation to the DMV and understanding which documents and IDs are acceptable,” wrote Schrader in an email to NNS.

Here’s what to know about getting a free ID before the election.

Steps

U.S. citizens who will be at least 18 years old on or before Nov. 3 – but who don’t have an ID that can be used for voting – can apply for one for free through the Wisconsin Division of Motor Vehicles, or DMV.

Although “voter ID” is a common term, there is no separate ID specifically for voting. Wisconsin accepts state-issued ID cards, which also can be used for other purposes.

Other acceptable forms of ID for voting include Wisconsin driver’s licenses, U.S. passports, military IDs and certain student and tribal IDs.

The photo ID requirement also is separate from voter registration, which has different requirements. 

Registration establishes a person’s eligibility to vote, while the photo ID requirement is for when someone actually votes.

People applying for a state ID for the first time must visit a DMV customer service center in person. People renewing or replacing an existing state ID may be able to do so online or by mail. 

When applying for a state ID for the first time, people ordinarily need to bring:

• Proof of name and date of birth.
• Proof of identity.
• Proof of Wisconsin residency.
• Proof of U.S. citizenship or legal status.
• Their Social Security number.

Some documents can fulfill more than one requirement. For example, a certified U.S. birth certificate can establish name and date of birth as well as U.S. citizenship.

The DMV maintains a list of acceptable documents for each type.

Generally, people must bring original documents or certified copies rather than photocopies. However, the DMV accepts printed electronic records and photocopies of certain documents used to prove Wisconsin residency.

Also, people generally need to provide their Social Security number but do not have to bring the physical card unless the DMV cannot verify the number electronically.

In addition to these documents, people must complete the Wisconsin Identification Card Application, indicating that they want a free ID for voting.

People who complete the regular in-person application generally receive a temporary paper receipt with their photograph at the DMV. The receipt is good for 45 days and can be used to vote while they wait for the permanent card to arrive by mail.

According to the DMV, permanent cards generally arrive within 10 business days.

Identification Petition Process

Wisconsin has an alternative process for eligible residents who do not have the documents usually required to obtain a state ID, called the Identification Petition Process. 

The process allows U.S. citizens who will be at least 18 on or before the next election to apply for an ID for voting while the DMV works to verify their information.

Schrader called the petition process an important option.

“Its key benefit is that a missing birth certificate or other required document does not have to prevent someone from obtaining identification for voting,” she said.

People who apply must go to a DMV office, fill out paperwork and wait for the document to arrive by mail.

People should bring whatever documents they have to a DMV service center and also complete two forms: the Wisconsin Identification Card Application and the Identification Petition Process application.

The DMV then mails a temporary photo identification document that can be used for voting while the petition is processed.

According to Wisconsin law, the DMV generally must issue the temporary document within six working days of receiving the petition.

For petitions filed within seven days before or two days after a statewide election – Oct. 27 through Nov. 5 for this year’s general election – the DMV must issue the document within 24 hours and send it by overnight or next-day mail.

Expedited processing does not guarantee people will receive the document before Election Day for those who file before Nov. 3. 

Other ID options

Residents may already have an ID that meets the Wisconsin voting law requirements. 

Wisconsin driver’s licenses and state ID cards are acceptable for voting if they are unexpired or expired after Nov. 5, 2024, the date of the last general election. U.S. passports and qualifying military IDs also are acceptable if these meet the same expiration requirements.

Joel DeSpain, a communications specialist for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, refers voters to the agency’s list of acceptable photo IDs.

A REAL ID is not required to vote, and the address on a photo ID does not have to match the voter’s current address.

The City of Milwaukee Election Commission also provides information about which IDs qualify.

Wisconsin enacted its voter ID law in 2011, although legal challenges delayed its full implementation until 2015. 

In April 2025, voters approved a constitutional amendment adding the photo ID requirement to the state constitution, making the requirement more difficult to change.

Options on Election Day 

Registered voters who arrive at the polls without acceptable photo ID can still request a provisional ballot for this year’s general election.

For the ballot to count, these people must present an acceptable photo ID at their polling place by 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3, or to their municipal clerk by 4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6.

Wisconsin also allows eligible residents who are not registered to go through that process at their polling place on the day of the election. However, they must provide proof of residence to register, which is a separate requirement from having the right ID to vote. 

Where can I get help?

The Wisconsin DMV operates a voter ID hotline at 844-588-1069 for questions about free IDs and the Identification Petition Process.

Schrader named several organizations that can assist Milwaukee-area residents:

• You can call or text VoteRiders at 866-432-8683 for free help obtaining identification and supporting documents, as well as arranging transportation the day of the election. 
• Souls to the Polls provides information about free rides to DMV offices and polling places. You can reach the organization by calling 414-742-1060.
• The League of Women Voters of Milwaukee County provides voting information and assistance resources at mkevote.com.
• Disability Rights Wisconsin can be reached at 844-347-8683 with questions about voting rights and accessibility for people with disabilities. 

For questions about voter registration, polling locations and other election information, visit MyVote Wisconsin.

Here’s how to get a free photo ID before the Nov. 3 election is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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.”

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This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Election officials are again urging Wisconsin voters to return their absentee ballots as early as possible after an Oct. 6 court ruling blocked a plan that would have allowed voters with late-arriving mail ballots to cast provisional ballots on Election Day. That decision led officials to double down on their long-standing advice for voters to submit absentee ballots well in advance, whether by mail or through alternative return methods.

Voters should not mail back their ballots if Election Day is less than two weeks away, Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson told reporters on a call Tuesday. Instead, she said, “We want them to actually deliver it to the clerk directly, use a drop box, find an alternate method, because if we don’t have it by 8 p.m. we can’t count it.”

Two-thirds of Wisconsin clerks observed issues with absentee ballot mail delivery in the April election, a Wisconsin Elections Commission survey showed. Clerks like Tollefson worry delays could happen again and would be exacerbated by voters mailing ballots late.

So far, clerks haven’t seen many issues with mailing ballots, Chetek City Clerk Mark Eby, the vice president of the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association, told reporters Tuesday. Ballots began going out in mid-September, and voters have already returned over 142,000. It’s the late returns clerks worry about.

Mail delays pose a significant risk to Wisconsin voters because it is one of 35 states that do not accept late-arriving mail. Unlike the 15 states that allow ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive late, Wisconsin requires all absentee ballots to arrive at the polls by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted.

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit in July to allow voters whose mail ballots would likely arrive late to cast a provisional ballot in case the mail one doesn’t show. The lawsuit is still pending in Dane County court, but Judge Rhonda Lanford ruled last week against a motion for a temporary injunction that would have allowed the provisional ballot relief in the upcoming election.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin officials call for prompt ballot return after court rules against proposed backup plan is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

When Mitchell Berman received an email from Elon Musk asking him to justify his job as a front-line emergency room nurse at the Department of Veterans Affairs, he began thinking more seriously about how he could make a difference beyond the hospital. 

The email came as the Department of Government Efficiency, commonly referred to as DOGE, began making cuts and hiring freezes in spring 2025. More than a year later, Berman is still working emergency room shifts, but is now campaigning as the Democratic challenger to four-term Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District.

“I kind of realized if we really wanted to help improve things for folks, not even just at the VA, but for people in our communities, it was going to take somebody from the ground floor standing up and fighting for it,” Berman said. 

The southeastern district is emerging as an unexpected battleground as Democrats look to capitalize on a shifting political environment and political newcomer Berman attempts to unseat Steil, who has represented the district since 2019. 

Recent polling from Democratic-aligned organizations shows a close race, leading to increased national attention and campaign spending. Democrats point to dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump’s policies and congressional Republicans’ continued support of them as reasons the traditionally Republican district could be more competitive, while Steil noted he has faced significant Democratic spending in the district before and has continued to win. 

“We’ve seen national Democrats spend millions of dollars in southeast Wisconsin before,” Steil said. “My strategy remains the same: Go speak directly to voters about the issues that are in front of us, and we have ultimately been successful in earning the support of the majority of voters four times in a row in the southern part of the state.”

About 38% of registered Wisconsin voters approve of Trump’s job performance, according to a Sept. 30 Marquette Law School Poll.

An Oct. 3 poll conducted by Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC showed Berman leading Steil 48% to 47% among likely voters. The poll also found 56% of respondents viewed Trump unfavorably. A Sept. 29 poll from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) found the candidates tied at 48%. 

The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election analyst, recently shifted the district from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican.” 

In 2024, a Congressional Leadership Fund poll found Steil leading his challenger Peter Barca, a former member of Congress and Assembly minority leader, by 10 percentage points less than a month ahead of the general election, and Steil went on to win by that much. 

Recent election results, however, show differences in how voters in the district have supported presidential, congressional and Supreme Court candidates. Trump carried the district by 4.5 percentage points in 2024. But liberal Supreme Court candidates have won the district by at least 6 percentage points in elections since 2023. 

Democratic political strategist Joe Zepecki said the national political environment could make the district more competitive than it has been in previous elections. 

“When the political environment is as bad for either party as it is bad for Republicans right now, races that didn’t seem plausible a year ago suddenly get very real,” Zepecki said. 

Zepecki said Steil could have difficulty distancing himself from the administration as voters react to Trump’s actions. 

“The way that Trump’s choices and congressional Republicans’ refusal to do anything about it is really hamstringing candidates like Steil, who otherwise would be viewed as safer than he finds himself today,” Zepecki said. 

Republican political strategist Bill McCoshen, however, said Democrats appear to be “potentially overreacting” to what he said appears to be a favorable national environment for their party. He said he was surprised Democrats are targeting the district. 

“Will that national environment still be there in three or four weeks? We don’t know. So I guess as they’re trying to put more seats in play right now, and then they’ll narrow it down to the ones they think they have the best shot at in the final two weeks,” McCoshen said. 

Who has the advantage?

Steil in 2026 benefits from advantages in name recognition and financial resources compared to his opponent, McCoshen noted. 

A campaign finance report from Oct. 15 showed Steil with more than $4.2 million in his campaign chest, compared with about $338,000 for Berman. 

But Berman’s campaign has received additional support from national Democrats. In September, Berman was added to the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” program, which provides selected Democratic candidates with additional fundraising and organizational support.

Barca was also added to the program during his 2024 campaign. He said the designation helped raise national money because people want to invest in candidates they believe can win. 

He said the political environment changed significantly since he ran. 

“The whole focus (in 2024) was putting Biden and Harris on the defensive and because even though things were improving, people didn’t really sense that big of an improvement,” Barca said. “And now though, I mean, it hasn’t been this bad since I think the recession of ’08. So as a consequence, I think it’s a completely different environment than it was.”

Outside groups have also started pouring money into the race, bringing more national attention to the district.

The House Majority PAC has a $2.7 million ad buy planned for this district, according to AdImpact. Steil has still outpaced Berman in overall advertising spending, with about $5.9 million compared with more than $3 million for Berman, WisPolitics reported. The DCCC also made a joint ad buy of more than $270,000 for the Berman campaign. 

Republican-aligned groups are also pouring money into the race. The No Going Back Pac, backed by Trump, spent over $400,000 on Steil along with crypto-backed Super PAC Wisconsin Working PAC spending over $500,000.

But Barca said spending may not be enough to overcome a broader political shift if voters remain displeased with the policies supported by Steil and other congressional Republicans. 

“This is one of those potentially wave years where money can’t save you,” Barca said. “When you’ve got people hopping mad, and especially given they can connect the dots and tie what’s going on directly to policies that Steil has supported, I think that hurts dramatically.”

Candidates make their case to voters at home

While the political environment and campaign spending have drawn national attention to the race, both candidates are focused on emphasizing their message to voters in the district through their policy priorities and differing visions.

Berman, a political newcomer with more than two decades of experience in health care, is positioning himself as an outsider who can relate to working-class voters. 

“I’m the true definition of a working-class candidate. I’m still working shifts in the emergency room as we run the campaign because I have a mortgage to pay,” Berman said. “Unlike Brian Steil, who sort of left for D.C. and kind of forgotten where he comes from, this is my home, and I’m invested in seeing our community do better.”

Berman said his experience in health care has shaped both his campaign and his decision to enter politics. Zepecki said this background could give him an advantage in a race where health care costs are a major concern for voters.

 “I think he is exactly the kind of candidate you want at a time when health care costs are among the most severe pain points that families are dealing with,” Zepecki said.

Berman has called for lowering health care costs, restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies and reversing Medicaid cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. He is also campaigning to raise the minimum wage, protect reproductive rights and provide more funding for environmental protection. 

He criticized Steil’s support for Trump’s tariffs and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, saying Steil’s support for policies like these have made life more difficult for Wisconsin residents. 

Steil has emphasized securing the border, protecting older adults, supporting law enforcement and that he is “a strong supporter of life,” which signals support for the anti-abortion movement without mentioning the hot-button issue. He also highlighted legislation he supported, including the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which reduced taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security and increased the standard deduction. 

Both candidates emphasized affordability as the top issue for voters in the district, but disagree about the route to addressing it. 

Steil said Berman’s policy proposals would put more of a financial burden on taxpayers while Berman said Steil has failed to deliver on promises to lower costs.

“Brian Steil has made a lot of promises to folks here in this district,” Berman said. “He’s been running cycle after cycle on lowering costs, making health care affordable, protecting Social Security, and he, in fact, has not done any of those things.”

Steil pointed to his support for legislation that’s helped lower costs, such as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and legislation to produce more domestic oil and gas to lower household energy and living costs for Americans. 

“There’s more work to be done, and I think what you see is a contrast in policies between the radical left at the national stage, supported by my opponent, that would make life more expensive for families here in Wisconsin versus our policies to lower the costs for hardworking families,” Steil said. 

The candidates do share some common ground. Both have emphasized supporting veterans, with Berman drawing on more than a decade of experience working at the VA. Both have also emphasized protecting Social Security.  

Steil, having won four previous times, said the district has always been competitive and that his strategy remains the same as it has been even with continued efforts by Democrats.

“It’s a swing area of the state, a swing area of the country, which is why my focus is always on the grassroots and on direct voter outreach,” Steil said.

As Republicans face a mounting Democratic wave election, Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District becomes a battleground is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.